Work Text
She dons her helmet.
The one he gave her.
She fights to walk backwards.
As she wipes blood from her saber.
-------
Really, this kidnapping thing was getting old.
Okay, so what if this was the third time in his life - still, Tony was tired of it. He was tired in general.
It had been at least four days - there was no window to the outside from his dark, underground cell, but they had fed him eight or so times and he was going on that. What was particularly annoying was that he had no idea what they wanted.
They seemed more or less human, which was encouraging, but only a little. It was quiet for an evil lair, Tony noted. He rarely heard movement that wasn’t his own. He was left alone, his cell was nothing but a dirt room beneath the surface of god only knew where, and the door was thick and rusted iron, and though it looked as though it were about to fall off its hinges, no amount of kicking and shoving it had budged it.
His hands were cuffed together, which was
very
annoying. He couldn’t even try to pick it - his captors had taken a blowtorch to the locking mechanism, melting it over. In short, it sucked.
Tony was curled in the far corner, trying to sleep though his mind was spinning. He knew he couldn’t very well escape if he was collapsed from exhaustion. It was then that his quiet captivity was no longer quiet.
Shots ricocheted. Men screamed - half orders, half shouts of pain. The latter was slowly dominating.
Tony was on his feet immediately. “Finally.” He muttered.
The sounds of boots on earth thundered. More shots. More screams. No more orders.
Tony opened his mouth to call out, but stopped himself, though he didn’t know why. He just… didn’t. He didn’t approach the door either.
Heavy footfalls came along the outside of his cell, starting to pass, then pausing a moment before returning to the door.
Again Tony steeled himself against calling out. He had a bad feeling settling into the pit of his stomach.
But it was of little matter; there was a screech of metal on metal.
Tony jumped - the tip of a bloody blade was wedged between the iron door and its frame. He felt his heart somehow pick up speed as the blade slanted to one side, and the door creaked under the impossible pressure of that small blade…
The lock gave way, the metal of the door bowed around it, and it creaked open on rusted hinges.
Tony gaped.
Blood-splattered armor. Pale face. Dark, tangled locks flowing from beneath a horned golden helmet that was oh-too-familiar. But that face, no that wasn’t right. It was anything but right.
It should have been - the placement of the feet, the contemptuous tilt of the head, the long fingers wrapped elegantly around the hilt of the weapon, the bright lips tight with disdain, the shamrock green eyes with a glint of gold narrowed in a carefully subdued rage.
No, that face was wrong, and in more than one way.
Still, not many people just went around wearing helmets like that. It
had
to be…
“Loki?” Tony choked out the word.
A dark brow cocked, the smallest hint of a smile on those bright lips. But the face turned, looking off out of Tony’s cell.
“I found a friend of yours.” She called.
Yes, she. There was no denying now, despite how Tony’s head went in useless circles trying to make sense.
And suddenly Loki was there. His face was right. He was a little taller than the woman, and he was without his helmet.
He was clad in light leather armor, though it was spotless, unlike the woman’s blood-covered attire. He also appeared unarmed. His dark hair was neatly combed back. His expression soft and innocent - everything he shouldn’t be.
The woman looked more like Loki than Loki did. It was a disturbing thought.
Loki didn’t speak. He just stood in the doorway beside the woman, staring at Tony like he was just as surprised at the situation.
“Stark, wasn’t it?” The woman asked, her eyes on Loki, their shine a little sweeter when reflecting his features. “I believe that was his name.”
Slowly, Loki nodded. He kept staring.
Tony swallowed hard. He needed to recalibrate, and preferably before Loki remembered he was in fact Loki and tried to decapitate him or something.
He wouldn’t have to try hard.
A pesky voice in the back of Tony’s head chimed.
That shook some sense into him.
“Uh, so…” Tony set his mouth free, his brain too busy to really keep up with it right then. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend. Or that you were, you know, alive.”
The armored woman settled an arm around Loki’s thin waist, paying Tony no attention. “Shall we take him with us?”
“Hold up!” Tony tried. “Rewind - you’re not taking me anywhere lady. I don’t even know who the hell you are!”
“Simone.” Shamrock eyes cut to him. That rage-in-a-jar glint was back, almost harsher that before. She paused, then the anger was gone like a kid’s magic trick, and she smiled brightly. “Now that we’re introduced, why don’t you come on home with us. This place has terrible accommodations.”
Tony hadn't even begun a protest when she flicked her free hand, and Tony’s eyes were assaulted with an overwhelming abundance of daylight.
The cuffs were gone. Tony pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes to soothe the stabbing streaks of light that still flashed behind his closed lids. He was almost feeling better when he remembered what had happened - he jerked his head up, blinking frantically to take in his surroundings.
He was in a tastefully decorated kitchen, complete with dusty-bronze counters and a carved rock backsplash. The entire far wall was glass, revealing a breathtaking view of distant mountains and the misty forests between here and there.
In the time Tony had been blinded Loki had migrated to perch on a stool at the bar, and was sitting with his legs crossed delicately, an elbow on the counter and his chin rested lightly on his pale fist, eyes examining the distant mountains as though he had nothing better to do. His leather armor had been replaced with a sleek black suit.
His friend was at the sink, running her bloody sword under the tap as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Tony took longer than he’d care to admit composing himself. When he spoke, it was questionable as to whether he succeeded.
“What. The. Hell.”
The woman - Simone - dried her sword off with a piece of paper towel and settled the weapon on a series of hooks to the right of the stove. “Would you like something to eat? They can hardly have fed you well there?”
Her smile was kind, her face now relaxed and her expression fitting perhaps for a rather uneventful Sunday brunch.
“I - uh.”
“Some water then.” Simone decided for him, and she didn’t even leave where she stood. She waved her hand, and suddenly she was holding a wine glass of cool transparent liquid. She held it out to him as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“I…” Tony glanced to Loki, who was ignoring them all together. Really, he was way too interested in those mountains. He looked back to Simone.
He was certainly untrusting, but lack of good water for the past how-many-days-now paired with the fact that Loki and his new pal had just rescued him from mysterious kidnappers had him taking the glass and gulping it down.
Simone smiled, cheeks aglow. “I thought so.” She said. “Why don’t you have a snack too, hmm?” She started to turn away, then looked down to her bloody armor and frowned. “I suppose I should get cleaned up first.”
She strode from the kitchen into a deep green bedroom, and closed the door behind her.
Tony stared.
“The fuck.” He said finally.
Loki seemed to notice him then, however casually. Shamrock eyes drifted lazily his direction, an eyebrow lifting wearily. “It’s been awhile, Stark.” He said quietly.
His voice - oh, his voice was wrong. It was soft and gentle and smooth as crisp new leather and it harbored not the slightest drop of hatred or malice, oh, this was not the Loki Tony knew, it was a Loki that Tony hadn't known was possible, still didn’t believe wasn’t a ruse for some terrible scheme.
“Yeah.” He managed.
Loki returned his gaze to the windows. “I am sorry.”
Tony nearly choked. “What?”
Loki let out a faint sigh. “I suppose it’s only right that you are surprised. I am not,” a slight frown tugged at his lips, “I am not who I was. I changed. And then I changed again, and now,” he shrugged, still not looking out the windows, “now I am here.”
It was not registering. Not any of it. Tony only stared blankly, his mind going off on tangents that were not at all helpful and far too time-consuming.
Simone was back, wearing black dress pants and a yellow cotton shirt that somehow managed to match, and the next thing Tony knew she was pushing a plate into his hands and herding him to sit down at the bar.
“It’s not much,” she said, setting Tony’s refilled glass in front of him and slipping onto the stool between him and Loki. “I’m not good with food anyway. Loki usually does the cooking.”
Tony blinked down at the sandwich sitting in front of him. It looked like it had come from some professional deli, though Tony was certain he hadn't even seen Simone pick up a loaf of bread. She had hardly been back in the kitchen thirty seconds before giving him his food.
It was little in the way of surprise after her conjuring up a wine glass of water from thin air, though, so with only a moment’s hesitation Tony lifted the puffy bread and took a bite.
Simone smiled and hooked her bare toes around the spindles of her stool, taking a sip from a glass of fizzing soda that most certainly hadn't been in her hand a moment before.
She was quiet while Tony ate, which he was glad for, because he was starving - borderline literally - and his brain wasn’t up for extra stimulation at the moment.
He finished the sandwich and downed his glass again, and when he looked up it was a little sheepishly, given his supposed enemy’s hospitality, and was met only with a bright, encouraging smile. It was so different from the woman who pried open his cell door with a sword - he was beginning to wonder if she had split personalities or something, because there was no way that had been the same woman.
“Better?” She asked.
Tony nodded. “Uh… yeah. I guess, better than a cell.”
She grinned. “I suppose you’ll want to go home now. I would imagine all your friends are terribly worried - you seemed to have been there quite awhile.”
“I um…” Tony couldn’t think. He was struggling to form complete sentences at the moment. Struggling and failing, it seemed. “I… yeah, home sounds good.”
Her grin curled a little on one side, just a little more than could be considered safe, and something flashed dark in those shamrock eyes, something that made Tony, just for a moment, think that maybe the woman who had opened his cell door had never left. That maybe she was right there, in front of him, hiding under that yellow cotton shirt and rosy cheeks. That maybe the sweet woman he had only just started to know was nothing but a front for some terrifying monster.
And in the next moment, he was standing in the common room at Stark tower, right in the middle of a solemn-looking team of Avengers.
Everyone leaped back with various shouts and tumbles over furniture.
“Tony?!” Bruce cried, the first to recognize the intruder.
Tony was frozen staring around the room. A laugh like a broken bell echoed somewhere far away. “I uh…” He swallowed. “I just had the weirdest thing happen.”