His true glorious purpose

The checkup had gone well. Bruce still isn’t sure how exactly Loki’s holding himself together, but it’s obvious whatever he’s doing is working. Loki had agreed to some tests being run outside of his recuperation, and Bruce has learned so much. He hasn’t seen Thor much though since the little fight he had had with Loki. The only time he appeared was at breakfast to grab a bunch of food and then disappear.

Loki isn’t allowed out of his cell under any circumstances, so Bruce often sneaks just as much food from the cafeteria on the helicarrier as Thor does, a little favour for Loki letting himself get “observed”. Tony delights in helping Bruce do so, happy to have an excuse to visit the god. It fascinates him to talk to the guy, hear his fancy way of speaking snap back with a much needed crispness that adds to his dreary day while they wait for the helicarrier to land.

“What's Asgard like?” Tony asks, handing Loki a croissant. Loki sizes the pastry up before ripping off a piece and looking at it closer.

“Certainly nothing like here. For one, the cooks at the palace, let alone the bakeries in the town could never make a delicacy as fragile as this. It's all meat this, meat that! Imagine waking up every morning to what's basically glorified gristle. UuUugh.” Loki shivers in disgust, the thought of tough tasteless grey meat putting him off his croissant. He offers it to Tony, and he takes it with a small smirk.

“Ya know…” Tony starts, sitting back in his chair and ripping a bite off his breakfast.

“Iph yoo want i can…” Loki holds up a hand.

“Please, I do not boast of the best bedside manners, but that is truly disgusting. I would appreciate it if you had at least a little more tact than that boorish blonde mop headed twit.”

Tony snickers a bit but finishes chewing, not wanting to be shooed away before he could make his proposal.

“As I was saying,” he says, wiping crumbs off his shirt. “It must be awful dreary being stuck up in this uh… wouldn’t exactly call it a hospital room no matter how hard Fury believes the colour white means clinical. If you wanted I could vouch for you. Get you out of here once we land. Lord knows you’ll just be headed somewhere less comfortable as soon as we leave. But maybe I could get you into Stark Towers.”

Loki lowers his eyes, the conversation taking a turn he doesn’t quite like.

“What do you want?”

Tony cocks an eyebrow, a silent question issued. Loki rolls his eyes, a scoff rolling from his tongue.

“Do not take me for a fool. You have known me less than a week and we have exchanged what, five, six conversations? I believe you might be forgetting the part where the last time I expected help from someone I was quite literally tortured out of my own mind. There is always more, always conditions. I do not grab a hand extended to me without knowing whose hand it is any longer. It would be wise of you to tell me your ulterior motives now rather than later. I might even agree.”

Tony huffs a bit, taking another bite. He puts his hands up in surrender, the croissant dropping crumbs into his already tussled up hair.

“You got me. I do want something.”

Ah, there it is. Frankly, Loki would have been much more sceptical if Tony had seriously not wanted anything at all. But give and take? That he understands. That's more his speed. He can manipulate that to his advantage.

“I think you’ll be happy to find it’s nothing so harsh as torture this time though. I simply want information. Not that hard yeah? I want to know what it’s like up there with your giant rainbow bridge and your… seídr? Is that it?”

Loki nods slowly.

“Well anyway, I just wanna learn. It’s better to be informed on what you don’t know before you go blundering into inter-spacial wars like we're apparently gonna have on our doorstep in a few weeks if we don’t find Barton and that whole crew. And I can’t exactly get any… scientific evidence out of Thor anyway. So, you get freedom, and I get knowledge. S’not a bad trade is it?”

Tony thrusts out his hand for a shake, staring right into Loki’s eyes. He can see the cogs turning behind the shifting irises, but he can tell the moment he has him. Loki stands up gingerly from his bed, and grasps Tony’s hand in his own. Both men take notice of how worked the other’s hand feels, but only one wonders how it could have possibly have gotten that way.

Loki hadn't expected much, but Tony followed through on his word. Not even a day has passed from the agreement when Tony strides confidently into Loki’s room, followed by Bruce like usual and surprisingly, Steve. Tony waves a stack of papers in front of Loki as if they're the most enticing thing in the world, and Bruce groans but the smile on his lips doesn’t fade.

“Guess who risked Fury’s debilitating I'm not mad… oh wait yes I am stare to get these! Me! Well we all did actually but mostly me! It was my idea and I did most of the finagling so yeah, 99% me.”

Steve rolls his eyes and snatches the Papers out of Tony’s hands.

“Just give him the papers already, you incorrigible spaz.”

Tony scoffs and places his fingertips on his chest, fake disgrace rolling over his face.

“Well I never!”

“And now you have. Deal with it.”

Steve retorts, handing Loki the papers. Loki takes them from Steve and pours over them. It’s an agreement, an agreement for Fury to allow him to stay under Tony’s care in Stark Towers, with conditions of course. Every week there will be a report on what Loki has done and will be doing, under no circumstances is Loki to be allowed outside the tower unaccompanied by less than two avengers at a time, Loki will diverge any and all useful knowledge about the Chitauri and their plans, and will cooperate with Tony’s experiments and research on the Asgardian people and whatever else may be out there.

Not as many restrictions as he thought, but the not going outside unsupervised thing might be a problem. Loki has no intention of revealing the travels he needs to make to the Avengers. Not unless it’s necessary of course. Loki thinks of what he’ll do all day. When the helicarrier lands with a shudder he does not notice. He’s thinking about small hands and how they must have grown. When he is led out of his cell, because he knows that's what it really was, and is put in shackles once more, he doesn’t focus on the fact that these are hopefully the last shackles he’ll have to wear for a while. Instead his mind is on the chains his dear Fen remains locked in, how long he must wait till he’s free from their restricting coils. And when they load him into a military helicopter, the blades whirring at takeoff like a deadly swordsman twirling their weapon, all he can look at is the sea. The vast, deep, widespread ocean surrounding the helicarrier in all directions and how it must seem so bleak from the bottom. How crowded it must have become for the nearest of his children. He swears for a moment he can almost see the sparkle of his childs scales in the sway and fall of the waves, but then the moment is gone, and he is left to his memories of times when the shimmer was never far, close where he could protect it.
And as soon as they took off their on land again, or the top of Stark towers anyway. Two more choppers drop beside him, one holding Bruce, Tony, Fury, and an agent with a rather large gun, and the other with Steve and Natasha and another two agents. Out they all pile, Tony making a show of holding out his hand for Steve as he gets out and then bowing with what Loki read on his lips over the noise as a snarky, “m’lady.” All the attendees are making their way over to his helicopter when the agent with a shield over his face grabs his arm roughly and practically drags him out of the vehicle. It’s not that he’s resisting, just that the person got up so fast he doesn’t even have time to get up himself, and he barely rights himself before he stumbles out of his ride.

Looking around, he sees everyone except the archer and Thor. Knowing Thor he’s probably out drinking somewhere, causing mayhem and being reckless. Bruce looks less than happy at his patient's rough treatment, and Tony is staring at Fury as if to silently tell him to leave. Fury however seems hellbent on making sure Loki knows just how bad he can screw him over. Slowly strolling towards him, Fury fixes his eye on Loki in a thousand yard stare. As soon as he gets close, he pulls out a key and undoes the bonds holding Loki’s hands together. He leans in, mouth next to Loki’s ear, and whispers,

“If you so much as cough too hard and halfway around the world a natural disaster happens I will find a way to blame it on you. Watch yourself.”

And then he leaves, slapping the side of the helicopter he gets into twice signalling liftoff. The group watches until they can see nothing but a speck of angry disdain in the sky, and Tony, ever the good host, spreads his hands wide and invites them all into his home. He explains to Loki on their way down to the living floors in what is called an “elevator” and is certainly a thousand steps up from the thousands of steps up littering Asgard that since Fury wanted such a tight detail on Loki, and he barely trusts S.H.I.E.L.D as it is, they had come to an agreement. All the Avengers will be living at the towers for as long as Loki does.

To keep an eye on him of course. Definitely not because Tony had grown accustomed to his daily talks with Loki and absolutely not because the rest of the Avengers had agreed that he had grown on them as well. While Tony would like to take complete responsibility for Loki’s transfer, it had really been Natasha threatening to leave S.H.I.E.L.D unless Fury was compliant that had got them to this point. She seemed to understand Loki, or at least his pains. It’s refreshing to see the edge drop off her when she’s around him.

So Tony gives them a tour, starting with the communal floor. A whole entire floor devoted to a living room esque living space. To the right of the room is an almost endless sea of couches and bean bags, all positioned in little circles and gathering around the room. To the right is the kitchen, stocked with fruits and cereals and for some reason a whole cabinet just for olives. When asked about this, instead of Tony answering Jarvis does.

“That is the olive cabinet. It is frequently used to keep the olives that are put into sir’s martinis cool.”

The cabinet slowly opens and out falls a cascade of smoke, no doubt from the cool temperature of the cabinet. Loki goes to take a closer look, reaching out in amazement at cooling without the use of seídr, but the gang sees him pull his hand back sharply. He stares down at it in hate and disgust, almost like a leech had just latched onto him. Bruce rushes over to see what's wrong, and Tony’s eyebrows knit together when Loki hides his hand up his sleeve and refuses to show Bruce what happened. Tony swears he can see blue on Loki’s fingertips, but then it’s gone and Loki finally allows Bruce to see his hand.

“See? It’s fine. I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.”

Bruce looks sceptical, but after a quick examination of Loki’s hand he gives it up. The tour resumes, and everyone is shown their rooms, but Loki still seems a bit off after whatever it was that happened. He’s the last to be shown to a room.

“Here's yours.” Tony says with a pause to gesture at the door waiting at the end of yet another long hallway branching off of the living space.

“I’m right next to you if you have questions, but I'll probably be in the workshop. No rest for the powerful and all that.”

Tony makes to turn away and walk off, but he stops and turns back around.

“You're here now. We have no intention to hurt you. If somethings wrong, you really should rely on Bruce to fix it for you.”

Loki nods, and Tony walks away to go tinker with his suit. Maybe add a new blaster. He needs something to take his mind off of the past couple of days, and maybe he’ll get Pepper to come down later. She always knows how to calm him down.

Loki watches him go until Tony disappears around the corner, and only then does he open his door. Stepping inside, immediately to his left is a bathroom bigger than any he’d ever been in. Sure he had lived in a palace, but Asgard didn’t really put much thought into where you shit. Plus, they don’t have the benefits of plumbing. For all that Asgard considers itself superior, once Loki had seen the wonders of a good plumbing system on every other god forsaken planet ship and rock he had visited he had never been sure again that that was true. (Course he was never sure if that in the first place but that realisation had more than solidified his view.)

Pressing further into the room, there sits a bed with a dark brown wood headboard. Around the borders are carved gealic knots, and on the gold trim of the bedspread the same patterns are embroidered in green. The whole room in fact seems decorated by someone aiming for Norse but missing by a bit. While it’s definitely wrong, the thought is evident and it warms his heart to know at least someone was trying to make him feel comfortable. He takes one more look at the perfectly made bed before throwing himself on it. Soft. Very soft. Softer than Odin had ever had the decency to afford him.

Flipping slowly onto his back he brings a hand up to his face. Examining it, he can see the blue still at the bottom of his cuticles. He had been careless. He never thought that little bit of cold would trigger it. But after all the times Thanos had stuck him in a meat freezer like cattle just to watch him change he geusses he got used to it. It’s a reflex now. His face goes pallid and blank. The thought races in his mind, and then out loud,

“Oh god it’s a reflex…”

And the thought gets even worse when he realises what that means for his existence in the tower. His only purpose here, the only thing keeping him out of a prison is Fury and Tony’s assumption that he’s an Asgardian. Any tests they run, any tests they have already run, will be significantly different from what comes from Thor. Shit.

A problem arises, but as he’s learned there are always ways to take care of these types of things. And if he knows anything about Tony so far it’s that he’s always down for a surprise if it means something new to study. So Loli pulls himself together, and for once is dead set on telling the truth.

“Erm… Jarvis?”

“Yes?”

Loki jumps with a small,

“Every time!”

He flattens down the creases in his clothes from the scare and turns his attention towards the ceiling.

“Is… is Tony in the workshop?”

“Yes, sir is currently in the workshop. Would you like me to call him here?”

“Ah, no thank you. In fact, could you lead me to where he is? He told me where he’d be, but he never told me where exactly that is.”

“Of course. And shall I alert him that you're coming?”

“Yes.”

Loki opens the door to his room, and on the floor he starts to see arrows blink awake. He follows them down a set of steps and into a large area. The floor is covered with plans and blueprints, tables and racks adorned with various technology litter the space. In the middle of it all he notices Tony, screwdriver in hand surrounded by a few smaller bots. They hand him things and take things away, making adjustments to the position of whatever he’s working as they go. As he wades his way farther into the mess of inventing, Jarvis announces his arrival. Tony turns, smiling.

“Couldn’t wait five minutes before having a problem?”

Loki smirks back.

“Well, seeing as this might be something that affects you as much as it does me, it dawned on me that I should be helpful and tell you about it.” Loki puts his hand on his hip and waits for an answer as Tony sizes him up, trying to predict what he might want to tell him.

“Well go on, let's hear it.”

Loki takes a deep breath, debating whether he should or not. But lying and deceptions were what got him into this situation in the first place, and if he is to get used to what he inevitably will always be, it starts by accepting it around other people. So he speaks.

“It's about the research I’m supposed to be helping you with. If you want me to, I will still help. I have no reservations about that. It's just… I may not be the specimen you were hoping for.”

Tony’s eyes narrow, but curiously more than anything else.

“Care to expand upon that?”

“I uh, I'm not from Asgard. Not originally anyway. Odin took me as a child from Jotunheim. I’m not of Asgardian descent, and you said you wanted to work with an Asgardian. I, am decidedly not that.”

Again, the eyes go thinner. Loki’s not entirely sure how he’s doing that and can still see. He puts down the… gauntlet? Hand looking thing? He’s working on and crosses his arms and his legs, leaning his backside on the table.

“So, if you're not Asgardian, then what are you?”

While Tony was certainly confused, Loki was even more so. He heard no animosity in Tony’s voice. No anger at being lied to, just insistence. It amazes him that someone so information driven wouldn’t be mad that his only competent source of information was not what he thought it was. But instead, he looked happy. Excited even.

“I am Jotun. What your people would call a frost giant.”

Tony starts circling him.

“What um… What's the difference? You don’t look any different from Thor other than the hair and the… brain… but you don’t look much different.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. He looks around, and finds a cup empty of the drink it held. He hands it to Tony and holds his hand out flat. Tony just stares at him for a second before realising what he wants, and he dumps a few ice cubes into his hand. Tony only has to wait a second to see what Loki wants him to, and his eyes go wide with amazement as blue starts to radiate from the cubes onto the rest of Loki’s palm. He backs away for a second, and Loki drops the cubes back into the cup.

“That's… wow! Why does just your hand do that? I thought I saw it earlier today and I guess I was right… Can you change your whole body?”

“Yes, but it’s rather unsightly. And I can’t change only one part of my body without something cold. See, i’ve spent my whole life under the blanket of the skin you see now. So I have no practice in letting it show, only keeping it hidden. But if you so desire, as I am to pay you back, I shall show you.”

Tony nods, his curiosity peaked. Loki steps a few steps back from him, advising him it would be best if he stayed a bit away, and closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, they're a piercing red colour. The rich blue that Tony saw before spreads across every inch of his skin, radiating out from his eyes. As it travels farther, everywhere it touches scar looking marks are revealed. They have patterns to them, swirling and twisting, decorating his skin. Before the blue even reaches the bottom of Loki’s neck, he starts to grow. Taller, wider in proportion to his size, until Tony’s head barely comes up to his hip. His clothes glow green and grow with him, another of his little tricks, and they crinkle and scrunch up as Loki has to squat to make sure the two horns starting to protrude from his head don’t spear the ceiling.

Tony can do nothing but gasp and stare in shock, and Loki seems a bit uncomfortable being in his own skin with Tony staring at him, so Tony puts his hands over his eyes and rubs the shock out of them. Suddenly, from the door comes the mirror voice of what he was thinking. There stands Bruce, wide eyed and clearly mind blown. One word leaves his lips, and Loki can already tell he's not going to get to sleep in that comfy new bed tonight, only tests.

“Damn!”