There But For The Grace Of God Go I

Part VIII: Solidarity Momentum

We go blind when we've needed to see

And it leans on me like a rootless tree.

Damien Rice - Rootless Tree

Tony made it very clear to Thor that there was no way he'd be taking Loki back to Asgard. Loki had stood behind him, silent as a shadow the entire time, during the whole nearly one-sided argument that consisted of Loki's fate. Thor hadn't even looked at Tony once the entire time, fully captivated by the not-brother that stood behind him.

It was really miserable, just the way Thor looked at Loki. Tony couldn't imagine the kind of reproachful gaze that Thor was getting back in return, but he could almost feel Loki's tightness behind him, could nearly hear it like a whole running script of: you will not touch me, you will not touch me, you will not touch me.

But when everything was done and said - on Tony's part, anyway - Thor had finally broken eye contact long enough to announce, "I would not return to Asgard, then, if my brother cannot come home with me."

Tony, for all his genius, hadn't expected that, "What?"

"No." Loki said, and his voice held equal measures of anger and anxiety. "Return to Asgard, Thor. Tell the All-Father what you've seen. Make it clear to him that if he so wishes my return, then he will come for me himself so that I may ask him-"

"Brother," Thor's face fell, his lips tightened. "Do not ask that of me."

"So that I may ask him what glory there is in throwing me to monsters. What peace that may have brought." Loki finished, ignoring Thor.

Tony turned to face Loki, and was not surprised to see how steely that face looked, how rigid he seemed.

"Hey, what you want to do is all up to you, I know." Tony started out. "But I don't think bringing Darth Vader and the rest of the Death Star down upon our heads is exactly the brightest idea. Just saying." He finished this spiel with a shrug.

Sparing not even a glance at him, eyes fully trained on Thor, Loki said, "As you said, Stark, the choice is mine and mine alone. This is what I would like. To show Odin what he has brought, what decision he has made."

"I cannot, Loki." Thor crossed his arms over his chest, did that thing where he frowned with his whole face.

"Cannot, brother," Spit Loki, venomously. "Or will not?"

"Can it not be both?" Retorted Thor, crestfallen. "I would not set forth in Asgard, not without you by my side."

Loki's whole stance changed then, like smoke curling in on itself, "I would throw myself from the Bifrost a thousand and one times again before I would even look at Asgard, much less walk on its gilded streets."

Tony interjected, then, clapping his hands, "Well! Looks like the three of us have reached an impasse. Two gods for the price of one, Bob Barker deals and all!"

"I do not wish to impose, friend." Thor said.

"You already did that by flooding my hallway and knocking down my front door. Thanks for that, by the way. Very impressive, very a la Spartacus." Tony felt Loki's gaze trailing a fiery streak down each notch of his spine. "But Thor, buddy, amigo, ami, the last thing you'd be doing is impose by taking up space in good old Stark Manor!"

Loki hissed, impossibly close, "I would not have him stay, Stark." And then, threatening, "I will flee, and you will not find me ever again."

"But then SHIELD would hunt you down." Tony returned. "And believe me, they're not as hospitable as me. Far from it, in fact. You think you're hurt now?"

Loki's gaze was sharp as an athame as Tony continued, "What the Jötnar did to you, SHIELD would do a hundredfold. No, a thousandfold."

Tony didn't know if this was truth or lie. Half-truth, maybe, which made the best lies. He hoped instead that Loki would fall for it, that he wouldn't hear the racing heart in the center of Tony's chest, that he wouldn't notice the suspicious pointed stare he shared with Loki.

It was Thor, surprisingly, that saved him, "I would stay, then, if it's not too much trouble."

Behind him, Loki seethed, and Tony replied, "We're going to have to relocate then. To Stark Tower." He shot Loki a glance over his shoulder. "Just like old times. Right, Reindeer Games?"

Loki did not dignify that with a response.

That night, Tony Stark slept in snatches.

His nightmares came to him in wild, hysterical episodes, like a freak windstorm or a near-death experience. Everything about his life, from beginning to end, flipped from behind his eyelids and into a sped up VCR tape, and he felt almost everything he'd ever felt in the span of a single heartbeat.

When he'd shot awake, it was exactly 4:00 AM, and his whole chest felt like it were going to burst.

It took him a brief moment to recognize the weight on the edge of his bed and when he did, the weight spoke, "You have night terrors."

"Is that what they are?" Tony responded to Loki, groggily. "Felt more like a wet dream than anything else. Very pleasurable. I didn't know a gymnast could be that bend-"

"You are crass beyond measure." Loki said, and Tony realized he was staring out the window of Tony's bedroom again. A specter of black against pre-morning. "Is it how you deal with the events of your life?"

"Not sure there's many events in the life of Tony Stark, asshole extraordinaire." Tony shuffled the pillow over his head, searched for small dregs of a nice sleep. "Besides booze, babes and... something else applicable that starts with a B."

"Beatitudes?" Loki finished for him. "You do not fool me, Stark. I know all that SHIELD had on you."

Tony's heart clenched, "Oh. Right. Barton told you everything."

Loki paused for a second, "Yes."

"One thing he didn't tell you?" Tony said, muffled beneath a pillow. "Contrary to popular opinion, I don't like it when random people show up in my bedroom."

"Like you, I cannot sleep." Loki offered. "Whether that's a comment on the comfort of your guest quarters or myself remains for me to know."

"Ouch."

Loki inclined his head to the side, and Tony could see half-beneath his pillow the outline of Loki's head, the flicker of his eyes.

"What happened to you?" Loki asked, quietly. "Tell me."

Tony pulled himself up, out of bed, and half-faced Loki only to ask, "What happened to you? That's a little more important, don't you think?"

"No." Loki croaked, his voice snapping halfway. "There is nothing important about it at all."

"You really think that?" Tony felt like he were treading on thin ice, like his wintry nightmares. "I thought everything about you was important. Came with the diva attitude, pure Primadonna."

Loki's laugh was dry, "You delude yourself in thinking I am like you. I'm not."

"Believe me, daddy's boy," Tony replied sharply. "I didn't think that at all."

In the shadows, Tony could see the small twist of Loki's lips though he couldn't discern whether it was a smile or a frown.

"I have never been important." Said Loki. "I have only ever been a bargaining tool. Auxiliary. A spare."

Tony paused, unsure how to continue, and said, "You seem pretty important to Thor."

Loki's shoulders tightened up, his posture slackened, "Thor wants a lie returned to him. He doesn't want me."

"Maybe," And wow, is he really up at four in the morning discussing feelings with the same man that tried to throw him out his own window? "But would he really call you brother and fight for you every step of the way, unless he wanted just you?"

Silence.

And then, "I know what I am, Stark, and I know that no one wants me. But it matters little. I have me."

Tony had absolutely nothing to say to that. But he felt a certain solidarity with the sentence, felt it in the center of his chest almost as surely as he felt the arc reactor, and there was no way that he couldn't not pity Loki. He couldn't really. For the first time, he saw something there, beyond the megalomania. Something beyond the hatred and the genocide.

"They're calling you the Merchant of Death."

The plane ride was... awkward, to say the least.

Loki spent the majority of it staring out the window, watching clouds pass as Thor made stilted and awful attempts at conversation.

Tony, as was his fashion, ordered a straight bottle of bourbon and tried his hardest to ignore both of them. It had been exceptionally difficult to hide both Loki and Thor in one of his more... subtle rides, or the only car even remotely close to subtle, but somehow they managed to make it to the airport without much fuss.

And now they were flying, with a notoriously odd amount of lack-of-fuss.

"This form of transportation is lumbering, at best." Was the only sentence that Thor ever directed to Tony which was better, he supposed, than trying to get him involved in whatever one-sided conversation he and Loki were having.

"My planet, my rules." Tony retorted, and he drank.

It was the middle of the afternoon when they touched down in the middle of New York City, and headed to Stark Tower in the guise of a heavily tinted car.

"The city has recovered well." Thor remarked.

Loki, as usual, was silent.

"We're nothing if not adaptable."

Stark Tower was dead.

Which was alright, it was pretty unused, especially in the wake of the reconstruction that was nearly halfway done. The personal project that Tony had tried throwing himself into after all the world tried to fall down around him.

Still, the lack of people within was deadening.

Loki spoke up for the first time in hours, "Your tower is impressive."

"I know you think so."

Thor said, "There is no one here?"

"Manhatten's still pulling itself back together." Tony replied, smoothly, though he watched Loki's reaction. "Baby steps. Plus, the Tower's got a little construction left of its own."

They took the elevator up to the penthouse, and JARVIS welcomed them with, "Extra security measures have been taken to prevent the sightings of both Mr. Odinson's-"

"Loki, voice." Loki commanded, and Thor shot him a hurt look. "My name is Loki."

"My apologies, Loki. SHIELD's surveillances over Stark Tower and your other properties have been jammed, as per your request."

"Thanks, JARVIS."

The floors ticked by, until the doors opened up to the penthouse. Tony shot a look over his shoulder at Loki, to see if the god remembered this place, if anything about it became familiar to him.

Apparently it did, for he smiled the slightest bit, "I see you've filled the gap I left behind, Stark."

Tony pouted, "Oh, any gap you leave behind I could never fill." And realized only then how unintentionally racy that line had seemed, though he didn't care a whit.

The two gods seemed to survey the rooms for a bit while Tony set up the monitor, pulling up and bringing a 3D diagram to his hip. Loki and Thor flanked him at the shoulders.

"Here's Stark Tower," He said, looking at with all the faux love he could muster. "Right now, we're on the top level. The penthouse. This is my space."

The top level was highlighted, and Tony spun it around a bit.

"It's excessive," Said Loki, quietly. "Not befitting of a mortal."

"I'm pretty godly," Was Tony's retort. "I think I'll manage."

Loki's glare was poisonous, and his shoulders bristled, but it made Tony smirk to see that he could rile Loki up regardless.

"Where will our quarters be, Anthony?" Thor asked.

"Separate quarters, of course." Loki added, and Thor shot him yet another harmed aside.

Tony chuckled and said, "Well, you're underneath me." Which was entirely meant to be a jab, and Loki knew it. But Tony continued, "And Thor's under you. You each get your own floor. Try not to start a catfight? I don't want to break you girls up if all this goes south."

"And we are to stay until..." Thor started, but then he trailed off.

Tony finished for him, "Until we figure something else out, yeah." Though he felt Loki's eyes on the back of his head again and the unspoken, "Until Loki figures out what he wants to do."

Everything went smoothly until about 1:30 PM.

"Sir?" JARVIS had started. "Director Fury is attempting to contact you."

"Let it go to voicemail, JARVIS." Tony had replied, ripping out wires from the center of the Mark II. "I'm working."

"He says it is urgent. He says, quite cleanly, 'Stark pick up this motherfucking phone right now.'."

Tony whistled, which echoed in the hollow of the suit, "Voicemail, JARVIS."

Sounding as peeved as an AI could get, JARVIS said, "Very well, sir."

And that was the end of that.

Or so Tony thought.

Two hours later, the alarms sounded. Great, wailing things that startled Tony into banging his head against the top of the car he was working on. He scrambled out from beneath it, greasy and dirty and scared out of his wits. The lights all around him flicked off, flushing the workshop in black.

"JARVIS!" He called out, dropping his wrench and flying up the stairs. "What's going on?"

"SHIELD is attempting to break in. I have truncated the power for now, leaving them trapped in the elevator. Should I warn-" JARVIS' voice scrambled off into some into something incomprehensible and radio-like.

The power flipped back on, and Tony was halfway up the steps.

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