Two bleak, lonely weeks passed without a visit from Loki, two weeks in which Tony managed to overthink those moments nearly to death, eventually believing that he had completely misread what Loki had been communicating. Asgardian language was different; both brothers were proof of that. Maybe saying you were addicted to someone's presence was a proclamation of friendship on Asgard.
Either way, Loki was gone, and Tony had to live with that. Everything Loki had said about Tony not deserving to be alone were just empty words, and here Tony was, wallowing in his own self-pity. Of course, Tony shouldn't have been surprised, considering those words had come from the God of Lies.
And then one day, Pepper showed up at the mansion with a stack of paperwork, a no-bullshit expression, and a mission to get Tony out and doing press again.
"Pepper, you are a godsend, I swear," he said to her when she stepped over his threshold in her high heels and trim suit and skirt combo. She looked fierce as ever, and the sight of her made Tony's heart ache. Oh god had he missed her.
"Tony, I brought paperwork and am about to force you to go to press conferences and charity functions. Are you okay?" Her heels clicked loudly on the slate flooring as she followed Tony into the kitchen, a great contrast to the silence Tony's socked feet created as he walked. She set the papers down with an ominously heavy thud on the kitchen counter.
Tony shrugged. "It's just good to see you, I suppose. How are you?" The air around them was thick with what they weren't acknowledging, and Tony hated it. It had always been so easy with Pepper, and now that was gone, and it was Tony's fault. He had to make everything a drama-fest.
"I've been well," she replied easily, and then she seemed to come to a decision as she weighed her words. "Actually, I've been great. I'm seeing someone."
Tony could see in her expression and in the way she was holding herself that she was excited and happy about this relationship. "That's great Pepper, I'm happy for you. I'm assuming he doesn't face death on a regular basis?"
Pepper laughed lightly, and the sound rang strangely in Tony's ears. "No, Tony, he's an accountant. The closest he's ever come to danger is accidentally burning himself on the stove when he cooks dinner."
Ah, so he was someone who actually cooked. Tony figured Pepper would find someone who could take care of her just as much as she took care of him. It was so much better for her, so much healthier.
Pepper smiled sadly at him, and suddenly the kitchen island between them seemed like a veritable continent of distance. "What about you, Tony?"
He shrugged. "I'm okay. Same old Tony here. No big changes with me."
"You should be happy too." She gazed around the quiet house. "It's so big and empty here."
Tony could hear those words echoed in a much different voice, and it stung.
"Pep, I'm famous, I have company when I want it."
She frowned at him. "Not the right kind of company."
Tony waved off her comment and the irony. "I've been fine. Jarvis keeps me company, Rhodey and I hang out on occasion, I've got my public. I'm doing okay." He sighed. "I've been improving my suits and my tech and recuperating from New York, which has been a process, but I am fine."
Pepper's eyebrows furrowed, but the tension drained out of her slim frame. "Okay," she sighed. "I still worry about you, Tony. I can't help but worry about you."
Tony's shoulders sagged slightly at her admission. "I'll be fine, Pep. I'm a big boy. You shouldn't have to live your life worrying about me."
Even though Tony had let her go, her eventual departure still felt like a stab in his already sensitive gut.
In the week that followed, Tony did enough public appearances to make up for the life of a hermit he had been living for the past two months, and for once the blinding flashes of cameras and the stuffy personalities of the higher-ups were just what Tony needed to forget his empty house. How could a man be lonely with fans screaming his name and charities preaching his generosity? He assured everyone that, no, he wasn't dead, and that, yes, he was still working hard to keep Stark Industries technology leagues ahead of the competition.
Tony still had an empty ache in his stomach whenever he let his thoughts wonder too far, but it was easier to forget his loneliness when he wasn't even in the house for very long. Tony suspected that Pepper had known exactly what she was doing for Tony when she had set all of this up, and it made him warm a little on the inside to think of how much Pepper still cared.
The strange dreams were still reoccurring, and now that he knew exactly what they were about, they hurt even more. And even worse, at the end of the dream, Loki dissolved into mist and Tony was left alone on the moonlit hill overlooking the barren plain. His mind was rebelling against him in his free time by playing that night in the bar over and over in his head, and he was slowly developing an unhealthy obsession with someone who he would probably never see again. As the charity functions and galas slowly ran out, his mind wandered further and further. He kept looking up from his projects in the lab and expecting to see the trickster leaning against a worktable with a smirk playing on his face. Tony had gotten so used to his presence that the complete lack of it now was throwing him for a loop.
Tony reverted back to his coping mechanism of bringing home women from different events and attempting to lose himself in sensations, but he always woke up extremely early and left the unfamiliar women alone in his bed. He felt bad about giving them the cold shoulder and being a jerk by having Jarvis escort them out, but he couldn't face the humiliation of a one night stand whose name he couldn't remember.
It was not long before he started to notice a pattern in the women he favored, and that put a swift halt on any more of those activities. Dark hair, thin frame, long legs, pale complexion; they led to one person, and Tony was so not comfortable with living out fantasies through random women. It was creepy.
Tony stared out at the shining water through the huge windows of his living room with a dark mood hanging over his head and wondered which god he had angered that was currently making his life a mess. The bright sun and the blue water succeeded only in mocking him.
"Sir, the energy registered as Loki Laufeyson has just flared in the kitchen area," Jarvis chimed.
Tony cursed as he felt his pulse began to speed. The whole time he had been wallowing in self-hatred and loneliness he hadn't put one thought into what he would do if Loki came back. For some reason Tony hadn't bet on Loki coming back.
"He's still here, then?" Tony asked with a raspy voice.
"He is, but there is something strange about his energy signature," Jarvis stated. "It is much weaker than it has been in the past."
Tony frowned as he made his way into the kitchen, steeling himself for the unknown and trying to resist breaking into a sprint.
What he found was Loki perched in a barstool, his head bowed and his eyes closed. His posture was missing its normal grace, and he didn't look up when Tony padded into the kitchen.
"Loki?"
The god finally opened his eyes and turned to face Tony, and Tony was startled at the weariness he saw just barely covered by Loki's smirk of greeting. The sight of the god twisted Tony's stomach into knots, and he had to swallow to clear the dryness of his throat.
"Tony Stark, it has been a while."
"Three weeks," Tony automatically supplied.
Tony saw surprise flicker across the pale face before it disappeared again. "Longer than I thought." Loki blinked, looking lost for a moment before it cleared.
Tony slowly moved over and pulled up a barstool next to Loki's, a safe distance between them. "So, where've you been, Reindeer Games?"
Tony marveled at the look of hesitation on the god's face, how he seemed to be chewing on his words before he spoke them aloud.
"I may not be returning here again, Stark," he eventually confessed. "I came as soon as I was able, but this will be my last visit."
Tony cleared his throat awkwardly and picked at a thread on the hem of his shirt. "I completely understand. I mean, unwanted attention is disturbing, and it's already awkward enough between us on the best of days. I just made it worse, and I wish I could take it back, but that sort of image doesn't leave you, I understand. I can even understand a restraining order or a filing of sexual harassment, I mean-."
"You do not understand," Loki cut in sharply, putting a halt on Tony's rambling. "Not at all."
Tony fell into a startled silence, watching Loki's frustration in the hand he ran through his ragged black hair.
"It is not by choice that I have avoided you, and it is not my wish to never return." Loki took a deep breath. "Haven't you wondered why I've avoided all physical contact since the moment I first started to visit you?"
"Well, I figured you were just skittish."
That brought a chuckle from Loki, but the sound was broken. "No, Stark, I was very careful to avoid contact with you for a very specific reason."
"Herpes? A terrible rash?"
Loki shook his head and rolled his eyes. "See for yourself." Loki held out a hand to Tony.
Tony frowned at the proffered hand. "I'm not going to get electrocuted, am I?"
"No, Stark."
Tony reached out to take Loki's hand, strange fluttering in his chest, and was startled when he was met with nothing more than air. Loki's hand shimmered like a golden hologram where Tony's hand had passed through before slowly solidifying again.
"What…" Tony looked up at Loki in confusion.
"What you have seen of me during my visits has been nothing more than an illusion on my part. I have never been here at all, in fact. Since my attack on New York I have been in a dungeon in Asgard, left to rot away like so much rubbish."
Tony stared in shock, unable to come up with a worthy reply.
"The guards became aware of my use of magic, though, and have been working on cell walls that will stifle all magic inside. They have made progress, and I believe in mere days they will have succeeded." Loki turned his face away and closed his eyes. "They will be able to keep me in my cell for eternity with no outside contact and with no access to the magic that allows me to retain a sliver of sanity."
Tony felt realization strike like Thor's hammer. "You started coming here because you needed something to do, and you kept coming back because you found real entertainment and company through me."
Loki nodded, a slight glint of humor in his eyes. "At first I thought terrorizing you and your Avengers would be humorous, and then I realized that I would rather get to know the man inside the suit of metal. Eventually, I could not stop returning."
Tony grinned. "It's a good thing I'm hard to resist."
Loki's humor slipped off his face. "No. Now I am left wanting something that I can never have." His voice had deepened and his face had darkened, and Tony wondered at the turn of his thoughts.
Tony didn't dare to hope Loki meant what Tony wanted him to mean. Tony waited silently for him to continue.
"I am being denied what I have come to want dearly." His gaze met Tony's steadily, and there was a deep, ancient sorrow in the green depths. "I cannot have you."
Tony's mouth dried out and prevented him from responding.
"I would have kissed you that night, had I been able," he said lowly. "Unfortunately, though it does not look it, we are worlds apart, never to be in the same realm again."
"You left because you couldn't kiss me," Tony said dazedly, his mind swimming with the new knowledge and emotion.
"I left to convince myself that what I want can never happen. My plan had been to come back to tell you what I am telling you now weeks ago, but the guards became suspicious and began to question me thoroughly."
Tony wondered what exactly Loki meant by "question." If what Tony was looking at was just a glamour, the real Loki could be in any shape.
"If it were up to me, Stark, I would have you for my own." Loki's voice was deep and held promise, but his eyes told of his sadness.
Tony's thrill at his affection being reciprocated was suddenly overwhelmed by complete hopelessness as he thought of Loki locked up in a dungeon in another realm completely.
"So you're just stuck in that cell forever?"
"Odin ruled it so." Loki's gaze moved to the countertop, and his thin fingers trailed across the patterns in the granite.
"That seems harsh considering you guys are immortal, right?" Tony responded, eyebrows raised.
"We live about five thousand years," Loki replied flatly. "An eternity to most humans."
"No parole or anything?"
"No. When Odin Allfather makes a ruling, it is final."
Tony thought back on the strange adventure Loki had painted for him near the beginning of his visits, and of the blond who had wreaked havoc in an icy world. "Your brother got a different punishment for killing a bunch of Frost Giants for no reason."
"Thor is of Asgard, the true heir to the throne and Odin's favorite," Loki responded flatly.
Tony could totally see how Thor was the favorite brother, and suddenly the resentment that Loki showed towards Thor made much more sense. A younger brother hidden beneath the greatness that was Thor, the golden child.
Loki sighed. "I don't have much more time, Stark. My energy is waning." He winced heavily at something, and Tony's breath caught. "As this is the last time I will ever see you, you should know of my high regard of you." Loki reached up to Tony's face, brushing a ghostly thumb along Tony's cheek, which felt like an icy breeze. He was surprised at the affection in the gesture and what it meant coming from Loki.
"I know that it was my actions that brought along my imprisonment, and I never regretted them, even after my sentence was announced. All that I did here on Midgard was for a purpose, and I refused to see the folly of my decisions and my mindset." Loki cupped his hand under Tony's chin, and though Tony couldn't feel the touch, it still made him shiver. "There is no way to change what has been done, but in my heart I wish things would have turned out differently. I do regret the damage and horror I inflicted on Midgard, a place I would not have been able to rule, even if I had succeeded in the takeover."
"They say the first step to reform is knowing you have a problem," Tony joked, but the tightness in his voice ruined the effect. The thickness of the air was clogging his throat and making his eyes sting.
Loki's mouth twisted downward as he dropped the hand that was on Tony's face back to his lap, and closed his eyes. "I will miss you, Tony Stark. I shouldn't have allowed myself to get attached; attachment always ends in pain, one way or another. I was a fool in returning to you after I knew."
Tony opened his mouth to rebuke Loki's statement, but stopped when Loki opened his eyes again. They were dull and more hopeless than Tony had ever seen them. Loki had given up.
"Goodbye, Stark. Thank you for all that you have shown me and for accepting me as I am," he said with an air of finality that twisted Tony's stomach.
"Wait!" Tony barked out as Loki's image shimmered, and starting with his hands, disappeared like a sheet of parchment burning away, until the barstool that Tony had thought Loki was occupying was empty.
Tony stared at the empty chair in a state of shock, clutching the edge of the counter so hard that his fingertips were white.
"Jarvis," Tony rasped, and then cleared his throat so that when he continued speaking his voice was steadier. "Compare Loki's energy pattern from his visits here to his energy pattern during the takeover in New York."
"During the seizure of Stark Tower, the energy pattern was the same, but it was covering a lifeform identified as Loki Laufeyson. His energy pattern while here was just that: an energy pattern."
"God dammit!" Tony ran a hand through his hair and lurched off his stool to pace the tiled floor in socked feet. "Why didn't you tell me that? That's an extremely important little tidbit!"
"I did tell you that he was an energy signature, sir, but you were rather preoccupied with Mr. Laufeyson."
Tony growled in frustration as he paced, thoughts flying through his head like arrows shot by Clint, though the target in this case was lost in a cloud of emotion. Tony should have noticed that Loki had refused every drink and snack and hadn't gotten close enough to touch. It had been fishy, but Tony had wrote it off as some strange Loki thing.
Tony absently brushed a hand down his throat, remembering Loki's strong hand around his throat right before he had hurled Tony out of Stark Tower.
There was nothing to be done. Loki was dimensions away locked in a dungeon under the palace of Asgard and not even Iron Man could get him out. Tony was not going to delude himself that there was hope of ever getting Loki out of that mess. If Loki had come to say a final goodbye to him, then that was that. If Loki had no idea how to get himself out, there was no way Tony could.
Tony knew that he had to try to move on with his life and attempt to forget the god who he would never see again. Tony knew that the only reason Loki was in that dungeon was because of what he had done to Earth, and that a few months ago Tony would have applauded Loki's fate.
But there was something in the way those brilliant green eyes had been so different than the icy blue that stared into Tony's as he was thrown out of a window. The murderous intent Loki had shown, and the ghastly, sweaty pallor had been completely gone by the time he was visiting Stark Tower, and Tony couldn't help but wonder about the unseen forces pulling Loki's strings. The wild desperation that had been in Loki's eyes during the takeover had been a little too manic, a little too inhuman.
Five thousand years was a long time in a cell for someone whose crimes had so much grey area. Hadn't Thor done the same thing to that icy place that Loki had done to Earth? Hadn't he been given banishment with chance of redemption which ended up lasting about two days? Where was the justice in that? For some reason, Tony found that he didn't much like Odin the so-called Allfather.
There was nothing Tony could do with these angry thoughts, though. He was stuck here on Earth, to remain in the dark about what was happening to Loki, never to lay eyes on the god again.
Tony sagged against the bar. This was the first time that no genius plan would save the world. There was no bad guy to fight, no disease to cure. This was something far out of reach and complicated. This was a new level of helplessness, and it hurt. It was an ache deep in his chest, and in combination with the ache that thoughts of Loki had given him the past couple of weeks, it was almost unbearable. It made him want to drink himself to sleep or possibly jump off a cliff.
With these thoughts swirling bleakly in his mind, Tony decided that this was not something he should be facing alone. Pepper was out of question, but there was one person that he had always counted on that for some reason he had forgotten about as of late. Tony pulled out his cellphone and hit the second number on speed dial.
"Rhodey, are you busy?"
"I'm always busy, but I can make time for you. I was worried you had died or something, it's been so long." Rhodey sighed.
"I know, I know, but I really need to talk to you."
There was a short silence in which Tony knew Rhodey was assessing the tone of his voice. "Where do you want to meet up?" he eventually said, and Tony smiled.
The story Tony gave Rhodey was vague enough that he wondered if the man actually understood any of it.
"I'm screwed, Rhodey, I really am."
"So, the one person you've fallen for is entirely out of your reach?"
"Entirely. They could be in another dimension for how out of my reach they are. As in, I will never see them again and I have no way of remedying that."
Rhodey pulled a face and swirled his coffee with the tiny red stir stick contemplatively. They were currently sitting in a little coffee shop occupying a small table in the corner. Tony didn't want to be spotted by any fans, so they had chosen a spot out of sight.
"Tony, I need more information. Are they married, were they deported, are they in the CIA or something?" He tilted his head. "You keep saying "they." If it was a girl, you'd be saying "she," so I'm assuming we're talking about a guy here."
Tony should have counted on Rhodey's intelligence.
"Male, yes. Any of those other things, no."
Sudden realization dawned on Rhodey's face swiftly followed by horror. "Please tell me it's not that scary thunder god, Tony, please."
Tony winced at his friend's ability to nearly hit the nail on the head in one go. He shouldn't have used the 'other dimension' metaphor. Tony's only consolation was how well Rhodey could keep a secret.
"Um," Tony said, hesitating and watching Rhodey's eyes grow round. "No, but it may or may not by his brother."
Rhodey laughed lightly, but his smile slowly faded as he realized that Tony hadn't been joking.
"Wait, really? How?"
Tony sighed deeply and ran a hand over his face before launching into the real story, wondering how he ever thought he could keep it from his best friend. He watched as Rhodey's face went from incredulous to utter shock.
"And so, he's stuck in Asgard in eternal imprisonment, and I'm here."
"Tony, you get yourself into the strangest predicaments." Rhodey stared across the restaurant, collecting his thoughts before finally turning back to Tony. "If this were to happen to anyone, it would be you, wouldn't it?"
Tony shrugged, staring into his untouched coffee.
"Well, we can't exactly help who we fall in love with, can we?"
Tony's gaze snapped back up to Rhodey in surprise. "You're not going to tell me off for this?"
Rhodey placed a hand on his shoulder. "No, Tony, of course not." Rhodey gave his shoulder a squeeze and let go. "It sounds like he helped you through a lonely time, whether you were willing in the beginning or not. You guys have problems in common, I suppose, so it's really not a long stretch to see why you've fallen in love."
Tony winced at the L-word. "Doesn't help anything," Tony grumbled back. "He's gone, and I'm screwed."
Rhodey looked thoughtful and way too calm for the situation. "Why don't you talk to his brother? You're pretty buddy-buddy with him, right?"
Tony glared at his friend. "Yeah, I'll just go up to him, pat him on a muscled arm and say, 'Hey, I wanna bang your brother, so can you help me bust him out of jail?' That will go down so well."
Rhodey just rolled his eyes. "Thor wants what's best for his little brother, right? You have a way with words; convince him to help you."
Tony was still struggling with Rhodey's calm demeanor. "So, you don't think I'm crazy for falling for the guy who tried to take over the world?"
Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "First off, I never once believed you were sane, and second, I think it's just like you to fall for someone like that. Obviously, an average person wouldn't hold your attention for long enough, and your lifestyle is way too much for most people."
"Great. No human is good enough for me. Superb." Tony scrubbed a hand down his face.
Rhodey pat him on the back. "Well, it seems you found the right one. You just have to save him from eternal imprisonment in a city of gods."
Tony winced. "And if anyone can do it?"
"It's you," Rhodey finished, and despite the fact that they were both holding coffee mugs and not shots or alcohol, toasted to Tony's crappy luck.