9.
Loki's now been stranded on Earth for long enough that he's amassed quite the collection of books he, according to the Avengers, "absolutely must read". He's currently enjoying the ingenuity of Tom Sawyer, a recommendation from Captain America, when Jarvis calls for his attention.
"Master Loki," he calls in the same disembodied, toneless voice he always does, "Mister Stark requires your assistance in the workshop."
He sighs, marks down his place in the book and then gets up from his comfy armchair, heading for the elevator. He finds the doors open and the button for the workshop already lit. Although this is odd, he thanks Jarvis as the doors slide closed behind him, chuckling quietly as he imagines Tony's face lit up with childish glee and excitement about some new discovery, the only thing he believes warrants rushing Loki to the workshop.
The grin practically melts off his face as soon as the doors open on the workshop level, and he takes long strides to come around the corner of the hallway quickly. The smell of burning flesh is clogging up his nose by now, and when he crosses the reinforced glass doors into the shop proper, he calls out, "Tony?!"
The whirring of the bots guides his steps around one of the large, metal workbenches Tony was dancing on just a few days ago, and he can finally see the engineer then. Tony's curled up on the floor, Dum-E and U whirring around him with no idea what to do, and Loki has to shove at them to make room for himself to kneel down next to the man.
Loki was expecting some burns, based on the smell of the room, but he wasn't expecting this. There's an orange glow under certain parts of Tony's skinand he's grunting through clenched teeth, thrashing. Strips of his skin are blistering, opening up into sores right in front of Loki's eyes. Tony seems unable to speak so Loki turns to Jarvis for answers, sparing a moment to stare at his blue Jötun hands before placing them against Tony's neck.
"Jarvis, report. Show me his vitals and activate the fire alarm."
The alarm starts blaring seconds before the sprinklers installed on the ceiling activate, drenching them both and making Tony grunt. Cold water on sores and burns must be excruciating. Loki runs a hand through Tony's hair soothingly, and the man leans into the touch. It takes another few seconds for Jarvis to turn off the siren and start speaking, "Mister Stark injected the modified Extremis technology into his bloodstream," he AI says, a holographic screen appearing in front of Loki, "He appears to be suffering from heatstroke."
"Get Banner here," commands Loki over the sound of dripping water, moving his cold hands from Tony's neck to his armpits. He hears a panicked whir and looks up just in time to see Dum-E, carrying a fire extinguisher, skid on the puddles around them and slide by.
"No, Dum-E! There is no actual fire!" He has to yell at the bot, just in time to stop him from dousing Tony in foam. The bot dejectedly sets down the fire extinguisher and resumes his pacing. Loki groans and turns to U, the more reasonable of the robots.
"Tony was making a set of playing cards," he tells it, "can you bring it to me?"
To Dum-E, he says, "I need water for him to drink," Loki gestures at Tony, "as cold as you can get it."
The robotic arm shakes up and down in affirmation, then both bots whirr away. The sprinklers overhead turn off.
"Jarvis, where's Banner?"
Jarvis is ominously quiet, and Loki already knows he's not going to like the reply. "I'm afraid Doctor Banner won't be here anytime soon. I'll connect you to Miss Romanoff," resolves the AI. Loki nods, distracted as Tony starts shifting and groaning again. His cold touch seems to help, so he cradles Tony's head in one hand, the other poking at the holographic screen to zoom in on Tony's temperature readings.
"Loki, what's wrong?" asks Natasha, her face appearing in the lower left corner of the holo-screen.
"Tony is hurt," he replies, "Banner was supposed to come help but I think he's— " A growl interrupts him, reverberating through the microphone.
"Yep," deadpans Natasha, already heading for the sounds of the Hulk tearing down some walls, "I'll take care of Banner and get him to you as soon as I can, and Jarvis will alert the others. Can you stay with Tony, help him as much as you can?"
Loki nods shakily, and Natasha must see it, because she then says, "Loki. Breathe. We'll be there soon." She doesn't seem to have time for more and hangs up.
Loki takes her advice, breathes deeply, and tries to recall his medical training. Heatstroke.
The first thing he does is remove Tony's T-shirt, then his shoes and socks. Even without the cards, he can freeze the moisture that clings to Tony from the sprinklers, so he does that, slowly trickling his magic outwards, fearful of activating the runes on his arms.
Tony shivers, half-opening hazy eyes to meet Loki's red gaze. "Lo'," he mutters vaguely, and Loki squeezes his hand in reassurance, even though he can see new blisters forming on his skin. U arrives with the deck of cards, dropping it into Loki's lap unceremoniously, and then Dum-E wheels in with a glass of water, handing it over carefully.
Loki sighs in relief; he can work with this. The deck of cards is an elegant, transparent design, and is made of the thinnest and hardest glass Loki's ever seen. The two of diamonds is the first card he looks for, calling it with his magic, and then plopping it into the glass of water. It turns to icy slush, and Loki holds it in one hand as he tugs Tony upright with the other.
There's a pained gasp at the movement and then Tony's eyes are blearily meeting his again. "Drink," orders Loki, leaning the glass of slush to Tony's lips. He's only able to drink in small sips, but does so greedily between gasps until he's done. Loki rolls up Tony's T-shirt and lays him back down on the floor, propping his head up with the makeshift pillow.
A glance at the holo-screen tells Loki Tony's temperature has dropped some, and so he sets out to treat the burns before they start to bleed. He arranges his diamond cards to keep cooling Tony, one on each side of his neck, behind his knees and on his armpits. He's placing the last two cards over Tony's liver when the seizure starts. Tony's eyes roll back, he goes limp and starts shaking uncontrollably.
Loki tries to tug him so he's on his side, lets him ride the seizure out, torn between trying to hold him and risking injury, and watching helplessly as his tender, burnt skin tears and bleeds. There's a lump in Loki's throat, and his hands fumble and flutter over Tony, shaking. His eyes blur with tears as he mumbles reassurances, mostly to himself, to no avail.
When the seizure finally passes, Loki feels like he can breathe again. He swallows to clear his throat and, with a shuddery sigh, arranges the playing cards once more. The diamonds to cool Tony off, then the hearts over the worst of the damage to Tony's skin. His thrashing has torn open some of the sores, especially the ones around his chest and ribs, and so Loki focuses on healing that, lays his cards in a jagged line from Tony's shoulder to the arc reactor, from just under his left pectoral and almost to his back. After that, it's just the work of sending out his magic, repairing torn skin and keeping the feverish body cool.
Loki doesn't know how long he does this, occasionally moving the heart cards over to the next open sore, but he does notice the moment the first diamond card gives out, his awareness of it flickering, then vanishing. Another follows, and another. Tony's been unresponsive for a while, but is breathing steadily and twitching slightly, which calms Loki some. He's also started producing sweat again, which is a good sign. The wrecked scream he lets out next is not. The sound reverberates off the walls of the workshop, echoing inside the room, the force of it arching Tony's back and sending his heels skittering on the tiled floor.
Tony's chest is smoking around the reactor, smelling of burnt flesh, and while the inside of the metal casing is insulated against the heat, the skin around the outside is not. Suddenly, Loki understands that, if the casing melts, Tony will die.
There's an orange glow that starts under Tony's skin, just over the reactor, growing and diminishing like a heartbeat. Loki remembers asgardian dragons, thinking about heartstones and legends as he reaches out with his magic for the two Joker cards in the deck, his strongest, placing both at the center of Tony's bare chest and focusing all of his magic on that one spot, cooling and healing at once. However, it's a temporary solution. His magic can't handle being pulled in three directions at once, and the constant waves of energy start to splutter and die as the cards reach capacity.
Loki's panting with exertion, looking at his blue hands with a betrayed expression, and trying to force more magic into the cards, but it's no use. Soon, the brands on his arms start to burn, and when Loki ignores it and continues, the runes deliver a nasty shock to his spine, leaving him reeling, hunched over Tony's prone figure.
Tony starts whining in discomfort again, and Loki takes his hand, squeezing hard and hoping Tony can feel it, hating how he has this mortal's life in his hands and can do nothing to help him, has to watch him fade helplessly. Tears gather in his eyes again, and he wipes them away with a snarl, catching sight of the blasted runes on his forearms and gritting his teeth in disgust.
In the end, it's easy to decide. The ace of spades is more than sharp enough to slash through the lines of symbols, two on his left arm and two on his right. He cares not for the dark blue blood trickling out of his veins, only has thoughts to grab onto one of Tony's hands and use the other to channel every last ounce of magic he has left into Tony's chest. He remains there, almost frozen in place, as his breath grows heavier and his strength starts to disappear, his thoughts only on the magic and the very mortal man beneath him, until he fades to black.
_oOo_
Loki comes to slowly, aware at first only of his hand holding something warm and solid, then of a bright light behind his eyelids, and finally the sound rushes in.
"-ki!" Natasha's now familiar voice calls, "Loki, you can let go now."
He opens his eyes to the blurry sight of red hair and black clothes, turns to seek a bright blue glow and, as his eyes focus, can finally recognise his own blue arm, Natasha's hands hovering uncertainly over it, and Tony's hand clenched in his own, messy with smears of blue blood.
Jarvis is speaking, explaining Tony's condition to Bruce, bare-chested but finally there, and Loki catches the word "stable" from the litany and drops Tony's hand.
Natasha takes hold of his shoulder, drags him off to the side and helps him sit up against the cot in the corner of the workshop. Loki feels sluggish, knows he should be far more aware but the adrenaline crash from blood loss is coming on fast and so he limply moves as Natasha guides him.
One of the bots whirs by, drops a medical kit at his feet. Natasha grabs it and gets to work cleaning his wounds. It's a familiar ritual except for how she has to be careful not to touch his bare skin directly.
"Bruce doesn't think you need a transfusion," she tells him quietly, applying gauze to his arm, "just a lot of rest. He did suggest stitches but I don't think you want that."
Loki shakes his head at the memory of Thor's large, strong hands and a needle, not quite sure he's capable of forming sentences quite yet. He's tired and irrationally annoyed at nothing in particular.
"I'll do butterfly bandages," Natasha says, already cutting out strips of tape, "but you have to heal these cuts as soon as you have some magic to spare."
Loki nods dumbly, swallows and then rasps, "Tony?"
"He'll be fine," she replies tiredly, "just needs a lot of rest and some meds." Now that Loki's eyes are actually able to focus, he can see her split lip and swelling cheek.
"What happened with Banner?" he asks as she starts to wrap his forearms in bandages.
She huffs, "Apparently Tony went to him yesterday, asking for his help with injecting Extremis. Bruce didn't think it was ready to implement yet, wanted to do some trials. Tony and Jarvis both thought the math was sound, and so Tony went and did it anyway. That's why Bruce hulked."
Natasha sighs and Loki can see how tired she is, how her eyes look to the side with worry, how she holds herself stiffly. Tony being an idiot seems to have that effect on all of them. He's glad the man is stable now, allows himself to start to become angry at Tony's sheer stupidity. Tony could have died. He very nearly did. And he was told to wait, to run tests, but decided against it anyway.
Loki pulls himself up to the cot, reclines against the wall, and Natasha follows. For the next half hour, they sit there in companionable silence, waiting for Loki's head to stop spinning and for news on Tony. Eventually, U nudges Loki's hand with a small, matte black box. I't holding his now clean deck of cards. Loki thanks the bot and starts nervously turning the box over and over in his bandaged hands. The cards inside are sending pleasant zaps at him, signalling the slow but certain return of his magic. Natasha's silent next to him, but he can feel her sharp gaze and knows she's picking up on this. He feels strong enough again.
Slowly, he uses magic to nudge the three of clubs towards her, going faster as he feels no significant drain from this, thinking about healing and numbing, his mind working magic around the idea that he's lucky she was there and she's lucky the Hulk kind of likes her, until he can stick it to the side of her face. He's perfectly aware she's indulged him but as she chuckles, the sides of her eyes crinkling, red curls bouncing, with a playing card stuck to her cheek, Loki feels the corner of his lips turn up. When the card has done what it needed, it flops down between them.
Natasha looks at him, then lifts her eyebrows, nudging him. With a sigh, he pulls out a couple of heart cards and lays them over the bandages on his arms. He has to go slow since the heart cards are all but depleted, but he can get enough out of them to hold his own skin together, joining the edges of the runes he slashed through.
"Jarvis?" he prompts with a curious frown, "can you reconstruct what the runes on my arms look like now?"
Wordlessly, Jarvis projects a screen in front of them, showing Loki's arms with their respective spells and the gashes, the norse writing all but destroyed now. Loki hums, takes out the seven of clubs thinking of deceit and disguises, and to his surprise, his fingertips lose their blue colour where they're touching the card, pale pink spreading out instead, running over his arms, torso and finally, his face. He can feel the shift as it happens, a rush of warmth over his skin as he again grows used to not giving off cold.
"Heh," he breathes out, surprised and amused that he's allowed this, that his magic is back under his control after almost half a year. Natasha touches his hand, smirking at him when her fingers don't freeze, and at this he starts giggling uncontrollably, the tip of his tongue stuck to his teeth as his chest shakes with laughter.
"I'm gonna miss the smurf look for fight practice," she says between chuckles, but her hand never lets go of his.
"What now?" she asks after they've calmed down, and Loki's eyes lose focus as he gets lost in thought.
He's been waiting for his magic to come back in order to formulate yet another scheme to take over the throne of Asgard and free Sleipnir, but when he thinks about it in those terms he realises he's tired of it. He's done with fruitless schemes and plots, is furious at himself for even trying some, and would just like to be able to hold his son. He smirks sadly. It would be all too easy to just tell Tony, he has faith that the engineer would think up a plan and offer to help. However, Loki can't in good conscience ask him to do that without first sorting out what Tony means to him. What they mean to each other, an optimistic part of his brain says. And however nice that would be, right now Loki is still pissed off at Tony's impulsive nature, at his selfishness.
It's a good while after Natasha asked her question that he finally answers with one of his own. "Did you tell Thor what happened?"
She nods, her face serious, as if she knows exactly what's going through his mind. While this ability of hers normally unsettles him, right now he finds it reassuring.
"I think," he pauses, not really wanting to speak his mind and turn his thoughts into a reality but knowing he owes it to himself, "I need to leave the tower."
Natasha nods and Loki can immediately tell she's been expecting this.
"I need space, and I have some matters to discuss with my brother."
"He should be about to arrive," she says calmly, but he doesn't miss the glint in her eyes at Loki's words, as if she knows just what his calling Thor 'brother' means. "You should tell Bruce before you go, and I believe you need to say goodbye to Tony as well."
Loki takes a deep breath, nods.
It's the work of minutes to find Banner in Tony's living room and explain he's leaving for an indefinite amount of time to go with Thor, and then he's allowed to see Tony. The man is deeply asleep, sedated as Banner told Loki, but his condition is stable and he'll be perfectly healthy once he wakes up. Loki feels relief so strong his knees nearly buckle, watching this very mortal man take a few deep breaths without being in mortal danger. He has to fight the urge to run a hand through Tony's hair in the same way that had reassured him earlier, choosing instead to grab his hand and then placing one of the Jokers from his deck in Tony's palm.
Loki sighs and chuckles at himself, at the fact that he's trying too hard to bury his affection for this engineer, and then lets go of Tony's hand, leaving it closed around the Joker. He can hear thunder overhead. It's time to go and find Thor.
Thor almost smothers him in a hug, asking over and over if he's alright. Once reassured, he agrees very quickly to take Loki with him to Jane's in New Mexico. He gets a handshake from Banner, and a hug from Natasha. She manages to extract a promise to call from him, and whispers a cryptic, "Come back and figure your shit out," into his ear. He's nodding before he can truly comprehend what she's asking, but then again there wasn't any doubt of his return.