Note: this chapter contains a version of Loki that's pretty different from the established fandom norm and may at this point seem contrary to MCU canon. I actually have totes legit reasons for doing this, and some of those reasons will be explored in chapter 12. Until then, don't hate me because I'm different! :P
Additional chapter warnings for some Asgardian cultural homophobia and intolerance.
Tony's spent the last three days begging the universe for a bit of luck. One lucky break. He's used to lucky breaks: he's Tony Goddamn Stark. Things are supposed to go his way. And right now, it's not like he wants anything outrageous. Just one little favor. What he's asking for as he pulls on his shorts and leaves the bathroom is for Thor to hurry up and get his ass back to the motel in a timely fashion. That's all. Nothing fancy. He just needs Thor to show up, because the sooner Thor returns, the sooner they can be on the road, and the sooner they'll be in New York.
The universe decides to grant his wish and kick him in the balls at the same time.
The door opens as he's digging through the Ninja Turtles backpack for a clean shirt. It's a shy and tentative action at first: not the usual bursting, grand entrance Tony's come to associate with Thor. The door creaks open just enough for Thor's head to peek through.
"Loki?"
Glancing around the room, Thor's head stares at three things in a specific order. One: Loki, gracefully owl-perched on the dresser and no longer a jabbering, magic-addled lunatic. Two: Tony, wearing nothing but underwear while discarded items of yesterday's clothing lie scattered on the floor. Three: one bed with linens all twisted up and kicked aside (second bed pristine and unused).
A very obvious conclusion can be drawn from this scenario.
Judging by the look on Thor's face, that's the conclusion he makes. He throws the door wide open with a shout, fulfilling expectations of that bursting, grand entrance. Only not in his usual congenial way. This time he looks furious, growling in a berserker Viking rage that makes Tony's stomach plunge.
"Loki!" Thor bellows, and Loki doesn't even have time to blink in reply as Thor grabs him by the neck and hauls him out to the parking lot.
Tony, who does have time to reply based on the fact that he's not being dragged outside, yells a feeble, "Wait!" But to no avail. Thor's already outside, throwing Loki down to the ground.
Shit fuck shit fuck fuck shit balls!
It's like one of those dreams where everything happens in slow motion despite a desperate need to move forward. Tony hastily stuffs his feet into his shoes, no time for laces, and pulls on the first shirt he can grab off the floor. Loki's Stark Expo shirt from last night. Inside-out. Whatever. He stumbles out the door and vaults over the railing just in time to see Loki, lying on his back as the golden illusion of his suit disintegrates, lash out with a scythe-like kick that knocks Thor off his feet. Thor falls to the ground with a furious cry but springs right back up again to raise his hammer above his head. He smashes it down onto the gravel, shattering pebbles into dust a fraction of a second after Loki rolls to the side with the agility of a cat. Loki retaliates with another well-placed kick to Thor's knee.
"Stop it!" Tony shouts.
Maybe they hear. Maybe they don't. In either case, they're too busy fighting to pay Tony any attention. Loki rolls again as Thor reaches down to grab him, but isn't quite quick enough; Thor's hand finds his hair and drags him to his feet. Loki lashes out with one arm, fist connecting solidly with the side of Thor's head, thought he blow costs him any chance to escape. Thor hooks Loki's arm and pins it underneath his own before releasing Loki's hair and twisting him into some sort of headlock.
"Jesus fucking hell you assholes, stop fighting!"
Bound in Thor's iron hold, Loki attacks in the only way he can: by kicking at Thor's shins and biting his bare arm hard enough to draw blood. Thor only squeezes harder on Loki's neck, choking him until he's forced to release his bite just to struggle to breathe.
They're not going to stop. Not now, and not because some puny mortal told them to. And so Tony tries the only thing he can think of that might get them to listen. "Somebody will see you, you dumb fucks!"
That, at least, grabs Thor's attention. He snaps his gaze over to Tony, and after a brief moment of what looks like consideration, relaxes his stranglehold enough for Loki to gasp in a breath.
"Tony Stark is right," Thor says, maybe to Loki. More likely to himself. "We cannot fight here."
"Goddamn right you can't fight here!" Tony spits back at him. "What the hell, Thor?!"
"We will finish this away from the settlement."
Tony only has time to shout out a horrified, if clichéd, "No!" before Thor thrusts his hammer into the air and flies off, carrying Loki along with him. He shoots up like a rocket on an arched trajectory, coming to land maybe a mile out in the desert beyond the edge of town.
"Oh you have got to be kidding me," Tony mutters. "Shit. Shit. Shit!" He breaks into a run, repeating that mantra over and over in his head as he bolts past the gas station at the end of the block and onto parched dirt. Shit. Step. Shit. Step. Shit. Step. Shit! Step.
At least by the time he finally reaches them, sweaty and panting for breath, they're no longer trying to murder each other. The fight's switched gears into a mere screaming match.
"You knew as well as I did!" Loki's in the middle of shouting when Tony stumbles into earshot. "It was the only way, and a risk I had to take, overextending my powers and leaving myself at your mercy! I saved our lives, Thor! Had I not done it, we would not be enjoying our freedom right now! Sometimes such actions are necessary for survival!"
"And allowing yourself to be unmanned because of it?!" Thor shoots back
Loki snarls at him. "Necessity! You know that, too!"
"You could have waited! One more day, and-"
"Waited for what?" Loki's laugh is acid, burning through Thor's words. "Waited for your approval? Waited to conduct myself in a way that you deem fit? I am sorry my actions so offend you, brother; that the whole of my wretched existence causes you so much grief! Perhaps I should live only to please you?!"
"No! You should live as befits a prince of Asgard!"
"Oh, but this is how I live as a prince of Asgard!" hisses Loki. "You are so blinded by your purified ideal of me that you fail to see what has been right in front of you all along! This is my life, Thor! This! Silence and secrecy and sacrifices you would never understand because your mind is so hatefully shuttered against them!"
"No!" Thor tries again. "All I want-"
But Loki's on a roll and damned if he'll let anyone stop a good rant. "All you want is for me to be more like you! That's what you've always wanted! Is it not? A younger brother in whom you can take pride? A warrior. No shameful wielder of effeminate magic. And do you think I did not try? Do you think I did not fervently wish with every last thread of consciousness to be more like you? The favored son of Odin, beloved of the realm? And do you think I did not notice when none of this made the least bit of difference, because whenever I tried to act in such a way that would please you, you responded with naught but apathy?" He pauses to draw a breath as a bitter smile tugs at his mouth. "Yet now when I finally choose to act in a way that is pleasing to me, to follow my own desires rather than those of a kingdom of narrow-minded fools, you have the gall to claim such horrific outrage!"
"Loki-" says Thor, but this time it's Tony who interrupts him.
"Hey!" Panting hard and trying not to choke on a gritty mouthful of dust, Tony grabs Thor's arm. Probably not a safe move given Thor's state of mind, but for fuck's sake, this nonsense has gone on long enough.
As expected, Thor shakes off the touch with a snort. "Tony Stark, this is none of your concern! You have interfered enough already! Leave us!"
"No, sorry, I like interfering and I'm not leaving. If I can just take a minute to explain you a couple things, because I have the strangest feeling you're mad at Loki over what you think may have happened last night-"
Thor silences him with a one-handed shove, knocking Tony for a few staggering steps before he falls flat on his back in the dirt. "I said, this is of no concern to you! It is between me and my brother only!"
"Brother!" Loki laughs
With a cold glare, Thor stares him down. "Loki, our father sent me to bring you home to face the laws of Asgard, and I will do as I am bidden. You are my brother, and you are the son of Odin, and you will answer for this dishonor you have brought to our family!"
"Oh I will?" asks Loki. "No, Thor, I think I have a better idea. I will renounce my title as Prince of Asgard. In fact, I will renounce all claims I might hold on Asgard at all! We both know how false and unsubstantiated those would now be, do we not? Thus I am part of your spotless family no longer. Do not trouble yourself to worry about me. How can I bring you shame when all ties are severed? I am not your brother, and I am not the son of Odin. You need not live in fear of how I might disgrace you next."
Thor hefts up his hammer with a savage growl as he makes a menacing lunge toward Loki. "You will disgrace no-one, not even yourself, when you are properly imprisoned!"
"And if I refuse?"
"You think you can refuse me?" Thor snarls. "You think you can win this fight?"
Loki just smiles in reply, cocking his head to the side. "A fair fight?"
As a warning, Thor raises his hammer higher and bares his teeth.
"No, no, I like this idea," says Loki. "A fair fight! I challenge you, Thor, officially, to fight me. If you win, I will calmly yield to whatever idiotic sense of justice you have in mind. But if I win, you will leave me in peace and stop this misguided quest to carry me home as your prisoner. If we return to Asgard, we do so as equals. Is that acceptable?"
Slowly, Thor's arm falls to his side. "I may accept," he says, face full of suspicion. "What terms?"
"No weapons." Loki jerks his chin towards the hammer.
"Then no magic," Thor retorts.
"Agreed. Physical strength only."
"Agreed."
"Arena?"
Thor looks around them, turning in a full circle before settling on a wide depression in the landscape some hundred feet away. He points. "There."
Loki nods. "Fine."
"Oh hell," Tony grunts as the Asgardians start walking. Scrambling to his feet, he takes off after them, sprinting to catch up to Thor. Careful, though, to stay out of shoving distance. "Hey! Chuck Norris! What do you think you're doing?"
"Fighting," says Thor.
"No. Nuh-uh. Bad idea. Remember? Remember what we talked about last night? Remember when I said you need to have a conversation with Loki? This isn't a conversation. This is the opposite of a conversation. Stop now and work things out with your brain-muscle."
"I'm sorry, Tony Stark, but Loki challenged me to an honorable duel. I cannot refuse."
"Cannot or will not? This is stupid. Just stop for a second and-"
"No." He pushes on ahead, taking advantage of his height and long legs to outpace Tony. "We must fight! It is the law."
"Law of what? Oh for the love of..." Tony whips around, brain spinning through a million worst case scenarios that could possibly unfold. Injury. Death. Epic fucking god-battle that rends the desert in two or some other such mythological bullshit. Goddamn, he has to stop this. He falls back to jog alongside Loki. "Alright, so, I can't even believe I'm trying to appeal to you to be the reasonable one, but you can't go through with this."
"Why not?" Loki asks, a hint of a smile breaking across his lips.
"Well, um, first the obvious answer: Thor will kill you or at least break your neck. Physical fight only? This is where he has the advantage. You're not allowed to use magic. He will destroy you."
"I need no magic to defeat him."
Tony groans. "I love that you're so optimistic, but if you stop to think carefully about-"
"I have thought," says Loki, so calmly it sends chills across Tony's skin. "I have thought this through very carefully. I need no magic to defeat Thor, Tony Stark. I need absolutely no magic at all."
As Loki steps forward, Tony stays right where he is, paralyzed in place and heart dropping heavily down to his feet. No magic at all. He can't possibly mean...
The ice comes first. Frozen little crystals gather around Loki's feet, leaving silvery prints in his wake. Next is the color, a frigid blue shade blooming up through his skin as the magic dissipates. Then transformation.
Giants. The word blares in Tony's mind. Thor said Frost Giants. They'd be called that for good reason. With every step he takes, Loki's growing taller and broader. Corded, wiry muscles ripple under his icy skin, sharply defined by each movement. His shirt strains across widening shoulders until the sleeves split at the seams while his hair fades into wisps of smoke, replaced by ridges of reptilian bone set like a crown over his skull. It takes mere seconds for the full transformation. Loki continues to follow after Thor, not even pausing, not even slowing as his metamorphosis comes to completion.
Thor only turns around once they reach the designated arena. He spins with a furious sneer on his face, lifting his arms and clenching his hands into fists, ready to fight, but all of that crumbles into one look of horror when he sees what Loki has become. Nearly eight feet tall, skin leathery blue-gray and crisscross swirled with raised lines, crests of bone on his head and ice spreading from his feet in a frosted white starburst across the dirt. The sight's enough to make Thor stumble backwards, almost falling. Disbelief widening his eyes.
"Loki!" he gasps. And that's all he has time to say before Loki strikes him across the chest and sends him flying.
This one blow will set the stage for things to come. Tony can see that, cringing as Thor rolls to a stop on the dusty ground before scrambling to his feet. Already, Loki is charging in for another attack. Thor manages to dodge the first swing of Loki's arm, but not the second, which knocks him flying again. Without that hammer as backup, he won't do so well against Loki's Jotun size and strength.
"No magic!" he shouts, dodging once more. "You agreed-"
"And so I rid myself of all magic," Loki replies, lunging at, and missing, Thor's shoulder. "How do you like my true form? The body into which I was born, free of the decoration of Asgard?" His voice has changed, too. Deeper. Rougher. Rasping and feral.
Thor's answer is a retaliatory strike as he brings his fist down on Loki's back. Hissing, Loki lashes out and catches him across the face with a fast backhand. Thor staggers but doesn't fall, coming back quickly enough to land two punches, one after the other, to Loki's stomach. Loki swings at him, clipping the side of his head, Thor charges forward in an attempt to tackle Loki, Loki grabs him by the hair and slams him down...
And this time, Tony's pretty sure nothing he can say will be able to stop the fight, and he's not stupid enough to try. All he can do is watch it unfold with a feeling sour nausea forming in his gut. Loki has the upper hand, swiping a kick at Thor on the ground, reaching down to stop him from escaping, raking his clawed fingers over Thor's neck. Thor rolls to the side to swing his leg out at Loki, Loki tries to pin him down with a foot, Thor writhes his way free, Loki kicks at him, Thor dodges while landing his boot on Loki's knee. On it goes, trading blow for blow, though Thor's slowly losing ground. He grabs Loki's arm, once, trying to wrestle him down, but quickly lets go and shakes his hands as if injured. He can't maintain contact with Loki's frozen skin. Can't hold him, can't stop him, can't do anything but try to defend himself between quick strikes.
Without the extra weight of the hammer on his arm, Thor can neither balance nor find his rhythm, and Loki's leaving him no room for error. Every miscalculated swing of a fist draws him one step closer to defeat as Loki pounces on the opportunity to land a punch of his own. No matter what Thor tries, he can't seem to stay on his feet; each time he manages to raise his head, Loki knocks him back down. Until, finally, one well-aimed crack to the temple sends him reeling and he slumps to the ground.
"Do you yield, brother?" Loki snarls. He kicks Thor to roll him onto his back before planting a foot firmly on his chest.
Thor swipes at Loki's leg, but his dizzy swing isn't enough to earn him his freedom.
"Do you yield?!"
Thor's defiant shout of rage breaks down into a pained groan as Loki leans forward to press more weight onto his ribs.
Just give up already, asshole! Tony silently screams at him. Let Loki win for once! You can always fight him again later!
But Thor's the kind of guy who doesn't give up. Doesn't surrender, and doesn't just let somebody else take all the glory of winning. Especially not when he can take all that glory for himself by way of one little cheat.
The hammer whistles through the air, passing by Tony's right side almost too fast for the eye to follow. It meets Thor's hand with a crack of thunder that shakes the ground. Loki jumps back, but his new and improved size has cost him his previous quick agility; Thor catches him with the hammer's first swing and knocks him off his feet. He lands hard in the dirt and has time only to raise an arm to shield his face before lightning strikes.
So the tables turn again. Thor, hammer in hand, crackling with electricity, glares down at Loki with a look of raging hatred on his bloodied face. Unable to hide the injuries sustained from that first hammer blow, Loki draws his knees up to his chest. The blue tint rapidly drains from his skin as he shrinks back down into his Asgardian body. But Thor is too far gone in his bloodlust for any show of pity. He looses another lightning bolt at Loki, pinning him to the ground.
"I should kill you now!" Thor shouts. "The Nine Realms would be better off without your cowardice and betrayal!"
Loki's answer is a handful of pebbles hurled in Thor's direction. They shoot like bullets toward him, and it's only just in time that he raises his arms to block his face.
"Is that all your worthless magic can do?!"
No; lying injured has little impact on the potency of Loki's spells. As soon as the taunt leaves Thor's mouth the ground explodes under him, blasting him with another facefull of rock and dirt that shreds at his hair and skin. He shoots up into the air to escape it and sends a third lightning strike back down in exchange, but Loki's wise to that move and easily blocks it with some kind of invisible energy shield.
And the fight begins again in earnest. Thor dives at Loki, landing with enough force to blast a crater in the earth. Loki teleports out of the way at the last second and whips around to assail Thor with a new cocktail of stones and ice. Thor swings his hammer, Loki jumps aside, swiping at him with a shadowy club that looks like it materializes in his hand and disappears just as quickly... It's a tradeoff, attack and defend, defend and attack, each movement blending into the next with superhuman speed. Thor swings and ducks. Loki dodges and engulfs Thor in a cloud of smoke to blind him. Disoriented, Thor hurls his hammer like a boomerang, but Loki's already teleported away. Behind Thor. With a sudden glint of silver in his hand, flashing its warning of danger in the late morning sun.
Then Loki's arm is rising high above his head, the blade of the knife growing longer in a deadly curve. Thor spins to face him as he brings it down, reaching up and grasping his wrist. A momentary struggle: Loki's arm comes down, but his body blocks the knife from Tony's view and it's impossible to see what's happening.
Until the spray of bright red arches up through the air to land on the dirt in a spattered crescent.
It's Loki though, not Thor, who staggers forward on weakened knees. Loki who drops his head and hunches his shoulders to curl protectively into himself. Loki who's bleeding in little channels that trickle down his legs and drip from torn clothing.
Tony's halfway there before he even realizes he's running, the same old mantra pounding through his head. Shit. Shit. Shit! Punching and kicking and wrestling all have their place in friendly brotherhood battle royale, but now there's a knife and blood and... so much blood, pooling at Loki's feet... Thor has one arm around Loki, both supporting him and keeping him in a locked grip to prevent escape. But that must not be good enough, because in the next second Thor's raising his hammer and bringing the butt of the handle down hard on the back of Loki's head. Loki sags forward, unconscious, draped like a gory rag doll on Thor's shoulder.
Shitshitshitohshit... "Thor! What-"
"Stay back, Tony Stark!" Thor warns, holding out his hammer and aiming it at Tony like a human might brandish a gun. "I am returning my brother to the custody of S.H.I.E.L.D.!"
It takes two steps to process Thor's words. And another two to stumble to a halt, still fifteen feet away, when his stomach leaps up into his throat. All Tony can do is stupidly stand there, mouth gaping, mind erratically whirring through a thousand thoughts without being able to articulate a single one of them. His mouth only picks up clumsy fragments. "But our... we had a... when we decided... No, fuck, you can't go back! Everything we've accomplished! If you go back now they'll-"
"Your S.H.I.E.L.D. is no threat to me. I have had dealings with them before."
"Yeah but our plan to-"
"There is no more plan!" Raising his hammer above his head, he adjusts his grip and shifts its weight in his hand. "Our alliance is ended. I should never have trusted you. I will retrieve the Tesseract on my own. Loki will answer to your people for his involvement with the Chitauri, and then I will return him to Asgard to face his crimes before my father. I have no interest in delaying any further. Good bye, Tony Stark."
"You're just angry!" Tony shouts, and shit, he hates how desperate and shrill his voice sounds. "You're angry at Loki, you're not thinking straight, Jesus Christ, I don't even know what you're so mad about! Just tell me what's wrong. Let's talk this through, we can talk it through, and... If you take off now you'll regret it later! You'll regret it when you realize what you've done. You're angry, you want to punish Loki, you want to hurt him... But one hour. Just give it one hour, calm down, think carefully... Please. Please, Thor, let's go back to the motel and talk about this. Please."
Thor's last word before shooting off into the sky is a simple, guttural, "No."
ooo
It's a long, slow trudge back to the motel. The door's still hanging open, just like Tony left it, and all their stuff's still scattered through the room. The remnants of an idiotic quest gone wrong. So that's that.
It makes sense, on some level, for this to end the way it started: with Thor flying off carrying Loki in his arms. He'll return to S.H.I.E.L.D., effectively undoing everything they've accomplished over the past few days, and Tony... well. Tony gets the dubious honor of choosing whether to continue dicking around and staying on the run until Fury finally catches him, or to turn himself in. And since both his reason for running and his leverage for staying out of prison just flew off into the wild blue yonder, he's screwed either way.
So. Plan? Nothing. Not yet. No great ideas, other than just get out of Texas. He has his car thief kit, so might as well stick to stealing a car, but instead of heading to New York it would make more sense at this point to shoot over to Malibu. Just as easy for S.H.I.E.L.D. to arrest him there, where he can also get cleaned up and change into some decent clothes. Then they can haul his sorry ass back to the east coast (or wherever the secret lair is hiding at the moment). Maybe, if he's lucky, he'll get a chance to have a go at Thor for the inconvenient abandonment and other stupid actions.
And maybe, if he's lucky, Loki will still be in one piece.
"Shit," he mutters. He drops the backpack he's been stuffing full of clothes and sits down hard on the edge of the bed. Romanoff said she wanted the Asgardians, both Loki and Thor, but if Tony has to make an educated guess he's going to say Loki's the more important of the two. Why? Well, she also said S.H.I.E.L.D.'s priorities had changed since the Brookhaven incident, and that's probably due to the Chitauri that came through Thor's 'space hole'. In that case, Loki's going to have a lot of explaining to do. Probably not willingly.
A sick feeling is starting to prickle its way up Tony's spine and into his neck. Wanting to punch that smug asshole in the face is one thing. Torture? The thought alone is enough to make him want to vomit for the second time today. It was hard to stomach when Loki was just the random villain of the week. Now Loki's the guy who saved Tony's hide when S.H.I.E.L.D. came calling in Atlantic City. The guy who offered to help with the plan to steal the Tesseract back. The guy who's been wearing Tony's old, ill-fitting clothes for three days, who refuses to consume anything that doesn't come out of a juice box, and who smells like coconut shampoo. The guy (and girl?) who... yeah. All that.
"Shit!" Again.
He doesn't have time to drive to Malibu, get himself arrested, and fly back east. Who the hell knows what they'd do to Loki by then, now that tangible proof of an alien invasion exists in the form of seven Chitauri corpses. Not that Tony can really do anything to stop them, but son of a bitch, he has to try. He has to talk to Loki. Convince him to drop all the Dr. Evil shenanigans. It probably won't work and his efforts will likely get him nowhere, but he'll be damned if he doesn't at least put up a fight.
Leaning over to reach the nightstand, he picks up the phone and dials the one number he knows without a doubt S.H.I.E.L.D. will be monitoring.
Voicemail kicks in after four rings. Hello, you've reached the personal mobile phone of Pepper Potts. I'm unavailable to take your call right now, but please leave your name, number and a detailed message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.
Always perfect and professional, even on a phone she only ever uses to call her mom. "Hey," Tony says after the beep. "Pepper, I apologize in advance, and you're going to want to delete this message because I'm only calling for Agent Coulson. Also please don't freak out about anything I'm about to say. I swear it all makes sense and I'll tell you the whole story sometime. Yeah. Just delete it now. And Phil, I know you're listening. It's Tony Stark. I need to talk to you. I'm in room 108 at the Kozy Kloud Motel in a town in Texas that I think is called Serviceberry, which is... Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. Somewhere near the New Mexico border. East, maybe."
He pauses to clear his throat. "Anyway. Thor's on his way back to you, bringing Loki along with him. But I, uh, have some information about the Asgardians that you need. Pretty important. I don't want to say over the phone because..." It's a blatant lie. "Security. You know. Just make sure you don't do anything with them until I've had a chance to talk to you. This is big. Get here quick. I'll explain everything then. And sorry about yesterday," he tacks on for good measure. "So sorry."
Replacing the phone in its cradle, he wipes back the sweat beginning to bead on his forehead. Okay. One thing done. Coulson will get the message. Coulson has to get the message. Doesn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have Clone Troopers stationed all over the country, ready to jump at the first hint of Tony Stark doing something? Sure they do. Yeah. They must. Somebody'll be here with a helicopter or jet within the hour. Guaranteed. Tony just has to sit and wait, even though waiting feels like a rat gnawing away at his innards. A frenzied rat made of pure anxiety and-
"Tony Stark."
He whips around at the sound of that voice. Loki's standing in the doorway. Loki, dirty and bruised, dressed in shredded clothes and covered with blood. There's blood drying down the side of his face, blood matted in his hair, spattered on his arms, smeared on his hands and – fucking hell – dripping onto the floor from the huge gash down the side of his chest. Grimacing in obvious pain, he slumps against the wall and closes his eyes. Both hands rise up to cover the wound, but it does nothing to stop the pulse of never-ending blood.
"Jesus Christ," Tony whispers. "What..."
"Thor is on his way back," Loki says through clenched teeth.
"You mean you guys sorted things out? Or...?" He shakes his head. "No, never mind Thor, you look... You need to sit down. Hang on. Lemme grab the towel."
He's in the bathroom in four long strides, snatching the damp towel off the counter. It's far from sterile, but it'll have to do.
"I have no time to sit. I slipped Thor's grasp to shift back here, but-" Loki pauses to hiss in a breath as Tony presses the towel against the ruin of torn fabric and skin on his chest. He takes hold of it, awkwardly, and immediately the white edges begin to flower crimson. "Thor will be here momentarily," he continues through ragged gasps. "Choose, Tony Stark."
Tony's hands are shaking, but he doesn't dare let go. Already the towel is soaked with red, and the sound of Loki's labored breathing is enough to tell him that the situation's worse than Loki lets on. "Choose... wait, what?"
"You may come with me. Or stay and wait for Thor."
And at that, Tony laughs. He's not sure why. This isn't funny, not by a long shot, but the nervous laughter just claws its way out from his throat to accompany the stupid, terrified grin he knows he's wearing. "Uh... You're asking me to..."
"Choose," Loki pushes. "I need to go. And I will take you with me if you wish, or I will leave you here, but I must know. Now!"
It's with a feeling of surreal lightheadedness that Tony glances up to actually look Loki in the eye. What he sees is hard to read, but it might, for once, be sincerity. Or at least a lack of lies. "Where are you going?"
"I don't know."
"And you... want me to come?"
Loki averts his eyes, just the slightest bit, to stare at the wall somewhere past Tony's shoulder. "If you..." He pauses to bite his lip. Maybe in pain. Maybe not. Hard to tell. "If you will it. You may come with me."
Not really an answer. But slowly, Tony nods. "Well," he says. "In that case I think you'd better take me along. Because what I've seen so far with you dumping us in this place? You're a terrible navigator."