Saying Your Names

Thor is massive. He’s broad in the shoulders, taller than Loki, muscles rippling in his arms as he tenses with an equally massive hammer in one hand. His hair is gold and shining with searing sky blue eyes entirely focused on Loki. Not to mention the way the air crackles around him, charged with the promise of storms to come.

“None of your jests, Loki,” Thor says, pointing, and see, that seems to Tony like exactly the wrong thing to say, because even his impulse is a self-destructive mouthing off.

“How much energy did it take to send you here, I wonder? Or have you finally rebuilt the precious Bifrost? Took you long enough.” Loki starts to circle Thor. Tony exchanges a quick look with Barton before they both head for better cover, though Thor doesn’t seem to have eyes for anyone but Loki.

“Or is there something else that your precious All Father has sent you here for, and I am, as ever, incidental?”

“Loki, we thought you dead.” Thor takes a step towards Loki, face pained. Loki stays still, letting Thor get in his space, and the other god carefully sets a hand at Loki’s neck with an intimacy that has Tony’s skin crawling and him grinding his teeth.

“Did you mourn?” Loki asks carelessly, already seeming disinterested in whatever answer Thor might give him.

“We all did!” Thor says, near tears, and Tony can see how the words hit Loki, leave him vulnerable in a way Tony’s only seen a few times, all when Loki is raw and frightened and unsure of his place in the world. “All of us. Brother, please—”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

“I am not your brother,” Loki spits, shoving Thor away, a snarl on his face making him wild and vicious. No, more--Loki’s barely holding together at the edges, fury bleeding the shadows and he looks like he might—

“Loki, please, I do not wish to fight you. I do not know what I’ve done to offend you, why you felt you needed to pretend your own death—”

Loki lunges and Tony decides that while he’s survived a lot, the epicenter of two gods going at it isn’t one he really wants to try adding to the list. Loki’s sworn not to hurt Tony, so hey, might as well test that out--Tony manages to get himself between them, grabbing hold of (fur, that’s definitely fur and scale and slick), other hand trying to push back Thor (shit he’s pretty sure he’s just burned his hand and his teeth are buzzing, copper electric taste blooming on his tongue with the contact).

“Stop,” Tony says, putting all his suddenly very real fear into the word.

Amazingly enough, they do.

Of course, then Loki’s hauling Tony away from Thor, hissing and spitting; he’s holding a form, even if Tony can’t quite make out what it is through the shadows except big, twisting restlessly and claws tearing up the ground beneath them. Thor, at least, still looks mostly human. There’s something.

Thor is also staring at Tony, consideration in his eyes as he draws back a few steps. It gets Loki to relax a little more, even if there’s still a low growl in the room.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Barton says. “Also, backup is here.”

“Great. Let’s have the not-family-family get together back at the base.” Even though it makes Tony’s skin crawl a bit, he reaches up to snag Loki by the jaw (wolf-snake-beak, shifting slowly between and all at the same time, wicked and vicious) and get the god to look at him. “I want to go somewhere safe. We have Barton. That’s why we came here--mission accomplished. I want you to bring the big guy so he doesn’t crash through the base like he did this building.” He’s a little surprised how calm he is even though Loki’s mouth of choice is large enough to bite his head off in one go. For all the animalistic appearance, his eyes are still Loki’s--poisonous green and intelligent and aware, hyper-aware even--and touching him is running a jolt through Tony just as sure and complete as the first time they touched.

It’s still Loki, big and inhuman and nightmare fuel as he currently is.

Loki hisses, a little, a string of images pressing into Tony’s head that are sharp and bitter with sarcasm, but then there’s a hiss of close your eyes that Tony’s getting used before there’s a yank and they’re sliding into the spaces between things.

***

“That was pretty stupid,” Barton tells him.

“I’m not giving you any scotch,” Tony tells him and goes back to nursing his drink.

“You landed on top of me.”

Tony sighs and pushes the bottle towards Barton.

“Loki done then?”

“Yeah. Well, at least with me. He’s pretty high strung right now.”

“It is not my job to calm him down. Nope. I did not sign up for this. I’ve done my duty, I made sure we didn’t get turned into a vaporized mist when those two went at it.” Tony pauses. “Thor, right? Do you know anything about him?”

“Did you not read any of the reports on that?”

“SHIELD didn’t have Thor in custody.”

“Then you’re extra stupid.” Barton grins, wide, and while he probably does mean it a bit, it takes the bite out of it. “Battle, thundestorms, summer, people who aren’t loaded the way you are, and soulmates. He showed up in ‘67 without any powers and looking like a normal human, left not too long after when he got his hammer back. The town wasn’t so much his fault as something that his brother sent after him to finish the job that being cast out didn’t, or something. No one’s quite sure, and it’s not like anyone was around then to ask him.”

Tony polishes off his drink. Soulmates huh?

“I’m gonna go talk to him. Give me my scotch back.”

“No courage like liquid courage,” Barton intones, handing it back over.

***

If Tony’s honest, the main reason he’s bothering Thor is to see if he can’t find some way to defuse the situation between him and Loki. Starting with Loki--while Loki is working on figuring out where Natasha is--seems like the dumbest idea possible; it took a solid ten minutes after Thor left the room before Loki finally settled on his more human self. Dressed for war, sure, but at least not destroying the room when he tried to move in a space never designed with a god in mind.

If he’s still twitchy like Barton says, then there’s not going to be anything Tony can do without winding him back up again.

Thor is outside of the base, arms folded and staring over the cliff face not so far away. He’s thinking, that much is clear, mouth set in a firm and decidedly unhappy line.

“Drink?” Tony offers the bottle and doesn’t look away as Thor looks at him.

“No,” Thor says and goes back to looking out over the forest.

Tony can handle silence. He also can handle not sharing his alcohol.

Unfortunately, he came out here to find a way to defuse things, so he can’t just shrug and go back inside. He takes his solace in sitting down on a nearby log and pouring himself another glass of scotch. It’s almost companionable, this way.

Tony’s most of the way through his glass when Thor finally speaks again, his voice a low rumble.

“You are my brother’s soulmate.”

“Seems that way.” Tony sips his drink and waits on Thor. Waiting, he’s decided, is the best way to go with these god types.

Tony almost thinks that’s all Thor’s inclined to say. He studies the bottom of his glass, tilting it to watch the way the light cuts through it, debating if he wants to go for glass four or stop now. Loki will probably figure out where Natasha is soon, after all, and he’d rather not be trashed for that.

“He has not needed you… in a very long time. An epoch, at least.”

That gets Tony’s attention.

“He was not pretending death, was he?” Thor asks, finally turning to look at Tony.

“Not really, no.” Tony stares up (and up) at Thor. Thor looks disappointed, mostly at himself, and he heaves a great sigh that Tony feels the last gusts of.

“Then I have done him a great wrong, in more ways than one.”

Tony shrugs--he doesn’t know about all that, but he also doesn’t know anything about Thor and his relationship to Loki other than Loki reacts with extreme murder to being called brother.

“You said he hasn’t needed me. What do you mean by that?”

“You are his soulmate,” Thor says. “When he does not need you, then the two of you do not meet.”

“Wait, you mean to tell me that I’ve lived… who knows how many lives, thinking I don’t have a soulmate? Just because he—”

“Loki,” Thor interrupts gently, “is unique. As are you and your relationship to each other. Who else could ever help him but the creator of the one who constructs ways out for Asgard? Who else would ever be strong enough to bear the weight of not knowing his soulmate but the one who created the very cynicism that threatens its mere existence?”

Tony stares.

“You are everything,” Thor says. “All of the souls who created us are, but you most especially. Without you, we have no Loki. Without Loki, change and entropy do not exist.”

“I think I need another drink."

***

Basically, Tony gathers from talking with Thor, gods are thoughtforms. Sort of. They’re also real, solid beings, tangible, who exist on real other realms (read: worlds) that one day humanity will likely see for themselves. They grow and change, personalities developing the same as any human’s even if their sense of time is totally different.

But the thoughtform thing--once, who knows how long ago, there were a handful of souls (physicality hadn’t quite been conceived yet) who thought up gods. The earliest souls with concepts at their core they brought to life. Maybe intentionally, maybe not--Thor isn’t sure on that detail, can barely remember it.

The gods have been developing since then the way ideas do, and the souls that first created them were the first soulmates.

(Apparently, not everyone used to have a soulmate, but Thor glosses over how it went from a few to everyone.)

One of those souls was Tony.

Tony isn’t sure how much of all that he believes--it’s a lot to try and take in--but Thor doesn’t seem to care whether Tony believes so much as he understands because this is what Loki believes, and belief--well belief is almost the same as truth with a thoughtform nearly as old as the universe.

***

“I need to apologize to my brother,” Thor says, standing up from where he’s been sitting next to Tony on the log.

“Yeah, about that.” Thor stops, looking at Tony. “Don’t call him brother. He kind of didn’t like that.”

“I noticed,” Thor says dryly. “But what else is he? When I last saw him, he said he was not for reasons that I did not know. Now I do, and I know no other way to reassure him that for all that may have happened, he is yet my brother--in bond, if not blood.”

“You could try his name,” Tony suggests. “Just… he’s not all together. If you get my meaning. He nearly killed me for lying about whether I was scared or not when we first met.”

Thor frowns.

“He is unwell.”

Tony shrugs.

“He’s something. I just think maybe you should do us all a favour and not call him brother until you two have some quality time together to sort out what the hell happened.”

“I am grateful for the warning,” Thor says, all formality. “What is he attempting to do?”

“We need to find Romanoff. Barton donated some blood to the cause.”

“Are they related?”

“No, soulmates. Loki seems to think that’s enough.”

Thor smiles, damn near blinding.

“More than,” Thor says. “I shall assist him.”