But give me the frost of your name
in my mouth, give me
spiny fruits and scaly husks —
give me breathto say aloud to the breathless clouds
your name, to say
I am, let me need
to say it and still need you
to give me need, to make me
into what is needed, what you need,no more than that I am, no more
than the stray winds on my neck, the salt
of your palm on my tongue, no morethan need, a neck that will bend
lower to what I am so
give me creeping, give me clouds that hang
low and sweep the blue of the sky
to its edges, let me taste the edges, the bread-colored clouds,
here I am, give methumb and fingers, give me only
what I need, a turn here
to turn what I am
into I am, what your name writ in clouds
writ on me
0.
He can’t breathe. He tries, but it’s all too thin, not enough, and he flails through blurred vision to try to claw down-down-down, to heat that he can only barely feel any longer on his skin—
(everything is so distant)
—but he’s too weak. Tries to summon the energy to push (again), hisses as pain flares in his bones, catches fire (the wrong kind of fire), and lays on the ground, too thin and too frail chest heaving.
(end he’s going to end)
He can’t feel his hands, only feels cracked skin and sticky puss on his forearms.
(he doesn’t know where he came from how he got here, only that he needs to end, to destroy-burn-cleanse, return to formless shapeless darkness that he sprang from, there is nothing else he has)
XXX
There is another--human--there. Someone who flickers. Smells like blood, like war, but not the kind of war he wants (not a war to end). He watches through blurred vision as he comes and goes, words through too thin air incomprehensible.
The human wants something.
He’d lash out if he could; he can’t, not without hurting more, without risking what little flame he has left, so he snarls instead and spits in the human’s face, then cackles at the string of swears.
(He’s going to end him first.)
XXX
He thinks, once, that he wasn’t so small.
XXX
Once—only once—he slips where he’s been locked away, blood spilling down his hands and throat.
(He’s too weak to disappear, too weak to take form, last of his will spent in the rending of his chains.)
(He is starving, hunger licking up his throat, beast tearing him apart, he is going to die this way and he does not care because he is free.)
He stumbles.
(If he could just claw his way to the center of the world, he’d drain this realm dry, juice of it smeared down his chin, and kill them slowly by the same starvation forced on him.)
(As if he’d beg for their worship.)
He hears someone swear, and his head turns. Blinks, vision fracturing and fractured, dazzled by the well-spring of this particular human—well-spring—
She’s terrified, stepping back. She smells like the other, faint, but she’s not bloody (not yet)(not in this life)—but there’s a tie (there’s a future, in her).
She is awed, and he steps closer with a whine because he is so hungry (it isn’t right, awe, not quite, but it’s close and he hasn’t eaten in so long—
She will birth blood and end (war to end all wars) and he will crawl before her and beg a taste of what she offers, has nothing to give and yet the future in her veins is as brilliant and ripe as the realm he would devour (she is the realm in miniature, the world birthing its own destruction) and he needs—
She says something again and he lunges for her as she tries to run—
(”Let’s end this,” his beloved says, eyes the shade of blood-soaked ground, blue glow cast across his face, and his beloved smiles, a thin quirk of the right of his mouth. “After you, Loki.”
He—Loki, his name is Loki—grins, uncurls himself and laughs.)
He listens to the sigh of her blood and croons to the future she has not yet born.
XXX
He lets himself be captured again. Waits.
XXX
Eventually, the human who chained him stops arriving at all. He—Loki—stirs from the floor, from counting the cracks and scars and how shallow he can make his breath in the too thin, chained air.
(It feels as if he has waited centuries.)
He has so little left—a few drops her awe.
(It will be enough.)
(It will be. There is a future that awaits.)
He pushes himself, pulls a too heavy hand to his lips, and blows the near last of his fire across his finger tips, feeling the chains that have stripped the air cut his breath.
Beloved he sighs. The thought rests against his fingers, dances, then flutters away.
He closes his eyes and lets his hand fall back to his side.
When he opens his eyes (thousands upon thousands of heartbeats later, the world a little older, the universe spun a little further off its axis), there are eyes the shade of blood-soaked ground staring at him, wide and stunned and young, no blue glow at all.
The young man says something; Loki laughs, chokes, then does both, too weak to curl on his side.
(At some point, he realizes he is being carried, little more than stardust and thought held together by promise of the future.)
XXX
He—the young man—sets him down at some point, works by and around. Everything comes in stops and starts. A hand touching his wrist. Swearing that smells like the richest feast Loki could ever have if he could but manage to work past these chains. The mouth-watering intent of candles lit that manage to trickle in despite the work of this man’s father, Loki unable to help licking his lips like the... worship is the first drops of water after crossing a desert.
There is a lance of pain, bright and sharp and all-consuming, agony, he is being torn open and apart what has he done what what what, and he screams
(screams, born-reborn-destroyed-shattered)
and it’s gone, as quickly and sharply as it came.
He blinks, stares with wide eyes at the room he is in, at the face above him—
He can see. His vision is not fogged, he can see (blood and branching paths and history, colours that swirl emotion and thoughts) and he sobs, gasping in air that is not strained thin and too little, shaking and shuddering as sensation overwhelms him, turns him raw, fills him full to bursting and he cannot stretch out entire but he is not cramped and chained down and dying.
He cannot stop sobbing, cannot stop how tears streak his face even as the sobs hiccup into laughter, shrieking and half-mad laughter, because he cannot do but he can feel and eat and oh-oh-oh his beloved is so clever, bloody and rich and brilliant, is truly beloved (how could he not love him for this), and he reaches for him with the strength already flooding his veins, touching his face, laughter shaking him, memorizing the form his beloved has (he will not lose him, never-never, oh and how the universe will shudder if it tries to take him)(this is why he ends he understands, he understands).
”Your name,” he says, slurs across his tongue, because he would have this mortal’s name, would sear it into his soul, will take his true name from him piece by piece and guard it for eternity (none shall harm him without feeling Loki’s wrath), “your name,” and he cares not at all if it sounds of begging.
”Tony. Fucking hell. It’s Tony.”
”Tony,” Loki croons. “Tony.” He smooths his hand through Tony’s hair, then smiles.
”You?” Tony asks, voice shaking but features casual but for the wideness of his eyes. (Awed. Awe that is given to him, awe he basks in.)
”Loki,” he says. “Loki-who-ends, Loki-Bringer, Loki-eater-of-worlds,” and even as he says them he knows they are true, that they are what Tony will desire of him, what Tony will pray to him for, and his smile grows soft because his Tony is already so brilliant, already smells so richly of the blood he has been raised in, and soon (soon) he will be so much more.
Loki will ensure it himself.
Anything at all for his beloved, anything in all the worlds.
1.
He’s not thinking of anything by the time he gets home.
(Tells himself he’s not. Pushes back at all the thoughts crowding his head, what he needs to do, how to do it.)
”Welcome home, sir,” Jarvis says.
”Thank you kindly, Jarvis,” Tony replies automatically. He wanders, feeling half a stranger. It’s too pristine. No one lives here.
As the lights come up, he starts towards the spray of flowers left on the coffee table, pulling the sling he’d been forced in off, then his jacket, throwing both over the arm of the couch.
”Based off news reports, I calculated your chances of survival at .25%.”
”Yeah, I missed you too.” He picks up a box—a watch, Thank god it wasn’t your time —Obadiah.
Jarvis wouldn’t have known. Did anyone even bother to tell him what was going on? News reports.
He sighs (one more thing to plan for in the future) and looks up, then heads toward the window. A display comes up as he does, pale blue washing out the glow in his chest he’s still not used to (still trying to ignore).
”You have 1713 new voice messages. How shall I categorize them for you?”
Tony glances over the display, doesn’t even make an effort to care. He swipes his fingers across the surface, drags the group down and confirms aloud, "Delete all.”
He turns back around to look at the room. It still feels off.
(It’s him, that’s the problem, it’s him, he’s changed, what does a person even do with this much space, of course it doesn’t feel lived in, he’s been gone mon—
”What happened to the waterfall?” Tony asks. There’s still a pool at the base of the stairs, but it looks like there was never a waterfall at all. More, as his eyes adjust, he realizes the piano’s missing. One of the end tables, a vase that (once) was perpetually filled with plants.
”It was disabled for safety reasons, sir.” Then, gentle—gentle as Jarvis ever is, which speaks almost as much as stating percentages as to how rattled the AI was and is—Jarvis adds, “Your absence was worrying.”
Tony looks at the empty spaces, vaguely alarmed but still not sure why.
(unlived in)
”Loki,” Tony says, pulled out of him too quickly, and he thinks news reports and who told Jarvis and worse, so much worse, because Jarvis has ways to escape but Loki—
”The lab, sir. It is currently locked down.”
Tony heads for the lab before Jarvis even finishes talking, reciting off the pass-phrase as he goes, hand briefly touching the reader. The door doesn't open immediately.
(Tony doesn't scream. He doesn't think he has it left in him right now. He wants to, though, oh he wants to. Loki, how could he have—)
(because thinking about him was too risky, too distracting, and would change nothing. What good is prayer when all the gods are chained?)
”Jarvis,” he says quietly, instead, hands balling into fists and shoulder aching for it. Chest aching worse.
”I advise caution, sir. While he is listless now, he has expounded at great length the many ways he wishes to destroy you.”
”I’m sure they were creative,” Tony says as the door slides open.
The lab is, to put it mildly, a wreck. Glass crunches beneath his feet, a few tables flipped, half the lights blown out. Dum-e and U are both off in a corner and look fine, beeping as he steps in—but then that doesn’t surprise Tony. Even at his worst, Loki’s never harmed them, some instinctual recognition that doesn’t always extend to Tony. Locked down, Jarvis said—more like locked in.
A quick glance around, though, does not reveal the resident half-mad god.
”Hey guys,” he says, starting to ease his way over towards the bots, glancing under work benches in case Loki’s curled up under any of them and is planning on leaping out. The air smells, instantly recognizable from a life time of welding—charred skin, burnt hair. Acrid.
(There’s blood spatter, on the floor, on the glass.)
Dum-e clicks his claw at Tony as he gets closer; Tony looks up, realizes that neither bot has moved though the wreckage isn’t enough to stop them, though they would have, normally. There’s just enough space between them, though….
He pauses by them, patting each absently, and stares down at where Loki is curled between them. Loki’s eyes are just barely open, staring at some middle distance Tony has never wanted to know (but is too familiar with now). The skin at his neck and wrists is burnt, clear puss glistening, the silver necklace and bracelets gleaming against the ruin.
(If Loki were human, he’d be dead.)
”Budge up, guys,” Tony tells the bots, and crouches down in the cleared space, settling a hand on Loki’s calf. (Too thin, half-wasted; the sheer amount of energy Loki must have chewed through to have marks as bad as he does, marks that aren’t healing. If he’s been locked to the lab, he hasn’t eaten in… Tony doesn’t know. Too long.)
Loki’s eyelids flicker, then his eyes shift to look at Tony. There’s fury there; Loki kicks. Tries to kick. Tony’s hand barely moves.
”Hey,” Tony says.
Loki snarls and closes his eyes like he can shut Tony out, but it’s not a moment and they’re open again. Looking at Tony, at Tony’s chest with a flicker of recognition. Tony ignores it for now and just rubs his hand along Loki’s calf.
”How’s takeout sound?” Tony asks. Loki doesn’t answer—Tony is fairly certain Loki doesn’t even understand speech, not if Jarvis deemed it necessary to lock Loki in the lab.
(But this is how it goes. Loki breaks, crashes, becomes greater—too vast, incomprehensible, inhuman. Loki only needs the reminder of how Tony comprehends to start working his way back towards it.)
”Jarvis, order Chinese from that place Loki likes. A little of it all.”
(Food is everything to the gods.)
xxx
Tony’s had Loki for only slightly less time than Howard’s been dead. Found him from a rumour he heard, buried and hidden so that only Tony could find him. When Tony did, Loki was so far gone it had made Tony’s stomach churn, even back when he cared so much less.
Tony doesn’t know where Loki came from. All the gods had been chained or dead for generations, accounted for, and for all Howard’s records, there weren’t any that directly mentioned what he’d done to get Loki (or create him, but Tony's never let himself dwell too long on that thought).
There are a few hundred laws Tony’s breaking by not keeping Loki under lock and key, and a couple international treaties. (That, of course, doesn’t account for the fact Loki should be registered and not the Stark family’s best kept secret.)
While he waits on the food to arrive, he has U go rummaging for the spare candles, lets Dum-e feel him up and make sure he’s alright. He keeps a hand on Loki’s calf the whole time, thumb rubbing through the thin material of his pants, occasionally glancing at him.
Loki stares at him. Listless, Jarvis said earlier; Tony is marginally grateful since it means he’s not dealing with anything being thrown at his head. Loki would; might be the only one right now, and Tony’s grateful for the threat implied by the anger in Loki’s eyes even if Loki barely has the energy to breathe, let alone throw something. It's the only normal thing he's encountered since he got back.
Only when he’s got both candles and food does Tony move his hand and start to sort everything out.
The candles he arranges in a half circle, lighting them as he goes. Loki’s eyes follow him as he works, the god stirring for the first real time since Tony got back to rest his head on one arm. Tony doesn’t say anything to him, not yet; words won’t be any use until Loki isn’t burnt hollow. Instead, he starts to dig through the bags of food until he finally finds the soups.
(It’s not about Loki’s stomach. Not the physical one at any rate.)
Dum-e’s already found several bowls and only cracked one as he brought them over. Tony half-smiles, the most genuine he can manage, before he sets them near Loki.
The candlelight is gleaming off Loki’s eyes, dark and furious, makes already sharp cheekbones enough to slice atoms and shadows flicker over him like he’s half-fire himself. The hand not tucked beneath his head is twitching as he grinds his teeth.
(Anyone who saw him now would tell Tony to let Loki starve until he begged, that feeding a furious god was suicide. Tony, not particularly religious but certainly an engineer, would point out that would be like using last season's hardware to run Jarvis.)
Tony pours the egg drop soup into one of the bowls, watches the vapour wisp up into chaotic curls, and catches the god’s eye.
”Loki,” Tony says quietly.
He doesn’t manage reverence that first time, not quite, but as he repeats the process over and over and over, slowly and methodically working his way through everything, it gets easier. He remembers the shape of this on his tongue, the thrum of it in his throat. As he goes, Loki’s eyes droop, fury and tenseness both abating. Tony barely notices when the ugly burns on Loki’s wrist and neck begin to heal, only pays attention to the way Loki’s lips part after consuming essence and Tony finally offers him that first sensual taste.
Tony feeds him slowly and by hand, sticky fingers lingering to brush Loki’s lips. Loki doesn’t move but to consume, eyes greedy. Tony keeps murmuring Loki’s name, free hand aided by Dum-e and U pushing cartons over so he doesn’t have to move, so that Loki has all of his focus.
And how Loki basks, drinking down the attention as readily as he eats what Tony offers him, flush on high cheekbones and breath warm and wet, air around him beginning to grow heavy and raising the hair on the back of Tony’s neck.
”Loki,” Tony says, warm and fond, and Loki’s eyes close, breath hitching and a soft whine in his throat as he shifts where he lays, one hand inching towards Tony.
Tony smiles. He waves off whatever it is U has now, putting his thumb in his mouth and biting into the flesh until it bleeds. It hurts (it always hurts), bright and sharp; the smell is coppery on the air, even to Tony. For Loki, it’s so much more, eyes flying open and his tongue flicking across suddenly dry lips, eyes focused not on Tony but the blood that rolls over his finger pad, droplets made fat pomegranate seeds in the light.
”Hold still,” Tony murmurs, reaching down to smear the blood across Loki’s bottom lip. Loki’s eyes darken violently, pupils blown entirely, and he shakes as Tony strokes his lip, hand fisting Tony’s pants leg. He doesn’t breathe, only waits, and without meaning too Tony holds his own breath, too.
Tony slides his thumb into Loki’s mouth, rolls the open cut over the hill of his lip and onto his tongue. Loki’s hot, tongue curling around the pad of Tony’s thumb even as he moans. Green eyes roll up, flush spreading from his cheeks and down his throat as he laps at the blood freely given, finally, finally moving to press closer to Tony. Tony grips him with his free hand, half-hauling Loki into his lap, Loki clawing for purchase.
Already, there’s weight that wasn’t there when Tony returned, the skin beneath Loki’s bonds unscarred and smooth.
Loki lets go of Tony’s thumb, lunging to claim Tony’s mouth in a kiss. Tony only pulls him closer, grip bruising (would be bruising). Tony grabs a fistful of Loki’s hair and pulls, Loki bites Tony’s lip until he draws blood, both fighting to claim the other, desperate to close what spaces there are.
When they pull back, Loki rests his head against Tony’s neck and laughs. It’s soft, breathy, half-cracked, spasms the way that Loki’s hands do on Tony’s arms. His mouth is smeared in blood (but then, so’s Tony’s now; he can taste it).
”Tony,” Loki whispers, grip tightening and relaxing again.
”Loki.”
One of Loki’s hands smooths along Tony’s chest, comes to rest just beneath the arc reactor.
”What happened?”
What little peace and distance Tony had shatters. He stiffens, goes to pull back, but Loki is heavy and has no interest in moving, only keeps stroking the curve just under the reactor.
”Idiot,” Loki says.
Tony debates shoving Loki off and leaving him. He could have Jarvis relock the lab when he leaves, come back when Loki isn’t—
He swallows bile.
(What, like how Tony was kept locked away, threatened, told to build things like some pet engineer?)
”I could fix this,” Loki says, oblivious (pretending oblivious), tapping a nail against the reactor. Tony feels Loki’s eyelashes brush against his throat, a wry smile curve his lips. It’s a lie—Loki’s not a god of healing, never has been.
(All those gods are dead, tore themselves apart long before Tony was born.)
Loki can do something, but it’s not healing.
”Maybe later,” Tony says.
Loki sniffs like Tony doesn’t know a good offer when he’s given it, which may well be the case.
”I will destroy them,” Loki says mildly. He undoes one of the buttons of Tony’s shirt, the blue glow brightening now that it isn’t obstructed. “I’ll chase the branches that caught you to the trunk, rip them up by the roots. There won’t be anything left of them, except that they once existed, only enough to strike terror in the heart of any who dare think to try again.” Loki pauses as Tony’s fingers find the silver chain around his throat. “Jarvis wouldn’t let me go.” It’s an accusation—if Jarvis had, if Tony had considered and left instructions for the situation, Loki would have been able to do something.
(It’s guilt—because Tony did not consider Loki might need to save him (left Loki helpless and bound), Tony should let Loki take what revenge he can.)
”No,” Tony says. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. There’s too much to sort through still, too many things up in the air. He kisses the top of Loki’s head when Loki turns his face to press it fully against his shoulder. “No,” he repeats softly, rubbing the top of Loki’s spine.
Loki shudders—rage or hate or fear, Tony doesn’t know, not without seeing Loki’s eyes.
”You swore—” Loki cuts off.
”I did.” Tony sighs. “I need sleep.”
”Tell me,” Loki says, tapping the glass of the reactor again. “At least give me that much.”
Tony hesitates. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t know what he wants to do, besides sleep, besides stop thinking for two seconds.
He starts talking.
2.
Pepper knows exactly what Loki is.
This was not how she was introduced to him, of course. She found him in Tony’s bed, twined around Tony and unnaturally green eyes cat-heavy and focused on the stairs when she came in to wake Tony for a meeting. That hadn’t been unusual, not for Tony.
Unusual had been the knife-precise cut on Tony’s forearm that he’d waved off as an accident though it was clearly anything but. Unusual had been that she kept seeing Loki around, despite the fact she’d never seen or heard him mentioned in the press.
While curious, Pepper had never asked what they were to each other—it was something, but Pepper’s job was to get Tony where he needed to go when he needed to despite Tony’s own best efforts.
In hindsight, she always suspects that this practicality endeared her to Loki more than anything else.
XXX
There had been rumours, off and on, that Stark Industries had a god and that was why they were so very good at their weapons tech. Tyr, some people suggested, or maybe Ares. One of the old war gods.
Pepper never paid much attention to those rumours other than idle curiosity. It was boredom, waiting on Tony and overhearing a conversation about another god dead that reminded her.
Those of Howard’s notes she had access to rarely mentioned gods at all. It was… odd, considering his known interest in them.
It didn’t sit quite right.
Pepper, who had always considered journalism—or blogging, rather—to be an excellent alternative career path, kept poking around in her spare time, little as it was. To keep her skills sharp, true, but also to relieve some stress.
There still wasn’t all that much mention of gods.
Eventually, the trail dried up entirely—she wasn’t going to poke around and try to access the files that she didn’t have permission for. She wasn’t so invested in determining if the rumour was true or not to lose a job that she rather liked for all its hardships; instead, she tucked the research away and went on with her life.
XXX
It was an old file of Maria’s that Pepper came across that gave the side project life again. Paper, slipped between some photographs, likely misfiled who knew how long ago and lost forever the way things were. She’d been looking for suitable speeches for the Maria Stark Charity Ball for Tony to reference.
What she had was something else entirely.
It was a diary entry, torn out and pencil smudged almost beyond recognition. Two words were still legible, for the most part, two words that caught Pepper’s eye:
green eyes
She doesn’t know why she thought of Loki then, even if he was the very definition of green eyes. A gut feeling, instinct.
She folded the slip of paper, tucked it into her purse, and went back to work.
XXX
There were plenty of reasons for Pepper to dig through Maria’s old files. For one, Tony had never gotten all of them saved electronically, and for two, all the Stark Industries charity events had originally been her work. If Pepper was looking through them for another reason, well, no one needed to know.
They only made the god-shaped hole in Howard’s personal files more obvious.
XXX
By the time she’d finished going through Maria’s files, Pepper had both her own hand-written set and the entirely digitized originals.
If she said so herself, she’d done a better job removing the hints and mentions of gods that had been scattered throughout than whoever had handled Howard’s files had. Probably Tony, but there wasn’t any way for her to ask.
”Hey, when did mom’s stuff get uploaded?” Tony asked barely a week later. He was trying for casual, but there was vague alarm underneath.
”I did that,” Pepper told him. “It’s going to make my life much easier.”
”Was that all of them?”
”It was. Do you need the original files destroyed, Mr. Stark?”
Tony considered her for a long moment, likely weighing how much he trusted her. She’d been working for and with him for years at this point, but then so had Stane and she’d heard more than one at-length rant about him and had a long list of things not to discuss with him courtesy of Tony.
”Go for it,” Tony said, shrugging.
Pepper smiled.
XXX
The first time her side project’s trail had dried up, Pepper had settled on Loki and Tony having a surprisingly open relationship. Not surprising because of Tony, mind, but because in the time she’d come to know Loki, she’d realized he was incredibly possessive of Tony.
And it hadn’t been because Loki was sleeping with whoever Tony brought home, too. None of them even knew Loki existed; Pepper eventually realized that Loki knew when the one night stands were gone—not because anyone told him, either.
After going through Maria’s notes, his knowledge was cast in an entirely different light.
Pepper didn’t say anything to either Loki or Tony—she didn’t want them to change while she was still placing the last pieces. With all the work Tony had put in to make sure no one knew, it only seemed polite.
It explained quite a bit. The bowls of food she’d occasionally found left out, Tony snapping at her to leave them alone because they were Loki’s—even after they’d clearly been out overnight. The not at-all-accidental accidental cuts Tony sometimes sported. The unnatural green of Loki’s eyes, the particular tension he added to a room by simply entering. All the candles.
Gods were meant to be chained; what little Pepper had ever seen of those chains prior had been bulky things, ugly and wrong even through a photograph or TV. Loki didn’t wear anything at all like the ones she’d seen, but he did have a necklace—silver—that he occasionally toyed with and she’d never seen him without. Another time, she happened to notice matching bracelets; those, Loki was more careful about hiding. If anyone could redesign the old chains, it was Tony.
It wasn’t absolute—Pepper wasn’t going to go up and ask, not after all of her work—but…
Well, she certainly knew what she thought of the rumour.
It was a great deal more satisfying, that time, putting the project aside.
XXX
Pepper is seriously questioning why she never actually found out for sure that Loki is, in fact, a god. Ninety-nine percent is great when the stakes aren’t the mess that’s currently going on, but suddenly they feel like the worst sort of betting odds.
What other choice does she have?
She knows Stane was at the mansion—Stane, she was right to trust her gut, but even so—but if he was then where was Loki? Loki could have stopped Stane, why didn’t he? She has no idea where he is but he’s never left the mansion that she knows of—
Her hands are shaking and the first two times she tries to put the candle down it falls over. Tony might not want her to do this—Tony doesn’t even know she can, but she’s not destroying the reactor, not risking killing him, too, not when there’s another option. She hopes.
She’s right. She has to be. She knows how to investigate, everything says Loki is—
She has no idea what she’s doing. Tony always has candles, always has little cuts, always has food. She’s got a scented candle she found in one of the offices and a book of matches, and she can still hear the sounds of Stane and Tony fighting.
She breaks the first match. Bites her lip, tries again, trying to block off the noise and sound of metal screeching. The next springs to life, gets blown out by a gust of wind; she covers her head as part of the warehouse falls inward, followed by both of them.
The third match catches, holds steady long enough for her to get it to the wick of the candle.
”Loki,” Pepper says, desperate and not sure what she’s expecting, only she needs him here, needs him able to help, she can’t lose Tony, not again, not after he just got back, and if she’s right, Loki can do this without her having to destroy the reactor and risk him dying for some stupid notion of heroism.
”Loki,” she repeats again, voice cracking; the wick catches, sputters, then holds steady.
Nothing happens.
”Loki,” she says again, pleading, “please, please, save him, stop this, I know you can, stop acting like you can’t you—you—you idiot, I can’t—” She closes her eyes, tears spilling over and head bowed, shaking.
The air changes; Pepper looks up, and through blurry vision she can see Loki. He’s standing in front of her, staring at her, mouth parted and eyebrows raised in shock. She rubs the tears out of her eyes; when she looks again, there are red marks across his wrists and throat—where the bracelets and necklace would be, shattered or broken it doesn’t matter, but they’re gone, and already the air is thickening, heavy as the smoke of a burning building as Loki looks away from her, hearing the fighting going on.
”Obadiah betrayed Tony,” Pepper says. “He’s trying to kill him. The—where were you?”
”What do you want?” Loki asks, voice a rough growl; his shape is wrong, the outline of him blurred—no, blurring. He looks at her, eyes burning, the green starting to spill over like flame, his teeth sharpening and catching the light, jaw wrong (wolf or snake or somewhere between), and there are antlers branching over his head, sharp and dangerous and bloody, only the hints of human left to his form. Tell me, Loki hiss-scream-howls, claws ripping up chunks of the concrete, and Pepper clamps her hands over her ears, shaking and wide-eyed, mouth dry.
”Tony,” she says, faint, then licks her lips and says again, “Tony. I want you to save Tony.”
Loki stares at her for a heartbeat—too long, eternity—and Pepper shakes, crying, too weak to stand or move away or do anything but stare back and pray.
Hide Loki hisses, then he’s gone, tearing through the walls to the fighting, an unearthly shriek rising as he catches sight of them.
Pepper pushes herself back against the wall, hugs herself as she stares at the candle flame that hasn’t flickered for all the movement, and shakes.
XXX
”I had it under control,” Tony says.
Pepper levels a look at him where he’s still prying the armour off. Tony grimaces.
”Point taken,” he says.
”Where’s Loki?” she asks, though she honestly doesn’t want to know.
”Hell if I know,” he says, turning his face to hide his frown. He chuckles, bitter. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Pepper has no idea how Tony isn’t terrified of Loki now, what he is, what he can do. Why Tony’s bitter Loki’s gone when she still can’t close her eyes without seeing Loki again, beautiful and terrible and violence, and shudder in residual terror.
Gods, they’d been calling them. Pepper understands why all too clearly now.
3.
In the quiet, with Loki gone--still gone--Tony thinks about what he saw on the rooftop and he drinks.
Horns, antlers, fangs and star-glimmer, four-six-eight legs-claws, void and vast and--
"Wait--
No (hiss-howl-scream), too brilliant eyes (too many eyes) focusing on Tony over Stane's head (a promise)("I'll chase the branches that caught you to the trunk, rip them up by the roots. There won’t be anything left of them, except that they once existed, only enough to strike terror in the heart of any who dare think to try again" only Loki's found what he wanted, and he's vast, terrifying, spilled over the edges, shape changing, shifting, alien--)
(--beautiful)
Tony takes another drink, rubbing his eyes, and he can't tell if he's rubbing the images out or trying to press them closer.
xxx
Tony doesn't know if Loki will come back, just that he'll never be able to chain him again.
Doesn't want to anyway.
xxx
Weeks go by. Tony cleans up, deals with interviews, announces who he is because he's never been one to hide except in the spotlight.
(Sets himself alight because it might be enough to call Loki home.)
xxx
He's in the lab, tinkering, when there's the press of void-space-claws against his back, nuzzled by a face that barely holds shape more than a moment, and he's dropped his tools, banged his knee, he's swearing, twisting around to get an eyeful of bloody antlers and snake scale glimmer.
"Where were you? Why did you show up? How did you even get out? I had it under control," Tony demands, heart caught in his throat.
(Catalyst-war-home-rebirth hums in the air, thrums in Tony's veins, makes his blood feel blue-lit and live.)
Pepper prayed, Loki say-hums.
"I prayed," Tony says, petulant even though his heart still hasn't slowed down with Loki's sudden reappearance, though he can barely resist the urge to dig his hands into Loki's shifting form.
The sound Loki makes might be laughter, but it's enough to make the glass in the lab warp (unbecome) until suddenly it's so much sand across the floor.
You believed... "differently than she." Loki's still not all... normal, but shrinking, mostly contained to a human-shape again. He shakes his head; the antlers (bloody, Tony notes, strips of velvet hanging off) fall to the floor and disappear in the same swirl of dust that blows away to reveal two legs--not eight, or four, or somehow both.
Loki presses bare toes into the lab floor, lips pursed in thought.
"You believed that nothing could break my bonds except the physical. Pepper... did not. She prayed. She desired them broken." Loki pats at his coat that was definitely mostly fur and void a moment ago, then pulls out familiar silver alloy chains Tony made himself years ago. "She had faith. It was really quite marvelous."
Tony isn't sure what he thinks of that, but he takes the chains when Loki holds them out and only mutters a little.
"Don't throw them out," Loki says, his voice finally, finally settling into a range that doesn't vibrate down Tony's spine, that isn't layers that echo in his head or threaten to burst his eardrums. "I want you to make something of them."
Tony raises an eyebrow and waits.
4.
Pepper finds out Loki’s back while she’s in her office, sorting through all the property damage paperwork. Fitting, in a way. She’s willing to suspect he timed it intentionally.
”Ms. Potts,” Loki says. Pepper resolutely tightens her grip around the paperwork instead of drop it, shoving down her urge to startle.
He’s human again. Looks it, at any rate, though Pepper can pick out the details that are off like beacons now. There’s a certain happily exhausted glow to him more common to post coital bliss and newly weds, a lingering scar on a distressingly bare wrist.
”Loki,” she says, reserved, and sets the papers down, smoothing them out. “What can I do for you?”
Loki smiles demurely, picture of meekness.
”I should hope it’s more what I can do for you. A token of appreciation, if you will. May I?”
It’s comforting, a little, that Loki is aware that she doesn’t necessarily want anything to do with him.
”Of course,” she says, and Loki’s smile widens as if perfectly aware that it’s hardly so simple as she’s making it sound.
”My thanks,” he says, setting a very small box on her desk. “Have a lovely day, Ms. Potts.”
”Thank you, you too,” Pepper says, and waits until he’s gone to move the box.
She doesn’t open it then; she doesn’t open it until she’s about to leave and notices that it’s still sitting next to her thermos.
It’s a silver bracelet. Not silver—that’s obvious when she touches it, a sick pull that feels briefly like being caged. It frizzles out, though, and as she examines closer, she realizes both what it is and why the feeling passed so quickly.
Loki’s—one of Loki’s—chains. It’s broken, a gold clasp and extension affixed to turn it from a pretty binding to actual jewelry. Pepper puts it back in the box, nauseous, and notices a slip of folded paper stuck inside.
If you ever have need, ask.
5.
"That's Loki," Pepper says, and Natasha notes the way Pepper's chin tilts just slightly up. It's the loudest tell Natasha's seen Pepper give; Pepper uses politeness like a weapon, but this is different.
She's trying not to show she's afraid.
"He and Tony have a thing."
The man--Loki--turns his head, just slightly, when Pepper says his name despite being on the opposite end of the lab with glass separating them.
"I didn't know Stark could do a relationship," Natasha comments, because it is the sort of thing that she would be expected to say. It makes Pepper smile, just a little, but it's bitter.
"We don't discuss Loki," Pepper says, and moves on in the tour of the building.
Natasha glances again and pauses. Loki is watching her, eyes too green, predatory.
She makes a mental note to be careful around him and follows Pepper.
xxx
There isn't any information about Loki. No birth records, no paper trails, no paparazzi photographs, no newspaper articles that mention Tony's significant other.
That's what Loki is to Tony, she thinks--his significant other. Not romantically, she can recognize that a mile away. Whatever they are to each other is more than that, more complex.
Complicated.
Natasha dislikes how much Tony seems to enjoy complicating things, but this, she suspects, is not Tony's doing.
xxx
Tony wears a silver alloy bracelet that hums and trails strange energy signatures.
Tony leaves food out, claims it's Loki's, but Natasha's never seen Loki eat unless Tony's handing it to him himself.
Tony taps at his arc reactor when he thinks and Loki's eyes follow the movement--follow the play of light.
Tony has the work to weaken laws dealing with gods so buried that Natasha finds it mostly by luck.
xxx
"Natasha," Loki says, and Natasha keeps walking because she's Natalie here. "You do so love finding out how things tick, don't you? Perhaps I should return the favour--I'm sure you've always been curious what makes Barton's heart large enough to accommodate your ledger."
Natasha stops walking, turns to look at him. His eyes are brilliant, too green. He gives her a slim smile. He's not threatening, not yet, but it's a warning.
"How did you know?" Natasha asks, because at least she can determine if anyone else has figured her out yet, how far her cover is blown.
"It was all the blood, really. I could smell it on you."
"You're a god of war then."
"More to end them, really," he says, casual, and grins. "We could be marvelous, you know."
"Not interested," Natasha says.
"You would have remade the world, with my help. Undone so very much damage--isn't that what you're after? Try to even out the scales?" Loki's grin is less human in the half-light; she isn't sure how she thought he was human at all.
"Not. Interested."
"Pity. Another time, another place." His grin fades. "Do mind you know whose lies you tell."
"And Stark?"
Loki stares at her blankly.
"Does he know?"
"Why would I tell him when you will shape him so well into what I need?"
Natasha shrugs him off. He's trying to manipulate her, and badly at that; when she looks again, he's gone.
xxx
Stark doesn't know. Stark doesn't comment. Loki only smiles.
(We could be marvelous.)
Just words.
(Do mind you know whose lies you tell.)
Just. Words.
6.
Loki wears only a necklace now. It burns at his skin, hums in the back of his head, but it's broken and there's nothing to chain him left in it.
It is a reminder--anything for his beloved. Anything in all the worlds.
(Tony found his freedom in a cave; once, a very long time ago, Loki gave his up instead of die because it meant finding Tony.)
"They're like ants," Loki says, casual. "They barely understand the tesseract at all. I can open a portal for you, let you through, so you can make it yours."
Thanos watches him.
(Loki's never seen another god with so much power. Never seen a god so worshiped, flush with it, who strides as if he owns the space he touches. It's foreign.)
"Give me an army," Loki says, "and you'll have the nine realms at your feet."
(Tony wants the world remade. Tony wants wars to end, wants peace. Loki will give it to him the only way he knows how, give a united front and force bickering together long enough their heroes realize what needs torn out of their world's rotten core.)
In another time, Loki would take an army and burn the world to the ground for what it has done to him. He talks, now, as if this is that time.
"You are not so much bigger than them yourself," Thanos points out, and Loki hears death-destroy-burn in his voice, feels it echo and tug, and oh how familiar it sounds.
(But it is missing something, missing catalyst-protect-save.)
Loki laughs lightly.
"Why do you think I appeal to you for an army?"
Thanos chuckles.
"You shall have your army," he says, and Loki smiles and smiles and smiles, eyes bright, because he's promised nothing here but he's been promised everything he wants.
The problem with having so much worship, Loki thinks, leaping and bounding home through the stars, chasing the flicker blue light that sings and hums and shapes him just as much as he shapes it, is one grows ungrateful. Unappreciative. Thanos is old and powerful and flush with it, and Loki will drain him dry before this is done and leave Thanos' name a forgotten relic of a dead people.
That it will shove the world towards what Tony desires is intended, makes it so even if Loki fails to utterly consume Thanos that some benefit will come of this no matter the outcome.
xxx
"Fuck, Loki," Tony says, startled as Loki finds his glow, curls around it, presses himself against Tony. "You've got to stop just fucking showing up, what if someone saw you?"
"Then I would kill them," Loki says happily, content, sinking into the skin Tony knows as Loki, pale skin and green eyes and black hair around his face.
"Ruthless," Tony huffs, a hand running across Loki's cheek, cupping his neck. "Good trip? Where do you even go?"
"Better to be home."
It makes Tony's eyes soften, just a little, even as his beloved pushes him away, mouthing off about sappiness and sugar. Loki laughs and dogs his footsteps until they're pressed flush, skin to skin, sweating and breathless.
"Where do you go?" Tony asks, in the aftermath.
Loki closes his eyes--
(”Let’s end this,” his beloved says, eyes the shade of blood-soaked ground, blue glow cast across his face, and his beloved smiles, a thin quirk of the right of his mouth.)
--and says, "To make sure I can answer your call."
"And here I thought not having the jewelry would make you less crazy. Silly me."
Loki smiles.