Chapter 8
Tony had put on a good show of drowsiness; getting into bed, even thanking Bruce for the pills, telling him it would be nice to just black out for a while. Then, the moment the door had closed (and automatically locked) behind Bruce, Tony had staggered to his feet and into the bathroom.
Of course he had long ago gotten rid of most of his gag reflex, but if he wanted to throw up he could usually manage with the help of a couple of fingers down the throat and a bit of focus. It was a good trick to know when you were at a party with a lot of pills and wanted to give the impression of having a higher tolerance than you really did. Or if you just regretted taking as many as you had. You had to act fast though; some pills were quick to dissolve.
The room echoed with unpleasant noises for a few moments, and then – there! Both of them, bright white and still mostly pill-shaped. Tony flushed the evidence, and then went back to work.
It was total nonsense that Bruce thought Tony would be willing to just go to sleep when his best friend had been murdered and the murderer was still out there. Tony didn’t even willingly go to sleep on most normal, perfectly fine days. Like hell was he going to let himself be out of commission when there was a psycho-killer god of Chaos still walking around free and unaffected by what he had done.
Tony was going to bring it home to him, ASAP if not sooner, and he was going to savor every moment of it. Good thing Thor was in New Mexico, Tony really didn’t want to have to hurt a fellow Avenger. But the brother that Thor had loved (if such a person had ever been real) was long gone, and Thor was just going to have to come to terms with that. Maybe it was an Old Yeller situation, a mercy killing for someone who had lost their goddamned mind and was never coming back.
They had dicked around too long with Cap’s stupid just-ignore-him approach to Loki, and look at what had happened. No prison could hold the vicious little shit, ignoring him got good people killed, and reasoning with a psychotic war-criminal was not even on the table, as far as Tony was concerned. That left Plan Z – kill the fucker.
Back in his workshop – where he belonged – Tony punched a twelve-digit code into a wall panel, and then stood back as the floor opened and the secret prototype rose into view. It was huge, five times the mass of his usual suits, and about thirty times the fire-power.
More than a year ago, SHIELD had asked Tony to create a suit that could overpower the Hulk if necessary. Tony had refused – because solidarity – but the idea had taken hold of his mind, and he had gone ahead and created it anyway, mostly just to see if he could. Also to show Obie, the dead bastard, how a big bulky suit could be done without looking like a gorilla had made it out of leftover dump-truck parts.
He had never used it, because he knew that if SHIELD or the military once set eyes on such a thing, they’d be banging down his doors for him to make them some – or worse, trying to replicate it on their own.
Up till now, Tony’s normal Iron Man suits, with the help of the team, had been able to handle anything that was thrown at them. But the team wouldn’t have his back for this one.
They hadn’t known JARVIS the way he did. Most of them just thought of him as a convenient sort of tool. Probably only Bruce was computer-literate enough to understand how unique and fully human JARVIS had been, and even Bruce hadn’t known him as long as Tony had, or been privy to all his moments of progress and growth. Tony folded over the toolbox he’d been rifling through, and waited for the painful clenching of his chest to pass.
Even while he was gasping back another panic attack, Tony’s mind was awhirl with modifications that would make the suit (he had never come up with a good name for it before, but now he was thinking ‘God-Killer’) more suited to battling Loki than the Hulk.
He could take a page from Loki’s own book, make the suit able to project holograms of itself. With a few deployable drones, he could even make it so that the duplicates could fire actual weapons, confusing the target even more. JARVIS had said that Loki’s PTSD was triggered by fire, so a flame-thrower and some Molotov-cocktail-type mini-missiles were no-brainer additions – Tony drew up 3D schematics with a few swipes of one hand, tossed aside the old proprietary Stark formula for napalm and started work on another, more viscous, longer-burning, unquenchable…
He worked on that until he was satisfied that he had the fundamentals of a new recipe, and then swiped that aside too. Besides fire and heat, what had JARVIS said? Confined spaces? Something to do with food? Well, why rack his brains, he could just bring up the footage of the conversation.
“Hey JARV-” Tony stopped dead.
He curled over and put his face in his hands. He hadn’t cried yet (hyperventilated, oh yes; cried, no) and he didn’t plan to. He could cry when Loki was dead and incinerated – before that, it would just be a waste of precious work-time.
Of course, the most powerful god-proof suit in the universe wouldn’t help if he couldn’t find Loki. The bloody-minded lunatic could be standing right behind him, or he could be on Neptune or Niflheim or New Mexico for all Tony knew.
Tony spun on his stool to face the bank of computer screens, and put his hands to the keyboard of the largest one. He had rigged up a quick-and-dirty partial-AI operating system (not to replace JARVIS, who was unique and irreplaceable, but to help streamline the search for him) back when he had still had hope.
His last desperate query, from after he had given up on sophisticated methods and had bluntly, hopelessly asked what he really wanted to know, was still floating on the black screen, the cursor blinking:
WHERE IS JARVIS?
Tony tapped at the delete key a few times, and then typed in a new name.
WHERE IS LOKI?
It felt every bit as hopeless as the previous question. The Avengers, and SHIELD, and JARVIS himself, and who knew who else, had all been hunting Loki for the past two years, ever since he had vanished himself with an evil leer off of the roof of this very building. There was no way the question would get an answer now. Tony was only typing his own thought out, just to see it written, just to focus…
An image popped onto the screen. It was the facial recognition program, whirring away at a zillion pictures all the time. It had found a match.
The picture was moving. It was video footage. From the cameras above the front doors of Avengers Tower.
Loki was standing on the sidewalk in a hoodie and jeans, carrying an ordinary plastic water bottle and talking calmly to Steve, who was wearing his jogging clothes. As Tony watched, Loki turned and looked up at the camera, staring directly at him.
Tony forgot to breathe. This was footage he had never seen before.
WHEN IS THIS FOOTAGE FROM?
The answer appeared instantaneously:
FOOTAGE IS LIVE.
Tony was on his feet and across the room before his brain had even caught up to what he was doing. His hands tugged and pushed at the releases of the huge prototype, and it opened up for him like a cadaver on the autopsy slab.
So what if none of the Loki-specific modifications had been made yet – Tony could not let this golden chance get away. Loki was here, walking right into Tony’s grasp. Tony laughed aloud – the asshole really was crazy!
The panels of the God-Killer closed over him, and Tony sat up, suddenly a giant.
It took a bit of getting used to, as Tony bent and flexed each limb, waiting for all the systems to come online, but nothing was going to slow Tony down for long, not today.
Without JARVIS in the suit with him, Tony actually had to open the torso and reach out with his human hand to type another query into the computer.
WHERE IS LOKI NOW?
The image changed and the feed from the front doors became a feed from inside one of the elevators. Steve and Loki had been joined by Bruce. Damn. The prototype might get more of a test than Tony had wanted.
HALT THAT ELEVATOR. LOCK THE DOORS.
A distant blaring started, to Tony’s immense satisfaction.
Tony tucked his arm back into the suit, and charged through one of the everything-proof glass walls of his workshop, heading towards the sound.
He punched his way into the correct elevator shaft, and then began climbing. Thank goodness he’d chosen to make the Stark Tower elevator cars so spacious; his suit probably wouldn’t have fit up an ordinary elevator shaft.
The bottom of the car was just above him now. He shoved one fist through it and pulled. The metal peeled back like paper-mache, opening a gaping hole into the floor of the car. Tony engaged his calf-repulsors and blasted up into the enclosed space.
The car was lit only by a small red emergency light, and the shrieking of the alarm was deafening now that he was so close. Tony tapped it with the side of his fist, accidentally crushing that wall of the elevator, and the sound stopped.
Steve positioned himself in front of the suit, stupidly ready to take on the God-Killer.
Bruce unhunched himself from a corner and took his hands off of his ears.
“Tony?” he asked, tentatively.
“Yeah,” said Tony tightly, pushing up his faceplate, “You guys might want to get out of here. It’s about to get messy.” He ripped open the locked doors of the elevator car, letting light spill in from the hallway.
Neither Bruce nor Steve moved. Loki was pressed back into the corner behind them, wide-eyed and still as a statue.
“Tony,” said Bruce, “He surrendered.”
“Oh, I don’t care if he’s confessed, gone to church, and been baptized,” Tony smiled through a clenched jaw, “I’m killing him. Today.”
Steve stepped forward. Fucking Steve.
“Tony,” he began, every inch Captain America despite the sweatpants and sneakers, “Loki has surrendered. He’s an unarmed, defenseless prisoner, in our custody. I know you wouldn’t-”
Tony didn’t wait to find out what he wouldn’t do. He grabbed Steve with both huge, metal hands, and threw him down the hole in the floor.
“Shut the fuck up!” he screamed after him. Teammates were supposed to help you, weren’t they? Make things easier? Just his luck he’d ended up with a couple of goody-fucking-two-shoe killjoys like Bruce and Steve. Why couldn’t it be Nat and Clint who were here? They’d all be elbow-deep in Loki’s guts by now.
“Tony,” Bruce said, reasonably, “I know you’re upset. You have every right to be. But I also know that if you kill an unarmed prisoner, you’re going to feel bad about it later. If you’ve hurt Steve, you’re going to feel bad about that later too. Why don’t you stop while you’re ahead? Loki is weakened, he’s not going anywhere. We can lock him up, and he’ll still be here tomorrow. You don’t have to do this.”
Tony had been eyeing Bruce appraisingly during this pointless speech. There was no tinge of green in either his skin or his eyes, and he didn’t seem overly agitated, just wary. Tony figured it was safe, and shot him with a blast of anti-combatant foam. Bruce gasped and coughed, and ended up stuck firmly to the wall of the elevator, all of his limbs coated in the thick, sticky neon yellow foam.
“Tony! Don’t you fucking touch him!” he yelled from his new position, “Please don’t make me turn like this, inside the Tower. Tony!”
“You are one sick puppy,” Tony told Loki, stepping in closer, his eyes riveted to the unmoving god. “You murder my best friend, and then you just waltz into my tower like la-dee-da? What did you think was going to happen?”
Loki didn’t answer.
“Handy that you’re weakened, though,” Tony continued, “I guess we can thank the good old All-Pappy for that one. Now, what was it JARVIS said about fire?”
He hadn’t had the chance to install a flame-thrower yet, but all of Tony’s suits had a blow-torch in one of the fingers. Tony ignited it now, turning the flame up until it was nearly a foot tall, in front of Loki’s face. Loki’s eyes never left Tony’s, and Tony smiled to see the tightly-contained fear in them.
Just when nobody at all wanted him, Steve – fucking Steve – crawled up out of the huge jagged hole in the floor, and threw himself between Loki and the flame.
“Tony, I can’t let you-” he was yelling, when Loki somehow cut him off with a quiet voice.
“Your phone is ringing, Mr. Stark,” he said.
“What the fuck?” said Tony, because it wasn’t.
And then his phone began to ring.
Everyone looked at him as if expecting him to give a shit.
“I don’t give a shit,” he told them, just to be clear.
Ice-pale and statue-still, his wide eyes reflecting the cone of flame, Loki said “It’s Jarvis.”
Steve and Bruce both turned their heads to stare at Loki.
“Do not fucking silver-tongue me, you heartless piece of shit,” Tony snarled, “I know my own ring-tones. It’s Pepper.” He moved the blow-torch closer.
“Tony,” said Steve, in his most steady Captain-America-Is-Serious voice, “Answer it.”
“He’s the god of lies,” Tony said, exasperated.
Steve nodded, “That’s right. And the god of lies will still be here after you’ve answered your call.”
The phone stopped ringing, everyone in the elevator drew a breath, and then the phone began to ring again. Still Pepper.
“I know exactly what you’re trying to do,” Tony glared around at all of them, “And it’s not going to work. You can cool me down all you want, I’m still going to kill this little fucker. I’ve decided.”
“Just answer your fucking phone,” said Bruce in a strained voice. He was hanging there, glued to the wall, obviously struggling to regulate his breathing and heart-rate.
“You!” Tony pointed the flame directly at Loki, close enough to singe a strand of his hair, “Don’t you fucking move!” He was annoyed to notice that Loki didn’t wince or flinch.
With his other metal hand he opened his chestplate enough so that he could reach his own human hand into the pocket of his jeans. He swiped the screen, and Pepper’s voice filled the elevator.
“Tony? Oh my God, are you there Tony?”
“Yeah, Pep, I’m here.” It was weird to have to switch back to a friendly voice, after doing his best to be a menacing hard-ass. “This isn’t really the greatest time for-”
Pepper interrupted him breathlessly, “Tony, this hospital has been trying to get hold of me all morning - Bethesda East – they’re in New York.”
“Yeah, I know Bethesda,” said Tony, who had once, in his less practiced days, gotten his stomach pumped there, “So what-”
“Shut up, Tony! Let me talk! They finally got through all my receptionists and secretaries, they insisted on only talking to me. Tony, they say they have a coma patient there, a John Doe, you know, unclaimed, unidentified. He’s been in a coma for months, and this morning he just woke up.”
“Gee, Pep, this is super interesting, but-”
“Tony! Shut the fuck up!” Tony had never heard Pepper drop an F-bomb in all the years that he’d known her. He shut the fuck up.
“He says his name is Jarvis, Tony! He couldn’t tell them a first name, said his only name is Jarvis. He told them you were his emergency contact, but you know you’re almost impossible to get hold of, an unknown phone number, it never would have reached you. So he gave them my number.” She paused, “Tony! Are you listening?”
Tony was not listening. His eyes turned and locked on Loki’s.
“What have you done?” he breathed.
“What you could not,” said Loki, “Granted his wish.”
With a dinky clatter, Tony’s phone fell to the floor. The blow-torch shut off. Everyone stared at Loki.
Loki looked only at Tony, “Go to him. He needs you.”
Tony shut his faceplate, stomped into the hall, and flew out the nearest large window, shattering it to a million pieces.
Huh, weird, he thought, as he zoomed off over the city, That’s the same way I left my last conversation with Loki.