Chapter 22
When Tony and Loki leave the bookstore, they are at a tactical disadvantage. Primarily, neither of them expect to be attacked in the middle of a sunny day in New York City, especially since Tony is under the assumption that wearing a hat and sunglasses make him unrecognizable. Secondly, they are piled so high with books that even Loki’s stronger-than-human strength is rather overwhelmed, saying nothing of Tony.
So when people sneak up behind them with chloroform rags, they are not expecting it.
“What is this, Nancy Drew?” Tony quips. (Yes, he read children’s mystery books. Sue him.)
For his frankly delightful humor, one of the goons shoves the butt of a gun into Tony’s chest. He almost collapses in pain, because of course his luck would have the Nancy Drew goons destroy his fucking arc reactor. It’s not like he needed that or anything.
Loki immediately attempts to defend himself, the books tumbling to the ground. Tony shakes his head as he fades, remembering through the fog how much they have to lose if Loki’s found out.
Tony is rather good at hiding that he’s in pain. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s constantly sleep deprived that slurred words and stilted movements have come to be expected. It’s only when Loki attempts to inspect the wound and finds there isn’t a wound, but the glow he has sometimes seen from Stark’s chest is dimmed, that he realizes something is terribly wrong.
“You’re going to die,” Loki says, horrified. Loki hates himself for forgetting how breakable Midgardians are. He should have known better, been better. He should have fought, even though Tony told him not to.
“I’ll be fine,” Tony coughs, those terrible coughs that wrack his entire body. “Seriously, kid. I’m always fine.”
“What was it they broke?” Loki asks. If he knows what’s broken, he can fix it. He has to.
“Arc reactor,” Tony coughs. “I have shrapnel in my chest. It keeps it from going into my heart and lungs.”
“Oh,” Loki says. He can fix this, he’s sure he can. But he has so little time. He wants to ask, wants Tony to reassure him that he can do this. But he needs to work quickly.
Loki raises a hand. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“What are you —” Tony starts before slumping into a deep sleep.
Loki looks to the surveillance camera. After what Tony did to keep Loki from being outed as other-Loki, he knows he can’t let the camera catch what he’s doing. So he angles himself over Tony and gets to work.
Tony wakes up hours later with a gasp. More air floods his chest than he knows what to do with.
“What happened?” He asks. Loki presses the shrapnel into his hand, saying nothing.
Tony sighs. “That wasn’t cool.”
Loki holds Tony’s gaze. “I’m not sorry for what I did,” he says. He looks away then. “But I am sorry for how I did it.”
Tony nods. He would have preferred a heads-up (or for Loki to not play in his insides in the first place). But he’s seen the way Loki is whenever anyone he cares about gets hurt. He understands it.
“You’re a good kid,” Tony says. And he means it.
Loki falls asleep. There’s a reason precision healing is usually done with multiple healers. When he wakes up, Tony isn’t there.
Loki starts to panic. He debates using his seidr to get himself out of the room they’ve been locked in and looking for Tony, when the door opens and Tony is unceremoniously thrown back inside.
His lip is bloodied but he seems otherwise unharmed. Loki dabs at his lip with the edge of his shirt, but Tony flinches away from the pressure.
“What happened?” Loki asks quietly. He can find a way out of this, of course he can, but he needs more information first.
“The assholes want me to make them weapons,” Tony mumbles. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“Okay,” Loki says calmly. “That’s good news.”
“How is that good news?” Tony slurs.
“Because that means they aren’t going to kill you anytime soon. And, theoretically, they’re going to need you alert and unharmed enough to build stuff for them.”
“I think you’re giving them too much credit,” Tony mumbles.
“Perhaps I am.” Loki sighs. After all, if they were smarter, they wouldn’t have kidnapped Loki along with Tony. That’s going to come back to bite them.
“Could you magic us out of here?” Tony slurs, using jazz hands when he says magic. Loki magnanimously ignores the jazz hands.
Loki sighs. “I could get myself out. I’d have to walk Yggdrasil to get back to the Tower. In other circumstances, I might be able to take a passenger. But I don’t know the lines of Midgard as well as the rest of the Nine.”
“You should go, then,” Tony says. “I can take care of myself.”
“Why didn’t you let me use my seidr when I could have prevented this from happening? Because your idea seems to include your captors watching me vanish from the cell and also leaving you alone. How is that a good idea?”
“It’s better than you being here with me,” Tony slurs. “Really, kid, you should go.”
Loki doesn’t respond. Instead, he channels a little bit of seidr into his fingertips and lessens the swelling of Tony’s lip. Not enough for the cut to disappear, of course. But enough to make it stop hurting.
The door slides open again a couple hours later.
“Good news,” the man outside the door says. “We’ve been given a ransom for the kid. He’ll be going home tomorrow. We don’t need him anyway.”
Loki starts to plan.