Part 1 - Chp 7
Natasha gets Steve on board. They have a meeting and everything--Barton, Tony, Natasha, Steve.
Tony, with great force of will, keeps his mouth shut and lets Natasha do most of the debriefing on what she and Tony have pieced together.
Tony is not surprised that what hooked Steve--more than a clear enemy and a possible purpose--was the Winter Soldier.
“How do we want to go about doing this?” Tony asks. Steve’s supposed to be a great strategist.
(He’s not bitter (right) and if this is a team effort--which it is--then they need a great strategist.)
“Thorough,” Steve says. “If we don’t wipe them out in one shot, they’ll come back.”
“‘Cut off one head and three more shall take its place,’” Natasha echoes, entirely unnecessarily in Tony’s mind. But point made.
“We could start with Bucky,” Barton pipes up. “He probably knows more about how they operate, inside stuff, bases that wouldn’t be documented.”
Tony doesn’t point out he thinks that the chances of them being able to get the Winter Soldier on their side is slim to none. Mostly because he’s sitting across from Captain America and he’d prefer not to get punched today.
“Possibly,” Natasha says--she’s so much more tactful than him.
“It’s a start,” Steve says, voice steel edged.
They were always going to start with Bucky.
***
Tony hasn’t seen Loki around in the two days since Loki slammed him against the wall and strangled him. As much as he’d like it to go longer, his body and parts of his brain think that’s a terrible idea.
Tony would very much like to know why the hell he got stuck with the most stereotypical of fairy tale soulmate bonds possible. Real, physical ache at not being around Loki is going to be a hell of a problem down the road.
He finds Loki in his workshop; it makes the hair rise on the back of his neck mostly because he’s not more pissed off about Loki rummaging through his workshop. Loki, for his part, doesn’t seem to be touching anything since his hands clasped behind his back, but it still should be pissing him off.
Instead, it just looks… natural.
“What are you doing here?” Tony asks, ignoring that it doesn’t have half as much vehemence in it as it should.
Loki glances at him briefly, but his eyes quickly dart away from Tony. Tony crosses his arms and frowns at him, but Loki still isn’t looking at him. Tony doesn’t think it’s guilt about being caught where he shouldn’t be; Loki certainly hasn’t stopped roaming the workshop since Tony showed up.
“I wished to see you. You were occupied. You are here more than any other room in this house.”
“Okay. You’ve seen me.”
Tony does not admit he wanted to see Loki as well; encouraging Loki seems like a good way to get back into no personal space at all. Traitorously, part of him thinks that sounds amazing.
Loki’s face does this complex expression--a series of expressions, each so fast Tony can’t catch any of them, only a vague sense of the whole: fear-distress-upset.
“Wait, are you frightened?” Tony asks.
The look Loki gives him could freeze a wildfire, and that just with his eyes--the rest of his face is utterly still. But he doesn’t say anything else--definitely not just flat out lie the way Tony did.
“Why?” Tony asks. He moves closer to where Loki is standing; Loki watches, simultaneously looking like he might bolt and he doesn’t care at all. He also doesn’t answer the question.
Tony studies him; he looks, well… better. Still lean and whipcord, but his hair is sleek and neatly tied away from his face now and there aren’t dark circles beneath his eyes. While his cheekbones could probably still cut someone, he doesn’t look like he’s one missed meal away from starvation. In fact, Tony can’t remember the last time he saw Loki looking quite so half-illusion as he had those first few days.
He narrows his eyes at Loki hasn’t said anything, just waiting on Tony.
“As much as I’m sure you’d love for me to put words in your mouth, I’m not going to,” Tony says pointedly, crossing his arms. He might have guesses, but that seems like a good way to risk more trouble with Loki--nothing Barton has told Tony suggest otherwise, either.
“An exchange then,” Loki says. When Tony raises an eyebrow, Loki adds, “What frightens you for what frightens me.”
It sounds equal enough. Loki isn’t going to say anything otherwise, and Tony does actually want to know more about the god than what he got out of Barton.
“Deal.”
Loki smiles then, a brief quicksilver thing sharp as a knife.
“Don’t be creepy about it,” Tony says, pointing at him and scowling.
“I would never,” Loki says, appalled at the mere implication, eyebrows climbing. Tony believes that about as far as he could throw Loki without the suit; then again, Loki doesn’t seem a fan of lies and probably doesn’t think he is being creepy. Dammit. Then, “I did ask you first.”
“And then you threw me against a wall,” Tony points out.
“Because you lied.”
“As a reason for me to go first, that isn’t convincing me.”
“What is the energy in your chest for?”
It takes Tony a second to realize what Loki is talking about, then he resists the urge to cover the light shining through his shirt. He gives a tense smile.
“Asking more questions won’t make me open up,” Tony says. “You haven’t even answered the first one.”
“You agreed to an exchange. You seem ill-inclined to follow through. I am merely seeing if there are any other fears you wish to trade.” Loki cocks his head to the side, analytic and inhuman. “Or are you an oathbreaker as well as a liar and killer? What else do I need know of this life of yours? How far have you fallen this time?”
Tony’s mouth goes dry.
“Who told you that I’m a killer?”
(Nevermind that it’s true--blood seeped into Tony’s hands he doesn’t know how to scrub out, doesn’t think he can.)
Loki just looks at him.
“You’re really crap at being not weird,” Tony says, and if his voice shakes a little, that’s pretty understandable, all things considered.
“Your values change too quickly to bother with normal.” Loki sneers the word, tensing just briefly as he does, almost vibrating. “Shall you keep your deal or am I wasting what breath you have?”
“I didn’t even think I had a soulmate and here you are. You talk like I’ve always been your soulmate even though I’m pretty clearly human and you are whatever the hell you are. What am I supposed to think? What isn’t terrifying about having you for my other half? Why the hell aren’t you terrified of all this?”
Loki frowns as Tony speaks, a little dip appearing between his eyebrows.
“I forget,” Loki murmurs, “that you do not remember.”
“Remember what?” Tony asks. He rocks back on his heels as Loki pushes into his personal space, hands no longer clasped behind his back but reaching for Tony’s face. Tony quickly grabs Loki by the wrists though Loki’s much stronger than him; Loki allows Tony to stop him. “Remember what?”
“You are everything,” Loki says. “I do not say that lightly. You were the first and you shall be the last when all things end, when all is consumed and born anew. You will always be my first and my last, in all the cycles of this universe. You are everything.” Loki’s eyes search over Tony’s face, raw and open. “And I forget that you do not remember, and so we must start again--again and again. That no matter how tightly we are bound, it is not memory, not for you.”
Loki twists his hands out of Tony’s grip, sliding them so that their fingers entwine. Tony can’t look away from Loki, the way Loki is studying the roughness of Tony’s hands next to his own.
“Without you, I am nothing,” Loki says. “I exist because of you and I will cease at the end of all things when you cease, and were you to ever… ever—” Loki stops, bites his lip, then his features smooth to stillness again. He does not look up at Tony’s face.
Tony makes himself breathe and not break under the incomprehensible weight of time pooled in front of him.
“I am not as I was,” Loki murmurs. “Forgive me.”
“How about,” Tony says, once he’s swallowed around the dryness, “we try this again. Hi, my name’s Tony Stark, and I just helped break you out of somewhere I probably shouldn’t have.”
Loki smiles, looking up to meet Tony’s eyes.
“I am called Loki.”