The agreement
Everything was closing in on him. Guards bound to catch him at some point came from every direction, his left leg quickly becoming useless as the arrow lodged in it ground against bone. He had hidden them well, used every trick he knew to make them as innocuous as possible and led them away when the All Father started asking questions. Suspicions, then questions, then fury, a lane he had gone down many times. He had seen the suspicions building, he had witnessed the questions, and now he suffered the fury building behind his fathers eyes. The best he could do is run in the opposite direction, and pray when he was caught they would not be. He would be penalized, harder than he ever had been before, but to protect them? Any punishment could be tuned out to some extent, and he somehow still held the notion that his father held some semblance of compassion for him deep down.
So when they caught up and tousled him to the ground, he didn’t fight back too hard. Just enough to sell it. When they dragged him up the stairs, each bump deepening his wounds and trailing blood from his leg behind him, he dared not utter a sound. Every word could be used against him, every groan or pained hiss seen as resistance, immediately upping the punishment. And eventually, the punishment would get so bad that he wouldn’t be able to go back. Wouldn’t be able to take care of them anymore. And he thought, as they dragged him limply through the palace halls, that that was truly his worst fear.
He was wrong. Around the bend lay a scene that terrified him to his core. Odin, hand raised poised to strike a small heap on the floor, four more behind her and one small snake writhing and hissing in his other hand. Small. Tiny. Helpless, is all he could think as his horrified stare catches Odin's eye. He’s grabbed from behind, pinned down on his chest by rough hands he knows all too well. Hands he’s shook in congratulations. Hands he’s pried from around his neck after a spar. Hands that used to braid his hair almost perfectly when he asked, not so rough and time worn quite yet. Hands that had curled their fingers around his own, Pinky promised that no matter what they went through, how many times father yelled at him, or what they had done, they would always stick by each other. Thor. His lungs shrunk as all air was expelled from them, leaving him gasping, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the shock or the pain.
So, as he recognized the children on the floor near Odin, small. Tiny. Helpless. HIS. He suffered too much heartbreak for only one person. He could feel it spilling over his waterline, could see it plopping onto the floor in thick fat drops, but no matter how much of it his body expelled it wouldn’t stop building. And it wasn’t until he heard the first shrill, sharp scream ringing from his childs lips, it wasn't until he stared into eyes entirely his own and saw nothing but panic and dread that he realized what was happening. Odin held out the hand containing the snake, his son, over the side of the open room. Below him, wide and vast, lay Ginnungagap. A straight road to death. Death or Midgard.
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move no matter how hard he struggled, the scene before him blurred and unblurred for every tear shed, nausea rising in his stomach. Odin gripped a little harder, staring at his son like he was a blight on the world, and growled,
“Filthy thing.”
And with all his senses heightened by adrenaline he could hear the only words he would hear from any of his children for the next hundreds of years.
“F..fath-father!”
Odin let go.
His son fell.
He managed to get a single arm out from under Thor, reached forward until he could feel his shoulder dislocation from it’s socket, but it was too late.
His son…
All of it, years of abuse and fear and pain bubbled up from the depths of his heart into one solid, guttural, blood curdling scream, ripping him apart,
apart,
apart.
Loki shoots up from his pillow, sheets falling in a bunch around his waist. His heart pounds, his head aches, his throat is so closed up that when he tries to take a breath he only hears a strangled gasp, and his hand is still outstretched. It waits to grab something long fallen, and he knows that. But he can’t quite seem to close his hand. Instead, he lets it fall, curling up on himself still sitting upright. He doesn’t care that his arms are caked in sweat, and he doesn’t particularly notice how slick with the stuff his back is either. All he feels is cold, freezing in fact, which in of itself is unnerving given his Jotun roots.
When he had explained to Tony during their last science escapade what happened during these times, Tony had just laughed a little and said that it was reassuring to know that even gods got panic attacks. Fine, great, but how does he make it stop.
He feels as if at any second the walls will cave in on him, and his own skin feels too tight. It crawls on him, and he hates it, he hates how trapped in himself he feels. As the room seems to get more cramped, so does his chest. It hurts to breathe in now, and every time he breathes out less air fills his lungs the next time he inhales. Yet he can’t stop the breaths from coming and going, and as his hands thread through his hair and clutch it tight he realises he can no longer breathe.
He doesn’t know how long he stays that way, hands in his hair and face in his knees, unable to see, to hear anything other than blood pounding in his ears, to breathe. He can vaguely make out a muffled knock from the door, but from his position on the bed it registers as just another torturous heartbeat.
Again, the knock comes, but this time it rings in his ears, magnified to an unbearable extent. He lets out a strangled groan, and another when the squeak of the front door opening feels like a scream in his face. He can hear shoes rushing over the wood floor, and vaguely acknowledges the call of his name that comes with a divet in the mattress. He shakes his head left to right, just wanting it all to go away, to be quiet again. But a sudden warm hand on his arm shoots his head up, his eyes locking onto Tony’s worried ones.
Shame floods him, fear quickly following. He can’t be weak like this, not now, not ever, and especially not in front of other people. This type of weakness only leads to harm coming to him and the people around him. But Tony’s face is welcoming, and he looks calmer than one would expect, so when he says,
“Where do you think you are right now?” All Loki does is blink at him.
“W-what?”
“Where do you think you are?”
“I… here?”
“Where’s here?”
“Um… Stark. Stark Tower?”
“Uh-huh. And where in the tower are you?”
“It- what is the point of this?”
“Are you still freaking out?”
“...”
“I’ll take that as a no. Are you ok?”
“...”
“Another no.”
Loki tries to argue, but Tony straightens up, pats the bed next to him, and says,
“C’mon. You need to not be in this room right now.”
Tony gets up, and Loki doesn’t particularly want to get out of bed but he knows Tony’s right. Being all alone in his room right now will do him no good. So up he gets, trudging along after Tony. he follows him out the door, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. He can still feel the cold seeping through his clothes, and he wishes he could change into new ones. He feels unclean, especially since he hadn’t bothered to change out of the clothes he had been wearing that day before going to bed. He just didn’t have the energy.
Loki follows him into the kitchen, and Tony pulls a mug out of a cupboard, putting it under a strange sleek machine. He opens the top and puts in something that looks like a smaller cup, closing it again and pushing a few buttons. They stand in silence as the thing whirrs, before it makes a small clicking noise and a murky brown liquid begins flowing out of it into the cup. An earthy smell reaches Loki’s nose. Tony takes the cup and hands it to him before turning to make himself one, and after observing the liquid Loki deems it fit for consumption.
It is, decidedly, not fit for consumption.
He spits and sputters into the sink, the bitter taste spreading across his tongue. At least that surprise has snapped him out of any residual funk he might have been in, he thinks, but still not a pleasant experience. Tony laughs, calls him a “dingus” and explains that that was black coffee, and he could have at least put creamer in it or something first. But Loki refuses to put his lips to the cup again, and Tony’s laughter dies down. They sit in silence, albeit a comfortable silence, until Tony breaks it.
“So.”
He takes a sip of his disgusting dirty bean water.
“You mentioned… You mentioned that you have a child. Here. On Earth.”
Loki sits up a bit straighter, instantly becoming more blocked off. Tony sighs. He knew this probably wouldn’t be an easy conversation, but he had been hoping not to get Loki’s guard up so early into it.
“Yes. What about it?”
“Are you here to look for him?”
Loki blinks a bit. It's not like he wasn’t here for that express purpose, but he wasn’t expecting any of the avengers to take interest.
“That is my reason for being here, yes.” Tony nods.
“Would you like help? Finding them that is.”
Stunned. Shocked. Bewildered. Utterly bamboozled. Why in any world would Tony help him with this? He doesn’t know, he has not a single idea why, and so he asks. Tony just responds with,
“I’m curious. Plus, I wanna know exactly how a literal ancient god has been on Earth for so long and NO ONE has noticed.”
Again, utter shock. Loki persists. Why are you curious? What about? What do you plan to do when we find them? How will we find them? Again, why? Tony pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Is it really so hard to believe I wanna help you? Look, you're one of us now. Whether you like it or not, we're supposed to be looking out for you, and that's exactly what I intend to do. All I ask is that when you go out to find them, you take me along. I’d have to be stupid to not take this opportunity to advance my knowledge. Definitely for science.”
A smile makes its way onto Loki’s face, the most genuine he’s felt in a while.
“Ok.”
“Now I know yo… ok?”
“Ok, I shall accept your gracious offer.”
“Well! Wasn’t expecting it to be that easy… nonetheless I'm glad you’ll be accepting my help! Where should we start?”
“Now?”
“Well, I doubt you’ll be going back to sleep anytime soon, so why not now?”
“Hmm, I suppose you're right. In that case, where do you keep records of seismic activity?”