There But For The Grace Of God Go I

Part VII: Recourse

I travel without direction

Since I have been everywhere

Each road, each decision

Carol Feiser Laque's "Journey: All Roads Are Taken."

Tony sat through all of Thor's story in total, deafening silence. The minutes and seconds didn't seem to exist at all, actually, the idea of time was as superfluous and ridiculous as Norse gods that fell through skylights, as awfully unrealistic as space wars that he'd never even heard of.

Thor shot off a lot of unfamiliar names: Sif, Fandral, Vanaheim, Norns and Frigga and Laufey. Every now and then he'd backtrack and say something like, "Fandral is a friend of mine from childhood, a true, valiant warrior, though his weakness has always been the charms of wenches." which didn't make them seem any realer to Tony, didn't make them come off as having any sort of existence at all.

A sort of numbness spread all throughout Tony as the story dragged on, an old, awful feeling that Tony associated with the time Stane had pulled the Arc Reactor from his chest, the way the oncoming cardiac arrest had felt as he crawled his way into the workshop.

He took note of the parallels between Loki and him the whole time, a mental checklist that made him sicker and number the longer it went on.

Thor had finished off, half-choked on his own words, with a deadening halt in each sentence, with Loki's literal fall from grace.

"A Lucifer," Tony thought, almost snidely. "In his own right." A snide comment which hadn't actually been all that snide at all, an attempt to dissuade the situation with hollowed humor.

Tony looked straight at Thor, and wondered if he had looked that colorless before. He looked as wan as possible, moonfaced almost, like a child lost in a forest.

"I..." Tony's mouth felt very dry. He licked his lips. "He let go." Which was just such an eloquent thing to say, really. Tony's powers of the oratory were of the awesome variety. "You let him..."

"No!" Thor said, eyes wide and Tony had hit a nerve, he really had. "I... Stark, I did not let my brother fall, I did not." And Thor sounded more like he's trying to convince himself more than Tony, and there's a certain sadness in that that is utterly and completely foreign to him. Alien.

Tony rubbed his eyes, and the nausea in the pit of his stomach just wouldn't go away. He wanted to vomit, again, or crawl into his bed and forget that this had happened at all.

"So, what, he disappeared? For a year?" Tony asked, and the constriction in his chest just wouldn't go away, a violating feeling that pushed and pulled. "And none of you knew where he was?"

"We assumed him dead." Thor replied, dryly. "We laid his memory to rest in a dirge, set fire to the longship, though his body had been..." Tony smelled ozone, felt that cackle in the air again. "Lost to us, to the Void. To Asgard, to me, my Father... my brother was gone, forever."

Tony squinted, watched the way Thor drew in on himself then, closing up like an oyster.

And then he said, "And we all know what came next, I guess. Loki came, with his army. We defeated him, with our Hulk. You took him to Asgard."

Thor nodded, and said, "My brother was placed in our prisons for a fortnight, until my Father decided what would befit the crime..." Thor paused. "Crimes, that he had inflicted upon the Realms."

"So you took him to... what was it again?" Tony remembered of course, but still. He had a reputation of ignorance and selfishness to keep up. "Yaw-tin-hi-em?"

"Jötunheim." Thor corrected, and continued, "My brother's... birthright." And he looked very, very uncomfortable with that, which pissed Tony off, because it was easy to see why Loki went off like he did, and he didn't get why they couldn't see it. Why they didn't see what he saw so clearly, like crystal.

Beings that were supposedly so much more advanced than them, and this is what had happened.

"Why did Odin take Loki?" Tony asked, because the question burned in him, like spitfire.

Thor blinked at him, taken aback, and said very softly, "The Jötnar are near primitive, Stark, they had abandoned my brother before he was even a day old. Odin took pity, on a child so abandoned by-"

Tony shook his head, gave Thor a look like he were embarrassed for Thor, "Yeah, because all these attitudes about the Jötnar inside of Asgard... of course Odin would take pity on a monster. Get real, Point Break. He took him for a purpose."

The air jolted again; "Do not speak of my Father in such a way, Iron Man."

Tony's face darkened, and he ground out through finely clenched teeth, "Your dad's a fucking asshole."

The air spun and twisted, wound around Tony like a mini hurricane. Thor was dead silent, his face impassive and stony, his lips unmoving. Tony wondered if he'd struck upon a particular nerve, pinched a weak spot of Thor's. He then decided he didn't particularly care - Thor deserved that slight. He hadn't seen what Tony had seen, hadn't had to clean up the mess the Jötnar left in their wake.

"Do not presume to know my Father's intentions, Metal Man," Thor insulted. "I have no doubt that what he had intended was to curry peace between our people."

"By handing them, what? A sacrifice?" Tony asked. "A plaything? Did you see what they did to him?"

"My Father told the Jötnar king, the rightful king, that my brother would be given to him for an extended time, to repent for what he had done to his own race. Father made them swear, on their honor, that they would not harm Loki."

Thor looked up, searched Tony's face for something - acceptance, maybe, understanding even - but no, there was nothing like that in his face. Tony's teeth ground together, he thought of Stane, thought of drowning and "Jericho!" and the hum of an arc reactor and palladium poisoning.

"People lie," Tony hissed out, insurmountably angry and forcing himself up from the adjacent seat. "For fuck's sake, it's all we ever really do anymore." He stood over Thor, hands balled up at his sides. "And what, was all this supposed to be justice, or something? Torture isn't justice, it's torture."

"Anthony-"

Tony shook his head, lips curled, "Don't even deny it. You saw!" And he can't even figure out anymore why he is so angry, where are all this hostility is actually coming from, like a virus buried deep down in him just waiting for its chance to strike.

And Tony turned away, and he left Thor to sit there with that statement, that accusation curling around in the air like a whip.

"JARVIS, where's Loki?" Tony asked aloud, away from Thor.

"Loki Odinson has taken refuge in your bedroom, sir."

Tony found himself in his bedroom, paused in the doorframe. Loki stood there, like a nightmare, staring out of the window and at the ocean ahead of him, watched the roiling and vicious tides as they collapsed against the rocks. Over and over and over again.

It was eerie to look at. Tony wondered to himself what exactly was going on in that wasp's nest of a head, what kind of thoughts plagued the stark black figure that lined his window.

Tony took one step and got, scathingly, "Come no closer."

"Thor isn't taking you back to Asgard." Tony said. "Just a heads-up."

Loki didn't turn to face him, but bowed his head the smallest bit. His hands twitched, a motion that drew Tony's eyes to them, which Tony regretted.

"Shit, what did you do?" Tony queried, because the God of Mischief was bleeding all over his floors again. He ignored Loki's past warning, jumped ahead to approach him-

"Do not touch me!" Loki hissed, yanking his bleeding hand away from Tony, facing him now. His eyes flashed, his whole body seemed to tighten up, like a bowstring. Tony tried not to look at the fingertips of Loki's hand, the ragged, bleeding cuticles. Instead he focused on those eyes.

There was fear, again, and hatred. So much hatred it almost poured out of him, so much hatred it seemed to swallow everything, all of it, like a maelstrom.

"I'm not going to touch you." Tony said, and it seemed too soft-hearted and touchy-feely so he tempered it with, "Not unless you want me to."

Loki peered into his face, did the same creepy thing he always seemed to do, where he peeled back Tony's layers like an onion, "Keep your distance, Stark."

A pause - there seemed to be an awful lot of those, recently - and Tony said, stepping forward, "You're going to have to be a bit more specific about what type of distance, Scarface."

When Tony reached out to touch that bleeding hand, Loki's fingers curled around his wrist like a vice, "Do not play games with me." He said, insidiously, and Tony smiled.

"What games?"

Loki glared at him, and the feeling of intimidation crawled across Tony's skin like a layer of worms. He suppressed it, gave his best smarmy smirk, and then said, "Listen, Thor's not taking you back."

"Say you." Loki whispered, and his grip tightened. A muscle jumped up Tony's arm. "What reason do you have to keep me here, Stark? Am I to be a trophy? A semblance of the enemy you took so great a pleasure in conquering?"

Tony replied, feeling as reckless and daring and positively stupid as he could have gotten, "Actually, it's more a personal creed. A 'do unto others what you would have done to yourself' kind of deal. Hopefully it'll get me somewhere."

Loki hesitated, shockingly enough, and the grip on Tony's wrist was released. Tony was thankful he'd gotten off without a spot of frostbite. The hand was outstretched towards him, an offering, and Tony took it.

The skin just above the cuticles was a ragged, awful mess, and the reason behind this newest wound became as clear to Tony as daylight.

"So is this self-hatred an old thing?" Tony asked, aloud, fearlessly. "Or is this something you picked up after that stint with the Jötnar?"

Loki's head jerked up, his eyes narrowed, those eyes tapering to a point.

"Oh, Thor told me everything." Tony explained, and he felt bolder with each and every word.

"But of course." Sneered Loki, though his prior confidence and menace seemed to leave him for a second. "Dear Thor has such a hard time keeping to himself that which he should. It's one of his many faults."

Tony surveyed the hand and said, aloud, ignoring the comment about Thor, "You escaped, right? Didn't plan on ending up here. Didn't want to."

Loki's hand twitched in his, "Whatever gives you that idea, Stark?"

"I'm not your biggest fan." Said Tony. "Hell, I don't even really like you, and you know that. You could've gone anywhere, could've headed up to Norway and barricaded yourself in some cave."

"Where you, your Avengers and Thor would no doubt have found me." Loki hissed. "And you forget, I had need of your Arc Reactor."

"So that's it, huh?" Tony said, dropping Loki's hand. The god seemed grateful for that. "I'm just useful."

Loki looked uncomfortable, and reached out to hold his own bloody hand.

He retorted, "Be glad, Stark, that you haven't outlived your usefulness." And Tony had the distinct feeling that that sentence meant something else entirely, like an entendre.

"What can I say?" Tony replied, sarcasm drenched in each syllable. "I live to serve."

Loki looked Tony up and down and up again. He felt distinctly like he'd been x-rayed, like Loki was going to espouse all the things that were broken in him, from top to bottom, a laundry list of reflected fucked up things.

"Tell me, Stark," Loki asked, staring down at his hand. "Why do you keep Thor from returning me to Asgard? What changed your mind so?"

Tony felt sick again, and licked his lips, "Because it's not right, what they did to you. And yeah, maybe you do deserve it, just a little bit, but hey," Tony shrugged. "Doesn't change the fact that, down here at least, we've got rules about this kind of stuff."

"Your Realm's rules have made you all weak, reckless creatures!" Loki groused, and the glower he gave Tony was intense indeed. "You fear no retribution because there is no retribution!"

"I'm not complaining." Tony retorted. "You shouldn't either, by the way."

Those sharp eyes fixed him with a penetrating stare, and Tony only smiled, all teeth and all defiance.

"You provoke me." Loki said.

"Not on purpose." Tony replied, laughingly. "It's just the way I am."

Loki looked at him then, suspicion etched on his face as clearly and plainly as the scars that marred him. Tony tried to piece together what he'd heard about the Jötnar from Thor, tried to imagine that face colored in blues and reds, and found that he couldn't quite conjure up the image at all. It didn't fit, really, on Loki, no matter which way you sliced it.

"How long do you plan on keeping me here, Stark?" Loki questioned, and his face was steely once again. "You cannot trap me here forever."

Eyebrows raised, Tony clucked his tongue and said, "Hadn't thought that one through yet. As long as it takes? Until... who knows. I'm not handing you over to your jackass of a dad, anyway."

"Odin is not my father." Loki murmured, lowly. "Surely Thor told you that much?"

Tony nodded, moved to stand in front of the window that Loki had stood in front of and said, with a small constriction in the center of his chest, "Yeah. But he took you, right? You'd be dead if he hadn't."

There was a small stretch of silence, and then, "Some would say I would have been better off."

"Especially," Tony thought to himself. "If some were Clint Barton."

Which wasn't Clint's fault. It wasn't anyone's fault, really.

"Maybe," Tony said, and then he echoed, "Who knows? Maybe you're alive for a reason."

Loki laughed, dry and hoarse and cracked, "Do not force your sentiments upon me, Stark."

All Tony had in response to that was a low, lost chuckle.

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