Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

13.

“Well,” Tony says, and raises his hands above his head, in what he realizes a second later is probably a cultural gesture neither of the two people watching him will understand. “I think we're a little bit caught, Loki.” Despite himself, the words come out sounding a bit sarcastic—and, alright, he doesn't really think Loki's going to let them stay caught.

Tony's not exactly surprised when he's completely ignored, especially not when Loki decides to start this particular conversation by saying, voice cold as ice, “Odinson.”

Thor, to his credit, doesn't look particularly surprised by that greeting. “Brother,” he says, and there's something very sad in his voice, “do not do this.”

Behind them, the sounds of the party are still going, loud enough that no one inside will hear them. Of course, that's why he and Loki are here tonight—because with a little bit of glamour from Loki, and the cover provided by the party, basically nobody noticed Tony and Loki robbing a nice Asgardian couple of their significantly misunderstood family heirloom. How Thor even found them, Tony has no idea. Short of Thor being alerted any time they show up on his planet, Tony's got nothing.

“Oh,” Loki says, and his voice has dropped to that near purr, “I should think you'd like this plan much better than my last. It leaves your precious Midgard out of harm's way.” The smile that crosses Loki's face then is positively lethal, all teeth and no warmth. “Well,” Loki adds, making it sound like an afterthought even though Tony's sure he was building to this all along, “for now, at least. Or do you no longer care for your precious mortal toy?”

There's an easy line in there about the way Tony's followed Loki halfway across the universe and is still plenty mortal himself, but thankfully no one takes it. “I care for Jane,” Thor says, more evenly than Tony would've thought him capable of, “but if you imply that she is the only one I care for, you are very wrong. Brother, can you not see that you must put an end to this, before it's too late?”

Even Tony can tell that's the complete wrong tack to take with Loki, and he hasn't been the guy's brother for centuries. Putting on an expression of shock, Tony says, “Wait, you mean there'll be consequences for our actions? Loki, why didn't we ever think of that? Well, now I've seen the error of my ways, I'll be heading straight home right away, thanks so much.”

Thor's eyes focus on Tony for just a second, but when he talks, Tony doesn't doubt he's still talking to Loki. “You will be hunted,” he says, very seriously. “Not just by me. I cannot guarantee your safety, should you walk away now.”

“My safety,” Loki says, and the last word sounds half-way to mocking laughter. Tony knows enough by now to guess that Loki's thinking of Thanos—and he's right to. If they keep going, they'll be hunted, but if they stop now, then Thanos will be the one doing the hunting. Tony knows which one he'd choose. “You always did have a skill for the absurd, Odinson.”

When Thor speaks, his words are pretty clearly meant to hurt. “Stark would not have chosen you for a companion, brother. Think of that, if you will not think of yourself.”

Tony blinks, because as insults go, that one's pretty much a swing and a miss. “Hey, uh, I hate to point out the obvious, blondie, but I'm right here,” he says, waving a hand like that'll make Thor notice him. “Choosing.” Loki gave him the realization, gave him the truth in a world full of lies—why the hell wouldn't Tony choose him, after that? What has anyone else ever given Tony that could possibly compare?

He looks over at Loki, hoping to—he doesn't know, share the joke, maybe? Loki, though, has gone totally unreadable, all hints of expression locked away behind his standard, smug mask. “I think we're done here, Stark,” Loki says, and reaches out for Tony, and for the first time since they started using the space gem three months ago, Loki goes for more than a single point of contact, all but dragging Tony towards him.

Tony's...confused, to put it mildly, but all he says is, “Yeah, of course.” The space gem's in Tony's pocket, easy to use, and Tony turns his thoughts towards it, used to it essentially reading his mind by now.

Thor doesn't try to stop them, but he stands and watches while space folds around them, and looks at them with an expression like his heart is breaking right up until the moment that they disappear.

…

20.

This hunter is faster than the others, and Tony's overconfident, after months of outrunning the best the nine worlds had to send their way: it's because of this that he never sees her coming.

She doesn't even hit him in the head, and that's maybe the worst part, that she just sweeps his legs out from under him and hits him hard on the sternum once he's down, winding him and making his breastbone creak ominously. Clearly, to her, Tony is just the mortal of the pair—not dangerous, just in the way, needing to be taken out for a few minutes so she can deal with her main target in peace. She doesn't mean to do any serious harm to Tony, or at least not with that first strike.

On his way down, though, his head hits the ground, and it ought to be nothing. It's just a glancing blow, one that, even with the hunter's greater strength behind it, should do him no permanent damage.

Instead it tears his world out from under him, takes away his realization and his certainty and everything he thought about himself in the past year, and leaves him nothing but the truth: leaves him winded on the ground, no place to run or hide, no way to get away as his whole life crumbles around him.

Tony has free will for the first time in a year, and he can't even use it to run.

…

3.

Two weeks, two planets and one aborted invasion of Earth later, Tony turns to Loki and says, “So about how you left a few details out of your explanation.”

Loki, who's wearing a fresh set of bruises and cuts, looks down at Tony, irritation clear in every line of his features. “Some things are no concern of yours,” Loki says, and Tony just—it's been two weeks, and Tony is already sick of this thing where Loki forgets they're in this together. Tony left his friends, his company, his life behind for this: the least Loki could do here would be realizing this means just as much to Tony as it does to him.

Tony raises one eyebrow, putting as much skepticism in his expression as he can possibly manage. “Knowing you weren't really the one in control of the Chitauri wasn't my concern?” he asks. “Because, y'know, from where I'm standing, it seems like our whole plan sort of hinged on that fact. That seems more than a little relevant to me.”

“The Chitauri answer to me,” Loki hisses out, baring his teeth. That expression should look fierce—fuck, under any other circumstances it would be terrifying—but all Tony really notices is the way it reopens the split in Loki's lip, the way a single droplet of blood wells up red against Loki's skin. Somehow, the reminder that Loki's already suffered for his oversight makes Tony's irritation lapse into something closer to sympathy.

“And you answer to Thanos,” Tony says, but this time there's nothing confrontational in his voice—he's just stating that fact and moving on. “You could have told me, you know.” Loki sneers, and looks away, like he's expecting Tony to...no, actually, Tony has no idea what Loki's expecting here. Thing is, there's no question of whose side Tony's on now. Tony's loyalty isn't based on who controls the Chitauri, or even where the power lies in the cross-mythology pissing match between gods he seems to have stumbled into; Tony's with Loki, here, and that's it. The strange thing is, Loki doesn't seem to realize that. “Hey, come on,” Tony says, and takes a half step closer to Loki, “you know you can trust me.”

Whatever Tony was expecting—Loki saying yes, Loki saying no, Loki getting confrontational that Tony brought up trust in the first place—it isn't what he gets. What actually happens is that Loki laughs, actually throws his head back and laughs hard enough that Tony can see the pale skin of his throat shake with it. “How far gone you must be,” Loki says, when his laughter is done, “to think that what is between us requires trust.”

Tony...doesn't see the joke, if he's being perfectly honest. He frowns, and looks away, trying hard not to feel insulted. There's a feeling, a sort of pressure, building at the base of his skull, like a headache waiting to happen; despite that, Tony's voice is nothing short of perfectly composed when he says, “Well. At least I know now.”

Even insulted and confused, nobody can call Tony Stark anything less than brilliant—plus, right now, the plan makes more sense than Loki, and Tony's all in favor of that. So Tony says what he's been thinking over since Loki first came back, bruised and stony-eyed, from his meeting with Thanos: “We can use him.”

And Loki says, voice sharp and suddenly perfectly focused on Tony, “Tell me.”

…

28.

After all the places the last year and a half have taken Tony, after seeing all the worlds of the universe and most of the crevices in between, Tony can pretty definitively say that Thanos' hiding place between worlds is Tony's least favorite place in the universe, and mean it entirely literally.

The space gem sets them down on solid ground, hard enough that Tony completely forgets to compensate for the altered gravity, and would wind up flat on his ass if it weren't for Loki reaching out to hold him steady. “Thanks,” Tony says, absently, frowning down at the space gem. It isn't doing anything abnormal—for the moment, the gem's behaving no differently than any other inanimate stone in the world, if the magical space bending isn't taken into account—but despite that, Tony's still getting a definite vibe off the thing. “I think the gem isn't Thanos' biggest fan,” he says. Huh. He's starting to think the gem has good taste.

“It is not alone in that,” Loki says, quietly, and despite the volume his tone is pointed as anything. “Come, Stark. We have much to discuss with the mad titan.”

Tony looks up the winding stairs that lead up to Thanos' throne, spectacular tribute to Thanos' own narcissism that that is, and says, “Yeah. That we do.” He looks at Loki and grins, the expression maybe sharper than it needs to be, and says, “Once more unto the breach, then?”

…

4.

It's as simple as this: what they really need is a war.

Thing is, Tony's a pretty decent judge of human nature—and, alright, he usually doesn't bother figuring people out, but that's just because ninety-nine percent of the time Tony doesn't care. Most people are less intricate than the robots Tony builds, are motivated by easy things like work and money and success, and that's boring. Tony doesn't do very well with boredom.

This, though, this is officially part of the other one percent; this is Tony motivated. Absolutely no one who's ever met Tony should be surprised that for Tony, that word functions like a close synonym of dangerous.

So, it's like this. If Loki had gone through with his invasion plan, and somehow he'd managed to use his army to bring down Earth's defenses without getting himself killed in the process, and then somehow still had enough of an army to subjugate the people, and then managed to keep control of the Chitauri for long enough to put himself in place as king of the planet—even then he wouldn't have won, because the survivors would have crucified him.

It's human nature, to love having a clear-cut enemy around to hate, some foreign force to rally against. Tony's best guess for how long it would take a resistance to organize after the invasion succeeded is...oh, months at best, maybe even weeks if people were feeling particularly motivated. And when Loki then tried to use the Chitauri to destroy the resistance—again, assuming Thanos let him keep hold of the army for that long, rather than just waltzing in over Loki's trail of destruction and tossing aside Loki altogether—well, that resistance wouldn't just fade away. If anything, actually, the resistance might become more impassioned, might go underground and entrench itself there. When the majority of the population of a world counts as the resistance, it doesn't exactly spell out good things for the conqueror.

“Which is why,” Tony says, grinning like the devil, “we're going to have Thanos do the conquering instead.”

...

29.

“So, exactly what part of our extremely well laid-out plan was too complicated for you to follow?” Tony says, voice deliberately over-cheerful, as they finish ascending the stairs and Thanos comes into view. Neither he nor Loki bow, though he's fairly certain Thanos wants them to.

As always, Thanos looks a little too long at the color of Tony's eyes, a leering smile on his face; ever since the first time they met, Thanos has been making a point of noting that 'Loki's trusted human advisor' is only trusted for the blue in his eyes. Once, maybe, that reminder would have bothered Loki—not now. Not anymore.

When Thanos is done with that, the mad titan turns his attention from Tony entirely, clearly dismissing Tony, and says, “Did you know that you have disappeared from my sight, little god? Once I could turn my eye upon you in any corner of the universe, and see you plain as day. Now it is as though you were never there.” Thanos cuts his gaze towards Tony, just a brief look, and the leering smile reappears. “There are, of course, some things I am relieved to be spared the sight of, pathetic as they are.”

Loki just raises one dark brow, mockery in every line of his expression. “Must we act like children, Thanos?” he asks, and Tony's glad Thanos isn't looking at him right now, because it's all Tony can do not to burst out laughing at how much derision Loki manages to fit into six words. When Loki decides someone needs to feel insulted, damn but he's good at getting it done. “We came here to speak of matters of war, not of your speculations as to what happens in my bed.” Loki's expression goes friendly, and his tone confidential—and that's how Tony knows whatever he says next is likely to get them attacked. “Such speculation is of course forgivable, given the circumstances. Between your long fruitless courtship of the Lady Death, and your isolation here, with only the Chitauri for company, it is understandable that your thoughts would turn to a bed more...active than your own.”

“And now that everyone's sex lives have been mutually insulted,” Tony says, trying hard not to sound amused, “can we possibly get back on topic?” The fact that Tony's stuck playing the role of the responsible adult in this situation? Yeah, it really doesn't say good things about this conversation as a whole. “See,” Tony says, “I'm more interested in talking about exactly why you sent the Chitauri to attack Alfheim yesterday, ahead of schedule.”

“Your pet speaks,” Thanos says to Loki, tone lazily uninterested. “Perhaps you should see to that.”

Tony grits his teeth. “You know, cute as this whole ignore the mortal routine might be, I really think you should answer my question.” Not for the first time, Tony wishes they could have brought the Iron Man suits with them, that Tony could have the firepower to back up his intelligence. It's unlikely Thanos would respect Tony any more if Tony kicked his ass, but Tony's not going to say it wouldn't be cathartic anyway. But, no: the suits were too bulky, too high profile, and too hard to get into and out of to take with them, especially when Jarvis would never have gone along with this plan.

With an air of extreme condescension, Thanos finally looks down at Tony. “The Chitauri are my army, to do with as I wish. I grew bored of waiting.”

“Great, that's just great,” Tony says. “You went off plan because you were bored, that's a perfect reason.”

Thanos smiles darkly, baring his teeth. “Careful, mortal,” he says, threat clear in his voice. “You want the peoples of the nine worlds pushed beyond hope, and I will make them so. Press me, and I will include you in their number.”

“Right, here's the thing you're not getting,” Tony says, completely ignoring the usual vague intimidation tactics and moving on. “This whole plan, the one that needs to work if the three of us are ever going to rule anything, instead of sitting around uselessly plotting at the end of the universe? It's entirely dependent on timing. As in, our timing has to be pretty much perfect for it to work at all.” Tony grins, spread his arms, and says, “Of course, that's what you've got me for.”

“Come to your point,” Thanos snaps, patience almost visibly fraying.

Well, if Thanos wants to rush genius, then Tony can give the spark notes version. “My point,” Tony says, “is that if you escalate early, the plan isn't going to work. The best way to make people hopeless isn't just to come rushing in, it's to have a prolonged siege, to keep them feeling harried and anxious for months without any reprieve—and we need them right at the peak of hopelessness when Loki and I start our part of the plan.”

Thanos looks unconvinced, and Tony opens his mouth to continue when Loki does it for him. “We seek to inspire reverence, not mere adulation,” Loki says. The words sound smooth and persuasive in Loki's voice, dropped to a low, almost intimate register. “It is not enough to make people fear the Chitauri; you must make them think you invincible, and your army omnipresent. You must haunt the nine worlds like a specter, must linger in the thoughts of the people, never forgotten and yet unexpected each time you strike. Only then will our victory against you reap the rewards we require.”

Tony shoots Loki a grateful look, and builds on the foundation Loki's given him. “Exactly. If Loki and I 'save' the universe from your armies before it's been established you're unbeatable, then we get, at best, minor hero-worship and a little fame; if we wait too long after people give up hope, then eventually someone is going to start questioning why it took us so long to use whatever powers we had, and we're going to lose the trust of the people. We need to be ready to fight you at exactly the right time, because that's the only way we're going to get the sort of response we need. And,” and Tony doesn't think he can stress this enough, “Loki and I aren't ready yet, so if you could stop pushing the schedule forward, it would be really appreciated. Understood?”

“Yes,” Thanos says, and the word comes out sibilant and dangerous. “I understand perfectly.” Something in Tony relaxes; every single one of these talks with Thanos is a gamble, and as time goes on, Tony's less and less willing to take the risk. Still, he and Loki need Thanos, for now.

“Then we'll take our leave, as we've much to do,” Loki says, cordial enough now that things are going their way. “Stark?” Loki holds a hand out towards Tony, and Tony reaches out, the feeling of their fingers curled together fairly familiar by now, given that contact makes it easier for Tony not to accidentally leave Loki behind somewhere during transport.

“Oh,” Thanos says, and his tone is so conversational, so friendly, that Tony instantly goes tense in reaction. “There is one thing I would have you understand, before you leave.”

Tony tries, he really does try to get them out of there before anything can go wrong, but he doesn't quite manage it; Thanos manages to get an arm up and pointed at Tony, smiling in a grotesque approximation of what a real smile is supposed to look like, and Tony has just enough time to realize he's really fucked here.

Then his leg is on fire, and pain swallows Tony up just as Thanos' crevice between the worlds dissolves away, the space gem taking them away just a moment too late.

…

14.

Tony doesn't know exactly what the conversation with Thor did to Loki, but Loki's oddly silent even after they've made it back to their current hideaway, rolling the red gem between his fingers contemplatively and saying nothing. It's not like Loki to be this quiet after they successfully found a gem, especially not when it took months of research and planning to even find the damned thing and get close enough to steal it. Yet here Loki is, and to be honest it's freaking Tony out a little.

For at least a little while, Tony respects that silence, wandering off to scrounge up something to eat. When he gets back and Loki still seems to have no intention of saying anything, Tony's officially had enough of that. “Two out of six Infinity gems, huh,” he says, keeping his tone casual instead of concerned, sitting down next to Loki. “Not too bad, considering less than half a year ago we weren't even on the same side.”

“Mm?” Loki says, this faint humming noise that makes it clear his thoughts are a million miles away from Tony right now. After a moment, Loki seems to process what Tony's said, and come back from wherever his mind was—he looks over at Tony, expression still inscrutable, and says, “Three of six, actually.”

Tony feels his surprise show on his face, his eyebrows shooting up and a faint frown curling his lips. “Did we pick up an Infinity Gem when I wasn't paying attention?” It's mostly a rhetorical question—Tony knows exactly where he's been for the last five months, and considering how hard it was to find and retrieve two of the gems, he thinks he would have noticed them putting in the effort needed to get a third.

“Quite the opposite,” Loki says, and reaches down at his side to pick up his scepter. “I've had possession of one all along.” Loki taps one finger on the glowing blue gem resting at the head of the scepter.

Tony blinks in surprise, and leans in to take a closer look. Honestly, he's so used to seeing Loki with the scepter—in five months, he's maybe seen Loki without it twice, and generally the scepter hangs in its shrunken form by a belt from Loki's hip—that he's never actually processed the scepter as anything other than an extension of Loki. It makes sense, though; for the scepter to be able to do what it does, to give the sort of revelations it does, Tony should have expected some sort of greater power was involved there.

“Let me guess,” Tony says, wryly, looking up at Loki, “that was another thing that was no concern of mine?” In the last few months, Loki's been getting better about keeping Tony in the loop—but if Loki's had this gem from the beginning, Tony can see how it might have been glossed over in the early days, when Loki was still acting strangely.

“Yes,” Loki says, simply, and looks away from Tony.

Tony gets the feeling that if he doesn't keep talking, Loki's going to drop back into that silence again; so Tony doesn't stop. “Which gem is the one in your scepter?” he asks, and it's only after he's said it as a distraction that he realizes he's genuinely curious. Loki listed off the names of the six gems a while ago, and Tony digs through his memory for the one that makes the most sense. “It's the reality gem, isn't it?”

Loki goes still at Tony's side, just for a moment, but it's long enough that Tony can feel it happen. Then Loki looks at Tony, with something strange in his expression, and says, “It's the mind gem.”

That isn't what Tony expected, but he can see where that would make sense. “How does it work?” Tony asks, because...well. Because he's Tony Stark, and he always wants to know how everything works, which should come as a surprise to absolutely no one.

Loki opens his mouth, and says—

And Tony blinks, slowly, feeling weirdly dazed. He doesn't really remember what he was just doing, to be perfectly honest—but he looks up and Loki's just looking at him, expression expectant, so it must have been something important. “I'm sorry,” Tony says, still thrown off balance. “Were you saying something?”

The expression that crosses Loki's face then is almost rueful, but Tony can't for the life of him remember why; after a moment it's gone anyway, Loki's face shuttering closed to something more neutral. “No,” Loki says, and looks away, “nothing of import.”

…

5.

When Tony's done explaining, Loki spends a moment just thinking. Then he says, voice utterly sure, “Thanos will betray us, when everything is done.”

“Well, yeah,” Tony says, because he'd thought that much was completely obvious, “but considering we're planning to betray him first, that's really not that big of a deal.” Everyone knows that when you agree to share power fifty-fifty with someone, it really just means you've agreed to hold off on selling each other out until the very end, and then, once your alliance does what it needs to, it's a free for all. Tony was actually the CEO of a Fortune 15 or better company for most of his life, he does understand the way this works.

“Quiet,” Loki says, the word all but snapped out. Tony does as he's asked, but he raises an eyebrow pointedly at Loki, because he'd at least like to know what brought that on. At least this once, Loki seems willing to indulge Tony's curiosity, because he says, “Thanos can see and hear well beyond what you would consider possible, and speaking of him openly could ruin everything.”

“And there's no way you can shut him out?” Tony asks, because Loki didn't say he had to stay quiet.

Loki looks down, expression thoughtful, and his gaze stops when he looks at the tip of his scepter. A thin, sharp smile stretches its way across Loki's face. “I can think of a way,” he says, and looks back up at Tony. “A way that would do much to rectify my lack of sufficient armament, as well.”

“That sounds...perfect, actually,” Tony says, all in favor of solving multiple problems at once. “What do we need to make it work?”

Loki's voice goes low and self-satisfied as he says, “They are called the Infinity gems.”

Chapter Text

10.

Somehow, when Loki said he found them a hideaway, Tony was expecting something a little more underground bunker and a little less hole in the wall.

“Well,” Tony says, and idly picks up a book, nearly choking himself on the cloud of dust the movement raises, “it's better than sleeping in the woods of Svartalfaheim. So, that's something, at least.”

Loki makes a small, unamused sound from behind Tony, at his place by the door. “Next time we require a safe place from all the worlds, I shall be certain to consider interior design above functionality, for your sake.”

Tony raises one eyebrow, and, alright, maybe it's just that he's used to mansions, but he's not even seeing the functionality here. He's mostly seeing a dusty room that looks like it's been haphazardly carved out of a cliff, and hasn't been used in a while to boot. He's not exactly going to complain, not when he's spent weeks sleeping out on the cold ground, but still. “I thought you said I'd be impressed.”

“Such impatience,” Loki says, and it's only the familiarity with Loki that Tony's gained over weeks of constant contact that lets Tony hear the teasing note that makes the outward irritation ring false. Stepping practically silently, Loki makes his way around Tony, his feet leaving small imprints across the dirty ground with each step. “There is much here you've yet to see, Tony Stark; do not name yourself unimpressed just yet.”

Loki comes to a stop at the far side of the room from Tony—where far basically means all of ten feet away, thus Tony's complaint in the first place—and raises one hand almost showily, fingers flexing smoothly in a way that seems meant to draw attention to the motion. Tony, who's been accused of many things but never of stupidity, takes the delicate hint and watches Loki's fingers; and, satisfied somehow of his audience, Loki grasps at empty air and comes up holding a ball of green light that pulses and expands to cover the room.

The wave of magic changes everything it touches. Under the green light, the dust seems to vanish as if it were never there—the tables and books which were strewn about straighten up and order themselves tidily—and, most important of all, the wall Loki was facing disappears entirely, leaving an open doorway behind. Tony feels surprise cross his face, and Loki turns just in time to catch the expression, a hint of a smug smile playing across the god's lips. Of course, by this point, admitting he's impressed is tantamount to admitting defeat, so Tony just raises one eyebrow and asks, “So, was what I saw before the illusion, or is this?”

The corner of Loki's lips curls up almost lazily, blooming into something approaching a real smile; that small quirk is the only part of Loki's expression that Tony can make heads or tails of. “You're learning,” Loki says, with something like approval in his voice. “Come. There is more I would show you.”

In the continued vein of not being an idiot, Tony doesn't walk through the newly revealed walkway until Loki passes through first, just in case it really is an illusion. Once Loki's stepped through into empty space rather than banging head first into a wall, Tony follows after more than a little eagerly. Past the small room they entered into, there's a long hallway with doors branching off it every few feet. Loki leads them past the first few doors and then slows. “It has been near a century since I last set foot here,” Loki says, looking contemplatively at a door that's completely indistinguishable from any other door here as far as Tony can tell. “But I think—”

Loki presses the door open, and Tony's mouth might actually drop open. Just a little bit, mind, but—there's an entire room, filled entirely with bookshelves, lying beyond that door, except it's large enough that Tony can only just see the opposite wall from his place by the door, and he can't even come close to seeing the ceiling. The thought of that many books in one place...look, Tony isn't a bibliophile as such, but he's a genius who absorbs knowledge like a sponge. He can appreciate things like endless libraries stocked by gods, even if it's highly unlikely they have sections on robotics or Earth physics.

“Yes,” Loki says, and he's definitely smug now, no doubt about that. “I seem to have remembered correctly after all.”

“Okay, I admit I'm impressed,” Tony says, and steps past Loki to get a better view of the library. On further inspection, the ceiling is higher than Tony expected. “What did you do, warp space time to fit this in here? No, on second thought, don't tell me, I want to figure it out myself.” Tony's practically going to have to use the space gem to get anywhere in here, he can't entirely decide whether he thinks that's ridiculous or wonderful. “What sort of books are in here?” Tony asks, and he thinks he manages to sound casual about the question.

“This library has been built over millennia—and not solely by me, though I am now the last who remembers it,” Loki says, and his tone makes it clear that, while there's a story there, Loki isn't going to be telling it any time soon. “Even I do not know all that rests within these walls.”

Something in his voice sparks a question in Tony's mind, and Tony says, curiously, “But you're looking for something in particular, aren't you?”

“Yes,” Loki says. “It is my hope that the location of the remaining Infinity gems lies within one of these books.”

Tony turns around to look at Loki, a slightly unpleasant realization dawning on him, and echoes, “Your hope. As in, you're uncertain not only of where the other five Infinity gems are, but also of whether you even know where to look for hints as to their locations.” From the look on Loki's face, Tony's going to guess he's right—Loki has a particular expression he defaults to whenever he thinks someone is stating the obvious.

Tony draws in a breath, and considers the implications there. The first part of that isn't necessarily surprising—they did just spend weeks essentially scouring a small chunk of Svartalfaheim to find the space gem, Tony's grown comfortable with the fact that Loki isn't actually omniscient and that the gems might be hard to find—but Tony at least thought Loki would know where to start looking.

There's a sort of mental timeline Tony keeps running in his head, to make sure the different parts of their plan all play out in synchrony as Tony and Loki need them to; automatically, a small part of Tony's brain starts recalculating that timeline, based on the fact that the window of time Tony had previously allotted for finding the Infinity gems has just enlarged, possibly indefinitely so. Fairly certain the protest is going to be useless even as he says it, Tony points out, “That's another thing it might have been useful to know a while ago, for the record.”

Loki just looks at Tony, one dark eyebrow raised and the rest of his face expressionless, and Tony sighs. Right. So they're back to the thing where Loki only trusts Tony with certain things at certain times, no matter how deeply invested Tony is in the matter. Great, that's a wonderful place to be. “Well,” Tony says, “I guess we'd better get started, then.”

…

8.

The problem here, Tony fully realizes, is an issue of scale. See, when somebody tells Tony they know a specific gem has been buried beneath a specific chunk of forest, Tony basically assumes they're going to spend a day looking, tops, and probably be done in time for dinner. In his opinion, it's not exactly an irrational assumption to make.

The teensy issue with this is that, when Loki says he knows which forest they have to search through to find the space gem, he neglects to mention the fact that that forest spans the length of the average continent on Earth. As it turns out, Svartalfaheim is far more densely wooded than Earth; even worse, the trees of its forests grow so closely together that their tangled branches form a thickly leaved canopy overhead, shutting out most of the dim light of the planet's sun. Since they're still essentially hiding out at this point, Loki isn't even willing to chance using magic to light their way, and so Tony sort of gets a crash course in how Svartalfaheim earned its name.

For a day, maybe two, Tony takes the incessant darkness in stride, and tries to follow after Loki without complaint. It's not exactly easy, making the transition from living the high life on Earth to sleeping outdoors on cold, hard ground, and the lack of a clear day or night doesn't really do much to improve Tony's mindset. Tony knows this is worth minor discomfort—his realization is still fresh enough in his mind that there isn't much Tony wouldn't try putting up with, in those days—but he isn't sure it's worth him totally losing his mind, and by the third day he's pretty sure that's the direction this is going in.

“Right,” Tony says, and stumbles to a sudden halt on the dark ground. “This isn't going to work.”

After days of trying to follow Loki like an obedient shadow, Tony's voice comes as a surprise even to himself—in the dim light, Tony watches as Loki turns towards him, the god's expression shadowed and indecipherable. “What will not?” Loki asks, and the sheer indifference in his voice would put Tony on edge if it was coming from anyone else.

Tony throws his hands into the air, trying to gesture to the entire planet at once. “This,” Tony says, “the thing we're doing where we walk through almost total darkness all the time, completely silently, and the only time we talk is when you announce we're stopping for the night. That has to stop.”

Loki's lips curl into a sneer, clear even across the distance between them. “Shall I jest as we walk, for your entertainment? What would you have of me, Stark?” And it just figures, that the only time Tony can figure out Loki is when the god is mocking him.

“Talk to me,” Tony says, maybe too vehemently, his voice just a touch too loud. Aggravation makes Tony's next words come out more sarcastically than he plans. “I know that's an incredibly difficult request, but I have faith in you.” Loki makes a small unamused sound, and Tony drops the sarcasm, switches tracks, and asks, “Seriously, why keep me around if I bother you this much? It would've been easy to send me off with Barton or Selvig, but you wanted me here, remember?”

“You'd be of little use to me elsewhere,” Loki says. It's not exactly revolutionary information—strategists are typically more useful when they're on hand to communicate with, rather than holed away somewhere on another planet—but the fact that Loki is willing to admit that Tony's useful is important.

“Yeah, well, I'm not going to be especially useful if I'm bored to death and spending half my time falling over things in the dark,” Tony says, not unreasonably, in his opinion. “I left behind my whole life to help you, Loki—I'm with you, I'm on your side, but that doesn't mean you get to use my brain part of the time and ignore me the rest of the time, alright?”

There's a short, loaded moment's worth of silence, and then Loki's head dips in a shallow nod. “Very well,” Loki accedes, and even if Tony still can't read Loki's tone, the fact that they're speaking at all now is a step up. It's not nothing, to be valuable enough that Loki will give in on little things like this.

“Good,” Tony says, willing to leave it at that for now. “Lead on. We have an Infinity gem to find.”

…

11.

The party is loud, all bodies packed close together and constant motion, with alcohol in abundance: or, in other words, it's pretty much exactly Tony's scene. Take out the Asgardian music and the something-like-a-waltz that's going on on the dance floor, throw in more Earth-appropriate styles, and Tony would say he's thrown this party before. As far as distractions from a robbery go, they aren't going to get much better than this.

Under the disguise of Loki's magic and the unfamiliar weight of Asgardian clothes, Tony winds through the crowd, a half-full flagon of what he thinks is mead in one hand, looking for Loki. There's a flash of bright, almost violently red hair visible through a gap in the crowd, and Tony smiles and weaves his way towards it.

Loki looks nothing like himself, which is pretty much the entire point; still, Tony doesn't doubt he's found Loki, not when Loki's disguise involves hair that distinctive. Tony, knowing full well neither of them are going to be able to hear each other, doesn't stop at Loki's side, but instead presses close, wrapping one arm low around Loki's waist. His lips nearly brush the shell of Loki's ear when he asks, still practically shouting, “Find anything?”

Loki doesn't say anything, just catches Tony's hand and drags Tony after him, leading Tony out onto the dance floor and launching them into the near-waltz everyone else is dancing. Tony doesn't exactly know the steps, but his mother didn't force him to take years of ballroom dancing classes for nothing—he picks up the rhythm, and then he and Loki are moving easily, Tony following Loki's lead with only the occasional stumble. It's quieter, out on the dance floor, and Loki's holding Tony close—it's easy enough for Loki to lean in and answer, considerably more quietly than the question was asked, “I've found nothing on this floor.”

“Neither have I,” Tony says. “You're certain the power gem is here?”

Loki frowns, very slightly, and the dance makes them break apart briefly before coming back together. “You had your own part in the research, Stark. Perhaps you should answer your own question.”

Well, when it's put that way. “It's here,” Tony says, because either it's here or they wasted months of research, and Tony frankly doesn't feel like contemplating the second option. “Is there anywhere else in this building it could be?”

“There is always the second floor,” Loki says. “The private suites of the family are likely there.” The dance ends, and they break apart, Loki dropping into a slight bow and Tony following suit—when the music for the next dance starts, Tony raises one eyebrow, and, at Loki's nod, reaches out for Loki again. Neither of them speak until the dance starts up, and they have a decent excuse to be close enough to talk again.

“It's worth mentioning that the party probably won't cover us up there,” Tony points out, picking up the new steps idly. “If we get caught on this try, it'll probably be much harder to steal the thing later on.” Tony grins, a little caught by the realization that they're really attempting a robbery in the middle of a party, and says, “They might actually add security to the house, for one thing.” That he and Loki will need to be careful goes without saying—but, carefulness aside, Tony's starting to think he'll enjoy this.

“So we'll fabricate another reason to be wandering through private suites,” Loki says, and all at once his voice is low and rough and practically dripping suggestion, sex curling through every word like some new form of punctuation. It's...effective, to say the least. “I am certain we shall think of something.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, and he isn't entirely faking the deep, breathy register that word drops into. His hands shift on Loki's back, trailing a line down the length of Loki's spine, shifting Loki even closer; and Tony, who's always been good at using his body to lie, writes sex over every line of his face and body, breathless attraction in his every movement, and knows it happens too easily to be entirely untrue. “I guess we will,” Tony says, and leans up.

That's their first kiss—breathy, half-faked, wearing faces that aren't even theirs, in a crowd full of people—and so it shouldn't be anything. It shouldn't be, except Loki kisses like he has something to prove, like Tony was going to fight him somehow, and so of course Tony has to prove him wrong, has to press close and make it sweet and wet and wanting. They break apart, come back together, nip and suck at lips, and somehow before Tony knows it he's smiling into the kiss, somehow his fingers are tangled in Loki's hair and Loki's pressing at the small of Tony's back like he thinks it's physically possible for them to be closer; and when the kiss ends, Tony's fairly certain it was real.

Loki pulls away just far enough that his breath curls, warmly, over Tony's lips, and one of his hands leaves Tony's back to tangle their fingers together. “Come,” Loki says, sex on his voice and the red line of his lips, and turns from Tony, red hair flying in Tony's face and grip unshakeable—and together, they make their way upstairs.

…

39.

He's forgotten the color of her hair, and he hates himself for it.

The night air is cool against his face, too cold for comfort, and Tony turns his face into it anyway and thinks. Half an hour ago, he woke up from a dream he couldn't remember, covered in sweat, with the last syllable of a name on his tongue—he still doesn't know what he was dreaming about. By now, though, Tony recognizes the difference between forgetting, and having a memory swallowed by the hold Loki has on his mind; given that thinking too hard about the dream makes Tony forget where he is and what he's doing, he's willing to guess this is the fault of the latter. That should probably make him angry. It doesn't.

Behind him, a door slides gently open, and Loki steals out silently into the dark. Tony can't hear the god move, but he can feel the press of Loki's slim form when Loki stops just behind him, looking out over Tony's shoulder into the night. “You dreamed,” Loki says, making the words a statement rather than the question anyone else would ask.

Tony huffs out a small, helplessly amused breath, and answers the unasked question anyway. “Pepper,” he says, and the word holds weight between the two of them. If Tony had regrets about his life—if Tony was capable of having regrets, he should say—he thinks they'd come out of his mouth sounding like that. “You might as well go back to bed. It's noth—,” Tony swallows around the words, and doesn't finish saying them. A moment too late to recover gracefully, he says, “I'll be fine,” which really doesn't mean the same thing at all.

Loki nods, and brushes one hand down the length of Tony's side, the familiar touch at once too much and not nearly enough; equally as quietly as he came, Loki goes, leaving Tony alone with his thoughts.

It's not exactly a comfortable place to be.

…

15.

Tony isn't expecting the knife that comes flying toward his head—though, to be perfectly honest, he's pretty sure no one ever anticipates that particular event—and so it's luck, and luck only, that has Tony duck down to examine the local equivalent of an apple at just the right time. Thanks to the grocery shopping, Tony manages to have the knife fly over his head, just grazing a thin cut across his skin, rather than directly into it. He's honestly never been more glad to be choosy about fruit before in his life.

“Holy shit,” he says, and drops to the ground instinctively, nearly knocking over the fruit stand as he does so. All around him, people are scattering, clearly just as surprised as Tony is—it's not like Tony hasn't been to his fair share of violent places in the last seven months, but this market has never seen an assassination before, and Tony really doesn't want to be the first.

Getting his wits about him, Tony scrambles for cover, managing to duck under the stand just as another knife imbeds itself in the ground he was just laying on. Tony fumbles to get a hand into his pocket, not willing to test his luck on a third knife, and the feeling of his fingers closing around the space gem is possibly Tony's new favorite feeling in the world.

“Home,” he hisses out, just in case the space gem needs extra incentive beyond what normally works—and just in time, the space gem warps the world around Tony and twists, carrying him away from the path of a third knife, which from the looks of it was aimed right between his eyes.

The gem dumps Tony in the library unceremoniously, his arrival knocking over a stack of books. Loki, who's sitting exactly where he was when Tony left, poring over the same book with pointed concentration, looks up at the sound of the books hitting the floor, and frowns at the sight of Tony. “What happened?” Loki asks, and his tone is sharp-edged, a clear threat against whatever hurt Tony.

At any other time, Tony would appreciate that, the small sign that he's sort of growing on the god of mischief. Right now, though, he's not in much of a mindset to appreciate anything; right now, Tony just starts laughing, maybe a little hysterically, as the reality of how close he came to actually dying dawns on him. “What the fuck?” Tony asks, through the laughter, and the question isn't so much rhetorical as aimed at the universe at large, like something's actually going to hear and explain. Unsurprisingly, there's no sudden answer from above—the only thing the question does is make Loki's expression darken, and make Tony start really thinking about the answer.

It's pretty clear, once Tony manages to push past the hysteria and think rationally for five seconds. “Well,” he says, and there's still a slight giggle behind the words, but he and Loki both ignore that, “now we know Thor was right about unmerciful hunters coming after us. I think that's probably a good thing to know. And hey, apparently one of them is a big fan of knives, who knew?”

Tony lays back fully against the ground, listening to his heart beat double time in his chest, and breathes through the adrenaline rush. “The one time I try to do the grocery shopping,” Tony says, very seriously, and it's too much, too ridiculous to think about—he starts laughing again, and it takes him a very long time to stop.

…

48.

Tony's knees ache against the cold stone, but the Chitauri aren't letting go of the grip they have on him, the grip that forced him down to his knees in the first place, and struggling only wrenches Tony's shoulders and makes the ache worse. “Fuck you, Thanos,” Tony all but spits out, “once I'm free from this—”

“You wear your weaknesses too openly,” Thanos says, offering up the words like a genuine piece of advice, and reaches out—

…

6.

“Legend has it,” Loki says, “that whosoever holds all six of the Infinity gems gains power beyond all imagining. Omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, the power to bend reality itself to his will, to shift time and space at a whim. With that sort of power, any man would become a god—and if he were a god already, he would become a force beyond reckoning.”

Tony hasn't ever heard that sort of reverence in Loki's voice before—and that, more than anything, gives him an idea of how powerful these gems really are, that even Loki sounds nearly breathless just thinking about them. With those gems on their side, it sounds like even Thanos wouldn't be a threat, and that would definitely make the end game of their plan much easier. “Question,” Tony says, because there's something nagging at him in all this, “if these Infinity gems are so powerful, why the hell didn't you just collect them all earlier, before you tried conquering a planet?”

The tip of Loki's scepter raises, slowly, and comes to a gentle rest over Tony's arc reactor. Tony feels—not scared, exactly, because the last time the scepter touched him it woke him up from thirty years of mindless inertia, and he can't quite fear anything that gave him a gift of that magnitude. No, what he feels is more like...pressure, far more than the weight of the scepter alone could explain—Tony feels held down, an ache blooming behind his eyes and under his skin that he can't explain. Loki's voice is measured and cold as he asks, “Do you doubt me, Stark?”

It takes effort to get the words out, much more effort than Tony thinks it should, but finally he manages to say, “No. Of course not.” Tony blinks, trying to clear the heavy feeling from his eyes. “I wasn't questioning you, I just—I was just—”

Then Loki lifts the scepter away, and Tony can breathe again. “Perhaps you should consider remaining silent,” Loki says, and Tony nods, mutely, in confused agreement. Of course. If Loki wants him quiet, then of course he will be. It's—he doesn't entirely remember what he was talking about in the first place. It probably wasn't anything important. “Come,” Loki says, and holds out a hand. “There's quite a distance to Svartalfaheim, and we've wasted enough time already.”

…

16.

A week ago, there was a town here. Tony would know—in the months he's been using the space gem, he's gotten fairly familiar with the geography of the nine worlds, and particularly with places where his presence won't draw attention. For all that he and Loki have been mostly hidden away for half a year, that doesn't mean they've escaped notice; Loki's aborted invasion of Earth may not be common knowledge, but between it and the string of thefts he and Tony have pulled off over the last months, they've acquired enough of a price on their heads to be of interest to the wrong sort of people. It's easier, all things considered, to keep a low profile, blending in in big cities or only venturing into out-of-the-way towns where they can be anonymous.

This, a week ago, was one such town—small and distant enough to be safe, with a decent market to barter for supplies in. Tony was here a week ago, chasing down a rumor that might lead to the time gem, and haggling idly for food.

Today, the space gem sets him down in what was once the center of town, and the landing sends Tony sprawling instead of putting him neatly on solid ground. Tony's reflexes are good enough that he catches himself by his palms instead of the completely graceless alternative of landing on his face—when he manages to get his legs under him and pick up his hands, his palms are marred black, a thick, greasy ash coating his skin.

He knows, before he gets up, what he's going to see; that still doesn't make it any easier. Where the buildings once stood, now there's only charred rubble, bits of wood and stone streaked with ash and collapsed inwards. And the smell—Tony gags, his stomach lurching, and it's all he can do not to be sick. He doesn't need to go looking for the bodies to know what happened here.

The Chitauri did this—Tony knows because he's been hearing the stories for months now, hearing about the way the Chitauri come and go like an unpredictable tide, appearing in the dead of night and destroying everything in their path, swarming and burning and maybe doing worse, no one knows, before disappearing again the way they came—he knows because the Chitauri are rapidly becoming the nightmares of the nine worlds—

Tony knows because he did this. This is Tony's plan in action, Tony's plan working like a dream, and that—that's—

…

17.

Tony runs, he wraps space around himself and retreats back to the safety of the hideaway, and it isn't enough to get rid of the smell—he doesn't know if anything will be—

Then Loki is there, Loki catches Tony's weight as Tony sinks to the ground, and Loki is saying something, saying Tony's name. “They're dead because of me,” Tony interrupts, and it sounds like an accusation. “Loki, they're dead, they're all dead. It's my plan, and now a town is dead because of me, and it isn't the only one, whole worlds worth of people are going to die just because I said it was the right place to strike, and I don't feel guilty. Why can't I feel guilty, Loki, why do I just feel—”

“Forget,” Loki says, iron in his voice and scepter in his hand, and Tony's world swims in blue, the blue glow of the scepter, and he sinks under the weight of that order, he obeys—of course he obeys, he wants to obey, he wants to forget—the smell, that goddamned smell, the bodies of people he knew a week ago—he brought this on them, his plan—he wants to forget and Loki lets him, Loki puts a hand on him like benediction and says, “Forget.”

…

18.

Tony feels hazy when he wakes up, like he's slept for days; his spine lets out a really satisfying crack as he sits up, yawning widely. He's in the library in the hideaway, a book spread open on the table in front of him, and Tony doesn't doubt there's an unattractive red line down the side of his face right now that perfectly matches the shape of that book.

It's a surprise, to look up and see Loki sitting across the table from him. They've been researching more heavily recently, true, given that they're probably narrowing in on the location of the time gem. For the most part, though, he and Loki research separately, since Tony tends to mumble constantly while he reads, and Loki's more of a reading in silence kind of guy. “Hey,” Tony says, and Loki's green eyes flick idly up from the page to Tony's face, the god's expression blank. “I wasn't snoring or anything, was I? You could've poked me awake if I was.”

Loki shakes his head and says, “No, you were no bother. It seemed you needed your sleep.”

“I guess I did,” Tony says, scrubbing one hand through his hair to push it back into order. “I remember having some sort of crazy dream, and usually that only happens when I've spent three days in a row awake.” Tony doesn't actually remember when he last slept—it's kind of a haze, actually—and usually that means he pushed way past his own limits. “Actually, shit,” Tony says, suddenly remembering the last thing he was thinking of before he fell asleep, “it was my turn to go grab us food, wasn't it?” He starts to stand, then realizes he has no idea what time it is and he's probably slept through normal market hours anyway, and subsides back into his seat. “I can go tomorrow,” Tony says, as a peace offering.

“No, that's alright,” Loki says, and Tony blinks in surprise at the sudden magnanimity. “I will go. Too much time spent cooped up in this library makes me restless; I could do with a change of pace.”

That's...a bit unusual, but considering Tony starts getting fidgety after about thirty seconds of boredom, he doesn't think he really gets to criticize. “Suit yourself,” he says, with a shrug, and stands. “I think I'm gonna go to bed, tempting as passing back out on a book sounds. See you in the morning.”

“Sleep well,” Loki says, that strange, intense solicitousness still firmly in place—and maybe it's just Tony's imagination, but he feels Loki's eyes on him long after he turns to leave.

It's lucky Loki goes to the market the next day instead of him, though—a hunter makes an attempt on Loki's life there, and considering that Loki comes back with a bleeding scratch that curves around the length of his ribs, chances are it would have killed Tony. After that, they don't risk going back to that town again.

...

12.

He and Loki stumble through the door to a bedroom, Tony reaching behind himself and opening the door blindly, and Loki's hands are everywhere, tracing possessive lines on Tony's body like he's had Tony before, like he's learned Tony's body by touch and taste and is tempted to do it all over again for good measure. Tony thinks he can be excused for finding that genuinely hot as hell. When he leans in, sucking a kiss into the skin of Loki's neck and reaching around Loki's back to shove the door closed behind them, he isn't faking anything.

And that's terrifying, because as soon as the door is closed and it's clear they're alone in the room, Loki disengages, and his expression is so blank it verges on bored. “Search the back room,” Loki says, his voice dispassionate and commanding. “If you find something of note, call for me.” For Loki, it really is that easy—and it has been that easy every time they've used this trick, which at this point is about three rooms' worth of feigned groping.

For Tony, it takes considerably more effort to push down his arousal and move on, telling his confused libido to politely shut the fuck up so he can get on with his work. Getting the Infinity gem is the most important thing here, Tony does understand that. Still, though. He's having a little difficulty handling how little this obviously means to Loki, when Tony's reactions are becoming increasingly genuine with every go round.

“Back room, got it,” Tony says, and wanders off into the part of the suite farthest from the entrance. He's getting more than a little tired of searching at this point—considering each one of these suites is about the same size as a floor of Stark Tower, and the Infinity gems are smaller than the size of Tony's palm, he's been doing a lot of snooping and so far his best reward has been blue balls. He's just saying.

Even Asgardians living the high life have bedrooms pretty much like any else's, he's learning, filled with pretty much the same shit he's used to: scattered clothes, albeit clothes involving a lot more folds, layers and armor than Tony's used to, random books sitting on bedside tables, and occasionally what Tony's choosing to interpret as sex toys hidden away in odd locations. Tony looks through it all diligently anyway, checking under pillows and sheets and in drawers, and gets absolutely nothing for his efforts.

He's about to write off this room as another waste of time, when some nitpicky corner of his brain sparks off an idea. Tony freezes, scans the room, and reconsiders—but no, he's definitely right, this room isn't perfectly symmetrical, one wall is definitely sloped forward. Given that the sizing of every other room in this house looked like some anal retentive architect had a wet dream about the floor plan, that small chunk of floor space behind the wall strikes Tony as odd enough to be worth investigating.

“Hey, Loki, come here a sec,” he calls out, and wanders over to the wall in question. Tony doesn't actually hear Loki come in—goddamn but Loki can be quiet when he wants to be—and so he startles slightly when he looks over his shoulder and Loki is standing right there. “God, would you consider making some noise once in a while?”

Loki's response to that is, unsurprisingly, to raise an eyebrow and look unimpressed, and Tony knows a lost cause when he sees one. With a faint sigh, Tony gives up, and asks “Have you got a good way to check for secret compartments?”

Loki takes a quick look around the room, and obviously comes to the same conclusion Tony did. “Very astute, Stark,” he says, and it actually sounds like a genuine compliment, with no hidden double-edge or cutting sarcasm involved. Raising one hand, Loki runs his fingers down the same section of the wall Tony had been in the middle of inspecting, green light playing visibly about his fingertips; half-way down the wall, there's an audible clicking sound, and the wall splits down a previously invisible dividing line, one section swinging neatly open. “There we are,” Loki says, sounding utterly self-satisfied; he looks at Tony and grins, and Tony can't really help grinning back.

“Have I ever mentioned how stupidly useful your magic is?” Tony asks, and reaches out to push the door to the compartment fully open. Inside the compartment are three boxes—Tony pulls them out, pushes one towards Loki, and pops the top off a second. It's full of jewelry, and Tony rifles through it, looking for a telltale glint of red stone.

“It's still impossible for you to learn,” Loki points out, just like he has every other time Tony's brought up this conversation.

“I still say it's worth a try,” Tony says, and then, “Ah. Found it.” The power gem's been set into a signet ring, the setting a thick gold band that has what looks like a family motto carved into it—Tony picks it out of the rest and tosses it to Loki, grinning stupidly the whole time. “Do the honors?”

“Gladly,” Loki says, and a flash of green magic frees the gem from its setting, and Loki—

Loki looks at Tony, this triumphant grin stretching his disguised face and the power gem sitting in the curve of his palm like it belongs there, and it's pure instinct that makes Tony lean in and kiss Loki. It's hardly their first kiss of the night—to be honest, Tony doubts it's in the single digits—but this one is different, this one is just because Tony wants, because now he knows what Loki tastes like and what Loki's lips feel like against his, because he knows the noises Loki makes when he feigns arousal and wants to learn what the real ones sound like. Tony kisses Loki in a rush of adrenaline, because he thinks Loki's going to smile like that when their plan pays off, and Tony wants to be able to kiss him then too, wants to be able to kiss him everyday between that day and now—and for a second, just a split second, Loki kisses back, victorious and claiming and hot.

Then Loki jerks back and says, “No,” sharply enough that the word rings like the sound of a slap, and Tony recoils. There's a moment where they just stay there, caught at that awkward in-between distance, too close for politeness and too far for intimacy, breathing hard. Loki looks away first. “No, Stark,” he says, like Tony didn't hear him the first time.

And Tony, as smoothly as he possibly can given how idiotic he feels right now, smiles and says, “Of course, you're right. Moment kind of ran away with me there, sorry. Let's get the hell out of here.”

...

25.

It's kind of strange, walking back into the hideaway, the place that Tony's considered home for a year now, with the new realization that it isn't his choice to be here. Tony's fond of this place—it's safe, it has a giant library, his bed is comfortable as fuck, what's not to love—but, by the same token, he realizes Loki could've taken him anywhere in the nine worlds, and Tony would have considered it home, because Loki wanted him there. Maybe the weirdest part about it is that Tony recognizes, now, his lack of free will in all this, and he feels...absolutely nothing about it. No anger, no betrayal, not even mild irritation, because Loki doesn't want Tony feeling those things, and so Tony doesn't.

“I have to say, I'm really starting to appreciate this lack of free will thing,” Tony says, throwing a glance over his shoulder at Loki. “Seriously, it's fantastic. It's like the get out of jail free card for life, zero guilt guarantee or your money back.” He drops into a chair in the entry way, the same chair he's draped himself over a thousand times in the last year, and honestly wonders for a second whether the view is different, or whether he's exaggerating things in light of his new realization.

Loki settles against a table opposite him, long legs stretching out in front of him, and looks at Tony pensively. “Is that mockery or honesty I hear?” Loki asks, and it sounds like the answer actually matters to him.

Tony thinks for a second, shrugs, and says, “Honesty, mostly. If I felt the way I did before I went back under—” and Tony, even insulated from that moment by a day and a fresh batch of mind control, still shudders faintly in remembering it, “—then it would be mockery, I think. Possibly outright hatred, I'm really not sure.” It feels a little like discussing a dream, trying to predict what he would do if he was entirely under his own control: like it's distant from Tony and a little hard to remember. Tony leans forward and asks, thoughtfully, “Could you make me forget about that?”

Loki's face goes through an interesting set of contortions that Tony really doesn't want to even try interpreting before the god actually speaks. “I could,” Loki says, spreading his hands out in front of him, palms up, a placating gesture.

“But you won't,” Tony says, and even he isn't sure if he's asking a question or saying something he's certain of. Maybe it's even an order, if Tony's capable of giving orders and having them obeyed in this wildly unequal little partnership.

“No,” Loki confirms, his voice low and as serious as Tony's ever heard it. “I will not.”

Tony has to ask, has possibly never wanted an answer to a question more: “Why? Why keep me around and let me be myself—mostly myself, anyway—when you could literally change everything I am, and I'd never notice?”

Loki's long fingers tangle and knead at each other, either an absent motion or a nervous one, as Loki speaks. “At first, because you fought,” Loki says, and Tony startles, because he definitely doesn't remember fighting anything. “Any order I gave you was obeyed, but you were prone to misinterpretations, or such heights of semantic distinctions that the orders were very nearly useless. An order of silence would stay your tongue only in the moment it was uttered, and cease to apply lest I bid you stay quiet; what an order meant to change your very self might have become, I know not.”

“So even under mind control I'm a difficult son of a bitch,” Tony says, and grins. There's a point of pride in there somewhere, he's fairly sure. “You said that was just at first, though, and here we are a year later.”

Loki fixes him with a green stare, somehow managing to make it perfectly clear with his eyes and eyebrows alone that he'd be getting to that now if Tony hadn't interrupted. “Later,” the god of lies goes on, honestly, “I feared such alterations would damage your mind unduly. A strategist who cannot strategize is of little use. The mind gem will sometimes act on its own, to...fog things which might distract, or add distance to memories which might disrupt its control, but I myself was unwilling to change you unless there was no help for it.”

“And now?” Tony asks, because it's important he knows where he stands, if he has no choice but to stand with Loki.

Loki smiles, and it isn't exactly a soft expression, but it's the closest thing to one that Tony's ever seen on the god's face. “Need you ask?”

And Tony—alright, Tony smiles. His life's a fucked up mess, his mind isn't his own, and none of that matters to him, because right now he's happy. “So you do like having me around after all,” Tony says. “I was starting to wonder about that one.”

“Sentiment,” Loki throws back, sounding not-entirely displeased about it, and right now, in this moment, Tony wouldn't change a goddamn thing.

…

19.

Tony and Loki have bounty hunters after their heads—there's a decent reward for anyone who catches the former prince of Asgard and his mortal accomplice, and a better reputation boost for anyone who manages to catch or kill them after they've evaded so many—but the Chitauri have their own slowly developing mythos, becoming the nightmare creatures that children are scared of at night. Tony and Loki are sighted occasionally, and at least the bounty hunters seem to care about that—the Chitauri have a body count that's growing rapidly toward the thousands, and a bloody trail to their name across the nine worlds. Tony and Loki have some small notoriety, but comparatively, their little reputation is dwarfed by the threat presented by the Chitauri.

And under the constant, looming presence of the Chitauri, there's a name that's starting to be brought to light, to be whispered alongside stories of the Chitauri: Thanos.

Tony looks at Loki, the first time they overhear Thanos' name being bandied about by small town gossip, and says, quietly, “It's working.”

…

26.

Life under mind control, as it turns out, is pretty much the same whether you're aware of the mind control or not; if Tony expected any huge differences after his second realization, he'd be fairly disappointed. Mostly, the pattern of his days—wake up, eat something, spend large chunks of his day wishing the Infinity gems were easier to find, and possibly fall asleep on a book—goes uninterrupted, and Tony's life marches on with very few changes.

There is one small but important difference: now, Loki can talk about what the mind gem does without Tony suddenly blacking out and forgetting everything in self-defense, which means Tony gets to understand at least a little more about the goings on of his life. “So, wait,” Tony asks, one day, looking up from research as a thought strikes him, “if the mind and power gems together are enough to keep Thanos from looking in on us, why can't we use them to keep the hunters off our backs?”

Loki says, eyebrow raising, “With those gems, I can access one specific mind, or the mind of every being in the universe at once; there is no middle ground. Discouraging Thanos from paying us any mind is easy enough, when I need plant an impulse to disregard us in one mind alone—but would you have me make every living thing on all the nine worlds ignore our existence simultaneously?”

“Fair enough,” Tony says, and goes back to research.

That's the other difference, really: now that Tony really understands why he's here, Loki's much more inclined to talk to him honestly, to answer his questions and treat him like an equal. It doesn't actually make Tony any more equal—mind control tends to put a damper on evening out power imbalances—but it makes him feel equal, like a partner, and that's...not nothing.

…

27.

“Okay,” Tony says, “if I read one more sentence about something that might either be the time gem or the paranoid hallucinations of a dead Asgardian scholar, I'm going to snap and kill something. I give up, the time gem clearly isn't worth it, let's retire to Florida and try ruling a gated community instead.”

Loki, who seems to spend most of his time profoundly unimpressed with Tony, just raises one eyebrow and pointedly keeps reading. Ever since Tony's second realization, Loki's been much more inclined to stay in the same general area as Tony when they research, though whether that's because Loki's become more tolerant of Tony's noise or because Loki's finally realized Tony's been slowly hoarding all the most comfortable furniture in his nook of the library, Tony doesn't know.

“You ignore me now, but you're the closest person nearby for when I start my killing spree,” Tony says, and despite himself, looks back down at the page he was reading. He's starting to get really good at digging through obscure texts for references to the mostly long-forgotten locations of a bunch of gems that were considered legends for hundreds of years before Loki rediscovered them—and that, he can honestly say, isn't a skill set he ever anticipated developing in his lifetime.

“I live in fear,” Loki says, sounding exquisitely bored and disinclined to pay attention to Tony right now. Tony thinks that's teasing, but with Loki, he's never quite sure.

Tony drops the subject, and for a little while they read in silence. “I'm about seventy-five percent sure this is bullshit,” Tony says, after the scholar starts detailing how his many enemies used the 'time-controlling device' to ruin everything from his love life to his tomato-like-vegetable garden. “The other twenty-five percent of me is just wondering who would use a gem that controls time itself to fuck up a garden.”

Loki sets down his book, and says, clearly irritated, “Will nothing silence you, Stark?”

And Tony really isn't sure why he says what he does next, why he dredges up a memory from nearly a year before to relive at just that moment, but what comes out of his mouth is, “Oh, I'm certain you can think of something.”

There's a second of total silence, where—look, okay, it isn't like Tony's been pining away for the last year, alright? He thinks Loki's gorgeous, he knows Loki kisses like a demon, and sometimes, yes, in the privacy of his room he and his hand might creatively revisit certain memories of Loki, but Tony knows how to take no for an answer, and that's the answer he got the first time around. It's stupid, to bring it back up now, when everything is going so well, and Tony opens his mouth to say—he doesn't even know, to say something—

When Loki rolls his eyes, reaches across the table, and pulls Tony into a kiss.

It's not exactly the stuff fantasies are made of, considering that there's a table cutting into Tony's hips and the angle is weird as hell—but it's Loki, the barely-familiar taste and press of Loki's mouth, it's Loki who nips at Tony's lip in obvious aggravation and then soothes the faint pain with a sucking swirl of his tongue the moment later, and so Tony leans in and kisses back as best he can, lets himself forget everything else.

They kiss until Tony runs out of breath, testing and learning and tasting and just generally enjoying each other, and finally Tony pulls back to pant, breathless, against Loki's cheek. “Was that what you were thinking of?” Loki asks, and it's so smug that it makes Tony smile on principle.

“I—,” Tony starts to answer, and then he falls quiet, because clearly the better answer is to get up, walk around the table, settle himself into Loki's lap, and then proceed to return the favor, kissing Loki breathless and wanting, surrounded by the smell of old books and home.

Chapter Text

46.

“Well,” Tony says, tone deliberately as flippant as he can make it, “you were right about Thanos betraying us, if that helps.”

Loki throws Tony an incredulous look, and, even amidst all the chaos and the impending likelihood that they're both going to die here, Tony can't help but find that look a little funny. “Yes, Stark,” Loki says, his voice noticeably strained, “I find that such a comfort.” He's bleeding, bruised, and the Chitauri holding him are more holding him up than restraining him—Tony's hopeful that at least part of Loki's pain is an act, but he can't be sure. Maybe Loki's trying to put the Chitauri off their guard, or maybe he's genuinely thirty seconds from collapsing: either way, Tony has to assume it's genuine until Loki proves otherwise, if they're going to have any hope of getting out of this intact.

The Chitauri holding Tony still tighten their grips, and strong, inhuman fingers dig into Tony's skin with bruising force. “Apparently you guys aren't very big on gallows humor,” Tony says, because this is what he does: classic Tony Stark bravado, facing down death with a smug smile and a cheap one-liner. The fact that his death might be coming at the hands of alien gods is new, but, otherwise, this is practically the most familiar thing that's happened to him in the past two years.

When Thanos speaks, it takes everything Tony has not to instinctively tense up. “Pathetic. Two little fools, playing with matters beyond their scope, who hope now to stave off their fate with words.” Thanos gestures, a small quirk of two fingers, and suddenly Tony's being shoved down to his knees. Tony struggles, instinctively, trying to get his feet under him and wrench away from the hold he's in—but, no, once again he's reminded the hard way that he's the only mortal in a room full of aliens and gods, and he's not nearly strong enough to go anywhere.

Loki doesn't fight, just sinks to his knees with a sort of fluid grace, elegant even under pressure. Tony...really doesn't feel like that's a good sign, actually. “Hey, Loki,” he says, because he's starting to get a little nervous here, and if Loki does have a secret plan, this is pretty much the right time to use it—but he doesn't get to finish what he was going to say, since he's a little busy getting the wind knocked out of him by one of the Chitauri.

Tony coughs, and sucks in a gasping breath that hurts—and all the while, Thanos smiles, his eyes focused unwaveringly on Tony. “It's time,” Thanos says, “for you both to learn what befalls those who cross Thanos.”

…

31.

“So, for the record,” Tony says, timing the sentence so he starts talking right as he pops into the kitchen of their hideaway, “Nick Fury still really doesn't like you.”

If Tony was hoping to startle Loki—which, okay, maybe he was, a little bit—he'd be disappointed. Loki doesn't even look up from his meal, just spears another piece of meat on his fork and asks, “You visited Barton, then?” Seriously, you'd think Tony pulled that sort of stunt with the space gem every day, from how little Loki reacts.

Tony, after years of things not going to plan, knows when to concede a failure gracefully and move on. “Figured it was about time to check in, see if Barton had any new intel for us,” Tony says, tossing the space gem idly from one hand to the other. “Or maybe see if he'd been hiding the time gem up his ass this whole time and just never told us.” Loki does look up at that, for just long enough to give Tony a really disparaging look. Tony smiles. “What, it can't hurt to be optimistic. It's not like we haven't looked for that gem just about everywhere else in the nine worlds.”

“Stark,” Loki says, and it's—Loki doesn't use his full-on sex voice, but it's close enough to shut Tony up really fast, a hopeful, curling warmth starting under his skin. A faint smile curls Loki's lips, amused and fond and more than a little mocking, and Tony shakes his head and affects a frown. It's not his fault his reaction is practically Pavlovian at this point—a month of regular sex after a year long dry spell will do that to a guy. “Did Barton tell you anything of use?”

So they're sticking to business, then—Tony can do business, even if it's less fun than the alternative. “Bad news first, or good news? Actually, no, I'm just going to go with bad: Romanov is on his tail again,” Tony says, his voice going serious. “She's not going to let us keep him for much longer, if she manages to catch up.” It makes Tony feel—something, a muffled sort of feeling that he recognizes as an emotion dimmed by the mind control, to know that Natasha Romanov willingly went rogue for Barton just days after Loki instructed him to go into hiding, that she's been chasing Barton for a year and a half straight without showing signs of tiring, and—well. Here's Tony, a year and a half later, with no one chasing after him but bounty hunters. “I dropped Barton off in a new place to give him a head start, but soon enough we're either going to have to take Barton off-planet or lose him.”

For a moment, Loki thinks, and the silence between them is only interrupted by the soft sounds of Loki's knife and fork. “Tomorrow, you'll return to Midgard and retrieve Barton. He's been a useful enough resource that I would not have him lost to us.”

It's a direct order, and Tony feels the way it washes over him, the usually-ignorable sensation of Loki's will superseding Tony's own becoming totally noticeable, just for a moment. The weight of the command on Tony's mind is weirdly pleasant; the best analogy Tony can come up with for it is the feeling of sinking backwards into warm water, and letting something else carry his weight for a little while. Tony doesn't try to resist, just grins and says, “Sure, I wasn't doing anything important tomorrow anyway.”

Loki smiles, the smile that stretches his mouth but doesn't come close to touching his eyes—before Tony can press and find out what's behind that particular expression, Loki says, “You said there was good news?”

“Very good news, actually.” And about time, at that—it's been a while since they had any good luck, between the time gem being impossible to find and Tony getting his mind rearranged again. Tony leans forward, his grin going maybe a little smug, and says, “See, Nick Fury still doesn't like you, but he's the only one still paying attention. Between the sudden shock of a whole planet suddenly realizing aliens are real, and then learning those aliens aren't exactly friendly, your little escapade last year might as well be totally forgotten.” Tony's not going to lie, this is more luck than planning on his part, but it's still making his plan work perfectly smoothly; Tony can take that and run with it. “When we show up on Earth as heroes, we're going to do it almost entirely free and clear.”

And suddenly the air feels...charged, almost, as Tony has one of those rare moments where he really thinks about the scope of what they're attempting here. They're planning to rule worlds, and Tony's had power and influence his whole life, but never on this sort of scale; they're planning to rule the universe, and the terrifying thing is, it seems to be working.

“What of your Avengers? Will they not remember me?” Loki asks. Somehow, the god sounds... less than intimidated at the thought.

“Probably,” Tony cedes, “but it was an immediate threat that brought them together, and they've spent a year without a clear enemy. They're short Romanov, and she would probably be the biggest threat to us—with Barton and me out of the picture, and Thor still on Asgard, Earth's mighty Avengers are basically down to Stars-and-Stripes and Banner. Maybe they don't even have Banner; he seemed pretty ready to slip the ball and chain and go back into hiding, when I saw him last. So, yeah, one defrosted soldier might still remember who we are, and be willing to fight us; you'll excuse me if I fail to find that frightening.” He doesn't doubt that the Avengers could have really been something, if things had gone differently—if they'd learned to work together more quickly, maybe, or if Loki hadn't managed to get Tony on his side, then, yeah, he could see the Avengers being a force worth serious concern. That said, things didn't go differently, the Avengers aren't going to be a problem, and that's the end of the matter where Tony's concerned.

His expression sharp, with something almost hungry in his eyes, Loki asks, voice all pointed nonchalance, “There is one other name which I would hope is not so unknown.”

Tony grins, and reaches his hand out. Theatrically—because if he's going to do this, he might as well do it right—Tony arches his fingers into what looks like thin air, and essentially is, save for the tiny fold in space that wasn't there a moment before. It takes a second's worth of grasping around, but eventually Tony's fingers close around what he was looking for, and Tony withdraws his hand from what is, now, perfectly normal air again. With a flourish, Tony sets today's New York Times on the table in front of Loki. “Thought you might like to see this,” Tony says, knowing he sounds smug as hell and not particularly willing to stop.

The headline of the newspaper is, in rather dramatic bold letters, 'Who is Thanos?,' set over a picture of the Chitauri blowing out the windows of an office building. Tony gives that a second to sink in, and then says, “Not unknown at all, Loki.”

Loki looks up at Tony, and Tony can see the implications there sinking in, can see Loki realizing that they're half way towards pulling this off already. Suddenly, this impossible, year-long dash across the nine worlds seems like it might actually end up with them on a throne, and that's—

“Stark,” Loki says, his voice dropped low and rough and, okay, that is the sex voice, that is definitely and unmistakably the sex voice.

“Are we about to have power trip sex?” Tony asks, because he's Tony Stark, and sometimes he can't shut up even when he knows he ought to. “Because that's—”

For a while, after that, he has better things to do than talking.

…

53.

It was Odin who put the contract on them out in the first place; Tony never understood why, near the beginning.

“Is it the invasion thing?” Tony had asked idly, one day when they were stuck in their hideaway, research going slow as molasses and a sort of stagnancy in the air. “Because it seemed like Thor was pretty okay with that, all things considered. Not happy, obviously, but since he kept trying to drag you back home, I figured that meant Asgard didn't think of planetary invasion quite the way Earth does.” Mentioning Thor had always been a touchy subject, and Loki's expression had immediately made it clear that Loki wouldn't put up with it that night. Raising his hands in surrender, Tony had backed down from mentioning the thunder god, though he pushed just enough to say, “It didn't come across as a hanging offense, is all I'm trying to say.”

Loki had tapped the tips of his long fingers together, hesitating for just a moment; then Loki's green gaze met Tony's unfalteringly, with a strange intensity Tony couldn't begin to explain. With his voice smooth enough to give nothing away, Loki had said, “There are some trespasses Asgard cannot forgive, Stark, and I have committed perhaps the greatest of them. Odin must see me punished, as per his laws. I don't doubt he sees it as mercy on his part, allowing others to pass my sentence on his behalf rather than carrying it out himself.” Never looking away from the blue of Tony's eyes, Loki had asked, slowly, “Do you understand, Stark?”

Then, Tony had made some sort of quip, to cover up the fact that he couldn't understand, something about remind me not to take over a planet around Odin, then – oh, wait.

And after a certain point, it didn't matter that Tony couldn't understand the original intent, because he definitely understood why they suddenly gain such notoriety: Tony understands pride, after all, and wanting to prove himself. After the first few hunters failed, it was easy enough to see why he and Loki would become such tempting targets, because who wouldn't want to say that they did what no one else could?

It's only now, with miles and an entirely different state of mind separating Tony from that conversation, that Tony is capable of understanding what they were talking about in the first place: Loki lost all chance he ever had for reconciliation the moment he decided to keep Tony in thrall and by his side. Loki went all in on this ridiculous, impossible, amazing plan of theirs a long time ago, long before he even had any proof it would work.

And that, well. Right now, that's something Tony needs to remember.

…

32.

Of course, of fucking course, with Tony's luck being what it is, the only reason they ever find the time gem is because of a stupid, lucky coincidence. It turns out like this:

Even after a year without a readily available coffee supply, Tony still wakes up feeling blurry, slow, and craving; today is no different in that respect. Half-awake, Tony stretches out his fingers towards Loki's side of the bed, and isn't surprised to just find crumpled sheets and no sign of his lover. With a slight irritated sigh, Tony makes himself open his eyes fully and sit up, shaking off sleep entirely.

He finds Loki a few minutes later, sitting at the kitchen table. There's food laid out, a haphazard selection of whatever they've bought, bartered or stolen recently that approximates breakfast food, and so Tony makes his way over to the table. “'Morning,” Tony offers, just in case Loki hasn't realized Tony's coming up behind him, and instinct from...well, from before, makes Tony drop a gentle kiss to the top of Loki's head before he entirely realizes what he's doing. Tony expects Loki to stiffen, or scoff, or to rightly point out that they aren't the soft morning gestures type—instead Loki seems not to even notice the slip, his attention focused entirely on the newspaper in front of him.

Surprised—Tony wouldn't exactly peg Loki for a New York Times reader, is all he's saying—Tony leans forward slightly, and scans the page his lover is reading. It takes him a long second to realize exactly what it is he's looking at; for a second, it just seems like Loki has taken a sudden and intense interest in the arts section. Then his eyes alight on what Loki is focusing on, and Tony says, out of shocked reflex, “Oh fuck me. Seriously?”

“Apparently,” Loki says, managing to somehow sound amused and irritated at the same time. On the table below him, the newspaper hasn't suddenly changed its content, still showing the same story about a private collection, currently being kept in a bank in Manhattan, that's going to be transferred over to the Met for display: and there, amongst the old jewelry shown in the associated photo, is definitely, unmistakably, the time gem.

Fuck. The time gem's been in Manhattan this whole time, of all places, not in any of the ancient crevices and crannies their research has pointed them towards futilely for months. If it weren't for this one, ridiculously lucky coincidence, they probably would never have found it. Tony doesn't know whether to laugh or groan.

He settles for running his hands through his hair and saying, glibly, “How would you feel about a tour of my home town, honey?”

…

38.

Loki steals down into Tony's workshop like a shadow, almost perfectly silent and unobtrusive—Tony almost wouldn't notice the god, if he hadn't been expecting something like this. It was Loki's magic that carved this space out for Tony, after all, and Tony knows better than to expect privacy in a place Loki made for him.

Tony doesn't look up, just keeps his eyes entirely focused on his work, forcing metal to bend itself to the shape he wants it in. Still, because he's not quite petulant enough to ignore Loki entirely, Tony says, in warning, “I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to speak with you right now.” He's still too irritated, and there's a thick vein of...not exactly hurt, but close enough to that that Tony feels uncomfortable admitting it, underlying the annoyance. Just the fact that he's still feeling those things, that Loki hasn't gotten fed up with Tony's annoyance and ordered it away, is a sort of apologetic gesture on Loki's part, Tony knows—or, at least, as much of an apology as Loki will ever be willing to offer. That doesn't make it enough, though.

Loki doesn't acknowledge his words directly, or leave, which was pretty much what Tony was hoping for. Instead, the god says, his tone almost conciliatory, “I do not give my trust easily, Stark.”

The metal taking form under Tony's hands rings out as Tony's next strike goes a little astray, and Tony frowns and fixes his own mistake before he speaks. “Yeah, I'm getting that.” It feels like they've been having the same continuous argument for over a year now, punctuated with truces but never really ending: Loki underestimates Tony or is too slow to trust him, and so Tony is left perpetually scrambling to play catch-up with all the things Loki doesn't tell him. It's weird, that even after a year and a half this latest instance could still blind-side Tony like it did. “Thing is, I'm sort of wondering exactly how many times we're going to have to do this before you realize I'm on your side.”

Suddenly, stupidly, that deep-down current of hurt swims up to the surface and makes itself audible in Tony's words—those last words come out choked and embarrassingly close to breaking, and it makes Tony feel sick and vulnerable to be suddenly, unwillingly obvious, to—to feel as much as he does. Tony shuts his eyes, swallows, and makes himself shut up. This isn't the time. There might never be a right time for this.

Except then Loki's saying, unexpectedly and with audible, painful sounding honesty, “Not freely, Stark. Not of your own will.”

And that's—fuck. Tony puts down his tools and the still mostly shapeless metal in his hands and turns to look at Loki, to watch Loki in the half-light of the workshop. Loki looks defensive, his body language practically screaming out a desire to fight or run or make Tony forget, and it's that, more than anything else, that makes Tony realize that Loki meant the words, really and truly. Tony never even realized that might be their last stopping point, that that of all things might be bothering Loki, and the irony of the problem isn't lost on Tony.

Voice gentler than it was before, Tony says, “We tried that once, remember. It didn't exactly go well, for anyone involved.” From what little Tony remembers of his brief return to free will, he's pretty sure it's just about the worst thing that could happen to him, and he's in no hurry to try it out again.

It's, evidently, the wrong thing to say. “Do not patronize me, Stark,” Loki all but hisses out, suddenly furious. “I know very well that, were you free, you would be far from here, never to return. Do not presume to judge me for being unwilling to reveal too much of what I know, when at any moment the slightest blow might make you once again my enemy.”

“It wouldn't,” Tony says, automatically, his mouth speaking without any input from his mind—Loki shoots him a dark, angry look, limned heavily with skepticism, and Tony shuts his eyes tight. Because that's sort of the point, isn't it? No matter how strong Tony's conviction is, no matter how sure he is that free will wouldn't suddenly tip him over to the other side, Tony can't know for sure. Tony will never know for sure, as long as the mind control quiets anything that might make him dissent, and Tony's not willing to risk everything they've achieved just to put that conviction to the test. It's a lovely catch-22, and one that winds up with Loki never fully able to trust him, and Tony never able to prove himself worthy of that trust.

When Tony opens his eyes again, Loki's smiling at him, this small, resigned expression. “So you understand,” Loki says, and Tony has to swallow hard to keep his protestations quiet. Yeah. He's getting the gist of the issue, now.

Tony looks away, unable to hold that green gaze for any longer, and looks back down at his workbench. “I should probably get this finished,” he says, forcing a levity into his voice that doesn't fool either of them. “Time limits being what they are, and all that.” It doesn't escape Loki's notice, Tony's sure, that Tony makes no move to actually pick up his work.

“Perhaps you should,” Loki says, his voice slipping back into shades of inscrutability, and Tony doesn't—can't let this conversation end that way.

Tony stands, pushing himself away from his workbench almost violently, and rounding on Loki. There are only a few few feet separating them, and Tony crosses them quickly, throwing out a hand to catch at Loki and drag him down, pulling the god into an angry clashing of mouths that only slightly resembles a kiss.

It's Loki who gentles them, a moment later, and that only for a given value of gentle—Loki kisses Tony like a drowning man suddenly rediscovering air, like Tony will disappear the moment Loki lets go of him, and Tony returns that and more, breaking away to pant for air and then diving back, his hands and his mouth and his thoughts all tangled up in Loki.

It's not enough—Tony's not sure anything could be enough, but he's willing to try. Tightening his grip on Loki, Tony shoves, and all the force Tony's capable of would be nothing if Loki didn't want to be moved, but Loki allows it, stumbling in the direction Tony presses them in until the god's back hits the nearest wall, hard. Then Tony is all over him, pressing close, fingers scrambling to get to skin. It's clumsy, like this is their first time rather than one of many, like Tony hasn't had months of practice at getting Loki out of his clothes, but Tony doesn't care, and if the way Loki's normally deft fingers fumble is any sign, then neither does Loki. They're frantic, both of them, and every inch of skin is hard won and greedily accepted; Tony loses time, and lives in disparate moments, his world narrowing down to the taste of the skin under Loki's jaw, the lean curve of Loki's ribs under his hands, the way Loki shakes against Tony, the bloom of a dark bruise against the hollow of Loki's neck.

Finally, finally, they manage to strip down to skin, clothes scattered haphazardly and forgotten. Tony cups the hard lines of Loki's hips in his palms, marveling at the deceptive slightness of his tremendously strong lover, and drops to his knees, treasuring the harsh intake of air the move earns from Loki. Tony wants too much to be slow, to be gentle—he wants Loki's skin at the back of his throat, wants the weight of Loki on his tongue, real and heavy and his if only for right now—so he takes it, everything he wants, ignoring the immediate faint ache in his throat in favor of taking, tasting. It's Loki who chokes at the sudden movement, not Tony; Loki who clenches his fists in Tony's hair and stutters his hips forward; and Tony wants more, wants Loki coming apart at the seams, so he earns it. Tony uses everything he has, everything he knows Loki likes and some things he's never tried before, so focused on the heavy slide and catch of Loki's skin through the curve of his lips, on the taste and the small sounds Loki makes, that he's almost surprised when Loki finally lets out a low curse and comes, shaking, in Tony's mouth.

Tony holds up Loki's weight when the god falters, when Loki's knees buckle, and they come to rest, gently, against the ground. Tony's lips are swollen and streaked with come, and Tony smiles, smug and aroused and self-satisfied—Loki looks up at that smile, still panting slightly for breath, and smiles back, too fucked out and pleased to manage his usual sharpness.

They wind up fucking, raw and nearly dry, against the workshop floor—Tony tries to be good about it, tries to finger Loki open with spit and slow progression, but Loki is all writhing impatience, and Tony is no saint. Loki rides Tony into the floor, fucking himself open in a way that has to be painful, but Loki shows no sign of it; Loki smiles like a demon and rocks them together, rolling his hips and taking Tony deep, until Tony's reduced to panting incoherence, his head tipped back against the hard floor to watch Loki. Loki moves in long, arching lines of pale skin, every motion its own show for Tony's benefit, and he's fucking relentless, driving hard and giving Tony no time to breathe or think or do anything but clench his hands around Loki's hips and feel. It seems like it goes on forever, and that's probably nowhere near true, but Tony feels it, feels the moment stretch out infinitely, the shift and press of skin and sweat and Loki forever looming overhead and around and everywhere, filling up every bit of space left in Tony's world, and suddenly it feels too perfect to be real and too impossible for Tony to be making it up, and he feels—

It's a relief to come, to feel the moment shatter into a rushing wave of pleasure that Tony has to close his eyes against—when he opens his eyes, everything feels real again, and Loki is just—just—a god, instead of some impossible specter of sex and intimacy. Tony grins up at Loki, this stupid, wide expression, and lies still while Loki jerks himself off, finally coming a second time, more weakly, painting the sweaty stretch of Tony's body with come.

They lie there for a while, against the uncomfortable hard surface of the floor, both panting through the afterglow, and finally Tony starts laughing, mostly at himself. Loki arches a mildly offended eyebrow at Tony, and Tony, feeling warm all through and open, kisses that eyebrow and then Loki's swollen lips in apology. “I really did have work to do,” Tony explains, and that's partly what he's laughing at, but it's more this, them, how ridiculously fucked up he's sure their relationship is and how good everything feels despite that. It's more that, given a choice between going on to conquer the universe, or staying here forever, just him and Loki, right now he feels like his decision would be pretty absurd in the grand scheme of things.

“You do an excellent job of distracting yourself, Stark,” Loki agrees, voice fucked out and husky, and just for that Tony has to kiss him again, and once more after, and then, well. He doesn't wind up getting much work done that day.

…

33.

New York shakes under the assault of the Chitauri; in the streets, the fire of Chitauri weapons cracks through the air like thunder, the Chitauri descending on Manhattan like an unrelenting storm; everything is chaos, confusion, and the smell of ash and destruction. And, amidst the insanity, Tony Stark, with a Chitauri energy weapon in hand and a magical disguise laid thick over his skin, is going to rob a bank. It's either terrible or poetic, and Tony doesn't have the time or inclination to decide which.

Tony walks, calmly, through the doors of the bank, and maybe it's Loki's magic, or maybe it's that things are already crazy enough that a new addition isn't particularly noticeable, but nobody actually pays any attention to Tony until he raises the Chitauri gun and fires a warning shot into the air. The high ceilings of the bank make the shot echo dramatically—from the sound alone, Tony would think an entire Chitauri kill squad had opened fire, if he didn't know better. The people in the bank, who aren't so well informed, react in sheer terror, screaming and diving for cover: so Tony's definitely got their attention now. Good.

Tony waits for silence, lets them feed on anticipation, and only when he gets it does he say, “Can anyone here open the vaults?”

It's not what any of them were expecting, Tony can tell—but then, who would be expecting a Chitauri drone to rob a Manhattan bank? For all intents and purposes, that's what Tony seems to be right now; Loki is very, very good at disguises, when he chooses to turn his magic to that purpose. Even Tony's voice comes out sounding altered, turning deep, inhuman and rasping, and especially impressive in the acoustics of the building.

No one makes a sound, not a single person emerges from whatever shelter they ducked behind, and Tony doesn't really have time for this. “Right,” he says, and crosses the lobby floor to drag the person nearest him from cover. Reaching behind a counter, Tony gets a firm grip on clothing, and pulls a small, well-dressed woman out from where she was hiding. She screams, right up until Tony presses the weapon up against her spine; then she lets out a small whimper and subsides, following Tony obediently when he pulls her towards him. “I'm only going to ask this one more time, and then I'm going to start shooting,” Tony says, and engages the mechanism that charges the gun; it's useless, considering the extra charge will dissipate in a few seconds when Tony doesn't immediately start firing, but it does make a really intimidating sound come from the gun. “Can anyone here open the vaults?”

There's a second or two of silence, and Tony tells the woman he's holding, tone conversational but loud enough to be audible, “I guess no one here likes you very much.”

Her eyes go wide, and tears pool at the corners of them; she shakes in Tony's arms. “Please,” she says, her voice cracking in the middle of the word, and then says it again, louder. “Please someone help me. Oh god.”

And then, sounding hesitant, a voice from near the back of the lobby says, “Wait! I can open the vaults.”

“Oh goody,” Tony says, softly enough that no one's going to hear it. “Alright, you in the back, stand up slowly. Everyone else, stay perfectly still, and no one needs to get hurt.”

From the back, another woman stands, this one equally well-dressed but also wearing a tag that marks her as an employee of the bank. “Follow me,” she says, and to her credit, her voice only shakes a very little bit.

Tony does, dragging his hostage along with him. When he gets close enough to speak with her without shouting, he says, “To be clear, if you do anything stupid, I will kill you, and then her, and then everyone else in this bank. Understood?” She nods, and swallows—sufficiently convinced she gets the idea, Tony tells her specifically where he's looking to go, and gestures for her to lead the way.

He follows her through the bank, watching her card bypass various security checkpoints. Tony doesn't doubt that, normally, this sort of stunt would never work—security would be all over him, by this point—but apparently the Chitauri incursion going on outside is enough of a distraction to slow security response time, who knew.

His hostage goes along quietly, trading looks with the bank employee but not saying anything, her feet dragging against the floor in faint resistance with every step. Finally, they get to the vault Tony was looking for, and Tony waits, not entirely patiently, as the employee puts in the necessary codes to open the door. When the thick metal door swings open, Tony smiles pleasantly at the bank employee, aware that even a pleasant smile on the face of a Chitauri is mildly horrifying, and says, “Pleasure doing business with you. You'll want to run back to the lobby and start clearing this building out, now. Anyone who's still in the lobby when I leave is going to die: you have ten minutes.”

The employee looks back over her shoulder, and then visibly steels herself to say, looking hard at Tony's hostage, “What about her?” It's pretty impressive, watching basic human decency in action at a time like this; it's also the least helpful thing that could be happening at just this moment, at least for Tony personally.

“Nine minutes and forty-six seconds,” Tony says, throwing a little extra growl into his voice. The employee hesitates another moment, and Tony continues, pointedly, “Nine minutes forty-two seconds.”

That does it, and, with a regretful look at Tony's hostage, the employee turns and starts off at a run back towards the lobby, her shoes clicking audibly against the tile floor with every step. “Just you and me now,” Tony says, conversationally, to his hostage, and then he drags her the last step forward, across the doorway of the vault.

And he's in. Tony lets out a loud, relieved breath, and says, “Well, that was lucky for us,” and lets his hostage go.

She smiles over her shoulder at Tony, says, “Extremely so.” Then, with a moment's flash of green magic, she seems to almost unfold, body growing and shifting until the familiar form of his lover is left standing in front of him. With a faint stretch, like someone readjusting to movement after staying still for a while, Loki sheds the last of his disguise, all of his own features rushing back. “Well done,” Loki says, in a rare moment of outright praise, and Tony can't help but grin.

“I try,” Tony says, with false modesty, and then gestures with one hand toward the contents of the vault. “After you.”

…

47.

At first, Tony screams on Loki's behalf—shouts at the Chitauri to let them go, shouts insults at Thanos, threatens anything and everything he can think of at the top of his lungs—but Tony's only human, and he loses most of his voice before they lose motivation. It doesn't stop Tony from screaming, but it makes him quieter, makes his voice rasp and sting in his throat. He fights the hold the Chitauri have on him until he bruises, and then until he bleeds, and gets nowhere, and keeps trying; whatever pain he's feeling, it can't be anything to what Loki is going through right now.

Loki bleeds for a very, very long time, longer than Tony would have thought possible, and doesn't die. The god screams sometimes, when the pain is enough, but each time they pause for Thanos to gloat, Loki looks up with a bloody, unbroken smile and laughs, this angry, hateful sound. At the beginning, that laugh had insults to go along with it—“Is that the best you can do?” Loki sneered, the first time, and spit a mouthful of blood at Thanos' face. “Pitiful.”—but now those have died out, and the only sign Tony has that Loki hasn't died after each round is that horrible fucking laughter, before everything starts up again.

This time, in the gap between, Thanos drops to one knee, just in front of where Loki lies prone, and reaches out a hand to make Loki look up at him. “Tell me,” Thanos says, and his tone is almost friendly, like he hasn't just spent the last—fuck, Tony doesn't even know how long any more—watching his Chitauri make a valiant attempt at beating Loki to death. “Do you think me a fool? When you first came to speak of your plan to me, offering me free reign of the nine worlds and the right to kill where I would, did you think I would not recognize that I was meant to be a scapegoat? Did you think you could cross me lightly, and lead me meekly to my death like a lamb to slaughter, without me ever seeing that your goals could only be furthered by my death?” His voice hardening, Thanos says, “Thanos is no fool.”

“Really,” Tony throws out, a hoarse whisper of an insult—because, so far, Thanos hasn't so much as touched him, and if Tony can make himself a target, even for a few minutes, it'll give Loki a chance to rest. “Funny, because it definitely didn't seem that way for the last two years.”

Thanos looks at Tony, and if looks could cut then this one would definitely be sharp enough to do harm. Then a broad smile breaks out over Thanos' face, and Tony's stomach drops. “Oh, but you have not been idle in those two years yourselves,” Thanos says, and this is—no. Tony can't have missed seeing this coming. “There are a few little gems in your possession that are of some interest, and now you have done all the hard work of finding them for me.”

Tony's mind races, looking for any way out of this, frantically turning over any possibility, and he comes up with—fuck, with nothing. They're both going to die because Tony underestimated Thanos. The thought alone makes Tony feel sick to his stomach, and Tony darts a look towards where Loki lies bleeding on the ground, feeling his heart wrench in his chest.

“So, then,” Thanos finishes, dramatically, “I propose a trade.”

“The gems for our lives,” Tony says, before Thanos can get around to it, because of course this is what it comes down to. Of course this is what Thanos has wanted out of all this, all along.

And Thanos all but purrs with self-satisfaction when he says, “For the first time, mortal, you have said something astute.”

…

35.

“Alright,” Tony says, when it becomes pretty clear Loki isn't going to start this conversation. “Whatever it is you haven't been telling me, I think you need to just get it out and over with.”

By now, Tony recognizes the signs. Considering that they just successfully found one of the gems, Loki should have spent the last few days celebrating—which, for Loki, means wearing sharp, smug smiles all the time instead of just most of the time, playing around with his magic, and having a lot of sex with Tony. Instead, Loki's been increasingly withdrawn with every day, his expressions slipping towards being totally unreadable, and he's been touchy and irritable to cap things off. In Tony's book, those aren't so much signs as giant neon billboards announcing that something isn't right.

Tony picked his timing well—they're both just getting into bed, and the door to what Tony's slowly coming to consider their bedroom is already closed—and that means Loki can't easily evade the question without actually storming off. Sometimes the irascible god is willing to do just that, but Tony's banking on the fact that, while Loki's theatrical by nature, he also despises being predictable, and right now avoiding the conversation would be the expected move.

For a second, Loki clearly contemplates doing that. Then the god sighs and settles down onto the bed gracefully, and looks Tony directly in the eye. “You will not like this,” Loki warns, raising an eyebrow, and it's somewhere between a statement and a challenge.

“I haven't liked lots of things in the last year and a half,” Tony counters. “Hasn't stopped them from happening to me yet.” That's...maybe not the gentlest way Tony could have started this conversation, but Tony, above all else—and, yes, he appreciates the irony of this, considering he's sleeping with the god of lies—just wants the full, honest story about what's going on in his own life, for once.

“Very well,” Loki says, and folds his hands together in his lap, the gesture both elegant and slightly nervous. “In that case: I know where the last two Infinity gems might be found.”

Which ought to be great, taken on its own, except that Loki's tone makes it perfectly clear that this isn't a recent discovery. A wave of anger rushes through Tony, and he has to swallow around it to make his next words sound even close to reasonable—even then, there's still more bite to them than he expected. “That seems like the sort of thing it would have been useful to know a while ago. Like, say, maybe a year ago when you told me about the mind gem. Or even six months ago, when I thought we started actually being partners.” A year and a half in, and lovers besides, and Tony gets to face the fun fact that Loki still doesn't trust him fully. The realization stings. Tony has to force his voice to stay steady when he asks, “Why didn't you tell me?”

His voice very flat, Loki says, “The reality gem rests still in the gauntlet, which is needed to use the gems to their full power—both of those things are held within the depths of Odin Allfather's vault in Asgard, guarded so carefully that even I was nearly attacked for trespass, in the days when Odin still held me to be his son. Worse, the soul gem rests in the hands of none other than Thanos himself, and there is every possibility that when we confront him, he will use it to steal our souls away and leave us mindless husks.” Sarcasm creeping into his tone, Loki spreads his hands wide, the questioning gesture theatrical and so pointed it bites, and asks, “Should I have given you this news casually? Good morning, Stark, fine weather today, we shall likely both die terribly in seeking the last two Infinity gems, please do pass the butter.”

Tony can't entirely decide whether he's furious, or terrified, or disappointed, or—fuck. He's fucked, is what he is; they both are. “That's why you didn't go for the Infinity gems before you tried the invasion in the first place,” Tony says, with all the force of a realization over a year in coming. Loki's known this all along, right, that's—Tony blinks hard, and forces his train of thought to turn towards something more productive. “It still might have helped to know ahead of time,” Tony argues, and runs a hand through his hair just to have an excuse not to sit still. “Planning is kind of what I do around here, and it's a bit difficult to plan well if I have no fucking clue of what we're up against.”

Loki sneers, and it's an expression Tony hasn't had turned against him in a while; he hasn't missed it any, he discovers now. “You speak as though there is a solution to be had,” Loki says, and, alright, maybe there isn't an easy answer, but that doesn't mean Tony can't try.

“Good to know you have so much faith in me,” Tony says, and suddenly he needs to stand, can't just be sitting idly in bed with Loki discussing this. Grabbing for the shirt he already pulled off, Tony tugs it back over his head, making his way towards the door. “Funny, but I'm not feeling particularly tired right now,” Tony informs Loki without turning around. “Don't wait up for me.”

It's possible that this is just Tony's imagination, but when the door shuts between them, he feels as though the sound has a sort of finality to it.

…

48.

Left with only two choices, neither of which he particularly likes, Tony picks the only option he thinks he can live with: he lies through his teeth. “I have no idea what you're talking about,” Tony says, and smiles insouciantly as he says it. No one's going to believe him, but that isn't the point: Tony isn't going to hand Thanos unlimited power and the keys to the universe, and if Thanos tries to make him, well. At least Loki will get a bit of a break, in the time it takes Tony to crack.

Thanos looks at Tony for a long, long moment, and then, finally, turns away. Tony's heart sinks when Thanos turns back to Loki. “Loki,” Tony rasps out, not even sure of what he's about to say—I'm sorry probably doesn't cover what he's just done to them, anything sarcastic would be too callous, and anything else...well. Too little, too late: and so Tony says nothing else, just says again, “Loki,” his voice cracking on the name, and then falls silent.

If Loki hears him, the god doesn't respond—and Thanos, for his part, ignores Tony entirely. “It takes only one to give an answer,” Thanos says, his voice coaxing. “And only one to hold a throne. It is a fair trade, Loki Silvertongue: your freedom, and nine worlds besides, for only five gems.”

It's a false offer—probably, neither of them are going to live, let alone rule anything—but Thanos gives it convincingly, and Tony can't speak out against it. Tony's way of handling things is going to kill them both; if Loki wants a way out, Tony isn't going to begrudge him that, even at the sort of cost they're facing.

Slowly, clearly painstakingly, Loki raises his head to look Thanos in the eye. Then, around a mouth full of blood, Loki says, as clearly as he can, “Do you think me a fool?” It's a mocking echo of Thanos' own words, the sarcasm cutting, and Tony's heart clenches, because of course that would be Loki's answer, and now they're both going to die. That's a terrifying thing to have to resign himself to, and he doesn't quite manage it.

This time, Thanos lands the blow on Loki himself—and it's clear, immediately, that Thanos is stronger than the Chitauri, maybe even stronger than Loki at his best, because where beating from the Chitauri has bruised Loki and broken his skin, this strike breaks bones: there's a sick cracking sound, and Loki screams, a high, animal sound of pain, before curling up around his now-useless arm.

“Loki!” Tony shouts, roaring out the words uncaring of his torn throat, and actively fights against the Chitauri holding him down for the first time in a while, because it's one thing to know he's going to die and another thing entirely to have to watch Loki die, and Tony can't. “Loki, fuck, please—”

Thanos lashes out again, and Tony hears rather than sees Loki's ribs break. “Come now,” Thanos says, and his voice is gone oddly gentle, “will you not reconsider? This aides no one. Give me the gems, and all this can end.”

And that is—Tony has never been this angry or terrified in his life, and it all twists together into one desperate knot of emotion that wraps itself around Tony's chest and makes it hard to breathe. “Fuck you, Thanos,” Tony all but spits out, the words nothing more than reckless, angry bravado, “once I'm free from this—” like he'll ever be free, but he needs to say something, needs to draw attention away from Loki, needs to help.

Thanos looks at Tony, a considering expression on his face, before he turns back to Loki's prone form. Still in that damnable, gentle tone, Thanos says, “Perhaps, if your own life is not incentive enough, something else will be.” Then Thanos turns, and sets his eyes on Tony. “You wear your weaknesses too openly,” Thanos says, offering up the words like a genuine piece of advice, and reaches out—

And with hands strong enough to break the bones of a god, Thanos gently, so gently, strikes Tony across the face, and Tony—

…

49.

Tony smiles at the god of lies and he leaves behind Jarvis and Rhodey and Pepper—Pepper, perfect imperfect Pepper who makes Tony want to be a better man than he is—and he leaves behind the company he tore apart and built back better, and he leaves behind the team of so-called superheroes who are quickly becoming an actual team, who are becoming something to be reckoned with—

Tony runs, and hides, and plans, builds a plan to make the universe quake before them and fall to its knees, Tony devotes his thoughts and his time and his energy to a god who leads him through the dark and won't even speak to him—

And then Tony fights to make them speak, to make them closer, to make Loki trust him, and slowly but surely Tony fights his way into getting that trust, into getting Loki's friendship, because Tony Stark gets what he wants with a single-minded intensity even when it's not what's best for him—

And Tony remembers, once, remembers everything, and he—and he—

Forgets. Forgets that people have died because of his plans, forgets that he's fighting to subjugate not only his own world but every world, forgets that he's working his hardest to put the universe in the hands of an unstable god who treats even his closest ally with disdain and distrust. Forgets because it makes him feel less guilty, because it lets him keep doing what he loves—he loves it—

And: Loki. The sharp curve of Loki's smile, the thin line of Loki's lips, the taste of skin so carefully memorized, the way Tony painstakingly teaches himself to read Loki's expressions so that he can understand. The feeling of Loki's fingers curling around Tony, possessive and wanting, the marks Loki likes to leave behind and Tony likes to look at as they slowly fade. Laughing, with and at each other, fighting each other, all the time this push-and-pull fucked up tug of war between them that Tony—

And none of it, absolutely none of it, Tony's free choice, nothing he walked into with his eyes open and his mind set. Two years of his life spent without free will, and he didn't even miss it when he knew it was gone.

Tony remembers. He remembers everything.

He just has no idea what to do now.

…

50.

Tony looks up out of brown eyes for the second time in two years, and can't find a single fucking word to say.

He's aware, at once, of Thanos looking down at him, smug as anything, and Loki. Loki, looking at him with a bloodied mouth and bruises around his green eyes, the look in his eyes so painfully, perfectly neutral that it's like there isn't even a person behind them anymore. Tony swallows and breaks the gaze, looking down intently at the ground beneath his knees.

“Well, little mortal,” Thanos says, arrogance clear as day in his voice, “is this not an improvement?”

Yes, Tony starts to say, and finds the specter of the word no already hanging in the shape of his lips. It’s strange; for a moment, things are quiet enough that Tony hears his heartbeat as it thuds in his ears, a dull, echoing rush. Is he angry? He...honestly can’t tell. Everything feels terribly far away.

Except Thanos. Thanos is altogether too close as he leans down towards Tony. With all the arrogant graciousness of someone who's sure he's won, the mad titan says, kindly, “My offer stands. Perhaps you will be less opposed to giving me the Infinity Gems now.”

And that—Tony's grateful to have one thing he can be absolutely, unequivocally sure about. “No,” Tony says, and smiles when rage flickers across Thanos' face. The grip the Chitauri have on him tightens punishingly around already bleeding skin, and Tony bears with the pain; he won't be feeling it for long, anyway.

“You would throw away your life for this cause, still?” Thanos asks, his expression going dark and brutal.

It takes Tony a moment to make sure the words about to leave his mouth are the ones he wants to say. After that moment, he shrugs, and says, “For the good of the universe, actually, but yeah.” Thanos hits him again at that, and this time it isn't so much a gentle love tap—the strike isn't deadly force, not yet, but it makes pain sear across Tony's face, and it's entirely possible it breaks something. Tony's neck creaks ominously when he turns back to face Thanos—when he smiles at the mad titan, it's through a mouth full of blood. “What?” he asks, and spits the blood out at Thanos' feet. “You can't give a guy free will and then be pissed when he exercises it.”

Thanos draws back his arm at that, and Tony closes his eyes, because he knows the strike that's going to kill him when he sees it. It's a shitty way to die, having his head crushed by a crazy god on a planet worlds from his own, but there are definitely worse ways, Tony consoles himself in the moment before the blow lands. At least this way is fast.

And then, at the last possible second, Loki says, tonelessly, “Wait.”

At first, Tony thinks he hallucinated it, because Loki, of all people, knows that Thanos can't be trusted with that sort of power. When a second passes and Tony still isn't dead, Tony blinks his eyes open a little hesitantly, unsure of what he wants to see.

Thanos has, once again, given up on Tony entirely, and instead has dragged Loki up almost to stand, which clearly can't be comfortable for the god of lies. Loki hangs from his grip, shattered bones making one whole side of his body slope in a way that makes Tony wince to look at. “You will bring the gems to me?” Thanos asks, and there's something pleased in his voice, like some twisted substitute for joy.

“I will bring you to the gems,” Loki says, and there's part of Tony that wants to sneer—laugh—smile at the fact that Loki can be thinking of semantic distinctions right now. His voice rasping and hoarse, Loki says, with a small, self-deprecating smile spreading his lips painfully, “You were right, Thanos, when you named my weakness. So, I'll have your word that he'll go unharmed, and, for that, you will have the gems.”

Thanos smiles, arrogant in his triumph, and says, “My word, then.”

At the words, Loki closes his eyes—just for a second, just one small movement that could be missed with a blink—and for that second alone, Loki's neutral mask fades into utmost relief. Tony sees it, and he doesn't...he can't know what to feel about that.

Then the moment is over, and Loki goes back to looking merely bored. His eyes fix on Tony for an instant, and then dart away. “Ah,” Loki says, and his tone could equally be about saving Tony's life or the weather, it's that generic. “Then it falls to me to hold my end of the bargain.” Looking directly, unflinchingly, at Thanos, Loki says, “We hid the gems away on Midgard, for safe keeping. I can show you where they are.”

Thanos reaches out, and his hand sinks into a tear in space—a tear Tony made there, with the space gem, made all over this little dead end planet, so that the Chitauri could raid where they pleased—and pulls it open. “Then we will go now,” Thanos says, and the view through the tear in space resolves itself into a random Manhattan side street, pedestrians passing by just inches away with no idea of what's transpiring just next to them, worlds away. “Waiting is for the weak.” With Loki clenched tight in his grip and carried like a rag doll, Thanos turns towards the hole in space—and in the last moment before he steps through the portal, Thanos throws a grin over his shoulder and says, pleased as anything, “Goodbye then, little mortal.”

It's at that moment that Tony knows, without a single doubt, that Thanos' word is meaningless, and Tony's going to die here anyway.

Then Thanos is gone, and Tony's left alone, battered and bruised, surrounded by Chitauri. “Shit,” Tony says, emphatically, and then manages to get out, “hey, come on—” before they're on him.

The first hit makes his world spin sickeningly—the second leaves him gasping for air, his world slowly going dark—and Tony never even feels the third.

Chapter Text

51.

There's a sound—Tony doesn't know what it is, exactly—and Tony wakes.

Just that is shocking enough, considering that Tony was fairly certain he was going to die; more surprising still is that Tony blinks his eyes open to the very familiar sight of the ceiling over his bed. Blearily, hurting in too many places to catalogue them properly, Tony sits up, and tries to piece things together. So he's not dead, for a starter, that's an extremely welcome bit of luck. The question remains, exactly how the hell did he get off of Thanos' backwater corner of the universe and home to Alfheim while unconscious?

The answer to that question is sitting, perfectly silently, in a chair pulled up next to Tony's bed, watching Tony with blue eyes. “Boss,” Barton acknowledges, expressionlessly.

Tony groans, and shuts his eyes again. Fuck, he'd forgotten about Barton. “I'm not your boss,” Tony points out, because even when Tony was still...even before, it was always Loki who called the shots where Barton was concerned. At the thought of the god of mischief, Tony feels his chest go tight, his heartbeat doing something interesting but probably not particularly healthy, and that's—Tony doesn't know whether it's anger, fear or something else entirely, but he doesn't want to feel it. He doesn't want to feel anything, right now.

Barton's voice, when it comes, is a welcome distraction. “You're Loki's second in command,” Barton says, and something about considering his relationship to Loki in that light makes Tony startle slightly. “With Loki gone, that makes you the boss, at least for now.”

“That's not,” Tony starts to say, and then realizes exactly how futile this conversation is going to be. He remembers perfectly well what it felt like, to be under Loki's hold: so long as Barton's still all blue eyes and unquestioning loyalty, Tony explaining that he doesn't want control over Barton, over this insane plan that's at once his and nothing Tony could ever condone, will just go over like a lead balloon. Huffing a slight, unhappy laugh, Tony gives up, and just says, “Good timing.”

Barton shrugs, clearly not accepting the praise. “You said that if the two of you weren't back by daybreak, I should come and get you,” Barton says, matter-of-factly. “I follow orders.”

It's an unusually loaded phrase at just this moment, and Barton doesn't even know it—it makes Tony laugh, and once he's started he can't stop, just shakes with laughter that verges on hysterical until a lack of air drives him into involuntary silence. In the aftermath of that laughter, Tony hiccups, once, and sucks in air like a drowning man finding the surface, lightheaded and aching. Barton watches throughout it all with a faint expression of concern on his face, but says nothing. “Yeah,” Tony says, finally, when he has the air he needs to speak again. “I guess you do.”

Clearly choosing to ignore whatever is going on with Tony right now, Barton reaches down into one pocket, and pulls out something small, tossing it at Tony—it isn't until he closes his fingers around it that Tony realizes he's holding the space gem again. Something about its weight feels right in his grip, and when Barton says, “That's yours,” Tony doesn't think to correct him.

Tony looks down at the small purple gem in his hand, and says, his tone sounding strange even to his own ears, “Thanos is going to kill Loki, when he realizes Loki can't give him all the gems.” Loki knew, of course—Loki looked at Tony for just a split second before he said the words, before he turned to Thanos and promised something impossible to protect Tony, and Tony knew what that look meant. Two year's worth of knowledge about Loki didn't just evaporate into thin air when the mind control did; Tony saw that look, and knew Loki was about to make a mad gamble, resigned to the odds against him.

By now, Tony knows, Loki could already be dead. He closes his eyes, and breathes.

“Are you planning to do something about that?” Barton asks, and Tony thinks he hears a faint accusatory note under the professional neutrality of that tone.

Tony breathes out hard, and then says, too honestly, “I don't know.”

It's not that easy, of course. Tony doesn't get to just say he doesn't know, hide away from the worlds, and let the issue of Thanos sort itself out—that's not the sort of person he is, not who he was two years ago and not who he is today. Whatever else the last two years have changed about Tony, they haven't made him someone who'd sit back and watch other people suffer when he can do something about it, and that's...sort of reassuring, in its own way. It's good to know himself at least that much, to know that, whatever else he chooses, he is going to make a stupid, possibly suicidal attempt to put Thanos down for good.

But Thanos is one thing, and Loki...Loki's another thing entirely. There's no easy, right thing to do with Loki, no choice that stands out from all the moral grey and ridiculous complications of this situation—and, failing that, Tony's left with what he wants to do. And that's—

“I don't know,” Tony repeats, and huffs out a faint, self-deprecating laugh. “I guess I should get on that.” Tony runs a hand through his hair, ignoring the aching pull of his bruised skin at the movement, and then swings his legs over the side of the bed and comes up to stand. The motion makes him sway, faintly, his balance uncertain; Tony holds out a hand, and stops Barton from steadying him. “I'm fine,” Tony says, and catches himself on his own two feet, unaided.

Once he's steady, Tony says, “Alright. Two things need to happen here, before anything else. You're going to help me with one of them.” The tone—imperious, easily assured of his right to command people around—still comes easily, even after two years of disuse; and, for just a second, Tony sounds like his old self, the person he last was when he stood, heart pounding in his chest and a challenging smile on his face, to face off against the god of lies in Manhattan two years ago. It makes for a not-entirely-comfortable moment of nostalgia, and Tony shakes it off as soon as he can.

Obliging, Barton stands, and follows Tony when he leads the pair of them, slowly and maybe a little stiffly, out of the bedroom. When Tony makes no move to speak further, Barton asks, “And what about the second thing?”

Tony smiles, and looks over his shoulder to catch Barton's still-blue eyes. “I'm going to help you with the second thing,” Tony says, because if he has to start making choices again, this seems like a pretty decent starting point. “There's someone you're overdue for a conversation with, and it's rude to keep her waiting.”

…

21.

Loki finds him, in the aftermath of the hunter's attack—Tony sees him approaching, sees the long, familiar lines of the god's body, and has to close his eyes.

“Fuck,” Tony says. His voice is rough; it shakes. He's shaking, probably—he tried standing, earlier, and he just couldn't, like getting everything back actually threw him out of his body. Tony feels...disconnected, lost in his own fucking body. Not just his body, in his own life, his entire life is—this is his life now, this, the plan, Loki—

“Stark,” Loki says, with something urgent in his voice—and even now, even free, Tony obeys the order implicit there.

Tony opens his eyes, and Loki stands over him, a tall, unbending shadow against the fading sunlight; Tony looks at the god from behind brown eyes, and feels his mouth spread into a sharp, unhappy thing that is nothing like a smile.

…

36.

It takes Tony until somewhere around five in the morning to come up with a plan; sunlight is already beginning to creep into their bedroom by the time that Tony tiptoes his way back in.

Loki, always a light sleeper, stirs when Tony sits on the edge of the bed. It takes Loki a moment to speak, but, when the god does, his voice is amused and cutting in a way that Tony doesn't like at all. “Back so soon?” Loki asks, insinuation curling heavily around the words.

“Oh, fuck you,” Tony says, but it comes out sounding more tired than angry. Loki's only response is to roll onto his back, and to look up at Tony in a way that might almost seem apologetic, if Tony didn't know Loki better than that. Agitated, Tony runs one hand through his hair, throwing it into disarray, and says, pointedly, “I came up with a plan to handle the last two gems. Is now a good time, or are you still too busy with your ego trip to listen?”

Tony knows, as he's saying it, that he's probably picking a fight, but it's also five in the morning, and frankly Tony is too irritated and tired for diplomacy. Apparently, though, Loki is actually feeling at least a little bit apologetic, because Loki doesn't take offense, or even withdraw behind cruel insincerity, just says, “Tell me.”

So Tony does, and he doesn't spare Loki any of the details. Even the bits Loki doesn't have the background to fully understand, Tony mentions, because he's pretty fucking determined that there won't be any more pointed exclusions between them. When Tony's done, Loki takes a moment just to absorb the information, and then says, “You're certain this will work?”

“I wouldn't have brought it up if I weren't.” Tony sighs, and stands back up. He wants, more than anything, just to sleep; this isn't even close to the first time he's given up on sleep for something more important, though, and it probably won't be the last either. “I'm going to finish working out some of the details. In the morning, I'm going to need to know everything you know about how the gauntlet works—hell, I'll take educated guesses too. And there are obviously some things I'll need you to—” A wide yawn interrupts Tony's words, as Tony's body reminds him of exactly how tired he is. He turns to leave once it's done, figuring he should get as much work done as he can before he stops having a choice about sleeping.

Long, slim fingers close around Tony's wrist as Tony starts to move, and even Loki's lightest grip is strong enough to keep Tony still. It irritates Tony, to be so easily caged; he's not weak, by human standards, and even after two years he's not fully adjusted to having a lover who can so easily overpower him. “Yes?” Tony asks, his tone deliberately unwelcoming.

Loki looks him over, head to toe, though Tony isn't willing to put in the energy to decipher the accompanying expression on the god's face, and so hasn't the slightest clue as to why. “You should sleep,” Loki says, just enough of a suggestion that Tony doesn't have to take it as an outright order. The words still weigh on him, but they're easy enough to shake off, even if the effort leaves Tony feeling a little cold.

Tony raises his eyebrows, and looks pointedly down at Loki's grip. “To be perfectly clear,” Tony says, “even if I was sleeping tonight, I wouldn't be sleeping here.” Loki isn't forgiven. Just because Tony came up with a way to save their asses doesn't mean he's forgotten that Loki was willing to let him walk into danger without even forewarning him that it was coming.

Just like that, Loki lets go—though of course, Loki being Loki, he manages to make the move look like he was planning to do it anyway, and Tony's words had nothing to do with it. “I'll not keep you, then,” Loki says, his tone perfectly conversational and bland, and his eyes dark: pointedly giving Tony nothing, in the way the usually means there's a strong emotion underneath the blankness that Loki considers weak, and so won't show. In this case, it's probably something close to hurt.

For just a second, Tony hesitates, because it's not as though he likes the state of things between them right now, both of them hurt and neither apologizing. Ultimately, though, it was Loki who fucked up first, and worse—and so Tony just says, equally casually, “Thanks,” and heads for the door.

…

52.

The way Tony sees it, he really has three options here.

One: Go up against Thanos, fuck up somewhere, and die. That's not Tony's favorite possibility, and he's going to try to avoid it as much as he humanly can, but the occasional dangers of being a pragmatist include realizing his death is maybe the most probable option.

Two: Go up against Thanos, pull it off, save the nine worlds, and then leave it there. Drag Loki off and leave him with Thor, or let Loki disappear into the ether. Track down the Chitauri armies and wipe them out, make the worlds safe, and step away from using the victories the way he planned to. Step away from the throne. Try to find some other life, some middle ground between trying to squeeze back into his old life like a puzzle piece that no longer quite fits where it used to, and the fast-paced planned-out life he's lived for two years.

Or, three: Go up against Thanos, pull it off, save the nine worlds, and finish the plan as it was intended. Track down the Chitauri armies and wipe them out, and make sure he's seen doing it, make sure he's credited for each and every victory. Make appearances, make himself known, make people whisper behind their hands in awe whenever they say his name, and then ride that wave of devotion right into control of the nine worlds. Take the power he wanted. Ignore the cost. Make that last step his free choice where none of the others were, and finish what he started. And...handle the question of Loki, somehow.

It's Tony's choice. For the first time in two years, it is completely, entirely Tony's choice.

Tony's fingers twitch, and he clenches them into a fist to still them, his own fingernails biting crescents into his palms.

…

37.

It's a little bit, in terms of impossibility, like trying to rebuild a jet fighter from broken parts, blindfolded and in the dark, using parts from six different plane models, without tools, when you've never actually seen a fighter plane in your life. Or, to put it plainly, it's maybe the most challenging thing Tony's ever done in his life, and Tony's the guy who successfully miniaturized an arc reactor from bomb parts in a cave in the desert, so that's saying a lot.

Tony hums, thinking, and the world fades away. He feels time passing, in an abstract sense: food shows up at his side and he eats it, idly. Maybe there are words addressed at him, but the sound of them vanishes over the buzzing thrum of his thoughts. One by one, connections slide into place, and Tony draws them out of beautiful theory and into life, onto paper—one by one, until there is only one left, and Tony realizes, suddenly, that it isn't daytime any more, and that Loki is standing just over his shoulder, the god's focus an almost tangible weight on Tony's skin.

“If you say one word right now,” Tony says, paying absolutely no attention to the words coming out of his mouth, “I swear to god, I'm going to—”

It's going to be a good threat, probably, except that at just that moment the last piece slides into place, and Tony drops the thought to let his fingers fly over paper, pencil tip completing a circuit and bringing the entire, impossible theory into visible plausibility. Just like that, it's done.

Tony raises the tip of his pencil, so careful not to smudge a single line, and then lets out a breath. “It's beautiful,” he says, his tone the same, faintly awed thing it turns into every time something this brilliant crystallizes into something real. Tony's a genius, yes, and arrogant as shit, but it's just possible this is the best work he's ever done; he's allowed to be impressed with himself for a minute.

Loki leans in over Tony's shoulder, green eyes darting across the paper, and Tony has one of those moments where he remembers exactly how smart his lover is; even unfamiliar as he is with Earth-style engineering, it's clear just from the look in Loki's eyes that the god understands what he's seeing, his mind almost visibly processing the new information. “I see,” Loki says, after a few minutes silence—but if Tony's not mistaken, he hears a little doubt underlying the words.

That's alright, though: Tony has enough faith in himself for two people, and he just knows, somehow, that this is going to work. “No, you don't,” Tony says, but the words aren't argumentative—actually, this is maybe the friendliest Tony's been since he and Loki had their fight. Tony looks up at Loki, grins, and says, “You will.”

…

54.

The last piece locks into place perfectly, with a faint, pneumatic hiss, and Tony grins at the sound. “Everything okay?” Barton asks, and steps away to let Tony move.

Tony lifts one hand to eye level, and looks at it, curling and unfurling his fingers, and his grin goes stupidly wide. This is maybe the best he's felt since he suddenly regained free will; considering that it's possible he's going to get himself killed in a little while, he feels perfectly entitled to enjoy the hell out of this moment. “Yeah,” he says, and holds out a hand to Barton. “Seems alright to me. Ready to go?”

Barton looks at Tony with faint reproach, but takes Tony's outstretched hand. “You still haven't told me where we're going,” Barton says.

“It's a surprise,” Tony says, making his tone go chiding. “You wouldn't want me to ruin the surprise, would you?” The space gem starts up mid-sentence—sometimes Tony really thinks the damn thing has a sense of dramatic timing—and the space of Alfheim folds and falls away from them for maybe the last time ever.

Barton has just enough time to realize what Tony's done, and turns to Tony with betrayal on his face, a question hanging on his lips—and then Romanov is on them, wrenching Barton away from Tony bodily. Barton struggles, of course, but for all that Romanov is smaller she's also terrifyingly competent at what she does; within just seconds, she's managed to turn all of Barton's attempts to escape against him, and caught him in a chokehold that's probably going to knock him out for a while, Barton's attempts to fight getting weaker with every passing second. Luckily for Tony, that keeps her hands full for the moment being, which means the worst she can do to him is throw him a downright venomous stare, and ask, “Why did you bring him?”

Tony shrugs, and says, “Because he deserves better, and you deserve to be the one who gives it to him.” Romanov's spent two years trying to find Barton and bring him back to her side—Tony's fairly certain that qualifies her as the safest hands to leave Barton in, while Tony goes off to possibly get himself killed. “I'd recommend a good hit to the head, if you want him to start thinking on his own again,” Tony says, as a peace offering of sorts. “Either way, he's all yours.”

Romanov watches him, her dark eyes unwavering, until the second the space gem swallows him up, and sends him off to make a harder choice.

...

40.

The first time Tony makes it work, he also blows up half his workshop doing it. Loki is...less than impressed by this.

“You wouldn't have wanted to know me during my MIT days,” Tony says, slightly amused, when Loki's initial adrenaline-fueled reaction has faded away to utmost irritation. Tony, for his own part, is actually slightly heartened to find out that Loki will all but leap to his defense, when he thinks Tony's under attack; of course, unsurprisingly, the second Loki realized that bounty hunters hadn't actually invaded their home, and that it was Tony's own miscalibration that blew a chunk out of his wall, well. That protective anger shifted over to incredulous disdain pretty rapidly. “I've definitely done worse damage than this to a workshop before.”

Loki turns an absolutely cutting expression on Tony, anger clear on the god's face. “You're very self-satisfied for a man who nearly just brought his home down, Stark,” Loki says.

Tony refuses to actually wither away and die under the force of that expression, though it's pretty clear that's what that look is intended for. “Yeah, I am,” he says, still far too pleased with himself to sound anything like contrite. “Seeing as this means I got it functional, I'm going to go right on feeling that way, actually.”

“You call this working?” Loki asks, throwing one arm out in a wide sweep clearly meant to bring the destruction behind him to Tony's attention.

“Not working well,” Tony cedes, because nearly two years away from his career on Earth haven't been enough to strip him of his pride in his skill, and he doesn't want Loki thinking this is the best he can do. “Still. It's working at all, and that's definitely something. It means this model is on the right track, anyway.” Tony's willing to be proud of successful baby steps, considering he's doing something no one else has ever done, and his first few tries didn't even work at all.

Loki raises one eyebrow, and at least a little bit of his anger seems to cool. “Well,” the god of mischief says, in a perfectly calm voice. “At least there's some evidence that this fool plan isn't for naught, after all.”

“There you go, babe,” Tony says, and grins widely at the extremely sardonic look Loki gives him in return for the pet name. “You're starting to develop some faith in me after all.”

…

55.

The thing is, it ought to be easy. Tony's never been the sort of guy to meekly fall in line and follow orders, and that's been exactly what he's been doing for the past two years. He ought to hate that, ought to hate everything about it, and he doesn't doubt that the person he was two years ago would have. It would have been easy, for that version of Tony, to know exactly what to do about Loki, because the answer would have been: finish off Thanos and then never have anything to do with Loki again, drop him off on Asgard and let him be somebody else's problem, and never talk about it again. That Tony would have walked away, easily, turned his back on the god that took his freedom away—and if he'd woken up at nights doubting his choice, or with his mind racing with memories, the answer would have been to drink the thoughts quiet, and go the fuck back to sleep.

It ought to be easy.

But.

Here’s the thing: there’s a part of Tony, a very large part, that wants it to be that simple. That part wants to throw the last two years out entirely, to just forget, and to be the man he was once again. Maybe Tony’s never been a good man, not fully, but he’s certainly been a better one than he was with Loki, over the past two years. And he wants to be that man again, viscerally.

But he can’t afford to forget. He’s had two years of forgetting, of merciful relief from his own guilt and the consequences of his actions, and...

Tony’s tired.

Because there’s another part of Tony--which is also, unfortunately, quite large--that’s absolutely terrified of forgetting again. There’s a nobler phrasing he could couch this in, something about Tony feeling like he doesn’t deserve the peace of forgetting, but Tony’s determined to be honest with himself, here, and his motivations aren’t noble, down at the heart of them. Right at Tony’s core, there’s a fucking incapacitating fear now: fear of helplessness, fear of that fog creeping in at the edges of his memory again, blurring parts of him away from his own reach.

Maybe Tony can’t quite figure out, yet, how he’s going to live with the memories of what he’s done, but he knows for certain now that he can’t live without those memories either.

And without forgetting them, well. There’s Loki, entangled in it all. And Tony can’t forget him either.

So, when it comes down to it, here’s Tony, standing on the brink of something massive. Here he is, hurting and alone, caught between a life he loved that came at a cost he can no longer condone, and the uncertain future ahead. And lying in the balance is...well, pretty much everything.

So.

No pressure, right?

...

42.

The space gem takes them as far as the doors to Odin's vault, but no farther—Tony isn't exactly surprised, after how closely guarded Loki said this place was, but that doesn't mean he wasn't hoping to show up right next to the Infinity Gauntlet, and be in and out in minutes. Instead, space unfolds and leaves them in the sheltered overhang of the uppermost doorway, with the warm, Asgardian sun shining slanted over their faces.

“Well,” Tony says, and looks around momentarily, just to make sure they're actually alone. “I hope we had an alternate plan of how to get in, because this was all I had.”

Loki throws Tony a look, the one that all but calls Tony an idiot, and raises his hand, green wisps of magic dancing visibly around his fingertips. “We're hardly unprepared,” Loki says, and twists his fingers—just like that, the door behind them unlocks, with an audible click.

It's a long walk down, and there are more doors between them and the vault, but they never give Loki any trouble. It feels...too easy, almost, which in Tony's experience is almost never a good thing; Tony goes with it for as long it works, though, following Loki down the long set of stairs, and finally into the belly of the Asgardian palace where the vault itself rests.

“Be careful not to step beyond where we must,” Loki says, his palm resting on the vault door and his footsteps nearly silent even in the echoing vault chamber. Throwing a distrustful look at the far wall of the chamber, Loki says, “I think my magic will shield us, but if I am wrong, this will end...poorly, for us. The Destroyer was ever vigilant in its protection of this place, and I don't doubt that whatever Odin Allfather replaced it with is equally vicious in its task.”

“Good to know,” Tony says, wincing slightly at the sheer amount of sound he makes with every step. Subtlety has never exactly been his forte, but being noisy and being loud enough to bring the Asgardian royal guard down on their heads are two very different things, and Tony's slightly concerned that he's veering into the latter territory.

He crosses the vault room behind Loki, until Loki stops at an alcove inset into the wall—and there, perched on a pedestal, is a gaudy golden gauntlet, with the reality gem set neatly into one of its knuckles. Tony steps slightly into the alcove, tilting his head and taking in as much of the gauntlet as he can. “Huh,” Tony says. “Not much for understatement, were they?” If something's over the top by Tony Stark's standards, that says more than it doesn't.

“No,” a voice says—a voice not Loki's—and Tony just knows, somehow, even before he turns around, that he's going to be coming face to face with Odin himself.

…

56.

It's easy enough to find Thanos, in the end—Thanos is past subtlety now, too close to his goal to care about playing the omnipresent, shadowy menace that Tony's built him up into, and he leaves a trail of wreckage in his wake that's better than any trail marker could be. Tony follows after as quickly as he can, trying to ignore the occasional body mixed in with the rubble—he knew, after all, that Thanos had no respect for life, and it was only Thanos' desire to have Tony and Loki do the hard work of finding the Infinity gems that ever made Thanos curb his destructive tendencies at all. Now, though, Tony and Loki have served their purpose, and Thanos is probably looking to make as many sacrifices to his beloved Death as he possibly can, to make up for the two years of relative abandonment.

Tony steels himself against that, and keeps going. This is why he's here—to make Thanos stop, to keep him from ever harming anyone else. It still isn't easy to see innocent lives lost, but there are other, more important things to do right now than face the consequences of his own actions.

It very nearly makes Tony laugh, when he realizes where Loki brought Thanos: the trail of destruction leads straight to Stark Tower, stopping just at the doors of Tony's old monument to himself. There's something almost poetic to that, to everything ending in the same place it started two years ago, with Tony once again under his own free will and acting for the good of this world. This has Loki's sense of humor all over it, which probably—probably—means Loki's still alive, and that's—

“Alright,” Tony says, and starts towards the ruined doors of his own tower. “Let's get this done.”

…

22.

Tony can tell the exact moment that Loki notices the change in Tony's eye color, because Loki's shoulders tense, the god's posture closing off above Tony. So Loki knows he did something wrong, at least, doesn't consider himself blameless, knows right now that Tony wants to—that more than anything Tony wants—

Tony laughs, because even in his own fucking head he shies from the word, from wanting anything, from choice—because Tony's free, but he doesn't feel it, he feels lost and incompetent and— “Fuck you,” he tells Loki, and his voice doesn't even sound like his own, rough and tight and shaking, “you did this to me, you—”

“Stark,” Loki says, and there's something like apology in the name, apology Tony is completely unwilling to hear.

“No,” Tony says, adamantly, and the word comes out like a shout, too loud for the space between them. “No, you don't get to try to make this better, this is all on you, this is—,” and Tony, suddenly, feels cold, and deadly calm. It's shock, it's probably shock, but that doesn't make the realization that comes with it any less chilling. Very quietly now, Tony says, with absolute surety, “I can't live with this.”

Tony's done too much, forgotten every lesson he ever learned about the cost of war, slept deeply while his plan saw thousands of innocents killed, and that...it makes Tony sick to realize that. There was already too much blood on Tony's hands to every be washed clean, realistically, and to add this on top of it all...he can't. It would kill him to try.

“No,” Loki says, and suddenly his voice is all snarling urgency. “You will not throw your life away.”

“You already threw it away for me,” Tony says, and the words are perfectly, unwaveringly calm. Jarvis, Pepper, Rhodey, his company, the redemption he was earning tooth and nail—they're gone. Everything's gone, everything was taken away the second Loki touched the tip of that scepter to Tony's chest and stole him away, and that's—

Tony's eyes fall on the tip of the scepter, and his breath catches.

“Of course,” he says, slowly, “there is another way.”

…

57.

They're going to be in the penthouse, Tony knows; if it's Loki orchestrating this whole thing, bringing them back to where they started, then Loki's damned well going to be thorough about it.

Tony stalks through the lobby of Stark Tower, ignoring the faint irritation that seeing his tower damaged raises. This isn't his place anymore, and it shouldn't matter that Thanos clearly felt like a bit of wanton destruction was in order here, that Tony's carefully designed building is looking more than a little worse for the wear. The elevator's still working, and that's about all Tony needs right now—the rest of it ought to be irrelevant.

Ought to be, Tony acknowledges, a little ruefully, isn't quite cutting it. Thanos needs to learn not to fuck with what belongs to Tony.

Tony stabs the button for the penthouse, maybe a little harder than he needs to, and waits for the elevator doors to slide shut. Before they can, someone stands from behind the lobby desk—the receptionist, looking a little battered but overall intact, stands, and then, noticing Tony, stares.

“Hey,” Tony says, for lack of something better to say. “You should maybe think of getting out of here. Might get messy.”

The receptionist's eyes widen, and the guy looks around at the destruction around him, clearly wondering what messy means, if this doesn't qualify. Tony's amused, despite himself, and despite the moment. “Just saying,” he says, as the elevator doors slide shut, and the elevator shudders upwards.

…

58.

Tony hears Thanos before he even sees him—even through the metal of the elevator doors, the mad god's voice is audible. “I will wait no longer,” Thanos says, all but spitting out the words. “You will give me the gems, fool god, or you will die.”

And, because Tony's life is one gigantic instance of good dramatic timing, the elevator doors pick that moment to slide open, with a faint, cheerful ding.

The tableau they open onto isn't exactly pleasant—Loki's clearly taken a few more hits, between the time Tony last saw him and now, and Tony's honestly not sure even Loki's healing will be able to bring him out of this in one piece. About the only thing about the god of lies that doesn't look ruined are his green eyes, which are locked on Thanos, gaze pointed and caustic, right up until the moment Tony enters. Then, Loki's eyes flick towards Tony, and hold there for a while, with something unreadable his gaze.

Tony, being who he is, goes for the asshole opening line; stepping out of the elevator and into the penthouse proper, Tony flashes a wide smile and asks, “Miss me?”

…

43.

It seems like a dumb thing to say, but, after every story he's ever heard about Odin, Tony sort of expected the guy would be taller.

That's not to say that Odin lacks presence, because the opposite is pretty much true—as soon as Tony notices Odin, it's like the room shrinks to center on him, though possibly that's the adrenaline rush rather than any special skill on Odin's part. Tony backs away, instinctively, the whole step that he's capable of backing up in this limited space. It's practicality, not cowardice; one look at Odin makes it pretty clear that if the god decided to put an end to Tony, Tony would be shit out of luck.

Still: not as tall as expected. That's mildly reassuring, in its own way.

Also helpful is that Odin, apparently, suffers from the same condition as every other god Tony's ever met, the one where he totally ignores the mortal in the room if there's another god present. The way Odin is watching Loki is downright terrifying, and Tony says that as an outside observer, who doesn't have the force of that gaze turned on him. It must be awful for Loki, considering Odin is about the last person Loki would want to see here, and absolutely nothing about Odin's stare is friendly or paternal.

“Loki,” Odin says, his voice booming in the high-ceilinged room; the absence of a last name for Loki is cutting in its obviousness, and Tony hears Loki take a sharp, quiet breath in by Tony's side. “You trespass too far for tolerance.”

Loki laughs, and Tony can actually see his masks go up, the careful control of expression that Loki uses to perform. “Come now,” Loki says, and steps out of the shadow of the alcove, facing Odin eye to eye. It's strange, because Loki is by far the taller of the two, and Tony's used to seeing Loki as a tall, looming figure—in this moment, though, facing off against Odin, Loki almost seems smaller than Tony's used to. It's like, for all of Loki's careful control, he can't quite help from shrinking into himself when Odin's around. “Let us not pretend that my trespass has not long since passed the point of tolerance.”

“Perhaps,” Odin acknowledges, and for just a moment, the dispassionate, uninterested way Odin looks at Loki reminds Tony so much of Howard that his stomach twists uncomfortably. Tony wants to reach out, to offer Loki physical support right now, but Loki is too far to reach—even if he wasn't, the closed lines of Loki's posture make it clear that right now Loki would only shake the comfort off with a snarl. “Now, however, that trespass has brought you uninvited into my home. That, I cannot forgive.”

There's a spear in Odin's hands, Tony realizes, suddenly; he doesn't know whether it wasn't there before, or Tony was just too caught in the situation to notice it, but there it is, a gleaming golden line that Odin brings to bear. The dim light of the vault reflects off the sharp edge of the spear with an almost vicious glint.

Right, so this is going to go badly, Tony can definitely acknowledge that right now. Loki's stance changes, his center of gravity dropping as his arms come up defensively; his magic sparks into visible green light, dancing agitatedly around his fingertips.

And—it isn't Tony underestimating Loki, because he knows exactly what his lover is capable of in a fight, but Tony just knows, watching Odin and Loki face off, that Loki isn't going to come out the winner here. Odin's got a few thousand years of experience in battle on both of them, and he's probably intimately familiar with Loki's fighting style as well. If this plays out, Tony doesn't doubt that they aren't going to make it out of here in one piece.

Tony darts a look at Odin, just to make sure—and, yes, all of Odin's attention is still fixated on Loki, unwaveringly, and not on Tony—so Tony takes the chance, and goes for it. He's already in the alcove with the gauntlet; it doesn't take much to reach out, slip the gauntlet off its pedestal, and slide in easily over one hand.

The gauntlet's cold, and the fingers move stiffly, joints probably long rusted over—but, for all that, it fits over Tony's hand neatly, and settles over Tony's arm with relatively few problems. Tony's other hand comes up, and scrambles for the end of the gauntlet, and it's the work of a few seconds to get everything in place; it's all done before either Odin or Loki get to throw a proper first strike.

Then, all that's left is to hope like hell that he didn't screw up somewhere, and step out of the alcove, gauntled arm raised at Odin, to say, “You might want to rethink that.”

…

59.

Thanos turns to look at Tony slowly—the mad god's lips purse downwards, and his eyes scan over Tony dismissively. “You live, little mortal,” Thanos acknowledges, the words sounding almost bored. “Your existence begins to irritate me.”

It's not exactly the first time Tony's heard that line, though the context is new, he has to admit. “Yeah, well,” he says, and steps closer, “I'm a bit hard to kill, what can I say.” Thanos smiles, widely, like Tony told a fantastic joke rather than the best single-sentence summary of his life he can offer, and Tony decides it's about time he was taken seriously around here. Tilting his head questioningly, Tony asks, “Any chance I caught you right before you had a chance to put down Loki, give up the soul gem, and leave behind this life of crime?”

Thanos throws back his head and laughs, a full-bodied, rough sound, and Tony says, “Yeah, I didn't think so, somehow.” Tony shrugs, rolls his shoulders idly, and says, “We can do this the hard way instead, I'm down with that.”

“Oh, this is rich,” Thanos says, and looks directly at Tony's eyes, incredulity and amusement clear on the mad god's face. “The mortal thinks himself strong enough to face Thanos, does he?” Suddenly, Thanos lets go his grip on Loki, and turns to face Tony fully; Loki drops like a stone to the floor, clearly unable to support his own weight. The smile on Thanos' face goes dark, and Thanos' eyes go almost fever bright. “Do you think a little armor will be enough to protect you from me, mortal?”

Tony looks down, at the gold, shining metal that encases his body from head to toe, and curls his fingers, feeling the familiar resistance of a suit to movement—when he looks back up, he's smiling behind his helmet, not that Thanos can see it. “Oh,” Tony says, his voice thick with amusement, “you really need to start doing better background checks, Thanos.”

It is with the utmost satisfaction that Tony raises one palm, and shoots Thanos right in the face.

…

44.

Loki doesn't turn to look at Tony when he steps from the alcove, though Odin does, perhaps for the first time. For his part, Loki just says, “I was beginning to wonder when you would make your entrance, Stark.”

“It took me a second to make sure I wouldn't blow us all up trying,” Tony says, and makes sure none of his uncertainty about this reflects in his posture. This is at least twenty percent bluff, and if Odin guesses as much, then they're both fucked. “You're welcome, by the way.”

Loki grins, a sharp, predatory thing, and the magic curling around his fingers sharpens suddenly, solidifying into a small, deadly-edged blade. “I could have held my own,” Loki says, and Tony isn't sure whether that's bravado or overconfidence.

“I like our odds better this way,” Tony says, because, hey, mid-fight banter is basically what Tony does.

The moment snaps as Odin's voice rings out. “Enough!” Odin says, and brings the wicked point of that spear up, ready to strike. “It was folly to bring the mortal here,” Odin says to Loki, very seriously. “The only thing you have accomplished is that now he will die with you.”

And that's all the warning they get: a second later the tip of that blade is flashing out, almost quicker than Tony's eyes can follow, toward Loki.

It's instinct, not assurance, that lets Tony do what he does next; all he knows is that he doesn't want Loki harmed, and, with that in mind, Tony reaches out with one metal-covered hand, and tries.

The strike never lands.

…

60.

After two years without the suits, two years of being the weakest person in any given room, there's something fantastic about hearing the familiar buzz and whir of a repulsor charge and discharge; even more self-satisfying is watching Thanos' face snap back at the force of the shot, taken enough by surprise that the mad titan has to stumble a step backward to catch his balance.

When Thanos looks back up, the expression on his uninjured face is furious, but coldly so; he's looking at Tony like Tony's already dead, and just hasn't realized it yet. Tony grins behind the face mask, the familiar thrum of battle adrenaline rushing through his veins. Finally, fucking finally, Tony gets a chance to face Thanos head on, after two years of being disregarded and taunted; if Thanos thinks Tony is going down easily, he's got another think coming. “That was so worth it,” Tony says, pleased as hell with himself.

A second later, Tony has to dodge violently to one side to avoid one of Thanos' energy blasts—even half a year later, Tony still remembers how badly those burn. The shot hits a wall, rather than Tony, and Tony feels the faint impact of flying debris against the back of his suit. Thanos hisses out an irritated sound when the shot misses, and takes another one almost immediately, this one a little too quick for Tony to dodge.

Tony sees the victory in Thanos' eyes, and takes great pleasure in the second where the space gem twists space around Tony, and deposits him safely out of the way of the blast. The outrage in Thanos' eyes is wonderful. “Come on,” Tony says, voice taunting, “you didn't really think we were stupid enough to keep our gems locked away in a tower in Manhattan, did you?”

Then Thanos is right on top of him, so quickly he couldn't have physically crossed the distance between them, and gets one hand up, around Tony's throat. The metal of the suit creaks and buckles under the strength of Thanos' grip, and suddenly there isn't enough air in the world, and Tony feels himself choke. “You are not the only one who can teleport, little mortal,” Thanos says, voice all arrogance, as his fingers tighten.

Tony doesn't have the air he'd need for witty repartee, but he does have a bit of luck on his side—when Thanos came to grab him, he let one of Tony's hands fall into the space between their bodies, and Tony brings that hand up, now, to rest on Thanos' chest, and pushes. There's visible surprise in Thanos' eyes when that move has enough force behind it to actually push the mad titan backwards, freeing Tony and giving him a half second to gasp for air.

Finally, finally, Thanos seems to grasp what's going on here. “You use the Infinity gems to fight,” Thanos says, and throws another blast Tony's way as he speaks.

Just to prove a point, Tony calls on the time gem this time, slowing the blast until it's moving almost glacially, and then stepping around it easily, letting it bump harmlessly against the wall behind him. “There's a lot you can do with five of six,” Tony rasps out, grinning despite the ache in his throat.

“True,” Thanos acknowledges, and the fact that Thanos agrees with him is warning enough that Tony isn't surprised to suddenly wind up held in Thanos' grasp. “The question remains: can they do enough to save you, little mortal?”

And just like that, Tony is being hurled backwards, crashing through the glass window of the penthouse and suddenly, terrifyingly, finding himself in free fall.

…

61.

This incarnation of the suit can't fly—Tony had other priorities, when he was building it—and for a second, Tony just watches the ground rush up towards him, absolutely, stupidly convinced that this is it for him, that this, after everything, is going to be what kills him.

Then his brain engages, and Tony actually rolls his eyes at himself as he politely asks the space gem to not let him die. There's the familiar folding of space around him, and then Tony finds himself crashing into the street, landing awkwardly, but not with deadly force. He catches himself with one hand and his knees, and a little help from the power gem is enough to get himself upright in pretty much the same motion. Looking up towards the shattered window of the penthouse, Tony shouts, “Nice try, Thanos, but no cigar.”

It doesn't particularly surprise Tony to see Thanos suddenly appear on the street before him—what does surprise Tony is that Thanos brings Loki with him, clutching the god's limp form in one hand like Loki is the world's biggest ragdoll. Thanos tosses Loki aside, and it's slightly heartening to see Loki actually try to catch himself this time, hands coming up to break his impact against the street. “I would have him watch you die,” Thanos says, far more gleefully than anyone should ever say those words.

“Not dead yet, Thanos,” Tony says, and grins like a demon. “Care to try me?”

Thanos comes at him, fast; and Tony grins wider, calls on the power gem for a little help, and launches himself at Thanos. When they crash, it sounds like thunder.

…

41.

The thing is, the Infinity gauntlet is, in essence, a tool. It was engineered god only knows how long ago—Loki has no idea, when Tony asks him—and using materials Tony doesn't have access to; but it's also something that was engineered, once, something that at its most basic level works on circuits and connectivities just like the ones Tony is used to working with. Which means that, theoretically, Tony can build a new one. And, alright, so maybe there's some magic involved in the whole process that Tony can't begin to comprehend, but that's what he has Loki around for, right? Between the two of them, Tony's sure he could build a new gauntlet of his very own.

Except, the thing is, Tony is Tony Stark, so of course that was never the plan. Because after Loki briefs him on the gauntlet, tells Tony absolutely everything he knows about the thing, Tony...has some revisions in mind. The way Tony sees it, the original builders of the gauntlet got lazy. They made it so that you had to have all six gems to use the gauntlet properly, rather than letting each gem added amplify the powers of the others individually. They also built an object that needed to have the gems physically attached to it in order to work, despite the fact that one of those gems controlled all of space itself—and that, to Tony's mind, just shows a serious lack of creativity.

So Tony doesn't just build another gauntlet—he builds something that renders the gauntlet obsolete, that makes the gems more efficient, that eliminates the need to have the gems physically attached and thus vulnerable—and, the best part is, he makes it into a suit, perfectly attuned and calibrated to him, so that just about anybody else in the world would find it impossible to use.

It's perfect, at least from Tony's humble point of view.

And, hopefully, perfect will be enough.

…

62.

Tony doesn't think. He moves, and just keeps moving, focused more on never staying still than on specifically what he's doing. He dodges, shoots, dances in close to Thanos to get in a power-amplified hit, dodges back again, calling on the gems when they're needed—as ever, the space gem is the quickest to answer, the most responsive to Tony's wishes, so a lot of the fight becomes centered around manipulation of space, he and Thanos each using teleportation to try and land unexpected blows. Thanos disappears into midair, reappears to land a fucking painful blow against Tony's side—Tony grunts through the pain and spins space out around him, coming at Thanos from above, the time gem slowing Thanos' reaction just enough to let Tony land the hit.

He's not sure of how long the fight stretches out for—between the adrenaline rush and the way Tony is literally fucking with time mid-fight, it could be anywhere from minutes to hours—but finally, finally, Tony starts to gain a noticeable advantage. Thanos is more powerful, and every single hit he lands rocks through Tony like an earthquake, making the metal of the suit creak and buckle, but Tony is faster, with the time gem pitching in to keep Thanos slowed, and Tony makes that extra speed count. He lands two, three blows for every one of Thanos', pushes the power gem for every drop of force it'll give him, and then disappears into folds of space before Thanos can land a hit in retaliation; even with Thanos' resilience, even with the almost impenetrable skin that covers his body, those hits start adding up. Thanos starts to slow, this time not solely from the effect of the time gem, as Tony carefully aims his hits at vulnerable joints and his best guess as to where Thanos' organs lie—Tony fights as unfair as he possibly can, and the first time he actually gets a hiss of pain out of Thanos at a strike, Tony suddenly realizes that he might actually win, here.

And, soon enough, it becomes clear that Thanos realizes it too. Disbelief lights up in the mad titan's eyes, and Thanos keeps fighting for a few minutes, clearly trying to deny the reality of the situation. When minutes pass and Tony just keeps winning, something changes in Thanos' expression; seeing that change, Tony automatically jerks back, space gem spinning him a few feet away, giving him enough room to prepare for whatever crazy thing Thanos does next.

Thanos smiles at Tony's retreat, his expression downright maniacal, and then blinks out of view; Tony feels the folds of space, and braces himself for the hit.

Except the hit never lands, because it isn't Tony that Thanos teleports towards, it's Loki—Loki, who's still laying prone on the ground, having moved just enough to watch the fight with that green-eyed stare—and it's Loki that Thanos grabs for, hoisting the god once more into midair before Tony has time to react.

It's instinct that makes Tony tense, two years worth of feeling protective over Loki that make him call on the space gem, moving before he even realizes what it is he's doing.

“Tsk tsk,” Thanos says, like some sort of chiding parent, before Tony actually gets anywhere. “I would stay where I was, were I you, little mortal.” With his free hand, the one not holding Loki, Thanos reaches into a small pocket on his clothes, and comes out with a closed fist—and, Tony can't help but notice, the gap in that fist is just the right size to hold a small, round stone. “After all,” Thanos says, and shakes Loki, sending a shudder down Loki's entire body, “I'm sure it would be tragic were your lover to lose his soul.”

…

45.

There's a spear in Tony's hand, and he actually has no fucking clue how it got there—but, on the plus side, it's in his hand rather than embedded in Loki's side, and Tony will accept small mercies when he gets them.

Odin looks...not surprised, exactly, but only because surprised would be an understatement; the Allfather looks downright shocked, looking at his spear where Tony's fingers curl around it. Tony's fairly certain that means he just did something more impressive than he thought, given that Loki's looking at it in much the same way, but Tony doesn't really have the time to puzzle out what. With the instincts of a fighter, albeit a fighter who hasn't fought in two years and has never wielded a spear before, Tony hefts the spear—he's almost surprised at how well it balances in his hand, at how easily it seems to aim at Odin, like the spear could practically throw itself without any help from Tony.

“Right,” Tony says, breaking the silence. “Like I said. Care to reconsider?”

…

63.

For just a second, Tony freezes at the threat, and finds his mind suddenly overflowing with memories of the last two years. Just one threat, and suddenly Tony's fucking bombarded with memories of the heat in Loki's eyes when Tony dragged him into a kiss, the way it felt the first time Loki smiled that sharp conspiratorial smile at Tony, the weight of Loki's sleeping body along his in the dark—with everything at once, with too much. Tony can't handle it, can't slow the flood; and in its aftermath, Tony feels this messy, unwanted surge of blind, furious protectiveness that's strong enough to force him still and silent.

That moment ends as quickly as it came, but Tony looks at the expression on Thanos' face and doesn't doubt that Thanos saw it. “What the hell makes you think I care about that?” Tony asks, but it's a weak bluff, and they both know it. Damn it, of all the times to realize—

Thanos raises his free hand farther, the threat of the soul gem hanging heavy in the air between them, and says, “A poor lie.” Tony darts a look at Loki, and finds Loki's eyes fixed on Tony, unblinking, watchful—if Loki's trying to communicate something, then Tony has no idea what it is.

Under the weight of that gaze, it's somehow easier for Tony to say, his voice rough, “Yeah. I guess so.”

The admission makes Thanos grin, delightedly, with all the enthusiasm of a sadist who realizes he has the ability to inflict great pain. Sounding almost conversational, Thanos says, “For the cost of your life, I was promised only lies by your lover. I wonder, little mortal, are you more honest? What would you give Thanos for your lover's soul?”

“Don't do this,” Tony says. It isn't a plea—it's a warning. Tony closes his eyes, and embraces, for now, the rush of emotion that he doesn't know how to handle: sinks into it, like he sunk once under the control of the mind gem, and lets it rule him. His voice is absolutely, coldly precise when he opens his eyes again and says, “I'll tear you apart.”

“Even if you could kill me,” Thanos says, his grin widening, “it would not restore his soul.” And Tony—Tony hesitates, for just a second, and Thanos sees it. Still smiling that sick smile, Thanos opens the fingers of his free hand, rolling the green gem tauntingly between his fingers. “Choose carefully,” Thanos says.

“Oh,” Tony says, feeling so fucking exhilarated that it bubbles over into a smile, and near laughter in his voice—he gets the great joy of seeing Thanos reel back in surprise at that tone. “I already have.”

Tony only ever needed a line of sight, and Thanos was kind enough to give him one. This couldn't work out more perfectly if he tried. “See,” Tony says, and looks pointedly at the soul gem, “that's mine.”

And, stirred from sleep, the reality gem makes it so.

…

64.

The sixth gem curls into Tony's fingers obligingly, still warm from Thanos' touch, and Tony—

Tony isn't Tony anymore. He's bigger than that, than physical limitations and bodies, bigger than a single self. He's everywhere, everyone, he's spread like a web over the world, cast by the power of the six Infinity gems to the far corners of the universe. He knows everything. He is not mortal; he cannot be touched.

He feels joy, and a weak facsimile of it emerges as laughter from the body of Tony Stark, strong enough to make that body shake—and the body of Thanos shakes too, as he reaches out and tugs at the strings of that form. Strong Thanos, mad Thanos, ruler of worlds and lover of Death, is nothing here, a speck of dust that mars the tapestry of the universe; even immortality, here and now, is not enough to make the mad titan anything less than finite.

So he spreads himself through that form, and quiets its feeble attempts to struggle. He touches the memories that lie there, watches millennia of a slow descent into madness in moments; time is nothing here, but memory is not without power, and the thing that was Thanos squirms under the investigation. He ignores it, searches memories and finds what Thanos fears most—finds, under the threats and bravado and brutal, savage love of Death, a perpetual, lingering thread of terror. Terror of obscurity, of slipping away unknown; terror of being inadequate, terror of failing. Such fear, to motivate such strength.

He lets the Thanos thing go, and it shivers at its new freedom, too frightened or perhaps too intelligent to try fighting again. He looks at it, and it shrinks away from its gaze—and he knows that, for the first time in millennia, Thanos feels powerless.

It makes his body, that distant, weak thing, smile. Here, vindictiveness is too small a thing to feel—instead, he feels necessity. “Time to bring an end to this,” he says, and it echoes from his small, physical voice; that body reaches out one hand toward the mad titan, as he brings the force of his will to rest on Thanos.

And with a tiny spark of what remains of Tony Stark, he says, “You really shouldn't touch my stuff,” and sends Thanos out of existence. The mad titan blinks out quietly, with no dramatic last words or speeches—Thanos goes quietly, beyond any place that the Lady Death could reach, and is gone.

A great weight lifts, and he knows his purpose here is almost complete. There is one little thing, however, and he looks to green eyes set in a broken body, and breathes out life. The god's shattered body reforms, slowly, broken bones reforming whole, blood sinking away from skin and back into vessels which knit themselves together. He does not heal everything, but what he doesn't touch, he gives the god the strength to heal himself, fills that body with the rush of energy it will need.

Then, his work done, he reaches out to the connection of gems, to the great web of power that makes him infinite, and coaxes it apart. The gems are slow to agree—they like it here, this joining, and at least one of them is adamant that he remain here with them—but eventually they are persuaded. One by one, they drop out of the web, offering promises to reform it again as soon as they are called upon—and one by one, they let him shrink down, until, at last, he fits back into a mortal body, and is no more or less than human again.

Tony Stark, suddenly a mortal once more, hiccups in faint surprise, sways on his feet, says, “Holy shit,” and then, gracelessly, passes the fuck out.

…

23.

“Put me back under,” Tony says, never looking away from the tip of Loki's scepter. “Put me back. Don't make me live with this.” Loki stays perfectly still, clearly hesitant, and Tony finally drags his eyes away from the scepter itself, to look up at green eyes. “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—”

Loki's voice is perfectly, eerily flat, when the god says, “Then this is your choice?”

And Tony swallows, looks down at the glowing tip of the scepter once more, and says, “Yeah. My choice.”

…

65.

“Tony,” a familiar voice says, pointedly, and Tony drags himself back into consciousness.

He opens his eyes, and manages to make out a pair of familiar green eyes looking down on him, before he realizes he has a splitting headache and closes his eyes again with a moan. “God,” he says, his voice hoarse as anything, “I feel like I just got hit by a truck.”

Loki laughs, above him, and Tony, whose head is apparently resting in the god's lap, is shaken, a bit unpleasantly, by the movement. “The experiences are not incomparable,” Loki says, and there's relief in those words. “Mortal minds and bodies are ill-equipped to deal with infinity.”

“You're telling me,” Tony says, and ignores the pounding in his head to open his eyes again. This time, Loki's face actually resolves into focus—and it is, once again, Loki's face, rather than a bleeding, fucked up mess. There are still dark bruises painted under Loki's skin, and shadows under the god's eyes, but Tony can tell even as he looks at them that they're healing. “You look like shit,” Tony says, mouth trying to approximate a grin, and Loki looks down at Tony and bursts into deep, full-bodied laughter. Great. So Tony probably looks like he got hit by a truck, too—good to know. “Hey, shut up,” Tony says, maybe a little bit petulantly. “I saved your ass three seconds ago, you don't get to laugh at me yet.”

Loki looks down at Tony, and his expression is indulgent and amused, and—though it surprises Tony to see it this openly—fond. “You did well,” Loki acknowledges, and that, from Loki, is practically singing Tony's praises off of rooftops.

And it isn't this easy, it isn't going to be this easy, because Loki is still an asshole, still caustic and cutting even towards the people he's closest to, and downright vicious with anyone who crosses him; he's still a walking minefield of complexes that can explode in the face of even the most well-meaning, and it's still going to take near-constant effort to make any sense out of the convoluted workings of his brain. And Tony, well, Tony still has to deal with the last two years, still needs to process the aftermath of getting his free will back, still has a thousand and one issues that aren't going to go anywhere just because of this one moment. Everything isn't nearly over: they still need to finish off the Chitauri, patch together the worlds they tore apart, there's a war ahead of them yet; and everything is still fucked up, nothing is fixed, nothing from this point on is going to be easy—

But still, in this moment, it's the easiest thing in the world to look up at Loki's battered, familiar face, and say, “Guess I was right after all. I'm on your side.”

The kiss that follows is in no way perfect, both of them bruised and aching and barely intact as they are, but it makes Tony smile to feel Loki's familiar lips press against his, just this soft, warm press that's barely a kiss at all.

He leans up into it, into Loki, and deepens the kiss: his choice, all his.