Loki initially stiffens when Tony collapses into him. He is among the most skilled of silvertongues, capable of felling a foe or exalting a friend, brother, or ally with words alone, but oh, gestures of affection render him a stammering flustered fool. He has always coped with this particular shortcoming with illusions, with jests, with outright self-concealment, but obnoxious, gunslinging, outspoken Tony Stark is another story entirely.
Loki pats him awkwardly on the back; after a time, accustomed to bursts of tenderness from his elder, infinitely more extraverted brother, Loki settles into the embrace.
“There, there. No, no, shh. I know. I know what you have endured. I know firsthand.”
Ebony Maw, the Black Order, the Chitauri, the Other and Thanos, they were Loki’s Afghanistan. They were Loki’s Obadiah Stane. And Thor was, and is, Loki’s Ho Yinsen: Loki’s Avengers. Loki’s whole population of earth. The people he desperately tries to protect, better and better as time passes, in the wake of his own nightmares. Loki knows.
“You are most welcome.”
I know…
Those two words hit Tony harder than anything else, and he clings ever tighter to Loki, as much in a desperate need for comfort as the need to give comfort as well. Because out of everyone, he truly didknow, and understand completely, unlike when he tried to explain to anyone else. There were things between him and the god that could simply go unspoken, because they both knew the horrors they faced all to well, and…
Another sob escapes him as he clenches his eyes shut, desperately trying notto let his mind go there. It takes him several more minutes of just holding onto the other before he’s able to bring himself to loosen his grip in the slightest, pulling back to look up at the god with watery eyes and tear-streaked cheeks.
A second later, he becomes self-conscious of that very thing as he glances down and notices the wet patches he left on the god’s chest, a pitifully weak laugh escaping him as he offers, “Sorry. I…” Looking back up at him again, open vulnerability in his warm brown gaze, he looks almost contemplative for just a moment before he leans up and presses a tentative kiss to Loki’s jaw before he releases his hold on him.
“I should go clean up,” he murmurs, taking a small step back.
Loki smiles as Tony apologizes and steps back. And Loki says nothing: only shakes his head.
No, it isn’t a crime. No, I won’t tell a soul. No, it does not diminish you in my eyes.
“You are a warrior fit for Valhalla,” he remarks, after a pause, leveling a meaningful stare at the Iron Man.
He conjures a handkerchief and offers it. Then he honors Tony by baring his back to him yet again, and resumes his task, to grant him all the time necessary to collect himself. Proud beings require this; Loki can recognize that part of himself in another.
@icyxmischief – (//sorry for the angst, but hurt/comfort fluff can come out of it?)
“Mr. Frigguson? I’m sorry for waking you, but I thought you might wish to be aware that Boss is having a nightmare and may wake screaming soon,” FRIDAY announces, concern for Tony clear in her voice.
In his own bed, Tony twitches in his sleep, breathing quiet whimpers of fear as he’s forced to relive the traumas of his past, unable to wake from the nightmarish hell even with FRIDAY’s voice sounding in the room, trying to coax him gently back to wakefulness.
If it were simply a replay of the events as they actually occurred, it would probably be easier to cope with. But like so many things in dreams, things get twisted, and in the clutches of a nightmare, so much darker.
He watches, time and time again, as nothing he did to protect those he loves was enough, watching as they died over and over because he wasn’t enough to protect them.
He relives the nightmarish hellscape Wanda Maximoff put in his head, only each death of the Avengers was at his own hand. He watches as the world crumbles because no matter how hard he tried to protect it, he always failed, bringing only destruction.
He dreams of the civil war, Rogers and his team forcing him and his into a fight with no choice of holding back. It was a fight to the death, and Tony failed to protect them all. The worst death to witness was that of young Peter Parker, who was only even there at Tony’s insistence. He should never had involved the kid in that fight…
In Siberia, Rogers didn’t hold back, tearing into Tony. Unable to bear it anymore, he just let him, accepting his fate to die in the ice and snow inside the broken metal coffin that was once his suit.
Despair overwhelms him when even then he didn’t actually die, forced to continue to live, and he screams out in rage, grief, and sorrow, that very scream echoing through the penthouse as he’s finally escapes the nightmare only to have to face reality in its aftermath.
Loki freezes mid-stroll at FRIDAY’s dispassionate report: if there’s one thing about mortal technologies with which he’ll never grow accustomed, it’s the chilling impartiality of its artificial intelligence. As automatons went, the Destroyer was eternally, viscerally furious; FRIDAY, by comparison, is on an endless supply of poppy juice.
Regardless, he murmurs a curt “acknowledged,” and darts down the hallway adjoined to Tony’s bedroom.
At the risk of a magical teleport going awry, he carries himself on his own legs, and even long lupine strides don’t get him to the tormented human on time. He balks in the bedroom door, greeted by a scream so abject that his throat closes.
As though STRANGLED.
And he is in Chitauri space, having slivers of his body, wherever nerve endings collect most potently, cut away by long thin surgical needles, Ebony Maw droning endless litanies of disillusionment and woe in his ears, reminding him that he is alone, reminding him that any love he’s known has been contingent at best, reminding him that no one has come looking for him and no one ever will …
STOP.
“Tony.”
He speaks the name with a mother’s gentleness. He steals across the room, and perches on the edge of the bed, in the room that reeks of sweat; trauma is not beautiful, it is wearing a corpse with maggots inside you every day.
He catches his face: gently, gently.
“You are not there. You are not there. You are with me, and safe.”
He keeps one hand on Tony’s face, the other arm opening for him to collapse against, and hide, if he wishes.
“My darling, you don’t exist solely as a device, or tool. You are not a convenience item. Breathe, and weep, and rest. It is alright.”
Working in a bookstore generally meant that every day was different. Of course, one could always make predictions like how business would be busier during the weekends and slower during the middle of the week. Or if a particular author was releasing their newest book, one could expect a few more customers. But on the whole, one could never truly predict what would happen on a day to day basis.
It was mid-afternoon and Anne was biding her time straightening and restocking the shelves of the store. From her vantage point she could see the door and as customers entered she would call out a friendly greeting to them. She did not see the latest customer but heard the door open and footsteps. Still she called out. “Welcome!”
At the irrepressibly perky greeting, Loki jolts; startle-response as manic as ever, he dodges behind a particularly hefty bookcase. Scowling, haughty, an alarmed fey cat, he peers at the clerk, and her innocent affability.
Human cheer. So terribly obnoxious. Fragile flesh sacks, with a shelf life shy of a century. He doesn’t strictly mind them, no matter what the Avengers may claim. But more often than not, they wear an irritating insensitivity to the humors of others.
He clears his throat and lopes out from behind the bookcase, on which several decidedly uninteresting cookbooks are displayed, and produces a slip of paper. It bears his handwriting, a sharp-looped cursive.
“Ehm, hello.”
He gauges the girl, Anna, for recognition. Some New Yorkers remember the blotch of gold horns and black hair from the CTV footage in 2012. To others, Loki remains a convenient enigma, and the Chitauri are a far vivider focus of their nightmares.
“… . I’m looking for your horticulture section. Perhaps this title? For … . ”
For the collection of Midgardian herbs necessary in the completion of my extensive spellwork.
“For my newfound gardening hobby.”
He smiles, a smooth and charming display, ostensibly earnest and forthright.
Loki stalls, clearing his throat, angling his head around the chamber like the opportunistic predator that he is, for a diplomatic answer.
“ … Alright, don’t get upset. These hex bags and potions and this … aroma of … ehm, putrid corpses … are all the product of me trying to protect New Asgard from a most slimy American politician who wishes to impose tariffs on all of of products, rendering our entire nascent economy dead in the water. Listen, brother, I know you aren’t fond of murder, but this man is scandalously corrupt anyhow, and don’t we owe it to our people? He’s cheated on his sick wife! With underage interns! He is reprehensible! No one will miss him! Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’d have thanked me later, you stuffy altruist.”
Irritably Loki begins to put away the various accoutrements of his black magic. A puff of puke-green smoke puffs, with comical timing, from the vial that he goes to screw shut. The smoke takes the shape of a skull.
Loki can’t help but smirk at that, as he shelves the concoction.
Thor is momentarily rooted to the spot, slightly stunned as he sees his erstwhile sibling contemplating flat out murder once more. Magical murder, but still, murder! And while Thor is far from being high and mighty in that regard..(these days) he cannot help but shake his head just so, for he is morally obligated to prevent Loki from doing such a thing, no matter how utterly reprehensible the target in question might be.
“Loki..” His voice is oh so slightly raised in warning. “While I agree that the circumstances are definitely such that one might desire and nigh, even feel obligated to take drastic action in this regard, you know what it is I must say.”
But, clearly, he needs not say it, for Loki, though grumbling, begins to put away his magical spells, watching the skull appear in the smoke, Thor allows himself another shake of his head. “There are ways of protecting New Asgard from this individual, and others of the same ilk as he without resorting to such measures.”
Thor would not be foolish enough to call himself the ‘reasonable’ one of the two of them, former brawler and ruthless fighter he was, but sometimes..sometimes he could have the most random spurt of being the voice of reason, especially where Loki possibly making a grave action was concerned.
“I refuse to scold thee, for your intentions are ah..well, maybe one could call the noble in and of themselves, if perhaps a tad too dangerous.” He pauses, “Though between you and I? It is more so I dislike the idea of you finding yourself in trouble.”
It takes nothing more than that elevated tone to tighten and square Loki’s shoulders, to jut forward his jaw, to darken his eyes.
“Nobility at the expense of pragmatism often produces still more innocent suffering. Think on that.”
He snatches away any remaining vestiges of the magics cast, and resolves silently to pursue the matter at length. The man in question needn’t die today, or even soon, or even by means Loki devises. But Loki will himself die before he sees the last scattered clusters of his people blown away like dust.
He can feel the tendrils of old bitterness gathering around his heart cockles, and he knows he’s being unfair, but there’s still an empty sort of consolation in being sharp-tongued and petty.
“I wonder if you reflect upon your record of slaughter when you berate me for acting on unfortunate experience. Never, not once in life, brother, are there shortages of enemies.”
Something in his eyes lacks focus, as his pupils dilate to swallow sight of any invisible, unforeseen danger. Old fears do not easily die.
icyxmischief 