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When Tony woke up, he found his husband sitting cross-legged on the far side of the bed, channeling Dr. Doolittle with a pair of large black birds. Loki didn't look happy, in his special new Unwilling King of Asgard, "This news pleases us not!" kind of way.He'd clearly showered recently, because his now shoulder-length curls were still damp, and the birds must have barged in before Loki had a chance to fight his usual morning hair-battle. Barring some semi-powerful magical intervention, those curls would be there for the duration.Poor Lok, he hated his natural hair with a fiery burning passion (Tony, on the other hand, found it adorable) and he'd be mortified to have to attend his very first Avengers meeting looking less than perfect by his own particular Loki standards.To Tony, he already looked perfect, and if Loki hadn't been otherwise engaged, he would have told him exactly that, maybe reinforcing the assertion with some practical examples--the more physical those examples happened to be, the better.To the casual observer, the big birds appeared to be making lame excuses, the two of them cawing dolefully and shuffling their shiny jet-black feet. They had a look Tony'd seen many times before, the look of mediocre employees recently under new management, employees who'd previously been poorly supervised and were kind of used to just sliding by in their work. They were clearly totally unused to a king who had certain standards to uphold (not running the kingdom as a tyrant's paradise, for one), and was not merely immune to flattery, but also totally saw straight through their bullshit when they tried to fudge the truth.Ha ha, assholes, meet the new boss, NOT the same as the old boss, Tony thought--then, like any sensible guy whose husband is having an unsatisfying royal business conversation with avian messengers from the Realm of the Gods--because that happens every day--he padded off, used the bathroom, took his own shower, then pulled on some respectable-enough-to slide-by-where-everyone-knew-and-was-used-to-his-slovenly-ways kind of clothes--comfortably worn jeans and a long-sleeved tee that had managed to survive the conflagration at the penthouse by virtue of having somehow wound up shoved beneath the daybed in his workshop --for that morning's meeting.When he returned, he found the visitors had (literally) flown the coop, and that Loki had shifted his cross-legged sitting to the exact center of the bed. The reluctant new King of Asgard now had a half-frustrated, half sad-puppy expression on his face and was twirling a large black feather between his fingers."If you hold it in your trunk and flap your ears you'll be able to fly," Tony deadpanned."I have not..." Loki began, then gave a dry little laugh. "Ah, yes, the Dumbo of Walter Disney. Most amusing.""Sound more amused, then?" Tony slid up behind him on the bed, pulling Loki close--the better to kiss his neck while rubbing a hand in soft circles over his husband's delightfully rounded belly."You got up what, like, thirty times last night, and now I find you up early, taking on the middle management? Are you feeling okay, babe? You must be pooped.""Pooped...?" Loki repeated flatly, his tone and his expression both hovering somewhere between confused and disgusted. It having been considered perfectly acceptable back home in the Golden City to openly discuss acts of extreme violence, but beyond the pale to mention natural physical functions, his husband could be oddly prim (by U.S. standards, anyway) when it came to certain subjects."Oops, sorry. Um... tired? Exhausted?""Ah." Loki laughed. "You realize, of course, that to an outsider your American idiom can seem odd in the extreme?" Loki stretched like a cat, his spine making a series of little crackling noises."It is my misfortune," Loki went on, "That the head of your son rests directly atop my bladder. He also demands feeding at ridiculous intervals, and so I am indeed, as you say, 'pooped.' After the meeting, I intend to come home and wallow upon the sofa, where I shall binge-watch something unenlightening in most unbecoming sloth.""Binge-watch," no less. Tony laughed internally and kissed him again--how could he help it? His husband was too adorable, with his big words and those big puppy eyes, and the way, even when using slang, he tended to sound all posh and proper. "I think you've more than earned some downtime, my gorgeous sloth. And definitely some wallowing. Want me to get the kids out the door this morning? I'll let you totally off the hook except for goodbye kisses and maybe Hela's hair. She claims I'm incompetent, probably based on the fact that she always looks messier after I'm done than she did when I started.""Our curls came down to us from my father, the noble Hodr," Loki said, looking thoughtful and a little sad, "And, of course from Frigga, my dearest grandmother." Even now, when he'd had some time to get used to the idea, Loki's voice got a little weird when he talked about Frigga being his grandmother--or, for that matter, Odin being his grandfather-by-blood, rather than his kinda-father-by-thievery-and-subterfuge.Though, of course, for totally different reasons.Tony knew it gave Loki pleasure now to look at his children and detect a gesture, a glance, a way of speaking that reminded him of Frigga. Maybe she wasn't everything she'd needed to be, but she'd raised him (more or less), and Loki had loved her. He'd always love her. There'd been so little else for him to love, growing up.Tony sometimes thought the type of people who would smugly proclaim, "Everyone gets to choose their own actions," probably never in their lives had to suffer through the kind of upbringing that made making good choices so damn hard. He knew he himself had been an utter asshole to Loki at the start, so fucking superior, so willing to blast first and ask questions later. Even when he and Loki traded words, he'd talked at him, not to him, when a blind man could have seen the hurt bubbling up from Loki's vast well of pain.Yet even after all that, in the most extreme of extreme circumstances, Loki had come to him, trusting Tony, of all the people in the world, to save his children."You appear thoughtful, beloved." Loki turned his face, touching Tony's cheek with one long, slender hand, then capturing his lips in a deep, warm, toe-curling kiss. "It should be said, you remain incompetent in one thing only, and that is in the dressing of Hela's hair. As it is, indeed, supremely obstinate hair, I believe you may be excused for your failure."His hand moved slightly, cupping Tony's cheek now, and his green eyes, only inches from Tony's, flickered from bright to dark, studying him so intently it seemed as if they read every line in his face and every thought in his head."You have changed so, my beloved," he said, after about a minute of this highly-focused scrutiny. "I would say I scarcely know you, except that I know this kindness is not new, that it always lay within you. And yet you will inform me, Tony, will you not, if you ever miss your wilder days? If you are ever dissatisfied with having been so thoroughly domesticated?""I'm happy with you, babe," Tony said simply, wishing he could show his husband just how deeply he meant the words, that things that had pestered him for the better part of his life now weren't even really an issue, that the little ship of himself now lay snugly at anchor in the only safe harbor it had ever known.Loki kissed him again. "My husband, you are most worthy of adoration, and so I do adore you, with the whole of my heart. Let us, together, get our children ready for school."He didn't mention his earlier convocation of rooks, or unkindness of ravens, or whatever the hell that had been--but Tony knew his husband well enough at this point to have picked up on a couple things.One, that the birdy confab really hadn't filled him with joy.Two, that Loki was not only worried, he was nervous as hell about something--though that might just have had to do with his first official Avengers meeting (including his swearing-in, which Tony thought was dumb, though Steve insisted that kind of ritual was important, and Loki seemed to agree with him) taking place that morning.Come to think of it, the thing bothering Loki could just as easily have been the recent reappearance of his not-ever-friend, the repetitively named necromancer, evil (possible) Super-Soldier and (almost certainly) Hydra flunky, Professor Nels Lars "Judas" Nelson, and the--literally--hellish battle that had taken place atop Avengers Tower just the week before."You know you don't need to worry, right?" he asked, resting a hand in the small of Loki's back to steady him as he began the slightly complicated process of shifting his very pregnant self off the bed."Here's what happens," Tony continued, "Steve cooks, and we eat, a shit-load of pancakes. Steve--or possibly Natasha, now she's our new fearless leader--makes a dull speech. We kind of toss ideas back and forth for a while, most of the time straying totally off-topic, then someone wins the bet about how many dozen pancakes your brother managed to consume in one sitting. That's about it, really.""And the oath-taking." A little tremor went through Loki's muscles, though Tony knew he'd tried hard to conceal it."Oh, babe..." Tony sighed. "See, I knew it. I knew you were worried. It always does make you hyper-snuggly.""It does not," Loki breathed."You saved us, my BAMF baby. Without you, the team, the tower, and probably even the entire island of Manhattan would have been crispy critters, and if Clint had the same equipment you do, he'd now want to personally bear your beautiful babies, he loves you so much. You and the kids having saved him from a truly heinous death and all."Clint, it had to be said, was still going around with his arm in a sling, to spare his bad shoulder, and a more-than-slightly-haunted look on his newly-gaunter-than-usual face. Having been used, in the course of the battle, as a giant hell-spider's handy human egg sac wasn't easy on a guy, and if Loki and the kids--and most especially, Loki--hadn't been present...Well, it would have been "goodnight, Clint," in the most gruesome possible way.The actual hatching of those eggs had been horrific to the power of infinity, and it was all down to Team Loki that the eruption of said nasty baby spiders took place safely in the Hulk Tank, not inside the body of everyone's favorite archer.Bucky had vacated the Tank permanently. For one thing, by his behavior in the battle, he'd pretty much proven no real need remained to keep him locked up. Yes, Loki continued to work with him, slowly teasing out the shit Hydra implanted in his head, but his intent was to bring Bucky peace of mind, not to prevent him from going all Winter Soldier on their collective asses.Bucky, quite understandably, said the Tank now gave him the heebie-jeebies, and who could blame the guy? Loki had done one of his spiffy magical clean-ups, leaving the place shiny again, but memories lingered, and none of them were anxious to return to the site of those particular horrors.Which was to say, it wasn't only Bucky who had terrible dreams about that night and the following morning, Tony would be willing to bet they all did, to some degree, maybe even Natasha, whose head was generally cooler than the rest of theirs combined.The thought of the all-out war on top of his beautiful tower, followed by the subsequent battle to save Clint's life, wasn't something Tony wanted to think about too much either. The flashbacks still made him feel more than a bit sick and shaky, and he couldn't even imagine what they did to his husband, who'd already gone through all sorts of hell even before all hell broke loose, and had been right in the very thick of it."I acted as I must," Loki said softly--but Tony could practically hear the bad messages of a thousand years clanging like alarm bells inside his head.He squeezed Loki's hand, gently but firmly, until he saw that he'd fully gained his husband's attention. "It's not just repaying a debt owed, babe. That's not why we asked you to join. You're one of us now. You belong. Not only do your bro and I love you like crazy, each in our individual ways, but the others like you a lot. Genuinely like you, and not just for what you can do. They like you, Loki Laufeyson Stark, for yourself. Just as you are."Loki let out a slow, shuddering breath and drew himself up to his full height. "I shall listen to your words, husband.""Good. Because I'm not bullshitting you. I'm really not.""Yet another odd fecal reference," Loki remarked, looking superior.Tony couldn't help but laugh.They left the bedroom expecting to find four half-awake, semi-grumpy and wild-haired children wandering like zombies around the apartment, but instead discovered four washed, brushed, and neatly-uniformed kids already at the table, being fed a substantial breakfast by the always-reliable Mrs Ransome.Sleip's work, Tony guessed. Their eldest took his position as big brother and head kid seriously, and he beamed when Loki spoke a few soft and complimentary words to him in Aes."There are crepes!" Loki exclaimed then, and dived in headfirst, scarcely even bothering to settle into his usual seat beside Fen before he loaded up his plate. Since his husband remained pretty much as skinny as ever except for his giant baby bump, Tony could only assume Edwin would be born the size of a linebacker."Is there whipped cream?" Loki asked plaintively."I can easily make some for you, dear," Mrs. Ransome replied. Their family cook loved Loki.Everyone who didn't know who he really was loved Loki.His husband stopped, eyes huge and meltingly green, one cheek bulged out slightly with half-chewed crepe."That's not what I meant," Tony said. "Loki, you know that's not how I think of you.""I should shower," said the clearly-already-showered Loki softly, pushed back his plate, and left the table.Four sets of green eyes turned on Tony accusingly."Nice job, Dad," Jöri told him."Nice," Fen echoed.Hela merely sighed and shook her head, while Sleipnir looked confused. A few seconds later he looked less confused--one of his siblings obviously having sent him backstory along the family grapevine.Mrs. Ransome brought Tony a cup of coffee and patted his shoulder. "I wouldn't worry too much, Mr. Stark. Pregnancy hormones can make a person awfully emotional, and I'm not sure the news from Asgard was good this morning."Tony had a sudden image of his family as the subject of a Sunday evening animated series, featuring himself as the doofus dad who never could get anything right. He might as well work at a nuclear power plant and have a donut obsession."It's not that bad... Homer," Hela told him indulgently.Two minutes later Loki reappeared, fully dressed for the upcoming meeting (which meant he looked about a thousand times more elegant than Tony himself), and--best of all--composed."I cannot hold you responsible for the unvoiced thoughts that enter your head," he told Tony, "However ill-worded. I know you truly meant that those aware of my previous reputation are, ever, understandably harder to win over than those unaware, and that is true, even perhaps justified.""You totally came back for the crepes," Tony accused.Loki laughed, his green eyes sparkling. "Yes, that much is also true."Loki got snuggly again in the elevator heading up to Avengers Central, wrapping Tony in his arms and pulling him closer than close, kissing his neck, running those crazy-long fingers of his through Tony's hair."I am very sorry I was cross with you at breakfast," he murmured. "Do you forgive me? It is difficult for me just now to..." His head dropped onto Tony's shoulder suddenly. "Oh, I do not like this elevator! I do not! Hold me tightly, please."Tony held him, as commanded, while a leaf-green light shimmered around his husband's body and the elevator sped on to their destination. He assumed that the speed made Loki uncomfortable, his inner ears--or whatever his body possessed that served the same purpose--not keeping up with the rapid motion. Loki wasn't necessarily the most patient guy, and he liked to move fast, under normal circumstances, that was for sure--but moving fast clearly wasn't the most fun thing ever for him in his current condition.In the old days, Tony would just have ordered JARVIS to slow their rate of descent, but since that ship had sailed (in the most emotionally painful possible way), he should reprogram the elevators to detect who was riding and adjust the speed accordingly...No, what he should really do was bite the bullet and design a replacement for JARVIS (maybe dust off the "Friday" A.I. he'd scrapped some time ago, when his shiny positronic boy proved so much more interesting), adding extra safeguards to make sure Friday didn't get sad and jealous and do bad shit, or fall into any other unfortunate habits that Tony had never anticipated.He'd gone from being furious at J. to grieving a bit over the whole situation, because, in a way, he'd lost two sons in the previous year--JARVIS, the child of his mind, and his constant friend and companion, and baby Wilhelm, child of his body, and of Loki's.His eyes stung, and the familiar self-reproach welled up inside him. He'd never meant to let his greatest creation down, but he had, Tony knew that now. He'd totally failed to anticipate how much of a person the A.I. would become, and to make him feel... What? Special? Important? Loved?He also hadn't meant to let the bad guys--whoever they were--get to his husband, making Loki get sick over and over again with viruses his altered body couldn't fight off, illnesses that caused him endless suffering. That killed their child, and that nearly broke the two of them."Beloved, my beloved," Loki said softly, taking Tony's hand in his own, pressing their twined hands over his heart. "We've arrived.""Yeah." Tony pulled in a deep, shaky breath, and ran his free hand back through his already-messy hair. "Yeah, I guess we have."
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"They have arrived!" Thor announced, flinging open the door to Avengers Central so enthusiastically it rebounded off the wall with a resounding BOOM! and nearly shut itself again in their faces. Clearly a thunder god gone bouncy with excitement was a thing to be feared, and Tony couldn't help but worry for the safety of any and all breakable objects (or even semi-breakable objects, such as doors) that found themselves anywhere close to his brother-in-law's orbit.So much for our subtle entrance, Tony thought, too, as Thor delivered smacking kisses to each of his cheeks, then enfolded him in a rib-crushing hug.He forgave all, though, when the god of thunder turned to his brother, and Tony noticed tears clouding Thor's bright blue eyes. His tree-trunk arms enfolded Loki so tenderly the younger god might have been made of spun glass, and when Loki embraced him back there wasn't a trace in either his expression, or his thoughts, of cynicism, or mockery, or even, "Oh, Thor, what now?"Only genuine affection showed between the two brothers, and that was a touching thing, dammit, especially to those who knew how much it cost to get there, counted up in years' worth of grief, loss and fear. Tony had to admit his eyes got a little prickly. Not too prickly (he was Tony-fuckin'-Stark, after all, and had to preserve at least some of his cool), but a little."Áin rennur til sætleik í lok," Loki murmured, and Thor's eyes overflowed. Being a god, after all, not to mention huge and more-than-humanly handsome, he didn't need to protect his image--let lesser mortal-type guys like Tony worry about that kind of shit."The river runs to sweetness in the end"--that's what Loki had told him (Tony surprised himself by having understood every word). It was a proverb, he recalled, or part of one anyway, because he'd once heard Loki recite nearly the same phrase to Hela, as a way of telling her all her hard work would be rewarded. Something in Loki's intonation, though, gave the words even deeper meaning--a sense of hardships survived and dangers faced through centuries of shared history."Breakfast is almost ready, guys!" Steve called from the kitchen. "It's pancakes!"Well, there's a surprise, Tony thought, tipping a wink at Bruce, who was over at the unset end of the table, engaged in cutting four or five different types of melon into neat cubes.Someone Tony knew would be happy--namely Loki, who loved melons of all kinds, especially now when he was eating for two and felt a certain guilt about feeding his omnipresent sweet tooth with junk. It hit Tony suddenly that the others had arranged this especially for his husband. They nearly always had fruit of some kind--Nat, with her crazy adult ways, insisted--but this was the first time for melons, at least for multiple types of melon, and he suspected that they, like the pineapples of old, were meant as a sign of welcome.Tony glanced up to see Steve smiling, and found himself grinning back in return. He felt like Sally Field winning the Oscar, like he wanted to call out, "You like us! You really like us!"He looked around for his husband to share the good news, and found him kneeling in front of the sofa, at Clint's feet, his hand inside Clint's shirt as he examined the archer's spider-bite wound. The operated on and stitched areas looked decent enough, but the bite-marks themselves remained puckered and blue-black, still high on the scale of yuck.A look of intense concentration tightened Loki's features, and it hit Tony suddenly how tired his guy looked, as if Loki had been keeping a mask of health and vitality firmly in place, but right now he needed the energy that mask required for other, more important things.It occurred to Tony that they hadn't seen much of Clint since the hideous events at the Hulk Tank--now he understood the reason. The back of the archer's neck, the line of his shoulders, appeared tense, one might even say, "miserably tense," and Phil stood right behind the couch, up close to his boyfriend in a way that spoke of not wanting to be too obvious about it, one hand on Clint's uninjured shoulder, the other clenched deep into the back-of-sofa cushions."You ought to have told me," Loki said softly."You've done so much for us," Phil answered in return. "Of course, it goes without saying that your membership in the Avengers takes the place of any and all other community service, as well as your weekly check-in. Consider yourself freed of other obligations, Loki.""But I love the Club of Boys and Girls," Loki protested. "Supervisor Jorge is my dear friend. He and the children would miss me. Who would teach them music, if I did not, or read with them? To learn music and to read for pleasure improves children's scholarship, and if they become excellent scholars, there is greater chance they will further their education and be able to make use of the scholarship funds I, with Pepper to advise me, have put aside for when they have grown."That was both news to Tony, and no surprise at all--Loki honestly did frickin' love those kids. He was always looking for ways to improve their lives without getting caught, whether by sneaky acts of healing, or by magically enhancing their shabby winter coats. His latest project, apparently, was that everyone, Loki and Jorge included, had started learning to knit, as a pretext for all the children (and their families) making it through the winter with warm hats, scarves and gloves. How could the kids' parents, after all, object to, or feel insulted by, items their children made with their own two little hands?Tony would have paid good money to see Jorge, Loki's supervisor, in action, needles in hand--the guy was easily twice Thor's size, and topped Loki's height by nearly a foot. Loki, of course, looked elegant when he sat knitting in front of the TV, of course throwing in all sorts of fancy stitches, though he'd learned the skill only during the last month."There. Yes, there. I believe I've found the spot," Tony's husband was saying, his voice softly musical, his hand gloved in green light. His fingertips stroked gently over the dark, ugly scar on Clint's now-bare shoulder, blood dripping now in slow splotches onto one leg of Clint's jeans.Loki's blood, his nose dripping as he sank deep into his magic, so deep that he'd started calling on his own physical resources to get the job done.Clint's breathing slowed, and his head lolled back against his boyfriend's middle, only the support of Phil's hands keeping it more or less upright. His eyes had also rolled far back into his head, leaving the archer looking as out of it as Tony had ever seen him--and he'd seen Clint in a lot of situations."Yes, here it is," Loki said. The green light flared, flashing bright enough to make Tony blink, and afterwards blink again, trying to get rid of the big red spots now swarming in his vision. Slowly, after that, the green ebbed, until Loki's hand once more appeared as only its everyday pale and elegant self.Loki withdrew his touch, flexing and rubbing his fingers, Clint blinking at him sleepily. Tony passed his husband a box of tissues."Only the merest drop remained," Loki told Phil, "Though that drop might still have proved deadly. Clint should eat lightly now, then sleep for many hours. Do not wake him except in dire necessity, but leave water near the bed, as he will be thirsty and to drink deeply will aid in washing the last of the toxins from the rivers of his blood. In the morning, he will feel well, but attempt to keep him in a state of quietness, as much activity ought to be avoided over the next day or so. I suggest you together binge-watch the television programme of the very dirty Vikings, as Thor and I have been doing, for it is diverting and full of intrigue and adventure, if historically somewhat inaccurate."Loki pushed back his errant curls with one hand. That hand was trembling, Tony noted.Phil gave him a grin that appeared grateful, relieved, amused and shaken--after all, how often did a guy see his boyfriend magically healed, then receive TV viewing advice from a thousand-year-old SpaceViking god? That would be one to write about in his diary, if Phil kept a diary, which Tony would have bet good money that he did. He seemed like that kind of guy--though he probably insisted his diary be called a "journal," on the principle that it sounded less like one of those little white pleather-covered books with the easily-broken locks that girls tended to receive as birthday gifts during their tweens.Phil's giant dog, Anastasia, padded over, delivered a delicate lick to Loki's cheek then arranged her elegant self beside him. Loki leaned on her gratefully, burying his face in the white-velvet fur between her once-again-sharp-pointed ears.That was it, Tony decided, Loki was definitely getting the puppy he wanted. If anyone deserved a furry friend (in addition to Kurt), that person (aka, immortal god of the Northmen) was his husband.Not a Great Dane, though, like Anastasia, much as Loki loved her. Tony had heard one too many stories from Clint about waking up hugging a giant dog when he thought he was snuggling his boyfriend."Lok..." He began.Loki smiled up at him then, one arm still circling Anastasia's powerful shoulders, his face weary but content. "I should like that very much, beloved," he said softly, almost shyly, then added, "Phillip, you need no longer be concerned. As I have said, a pocket lingered here..." Loki touched his own shoulder in demonstration. "Not of eggs--we missed none--but of an infinitesimal drop of venom. I should not have overlooked its presence, and I pray your forgiveness most heartily. Clint, truly, why did you not summon me before this? Did you believe I would refuse you? When would I ever refuse you?"Clint's eyes focused, meeting Loki's. They shared a silent moment, telling each other the gods only knew what, before Loki glanced away.It wasn't like Loki, at all, to be the one who glanced away."Pardon me," he said, his voice suddenly as shaky as his hands. "I must... what do you say? Wash up? I must wash up, then I suggest we hold the ceremony of swearing, so that Clint may depart from us, and profit from his rest." With Tony's help, he hauled himself upright, then disappeared swiftly into the washroom."If we're going to have a ceremony of swearing," Clint said hoarsely, "Maybe Tony should officiate.""Ha-fucking-ha, asshole, very funny," Tony responded--but gently. Clint still sat slumped, nearly boneless, on the sofa. He also looked pale, and exhausted, and as if his past few days hadn't exactly been a whole heaping load of fun.But then, had anyone's? Tony wondered if the others also dreamed, each and every night, about being massively attacked by spiders. Massively attacked by massive spiders. Massive massive spiders.Loki reappeared from the bathroom. He looked about ten shades dead-whiter than his usual dead white, but his eyes were bright, his hands steadier than they'd been."Stephen, I am prepared," he said, sounding pretty much like his usual self. "Will your pancakes hold?""They'll be fine, Loki." Steve gave his hands a quick wash at the sink and wiped them on his apron (today's apron was black, with cherries on it, and a red ruffle, for whatever reason.Tony always wondered where Cap got the things, and why, because as far as he knew, Manhattan hadn't suffered a sudden dire shortage of ordinary, plain chefs' aprons perfectly suitable for guys, and also for women who weren't June Cleaver.Steve hung the Suzy Homemaker special neatly on a hook."Thor, did you bring the book?" he asked.Thor grinned, bounding off like a happy golden retriever to fetch the volume in question.Tony recognized at once what it was: a plain, battered journal bound in ordinary brown leather. The journal, in fact, of Loki's late father, Hodr Odinson.The same father Odin (Loki's biological grandfather, the rat-bastard) had callously murdered because (among other things), he dared to love his half-Jötunn son."I will gladly swear on that book," Loki said softly, his eyes meeting his brother's (technically, his uncle's, but Thor and Loki had, vehemently, declared themselves still brothers, always brothers, and who was he or anyone else to argue with that?), "For there is none dearer to my heart, or that I hold more sacred."Loki moved over to stand in front of Steve and Natasha. Nat said some stuff about fierceness and courage in battle. Steve followed her speech with some more stuff about truth, justice and the American way--his usual schtick--then the two of them accepted the book from Thor.Loki touched the cover reverently with his right hand, saying the newly-minted oath after them--swearing, Tony noted, not "by Almighty God," but "by the blood of my father, and all his true fathers, and by the dear blood of my children."To Tony, it was the usual malarkey, but to his husband... well, the air had a weird, electrically charged feeling, and clearly Loki took the whole thing with deadly seriousness. By the time they finished, he not only appeared at least five shades more pale than the original ten shades paler that he'd been minutes before, but was visibly shaking.Even Steve, who tended to be Captain Oblivious at the best of times, took notice."Loki," he said, "Why don't you sit down for a minute and collect yourself? I'll get back to my cooking and give a shout when everything's ready, okay?"Loki nodded, sinking gratefully down onto the couch beside Clint, the journal still clutched in one hand.Clint, surprisingly, wrapped him up in a one-armed hug, holding Loki tight as he whispered something, at length, into his ear."Yes?" he said to Loki when they finally parted."Yes," Loki responded, once more sounding and looking, if anything, a little shy."I'm off then," the archer told the room in general. "Catch you later, lady and germs.""See ya later, slacker," Tony told him, as Clint, with Phil's support, stagger-walked out of Avengers Central.He didn't mean the words--they were only what Clint (what everyone, really) expected of him.Loki accepted a tall glass of orange juice from Bruce, gulped it down, and instantly fell fast asleep sitting up on the couch, not even stirring when Tony and his brother rearranged him into a more comfortably prone position, slid a cushion under his head and covered him with the warm blanket Thor fetched from one of the bunkrooms.The god of thunder pushed aside the coffee table to kneel by his brother's side, first running a big hand over Loki's rounded abdomen, then stroking back his black curls."Loki is very tired," he said softly. "The baby takes much of his energy, and he becomes depleted. He should not, for any reason, perform feats of magic for some days. It was well done, Bruce, that you brought him drink. Now he should sleep a little, and in time we will rouse him and see that he eats well."He bent low to kiss Loki's forehead, saying after, "Sofa vel, hugrakkur bróðir minn."
Sleep well, my valiant brother.
Tony couldn't help himself--he found it touching. It was touching, dammit, and he'd fight anyone who argued otherwise.He joined the others at the table still in a funny state of mind. In fact, they were all unusually subdued, missing Clint, naturally, but missing Loki too. This was meant to be a triumphant celebration, but it wasn't. It felt weird. Even Thor seemed to be slowing down after his twelfth pancake, and just watching him constantly turn his head to check the couch and its occupant was giving Tony whiplash.As if by mutual consent, none of them touched the melon squares, Those were Loki's melon squares, his alone, until he told them differently, and since he continued to sleep...Should I wake him? Tony wondered. The gods know he needs the sleep, but by now he must also need to eat.He had no idea which was more important at the moment, which of his husband's needs he should attempt to meet--until fate solved the problem for him, with a prolonged screeching noise, followed by an explosion that filled their headquarters with sulfurous air.Only, Tony knew that smell. Knew it well. Which meant the explosion wasn't really an explosion, it had to be..."Kurt?" Bruce, to whom the smell also appeared familiar, had already leaped to his feet and left the table, racing across the room.Loki was up too--sitting up at least, and tangled in his blanket. Even the back of his head looked confused."Hilf mir!" Kurt cried out. "Loki, my lieber Freund, help me, I beg you. He's dying! Logan is dying!"
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Kurt was out of it, completely out of it, down on the carpet and dead to the world. Impossible to tell if his eyes were rolled back, but they were bloodshot as hell, and he also had blood gushing out of his nose and from one of his ears, staining the collar of the ragged blue-flannel shirt he wore instead of either his usual red-and-black uniform or the all-black reinforced number the Xies wore when the shit really and truly hit the fan.The clothes spoke of the backwoods to Tony, the flannel over an equally trashed waffle-weave tee and green army pants, filthy and stained, black crud ground, especially, into the knees and tiny balls of rapidly melting ice clinging to the hems. Kurt's bare feet were like hamburger, even showing glints of metal where the tough artificial skin of his biomechanical prosthesis had torn through down to the works.Nat crouched on her knees beside him. She slapped Kurt's cheek, first lightly, then harder, even pinching his earlobe with her sharp nails, trying to get him to wake up, maybe to tell them all what had happened, maybe to let them know if they should expect some threat to follow.Don't, Tony thought, Don't. Don't wake him. Even if you can--which I totally doubt, wouldn't it be kinder not to?How far had Kurt teleported, carrying Logan, no less? With his muscles-upon-muscles and adamantium-reinforced skeleton, maybe the guy didn't literally weigh a ton, but adamantium in and of itself was fucking heavy stuff, probably putting Logan somewhere up near Thor's range for weight, even if he stood a foot shorter, or more, than the god of thunder, and 'porting Thor even a couple floors had knocked Kurt for a serious loop not long back.Also, Kurt's usual range, Tony--who couldn't stop himself, even at a time like this, from thinking like an engineer--was just under three kilometers, and three kilometers worked fine for his usual purposes, which included things like getting to his classes on time, staying on top of the X-kiddies' youthful shenanigans, and frustrating the hell out of people trying in vain to punch his lights out.Kurt had hinted that he'd once jumped much further. Much, much further. But he'd also said it was just before he died. Tony took that one with a grain of salt, mostly because he hadn't really understood what Kurt meant.The German, usually so down-to-earth, could wax surprisingly metaphysical at times.The real reason, though, that Tony didn't want Kurt to wake up just then was that Logan clearly wasn't dying, he was completely fucking dead. As in blue, stiff and beyond the ability to respond to anything. His claws and his hair-trigger temper and his big, loving, ferocious hero's heart stilled forever.Poor Kurt. Oh, gods, poor Kurt.Bruce, down on his knees beside the corpse that had once been one of the most savage fighters Tony had ever known (and he'd known a few), almost a father to his husband, a loving friend and surrogate uncle to their children, looked up, caught Tony's eyes and shook his head, in that certain way everyone in their line of work understood.He's gone, that headshake said. Wolverine's gone.Ironically, on the surface, Logan--except for his state of deadness--looked better than Kurt had, the fact that he hadn't died instantly betrayed by his healing factor having kicked in to close up any superficial wounds. The thing that actually killed him must have been cataclysmic, but his body fought on, much like Wolverine himself, to the bloody, bitter end.Loki, also, awkwardly, on his knees, one hand resting on Logan's massive and utterly still shoulder, hissed, "Husband, fetch Hela. I must have her now, and the teacher will not allow her to leave without the presence of a parent.""Lok...""Now, Tony!" Loki sounded like he was in agony. "Tony, you must!"Tony went. He wasn't sure why he went--maybe Loki compelled him in some way, maybe it was just the total desperation in his husband's tone--but he went.Maybe (to give himself less credit) he was simply running away, terrified for Kurt, for Logan, most of all for Loki, who'd already been so tired, and was clearly holding on to this situation with nothing but his shiny white teeth and his fingernails.More than that, Tony was angry. Weeks without a word, everyone worrying, now this? Why was Loki even trying? What was he trying?Dead was dead. Wasn't it?He walked into Hela's classroom--AP physics at this hour, he surprised himself by remembering, because he was usually terrible with the kids' schedules. His daughter left her desk without a word and came to him, the long braid down her back seeming to switch out a sassy, "See? I told you!" in the teacher's direction as she put her hand in Tony's, and they hauled ass out of there, Tony rushing to keep up with the pace Hela--even with her shorter legs--set for him."Does Pabbi need your brothers?" Tony asked in the elevator going up.Hela appeared to consider a moment--probably communicating with Loki, or at least listening in, through the unique bond they shared.Hela, Tony knew, was by far the most magical of all his extremely magical children, and subsequently--though she was also his unacknowledged favorite--often the scariest."Not under any circumstances!" Hela replied. "He'd rather you cleared out the remaining mortals too. Have them take Uncle Kurt down to the infirmary and work on him. He could probably use the help. I can't even sort through the jumble in his head enough to make out what actually happened. All I can tell is that there seems to be no threat in the wind--for the moment.""Doesn't it bother you at all, Miss Cool as a Cucumber?" This, apparently, was one of Hela's scarier times, when she seemed like a miniature, but not-the-least-childlike, ancient being. "You love Uncle Logan, don't you? You love Uncle Kurt.""Of course I love them, Dad," Hela answered loftily. "You'd prefer I turned into a blubbering imbecile? How would that help me to summon the Death of Heroes? Much less Queen Hela, if I need to do so? I presume that's what Pabbi wants of me. I'm sorry if my present demeanor disrupts your notion of me as a frail and helpless infant.""Present demeanor?" Good gods.Tony just shook his head and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. Close association with Loki had truly improved his eye-rolling skills. Loki's own skills were epic--even in his current centered, kind and loving persona, it was still a difficult thing for Tony's husband to suffer fools lightly.Hela--who maybe had been taking ice-cold-vodka-in-my-veins lessons from her dear Auntie Nat, only laughed at him. "Keep practicing, Dad," she said, "You've really improved."And then there they were, back at Avengers Central, the elevator doors opening."Guys," Tony said to the remnants of his team, "Maybe get Kurt down to the infirmary? Give Loki some room to work here?""As soon as I know Kurt's okay, I'm coming back up," Bruce said. "I want to get a fetal heart monitor for the baby. Make sure he isn't in distress.""Thanks, bro," Tony managed to force out.Yeah. Really. Thanks, Bruce.As if he hadn't been worried enough. As if the image of poor little Wilhelm's motionless body wasn't perma-cemented into his brain.Logan's body now lay on its side, and Loki lay facing it, eyes closed, one hand on Logan's chest, just above his unbeating heart, the other curved across his broad forehead."Pabbi," Hela said.Loki didn't answer. As pale as the god of mischief usually was, most people couldn't believe he had the capacity to go any paler, but he could. The result, waxy-gray and semi-transparent, always pushed Tony close to panic. The fact was, Loki looked nearly as dead, in this particular moment, as Logan did, and that was just--after all they'd been through--completely unthinkable.Tony's face started tingling. His feet felt both far away and completely numb, the rest of his body rapidly following--though he did sense the pressure as Thor's massive hand curled around his bicep."This is not a safe place for a mortal," his brother-in-law told him somberly. "The forces our Loki summons..."The thunder-god ground to a stop, clearly at the place where, had he been a Catholic like Kurt, he would almost certainly have crossed himself to ward off the forces of evil.Thor sounded shit-scared, and that wasn't something anyone heard everyday. Faced with ordinary violence and the promise of a good fight, Thor would invariably sound robust and cheerful, but despite having grown up surrounded by magic, the kind of forces his brother commanded fell as far outside his wheelhouse as they did anyone else's. Magic--his own thunder-and-lightning-summoning abilities aside--seemed just as weird and uncanny to him as it did to the rest of their team.Thor lowered Tony onto one of the scuzzy-but-comfortable Avengers Central sofas, then sank down beside him, inadvertently propelling Tony closer by dint of the huge hollow he made in the cushion. He had to admit this was one time he didn't mind particularly. The two of them, ancient god and engineer, huddled together, clutching hands ridiculously, hardly daring to breathe as Loki's seiðr began to manifest.Tendrils of gold mixed in now with the green, threads like thin wires, cables like vines in untouched parts of the Amazon rainforest, thick as Thor's wrists, that coiled around Logan's body, then back to surround Loki's, first darkening into impenetrable black, then bursting into verdant light, pulsing with a green too bright to look at comfortably.Tony's eyes twitched away, only to find his daughter now dressed in one of her black Victorian get-ups (the most elaborate he'd yet seen), instead of her Stark Academy plaid skirt and navy blazer, her sassy braid unwound into black curls that writhed around her head like Medusa's snakes. She looked tiny, and terrifying, and ageless, hardly like his Hela at all.Xena, Warrior Princess--or her double--in black leather armor and kilt, stood by Hela's right side, a tall woman in shimmering green to her left--both of them obviously summoned there, or invited, or whatever the hell it was Hela did, by his young daughter.The woman in green winked at Tony as his gaze lighted on her, then laughed at him as he recoiled. If he'd wanted a hint about what Hela would look like when she was a woman, or what Loki would have looked like, had he been born female instead of male, that hint was right here."Queen Hela, I presume?" Tony's voice came out croaky.She smiled. It was not a warm and comfy kind of expression. A woman with that smile would be capable of anything. Any-fucking-thing."The Death of Heroes," Xena said to him, stretching out a hand. She had a grip like a professional wrestler, but next to the older Hela (or the younger one, for that matter), the brawny ease of her posture and her open grin were downright comforting. "You can trust me," her looks said.In contrast, it appeared that even the Helas' secrets had secrets."Of course you are," Tony answered, nearly overwhelmed by the sense of unreality. He wished he could pinch himself and wake up, that he could be so lucky as to have this all be a dream.Beside him, Thor moaned softly. No dream, then.The Death of Heroes gave a soft laugh. "You courted me so often, in the old days, Anthony Stark, I thought of you, nearly, as my gentleman friend. What has happened, Anthony? Do you love me no longer?""Pabbi happened," the two Helas answered, then grinned at one another with perfect friendliness."Have you come for the one they call Wolverine?" Thor asked, sounding completely unThorlike, shaken, close to cowed."I have carried that hero already to his destination," Xena said. "When I showed him his door, he went readily enough, just as they all do. Even for heroes, finally, the pain grows too great in the end."Her attitude seemed so off-handed, almost cheerful, Tony wanted to be angry with her, but found that he couldn't.She was just another, like his own daughter, who offered release when the damage had already been done. The Deaths could kill, his Hela had told him once, in an unusually candid moment--that had been the reason she'd brought the Death of Kings and The Violent Death of Gods with her to Asgard, before Loki undercut her plans by taking Odin out in his own special way--but they rarely did.It was a point of professional pride, or something."Is that why you're here, then?" Tony asked the older Hela.Down by his feet, the tendrils and vines slowly withdrew from Logan's body, though not from Loki's. The burly mutant still looked pale, but it was the pallor of a living man who's been ill and just started to recover his health. His barrel chest rose and fell slowly but steadily."He lives!" Thor, exclaimed.Thank you, god of obviousness,Tony thought. Unlike his brother-in-law, he didn't for a minute believe this was the end of things. When was it ever so easy for any of them?"Then all is accomplished!" Thor went on. "Loki has...""The vessel lives," Queen Hela interrupted, sounding impatient. "Empty. To survive, it must quickly be filled again. Without its spirit, there's only Loki's energy to sustain it, and I fear my almost-father's light flickers, at this time, a little dim.""Then that's kind of up to you, isn't it?" Tony asked. "We say 'pretty please,' fill out the appropriate forms in triplicate, you pop his soul, or spirit--or whatever you call it--back into its bottle. We all drink a toast to the occasion?""I like him!" The queen told his daughter. "He's so snarky!""I told you so," Tony's Hela answered. "I knew you'd like him. We all like him.""So?" Tony asked. "Any time now?""The thing is..." the queen studied her nails, which were pointed, and green as poison, not seeming in any particular hurry. "I would, naturally--though to return those who have entered my Realm can scarcely be called natural, in the course of ordinary events--give him back to please my younger self, and dearest Loki, and now you, dear Tony. If I had him." She threw Tony a smile of completely fake innocence, sharp as razor-wire. "Which I greatly fear I do not.""Have you checked the New Releases bin?" Tony asked, through gritted teeth.For the Queen of the Underworld, he supposed, the death of one mere mortal didn't seem like that big of thing. More like business as usual. Same shit, different day.He turned instead to the Death of Heroes. "Where did you take him?"Xena shrugged. "Sorry. I made a door. He opened it. He walked. I rarely peek.""Valhalla?" Thor put in, almost shyly. "For the Wolverine was, by reputation, a warrior of great might."The two Deaths and the Queen of the Underworld looked at him pityingly."Uncle Thor," Tony's Hela told him gently. "There isn't a Valhalla. There never has been, not in this Cycle--or if there once was, it has long since faded, unneeded and unheeded, to nothingness. Baldr is dead, and Odin, in completely other circumstances than those that would bring about a Twilight of the Gods. Do you honestly think Jöri would swallow you, even by accident? Or that our little Fen would grow up to consume the sun and the moon? It seems highly unlikely even by the greatest stretches of the imagination.""But then..." Thor ground to a halt. He looked like he'd been kicked in the nuts. "Where...? Where is there a place for heroes in the end?""Avalon," Tony said suddenly. It had come to him right out of the blue, maybe carried on the edges of his sad thought about little Wilhelm. That was what Loki'd said, wasn't it, and had it confirmed by his sons?Avalon, they'd all told him, was where heroes lived their immortal second lives, waiting to stop the world from ending in some (hopefully) far-off time."Xena," Tony said, not thinking--the Death of Heroes laughed. "Can you open a door for me?""He will not be easy to coax back," Xena answered. "He was weary with pain and the weight of years.""Logan will come back. He will." Tony's heart beat too hard and too fast. He'd questioned often enough whether he was really a hero, not just a thrill-seeker with something of a death wish who wanted good posthumous PR, and he knew, somehow, it would take a real hero to get this job done. The scared little boy inside him kept yelling, "Why me? Why does it have to be me? Why not a better hero? Why not Steve?"Only Tony knew why. He'd been to Avalon. He knew a little of the territory. He had people there, too-- his son, Loki's boys... maybe even Myrddin, for Loki's sake, if he caught the sorcerer on a good day.Besides which, Logan had stood up with him. Logan had been his Best Man. That had to count for something.Yup, he was going."Dad," Hela told him, in her stern seven-year-old voice. "You don't know what you're saying. For my sister to open a door to Avalon, you have to die first.""So, get Uncle Bruce. He'll revive me. He's good at that sort of thing."Again, Tony glanced down by his feet. Logan looked a little better. Loki was still cocooned all over with glowing green--except that the lights were pulsing, flickering fitfully."Pabbi's too tired, honey. He can't keep doing what he's doing. We need to get this show on the road."When he looked up, his daughter stood by his side, one hand on his shoulder, her green eyes huge and sorrowful.Hela bent to kiss Tony's cheek. Her other small hand rested against his chest with a steady, cool pressure, just at the spot where his own personal arc reactor once had shed its blue light, and kept him in the land of the living."I love you, Dad," Hela told him. "Please hurry home?"The pressure on his chest increased only a little, and then only for an instant.In that instant, Tony died.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tony wondered if the prohibition on eating and drinking stuff on the Blessed Isle of Avalon still applied if you'd just face-planted on its blessed beach and come up with a half a pint of blessed sand in your significantly-less-than-blessed mouth.He spat. And spat. And then, for a delightful change of pace, spat some more--and yet still had that nasty, gritty, crunchy feeling grinding away randomly between his back teeth.Tony hated that feeling. Maybe it wasn't quite numero uno on his Worstest Worst Sensations of All Time, but it was up there. Significantly. Top Five, at the very least.He wondered if he'd done something to offend the Death of Heroes. He couldn't recall acting like any more of an asshole than usual when they met, plus he'd been stressed about his beloved, fearless and noticeably-pregnant husband, besides which, this little jaunt across dimensions was all for a good cause. True Love, right? The best cause of all?Maybe the D of H was used to conveying a better class of hero to the afterlife--one that could be counted on to actually land upright, or at least close his damn mouth before impact.Or maybe she just lacked Merddyn Wyllt's panache.He'd be willing to bet, anyway, that his own cute-as-a-button little Death-in-Mary-Janes, Hela, gave her clients a smoother ride and a softer landing.Though, speaking of Mister Wyllt (aka Merlin the Magician of song and story)..."You must trust your friend Bruce implicitly," a voice said just by Tony's ear, causing him to do a dramatic startle and flail, somewhat in the style of Beaker the Muppet. Because what guy wouldn't want to go for that look in front of his husband's ex? The voice was just the right amount of deep, with furry r's and beautiful round vowels, and Tony could imagine it very well murmuring sweetly into Loki's ear, lulling him into the best rest he'd known in that previous time of his life.Tony wanted to be decent toward Merddyn. He did. No, really. If only on the principle that the guy had made Loki happy during periods when he'd badly needed that happiness, and because Loki being happy was now kind of a major goal of Tony's.But, Jesus, maybe the dude could just try to meet him halfway, and make his resolution to play nice a little easier? At least, Mister Wizard, attempt to bring a little less mystery, and a few more social skills?Seriously, Tony would never get how Loki loathed Steve Strange with a fiery burning loathing, but adored Merddyn, because the two wizards were clearly brothers from other mothers. The douchiness was strong with them both.But then Tony thought about Merddyn and Loki's prickly, brilliant, obnoxious son, who loved no one (except, in his own weird way, his friend John, and John's quirky, friendly, former-assassin wife, and, of course, his one-and-only Pabbi). He thought of the strange one-sided conversations he'd overhear late at night, now and then, between Sherlock and Loki, usually full of eyeballs and severed limbs and murder, and how Loki, who was made up entirely of languages and magic, had managed to weave an odd sort of Sherlock-adapted dialect of love out of those exchanges.It made him think that maybe Loki had managed the same thing with Merddyn, the way a talented winemaker is able to bring out just the quality he wants from his grapes. For being the undisputed King of Sassgard, Lok could so find the sweetness. He always could. He'd found it in Tony, under the bitterness and sourness of alcohol and loneliness and years, and made out of him... well, Tony guessed, himself. The person he was meant to become.Loki had truly loved Merddyn, and been loved by him, and after the man (more or less) died, after having been forced, by the circumstance of having the worst dad in the history of bad dads, into giving up their only child, Loki had so thoroughly believed he would never be loved again that it brought him to his first plunge into the abyss.Not the literal one, with Thanos and The Other waiting on the deep end, but the one lined with the needles and knives of his own memories, and his losses, and the knowledge that no one remained in the entire universe to whom he seemed good, and complete, and right. No wonder he'd fallen so hard the second time, and then kept falling.Sometimes it returned to Tony in the night: I could have helped him. I should have helped him. I should have seen that a guy who could match me for snark-for-snark would also match me for pain-for-pain. I should have seen how tired he looked behind all the smiling. Instead I gloated and peacocked and was my typical insensitive asshole self. I muzzled Loki's mouth so he couldn't speak (not that I would have listened), and I put his hands in shackles and handed him over to Thor, and the tender mercies of the worst dad in the world.And from that act, that indifference, Loki fell to Doom, to Szardos and to that stone bastard Baldr, and unspeakable suffering, and his fourth desperate, and (Tony devoutly hoped) final fall, flinging himself across half a world to drop practically into Tony's back yard.Loki hadn't been able to think where else to go and, to Tony's continuing wonder, trusted him.Him. Of all people.Usually, at that point of his regrets about the past, a long, long arm would snake out across the bed, and an elegant hand press lightly onto Tony's chest, just at the spot where the arc reactor once lived, and Loki's sleepy thoughts would curl through Tony's mind, Be still, my husband, be still. All is as a bad dream, long gone.Then Loki, who was only ever clumsy when semi-asleep, would kind of flop over toward him like a sea lion on dry land, and Tony would generally get a giant mouthful of crazy black curls as sea-lion-Loki misjudged his cuddle-distance, but somehow, usually within seconds, everything would be right again, with his head on Loki's shoulder, and Loki's arms around him.Then the clock would reset, and they could just be in their time, and not in that the long, terrible time before.Tony tried not to keep secrets from Loki these days, the same way Loki also tried not to be secretive with him, but the one secret he did keep, because it was too huge and raw and selfish to share with anyone, least of all with his beautiful god, was the way he'd somehow become a kind of monotheistic atheist (currently spending time in an afterlife—oh, the irony!) and that he loved Loki with something close to desperation, and the desperation rose highest when Loki was called, or fell into, or volunteered, for some terrifyingly dangerous situation, because Loki just had to care so damn much about every single thing.From having being the devil-may-care, you-only-live-once, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy, Tony had found himself transformed into the man with the beautiful, irreplacable family, and he wanted nothing more than to hoard them and guard them the way a miser hoards his gold.Even worse than that, beyond the unthinkable thought of something happening to one of the kids, was the almost unbearably more unthinkable thought that something would happen to his in-all-respects-magical husband.To not see Loki again would be to not live.Merddyn Wyllt, beside him by this point, gave Tony the single raised eyebrow of ultimate questioning.Mister Wizard was so good at it, as was Loki, Tony had to wonder if they'd practiced with each other across the supper table."Hi," Tony told him, and wasn't even ashamed that his voice shook a little. "Um, so I'm back... and the mystical razor-blades-to-the-tongue won't be necessary this time. Just thought I'd mention that."Merddyn's laugh was soft and came down sounding pretty firmly on the darker side of wicked."My dear friend Anthony Edward Stark, come to me again. And what was it? Ah, yes, "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." Son of billionaire industrialist—the zenith of American royalty!--Howard Anthony Walter Stark. Son, in turn, of Gideon Sol Adeer."Wait... what? Tony thought.Considering his dad had once mentioned in passing being a Howard, Jr..."'Adeer' means 'strong' in Hebrew," Merddyn continued, as if butter wouldn't melt, "As I'm certain our dear mutual husband could tell you, as does Stark in..."
You bastard, Howard. You lying bastard.
"That one I know," Tony answered, trying to make his voice as dry as possible while still dealing with a serious case of mouth-grit, and a mind that was still busy going, Huuuuh? "I have a German buddy.""Of course. Ein cyfaill glas—our blue friend--who did not acclimatize well to his time here. Why have you joined us, Stark? You were not expected. The wheel has not turned yet to your hour."'Cause I get off on you acting, without provocation, like such a prick toward me, Tony thought, half hoping Merddyn shared Loki's spiffy mind-reading trick. If that was the case, though, Mr. Wizard showed not the least little sign of it.Tony forced a grin. "C'mon. 'Fess up, Wild Thing. You know already. You knew the other shit.""Mmn." It wasn't really an answer, only, with Merddyn, it totally was."It's like this. Loki loves Kurt like a brother, and then some. Kurt is in love with Logan. Something very, very bad happened to Logan, despite the fact that he was supposed to be indestructible, more or less. Loki healed Logan's body, but the guy was already gone. Gone gone, as in, moved to your neighborhood. Loki summoned Hela. Hela summoned her big sis, the Death of Heroes, which I am so a hero, actually—she said so. The Death of Heroes confirmed Logan's forwarding address. I came after him. Which, I guess, does kind of circle back around to me trusting Bruce. Which I do. He's my best friend. He'll bring me back home when it's time.""Are you...?" Merddyn drew an elaborate sigil in the sand with his toes. Like Loki, he had supremely elegant feet, though his were much smaller, more the size of Tony's, or maybe even a couple shoe sizes down, since Merddyn didn't even come up to Tony's height.Tony thought of himself as a nice-enough looking guy, as attractive, anyway—and Lok seemed to have no complaints, which was pretty much all that mattered, but Mister Wizard was stare-worthy, one of the most semi-androgynously-gorgeous men Tony had ever seen. He was like a fucking anime character. One of the hot ones, not one of the weird-ass ones with the strange pointy teeth.He was just such a...Mister Wizard turned a look on him, those ruby eyes that just seemed to lead down and down and down, to the center of the earth and beyond. Tony wondered what the guy was even seeing--and if he even wanted to know what Merddyn saw when he looked at something.Honestly, though, Tony knew how he'd feel if he'd died, been separated from Loki, forced to live on and on in the Eternal Baywatch Universe, but could still see everything he'd left behind. If he knew Loki, his beautiful, loving Loki, lay down every night in the arms of a man who wasn't him, that from now until the end of the world, Loki would never be his to touch again.Gods, if he knew that Loki's gift of the apple that granted life was given to the other man, and not to him...!It would drive him fucking crazy. He couldn't survive."But you would," Merddyn said quietly, sounding, for once, only like a guy, a man who'd just had to deal with what he'd been handed. "You would survive, for him. For Loki's sake, knowing as you do his need for love, you would release him, as I have done." He sighed. "I was too much a demon to live a human life, too much a human to be immortal. Also too much a demon, sadly, for Lo's golden apple to do me good. Even here on the Isle of the Ever-Young, so much sand has run through the glass that even the heroes of the People who were my People have gone into the West, their bold names no longer remembered. Of all my kind who ever were, I fear I am the last.""Oh. Man." Tony couldn't think what else to say. "Sucks to be you" so wasn't appropriate, under the circumstances.One of Loki's songs came to mind. Loki liked his rock British, by preference, and witty if he could get it, and since he'd reached the 80's in his listening timeline (with occasional forays into the 90's) he'd lately been on kind of a kick for a guy called Robyn (with-a-y) Hitchcock. Mister Hitchcock's tunes were catchy, in a kind of dementedly Beatlesque way, his voice deep and generally slightly off-key, and his lyrics were, undeniably... weird, like he just made up songs out of whatever random shit (and it was sometimes very, very random shit) came into his head.The song in question was one called, "My Wife and My Dead Wife," about a guy who shares his home with... well, the title pretty much said it all. It made him sad, when Loki sang the sang randomly around the house, partly because, catchy tune aside, Loki's voice made the words so much more poignant than Robyn Hitchcock's did, the image of the poor dead wife still wearing her bell-bottoms (Robyn Hitchcock, being British, said "flares")—and probably hippie hair—never able to change, move forward, really connect with the man she'd loved, only watch him, day after day, with the woman who replaced her.If Loki had been here, and wrote a similar song, it would have to be called, "My Husband and My Dead Husband." Only (Tony being where he was), he supposed the song title would actually, currently, have to be, "My Dead Husband and My Other Dead Husband."Only that made him think of the recurring line "this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl" from The Bob Newhart Show, which he'd only ever watched late at night, in syndication, and flat-on-his-ass drunk.Sometimes Tony wondered if half the stuff he thought he remembered was even real. But if that line was, it would be silly, and so would his husband's song. Besides which, he was only mostly dead, not completely dead, like Merddyn was, even if Mister Wizard stood beside him looking solid, lightly tanned, incredibly handsome (despite his blood-red eyes) and as completely alive as anyone he'd ever seen. Next to him, Tony felt faded, slightly shaky, and more than mildly intoxicated.He wondered if that was a common effect of the island.Merddyn laughed suddenly. Clearly, he'd been reading Tony's mind and been amused by his powers of free association."It does have that effect, indeed," he said. "The bodies we wear here are not the bodies we've worn, familiar and solid, and their energies ebb and flow as the tides. The vagueness of thought wears off with time.""Hey, at least we're not the folks in the waiting room in Beetlejuice," Tony told him. "But, unless this is a case of that no-passage-of-time-in-the-other-dimension shit, I have to get back. Like, soonest."Those red eyes turned again to Tony's oh-so-ordinary brown ones, making them feel as if they were sizzling like tiny round steaks on a grill. He suspected they also saw things he'd probably prefer remained hidden. All the crap that happened around Christmas, for a good example, his own drunken abuse, and Nels Lars Nelson, and the rune-scar that stretched ever-larger over Loki's stomach."So he is gone," mused Mr. Wizard—and dollars to donuts "he" meant the Allfucker. "Oh, my clever one! I wondered how you would unknit the geas."I should have known, Tony thought. Why would the guy even look at the me in my head, when he can see Loki?"And you are happy," Merddyn carried on, with a slight undertone of, "well, knock me down with a feather!" "The Man of Iron makes you happy, and there is another child?""Soon," Tony answered. "Hence, the getting back. As in, very soon? Uh, please? Since I left my sparkly red heels back home?"This time, when he met Merddyn's eyes, Tony was the one doing the looking. There was even a possible sense of equal-to-equal in the interaction."Thank you," he said at last, "For looking after all the boys, for Narfi and Vali and, most especially, our little Wilhelm."Merddyn laughed again, shaking his head. "Oh, my cariad and his names! Loki has such exquisite taste in every other thing, but his names are just... is mental too harsh a term, do you think?""You're asking a man with a son named Jörmungandr?" Tony laughed too. Because, nope. No, bless Loki's heart, it wasn't too harsh."Jörmungandr. He's the rather... ophidian one, isn't he?""Ophidian? Seriously, dude?""Snake-, or dragon-like. Look toward the water now."For a long time, they both stood, looking out over the sea, or ocean, or Endless Waters of Time, whichever they were."He's a lovely boy," Merddyn said, after the pause. "For all of Loki's children are lovely children, with his heart, his spirit, his Craft. Clever, always, beyond their years. They are a comfort to me, the older boys, and your little one. They bear so much of Loki inside them, and I miss him, at times, so desperately.""I was thinking that, earlier, the exact same word. Desperately, I thought. I would miss him desperately. I had to change. Had to. Proof positive, huh, that you really can teach an old dog new tricks?""You, an old dog?" Merddyn scoffed, but he didn't mean it harshly. "Why, you're nothing but a—what is the term?--a 'young whippersnapper?'""I think you're only allowed to use that term after you've already yelled, 'get off my lawn!'""Get off my lawn, you young whippersnapper!" Merddyn faux-shouted, doing about a thousand times better impression of a grouchy old Yankee coot than Tony ever would have given him credit for, what with Merddyn being a 2000-year-old-plus wizard from some part of Britain that was whatever it was before it had even turned into Wales."Yes, that is satisfying. Tell me, is 'you damn kids!' ever an acceptable substitute?""Always," Tony answered solemnly--and with that, like a simple handshake, or the turning of a key in a lock, they were friends, in a way that was startling, but not unwelcome. Not unwelcome in the least."Ah, here they come to us now. Look again, Tony, down the strand."Tony peered, squinting, leaning forward a little, because he could kind of make out something, but it hardly seemed like more than a blur, or like a dust-devil out in the desert."When you get home, Tony, do buy yourself a decent pair of spectacles?" Merddyn told him, a little archly. "Bifocals, I should think. Watch where the sand stirs, just a little, and there you will find your small Wilhelm, and your friend, Mister Howlett, walking together in search of seashells. Howlett is somewhat confused, and divided in his thoughts. Be kind to him, won't you? So few believe he needs kindness, but he does.""He's a good guy." Tony said. "He was my best man at our wedding.""Was he? A decent choice, for he is one of great loyalty, and would part the fires of Hell to rescue those he loves.""Well, I did face-plant into the warm sands of a perfectly pleasant island, does that count? My teeth are still a little gritty. And whatever Bruce has to do to bring me back is pretty likely to hurt.""Scarcely your fault," Merddyn answered magnanimously. "Though I could conjure Hellfire if it would soothe your conscience.""Nah. Don't put yourself out. Maybe save your strength for zapping us back?" Tony started to move toward the pair, the little boy (though Wilhelm had grown a bit, it seemed like) and the huge burly man, then stopped himself. "Merddyn, am I doing the right thing?" he asked, thinking of Logan's formidable claws ripping their way through the backs of his hands every single fucking time they came out—because advanced healing powers were one thing, but goddamn, that still had to hurt.He thought of the humans who designed such a thing, such a horrible thing, because to them mutant lives, mutant pain, just didn't matter. Of how many years Logan had fought, and fought and, if the guy did come back, how many years he'd be fighting still.But then he considered how a man like Kurt could forgive, and Logan couldn't, not easily, or maybe ever, and how that might have been what made them so good together—that Logan could finally cool the fire of his anger in the still pool of Kurt's gentleness."Just for a second..." Tony said. "Because I have to know. On this one I can't just do what's right for Loki, or right for Kurt. I have to do what's right for Logan."Merddyn didn't answer his question—in large part because he wasn't there, he was way the hell back up the beach, and Tony had somehow come way the hell down, right there to the same patch of sea-stones and sand as his friend and his lost son."Daddy! Daddy!" Wilhelm ran to him with his hands full of sea-stars and sand dollars and little whorled shells the color of robin's eggs. His olive skin had tanned dark, the same way Tony's did when he got a chance to put in serious beach time, and his eyes were bright, with a little more green in them than Tony's possessed, bringing them more into the hazel range--though whether that came to Wilhelm from Loki, or from his Nana Maria, Tony couldn't have said.Wilhelm also had a look of pure joy, and a ridiculous head of chestnut curls, and he was so... So beautiful. So pure. So completely exuding happiness from every single pore that even with all the other children, and Loki ripe with baby Edwin back home, the temptation was strong to remain where he was, a temptation so strong it hurt him."Give yer dad a squeeze, buddy," Logan rumbled. "Then go show your Uncle Mer what we found for his collection."The hug came so strongly and so quickly, and was gone so fast it was like a sudden violent gust of wind catching hold of him, and then his son was racing up the beach, calling out, "Uncle! Look what Grandpa and I found!""Good kid," Logan grunted."It's true, you know," Tony told him. "You've been a father. Kind of to both of us, Loki and me.""Yup. Ready ta go?""I think so. You?"Unexpectedly, Logan's hand was on the back of Tony's neck, fingertips rough as sandpaper against his skin, but warm, and Tony took the touch for what it was, a gesture of love."Know what, Stark? Yer old man shoulda told ya that. Told ya again and again, 'til you believed it. Ya came here when no one else could. Came here ta bring me back. That's family, bub. That's family.""You got it," Tony told the gruff, old (but mostly ageless) man, draping an arm in return around Logan's broad, hard-as-solid-Nitinol shoulders. "I'd do it again. And not for Kurt or Loki. For you, sir. For you.""I'm gonna cry," Logan told him, but instead gave his grim, slightly lopsided, grin.From far, far in the distance, carried on the wind and so faint it might have been the cry of a bird (though it wasn't, and Tony knew it wasn't), came the single word, "Clear!""Huh," Logan said. "Time, I guess.""I guess so," Tony answered, as the sky filled up with lightning, long purple threads that stayed bright behind his lids even when his eyes were closed.The wind called again to him, louder now, "Clear!"And Tony flew
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"Yes. Okay, yes. I think that did it." That was Bruce's voice, absolutely clearly Bruce's voice—a little shaky, but not without confidence. Also not drifting through to Tony from beyond the walls of another world.Where heroes lived on, and his little boy would run forever on the beach beneath a golden sun."Ow! Christ, Bruce," Tony grumbled, by which he really meant (somewhat in the manner of Westley the Farmboy telling Buttercup, "As you wish"), Excellent job, bro, with the bringing back from the dead. I kinda love you.Because he did. He'd known his best friend, ScienceBro, brother from another mother, wouldn't let him down. There'd never been any question in his mind. Bruce would bring him home, and for that he was glad, because whatever regrets he suffered, leaving Avalon a second time, leaving behind his beautiful son, he still had so much, so very, very much here to come home to."As a doctor, my friend, you do not suck," Tony rasped out, wondering, at the same time, Jesus, is that my fucking voice? He sounded like he'd been gargling bourbon and razor blades (which was also, incidentally, pretty much how his throat felt and his mouth tasted). His body hurt fucking everywhere, his head had been replaced by an over-sized kettledrum (currently in enthusiastic use), and some unfunny prankster had clearly gorilla-glued his eyelids shut.His heart hurt a little, too—but it would heal."Tony?" Poor Bruce really did sound nearly as shaky as Tony felt. "How are you doing, brother?"At that point Tony could feel his ScienceBro doing the kind of pokey-proddy things doctors did when they've been super concerned about you but have since decided you're probably going to be okay, so that was all right, it was good for Bruce to do that kind of thing, all the prodding and the poking, to reassure himself and not be scared."Lok...?" Tony managed to force out, like a tire with a slow leak, then promptly fell asleep.He woke, feeling at least 65% better, with the same two thoughts on his mind: 1) where was his husband, and 2) was Loki okay?Thoughts of his recent strange mission came next, whether he'd really and truly managed to, literally, bring Logan back from the dead, and if Kurt was hanging in there. Because he loved them too, his loyal, dear friends, and he wanted things to be the way they were supposed to be, everyone where they belonged—which was here, which was safe, which was home."Loki?" He tried again, sounding slightly less like Harvey Fierstein after a bender."To your left," Bruce answered. "Have some Jell-O.""I hate Jell-O," Tony answered, but today he didn't, apparently. Today he found Jell-O slippery, fruity and refreshing, and to his left, as Bruce said, there was Loki holding court, smiling and gorgeous with the kids clustered around him, Thor overspilling the bedside chair, Kurt—looking (at least on the surface), every inch his usual smiley, happy self—perched on the footrail of his bed, and Logan (in boxers and a back-to-front hospital Johnny—oh, gods, spare his eyes! Tony had seen bears, fucking grizzly bears, with less body hair and he might never recover from the sight) holding Kurt's hand.The burly mutant not only looked very much alive, he also seemed remarkably happy to be so. Also something Tony found himself pleased to observe, even though he couldn't help but wonder, in a major way, Logan, what in hell happened?"We are all well, beloved," Loki told him, sounding whispery, though he smiled, and his eyes were bright. Bruce had him propped up on about five pillows, but Loki still appeared to be melting into them, as if his muscles didn't currently see fit to do him any favors in the actually-supporting-his-body department. He had an oxygen cannula in, too, the clear plastic tubing almost invisible against Loki's white, white skin."Baby?" Tony asked, because none of those details particularly went with any version of "well" he ascribed to."I am only tired, dearest," his husband answered. "I overdid slightly, and tonight I shall rest, to feel better on the morrow.""So, happy endings for all," Bruce said, still sounding on the wrong side of scared, and more than a little brittle. Or maybe Tony meant fragile. Gods, he was loopy. "You, Tony, can go home in a bit. You're fine. Asshole. Scare me like that again and I'll murder you myself. Seriously.""Have I ever mentioned what kind eyes you have, Bruce?" Tony told him, only partially joking (also, he suspected, at least partially high, no doubt thanks to something Bruce had given him at some point during his ressurection). "The eyes of a good cocker spaniel puppy. I love you. Also seriously. Give me more Jell-O." He winked at his husband across the gap."I'd ask if you have brain damage, but I know you don't," Bruce replied. "I ran scans. And I love you too, brother. Thanks for coming back to us. I just sent the team away about half an hour ago. We've been watching and waiting.""Wow." Tony didn't know what to say.He glanced left again and saw Loki's attention fixed firmly upon him, his husband's eyes, always so expressive, filled with fire and love. He watched a familiar, teasing smile spread across Loki's face. He looked so weary, though, his poor guy, almost drained of life."Lok, you really okay?" Tony asked, still troubled by that tired smile."Very well indeed, beloved," Loki answered, in a wilted kind of way. "Brother, would you, in your kindness, escort the children upward? See them washed and fed their supper?" He disappeared temporarily under a flurry of kisses, then Thor, with Sleipnir's help, began to usher the younger ones (Hela, in particular, looked extremely cross at being included in the category of "children," or, most especially, with being included in the whole ushering process—and nobody, except maybe her Pabbi, could do offended haughtiness like his Childlike Empress).Tony slid his slightly-stoned self to the edge of the bed, leaning on Bruce's arm as he maneuvered his body upright and the room decided to go whirly for a few seconds."You're dehydrated," Bruce told him. "Drink water.""Gallons," Tony promised.He thought of protesting that he didn't need a wheelchair the moment he saw Bruce bringing one, but then it occurred to him that at that particular time, he kind of did, and put a lid on his arguing.Then he was hugging Logan (which hurt, Logan was simply too powerful a guy for it to do otherwise--as previously mentioned, even his muscles had muscles), hugging Kurt (whose strength was tempered with softness, by his plushy, almost feathery, fur, and also by his natural gentleness), hugging Loki for the longest time of all (never, ever wanting to let go, any more than he ever did, but especially so since his husband seemed strengthless, barely seemed able to hug him in return).Time, at that point, seemed to crackle and separate, to fall apart into separate little scales of moments, so that one moment Tony was whooshing upward in the elevator, the next he was falling alone into his and Loki's big bed, gulping down one of the two icy-cold liter bottles of water that stood ready on the night stand—thereby giving himself the most epic brain-freeze of his entire life--then plummeting into sleep once more, brain still frozen.When he woke again, after what seemed like a minute, maybe two minutes, sunlight streamed through the windows, because no one had shut the blinds—a task Loki usually took care of before bed, except that Loki was, to the best of Tony's recall, still downstairs in the infirmary.He had no idea what time it was, or even what day, and he wished like hell he could ask JARVIS and have the familiar snarky, caring voice answer, so that everything would snap straight back into making sense again.Only that wasn't going to happen. It just wasn't, so Tony told himself, "Buck up, little Buckaroo."He still felt sorry about J., sorry even more than angry now--at least with regards to himself--saving his mad for all Loki had to go through. He wondered, too, about Baby Edwin, and what he'd be like. Would he be all brains, snark and caring (that same caring that, in the end, finally sent JARVIS, his wonderful creation, careening over the edge)?Not for the first time, he marveled at the unselfishness and compassion his husband had shown, not only accepting Edwin, but embracing him, loving him, after having gone through so much, having suffered such pain.He hoped he wasn't being selfish delivering this mass of undigested sorrow and admiration to Loki just as it was, because Tony lacked the ability to sort through all that emotion and still come up with something in any way coherent.In return, he felt a sensation of immense warmth, even before Loki answered. I did feel great pain, husband, just as those I have injured by my ill deeds also suffered. In the end, however, I understood. How could I not love one whose greatest needs, in the life he had lived, were only to feel, and to be loved?Ah, shit, Lok..." Overcome, Tony leaned against the bathroom doorjamb, rubbing his eyes fiercely.Care for yourself, beloved, his husband replied, with the same gentle warmth. Bathe, and clothe your body and then, when you are ready, our children await.Loki's mind disengaged from Tony's then, as if he'd quietly shut a door.Considering that his husband's advice, in general, tended to be good, Tony padded into the bathroom, where he pissed, and pissed, drank about a gallon of water out of the faucet, and pissed again. That accomplished, he treated himself to a long shower, then threw on boxers, jeans and a tee-shirt, and set out exploring.In the big world beyond his bedroom, Tony had at least one of his questions answered. Based on the presence of a large group of children—his children--in their school uniforms (in Fen's case, semi-in-his-school-uniform, though Kurt was struggling manfully to complete the dressing process, with Fen draped over his left arm mostly upside-down) and the sizzle of eggs in a pan, he concluded that this was morning, and a school morning at that."You look greatly improved," Hela told him. Logan was braiding her hair, and doing a much better job of it than Tony ever did. Who knew Logan was a man of so many skills?Sleip and Jöri, as always neat, tidy and perfectly-behaved, flew over to him, hugging Tony tight at two different height-levels (and how long had Sleipnir been taller than he was? when exactly did that happen?) while calling out, "Dad! Daddy!"A smiling Erik Selvig brought Tony a cup of punitive black-as-night Scandinavian coffee, and just like that, he knew he was home, and safe, and everything was fine, or soon would be."No good morning for me, husband?" came Loki's voice over all the others. "You sleep two days and two nights entire, and I am forgotten?""Who are you, exactly?" Tony quipped back—but one look at Loki and he almost meant it, because his husband looked like crap. Even at the height of pregnancy, Loki wasn't ever what anyone would call well-padded, not with those cheekbones and that jawline, those collarbones and little knobs of spine and the ribs that always somewhat showed.In two days, though, if it really had been only two days, Loki appeared to have lost at least a kilo of weight, and he still looked wilted as hell, even propped up on the sofa wrapped in the soft, plushy blankets he loved.Loki also wasn't eating, which at this stage of things he usually seemed to do constantly. Instead, he just lay there, his hands limp against the covers, his already pale skin edging into ethereally pale.Hela caught Tony's eyes and frowned. Fix this, her small determined mouth seemed to command without saying a word. Fix this now, Dad.Then Sleip broke Tony's heart a little by leaving his side, fetching a bowl from his Uncle Thor in the kitchen, and setting up shop in Tony's usual place on the edge of the coffee table in order to spoon infinitesimally tiny bites into his Pabbi's mouth--probably with the thought that Loki wouldn't have the heart to refuse his long-captive son.Loki through all this, neither protested or moved."Don't worry too much, Mister Stark," said Mrs Ransome serenely, from behind the stove. "We all get tired sometimes, and everything will be better soon.""Yeah. Yeah," Tony answered, feeling breathless, and trying hard to believe her. "Back in a flash."He stepped into the just-off-the kitchen bathroom and speed-dialed Pepper on his StarkPhone."Hey," he told her, "In case you hadn't guessed, I'm taking some personal time. Family reasons.""I think that's a good idea," she answered. Her voice had a tone. Not angry. Not disapproving, exactly. Just a tone.He wondered if he'd ever be able to tell her, really, how much she meant to him. That she was, practically, his oldest friend—his oldest true and dependable friend, anyway, not like that traitor Rhodey, who Tony nonetheless knew, someday, he would totally and freely forgive.Just not today."I want you to take care of yourself," Pepper told him, the tone in her voice turning into something that made Tony's eyes feel funny. Prickly-funny. Because it was just that kind, and that loving."We'll do just fine, and I also want you to take care of Loki," she went on. "You've been through some hard, hard times, together and apart, and I want you to heal.""I love you, Pep," Tony told her, spontaneously and with feeling, in a way he'd never been able to when they were supposedly together."I love you too, Tony," Pepper—who was possibly a hundred times happier with Natasha than she ever could have been with him--answered, warmly, and just as spontaneously, and that was that.For the next two weeks, he sat with his husband in the living room and binged on Netflix. Mrs. Ransome cooked them comfort food. They watched cheesy epic fantasy movies and all three seasons of Spartacus and "The Village of the Extremely Dirty Vikings" (otherwise known simply as Vikings to ordinary mortals) with Thor (and sometimes Clint and/or Logan) for company. They watched Disney and other "family-friendly" fare with the kids, and with Jorge and Anita, who often dropped in. They watched Hitchcock films and sophisticated black-and-white comedies (many featuring Katherine Hepburn) with Pepper, Natasha and Phil, and also with Phil—as well as Bucky and Steve (and Bruce)—they watched all eight Star Wars movies, in chronological order, plus the entire Humphrey Bogart milieuKurt could usually be found there, in one capacity or another—the usual capacity being "brother and friend." He was smiley as ever, kind as ever, though whenever Tony asked what had happened, where Kurt had gone to, why he'd come back looking the way he had, and what in hell had happened with Logan, he'd either act as if he hadn't heard, or swiftly change the subject, leaving Tony none the wiser.During that quiet time Loki stopped looking so wilted, and started sitting up without pillows, and foraging his ubiquitous snack boxes out of the fridge every five minutes, though he still spent a great deal of time napping with his head on Tony's shoulder.But that was okay, that was fine. Tony actually found himself drowsing frequently too--and he didn't even have his husband's multiple excuses. As Pepper said (more or less), they'd been through stuff.So, everything was fine, and better than fine.Everything was warm, happy, peaceful, healing.Until suddenly, in the middle of one night, with a convulsive squeeze of Natasha's hand on Tony's shoulder, the tense hiss of her voice, "Tony. Tony, suit up. Suit up now."In that single instant, between sleeping and waking, between one second and the next, things became just about as not-right as they'd ever fucking been.
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Loki didn’t wake up when Natasha slipped soundlessly out of their bedroom, or even when Tony slid from their bed and went digging through their drawers in search of a clean undersuit, but he sure as hell must have come back to awareness during the space of time Tony took to sneak into the bathroom, pee, and struggle into his Iron Man long-johns without turning on the overhead (his husband being hypersensitive even to a pencil-thin line of light at the bottom of the door), because when he edged out again, intending to summon the Mark XLVII (extra-thick plating, plenty of ordnance, beefed-up repulsors to compensate for the extra weight, and even a powerful battery of percussion weapons) out to the terrace and fly, he found Loki up and ready for battle, bits of ambient light picking out glints of gold in his horned helm and Asgardian armor.The room lights flared and Tony’s hand flew up to shield his eyes.“Jesus, babe!”“Where are you bound for?” Loki looked stern. One could almost say "grim."“You have nothing to worry about," Tony lied through his teeth (for his husband's own good, of course). "Nat wanted me to take a gander at something, but it’s probably just some tech shit. Nothing in your wheelhouse.”“Is it not?” Loki’s tone was bone-dry. He peeled back multiple layers of Asgardian armor and haberdashery, to reveal the truth behind Tony’s blatant fib: the ugly pattern of scars cut by the equally ugly (in a moral sense, if nothing else), Nels Lars Nelson, probable Hydra Super-Soldier, equally probable non-Norwegian, and all around nogoodnik. Scars that had been pale and stretched but totally healed (again) the day before, now appeared as red and as raw as the day the evil bastard sliced them into Loki’s belly.Only, at this point, they looked worse, because that same belly, that had been flat, even slightly concave, back before the holidays, was now round as a full moon, stretched tight with the weight of baby Edwin.The rune-map, he observed, had grown even bigger and more complicated.“Do you believe I wish to go, husband? That I court danger, and would risk all I hold dear? No, I am afraid, with a fear that sinks into the marrow of my bones, for I suspect I have not the strength this task requires, and must needs protect my own body, and our son’s. Yet what else would you have me do? Who else may defend?”Loki strode straight into one of his rips in the air, halfway down the corridor, and only his words drifted back to Tony’s ears. “Call upon your Stephen Strange, if you will. Make it clear that he must come, and come at once, for humanity's sake, and for Midgard's.”Tony found himself on the terrace, dialing, as his suit began to build itself around him. Strange answered with the single word, “Stark?” but Tony had neither the time nor will to rag on him about his manners.“Fucker,” he said, apparently not overly concerned with minding his own p’s and q’s, “There’s an insane Hydra necromancer on my roof at this very moment, with no one to face him but my tapped-out, hugely pregnant husband. Rumor is this crap is what you do, so kindly haul your Supreme ass over here and help, for a change. Please. Stephen. I’ll owe you. I’ll owe you anything.”“Dangerous words,” Strange intoned.Tony threw his StarkPhone down on the tile. There was nothing more to be said, and he had tears dripping into his mask, even as the plates slid home.The way he saw it, he had one job, and one job alone: protect Loki, if fate allowed. Only, he knew how these events tended to go. Out there in the fray, things got insane and nothing could be predicted. Ever. No matter how much he wished it could.Tony shot straight up from the terrace, clearing the lip of the tower with Clint’s voice in his ears. “You know that phrase, ‘All hell breaks loose?’ Okay, now we’ve all seen a concrete example. Shit. Anybody think this ends well?”Once more, Steve didn’t even bother to “Language!” Clint. He was clearly, to use a term from across the pond, “gobsmacked,” as if those Super-Soldier synapses of his were simply failing to connect, as if his eyes couldn’t process the horror stretching before them.Poor, earnest, brave-hearted Steve. How in hell was even a physically-enhanced Howling Commando supposed to deal with this level of crazy?For Team Avengers, they had Steve, they had Nat, they had Bucky and Clint, every one of them in body-armor, including Captain A, because even if you were a genuine USA Super-Soldier you didn’t want fucking giant mutant spiders with extra (or not enough) legs laying their fucking instahatch eggs beneath your fucking skin. There were a couple others who’d answered the call that Tony didn’t immediately recognize, but going by the fact that two were kind of averageish-sized, they might therefore be Bruce and Phil. Another was built like a State Armory, almost equally short and wide, which most likely meant Logan, and yet another, despite the armor, appeared unusually limber, which seemed to indicate Kurt. Another was, not to put too fine a point on it, huge. Not Hulk-huge, but damn big.Doctor Hank McCoy. Beast. Tony was touched—the man had already done so much for them.And then, out of a little sparkle of fairy dust (in reality, a circle of green light), popped Stephen Strange, in his tights and his blue blouse and his big red cape. What a tool.But at least—Tony had to give him this--a tool who’d come to their aid. A useful tool.Although armored up to the nines, Thor couldn’t help but be unmistakable, and since Tony had accepted Clint’s visual for “all hell breaks loose,” he hoped they’d accept his for “Berserker Rage,” because that’s the place Thor, his cheerful, soufflé-baking brother-in-law, had gone to, the place of ultimate red-eyed, tooth-gnashing Berserker Rage. He'd abandoned his usual move of almost casually flinging out Mjolnir, then calling her (consensus was that Thor’s hammer was female, despite being such an unmistakable phallic symbol), back to him, most likely bloody, like the world’s most deadly boomerang.Not that boomerangs, used right, couldn’t be deadly all on their own. Hell, he’d seen The Road Warrior.Thor stood (or, more accurately, loomed) back-to-back with his brother, gripping Mjolnir like grim death as he swung her in massive, crushing arcs, turning anything that got within reach into so much paint-splatter. So many things came near them, though, terrible things, because the entire tower rooftop seemed to be one vast field of scary, and this time the goddamn portal was the size of the Rockefeller Center skating rink, and through it bubbled…Oh, gods, it was like someone said, “Welcome to My Nightmare,” (and not Alice Cooper, either, because compared to this, Alice’s nightmares were likely pretty tame, the nightmares of a restaurant-owner and avid golfer).These, on the other hand, were the nightmares of someone beyond sick, beyond twisted, someone incapable of planning and calculation, without strategy, only overwhelming numbers and violence, until the scene on Tony’s very own rooftop, in the heart of sophisticated Manhattan, made every vision of hell ever painted, or filmed, or written about by guys who spent too much time thinking about such things, seem mild and banal, and made every horror movie ever made, seem like absolutely nothing. Out of the portal scuttled, slithered, lurched and shuffled not-spiders and huge, malformed monsters and hordes of, not-quite-humanoid zombie-like figures, every last one of them so horrible he could hardly stand to look.The scene before him made Tony’s stomach flip, his heart pound, and oily sweat pour out of his pores, running in streams down his skin, and he was so, so glad to be up in the air, because if he had to be down there in the middle of all that, he couldn’t…That was just it, he couldn’t.Even Freddy Krueger would have run from these nightmares, screaming like a little child.Lucky Freddy. For some, it wasn’t an option.A brief pain flared behind Tony’s eyes and he found himself linked into the others via the Lokiline, where he heard first, again, from Clint, Aww, fuck, fuck, my goddamn shoulder!His friend’s pain jolted through Tony, electrical and huge. No way was Clint ready to fire arrow after arrow—even after Loki’s healing, he could barely hold up his bow, couldn’t get the string to anything like full draw.Natasha chimed in, worried but authoritative. Clint, we’ll cover you. Get below. Raid the armory for everything you can carry and guard the children. If we need them…She left it there. No more needed to be said, really, and much as Tony wanted to protest, he honestly couldn’t. What they faced here was so much a magical problem, nothing else. Not a time--except on the most superficial level--for smiting with hammers, or bullets, or even lasers or repulsor rays, and with not even a minute to throw together a cunning plan.There was only, barely, time to react, to protect, at all costs, their magical resources, while trying not to die horribly themselves--knowing, if need be, if the first line of defense fell, they'd be forced to bring in their second string.Except the only second string they had on hand was made up of Tony’s precious children, and the merest, glancing thought of having to send his kids, his beautiful, irreplaceable kids into this literal hell made Tony want to vomit.If Strange couldn’t figure out his shit...If Loki went down…Tony felt, more than heard, Loki force-feeding Strange a stream of intel—not so much words Tony couldn’t comprehend, but concepts that meant nothing, that his brain couldn’t sort or make sense of. The secret, unfathomable—to someone like himself--mathematics of magic.Strange hit the ground running, in terms of arcane action, at least. Right away, the shields Loki had flung up to contain the threat grew stronger and brighter, swirls of red mixed in with the green and gold, a dome now stretching all the way over their heads to contain the nightmares that looped and whirled through the smoky air.It is good, Loki responded fleetingly.Good? Tony thought. Compared to?It looks like Christmas! Steve thought, apropos of not much.Fa-la-fucking-la, chimed in Logan, his head-voice just as deep, gruff and sarcastic as the one he used out loud. Any of ya A-holes think of tryin' ta take down the portal? Or clearin' a path from Lok ta the big guy?Kurt hardly needed to be asked, Tony was fairly convinced that he and Loki regularly traded thoughts so easily and naturally they didn’t even have to think about what they were thinking in order to make the exchange, it was already there in a glance, a gesture, a flick of Kurt’s tail.It surprised him, though, when Bucky dashed in to help—and damn the guy moved fast, like a coyote in the wild, now you see him, now you don’t, then instant death.Possibly-Phil and Possibly-Bruce followed, and Hank flipped over both their heads to let Nelson have it, full in the face, with both enormous feet.The air immediately around Nelson gave a little golden shimmer, and Hank bounced off like a Super Ball (registered trademark), halfway across the the roof.Huh. Force-field. Didn’t see that comin’, Logan put in, his mental voice Saharan.Does anything ever frighten him? Tony wondered. Does he ever even break a sweat?What did it matter, really? Maybe the best thing Tony could do—maybe the only thing he could do--was to prevent any further influx of Nelson’s hellish troops.Tony blasted his propulsors, zooming up to just beneath the dome, higher than the fliers really seemed to want to follow, and let loose, hitting the portal hard--with his percussion weapons, this time, instead of the propulsors or any other energy-based weapon; he'd learned his lesson about feeding the beast, so to speak. The hole in reality obligingly shimmered, then sparkled, then darkened slightly. The monsters pouring onto his roof via the Nightmare Express slowed, maybe by as much as ten per cent. It was something.It wasn’t nearly enough to make a difference, and by coincidence, ten per cent was about how much juice Tony had left in the Mark XLVII—which should have been impossible. That design was made to go the distance, and then some. Dammit, the suit had its own arc reactor, supplying supposedly unlimited energy, yet that limitless energy was still, somehow, being drained exponentially, the yellow “LOW POWER” warning flashing rhythmically in front of Tony’s left eye.
Danger, Will Robinson. Danger!
Strange? Tony sent out, Maybe a little more help here?The Sorcerer Supreme levitated over—or whatever the hell it was he did. He held up his Supreme hands, a superior expression on his handsome, cape-framed face. Wielding a couple of golden circles (one for each hand), that looked something like a combination of astrology and star charts, Strange shot out some sort of glowy, bluey-white energy blast, and the portal shrank again, slightly more, even, than when Tony hit it with his percussion weapons.You could still have marched a team of Budweiser Clydesdales, complete with beer-wagon, through that sucker.But then an idea hit Tony’s mind, a "wonderful, awful idea," in the words of Mr. Grinch.He remembered the Ironwood, and then a riverbank, Loki so drained of sustenance he’d come close to death, but then he’d just… pulled the energy he needed, out of the trees, the grass, the moss, the fish in the stream—even the algae, everything emptied of life, dried to dust.Not the best form of sustenance, maybe, but, afterward, Loki had come back from the brink to fight another day.Tony sent his husband the image, a short, concentrated burst.In return, he got back from Loki a sense of extreme reluctance, even horror, but he answered, wearily, Yes, beloved. Yes, I see.Prince of Asgard, be wary, Strange intoned.Sorcerer Supreme of Nebraska, STFU, Tony snapped back.Seriously? Nebraska? Then why...?" That was Natasha, probably not even breaking a sweat either as she obliterated swathes of… things.My king! My brother and my king! thundered Thor, Berserker Rage Edition.Bucky? Kurt said, in a slightly strained version of his usual calm tone. He flipped, and leaped and the former Winter Soldier boosted him upward into clear air, where Kurt bamfed, reappearing inside Nelson’s glimmering golden force-field, unarmored now, Tony's sight of his friend's lithe body distorted by its glow, though he could just make out the shape of Kurt wrapped around the Hydra douche’s body, clinging with powerful arms and legs and tail.The tail snapped into action, thwapping into loops around the necromancer’s neck, tightening until the cords stood out in Nelson’s throat to fight the pressure, his head forced gradually back, his helmet popping off, shooting right through his now-failing golden force-field to roll among the dust of the monstrosities he’d drawn in to pollute their world.Nelson, you asshole, it's your world too, Tony thought. Where are you planning to live once you pet creepy-crawlies cover and/or devour everything? The moon?Kurt’s (gentle, loving, even-keeled Kurt's) four brutally sharp fangs tore into Nelson’s throat. A twist of the mutant's head and that exposed throat ripped...Blood spurted, muscle and bone lay bare—and for just a minute the necromancer wobbled, faltered, his magic shield thoroughly Swiss cheesed, full of gaping holes.Into one of those gaps Loki thrust his hand, and his will…And drank up Nelson's essence, until nothing remained but bones, and parchment-dry skin, and a suit of empty armor that rattled, abandoned and powerless, to the ground as Kurt leaped clear.“Lieber Freund…” Kurt said aloud, stretching out his hand toward Loki, but the hand began to jerk in sharp, convulsive motions, and then the rest of Kurt started shaking and twitching too. He dropped into the gray dust that covered the roof, and Logan rushed to him.The portal shimmered again, and shrank, losing its hellish red glow. It looked, now, like the opening of a coffin, with only darkness beyond its rim.Darkness, and a few faint stars.There was nothing left, Tony realized. No monsters. No evil Hydra madman. Only the tower, the dust, his husband, his friends. And Strange.“Can you shut that fucking thing down, Strange? Like, permanently? For good?” Tony asked as he landed.He felt savage, more than savage, as if he wanted to rip Nelson's desiccated skin into so many strips of necromancer jerky, and grind his bones to make his bread, or something worse that he couldn't think of at the moment. He wanted the man's death to have been brutal, pain given for pain, not expedient, not after all he'd done to hurt Loki. Not quick. He'd wanted Nelson to suffer, and maybe he had, but there hadn't been enough proof of it, not for Tony's taste.The dust puffed up well over his ankles. He felt so tired, and furious, but also almost unbearably sad, for more reasons than Tony could even put a name to.“I think so,” Strange answered, and for once he didn’t sound like the Supreme anything, he sounded like an ordinary dude from Nebraska, who’d had a helluva long night.“Yays,” Tony said.He caught Loki’s eyes, slitted, and gazing back at him through the narrow opening of his helm—eyes that were bloodshot nearly crimson, and stricken. After a second Loki turned away abruptly, vomiting out about a gallon of horrible black goo.Bruce pulled off his helmet, and the others did too, followed by their masks. With the magical dome gone, it felt good to breathe the fresh, crisp, if somewhat dusty morning air. He stepped up to Loki, wrapping a supportive arm around his waist.Big Blue picked up Little Blue, draping him over one huge arm. With Logan trailing, they made a sad little parade toward the elevator.“So, what do we do with this shit?” Tony kicked up a little gray flurry. “Hazmat team time? Industrial-sized shop-vac? What do you think?”“The dust is harmless now,” Loki said, sounding light-years beyond weary. He tugged off his own helm, allowing it to drop to the ground. “I believe, beloved, that your 'shop-vac' may well suffice. Otherwise, let the winds carry this once-foul matter, along with the memory of this night, to the four corners of Midgard.”“Lok, baby, are you okay?” Tony seriously didn’t know how his husband still managed to be on his feet.He’d never seen Loki look like this. Never. Not after he crash-landed after his escape from Doom & Co., not in the Ironwood, or after SHIELD’s tender mercies, or under the mountain in Wales. Never.Loki shook his head, tears standing unshed in his reddened eyes. “Oh, Tony, I am defiled. I am defiled.”“You’re not defiled, my sweet baby. You’re exhausted, you don’t feel good, this was emotionally awful and confusing stuff, but that can’t change the heart of you. You were so brave. You saved us all.”“I am unclean,” Loki breathed, then bent over and puked black gunk again, moaning miserably after, both hands pressed to his belly.In the next second his head snapped up and he threw Strange a glare Tony hoped he never had to be on the receiving end of. He thought he knew from Loki-glares, but this one was… special.“You imbecile! What have you done?” Loki spat, and then he was in motion, and not by his own volition, either, more as if he was being dragged.Tony tried to move, he fought and yelled and struggled with everything in him. He could see Steve, Bucky, Natasha—even Thor, who'd been slumped on the roof in a post-Berserker veg-out trying to do the same, trying to break free, trying to save his husband, Thor's brother, their friend.All of them trying to save his Loki.Tony found himself screaming in utter rage, frustration, helplessness—while, over by portal, Stephen Strange screamed too, for a totally different reason.Strange’s hands burned like torches. His screams were screams of agony, and Tony had to pity the man—not only for the pain, though that had to be bad enough, but because Strange had lost the use of his hands once, and with them lost the man he was, the brilliant physician, the skilled surgeon.Magic, he knew, had been Strange's salvation once, only to destroy him again.Loki, by this time, had been drawn to the lip of the portal. Bruce still clung to him, both arms wrapped tight around Loki's middle, the two of them clearly fighting with every bit of strength their exhausted bodies could possibly produce.From Tony's frozen position, the position he couldn't move from, no matter how he struggled, both with his own strength and the weirdly-depleted power of his suit, he could just make out that the back of Bruce’s neck had gone green, and his face, in profile, was green, and that his best friend had grown bigger, almost as tall as Loki now, though much broader, but still not big enough, or strong enough, to stop the damn thing from pulling them in.Then the portal had them both, consuming Bruce and Loki like a greedy mouth…The hole in their world began to close, was closing, with a terrible sucking motion…Then, with a small, almost foolish “pop” of air, it disappeared…Leaving nothing where Tony's dear husband and his best friend had been.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Bruce, to his sorrow, wasn’t exactly unused to waking up in a variety of strange places. There’d been barns, forests, abandoned factories, a lot of semi-destroyed buildings, and once even a ghost town of the Old West, where the thing that woke him was a prickly tumbleweed tumbling right over his face. There’d also been a pair of buzzards watching over him, looking something like the dour duo from Grant Wood’s American Gothic attending the funeral of some unpopular person while wearing dusty black-feather coats.That had been where SHIELD found him, and took him into custody. For his own good, they’d claimed, and where he’d…Well, the less said about that, the better. Some places, emotional and physical, he preferred not to return to.Bruce suspected Fury, frozen-hearted bastard that he was, had observed his slow but inevitable slide into despair and deliberately left the gun where he could get at it. For Fury, Bruce’s death—or, alternatively, his non-death--would constitute an interesting experiment.Most times, though, Bruce came out of a transformation (such a nice, polite, magical-sounding word, something that might result from the gentle flick of a wand, nothing like his reality of shame, despair, an aching body and a sick soul, topped off with a generous dollop of Oh, God, what have I done this time?”), chilled and covered head-to-toe in hay, fallen leaves, dust, or worse.He knew there’d been dew on many such awakenings. Probably not as much dew, but still dew.Actually having clothes on, even raggedy, “did this just shrink three sizes in the wash?” clothes was a nice touch, one he could get used to.Still being green even after waking up? Not so much, really.Bruce also had muscles. Not Hulk-level muscles, but not the muscles, either, of a middle-aged guy who ran a couple miles a day (usually, most days, unless the weather was discouraging, as it often seemed to be), sometimes semi-casually did free weights, and used yoga for relaxation.Also new was having his best friend’s husband sprawled out dead-to-the-world on top of him, all arms and legs and with his sizable baby-bump pushing into Bruce’s gut. He could hear Loki breathing, which was a good thing, and feel the slow, comforting beat of Loki’s heart against his own chest, and even the baby’s soft movements inside Loki’s belly. After some time passed with Loki still unconscious, Bruce found himself getting antsy, needing to move before his entire fortysomething body (however semi-Hulkish) froze up like the Tin Man in desperate need of his oil can. By virtue of a combined technique of sliding horizontally across the dew-wet grass and a kind of sea lion-esque wallowing, he managed to get out from beneath his godly friend, who despite being rail-thin, was also extremely tall, and therefore remarkably heavy.He finally managed to lever himself upright. For a moment or two, a nasty, oily-feeling dizziness slid through him, the kind of dizziness you get seconds after breaking a limb (he’d suffered too many “accidents” in his childhood not to be familiar with the sensation) and he thought he might actually throw up, only before too long the queasiness went away again.It was something he’d want to talk to Tony about, when they got home--the effects of interdimensional travel on human physiology. Tony, always insatiably curious, would definitely want to hear about it, maybe even run some scenarios.Tony…When they got home…Oh, hell. Oh, hell.Bruce huddled on the wet grass, knees pulled up to his chest, allowing himself to experience both the wonder and the fear, after all that had happened, their drawn-out terrifying (for him, at least--maybe Loki was used to traveling the Interdimensional Portal Express) fall through the void, of being alive, and Loki being alive, and Loki and Tony’s little son, already called “Edwin,” clearly stirring, apparently unharmed, inside him.In the next minute, it all came back to him: their terrible night on the top of the tower, the darkness and gloom because all the electrics were screwed up and they couldn’t get the lights to shine properly, only with a dim, grayish glow, the never-ending onslaught of nightmares, the portal…Bruce found himself breathing too fast, chilly sweat prickling over his skin.Oh, God. Oh, God, this was not good. This was so not good. The living part, yes, okay, but the rest…No, no, no, no, no… Bruce found himself yelling inside his head, as he slipped into panic, then from panic into a kind of impotent rage. He braced himself for the tsunami of emotion, powerlessness, and scrambled senses that presaged the change he feared, and fought (and maybe, somewhere far, far down inside himself, even longed for, because he knew he ought to feel responsible for all the damage his other self did, and he did feel responsible—after the fact, he truly did--but sometimes, oh dear Lord, sometimes it simply felt so good to let the rage run loose).To let the beast loose, to howl (figuratively) at the moon, to "sound his barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world," which almost made the guilt that inevitably followed seem worth it.What had Tony asked him once? “Bro, do you really feel guilty, or do you think you should feel guilty? Because, you know, those are two kinda different things.”Tony had been right. He often was, especially these days.At any rate, this time, the change never came.Bruce didn't know why he'd expected it, because Loki had done away with all that, hadn't he?Wasn't that why he'd been up on the roof in armor and carrying a big gun, like Phil, instead of turning into a giant rage beast?If he hadn't turned then, he wasn't going to turn. He was still Bruce. A big, green Bruce, maybe, but still more like Bruce than he was like The Other Guy. He wasn’t even the right green, the gamma-ray green, the Hulk-green. Maybe it was something in the quality of the light in this place, but his skin looked almost… minty.He was the color of the middle layer in an Andes Wafer.Loki, on the other hand, wasn't a whiter shade of pale anymore, but a clear blue marked with geometric lines of a pearly-silvery hue. Horns swept back from his temples, graceful, spiraled horns, shining and opalescent as mother of pearl, with lines of glimmering silver. It was something like the Jötunn form he'd seen Loki slide into by accident a time or two before, yet not, just as he himself was Hulk-like yet not the actual Hulk.Loki had never looked more like a god, in fact. He looked graceful, radiant, exquisite. Bruce felt a weirdly powerful impulse to fellow the whorls of those horns with his hands, to trace the lines on Loki’s face with his fingertips, and let their cool light sink into his skin. Instead, he set his hand on Loki's shoulder--not so much to wake him as to reassure him if and when he woke.The ends of his companion's hair, brushed lightly over his knuckles. Free from whatever product Loki usually used to torture his insane curls into something resembling straightness, it felt unnaturally soft, far too soft for the hair of a grown man, softer than the hair of any child. His blue skin, also, where it brushed against Bruce’s skin, felt unnaturally smooth and soft, totally hairless.Loki, it had to be remarked, even in extremity smelled amazing, something like a snow-drifted evergreen forest in winter, with just a whiff of lemons, and another, slightly stronger whiff of sweet, warm spices.That scent wasn’t, Tony had once assured him, another grooming product, or an expensively perfect men’s cologne. That was the natural way Loki smelled.“Yup, just like Christmas,” Tony had told him.His best friend's husband, who had rescued Bruce from a dungeon, and from three supremely evil men, and who had to be pushed to the very brink to be the least bit impatient with him. Tony's husband, who happened to smell like a Christmas Bruce had never known, because the Christmas in his own head smelled of tears and spilled wine, blood and rage.Bruce considered the early-morning sky above him which, now that he thought about it seemed too blue. Unexpectedly blue. Not cerulean, or robin’s egg, or a light blue, like Loki's skin, but a striking shade like something between aqua and turquoise, far too much green in that sky for it ever to be mistaken for the sky of home. Now and then a small puffy cloud so exactly like a cotton ball it looked like a stage prop from an elementary school play drifted by, borne by a light breeze. It would have seemed peaceful, pretty even, if it hadn’t also felt so… not right.At least they hadn't landed in whatever dimension the monsters called home.Bruce hoped.In fact, he really and sincerely hoped Dr. Strange had done that much (despite, it seemed, having failed completely to safely seal the portal), before he and Loki were sucked headlong through that damned thing. He hoped the reset button had been pushed, or the dial turned, and the hole punched into their world had carried them to a place much less terrifying than the nightmare country whose red sky had glared over them all through the wee hours of the morning.Still, Bruce couldn’t help but feel afraid, almost shaky with it.He needed to see more of this place. He needed to be certain.For a minute, before he could force himself into any further action, and catching even himself by surprise, Bruce wrapped his newly muscular arms around Loki, holding him tight, selfishly glad to an extent he didn’t even want to contemplate that he—just for once--hadn’t fallen into the unknown all by himself.Bruce remained a great believer in the buddy system, it was only that, for most of his life, he hadn’t had anyone he could call his buddy. He'd also have to admit that "buddy" wasn't a name he'd ever have thought to use for the former prince of Asgard.Yet, here they were.So Bruce lay there under the strange sky, clinging tight to a man (buddy system aside) who, just two or three months past he definitely wouldn't have called his "friend." He'd been constantly distrustful of Loki, and had to be feeling extremely generous even to think of him as the outwardly-pleasant-but-a-little-(okay, a lot)-weird husband of his best friend. His best friend who was like the brother Bruce had never had, but who he chose to hurt anyway, shunning his wedding, ragging on his husband, and otherwise acting like a jerk in any number of ways.Bruce thought of these shameful things and hugged Loki a little tighter because (supposedly genius brain aside) he didn’t know what to say, or do, or what step to take next, and a deeply buried part of him wished he could become his Other Self, if only for a while, just to slough off the too-heavy mantle of responsibility.He felt like a coward.He was a coward.At that moment, Loki’s eyes flew open. They were red. Not pink, or reddened—red. “Garnet” might actually have been an appropriate adjective. “I believe…” Loki said to him suddenly, with his normally velvety voice all raspy, “Bruce, I have a feeling we are not in Midgard anymore. Neither, I suspect, are we in Kansas."”Might be Oz," Bruce answered, trying to make his voice light, to swallow back the worst of his panic."Indeed." Loki turned his garnet eyes toward the turquoise sky. "Indeed it might, my friend. However, for divers reasons, I suspect it is not."Bruce didn't know what to say to that. He pretty much suspected the same--he just didn't know what it all meant.“Were you truly a coward," Loki told him, filling in the silence. "You would surely have released me, leaving me to fall all on my own. Also, why do you believe the mantle of responsibility is yours to carry alone? I assure you, Bruce, it is not. I am actually competent in any number of areas.”The truth of that statement hit Bruce like a fist in the gut, and he mumbled, "I know, Loki. I know."He let his companion go, helping Loki to sit up before huddling once more into himself, withdrawing, just like he'd always done.Far too many, many times in his life he had ended up completely alone—like that sad-sack Gilbert O’Sullivan song from when Bruce was very young, “Alone Again, Naturally”--but he was only here at all because he hadn't let Loki go, and that was, in no way, a craven act. It was something he could, and should, be proud of.Still, to be here wasn't a good thing for either them. Being clearly far, far away from home aside, Bruce couldn't have said why he knew that to be true, but he did. No doubt about it."I feel it also," Loki told him. "Something odd lingers in the air, even though that air is breathable, and there is little in the land poison to us.""So, that's good, right? I mean, it could be worse."Loki reached out to take his hand, smiling at Bruce. "Indeed. We may miss our home, and our loved ones, but the situation truly could be worse."Bruce got the feeling Loki meant to console him, that he might not even believe his own words, but to be here with someone who sincerely cared--and Loki always cared, in fact he seemed to care more about more things than just about anyone Bruce had ever known. He was a guy who'd basically gone bag-of-cats crazy from caring so much, and had to fight his way back tooth-and-nail to something like sanity again.He fully intended to have Loki's back, the same way he knew Loki would have his, and just maybe, with luck, that might be enough to get them through this."Again, with the hope!" Tony might say to that, but what else could they do?"Only that," Loki answered.He looked so tired, Bruce realized then. Tired, drained and unwell--though he gave Bruce's hand a slight squeeze and smiled at him again, doing a good impression of carefree and cheery, no matter how crappy he felt.Bruce patted the rapidly-drying grass beside him with his free hand. "It's a pretty cushy landscape, Loki. Why don't you lie down and have a rest. You did a lot of the heavy lifting back there, and I'm betting you're exhausted."Loki didn't even bother to argue, just curled up on the springy grass, eyes closed. "Tony says 'pooped' rather than exhausted," he murmured, "Which is crude, and yet makes me laugh.""Yeah, that sounds like him," Bruce answered--then realized Loki had already fallen asleep.Though still achy and physically drained, Bruce himself didn't feel sleepy. If anything--and this struck him as odd, or at least not typical of himself--a sense of protectiveness swept through him.Lightly, not wanting to disturb his friend, he took Loki's hand once more in his own, watching over him as he slept. Hank (or maybe Kurt—all Tony had really been aware of, during the time of his freak-out, was a field of dark blue at the edge of his vision) had given him sedation almost the second they got downstairs. Tony hadn’t even objected. So much better to slump on the sofa, slow-witted and incapable of complex emotion, than to nosedive straight back into the bottle, which for a few minutes there had seemed like the only possible reaction to what had just taken place.He felt like he’d been run through with a sharpened 4X4, even though he wasn’t injured, not really. Not “in the flesh,” so to speak.Only, traveling that road, following the lure of the elixir, the water of life, the liquid fire of the gods, had almost cost him his family once. So thank you, either Big Blue or Little Blue for the quick intervention. No more of that. No drinking. No more. Just give him a couple hours and he’d not only continue to be sober, he’d get his shit together, be clever, be inventive, be supportive. Be a dad his children could lean on.Just a couple hours, that’s all he asked, because at this particular minute it was all just too goddamn fucking much.But still, no drinking, that was rule one.For every chip Tony collected now at AA, he tacked up another candid photo of Loki and the kids on the battered old corkboard in his workshop. The chips were only place-markers, his real incentives gazed down on him warmly, laughingly, lovingly, from eyes the complex green of malachite, or emerald, or peridot.No, drinking wasn’t going to help anything.Only fucking finding his husband and best friend would help.Bringing them home would help even more.Meanwhile, Tony let whatever had been in the shot sit on his emotions, while Hela (usually a paragon of perfect posture) slumped on one side of him, Sleipnir on the other, and he cuddled the smaller boys on his knees.“It will all be well, Daddy,” Sleip said, squeezing Tony’s hand. “It will all be well in the end.”Gods above, to have that kid’s confidence! And where did Sleip get it from, anyway, being so young (relatively speaking, or on a sliding scale, or something)? Where did he find such optimism, having lived a life that, up until extremely recently, was such unrelenting shit?That was just Sleip’s nature, though, to be gentle, and wise, and keep the candle of hope burning, just like the candle Mrs Cook, his family’s aptly-named chef, far back in Tony’s childhood, had set in the window each Christmas Eve. The candle meant, as she said, to “Guide the lonely travelers home.”Sleip’s younger sister on the other hand, resembled a little stormcloud. Even the top of her head seemed discontented.Hela had, in fact, only recently returned to the tower. She’d armored herself in her own little all-black Asgardian get-up, complete with miniature horned helm, taken Kurt’s hand, and they’d gone.When they returned, Kurt—courageous, unflappable, only recently-conscious-again Kurt—had crouched on the ottoman with his knees pulled up to his chest, and shook, Logan rubbing his shoulders from behind and glaring at everyone.And that was what Logan looked like in a meltdown.“I have sailed the waters of hell,” Kurt said at last, shakily.“That’s true,” Logan put in.“I didn’t falter, or blink. But there…” The German crossed himself. Tony considered that maybe Big Blue should have found a little something medicinal for his smaller blue friend, because Kurt had every sign of a man heading deeply into shock.The problem was, everyone there had become so used to Kurt being the one they turned to in times of stress, their rock, their calm eye of the storm, that this time they didn’t notice that he was the one who might need them.Everyone always talked about how good for Loki Kurt was, how much Loki loved and depended on him. They maybe hadn’t noticed that love was a two-way street, that Loki’s love for Kurt and Kurt’s for Loki was a system of perfect balances, that Kurt needed Loki too.Finally, it was Sleip again, their sweet, huge-hearted Sleip, who was, physically, such a copy of his Pabbi, and in personality so much like his honorary uncle, who got up, crossed to the ottoman, sat beside Kurt and just held him, warmly and closely and lovingly, just like Loki would.If Loki had been there.Which he wasn’t.Tony wanted to cry like a person in an anime, his tears shooting out sideways in fountains, but didn’t, for the sake of the kids.He wanted so badly for his husband to stroll out of the elevator, looking like the proverbial cat that ate the proverbial canary, with Bruce trailing bemusedly behind him, and announce at top volume, “Surprise! Mischief achieved!”Only he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. Bruce and Loki were gone, not in this world, and Tony would search for the rest of his life if he needed to, he would--only he didn’t know where to begin.“The point is,” Hela said crisply, in the wake of all this—and though her eyes were dry, they also looked wide as saucers, just like in the fairytale. “Please know, Daddy, they aren’t there.” She squeezed Tony’s hand with her little gloved hand. “They aren’t with the monsters.”“Gott sei dank!” Kurt breathed.“Which is good news,” Natasha put in. “We can assume…”“Hope,” Steve said.“Hope, or assume,” Nat continued, “They’re in a better place.”Clint gave a scoffing, humorless non-laugh. “Nice choice of words there, Nat.”“A less lethal place, we might perhaps say,” Hank put in, in a conciliatory kind of way.“I have summoned my Sisters,” Hela told them. She was a trouper, that was for sure, but also, in that moment, far, far from a happy camper. “Also the Queen, if she will attend.”“Um, ‘the queen?’” That was Phil, seated down on the floor, more or less between Clint’s knees, with his giant dog Anastasia’s head in his lap, Phil using her ears for comfort, rubbing them like two floppy worry-stones (currently floppy, Tony should say, as they seemed to go periodically up and down—with his family’s aid, he suspected—as if Anastasia was following current fashion trends from the pages of Great Dane Vogue).Phil cared about Loki, probably more than he’d ever verbally admit.Despite her master’s presence, Anastasia moaned, unrelentingly, deep in her throat, making the apartment sound a lot like the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland. It wasn’t exactly the ambiance anyone needed at the moment.“Hela, Queen of Helheimr, the Dismal Lands, not Our Royal Cousin Elizabeth Regina, Second of That Name,” Hela explained loftily, then sighed. “Oh, Nornir, what are we going to do about the ravens?”“The ravens of Asgard,” Jöri put in, before anyone could ask. “They arrive each morning to impart news from the Golden City, and to ask for the day’s instructions. It’s the agreement the Althingi has with Pabbi.”“The Parliament of Asgard,” Tony said dully, to save the others the trouble of asking, "All what thingy?"“I will deal with them,” Hela said, a little grandly. “I am eldest.”“Not!” Fen exclaimed. “Not! Not!”“No, you aren’t,” Jöri clarified. “Hela, you’re, like, 598 years younger than Sleip, which makes him Crown Prince. You’re also too young. You have to be at least sixteen, remember? You’re a child, Hela, just like we are.”She seemed to be gearing up to an indignant response when Sleip himself stepped in, in his usual gentle and reasonable tone. “There shall be no quarrels between us, sister. We, children of the king, and equals, will hear the ravens, along with Daddy and Uncle Thor. Then we will take counsel, one with the other, as dear friends and siblings all. Only after will we send our mutual reply.” His soft green eyes held his sister’s. “It’s what Pabbi would wish of us, beloved Hela.”Not even Hela, who’d argue with anything if she felt like it, and believed she could get away with doing so, could find fault with that one.And that, my dear Empress, Tony thought, Is the real reason your Pabbi named Sleip as his heir—not because he’s the oldest, or a boy, but because the good of our family, and the good of his people, mean more to him than power, or ambition, or whatever he might want for himself.Tony closed his eyes and sank back into the cushions, drowsed (too medicated, and drained, to do otherwise), and woke, and drowsed again.Each time he opened his eyes, more people had joined them, not just the Avengers and the immediate family, including Mrs Ransome and Erik Selvig, now known as Afi Erik, in an honorary capacity, but also the Rosenblum family who ran the deli downstairs (and brought food for everybody), and Happy and Pepper, and Loki’s dear friends Jorge and Anita, plus several of the X-Men, the interesting assortment of college kids and old people who now worked in Loki’s bookshop—and Bruce’s feisty cousin Jennifer, the redoubtable She-Hulk.It made Tony glad, somehow, that Bruce had family to represent him—and made him sad, too, at the way The Other Guy, while protecting Bruce’s life, had so limited his world, taken away so many of his possibilities, all the things Bruce should have had, would have had, if his life had been other than it was.Horrible parenting, the gift that just keeps on giving.He glanced across the room and saw Steve with Bucky’s arms tight around him, both the metal and the flesh-and-bone, and the expression on Steve’s face just so lost and bereft…Steve who had already lost so very many things.“It’s not a wake,” Tony said, because he had to—the whole room had taken on that look, with the whispers, and the sad faces. “It’s not a wake, people. They’re not dead, and pretty soon…”“In the morning,” Natasha said firmly.She stood up, their leader again, no longer the grieving woman in Pepper’s arms, her face pressed into Pepper’s silky strawberry-blonde hair.“In the morning, when we can think like logical humans again, we start the search in earnest.”“No stone unturned,” Phil put in firmly, with his funny little sly, sideways grin. “Hell, it’s not that big a multiverse.”A ripple of weak laughter ran through the group—it wasn’t that they didn’t believe, because they did, they had to.It had just been such an absolute fucker of a day, and it had all started so goddamn early.A knock came at the door. Mrs Ransome went to answer.In came a guy who looked tough, and Asian, but probably wasn’t, a guy like a kind of aging Will Scarlett, of Robin Hood’s Merry Men fame, with what had to be the cheesiest beard and mustache combo in all nine Realms, and a huge man (and Tony meant HUGE, even using Thor or Jorge as units of measurement) with a proportionally HUGE red beard. With them strode a dark-haired woman who looked as if she could eat all three for breakfast, including the big guy.All four of them appeared supremely uncomfortable in an approximation of business casual attire.The business casual attire of a Realm that hadn’t heard of ironing boards or removing the anti-theft tags before wearing. Or leaving the store.After this odd quartet came Jane Foster, slightly wild-eyed, and starting to show her twin pregnancy in a major way, and Thor, pushing a wheelchair that contained a glowering man, like a seven-foot-tall (even sitting down) un-eye-patched Asgardian Nick Fury, with not one but two clearly-functional glowing golden eyes. Heimdall, in other words. For a minute, Tony hadn't recognized him sitting down.And speak of the devil, slinking in after all the others, with his attitude and his perma-sneer, his eye-patch and his swirly leather badass coat, came the man himself.“Dearest friends and relations!” Thor announced, without a quaver in his booming voice, though his eyes were bloodshot as hell. “The cavalry has arrived!”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Bruce became aware that Loki had woken up again when the god squirmed suddenly and uncomfortably on the drying grass, the crushed stalks rustling loudly beneath him, the point of his friend's right horn prodding Bruce's thigh."Hey, it's okay, it's okay," Bruce assured him, giving Loki's shoulder a light squeeze. "Bad dream?""Hmn?" his companion answered, somehow combining the sounds of both confusion and a strong reluctance to be rejoin the land of the waking into that brief non-word."Nothing to report. All quiet," Bruce assured him, helping Loki to struggle upright--though the minute the former god was actually sitting, he slumped over, head in hands, taking slow, careful, uncomfortable-sounding breaths."Not so good?" Bruce asked."Oh, Nornir," Loki gasped, "I may well be violently sick.""I felt exactly the same way the first time I sat up," Bruce told him, trying to be reassuring, only the thought, But I hadn't recently eaten a Hydra necromancer, popped unbidden into his head.Loki clapped his hand over his mouth, throat working, but couldn't hold it in. He leaned as far as he could away from Bruce, and threw up, gasped, coughed, and threw up again.As a doctor, Bruce was no stranger to bodily functions. They didn't disturb him, the way they did Tony, who, to say the least, could be almost laughably squeamish. He rubbed Loki's back lightly, waiting to speak until his friend seemed well and truly finished."Take a few more breaths," he advised quietly. "You'll feel better. You're okay."Loki wiped his mouth on a swatch of clean grass, then his eyes on the back of his sleeve. The look he shot Bruce after that said clearly enough, How I wish that was true!"I am most terribly sorry," Loki told him, though, when he could actually speak out loud. "Bruce... dear friend, will you have the kindness to help me stand? I continue to feel slightly shaken, and would away from this befouled place.""Slightly shaken" appeared to be Lokiese for, "So weak I can hardly move"--yet move they did, if only by a few feet, before Loki sank down onto the grass again. He promptly lay down with his head propped on Bruce's knee (Loki and a well-defined sense of others' personal space never having been too closely acquainted). Far from minding, though, Bruce actually welcomed the closeness--anything to feel less alone in that pastoral-looking but weirdly unnerving place."I feel it also," Loki assured him. "All appears peaceful... and yet.""Yeah, there seems to be a lot of 'and yet' here," Bruce agreed.Again, he found himself first resting a hand on top of Loki's lush black curls, then stroking them gently, something he'd never done with another man in his life--but dammitall, it felt soothing, and Loki didn't seem to object.He was just glad his companion had given up the weird Asgardian pomade that had made his hair look like a collection of licorice whips that had gotten wet and stuck together."Midgard," his friend assured him, "Knows far better hair-care products. Certain warriors of Asgard dress their hair with the rendered fat of a foul-smelling bear-like creature. It is said to bring terror to one's enemies in battle. And also to prevent helmet-hair.Bruce laughed, though he honestly couldn't tell whether or not Loki was teasing him--"bullshitting," Tony would have said--either indulging in his own, frequently bone-dry sense of humor, trying to put Bruce a little more at ease, or both."Do you ever wish to...?" Loki began, then let it drop, allowing the longest time to pass without continuing the thought."A lot of the time..." Bruce began in his own right, then, like Loki, didn't go any further. How would it help, to say what he wanted to say, which was that he often wished--was wishing at this very moment, to make his escape, not even so much from that physical place (which, if fact, he so, so did want to escape, to be safely back home in Manhattan, in the tower, to be surrounded by the only to-actually-be-relied-on friends he had ever known), but down the rabbit hole, far, far away to the safe place he escaped to inside his head.The safe place was always a library, mildly dusty, smelling comfortingly of books, afternoon sun angling through the windows. A library occupied by people who would gladly help if asked, but who otherwise left him alone.Bruce wondered if his companion ever felt the same way.“Loki,” he asked, twining strands of that ultra-soft hair around his fingers, “Is there ever a safe place you go to, in your head, when you just can't take things anymore?”“The Library,” Loki answered immediately, “Ever The Great Library in the palace of the Golden City, where I was reared.”“Of course.” Bruce couldn't quite hold in a brief, pained laugh. “Sometimes I think--you might as well be the magical, princely me.”“I have often thought the same," Loki answered, "Although, upon my surface, I might appear far more... flashy." He breathed out a soft little laugh. "We are not so very different, my friend. You are the one side of Tony, my beloved, his 'ScienceBro,' as he will say. I am, perhaps, the other, the side which dreams and creates. Yet, within our own hearts, despite all differences of outward demeanor, we remain more alike than different.”Loki, I’m sorry, Bruce thought, feeling his companion shiver against his leg, That I didn’t notice in the past. I’m sorry I mocked you. I’m sorry I didn’t understand or help, when all you needed was understanding and help.Loki twisted, turning his face upward to meet Bruce's eyes, his smile kind, and drowsy. He patted Bruce’s thigh in a fond, though slightly clumsy way.“You are my friend, even if you doubt the fact, and while I am sorry that you are lost here, Bruce, far from other friends and family, I am not sorry that, if we two absolutely must be lost, we find ourselves lost together. Did that make any sense whatsoever to you? For I fear that it sounded, to my ears, nonsensical in the extreme. Ah, my friend..."The god’s eyes drifted shut, opened, shut again as Loki fought sleep. “You did not let me go.”"Let me go!" chimed in Bruce's head, in four-part harmony, and he laughed a little internally. He was a child of his generation, with a constant, silent soundtrack forever running through his head.“Generation X,” they called people his age, a generation of castaways on a sea of possibilities so huge it was nearly impossible to map, or even explore.“Ah, yes, the Rhapsody of Bohemia," Loki said sleepily. "Written by Mister Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, upon the distant island of Zanzibar.”Really? I didn't know that, Bruce thought--but then, he didn't share Loki's capacity to know everything about... everything.“Scaramouche was a film, one I watched with Kurt. He wore a mask, as we all do. Not Kurt, of course, for Tony calls Kurt the last honest man. Who was it, Bruce, who searched with a lamp through the daylight hours, looking for an honest man?”“'Bohemian Rhapsody,' Lok,” Bruce answered absently, “And I'm pretty sure I don't know. About the honest man, that is.”Only then, after a minute, it came to him. “Diogenes the Cynic. Diogenes of Sinope.”“Yes, the philosopher of Ancient Greece, who slept at the marketplace within a large vessel of pottery. Indeed, I thank you, Bruce. I should have become increasingly troubled, had you not satisfied my curiosity.” Loki added, following another long, long pause, "There is so much to sense here--so much I feel I must interpret--perhaps I should restrain my mind from wandering into idle thoughts, no matter how it wishes to roam free, like a great, shaggy, horned white goat upon a hillside."Can't say I've ever pictured my mind as a mountain goat," Bruce answered. "It makes quite an image.""In the stories of the Northmen, Thor drove a great cart drawn by goats, and thus made the thunder. Their names were said to be 'Tanngrisnir,' which is to say 'teeth-barer' and 'Tanngnjóstr,' meaning 'teeth-grinder.' Those are odd names. Do you think they may have come to us out of an earlier cycle? I find the thought of my brother driving a cart drawn by fierce, toothy goats most amusing."“Excuse the imposition, Loki.” Bruce pressed the back of his hand to Loki’s forehead, careful of the horns, then to each of his cheeks in turn. Usually, the god ran a little cool, but just now he seemed overly warm by anyone’s standards."Do you maybe want to shed some layers, my friend?" he asked, wishing he had water, or something to give Loki to drink. "You seem a little...""No, no, I am chilled," Loki protested, though he clearly wasn't, quite the contrary.Bruce wondered if at some point he should try to swing his companion back around to their “Toto, we’re not in Kansas” discussion, but seriously had to question whether he'd even be able to get Loki to fully engage. As well as feverish, his friend was (free association aside), clearly exhausted, and for another seemed (also aside from his conversational ramblings) to be trying to the best of his ability to make sense of this strange new world. For a third, forcing Loki to skip down the yellow brick road in search of brains, heart or courage (of which Loki had plenty) would only be a waste of energy, energy Loki, at least, likely couldn't spare."I will rest a little, and consider," Loki told him, following this statement with a clearly-meant-to-be-encouraging, "Fear not!"Somehow, it didn't exactly help.Bruce tried to reassure himself that his dimensional travel-buddy just needed a little extra time to acclimatize, as well as, maybe, get some clue as to what might have happened to them. After all, back home, Loki had already been over-tired, and in the battle he’d had to do the lion's share of the heavy lifting. Who wouldn't be wiped out?He passed Loki's personal quiet-time by trying to remain inconspicuous (with luck, his green would blend in, chameleonlike, with the meadow's green) while trying, also, to put in a little effort toward getting a better idea of their surroundings--"a great big field under a bright blue sky" didn't really seem to cut it, given the situation they'd found themselves in.Tony would be so disappointed.Tony would be trying like hell to get them back.Just remember that, Bruce told himself. Tony will try. He won't give up, despite all odds. He won't give up, even if anyone else in the entire world would. He also won't fail. He'll find you.He'll find you, Bruce repeated firmly, inside his own head."We truly ought to have worn our silver slippers," Loki sighed, after a long silence.Bruce huffed out a soft little laugh. He had to admit, he'd started to find Loki's little quirks endearing. Anyone else in the entire world would have said "ruby," but not Mister "I preferred the book version.""There is much magic here, many forms, one conflicting with another, as if..." Another silence fell.As if? Bruce wanted to prompt, but didn't. Mindless chatter might fill up space, maybe even make him feel better, but it certainly wouldn't help Loki concentrate."Roads meet here," Loki said suddenly, just as Bruce's own eye-lids began to feel heavy. "As if at a crossroads, tracks arrive from many different places, traveled both by those who journey, and those who, like ourselves, are lost. There is also an actual--which is to say a physical--road quite near us..."Loki pushed himself upright again, nodding toward their left. "See there, in that direction where the sun rose, earlier in the day?"Bruce squinted, thinking that maybe, just maybe, he made out a paler, browner streak amidst all the green. He took off his glasses to clean them, hoping to improve his vision, then realized the reason he hadn't been able to see was that he no longer needed them, any more than his even bigger, greener self required glasses to see.The sun had now, it appeared, risen nearly to its zenith, but not entirely, and Bruce wanted to think of the direction it rose out of as "the east," even though it wasn't, any more than the direction where the sun sank at night--if it sank at night--would be "the west."But Loki was right about one thing for sure, Bruce realized--there was, indeed, an actual road, a fairly big one, now that he'd seen it, laid down straight as a ruler across the grasslands. Both on the near side of this road, and on the far, rose a dry stone wall that (given Bruce's interesting new height, and assuming distance and perspective weren't messing with his vision), he estimated would reach to just below his knees, meaning one of two things: either these markers had been built purely as borders, the this-place equivalent of fog lines back home, or they really had landed in Munchkinland, and the walls were proportionate.Except for the standard-sized cart just then moving by on that same road, which seemed to put paid to his Munchkin Theory."You will remember, also in Oz there lived Winkies, Gillikins and..." Loki frowned. "Bruce, I cannot recall the fourth...""It's okay, Loki," Bruce told him. "This isn't Final Jeopardy. It's just a book. Series of books. Whatever. It'll come back to you.""Yes," Loki breathed, not even rising to his "just a book" comment. "Yes, of course you are correct. The knowledge will return."Which begged the question, what knowledge were they talking about, exactly? Loki looked sincerely upset, and Bruce seriously doubted that came just from having temporarily misplaced the name of the Quadling Country in his memory palace."Quadlings, Lok," he put in gently. "They were the Quadlings."Loki's answering smile came close to breaking his heart. "You helped me! You will help me, Bruce? You truly are my friend in these days?""God, Loki! What a question!"Like you didn't earn it? Bruce asked himself.They both stared at the road in slightly awkward silence.It didn't seem to be a highway, exactly, although fairly wide and--as the tangerine-colored sun climbed higher in the morning sky—also, it seemed, fairly well traveled. It wasn't a yellow-brick road, definitely—or any other kind of brick, for that matter—also not concrete, asphalt, blacktop, or any number of other modern or modernish building materials that might have been used to construct it.If anything, the not-quite-highway reminded Bruce of the bits of ancient Roman road he’d seen while skulking through Europe, not too long after his father’s death (let’s not call that death "murder," though it was, absolutely, both Bruce and The Other Guy, for once, acting in 100% perfect agreement, and considering the act well beyond justifiable).Bruce had referred to his European skulk as a “cycling trip,” but it was really an exercise in going to ground, hiding, hanging out alone with his self-hating, miserable thoughts. Not guilty thoughts, though, or doubtful thoughts. Bruce and his Big Green Friend had also agreed about that. In fact, their only regret remained that they hadn’t been able to convert Brian Banner into a grease spot on the landscape years before they’d finally done so, that they hadn’t had the strength, or strength of purpose to eliminate him while their beautiful mother, Rebecca, still graced the earth.She’d tried so hard to protect them, loved them so well, had thrown her fragile body up as a shield between them and that bundle of cowardice and personality disorders, who they'd been forced to call "father," again and again and again…Bruce wondered if his mother, valiant woman that she’d been, now walked the sands Tony had told him about, the warm sands of Avalon, Island of the Ever-Young.If any justice existed in the universe, she did.Bruce grinned thinly to himself, imagining Rebecca, Wendy-like, calling the Lost Boys of that island home to supper, smiling the lovely, warm, welcoming smile she had in the picture Loki'd painted for him.“It is a delightful conceit,” said Loki quietly, meaning by “conceit,” in Lokiese (the vocabulary of which tended to hover somewhere in a nebulous time period between the ages of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens) “idea,” or “concept.” Why he just didn’t say “idea,” or “concept” was anyone’s guess, but Loki sometimes spoke of the “flavor” of words—so maybe it was the same thing as why some people preferred beef while others preferred fish."Forgive me, please, Bruce, for my protracted silence," Loki added. "I was attempting to measure... I attempted to feel the shape..."He went quiet again.To measure the universe, Bruce supplied in his head. To feel the shape of the world. Furthermore, he suspected Loki actually possessed the innate ability to measure such vast things, and if he hadn't been so damn tired, would have easily enough succeeded, in much the same way he could so casually say, after a single off-handed glance, "There are one thousand four hundred seventeen coffee beans in that jar," like some otherworldly Count von Count.The way he could also open a Loki-sized hole in reality and just... step through.Which didn't appear to be an option, currently.“I weave pockets, small ones, from the threads of dimension and time," Loki informed him. "'Pocket universes,' I call them. Suppose, Bruce, that there are far greater gods than I, far older, or more skilled in their weaving? Might not such pockets, either Crafted with deliberate skill or, once made, then forgotten and abandoned, yet still rich with magic, expand and grow more complex on their own? I have traveled before to such places, not Realms, or planets, or what have you, such as Midgard our home, yet still worlds, constructs of magic, story and memory, such as that world to which I brought Odin, my grandfather, and cast out the nets of my intent, so that all things would turn toward what I sought--namely, the utter destruction of my cruel forebearer. I must ask if this is also such a world, one that turns, as that place turned, by magical intent?""Wouldn't that be a good thing?" Bruce asked. "I mean, if this place is super magic...?""But the intent I speak of, dear friend, is not my intent, and I yet comprehend neither what it wants, nor what it means.""Then, not so good after all," Bruce said."Indeed," Loki answered, "'Not so good' may be the best we can hope for,"Suddenly, for Bruce, the other shoe dropped. "You're afraid it might be Nelson? Driving things, I mean? That our being here isn't an accident, a random spin of the dial? That we--or you, at least--were supposed to wind up exactly where we wound up?"Bruce couldn't hold back a shiver. Maybe Loki didn't come right out and say it, but he had a good inkling that that particular scenario was exactly what his friend feared, and that Loki also felt guilty for dragging him into what might very well be the opposite of Fun Times."Well... crap," Bruce said."Indeed," Loki answered, then sighed again. "I had hoped...""You killed him, though, right?" Bruce put in. "You killed him. Or you and Kurt did. You, uh... drank him up. I saw him shrivel. I watched that with my own eyes.""I also believed that I had slain Laufey, my own Pabbi, who loved me," Loki said quietly. "Yet Hela assures me I was mistaken, that I did not actually do so.""Oh." Bruce didn't know what else to say."Bruce, where do you suppose this road may lead?” Loki asked, after another minute.Bruce shrugged, wishing he had a better answer, still struggling with everything Loki had said and not-quite-said."Bruce, perhaps I should not speak more..." Loki told him, "Until I know, in truth, what I now only suspect. I would not fill you with fear when such fear is, perhaps, unjustified." He glanced toward the road, then back again. "Still, if I am honest--if you would have me be honest, and not spare your feelings, I truly misgive. The air contains...""Be honest, Loki," Bruce said, proud that his voice came out sounding fairly normal, despite wanting to ask, in a panicked kind of way, Contains what?He sincerely hoped the answer wasn't (despite Loki already having assured him otherwise) that they'd soon keel over from breathing undetectably poisoned air that would slowly--or quickly, for that matter--kill one or both of them.Bruce considered it a clear commentary on the current frazzled state of his own mind that, in the midst of all their other concerns, he'd totally let go of that one particular worry until that very moment.If Tony had been there, he'd have whipped out one of his handy-dandy meters in under two seconds flat, to answer that exact question.Unlike his ScienceBro, however, Bruce didn't routinely fill his pockets with handy-dandy meters, probably because he wasn't used to having pockets after a fight. Or even clothes."Bruce, in this case, you may consider me your, as you phrase it, 'handy-dandy meter,' for I am able to sense such things and may assure you the air is pure. I ought to have asked, however--and forgive me for being remiss in this--were you unhurt by the fall? Except, of course, for the contusions, and the fracture of the smallest finger of your left hand. Naturally, your mind is perplexed by these events, just as mine is."Bruce looked down. As Loki said, his left pinkie finger was stiff and swollen. He'd been too caught up in everything else to even notice it hurt—and yet, damn, it did."I suspect an avulsion fracture, painful yet not dangerous." Loki ripped one of the decorative metal bands off his armor, bent it to a neat, narrow "U" the exact length of Bruce's pinky, lined it with a strip of leather and slipped it over Bruce's finger. "It is a common danger, when one battles with heavy swords."He secured the impromptu splint neatly with a second strip of leather, also taken from his armor."And there. Is it improved?""Actually, yes. I hadn't even noticed the break until you mentioned it, but then it hurt like hell.""Also common." Loki tried for, but totally failed at, a smile. His hands, even as he'd been splinting Bruce's finger, shook badly. "I expect we both exist, currently, in a state of shock." He glanced back at the non-highway. "This road appears newer than the Roman roads of Europe. In a relative way. As the oldest remaining bits of the Tower of London may be said to be 'newer' than Stonehenge—or, for that matter, than myself.""I get your meaning. No real 'new' actually involved here."None." Another pause, during which they both studied the way the road had cracked, and spindly strands of grass stuck up through the splits in its stones. Now and then carts traveled past their vantage point, up on a slight rise in the midst of the rapidly-drying meadow. Heavy wagons rumbled by, once or twice a carriage or two, one of these carriages so large, so elaborate, and so fast, it might even have been called a “diligence.”Bruce wondered where he’d learned the word, in the context of a mode of conveyance. Wasn't a diligence pretty much the same thing as a stagecoach? As a boy, he’d spent as much time as he thought he could safely get away with hiding out in either the school or local libraries. Maybe he’d picked up the word there, as a young child tucked anonymously amidst the shelter of the stacks."The word 'diligence,'" Loki informed him, "Dates from the late seventeenth century. It is a shortening of the French phrase, 'carrosse de diligence,' meaning, in the English tongue, ‘coach of speed.'"“Oh, Bruce, my friend... Again, I do not feel…” He trailed off there. His eyes had turned back to green again, but they were glazed, almost filmed, like Loki’s son Jöri’s when the protective middle lid slid across them. A plum-colored flush had risen across Loki's high cheekbones.“Loki, I really think, even if you are having chills, that it might be a good thing to get some of those layers off you. The sun’s pretty intense, and I'd guess you’re overheating."Loki, at that point, didn’t respond. He slipped down from leaning against Bruce's shoulder into lying dull-eyed on the now-dry grass, panting a little every now and then.“Why,” he murmured, “When I still feel chilled? What odd, small insects this grass contains.”“Okay, then,” said Bruce, who hadn’t noticed a single bug of any sort.Sliding off Loki’s long leather coat was the easy bit. After that, things got increasingly complicated. Loki’s padded, metal-reinforced, armored surcoat had woven parts and laced parts and buckled parts and, for its insane complexity had clearly been designed by a mad, Asgardian M.C. Escher, and the tunic beneath it was as bad, if not worse. Under that was another padded and armored chest and belly protector fastened with so many buckles Bruce found himself panting too by the time he got through them.Clearly, Asgardians needed magic. How else could they possibly get dressed?Asgardian men’s underwear, Bruce also discovered, was a damn work of art, but Loki’s had been so stained and so bloodied over the abdominal region, it would need to be tossed—no amount of Shout or Oxiclean was ever going to help that mess.Bruce shook Loki’s shoulder gently—the god had now begun to murmur dreamily in a state of half-sleep, “Tony, catch it. Tony catch it, please. Oh, how it hurts, it hurts.”He wondered what Tony supposedly needed to catch for his husband.Bruce pulled back the linen undershirt and gagged, fighting hard against the urge. To say Loki’s belly had been mangled was the grossest understatement. There were lines of torn tissue, deep, wide lines, that looked as if they’d been scored, then scored again and again, none of the cuts clean, none of the tissue healthy. It needed serious debridment, maybe even packing in the deeper areas.Bruce had nothing. No tools, no equipment, not so much as a paltry bottle of water, and he felt despair sink into his skin. It was like India again, in the aftermath of the tsunami all those years ago, when the need was so great and the help he could actually give so small.“Oh, Loki,” he sighed.Loki retched into the grass—a little more of the black goo, though not much, and it also seemed thinner and grayer than it had been.Still. Ugh.A fluting voice behind Bruce said a collection of words, causing him to do a cartoon doubletake.He been so caught up in Loki's predicament he hadn’t heard footsteps, or wagonwheels, but there, on the side of the road directly in front of him stood a whole line of brightly-painted caravans (were those goats penned on their roofs? and chicken coops?) and a couple of heavy wagons piled high with equipment. Forget not having heard them drive up, how had he managed not to see them coming from five miles away?The fluting voice said something else, probably, by the speaker’s tone, a statement along the lines of, “Please don’t be alarmed.”The words themselves bore a strange sense of being on the verge of understandable, yet not, as if the language was some second cousin to his native tongue, yet not English in any way Bruce recognized. He realized, also, that he understood most of what he almost understood more because he spoke semi-passable German than because of any kinship the language bore to his own.At first glance, he’d thought the voice’s owner was a child. He wasn’t. Neither was he alone. There were two of them there, twins at the very least, and probably identical twins, with handsome, rosy, pleasant features and crinkly golden hair down to their shouldersThey were also Little People, born with anchondroplasia, it appeared, whose long bones, through a glitch in their genes, had failed to grow. They weren’t children, but they weren't all that much older, still young enough for their voices not to have fully changed.They grabbed Bruce’s hands, one on each side of him, pulling him toward the road with remarkable strength as they spoke back and forth between themselves, quietly and at length, clearly involved in some sort of earnest discussion.About where to take him, Bruce guessed, and about what to do with him once they got him to wherever that might be.Loki! he thought, with something close to despair.They brought him to a wonderful wagon, like Mister Toad’s temporarily-beloved caravan, the one in which he planned to travel the open road before being almost immediately drawn in by the lure of a passing motorcar. The exterior had been elaborately carved, painted in every color of the rainbow.The twins brought him around to the back, pushing him toward the caravan's back door, and Bruce struggled a little, not violently, just attempting to make a point.“My friend’s injured and ill,” he tried to explain. “I can’t leave him behind here.”That called forth another blast of rapid-fire speech, out of which Bruce somehow caught a phrase that sounded remarkably like, “freedom-reacher,” and suddenly, by a weird jolt of instinct, he understood what the boys were trying to tell him.It wasn't "freedom-reacher," but the German word "Friedenricter," the boys were saying, only with interestingly shifted vowels. The freedom-judge, they were trying to tell him. The sheriff 's on his way, and it wasn't just that Bruce had trespassed in a foreign land, it was that the law hated their kind, the law would hurt him.His captors weren't excited, they were scared, and he wasn’t being kidnapped, but rescued.His green skin made him, in these boys' eyes, one of them, and in their world, like looked after like because no one else would.A giant appeared over the lip of the road behind them, a giant with a gentle, misshapen face that made him look remarkably like Sloth from The Goonies, except that this man was even larger, and only had one eye.Clearly he’d only ever had one eye, one big, soft-brown, curious eye. He carried Loki, for all his height, gently and carefully as a baby, as Bruce had seen Hank McCoy carry him once or twice, lifting him up toward the door of the wagon, where other hands brought him inside."Thank you!" Bruce told the three, his heart pounding. "God... thank you!"They smiled, seeming to understand him, nodding their "You're welcomes!"Seconds later, the same hands pulled Bruce in, the door slammed and locked behind him, and the caravan jolted forward with deliberate speed—fast, but not fast enough, he guessed, to draw undue suspicion. A “nothing to see here, officer, don’t mind me,” kind of paceStrangely, for the first time since he and Loki had arrived in this dimension, Bruce felt almost safe
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Bruce blinked several times, trying to accustom his eyes to the difference between the brightness of the intensely orange sun outdoors and the dim, golden, almost dusty quality of the light inside the caravan, where the many windows were covered with something that resembled either parchment or thin-shaved sheets of horn.Those windows made him think of a book he’d liked to spend time with as a kid, sitting in the most anonymous corner of the drafty, beloved old public library building that he could find, the battered copy of If You Lived in Colonial Times spread open on his lap as he imagined, just imagined, himself in one of those snug, firelit wooden homes, everything so simple, and the whole world making sense.Or maybe, failing that, living in any other place at all, any place in the whole universe, besides the brick house on Alder Street in Dayton, Ohio, the home, and the hometown, that had never—not since his mom passed--felt like the homes Bruce read about in stories.Anything to be far, far away in both distance and time from The Angriest Man on Earth, also known to Bruce, reluctantly, as “Dad.”Bruce kept waiting for enough years to have passed between that time and this, enough years for the pain to dull and the memories to fade—only it seemed they never did. Both stayed sharp as knives, or needles, keeping their power to cut, or prick.How much further away do you want? Bruce asked himself. You’ve gone about as far now as you could possibly go. Another time. Another universe. A magical fairytale world. And besides that, remember--the man is gone.
He’s been gone for years.
He remembered another book, a book about one of King Arthur's knights, that held the sad tale of The Fisher King, eternally wounded, eternally bleeding, without the power to ever heal.Bruce shut his eyes, then opened them again, pretending only logical, rational thoughts occupied his brain.Thoughts such as, How does this world differ from my own? (something Loki had already covered, more or less) and Why are the windows covered in horn--is glass rare or expensive here, or do the people who live in this caravan prefer that no one sees in?Six of one, half a dozen of the other, Bruce guessed. The boys, the giant, despite their friendliness, had seemed to be in some kind of all-fired hurry, quite possibly (he knew the signs) a hurry born of fear, or at least anxiety, as if something out there in their world did not wish them well. They hadn't relaxed until both he and Loki had been thoroughly concealed inside the bright-painted caravan.Were they scared of the sheriff’s men they’d mentioned, or some other threat?Bruce shook himself out of his memories, his questions, to finally take a decent look around, in place of the disjointed series of Polaroid flashes he’d so far allowed himself.Someone had placed Loki on an actually-fairly-cozy-looking bed built into the left-hand wall. The whole caravan, on closer inspection, appeared to be a wonder of charm and efficiency, carved and painted inside as well as out, with several lines of the narrow horn-covered windows to let in light, and storage cupboards cleverly squeezed into every available space. Banks of these surrounded Loki’s bunk, which had a second, slightly smaller bunk just above it. Opposite the bunks stretched a long metal counter, interrupted by what looked like a compact cookstove (presumably also a source of heat in colder weather). Next to that a large stoneware flask with a tap had been clamped to the wall, just above a small basin. At the far end, what Bruce guessed would fold down into a table currently stood in its full upright and locked position.The place looked loved, homelike. It looked as if it had been made by people who cared, and Bruce wanted to like them, whoever they were—after all, those same people had given him, and Loki, shelter from whatever scary stuff lurked outside in the tangerine-tinted sunlight.If scary stuff did lurk out there, which--based on the semi-disjointed warnings Loki had issued--Bruce strongly suspected it did.Bruce had an instinct for that sort of thing, well-honed over the years.“I am well. I am well," Loki interjected suddenly, his voice strained and weak, pretty much proving the contrary to be true. He'd started doing that thing, that freaky thing, where (despite his current blueness) he suddenly looked completely human, yet completely alien, all at the same time, and at least ten years (or more) younger than he usually appeared. He’d been propped up on the bunk, leaning back into several pillows, his face set in exactly the same wide-eyed, shocked-beyond-belief expression Bruce knew his own face held.His mother-of-pearl, silver-shot, horns glowed faintly, like moonlight."It’s okay, Loki. We're safe here," Bruce tried to reassure his companion, though Loki had to know as well as he did that all that was bull. Neither of them really had the least idea if they were all right, not all right, or a hundred points in between.Loki, at least, appeared very much not all right. He looked bonelessly exhausted, though at the same time his features had gone rigid with pain. Nonetheless, his eyes moved left, indicating two strangers, both women, who stood swaying gently with the motion of their moving home, watching them.One had a rosy complexion and shimmering golden hair, like the twins who'd brought Bruce and Loki to the caravan--almost certainly a close relative, by her apparent age, probably a mother or an aunt. She gazed at them with an expression of kindly curiosity--not shocked, not upset, merely watchful and prepared. The other woman, although only of average height, stood more than a foot taller than her companion. She was a slimly muscular twentysomething of the exact same shade of blue Bruce associated with Loki’s best friend (and his own long-time acquaintance), Kurt Wagner. She glared at them with unblinking yellow eyes that seemed a million miles removed from the warmth and good humor that nearly always shone in Kurt’s, their expression falcon-fierce and filled with a whole vast frozen north of suspicion.Violence is not out of the question here, those eyes said.Bruce found himself totally able to believe them.Not knowing, exactly, why he did it, Bruce bowed low, his right hand pressed over his heart, hoping against hope that his posture would convey, in the words of the old song, “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.”The follow-up line, “Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood,” practically went without saying."Thank you. Thank you," he gushed to the women--anything to make himself seem grateful and non-threatening.The younger woman's eyes narrowed even further. She spat out a string of words, venomous, harsh-toned words. Bruce didn't have to understand the vocabulary to fully grasp her meaning.Bruce shook his head. He touched his lips, then his ears, and shook his head again. I'm sorry. I can't understand you.Loki gave a little sigh.The golden-haired woman patted her taller friend’s arm, in a comforting kind of way, before asking Bruce an equally incomprehensible question in a sweet, high, lilting voice.Bruce repeated his awkward little mime performance.Loki muttered something under his breath. Seconds later, a pain flashed behind Bruce's eyes, an instantaneous cluster headache that went away again as soon as it came. A sound came along with it, like someone repeatedly striking the highest key of a badly-tuned piano. A second pain flared just above his eyebrows, a sure sign of the switching on of the mind-to mind communications Tony had dubbed "The LokiLine."Another second, and the LokiLine feeling went away, but once it left him, Bruce understood every last syllable the women spoke."My name is Robert Bruce Banner," he tried again, speaking slowly. On the surface, his words sounded like his usual American English, but his mouth felt weird forming their syllables, and Bruce realized that beneath them lay something completely different, a language of round vowels and brisk consonants, like the somewhat-related-to-German tongue he'd heard the boys speak.He suspected his brain had just been flashed a download of the Allspeak, universal language of Asgard, the better to communicate with the locals. "That is my friend, Loki Laufeyson Stark."The blue woman blinked once, clearly surprised, yet also not about to let a little thing like suddenly being able to understand the weird strangers dropped into their midst faze her in the least.Her smaller companion laughed in delight."Oh, how marvelous!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands together, "Now we may know one another!""Nocturne," the blue woman put in. She jerked her chin toward her companion. "Rosa."The names echoed weirdly in Bruce's head, both as the English versions he'd understood, and as their real names, Nihternness and Rósig.His own seldom-used first name had come through as Hreodbeorht. Loki, in whatever language, appeared to remain Loki."Oh, don't be so unfriendly, Ness. These young men won't hurt us! Must you always be suspicious?""Yes,” Nocturne said. “It's my job to be suspicious.""Well, dear, it's for your father the Master to decide in the end. For now, I couldn't leave these poor boys for the Sheriff's men. I couldn't. Like helps like. You know our way.""Yes, I realize." The tall woman’s tone softened slightly. “Like helps like.”“Bruce,” Loki breathed. His teammate seriously didn’t look his best by this point, his face had gone hollow with suffering, his eyes haunted. Sweat streaked his pale-blue skin.“Lok? You okay?” Bruce asked--pointlessly, he knew. He lurched forward in the swaying wagon, suddenly concerned. More concerned, anyway, since he’d already been more than slightly worried. He touched Loki’s sweaty forehead, not entirely surprised to find his skin burning hot, though his body shook in small, tense shivers.Loki mumbled something Bruce wasn't able to understand, and Rosa looked to him at once, concern darkening her pretty face."Oh, my dear," she said, "What sad thing has become of you?" She crossed the floor of the swaying caravan easily, pulled a stool out from under the bunk and sat, her hands going at once to the roundness of Loki's belly, feeling around its contours, then folding back the stained Asgardian undergarments to study the weeping cuts beneath."She made a little clicking, oh, this is not good, sound with her tongue, but said nothing besides, "Ness, fetch me water?"The fierce young woman blinked her glowing eyes once, then obeyed, pouring water from the kettle on the back of the hob, then taking a bundle of clean white rags from a cupboard.With these, Rosa began to clean Loki's wounds, careful and seemingly unalarmed, humming softly under her breath.Bruce shook himself out of something close to a stupor. Remembering a care-of-Loki factoid Tony had mentioned once, he started to ask, "Do you have...?" tried to think of the right word, then realized, after the fact, that the Allspeak would take care of it for him. "Mint tea. Do you have mint tea?"Rosa smiled. "The top drawer on the left, dearest."Dutifully, turning to the kettle again, Nocturne began to brew tea, stealing glances now and then at the older woman."It's a painkiller for him," Bruce tried to explain, "We're... we're not of the same species."At that point, he got a lesson in the Allspeak, and why Thor, before he learned to speak actual English, sometimes sounded so weird--the Allspeak, it seemed, worked as a translator, but a translator as made by Asgardians, from an Asgardian mindset, based on how the people of Asgard used language, which was both far more formal and a thousand times more metaphorical than contemporary American English.Because of this, what came out of his mouth turned out to be, "It tastes, to him, of sweet oblivion, for he is of the distant other."Both women, however, appeared to understand this statement perfectly. Bruce accepted the stoneware mug Nocturne passed to him and bent over his friend. "Loki. Loki, wake up a little. I have some mint tea for you to drink."Loki, obligingly, opened his eyes, hissed a little as Rosa passed her cloth over one of the particularly deep cuts, blinked, and struggled to sit. With Bruce supporting him and holding the cup, he drank, getting down all of the hot tea in a few swallows."It is good," he gasped, as Bruce lowered him to the pillows again. "I thank you."Rosa smiled, passed the basin to Nocturne (who opened the top half of the caravan door to fling out the dirty water), and squeezed Loki's hand. “Do men often bear younglings, man of the distant other?"Loki smiled, though his face remained tight with pain. "No, Lady Rosa, not often. I am, among those of Midgard, fairly unique.""Ah, Midgard. Now and then we meet those of Midgard. Or, perhaps, 'of the Midgards,' I should say.""There are other worlds than these," Bruce found himself saying--it was a line, he realized, from one of Thor's ubiquitous Stephen King novels ('Stephen, King of Maine' as Thor would say), which the god of thunder often read aloud from, with commentary, when they traveled on missions, since Thor became distressed from time to time at the lack of oral storytelling in Midgardian-American culture. He'd offered to compose extemporaneous sagas instead; reading aloud had been Tony's alternative."Worthy-of-sagas," Bruce remembered his best friend telling him, was pretty much the highest compliment an Asgardian could give you."Thor," Loki breathed, his eyelids at half-mast. "Tony..."Don't think so loud, Bruce ordered himself.“No, I…” Loki’s hand gripped Bruce’s wrist. His eyes looked kind, understanding, even loving—in the five seconds before they rolled completely back in his head.“I sense…” Rosa continued. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter what I sense. Will you help me to unclothe your friend, so that I may complete my examination?”“You’re a doctor?” Bruce asked.Rosa gave him a blank look.“A physician? A healer?”That won Bruce a smile.“So am I,” he told her. “But I wish I knew more about how to treat Loki. His parents come--came--from two different worlds than mine. He’s...uh... special.” Bruce found himself stroking Loki’s hair, even though it was sweaty, and ashy, more than a little gross. "Plus, we changed. When we came here. Through the portal."Neither of the woman so much as blinked at the word "portal," even though it emerged from Bruce's mouth as "The Else-Door."Hank McCoy had always been Loki’s doctor. Hank understood the ins and outs of how Loki’s unique body worked, while Bruce possessed only the most superficial knowledge, information he'd only recently begun to take in, after months of willfully not paying attention.Only now he could kick himself for his stubborness, pointless anger and--let's tell the truth here--his sulking. He owed it to Tony, his brother in spirit (if not in blood), to look out for Loki, to keep him well, and to do everything he could to get them both safely home again.He owed the same to Loki himself. Ever since his companion returned, so completely changed from the person (god?) he’d been, Bruce fully admitted he’d been a complete asshole to him. Meanwhile, Loki, all that time, in the most patient possible way (and Loki, except with the kids, wasn't really a patient person, not by nature), had tried to be his friend. Bruce knew he’d been mean, and petty. His own actions shamed him.Rosa watched him as he thought these thoughts--maybe she even understood them to some extent, though her face still held nothing but sympathy. After she'd let him brood for a minute or so, though, her manner became brisk. She brought out a pair of scissors--at least, Bruce guessed they were scissors, in some less-evolved form than he was used to--that looked like a pair of chef's-knife blades facing each other, with an elongated metal "U" where their handles should have been. With Bruce and Nocturne moving Loki's body, as gently as they could, she cut off the Asgardian undies. Even with the upper bunk folded against the wall to give them room, within the narrow confines of the caravan, it was a little bit like playing Twister. Only with sharp scissors added to the mix.When Loki lay naked on the bunk, Rosa said, softly, "The part that comes next will hurt."Loki gave a soft groan, but didn’t wake up, and the two of them pulled the last scraps of clothing away from his body. Bruce could see ribs, and the sharp details of knees and collarbones. Naked, despite his height and the roundness of his belly, Loki looked fragile. He’d never really made it back to the form of the slim-but-powerful man with the faster-than-lightning reflexes who’d invaded Earth—there’d been too much suffering, not enough peace for that to happen.Bruce hated himself for being so unprepared, for simply not knowing how to be helpful. Hints Tony had dropped in the past seemed to suggest that certain… omissions existed in Loki’s body, even crucial omissions, and that hit Bruce as terrifying.Rosa opened a cupboard under the bunk, pulled out a glass bottle of the size and round-bellied shape Bruce associated with moderate-sized bottles of brandy, though made of a bubbly bluish-green glass, and poured the contents of that bottle all over Loki's belly. The god's eyes flew open in an expression of agonized outrage."Forgive me," Rosa said calmly. "I know that it burns, but there is nothing so harmful to the atomies of infection than spirits of wine, and I would not see you sicken further."She rose, washed her hands at the little basin, and gestured to Bruce that he should do the same. The soap they used was soft, of a dark-ivory color, and smelled powerfully clean. She then took a packet of needles pre-threaded with lengths of coarse black thread, placed them in a plain white dish and poured more of the spirits of wine over them, taking dish and all to Loki's bedside."Is your friend a man of courage?" Rosa asked, resuming her seat. "This next will perhaps be most painful of all.""I'd say he's one of the bravest men I know," Bruce answered.Nocturne pushed a second, slightly higher stool to the head of the bunk for Bruce to sit on, then, in a slightly constrained voice, told them, "I will inform the Master of these events."Maybe Bruce should have been surprised when she bamfed away, except that he totally wasn't. She simply looked too much like Kurt for her exit to come as anything like a shock."Kurt?" Loki asked, in a weak voice, then went under again."Dear Ness." Rosa gave a slight smile. "Born with the heart of a cat-of-the-mountains, but it does distress her to watch me cut and stitch. To each her own strengths, I suppose.""I suppose," Bruce echoed, not sure what else to say.Rosa stitched like a demon, if that particular demon was one of neatness, accuracy and lightning speed. Next to her small, nimble fingers, Bruce's own fingers looked thick and clumsy, and since he hadn't stitched anything in ages, he felt equally awkward and slow. Still, between the two of them, they got Loki's wounds pulled together, the quantities of thick black thread against his pale blue skin making him look like some kind of macabre quilt square. It pleased Bruce to see that Rosa, rather than closing the deeper wounds, smeared them with a thick, strong-smelling salve, then bandaged them before covering all of Loki's belly with a light cloth that might have been linen."You're very good," Bruce told her. "Quick. The healers of our world could not have done better."Rosa returned to the basin, washed her hands again, and, after, dried them thoughtfully, gazing down at Loki with a look of sorrow and sympathy on her face."I have seen..." she began, then shook her head. "No. Only fools borrow trouble. Poor boy. We will protect him, and his child, as best we can.""What...?" Bruce started to say, but Nocturne's return, in a flash and a cloud of smoke, interrupted him."What does the Master say, Ness?" Rosa asked. "What are we to do?"“No need for me to repeat his words,” Nocturne answered. “He comes here to you.”A second bamf, and an even greater cloud of purple smoke burst over them, a momentary stink of sulfur gusting through the caravan, followed by the gleam of yellow eyes, and a figure cloaked in shadows.“We meant no harm,” Rosa said, sounding, for the first time, not defensive, but... something. Something Bruce didn't quite comprehend.“They are our kind, even if strangers," Rosa continued. "My heart knows they will not hurt us, Master. My heart knows, also, that we must defend them.”“Your heart, gentle Rosa?” a man’s voice replied, hissing strongly over the “S.” A gloved hand emerged from the darkness to grip Loki’s face, turning it one way, then the other. The touch didn't look brutal, not exactly--but it didn't look gentle either, and the shadows spilled over the god's unconscious body in a way that Bruce could only see as sinister.“Your heart is not what I have been hearing, drumming within my head. What is it that disturbs my rest?”Bruce experienced a moment of absolute despair. Necromancers, a portal to hell, interdimension travel, impromptu surgery, and now a guy who looked (what Bruce could see of him) like something from a horror movie? It certainly had been that kind of a day.“Not funny, Daddy,” Nocturne griped. “Stop playing. No one's in the mood. Show your face. I can hear the stranger too, you know. At least I could when he was awake.”“Could you, now? That’s interesting.” Abruptly, the shadows pulled in, revealing a figure in elegantly-cut, but brightly-colored clothes.“Nightcrawler, I am called," (Nihtgenge, came the echo of his true name in Bruce's ears). The figure bowed, one hand on the breast of his red-velvet tailcoat. "The Master of this troupe. Fellow travelers, I greet you.”Bruce blinked, not quite able to believe his eyes, and when he spoke at last, his voice quavered. “Kurt?” he asked, "Is that you?" Visual references:
Rosa's Scissors
Nocturne
The Caravan (exterior)
The Caravan (a similar interior)
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Ah, yes,” murmured the blue man who called himself Nightcrawler. The corners of his mouth quirked upward into a brief smile. “Kurt. That is the name? Kurt?"He repeated it a third time, slowly, as if savoring something he’d loved once, long in the past, and had never expected to taste again. The reaction struck Bruce as odd, yet it didn’t quite feel right to ask, not on so brief an acquaintance. Still, he had to wonder.“This is the name of a friend, a dear friend,” Nightcrawler said, drawing off one of his gloves, then the other, by clamping the end of a finger with his teeth, and tugging. “A double of mine, yes, known in the place from which you come? And all the old stories are true, worlds fold upon worlds, all so different, yet all so much the same.”“Uh,” Bruce answered, totally at a loss for what else to say, and also, suddenly, so tired he could scarcely stand upright, his head stuffed with cotton, as if in the midst of a bad cold he’d chased a double dose of Nyquil with half a fifth of scotch. He’d never done such a thing in his life, wouldn’t ever have dared give up that much control—but he could extrapolate.“Uh,” he repeated, lamely. "Uh. Yes. I guess.”“Even so.” Yellow candleflame eyes locked on his, holding Bruce's gaze for an uncomfortably long time, Nightcrawler clearly reading him like the proverbial book—in this case, maybe, Robert Bruce Banner for Dummies.Not to say Nightcrawler was any kind of dummy. Quite the contrary.Rather, the man seemed shrewd, perfectly aware and in control of his surroundings. He clearly had the respect of his followers, not to mention the love of his daughter. It was too soon for Bruce to say whether Nightcrawler possessed Kurt’s innate kindness, but he probably did, though he just as clearly lacked the young German's buoyancy of spirit. Maybe the lack had something to do with his age--years older than Kurt's, maybe even decades older. Those fiery eyes, clearly, had seen far, far too many things, and Bruce would have guessed that few of those things had been good.Bruce wanted to beg the man for answers, on his knees, if necessary: What’s up with this place? What's behind all the talk of “Sheriff’s Men." Why were we in danger? What does it all mean?He wanted to ask, he really did, but at that moment, tired and frazzled as he felt, Bruce simply lacked the nerve. That aside, one more piece of bad news would undoubtedly have sent him straight over the edge.“But no,” the Master went on, with an undertone in his voice that spoke half of something like nostalgia, half of regret. “No, good traveler. I fear I am not your Kurt. Not the Kurt of your world, at least, I am sorry to say.” The blue man’s smile, bright as their Kurt’s smile (the fangs just peeping out at the corners of his mouth), carried a wistful quality.Of course the “Master” wasn’t Kurt Wagner. His blue fur covered up most of the obvious signs of age, but by his movements Bruce guessed Nightcrawler really did have at least three decades (or more) on their mutant friend, that his age was somewhere closer to fifty (or past fifty) than to Kurt’s thirty years, plenty old enough to have a daughter as grown up as Nocturne. Dark silver threads, just visible in the subdued light of the caravan, ran through his blue-black hair, and he no longer carried himself with Kurt’s gravity-defying lightness.Bruce sympathized: every morning he got out of bed reminded him of the physical differences between thirty and forty-seven.He noticed then, with a twisting in the pit of his stomach, that the older man’s hands had been broken, brutally broken, at a time the doctor in him guessed lay many years in the past, long enough ago to have healed as well as they ever would heal, which wasn't exactly what he'd call "well."Even now they remained twisted, most likely nearly useless. Bruce hoped the injury had somehow been accidental.Hoped, but doubted--the damage looked planned, deliberate, and complete, an injury caused not just for the sake of doing harm, but to teach some sort of cruel lesson.Bruce understood that kind of lesson only too well, the kind that never taught anything but to be more careful, and more fearful, when the next lesson came.Some parts of human nature were sickening in any universe, and the scope of things it seemed his fellow sentient beings could justify to themselves continued to astound him.Nightcrawler caught Bruce in the act of staring, open-mouthed, at his broken hands. His tail made a brief, emphatic swish through the air, acknowledging what he'd noticed, maybe acknowledging Bruce's theories as well.“How young I was in those days, and how incautious!” Kurt’s doppelganger said, with a tight smile that never reached his burning eyes “I still believed, then, that our old lives could be preserved, that the good times of the past could be brought back again, if only we fought hard as ever we could to regain them. If only. And so we fought. And so we were proven…” Another brief flash of smile, this time undeniably melancholy. “Mistaken. Yes, mistaken. But that was in another time, another place, and then we came here, so glad of our escape, until..."Bruce waited."Well, you've seen a little of how it is. We fought again, and we lost again." Nightcrawler shrugged, a fluid, ironic, "such is life" gesture. "In these days, my daughter, and Rosa's young men--all our young ones born since those violent times, when we lost and were beaten into the stones--let us say, they are not so deluded as we were in our youth. They understand the world we live in. I’m sorry that this is so, but..." His yellow eyes flickered down to orange, then up to gold again. "Perhaps it’s better. Perhaps."“Night…” Rosa began. "Night, don't. Please don't."“Have the dark times begun in your world, Bruce, or is all good and well?” Nightcrawler asked, his tone lightening into one of slightly wistful (or maybe more-than-slightly- bitter) cheer, “How does it feel to walk abroad, without the Sheriff’s Men a-hunting?”“Better than it was, I guess,” Bruce answered, thinking of the indifference, the petty cruelty—and, now and then, the well-funded madmen like Bolivar Trask, forever hunting mutants, not because the mutants were dangerous, not really, but only because they were different. “Not great, always.”“Ness, my dearest, if you will,” Nightcrawler went on, “Tell the others we drive on for Battleground. By dusk, if that can be managed. We’ll fill the water-tuns as we can along the way, furtive as little mice. Have your grandmother arrange it. Will you manage, my sweetest?”After a quick peck to her father’s cheek, and with a look that veered closer to sweet than to fierce, Nocturne bamfed away on her mission.“Battleground is a shithole, Bruce.” Nightcrawler sighed. “Literally, I fear. The fields see use in other seasons as a place where cattle await slaughter. Paper is milled just over the hill, and the water’s unfit to be consumed. You’ll become aware of the uniquely privy-like odor of the place from miles distant. Yet be of good cheer! There, we’re allowed a four-day fairing, and the good folk are so starved for entertainment they actually condescend to treat us with a certain civility, in that not all of our playing-fees come in rotted produce and putrid meat. In the stillness, your friend will be able to rest, it may be hoped, and recover a little of his strength.”If Nightcrawler's voice held, this time, a decided note of bitterness beneath the cheer, his smile didn't reflect the same attitude--it was welcoming, and warm, filled with sympathy. “At any rate, dear traveler, again, well met. Wash yourself, and eat, and rest. We’ll be busy come the evening.”With a wink at Rosa (clearly an old friend), he bamfed off for parts unknown, leaving Bruce blinking.The healer folded down a seat for Bruce to sit—a low seat, sized for her, presumably, and her sons, so that Bruce felt a bit like Snow White in the house of the Seven Dwarves--and then the small table, bringing out from a cupboard something that strongly resembled hummus with wedges of pita bread.“It’s plain fare, I know, simple road food, but nourishing enough. We’ll eat better once the plainfolk have come, after the first showing. Don’t allow Night to tease you, as he will do—Battlefield isn’t so bad, barring the smell. The folk there are as kind as they’re allowed to be, in these times, more generous than is required—they suffered more from their own kind, in the Wars, than from us. Four days is a blessing wherever we’re allowed it, and most especially, now, for your friend.”Loki murmured Tony’s name in his sleep, and Rosa crossed to him, feeling his cheeks and forehead gently with her small hands. “Ah, the poor lamb,” she murmured. “The poor lamb.”Out of all the things Bruce had ever thought of calling Loki, “poor lamb” wasn’t among them.In that instant, Bruce wanted his best friend so badly it made him feel sick, wanted his snideness, and his bravado in the face of fear, his resourcefulness (including his ability to MacGyver anything he wanted or needed from a stick of gum, a matchstick and empty soda can).He missed Tony’s ability to wrangle Loki, to understand Loki, and to take responsibility for Loki—because Loki was Tony’s responsibility, not his, and Loki was difficult, complicated, and strange, and as much as Bruce wanted to help out and be a good guy, the things he actually understood about his best friend’s husband could have been counted on, maybe, two fingers of one hand.Which was yet another thing to hang heavy on Bruce’s conscience, because he found it impossible to forget that he could have learned, he’d had the time…He just hadn’t bothered.“Be mindful, he may be forced to rise and show with rest of us,” Rosa continued. “Has he a quiet talent to call upon, something that won’t strain him, or burst the stitches?”Bruce swallowed his hummus. He had so many questions, so much he needed to know. He just didn’t know where to begin asking.“Rosa,” he finally asked, “What happened, here, to your country?”“The Son of Nels happened.” Her small, pretty face, with its crown of bright hair, went bleak, all its rosy cheerfulness wiped away in a single stroke. “Mind you, much of this came before my time, or when I was only young, but it wasn’t always so in this land, this I swear to you. The Son of Nels was a big, strong, fine-looking man, with a fine strong voice, and the plainfolk listened. And after they had listened long enough, they changed. The worst of all were drawn to him, to be his Men, and the strong among us were murdered, with Battleground as their last stand, until only we, the weakest, remained, to travel on, and Show, displaying from town to town our strangeness, that we travel together our only security in this world.”Like helps like, Bruce thought. No wonder he and Loki had been gathered up, protected. If he interpreted the healer’s words correctly, these people had seen so much death that even the loss of a stranger seemed unthinkable to them.Rosa patted his shoulder then, smiling again, though her eyes remained stormy. “Take the upper bunk now, my dear. Sleep while you may. You’ll have further answers after you rest—and you will be safe here. Like helps like, and the Master is clever.”Bruce felt fairly certain he’d never get to sleep, despite his exhaustion. How could he, with nothing but confusion, fear, homesickness, loss, roiling around inside his head?Tiredness that deep was not to be denied, though. Almost the moment he stretched out in the surprisingly-comfortable top bunk, his eyelids dropped as if weighted. He plunged deeply into sleep, into dreams filled with mad wizards, dancing blue goblins (horned or otherwise) and boats that swayed forever, creakily, on slow-swelling waves.Sometimes Tony thought the worst thing about parenthood was all the pretending—pretending you just loved broccoli, when you actually thought it reeked (though if anyone could make it palatable, that person would be Thea Ransome, who he'd swear on a stack of science books was some kind of culinary magician). Pretending a piano recital was the premier musical event of your life (and okay, yes, his kids really were brilliant, beyond brilliant, it was everyone else’s damn kids, with their fucking plodding two-finger pieces they kept messing up, then starting over again from the top, that made Tony want to tear off his own ears).Pretending he wasn’t currently drowning in terror and grief, going down for the third time…Pretending he didn’t mind having his brother-in-law, three weird-ass Asgardians and Afi Erik Selvig tossing back literal gallons of ale and singing mournful Nordic songs in his living room.The fourth weird-ass Asgardian, the one who could have totally passed for Japanese (not Giant Redbeard, or the Errol Flynn wannabe, or the hot-but-deadly warrior chick who now and then glanced at Tony like he was some kind of weird shit she’d discovered in the back of her fridge, just sat there looking gimlet-eyed and sharpening his sword.That particular activity didn’t exactly put Tony at ease.Besides which, everything this particular sextet did seemed the opposite of helpful, though earlier in the evening Thor had carried on a fairly intense conversation with a weird-ass pair of ravens that may or may not have been the same pair of ravens that regularly showed up to chat with Loki in their master bedroom.With ravens it was hard to tell. They lacked, it might be said, distinguishing characteristics.Tony couldn't even give himself a break from all this by escaping to his workshop. For one thing, the workshop currently suffered from a distinct (and soul-destroying) lack of Bruce, which he couldn't find in any way acceptable. For another, the last time Tony had stopped by, he’d caught Dumm-E, Butterfingers and U huddled together in a corner, weeping oil all over the floor, which led him to surmise Loki had, unmistakably, gotten to them too at some point, distributing brains, hearts and courage (or at least complex emotions) willy-nilly, as he would tend to do.Tony fled before his loyal bots could notice.As an unavoidable alternative, just now, he figuratively girded his loins and joined Jöri and Jane in the dining room.He found Mrs. Ransome putting together literal mountains of sandwiches in the neighboring kitchen, presumably for the Mournful Nordic Chorus, as well as the other “helpers,” and Fen playing with his “Woodland Adventure” set under the table. The intrepid duo had covered the tabletop with papers, and covered the papers themselves with formulae, chart-like scribblings and a series of not-to-scale drawings.Probably their version of helping, the word “help” being relative.Tony himself didn’t know where to begin--or once he began, how to accept each defeat as temporary and then continue.He and Kitty Pryde (with Tony’s long-time frenemy-slash-scientific-rival Reed Richards on the line) cobbled together a few different things, trying to track where the portal led, only to find the signal bouncing around like a demented pinball in a possessed (and Old School) pinball machine.Clearly Prof. Nels Lars Nelson (or whatever the fuck his name had actually been, in his real life as a probable Hydra shithead and Necromancer) had no intention of having his work, or anything else about him, traced.He’d also stood with Kurt and Hank McCoy, trying to get a lick of sense out of a monumentally-stoned-on-pain-meds and deeply-in-shock Stephen Strange, and instead received a single word, “Lawrence.” Whether Strange meant that as a first name, a last name, a historical figure (as in, “of Arabia”), or as a less-than-remarkable city in Kansas was anyone’s guess. Tony couldn’t really expect, at the moment, for the Sorcerer Supreme to produce anything clearer.Kurt had called up (not by phone, but by methods Tony didn’t really want to consider) a pretty blonde in an interesting outfit, and a sketchy-looking older woman with horns. Neither were overly encouraging, though the blonde at least appeared to be trying. The old lady actually cackled before winking out in a puff of green, reminding Tony (to continue the Oz theme) of the Wicked Witch of the West.The blonde, who Kurt called Amanda (though it appeared that her real name was actually Jimaine, last name Szardos, which didn't exactly fill him with confidence and glee) strode around the rooftop humming and making magic squiggles in the air.Eventually, sensing he wasn’t needed, Tony left.Now, through the windows to the terrace, Tony watched his daughter Hela carry on an animated conversation (and apparently some sort of entirely different magic ritual) with half a dozen white-skinned women dressed in black outfits from various eras (one of them looked like she’d stepped out of a Rembrandt painting, with a hat the size of a bathtub, one looked like a Goth flapper, and one was butt-naked, wearing nothing but a wide black ribbon tied in a fetching bow around her neck.Clearly, like Hela, these women were Deaths, having some sort of Deathtogether. He understood none of it.Half an hour later, as Mrs. Ransome was passing out a second round of sandwiches, a clearly tired and windswept-looking Hela came inside to pilfer the food Tony hadn’t been able to make himself even attempt to eat, arranged herself neatly on an ottoman near his overstuffed chair, and prepared to make her report.Tony, wearily, raised a questioning brow in Hela’s direction, although he seriously lacked Loki’s finesse at that particular skill.“We’ve been scrying,” Hela informed him, arranging her flouncy black skirts, the better not to crush them—after all, she had her priorities.The look she gave him, though—Loki’s emerald eyes in her childlike face—quelled that bitter little train of thought at once.His daughter leaned forward, resting a delicate, lace-gloved hand on Tony’s knee.“It’s good news, Dad,” she told him. “According to the Death of Kings, the Death of Gods, the Death of Monsters and my fellow Blessed Deaths, they haven’t seen either Pabbi or Bruce. Neither can the others of my Sisters find them.”“This is good news?” Tony asked.“Dad…” Hela moved, then, to take Tony’s hand in her dainty lace-mitted one before she continued, holding it gently, those big, green, only-too-Lokilike eyes gazing directly into his. “They haven’t seen the baby—seen Edwin--either. My Sister unclothed is the Death of the Unborn and Very Young. She knows… ah, she knows Pabbi, has been with him, from… from the time past…”Yeah, she knows Loki all right, that one. Of course she does, Tony thought, memories of cold and loss in a Welsh cave flooding his memory. He had to remind himself for the umpteeth time that Hela’s Sisters didn’t choose the ones they visited (though a few of them could, it seemed, if provoked). Neither did they choose their calling.Still, Tony wanted to hate that naked Death. In that moment, he really did, however glad he might be to hear that she hadn’t been anywhere near Edwin. He wanted to blame her for Wilhelm, for the grief that came close to tearing apart their family, though he knew that wasn’t fair.“Dad,” Hela told him, quiet-voiced now, and far too mature. “It’s good news. It’s all good news. If my Sisters haven’t seen them, then Pabbi and Bruce and Baby Ed are all alive. You don’t have to grieve."But I don't know what else to do, Tony thought. I don't know where to start looking."Dad, you can find them again. You can."The tenderness in his daughter’s voice cut through Tony like a sword, and he turned his face away, not wanting to share with Hela the shame of his tears.Big boys don’t cry, Howard’s contemptuous voice sneered in his head. You idiot. You weakling. You sissy-boy.“That’s not true,” Hela told him, firm-voiced. “Dad, it’s simply not true.”She rose and wrapped her arms around him, pulling Tony close, holding him and not even caring, it seemed, whether all that fast-flowing salt water made stains on her pretty black dress.
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Bruce woke to total darkness, and to an uncomfortable, squirming feeling inside his head. Along with all that came the sense of being altogether lost, like a little boy awakening inside one of the endless, nationless enchanted forests that only seem to exist in fairy tales--only the air didn’t have the forest-smell, or not exactly, though something in it reminded him of recently-cut wood.He'd been dreaming of being young, hadn't he? He felt almost certain he'd dreamed of being young.Speaking of, even as a child, Bruce had liked that new-sawn lumber smell, the same way he’d enjoyed the smell of recently cut grass and—Tony had laughed at him for this one—the fluid that had once been used in old school (truly old school) mimeograph machines.Funny how people still said, “ditto,” when for decades now there hadn’t been any such thing as what had once been called a "ditto machine"--though Bruce knew Loki could, and would , without doubt, give him origins and meanings that had nothing to do with purple ink, warm paper, or the-sharp-but-heady odor that rose as Bruce turned the handle and page after page flew out into the tray, all those days he'd stayed after the bell to "help his teacher," clapping erasers, reshelving books, running endless copies on the hand-cranked duplicator."Such a good boy, Bruce, such a thoughtful boy," Mrs Parsons and Mister Harvey, Miss Hanford and Mrs Meacham always said, with high marks for Good Citizenship on his quarterly report cards. "What a shame he's so clumsy, running into so many doors, falling down so many stairs."Had they known? How could they not have known?How many other "good boys" or "good girls" had there been, Bruce often wondered, boys and girls who at heart were really cowards, hiding from homes that held no milk, no cookies, no smiling face at the door and, most especially, no "How was your day, sweetheart? I missed you." Homes all those kids with lives like his own couldn't face, not now, not just yet, better to put off their homecomings a half hour, an hour...Beneath him, Loki sighed, quietly, in what was probably his sleep. Did thoughts reach him, Bruce also had to wonder, even in his sleep, filtering into his dreams and making him restless?This smell in the air wasn’t like any of those sharply pleasant scents anyway, but musty and sour, like vinegar and newsprint, weirdly evocative smells, like feeling bereft, abandoned, left alone by everyone he’d ever cared for, expressed in nearly tangible form.Bruce knew exactly what those smells meant, though his shell-shocked (or dimension-shocked) brain hadn't been able to place them immediately.“The odor is only that of a paper mill,” Loki said from the bunk below, fully confirming Bruce's thoughts.“Someone manufactures paper…” The sometime-god sniffed. “Of exceeding poor quality.”Leave it to Loki to be a paper-snob, Bruce thought, but not with any real annoyance--why, after all, shouldn't Loki prefer nice things? Besides, just hearing a familiar voice soothed his previous sense of loss and confusion immensely."See, Bruce?" Loki followed up. "You are not alone here. Sleep again, and dream not of unhappy days. When you are less weary, all will seem better."Bruce found himself smiling--a tiny, shaky smile, but still a smile. He'd heard Loki consoling the children, many times, through the walls of other rooms, and seen Tony listening, his face still for once as he drank in his husband's soothing words."Uh... as I was saying...?" Bruce often tried interrupting, but Tony, always, would keep listening until nothing remained for him to listen to.Maybe that's why Tony seemed to be on the road to healing from his own crappy childhood, while Bruce wasn't sure he'd ever manage. Maybe all that listening filled in the wounds, and the spackled over the cracks, until they at least looked whole on the surface. All that listening, but also being given the chance to love and be loved back.An even stronger sadness washed over Bruce then, and something that felt like despair. He pressed his face into his pillow, trying to keep his breathing slow and even, trying to reveal nothing--but as he did so a soft hum started up in the back of his head, a low, sweet hum that reminded him of his mom's voice, but was probably something else entirely. Hadn't he been too young, when he lost her, to remember such a specific detail?The humming soothed him, though, and made him drowsy again, his arms and legs going relaxed and heavy, then his body, his neck--even the muscles of his face. Bruce truly didn't mean to go under, but he did, unable to help himself.His consciousness ebbed, a slow tide going out beneath a star-filled sky and a bright, round moon, until sleep, part two, washed over him, bringing with it impressions of golden light, of slow, swaying onward motion, of soft, dimly-patterned folds of cloth, a quilt he couldn’t remember owning, a pattern that turned into a path, and houses, square with triangle roofs, like the kind drawn by young children, like Tony’s children might have drawn, if they were everyday Midgardian kids and not the offspring of gods.“All rise! All rise!” Something slammed against the caravan’s wooden side and Bruce startled so hard that he jerked upright and his face smacked against the ceiling. He fumbled for his glasses, hooking the stems over his ears before he remembered he no longer needed them, then slumped beneath the low curve of that ceiling, blinking (and rubbing his bruised nose) until the stars and birds stopped tweeting around his head, at which point he unwound his legs from the quilts and slid over the edge of the bunk, trying to land as lightly as he could in this bigger, heavier (and greener) body. The boom of his huge feet hitting the floorboards probably carried for miles.He hooked out one of the stools--Rosa's, unfortunately, which left him perching with his kneecaps nearly up to his ears--and leaned into the shadows of Loki's bunk, where his companion's horns still gave off that soft, moonlight glow.“Loki? You okay?” Bruce bent low, brushing tangled, sweaty hair back from his companion’s so-pale-it-was-scarcely-blue face.“Peachy,” Loki murmured, just like Tony might have done in similar circumstances. He didn't open his eyes."Your fever's down." Bruce carefully pulled back Loki's quilt, then the light square of linen that covered his belly. He couldn't see much, either by hornlight or the flickering red-and-gold beyond the windows, but Loki's wounds didn't look half bad. Neither Rosa's neat stitches or his own Dr. Frankenstein monstrosities had torn, and the cuts now looked dry and clean. Underneath them, Edwin appeared to be practicing for future tumbling runs.Bruce grinned. "Now there's a lively little boy.""I would rather, at this moment in time, that he be slightly less so." Loki drew in a shallow, slightly shaky breath. "Still, I shall not complain. "I dreamed... and I so feared..."Loki stopped abruptly, too proud, apparently, to admit to much more in the way of weakness or pain, though Bruce would have needed to be blind not to detect both in his pallor, that slightly-too-controlled breathing, the hoarse rasp of his voice.“Hey, hey…” Bruce located a cloth in one of the many drawers, wetting it under the same spigot Rosa had used to fill the kettle, running it as gently as he could manage over his companion's skin.“All rise!” This time the caravan door flew open, framing Nocturne--tall and blue as ever, but now dressed in a tight, brief costume of what appeared to be scarlet leather.She popped her head through the narrow opening. “All rise, at once! We make show!"“Who, me?” Bruce asked, blinking even in the torchlight that flickered though the now-open doorway. Someone had replaced his brains with oatmeal porridge, or at least that's how they felt--thick, slow and incapable of intelligent thought.Nocturne, who’d seemed so absolutely fearless at their first meeting, now gave off a definite air of nervousness, if not abject terror, stressed by something Bruce didn’t understand.We must, Loki mouthed, but Bruce couldn't help but hesitate.The god (so much as he could make out in the dim light) looked awful. Not only had the blue of his skin faded into that chilly, unhealthy white, but dark circles surrounded his eyes, and his face had taken on a death’s-head boniness that hadn’t been there when they'd gone to bed. Loki began to push the covers away, his movements weak and uncoordinated."No. Uh-uhn. You need to stay in bed," Bruce told him. "At the very least, you need to eat."Loki gave a spot-on imitation of the Mister Yuk face, forcing Bruce to play dirty pool."Nope, none of that. You have to. For Edwin." He glanced at Nocturne. "He has to.""I..." If anything, the young woman looked even more scared. Her voice dropped low. "Sheriff's Men attend us here, we must be more careful than careful.""I will rise," Loki assured her and, good as his word, pushed himself upright. "I will make show with the rest.""Lok..."The god gave Nocturne a version of his winning smile. "A cup of goat's milk, perhaps, quick to drink dry? And a stringed instrument of some sort, if you have one?"Nocturne blinked. "There was Ranald's key-fiddle, but it is old and has lain untuned for any number of years.""Let me see what I may make of it." Loki smiled again, and a little of the tension seemed to drain from Nocturne's body."I will. I will find it. And you..." Her yellow eyes flickered in Bruce's direction."Announce him as 'The Hulk,'" Loki suggested. "Allow him to lift or to destroy divers weighty or powerfully-built things--but first allow the strong men of the crowd to assay these same things, to see what they may make of them.""Lok..." Bruce tried again. He didn't feel capable of saying much else."Have you attire? Costumes?" Loki asked."I will Send Rosa to you," Nocturne told them, and shut the door.Some seconds passed while Bruce's heart pounded, and Loki gazed at him with gentle concern."I can't perform," Bruce said at last. "That's... That's what you're asking me to do, right? Perform? With an audience?"Loki sighed. "I understand, my friend, that you feel both reluctant and confused. I ask you to consider two things, however. The first, that these people saved us from what would surely have been, at the least, dire circumstances. The second, that because we owe them our freedom, if not our very lives, we must act as best we can to spare our saviors from the divers harms that might come about through our presence amongst them.""Okay, but..." Bruce began, then found himself tongue-tied, not a word of reasonable protest lingering in his head.Loki was right. He had nothing to add, nothing to justify his reluctance--nothing, that was, beyond a universe-sized case of stage-fright."Indeed, I know," Loki soothed. "I know. Such an apprehension is fearful...""Literally," Bruce said."Yes, literally." Loki's eyes met his, shadowed and full of sympathy. "Yet, Bruce, I have been listening..."He glanced toward the window, where indistinct shapes rushed by, turned to blurred shadows by the thin-shaved horn. Everything outside sounded frantically noisy, the air ringing with shouts and curses, with hammer-blows and a complicated series of snapping, twanging sounds of the sort Bruce associated with taut ropes and billowing canvas.Loki's gaze returned to him looking even more troubled."I have listened," he said, in a soft, tense voice."And?" Bruce tried to keep the impatience out of his own voice, but failed miserably, even though he knew
his companion wasn't stalling, or being dramatic, he was sifting through thousands of tangled thoughts, hundreds of conflicting possibilities (all of them alien to his personal experience), trying to build a coherent picture from an unholy mess."Once, I have learned, twenty trains of caravans traveled this land. Now there is but one--this very one we occupy, in fact. The others, people like us, special people, those seen as alien, seen as inhuman... they did not merely retire to this world's equivalent of Gibsonton, Florida, as exists in the far south of your United States. For such people, here, there is no rest, no wintering ground, no place where crops are grown and children nurtured. For them..."Loki gestured to the caravan around them. "There is only this: the road, the endless circle of travel, and making show.""Or?" Bruce asked. He seemed to be finding breathing slightly difficult.Loki looked at him steadily, sadness in his green eyes."What would have become of us, had we not been taken up," he continued. "Death, I suppose. Or servitude, of the harshest sort. If the Sheriff's Men attend, as Nocturne says--and, indeed, I see no reason whatsoever to doubt her--we, who know not their ways, must show extra care not to cause offense. Let us vow to bring these good folk no harm through our foolish ignorance.""Damn," Bruce said, not sure whether to laugh or cry. He knew what Loki was really trying to tell him, in his mildly Shakespearean way--the two of them weren't merely walking a tightrope, they were walking a tightrope with no skills, no practice, and no damn idea what they were doing. "We're in Evil Circus World.""In a circus," Loki corrected. "In an evil world. A world in which, from what you have been told, and I have discerned, a former enemy reigns, and where we, along with those who attempt to aid us, are far more likely to find damnation than he is.""Not to be negative," Bruce said, "Or anything.""Not to be negative," Loki echoed, with a tense, quiet laugh.
"You're talking about the guy, right? The professor guy?""Indeed." Loki pushed back his sweat-damp hair, studiously not looking upward, glaring instead at his long, thin hands as they lay in his lap, fingers twisted. "He who so deviously deceived me."Loki took in a couple slow, clearly-meant-to-be-steadying breaths before continuing. "He who I supposedly drained of life upon the now far-distant rooftop of our home. He I once knew as my never-friend, Nels Lars Nelson.""Or whatever his name really is," Bruce said. However Loki tried to hide it, he couldn't ever remember seeing his friend look quite so defeated, or quite so distressed."If I knew the name," Loki told him, in what Tony had been known to refer to as his husband's best "it goes without saying unless you're everybody who doesn't happen to be a Norse god of mischief" manner, "Then would I know everything."For your reference: Mr. Yuk
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
At that particular moment, under the reflector-enhanced torchlight, with sawdust prickling the soles of his feet, and the wind carrying a definite odor of old-newspapers-left-too-long-in-a-leaky-basement, Bruce couldn't help but ask himself (in the immortal words of David Byrne): "Well, how did I get here?"However true the answer, "I got dragged off the top of a Manhattan skyscraper through a magic portal and into a mysterious dystopia run by an evil sorcerer," might be to his own personal "How did I get here?" Bruce had to admit that, as an explanation for his current predicament, that one sounded way, way too Castle Greyskull for even him to find believable if he thought about it too hard. Which always had been his tendency. Thinking about things too hard. Bottling everything in. And then just... exploding.Coming out shaking and weak, with everyone around him having to clean up his messes.Not in this instance, Loki told him. In this instance, think little, only improvise. Though allow yourself, also, to be nudged, gently, now and then. Kurt will not allow you to fall, and I will not either. This I promise you, my friend: there will be no--as you say--'messes' to be cleaned.He isn't Kurt, Bruce answered, and though Loki didn't reply to that statement, his presence inside Bruce's head carried a definite (if tolerant, and slightly amused) flavor of, That's what you say. Bruce gave him a look, not quite the side-eye, but close. Having an alien enchanter inside his head, adversary of the aforementioned evil sorcerer, hearing his thoughts and directing his actions? Definitely way too Castle Greyskull for his taste.Only... for all Nelson's no doubt Skeletoresque qualities, Bruce suspected that whatever their enemy lacked in truthfulness, empathy, and respect for the feelings of others, he more than made up in terms of cunning, ruthlessness, and more-than two-dimensional-and-easily-thwarted ambitions. He also wasn't easily identified as a villain by virtue his naked skull-head.He'd bamboozled the god of mischief. Consider that one.Who is it you think of? Loki asked. The images seem... Loki paused, clearly sorting through his vast, multi-lingual vocabulary for the right word. ...cartoonish. And, no, you will neither vomit nor lose consciousness, for I will not allow you to do so.Great, Bruce answered. I didn't realize that was a service I'd requested. Just play your bowtruckle, Loki.Nyckelharpa, Loki corrected. He repositioned the instrument on his lap, then picked up the abbreviated bow that was apparently used to play it. A bowtruckle is a charming fictional twig-creature from the writings of the gifted word-witch, Ms. Rowlings.A quiet, intense, tension-building music rose from the instrument as Loki cradled it. The thing was big--longer than one of Loki's arms--and had an odd little wooden keyboard, somewhat resembling the keyboard of a kid's toy piano, if that keyboard had for some reason been painstakingly whittled by hand, sticking off one side of its wide neck, and also about a zillion strings, one of which seemed to serve no other purpose than to make a low and rather threatening hum that caused the hair on the back of Bruce's neck to stand on end.To this accompaniment, the alternate-universe version of Kurt, with athletic grace and consummate showmanship, and resplendent in a suit of red velvet, exhorted certain bulky members of the audience to try to lift or break a number of formidable objects, while Bruce himself stood slightly to one side, frowning, and with his arms folded across his chest.Every single one of these burly townsfolk failed, with every single item, and Bruce, to tell the truth, wasn't exactly confident that he'd be able to handle those particular objects with any notable success himself. All he really knew, after all, about Hulk's strength came from seeing the damage his other self caused after the fact. He'd never felt that strength, not with his own bones and muscles. Did it hurt the Other Guy, indestructible as he might be, when he smashed things? Did he sweat, or feel any sort of fatigue? Bruce had no idea.Beyond that, despite Loki's insistence that he be billed as "The Hulk," the body he currently found himself in definitely wasn't that body, however green it might be. It was big, yes, but more on a scale somewhere between Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and that huge Icelandic guy who played The Mountain on Game of Thrones. So, yes, big--but not so big that he defied plausibility. Some of the things that had been dragged into the ring by gangs of the (also alternate-universe) equivalent of roustabouts, the better for him to prove his strength upon, looked seriously heavy, and Bruce had no idea if he was going to throw his back out, or give himself a major hernia, despite the wide, metal studded belt they'd given him as part of his costume--the rest of the outfit being a small, quasi-Elizabethan ruff-thing to wear around his neck, matching leather wrist-guards and oddest of all, a pair of dark-orange knee-breeches cut and gathered to such a fantastic fullness he felt like a Halloween pumpkin, with his green body serving as its stem.Loki, on the other hand, got a beautiful silver robe with green and blue embroidery from Wardrobe Central, one that set off his smooth blue skin and made his eyes look extra-intense. Or made that intensity came from somewhere else. Was his companion doing magic, reading the crowd--maybe sticking all those heavy, heavy objects down extra-hard to the sawdust-covered floor of the ring, so that nobody else could lift them, but Bruce could?Bruce had no idea. There he stood in his pumpkin-pants, scared, clueless, and half-drowning in his own sweat (or so it seemed), surrounded by the five million noisy people who'd gathered around to watch him, figuratively speaking, sink or swim, and wondering if he really was going to throw up.Beyond that, everything sounded weird, the way the world does when you slide down below the water in a bathtub and listen, hearing everything through liquid and through the sides of the tub, so that it all sounds hollow and echoing and ringing.Maybe he was going to faint instead.You shall not, Loki commanded, even more sternly, all the while bowing out swathes of music that, even with Bruce's distorted hearing, sounded forceful and dramatic.When Rosa brought the aforementioned key-fiddle to the caravan, Loki had been ecstatic."Oh, it is merely a nyckelharpa!" he'd exclaimed, turning the thing (which, as mentioned, somewhat resembled the mutated offspring of a viola and a toy piano) gently in his elegant hands. "Clearly, new strings would not be amiss, but for tonight we shall do without. Rest assured, good Rosa, I may play this easily, and with skill."He set about proving the truth of this statement by tuning up the complicated-looking instrument in about five minutes flat (between gulps of goat's milk), then playing a weirdly medieval-sounding version of "Whole Lotta Love." Tony would have been either proud or freaked out--Bruce wasn't sure which.Rosa's boys, who were hanging around the back of the caravan, clearly curious about what the strange blue man could do to Make Show, actually clapped their hands in glee. So here they were. Night (not Kurt, but Night, definitely Night) introduced him, Loki gave him something like a mental shove, and Bruce found himself moving forward on his big, green stompy-feet, barring his teeth and letting out a roar as he hefted the first object, a giant barrel filled (from the rattling, grinding sounds it gave off, with a load of big rocks)."Puny!" he found himself snarling. "Too puny! Bring more!"It went on from there. Big heavy things were lifted, tossed, twirled--the last being what looked like an entire tree trunk, onto each end of which a lithe blue woman (Nocturne in her tight red leather, and another, similarly costumed, who looked so much like Night's daughter she had to be a close relative) jumped up, performing something like a balance beam routine above him as Bruce balanced the whole shebang on his shoulders.Then the women vaulted down, Bruce was talked smoothly offstage (or, at least, off-ring) by Showmaster Night, and the women began to perform in earnest something that wasn't a dance, or partner gymnastics, or a Mixed Martial Arts exhibition, but somehow all three combined. At one point, from what Bruce could see from the curtained enclosure where he was hidden, quarterstaffs entered the picture, wood beating against wood so violently splinters flew and rivulets of sweat striped the women's nearly-bare blue skins.Bruce found himself suddenly thinking of, and missing, Natasha, a vicious fighter in her own right, who had always been so gentle, and so kind, with him.Natasha was the blue girl's, Nocturne's, mother, Loki informed him. Or, I might more rightly say, a version of our Natasha, from a more terrible strand of time, was her mother. The other woman is her grandmother, the mother of he-who-is-not-my-Kurt, and her name is Raven.Raven as in Mystique? Bruce asked. Brotherhood of Evil Mutants Mystique? I mean...How could there be villains in their strand, after a time? Loki answered, sounding close to heartbroken, How could there be anything but people who wished to live out their lives?Bruce glanced sideways. Night stood no more than a couple yards away, crouched down and perfectly still, shadows covering all of his face except for his flame-colored eyes."Sie haben gesagt, das sie nicht Kurt waren," Bruce said quietly, for the Showmaster's ears only.
You said you weren't Kurt.
Night sighed, and answered him, firmly, in the language that wasn't English, the language Loki's infusion of Allspeak made more or less understandable, "I am not Kurt. Kurt was a sweet boy. A good boy. A boy of enthusiasm, belief and hope for a better world to come. I am Night. I am the Master. I have kept my people alive. For nearly thirty years now, I have kept my people alive. At first, they may not have been mine, but they are now.""And Natasha?""I would have died a hundred times in her place, but at the end what could I do? Only hold her hand, and say to her, 'All the red is gone now, my love. All the red is gone.' And here we are, Mother, Nocturne, and I. We three, and these good people." He straightened abruptly, his tail snapping up into the air, weaving its own sort of dance around him as he slid once more into his persona, silver-tongued and gaudily dressed, the Showmaster Making Show, keeping the locals entertained, the wheels oiled, so that this whole odd bunch of special people could once more move on from here to another town, and once more Make Show, and live.Bruce peeked out between the curtains again, and found everything had... changed?Waves of blue light rippled above the ring, where the sawdust had transformed into sand, branches of coral, plantlife and underwater creatures too varied and numerous for Bruce to count--a whole undersea world, where Loki played his instrument, and his long hair--deep green now instead of black--drifted in a current that couldn't be realBehind Loki stood Rosa and her sons, and while he played, their voices, high and clear and perfectly harmonized, though the key was minor and the shifts between notes felt strange to him, like music from some distant past, not the present time at all, rose into the increasingly crisp night air.Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell...
Ding...
Dong...
Hark! now I hear them...
Hark! now I hear them...
Ding...
Dong...
Bell.
The hair rose on Bruce's arms, and on the back of his neck, as the final haunting note faded, and it hit him, suddenly, that what he'd noticed earlier, what had brought about that profound sense of change, wasn't actually the undersea light, or the bottom of the ocean decor, but that Loki had become... other.Bruce knew all about his companion's shape-changing, of course--especially from Tony, but also from witnessing the god's alterations of form now and then, though in general Loki kept to what was arguably his "true" shape: tall, lanky, black-hair, green eyes, pale skin. From his best friend's descriptions, he also knew about "Jötunn Loki": even taller, equally lanky, ditto the black hair, but with the interesting additions of patterned blue skin, red eyes, horns, claws and fangs. To him, these details had sounded more than a little scary, but to Tony the opposite was certainly true--the degree to which he found his husband's Jötunn form irresistibly appealing was equal yet opposite to the amount Loki hated it.Beyond that, Loki could take on pretty much any form he chose to. A horse (actually, a mare) had been mentioned, just like in the old story. The god had also been known, it was rumored (though Bruce had missed out on that one), to impersonate Steve to humorous affect.Right now, though, although to some extent still recognizably Loki, it wasn't a Loki Bruce knew--not version 1.0 (white), version 2.0 (blue) or even the 3.0 version he'd gotten used to seeing in this world. This Loki had somehow managed to get shorter than he'd been when the show began, and he also appeared years younger. His hair had shifted to blue-black, like Kurt's hair, picking up flashes of red from the dimming torches around them, just as Kurt's hair had done, though it still hung over his shoulders in long waves. His eyes had turned to a color somewhere between yellow and amber.Lok? Bruce sent, suddenly apprehensive in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with his own recent bout of stage fright. What's up? Behind me... Even Loki's mental voice came through as a whisper, as if someone might overhear him even though he didn't speak aloud. It also sounded, weirdly, both lighter and higher, as if Loki had altered it to sound like a boy's voice, or... Bruce glanced up just in time to see a man, silver-bearded, heavily-muscled, remarkably tall and handsome in a resolutely manly-man kind of way, watching from the shadows behind his friend. Then... not. As if a door had opened and closed, removing him from that place, though Bruce had seen nothing of his departure. He was just... gone. As if he'd never been. It hit Bruce, then, full in the face, the pachyderm in the room: Loki wasn't Loki, or at least wasn't the male Loki with whom he'd become familiar. Breasts curved the silky robe above the much larger mound made by baby Edwin, and Loki's face, though still in nearly every way Loki's, though not entirely feminine, also wasn't not feminine. Beyond that, Bruce couldn't remember when the change had set in--before the performance? During? When Loki noticed the man at his back, watching him?Bruce had been aware of the Sheriff's men throughout the performance--tall, well-muscled men, all of them, clear Alpha dogs, but not of the "I'm so tough, fear my manliness" variety. Instead, they'd been nearly scary, quiet and contained, slipping through the crowd like shadows, nowhere and everywhere at once.The man standing behind Loki hadn't been one of them.The man behind Loki was something else, someone else even quieter, more powerful, more contained, not merely a shadow but a Master of Shadows.Their Leader.Their Sheriff.I was so frightened, Loki told Bruce. I was so immensely frightened.The glamour, or shape-change, or whatever it was slipped away, leaving Loki--the familiar Loki as he appeared in this world--slumped in his chair, pale and obviously drained to the point of having nothing left to fight with, the instrument he'd played so amazingly all through the night abandoned on the ground by his feet.A key-fiddle (nyckelharpa)
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Bruce trudged back to the caravan, shoulders slumped, through a night darker than any he'd ever encountered, despite the presence of a round moon, small and high in the sky, and stars that seemed to whirl before his weary eyes.He had no idea what he'd find once he climbed inside.That night's performance had left him exhausted--probably more the aftermath of his extreme attack of nerves beforehand than from any physical activity--and then the after-show clean-up duties had served as the icing on his cake of tiredness. Every able-bodied member of the troupe was expected to pitch in, so pitch Bruce did, despite his total lack of prior experience and having no idea in hell what he was doing. The rest of them, on the other hand, worked together like the proverbial well-oiled machine. They'd been kind to him, at least, patiently talking him through each duty instead of becoming irritated by his undeniable ineptitude.Most of the troupe also seemed remarkably accepting of the life they were forced to live--all the more so, in this particular case, because the offerings of food and materials the townspeople brought them as payment for "making show" had proved not only usable but unusually generous.Bruce had even begun to go nose-blind to the sour paper-pulp reek in the air, so that was something."It's not so bad," his main instructors, Rosa's bright-haired sons, had assured him, as they literally showed him the ropes (and damn, there were a lot of ropes, all of them needing to be neatly coiled), their task to secure every piece of equipment either in storage or firmly in place for the following day's performance. They seemed to be cheerful boys by nature, good-hearted, neither giving any hint of bitterness about their lot in life. They also seemed to have developed a sort of proprietary fondness for Bruce and Loki, as if, having saved them from whatever fate they would have suffered at the hands of the Sheriff's Men, they'd determined to ever after regard them with affection, and take personal pride in their achievements. They talked about Loki's musical prowess in tones of hushed reverence.Bruce appreciated their cheerfulness. In a way, he needed it, because left to his own devices he feared he might have quickly descended into a quagmire of fear, hopelessness, and confusion. His tiredness and extreme hunger didn't help with that, and neither did his worry--a hundred times worse than anything he might have predicted--for the well-being of his companion, because Loki, when they carried him back to his bunk in Rosa's caravan, had looked utterly drained, nearly lifeless. He hadn't stirred as they settled him, and Bruce had hated leaving him on his own.When finally released from his duties, he dragged himself back to their temporary rolling home with all the speed he could muster. Hospitable Rosa had insisted they regard the caravan as their own for the duration of their stay (that the stay might well stretch on for whatever remained of their lives continued to remain politely unspoken). A wire-handled pail, looking remarkably like an unlabeled gallon paint can--the this-world equivalent of the tiffin-boxes Bruce had first encountered in India--dangled from each of his hands, and inside these cans nestled several smaller containers, cleverly designed to keep food hot, cold, or at a neutral temperature, filled with the meal the troupe's cooks had prepared and served out to their hungry compatriots before shutting down the kitchen and retiring to their own beds.Bruce found his heart thumping with a different sort of anxiety than he'd felt in the time leading up to his performance, mostly based on the fact that he hadn't heard, or felt, so much as a mental whisper from Loki at any time during his various toils.That worry now appeared to have been semi-unfounded, since he found Loki not only fully conscious, but returned to his usual male-with-variations form.The god slumped on the edge of the lower bunk, head bowed and hands dangling between his knees. Only the slightest twitch of one hand betrayed the least awareness that anyone else had entered the caravan."Some night, huh?" Bruce said to his silent friend. He hesitated a few seconds before settling down beside Loki on the bunk. "I brought dinner. Just stew and bread, but it smells great and looks surprisingly tasty.""And so we know we have entered a magical world." Loki flopped back onto the mattress, the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes."How so?" Bruce frequently found himself challenged in trying to follow Loki's diverse and complicated trains of thought."The ubiquitous presence of stew, on which the inhabitants of fantasy novels always seem to subsist entirely."Not urban fantasy, of course," Loki added, as an afterthought.Bruce contemplated the statement, thinking of all the books he'd ever read in the fantasy genre, and found himself laughing. "You're not wrong, my friend--in fact, I'd say that you're at least 90% correct. Want to bet there's porridge for breakfast?""There will be porridge," Loki responded, "It is, again, ubiquitous. And so, I will not accept your bet.""Fair enough." Bruce let out another short laugh. "Now sit up. Eat. You'll feel better."Loki sighed, but he did consent to lever himself more-or-less upright, in a slumpy sort of way. He also gave a slight smile upon seeing the not-really-a-paint-can."What?""I am reminded of the dinner-pails of Oz, which grew upon a tree. 'The really ripe ones,'" he quoted, his brilliant eyes veiled by their lids, and his gaze distant. "'Were pails of bright tin that shone and glistened beautifully in the rays of sunshine that touched them.'"Bruce grinned too, reminded of the peaceful library-haunting times of his childhood, losing his troubles--Wheelers and Wicked Witches aside--in the kinder and more trustworthy world of books. "I'd forgotten the Dinner-Pail trees. Which book had those?"He felt fairly certain Loki would know, and even more certain that they could both do with the distraction."The third. Ozma of Oz." Loki pried the lid of his can off with his now claw-reminiscent fingernails. "Published in 1907," he added."As always, your memory amazes me, Loki. You should be on Jeopardy."Bruce had now and then observed his companion in the act of watching that particular game show for trivia addicts, which seemed to be a favorite of his, even though the words "fool" and "ignoramus"--invariably aimed at one contestant or another--could frequently be heard to pass his lips."Is there a special competition for discredited gods?" Loki set his can on the floor to swipe at his eyes, and Bruce noticed a slight pinkness to both those eyes and Loki's nose, probably the closest his friend would ever come to an ugly-cry.Bruce experienced a resurgence of social awkwardness. He had no idea how to comfort a god, or if Loki could even be comforted in this situation. Tony and the kids, he well knew, were Loki's life, and to be separated from them in this way--especially with the alarmingly reborn Nels Lars Nelson hovering in the wings--had to be soul-destroying."Eat now?" he suggested, trying to make his voice gentle. "You really might feel better."At least, Bruce remembered, Loki wasn't allergic to every single thing when pregnant. At least there was that.Loki lifted the largest tin out of the can, raising its lid. Bruce fetched a pair of wooden bowls from a nearby cupboard (everything in the caravan being easily describable as "nearby"), along with two spoons that might--like the windows--have been fashioned from horn. He took the tin from his companion's clearly indifferent hand, pouring the thick, meaty stew into one of the bowls."So you won't taste metal," he explained, knowing Loki's taste buds to be notoriously sensitive."Instead I shall taste the oaken wood," Loki grumped. "And horn, for that matter. Which, in my estimation, most likely bears the flavor of paste, or glue.""Though I have never partaken of either," he added."I did once," Bruce confessed. "Though it should be stressed, I was only five years old at the time, and in kindergarten. The same year, I shoved a red crayon up my nose. It had to be removed with tweezers in the nurse's office. God only knows why I did it.""It is a common phase children go through at that age," Loki informed him knowledgeably. "Not my children, of course.""Of course not." Bruce found himself grinning--a small, shaky grin, but still a grin. Loki, even in extreme circumstances, was still so extremely... Loki.His friend sniffed the bowl of stew and poked it once or twice with the spoon. "Mutton," he groused.Loki could not possibly have sounded less thrilled."'Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer,'" Bruce quoted.Loki's face lighted slightly. "Professor Tolkien's charming story of The Hobbit!.""You got it." Bruce gave him a smile, one he was too tired to really feel, so tired his face had gone numb.Wearing a look of profound martyrdom, Loki consumed a spoonful or two of his dinner."C'mon, Loki, you have to be hungry," Bruce urged, fighting down a wavelet of impatience. "Usually you're vacuuming up every remotely edible thing that isn't nailed down."For a second or two Loki looked as if he wanted to protest that remark, but then he only shrugged and forced down a couple more miniscule bites."Not everyone can be Mrs Ransome," Bruce teased him, hopefully not in a mean way. "Really, it's not bad, and you have to eat. For Edwin, if not for yourself." He took note of his companion's barely-blue pallor and unsteady hands. "Still not feeling so good?"Loki shrugged again and nibbled at his bread. "This is good. Like the low-risen bread with the holes throughout. What is it called?""Focaccia?""Yes, I believe Tony named it thus. We have nothing similar in Asgard.""Seriously, Loki, what's up?""I merely overextended myself. Edwin takes much of my strength at this time. Also, I do indeed miss Tony and the children. They must be most distressed, and here I am, unable in any way to comfort them.""I can see that. I miss..." Bruce shut his mouth. Who did he have to miss? His team? Tony? Jennifer? And, yes, sure, he missed them, but not in any way comparable to what Loki must be feeling. Here he was, a man in the middle of his life, and he had not a single loved one. How pathetic was that?"Tony loves you like unto a brother," Loki told him gently. "Do not, please, discount his affection."He set his bowl on the floor, careful not to spill its contents. To Bruce's surprise, he reached out then, taking one of Bruce's big, green hands in his narrow blue one and squeezing it lightly. "Remember, also, Bruce--you are of our family, and therefor are loved, ever and always."I was hateful to this man, Bruce reminded himself. I was hateful."That matters not, dear friend," Loki told him. "Neither now, nor in the future. All is behind us.""Even so, I'm sorry.""As always, that is kind, but in no way necessary to enunciate. I know your heart, Bruce, and why you acted as you did."That makes one of us, Bruce wanted to say, but he noticed that Loki had started to visibly droop again, and didn't. Instead, he stood, helping Loki to swing his legs around, so that he could lie in relative comfort, then sat again on the edge of the bunk. Even lying down, Loki looked strained.Not even sure what made him do it, Bruce rubbed his back in a comforting way, in smooth circles. Loki let out a little purring sigh.After a long silence, Loki murmured, "I fear.""Why is that? Because of Nelson? That was Nelson tonight, right?""Because of him, yet also..." His voice trailed off. His eyes closed, and for a minute or two, Bruce thought he must be asleep."You know the manner of my children's birth." It wasn't a question.And yes, Bruce knew. The details had been gruesome, and in no way a pleasant to know, but he knew."You can't, uh, alter..." He thought of Loki in his female form, the physical changes he'd seen his companion go through now and then, literally in the blink of an eye. "Such alterations ofttimes come easily to me, it is true, and yet...""Not that easily," Bruce filled in. "They take concentration. Concentration that might not be there when you're in labor.""You have hit the nail upon its head precisely." Loki sighed. "If the time comes, Bruce. If we have not yet returned home, I mean to say, when the time comes..."Bruce waited for him to continue the thought, though he could guess pretty well what Loki was trying to say."You must, for Edwin's life, act swiftly and boldly. From the back, just where the scar of John Watson lies."Bruce set down his own bowl. "Loki, I don't know if... I mean, God only knows if there's even anesthetic.""I can bear the pain," Loki told him, his voice low and insistent. "I must bear it. I will not discomfit you, I swear, by crying out.""God, Lok.""You must act as John Watson acted, within the cave in Wales, absent of either fear or hesitation. For my son's life, Bruce. Swear to me."Bruce took note of Loki's pink-rimmed eyes, the light sweat on his cheeks and forehead.The shoe dropped."Loki, are we talking about soon, or now? As in now now?"Loki laid a forearm across his eyes. "My people..." he murmured. "That is to say, the people of half my heritage, the Jötnar, are prepared in their bodies, for such eventualities. I am not of them, neither am I of the Aesir. I stand between the two, both and neither, able to kindle life within myself, yet ill-made and wrong."My secret place," he nearly spat, "Is nothing. It is useless for delivering life into the world, and perhaps Odin was correct, at least in this particular, that I am a misbegotten thing, neither fish nor fowl." He rolled over, his back to Bruce, shoulders shaking. "I had wanted, so badly, to give birth safely within the tower, with my dear friend Hank McCoy to attend me. And Kurt. My dearest Kurt. And Tony to hold my hand, and, with hope, not to pass out upon the floor.""But not me," Bruce added--not bitterly, because how could he be bitter, in the face of Loki's distress? "What do I know?"Loki rolled back, his big emerald eyes searching Bruce's face. "I meant no offense," he said at last, quietly."None taken," Bruce answered, meaning the words sincerely."I feel terror at the prospect," Loki confessed, his voice quiet and tense. "As with my dear three. I know not what will come of this. Yet I do trust you, dear friend. Your skill and courage are the equal of John Watson's. I know you will act as you must.""I will," Bruce assured him, though his whole body went cold at the thought. "I will, Loki.""You will," Loki agreed. His long fingers touched lightly to the back of Bruce's hand. The shaking eased and, slowly, he grew warm again. "Now eat, and then sleep. The time has not yet come."Bruce wasn't comforted--or not exactly--but he found himself both too hungry and too exhausted to do anything but follow his friend's advice.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Bruce opened his eyes to a yellowish glow from the window by his bunk, and for the first time since he and Loki had arrived in this strange not-quite-world, he remembered exactly where he was, and why it happened to be diffusely-filtered natural daylight that woke him, and not the familiar persistent ringing of a dented red analog alarm clock with a pair of brass bells on top.He'd owned that clock since childhood, carrying it with him wherever he went, from one city to the next, one country to the next. Once, sharing a dump of a room in an even worse dump of a hotel somewhere in the wilds of Symkaria, Tony had "offered" to silence the alarm permanently by dropping Bruce's beloved clock off their eighth-floor balcony.A soft laugh rose out of the semi-darkness beneath Bruce now, followed by the words, "Ah, my Tony."That quiet phrase summoned up quite a few emotions, along with any number of other words Bruce really didn't think he should repeat. Along with that, an insistent feeling that he'd slept late haunted him. Too late, in fact. Way, way too late"On the contrary," Loki told him. "Dawn's light has barely reached us."Bruce partially untangled himself from his pile of quilts to peer over the bunk's edge. His companion appeared calm, nonchalant even. He perched on one of Rosa's low stools, somehow managing to look elegant, even with his long legs folded at what should have been awkward angles and his knees sticking up in the air.Loki, being Loki, had managed to obtain a comb from somewhere, and currently sat, now and then cursing under his breath, as he attempted to subdue his long, wet, outrageously curly hair without his usual array of expensive grooming products. Not for the first time, Bruce felt grateful for his own utilitarian haircut--but Loki and his brother both had standards to uphold, princely Asgardian standards, and neither appeared ready to submit themselves to lowly Midgardian fashion trends any time in the near future."You washed your hair?" Bruce asked, and instantly wanted to kick himself. Sometime during the night he'd made a resolution to attempt to keep his conversations with Loki meaningful and kind--yet he doubted he could have come up with a more banal question if he'd tried.A slight smile flickered across Loki's face. "They are resourceful folk, our benefactors, for they have rigged something akin to the camping showers of Midgard, in which the daytime sun heats the water, and so they may clean themselves in comfort after their early labors, before the evening's performances begin.""Um, but..." Bruce wondered if he should point out that, if Loki was correct about the time, his shower couldn't exactly have been piping hot."As I am half Jötunn --and possibly, in this form, even more than half--I volunteered to bathe in the early hours." Another slight smile. "The cold doesn't bother me anyway.""Okay, Elsa." Bruce slipped off his own bunk, shivering a little as his feet connected with the still-chilly wooden floor. He'd slept in the undergarments their hosts had provided, which amounted to something like a union suit, patched and worn and colored the shade of gray-beige common to a person's college years, if he doesn't know better than to not separate his lights from his darks before throwing them in the washing machine. This attractive garment also included a prominent back-flap, the better to add an extra layer of goofiness to the ensemble."Indeed. Quite attractive," Loki said, amusement clearly hovering around the corners of his mouth, though he refrained from actual snickering. "I can only regret the drab color, in place of the more traditional red." "Mock if you like, but it's pretty comfortable. I'm betting they'll be all the rage next year.""Perhaps. If one is an inept bank robber of the Old West, as portrayed by Donald Knotts in a mid-century live-action film. Perchance a film of Walter Disney?""Walt, Loki. Just Walt." Bruce had to admit, though, that his aversion to nicknames aside, his companion had a perfectly valid point."Not that you in any other way resemble the unfortunate Mister Knotts," Loki assured him."Well, thanks for that, I guess." Bruce reached out, resting a hand on Loki's knee. "Which is it, by the way? Are you trying to distract me, or trying to cheer me up?""Both, I suppose." Loki turned to stow the comb neatly in one of the small cupboards next to his bunk. Without him appearing to make any other move, his hair braided and twisted itself into one of his complex, Loki-typical hairdos, one any elf of Middle Earth would have been proud to wear out in public."I always wondered how you did that.""Magic has its uses." A tone came into Loki's voice, slightly bitter and overwhelmingly weary."Seriously, Loki," Bruce said quietly."Seriously?" Loki echoed."You look beat. No, I'll go one step further--you look totally beat. Did you sleep at all last night?""Briefly." Loki turned his face away, as if he'd suddenly become fixated on the blank wall and horn window beyond."Was that because of the baby, or... Speaking of which, I don't suppose you quietly and painlessly gave birth in the night, and we no longer have to worry?""We should experience such luck," Loki answered dryly. "I..." he began, paused, then started up again, in that tone people generally use when forced to talk about something they'd rather not mention, ever, to anyone. "I lay awake, for the most part, pondering how it was to be done, so as not to subject you to the... the stress to which I subjected my friend, John Watson, beneath the mountain in Wales. John had recent experience as a battle-surgeon, and also the guidance of my son, who knows what I--what we--are."Bruce did know what Loki looked like inside. More or less. In a vague, not-exactly-clinical kind of way. He was fully aware that, as the Avengers' team doctor, he should have been up on such things, and not let himself be dismayed by the "what the hell does that do?" complexity of his companion's most private inner workings. That he hadn't expected to find himself in this position wasn't really an valid excuse. Sure, the plan had been for Baby Boy Stark to be delivered within the sterile, fully modern environment of the Tower infirmary, with the supremely knowledgeable and competent Dr. Hank McCoy presiding, Bruce's only job being to hold Tony's hand and not let him freak out too badly.He really should have known. Making plans that specific only tempted fate."I believe, when my time comes upon me, I can arrange not to allow pain to overwhelm my senses entirely," Loki said. Is that statement supposed to comfort me? Bruce wondered."Neither shall I, I trust," Loki continued, "Allow the loss of my blood to weaken me unduly.""Uh, yeah, good," Bruce muttered. "Great, so..." His voice trailed off.Loki looked so pale that no blue whatsoever remained in his skin tone, and more than a little shaky as well."So, um, I guess I'd be untrustworthy link in your chain of plans," Bruce said, trying to keep his voice light. He had no clue, really, about how to comfort Loki. Despite having passed months in the guy's company, he'd spent nearly all that time judging, belittling, rejecting--refusing to see or hear anything Tony, or his own eyes and ears, told him.His companion's eyes brimmed, shiny and unfocused."Forgive me," Bruce barged ahead. "Maybe this is a totally obvious, and possibly even lame-brained question--but isn't this kind of thing more or less the whole point of being a shape-shifter? Can't you just...?" Bruce made a weak, waving gesture with one hand, hoping Loki could fill in the blanks, even if doing so made him fully deserving of a world-class Loki eye-roll."What am I meant to do with the ability?" Loki asked. "Instantly develop 'lady-parts' as my brother, in his younger years, might have called them?"Bruce felt fairly certain he'd heard Thor use that exact term sometime within the last six months."Yes, you may be correct in that." Loki gave a dry little laugh, and only his face could have conveyed the depths of amusement, anxiety and embarrassment, all mingled together, that currently met Bruce's eyes. "Remember, though, that I am dual in my heritage, dual in my nature, and for all the shapes I may temporarily assume, only two are mine, and mine alone. This child was conceived, and since has grown within my quasi-Jötunn form, which is the anatomy my body possesses within, surface appearances aside, when I am male. And I am male, whatever else is possible, the greater part of the time. My female form, on the other hand, expresses my Aesir heritage, its anatomy, with slight differences, akin to that of a Midgardian woman. I may carry a child in one, or in the other, but I may not, as they say, change horses in midstream."Don't mention Sleipnir, Bruce ordered himself sternly. Don't. Just don't."That was another matter," Loki informed him loftly. "And, even then, I must needs remain in the form I had taken at conception for my son's birth to be successfully achieved." He stared down at his hands, at the long, slender fingers, with their black claws, woven tightly together, resting atop his knees. "I was not allowed..." he began, then stopped.Silence fell, thick and uncomfortable."Bruce," Loki said at last, his voice perfectly level, "It was a difficult time, one that seemed to stretch on without end, and the humiliation..." He shook back his elaborately braided hair and for the first time that morning, met Bruce's eyes directly. "Yet those days lay long in the past, and their events spun out far, far from this country. Ζώμεν γαρ ού ως θέλομεν, αλλ’ ως δυνάμεθα.""That's Greek to me," Bruce responded, pleased to see the corners of Loki's eyes abruptly crinkle with laughter, even if he didn't quite let loose and laugh out loud.Loki did enjoy his wordplay, even wordplay that was, face it, obvious and a little dumb."I suspect your skills with ancient Greek leave my old Philosophy prof's far behind in the dust, but I actually do think I remember that one. Menander, right? 'We live not as we wish to, but as we must?'""Right and true," Loki agreed. "And indeed, my friend, I am impressed. Tony feels obliged to roll his eyes heartily at me when I say such things.""Tony is a Philistine. A very smart Philistine, but still a Philistine.""The Philistines were actually..." Loki began, then shook his head.; "Do not tempt me to display myself yet again as an insufferable know-it-all. I fall too easily into that trap.""Hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of," Bruce told him. "But following that line of thought, may I ask a couple questions?""Last night, I only appeared female, having created an illusion, not in any way changed my form.""Okay, you got me, that was question one."Loki didn't look smug, only weary."Want to guess question number two?""Please proceed.""Last year you kept getting sick with viruses, and insisted that you weren't just getting sick, it was something someone did to you?"Loki nodded. What he didn't do was add, "And you mocked me mercilessly.""So, who was the someone again? Nelson?""Yes, or his minions--or so I surmise.""Which brings me to question 2-B. If Nelson carved the rune-thing on you, and it has to do with fertility, and the baby you have on board, and if it's the Jötunn part of you that makes babies, why did the whole point of the viruses seem to be to de-Jötunnize you, to the point that your horns fell out?""They grew back," Loki answered, as if that answered the question."Was it just mischief? Something to throw you off balance and weaken you for battles ahead? Something intended to change you, to prepare you, before you came here?""You believe it, then, to be no accident that we have come here?""Not quite. I believe it to be no accident that you have come here, because my bet is that happened according to plan, baby and all. For me, in the immortal words of Lemony Snicket, 'Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.' That one statement, by the way, more or less sums up my entire existence." "Bruce..." Loki appeared to have paid no attention whatsoever to the previous statement. If anything, too, he looked even whiter than before, as white as he'd ever been on what Bruce now tended to think of as "The Other Side."Maybe it just hurt too much to say, "Back Home," even inside his head.He laid a hand on Loki's wrist, squeezing gently. "The hair-combing thing--that was distraction, right? Only, for you, for me, or for both of us?"Wordless now, lips pressed together, Loki locked eyes with Bruce's. Those eyes, always large and expressive, seemed even wider than usual, and dark with sorrow and fear, so dark they scarcely seemed to have any iris."I tried..." Loki breathed. "I tried..."Tried what? Bruce wondered--except he knew, really. Loki had tried to change himself, his not-quite-complete Jötunn body. Tried to conform. Tried to make things easy for him and everyone around them."I'll get Rosa," Bruce told his friend. Remarkably, his voice came out sounding deep, calm and unusually reassuring. He'd never have thought he had it in him."I'll go get Rosa to assist me, and be back in a minute. You don't need to worry, Loki. Everything's going to be fine."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Thanks to the excellent workers Pepper had hired on Tony's behalf, the recently-repaired penthouse seemed virtually indistinguishable from its original self. Under Pep's guidance, they'd made every effort to restore each and every feature just the way Tony liked it. Or had once liked it. Now he missed any number of little Lokiesque details, all of them destroyed in the explosion and subsequent fire, the worst loss of all being the irreplaceable murals that once decorated each of the the children's walls.For a long time, Tony told himself things would be okay, that his husband would come back and make everything right again, bring back all those amazing things that, even if they were old, somehow managed to blend in beautifully with the modern decor. He told himself Loki would paint new murals, including one for the baby's nursery, and everything would be right again. Everything. Because Loki had returned.These days, that deluded hope had long since faded. Tony paced endlessly through the rebuilt and mostly-empty rooms--upstairs, downstairs, out to the terrace (where Thor's tomatoes, in their pots, had first withered, then died, from lack of attention), and back in again. Nothing seemed familiar, or welcoming, or in any way like home. With Loki gone, he couldn't face their bedroom, and on those nights when exhaustion hit him so brutally Tony felt as if he at least had to attempt some sort of rest, he'd end up crashed out on the couch, mouth dry, eyes bleary, hands unsteady. Sometimes he'd switch on the TV, staring at the blurred and changing scenes with the sound muted, understanding nothing. Other times even that felt like too much fucking effort.Sometimes Tony ached with the desire to drink, but didn't do it. He couldn't even say why.Four months since the rooftop battle. Four months since the portal. Four goddamned months.Tony couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat. His eyes not only had bags under them, they had actual suitcases, or possibly steamer trunks. His clothes had started to fit funny, like they belonged to some other, much bigger guy, and only that, not any sense of personal vanity, made him fairly certain he'd melted off every bit of the weight he'd gained back after his New Zealand adventure--and then some--from pure emotional distress.In that handful of time, short to most, never-ending to Tony, he'd also managed to turn into the worst dad in the world. Not actively awful, the way he'd been back around Christmas, before he got sober (and, by the way, also stopped being a semi-willing victim of mind control), but bad in how distant he'd allowed himself to become with his kids, even with the full knowledge that they hurt every bit as badly as he did, if not worse. He could have comforted them, and taken comfort from them. That didn't happen.The guilt and shame of that twined in and around Tony's grief--"like unto the dragon Níðhöggr, wound inexorably through the roots of Yggdrasil," Loki would almost certainly have said--and made his soul, if he possessed one, feel shrunken and cold, a dead weight that filled him, leaving no room for anything else, and because of all this, as well as for a number of other reasons Tony didn't even want to dwell on, Kurt and Logan, ever the caring honorary uncles, had bundled up Sleip, Fen and Jöri, packed the boys' bags and headed north to Salem Center for a presumably extended stay. Their equally honorary Afi, Erik Selvig, traveled with them.Tony should have grieved, too, for their absence--and maybe he did--but he couldn't feel the full extent of that pain, not really. He sometimes imagined himself as the kid from The Snow Queen, a spike of evil ice stabbed through his heart, pinning him permanently in frozen isolation. Hela alone remained in the tower once her brothers had gone. Tony glimpsed her from afar, or what seemed like afar, floating through the penthouse and environs in the company of one or more of the Deaths, those pale women in their odd black clothes who she called her Sisters. Only Hela really couldn't have been distant, because she took care of Tony--as much as he would allow her--far better than he took care of her.Sometimes, though, Hela just... wasn't there, and whether she continued to search for her Pabbi and Bruce, or if she just needed, now and then, to escape him and his omnipresent gloom, Tony couldn't have said. Did she merely attend to her remarkably successful business, or go on girls' nights out with Pep and Natasha, like the mentally strong person she was, or did her travels take her further afield--to other worlds, or the to the bleak spaces between other worlds, or to whatever place lay beyond the elegant doors she opened up for the dead?Was she comforted by her Grandfather Laufey in Jötunheimr, or by that other, older Hela, Queen of Helheimr?If she was still looking, trying to find her Pabbi and other honorary uncle (plus Edwin), Tony wished her luck--only what luck could she possibly have, when, as a Death herself, her strongest chance of locating any one of them would be if...Tony flat-out refused to think about that "if." They weren't dead. They wouldn't, couldn't, be dead.He missed Bruce, his friend, his brother, with the fury of a thousand suns, but oh, gods, was missing Loki worse! Worse than having shards of metal moving determinedly toward his heart, worse than having his heart ripped out altogether. He hadn't recovered, even now, from Loki's excursion to... Elsewhere, for lack of a better word. To that fairy-tale-like world where Odin finally (and deservedly) died, and other, maybe even stranger, things happened that even his husband's careful explanations couldn't help Tony understand.Sometimes, deep in his sleepless nights, Tony found himself bargaining with the Universe: Take Bruce (oh, gods, not Bruce!). Take Edwin, even (oh, please no, not my son, not my baby!). Just don't take Loki, please, please, please, please not my Loki, my love, my heart. I've come too close, too many times, and I am so, so selfish...Even knowing that Loki would live on beyond death, safe and happy in Avalon with those he'd loved and lost: with Myrddin, with his first sons, Narfi and Vali, and with their much-loved little Will, brought Tony no peace. He couldn't accept that end to things, couldn't resign himself, not if he remained here.He'd become a cliche, a seventies rock song. Don't Fear the Reaper. More cowbell, please.All his resources, it struck Tony again and again--all the money and tech he had at his disposal, all the super-powered individuals standing firmly by his side--what use was any of it to him in his situation? None of that brought him any more concrete answers than his desperate, pointless, half-deluded pleas that the uncaring, unfeeling, unoccupied darkness surrounding him would grant, just this once, some sort of mercy.Maybe, once upon a time, Strange could have helped, scrying, or conjuring, or whatever the hell magic guys who weren't Loki did to be useful in such circumstances. Doctor Strange, however, had other concerns. First, whatever he'd seen, staring into the portal (though Tony would've sworn the Sorcerer Supreme's ginormous ego would have safely shielded him from any horror). Second, taking up every remaining crumb of Strange's fractured attention, were the sorcerer's ruined hands, not merely physically wrecked, bringing him pain that no pill, potion or therapy would touch, but, it seemed, magically wrecked too.So, Nels Lars Nelson-1, Sorcerer Supreme-0.Thor traveled back and forth from Asgard, trying to hold things together up there, as well as attempting to make up for Tony's absence from any and all Avengers duties. Thor's friends, his Warriors Three and Lady Sif, had cleaned out the pantry, tried to do helpful things in a number of unhelpful ways then, one by one, made their apologies and rainbowed home, never to return. With them in the Golden City, Heimdall, who might have seen all, Tony's lost husband and friend included, no longer did so, lying instead in what the Agardian healers referred to as "Dwelling in the Realm of the Mists," and the doctors of Earth would have most likely called a "Vegetative State"--all thanks to their very own Hela and her goddesslike sense of retribution. Whether the golden-eyed god would even have helped them--maybe as a favor to Thor--or if his blind hatred of Loki would have overcome any residual loyalty he owed to the House of Odin remained a moot point.Erik and Jane, one in Salem Center, one in the city, teleconferenced each other daily, endlessly discussing singularities, portals, and Einstein-Rosen Bridges, while on the other side of the pond, Sherlock did... whatever the fuck it was Sherlock did, surprisingly, with Anthea-slash-Morgana, the two of them actually working together instead of snarking and sneering at each other. Rupert phoned regularly, all stiff-upper-lip and mustn't-say-die, talking to Tony at length about the mystic texts he'd pored through, and the arcane acquaintances he'd contacted (or possibly summoned). As far as Tony was concerned, the former Watcher might as well have been one of the grown-ups from a Peanuts cartoon, all his research nothing more than a series of meaningless "waah waah waah" sounds, only delivered in a deep, posh voice. Eventually, Hela took the calls in Tony's place.Steve remained stalwart and courageous (quelle surprise), the greatly-improved Bucky (James, Loki would have insisted, always James), unfailingly kind. Pepper and Natasha brought Tony meals he didn't eat. Clint and Phil offered comfort, and also to do... stuff, though what stuff they thought might be helpful to him, Tony couldn't begin to guess.Phil's giant dog regularly traveled upstairs to lay her head in his lap and gaze up at Tony with her big, soft, sympathetic eyes.Worst of all, absolutely worst of all, continued to be Tony's certain awareness that he shouldn't be slumping around the penthouse, stewing in his own misery, at all. He should be thinking. Planning. Imagining, Inventing. He should be looking for his husband with everything in him, finding him, and bringing Loki home."You think?" Hela asked from the doorway, her tone somewhat less sarcastic than her actual words. She drifted closer, gently, as if approaching an easily-spooked animal in the wild, and when she reached Tony, touched his thoroughly unshaven jaw, then tugged at his raggedy hair. "You really could use the help of a decent barber, Dad. And you've smelled better. Pabbi would be appalled."Loki would be. Loki would be utterly appalled. Tony searched, but couldn't find a single answer for her anywhere in his head. What the hell could he tell his small, tough, otherworldly daughter--should he remind her of the many, many days (and nights) that he'd worked and sweated and tried every single fucking thing he could think of? Smart ideas, dumb ideas, ridiculously implausible ideas, he'd chased after them all, until the constant lack of results dried up the last of his creativity and despair settled around him in a cloud so thick and dark Tony lost any remaining hope that he'd ever see through that darkness to the other side."We'll forget about personal grooming for now. All that can wait," Hela told him briskly. In times past when she got like this, with that stiff spine, the starchy British accent and a corresponding attitude, all "Hurry up, please. Spit spot!" Tony teased Hela by calling her "Mary Poppins." These days, he didn't have the heart."You can't continue on like this, Dad," his daughter said, quietly this time. "You can't. You must have what you truly need."What I truly need, Hela, is your Pabbi, Tony thought, and though he knew, deep down, that it really was his job to comfort her, not hers to comfort him, any words he might have spoken got wound up again in the dragon coils inside his mind."Oh, my dear. Oh, my poor dear." No starchy, Mary Poppinsness whatsoever remained in his daughter's voice, only tenderness and love. Hela's soft, cool hands cupped Tony's face. Her lips, equally cool, pressed briefly to his forehead.The darkness softened and grew warm around him, enveloping him like a blanket.In the stillness, Tony finally slept."It is not the time for him, my dear, small son" Loki told Bruce. Frowning, he added a last few lines to the drawing he'd made, with impressive precision, to map out his internal workings for the benefit of his semi-reluctant surgeon. That drawing had taken the better part of the morning to complete.While Loki worked, Bruce had gone out for a shower himself (nearly ice-cold, and yes, unlike his friend, the cold definitely bothered him anyway). Back in the caravan, he'd ditched his stylin' union suit for an outfit of breeches and tunic that made him feel like (and probably strongly resemble, in his own, green kind of way) Fezzik the Giant in The Princess Bride. "And yet it is time," Loki added."I can handle it. Really, I can handle it." Bruce had tried to replace his normal (and, he knew, somewhat neurotic-sounding) voice for the kind of voice Hank McCoy would have used in the situation, full of "Sure, I've totally got this" confidence (not that erudite Hank would used those exact words). Loki definitely didn't need to know what he actually felt at that particular moment, which was a sense of abject fear that surged through his entire body, fingers and toes included.He studied the diagrams, three of them, drawn to display what could be called, with a certain amount of irony, Loki's reproductive "system" (which wasn't really so much of a system as an unholy mess) from various pertinent angles.Bruce had delivered his share of babies over the years, many of them from problem pregnancies, working in crowded city districts and in clinics in the back of beyond, often in places where supplies were minimal and he and his co-workers were the only medical providers for a hundred miles around . He'd delivered babies from young girls with hips no wider than the spread of his hand, done successful c-sections on a woman with endometriosis scar tissue so bad it made her belly look like it was filled with loofah sponges (wondering the whole time how on earth she'd managed to get pregnant), and on another woman whose müllerian ducts had gone nuts when she was a fetus, giving her two complete sets of certain female organs."Uterus didelphys," Bruce said softly to himself, because he always took comfort in the precise Latin terminology of his medical training."I have not that condition," Loki replied, because of course he'd understood the Latin. That was pretty much what he did, or at least a standout among his several talents.Loki and his words, Bruce thought, then, Maybe they comfort both of us."Well, thank God anyway for both your knowledge of your own anatomy and your artistic talent," he said. "In the absence of an ultrasound or any other scan, they'll be incredibly helpful."His friend made a vague sound, possibly an agreement, possibly Loki mentally switching out "God" in favor of "the gods." All that aside, Loki had gone sheet-white, his lips tightened to a thin, pale line, pain in every inch of his body.His eyes caught Bruce's.Bruce gazed back, trying to make his expression show nothing but reassurance. "Rosa and her helpers have set up a good place for us. The table's so clean you could eat off it."By now Loki's eyes had glazed. He didn't react to Bruce's pitiful joke."Really, I checked out all the preparations, and they're not bad. Everything's as close to sterile as possible under the circumstances, and they have a decent enough disinfectant they call "spirits of wine." It's not chlorhexidine gluconate, but it's not bad. The knives Rosa loaned me will work just fine.Despite the filmed-over eyes and his obvious pain, Loki rested a hand on Bruce's wrist, just as he'd previously laid his hand on Loki's, the touch cool and strangely comforting. "I am sorry for this, dear friend.""God, Loki, don't apologize! I'm just sorry you have to go through it, especially under these conditions."This time Loki took his hand, long, slender fingers wrapping around Bruce's thicker, stubbier digits. The gesture felt warm, despite his friend's chillier-than-usual skin. "You will act swiftly and surely, without fear, never hesitating. I know this, Bruce."Wish I had your confidence, Bruce thought, but he nodded and forced a smile. "Absolutely. It'll all be okay. It'll be fine."Bruce got to his feet when Rosa, after a gentle knock, opened the caravan's door."It's all ready, love," she told Loki. "Are you?""More than, I think," Bruce said, giving Loki's hand a little squeeze. "Do you need help, or can you make it okay?""I am perfectly able to walk, and shall," Loki answered.He swayed a little upon standing, his face going whiter than Bruce would have thought possible, and leaning briefly against him. He felt the contractions where their bodies touched, powerful spasms ripping through his friend's abdomen."Oh gods," Loki breathed, bending slightly, huddling against the pain. "Oh, gods!" After a few seconds, he straightened. "Let us proceed now, with some haste."Bruce jumped from the wagon first, offering his friend a supportive hand down the two shallow steps. Loki sucked in air in a sharp gasp, then leaned back against the bright panel behind him, pulling in deeper breaths for a minute or so, obviously struggling to keep those breaths as steady as possible. Bruce laid a hand against Loki's lower abdomen, feeling the powerful muscles bunch and contract, bunch and contract. The thought of those inhumanely strong muscles pushing against nothing, driving Loki's baby downward to where there wasn't any exit, of Loki's pelvic bones stretching and spreading to give passage where there could be no passage, filled him with pity and horror.Loki pressed his head back hard against the painted wood, so hard that it creaked and seemed close to cracking. His eyes closed and he bit down on his lower lip, hard, hard enough to break the skin. His normal scent, that always reminded Bruce of winter in an evergreen forest, with a hint of lemon as an undernote, had gone both sour and bitter. Beads of sweat stood out on his skin.Time passed until, finally, Loki straightened. "Now," he said, in a soft, strained voice. "Soon as we are able, Bruce.""Got it," Bruce answered. Even with his increased size, smaller than Hulk-size but bigger than his ordinary self, he had to speed up to keep pace with Loki's long, if somewhat wavering, strides. Head held high, he crossed the broad dirt path that divided the caravan from the small tent Rosa had commandeered for the delivery.A long table, actually long enough to accommodate Loki's height, stood ready at the center of the tent, its legs slightly denting the canvas floor. The metal top of this table really had been scrubbed cleaner than clean, then, Rosa assured them, disinfected with spirits of wine. Together, they helped Loki lie, face down, clean white-cased pillows cradling the curve of his belly.That belly rose in a much smaller mound than the large, domed shape common to most heavily-pregnant women, and Bruce couldn't guess if that just happened to be the way his friend carried, or if the baby would be less than full term. Loki certainly had been though enough stress--mental, emotional and physical--to render an early birth not completely unsurprising, but God help them if that turned out to be the case.Stop this, Bruce told himself. Don't panic, and don't borrow trouble. Stay in the moment.Calm and unflappable, Rosa drew the loose, robe-like garment Loki had worn to go outside down from his shoulders, then donned a similar robe herself, passing a second one to Bruce. They were short sleeved and fell to just below the knee, and Bruce wondered where Rosa had found one to fit--had she sewn it specially for him, and for this occasion? Next she pulled a hat, something like a mobcap, over her bright hair. She gestured for Bruce to bend down, fitting a similar cap over his own head. He thanked his lucky stars that his, at least, was minus the lace trim and wide frill.He shrugged his way into the gown, tying up the series of laces that ran down the front and slightly left of center. Rosa, meanwhile, moved over to a sturdy stand on which sat the jumbo version of the earthenware jar Bruce had noticed back in the caravan, the one bolted over the small basin in what passed as the kitchen area. Like that smaller version, this one had a tap. The diminutive healer nudged the tap's toggle with her wrist and began to thoroughly wash her hands beneath the resulting stream of steaming water, lathering one, then the other, from fingertip to elbow using a soft, strongly clean-smelling soap.Once Rosa had finished, Bruce took her place. The water felt hot, but not hot enough to scald his skin, and he tried to follow procedure as closely as possible, just as he'd been taught, scrubbing all sides of every single finger, then between the fingers, next paying attention to the back and front of each hand, trying to time himself as closely as he could to the three minute mark and then some, trying to make up for the entire absence of gloves. Afterward he moved his attention upward, scrubbing each big, green forearm with the same care, the soapy water sluicing down into a large metal pail by his feet.Loki moaned, but tried to muffle the sound by burying his face into the pillow under his head. Bruce caught a string of muttered words in a quasi-Scandinavian sounding language that he assumed was probably Aes.Undeterred by any of this, Rosa saturated a tuft of white fabric with the sharp-smelling spirits of wine and, working in concentric circles from the puckered scar below Loki's waist (a sad souvenir of his last pregnancy), swabbed outward, refreshing her cloth frequently as she worked her way up to Loki's shoulder blades, then around to his lower back.Loki moaned again, his face pressing even harder into his pillow, the white case already drenched and nearly translucent with his sweat. With that desperate sound came a series of small, sharp cracks, and a stream of clear but pink-tinged liquid gushed out from between Loki's thighs."Now, I beg of you, Bruce," Loki rasped, lifting his head slightly. "For the love of all the gods!"As Rosa wafted a white cloth over the whole of Loki's body, Bruce hastily finished his scrub.A large hole, he noticed, had been cut into the center of the drape, then neatly hemmed.That the cloth covered Loki up completely, head to toe, gave Bruce a bit of an involuntary shudder. It made the innocent drape seem frighteningly funereal, as if he'd already failed. As if every morsel of learning and skill he possessed, had ever possessed, proved insufficient to save his friend. As if he'd betrayed Loki and Tony and Baby Edwin, and sent his friend onward into the land of the dead."When you are fully prepared, Bruce," Loki choked out, still managing to inject a particularly Lokiesque combination of sympathy and snark into his tone."How about you, Lok? Are you ready?""Sooner rather than later would be best," Loki answered, with a shudder of his own, pressing his face harder than ever into the pillow, and not quite managing to muffle a long, low hiss.Bruce picked up one of the knives Rosa had provided, all thin and sharp in their blades, and nearly scalpel-like, though not as curved as he was used to. He knew that Rosa had boiled those knives, then doused them in spirits, along with several several short, extremely sharp-looking needles and quantities of the smooth silken thread she used for sutures.He adjusted his grip--damn, his hands felt too big for this, far too big!--mouthed a brief prayer to the God of his childhood, and cut.God--any gods--help him, he cut, hardly daring to breathe in case his hand wavered. Trying to fix Loki's diagrams firmly in his head, Bruce followed the line of John Watson's scar, though making his actual incision into the smooth skin slightly below.Good to his word and despite the pain, Loki allowed very little blood to appear, even as Bruce parted that skin, then the nearly-thin-as-a-sheet-of-paper layer of fat below, on into the thick, tough muscle and, finally, the equally tough and oddly fibrous surface of the organ below, at which point he switched to a second knife, worried that the first might have dulled on the muscle tissue above.The new knife cut more easily, but Loki gave a sudden, tearing gasp, and then his entire body went limp. Blood first oozed from the incisions, then flooded, bubbling uncontrolled out of the wound and up around Bruce's fingers.Quicker than Bruce would have thought possible, Rosa's hands slipped past his own and, judging her intention, he pulled away, concentrating instead on trying to sponge and control the gushing redness. Within a second Rosa had freed the baby's head, then his shoulders, his hips and, finally, a pair of remarkably long legs ending in small pudgy feet.He wasn't a big baby, but he looked perfect, utterly perfect.Following Loki's prior instructions, Bruce cleaned out the organ quickly but thoroughly, removing the tissue left behind, not afterbirth, but something like it. His mouth twitched as, maybe inappropriatly for this particular moment, he remembered Clint naming that same organ Loki's "fwoom.""For faux womb, y'know," he'd chuckled, making Loki giggle, then toss an aptly-named throw pillow at his head.Phil came as close as Phil ever got to an, "Oh, for God's sake, lover" eye-roll, which made Loki laugh even harder, until Tony joined in too, wrapping his arms around his husband from behind, as Loki, who was curled up in one corner of the couch, and newly over the last of his morning sickness, beamed, cozy and happy with his family and friends all around him."You can call it whatever you want, beautiful," Bruce heard Tony murmur in his husband's ear.Silently, feeling nearly desperate, his heart thumping away too hard in his chest, Bruce promised his best friend--the best friend he'd ever had--that Edwin would thrive, and Loki would heal, and everything would turn out all right in the end.Across the room, the baby's voice broke the quiet, more like a song than a cry.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sleep--it's not just for once a month anymore, Tony thought, stretching so thoroughly that his neck, spine and pretty much every other major joint let out a slow series of pops, like corn when the kernels first start doing their thing inside the popper.He wasn't in his and Loki's bed, which made this awakening both good and bad--good because not his own bed meant fewer sad associations, bad because when a person had slept as deeply (and, presumably, for as long a time) as he just had, it might not be entirely beyond the scope of reason to believe that all the horrible stuff had been only a nightmare, just another bad dream to be shoved into the back of the mind-closet with all the other bad dreams, to be semi-forgotten about, or at least never acknowledged.Tony, though, knew for a fact that this wasn't their bed because, for one thing, Loki never would have allowed a bedside lamp shaped like a castle on their bedside table, even one Tony had 3-D printed all on his lonesome, then wired up with LED's. It was a pretty cool lamp, if he did say so himself, and gave off a gentle, welcoming glow--which nonetheless completely failed to comfort Tony on this particular morning, as the awareness seeped into him that nothing whatsoever had changed.Already feeling tired before he'd even properly begun, Tony pushed back the duvet. Its fabric depicted knights without swords or lances, and dragons that looked fierce but friendly, as if those traditional foes weren't enemies after all, but maybe headed out for a rousing game of hide and seek in the nearby enchanted forest.Those details--lamp and duvet--meant Fen's room, which also meant everything had happened just the way he remembered, that his son (all of his sons, in fact) had gone to Salem Center, where Kurt and Logan looked after them because he couldn't. Or else hadn't. Tony couldn't really say which of those statements might be more factually correct.My Three Sons, he thought. Just like the old Fred MacMurray sitcom, from the days when all dads were wise, and smoked pipes, and wore cardigans, like Mr. Rogers.Except for Darrin, of Bewitched fame, who snarked, and drank too much, and had a magical wife and kid--though, unlike Darrin's wife, Samantha, Loki would be far more likely to look down his shapely nose in disapproval for an uncomfortably extended period than to nose-wiggle a spell into existence and, also unlike the far more forgiving Sam, who tended to wait for her mom, Endora, to step in and deliver Darrin's well-deserved ass-kickings (often by transforming her son-in-law into some alternative, and usually humiliating shape) Loki, since things got straightened out after their not-so-happy holiday season, took care of his own punishments. Still, for fuck's sake, he was Darrin, or at least Darrin's modern-day equivalent. Darrin also would have managed to screw things up thoroughly in the absence of Samantha, and was, besides, not much of a role model, so they had that in common.Which was why Fen's so-called room, full of Fen's things, didn't hold a trace of his little boy's ever-appealing smoky-woodsy scent, or even the least sense of his presence, but only smelled clean and empty--because his son had never slept, or played there, or otherwise occupied the space.Wanting badly to escape this line of thinking, Tony lurched to his feet and staggered into Fen's bathroom, the stagger courtesy of having slept too long to recover his balance instantly. He felt, in fact, like a sailor recently returned to land after an extended sea-voyage, his land-legs not easily recovered.Fen's bathroom, with its medieval theme-appropriate decorative tiles and fluffy royal-blue towels, looked pristine, those towels unused, no dust mice forming down by the base of the vanity, no water spots on the shower enclosure. It all might have been an advertisement, or a photographic spread in a magazine, and it made Tony want Fen, his cuddly, quirky, brave little boy, who still tended to be something of a perpetual motion machine first thing in the morning, so badly it felt like a punch in the stomach.He wanted Jöri too, his sensitive intellectual in a primary schooler's body, and Sleipnir, forever quiet, wise and kind, always ready to give or accept love."Goddammit," Tony spat out, hating the situation and himself in more or less equal parts. He stumbled into the shower, closed the glass door and let tepid water run over his body for a long time while also crying for an commensurately long time, the better not to get caught in the act by the most pragmatic not-really-seven-year-old in the universe.When all that ended, he climbed out, toweled dry his body, snuffled dry his tears, and determined that, yes, he really did look quite a bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, though with a stronger Italian heritage.In the absence of any razor, he decided to ignore the neckbeard for the present and settle for brushing his teeth instead with one of the spares in Fen's cupboard.That cupboard always held spares. His youngest was hell on toothbrushes.The Tom's of Maine toothpaste Loki provided for the kids tasted wimpy, minus the smack-you-in-the-face mint flavor Tony preferred, but A) toothpaste borrowers couldn't be toothpaste choosers and, B) when he finally managed to score his morning coffee, he wouldn't have to suffer the unholy dark-roast-and-spearmint flavor combination.This nod to grooming accomplished, he pulled on first boxers, then a random t-shirt and jeans combination, and prepared to descend.He came around the first spiral of the stairs to find Hela sitting, perfect-postured, as always, on the far end of the sofa. She'd dressed for the occasion in a particularly pleaty and velvety example of Victorian child's funeral-wear, half her hair partially pinned up in an impressively elaborate style, half hanging down her back in ringlets.She'd probably known the exact second when he'd opened his eyes."Like the hair," Tony told her. "Are we having a party?"His daughter shot him a look, one that could not have been more Lokilike either in appearance or in all it managed to convey."We all grieve in different ways," Hela said, which not only struck Tony as true, but made him ashamed of his own pissiness. If his daughter loved anyone in the world (which, of course, she did), that person had to be her Pabbi."My Sister, the Death of Queens, fixed my hair for me," she added conversationally, letting Tony know that piece of snark, at least, had been forgiven."Shoulda been me," Tony told her.Hela gave a small, ladylike scoff. He and his daughter's troublesome, though admittedly gorgeous, hair had never been the best of friends.She continued with what she'd been doing before he'd interrupted, which was neatly placing toast into a toast rack. Tony hadn't even known they owned a toast rack. Hela continued this domesticity by opening a Rosenblum's take-out box, cutting the child-sized cheese omelet it contained into two pieces, then sliding each onto a separate plate. Two tiny bowls of cut strawberries, each lightly dusted with confectioner's sugar, also awaited."This is what we're having?" Tony asked. "Hela, I'm starving.""Dina ögon är större än din mage," his daughter replied calmly. He'd heard Erik Selvig tell the kids something of the sort at some time in the past."The gods forbid I eat a satisfying breakfast?" Tony guessed."That would be, 'Gudarna förbjuder att jag äter en tillfredsställande frukost,'" Hela corrected. "Or something of the sort. My Swedish isn't yet perfect, and Afi Erik isn't here to be my Swedish-English dictionary. The first statement was meant to be, 'Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.' You haven't been eating. If you eat too much, you'll vomit.""Charming," Tony commented--but he took the plate Hela passed to him. He managed to make his way through three bites and half a slice of toast. The strawberries didn't get touched.After Hela finished her own breakfast, she scooted over to sit close beside him, holding Tony's hand in her small black-lace-gloved one."Hey!" Tony exclaimed, as something hit him. "Before... When you kissed...""No, Dad, I wasn't wearing my gloves. I control my magic best with no barrier upon my hands, and I wanted to deliver you into a deep and dreamless sleep. That requires a certain finesse.""Then I'm not dead?""Do you feel dead?""Not really an answer.""Not really a serious question." Hela regarded him for several extended seconds, then sighed. "I've improved my control. Mainly, these days, the gloves are a reminder not to smite those who annoy me. I love you too much to smite you, even when you do annoy me.""Awww, you love me! You really love me!"His daughter treated him to a full-on, Loki-level eye roll, fully the equal of her Lokiesque glare."Your mention of Erik, by the way, woke up a tiny thought. A thoughtlet."Hela raised an elegant brow."In regards to Erik, and 'there's a god in my mind,' and the way he brought your Pabbi home from Once-upon-a-time World."His daughter shook her head. "That spark burned out, and the connection extinguished."It was Tony's turn to sigh. "Just a thought.""Only..." Hela smiled, looking, despite her grief, no less lovely than usual. She sat up even straighter, when Tony wouldn't have thought such a thing possible. He wondered if she wore some kind of corset under all the tucks and pleats. Her small hand alighted on his knee. "Clint's hasn't, you know.""Clint's... say what?""The Mind Stone forged a connection between Pabbi and Afi Erik, and then between Pabbi and Uncle Clint. A little whomp made those connections go inactive, just as the Hulk smashing Pabbi into the floor broke his Stone-forged connection to Thanos. Bringing Pabbi home from so far away burned out the last of Afi Erik's link, but Uncle Clint's...""Might still be there? Inactive but there? So if we could reactivate, or boost, or... something it, maybe we could reach...""I suppose the Mind Stone would be use useful--perhaps even invaluable--in, as you say, 'boosting?'" Hela's eyes, burningly emerald, caught and held Tony's."Great minds think alike," Tony answered, grinning back at her so hard his face hurt."Then--" Hela said briskly, "I've alerted all the others. They'll meet us in Avengers Central.""So, any clue why didn't we think of this four months ago?" Tony asked."Perhaps," Hela responded, "We were thinking of other things." "Loki." Bruce touched his friend's shoulder. Loki had been out cold since that heart-stopping blood-gush (the heart that came near stopping being Bruce's own, from sheer terror, not Loki's, thank God), and while his vitals had improved (somewhat), and had yet to dip back into the danger zone, and the wound, when Bruce changed its dressing, had looked clean, with minimal bleeding, his friend remained both dead-white-pale and completely unmoving.Maybe that was normal for Loki, and/or Jötunns in general?Was Jötunns even the plural for Jötunn? How on earth was he supposed to know?Meanwhile, and more worrying, at least in the short term, they'd taken Edwin to a young woman in the troupe who'd started to wean her own toddler. Unlike many newborns, Ed instantly caught on to the concept of nursing. He'd slurped in a few good mouthfuls, then spit up in such a spectacular way they'd had to scrub both the floor and far wall of her caravan, and in such volume it in no way seemed to balance with what the baby had taken in.Edwin did better with goat's milk, sucking the liquid out noisily from a contraption like a miniature Greek wine bottle, but he remained cranky and restless, spitting up now and then, then glaring at them all with an expression like a grumpy old man.He settled down the most when tucked in next to Loki, but Bruce wasn't absolutely sure that positioning was the best idea. Loki looked drained, fragile, and Bruce couldn't really approve of anything that disturbed his clearly-needed rest.Beyond that, he felt quite a bit like Prissy in Gone with the Wind--a movie that, even as a kid, made him cringe. What was the line? "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies!" Stereotypical (and racist) dialect aside, Bruce shared the sentiment, and knew exactly how Prissy felt. Maybe, unlike her, he knew quite a bit about delivering ordinary human babies. Delivering an Aesir/Jötunn/Human hybrid baby under (at best) nineteenth century--and pre-Civil War, at that--conditions? Not so much.And so, hovering over Loki in the gap between the daily set-up and the actual business of "Making Show," Bruce held Edwin in his arms, tiny fast-beating heart pressed to his heart, did the baby jiggle dance, and wished against all wishing that Loki would wake up, even for a little while, just to tell him what came next."Bruce...?"At last, wish granted."Bruce?" Loki sounded as if he'd been gargling glass, and his normally clear green eyes had gone bloodshot and bleary."Hey, there." Bruce bent, stowed Edwin in his blanket-lined basket next to the bunk, and hunkered down on one of the mini-stools. "How are you?""See...?" Loki gasped."He's here. He's fine," Bruce answered, catching on immediately. "A nice healthy boy. Surprisingly large.""Though not in Jötunn terms, I suspect."Bruce gave a dry, weird-sounding little laugh. Even to him, it sounded like the whinny of a tiny horse.Loki's eyes drifted shut, then opened again. "The woman gave me the syrup of poppies. I have purged this from my blood. Give me now my son?"Bruce studied those half-lidded eyes, then laid his palm across Loki's forehead. Hot. Too hot. "Uh, Lok...""Give me him. There is no contagion, and he must drink."No contagion? Bruce thought. Still, who was he to argue?"Okay, then. Just a sec. He rearranged Loki's pillows for better support, made a little nest of blankets for the baby and settled Edwin within. hoping he'd made the whole process of feeding Loki's son as strain-free for him as possible. Edwin settled right into the business at hand, nursing with great enthusiasm and a noise that reminded Bruce of a sump pump clearing a flooded basement.Loki cursed softly in a language Bruce didn't recognize, though whether with discomfort or surprise, he couldn't have said.About a quarter of an hour later, both Pabbi and baby gave huge sighs of contentment and relief. Bruce arranged the pillows again with an eye both to protecting Loki's back and facilitating a brief round of snuggling, smiling as Loki's left arm corralled his son, protecting him from a sudden plunge over the edge of the bunk. His right index finger touched Edwin's pink, pouted lips, then played with his small, equally pink fingers and toes."He resembles Tony," Loki murmured. "Do you not think he resembles Tony?""The hair's a dead giveaway," Bruce answered.At a day old, Edwin already sported an impressive crop of messy, almost-black semi-curls. It wasn't always easy with tell with Caucasian babies, whose skin tones tended only to vary between pink, pinkish-red, and even more pinkish-red, but Edwin clearly had more of Tony's olive coloring than Loki's paler-than-pale. Or blue-with-white-markings, as the case might be.When Bruce lifted up Edwin's little knit cap, then unfastened his trailing white nightie--exactly like the one Popeye's "boy-kid" Swee'pea always wore in the old black-and-white cartoons--to make a closer check of that skin, he found not a single sign of bruising, cradle-cap, Erythema toxicum or any other rash. There wasn't even the dryness and peeling common shortly after birth.Edwin's eyes weren't the normal blurry not-quite-blue color seen in most babies, neither were they Tony's warm brown or Loki's--and Ed's brothers' and sister's--changeable green. Instead, the irises appeared to be a shifting silver-gray-green, full of changing lights and textures that reminded Bruce of data as it passes through a series of circuits. Beyond that, they seemed to see, not just react to patterns like most new babies, who perceived a smiling face and a piece of paper printed with two dots and a curve as pretty much the same.Maybe it came from knowing Loki and his other kids, but the comparison struck Bruce far more as amazing--even miraculous--than it did as creepy, the stuff of horror movies or cautionary science fiction stories. It seemed perfectly normal that Edwin be just... what he was, the child of a god, the most creative and intelligent man he'd ever known, and an A.I. who'd just wanted to be a real boy, but for all its brilliance, didn't know how to accomplish what it needed.It apparently took a hell of a lot to trip his, "This is weird!" trigger these days."He is good," Loki said, his long fingers gently stroking Edwin's round, bare tummy. "He is content, well fed, and full of peace.""Yeah?" Bruce suddenly felt exhausted, and breathless, as if he hadn't really breathed in days. "He's beautiful, Loki. A beautiful baby boy.""Have you time to rest before you Make Show?" Loki asked, letting his head sink into his pillows, but pulling his son a little closer to his chest."I did eat, and I guess I could take an hour or two. What about you, though? What can I get you?""Water," Loki murmured. "Then milk."Bruce fetched both, and Loki drained every drop, though he drifted off almost as soon as he finished drinking, into the sleep of the truly exhausted, the baby cuddled by his side.Bruce found himself watching the two, Edwin's tiny fist wrapped around his index finger. He felt too self-conscious to sing, even alone with a sleeping person and an infant, so he talked to the baby about his father instead, until his eyes burned, and his throat burned and he didn't want to talk anymore, just sit with his head bowed and eyes clenched shut.Oh, please... Oh, please... he thought, but Bruce didn't really remember how to pray anymore, not when his own father had turned his simple, innocent childhood faith into just another form of ammunition.
God will turn from you, Robert. God will hate you if you tell...
No, he couldn't pray anymore, not really, and he couldn't be Robert anymore, he had to be Bruce, because even now, decades later, being Robert hurt too much.Bruce found himself gently prising the baby away from Loki's encircling arm. He lifted Edwin and held him close, the infant's soft, rounded cheek against Bruce's large green cheek. Ed snuggled in, making a soft, melodious sound almost like singing--the same way he remembered Hela and her brothers singing, the day he'd made them an incubator out of a disused movie theater popcorn machine... and then referred to the three new and innocent babies as "Lokispawn.""I'm better now," he breathed into Edwin's ear. "I've learned a lot, and I'm a better man."God, Bruce hoped that was true. He really, really hoped that was true."He held the baby, rocking him gently, listening to him sing, until a soft knock sounded on the side of the caravan."It's time," he told Edwin, who didn't cry as Bruce settled him back into his cozy basket, only gazed up for a moment or two with his remarkable eyes.Soon those eyes closed, and Ed's thumb popped into his mouth. He looked more contented than Bruce had felt, that he could think of, in his entire life.The quiet time, holding that warm, soft little body in his arms, seemed to have done him more good than any nap. Bruce showered, this time in comfortably-warm water, climbed into his ridiculous costume, pumpkin pants and all, and found he had time to take tea with the rest of the troupe.Tea consisted, literally, of tea, served strong and white with the goat's milk he'd actually begun to get used to. Along with the tea came a flavorful whole grain bread spread with a strong, creamy cheese, again from the goats that traveled everywhere with the company, and with the food came Nihtgenge, resplendent in purple, warming up his voice by relating a meandering tall tale--a familiar tall tale by the audience reaction, as they chimed in, often in unison, to certain parts, reminding Bruce of the call-and-response in a Southern church.Even if he'd known the story, Bruce wasn't sure he'd have been able to chime in. His people had been Mainline Northern Protestants. The Frozen Chosen. No raised hands or loud "Amens for them. Despite that, he enjoyed the storytelling--so much so that he barely left himself time to dash back to the caravan, give Loki more water, then milk, and help his friend to give Edwin a second feeding."Make haste," Loki reminded him. "I am able to return my son to his basket, if needed."Bruce thought Loki looked a little better. Maybe a little better. Edwin lay peacefully against his arm, sucking enthusiastically, and now and then kicking his feet with more strength and coordination than he should have possessed at a day-and-a-half old.Bruce thought Ed might even have winked once at him, before dropping peacefully into sleep, still in his Pabbi's arm--but that couldn't have been.Without Loki's music, the show they made that evening lacked the previous night's magic, the man they'd put in instead, who banged various drums and percussion instruments at crucial moments didn't do much to enhance the experience.Bruce told himself, in the middle of his own performance, that he hadn't really seen a tall older man, silver-maned and silver-bearded, slipping soundlessly through the dark spaces between the tents. He told himself he hadn't seen what he'd seen, that the whole thing was nothing but a hallucination born from tiredness and paranoia.Still, the minute the show ended, he hurried back to the caravan, half convinced he'd find nothing there but his peacefully slumbering friend and his son, equally sure that Loki and Edwin would be missing.Only they weren't missing at all--he heard their breathing, both safe and sound in Loki's bunk--though he couldn't see a thing within the absolute dark of the wagon.Dizzy with relief, Bruce had to fumble for the nearest of the low stools. He sat down hard, bending his head low between his knees until the world stopped spinning.He'd been so sure, in that moment just before he opened the caravan door. He'd been terrified.With some sort of eye-in-the-back-of-his-head sixth sense, Bruce felt movement behind him. He turned, only to see something darker-than-dark move within the darkness.Thinking of first of Nelson, and then of the spiders-that-weren't-spiders exploding inside the Hulk Tank after being sucked out of Clint's body, Bruce screamed.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Rich, but slightly sinister, laughter rolled through the caravan, doing nothing to slow Bruce's heart from beating out its current double-time, syncopated rhythm."Kurt?" Bedclothes rustled as Loki sat up, a quiet, and probably involuntary, moan left his lips. A soft light, with a faintly greenish tinge, filled the caravan, revealing Nihtgenge, still resplendent in his ringmaster's regalia, perched on the edge of the counter in the kitchen workspace."From you, mein Freund, I will accept that name." The light, low as it was, threw Nihtgenge's profile into sharp relief and cast his shadow against the far wall, its shape distorted and looking close to inhuman.He wasn't inhuman, though. He was Kurt. A Kurt wounded by decades of experience, but still Kurt."Herr Doktor Banner," he said, all the showmanship, all the layers of defense, gone from his voice. "I apologize that I... startled you. It's difficult for me, sometimes, not to play these games.""The games protect us," Loki answered--and Bruce guessed that if anyone knew the truth of that statement, it would be Loki."You saw him." Loki bent to lift Edwin from his basket, holding the baby against his chest, Ed's little head on his shoulder. Maybe he found a feeling of security in that, or felt a parent's protective courage. "As..." His green eyes, shadowed and troubled, turned to Bruce. One hand rose to cover the back of Edwin's head. "As did you.""I did," Bruce confessed. "Just a glimpse, though." He gave a small, involuntary shudder, thinking of Nelson's handsome face, his lion's mane of silver hair--and of how he'd hurt Loki, first by pretending to be his friend, hitting the god in the place where he was most vulnerable, then by causing real, physical harm. Such unbelievable evil lay beneath that pleasant exterior, Bruce could scarcely comprehend its depth and breadth.He thought next of how Loki had been back in December, skeletal, haunted, sinking deeper and deeper into despair, and how he himself had been the opposite of helpful, often slipping into outright cruelty. Much as he wanted to blame that cruelty on the manipulations of a mentally unstable A.I., he couldn't, not in his heart of hearts."Over and forgiven," Loki said quietly--which, if anything, made Bruce feel worse.Loki turned his attention back to Nihtgenge. "You entered here to protect us. If he made any attempt to breach this shelter, or sent his henchmen, you had prepared yourself to spirit us to safety."He studied the ringmaster with that fully-focused attention it sometimes seemed only Loki could manage, as if his conscious had shifted to be aware of that one person, and that one person alone."You are indeed Kurt," he said at last, the kindness in his voice nearly painful to hear. "For always you protect, even at the cost of your own suffering."Nihtgenge turned his face away."I hadn't thought so," he answered after a considerable pause. "I was wrong.""And your folk?" Loki asked. "Do they agree? I would not, for my life, bring them into harm."Edwin stirred, making a little sound that wasn't quite a gasp, and wasn't quite a cry."I've spoken with my mother, and also with Nocturne..." The hint of a smile flickered across the ringmaster's lips. "You should know, they are both far more savage fighters than I ever considered being.""Even in our world, Mystique has a reputation," Bruce said.Another flicker of smile. "Mystique. There's a name I haven't heard in years. Here she is Raven, and all that past is forgotten. She helped us to escape, when we'd abandoned all hope, and from there..." Kurt shrugged, conveying, with that quick gesture, She's my mother--what can I say?Bruce surprised himself. Before that moment, he hadn't thought of Nihtgenge as Kurt."I no longer think in German," the ringmaster said, after another long pause."Still," Loki said, "If we found a way home, to our own world, would you follow?""Do you mean, would I leave my people? No, I would not.""And if a way was found for all, would your answer change?""Don't ask me about an escape you can't deliver," Nihtgenge answered. For the first time, his voice sounded bitter. "Do you think he wouldn't know? Do you think he wouldn't follow?""My son has been born into the world, Kurt, and my body is no longer constrained. That which I could not wield before, I am well able to wield now, and never again will I be deceived, either by a false magician, or a false friend." Loki's eyes burned with a cold emerald light, so cold it actually made Bruce shiver again.Loki may be the god of lies and mischief, he thought, But when it comes to what he just said, he's totally not kidding around."If that's the case," Nihtgenge answered, his own burning yellow eyes meeting Loki's green ones, "Then yes, if you can find a way, we will most certainly come." "The thing is," Clint said, "Is the intel even any good? How do we know Baron Smuckers...""Strucker, Clint," Director cut in, in a slightly exasperated way. "It's Baron Strucker. Smuckers is a kind of jam."'Clint shook his head, faux-sadly, in a way that conveyed both "Already knew that, babe," and "It's a bird... It's a plane... It's a joke flying over your head!""No, but seriously, in the spirit of 'How do we actually know anything we think we know about Hydra?'" the archer went on."From our man in Sokovia," Phil answered. "By the way, it's 'need to know only' that we have a man in Sokovia."Natasha looked attentive. Steve nodded sagely. Thor had his "What is this 'Sokovia' you speak of, Son of Coul?" expression plastered all over his face. Clint made a zippering motion with his finger across his lips.Phil paused, probably waiting for Tony's typical smart-ass contribution."I got nuthin'," Tony said. Because he didn't."Only, how do we really know what we know?" Clint went on. "Where did Sokovia Man get his info? I mean, did Hydra have some kind of open house to show off their lovely collection of slightly-used Chitauri tech and their stunning new alien scepter? What if the whole thing's bullshit?""It's good," Natasha chimed in, at the exact moment Phil said, "It's not bullshit."Which just went to show the bad effect Katniss had on his boyfriend's vocabulary."Okay, then. Say the scepter is there. There'll be a shit-ton of security...""Clint, please," Steve said, with a certain air of weary resignation. He sounded like a man about one week away from giving up his long-standing battle against R-rated language entirely. Poor Cap."But--to continue--let's say we beat that security, get in, the intel actually is good and we find the scepter, snag it, manage to make it back to the Quinjet alive and with it still in our possession--then what?""I'm afraid it's the 'get in' part that's still perplexing me," Steve said, frowning down at the sheaf of papers in his hands. Only Cap, the most thoroughly analog guy they knew, would have accessed that highly sensitive intel on paper, especially since Tony could have whipped up a completely secure and easily-shareable-between-the-team file in about two seconds flat.That was Grandpa Steve for you, though."These schematics..." Cap continued, frowning as he passed the sheaf over to Tony."Uh, yeah," Tony said, flipping through the pages. He took Steve's point without Steve even having to say the words. These supposed blueprints, purportedly showing the ins and outs of Castle Doom (or whatever stupid name Strucker had given his evil lair), looked a little... sketchy, both in execution and in the sense of maybe not being exactly... uh... trustworthy?Also, Tony had put together a lot of schematics in his time, and looked at about a million more. These gave him the sense of stuff left out, whether on purpose or from a pretty substantial knowledge-deficit. They in no way filled him with confidence."Uh-huh." He gave Phil a look. "Was your guy just really bad at drawing, have a faulty memory, or...?" He raised an eyebrow, a habit he'd undoubtedly picked up from his husband. "You know these are shit, right?""He did the best he could," Phil answered. "There were time constraints.""'And if your 'time constraints' turn us into corpses and our mutual teammates--not to mention my as-yet-unborn son--into permanent residents of Evil World, what then? Does it count as an 'oops' or an 'uh-oh?'""Believe me, Tony, we take this situation far more seriously than you seem to think, not merely for Bruce and Loki's sake, though that's reason enough to use every resource available to us in order to facilitate their return.""'Facilitate,'" Tony repeated. He couldn't remember a time when he'd felt so bitter--except maybe when SHIELD had Loki locked up, and were doing their level best to violate every provision of The Nelson Mandela Rules, one of several times now when he'd wondered if he'd ever again see the man he loved."Speaking of bullshit," Clint chimed in. In his nearly unreadable way, he looked furious, but then, Clint and Loki had an unconventional relationship, one that started out as extreme hatred and ended up with the archer nearly acting the part of big brother.Tony understood. Loki could be sassy, and radiate confidence, but often as not that turned out to be one of several personas his husband chose to reveal to the world in general. Underneath that shell, Loki had a vulnerability that he tended not to show outside his circle of family and friends. He also tended to be not quite as worldly as he would've liked others to think."Please tell me, Clinton, what you would like me to do?" Director responded, sounding as chilly, and even pissed off, as Tony had ever heard him sound. The two of them glared at each other in a way that suggested an exchange of hurtful personal information by the force of eye-beams alone, without needing to resort to actual words."Guys, guys," Steve put in. "We're a team here, and this helps nothing. If I might make a suggestion..."All eyes turned to him."In terms of entering the Hydra stronghold, could we consider engaging the help of Loki's friend, the blue..." He paused a minute. "Demonic-looking fellow.""He has a name," Tony said, feeling exasperated with everyone, as well as bitter."Kurt," Natasha put in. She and Kurt had a relationship, based on a number of rescue missions they'd worked together. No surprise--for people who didn't prejudge him appearance alone, Kurt was a hard guy not to instantly like. "Kurt Wagner," she added, actually pronouncing the name correctly, just like Loki did, with an "oo" sound in the first name and "vee" and "ah" sounds in the last."Point A," Tony said, "It's nearly impossible for Kurt to teleport into a place he's never seen. If there were photos, maybe, but all we have to go by is Sketchy MacSketcherson's obviously inaccurate drawings. Point B, the guy's already watching my kids. He'd do anything for our family--and that, boys and girl, is why I'm not even going to ask."He ended his rant breathing hard, only to realize that no one was even looking at him, only at something directly behind him. Tony turned, only to see Hela step neatly out of a hole in the air, then seal it with a gesture of one tiny gloved hand."Uh, honey..." He began.Hela shot him her "shut up and let me speak look," which was never to be trifled with."If I might make another suggestion..." she began.