A/N: 1) Set the day after Tony's birthday.
2) Next chapter we finally get to see the scene that inspired this entire fic in my mind!
...
...
Loki does not know how much time has elapsed, and he does not care. He holds on to the present because he cannot bear to think of the future – and tries not to notice the hours sliding by, taking what is left of Tony's life with them.
He does notice though when other people arrive, including a man with an eye-patch which reminds Loki far too-much of the Allfather for comfort, and it is with a mixture of old-anger and new wariness that Loki briefly considers leaping on the man's head and giving him reason to have another eye-patch.
Tony seems comfortable enough with the other man's presence that Loki figures he does not need to engage in any acrobatic eye-clawing. He also knows based on the emotional armor of cool indifference that immediately covers Tony, hiding the completely shattered vulnerable man beneath a surface of polished steel, that this one-eyed mortal is not a friend of Tony's, just a former acquaintance whose intentions Tony trusts in the 'You're not here to kill me because I'm more useful to you alive than dead' way common between loose allies.
The offer of coffee is enough to get Tony to his sofa, and Loki chooses to perch on the back of the sofa by Tony's shoulder, instead of on the seat, when the furniture gives rather loudly under the weight of Tony's armor. Still, it is clear to Loki that Tony is not interested in whatever this man may have to offer, and Loki's speculation is proven correct when Tony says in a flat tone laced with forced lightness:
"I already told you, I'm not interested in joining your super-secret boy-band."
The other man laughs and his reply is cynical:
"Oh, right, I remember, you do everything yourself – how's that working out for you?"
Loki sees the faintest flicker of desolation seep through the mask of indifference in Tony's eyes. It is not a surprise that those words cut deep when for months Tony has kept buried within him the terrible secret of his inevitable demise – trying to spare the people he cares for by hiding from them truths that will only cause them pain, yet by protecting them, he has lost the support and understanding of everyone he needed most.
True to form though, the emotion vanishes as quickly as it appeared. 'Absorb and Deflect', Tony once said, and it is exactly what he does now:
"Honestly, I don't want to get off on the wrong foot, do I look at the patch or the eye? Honestly, I'm a bit hung-over, I'm not sure if you're real or if I'm having delirium-tremens."
Loki is almost certain that the other man knows more about the wreck that is Tony's life than he's letting on when his initial response is an aggravated knowing smile, and seconds later, when his fingers are brushing against the marks of the palladium poisoning that are creeping up Tony's throat, the offhand comment: "That's not looking too good." is certain verification that somehow this man knows the secret Tony has hidden so well.
The answer to the obvious question of how he knows walks into the room, literally, and Loki feels a flicker of satisfaction as his suspicions about Natalie not being who she seemed are confirmed. She is actually Natasha Romanov, an agent who works for the man Loki now knows is Director Fury. In his experience this type of people do not involve themselves with hopeless cases, and Loki finds himself wondering why exactly they are here, knowing that Tony is dying.
"You've been very busy lately, You made your girl your CEO, you're giving away all your stuff… you let your friend fly away in your suit!.. If I didn't know better…"
It is bitterly ironic that a one-eyed man sees the painfully obvious signs that Tony has been preparing to die, when all the people close to Tony did not, but the newfound appreciation that Loki finds for this man's attentiveness melts into the profound wish that he would just shut up when the topic of Rhodey comes up, and this time the hurt and betrayal that wells up inside Tony is too much to hide, too much to let go without comment:
"You don't know better, he took it."
Fury seems somewhere between disbelief and sarcasm, but Loki cannot honestly bring himself to care. All he can see is Tony's expression, the pure honest sadness and hopelessness that Tony does not seem to have the strength to hide, because the truth is worse than Tony's half-truth, worse than Fury's assumption. Tony had taught Rhodey to operate the armor, he'd given his friend knowledge he'd share with no other, and the greatest gift of all: his trust. Rhodey had taken that trust and left it broken in the rubble of Tony's house when he took the Mark II to the military – and though Loki knows that even now, Tony still cares for Rhodey, still would not harm him, it does nothing to lessen the pain of a betrayal that was perhaps the last straw.
When Loki looks again, Tony's expression is guarded. He manages to suppress the worst of the pain and loneliness, but the weariness shows through, he's tired of living with everything falling apart around him, tired of hurting…. tired of those closest to him leaving him, and tired of having only people who want something from him in his presence, and it is this final emotion that shows clearly in his tone when he cuts in:
"What do you want from me?"
Tony wants this conversation over, wants the meaningless acquaintances - that only serve to remind him of how truly alone he is – to leave so he can die in peace. For some reason, Fury seems angry at the question, and Loki feels his position tighten into an involuntary crouch as the anger builds within him. Tony may not value much what Fury has to say, but he does not need another person telling him that he is a problem.
When Natalie – Natasha actually – injects Tony with something, all Loki's anger is suddenly directed at her, but she pulls away in time to not be caught by his claws as he swipes at her hand, and he feels his heart hammer painfully within his chest as paralyzing terror fills him, and all he can think of is Stane.
It is only when after what is more a token protest than anything, Tony starts to breathe easier, and the marks of the poisoning recede beneath the collar of his armor that Loki escapes his haunting thoughts, and though unsurprisingly the injection is not a cure, Loki is grateful that this compound can at least lessen Tony's suffering.
The resignation in Tony's tone when he tells them of the futile attempts to find a replacement for palladium burns deep within Loki's chest, leaving him desperate for anything that will make the pain go away, yet he does not let himself hope that Fury is right, that Tony still has a chance to live, because he has always known it is impossible, there is no suitable replacement in this realm.
From there the conversation goes to Tony's father – and Anton Vanko, the father of the man who tried to kill Tony back on that racetrack in Monaco, and for the first time Loki starts to have an idea of why. The fact that it boils down to the younger Vanko having what Midgardians call 'daddy issues', which to him apparently justified killing people who never actually did anything to him – Tony Stark included – leaves Loki feeling sick. He hates Vanko for trying to kill Tony, for making him vulnerable in the eyes of the world, for bringing in the sharks and giving them the leverage to make the little time Tony has left miserable. Despite that he cannot help but draw the obvious analogies between Vanko's actions and what he had planned for this realm when he first arrived, and the realization of how much unjust tragedy he would have created is so unexpectedly painful – now that he looks at the results of misdirected vengeance from the side of one of its victims – that he cannot bear to think about his past.
Loki decides to let it go. He has time – too much of it, in fact – ahead of him, and at present dwelling on the past is both useless and pointless. When the conversation turns to Tony's father, Loki cannot help but be sucked back into the murky swamp of dark memories he would rather not think of, into the old pain of feeling for most of his life unimportant, unloved, and never good enough.
Thousands of years will pass, but Loki knows he can never forget Tony's words, or the subtle flickers of deep emotions that flash through his eyes and lace his voice as he says them:
"I don't know where you're getting your information from, but uh… he wasn't my biggest fan… He was cold, he was calculating; he never told me he loved me, he never even told me he liked me – so it's a little tough for me to digest when you're telling me he said the whole future was riding on me, and he's passing it down…. I don't get that. We're talking about a guy whose happiest day was when he shipped me off to boarding school."
A new admiration for the fragile mortal he has come to love wells up within him, bringing with it a new grief that is near unbearable – because it is all there in those words and in their delivery: deep wounds that could never be healed hidden behind a fragile scarred veneer of indifference and sarcasm.
Tony's tone shifts between bitter, indifferent, broken, defensive, and all combinations thereof – and Loki knows him well enough to be able to read his body language, to see the fissures where the age-old wounds have bled through cracks in emotional armor that could not always withstand the grief pent-up inside.
For the first time the exercise in contradictions that is Tony Stark makes sense.
For the first time, Loki knows why Tony built around himself emotional armor so formidable it makes his gold-titanium armor look soft by comparison, armor so thick that only a few people in his life have on rare occasions glimpsed the human being beneath, while the rest of the world only sees the flashy impenetrable inhuman exterior.
Tony Stark shows the world a man who exudes an indifferent confidence, and is impervious to any criticism, to hide the person who spends sleepless nights tormenting himself with crimes that were never truly his – and paying for a forgiveness he will never grant himself with his own blood.
He's had meaningless physical relationships in the past, and given them up for the sake of the woman he truly loves, but will never tell her because deep down inside he believes he will never be good enough to deserve her – and knows that to have her confirm it will destroy him.
Outside the armor, he is eccentric and so self-obsessed he does not ever think of other people and their opinion of him. Beneath the armor, he is still human, already broken emotionally by guilt and a lifetime of loneliness – and though he pretends to the world that nothing can truly hurt him, Loki has seen enough to know that it is not true, and that at some point Tony's emotional armor transitioned from a protective device into a reservoir for a lifetime of hurts he must bear alone.
Despite all the pain, though, Tony Stark never let it make him destructive – at least not to anyone but himself. Even the man who had been called the Merchant of Death never wanted to cause harm; he'd assumed naively that his actions were protecting innocent lives, and when that naiveté was shattered, he was willing to sacrifice everything to stop the bloodshed.
Instead of burning the world, he isolates himself behind countless facades to keep from reaching a breaking point, and buries the pain deep within him, somehow finding the strength to use his gifts to fight for what he knows is right, even when the world repays his sacrifices in the cruelest way, and even when those closest to him – who still do not understand him – inadvertently alienate themselves from him when he needs them most.
For all this, Loki finds he has never admired anyone in his life as much as the dying mortal before him – because Loki had snapped beneath the burden of a lifetime of loneliness and self-doubt, and beneath the same burden, Tony is strong enough not to.
For the first time, Loki wants to make that strength his own – and for the first time it is not to prove anything to anyone; it's not for glory or even acceptance. It is for something else, something that is hard to put words to, and maybe once identified even harder to accept, but the reasons don't matter for the moment; that he wants it is enough for him.
...
...