Avengers 1. Black&White No Gray

To Loki Laufeyson, blue was a cold reminder of hunger and loneliness. Dim as it was, in his mind it always appeared as a blinding color; a dark shadow hovering over him every time a drop of red wine -sour drinks of the Gods- touched his parched lips during an asgardian banquet. It was the beasts and monsters, and the legendary heroes, that haunted his dreams and his darkest nightmares; the odyssey of a righteous firstborn, and the killing of his misguided adversary. It was the cold that kindled in protest under his pale skin, when the light of the sun touched him on a warm summer afternoon. It was all the grains of sand that, with the passing of the years, had formed in his chest a dirty mound of hate.

Hate was Loki´s world; the only truth –that in its more warm and choking vastness- he would allow himself to embrace. For a spiteful man should always embrace the truth, especially when he doesn´t know more than one.

Loki, after centuries inhabiting this inhospitable world, was, indeed, a spiteful man. At least, he appreciated –like any of them would- the gray pleasure that is born in the absence of movement and sound; in the security that one can only find in a lonely and well calculated existence. And he was fine living in that great pool of black and white tones, no matter what others (his family, his former friends, or mere strangers) could think about it. Maybe that had something to do with the color blue, but if it did, he never acknowledged it.

Something that people don´t normally understands, is that for spiteful men life usually travels a path full of troubles and incidents. The difficulties, disappointments and betrayals that Loki had suffered, would have been enough to turn anyone into a bitter adult. Once he had been a resigned child, committed to obedience and patient wait: those times were over. Long ago his defeated and slightly distressed face turned into one more sad and bitter; long ago he promised himself never again tolerate to be wronged by others.

In that moment, Loki took a choice. He decided to defy his realm and his king, and everything he had known until then; most important, he decided to defy the man who –for all his grievances- had turned him in what he was. He went down to Midgard –distant land of mortal men- to take on the color of powder and ash, and become intoxicated by the ocher smells of war. To kill those who had wronged him, and hate.

Tony Stark didn´t felt cold, nor he was cruel or bitter, but he also knew the unmistakable smell of hatred. It was the smell that enveloped his father, of skilled and ruthless hands, and somber clothes. The mere voice of Howard Stark had a smell of acidity and pestilence to Tony.

He was always a smart boy, and fate was never ruthless or hostile to him. For him everything was easy except, probably, dominate his curiosity. The only thing that had ever wronged him in some way was the cold rectitude that his father (An honest and successful man, who had made a career out of rightness and safety) imposed him. To Tony, his childhood (and young adulthood too) had been a brilliant and fast lightning. His talents gave him everything a young man could wish for, and circumstance taught him that the right to own something couldn´t be gained without effort. That was his father´s philosophy.

His talents provided Tony friends and honors, and the friendships and honors he gained filled him with pride -and an unhealthy vanity that he was not fully aware of-. He was an intelligent boy of fifteen years when he was expelled from school for having cross-linked the cables of the elevator´s board, adding some switches to the buttons, so when someone touched them they would suffer an unexpected electroshock. At sixteen, he was already studying engineering at the university.

He grew up to be an important and very popular person; for he felt the need to be popular and this one -like all his other needs- was easily satisfied. He always had plenty of time to talk and drink; to draw blueprints under the thunderous music of Metallica, to hear who was worth listening to, and to correct and redo things that others could not. And he was fine with it, because his life was pleasant and easy, and the complicated lives of others were not his problem.

But that was before Iron Man, and the Arc Reactor.

He realized, then, that life was an institution very different to all colleges and universities where he had studied; that it was something he could not win with insolence or wit, as he had done with the directors of the school. It took him even longer to realize that the people he had surrounded himself with ever since his father´s dead, would never understand that completely. Someone would always question his decisions during the board meetings of the company, someone would always scorn the brilliant monologues that spilled out of his mouth during a night-gala, or the love -slightly reaching obsession- he had for his job and for his suits. That his virtues and wins would always be flaws for them.

Ever since then he felt lonely, slightly depressed, and hateful. And there, between the tough, angry armor of Iron Man, he found an answer, a dream and a disaster

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><p>So, this first chapter is more a prologue or a pilot than anything. I meat to write it as a character study for both Tony and Loki. Next chapters would be longer and with more content ;-)<p> 


	2. Good Makers

Loki lived in a strange, ever changing world that millennia ago the Gods had appointed ´Midgard´, the land of men. While being there, he always wore elegant, tailored clothes, and maintained a regal appearance that gave people the impression that he was a very rich man (even though he didn't have any wealth, nor a home, nor what one would call a ´proper job´). He used the collar of his black trench coat to cover his face -white as paper, and sharp as a cold chisel- and under his white silk shirt, there were always hidden two silver-handled daggers. He appeared among mortals as a tall, slender man, of steady gaze and expressionless face.

It was dark magic -of the most dangerous kind- what made him invisible between the crowd; what forced men to depart from him, and woman to avoid his gaze, and what made children (much more perceptive to sorcery tricks than adults) stop to observe him. When he wanted something, he took it. When he didn´t have the means to do so, the blue medallion hanging from his neck would issue a dim light, and the first person who crossed his way would get it for him. He gave no guidance, no orders, -for they already knew them- and in a matter of hours the job would be done. Then his benefactor hurried to leave, uncomprehending.

Contrary to popular belief, Loki´s powers could not change the reality, but they could alter the perception of others about what was real and what was not; his power resided in creating illusions. His magic altered senses, he could make one see, feel, hear, taste or smell things that didn´t actually exist. In order to achieve this, he had gained a profound knowledge about physics, especially about the visual and auditory part of the science.

He was very quick with his hands and fingers; a skillful manipulator of objects. He had a way with words that he used to distract, or to emphasize his deceptions. When the power of words was not enough, he would always value the power of the medallion. His view was excellent. He could quickly distinguish a smile from a choleric gesture; but nothing impresses a creature who lacks emotional sympathy. He could laugh, and he could get angry, but he could not understand the joy or anger of others.

His lifestyle had forced him to maintain an agile and willing body, but when the time to fight came, it was his great perception what always saved him. The lightning coming down quickly in his direction, the arrow aimed at him passing through the air - they never took him by surprise. Despite his physical complexion, he reacted to blows, and he could maintain a fight with the strongest warriors of Midgard, and his fearsome beasts. He could fight against storms, against machinery, soldiers and monsters; he could take loneliness and anger as if they were natural to him. Resistance was, after all, one of his more valuable assets.

He had no preference when looking for a place to stay, but in the places where he stayed there were always more houses than buildings. He liked the green grass and the fresh air more than anything (maybe because they reminded him of his home). However, because of the kind of sorcery that he studied, he needed a fairly spacious abode.

In his days of youth (as he liked to call them), when he lived in the Valaskjalf Palace, Loki's quarters were conditioned to appear like something that they were not; they contained lots of spells and tricks to defend him against any possible attack, and also to boast of his powers in front of the guests he may have received. Ever since he was in Midgard, he had to opt for more subtle liars, so he wouldn´t call the attention of Phil Coulson and his associates.

He had been incarcerated by SHIELD four times. He had not minded too much, and it had not changed him in any way. Once he took off his cellmate´s eyes while he slept, and among the commotion of the guards and the screams of the other prisoners, he left the prison through the front door. It was an open reference to one chapter of the Odyssey; in fact, it was meant to be a joke, but as usual, no one in SHIELD got it. On another occasion he cut the throats of all his guards and escaped through his cell´s window. On the other two occasions, he went for a more subtle breakout.

When the time came, an agent found himself face to face with Loki and his devilishly green irises. The Medallion under the trickster´s clothes shined, and the door was opened. His benefactor would run to do something then -anything-, deeply troubled.

Loki was a god, a superior being (quoting his words) that could not live among mortals. But he was, effectively, a god living among mortals. He moved in their world in silence and secrecy, with the grace of a panther stalking his prey. He killed like an animal, with hatred and without haste. He ate just enough to live, and never more. He slept between dark and evil dreams, always ready to escape. In the best times, he had the maturity of a bitter old man, and in the worst, that of child who found no fun in games. He didn´t know neither happiness nor joy; his being sailed only -placid and blindly- between anger and satisfaction.

A sad Jotun, sensible and bluish, lived inside of Loki. Something united it with his outward appearance, but for most of his life, he had ignored that. He feed it daily, but unconsciously, with his strength. When Loki felt heat, that inner being trembled slightly, almost in fear. It would die if it was exposed to the sun for too much time, but Loki didn´t seem to mind, for he never prevented its light.

Tony Stark was a good agent, one of the bests, in fact. That´s what Director Coulson told him when he assumed his post as ringleader of SHIELD. It was shortly after the Battle of New York, when Coulson´s predecessor, Nick Fury -with an indignation greater than agony and fear- died cursing the name of Loki Laufeyson. Tony had been collaborating with SHIELD during less than 24 hours.

Just a good agent, Coulson said, the best of all agents, would have dared to risk his life in such a way for the good of the cause. Not any agent would have come back from a certain dead with a smile from hear to hear, like the one that appeared in Tony´s face when he knew they were victorious. So, when SHIELD reopened the Avenger´s project, and the Director started to look for recruits, Tony Stark was the first name on his list (being a priority over Steve Rogers himself).

"You want to do good, don´t you? Just like us." He said that day, when he handed him the folder that contained the information for his first mission. "This is your opportunity to do something good."

Tony took the file, with just a little hesitation (he didn´t like to be handed things) even when a strange knot in his throat told him that it was a bad idea.

Because it was truth. Tony wanted to do good, and what Coulson was saying did make sense; but when he knew that his mission consisted in guard the Infinity Gauntlet, and all the powers and mysteries that it held inside, Tony felt that he was doing something horribly wrong. Shortly after, when the old asgardian relic was located in his workshop, in a highly secure metal container, right beside the Iron Man suits, Tony realized that the implications of "good" and "wrong" were completely lost to him.

Before the transfer Coulson had explained him how scientist and doctors of the highest integrity had went mad while been alone with the Gauntlet, when they could not contain it properly. How their bodies had become cold and inaccessible, mesmerized by its poisonous red glow; how the color moistened their eyes, overlying them with ugliness and horrors. When they showed him the photographs of those sad, cracked eyes, consumed by carmine, Tony had not wanted to know more about the matter. Losing control over one´s body was something he could not understand (let alone explain) and because of his deductive nature, Tony feared greatly everything that escaped his understanding.

Ever since New York, Tony and Pepper lived in the Malibu House, high on a bluff overlooking the ocean. It was a quiet place. No road came to the house; only a narrow path that writhed again and again among palm trees and sand, and from the windows one could not see where it lead. The trail ended at a wall and an iron gate; beside the gate, embedded in the wall, there was a steel panel that opened the doors with the push of a bottom.

Tony was a busy man, however, just like Pepper, and they didn´t spent as much time at the house as they would have liked (they didn´t spent too much time together either), but when they did not have any commitment or anything really important to attend to, they rarely came out of the Mansion. Ever since the wedding, the press fell on them as hungry crows fall over fresh meat. Going out together had become a tiring task, if not exhausting.

Once a day Pepper came down the road and opened the locks of the panel with two keys. She lifted a metal plate, and picked up the correspondence, leaving a bit of money and a few cards; then she closed the locks once more, and headed back to the house. That was as far as they´ve got during the last weeks.

They had taken extreme measures at the moment of placing the security systems, but Tony believed it was better safe than sorry -at least in that aspect-. Security was not, after all, meant to protect them as much as it was meant to protect what Tony hid in his workshop.

It was there where the engineer spent most of his time. Normally he didn´t get to see the house, or the wall or the Iron Gate, not even the sky or the palm trees. While working on his suits, Tony barely ate and drank. When he locked himself in the workshop no one could bother him. Ever since New York he didn´t let anyone enter, not even Pepper.

That day, sitting at his work table, Tony was putting together the pieces of his new suit. He noticed a cable poking out between the pieces of metal, and hastened to put in place, out of sight. He leaned his head against the back of his chair, and stared at his work. The air conditioning in his laboratory was heavy and dense; it rested on his lips until they cracked, it squeezed them until they became little more than an imperceptible thin line. It went boldly on his chest and made his insides tremble.

But it was an air conditioning with a problem: it was cold, like an ice cube melting on sweaty skin, completely motionless, and yet hot. The cold and heat were moving together, excitedly, inside him, almost like an electro shock. It didn´t make sense. At some point he started to wonder if it was really the air conditioning what he was feeling.

A shrill screech came to him from afar. Tony felt his eyes itch, and a mysterious fog clouded his vision. Something stretched on his stomach. He looked down, and then his hands began to move, one above the other, placing in his hands the gloves of his suit. Then, already covered, they raised to Tony´s head to put his helmet, even when he was desperately trying to stop them. He leaned forward, and his hands felled quietly on the other pieces, placing them in his legs, his arms and his chest.

He held out his hand, clumsy and hesitant, and slapped himself, as if that would free him from that unspeakable and confusing attack. It didn´t happen like that. Tony attempted to resist, and when the cold and the heat finally took possession of his whole body, gently pressing against his brain, he began to scream.

Loki had been in his lair, reading through the pages of an ancient scroll, when he felt it. He stopped moving his fingers over the rough surface of the paper and looked up, alert and watchful. He could hear a distant call; soft, almost imperceptible, radiating from somewhere far away, in a place where he had never been. At the beginning he tried to ignore it, telling himself that it was only his imagination; but the sound slipped through his ears and ticked him in the back of his neck, pulling him out of his reading again and again. The pressure of a hand on his shoulder would not have been more real than that call.

He stood very slowly, as if afraid to break something. His green eyes glowed softly in a bluish hue. He had never called anyone (not in this way); he had never been called, neither had he responded. He started to walk, nevertheless. He went to his sensed goal voluntarily, without anything from the outside prompting him to. He felt -without thinking- that inside him was awaking a desired that had been entrenched before. That desire had been accompanying him for a long while now, ever since New York (ever since his first breakout in SHIELD´s jurisdiction, really) but he had never been able to understand it so far. Now, he could.

He took a deep breath, and teleported himself out of his lair, to that faraway place where the call was coming.

Loki walked carefully and quickly, using only a small amount of magic to dull the sound of his footsteps. He swung his shoulders, sliding between palm trees, burying his boots in the sand, as if he could not abandon the rect line carrying him towards that call. Underneath his pale skin, his inner Jotun trembled at the heat of the coast. The sun was high in the sky; the palm trees were repeating indefinitely in front of him, in his left side, the ocean in his right side, in his right side, and at his back again. However, he continued on his way without hesitation, not knowing where he was going; only guided by the ever present call.

And suddenly, he was there.

The coast was unexpectedly interrupted by a strip of scorched earth, surrounded by an iron fence about fifteen feet wide. The palm trees had been uprooted so that the branches would not pass above the irons. Loki walked through the bare ground, towards the clenched bars. With just one glance he knew what material they were made of, and he knew that the fence would not budge. Despite his superhuman strength, Loki did not have the ability to break bars made of Adamantium, and teleport to an unknown location -where he didn´t know what dangers awaited him- was too risky.

But his eyes remained active, quick to respond, staring through the bars and the palm leaves. He started walking along the iron fence, hoping to find its gateway.

Tony was standing in the middle of his living room, looking through the wide windows facing the ocean. At the other side of the crystal, he could hear a song. It was strange, to be so interested in it, for he didn´t know anything about music. He couldn´t read it, and he certainly couldn´t play it; but he was hearing this melody, among the sound of the birds and the howl of the wind, and he was almost certain he could catch the notes it was playing. As if they were telling him something.

"Tony, why are you wearing your suit?" A voice asked harshly.

Tony turned slowly over his heels. Pepper was standing in front of him, with a strange, hard face.

"Why are you wearing your suit?" She asked again.

He looked down slowly, and saw the Infinity Gauntlet resting between his hands.

"Well?"

"I… Fuck, I have to…" Tony started, but no matter how much he reached on his mind, he couldn´t find the words. "I…"

"Stop babbling." Pepper interrupted him. "What´s wrong? Tell me."

"I´m trying to!" He said in a harsh, and at the same time pleading voice.

Tony pulled the gauntlet against his chest (right on top of the Arc Reactor) and his metal finger approached its golden padlock. Pepper gave a few steps forwards, y forced them away.

"Don´t do that. You know is dangerous." She said. "What were you doing? It looked like you were speaking with someone."

"Yeah, I was… I mean, I think I was… But not with you."

"… There´s no one else in here."

"Yes, there is." He answered way too quickly, looking around the place. "JARVIS says it's nothing, that it´s my imagination, but he´s wrong! There´s someone else in here." And then, out of breath, he added. "And I have to give him this."

"This?" Pepper followed Tony´s gaze and looked at the Infinity Gauntlet.

"You can´t give that to anyone, Tony." She said slowly, with all the sweetness she could manage in her confusion. "Look, are you… are you feeling alright?"

"Yes." He answered, again, way too quickly. "No. I… Fuck, I don´t know." Tony held tight the gauntlet, and slowly tried to open it again.

"Tony! Don´t do that!" He turned to look out at the windows, as if searching for something, and then turned to look at Pepper again, almost with confusion.

"I have to give this to him." He said, though he didn´t sound as convinced as he should have. "Goddamed, I have to! But the fucking genius doesn´t tell me where to send it!"

"Anthony…" Murmured Pepper, and with eyes wide open she began backing towards the door. "I´m going to call Phil, okay? He´ll know what to do, just… just don´t move."

Tony stood there –not moving a muscle- in the middle of the living room, and watched her disappear through the door.

* * *

><p>So, I´m here like raping the Movie´s Canon by killing Nick Fury, and mercilessly replacing him with Coulson. Honestly, I did it because Coulson is the cutest thing and Fury makes everything too difficul ¬.¬<p>

And well, Pepper and Tony are married, the Infinity Gauntlet is in earth, and everything´s a mess. Yep, I´m pretty much raping the movie´s cannon.

Anyway, I hope you don´t mind much. I´m just trying to be creative! :3


	3. Monsters&Creators

When Loki finally made it to the Iron Gate – a big, imposing structure over twelve feet tall- he supported his hands against the bars of the fence, trying his best to look pass them and into the scorched land. With a mere touch he could tell that the metal bars suck too deeply into the cement channel, and that no matter how much he pulled, they would not budge. He leaned back on them for a moment, and hit roughly the cement with his foot; he could not break it either. His bright, green eyes started to move quickly around the place, looking for another way in.

Then, a green oak leaf, lifted by the wind, came to greet him; it stopped for a moment and it started to slow down, then it retook his course, and disappeared through the iron bars. Loki followed it closely with his gaze, and catched a glimpse of the control panel. His magic consisted almost exclusively in the projection of illusions, and if he had faced this same problem in any other moment, he probably would not have been able to follow that leaf. He was an illusionist, not a warlock; he didn´t have the power to change the ways of the world around him. But the call was getting closer –almost painfully closer- waiting for him, right on the other side of that fence; and nothing could have stopped him from following it, not even his own limitations.

So he extended his hand towards the panel, as if reaching for it, just to discover that its mechanism was, despite small, too complicated. The screws and nuts seemed molten to each other under that gray box, and nothing could pass between them, neither fingers nor leaves – not even_air_-. He began to squirm at the entrance, leaning his whole body against the bars - his right hand stretched towards the other side of the fence. He felt the coldest air entering through his nose, suffocating him, but he continued with his work; blindly, insistently. He finally reached a gear, and tried to shake it: he felt an unexpected, almost painful tension in his hand, and let go of it. He tried successively with two or three gears and, suddenly, one of them moved. This last attempt resulted in something different. Loki ignored if that meant that the gear was rusty and was, inconsequence, a little weaker. It was simply something different, and that gave him hope.

He put his feet at the sides of one of the bars, and ignoring the intense feeling of coldness that was reaching his shoulders, he reached for the gear, took a deep breath and violently pulled. A red trail began to spurt from his nose, staining the front of his silver armor. He leaned forward and then back with a tremendous effort; the rusty gear cracked under the pressure and he fell backwards, hitting his head with the edge of the channel. Loki signed, frustrated.

He shook his head, trying to get rid of the sudden dizziness –a lightheaded state that he didn´t normally suffer for head injuries, and that made him wonder, just for a second, what was he doing there, and if trespassing that Iron Gate was really that important-. He got to his feet, shaking off the feeling immediately, and began to walk with his shoulder hunched towards the bars. The crack he had made in the gray box that formed the panel control was about forty inches tall, but not more than twenty wide. Again he understood the inexorable fact that willpower was not enough, that pressure alone would not make the gear budge. He went to the next gear and tried to break it. It didn´t move, and the next one didn´t either.

He looked up and stared angrily at the edge of the fence, at its full sharp and pointy teethes, and hungry rows of broken glass. Something stirred painfully inside his brain, as if telling him to hurry up. He moved his feet slightly and suddenly, Loki felt a piece of ice crack under his boots. It was about thirty inches wide; a rough recreation of a small spear, with a pointy end. He bend down to take it, wondering absently if he had been the one who created it.

_Come to me. Come to me. _Was what the call whispered to him, in an old, throaty voice that he had learned to relate to The Other – the Mad Titan´s servant-. He swallowed hard, shivering.

In that moment the inside thread that united him with his inner being trembled; it grew and it began to transmit something, babbling. Waves and sparks of power were released through the thread and returned laden with knowledge and information to his brain. His gaze fell on the piece of ice; his hands made it turn around itself. His instinct began to act, sore from the lack of use, and then, for the first time, was manifested into something palpable. Loki took the iron bars between his hands -tainted with a hint of blue- and reached for the control panel, freezing its circuits. The sparks of the crashed mechanism began to fly everywhere, in a sordid panic, and the Iron Gate opened his doors, creaking and shaking, for Loki to enter.

"God, I shouldn´t have left him." Pepper said, putting a hand over her forehead. She looked distressed, maybe a little scared.

Coulson scanned the living room with his bright, sunken eyes, running his fingers over a dusty oak table. He could see the footprints that Tony´s suit had left in the marble floor, and after following them, he realized with dismay that they headed to the open balcony. Tony Stark and the Infinity Gauntlet were nowhere to be seen.

"He said he needed to take the Gauntlet to someone... he didn't tell me who." Pepper remembered, taking a seat in a soft looking couch. Coulson couldn´t have said if the color on her cheeks were because of anger towards the situation or for the shame that leaving Tony alone –while he was obviously not in his right mind- made her feel.

"Don´t worry, Pepper." He told her, giving her the sweetest smile he could manage. "I have a SWAT team surrounding the whole area. We would find him, but we need a place to start the search. Have you any idea where he might be?"

"I don´t know… Maybe outside, under the cliff. He likes it there." She responded, not entirely sure. "You are going to look for him, aren´t you? Let me go with you."

Coulson observed with concern the flushed face and burning eyes of Pepper, and slowly shook his head. "No, I can handle this. You stay here, in case he comes back." He reassured her, widening his smile and putting a hand on her shoulder. It lingered there for a moment too longer. Pepper nodded at him, a small smile on her face, and turned on her heels to look at the balcony. She was biting her lip nervously.

He squeezed her shoulder for a moment, and left the room hurriedly. For a few seconds Pepper just stayed there, not knowing what to do and trembling a little. Then she rushed to the window, and she saw how Coulson walked away among the trees with determination. Her hands were opened and curved over the window frame. She thought about New York, then, -about Tony´s flashy, red suit falling lifeless towards the sidewalk- and a strange, inarticulate cry came out of her mouth.

Tony made it to the coast breathless.

There was something strange in the world around him; an invisible smoke was floating in the air, blurring his vision, interrupting his cognitive processes. A strange, not at all clear phrase was repeating over and over again in his head, muffling any other though, any other idea. _Thanos wants the Gauntlet, Thanos wants the Gauntlet, _and from time to time, when his focus was drifting, _The Gauntlet wants Thanos._

He looked around anxiously, not sure why or when he had come there, flooded with a sudden and imminent sense of danger. He didn´t know if it was been caused by an object, a person or a coming event, but when he lit his suit thrusters, ready to fly towards the open, blue sky, he felt that something terrible was about to happen. He ran quickly to the shore, nevertheless, and tried to gain momentum before taking off.

Suddenly, he heard something stir between the threes at his back, and Tony went completely still, realizing that there was someone behind him. He turned slowly on his heels, and found a man standing between the trunks of the palm trees, looking intensely at him. He was tall and slender; his face was white as a paper and sharp as cold chisel. He looked weak and tired; strangely pale, and the front of his silver armor was crossed by a trail of blood. He seemed familiar. Somehow, Tony had the sensation that he knew him, but the dense fog lingering on his head didn´t allow him to dwell pass that.

Loki looked at the Man of Iron with wary eyes, hesitantly, and once again the call emerged in waves of loneliness, hatred and desire; in a sharp tingle of satisfaction and resentment. When he looked down at the old relic that Tony Stark was holding between his gloved hands, he didn´t felt scared or surprised, just impressed. The silent radiations of the Mind Gem -tied around his neck in form of a Medallion- and the other five gems were almost touching; mixing, joining and blending together. Loki swallowed hard, and silently moved towards Tony to touch the artifact. The Avenger didn´t do anything to stop him.

They stayed there for a moment, not moving. Loki put his hand over the padlock of the artifact, and the interior streams (his and the Gauntlet's) suddenly flowed, crisscrossing. He failed to hear how Tony´s breathing become heavier at the sight of the Mind Gem (the only missing part of the Gauntlet), and his terrible cry of outraged man. Too self-absorbed at the moment, he didn't noticed anything until the Man of Iron was over him, desperately reaching for the medallion. He didn´t felt the first or the second metal punch, even when his flesh, scratched and bruised, was opened, and blood began to flow out of it.

Tony's thrusters whistled in the air, firing at him, and the force of the raw power sank deeply in Loki´s back. Instantly, the old reflexes returned to him. He crawled over the dry sand, trying to get on his feet. Iron Man got closer to him, taking his thin wrists between gloved, metal hands, and ran a dozen steps, moving away from the shore and carrying with him the squirming figure. He fired at him again –this time on the head- and turned to look at the blue sky, looking for that distant song that he heard on his living room.

When he turned his gaze towards Loki again, the Jotun was already on his feet. Tony charged his thrusters, this time aiming to the chest, and Loki fell backwards again. A thruster came to rest over his right shoulder, preventing him from making any movement, and another gripped strongly at his neck, looking for the medallion. Acting quickly, the Jotun put a cold hand over Iron Man´s helmet, trying to freeze it; sparks started to fly everywhere and Tony heard a piercing scream came out of his communicators.

The man rolled on the sand, and looking up he saw Loki´s enraged face. A trickle of blood ran from his right side of the head, where he had been shot. He dug his finger on the eyes of the helmet, and he rudely separated it from the rest of the armor, making Tony scream in pain. He encircled the man´s throat with one hand, and roughly hit him in the head with his own helmet. Tony stopped moving for a moment, and Loki faltered, panting. His breathing was short and heavy.

He took his head between his hands, standing up, and moaned softly. He took a deep breath, and began to walk away from the Man of Iron and from the Infinity Gauntlet. Far away, he could her SHIELD´s SWAT team getting closer, and a relentless urge to flee -that erased everything else- was born in him. The sounds of the call no longer seemed important, the voice of The Other had been turned off; the shot that nearly knocked him unconscious had broken something more than flesh and bone. There was only escape now, and nothing would be possible until he achieved that goal.

Suddenly, he went still, feeling a big, metal hand circling his ankle; after a few moment he felt his whole body been wrapped by an electroshock, going from the ribs to the hips. Tony pulled at his ankle and threw him backwards, not minding how or where he fell. Loki gave a shout as he fell in the water –been followed by the Man of Iron- and dove between the submerged rocks. The holly leaves raked Tony´s face, who submerged his head in the water. One of his hands reached a small, booted foot, and he pulled it with all his might. The foot hit him on his cheekbone, and his head was tipped against a rough coral reef.

Loki got rid of the grip that was stubbornly holding him in place and, almost completely out of the water, he tried weakly to straighten his aching body. He turned around, and looked at the motionless body of the Man of Iron sinking into the cold water. The reflex movement of flight was slowly switching off, and after a few moments of complete emptiness, inside him was born a strange and new feeling. The experience was so singular as the call that had brought him there, and almost as intense. It was a feeling slightly similar to hate; but hate was something sharp, severe and precise. This was a viscous, dark fog that made him feel sorrowful.

He let the water drag him back to the bottom, and opened his hands to reach for the fading white light that was disappearing between the waves. It was the first time that he was so close to the suit –the first time that he touched it, if fact, for all the times he and Tony Stark had converge in the battlefield, they had opted for fight at distance- and when his fingers curved over the rough, polished surface of its shoulders, pulling the human´s head out of the water, his grip faltered for a second. A salty, bittersweet taste in his mouth made him aware of the titanium-gold alloy with which was built, and of the pounding trails of energy –emanating from the Arc Reactor- that ran through it. It was a fine piece of armor; that´s as far has he let his thoughts dwell before dragging the man towards the chore and out of the water.

When the armor fell to the sand it made a hard, cracking noise, and Tony´s thorax convulsed in a startling way; Loki observed his immobile throat –marked by red, angry marks, caused by his suit´s neck- noticing the stillness in his chest, and realized that he wasn´t breathing. He growled in a low, hard voice, burying his fingers in the threads of his wetted hair and closing his eyes.

For a moment Loki just stayed there –the loosened parts of his armor burying deep inside his skin, the leather under it still wet and tarnished because of the fight- not knowing what to do. A burst of wind passed through him, making him shiver, and he turned to look towards the trees were he had come out from and pass them, to the high adamantium fence that surrounded the place, and then again to the inert body sprawled in front of him. Somewhere, not so far away, he could hear SHIELD´s SWAT team getting closer.

He had killed many times in his life, more than he could count. His hands were tainted with the dry blood of every race, every species in the Nine Worlds, and he had spilled that dense, reddish liquid without shame, without remorse and perhaps with some pleasure, always that it fitted his purposes. In the path he was walking, death and the act of killing had become normal, even natural to him. However, as he saw the light of what he had learned was, in its most essential sense, Tony Stark´s metal heart, slowly fading away, he knew that if he let this human die, sooner or later he was going to regret it.

He knew himself enough to know that he would, and thought he didn´t know why, he kneeled down beside the immobile body, ignoring that lingering sense of danger that invaded him every time SHIELD´s team got closer. He cupped the back of his head, and silently but quickly he went under his skin, searching through muscle, flesh and bone the anomaly that had taken the mortal´s breath away. He found the back of water lingering between his lungs, and with the smallest hint of hesitation, fearing to move something important or fragile in the human´s systems; he began to push it out.

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><p>Normally, when people write about Loki they base his powers in the ones he has in the comics, but since I have never read a comic about Loki (or even Thor) I decided to use the ones he has in the movies (Illusions, teleportation, invisibility, ect). So, I made a research about the subject and came to the conclusion that Loki is not a Mage, or a Sorcerer or a Wizar, but an Illusionist. That means that his abilities can fool people´s senses, but he can´t actually hurt them unless he had a magical weapon (like the one he had in the Avengers).<p>

In conclusion, Loki´s powers are not awasome right now. But he´ll learn other types of magic while the finc advances :3

Anyway, I hope you have liked the chapter, and please, leave feedback! :D


	4. In the Deep End

From that short amount of time when he had been passing out (neither fully awake, nor unconscious) Tony didn´t remembered much. He had felt scared, confused; the weakness that had overthrown his body, the lack of control in his legs and arms filling him with anxiety. He felt his head spinning around, collectively bleeding through imaginary cuts; the back of his skull hurting, as if it had been shattered into pieces. There was no sharpness, no clarity, in the watery world that surrounded him; the dark spots blurring his view, the immobility of the skin that he inhabited, had plagued his mind with silence. He felt neither full nor empty – he was just drowning.

When the lack of oxygen became unbearable, and his mortal strength began to yield, everything around him turned black – his stomach and lugs feeling full for the consumed water, his eyeballs hurting for the salt that had sneaked underneath his eyelids. He loosed all sense of balance; trapped in a dark limbo separated from the physical world. A short, trembling rope of loose strings was the only thing that kept him bound to reality.

When his body was freed from the underwater pressure, and the light of the sun fell over him, warming up his muscles, he started to drift in and out of consciousness. He could hear the ocean waves crawling through the soft, wetted sand of the beach; he could feel the heat of the afternoon, and the annoying traces of salt in his skin, but he couldn´t see anything. Someone was dragging him through the sand beach, out of the water; he could tell that much.

Somehow, it felt like been asleep; unaware of the passage of time, mildly conscious of the world around him, but not quite. Like in his dreams –or nightmares, maybe- his legs felt like sandpaper; he felt a current need to run, to break free of the invisible boundaries that tied his body up, but he kept crumbling down, never standing on his feet, never moving a single muscle. After a while, everything went black again, and he felt unexpectedly cold.

The next time Tony woke up it was with a sharp pain in his low stomach, and the salty taste of seawater in his mouth. He felt lightheaded (his vision was blurry, and the dark spots around his eyes hadn´t disappeared completely). When his eyeballs stopped hurting, and the deep, thick fog that had been clouding his mind (his control over his own body) slowly faded away, he realized that he was in his hands and knees, throwing up the water that he had swallowed while drowning. He spat two or three times over the sand, and only when he felt that distasteful heaviness in his lugs and stomach disappear, he let himself fell facedown on the ground.

His heart was beating loudly on his chest, and for some moments, the tiredness in his body didn´t allowed him to move. He was scared (slightly disconcerted) and a muffled voice in the back of his head kept wondering if he was still breathing – if he was still drowning. He had to remind himself that he was only a few meter away from his Malibu House, that he was in the quiet, secured area where he lived with Pepper and where nothing ever happened; that he had just been drowning on shallow coastal waters, right in front of his home. He laid facedown in the sand, taking deep, measured breaths; any though about humidity, about dark, cold caves in the middle of nowhere, and wooden buckets filled with dirty water was instinctively repressed.

It was only when he managed to calm down (when his heart no longer seemed about to jump out his chest, and his lungs stopped contracting strongly, hurtfully in his insides) that he noticed that there was someone beside him. He turned around slowly, still laying on the floor (suddenly alarmed by that warm presence of life; that faint breath that told him that he was not alone) and all the color that had returned to his face faded away once more.

Loki was kneeling beside him (just a few inches away) looking tense, wary; but as disconcerted as Tony himself felt. For a moment, when a burst of win passed between them, making his wet body shiver slightly, he went completely still, suddenly well aware that the pieces of his armor were scattered around the place, out of his reach. His heart started to beat loudly again –the alarmed pace of his systems pounding in his ears- and while looking at Loki´s green eyes, sharp and severe by nature, and the dull, tired hint of gray they had under the sun light, he knew that that day, in that precise moment, he was going to die.

The man in front of him, however, made no move neither to attack nor to approach him. He just let himself fall over the sand (between the scattered pieces of the Iron Man´s armor, where the ocean waves could reach the tips of his booted feet) in a soft sigh of resignation.

His breathing was labored (Tony could tell by the swift rise and fall of his chest, even while been so well covered by the thick layers of his armor) and various drops of salty water were falling from his wetted hair. He didn´t seem injured or pained; just strangely tired. The traces of blood streaming down his temples, reaching his chin, were the only mark left by the fight that Tony couldn´t remember well, but that he knew had happened there –between both of them just moments ago.

"Did you just…?" Tony started breathlessly, turning to look at the deep blue sea in front of him, and then back at Loki. He remembered diffusely those short moments of consciousness before he actually woke up; the feeling of sand grains sneaking through the joints of his armor, that liberating sensation when the water stopped squeezing his lungs. He let himself fall over the sand as well, feeling confused.

"Why did you…?" Tony absently ran his hand over the Arc Reactor (untouched, still glowing in his rightful place) and then lower, over the purple bruise where he guessed Loki had pressed to get the water out of his lungs. "Why did you help me?" He asked finally, and if he sounded dumbfounded, or maybe a little incensed, it was not on purpose.

Loki glanced at him with arched eyebrows, looking confused, as if he had forgotten that Tony was there. "… I _do_ hope you do not take this as an act of good will, Man of Iron, because it is not." He said slowly, in a strangely tired voice (the grip of _The Other_ over someone´s mind was a rather tiresome thing, Tony knew now) but with same eloquence that he always used while talking. "I just thought that… die drowning on a beach of shallow waters, right in front of your own house, was a disgraceful, if not laughable end." When Tony frowned at his words, clearly not understanding their meaning, Loki sighed, looking exasperated.

"I just didn´t found it suitable." He said simply, turning to look at the sky while putting a hand over his forehead. Tony frowned even more, but in order of not pushing his good luck, or give Loki a reason to get on with this nonviolent attitude and attack him, he didn´t ask further. So he didn´t move, he didn´t made a sound; the technology which made his suits came to him just with the push of a bottom was not yet added to this model, and he knew that in the current circumstances a wrong move could get him killed.

Then he realized that if Loki actually wanted him dead, he would just had let him drown, or do something as easy as slid his throat while he was unconscious. The thought was not as comforting as he would have liked, but it allowed him to relax a little. This was not the first time that he had faced Loki without the Iron Man suit, and if he came out alive once, he could manage a second time.

Tony scratched his forehead, trying to get rid of the grains of sand that had stuck to his head, and suddenly he remembered a very important conversation that he had with Thor the last time he saw him. One that had officially informed to SHIELD, and to all of the Avengers, of his brother´s demise. "Hey I don´t mean to be rude or anything, but…" He started, sitting upright in the sand, and turning to look at the man lying beside him. "Aren´t you supposed to be _dead?" _Loki´s opened his eyes slowly, and turned to look at him with stern eyes; a blank stare, full of contempt, that seemed to doubt of his mental capabilities.

"Why, I don´t know, Man of Iron. I feel alive enough." He responded, in an uninterested, monotonous voice, while whipping the trail of blood off his face. He went strangely still then, and suddenly turned to look at the palm threes behind them, as if searching for something. Tony followed his gaze rapidly, but didn´t saw anything besides sand and vegetation.

"What´s the matter?" He asked abruptly, unconsciously clutching at the remaining pieces of his armor. He remembered fuzzily everything that had happened after the incident in his workshop, but he knew that he had been about to give away the Infinity Gauntlet and that Loki –on purpose or not- had stopped him. That didn´t mean that the person after the artifact had absconded, and without his armor there was little that Tony could do to defend himself, or the Gauntlet.

However, Loki got to his feet calmly, and didn´t seem about to start a fight. "None that should concern you." He told him, in a voice more annoyed than alarmed. "It is just my cue to leave." Before Tony could reply anything, a couple of SWAT Agents came out from behind the trees, pointing their guns at them. Tony went completely still, but when he recognized the SHIELD´s logo on their uniforms, he thought that this actually might be a good thing. The reminder of how much paperwork he would have to do in order to explain this to Coulson was just an annoying tingle in the back of his head.

In a matter of seconds they were completely surrounded, and bold, funny looking man who Tony recognized as Jasper Sitwell (one of Coulson´s special agents) pointed his gun at Loki, demanding him to _freeze, _and Tony to get out of the way. His problems with authority and his normally stubborn behavior didn´t allow him to obey, and he just stayed there, looking up at the annoyed Jotun in front of him. Loki just rolled his eyes, now seeming slightly unnerved.

"I highly recommend you not to take the Gauntlet´s power lightly, Man of Iron." He said in a rather loud voice, so his words might be hear between the alarmed shouts of the agents around them. "It is not a toy for you to play with." He said intently, looking at Tony straight in the eyes. For some reason, he found himself speechless, and just kept looking up at the Jotun until the first gunshot was heard. At the moment the bullet reached his destination, Loki was already gone.

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><p>So, this chapter was somehow shorter than the others, but I hope you´ve enjoy it still.<p>

If you like it, please leave feedback! It makes me happy :D


	5. To Kill a King

The Minor Character Death tag is for this chapter. You were warned!

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><p>The last time his father woke up from the Odinsleep, Thor put a fist inside his mouth and sank his teeth into the skin, feeling a ray of anxiety ran through his body. It was not because of his garments, worn and wet with night sweats; not even because of that shattered eye (or empty socket) that seemed to dig into him and see through his physical body. It was something else: a cold rage, leaking from his core by the pores of his skin, a tension in those old wasted muscles that seemed to warn the incoming violence. Something that made Thor´s insides twist with worry.<p>

"Father!" He called, when Odin rose awkwardly out of bed – the unused bones and muscles making an unpleasant sound, as if they were breaking under his weight. His father was unfazed while looking from the boots that had been throw under the bed during his sleep. Thor was ignored.

Odin All-father stood to his feet and advanced towards him, not saying a word. In the last moment, when he was about to be crushed like a wheat plant, Thor blindly gave a step backwards. Odin walked past him rapidly and went into the library. Not a single word was exchanged between them.

The king had fallen in the Odinsleep shortly after the incident with the Aether, when his firstborn Thor (heir to Asgard´s Throne, and Protector of the Nine Realms) came back from his misadventures in the land of men, denying his divine right to rule in favor of a mortal´s heart. The King had been angrier than ever at hearing the news; he gave a cry of outraged man, charging towards his son with the fierce of a beast. ´_Disgraced by his own legacy´,_ he had proclaimed, before falling asleep. Now the rage was gone; now he just seemed indifferent. Cold.

"Father!" Thor called again, with worry.

There was no answer.

He ran to the library, leaving the doors wide open. His father was on the other side of the room, next to a closer that Thor had never seen open. It´s doors were worn, old and ajar. Odin took a teapot and a box full of jade leaves from the top shelf and placed them of the largest table of the room; with a light touch of his fingertips, water began to boil in the jar. He sat on an old wooden chair, and began to prepare methodically a cup of tea.

"Father, what´s wrong? What are you doing?" Thor asked, walking closer to his father, and putting a hand over his shoulder.

Odin turned to stare at him, coldly, with his one healthy eye. He inhaled slowly, taking way too much time in doing so. He held his breath, also for too much time, and gave a long, painful whistle. When the tea was ready he took the jar with a trembling had, and filled the cup to the brim. He looked intently at his son, and took a sip.

Thor would never forget the look he gave him. Terrible events had and would befallen him during his unnaturally long life, but time –slow patient killed- would erase those scenes of pain and sorrow, making its details distant memories of blurry edges. That look, however, so full of pain, rage and _disappointment_, would haunt him forever.

Odin fixed his good eye on Thor, grabbing him and pinning him down with no more than a glance. Suddenly, he had the horrible security that his father was not looking at him anymore, but at an unknown, private horror. He squirmed like an insect pierced with a pin. Now he knew what his father was doing, and what he had put in the tea – he also knew that there was nothing that he could do about it. For a moment Thor wondered if he was thinking about his mother. He wondered if he was thinking about Loki.

Always looking far and beyond Thor, Odin took the handle of the cup more tightly, and he drank all its content in one sip, letting himself as a dead weight in the back of his chair. The sound of porcelain falling to the floor, breaking into pieces, was not loud. Odin´s head fell backwards, lifeless; but his good eye was still fixed in Thor, looking past him. The rope that was tied strongly around his son´s neck in the moment he fell on the Odinsleep (the one that kept him stuck to his bedside, always vigilant to his every need, during all those past weeks, even when his mortal lover was still waiting for him to return to Midgard) was suddenly broken.

Thor left the room an hour later, feeling numb and stiff.

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><p>It was around 5 o´clock. Sunlight was streaming through the window, illuminating the worktable, and every substance, every scroll and every tool that laid over it. Loki was hidden in the shadows, in a small corner of his lair, avoiding its touch - he had long ago come to the conclusion that he felt safer in the dark. He let himself fall over the wooden chair beside him, stunned with grief and fear, haunted by an inner struggle.<p>

_´You ill-breed bastard!´ _he though dispassionately. _´Why can´t you just die, once and for all? You´ve taken your own life, moved by fear – by mere arrogance. And yet I still feel you; alive and whole and demanding - Still I ask you for forgiveness! You ghoulish, pervert, murder, demon… Asgardian! ´ _Screamed in his aphasia the most dark, repressed part of his being._´Accursed, poisonous Asgardian! ´_

The smells of hatred and fear were dancing around him; tangling around his neck and _squeezing, _until red angry marks were left in the white, pounding skin of his throat. Loki used to think that he had come a long way; now he knew that he had not advanced one step. Now nothing was well focused, nothing seemed to make sense; because the All-father had died, and a part of Loki had died with him.

When the small Jotun fell from the Land of the Gods (out of the broken Rainbow Bridge) he had felt something like this. When the cold, clawed hands of The Other where engaged in his body in the middle of the dark, dragging him slowly, furtively, out of the pounding moorings of The Void – when he set foot for the first time, since he learned of his parentage, in the frozen wasteland of Jotunheim, feeling the cold arose in his bones and the changing of colors in his flesh, he had felt a fear as stolid and uncertain as this one. Fear towards the velocity of a world not darkened by emptiness; towards the bodies, _so many bodies, _so horribly visible, so horribly _alive _that inhabited it. Fear towards that tainted bluish color that ran through his veins, finding a place inside his heart.

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><p>Loki lived in a house that no one on Asgard, or Midgard, or in any of the Nine Realms knew about. It had windows overlooking a street where cars went, silent and bright, and humans walked quietly at the edge of the sidewalk. The hedge was not a tall, impenetrable wall made of silver and gold, as the one surrounding Asgard´s Citadel, and the gates had no guardians or sentinels. Loki could see through the curtains whenever he pleased and see strangers walking by. In the bathroom of the second floor there was a mirror as tall as him, where a daily looked the soft, pinky glamour covering his Jotun flesh. He lived alone, and spent most of his time reading ancient scroll and practicing new ways of sorcery. He read about the world that surrounded him too, and about the people how inhabited it.<p>

Sometimes he thought about Thor…

Thor never came to understand that their father was mad. He never had to face the grievances of self-hatred, or the cold gaze of a disappointed father. Loki had grew up and lived in a different world; a world made by himself, whose purposes, rules and dangers where orchestrated only by himself. It was something that came with been an illusionist. Thor, however, resigned himself to live in a world constructed by their father, and he had never complained. Maybe it was that, and not the resentment and the bad blood, what prompted Odin to play favorites. He wondered briefly what his brother would do, now that the All-father was dead.

_´What has happened, that gave you the decency to end with your life? Your old, senile body could not bear the weight of the throne anymore?´ _He though bitterly, incessantly._ ´Was the slow ache of mourning too much for you…? Where you only mourning for her, or where you mourning for me too?´_

He didn´t wanted to know the answer to any of those questions; the memory of his dead father caused him fear and incertitude, but it also calmed him in a strange way. It appeased old ardors; it allowed old wounds to heal. The delusions of grandeur, the eternal quest for equality, the incessant inner rage that gnawed his soul; everything had went silent. If incertitude was the price to pay for this sense of calm that was expanding through his mind and body (through the cold vastness of his systems) he would pay it gladly.

He rose from the chair and looked behind him, towards the window facing the forest; he looked carefully the around the meadow, trunk by trunk, shadow by shadow. He closed his eyes for a moment, and went he opened them he was in the bathroom of the second floor, in front of the full-length mirror.

Loki stood strangely stiff, and held his breath. He closed his eyes again, so tightly that red lights began to appear over the black background. Thin fingers ran through his armor, opening zippers and undoing bottoms, and very slowly his garments began to fell to the floor. The air around him went cold and touched his him in an indescribable way; in seemed to blow icily, fiercely through his flesh. He walked closer to the mirror, putting his hands over the transparent surface, and let the glamour fade. And he looked. He looked intently, deeply, embedded in the red and blue colors, in the white, foreign designs marking his body; as if he was consciously using his eyes for the first time in his life.

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><p>So, I killed Odin... If I said I am sorry I´ll be lying, the guy is a douchebag :P<p> 


	6. Ring of Fire

Shortly after the incident with the Gauntlet (when the perimeter around his house was secured, and his relationship with SHIELD came back to its relatively normal state) Tony ordered Dum-E to throw a paperweight to Jasper Sitwell´s head, and the base of the agent´s skull was fractured. The small robot, so easily excitable as it was, did as it was told without further contemplation, for it understood clearly, though in a slightly irrational way, that that man shouldn´t be close to Tony´s workshop, or to what it held inside (especially when the engineer was not present). Pepper screamed at him that night, after Director Coulson demanded them a large monetary compensation, and they started to fight. It was one of those discussions that Tony could bear with his usual composure, not actually hearing what his wife was saying to him. However, the argument made him a bit nervous; before they were married, Pepper didn´t loosed her patient so easily. Now, however, she could yell at him for incredibly minor issues; going from his usual bureaucratic errors to what he should or should not ate at breakfast. It was becoming unbearable.

She was also starting to lose her patient, as far as those fights were concerned.

"He behaves like a child. I don´t know what to do with him!" Pepper would say later, when she was alone with Coulson. "I can´t handle him anymore… God, you most believe that what I´m saying is horrible."

"No, no. I understand." Coulson said, putting a hand over her shoulder. Pepper told him, then, that he should visit them the next evening; she thought that in the moment he saw his husband´s current state, he would really understand her worries.

Coulson accepted the invitation, and actually understood; not the full situation, or the reasons for Tony´s behavior (no one understood that) but Pepper´s feelings about the matter. The man received him standing of his feet, in the entrance of his workshop, bolt upright, with his legs firms and spread, as if wearing boots. A metal bar was dangling from his hand and he was swinging it around him as a walking cane. He was striving to hide the tiredness of his face (he had speed that last four nights awake, trying to devise a way to curb the powers of the Gauntlet, and at the same time, stop that influence that The Other and his master had over them).

Tony was used to show an enthusiasm improper for his age, and between all the agents that Coulson had hired since obtaining his post as Director, he was the smallest in size. He had robust features, big eyes and long eyelashes. The proportions of his body were not exactly like the ones of those agents who were able to bend by the waist and touch the ground with their foreheads. His torso was quite wide and his legs were a little short. He always spoke with little clarity and with a devastating lack of tact. He was good at what he did, nevertheless; one of the best. And that was the only reason why Coulson hadn´t fired him yet.

"Mr. Stark, I came for the report that you promised us." He said that day, standing in front of him with that smile from ear to ear that annoyed Tony so much.

"Yeah, I´ll tell where you can shove that report." He answered, giving a smile just as fake.

"Tony!" Screamed his wife, immediately. Later, in a more calmed voice she added. "What happened in the beach was not your fault, we know it. But you have to give SHIELD a report explaining what happened. They need to know about it."

Tony accepted that sentence without adding a single comment. He turned on his heels and went back to sit at his desk, ignoring them both. Coulson understood that it was silly to stay standing in the middle of the workshop smiling like that, and he turned to leave, but so clumsily that he crashed against a coffee table, pulling down a cup. Tony hinted a wild smile. He was sure that what had happened on the beach was not his fault but SHIELD´s, for not warning him that the power to control him in such a way; if he had some resentment towards Coulson for keeping that information to himself, no one needed to know.

The Director, red to the ears, picked up the pieces of the broken cup. He left early that evening, and did not return for a long while.

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><p>Tony´s wife was never safe from his husband´s childish attitude; not even in crowded reunions. One afternoon, disobeying all the rules that Pepper had imposed him, Tony showed up at a party of the company after four rounds of liquor in Rodney's house, and from one corner of the living room began to throw all kinds of disguised insults and wistful retorts to the reddened faces around him. Then, when he approached the bar, a blond, fat man, very well equipped at the rear (and who had his arms wrapped around an asian beauty during that whole evening) extended his glass and greeted Tony with a bow.<p>

"But this is Tony Stark, nothing more and nothing less!" He said excitedly, swaying a little over his feet (the wine was starting to get to him). All heads bowed simultaneously towards them, as an electrical switch board. All noises ceased.

Tony stared at him for a moment, without saying anything, as if he didn´t know that the man was talking to him. He didn´t understand why suddenly everything went so quiet. Finally, he decided to speak, and got closer to the men with a slightly drunken smile. "Yes, that´s me. And _you_ are a man with a very big and fat…" He started in the middle of the silence.

"Tony!" Pepper screamed, who know him very well, and knew that he was not about to say anything nice.

Someone laughed, and someone cleared his throat; the man´s hand went off the Asian woman´s waist. Tony waited for everything to go quiet again.

"Market of meat…" He announced.

Pepper smiled awkwardly to the man, showing all her white teethes. Someone looked at the man to the eyes and started to laugh. Other person said, very slowly, "There goes the Sunday´s sirloin." A running nose would not have stretched so tightly the fat man´s mouth; his lower lip came out of his mouth as a sweet berry coming out of a sandwich, and his cheeks were flushing.

Tony didn´t know that the man that he had just insulted was a very important senator, or that he had came to the party because he wanted to close a deal with the company. If he had known, he had probably not minded either. He just walked away from the scene very slowly, stopping in a corner of the room were Pepper´s accusatory eyes could not reach him. He leaned on the table in front of him, drinking all his scotch in one sip.

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><p>Two months after the incident with the Gauntlet, Loki started to play pranks on Tony while he was working on his workshop. The man took a long time to realize that his current bad luck wasn´t due to a system´s failure (that the problems on his workshop were caused, effectively, by human´s hands… sort of) and it took him even more to realize who the little joker was. Suffice it to say that when he discovered him, he was very surprised.<p>

At the beginning they were tricks a bit dull (pencils falling from the desk, nuts appearing and disappearing in different places; little details that most of people would not have noticed). Later, things started to move around Tony for no apparent reasons; Tony would look through the window, and when least expected, a piece of titanium was thrown at his direction, making him fall off the chair. At first he suspected that Rodney, or maybe Happy, were trying to play a prank on him, but it didn´t matter how much he thought about it, he couldn´t figure out how they were doing those things without even entering the workshop. Finally, when the suspects on the list began to run out, and Tony seriously started to consider that his AI and Dum-E had betrayed him, he turned to look, and he found of piece of titanium floating in the air, without anyone or anything supporting it. For a moment, he thought that he had lost it.

Then, he started to hear a voice (it that low murmur could be considered a voice) that he soon came to identify as an awfully familiar laugh. Tony palled a little, and taking a couple of steps backwards, with his eyes wide open, he asked, "Loki?" His answer didn´t came in words: the titanium piece that had been peacefully floating in the air rushed at him, hitting him in the face and knocking him to the ground again.

"That son of a bitch!" Was the only thing that he could say, before rapidly standing on his feet and adopting a defensive posture, ready to push the button on his bracelets to call the Iron Man suit. He expected to be attacked, but he looked around, searching for the Jotun, and nothing happened. Loki´s laughter began to subside, and finally it disappeared.

After that, another prank was born. During the weekdays, when Tony was engaged in assembling the new applications of his suits, the welder began to move out of reach, so fast that the eye could not follow. In an instant it was in front of him, still and untouched, and a moment later it was meters away from him, at the table across the room. The first time that it happened, Tony cursed, jumped off his chair and looked around, sending something that pretended to be a deadly glare, but that Loki just found amusing. He had discovered that if he focused correctly, he could move small objects, as long as nobody else was holding them. It was a type of sorcery that had drawn his attention since, moved by instinct, he used it to open the gate of the fence around the house. Now that he knows how the surroundings were and what laid on the other side, he only had to teleport to the place and cover himself with a transparent glamour.

He excessive this newly found asset patiently, lying face down on a work table that Tony never used, with his chin over both of his hands and squinting for the effort. At first the welder didn´t moved from its place; stirring weakly as if a light wind was passing over it. Soon, however, he managed to make it crawl across the table and floor like a small crab (always out of Tony´s sight). It was wonderful to see how the poor midgardian loosed his patient; his raged curses were also a very nice sound.

The human began to be more cautious, but he never saw coming the pranks of the small Jotun. Sometimes, Loki could not maintain his grasp over the object, and the instrument would turn on and began to spin around the table like a cat chasing a beetle. He would release the welder, then, instinctively fleeing from the flames (his natural fear towards fire making the adrenaline run through his veins). After that, Tony would take the welder away from his wicked hands and would come out of his workshop, giving an end to the game.

* * *

><p>One afternoon, after a lot of weeks of practice, and going against all his instincts, Loki turned on the welder (this time on purpose) and fulfilled the feat of raising the fire in the air and move it at his will, instead of just moving the piece of metal through the workshop´s tables. He didn´t got into the game until Tony, being entirely careless, put the instrument in the middle of the room, moving away with a distracted air and then turning around slowly, as if challenging him. The welder was raised in an upward spiral and it fluttered outside the workshop, coming to rest in the sill of the second floor´s window. Now it was almost two meter high from where Tony was, completely out of his reach. Loki leaved it there.<p>

"You little shit…" Tony said gaping, as if he couldn´t believe that Loki had dared.

The human ran to the window and come to stand in the sill, stretching and trying to reach the welder. He raised his hands as much as possible, dragging them over the brick wall over two meters tall that separated him from his target. Then he tried to climb the wall, separating himself from the window frame; he slipped once, twice, and three times, and in the third one he almost fell. Suddenly, Loki was well aware that if a human fell from that height would was likely not survive; his pleasure decreased rapidly, and something oddly similar to fear started to grow.

It seemed like hours passed –or even weeks- of nervous wait. Tony continued with his task, standing on his heels over the bricks sticking out of the wall, always staring at the welder. Slowly he started to climb, nearly reaching the two meter high. His fingertips slightly brushed the edges of the instrument. In a last attempt to catch it, Tony gave a small jump (a barely perceptive, negligible movement) and the brick under his feet broke apart. The man slipped, and Loki saw him fall from the window of his workshop, frozen in place – as a limestone of fear.

Unconsciously, Tony closed his eyes. For a few seconds, he felt himself falling; how his heart began to beat faster, heavily pounding against his Arc Reactor, at the sudden pressure of gravity, how air currents broke around him, strumming his cheeks and lifting his clothes. Just for a few seconds. Then, when he was just about the push the button and call the Iron Man suit, he felt a strange pull in all his body, and everything went still. He opened his eyes and saw the cliff beneath his feet; the ocean waves roughly colliding with the edges of weathered stone, the air passing right through him, making him tremble. He looked up, almost expecting to see up someone there, in the frame of the window, but there was nothing holding him; just a slight pressure at his sides (similar to the one gravity exerted on him as he fell) keeping him in place.

The pressure on his sides increased, and he felt, astonished, how his whole body was lifted in the air. He rose to the window and was taken through it; the pressure relented and he was roughly dropped to the tiled floor of the workshop. Seconds later, the welder entered through the window and was throw directly at his head, making him fall to the ground once again. It took him a few minutes to realize what had just happened, and even then, he found himself uncharacteristically speechless. He worked his jaw for a few moments, silently watching at the ceiling above him, and finally found his voice again.

"Damn it, I get it!" He screamed at the room in general, sitting upright. "You just discovered some awesome Matilda-Powers and you want to test them." He put his head between his hands, exasperated, and then screamed again. "But why do you have to test them with me?!"

Loki didn´t answer. He just stood there, besides the window, looking at the human with impassive eyes. He considered Tony´s words for a moment, wondering if maybe he should stop tormenting the poor midgardian; then again, he was doing this out of boredom, and until something more entertaining aroused, he was not going to relent. Obviously, he was not there just to annoy the Man of Iron (he could be eccentric, sometimes, but he wasn´t that _vain_); he was there because living the Infinity Gauntlet in the hands of a reckless midgardian was made him nervous, but at the same time, he didn´t trust himself enough to take the artifact away. Since their father´s dead, Thor hadn´t returned to Midgard, and if everything had went according to the old man´s plan, and the once prince was already a crowned King, he was never going to do so. A King of Asgard could not go down to the land of men for such a petty reason as seeing his mortal lover. If Loki took the artifact, and The Other managed to take control over his mind again, there would no one to stop him. However, if the artifact remained in Tony Stark´s workshop, untouched, he would not have to face major consequences; even if the human´s mind was taken, if Loki remained vigilant, he would be there to stop him. To do otherwise would be unadvisable.

Tony looked warily around him, as if he expected Loki to throw something at his direction again. The Jotun couldn´t help but smile, thinking over what had just happened. He had never moved something so big before (Tony was not particularly tall or wide, but he was a grow ma with somehow average measures, and that was big for Loki´s standards). He had never moved something that was alive, and the realization that he had managed to do by mere instinct amazed him. He wondered what else he could move with these new found powers. He looked at the welder, and without thinking too much on it, he turned it on.

Tony shivered instantly, as if a pyromaniac had just lightened a match in front of him, and moved by instinct, tried to get away from the fire. From the tip of the welder, there were coming out more flames than normal. Loki focused on them, matching how they moved at the will of the wind, how they danced in his invisible grip. Slowly, he separated them from the instrument, and as he had done with the pieces of titanium, the leaved them floating in the air, right were Tony could see them. Illusionist, among all other magicians, were the ones who got more excited over an audience, and although in his later years Loki´s tricks had been turned into a clandestine action, he would be lying if he said that having a public again was not pleasant.

Tony watched as the flames (that until now had taken the shape of a fireball) began to transform, turning into two red crescent moons floating around him. The brightness of the Astros started to grow, and a small threat of fire came out of both of them, undoing their form, as a piece of cloth poorly knitted. Too late, he realized that the threat was surrounding him, and when he took a look, he found himself trapped in a ring of fire. His body went completely still, then; the sides of his t-shirt were stained with perspiration (If it was due to the heat currently surrounding him, or for fear towards the fire and the one manipulating it, it was hard to tell).

The flamed flowed around him as the course of a river; encircling him in ever changing ovals, never of the same seize and never in the same place. The thread became thicker and smaller, and it began to spin faster and faster, like a dog chasing his own tail. A flame went down, touching the ground, and another went up, pouting upwards to the ceiling. The ring was transformed into a ball, turning on itself over and over again. Tony felt a hole in his stomach, listening the fire tear apart the current of cold air that ran though the workshop. The sound was greater than the fury of the movement, but either way, it was a beautiful view.

Finally, the fireball contracted, and after giving a final spin around Tony, it spread through the entire workshop (as in a small explosion) and as fast as it came, it disappeared. The fire alarms came on suddenly – an irritating sound, similar to a school bell, came out of the headphone that allowed JARVIS´s voice to be heard, and a red light began to glow between the white walls of the room. The sprinklers came on, and both Loki and Tony were doused with water.

The Jotun felt the change immediately, but his coldblooded nature took it as something good and refreshing, not unpleasant. Tony, on the contrary, trembled a little at the sudden change of temperature, and started to rub his hands against his shoulders, trying to stay warm. When he turned around, Loki had to contain his laughter at the mortal´s astonished look.

"Okay… that was awesome."He said, in startled voice. Then he looked around; at the water that would have to be dried later, and at the tips of his slightly burned instruments. "But don´t do it again!" He said immediately, as if trying to placate him. "_Seriously,_ don´t do it again."

Loki smiled (in a way he hadn´t smiled in a long time) and even when his nose was still bleeding for the effort put in such a trick, he began to laugh. Tony, dripping wet and with his soaked hair plastered on his face and covering his eyes, began to laugh as well.

* * *

><p>So far, this was the most difficult chapter to writte, specially that last scene. I hope you have liked it anyway! :D<p> 


	7. A Peace Offering

Beyond the Iron Gate, right in front of Tony´s Malibu House, there was a park of about 25 hectares that his neighbors with children used to frequent. In there was a _Café Noisette _that was only open during the mornings and where he usually went to have breakfast; beside that there was the cage of a Golden Eagle that the owner had put there for public display, and beyond that, in the background of the Park, there was a thick, small group of oaks threes gloomy-looking. Between those three was the hidden terrain, right under the cliff where his house was placed, where Tony had took the Infinity Gauntlet almost three months ago. It was a place only known by Tony, Pepper and some night couples. Since Tony didn´t go there during nights anymore, and Pepper hadn´t liked it much in the first place, under the dim light of the afternoon, he considered himself his only discoverer and owner. It was a quiet place, where he went to think in time to time, when the things in his workshop became too overwhelming.

Two weeks after what he haddecided to call The Welder Incident, Tony had remembered the place. Lately, Loki had been boring him; he never did anything interesting anymore. During the last couple of weeks nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the workshop; his tools remained unmoved, no piece of Titanium was thrown at his way, everything, putting it simply, was following his natural order. It was as if the trickster wasn´t there anymore. As far as Tony knew, he was gone long ago (probably he had decided that a good joke, and a laugh or two were not worth the effort; Loki was exposing himself to the enemy, after all). Tony couldn´t say that he was disappointed; actually, it was a relief not having the trickster around anymore. He would be lying, nevertheless, if he said that things hadn´t become quite boring without him. Pepper, on the other hand, had gone to New York to have meeting with a very important client, and she would not return until late at night. Having nothing else to do, Tony decided he should return to the hidden terrain, out of curiosity more than anything.

The Iron Gate was secured from the inside, as always; Tony leaned forwards, pressing a couple of buttons in the newly repaired control panel, and opened the doors. He crossed the park, passing the Coffee Shop and the Eagle´s cage, stepping into the background of the park. When he arrived to the small group of threes, he loosed some composure; SHIELD had surrounded the place with an electric fence. He couldn´t pass through it.

For a moment he just stood there, not knowing what to do. He couldn´t just call his suit to resolve such a petty problem, (his neighbors would surely not take it kindly) but something close to pride, or maybe arrogance, didn´t let him walk away just because SHIELD didn´t want him there. Then he noticed a larger three, just a couple of inches away from him, which had long branch that passed over the fence and cross it. A silly mistake, really, but it made him smile.

He climbed the tree and passed from branch to branch until he reached a point where he could see the hidden terrain. He thought that the bushes on the other side of the fence were moving, but he didn't give it importance. He clung to the larger branch, and slowly moved forward, putting a hand in front of the other. The branch began to bend; Tony waited until it stopped moving, and let himself fall. The distance with the ground was of only half a meter, and yet...

At the same time that he let go of the tree, something grabbed his feet and pulled them back in a violent way, making him fall face down on the ground. At the moment his hands were together, just above the solar plexus; the movement made them bend inward and squeezed his fists against the Arc Reactor. During an unbearably long time, Tony was a twisted knot of pain. With a tremendous effort he managed to get a little air to enter his lungs. It escaped through his nose then, and he no longer had the strength to breathe again. He tried again, in a series of hissed suctions and pants. The pain gradually disappeared.

He leaned on his elbows and spat, partly powder partly mud. His eyes barely open distinguished Loki, crouched in front of him, a few inches away.

"Greetings, Man of Iron." He said with a smile on his face, taking him from the wrists and forcing him to stand up. Tony just stared at him for a moment, as if he couldn´t believe that he was there; this was the first time in the past month that Loki appeared in front of him like an actually physical being and not as some invisible force throwing things at him. Now that he was seeing him, it seemed surreal, somehow. Then he thought about what had just happened, and his shock instantly became in angriness.

"You son of a bitch!" He screamed, before launching towards to Loki (not really thinking about it) to try and knock him down. The Jotun just made a strange face, barely resembling a smile (that later Tony would learn, Loki always made when he was about to teleport) and instantly disappeared. Instead of falling on top of him, Tony just landed on the ground, confused.

He stood up slowly, warily looking around him. He was alone in the small glade between the trees. He turned to the left and then to the right. Nothing. No one. Something fell on top of his head. He passed a hand through his hair and looked at the ground; it was a rock (a small one, just big enough to call his attention). He looked up and another fell, this time on his forehead. Loki was standing in the larger branch of the tree, smiling at him.

"Now, that was just rude. Is that way of greeting a friend?" The Jotun asked, leaning his head backwards and lifting his chin. Tony frowned and pursed his upper lip (something he always did when he was angry) and took one of the small rocks from the ground to throw it at Loki´s direction. He was tired of the Trickster throwing things at his way.

"_We aren´t friends!_" He said meaningfully, with all the venom he could manage. And there was Loki again, standing over another branch, and with another wide smile on his face. Tony felt a sparkle of trepidation running down his stomach; suddenly, he was very aware that he didn´t have anything to protect himself. He didn´t have the suit, and he had left the bracelets that called it at home. Not without dread he realized that with all this screaming and snapping he was just taunting the Jotun. This man could easily kill him with a flick of the wrist.

"Don´t look so grim, my fellow Avenger." Loki answered gladly, nevertheless, looking more amused than offended by Tony´s outburst. "Friends or not, I´ve come with gifts." He said meaningfully, making the human frown.

The Jotun jumped from the tree´s branch, falling gracefully in the ground. He took a dark lock that, at the movement, fell out of its place, and put it back behind his ear, before taking three steps towards Tony. When he slipped a hand in one of the many pockets of his asgardian armor (one of the few vestiges from his time with the Æsir, kept out of sentiment, if he said it himself) the human tensed instantly, as if expecting him to draw a weapon and fire at his way. Loki faltered for a moment, and smiled at him again (this time something softer, that in any other person would have been reassuring) and slowly pulled out a scroll from the pocket.

"It has come to my knowledge that you are the new Guardian of the Gauntlet." He said very slowly, putting the scroll on the ground and kicking it at Tony´s way. The human was very edgy already; there was no reason to put him more nervous. Tony narrowed his eyes at him, and eyed him for a moment before bending down to pick up the scroll. It was obviously very old (its pages where yellow already) but it was in a relatively fine state. "If you wish to protect it properly, and not get harmed in the process, you would follow those instructions to the letter."

Tony looked at the scroll, at Loki, and then at the scroll again. He felt confused. "Why are you giving me this?" He asked warily, yet the tension that had grown on his body, disappeared. Loki had been lingering on his workshop for some time now, if he wanted to kill him, or even hurt him, he would have done it already. The man just shrugged, as if it was not a big deal.

"Consider it a peace offering." He said immediately, as if he had been expecting the question. "We might not be on the same side, Man of Iron. But we certainly have a common goal." While he was talking, Loki sounded very convinced of what he was saying, but been who he was, Tony had trouble believing him.

"Yeah, and what would that be?" He asked, clenching the scroll tighter.

"Keep the Gauntlet protected." Loki responded with conviction. "Out of the wrong hands, let us say."

"Yeah, that sounds as if you were giving an explanation, but you really aren´t." Tony accused, pointing Loki with ancient scroll and narrowing his eyes. The Jotun just laughed, taking three steps backwards, and putting his hands behind his back. He disappeared just as fast as he appeared; at one moment he was there, and at the other he was gone.

Tony looked up, then down and behind him. Something made him look to the other side of the fence; there was no one there. He growled under his breath, and leaned back on one of the three´s trunks, letting it carry his weight. During a long time he stayed there, sitting on the ground and looking at the place where Loki had disappeared. He thought about opening the scroll a couple of times, but finally decided against it; he didn´t know what could be inside it, he preferred to be in the safety of his workshop before finding out.

* * *

><p>When Tony opened the scroll he found out that there was nothing written on it. At the beginning he didn´t knew what to think; he just stayed there, staring blankly at the piece of paper folded in front of him. He turned it around once, twice, three times, looking for a phrase, a number a letter, anything; but he found nothing. He let it fall on the work desk in front of him, and frowned at it; there was string of anxiety hanging on his chest. He wondered why Loki, of all people, would make so much trouble about a blank, worthless piece of yellow paper.<p>

Convinced that there was something there that he was not seen, he started to run tests on the scroll, looking for unusual traces of energy, maybe a hidden message. It didn´t took long for him to realize, however, that he was not going to find anything. In the past few weeks he had learned that the Jotunn (regardless of his impetuous, raging manners), could be more than just a little puckish when he was bored; that in times of serenity, while he was silently lingering in the workshop, moving things from their place and poking at electronic devices, he could display a harmless level of playfulness that sometimes made Tony forget how very dangerous he was. It crossed his mind that this might as well be one of the many pranks that Loki usually played on him.

It was reckless, he knew, to leave Loki wandering around his workshop so freely, hidden from his own view and from JARVI´s senses. He knew that, as harmless as he had been acting until now, there was always the possibility that his attitude changed. He could steal his technology from him, take away his blueprints, or sabotage his suits; and yet, whenever Tony leave his workshop to go rest, go to a meeting, or just to talk with Pepper, he didn´t felt anxious knowing that Loki was still there. For a moment he wondered if it was because the trickster had saved his life. Whenever his thoughts started to wander over that matter, he shut them down.

* * *

><p>The weeks that followed that last incident with Loki came to be strangely normal for Tony. He left the Malibu House and settled down in New York for some time; he had to attend to countless board meetings that he had been avoiding the last months, and supervise a series of brand new projects of the company. Some divisions were closed or their funds were cut offs; others were opened and received a fair amount of money for their start. Tony started to attend to a lot of parties in order to make public relationships; other times he attended just for the sake of it. Pepper was slowly cocking her brain during the office hours, and she was too tired all the time. They rarely talked.<p>

Sharon, one of Tony´s secretaries (a blonde, cute girl, with an unexpected interest for art technology) started to hit on him during the board meetings. Whenever it happened, he openly turned her down, or found his way out of the matter through an exit door. She was persistent, nevertheless; Tony started to take it as just another thing that came to the job, and begin to ignore her.

In time to time, while he lay awake at night, he thought the Infinity Gauntlet and its six gems, safely guarded in one of the Malibu House´s basement; he thought about the prickling eyes of SHIELD on his back, and about Phil Coulson coming to fix matters with Pepper way too often. He thought about his damaged suit and what had happened that day on the beach; about the voice that rang loudly inside his head, and the unresponsive stiffness of his muscles. He made himself a lot of questions, and he didn´t have answers for any of them.

* * *

><p>On Saturday of the fifth week, Tony received a text from Pepper; they had begun to communicate almost exclusively that way, because of their ever changing schedules. He recalled that a few days earlier, during a board meeting, he had written her a fairly cheesy text telling her that he missed her and that he wanted to see her. A confession that, maybe because of her answer, that plainly ignored his message, now he found naïve and stupid.<p>

At the end of the message she wrote _´ily´_ - a childish thing that she learned in high school and that she never got over. It meant _´I love you´._ They had been married for barely a year, and the words had already begun to lose substance. Tony was tired. After having lunch, he fell asleep over the couch in the living room. He felt that something was perishing; maybe even decomposing.

For two days they didn´t saw each other. In the third day she told him that she was going to make a trip to Washington, to close a deal with a new contractor. Her amusement looked like a legal document. Tony didn´t care. An odd, annoying voice in the back of his head told him that surely, Director Coulson would be there too; he tried not to think too much about that. They barely write each other, although the _´ily´_ was always there, as the hallmark of a dark mystery, at the bottom of her messages.

Tony realized that his interest towards Sharon was going to a different level a Monday, when they stayed until late at night on Stark Tower, in the administrative offices. After several days full of insipid messages with the never faltering _´ily´_, Tony invited her to come up to the penthouse. They had a good time; they talked, they shared thoughts about the company, and they flirted a lot. Sharon´s vocabulary was strange for her age (she was just 25 years old) and yet she seemed mesmerized by everything that fell out of Tony´s mouth. These days Pepper was a remote and angry entity; sometimes she spoke to him, but they never_really_ talked. That was, on the contrary, a thorough conversation, moving, fascinating, with no other purpose than laughter.

The night slipped away slowly, with the delicacy and charm of a flying seagull. And with a similar speed. When the elevator was opened and Pepper´s voice sounded in the living room, Sharon was still there.

"Well, well. Then come in and have a cup. We can´t stay outside all night." Pepper got rid of her ponytail and her hair fell all messy over her face. Phil Coulson hugged her from behind, bringing her towards him, and kissed her cheek. Then she turned to look at the bar, and got completely rigid when she saw Tony and Sharon there, looking straight at her. The girl was gazing between her and her husband, trying to contain a laugh; the other three persons in the room were silent.

"… She was already leaving." Tony said stoic, getting up from her chair. Sharon, biting her lower lip, nodded and followed suit.

"I swear it, Tony. " Pepper said, her eyes suddenly looking red. "This is the first time that happens. Don´t think that… God, I don´t even want to know what you are thinking! Please, take that woman away!" She practically screamed, taking a hand to her forehead and gesturing towards the elevator.

Sharon walked though the leaving room and towards the end of the hall. Her eyes were wide open, and she was still biting her lips; maybe what he was containing was a nervous laugh. Tony´s tongue was as dry as a piece of carpet, and a low daze was numbing his legs. He put Sharon in the elevator and pressed the lower button. They didn´t say goodbye to each other.

He came back to the living room dreadfully, and the elevator closed behind him. Coulson was standing behind the table of the bar; he almost seemed to be hiding of Tony. Pepper looked up and crossed the room to stand in front of her husband; her eyes were shining and her chin was wet. Tony´s fists clenched at the sight and he unconsciously turned to glare at Coulson. Pepper was crying.

Tony felt something like a shiver ran down his back, but even deeper. It didn´t stop. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked straight at Pepper´s blue eyes. The woman´s cries stopped, as if someone had taken the voice from her. The fat looking veins in her through became more visible (it happened when he was angry) like a blood flown in the breaking point. Tony gestured towards Coulson, still hiding behind the bar, and started to scream.

"Get that little fucker out of my house!" He said, in obvious resemblance to her words. She glared at him for a moment, and turned in her heels to walk towards Phil; she never made it to the bar. If she did, Tony didn´t saw her.

Suddenly, the glasses of the windows broke, and a wild whistle, as the wind charging against his very forces, made an echo in the room. A loud rumble rang in Tony´s ears, muffing all others sounds, and he immediately felt been pulled back with unexpected force (something cold and soothing gripping tightly at his arm) as the ocher smells of powder filled his nostrils, and heat began to burn through his skin. The explosion in the living room, loud as it was, came as something unexpected.


	8. Bad Moon Rising

When Tony woke up, everything around him had changed. The floor of his living room looked like a carpet made of ashes and rests of burned furniture. He had passed out for a while, but the explosion had happened only moments ago; he could still smell the traces of smoke, fire, and oil. He felt confused (his vision was blurring, and at the first moments, his body had been unwilling to obey his mind). He swayed on his feet, and did his best to get up, ignoring the sensation of nausea. The wall that had separated the living room from the terrace of the building had crumbled down after the burst, leaving a bid hole in the structure of the penthouse, right where the television set had been. The cold of the night was coming through it; a burst of wind passed through him, and Tony shivered.

Coulson was right in front of him, trying to tell him something, but he couldn´t listen more than muffled words. There was a trail of blood running down his temples. Tony shook his head, trying to get rid of the dizziness, and realized that Coulson was carrying Pepper in his arms; she seemed unconscious. The edges of her hair were scorched (probably reached by the fire) and there were a few burns around his arms and neck. Later, when everything would be calmer and his heart would not be pounding loudly against his chest, Tony would realize that her injuries (and his too) were not significantly serious having in count the damage caused to the building, and he would ask himself why; now, however, the only thing he could see were the sore looking wounds in his wife´s body, and the pain written all over her face. He tried to reach out for her, but Coulson´s now audible voice made him falter.

"Mr. Stark!" Was the first thing he heard; a strange sound, like a distant scream. "The ceiling is breaking, it would fall upon us if we don´t move!" Tony stared at him for a second, as the sound in his surrounding returned to him, and turned to look at the ceiling. It was gray (scorched by the explosion) and a big, angry crack ran through it. Coulson´s next scream came as a sordid sound, that brought him to reality once again. "_Tony_, we need to leave now!"

Giving the circumstances, Tony didn´t felt too eager to follow the man´s instructions, but looking at the place around him, he realized that he didn´t have that much of a choice. He shook his head once again, and when Coulson started to walk towards the stairs, still holding Pepper in his arms, he followed suit.

* * *

><p>At four o´clock in the morning, New York was a silent place; twinkling lights and a horrible cold. But not that night; that night, while the police started to evacuate the whole building, there was only heat, and the murmur of the crowd that barged from the avenue.<p>

During evacuations, there's always a last second in which you can initiate a calm and uneventful flight. At the next one, you are locked up, not knowing when you are going to come out, if you ever manage to do so. Before Iron Man and the Arc Reactor, Tony had mocked evacuation plans while smoking with his friends on the roof, when he was still at MIT. At that time, he had only heard of C-4 explosives in trite Hollywood films that passed in televisions at Sunday. He couldn't help but feel nostalgic for those simpler times.

Pepper had been taken out first to receive medical care, and Coulson was already out of the building, been escorted by a ton of SHIELD´s officers. Tony had been left in the lower floors of the tower, waiting a long with the not so few employers that were still working for the front doors to open again. While been there, he tried his best not to think about what had happened in the penthouse before the explosion; he tried not to get lost in anger and indignation or in shame (because what Pepper had done was exactly what he had been about to do). It was certainly a matter he needed to attend, but right now he needed to concentrate in the explosion, and the evacuation; he didn´t have time to think about in the hows or whys of his and his wife´s affairs.

The smallness of the space left by the piled bodies soon began to affect him, as he wondered who had placed the bomb in the penthouse and for what reasons; the heaviness in his chest was not because of claustrophobia, but because of the anger and the not so easy to confess fear that the event was causing in him. In that hole full of people, where he nevertheless felt alone, he began to think in blueprints of high caliber weapons, in banners where the penname "MERCHANT OF DEATH" was written in red, and in the dull shine of SHIELD´s logo over the badge that he kept in his nightstand. He wondered if this attack had been orchestrated specifically against him, or if the secret organization was involved in it. In had happened on his Tower, but Coulson had been present, in the very same room where the bomb exploded; they were both fairly reasonable answers.

The coldness in the room where they were contained was even worst that the one in his workshop, even with so many people around; the tiles on the floor seemed to have acquired a different color. Everything had changed. They began to evacuate. When they cut the electricity, Tony felt that a ball of lead sucking the insides of his stomach. The emergency lights were turned on a few minutes later. Now there was no doubt, this was another place; for that night and that night only, Stark Tower didn't felt like his home anymore. Suddenly, he thought about Loki. In how he had fell gracefully from the branch of the three where he was standing, and how upon landing, he had put the only strand of hair that had fell on his face back in to place. It had been surreal; a stupidly perfect movement.

He didn´t know why he was thinking about that, but he thought in a lot of this during those long minutes in the dark. People were running through the halls and screaming things that he couldn´t understand; he wasn´t listening. Instead, he started to question all the life decisions that had taken him to that place right in that damnable hour.

When the security lights came on, he saw a man standing in the hall (he was wearing a black military uniform and a helmet that one would expect to see in a World War II movie) staring at him. At plain sight, he didn´t have any color; just the black of his clothes and the white of his skin. Tony remembered one of the ghost movies that also passed in television at Sunday, and shook his head. He looked again, and he wasn´t there anymore; in his place was a fat man wearing a T-shirt two sizes smaller than he should, screaming at him they were finally coming down the hall and he needed to get moving. By the tone he was using with him, he probably hadn´t realized who Tony was; he preferred to leave it like that.

He started to walk between the crowd, and remembered a rainy Sunday that he had spent with Pepper eating popcorn and watching _Reservoir Dogs, _his favorite movie. He almost could taste the fresh coffee that she used to bring him after lunch, and the smell of the slightly crude pastrami that once she tried to make for dinner. He thought about her and all the other women, about the first time they had sex and the second one, and the quickie they had a couple of weeks ago.

_Be careful_

That´s what she used to tell him whenever he went away for a SHIELD mission, even when she knew that he wouldn´t listen.

_Don´t play hero, just do what you´re told._

The cries of two women behind him pulled Tony out of his thoughts, burying like knives in the back of his head. They got closer to the ground floor, and he started to cough; another bomb had been detonated in the basement. Suddenly, Tony realized what he was doing. He was there between the crowd, waiting to be rescued by the police and the paramedics like all the other people around him. He was escaping. He smelled the powder and the smoke and the fire; he remembered the blast of the bomb, Pepper´s injuries, and Coulson´s screaming, and he felt anger rise up his chest.

_Don´t play hero._

Pepper used to tell him, even when she knew that he wouldn´t listen.

He curled his hands into fists, and moved away from the line directed at the front doors, now widely opened. The women that had been crying behind him passed running at his side, and went straight to an ambulance parked outside; one of them was limping. Tony clenched his teeth, and tried his best to move down the hall without been seen. Finally, he reached the stairs, and couching just a little because of the smoke, he started to walk towards the small workshop that he had built in the middle floors. If he wanted to do something about this, he needed to get to one of his suits first.

* * *

><p>In the hall that would take him to his workshop, all the lights were turned down, expect one. It came from a small lamp, placed in the upper corner of one of the walls, and there was a dragon-fly placed on top of it. It´s long, cylindrical form was reflected as a dark shadow down the hall, as a vicious creature lurking in the dark. Tony stared at it for a moment, before continuing his walk; for some reason, he started to move faster.<p>

Finally, he turned down in the last corner, knowing that he would find his workshop in the next hall. When he reached it, however, he stood completely still; the sudden light coming from the opened door blinding him. He grimaced, narrowing his eyes, and immediately retrieved. He rubbed his temples with his fingers for a moment, and he looked again, hiding behind the corner; soon he could distinguish the form of a person between the dark, standing right in front of his workshop´s door, with his back to the wall. For some reason, the sight made his skin crawl.

The figure seemed to notice him, for it turned to look at his way; instinctively, Tony took a step back. For a moment, none of them moved; it was just him and the unknown figure, looking at each other in the dark. Slowly, almost cautiously, it began to walk towards him; its boots making no sound against the blue gray tildes of the floor. When it was close enough, the light of the one lamp in the hallway behind him illuminated him; he was dressed in some sort of ancient armor, and its right hand held a silver dagger covered in blood.

"_Goddamnit_..." Knowing that, while been in the dark and without his suit he was a disadvantage, Tony turned around in his heels and tried to run. He had taken four or five steps, however, when he collided with something and fell to the ground. When he looked up, he saw the same man that he had seen in the hallway during the evacuation; his black military uniform and helmet remained, as a big, absurd anachronism standing on his way. He was pointing a nine millimeter gun at him. Once again, Tony cursed, and tried desperately to get out of the way.

He threw himself to the ground in order of dodging the bullet, and took hold of his bracelets to send a call to the Iron Man suit, stored in a glass cabinet just a couple of meter away; he hesitated however, when the sound of the shoot never came. Instead, he saw the black, tall figure charge against the man and immobilize him in seconds, putting his right arm behind his back and kicking his gun out of the way. The man struggled against his hold for a few seconds, barely making any sound, until the silver dagger came to rest gingerly over the soft skin of his neck. Tony grimaced when the figure, in a quick, swift notion, sliced his throat, shivering at the strange, choking sound like that followed it.

The man´s dead body fell to the ground in a startling clatter; a sound that, for some reason, reminded Tony to the one he had heard when he accidentally pushed Jake out of the bed, when he was still a baby. It caused him, just like then; something between fear and disbelief, a small pressure in the inside of his chest that made him falter for a second. He was about to push the button in his bracelet to call his suit, when the dark figure finally came to stand in the light.

It took Tony a moment to realize that the man standing in front of him was Loki; the insufferable trickster that had disappeared from the face of the earth a couple of weeks ago, after leaving him to watch over an ancient scroll that had nothing written on it. For some reason, it made a wave of relief wash upon him, slackening his muscles and letting him breathe properly. Loki was not harmless, he knew, but he was certainly better that an unknown black figure watching at him in the dark. He was throwing a big, cocky smile at his way that somehow made Tony feel safe.

"We really need to stop bumping into each other like this." He said evenly, looking somehow tired, but smirking nevertheless. "It _is _becoming repetitive."

Tony stared at him for a moment, not knowing what to do or say at the sudden apparition. Finally, he got to his feet, and his astonished face adopted a rather angry grimace. "What the fuck are you doing here?!" He asked, feeling how the relief transformed into anxiety in his chest. He was still unarmed, and he didn´t have to remind himself that, no matter how harmless he could manage to look like, Loki was a dangerous man. What he had just witnessed was a living proof of it.

"…Pardon me?" Loki asked after a few seconds, with a strange smile lingering on his face. He looked almost surprised by his reaction.

"What are you doing in my tower?! Who the fuck was that soldier boy that you just knocked off?!" He said with a hint of anxiety in his voice, pointing at Loki with one hand and the immobile, dead body at the other side of the hall. The jotunn just smiled at him more widely, looking somehow pleased, tiding his head towards the inert soldier.

"Do search into his pockets." He said evenly, putting his bloody dagger back into the sheaths hanging from his armor. "I think you´ll be fairly surprised."

Tony narrowed his eyes at him, seeming suspicious, but after a few moments of hesitation, he started to back towards the corpse, grimacing just a little. He kneeled in front of it, and his nostrils flared at the smell of blood; it was an acrid scent, bitter to the palate, at which he had become used to in that small, dark cave in Afghanistan. Custom never made it any better, thought. He searched into the pockets of its gray jacket, and found nothing but dirt and dust. The ones in the sides of its pants held two sharpened knives longer than his forearms, and the smaller ones at his ankles held what looked like little explosives. At each discovery, Tony´s heart started to beat faster, and his breathing became heavier. At some point it became obvious that this man, however he was, had been responsible for a explosion in the penthouse and in the basement as well. For a moment he wondered how he even made it through the security. JARVIS was supposed to be ready for this sort of situations.

Finally, while searching under his jacket, he found it. It was hanging from its neck (as a necklace of some sort) and it was hidden under his clothes; a black and silver place, no longer than three inches or so, with the design of a human skull right in the center, as well as other unknown traces. Tony swallowed hard, realizing for the first time the gravity of the situation, and cursed under his breath.

"You do recognize the signature, do you not?" He heard Loki said over his shoulder, as he walked closer. He was talking in a shushed voice, and even while wearing boots his footsteps made no sound against the floor; he obviously didn´t want to be heard, and Tony had to wonder why. It was possible that other agents were around the tower, he mused; it would do no good if they were found by them. "I´m afraid you have received a rather unpleasant visit from HYDRA."

Tony rubbed a hand against his forehead, feeling how a low headache began to form there. He was already a little shaked by the two last explosions; the mere thought that those were just the tip of the iceberg, that this mess could get even worse, was unacceptable. "I don´t understand." He said, standing up slowly and letting the plaque fell on top of the dead man´s chest. "I have nothing to do with HYDRA. I´m not even part of Capsicle´s campaign to dismantle them. What do they want with me?" He asked, turning to look straight at Loki´s green eyes. They looked strangely bright in the dark, when the rest of his face was framed by shadows. The jotunn shrugged, throwing him that crooked smile of his, as if it was not important.

"Let us find out." He said, gesturing to the door of his workshop at the other end of the hall, from where a white, dulled light was coming. Realizing, for the first time since he arrived, that there was movement in the room. "Please, do follow me." The jotunn said evenly, starting to walk towards it. Tony stared at his back for a few seconds, and just a little hesitant, he shrugged it off and obliged.

He still had a lot of questions, but they could be answered latter.

* * *

><p>This chapter just didn´t want to be written. I think I had never taken so long to update, sorry for the delay :P<p>

Hope you like it, and if you do, please leave feedback! :D


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