The Limits Cannot Hold - Like_a_Hurricane (2024)

Chapter Text

Tony woke up first. In fact, he woke up far too early, but that was fine, really. He was used to operating on less than five hours of sleep most of the time.

As he’d hoped, the white-noise field Pepper used to help her stay asleep when she was particularly stressed (basically every day since Killian’s death so far, not that Tony was counting weights to add to his personal guilt-collection or anything) was just enough background-cover to prevent either of the other two people in his bed from being woken by him as he lifted his head enough to figure out why exactly he seemed to be experiencing an odd temperature contrast in the region of his right arm.

The solution was simple enough: One, Pepper was almost feverishly warm where her back was against his chest, but somehow they’d moved closer to Loki during the night and she’d curled up against his side, clinging comfortably, which brought the arm Tony had loosely about her waist to change position a bit, his hand and wrist on Loki’s stomach, which felt not-uncomfortably cold.

The inventor considered that the next time he got particularly bruised after a bit of action in the armor, he could settle in between them and get all the benefits of an ice pack and a heating pad respectively.

Then he recalled that he hadn’t yet replaced any of the suits destroyed after Killian’s death and felt a little sad. Coffee, he decided, was clearly what he needed right now; he considered that it meant leaving Pepper to her own devices with Loki, but recalled that the trickster had exerted a lot of energy last night and possibly in the days before (he’d been rethinking Lyra’s apparent exhaustion and weariness lately, in a new light; hell, he was rethinking Lyra altogether in a new, suspiciously green-tinted light) and that Pepper had suggested something about being more than capable of damaging him if she actually put an effort into it.

Safe enough, considering he’d already somehow wound up with a threesome with the trickster god in question, which his freshly-woken mind was beginning to wonder about the rationality of. It was Pepper-approved, which made it automatically more sensible than it was as an idea of Tony’s alone, but Pepper and Loki... there was something a bit odd, there, that he couldn’t entirely work out.

Coffee, then.

He gingerly disentangled himself and slid out of the bed, quiet as possible, and stepped out of the room.

~~

Twenty minutes after waking, brushing his teeth, and draining two cups of very fine Italian coffee, Tony was almost awake.

“JARVIS, you’ve been keeping some things about Lyra off my radar, haven’t you?”

“At Miss Potts’ request, sir, yes. There have been a few things.”

Briefly, the inventor pondered the consequences of requesting that his AI raise all restrictions and start showing him any and all particularly interesting conversations held in Pepper’s office recently, especially all concerning Dr. Lyra Walker. He set his empty coffee cup aside and rubbed at his eyes. He was only in the living room, anyway, and still in nothing but his boxers, and getting caught watching private conversational footage on the couch in just his boxers would just be embarrassing, even by his own particularly twisted shame-standards.

“Leave them locked, for now,” he sighed, and pulled out a StarkPad from where he’d absently tucked it amongst the couch-cushions yesterday morning. “Bring up Lyra Walker’s interview footage, though, on projection. Both parts.”

“Of course, sir.”

Watching the projector-borne playback on the wall, speeding through a few places, Tony found himself trying not to laugh, because really, Loki was clearly a son of a bitch. “Call yourself Sky-walker and bring up Asatru in the interview, you cheeky motherf*cker.”

He also noted a few other things. Dissertation about Erskeine’s formula nearly got Steve killed, likely petty revenge, got her noticed by AIM, though. Accelerated Extremis development, but what else? Loki at AIM: now that raises some new and terrifying questions. He clicked his tongue, watching signs in Lyra’s expression (which he’d since gotten to know a bit better) when she mentioned Siberia in the interview. Hydra, and the lost project: totally a setup. They’re doing his work for him, whatever they’re doing. How does it relate to Extremis, though? He tapped a command or two on the StarkPad in his lap, rewinding a little.

Lyra Walker’s voice, quiet enough not to wake even paranoid tricksters just in the next room: “The mechanisms which cause the heat-effects of Extremis are far older than they may seem. Older than any known records of persons with active mutations such as the X-men: much, much older. That said, there are a number of humans with traces of those older things in their genes, particularly some with heritage from certain regions of Scandinavia, and to a slightly lesser extent, the rest of Northern Europe, along with Siberia and Mongolia...” Idly, Tony remembered something Pepper had mentioned Killian saying, about a part of the human brain that he thought meant that it was made to be upgraded. Killian’s name suggested his heritage was probably Irish but the Irish’d had plenty of run-ins with vikings––lots of monasteries and nunneries all raided back in the day, and even before that: trade and raids and other cultural exchanges. Tony wondered, briefly, about red hair, and Pepper Potts, and fire. Then Lyra’s voice again interrupted his thoughts: “My mother’s interpretation was a bit more religious than I was at all comfortable with, for the record.”

He stopped the playback and stared. “You. Complete. Bastard.” He ran a hand through his hair and started to grin despite himself. “Brilliant, magnificent bastard.” With a few gestures, the playback fell away, replaced simply by Google.

Tony typed in: Norse mythology fire

Second result down: Norse mythology fire giants

“Frost-giant, you say? Well, how conveniently opposing,” the inventor muttered, adding giants to the search-string. “Surtur seems popular, let’s see: In Norse mythology, Surtr (Old Norse "black" or "the swarthy one") is a jötunn. .... thought of as being a mighty giant who ruled the powers of (volcanic) fire of the ...” Tony’s finger hovered over the link. “I’m already not liking the sound of this.” He hummed. “In any case, it’s Wikipedia. Not exactly trustworthy, given that last I checked, the myths seemed to suggest Loki was Odin’s adopted brother instead of Thor’s, in a less identity-crisis-inspiring way.” He clicked it anyway. A moment later, he gave a slightly exasperated sigh. “It’s all about the apocalypse with these people.” He was fairly sure Loki wasn’t trying to bring about Ragnarök here, not so soon anyway, and his godly vengeful ire had changed focus at some point from Asgard and possibly earth a bit, to someone far more distant, and the remains of the Chitauri along with them. So maybe there was something old and dangerous under Siberia. Maybe it was a fire-giant, and maybe it was just something related to one. No telling, really.

Tony had no doubt, though, that whatever it was, it was big and nasty and horrifying and probably capable of wreaking untold destruction.

Cooling. Loki knew exactly how to cool down the heat-reaction of Extremis, the inventor mused. Cool and contain and...

Something clicked. Tony tilted his head back a bit, closing his web browser. He leaned back heavily into the couch, thinking. Thinking about clashing fire and ice, and what Loki could possibly want with a half-sedated fire-giant.

It didn’t sound very good. None of it did. Disaster, surely, would follow, but Lyra hadn’t involved Stark Industries in it yet. Not visibly. And why?

His fingers drifted across the arc-reactor and he turned his attention to it thoughtfully, only a little distracted: his other three trains of thought still running in the background. After a moment of staring, he gripped the edges and turned it until it clicked and came up, slightly loose, in his fingers. He removed it gingerly and examined it for a moment, braced for the faint, customary little tearing pains that usually came with it: the suspended shrapnel suddenly recalling the existence of gravity and other forces and moving slightly, just slightly: enough to ache and make it hard to breathe for a moment. This time, the moment didn’t come. He kept breathing, slow and easy, undisturbed by inconvenient jagged little shards of metal.

Now he just had a big, metal-sealed hole in his chest to put a battery in.

Not very glamorous, that.

Gently replacing the arc reactor, Tony recalled the exhaustion on Lyra’s face a few nights ago, before she’d taken that brief little dose of time off. She’d looked ragged, then, drained almost like she’d suffered actual blood loss. Two places at once. No spell-casting upkeep, so how do you maintain it? Tony mused. Dreams, maybe. But you came back from that vacation looking so much better, so much more whole.

“I think you went home,” Tony murmured. “I think you needed more than dreams.”

“Sir, a Dr. Reed Richards is calling you about the Avengers.”

The inventor’s eyebrows raised. He’d known Richards, before the superhero business. He’d been Tony’s idol, for a while, when he was in his late teens (IE: after his father’s death) and Richards had been in his early twenties already coming up with the most astonishing theories about phenomena in space. Then the Fantastic Four happened, and Tony had been concerned, but distracted by... fairly meaningless things, in retrospect: a war or two, and all the weapons to keep them going for years. Since Afghanistan, he hadn’t thought of the other scientist much, but since the invasion over New York City... well, it had occurred to him that if the Fantastic Four had been a little more in the loop, they might’ve been in the right corner of the globe to help do something. He raised his tablet and tapped a few commands, answering the call.

Richards’ face, older than he recalled from their last meeting, but still younger than he quite should for a man with almost a full decade on Tony Stark, who had been doing even more insane things over the past few years––Must be from the radiation––appeared on the screen. “Hey, Reed. Long time no see.”

“How you enabled video features when I’d disabled them, I’m disconcerted by,” Reed offered, shaking his head a little. “It’s been a long time, Stark.”

“Call me Tony, man, you’ve known me since I was at MIT. And you’ve survived knowing me that long, too, so clearly you’ve earned the right”

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything I never want to know the details of,” Reed sighed, glancing below Tony’s face pointedly.

Right. No shirt. The younger man grinned shamelessly. “Nah, I woke up before them. You’re presuming a lot, though, calling in before it’s even ten.”

“I’d been informed that some of your more... questionable recreational activities have become a little less frequent. I suspect I may be wrong.”

“Oh, still questionable, just in different ways,” Tony assured. “JARVIS said you were calling about the Avengers, though? Cut to the chase, before anyone else wakes up and I have to explain who I’m video-conferencing with while so scantily clad.” He fluttered his eyelashes for good measure.

Reed, predictably, made a face. It was a great face: exasperation, mild disapproval, a bit of worry, and above all a determination to move on and try to pretend that whatever had caused him to make the face had not just happened. “I got a rather strange pair of visitors in my lab recently. It took me a few days, because S.H.I.E.LD. security protocols have gotten so much more aggressive than when I last sought any information from them...” He raised an eyebrow pointedly.

Tony coughed. “Well. We keep them on their toes.”

“But,” the older man continued, “I did find a few disconcerting things.”

“And they reminded you of your visitors?”

“One of them. The second was harmless: Spider-man, who clearly stepped in at perhaps the wrong time, but he seemed unhurt for it, so perhaps he got lucky. The other didn’t give his name, but he was the one providing transport.” He offered a half-amused, half-exasperated smile. “And cargo.”

“Cargo?”

“Just over a dozen automatons courtesy of Victor von Doom, the usual,” Reed said, shrugging. “Except they hadn’t been after us. We didn’t know anything about them.”

“But he brought you an ambush?”

“Freshly defeated, and fully incapacitated, albeit with a time limit.”

Tony blinked a bit. “Temporarily incapacitated?”

“With ice.”

The inventor tried not to show a sudden flash of interest. He really did.

“Sound familiar?” Reed asked, his smile turning just a bit knowing.

Apparently, those attempts had failed. “A bit, yeah. Spidey say anything about the visitor? Maybe not a name but a title?”

“He would be the sort to have a title. I gathered that by his sudden entrance, lounging back on his defeated enemies like their bodies were an icy throne. Reminded me a bit of you, actually, but that was more his exit than anything else.” Reed leaned forward a bit, rubbing his chin. “Spider-man mentioned something that struck a chord here, with things I’d read about some unusual astrophysics from a promising young scientist in New Mexico, which halted abruptly for a while after a bit of S.H.I.E.L.D. interference, along with all correspondence from Dr. Foster. I followed up on it, until I heard from her again, some days later. She never quite explained what had occurred.”

Tony started to grin.

Reed smiled back, with less smugness, but only a bit. “He apparently called himself an old god. Spider-man also mentioned that he might, if overheard correctly, have offered Doom a deal.”

The inventor frowned thoughtfully. “Did Doom accept?”

“I doubt I would have had as much ice-damaged armor to clean up afterwards if he had,” Reed answered. “Spider-man also confirmed that their exchange didn’t exactly take the usual shape of a successful diplomatic agreement being reached.” He raised an eyebrow again. “What can you tell me about him, Tony?”

“I only know a few gods, Reed, and none of them were actually icy, though I did hear later that one of them was supposedly a frost-giant, but he looked pretty human and didn’t use any ice where we could see it,” the younger man explained. “How’d this guy look?”

Reed made a thoughtful noise. “Not exactly human. Blue skin with slightly paler markings––I couldn’t discern whether they were scars of some sort, or more natural––and red eyes. The red encompassed both irises and sclera. That aside, his features were human enough in shape, like the rest of him. He was seated, but it was clear he was tall, slightly lanky, with long black hair.”

Tony kept his composure much better this time, being more prepared for it. He shrugged and quirked his mouth a bit to one side thoughtfully. “Both the gods I got to meet were pretty pale. One was a shape-shifter, but hey-”

“Was he also the frost giant?”

“Well, yeah, but he’s in prison, in Asgard.”

“You’re certain?”

“If he’d gotten out, we’d have heard from Thor by now,” Tony assured. “They won’t keep anything less than a really sharp eye on him, these days, given he’s nearly destroyed two planets just within the past few years, with earth being one of them.”

“Fair enough,” Reed sighed. “I suppose I might have to check alternate pantheons or something.”

“You know Doc Strange?” Tony asked lightly.

“I have heard of him, vaguely.” He sounded disapproving.

“Arthur C. Clarke, Reed. Magic is science we don’t get quite yet, and that is what dealing with gods makes you have to learn quick. I can introduce you to him over lunch sometime this week. He mentioned he was having trouble with some terrestrial elder-gods, whatever that means.”

“Spider-man did mention that the monstrous beings we got reports of throughout last week converged around the god as their target,” Reed mused. “They were... I’ve seen nothing like them, nor anything quite like the remains of one collar I retrieved from one of the Doom-bots.”

Tony snorted. “Doom-bots?” he repeated, amused.

“His name is ‘Doom’, Tony, get over the nomenclature, please.”

“I won’t,” the younger man sighed. “I got one of those collars, actually. Ran into one of those things on my way to lunch with some friends.”

“Which friends?” Reed asked, eyes sharp and bright.

“Well, Doc Strange, for one. I think one of the constructs got distracted by him. They belong to someone called ‘Nightmare’-”

“And you laugh at Doom-bots when-”

“-who is an old enemy Strange has gone up against a couple of dozen times.”

“No one else?”

“Pepper. Me. Pepper’s friend.”

Reed fixed him with a frightfully paternal disapproving stare. “Tony.”

“Look, I was suspicious of the friend too, at first, but she isn’t at all magical. I had Strange there to confirm that, and I think of all people you and I actually know of, he’s pretty much the most qualified at detecting things like magic or... godliness, I guess.”

“Do you trust him? Or this woman?”

“That woman saved my life last night, Reed. And Pepper’s. There was an assassination attempt on me, at the gallery opening we were at, and her quick thinking saved a lot of people. She risked herself, and kept Pepper from losing control of her own recently-acquired questionable powers, even. I’d say we’re fine, where she’s concerned.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lyra. Happy now?”

Reed sighed. “Tony, if it was midday when you were attacked by that nightmare-thing, that suggests it was the first attack that day. The others didn’t start until sunset.”

“Strange is an occult-entity magnet, Reed. Come on, if you’ve read anything about him, I’m betting the info was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s, and you know they send him out when they want something dangerous led away from innocent people. He attracts them, because of his ludicrous title and ostentatious jewelry or whatever.”

“You’d be the expert on ostentatiousness.”

Choosing to ignore that pot-shot, Tony asked, “Where did the other attacks happen that night, anyway?”

“Spider-man stated the finale, as it were, occurred in Central Park, not long after dark. Reports we got before that were all from within a half-mile of the park.”

“I found Lyra leaving dinner with an old friend, on the opposite side of town, right about that time, Reed,” Tony said. Only a half-lie. “No monsters nearby, nothing like that. She was a bit ill, but it didn’t exactly look mystical.”

The older inventor raised both hands, palms-forward. “I’m sorry.”

“You of all people, Reed. Don’t fit some of the facts to suit theories instead of a few theories to suit all of the facts.”

Reed had the decency to wince and look sheepish. “You’re quite right.”

“Still want to meet Strange and brainstorm about the Central Park showdown?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“I’ll call him, see about arranging something. What days have you got free? JARVIS? Calendar projection. Oh, before I forget, you mentioned something about your blue icy god’s exit?”

“He delivered a small defeated battalion along with Spider-man, who made a few excuses for them both quite reflexively, including a claim that Doom had been the attacker and our mysterious blue stranger merely defending himself, then declared the other monsters had been sent away and Spider-man would do any further explaining, then just smiled and vanished. He waved at me as he did, and I though of you.”

Tony couldn’t repress a fit of snigg*ring at that. “That’s hilarious.”

“Mark tomorrow on your calendar, please.”

“Sure, sure,” the younger inventor sighed.

~~

Five minutes later, Tony called up Steven Strange.

“Yes, Tony?”

“You lied to me,” he said flatly.

A long pause. “About?”

“Lyra. You worked something out.”

“Only a little. She seemed...” The sorcerer considered his words carefully. “I would never say that woman seemed ‘harmless’ or entirely ‘well-intentioned’ either, but she was no harm to you, that I could detect.”

“The nightmare-thing that was after you––she said something before the crash, but I couldn’t make it out,” Tony offered.

“She requested that I shield you both, and myself. As she dropped her attention-diverting wards,” Strange sighed.

The inventor made a thoughtful noise. “Huh. Then she shouted something, but it was really muffled, sounded wrong.”

“I was getting rid of the silencing wards I had raised in order to converse with her frankly without alarming either of you.”

“She got you good. You didn’t get her out of that car, did you?”

“No. She did it herself. How––how did she reveal herself to you?”

“Saving my life, is all,” Tony admitted.

“Then you’re welcome.”

The inventor snorted. “For?”

“If I had informed you then that I suspected her to be a powerful mage, not human, hiding from gods only know what, would you have trusted her enough that she could have been there to save you?”

Tony considered for a long moment. Perhaps too long.

“I was giving her a chance. You did not see how she looked when she thought you both in danger.”

Ignoring that. You don’t get to put those ideas in my head, not now especially, Tony thought, but conceded, “Okay! Okay. Fine. f*ck you, though, seriously. This does not a trusting relationship of sharing information make.”

“Neither does this pretense at the start of our conversation. If you were actually angry with me, my desk would doubtlessly be in splinters and I’d be badly burned, at the least while you-”

“Very true. Look, I need you to maybe lie about Lyra a little bit just one more time, but I also want you to meet an old, old friend of mine, who might know a little more about Nightmare having loaned out his bloodhounds to Doom.”

“Doom made that collar?”

“Yep.”

“And there was more than one of those things?”

“Yeah, they got torn apart in Central Park later that night, mysteriously. Lyra, incidentally, was on the other side of town with one of the most gorgeous blonde women I have ever seen on her arm.”

“Is that relevant?”

“Reed Richards thought so. Well, abut Lyra, not the blonde, but seriously: goddamn. Anyway, I told Reed that it was more likely the scout-hound that came into town looking for someone else stumbled across you, and its master noticed and decided to send it after you while you were unawares and a little vulnerable, because let’s face it: Nightmare hates you a lot.”

“That would make sense, I suppose,” Strange mused. “But you doubt?”

“I’m uncomfortable with how he fixated on Lyra. I think it’s because the one they were after, in Central Park, sort of called himself a god.”

“A god?” Strange sounded unimpressed.

“A little old god who took apart Doom’s robotic drones by selective application of ice to their internal components, forcing all the important little pieces apart,” Tony offered, with a little dramatic flair. “He apparently tried to offer Doom a deal, even.”

“Like a devil. Great,” Strange sighed. “I’ll need a look at the battle-ground.”

“Free for lunch sometime this week?”

“I don’t know, Tony. Last time I accepted that offer, I got verbally abused by a mage in hiding I still can’t figure out, and was involved in a violent car accident, then attacked by a wandering corporeal nightmare-beast.”

“The last bit, the beast and by extension the car accident it caused? Totally your fault, man. You’re lucky I’m inviting you again, after that kind of thing. So rude, bringing your personal vendettas crashing into my beautiful, beautiful Bentley.”

Strange laughed, a bit reluctantly. “Tomorrow.”

“Good, that’s what Reed said. We can meet at the park. If he asks, Lyra is non-magical, because the last thing I need is her getting paranoid about Reed researching her a bit too intently. Even I can barely keep up with her regular levels of daily paranoia, and this is me we’re talking about; so, while I need her...” he prompted.

“Mum’s the word?”

“Thank you, Doc. Oh, and one more thing? Just a niggling question I’ve been thinking about where magical theory is concerned.”

An exasperated sigh. “Yes?”

“How do you make a copy of yourself that isn’t a purely magical construct? Say we’re dealing with an otherworldly shapeshifter denser than a human.”

Strange snorted. “What is this about?”

“Something from Siberia, a bit? Maybe? It’s weird. Just answer the question.”

The sorcerer hummed, thoughtful. “A shape-shifter might manage it, particularly if they had enough spare density, as you mention, to make two versions of themselves of the same relative volume, but half the mass. They would have to be incredibly talented to do it, however, and study more anatomy and biology than most. Supporting both halves, keeping them in the shape of two separate and identical bodies, would take power, though.”

“At first, or sort of perpetually?”

“Presuming both halves had something approximating identical minds that were independent, the results could be disastrous. Something like memory-regulation would have to be involved for that, but to support that, both halves would also need the mage’s magic,” Strange mused. “A lot of it, for the half that didn’t get the soul.”

“Souls don’t split?”

A sound of something fragile-sounding cracking from the sorcerer’s end of the line, followed by a low swear and the sound of glass being swept up. “They––can.”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“It’s not something people usually want to discuss, who have ever seen a soul properly,” Strange said. “Anymore so than any surgeon would be comfortable discussing vivisection techniques.”

“Say this mage had a lot of self-resentment going on, possibly an identity crisis a little, something rattling their brains,” Tony postulated.

“That would only increase the risk further, Tony. Identity is at the core of control of one’s magic, if it’s a natural gift, which for a shape-shifter and mage it would necessarily be: wild magic, shape-changing magic limited only by careful control of body and mind alike. Body and mind, in turn, are controlled by will, expectation, and self-aware knowledge. An ‘identity crisis’ would thin that control.”

The inventor ran a hand over his mouth. “But they’d be much more comfortable with causing themselves an utterly ridiculous amount of pain. I’d know; I’ve got a hole in my chest to prove it. People take themselves apart in all sorts of questionable ways when they’re desperate enough, and hate themselves enough. It’s morbidly cathartic, for some of us. Not healthy, never that, but cathartic.”

“Tony, look-”

“Humor me. Could a soul separated in two support itself for long?”

Strange sighed, pacing audibly. “Given two bodies, with copies of the same mind, and a lot of highly volatile magic––” He took a breath sharply. “Overflow. Loss of control over power in the blood and all of the other tissues, there would be an excess that could support a slight warping of reality. Mages too powerful, when they lose control, let slip their hold on their powers and bring about impossible things, usually not very great, but with just enough focus, or––or, well, knowing a mage it would be stubborn pride––the parts of soul could be connected on a level other than magic.”

“Dreams, maybe?” Tony suggested. Where they can’t detect you. Even Thor said so; you’re good at wandering there, and it’s something different enough from the rest of your magic they can’t take it from you.

“Perhaps, but it would put a heavy strain on local regions of the astral plane,” Strange said slowly, “absorbing energy, perhaps entire structures of the landscape of shared dreaming if it had to support the bond over any great distance.”

The inventor hummed. “When did you start hearing from psychics in Siberia about the world going up in flames?”

Strange told him.

Tony made a thoughtful noise. Not long after Thor’s hammer landed in New Mexico. Right about when half of Loki fell off the bi-frost and suddenly had to cope with one hell of a distance. Wiped out a big section of dreaming or astral plane for miles around, replacing the usual dreams with fire, because that’s all you could feel and think about, wasn’t it? Thinking you that if you couldn’t get it together, you wouldn’t be able to slow or stop whatever is burning under the earth out there from going after people who weren’t the target for whatever petty vengeance this started out as. Then half of you landed somewhere where they hurt you again, made you feel anger and life again because of how much you came to hate them. Tony rubbed a hand over his face and tried to shake free of such thoughts. They hurt, just to think about. On the other hand: f*ck yes, I’m brilliant!

“Tony? Are you all right?”

“I think I know what pissed off Nightmare lately, and why he’s so nervous.”

“You don’t think––Tony, no one is insane enough to attempt the feat you just described. Few beings in existence even have the power and skill necessary.”

“Exactly, and that’s why it’s f*cking brilliant,” the inventor whispered.

“Self-induced vivisection of one’s own soul is the opposite of brilliant!”

“Yeah, but there’s a brilliance in realizing that it’s so crazy no one would think of it,” Tony shot back.

“Except, apparently, you: not even a novice at magic, because you can still hardly believe that it even exists!”

“Color me a believer, Doctor Strangelove.” Tony tapped at his arc reactor thoughtfully. “I think I might be really starting to get it.”

“Who, then, Stark? Who would possibly do something like this? Your Lyra?”

“She’s not mine, oh, not even close,” Tony scoffed in airy tones. “No, no no. I’m thinking of gods.”

“Gods?”

“Well, a god. A trickster god with some self-loathing issues. Family problems, you could say. Imagine you live a couple thousand years believing you were one thing, and then find out you’re adopted from another race of people you grew up thinking of as the greatest threat to your home and all you held dear, for years and years, when you were small. Even after a millennium of peace, they’d still be what you imagine when someone says “monster” because they were your boogeymen growing up. And then you find out that you are one. Imagine that for a second, Strange, as Sorcerer Supreme, and tell me about identity crises again.”

“My god,” the magician breathed. “That’s... that’s insane.”

“Tell me it’s impossible. Can you?”

A sharp intake of breath, then a slow exhale. “No, I cannot.”

“I thought as much.”

“Should I attempt to reach Asgard?”

Tony considered. “No. Last time you tried, you wound up in a coma for two weeks, and if there’s possibly a rogue Asgardian mage around, we’re probably better off with you conscious and otherwise functional. Well, as functional as you ever are.”

“They would hardly believe me. Even if I reached them, I don’t think they would believe me.”

“Because you’re a mortal and trust them up in Asgard, they’ve been at this for way longer than you, right?” the inventor crooned. “Enjoying that feeling of justified irritation at your brilliance being put down?”

“I refuse to apologize because I still hardly believe it myself.”

“Even knowing there’s been a frost-giant spotted in Central Park trying to fend off a horde of collared nightmare-beasties? While he’s supposed to still be in prison?”

“You’re joking.”

“He delivered the evidence to Reed Richards, likely because he didn’t have enough energy left to melt them all down, and there’s not a much easier way to conclusively stop one of those things. They self-repair in ways that are just unfair.”

“Or magic-induced.”

“Unfair, like I said.”

Strange gave an amused huff. “You are ridiculous.”

“I’m a genius; I’m allowed.”

“Tony, how did you work out what Loki might have done?”

“He got co*cky,” Tony said, light and casual as could be. “Suggested the idea off-handedly, doing a bit of dream-walking. I was paranoid about a lot of things after the invasion and all, so Thor mentioning his little brother’s irrepressible ability to saunter uninvited into the dreams of the unwary got me working on some lucid-dreaming techniques. I was expert in about two weeks; it would’ve taken less time, but I wasn’t actually sleeping much. So, long story short, I knew how to figure out I wasn’t dealing with something from in my own head, when he showed up.”

“Why would he reveal himself to you?”

“I dunno, Doc. Maybe he missed me.”

“The poor soul,” Strange countered dryly.

“He seemed to be testing the waters, seeing if there might be room for deal-making with me. He didn’t exactly say what sort of deal.”

“If half of the stories one hears about him in the right circles are only half-true, it would be enough for me to be wary of him, even without taking into account what he did to New York.”

“Yeah, he’s not a safe bet.” Neither am I, unless Pepper’s doing the betting. Lucky for him, she is. “We can work on the rest later, I’ve got to wake Pepper before any alarms go off for the meetings we plan to miss.”

“She won’t protest that? She’s usually the only one who can keep you on any sort of schedule.”

“We have a one very solid ground-rule, and that’s about public attempts made to kill us: we get at least twenty-four hours to ourselves after one. Pepper makes a few calls if needed to make sure we’re clear on it, but other than that: no press, no Stark Industries if it can be helped, and no Iron Man if there’s not an immediate threat, but that usually only applies when it’s clear that more people are still out there trying to kill us. Natasha did clean-up and knew all about these guys, though, so I think we’re safe, there, for once.”

“Pepper agreed to this?”

“It applies more often than you might think when it comes to tactics for her to put off attempts I might make toward potentially unwise and hasty press conferences.”

“Oh, I see. That’s quite brilliant, actually.”

“Yes, and she’s taken. Bye, Stevie, play safe with your pentagrams.”

“Same to you with your––iPhone, is it?”

“... f*ck you, Strange.”

The sorcerer laughed at him and hung up sharply.

~~

Waking from dreams was usually a fairly jarring experience for Loki on most given days, since the split. He’d gotten used to the dissonance of dreams breaking apart, and suddenly not being certain whether he’d wake up in a prison cell, or freely wandering about the earth. It didn’t matter in the long-term which it was, of course, as he would remember the same thing from the other perspective the next day, but there was almost always that momentary doubt, that uneasy moment––I don’t know where I am––that made it that much harder to actually open his eyes.

This problem, it turned out, did have a temporary sort of solution.

Really, he should’ve realized before, not that it would’ve mattered.

He’d slept very heavily, after all of the energy exertion and other volatile events of the previous day, followed by some quite excellent sex. If not for the faint white-noise field JARVIS filled the room with (as he recalled, it apparently helped Pepper sleep) he would have still been alert enough to hear someone else in the bed waking up. Instead, he remained lost to slumber until the white-noise dropped and, a few moments later, Pepper’s voice, slightly louder, but still not-jarring, said, “You know your temperature drops in your sleep?”

Before he even opened his eyes, as the dreams were still fading, Loki knew precisely where he was. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that. One eye falling open, he intended to glance at her, but found some orange-and-black light-weight obstruction in the way, and had to open his other eye and lift his head slightly to see over it. At some point, Pepper had curled up against his side, using his shoulder as a pillow so she was pressed in close and cuddly against the length of him, and radiating a bit of excess heat. Her hair was tangled a bit with some of his on the pillow. He brushed some of it out of his face to see a little clearer.

“Loki?”

“I am not entirely surprised.”

“Some dream?”

“Memory exchange. Keeps the other half of myself from turning into someone other than me, by keeping us both up to speed, as it were,” Loki murmured.

She sat up, then, the arm not about his waist settling on the pillow beside his head with elbow bent, so she could rest her chin in her hand. “So that’s how you’re here, and also in Asgard all safely locked away, not raising any alarms.”

“Yes.”

“Half of you. So, not just a copy.”

“A copy would be less stable, and more likely to trip any wards designed to detect magical subterfuge.”

“But they didn’t expect you to... split.”

“It was not a... sane sort of decision, but having survived it has worked out for me so far,” Loki murmured.

“Well, lack of sanity, I’m familiar with, and reckless examples of questionable decision-making.” She trailed a finger along one of his cheekbones. “When?”

“Not long after visiting my brother here on earth, and failing to lift Mjolnir, when I did try,” he offered. “I felt––unworthy. And I didn’t like it.”

“So you wanted to get back at them?”

“I wanted to see something beautiful burn: that which would break my family’s heart as they had broken mine, and more than my heart.” He shifted his head back further into the pillow, watching her as she watched his face. “It’s very strange, conversing with you.”

“How so?”

“I can let slip more truths than with most. Something about you.” He shook his head a little, rubbing at his eyes. “I had expected to find Tony Stark distracting. He already was: too brilliant and too broken for me to leave entirely alone. You, however, are every warning I ever ignored or scoffed at where mortals are concerned, and I feel quite as though every teacher who insisted upon the validity of those threats is now laughing at me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“I didn’t believe them. It’s difficult, after a certain point, to believe that good exists in this universe. Even my brother, earnest and sincere and well-intentioned, brings havoc with him wherever he goes,” Loki mused. “He is a good and merciful weapon, more so than he is a truly good man. Most heroes are, and as such most heroes have familiar shades of dark in them, regrets usually, or guilt, or need for something like redemption, I suppose. You have so little of that––some, enough to make you clever and realistic, and let you understand the dark without possessing as much of it as someone like myself, but not so much that you hide from happiness, or love, or that you fear complete honesty. No, honesty is something you wield like a blade, instead, and with great precision. I can tell that you have been low before, and seen others around you lower, but there is still so much life in you, and little fear of monsters or the dark.”

“Something tells me you could sweet-talk your way almost anywhere, if you really put an effort into it,” Pepper mused. “Not usually so honestly, though. You don’t expect me to believe you, though, which helps.”

Loki smiled faintly. “It does. I can always reveal truths that are unbelievable.”

“Like when you were Lyra, because you were doing that the whole time: dropping hints of impossible things.” She sat up a bit further, looking down at him, taking in the lines of his chest in the faint streams of daylight where the blinds, according to their timer, had let in a few narrow shafts of it: not enough to overwhelm the room, but enough to cast most of it in a grey-gold glow, calm and quiet. Then she met his gaze again and moved, straddling his waist comfortably, able to feel his narrow hips under her. “Sometime, you’ll have to tell me what happened to you. What really happened.”

The trickster’s expression now was one of surprise, curiosity, and something more wary. She was watching him, calm and calculating, though her smile remained warm and her eyes bright. Warm though it was, her smile possessed an edge of mischief. “Will I?” Loki asked.

“You want to, I think. You’re curious. And you still have just enough distance that you think you could run away if you wanted,” Pepper explained, low and soft. Her hands, settled on his chest, moved out and then up. She pushed extra pillows aside, then ran those fever-warm and clever fingers of hers up his arms, guiding them gently, until she pinned his wrists against the mattress, out on either side of his head. Leaning her weight on them slightly, she tilted her head. “You could.”

Loki swallowed tightly, his eyes very dark. “What are you doing?”

“I’m holding you down where I can see you,” she said lightly, and smirked just a bit when he shifted in her grasp a little. “You don’t like the idea?”

The trickster cleared his throat quietly and shot a pointed glance down their bare bodies, lingering particularly on her hips before he met her eyes again. “Don’t I?”

Pepper turned her head enough to spare a glance over her shoulder, where there was clear evidence to the contrary tenting the sheets now low-slung across him just below those hip-bones. She turned back and smiled winningly at him. “So you’re not in the mood for telling tales, then?”

“I can maintain my words through all sorts of things,” Loki purred. “It would depend upon the tale.”

She nodded, thoughtful. “You have sex-magic to get rid of morning-breath?”

The trickster’s fingers moved a bit, with a dull flicker of green.

Pepper ran her tongue across her teeth and nodded approval. “Thanks, that was starting to get distracting.”

“I’m enjoying being distracted, presently.”

“You’re not, really. Not distracted.” She leaned in a little closer. “You’re waiting to see what I’ll do next, is all.”

“I could always get free.”

Pepper smiled benignly, tightening her hold. “And I could decide not to let you.”

Loki raised an eyebrow and started to move to sit up, only to hiss in acute discomfort as her hands began to heat. “Why are you-”

“Cool down, Loki,” she interrupted, commanding.

The trickster held her stare for a long moment, savoring the burn. “Your strength-”

“Enough to hold down half of you, I think.”

Loki let himself cool, reached out with the cold and sent it creeping over the skin of her hands. His eyes reddened slightly, but not very much.

Pepper increased the heat. “You like the pain, a bit, don’t you?”

“From you? Perhaps.”

She smiled a little. “More than that. You relish it because deep down you think you don’t deserve to exist without suffering.”

Loki’s expression closed off suddenly, turning very stony.

“That won’t hide you from me,” Pepper whispered. “And you know it.” Again, she increased the heat, though her brow furrowed a little with concern as she watched him closely.

Breathing a little more raggedly, Loki gave in and turned cold, so he could reach out and dampen the heat where it touched him. The result was a sound like steam releasing, or metal creaking with sudden temperature-change.

Pepper dropped the heat, still looking at him. “You spent a long time learning to combat heat like this... Siberia. AIM. And me, a bit. You were able to get in some more refined, precision practice, with me.”

Loki smirked a little, just faintly. “Know thy enemy. Extremis is a distant descendant of something very old.”

“I remember that, yeah. I’ve wondered about it.” She leaned in and caught his mouth, briefly, just to taste, smiling when he inhaled sharply at her touch.

Heat. So much heat, Loki thought, only a little dazed. Pepper’s clever mouth, all softness and spiced apricots, now with a hint of something like over-heated metal. He relaxed into it, the contrast with his own cold intensely satisfying. He blinked a bit when she pulled back, pinning him more firmly again.

“You thaw,” she murmured. “That’s... new.”

It took the trickster a long moment to fully realized that he wasn’t cold to the touch any longer, and his skin was once more very pale. “I... did not expect that.”

“Tony mentioned a few things you’d told him. And I read your files.” She smirked a little. “You haven’t done a lot of things yet in that color-scheme, have you?”

“Only some practice. It prevents me draining my magic reserves on this world, which is itself not kind to non-native practitioners,” Loki concurred.

“Do you have any forms you take that aren’t unfairly beautiful, though?”

The trickster stared for a moment or two before what she was saying quite clicked. He tried to come up with a response, to laugh it off, but she looked so sincerely curious, like she assumed he already knew, and possibly was doing it on purpose: being... beautiful, apparently. Not only as himself, or Lyra, but in Jotunn war-colors.

“Oh,” she said softly. “You don’t like it?”

“Jotunns are creatures that Asgard tells its children scary stories about, as they grow up, to keep them in their beds after dark,” Loki said softly. “They are monsters. They are the enemies I was taught to be prepared against, all my life.”

“Are they all pretty, too?”

Loki snorted, his fingers twitching a little with the desire to rub at his eyes and half-cover his mildly exasperated expression. “Hardly.”

“I mean, keeping in mind you’re gorgeous and all.”

“I do not find them so. Not even my own reflection, in that form.” He sighed. “Though I have seldom seen any of the others outside of their war-colors, either, I will admit. Their planet only grew colder after the war ended, and there are few places left warm enough for them to causally wear it. There are others in the rest of the nine worlds, who left Jotunnheim before the war and lived peacefully, keeping to themselves, but they are rare. I have not met them, myself, to my knowledge. Only a few other Jotunns without the ice in their veins.”

“Not all of them are icy, then?”

“Not all. Most of those still living are, simply because the icy Jotunn of Nifelheim were the conquerors. That was what began the war.”

Pepper nodded slowly. “So why are there traces of more fiery ones around here on earth for you to find?”

Loki’s eyes widened, just for a moment. “Good guess,” he conceded.

“Why are you studying them? Why are they your enemy?”
“They aren’t,” Loki assured. “Nor are you, I may hope.”

“This isn’t how I treat my enemies,” Pepper shot back, smiling a little sharply. “So who is your enemy then?”

“I’m after revenge, as you know.”

She nodded.

“There are other power sources other than the tesseract.”

Pepper’s brow furrowed. “What for?”

“Containment and delivery, if I could only learn how all this ice works,” Loki whispered. “And now I have.”

“Delivery of what?”

Loki only smiled.

She frowned at him. “Loki...”

The door slid open, then.

“Have I missed much?” Tony asked lightly, taking in the tableau they made.

Loki shot him a glance. “I could ask the same. You left some while ago. Whatever have you been up to?”

The inventor shrugged. “Oh, y’know, not much. Who is Surtur?”

The trickster’s head fell back, his eyes very wide and alarmed for a moment as he stared at Tony, who closed the door behind him and strode closer to the bed. Loki recovered from the initial shock with a brief head-shake and shot questioning looks between Pepper and her mad inventor both. “Perhaps I should run,” he muttered, quiet enough only Pepper was close enough to make it out.

“Tony,” she said, in curt and professional tones that never failed to send the inventor’s mind careening into the gutter, these days. “I think he’s ready for you.” She shot him a pointed look from under her lashes. “You made him a promise, right?”

Tony stood very still. He’d almost forgotten about that. I really must’ve been shagged-out to promise the god of lies a blow-job in the morning if he’d stay the night. Then he stopped and thought about the bedroom-related events of the previous night, and how incredible it had really been. He gave a thoughtful, appreciative hum of agreement. “Yeah. I did, a bit.” He offered a shark-like grin in Loki’s direction. “Got him warmed up?”

Pepper giggled a little. “Yeah, something like that.” Loki was staring at her now with a mixture of bemusem*nt and grudging admiration, even as she turned and met his wide-eyed stare with her own wicked look. “When you’re done, we can run a bit of an endurance test.”

The inventor had to think about that for a moment, before he realized that there was still a bottle of lube at the foot of the bed, and recalled that Pepper’s ideas were often the best ideas. “I love the way you think, sweetie.”

She shot him a coy look as he pulled the sheets out of his way and settled in behind her, and between Loki’s legs.

“You just plan to hold him down?” Tony asked.

“Oh, a little more than that,” she mused.

The inventor grinned a bit as she fixed her attention back to the trickster’s face, and then looked at what he’d gotten himself into and refused to be daunted. He’d been f*cked in the ass for the first time last night, and had come hard enough to see stars; so really, sucking a co*ck for the first time was actually the lower hurdle to leap. Tony curled his hand around the base and settled in low enough to lick across the head for a taste (warm, not-unpleasantly bitter with a distinctly sexual tang, musk and spice) slow and firm, gratified a little when Loki’s hips twitched in response.

Besides, Tony reflected, it wasn’t as though he didn’t know anything about this particular act. He knew it very, very well––albeit from the receiving end; although, that mean that he knew how rough he could probably get away with, and had a fair idea of how to be a maddening tease.

Pepper enjoyed the sight of a very faint pink flush rising along Loki’s cheekbones as his breathing got a little more ragged. “He’s good with his mouth, in my experience,” she said lightly, closer to his face now: enough he could feel the air stir with their intermingling breaths.

“Now I’m––fairly distracted by him, I might be inclined to agree with you,” the trickster managed to say in response, only a little unevenly.

“He’s a quick learner, too. How long until he works out how to get past his gag reflex, you think?” she wondered aloud, after watching him for another minute or two. “It’s just relaxing the relevant muscles, really.”

A thoughtful sound from behind her, at that.

Loki gave a low groan shortly after, his whole body taut as Tony’s mouth took him to the hilt, proving her point. “You’re enjoying this, I see?”

“I like it when you lose track of your masks,” she said lightly. “I didn’t get a good look the last time.”

The trickster’s breaths came in a bit shallower still. “Sex isn’t actually very reliable for that. You can ask my ex-wife.”

“Well, if she was as astute as your old friends...”

Loki’s head fell back and he tried to arch his hips, roll his whole body up and forward, to get more of Tony’s mouth and what it was currently doing to the underside of his co*ck with a few flicks of tongue. Then his eyelids fluttered back open and he found himself still, a little disconcertingly, pinned by Pepper’s weight, and her unwavering stare. “She wasn’t fooled by the same tactics that they were.”

“What was she fooled by?”

“I was fooled, believing she knew my nature better than she did,” Loki panted. “She was under the impression I’m not cruel.”

Pepper tilted her head, considering. “Oversimplification, I think.”

“Well, your boyfriend is currently sucking my brain out through my co*ck, so I’m a little short on my usual eloquence,” Loki groaned.

“I think you’ve been on earth too long,” Pepper giggled. “You are still talking, though, and in coherent sentences, even. I’m impressed.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice and it’s saved my life dozens of times.”

Pepper moved his wrists, pinning them above his head with one hand, freeing up the other so she could tangle it in his hair at the base of his skull and tug his head back. Her expression was curious, not enjoying his pain, but working out just what sort of mild pain got the best little reactions. “Look at me.”

His eyes fell open again.

“I trust you,” she said, very quiet.

Loki inhaled sharply, struggling a little. “Don’t.”

“It’s a bit late for that. You got my attention from the start, and you didn’t stop. You saved my life, and Tony’s, and when it comes to those I love and my friends I am selfish, you were right about that.” She ran her hand up through his hair, petting and scritching, before tightening her grip again and applying enough pull to get a low gasp out of him. “I’m selfish enough to not care what you’ve done in the past or how many people you’ve hurt or killed when you were at the brittle edges of your own sanity, or just when you were younger and more stupid.” She kissed him, gentle and all too briefly, and pulled back enough to meet his gaze again. “I give a sh*t about you, now, whether you like it or not, but if you’re not okay with it or just don’t care, please leave soon before I make the mistake of liking you more than I already do, because you said you don’t want to hurt me, and I do think you meant that.”

The trickster struggled a bit further, as much because Tony had slowed his actions down to listen as because of her words. His masks were all too cracked, no matter which one he reached for. “I don’t know what you want of me.”

“More, in my life, if you’re interested,” Pepper said softly. “It will change you, though. And you know that. You can still run.” She tugged his head up a bit, closer to her own. “There are things we’ll want to know, if you’ll let us.”

Loki panted, staring at her for a few moments until his expression suddenly turned to one of startled, almost-reluctant bliss. “Dammit, Stark!” he groaned, his hips bucking a bit despite himself.

“Tony?” Pepper asked lightly, in dry and mildly disapproving tones.

A quiet, slightly obscene sound followed as he freed up his mouth for response, “I may or may not have made use of the lube.”

“I’m questioning your timing,” she shot back, still focused on the trickster.

“Well... freed up my mouth long enough for me to add that you’re not the only one interested.”

Loki moved his head to one side to peer around Pepper. “I’m also questioning your timing. And your sanity.”

“Reed Richards asked me if I knew anything about ice-wielding gods, by the way,” the inventor responded lightly. “Meeting with him and Strange tomorrow to check out Central Park and prove to him that ‘Lyra’ had nothing to do with it.”

The trickster raised an eyebrow slowly, in a silent question.

“I didn’t exactly rule you out, though, princess,” Tony added, winked, and crooked the two fingers that had caught Loki so off-guard a few moments ago, and began pumping them in and out, not quite slowly, pushing testingly until he hit the anticipated spot that made the god of lies gasp for him. The inventor offered a wide and ferocious grin. “You’ve got a chance. Take it or leave it.” He then lowered his head again.

Loki couldn’t quite contain the ragged moan as the inventor unexpectedly went right back to swallowing him whole quite admirably for a beginner. It wasn’t smooth, or practiced, or the most skillfully applied technique, but it was messy and hot and Tony Stark being mad and brilliant at him, and sucking him off. It took him a while, between Pepper’s unwavering appraisal of his expressions even as her skin grew flushed and her hips ground against him a bit, and the mad inventor applying mouth and hands with such enthusiasm and curiosity, to fully process that Tony had just admitted to lying to someone on Loki’s behalf, even if just enough to divert suspicion from the trickster’s hiding place, albeit not away from the god himself.

Caveats aside, the thought was a slightly astonishing one.

“That’s it,” Pepper murmured. “Now let go.”

Just because his every instinct was inclined to contrariness, he tried to hold out longer, but looking up at her as her teeth dragged across her lower lip and he noticed the hand formerly in his hair had drifted away at some point, so that she could touch herself––he couldn’t hold back. He came with a low, broken cry, as his whole body shuddered.

Tony coughed, slightly. “Swallowing really ain’t easy.”

“I could’ve warned you about that,” Pepper sighed, then let Loki’s wrists go long enough to reach into the drawer of their nightstand and withdraw a couple of condoms. She tore them both open, and handed one back to Tony.

Loki, still in a bit of a post-org*smic haze, noticed. And then he realized, as Pepper raised her hips and moved with them both when Tony pulled him further down the bed by his thighs, what exactly the devilish mortal woman had meant about endurance earlier. He half-laughed. “By the Norns, you’re both mad.” He did not, however, resist in the least to being re-arranged. He still felt a bit boneless, and sated, as well as amazed and confused in equal amounts, but also still... hungry.

“You like it, though,” Tony taunted right back, arranging Loki’s hips at what he theorized, based on data collected so far, was the optimal angle, at the edge of the bed.

“I’m considering,” the trickster admitted, eyes glittering with mischief. “You may need to impress me a bit further.”

“Well, I’m already feeling special that you haven’t said a word against the idea of me f*cking you here,” Tony said, as Pepper put a condom on the god of mischief, who was already hard again, though a bit sensitive, judging by the little shivers he gave at her touch. “Are you sufficiently persuaded, then?”

Loki hissed a bit at that, in conjunction with Pepper straddling him again, this time with one of her soft hands guiding him into her. His head fell back and he muttered a few reverent curses at the feel of her wet heat sheathing him.

“That wasn’t an answer,” the inventor chided, grinning as Pepper leaned back against his chest. He took a moment to kiss her thoroughly, after which they both shot the trickster expectant looks.

“I’m persuaded,” Loki panted.

“Good,” Tony said, and pushed into him, slow and unhurried. He gripped the trickster’s hips firmly, and smiled a little as Pepper reached back around him and pulled his head down so that her lips were near his ear when she whispered, “Pull us both toward you, and let me lead.”

The inventor shuddered. “Yeah. God, yeah.”

Loki sat up on one elbow, his other hand reaching out, stroking down from Pepper’s side to her hip. He pressed his thumb against her cl*t with her first rise-and-fall and she whimpered, arching her hips forward a little. Then she had him sheathed to the hilt again, and Tony gripped her other hip, pulling her back a bit as she rose again, and he pulled back, and then letting her control her fall, following her down and forward as he thrust into the trickster again.

“You’re so clever, I love you, Pep,” Tony hissed in her ear. It was such a wicked little reversal of last night, when Loki had been f*cking them both, had been the one in control. Now the god of lies was being f*cked by both of them and could hardly do more than writhe with them as they did.

She gave a breathless half-laugh that broke off with a cry as Loki’s fingers worked her over.

It didn’t last very long, with them both so worked up, and Loki still sensitive from the first org*sm they’d pulled from him. He was gasping out small, incoherent half-syllables by the time Pepper came, hot and tight and slick around him, Tony letting her go so she could press closer to the trickster, still grinding her hips even as little after-shocks made her whimper softly. She caught Loki’s mouth and kissed him hard, muscles in her lower abdomen tightening around him very deliberately, making him shudder; although he stubbornly held out, lingering on the knife-edge between too much, and not enough.

Admiring the view, Tony felt his balls begin to tighten and forced himself to pick up the pace while still holding himself together. “Come on, Loki,” he panted, with only a little vicious edge to it. “I want to see you like this.”

Pepper pulled back enough to let him, and said low and soft, in her very sweetest almost-innocent tone, “Break for me.”

Loki gripped her hips hard enough to bruise a normal human, pushing into her hard enough she gave a low cry, and Tony swore at the way that muscle-flex affected him, too. “And if I break one of you?” he hissed back, almost too quiet to hear, right in her ear.

“Worse have tried,” Pepper countered, then shuddered a little as his fingers went back to working on her cl*t. She squirmed over him, breathing a little hard. Then she gasped at the sudden feeling like he was––like he... She pulled back a little and stared, watching his tongue flick across his lower lip and feeling it, a mimic of it, against her sex. She whimpered, and leaned in to kiss him again. The results were––unique.

Because she could still feel his tongue, in both places, and it was glorious.

Tony admired the trickster’s handiwork, feeling the god tightening around him, seeing muscles in those long pale thighs flutter a little. He tugged Loki a bit further down the bed, so that he could grip the god’s ass hard and apply a bit more force, getting that much deeper. He was rewarded with a strangled moan from trickster, followed shortly by the sounds of Pepper and Loki both hitting org*sm very nearly in the same moment, and as a result he barely managed to ride Loki through most of his before losing it himself and having to quickly lean forward over the bed to remain mostly-upright as he shuddered in the wake of his climax.

They spent a long few minute catching their respective breaths, before they could find the energy necessary to pull apart for practical and cleanliness reasons. Loki obligingly provided another anti-stickiness spell thereafter, and they all collapsed on the bed: the trickster lay where he’d been, Pepper rolled off of him to one side, and Tony plopped down between them to lay on his back.

“Wow,” Pepper said, after another minute or so.

“Seconded,” Tony said.

Loki half-smiled. “Call it unanimous, then.”

“Aw, honey, we impress a Norse god, even.”

“That spell, with your tongue, Loki, is unfair,” Pepper sighed.

“The what now?”

Loki rolled slightly so that he settled over the inventor’s body, most of his weight on his forearms out to either side. He smiled toothily. “I can show you.”

Tony made a low noise. “Uhm.”

Pepper made a thoughtful sort of sound.

Both men shot her lightly questioning looks and found her sliding off the bed to stand on her feet. They both paused to take in the sight appreciatively.

She put her hands on her hips and stared them down. “I need to shower and confirm that Stark Industries is following the usual post-assassination-attempt policies and won’t make the mistake of sending anyone in or calling us inconveniently, and reschedule two important meetings.” She smirked a little. “But don’t let that stop you.”

“Wait. Wait. That... is that against a rule somewhere?” Tony asked cautiously.

She leaned down to kiss him, smiling a little against his mouth because Loki had shifted up a bit to oblige her, like a most ungentlemanly gentleman. “I trust you. And I know you trust me.” She shot Loki a look. “Savvy?”

“Thank you,” Loki said, inclining his head a little, in acknowledgement of her first-claim rights, possibly. Or because he was a prince and just did things like that. It was hard to tell. “I promise not to break him. Much.”

She kissed him, too, and turned away to stroll into the master bathroom. “JARVIS? I want footage in high-definition please,” she called to the AI, on her way out.

“Yes, Miss Potts,” JARVIS responded. “Saved to local private server.”

Loki clicked his tongue. “That woman... what is she?”

“Mostly human. Most any and all inhumanity is a recent addition, and didn’t actually affect much other than the fire-breathing, bouts of super-strength, and other fire-related things,” Tony responded. “Also, she’s f*cking perfect.”

The trickster nodded thoughtfully.

“Speaking of fire...”

“You lied for me, yes,” Loki interrupted, fixing him with a keen, shrewd yet fascinated look. “Most interesting.”

Tony relaxed under the intent scrutiny, as was his wont. “Yeah. I did. Figure out quite why, yet?”

“You want them looking for clues you could still use,” Loki mused. “So you let them still consider me suspect, while still leaving a place for me to hide. Strange should have worked out more than he has, by now, in that regard.”

“He seemed to think ‘Lyra’ was fairly fond of us. Said you looked at us funny.”

The trickster smiled widely. “Of course.”

Tony blinked a couple of times, having trouble interpreting that response, and particularly how much of it was reminder/threat, and how much was the god of lies being surprisingly honest because he was sure it wouldn’t be believed. “You interest me,” Tony said slowly. “You did from the beginning, but you’re kinda crazy, and made the mistake of killing some people I liked.”

“And would you still have me pay for that?”

Tony considered. “Haven’t you? You’ve done more penance living as a mortal down here than Thor did, even. My only real question is how stable you are with only half your soul keeping you held together right now, and how long you really think you can keep that up?” He sat up a little, admiring just how stony and unreadable the trickster’s expression suddenly was. “I want to know because I think you started to unravel, and had to do something more risky than usual to re-stabilize.”

Loki considered for a long moment. “I have it under control.”

“How much does it hurt?”

Something bleak and pained flickered across Loki’s expression. “I never said it did.”

“Neither did I.” Tony tapped the arc reactor audibly.

The trickster said nothing to that.

“I bet it’s the sort of thing you can ignore. Especially after time to adjust, time to learn to block out awareness of it unless you’re too tired, or stretched too thin. I bet it’s nothing compared to how bad it must’ve gotten when you fell,” Tony said quietly.

Loki flinched, baring his teeth for a moment and moving as though to remove himself, but the inventor reached out and pulled him back down with two arms about his waist and it was too––too unexpected. Curiosity and confusion prevented him struggling, got him trying to read Tony’s face again. “How do you know that?”

“Because you’re not the only one in the habit of only telling people truths you’re sure they won’t believe, because you’re a liar, and the truth is unbelievable.” Tony took a deep breath. “And because you really did worry me, when you looked half-dead with exhaustion that night, you bastard.”

“Worry,” Loki said flatly, disbelief evident. “I could kill you with no effort.”

“I don’t think you will.”

“Why not, then, Tony?” He settled his hand over the inventor’s throat. “Why not?”

Tony got brief flashbacks to being thrown out of a window and swallowed thickly. “Same reason I wouldn’t kill you even if I thought I could.” He half-smirked. “You even said it yourself: killing me would be tragically short-sighted.”

“And you’re certain that wasn’t a lie?”
“All I know is that I’m about 80-90% certain you want to take me apart as badly as I want to do to you,” Tony bit out, his hands gripping hard at the trickster’s hips. “Because you’re curious, and you know I’m brilliant enough to keep up, and I want that from you; I want to crack you open and see what’s inside.”

Loki exhaled slowly, his index finger tracing a small sigil against the inventor’s neck. Then he ran his tongue across his lower lip.

And Tony made a slightly startled noise, because her felt that somewhere entirely else: an else-place that had recently been more adventurous, but still hadn’t, before that moment, ever felt the flick of someone’s tongue against it. “You––that’s––”

Then the trickster kissed him, slow and deep, and Tony made utterly indecent sounds because he swore he could feel that same slick-slide of tongue, that same pressure and heat, probing into his ass and that was––Holy god. Wait... Unholy god? Whatever, oh f*ck. He was desperately hard soon enough, and marveled a bit at his own lack of fatigue. There really were a ridiculous number of benefits to bedding a god.

When Loki broke the kiss and stared down at him, dark and hungry and predatory with an edge of something a bit more dangerous than before, Tony could only stare and pant for a few seconds. “Holy sh*t, your tongue is the best and most indecent thing, all at once,” he managed, a bit unevenly.

The trickster smirked slow and thoughtful. “Liked that, did you?”

Tony squirmed a little as the trickster’s hands crept down his body and settled on his ass, pulling them flush together, making the inventor gasp a little at the feeling of Loki’s erection pressed alongside his own: hot and velvet. “There are far too many things I like about you,” he groaned.

“I’m noticing, yes, but are you not a hero at heart, Tony Stark?”

“If you still haven’t worked that out, you’re a bit behind,” Tony shot back.

“Your morality is surprisingly tricky to puzzle out,” Loki mused. “You changed yourself and your entire life to escape and try to clear a legacy soaked in innocent blood, and yet here you are writhing under the touch of another killer, and you like me.” He ground their hips together, slow and unhurried. “And I am not repentant.”

The inventor grinned, brittle and cold. “Yeah. A sometimes-genocidal god and the Merchant of Death. You ask me how many regrets I’ve got.”

“More than none?” Loki guessed, his tone light.

“No more than you,” Tony shot back. “And you might be the only one who’d believe that, because you see it, don’t you?”

The trickster’s expression darkened further. “Perhaps I might.” He leaned down and caught the inventor’s mouth again, his hand drifting down between them to wrap around both of their co*cks, stroking them together.

Tony rolled his hips in time with the movements, making the occasional embarrassing noises as the tongue trick continued, making him feel even more depraved than usual and... wanting. It took him a few long minutes of their movements getting faster and a little more desperate before it occurred to him that he actually wanted to be f*cked again. He broke from the kiss with a shudder at the thought and rasped, “You’re a bad influence, and you should f*ck me.”

Loki made a slightly strangled sound, and pushed him a bit further up the bed, grabbing the lube while Tony plucked another condom from the night-stand.

“Put it on me,” the trickster purred in his ear, as two slick fingers pressed into him. Loki made a low, hungry and pleased sound as the inventor obeyed with slightly shaking hands and lay spread out under him again, canting his hips to better appreciate the long fingers opening him up a bit further. “You’re already so relaxed and open for me, Tony.”

“I blame your tongue, seriously, it’s a dangerous thing,” Tony panted. “Get on with it, though, I’m already close and––hnnghf*ck!”

“Perhaps I want to feel you come a few times.”

“Not––usually physically a thing I can––oh-” He cut off as Loki’s length pressed into him, not quite slowly, filling him up slick and hard. Belatedly, he noticed a pillow under his hips that hadn’t been there before (good idea: better angle) then got distracted from that as Loki pulled his legs up so they rested against his shoulders, opening the inventor up further so that when he pulled out tauntingly slow and then slammed back home, he went deeper still and earned a growling cry from the man beneath him. “Holy f*ck, do that again.”

“My pleasure,” Loki purred, and obliged again, and again, picking up a rhythm and then steadily accelerating it a little at a time, holding back far less this time: hard and merciless and almost punishing in his pace.

Tony’s hands clung onto the trickster’s hips for dear life as he tried to keep breathing past the overwhelming need to come and his own stubborn need to hold out a little longer. He was swearing, a bit, when he intermittently regained some capability to form semi-coherent syllables, but even those soon trailed away as Loki pulled a new variation of the tongue trick: a muttered spell against the side of Tony’s left knee and a wicked grin as he held the inventor’s gaze and licked along that conveniently close stretch of skin. Tony felt it on the side of his knee, but also up the length of his co*ck.

“f*cking cheating,” he gasped, but Loki only licked again, then paused to suck and Tony felt it right on the head of his dick.

The inventor came hard, his body shuddering with it, especially as Loki––the complete bastard––just didn’t let up. He kept licking, and pounding into him, even when Tony was so sensitive it made him hiss in pain. “St-stop, I can’t-”

“Ah, my apologies. Here, allow me.” One of Loki’s hands trailed down his leg to his hip and he murmured another spell.

Tony jerked at the warm, prickling tingle it sent over his skin, and sighed in relief as pain faded, except a dull ache where, he realized, he was getting hard again while Loki f*cked him. It was exquisitely wrong, a bit like soreness but so wrapped up in pleasure that Tony couldn’t find it in him to complain, in part because he was already panting heavily again as Loki changed their position slightly, curled closer with the inventor’s legs about his waist, and continued hammering into him with almost desperate fury. Tony yanked him down into a kiss that was messy and filthy and biting, and moaned at the way Loki melted into it and matched it.

He would’ve outlasted the god, he was sure, if Loki hadn’t wrapped a hand around his co*ck and started stroking hard and a bit out of joint with his thrusts, and growled in the inventor’s ear, “I want to break you apart and decipher you, and for you to love it as much as this.”

Understandably, Tony’s plans to last any longer all shattered at that, along with his composure and resistance as he came so hard his vision whited out for long few moments, during which Loki rode him through a couple of jarring aftershocks before coming too, hard and gasping, and slumped a bit, resting his brow against Tony’s chest right above the reactor.

After about a minute of heavy breathing and the both of them slowly coming down from a state of blissed-out mental fog, Loki muttered, “I hate you both.”

Tony considered the note of petulance in that, and opened his eyes to stare down at the top of the trickster’s head. “No you don’t.”

“Which is why I should.”

The inventor chuckled. “So you’re tempted to stick around, then?”

Loki lifted his head. “We should get started in the lab, actually.”

“Whatever is in the water up there in Asgard, I want some. Seriously, how can you even move yet?” Tony groaned.

The trickster snorted. “It’s not the water, so much as the apples.”

Waving a hand as though fanning away the words, Tony said, “Meh, minor details.” Then he made a noise that was definitely not a whimper as Loki pulled out. It left him feeling a bit empty, and the slight sensation of disappointment that came with it, the inventor found himself a little disturbed by. “Wow, you are an education.”

Loki laughed a little, even as he applied a basic healing spell, along with the usual cleanup.

Tony sighed in relief a little as discomfort that he hadn’t noticed until it was gone chose that moment to fade. “So many perks,” he muttered. Godly perks. From there, it was a matter of finding the will to move, which still took him a few more minutes.

~~

Pepper emerged from the shower in just a towel to find Loki sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but his black slacks from the night before, arguing with a clad-in-just-jeans Tony about something obscure related to bio-mechanics as the inventor rummaged through a drawer of t-shirts. Pepper shook her head at them both, smiling. “Still at it, just switched to verbal-only intercourse?”

Tony made an offended noise. “Intellectual discourse, actually.”

“Well, we could change that if you like,” Loki purred, looking her up and down pointedly, and offering a charming, wickedly bright smile. “You look lovely in white.”

Pepper blushed. “It’s a towel.”

“How do people in Asgard get anything productive done other than having a lot of sex?” Tony muttered.

“We lead very long lives,” the trickster deadpanned, with a casual shrug, “Otherwise I fear we really wouldn’t be able to manage.”

The inventor chuckled a bit, and pulled on a shirt, then tossed another to Loki.

Loki examined it, then looked at Tony and raised an eyebrow.

“Not Amon Amarth*, then?” Tony asked innocently.

The trickster folded it back up neatly and then launched it with unerring precision such that it landed on Tony’s face. “You’re not that funny.”

“I am hilarious, and you know it,” the inventor shot back, after removing the shirt and putting it back in the drawer. He pulled out a plain shirt without potentially offensive decorations and tossed it over instead.

Loki caught it, and pulled it on casually.

Tony kissed Pepper’s temple as she strode over to her own set of drawers in the dresser and said, “We’re off the lab.”

“I’ll see about ordering in food when I’m done reminding everyone to leave us alone the rest of the day,” Pepper responded, mussing his hair a bit as he tugged a bit at her towel, which sadly stayed in place. When he kept trying, she smacked his hand lightly and he pouted. “You have work to do.”

“I do,” he conceded, shuffling his feet like a kid, because he could and because it made Pepper make a tutting noise at him that he found adorable. “C’mon, Loki.” He turned, heading for the door.

The trickster rose and started to follow.

“Loki?” Pepper called.

He paused in the doorway and turned to look at her. “Yes?”
He back still to him, she let her towel fall to the floor. “Don’t destroy anything too important, please?”

Loki smirked, wide and shameless. “I will take your suggestions into consideration, of course.” Then he closed the door quietly behind him.

~~

The first half-hour they spent in the lab was mostly Tony perusing the information Loki had sent him, and the design of the serum to stabilize Extremis therein. He took in the whole thing in silence at first, turning a three-dimensional model of the molecular structure of it in the air and running it through a couple of simulations. After thirty-odd minutes of long silences interrupted by commands to his AI and occasional muttered observations, he seemed to recall that Loki was still in the room and said to him, “This is very specific, more than you’d been before, with this.”

Shaken out of his own thoughts, Lok responded, “It won’t be generally applicable. This is designed specifically with Pepper’s DNA in mind.” He stepped up to the projected 3-D display and looked it over critically. “It took me a while to confirm that there are a few traces of inhuman ancestry from over a hundred generations back. It’s diluted, but there are a few sequences that are already naturally inclined to aid her regulation, if they can only be activated. There are differences between the original power those were meant to control, and Extremis, however. It took me some time to work out precisely how different, in her case.”

“You’ve been working on this for a while, then.”

“Roughly half the time I’ve been in your employ, yes,” Loki admitted.

“I still can’t believe I hired you,” Tony muttered.

“Is that regret, Tony?”

“Nah, mild chagrin, maybe, but I’m actually glad.” He turned the model thoughtfully. “Oh, who is Amora, by the way?”

The trickster stiffened. “Pardon?”

“The blonde? The very memorable blonde with green eyes not quite like yours who seemed to know a few things I didn’t, and who apparently gave you ‘news from home’ which, from you, is pretty ominous in retrospect?”

“She is as I said before: a very old friend.”

“How much does she know about what you’ve been up to?”

“Not enough to see my true goal, or know how it is that I’m roaming free without anyone in Asgard seemingly aware of it,” Loki admitted.

“Keeping that close to the chest as you can, aren’t you?”

“As much as possible.”

“I had to ask Strange about it. How it might be possible, just theoretically. I didn’t really mention you by name, at first, but I did eventually,” Tony said, and shot the god a reassuring smile. “He’s pretty convinced that even if he somehow managed to contact Asgard to potentially warn them, they wouldn’t believe him.”

Loki smiled thinly. “There is that advantage, yes.”

“You’re pissed that I worked it out and shared, though.”

“I’m intrigued. You share my secrets, yet not enough to endanger me, though you tread some very fine lines,” the trickster mused. “What do you want of them?”

“Things you won’t tell me, mostly.”

A flicker of something that might’ve been impressed crossed Loki’s expression, and his green eyes looked very sharp. “You are, on occasion, quite good.”

“Oh, I’m always really, really good,” Tony assured. He shivered a little as he sensed Loki step up close behind him. “The simulations here alter a lot of bits of Pepper’s DNA. I’ll need to run those by you. Start with these.” He switched out the large-scale simulation of the serum’s molecular structure with a series of changed gene sequences: before and after displays of each DNA-segment, eleven of them.

“Those are all sections which were altered by the original dosage of Extremis.”

“Yeah, but you’re not changing them fully back to how they were before it, so what exactly are you altering?”

“JARVIS, display the correlating sections of sample genome marked ‘487Muspell’ please,” Loki requested.

“Yes, Dr. Walker.”

Tony experienced a sudden realization and slowly turned to glare at the trickster. “You’re kidding me.”

“Hmm?”

“Sky-walker?”

“It was one of my names long before the concept of Star Wars was conceived.”

“And you just... left it there... big f*ck-off obvious clue?”

“Yes. Immensely obvious. You worked it out so quickly, after all,” Loki drawled.

“You’re a real asshole, sometimes,” Tony sighed, exasperated. Then he looked up as the before-and-after bits of genome were all joined by another set of examples of the same sections of genome from a third, unknown source. “What am I looking at?”

“A very, very, very distant cousin of my blood-kin.”

“Surtur?”

“How did you discover that name?”

“I reviewed footage from your interview and Googled the obvious. Fire-giant, something something end of the world, volcanic everything, big shiny sword, right? He sounded sort of important and dangerous. Is it him or just something else related to him that Hydra is digging for in Siberia?”

Loki shot him a look that was very difficult to read, then smiled a humorless and self-effacing half-smile. “Oh, it’s Surtur, just himself, and that’s more than enough for any world. Odin locked him away in the earth a long time ago, when he was rather more rash and hadn’t quite come to value mortals so highly as he did by the time the power-vacuum left by the loss of Muspellheim’s last great son was filled by an expanding empire of ice from out of Niflheim. They hit Jotunnheim first, full as it was of their cousins. They consumed a planet of forests and stone under miles-thick glaciers, and all the less elementally-powered Jötnar were either spread to other realms, made part of their armies, or wiped out. They had plans along similar lines for the earth.”

Tony nodded slowly. “And what’s he for, to you? Surtur?”

“Initially, I had the rather boring idea of letting him destroy the earth Odin and Thor do love so much, but things rather changed after my fall. I gained new perspective, and new purpose.”

The inventor considered for a long moment, staring at the genes on display before them. “You’re taking the changes made by Extremis, and altering them to be more like genes from a fire-giant.”

“This sample isn’t Surtur’s. No fire Jotunn has altogether stable DNA. They are strange creatures, but like most Jotunn have their war-colors for fighting, and another shape that they live in more often.”

“You turning blue is the frosty equivalent of one of them heating up to the point they almost resemble moving lava?”

“Yes. They are the most powerful Jotunn to deal with, the most difficult to destroy, because they repair their forms as no others do, with their fire: their flesh and bones as malleable as molten rock, when necessary,” Loki mused. “This sample is from a person who is only half-Jotunn of a fiery nature, and much more stable. Her father was a lesser son of Muspellheim, one of the foot-soldiers of the army Surtur had gathered, before Odin locked him away.”

“Half-human?”
“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

A poignant pause followed.

“Unless there’s a story,” Tony admitted.

Loki chuckled softly, and explained, “Muspellheim has few mages, and does not value them so highly. As a race, most of them have a strong natural resistance to magic built into their constitution: they are not immune to it all, but they cannot be destroyed by it––only contained. This foot-soldier had some gift for magic: enough to teleport himself great distances. Before Surtur fought Odin, this soldier abandoned his responsibilities and traveled the other nine worlds, seeking to learn more. He was not greatly powerful, but he was persistent, and determined to learn. He came to earth, where magic was rare, and lingered to teach some of what he knew to a few with something of the gift, because he’d found that they had no other teachers. He fell in love with one of them, or at least grew enamored enough to produce a child, before war took him.”

“War took him?”

“He was a deserter. Surtur was delivered to earth, and Odin would not let any jötnar remain on the surface, especially any of fire. He sent the soldier home by force, when he would not go willingly, and the poor fool was executed mere days after his arrival there.”

“That’s pretty terrible.”

“His daughter still lives,” Loki said softly. “She is an impressive creature.”

“She’s on earth?”
“Sometimes. Not often. I was lucky to catch her when she did visit.”

“And she gave you a... ‘DNA sample’ freely?”

Loki appeared amused, and didn’t respond.

“You get a lot of action for a man in solitary confinement.”

“Oh, here and there.”

“How are you going to get Surtur to another galaxy?” Tony asked.

“There are power-sources other than the tesseract out there. I’ve collected a few, and one or two of them will even add insult to injury,” Loki said lightly.

“But?”

“Hmm?”

“There’s more to it, or you’d have done it by now.”

“Oh, you know,” the trickster waved a hand dismissively. “The last piece of the puzzle being trapped in the Dark World might be a key factor.”

“The what?”

“A place older than Asgard. Their desires are strong enough that they have reached the awareness of someone like-minded, far from them, also inclined to bring a lot of primeval, chaotic darkness to as many worlds as possible. They have common enemies, and shared need for common resources which those same enemies have locked away out of their reach,” Loki explained, briefly.

“They’re in contact?” Tony prompted.

“Oh yes. Their mage, Malekith, is also a dream-walker,” the trickster murmured. “He has been trying to find listening ears of the right sort for so long that he is no longer as good as he once was at making sure that the wrong ears did not also catch his words, and he made the mistake of believing me Thanos’ fool as much as Thanos ever did. I thus know all about their little exchanges.”

“Thanos?”

“The Chitauri belong to him.”

“Ah, that’d do it.” Tony reviewed the other dozen-or-so DNA-rewrites programmed into the serum, and began reviewing the remaining alterations: not changes to DNA itself, but to which genes were and weren’t active, and what systems would be affected. New hologram of a transparent humanoid shape, with different areas highlighted. “JARVIS? Synthesize the prototype. We’ll run further testing once it’s a little more tangible.”

“Growing the appropriate materials and shaping them will take over 24 hours.”

“I figured as much.” He sighed, turned and leaned back against one of his work tables. “So you have a few extremely valuable high-powered artifacts scattered around, a vendetta against someone called Malekith to sort out, and... what exactly do you need from that guy?”

“All of Asgard distracted, with their eyes on my other self,” Loki murmured, looking only a little uneasy. “Knowing Malekith’s impatience, particularly in the wake of my seeming failure to take over the earth, he will make his move against Asgard along with the rest of the dark elves sooner rather than later.”

“You initially thought you’d have some more time before that, but I’m starting to suspect your time is running out, there,” Tony mused. “Was that the news from home?”

“Your perceptiveness is becoming annoying.”
“Now you know what the rest of the world feels like when they talk to me, almost. Also: I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”

“They let me out,” Loki said.

“What?!” Tony didn’t jump, but he did twitch impressively.

“I’m the only one in Asgard who can get into the Dark World, aside from Odin himself, and he will be required outside of it for the foreseeable future, to keep the darkness at bay as it begins to sicken and corrupt the land and those closest to it,” the trickster explained. “I’m far more disposable.”

“Are you?”

Loki looked at him curiously. “Politically?”

“A bit, but I mean, to Asgard in general? Politics aside, you’re their most powerful mage aside from Odin, right? There’s that, for one. For another, you can go almost anywhere, talk to damn near anyone and persuade them of all sorts of things, and that makes you already better for diplomacy than Thor because diplomacy requires a degree of selective omission and other truth-twisting he doesn’t overall excel at. Really, as far as defending that realm goes, you’re more likely to be capable of doing it almost single-handed, compared to anyone else. And look, you’re doing it now.” With a melodramatic flourish, he gestured toward Loki as though presenting him before a panel of judges. “I think anyone with half a brain in that world has already worked out that you’re fairly invaluable. They just don’t like you, much, but I think you’re an acquired taste.”

“Sorry, but are you certain this is still me we’re discussing?” Loki inquired.

“Nah, most people love me. I’m shiny.”

“Yes, you’re loved by many with little power of their own, who hardly know you, but what of leaders elected and otherwise, all around the world you’ve been protecting? The ones who still refuse to listen to you, who still threaten you, and work to undermine you?” Loki asked. “There are so many. So very, very many.”

“And they can merrily go f*ck themselves,” Tony responded lightly. “Yeah, they’re always going to be there, and always in the way, but I don’t need them. They need me, and it scares them when they think about it, so they usually avoid thinking about it, sometimes to the point they convince themselves and others that killing me would be a good idea, but that’s just my life, these days. I don’t care if they like me, or acknowledge that if I really bothered, I could take over this planet in about a day, except that I don’t have to, yet and don’t want that responsibility ever because people are so needy. I’ll get enough satisfaction from the looks on their faces if it ever gets the point I will have to, because their heads will explode when I do it, and then just casually give it back and tell ‘em not to scratch the paint.”

“Oh, I do like the way you think,” Loki murmured.

“When did they let you out?”

“Yesterday. I didn’t get the update until I awoke this morning.”

“It is dream-based, then.”

Loki nodded. “Most of the time.”

“How much liquor does it take to get you drunk, do you think?”

“Alcohol of Midgard is very mild by Aesir standards.”

“You’ve only got half your usual density, though.”

“This is true.”

“I propose an experiment.”

“I would recommend waiting on that, sir. Miss Potts has just alerted me that lunch is delivered, and asked me to hasten you both to join her,” JARVIS interrupted.

“Curses, foiled again,” Tony sighed.

Loki laughed at him a little, already walking out of the room.

~~

Pepper had seemed almost surprised to see Loki when he joined her at the table, and he told her as much.

“Well. Presuming you listened to my earlier request at all, I’m happy to see you, here is all,” she said quietly, smiling a little.

The trickster wasn’t at all confused as to what she meant by that. I give a sh*t about you, now, whether you like it or not, but if you’re not okay with it or just don’t care, please leave soon before I make the mistake of liking you more than I already do... In truth, he had been giving her words serious consideration, along with some of Tony’s. (Because you’re curious, and you know I’m brilliant enough to keep up, and I want that from you; I want to crack you open and see what’s inside.) The whole idea of lingering here, with these mortals, should have been a number of things: ridiculous, insane, reckless, self-destructive, dangerous and above all a very bad idea. Then again: the same words could be used to describe Loki himself, and all of the aspects of himself he was most fond of, as well as most of the endeavors he’d always gotten the most thrill out of pursuing, throughout the course of his life. Really, there was no choice at all. He offered her a slow, sly little smile. “I’m curious,” he said simply.

“And you care?” she prodded.

Tony strode in, muttering about gods with longer legs getting ahead of him.

Loki looked at him, then back to Pepper. “Yes,” he said, with obvious discomfort and reluctance, but he said it nevertheless. And it wasn’t actually a lie, either. “Enough to be curious, and inclined to see where this goes.”

“Uh... did I just walk in on awkward relationship delineation time?”

“You’re both apparently dating me now; get over it,” Loki deadpanned.

Pepper almost choked on her drink, sputtering a bit.

Tony gaped for a moment, then slowly shut his mouth and gave it a bit of thought. “Well... okay then. That’s sounds sort of official.”

“You’ve both been considering the idea and immediately dismissing it for over a week now, if I’m not mistaken,” the trickster pointed out.

“During which we thought you were a lady,” Tony countered.

Loki shrugged. “And yet, here we are, and we all three of us seem to have somehow built trust and affection despite efforts to the contrary.”

“So we’re an experiment, to you?” Pepper asked lightly.

“All relationships are, when they’re as young as this,” the god countered. “You like me, you’re interested in me, but we are hardly in love: that goes for both of you, in relation to me.”

“Is that––” Tony coughed. “Are you saying that’s on the table, though? In any sort of foreseeable future? Just asking so we’re all on the same page, here.”

Loki hummed. “Well, anything is possible, but not all things are likely.”

“Yeah, well, I think people are already shocked enough I’ve got one functional romantic relationship, myself included,” Tony mused. “That said, would you call this romantic, exactly?”

“I think we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t admit we’re already toeing that particular fine line,” Pepper cut in. “Otherwise, I don’t think we’d have gotten over the initial trust issues with the fact you, Loki, are a formerly-genocidal maniac with a history of involved mind-games that screw over people who thought they could trust you, and let you into our lives instead of attempting to kill you on the rooftop last night, all things considered.” She took another sip of sparkling water very calmly in the ensuing long, awkward silence, during which Tony looked at her with a poleaxed expression and Loki appeared suddenly stone-still with his usual calm mask cracked a bit by another expression torn between mild panic and wary suspicion.

After almost a full minute of enjoying their discomfort, Pepper added, “You know I’m right. That’s the real reason you’re both tip-toeing around this, even now. You want to lay down the expectations that it’s unlikely and that it’s absurd, and suggest that it’s not worth the risk of even admitting we’re already dangerously fond of each other. If you think about it, we’re already pretty impossible, and we’ve just gotten started. So, Loki, I’m going to tell you now that Tony and I are very much in love, but we’re both interested in you, and in pursuing you.” Her stare was cool, thoughtful, and a little predatory, though her smile was oddly soft in comparison. “I’d be hurt, if you left, and disappointed, because I think we have potential. Your thoughts, Tony?”

The inventor was running a hand over his face, and stopped abruptly, balling his hand into a fist and resting his thumb against his chin. “I think... I can’t argue with that,” he admitted slowly, and met Loki’s gaze with challenge. “Not the hurt, yet, but that’s because I tend to get angry first, which numbs it a bit. I’d be mad, and yeah, a bit put-out that you left the party early.”

Loki’s stare flicked between the two of them. “I’m... on the brink of a war, and can’t promise I’ll survive it,” he said quietly, “but this is very good motivation to return.”

“Or you could bring us with you,” Tony suggested. “We’re good at war.”

Loki’s eyes widened further, and his hands on the arm of his chair gripped the wood a bit tighter as he tried to fully come to terms with that offer. “Pardon?”

“Consider it a selfish sort of time- and effort-investment.” Tony shrugged. “I want you around, all right? I’m not done figuring you out and figuring out why I like you so much when you’re such an asshole, and if I can puzzle that out, I’ll be even more certain than I am now that I can do goddamn anything. Plus, come on, man, my planet is at risk and you expect me of all people to leave it to you to handle? f*ck that.”

“Oh right. It’s your planet. I do keep forgetting,” Loki mused.

“Because you think it’s yours?” Pepper asked warily.

“It’s more that I forget you people are from here, given how different I consider you to be, compared to the general populace,” the trickster amended hastily.

“Sure it is,” the redhead sighed. “Because I’m so very inhuman.”

Loki made an amused noise at that. “Even I don’t think that. You could be nothing else but human, Pepper Potts. It’s part of why I find my interest in you quite so mystifying.”

“I’m not entirely sure I should take that as a compliment,” Pepper muttered.

“Then how did you forget this is her planet?” Tony interjected.

“Simple cognitive dissonance. I’m working on it.”

“You are?” The inventor looked a bit startled. “I thought gods kinda took pride in that sort of thing: not knowing the petty ways of us mundane mortals, et cetera.”

“You confuse me with an American tourist,” Loki shot back.

“Oh, come on, that’s not even fair,” Tony sighed.

“Though I cannot speak for other pantheons, those with any inclination to travel for reasons other than warfare, where I come from, does so in deference to the natives of most places we visit. Consider Lyra Walker’s entire academic career. Also, consider my car,” the trickster pointed out.

Pepper snigg*red suddenly. “Oh my god, you really drive that. You. Drive that.”

“One can’t teleport everywhere without someone noticing.”

“If I may interrupt, sirs and madam, you have an urgent incoming call.”

“Assassination-attempt day,” the inventor responded immediately. “Tell ‘em I said ‘No’ very emphatically.”

“It’s Mr. Odinson.”

There was a short, but ominous silence around the table for a few moment.

“Not a video conference? Please, not a video conference,” Tony sighed.

“It is. Dr. Foster is also on it, along with––well, you, Dr. Walker.”

“Why is JARVIS still calling you that?” Pepper asked.

“Why not?” Loki responded.

Tony considered for a moment. “Bring up one-way visibility via projection on the wall over there, but send the call itself to me.” He picked up Pepper’s StarkPad from the corner of the table and looked surprised and curious when the video feed came in. “Hey, Thor, long time no see. Nice braids: they’re very cute. Hello, Miss Foster, and what are you doing out of a cage?” Tony greeted, changing his tone from light and friendly to flatly angry once he visibly focused his attention on Loki’s other half.

Pepper and Loki watched the projected display, the trickster looking at himself only briefly before he winced and closed his eyes, shaking his head as though to clear it and not looking that way again. Pepper noticed the trickster’s other half––lurking just over Thor’s shoulder where the thunderer and Dr. Foster stood in very close to the camera––momentarily look a bit pained just before he responded, “Charming to see you again, Mr. Stark. I do remember our last meeting... fondly.”

Tony managed to keep a straight face, but it was a near thing. Because Loki has just explained that his memories updated through dreams, which meant that Loki’s other half had woken up in the morning with memories of some really great sex. You complete bastard. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, Princess Prickly, but you’re looking less incarcerated than I expected. Care to explain that, Thor, buddy?”

Quietly, in the background, Pepper asked Loki if he was all right.

He muttered, “dissonance,” quiet as he could; the microphone didn’t pick it up.

“My brother is aiding us, in exchange for some time out of his prison. He is the only one who can take us places the bi-frost will not go,” Thor rumbled. “Please, Tony Stark. We need your help, as well.”

“Have you seen the news yet, Mr. Stark?” Jane asked quickly.

“Haven’t turned on a TV, yet, no. We’ve been––occupied,” Tony said. “I did sort of get shot and almost killed yesterday, and all. It’s a little distracting. JARVIS? Bring up the news will you? Separate display.”

Another projector, aimed at the table, obliged. Loki opened his eyes to stare at it and settled his hands flat on the table on either side of the image, his jaw clenching tight. An object too large for the cameramen on the ground to quite catch in full––vast and dark, rough-edged like the broken-off corner of an age-brittled ebony sculpture––was looming over otherwise idyllic grounds (a state building, or possibly a university, if Tony had to guess) coming closer, scraping along the earth and tearing into it.

“Oh my god,” Pepper gasped.

Loki merely sat back in his chair and brushed his thumb along his lips unconsciously, staring at the image as a news reporter’s voice spoke over it, “These images, and others like them, are still coming in from local witnesses to yesterday’s incident. Government officials are still refusing to comment on the alien nature of the structure-”

“Mute,” Tony said sharply. Then he looked back at the video conference screen. “Okay. I’m listening. Now, what the f*ck is going on?”

“Well, that happened an hour ago or so, for a start,” Jane said. “I almost missed it, too, actually, given I’m here.” She jerked her head toward Thor.

“All of the nine realms are in danger,” Thor began.

“I got that. The ship: any invading forces in it?” Tony asked. Loki’s description of Malekith and the Dark World hadn’t led him to expect another large-scale invasion of earth being in the cards, and particularly not so soon. A glance at the trickster showed he didn’t look entirely prepared for this either, which was at least a bit heartening, while also making his stomach twist, because if Loki of all people, paragon of paranoia, wasn’t prepared for this, the odds weren’t looking great for anyone else less devious being ready to respond and do anything actually heroic to fix it.

“It vanished, before it even finished landing,” Loki said, from the video feed. “They were a scout vessel, sent to make sure that the next ship, or ships, they send will be less clumsy.”

“Who supplied Malekith with these?” their more local trickster whispered.

“Is someone else there?” Jane asked.

“Maybe. Where’d they get the ships?”

Thor and Jane exchanged hesitant glances. Loki looked grimly amused.

“How did you know-” Thor started.

“If they’re having trouble landing properly, it seems safe to assume the ship isn’t at their usual technological level. They’ve gotten help. Where from?” Tony insisted.

“Their leader, Malekith, has been in contact with a number of questionable sorts with whom I myself have been recently acquainted,” said the Loki over Thor’s shoulder. “Ones from outside. You glimpsed them, yourself, Stark, if you’ll remember: something that shouldn’t have been, pressing against the veil as everything was blown apart.”

Tony felt a chill roll down his spine, but managed to keep breathing slowly and evenly. “I remember. Not Thanos, then?”

Loki looked a bit off-put this time: both of him did.

Tony grinned in return.

“How do you know of him?” Thor demanded.

“Oh, I pick up on things. Does this mean things aren’t looking so good in Thanos’ region of space, if those things are trying to get through?”

“Thanos is as a pet to them, a charm by which to lure Death herself to them. They’re from numerous undying universes that have destroyed Death and learned to infect other universes with themselves, growing and spreading their creed like a cancer,” Loki-the-freed-prisoner explained. “They are the darkness that has existed outside of time before our own universe was born, and they will linger after we die, unless they claim us, which is a far worse fate than death.”

“You’re being unusually forthcoming suddenly,” Jane muttered.

“Where are they?” Pepper asked, upon noticing something fairly strange about the background. There were stars over their heads, but the light that fell on them was warm and golden like daylight. “The sky looks a bit, uh... unearthly.”

“I may have altered Dr. Foster’s machinery,” the trickster on the video said, “in order to send this communication. It has also sent a good deal of information about how to find a certain artifact of some interest to your AI, Stark.”

Tony shot the trickster in the room with him a quick glance.

Earth-dwelling-Loki silently mouthed, Convenient lie. Go with it.

“I see it has, yeah. If you’re in Asgard right now, I can’t say I have a clue what help you need from me, though, even if I find some artifact for you all,” Tony said flatly. “It’s not like I can reach all of you, there.”

“We need actions taken on earth,” Thor said. “There have been disturbances on earth Heimdall has seen of recent, signs of something under the surface, dreams being consumed to feed it, and prophecies of the world ending in fire.”

“Well, you’ve got a dream-walker with you, don’t you? What’s he seen on the astral plane lately? Does prophecy look different than regular dream-scape? Does it look like a wound, maybe? Or just oddly repetitive like ripples from a stone dropped in a pond, or the shape of a crater’s blast-radius?”

“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Stark?” the more distant Loki asked.

The Loki closer at hand was giving him a wary, yet hungry sort of look that threatened to be very distracting.

Noting that intellectual foreplay with this one could be epic and glorious, Tony very deliberately (albeit with some reluctance) filed that thought away for later and focused again on the game at hand, after quietly clearing his throat. “Never mind. Look, I’m sure if you interrogated him a bit, he might come up with some convincing evidence that recent sh*t going down on earth isn’t part of this Malekith guy’s machinations-”

“Brother,” Thor growled, low and warning. “He seems to think you know something more than you have let on, of the happenings on earth.”

The trickster at the dining table shot Tony an obscene hand gesture.

“Look, I’ve been working with our local Sorcerer Supreme on our issues, and let’s just say I’m pretty sure they’re––well they might be anti-Malekith in nature, more than anything else. Trust me on this, though, we’ve got a good idea who is behind all that, and he’s much closer to me than you, right now.”

The trickster across the table from him bit his lip to contain a hysterical laugh.

“My father is not so convinced,” Thor insisted. “He believes that Malekith is after something on earth, a powerful artifact. We will be venturing into his domain tonight, in the hopes of reaching some understanding, but we need the Casket of Ancient Winters found as soon as possible. It was lost to us when the bi-frost broke, but we believe it landed on earth.”

The on-camera Loki’s expression was a careful blank, except when he winked.

Tony shot the off-camera Loki a questioning look again.

The trickster offered a mild grimace and ran a hand through his hair, but said nothing.

The inventor muted the microphone on his end. “Seriously, though, have you actually got it?”

“It’s safe.”

“Thaaat’s not as reassuring as I think you wish it were.”

“Tony, we can’t hear you,” Jane said loudly. “Are you there?”

Un-muting quickly, Tony said, “I’ll work on it. What do you need it for?”

“Winter is the season of death,” Thor said gravely. “If anything might be of use against forces which have forgotten Death’s sting, that weapon is it. More than that, however, we fear Malekith might seek to open it and disperse the cold somewhere more helpful to his own plans.”

“I’m still personally inclined toward cleansing fire,” Loki mused. “Think about undying things on fire: constantly rebuilding themselves, only for the recovered flesh to just keep burning.”

“Wow, you’re morbid,” Jane muttered, shooting him an odd look.

The on-camera trickster offered a smile bright as a polished knife-blade and just as potentially warning.

“Do you have any suitable means to wield it, brother?” the thunderer asked.

“Oh, maybe. Get me into the weapon’s vault and-”

“No,” Jane and Thor both said flatly: the former with horror, the latter with exasperation.

“No fun, these people,” the trickster sighed. “Malekith may have the weapons of those who cannot die, but they won’t risk sending in their soldiers until they have a rift formed which would allow them to remain sufficiently connected to their deathless universe that they would be indestructible in ours, or manage to destroy Death here by other machinations before they arrive. We would be better off, facing down Malekith’s darkness as well as the void’s deathless things, with fire.”

Tony muttered, “I’m realizing I should’ve offered the other Amon Amarth** shirt.”

“What was that?” Jane asked.

“Nah, nothin’, don’t worry about it. Side note: Infinity Gems, someone has been trying to track a few down. Heard anything about that?” Tony asked.

“You know more than you are letting on, Tony Stark,” Thor said slowly.

“Maybe, a bit, but face it, I’m you’re only hope. Who else will even listen, let alone have the necessary resources to do something about it, too,” the inventor shot back.

“We have known about the gems for some time,” the thunder god admitted. “Thanos’ gauntlet vanished from the weapons vault several months ago.”

Loki at the dining table leaned his chair back and donned a nonchalant expression that made Tony instantly suspicious.

“How many gems missing? And what are they?” Tony asked.

“You would best ask your other information sources,” Thor retorted. “Find the casket, Tony Stark. It was once the most powerful weapon of a great empire, and powered their world and all its machines of war. It will have left a trail.”

“I’ve already got a few ideas for where to start looking,” the inventor mused. “But when I find it, what then? I can’t exactly just call you.”

“Me, you can,” Jane said. “I’ve got the strongest connection to earth, and Loki’s convinced something has, uh, kick-started a bit of psychic sensitivity in my head.”

“Influence from the Dark World. She may or may not be mildly possessed on an intermittent basis,” Loki said. “The frequency of this encrypted broadcast sent to you is the one you’ll need to reach back out to. I’m sure your AI has already deciphered it by now, I kept things fairly basic.”

“JARVIS?”
“Affirmative, sir. I would be able to, as it were, call them back.”

“Get your sorcerer or some other magic-user to aid,” Loki continued. “They will be dragged into a psychic link across the astral plane, which is actually what we’ve used to place this call in the first place. I merely fed it into this convenient device.”

“If she’s possessed and decides not to pick up?” Tony inquired.

“It will wake her. I’ve made certain of that,” Loki responded.

“We’ll keep you updated. You look tired though, Loki. Maybe you should nap soon,” Tony suggested, with an only slightly wicked half-smirk. “Refresh your mind a bit.”

“We will await word from you, and warn you if we hear of any more ships sent to earth, should Heimdall spot them,” Thor concluded. “Thank you, Tony Stark.”

“Anytime, blondie. Bring Dr. Foster back home in one piece, yeah?”

“It’s a work in progress,” Jane cut in, before Thor could respond to that. “Bye, Mr. Stark. Good to speak with you again.”

“Goodbye, fare you well, salutations, and-” He winked. “-sweet dreams.”

The screen and the projection both went dark.

Loki rose to his feet and began pacing, muttering under his breath in a language that hadn’t been spoken by anyone on earth for a few hundred years.

“I don’t know where to start with the questions,” Tony sighed.

“Me neither,” Pepper concurred.

“I’ll kill him,” Loki growled.

“Thor?” Pepper asked.

“Malekith, or your other half?” Tony prompted.

“Malekith,” Loki snarled, stepping up to the inventor close and threatening. “I know his mind, Stark. If he has made a deal with those things, there are only so many possible temptations that they would offer, and which he might actually accept. His kind are from the dark, from a more primeval sort of existence; the void has a place in some of their myths, some of them once worshipped it, long before the nine realms came to be. They do not fear it; it has always been considered one of their options. I’ve been a fool to think he would keep playing Thanos when there are still greater powers so nearby, even more eager to spread foul eldritch whispers than he is.” He turned, raising his hands in a gesture of fed up exasperation.

“Uhm... I know I’m a genius, but I need a little more context,” Tony suggested.

Not missing a beat, Loki rattled off explanation at a rapid pace: “The nine realms are in the branches and roots of Yggdrasil. Malekith’s kin, the dark elves, are only akin to the rest of the races in the nine realms as a tree is akin to the soil it has grown in: same stuff, divided by time, decay, and death. They destroyed their world, killed it long ago, but saved themselves away, sealed away while the storms passed, until another world developed in the same place, part of something far newer. They waited below, in the dark, as Svartálfaheimr grew and prospered, home of Dwarfkind, then emerged with intent to ‘reclaim’ as they saw it. It took Asgard’s aid to banish them, and they hid themselves again, as they did before, cloaking themselves in a shadow just outside the normal passage of time. In fact, they hid in Asgard’s shadow, grew on the underside of it like a distorted mirror we could not touch, for centuries, until they could no longer go unnoticed. They sent Malekith out into the light to speak for them, and Asgard sent myself and Thor into the dark to do likewise, but even I would not call the results peace, for there are indeed lies too great. They have been waiting––and how did I not see this before? Damn the bastards––because they believe that they can wait out the last and worst of storms, the cancer-verse that presses in from outside seeking to break through the walls between. Malekith thinks he might lay low until the rest of our universe is hollowed out and the cancer moves on, no longer focused upon it. He believes he stands a chance of conning them into cleaning out all the worlds for him and his people––he believes that he can give them Death, while also maintaining her like––” He stopped pacing and gesturing, stopped still as stone, with his eyes very wide. “By the Norns’ orgies, damn him, but that’s actually clever! He could prevent them taking Death, but fool the universe temporarily into believing her gone with the same temporal distortion his people have been using all this time to keep mostly out of anyone’s reach! It might actually work, which means I need to kill him all the sooner,” Loki concluded in cold, vicious tones.

Tony and Pepper stared for a long moment as the trickster slowly re-steadied his breathing, his anger cooling just a little, and becoming more calculative.

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you say in one go,” Pepper said lightly. “What or who is ‘Thanos’ exactly?”

“Death’s lover. He is literally in love with the physical manifestation of the idea. She’s quite pretty when she’s got skin and flesh on, but half the time she’s as skeletal as mortals usually envision their Grim Reaper, except that her robes still fit her figure the same either way, which is honestly a bit disturbing. Most call her Mistress Death, particularly Thanos,” Loki muttered, already starting to pace again.

“So this is how we get you to actually provide exposition? Get someone to piss you off in a sufficiently brilliant manner that you can’t shut up about it?” Tony asked.

“Possibly,” Loki snapped. “I don’t recommend it, however, for frequent use.”

“Aw, but why?” the inventor mock-pouted.

“Because it will make me all the more tempted to rip out your entrails and have them dried and woven into the world’s ugliest basket,” the trickster growled. “And my ability to resist violent impulses is severely hampered on such occasions as this.”

“Noted, but while you’re so cooperative, how about those Infinity Gems?” Pepper prompted. “What are they and why are they missing?”

“They are the remains of one of the first sentient beings to ever exist in our universe. It broke apart into six parts, each one only passively sentient in its own odd way. The six parts manipulate different forces in the universe: Souls, Time, Space, Mind, Power, and Reality itself. The last has either been destroyed, or is the most successfully lost artifact in history, but the others were assigned to guardians after the incident wherein Thanos collected all six together, put them in a gauntlet not very creatively named, and destroyed two-thirds of all life in the universe, among other things, before it was all undone by a few souls who knew Thanos’ mind better than he himself did, and set him against himself before it was too late,” Loki rattled off, almost absent-mindedly, as he paced, rubbing his hands together.

“Which ones are missing?” Tony prompted.

“Nice try,” Loki shot back, not sparing him a glance, too busy staring through his surroundings rather than at them.

“You have them, then?” the inventor tried.

“I can’t use them.”

“Why?” Pepper asked.

Loki paused at her chair and leaned down, meeting her gaze steadily. “Because I know myself, Pepper Potts, and I know very well, of late, the limitations of my ability to resist the temptation of unlimited power in various forms.”

“But you have them?” Tony asked again.

“Two. One I did not want, one I cannot risk touching,” Loki responded, with obvious reluctance.

“Power is one, then?” Pepper suggested.

Loki’s grip on the arm of her chair went white-knuckled for a moment, then released. “Just so.”

“Why do you have them? Unless you’re using the Time and Space ones-”

“The only one I would dare risk touching, especially for actual use, would be Soul, and that’s only because I’ve met it before, and it likes me,” Loki snapped. “I don’t collect them for their powers.”

“You’re getting Thanos’ attention,” Tony murmured. “Because they used to be his, and you bet once he hears they’re being collected, and that his old glove is now officially missing-”

“He’ll be working all the harder to open another portal closer to them, which is what I need him to do,” Loki muttered. “That’s not all I need, however. I need him mad with hate, and I need that hate to be aimed somewhere productive. I had known Malekith would be so desperate by now for another world for the ghosts of his people-”

“Ghosts?” Tony asked, at the same tim Pepper exclaimed, “Wait, what?”

“He’s one of the last; their war with the dwarves left them very few in number, in truth, and with none of their venerated elders left: just Malekith the Accursed, for their very last hope. Most of his people are just memories, echoes, and they need him to help them become solid again in the light as well as they are in their carefully-maintained Dark World. The mirroring of Asgard was a warning: he has found more of his kin, more of their souls. It was only a matter of time before their ambition drove them to seek true life again.”

“You said you just needed the Dark World mostly to distract Asgard while you get things done down here,” Tony said slowly. “Will that be enough if he starts attacking earth, too?”

“That’s precisely the problem,” Loki whispered. “I need Malekith kept away from the earth. I had not factored in these ships. I need to distract them. What are the Kree up to, lately?”

“Same thing they do every night, Loki: try to take over the Skrulls,” Tony deadpanned.

“Well, obviously, but I meant in a little more detail,” Loki prompted.

“You don’t trust yourself to distract him?” Pepper offered.

The trickster froze, turning slowly to face her. He took hold of her face reverently and kissed her very firmly on the mouth. “You’re brilliant. I like it,” he said, and vanished abruptly.

Pepper stared at the empty air in front of her, blinked twice, then leaned back in her chair with a sigh, rubbing at her eyes. “My god, I think he’s as crazy as you, but with f*cking magic.”

“Crazier. Much crazier,” Tony corrected. “He’s had more centuries to develop his insanity to its full potential.”

“True,” she conceded.

An awkward pause descended.

“I like him, but not––not the way I-”

“I know,” Pepper said softly.

“But you-”

“I already consider him a friend I want to value,” she said. “He’s right: this isn’t love, right now, but we––you and I fell in love so slowly, mostly without even noticing until suddenly we realized just how much needed each other, and it hurt, Tony. I was so... It was terrifying. We didn’t even notice before then just how much love we had, and still have, and we can’t do that again.”

“You think there’s potential we might? I mean... I didn’t think I could really––be in love, like at all, for a long damn time, Pep. I’m still amazed that I can, that I am, with you.” He strode up to her when she reached for him, and leaned over her so she could touch his face. “You’re impossible and perfect, Pepper Potts. I don’t think I could love anyone else the way I do you.”

She smiled at him, her eyes glassy for a moment until she blinked the tears back a little. “I know. I love you, too, more than I ever believed I could love someone so amazing and annoying and insane as you.”

He laughed a little. “But...”

“Love is more than just us. What we have is amazing, but––there are other shapes love takes, you know?” She let him go, tilting her head a little. “You love pushing, you love chaos and adapting to it and riding the waves of it like a demented surfer, Tony. I can do so much, but there are things you do, chases you go off on, that I can’t follow, you know?”

“You’re enough.”

“I know.” Her smile turned a bit wicked. “When have you ever stopped at ‘enough’ when there was a chance to keep pushing, and see more?”

“Well, there was this one time I destroyed all of this Iron Man armor to show the woman I love that I was letting go of fears and distractions...”

“Tony,” she said quietly. “You won’t lose me. Not to this. You have me, and I’m not letting anyone take you from me, so get that through your frequently-bruised skull right now.”

“You’re sure we won’t––I’m not good at this, I don’t know how real relationships are supposed to work, but this isn’t what any sit-coms ever led me to expect and-”

“Trust me, then,” Pepper whispered.

He stopped, and stared. “You really want to try this, don’t you?”

“You have your adrenaline rushes, I have some of mine. I’m good with people, you know I am. I––I like taking them apart like you do machines, almost, except it’s also a bit like what you must’ve done building JARVIS, but in reverse.”

Finally, Tony started to smile at her, slow and knowing and curious. “Pepper Potts, you sneaky, glorious, and fiendishly clever woman, do you know how much I’m attracted to you right now?”

She blushed a bit and half-heartedly smacked his arm.

“You sure you want to see him that close, though?” he asked. “He’s... well, he’s like a panther, a bit. Really cool-looking and fascinating and intimidating at a safe distance, but at some point when too close up there’s just a lot of teeth and it’s all too clear they evolved to be really good at ripping other animals apart and eating them, and that’s all they really want to do when they aren’t sleeping.”

“You sure you want to get into another war, Tony? There’s an awful lot of jungle full of animals that want nothing more than to rip you apart and eat you, there,” she countered. “Except you like the thrill, and you can’t resist the danger.”

He clicked his tongue. “Damn. No wonder you’ve got me whipped.”

“You like it,” she countered, smiling a bit more slyly even as she blushed.

“I love it.” He took her hand in one of his, lifting it to kiss her knuckles. Then he let her go, and reached for the tablet, checking a few things. “Huh. He did send info, actually, but not about the casket. Looks like an aerial map with... oh, sh*t, that’s a bigger chunk of Siberia than I expected.”

Loki reappeared then coughing smoke and looking a bit more battered than he had a few moments before. “My brother, at least, is sufficiently paranoid for this endeavor to stand some chance of success.” He sat down heavily in the nearest chair. “That really stung.”

“If you were struck by lightning, why is your hair not...” Pepper gestured, her fingers around her head tracing shapes that wouldn’t have been out of place as the silhouette of an improbably punk haircut.

“He’s got magic and an excess of pride,” Tony responded.

“You’re not wrong,” Loki mused and shot him a faint grin. “Jealous?”

“Eh, not overmuch. I don’t pay that much attention to my hair.”

“Liar,” Pepper said flatly.

The inventor tried to shush her, but got intimidated by the glare she sent him and gave up before he was halfway through the attempt, such that it fell apart a bit embarrassingly. He coughed in a vain attempt to cover for it. “So. You tapped yourself for updates?” Tony guessed, in an effort to distract Pepper, as much as to keep getting information while Loki was apparently caught up in a bout of unusually forthcoming verbosity.

“Yes,” the trickster admitted.

“So, wait,” Pepper said. “Getting this straight, you’ve been driving Nightmare crazy here on earth by messing with dreams somehow, there’s something you want under the ground in Siberia that I’m presuming involves ‘cleansing fire’ of some sort, and Doom noticed and presumably got angry that great games were afoot that he wasn’t in charge of, but you’ve also been waiting to get after Malekith who wants to destroy Asgard and has also been making deals with creatures out of H.P. Lovecraft?”

“Also, Malekith and Thanos were on friendly terms, willing to work out deals where conquest of planets around here are concerned,” Tony added helpfully.

“Yes, and still, in the end this is mostly all to get back at Thanos?” Pepper concluded.

“Destroy Thanos, set aflame the darkness trying to press its way in from between universes with primordial heat that might have once burned all of Yggdrasil to ash, and incidentally ruin all of Malekith’s plans in the process: that is my goal,” Loki confirmed, beginning to grin a little more widely. “Apparently, Malekith’s been in contact with Thanos all this while, too, so I’ve just re-discovered.” He tapped his temple. “Oh, I’ve been busier than I expected; I’m so used to the rest of me being bored and boring, it’s hard to think again in terms of being free in two places, but I digress. Thanos is what the ships are really all about: he’s promised Thanos a whole new fleet, and a new portal, presumably so that Asgard will have their forces divided, given their renewed interests in protecting the Earth, and how paranoid Odin always is about any interest in the Infinity Gems, or about Thanos making any return to this galactic region. One of those ships in the fleet will have the portal for Thanos to step through as the ships all converge, and that ship will be mine.”

“You sound disconcertingly pleased by this,” Pepper said.

“The ships are manned by ghosts, ideas, memories of people,” Loki mused. “They will destroy mortals and gain more solidity as they go, theoretically.” He giggled a little, and wiped at the corner of his eye. “They’re souls. Nothing but souls.”

“You don’t have the Soul gem,” Tony said slowly.

“I don’t require it. No, not at all, not for this, don’t you see?”

“Because of Death?” Pepper prompted.

“Exactly, my dear. I just need to make sure that Thanos knows Malekith has his gauntlet, and Mistress Death needs to know what deals dear Malekith has made.”

Tony whistled. “You think she’s been missing those lost souls?”

“Oh yes,” Loki all but purred. “Quite.”

“What about Siberia?”

“That’s the tricky part, but that was always the tricky part,” Loki sighed. “Plans haven’t changed for Siberia.”

“What were they in the first place?” Pepper insisted.

“Oh, there’s a fire-giant under it,” Tony supplied. “Big, bad, nasty one.”

“And Hydra is mining for it?!”

“Oh, they’re months behind schedule,” Loki sighed melodramatically. “So much in-fighting amongst the leadership, several terrible workplace accidents, and a constant cat-and-mouse game with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents... It’s no wonder they get so little done.”

Pepper’s eyebrows raised. “Wow. You’re good.”

He beamed at her: pure mischief. “Not at all.” Then he picked up a sandwich from the plate of them on the table and took a bite, chewing contently.

“Is there any way we can help?” she then added.

The trickster coughed, and only narrowly avoided choking. After a hard swallow and a long sip of water, he gingerly set down his sandwich. “Pardon?”

“It’s my planet, and I’d like to help prevent some collateral damage where possible,” she explained.

“Plus, this kinda sounds like fun,” Tony added, as he sat down at the table with them and set his tablet aside.

“Tony,” Pepper warned darkly.

“What? That’s not allowed?”

“I didn’t mean to encourage him,” Loki apologized.

“Don’t you start!” Tony growled, jabbing an accusing finger Loki’s way. “I was thinking about little pockets of temporal disturbance throughout the upper atmosphere over most of the planet except Siberia: little ones, not even enough to mess with any satellites, but many many many of them. If the ships are appearing here from outside the normal flow of time, those would mess with their systems, particularly navigation. They would see the only clear, identifiable place to show up, to be right where you need them to be. I could probably get Reed and Doc Strange working on it before sunset tomorrow, since I’m meeting with them for lunch.”

Loki started a bit, staring at the inventor for a long moment before he could quite formulate a response. “I’m both disconcerted and aroused.”

“We’re even, then. I’m usually like that around you, lately, especially when you’re talking. Now, how are you going to get Thanos to really believe Malekith has been the one running around and nicking gems?”

“Surreptitious dream-walking,” Loki said. “With enough effort, I can mimic his mistress for a while, which will in turn irritate her. The nature of dreams is such that she often appears in his, and has a connection to them sufficient for me to catch her attention through them. I can then introduce her to the Dark World, and offer to return all of its lost, entrapped souls to her keeping, back where they belong.”

“You’re sure you won’t get caught between the two of them?” Pepper asked.

“I’ve been at this for millennia,” Loki drawled.

“Still sounds a bit risky,” she sighed. “Doesn’t he have any advisors he’d listen to? Anyone who gets visions with any sort of regularity?”

“Well... yes, the leader of the Chitauri would match that description,” Loki mused. “And Thanos reads his mind with some frequency. I would just have to scare the living daylights out of him with visions of Malekith’s plans and give them a heavy dose of apparent prophecy. Oh, sweet petty revenge: I like it.”

“How long ‘til he notices?” Tony stage whispered.

Pepper kicked his shin under the table.

“Notice what, dare I ask?” Loki inquired.

“You’re involving us in your plans,” Pepper pointed out. “Not just revealing them, but giving us real input.”

The trickster paled a little. “By the Nine... you both manipulated me.”

“Successfully,” Pepper added, with a slightly playful smile.

“How’s it feel?” Tony asked lightly.

Loki leaned back in his chair and covered his mouth with his hand, glancing between the two of them with an alarmed expression. “I think I have incredibly good taste, and horrible judgement.”

The inventor laughed a little. “Welcome to my world.”

“Are you all right?” Pepper asked, resting a hand over one of the trickster’s.

“I... believe that I am,” he said slowly. “In a doomed sort of way.”

“You really should stop thinking you’re doomed just because we like you as much as you like us,” she said quietly. “You’re allowed to have people in your life you care about without being doomed to suffer in the end, not every time. We’re not like people you’ve known before, and I can at least promise you that.”

Loki took her hand and examined her expression, reading it. “You’re crazier than the both of us, Pepper Potts.”

“I know. It’s because I keep a conscience around. Irrational as it may be, I like being a good person most of the time,” she said.

“Good people are bothered by me, generally. Particularly my history,” the god reminded her.

She only winked at him. “Just because I keep it around doesn’t mean I really listen all that closely. Eat your lunch.”

Loki kissed the back of her hand, and released it in order to pick up his sandwich again. He caught Tony shooting him a shrewd sort of look and reached over with his free hand, grabbed one of Tony’s and kissed it too, before letting him go and taking a bite of his sandwich while Pepper laughed at Tony’s disconcerted expression.