"I won't deny it."

"Well," Tony said and settled himself onto the couch that stood opposite the bed. "Tell me why I'm here."

"That is because I do not want to die, nor do I like the alternative of lifelong imprisonment, both of which are very likely outcomes for my situation unless…"

Loki left the sentence unfinished on purpose and Tony figured that he expected him to finish it. "Unless there was someone who needs you alive and unconfined."

"Exactly. I would like to show my good will about redeeming myself."

"You've gotta be kidding me."

Loki leaned forward, locking his gaze with Tony's."No. And you need to be persuasive with my father. Saying 'pretty please' won't do. I am your only hope, you are desperate and one of Earth's most powerful claims to be wise, he will aim to stay in peaceful conditions with mostly, you are Thor's friend and he will insist on helping you. And our mother will be on both my and Thor's side. Therefore, he won't have much choice but to agree."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Tony said and raised his arms in defense. " Slow down your horses. I haven't agreed to anything yet."

"Why else would you come here? I was just trying to get the details across promptly."

Tony leaned back into the cushion. Loki was right. That was the reason he was here,because he wanted to make a deal. But now he was in the same room with Loki and that altered the situation. In your memory you see a color, more vibrant than it ever was, a night sky with more stars than it ever had and a woman of astonishing and unreal beauty. Tony saw Loki in his memory, less vicious. Less threatening and dangerous than he really was. He could tell by a glance into the man's eyes that he was far from sanity and a man like that hardly spoke true words.

He was too eager. Or was he? The lack of good sleep was confusing Tony's brain and he squeezed his brows together, forcing himself to concentrate.

"What now, Stark?"

"Shush, trying to think."

Loki made nasty sound out of the back of his throat, but he went mute and waited. He sat still, but Tony saw him tap two fingers against his left hands palm repeatedly. Was he nervous? He had good reasons to be. If Tony refused the deal he would have to face life-long confinement. Or death.

Then again, maybe he was faking that tick. Tony tilted his head.

"Give it up." Loki said.

"What?"

"Trying to see through me. If I was putting up an act, which I am not, you wouldn't be able to see through it."

He should've studied psychology after all.

All he could do was to rely on a trickster. It was the most paradoxical thing to do, yet the most logical. Tony stood up and held out his hand to Loki. "Right. Agreed. Let's make a deal."

Loki rose and took the offered hand. "Very well. Name your conditions. I believe we will need a contract."

About twenty minutes later Tony left the room and shut the door. Thor was still leaning against the wall. "How did it go?"

"Good." Tony said. "We made a deal."

"What?!" Thor pushed himself off the wall.

"A. Deal."

"What were you thinking?!"

Tony gulped as Thor's massive hands grabbed him by the shirt.

"I was thinking… that I want to save Pepper!"

Slowly Thor let go. "I assume you agreed on conditions."

"Yeah."

"Are they to your favor?"

"Loki wants me to convince your father that he deserves redemption."

Thor sighed. Loki didn't deserve a clean slate, but Thor had deep compassion for his brother and he would always hold onto the hope of getting close to him again. "You are my friend and helping people dear to you is a noble cause. Hereby I will help you within the range of my capabilities. But Father won't allow you into Asgard."

"But I need to talk to him! I need to persuade him!" Tony said.

Thor placed his hand on Tony's shoulder. "Let's talk about this elsewhere."

They settled down in the living room. Tony poured himself a drink, but he couldn't sit down. He felt jittery, like ants were crawling up his legs. He felt like he needed to take action immediately. Maybe he was making awful decisions here. If so, he couldn't tell. His brain had switched to Auto-Pilot. Emergency mode. Tony gulped down his whiskey in one big gesture. He was doing the right thing. He was doing the necessary thing. Still…

"What do you think about it?" he asked Thor, who sat on the couch, staring into space, the beer on the table untouched. He had a hard time sleeping too. There wasn't a single giveaway like shadows under his eyes, nothing like that. Someone good at analyzing people could probably point out all the tell-tale signs. To Tony, Thor's entire self just seemed tired. Simple as that.

He reached for the bottle, but didn't drink from it. "I think ...we are both compromised. Loki is exploiting our weaknesses."

"I don't feel like having much of a choice," Tony said.

"Neither do I," Thor agreed. "But look closely and you will see that we have. I would just have to let go of my foolish hopes."

"And I would have to accept that Pepper could get hurt." Tony paced back and forth, tightly clutching the glass. "What is Loki's play? Does he really seek redemption? Do you believe that?"

"It seems unlikely," Thor said. "Then again, I don't know what he and Mother talked about."

"She implied the talk went bad."

"I don't know. I think I was never good at guessing what Loki was thinking."

"So, we're back at this. I can't be sure about his motivations. But I am willing to take that risk. For Pepper."

Thor stood up, walked towards Tony and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. "You are sure about this?"

"Yes."

"I will talk to father," Thor said. "I will pass on the conditions, and make it impossible for him to refuse."

"This isn't about helping me, is it?"

Thor let go of Tony's shoulders and walked a few steps to stare out into the night sky. "I still consider him my brother. Do you think I'm a fool?"

Tony stepped up beside him. "No. But I think Loki is one for not seeing it."

"He is. Seeing it. But Loki is still fretting over our past and he is not ready to forgive me."

"He pushed me off the tree! He pushed me!"

"We were playing!"

Tony said nothing.

He didn't talk to Loki anymore after this.

The night went by. Loki, Thor and Frigga took off to Asgard.

Seven days passed and Tony wondered if Loki had been killed after all. If so, was anyone going to tell him? He sat in a chair and watched Pepper's unmoving face in the dimmed light. The intaking of his breathing seemed to have matched with the beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor and he stared at the Mark Rothko he had hung up above her bed. It was two red and one eggshell yellow squares next to each other and it reminded him of life, of heartbeat. Up until now he had hated this kind of modern art. But Pepper had always loved it and now, for Tony, it stood for everything she had been. Neat and fiery. Compassionate but calm.

Tony buried his face in his palms, gritted his teeth and tasted tears on his lips. They were silent tears for a silent person. When the sun started to set outside, he decided to go home. He had been here for three days and after Loki had left, he hadn't talked to anyone except JARVIS and blocked all calls. Steve had called. Bruce had called. Clint had sent him a text and Natasha once came by. He hadn't let her in. He didn't take any calls and never replied to the text. Tony hadn't told anyone yet that he and Loki had made that deal, thatwhen he had entered the room they had locked Loki up in after they had left seven days ago, he found the tesseract shoved under the bed like a shoe box.

When he arrived home, the lights slowly came on and JARVIS greeted him. Tony retrieved a bottle of whisky from the bar and sat down on the couch. He turned the TV on. The voices floated around in the room without meaning, he watched their faces and found that they were all really fake.

"Do I look like that when I'm being filmed?" he asked JARVIS.

"I can assure you Sir, you are never adjusted accordingly."

"Good to hear."

Nearly every channel broadcasted about the attack on New York. There were lots of speculations, for no one really knew what had been going on. Endless news about the existence of aliens. About their origin. Nothing about Loki though. No one had managed to get any footage of him. Some people were confused, they told the media that they had taken pictures or videos with their smartphones, but the man they had seen was just gone.

Tony kicked off his shoes and placed his feet onto the table. Pepper would have hated it. So what? She wasn't here. He drank until he was able to laugh about a late-night comedy show. And then he fell asleep, the bottle slipping out of his hand and shattering against the floor.

"By the norns, this is disgraceful."

"Shut up, Loki. Be considerate."

A snort was heard. "Sure."

"Where are those voices coming from?"

"It's just the Television, Thor."

"Don't sound like that. I forgot."

"I'm sure you did."

The voices that made it through the thick fog into his head sounded familiar. Tony groaned. His head hurt so much. He felt like he wouldn't be able to open his eyes. Until he felt the terrifying sensation of someone suddenly standing very close to him. Tony heard a crunching sound. He squinted one eye open and made out a blurry silhouette. He blinked. And as the image turned sharp he saw Loki, bent over him, staring right into his face. "Did you try to kill yourself?"

"Nooo…" Tony said. "Five more minutes Mommy, turn the lights off."

Loki turned his back on Tony to face Thor. The glass shards he had stepped on crunched once more. "Is he serious?"

"He told me they call this a hangover here." Thor said. "He had too much to drink."

"I figured out that much."

Tony wondered why everyone sounded so pissed. Maybe it was because it was so fucking bright in here. "Can someone pull down the shades? Jarvis?"

"I suggest you to sober up, Sir. Loki and Thor have returned." JARVIS voice said, while the shades rolled down.

Slowly the sense of the words he had just heard got into Tony's head. He pushed himself upright, eyes still tightly squeezed together and studied the people in his living room. "Ah," he said, finally realizing that Loki was standing there. "I see your heads still on your shoulders. Nice."

"I have brought the contract," Thor said. "But I think it will be for the best if we save up all the explanations until you are...better."

"I'm good, good, perfectly fine," Tony said. He stood up, feeling a little wobbly, but he made it over to the espresso-machine. After pressing the button for a double shot, he went to search for some painkillers in the drawers. He swallowed two of them along with the shots and half a glass of water. "Will take like...two minutes and I'm fine. You'll see."

He sank down onto a barstool. Thor walked over and placed a big piece of parchment onto the table. "You should get some rest before we discuss this."

Tony felt bile rise in his throat. "Right," he said. He stood up, hurrying past Thor and Loki into the bathroom. Bent over the toilet-bowl, Tony threw up until his throat turned sore. He flushed and sank back against the wall. His legs felt like jelly, they wouldn't carry him if he tried to stand up right now.

He closed his eyes. Just for a little bit. To catch breath. His head fell back against the cool tiles of the wall. The bathroom suddenly seemed like the perfect place to sleep.

Until someone banged against the door.

"Anthony, are you alright?"

He groaned. "Yeaah, just lemme…, I need to…"

He struggled to get up again and opened the door. "Guess I really need a nap or two."

"Do you need help?"

"That's charming. I think I'll make it." Tony dragged his feet into his bedroom and plopped into the bed.

Ah, this was much better. So soft. He curled up in his blanket and closed his eyes again. Before he fell asleep, he wondered, for a moment, what Thor and Loki were going to do while he slept and imagined a funny scene of them struggling with his microwave.

It had dawned when he woke up again. A warm shade of orange spread through the windows over his blankets and somehow it made Tony feel hopeful. Loki had come back after all. He hadn't realized earlier, due to his state of severe intoxication, how relieved he was. Maybe the moment when he had opened the Whisky bottle, he had given up on his hope.

Tony took a quick shower, pulled on fresh clothes and found Thor and Loki still sitting around in his living room.,Loki stoically on one of the bar stools and Thor leaned back into the cushions on his couch to, watch a wildlife documentary on TV. He stood up when he saw Tony. "I see you are better, that's good."

"Sorry for that," Tony said, massaging his neck.

Thor said, "Don't worry about it."

Loki said nothing. He stroked the parchment with his long fingers.

Tony walked over and bent over the table to have a look at it.

It said that Loki was obligated to help him save Pepper- referred to as Tony Stark's partner- and bring her back to consciousness and full health. Furthermore he had agreed to avert any harm directed at Tony himself while they were pursuing that goal. If his good will was shown convincingly enough, the All-Father agreed to a complete redemption of Loki Odinson and his past deeds.

To control his actions -Tony frowned at the sentence- and prevent any situation in which Loki would manipulate or use Tony, he had agreed to having a wristband of runes engraved into his skin, which would allow the Asgardians to observe any use of magic he made. Loki's activity was to be watched by his mother, Frigga herself and Heimdall, the Gatekeeper of the Aesir.

To Tony it seemed that the contract covered everything vital, but he still wished Pepper was around to proofread it for him. Instead he made Jarvis scan the document and search for potential gaps in the verbalization. As his AI confirmed to him that the contract was safe, Thor handed him a quill. "You need to place your signature exactly beneath Loki's."

Tony took it, hesitated for a brief moment, then scribbled his name across the paper. Loki stood up and held his hand out to Tony. He stared at it.

"Is it not common here to shake hands after sealing a deal?" he asked.

"No, I mean, yeah it is." Tony slowly took Loki's hand and they shared a firm handshake. "I just feel like I'm trapped in a Dali. Every moment now, Ants will crawl out of my face and devour me."

Thor made a face. "What are you saying?"

Tony didn't blame him. He never really cared about paintings and arts either, up until Pepper fell into a coma.

Tony stared at Loki's arm. Engraved in his wrist were runes, glistening, snaking around his arm like liquid silver.

"Just that this whole thing feels surreal."