so... I'm alive. As you might have noticed, I'm not really very active in the Marvel fandom anymore, but I saw Infinity War a little while back and it motivated me to get off my ass and finish this chapter that has been laying in my drafts for forever. I am determined to finish this fic and stop with the year-long hiatus between chapters, I promise.

Tony had been scared before. Hell, in the past couple of years, he had feared for his life more times than he cared to count, certainly more often than in the previous thirty years combined. Still, none of that quite measured up to what he was feeling now.

Of course, he had seen the abyss when he'd stepped onto the Bifröst, and yes, that had been somewhat intimidating; but now, he felt like he was surrounded by a vast expanse of nothing, a weapon with the power to destroy the entirety of New York weighing (or not weighing, because concepts such as that didn't matter here) on his back, and the only thing he could see aside from darkness with the occasional twinkle of a star was a massive fucking fleet of bizarre-looking space ships. The voices of his teammates on the intercom had flickered out as soon as he had crossed through the portal and the stars around him looked wholly unfamiliar, nothing like the constellations he'd grown up with.

Oh, and his suit was not built for this. He'd never ventured far enough out of Asgard to warrant an oxygen support system, and what little precautions he had taken weren't going to get him very far.

It felt like forever, but he estimated that realistically, he couldn't have been on this side of the portal for more than fifteen seconds and it might be his imagination, but the air in the suit felt thin and left him gasping slightly already.

Maybe, he mused, it was that this time, things felt final. So far, he had always managed to convince himself that there was a way out, something he could do, something he could change and fight, but this seemed awfully final. It would be one hell of a way to go, at least.

Perhaps this was the part where his life was supposed to flash before his eyes, but all he could feel was a bitter sting of disappointment over the fact that everything could have been fine, he'd gotten his hopes up for them to sort this out and then return to some semblance of normalcy. Instead, he was fighting an alien army like some hero from a B-roll sci-fi flick and he was going to be able to fix nothing whatsoever.

And there were so many things that desperately needed fixing.

He drew another shallow breath, blinking against the dark spots in his vision. Absently, he wondered how much the Apple had improved his body's performance, how long he'd be able to survive without a proper air supply.

Time to find out.

He relinquished his hold on the nuke, watched it carry on with the momentum he'd given it, and then engaged his stuttering thrusters to propel himself in the opposite direction so he wouldn't follow the same path. He could feel the pull of the portal, or maybe it was just his own momentum carrying him there. He couldn't quite bring himself to care.

With a flash of blindingly white light and an eerie, complete absence of sound, the nuke burst above him, and if that wasn't the very definition of going out with a bang, Tony didn't know what was.

###

The roar that woke him was so loud it felt like it reverberated through his bones and before he'd even registered anything beyond the sound, Tony heard himself echoing it with a startled scream of his own, air filling his lungs and burning, his head spinning and his ears ringing with a high-pitched sound. He squinted, felt his chest heaving; everything was too loud, too bright, someone must have removed his face plate and his limbs felt like lead.

He was vaguely aware of voices around him and once his vision stopped blurring everything into an indiscernible lump of colour, he could make out Loki, kneeling at his side and bent over him protectively, and something large and green on his other side, teeth bared in a snarl.

Oh, and Loki was talking, talking a mile a minute, lips moving and eyes frantically fixed on Tony, anger clear in his expression.

"...do that again, what were you thinking, you bloody moron? What if she had closed the portal, if He had gotten his hands on you, what would I –"

"Loki," Tony cut in, his voice feeling hoarse, "Loki, for god's sake." He could still taste the disappointment from before in his throat, bitter and unpleasant, and there were so many things that he'd thought he would never be able to do again that suddenly seemed like possibilities, like open invitations once again. "Would you please just kiss me?"

For a second, Loki was frozen, as if he was trying to process the request, then he leaned down abruptly – "watch your fucking teeth, jeeze" – and the adrenaline that had been coursing through Tony's veins surged again for entirely different reasons. It was nothing like the tentative kiss they had shared in his workshop a lifetime ago; Loki kissed with the desperation and hunger of a drowning man, like he needed the contact, the closeness as a proof, an anchor to reality. It was a reassurance Tony was all too happy to provide, especially when the god's frantic haste slowed to something softer, gentler. Tony matched Loki for each of his movements, mirroring his urgent need of contact despite the slightly awkward angle the helmet forced them into.

When he pulled back all too soon to let the two of them breathe, Loki's eyes had a suspiciously bright shine to them, even as he narrowed them slightly: "If you think that this will simply make me forget your reckless –"

"You threw yourself off a fucking bridge, Lokes, I really don't think you have any ground to stand on here," Tony interrupted, wincing at the unintentional wordplay.

Loki flinched and opened his mouth to retort something, but someone else chimed in before he could.

"Are you two done with the PDA or should we get you a room?"

A little sheepish, Tony glanced past Loki, for the first time consciously taking note of the presence of the rest of the team, now that his head was a little clearer.

"I, uh, yeah. Excuse us." He went to sit up and groaned at the instantaneous protest from his limbs. "Does anyone wanna help me out of the armour? Assuming we don't need it anymore? I mean, since we're all just kinda sitting here, I'm assuming we don't. What did I miss?"

Now that his brain was getting back in gear, questions came flooding in quicker than he could ask them. He looked around even as Loki helped him into a sitting position, which allowed him to actually take stock of what was going on. Thy were down in a street, surrounded by rubble and debris, with the entire team gathered around him. It was almost touching.

Especially when Thor stepped forward and the Hulk startled Tony with a low, rumbling growl starting deep in his chest, crouching protectively over him. To his credit, Thor had the wits to stop in his tracks, looking up at the truly impressive scowl he was presented with.

"I only wish to help," he said slowly.

Tony watched with bated breath as the two stared at one another, motionless; they remained like that until Thor took another step forward and the Hulk snarled at him once again.

"Thor, your highness," Tony spoke up, trying not to let his amusement colour his tone too strongly, "maybe you ought to put the hammer down?"

The thunderer's eyes flickered toward him and the tense silence remained for another few seconds before Thor slowly bent down to set Mjölnir on the ground beside him, then presented his newly empty hands to the Hulk when he took a small step forward. This time, the Hulk sat back on his haunches with a huff and Thor gave him a blinding smile before he crossed the distance between him and Tony to drop down in front of him. The inventor flinched slightly, eyeing the god warily – he didn't exactly have the best track record with the older prince.

If he noticed his reaction, Thor didn't let it show as he reached out for Tony, who snapped out of his stupor in time to warn: "You break this armour and I break your wrist."

Thor stopped in his tracks, a flicker of astonishment crossing his features. Tony didn't know where the confidence for the quip had come from; leftover adrenaline, the light-headed feeling that came with almost dying or Loki's presence at his back, or maybe a combination of all three. He held Thor's gaze with as much determination as he could manage, the god's hand frozen in the air between them.

Then, a grin spread across Thor's face and he rumbled: "You are welcome to try that, Anthony." For a moment, the sparkle in his eyes almost reminded him of Loki. That was just... that was not the way they interacted, usually. Hell, they barely interacted at all, and when they did, it was tense and uncomfortable with the way that Thor still tended to look down on him.

However, Tony liked to think that he had a fairly good grasp on how the Aesir worked by now and maybe proving himself in a battle had been exactly what was necessary to deem him worthy, deem him an equal in Thor's eyes.

Speaking of battles. "You still haven't told me what happened while I was out," he remarked while he did his best to assist Loki and Thor in taking off the armour, which was bent and dented in some places. He watched the pieces clatter to the ground mournfully. Working and tinkering with the suit had been what kept him sane during the past two years and even if this was one hell of a way to go, it still pained him a little.

"Well, apparently," Barton spoke up, apparently having decided to ignore what had happened with Loki earlier, "you blowing up the alien mother ship..."

"Did you just use the word alien mother ship in a serious sentence?" Tony chortled, the giddy relief of being alive – he still had trouble wrapping his head around just how close of a call this had been – making him sillier than usual.

Barton made a face at him. "Look, first of all that's three words, and it's been a long day, and I think you were here when we fought off the alien invasion –"

Tony grimaced. "Which also sounds pretty fake, when you think about – ouch! Loki! Pinching!" He cleared his throat while twisting his arm out of the armour piece that the tunic and a little skin had gotten caught in. "I'm still not entirely sure I didn't just hit my head really, really hard a couple years ago, but please, keep talking."

The archer glared at him, but Tony was at least a little sure he was trying to suppress a smile, so he counted it as a win.

"If you'd stop interrupting me, you wouldn't've to ask me to keep talkin'," he muttered. "Anyway," he picked back up, waving a hand around airily as if to physically brush Tony's words aside, "there must have been some sort of connection because these things dropped like a bunch of the ugliest marionettes I've ever seen." He nodded down the street and Tony followed the movement to take note of the limp bodies of the Chitauri scattered between the rubble.

"That's convenient," he muttered, fiddling with the fastenings of his suit leg until the metal gave with a creak of protest and clattered to the floor. With a groan of relief, tony stretched the leg and bent it toward his body. "So this is it? We're done?"

Loki made a soft noise behind him that could have been a laugh if it didn't sound so bitter. "Oh, this is far from over, Anthony," he replied. "We may have slowed the Titan down, but there is no stopping him. He will find another pawn to bend to his will, and he will be back."

Tony shifted, shrugged off Thor's hand and struggled out of the chest armour so he could twist around to face Loki. His ribs flared in painful protest at the movement, but he ignored them for now.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he demanded. The look on the god's face gave him pause – Loki looked scared, genuinely so, but the expression was mixed with such utter acceptance and resignation that it made Tony's skin crawl. "Come on, Lokes, we just wiped out his fleet, there's gonna be a way to get to him, too. We got time now, we..."

"No," Loki interrupted with a shake of his head. "He is immortal, truly so – Hel refuses to grant him passage into her realm, no matter how much he courts her. There is no way of actually killing him."

"Yeah, that's bullshit. We chop off his head, end of story, what's he gonna do? And if we have to slice him in tiny little piece and, I don't know, burn them or feed them to someone for dinner, then fine, gross, but fine. We'll do that. But nothing is unkillable, I'm not buying that."

This time, Loki actually laughed, a stifled little thing while he ducked his head. "Oh, Anthony," he murmured in the tone of someone who was dropping an argument with a child because they know it will not be swayed from their stubborn, but naïve conviction.

"Don't oh, Anthony me," he snipped, leaning forward with a slight wince. He felt bruised and sore all over in a way that he hadn't experienced in years, if ever. He needed a hot bath and a bed after all this was sorted out – which, as it seemed, was going to take a while. "I..." A low, rumbling growl interrupted him and Tony glanced off to the side at the Hulk, who was folding in on himself, twitching and convulsing in a way that had to be painful. For a moment, Tony watched in morbid fascination, much like everybody else around him; then there was a moan that sounded more human than monster and it spurred Tony into action. He nudged Loki. "Give me your cape." The prince blinked at him, brows furrowed, and Tony made a grabby motion with his hands. "Today, Lokes."

Loki raised his eyebrows at the inventor's tone, but nodded. "Of course," he replied with a nod, fiddling with the clasps that fixed the cape on his shoulders before he pulled the slightly battered thing off and hold it out to Tony, who took it with a murmur of thanks and ignored the questioning look on Loki's face.

Ignoring the ache all over his body, he shuffled a little closer to Banner – who definitely looked more like Banner now than just seconds before – to drape the fabric around his shoulders, pulling it closed at his front because the tattered trousers he was wearing looked like they might fall apart at the seams any moment now.

"You back with us, doctor Banner?" he inquired softly, leaning back to give the man some space when he saw his hands curling around the fabric of the cape weakly. He watched Banner blink rapidly for a few seconds, squinting at his surroundings. His already pale face turned ashen when he took in the shattered buildings around them, and a moment later his eyes found Tony's, startlingly dark in his pale face.

"Did I..."

Tony cut him off with a laugh before he could even finish the question. "Don't give yourself too much credit," he teased. "You didn't do this. Or, like, maybe a little, but nothing worth mentioning."

"Actually," Rogers spoke up, making Tony glance up in surprise and hoping the Captain wasn't going to say anything stupid, "you, or well, Hulk, saved Stark's life when he fell." He seemed a little awkward, like he wasn't sure whether that was what Banner wanted or needed to hear, but Tony decided to give him some points for the effort – not just because he hadn't known that, either, having been unconscious at the time.

Now that he thought about it, there were quite some gaps in his memory that he'd very much like to be filled, so he moved into a cross-legged position next to Banner, hissing because his body still felt like one big bruise, and took a proper look at his teammates, who looked... dirty and exhausted, but surprisingly unharmed for the most part.

"How'd you all even get off the Tower quickly enough to avoid..." He waved a hand in the vague direction of the collapsed building. The limp body of one of the large alien whales, still in lack of a better name, lay on top of it and explained the utter destruction of the Tower. "...that?"

"I took the Captain and our dear Natasha down with me," Loki jumped in to explain, "and doctor Banner here carried the little Hawk."

"I have a name, asshole," Barton grouched, but the words were lacking the bite that Tony had expected. "Also, big guy, no more jumping off of buildings with me, not until you've bought me dinner."

Banner laughed weakly next to Tony, huddled under Loki's cape like it was a throw blanket – Tony doubted the doctor had even realised where the fabric had come from – and there was a grateful spark in his eyes when he looked at the archer.

"I'll be, uh, I'll be sure to remember that next time," he answered.

Tony smiled to himself; to some extent, he recognised himself in Banner's subdued, quiet demeanour, although their situations were vastly different. Even so, the careful way he held himself, the hesitance in his interactions with the people around him, all of it screamed that he wasn't used to people treating him like a person, that he was both grateful for it and unsure how to handle it. Barton's easy, playful behaviour eased that fear just like Tony had been soothed by Loki treating him like an equal, not something fascinating he'd found at an auction.

After a moment, his smile faded, replaced by a quizzical frown as he cast a look around the gathered group again, doing a headcount not once, but twice before he asked: "Where's Obadiah?"

Whatever muttered conversations had been held amongst the team fell silent and Tony cast another look around, a spark of suspicion lighting up in his mind. He fought to snuff it out, searched the other's faces for some kind of answer that he'd failed to read between the lines. Rogers rubbed a gloved finger over a scratch in the paint job of his shield, Barton and Romanov exchanged a wordless glance, as did Thor and Loki; the only one who looked as clueless as Tony was Banner.

When after a few seconds, no one had bothered to reply, he pressed on: "You heard me, where is he?"

This time, Loki and Romanov spoke up at the same time, both of them falling silent at hearing the other. Finally, the spy spoke up: "He didn't make it." It didn't sound like she was delivering condolences, not particularly delighted either; for all the emotion in her voice, she might as well have been telling Tony that it was going to rain later on.

The inventor himself was suddenly glad he was sitting already because for the umpteenth time in the past few days, he felt like someone had pulled out a rug from under his feet. One would think he would get used to it over time, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen anytime soon.

"What is that supposed to mean, he didn't make it?" he demanded, attempting to sound sharp rather than startled.

Romanov raised an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed. "Would you like me to spell it out for you?" she asked and Tony scowled at her, sitting up straighter as he made a sweeping hand motion to indicate the group.

"Are you telling me that between the six of you, no one managed to grab the guy or, I don't know, haul him off of the collapsing building? That didn't even occur to you? Not for a second?"

"We were a little preoccupied with the guy who had just flown into an alien-spitting wormhole," Barton answered drily.

There was a sharp response already on the tip of Tony's tongue, but Loki beat him to it: "Why would you, of all people, want him alive?"

Tony turned to look at him, thrown by the question – or perhaps it was the way that Loki had asked. There was something in his tone, in his expression, because even though he looked genuinely confused, as though he couldn't comprehend Tony wanting Obadiah alive at all, there was also something cold, almost disdainful, colouring his voice, something that Tony wasn't used to from his Loki. People can change, a gleeful little voice in his head whispered, but this wasn't a change Tony was sure he was comfortable with.

"Why would I not want him alive?" he asked, turning the question around. He wasn't sure what he hoped to hear in Loki's answer.

The prince's brow furrowed. "Why would you not want him dead?" He voiced the question as if he was presenting a perfectly reasonable argument, not twisting Tony's words around again and talking about – about someone who was dead, Jesus Christ, Obadiah was dead. Tony's head was reeling, trying to fully understand the implications of it.

"Because I– I have to, I need to..." He stumbled over his words, realising that whatever it was he had still wanted to sort out with Obie, it was never going to happen now. "I need to understand why he would... I mean, after everything, what made him decide to..."

"He was a greedy, selfish bastard who seized an opportunity given to him," Loki cut in. "There is nothing to understand or explain here, Anthony."

"How would you know?" Tony snapped. "You don't– you didn't know him, and it's not like you can ask now, and–"

"And I would not want to," Loki spoke over him. "What good would it do you to understand him? Would it reverse any of what he did to you? What benefit is there for you in him staying alive?" He met Tony's gaze head-on, cold and unrelenting, and the inventor had to consciously remind himself not to flinch or break eye-contact. Loki wouldn't hurt him.

"It's not about benefits," he answered weakly and trailed off, looking for a suitable response. Loki wasn't wrong, per se, it wasn't going to undo any of the things he'd gone through thanks to Obadiah, although by now he was inclined to argue that they hadn't all been bad, it wasn't going to give him back the life he'd led before.

What would it give him?

Closure, he mused, perhaps the knowledge why someone he had known for so long and trusted so deeply would so easily turn on him. Answers. Explanations.

"If I wanted him dead, if I was... if I was okay with him dying because his death would benefit me," he said slowly, his eyes fixed on a torn part of Loki's armour, "that'd make me no better than him. That would put me exactly where he was a couple years back, that would make me just as cold, and I can't... after everything, I can't be like that. Just because I'm bitter, or angry, or hurt, or because things would be easier for me if he was dead, I can't be like him. Especially not after... everything. After I saw what it..."

He swallowed and cut himself off, throat painfully tight. He was aware of the others' eyes on him, but when he looked up, it was to meet Loki's, and this time, the god didn't respond to shut him down. He was quiet, lips pursed and brow furrowed, searching Tony's face for... something. Everyone around them was eerily silent.

"Anthony," Loki began eventually, a hand lifting to reach out toward Tony. "You could never have..."

The howl of an engine interrupted the strange quiet of the city, broke the spell that had kept them all silent and motionless. Collectively, the group turned toward the source of the noise, a large black van manoeuvring through the street between rubble and debris.

Barton clapped his hands together. "Moment over," he announced, "our ride is here."

If anyone wants to come yell at me to write faster, my tumblr is the same as here ( .com, I can't embed a link to save my life) and I have a "sold to the devil" tag that my lovely girlfriend has been steadily filling up with fanart to spur me into writing, so everybody, go give her some love. And kick my ass. I need it.

Also, to anyone whose comments I have not answered - i have read them and they have made my day and kept me writing, thank you all so much. 3