Chapter Text
1.
“Come now, Stark,” Loki says, and his voice has dropped to a low, rumbling thing, full of satisfaction. “Don't tell me you've never wanted to burn a world down.”
Looking out from behind blue eyes, it's suddenly so easy for Tony to grin in return, to say, “Yeah. Actually, if you're taking suggestions, I have a few ideas.”
…
34.
Once they're finally safe, shut away behind locked doors in their hideaway on Alfheim, Tony lets go of the laugh he's been holding in this whole time. “Jesus,” he says, through the laughter, and Loki watches him, unimpressed, as Tony sinks down to sit on their bed. “That shouldn't have worked. Seriously, there's no way we should have been able to pull that off, we're two of the luckiest fuckers in pretty much the entire universe.”
“What we do is skill, not luck,” Loki corrects, and his voice is serious enough that maybe he even believes it. Tony knows better, but what the hell, Loki's the one doing this out of free will. Maybe the grass looks greener on that side of things, Tony really wouldn't remember. Either way, luck or skill, it's working; the orange gem Loki's rolling between his fingers right now is pretty good evidence of that.
Tony smiles, and then says, not even trying to disguise the innuendo, “Yeah, well, if you're feeling up to a practical demonstration of that skill—”
Loki rolls his eyes, and says, voice chalk full of derision, “Such subtlety, Stark.” Tony could really care less, though, because Loki also drops the gem on the end of the mattress and crawls his way up to where Tony's sitting, and really, what's a little mockery when he gets this as a reward?
…
7.
Near the beginning, Tony jerks awake at night, fingers clutching whatever lies beneath him—usually dirt in those days, since keeping a low profile back then basically required sleeping rough—wanting something. He never knows what, never remembers what he was dreaming about, just has the strange feeling that he had something once and now he's lost it.
Once, he staggers upright and creeps past Loki's sleeping body, feeling an unconquerable need to just move rather than think. It's dark as anything, Tony's mortal eyes not adjusting very well to the dimness of Svartalfaheim, and Tony stumbles as he walks. He doesn't know where he's going—and in the end, he just walks and walks and walks until he's too tired to go on, and then curls up on the chilled ground and sleeps for what feels like days. The whole thing feels like an escape, but Tony can't for the life of him think of what he'd be trying to escape from, or to.
When he wakes, Loki's standing nearby, face impassive and unreadable. “Did you enjoy your walk?” Loki asks, and there's something dark in his tone.
“My eyes weren't always blue,” Tony says, and he honestly has no idea why he's saying it, and even less of an idea of why it sounds like an accusation. Why the hell should it matter what color his eyes are? “Sorry,” Tony says, when a moment passes and Loki says nothing. He reaches up one hand to rub at his eyes. “I must have had a weird dream or something, I have no idea why I just said that.”
After another moment's silence, Loki pushes off from the tree he was leaning against and offers Tony a hand up. “We've work to do,” Loki says, and, right. Loki's right, they don't have time to waste on Tony being ridiculous.
Tony takes Loki's hand, and pushes everything else aside.
…
2.
“Your invasion is going to fail,” Tony tells Loki, at the very beginning of things, looking out the glass windows to the skyline of New York City below. Loki's reaction, probably unsurprisingly, is to bare his teeth and raise the tip of his scepter again—and Tony's pretty sure that if Loki uses that thing on him again, it's going to be less about opening Tony's eyes to the truth, and more about running Tony through on the pointy end. “Whoa, whoa,” he says, holding up his hands placatingly, “down, tiger. I'm on your side now, remember? I'm just saying, there are a few things in the master plan that could probably use a little revision.”
Loki lets the scepter drop, now pointing at the floor rather than the middle of Tony's chest, and Tony's feeling pretty okay about that development. Frowning slightly, Loki says, “None of the others were like you, when the scepter touched them.” Tony raises an eyebrow, curious, and Loki continues, “They have all, to a man, become consumed by thoughts of the tesseract. Little of their original personalities remain.”
Tony shrugs, because, yeah, that makes sense. The realization sort of comes on like this overwhelming wave, so much information all at once that Tony can absolutely see how somebody could be dragged under and swallowed, can even see how it might feel wonderful to just let go and let it happen. That's not the sort of person Tony is, though; Tony's used to rapidly taking in knowledge and then using it to his benefit. It's pretty much how Tony's survived to this point in his life.
Loki probably doesn't want to hear all that, though, so Tony just says, “How did you put it in Germany? 'There are no men like me.' Don't be surprised that I'm exceptional, it comes with the package.” Loki raises one eyebrow, giving Tony a wonderfully caustic look, and Tony has to grin. “Anyway, the tesseract's great and all, but I think we've got bigger issues than the cube.”
“Enlighten me,” Loki says, tone caught somewhere between flat and disbelieving, clearly not seeing what Tony's getting at. That's alright, though—considering that Tony wouldn't ever have seen the truth without Loki's help, it's the least Tony can do to help Loki see the gaps in his plan. Loki might be a genius, but Tony knew even before the realization that Loki was also fighting a little blind on this one, pushed by that burning need to prove himself above his brother and his father and his narrow-minded little world, making decisions he might not have made if he could look at this rationally. Tony, though, has the objectivity Loki lacks right now, and Tony means to use it.
So Tony does. Grinning, Tony says, “Right now, we're seriously under-armed to take this on. You say you have an army, and that's great, but it'll take more than an army to get the people of Earth to obey. Besides, why take power, when you can get people to give it to you, freely?” He can tell Loki isn't seeing it yet, though, isn't seeing the full span of what Tony's realization let him understand, and so he spells it out. “I'm thinking that instead of playing the conquering villain on one world, we could go for conquering hero on all nine.”
…
30.
“Fuck Thanos,” Tony hisses through clenched teeth, clutching hard at the throbbing skin of his leg, fuck that hurts. “What was that supposed to prove?” Pressure hurts, but as soon as he lets go he starts bleeding again, and his skin is an utter mess, and just—he hurts, and seriously, fuck Thanos and his energy blasts and the fucking horse he rode in on.
Then Loki's hands are resting over Tony's own, and Loki's saying, voice hissing and impatient, “Let go, Stark.”
Tony lets out a pained grunt at the added pressure, and gets out, “Uh, how about no?”
“I'll heal you, you utter imbecile,” Loki says, and then seems to remember he's about a hundred times stronger than Tony, and physically pulls his hands away. Loki's fingers drop to the ruined skin of his leg, and the touch is like ice, cold enough that it would burn in any other circumstances; in these, the cold is a relief, pushing away the burn and leaving cool, whole skin in its wake. By the end of it, Loki's paler than usual and his hand is covered in Tony's blood, and Tony has no doubt he himself isn't exactly looking his best, but Tony's leg is whole and he can put weight on it again without pain.
“Thank you,” he says, stretching his leg idly to test it. He looks up and meets Loki's eyes with a smile. “Practically good as new.”
Loki, though, isn't smiling. “Thanos meant this to be a demonstration,” Loki says, and turns away when Tony reaches out to touch him. “A reminder that my best ally is a mortal, and easily breakable; that should it become necessary, Thanos could bring an end to you as easily as snuffing out a flame.”
“Well, that's a stupid fucking reason to practically set my leg on fire,” Tony says, in honest reaction, and then promptly ignores the glare Loki throws his way. “Loki, come on, it's not like you were in danger of forgetting I'm a mortal.” That, from the look of things, doesn't make anything better—and, okay, Loki's starting to look actively homicidal, instead of his usual state of idly dangerous. “Hey, come on,” Tony says, “at least he hit me in the leg and not the head?”
Loki steps away, giving Tony his back, and it's at once a dismissal and a sign of trust—Loki feels comfortable giving Tony his vulnerable back, and yet freaks the fuck out at the first sign of vulnerability from Tony, at the first reminder that Tony could be taken away from him. Well, screw that; never let it be said that Tony Stark takes dismissals easily. Tony steps close and lays a hand on Loki's shoulder, saying softly, “We need Thanos alive. Remember that, at least.”
It takes at least a minute of the two of them standing there before the tension bleeds from Loki's shoulders. “Alive, yes,” Loki says, and it sounds more like an echo than a promise.
…
23.
The wound on Tony's head is so small, comparatively—it barely even bleeds—but fuck if it isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to Tony, having to remember everything, to know everything he's done, to know that for practically a year now he's been doing things he never would have done before, things he never would have agreed with, and Tony had morals, Tony had a life, and now he has this, and it's—fuck—Tony can't—
“Loki, please,” Tony says, and he can't make his voice stop shaking, can't make himself stop shaking, “please, if you ever actually genuinely cared about me for even a second, please—”
Then the tip of the scepter descends, and Tony's world is swallowed up by blue.
…
24.
The second realization is nothing like the first. The first time, it felt like a gift—like this burst of knowledge, of truth, that Loki gave him to set him free from the half-life he'd been living for thirty-eight years. The first time, Tony hadn't even realized what it was he was giving up in the bargain: knowledge for free will, that utter certainty for the ability to act on his own desires and choices.
The second time, Tony remembers; when he opens his blue eyes to see Loki again, he understands what it is he's missing, what it was that woke him up at night searching for so long after the first time. Loki watches him like a hawk, eyes seeking out every minute change of expression on Tony's face, and for a moment Tony gives him nothing to analyze.
Then his serious expression cracks into a grin, and Tony says, flippantly, “Well, what's a little free will, in the grand scheme of things? Come on, we've got better things to do than waste time here.”
…
9.
For a gem that supposedly controls space itself, Tony thinks, the purple Infinity gem is a little...well, unimpressive. He was expecting something bigger, or shinier, or something. Instead, after all their searching, after weeks of walking through forests where Tony couldn't see three inches from his face, what the space gem turns out to be is this small, purple stone, cut so badly that it would make a jeweler cringe. Physically, it doesn't look worth the effort.
When Tony picks it up, though, this weird feeling lances through the skin of his palm, like he's trying to hold lightning in his hands. A moment later the feeling's gone, and Tony's left holding a gem that fits perfectly in the palm of his hand, seeming to almost hum in Tony's grip.
“It seems to like you, Stark,” Loki says, his voice completely deadpan, and right, that's just what Tony needs, one of their power sources bonding to him. That's just great.
“Wonderful,” Tony says, equally deadpan. “Can we get the hell off of Svartalfaheim now?”
Loki gestures at Tony's hand and says, “You hold the space gem. If you wish to be gone from here, it is well within your power to leave.”
“Right,” Tony says, a little dubiously. “Which one next?”
“Power, I think,” Loki says, and Tony's not sure whether Loki actually has a plan, or he's just essentially picking from the hat as to the order of their search. Either way, it's not like Tony knows enough about the damned things to make a meaningful suggestion.
“Right,” Tony says again, and reaches out to get a firm grip on Loki. “So, how exactly do I use this damned—”
Loki doesn't get a chance to answer, because the space gem's answered for him, before Tony can even finish the question—and Tony watches as space itself folds around their bodies and shifts, leaving Svartalfaheim far behind.