Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony Stark was jealous.

Of a man named Walt.

"Walt," he muttered to himself, using a wrench to adjust the bolts on a strange machine. He hadn't decided what it was yet. It was either going to be a coffee maker or a terminator. But it definitely had hands. You needed hands to fulfill either of those functions with enough artistry. "Walt. Seriously? What does she see in him? I'm Tony Stark! Fucking Walt..."

Tony paused and looked around his workshop for inspiration, and found only polished cars and resentment. Fucking Walt.

He was thinking about naming his creation The Caffeinator, but based on how his other robotic assistants had turned out, he would probably just end up calling it Ick.

That, too, would cover both of its possible functions, or at least the products that resulted.

Walt Anderson was rich and gentlemanly and aware, the kind of man who remembered which fruits a girl was allergic to. Apparently he owned some companies that sold heaters. Tony and Pepper had met him at a charity event, and he had made a little flirtatious banter with Pepper, but nothing sinister. Tony hadn't felt threatened, beyond making a few rude remarks to the man that had made Pepper gasp in horror.

Tony had soothed her ruffled feathers, convinced her to dance with him, and then they had gone home and had wonderful sex. Everything was fine.

Pepper and Walt had become friends, organized a few events together. Walt had eased up on the flirting, taking the hint after Tony had programmed Jarvis to address Walt as "Mr. Anderson," in a slightly chilling voice.

He hadn't started to worry until Pepper came home one day, fuming. He had prepared for the worst, or what he thought was the worst until he heard her tirade about the failings and character flaws of one Walt Anderson.

Tony had listened, full of dread, as she expounded on her rage and described Tony in glowing terms as a comparison. She used words like "sweet" and "thoughtful," and other adjectives that had never and should never be used to describe the self-centered billionaire.

He was supposed to be the only one who got her riled up like this.

Finished with the bolts, Tony started pacing. "Thoughtful. Thoughtful. I'm not thoughtful, I'm Tony Stark." He threw the wrench against the glass door, and it bounced harmlessly off the reinforced material and landed on the floor at his feet.

After that night, it had all been downhill. Nowadays she tried to act happy with him all the time, even when she would normally be worried or angry. She would get distracted and zone out in the middle of conversations with him, which was weird, because that was his job. The sex was... well, he still enjoyed the sex, but he thought it was getting pretty one-sided, and that was downright depressing.

Tony sat down in front of the robot he was building, looking it over, trying to figure it out. He was a genius, but he wasn't smart enough for this.

.:.

That evening, he and Pepper were getting ready for an outing. He wasn't sure if was an event date or a real date, but Pepper was sure to know. Either way, it involved a suit and tie, and a very sexy dress that kept pulling his eyes down to the base or Pepper's spine and making him think about things he shouldn't, well, he should, but...

Pepper hadn't spoken to Walt in over a week. She was miserable. Even he could tell.

Tony's mouth had a bitter taste in it that he mostly blamed on science. Jarvis had insisted after some brainstorming that he go in the coffee-making direction, and Ick was making Very Unique coffee by the end of the day. Tony would have to convince Walt to try some.

Pepper went to adjust Tony's tie, and it reminded him so much of another moment, so he reminded her. "You know, if I were Iron man I'd have this girlfriend who knew my true identity."

Pepper smiled warmly and rolled her eyes.

"She'd be a wreck, ‘cause she'd always be worried that I was going to die, yet, proud, of the man I'd become. She'd be wildly conflicted, crazy about me... but, in love with someone else."

Pepper, who had been listening in amusement, suddenly put a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. "Tony," she said, in a broken voice.

And he gave her a look. A look that said, I know. It's okay. Go to him. Nothing has changed between us, not really.

Tony Stark was rather impressed at what a tremendous load of bullshit he managed to convey in just one look.

She kissed him, and the kiss screamed, "Goodbye," and he did his best not to scream back.

And then it was over.

Tony started spending a lot of time in his workshop.

Pepper figured out two days after her engagement to Walt that despite his act, Tony was not okay, at which point he started ignoring her calls. He felt bad for what it was probably doing to her, but he felt worse for himself.

.:.

The latest suit was coming along nicely. He was bouncing back and forth about the idea of a plate to cover up the glowing thing in his chest, because it was pretty serious vulnerability issue he had yet to really address. The coffee that Ick made was starting to taste pretty okay, which was odd, because he hadn't made any adjustments to the robot since that first day.

There was some arbitrary amount of time that was Too Much to spend moping in his workshop, but he had a strong impression that he paid someone else to know what it was.

.:.

Loki sat alone in a cell in the dungeons of Asgard, stared at the occupants of the cell on the opposite wall and thought, This would all be so much easier if I acquired a badger.

Thor had come and talked to him. He’d spoken a great deal about that mortal woman he had met when Odin cast him into Midgard. She was helping to rebuild the Bifrost, and it would be done within the year. They were going to get married. Loki wondered if Thor realized how short the human lifespan was.

Loki had listened, but had not graced his adoptive brother with any replies. Thor gave up and left, and Loki had been alone again for a length of months.

Now a plan was forming in his mind. But he did not have his tools, nor the ear of anyone important to whisper cunning lies into, unless Thor came back. And the spell in this prison prevented using magic, unless one had the right materials.

When the guards came to bring him food, he always insisted that he must speak to his father, and they never listened. It really wasn't fair.

So now he was slowly gathering the ingredients he needed to do a spell in this place, and make his escape.

The prisoner in the cell across from him had a pet badger that had burrowed in from the wall and befriended the prisoner in exchange for part of the meager meals the guards brought.

One ingredient was missing from Loki's collection, and a claw from the creature's left hind foot would suffice. He could ask for it, but he didn't think the prisoner would take kindly to the idea of Loki hurting his best friend. He also didn't think the badger would take kindly to the attempt.

Loki had tried enticing it by holding out his own food, to no avail and dirty looks from his fellow inmate. He was stuck. It was the badger that had first reminded Loki that the spell he intended to do existed, and now it was the badger that stood between him and performing it.

Loki frowned down at his water cup. He couldn't do magic per se, but...

Not particularly wanting to know the answer to this question, Loki dipped a finger in the water and concentrated. Ice crystals formed in the water. The powers that came of Loki’s so-called nature apparently did not fall under the umbrella of magic, and were not forbidden here.

Loki looked up to address the other prisoner. "What is your name, sir?"

"Hrolf."

"Hrolf, your badger friend looks ill."

Hrolf ignored him, as Loki had suspected he would.

Loki lay his hand down in the ground, and slowly, ever so slowly, caused frost to grow along the stone floor.

When the frost had reached the opposite cell, Loki spoke a little more poison. "Animals can become sick, just as humans can. I've spent time with humans, I recognize the signs of a fever. You've heard of fevers, right? Shaking chills and glassy or over-bright eyes? I have medicine." Loki gestured to pile of herbs and oddments he had been gathering in preparation for his spell.

The prisoner looked doubtfully at his badger, but the animal had no symptoms, so he said, "You're lying."

"You'd best decide soon. Left untreated, these things can kill." And Loki pushed the frost just far enough to chill the furry creature.

The cold set in, and the badger started shaking and curling close to his master for warmth. The man looked doubtfully down at the creature, and then even more doubtfully up at Loki. "You'll cure him and then you'll send him back to me."

Loki nodded.

Hrolf pushed the badger through the bars in the god's direction. "Go on," he urged the creature. The badger slowly made its way into Loki's cell. Loki sighed in relief.

A guard walked past on his round and slipped dramatically on the ice, landing hard. "Ouch! Dammit, I was planning to go dragon hunting later today."

Staring at the ice, Hrolf suddenly figured out the game. "Hey! Return my badger to me, you fiend!"

Ignoring them both, Loki picked up his find and looked it over. The badger looked back at him a little shakily, eyes over-bright from the cold as Loki had predicted. The thing was... cute.

Well, no one had ever written that the claw had to be detached from the badger.

.:.

Tony had no clear perception of what day it was, and only an educated guess about what month it was. He had perfected the suit in every way he could think of, designed the chest covering in and out ten times, and eventually opted to leave it out and keep the glowing look because anything else looked tacky by comparison. He was out of inspiration.

So he took out his phone, thinking maybe he could obsess over old pictures like unstable ex-boyfriends were supposed to do, and found out that the last few calls he had missed were actually from SHIELD.

Right. Superhero. Really had to get on that.

It probably wasn't anything too urgent, or they would have broken down the doors. But then, they were made of reinforced glass. No, Jarvis would have told him. He had been ignoring the AI more than usual lately, but Jarvis knew how to be stubborn, if it was important.

Meeting scheduled for ten minutes ago. He could leave now, and still be more punctual than usual.

Tony arrived in style in the latest, most impressive and shiny version of his suit, then took it off and watched everyone wrinkle their noses at his appearance. He could really use a change of clothes, and a shower. And a haircut, he suddenly thought as he caught sight of Pepper at the table. It was the kind of thing she usually reminded him of. He really needed a haircut. When was the last time he had shaved?

This whole punctuality thing was suddenly seeming like not a good idea.

Bruce stood up to greet him. "Tony. Glad you could make it. Kind of surprised, but glad. We were just about to get started, as soon as Thor gets here."

"For once I'm not the last one here. What's keeping Thor?" Tony lounged in Bruce's chair and picked up the steaming mug in front of it, putting his feet up on the table.

Pepper got up and came around the table to him. "Tony. Tony, we need to talk."

Tony sipped from the mug and said, "Oh dear god, that is real coffee. Everyone has to be quiet while I enjoy this."

There was tremendous sound, like a crack of thunder or a universe ripping apart, and Thor appeared in room, crouching down, looking to be in some amount of pain.

Everyone gasped, and Pepper said, "Thor, are you okay?"

"That's not being quiet," Tony complained.

"I am fine," Thor said, coming to his feet. "I am just come from Asgard, and some of the doors between the worlds are unpleasant to traverse. Give me a moment."

Thor got his moment, and Bruce brought him the cup of coffee he had been making for himself to replace the one Tony stole. Thor sat down, and the meeting began while Bruce poured himself a third cup.

Fury said, "The first order of business was the possible threat posed by the emotional instability of one Tony Stark, but seeing as he's left his lair and isn't doing anything more offensive than smelling bad, I'm moving to dismiss. Miss Potts, you may leave."

Pepper got up and walked out, giving Tony guilt-filled glances. Tony realized that he must smell worse than he thought he did, if that was more offensive than stealing the Hulk's coffee.

Fury went on. "The second order of business is Asgard. Two days ago, Thor here received a letter from his father. He was very tight-lipped about what it said, but he asked us call a meeting at this time, and promised to be back by the time it started." Fury gave Thor a pointed glance.

Thor leaned forward to speak. "My father has asked that you all come to Asgard and aid us in a search."

"A search for what?" Steve asked.

"Loki."

Chapter Text

Loki had been sent back to Asgard to serve a prison sentence for his crimes, and it didn't really surprise anyone that he had found a way to escape early. Now he was up to Something, but there wasn't much in the way of specifics. No one knew where he was or what exactly he was doing. A magic icebox had disappeared, and a lot of people were panicked about it. There may or may not have been an eight-legged horse involved.

They all packed up to go. Thor seemed eager to leave soon, but even more eager for Tony to shower first.

"Getting awfully enthusiastic there, Fabio. Care to join me?"

Thor glowered at him.

Once everything was ready, they gathered back in the office and Thor pulled them through the not-so-pleasant door between worlds.

They arrived in Asgard, groaning and rubbing their heads and swearing off inter-dimensional travel, even if that meant never seeing earth again. An hour later, once they understood what information was available for Loki-finding purposes, the unpleasant conclusion was reached that Tony and Bruce would have to go back for a bunch of scanning and tracking equipment.

These were the two worst people to have to go back, because Bruce might hulk out if he was in too much pain, and because Tony's feelings mattered more than anyone else's.

By the time Thor and the two scientist got back to Asgard with the equipment, Bruce was looking a little green. The sick kind of green, but no one wanted to take any chances.

He sat down with some ginger tea on the stairs in the room where the Casket of Ancient Winters had been housed, and made occasional suggestions while Tony set up the equipment. They managed to get some idea of what sort of radiation the thing had given off, and then Tony packed up most the equipment again so they could set it up outside and scan Asgard for the stuff.

It was actually pretty difficult to convince the machines to do what they wanted. Tony had to take a scanner and couple laptops apart and put them together in different ways. "Isn't there an easy, magical way to track down runaway gods?" he complained, nursing a thumb he had cut on a broken plastic computer casing.

"There is," said a soft, authoritative voice behind him. Tony turned his head. It was the king of Asgard. "But Loki expected that I would use magic to search for him, and he has put spells in place to make himself difficult to track by such means. Let me see your hand."

And then Odin used magic to heal the wound Tony's computer had dealt him.

Tony stood, staring at his thumb, a slow grin forming in his face. "I have got to learn how to do that."

"It takes centuries of study to master the magical arts, even for one who has the gift."

"Eh, I'll just build a machine that does it for me. If I figure out a way to mass-produce it I could revolutionize the medical industry and make billions..."

"Tony, focus," said Steve.

"Right," Tony said. He sat, returning to a laptop screen and typing in some commands, "Tracking villains. Much more important than helping injured..." he trailed off as he realized what he was seeing. "Hah! I've found it. Clint, hand me that map. Actually don't, just put it... thanks."

There was flurry of activity as they charted stuff and tried to get the system of computers portable enough to take with them on an adventure and still be usable.

Odin ordered horses and everyone but Tony climbed onto one. Including Odin.

"You're coming too?" Bruce asked in surprise.

Odin nodded. "I would have words with my son."

.:.

Loki knelt in the middle of a grassy field. All his focus was on the glowing casket in front of him, which turned his hands a repulsive icy blue color wherever he touched it.

The Casket of Ancient Winters was not just a tool for destruction. When open, it caused havoc, spreading plagues of frost across the realms. When left closed, it burned with steady chill. The heart that beat cold life into its home world.

If it were destroyed, the realm of Jotunheim would thaw and crack, and the race of the Frost Giants would ebb and disintegrate. This was why Odin would not, as Loki had once suggested, just toss the thing into an unused dimension and prevent Ragnarok.

But even keeping the casket in Asgard was starting to take its toll. Already, the frost of the realms was receding back into Jotunheim. Svartalfheim and Muspelheim were having problems with excessive heat. Hel had become unlivable. The people of Midgard were edging toward panic as they were suffering from a severe shortage of large white bears.

It was likely that Loki was about to make that problem much, much worse.

He had stolen the heart of Jotunheim from Odin, and he was performing a very complex and powerful spell, one which would alter the course of history between the realms. He was almost done.

So, of course, something had to go wrong. He heard hoofbeats and talking in the distance, and saw a group of people riding toward him. He couldn't make out details yet, but they were dressed strangely and talking loudly. Almost definitely a band of heroes sent by his father to vanquish him. It was going to be one of those days.

They were approaching fast, running now that they had spotted him. Well, the red one in the sky was flying, and then Loki realized just which heroes his father had sent for him and blew out a frustrated breath. "Avengers. Another complication I do not need."

He looked back at the casket. He would have to take a shortcut, finish this spell fast and distracted and messy and hope it was enough. It would still take six more minutes. He cast a sight shield over the casket and stood to face the heroes.

This was going to hurt.

Loki walked toward his pursuers, as far as he could from the casket, as if circling, as if he were not a diversion but a predator looking for and opening. Then stopped and held up his arms. "I surrender," he shouted.

The Avengers drew close, and those on horseback dismounted. Surprisingly, Odin was with them. Perfect.

Iron Man landed. "What?" The red metal suit cocked its head.

"I surrender," Loki repeated with exaggerated politeness, which gave way to terse dislike as he continued, "On the condition that I am allowed one conversation with my King."

The Avengers paused, and the King gestured for them to stand back and wait. The Allfather had charisma. Even in a field standing in griffin droppings, he held court, and they all did as he directed.

Loki approached Odin, and Odin looked down at him with compassion and distrust in his eye. "Why are you here, Loki?"

Loki smirked. "Aren't you going to ask me how I escaped? It is an amusing story, I assure you."

Odin paused, taken aback a little by Loki's lack of deference. His face hardened. "No," said Odin, "I am much more interested in the why than the how. The how is simple mechanics, but in your case, Loki, the why is always beyond me."

The smirk dropped from Loki's face as he said with venom, "Perhaps that is because, as Thor once pointed out, you are an old man, and a fool."

Odin narrowed his eye.

Loki took a deep breath through his nose. "But perhaps it is because though you claim to be my father, we are different creatures from different worlds. I have some unanswered 'why's of my own."

Clint said, "Are you sure you don't just have an evil plot? We're getting restless over here."

Loki heard, and looked at Clint as if he were an ant that had crawled into the god's honey jar. "My only desire is to speak plainly with the Allfather."

Tony said, "Wow. That's sweet. Does anyone else really not believe him?" He raised his hand and the other Avengers lifted theirs in agreement.

Odin said, "Ask your questions, Loki."

Loki gave Odin a long, searching look, face neutral and hiding icy storms. "Why did you never tell me what I was?"

"I planned to, one day, but the time was never right."

"Classic,” said Clint.

Loki went on. "So you let me believe I was your son. You raised me to love Asgard, but you did it too well. Then I was no longer a suitable pawn for you to pander to the Jotun with. 'No, Loki.' So you imprisoned me."

"I did not punish you for being Jotun."

"No," Loki said bitterly, "It was bad enough that I was myself."

"I punished you," the King said angrily, "because you failed to live up to the expectations a king of Asgard must have for his sons."

"When you punished Thor for starting a war, you gave him a lesson. Me, you gave up on, and left me to to rot. I see now how much the great king of Asgard loves his son." Loki closed his eyes and pushed the next question through his teeth. "Tell me, then. How have I failed you?"

"You sent the destroyer to kill Thor."

Loki's anger turned hot at the accusation, and his voice rose as he talked. "You sent him to Midgard, stripped of his power. Weak and mortal and temperamental. What did you think would happen to him? Midgard is full of dangers. Sicknesses, and automobiles, and madmen in red metal suits. He would either lift the hammer or die within the century. I merely sped things along!"

"You would have murdered the Frost Giants!"

"War was inevitable! You yourself said you had given up hope of peace between the kingdoms, did you not?" Loki pointed to his own chest, "I did not seek out war. I prevented it! The Jotuns would have lost anyway, but Asgardian lives would have been lost as well. Again, I only made events unfold sooner, for the protection of this realm."

"War would not have killed their whole race, Loki."

"Nor would I." Loki held of a hand and shifted it through blue, reminding Odin that one Jotun would have survived.

"Women and children." Odin said in a tone of controlled horror, trying to impress upon Loki the wrongness of his actions.

"...Who would die suddenly in the death of their realm, instead of slowly, without the care and protection of their fathers and husbands. You thought my plan cruel? Do you think it kinder to destroy a race's spirit, to cripple their realm until all they have left is surrender, take their heart from them and leave them to wallow in their shame and their broken world? Do you?"

Odin opened his mouth, but Loki shook his head and continued. "You do. I heard you as I fell from the Bifrost. You would have had me live in misery and defeat. Odin, Allfather, which one of us is cruel?" He stopped to stand in front of Odin, waiting for a reply, or perhaps just watching for the impact of his words.

"Loki," Odin said, staring at him, "I didn't realize... how young you still are."

Tony and Natasha both grimaced, because it was the wrong thing to say.

Loki's face was momentarily transformed by frustration and hurt, but he forcibly pulled his features back into place. "Well," he said with theatrical finality, "I think that's all the time we have."

He made a series of magical gestures with his arms. An arrow from Clint's bow buried itself in Loki's hand. There was a flash of light, and suddenly a magical dome contained all of them, Loki and Odin and the Avengers, while the grassy field around them exploded in an all-consuming burst of red fire.

Chapter Text

The Avengers stared out at the red fire that surrounded them on all sides as it curled into black smoke and blew away with the next gust of wind.

It was over quickly, and then Loki was lying on the ground unconscious and they were all trapped in a magic dome, surrounded by ash. The horses were nowhere to be seen. Steve said, "Um, Your Majesty, do you think you could lower the magic shield? The danger seems to have passed."

Odin held up his staff and concentrated. Nothing happened. He shook his head. "This shield was not my doing. It was Loki's. I cannot lower it."

Everyone was quiet while they processed that information.

Tony touched the dome experimentally, and it didn't zap him or anything, but it also didn't give when he hit it with all his strength. "Uh, Thor? A little help?"

Thor raised his hammer to throw. "Wait!" Odin commanded, holding up a hand. He was looking down at Loki intently. "Tap it. Gently."

Thor nodded and walked up to stand beside Tony, facing the shield. Tony said, "Any idea why Loki protected all of us from the explosion he made just then?"

"I doubt my brother was thinking clearly in his anger," Thor replied. He tapped the shield carefully with his hammer. It wavered, but stayed in place. Loki's body made a choking noise that sounded suspiciously like dying, and Thor froze.

"As I thought," Odin said. "He is holding the shield in place while he sleeps. It is draining him, and does not know to take it down to save himself."

"Can you take it down?"

"It would likely kill him."

"Can you teleport us out?"

"I have already tried. It is a powerful shield."

"Wonderful," Tony concluded, "So, we can either escape, killing the crazy god in the process, or wait for him to wake up."

Odin sighed. "Keeping such a powerful shield in place is a task which must consume all of Loki's strength. It will be a long wait."

Tony didn't like the sound of that. "You mean 'would.' It would be a long wait if that was what were were going to-"

Odin gave him a look.

"Right."

So they waited.

.:.

A few hours later, the Avengers were in the exact same place, with nothing to do, getting grumpy and restless and starting to wish there was a bathroom.

Odin was staring down at Loki, looking sad and thoughtful. Tony and Thor walked up beside him and followed his gaze in looking curiously at the unconscious god. Thor said, "Did he mean to trap us here?"

Odin said, "It's possible. But I suspect Loki only meant the shield to be up for a moment. He finished casting it just as the archer shot him, and that surely interfered his spell."

Tony raised his eyebrows. "So it's Clint's fault. Hey Clint! This is your fault! Billy the Kid, itchy trigger finger much?"

Apparently that hit a nerve, because Clint strode up to Tony and said, "If we're going to point fingers, I'm pointing one at His Majesty the King of Asgard. He dragged us out here and then told us not to fight, and his magic hasn't done a damn thing-"

"How dare you?" said Thor.

"He's right," Tony said, incurring Thor's wrathful look.

At the same time, Captain America was bodily dragging Clint away from the king. "You do not talk like that to a foreign dignitary!"

"Try me."

"If everyone could please calm down for a minute," Bruce was shouting, but it was a controlled shout, "And recall that you are trapped in a small space with a guy who sometimes turns into a big green monster that only understands the word, 'Smash.'" Everyone went quiet and gave him apologetic looks. "Thank you." Bruce sat down away from everyone else and started doing breathing exercises.

Tony sent a blast of energy at Steve, knowing full well the captain's shield would protect him, and needing to blow off steam. It deflected and hit the magic dome, which rippled dramatically again.

Bruce took an extra deep breath, refusing to move.

"Oops," Tony looked guiltily at Loki, who stirred, taking a deeper breath as some of the color returned to his face. "Oh, I mean, I meant to do that!"

"Do it again," Thor encouraged.

Tony aimed his palm at the dome. "Wait," said Natasha.

"What now?" Tony complained. Natasha was already crouching next to Loki. She had produced a length of rope as if by magic, and was binding the god's hands and feet. "Oh. Good plan."

Once Loki was bound, Tony threw a few more energy bursts at the shield, until Loki groaned again and tried to sit up.

Tony walked over to him. "Awesome. You're awake. Now take down the magic dome so we can lock you up and all go home."

Loki mostly succeeded in sitting up this time, and squinted up groggily at him. Sounding very ill, he said, "I cannot release the magic unless you unbind my hands."

Tony aimed a flight stabilizer at Loki's head, powered it up and said, "Very funny. Take down the dome." They had just gone out of their way to keep Loki alive, but hey, he didn't know that.

The dome disappeared.

Loki sagged in relief, a great deal of strain leaving his face as he passed out again.

Now that Loki wasn't doing magic, a couple of things immediately became apparent.

Tony raised a hand to scratch his head, and dropped it when he realized he couldn't through the suit. "Okay, one, he's blue. Two, is that the magic box you were looking for?" Tony pointed to a spot in the midst of the destruction that had looked empty a moment ago.

"It is," replied Odin, walking up to it. The heart of Jotunheim was at the very center of what had been the explosion. Structurally, it was intact, but the cold blue glow of life it gave off had all but gone out. Odin picked it up and stared down at it sorrowfully. "The heart of Jotunheim. I fear my son has not given up his grudge against the Frost Giants."

Tony was still staring at Loki. Blue was a good color on him. "Thor, when you said he was adopted..."

"Were you not listening to their conversation when Loki spoke to my father? Loki is a Jotunn, a Frost Giant."

"Those are the same thing?"

Everyone gave him a look.

"Okay, stupid question. Here's another one. If Loki is a Frost Giant, which, if he is, he's tiny," Tony pointed down at Loki's tall form, "...Then why does he have it in for all the other Frost Giants?"

Thor gave him a look.

"Like I said, stupid question."

Odin explained simply, "Loki hates what he is."

Tony frowned. Something about that didn't compute. Or computed too well. He wasn't sure which. Either way his brain was malfunctioning and he would have to run some diagnostics. He kept staring at Loki until Thor picked up the blue god and started carrying him in the direction of the palace.

It looked like they would be going back on foot.

Tony could have flown, but he found himself walking with the group, sticking close to Thor. Clint was looked out at the wreckage as they walked. "I think those were the horses," he said, gesturing at some very not-human-looking corpses. "I hope those were the horses."

The ash on the ground started to give way to grass as they reached the top of a hill, and they found that there was a forest near at hand on the other side, a very blessed sight. Clint, Natasha, Bruce and Steve all went off to heed the call of nature, while the Tony and the gods waited were they were.

And then Loki woke up. Thor set him on the ground as he came to his senses. The first thing Loki said, before he was really properly awake was, "Did it work?" He held up his head waiting for an answer, which looked painful with the way his hands were tied behind his back.

Tony said. "Well, the magical glowing box is not so glowing anymore."

"Good." Loki relaxed back onto the ground. He looked up at Odin. "I was going to return it to Jotunheim. You should do the same."

"And what do you think will happen when they find out what you have done to it?" Odin demanded.

"They'll be furious. And helpless to retaliate." Loki smiled a bit.

Odin was not amused. "Why, Loki?" he whispered.

Loki looked up at his father with and almost hopeful look in his red eyes. "The bridge between the worlds is almost repaired, and the Frost Giants were still a threat to Asgard. Now they are not."

"Have you learned nothing since you fell from the Bifrost?"

Loki closed his eyes grimly. "I have learned a great deal."

Nothing more was said until the other Avengers got back and Thor picked Loki up to continue the Journey. Loki stiffened. "I can walk," he said darkly, and everyone ignored him.

.:.

The Avengers were preparing for the trip back to Midgard.

Loki was sitting on a couch off to the side, hands and feet still tied. Thor had put a necklace on him that could not be removed by the wearer, and that prevented him from preforming any magic, no matter what materials he had available to him.

The necklace was an ugly monstrosity, strung with large, rough beads and bits of bone that did not go at all with his elegant black and green attire. Which was a bit a moot point, since his skin was still this sickly grayish blue.

He was not well enough now to do magic anyway, but somewhere down the road it was going to become a real problem. The sooner he could escape and find someone gullible to remove it, the better.

But he didn't immediately see a way to avoid getting thrown back in prison.

Odin walked up beside him. "What am I going to do with you, Loki? You deserve another century in the dungeons for your crimes."

"I will just escape again," Loki said in a bored voice, because he didn't think he would ever find another way out of that dungeon.

"Yes, and I think it more fitting that you be on Midgard, to see the destruction you have just brought to that realm. I have already asked these heroes to take you with them and imprison you there, and they have agreed."

Loki looked at the Avengers as if the idea displeased him greatly. This was really much better than he could have hoped for. Earth was about to fall into chaos, and he intended to be there when it did.

.:.

Tony was on his way downstairs from the roof with some of the tracking equipment they had left there earlier. The Avengers were getting everything together for the final trip back. They were being pretty thorough about making sure they had everything, because they weren't about to go back for missing keepsakes.

Thor, Natasha and Clint had gone over earlier to talk to Fury about the idea of keeping Loki on Earth. Thor had returned to Asgard with a 'yes' and a very bad headache.

Tony was wearing a T-shirt and unwarranted sunglasses, and he was enjoying how much more the look stood out on Asgard. He had packed up his armor on the assumption that the danger was over, but the sight of Loki lounging on a couch while the Avengers made last minute preparations caused him to second-guess that.

Once everything was ready, the Avengers gathered in a circle near where Loki was sitting. Thor started to reach into the space between the worlds.

"We're not just going to leave without preparing first, are we?" Loki asked.

Thor stopped.

Steve looked at the gathered luggage. "We've got everything packed."

Loki lifted his tied hands to rest the thumb and forefinger of one hand against his chin and tilted his head thoughtfully. "You're going leave just like that? Wouldn't that hurt?"

The Avengers looked at each other.

Loki took in their reaction and sighed. "Traveling between the realms is painless when you know what you are doing."

Thor looked thunderstruck, which was really sort of ironic, Tony thought.

Clint said, "Alright smart guy. What are we doing wrong?"

"There is a cleansing ritual you must do to travel through such pathways unharmed. It is magic - well, or similar to magic," he said dismissively.

"Is this a trick?" Steve asked suspiciously.

"You there," Loki called to one of the servants. "Bring us sage for the cleansing ritual."

"Wait," Tony stopped the servant, "Is that a real thing?"

The servant nodded.

"It does sound familiar now that it has been mentioned," admitted Thor.

.:.

Soon they had all been smudged with sage, learned the chant, and now they were on to doing a ceremonial dance that kept making the music video of "Walk like an Egyptian" pop into Tony's head. Supposedly they were supposed to keep their eyes closed, but Tony had decided the sunglasses somehow canceled that out.

Suddenly, he caught sight of Loki still sitting tied up on the couch, face empty of emotion.

He stopped dancing and walked over to to the god. "So. Why aren't you doing it too?" Tony asked, and Loki's mouth shifted in a desperate attempt to keep a straight face.

Aha.

Tony crossed his arms over his chest and opened his mouth to tell the rest of the team they could stop. Then he thought better of it, sat down next to Loki, and enjoyed the show.

.:.

"Wow, it worked. I really don't have a headache," said Bruce as soon as they arrived back on Earth.

Tony rubbed his head. It was true, it didn't hurt. He would have to ask Loki which part of that ridiculous ceremony had actually made the difference, but he was going to wait until the other Avengers were out of earshot.

Chapter Text

New York was in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave. Actually, so was the rest of the world. Apparently the whole "Global Warming" thing was moving along much faster than scientists had projected.

The Avengers did their best to avoid leaving the tower, which was well air conditioned. Every time one of them even considered an outing, all they had to do was open the front door and they would immediately close it again and decide to make less interesting plans.

They would have braved the weather to fight crime, but that would require that the criminal element do their work in the same blistering heat, and none of the available super-villains were that resolute.

Much as he liked his workshop, Tony was getting stir crazy and bored. So when he hacked the SHIELD detainee listings and found out that Loki was being held in the basement of Avengers tower, the very first thing he did was do down to visit him. If Tony was bored, he could only imagine how the over-smart god felt. He was being charitable, really.

Either that, or he wanted to rub Loki's nose in the fact that the Avengers had beaten him again.

.:.

Loki was examining his hand. He had never before had the time or the will to familiarize himself with the way his skin looked in this form. The prison on Asgard had been dimly lit, but the light in this room was bright during the day.

His hand was dark blue and cloudy. The color of the sky on a starless evening, and a few shades lighter. There were the raised white lines that he knew from a distance made Frost Giants look like scratched, brittle ice. He hated them. He found himself picking lightly at the lines with his nails, not with the intention to remove, merely with the wish that they would be gone. Along with his skin, and his blood, and everything else that made him other on the plane he had thought was his home.

"You know, I'm guessing that's probably a bad habit."

Loki looked up, startled, to find that he had a new visitor. Tony Stark. Loki returned his eyes to his hands, ignoring the man, but he stopped picking at the ridges on his skin.

Loki was in a cell behind a thick wall of plastic. An empty black folding chair was set up just outside the cell, facing him. Stark leaned forward, resting his hand on the back of the chair, and continued talking. "There are a few things I've been wondering ever since since the whole 'we beat you and locked you up' incident. Well, the most recent one of those. One thing in particular is bothering me: When the god of mischief offers to tell you a funny story, what kind of wet blanket king says no?"

"Do you have a point?" Loki said in a voice that dripped with bored disdain.

"I want to hear how you escaped from the prison in Asgard."

"No."

"Why not?"

Loki cast his red eyes briefly in Stark's direction before returning them to his own hands. "Why are you here?"

Tony walked around the chair and sat down. "I thought you might like some pleasant company."

Loki gave him a look.

"Why does everyone look at me like that? No, stupid question." Stark held his hands up in defeat. "I was bored," he answered truthfully.

"And you want me to entertain you?"

"That was the idea with the story request."

"My place in the worlds has not yet fallen so low as to make me the household bard of an infantile old man like you."

"That's rich. You're what, a thousand years old and still the god of dumb pranks?"

"I am the god of clever deceits, you ignorant gorilla."

"Off the mark by a few species there, Darwin."

They exchanged faint, amused smiles that were gone after a split-second.

Tony's phone started playing the national anthem, and he picked it up. "Genius-millionaire-playboy-philanthropist speaking, how may I help you? Yes, Steve, I know it's you. There's this thing called a ringtone. You've been looking for me? That's very flattering, but... No, I haven't left the tower." Impatience crept into Tony's voice. "Yes, I'm fine. No, I haven't... Capsicle, last time I checked, you were not my babysitter. I can disappear for hours, or days, or as long as it takes for the world to need saving again. Not your problem." There was noise from the phone, a voice raised in anger. Tony laughed. "Well, I'm glad we got that straightened out." And he hung up.

Loki watched Tony as he pushed the phone back into his pocket. "Your team keeps you on a short leash."

"They're just worried. I have a reputation for instability. Apparently when I'm emotionally compromised I'm prone to bouts of sleeping with everything that moves, giving scientific lectures blackout drunk, saying things I shouldn't in front of large groups of people, and putting my life in unnecessary danger."

Loki gave him a scrutinizing look. "Are you emotionally compromised?"

"My file says I am."

"Then why aren't you off somewhere doing all that, instead of bothering me?"

Tony had to think about that.

It was odd. Come to think of it, he hadn't gotten drunk, or done anything stupid in public, or slept with even one brunette since Everything Got All Screwed Up. There may have been a couple redheads with freckles early on, but that was beside the point.

No wonder Jarvis had been so accommodating. What was wrong with him? Why hadn't he gone farther off the deep end?

He hadn't wanted to. He had stabilized, broken old habits for Pepper, but he had also done it for himself. He didn't like himself doing those things. When he was dying, sure, but as long as he had his life... he didn't want to waste it.

Huh.

Maybe it hadn't been such a lie after all. Maybe he was going to be okay.

"Some habits you have to break before they break you. Or someone else." Tony frowned at how forthcoming he was being. It was probably bad form to let the villain, who would likely escape again someday, know so much about the workings of his soul.

"Very profound."

Tony smiled. "You'll be the first to get the T-shirt. No, wait, better make it a coffee mug."

The door opened and Natasha walked into the room. Tony stood. "Natasha," he greeted, mostly pleased to see her.

All the warm humor left the Loki's face, which led Tony to the startling realization that it had been there in the first place. The Frost Giant's red eyes narrowed to slits. "And the spider returns to check her webs," he said to Natasha, "But what exactly have you caught?"

Natasha glanced at Tony, who grinned back at her.

After a pause she said, "Tony, get out of my interrogation."

"Oh, were you interrogating him?" Tony pointed innocently at Loki. It earned him another look, this time undeserved. "Seriously, I didn't know."

"Well, now you do. Out."

"I can't stay and watch?" Tony joked, voice full of innuendo.

But Natasha titled her head, considering the question. She glanced thoughtfully back and forth between the two men and nodded. "Okay. Sit down," she ordered.

Tony returned to the chair, feeling suddenly uncomfortable and not sure why. He shot Loki a slightly panicked look, and Loki frowned back at him, equally puzzled.

Natasha leaned against the side wall. "What were you two talking about before I came in?"

Tony turned his head toward her, "Do you normally interrogate people by making small talk? With people not them?"

"Yes. Answer the question."

"Coffee mugs," Tony said shortly. He didn't particularly want to admit that it hadn't just been small talk.

"What about them?" Natasha pressed.

"We were talking about selling them."

Loki said, "You were."

Tony smiled, relieved that Loki was playing along with his lie. "Alright. I was. He was listening." Tony spread his hands as if pitching the idea. "'Stark Industries: weaponized coffee.' They'd sell like wildfire."

"It's an odd manufacturing choice," Loki muttered.

"What? I'm a visionary."

"You are a tin-plated tinkerer."

"You're a silver-tongued swindler." Tony thought for a moment. "You could be on the advertising team."

"How in the worlds could you persuade me to do that?"

Tony had a twinkle in his eyes and he opened his mouth to reply, but Natasha spoke instead. "What did you do to the Casket of Ancient Winters?"

Loki glanced sidelong at her, annoyed by the interruption, and did not answer.

Tony said, "I thought we were making small talk."

Natasha was holding Loki's gaze in battle-of-wills sort of way. "You were. Now you're done."

"But I had a great comeback!" Tony complained.

"Too bad."

"I have to just sit on a witty remark so Loki can tell us why a blue box went boom? Get your priorities straight, woman."

Then Natasha glared at Tony so fiercely that he actually stopped talking. Damn. Even Fury couldn't do that. It must be one of those things you only learned in Heartless Adolescent Spy Training.

Loki spoke. He sounded bored again. "The 'going boom' part was more your doing than mine."

"How so?" asked Natasha.

"You interrupted a spell. Its power dispersed in the explosion you saw. A terrible waste."

"What was the spell supposed to do?"

"Exactly what it did."

Loki and Natasha were scrutinizing each other's expressions, and clearly Tony was missing something. He didn't like it. "Either of you going to explain the subtext at some point?"

"No," said Loki flatly. Natasha smiled. Loki winced. "Damn it. Fine. I rendered the Casket powerless such that it could never be used to attack Asgard."

Natasha moved away from the wall and walked toward Loki. "I was going to ask why you protected us in the shield, but I think we both know the answer to that question." She turned to Tony. "Thank you, Tony. Your presence has been very helpful here."

Tony picked up on the hint that Natasha wanted him to leave, and was so confused and out of sorts that he forgot to ignore it. He stood.

How? How had his presence been helpful? What was going on? There some subtext, and apparently he wasn't allowed to know what it was, for reasons that involved more subtext. He normally solved this sort of problem one of two ways. One: hacking into things, which tended not to work on people's brains. Or two: insulting people until they yelled at him, which also wouldn't work on these two.

Tony walked toward the door, while Natasha stayed where she was, clearly contemplating her next question. He waved to Loki. "See you... the next time I feel like visiting the jail cell of a deranged god."

"Or sooner. I won't be locked up here for long."

"No?" Natasha asked calmly.

"No. You're going to need my help."

When the god didn't elaborate, Tony realized that Loki was waiting for another dramatic cue, so he gave it to him. "To do what?"

The corners of Loki's mouth lifted, but it was not quite a happy look. "To keep your world from falling into the sea."

Chapter Text

Over the past week, it had become the most prolific hurricane season in documented history, which was rather impressive, because it was only June.

Most of them had been harmless, but a particularly nasty one had hit the east coast. The Avengers left their tower to help, but there was only so much they could do. They helped people evacuate beforehand, and afterward, and they got medical supplies into difficult places, and they saw a lot of dead bodies.

Then they went home to the tower to rest, but Tony didn't feel like resting. Loki's words kept going through his head. To keep your world from falling into the sea. It wasn't the same, he told himself. It had been something different, some unrelated lie.

But Tony went down to the basement, to Loki's cell.

For a moment Loki looked mildly pleased to see him, but when the god caught sight of Tony's expression, his face became a blue mask, void of emotion.

"So. Did you do this?" Tony asked.

Loki took a moment, considering a lie and deciding that it would backfire too quickly. "Yes," he said. "That is, if you are referring to the increase of temperatures on Midgard, and the resulting disasters."

Of course. Nature of the beast. Why had Tony almost expected a different answer? "Any chance you could undo it?"

Loki leaned forward and replied seriously, "I can try."

"Really?" Tony was skeptical.

Loki nodded. "If you return my magic to me and take me to the poles, I can restore the frost there, at least for the time being."

Tony crossed his arms. "Right. Very plausible, Mr. 'I cannot release the shield unless you untie my hands.'"

"Whether you believe me or not is not my concern. Your world will melt without my help. Enjoy the weather."

They stared at each other until they realized they were at an impasse. Tony left.

.:.

"No. No-no-no-no. Don't touch the-" There was an abrupt flash of light and a sharp popping sound, and Tony sighed and dropped his head into one hand. "Dummy, that city college still has your name on it."

Since the heat wave, he'd had all his robots shipped to the workshop at the top of Avengers Tower. He certainly wasn't going to them, so they had to come to him. Now he was internally debating the benefits of shipping them back.

Tony had come up with a brilliant way to improve the climate control systems of his suit. It was one of those sudden flashes of inspiration that he had been strangely rare this past month, and it had taken over his mind in a pleasant, overwhelming way that didn't leave room for any other thoughts.

Which was nice, because his thoughts would have told him that Pepper was downstairs with a stack of paperwork and a long overdue talk, and that he was being a coward hiding up here.

If his idea worked, it would allow him to survive extreme cold, combat the soaring temperatures here, and possibly allow him to spend a few seconds inside a volcanic eruption.

The theory was simple enough, but he had built himself into a corner. There were fine wires that had to be placed exactly, and tended to shift when he was assembling parts of the frame. He was trying to reach into too-small gaps in the metal and delicately push the wires back into alignment, and then clip them securely to stop them from moving around anymore. It wasn't working.

It was a stupid logistical problem that had him completely stuck.

He could fix it when he built the next suit - divide the wires into segments and clip them to the parts before assembly, and design the ends to self-attach as he went along - but he wanted to give the thing a test drive before he spent then next few days putting together a whole new machine.

There was no reason why his robots should be unable to do this for him, but they found ways to fail at every task he set before them, and seemed pout up at him in a hurt way as he continued to inform them of their incompetence.

"Please don't do the droopy thing. You're making me feel like the bad guy. No, don't do that either! Just, look off in that direction, okay? Assume a thoughtful pose." Pause. "Or you could do that."

Tony tried to angle a curved tool to shift the wire over, but he couldn't catch the wire, and he couldn't place the tool right, and he couldn't feel or see what he was doing, and it just felt wrong.

His hands really weren't small enough for this.

He beat his head against an available surface, gave in, and went downstairs to find Pepper.

She was in a hallway a few stories down, having what looked like a pleasant conversation with Steve.

Tony poked his head out of the stairwell. "Pepper!"

Pepper jumped, and put a hand over her heart. "Oh, god, Tony don't scare me like that." She walked up to him, frowning in concern. "Have you been eating?"

"Sometimes. Question: Do you still work for me?"

"Um, I don't... well we haven't talked about it, because, Tony, you won't talk to me and we haven't sorted out any of that yet so I guess... technically? I just-"

"Good. Follow me."

"Tony..." she complained, but followed him up to his workshop.

"Ick, make two cups," Tony commanded as he entered the workshop, and Ick got to work.

Pepper dropped a pile of papers on a desk and stopped in front of Ick. "What is this?" Her voice was a mix of horror and polite curiosity.

"Oh, you haven't met my latest robot yet. Ick, meet Pepper. Pepper, Ick."

Ick used one of its eerily humanoid hands to shake Pepper's, while the other continued working.

"What does it do?"

Ick worked at incredible speed, so Tony was able to answer by handing her a full mug. "It makes this drink. It's great. You'll love it. It tastes like coffee. And strong dandelion tea. And ketchup," he added as Pepper took a sip.

"Nnnng!"

He felt a little sorry for her, but really, the name should have been warning enough. She stared, looking a little sick, as he took a long slow gulp from his own mug.

Pepper set down her mug and sighed. "Tony, I'm worried about you."

"Pepper, I'm fine," he said, and it was true.

But he was the boy who cried wolf and she didn't believe him. Pepper crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows in a way that said, Yes, and..?

He sat down, sighed, and took another long sip of coffee. "Look, I've had my time to mope, and I'm done. I'm doing the whole Avenger thing. I'm showering, I have eaten today, I've cut my..." He yanked on a lock of hair to demonstrate and then stared at it. "Well, I was planning to cut my hair. Bad example."

Pepper's expression told him he wasn't getting through.

So he stood up and walked up to her, looked her in the eye and braced himself for painful honesty. "I loved you, but you're not all I have. Not anymore. I'll be okay."

And she believed him. Pepper nodded and started to smile, but her face crumpled into tears instead. She swayed forward, not letting herself hug him, so he hugged her and she cried into his shoulder. It was all very emotional, and it made his chest hurt.

After a few minutes, she backed away and shook her head, flustered. "I'm sorry, I'm not... I shouldn't be doing this. I was just going to make sure you were okay, and um... and get you to sign these." She gestured at the stack of papers she had dropped on his desk. She put her hands over her nose and mouth and sighed, trying to gather herself.

"Do you want to keep working for me?" Tony asked, "Purely in the capacity of running the company. You've done a wonderful job so far."

There was a pause, then they talked over each other for a confusing minute.

"Right. Yes.-"

"-Good.-"

"-I mean, actually, I'd have to-"

"-No?-"

"-I have to ask Walt-"

"-You have to - Oh.-"

"-I mean, yes I want to-"

"-You need his permission. I get it-"

"-But I think he would be fine with it-"

"-Wouldn't want to think for yourself when you've got Walt-"

"-What? No, I don't need his permission. It's not like that-"

"-That's fine. Everything's fine, as long as you're-"

"-No, I-"

"-You're happy with him?" Tony asked, suddenly the only one speaking.

He waited for and answer.

The soft, involuntary smile that lit Pepper's face was a resounding yes that felt like a hard slap in the face. But in a good way. He smiled back at her. "Will that be all then, Miss Potts?"

Pepper shook her head warmly. "Goodbye, Tony," she said, still smiling, and left the workshop.

Once she was gone, Tony sat down at his desk and fiddled somewhat unseeingly with pieces of machinery and armor. When he got around to noticing what he was doing, realized that he had a giant stack of paperwork in front of him waiting for signatures, and the wires still weren't placed in the suit.

.:.

Two days later, the Avengers called an emergency meeting.

There was some important shelf of ice in Antarctica that would somehow be worse than all the others if it fell over. It was about to fall over. Apparently, that would cause all the coasts in the world to flood, which included a good chunk of the major cities.

Everyone was throwing out ideas, and none of them were good.

"Lots of ice cubes?" suggested Steve.

"Could we power a giant freezer on the tesseract?" asked Clint.

Tony sighed. "No way to move the cold deep enough into the shelf, and disposing of the amount of hot air the thing would produce would be really tricky. Also, they haven't figured out how to work the tesseract yet, and it's a bad dance and a boat ride away in Asgard. Do you want to be the one to ask Odin if we can have it back?"

"Tony, can't you build something?" Steve asked.

"Like a structure to hold the ice shelf in place? Sure, if I had a month and an endless supply of construction workers willing to build in the south pole."

"I was thinking more like a freeze ray."

"On that scale? Same answer, although it would be a lot more interesting."

Bruce looked thoughtful. "If we could find a way to destroy it completely, so there won't be anything left to fall into the ocean..."

Thor lifted his hammer as a suggestion. "I could-"

"No!" the others shouted in unison.

"Guys," Tony closed his eyes, wincing at what was about to come out of his mouth, "I can't believe I'm suggesting this... There might be a way."

"What way might that be?" Fury already sounded unhappy about it.

"Loki."

.:.

Thus, the Avengers found themselves gathered around Loki's cell, asking for his help.

They explained the problem and Loki explained his plan. "I have elemental freezing abilities, but without magic, they would not be powerful enough. With magic, I could freeze a much larger area, and secure this ice shelf into place. If you take the necklace off for a time so I can do the spell, then imprison me again, I can prevent the disaster you fear. Or at least delay it."

Tony was not convinced. "Strangely eager to help, for the guy who caused the problem. What's in it for you?"

"New York is one of the cities that would be affected, correct? And I am locked in a basement without magic. How do you think I would fare in that flood?"

"You lack of faith in my building is tragic."

Natasha asked, "What will be in it for you the second the necklace comes off?"

"I have a sincere desire to help the people of this world," Loki said disinterestedly.

Natasha narrowed her eyes as if Loki's sarcasm were somehow unexpected.

Thor walked forward and sat down in the folding chair. "Brother, the need is desperate. If we do this, will you promise to help the people of Earth as you have said, and will you promise that when the task is done you will immediately return to Avengers Tower, to be a prisoner again?"

"You have my word."

Thor was satisfied with that, and everyone else couldn't think of a better solution.

So they went to the south pole. It was cold, and Tony really wished he had finished with those modifications to his suit, because it was cold. Thor removed the necklace, and to everyone's pleasant surprise, Loki didn't immediately run away. The first thing he did was don his Asgardian skin. Then he spent a lot of time walking around the area of the ice shelf, scouting and assessing. At one point, he said, "It's not here!" sounding frustrated and mildly distressed.

When asked what he was referring to, he made something up about searching for a magical ley line that would make his spell more powerful.

Then he sat down and did something dramatic that involved frost and magic, and froze the ice shelf securely into place.

It was all going unexpectedly well. So far.

When Loki was done, Thor solemnly took the necklace and lifted it over his brother's head. Still in Thor's hands, the necklace swung loose through the spaces that were supposed to be occupied by Loki, and the illusion disappeared, leaving empty space in front of a perplexed god of thunder.

Clint swore and nocked his bow, spinning in place to search for the real Loki.

"That bow will be no help to you here." Loki said from a seat atop an ice bolder, expression smug.

Tony pushed off from the ground and flew a few feet into the air, bending his arms and legs in preparation for a fight. "I seem to recall you promising to go right back to your tower, princess."

"And I have," Loki said, and vanished again.

The Avengers returned to the tower, and sure enough another Loki was waiting for them, sitting calmly on the couch in the lounge, reading a book. And sure enough, the necklace fell right through him and he disappeared.

Clint and Steve got all wound up about it and started hunting through the tower trying to capture and contain the real Loki.

Tony hooked up the security camera feed to a big screen TV while Thor made pop corn, and they sat down with Bruce and Natasha to watch the show. It served as both the night's entertainment and a way to know immediately if Loki came out to attack anyone, at which point they were all ready to spring into action. Tony was wearing his suit-summoning bracelets, and Thor had his hammer near to hand, but neither really thought they would be needed.

Tony taught Thor the game of narrating the thoughts of the characters on the screen, and they had a merry old time. Loki spent a lot of time making little blue wisps of light appear just in the corner of Hawkeye's line of sight until the archer shook his head and started blinking in discomfort, and Tony exclaimed, "My eyes! I need my beautiful eyes!"

Captain America did a sweep of the guest rooms, the first of which still looked very lived-in from Pepper's last visit. Loki swapped out the furniture and clutter between rooms as Steve was on his way from each door to the next, so the captain found himself looking in on exact copies of Pepper's room all the way down the hall.

"There is something familiar about this room," Thor voiced for him, "And this one, and this one. The halls of Tony Stark are visited by women with very similar taste in wardrobe!"

When it got late and the real Loki had yet to make an appearance, Thor suggested the four of them go to bed, and Tony agreed. Natasha made a noncommittal noise and stayed where she was, but the other three headed off to their parts of the tower. Tony wore his bracelets to bed even though they were uncomfortable, and told Jarvis to wake him up if anything suspicious happened.

He slept through the night, or what was left of it, and the next morning the hunt was still going. A Loki had appeared on the couch in the seat next to Natasha, dressed casually in jeans and a dark green t-shirt, and the two were staring at the screen in companionable silence.

Thor woke about half an hour later and cooked a large breakfast for everyone. The man really knew his way around a Midgardian kitchen.

Tony filled a plate with eggs and bacon and dropped it on the counter, calling, "Loki! Breakfast!"

The plate vanished. "Thank you," the Loki on the couch said absently, eyes still locked on the screen.

It was another two hours before an exhausted Hawkeye and Captain America walked in and filled plates for themselves. The Loki on the couch disappeared now that there was nothing interesting on the TV. There were plenty of eggs left, so the rest of the Avengers joined the weary two for another round of breakfast.

Clint and Steve stared moodily at the others while they ate, clearly feeling betrayed by the lack of assistance. Clint said, "So, what, he can just do whatever he likes?"

Thor said, "I believe my brother still considers himself a prisoner here. He cannot leave the tower without breaking his word."

"What's keeping him from breaking his word?" asked Steve.

"His honesty," Thor replied, before taking a large bite of eggs.

Bruce shrugged. "What's he gonna to do? Destroy the world?"

"...Faster?" Tony added.

Steve frowned. "We told Odin we would keep him locked up."

"I am certain my father will be pleasantly surprised by how well you have done so far," Thor assured them cheerfully.

Tony waived his fork in the air. "I'm pretty sure there's an insult in there somewhere."

"We're really just going to let him have the run of the place?" Steve asked.

Tony said, "For lack of a better alternative, yes."

Hawkeye leaned back in his chair and stabbed a clump of eggs with flawless accuracy. "Well, shit."

Chapter Text

"I am a genius!" Tony declared, arriving in the lounge where Bruce and Steve were in the middle of a conversation.

They looked up at him, then Steve turned back to Bruce and kept talking. "...Just not sure it makes sense for us all to be living here together right now."

Tony made a face of mock hurt. "Are you breaking up with us? No, never mind that, important things are happening! Bruce, I just invented something you have to see."

"Is it time-sensitive?" asked Bruce.

"You have no idea." Tony paused. "No, not really. Kind of the opposite actually. But it's right upstairs and - amazing."

"Then it can wait until we're finished our conversation," said Steve.

"Okay, fine, I can wait," Tony said too innocently, "It's just, it's giving off this really weird radiation..."

"I could take a look, I guess," said Bruce, pushing himself up off his chair.

Tony walked over to the elevator and pressed the up button. "Excellent. Come on up to my workshop. I'll show you what I've got. Cap, you're not invited."

Steve ignored Tony and followed them into the elevator. Once the door closed after him, he said, "I'm just saying, if Loki is really going to keep to Avengers Tower, maybe we shouldn't. He might have plans that involve using us, and he can't do anything to us if we're not here."

"Feel free to be not here any time," said Tony as the elevator door opened again and they walked out into his workshop. He stopped in front of a large column that went from floor to ceiling and held a fancy tub of clear liquid at about eye level. "Okay, here it is. Let me show you." He flipped a switch on the column and waved his hand in behind the glass, and a slightly distorted image of his hand was visible through it.

Bruce and Steve stared at him, unimpressed.

"Do none of you have vision?" he demanded. "Look." He waved his hand again. "See that image?"

"The liquid is distorting the light?" Bruce observed.

Exasperated, Tony explained, "It's slowing down the light."

"Huh. Do it again." Bruce noted the way the image in the glass lagged behind Tony's arm, and nodded, mildly impressed. "It's cool, but it's not unheard of."

"Like this it is," Tony insisted. "Here." He handed Bruce a clipboard.

Bruce glanced over the numbers, and his brow furrowed. "Is this..." He tried again, "You've double-checked these results, right?"

"I don't need to. My math is never wrong."

Bruce raised an eyebrow.

"I checked it two dozen times," Tony admitted.

"What is it?" asked Steve, looking between them.

"Why are you still here?" asked Tony.

Bruce said, "These results should be impossible. There are forces working against the motion of the light, but nothing like enough to explain this. It's just... moving less fast."

Tony grinned. "I have successfully bottled relativity," he concluded, flipping the switch off again.

Steve didn't really know what that meant, so he didn't really care. "To answer your question, I'm here because we haven't figured out what Loki's planning yet, and I think we should focus on that before you go back to your science experiments. He's being awfully helpful, and I want to know why before it blows up in our faces."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Does everything have to be sinister just because he's the personification of sneaky, evil plots? Maybe our demise isn't on his to-do list this visit. Maybe he has a plan that involves us all going away to live on Cloudsdale and have ice cream sundaes for dinner every day."

"Did you just reference My Little Pony?" Steve asked disapprovingly.

"Did you just understand that reference?" Tony fired back.

"Um..."

"Bag of cats," Bruce reminded them, "We could be living on Cloudsdale one day and Muspelheim the next. I don't think assuming he'll stay here will help with that. The guy doesn't exactly think in a straight line. Might as well just accept it. Say hi to the newest, craziest member of our already eclectic household."

Loki appeared directly behind Bruce, nose just millimeters from the back of the scientist's head. "Hi."

Bruce did a full-body twitch, then took a deep breath and slowly uncurled his fingers and relaxed his shoulders until he was standing as he had been before. "Hello, Loki," he said without turning around.

"Now there are too many people in my workshop," Tony complained.

Steve turned to Bruce. "Ready to pack your bags yet?"

Bruce shrugged. "Two pointy things instead of one; I'll be fine. Besides, my lab is here."

Tony said, "Seriously, there's a maximum occupancy for this room and one of you has to leave."

Loki started walking around the workshop, forefinger curled contemplatively under his chin as he examined Tony's collection of machines.

"Where's the necklace?" asked Bruce.

"Clint has it," said Steve.

Tony said, "It's too crowded. This is worse than being handed things."

Bruce tapped on the glass containing the mysterious clear liquid. "Tony, what is this stuff, anyway? The readings aren't consistent with any known element."

Loki summoned the clipboard into his hands and started reading it.

Tony rubbed his palms over his eyes. "Jarvis, can you teleport one of them back out?"

"I don't possess that ability, sir."

Tony made a face. "Jarvis, this isn't working out. I'm dumping you for the Enterprise's computer."

"I apologize, sir. In the future I will of course endeavor to spontaneously learn magic at your convenience."

"Well, what can you do?"

Tony was answered with a burst of noise so loud and jarring that it took even him a moment to identify it as music. "Lights Out" by The Mighty Mighty BossTones was playing at what must be the loudest volume his speakers were capable of.

As soon as Tony realized what was happening, he started bobbing his head in time to the music. "That is more like it!" he shouted, and couldn't hear himself. Loki was holding his hands over his ears, looking pained, and Bruce and Steve were making a hasty exit through the stairwell door, which Jarvis obligingly opened for them as they ran.

Once they were both gone, the music turned off.

"Jarvis, that was brilliant. Maybe there's hope for you yet."

"Thank you, sir. I live to satisfy your every whim."

Loki took his hands away from his ears, shaken. "What was that?"

"My fellow Avengers don't appreciate good music."

"Music?"

"Music."

"That wasn't music."

"You say that, because you have the tastes of a crotchety, thousand-year-old viking. That's okay, most people do."

"Or perhaps because I have ears."

"Is that what those were, bunny rabbit? Well you're not wearing them right now, so I'll forgive your auditory lapse in judgement."

Loki's lips were lifting at the corners as he warmed to the flyting match. "'Lapse in judgement' coincidentally being a perfect description of your armor decoration. Tell me, was there an accident involving a large amount of red paint, or did you just decide to don the colors of an archery target because it didn't seem moronic at the time?"

Tony put a fist to his chest in mock hurt. "Ouch. That cut about as deep as a spear with performance issues."

"Considering that the staff has not malfunctioned before or since, I'm quite certain the problem was with you."

"Keep telling yourself that." He smirked. "I know I can be intimidating."

Loki smirked back. "Keep telling yourself that. Of the people who intimidate me..." He trailed off, expression turning somber.

"Yes?"

But some unpleasant thought had driven the humor from the god's mood, and he did not reply.

"Well, if you don't start talking, I'm going to assume my very presence has you silent with awe."

Loki looked back down that clipboard he still held in his hand. "Dr. Banner was right. This element does not, as a rule, exist. How did you make it?"

"I didn't find it, I - Oh wow, you actually asked the right question!" Tony exclaimed, pleased.

He tapped the reactor in his chest. "My battery here has a homegrown element or two built in. I had to shine accelerated light on a base material to get the right orbitals to fill up to keep the protons in place. There's an accelerator over there if you want to take a look. Since I made it, I've been trying it on other elements. I wasn't coming up with much that was new and shiny until I got drunk and tried it on Vibranium. Wound up with this beauty."

Tony gestured at the tub of clear liquid again. "The base element is a metal, but the transformation turns it into a liquid similar to water. All it takes is a mild electric charge, and time slows down in the space occupied by the element. I call it Extemporanium."

Loki looked duly impressed, and then asked, "What would happen if you placed an object inside the liquid?"

"Good question. I don't know. Why don't we just..." Tony started to heft the glass tub out of its place in the column.

"Sir, it is extremely dangerous to open that witho-"

"Mute," Tony said, and Jarvis was cut off mid-word. He slid the tank out just far enough that there was a small opening in the top of the tank. Tony clapped his hands together in a let's do this gesture. "What do you want to drop inside?"

The god of mischief started to grin.

The elevator doors opened and Pepper walked in without looking up from her tablet. "Tony, have you signed that paperwork yet? It's been - Oh my god!" she shouted as she caught sight of Loki.

Loki narrowed his eyes at her.

Tony stepped between the two and held up an open hand toward each of them in a placating gesture. To Pepper, he said, "It's okay. He's harmless. As long as you don't make any sudden movements, or offer him a drink or... y'know, breathe."

"Then how is it okay?!"

"Look, I've got it under control, just, could you calm down?"

"Okay. Okay, I'm being calm. Is there anyone I should call, like the police...?"

"Nope."

"Well, then could you explain to me what is going on?"

"He popped in for a conversation. I revealed some of my most closely held technological secrets. He was just talking me into doing a slightly dangerous experiment with-"

"Mute," Loki said, and sound stopped coming out of Tony's mouth, though he kept moving it for quite a long time afterward.

To Pepper, Loki said, "Loki Odinson. I don't believe we've met."

Pepper visibly relaxed into Calm Professional Business Woman Mode. "Pepper Potts. We haven't met. What brings you to Avengers Tower?"

"A prison sentence."

Pepper frowned, confused.

Tony made a witty remark and no one heard it.

Pepper said, "I thought you escaped."

"Hardly. I have more freedoms now because I have made myself useful."

Pepper turned to Tony. "Is that true?"

Tony gave her a helpless look, thought for a while, and nodded.

Pepper said, "This is actually kind of nice. It's normally so hard to get a straight answer out of him."

Loki just smiled.

Pepper's expression faltered, uncomfortable with how friendly the conversation had become. The god's smile hardened a little.

"Well," Pepper said briskly, "I'm just here to collect those papers. And I see they're right over there. Tony, did you sign all of these?"

Tony nodded.

"Excellent, I'll be on my way, then. Oh, and this tablet has a list of possible new assistants for you. Look over them. And get a haircut." She held out the tablet to Tony. "Loki, it was nice meeting you."

Loki raised his eyebrows. "Lying to the god of lies. How very daring of you."

I don't like being handed things, Tony mouthed, and was ignored.

Pepper said, "Interesting. It was interesting to meet you. I'm really leaving now." Noticing with a trace of hurt that Tony had yet to take the tablet, she put it down on his desk and made her exit.

Once Pepper was gone, Loki said, "Un-mute."

"-fucking Walt. Jesus, I can hear myself now. I should probably ease up on the swearing."

Loki stared at the closed elevator doors. "Who is she to you?"

"Best friend. Ex-girlfriend. Runs my company. Basically the one that got away. Her wedding is in a few months. It's very exciting."

Loki gave him a scrutinizing look. "You seem like the sort of man who could make life hell for anyone who took what was yours."

"I could," Tony agreed, and did not elaborate.

Loki let it go. He picked up the tablet from Tony's desk. "Why do you need a new assistant?"

"She used to be that too."

Loki gave the doors another thoughtful look. "A woman of many talents, then. I wish you luck in finding a suitable replacement for her." He handed Tony the tablet.

Tony took it automatically, then frowned at it as Loki teleported away.

.:.

Over the next few weeks, Loki did keep to Avengers tower. He willingly went back to the poles to keep the ice in place any time they asked him to. The first time he went to the North Pole, he spent another half-hour looking for "ley lines," but when he didn't find any, he went right to work with the freezing thing and then went right back to the tower.

He didn't seem to be causing much mischief for anyone who didn't go looking for it, and they gradually got used to having him there.

He would show up for meals and look superior and bored, and make occasional contributions to the conversation. He dressed in appropriately casual Midgardian clothing, which was more than could be said of Thor. Sometimes he would even eat while he was there, of he knew the necklace was somewhere out of easy reach.

Other times, he would appear in Tony's workshop to turn off his music, exchange insults, make brilliant observations, and be otherwise annoying.

He ate with them and saved the world with them, and it was getting hard to remember that he wasn't just another Avenger.

Not that anyone ever forgot.

Chapter Text

"I have the most disturbing suspicion that you're going to eat that," Loki said to Tony one day.

"Impressive deduction, Sherlock." They were sitting in the kitchen area of the shared lounge. Tony had gotten distracted by the project in his workshop the last couple days, and now he was starving. He was just sitting down to a balanced meal of cheeseburgers and fries.

Tony's cell phone started playing Darth Vader's theme music.

"It's SHIELD," Loki noted, recognizing the ring tone.

"Probably means the world is ending," Tony said. He made to eat his burger anyway, sighed, and ran off to suit up instead, picking up his phone as he went. "Yeah?"

.:.

There were a couple of creatures rampaging through a street in Brooklyn. They were vaguely human shaped, but a lot more on fire, and seemed to bear extreme ill will toward civilians and standing structures.

The available Avengers gathered.

Thor and Jane were in Asgard hammering out wedding plans and, more literally, sections of the Bifrost that were still in need of repair, and there weren't enough things to smash to bring in the Hulk, so it was just Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.

It was a long range fight - there not being anything to punch that wasn't on fire, so Steve and Natasha mostly stuck to helping put out fires that had already been lit. That left Tony and Clint to shoot at the creatures and hope for the best.

The things went around almost gleefully setting fire to everything and everyone they encountered. The whole thing was made creepier by the fact that, under their outer coating of fire, they didn't seem to be species that bothered with clothes. All around, they looked emphatically supernatural with a big helping of Not Supposed To Be Here.

This impression was reinforced when, after the Avengers exchanged a few shots and fireballs with them, the creatures opened up a huge black portal and disappeared into it.

Once all the fires were out, the the Avengers went home with a distinct feeling of not having particularly won.

.:.

After the fight, Clint followed Tony back the shared lounge while they discussed how weird the things had been. Loki was sitting exactly where he had been, appearing not to have moved an inch. Tony sat down once more to eat his food. But Clint stopped him, grabbing his wrist.

"D'you mind?" Tony demanded.

"You're going to eat something you left alone in a room with him?" Clint indicated Loki with his eyes.

It was was a valid point. Tony looked mournfully down at his french fries.

Loki gave them a bored look, took one fry, and ate it to demonstrate that it was not poisoned.

Tony doubted the same things were poisonous to humans and Frost Giants. But he was hungry, so he said, "Good enough for me," and dug in. Clint gave him a disgusted look and went off to find a perch.

Tony suffered no major side effect from eating the food. But he did start bugging Loki to take the first bite of all his meals, just in case.

.:.

Wednesday evening was quiet.

Tony was leafing through a stack of Isaac Asimov books and talking to Jarvis about the possibility of introducing laws Zero and One into his programing. Jarvis seemed cautious of the modification, pointing out that not allowing any humans to be harmed was a big job that would take up all his processing power, and perhaps Tony wanted to build a second AI that was more humanitarian-focused?

"You just don't want anything getting in the way when you and your robot friends try to take over the world," Tony quipped.

"Sir, I'm delighted that you still can't tell we already have."

Tony shook his head and started re-reading one of the stories.

After about ten minutes, Jarvis spoke out of the blue. "Requesting your permission to access the SHIELD database, sir."

Tony looked up abruptly. "That is not normal. Jarvis, are you being hacked?"

"Doubtful. I am speaking with Loki, and the conversation might be safer if I had a copy of his SHIELD file on my database."

"Safer? How so?"

"For example, he seems to find my addressing him with the surname 'Odinson' mildly destabilizing. Given the files, I may be able to find a viable alternative."

"Can't you just call him 'Loki'?"

"That would hardly be proper, sir."

"Fine, do the hacking thing. I get a copy too."

"Of course." There were two seconds of silence and then, "It's on your server now."

The SHIELD file was very disappointing. It contained mostly information about Loki's role in the Chitauri invasion, of which Tony already knew the basics. It named his race correctly, but failed to describe the specifics of what exactly a Jotunn was. Virtually nothing explaining his background, his motivations, his favorite foods or anything really interesting. Tony knew for a fact that his own file was much more thorough than this.

"This is useless," he said, tossing the file in the trash bin icon.

"I have to agree, sir. Would you like to start your own file?"

"You read my mind."

"What do you know about him so far?"

"Well, he's some kind of ice-based life form, and he enjoys bacon..."

.:.

On Thursday night, dinner was ruined.

It started out well enough. It was Steve's turn to cook, which meant it was takeout night. They had ordered Chinese.

Tony was pretty sure it was the real Loki tonight. He was eating, but it had been established in an earlier incident that Loki could create the illusion that he was eating.

Clint was nowhere to be seen. Sometimes he tolerated Loki's presence at the dinner table, but most days he opted to eat alone. Tony thought he was probably off somewhere moping.

"So tell about the fight," said Thor as they sat down to eat, "I understand your realm had visitors from Muspelheim while I was away. Shame I missed it."

"Not much to tell," said Clint, "They left the minute we started putting up a fight."

"A scouting party, then," Loki deduced. "Cheer up, Thor. I don't think you've missed your chance to slaughter Jotunn."

Thor's eyes widened. "Loki, I-"

"Those were Jotunn?" Tony asked, stealing a piece of orange chicken from Loki's plate, "They didn't look a thing like you."

"Fire Jotunn. Different species." Loki glanced at Thor and rolled his eyes. "Oh, stop looking at me like a wounded puppy. You're not the only one who's been overzealous on that count." He took an egg roll from Tony's plate and started eating it.

The food thievery was actually a normal behavior. After the incident with the not-so-poisoned fries, a pattern had formed: When Tony left a plate or cup unwatched, he gave Loki a suspicious glance, and Loki would glare at him and take a bite or a sip.

It became a game, and then it became a habit. They had started to lose track of which food was whose and ate from each other's dishes interchangeably. Somewhere along the line, the two just started sharing food.

The other Avengers thought it was weird. Tony thought it was weird too, when he thought about it. He solved the problem by not thinking about it.

"What do the Fire Jotunn want with Earth?" Steve asked.

"Cooler territory, I suspect," said Loki, "More than one realm is overheating."

"So Muspelheim has become too hot for the Fire Demons," Thor chuckled.

"An invasion, then," Steve concluded.

"Only if they like what they see," Loki said.

Tony put down his fork in mock offense. "Are you implying that my world might not be worth invading?"

Loki gave Tony a rare smile of pure good humor. "You people put cheese on everything. What would the conquering race be expected to eat?"

There was a sudden twang and a rushing sound. The Avengers started and looked around.

The god of lies was now necklaced and blue and dropping his fork in angry shock. An arrow was buried in the floor to Loki's left. When they all turned their eyes to backtrack its trajectory, they found Clint hanging from the ceiling about thirty feet away.

Hawkeye had somehow managed to attach the magic necklace loosely to an arrow, and still shoot it with enough accuracy to drop the necklace on Loki without hurting anyone.

The Avengers at the table looked around at each other uncertainly. By all rights, they should be up and arresting Loki, leading him back to his basement cell. Clint had won fair and square, after all, and Loki had started the game in the first place.

But something about it just didn't feel right. They had been eating a companionable meal, and this felt like a rude interruption. Like public humiliation. Tony didn't know whether to punch Clint in the face for being a jackass, or congratulate him on a great shot.

Loki rose in silence and walked out of the kitchen, holding tightly to what remained of his pride.

Clint dropped neatly from the ceiling and walked over to the table and served himself some food. He took in the confused, slightly hostile atmosphere coming off the group, and nodded and if acknowledging an order. He walked away, plate in hand, to eat alone.

A moment later, Natasha got up to follow him out, looking almost concerned.

Tony, Bruce, Thor and Steve were the only ones left, and they picked at their food uncomfortably. Even Thor seemed to have lost his appetite.

Tony said, "Screw it," pushed his plate away, and went off to look for Loki. As he left, the other three got up and started clearing plates.

So dinner was ruined.

.:.

It was a lot easier to find Loki now that the god didn't have any magical powers. Tony asked Jarvis, and Jarvis told him, and then he went where Jarvis told him.

There was a room with a swimming pool in one of the bottom floors of the tower - because who builds a house in New York without tossing in a swimming pool? - and Loki was sitting on the edge in the corner opposite the door. His finger just touched the water and made patterns of ice crystals appear across the surface, shifting and growing and covering the pool.

"Neat trick for a guy who can't do magic," said Tony, and Loki looked up.

Tony thought, Don't ask me to take off the necklace. I'll say no.

Loki said, "What are you doing here?"

Tony walked along the edge of the pool. "I came to see how you were doing."

Loki went back to staring at the water, ignoring Tony's existence. Tony walked around the rest of the way and sat down next to Loki.

Tony had never seen the god quite so close before in this form. His skin was a dark grayish-blue, ridged with white patterns. It made him look ethereal, like a formation in nature. Rock, worn into a beautiful shape by wind and chance. In contrast, Loki's red eyes looked startlingly alive, downcast though they were, lost in shame and distant thoughts. They reflected brightly in the icy water.

Tony said, "Hey, it's not so bad. Everyone likes you too much to lock you up again. You'll see. It'll be just like old times, but in a more conspicuous color."

Loki hit the surface of the water with his fist, creating a spiderweb of cracks in the thin ice.

Tony jumped a little. "Not exactly the reaction I was going to there, but okay. Do you want us to lock to up?" he asked seriously, "Was that part of the plan or something?"

"No."

"So the problem is the color. For the record, I like it."

Loki shot him the mild glare that said, Do not mock me, and looked back down at his blurry reflection in the ice. "For a moment," he said quietly, "I had almost forgotten."

"Forgotten which?"

Loki held up his blue hand again, demonstrating the color that marked his species, just as he had for Odin, but this time he could not change it back.

"Ah. And then a big ugly necklace dropped from the sky. Rude reminder."

Loki nodded.

Tony thought, Don't ask me to take off the necklace. I'm not sure what I'll do.

He said, "What's so bad about being a Frost Giant?"

"Everything."

"Besides that."

Loki didn't answer.

"Okay." Tony tried a different angle. "Why is it good to be Asgardian?" When Loki still kept silent, he said, "Come on. You can talk to me. I'm on your side. No, that didn't come out right."

Focusing intently on the ornate patterns he was forming in the ice, Loki started speaking. "The Jotunn are a vile race that bring destruction and suffering. They spread themselves across the realms like a plague when not pared down. Asgardian parents scare their children with stories of them. When I was a child, I feared they would creep in through the windows of my room at night and kill me while I slept."

"Odin meant me to rule, but never Asgard. The very idea of Jotunn prince on his throne is like a bad joke." Loki dug his fingers into the water in a commanding motion. The ice shattered across the entire surface of the pool, then fell and mixed with the water near the surface, beautiful pattern turned to slush.

"If I were Asgardian, my father might have trusted me as he did Thor, or at least listened long enough to hear sense and not put Thor on the throne so soon! I would not have had to take matters into my own hands. There would have been no battle with the Frost Giants. Thor would not have been exiled, and I would not have failed so dismally in his place. If I were Asgardian, I would still be my father's son!"

"And what's so great about that?" Tony asked, unimpressed.

The question startled a smile onto Loki's face, and something that was half sigh, half chuckle. Tony thought it was actually a very attractive sound, and then he thought, Wait, what? Fortunately Loki was talking again, which gave him something else to think about. Sort of.

"Odin could never love me as he loved Thor. He could never truly trust me. He looked on me with confusion. Sometimes pity. And now finally I understand why." Loki was picking at the lines on his hands again. "When we were children, the most important game was to be just like Father. That deck was always stacked in Thor's favor, and I never saw it."

"So don't play."

"I had thought of that," Loki said coldly.

"And?"

"And, now that I know all the cards, I may yet find a way to cheat."

"That's the spirit, I guess."

"Of course, I'm not playing with the same hand I was this morning."

Tony shook his head. Then he asked anyway, "What would you do if you had your powers back?"

Loki frowned as he thought. "I would keep on acting as I have been, and wait."

"Caught in a lull between dastardly plots?"

"Something like that." One corner of Loki's mouth lifted, but his eyebrows were still drawn together. "And I would never take this form again."

Tony thought, Ask me to take off the necklace. I'll say no.

Chapter Text

"Fury will have him arrested," Natasha said later that same evening, once the Avengers had all drifted back into the shared lounge.

"Technically speaking, he never stopped being our prisoner," said Bruce.

"Fury will still have him arrested."

Thor said, "He has been on good behavior. Does that not influence Midgardian punishments?"

"He's been blatantly refusing to return to his cell," Natasha pointed out.

"Did anyone ever actually tell him to?" Tony asked curiously.

There was a silence.

Clint said, "Fury will still have him arrested."

Tony turned to Clint. "And what does Fury propose we do the next time an ice cap wants to fall into the ocean? Of the not Steve variety, that is. Punishing him now and asking for his help later? Kind of not smart."

Clint turned to square off against Tony. "You're looking at this from too close, headcrab. Do you even remember how to eat by yourself anymore?"

"You do that enough for the both of us, Eeyore," Tony assured Clint, patting him on the shoulder and he turned back to the other Avengers. "Look, we don't even need to tell Fury that Loki doesn't have his magic anymore. SHIELD doesn't have access to the camera feed right now-"

"Of course we're going to tell Fury," Steve cut in.

The other Avengers nodded. Even Bruce.

Tony threw his hands in the air.

Bruce said, "Wait, why does SHIELD not-"

Natasha looked up, started, and everyone else looked in the same direction. Loki stood in the doorway to the stairwell, leaning against the doorframe and rubbing his dark blue fingers together thoughtfully. He looked up at them, and damn, those bright red eyes could be unnerving. "Let me speak to Fury," he said.

The Avengers looked at each other and shrugged.

.:.

So Loki was allowed to walk the tower. He had to return to his cell each night, and there were certain areas that now had guards posted at the doors to keep him out. In a memo that was somewhat embarrassing to Loki, all tower employees had been informed about the nature of his necklace, and instructed not to remove it under any circumstances, no matter how dire the situation may seem.

.:.

Tony was in the workshop internally celebrating his latest breakthrough over a mug of Ick's coffee. Loki appeared in the stairwell, and Tony wondered why Loki tended to take the stairs. One more thing to add to his file...

Tony's musings were cut short by the muffled sound of Jarvis saying, "You are not authorized to access this-"

"Jarvis!" Tony called sharply, "Let him in."

Jarvis managed to open a door sheepishly. "Sir, would you like to restructure some of your security protocols?"

"Yeah. Toss them up." Tony rearranged boxes on the screen while Loki walked in. "Sorry about that. Jarvis can be a little insensitive. Just because you're all weak and powerless now is no reason to lock you out. Even Fury knows that." Tony finished with the protocols and closed the window. "How did you convince Fury to let you go wandering, anyway?"

"I pointed out that he might need my help again."

"That sounds..." Tony made a face. "...Entirely reasonable."

Loki bent to examine Tony's latest experiment. "That's always the trick. You've made progress with the Extemporanium, I see."

"Yeah." Tony jumped up excitedly and started adjusting machines and waking up displays to show Loki what he had created. "It's almost ready for me to start incorporating it into the suit. Fire a blast that slows down my enemies, now that will be cool," he pointed at Loki for emphasis between adjusting dials.

"You can do that?"

"Getting there. I've figured out how to channel the time distortion into a field outside the substance, which means we can place other objects in it. It causes the element to decay fast as anything, though. It's going to be a problem on any large scale application, because there's a limit on how much Extemporanium I can make."

"What limits it?"

"The base element is very rare. There are about fifty pounds of it known to exist in the world."

Loki used a nearby display to pull up information on the applications and accessibility of Vibranium and started reading. "And you shot accelerated light at five of those pounds just to see what it would turn into?"

"Well I was drunk and - wouldn't you?" Tony set his coffee down on the table while he focused on the charts. Loki absently picked up the drink. Tony looked over just in time to not stop him. Loki took a sip, choked, swallowed with some difficulty, and stared at him, shocked.

"Ah. Um, it's an acquired taste," Tony said, trying not to laugh, a little worried about angering the god without his Iron Man suit near to hand. Again.

"This is genius," the god of mischief said. "How many of your mortal friends have you convinced to drink this vile brew?"

Then Tony did laugh. "Just one so far," he said, fiddling with the holograms above his desk.

"A fact that must be remedied." Loki leaned against the desk and raised his eyebrows.

Tony's reply was a cunning look.

.:.

Loki had forgotten just how much fun humans could be.

Practical jokes were easy in any realm, and convincing Steve that it was just coffee in that mug was fairly boring. But the thing that made humans special was that after they had all watched the captain splutter and cough and exclaim at how disgusting the stuff was, everyone else decided they had to try it too.

Without any intervention from Loki, they quickly agreed upon the rule that spitting it out was not an option. It had to be swallowed.

Bruce went first. He didn't make any sounds, but his face formed a contorted, helpless expression that would go down in the history books as one of the funniest things the other Avengers had ever seen.

Clint and Natasha drank the now dubbed "Ick's Brew" with ease, and started exchanging references to places where they had eaten worse things.

Thor threw back most of a mugful, and failed at the "not spitting it out" portion of the challenge.

Then they convinced Bruce to take another sip so Tony could take pictures of his face.

Loki found himself constantly holding a hand over his mouth to keep from joining in Tony's helpless laughter by the time they all got around to concocting a plan to feed the stuff to Fury.

Since the plans suggested seemed to focus a great deal on not getting caught, Loki was certain that this was an event he would have to witness with his own eyes. Tony assured him that he would make sure there was video footage.

.:.

That night, they watched The Wrath of Khan. Tony had insisted that if Loki was going to help him create the stuff of science fiction, he had to be well versed in it, and thus planned to force him to watch all the Star Trek movies. Aside from a few that he chose to pretend didn't exist.

Clint, Natasha and Thor all joined them. Steve had promised to come, but canceled at the last minute, claiming something had come up. Bruce was doing important research in his lab, or possibly just being antisocial.

Pepper was there too, by invite from Tony. It was sort of a peace offering, because they had accidentally been avoiding each other following that day in the workshop.

Clint was all for the choice of original Star Trek, but he started to look pale around the time the brainwashing bugs started crawling into people's ears. Natasha held his hand until he relaxed and got back into the movie.

Kirk started inspecting the Enterprise, then stopped halfway through and told them to take her for a spin. "What about the rest of the inspection?"

Later, Kirk mouthed as he left the room.

Tony said, "Run before you walk. I keep telling Jarvis, but he never learns."

"Thank god," Pepper muttered.

McCoy yelled at Spock about the destructive power of the Genesis project. Loki looked thoughtful, chewing slightly on the inside of his lip.

Tony gave him a sideways look. "Giving you any ideas yet?"

Loki said, "I'll never understand how humans continue to think that they can take a powerful technology and throw away the destructive while they keep the creative. It never works. It will never work. Power is power."

Tony shrugged. "You can try to keep it out of the wrong hands."

Loki glanced down at his own hands, and Tony got the distinct impression he had just put his foot in his mouth.

Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik started to search the dark, abandoned space station.

Clint said, "Oh look, they're splitting up. Idiots."

Chekov and Terrell showed up again and described being taken over by the bugs, and Clint started to look ill again. Natasha grabbed his hand again and tried to distract him by making fun of Chekov's accent.

Kirk said, "I don't believe in the no-win scenario."

"This Kirk character seems awfully familiar," Loki said, glancing significantly at Tony.

Tony smiled back. "I know, right? He's Natasha all over."

Loki snorted.

Natasha got a phone call and left to room to take it. When she got back, she said, "Suit up, guys. We've got Fire Demons in Malibu."

Clint looked relieved. Tony and Thor groaned at having the movie interrupted, and got to their feet.

"Do we need to fetch Bruce?" Tony asked.

"Fury said no. He's worried the Hulk might give up on touching hot things and go after civilians."

"Okay. What about Steve?"

"He's finishing up with a bit of petty crime trouble on Broad Street. He'll be along in about an hour," Natasha replied.

"What sort of petty crime?"

"Bank robbery. Lots of guns."

"That's all?" Tony asked, "Why would that take an hour?"

The Avengers made their way out, leaving only Pepper and Loki sitting on the couch.

As Clint walked past Pepper, he said in a low voice, "Remember, this guy is the patron saint of talking people into doing stupid things. No matter what he says to you, don't take off that necklace."

Pepper nodded.

As soon as everyone was gone, Pepper turned off the movie and put on the news. The anchors spent about a minute talking about a politician who had a visible hangnail during an important speech, before the battle came on. Pepper and Loki both leaned forward to watch anxiously.

There was a nerve-wracking half-hour of uninterrupted violence. Natasha and Thor both had some nasty burns, and the Iron Man suit looked badly damaged, but convex enough that the person inside might still be fine. At any rate, everyone was still in the fight.

There seemed to be no end to the Fire Jotunn, though. Every time the Avengers started to make some progress, another portal would open and as many Jotunn would run though as could make it while it was open. Often the last one would be sliced by the closing portal, and fall to the ground in a gruesome cross-section.

A blond reporter who apparently lacked all sense of self-preservation walked up to one of the creatures and cheerfully asked, "Is there anything you would like to say to the people of Earth?"

The Fire Jotunn turned to face the camera, fiery skin glowing brightly against the night sky. "We will take this world for our own. This is only the first wave. Soon, Surtur will open a great doorway. He will march through it with his sword, Twilight, and all the inhabitants of Muspelheim will follow. You will not be able to stand against us. Surrender now, and perhaps he will show mercy."

The clip ended and the news anchors started exchanging their predictions about the fate of mankind, while images of the destruction continued to play in the background.

"It's a diversion," Loki breathed, watching the screen.

Pepper gave him a questioning look, and Loki explained, "This entire battle is a diversion. If the people of Muspelheim wanted to open a large, stable portal for an invasion, the easiest place would be a point where such a portal had been opened before." Loki looked up.

Following his meaning, Pepper looked up too. "Right over Stark Tower," she said, "I'll call Tony."

"No. A distraction in this fight could kill him, and no Avenger possesses the magic to prevent this. No one on Earth currently has that power."

She nodded. "I'll call SHIELD instead."

"And line up more bodies for the slaughter? No, it won't help. No one on Earth currently has that power. Currently."

Pepper followed his meaning again, and leveled him with a look of pure distrust. "This is a trick."

"No trick." Loki leaned forward. "Under what circumstances would you consider removing this necklace?"

"Not if the world depended on it."

"That is a shame, because right now it does."

.:.

The Avengers were doing their best, but there was just no winning. The faster they cut through the line of Fire Jotunn, the faster more arrived. It wasn't like the Chitauri invasion. There was no single point to focus on, and they never knew where the next wave was coming from.

Clint was running out of arrows. Natasha was burned all over, and had a limp, if you looked closely. She couldn't touch the things, so she picked up and discarded weapons as she went, and collected arrows for Clint whenever she came across one that wasn't ruined. Thor was the only one who was really making a dent, and that just wasn't enough.

Tony's suit looked awful, but it was still mostly functional. The new climate control tech was really coming in handy. His right wrist wasn't moving like it should, but he could still fire energy at the things. It didn't have as much effect as Thor's hammer, and that was bothering him. He was working on a more creative plan.

.:.

"Believe me, the danger is very real," Loki insisted, "I'm not one to cry wolf."

"You are the wolf!" Pepper cut in. "You killed Phil! You tried to take over the world! With an army!" she gestured vaguely at the TV, which was playing an excellent exhibit of said atrocity for comparison.

"That was not what it-" Loki stopped himself. He looked Pepper in the eye, forcing all the bitterness from his expression, begging her to listen and understand. "Look, even if I did mean to destroy or rule your world, I have learned since then. There is nothing I can achieve by hurting you. When I had my power these past weeks, I used it freely to protect this realm. Why would that change now?"

There was a long silence, and Loki let it sit, letting confusing, conflicted thoughts circle in Pepper's head. At length, her expression started to settle back into distrust.

Carefully, Loki broke the silence, with just a little bit of bitterness now. "Part of you believes I am telling the truth. Part of you truly believes that you are damning your world to fire and destruction. But the risk to your pride is too great. You fear you would join the ranks of fools who have been taken in by Loki Lie-smith. You would be ashamed, you would appear gullible. We can't have that, not on the reputation of the consistently capable Pepper Potts."

Pepper narrowed her eyes. "Are you accusing me of being selfish?"

Loki shrugged. "A woman so close to Tony Stark, I assume you have endangered your own life for the common good. It is below you, though, to endanger your vanity for the sake of your fellow man."

Pepper shook her head, with the hard smile of a woman deeply offended but feigning amusement. She picked up her tablet and started opening and closing files at random, pretending to be busy.

"Consider. What if I speak true, and you do nothing? You would instead join the ranks of those fools who have met their doom by ignoring my warnings. I assure you, it is a far larger club, and a stupider one."

Pepper looked up at the TV, then back down at her screen.

Loki said, "And what if it is a trick? You could bind me with any oath before removing the necklace. I often lie, yes, but when I give my word, I keep it. At least more dependably than Thor does."

"That could be a lie," Pepper pointed out, still feigning boredom and focusing her eyes on her tablet.

"It could be, but it is not. Either you believe me, or you do not. Whatever you have been told to do, you are responsible for your actions. You must decide what you think is best."

Pepper looked up at him. She visibly wavered, then took on a determined look. She got out her cell phone. "I can't trust you. I'm calling SHIELD."

Immediately, Loki stood and made for the stairwell door. "Damn you humans and your stubborn pride. You deserve to burn."

Pepper stood too. "Where are you going?"

Loki stopped in the doorway and turned to her. "You're right, you can't trust me. Disregard everything I've just told you. If you need me, I'll be angering a Hulk." With that, Loki started down the stairwell at superhuman speed.

"Jarvis, stop him!" Pepper shouted. "Lock him in the stairwell!"

"You are no longer authorized to access those protocols," Jarvis informed her.

"Tony, what have you done?" Pepper muttered. She started for the stairs, thought better of it, and stepped into the elevator, dialing a number on her cell phone. When the call went through, she said, "Steve, I need your help."

.:.

Tony smiled in malicious satisfaction as he sprayed down Fire Demons and said Fire Demons became very unhappy and ceased to be on fire. In a work of practical ingenuity, he had brought together many lengths of fire hose, a few strong pumps, and the cold water underneath the top layer of the Pacific Ocean.

He and Thor were both making about equal headway now. They were keeping up, but that was it. Clint was out of arrows. He and Natasha were hiding out on top of a building with pistols shooting at anything within range.

It still wasn't enough.

.:.

Bruce was in his lab as usual, studying gamma radiation, its effects on the human body, and how to reverse them. He had just managed to kill another batch of mice, and was considering whether or not to say something nice over them, when his day got even worse.

"Well," Loki said from the doorway behind him, "It's over."

Bruce turned around and looked at Loki, who was wearing a victorious smirk with hate and bitterness in all its dark corners.

"What's over?" Bruce asked.

"The game. The part where I pretend to be harmless and helpful, and you all fall for it like sentimental fools. The Fire Jotunn are attacking. Within hours, your world will be reduced to ash."

There was a noise, not loud, but it permeated space in the most uncomfortable way, a sound that shouldn't be physically possible. Loki glanced up in response with a look that said, Ah, here it comes. "Your friends are distracted. They have no idea the main invasion will happen right here."

Bruce was watching him through narrowed eyes. "You've been living with us for over a month. You ate with us and worked with us and watched Pocahontas with us. You did all that just to destroy the world?"

The god shrugged. "Well, to destroy it a little faster."

"Why?"

"Revenge," he whispered.

Then Loki abruptly let loose the rage that so often simmered under his skin and shouted, "I could have been King of Asgard! Thor was unworthy, and succession fell to me! It was my rightful place, but one visit to this abhorrent realm, and Thor came back into the fold with father's blessing! And I was cast aside into darkness! A worthless tool, forged for an expired purpose..."

Focus, Loki chided himself, and went back to explaining his grudge against Earth, "And I should have been ruler here, to teach your people what suffering comes when you wrong a prince of Asgard! But you dared touch me, attack me! You destroyed my army! You sent me to my father in chains! Every human aught to suffer as I suffered, to know shame and despair and death. Every one. Men and women and children. Not one of you will be held innocent."

Loki had hoped his own anger might be contagious, but Bruce was unaffected. Maybe he had laid it on a little thick.

The scientist asked calmly, "So why would fast be better than slow?"

Loki absently spun out the lie, most of his mind focused on finding a chink in Bruce's self-control. "With time, you could leave. Colonize other worlds. Some remnant of humanity would be left to infest the universe. I aim for total extinction."

"That's awfully evil of you," Bruce said, voice colored more by surprise than by disbelief.

"And all I needed was to be right here, to slowly prepare the gateway to reopen when the time was right. And you let me stay. Isn't it amazing? How easy it was to fool you all." Was that hint of anger?

Loki pushed. "How quickly you bought into my act. Humans really are pathetic. Weak. Your emotions take hold of you, and your minds are powerless against them. Can't you feel it now? How you still want to see good in me. And the knowledge that I created that, that I planted that sympathy in you, that it was all a lie, doesn't that hurt? I am about kill you, and everything you love, and here I am twisting the knife just for the fun of watching you suffer. Think of everyone you have ever helped, how useless that will be when the world is dead, and tell me: How does that make you feel?"

"Are you trying to make me angry?" Bruce asked, incredulous.

Loki's lips curled in a classic evil smile. "Yes. And isn't that just the most infuriating part?" He really was starting to enjoy this.

Pepper ran in. "Bruce, don't listen to him! He's trying to turn you!"

"Yeah, I got that," Bruce said wryly, "Thanks for shouting."

"I called Steve," Pepper informed Loki, tone making it sound like a threat, "He's on his way."

"Excellent," said Loki. "Now I suggest you run."

Bruce chose that moment to try running, and stopped himself quickly when Loki stepped into his path, the Frost Giant visibly gathering biting cold onto the skin of his own hands.

"Not you," Loki clarified.

Bruce eyed him warily, a little afraid, but calm.

It wasn't working.

Loki considered what it had once taken to make Thor lose control, and wondered if the same strategy would work here. Bruce was hardly as dumb and gullible as Thor, but some emotions were universal.

"They say you need to get angry to turn, but pain works just as well, does it not?"

Bruce picked up a beaker of a chemical that looked like it would react unpleasantly with a Frost Giant's icy skin, and took on a defensive stance.

Loki shook his head. "Oh, no. I would hardly try to overpower you in my current form. Luckily, I thought ahead," he lied smoothly. "Causing you pain is one thing, but what about the pain of others? Would that work just as well?"

Bruce's face went blank, concealing his reaction to Loki's words, and the god knew he was on the right track.

"I understand there is... a particular woman you might feel protective of." Loki had no idea if there was. It was a calculated guess, only confirmed when Bruce's eyes widened in horror. Loki smiled viciously. "Perhaps I should pay her a visit."

Now the scientist couldn't conceal the signs of anger. An increase in heart rate, harder breathing, the slight tensing of his hand as it tried to curl into a fist. But his eyes were moving quickly. He was processing Loki's words in his head, trying examine them mentally, to push aside the emotions and think.

It had been a completely empty threat, and Bruce would see that too quickly, Loki realized, so he threw in one more verbal dagger. He layered a malicious caress into his voice, as if recalling a fond memory, and said, "Perhaps I already have."

Bruce's nostrils flared in anger, and he started to change. It was all going exactly according to plan.

It was a really bad plan.

"Damn," Loki whispered, taking an involuntary step back as the big green monster reached its full height and turned to face the offending god.

For the second time in his life, Loki found himself swinging by his feet, being slammed viciously against all available surfaces as the Hulk had good fun smashing up its new toy. It hurt a lot more without magic, and he was sure at least ten of his bones were broken by the time the beast paused long enough for Loki to do a teleport and escape.

He collapsed onto the roof and smiled grimly as his healing magic set to work. As he had hoped, the motion of the Hulk swinging him had propelled the necklace off his head. Apparently the fates counted that as someone else removing it for him.

It was a few minutes before he could stand. Pushing himself to his feet, Loki examined the opening portal.

He couldn't close it in the time he had, but he could interfere with the delicate balance required to make it viable for travel from Muspelheim. He sent a bolt of magic. The portal wavered dangerously, then closed as whatever force was on the other end gave up on keeping it stable.

Exhausted, Loki sat down on the roof and waited for the cavalry.

.:.

It had seemed like and endless stream of monsters, like an army, but the Avengers were finally making headway. The portals had stopped opening, and the remaining Fire Jotunn seemed confused and disheartened amid the lack of reinforcements.

Eventually, the Fire Jotunn stopped fighting and one of them walked up to them, hands up in a pacifying gesture, and said, "We will negotiate terms of surrender."

The Avengers took a moment to stare at each other, because this had never happened before, unless you counted Loki, which they didn't.

Then Tony walked forward and said, "Smart man," and the fight ended.

After that, the hard part was figuring out a way to imprison the Fire Jotunn that was both effective and humane. Cold was the easiest way to control them, but cold seemed to hurt them terribly, so it was all very tense for a while, until director Fury showed up and said a bunch of vague stuff about how SHIELD had "prepared for a situation such as this," and sent the Avengers home.

.:.

When Loki heard the stomp of government boots nearing the roof, he forced himself to teleport despite his tiredness. There was a loose end to deal with.

He returned to the lab, relieved to find it empty. The room and the equipment were badly damaged, and there was a trail of destruction through the next few rooms and out the remains of a large window.

Amid the rubble, Loki found what he was looking for. He picked up the necklace and turned it over in his hands. He tried to vanish it, unsurprised when it resisted the magic. He teleported two feet over, and it came with him. Excellent.

Loki considered the wording of his promise to Thor. He had agreed to be a prisoner. He had never agreed not to escape.

No longer bound by oath or magic to stay within the tower, Loki went off to find a suitable hiding place for the dangerous item of jewelry.

.:.

After the fight, Tony, Thor, Clint and Natasha went back to Tony's Malibu house to rest and eat ice cream.

Tony sat on one of the dining chairs with his feet resting on another, and a toolbox on the floor next to him. He was still wearing the gauntlet on his right hand and forearm. The wrist mechanism had gotten stuck, and he didn't trust any of his robots to remove it without hurting him. Anyway, there was something relaxing about fiddling with machinery after a stressful fight.

Thor slowly ate a bowl of mint chocolate chip, looking perturbed. "What did Fury mean when he said they were prepared for this situation?"

Tony said, "Oh, I asked Jarvis. They confiscated a bunch of Hulk cages from someone named General Ross way back when. I guess the the things are not easily set on fire."

Natasha frowned and adjusted and ice pack on her leg. "I thought hacking information from SHIELD took hours."

"It does, the first time. It only takes that long again if you make a rookie mistake like not leaving a few viruses in the system to keep track of the changing encryptions." Tony searched through his toolbox for a phillips-head and started slowly spinning a screw loose. "Anyone know where Steve is?"

Loki walked into the room, from the general direction of the rest of Tony's house. "Last I heard, he was on his way to do battle with a Hulk, but that was some time ago."

Then everyone stared at Loki. So Tony stared at Loki too. He was pale-skinned and green eyed again. It didn't show off the elegant lines of his jaw and nose to nearly the same advantage as blue had, but the god was still stunning. The scheming look in his eyes and knowing curve of his mouth still hinted at fierce, striking intelligence.

Tony shook off that line of thought and looked back at his gauntlet.

Clint was aiming a gun at Loki's head. "You have anything to do with that?" he asked, in reply to the Hulk comment.

"It was a means to an end," Loki said, not looking at all worried about the gun, "A portal was opening over Stark Tower, and the true invasion of the Fire Jotunn would have taken place there. I needed my magic to stop it, and the Hulk was kind enough to remove my necklace." Loki winced a little at the memory, and Natasha and Tony smiled in amusement as they caught on.

"So you are no longer honoring your oath to keep to Stark Tower," Thor said with disapproval.

"I was a prisoner, in keeping with my oath. I think it entirely fair to say that I escaped."

Clint was still pointing his gun at Loki. "Any reason we should believe you?"

Tony said, "Is Bruce still a Hulk? Because if so, we should probably do something about that."

There was a knock on the door. Clint opened it and Bruce walked in, grim-faced and wearing a new change of clothes.

"Hey big guy," Tony greeted, "I hear you turned green for a while there. Smash anything interesting?"

Bruce looked pained. "Pepper's in the hospital. She was in the room with us when I changed."

Tony's eyes went wide, and the screwdriver stilled in his hand.

"Is she alright?" asked Natasha.

It was as if Tony were paralyzed, waiting to hear how serious it was, yes or no, okay or not okay? The panic at the top of the roller coaster when the news had to fall one of two ways.

"A couple broken bones, but the doctor says she'll be alright. Apparently the Big Guy decided to hold her upside down by her feet for a while before he got around to the smashing thing, and Steve got there in time."

The god of mischief let out a huff of laughter at the mental image, which was a very serious mistake.

Tony found that he could move again, so he got up and slammed his armored fist into Loki's face, and that lovely nose went crunch.

Time slowed to a crawl while the god staggered backwards, because Tony really expected to be dead the instant Loki realized what had happened.

But Loki just clutched his bleeding nose and stared at Tony. There was no anger there, only surprise, and a hint of something that looked like confusion. No, insanity. It was there, playing in the background, though it had not surfaced in these past few weeks while they had been working together.

When Tony recognized it, he felt enough pity to push aside most of his rage. He didn't want to aggravate that spark of madness. But there was something that had to be made clear. "New rule, Grasshopper," Tony said, still breathing hard in his cooling anger, "You never, ever harm Pepper, or through one of your crazy plots, allow her to be harmed. Understand?"

Wide eyed, Loki nodded. And there was the madness again, a childlike, believing look in his calculating green eyes.

Tony found it unnerving. But he said, "Good," in an abrupt, almost cheerful voice, pretending that was exactly the reaction he had been going for.

Taking another step back, still nodding a little unsteadily, Loki disappeared.

Now everyone was staring at Tony, and he looked around at them, half challenging them to say anything, half angry, half guilty, half acting like nothing was wrong. There were too many halves.

Then he sort of ran away.

Tony got down to his workshop, and none of his robots were there. Everything was at the New York house; his latest projects, and his favorite cars and his disgusting, familiar coffee. He pried of the gauntlet at threw it at the glass door, and it bounced off and landed at his feet.

"Fucking..." he muttered, staring down at it.

Then he realized what he did still keep down here, and proceeded to break out the alcohol.

.:.

"I should kill him for laying a hand on me," Loki whispered to himself, looking down at Tony where he lay passed out drunk on the floor of the Malibu workshop. He crossed his arms and paced slowly, occasionally stopping to glare at the sleeping engineer. At length, he collapse into a chair and looked up at the ceiling. Addressing himself again, he asked, "What was it that made you so soft?"

Chapter Text

The Avengers sat around in the dining room. It was takeout night again, and the pizza was late. They were back at Stark Tower, and there had been no sign of Loki for several days, ever since Tony had punched him in the face. Tony was eating grapes from a bowl he carried with him in his hand, too hungry to wait for pizza and too antsy to sit still. Bruce had brought some paperwork to the table, and was focusing on it in an attempt to ignore Tony's agitated mood.

"What do you think the Fire Jotunn will do next?" Steve asked.

"Another invasion," Natasha guessed. "The diversion didn't work, so they'll come with brute force next time."

Steve shifted in his chair a little impatiently. "But how long will they wait? Where will they attack from? What kind of numbers are we dealing with?"

Thor said, "My brother would be the person to ask. He is a good strategist, and he knows Surtur well."

"He's not exactly here to ask," Steve pointed out.

Bruce put down his pencil and looked at Thor. "Loki knows Surtur, huh?"

Natasha said, "SHIELD questioned the Fire Jotunns. They confirmed Loki's story."

Clint said, "So a bunch of trolls say we can trust a troll. Sounds legit."

Tony said, "Hawkeye, have I ever mentioned how much I love that Clinty-fresh mouth of yours?"

Bruce said, "It does seem a little too convenient."

Tony sat on the table, then immediately stood again. "I assume you mean it's convenient for us, since Loki can pretty much do whatever he wants right now."

"Well that's the question, isn't it?" Steve looked to Tony. "What does Loki want?"

Tony spread his hands. "How should I know?"

"The same way you knew he would take over Stark Tower," Steve replied, "You think like he does."

"He is kind of your evil twin," Bruce agreed, stealing one of Tony's grapes.

Tony cradled the bowl close to his torso for protection against future thieves. "You know, that's awfully mean. To Thor, who has dibs on the whole Loki-as-an-evil-twin thing."

"Can't you at least try to figure out what's going on in his head?" Steve pushed.

"No," Tony said with surprising finality. He wasn't going to play this round of guess-what-Loki's-thinking. Because whatever thoughts were in the god's head, they probably something broken and unpleasant, and Tony had probably put them there. "Leave it a mystery for a change. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt."

Clint said, "Sure, we'll give crazy the benefit of the doubt. What do we get in return, complimentary haircuts?"

"Flying monkeys?" Steve suggested.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Steve, references aren't funny unless they mean something."

"Gift baskets of assorted grasshoppers?" Bruce added anyway, finishing with a calculation and standing to put away his notes.

"One wish," Loki said, suddenly right behind Bruce.

Bruce jumped a little and Steve said, "Gosh, would you stop doing that?!"

"One wish?" Bruce repeated, turning around. "You mean you want me to make a wish?"

Tony stared, feeling confused and relieved. Loki looked...okay. In control. A far cry from the terrified child who had stared out from Loki's eyes right before he disappeared.

Loki traced his hand over the the back of Bruce's empty chair and said with a slightly aloof inflection, "I used your other form against you to regain my powers. It was necessary, but it was also cruel. So, make a wish, and if it is reasonable and within my powers, I will grant it. In exchange, you forgive any debt I owe you."

Clint snorted. "If you're giving out wishes to apologize for using people, I've got an arrowhead that's been pining after your eye-socket for months. Does this mean they can finally be together?"

"No," Loki replied shortly.

Bruce was thinking hard. "Is it within your powers cure me? You know, no more 'other guy'?"

Loki tilted his head, intrigued. "I doubt it, but that's an interesting question. I'd have to study your condition in more detail."

"Well, try, and I'll call us even."

Loki smiled a little cunningly. "The attempt is all you require? Not a wise deal on your part."

"Well, no one died. This time." Bruce thought for a few more seconds. "Pepper gets a wish too. And Clint. That's my deal."

Loki nodded. "Wishing for more wishes. That's much better. We have a bargain."

Clint looked up hopefully. "Eye-socket?"

"No."

"But you said-"

"I said within reason."

The doorbell rang. Natasha said, "That's the pizza."

Tony opened the door and paid the delivery guy, and Thor carried the food to the table.

There was a bit of chaos and dodging around each other as everyone went to get a slice. It somehow worked out that Loki and Tony were closely facing each other, though neither of them had intended to approach the other.

For while they stood there, stuck, not sure what to say or who should speak first. Everyone stopped to stare at them and the uncomfortable moment dragged on.

Tony held out his bowl to Loki. "Grape?"

.:.

The next day, Fury called a meeting with the Avengers and Loki to plan for the possibility of the Fire Jotunns returning.

As the meeting started, the director found everyone strangely quiet. There was a tension in the air, a feeling of stifled anticipation. None of them would meet Fury's eye. They would glance evasively at the untouched coffee on the table in front of him, then at each other, the ceiling, anywhere but his face.

Tony had his phone out, and kept his eyes trained on the screen, though he didn't seem to be doing anything with it.

Something was wrong, but damned if they were going to tell him what it was.

"Alright," Fury said, with as much finality as he could muster. "Spit it out."

Everyone but Natasha glanced at Thor. Tony bit the inside of his cheek. No one spoke.

Fury gave up and carried on with the meeting. He put his hands on the table and stood. "People, we are facing a new threat. Once again, an alien race has singled our planet out for invasion."

He picked up his coffee and carried it with him to the window to stare out dramatically at the city below. The Avengers' eyes stayed locked on him.

"I, for one, intend to be ready for them. Loki, what can you tell us about the Fire Jotunns?"

Loki held up his palms in a gesture similar to a shrug. "What do you want to know?"

"Strategy. When will they attack next, and where?"

"Ah. The question then is, what can I tell you about Surtur." Loki leaned back in his chair. "He is overconfident and self-obsessed. Intelligent enough to be talented in his kind of magic, but otherwise something of an imbecile. And overly violent in his methods." He gave Tony a sidelong glance.

Tony bit the inside of his other cheek.

Loki continued, "If his subjects are to be believed, he was opening a stable doorway all the way from Muspelheim to Midgard. And if he really is capable of that, he must have obtained an object of great power, similar to the tesseract."

Fury held the coffee up near his mouth, but stopped to speak. "Are you aware of the existence of any such objects?"

Loki eyed Fury's coffee carefully. "Several. The other end of the tesseract is one. But that could only open a door to Asgard at the moment."

Fury lifted the coffee to his mouth once more, but stopped when an agent ran into the room. "Director Fury, I think you should see this."

Fury put down his coffee and asked with a mixture of resignation and sarcasm, "Is the world ending?"

"No, nothing's wrong sir, just..." The agent glanced around at the Avengers and visibly decided to keep his mouth shut. "...I think you should see this."

Fury left the room, following the agent.

Tony started laughing.

.:.

Loki had succeeded in saving the world. It seemed he was also going to succeed in destroying it.

He stood alone along a coast in Antarctica, next to a deep fissure of melting water. With no one around to see, the god allowed himself to take out his frustration on a nearby ice boulder by kicking it repeatedly.

Once he had concluded that that didn't help, he made another attempt at freezing the pool of water. His body turned blue, he gathered ice into his hand and... it stayed there, refusing to reach beyond the surface of his skin.

His Jotunn powers were gone, and there was nothing he could do here to stop the melting of the ice.

He kicked the boulder again. It still didn't help.

.:.

The first few times Tony had gone to visit Pepper in the hospital, Walt had been there, and Tony had turned right back around before Pepper had a chance to catch sight of him

Now he was determined, and armed with a grocery bag and an iron will, and a certain amount of guilt that he hadn't spoken to her since she was injured.

Tony stood in the doorway of her hospital room and looked her over unhappily.

Pepper was sitting up, looking calm and alert, so that was good at least. She had a yellow, healing bruise along the right side of her face, a cast on her left forearm, and splints on two of the fingers of her left hand.

Walt was there, of course. The two were talking happily, and it bothered Tony a little that that didn't bother him more. He was trying to hold tight to his hatred at the man who had stolen his girl, but at this moment, it just seemed like too much effort.

Pepper looked toward the doorway. "Tony? Is that you?"

Tony smiled at her.

Her face turned stormy. "I can't believe you! I can't believe you changed Jarvis's security protocols to give Loki a higher clearance than me!"

Tony grimaced. "Oh. Right. That."

"Without telling me! Do you know how that made me feel? Do you realize what could have happened?"

"I think you're overreacting-"

"-No. You don't understand-"

"-It's sort of complicated how I organize the protocols and-"

"-It was dangerous. It was dangerous for me-"

"-I didn't give him a higher clearance than you, I gave him a different-"

"-and it puts you in danger, because he could go in there any time and just do...whatever-"

"-It's not like I meant for that to happen-"

"-you can do whatever you want, and if you want to-"

Tony reached into his grocery bag. "-Look can we stop arguing about this? I got you something-"

"-then that's fine, but at least tell me..."

Walt put a hand on Pepper's shoulder and she visibly calmed. Huh. Did Walt have magic powers, or was there a Calm Down button on Pepper's shoulder that Tony had just never found? That would have come in handy.

Pepper looked at the offering in Tony's hands and burst into unwilling laughter. "Did you bring me strawberries?" she choked.

"Yes," he said, and tossed the box in the trash, "But it's okay, because I also brought you blueberries, and I distinctly remember you saying there was only one fruit in the world you were allergic to." He walked forward and held out his real gift.

"Ow, it hurts to laugh," she chuckled, and took a blueberry.

Tony pulled up a chair and sat on Pepper's right, opposite to Walt. "What's the damage?"/p>

Pepper said, "Three broken bones in my left arm, and a lot of bruises. I'm plenty well enough to go back to work," She gave Walt a pointed look. Apparently they hadn't agreed on that.

"So why are they still keeping you here?" Tony asked.

"Some of the bruising was deep." She put a hand over her side to indicate where. "They just wanted to make sure there wasn't too much internal bleeding. I'm fine. I'm going home tomorrow."

"I'm sorry," Tony said repentantly.

Pepper rolled her eyes. "It's not your fault. And Loki did the right thing, sort of. There was no helping it. And like I said, I'm fine."

"You're not the person who gets to decide that," Tony said, picking up her chart for his own examination.

Walt said, "The doctor said to take a few days off. I really think-"

"Of course I will listen to my doctors," Pepper assured them both with a sweet smile. Walt and Tony exhaled in mild relief. Pepper kept the smile on her lips as it left her eyes and her voice flattened with sarcasm. "Just as much as either of you would in my situation."

Tony held up a finger. "Okay, no-"

"-Just because I'm a stoic idiot doesn't mean you have to be," Walt argued.

Pepper looked smug. "Doesn't feel so good to be the one worrying, does it?"

Tony smiled. He didn't know how, or what had changed, but it felt natural to be with Pepper. The way it had felt before he had been kidnapped, had his world turned upside-down, and realized he wanted more in his life than an infinite supply of women to meet all his physical and practical needs.

He still wanted more, but the idea that it had to be her was something he could put aside. Band-aid in place, yup, back to normal, everything fixed, just friends again.

A nurse popped her head in the door. "Visiting hours are over. It's time for non-family to leave."

Walt said, "No one here is non-family."

Tony stared at him.

The nurse gave Walt a soft smile. "All the same, Mr. Stark has to go. Hospital policy." She turned to leave.

"Oh, can you fetch the doctor?" Walt called after her, "I want to ask her about Pepper's workload once she gets home." The nurse nodded and left.

Tony started to hold the blueberries out toward Walt, then changed course to gesture at the trash can by the door instead. "Strawberry?" he offered.

Pepper chuckled again. "Tony. Ow." She complained.

Tony repentantly offered Walt a blueberry, and Walt accepted.

One big happy family. Alright then. You could still hate family.

"I'm going to go wait for the doctor," Walt said, and walked out to the hallway.

Tony looked surreptitiously between the doorway and Pepper. "Did he just give us a moment alone?"

"He's giving you a chance to say goodbye without him hovering. He must think you actually intend to leave when told."

"You know, I'm going to do the unpredictable thing. I'm going to follow the rules."

Pepper narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

"Get some rest, Pepper."

"You're babying me."

"Doesn't feel so good to be the one people worry about, does it?" Tony said as he stood to leave.

"Are you kidding? You love it."

Tony smiled. "Yeah, a little." He had to resist the impulse to bend down and kiss her. Not out of any romantic feeling, but because it had become his habitual way to express the warmth he felt toward her. Instead, he just said, "Bye."

"Bye. And Tony? Thanks for coming."

"Yup."

Out in the hallway, Walt was talking to Pepper's doctor, a short woman with black hair.

"-Just don't let her exert herself physically too much. If she wants to work from home, and she still gets her rest, that's fine."

Walt nodded and thanked her.

"She'll start pacing if you let her look at the R&D budget," Tony said helpfully.

"I know," Walt replied.

The doctor left and Tony glanced through the open hospital room door at Pepper, who was now on her tablet, probably organizing something.

He looked at her bruises and casts and it bothered him to no end, but it had been Loki. What was he supposed to feel? He wasn't mad at the god anymore. Hey, it was Loki, what was there not to love? Didn't even really blame the guy. He was still mad though, at no one in particular, and he didn't know what to do with it. Maybe it was time to go get drunk again; that had resulted in pleasant unconsciousness last time. But he was pretty sure he still had the headache.

"Are you alright?" Oh, hey, Walt was talking.

Oops, he had been staring at Pepper. That was probably not smart.

Tony rubbed a hand over his face and babbled, "Me? I'm fine. I'm over her. Happy is heartbroken, though. Hasn't come out of his car in months. I'm looking into getting his name changed."

"I don't mean that." Walt sighed. "Look, I know how I felt when I found out what happened. I saw all those bruises, and I wanted to kill something. And over it or not, you love her too. So I'm going to ask again. Are you alright?"

Tony thought, Dammit. I like him.

He almost considered being honest and saying No, I'm not alright, but he reminded himself that he was talking to fucking Walt, and refrained.

"Like I said, I'm fine." Tony started walking away, and called back as he went, "Don't take everything so seriously. Go kill something. Peace!" God, he needed a drink.

.:.

"You know he's not okay, right?" said Walt to Pepper a few minutes later.

Loki paced quietly as he listened, cloaked in an invisibility spell. After Antarctica, he had come here to ask Pepper for her wish in keeping with the deal he had made with Bruce. But Loki had been far to interested in the conversation to bother showing his face just yet.

Pepper sighed. "He's going to do something reckless. Once he's got it out of his system, he'll be fine. As long as he doesn't get himself killed in the process."

Loki curled a knuckle against his lips as black thoughts circled in his head. Of late, he seemed to be developing fondnesses for things destined to destruction.

"Do you want me to follow him?" Walt asked.

Pepper shot him a wry glance that was half despairing, half amused. "Trust me, it wouldn't help."

Walt gave Pepper a long look. "There's a story there."

"There are a lot of stories there. Tony doesn't work by the normal rules. I'd say stop him from drinking, but if you stop him from drinking he gets even more reckless. The one time I locked him out of his liquor cabinet, he almost lost a leg. I don't think he's really addicted to alcohol so much as he's addicted to... stupidity. But he's been better lately. I was worried about him when we broke up, but he really is better. I think he'll be okay."

Walt nodded thoughtfully.

Pepper said, "So what did the doctor say?"

Loki left as the conversation turned to other things. He could ask about the wish later. Right now, he found that he was not content to trust Pepper's judgment on the matter of whether or not Tony would be okay.

Chapter Text

Tony sat in his workshop and stared thoughtfully the glass of scotch in his hand.

Pepper had informed him once that he fit the definition of a functioning alcoholic. She had tried to break him of the habit, but confronted with Tony's stubbornness and Obadiah's insistence that Tony was fine as he was, she had eventually relented. After all, at the time, she had been his employee first, and his close friend second.

And by the time she had become more than just a close friend, she understood too well to fight him on it.

She understood that fitting the definition and being were not the same thing. Alcohol wasn't his problem, usually. A drink in his hand was something he wore. Like a pair of sunglasses, like an Armani suit. A drink was something he could hand to someone, a peace offering, like a grape or a blueberry.

Alcohol became his problem when he had bigger problems.

Since Afghanistan, he had only gotten outrageously drunk twice; the one time it had definitely been Natasha's fault.

The other time had been a few nights ago, and he had woken up relieved to find himself in the same place he had started, with no major structures destroyed and no friendships severed.

Alcohol could become his problem. But he'd had plenty of bad habits in his life, and he understood them well enough by now. The best driver was someone who'd pushed it and been reckless, who'd crashed a few times, because he knew his limits, knew all the ways he could push and have nothing go wrong. So the best drinker...

Tony looked at the scotch in his hand and thought, I'm probably about to crash, and he guessed from there it was a question of how hard it was to put the drink down.

He put the glass down, dropping it the last few millimeters so it landed with a decisive clink, and walked away.

Not really all that hard.

Alcohol wasn't his problem. Not yet.

Loki said, "Is this the part where you find something pointless and reckless to do?"

"Bwah!" Tony spun, startled, to face the god standing behind him. "How long have you been here?"

"Oh, not long," Loki assured him and Tony didn't bother to call him on the lie. "Was there something in particular you didn't want me to see?"

Tony gave Loki a mildly dubious look. "Well, you're in a cheery mood today. Who shanked you with a mistletoe?"

Loki closed his eyes and smiled grudgingly at that.

"Seriously, what's up?"

Loki sighed and looked at his hand, a gesture that Tony was learning always meant the god was thinking unhappy thoughts. "My powers are fading."

Tony frowned, troubled. "No more magic?"

"My magic is fine," Loki said a little sharply. "My Jotunn powers are fading. My control over ice is connected to the life of the Casket."

Tony's eyes widened. "Well, that's a problem too."

Loki nodded once in agreement. "It means I can no longer keep at bay the oncoming destruction of the realm."

"So what do we do?"

Loki's jaw clenched while he thought. It occurred to Tony that the god wasn't pleased with the course of events, and that was strange considering Loki had set them in motion. What went in that head anyway? Had he changed his mind, or had things not gone the way he planned?

Bruce was right, the guy didn't think in straight lines. But Tony had bounced enough ideas off him in this workshop to know that Loki was capable of some pretty stunning intellectual zig-zags. And Tony wanted to know just what bizarre train of thought had gotten them all into this mess.

He wanted to know too badly. He was fascinated. And Loki was doing that thing he did when he was deep in thought and chewed on the inside of his bottom lip -

Loki stopped and sighed. "No," He muttered, "There's nothing I can achieve right now by returning to Asgard. Too many doorways are watched."

There. What the hell did that mean? "Care to elaborate on that?"

"Not particularly."

"Hm. Then maybe I'll give it a shot." Tony stood, suddenly all too eager to play a game of guess-what-Loki's-thinking. In Tony current mood, he almost hoped he was about to get thrown out another window, just to prove to himself that he could push Loki's buttons. "You, Dr. Evil, are still between diabolical plans," he made sure to reference a movie Loki had seen, "I don't know what went wrong, but I'm guessing you weren't looking for 'ley lines' down in Antarctica. Whatever the plan was, somewhere along the line, you screwed up. But you're smart, and circumstances change, and you know if you wait around long enough and pay careful attention, something will change, something you can use, and you'll be right on track."

Tony crossed his arms and walked closer to Loki. "But that's all you can do. Wait. And it's driving. You. Crazy." He was standing too close to Loki, a little buzzed from the scotch, determined to bother him, and Loki glared dangerously back. "You've got your full hand, you've got your magic back, and you honestly don't know what to do with it. Cheating's fine and good, but have you ever considered that maybe you just suck at playing the game?"

Then Loki's glare turned thoughtful, quickly replaced with a smile. The expression was full of vicious wit that told Tony he was about to loose ground very fast, and Tony felt gravity go weak as he realized how much of an effect that smile had on him.

Huh. I guess I really am bisexual, a small part of his brain concluded, and started tallying up evidence for this fact in other moments he had spent staring at Loki in the previous weeks. That explains a lot.

And then, most of his mind was still sort of floating and trying to figure out which way was down.

"And what has you in this mood, hm, Stark?"

That snapped him back to the present. It had been a while since he'd been "Stark." He must have really ticked the god off.

"Are you waiting for the return of a woman who will never want you back?"

Ow.

"That woman, Pepper, how many of your bumbling guessing games did she endure before she left you?"

Ow-fuckity-ow. On the bright side, he had definitely succeeded in pushing Loki's buttons. Why had that seemed like a good idea?

Now depressed enough to feel introspective and wishing he still had his scotch in hand, Tony sat down. "So, yes, Pepper left me. So what? I still have her in my life. She still cares what happens to me. She still expects me to be better than I am. She still brings out the best in me."

Loki continued to look more and more peeved.

Tony smirked a little sadly. "Ever love someone you didn't push away Loki? Does anyone who loves you give a shit what you do anymore?"

"You think you matter more than I?" Loki spoke almost petulantly, "I will live to see the all the nine realms begin their descent in Ragnarok. The span of your life will be meaninglessly small. You are going to wither away and die within the century."

Tony was still smirking. "Jealous?"

By the irritation on Loki's face, he had hit surprisingly close to the mark.

"Hey, want to watch things blow up inside a time bubble?" Tony said quickly.

Loki took the out. "Gods, yes."

So Loki fired up the time machine while Tony hunted through his workshop for various explosives, and they forgot their woes amid observing the speed of blast waves as they hit the border of the time distortion.

Tony did at one point get a nasty burn on his right arm, but he didn't lose any limbs. Loki chose to consider that a victory.

.:.

It was later, when Tony and Loki were sitting in the workshop going over the data from the time distortions, that it happened.

Loki made some offhand comment, well, brilliant insight, it was amazing often those went together with Loki, and Tony's head started rushing forward through all the implications... and stalled.

The landslide in his head had been halted by an awkwardly placed thought. And when he went to get the thought out of the way, it was, I'm in love with Loki. And then the landslide started up again and he was too distracted to pay the discovery much mind.

They spent the next few days submerged in science. With Loki around, ideas themselves took on a highly reactive quality, combining to create unexpected results, and often expanding into new worlds of possibilities. And trying to chase down those possibilities just set off more reactions.

When all the inspiration had finally died down, perhaps due to the sheer physical exhaustion in both of them, and there was little left to do let let Jarvis run tests and simulations, Tony finally turned his attention back to the thought.

He watched Loki, who sat mostly motionless at Tony's desk, occasionally scrolling down on the display, which was a list of ebooks on 20th century American history.

Tony loved Loki. It was a pretty big leap from cautious friends to love, but the leap had been made. And now it seemed obvious. Part of his brain was pointing out in a dry, oddly JARVIS-like voice that water was wet and E equaled mc² while he was at it.

It did sort of explain why he didn't mind having the notoriously destructive god in his workshop, even though he felt uncomfortable with any of the Avengers poking around his stuff, and even the idea of letting Pepper in was starting to seem... weird.

And there was the whole "sharing food" thing. That really should have popped up as some sort of warning sign, but he hadn't thought about it.

There was the question of what to do about it because, contrary to popular belief, Tony did have some degree of self-restraint, and becoming romantically involved with the criminally insane was on his list of things to think about before doing.

This wasn't the soft, warm love he had felt for Pepper. There was danger and infatuation mixed in with this. It was a current that could pull him under if he wasn't careful. And hadn't he decided to be careful, just a little? Just enough to put his life to use?

This is the line, we don't cross it.

He wasn't going to let that line disappear, not for anyone. Not even for Loki in all his mischief and genius. He was pretty sure he could stick to that. Maybe.

Chapter Text

"So, what ever happened to the badger?" Tony asked. They were still in the workshop, and Loki had just finished telling Tony the story of his escape from Asgard.

Loki frowned. "I'm not entirely sure. It should have remained the cell with the other spell ingredients, but I have no clear idea how the spell would have affected the creature."

"Why didn't you just cut the claw out like a normal super-villain?"

"It wasn't necessary."

"Just like it wasn't necessary to blow us all up in the field that day?"

"Ah. That." Loki looked a little sour. "Miss Romanoff seemed to think I extended the dome to protect you personally. Or rather, she implied so to mock me." He paused, considering his next words, then added a little unwillingly, "The truth is far more distasteful; I was protecting Thor."

"I thought you hated Thor."

"Oh, I do," Loki said stubbornly.

Again, the temptation to poke at Loki until he got a reaction, but this time Tony refrained and got out his phone instead.

Loki changed the subject. "The time distorter will be a powerful weapon once you incorporate it into your armor."

"The time distorter works great, but it's still not a feasible addition to the suit." Tony spoke, but he seemed occupied with his phone. "It takes up too much space. And more importantly, you can't make the distortion bubble stable while the machine is in motion, especially at the distances and speeds I move in the suit. Cool as this is, it may never do much good where saving the world is concerned. That's okay. I'm sure there are other applications, and I'm not done playing with it yet."

Loki looked over Tony's shoulder at the screen of the Stark phone. "What are you doing?"

"I'm transferring funds to the Wakanda Bank. Hopefully..." he paused while he did something with the screen that required more of his attention, "...I will need them to make a very large purchase from the King there." He closed the phone. "Looking into buying more Vibranium. The guy who owns most of it is big on eye contact when it comes to business deals. I've got a meeting in Africa with him tomorrow morning. Well, it'll be morning here. There, it'll be... I have no clue what time it will be. Jarvis knows."

"When do you leave?"

"Tonight."

There was pause in which Loki considered offering to come along, and Tony considered inviting him to come along, and they each concluded that it would come across as clingy.

"Well, I wish you luck."

"Yeah, thanks."

.:.

They ate dinner with the Avengers that night. It was Bruce's turn to cook, which meant they were eating something foreign and spicy that most of them could not pronounce the name of.

Everyone was sufficiently used to Loki's presence that they talked amiably. Even Clint was there. Thor and Steve were happily trading war stories. Loki had evidently heard a lot of Thor's stories before, and looked alternately irritated and bored.

"Loki, are you still planning to try to reverse my condition?" This was Bruce, talking under the louder conversation.

"Of course," Loki replied, glad to have something else to focus on, "I'd like to hear about your research so far."

Clint, next to Bruce, gestured at Loki with his thumb and muttered to Natasha, "Is it just me, or is he being suspiciously polite?"

Loki made use of his broad British vocabulary and told Clint to do something with his arrows that was at best anatomically improbable, and at worst very painful for the circus animals involved.

The others paused to listen. When Loki finished, Thor and Tony laughed loudly while Steve turned very red.

"I'll take that under advisement," Clint said impassively, and went back to eating.

Prompted by a reminder from Jarvis, Tony headed upstairs to prepare for his trip.

Loki stayed at the table and continued talking to Bruce. "Your research?"

"I take it you're familiar with a little thing called gamma radiation."

Recalling his in-depth study of the tesseract, Loki smiled a little darkly and nodded.

They stayed put while other Avengers finished and cleaned up dinner. Bruce was surprisingly interesting to converse with. He was intelligent - almost as intelligent as Tony - and he spoke with the dark, dry wit of a man who has very few illusions left about the universe and his own unfortunate place in it.

They were interrupted when Tony walked though, apparently hurrying on his way out of the tower, even though this room was not actually on the way, and could only have been an intentional detour. He was wearing a business suit and was in the process of putting on a pair of sunglasses. "Goodbye my dears. Back tomorrow evening."

"You're leaving now?" Loki asked casually.

"Yes." Tony opened the door to the hallway, then turned around, his hand on the open door. "And FYI, I set Jarvis to run some maintenance on the tower programing while I'm gone. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to worry about. Don't mind if the elevator stops working, that's to be expected. And likewise, if any microwaves start turning on on their own then, um... run." With that, Tony closed the door and was gone.

.:.

Loki went up to stand on roof early the next morning. He needed to clear his head. There were rational thoughts that had be sorted. Difficult decisions that had to be made. Soon, it would be too warm be outside, even in the morning before the sun really started to heat up the day. He should enjoy what little tolerable weather there was while it lasted.

Soon, the Bifrost would be complete. And then war would be inevitable. He supposed, if it came to it, he could find a way to stop Thor from finishing its construction. Trick him into throwing his hammer down a bottomless pit or some such.

Or perhaps it was better to let it play out, let Asgard crush the Frost Giants yet again. They were no longer a real threat. More waiting.

Soon, this tower would start to feel too much like his home. It already did. He should...

The elevator chimed, and Loki's thoughts were interrupted by the slow click-clack of high-heeled feet approaching at a tired pace.

It was Pepper, left arm and fingers bound in those primitive casts they still used in this realm, face bruised. She looked far more composed than she could possibly be, considering her wounds and the rate of her footfalls.

The elevator closed behind her, then beeped ominously and the lights lining the doors blinked red. Pepper looked back and frowned. She pressed a button and nothing happened. "Jarvis, what's going on?"

"The elevator is down for scheduled maintenance."

"Now?"

"Master Stark's programming of the updates was a little haphazard. I'm afraid there's nothing I can do."

Pepper rolled her eyes and muttered to herself as she walked up beside Loki.

Loki shot her a displeased glance. The last thing he needed was Pepper overextending herself and acquiring more of Tony's sympathy. "You should be resting."

"We need to talk."

"Ah. Did Bruce tell you about the wish?"

"Yes, but that's not why I'm here. About what happened the other day..."

Was a moment alone with his thoughts too much to ask? "Whether you are here to apologize or to receive an apology, either purpose could be served best by making your wish and then leaving," Loki said impatiently.

"The elevator is down."

"Have you decided on a wish?"

"Yes."

"And?"

She told him.

Loki nodded slowly, a gesture more resigned than affirmative. "I think you overestimate my powers."

"Well I don't. Look, I'm not sure why, but Tony trusts you."

A half-smile of unhappy amusement. "I assure you, he doesn't."

"Well, he trusts you more than he trusts me, and that... used to be a lot." Pepper worked to keep her face composed.

Loki saw a world of vulnerability he could easily manipulate, but he said nothing.

Pepper sighed. "Never mind. What I'm here to say is...thank you. For saving the world."

Loki narrowed his eyes and tilted his head just a little incredulously.

"I'm not saying I'd do anything differently. I still don't know what you're up too, or what you want with Tony." She lifted her chin. "But I thought someone should say it."

Loki was silent for a time, truly not sure how to take her words. She was right, she had been the only one to say it. "Well," he finally said, "Now that you have given me your backhanded thanks-"

They heard a very familiar ripping sound, where the nature of sound itself was twisted out of its normal shape.

They looked up.

Another portal was opening, very similar to the first, but much closer, only about twenty feet from the roof. It looked as if Agent Romanoff had been right about the Fire Jotunn planning a more straightforward attack. Rolling his eyes at the fact that Surtur was attempting the same point of entrance that Loki had blocked last time, Loki went to stop the opening portal with a blast of magic.

Nothing happened.

No magic even left his hand. There was no magic in his hand to begin with.

Loki looked down at himself, and there was the blue creeping in as the illusion he usually wore gave way. Some powerful force was making it impossible for him to do any magic. How?

Of course. Surtur's sword, Twilight. It selectively resisted magic, and Loki had never before come close to it while it was out of its sheath. Surtur must be holding it close to the other end of the portal specifically to keep any other magic from closing or damaging it.

Loki backed up to the far edge of the roof, and with that distance and with great effort, he was able to force the spell back in place that maintained his Asgardian form. There was now an unpleasant drop about a centimeter behind his heels.

The portal opened further.

Loki frowned in concentration. There was something sloppy in the structure of the portal. As if the mage who had opened it were untrained, the fabric of space twitching with the shakes and spasms of a weak intellect trying to hold a complex idea in place. Surtur must have obtained a great power source to open a wormhole of this size, but it was clear that he barely knew how to use it.

This also explained why it was not opening at the exact point the previous portal had opened. Pure, sloppy lack of precision.

The portal widened father. A giant of a Fire Jotunn walked through and stepped onto the roof to tower over Loki and Pepper.

The giant had flaming skin and tremendous sword. He looked out over New York and seemed to address the city at large. "I am Surtur, king of Muspelheim, and soon to be king of Midgard. Who will stand against me?" His words had a super-villainous gravel to them, with a voice like shifting, popping fire that came alive and spoke. Or perhaps just like a man with a very bad cold.

Smaller Fire Jotunns - still giants in their own right - began to march through the portal. Loki looked over at Pepper where she stood rooted to the spot, staring up at Surtur with wide eyes. Still bandaged and wearing those ridiculous high heeled shoes, she looked utterly helpless.

This was definitely not Loki's day.

Following Pepper's gaze, he looked back up at Surtur, and realized that something was off. Loki had seen Surtur before, even allied with him at times, and this was not quite right. For one thing, he was too short. And there was something off about his magic, something...

It was a projection, Loki realized with relief. A magical clone much like the ones Loki liked to use. Surtur could use it to walk and talk and see and hear, even interact with physical objects, but it was not Surtur.

Loki forced back a disdainful smirk. Surtur was happy to send his minions through his amateur portal, but he wasn't stupid enough to walk through himself.

Then the Surtur clone caught sight of the god.

"Loki!" Warm familiarity just didn't sound right in that booming, evil voice. "My old ally! It has been many centuries since I saw you last. Come, stand beside me again in battle!"

Loki smiled, pure charm. "Surtur! It is a bad time for an invasion, old friend. The people of Midgard have grown powerful and warlike of late. You do not know their strengths and weaknesses as I do. I have my own plans for this world. Give me time to build my throne here, and I will gift you with whatever land you would find most hospitable."

Surtur sighed impatiently, creating the general impression of a bonfire settling. "I have no time for your sluggish methods, Loki. Muspelheim burns too hot. Our people need new ground to scorch. I will have this world now. Stand beside me or stand against me."

Loki spread his arms in a showman's imitation of helplessness. "You leave me no good choices, Surtur. It will not help me to aid the loosing side."

"Then you stand against me. You will soon see, Loki, how foolish your choice was." Then Surtur address his minions. "Go forth. Kill every Midgardian you see."

The Fire Demons all looked at Pepper and started toward her.

Loki held up a hand, ducking his head a little to hide the wince forcing its way through his charming smile. "Wait."

Surtur held out his arm in a gesture to halt his warriors. "Have you changed your mind Loki?"

"I say you cannot win, because you have not come to Midgard yourself. You send soldiers and illusions."

The Fire Jotunns looked up at the image of their ruler, a little scandalized. It seemed they had not been informed of Surtur's illusion.

Carefully now, Loki cautioned himself as Surtur narrowed his eyes in anger at having his secret revealed.

"I have studied the tesseract," said Loki, "I am an expert in opening doorways such as this. Here is my suggestion: You provide the energy, and I will do the rest. With my help, you could open a door so wide that you could walk through in your true form."

He tactfully said wide in place of competently constructed, and could walk though in place of won't be too scared to walk through.

"All the might of Midgard could not stand against the glorious fire of Surtur and of Twilight," he finished dramatically.

Surtur nodded, clearly liking the sound of this. "Widen the portal, Loki!"

"Wait," Loki said again.

Surtur narrowed his eyes. "You try my patience, old friend."

"If you must invade, this city is not strategically placed," Loki said, "You must have heard about my first attempt to conquer this realm."

"I have."

"I had an army of Chitauri at my disposal, and I still lost, because I chose the wrong first move. Opening the portal so close to the opposing forces creates a bottleneck. Learn from my mistake. Move all your forces through quietly, away from a populous area, then attack. Close the portal here, and I will open a new one somewhere else. From there, I will help you to gain dominion over all of Midgard."

"And what would you take in return?"

"One continent, to rule as I see fit. Antarctica, the coldest part of the realm. You would have no use for it. And I would desire enough humans to serve me and amuse me there."

"You find the humans amusing?"

"Some of them. This one in particular, I am partial to," Loki lied, gesturing at Pepper.

Surtur narrowed his eyes. "This conversation should be private. Mortal ears are not worthy to overhear these negotiations between gods and kings, and live to recall them."

"Surtur, this is one of my terms," Loki insisted.

Surtur thought. "We have a bargain. But first, you must give your word that within the hour you will open a portal through which I can walk onto Midgard."

Drat. Surtur had gotten a lot less stupid over the last few centuries. "You have my word," Loki said before he could be seen to hesitate. There was a very real chance that this was going to end badly for the planet.

Surtur ordered his warriors gathered on the roof to return to Muspelheim. The portal began to close, and the image of Surtur vanished.

Loki looked at Pepper and grimaced. "Would you believe me if I said that was not what it looked like?"

And Pepper just said, "Yes. What do you need?"

Loki pushed aside his surprise and thought.

"Time," he said. How much time would it take without magic? Thirty steps to the elevator, about ten seconds to type in passwords, and... the elevator was down. Damn it. "I need to get to Tony's workshop as quickly as possible. But my magic is not strong enough to teleport from so close to the portal."

Pepper nodded, and pushed him off the roof with businesslike efficiency.

It was so unexpected that Loki didn't even realize what was happening in time to resist. As vertigo set in, there was a split second of thinking she had actually tried to kill him. Then Manhattan was rushing up toward him with alarming speed while he made the mental connection.

As Loki desperately tried to teleport away before he was flattened against any hard surfaces, he wondered if all his conversations with Pepper were going to end like this.

Then he was in Tony's workshop. No time to reel from the shock of his fall, he only had an hour, and too much to do in it.

He vanished the time distortion machine whole, though it would drain him to carry such a large object securely in a pocket of space.

He disassembled the light accelerator and vanished a few vital parts, but left the body of the machine where it was.

Then he took a deep breath to steady himself against his own growing exhaustion, and teleported again, this time much farther.

.:.

"Have you ever considered adding a cell tower your big top secret Vibranium-storing bunker? There's no signal in here." Tony grimaced as he checked and rechecked his cell phone a little compulsively, not liking the feeling of being cut off from the world.

He was sitting in a room with concrete walls across from the king of Wakanda. T'Challa stared at him with a stony lack of amusement, and Tony forced himself to put away his phone and make eye contact. "Anyway, to business. You own the majority of the Vibranium in the world. If I were you, I'd want to keep it that way. So here's my proposition: I buy seventeen pounds, melt it all down into Extemporanium, and you still own the majority of the Vibranium in the world. Everything you keep is going to shoot up in value. There is absolutely no loss to you."

"Except that I will have seventeen fewer pounds of Vibranium."

Tony paused. "I'm not sure you're following me here."

"I follow you, Tony Stark. I just don't trust you. Vibranium is a powerful substance. As is this Extemporanium you speak of. How do I know you will use it responsibly? How do I know you will guard it from falling into the wrong hands?"

The wrong hands, Tony thought distractedly, Loki looking down at his hands, the wrong hands. Do I really love him? He's already held extemporanium in those hands. Is that wrong? Two by two, hands of- No, that's a Firefly reference.

Aloud, Tony said, "I'm a superhero. Dealing with powerful substances and powerful technologies is what I do. Remember what happened to the last couple bad guys who got their hands on this?" He tapped the reactor in his chest.

The voice in Tony's head (which was apparently there to torture him) finished, Won't even want to come out of their caves.

That was when a lot of alarms started going off and lights started flashing. T'Challa jumped up and ran down the hall, apparently fully aware what those alarms meant. Tony ran to follow. He had a bad feeling about this.

"What happened?" T'Challa demanded of a guard.

"The Vibranium has been stolen. All of it. I'm not sure what happened. It's just gone."

T'Challa's jaw clenched. "Have you looked at the security cameras?"

"Not yet."

"Show me."

They all walked quickly to the surveillance room, and the guard set the computer to play the appropriate footage.

Tony still had that bad feeling. Well, if anyone had stolen all that Vibranium, it was bad, but Tony had a bad feeling.

The camera feed showed... Loki appearing, and vanishing all the Vibranium. Then Loki disappeared.

Tony thought, Maybe there's a reasonable explanation.

T'Challa watched the video feed, nostrils flared in livid indignation that so precious a thing had been taken from him. Then he turned to Tony. He was upset, but there was also a slight gleam in his eye. He had seen a chance to use the circumstances. "You want to prove the lengths you will go to in order to stop Vibranium from falling into the wrong hands? Prove it now, and then we will discuss price."

Tony nodded, and shook T'Challa's hand.

He had a really bad feeling about this.

.:.

Loki did not have enough time. Between taking apart the light accelerator, recovering from his hasty overuse of magic enough to move again, and stealing the Vibranium, he had used most of his hour, and he desperately needed the remaining time to set up the portal he had promised Surtur.

And to top it all off, he was stuck in Wakanda. His much-abused magic was starting to make its objections known, and the teleport that had been meant to land him in an unoccupied desert had taken him all of one mile.

Loki supposed he should consider himself lucky that he hadn't ended up fused with any solid objects.

The only thing for it was to bring Surtur into another highly populated area. And really, he had known there was little likelihood of this ending well. In the grand scheme of things that could have gone wrong, this was still going relatively smoothly.

He would just have let Surtur through here. A minor difference really. In the grand scheme.

Loki set up the spell, and his magic shook with the effort, embarrassingly similar to the way Surtur's portal had shaken with mental effort. But the spell he wove was still properly crafted.

Barely on schedule, but the spell was in place, and only needed an unfathomably large burst of magical power, which arrived right on cue.

.:.

The first thing Tony had done when he left the bunker was put on his Iron Man suit and take to the air. The second thing he did was realize he had no idea what to do next.

"Question," he said aloud to himself and Jarvis, "How do you track down a guy who can instantly teleport anywhere in the world?"

Jarvis said, "I believe the last time you were presented with this situation, you guessed."

"Right. We've got a problem then, because I have no clue. Thoughts, Jarvis?"

"It would appear that Loki is not as benevolent as he would have you believe. He seems to have returned to old habits."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm probably an idiot. But he wouldn't just do this at random. If he is up to no good, this is too subtle. There's something else. Something bigger it's leading up too. Something more..." looking around, Tony caught sight of the large, ominous portal slowly opening about a two miles behind him. "...more like that."

Tony reversed course and headed toward the opening portal.

He got close enough to see Loki doing some sort of magic that seemed to be aiding the opening portal.

"Maybe there's a reasonable explanation," Tony thought aloud, "Maybe he's actually trying to keep it from opening."

"I'm sure it's something like that, sir," Jarvis said almost comfortingly, but just a little too sarcastic to actually make Tony feel better.

Soon after, a tremendous fiery demon walked through the portal, followed by all his fiery minions. "I'm guessing that's Surtur."

"It would appear so, sir."

Surtur and Loki had what looked like friendly words. Surtur looked around and seemed briefly confused, but Loki smiled charmingly and said something that seemed to put the giant's mind at rest.

Then the Fire Demons all started destroying things and killing people.

Maybe there's a reasonable explanation, Tony thought, but at this point he really fucking doubted it.

It wasn't as if Loki had made any claims of being reformed. It wasn't as if he had promised not to go right back to destroying things willy-nilly as soon as it suited him. Given that, maybe there was no real reason for Tony to feel so betrayed.

He caught sight of Loki making machinery appear out of thin air and setting it up on the street outside the bank.

Wait. Was that Tony's lab equipment? Okay, now he definitely felt betrayed.

Tony was distracted when several Fire Jotunn attacked him from behind. He spent a few minutes lost in the chaos of battle, alternately trying to get away and trying to save civilians that were in harm's way. At one point he even got slapped in the face by the king of Muspelheim, which gave him a pretty good sense of what a fly felt like while being swatted.

"Jarvis, call for backup."

"I already did, sir. The Wakandan military is mobilized-"

"Yeah, I see them."

"-but it will be several hours before any of the other Avengers arrive."

Tony sighed. "Great."

He finally got close enough to Loki to get a good shot. The god was busy with some bits of machinery Tony recognized as being scavenged from his favorite light accelerator. Loki had taken apart his favorite light accelerator. Tony tried not the think too hard about how much sadness that brought him, compared to the disaster currently unfolding around him.

He aimed a repulsor at Loki's face. Then, with a grimace, he shifted his aim downward to the god's armor-protected chest, and fired.

Loki was knocked flat on his back, but quickly pushed himself back to a standing position as Tony approached and landed on the street about fifteen feet away.

Loki was out of breath, and his eyes were bright with either exhaustion or the barest hint of crazed evil, but he was calm and collected enough to look down at the mark on his armor and say, "Still prone to unnecessary violence, then."

"You're one to talk." Tony's helmet had been damaged and was kind of hurting his face, so he took it off and did his best to act invincible with his head unprotected from the famously volatile god. "I'm not sure if you're plotting something nasty or if you're just a lunatic, but either way, that's it. We're done here. You're going back to Asgard, and if they screw it up again and you get out, I am not going back to help them."

"Tony-" Loki started.

"Now, I get it, the whole, 'I'm evil, the word is my piñata,' thing. But if you could just do it a little less here, and more somewhere else, or even..." Tony flourished an armored hand as if searching for inspiration, "...Not at all."

"But I was doing as you said."

"Leaning toward the lunatic end today, I see. I never told you to do this."

Loki felt his chest contract.

No, Loki.

"Oh," Loki said with forced calm, "My mistake." Hard to get the words out, to breath evenly. There was an odd twinge of remembered pain in his nose.

"Now, mistakes are what happen when you accidentally put an extra cube of sugar in your tea, or when I do something irresponsible and destructive and don't..."

Tony stopped. Frowned. Thought over Loki's words, and the tone in which they had been said.

"What am I not seeing?" he asked, with the growing sense that he had just said some terrifically stupid things.

"I was protecting that woman you are fond of," the god explained guardedly.

"Pepper? How were you-?"

Tony was cut off by the sound of ringing. He pressed a button near the neck of his suit and spoke toward it. "Pepper? ... No I-" Tony listened as the voice at the other end carried on a panicked, high-pitched babble that Loki could not decipher from fifteen feet away. "Pepper, breathe. Where are you?...What were...really? You..." Tony snorted with laughter. "Really? You pushed him off the...okay, I got it. I got it. I'm glad you're safe. Gotta go."

The sound of fretful talking on the other end continued until Tony pushed the button again, staring at Loki. He walked up to the god, placed a hand on each shoulder and said, "Loki, I think I love you."

Then the super hero cracked a broad grin and gestured at the destruction that surrounded them, "But don't ever do this again. Now what's the plan?"

.:.

So Tony evacuated civilians from Surtur's path while Loki went about using a combination of machine parts and magic to accelerate light and turn all the stolen metal into Extemporanium. Then Tony helped Loki adjust the time distorter for a much higher output. They managed to turn it on and shoot the thing at Surtur around the time he got to the Wakanda bank.

Surtur, the Fire Jotunns closest to Surtur, and the bank were all enveloped in one tremendous time distortion bubble. Time - and thus light - slowed so far that the field appeared as a towering black sphere.

"Now what?" Tony asked.

"Now I put on a show," Loki whispered.

Shortly thereafter, the leaderless Jotunn army was greeted by the sight of Loki, in full armor and horned helmet, standing atop a building, arms spread to address them. "People of Muspelheim! You see now the power of Midgardian magic, that it has the power to stop even Surtur and his great sword. Will you surrender and return to your world, or will you too be extinguished by the blackness?" Loki gestured at the dark time bubble.

The Fire Jotunns took a good long look at the black sphere where their king had been, and then most of them turned around and went home. There was a little bit of fighting between the ranks, as those who had been surpassingly loyal to Surtur expressed their displeasure at the mass retreat, but in the end it all went surprisingly smoothly. Within the hour the last of the invaders had retreated back through the wormhole, which Loki closed behind them with considerable effort.

Tony adjusted the time machine to a more reasonable output, which made the image of Surtur blink to life as light recovered something like its normal speed.

Tony and Loki both sat near the time distorter, getting their breath back and watching the machine to make sure it wasn't in imminent danger of malfunctioning. They had both shed their helmets, but were otherwise still dressed in battle gear.

Tony looked up at the still image of a triumphant-looking Surtur sinking his foot into the Wakanda Bank, which was half-demolished and up in flames. "You know, I'm pretty sure most of the money in there was mine," Tony mused. The he clapped a hand on his knee. "So. That went well. Got any genius ideas for what to do about Surtur once we turn the machine off?"

Loki shook his head, still breathing hard with exhaustion. "Assuming my math is right and the time machine continues to work properly, Surtur will be trapped there for at least ten years. Consider yourself extremely lucky if this realm endures long enough for him to become your problem again."

Tony looked unhappily down at the machine, and the vat of time distorting element that fed it. "So, no more Extemporanium? Ever? The plan was to just trap Surtur indefinitely in the middle of a city in Africa?"

"Much of it was improvised. I'd like to see you do so well."

"Jarvis," Tony said, resigned, "You can tell the rest of the team not to bother showing up. I think we've got everything handled here."

"Yes, sir."

It was around then that the king showed up. T'Challa and an entourage of guards walked up to the pair. "Hey," Tony waved, but didn't get up, "I found it."

By the expression on his face, the king of Wakanda did not appreciate Tony's sense of humor. "And you appear to be working with the man who stole it in the first place."

"Yes," Tony said, "But maybe there's a reasonable explanation."

The king waited.

Tony opened his mouth, and realized that Loki's idea of bringing destruction down on T'Challa's country in order to save Pepper was probably not going to go over well here. "Okay, you could have the reasonable explanation - and it is a funny story; there's a roof, and possibly a badger if you go back far enough - but here's the thing, you could have the explanation, or I could pay to rebuild your city."

"You think all your problems can be solved with money?"

"No. Just hoping this one can."

Loki spoke up. "I assure you, Iron Man had no part in stealing the Vibranium, or in helping Surtur into your city. All he did today was save the lives of your subjects."

"That's true!" Tony confirmed eagerly.

"What about you?" one of the king's guards said to Loki.

"I had my own reasons for my actions. And it hardly matters if you know them, because I am a mythical being and I will vanish instantly should you try to capture or hurt me."

"That's also true," Tony added, "It really shouldn't be, but it is."

T'Challa walked over the vat of Extemporanium. "This is the other other element you spoke of?"

"Yeah," Tony said, "I wouldn't move that if I were you. It's kind of pivotal to keeping a giant fire demon from rampaging through the city. More."

T'Challa crossed his arms and stared hard at the two, thinking. "Tony Stark," he finally said, "I am glad that after today you will not possess Vibranium or Extemporanium. I do not think you are worthy to be entrusted with either. But I will accept your offer to pay for the repairs to this city."

.:.

Once everything in Africa was as sorted out as it was going to get, Loki teleported them both to the kitchen in the shared lounge of Avengers Tower, and the two raided the fridge, because defeating Surtur was hungry work.

Steve found them in the dining room, the contents of the fridge littering the entire table as the two slowly made their way through a random collection of leftovers, snack items, and cooking ingredients. He demanded to know exactly what had happened, so Tony told him.

Then the captain started chewing out Loki. Tony kept unusually silent, occupied with the food, mildly amused by the show, and not quite sure which side to take. Loki seemed too tired to care much what Steve said, more intent on eating his way through a large bag of green apples.

"People died. Far more people than would have died if you hadn't done anything. Why didn't you just call the other Avengers and let us deal it there at the top of the tower? We could have avoided tens of civilian casualties!"

Loki finished with the apples and started in on most of a leftover turkey. "There would have been no way to ensure the safety of Miss Potts."

"So you put the whole world at risk? Are you insane? Were you even thinking?"

That got Loki to put down his fork. "Of course I was thinking. There's always a purpose to everything I do."

"No wonder you're nuts," Tony muttered.

Loki leaned back to look up at the ceiling, exasperated. "When I risk one life to save a world, you complain. When I risk a world to save one life, you complain. I can't win, can I?"

"Is everything a game to you?" Steve demanded.

Loki straightened his head to meet the captain's eyes. "Everything that has rules."

Steve looked at Tony. "Tony."

"What?" Tony asked around a full mouth, confused.

Steve inclined his head toward Loki as if to say, Back me up here.

Tony swallowed his mouthful of hotdog bun and gave it a shot. "Steve does sort of have a point. I'm biased in that I like my friends to stay alive, but what you did was kind of wrong. Even when you're trying to do the right thing, there are certain lines you don't cross - dear god, I can't believe I'm the one explaining this."

Loki rolled his eyes and went back to eating turkey. Tony looked at Steve, who gestured for him to go on.

He tried again. "Look, I'm a genius and a billionaire. If I decided I wanted the moon budged over a few inches I could make it happen. But I probably wouldn't do that. With great power comes... responsib... hm." Tony was floundering.

Natasha walked in. "What's going on in here?"

Steve said, "We're trying to explain to Loki that the ends don't justify the means."

Natasha made a short sound of half-voluntary laughter. She turned to Loki. "How does it sound so far?"

"It sounds like squeamishness masquerading as moral superiority," Loki replied.

"Exactly!" Tony exclaimed, gesturing triumphantly in Loki's direction with a jar of peanuts, "You need more of that. That is what distinguishes super-heros from super-villains."

Loki and Steve both scowled at him for different reasons.

Loki said, "I thought what distinguished you from other super-villains was that you were successful."

Tony started unscrewing his jar of peanuts. "Me, a super-villain? That's not fair. I'll have you know, I once privatized world peace."

"Which is a diplomatic way of saying 'took over the world.'"

Tony drew his head back, insulted. "I am incapable of being diplomatic."

Natasha said, "Loki, why didn't you just break your word to Surtur?"

Loki looked disgusted. "Just because I cause large-scale destruction doesn't mean I am completely uncivilized. When I give my word, I keep it."

Steve crossed his arms and stared moodily down at the table.

Tony gave Natasha a canny look. "You were listening to this entire conversation, weren't you?"

"Besides," Loki added as an afterthought, "If I had broken my word, the Fire Jotunn would have attacked anyway, and there would be no knowing where the invasion would come through." This argument was made a little less comforting by the fact that Loki seemed to have only just thought of it.

Tony said, "Look, this seems to be turning into a regular occurrence. Why not give Loki a communicator? Link him into the Avengers com system. That way, we can talk to him, he can talk to us...make things a little less confusing the next time someone has to save the world."

"No," said Steve.

"No?"

"I don't know if you've forgotten, but Loki is a psychopath, and a wanted criminal. He's a mass-murderer. I don't want to give him a way to listen in on our plans if he suddenly turns against us." Steve stood and walked out of the room.

Tony, Loki and Natasha stared after him, all sharing in the same silent amazement that Steve actually thought the Avengers would be able to keep something from Loki.

Chapter Text

"Now that you've got a better understanding of the science behind the Hulk, do you think you can help me?"

Loki and Bruce sat in Bruce's lab. Loki had just finished poring through the scientist's extensive research notes, and had been sitting in meditative silence for long enough to make Bruce uncomfortable, which was quite a long time.

Loki shifted forward out of his thoughtful pose. "Well, I suppose the first thing to do is turn you into a mouse and see if the Hulk transformation still takes place as such."

Bruce gave him an incredulous look. "Obviously. Wouldn't have occurred to me not to start there."

"It's the best way to judge the potential for magic to solve your problem. If I can turn you into an unafflicted mouse, it follows that I can turn you into an unafflicted human."

"I'm really not sure about this. Tell you what. Give me a chance to observe the results when you preform transformations on actual mice. Once I have an idea of how it impacts the cells, we'll work from there."

Loki sighed. Tony never forced him to be this rigorous. "Very well."

Bruce shot him another odd glance. "You're really doing all this for me just because you felt guilty about using the Hulk to your own not-very-dastardly ends?"

"Clint has yet to decide on his wish," Loki deflected.

"Has Pepper made her wish yet?"

"It's also under consideration."

"What's under whose?" Tony asked cluelessly, just walking in the door. Cutting off any answer they might have given, he said, "Loki, I've had an epiphany!"

Loki waited.

"I don't need Extemporanium."

Loki raised his eyebrows.

"Look. If the time distortion can exist outside the element, there must some other way to create the distortion. If they can make trains that run without coal and they can make vanilla without beans, then I can sure as hell make time slow down whether or not I have the original ingredients."

"How?"

"No idea."

Loki's lips twitched a little in an attempt not to laugh.

"Don't be like that. I just had the epiphany two minutes ago. I'll think of something."

.:.

The next epiphany came to Tony later that very same day.

He and Loki were in the workshop - again. Tony was trying to repair the damages done to his favorite light accelerator, meanwhile giving Loki a hard time about having taken it apart in the first place. "You couldn't have used parts from any other machine? You had break open Speedy and tear her little core out? It's going to take me all day to make a new one." Butterfingers attempted to help, and the part Tony was working on gave off a low hissing noise. "Make that a day and a half."

"I said I wasn't sorry," Loki defended. He was sitting with his feet resting on Tony's desk, wearing blue jeans and a deep green button-down shirt, holding a mug between his two hands and watching Tony work.

At some point Loki had brought in a coffee maker and started brewing his own coffee in the workshop. Tony considered this both encouragingly domestic and weirdly sexy. There was something about the way Loki poured coffee.

Tony snapped out of a slight stupor and went back to work. "You know, when you used Bruce's brilliant scientific creation without asking first, you granted him a wish."

"You're suggesting I do something to make it up to you?" Loki caught Tony's leer and rolled his eyes. "No."

Tony removed a few pieces of the body of the machine, considering how much room he had to add some interesting features to the new core. "It's not what you think. I was going to ask you to make me pancakes."

"Pancakes," Loki repeated, disbelieving.

"Pancakes. And coffee. Which you would pour. Into a mug. Totally innocent." When Loki continued to stare at him suspiciously, he said, "A man can't crave breakfast foods every once on a while?"

After a moment of thought, Loki said, "It is a rare man who thinks wheedling a wish from a wily god is the most effective way to acquire them."

"So...is that a yes?"

"Tony, did you suffer actual brain damage when I broke that window with your skull?"

I suffer actual brain damage every time you say my name like that, Tony didn't say.

"No, I will not make you pancakes." Loki said, and sipped his coffee.

Tony started spinning a washer out of place. "Will you go out with me?"

Loki actually did a spit take.

Tony felt rather proud of himself. Getting the god of mischief to spit out his drink was on par with knocking out the god of thunder with a taser. He was still a little sad that he would never get a chance to knock out Thor with a taser.

Of course, it was an elegant spit take. Most of the coffee ended up back in the mug, and those drops which didn't were quickly banished with a magical gesture.

Loki set down his mug firmly, turned to Tony, and said, "What." He stressed the h sound derisively.

Tony thought, Am I misreading signals here? He opened his mouth to explain the Midgardian concept of going out.

"Don't. Don't bother." Loki ran a tense thumb and forefinger over his eyebrows, muttering, "I knew better than to stay this long."

Tony relaxed. No, he's just scared. He put down the washer and walked toward Loki. "Obviously you didn't. It's a little late to decide you need to keep your distance now."

Loki slowly lowered his hand from his face, glaring at Tony, furious at the human for implying that they were already in too deep. "You are imagining something that isn't there."

Tony tilted his head in a mock-thoughtful motion. "No I'm not," he concluded. Then he grinned. "I know I can be intimidating."

"Your perception of yourself is sadly distorted."

"I don't think you even realize how distorted your - Oh. Wow. Idea!" Tony spun in place, spreading his arms wide at the scope of new scientific insight.

"Yes, of the two of us, I am less aware," Loki deadpanned. He may as well have spoken to a wall.

Tony's attention had shifted back to Speedy, and he started talking quickly and excitedly to himself. "I used this machine and I created an element that in turn creates a time distortion. Of course. Of course." He looked back at Loki and said more deliberately, "I think the Extemporanium itself was created by a slight time distortion."

Loki gave him a particularly icy you're insane look, but asked anyway. "How so?"

"Well, you need a light accelerator to make it. I've only been thinking about this in terms of how the light accelerator impacts the structure of the orbitals, but it just doesn't add up. Now I think it gives off a weak time distortion field itself, and that's been impacting how the element is formed."

"Why would a light accelerator distort time?"

"You're a magician - in the showmanship sense that is. How to you create the illusion that something is moving?"

"You move the audience," Loki replied automatically. Tony smiled to himself, because there was more than one correct answer, and that was the right one.

"Hence: How to you speed up the very thing that defines the maximum rate of motion in the universe?"

"You slow down everything nearby." Pause. "I see. And you never recognized that you had already created a time distortion field?"

"It must be pretty weak." Tony gave speedy a challenging look. "If I'm right, I just have to figure out how I did it, and then do that more. Easy."

Loki took another sip of coffee and settled in to watch the show.

.:.

Temperatures rose. Things were getting just a little apocalyptic, with heat waves and droughts rolling through all the warmer regions of the world and some of the cooler ones as well.

Tropical storms were popping up all over the place. Hurricane Rho - it was only July and they were already well into the Greek alphabet - was destined to hit the coast a little ways south of New York. The weather forecast was rain, rain, rain and rain.

The Avengers stayed shut up in the increasingly air conditioned Tower.

Tony did invent a new time machine, sort of. It created something that was not so much a time bubble, as an amorphous and terribly uneven time blob. He set out a large ice cube in the distortion to melt, and it turned into something like Swiss cheese, parts of it melting at the normal rate, parts of it still frozen solid after two days.

There must be some pattern that determined it, some mathematical quirk. He could sense it. When he looked over the numbers it was on the tip of his brain, but always out of reach. Any method he used to track the time distortions turned up a dead end. He would plot one pattern over the course of a certain space and time, just long enough to get excited, then the pattern would dissipate, to all appearances leaving him with a collection of random numbers.

When he got too excited and muttered aloud about it, Loki would unhelpfully comment, "You are imagining something that isn't there," and then go back to examining the inner workings of obsolete arc reactors.

.:.

"Why do you still eat dinner with us, anyway?" Steve finally asked Loki over ravioli the night before the storm. "You're too much of a psychotic egomaniac to claim you actually like us. You're not stuck here anymore, and you must have better - or worse - things to do than watch us eat. So, why?"

"Loki is my brother," Thor said sharply.

"That's not why," Loki assured the group quickly, looking almost worried that they might believe it was.

"Then what is?" asked Clint.

Tony said, "Because he's our friend."

Clint shrugged, unconvinced. "I despise him."

Tony took on a mock soft expression. "Clint, look into your heart. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. If you hate him, it just means that deep down, you really-"

"I think I've lost my appetite," said Loki, at the same time as Clint growled, "Stark, shut up, for the love of god."

To which Tony asked, "For the love of which god?" and wiggled his fork to point back and forth between Loki and Thor. "I mean, we've already established that you're not indifferent to Loki, and he is the pretty one."

The best part was the way Clint and Loki sort of clenched their jaws in unison as they fixed Tony with unimpressed glares.

"You know he's annoying you two on purpose so you'll agree about something, right?" Natasha said, without taking her eyes off her laptop. She had brought it with her to the table, and was browsing news sites and scanning a map of New York city, looking troubled.

Tony focused on her. "You look troubled. Why do you look troubled? I though that was one of the signs of the apocalypse, but - oh, no wait, the world is actually ending. You're good," he assured her.

"What are you looking at?" Steve asked Natasha.

"The weather reports keep predicting the storm will weaken, but the wind speeds just keep increasing. I don't think anyone realizes how serious this is going to be. We've got rain, storm surges and high tide coming in all at once, and the ocean level's been spiking around New York even more than it has everywhere else."

Steve said, "So what you're saying is, it's gonna flood out of season this year?"

Natasha gave him a hard look. "What I'm saying is, we're looking at a disaster that makes the Chitauri Invasion look like a party."

Tony said, "Well, some of my parties look like the Chitauri Invasion, so..."

Ignoring him, Natasha continued, "This city is a death trap. Everyone gets around by the subway, but that's the first thing you have to shut down with a major flood coming. The population will be stuck, right when we need to evacuate one of the most densely populated cities in the country."

Tony took a moment to imagine that, and all his humor faded. "That's gonna be hell."

"Yeah."

Tony said, "So what can we do?"

Loki said, "You heroes won't be much help to anyone. Your powers and skills are more suited to combat."

"Yeah, I noticed that in the last hurricane," Tony said touchily, "Didn't stop us from doing something."

Loki schooled his expression and looked at his plate, feeling oddly chagrined.

.:.

The next day, there was a hurricane.

The height of the tides was such that a lot of the work was just making sure that people could escape from buildings flooding slower than the rising water around them. There was surprisingly much for a hero to do, and the Avengers were busy. Loki was nowhere to be seen.

One of the worst moments was when Tony found a building that hadn't been evacuated in time and his HUD identified 15 people alive inside, and no way to get them out without damaging the building enough to likely kill them in the process.

He landed on the roof and racked his brain for a brilliant plan, but nothing came, and there was no time. He grimly started weighing the not-so-brilliant plans against each other.

Suddenly all the occupants of the flooding building were on the roof, all looking entirely surprised to be there, some looking still more surprised to be breathing.

When Tony looked around for an explanation, he saw the god of mischief standing on the roof with them hand help up and curled and wearing a hint of an I just saved you all by snapping my fingers smirk.

"Loki. I didn't know you were out here." Tony's grin was hidden behind his faceplate.

"As I said, your powers and skills are more suited to combat." Loki crossed his arms and walked up beside Tony. "The protective wards I've been placing around the city are another matter entirely."

For a moment, looking at Loki Tony felt as if everything was going to be okay.

It was a very short moment. "Of course, it's still going to be a disaster," Loki assured him.

And then it was.

.:.

There was never not something to do, never not someone who needed saving. Never moment to stop or breathe or look away from the destruction. A constant onslaught. They certainly weren't saving everyone, and after a few hours the wind picked up force and buildings started going down. It was wearing on Tony, but he was more worried about what it was doing to Loki.

More than once, he would see horror creeping into the god's eyes, that special I-will-never-not-have-screaming-nightmares-about-this brand of horror. He kept meaning to go over to Loki, tell him to stop, rest, but he never got close enough before some other disaster came up that needed his immediate attention. He was going to kill Steve for not hooking Loki into the com system.

It didn't take long for the hurricane to pass under them and head inland. Tony didn't really want to think about how cities further south were faring. The wind was bearable again, but it was still pulling nasty waves in from the ocean.

Tony had a clear line of sight to Loki the moment he went over the edge. A woman was talking to Loki, hurried and at length, gesturing in all directions and looking panicked. Tony couldn't hear her words, but he had been listening to the stories all day, and he could guess.

Things like, Have you seen my son? and, My brother was trapped in such-and-such a building, do you know if everyone got out alright? and, My medication is in a purse that looks like so, I can't find it, I know it doesn't seem important, but I'll die without it, and so on, and so on, and so on...

He could see the horror creeping in. He had the display on his helmet zoomed in on Loki's face, and he could almost hear something in the god's head go SNAP, before a shaky, unhappy smile started to form on his face.

Before he was aware of making the decision, he was in motion. "Cap, I'm taking my lunch break."

He roughly grabbed Loki by the arm and pulled him into flight, scanning the city for a place to land. He wasn't sure where they could go that the god wouldn't be confronted with destruction, and eventually settled on the top of a skyscraper in an area that had already been evacuated, because at least there were no people around to panic and set him off again.

They landed, and Tony lifted up his faceplate to look Loki in the eye. Loki was no longer smiling, but his face still held an expression that would be dark amusement, if it weren't just a few degrees crazy.

Tony had no idea what he was supposed to do here, and you probably had to be delicate with people in this state of mind, but he didn't know how to be delicate. So he took the god by the shoulders again and said, "Whatever messed up place you just went to in your head, back away from it. Now."

Loki blinked. Expressions moved across his face. Defiance. Confusion. Pain, there was definitely a lot of pain. Recognition, as he blinked again and focused his eyes back on Tony's face. Just enough clarity to see and be afraid.

Loki's eyes moved again, looking out across the skyline. Tony tried to shake him, to pull his attention back away from the morbid view, but Loki pushed his hands away and walked to the edge of the roof. He sat down on the edge, which worried Tony a little, and looked.

"I did this," Loki whispered.

Tony plopped down next to him with the slight clang of armor hitting concrete. "Yeah, yeah, you did."

The god buried his head in his arms, muffling a scream, but it was still kind of loud.

Tony took a breath. "Say, did I ever tell you about that time I built a bunch of weapons that got used to kill innocent people? It's really kind of a funny story." The words came out flat and pained. Tony winced. He was trying to make light of this, and it wasn't working.

But Loki was looking up at him intently, mentally holding onto him for deal life. He said, "Then tell it to me."

Tony didn't want to, not really. He had meant it as a passing quip, to make Loki feel a little less guilty without pretending nothing was wrong. But he knew desperation when he saw it, so he told the story.

He was sure Loki knew most of it. It wasn't as if the god had never used a newspaper or a search engine, but there were some things the newspapers didn't know, and Loki hung on his every word as if the information were new and riveting.

He told him about building weapons, about Obadiah, then about the cave and Yinsen. His escape, and then discovering Obadiah's betrayal and to what purpose his life's work had really gone.

By the time Tony was finished, Loki was sitting upright again, effectively distracted from his own thoughts. Which, he damn well better be, because now Tony was remembering all the things that made him feel like a mass murdering son-of-a-bitch, and he didn't want all that guilt going to waste.

"You couldn't have known," Loki said. The hollow, comforting words sounded all wrong coming from him.

Tony gripped the edge of the building. "I worked pretty hard not to know. I let someone else do all the thinking. I memorized the talking points and wore them around like armor so no one could ever call me on anything. And when all else failed, I quoted Howard at them like he was Jesus Christ. Your game is still to be just like daddy? I've got a news flash for you; winning's not all it's cracked up to be."

"Ah. Well. I withdraw the statement," Loki said dryly.

"Thanks."

Cap's voice on the com had been barking out orders to various members of the team, and the sound of Tony's name caught his attention. "Iron Man, you alive? I don't see you."

Tony put down his face plate. "Yeah, I just got a little sidetracked."

"How was lunch?"

"Funny story: all the restaurants are closed. Who'd'a thunk, right?"

"Free now?"

"Yeah, just a sec."

He pulled up his face plate and said to Loki, "Stay here."

Loki narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to say something mutinous.

Tony hastily changed the instructions. "Don't go right back to search and rescue. Check your wards. They'll do more good in the long run."

Loki nodded, and Tony grudgingly left him and went back to work.

.:.

Fury finally told them to turn in and that the rescue workers could handle the rest. He might have actually said that a few times over the last two days, but now the Avengers were tired in every possible way, so they actually listened. The director added in tones that brokered no argument that, barring any more unforeseen disasters, they were all to take a few days off.

The ground level entrance was under water, so those who could fly carried the others to the balcony of the penthouse.

When everyone was assembled and inside, Tony noticed the circles under Loki's eyes, and they reminded him of something, but he was too tired to chase the thought through his own winding head.

As soon as the Iron Man suit came off, his own weight became too much for his legs. He would have gone down like a rag doll, had Loki not caught him. But the god was tired too, and Thor had to put a hand to Loki's arm to keep them both upright. Loki sent his brother a spiteful glance and muttered something sleepily garbled that could just as easily have been "Fuck you" as "Thank you."

Everyone else left, and Tony and Loki stayed awake just long enough to stumble into bed. And certainly not long enough for either of them to note the fact that they were both stumbling into the same bed.

.:.

Tony woke up in a surreal world, with morning light pouring in through his windows and a god asleep in his bed.

Tony was still dressed. Loki must have woken sometime during the night to change out of his armor, because he was wearing a loose T-shirt. The god was definitely asleep now.

Loki looked, if anything, more care-worn in his sleep. The mask was gone, and the worries underneath were evident in the tilt of his brows and the tense creases around his eyes. His mouth had fallen slightly open while he slept, and it stayed there, paused, as if on the verge of offering some excuse or making some desperate request.

Tony touched Loki's face. Was there an off switch that would make all that worry go away, at least for now? His shoulder, maybe. Or the crease at the center of his forehead. Tony smoothed his thumb over the spot where his brows were drawn together, and they did relax a little.

He moved his hand down, tracing Loki's cheek, the curling his fingers around Loki's jaw, touching his thumb to Loki's mouth. Maybe he could make that relax as well, but he had less success there.

When Loki's eyes opened, Tony's hand was still on his jaw, thumb still resting over his parted lips, a weight to stop whatever pained words were hanging there. Loki's eyes turned to focus on him.

And Tony realized that his own mask was probably off too, that he probably looked, for all the world, like he loved Loki, because it was first thing in the morning and the walls were down, and because he did.

Loki might have said something, or turned his head away, or closed his expression; but he couldn't because Tony's hand was still curled around his jaw and Tony's thumb still held his mouth slightly open, and Loki's eyes seemed to be trapped holding Tony's gaze, maybe against the god's will, because there were denial and tears crowding in, and his breath seemed to be coming less easily with a slowly building panic.

Still they looked at each other, and time seemed paused and surreal.

It was all very emotional and it made Tony's chest hurt, but he couldn't quite want the moment to end; he thought he might never get a chance to see Loki this clearly again. It was one thing to see a man broken and insane. It was another thing entirely to see him utterly himself, and still vulnerable.

Tony could feel the motion of it when Loki finally tried to move his lips, a soft brush against his the calloused skin of his thumb. An attempt to withdraw.

The moment was ending. No chance Loki would ever let Tony see him like this again. It would be a kind of death, when Loki looked away. Got any other bad ideas? Tony thought to himself and, well, of course he did.

He propped himself up on his free arm and leaned over, moving his thumb out of the way so he could press his mouth into Loki's.

Loki made a noise of protest, but before Tony could move away, a strong hand wrapped around the back of his neck, holding him in place. Not all that protesting, then.

Loki pulled him down further, deepening the kiss, and Tony had to adjust his arm quickly to keep from falling forward, and then his brain turned off entirely, and his only thought for a while was, Loki.

Suddenly the hand was gone from his neck and two hands were pushing on his chest so that he fell back onto his side of the bed, and Loki was sitting up saying, "I've got it!"

Tony gave him baffled look. "What happened to kissing?"

"The time distortion. I know how to balance it now." Loki summoned a pen and paper to his hands and started writing hurriedly.

"I'm pretty sure we were having a moment," Tony whined.

When Loki was done writing, he handed Tony the paper and said softly, "That moment can last as long as you want it to."

Tony read over the formula and felt a grin take over his face as he looked back up at Loki.

The two spent the rest of the day in Tony's workshop, going over the math and running experiments. It was exactly the breakthrough they had needed. The time distortions were far weaker than those created by the Extemporanium, slowing time down by a factor of ten at most, not nearly enough to create visible differences in the rate at which light moved. And it took an immense energy draw, challenging the significant output of the arc reactor powering Avengers Tower.

"But it's more compact than the original machine, and it's still more than enough to slow someone down in battle," Tony said optimistically.

.:.

When Tony started to notice feeling hungry and tired, he asked Jarvis what time it was, and Jarvis helpfully gave him both the time and the date, and Tony realized that he and Loki had been at it for thirty hours straight.

"Oops," he said.

Loki gave him a quizzical glance and took a closer look at the time distortion in front of them.

"Not that. I promised Pepper I was eating and sleeping at regular intervals. I guess I lied."

"Ah." Loki frowned, putting a hand to his own stomach as his attention was called to the fact that meals had been missed.

"Jarvis, get me a list of restaurants that are air conditioned," Tony said automatically, then added, "And open," when he remembered how much of the surrounding city was still under water.

They both deemed it too hot to travel by non-magic means. So it was that they found themselves popping into existence in a deli in Washington Heights.

"Somehow, I expected more stares," Tony mused.

"Well, we are invisible," Loki replied, scanning the small crowd of customers attentively.

"We are?"

"Until everyone looks away. There we go." Loki gestured, and afterward the next person to glance their way froze and gave them a disconcerted look.

From there the stares increased. Fortunately no one made too much of a fuss over the presence of the well known super hero. Tony got most of the furtive glances and requests for autographs.

Then one woman gave Loki a wide-eyed look and said, "I recognize you!"

Suddenly realizing he was in no mood to play the villain, Loki mentally readied himself to leave just as quickly as he had arrived, but he wasn't quite prepared for her next words.

"You were one of the heroes who helped us escape. Thank you so much." The woman gripped Loki's right hand in both of hers in a brief, grateful gesture, and then left the quickly, awkwardly carrying two heavy paper bags full of sandwiches.

Loki looked down at his hand as if it were something alien. Which it was.

"Hey," Tony snapped his fingers in Loki's face until he looked up, "Turkey or ham?"

"She had no idea to whom she was really speaking."

"Come on, what do you want on your sandwich?" Tony continued, stubbornly filling the air with words and gestures, "They've got cucumbers, they've got olives, they've got cheese but you don't like cheese, they've got about fifty different kinds of bread - I'm thinking I might get mine with a little of each - they've got mayo, they've got..."

"Just order something," Loki muttered and walked away from the counter to sit at a table.

When Tony brought the sandwiches to the table and found Loki still moping, he rolled his eyes. "Don't do this to yourself."

"Why ever not?" Loki asked obstinately.

"Because it's boring, and it makes me feel depressed to watch it." Tony sat and slid Loki's sandwich over to him.

"I don't care what that woman thinks of me."

"I gathered that from your cheerful demeanor." Tony poked Loki's arm. "Hey. Eat."

Loki took a bite of his sandwich, and seemed to remember his appetite. The two ate in companionable, mopey silence for a while.

Tony sighed. "This may be the worst date I've ever had."

Loki opened his mouth with the clear intention of saying, This isn't a date, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, he said, "Next time, take me someplace free of the common rabble."

Tony leaned back in his chair and smiled at Loki with a mixture of smugness and warmth. "Next time, huh?"

Loki took a large bite of sandwich and ignored him.

Chapter Text

The next day, Tony came up with what was possibly the worst idea he had ever had, and gleefully set about searching for a fire extinguisher.

.:.

It took Loki a moment to realize what was happening. If he had seen it coming, it certainly would not have happened at all.

One moment he was sitting in the workshop reading over a spreadsheet of time frequencies, the next he heard the shriek of rushing air and a harsh gust of wind slammed into him.

Something like snow flurried into him along with the wind, and a thin, brittle substance was forming on his skin and clothes where he was most in the path of the wind. Loki didn't realize it was cold until he put up a defensive hand and found that his skin had turned its natural deep blue in response to the stuff wherever it touched him.

The shrieking sound ended. He looked up, and Tony Stark was holding a fire extinguisher, hose still pointed in Loki's general direction.

A clever prank, but a hurtful one. And Tony, of all people; that cut deep, but somehow Loki knew he was a fool for not expecting it. He felt a cold, murderous rage building, freezing over his shame as he stood and brushed dry ice from his clothes.

He teleported the four feet it took to stand directly in front of Tony, placed and open hand over the circle of blue in his chest and lifted the man roughly by the front of his shirt. He heard the loud thump of the extinguisher falling to the floor, and higher ripping sound as a seam in the shoulder of Tony's shirt tore under his weight.

"Why?" he demanded.

Tony looked at him without the slightest hint of fear and said, "Because I'm a jackass and you look beautiful in that color."

Well, that wasn't the answer he had expected.

Loki was holding Tony up off his feet, face full of dangerous, confused anger. Tony looked down at the hand tightly grasping the front of his shirt, and had the thought, I really hope there aren't any windows around, 'cause if there are...

He looked back up at Loki, and their faces nearly touched.

...then it was totally worth it.

Tony was having trouble thinking coherently, because it was Loki's real face, not the mask he wore when he could, and it was something exquisite and strange that Tony had seen often but never touched, and he wanted to...

Oh, wow, lips. Very cold lips. Tony realized belatedly that he had acted on his impulse to kiss the Frost Giant. Really, it was Loki's fault, holding him so close when he looked like that. And the cold felt amazing. Tony kept kissing him, moving his lips to completely take advantage of the rare opportunity, waiting for the moment when Loki would realize what had happened and drop him.

Which Loki soon did.

The floor hit Tony's feet with a painfully jarring impact, but he managed to stay upright and keep looking smug.

The look on Loki's face was more one of consternation than anger, and some small part of Tony's brain that still cared about staying alive was saying, Good. Keep him confused, and back away slowly.

His mouth didn't get the memo. "Is it just me, or was that kiss a little one-sided? I hope you don't expect me to do all the work in this-"

Loki's expression hardened. "If we are to be lovers," he started, and Tony felt a thrill through his entire body at the words, "Then you must swear never to do that again."

"Are you telling me not to kiss you, or is this just about the little matter of the fire extinguisher?" Tony joked, then said seriously, "Only if you swear I won't have to. There's a problem with the concept of us seeing each other and me never actually seeing you."

Red eyes widened, then narrowed. "You won't have to," Loki agreed grudgingly.

"Then I promise not spray you with condensed carbon-dioxide ever again." Tony paused. "Unless of course you're actually on f-"

Loki kissed him, possibly more to get him to stop talking than for any other reason.

It did not take long for them both to get much too lost in that kiss to remember slights or bargains. Tony felt cool fingers threading through his hair and a hand fisting in the back of his shirt, pushing - pulling? - him closer to Loki. And his own hands were finding the most wonderful places, Loki's neck and Loki's back and Loki's sides. Cold skin that was hard and almost brittle, but shifted smoothly with the muscle underneath, laced with ridges that Tony traced randomly only to find that they led his fingers in the most fascinating patterns.

Remembering what had interrupted them last time, Tony muttered, "You'd better not get any brilliant ideas this time."

Loki's hand momentarily disappeared from where it was tangled in Tony's hair. Tony was getting sufficiently used to the sensation of teleporting that he didn't bother to stop kissing Loki when he felt the world twist briefly out of existence, and then re-materialize in the shape of his bedroom.

"Too late," Loki said as his hand settled back into Tony's hair and pulled his head back lightly, kissing a cold trail down his neck.

"You don't get to claim that idea. I had that idea first. I had it patented weeks ago-oh..."

Clothing started to disappear, along with Tony's ability to formulate witty remarks or keep track of his surroundings. The soft surface of the bed appeared under him, and he was pretty sure there hadn't been another teleport involved.

So this is how the world ends, Tony thought, as what remained of his ruined thought processes waxed poetical.

It ended in red eyes and black pupils, strands of living red shifting and pulling to make way for black ice. It ended in cool touches that sent heat rushing through his veins.

At length, it ended in surrender to sleep. Cold, tangled limbs and chilling sweat, and blue eyelids closed in contented lines that he traced in tired fascination as consciousness faded away.

.:.

Loki woke alone in Tony's bed.

His thoughts moved first through memories of the previous night, which brought an indulgent, satisfied smirk to his face, then touched briefly on indignation that his bedfellow had left him alone here, then startlement, when he realized his skin was blue, and his hand reached up reflexively to check for the necklace, before his mind provided him an explanation.

Relieved, he shifted into his more familiar Asgardian skin, and from there into a state of dress, dawning the casual Midgardian jeans and green button-down shirt that had he had preferred of late. He stepped gracefully down from the bed, and looked around.

The room was flooded with clear morning light from generous windows. There was no sign of Tony. The room was so clean that there was no sign, really, that anyone lived here, apart from the rumpled bed Loki had just left.

A little exploring led him to the bar. This too, held fond memories, although the smile they brought to his face was more in acknowledgment of points lost there.

Still no Tony.

"Jarvis," Loki called, growing mildly impatient, "Where is your master?"

"Are you certain you need me to answer that, sir? You know his habits now as well as I."

Loki rolled his eyes at his own lack of basic deductive reasoning, and teleported one floor up.

Ah, here was mess and engine grease and brilliant madness. This was a place where Tony Stark truly lived. The mortal was repairing a car engine, in the midst of it, parts and oil scattered across the floor. Loud, vile music was playing. It was amazing Loki hadn't heard it from the other floor.

The part of Loki's mind that had catalogued the contents of this room identified the vehicle as a new arrival. Tony must have moved it in sometime while Loki was asleep.

Loki turned off the music, and Tony looked up at him, then back down at his work. "What would it take to get you to stop doing that?"

Loki frowned. Not exactly the greeting he had been hoping for. If this was about the stupid music... "Doing what?"

"Turning beige."

The unexpected answer halted Loki's growing annoyance, and he looked down at himself thoughtfully. He liked his Asgardian form. But then, he was finding he also liked the fact that Tony liked his Jotunn form. "I'll have to get back to you on that."

Tony looked up at Loki again, this time more attentively, "Oh, hey, should I be not doing this?" he gestured at the car he was working on.

The man was genuinely unsure how to handle the competing demands on his attention, and Loki smiled a bit, because that was sort of...cute. "No, carry on. I'll leave you too it."

Tony looked even more confused and put down the tool in his hand. "You're going somewhere?"

"I need to think. And for that I need to be away from distractions." Loki bent down to kiss Tony, in part reminding him why he would be a distraction, in part an affectionate goodbye.

This kiss did not so much scream goodbye as whisper it, but that didn't make Tony any less suspicious. He broke away and said, "Woah, woah, woah! This isn't one of those things where you go off and think and decide this can't work after all and never materialize again, is it?"

Loki tilted his head as if to say, Well, maybe. "I have a great deal to think about, and most of it concerns the fates of various realms."

Tony stood to face Loki, running his hands down the god's arms in a be calm and listen to me motion. "Tell you what. You do your thinking, and then we have dinner tonight. Nice restaurant away from the common rabble. I'll make reservations, you pick me up at seven and provide transportation. Agreed?"

Loki crossed his arms. "Fine."

Tony kissed Loki briefly, said, "Go plot something," and turned back to his work, barely noticing Loki leave as the craft of honing an engine to perfect function pulled his mind back into oblivious focus.

.:.

Tony had a vague notion that there was something important he had to be on time for, so he clawed his way free of his work the next time he found the will, and looked at the clock to find that it was only 4:30. Early, but late enough that waiting for another good stopping place would be tempting fate. "Jarvis, make reservation at that steakhouse I like."

"Already done sir," Jarvis said, quietly canceling the matching reservation he had made with several other likely restaurants.

Tony headed down to the shared lounge, taking a few small parts with him that needed cleaning and oiling, on the theory that he couldn't get too distracted with people around and little work at hand.

"-when you said Loki was going to face Asgardian justice, I kind of imagined that the rest of his life would involve a lot more Asgard. And justice." That was Steve's voice.

Natasha's voice said, "Revenge is all good and fine, but we have bigger problems right now."

Tony rounded the corner and the whole gang was there, apparently discussing the end of the world. Bruce and Steve were standing behind the counter drinking coffee. Clint was at the kitchen table doing some sort of maintenance on the collapsing mechanism of one of his bows, and Natasha was sitting in the next chair a couple feet away, with her foot subtly touching Clint's.

Tony stepped in and looked right to them. "Seriously, with the footsie? You two are like fourth graders. You'll be on to holding hands any year now."

Natasha sent him a mild glare and did not move her foot. Continuing the earlier conversation, she said, "What we need is a solution."

Steve said, "Thor, have you asked Odin if he can create an item that serves a similar purpose to the Casket?"

Thor was standing across from the counter, holding his chin and solemn with thought. "The dwarven craftsmen have drafted designs for such an item. If they work quickly, it may take less than three hundred years to complete."

There was a long moment of bleak silence. Clint put down his bow and looked around. "If no one else is going say it, I am: We're all going to die."

"Wow, that's such a..." Tony sat down at the table and started cleaning the parts, "...profound commentary on the human condition. Thank you, Clint." Then he looked around exasperatedly. "Buck up, people. Did I walk in on a moping party, or does anyone else have an actual idea?"

"It's unlikely that everyone in this room is going to die from this," Natasha said to Clint, shrugging. "The world governments will collapse, and anyone powerful enough will move to Antarctica and keep the human race alive until the Dwarves finish the job."

Clint looked back darkly. "That's not much better."

Steve sighed. "Tell that to his highness the god of randomly blowing things up."

"Aaand we're back to blaming my boyfriend," Tony muttered.

Everyone's head whipped around to stare at him.

Tony froze. "Did I just say that out loud?"

"Yes," Natasha said shortly.

"Oops." Tony focused on polishing the metal in his hand and avoided their eyes.

"Not really, though, right?" Bruce asked evenly, "I mean, that's just a joke? You two act weird around each other, but that's why it's funny."

Tony sighed and put down his toy. "No, it's not just a joke. Yes, we are actually dating."

Steve dropped his mug. Fortunately, there was a counter right under it.

Taking in the shocked expressions, Tony cautiously glanced at Thor, and was surprised to find the Asgardian looking about as amused as Tony felt, watching the reactions of the other Avengers a little knowingly.

"Are you sleeping with him?" Natasha asked Tony, coldly formal. Gathering information and assessing the danger.

Tony nodded.

"Your... boyfriend?" Steve spread his hands in a vague gesture, not judgmental so much as incredulous and lost. "How does that even... What?"

Tony smiled at him, "It's actually pretty simple, Beaver. Would you like me to draw you a diagram?"

Clint snickered.

"I'm honestly tempted to say yes, because I have no idea how that would work, but... no." And Steve walked away.

Tony walked up to Thor and tapped his arm. "Thor, buddy, you seem surprisingly mellow about this whole thing. Have you been drinking Bruce's tea? I'd be more careful; I'm pretty sure the Tension Tamer is prescription strength."

Thor smiled and shook his head. "I have known Loki for far longer than you have. I have long since learned to laugh at his most impressive pranks."

Tony shrugged. "It's not a joke."

Thor thought before replying, "They never quite are."

.:.

Tony looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was much longer than he usually kept it, not really long yet, but well into shaggy. It was odd, because he had been keeping his beard neatly trimmed, so why the hair kept slipping his mind was a mystery, but it didn't really look bad, so maybe that was why. He had yet to look in the mirror and think, Now that doesn't look like Tony Stark, sexy mad genius super hero, which was what happened when his beard started to look untidy. He just kept thinking, I should really cut that, and then he never did.

Otherwise, he looked very put together. He was wearing a white shirt and a charcoal grey suit, cut close to the body, with thin lapels and textured accents. His tie was a daring but utterly tasteful shade of purple.

Shaggy hair notwithstanding, he was a date fit for a god.

"Not bad," he concluded.

Loki's reflection appeared next to his. "Are we leaving now, or do you need a few more hours alone with that mirror?"

Loki was wearing a very dark teal vest over an ice blue shirt, which brought out all the beautiful tones of his blue skin, and black pinstriped pants that framed the lines of Loki's legs in a way that made Tony think of things he shouldn't. Well, no, he decided. He really should.

Tony looked his date up and down again admiringly. "My dear, you look almost as stunning as I do. Please tell me you're going out like that."

With an indignant blink and a quirk of the eyebrows, Loki somehow managed to look insulted and flattered at the same time. His skin shifted from blue to pale beige, and his eyes from red to green. His clothing stayed as it was, and continued to suit him beautifully, although the shirt and vest made his eyes appear a touch more blue than they usually were. "Shall we?" Loki held out a hand to Tony.

Tony sighed, disappointed, and took Loki's hand. A moment later they were in the entryway of the restaurant Tony had chosen. It was an upscale steakhouse, the sort of place the mayor couldn't get a reservation for unless he Knew People.

A waiter came to escort them to their table, and the two followed. The walls were painted in neutral colors and decorated with rich drapery. The people were formally dressed and sure of their own importance. They were being led toward a table that was simply set, with a white table cloth, silverware and napkins and glasses already filled with water.

The two drew considerable attention as they walked across the room. Tony doubted anyone here recognized Loki without the armor he wore in all the news footage. Enough that it was Tony Stark, accompanied by a man. Not that either of them minded the attention. They were both princes in their own way, Tony mused, and they were in their element here, almost as much as they were in the casual, messy brilliance of their - his - his workshop.

Standing close to Loki, Tony whispered in his ear, "No common rabble here. This place is full of the classiest rabble you can find in New York City."

Loki looked around at dispassionately. "So I see. That woman recognizes you."

"They all recognize me." Then Tony caught sight of Christine Everhart, where she was sitting across from Jude Law over dinner and a tape recorder. "Oh, her. Yes. We've met. I think her name is, uh, Christie."

"You've met," Loki repeated a little dangerously as they took their seats.

"Yeah. Well. Etcetera."

The ill-tempered silence that followed was cut short when the waiter came to take their order. There were no menus, but the waiter listed the available entrees aloud for them. Tony ordered a ribeye and a bottle of cabernet. Loki ordered filet mignon and, at the waiter's advice, a glass of syrah.

Tony picked up his water glass and scrunched up his face in disgust at Loki's chosen cut. "You have no taste."

"You have no texture," Loki murmured back too quietly for the waiter to hear, and Tony choked on the water a bit.

As the waiter left, Loki glanced over Tony's shoulder. "Oh dear."

"What?"

"I think she just recognized me."

Tony twisted in his chair to look over at Everhart, who was giving Loki a look of intrigued contempt. Tony caught her eyes and gave her a little smile that clearly said, fuck off, and she obligingly turned back to her dinner companion.

Tony turned back to Loki. "It'll be an interesting morning edition," he said as the soup course arrived along with the wine.

Loki smiled, but his eyes were guarded and assessing. "That doesn't bother you?"

"Why would that bother me?" Tony reached for his wine glass, and succeeded in taking a sip as he had not with the water.

"Reputation. Your clear enjoyment of the hero worship the people here lavish on you."

"Excuse me, have you seen my reputation? I've done worse; save the world a few times and most people stop caring. Anyway, they'll probably just say it's proof that you've reformed. Or brainwashed me. Either way, I'm in the clear."

"Have you always been this doltishly optimistic?"

Tony tossed him a grin full of overblown charm. "I asked you out, didn't I?"

Loki opened his mouth to snark back, realized he had just been complimented, and gave up. "...Well played."

They finished the soup course in comfortable silence. Tony smiled as left for the men's room, satisfied that the date was going very well, all things considered.

Of course, he knew better than to think it would last. So he couldn't brink himself to be very surprised when he got back and Everhart was standing at his table, in what looked like unfriendly conversation with Tony's dinner companion.

For a moment he felt sorry for her. But he caught the flash of a hunted look in Loki's eyes, and remembered that the reporter was significantly sharper than she looked, and could be aggressive with her moral straightedge. Come to think of it, that was part of why he had slept with her in the first place.

He walked up behind her and said, "Mind if I cut in?" then in a quieter, more frank voice Tony added, "I'm kind of on a date here."

Everhart looked at Tony with a flash of surprise that told him she had meant to be gone by the time he returned. It was quickly covered over by polite composure. "Of course. I didn't mean to intrude."

"Oh, I think you did." Tony eased back into his chair, acting as if it didn't involve letting Everhart much too far into his personal space, and poured himself another glass of wine. "I think you wanted get a rise out of Loki here, so you'd have something extra juicy to quote in the next Vanity Fair."

"I'm surprised you don't want me to." She gave Tony a small smile and gestured between the two men. "Do you expect me to believe this is about something other than shock value?"

Tony felt his jaw go slack at her astoundingly off-the-mark guess. He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough.

She bent forward a little as she analyzed his expression, made the connection and gaped back in mild horror. "Jesus. You really are that much a hypocrite. You promised your company would stop getting into bed with tyrants and war criminals. This whole 'accountability' line of yours wears pretty damn thin when you get into bed with one."

The conversation was still quiet, but the people at the surrounding tables were starting to stare more openly.

Tony said, "People change."

"So I'm told. Are you claiming Loki has changed?"

"He saved more lives in that hurricane than died in the invasion."

"Oh really?" Everhart crossed her arms and tilted her head shrewdly. "No thoughts as to what's causing this sudden acceleration of rising global temperatures?"

Damn, she's sharp, Tony thought again, with a little spark of rekindled interest that he easily brushed aside. "Meteorology is not my area."

"Bullshit," she whispered.

"...is your area, as a member of the press," Loki observed. "Are you going to let us eat our dinner, or was there something else you needed to get off your chest?"

Everhart graced Loki with an unkind smile. "Well, in the past Tony's been pretty enthusiastic about doing that for me."

Loki's expression turned very, very cold, and Tony gave him a wide-eyed look that basically amounted to, Please don't kill her.

Loki looked back at Tony and raised his eyebrows expectantly. Well, what are you going to do about it then?

Tony took a fortifying drink, turned to Everhart and raised his voice enough for onlookers to hear. "Brown, honey, you may not like it but I'm just not on the market right now. If I were, there are plenty of people in this room who would have a better shot than you. I'm just wondering why you're not in your own chair interviewing one of them."

Everhart looked around at the other patrons who were now staring very hard at her. Without a word, she turned around and walked back to her seat. Jude looked Tony up and down in mock interest and said something quiet that made the reporter snort a laugh, and the tension in the room eased.

Tony turned back to Loki, who was giving him a slightly wide-eyed look of approval. The god opened his mouth and paused before saying, "Tony Stark, I love you."

Tony felt warmed all the way through, but that could easily be the fact that he had recently downed his '91 cabernet like a shot. He grinned in genuine happiness. "I love you too, Beautiful."

Loki closed his eyes and winced in annoyance at the pet name, but there was a smile somewhere in there.

Tony eyed Loki's expression, and let his own face relax into something a little more earnest. "I'm serious, you know. I love you. Completely. Which is pretty terrifying all around, and probably bad for my health."

Loki smirked, "Not to mention fantastically irrational."

Tony didn't laugh, which put Loki in the uncomfortable position of realizing how self-deprecating his words had been, and how much he had meant them. He frowned down at his food.

Tony took a moment to rummage around in his head for the right words, which he was pretty good at finding when he actually made an effort. In a low voice, he said, "It's totally reasonable. I can think of about five thousand reasons off the top of my head. This whole thing may not be exactly wise, but Loki, being with you is just about the most magnificently rational experience I can imagine."

Loki's forehead crinkled momentarily, and he did not look up from his plate.

Tony felt he had said his piece, but to fill the silence, he kept rambling like an idiot. "I've never felt this way about anyone. Well, I guess I felt sort of like this about Pepper, I mean, the whole in love thing, yeah, but not like-"

Loki schooled his expression to a small, composed smile and looked up. "Tony," he said with more warmth than Tony had ever before heard in his voice, "Shut up."

The conversation stayed amiable while they finished the main course and the waiter took away their plates.

The dessert ordering process, however, began to go downhill the minute they started trying to outdo each other.

It started with a battle of expense and inconvenience - "You don't have organic kiwi to go with my pavlovas? Be a dear and run down to the grocery store then; I'm pretty sure it's still open." - but it quickly devolved into a thinly disguised flyting match.

"Oh, the chef made tiramisu today?" Loki inquired, "Might as well order it now. It doesn't age well."

"I like the taste of red velvet, but not a big fan of the food coloring - I don't think that's its natural color," Tony turned to the waiter and asked pointedly, "Do you think that's its natural color? I seriously doubt it."

"Southern butter roll," Loki mused, "Too rich for my tastes."

"No it's not," Tony said with perfect self-assurance, "You like rich things."

"Well, perhaps if it had any redeeming qualities... Devil's food cake?"

"Nah. I've found it doesn't really live up to its sinister reputation. Try the pie. The pie here is fantastic. Everyone gets the pie."

"I'd prefer a dish that fewer people have already sampled."

"I'm sure it's popular for a reason."

"Tony, your faith in the good judgement of the human race is adorable."

"Can we agree that ice cream is icy and cheesecake is cheesy, and those are both way too easy?"

Loki gave a short nod. "Yes. As are you. Waiter, just how short is the short cake?"

The waiter opened his mouth, but Tony spoke instead. "The one with dark chocolate syrup? Not a fan of dark chocolate. It's bitter and has daddy issues - wait, I don't think that one works."

Loki's expression soured, and for a moment Tony feared he might get a face full of syrah. Then Loki smiled that you're going to lose ground smile; things got a little blurry after that point, but there was definitely a thousand-dollar bottle of "sickening and utterly transparent" vodka involved.

With the help of an assortment of verbally abused desserts, Tony was already starting to sober up again by the time they got themselves kicked out of the restaurant, and he considered that an achievement. He left a tip significantly larger than the bill, and they both made their way to the entryway.

They stopped in the space between the two sets of double doors that divided the restaurant from the intolerably hot outside world. Tony was still laughing as he said, "I still can't believe that after that crack about not aging well, you didn't know tiramisu has cheese in it."

Loki - who had consumed the majority of the vodka and was rather more drunk than Tony - actually laughed with him. "I can't believe you tried to serenade me. My love, your voice is a flyter's dream come true."

Tony contemplated the fact that the words, "I can't believe," sounded very different in Loki's accent. Vastly improved, really.

Loki interlaced Tony's arm more securely with his. "Home, then?"

One corner of Tony's mouth pulled down in an expression of pained caution. "Are you sure you're okay to-"

They teleported.

"-drive?" Tony finished. They were in a hallway somewhere in Avengers tower, and it didn't look particularly close to the floors where Tony lived.

Loki looked around curiously, and then seemed to process Tony's words. "Oh. That...may have been an excellent question." The god bit his lip and succeeded in not dissolving into another fit of drunken laughter.

Tony watched the motion with obvious, lustful fascination. "I have another excellent question for you: Can I have you right here?"

Loki rolled his eyes, pulled himself free of Tony's arm and started to walk away.

Tony raised his eyebrows. "Have I offended my almighty god?"

"Your almighty god needs to find a men's room. On foot. Wait there; I won't be long."

So Tony stood in the hallway and watched Loki walk away. It really wasn't fair that the god could walk straight when that intoxicated; and it really, really wasn't fair what those trousers did the whole process of Loki walking.

It was only a second after Tony's date disappeared around a corner that he heard distinctive footsteps coming toward him from the opposite direction. He turned around and there was Pepper, looking particularly harried and a little upset. "Tony!" she stopped when she reached him. "There you are," Pepper breathed, digging her fingers into her hair in a way that bespoke incomprehensible stress, and opened her mouth to continue.

"Oh, hey Pepper." Tony held up his hands in a gesture half calming, half defensive. "Look, I know I haven't picked an assistant yet, and I want you to know-"

"-Tony, I've left Walt. I-I want you back. I still love you." She said it in a rush, and then watched his face anxiously for a reaction.

Tony froze.

Then he backed away a step.

His brain was stalling like a clogged engine, because this was bad in so many ways he didn't even know which direction to panic in. Perhaps the biggest real worry was what Loki might do to her...

Oh.

Tony took a breath and felt his heart start beating again. Not that his heart could really have stopped, since it was controlled by an electromagnetic... Gah. "Jesus, Loki, don't do that. You scared the hell out out of me."

The illusion of Pepper disappeared, replaced by Loki, who was clearly not as drunk as he had been acting a minute ago. The expression didn't change much, still watching Tony's reaction with anxious intensity. "You were scared?" he questioned, "That was all you felt?"

"Scared, horrified, nothing good."

Loki shifted his weight back, expression morphing from anxious to mollified. "Good."

Tony put two hands over his face and groaned.

"Are you angry with me now?" Loki asked, in a voice that held no concern whatsoever.

Tony wasn't even sure. He hadn't enjoyed Loki's little experiment, but he couldn't honestly say he wouldn't have done the same thing in his lover's place. They were both practiced enough in lying, and particularly in lying to themselves. If the god now felt confident that he wasn't pining after Pepper, all the better for everyone involved.

Tony dug his fingers into his hair in the same anxious gesture the fake Pepper had recently used. "No. Just..."

"'...Don't ever do it again,'" Loki finished for him, smiling because they would never run out of reasons to say that to each other.

Chapter Text

It would go down in history as the day the air conditioners in Avengers Tower stopped keeping up with the heat wave.

Tony had already sealed off some of the nonessential rooms and stopped the tower sending air to them. Now he started sealing off entire floors, shutting down sections of R&D and having Jarvis notify some of the residents that they were being moved to different rooms to consolidate space. It saved energy, but they were still hitting the limits of what the hardware was capable of.

All things said and done, it was a moderately warm day in Avengers Tower.

It would have been fine if they hadn't known what would come next. Moderately warm was the first step to unbearably hot, which in turn led to dead. Thus, there was a lot of anxiety to go around. Bruce was working hard in his own lab, and refused to leave or let anyone else in.

Tony busied himself with checking through the air conditioning systems for any flaw or way to improve their efficiency. There was one on floor ten that had a lower output than the others, and he left his workshop to take a closer look.

He was on his way through a hallway full of offices, and stopped in his tracks when a voice called sharply, "Tony Stark."

He turned around, and there was Pepper, holding a large stack of papers - was he going to have to sign all those? - and looking furious.

"Oh, hey." Tony paused and looked her up and down carefully. "Pepper...that is really you, right?"

Pepper dropped the stack of papers she was holding on the nearest table and rounded on him. "Tony, I have been fielding phone calls from the press all morning because you... You do realize this isn't supposed to be my job anymore? No, never mind that. Is it true? Did you go on a date with Loki? Of all people...Tony, just answer one question for me; are - are you actually a lunatic?"

"Jarvis, I think Pepper is standing in front of me."

"Yet another astute observation, sir."

Pepper was not so impressed. "I can't believe you. I can't believe you! No, you know what, actually, I can." She was nodding at her own words in a way that boded very badly for Tony. "This is exactly what you do. You cook up the most suicidal, impulsive ideas that only you could think of, and then you get yourself so drunk -"

"- Oh come on, I haven't gotten stupidly drunk since -"

"- If you finish that sentence with anything but 'yesterday,' your definition of stupidly drunk is not our earth definition!"

"What happened yesterday?"

"Exactly!"

"No, seriously -"

"- I thought you knew better than this. I honestly thought -"

"- Did something happen? -"

"- I can't believe for a second I thought you could handle -"

"- Wait wait, go back. I'm still stuck on the 'yesterday' comment."

"You propositioned Jude Law in front of the press!"

"Oh, I remember that." Tony frowned. "We hadn't even broken out the vodka yet -"

"Tony." Her voice was low and warning.

"Why can't you just be happy for me?"

"Be happy for you? Be happy that you're sleeping with someone who would just as soon kill you -"

"- Yes, actually. I don't think that's too much to -"

"- Have you even thought about how this looks? -"

"- Oh, come on, he not going to kill me -"

"- reporter asked me if the super-villain lifestyle held any appeal for you -"

"- Do major bodily harm? Maybe. But kill -"

"- What do you even expect me to tell them? It's not even my -"

"- a little melodramatic -"

"- He's criminally insane, Tony. Do you even realize -"

"- You don't have to tell them anything. I keep telling you, deflect -"

"- What do you even see in him? -"

"Everything!" Tony found himself shouting.

Silence fell.

After a few breaths he continued softly, "Everything. He's the most brilliant person I've ever met. And he's just as insane as I am, and he's just as brave as I am -"

She gave him a dubious look.

"- Well, it's true. And he's just as much of an asshole as I am. And I have never, in all my life, had someone look at me, and actually see; not like he does."

Pepper stared at him, wide-eyed, with just a touch of the inevitable hurt.

Tony sighed, and gave in to the urge to tuck back a lock of her hair. "You came the closest, Pepper. You saw my heart, and I don't know if you'll ever really understand how much that's done for me. But he sees my mind too. He sees everything in me that's there to see. And I like to think I do the same for him. So what do I see in him? Everything." He spread his arms in something like a shrug and shook his head helplessly.

"...Oh," Pepper's voice cracked, but she was smiling a little. "That...answers that, then."

Tony smiled back and returned to his usual quick-talking levity, "And knowing him, the sneaky bastard is probably with us right now. Hey Loki, come out!" He clapped his hands. "On with the bandages and sunglasses, Griffin!"

Loki appeared. "As I've never spent time as a griffin, I'm assuming that's another reference."

"It's H. G. Wells," Pepper informed Loki, even as she blinked repeatedly at his sudden materialization. "Griffin was an invisible man who...went murderously insane."

"Ouch," Loki looked impressed, "Accurate."

Tony grinned and kissed Loki's cheek. "Thank you, darling. I try."

.:.

The Avengers found that after Tony and Loki started dating, the god of mischief spent more and more of his time voluntarily blue.

He was usually with Tony - that had not changed, nor had the fact that Loki was arrogant, impatient, and generally unkind. But he was calmer, just a little slower to anger and a little quicker to a joke, and more of his smiles were genuine.

It was the first time most of them had seen god of mischief act - either figuratively or literally - comfortable in his own skin.

Steve finally broke down and let Clint explain to him the physical realities of same-gender sex, and afterward the captain looked a little ill every time he saw the two mad geniuses together.

Tower temperatures leveled out at hot. Tony altered the employee dress code to "swimsuit formal" to accommodate the climate, which he swore was totally a thing. Then his eyes wandered so much over both male and female staff members that Loki hacked into his work email and changed it back.

People adjusted and emotions calmed. Bruce started leaving his lab and talking to people again, and went back working with Loki on the Hulk thing.

Which may not have been the best idea.

The afternoon started normally enough, with the Avengers sitting around in the shared lounge while Tony grinningly mocked Steve for his naiveté. "You genuinely did not know about the whole 'some people are gay' thing?"

Thor looked curiously away from the TV - which was tuned to footage of the giant Surtur-filled time bubble that still sat in the center of Wakanda - to hear Steve's answer.

Steve sighed. "Of course I knew that. In theory. I mean, even in my day, you couldn't get through military training without hearing the rumors. But there's a difference between knowing that it happens somehow, somewhere and knowing..." Steve trailed off, making vague, bewildered motions with his hands and them giving up. "Besides, you used to date Pepper, so it never really occurred to me that you might..."

Tony said, "Okay. I'm gonna stop you right there before you start up the dirty hand gestures again."

Then Loki appeared out of nowhere. That was also normal enough, but he looked oddly perturbed, missing just a pinch of his usual dignity. He kept looking up in the direction of the R&D floors and curling his hands in a slightly nervous gesture.

Tony got up, intending to give Loki a greeting customized to make Steve uncomfortable.

"Tony," Loki started.

Tony stopped, picking up on Loki's unease. "Yes?"

Loki looked up again, then back to Tony. "Would you actually believe me if I said that for once, I did not do this on purpose?"

Tony said, "Why do I get the sense that -"

There was a tremendous, angry roar, just familiar enough to make Tony think distinctly of the color green and a vague craving for shawarma. The windows rattled with the force of the sound. Everyone looked up, then looked back at Loki with varying levels of accusation.

Loki looked back at them, truly more harried than Tony had ever seen him. "The spell was meant to turn him into a mouse," the god said a little weakly.

Tony crossed his arms. "And you didn't think that would make Hulk mad?"

"No, not really."

The Avengers found the Hulk in Bruce's lab for the second time in as many months, tearing the place apart, which seemed especially not safe given the number of highly reactive chemicals Bruce kept stored there.

And of course, just as Tony thought that, the Hulk turned toward a shelf full of bottled liquids.

Tony flew close to the Hulk's face, arm outstretched, either to calm or to aim a repulsor blast; he wasn't really sure yet. The Hulk snatched him out of the air by both wrists and threw him to the floor. Then the Hulk took note of the crowded, confined space of the lab, and ran to jump clear of the tower, utterly unfazed by the fact that there was a wall in the way.

They all braced themselves as the building shook with the violent exit, then they made chase.

With all the Avengers on hand, they managed to lure the Hulk to an evacuated section of New York, and then they let him smash to his heart's content until he felt better and turned back into a little scientist.

When Tony went to hand him his pants, Bruce looked around at the wreckage and said, "So I guess the mouse thing didn't pan out after all. Is everyone okay?"

Steve nodded.

Tony said, "You broke the wall in your lab, though. We'll need to move all your stuff out so I can shut off the air conditioning."

"Great," Bruce muttered, sarcasm in his tone so thick it almost circled all the way back to genuine.

.:.

Back at his penthouse, Tony extracted his bruised forearms from their crumpled gauntlets, and grimaced as he saw the remains of his bracelets.

Jarvis started helpfully, "Sir, perhaps next time -"

"Next time I'll make a spare set. Yeah." Tony pulled them off and tossed them on the counter of his bar.

Loki picked one up and examined it. "What are these?"

Tony didn't even bother trying to figure out whether the god had just appeared, or had escaped his notice until this moment. "These are actually the reason I offered you that drink right before the Chitauri invasion. Aside from the fact that I was stalling."

"Threatening," Loki corrected.

"I slipped them on behind the counter. When I'm wearing them I can summon and put on my suit anywhere, even in midair. Very handy when things take me by surprise. Useless now, though."

Loki looked carefully from the twisted bits of metal to Tony. "Without them, your suit can't find you when you need it?"

"Nope."

Loki put down the bracelets. "And you don't. Have. Spares." His tone was icy enough that Tony had to brush off a moment of real fear and remind himself that the god was worried for him.

"Hey, I've been busy! The world is ending, for crying out loud. It'll take me one day to make a new set. I'll be fine."

"Why a whole day?"

"Well, while I'm at it I have to improve the design a little. I've had those for months. They're obsolete. Or, they will be tomorrow."

"Tony, is there even an atom in your body devoted to common sense or self preservation?"

"May I remind you that you recently tried to turn a Hulk into a mouse?"

"Irrelevant."

"But that's the whole reason they're broken!"

Loki strode around the bar to advance on Tony. "If you die over something as stupid as not having made a backup -"

"I know, I know. Like I said, I'll make duplicates this time. I've learned my lesson."

Loki stopped as a thought struck him. "Tell me you've made a spare arc reactor."

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course I have."

"And what had to happen to make you realize that was necessary?"

Tony threw his arms in the air. "I am not answering that question."

"Ah. Of course. The incident with Obadiah," Loki recalled.

"Okay, now that's just mean. You're bringing up traumatic memories for me." Tony hooked a finger into Loki's pants, tugged a little, and flirted, "You should really do something to make me feel better."

Only Loki's face could manage that combination of lingering annoyance and wistful interest. "You have work to do, and I have and archer to annoy."

"What about after?"

Loki just disappeared. Tony sighed and turned his focus back to the bracelets as he contemplated a new design.

Chapter Text

After doing his part in the Hulk incident, Clint Barton went down to the shooting range to practice. The room had all sorts of cool toys, including scaffolding near the ceiling with which an acrobat could practice shooting with various limbs engaged in holding himself up from a deadly drop. He was up in that scaffolding, and had just finished his standard bow routine and was on to working with one of his less favored weapons - a handgun - when he heard a noise.

Without looking away from the target board, Clint aimed the gun at the door and said, "Stop right there."

Loki spread his arms innocently. "Do you honestly think I mean you harm?" the god asked, and then took two slow steps forward and continued less innocently, "Or that distance would make a difference if I did?"

Clint turned his head to look at Loki. "I seem to recall your brainwashing staff weapon requiring close proximity. You can stay where you are."

Loki decided it would serve no purpose to point out that Clint had no way of knowing his actual location or proximity. Instead, he waved his hand and a full quiver of arrows appeared in the air in front of Hawkeye, who had the reflexes to reach out and grab them by the shoulder strap before they fell.

"What's this?"

"You seemed slow coming up with a viable wish, so I offer these as a suggestion. Magic arrows." Clint cautiously holstered his gun, then threw the quiver's strap over his shoulder and looked at the new arrows curiously while Loki described their functions.

"The beaded ones shoot through solid objects. They become non-substantial the moment you fire, and return to a solid state after a certain distance, which you can adjust by sliding the beads. Practice with them. They won't always be affected by wind or drag, and they can be reused.

"The purple ones have a wider head, because they are intended for grazing. They make the target vulnerable to suggestion, but they only work once. Do not cut yourself on one.

"The black ones make something disappear into an alternate pocket of space. When the tip touches a solid object, everything within three meters of that point will vanish, except the arrow itself. You can vanish almost any object, and trap anyone but a giant or a magic user. Always retrieve the arrow afterward. You can release the object by removing the arrowhead, or trap it there forever by breaking the shaft. Do not touch the tips, and when you shoot, mind the vacuum."

Clint pulled out a black arrow and saw that there was a leather covering over it that would have to be removed before he could shoot it. "Also one-time-use?"

"Yes."

There were five of each type of arrow, totaling fifteen.

"These are sweet." Hawkeye's voice was too flat and suspicious to clarify his meaning, so it was hard to tell whether sweet meant cute or the more modern translation, fucking fantastic. He gave Loki a hard look. "It doesn't exactly make up for forcing me to kill all the wrong people."

"Then make a different wish."

Clint thought. "Shooting you in the face is still out?"

"Yes."

"But you would heal right away, right?"

"Of course."

Clint nocked one of his own arrows and drew his bow at lightning speed. Loki flicked his hand, and the bow disappeared before Clint could release the string. The arrow remained, and archer watched it shift forlornly between his curled fingers for a moment, and then returned it to its quiver.

Loki said, "Make a different wish."

Clint thought for a long time. Loki was just considering leaving him to it, when the archer gave his answer. "An apology. And the arrows."

"You people aren't bad at this, you know," Loki said dryly, "Not one of you has made the common mistake of limiting yourselves the the stated 'one wish.'"

The door opened and Tony walked in, looking mildly agitated. When he saw Loki, he pointed backward with his thumb to indicate the floor he had just left and said, "Why is there a bed in my workshop? Related question: Why is there not a bed in my bedroom?"

Loki shrugged. "I grew tired of waking alone."

"You could have said something."

"I'm confident in my own solution to the problem."

Tony was about to make some objection, but then he realized that before Loki, he had slept in the workshop more often that not anyway. The only things he used that bed for were sleeping with Loki and sleeping with Loki.

That brought another objection to mind, and this one he voiced. "It's going to interfere with my work."

"There's plenty of room."

"It's distracting. It'll interfere with my thoughts. I won't be able to do anything without imagining having sex with you."

Loki smiled.

"...Which was the other reason you did it." Tony had to resist the urge to find a wall to hit his head against.

"You are clever," Loki said with a touch of feigned surprise, "I knew there was some reason I liked you."

"Remind me again why I like you?"

"I could, but I think you would find the process distracting. Do hurry up and finish those bracelets, love."

"You are so not fair," Tony said, and headed back to his workshop.

Still smiling, Loki turned back to Clint.

Clint said, "If SHILD ever orders me to spy on either of you, I'm quitting. There are some things I can't be paid enough to know."

Loki looked momentary pleased by that information, the returned to business. "I believe there was a wish on the table?"

"Arrows and a heartfelt apology. Deal?"

Loki considered for a moment, then dipped his head in acquiescence. "Deal."

"Apology?"

"Heartfelt apology. I'll let you know when I feel one coming on. Enjoy the arrows." Loki magicked Clint's bow back into his hand and teleported out of the room.

After he was gone, Clint took a moment to stare at his newly acquired possessions and grin. "Sweeeet."

.:.

Tony stood in his workshop and fiddled with the design for his new bracelets. He definitely wanted something with duller edges, but that was tricky without adding to the weight. It would be nice to add a voice interface with Jarvis that he could use outside the tower if he lost his cell phone, maybe consider a stronger material, or something flexible, that would bend under pressure and then spring back.

While all these things ran through his mind and the holographic blueprints above his desk, he vented to Jarvis about Loki. "'If I die'...I mean, what am I gonna do, leave the tower? Such a bastard. Who I would do anything for, for some reason. Smug, sneaky, sexy bastard."

"Sir, I think it is pertinent to note that you know very little about Loki, and his intentions."

Tony rotated the blueprints in front of him. He was definitely liking the flexible option, but it was hard to find a material that looked as stylish as the metal. "Are you suggesting that my decision to date an unstable god could be construed as reckless?"

"I wouldn't presume, sir, to suggest the doltishly obvious. But I do recommend that you learn more about his motives, before something happens."

"'Doltishly'? You're starting to sound a little like him. Wait. Jarvis, that is really you -"

"Sir, I think the fact that you have to ask is evidence of my point."

"Fine, fine. Don't we have a file on him?"

"It's minimally informative. Even the slot for eye-color is still blank."

"That's ridiculous. Everyone knows he has red eyes. Except when he has green eyes. Except when he has..." and then Tony realized something. "Son of a bitch."

"Have you had an epiphany, sir?"

"May-be. Jarvis, tell me you have color footage from the day Loki threw me out that window."

"Would you like me to play it?"

"Please. Okay, no, pause there. Zoom in on his face. Now pull up a photo of him nowadays being all Asgardian. Jarvis, am I seeing things, or are his eyes a different shade?"

"Adjusting for differences in lighting and camera quality...Yes, sir. Loki's eyes are distinctly more blue in the earlier picture. Does that mean something to you?"

"You have the shield files on the Tesseract. What's the universal sign that someone is being controlled by the glow stick of destiny?"

A pause, then Jarvis said, in his usual unruffled british tone, "Son of a bitch."

Tony looked up, genuinely shocked. "Jarvis! Language!"

"I apologize for offending your delicate sensibilities, sir. It's worth noting that in both cases, Loki was wearing an intentional disguise. He may well have -"

"- Changed his own eye color for some sneaky reason. I know. Keep it on the file. I'll mull it over."

Tony refocused on the task at hand. Or he tried to. Had the tesseract been manipulating Loki? It would explain so much, but it seemed to easy, like too much of a cop-out. Wouldn't Loki have said something? But what else would explain the eye color? Some people's eyes just changed color. No reason but odd biology. Tony tried again to think about the design in front of him. His keyboard looked like it was lettered in Mayan.

So it was that Tony found himself back down in the shooting range asking Clint about it while the archer packed up his gear after training. And to Tony's surprise, Clint just let out a resigned sigh and said, "Yeah, probably."

Tony held up two hands, trying to hold a suddenly tilting perception of reality stable. "I'm pretty sure that wasn't your line. It should have been something like, 'no way,' or, 'holy shit, maybe you're right,' or, really, anything that doesn't imply you knew this all along and didn't say anything."

Clint gave him a dark look. "You've never seen the Tesseract up close like I have. There are things about it you don't grasp."

Tony crossed his arms. "I'm listening."

"The Tesseract pulls you out of yourself. But it leaves something behind. Something like you, but obsessed with serving it. It's like being in a cult. Everyone else under its control is a fellow worshipper. You're in on it together, like you've seen something so amazing, and no one else could understand...

"When it was controlling me, Loki was my commander, but I didn't worship him. It was all about the Tesseract for me. It was part of me. 'It touches us all differently.' Loki said that once."

"And you never mentioned this because...?"

"I gave SHIELD a full debriefing. I never mentioned it to you all because knowing a little can make you stupider than knowing nothing. I worked for the Tesseract. He worked with it. It was a tool to him. A piece of machinery. If I saw right the way he looked at it, he hadn't been forced into servitude the way we had. Maybe the Tesseract changed him, maybe he changed the Tesseract. He understood it, on a level no one ever should. Still does. Gives me the creeps."

Having said his piece, Clint went off to do whatever it was that Clint did all day. Tony realized he didn't really know why they saw so little of the archer compared to the other Avengers, and realized shortly thereafter that he didn't care.

Bracelets could wait. It was high time Tony got Thor drunk.

He found Thor and Natasha in the shared lounge playing with the Wii system. Natasha was lining up her shot while Thor sat on the couch and waited for his turn, controller dangling from his wrist.

"Thor!" Tony greeted, "I'm going out. You're coming too. We have drinking to do."

Thor looked up. "Is there some occasion?"

"We have to hit the bars together now that I'm dating your younger brother," Tony explained, "It's an Earth tradition. Drinking. Bonding. You threatening to kill me in interesting ways if I hurt him..."

Thor nodded, smiling. "Yes, I recall a similar outing with Dr. Selvig when he suspected Jane and I might begin our courtship. Good fun was had. I shall be along after I have bested Natasha at Wii bowling."

"You realize Natasha gets a perfect score every time?"

Thor looked at the scoreboard and grimaced a little. "I shall be along when the game is over," he rephrased.

.:.

"Happy, take us somewhere we can get drunk. Somewhere refrigerated," Tony ordered once he and Thor were in the car.

Happy drove them to a bar and dropped them off as near the entrance as possible. The two almost turned back when they hit the wall of hot air that was the outside world, but Tony persevered, and Thor refused to be outdone, and soon they had safely reached the heavily air-conditioned (if still over-warm) bar. It was crowded. A number of customers seemed to have luggage with them, camping out in any public space that had working air.

They found a little space at the bar and picked out a good beer. Tony bought a round for everyone in the room, and got a lot of positive attention for a while.

When things calmed down, they sat down to drink their beer. It was important that Tony stay more sober than Thor, so he could question him about Loki and still remember the answers in the morning. Tony had a high alcohol tolerance for a human, but Thor was Thor.

Tony sipped. "Got any nice creative threats for me?"

"Some, but I fear few of them would be sincere. I'm happy for you. I see how you have changed him."

Have I? Tony wondered. "Oh, come on. Aren't you just a little shocked and horrified? Me and your poor, innocent younger brother?"

Thor laughed. "You would not be the strangest creature my brother has ever bedded. Well," he reconsidered, "Not by much."

"About the horse-"

"A wildly exaggerated myth. But that was a very odd year."

"Do tell."

Thor shook his head, "The last time I told someone that story, Loki placed a curse on me, so that I described my privy habits in detail whenever I spoke to a beautiful woman. I have learned my lesson."

An hour later, after much singing and making merry and a quantity of alcohol that was making even Tony vaguely nervous about his pocket book, they were back on to the subject of Loki.

A thoroughly drunk god of Thunder leaned glumly forward onto the table. "Loki, my brother. We were such friends once. Truly. We trusted one another in battle. We mocked each other with the warmth of inseparable companions. I believed then that he would always love me."

"There, there," a much less drunk Tony patted him consolingly on the shoulder.

"And then he was dead. And how I mourned. It was as if half of me were missing. The clever half."

"There, there."

"When Huginn and Muninn saw that he was alive, my heart wept for joy. But bitterness has taken him from me more surely than death ever could. And when I looked on him again, I could find nothing but madness, and a disastrous lust for power."

Tony cleared his throat. "Clint said the Tesseract might have had a role in that."

Thor nodded. "Of course. It was unwise of Loki to meddle with such an object, and impossible to make him see sense once it had touched him."

"You knew the Tesseract was messing with his head too? Am I the only one who was out of this loop?"

Thor took hold of Tony's shoulder and looked into his eyes, expression grim and conflicted. "Tony, my friend, do not make the mistake of assuming that my brother is blameless or harmless. The Tesseract does not touch the minds of gods as it does mortal men. Certainly, it poisoned his heart, as dreams of power always must, but he was not helpless to it."

"Okay, so the Tesseract is like the One Ring and gods are basically hobbits?"

Thor thought over that and smiled. "A fair comparison. But that ring was evil, I recall. The Tesseract is but a dangerous tool. A good one, in the right hands."

The right hands, Tony thought, Right. "So Loki was the bad one, corrupting poor innocent Tesseracts, is that what you're saying?"

"No." Thor sighed. "But the two should never have been combined. Certainly not after the events that transpired when Loki fell from the rainbow bridge."

"Oh, really?"

Thor had a love of storytelling, and from there it was not hard to pull out a detailed, if one-sided, account of how Loki had fallen from grace.

The two got in late, and Tony was relieved to find Loki already asleep in his bed, a nice ice cube to snuggle up with on a warm night and sleep off what even he thought was a little too much alcohol.

A few hours later, Tony woke hung over and overheated to motion and distressed whispers. Loki had rolled away from him some time while they were asleep, and was clearly dreaming.

Ah, that special I-will-never-not-have-screaming-nightmares-about-this brand of horror, Tony thought with mock fondness as Loki spoke in his sleep. "No. No! I didn't mean to! Please stop! Forgive me, brother. Forgive me, I did not- I thought-"

Tony shook Loki awake. Loki gasped and turned to him, having taken the panic with him into waking.

"I take it back. I take it back!" His words were desperate and rushed. "I tried to help him, I tried to tell him the right lies, but then it was too late, and I was so angry, I did not mean it!"

Tony held Loki and said, "Hey. It's okay. It's okay," and grew more concerned as Loki did not push him away or snidely deflect his words of comfort.

After a time, Loki closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. "Thor is alive," he said. It was almost a question, and that was pretty scary.

"Yes, Thor is alive and snoring."

Loki laughed a little. "Yes. He was worthy and I was not. I remember now."

Tony's head hurt. "Loki, what did you mean 'the right lies?'"

Loki shook his head. "Bad dream, that's all."

Tony gave him a scrutinizing look, and wondered what conversations Loki might have been overhearing to inspire those particular dreams. "Uh-huh..."

Loki gave him a dark look that said drop it, and for now Tony did, comforted by the fact that Loki was still capable of glaring. He burrowed his face into the pleasantly cool skin of Loki's shoulder and they eventually went back to sleep.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Loki sat alone in the pool room. It was the same room where he and Tony had talked after Barton had taken away his magic. Tony had since cut off the air conditioning to that floor. Thus, there was stifling heat but less than there would be later in the day, and no crowd to distract Loki from his thoughts.

He placed one blue hand in the empty pool and tried to create a sheet of ice as he had that day. One feeble line of crystallizing ice extended from his index finger, and began to melt into water again even as he struggled to make it grow.

He always seemed to be working under a handicap.

He needed to resolve this soon. And as the worlds approached destruction, riskier plans were worth considering. He could give up the game, tell Odin exactly what he had done, sit back and hope. But no, he wasn't quite that desperate yet.

He stood and paced. He needed a way to Jotunheim, and it seemed the only passable route was through Asgard. But Heimdall would catch him far too quickly, and he would never arrive in...

Oh.

"I have to kill Heimdall!" Loki realized in an exclamatory whisper, "Of course. There is no better way. But how?"

So Loki started to plan. Killing Heimdall in person was out of the question. Perhaps poison? The delivery would be tricky, but entirely possible. He kept pacing for a time, considering and eliminating options.

His thoughts were interrupted when the door opened and Tony walked in. "Loki, we need to talk."

Loki frowned at the severity in his lover's tone. "Why?"

"Fun fact: did you know that Jarvis can hear everything you say?"

Loki took a moment to absorb that information and curse himself inwardly. Then he turned his mind to possible denials and explanations for his confessed intention to murder the Gatekeeper.

"Another fun fact: did you know that I can actually see your face right now, and it has 'I'm about to lie to Tony Stark' written all over it?"

Loki winced.

"Care to explain?"

"No, not really. But I doubt I have much of a choice."

Tony walked toward him and gestured for him to continue. "Well, go on. Gotta admit, if there's something that makes murdering a guy sound like a good idea, I'm all ears."

"It is only fair," Loki argued a little defensively. "When I was king of Asgard, he tried to assassinate me."

Tony frowned. "Huh. I had not heard that part of the story, actually."

"Really?" Loki smiled a little cunningly. "What part of the story did you hear, pray tell?"

Tony stopped in front of him. "Nice try. Let's get back to the 'you killing Heimdall and why' topic. It's obviously not just about revenge."

"No. If I wanted vengeance, I would have killed Heimdall just after his attempt on my life, when he was encased in ice and could not defend himself." Over a frustrated breath, Loki added, "Really, I should have. Now he stands in my way." He eyed Tony guardedly, searching for a reaction to his callousness.

Tony just said, "So, what exactly are you trying to do, and how is he in the way?"

Loki pressed his teeth together, halfheartedly casting about for another obfuscation, and sighed.

"You're really not into this whole 'sharing' thing, are you?"

Loki glared at the empty pool. "The more people know about my plans, the more precisely they tend to ruin them."

"What ever happened to you having no choice but to tell me?"

"Yes. That." Loki clenched his teeth. "I assume you will leave me if I can't explain this well enough to look like something of an ally to you."

Tony pulled air in through his teeth in a conflicted grimace that said, Well, maybe. After a moment of thought, he shook his head. "But you already look benevolent enough from where I'm standing. I mean, you destroyed the world, but you've been pretty nice about the whole thing ever since. On the other hand, if you're going to go around killing people without explaining why, I'm gonna try to stop you. I can't really see a good outcome for that."

"While Heimdall and his spies guard the doors into Asgard, I cannot go to Jotunheim."

"Jotunheim? That's where you're trying to get?"

"Of course. Why else would I have searched for doors at the poles, where the frost seeps in between the worlds? The only doors I have found to take me there so far are in Asgard, and Heimdall has them watched carefully."

"Okay. Why?"

"Because, in a moment of idiocy, I told the Gatekeeper that there were doors to which he was blind. And Heimdall cannot stand the notion of something beyond his sight. It's the very reason he thwarted my plan to keep Thor out of Jotunheim on the day of the coronation."

"I meant, 'Why are you trying to get to Jotunheim?'" Tony stopped and thought over Loki's words. "Wait. Run that last part by me again. Weren't you the one who tricked Thor into going to Jotunheim so he would get in trouble?"

"Really, where do you get your information?" Loki taunted, smiling inwardly at having altered the course of the conversation from his present plans to his past ones. "I never meant to leave Asgard, nor to get Thor into nearly so much trouble," he explained. "I told a guard to send for Odin."

Loki clenched his teeth in frustration at the memory. "We should never have reached Jotunheim. I meant to stall, to slowly talk Heimdall over to Thor's side until Odin arrived to stop us. But Heimdall cut me off and sent us through faster than you could say 'warmonger.' Perhaps he was curious, as he claimed; or perhaps he already despised me and all my secrets enough to hope I would die alongside Thor."

Tony let that sink in and said slowly, "So this guy sent you off to die under the guise of a pleasant visit to hostile territory, then hunted down all your prized secrets when it didn't work. I don't suppose he also whines about stock drops, plays the piano when he's upset, and wears twelve-ton armor?"

"Possible yes to the last," Loki mused, "I've never weighed that ridiculous helmet, but it looks fantastically impractical. Do you still object to me killing him?"

"You have long since lost the right to call anyone's helmet ridiculous. And yes, I do. Chalk it up to squeamishness and moral superiority. Loki, what else am I getting wrong? Thor told me the whole story, but he clearly did a terrible job. What am I still missing?"

Loki shrugged. "Perhaps nothing," he said equitably, in a shameless effort to be as infuriating as possible.

Tony remembered Loki's nightmare, and mused aloud, "When you sent the destroyer, Thor seems pretty convinced you were trying to kill him."

"And was I?" Loki asked smoothly.

"Jury's out," Tony said flippantly, then he gave Loki a scrutinizing look and said slowly, "I think you don't know."

Loki's eyes widened slightly and he froze, caught out.

Tony continued thoughtfully. "Thor told me that you seemed to want nothing more than to trade punches with him as soon as he got back to Asgard. Given your dramatic flair - which is one of my favorite things about you, by the way - what better way to start that fight then a backhanded slap across the face with a somewhat overqualified dueling glove?

"But you overdid it a little, I think. Guessing you hadn't had much practice with the destroyer. I'm no stranger to piloting overpowered metal suits that pack a little more punch than you first expect. And then you saw him lying there and thought you had killed him. And part of you had wanted to."

Loki looked touched and a little sick, as if he couldn't quite decide whether to tearfully thank Tony for understanding, or just slit his throat.

Suddenly, Tony stopped and shook his head to clear it. "Well, that was one of the most impressive instances of conversation redirection I've ever experienced. I still have no idea why you want to go to Jotunheim."

Loki reined in his emotions and sighed. "Maybe the tesseract corrupted me. Maybe I still want destruction and power."

"Yeah, one problem: destruction is easy. Really easy. Trust me, I know. And for people as smart as us, so is power. Well, getting power is easy. Keeping it is..." Tony made a face, "...drudgery. But if you had ever actually wanted to take over or destroy the world, it would have been way easier than you've made it. Kill and replace the right politician, maybe send nuclear warheads to a few key locations...the world practically takes over itself.

"Instead, you started out by pissing off a bunch of superheroes and set us up in a grand face off. You yourself told me that that was the plan. You even waited for us to get our act together before you sent the bulk of the army. Maybe you wanted to win, maybe not, but it wasn't about winning. You wanted that battle to happen for some reason. I get the aesthetic appeal of a big showdown, but I still haven't figured out what it gets you.

"Now you've set things up for the world to heat up, and you're doing everything you can think of to undo it. I've heard it theorized that you lack conviction. I think you're just good at hiding your motives. Taking over the world, destroying the world; those are just collateral damage. So what's the real plan?"

Loki looked at Tony and said with slow, resolute honesty, "Everything I have ever done has been for the well-being of Asgard. What I did to the Casket, I did to prevent a war."

"Between Jotunheim and Asgard?" Tony's eyes widened as he put it together. "You took away power from the Jotunns because Thor is rebuilding the Bifrost! God, that makes sense, assuming Jotunheim could use it to attack Asgard..."

Loki was staring at him like he had a second head. "You actually followed that?"

"Genius, remember? But isn't there a gatekeeper for that sort of thing?"

"Yes, one so very reliable when it comes to obeying the king and denying passage to those who go seeking war," Loki drawled sarcastically. "Anyway, that's not the concern. The Bifrost can be opened from the outside, with a great deal of difficulty and time. It would be suicide to make such an attack when Heimdall would surely see it coming, but with a sufficiently large army, the Jotunns might take enough Asgardian lives with them to exact revenge."

"And that's why you destroyed the Casket," Tony mused, "But you had to know this would happen. All these worlds melting. Why do I get the impression that this whole mess wasn't really part of the plan?"

"It wasn't. If you'll recall, you and a pack of overzealous Avengers interrupted the plan."

"So it's our fault? How exactly could you avoid this after what you did to the Casket?"

"The Casket will come back to life under certain circumstances. Specifically, when there is peace and good will between Jotunheim and Asgard."

Oh. Now that was interesting. "Why didn't you tell Odin and Thor about that?"

"Because I do not trust them to create those circumstances. Odin would certainly send Thor to Jotunheim, and much as Thor has changed..."

"Not enough to act all snuggly with a bunch of Jotunns that want to kill him."

"I doubt it."

Remembering his own first meeting with the god of thunder, Tony doubted it too. "So you weren't kidding when you told Odin you were going to take it back to Jotunheim." When Loki didn't reply, he added, "Why not just destroy the Bifrost again? Wouldn't that do a lot less damage?"

"Yes, I've considered it. It would really only delay the war, and does nothing to address the problem of the frosts receding."

"Excuse me. You created that problem."

"I hurried things along."

Tony felt his mouth fall slightly open as he puzzled on that. "So this whole 'the world falling into the sea' thing...?"

"Would have happened in fifty years or so."

"Loki, why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"Tell you which?"

"That you didn't actually destroy my world."

Loki looked puzzled. "And what would that have achieved?"

"A little peace of mind on my part?"

Loki looked suddenly sad, and there was a bitter edge to his voice when he said, "Would it really give you such peace of mind to believe I could not bring myself to destroy a world?"

Oh, right. The "blowing up Jotunheim" incident. Oops. "Honestly, maybe a little, but that's not my point. When it comes to worlds, I'm a little partial to this one. I'll put it this way; if you thought I had destroyed Asgard, wouldn't you take it a little personally?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Tony, you're being petty."

"Fine, fine. So the worlds would have heated up anyway, and you would have fixed that how?"

"By returning the Casket to Jotunheim." Loki paced a little as he continued, "It seemed like no difference, a minor risk. What is fifty years, when weighed against the end of a world? But the human lifespan is short. How could I of all people forget that? Fifty years is everything."

Loki glanced at Tony, and Tony realized, In fifty years, I'll probably be dead.

Loki kept talking. "I planned to escape here, to go to Jotunheim and find a way to negotiate peace. They know nothing of what has happened since the Bifrost was destroyed. I could be Laufeyson the Jotunn, or Odinson the Asgardian, or whoever I needed to be to convince them. Easier to negotiate with the casket in hand, but possible without it. Getting there was the problem. I thought it would be easy, to find a door between Midgard and Jotunheim at the southern pole. I was mistaken. It must be there, but it's hidden somehow."

Tony felt a little like he had caught a villain monologuing in reverse, listening to Loki expound on his failing plan to save the world.

"I could return to Asgard, and get to Jotunheim from there, but with Heimdall watching them, I would not get far."

Tony said, "Here's another plan: You could ask for help."

"From whom?" Loki asked distractedly, still pacing.

"Me."

Loki stopped pacing and looked at him. "What could you do?"

"I can do a lot," said Tony, a little insulted. "I could, um... I could tell Thor we don't want you anymore and then, if I escort you back to Asgard, I could help you escape into Jotunheim."

Tony's eyes widened as he realized how much trust he was offering a man who had recently been his enemy. It was one thing to fall in love, but was that a good enough reason to lie to everyone else? How sure could he be that he knew when the god of lies was telling the truth? Am I being seduced by the dark side here?

Speaking of seduction.

The god was suddenly very close, leaning gracefully over him, hands resting on the bench on either side of Tony's thighs, face inches from his. "You would do that for me?" Loki asked in a low voice that made Tony's breath hitch. "I know you love me. But you're smart, Tony, so it never occurred to me that I would be able to use you."

And Tony couldn't say yes, of course he couldn't, it had just been an example, because you never trust a super-villain when they're turning your insides to mush like this. Tony swallowed. He was looking into mesmerizing red eyes. Eyes that saw the doubt. Loki was doing this on purpose, reminding Tony of all the reasons not to trust him. Those eyes said, I am manipulative and dangerous. Beware. Say no. "Would you really trust me?" Would you be gullible enough?

Tony hesitated. And then he moved forward, not enough to kiss the god, but just enough that he was in Loki's space instead of Loki being in his. "Yes. I would."

God help him.

Those bright red eyes widened in shock. Loki stood up, staggered back a step. Tony stood and took half a step forward, following him. "What's wrong, bunny rabbit? Not the answer you expected?"

"You cannot trust me. Not this far." Loki stated it as unequivocal fact, but there was a tremor in his voice.

"'Cannot.'" Tony tested the words in his mouth. "'Can-not.' No, that word just doesn't work in sentences that refer to me."

The god stepped back again. The look in his eyes reminded Tony that Loki had not completely recovered from what the flood of New York had done to his already shaky mental stability. "You would betray your friends, put the realms at risk, because you trust me? I never took you for a fool."

Again, Tony stepped forward into his space. "And yet, here we are. The question is, why is that a problem for you?"

"Your hero mask is slipping, Stark!" Loki snapped out viciously, to hurt him, to distract him, "Turns out you have no morals, no limits. Your team relies on you, and here you stand plotting against them. Where are your rules now?" His voice softened with poisonous malice. "Is there nothing you would not do, no low you would not stoop to, to be in my bed?"

Tony frowned in annoyance at the use of his surname, but dismissed the lot as obvious bullshit. He put a theatrical hand over his heart, and the arc reactor threw his fingers into silhouette. "If I thought you believed a word of that, I would be so very hurt. But I know you. You're a liar." All the mockery left Tony's face and his hand continued to rest on the center of his chest, earnestly now. "And I still trust you."

Fragility and doubt, and there were the beginnings of insanity again, the look that had once convinced Tony not push Loki any further. Now he felt the opposite, as if there was big red button in front of him labeled Do Not Push. How could Tony Stark resist that?

So he wrapped a hand around Loki's wrist to keep him from retreating farther and kept talking. "It was pretty well established all around when I first joined the team that I don't play well with others. If you tell me to lie to them, that's what I'm going to do. If you told me to dance naked on top of Stark Tower, that's what I would do. If you told me to shoot the helicarrier out of the sky, that's what I would do. Not because you've seduced me, and not because I like the idea, but because if you tell me that's what will stop all this, I'll believe you. Because I trust you."

"Liar," Loki snarled, his eyes filling with angry tears. "You say this now, but when the time comes, you will change course and betray me."

Oh. Ouch. That actually did hurt, because Loki seemed to mean it.

"I'm not Obie," Tony said fiercely.

"And how am I to know that?!" Loki shouted, and he kept shouting. Too fast for Tony to keep up, and using a lot of words and names he barely recognized half of, like Sif, Hogun, and Fandral, and later Sleipnir and Hela. Heimdall came up a lot, and he knew that one. Tony was really going to have to ask who Sigyn was at some point. And then there was an almost intelligible tirade about Odin and trusting a Jotunn with the throne.

Finally, out of breath, Loki started to slow down. His voice was gravelly with rage and wear. "So you see, no one can ever trust me. No one wise. Only fools like Thor who see past me and imagine some dutiful younger brother, and I showed him didn't I?"

Tony put his hands on Loki's shoulders. It was becoming sort of a tradition, when he started to see a spark of madness in the god's eyes. "You done?" he asked.

Loki nodded.

"Okay. Are you telling me I wouldn't trust you, or I shouldn't trust you? There is a difference."

Loki's eyes widened slightly, and he thought. When he spoke, his voice was very raw from yelling. "If there is practical distinction, you would be the first to make it. When people decide not to trust me, they usually find a way to prove themselves right."

Tony took a breath. "Look, whatever you've done, or whatever other people think you've done, I honestly don't care. I'm going to bet everything on you, right here. That's the plan." He stopped, and his eyes shifted a little to the side as he realized just how many ways this could go wrong. "That's always the plan."

He looked back up at Loki. "Either I'm right, and I can trust you, or I'm wrong, and I'm seeing something that isn't there. Either way, you have your answer. Were you lying to me?"

"No."

"Well, there you go."

Tony stared into Loki's eyes, waiting for some sign of how his words had been taken. The god looked utterly lost. Not insane, just lost. Tony guessed that was probably an improvement.

After a few minutes, Tony dropped his hands from Loki's shoulders, raised an eyebrow and said, "You know, for this plan to work, we're going to have to pretend to break up."

Loki walked over to a bench and sat down, smiling weakly as he considered that. "How about this: I'll betray you, and then you will want nothing more to do with me."

Tony sat next to him and wrapped an arm around the god's shoulders. "Or I could have an affair with that pretty blond reporter who keeps asking me for an interview."

Loki wrinkled his nose. "I forbid it."

"That's part of the plan."

"I prefer my scenario."

"You could have an affair with that pretty blond reporter who keeps asking me for an interview."

Loki cocked his head. "You mean the girl who writes that idiotic column about reformed souls?"

Tony shook his head. "No, I was thinking of the young man who used to be a war correspondent."

Loki raised his eyebrows, intrigued.

Tony started playing with Loki's hair. "For the record, I forbid it."

Loki smiled. "All part of the plan," he said loftily, before pulling Tony into a kiss. The kiss deepened and pulled them into other things, and it was a while before they left the pool room.

.:.

When Loki did leave, it was for a meeting with Bruce. They were going to look further into the interaction between Loki's magic and gamma radiation. So Loki regretfully kissed Tony goodbye and left, and Tony set about collecting his clothes.

He wanted to go up to his workshop and finish rebuilding his bracelets. He really was almost done.

He decided he really needed a drink first. There were too many emotions in his head. Triumph and relief at having contradicted a little of the pain in Loki. Worry and doubt that he was wrong, concern that he might get caught, or the plan might not work. Or that the plan would work, and he and Loki would be effectively separated. Guilt about agreeing to betray the team, but it was for their own good. As he left the gym, he felt very confused.

And then it was all thrown aside by the sight of a strong beige hand wrapping around his arm, and the thought, Oh, shit.

Natasha dragged Tony into a large broom closet, closed the door, and pushed him up against a wall. She was speaking in a tirade of angry Russian.

Tony said, "Normally, I'd consider this a good thing, but I'm spoken for at the moment."

Natasha paused, then clenched her teeth and switched to English, "I overheard your little chat with Loki in the gym."

"That's, um, that's very not good."

"You trust him? You'll lie to us for him? This is why you don't get emotionally attached!" she said viciously.

"You mean this is why you don't."

Natasha blinked.

Tony blinked too, because he had let his mouth spit out a random comeback, and he hadn't meant it to be so apt. "Sorry. Go on. Scold." He waved his hand for her to continue.

She got back into livid mode pretty quickly. "You were planning to lie to all of us. You were talking about releasing a depraved and dangerous prisoner of war into a situation where he could put more than one world in jeopardy. Under the nose of the US government. This is treason, Stark. Treason being plotted right out in the open in a shared room of Avengers Tower. This is the sort of thing you spend the rest of your life in prison for. If you're lucky. You дурак!"

Tony was feeling a lot of dread, because he really, really didn't like the idea of prison, and without his suit or a way to summon it, Natasha could easily overpower him before he had a chance to put his considerable resources toward hiding from the law. But he lifted his chin in an unconcerned way and asked, "So, what? Are you going to arrest me now?"

Natasha backed off and crossed her arms. All her anger disappeared, perfectly concealed, and she looked up at him in a considering way. "I actually had another plan."

Tony straightened his shirt. "And what's that?"

"You could ask for my help."

It took a minute for that to sink in. When it did, a slow, conspiratorial smile formed on Tony's face. "Why Natasha. Am I to believe that I am not the only one who trusts our pretty blue friend?"

"Trust is a strong word. But I've interrogated Loki before, and he wasn't lying to you in there."

Tony felt a rush of relief in the corner of his brain that had still been wondering. "In that case," he said, "what do you suggest?"

"We tell Fury the truth. Leave out the part where you were planning to lie to him. Explain that Loki has a plan to fix this, and emphasize that the world is going to end if we don't try something drastic. He'll listen."

"And then we all sneak Loki into Jotunheim?"

Natasha nodded.

"Sounds like a plan."

Natasha opened the door. "Oh, and Tony," she said, a hiss of anger creeping back into her voice as she left the broom closet, "The next time you decide to double-cross us, hide it better."

.:.

The next thing Tony did was hunt down Loki to tell him about the change in plans.

Loki was working with Bruce, doing something mysterious with test tubes, so Tony had to be subtle and roundabout. "So Loki. I just talked to Natasha. She's been thinking about that plan you explained to her, and she's in, but she wants to make some changes."

Loki stilled. "Is that so?"

"Yeah. She was thinking once we've explained it to the gang, we could all go with you to Asgard."

Loki did something magical that made the contents of a tube glow yellow, and put it down, frowning in confusion. "I'm surprised she's so eager to help," he said carefully.

"Well, she's convinced that the world depends on it. That can be a strong motivator."

"I see," said Loki, looking more confused than ever.

Bruce was sitting at the computer, typing. "So there's another plan?" he said curiously.

Tony said, "We're looking into a more long-term solution. It involves sneaking Loki into Jotunheim."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Most of Bruce's focus seemed to still be on the data set he was looking at.

"Yes." Tony said it with conviction.

"Huh. Well, that doesn't sound like an adventure that will require any of my special skills, but you all have fun."

Loki gave Tony a wide-eyed, disbelieving look. Tony shrugged.

Bruce got up from his chair. "Alright kids, I have to go grab these printouts. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, and don't drink what's in the vials." And with that, he left the lab.

Once Bruce was out of earshot, Loki said, "She agreed to it?"

"Yup. She was listening in, and she believed your story."

He shook his head and muttered, "Unbelievable."

Tony leaned back in his chair. "Of course, if she was there for the whole conversation, she would have also been there for the part after the conversation." He winked.

Loki's eyes widened and his face turned a much deeper shade of blue. "That voyeuristic wench."

Chapter Text

Loki declined to come to dinner that night, claiming he was not hungry, and Tony didn't push him, so it was just the official Avengers team members.

After they all sat down, Steve cleared his throat. "So. Natasha told me there was something we all needed to talk about tonight. Something about a new plan to save the world?"

Tony looked up from fiddling with his stylish new bracelets. "Oh, we're doing that now?" He turned to Natasha. "I thought you wanted to tell Fury first."

Natasha shrugged. "I never said anything about telling Fury first."

Bruce stood. "No offense, gang, I think I already know as much about this as I need to, and don't really want to be around for all the yelling that probably comes next." He picked up his plate. "I'll be in my lab. Call me if the conversation turns back to My Little Pony before dinner's over."

Clint and Thor looked to Steve curiously. Steve said, "Well, I don't know what the plan is," and gestured at Natasha and Tony.

"Okay," Tony started, wondering how he could possibly explain this. "So, we've established that the problem is that Loki broke the Casket of Ancient Winters. Apparently, he can fix it if he makes peace between Asgard and Jotunheim."

"That makes no sense," said Clint.

"It's magic," Tony said.

"That makes no sense," Clint repeated.

"Of course it doesn't. That's the definition of the word 'magic.'"

Steve said, "Making peace between two countries who hate each other seems like a pretty tall order. How do you expect to pull it off?"

"Loki thinks he can negotiate a peace treaty if he gets a chance to talk to the Jotunns," Natasha explained. "It's a long shot, but it's worth a try."

"If anyone could accomplish such a thing, it would be Loki," Thor mused. "He has a talent for convincing men to act according to his wishes."

"The real trick is getting him there," Tony continued. "But we've got an idea for that too."

"Aren't we all being a little gullible here?" Clint cut in. "This wouldn't be the first time Loki tried to destroy the earth, and as Thor pointed out, he's a pretty manipulative bastard. I get that he's had a big fuzzy change of heart, and I'm not objecting to his newfound generosity when it comes to magic arrows and such," Clint turned to Natasha, speaking to her as he finished, "but are we really gonna buy this?"

"We're not exactly talking about a change of heart," Natasha replied. "He just doesn't want to destroy half the life in the known universe."

"That's comforting."

She shrugged. "It is when that's what's at stake. Clint," she put a hand on his shoulder, "you're gonna have to trust me on this one."

Natasha and Clint looked intensely into each other's eyes, and everyone else sat around feeling awkward. After a minute, Clint nodded and said, "I'm in."

"Really?" Tony raised his eyebrows. "That was easy."

"No it wasn't," Natasha said flatly. She leaned forward and rested her forearms on the table. "Rogers. Thor. Where are you two on this?"

Thor leaned in thoughtfully, mirroring Natasha's pose. "I would know more of my brother's plan before making a decision."

Loki appeared, and no one bothered to looked startled. "Why Thor," he said, in a tone dripping with mock sweetness, "I've been waiting over seven centuries to hear you say those words. But the timing with which you learn valuable life lessons is inconvenient as ever."

"So you are lying to us," Steve concluded.

"No." Loki sighed and sat down next to Tony. "I do mean to restore the Casket to its function. Tony has insisted I try not to murder anyone in the process, and for that I need your help.

"The plan," Loki explained, "is to pretend that you are returning me to Odin to be imprisoned on Asgard once more. You can tell him that I was too much trouble, and keeping me prisoner here proved more burdensome than you expected. We should arrive in Asgard at night, under the cover of dark. I will be in Jotunn form, and the people of Asgard must never know what I am."

"Right," Tony muttered. "Wouldn't want to ruin your reputation."

Loki ignored him and went on. "We only need to fool Odin and Heimdall long enough to sneak me into Odin's treasure room. There is a doorway there that leads straight into Jotunheim. If I can take the Casket with me, all the better. After that, merely say that I escaped through trickery. Odin will believe you, even if I tell him the truth afterward. You will all appear guiltless."

Thor shook his head. "I do not see why we need deceive our father. If we told him the truth, he might give you the Casket and let us pass freely through the doorway into Jotunheim."

Loki went over to stand beside Thor's chair and waved one hand in a broad let me paint a picture for you gesture. "I can just see it, Thor. You would approach the Allfather and speak: 'Father, Loki has convinced me to entrust him with the Casket of Ancient Winters and send him to Jotunheim. Never mind that he freed Surtur and helped him onto Midgard, or that he caused the realm to melt. Never mind that the Bifrost has been broken and all the signs of Ragnarok are coming true. What could possibly go wrong?'"

Loki clapped a hand on Thor's shoulder and finished with a sharp sarcastic edge, "It would go over well, no?" Then he walked away from his adoptive brother in disgust and returned to his seat.

Thor stared at Loki over his folded hands, and something uncharacteristically jaded and cautious crept into the thunder god's expression. "So Father would distrust you, and yet you ask help from me. Tell me, brother, are you capable of sincerity?"

Loki's face darkened, and Tony face-palmed.

"Thor, of course I am incapable of sincerity," Loki enunciated the word harshly. "Sincerity is for those who only carry one thought in their head at a time."

Thor leaned back and said slowly, "Then, when we spoke, when you reassured me before the coronation..."

"I was inflating your ego, setting up your pride for a great and terrible fall." Loki's tone stayed vicious, as though he hoped the truth would cut at Thor as it did at him. "I meant every word."

"Just as you meant every word when you told me our father was dead?"

Loki stood. "I did that for your benefit!"

Thor stood too. "You did it to keep the throne!"

Loki laughed a little but it was a very ugly sound, disbelief and hatred distilled to piercing purity. "Do you never think before you speak? Keep the throne? Watch die the man I loved as a father? To hold Gungnir is a nightmare, Thor. When you learn which end goes right way up, you can have it."

"Then why?" Some of Thor's rage gave way to confusion and the beginnings of tears. "Why did you let me believe our father was dead?"

"Your father," Loki corrected quickly. But he took a breath and continued calmly. "When someone you have loved is lost to you, you hear all their words over in your head, and you listen as you never have before. Our father set before you the task of learning a lesson, one he had failed to impress on you with repeated lecturing. I lied to you so that you would hear him. And it worked." He paused and added under his breath, "The timing be damned."

"How do I know you are telling the truth?"

"Because I waited for you to try. You were mortal. I could have slain you without thought. But I stopped to see if you could lift the hammer on your own before I spoke to you. And regardless of that, I know you, Thor. I know the look in your eyes when you've just had some reckless and stupid idea. I know exactly what to say to plant it there. I know how to talk you down from a fight, and I can recognize the moment before it becomes a lost cause. Did you honestly think that I would tell you exactly the lies you needed to hear in order to lift the hammer by accident?"

Shame gathered in Thor's expression, because he had thought that. Loki stepped back. "All that time in your shadow. You don't know me. You don't even begin to."

Thor sighed and sat down heavily. "No," he agreed. "But I will follow you into Asgard."

The tension in the room eased, and Loki smiled a little. It was a smile of victory, having maneuvered Thor exactly as he wanted, but Thor smiled back, seeming to take it as a good sign.

They looked to Steve, and Steve gave a short nod. Tony looked around at the now unanimous group. Shouting matches between gods aside, this was all going surprisingly well.

Clint said, "Who's going to ask Fury?"

There was a terrible moment when all eyes looked to Tony. Except for Steve, who said, "We all are, of course."

Everyone nodded, and Tony sighed in relief.

"Except Loki," Natasha added.

Tony gave her a look. "Why not Loki?"

"Fury despises the sight of me," Loki explained, "My presence would hinder more than help."

"But he despises the sight of me too. Why do I have to go?" Tony argued. Everyone ignored him.

"It's settled, then," said Steve. "If Fury gives the okay, we're really doing this."

Thor gave Loki a long, wry look. "My friends, we are going to Asgard."

.:.

While the others were speaking to Fury, Loki went up to Bruce's lab. "It's been decided," he said, and Bruce jumped a little.

"You really might want to stop doing that at some point," Bruce advised, turning around.

"If the others can convince Fury, we will most likely leave for Asgard tonight."

Bruce nodded. "I figured."

"I may as well try to cure you now."

"You mean the idea you had to alter your transfiguration magic? I sort of thought we were going to test it in more detail before doing something drastic. Again."

Loki said, "After I leave, I may not be able to return to Earth. It may be your last chance."

"I'd really rather have more time to test it first. Are you sure...Wait. You might not come back?"

"The most likely outcome of this is that I be imprisoned on Asgard again, either in failing to escape, or in being recaptured once I return from Jotunheim."

"For how long?"

"Centuries."

Bruce put down his notebook and turned to face Loki. "What about Tony?"

"He's aware."

"And he doesn't object?"

Loki was quiet for a long time, but eventually decided to answer. "There are no alternatives, except, perhaps, to let the worlds burn. We both search for better plans, and there are none. We both object, but fate does not hear us."

"I'm sorry."

"Our time would have been brief regardless," Loki muttered.

"You really think this Hulk cure will work if we do this now?"

Loki folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. "I agreed to try, and this may be my only chance to do so, so here we are. I never promised you results."

Bruce looked at him warily. "How badly could this go wrong?"

"It could make your condition worse."

Bruce shook his head. "That's not a risk I'm willing to take. I'm not sure why you cared so much about making amends, but you've made them." He gestured at the notebook full of their compiled data. "I can use this. I'm calling that my wish."

.:.

Fury paced slowly, hands clasped behind his back, as Tony, Steve, Clint, Natasha and Thor all stood before him, nervously waiting for his verdict. "You're telling me," he started slowly, "that you want to follow Loki into Asgard, help him sneak onto the planet he tried to destroy a few years ago, and just hope that Odin doesn't notice."

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"He said it would be even better if we could steal the Casket of Ancient Winters from my father's treasure room while we are there," Thor added.

Fury stopped pacing and raised his voice, "How am I supposed to know he didn't use his magic to brainwash you all?"

"Well, if he had, then we probably wouldn't be asking for your permission," Tony pointed out.

Fury picked up his paper cup of coffee off the table. He still hadn't had a chance to drink the damn thing today, and it was making him cranky. Some of the Avengers winced at the action as if the coffee were going to grow claws and attack them.

"And none of you know what exactly the plan is?" Fury questioned.

"Loki says that if he makes peace between Asgard and Jotunheim, the heat wave will end," Steve explained.

"Did he say anything about how that works?"

"Magic," Tony supplied.

"Wonderful," Fury muttered.

Natasha walked up to Fury and said in a formal, deferential voice, "Sir, I'm confident that Loki will work to protect Earth if we give him the chance."

"And just why would he do that?"

"Because it's Tony Stark's home world." She glanced at Tony. "He's emotionally attached now."

Fury took a sip of his coffee. He froze. The only thing that moved was his eye as he fixed each of them in turn with a deadly glare. The he finished his sip as if nothing had happened.

Putting the cup down carefully on the table, Fury settled his glare on Tony and continued. "Ah, yes, I forgot. You and Mr. 'True Power' are love birds now. Mr. Stark, do you realize how tenuous your membership in the Avengers project already is?"

"Do you realize whose house you're in?"

Fury lifted a paper from his desk. "Let's go over the bill, shall we?"

"The bill?" Tony blinked. "I pay for everything. As previously implied, this is my house."

"I am taking, Mr. Stark, about your credit card bill. SHIELD took the liberty of making a copy." Fury looked at the paper in his hand. "In the past two weeks, you have bought Loki: over ten thousand dollars in clothes, two vacation houses, a cruise boat, a variety of rare and dangerous chemical substances, and my personal favorite: five extremely convincing fake passports."

Tony held up a finger to interrupt. "In my defense, I had a very specific plan for what we were going to do with those passports."

"That doesn't really help you here."

Tony and Fury stared each other down.

At length, Tony said, "Okay. What's your idea?"

"What?"

"Well, you're drawing this out like you have a decision to make. What's your idea? You know, the thing we do if you say no and we don't help Loki into Jotunheim." Tony walked around Fury, picked up the director's coffee and took a long, insubordinate sip. "Or, don't tell me: we all sit around and die? Your call, but we're all waiting on you to make it. Yes or no? ...Sir."

Another staring match. Without looking away from Tony, Fury said, "...Yes. You're all dismissed. Mission starts in one hour. Go get ready."

Tony put down the coffee and spun to lead the line of people filing out, eager to be out of Fury's fearsome company. Steve, the bravest of them all, was the one to stop and ask, "So, Director, um, how's the coffee?"

Fury sighed. "It tastes like a skunk died in it, but it's better than decaf."

.:.

An hour later, everyone assembled in the office for the trip to Asgard. Tony brought by far the most luggage, including a suit shaped like a suitcase, and several bags filled with various electronics and knickknacks.

"Do you really need all that stuff?" Clint asked.

"After last time? Yes. Yes, I do."

"Why did you harass Director Fury like that?" Steve asked Tony as they sat down.

"Everyone's a critic today," Tony complained. "Fury started it. Besides, if I sat quietly and waited for him to finish talking, he'd be convinced Loki had brainwashed me. I had to act natural."

"That's your idea of acting natural?"

"More or less."

Speaking louder, Steve addressed the whole group. "Do we have everything we need?"

"Nearly," said Loki. "In order for this ruse to work, I must be wearing the necklace I was wearing when I left Asgard. I must appear to returning against my wishes."

"You can't create an illusion?" Natasha asked while Tony rummaged through his bags.

"The Allfather has his own magic. He will not fall for a mere facsimile where the necklace is concerned."

"Well, the necklace mysteriously disappeared right after the Fire Jotunns first invaded," Clint said with a pointed look at Loki.

Loki nodded. "I've hidden it. When I go to retrieve it -"

"You mean this?" Tony held up the necklace. "I've had it forever."

Everyone, including Loki, gaped at him. Steve asked, "Where did you find that?"

Tony dropped the necklace on the table. "Someone hid it on a bookshelf at the Malibu house, behind the Jane Austen collection." He grinned at Loki. "You thought I didn't read those!" he concluded triumphantly.

"You read Jane Austen?" Loki murmured, frowning at Tony as he struggled to recalculate.

"Honestly," Tony said, "You think I would buy a book and then not read it?"

"Yes," everyone muttered in unison.

"I am hurt."

"Are we ready then?" Steve asked.

They did the smudging ceremony, and then everyone but Loki and Tony closed their eyes and danced around like Egyptians for a while. Natasha and Clint caught on halfway through and gave Tony dirty looks as they stood around waiting for Thor and Steve to finish.

"One more thing," Loki said. "As soon as I don the necklace, Heimdall will be able to hear every word you say. From that moment on, you must speak as if I'm still your prisoner."

Loki glared at the necklace where it lay on the table, and then picked it up and pulled it over his head. He was already in Jotunn form, so his appearance did not change.

"Thor," Steve instructed, "lead the way."

Chapter Text

They arrived on Asgard and immediately found themselves in a magical dome much like the one Loki had created when they first tracked him down.

Clint said, “This again? What the hell?”

Loki smiled a bit. “One of Heimdall’s traps. No doubt triggered specifically by my presence.”

Presently Heimdall walked around a corner and approached them, accompanied by one of the palace guards. “What is your business on Asgard?” the gatekeeper inquired.

“Good Heimdall,” Loki greeted mockingly, then gestured at the dome around him. “I see you’ve acquired some rather grand abilities since last we spoke. Does the power of the Singasteinn treat you well?”

Without a glance at Loki, Heimdall stood and waited for an answer to his question.

“Yeah, Loki turned out to be a bit of a handful, so we’re giving him back to Odin,” Tony explained smoothly, “Can you make the bubble go away? Not a fan of confined spaces. They bring up traumatic memories for me. I was trapped in a moving limousine the first time I heard Nickelback.”

“I see.” The shield shrank until it contained just Loki, and none of the Avengers could reach him. It was a less than ideal situation for strategic necklace removal. Heimdall said, “We will take Loki from here. You may return to your world.”

The Avengers looked each other. They hadn’t planned for this.

“We wanted to talk to Odin while we were here,” Steve insisted, “Our orders were to take Loki straight to him.”

Heimdall narrowed his eyes. “Very well.” He nodded and started toward the palace. The dome containing Loki moved with Heimdall, so there was nothing to do but keep up the charade. The Avengers followed in tow.

.:.

They were announced in the throne room and Odin bade them come forward with a grand gesture. “Greetings to the heroes of Midgard. What matter brings you to my halls?”

Heimdall stepped forward and said, “Loki has grown too unwieldy for the people of Midgard to control. They have come to return him to your care.”

Odin closed his eyes in an expression that held shame, hurt, and a complete lack of surprise.

Thor clenched his jaw hard at the untruth, and stared down at the ground as if he were the unrepentant child being scolded as Odin spoke.

“I see. I give you my word, we will see to it that Loki cannot harm your word again. Loki, I had hoped... I had believed that you might return to me changed. That you might learn how little lies and treachery can serve you.”

Loki didn’t quite hide a derisive snort.

“But I see now that is not the case. You return to me, still seeking only chaos and destruction. Agmud, Halvor, take him away.”

Two stern guards stepped forward at the summons, taking secure hold of Loki by both arms as Heimdall dropped the dome imprisoning him.

The whole notion of sneaking Loki away was looking a little tenuous by now. They would have to track him down in his cell and break him out, and that prospect did not strike Tony as promising.

Tony was just considering running over and pulling off the necklace, secrecy be damned, when Natasha surprised everyone by kneeling before Odin in a perfect Asgardian bow. “Your majesty, may we do the honors?” She spared Loki a distrusting sideways glance. “I for one would feel more comfortable if I could personally see Loki locked behind bars again before we leave Asgard.”

“Seconded,” Tony said fervently, and the others nodded.

Odin nodded once. “I grant your request.”

“Father,” Thor burst out, “Loki’s time spent on Midgard has changed him!”

“Thor,” Loki hissed through his teeth angrily.

But Thor went on, unheeding. “He does not deserve to be locked away again. Forgive him, as you once did me.”

Odin frowned. “Do you bring Loki back to Asgard because you cannot hold him, or do you bring him before me because you think him reformed?”

Thor hesitated.

“Both,” Tony supplied, “He keeps escaping and saving our asses. But the deal was that we’d keep him imprisoned, and we’re not really holding up our end there, so we figured we’d bring him back here and let you deal with him.”

Loki closed his eyes in relief, because Tony had come up with a plausible lie that had the benefit of being mostly true.

Odin folded his hands before his face, expression thoughtful and slightly suspicious. “Is this true?” he asked his sons.

They both nodded.

“Then I will consider these matters more carefully before I decide Loki’s fate.”

“You must let Loki explain his actions!” Thor insisted, stepping forward.

“In time I shall, but I would first speak to you about the completion of the Bifrost.”

“But father-”

“After that, I will consider Loki’s fate,” Odin said with finality, and Thor closed his mouth. To the guards, Odin said, “Take Loki to one of the palace cells, and guard him most carefully.”

The guards led Loki away.

Odin turned to the Avengers. “Heroes of Earth, you may remain guests in my house until Loki’s fate has been decided. The servants will escort you to your rooms.”

Leaving Thor to his warm family bonding, the Avengers trotted off to follow the servants who stepped forward to direct them. As soon as they were out of Odin’s sight, Tony casually switched direction to track down the guards that had led Loki away.

He found Loki a few hallways down, chained by the wrists to the back wall of a cell, once again out of reach for necklace-removing purposes. This was getting ridiculous.

The two guards from before were standing guard on either side of the cell, so Tony addressed them. “Come on. Open the door. I want to talk to him.”

Without blinking the taller guard replied, "Odin instructed us to guard the prisoner carefully. We will not open the door to any visitor.”

“What, you expect me to talk to the prisoner from out here?” Tony waved his hand in a gesture both flippant and supremely authoritative. “Won’t do, not today, on with the opening of the door.”

The guard stood his ground. “You mustn’t go in. Anyone speaking to the prisoner might be convinced to remove his necklace and aid his escape.” He lowered his voice and added in a more casual tone as if confiding in Tony, “You may not even realize when you’re doing so; he is slippery that way.”

“Paranoid much?” Tony complained, “Fine. I can’t get close to him. But I do need to have a private conversation with him. Avengers business.”

The guards looked at each other, nodded, and walked out of easy earshot but kept their eyes on Tony.

Tony leaned his elbows against a horizontal beam in the bars. “So, I guess you’re off our hands now,” he said without much heart. “Good riddance and all that.”

Loki glowered. “You can give up the show. The gatekeeper suspects too much by now to be fooled, and he’s no longer our biggest problem.”

Tony’s voice sped up with anxiety. “Okay. Big problem: You have an oddly canny set of guards that won’t let me near you. Any suggestions?”

Loki shrugged. “Improvise, I suppose.”

“You didn’t plan this part ahead of time?”

“You can thank yourself for the diligence with which I am now guarded. ‘He keeps escaping.’ Were those not your words to the Allfather?”

“Oh. Right.”

After a silence, Loki whispered, “I have no choice but to ask Odin for forgiveness. If he allows me to go free with my magic, the rest will be simple. But he’s not so gullible as Thor.”

Tony thought about what he knew of Odin. “Let him have a good yell and feel right the whole time,” he suggested bleakly. “He’ll feel better afterward.”

“I know. I dislike the notion.”

“Yeah, I hate the notion, and I don’t think I even could make nice with him in your shoes. But we’ve got a lot to lose here. Play to your strengths."

Loki nodded, clenching his jaw.

Tony ran a hand roughly through his hair in frustration. “This was a stupid plan.”

“This was your plan.”

“You’re splitting hairs.”

“And you’re tearing them out.”

Tony dropped his hand from his scalp. “If Odin decides to keep you locked up, I’m suiting up and breaking you out.”

“I know,” Loki said blandly, looking away. “It won’t work.”

“I know.”

Loki looked at him, with a hint of wistfulness to convey the gut-twisting fear that neither of them would really show.

The guards came back. “He’s been summoned by the Allfather.”

Tony smiled, all charm. “Hey, I’ll walk you. One extra guy to watch the prisoner.”

The taller guard crossed his arms. “You mustn’t-”

“I insist. It’s no problem, I’ll - Oh, now that is just uncalled for!” Tony groused as the guard started leading him forcefully away. “Goodbye my love!” he called back to Loki, easily passing the truth off as a joke, “If we never meet again, my life will be meaningless and drear.”

.:.

Loki was always surprised at how quickly the color and warmth went out of the world without Tony’s presence. Perhaps that was all it would really take to make the realms freeze over again; remove from them the one person who brought real heat and motion to the universe.

Damn it all, this was not going to be nearly so easy as Loki had thought. And he had thought it would be much too hard.

The guards led him before Odin. Loki knelt with careful deference. The Allfather regarded his outcast son with a long stare.

The silence stretched out as Loki outwaited him. At length, Odin spoke. “What are you planning, Loki?” His voice was formal and regal, but there was sadness there. Knowledge of a pattern repeating, and grief that it could not be broken.

Loki looked up at Odin without lifting his head, raising his eyebrows almost innocently. “The same thing I am always planning. The protection of a realm. What are you planning?”

Odin sighed. “Thor would have me forgive you. Forgive the horrors done to Jotunheim, to Midgard, to the many worlds you have doomed. End your sentence, and let you go free.”

“And will you?”

Odin shook his head, not quite a no, but still a bad sign. “He tells me you saved many Midgardian lives during your exile. Have you changed so much?”

Loki withheld a crack about such rescues being incidental and unfortunate. Repentant, he instructed himself, but don’t oversell it. “Perhaps if you considered my conduct before the incidents of the last few years, how I behaved for the many centuries that I was your son, you would not find me so very changed from that now.”

He watched Odin’s gaze flit accidentally away from Loki’s eyes and to the skin of his face and hands, deep blue in tint.

Apart from that, Loki thought. “If you find my form repulsive, by all means give me the magic to hide it.”

“I never found your form repulsive, Loki.”

Liar.

“But your actions...” Odin shook his head.

“What can I do?” Loki said quickly, eager to avoid the topic of his actions. “To earn your forgiveness. What can I do?”

“Will you restore the Casket?”

“As soon as my magic is restored to me, yes,” Loki said frankly.

Odin frowned in suspicion, and Loki felt the con go sour. Easy enough to tell a convincing lie, but telling a convincing truth was something else entirely.

Odin sighed. “Then here is my condition. I gave my word that you would do Midgard no more harm. As such, you must swear to remain on Asgard until I give you leave.”

“What?”

“Are you so surprised?” Odin asked sharply.

I cannot restore the casket while on Asgard. But Loki thought better of attempting to convince Odin of that. Instead, he said, “I had hoped to regain your trust.” What a lie that was.

“My trust, Loki?” Odin’s voice rose in anger. “When you have proven yourself untrustworthy, selfish, power-hungry..."

“- Power hungry?” Loki burst in, momentarily losing himself to indignation. “Frigga ordered that I be king. What was I to do, refuse her?”

“So you think nothing of your attempt to conquer Midgard?”

Right. That. Loki took a difficult breath. Repentant, he reminded himself.

Odin’s voice increased in volume. “How can you hope to regain my trust when you are blind to the horrors of your own actions?”

Well, that brought to mind floods and storms and deaths and nasty things, and Loki wanted to correct Odin, but he held the words tightly between his teeth.

“You had a home! A family that loved you!” Odin stopped, looked at his disfavored son, and recalled a time when Loki had been young and innocent. “Before you knew the truth, you were happy here.”

Loki opened his mouth to disagree, and forced himself to close it. Why did you bother to keep even the one eye, if you don’t use it?

“What do you have to say? Admit your wrongdoing, and come back to me, Loki. Be my son.”

Lie! Loki commanded himself fiercely. Lie and come back into his good graces, to achieve what you must. Speak, you fool!

But his father had a unique power over him, to make him a child again, to make him crave comprehending love with a reckless desperation. It made him sloppy, and at times, it even made him honest. The words forced themselves out in a pained breath. “What wrongdoing would you have me pretend to regret?”

“You led the Jotuns into Asgard to steal the Casket, and in doing so provoked a war. You stood by while I banished Thor for a crime that was as much your doing as his!”

“I tried to tell-”

Odin growled at him, cutting him off.

Loki looked pained, hand up and almost gesturing, as if he were working very hard not to point out something very obvious.

“Tomorrow I will stand before the people of Asgard, and tell them that the Bifrost has been repaired. I would have both sons stand beside me then, and truly put these years of grief behind us.” Odin rested his hands on Loki’s shoulders. “Will you swear to remain on Asgard until I permit you to leave?”

“I swear it.”

Odin removed his hands, and with them the necklace. “Loki, this is the last time I will forgive you. Fail me, fail Asgard again, and...”

“I know,” Loki interrupted quietly, stopping Odin from committing to a punishment he might later regret. “Thank you, father. I won’t fail you again,” he lied in earnest tones.

Odin nodded, accepting this.

.:.

The guard had led Tony back to the other Avengers, and there they waited.

Loki finally returned from the meeting with Odin, free from all restraints and colored in Asgardian beige.

When Tony saw him, he stopped talking right in the middle of an offensive comment to Steve, and ran over to seize Loki by the head and kiss him very thoroughly.

Clint and Natasha clapped.

When they broke apart, Tony muttered, “I was a little scared I’d never get to do that again.” Louder, he said, “Your dad took you back. You must have put on a good show.”

Loki’s face blanked. “There may have been some method acting involved,” he said stonily.

Tony grimaced. “Ah.” He clapped Loki on a shoulder a little comfortingly and led him back to the rest of the Avengers.

Clint crossed his arms. “So, the next stop is Jotunheim for you, I guess.”

Loki sat on one of the lavish palace couches and shook his head. “There’s been a bit of a complication.”

Clint gave him a flat look. “Just one?”

“Odin insisted I swear to stay on Asgard until he sends me away. As long as I am bound here by my word, I cannot take the Casket to Jotunheim.”

Natasha frowned, not seeing the issue. “So you promised not to go to Jotunheim. Do it anyway.”

Loki looked at her as if she had casually suggested infant cannibalism.

“She is right,” Thor agreed. “Sometimes, to save lives, even an Asgardian must break his word.”

Loki turned to look at Thor, and his expression turned from disbelief to something colder. “So you would lock me away, call me ‘liar’ and ‘murderer’ and ‘traitor’ for actions you consider dishonorable, right up until the moment when the honorable action strikes you as inconvenient.”

Tony groaned. “Perfect. Tony Stark and Loki Liesmith, and the world is going to end because we both got morally squeamish.”

Loki smiled a bit. “Fitting, I think, that it would take no less. But there may still be a way.”

Thor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “What do you propose?”

“We tell Father the truth.”

Thor dropped his arms, indignant now. “At the time I suggested that, you thought it ludicrous.”

Loki said, “At the time, we had alternatives.”

“We still do,” Clint argued. “We have the original plan.”

Tony sighed sympathetically. “Sorry, Merida, I don’t think it’s up to us. We can’t exactly make Loki do this.”

Thor spread his hands. “Then can we at last tell Father the truth and be done with this charade?”

“Not yet.” Loki held up a finger. “We wait.”

“For what?”

“For the Alfather to announce to the people of Asgard that I have returned to his good graces.” Loki leaned forward with a hint of a cunning smile. “Not so long ago, our father chose a son to be ruler in his place. On the day of the coronation, he changed his mind and banished Thor instead. And then reinstated him as crown prince within the week. Some have criticized him for indecision, and the throne grows more precarious. Now he takes me back with open arms, and if he does so publicly, I think he will listen more carefully for a reason to stand by that decision.”

Thor shook his head. “You underestimate our father’s judgment, if you really think he would consider appearances in this matter.”

“You underestimate his judgment if you think he would not,” Loki said dryly. “Now, tomorrow the Allfather will appear on the palace balcony to announce to the people that the Bifrost has been repaired. As his sons, we will both be expected to accompany him. After that, we will tell him our true purpose in coming here.”

“And if he believes you, he will send you to Jotunheim with the Casket?”

“No, Thor,” Loki sighed. “He will send you.”

Thor looked stricken. “What?”

“Father will surely send you, the son who has his trust and pride, to negotiate a truce. Not the son destined to use the Casket against him.”

Thor looked down and took an unsteady breath. “But...I attacked them. I killed many of their warriors -- without hesitation, without justification. The people of Jotunheim must despise me. He cannot send me.”

Loki looked up at Thor with a touch of pity. “He will. I am certain of it.”

“Is that why you lied to Father? Because you knew he would send me, and that I was ill suited to the task?”

Loki replied with a silence that was tantamount to a yes.

.:.

The next day when Loki left for his big appearance, Tony tagged along. It hadn’t been a plan exactly, but somewhere between all the threats of eternal separation in the last day, he’d started feeling a bit clingy, and he wasn’t of a mind to let Loki out of his sight unless the circumstances required it.

Various nobles were gathered in the room just inside the balcony. Thor was there, currently talking to Thor’s friends, who had once been Loki’s friends, but apparently it was complicated.

Tony shook the hand of Hogun, the one who looked least happy to make his acquaintance. “Tony Stark, Earth’s greatest hero. Nice to meet you.”

Fandral stepped up to introduce himself next, giving Tony a boisterous handshake in an impressive imitation of the one Tony had given Hogun. “Tony the Stark, I am Fandral the Dashing, Asgard’s...” He paused, glanced at Odin, Frigga, Thor, then Sif, and concluded, “...fifth greatest hero. But the most dashing, as you may have guessed.” He paused again, this time to smile at his own joke.

Volstagg put a hand on Fandral’s shoulder. “Fandral, forgive the correction, but I fear you’ve miscounted! You are of course Asgard’s sixth greatest hero, and quite rightfully so...”

Tony leaned toward Loki and said in a low voice, “Can’t you mute them?”

“No. That spell no longer works on the palace grounds.”

“Why?”

“I used it a great deal in my youth, so Odin warded the palace against it.”

Tony watched the nobles continue to talk nobly at each other. “Yeah, I can picture that.”

Odin caught sight of Tony and approached him. “Iron Man, do you have some business with me?”

“You? Oh. No, I’m just here to seduce your son. If you’re about to go out, I can make myself scarce.”

Odin gave Thor a questioning look.

“Tony happens to be my lover,” Loki explained truthfully.

Sif raised an eyebrow and Fandral looked aghast. Hogun was unfazed. Volstagg was eating.

Odin gave Tony a look of contemplative distrust. “You love him, yet you wanted to see him behind bars?”

“Do you see me judging your kinks?”

Before anyone could ask what a kink was, Loki changed the subject. “Father, perhaps, being my lover, Tony could join us in our appearance on the balcony?”

“Yes. Yes, being a hero of Midgard in high standing, I see no reason why he should not. See to it.”

As Odin walked away, Tony asked Loki, “Did you just offer me a public appearance to prevent me from saying something embarrassing?”

“On the balcony you won’t be expected to speak,” Loki pointed out acerbically.

“When has that ever stopped me?”

Loki paled. “Good point.”

.:.

It came time for the public appearance, and the nobles found their places in carefully choreographed groupings and waited for their cue to move into the public eye.

Tony was still flirting with Loki. “You know, that’s really not your best color.”

“I will not appear before the people wearing my Jotun skin,” Loki said firmly.

In a wheedling tone, Tony muttered, “Why the hell not?”

Overhearing them, Odin spoke somberly. “The people of Asgard must never know the truth of Loki’s heritage.”

“Why the hell not?” Tony asked, curiously now.

Odin did not dignify that with an answer.

Tony turned to Loki and whispered, “Is this the standard with you people? Just keep secrets until they blow up in everyone’s face? Because I can think of exactly zero instances of that ever being a good idea.”

“That is because you never learned any secrets that were properly kept.”

Tony smirked boastfully, and continued under his breath, “Not true. Ever heard of Phase Two? Y’know, SHIELD stockpiling Tesseract weapons...”

“You call that properly kept?”

“It was data buried under mountains of encryption.”

“It was a gleam in Fury’s eye,” Loki corrected, unimpressed. “Not to mention a chatty archer,” he added, adjusting his pauldron on his shoulder as they all started out onto the balcony.

They walked out to much cheering. Then there proceeded a long hour of speechifying about the rebuilding of the Bifrost and what it meant for Asgard.

Odin gave a passing but flattering introduction of Tony, who preened right up until Odin mentioned, “His heroic acts in slaying many of the Jotuns that came from Muspelheim to invade Midgard.”

Tony stifled a cringe at the wording of the compliment. He was going to have to give Odin a piece of his mind about that...after they saved the world. Saving the world was more important, right? Right. Tony kept his mouth shut.

He got even more annoyed as Odin spoke of, “My son, Loki, finally come to remain here in his rightful place and true home, the palace of Asgard.”

It was said with warmth and the best of intentions, but Tony felt Loki tense next to him. Odin’s words invited Loki back to his old life and trapped him there in one unpleasant stroke.

Thor took his turn speaking, and things got boring again. He talked about hope, and peace, and moving forward. He talked about cooperation between Asgard and Midgard, and the role Midgardian science had played in the accomplishment.

“With the repair of the Bifrost,” Thor said about twenty minutes into his speech, “We can once again visit the realms that were closed to us. Alfheim, Vanaheim, Jotunheim --”

“That is, if you want to visit a great deal of violent, uneducated savages in loin cloths,” Fandral interrupted with humor in his voice.

Thor shot his friend a warning look, but Fandral looked smug as laughter rolled through the crowd. “If a Frost Giant exists who can hold an intelligent conversation, that would certainly be a marvel, but hardly one worth visiting what primitive little villages remain there.”

More laughter.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Tony muttered through his teeth, smiling for the crowd.

Loki scratched his nose to hide the movement of his lips as he replied. “Given the life-perpetuating nature of godhood, that may prove time-consuming.”

“But that’s what makes it fun.”

“Oh, my thoughts exactly.”

Then Tony had a terrible idea. “Better yet, I’m going to tell them the truth.”

Loki’s eyes widened. “Don’t you dare.”

But Tony had that feeling again, that Loki was presenting him with a big red button that said Do Not Push, and damned if he was going to listen.

“Listen everybody. Hey!” Tony shouted, waving his arms over his head, “Pay attention to me. I’ve got something to say!”

Tony waited for quiet, and started talking again. “You know that time your King went to Jotunheim? Took some souvenirs? I understand there was a war or some-such. Not important. What you need to know is, he also took a child home with him. A Jotun child.”

Tony paused for the murmurs of surprise.

“Mute,” Loki whispered desperately, and of course nothing happened.

“The child,” Tony continued dramatically, “was Laufeyson, the heir of Jotunheim. Odin took that boy and raised him as his own son, because he hoped to unite the kingdoms. The boy grew up to be your prince. The King kept it a secret, even from his adopted son, so you would all get to know him as he really is.”

Tony gestured grandly toward Loki where he stood grimacing next to Thor. “I know this man. I love this man. I’ve fought beside him. I trust him. He is Jotun. But that doesn’t make him a monster, and it doesn’t make him your enemy. It makes him your greatest hope for peace.”

Then Tony grinned like, well, like Tony Stark in front of a crowd, and finished grandly, “Ladies and gentlemen, the lost prince of Jotunheim stands before you today!”

In the silence that followed, Tony turned to the younger of the princes. “Isn’t that right, Loki?”

Loki’s face softened, actually full of warmth and relief now that Tony was finished his declaration. “That is so,” he said firmly. Loki made a magical gesture with his hand, and Thor promptly turned blue.

Thor did.

From the crowd, there were gasps of amazement. Shouts. Outrage. Cheering.

It took Tony’s brain a moment to catch up to what his eyes were seeing. Then it was all he could do not to dissolve into a fit of helpless laughter.

Thor stared down in horror at his hands - now Jotun blue. “Loki...”

“You don’t have to hide what you are anymore, Thor,” Loki said, in a voice that carried. “The people will love you and look to you no matter what. Please don’t deny it.”

Thor shut his mouth, with which he had been about to deny it vehemently.

Smiling magnanimously, Loki continued, “Admit what you are, the rightful ruler of Jotunheim, and use that truth to make peace between the realms!”

This statement was met with so much cheering that nothing Thor said in reply could be heard over the sound.

As soon as they were inside, Tony went to pieces laughing. “Thor,” he choked out, “Your face... I think this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Oh, god... Oh, gods... Oh, gods pretending to be other gods...”

Thor’s glower was quickly giving way to confusion, curiosity, and the beginnings of humor. “Explain this to me.”

Loki spoke quietly, so that only Tony and Thor could hear him. “I created the illusion to convince the people that you are Jotun. It is a deceit you will have to maintain for as long as possible, because it will allow you to rule both Asgard and Jotunheim, uniting the kingdoms as Father always wanted.”

Thor nodded. He could see it. “I do not like the idea of keeping such a secret,” he said, but he was smiling and pushing back unwilling chuckles as he began to get the joke. “However, I will do my best. It is good to truly have you back, brother.”

Loki’s face went blank, and then the smile fell away from Thor’s.

Tony looked between them and said, “Well, this is awkward.”

Someone mentioned dinner, and then Volstagg insisted that they had lingered here long enough and it must be time to eat, so Odin and his entourage started making its way toward the dining halls. Fandral got ahold of Thor and started a long and tearful series of apologies for insults given.

Loki trailed toward the back of the group, so Tony hung back as well, letting the others walk ahead of them.

Just as the group disappeared around a bend in the hallway, Loki moved. He pushed Tony up against the wall in a way that kind of reminded him of Natasha in the broom closet, but Tony was a lot less worried this time.

“What were you thinking?” the god hissed through his teeth in restrained anger.

Oh, shit. Make that much, much more worried. “I’m guessing I probably wasn’t.”

“Do you understand what you almost did? The implications it would have had for the realms if my lineage was revealed? You said you trusted me.”

“I do trust you.” Tony realized that the panicked strain in his voice was undermining his believability. Rolling his eyes, he pushed Loki off him. Well, he pushed with mere mortal strength, and Loki willingly backed away, for which he was grateful.

Tony caught his breath so he could say in a low, even voice, “I do trust you. But trust has to go two ways. You never said anything about why I shouldn’t tell them. If you don’t tell me your plans, I can’t follow them. You’regoing to need to start trusting me.”

Loki narrowed his eyes as he considered that.

Tony continued, “You have plans. I get that. I love that. But I can either work with them, or be oblivious and screw things up. The alternative is that you learn to predict my actions with perfect accuracy. Does that sound like fun to you?”

Loki opened his mouth to reply, then looked sharply sideways at the sound of approaching footsteps. To Tony he said, “For now, follow my lead. Yes?”

Tony nodded. “Yes.”

They had been missed. Sif and Hogun came back to find them and shepherd them back to the group, insisting that they were only concerned for Loki’s safety, him having disappeared so suddenly and all. Sif shot Loki distrusting glances when she thought he wasn’t looking, and Hogun shot Loki distrusting glances when he actually wasn’t looking.

Once they arrived at the dining hall, they found they were early anyway and the food had not yet been set out, much to Volstagg’s dejection.

“Loki,” Fandral suggested as they waited, “if you really intend to keep that pet mortal, you should show him more of the palace. Make him feel at home here.”

Loki nodded. “And excellent idea. I suggest a tour through the treasure room with my father and brother.”

“Really?” Tony asked, puzzled.

Loki shot him a warning look.

“Sounds lovely,” Tony said quickly. Thor and Odin agreed, and the four of them started off toward Odin’s treasure room. To Loki, he whispered, “Do we tell him now?”

Loki smiled slowly. “No. The circumstances have changed. And with the proof I can now offer the Allfather, I may be able to go to Jotunheim after all.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 19: Right. Those conditions.

The moment they entered the treasure room, they all stopped and stared at the Casket of Ancient Winters, which was now giving off a slight but distinct blue glow. Then they turned to look at Loki, who leaned back against the wall, entirely unsurprised.

“Loki, this was your doing?” Odin asked, and the uncertainty in his voice was really sort of insulting as far as Tony was concerned.

Loki held up his hand as if to examine his nails, but instead he rubbed his thumb and fingers together and flakes of ice fell away from his hand like snow, showing off newly recovered Jotun powers. “You disbelieved me, when I said I would restore the Casket. After you returned my magic to me, you made no mention of it again.”

Odin kept his eye on the Casket, not entirely convinced that the sight was real. “When I brought the Casket back to the palace, I examined the spell you placed upon it, with the intention of restoring it myself. It was permanent; not breakable by my magic, nor yours, nor any being in the known realms. And when you came before me yesterday, I asked you if you could undo the curse... as a test. To see if you would lie to me.”

“And I told you that I could.” A humorless laugh. “But it was the truth.”

Now Odin looked to Loki. “How?” he breathed.

Loki strode toward the Casket. “I altered the power of the Casket to be conditional. Your idea, in concept. An item of great power that only works in worthy hands. Or, in this case, under worthy circumstances. Now the Casket will only work while there is peace and good will between Jotunheim and Asgard.”

Odin’s eye widened in realization as Loki’s plan came together in his mind. “And you would return it to its place among the Jotuns, letting them see the soul of their race die whenever there is strife between our two worlds. You put Jotunheim at a hard disadvantage.”

Loki replied with a cruel smile. “I never said it was fair.” He looked again at the Casket. The glow was dim, and only one forlorn wisp of blue circled in it, weak but undoubtedly alive. Loki placed his hands on it.

Odin’s hand flinched forward, as if to stop him.

Loki gave Odin a long, questioning look that lasted throughout the slow transformation of Loki’s skin from Asgardian pale to Jotun blue. The look held steel, and accusations, and disappointment as Loki tore his eyes away to focus back on the casket. “It seems the good will which the people of Asgard now feel toward Jotunheim has stirred the Casket awake. Let us hope it lasts.”

“It will last longer,” said Odin, “if a formal truce can be reached.”

“You will send Thor,” Loki predicted. It was almost a question.

“Being widely known as heir to Jotunheim, he is the obvious choice.”

Loki closed his eyes and nodded.

“Just as you, being widely known as my firstborn son by blood, are the obvious choice to accompany him.”

Loki and Odin looked at each other then, mirroring the looks of dawning, distrusting hope on each other’s faces.

At length, Loki said, “With your permission, then.”

“You have it. You, Thor, and whatever companions you choose will leave at noon tomorrow.”

Loki nodded again.

Odin smiled a little. “Come along then, you three. We shall be late for the feast.” He turned and led the way back to the dining hall. Thor, Tony, and a convincing double of Loki followed them.

The real Loki waited in the treasure room. He had no malicious plans to carry out here; only curiosity to satisfy.

Thor had left the hammer in its old resting place in this room while he went about socializing. The handle leaned against the wall at a slight angle, easy to reach out and grasp. Loki looked around, careful that no one was watching, then again as he mentally took stock of the safeguards that might be triggered when he touched it. The destroyer was dead, and he could handle the rest.

Loki wrapped his hand around the handle. Before he lifted it, he thought over all that had happened. He had changed, been altered by love as Thor had during his banishment. He had protected people from harm. Asgardians and Frost Giants and humans. He had fought by their side, and even Steve was starting to refer to him as part of the team when he wasn’t paying attention to his own words. He was one of the heroes again, little as the idea appealed to him.

Surely, whatever lesson Odin had wanted Thor to learn, he had learned it too?

Loki pulled. And then he pulled harder, breathing through the protest of his stretching muscles, pulling with all his might, and nothing, no motion. The hammer was too heavy.

A female voice said, “Being able to lift the hammer means being worthy in your father’s eyes. Maybe it’s time to stop gunning for that.”

Loki looked up and to the side. “Agent Romanoff. How very unwelcome of you.”

Standing a few feet away where there had been a clear coast moments before, Natasha smiled humorlessly. “But I’m going so easy on you. I could be giving you a lecture about all the gushing red in your ledger.” At the slight wince Loki tried to hide, she cocked her head. “It would really hurt, too.”

“For whom?” Loki challenged.

“Both of us. That’s the game people like you and me play. We make ourselves pawns, we mutilate ourselves to take someone else down with us. Life screwed us over and made us smart enough to see what needs to be done and talented enough to do it. You’ll always be guilty. Whether you make shit happen or let shit happen, you’ll never be the spotless hero.”

“Why do you say this now?” What could you possibly achieve by hurting me before putting the fate of the realms in my hands?

Natasha said, “Because you can’t be the spotless hero, but you could be something better.”

Loki took an unsteady breath. “What a fantastic load of foul smelling bull-sentiment.”

She smiled, amused. “Tony’s jokes are rubbing off on you.”

Ignoring that, Loki said, “So that is what you tell yourself? That you are better than the spotless heroes you work beside? Are you superior to Captain America, because of your mistakes, because you were ill used and everyone should pity you?”

“No. I’m superior because he and I are both tools, and I’m a more versatile one.”

“Why are you here?”

“I had some ideas to plant in your head, and now I’ve planted them. I’m going.”

“Good,” Loki said as she left.

Loki gave the hammer one more look, and went to pick up the treasure that was his true inheritance.

He looked down at the swirling, living blue, and the rigid blue-gray hands that held it.

A stolen relic, a tool, a weapon. So far held only by the incompetent, or by the selfishly incompetent. What could such power do in the right hands?

Loki performed a vanishing spell and strode out of the treasure room with the Casket of Ancient Winters in his possession.

A weapon to destroy, and a tool to build.

.:.

“Loki!” Tony greeted when the inventor finally managed to track the god down.

Loki lay on the bed of his old room, reading a book, still wearing the illusion that made him appear Asgardian.

The door had been locked. Tony must have picked it without picking up on the subtle hint a locked door was supposed to communicate. The human had been given his own rooms, but in the two days and one night he had spent here, he had yet to visit them.

Only mildly annoyed, Loki looked up from his book.

“You missed all the fun! Thor thought it would be clever to put Ick’s Brew in the goblets, and everyone spat out the toast dedicated to your reunited family. Odin was all worried that it was a bad omen, but I thought it was funny as shit.”

“I take it my double didn’t fool you for long?”

“Ehehe. What with lacking physical substance and all... not a great kisser. But I played it cool. No one caught on who might worry that you were actually... I dunno, stealing the Casket of Ancient Winters.”

“And if I did?”

“What’s to steal? Isn’t it technically yours? Not actually worried over here. Anyway, I think I can guess what you tried to take and, no offense babe, but if you had managed that particular feat, you wouldn’t be keeping any secrets about it.”

Loki snapped his book shut and gave Tony a look.

“Oh, n-n-n-no, don’t get mad at me right now. This is a sucky time for you be mad at me. We keep almost getting separated for all eternity, we’re going to Jotunheim tomorrow and who knows what could happen there, and we only just made up after all the stupid stuff I said on the balcony. Which I was going to not remind you about. Um. Oops.”

Loki waited a few more moments after Tony lapsed into fumbling silence. “Who ever said you were coming with us to Jotunheim tomorrow?”

“I did. Just now. Have you actually been paying attention to what I’ve been saying? Because if not then that’s really… convenient.”

“You’re staying here.”

“Is this the heroic equivalent of making me sleep on the couch?”

“You are mortal, and weak, and vulnerable to extreme cold, and not coming along.”

“Yup, I’m definitely in the doghouse. Here’s the thing, though. Remember what I said about letting me in on the plan? And the fact that you can’t predict my actions with perfect accuracy? You know I’m going to be looking for a way to tag along no matter what you say. I might even think of a way that you don’t think of, and succeed. And if you’re not expecting it, maybe I’ll show up at exactly the wrong moment, say exactly the wrong thing, and blow up the whole political situation.” Tony shrugged. “You just can’t know.”

Now Loki was smiling. “So your own inept stupidity is the most dire threat you can think to wield?”

Crawling onto the bed next to Loki, Tony smiled back. “Oh, no. Inept genius. This involves outsmarting you and then screwing everything up.”

Loki frowned, but there was no antagonism in it. “Why are so set on this? You would risk your life, achieving nothing… why? Because it would hurt your pride to be left behind?”

“If it does get ugly, I’m gonna be fighting next to you.”

“I may not be able to protect you.”

Tony held up a finger. “No. I don’t need protecting any more than you do, and if you don’t trust me to watch your back, then I don’t know what you and I are even -”

Loki kissed him.

Tony blinked and said something garbled, then remembered how to talk and said, “Oh. Right. That.”

“I won’t deny you are as formidable in battle as any Asgardian warrior. But once defeated, an Asgardian is much harder to kill. Especially one who is the subject of unfulfilled legends. You, on the other hand -”

“Excuse me? Have you met the last few hundred people who tried to kill me?”

Loki smiled grimly. “I believe I’m one of them.”

“Exactly! If you couldn’t pull it off, who could?”

“Time.”

“So not the point.”

“What then? What is this about? You trust me.” Loki paused and tried those words again. “You trust me not to betray you or fail you. Why do you want to go to Jotunheim? What are you so eager to see?”

“I meant what I said about fighting next to you.”

“Yes. And?”

“And… I want to see the world that made you,” Tony admitted with a shrug. He didn’t expect this to go over well, knowing how little love Loki had for his ancestry. He winced and waited for the backlash.

But Loki just reached over to place his book on the bedside table, an excuse to look away from Tony as he said, “And I don’t want you to see what I made of it.”

Tony blinked. Not the answer he’d expected. He waited for Loki to face him again before he spoke. “Too bad. Cause I’m gonna look. And I’m gonna see.” Tony gripped the back of Loki’s neck. “And I’m still gonna love you. That’s what we do.”

There was that vulnerable look again. Loki opened his mouth, but seemed unable to conjure words.

“I’m not about to look away. Not from you, and not from anything you’ve done. I’m not pretending it’s not there just because it’s ugly. Got that?”

Still at something of a loss, Loki eventually replied, “You... really should not be possible.”

“I know. I love you too.” One corner of Tony’s mouth quirked up. “You’re kind of the pot calling the kettle preposterous, though, don’t you think?”

Loki mirrored his smirk and said in a low, dry voice, “The pot is made of fewer odd pieces and makes far less noise.”

“Hm,” Tony hummed contemplatively. “I’m gonna prove you wrong about that second part.” Then he kissed Loki thoroughly enough to pull a moan from the god and make his innuendo clear.

Breathing a little unsteadily, Loki queried, “Would you like to wager money on that?”

“How about an all-expenses-paid trip to the planet of my choice?”

“We have a bet.”

Tony won.

Chapter Text

Loki spent hours the next morning placing a spell on Thor to make his skin turn blue when exposed to extreme cold.

They all loitered outside in one of the palace gardens, Loki sitting on a bench next to Thor, weaving runes into the thunder god’s arm and sharply shooting down all attempts at brotherly banter.

“You say this spell will help us fool the Jotuns but given your history, Loki, how do I know it will not turn me into a Dwarf or a frog?”

“It won’t,” Loki said shortly.

“But how can I be sure? Remember when we were boys and-”

“No.”

“...Your helmet looks strange,” Thor muttered in pathetic tones, leaning his chin on one fist in defeat.

“Sit still or lose a limb. This magic is cold enough to burn.”

Tony stood nearby explaining the latest development to Clint, Steve, and a speciously ignorant Natasha. “Basically, it worked. Odin is sending Thor and Loki to Jotunheim with the Casket and,” he snapped his fingers, “problem solved.”

“Sounds a little too easy,” Clint said.

Steve frowned at Loki. “It does. What happened to ‘he will certainly send Thor’? If Odin would have sent you all along, what were we all doing lying to him from the beginning?”

Loki said, “Odin would not have sent me before the incident on the balcony. No doubt you’ve heard that all of Asgard now believes Thor to be a Frost Giant.”

Clint gave Loki a long, untrusting look. “Sure, because practical jokes are the way to get people to trust you.”

Loki looked right back. “Well-aimed ones are, actually.”

Tony took a breath and changed the topic. “So. Trip to Jotunheim today. Who all is coming?”

Loki answered before any more Avengers could volunteer. “You and I, Thor, Sif, and the warriors three.”

“You’re letting Fandral come along.” Tony scrunched up his face in displeasure. “Really? I mean, I can see bringing not-so-happy Hogun over there, but Fandral is so...dashing. As in, dashing our hopes to fix all this if he opens his mouth once we get there.”

“Which makes him different from you how?”

“Hey, I’ve handled more delicate political situations than you probably realize.”

“Balcony,” Loki stated.

“You’re never gonna let that go, are you? It wouldn’t be that bad if people here knew the truth about you. It might even --”

“Of course it would. If there is to be peace between the two realms, the lost prince must be someone the people of Asgard actually like. If I am secretly a Jotun, I look like an alien and a spy.” Returning to the spell, Loki continued, “It is, however, beyond anyone’s power of influence to make Thor look devious. Besides, if I admit to having any more royal blood, I might have to be king of something again.” Loki shuddered, shaking off the thought with visible distaste.

Tony smirked. “I thought you wanted to rule Earth.”

“Please. You never fell for that one.”

“You weren’t trying to take over the world?” This was Steve, still sending a dubious look Loki’s way.

Loki scoffed. “As if there was a throne to take. When was the last time you honestly tried to become king of an anthill?” He shook his head with a touch of wide-eyed amazement. “You people believe the most ridiculous lies.” Turning back to his task, Loki summoned the Casket to hand and opened it just slightly, weaving a little of its cold into the spellwork.

“Since when do you have that?” Clint demanded. “Since when does he have that?”

“I need it to work this particular spell.”

“That’s not an answer,” Clint pointed out.

Thor sighed. “Brother, is it really necessary to cast this spell before our journey?”

“Would you have our quest fail the moment you touch the local architecture?”

“But why lie to them?” Thor persisted. “Oh, I understand that I must keep this deceit with the Asgardian people. But could you not rule in Jotunheim? You would be better suited to it than I.”

Loki looked like a child presented with a plate full of boiled, leafy vegetables. “I think not. News will eventually come to them of the events leading up to the destruction of the Bifrost.” Loki smiled at some internal joke. “I suspect that the people of Jotunheim would not take kindly to a king who had murdered his predecessor.”

“Few know well the events of the day the bridge was destroyed,” Thor argued. “Brother, you have grown wiser these past months. You may yet find your place as king of Jotunheim. They are your people, Loki.”

There was a flat, dangerous quality to Loki’s answering glare, but he just said, “Thor, if I were to use the tools in Tony’s workshop to disassemble you piece by piece and polish your innards, I am fairly certain you would survive the process.”

“A shiny new refurbished Thor,” Tony mused, “Jane would love that.”

Loki beamed at his lover.

Thor was undeterred. “I know naught of their values, their culture and history. How can I lead them?”

“And why should I know them any more than you do? Just find a steward to rule in your place, and visit in person every decade or so. I see no reason why either of us should have to venture there very often.” He waved a dismissive hand over the runes on Thor’s arm, and they disappeared into his skin. “It’s done.”

When Tony found a moment, he put an arm around Loki’s waist and whispered in his ear, “You really did want to be king of the Earth, didn’t you?”

“It had crossed my mind,” Loki admitted smiling a little at the notion of world-domination. “It was one of many possible outcomes of that invasion. But my main purpose was to destroy as many Chitauri as possible and escape Thanos.”

“Thanos?”

Loki grimaced. “Later.”

.:.

They arrived on Jotunheim, and for a while they just stared. It looked a little like someone had taken the landscape, the castle and the earth and rock for a hundred feet under that, run it all briefly through a blender, and poured the remaining mix back into place to freeze.

Thor stepped hesitantly, cringing at memories of his past actions. For once, Loki and Thor seemed to be of the same mind. Of course Loki’s face was void of emotion, where Thor’s regret was written plainly on his open features.

Loki knelt to examine a large fragment of rock, tracing the decorative carvings on it with recognition. “This was part of Laufey’s throne.”

The ground was treacherously brittle under them, uneven and unsolid. Tony gave up on walking after a few steps, in favor of using his suit to hover alongside the six gods.

This was what Loki hadn’t wanted him to see, and Tony could see why. It was ugly, uglier than Gulmira, and it occurred to Tony that what he had come to see, the world that made Loki, might not really exist anymore. That had probably been Loki’s intention when he did this.

Once they had walked a few hundred feet and encountered no sign of life, Sif whispered “Is there no one left?”

Tony took off his helmet to get a better look around, and that was a bad idea because it was really, really cold, but the fresh air was kind of nice in a might-give-his-lungs-frostbite-if-he-inhaled-too-fast kind of a way.

Loki spoke. “There is --” he cleared his throat. “There are survivors, somewhere. Perhaps not here, at the brunt of the damage. Then again, Jotuns are not known for announcing themselves to strange visitors...” Loki lapsed into contemplative silence. “Wait here,” he said.

A blink later Loki was gone and an owl with thick white feathers was flying skyward from where he had stood.

“Yeah,” Tony called up at it, “Going off alone. Great idea. Thanks for consulting us on that one.”

The owl swooped down and landed on Tony's shoulder long enough to peck affectionately but painfully at his earlobe – “Ouch!” – and flew off again.

Tony watched, disgruntled, as Loki flew into the distance. When he looked down again, the Warriors Three were all giving him the I-question-your-judgment-in-romantic-partners-and-therefore-in-every-other-area-of-life look that he'd been getting so much lately. “He's really very sweet and cuddly once you get know him,” Tony informed Loki’s oldest friends. Grinning, he replaced his helmet.

The owl returned forty minutes later and turned back into Loki, a touch out of breath from the long flight. “There’s a dwelling three miles east,” he informed them. “A scout is following us to the south but I doubt he'll make himself known.”

They walked an uneventful three miles south until shelters appeared in the distance, built of ice and broken stone scavenged from Laufey’s city. Half the dwellings had collapsed in on themselves, the ice portions of their structures having melted away in the heat of the past few months.

After that, the lonely icy landscape around then quickly became populated with twenty-some Frost Giants moving to surround them.

“We come seeking peace!” Thor called, holding out his arms in a motion both conciliatory and supremely declarative, forcing Tony to envision a blond and particularly muscle-bound Jesus magnanimously blessing a wretched multitude.

It was enough to keep the locals from outright attacking. They stood on guard in a tense ring around the travelers and waited for Thor’s next move. The other Asgardians looked on the Frost Giants with all the unease of meeting something alien and strange, and all the disgusted recognition of recalling that the monsters from their stories were real after all.

A female Jotun caught their stares and looked back with comparable disgust.

“Hel-lo good-looking,” Tony said under his breath, and was elbowed by Loki -- to little effect, as he was still wearing his Iron Man suit. Aloud, Tony called, “Take us to your leader,” and was disappointed when no one present knew to groan at the reference.

A male frost giant stood forward. “I am Fridtjof, head of this clan."

“We are looking for Jotunheim’s ruler,” said Thor.

“It has none. Laufey abandoned us before Asgard attacked with the bifrost. His cowardice has broken the royal line as death could not.”

The visitors exchanged uncomfortable looks, silently agreeing that it really, really wouldn’t help their case to correct that particular misapprehension. It also would not help their case if either of Odin’s supposed sons were to reveal a long-secret royal Jotun lineage. There went their favorite trickster-god’s carefully laid plan. Again.

Sometimes Tony hated Loki just a little bit.

Thor said, “The Allfather sent us here to negotiate a new peace.”

“My clan is the most powerful in Jotunheim,” Fridtjof informed them. “The only way to make a treaty is through me.” The other Jotuns sent disgusted looks his way but gave voice to none of their disagreements. Taking in their disapproval, he added, “And that will not happen.”

“Why not?” Loki asked.

“Because Asgardians are monsters and murderers,” another giant said. “You nearly ripped the world apart. We will not sit peaceably and wait for Odin to destroy us again.”

“You believe Odin ordered the attack with the Bifrost?” Loki questioned.

“You can’t possibly claim otherwise!”

“Apparently I oughtn't,” Loki said carefully. “But how do you reconcile that with another point -- that the Bifrost has enough power to obliterate Jotunheim completely, and that it certainly would have if Odin had truly ordered such an attack?”

The Jotuns looked at each other, unable to refute that.

Sometimes his ability to improvise made Tony want to tear all Loki’s clothes off just a little bit.

“It was most unfortunate that the incident that destroyed the Bifrost also wrought such destruction on this realm,” Loki continued. “In light of all that has happened, we would build a treaty between our two worlds, so we may coexist in peace once again.”

The female Frost Giant Tony was ogling spoke up again. “So Jotunheim can melt away while you hold the heart of our world on display in Odin’s halls.”

“Hyndla’s right,” said another, “Asgard’s truces are made of empty promises and death. Jotunheim can never prosper while we have peace with traitors and murderers.”

“Jotunheim can never prosper while Asgard holds the Casket,” Loki corrected.

Several of the Frost Giants narrowed their eyes, suspicion smothering hope. Fridtjof said, “You admit that, and still you come here.”

Loki gestured, and the Casket appeared on the ground before him. The giants stared down at it, too stunned to react for a moment.

Then it clicked, and the two Jotuns closest to the artifact jumped into action, taking hold of the Casket and carrying it away from the visitors toward their collection of shelters. The giants looked around them for an appropriate place -- maybe a pedestal or a stronghold, but recalling that there was nothing to find but ruin, they set it on the ground and turned to guard it.

“You’re fools if you think we’ll give you anything in exchange for what’s rightfully ours,” Hyndla informed them.

“This is not a bargaining chip,” Loki insisted smoothly, convincing no one. “This is a gift, from my people to yours. But perhaps, given the nature of the gift, a treaty can be reached?”

Fridtjof said, “There will be no treaty. Only seven dead Asgardians.”

Loki treated Fridtjof to a disconcertingly victorious smile. “Now, if I were you, I might ask a few questions about the nature of the gift before I made a choice like that.”

Fridtjof followed his gaze to where the wisp of light in the Casket faded and dimmed. “What have you done to it?”

Thor said, “The nature of the Casket has changed. The fate of its magic is now tied to the relations between our two peoples.”

“You lie.”

Loki said, “You have the evidence in your possession.”

Fridtjof sent another giant to examine the spellwork on the Casket. Apparently, it met with Thor’s description to their satisfaction, because after when they returned, Fridtjof traded a look with the Jotun sorcerer and said, “We will consider your terms.”

Loki started discussing terms for a treaty and it seemed things were finally going very well, right up until Hyndla absently tossed an icy dagger through Fridtjof’s head, and the self-proclaimed leader fell down dead right in the middle of interplanetary peace negotiations.

The Asgardians present stared in stunned, wide-eyed horror. Loki held up a hand to halt Sif from drawing her sword as Tony voiced an indignant, "Hey!"

The Jotuns stared with varying levels of shock and relieved approval at Hyndla, who lifted her eyebrows at them, unconcerned. To Tony she said, "That treaty would have served you poorly. This clan holds no real power, and Fridtjof is an idiot as well as a liar."

"Was," Loki corrected, looking down at the assassinated Jotun.

"Really?” Hyndla replied. “Has death made him wiser? I did him a service, then."

Tony crossed his metal-clad arms. "Okay, sexypants, who do you suggest we talk to?"

A consternated Fandral silently mouthed, "'Sexypants'?" and Loki rested an open hand against his eyebrows as if hiding his face could somehow absolve him of all association with Tony and his ill-timed, ill-thought-out nicknames.

Hyndla replied, "If you are determined to play at peace treaties- "

"We are," Thor confirmed gravely.

"Then speak to Byleist. He rules a clan in the north, where the mountains used to be. If a king is what you seek, he is as close as you will find."

Tony said, “Wow. Ok, thanks for that. Any chance we could have our blue box back?” Then, at Hyndla’s look, “I mean, your blue box. I mean… nevermind.”

“May we leave in peace?” Loki inquired, already stepping back.

Hyndla said, “Go.”

.:.

They retreated a few hundred yards before Thor called a halt, giving them all a chance to sit and contemplate how much further they would now have to travel for their quest. Initially, they all sat together, the Asgardians huddling a little against the cold.

“Well,” Volstagg said bracingly. “It’s simple enough. We shall return to Asgard, rest, eat, and prepare for a longer journey.”

“What are we going to do without the Casket?” Fandral demanded. “Even if we do find King Byleist….”

Tony abruptly stood and walked away from the group, leaving them to shrug and wonder what they had said.

His eyes caught on a piece of broken rubble. Opaque. He couldn’t tell if it was ice or stone, but it matched the pattern of carving Loki had pointed out on a shard of Laufey’s throne, so maybe this was another. Pretty far flung from the first. Tony picked it up and sat down on the nearest rock, turning the item over in his hands and considering it.

“So now you’ve seen,” Loki said.

Tony looked up and realized his lover had followed him. Loki took a seat by his side and sent him a questioning look, with just a hint of terror to remind Tony of last night’s conversation about what Loki had done to the world that created him.

Tony lifted his faceplate and shrugged. “It’s really fucking sad. But it doesn’t change anything.”

“I had meant it to be a clean kill.”

Peeved at that, Tony snapped, “That’s not actually better than what happened.”

Loki did not reply, and an uncomfortable silence fell.

Thor walked up to them and sat down. “I fear we may have to search farther to find the being who truly holds power in Jotunheim.”

“Does anyone?” Tony asked.

"This Byleist character sounds promising,” Loki mused.

Thor nodded. "Perhaps the fallen mountains are where the true throne of Jotunheim now resides. But without the Casket to convince him….”

Tony spoke with growing irritation. “What is with you people and assuming there’s always going to be a throne?”

Thor blinked. Loki shifted to watch Tony more closely, intrigued.

“Maybe there’s no top dog you can replace with your own make-believe rightful heir. Maybe you can’t rule this place any more that you can rule Earth. If what these people say is true then it’s just a bunch of clans, and I think they’re a little busy right now trying to not die.”

“Then we rebuild the throne,” Thor replied, “Else there will be no one to entrust the Casket to, and no one to ally with Asgard to keep the Casket awake.”

Tony was not impressed. “So, you want to use superior technology and winning, high-handed generosity to impose a puppet government? And voila, everyone loves you while all the underlying problems get swept under the rug? Yeah. Cool. I’ve seen that done. Works great for ten years or so.”

“Our father sent us here to form a treaty,” Thor insisted.

Loki’s eyes were fixed on the wedge of ice in Tony’s hand. “Tony is right. It’s time to stop attempting what our father sent us here to do.”

Thor shook his head and looked to Loki, urging him to see reason. “We must make peace with these people.”

“And for that they must be subjugated to an orderly rule?” Loki snapped. “It’s not order you have to make peace with, Thor. It’s chaos.”

Bemused, Thor looked to Tony for support, but Tony was looking at Loki like the younger prince had just spoken the secrets of the universe and they somehow involved bacon. That was no help.

“How do you mean?” Thor asked.

Loki looked around at the broken remnants of the palace. “Make peace with the world as it is. Without a king. Without a simple answer.”

“I’ve yet to see how that can be accomplished.”

Tony dropped his head sideways to rest on one hand. “God, I wish Pepper were here. Or Bruce. Bruce would be perfect for this, but no-o, he figures there’s too much risk of smashing Asgard. Like the place couldn’t use an excuse to redecorate. Look, I’m no expert -- no, that’s not true, I’m an expert at a lot of things, I’m not an expert at fixing the political systems of countries impoverished by spending centuries under crippling terms of surrender followed by not-exactly-natural disasters --” Tony paused to inhale “-- But I hear talking to people like they’re actually people and giving them the tools to rebuild their way is a great start.”

Thor nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “You suggest we ask the Jotuns what they need, and give that aid without condition? Peace, not in promises but in actions.” Thor lapsed into thought for a while more, then smiled. “You give good counsel, Tony. My brother was wise to suggest bringing you here.”

Loki looked up at the sky, mostly hiding his exasperated amusement.

Thor stood and went back to his fellow Asgardians, informing them with enthusiasm that they were returning to the Jotun dwelling they had just left.

“Are you insane?” Fandral demanded.

“No. I’ve been talking to Loki - ”

“Ah,” Volstagg nodded, “Same thing.”

When they got back, Hyndla gestured for the other Jotuns to leave them alone, and the others obeyed. Apparently, she was in charge now. “Well?” she asked the visitors.

Tony said, “We changed our minds. We’re not so determined to play at treaties anymore.”

Hyndla eyed them consideringly, and ultimately smiled a little. “Good. What will you do instead?”

“We will help rebuild Jotunheim,” Thor answered.

Hyndla’s smile disappeared. “No you won’t. You will leave this place, and let us build as we see fit.”

Thor gestured at his comrades a little despairingly. “You don’t want our help?”

“I would not have you build a second Asgard here.”

There followed a long-winded argument between Thor and Hyndla about what exactly “rebuilding” meant, in which it became clear that they were working from very different histories of the wars between their two peoples, and very different notions of what it took to build a city.

Oddly, the Casket of Ancient Winters only seemed to glow brighter as the disagreements piled up.

“I’m bored,” Tony complained to Loki.

“Then your attention span is short enough to match your lifespan. That’s impressive.”

“I’m also hungry.”

“I did not force you to come here, nor am I forcing you to stay. If you wish to leave, do so.”

“‘Kay.” Tony turned and took a few steps. “I’m goin’.”

Loki snatched at his arm. “Not by yourself.”

“Um, we might need to have that conversation again about me being able to handle myself.”

“You were walking in the wrong direction.”

“Oops. I take it back. Would you care to walk me home?”

“And have an excuse to leave this wretched planet? Tony, it would be my pleasure.”

The local people were easing out of their state of high alert, and the necessary rhythms of life re-emerged. Preparing of an evening meal commenced. Children came out of hiding and started chasing each other around the uneven ground. Sif and the warriors three stared around themselves and gaped, realizing that the notion of there being Frost Giants of ages below adulthood had somehow not occurred to any of them before today.

Thor and Hyndla were now sitting across from each other and the tone of their argument was morphing from two people disagreeing over whether something could be done to two people disagreeing over how something could be done, and Thor was starting to smile a little with the glee of planning great works.

When Tony and Loki went to leave, Sif and the Three went to stand in their way. “And where are you going?” Sif asked.

“Home,” said Loki. “My ‘pet mortal’ needs feeding, and Thor seems to have matters well in hand.”

“Thor,” Volstagg called.

Thor paused in his conversation and turned to listen

“Loki is leaving us.” Hogun said it the same way he might speak of desertion on a battlefield.

“Of course.” Thor stood and smiled and shook Tony’s hand. “My brother, my friend, you may go. There is much work for me here, and you have done your part well.” Thor turned back to Hyndla and eagerly continued planning. “We will search Jotunheim for architects and craftsmen, and find builders in Asgard and Nidavellir to work under them...”

So Tony and Loki continued toward the Bifrost site. Loki took a look back at the Casket, which glowed more starkly now. It was already half as bright as it had once shone before Loki had bespelled it, and Loki wondered if it would surpass its original power as Thor’s work continued, assuming the thunder god did not make an ass of himself the moment they left. Either way, it was more than enough to bring a halt to the sweltering end of the worlds.

Tony had his doubts. "Are we really leaving them in charge? What do you wanna bet they screw it up and the Casket's on fire by the time we get home?"

Loki's eyes flicked pointedly back toward Thor, who was indulging a Jotun child’s clumsy attempts to climb him - amicably ignoring all hair-pulling that ensued - while the adults of the clan looked on with growing approval. Tony could almost hear heartwarming background music accompanying the scene.

"He may be a bumbling fool, but very little is at risk once Thor contrives to be endearing," Loki concluded.

“He didn’t have to lie to them after all. I guess you wasted the morning with that spell.”

“Yes, Thor’s ostensible claim on the Jotun throne did turn out to be irrelevant. It was only a precaution, anyway.”

“No it wasn’t!”

“There was more than one possible - ”

“It wasn’t a precaution, it was the whole strategy! Go in, convince them Thor is their king, go home. That was… really never going to end well, you know. I mean, talk about wishful thinking.”

“This is why I don’t tell people my plans!” Loki snapped.

“Because they never work?”

“Because no one in the nine realms seems to understand the concept of preparing for multiple contingencies!”

“It’s because they never work,” Tony concluded, and nodded sagely.

.:.

By the time they stepped off the rainbow bridge and onto the solid ground of Asgard, Steve and the assassins were waiting for them.

“So,” Steve asked, “Did you make a treaty?”

Tony winced. “Um, close enough. Let’s go home before… um. Let’s just go home. Now.”

Clint and Natasha exchanged wary glances. Steve just looked unimpressed. “Tony, what did you do?”

“I may have sort of convinced Thor to stay on Jotunheim and drink in some of the local culture in lieu of actually doing anything Odin told us to do.”

“And is this going to be a problem?” Steve asked.

It was telling, how quickly everyone looked to Loki for an answer.

“Your world is safe as can be hoped. I believe Odin will approve of the means we used, and of Thor’s choice to stay on Jotunheim. Still, a quick exit would be prudent. I am not about to make any more wagers this voyage.”

Natasha’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion. “‘More’?”

“Don’t ask,” Tony advised. “Steve’s suffered enough.”

“How are we getting home?” Clint asked. “Bifrost, or hole in the universe?”

Loki considered. “Heimdall will be watching over both. We may as well pay him another visit.”

They dispersed, packed their things, and managed to gather at the Bifrost before anyone showed up to stop them.

Then, of course, it was a matter of getting past Heimdall. “Loki, the King has not granted you permission to leave this realm a second time and return to Midgard.”

Loki nodded. “True. Nor has he ordered you to keep me here. The Allfather will not likely lock me up for disobeying him, but he may again order me to stay on Asgard. I have fulfilled my oath to him to stay until he bid me leave, and this may be your only chance in a great while to be rid of my presence for a few decades.”

“Loki Silvertongue, you argue with cogence,” Heimdall acknowledged blandly, and stood aside.

Once they were situated, Heimdall lifted the key into place, and the Bifrost sent them home.