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The first thing Tony notices about Thor’s appearance is that he’s haggard. Worn at the edges, and sad, in a way that Tony has never seen the thunder god before. Like he’s seen too much, in too short an amount of time, and is anxious to relieve himself at least partially of the burden of knowing—whatever it is he knows.
“Hey, Ben Hur,” Tony says, with one hand on the ceramic top of the bar in his house, the other hand on his jeans, thumb hooked into his belt loops. “Long time no see.” He reaches underneath the bar and pulls out a bottle of some fancy wine or another—he didn’t bother checking the label, he knows Thor won’t care or even notice the taste. Or he’s assuming, anyway—Loki never seemed to take any note of the differences between one alcohol or another on Earth. Said they were beneath him, and asked Tony how he could drink such “flavorless beverages”.
Tony managed to change his mind later about the wine, at least, when he let Loki lick it off his skin in his room.
“Yes,” Thor says, and takes the proffered glass Tony’s holding out to him. His voice is as uncertain as he looks, but Tony’s ignoring that, because probably Thor’s just been through a lot. Tony heard about what happened on Asgard through Jane Foster—Frigga’s death. Odin’s blatant refusal to stand down from his age-old traditions on the throne. The battle with Malekith in London, the one Tony knows Thor won.
Jane didn’t tell him anything about Loki, but then it’s not as if Tony expected her to. Like he’s ever told anyone about the two of them—except Thor, of course, who found out in a rather unfortunate way what his brother and the “Man of Iron” were getting up to behind closed doors.
“So,” Tony says, pouring himself a glass and leaning back against the bar, watching Thor out of the corners of his eyes. “You wanted to meet up?” Because that’s why they’re standing here to begin with: Thor was in London when he called Tony, asked if they could arrange to see each other soon at Stark Tower. There’s something Thor “has to tell Tony”, apparently.
Thor nods in response to Tony’s question, and “It’s of grave importance,” he says, “what I have to tell you. Please know that I would not have come here to bother you if it were not, Anthony.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Tony says. “Something big’s going down? You gonna need me to rally up and go back to Asgard with you, give your brother a lecture? Because I’m gonna be perfectly honest with you, if I’m meeting up with Loki again I’d rather do it without the suit on, and I don’t think you wanna hear the way the rest of that sentence is gonna go—”
Thor’s expression shadows, and a pained crease appears between his eyebrows.
“Sorry,” Tony says, waving a hand and taking a sip of wine, “no sex jokes, I know, too much—”
“Anthony,” Thor interrupts, and his voice is gravel-rough and just on the point of breaking. Which is strange, because Tony’s never seen Thor anywhere close to crying before, why would he be now—
“Yeah, all right, sorry, I’ll shut up.” Tony sets his lips, frowns into his glass. “Tell me, Blondie, why’d you come here? What’s this huge secret you got for me?”
Thor swallows. “It’s about Loki,” he starts, and then stops, still uncertain.
A low, unsettled feeling is growing in Tony’s chest. “What about him?” Thinking maybe he’s gone back to Jötunheim, maybe under Odin’s orders, and that Tony won’t be able to see him again for a while. Or that he’s in prison and will be until Tony is old—not like either of those things would matter, not when it comes to Loki. Tony’s not going to admit this even at gunpoint, but he’d wait for Loki if it took him the rest of his life to do so.
“He’s,” Thor says, taking a deep breath and setting his wine glass down. “He died, Anthony,” and Tony feels the floor give way beneath him.
*
Six million, seven hundred and thirty-two thousand, two hundred and thirteen miles away, Loki sits in Odin’s throne, a hand on his knee, chin propped up in the cleft of his hand. It’s been days of just sitting here, giving occasional orders in the Allfather’s form when needed, spending the rest of the time trying desperately to put the image of Frigga out of his mind. His mother, the last good thing about Asgard that he had to hold on to. The person who held him, raised him, loved him. Taught him magic and reading and how to stand the warm furs he was forced to wear in the cold, even though he’d never had use for them even as a child.
The only person in all of Asgard who treated Loki no differently even after his true parentage was revealed, and the last thing he’d said to her was that she was not his mother.
He can’t think about her, though. He has to rule the realm with Odin’s face until such a time as he can reveal his true identity—and that won’t be for a long while. Three hundred more years, at least, because he has to assemble an army first, train them and make sure they know loyalty to him no matter which form he takes, Asgardian or Jötun.
Not for the first time, Loki finds himself wishing he were still on Midgard, where time moves quicker and people learn commands faster. Where no one ever suspected his use of the scepter for mind control, no one knew how he thinks, no one knew his battle tactics. It would take two months, on Earth.
And Loki would have Anthony at his side.
He knows that, it’s not a question, Anthony’s loyalty to Loki. The way he looked at him, like no one has ever looked at Loki before or since. The crass jokes that spilled out of his mouth, the scent of gasoline and oil in his hair and on his clothes, lingering even when Loki would try spells to get rid of them. The scars on his chest, his arms and legs, that Loki would run a finger over at night while Anthony watched, eyes lit up from beneath by the glow of his arc reactor.
They had a week together, seven short Midgardian days, but Loki doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to push that out of his mind either.
With his chin still propped up on his hand, now, he shifts to Odin’s form and walks down into the underground rooms of the castle, where he can have some privacy to do what he needs to. There’s a portal down there, a spyglass—he’d described it to Anthony once, and he’d called it a telescope, but Loki doesn’t think it’s quite the same thing—and when Loki looks through it, he can see into any of the nine realms he chooses.
There are certain advantages to having his mother’s magic.
He looks through the spyglass now, channeling magic through his fingertips until he’s got a clear picture of Midgard, and then more closely of New York, and still more closely until he finds Stark Tower, standing tall and solid in the center of Manhattan. He would go straight there, forget all this looking through spyglasses in dark rooms and not communicating with anyone, but he has to stay here for now. Asgard needs its king.
Loki lets out a dry chuckle at that last thought, then hones in on the uppermost floor of Stark Tower, where he knows Anthony takes his leisure time.
And is surprised to see Thor in the room with Anthony. Broad shoulders facing away from Loki’s vision, frame hunched and smaller than Loki’s seen him in a while, and he’s talking to Anthony, clutching a wine glass in his huge hand. Anthony’s holding the bottle by the neck, has a strange expression on his face.
There aren’t many mirrors in Asgard, but Loki thinks maybe the expression on Anthony’s face is the same one he wore upon learning about Frigga.
With a little prodding and more magic swirling from his fingertips, Loki manages to get sound added to his picture, and hones in on the conversation just in time to hear Anthony say, rough and raw and shaky:
“You’re sure?”
“He died in my arms, in Svartalfheim,” Thor says, and Loki feels something sharp and cold slice through his chest.
Anthony lets out a short, sharp laugh, angry and bitter. “What a fucking idiot,” he snarls, and suddenly the wine bottle is on the floor, shards spreading around their feet, wine bleeding red into the carpet. “What the fuck kind of messiah complex did he have, going like that, did he think he was doing you a favor by letting himself get killed?”
“My brother died to save my life and the lives of thousands on Asgard. Were you not prepared to do the same last year?”
“It doesn’t fucking count!” Anthony yells, his voice ripped from his throat and Loki doesn’t think he’s even aware that he’s crying. “You realize I’m gonna be dead in twenty, twenty-five years anyway. Not him, y’know? He had thousands of years left. Could have—” he stops, dragging a hand down his face, but Loki thinks he knows what Anthony was going to have said anyway.
Could have spent some of them with me.
“He didn’t even give a fuck about any of you!” he adds after a second, and Thor flinches back, stunned hurt in his eyes. Like he didn’t already know that, and Loki would roll his eyes at his brother’s unwavering devotion if he weren’t so focused on not crying himself.
“Anthony—”
“Fucking go,” Anthony says. He’s all tense and shaking and Loki wants so badly to go there, damn the consequences, wrap himself around his lover’s frame and breathe promises that he’s never going to leave again. “You go back to Asgard and you don’t talk to me about your brother ever again, got that?”
Thor vanishes—ready as always to obey orders instantly and without question—and Loki’s left looking at Anthony alone. He sinks to the carpet, soaked through with wine now, ruined, head in his hands, shoulders shaking. He looks devastated, half-dead himself, and Loki flexes his fingers uselessly against the spyglass, mouthing Anthony’s name until it comes unbidden from his throat in a choked, harsh whisper.
He watches Anthony until the Midgardian sun has gone down, until it’s too dark to see in the room any longer, and then he allows his magic to slip slowly from between his fingers, the picture going grainy and shifting and finally fading out altogether.