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“You alrigh' there, hon?”
Tony flicks his gaze up from where he’d been intensely staring into the soul of the metal table to Mrs. Palmar, trying to quell his surprise that she spoke to him. Him.
It's out of pity a voice murmurs in the back of his mind, it's always out of pity. Why would anyone want to talk with Tony Stark?
Mrs. Palmar is staring at him gently, her frown turned down in a way that reminds Tony of Mrs. Rhodes. The concern is almost mothering, and it's something that Tony, quietly, selfishly relishes. It's not something unfamiliar to her, however. Tony has seen Mrs. Palmar give this exact same look to almost everyone who frequents her Mom n' Pop store.
His shaking fingers tighten around the coffee cup, but it only makes the threat of coffee spilling worse instead of better.
“Perfectly.” He answers, trying to put sincerity in his tone. He gives her a weak smile, grimacing when he shifts a fraction, sending a sharp, stabbing ache through his ribs. He has to clench the styrofoam cup in deathly white fingers so he'll refrain from touching them. The array of bruising is still nasty and poking isn't going to help.
Mrs. Palmar lifts a thin eyebrow, her frown growing more severe. She wipes her hands on the sunflower dish towel swung over her left shoulder--everyone over sixty is obsessed with doing that for reasons Tony will never understand--and sighs heavily.
Tony tries not to curl in on himself.
She, too, is frustrated or disappointed in him--whatever, it doesn’t matter --and he still doesn’t understand what he’s doing wrong.
This is pathetic, he decides. It's the coffee lady and he's not buying her coffee right anymore despite six years of dedicated customer-ing here. He's upset her. It's a given at this point. Of course it is. Of course he's not buying the stupid coffee right. He can't be a little bit normal in some aspect, can't he?
No.
Of course not.
Because he's freaking Tony Stark.
“You really ought to drink that, hon,” Mrs. Palamar’s voice--calm, collected, not full of rage, and maybe you just haven’t seen it yet-- snaps him back. “You’ve been there awhile an’ it’s gettin’ cold.” Her thick Southern accent rings through the air.
Mrs. Palmar continues to stand there, looking at him. Waiting. She is a goddess among the poor mortal men and has been since he accidentally stumbled on her small store all those years ago. She makes the best coffee in the world, and she’s a decent person. Both are qualities that Tony does not have. Who else, besides Mrs. Palmar, could pretend they weren’t annoyed with Tony being a regular customer at their store or not flaunt it for publicity?
The coffee is cold now, isn’t it?
Tony doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here, hiding from his responsibilities after going for a run this morning in a failed effort to clear his head, but he thinks it’s been a while. It’s been hard. Keeping track of time since...Well, since.
Shame. This coffee--as all coffee--is disgusting cold. Maybe he can ask her to heat it again. But on the same side, it probably has clumps at the bottom now, and it would just be gross to warm the coffee again and find that. Well, it sounds gross, he usually just gives up on the beverage when it's past lukewarm, so he’s not actually sure what would happen.
Apparently unsatisfied with his lack of responses to her insistent prodding since he sat down, Mrs. Palmar takes the seat opposite of him on the small table, and his body tenses despite himself. Years of experience have taught him better than to remain calm when this happens. His ribs give a dull ache in a reminder of their discomfort.
Yeah.
He didn’t forget.
“What’s on that mind of yours?” Mrs. Palmar asks, and Tony draws his attention back, trying to stay here. It feels impossible. His head is a scattered, frazzled mess and has been for nearly three weeks now.
(He’s my friend.
So was--)
Tony shrugs, avoiding her gaze. He really would prefer not to talk about it. He doesn’t even know how. What is he supposed to say? Something along the lines of: Oh, well, the government pulled a stupid and the friend--among others--I thought of as a brother left me to die in Siberia after trying to kill me. My girlfriend dumped me because she’s tired of my whining, my best friend is paralyzed from the waste down ‘cause I was stupid, and the family I built over the last four years was scratched on lies. How are you?
That, he’s sure, would go over well.
He’ll only get berated for seeking attention. Like-- look at how miserable I am! There are so many people that have it way worse than him. People who have actual concerns instead of his feeble attempts at a crisis. This is just him being Anothony Edward Overdramatic Stark, and that’s it. These aren’t real- real concerns.
They never are.
It doesn’t matter.
“Nothing important,” he mumbles out at last in response to Mrs. Palmar’s question. The sound of his voice makes him cringe. He hates the sound of it--has always hated it--and wishes he hadn't said anything at the scathing look Mrs. Palmer sends his way.
“No,” she disagrees, “that’s not it. Try again, hon.”
No, thanks.
“Don’t you have other customers to pester?” Tony counters, trying to rein in his patience.
Mrs. Palmar smiles knowingly, pushing up red-rimmed glasses. Her graying black hair falls over her shoulders as she leans forward. “Probably,” she agrees, “but everyone has their orders, and you’d been starin’ into that cup for nearly forty minutes now.”
Oh.
That’s a lot longer than he first thought. Annoyance ripples through him. He has so much that needs to get done today alone and he doesn’t have the time to dither. He has an Accords meeting with Ross, a dozen projects for SI, Pepper wanted him to meet her at a board meeting, then there’s managing the suit, updating Rhodey’s leg braces, working out the kink in the Spider-Man suit--
Nowhere on this lengthy list is sit in the best coffee shop for an hour having an existential crisis.
He bites back a groan, pinching at the bridge of his nose behind his sunglasses. A headache is beginning to throb dully, likely an aftereffect of his recent insomnia. He hasn't really gotten any since he left the hospital.
But it's fine. It's always fine. He'll get to sleep later.
( There's never a "later.")
There is still so much more to do today and he has already wasted so much time.
Mrs. Palmar prods at his arm, and Tony jerks his hand back on impulse. He swallows an exclamation and sees the coffee queen’s expression grow sad for a moment at his reaction. “Hon, maybe you should--”
“No, I’m fine.” Tony shoots down quickly, blinking as he lifts out one hand and pats down his pockets trying to find where he put his phone. He thinks he felt it buzz against his leg ten-ish minutes ago, but at this point, he might have imagined it.
Mrs. Palmar shakes her head, “I don’t think that you are.”
“And you’re all-knowing since when?” Tony counters, slapping his hand against the outline of his phone before he starts to tug it out of his pocket. Mrs. Palmar clicks her tongue, and a rush of guilt washes over him. He’s so mean. Can’t he hold his tongue for two seconds? "Sorry. I--you don't deserve that. I...sorry."
“Mr. Stark--”
“Listen,” Tony cuts in, rising to his feet, phone gripped tightly. “I appreciate that you’re willing to...do whatever this is, but I don’t have time for chit-chat. I need to get back to work and--”
“You need to get some breakfast.” Mrs. Palmar interrupts her tone hard. She doesn’t look to be in a compromising mood. Tony sucks in his cheeks, not willing to relent. He doesn’t want to get into a battle of stubbornness with this woman, but he will.
“But I--”
“Uh-uh,” Mrs. Palmar voices, lifting up a finger. “You sit down and stay there, Mr. Stark. I’ll go grab ya’ somethin’ from the back. Once you’ve eaten, then you can go.”
No arguing. It reminds him of Tash--no. He’s not going to think about that right now. It’s best not to. Easier. ( Are you capable of letting go of your ego for--)
He sighs and then tips his head with agreement, sinking back into the wobbly white seat. Mrs. Palmar beams with a smile bright enough to put the sun to shame before she rises to her feet. “Good man. I’ll be back ‘n a sec, hon.”
Tony watches her scamper off across the small store, weaving past the three other old and small, but scarcely filled tables with ease. The coffee shop hasn’t changed since he found it years ago, and he doubts that it ever will. It’s a small, squarish space painted a light blue with a few handmade paintings hanging near the windows. Behind the counter is a doorway leading off to where the magic happens. Tony’s never been inside back of house, so he really doesn’t know what’s in there.
Probably at least a coffee maker, or a cauldron that Mrs. Palmar brews her coffee potions in. Tony’s not gonna lie, if he has been drinking a witch-brew for the last six years, he’s perfectly fine with that. It has been a fine magical substance.
The door swings open and the little bell attached to the ceiling gives a harsh ding! that Tony doesn't turn around to look at. Part of him, horribly, hopes it's someone here for armed robbery of the tiny shop. Something else to focus on. Something to end this numbing emptiness.
He's a terrible person.
He sets the phone down on the table and grasps the cold coffee with both hands, taking a sip. Yeah, it’s just warm enough not to be cold -cold, which is somehow worse than straight-up frigid.
Gross.
Tony sets the cup down, his head raising when he hears a strange tapping sound. Almost like a clicker, but not as consistent. At first, he thinks "shoe", but a visual check reveals that isn't the case.
A tall, gaunt young man is making his way toward the counter, a white guide cane in his left hand. It’s tapping against various pieces of furniture. Long, ragged black hair is swept over one shoulder in a messy braid, but it doesn’t do much to hide the patches of missing hair. His clothing is patchy and his profile is familiar, but Tony doesn’t know from where. As far as he's aware, he doesn’t know any blind, homeless, plague victims.
There's something familiar about him. Tony isn't sure what it is. Eyes are freely staring at the man's back, but if he notices, he doesn't show it.
"Luke!" Mrs. Palmar greets him cheerfully, moving toward the counter as he approaches. "It's good to see you again," Mrs. Palmar continues, "it's been some time. You really need to drop by more often," she chides gently, and then sets whatever she was gathering for Tony down. "The usual."
"If you wouldn't mind," comes the smooth reply, and Tony's entire body seizes.
No.
No.
No way. This is--
It--
You have got to be kidding me.
This can’t be happening, especially here. This is Tony’s safe place, one he hasn’t told anyone about because it’s both stupid and strangely depressing that there’s less than a handful of areas he can be somewhat at ease in, and one of those is a coffee shop that’s falling apart.
Not here.
Not now.
Tony doesn’t want to deal with this. He’s been doing his utmost to ignore any superhero-ing he could since Siberia, and this is definitely going to qualify as that. What if he has to battle and it gets messy, destroying the stupid little shop, and Tony doesn’t see Mrs. Palmar again? What if--
Of course you’re thinking about yourself, and only yourself. The civilians here...they don’t deserve the fallout of what letting the psychopath run around free would do. He can’t just ignore this because he’s a little tired and a coward.
But maybe…
No.
Stop.
Don’t go there. Too late. He’s there and now his brain won't shut up with the idea. The man is not a person who will grant quarter, and maybe...stop. He doesn’t want to frame the thought into words inside his head, because it seems awful. Sinful. He’s probably supposed to be better than that. Who is he kidding? He’s Tony Stark. He’s a disaster and everyone knows it.
Loki is in Mrs. Palmar’s coffee shop.
Tony’s lips press together tightly and he blows out a deep breath through his nose. Mrs. Palmar has said something he missed, because Loki is setting wrinkled money on the countertop-- that is so weird-- and saying something else in response to a question. The other eyes in the shop have drifted away at how mundane the interaction is.
Tony can’t look away.
Thor said he was in prison.
But he's here.
How long has he been here? It’s been four years since the attack on New York. He can’t have taken residence here the whole time without no one noticing. Or him doing something to draw attention to himself. This is Loki. The Asgardian diva who put on the loudest and most obvious show in the universe so everyone would see him.
There is no way he would have kept to himself in that length of time.
So, this begs the question--what is he doing here in the first place? Actually, backtracking, his motivations are obvious: Finish what he started.
Loki turns, and Tony tenses, hand clenching around the edge of the table. The Asgardian begins to move slowly down the aisle, stick tapping against the pieces of furniture. He can’t really need that, and Tony’s privately incensed that he would lower himself to that level of mockery.
When he's close enough, Tony swallows the anxiety in his throat and calls out loudly, “Luke! It’s been a while.” For a second, it doesn't seem like Loki recognizes him by his voice, but then the Asgardian stops, and releases a long, slow breath.
Thin fingers tighten their grip on the edge of the guide stick before Loki moves toward him.
He comes to a stop near the table, resting a hand on it. His skin looks awful. It’s pinkish in some areas, stark white in others, and blisters are clearly in the process of healing. There are obvious burn marks varying between only a little red to still grossly black around some edges. It looks like what Tony would imagine would happen to bare flesh if acid was poured over it.
That, whatever it was, must’ve hurt. A lot.
“What do you want, Mr. Stark?” Loki’s voice has dropped. Any friendliness that he had for Mrs. Palmar is gone.
Tony tilts his head, refusing to meet the Asgardian’s haunted eyes. He stares down at his coffee instead. “To chat,” Tony says and gestures towards the chair in front of him, “have a seat.”
Loki doesn’t move. “Do you think me stupid?”
Tony shrugs, “Still haven’t decided yet. Sit. I insist. Or, you know...I think that the NYPD would like to talk to you, too...”
Loki stiffly takes the chair across from him, and Tony smirks with satisfaction, leaning back. He opens his mouth to make a comment about something, he can’t remember what, but also finally chances a look up at Loki’s face and all the words die in his throat.
Loki looks awful. His face is jutting bone in an unhealthy manner, and his skin looks only a fraction better than that of his hand. Around his lips is marred flesh from who-knows-what, and the skin around his eyes is...bad. The burns are more obvious there, and Loki’s sunken eyes are red and watery, but the iris is a pale gray. The skin on his face is just as patchy and burned as his hands, showing most prominently near his eyes. Loki’s not using the guide stick for show, he can’t be.
There are still features that make him recognizable, but if wasn’t for that, Tony wouldn’t believe that this was the same person that defenestrated him four years ago.
“Uhhh,” Tony stutters out, and then, like the graceful, careful man he is, blurts out: “Wow, I don’t think that the makeover went the way you were hoping. My advice? Sue your plastic surgeon, Reindeer Games.”
Loki blinks, his face blank.
Okay.
Trying not to be unsettled, he bites at his lower lip for a second, trying to find something to say. He can do interrogations, but his forte is not pulling information from someone. He’s an engineer, not an emotional manipulator. That was always Tasha’s-- will you stop thinking about her!?
Tony blows out a breath. Start with the basics. “You, uh, are aware that you’re supposed to be in you-know-where right? Serving out your sentence?” He doesn’t really want to go blurting out Loki’s name or Asgard’s right here, because that’s bound to catch the attention of the civilians around them, and the last thing he wants is for the press to grab at this.
Then again, it would give them something else to talk about beyond the Avengers split and warrants.
Loki sighs deeply, leaning back in the chair, and pulls the edges of his hole-filled brown jacket across his chest. “Yes.” The word is clipped.
“Okay,” Tony agrees, “so why aren’t you there?”
Loki rubs his eyes with three fingers. Tony wouldn’t want to touch such fragile-looking skin, but the Asgardian doesn’t have any restraint. He looks tired as if he’d been without sleep for a few days. Tony doesn’t really care. He’s not going to fall for any acts Loki’s putting up.
Why is he even bothering with this? The only person who had some semblance of success in worming information out of Loki was Tasha, but that’s because she’s her. Tony’s just...Tony.
And that has never been enough.
He leans across the table and snaps his fingers in front of the Asgardian’s face. Loki flinches backward, startled, and Tony sees his hand raise somewhat. His stomach coils with discomfort, but he pushes it to the side. “Hello?” Tony questions, “Earth to crazy?”
“Why on the Nine do you think I’m going to discuss this with you?” Loki asks flatly. “My business is my own.”
“Uh, no, it’s not, ‘cause your business gets people killed.” Tony scoffs, “Ergo, I kind of need to hear about it.”
Loki shakes his head, eyes rolling up with annoyance, and rises to his feet.
“Whoa--wait!” Tony commands, a surge of desperation washing through him, “At least tell me what your next move on the city’s going to be. A bomb? Evil captive situation? Mutant jello? Balrog? What do wizards do when they attack a large population?” He needs to do something right today. If he can get this information, he’ll have been a little useful. He’s good at being useful.
That’s all anybody wants from him.
"What are you going to do?"
Loki glances at him, but the effect of carelessness is thrown a little by the murky-gray and the slight tenseness in the sorcerer’s shoulders. His jaw flexes as if he’s debating over saying something before, in a toneless voice, he states simply, “Cry.”
Tony’s eyebrows shoot up, bewildered.
What the?
His jaw falls a little without his consent, but Mrs. Palmar calls Loki up to the front, and with a murmured if you'll excuse me the tap, tap, tap of his stick moves steadily across the ground before the Asgardian takes the food from the woman and turns rapidly, exiting the shop.
Tony watches him go, considering chasing after him, but stops himself.
What would be the point?
If Loki has been here since 2012, why would Tony have any more luck tracking him down than the police, FBI, S.H.I.E.L.D., or whatnot? As far as Tony is aware, no one even knows he was here. Thor’s never mentioned it, but Thor doesn’t really talk about his brother that much. Just a vague half-formed thought every now and then.
But he can’t just let Loki wander around without a leash. This is Loki. The guy who killed eighty people in two days, almost crashed a helicarrier, and attempted to invade New York. Took control of Clint--no. He doesn’t want to think about him, either. ( Watch your back with this guy, there’s a chance he’s going to--)
Tony sighs and lets out a soft groan, letting his head fall into his hands.
Something quietly assures him his life just got a lot more complicated.
Mrs. Palmar arrives about a minute later with the promised breakfast in hand and sets the plate in front of him with a small smile. “On the house, hon,” she declares.
Tony looks up at her, uncomfortable. He doesn’t like being an exception to previously made rules. It makes him feel like an awful person because people always get so angry with him when it happens, even though it’s largely not his fault. “I can pay you,” Tony stumbles out, “you know I can pay you.”
Mrs. Palmar nods, “Yeah, but let me do somethin’ for ya.”
“You do more than enough,” Tony promises.
Mrs. Palmar smiles sweetly and touches his shoulder for a brief moment. Something occurs to him then, that should have clicked earlier. Mrs. Palmar addressed Loki by a first name, which means he’s often here and she asked him if he wanted a “usual.” She has seen him a lot more than he has and might be able to give him a basic timeline of how long the Asgardian has been here, and possibly provide answers as to what happened to his face.
“Hey, um,” Tony grabs at her arm before she can move away, “you know Luke? That guy you just served?”
Mrs. Palmar nods carefully.
“I think he’s an old acquaintance of mine I haven’t seen for a few years. Can you tell me how long he’s been coming here?” The lie tastes bitter, but it’s small. Not nearly the secrets that the Avengers were built on top of.
Mrs. Palmar hesitates, “Oh, I don’ know, hon…”
“ Please ,” Tony presses.
Mrs. Palmar frowns, but relents after staring at his earnest expression. “Oh, all right. About six weeks now. He’s a little quiet, but a real sweetheart, you know?”
Sweetheart?
Six weeks. Six. That’s...a lot less time than he’d been expecting. He’d thought she’d say months, or upwards towards years. Not...not weeks.
Tony gives a thin smile, “Yeah. I do. That’s him.”
Mrs. Palmar makes a pointed glance he can’t interpret, but gently wiggles her way from Tony’s grip. “Alright, hon, you eat up now, I gotta store to run.” She pats his shoulder again before walking off and Tony looks at the plate of food but finds his appetite even more barren than it was before.
Loki is in the city.
He’s here; he’s talked with Mrs. Palmar. If he decides to make another attempt at sieging New York, who is going to stop him? Tony can’t call the Avengers, Thor is off-world doing who knows what (he’s heard it was picking up the aftermath of the damage Dark Elves did on his realm, but he doesn’t really know), and the only person he can really call on for help is Rhodey, because Vision bailed two weeks ago.
But Rhodey is paralyzed from the waist down now, and despite Tony’s attempts at making it better, it’s not getting there.
He has to handle this one alone.
Which is.
It just is.
He doesn't really care anymore.
Would anyone? Care if he survived or not? Maybe it would be a mercy, having died trying to save people. Actually die trying to save someone, because then it’s over. He’s been on borrowed time since Yinsen, and he can feel like a weight in his chest that it’s coming to a close.
This must be it, and he’s okay with that.
( He’s my friend.
So was--)
He’s being selfish again, for thinking these thoughts, but he’s all corrupted now, and there isn’t much else to do. It’s his fault that the Avengers fell apart, that Ross started the stupid Accords in the first place, for Ultron, Pepper’s endless tears, Rhodey’s legs--if he’d been better, pushed a little harder, maybe he’d still be redeemable.
But he is not. Just a shell of wasted potential.
( Sometimes my teammates don’t tell me things.
Did you know?)
This is impossible. He’s never going to be able to pick up the pieces the way everyone wants him to; he can’t keep pushing. His ribs hurt from where Steve slammed the shield into the arc reactor, and it hasn’t gone away since the event.
He’s so tired, but he couldn’t sleep it away even if he could sleep.
And Loki…
Suicide by proxy is still suicide, Tony. The voice sounds dangerously like Pepper’s, but Tony shakes it off, picking up the plastic fork Mrs. Palmar left on the side of the plate. Pepper wouldn’t care anyway. She hates him. ( Is he really considering this? Is he really so stupid and selfish that he’d...maybe. He doesn’t know. Is he really thinking this over?)
Dying in battle--that would be different, wouldn’t it? He’d go down as a hero, and get what he wanted in the first place. So no, maybe he isn’t going to seek Loki out for solely noble reasons like protecting the Earth and all that. Tony’s going to find the stupid, egotistic Asgardian and get him to kill him.
And to think, earlier he was moping about coffee. Now he’s written himself out a death sentence. He was so, so lucky to have waited around longer than he normally does. He might’ve missed this opportunity altogether if he hadn’t.
000o000
Tony walks back to where he left his car, trying to figure out a basic schedule for the day. The list is all-encompassing, and he needs to prioritize, but he doesn’t really know where to start. It all sounds unbelievably exhausting.
If he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t really care. What’s the point? He’s going to finish one more project that everyone will hate and then his last work will have been fixing someone’s bug.
But that’s what he does. He’s useful, and when he’s not useful, no one wants him anymore. Which is why Steve kept things from him. Why everyone did. Because if he’s emotionally compromised, then he’s not really capable of being useful anymore, is he?
Tony breathes out uneasily and climbs into the car. He just sits there for long seconds, trying to will himself to go back to the Tower. But it’s like a suffocating prison. He can’t focus there. All he can see is evidence of the Avengers everywhere as if the ghosts of his once-family are haunting the halls. It’s disorientating. And painful.
Because…
Because why didn’t anyone choose me? Even if they were on his side initially, they slunk over to Cap because he’s the one they actually care about. Because Steve is the golden boy that everybody loves, and Tony is just this awkward, fumbling mess who can’t do anything right. He was going to sick his team of lawyers on the Accords until they all had something they could agree with. He wanted them to adapt with it instead of against it.
But Steve didn’t trust him.
Maybe he never has.
(He’s my friend.
So was I.)
“Boss?” FRIDAY asks quietly. It jars him from his thoughts. Tony starts the car. He doesn’t answer the AI. He drives to the Tower and parks the car. He gets out. He feels like he’s in a daze, or like he’s watching his body from afar. He feels sick to his stomach, and like he’ll never be hungry again. The food Mrs. Palmar forced on him tasted bland.
Tony retreats to his lab and works on the projects. Not because he wants to, but because he doesn’t have anything else to do except think, and he would love to avoid that if at all possible. Working helps, at least for a little while. It’s good to not have to think about something related to the Accords, and Germany, and Siberia.
But it’s not foolproof. He’ll catch something out of the corner of his eye, or find himself looking up as if to see one of his teammates here--Natasha spent a great deal of time reading in the corner when she was stressed, and he started adding things to her nook, though he’s not sure that she noticed, or even cared.
But there’s no one there. He didn’t realize how used to the company he got. He used to only be able to focus when he was completely alone. It was part of the reason he used to blast his music so loudly. But now he’s gone and gotten himself addicted to company, and there’s nothing worse than this withdrawal.
But they didn’t really like him. It was tolerance at best.
His great spiral of Ignore Everything comes to a halt a little after six p.m., about the same time that he realizes he hasn’t eaten anything since this morning. He’s gone on for longer, a lot longer, but the thought of staying in his lab for longer is stifling.
He drags himself up to the kitchen and forces himself to cook something. If asked later, he couldn’t have said what it was for the life of him. Then he sits down at the table. And he swirls the food around in the bowl.
“Boss,” FRIDAY asks quietly. “Are you alright?”
“No,” Tony admits at length. He stares into the bowl. He can’t register the colors. “No, I’m not.”
( That shield doesn’t belong to you.)
FRIDAY is silent, processing that. But she’s not JARVIS, who knew how to get Tony to talk. Isn’t it kinda pathetic, though, that Tony has to create something to have a conversation with him? Because no one actually wants to? It was all a facade. They hated me. Like everyone else. And I fell for it, over and over again.
“Perhaps you should consider talking with someone,” FRIDAY says carefully.
Tony scoffs, wanting to laugh. “Who do I have to talk to?” he asks. The words settle into the space around him. Then inside of him. And then, like a heavy weight slowly sinking to crush him, he begins to cry. He’s five. Stark men are made of iron. But Tony can’t get himself to stop. He curls into himself, hands pressed against his eyes, and weeps.
He didn’t cry when Steve left him to die in Siberia. He didn’t cry when he woke up in the hospital alone. He didn’t cry in the weeks that followed. But now, sitting at a table in front of an uneaten meal, he’s sobbing.
Because Stark men may be made of iron.
But Tony isn’t.
000o000
Tony crawls to his bed and forces himself to sleep. His night is filled with falling through open space and dreams of the shield crushing through his armor and through his chest. He wakes up alive and unbearably disappointed. He’s shaking everywhere. He takes a shower that he can’t stand in and has FRIDAY pull up all the information on Loki that S.H.I.E.L.D. had. It looks about the same as the last time he remembers going over it.
He doesn’t know when that was or why.
Basic biological information is listed. Hair: black; Eyes: blue; Height: 6”1’; Name: Loki. Then a summary of the Attack on New York. Then the detailed records of what happened and transcriptions of conversations. Tony looks through everything, trying to understand. But having the Attack fresh on his mind just makes him more miserable and depressed, because he should have done something to stop it.
Just hundreds of names to add to his leger.
But seeing images of Loki in the Helicarrier really only impresses on Tony just how bad the Asgardian looked yesterday. Because, yeah, Loki doesn’t look great. He’s washed out and shaky on his feet, a detail he hadn’t really noticed before, but he looked nothing like yesterday.
What happened?
They sent Loki back to Asgard a few days after the Attack. Thor came back a few months later, looking a little worse for wear, and explained that Loki’s punishment was solitary confinement for the rest of his life. Tony remembers feeling a little indigent. Because Loki had hurt so many people and the worst that he got was a locked room?
But Loki didn’t look like he’d just been sitting in a locked room, bored out of his mind. He sort of looked like someone tried to burn him alive. Tony swallows uncomfortably, biting on his tongue. Because the more he thinks about it, the more that that fits, and he’s beginning to paint an uncomfortable picture in his head about what Thor told them versus what actually happened.
Loki doesn’t really have any internal body heat, Tony notices when he looks over the thermal imaging later. That’s weird. It’s like he’s just the temperature of the room, adapting with it. Did Thor do that? A quick check shows that no, Thor produces body heat. Tony remembers vaguely something about Loki being adopted. Thor talked about it a little more when he came back to Earth.
Then he left again, and didn’t come back, and it’s probably because the idea of talking with Tony left him wanting to retreat to the other side of the universe. Everyone gets there eventually.
Tony sighs, rubbing at his forehead. FRIDAY tries to remind him to eat, but the idea makes him want to curl into a ball, so he ignores her. It’s past seven a.m. now. He doesn’t know when he woke up last night, and he doesn’t care.
“Run a facial rec for Loki for the last six months in New York.” Tony says to FRIDAY, leaning back in his seat. He’d slunk off to his lab somewhere past five a.m. and has been hiding in it ever since. Pepper will probably bug him about the board meeting after eight, which is probably a good thing. Tony can’t remember when it was supposed to be. He’ll show up because she asked him to, but how much auditory processing he’ll do is a different story.
He starts on a different project while he waits, and a few minutes later, FRIDAY pulls the data up on his screen. “Here’s what I found, Boss.” She explains, “There’s nothing older than two months. He’s been showing up in the city in sparse bursts for the last nine weeks. Nothing before that.”
Tony nods, rubbing at the lower half of his face. Ugh. His beard feels strange. “Can you find any Bifrost readings around that time?”
FRIDAY looks. Then pulls up the information on a date sixty-five days ago. “There’s...something, I believe. It’s definitely Asgardian.”
“And without S.H.I.E.L.D. here to go track down every weird thing that even thinks about coming into being, no one bothered to check it out,” Tony sighs. FRIDAY runs scans, but the Avengers didn’t have the resources or the people to look at every sighting. She only would have brought up the most urgent ones.
“This one slipped past my notice,” FRIDAY admits, sounding slightly sheepish.
Tony waves a hand in a quiet it doesn’t matter. He’s too tired to care. He sighs, leaning forward, and resting his folded arms on the desk. “So he’s been here for nine weeks and hasn’t done...anything?”
That doesn’t sound like Loki. The diva was on Earth for about five days total and left only a trail of destruction in his wake.
“That I can tell, Boss? No. Nothing. Images from earlier show that he was...not doing as well.” FRIDAY explains and pulls up something to show him. Tony looks at it, grimacing, swearing lightly under his breath. However rough Loki looked yesterday, he’s about ten times worse. The image is grainy, as most traffic footage is, but it shows enough. Loki’s barely upright, his skin in a far worse condition than before.
What happened to him?
“Thor heals pretty fast,” Tony thinks out loud, “I mean. You stab him through the heart and he’s not gonna walk away, but I’ve seen him use broken limbs without a problem only a couple of days after it happened. Whatever this--” Tony waves a hand to indicate everything “--is, it’s pretty bad. I mean, it’s been nine weeks and he barely looks any better.”
“The damage must have been extensive,” FRIDAY agrees.
Tony sighs. Sympathy is crawling somewhere in him, and he hates it. Because Loki’s injuries are obviously painful, and nine weeks of that? It must be agony. But he’s not supposed to sympathize with him because Loki killed hundreds of people. But Tony’s not a good person, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
Tony pushes his tongue against the back of his teeth, thinking for long seconds. “Run a face rec now. Let me know when you find something.”
FRIDAY hesitates. “Can I ask why, Boss?”
Cause I’m going to convince him to kill me.
“We should probably just keep an eye on him,” Tony says flippantly, rubbing at his ribs absently. “Just because the Avengers abandoned the world doesn’t mean that I have to.”
But they didn’t abandon the world.
Just you.
000o000
Pepper does contact him about the board meeting. Her message is short and clipped, as they usually are. She visited him in the hospital, but that’s about the most warmth that he’s gotten from her lately.
To be fair, he doesn’t really want to talk to her either. The large argument that led to this current falling out is something that he has little desire to talk about or resolve right now. Which is fine. He’s fine. (He misses her. He misses her so much that he aches like a throbbing, broken bone.)
Tony goes to the meeting, zones out through most of it, and retreats back to the lab. He ignores SI because he’s good at that, and does his best to pretend that he’s not sulking.
He hides in the bathroom for a while, trying to rub some sort of cream that’s meant to help with inflammation across his ribs, and he just stares at the bruises for a while. Because after everything, that’s all he really can. It’s shaped in a straight line across his chest, the deepest, ugliest bruises being across his sternum. There are other bruises, too, from that fight, but nothing that feels as invasive as this does. That bruise, right on his sternum? That’s where the arc reactor dug into his body when it broke. They dug glass out.
If anyone had asked him before Siberia if Steve would ever hurt him, Tony would have laughed. Because yeah, they butted heads and they fought, but it was the way that brothers do. They hit each other for training, but it was never serious. Nothing like that.
Nothing…
(He’s my friend.
So was I.)
Tony grits his teeth. He drops his shirt and shakes off the memory. He’s been through worse than this. Why can’t he just let any of this go? Because betrayal can never come from your enemies. And he can think of nothing worse than someone you would have trusted with your life attempting to kill you.
For those brief, terrifying seconds, Tony had been convinced Steve was going to bring the shield down on his neck, not his chest. Part of him wonders if Steve thought that, too.
(Wait, you’re on that list? Are you above or below angry bees?)
Tony can’t remember most of the day, but he knows that he doesn’t sleep. He thinks he works, but he’s not sure. He doesn’t sleep that night, mind hurtling through a hit list of worst memories, so instead, he dives into all those projects that SI wanted him to do. The waitlist is going to be tiny by the time this is over.
Rhodey calls him, but Tony doesn’t feel like talking and remains mostly quiet. Then he slinks off afterward to go work on the prosthetic.
The days blur together, scraping past each other with brutal intensity. He feels sick. He probably is. It’s over a week from that day in the coffee shop before FRIDAY quietly tells him that Loki has been spotted in Central Park.
Tony stops looking over the Spider-Man suit, overcome with a sudden, intense feeling of relief.
Over the last week, he wouldn’t say that his mental state has gotten much better about the whole thing. Just worse. The idea of kicking the bucket is...isn’t not terrifying, it’s just...it is. It’s welcoming if he’s being honest. Not having to deal with this anymore? Not having to wrestle with this...this feeling? That sounds...wonderful.
“Prep the Mark XLVI.” Tony says, getting to his feet. He looks over his desk for a long moment, the familiarity of it. Then he looks up, and he only sees absence. His eyes slide toward Natasha’s nook, and his throat closes.
This is what they would have wanted.
No one would choose to keep me here.
000o000
Loki is, of all places, laying down on a park bench. The area has scarce civilians, for which Tony is grudgingly grateful. He stares down at Thor’s brother and runs through a few mental calculations before mentally shrugging. Screw it.
Maybe it’s not the wisest decision, but does he even care at this point? He’s going to have to admit no, and maybe that’s awful...He doesn't know. It isn’t good.
Tony lands--hard--on the pavement and the armor takes the brunt of the force. A shockwave still rattles up his left leg, which means that something isn’t functioning quite right down there--there shouldn’t be any of the ripples felt--but he doesn’t care. It’s not going to be his problem anymore soon, so, whatever.
He looks up, straightening, and sees that Loki has shifted up onto one elbow. His too-thin face is tilted towards him, but his gray eyes are focused forward. He looks even more rumpled up close than he did the last time they met, and Tony doesn’t know what to make of that. He’d sort of assumed that this is incognito attire, but now he’s pretty sure Loki hasn’t changed clothing.
Tony doesn’t really wait for questions, quips, or banter. He’s not in the mood and far beyond trying to hold a coherent conversation. Instead, as Loki’s mouth opens--probably to say “Stark” in the tone that makes it seem like the worst word on the face of this good Earth--Tony lifts up his repulser and fires at Loki’s chest.
It’s a weak blast, given that Tony didn’t give it much time to charge, but Loki still goes flying through the back of the bench. The wood snaps down the middle, scattering fragments like confetti.
Tony doesn’t wait. He’s pretty sure that if he keeps the blasts powered this low all he’s going to do is vaguely annoy Loki. The Asgardian took floor to the face and back multiple times when Hulk smashed him and walked away relatively fine. He was even mouthing off Cap before Thor shut him up, so Tony’s repulsers really shouldn’t do that much.
He advances towards the broken bench as Loki scrambles up to his feet. One hand is pressed against his chest, the other lifting up that stupid stick like a sword. His shirt is charred and faintly sizzling where the repulser got him, and Tony can see the skin already red beneath his palm.
“ Stark --?”
Tony fires again, and this time Loki manages to mostly dive out of the way, save the grazing on his left arm. Normal. He needs to make this seem normal. What does he do when he attacks people? Talk. He talks. Yeah. Talking. No. Taunting. He taunts. “Sorry, Reindeer Games, but we have a strict anti-dictator view in the U.S., we’re, like, uh, really objective on it.”
Really objective? And that’s what he comes up with. Right. Because the whole Cold War fiasco was just “really objective.”
Loki readjusts his grip on the stick, eyes rapidly flicking before he scrambles past the bench and books it for the sidewalk. Tony shifts the Iron Man armor into hovering and fires a few stray blasts in front of Loki to keep him from getting far. This is not going according to plan. Loki wasn’t supposed to run. Tony’s heard that Asgardian honor is based on sticking through fights or something like that. A retreat is the last resort.
Loki hasn’t even tried to hit him yet.
The blasts force Loki to halt, and he stands still for a second, a heaved breath escaping him. “I have not the resources, nor the will to attempt another siege on your realm, Stark.”
“Yeah, don’t care.” Tony promises, moving closer, “You’re kind of a loose canon there, Rock of Ages. I mean, you’re known as the god of lies here, so why am I supposed to take your word for this?”
Loki’s posture tightens. “Fine, then, I will submit to whatever prison you intend, but I beg you, if you have any mercy in your wretched soul-- do not send me back to Asgard.”
Tony pauses at the underlying panic in his tone. There’s just...there’s something that he’s missing and he doesn’t know what it is. A problem that he’d need to think about, but doesn’t exactly have the time anymore. This is supposed to be the grand battle of his death and possibly Loki’s later. If it wasn’t, maybe he’d think about this a little harder.
This matters, but not for the reason Loki was hoping.
“I guess I better give Daddy a call and say that you're not available, huh?” Tony taunts, “Having a rebellious teenager moment? Needed to break out of the house because he took away your TV time? Everyone feels bad for the brat.”
He powers up the repulsers.
An audible breath of disbelief escapes Loki before the Asgardian turns rapidly and outright spears the stick at him. Tony attempts to dodge it, pulling towards the left, but the strength that the Asgardian throws gives it a greater speed. Given the small distance between them, that didn’t really help either.
The long cane-like, stick lodges into the small gap between the arc reactor and the armor portion of Mark XLVI, digging deep. It presses against Tony’s chest--digging into bruises and he’s my friend-- at the force and Tony has a quick second to think well, that was stupid before Loki jumps at him. Tony doesn’t put up much of a fight. Enough to make it seem like he is, but the relief is all-encompassing. This is it.
This is it.
The end.
No more.
End of story. There is no happily ever after, but Tony has never been worthy of a happily ever after. It’s finally coming to a conclusion. Thank God.
He’s pretty sure he says some more nasty things to keep Loki properly incensed, but he doesn’t know. Loki doesn’t draw another weapon or use any magic, instead, he only uses his stupid stick and fingers to dismantle the armor. And yeah, being beaten to death by a guide stick was not really the way he wanted to go, but it is what it is.
If he’d actually been trying, this would have been an entirely different outcome. Even the most basic weapons at their full power would have been enough to knock Loki flat on his back and the more powerful ones would probably kill him. Well, incapacitate.
But Tony’s not trying, and he’s not going to.
Almost a minute after the fight began, Loki has him lifted in a chokehold with a shaking hand and Tony’s mind flashes back to Stark Tower four years ago when they’d stood in a similar position and Loki had defenestrated him.
His throat is constricting, but rather than panic he just feels relief. So much relief. A slight smile tugs at the corner of his lips. Look, I’m finally doing something right. You’ll all be proud of me now. Tony grabs at Loki’s forearm, but it’s all for show. “Okay, let’s maybe...maybe not…” he wheezes out.
His vision is tunneling.
His body is squirming in self-preservation, but it’s hopeless.
The end. The end. The end. The end--
Loki’s grip abruptly releases, and Tony lands on his hands and knees, hard, coughing. His throat is swelling, his vision is blurry, but the crushing overwhelming panic that seizes him makes both insignificant.
Nonononononono--
And suddenly, his filter is worth squat.
Tony lifts his head up, “No--stop!” His voice is a gasping wheeze. The world is gray and he can’t see anything but the sidewalk. He tries to stand up and falls back down again. “You have to kill me!”
The sound Loki makes in his throat isn’t something Tony could decipher if his life depended on it. “ What? ”
“You have to…” he breathes out, but his throat feels like it’s closing in. “You have to kill me!”
And then, suddenly, Loki seems to get it. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t taunt him or call him insane. Instead, the Asgardian seems pissed. “I’m not going to be a part of your murder fantasy,” Loki hisses.
Tony slams his gauntlet against the ground, feeling something snap in his hand, and releases a loud cry of pain.
“ Please,” Tony begs and a sob bubbles up in his chest. Pathetic. “ Please. You’re heartless. Having my blood on your hands can’t matter that much. Kill me, please. ”
“What on the gods-- No! ”
“You selfish, son of a--” Anger surges where despair once grasped him. Tony manages to draw enough strength together to slam his fist against Loki’s face. The Asgardian slams onto his left side, elbow taking the brunt of the force. The same strength didn’t even phase him in Germany, but apparently, whatever is wrong with Loki has severely depleted his sense of balance.
Loki gasps, rolling onto his back and clutching his arm close to his chest. It shouldn’t have hurt that much. Not an Asgardian. Tony swallows along his constricted throat, taking in ragged breaths. Loki was supposed to kill him.
This was supposed to be it. The one time that the Asgardian is above killing, and it’s when Tony doesn’t want him to be. “You are so cruel,” he grinds out. “Can’t even grant mercy in the form of the only thing you’re good for: murder.”
Loki laughs, dark and bitter, spitting onto the sidewalk. “You know so little of me.”
“Not much to see.” Tony spits.
“You’d be surprised,” Loki counters, managing to make it into a seated position with some visible wincing. Tony didn’t hit him that hard.
“I won't have to,” he promises darkly. “‘Cause I’m gonna call Thor and let him know you’re here, and then guess who's being hauled off to Asgard again? Are you so afraid of solitary confinement? Thor said that’s what your sentence was. That’s, like, not even anything.”
A coil of guilt tightens at his stomach as he sees how pale Loki’s face has gone. It wasn’t filled with much color to begin with, but the mask of indifference has been tossed and Tony can see etches of raw terror fluttering at the edges.
Thor’s not even within calling distance, but apparently, Loki doesn’t know that.
“Stark, please don’t--”
“I don’t care how you do it. Please. Just. Anything.” Tony interrupts, removing his helmet. He can feel desperation begin to claw at his insides, making his ribcage feel hot. He’s crying again. He feels about six. He stares at Loki’s face, trying to find any sort of give.
Loki’s expression is blank, his lips downturned, and his body language stiff. Tony doesn’t know if this is a byproduct of the blindness or a reaction to what Tony said. Tony doesn’t care. Desperation is making him panic. His chest feels tight and compressed, and he’s pretty sure that if it wasn’t for the suit locking at the knees, he’d be crumbling back to the sidewalk again.
Look at him. Finally kneeling. Just as Loki wanted.
They stand there, looking at each other.
Tony sucks on his teeth, trying to stop himself from crying. He doesn’t succeed.
“Fine, Stark, you win,” Loki says at great length. His tone is unreadable. He moves forward and Tony braces himself, ready for the killing blow, for anything, just let it happen-- and Loki touches his forehead with two fingers. An intense feeling of cold washes through his entire body. He smells cinnamon. The world grays and then goes dark.
Tony can feel himself laughing.
I win. This one thing. I win.
The blackness consumes him.
000o000
Tony wakes up. He’s laying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Mark XLVI is gone. His body feels slightly tingly, which just reassures him that he’s alive. Tony can’t move. He can’t breathe. This... feeling consumes him. Like being swallowed alive, slowly. He can’t even cry.
Loki is gone.
He let me live.
He didn’t kill me.
Why didn’t he kill me? This one thing. This ONE thing. Death by someone else's hand would have hurt less.
I can’t do this.
Why am I even bothering?
FRIDAY must have taken him back to the Tower. Taking control of the suit is an emergency protocol and she probably thought that whatever Loki did qualified for that. Which is fine. He doesn’t care. He wonders where Loki is. He’s probably laughing to himself in his supervillain cave, all wrapped up in silk and eating clams or whatever crap supervillains eat when they kill the hero.
He’s so cruel. Why couldn’t he just let me die?
It doesn’t matter. Screw him. I’ll do it myself.
There are hundreds of weapons in the Tower. Tony has a gun in the drawer beside the bed. He thinks about it for a very long time before slowly rolling over. His body feels like it is magnetically connected to the bed. He’s so heavy. Breathing is so difficult.
He pulls open the drawer, hauling the gun out. It weighs more than he remembers it.
“Boss?” FRIDAY’s voice has taken an edge. Panic, maybe.
He doesn’t care.
“Boss, what are you doing--?”
Tony checks the clip. Eight beautiful bullets sit inside. He slides it back inside of the gun, flicking off the safety.
“Boss, don’t do this. Boss--Boss, please, listen to me, Tony--”
Tony lifts the gun up to the side of his head. His body is beginning to tremble. Animal fear.
(You think you fight for us? You just fight for yourself. Who's going to avenge my son, Stark? He's dead. And I blame you.)
He pulls the trigger. The gun discharge is deafening, and he feels the impact, striking him just above his ear. He topples backwards on the bed. There’s a dull ringing and numb sort of throb, but Tony’s still staring at the ceiling. The same ceiling.
What the--?
Did he miss?
Tony can’t sit up. He puts the gun to his head again and fires once more. The same thing happens. Tony puts the gun in his mouth, desperate, but the bullet impacts and seems to just vanish. He doesn’t swallow it, he doesn’t feel it on his tongue.
(I put a bullet in my mouth and the Other Guy spat it out.)
He runs out of bullets, but he still doesn’t die. Desperation crashes through him. Tony finds anything he can in the space of the next few minutes, but there’s nothing that works. He slices open his wrists and there’s only a thin line that seals itself back together without a problem. He barely bleeds. Anything he tries fails.
FRIDAY keeps trying to talk to him, his phone begins to buzz with missed calls, but Tony--
Tony moves to the bathroom.
He stares at himself in the mirror. The dead-eyed, hollow man looking back at him has been a steady reflection since Siberia. He tries the razor again, over the sink, and maybe it’s the change in lighting, or maybe it’s that he’s beginning to calm down from an anxious frenzy to something hypoactive. The thing that’s knitting his skin together--it’s glowing green.
( I put a bullet in my mouth and the Other Guy spat it out.)
And Tony.
He’s.
He’s not.
Oh. His mind seems to only be able to process the word, heavy and laden. Oh. He slams his fist into the mirror, furious, but though the glass shatters, his skin remains whole. Tony throws the soap off the counter, slamming other toiletries into the floor. He throws the razor into the drywall and watches as it clatters off of it. Panting, breathing heavy, standing in the midst of his destruction, Tony screams.
Then, suddenly unable to stand, he falls to his knees, collapsed, broken and done.
Magic.
Loki cursed him. Because it wasn’t just enough to not kill him, wasn’t it? He had to go and make sure that Tony couldn’t do it either. He should have thrown himself off a building before counting on Loki doing anything. But it made so much sense. He dies trying to take down a villain and maybe the Avengers come back together.
But they never loved you.
They would never avenge you.
And maybe his family doesn’t stay broken. And Tony doesn’t have to deal with this anymore. He doesn’t have to deal with the disappointments and the heartbreak and the pain. His ribs ache, his heart aches, his mind aches.
I’m broken, he thinks, desperate. I can’t even do this.
This was supposed to fix it. This. This was…
Happy finds him in the destroyed bathroom. FRIDAY tattle-telling, the brat. The former head of security doesn’t say a word about the mess. He gets Tony off the floor and leads him to a different room. Tony collapses onto the bed and doesn’t move. Happy checks it for weapons, then sits down on the bed.
And just sits there; for a long time.
Tony finally rolls over. “You don’t have to sit there,” he mumbles. His voice is heavy. “I can’t...trying is useless.”
Loki took that from me.
Happy gives him a long, hard look. “My friend just tried to kill himself.” He says the words in a tone that’s almost flat. But there’s an undercurrent of worry and pain there. “I think...I think I’m just going to sit here awhile, if that’s okay.”
No.
Tony mumbles something in response to that, but he can’t make out what the words are. He needs to pee but ignores it, rolling over instead. He falls asleep.
000o000
Tony doesn’t know who FRIDAY contacted yesterday, but the list seems to at least include Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy. Tony can’t get out of bed and doesn’t try, but Rhodey comes and sits next to him. His presence is quiet and calm in a way that Tony can’t describe. He doesn’t push Tony to talk, though he looks like he wants to.
Tony looks at his legs and feels another surge of guilt.
I wasn’t fast enough to catch him.
Pepper arrives with a tray. There’s food on it. Tony doesn’t take it from her, ignoring her entirely. Pepper sighs and sets the tray on the bedside table. “I know that you’re not ready to talk,” she starts.
“Why are you even here?” Tony demands. His voice is sharp. For the first time in a while, he doesn’t care. Let her take the blades. She delivered plenty.
“What?” Pepper sounds surprised if a little hurt. “What do you mean? You're my friend, Tony.”
( He’s my friend.
So was I)
Tony laughs. He laughs until he cries, and when Pepper tries to touch him, he shies away from her. Eventually, she leaves, either worn out by him or too busy to care. Probably some mixture of the two. He’s exhausting. He’s tired of himself.
Tony falls asleep again.
He wakes up.
He thinks about what Loki did, and then he thinks about Loki. Then he thinks about how Loki is the only person who knows how to remove this spell, and that gets him out of bed for the first time in four days. Tony puts on shoes in slow motion, he pulls on a jacket, he mutes FRIDAY and tells her that he’s going for a walk.
He doesn’t tell her that he’s pretty sure he won’t be back.
He walks out the door, and then through the city, walking and walking and walking until he comes to a stop in front of Mrs. Palmar’s coffeehouse. Then he takes a seat on one of the outside tables and he waits. He has his phone, but it’s on silent, and he doesn’t want to work. He just stares at the table for a while, lost in thought and memories. His chest aches dully.
A cup slides in front of him. Tony looks up, and sees Loki sliding into the seat across from him. The Asgardian looks a little better, more color in his cheeks and the skin has healed some. He’s still wearing the last pair of clothing Tony saw him in--ratty hoodie, jeans, and all--and it makes him look sort of homeless.
“You’re angry,” Loki says.
“Go to hell,” Tony grumbles, wrapping his hands around the coffee. It could be poisoned, but he doesn't care. He takes a long drink, and feels slightly disturbed when he realizes it’s exactly the way he takes it. Loki must have smelled it or something. Thor’s sense of smell wasn’t anything to laugh at.
“I feared for you,” Loki continues as if Tony hadn’t spoken. “You don’t seem to be doing well.”
Tony snorts, “You use all thousand years of knowledge to come to that conclusion?”
Loki doesn’t take the bait. Tony’s disappointed. Loki takes a sip of his own drink, but it seems to be more of a distraction than something he actually wants. His body language is stiff. Tony idly wonders if he’s in pain.
Tony puts the cup on the table with force. The gun that he clicks beneath it, pointing at Loki’s gut, is done with careful precision. “Remove the spell.” He says flatly.
Loki doesn’t seem the least bit perturbed, which just makes Tony angrier. “It’s not your decision to play God. You don’t get to decide who lives or dies.”
“Odd,” Loki murmurs, “I was going to say the same about you.”
Tony’s hand tightens on the .45. “Is this some sort of a joke to you? Some sort of mockery? Punishment? You finally get your revenge on your rival? Because it’s childish and stupid. I thought that you would be throwing a party that I want to kill myself.”
The words feel ugly and horrible coming out of his mouth.
Loki settles his cup on the table. His gaze lands near Tony’s face, but not on it. Those gray irises are clearer now, tinged with green, but still dull. “You are awash with pain, Stark, and not thinking clearly. You need counsel. Have you anyone to talk with?”
“Why the heck do you care?” Tony seethes. His grip is slick. He shifts his feet. “You’re insane. You’re murderous. You killed Coulson in cold blood and threw your brother off what was basically a mountain to kill him. You’re heartless.”
Loki is quiet. Then he gets to his feet. He doesn’t have his walking stick anymore, and for some reason, this absurdly bothers Tony. “Your weapons will not harm me. I have no intention of removing my enchantment soon.” He wraps his jacket around himself, then, oddly, hesitates. “Stark,” his voice is careful, “I will be here at this same time for the next few weeks.”
“You trying to get yourself arrested?” Tony sneers. The .45 is shaking in his hands. He can’t do it. He can’t bring himself to shoot him, even though he probably should. Loki is right. Guns aren’t going to have an effect on Asgardians anyway.
“I am the last person on this Earth who wants to hear you mewl about your troubles,” Loki says, and there at last, is some of that familiar hardened edge. “But I would not see you dead.”
Tony laughs. “Who did a brain transplant with you?”
The smile that Loki gives him is bitter. And then, between one eye blink and the next, the Asgardian is gone. Tony looks down at the coffee. He puts the safety on the gun and buries his head into his hands.
( You should’ve left your armor on for that.)
But Tony didn’t leave his armor on. Not his emotional armor. He feels scraped raw. Vulnerable.
Alone.
000o000
Tony goes back to bed for a few days, and Happy, Rhodey, and, amazingly, Pepper pester him. Happy tells him about Peter Parker, who’s been spamming him cheerfully, asking about missions and giving mission logs. Tony listens to them with an ache in his chest as he longs for that sort of innocence. Peter sounds so happy.
Rhodey brings him small work and forces him to do something. Tony doesn’t really talk, and neither does Rhodey, the two of them working in the same room. When Rhodey leaves every day, he looks back at Tony with this pained, gutted expression and says, “When you’re ready to talk, Tony, let me know.”
Pepper doesn’t mention SI. She doesn’t press him for deadlines or dates or meetings or anything. She simply comes in and sits with him. After two days, though, she gently takes his hand in her own and rubs her finger across his thumb. “I think we need to talk,” she says.
“Not now,” Tony begs. He’s exhausted and he can’t stomach anything else.
(I want to take a break.)
Pepper respects that, and backs off. She’s always respected his boundaries, and he hers.
But though they try, Tony finds the idea of opening up to them horrifying. There’s this nauseating distance between them, and he can’t figure out how to make himself talk. He tries, he does, he opens his mouth to explain and the words will get all tangled up inside of him. Because they knew the Avengers, too, and Tony’s opinion on them is controversial right now, and he doesn’t want them to have to re-evaluate them and he doesn’t want them to be hated.
Because.
Because deep down somewhere, Tony doesn’t hate them. He never has. Betrayal hurts because of love, and Tony loves them. They were family.
(Watch your back with this guy, there’s a chance he’s going to break it.)
So somehow. By some means, under some power, Tony finds himself back at that stupid coffee shop under the stupid time frame that Loki listed because he’s stupid and life is stupid. Existence is a curse and life is a prison and he’s tired.
He’s so tired.
Lok is already there, outside of the shop, sitting in a chair with his back to Tony. It strikes him how small Loki looks, still in that ratty hoodie and jeans, and does he have any other clothing? This is getting old. Keeping up appearances is one thing, this is something else.
Tony sits down across from him.
He’s desperate. He can’t even imagine doing this under normal circumstances, and he wouldn’t want to. Loki’s crazy. He’s a murderer. And he’s the only person that Tony can imagine talking to before this weight inside of him kills him, Loki’s spell or not.
“The Avengers split.” Tony blurts.
Loki is holding a cup of coffee loosely between his hands. He looks cold. He blinks once at Tony’s words, but doesn’t say anything. He’s listening, though, because his head tilted just a fraction.
So Tony continues. Because that’s what he’s here for. Talking about this to someone who doesn’t care about the Avengers and doesn’t care about him. “Steve tried to kill me.” The words feel...tight. Slimy, somehow.
(He’s my friend.
So was I.)
Loki pauses, then says slowly, “The Captain...tried...to kill you?”
“You don’t know him as well as you think. No one does.” Tony mutters. He wishes he’d thought to get coffee. He wants something to do with his hands.
(I don’t trust a guy without a dark side.
Maybe you just haven’t seen it yet.)
“We, uh. There was a confrontation. He chose his friend. The Avengers split and they all abandoned me.” Because of course, of course, you must make this about you. You never hold an objective view of the situation. “I’m not. Taking it that well, I guess. They, uh. They were my family. I’ve still...I still have Rhodey, Hap, and Pep, I guess, but it’s. It’s hard. To talk with them. And the Avengers were…”
“Safe,” Loki says knowingly.
Tony sighs. “Yeah,” he agrees. “They were safe. And now they’re not. Half of them are in prison and it’s my fault. You...how much are you aware of on what’s going on on Earth?”
Loki shrugs, shifting the cup forward a few inches. “Enough. When a man with my disability can’t look, he learns to listen. Your Accords seem to have ended in catastrophic disaster."
Tony slumps. “That’s one way to put that, I guess.”
Loki brushes a stray strand of dark hair from his face, a movement that looks more habitual than anything else. “Betrayal is a seeping wound, and it is always harder to bear from ones we consider family.” Loki’s face goes distant for a moment.
“Speak from experience?” Tony guesses. He knows the bare basics about Loki’s story, and most of it is saturated in Thor’s opinions.
“Yes,” Loki says softly.
Tony sighs again. “I just wish this was easier.”
Loki’s lips push together, and he doesn’t say anything to that.
000o000
The next day, one of Nat’s old contacts comes around asking for a Quinjet. Knowing full well who it’s going to, Tony allows the ‘jet to “slip” from his notice. He’s sitting up today, which is a feat. It’s tiring. Rhodey managed to get him to eat something, and Tony feels a little better today.
Ross calls him a few days later, ranting about seeing Natasha in the midst of destruction in some field and how it's Tony's fault that it happened at all. Tony feels kind of weary but relieved that Natasha got away.
"Took one long, hard look at us before a helicopter picked her up. Some blonde woman in white." Ross says, then starts demanding explanations for this.
Tony hangs up on him.
He looks into the disaster, Red Rooms debris laying scattered out in that field, as promised, and the Widows in desperate need of relocation and therapy. Clint and Natasha said that they got everything when they blew up Dreykov, but Red Room was a part of HYDRA, which doesn't ever really seem to die.
Later, he gets a text from an unknown number.
System update on the Raft at 03:00 tmrw for 15? - NR
Tony stares at it for a long time. He puts the phone down. He thinks about not responding or not bothering to do anything, but the request eats at him. Natasha reached out to him. Despite their fight, despite everything (' We'? Boy, it must be hard to shake the whole double agent thing, huh? It sticks in the DNA.) Natasha still reached out for his help. For him.
The trust aches.
She trusts him not to tell Ross. She trusts him to help. She still trusts him.
He goes back to Mrs. Palmar's shop and finds himself sitting before Loki again. It's good to breathe in air that isn't recycled, even though it definitely should be. Loki is absently tapping at the table, looking stretched and tired.
"Natasha contacted me," Tony says without prompting, fingers curled around coffee. "She asked for my help."
"And what did you say?" Loki asks, eyebrows raised.
"Nothing," Tony takes a sip of the drink. "I didn't know what to say. I wish that she hadn't. I don't know what to do."
Loki hms. Tony doesn't really say anything else and both of them just sit there. He goes home eventually, but he leaves Loki there. He wonders where Loki has been sleeping. Tony tries to work on something and finds himself struggling. He goes back to sleep. He thinks about stabbing a blade through his stomach and remembers Loki's curse. He rolls over and goes back to bed.
His alarm for 2:30 a.m. goes off and Tony rolls over and starts prepping for the requested system update. He wakes up an hour later to Ross calling him and yelling that the Avengers have escaped the Raft. Tony thinks about Natasha. He never gave her a response, and she still planned on him helping anyway.
He drags himself out of bed to do the requested check-up with Rhodey, but neither of them find anything.
FRIDAY deletes any presence of a hack and that's sort of that.
Later that morning, after exhaustive hours spent on the phone or getting yelled at by various members of the government and police, Tony is breathing slowly, seated in front of the table, and eyeing the fork with extreme prejudice when he gets another text from Natasha's burner.
Unknown number:
Thank you.
Sorry you had to take the heat.
Can I stop by?
Tony lets out a long sigh, picking up the phone with heavy fingers. He wants to tell her no and yell and rage and scream, but instead he types only if you don't get caught and waits. Natasha's answer is only a " :)" in return, which doesn't mean much.
Natasha shows up forty-nine hours later, looking bedraggled and a mess. Her hair is a striking blonde and two of her fingers are broken. She's seated at the table when he walks in, one leg resting on the furniture, eating leftovers from the dinner Tony didn't eat yesterday. The assassin pulls the fork from her mouth, giving him an exhausted, blank smile. "Hey," she says.
"Hey," he answers in turn, moving toward the fridge and grabbing a water bottle so his hands won't be empty. He takes a seat at the table across from her. There's an awkward, heavy silence. "Yelena okay?" Tony asks at length.
Natasha pauses, but nods. "Yes. She and my parents are staying with Laura until they can get on their feet. The other Widows are with an old S.H.I.E.L.D. contact who can help them. Adjustment was...hard, after."
Tony nods. "I figured. The others?"
"Wakanda."
Tony's eyebrows raise. "Prince T'Challa was willing to house them? I thought he was trying to kill Barnes."
Natasha nods, scraping the last remains off the plate. "Yeah. Me too. Things were a little bit more complicated than that. Tony," Natasha's voice has dropped, softer, and she shoves aside the plate to reach out for one of his hands. It's wrapped around the glass with rigid tension. Her fingers are warm. "I'm sorry. We should have told you."
Tony looks away. "How long did you know?"
( Did you know?
Yes.)
"It was in the thumb drive I gave Steve. S.H.I.E.L.D. found the surveillance footage in 1992. I knew it was there. I thought you did, too." Natasha admits.
Tony shakes his head. "It was an unnamed shooter. It was always an unnamed shooter."
Natasha's mouth twists. "Not this time. I'm sorry. But it wasn't Barnes, Tony."
"I know," Tony interrupts before she can really get started. "I know. I know how mind control works. I know that they messed up his head. I know that. I wasn't thinking. It was just--it was always an unnamed shooter."
"Steve wasn't thinking either," Natasha says, gently. "We all got played."
Natasha spends the night on his couch, and leaves after, with a promise to keep in contact with bi-weekly updates. He doesn't tell her about his suicide attempt, because he doesn't want her to feel like she has to stay. Her presence is reassuring, and something in Tony's chest settles with relief. Maybe not everything is broken.
He goes back to sleep.
He wakes up again. A routine slowly settles. Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey back off, but not enough that he feels like they’ve left him alone in the wild. Tony forces himself to get out of bed and do something. He meets Loki at the coffee shop and they talk. Well, Tony talks, Loki listens, for the most part. Loki looks a little better, and starts to regain both color in his irises and blurry sight. He doesn’t say a word, but Tony can tell that Loki is relieved by this.
000o000
About two months after Loki’s curse happened, Tony looks up at Rhodey and says, completely without prompting, “I thought Steve was going to take my head off.” Rhodey pauses, looking up from behind the laptop screen. He doesn’t say anything. “He was...he was angry. And he lifted up the shield and it...he stabbed it into the arc reactor, but there was...I don't think even he knew what he was going to do. He would have killed me for Bucky.”
Rhodey’s mouth twists. “I’m sorry.”
Tony sighs. “Don’t be. It’s not like we were friends.”
( That shield doesn’t belong to you.) Tony wanted to hit him back. To give him as painful a blow as did you know, and Steve hadn’t even cared. He’d simply dropped the shield, shouldered up Bucky, and kept moving forward.
Did I ever know him?
“Tony,” Rhodey shakes his head. “Yes, you were. You were brothers.”
“He tried to kill me,” Tony says, quieter.
He thinks about Natasha. We all got played.
“But he didn’t.” Rhodey points out. “And he shouldn’t have let you think he would. Don’t misunderstand my defense for approval. I’m pissed. When we see him again, I’m going to deck him.”
Tony’s lips pull up into a ghost of a smile. “I’d like to see you try.”
000o000
“Your face. What happened to it?” Tony asks.
Loki pauses. His eyes are mostly clear now, which gives a false impression of health. He's stopped hobbling so much and now there only seems to be a perpetual squint as an indication that he was blind several weeks ago. The Asgardian has said scarce little in the way of information.
"My father," Loki says, and swirls the spoon around inside the coffee cup.
Tony looks at him. "What? Thor said--"
"Thor says a lot of things," Loki interrupts his voice hard. He sighs. "He's a much better liar than he gives himself credit for. You mentioned that my sentence was isolation. It was not. My father bound me beneath venomous snakes that would slowly torture me to the brink of death."
Tony shifts, "Um. Okay. That's kind of all levels of messed up, you know that right?"
Loki is quiet. "I escaped eventually, though I'm not entirely certain how. I've spent several months here, regaining my strength."
Tony frowns, something gnawing at him. "Where have you been staying?"
Loki shrugs. "The streets mostly. Cold can't kill me. It hasn't been much of a problem."
Tony thinks about that. Loki sleeping on the bench when he found him that first time, and always wearing the same pair of clothing for weeks on end. From prince to the gutter. They keep talking, but it niggles at the back of his mind like a living entity. Before they go their separate ways, Tony asks, somewhat impulsively. "Why don't you come back with me? I have plenty of spare rooms."
Loki's hand stills. "I have not need for your pity, Stark."
"Where would you go otherwise?" Tony asks.
Loki's expression is closed. He ends up coming back with Tony anyway, after a great deal of persistence. FRIDAY doesn't say a word, for which Tony is acutely grateful. Tony gets Loki a change of clothing, directs him toward the shower, and starts preparing a meal. He actually eats something that night and Loki looks better. Cleaner. Maybe a fraction more relaxed.
000o000
Pepper and Tony have their first real conversation since the break up a few days later, and it is, of all things, about Peter Parker, who decided that attempting to go after Adrien Toomes in a sweatshirt was a good idea. The two of them argue about what to do regarding the kid on and off for days. It's familiar.
It's...nice.
They keep talking, and keep talking, and eventually, they get around to the suicide attempt.
"I've spent a lot of time since Afganastian wondering what I would do without you," Pepper admits, her voice soft. "I don't want to lose you. Sometimes it's easier to push you away so I don't have to deal with the pain of that."
"I know," Tony promises. "Sometimes I think it would be easier to push myself away too."
Pepper reaches out for his hand. "I don't want you to die, Tony."
Tony squeezes it back. He stares up at the ceiling, both of them laying on the floor of the penthouse, staring up at the stars. "I don't think that I want to, either." He admits.
Loki comes in a few minutes later and rolls his eyes at them, throwing a pillow at Tony's face. He sputters and throws it back, but Loki catches it deftly, Pepper laughing in the background.
(Peter turns down the offer to the Avengers.
Pepper accepts his proposal with a genuine smile anyway.)
000o000
"Why?" Tony asks Loki, months later. Things are better. He can get out of bed. The world isn't so heavy. Peter Parker is proving to be both the bane of his existence and one of his favorite parts. Natasha has dropped by twice more and also didn't say anything about Loki beyond a raised eyebrow.
Things got easier. Maybe not better, not yet, but easier.
They're both at Mrs. Palmar's coffee shop again, Loki's vision fully restored and his skin looking considerably less patchy. It's snowing softly, but both of them are outside anyway. "Why did you cast the spell?"
He doesn't need to specify.
Loki considers his answer for long moments. "There have been many times in my life where I considered ending it. I have attempted before...and I suppose, when I looked at you, I saw...myself, in a manner of speaking. I wish someone had helped me, so I reacted instinctively."
Tony frowns, looking at Loki with a new light. Thor once said Loki fell from the Bifrost. Tony gets the impression there is more to that story. "Thank you," he says. "I'm glad that you did. Save me, that is."
Loki stirs his coffee. "Good."
Tony reaches out and flicks his finger. "Now let me help you, okay? You look like you could use someone to talk to, too. Besides," he gestures to Mrs. Palmar's shop, "we are in our favorite therapy location."
Loki rolls his eyes, but the small smile he hides behind the coffee is fond.