2

Years pass, and Tony never tells a soul about his dreams, neither its subject matter nor the disquieting fact that they stay the same from night to night: dark trees, dark soil - body of red-brown water, body wrapped in white.

Years pass, and Tony is still frozen in place by a setting and sequence now as familiar to him as the shrapnel in his chest; tableau of one who watches, one who washes. Sometimes as he watches Loki he fancies the the device between his ribcage throbbing an alien pain, as if playing the role of a breaking heart, and it seems to Tony that he's forever fated to attract foreign bodies – fatal ones - into himself.

Years pass.

The branches spread themselves every wider over the pond; the water rustles and slops, red and wet and warm as freshly spilled blood but Tony is human and knows not to read its divining mummers. He thinks the waters speak to Loki, because the god would sometimes pause in his cleaning, as if listening to something; but Tony can make no expression from beneath that ghostly veil.

When they do meet in the battlefield of life, it is Tony whom is veiled, concealed behind an iron mask. In real life, Tony goes about his day and feels little of the customary appetite that haunts his nights. He harbours little interest for the real world Loki, long having since discovered they were not the same person. They couldn't be.

The real world Loki is ugly and twisted, full of rage and hatred. Tony cannot be in love with this hard, attention-hungry, brittle and embittered god. He loves only the Loki of his dreams, the bather; Venus and Persephone, water nymph and mermaid.

More and more he twitches for a machine that could help him while away the waking hours a little faster, always falling short of getting down to the business of inventing one; sensing within it a path of no return. Dull as the world was, Tony can still tell between the two. He's still cognizant of its anchoring safety; he simply doesn't care for it. Why would he, when just within reach lies another world where the Loki of his dreams brushes past his skin like the lightest sweep of silk?

Thus does he willingly relinquishes the real world, and in his dreams his bather calls to him, or rather he to Loki, the forest silent and and waiting for the next tableau. Always in his dreams is this sense of expectancy – of action about to be. More and more he resigned himself to that action being one of violence; perhaps rape.

Definitely eventual.. abduction.

Ah, abduction. Tony hadn't know it until he thought it, and suddenly he knows it was there all along; in the very air. He had created his dream for precisely that, and now he knows what he must do.

A part of Tony is sure the Loki of his dreams is both deaf and blind; eyes unseeing, senses submerged. Such could be why the god does not seem to notice the pool of liquid around him slowly shrinking; soaked up by parched earth. Nor does he sense Tony's presence creeping closer over the crawling months.

~o0o0o~

Initially, as soon as it occured to him the idea had repulsed him, driven him from his own head. Is he so filthy? Is there no end to his greed, no redemption from the darkness hiden in his metal chest?

For weeks and months he struggles against it, alternately enaroured and repelled, until the day he is blasted out of the open sky in a surprise encounter with the real god of mischief, vibrant and terrible, clad in green armour and blackest contempt.

Tony blinks in recovery; he is sure they are in the real world for Loki smiles at him as he lands on the ground; as sly, as sharp and engaged as the Loki of his dreams is soft and disconnected.

'How I tire, Stark, of the way you dodge my every footstep,' the god drawls as he approaches the crater where Tony lies, trying to recover his breath. Resting his booted foot on top of Tony's right wrist, the god peels the gauntlets away with the tip of his spear. 'If I didn't know better I'd say you're quite obsessed.'

Tony had thought himself stealthy, but of course trying to outsmart the God of Mischief was sooner or later going to end him with occasional egg on the face. He simply had to roll with it; attempt not to get killed in the process.

'Don't flatter yourself; your highness, you're not that pretty.'

Instead of answering Loki hooks the blunt end of his spear around Tony's's other wrist and anchors them against each other, pinning his hands down.

'Why were you following me again, Stark? You've done this before haven't you?'

Tony simply grunts in reply, but Loki does not seem particularly homicidal today as he cocks his head, as if listening to an invisible reply.

'Well then. Be glad that I am feeling merciful today,' the god grins as he reverses the spear and plunges the blunt end of the staff into Tony's wrists. He doesn't quite scream as he feels the bones snap beneath the crushing force of the staff, but it is a near thing.

'Now, that would take at least a few months to heal, wouldn't you say? Off you go now, Stark, and send my best to mine brother.'

Tony picks himself up, crawling blindly through the red-hot haze. 'You couldn't have seen me from that far away,' he wheezes through the pain. 'Not even you.'

'Ah, but I wasn't there, you see,' Loki smirks, and from behind him, his doppelganger steps away and bows shallowly. Tony feels a violent jolt as the docile copy straightens, recognising it – him. This Loki.

This is his Loki, his bather; half spirit, half undead vessel.

The purest thing he's ever laid eyes on, and the most beautiful.

The shock is terrible upon him, and he feels a tremor pass through his body that has nothing to do with the pain in his hands.

The real Loki frowns, hands tightening around his spear. 'You have not met one of my copies before.'

Tony might be human, but he can spin out misdirections as good as any god of lies. 'A doppelganger. I'd have thought you beneath such a cheap trick.'

When the real Loki merely laughs, Tony ventures to ask; 'This copy; does it contain any of- your- spirit?'

For some reason, Loki decides to humour him. The god seems particularly amenable today, chatty even. The autumn chill seemed to agree with his temperament, and he seems to be very much amused by the direction of Tony's question.

'A small silver. I'll show you,' he says, and proceeds to hold out a gloved hand where a small semi-transparent cocoon forms. 'The spell is merely a vessel, so there needs be enough spirit for a shape to form.'

So saying Loki blows into it, and the amoeboid skein stretches and grows the way a bubble would, finally taking form into a third, fully identical god of mischief.

Tony notices that the newly made Loki is wet, with blue lips that tremble negligibly. He notices the small ripples in the skin, as if they had been unceremoniously ripped from some liquid sleep; there is a tremulous expression within those dark, wet eyes that is not quite empty. Beneath a god's notice perhaps, but not empty; and Tony latches onto this insight with greed.

'D-do they feel pain?'

The god laughs at this. 'So many questions. If you are looking for a weakness to exploit, save your breath.'

'Give one of them to me,' the mortal whispers, amazed at his own audacity.

'What?'

'Your copies. Give me one.'

The god's expression becomes cold, rapidly chilling the air. 'I don't think so, Stark. And you are a fool if you think I would relinquish my possessions so easily, even one as easy to make as this.' Then with a snap of his fingers both god and doppelgangers disappears, leaving Tony with two broken wrists and a cavity in his chest that feels like a bottomless drop into the earth.

~o0o0o~