Chapter 16
Loki sipped warily at this green tea. He thought it would be more appropriate to call such a beverage yellow-brown tea since he couldn't see anything remotely green about it, but it tasted good.
"Tony… a word please?" he heard Bruce mutter under his breath.
"You can have your word here. I'm not leaving him unguarded." Tony challenged.
He smirked. He could feel Bruce rolling his eyes from here.
"Tony, something weird is going on…"
"Are you kidding me? There's a dead god drinking tea in my kitchen! Of course something weird is going on! If he's well enough to do that, he's well enough to be arrested. Jarvis, call –"
"Wait!" Tony looked surprised. Bruce didn't usually raise his voice. Loki looked up cautiously at the sound too.
Tony frowned. "You don't want to hand him over?"
Bruce looked uneasy. "Listen, I – "
"Whose side are you on Doctor Banner?" he asked dangerously.
Bruce's eyes flashed an alarmingly bright shade of green, and the whole room seemed to grow visibly tense. He clenched his fists and looked away breathing rapidly a few times. No one moved.
"Tony." he couldn't quite keep the growl from his voice. He didn't look up at the man he was speaking to. "Something weird is going on, and the other guy…" he paused to breathe a few times. "The other guy can feel it."
Tony's voice sounded worried. "You think Loki is doing something to the other guy?" He glanced up at the tea-drinking man in his kitchen. "What kind of something?"
"No… not him. The other guy's been feeling uneasy for a while now, like dogs sometimes do just before earthquakes. I talked to Loki in the bathroom…"
"Yeah I heard. Some bullshit about him not being at fault for what happened –"
"Not that bit. What he said about being hunted, watched, about someone playing a joke on him… it feels like what the other guy's been feeling."
Loki narrowed his eyes in alarm. If this being messing with him could be felt by the… creature inside the doctor… that would be powerful magic indeed…
"Bruce… you haven't been sleeping well recently. Are you sure you're not just over tired and –"
"NO!" He growled slamming his hands down on the table with more force than he meant to, a large crack appearing across the wooden surface. Loki jumped, almost spilling his tea. Tony took two decently sized steps back. Bruce clenched and unclenched his fists, breathing raggedly. "He's been harder to control…" he hissed between his teeth, "because he's afraid. He senses something that we can't." The last sentence was a definite growl.
Tony looked very much like he wanted to argue, but he waited warily for the other man to calm down.
After a minute of dead stillness and silence, save for Bruce's ragged breaths, to Doctor spoke again.
"Tony, his fear - it's powerful. I can feel it, even now. I think we're going to need help for this one, and I think," he looked up at Loki, his eyes still alarmingly green, "I think he's just as in the dark about this as we are. We've each got knowledge that the other doesn't and I think, to face whatever is coming, we're going to need to work together." He breathed out, having finally managed to get out what he was trying to say.
Loki regarded him. His fear, the panicked look in his eyes, it reminded him of the strangely subdued faces of the Vanir. Whatever this was, it was much bigger than he was, and he was feeling very uneasy not for the first time.
Both men were still looking at Loki expectantly, awaiting some form of response, but just as he opened his mouth to deliver one he was interrupted by a disembodied voice.
"Sir, it appears that several of my sub-processes are malfunctioning."
An AI. Loki realised.
Tony frowned. "What? Which ones Jarvis?"
"Well… all of them."
That's impressive. It's been programmed to display fear.
"WHAT?! HOW?" Tony was on his feet, pulling open a laptop to run diagnostics.
"I'm not sure, sir. What should I do?"
"Hold on Jarv, I'm running some checks."
"Already been done sir, nothing out the ordina-bzzt-… main processes are failing sir."
"Shit! What's going on? Jarvis, reboot!"
"Negative, sir –bzzzzt- … I cannot –bzzzzt- … my name –bzzzzt-…"
"JARVIS?!" Tony looked and felt utterly helpless . Bruce watched in horror. Loki felt very uneasy. Maybe he should head back to the bathroom…
"Sir? Sir? Are you there sir? Sir, I've lost visuals. Sir, do you copy?"
"I'm here Jarvis, it's okay. I'll sort this out and have you up and running in no time." He sounded shaky.
"Sir? Sir? Are you there sir?"
"Yes, Jarvis I'm here!"
"Sir, do you copy?"
Tony said nothing, his eyes strangely shiny.
"Sir, are you –"
Tony hit the mute button. Nobody moved. Then he turned to Loki.
"This had better not be your doing. Because I swear to god, if you did this, I will rip to into so many pieces…"
Loki held up his hands in surrender. "I didn't even know you had an AI until about two minutes ago. I also feel like my stomach is about to relinquish the poorly named tea I just gave it, so I really don't think I'm in the mood to mess around with a man who can pump me full of missiles at a moment's notice, or his friend who enjoys creating craters with my body."
"Yeah well, you were also dead until about three hours ago! How did you pull that one off?" He yelled.
Loki smirked and got up, picking up a rather large kitchen knife in the process.
Tony's face changed comically quickly to a wide-eyed frightened expression. "Uhhh… what are you –?"
Loki reached up and drew the knife across his own throat, blood splattering across all available surfaces in the kitchen. His body hit the floor with a dull thud.
"OH GOD WHAT THE HELL?!" Tony sat down quickly clutching his chest where the small circular orb of light shone through his shirt. That was not an image he would ever un-see.
Bruce chuckled lightly beside him and he looked up in confusion. "Well that was certainly effective… and believable." His eyes, back to a shade that would pass as brown, sparkled with amusement.
"Wait…" Tony turned back to his kitchen, still covered in sticky red. "That was a…?"
Bruce gave him an amused face.
"Son of a…" He face-palmed with feeling.
Author's note: I'M SO SORRY JARVIS. I DIDN'T MEAN TO! D:
