Chapter Text
The dark padded soft-footed, darting needle-threads, crystal-seeds, frost-edges growing to scatter his mind's vision, reminding him he was born of ice, of winter, of harsh, frigid endings. Loki held his summer-warm, sun-bright, baby closer. Time was even less a Midgardian's friend than Loki's. Already there were hints of frost in Tony's hair. He rocked Tony, slowly. There was no more time to play, not now. "Sweetheart, you trust me, you trust daddy Loki, don't you." It wasn't a question; couldn't be a question. Either there was trust now, or there was failure.
He picked up a whole apple, a shining, perfectly round, globe. "Trust me, and take it, Tony."
It took a moment for Tony's hands to wrap around the apple, but the delay was due to childish coordination, not hesitation. Loki stroked his hair. "That's my good boy." Now that he knew it was there, his fingers tingled at the faint shimmer-blue of Tesseract infusing Tony. No doubt it was strongest in his blood, but there was enough in skin, especially in the hands of a maker, for what Loki meant to do. Creation was magic; from the mind to reality. Midgardians resorted to the intermediary of physical manipulation but in their dreams they knew the underlying truth/lies of what is/what can be. Loki had seen Tony's light-sculptures, had heard the invisible servant, had seen the souls formed in metal. Tony was a mage who lacked belief in magic, who lacked the spark. Who had lacked the spark.
"Hold it tight, baby."
Tony tilted his head to glance up at Loki, and then looked back down at the apple. His hands tightened on the fruit.
"Good, that's right. Hold on tight and remember it's an apple." Loki changed the seeming of the apple, at first subtly shifting only the color from golden to green, to red, then changing the seeming of the shape to other Midgardian fruits, some much smaller than the apple, some much larger.
Tony dropped it when the apple looked like a pineapple, spreading his hands to try to match the shape he saw. Loki caught it and laughed at the expression on Tony's face. "You forgot that it's an apple." He tapped Tony's chest, just above the Tesseract light. "See with your heart, not your eyes." Loki sent tendrils, finer than the thinnest spider thread, of his own green magic, to hover a breath away from Tony's skin, tracing the paths from heart to fingers, over and over again until Tony's blue flickered and followed to pool and pulse in a coiling disk at Tony's palms. That was a bit surprising; most mages focused the energies from their fingertips. Well, Loki had never known a Midgardian mage; perhaps they're different. It doesn't matter. It will work that way, too.
Tony took the apple again, this time reaching unerringly through the image of the pineapple to the true shape beneath the illusion. His blue formed a net around the apple.
"It's an apple all the way through," Loki said gently. He watched as the blue flowed from Tony, sluggishly at first, and then smoothly, until Tesseract blue had sunk all the way into the core, and beyond, into every dimension where the apple was, could be, had been. Loki was as proud of Tony as he'd been of himself the first time he'd sent a twin of himself to distract the cook while he stole tarts. "Well done, baby."
Best to get on with it. He didn't know how long Tony could hold his focus. It would be very bad if he faltered part way through. He kissed Tony's temple. "Remember. It's an apple. Only an apple." He gathered his memories of the void, seeking back to the beginning. The apple darkened, deepened, darker, black velvet pin-pricked for an illusion of stars.
Tony shivered.
"See with your heart." The stars took on form, details impossible, cold heat, charted courses beyond logic, expanding, shrinking, merging, passing through each other with silent screams in the void that was beyond empty, beyond lifeless, and yet held horrors of unlife, of folded space where things like the Tesseract bred to cast three-dimensional shadows. It was the unavoidable impossibility the mind couldn't hold, more horrible than any monster, the logic that said I cannot accept this, cannot visualize this, it cannot exist, but I must accept it, because it does exist.
Tony's eyes were wide and locked on the infinity that was cloaked around an apple, the apple like an irritant inside an oyster. Loki's green gathered around the apple, drew Tony's blue, at first the faintest overlay, more gossamer than morning mist, but gathering faster, and faster, veiling, thickening to swirls of turquoise, aqua, teal, gentling the fury, sweetening the bitter, cloaking the impossible with a thin veneer of reason. There weren't layers enough to cover what Loki had experienced, but Tony's sojourn had been so very brief that he'd only begun to process the madness.
The apple glowed softly, all the colors of the sky and sea, soothing, peaceful. Beyond the sky, beneath the sea there was darkness. The only way out was through. "Eat it, baby. It's good." Loki didn't hold his breath while he waited to see if Tony trusted him enough to accept the darkness, to believe it was safe just because Loki said so, but he did close his eyes. If it failed, he didn't want to see his baby destroyed. He had too many not-memories/not-dreams/not-nightmares of children he'd failed to protect.
He heard the crunch and smelled apple, bright and crisp and clean. He whispered, "Eat it all, Tony."
***
Tony fell asleep the moment the last bite of core vanished down his throat, the magic spreading soothing balm over his madness. The healers would have linked the regression to his insanity, Loki was sure of that. Tony will wake sane, cured and ... no. Loki rocked him and whispered in his ear, "My baby. You'll always be my baby."
Reluctantly, Loki laid Tony down on the bed and covered him. Black, red, and gray were pulling at him, singing obscene songs, biting at his heels, making him stumble toward the abyss. He picked up the book he'd been reading and sat down in a chair near the window. He needed to keep the terrors at bay for a while longer; needed Tony to remember him like this, not... not the other way. He was reading the same page for the fifth time, trying to make the runes stay on the page, make them stop growing spines and growling at him, when he heard Tony stirring on the bed. He put down the book and stood up, relieved that he'd held out long enough. "Tony? Baby?"
"Don't!" Tony sat up, started to get out of bed, and then glanced down at his bare chest, grimacing. He pulled the covers up to his shoulders. "Jesus... what am I wearing... oh, fuck no."
"You remember." Loki smiled, trying very hard to make it a sane, reassuring smile. Judging from the look Tony gave him, his attempt was a dismal failure.
"Yeah, no. Don't touch me!" Tony yelped when Loki took a step closer. "My skin is crawling enough already."
"I cured you. You owe me."
"It doesn't work that way. We still haven't finished adding up all the lives you took, all the people you destroyed. Hell, even I wouldn't have been... messed up... if you hadn't used my own building as your stepladder to the Dark Side."
"Well, that's true." Loki was still smiling. He liked it when his babies showed spirit, had heart. "But you wouldn't have..." He sent a jab of green at Tony, and grinned as Tony's hands came up instinctively, blue disks flashing protectively from his palms. "...that, either."
Tony stared at his hands as the blue ebbed and vanished. "What did you do to me?"
"Taught you how to use what you already had, baby."
Tony winced. "Do NOT call me that."
"But you are, and you always will be, my baby," Loki said reasonably.
"Uh huh, no, see that's just a no." Tony got up with the bedding wadded up around himself and edged away from Loki while still watching him warily. "THOR. You here, buddy? Visiting time's over."
Loki moved then, so swift Tony had only time to roll his eyes in panic before Loki had him pressed up against the wall, hand around his throat holding him still. He leaned close to whisper in Tony's ear. "Promise me you will visit me, my son." He felt Tony gulp. He could snap a Midgardian neck so swiftly, so completely. No one could stop him. Of course he wouldn't. He wouldn't hurt his baby. He only wanted Tony to listen. To obey. To be a good son. "And do not lie. I am the father of lies, I'll know."
Tony's hands came up to pull at Loki's arm, to no effect. "I... I'm busy, you know. What with protecting Earth, running my business... ok, Pepper does that, but really, I have a lot of commitments! And I don't think I could get Bifrost frequent traveller miles."
"Once a century, that's not too much to ask, is it?" Loki smoothed Tony's hair with his free hand.
"Oh, ok, sure, fine. A hundred years from now, Earth time. It's a date. I'm sure I'll be free then."
Loki released Tony and stepped back just as the watchers swarmed in, taking his baby away. He heard Thor's voice, loud and joyous, but the void was screaming and he was screaming back to drown it out. They encircled him in silence and darkness that was less than void, and he slipped into it, hating and loving the mercy of temporary oblivion.
***
Thor brought another basket of fruit later. Loki wasn't sure how much later. He wasn't really listening to Thor's happy ramblings about Tony's cure, about how he knew all along that Loki... whatever, Loki didn't care. He took one of the apples from the basket, all shining gold, and smiled. Idunn's apples. The apples of immortality, if your magic recognizes them. Odin would be furious if he knew that Loki had awakened Tony's magic and taught it how to use the apple. He'd be so angry that one of Loki's babies would live forever.
Thor eventually left. Loki sat by his window, watching the golden city and rocking an image of his Tony in his arms. He might visit Midgard a hundred years from now. By then Tony would have learned to appreciate his father's love.
"The king may sing in his bitter flight,
The pine may croon to the vine to-night,
But the little snowflake at my breast
Liketh the song I sing the best, ---
'Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
Weary thou art, anext my heart;
Sleep, little one, sleep.' "