Baby, Come Home.
Sunday night, fifty-two hours after Adeline had practically broken into Stark Tower, they brought her home.
Adeline and Tony both stood up abruptly when the quinjet landed on the helipad. Tony immediately bolted out to the helipad, pulling both of them into a tight hug, but Adeline hung back. She let the three have their moment, quietly taking stock of how much Sage was injured. Her heart was breaking, but she ignored it. Sage needed her right now and she needed to be strong. She would be fine and she would make sure her girlfrien was too. She caught Sage’s eye when she walked in, and caught the girl herself when she rushed over and threw herself into her arms. Addy wrapped her arms sround the other girl rightly, burying her head in her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m amazing.” Her light tone of voice was betrayed by how tightly she held Adeline back. “I’m okay. Or… I will be. We’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, we will.”
They didn’t say much to each other for a while after that. They stood there and held each other, and didn’t say a word until everyone else had left. Sage lifted her head from where it was buried in Adeline’s shoulder, and took one of her hands, kissing her cheek and leading her silently to her room.
She stripped off all of her clothes and rummaged thoruggh her drawers before carefully redressijng in an enormous sweater and a pair of sweats. She tapped the wall twice and turned the thermostat that emerged down to fifty-eight degrees. She climed into the bed as the vents started blowing practically frigid air, and huddled under the mountain of blankets before poking a hand out from underneath them and holding it out to Addy.
The other girl looked at her hand for a long moment and glanced over her shoulder at the door.
Sage’s head peeked out from under the blankets, and she tried to keep her face neutral, not showing exactly how much she needed this. “Please. Just for tonight.”
Addy closed her eyes and blew out a careful breath before climbing underneath the covers. She reached out for Sage and pulled her close, fisting her hand in the other girl’s sweater, just to remind herself that Sage was there. She wasn’t missing anymore. She wasn’t kidnapped, she wasn’t being tortured. She was there, and she was home, and she was safe, and if she could help it, Adeline was never letting her out of her sight ever again.
---
Loki managed to maintain his glamour just long enough for Tony to have gotten him into the tub before letting it melt away with a groan. He leaned his head back against the chilled porcelain, letting his eyes fall shut and bracing himself for when Tony turned back around. He heard a sharp intake of breath and cracked one eye open, noting the look of concern on his husband’s face. “I’m alright, love.”
Tony’s brow furrowed and a stormy look came over his face. “Alright?! Loki, you’re not… Alright. You’ve been tortured for the last four days. You- you’re bleeding in my bathtub! I-” He dropped to his knees by the tub, and carefully traced his fingers along the edge of a long knife wound striping the god’s pale chest. “Oh my god, you’re bleeing in my bathtub. Why isn’t this healed? D- did they use some magic weapon? O- or-”
“No, no, my love. Shhh. Everything is perfectly alright. The cuffs dampened my magic greatly, and I was too focused on protecting Sage to expend any energy on healing. I simply require rest, my darling, and I will be right as rain. Look. Anthony, look at my face.” He could feel the cut along his cheekbone healing in tadem with his split lip, and he needed for Anthony to see it. To know that he was out of harm’s way.
Tony looked up and ran a gentle thumb over the quickly fading bruise on Loki’s cheek, and then looked again at the sluggishly bleeding knife wound, and what looked like cigarette burns littering his thighs. A closer look saw a literal chunk missing from Loki’s forearm, the skin of the other one red and mottled. Rope burn snaked around both wrists, and his ankles, and his calves looked like they’d been scalded. Tears rushed to his eyes, and he leaned his forehead against Loki’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am so so sorry that we dind’t find you sooner. I should have put trackers on you, I- I should have had Coulsen have a SHIELD agent follow you, I should have-”
“No.”
Tony’s head snapped up at Loki’s hard tone, and while the god’s eyes were angry, his hands were gentle as the cupped Tony’s face.
“This is absolutely not your fault. I will not have you blaming yourself for anything that happened to me, do you hear me? You are not responsible for my torture. You did everything you could. You are not the cause of a single thing that happened this week, Anthony.”
The man let out a quiet sob, and couldn’t look Loki in the eye. “Alright. Fine. I’m not responsible. But-”
”No, Anthony. No. Do you love me, darling?”
Tony’s eyes snapped upward to meet Loki’s, and he looked hurt. “Of course, I-”
Loki smiled softly, interrupting. “And I love you. And you would never want me to blame myself for something that was out of my control, so please, please hear me when I say that this was not your fault.”
He let out a shaky breath, and raised a hand to grasp one of Loki’s. “I- I felt so useless, Lo’. It was so dumb, but I felt so… So scared, and so helpless, and they wouldn’t let me-”
“Anthony, what could you have done?”
“Excuse me?!” Tony lurched backward and tears rushed to his eyes.
“No… I didn’t mean that, forgive me, my love. I am not thinking clearly, let me rephrase that. I did not mean to question you or your ability. I was asking. What could you have done, my love? Tell me. Think through every step that you could have taken to put your mind at ease. Tell me how you would have done things differently.”
Tony took a deep breath, and let his eyes slip closed. He tightened his grip on Loki’s hand and let his mind free, letting it work through everything that he would have done, everything that he could have done, and letting his mouth work a mile a minute as his thoughts ran wild, doing his best to keep up. “Well, to start with…”