Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

51.

There's a sound—Tony doesn't know what it is, exactly—and Tony wakes.

Just that is shocking enough, considering that Tony was fairly certain he was going to die; more surprising still is that Tony blinks his eyes open to the very familiar sight of the ceiling over his bed. Blearily, hurting in too many places to catalogue them properly, Tony sits up, and tries to piece things together. So he's not dead, for a starter, that's an extremely welcome bit of luck. The question remains, exactly how the hell did he get off of Thanos' backwater corner of the universe and home to Alfheim while unconscious?

The answer to that question is sitting, perfectly silently, in a chair pulled up next to Tony's bed, watching Tony with blue eyes. “Boss,” Barton acknowledges, expressionlessly.

Tony groans, and shuts his eyes again. Fuck, he'd forgotten about Barton. “I'm not your boss,” Tony points out, because even when Tony was still...even before, it was always Loki who called the shots where Barton was concerned. At the thought of the god of mischief, Tony feels his chest go tight, his heartbeat doing something interesting but probably not particularly healthy, and that's—Tony doesn't know whether it's anger, fear or something else entirely, but he doesn't want to feel it. He doesn't want to feel anything, right now.

Barton's voice, when it comes, is a welcome distraction. “You're Loki's second in command,” Barton says, and something about considering his relationship to Loki in that light makes Tony startle slightly. “With Loki gone, that makes you the boss, at least for now.”

“That's not,” Tony starts to say, and then realizes exactly how futile this conversation is going to be. He remembers perfectly well what it felt like, to be under Loki's hold: so long as Barton's still all blue eyes and unquestioning loyalty, Tony explaining that he doesn't want control over Barton, over this insane plan that's at once his and nothing Tony could ever condone, will just go over like a lead balloon. Huffing a slight, unhappy laugh, Tony gives up, and just says, “Good timing.”

Barton shrugs, clearly not accepting the praise. “You said that if the two of you weren't back by daybreak, I should come and get you,” Barton says, matter-of-factly. “I follow orders.”

It's an unusually loaded phrase at just this moment, and Barton doesn't even know it—it makes Tony laugh, and once he's started he can't stop, just shakes with laughter that verges on hysterical until a lack of air drives him into involuntary silence. In the aftermath of that laughter, Tony hiccups, once, and sucks in air like a drowning man finding the surface, lightheaded and aching. Barton watches throughout it all with a faint expression of concern on his face, but says nothing. “Yeah,” Tony says, finally, when he has the air he needs to speak again. “I guess you do.”

Clearly choosing to ignore whatever is going on with Tony right now, Barton reaches down into one pocket, and pulls out something small, tossing it at Tony—it isn't until he closes his fingers around it that Tony realizes he's holding the space gem again. Something about its weight feels right in his grip, and when Barton says, “That's yours,” Tony doesn't think to correct him.

Tony looks down at the small purple gem in his hand, and says, his tone sounding strange even to his own ears, “Thanos is going to kill Loki, when he realizes Loki can't give him all the gems.” Loki knew, of course—Loki looked at Tony for just a split second before he said the words, before he turned to Thanos and promised something impossible to protect Tony, and Tony knew what that look meant. Two year's worth of knowledge about Loki didn't just evaporate into thin air when the mind control did; Tony saw that look, and knew Loki was about to make a mad gamble, resigned to the odds against him.

By now, Tony knows, Loki could already be dead. He closes his eyes, and breathes.

“Are you planning to do something about that?” Barton asks, and Tony thinks he hears a faint accusatory note under the professional neutrality of that tone.

Tony breathes out hard, and then says, too honestly, “I don't know.”

It's not that easy, of course. Tony doesn't get to just say he doesn't know, hide away from the worlds, and let the issue of Thanos sort itself out—that's not the sort of person he is, not who he was two years ago and not who he is today. Whatever else the last two years have changed about Tony, they haven't made him someone who'd sit back and watch other people suffer when he can do something about it, and that's...sort of reassuring, in its own way. It's good to know himself at least that much, to know that, whatever else he chooses, he is going to make a stupid, possibly suicidal attempt to put Thanos down for good.

But Thanos is one thing, and Loki...Loki's another thing entirely. There's no easy, right thing to do with Loki, no choice that stands out from all the moral grey and ridiculous complications of this situation—and, failing that, Tony's left with what he wants to do. And that's—

“I don't know,” Tony repeats, and huffs out a faint, self-deprecating laugh. “I guess I should get on that.” Tony runs a hand through his hair, ignoring the aching pull of his bruised skin at the movement, and then swings his legs over the side of the bed and comes up to stand. The motion makes him sway, faintly, his balance uncertain; Tony holds out a hand, and stops Barton from steadying him. “I'm fine,” Tony says, and catches himself on his own two feet, unaided.

Once he's steady, Tony says, “Alright. Two things need to happen here, before anything else. You're going to help me with one of them.” The tone—imperious, easily assured of his right to command people around—still comes easily, even after two years of disuse; and, for just a second, Tony sounds like his old self, the person he last was when he stood, heart pounding in his chest and a challenging smile on his face, to face off against the god of lies in Manhattan two years ago. It makes for a not-entirely-comfortable moment of nostalgia, and Tony shakes it off as soon as he can.

Obliging, Barton stands, and follows Tony when he leads the pair of them, slowly and maybe a little stiffly, out of the bedroom. When Tony makes no move to speak further, Barton asks, “And what about the second thing?”

Tony smiles, and looks over his shoulder to catch Barton's still-blue eyes. “I'm going to help you with the second thing,” Tony says, because if he has to start making choices again, this seems like a pretty decent starting point. “There's someone you're overdue for a conversation with, and it's rude to keep her waiting.”

…

21.

Loki finds him, in the aftermath of the hunter's attack—Tony sees him approaching, sees the long, familiar lines of the god's body, and has to close his eyes.

“Fuck,” Tony says. His voice is rough; it shakes. He's shaking, probably—he tried standing, earlier, and he just couldn't, like getting everything back actually threw him out of his body. Tony feels...disconnected, lost in his own fucking body. Not just his body, in his own life, his entire life is—this is his life now, this, the plan, Loki—

“Stark,” Loki says, with something urgent in his voice—and even now, even free, Tony obeys the order implicit there.

Tony opens his eyes, and Loki stands over him, a tall, unbending shadow against the fading sunlight; Tony looks at the god from behind brown eyes, and feels his mouth spread into a sharp, unhappy thing that is nothing like a smile.

…

36.

It takes Tony until somewhere around five in the morning to come up with a plan; sunlight is already beginning to creep into their bedroom by the time that Tony tiptoes his way back in.

Loki, always a light sleeper, stirs when Tony sits on the edge of the bed. It takes Loki a moment to speak, but, when the god does, his voice is amused and cutting in a way that Tony doesn't like at all. “Back so soon?” Loki asks, insinuation curling heavily around the words.

“Oh, fuck you,” Tony says, but it comes out sounding more tired than angry. Loki's only response is to roll onto his back, and to look up at Tony in a way that might almost seem apologetic, if Tony didn't know Loki better than that. Agitated, Tony runs one hand through his hair, throwing it into disarray, and says, pointedly, “I came up with a plan to handle the last two gems. Is now a good time, or are you still too busy with your ego trip to listen?”

Tony knows, as he's saying it, that he's probably picking a fight, but it's also five in the morning, and frankly Tony is too irritated and tired for diplomacy. Apparently, though, Loki is actually feeling at least a little bit apologetic, because Loki doesn't take offense, or even withdraw behind cruel insincerity, just says, “Tell me.”

So Tony does, and he doesn't spare Loki any of the details. Even the bits Loki doesn't have the background to fully understand, Tony mentions, because he's pretty fucking determined that there won't be any more pointed exclusions between them. When Tony's done, Loki takes a moment just to absorb the information, and then says, “You're certain this will work?”

“I wouldn't have brought it up if I weren't.” Tony sighs, and stands back up. He wants, more than anything, just to sleep; this isn't even close to the first time he's given up on sleep for something more important, though, and it probably won't be the last either. “I'm going to finish working out some of the details. In the morning, I'm going to need to know everything you know about how the gauntlet works—hell, I'll take educated guesses too. And there are obviously some things I'll need you to—” A wide yawn interrupts Tony's words, as Tony's body reminds him of exactly how tired he is. He turns to leave once it's done, figuring he should get as much work done as he can before he stops having a choice about sleeping.

Long, slim fingers close around Tony's wrist as Tony starts to move, and even Loki's lightest grip is strong enough to keep Tony still. It irritates Tony, to be so easily caged; he's not weak, by human standards, and even after two years he's not fully adjusted to having a lover who can so easily overpower him. “Yes?” Tony asks, his tone deliberately unwelcoming.

Loki looks him over, head to toe, though Tony isn't willing to put in the energy to decipher the accompanying expression on the god's face, and so hasn't the slightest clue as to why. “You should sleep,” Loki says, just enough of a suggestion that Tony doesn't have to take it as an outright order. The words still weigh on him, but they're easy enough to shake off, even if the effort leaves Tony feeling a little cold.

Tony raises his eyebrows, and looks pointedly down at Loki's grip. “To be perfectly clear,” Tony says, “even if I was sleeping tonight, I wouldn't be sleeping here.” Loki isn't forgiven. Just because Tony came up with a way to save their asses doesn't mean he's forgotten that Loki was willing to let him walk into danger without even forewarning him that it was coming.

Just like that, Loki lets go—though of course, Loki being Loki, he manages to make the move look like he was planning to do it anyway, and Tony's words had nothing to do with it. “I'll not keep you, then,” Loki says, his tone perfectly conversational and bland, and his eyes dark: pointedly giving Tony nothing, in the way the usually means there's a strong emotion underneath the blankness that Loki considers weak, and so won't show. In this case, it's probably something close to hurt.

For just a second, Tony hesitates, because it's not as though he likes the state of things between them right now, both of them hurt and neither apologizing. Ultimately, though, it was Loki who fucked up first, and worse—and so Tony just says, equally casually, “Thanks,” and heads for the door.

…

52.

The way Tony sees it, he really has three options here.

One: Go up against Thanos, fuck up somewhere, and die. That's not Tony's favorite possibility, and he's going to try to avoid it as much as he humanly can, but the occasional dangers of being a pragmatist include realizing his death is maybe the most probable option.

Two: Go up against Thanos, pull it off, save the nine worlds, and then leave it there. Drag Loki off and leave him with Thor, or let Loki disappear into the ether. Track down the Chitauri armies and wipe them out, make the worlds safe, and step away from using the victories the way he planned to. Step away from the throne. Try to find some other life, some middle ground between trying to squeeze back into his old life like a puzzle piece that no longer quite fits where it used to, and the fast-paced planned-out life he's lived for two years.

Or, three: Go up against Thanos, pull it off, save the nine worlds, and finish the plan as it was intended. Track down the Chitauri armies and wipe them out, and make sure he's seen doing it, make sure he's credited for each and every victory. Make appearances, make himself known, make people whisper behind their hands in awe whenever they say his name, and then ride that wave of devotion right into control of the nine worlds. Take the power he wanted. Ignore the cost. Make that last step his free choice where none of the others were, and finish what he started. And...handle the question of Loki, somehow.

It's Tony's choice. For the first time in two years, it is completely, entirely Tony's choice.

Tony's fingers twitch, and he clenches them into a fist to still them, his own fingernails biting crescents into his palms.

…

37.

It's a little bit, in terms of impossibility, like trying to rebuild a jet fighter from broken parts, blindfolded and in the dark, using parts from six different plane models, without tools, when you've never actually seen a fighter plane in your life. Or, to put it plainly, it's maybe the most challenging thing Tony's ever done in his life, and Tony's the guy who successfully miniaturized an arc reactor from bomb parts in a cave in the desert, so that's saying a lot.

Tony hums, thinking, and the world fades away. He feels time passing, in an abstract sense: food shows up at his side and he eats it, idly. Maybe there are words addressed at him, but the sound of them vanishes over the buzzing thrum of his thoughts. One by one, connections slide into place, and Tony draws them out of beautiful theory and into life, onto paper—one by one, until there is only one left, and Tony realizes, suddenly, that it isn't daytime any more, and that Loki is standing just over his shoulder, the god's focus an almost tangible weight on Tony's skin.

“If you say one word right now,” Tony says, paying absolutely no attention to the words coming out of his mouth, “I swear to god, I'm going to—”

It's going to be a good threat, probably, except that at just that moment the last piece slides into place, and Tony drops the thought to let his fingers fly over paper, pencil tip completing a circuit and bringing the entire, impossible theory into visible plausibility. Just like that, it's done.

Tony raises the tip of his pencil, so careful not to smudge a single line, and then lets out a breath. “It's beautiful,” he says, his tone the same, faintly awed thing it turns into every time something this brilliant crystallizes into something real. Tony's a genius, yes, and arrogant as shit, but it's just possible this is the best work he's ever done; he's allowed to be impressed with himself for a minute.

Loki leans in over Tony's shoulder, green eyes darting across the paper, and Tony has one of those moments where he remembers exactly how smart his lover is; even unfamiliar as he is with Earth-style engineering, it's clear just from the look in Loki's eyes that the god understands what he's seeing, his mind almost visibly processing the new information. “I see,” Loki says, after a few minutes silence—but if Tony's not mistaken, he hears a little doubt underlying the words.

That's alright, though: Tony has enough faith in himself for two people, and he just knows, somehow, that this is going to work. “No, you don't,” Tony says, but the words aren't argumentative—actually, this is maybe the friendliest Tony's been since he and Loki had their fight. Tony looks up at Loki, grins, and says, “You will.”

…

54.

The last piece locks into place perfectly, with a faint, pneumatic hiss, and Tony grins at the sound. “Everything okay?” Barton asks, and steps away to let Tony move.

Tony lifts one hand to eye level, and looks at it, curling and unfurling his fingers, and his grin goes stupidly wide. This is maybe the best he's felt since he suddenly regained free will; considering that it's possible he's going to get himself killed in a little while, he feels perfectly entitled to enjoy the hell out of this moment. “Yeah,” he says, and holds out a hand to Barton. “Seems alright to me. Ready to go?”

Barton looks at Tony with faint reproach, but takes Tony's outstretched hand. “You still haven't told me where we're going,” Barton says.

“It's a surprise,” Tony says, making his tone go chiding. “You wouldn't want me to ruin the surprise, would you?” The space gem starts up mid-sentence—sometimes Tony really thinks the damn thing has a sense of dramatic timing—and the space of Alfheim folds and falls away from them for maybe the last time ever.

Barton has just enough time to realize what Tony's done, and turns to Tony with betrayal on his face, a question hanging on his lips—and then Romanov is on them, wrenching Barton away from Tony bodily. Barton struggles, of course, but for all that Romanov is smaller she's also terrifyingly competent at what she does; within just seconds, she's managed to turn all of Barton's attempts to escape against him, and caught him in a chokehold that's probably going to knock him out for a while, Barton's attempts to fight getting weaker with every passing second. Luckily for Tony, that keeps her hands full for the moment being, which means the worst she can do to him is throw him a downright venomous stare, and ask, “Why did you bring him?”

Tony shrugs, and says, “Because he deserves better, and you deserve to be the one who gives it to him.” Romanov's spent two years trying to find Barton and bring him back to her side—Tony's fairly certain that qualifies her as the safest hands to leave Barton in, while Tony goes off to possibly get himself killed. “I'd recommend a good hit to the head, if you want him to start thinking on his own again,” Tony says, as a peace offering of sorts. “Either way, he's all yours.”

Romanov watches him, her dark eyes unwavering, until the second the space gem swallows him up, and sends him off to make a harder choice.

...

40.

The first time Tony makes it work, he also blows up half his workshop doing it. Loki is...less than impressed by this.

“You wouldn't have wanted to know me during my MIT days,” Tony says, slightly amused, when Loki's initial adrenaline-fueled reaction has faded away to utmost irritation. Tony, for his own part, is actually slightly heartened to find out that Loki will all but leap to his defense, when he thinks Tony's under attack; of course, unsurprisingly, the second Loki realized that bounty hunters hadn't actually invaded their home, and that it was Tony's own miscalibration that blew a chunk out of his wall, well. That protective anger shifted over to incredulous disdain pretty rapidly. “I've definitely done worse damage than this to a workshop before.”

Loki turns an absolutely cutting expression on Tony, anger clear on the god's face. “You're very self-satisfied for a man who nearly just brought his home down, Stark,” Loki says.

Tony refuses to actually wither away and die under the force of that expression, though it's pretty clear that's what that look is intended for. “Yeah, I am,” he says, still far too pleased with himself to sound anything like contrite. “Seeing as this means I got it functional, I'm going to go right on feeling that way, actually.”

“You call this working?” Loki asks, throwing one arm out in a wide sweep clearly meant to bring the destruction behind him to Tony's attention.

“Not working well,” Tony cedes, because nearly two years away from his career on Earth haven't been enough to strip him of his pride in his skill, and he doesn't want Loki thinking this is the best he can do. “Still. It's working at all, and that's definitely something. It means this model is on the right track, anyway.” Tony's willing to be proud of successful baby steps, considering he's doing something no one else has ever done, and his first few tries didn't even work at all.

Loki raises one eyebrow, and at least a little bit of his anger seems to cool. “Well,” the god of mischief says, in a perfectly calm voice. “At least there's some evidence that this fool plan isn't for naught, after all.”

“There you go, babe,” Tony says, and grins widely at the extremely sardonic look Loki gives him in return for the pet name. “You're starting to develop some faith in me after all.”

…

55.

The thing is, it ought to be easy. Tony's never been the sort of guy to meekly fall in line and follow orders, and that's been exactly what he's been doing for the past two years. He ought to hate that, ought to hate everything about it, and he doesn't doubt that the person he was two years ago would have. It would have been easy, for that version of Tony, to know exactly what to do about Loki, because the answer would have been: finish off Thanos and then never have anything to do with Loki again, drop him off on Asgard and let him be somebody else's problem, and never talk about it again. That Tony would have walked away, easily, turned his back on the god that took his freedom away—and if he'd woken up at nights doubting his choice, or with his mind racing with memories, the answer would have been to drink the thoughts quiet, and go the fuck back to sleep.

It ought to be easy.

But.

Here’s the thing: there’s a part of Tony, a very large part, that wants it to be that simple. That part wants to throw the last two years out entirely, to just forget, and to be the man he was once again. Maybe Tony’s never been a good man, not fully, but he’s certainly been a better one than he was with Loki, over the past two years. And he wants to be that man again, viscerally.

But he can’t afford to forget. He’s had two years of forgetting, of merciful relief from his own guilt and the consequences of his actions, and...

Tony’s tired.

Because there’s another part of Tony--which is also, unfortunately, quite large--that’s absolutely terrified of forgetting again. There’s a nobler phrasing he could couch this in, something about Tony feeling like he doesn’t deserve the peace of forgetting, but Tony’s determined to be honest with himself, here, and his motivations aren’t noble, down at the heart of them. Right at Tony’s core, there’s a fucking incapacitating fear now: fear of helplessness, fear of that fog creeping in at the edges of his memory again, blurring parts of him away from his own reach.

Maybe Tony can’t quite figure out, yet, how he’s going to live with the memories of what he’s done, but he knows for certain now that he can’t live without those memories either.

And without forgetting them, well. There’s Loki, entangled in it all. And Tony can’t forget him either.

So, when it comes down to it, here’s Tony, standing on the brink of something massive. Here he is, hurting and alone, caught between a life he loved that came at a cost he can no longer condone, and the uncertain future ahead. And lying in the balance is...well, pretty much everything.

So.

No pressure, right?

...

42.

The space gem takes them as far as the doors to Odin's vault, but no farther—Tony isn't exactly surprised, after how closely guarded Loki said this place was, but that doesn't mean he wasn't hoping to show up right next to the Infinity Gauntlet, and be in and out in minutes. Instead, space unfolds and leaves them in the sheltered overhang of the uppermost doorway, with the warm, Asgardian sun shining slanted over their faces.

“Well,” Tony says, and looks around momentarily, just to make sure they're actually alone. “I hope we had an alternate plan of how to get in, because this was all I had.”

Loki throws Tony a look, the one that all but calls Tony an idiot, and raises his hand, green wisps of magic dancing visibly around his fingertips. “We're hardly unprepared,” Loki says, and twists his fingers—just like that, the door behind them unlocks, with an audible click.

It's a long walk down, and there are more doors between them and the vault, but they never give Loki any trouble. It feels...too easy, almost, which in Tony's experience is almost never a good thing; Tony goes with it for as long it works, though, following Loki down the long set of stairs, and finally into the belly of the Asgardian palace where the vault itself rests.

“Be careful not to step beyond where we must,” Loki says, his palm resting on the vault door and his footsteps nearly silent even in the echoing vault chamber. Throwing a distrustful look at the far wall of the chamber, Loki says, “I think my magic will shield us, but if I am wrong, this will end...poorly, for us. The Destroyer was ever vigilant in its protection of this place, and I don't doubt that whatever Odin Allfather replaced it with is equally vicious in its task.”

“Good to know,” Tony says, wincing slightly at the sheer amount of sound he makes with every step. Subtlety has never exactly been his forte, but being noisy and being loud enough to bring the Asgardian royal guard down on their heads are two very different things, and Tony's slightly concerned that he's veering into the latter territory.

He crosses the vault room behind Loki, until Loki stops at an alcove inset into the wall—and there, perched on a pedestal, is a gaudy golden gauntlet, with the reality gem set neatly into one of its knuckles. Tony steps slightly into the alcove, tilting his head and taking in as much of the gauntlet as he can. “Huh,” Tony says. “Not much for understatement, were they?” If something's over the top by Tony Stark's standards, that says more than it doesn't.

“No,” a voice says—a voice not Loki's—and Tony just knows, somehow, even before he turns around, that he's going to be coming face to face with Odin himself.

…

56.

It's easy enough to find Thanos, in the end—Thanos is past subtlety now, too close to his goal to care about playing the omnipresent, shadowy menace that Tony's built him up into, and he leaves a trail of wreckage in his wake that's better than any trail marker could be. Tony follows after as quickly as he can, trying to ignore the occasional body mixed in with the rubble—he knew, after all, that Thanos had no respect for life, and it was only Thanos' desire to have Tony and Loki do the hard work of finding the Infinity gems that ever made Thanos curb his destructive tendencies at all. Now, though, Tony and Loki have served their purpose, and Thanos is probably looking to make as many sacrifices to his beloved Death as he possibly can, to make up for the two years of relative abandonment.

Tony steels himself against that, and keeps going. This is why he's here—to make Thanos stop, to keep him from ever harming anyone else. It still isn't easy to see innocent lives lost, but there are other, more important things to do right now than face the consequences of his own actions.

It very nearly makes Tony laugh, when he realizes where Loki brought Thanos: the trail of destruction leads straight to Stark Tower, stopping just at the doors of Tony's old monument to himself. There's something almost poetic to that, to everything ending in the same place it started two years ago, with Tony once again under his own free will and acting for the good of this world. This has Loki's sense of humor all over it, which probably—probably—means Loki's still alive, and that's—

“Alright,” Tony says, and starts towards the ruined doors of his own tower. “Let's get this done.”

…

22.

Tony can tell the exact moment that Loki notices the change in Tony's eye color, because Loki's shoulders tense, the god's posture closing off above Tony. So Loki knows he did something wrong, at least, doesn't consider himself blameless, knows right now that Tony wants to—that more than anything Tony wants—

Tony laughs, because even in his own fucking head he shies from the word, from wanting anything, from choice—because Tony's free, but he doesn't feel it, he feels lost and incompetent and— “Fuck you,” he tells Loki, and his voice doesn't even sound like his own, rough and tight and shaking, “you did this to me, you—”

“Stark,” Loki says, and there's something like apology in the name, apology Tony is completely unwilling to hear.

“No,” Tony says, adamantly, and the word comes out like a shout, too loud for the space between them. “No, you don't get to try to make this better, this is all on you, this is—,” and Tony, suddenly, feels cold, and deadly calm. It's shock, it's probably shock, but that doesn't make the realization that comes with it any less chilling. Very quietly now, Tony says, with absolute surety, “I can't live with this.”

Tony's done too much, forgotten every lesson he ever learned about the cost of war, slept deeply while his plan saw thousands of innocents killed, and that...it makes Tony sick to realize that. There was already too much blood on Tony's hands to every be washed clean, realistically, and to add this on top of it all...he can't. It would kill him to try.

“No,” Loki says, and suddenly his voice is all snarling urgency. “You will not throw your life away.”

“You already threw it away for me,” Tony says, and the words are perfectly, unwaveringly calm. Jarvis, Pepper, Rhodey, his company, the redemption he was earning tooth and nail—they're gone. Everything's gone, everything was taken away the second Loki touched the tip of that scepter to Tony's chest and stole him away, and that's—

Tony's eyes fall on the tip of the scepter, and his breath catches.

“Of course,” he says, slowly, “there is another way.”

…

57.

They're going to be in the penthouse, Tony knows; if it's Loki orchestrating this whole thing, bringing them back to where they started, then Loki's damned well going to be thorough about it.

Tony stalks through the lobby of Stark Tower, ignoring the faint irritation that seeing his tower damaged raises. This isn't his place anymore, and it shouldn't matter that Thanos clearly felt like a bit of wanton destruction was in order here, that Tony's carefully designed building is looking more than a little worse for the wear. The elevator's still working, and that's about all Tony needs right now—the rest of it ought to be irrelevant.

Ought to be, Tony acknowledges, a little ruefully, isn't quite cutting it. Thanos needs to learn not to fuck with what belongs to Tony.

Tony stabs the button for the penthouse, maybe a little harder than he needs to, and waits for the elevator doors to slide shut. Before they can, someone stands from behind the lobby desk—the receptionist, looking a little battered but overall intact, stands, and then, noticing Tony, stares.

“Hey,” Tony says, for lack of something better to say. “You should maybe think of getting out of here. Might get messy.”

The receptionist's eyes widen, and the guy looks around at the destruction around him, clearly wondering what messy means, if this doesn't qualify. Tony's amused, despite himself, and despite the moment. “Just saying,” he says, as the elevator doors slide shut, and the elevator shudders upwards.

…

58.

Tony hears Thanos before he even sees him—even through the metal of the elevator doors, the mad god's voice is audible. “I will wait no longer,” Thanos says, all but spitting out the words. “You will give me the gems, fool god, or you will die.”

And, because Tony's life is one gigantic instance of good dramatic timing, the elevator doors pick that moment to slide open, with a faint, cheerful ding.

The tableau they open onto isn't exactly pleasant—Loki's clearly taken a few more hits, between the time Tony last saw him and now, and Tony's honestly not sure even Loki's healing will be able to bring him out of this in one piece. About the only thing about the god of lies that doesn't look ruined are his green eyes, which are locked on Thanos, gaze pointed and caustic, right up until the moment Tony enters. Then, Loki's eyes flick towards Tony, and hold there for a while, with something unreadable his gaze.

Tony, being who he is, goes for the asshole opening line; stepping out of the elevator and into the penthouse proper, Tony flashes a wide smile and asks, “Miss me?”

…

43.

It seems like a dumb thing to say, but, after every story he's ever heard about Odin, Tony sort of expected the guy would be taller.

That's not to say that Odin lacks presence, because the opposite is pretty much true—as soon as Tony notices Odin, it's like the room shrinks to center on him, though possibly that's the adrenaline rush rather than any special skill on Odin's part. Tony backs away, instinctively, the whole step that he's capable of backing up in this limited space. It's practicality, not cowardice; one look at Odin makes it pretty clear that if the god decided to put an end to Tony, Tony would be shit out of luck.

Still: not as tall as expected. That's mildly reassuring, in its own way.

Also helpful is that Odin, apparently, suffers from the same condition as every other god Tony's ever met, the one where he totally ignores the mortal in the room if there's another god present. The way Odin is watching Loki is downright terrifying, and Tony says that as an outside observer, who doesn't have the force of that gaze turned on him. It must be awful for Loki, considering Odin is about the last person Loki would want to see here, and absolutely nothing about Odin's stare is friendly or paternal.

“Loki,” Odin says, his voice booming in the high-ceilinged room; the absence of a last name for Loki is cutting in its obviousness, and Tony hears Loki take a sharp, quiet breath in by Tony's side. “You trespass too far for tolerance.”

Loki laughs, and Tony can actually see his masks go up, the careful control of expression that Loki uses to perform. “Come now,” Loki says, and steps out of the shadow of the alcove, facing Odin eye to eye. It's strange, because Loki is by far the taller of the two, and Tony's used to seeing Loki as a tall, looming figure—in this moment, though, facing off against Odin, Loki almost seems smaller than Tony's used to. It's like, for all of Loki's careful control, he can't quite help from shrinking into himself when Odin's around. “Let us not pretend that my trespass has not long since passed the point of tolerance.”

“Perhaps,” Odin acknowledges, and for just a moment, the dispassionate, uninterested way Odin looks at Loki reminds Tony so much of Howard that his stomach twists uncomfortably. Tony wants to reach out, to offer Loki physical support right now, but Loki is too far to reach—even if he wasn't, the closed lines of Loki's posture make it clear that right now Loki would only shake the comfort off with a snarl. “Now, however, that trespass has brought you uninvited into my home. That, I cannot forgive.”

There's a spear in Odin's hands, Tony realizes, suddenly; he doesn't know whether it wasn't there before, or Tony was just too caught in the situation to notice it, but there it is, a gleaming golden line that Odin brings to bear. The dim light of the vault reflects off the sharp edge of the spear with an almost vicious glint.

Right, so this is going to go badly, Tony can definitely acknowledge that right now. Loki's stance changes, his center of gravity dropping as his arms come up defensively; his magic sparks into visible green light, dancing agitatedly around his fingertips.

And—it isn't Tony underestimating Loki, because he knows exactly what his lover is capable of in a fight, but Tony just knows, watching Odin and Loki face off, that Loki isn't going to come out the winner here. Odin's got a few thousand years of experience in battle on both of them, and he's probably intimately familiar with Loki's fighting style as well. If this plays out, Tony doesn't doubt that they aren't going to make it out of here in one piece.

Tony darts a look at Odin, just to make sure—and, yes, all of Odin's attention is still fixated on Loki, unwaveringly, and not on Tony—so Tony takes the chance, and goes for it. He's already in the alcove with the gauntlet; it doesn't take much to reach out, slip the gauntlet off its pedestal, and slide in easily over one hand.

The gauntlet's cold, and the fingers move stiffly, joints probably long rusted over—but, for all that, it fits over Tony's hand neatly, and settles over Tony's arm with relatively few problems. Tony's other hand comes up, and scrambles for the end of the gauntlet, and it's the work of a few seconds to get everything in place; it's all done before either Odin or Loki get to throw a proper first strike.

Then, all that's left is to hope like hell that he didn't screw up somewhere, and step out of the alcove, gauntled arm raised at Odin, to say, “You might want to rethink that.”

…

59.

Thanos turns to look at Tony slowly—the mad god's lips purse downwards, and his eyes scan over Tony dismissively. “You live, little mortal,” Thanos acknowledges, the words sounding almost bored. “Your existence begins to irritate me.”

It's not exactly the first time Tony's heard that line, though the context is new, he has to admit. “Yeah, well,” he says, and steps closer, “I'm a bit hard to kill, what can I say.” Thanos smiles, widely, like Tony told a fantastic joke rather than the best single-sentence summary of his life he can offer, and Tony decides it's about time he was taken seriously around here. Tilting his head questioningly, Tony asks, “Any chance I caught you right before you had a chance to put down Loki, give up the soul gem, and leave behind this life of crime?”

Thanos throws back his head and laughs, a full-bodied, rough sound, and Tony says, “Yeah, I didn't think so, somehow.” Tony shrugs, rolls his shoulders idly, and says, “We can do this the hard way instead, I'm down with that.”

“Oh, this is rich,” Thanos says, and looks directly at Tony's eyes, incredulity and amusement clear on the mad god's face. “The mortal thinks himself strong enough to face Thanos, does he?” Suddenly, Thanos lets go his grip on Loki, and turns to face Tony fully; Loki drops like a stone to the floor, clearly unable to support his own weight. The smile on Thanos' face goes dark, and Thanos' eyes go almost fever bright. “Do you think a little armor will be enough to protect you from me, mortal?”

Tony looks down, at the gold, shining metal that encases his body from head to toe, and curls his fingers, feeling the familiar resistance of a suit to movement—when he looks back up, he's smiling behind his helmet, not that Thanos can see it. “Oh,” Tony says, his voice thick with amusement, “you really need to start doing better background checks, Thanos.”

It is with the utmost satisfaction that Tony raises one palm, and shoots Thanos right in the face.

…

44.

Loki doesn't turn to look at Tony when he steps from the alcove, though Odin does, perhaps for the first time. For his part, Loki just says, “I was beginning to wonder when you would make your entrance, Stark.”

“It took me a second to make sure I wouldn't blow us all up trying,” Tony says, and makes sure none of his uncertainty about this reflects in his posture. This is at least twenty percent bluff, and if Odin guesses as much, then they're both fucked. “You're welcome, by the way.”

Loki grins, a sharp, predatory thing, and the magic curling around his fingers sharpens suddenly, solidifying into a small, deadly-edged blade. “I could have held my own,” Loki says, and Tony isn't sure whether that's bravado or overconfidence.

“I like our odds better this way,” Tony says, because, hey, mid-fight banter is basically what Tony does.

The moment snaps as Odin's voice rings out. “Enough!” Odin says, and brings the wicked point of that spear up, ready to strike. “It was folly to bring the mortal here,” Odin says to Loki, very seriously. “The only thing you have accomplished is that now he will die with you.”

And that's all the warning they get: a second later the tip of that blade is flashing out, almost quicker than Tony's eyes can follow, toward Loki.

It's instinct, not assurance, that lets Tony do what he does next; all he knows is that he doesn't want Loki harmed, and, with that in mind, Tony reaches out with one metal-covered hand, and tries.

The strike never lands.

…

60.

After two years without the suits, two years of being the weakest person in any given room, there's something fantastic about hearing the familiar buzz and whir of a repulsor charge and discharge; even more self-satisfying is watching Thanos' face snap back at the force of the shot, taken enough by surprise that the mad titan has to stumble a step backward to catch his balance.

When Thanos looks back up, the expression on his uninjured face is furious, but coldly so; he's looking at Tony like Tony's already dead, and just hasn't realized it yet. Tony grins behind the face mask, the familiar thrum of battle adrenaline rushing through his veins. Finally, fucking finally, Tony gets a chance to face Thanos head on, after two years of being disregarded and taunted; if Thanos thinks Tony is going down easily, he's got another think coming. “That was so worth it,” Tony says, pleased as hell with himself.

A second later, Tony has to dodge violently to one side to avoid one of Thanos' energy blasts—even half a year later, Tony still remembers how badly those burn. The shot hits a wall, rather than Tony, and Tony feels the faint impact of flying debris against the back of his suit. Thanos hisses out an irritated sound when the shot misses, and takes another one almost immediately, this one a little too quick for Tony to dodge.

Tony sees the victory in Thanos' eyes, and takes great pleasure in the second where the space gem twists space around Tony, and deposits him safely out of the way of the blast. The outrage in Thanos' eyes is wonderful. “Come on,” Tony says, voice taunting, “you didn't really think we were stupid enough to keep our gems locked away in a tower in Manhattan, did you?”

Then Thanos is right on top of him, so quickly he couldn't have physically crossed the distance between them, and gets one hand up, around Tony's throat. The metal of the suit creaks and buckles under the strength of Thanos' grip, and suddenly there isn't enough air in the world, and Tony feels himself choke. “You are not the only one who can teleport, little mortal,” Thanos says, voice all arrogance, as his fingers tighten.

Tony doesn't have the air he'd need for witty repartee, but he does have a bit of luck on his side—when Thanos came to grab him, he let one of Tony's hands fall into the space between their bodies, and Tony brings that hand up, now, to rest on Thanos' chest, and pushes. There's visible surprise in Thanos' eyes when that move has enough force behind it to actually push the mad titan backwards, freeing Tony and giving him a half second to gasp for air.

Finally, finally, Thanos seems to grasp what's going on here. “You use the Infinity gems to fight,” Thanos says, and throws another blast Tony's way as he speaks.

Just to prove a point, Tony calls on the time gem this time, slowing the blast until it's moving almost glacially, and then stepping around it easily, letting it bump harmlessly against the wall behind him. “There's a lot you can do with five of six,” Tony rasps out, grinning despite the ache in his throat.

“True,” Thanos acknowledges, and the fact that Thanos agrees with him is warning enough that Tony isn't surprised to suddenly wind up held in Thanos' grasp. “The question remains: can they do enough to save you, little mortal?”

And just like that, Tony is being hurled backwards, crashing through the glass window of the penthouse and suddenly, terrifyingly, finding himself in free fall.

…

61.

This incarnation of the suit can't fly—Tony had other priorities, when he was building it—and for a second, Tony just watches the ground rush up towards him, absolutely, stupidly convinced that this is it for him, that this, after everything, is going to be what kills him.

Then his brain engages, and Tony actually rolls his eyes at himself as he politely asks the space gem to not let him die. There's the familiar folding of space around him, and then Tony finds himself crashing into the street, landing awkwardly, but not with deadly force. He catches himself with one hand and his knees, and a little help from the power gem is enough to get himself upright in pretty much the same motion. Looking up towards the shattered window of the penthouse, Tony shouts, “Nice try, Thanos, but no cigar.”

It doesn't particularly surprise Tony to see Thanos suddenly appear on the street before him—what does surprise Tony is that Thanos brings Loki with him, clutching the god's limp form in one hand like Loki is the world's biggest ragdoll. Thanos tosses Loki aside, and it's slightly heartening to see Loki actually try to catch himself this time, hands coming up to break his impact against the street. “I would have him watch you die,” Thanos says, far more gleefully than anyone should ever say those words.

“Not dead yet, Thanos,” Tony says, and grins like a demon. “Care to try me?”

Thanos comes at him, fast; and Tony grins wider, calls on the power gem for a little help, and launches himself at Thanos. When they crash, it sounds like thunder.

…

41.

The thing is, the Infinity gauntlet is, in essence, a tool. It was engineered god only knows how long ago—Loki has no idea, when Tony asks him—and using materials Tony doesn't have access to; but it's also something that was engineered, once, something that at its most basic level works on circuits and connectivities just like the ones Tony is used to working with. Which means that, theoretically, Tony can build a new one. And, alright, so maybe there's some magic involved in the whole process that Tony can't begin to comprehend, but that's what he has Loki around for, right? Between the two of them, Tony's sure he could build a new gauntlet of his very own.

Except, the thing is, Tony is Tony Stark, so of course that was never the plan. Because after Loki briefs him on the gauntlet, tells Tony absolutely everything he knows about the thing, Tony...has some revisions in mind. The way Tony sees it, the original builders of the gauntlet got lazy. They made it so that you had to have all six gems to use the gauntlet properly, rather than letting each gem added amplify the powers of the others individually. They also built an object that needed to have the gems physically attached to it in order to work, despite the fact that one of those gems controlled all of space itself—and that, to Tony's mind, just shows a serious lack of creativity.

So Tony doesn't just build another gauntlet—he builds something that renders the gauntlet obsolete, that makes the gems more efficient, that eliminates the need to have the gems physically attached and thus vulnerable—and, the best part is, he makes it into a suit, perfectly attuned and calibrated to him, so that just about anybody else in the world would find it impossible to use.

It's perfect, at least from Tony's humble point of view.

And, hopefully, perfect will be enough.

…

62.

Tony doesn't think. He moves, and just keeps moving, focused more on never staying still than on specifically what he's doing. He dodges, shoots, dances in close to Thanos to get in a power-amplified hit, dodges back again, calling on the gems when they're needed—as ever, the space gem is the quickest to answer, the most responsive to Tony's wishes, so a lot of the fight becomes centered around manipulation of space, he and Thanos each using teleportation to try and land unexpected blows. Thanos disappears into midair, reappears to land a fucking painful blow against Tony's side—Tony grunts through the pain and spins space out around him, coming at Thanos from above, the time gem slowing Thanos' reaction just enough to let Tony land the hit.

He's not sure of how long the fight stretches out for—between the adrenaline rush and the way Tony is literally fucking with time mid-fight, it could be anywhere from minutes to hours—but finally, finally, Tony starts to gain a noticeable advantage. Thanos is more powerful, and every single hit he lands rocks through Tony like an earthquake, making the metal of the suit creak and buckle, but Tony is faster, with the time gem pitching in to keep Thanos slowed, and Tony makes that extra speed count. He lands two, three blows for every one of Thanos', pushes the power gem for every drop of force it'll give him, and then disappears into folds of space before Thanos can land a hit in retaliation; even with Thanos' resilience, even with the almost impenetrable skin that covers his body, those hits start adding up. Thanos starts to slow, this time not solely from the effect of the time gem, as Tony carefully aims his hits at vulnerable joints and his best guess as to where Thanos' organs lie—Tony fights as unfair as he possibly can, and the first time he actually gets a hiss of pain out of Thanos at a strike, Tony suddenly realizes that he might actually win, here.

And, soon enough, it becomes clear that Thanos realizes it too. Disbelief lights up in the mad titan's eyes, and Thanos keeps fighting for a few minutes, clearly trying to deny the reality of the situation. When minutes pass and Tony just keeps winning, something changes in Thanos' expression; seeing that change, Tony automatically jerks back, space gem spinning him a few feet away, giving him enough room to prepare for whatever crazy thing Thanos does next.

Thanos smiles at Tony's retreat, his expression downright maniacal, and then blinks out of view; Tony feels the folds of space, and braces himself for the hit.

Except the hit never lands, because it isn't Tony that Thanos teleports towards, it's Loki—Loki, who's still laying prone on the ground, having moved just enough to watch the fight with that green-eyed stare—and it's Loki that Thanos grabs for, hoisting the god once more into midair before Tony has time to react.

It's instinct that makes Tony tense, two years worth of feeling protective over Loki that make him call on the space gem, moving before he even realizes what it is he's doing.

“Tsk tsk,” Thanos says, like some sort of chiding parent, before Tony actually gets anywhere. “I would stay where I was, were I you, little mortal.” With his free hand, the one not holding Loki, Thanos reaches into a small pocket on his clothes, and comes out with a closed fist—and, Tony can't help but notice, the gap in that fist is just the right size to hold a small, round stone. “After all,” Thanos says, and shakes Loki, sending a shudder down Loki's entire body, “I'm sure it would be tragic were your lover to lose his soul.”

…

45.

There's a spear in Tony's hand, and he actually has no fucking clue how it got there—but, on the plus side, it's in his hand rather than embedded in Loki's side, and Tony will accept small mercies when he gets them.

Odin looks...not surprised, exactly, but only because surprised would be an understatement; the Allfather looks downright shocked, looking at his spear where Tony's fingers curl around it. Tony's fairly certain that means he just did something more impressive than he thought, given that Loki's looking at it in much the same way, but Tony doesn't really have the time to puzzle out what. With the instincts of a fighter, albeit a fighter who hasn't fought in two years and has never wielded a spear before, Tony hefts the spear—he's almost surprised at how well it balances in his hand, at how easily it seems to aim at Odin, like the spear could practically throw itself without any help from Tony.

“Right,” Tony says, breaking the silence. “Like I said. Care to reconsider?”

…

63.

For just a second, Tony freezes at the threat, and finds his mind suddenly overflowing with memories of the last two years. Just one threat, and suddenly Tony's fucking bombarded with memories of the heat in Loki's eyes when Tony dragged him into a kiss, the way it felt the first time Loki smiled that sharp conspiratorial smile at Tony, the weight of Loki's sleeping body along his in the dark—with everything at once, with too much. Tony can't handle it, can't slow the flood; and in its aftermath, Tony feels this messy, unwanted surge of blind, furious protectiveness that's strong enough to force him still and silent.

That moment ends as quickly as it came, but Tony looks at the expression on Thanos' face and doesn't doubt that Thanos saw it. “What the hell makes you think I care about that?” Tony asks, but it's a weak bluff, and they both know it. Damn it, of all the times to realize—

Thanos raises his free hand farther, the threat of the soul gem hanging heavy in the air between them, and says, “A poor lie.” Tony darts a look at Loki, and finds Loki's eyes fixed on Tony, unblinking, watchful—if Loki's trying to communicate something, then Tony has no idea what it is.

Under the weight of that gaze, it's somehow easier for Tony to say, his voice rough, “Yeah. I guess so.”

The admission makes Thanos grin, delightedly, with all the enthusiasm of a sadist who realizes he has the ability to inflict great pain. Sounding almost conversational, Thanos says, “For the cost of your life, I was promised only lies by your lover. I wonder, little mortal, are you more honest? What would you give Thanos for your lover's soul?”

“Don't do this,” Tony says. It isn't a plea—it's a warning. Tony closes his eyes, and embraces, for now, the rush of emotion that he doesn't know how to handle: sinks into it, like he sunk once under the control of the mind gem, and lets it rule him. His voice is absolutely, coldly precise when he opens his eyes again and says, “I'll tear you apart.”

“Even if you could kill me,” Thanos says, his grin widening, “it would not restore his soul.” And Tony—Tony hesitates, for just a second, and Thanos sees it. Still smiling that sick smile, Thanos opens the fingers of his free hand, rolling the green gem tauntingly between his fingers. “Choose carefully,” Thanos says.

“Oh,” Tony says, feeling so fucking exhilarated that it bubbles over into a smile, and near laughter in his voice—he gets the great joy of seeing Thanos reel back in surprise at that tone. “I already have.”

Tony only ever needed a line of sight, and Thanos was kind enough to give him one. This couldn't work out more perfectly if he tried. “See,” Tony says, and looks pointedly at the soul gem, “that's mine.”

And, stirred from sleep, the reality gem makes it so.

…

64.

The sixth gem curls into Tony's fingers obligingly, still warm from Thanos' touch, and Tony—

Tony isn't Tony anymore. He's bigger than that, than physical limitations and bodies, bigger than a single self. He's everywhere, everyone, he's spread like a web over the world, cast by the power of the six Infinity gems to the far corners of the universe. He knows everything. He is not mortal; he cannot be touched.

He feels joy, and a weak facsimile of it emerges as laughter from the body of Tony Stark, strong enough to make that body shake—and the body of Thanos shakes too, as he reaches out and tugs at the strings of that form. Strong Thanos, mad Thanos, ruler of worlds and lover of Death, is nothing here, a speck of dust that mars the tapestry of the universe; even immortality, here and now, is not enough to make the mad titan anything less than finite.

So he spreads himself through that form, and quiets its feeble attempts to struggle. He touches the memories that lie there, watches millennia of a slow descent into madness in moments; time is nothing here, but memory is not without power, and the thing that was Thanos squirms under the investigation. He ignores it, searches memories and finds what Thanos fears most—finds, under the threats and bravado and brutal, savage love of Death, a perpetual, lingering thread of terror. Terror of obscurity, of slipping away unknown; terror of being inadequate, terror of failing. Such fear, to motivate such strength.

He lets the Thanos thing go, and it shivers at its new freedom, too frightened or perhaps too intelligent to try fighting again. He looks at it, and it shrinks away from its gaze—and he knows that, for the first time in millennia, Thanos feels powerless.

It makes his body, that distant, weak thing, smile. Here, vindictiveness is too small a thing to feel—instead, he feels necessity. “Time to bring an end to this,” he says, and it echoes from his small, physical voice; that body reaches out one hand toward the mad titan, as he brings the force of his will to rest on Thanos.

And with a tiny spark of what remains of Tony Stark, he says, “You really shouldn't touch my stuff,” and sends Thanos out of existence. The mad titan blinks out quietly, with no dramatic last words or speeches—Thanos goes quietly, beyond any place that the Lady Death could reach, and is gone.

A great weight lifts, and he knows his purpose here is almost complete. There is one little thing, however, and he looks to green eyes set in a broken body, and breathes out life. The god's shattered body reforms, slowly, broken bones reforming whole, blood sinking away from skin and back into vessels which knit themselves together. He does not heal everything, but what he doesn't touch, he gives the god the strength to heal himself, fills that body with the rush of energy it will need.

Then, his work done, he reaches out to the connection of gems, to the great web of power that makes him infinite, and coaxes it apart. The gems are slow to agree—they like it here, this joining, and at least one of them is adamant that he remain here with them—but eventually they are persuaded. One by one, they drop out of the web, offering promises to reform it again as soon as they are called upon—and one by one, they let him shrink down, until, at last, he fits back into a mortal body, and is no more or less than human again.

Tony Stark, suddenly a mortal once more, hiccups in faint surprise, sways on his feet, says, “Holy shit,” and then, gracelessly, passes the fuck out.

…

23.

“Put me back under,” Tony says, never looking away from the tip of Loki's scepter. “Put me back. Don't make me live with this.” Loki stays perfectly still, clearly hesitant, and Tony finally drags his eyes away from the scepter itself, to look up at green eyes. “Loki, please,” Tony says, and he can't make his voice stop shaking, can't make himself stop shaking, “please, if you ever actually genuinely cared about me for even a second, please—”

Loki's voice is perfectly, eerily flat, when the god says, “Then this is your choice?”

And Tony swallows, looks down at the glowing tip of the scepter once more, and says, “Yeah. My choice.”

…

65.

“Tony,” a familiar voice says, pointedly, and Tony drags himself back into consciousness.

He opens his eyes, and manages to make out a pair of familiar green eyes looking down on him, before he realizes he has a splitting headache and closes his eyes again with a moan. “God,” he says, his voice hoarse as anything, “I feel like I just got hit by a truck.”

Loki laughs, above him, and Tony, whose head is apparently resting in the god's lap, is shaken, a bit unpleasantly, by the movement. “The experiences are not incomparable,” Loki says, and there's relief in those words. “Mortal minds and bodies are ill-equipped to deal with infinity.”

“You're telling me,” Tony says, and ignores the pounding in his head to open his eyes again. This time, Loki's face actually resolves into focus—and it is, once again, Loki's face, rather than a bleeding, fucked up mess. There are still dark bruises painted under Loki's skin, and shadows under the god's eyes, but Tony can tell even as he looks at them that they're healing. “You look like shit,” Tony says, mouth trying to approximate a grin, and Loki looks down at Tony and bursts into deep, full-bodied laughter. Great. So Tony probably looks like he got hit by a truck, too—good to know. “Hey, shut up,” Tony says, maybe a little bit petulantly. “I saved your ass three seconds ago, you don't get to laugh at me yet.”

Loki looks down at Tony, and his expression is indulgent and amused, and—though it surprises Tony to see it this openly—fond. “You did well,” Loki acknowledges, and that, from Loki, is practically singing Tony's praises off of rooftops.

And it isn't this easy, it isn't going to be this easy, because Loki is still an asshole, still caustic and cutting even towards the people he's closest to, and downright vicious with anyone who crosses him; he's still a walking minefield of complexes that can explode in the face of even the most well-meaning, and it's still going to take near-constant effort to make any sense out of the convoluted workings of his brain. And Tony, well, Tony still has to deal with the last two years, still needs to process the aftermath of getting his free will back, still has a thousand and one issues that aren't going to go anywhere just because of this one moment. Everything isn't nearly over: they still need to finish off the Chitauri, patch together the worlds they tore apart, there's a war ahead of them yet; and everything is still fucked up, nothing is fixed, nothing from this point on is going to be easy—

But still, in this moment, it's the easiest thing in the world to look up at Loki's battered, familiar face, and say, “Guess I was right after all. I'm on your side.”

The kiss that follows is in no way perfect, both of them bruised and aching and barely intact as they are, but it makes Tony smile to feel Loki's familiar lips press against his, just this soft, warm press that's barely a kiss at all.

He leans up into it, into Loki, and deepens the kiss: his choice, all his.