This chapter comes with a warning: It's dark.
Sixth Installment: The Longest Night
Skaði didn't like this time. Every nine days, they had to do this. She and Loki. She had to inflict this horrific torture on him. Trying, always trying to heal him. To draw that terrible golden poison out of him. As long as it was inside him, he couldn't regenerate his own seiðr, which meant he could neither use magic nor truly heal.
Well, she amended with a grimace, he used magic at great personal cost. Every time he used that gold light, he felt more damaged.
She hated it. She hated it so much it almost felt like poison. She wished it were a person that she could reach with her hands and destroy. She would tear it apart piece by tiny piece to inflict as much pain as she possibly could.
"Tony?"
The human was chopping wood by the pond. The moonlight rippled off his well-muscled arms and chest. He might be slim, but he was very toned and strong. A strength given to him half by Loki, half by herself. The axe thudded into a piece of wood and he looked up.
"What's up, princess?"
She hesitated. She wanted him to be present for this. But Loki did not. "Loki asked you not to come to the cottage tonight. The weather is fair, so you won't get cold." She deposited a couple soft furs near him.
"What?" Tony demanded, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. "Why not? I won't accept any answer but the whole truth. Otherwise, I'm going where I damn well want."
She almost grinned. "Every nine days, I try to get that gold light out of him. I can't do it more often than that, because he has to recover each time. It's difficult for him, and he doesn't want you there."
He reached down for his shirt. "No can do. I'm not going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while he suffers."
Skaði put a hand on his arm. His skin was warm. "Please, Tony. You will only make him angry, and it's best when we start if he's perfectly calm. I know you don't understand, and I can't really explain, but he needs you to not be there." She hesitated just a moment before adding, "He can't always control his actions. I think he doesn't want to hurt you."
That got to him. He dropped his shirt. "God damn it. Fine. But I'm only sitting by this once. You tell him that, princess. Just this once."
She smiled. "I will."
He winked at her.
Turning, she trotted into the cottage and closed the door. Loki was waiting for her in the bedroom.
"Well? Did he agree?"
"He did, but he wanted me to tell you he's only going to agree this one time."
Her beloved sighed. He looked neither annoyed nor surprised nor pleased. He just looked tired. "I rather expected that." He sat in the middle of the bed and crossed his legs. "Go ahead and begin, dearest."
Skaði felt vaguely ill as she obeyed.
It was still a strange thing, even after four months. She channeled part of her own self, as if it were seiðr rather than a piece of her very being. Liquid, black, light, it was bizarre to actually have eyes to see it instead of simply being aware of it. To have the mind even to ponder it. She hoped she never grew accustomed to it, that it always felt this new and wonderful.
She just wished she didn't have to use it like this.
The tendrils of ebony light, thick and reaching, touched Loki's skin and quickly surrounded him in an inky nimbus. The gold lines etched into his skin flared with brilliant light, the heat from them instantly filling the room. Loki's head flung back with a faint, ragged cry. His hands clenched in the bed coverings until the skin of his knuckles turned white, jaw clenching so tightly she could hear his teeth grind.
Trying to keep from screaming.
It wouldn't be long before he stopped trying.
o0o
It had taken the Aether days to draw the Mad Titan's seiðr out of Loki's body. It was one of the worst experiences of his life, rivaled only by Thanos pouring it down into Loki to begin with. Normally that never would have been possible, Loki far too powerful a mage. But his defenses had already been critically weakened because of Yggdrasil's vast energy, so he'd been helpless to stop it.
The damage done to him was threefold. Foreign seiðr flowing through him. His own seiðr completely depleted. Again. And the terrible power of all Yggdrasil ravaging every corner of his being. A power far too vast to safely inhabit a single being. Like trying to pour a river into a goblet.
Trying to draw it out, even cut off from the endless Tree, had turned out to be an exercise in futility. Painful, agonizing futility.
The Aether had performed Thanos' own trick to remove the Mad Titan's seiðr. She'd pulled it out of Loki to replace with her own. Then she withdrew her own. Pure torture. However, no matter how many times she'd tried to do this with Yggdrasil's energy, she could only ever pull it out the slightest bit. The harder she tried the more painful it became. The second she stopped, the energy settled right back into its chosen home.
His body's reaction to the ordeal was . . .
It strangled his senses until he couldn't tell anything from anything else. It caused his skin to bleed. His muscles seized, causing his whole body to contort and convulse. He screamed until he started coughing blood. He wept until his eyes bled. It made his veins feel flowing with acid. And the supposedly healed wounds on his body burned like rivers of lava on a blazing sun.
He'd thought it would somehow get easier, the more they tried. It only got worse. Worse and worse until he was out of his mind with pain, until all higher reason deserted him, until he was a mindless being able only to feel. To suffer.
He'd instructed the Aether to keep trying thirty seconds longer each time they did this. These sessions were now up to a few hours.
Blink.
The pain stopped. Loki looked down to see blood all over the floor. Panting, eyes refusing to focus, he looked up at the Aether. He was certain they'd only been at this for perhaps thirty minutes.
"Wh-why did . . . you stop?" he demanded.
Her swirling eyes looked more black than red, and she dropped to her knees at his side. "Must we keep doing this?" she said, seemingly not caring about the blood soaking her dress.
"You . . . know we do," he said, grabbing her upper arms.
She brushed warm fingers under his eyes, and they came away smeared bright crimson. "But it's worse than ever before," she protested. "I hate doing this to you!"
"You're helping me, dearest," he said, breathing a little easier now. "I need you to be strong for me."
She cupped his face in both her small hands. "I'm the strongest being in all the universe for you, my beloved. That doesn't change that I still think this isn't working."
Snorting softly under his breath, amused despite his pain, he clasped her hands and pulled them to his lips to kiss her knuckles. "I think you may be right. This will be the last time, then we'll look for alternatives. Agreed?"
Red-black eyes searched green, then the Aether leaned forward. She kissed his cheeks, eyelids, forehead, and both corners of his mouth. "All right. One more time."
o0o
Tony meant to keep his promise. He absolutely meant to, because he didn't want to diminish Loki's trust in him. He stayed outside, chopping wood for at least forty minutes before he decided to take a break and get some water. Trouble was, Skaði kept the water she brought in the cabin. Not giving it much thought, Tony trotted inside the little cabin to get a drink.
He crossed the threshold, and that was where his resolve to keep his promise unraveled.
Loki was screaming. A dry, horrible, agonized sound as if his body were slowly being torn apart. But worse than the screams were how hoarse they were. As if his throat was raw from it and could no longer produce strong sounds. For a few awful seconds, Tony thought he would vomit, so gut-wrenching was his reaction. The screams abruptly stopped, followed by a wet choking sound.
Then he was moving before his brain gave his body any conscious command. His instinctual reaction to protect the one he loved overrode all higher reason, and it absolutely allowed no room for argument. He had to go. He had to go right now!
He all but kicked the bedroom door open.
A scene right out of a horror movie awaited him.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. Bright, hot, and coppery, the smell of blood filled the entire room. Then, the crimson red of it. All over the floor. Loki was on hands and knees, spine arched upward almost like a stretching cat, his body caught in the act of dry-heaving. Blood splattered on wood. The air around him danced with inky black light and pale gold mist. The mist was rising out of Loki's pores where it was infected with black.
A split second of frozen shock.
Loki's green eyes snapped up and met Tony's, and Tony almost recoiled. That was not his Loki. Nothing remotely cognizant lit the emerald surfaces, no recognition of any kind. He looked like a wild animal, terrified and frenzied and furiously angry all at once.
But the pain . . . the pain on that well-loved face had Tony's instinct pushing him forward anyway.
"Tony!" Skaði's voice cried in his mind. "Stay away!"
With an incoherent snarl, bloodied lips peeling away from white teeth, Loki lunged up off the floor. Gold light flared around his hand, fingers curled into claws, and he made a slashing motion at the intruder. His hand passed right by, and for a second Tony thought he'd missed.
Then heat burst across his chest, and he looked down in shock to see a large hole in his shirt. Blackened skin and muscle peeled away from bone, and the smell of scorched flesh instantly filled the room with sickly sweet carbon. Tony dropped to his knees, leaden and numb, and promptly vomited all over the floor.
Loki followed him down, a predator sensing sudden weakness in prey.
"Stop! Loki! Beloved, please stop!"
Tony managed to lift his head enough to see thick bands of ebony light ensnare Loki, and the golden mist rising from his pores snuffed out. A guttering and spent candle in a stiff breeze. Loki let out another weak, heart-breaking cry, and the black light disappeared. Loki collapsed in the pool of his own blood, entire body shaking wildly.
Feeling a breath away from unconsciousness, Tony tried to crawl toward him. Instead, he toppled the rest of the way to the floor and almost face-planted in his own bile. Fuck I'm glad I missed that. He raised his eyes.
"Loki," he croaked, voice appallingly weak. "Hey, look at me, babe. C'mon. Show me those pretty green eyes."
Only a few seconds passed before Loki obeyed, countenance clear of that animal insanity. "Stark," he gasped, pushing himself to hands and knees. The effort seemed to be immense. He crawled to Tony and awkwardly got his arms under the man's head and neck. "You idiot." Little more than a breath. "I told you not to come." He pressed his lips to Tony's forehead, cradling him close.
Skaði knelt beside them. "Tony . . ."
Loki's eyes abruptly widened, only just seeming to see the damage. "I . . . I can't heal you," he whispered.
To Tony's shock and horror, a tear streaked down the god's face. "Hey," he managed, lifting hand that shook alarmingly, "don't look like that. I'm Tony Stark. You're Loki Silvertongue." He winked. "No one's better at getting out of shit than we are."
Loki gave him a weak smile, capturing Tony's hand and kissing it. "You're such an idiot, Anthony." He made a sound soft as a sigh, but Tony heard what he was sure Loki hadn't meant to say aloud: "My idiot."
"I can't really heal," Skaði said, clasping Tony's other hand, "but I'll do what I can."
Loki shook his head. "You can't use that power, dearest. You'll kill him."
"But what else can I do?" she all but wailed. "I know you imbued him with regenerative magic, but can it work quickly enough to save his life?"
"Use the energy inside me," Loki said, pulling Tony more fully into his arms. He was still trembling.
And still bleeding. Tony realized he was covered in Loki's blood. "No," he protested. His voice was almost gone. "No, that will hurt you. I won't let you do that."
"Fortunately," Loki whispered, pressing his lips between Tony's eyes, "you don't have the ability to stop me. Skaði, my dearest, you need to be strong for me again."
The most powerful destructive force in the Nine Realms in the body of a little girl surged forward and kissed Loki firmly right on the mouth. Her eyes blazed with red fire. "One last time. I will not let either of you die."
o0o
It was twenty minutes before their voices gave out. It was another ten before Tony passed out. Her beloved lasted a little longer, and when he finally collapsed, for a split second Skaði feared she'd killed him. But no, he was still alive. Just barely hanging in there. Channeling the gold energy from him into Tony had done nothing to loosen its hold on Loki, and she made herself the promise.
Never again. No matter how insists, I will not do this to him again. We will find another way. A better way. A way that does not hurt him.
It took her an hour to clean away all the blood and to bandage the half-healed wounds on Tony's chest. Half healed was fine. Half healed and his body would take care of the rest in a few days. Then Tony could take Loki to the city. And maybe that little glimmer of hope he'd felt when Tony described the blue power sources would turn into something.
On the bed where she'd lain them both, Tony stirred.
"You still here, princess?" he murmured.
Smiling, she went to the bedside with a mug of water. "Of course. You'll be all right now."
"I'm more worried about him," Tony said, half sitting up and looking down at Loki. "What happened to him? Why did he attack me?"
"He didn't," Skaði insisted. "At least, he didn't mean to. He's damaged, Tony. I think in my trying to help him, I've only made it worse." She closed her eyes.
Tony squeezed her hand. "From now on, you two don't do anything without me, okay? He doesn't get to make any decisions without me."
Despite the situation, Skaði couldn't help smile. "I'm so glad you're here, Tony. Maybe he doesn't know it yet, but you're good for him."
He winked.
o0o
Tony wasn't sure how long after Skaði left he lay there just watching Loki, but after what could have been an hour or twenty minutes, those emerald eyes blinked open. For several seconds, they gazed peacefully up at Tony. Then they glazed with anger.
"I never should have brought you here."
Not what he'd been expecting. Tony gave him a flat look. "We've been over this. And what're you angry about, anyway?"
Loki sat up, movements slow and careful. "I knew something like this would happen. You always assume you know what's best, that somehow just your presence will make all the difference and everything will be fine. It doesn't work like that, Stark. I'm not a broken invention that you can slap some welding on and replace a few gears. You can't possibly understand what's going on inside me right now."
"Okay, first of all," Tony said, striving for patience, "you don't 'slap welding' on anything. Welding is an action, not a fix-it patch. Second, I have a pretty good idea what's going on inside you. Third, I know there isn't really anything I can do except be here for you, and that's what I'll do. You're my lover."
"You're an idiot," Loki snapped, shoving away from Tony and getting to his feet. He seemed stronger now. "Need I kill you to prove just how wrong you are? Because next time, I very well may!"
Tony realized it wasn't just anger provoking this lash-out. It was fear. Lurking deep, deep down in verdant eyes. He didn't acknowledge it. Not to Loki.
"No you won't," he said, confident and cocky. He got up, too. "Know why? Because I'm Tony friggin' Stark." He wrapped his fingers around Loki's thin upper arms.
A few seconds of resistance, then Loki smiled faintly. It faded quickly, and he sagged down onto the bed as if worn out. "I'm too tired to point all the flaws in your logic. If I told you to go away, you wouldn't listen, would you?" He rolled onto his side, facing away from the man.
"Nope," Tony said, folding himself down onto the bed and curling up against Loki's back. He draped an arm around a thin, thin waist. "And just for the record, you're an idiot too."
A barely audible snort. "Yes." A mere breath. "I must be."