Lima to Stockholm
Note: I'm ignoring the myth about Loki commissioning the creation of both Mjolnir and Gungnir from the dwarves because I'm pretty sure Gungnir was shown in Bor's hands in TDW and thus was around before Loki was born in the MCU.
Chapter Seven: Repercussions
Time slipped by in a quiet sort of way. Where Tony had been able to jump on the Mind Gem and start unraveling its secrets the moment he laid hands on it Gungnir was a different story. For one thing, Tony had an analytical lab that was the envy of a planet at his disposal on Earth. Asgard might be the more advanced planet but...
Tony looked up from the Asgardian Thermal Desorption Mass Spectrometer Loptr had acquired for him. "All your doctors are women, am I right?"
Loki blinked at him in surprise, "How did you know that?" he asked. "-Although the preferred term is Healer."
"Easy: So-called 'normal' magic users are female. Your tech runs on magic," Tony said. "Now obviously guys can use it but your ancestors- Well your mom's ancestors anyway and I'm betting that Asgard, Jotunheim and all the rest of your world have some sort of independent, parallel development going on back in the pre-Yggdrasil-travel days. Anyway, the goal of magic was to eliminate the need for tech-interfaces, to let people manipulate energy fields directly. It didn't work, only a fraction of women and a scant handful of men got the ability, but my guess? That thinking didn't completely go away." He poked at the spectrometer irritably, "Which is why any joe-shmoe can operator a set of wings powered by the equivalent of one of my Arc Reactors but the delicate stuff all requires a mage to operate it. Even though you failed to give everyone the ability to- to sense the Universe on that level your culture still thinks it's better. So your doct- excuse me, healers are all women, all magic-users because your analytical equipment only works for someone with the inborn ability to reach out and manipulate magic fields. I'm going to have to redesign all this crap before I've got a working lab."
Even after Tony had built a lab that met his requirements it was still slow going. The Mind Gem was practically a crystallized spell, something Tony could touch and poke at and the stone itself begged, demanded attention. The spells on Gungnir were more of a subtle working. Tony found himself having to have Loki or Loptr enchant various objects while he ran his scans to develop a baseline for how magic enchantments worked.
Tony became skilled at detecting active manipulation of the magic fields and predicting what a spell's ends were from those manipulations but once the casting was done it became all but impossible for him to detect the perturbations left behind in the the fields.
"I can look at the Earth's magnetic fields and tell you where the poles are NOW but they don't tell me about the last time the poles reserved themselves. To figure that out I've go dig through layers of old lava on the ocean floor. Scanning something you've bibbitied doesn't tell me jack-shit unless I've got a before and after shot to run comparisons on."
But building that baseline took time and from what Tony gathered the sort of magical workings that went into the creation of Gungnir and Mjolnir had been lost many millennia ago.
"When'd your people stagnate Reindeer Games?" Tony asked quietly one night after Loki had set aside their 'bedtime story'.
"I don't know," Loki sighed. "Why do you think Father wanted you so badly? There are only warriors in our history books, no innovators. Primitive though it may be Midgard's technology is still in the process of becoming. You are one of its primary drivers, the animating force behind several of its recent leaps forward. You're here so that you may immerse yourself in the present of Asgard's technological status quo in the hopes that you could introduce a similar advancement here. Mayhap even knock loose some of the rust that has held us locked in place for so many years."
It had always been easy for Tony to lose himself in a challenge and, once the idea took root, the thought of having the ability to lock weapons based on the user's intent was an irresistible one for him.
Tony rocked his chair back on two legs as he stretched, grumbling about Asgardian philistines and chairs that neither spun nor rolled when he noticed Loptr was still hanging out in his workshop. The kid was in the process of rearranging the toolbox like a squishy, magic-using version of Dum-E. "Hey! Sorceress' Apprentice, not that I don't like your company but don't you have better places to be?"
Loptr dropped the wrench he'd been holding and started stammering.
"You've been here practically all day, every day lately," Tony realized as he thought back. "You're not stuck here because I told what's-her-name to go away?"
Loptr shook his head, "I like building stuff with you."
"But don't you have your magic studies? Or kids your own age to-"
Loptr flinched, "If you don't want me here-" he exclaimed and rushed out the door.
"Oh fuck," Tony gave into the impulse to bang his head against the table as he remembered how he would have taken being told he ought to have friends. And Loptr didn't even have the option of buying the illusion of friends the way Tony had done.
He hurried after the boy and found Loptr sitting on the bench under the willow tree in the garden. Tony paused at the edge of the mental barrier created by the edge of the veranda. "Look, I'm an idiot when it comes to the whole dealing with living, breathing people," he called to Loptr. "You just haven't realized it yet because when it comes to brilliant kids I've generally got a good enough memory to think back to when I was your age and remember what I wanted from people around me back then."
Loptr stared at the water, not acknowledging Tony. In Asgard's throne room, Loki looked up briefly sensing something not quite right with one of his clones, but whatever it was the clone didn't trigger a full alarm so he went back to trying to figure out what in the name of the Norns actually motivated Niflheim.
"Something changed,"Tony said. "You used to be out and about in the place scavenging things for me and you'd show me what you'd learned from your mom. Ever since that one day when you showed up all freaked out you're always here. What happened?"
Loptr remembered: The angry, fearful glances from people around the palace who'd taken note of his resemblance to his older-self. Thor's hands, too hard on his shoulders, the hope that he didn't know how to cope with in his erstwhile brother's eyes. Nothing he could share with Tony. "There's nowhere else for me to go." It was the truth if not the true answer to the question asked.
"What?" Tony took a step forward, into the garden, and froze. His heart started racing.
"My mother's dead," Loptr said.
"Oh kid, I- shit. I am so sorry." Tony forgot his fears and walked out to the bench to sit down beside Loptr. He wrapped an arm around the boy's shoulders.
In the four years since Frigga's death comfort was one thing Loki had never been offered. The next thing Loptr new he was sobbing, his face buried against Tony's chest. "It was my fault," he whispered.
Tony petted Loptr's hair and ignored the bruises forming under the kid's desperate grip. When Loptr's sobs trickled off into exhausted hiccups, Tony picked him up and carried him back inside to tuck him into his bed before going back to work on the spear. With thoughts of dead mothers fresh in his mind, sleep was the last thing Tony wanted.
"Howard? Howard?" Maria Stark's weak, broken voice was all but lost under the sound of grave shifting under heavy footsteps.
The Winter Soldier stared blankly over the roof of the car as he strangled her.
In defiance of his shattered skull, Howard stood up and started walking up the road. "We were barely a mile from the house," he grumbled. "How the hell could that worthless son of mine not know what happened? You can bet Captain America would have known."
"Your sleep is still disturbed by thoughts of your parents' murder," Loki commented after waking Tony from yet another nightmare.
"Yeah. How do you hear me anyway?" Tony asked leaning his head against his hands tiredly.
"I placed a monitoring spell on this room."
"Eavesdropping spell," Tony corrected mustering the energy to glare.
"No, those are devised to be undetectable," Loki argued. "The spell I used is the one my mother used to watch Thor and I's nursery."
"Okay, now I'm just insulted," Tony sighed.
"If it would help I doubt Odin would be opposed to having Barnes assassinated for you," Loki remarked casually.
For several minutes Tony could only stare at him in shock. "You didn't just suggest killing someone because I have bad dreams."
"Why not?" Loki shrugged, "You are important to the war against Thanos, your ability to create is extremely rare. While your so-called super-soldiers are few and far between on Midgard they are as common as dirt in Asgard's armies. The Captain's ability to inspire others to fight even in the mouth of the serpent has it's value but the Soldier is irrelevant to the Universe's future."
"Well that's a first," Tony muttered under his breath. "No, absolutely not. Look, even in my nightmares Barnes basically just an object. I'm not mad at him… anymore. Sure, then and there, it was his hands around Mom's throat and he was right there. I wanted someone to pay for what happened to her, she never deserved that. Hell, Dad didn't deserve that and I got along with him about as well as you and Odin."
Loki winced at the thought of his relationship with Odin.
"But once I'd had an hour or two to process I got it. Even then I got it a little, there was a reason Steve was the one I decked first. But then Barnes went and shoved a gun in my face, for the second time in as many days, because I had the unmitigated gall to punch his not-so-little boyfriend. And after that I didn't care if was Winter Soldier or Barnes confusing Post-Serum Rogers for a delicate flower." Tony made a disgusted sound, "What'd the rest of us do to deserve the two of them and their whole star-crossed bromance?"
"The whole world is collateral damage if they are together," Loki surmised.
"Hell yeah," Tony groaned. "You know, Captain America meant everything to Howard, way more than Mom or I, but in Siberia I found out Howard didn't mean a damn thing to Rogers. He finds out my parents got murdered and all he could think about was how it might affect his good buddy, getting justice for them never even crossed his mind. Anyone not named Bucky Barnes is so much chopped liver in his world, forgotten before the corpse is cold." Tony started laughing, "And me? I was still breathing when he wrote me off as yet another necessary sacrifice at the altar of keeping Bucky Barnes safe and sound.
"God, can you imagine how awkward it would have been for Bucky if I'd known and Steve had managed to bring him home before Zemo blew everything up?" Tony exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "I might have been a lousy host if I'd known that I was being asked to house the guy who murdered my parents. I mean how would Bucky have felt knowing I'd have to be picturing his hands around my mother's throat every time I looked at him. No wonder Steve kept it a secret."
"And how you might have felt doesn't matter at all?" Loki asked.
"Didn't you know? Tony Stark doesn't have a heart," Tony quipped bitterly. "Someone put it in the paper once so it must be true."
"How you feel matters to me," Loki stated.
"Because I'm less useful when I'm obsessing about my parents' murder or my weapons being misused," Tony finished Loki's statement tiredly.
For a heartbeat Loki looked ready to protest but he curbed the urge. "Would you feel better if the Soldier were dead?" he asked instead.
"No," Tony repeated. "I'm not petty enough to want him dead just to hurt Steve. And that would be the biggest reason to go after him. Now that I'm thinking I get it, all that HYDRA left of Barnes is a wind-up doll. When we were fighting, Steve said killing Bucky wouldn't bring my parents back, like that's supposed to make it okay for he and Barnes to ride off into the sunset. There's no way to bring the dead back, so just forget 'em. Dad's probably a case of live by the sword, die by the sword but I still want justice for my mom." Tony sighed, "I don't know if that's possible though. I've spent enough years making weapons not to get any sort of warm fuzzies from melting down guns used to commit murders, the gun's just a gun.
"And yeah, I shouldn't objectify him but I can deal with a weapon that murdered my parents. I can't deal with a person being forced into killing them. Sure killing him now won't bring them back but if he's such a great guy couldn't he have found a way to off himself seventy years ago? Spare himself and the rest of us a lot of misery."
"Even with all the power of Asgard at my disposal it is still impossible to reverse what has been," Loki said.
"Then I'd want Barnes contained," Tony said. "Because Bucharest and Berlin say he's dangerous to everyone around him and he doesn't- probably isn't capable of giving a damn who gets hurt when he's threatened. I wouldn't ever want to deal with him- I'd probably sock anyone who told me to be the bigger man and forget his hand around my mom's neck but I wouldn't get anything except more guilt out of seeing him dead."
Pepper walked back and forth in the bedroom they'd shared in the Tower, a screaming baby cuddled against her shoulder. "Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And down will come baby, cradle and all," she sang, her voice off-key and a little desperate.
"I don't think she likes it Boss-Lady," FRIDAY observed. "And frankly I don't blame her that's a horrible song. No one really puts babies in trees right?"
Pepper chuckled tiredly, "We only think about how nice it would be if the wind would rock them to sleep when Mommy's arms are so tired I think they might just fall off."
"If you set up an automated cradle I could rock her," FRIDAY offered.
"I think she likes your voice, she's finally quieted down. You're going to be the best big sister ever aren't you FRI?" Pepper said fondly.
"Absolutely!"
"Well keep talking, until she's really out."
"I could tell her the weather report," FRIDAY said dubiously. "But since we're already talking, I've been meaning to ask if I could get some holo-emitters set up in the home-theatre on the common level?"
"What for?" Pepper asked.
"Well, then I could ask Amadeus over to watch movies and he'd know where to look when he was talking to me. I'm not in the ceiling," FRIDAY said.
"You're not 'in' a hologram either," Pepper pointed out.
"I know, but I think it would just feel more natural for both of us if he had eyes to look at while we were talking," FRIDAY argued.
"Eyes?" Pepper asked archly. "Remember I'm the one that kicked him out of the lab last week when you were trying on avatars."
"Okay so I might have used a few models and actresses as my template," FRIDAY admitted. "And maybe the clothes were a little daring."
"Open up the folder," Pepper said and a moment later the wall screen showed a series of avatars FRIDAY had been 'trying on'. "This one wasn't bad." Pepper suggested. "But increase the skirt length by at least four inches. I don't care what you two like watching, he doesn't need to see your underwear every time you take a step."
"What the hell?" Tony muttered, "Since when do my AI's date and who is this Amadeus?" He looked over Pepper's shoulder, he had to give it to her the avatar she'd picked looked classier than most of those FRIDAY had put together but at the same time she looked a little, well, grown-up next to Tony's mental image of FRIDAY.
Tony let himself into the library but instead of heading back to the shelves where the oldest books, books he was starting to be able to read with only minimal help from Loki, were housed he browsed the shelves near the armchair Loki favored. He wanted to ask the mage a favor and nervous wasn't his style but here he was, dithering.
Loki turned another page in his book and Tony remembered those slim hands closed around his throat with implacable strength. Loki had made his point about weapons being no worse than the use they were put to and about powerlessness a little too well. From the first it had been hard for Tony to dismiss that he had been at Loki's mercy since waking up in Asgard. Odin was the only person with the power to interfere if Loki chose to hurt him and Odin played favorites: Thor was his son by birth, Loki by adoption and Tony was a potentially useful mortal Odin had picked up once Steve abandoned him. Tony didn't want to put too much faith in Odin coming to his rescue.
But Loki paid attention to what Tony said even when he didn't have the armor to back him up. 'That puts him one up on the Avengers,' Tony thought. 'They never even really gave Bruce or I a chance to explain Ultron. They didn't care what I was trying to do. They didn't even care about what I did. Just about having someone to blame when it blew up in my face. Loki listens when I say something, maybe it's just so that he can manipulate me into changing my mind but he listens. And even when he's scaring the pants off me he's still trying to help. So what if he's got selfish reasons for wanting to stop Thanos? It's still worth doing. I'm not Captain Bullheaded America, looking down on anyone who's got reasons beyond Truth, Goodness and the American Way.' Tony shook his head and wondered what it said about his stability that he accepted Loki's motives for terrifying him as justified, for his own good even.
"Not believing would be worse."
'He was just trying to motivate me. He even gave me the means of defending myself against him.' Tony flexed his hands feeling the weight of the new gauntlets hugging his forearms. Watches weren't the style on Asgard so he'd designed the first pieces of his new armor to look similar to the arm guards both Loki and Thor wore, except in red and gold naturally. The circuitry was hidden in plain sight by blending it into decorative metalwork. Similarly the arc reactor embedded in each gauntlet near the bend of his elbow and the repulsor set just above his wrist, waiting to slide into place over his palms, looked like nothing more than decorative gem stones. The gauntlets were considerable bigger than a watch, consequently Tony had enough material to work with that once they unfolded he was armored from fingertips up over his shoulders with enough left over for the two gauntlets to link across his chest and back. In addition to allowing more freedom of movement in the shoulders the link served the secondary purpose of providing reinforcement for the chest plate over his ribs.
Tony thought about the ridiculous picture he must make: A simple black tee-shirt, because who ever got clothes for him apparently thought AC/DC and One Direction were interchangeable, NOT! -Paired with medieval looking gauntlets. Levis stuffed into knee-high metal boots, with another set of arc reactors placed on the sides of the knees. Like the gauntlets they unfolded to armor him up to the hips.
He wasn't wearing the chest plate or helmet but given this was Asgard Tony hadn't bothered with any sort of disguise for them. In Odin's court armor was more appropriate for a formal appearance than a tie, not to mention more comfortable to wear. He'd kept the central arc reactor, removing it felt like admitting he was afraid of what Steve Rogers could do to him, but the next person who went after it was going to get a nasty surprise. Tony kept the unibeam but he had to sacrifice almost sixty percent of the shielding around the arc protect his ribs instead. To make the four limb-mounted reactors flat enough to fit he'd lost more than half the power they could produce, on a one-to-one comparison against the chest mounted reactor. The next person who thought they'd disabled him by crushing his heart was going to get more than words as a parting shot.
In deference to the local aesthetic Tony had made his new armor less sleek. He'd added a high collar rising from the shoulders and the gloves and boots were more textured. It was just coincidence that the collar would shield his spine from shocks even if someone managed to get another cord around his neck and if the texture on the gloves and boots was sharp enough to make it uncomfortable for anyone trying to get a crushing grip on them, well again total coincidence. Nothing to do with a dark-haired super-soldier squeezing his gauntlet until the metal gave, or a blond one using his ankle for a hand-hold while smashing his boot reactor with a shield. The alloy wasn't the normal Titanium-gold Tony favored. It was better, both lighter and stronger, Tony was seriously tempted to call it Mithril. The alloy had a warm, gold cast that Tony couldn't bring himself to cover with yellow the way he normally did. He also deepened the reds from hot-rod to garnet.
Tony didn't normally wear the breastplate, or even the boots in his rooms. The gauntlets weren't a sign of mistrust. When in Rome, after all Asgardians seemed to look at being completely disarmed as akin to being naked. 'It was just etiquette to keep a weapon on myself at all times, nothing that could hurt Loki's feelings and he practically suggested it anyway,' Tony told himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, then slid the book he'd been pretending to glance over back onto the shelf.
"Rud- Loki, what would you think about teaching Loptr magic?" Tony asked casually.
Loki looked up from the book he'd been reading and just stared for a moment. Then he started laughing.
"Come on, I'm serious here!" Tony exclaimed. "The kid lost his mom, who happens to also be the only one who thought his natural talents were worth developing. You've got those same skills and besides it would be good for him to see another guy working magic… And no I did not just suggest you as a role-model. Fuck, I totally did. Wait, modification, you're teaching me about magic, watching you teach someone to actually use it would be beneficial and I could moderate your influence on the kid."
Loki wiped away tears as he tried and failed to keep himself from dissolving into totally undignified giggles or possibly hysteria.
"Alright already!" Tony huffed. "Neither of us are exactly choice role-model material, but work with me here Rudolph!"
"There have been several developments in the case of Sgt. Barnes which might bring you peace," the Odin-clone told Tony. "The scientists of Wakanda and your own company collaborated to eradicate the Winter Soldier programing from the Soldier's mind. While they were successful he remains in custody in Wakanda until such time as he can demonstrate that he no longer presents a danger to the public."
"B.A.R.F.?" Tony asked curiously.
"Your Lady Pepper refers to the technology exclusively as Binarily Augmented Retro Framing," Odin replied and Tony snickered.
"Pep does not share my sense of humor," Tony explained. "Or at least she knows I get a kick out of watching her be all prim and proper when relaying the crap I come up with. Rhodey's even better. I used to make-up really dirty acronyms so I could watch him to try to keep a straight face while presenting them to the top brass until Obie had a fit and got the board on my case about 'sophomoric nonsense'."
"There is no more danger of the Winter Soldier programing being activated," Odin reaffirmed.
"Did they manage to fix the mental glitch where he and Rogers both go off their rocker the moment someone looks cross-eyed at the other one?" Tony asked distantly.
"Possibly not, which is why he remains in custody in Wakanda while Rogers is imprisoned in the United States," Odin said. "While in custody Barnes has been recounting all the details he could recall from his missions as the Winter Soldier. As a consequence of the information he provided two of former handlers were identified and arrested. Including the individual who ordered your parent's assassination."
Tony sat down heavily. "Really?"
"I am not in the habit of lying," Odin assured him.
"That's- The person that gave the order?"
"Was dragged out of a prosperous retirement from his service to HYDRA and currently is being held pending a trial that is little more than a formality as he has confessed."
In the doorway Loki smiled to himself. It hadn't been any trouble at all employ Hlidskjalf's abilities in assistance of the Midgardian manhunt. The Odin-clone had matters to discuss with Heimdall anyway, if that conversation just happened to distract the guardian while Loki used the paths to slip away to Midgard for a moment it was hardly anything to mention. He'd always wanted to try out the spell that caused its victim to feel as if they were being flayed alive every moment of the day and if his words might have suggested that relief could be found by unburdening a guilty conscious… Well he hadn't precisely promised that the man's torment could be ended by confessing. It wasn't even worth mentioning, he'd barely lifted a finger after all.
It didn't bring back the dead but Loki remembered the satisfaction when the Kursed who'd murdered his mother had been swallowed up by his own grenade and hoped Tony was feeling something similar.
Note: India Eisley with red hair from "Kite" is the 'template' FRIDAY is using for her look