The mortal heroes are finally all present. Even the green monster, which Loki had not entirely expected. They have proved themselves well capable in their handling of the first wave. He reaches out his seid through the sceptre, shuddering internally. It is easy, too easy, to establish the link with the Chitauri. Their psychic awareness presses up against his mind, slimy as the trail of a slug. Foul.
"Send in the rest," he transmits to them. He is confident they will die as intended. Everything is going to plan, and he has nothing to fear.
The war beasts begin to emerge in greater numbers. From his position skirting the edges of the battle, Loki can see Thor take up position on a tall, needle-sharp tower. Mjolnir's seid-summoned lightning flashes around it, shooting up to strike the sky-beasts just emerging from the portal. They burn and die, and Loki cannot entirely smother his grin. They fry and pop so satisfactorily.
Elsewhere the Chitauri are dying in droves. They have no more sense of tactics than Thor, and Loki has no intention of helping them, or indeed getting involved at all. He has played his part in getting them this far, and when they fail he is sure the blame cannot be placed upon him. He has given them all they asked for and not a thing more.
It is not long before the other human forces begin to arrive. Their most basic warriors, ill armoured and armed by the standards of their elite, their 'Avengers', but entirely making up for it in numbers. And they at least have some modicum of knowledge of how a war ought to be waged. Loki's so-called army act like raiders, like pirates, and expect to take a world with it!
It is after another half-hour or so of slaughter when his seid-link to Dr Selvig reports that it needs his attention. It appears the Black Widow is approaching the top of Stark Tower. Loki smiles, and lets his control of the mortal diminish, sinking it down to a sub-conscious level as he had intended to do with Barton. Let the man think himself free. Let him think he created the fail-safe of his own accord, instead of Loki's subtle prompting. Mayhap all the Chitauri are not yet through, but they will have warning enough of the portal's closing if they are clever enough to detect it. More fool them if they let themselves be shut out. More condemnation to put on the incompetent commander who waits across the vasts of space.
Hey boss, Clint says to him suddenly. You want me to send you a present? In the interest of making this look real, you understand. There's enough humour in his tone for Loki to know this is more about poking fun at him than any attempt at verisimilitude, but he's willing to allow it.
As you wish, he replies. Within moments, an arrow is winging its way towards him.
Even without the advance warning it would have been simple enough to catch it.
Really? he asks, sending a smile his hawk's way.
By the way, it's explosive, comes the reply.
Loki has just enough time to shield himself with his seid before the arrowhead detonates. He goes flying, but – by design he's sure – he is close enough to Stark's tower that he lands safely, his protective spells cushioning him from any harm. He allows himself to laugh as he pushes himself to his feet. A good prank is a good prank, whether it's at his expense or no.
Unfortunately it's at that point the great green monster comes leaping through the air, taking the both of them barrelling through the already broken windows into Stark's sanctum. Loki hits the wall and falls, his already bruised ribs protesting further. The berserker growls and punches the floor like an animal preparing to charge. Loki pulls himself up, sneering. Does this self-made monster wish to take him on? Monster against monster?
"Enough," he shouts at it, drawing forth tendrils of seid in preparation to attack. He's sure with the amount of Tesseract energy that constantly swirls around the creature that it will have no difficulty seeing the open threat.
And still he must play his part, for the war is but half won, and the sceptre lies out on the platform but a few fathoms away. "You are all of you beneath me," he says, a claim that he might have once believed. Now however a number of these mortals have won his respect. And as for Thor, he has never been able to equal him, let alone rise above him. "I am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by an a..."
Whatever braggadocio he'd been about to sport is abruptly cut short by the monster's swift pounce, its massive fist grasping him by the ankle and jerking him into the air. The creature is Jotun tall, and Loki has little time to react before it is swinging him through the air like a rag doll, bashing him off the floor with strength he's not sure any Aesir could match.
The breath is knocked out of him. Every impact causes another burst of pain. His bones begin to crack, even his own ancestry not enough to protect him from such bestial, violent force.
When the creature lets him go he can but lie where he is, winded and stunned, whimpering with the utter, encompassing ache that fills every part of him. It may not be the worst pain he has ever suffered, but it is immediate while they are in the past and have lost their teeth with time.
He has not the presence of mind to unleash his seid upon the cursed beast before it leaves as quickly as it arrived. Though how much use it might have been he is not entirely sure. The energy that fuels the berserker change has too much in common with that of the Tesseract. Spells might find little purchase upon the self-stuff of that one.
Still, he has missed his chance to find out. In future he will know to be more cautious of the green monster, to engage it from afar if it comes to that. In the meantime...
For now, he rather thinks he will be staying right where he is. He can't quite muster the energy to move.
Whatever the fuck Loki was trying to tell him, Tony hasn't had the time to figure it out. Even an intellect as awesome as his can't really focus on that kind of thing when he's literally fighting for his life. All his processing power is taken up with calculating angles and velocities, with weaving the suit between Manhattan's skyscrapers and dodging the skimmers which inevitably end up on his tail.
There are too many of them. That's the conclusion he comes to after about the first half hour. It's true that none of the team have been seriously injured yet, and that they're taking down the aliens like swatting flies, if the flies all had broken wings and the fly-swatter had a targeting lock. But there are a hell of a lot more aliens than there are Avengers, and they just. Keep. Coming.
Things become a lot easier once both Thor and Bruce are in play, because those two are their real heavy hitters, and are actually capable of killing the space-whales. Speaking of which, the mere existence of those things is giving him a headache. They are giant flying animals with no visible means of propulsion or lift and they have some kind of super-tough armour apparently welded onto their hides. What? In what world does that make sense?
Things to ask Loki maybe, once all this is over and they have the guy popped back inside his cell, hopefully with fewer mind-controlled minions waiting in the wings to spring him. The way Tony figures it, eliminate the helper-drones, and they'll be fine.
Of course that's assuming Loki has been fighting them with anywhere near his full strength. Tony has this little sneaking suspicious Loki could have escaped at any time he wanted to. He just hadn't wanted to. It's something that's worthy of more thought, but it is right about then that he gets the call from Fury that the Council has fucked up beyond all belief and they have a nuke headed their way.
Maybe it's the memory of Cap's jab back on the Helicarrier. More likely he would have chosen to do it anyway. Really, there is no other choice for which guy ought to be taking the chance of death to lob that nuke through the portal. Thor is the only other one who might be capable of it, and that's assuming all the electricity in his hammer didn't interfere with the electronics. Either way, given a choice between Thor risking himself and Tony Stark risking himself, it's no contest.
Tony may have an ego the size of his tower, but that doesn't mean he's not honest with himself when it matters, and even he isn't going to try and claim he measures up to a god.
He tries to call Pepper. If he's going to die, she deserves to know. She deserves to find out from him, not from one of SHIELD's impersonal phone calls. But she doesn't pick up. She doesn't answer, and isn't that just the way his luck goes? He doesn't know why he expected any different. Doesn't know why he thought he deserved to hear a friendly voice before the end.
The G-forces that hit him when he takes the turn upwards make his vision start to blur out around the edges. He can feel it pressing him back into the suit like someone's stuck a couple of blocks of concrete on his chest. It's nothing he hasn't felt before doing aerial acrobatics, but usually only for a couple of seconds and not after going all out for such a long time. The thrust of the rocket at his back makes all the difference in how difficult this is.
He makes it. Just. His belly nearly scrapes the side of the building before he's up and into open air, the gaping wound of the portal straight ahead. Eldritch blue energy swirls around the edges of a deep black maw. He has time to note that through it he can see stars before he draws level with it. And then he's inside.
Darkness, thick as being blinded. A roaring in his ears, the sound of his own rushing blood, of white noise, of nothingness. The pressure of the armour around him gone, as nakedness, as less than nakedness. No smell of his own sweat cloying in close conditions. No taste of his own parched mouth. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Time becomes unknowable. It might be seconds, hours, days, but all he knows is that he is starting to go slowly mad trapped in his own mind. He was not meant for silence. He was not meant for this... this lack of anything!
And then the stars return, as dazzling now as the flash of a thousand cameras, though he knows they are no brighter than any others from Earth's own skies. The display before his eyes bleeds back into colour, into the flashing notice of failure to connect above Pepper's face, as if that's not an indication of all their relationship so far, no matter how much either of them tries. And then fading, flashing out, as the link home is broken. Jarvis' upload to the suit failing. His vision narrowing to the slim eye slits of the suit.
He lets go of the nuke. His jets cut out; he feels the subtle pull of gravity starting to hook its claws back into him. It seems that much of Earth has managed to make it through all these light-years, these light-millennia, of space. He keeps watching though. He sees enough.
The mother-ship in the distance, a vast many-armed thing. The ranks of space-monsters waiting for their chance to come through. Yet more flocks of the alien attack craft. And through it all the rocket carrying death arcs, unnoticed and ignored, until the moment it impacts against the great central craft and explodes.
There is no sound in the vastness of space, but the resulting explosion is real enough, as is the radiation that's sure to follow in its wake. Tony watches the light approach, shining bright as the sun, and he cannot look away. If this turns out to be the last thing he ever sees, which seems likely, then he's damn well going to appreciate it. After all, who in this day and age can claim they saw a nuke go off? Very few.
He is falling, but it is too slow. And surely they will have closed the portal behind him by now? Death is certain, but it's something that's been coming a long time now. It's his payment, long due. It's karma, catching up with him.
The light is bright and he is tired. Despite his promise to himself, he finds his eyes slipping closed. Unconsciousness claims him.
Clint is feeling pretty sore. He's all out of arrows, and that last plummet through the windows of an office building was hell on his arms. He's got rope burn all down one forearm, and he's bruised all down one side where he crashed into the glass. He doesn't seem to have any serious injuries though he reckons, taking stock of himself. A few small cuts, but the bleeding seems to have stopped, and they don't do more than sting.
Judging by the rapid decrease in the noise level outside, it seems the party might be over. Slowly he picks himself up and goes to check. The streets outside look calm and deserted. There are Chitauri bodies sprawled out all over the place, not to mention the wreckage of crashed skimmers. That's on top of the property damage from firing their energy weapons everywhere. Still, by the looks of things, it seems they won.
"Hey guys," he says, before realising that his communicator isn't in his ear. A little rummaging around – carefully – amongst shards of glass soon turns it up though. He makes sure it's clean before sticking it back in.
"Hey guys," he repeats. "How'd we do?"
"Glad to hear you're okay Hawkeye," Captain Rogers replies. "Everyone is alive and mostly in one piece. The invaders are down."
"Score one for the Avengers Initiative," Clint says, grinning and starting to relax. The world is saved, it looks like casualties were minimal, and Loki will be in the clear. Now all that's left is the clean-up. Which, it has to be said, does include explaining the rest of Loki's plan to his team-mates, and trying to ensure they aren't too pissed off at him for lying to them.
"You also ought to know that the World Security Council authorised a nuclear strike," Natasha says, and for a moment all of Clint's muscles lock up in panic. Then he realises that if that had happened obviously they would all be dead, so it must not have gone through. "Stark intercepted the missile and guided it through the portal," she continues. "Thankfully he made it back through before it closed. Whatever damage it did on the other side seemed to knock the Chitauri out cold."
"Puppets with their strings cut," Clint muses, mostly to himself. It's something to ask Loki when they meet up again.
Rogers speaks again. "Rendezvous with us at the base of Stark Tower," he orders. "That's our last known sighting of Loki, and this isn't over until we have him in custody."
"Will do," Clint replies, with a silent sigh. Time for the big reveal.
Hey boss, he says, reaching out for the mental link still lurking at the back of his head. We're headed your way. Up to you whether you stick around to tell your side of the story.
I... think I'll be remaining where I am for a little while longer, comes the reply, but nothing more. Clint shrugs. He'll deal with the situation, whatever it is, when he gets there.
Loki is well aware of the mortals gathering around him as he struggles to right himself, but he pays them little heed. His seid is already at work healing the wounds he has suffered, and he has plenty to spare for his defence should it become necessary. The portal has been closed, the Chitauri defeated and broken, and even their commander killed, though he knows not yet how that last thing could be. The mindless drones that made up the army have lost their guiding force. Things have worked out well, and he has nothing to fear.
Twisting himself to sit upon the nearby steps, he regards the assembled heroes with a grin. Standing at their forefront, Clint Barton, his soldier, his hawk, lowers his bow, smiles, and reaches out a hand to pull Loki to his feet.
"You look like shit, boss," he says.
"If I knew how formidable your berserker was, I'd have taken greater care to avoid him," Loki replies into shocked silence, straightening and cracking his vertebrae back into alignment with the snap and crackle of rapidly healing bone. He nods to a visor-less Tony Stark. "I think I'll take that drink now," he says.
"You make mockery even now brother?" Thor growls. Loki glances at him and then tries to block his existence from his awareness. This will go so much smoother if he can pretend Thor isn't here.
"You're looking very calm for someone whose plan just failed so spectacularly," Stark says suspiciously. "Though it looks like you've got one trump card up your sleeve?" He nods in Barton's direction. Again Loki smiles. The Man of Iron is looking for the truth, questing towards it. He will have little trouble believing it when it is presented to him.
"My plan did not fail," Loki tells him. "In fact, everything went entirely as I intended."
"Really?" Stephen Rogers says. There is blood and burned skin visible through a rent in the belly of his uniform, but he stands straight despite it. Such a strong, brave mortal, though he is too like Thor for Loki to like him. "That's why you made us think Agent Barton was back with us? All that was a set-up?"
"Aye, what latest trickery is this?" his false-brother asks. Once more, Loki ignores him, puts his presence aside. Now of all times he can risk anger least.
Clint Barton steps forward, his loyal archer. Even without the bonds of his seid-spell, he is remarkably willing to do Loki's bidding. It cannot be all due to the hostage he has taken else he would be much more grudging. Can it be that something about Loki has won some kind of respect, some kind of fidelity? Unlikely. What could be found worthy about a monster? Yet he can think of no other explanation.
"It's the truth," his hawk says. "I'm sorry for keeping this from you guys, but we needed you to act like you did for the plan to work. The Chitauri had to believe Loki was on their side until we killed off their army and closed the portal."
Loki can see the light dawn in Stark's eyes, though the others of their band seem as yet less convinced. Clint's shield-sister for one is particularly tense. No doubt she fears that she has been fooled all along by her own wishful thinking; that her shield-brother has been under Loki's seid-control all this time. The Captain looks uncertain, and the berserker is twitching in barely held back anger, still subject to its rage. Loki knows not when the change will reverse, though he hopes it will be soon. He does not want to chance another attack from the beast.
And Thor... "You have bound this warrior to your own will?" his false-brother growls, his knuckles going white as his grip tightens on Mjolnir's shaft. "You would use your seid for such wickedness?"
"I do only what I have to, Thor!" Loki replies, his voice sharp with quickly rising irritation. This is precisely why he was hoping to ignore the Aesir's presence.
"You take this man's honour from him!" Thor shouts, not heeding Barton's immediate protests that his honour is perfectly intact thank you very much. "Loki, even in madness you go too far!"
"So murdering mortals and allowing an invading army passage are not too far for you?" Loki asks, half-laughing and bitter. Of course. Aesir morality. These mortals may be Thor's chosen pets, but they are still naught more than that to him. And a warrior's honour is always more important than his well-deserved death in glorious battle.
"You twist my words as always Loki. Release the mortal's mind at once!"
Loki snarls, wordless. Thor is too blind to see the truth; he has convinced himself of a certain version of events, and no quick speech of Loki's will shift him from it. For all his silver tongue, that is not within his power. His false-brother has always been stubborn.
No, there is only one way to end this so he might forge some uneasy peace with this team of mortals. He may yet find some use for them in the future, and it will make his hawk more willing to serve him if he is not in open war with his once-teammates. Not to mention that the one-who-seeks-death, the mastermind behind the Chitauri, surely will not give up on owning the Tesseract so easily. He will come for Midgard in the end, and Loki finds himself curiously unwilling to let him have it, though of course by then he will have taken the real prize far away.
His seid is strong; he has used little of it since coming to this realm. He has had long hours to consider what he might best use against Thor, whom he knows so well. Not to kill him, not yet, for despite the satisfaction it would give him a proper revenge is better, and that takes time.
Loki splits himself, easy as breathing, taking a half-step through Yggdrasil's dark paths to place himself behind his not-brother. His fingers are swift forming the runes of power he needs. The other Avengers have no time to react before he casts his spell, his hands flying to either side of Thor's head, the subtle weaving twining its way inside.
Thor collapses.
Mjolnir falls, taking on its true weight once more, though the enchantments on it prevent it crushing through the floor, or indeed plunging even further, into this planet's crust down to the core. Uru metal is the heaviest known, and Asgard is well versed in the universe's materials.
Loki turns from the still form of his false-brother to face the mortals once more. With Thor out of the way, perhaps they can finally have a civil conversation.
Tony has finally got what Loki was trying to tell him. Embarrassingly, he'd had to have it pretty much spelled out for him, but it all makes sense. The simplicity of Loki's plans for world domination. The quiet air that hinted at desperation, at being trapped. The disgust he'd had for that sceptre he'd carried, something the Chitauri had obviously given him, and which probably also had something to do with how they controlled him.
Tony's not stupid, he's not about to forget about all the people that Loki has killed, all the damage he's done. And they have absolutely no guarantee that Agent Barton isn't being mind-controlled by him right now – it's not like they have a handy test for it, which is really something of an oversight at this point, surely they've had enough time to come up with something. This might all be another lie, something that's being pulled by a desperate demi-god trying to patch over the remnants of his plan. But that last one is seriously unlikely, if only because it's ridiculously, needlessly complicated.
No, the reason he's ready to stay and listen is because it seems like Loki may not have had very many options. They've only got the bare bones of the story, but Tony has a little personal experience with being forced into doing something that you'd really rather not thanks very much, and he knows what those kinds of people will do to get what they want. He's sure the same applies to aliens. Sure, maybe Loki wasn't refusing to take over Earth out of any fondness for its inhabitants; that seems unlikely. Tony would bet he refused because he's a prince, and no-one makes him do anything he doesn't want to. It comes to the same thing.
And in the end, didn't Loki do just what Tony himself did? Find a way to get out of the trap he was in, whatever the cost? Tony built the first Iron Man suit. Loki used the Avengers as his own personal wrecking ball. Maybe Loki's not about to become a hero now that it's all done, but he's not trying to take over the world either, so that counts as a win in Tony's book.
However, he doesn't get any opportunity to clarify Loki's story, because Thor apparently has a major thing against mind-control – duh, he didn't get the reference about flying monkeys Tony, he's an alien – though he did know about Selvig and for some reason doing it to Clint is somehow different. Things suddenly get a whole lot more heated. There's shouting. Thor looks like he's about to attack at any moment, and Loki isn't far behind. Tony can tell it's making the Hulk antsy, and no-one else knows quite what to do either.
And then Loki is behind Thor, his hands raised, and the Norse god drops like a stone. There's a wild, manic look in Loki's eyes, a madness writ large and Tony is made really damn aware of why he should be afraid of the guy. Because whatever he did, it took Thor down, and if he could have done that at any time... then maybe they're finally seeing the kind of magical badass his brother kept warning them about.
"I have been waiting to do that for some time," Loki says. "And now without his boorish interruptions we can talk terms like the civilised people I know most of you are."
"What did you do to Thor?" Cap asks, his shield at the ready. Loki glances over at him and sneers.
"I merely gave him a memory of mine," he replies. "But I was not talking to you, honourable warrior." He makes those last two words sound like an insult.
"Terms huh?" Tony says, because it doesn't seem like anyone else is going to. "I hope you don't mean terms of surrender, 'cos you might have been showing off your 'true power' or whatever there, but don't think for a moment that we're about to bow down to you. And, y'know, I really don't think that's what you're all about anyway."
Loki smiles like a shark. "It is true that I no longer have to play that part now. Yet whatever I am, I am still of royal blood, and I will still have respect. Or fear, if you cannot give me that much."
Okay, issues. Issues spilling everywhere. "Hey, personally," he says, "It's hard not to respect someone who fooled us all for so long. I mean, you give a stellar performance, really, it was brilliant. Not to mention it was a good plan."
"So you did work it out," Loki says, sounding pleased. His grin is less manic too, less on edge.
"You gave me plenty of hints," Tony replies. He glances around at the rest of the team. Agent Barton is standing half way between them and Loki, which is telling as to where his loyalty currently lies. Cap looks hesitant, but for now he looks to be standing back and seeing where this goes. Although by all accounts the man is not afraid of jumping in or taking decisive action where necessary, he's also the kind of guy who likes to have as much information as possible before making a decision. Agent Romanoff is inscrutable, as always.
As for the Big Guy it looks like he's finally starting to calm down a bit. It's all this wary talking – if there's no punching going on, it probably seems like there's no real need for him to be here to protect his smaller self. Vocal threats have less impact than the physical, Tony notes. Something to remember.
"Perhaps you'd like to explain for the rest of us," Cap says, as behind him the Hulk starts to shrink down, skin flushing back to a more human shade.
"Well Steve, it's clear they didn't give you a great brain to go with all those muscles," Tony replies, unable to stop himself even now. Admittedly the way he says it is a hell of a lot more teasing than it used to be, so fighting together does seem to have done some good. But he's not entirely ready to forgive the way Cap cut him to the bone, even if it wasn't anything untrue. It's just that he always looked up to the guy growing up, so it's not something he can just brush off like he would – and does – from anyone else.
"Listen, I'll explain," Barton says, putting his bow down and spreading his arms in a gesture of peace. "And just so we can get it out the way, no, I'm not being mind-controlled right now, hard though that may be to believe. But I made the call that throwing in with Loki meant I could persuade him to minimise loss of human life, and I reckon it's worked out pretty well so far."
"You mind if I ditch the suit before we get on to this?" Tony says, sticking up his hand. "I'm kinda uncomfortable, and I can tell this is gonna involve lots and lots of fun questions. I mean, while we're on it, I'd also kind of like to hear Loki's side of the whole 'I'm adopted let's destroy a planet' story."
Loki nearly flinches. Tony thinks he's maybe the only one to spot it, though Romanoff might have too. With her, who knows? "For a tale such as that, a skald might expect payment," he says, baring his teeth. Putting aside the whole Chitauri thing, which alright, might seem counter-intuitive considering that's what this whole battle's been about, Tony thinks he's just found where the source of many of said issues lies. "But by all means shed your armour. My quarrel has never been with you, seidmenn, nor with your team."
"Seidmenn?" Bruce says from behind them, both hands clutching at the ruins of his pants in an attempt to preserve his dignity. "That's uh, something about magic isn't it. Wow, I missed a lot while I was out."
"Welcome back Science-Bro!" Tony calls out, as he sends the signal for JARVIS to disengage the suit. There's enough juice left in the built-in arc reactor to get it off him, but not enough to send it back into its display/repair case to allow the automated systems to bash out a few of the dents. Still, he doesn't really care about leaving it in a pile on his floor. This room is a mess already. "Cap tells me the Big Guy saved my life towards the end there, so thanks for that."
Bruce smiles. "I don't remember it, but no problem."
"So," Tony says, heading over to the bar to fix drinks. "Please, go ahead with the story."
"Okay," Clint nods. "As I understand it, it's something like this. After the New Mexico incident, Thor went back to Asgard, and had a fight with Loki. At some point the Bifrost was destroyed. Now I might not have been told exactly what went down, but I know that the end result was that Loki ended up in the hands of the Chitauri." Barton glances over at said alien, but so far Loki doesn't seem to have any objections that Tony can see to the way he's telling the story.
"Let us say merely that it was not a pleasant experience," Loki says, moving forward so he can pluck Tony's glass of Scotch out of his hand. Tony shrugs. He had promised him a drink. "I was weak after my long fall from the Bifrost, through the abyss. I could not fight them, nor could I escape them. So I allowed them to believe they had broken me, that I would fetch them the jewel they desired so much, the Tesseract, that I would be content with the payment they offered me." Hate twists his face, momentary but no less alarming for that. Yeah, Tony would not want this guy properly angry with him.
"As though I wanted a throne!" Loki continues. "I have never wanted a throne. That is not and has never been my fate. All I am concerned with is revenge, revenge on the Chituari, and revenge on Asgard." His eyes flick to the prone form of Thor, still lying where he fell, as peaceful as though he is simply sleeping. Though if Loki gave him the kind of memory Tony thinks he did, he's sure Thor's mind is currently anything but peaceful.
Clint jumps in, taking over the thread of the tale. "I found out about Loki's real motives," he says. "And I also worked out a way to partly get around his mind control. I was aware enough underneath his 'spell' for that. I guess he wanted to be able to confide in someone. He set up a weird kind of telepathy, a sort of mental link that let us communicate without the Chitauri knowing about it. I managed to persuade him that we could alter his plan so he could still achieve his goals without killing quite so many people."
"I do not like waste," Loki says, smiling and raising his pilfered glass in a kind of salute.
"Casualties on the Helicarrier were much lower than expected," Romanoff says. She sounds... not quite as wary as she was before, in Tony's opinion. Well, if a suspicious ex-Russian spy is starting to buy this story, it has a high chance of being true. And it makes sense, it fits all the facts they have. Occam's razor – this sequence of events explains this whole situation better than what they'd previously thought, and let's be honest, his own thoughts had been trending this way for a while.
Although on Barton's side... Personally Tony can't imagine feeling any kind of sympathy for a guy who'd stuck him under their control, especially not if he was still aware the whole time. It sounds like pretty much one of the worst things he can think of. But he won't question Barton's decisions. It's not his place, and he'd be really pissed off if someone did it to him. And since it seems Clint and Loki have somehow hit it off, have somehow nearly become friends of a sort, perhaps Tony ought to be thanking him. He's sure everything could have turned out a hell of a lot worse without what sounds like a steadying influence on the alien god.
"So what happens now?" he asks. "The Chitauri are all dead, you've got your revenge. But there's still Asgard. You still planning on going after them?"
"And if you are," Cap adds, "do you intend on continuing your vendetta against Thor? I may not know your grievance with him, but so far he's seemed like a good man. Certainly a good man to have in a fight. He's a part of this team now, and I'm not sure I'm willing to allow you to do whatever it is you're planning to do it him."
Tony winces as Loki's eyes narrow. "A good man?" he asks, voice vicious. "Oh yes, Thor is perfection, as always, and a monster such as I could surely have no valid complaint against Asgard's golden son! Think you I ask your permission? I do as I will, and if you throw your lot in with him you open yourself up to my vengeance. Do not think I shall go as easy on you as I did last time we fought."
Look, Loki may not be the most stable of individuals, but this is honestly sounding worse and worse about Asgard. You don't call yourself a monster like that and sound like you mean it unless someone else has made you think that way. But the full story isn't something they'd be able to drag out of Loki very easily, and who can blame him. Fuck, you think Tony goes telling people about why he has so many daddy issues, or the full details of what happened to him in Afghanistan? No. Not on your goddamn life.
"Whoa, whoa," he says, holding up his hands. "Simmer down folks. No-one's going to be fighting or taking revenge or whatever right now. The city's enough of a mess already, and let's be honest, we're all beat. I nearly died just half an hour ago, and I damn well deserve something to eat as a reward. So let's just get to the point of this little meeting huh, agree we won't try and kill each other unless the other one starts it first, make nice, whatever. There is far too much talking here, and not enough recovering from traumatic life events."
It's apparently enough to get Loki to calm down at any rate, and he favours Tony with a non-threatening kind of smile. "Well spoken," he says. "For now my terms are thus; the army may be gone, but many of the Chitauri race yet remain. I shall not rest until they are all dead, and for this purpose I shall be taking the Tesseract." He stalls Tony's protests – and he's sure whatever the others were about to say as well – with an upraised hand. "The Tesseract is no toy, no plaything. Your race has not yet come far enough to use its full power. My own study of it shall be the work of centuries. Approach me in a hundred years or so and I may reconsider."
Tony resists the urge to whine like a kid that's just had a shiny new toy taken away. It's not like gamma energy was even his field, but this thing was one of Howard's pet projects for a long time and he only just found out that it existed. SHIELD has a lot to answer for, and he wants to see what he can make of the artefact. But let's be honest, it's an Asgardian artefact, and it's not like Thor would have let them keep it under other circumstances. Loki probably has an equal claim to the damn thing.
"As for my so-called family..." This smile is decidedly less pleasant. "For the moment Thor may remain with you. I have little doubt that you will have questions for him. For one, I myself am curious why Heimdall All-Seeing knew of my army, but not of my treatment at their hands."
"Yeah," Tony says, glancing over at the big blonde heap on the floor. "I've got a coupla things I'd like to know too."
"Keep questing after truth seidmenn," Loki tells him. "We shall talk again, you and I. But now I shall take my leave, and Barton with me. Never fear, I shall permit him to return should his skills be needed, and of course to visit you as he desires."
"You're really going to go with him?" Romanoff asks.
Barton shrugs, picking up his bow. "I'm sorry 'Tasha. I'm really sorry. But... Phil."
She nods in assent. Tony is confused for a moment, but then he makes the connection; dating a cellist, cellists have bows, aka an archer aka Clint Barton. The sneaky bastards. He heartily approves, or at least he would have except that these circumstances are kind of fucked up. First Barton had been the brain-washed one, now the positions have been reversed... God, but Loki's a dick.
Talk about the lesser of two evils, but then Barton is a spy, so maybe he's used to making that kind of call. Still, in Barton's place he'd be looking to take a little revenge of his own one of these days.
"Come," Loki says, and holds out his hand. Barton takes it and they disappear in a flicker of light, like a mirage. There one moment, gone the next.
Into the uncomfortable silence they leave behind, there is a cough and a spluttering exhalation of air, and then Thor is sitting up, his long hair draped in straggling curtains about his face.
"Loki," he says, quiet, sounding almost broken. "Brother. I am sorry. I did not know."
Yeah, for all they just saved Manhattan and the world, this scene is kind of the opposite of cheerful. Wonderful. Tony is just about falling asleep on his feet, he hurts everywhere, bone deep, and he's starving.
"So... about that shwarma."