Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

1

By the twentieth attempt, even Thor had given up. Tony thinks its twenty, but really he’d lost count by four and wandered off by seven. He does however, reach over and pat Thor in commiseration on the arm as the sweating god collapses on the floor, panting. Tony is a supportive team mate that way.

‘Good try buddy. Pointless, but good.’

‘Tis no consequence, nonetheless,’ Thor gestured around their prison cell. ‘I fear these bars are held in place by a means more magical than its make.’

‘Magic again,’ Steve sighed.

‘Can you blame them?’ Clint groused. ‘Nobody would want to strip Tony with their own bare hands, Cap.’

‘Very funny,’ Tony sniped, although he felt small and fragile and short, barefoot and dressed only in his lightweight bodysuit.  ‘Amora still better have my suit somewhere around. At least on this plane ofexistence.’

‘Now what?’

‘It’s no use,’ Widow announced, ‘With all our weapons confiscated and no way to break out. We have to wait for Amora to come back.’

Tony stared at her. ‘You know what she’ll do to Thor when she comes back!’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Steven scolded. On the far side of the room, Bruce was sitting cross-legged on the floor, meditating. The cell was much too small to risk unleashing the hulk, so the moment they’ve woken up from the effects of Amora’s sleeping pollen and found themselves in a holding area no bigger than Tony’s bathroom Bruce had promptly placed himself as far from everyone else as he could and squeezed his eyes shut.

'We're helpless in any case,' Clint pointed out. 'No point debating when there's nothing to be done.'

The words escaped before he could swallow them. ‘There’s one last uh, thing -’

‘We've each of us tried everything,’ Steve said, and then narrowed his eyes at Tony’s shifty expression. ‘Haven’t we?

‘Everything that’s worth trying.’ Tony said quickly. ‘Because some things aren’t worth the uh, risk of it, you know. ‘

‘Are you saying all this time you might have had the means to get us out of here,’ Clint asked incredulously, ‘and you’ve just been standing there?’

‘I don’t know, alright?’ Tony barely refrained from shouting, conscious of how sensitive Bruce was to tension in a space. ‘I’ve been thinking of how to go about it.’

‘Then think faster.’

Tony opened his mouth to argue.

‘Tony,’ Widow leaned forward in a low voice. ‘We need to get Bruce out. Whatever you have to do, just do it. For his sake.’

‘You know I hate it when you play that card.’ Tony was fidgeting with his hands, twisting them as he paced around. He couldn't seem to stop despite the fact that his team was staring at him like he’d grown two heads. ‘So I'll do it but what you’re about to see cannot be held against me in front of Fury or any court of law if it gets our asses out of here alive. Kapish?'

'I knew it.' Clint crowed. 'This is something we're all going to live to regret, isn't it?'

'We'll figure it out,' said the brave Captain. 'Go ahead, Tony.'

Tony swallowed the bitter realization that he had been hoping the team would stop him before he started. Fine. Dammed if he did and dammed if he didn't.

'Ok. Everybody turn away because I’ve never done this before. I’m serious. There might be singing, or crying or fireworks. Probably a lot of begging because that would just make sense.’

They just stare at him, mouths gaping, and Tony snapped. ‘Turn! Turn turn, get to the other side, don’t you dare watch.’

He pointedly turned away from them, closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, summoning only a single thought into his consciousness.

He could almost feel Steve’s stare burning a hole through his head. ‘I don’t understand Tony, what can you possibly do out of your suit that we haven’t tried-‘

Its Widow that puts it together first. ‘It’s not what, it’s who.’

Tony ignored them and gritted his teeth, filtering everything out. He was supposed to concentrate. Clear his mind and think of-think of what? Maybe worship- no no, summoning.  Damn that crazy arsed whackjob for not giving him better instructions. Was he supposed to be prostrate on the floor? Do a raindance? What?

'Ironman, what the hell are you tr-‘

Tony gave up, raised his head to the ceiling and simply hollered his intentions to the universe like he expected to be heard. ‘I’m summoning you and I know you hear me, now come on and get a move on it.’

‘Summons-‘  Tony could hear the gears snapping to place in Thor’s brain, and the thud of his booted feet as he strode forward. ‘What new manner of mischief is this?‘

Tony opens his mouth to answer, but a flash fills the room, shimmers with enough energy and light that it forces everyone to take a step back and avert their eyes as it zips faster in circles and finally evolves into a gold and green form - and suddenly Loki is standing in the middle of the cell with them, wearing a set of horns that brushes the ceiling and a look of dangerous delight on his pale, pointy face.

‘Tony Stark,’ the god of mischief breathed in a voice that sounded remarkably like fond exasperation.  ‘Surely that was the worst acolyte’s call in the history of your people. Do consider for future reference the fact that even your forefathers, before they discovered language, fared better than whatever passed in your mind as constitutes for prayer.’

‘What the fuc-‘ Because of course Clint.

‘Brother-‘ Thor begun as Loki held up a hand, and Tony could feel the unborn strands of his future hair turning white as Hawkeye and the Thunderer’s mouths disappeared from their faces like too many horror movies he’d seen.

The rest of the team jumped back immediately with varying states of shock and preparatory violence, and Tony has no doubt he’s waving his hands around like a conductor who’s lost his marbles. Which might just be true.  

‘Creepy,’ Tony said, in a voice slightly higher than he’d like. ‘Creepy creepy magic man. I wished you wouldn’t do that.’

Loki merely raised an eyebrow. ‘You summoned me . Do you intend to waste my time?’

‘Uh, Tony-‘ It was Bruce. His eyes still tightly squeezed shut, but he was beginning to look distinctly green around the edges. ‘I’m not sure how long I can hold out-‘

Loki turned to him with flashing eyes and he slumped over, a blissed out smile on his face as Clint and Widow caught him.

Hurriedly Tony turned to Captain America before he could use his mouth. Or fist.

‘Stop stop stop. I told you all to turn away. What did you promise me? He turned to Loki and gave him the same glare. ‘And what did you promise me?’

‘Nothing I have not deigned to keep, although your friends may be free to keep my brother company if they but utter a word in my presence,’ Loki said. After a brief moment of looking at Tony he conceded, ‘Be calmed however, for their voices will return once they find in themselves the will to stay silent.'

‘Which means not as long as you’re around,’ Tony groaned. ‘Great.’

‘It is indeed as simple and as difficult as that,’ the god inclined his head mockingly. 'As most trials tend to be.'

‘You have such weird notions of fair play, Dancer.’

The god had the gall to laugh. ‘Ah but what is play without an element of the imagination in it?’ 

Tony sighed. ‘Look, Loki. I know this is weird territory, but I really need a favour here. Pretty please? I swear I’ll make it up to you.’

Loki perused the area around him, seeming to see right through Tony’s team as if they didn’t exist. ‘You do like being in captivity, Stark. I had thought the experience of the last time I found you thus would have chased such instincts from you. Do you ever learn?’

‘Nope. Never.’ Tony said. ‘Perks of the job, what can I say? Dental plans, annual holidays, involuntary incarceration- there’s where you come in.’

Loki mouth twisted into the approximation of a smile that didn't fool Tony for one minute . ‘Oh, do go on.’

The mortal cleared his throat. ‘Look. You’ve busted me out of things before. Probably out of sheer boredom that last time, I get it. Hell I wouldn't want to share a cell with me. But I remembered what you told me - the fact that you do answer prayers? Well I guess you can call this a prayer. And... what friends would do for each other.‘

Loki’s eyes were narrowed, but not in anger at his presumptuousness. ‘And are we? Friends?’ the god asked softly.

When hell freezes over.

Tony swallowed. ‘We can be. Yeah, why not? After those last few... sessions, you probably  know more about me than most people by now. So we need out, Loki,’ He paused. ‘Please.’

Loki just looked at him with a speculative consideration that made Tony’s skin crawl. Then the god seemed to come to a decision, because an arm chair and a stool suddenly appeared in the narrow confines of the cell. Out of the corner of his eye Tony saw his team crowding uncomfortably against the walls to make way for the conjured items, watching the surreal proceedings with narrowed gazes.

The mortal stood gaping as he watched the god folding himself into the armchair and gesturing at the stool before him. ‘Sit. Tell me the rest of your story.’

‘What?’ Tony squawked.

Loki’s eyes went unfocused for a moment, and a pot of tea appeared. A fucking pot of floating tea was now in the cell with them, and it gave off a delicate flowery scent and hovered at Loki’s elbow like a sentient thing.

The god held a prettily patterned porcelain teacup out to the hovering pot. ‘Are mortal minds so feeble? You never finished the telling of your story in our last prison; I will have it in this one.’

Tony scrubbed his hands over his face. ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Oh believe it,’ Loki’s smile was impossibly wide and entertained. ‘Take advantage, Stark. Seldom will you find me willing to barter on such… paltry terms. But I have always been an avid listener to a tale well told, and find yours to be particularly inspired.’

‘Fuck my life,’ Tony said and sank into the stool. He was never going to live down the humiliation of doing this with Loki whist his team looked on.  

The god of mischief blew delicately at his teacup and tutted in sympathy. ‘Yes, it does appear that way, doesn’t it? Would you like some tea?’

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

Trust in Allah, but tie your camels up at night ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

2

Tony’s stool of course, is barely adequate, deliberately uncomfortable and set just on this side of too high for Tony to keep a proper purchase on his balance and still find a place to fold his hands without constantly feeling like he’s about to tip right over into Loki’s lap.

‘Comfortable?’ the god purred knowingly. Fucking magiky prick.

‘Mellow as a cup of hot tea,’ Tony snapped.

The god simply cradled his steaming cup lovingly. ‘I did offer, you know. Its really very good.’

Tony decided to ignore him. ‘So where did we leave off? I want us vamoosed by the time Amora gets back so you’re going to get the Stark Notes version this time.’

‘I’d rather you start right from the beginning. As it happens, I do feel as if I’ve missed out on so much.‘ Loki stretched his impossibly long legs out, booted feet slinking under the legs of Tony’s stool in a way that doesn’t freak him out one bit, nope.

Tony drew a blank. ‘You already know about the ten rings and how I got the arc reactor-’

‘But that is not the beginning, Tony Stark, you have been alive for long years before that,’ Loki mouthed from around his cup, eyes gleaming with unknowable amusements. ‘Tell me instead about the day you were born.’

Tony’s mouth fell open. ‘Seriously.’

‘You think I jest?’

‘Fine. Fine. I existed as a squalling bundle of piss and regurgitation at two pm on May 29^th 1970, blessed with a glorious head of hair and an even finer voice as evidenced by what you hear today, and-‘

‘Once upon a time,’ Loki interrupted.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Tony roared. All he got for his pains was some polite slurping sounds; the god didn’t even bother looking up from his teacup.

‘You are just. You’re just fucking playing me, aren’t you?’

‘I’m a very patient man, Tony Stark. I don’t mind measuring my coin in decades or hours to get what I want. You on the other hand have little time to lose, so I suggest you begin as you mean to finish. The objective of this exercise is telling me what I want to hear, is it not? Now, let us start again, with once upon a time-‘

‘One upon a fucking time.’

If anything, Loki’s grin grew wider, as if witnessing Tony’s defiance was the highlight of his week. ‘Let us try again then. And repeat as many times as is necessary. Once upon a time there was a mortal…’

Tony gritted his teeth. ‘Once upon a time, there was a mortal.’

‘There Tony Stark, was that so hard? Please proceed.’

Tony swallowed the lump of resentment in his throat and continued. ‘There was a mortal who was born onto the world of Migard and christened with the glorious and purposeful name of Anthony Edward Stark. He was born to high society, a kingly wealth and servants that dropped whatever he fancied like ripe fruit upon his tiny and adorable upturned hands. Growing up as the only child to such parents, the boy had expected his presence to be the brightest star of his household, adored by his parents and showered with love and attention- aww, you know what, screw this shit.’

Incensed, Tony tried to get up, only to find the sharp end of Loki’s spear suddenly poking into his chest. ‘Pray do continue your story.’

Tony violently expelled a breath, though why he had grown so agitated, he couldn’t say. ‘You can’t make me.’

‘Can’t I, now?’ the god murmured, tone mild and the lines of his shoulders relaxed even as his eyes slitted like a cat’s. ‘Shall we make a wager of it? Then all your team may bear witness to what Loki can or cannot make you do.’

Defeated, Tony’s fists curled into his body suit as he hunched back into the seat.

‘Good boy.’

‘Fuck you.’

Loki barely batted an eyelash as he picked up his hovering teacup again, single minded bastard. ‘Begin your story anew, if you please.’

The mortal barely stopped himself from jolting out of the chair again. ‘What? Why the fuck?’

‘I said begin again. Once upon a time, Tony Stark, I believe you know the rest of it.’

Tony could feel the veins on his jaw throbbing as god and mortal stared each other down. Oddly enough there was no sound from the rest of his team as they witnessed the frozen tableau; considering Steve was neither unconscious nor missing a mouth, things were surprisingly quiet behind him.

Fine. He opened his mouth and talked, his eyes glued on Loki’s voracious face. He repeated his earlier story, gave it a new twist for good measure, and made it better. He ignored the curl of satisfaction in his chest when he saw Loki’s mouth drop open, either from surprise or pleasure, Tony didn’t give a damn. What the god wanted from such an afternoon of inanity, he no longer cared. Nobody was dying; no evil could come from this reveal that Tony could discern.

It was an exchange of triteness. It wasn’t master and slave so much as dick size and petulance. It wasn’t a game Tony would play - god knows he’s started such dickhead games himself often enough.

And Loki was surprisingly easy to keep entertained, for a god who’d surely heard it all before. Not that Tony would give him the satisfaction. But he did get caught up in the story, and then the words came fast and free and by the time he finished a major section in the time line and paused to draw breath, it was to catch Loki looking at him through pleasure-slanted eyes. 

‘So my uni ended up a bit like the story of Aladdin, you know, minus the poverty,’ Tony shrugged. ‘I stole, I cut class, I played all day long in the streets with the riffraff and inhaled enough recreational drugs to still be mildly surprised when I wake up every morning. My parents despaired, but then they died. Then one day someone came to me, and made me call him uncle, and he promised to be as a father to me, and the world rejoiced to see Tony Stark so reformed, for the boy so loved his uncle and would do anything to please him. So he built things. Any challenge or request set before him, Tony would find a way to make it come to life. And his uncle grew fat and prosperous on the profits of such nimble talents, and empires of his uncle, which he claimed to run in his nephew’s name flowed with riches, till one day he took his nephew aside and said to him, he said - are you fucking happy now?’

Loki clasped his hands together. ‘Almost, but we are not done with your story yet.’

Tony almost growled, but he forced himself to stifle the vile clawing his chest and continued. ‘The boy’s beloved uncle wanted him to embark on a long trip, halfway across the world onto strange and remote lands, there to meet and inspect the goods of foreign traders. Seeing nothing untoward in such request, the boy agreed, but it transpired that his dear uncle was planning to kill him all along. The rest you know, because ta-dah, Afghanistan and the Ten Rings. The end. Now are you happy? Can we all go home?’

Instead of being pleased Loki drew a long suffering sigh. ‘You really are the most pathetic sort of storyteller, Tony Stark.’

‘That’s because it’s not a fucking story,’ Tony bit off. Like he cared whether the god enjoyed his life stories or not, mad dog that Loki was.

‘Ah, but one begs to differ. We are nothing except for our stories, Tony Stark - gods and mortals alike. Appreciate this small detail, for in this lies the only instance in which we are comparable; temporary equals, if you like. For even as mortals have longed to know their gods, so ever have these self-same deities been as enamoured of the deeds of their mortals since the dawn of time. It is an eternal reflection which will not change; each watching the other, not knowing that in looking onto outwordly things they stare only into themselves - into lust, envy, and wonder.'

Tony couldn’t answer for a while. He was struck dumb by Loki’s words, unsure if he understood most or even any of it.

‘You can’t all be that fascinated with a colony of what you look down on to be ants.’

Loki looked at him, the barest hint of smile on his lips as he vanished his teapot with a wave. ‘Reflect, Tony Stark, on why whole pantheons of gods will never be done with insinuating themselves upon the business of mortals. By the laws of nature, never the twain shall meet. Yet there is no satisfaction so sweet as the forbidden, is there not? Throw perversity into the mix and I ask you, what manner of man nor god can resist?'

Loki rose smoothly to his feet, ignoring Tony’s hasty scrabble back from the mad god of lies and his narcissistic worldviews.

‘Are we done here? Will you take us back now?’

Instead of answering Loki held out a gauntleted fist. ‘Take my hand, Tony Stark.’

‘What about the others-’ Tony begun-

*

He found himself upended on the sofa the wrong way up, dizzy as a rollercoaster ride after two bottles of Glenfiddich and spitting out the pillow in his mouth. Biting off a curse, Tony crawled towards the floor, heartbeat elevated and painful until the groaning and rustle of clothing around him reassured him that everyone was accounted for and safe – that Loki had kept his word.

‘Thor? Clint? You guys ok?’

‘Fine,’ Clint croaked. ‘Let’s never do that again.’

Almost faint with relief, Tony pushed his head back into the carpet and expelled a long breath. Then he begun the deeply satisfactory business of cursing Loki in every language he knew how.

‘You’re got a shitload of explaining to do, Tony,’ Natasha’s voice said from somewhere to his left. Tony merely nodded into the carpet, not caring whether the spy could catch it – hell she probably had a sixth sense.

Finally he saw Steve’s shoes and a hand, and hauled himself up. Thankfully for him the world didn’t tilt over again.

Steve’s arms folded over his chest as soon as Tony relinquished them. ‘You didn’t tell us the whole truth about the Zemo kidnappings.’

‘There really wasn't alot to tell. Sure, we were stuck together for a couple of hours but nothing happened. Look, I didn’t think it mattered, OK? Zemo zapped Loki with something, and it took him some time to recharge his magiky. He was surprisingly good company, for a retarded dick. I swear to god that’s all it was. The.. ah Bible god. Yeah.’

‘You’re an Atheist,’ Steve said flatly.

‘Everybody’s a critic. I swear in the name of Science, ok? That’s a big swear in my books.’

‘You know I distinctly heard the F word back there.’

‘Steve for crying out loud, I'm sure we've all lost count of the amount of times I say fuck-‘

‘He means friends, Tony,’ Natasha interjected. ‘Are you and Loki friends?’

Tony opened his mouth to refute, but nothing came out. He scratched his head instead. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Look, I know I shouldn’t have kept it to myself, but the guy busted me out of a cell, and all because I read him a bedtime story. How the hell was I supposed to explain that to Fury? For days I thought I’d hallucinated it myself!’

Clint was smirking to the high heavens. ‘It must be written in the stars, Tin Can; you’ve found the one person on this planet who actually wants to hear you talk, and he’s not only certifiably violent, he’s not even from this planet.’

‘My brother is not evil,’ Thor asserted vigorously. Tony was just glad that it wasn’t with his fists.

‘Maybe not, Thor, but you have to admit that insanity comes pretty close.’

‘You do not understand the significance of a summoning prayer, friend Tony,’ Thor was getting disturbingly earnest, which really wasn’t a good look on him. ’Loki would only have answered such a prayer by virtue of his wanting your intercessions. An existing desire to hear your pleas.’

Trying his level best to forget the matter-of-fact way that Thor had uttered the word pleas, Tony raised both his hands in warning. ‘So what are you saying?’

‘It means mine brother is fond of you,’ the blond buffoon said happily, because thousand year old immortal god or not, Thor’s heart was a simple thing and he wore it on his sleeves for all to see. ‘In truth, I have never seen him so fond of another in an age.’

And to think he thought his face couldn’t burn any redder.

‘I don’t know whether to laugh or barf,’ Clint murmured into his shoes. Tony considered it a mark of brotherhood and respect he hadn’t laughed outright. Yet.

Thor clearly wasn’t done with his petitions, however. ‘Loki had always been a personality for deep thoughts, and some of those might be misunderstood. Perhaps if he had more friends to speak to-’

‘No, Thor,’ Tony started to walk away from the very bemused group. ‘Not in a million years will I befriend Loki, and probably not after that either.’

But the god continued to shadow him like a dog with a bone. ‘So seldom has mine brother answered petitions or seeked out the company of another that I cannot but augur this to be a happy accident indeed. Perhaps in the course of your interactions there may yet arise such opportunities that may allow you to influence his thoughts-‘

Tony swore he tried not to roll his eyes, he really did. ‘If ever I get the chance, Thor, you’ll be the first guy I turn to. Assuming I’m still alive after such a run in. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to drink myself stupid.’

He could barely contain his relief as the elevator doors slid shut on Thor’s reply.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

“Glory be to Him who changes others and remains Himself unchanged!”

 ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

3

And wouldn’t you know it, the following week they all get captured again. Of course. Do come over and fuck around with Tony’s life, ye gods of fate, roll out the carpets and let the wine flow free. Its open invitations to Let’s See Who Can Fuck Tony Stark’s Mood Up Like None Other Nite. To which there was naturally only one pointy-horned winner.

‘I think you’re starting to repeat yourself,’ Bruce said helpfully when Tony had started to run out of swear words and foreign languages.

‘Maybe you’ll like to take my place as unofficial court jester and twenty-second century troubadour to an insane god of lies,’ Tony snapped.

‘Point taken. You’re doing beautifully Scheherazade, don’t let us stop you.’

Tony blew him a raspberry and summoned – he most vehemently did not pray –  another appearance from the god of lies. It went exactly the way it did the last time, with Loki showing up in a swirly shower of green and gold and demanding for a story - after he gagged Thor again of course.

At the end of it, the mad god had tossed something slender and green at Tony, ‘The next time it takes your fancy to pray, Tony Stark-‘

‘It wasn’t a prayer,’ Tony immediately and hotly refuted. ‘I wouldn’t recognise a prayer if it sat naked in front of me, doused in honey.’

‘Indeed the altars of gods would crumble and holy men ash their robes if ever word got out,’ the god muttered almost to himself. ‘But Loki cares not for the opinions of others. You will still have to pray, Tony Stark, else I will not hear your call, but this might help focus some of that… inner chaos. Your babbling mind is a thing of disgrace, even by human standards. I am assailed by migraines whenever the channels of your thoughts reach out to me. ’

Rather than prolong a useless and disturbing argument he hasn’t a prayer of winning Tony got down to examining the thing in his hand. It was a folding blade; surprisingly earthly in heft and design. It reminded Tony of old barber knives, watching his father bare his throat to strange men as a child; gruff men who’d slick a dangerously sharp blade up and down tender flesh as matter of factly as if they were holding harmless wooded sticks.

‘Are we going to trade shaves instead of stories now? Because I gotta tell you, I doubt I can do better than whomever currently keeps the good o’ god of lies fuzz free and smooth as a baby’s bottom.’

Loki’s expression was gratifyingly confused. ‘It is a merely a small knive for fruits. It is harmless.’

Harmless his foot. Tony still remembered the fear he had for such blades then; hell, he’d watched the Barber of Fleet Street twice.

He slipped the blade into his armour under Loki’s speculative gaze and quelled the sense of unease that assailed him. Had he just been given a gift? A gift from Loki? It was probably a trap. Yeah. Evil bastard and all that. He should probably pour it into a concrete mould and bury it under a nuclear waste dump.

Except he kept forgetting to remove the blade.

*

Sometimes Tony thinks Fury is deliberately sending them out on suicide missions not for the missions themselves, but to test the extent of Loki’s willingness to function as the Avenger's new zero-noise, zero-carbon footprint, instantaneously transporting helicarrier. Fury was probably saving a tonne of dollars and buying himself a new downtown apartment every week.

Tony didn’t bother arguing, because by now he’d long since learned that SHIELD intelligence was often a contradiction in terms.

The mortal laid a suspicious hand on the new armchair, upholstered in an admittedly lovely bottle-green shade and velveteen to the touch. ‘Are you giving me a nice chair for once?’

Loki smiled. ‘Entertaining as it is to see the many expressions crossing your features whenever you fear for your balance, Tony Stark, it does detract you from your craft.’

Tony most certainly did not smile back at the god sitting before him, although it was a very comfortable chair. And if his latest story happened to be told with more enthusiasm than usual and a marked lack of swearing, it was all in aid of the smooth ride he’d secured for his teammates. He was doing it all for them, of course.

‘Good job,’ Steve had said later, and Tony had beamed as the rest of his team mates slapped him around the back, running off only when Thor tried to corner him again.  

Their last exchange left Tony almost in a good mood for several weeks – until he found them all incarcerated again, this time by Doctor Doom.

‘Hey Tony, do your thing.’

‘What the stinking fuck.’

*

He was starting to suspect a rat, green and rather tall with horns, but the rest of his team wasn’t as keen on the idea of not calling on Loki, especially given that soccer season had started to roll.

‘Are you people not remembering who he is? Anybody? Not you, Thor,’ he added before the Asguardian god could essay another speech about how good Tony could be for Loki's unstable mental health. 

Steve was his usual diplomatic self. ‘SHIELD seems to think he’s harmless, more or less as long as he’s still fixated on you, Tony.’

‘Whoah. Nobody is fixated. Come on. Bruce, back me up here.’

‘He does have a tendency to look pretty captivated when you start speaking,’ Bruce shrugged, then rattled his manacles. ‘Ironic, considering our positions.’

‘Whatever, I’m not calling him this time,’ Tony folded his arms together and sat on the floor. ‘I’d rather orate on the theories of gravity to a floor of wailing babies.’

‘It’s called solidarity. Tin Can,’ Clint said sagely. ‘Taking one for the team.’

‘Fuck you all and no.’

*

‘That’s it?’ Loki doesn’t quite snarl when Tony finishes, but it is a near thing.

‘And then he died. Stories end when the main character die, Loki.’ Tony gripped the armrest of his chair suspiciously. Did it seem like their chairs had moved closer? Nahhh.

Loki had gone back to affecting his usual look of boredom. ‘I’m not sure if I liked this story, Stark. It lacked a certain persuasion.’

‘Whatever Jingles, shows over and you still need to pay the piper.’

The god’s fingers were flexing like claws on his arms of his seat. ‘Even in your world, substandard goods get returned.’

‘Too bad there’s no quality clause in our agreement,’ Tony replied archly.

‘How very true.’ Loki’s eyes gleamed green in the dark confines of the cell before he snapped his fingers once, and then everything collapsed in a sudden folding of space and Tony is subjected to the most violently jarring teleporting that he wouldn’t dream of subjecting inanimate objects such as tanks to, ever.

The first thing earth's mightiest heroes did when they were conscious again was to sick up on the floor like a litter of cats that had just been stuffed in sack, subjected through a spin cycle and unceremoniously upended in the middle of Tony’s living room.

‘Next time just tell him a fucking better story!’ Clint roared when he was finally capable of speech a good many moments later. Thor was simply passed out on the floor, vomit dribbling from his beard in sticky threads.

‘Fuck this life,’ was all Tony had strength to say before hurling onto his marble floor again.

Nobody caught the soccer match.

*

The Avengers weren’t always there.  Sometimes Tony got into trouble all by his lonesome.

‘Again?’ The god of mischief was peached on the top of Tony’s cage this time, legs folded under him and an inexplicable bunch of grapes in his hands. Perhaps he had been eating when Tony summoned him. ‘I’m beginning to think you get into these situations because you miss me, Tony Stark.’

‘Like a whale’s barnacly butt,’ Tony told him sweetly, whirling the blade in his hand.   

‘And where pray tell, are your - oh my. You are alone today,’ Loki purrs when he finally cottons on, and the delight of his face makes Tony wished he hadn’t touched Loki’s knife after all, and wasn’t that just the most ideal imagery for a lazy Saturday that could have been spent on Amazon, buying a bunch of stuff he didn’t need?

Instead he was stuck in a cage.

‘One hopes you have a better story prepared this time, Tony Stark.’

‘Why’d you always call me by my full name, Loki Laufeyson?’

‘Open,’ Loki commands, holding a large grape to his mouth, and Tony without thinking opens his lips and allows the god to shove it in. A part of his rational brain seems to have short circuited. He took a step back and tried to picture the tableau; the god of mischief feeding the Ironman grapes through the bars of cage. A cage the god was currently sitting on. Life does not get any more surreal than this.

Nor more offensive, come to think of it.

Tony swallowed the grape and wipes the remnant juices from his lips. Loki simply watches him, eyes missing nothing, lips saying nothing.

OK. So things were seriously starting to take a turn for the weird, because here he was sitting in a cage and the only dominant thought in Tony’s head was the realisation that Loki had a sort of length and symmetry about him that drew the eye and could be very attractive when he wasn’t being crazy.

‘And what new story shall you be sharing with me today?’

‘Prepare to have your world rocked,’ Tony smirked, because he’d prepared his shit this time. He’d surfed the internet and found a nifty little story about a bastard half-wolf son of King Richard I who grew up to be the Lord of Badenoch and delighted in locking political horns with his father-ruler. Whom incidentally and predictably had refused to acknowledge his monster-hybrid son beyond handing him some remote barony. It was a story with loads of catty one-upmanships, very Game of Thrones. 

Loki would thoroughly be able to relate.

Imagine Tony’s disgruntlement then, when the god instead waved his story aside and bade him recall an experience he’s missed out on in youth.

‘The fuck? How would I know if I’d never experienced it? Besides, there was nothing. I was rich and gorgeous-’

‘And humble,’ Loki commented dryly, and stuffed a grape in his mouth.

‘Charming as peach blossoms,’ Tony continued, chewing, ‘-a veritable genius, a god in bed-’

‘Why, thank you.’

 ‘Try not to hurt yourself,’ Tony snorted. But his thoughts twisted, spiralled in uncommon directions. His voice when he spoke was more tentative than usual.

‘Maybe though. Maybe there was this… sorta feeling, I think. Sometimes I do feel as if I’ve been cheated out of something growing up, and its left a hole, but I cant- I cant put a finger on it. Don’t know what’s missing.’ He made a sound of frustration and swallowed another grape.

‘Not that you’d know what I’m talking about, Jingles, but sometimes I’d be up late at the lab and suddenly out of the blue I'll wonder how it'd feel to fall asleep in the bus after a long day and miss your stop. To wake up hours later at some unfamiliar terminal with everything dark and misted over - cold and tired and nothing is familiar but you’re not lost, you know? You have the means to go home. You know that you have a home. A place to reach, reason to put one foot in front of the other.‘

The mortal shrugged. ‘I can safely say that’s never happened to me. I’ve never gotten lost. I’ve never even taken the bus, never had the chance to really look forward to... something like that. Some days I think that I should hop on a Greyhound once or twice, but it doesn’t feel right. Too contrived, probably.’

He looked up at the god sitting above him. ‘Happy now, Dr Hannibal?’

‘Hmmm. Tell me the story you originally prepared, of the king’s monstrous son.’

Tony opened his mouth to repudiate the outrageous request, before he realised that he actually did really want to tell the story. 

‘You devious grape-eating fuck.’

‘You were practically vibrating off the floor,’ Loki shrugged, scattering a handful of grape skin like sticky rose petals above him. The corners of his mouth hitched when Tony snarled at him. ‘I doubt you’d have wanted to leave before your story was told even if your gaolers were to return this very moment, Tony Stark.’

Tony glared and bit into a freshly peeled grape. But he told his story. Dammed if he’d allowed Loki of all people to deal him a double whammy and manipulate him into not doing what he wanted to do. He sat down in that cage and he spinned that story out like a boss, with Loki feeding him grapes in between intervals.

Only right at the end did it occur to Tony to offer up a prayer of thanks to all non-Asguardian gods at the absence of his team mates. The grapes would have been a tad difficult to explain.

A thought occurs to him just before Loki puts his magic on him. ‘What happens when I run out of stories?’

‘Then your luck runs out.’

Tony barely stopped himself from stumbling. ‘Good thing I’m made of luck,’ he chuckled weakly. ‘Luck and money, two things that a Stark is never in short supply of.’

The god shook his head. ‘Tis not luck you need to barter our exchanges with, Tony Stark.’

‘Piece of cake then. I can talk rings around you, as long as it takes, Loki Laufeson.’

‘I applaud your self-confidence then,’ Loki’s eyes glittered like agates, and the mortal jolted as he felt a weight upon his arc reactor and glanced down to see a white hand on his chest. ‘Let us hope you have the means to make it so.’

Before he could protest at the physical intrusion, he was standing on the roof of Stark tower, blinking at the sun.

Seriously, fuck his life.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

"In the Arab world, gratitude is a language onto itself" ~  1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

4

After a great many turns that pulled untold muscles on Tony's arm and definitely destroyed his manicure, the lever gave way with a rusty screech and the heavy, circular door of the valve drain depressurized and finally pulled open with a hollow groan.

Tony dropped his head, released the breath he hadn't know he’d been holding, and for several moments simply concentrated on breathing.  He hadn't realized how deathly afraid he’d been that his strength would give out before the lever did or claustrophobic he'd been, squatting in one spot as long as he had with the odds of an ill-timed panic attack creeping upon him.

It’s been hell, trying to work the giant lever with his bare hands, and not for the first time he wished he’d dragged Steve or Thor along when SHIELD had dropped this assignment on his lap. Deliberate fuckers. They’d known the minute Tony heard the word ‘terrorist’ he’d be off like a shot, without thinking twice.

Tony had plans for the people who played him; but for now whoever he wanted to tear into, and there were many, it'd have to wait.

Gingerly he ducked into what he hoped was an underground valve that would take him either to one of the underground rain catchment areas, or a manhole in the middle of a street. It was with great reluctance that he’d abandoned his suit, but it was too bulky to drag into the sewers and would hopefully buy him time in his cell. Unfortunately for Tony, escape had taken a unprecedented route through the labyrinth of New York’s underground wastewater.

Keeping a hand on the wall to avoid doubling back, Tony followed the long endless tunnel before him,  accompanied only by the sound of water sloshing up to his elbows. He hoped he was in the drain water catchment area, rather than the pipes that moved all the---

Nah-ah. Nope. Simply refused to think about it.

A sudden scrapping noise in the distance made him jump. He stilled in the groping blindness of the place, trying to get a sense of what direction he’d been heading all this time. The smell was rife. On some level, Tony was glad it was too dark to see shit.

He might just mean that literally.

Please don’t let that be literally.

Stuck in what he could only call a stinking situation, Tony worked up a good head of froth as he crawled along the sewers. Fucking SHIELD and their psychological manipulations. Fucking Avengers taking up all his space and time and forcing Tony to play nice. And as for Thor's fucking little brother-

Loki had abandoned him, the no-good prick. Inconstant little fuck. Tony bit off an oath as he recalled how long he'd hollered into empty air and fiddled with the small green blade before finally accepting the bitter truth of it – the god wasn’t coming. Hopefully because he was busy dying somewhere.

But. But if he wasn’t, then please let him find Tony now, before the swarms of radioactive rats he could hear scrambling in the distance found him. He didn’t fancy being dinner to X-Mouse.

Crawling blindly, he reached out to the empty spaces before him, only for something to suddenly bite him.

‘Fuckfuckfuck!’ panicking, the mortal shrunk against the wall of the drain, only to hear the soft huffs of someone trying to restrain laughter. A pointy-helmed bastard someone, in fact.

‘What took you so long?’ the mortal hissed. ‘I’ve been calling on you for hours!’

‘Praying,’ the god corrected. ‘And I didn’t think you needed me, Tony Stark; you seem to be doing fine.’

‘I’m stuck inside a drain, I almost broke a hand, and now I’m stinking and dying of cold!’

‘Let me clarify then: up to this very moment, I simply didn't feel you had ‘put your back into it’, as the natives would say.’

Tony scowled into the darkness. It was a particularly ferocious scowl, so it was a pity Loki couldn’t see it.

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here Jingles, I smell like wet dog, and my knees are hurting something bad.’

‘Are you forgetting something?’ Loki’s voiced was arched; it was only too easy to imagine the eyebrow that accompanied it.

‘What, here? Fuck no. No. No.’

‘Then enjoy crawling amongst the toxic and desiccated droppings of your people, Tony Stark. I’m sure you’ll find your way out eventually, after a week or so.’

A animalistic growl of frustration escaped Tony’s lips before he could bite it back. ‘I’m not going to sit down here and tell you a story in some stinking sewer, you fucking prick.’

‘I see. You do look rather at home on your knees as well. I’m sure we could work something out.’

'Loki-‘

The god simply laughed, soft and low in his throat. For such a fastidious-looking egomaniac, Loki sure didn’t give a shit about mucking about in a Migardian drain, so long as he got to rile Tony up. Seriously, what was up with that?

Tony opened his mouth to retort, only to find the weight a finger on his lips.

‘Your captors approach,’ Loki whispered, voice and presence closer and more intimate in the darkness than before, and Tony barely kept from shivering. From cold. Because it was cold.

They both listen to the sounds of urgent footfalls, the tag-team shouts of Tony’s search party.  

‘Look,’ he whispered, acutely aware that the tip of his nose was brushing into Loki’s hair, ‘I’ll tell you five stories if you get us out of here, heck I’ll tell you fifty stories, just-. ’

‘Shhhhhh.’

The mortal shook the god’s hand away irritably. ‘Now what?’  

‘Congratulations,’ the god said sardonically, ‘It does appear that a delay in your purchase price has been accepted. This time.’

Tony could almost kiss him. ‘My next story will knock your socks off,’ he promised.

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ the god breathed in low and silken tones, and there was something in the rub of his voice that made all the hair on Tony’s neck stand to attention.

Before he can blink however, he is upright again and stumbling, catching himself on the steady arms that’d reached out and braced him from behind.

‘Give a guy some warning will ya, I almost swallowed a mouthful of s- whoah,‘ the mortal spun around. ‘This isn’t Stark Tower.’

‘An astute observation,’ Loki said. The words tickled his ear. Tony stepped hastily away and peered around. Wherever Loki had spirited him to it was... high up.

Very, very high up.

Slightly stunned, Tony’s gaze whipped from the circular stone balcony he was standing on with its heavily wrought balustrades, to the vista of someone’s elaborate and richly decorated living quarters behind him, and the endless sea of trees below him.

Fuck if it wasn’t the Princess Diaries itself, come to life before him.

Still dripping sewer slush whilst he tried to ignore the smell emanating from his clothes, Tony raised an eyebrow as he took in the unusual colour scheme, dominated by oranges and gold.

The apartment  was set within an airy and circular space, though all Tony could see from here was a sitting room. A wealth of cushions and carpets were strewed around, set with small clutters of low-rise tables in hammered gold. Iridescent curtains the colour of saffron danced in the wind, teased by bronze chimes.

A smoky scent suffused the air with spices and fragrant woods from an overhanging thurible. It was exotic, almost hedonistic, and not at all what Tony had expected. Clearly Loki was not a fan of the whole dungeon theme, except in clothing.

‘Nice digs,’ the mortal finally supplied. ‘Where’s the rest of the harem?'

‘In my own domicile, Tony Stark, where they abase themselves before mine alter and sing verses of my girth and prowess. You may join them if you wish,’ Loki’s expression was shuttered but amused, and his clothes and hair had magically dried up, Tony noted sourly.  They even smelled faintly of some pleasant herb.

‘Thanks for the offer but I’m happy with my own.  Which by the way, Jingles, is in Stark Tower, Manhattan, planet earth.’

Loki simply raised an eyebrow. ‘So I hear.’

‘And this is your home away from home I suppose?’ Tony sighed and looked around. Clearly he wasn’t going home until he got home, so-

‘I created it, and therefore I suppose I own it,' Loki said tonelessly, but then his eyes narrowed. ‘But for now it is yours, Tony Stark, until our business is concluded.’

Tony’s mouth hung open. ‘Sorry?’

‘You will stay here in this tower, out of harm’s way and therefore mine as well. I have told you before; the spider crawl of your brainwork when you call upon me is a particularly irritating and invasive one.’

‘But why can’t you-‘

The god turned away from him, his profile stark and eerily flawless against the vast skies.

‘Events are unfolding on Midgard that are coming to head, and I am not of a mind to watch you throw yourself headlong into death after all that effort keeping you alive. It would be… counterproductive of me, wouldn’t you say?’

'What events are you talkin-' Tony broke off as his brain finally caught up and his eyes widened with understanding. ‘Fuck. You’re kidnapping me.’

‘Call it what you wish, but do not forget I have saved your life untold times to date, and in return, I will have our agreement carried out. To my exact satisfaction, Tony Stark.’

Tony swallowed. He’d known that this protracted association with Loki was going to land him in some serious trouble one day, but stuck in a tower telling stories was not how he’d imagined it.

‘Look princess, I know you’re tired of hauling my arse out of trouble but can’t we just break up the normal way, with a facebook post? You slash all my tires, and I promise to throw away your number and never call you again.’

‘Since you can’t seem to stop getting yourself captured in one form or another,’ Loki continued talking over him like the dick he was ,’-I have decided to save myself the trouble of constantly snatching you back. It has grown wearisome. If you have need of such diversions, stay here. A tower for a tower, and this one is far more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing than your block of cold concrete.’

‘It’s hardly diversion if it’s part of my job scope.’

‘Getting kidnapped on a weekly basis is part of your job scope?’

‘About that-‘ Tony raised a finger, and but again Loki cut him off.

‘I shall have my sagas delivered to me in comfort, Storyteller. I grow weary of the stench of caves and prisons, and I especially grow weary of mine brother's greetings, short-lived as they may be.’

‘Lovely,’ Tony grunted. ‘Capital. Saved from my would-be murderers by another would-be murderer. How long are you keeping me?’

‘Until you run out of stories, Tony Stark.’

‘And then?’

He caught Loki’s bland smile before he turned around and vanished. ‘And then I kill you, of course.’

‘Good to know,’ the mortal said weakly. Only once he was sure he was alone, did Tony’s legs finally gave way as he sank into the cushions, and trembled.

'Mother always told me my mouth was going to get me in trouble one day.'

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

“Perhaps I am crazy to say that all doors must not be opened except from one side,

th at if they are opened from the other side then they must be considered to be still closed; but that is the truth of the matter.”

~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Night

5

Tony was dying of boredom.

No Jarvis. No Starkpad. Not a single blessed wire or electrical component could be found in the circular apartment. There were no door and no windows, although Tony had free rein of the stone balcony where he often paced in restless circles, looking out from his elevated prison of impossible engineering and feeling like a goddamn princess in a tower. Perhaps he should start growing out his hair, to better suit the irony.

The view was beautiful. It was paradise in a circular cage.

The landscape gave Tony no clues to his surrounding although he comforted himself that at least they were still in the northern hemisphere.  Food was plentiful and delicious, if not always identifiable. After spending the first day suspiciously monitoring its effects, Tony now scarfed it down without question.

The golden shackles on Tony’s ankles rang with a mocking sort of musicality as he paced. They were aesthetically pleasing, as thin and delicate as spiderwebs. They were also unbreakable, neither by iron nor flame nor ice. God knows he’d tried.

But worse than these reminders of his captivity, more decorative than purposeful, was the boredom.

He was utterly dependent to Loki for conversation and company - If the god had intended for Tony to think about him constantly, this was a good way to go about it. He’d spent the first week feverishly dreaming of escape, the next bargaining like a fishwife with Loki for his freedom, which of course he did not receive, and the third week sullenly asking for electronics, which he also did not receive.

Books he received aplenty, and when Tony had accused Loki of destroying his planet's ecosystem and whined that a Starkpad would have accomplished the same purpose (plus a few others) , Loki had only laughed and shot him an indulgent look. For a god well known for his vicious temper Loki had yet to show any, no matter how many times Tony attempted to rile him.

But mysteriously mellowed or not, Loki wasn’t stupid, and Tony remained disappointingly device-deprived. At least now he had plenty of time to dream up stories.

The god had also changed his demeanour towards Tony substantially. He no longer appeared in armour, nor threatened the human with twenty kinds of harm every other day. He spoke pleasantly, almost gallantly and after a week of driving Tony around the bend the mortal found himself simply waking up one day to find he had started to look forward to their conversations.

Odd. He’d never liked small talk before.  They’d always left him bored and jittery at best, malicious and mistrustful at worst. But recently he’d been calm, even against the knowledge that all this would one day go to hell in a hand cart.

Loki was turning out to be the most confusing bag of cats Tony had ever opened. 

*

The sudden hand on his shoulder made Tony stiffen like a hare caught by the legs, and he opened his mouth to hotly retort; ‘Christ, Loki! Give a guy some warning!’

‘Wrong god, Tony Stark.’ Loki raised an enquiring eyebrow, the ever-present quirk of his lips twitching. ‘Have I cause to be concerned? Are you seeing another deity behind my back?’

Tony placed a hand on his chest, willing it to slow down. ‘Ever heard of normal working hours? I could have died.’

‘If only it were that easy,’ the god shook his head.

There were no rhythms or reasons in Loki’s visitations. Sometimes he dropped by thrice in 24 hours, and other times stayed away for days.  His intention was always for the same thing – which was for the mortal to tell him a story. He never pressed Tony however, which was a secret source of relief.

It was not like he could really fight back if Loki decided to get nasty.

He’d long ago mulled over and discarded the option of physical defiance – there was simply no point of it, out-classed as he was. Should the day come that the Avengers found them or an escape presented itself, then he wanted as much uncurtailed movement as possible, without the weight of Loki’s constant suspicions.

‘I am peckish,’ Loki drawled, sharp eyes taking in the lived-in look of Tony’s gilded prison for god-knew what purpose. ‘Let us eat.’

‘Fine.’

They settled on the floor, as always. The bed and cushions, low slung tables and carpets were all circular. Tony wondered what sort of grudge Loki had against squares.

The god bats his hands away, tutting as if to a child. ‘With your mouth, Tony Stark. As before.’

Tony stared at the fork held out before him as the usual debate thundered through his brain. Submit to the humiliation? Or struggle against a god he had no hope of winning?

‘Why don’t you just throw me off the tower for old times sake and be done with?’ he groused, but Loki only raised his fork, and there it hovered until the mortal opened his mouth and accepted it.

Tony chewed, casting the god a withering look of loathing. It had the predictable effect of making the perverse fuck smile even broader. It had occured to Tony several times by now that he should really be a whole lot angrier with the whole charade, but he wasn’t of a mind to figure out why. Perhaps he’d gotten used to it. Perhaps Tony was simply too edgy about the bigger things, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Perhaps it was such a small thing, and seemed to give Loki so much satisfaction.

So it’s a weird way to save the world, but hey, if the god of lies was here in this tower, spoon-feeding Tony Stark weird stuff from a golden place, he wasn’t out there making wormholes for fellow extra-terrestrial invaders.

'Kay, story time. You ready?'

'Always.'

Tony rubbed his hands together. ‘So once upon a time there was a handsome prince who woke up on the wrong side of a storybook and found himself locked in a tower. The evil wizard who had captured him - who was a right arsehole by the way - came every night and subjected the handsome prince to disgusting acts of humiliation whilst depriving him of internet connection, which is a human rights violation and a dastardly act to boot. Bored to tears, the handsome prince read all the old stories on daring feats of escape and attempted each one, but his hair refused to grow out and the only birds he could find to make himself a pair of wings were sparrows – and those were simply too cute to shoot. His very short list of conventional options dispensed with, the handsome prince realised that there was nothing left but one last resort – he simply had to irritate the evil wizard to death. And so he opened his mouth and said, Loki Laufeson, you sonuvabitch-’

Loki’s thin lips made a moue of distaste as he raised another forkful of something meat-like. ‘That is not a story, Tony Stark.’

‘No exchanges, no returns,’ Tony snipped, but Loki simply harrumphed and stuck food into his mouth.

‘Very well, I shall tell you a story instead.’ He raised an eyebrow at Tony’s expression. ‘It is considered an art amongst my people you know,’ the god expanded, and Tony felt two fingers against his chin. ‘Chew, Tony Stark; the sight of your half-masticated lunch is hardly inspiring.’

Loki took a moment to gather his thoughts before he begun. He had the pensiveness of an artist and Tony thought he would be formidably attractive, if he wasn’t such an unmitigated dick. His voice when he finally spoke was low-toned and lyrical, reminding Tony of rustling brooks and other such cheesy thing he normally had no time for (but now had nothing left but time). It was a deep and honeyed voice, a voice made for recitation and all manners of lyrical things.

With a voice like that, Tony wondered why Loki bothered listening to Tony’s half-baked rambles with such apparent enjoyment. Obviously there was no accounting for taste.

‘The King of the Nine Realms, whom men called the great Odin, god of war and death-‘

‘Once upon a time if you please,’ Tony archly reminded him.

Loki’s eyes glinted with amusement. ‘Open your mouth. Once upon a time, there was a well-regarded king whose knowledge and wisdom in all things was unchallenged. This he owed to two ravens; his familiars. Hugin and Munin by name, fearsome and magical by feat. The Allfather carved his runes of magic into their claws so to possess their spirits, and the runes also allowed them to pass any barrier, from burning Surtur to the highest yew pillars of Yggdrasi herself.’

‘Ok. Wow.’ Tony said, sitting up straighter and scooting closer.

Loki merely smiled slyly and continued. ‘Tis said of Hugin that he is the blade of Odin’s thoughts, and Munin his brother a chalice of memories – a font of lost knowledge and mystical deeds long consigned to dust. So long the span of Hugin and Munin’s life that it’s said they existed before Odin himself, when the worldtree was but a sapling and Ymmir’s flesh was still his own; the realm called Miggard then but a god’s dream. And the ravens had other gifts too, of sentience, of prophecy and speech; and as fylgjur they could cast second sight upon a man to determine his true spirit. Their eyes, red as the lifeblood of gods, saw though the truth of all things. ’  

Loki’s voice dropped low, into cobwebs and the memory of storms. ‘Tis said, the ravens tell Odin of the coming of Ragnorak. They will rain upon the earth black feathers, and where heroes sink down to die, blue-black Munin shall drink the blood from their wounds.’

‘Creepy, creepy god,’ Tony said, pointing an accusing finger. ‘You know, on earth ravens and crows mean death.’

‘And so in Asgard as well; Odin’s ravens herald death and wisdom.’

Tony wondered what sort of sick worldview would think two such values suited together. ‘If your father-‘

‘He is not my father.’ Loki’s face tightened in momentary rage, before smoothing out into a faint, bone-chilling smile, ‘but it matters not for I have found him, the progenitor of my people. The most legitimate and oldest of Allfathers. And shortly shall he rise again. Swallow now, Tony Stark.’

Tony blinked at this and tried to recall what Thor had told him about Loki’s true father. Who by any reports should be lying dead as a doornail  and six feet under by Loki’s own hands.

 ‘I’m really starting to lose count of all your daddies, Loki.’ The mortals eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me truly, why are you here on earth? Because it sure ain't for the stories.’

‘Perhaps for the storytellers, then.’ Green eyes gleamed, like moonlight hitting dark waters, and Tony shivered.

‘Bullshit.’

'You expect truth from Loki, god of lies?'

'There is truth in all stories, I heard say.'

Loki's answering smile of approval could rival suns. ‘Reconciliation, Tony Stark. I have family I need to… reacquaint myself to.’

‘Funny, I don’t exactly see you rushing off to see Thor.’

‘That’s because he isin't family. Thor is the son of Odin, Tony Stark. I on the other hand, am not.’

‘He’s also an Avenger and a friend,’ Tony reminded sharply.

In response Loki threw back is head and laughed. A silken thread of black hair fell from its place, framed his forehead in a way that for some reason made conversation more intimate than usual.

‘Avenger. Little do you know of the nature of gods, Tony Stark. Allow me to elucidate. Mine brother has the most powerful kingdom of the Nine Realms laid at his feet. Why do you think he still chooses to be here, amongst you all? Do you really think in all your hubris that the gods truly act in service of mortals?’

Loki gazed at him with pity. ‘If that would be the case, Thor would have abdicated the throne and banished himself from Asgard to become an Avenger forever. Long can he serve, and well, if truly that was his intent. But the life of a god is long, aye, such that even when the friends he feels such deep affections for wither in the arms of time, he may return home as if no time had passed, and with such fresh stories as may to be told to win him admiration befitting a king.That is the truth of it, Tony Stark. Your world is a trifle, created for gaming. It is a plaything for the gods. Am I right, brother?’         

There was no noise or movement around him, though Tony waited, tense. A deep sense of not-quite-grief hung in balance somewhere in his chest, as if it would be tipped over by the slightest breeze.

Finally he heard a sound. A huff of breathing, and Tony looked up to see Thor standing before him, tears running down his face. His presence was surreal, shrinking the room and recasting it in a gaudy, self-indulgent light and making Tony feel vaguely ashamed of himself, like his shadows couldn’t stand up to the sun. It was a deeply discomfiting feeling.

Anger sharpened his tongue as Tony turned to the god of lies. ‘You really are nothing more than the god of piss and poison, Loki.’

True to his name the god merely laughed, sharp and brittle and mad. His fey eyes glistened like an animal’s; seeming to delight in securing pain even at the source of itself. ‘Your daring in the face of gods shall be spoken about long years after you die, Tony Stark. I do not mind revealing that I have occasionally had the mind to steal you from here for mine own collection, but alas I fear it would not be a profitable enough exercise.’

Loki’s gaze suddenly turned inwards, the distraction in his voice evident as he added, ‘I needs attend to some matters of urgency, but I’m sure you will no doubt appreciate the privacy to converse with your fellow Avenger, brother,’ Loki uncurled from the cushions like the snake he no doubt was and looked coldly at Thor. ‘See that you remember our agreement.’

‘Take your time, Loki,’ Tony growled to the god. ‘All century if needs be.’

Loki’s head tilted like an animal tasting the winds.

‘For all you know, Tony Stark, this world will tip into a sea of flames and you might still be here, in this very tower. Now wouldn't that be a story to tell?’

There was something darkly possessive in that gaze, a staking of claim and territory that Tony didn’t want to consider the implications of. That way lied madness.

Tony looked straight at the thunderer the moment Loki vanished into the night. 'You knew where I was. All this time.'

'Shieldbrother Tony-'

‘Thor,’ Tony said firmly, cutting him off. ‘I don’t know what you promised your mad brother, but you’ve got to break it. You’ve got to get me out of here.’

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

“Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious plateau”

~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

6

‘Friend Anthony,’ Thor rumbled once they were alone. He sounded emotional. ‘I hope you will not take heed mine brother’s wicked tongue. Loki is-‘

‘Believe it or not, I know what Loki is,’ Tony said tiredly. ‘Worry is, I don’t know if you do.’

‘He is my brother, and therefore as intimate as the other half of me. But upon my word, I swear that this world called Migard is held in my dearest esteem-‘

‘Thor, I believe you, OK? I know Loki. But you still have to get me out of here.’

His blond compatriot just looked at him, regret and dismay written on the planes of his face -and underneath that, an immortal resolve.

Watching Thor’s face turn blank, Tony could feel the weight of all his hopes crumbling in the face of that resolution.

‘I am truly sorry, my friend. But I cannot.’

‘Dammit Thor, why can’t you just- OK. Let’s do this again. You love you brother. I get it. You want me to get through to him. But that’s not going to happen.’

‘But if you would but talk to Loki-‘

‘It’s not going to happen you delusional twit! Loki is not going to do anything but what he wants! He’s not going to give me the time of day Thor, not even if I tied him to a chair and performed a fucking striptease. See these shackles? They’re there for a goddamn reason.’ Tony broke of, straining to control his temper. ‘What about the others? What did Steve have to say about this? Bruce? Good old Fury?’

‘They are displeased.’

‘And?’

Thor would not meet his eyes. ‘They think you are being… most irresponsible.’

He could feel the blood draining off his face at Thor's revelation. ‘Christ. You unexpectedly sneaky shit, you deliberately mislead them, didn’t you? They all think I’ve run off on some lark… some sort of fucking holiday, instead of kidnapped and locked in a prison of your brother’s making,’  Tony’s voiced climbed decibel by decibel, until he found himself shouting. ‘Aided and abetted by you!’

‘I can add nothing,’ Thor said thickly; clearly suffering but immovable. ‘-save Loki is to me what no other person is; not the Allfather, not even Jane. Please, I cannot not attempt all avenues to get through to mine brother-‘

Tony threw up his hands. ‘Jeez. Wow. What’s a guy to say to that? Great.’

‘Friend Tony, you don’t understand. I saw my brother fall. Nay, I let him fall. There is no day that comes without these accursed memories burning through my skull like fire. They will haunt me till the end of days. There is no act that will atone for mine abandonment.’

Tony ran his fingers through his hair. ‘So verdict is; you’d lie and cheat and die for him, and so must everyone else, if it comes down to it.’

‘These are not my words,’ Thor argued. ‘Why must you twist them so?’

‘Because you’re not fucking listening!’

‘You are safe with Loki, I swear it. He would not harm you for all the world.’

‘How do you know that? I’m not in a hurry to forget about my short drop off a tower. Look, Thor. Thor. Your brother’s up to something. I don’t believe you don’t know that.’

‘My brother has always been up to something, and it usually ends ill for himself and for others. Yet If you stay here, Tony, you can persuade him to relinquish these poisoning dreams. You do not know your own influence. For the love that you bear me, if any, please do me this boon and I swear, I shall repay you a thousa-‘

‘I don’t want to be a shining example of good mental health to your immortal psychopath sibling! Look at me, Thor; do I even look to you like an ideal candidate? Have you ever seen me with a healthy habit, or a relationship that lasted beyond a few months? I’m not the right guy here; you should have brought Steve over if you wanted that. Hell. I don’t want the responsibility!’

But Thor’s attention was still stuck some ways behind, and the confused frown on his face would be a hilarious joke if Tony’s situation wasn’t so serious. ‘Relationship?’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Tony spluttered indignantly. ‘Can you please pay attention to the crux of the issue here?’

‘Alright,’ the god said. But he continued staring at Tony as if he had just handed him the keys to a particularly grueling puzzle.

‘Hello? Earth to Thor? Fuck, just do something before this whole thing goes to hell. You know more than anybody else what a ticking time bomb Loki is.’

‘You could save him.’ Thor shook his head stubbornly. ‘Truly. It is a wonder I had not seen this earlier, but you can save Loki from himself.’  

‘Sorry, didn’t bring my halo with me when I got kidnapped.’

‘Oh Tony Stark,’ the blond giant shook his head, looking as overwhelmed as Tony felt. ‘If only you but knew. Yet perhaps it is for the best that you do not.’

‘Knew what?’ Tony eyed him suspiciously. But Thor only shook his head, expression obscured and complex; worry warring with relief and so much guilt Tony wondered how the god could still be standing with all that unceasing self-flagellation.

He almost buckled under the sudden weight of the god’s hand on his shoulder.

‘You will be safe from Loki’s machinations, my friend. I swear on Mjölnir. Be as you are, and all will be well,’ the god said earnestly, and Tony could hear the tendrils of farewell in his voice.

‘Thor, wait-’ Tony tries to grab his cape, but is too late.

His curses blister the empty air for a good many minutes after that.

*

Tony awoke up in the middle of the same night to find Loki back at the tower, likely to ensure Thor hadn't spirited his storytelling prisoner away in breach of their rotten agreement.

He had also clearly been watching Tony sleep, because he was a creepy, creepy god. God of creepiness. Apparently, he’d slept right through the Loki’s arrival too, and wouldn’t have woken up but for sounds of some frantic fluttering-about, like an animal attempting escape. A paranoid tendril crept around Tony brain, wondering how many times Loki had watched him sleep unawares.

Blearily confused, he’d sat up and blinked vaguely at the shadowy form of the god, statue-still and solitary behind the flutter of curtains. Tony couldn’t have confirmed it, but it seemed Loki held in his pale hands the biggest crow Tony had ever seen: it was struggling feebly and making soft sounds of distress. In the quickening shadows, Tony could only tell the creature was bleeding profusely because of the audible trickle of blood dripping againts the floor.

‘If you’re thinking to dropping decapitated things in my shoe as an early morning gift,’ he croaked, ‘lemme just say I don’t keep pets for a reason.’

He waited, but there was no riposte nor word of greeting from Loki. No wrenching Tony out of bed for yet anther story at three in the morning because the god felt like it.

Silence. The mortal scratched an armpit and barely restrained from giving his dick a reassuring tug. ‘Yoohoos. Want something?’

Again, no reply. Tony thought he’d caught a glimmer of something rippling through Loki’s expression like running water, something he was clearly trying to repress, but it was too dark to  clearly identify it. Probably just a function of the fluttering shadows of the curtains. 

‘Fine. If you’ve found yourself a new pet for your gilded cage, maybe you can let me go tomorrow,’ Tony called out into the darkness. Once he decided that Loki wasn’t about to come any nearer, merely watch from the balcony like the creepy dipstick he was, Tony turned his back on the god and burrowed back into his blankets, and into oblivion.

Such a fucking creepy voyeur. Whatever.

Loki didn’t return for five days, his longest absence yet, and his presence in the moonlit room that night seemed as a dream that Tony would have forgotten, if not for the fresh puddles of blood on the balcony where the god had stood, watching him sleep.

*

‘Settle down Slytherins, its muggle appreciation night.’

Loki rolled his eyes and made a huffing noise from the mound of cushions he was currently redolent on like some drowsy pasha, peeling a tangrine with slow, deliberate fingers.

‘If you attempt to tell me another Harry Potter story, Tony Stark, I shall hang you from the tower by your thumbs.’

Tony simply clicked his tongue and ignore him in favour getting into character.  He was starting to take the whole storytelling role pretty seriously; partly because there was nothing else to do, but secretly because he was starting to consider it an art.

An art Tony was becoming gratifyingly good at.

Of late he’d discovered that he loved the way he could disappear into a narration, wear a different skin; weave tales that could say as much or as little about himself as he wished. Loved the anonymity of it, working in a strange and subtle tandem with the honesty of expression it allowed. Loved the sense of accomplishment and pleasure he felt whenever he succeeded in moving Loki to laughter or tears.

Its always a shock to see a god cry, much less someone like Loki, but tears had flown freely from the god before; more than once, and Tony had discovered that for all his flaws and hubris Loki had an uncurtailed honesty of expression, a lack of shyness of his own emotions that Tony privately found almost…  aspirational. That is, when he wasn’t lying his blindingly white teeth off.

Sitting crossed legged before Loki’s sprawled form, Tony cleared his throat and begun.

‘Once upon a time, there was a racist tree. Seriously you are going to hate this tree, although it was startling beautiful: tall and strong, with with dark green leaves and apples red lips. I-I mean apples as red as lips. H- it grew high on a hill overlooking the town, and children would visit during the sunlit hours, and when they did, the beautiful tree would shake its branches and drop delicious ripe fruits onto their outstretched hands. You’d think this wasn’t a bad tree, Slytherin, for it gave its apples freely and allowed the children to play games between the shade of its racist branches.’

‘This is not a very interesting story.’

‘Shush, Slytherin. So all the children played happily on the hill of the racist tree, and one day a new kid moved into town, so they brought him to the racist tree and asked for an apple for Sam, their newest member. Oh, I don’t think so, said the tree. Sam is black. He’s a black nigger. Now this nigger business made all the other children very angry, and they decided that if he wasn’t going to give Sam an apple just because of the colour of his skin, then nobody else would accept apples from the tree. So the children stopped visiting and playing under the racist tree, who grew dull and lonely without company. After many solitary weeks, it one day saw a child flying a kite across the clover field. Can I offer you some apples? the tree asked eagerly. Fuck off, you goddam Nazi, the child replied-‘

‘What is a Nazi?’ Loki interrupted again, and Tony glared at him.

‘Bad, violent sonuvabitches who tried to take over the world because they thought they were better than everyone else. They had a self-crowned villian called Hitler who believed in blood superiority and all manners of megalomaniac delusions.’ Tony paused. ‘He lost, of course.’

‘But of course,’ The god murmured with no hint of irony whatsoever. ‘Pray carry on.’

‘Now. The racist tree was very upset to be called a Nazi, because while it was very racist, it did not personally suscribe to Hitler’s fascist ideology. The racist tree decided that it would have to give apples to black children as well, not because it wanted to mind you, but because otherwise it could face ostracism from all the other white children. And that, Slytherin, was how social progress was made. The end. Questions?’ He proded the god with a bare toe, gold shackles chiming in the space between them. ‘I know you must have a tonne.’

Loki discarded his tangerine seeds on a plate. ‘I see Thor has been using his time with you very well.’

‘Jealous?’ Tony grinned. ‘I didn’t tell him any stories, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

He watched the god idly tracing very distracting circles on his lap. Lord, but he had such long fingers.

‘Tell me, Tony Stark, are you an advocate of… self censorship?’

‘With my mouth?’ Tony snorted. ‘Hardly likely. I’m an advocate of rule of law. And of equality, sometimes. Don’t deprive others of their rights. Don’t reach for what isn't yours.’

‘I am a god. All things are within reach, and within rights.’ The god’s smile was twisted. ‘Midgard more so than any other; for it is land created from Ymir, father of Jotuns.’

Tony was immediately distracted by this new nugget of information. 'Whoaa slow down princess. Isn’t Midgard the term you have for earth?’

‘So you do pay attention.’

‘Earth is made of frostgiant flesh?’ Tony made a face. ‘Urghh.’

‘Indeed. Midgard is the creation of Asgardian gods, which is why you were created in our image. Why do you think you look the way you do?’

‘Evolution?’

‘Your theories of science are laughable,’ the god snorted. ‘And be honored, for you carry some part of you that is godly. Feeble as you are, some of you can be-‘ Loki trailed off and licked his lips, ‘-very fair indeed.’

Tony could actually feel something curling hotly in his chest at the attention and clamped it down. Must be the weird drinks. And the captivity, Tony always did badly in captivity. Maybe a part of his brain had gone to seed and was starting to believe he was really a princess.

‘Um. So poor Ymir.’

‘Poor Ymir indeed,’ the god breathed. Loki’s face was a little closer than he’d initially realised. Close enough to count the individual lashes on his cheek.  Tony started to panic.

But as if sensing his discomfort the god shifted away and continued, ‘Ymir’s Jotun flesh became the soil, his bones the mountains, and his teeth the hardest of stones. His blood founted into the seas and his tears the rivers.’

‘Why a Jotun?’ Tony asked without thinking.

Loki’s eyes gleamed at him. ‘Why Stark, need you ask? If your local Hitler was a racist tree, so then may Asgard be called the original orchard of all racist trees.’

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time

Some problems are about poverty not politics - 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

7

‘Another day another dollar,’ Tony sang out when the god appeared the following night in his armor. Then the mortal’s mouth fell open.

Loki actually looked tired tonight as he removed his helm. Withered. Whatever he had been doing the last 24 hours, it had clearly taken a toll. ‘Save your witticisms for your yarns, Tony Stark. I am drained of patience and wish for little more than some tolerable company and a tale. I will not linger.’

‘Okaaay,’ Tony’s eyebrows shot to his hairline as he watched Loki settle on the cushion like an old man. This was an anomaly, and worrisome. More so when a noted enemy seems to have his guard down enough to call him ‘tolerable’.

Hell. Even Pepper didn’t call him tolerable. What the hell has Loki been up to?

He pretended at domestic pottering whilst surreptitiously checking the armor for tell-tall bloodstains or signs of battle.

‘So. Busy day baiting traps and crow-hunting?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ the god shrugged. His voice was oddly flat.

‘Long stakeout with nothing to show for it, huh?’

Loki eyed him balefully. ‘Sit and eat.’

Tony sat. ‘Don’t suppose you bumped into anybody I knew along the way, because Steve's birthday just passed. His last 50 birthdays have been missed you know, so he's kind of sensitive. Penguins, so inconsiderate. I'd have killed to pass him a card.'

‘Calm yourself,’ Loki said irritably, ‘none of your precious Avengers are dead.’

Personally, Tony felt the ‘yet’ in that sentence couldn’t be any louder though. He watched Loki stare at his food like he couldn’t recognize its purpose and finally push it away, untouched.

‘Are you planning to starve yourself as a means of expression? Because I have it on good authority that interpretive dance is a much better way to do it.’

‘I will leave such interpretations to you tonight.’

Tony could actually feel his eyes widen comically. ‘Wow, that was like the worst comeback ever; I think I’m actually worried about you now.’

‘A moments peace is all I ask,’ Loki replied, irritated. ‘And yet you would ruin it with ceaseless chatter.’

‘You’re the one who stuck me in a cage and poke at me and expect me to warble. It’s not my fault you don’t always like the songs I break into-’

‘Enough,’ Loki’s voice whiplashed through the air, scorches it, and Tony drew back, finally sensing that he might have pushed too far.

The god sighed, lashes dipping in fatigue before he finally spoke. ‘When I am weary, Tony Stark. When the days are punitive and the night crawls merciless and indifferent. When I feel myself hollowed out beyond my own capacity, I dream of coming here. It is a weakness, yet here I am, drawn back to this tower as if it were an open flame. No matter how far I go, I feel its heat on my back.’

Tony stilled as Loki turned his fey, inscrutable eyes towards him. ‘You have not earned your keep tonight, storyteller.’

‘A poem today,’ the mortal half whispered, half croaked. He realised he was afraid tonight, more so than he had been in some time - there was suddenly a lack of air between them, for all the wind that stirred the curtains.

‘Very well then,’ the god settled against the cushions, limbs heavy and still as if sated but Tony knew this for the act it was, for Loki’s eyes remained hooded and restless, burning with fathomless wants. Tony could feel them roaming over the planes of his face, it was all he could do not to shudder.

Tony opened the book on his lap and begun to read. ‘He did not wear his scarlet cloak, for blood and wine were red.’

Loki made a small noise of surprise and he looked up, just in time to see the god’s expression shutter back into indifference.

‘And blood and wine where on his hands when they found him with the dead; the poor dead woman whom he loved, and murdered in her bed.’

Loki stirred restlessly before him. ‘Read me another poem.’

‘He walked amongst the Trial Men in a suit of shabby grey-’

‘Are you deft or just defiant?’ He could sense the god becoming tense and angry beside him. ‘I do not wish you to continue.’

Aware of his closing window of opportunity Tony scanned down the page the continued in a louder voice, ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard-’

‘Tony Stark,’ the god’s voice has gone dangerously soft, ‘-do you dare to ignore me?’

‘Some do it with a flattering look, some with a bitter word, the brave man does it with a sword, the cowa-’

And suddenly Tony found himself on his back and Loki’s face was too close. Much, much much too close.

‘-with a word,’ the mortal breathed out, all the oxygen squashed out of him by Loki’s substantial weight. He was bigger, much bigger and heavier than Tony had initially guessed.

‘I have always enjoyed your boldness, Tony Stark, but there are days you go too far, and I fear today is such a day. I am inclined to teach you a lesson for it.’

Tony squirmed uncomfortably under the press of the leather that seemed to have settled almost like a living thing between them - which just didn’t bear thinking about. ‘Lesson learnt. You can get off me now.’

Fingers stronger than they look caught his chin, forcing Tony’s gaze into collision with hard green eyes.

‘Normally I would flay the skin from your bones and be done with, or sever a hand that you may always remember your place in things. But for reasons I ken not, I wish no harm upon you, and instead I find the strangest, most artless of joys in simply watching you play. But do not try my patience.’

‘Patience,' Tony swallowed. 'Got it. Loads more.. artless joy where that came from, once you get off me.’

Instead, Loki just stared at him. If anything, the god only pressed closer. His voice was low and musing as if he was trying to puzzle out a problem, even as his eyes raked like hot coals over the Tony’s face. ‘It is barely to be borne. Wherefore, Tony Stark, are you such temptation in mine eyes? Shall I pry open your ribcage and investigate its arrangements? Perhaps if I ate your heart and brain, it would yield to me your secrets.’

Tony actually could see the anger bleeding from Loki’s face whilst he spoke, replaced with an air of bemusement and bitter amusement. He found himself staring at Loki’s cat-eyed pupils dilating in the firelight, presumably with arousal.

‘Oh no. Nononono-‘  Tony started scrambling in earnest, notes of hysteria beginning to climb into his voice ‘Whoa whoa , what are you- you’ve been listening to too many stories  – you don’t get to say these things-‘

‘You are a rare spice upon the tongue, Tony Stark. Unfamiliar and burning and pungent. Utterly… an addiction.’

Tony shrunk deeper into the floor.‘Nice kitty, Tony tell you a story-’

Loki gave a throaty laugh, delighted. ‘You are too precious. The branch that is Migard might burn to ash, but I shall keep you forever, Tony Stark, much like the nightingale you once spoke about.’

Tony felt faint. Oh god but he hoped he doesn’t piss in his pants, because then there would be no pants left. 

‘You need to get laid, Loki. You need a girlfriend. A hundred girlfriends. Christ. I’m- I’m going to-STOP!’ the mortal’s voice rose to an embarrassing shriek when he found Loki’s fingers on the buttons of his tunic. ‘I’m a guy, I’m a fucking guy!’

Loki was clearly not persuaded. His hands stayed on his chest, toying with the too thin fabric and dragging his fingers up and down Tony’s neck, making his breath flutter.  

‘Does it matter what you are? Gods can only see the person, Tony Stark. They gaze into the well of souls and drink of the waters without heed of its vessel. I do not care for what sex exist between your legs, so long as we both enjoy the fruits of the vehicle with which you have been blessed.’

‘Well that’s all very high and mighty of you, Dancer, but maybe I’m not gay.’ Tony thought about that sentence and quickly amended, ‘that is to say I’m definitely not gay.’

But Loki just crinkled his nose as if Tony had farted in his face. ‘Gay? I do not care for the state of your happiness, Tony Stark.’

‘Oh just fuck my life,’ the mortal flopped down into the cushions, too tired to care anymore. ‘This is not my fucking life.’

‘If you have never enjoyed the fruits of lovemaking between men, I would be glad to teach you.’

Heart hammering in his chest, Tony tried again. ‘You can’t take me against my will, Loki, that would make it a human rights violation.’

‘Then it is good thing you are about to be bedded by a god.’

‘Loki please. Please. I know things are different between worlds but I actually like you now. Sometimes. Very rarely, but yeah. Don’t change things, because then it’d all… break.’

Loki’s scrutiny was almost unbearable. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His eyes were very bright, but thankfully present. Listening and not… mad. Tony hoped it would be enough.

Finally the god drew away, giving him space to breath. ‘I would not break you for the sole purpose of enjoying your body, storyteller. Your spirit is worth far more.’

‘Wadayamean break me? I’m fucking Tony Stark- nevermind. You know what, whatever works.’

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘Re-release me, for starters.’

Tony drew deep shuddering breaths into his lungs as Loki finally relinquished him. Don’t say anything. Just shut up for now. Shut up today and live to fight again tomorrow.

‘Will you kiss me then, Tony Stark?’

‘I-‘ That was not a blush creeping up his face. It wasn’t.

Loki’s brows knitted together. ‘Needs I teach you how to kiss as well? Are the fables of your sexual prowess not well exploilted?

‘Ah-’

‘Or perhaps; perhaps my eyes deceive me?’ Loki’s face took on a look of true amusement as he watched the mortal squirm. ‘By the Norns, could you truly be feeling shy, Tony Stark?’

Perhaps licking his lips was not such a good idea, Tony’s brain whispered a split second before Loki’s head descended.

He’s fucked. Fucked.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

Remember: when a wound is tired of crying, it will start to sing ~ 101 Tales of Arabian Nights

8

Tony usually didn’t bother lying to himself. He could admit things, like the fact that he found Loki very easy on the eyes despite the fact that Tony wasn’t gay, never had a gay thought in his life and is surprisingly, embarrassingly vanilla once you've gotten past all the suggestive smiles and outrageous quips.

Tony could readily admit that he’d probably be attracted to Loki in another lifetime - and perhaps given a different set of circumstances and Loki being mortal, would probably have been open to some fun experimentation after a night of drinking and flirting.

But attraction, he’d come to realize, could only be present when one wasn’t absolutely terrified of dying. Or convince that being kissed by Loki is probably precursor of being subsequently eaten by him, Hannibal style. And thus Tony felt absolutely nothing aside from pure adrenaline when Loki had pressed him down into the floor and dragged their mouths together, tracing the lines of Tony’s mouth with avid curiosity.

He felt the cool exhalation of Loki’s breath upon his own lips – and a second before they landed, sealed his own mouth firmly shut.

Foiled, the god lifted his head and frowned at him. ‘I would taste you, Tony Stark.’

Tony shook his head frantically, lips curled protectively into his gums. He could feel his own ribcage jacking under the god’s substantial weight as he tried to drag air in through his nose. In response, one of Loki’s long fingers begun to attempt prying his lips apart.

‘Open,’ Loki ordered, and Tony immediately attempts to wrench his face away. Naturally he fails and Loki ends up with a firm hold on the fleshy part of his bottom lip, pulling it open and stroking his fingers over it. The overt sexuality of this caress is horrifying. 

And the god’s expression was – Tony had no words for it. Fascinated didn’t cut it, eager doesn’t even come close. The way Loki was examining Tony’s lips,  you’d think he’d never seen another person’s mouth before. All his efforts at attempting to dislodge Loki from on top of him failed.

‘Wffhy arfe yu doing thes?’ Tony finally asked awkwardly around a thumb which had worked itself deep into Tony’s mouth. Saliva pooled around the corners of his mouth, threaded down his chin, but Tony had bigger worries. Like not dying.

Loki didn’t seem to hear him, musing instead like an academic who was jotting down observations to a research paper. ‘Do you struggle from fear or aversion, or some misbegotten principle of distance between enemies?’

‘Pfff - pecause yuf fucking phfreak me out-‘ He wasn’t sure if Loki could hear his garbled attempts at speaking around the two fingers, which quickly turned into three, making Tony gag around them.

Frantically he wondered if the insane god was trying to stick his whole dam fist into his mouth. Was autoerotic asphyxiation a kinky Asgardian thing? Tony was starting to regret his previous lack of interest in Thor’s sex life.

‘I will not hurt you,’ Loki cooed into his mouth, clearly not aware that he was slowly choking Tony to death. ‘Do not fear, Storyteller.’

Easy for the god to say, he didn’t have half a fist stuffed into his mouth, long fingers that was currently attempted to catch hold of Tony’s fucking tongue.  

Finally giving up, Tony focused on trying to control his heartbeat instead. Death by storytelling and choking on a mad god. What a way to go.  

‘Sthorp-‘

Loki finally caught sight of the tears leaking out of his eyes and stopped. ‘Are you in discomfort, Tony Stark?’

The fucker actually looked surprised as Tony nodded frantically, and Loki’s fingers released his tongue and pulled out of his mouth.

‘Are you goddamn stupid?’ the mortal rasped once he could breathe properly again, ‘you almost killed me.’

‘Are you so easily killed even when being petted? This too, is a strangely appealing notion, although it irks to necessitate being so careful.’’ Loki licked his lips as he considered this, and then the fingers on Tony’s wrists tightened and his eyes tuned inwards and dream-like. ‘I reiterate, I will not harm you. You are so soft, Tony Stark-’

‘No! Loki!’ Tony scrambled against him again, mind grasping desperately for argument or persuasions, anything that could hold the god at bay.  He probably had one chance, before he got raped. ‘Loki, I’ll break. I’ll break if you do that.’

The god immediately released him, brows knitted. ‘I was not holding you so hard, Tony Stark.’

Whadaya know, it worked.

Tony knew he had one chance, to persuade this monster that delaying his.. gratification, was in Loki’s own interests. Deliberately, he licked his lips, and watched the god’s eye’s instantly sharpen upon them.   

‘Listen to me. Are you listening to me?’ Tony continued only when the god nodded, eyes still trained on Tony’s lips in a way that made the mortal itch for something sharp to stick between Loki’s ribs. ‘This is not how you to get someone to kiss you back, Loki. Not on earth. ‘

‘Hmmm.’

Tony ignored the god’s noncommittal hum and ploughed on. ‘You need to- you need to announce your intentions a mile away. Preferably from a different continent. Heck, I didn’t even even know you wanted- that- until a couple of minutes ago. Give a guy some space to adjust.’   

‘And how much notice would suit you, Tony Stark?’

‘Oh, give or take a few hundred years.’

Loki actualy smiled, seeming to be willingly distracted for now. ‘I am patient, but not that patient.’

Tony took advantage of the space between them to push away on his elbows. ‘So space. Space and time. Or I could be persuaded in exchange for some honest answers.’

‘Duly noted.’ Loki smiled wolfishly at him, assured of his conquest. ‘Ask your questions.’

‘Which of Odin’s crows did you catch? Hugin or Munin?’

The change in Loki was instantaneous, eyes shuttering  as the god rolled abruptly away. ‘Do not meddle in the affairs of immortals. You will end poorly for it.’

Tactical success. Tony had to bite his lips in an attempt not to crow. ‘Bit rich from the god who dragged me into it in the first place.’

‘I did no such thing. You have but one purpose, Storyteller, and that is to entertain me. This is all you are.’

Tony forced himself to pick up a grape and eat it in a show of irrevelance. ‘I’d believe that if you hadn't made it so abundantly clear the importance gods place on stories. Your kind lives and die by it, don’t you? I just realized, and goddamn. All that power and eternity, and ultimately none of you are truly self-directed.  And that’s why you watch us 'ants' so covertly, isn't it?' Tony gave a bark of laughter. 'Humans are the only creatures who truly do as they please. Us. Not you.’

Loki looked away. ‘Continue your reading, Tony Stark.’

‘Where do you get your cues from, Loki? Some big and dusty book of fate? Did the curly text under your name tell you that you’re supposed to be evil incarnate-‘

‘Monsters are essential to any good story, Tony Stark.’

‘Why’d you have to cast yourself in the role of villain?  Did you come late to the table and everything else was taken up-‘ Tony trailed off as the god gave him a sour look.

‘Precisely. Everything else was taken up.’

Tony pulled back and gathered himself before scoffing. ‘You’re a smart cookie. Smarter. You know you could out-hero your brother any day if you wanted to.’

The green-eyed gaze was inscrutable. ‘You think so.’

‘You know so.’

‘Mayhap you speak true,’ the god spread his arms, leaning back against the cushions. ‘But it would be an unnatural fit. The truth remains that I better fit to the shadows. Do you not agree in your secret heart of hearts, Tony Stark?’

And the dammed thing was, Loki suited the role of villain, with his wraith-pale flesh and dark clothes; his moonshaded skin and intense, haunted eyes. Against this backdrop of gold cushions and spiced wine, of time standing still and the outside world faded away, of scented and balmy winds where it was never cold, he truly looked the fallen prince.

‘What do you want, Loki?’

The cold eyes heated up like coils. ‘You know what I want.’

‘And you know I don’t mean me. Or this.’

Loki merely folded his hands under his head and closed his eyes. ‘You make a poor spy, Tony Stark. A poor spy, but an excellent storyteller. Now, read.’

Tony read. He hauled the closest book onto his lap and read random excepts, flipped haphazardly through the pages and traced out the shapes of whatever took his fancy. He knew Loki didn’t care about the story and was listening only for his voice; Tony could recite a grocery list and Loki would probably not stop him.

Something had happened between them tonight, and Tony wasn’t sure what. He had a feeling his immortal kidnapper hadn't a clue either.

Eventually he felt the god shifting closer behind him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention, and Tony held very still as Loki’s fingers burrowed into the hairs at the nape of his shoulders.

Tony’s voice buckled and evaporated, the book slid forgotten off his lap as he shifted minutely towards the god, discretely attempting to face him. Loki was very tense, almost a statue as his fingers burrowed into the hair of Tony’s goatee, traced his jaw and the soft undersides of his ears. Loki’s eyes followed the trail of his own fingers, weirdly lit as if hypnotized. As if Loki was a cobra and Tony the lute player, but that wasn't true, because it definitely wasn't Tony's tune the god was dancing to.

Wasn't it?

The mortal's eyes had fluttered shut before he realised what a bad idea it was - when he suddenly became even more aware of Loki’s fingers. Loki’s breathing. Which come to think of it, doesn’t sound terribly… controlled.

Tony resisted a shudder and tried to think relaxing thoughts. It was hard not to tense up when his brain seemed intent on supplying him with images of the god snapping his neck as casually as a twig.

He flinched when he heard a hitch in the god’d breathing behind him. Fucking Thor, this was all his fault. Motherfucking traitor Tony was going to get out of his tower, find Thor, and strangle him.  

Oh god please don’t rape him.

Please don’t rape him and then throw him off the tower.

Finally he felt the fingers withdraw from him his clavicle, a slither of breath as Loki spoke hoarsely into his shoulder.

‘The very pull of you, Tony Stark. It should not have been possible, nor so strong.’

‘Sounds like a universal joke.’

The god snorted. ‘If so, it is a cosmic one.’

Where had the air gone? It had been so windy this evening, now Tony feel like his lungs was going to catch fire any second. He didn’t know much what to do with Loki’s blatant candidness, his willingness to admit his desire for Tony. His lack of ire even, threw and surprised him. Loki was supposed to be insane and imperious, but here in this tower he was also rueful and confiding, and scarily truthful for one so well versed in lies.

It hits him again, that in another life they’d probably be friends. He suspected that Loki would have probably liked science. Technology. Biochemistry. And Tony doesn’t know why, but he felt like he’d lost something tonight.

He watched Loki rise gracefully to his feet and walk away. The god clearly wasn’t going to allow Tony to catch a glimpse of his face after losing control like that.

His mouth opened before his thoughts catches up. ‘When are you coming back?’

Loki stoped walking, his profile tilting slightly. ‘Is that an invitation, Tony Stark?’

The mortal does not answer, and after waiting a moment longer, Loki inclined his head in understanding and dissapeared.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

 After great effort, he explained that water is water - 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

9

He goes a little crazy the next few days, waiting for Loki to come back.

Each sunset that comes and goes without the god of mischief showing makes Tony more jittery; each time he blinks awake in the middle of the night and imagines Loki standing by in the moonlight, half hidden by curtains, stirs an unidentifiable panic in his chest.

The memories of touch, they turn into different things over time – and to Tony’s horror they turn tantalizing where his memories of Loki is concerned. He finds his tongue tracing the shape of his own lips at all hours, his own fingers mapping the memory of the path that Loki’s trailing hand took.

Each time, he is horrified by their serpentine intrusion. Each time, it is like emerging out of water.

Then he’d be paranoid, pacing rapid circles around his gilded cage. Sometimes Toy would break into a jog, trying to come back to himself. He knew he had to fight it. Fight the way he kept going under water, body so warm and wanting, head so desperate to just let go and escape into the dream that Loki had weaved into his subconcious.

Tony jogged. There was a lot of jogging. A lot of fisticuffs with his own shadow, trying to dislodge the monkey on his back. The sound of beating wings, of dying crows.

Stockholm syndrome; that was the only thing Tony could think of. His brain probably equated evil kidnappings with Afghanistan, and couldn’t accept that being locked up here surrounded by luxury was its own kind of evil.

But the worst thing about it; his secret source of shame - was the fact that some part of him seemed to love it, this captivity. Thrived on it. Felt almost… grateful to be taken out of his old world and plunged into a new one without context, only symbolism and empty space. A new canvass. A place of breathe.

And Tony couldn’t – didn’t want to understand why. Because what the. Stinking fuck. Really. What the hell was wrong with his brain?

And apparently he was gay now? Bisexual? Deity-sexual? Thirty-eight years of messing about in the most decadent city on the planet, and only now Tony’s getting the memo on his new-found sexuality?

His jogging grinds to a halt and he shakes his head. No. Absolutely fucking no way.

Frustrated with this constant self-vacillation, Tony turns around and almost smashes directly into the god of mischief.

And if anybody asks, the mortal stands by the fact that he gave out a very manly yelp of surprise.

‘Calm yourself,’ Loki tells him as he steadied him with a hand, and Tony-

Tony’s heart stutters. He-his chest is so tight from running, he can’t breathe.

He can’t breathe.

Loki is neither unobservant or stupid, and his hands stay on Tony’s chest, forgotten as they stared across a chasm that was both too wide and not nearly wide enough.

‘Tony Stark,’ the god finally says with a catch in his voice, and the spell breaks.

Tony's babbling voice, it saves him.

‘So hey. How’are ya. We should really lock down your visiting hours.’

Loki didn’t speak. His fingers flex instead on Tony’s tunic, the way a jungle cat would and the small action is sufficient to burn a hole through Tonys chest. Loki was clothed in something that smacked of Asguardian tailoring, that is to say clothing far too fussy in cut and too rich in colour for Tony’s taste. But Loki wore it well; material as soft and black as sin that seemed to flow into his hair. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing pale forearms long enough to belonged to two people.

He looked- comfortable. At home. For some reason this little insight made Tony very uncomfortable indeed.

He tore away and made a rapid retreat back into the living area. ‘So let’s eat. I’m starving. We’re having chicken tikka tonight, I love chicken tikka. Raw onions, burns so good, and that mint sauce, I don’t know where you’re stealing the food from, but this is Bombay Michelin. Do you eat with your fingers? Took me a few tries, but now there's nothing better than eating with fingers. Finger lickin’ good. Try the sauce, don’t you like the sauce?’

Loki who had followed him down merely stared at his plate, and then at Tony.

‘So tell me who you killed today. No rest for the wicked, evil never takes a day off, or does it?’

Finally the god sighed, shoulders slumping and only then did Tony realise how tense he’d been. ‘Tony Stark-‘

‘No really, spill. Swear I won’t judge. Who am I going to tell all your little secrets to anyways?'

‘Do not concern yourself with profitless speculations. You will be wrong, and they are unnecessary.’ Loki paused, an uncomfortable expression on his face like he was constipated. ‘Will you not tell me about your… day?’

‘My day?’ Tony’s throat gurgled with laughetr, high and false and more emotive than he’d like. ‘My day? Oh blessed me, what’s the captive prisoner of an evil overlord to do but sigh into his handkerchief and twirl his hair?’

Loki’s expression; already inaccessible, shuttered even more. ‘For a captive, you are kept in luxury, Tony Stark.’

‘Yes, all six square feet of it.’

‘And were one to present you with choices? The realm of midgard, or one of the others?’

‘What? This floating cage or a seperate floating planet? That’s not a choice!’

‘It is rather more than I would usually give. I am uncommonly generous with you, Tony Stark. You cannot be so thick as not to notice. Do you?’

Tony looked away, only to find his face yanked back by the chin. ‘Do you?’ Loki repeated. ‘Obey me and continue to enjoy your privileges.’

Something in the mortal snapped and he twisted away. ‘You call this gilded prison a privilege? I grew up in one just like this, you idiot, so fuck you very much but no.‘

Loki pulled his jaw back again with even more determination. ‘What stirs you into so chaotic a state tonight? Have you been visited by Thor? Has he been filling your head with senseless things-‘

‘Oh, get the fuck over yourself and get straightened out!’ Tony roared at him. ‘You and your jealous fits and your paranoid delusions-’

Anger sharpened Loki’s features. ‘Do not speak to me like this if you would live through the night!’

‘I’d rather not speak to you at all. In fact, your company is shite, Loki, your keeping me here, like some pedigree hamster that you like to pet and coo over is pathetic!’

‘Be quiet,’ Loki growled in warning. 'You know not your boundaries.'

‘And you know not how fulleth of shit you are, and your formality is stifling me!’

‘You insufferable little human,’ Loki shook him till his teeth rattled. ‘You are akin to a fussy little furlompy that does not care how close it is to mortal peril - it is well that you should be gaoled and chained!’

Tony had no idea what manner of creature Loki just described, but he had no doubt it was insulting. ‘That’s what it takes isin’t it, to get anything to willingly stay with the likes of you - leggo my arm you stupid-‘

The mortal almost fell over as his shirt suddenly tore with a rip that vibrated through the room

Shock from the rip yanked him out of the giant ball of anger he’d been blazing in self-righteous fury in, and Tony's mood sizzled out like water on a hot grill, gone as abruptly as it appeared.

‘Loki, look. I-’

Then he made the mistake of looking up, and if he had thought Loki’s expression had been intense before, it was nothing compared to now.

Like a ball had been dropped, or a veil yanked away. Tony could actually feel the energy in the whole room turn sexual. His own body ached with a thrumming awareness even as his heartbeat soared.

The god looked at him, dangerously still except for the shadow of a tic on his jaw. Then he pounced.

Tony didn’t even feel himself being dragged under. His brain had shut off in its entirety, leaving his body in control, and it received Loki’s attack with a frenzied enthusiasm.

His mouth opened under the god’s - hot, possessive.  Their breaths mingles; Loki smelled different up close; so appealing as to be a meal.

It wasn’t possible, nothing could tastes so good, especially not him.

Loki’s idea of kissing was insistent, famished. The god growled low in his throat, claiming everything with primordial fervour that left Tony shuddering, completely blown away. The mortal cursed in his head, in his throat, his fingers yanked on Loki’s hair as he cursed every twist of fate that brought them to this point. Because even someone as clueless as Tony could recognised they’ve just fallen off the ledge here. God help them now.

Tony wanted. How he wanted, scrambling for purchase against the sinfully soft material of Loki’s clothes.

Loki’s hands had insinuated themselves under his arms and behind his shoulder blades, holding Tony to him like he’d like nothing more than to staple them together. Their legs aligned, filling up the spaces between them like the world would end if they didnt squeeze out every pocket of air between them.

‘Fuck. Fuck.’ Tony breathed raggedly, willing his heart to slow down and not take him through a heart attack. They’d just gone from zero to blowing the fucking lid off, and frankly – frankly, he’s not sure that he’s going to survive the rest of the session. ‘Slow down.’

Loki growled his name instead, and his grip wondered south and turned painful on the swell of Tony’s hips.

That was sick, Tony decided with a bitten-off moan.  Hot. Sick. Fuck.  He rubbed his body against Loki and panted into the god’s mouth, hot puffs of breaths that turned jaded green eyes almost black with lust.

Loki looked lost. In thrall. Tony had done it all, and still he had never felt so powerful in his goddamn life.

Finally it was the god who pulled away first, granting Tony some much needed distance before he lost consciousness from lack of oxygen. He looked wrecked, hair completely mussed and his mouth throbbing red and debauched. Tony could hardly imagine how he looked, but he could take satisfaction in the way Loki’s eyes trailed over his face as if they were continuing what the god’s lips could not reach.  

‘Say something,’ Tony finally says hoarsely. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be the prince of lies?’

‘I’ll not lie to you.’

‘Right there. That’s a lie all by itself.’

Loki was staring at his mouth again. His own was slightly parted, breathing starting to slow but still unsteady. The god finally licked his lips and spoke as if his revelation required the use of his dying breath. ‘I want you, Tony Stark. So badly that all conventional wisdom fails me, and I know not what to do. Find the lie in that.’

Tony huffed, wanting to laugh at the ludicrousness of it all.

A silver tongue that could supposedly out manipulate the nine realms, and the only thing Tony could hear as they lay here entwined and paralyzed before before each other was their own violently beating heart, the truths between them that was done with storytelling and finally had nowhere else to run.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

What's important is how a story makes you feel inside - 1001 Arabian Nights

10

‘Now what?’ the mortal finally summons the courage to ask.

The god spread opened his hands. ‘I have told you what I wanted, Tony Stark.’

‘So you want my cherry? Missive from earth but I’m not even gay, and even if I was, you’re public enemy number uno.‘

‘The enemy you have no qualms soliciting rescue from on countless occasions-‘

‘Six occasions.’

‘Resulting in six life debts.’

‘I’m not paying,’ Tony said, crossing his arms. ‘Especially not with my body, and if you touch me without permission again I’ll bite your fingers off.’

Because he was clearly insane the threat actually made Loki smile. ‘Pay me then, with your presence here in this tower. For six weeks, pretend to be... partial to mine company.’

For a good many moments, Loki’s words didn’t register. When it did, the mortal started laughing, partly to clamp down on the pangs of horrified pity forming within.

‘You want me to pretend to be attracted to you?’

The god waited for him to finish laughing before replying. ‘Yes.’

‘You can’t be that hard up for action,’ Tony scoffed.

‘I do not need some action, as you so crudely put it,’ Loki finally snaps at him, ‘merely your cordial company with an absence of sulks, petty posturing, or frequent haranguing for freedom.’  

‘Why’d you want what you already have? I read to you. I talk to you. I fucking let you put things in my mouth-‘ Tony almost bit his tongue off as Loki’s eyes darkened at his words. ‘Not like that.’

The god licked his lips. ‘I am aware. And would have more of the same from you.’

‘More what?’ The mortal asked, confused as hell. ‘Because still not gay and still not sleeping with you.’

‘I do not require that. Although, I should like to kiss you, on occasion.’

His face was burning up, he was sure of it. How did this even happen, and what was he going to do now? Loki was devilishly attractive and currently being treacherously mild-mannered in his bargaining. Tony would be lying to say he wasn’t charmed off his socks on some level, flattered and discomforted in equal measures. Manipulative bastard.

'Only kissing,' Tony cleared his throat. ‘And if I agree, we’ll do nothing I’m not comfortable with.’

‘I will force nothing on you,’ Loki promised. ‘You have nothing to lose, Tony Stark. And at the end of six weeks, ask for your release, and I will grant it.’

Tony licked his lips and considered the offer. It certainly seemed to be his only way out so far, and he was stuck here anyways, with a mad god's unsolicited attention whether he liked it or not.

‘Deal’.

He didn’t trust Loki. Of course he didn’t, that was the easy part. But he wasn’t sure how much he could trust himself either.

*

Tony has never in his life gotten along with leadership. Many had thought this was due to jealousy – the desire to be top dog and lead whatever pack he happened to be part of. But this was not true, because if there was anything Tony knew, it was how to be top dog whilst avoiding the responsibilities that usually came along with it.   

Tony always knew when it came down to it he’d never be able to make decisions based on moral responsibility. He much preferred the freedom to leave, to seek new things, to change his mind as the wind blows.

And this is why he decides to kiss Loki as a means to seal their deal, even though the god was undeniably male, undeniably enemy. Admittedly, part of it was so he wouldn’t have to watch the expression of triumph cross the god's overly smug face.  

Loki makes a sound of soft surprise but kisses back, shifting awkwardly backwards until he gained enough leverage to roll them both over. His mouth upon Tony was thorough but gentle, slow and achingly sweet. 

Fucking bastard, Tony cursed, because villains weren’t supposed to kiss like this, with so much want and tenderness. Especially not psychopath villains.

When it became too much (and not with lust but something else, fuck but he wasn’t ready for this) – he broke away, backing on all fours and feeling like a right idiot. To his surprise Loki allowed this retreat, although the gods hands snatched involuntarily at empty air before twitching into stillness, mouth still licking the last taste of Tony off.

‘That is a very persuasive start to our agreement, Tony Stark.’

‘As long as you don't try to eat me,’ Tony blurts out, and startles a bark of laughter out of the god. He tries not be thrilled at this power. Tries and fails. ‘What now? What do you want to do?’ 

‘I am more than… contented, to lie here with you,’ Loki said this as if surprised, tasting the words in his mouth as if he’d never spoken them before.

The mortal lifted an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘That’s it?’ 

‘That’s it,’ echoed the god, matching his raised brow with one of his own. 

‘Ok.’ Tony forces himself to stop staring at the god and settle his head back down on the pillows, god of mischief beside him. The lamps in the ceiling blinked down on him, and he thinks of how ludicrous they must look, lying side by side like this. He could hear Loki breathing next to him, but as the god volunteered neither speech nor movement, neither did he. They passed the hour in silence, basking in the strange sort of peace that seemed to have emerged between them. Tony’s mind wondered, yet stayed strangely still-

It was only the next day when Tony woke up in his own bed that he realised he had never slept better, nor breathed deeper than the night before.

 *

 ‘So tell me a story.’

The god was laying on his side with body turned towards his captive mortal, bodies not quite touching but intimate. Loki’s head was propped up upon an elbow, the better to examine Tony’s ever minute expression. They’d barely spoken in the last hour, choosing without words to get accustomed to the pull (he wasn’t going to use the word attraction, not in a million years) that throbbed in lazy, spiky waves between them.

‘Trying to skive your duties tonight?’

Tony folded his arms over his head, playing at a relaxation he didn’t feel. He could feel Loki’s eye like a weight on his skin. ‘I think perhaps you ought to tell me one instead.’

‘Hmm. And what stories of Asgard’s might and prowess would interest you?’

Tony rolled over to face him. ‘Tell me something more personal.’

Loki’s expression instantly shuttered under his examination. ‘I have little to tell.’

‘Bullshit, I’ll start. Once upon a time there was a convict god-‘

‘You are incorrigible,’ the god said and reached out, but his fingers stilled in mid-air when Tony flinched, and strayed no further.

‘My touch,’ the god said quietly. ‘Is it so very loathsome?’

‘No,’ Tony swallowed. ‘In fact. It feels a little too good.’

In response Loki simply rested his head on him. ‘Tony Stark,’ he sighed againts his chest, voice vibrating low in his throat. Tony knew it was heartfelt by how resigned it sounded.

Like Loki was resigned to wanting him.

Hesitantly, he laid a hand on the god’s head and stroked it once, tentatively. The weight on hims stilled, as Loki drew a deeper breath, and Tony lifted up sections of hair and allowed it to tumble back, combed his fingers through a softness he had not thought possible.

Good grief. He was petting one of SHIELD’s archnemesis, and the mad god was letting him.

‘Go on then. Awesome adventures of an Asgardian convict god, part one.’

The god exhaled, a sigh that spoke volumes of how uptight he probably was; the control he exerted over himself. Then he begun.

‘Once upon a time, there were two youngling gods, brothers as as different as night and day, yet as close to each other as the threads on a tapestry. Seeking adventure and mischief, the brothers had ventured down onto a newly formed planet known as Midgard. The gods were but children then, the age of but the youngest of stars, and tempted by the stories of a world so very alike their own, yet in every way dissimilar.’

Thor, the older of the two brothers, had newly been bequeathed the great hammer Mjölnir, and was keen to employ it without restraint; this he could do only on Midgard, and the mountains rang with thunder and rained rocks for many days, for Thor is an oaf with the finesse of a bull-oxen, and thus in this spirit of play did he split Midgard’s crust with Mjölnir until they cracked and broke apart, splitting into five continents.’

Tony rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to rebut, but Loki simply would an arm around him and pulled him close before continuing in a voice like a drug.

‘Little did Thor know that his splitting of Midgard’s crusts had caused injury to the firegiant Logi, and destroyed his home. And thus did Logi challenge the brothers to a duel, with Moljin as the prize of forfeiture. But Loki could see the conclusion of this competition lied only in humilation for Thor and punishment for them both once the Allfather discovered the loss, as he inevitably would. In vain did he persuade Thor to relinquish this dare, but his brother was headstrong and vainglorious, and would not be swayed. Thus was Loki forced to resort to challenging Logi instead to a duel of eating, which Logi accepted-‘

‘Eating?’ Tony howled with laughter. ‘You’re as thin as a waif.’

‘I believe Logi mentioned something to that effect as well,’ Loki smiled thinly. ‘A great table of food was laid out, with meat enough for two hundred grown warriors. So confident was Logi of winning that he ate not just the meat, but the plates and bowls as well.’

Tony arched an eyebrow. ‘And then what did you do?’

‘The competition was held in open fields, but whilst the table was being replenished I requested it carried to the edge of a forest. Logi saw no harm in this relocation, self-assured as he was in his victory.’

‘Much to his detriment, I’m sure.’

‘Indeed,’ the god grinned down at him, and no truer embodiment of mischief had Tony ever known. ‘So when came my turn, all I had to do was shove him hard onto the table of feast, where it immediately caught fire – and everything was consumed: food, table, trees. An entire forest swallowed up by Loki’s proverbial hunger.’

‘You cheater,’ Tony laughed.

The god ignored him and continued; ‘And thus Loki defeated Logi and forced him into repatriations, which for his pains he obtained the gift of tinder – something the brothers could not bring back to Asgard, for how would they then explain the circumstances of their obtaining it? By chance a tribe of wandering humans passed us by at that exact moment- your kind were yet brutish and unregimented scavengers then, begging for scrapes from the gods. And thus the art of firemaking was passed onto mankind.’

Tony blinked. He was pretty sure his jaw was hanging open by then.

‘You’re the god that gave us fire?’

‘I am.’

‘Bullshit,’ Tony snorted, because he couldnt process that the god now surreptitiously stroking his forearm (as if he wouldn’t notice, the wily bastard – any touch of Loki’s was distracting as hell) – incidentally also the same god who tried to snuff out New York; which was also the same god responsible for enabling much of civilizations initial civil progress.

Rather than defend himself, Loki simply shrugged and pressed him closer. ‘Tis merely a story, Tony Stark, do not be so riled.’

‘Full of lies,’ Tony snorted, partly as a means of meaningless rebellion He was lying flushed against Loki, feeling both comfortable and uncomfortable, unable to protest. Because in truth, there was nothing he could protest about.

The god huffed a breath into his hair. ‘You will never see, Tony Stark.’

‘What will I never see?’

Loki paused, as if debating how much to tell him. ‘That there is truly very little that goes, in the way of truth, when one is immortal. Truth is an ever-changeable thing. Asgard does not like this, and hence does not like change.’

‘Here we’re all about change. But that’s not why you’re here, are you.’

Loki pulled him ever closer, and does not answer. Instead he offers the answer to a very different question.  ‘I have watched your kind grow from tribes to cities. I know everything there is to know about your species. There is no mystery on Midgard for one such as me, Tony Stark. Only the most shallow of stories. Yet here you are made; the scent of your breath pulled from this air. It is this earth that shapes this face, this voice that sings to my very bones.’

Tony squeezed his eyes shut, the rise and fall of a god’s chest vibrating on his cheek.  Could he do it? Be the Jane to Loki’s Midgardian lover?

He doesn't know.

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

"I swear by his eyebrow which drives the sleep from my eyes..."  ~ 1001 Arabian Nights

11

As far as quality time goes, Loki turns out to be remarkably easy to please. Tony takes to grousing about this.

‘Its getting to the point where I can’t tell if you’re the lowest maintenance evil overlord I ever met, or the exact opposite.’

‘Have you come to tire of me already?’ Loki yawns. Lately he always appears to the mortal tired.

Tony could feel his brows furrow. He had dismissed these notions at first, for Loki was a god - could gods truly suffer from exhaustion the way mortals do? But Loki looked more and more as if he was being consumed from within by dark fire: these days whenever he appears, Tony can hear the growing frustration in his stride, the urgent weight of his footfalls. But he can also see the tension bleed out of the god slowly, after a short time in Tony’s undoubtedly irresistible company.

What’s a guy to do? It’s not Tony’s fault he’s fabulous. And thus Loki’s new tendency of appearing out of the blue and melting against him like butter on a hot grill – well, its left ‘frightening’ long ago. To the mortal's disgruntlement, it seems to be slowly inching out of ‘deeply disturbing’ and into ‘flattering’ territory.

Tony recognizes trouble when he sees it, it’s just that he’s terrible at doing anything about it.

‘GErrofff me, Loki. You’re like an octopus, a freaking octopus.’ The mortal squeezed his hands between them in an attempt to wedge them apart; it was like trying to move a boulder.

A boulder capable of walking him backwards into a conveniently placed bed and then toppling him into it.

‘Ohfff; hey I just got up-‘ the mortal protested, but the god had rolled on top of him, effectively cutting off any escape.

‘Stay,’ Loki presses his cold, windswept lips into his cheeks, and Tony huffed at the ceiling as he suffered every inch of his face to be kissed.

‘How does anybody ever need this much contact?’

‘Because you are warm to the touch, Tony Stark,’ Loki sighed into his skin; ‘-and I am always cold.’

Damm if the mad god’s lies weren’t starting to worm its way into his heart. Tony gave up with a roll of his eyes and grudgingly allowed the giant green barnacle to cling even closer. If only it wasn’t maliciously magical and twice as big as him.

‘Fine. But then you have to answer a question.’

Permission granted, Loki wraps around him like a snake. ‘Ask.’

Why are you so tired all the time, Tony thinks, but what actually comes out of his mouth is:

‘What’s a Furlompy and why am I one?’

Above him Loki actually shakes with laughter, creating a small alavanch. ‘Perhaps its best you dont find out.’

‘Why?’ Tony’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is somebody about to get into trouble?’

‘Merely avoiding it, which one hears is good practice.’

‘I hear mercy killing can be good practice too.’

Loki laughed into his neck; authentic, warm, rousing in Tony a deep melancholia at how fleeting its sounds lingered in the air before disappearing like it was never there.  The movements of his fingers upon Tony’s skin had a blindly searching quality, search for X before it disappears. Tony is disturbed by how quickly he has come to accommodated to these new trespasses upon his person – they were now entirely too comfortable wrapped around each other.

‘Fucking octopus,’ he grouses again, but it doesn’t stop him from opening his mouth to the god’s seeking lips and stroking tongue. His heart hammers, part fear and part arousal, and wasn’t it funny because Tony had no clue if it was warning or desire – they seemed almost indistinguishable.

All that, and then of late there is the sense of something squeezing his innards, stuttering his heartbeat – a strange aching hollowness within him that’s starting to spread.

He has a bad feeling that one day all this rolling around together was going to break something vital.

Cold white hands framed his face, forced Tony to look into a pair of eyes so dark they were almost black, so deep with want that they seemed empty.

‘Tony Stark. Trust me.’

The mortal gave a shaky laugh. ‘Now here’s a currency we seldom use.’

‘Tis no surrender for you to do this,’ Loki persuades, fingers skimming under Tony’s shirt like spiders.

‘Liar,’ Tony breathes, but still it is him who pulls his immortal betrayer down for a kiss.

*

Thing is, he’s getting more and more certain that something’s going to fall apart. And he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing here.

Loki is in his bed; asleep, and the shape and proximity of him anchors Tony down and simultaneously makes him want to shake apart. There was something heart breaking about Loki’s sleeping face. Something in the lines of his face, shapes, planes and colour that whispered of tragedy, of bone deep yearning, of silence and desperation. Something beautiful and pensive and deeply, deeply incomplete.

Or maybe Tony was just becoming too much of a melodramatic storyteller. That could be likely too.

In his bed, Loki actually feels non-human; magical. The sensation of cold, bloodless skin against Tony’s flesh is a little too flawless and deceptive; although the mortal would be hard-pressed to explain in precisely what manner he thought this. The god’s presence is much bigger than his very human suggestion of pale skin and pink lips and sleep-softened limbs, clingy even in their unconscious state. In fact, Loki’s presence took over the bed, filled the entire room with mystery.  

The god filled any space he inhabited with want. And underneath even that, despair.

How strange was it that a god, more so this god, could want a human so much?

The human has lately taken into musing about similarities and differences between gods and mortals. Tony recognises these traits of need and relentlessness even in Thor – as well as the the stories about Odin and the heroes of Asgard. The habbit of storytelling had made Tony somehow more perceptive to nuances; to society - how Earth’s mortality had been responsible for human traits just as much as immortality shaped the wiles and wants of gods.

In relative terms, Tony felt that humans were quick to desire, but equally quick to let go. However it seemed that for gods possession is a deeply important thing. That and defense – the art of protecting said possessions.

And apparently Tony was now Loki’s stuff.

As if Tony had spoken his thoughts to Loki aloud (and wouldn't that be scary) the god stirred and cracked one eye open, observing the mortal with watchful possessiveness.

‘Go back to sleep,’ Tony orders, letting his arms fall and the back of his hand trail againts the sharp contours of Loki’s face. 'You need it.'

‘I have a hunt tonight,’ the god says reluctantly, eyelashes trashing in pleasure at Tony’s touch on his face. ‘The spellwork is already released, and timing is critical.’

‘So do it tomorrow.’

Loki’s face twisted in shades of agony, torn between two desires. ‘Tis a very delicate phrase of the night. Alas that I cannot stay.’

Tony continued to trail his fingers under the god’s chin and stroking the nape of his neck, fascinated by the shivering ripples in the god’s pale skin. He waited before whispering very quietly; ‘Tell me what you’re looking for. Maybe I can help.’

Green eyes flickered up at him, fathomless as a snake. A gaze that silently said I know what you’re doing.

‘It would grieve you to know.’

‘You seek to protect me?’

‘Have I not done exactly that all this while?’

'You speak of protection.' Tony’s arms tightened in response around him. ‘Then I wish you’d stop mucking about where the sun doesn’t shine.’

‘Tony Stark,’ the god sighed as he pulled slightly away, locking their gazes. ‘You may as well ask the ocean to swallow Midgard’s moon.’

‘I’m asking you,’ Tony said quietly, ‘to trade new terms for your stories.’

Loki arches an eyebrow. ‘You’d stay here forever, with only a mad god for company?’

Could he? Tony swallowed. He’d not anticipated Loki to actually entertain his bargain.

‘I'm dispensable. There are other Avengers. If my world was safe, there’d be no need somebody like me.’

Loki’s face reveals little of the god’s true thoughts, and Tony tried to still the rapid hammer of his chest. What was he saying? He’d always had a run-away mouth, but these words, this offer– surely they did not come from him. Tony would never give his life and freedom away like that.

A hand cupped his face and he flinched.

‘You are brave, but I wouldn’t want to break you, Storyteller.’

'I'm made of sterner stuff,' the mortal swallowed. ‘And maybe you think too much of yourself.’

Loki laughed, low in his throat and Tony hears the hunger hiding there. Outside the tower a gale blows – there is a blood moon out tonight; weeping rust and breaking waves. There are things out there, Tony thinks to himself – and blinks at the nature of his thoughts.

Once upon a time he was a man of science. Where was that man now?

Like a scorpion seeking shelter Loki crawls into his lap and Tony-

Tony picks it up; and holds it to his bosom.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time

A loss that can be repaired by money is not of such very great importance ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian NIghts

12

He’s starting to doubt himself – who he is inside, what he knows, what he believes in.

Tony is no fool, and he knows Loki must had planned this from the start, probably planted the seed himself when Tony wasn’t looking. It wouldn’t be hard to play the mortal too – Tony knew now without the shadow of a doubt that Loki truly was a god, part of El, manifestation of an idea given form, a face, personality. He couldn’t say how he had come to be so certain, but he was. His lover was Other, but this otherness was not alien.  No, it was an Other that reflected a vaster, more incomprehensible dimension.

And strangely, Other might even be a very similar state to what being human entailed. In other words, to be Other was not to be alien, but similar – and perhaps Loki was not a creature divorced from man, but as intimate to mortality as Tony himself. 

There is something deeply tragic about this - the idea of gods being human. Sharing the same emotional frailty, but not the physical. Tony cannot find why it makes him sad, but it does. 

He does not know why it makes him feel like Loki’s very existence had been wrought out of dark space to represent loneliness. That unlike humans, who tumbled out of chaos to shape their own destinies, Loki's very fate had been a thing created – created and labeled. A god shaped hole, at best temporarily soothed, but never satisfied.

It doesn’t absolve the god’s wrong doings. Far from it. But Tony understands incompleteness.

He thinks of himself, alone in this tower divorced from all he knew. How much time has passed since he’d last set foot on Stark Tower? Does a day here pass the same way? Could centuries move in the turn of a moon?

Beside him, Loki watches the wisdom grow in his eyes as thoughts and theories come together, divorce and realign. He gives no answer, not that Tony really wants any. Some things deserve to remain buried, Tony catches himself thinking -  and it is this thought, more than any other that makes him realize that should Loki return him today to Stark Tower and his old life as an Avenger, he’d be almost unrecognizable to the people who once knew him.

He thinks of Thor, and wondered if gods would always be doomed to love mortals, one way or another. His lover (and Tony shies from the word, but there it is) – his lover simply wasn’t capable of satiety, for all that he longed for it.

‘You see so much, and yet so little,’ Loki had sighed over multiple attempts to distract Tony from his thoughts, pressing a thousand kisses over the seamless blend of night and day. Tony has learnt patience from his stories, so he allows Loki to weave these sweet illusions around them both. He knew there is a chance, a very high chance, that he might spend the rest of his short life trapped in this tower, captive to the loneliest god who ever walked the dark spaces of the universe.

For all that it was a life sentence, Tony finds himself strangely absent of bitterness.

Gods had been kidnapping mortals from the oldest of stories – mythology and history is dotted with gods and kings who coveted, stole and hid away. Modern man might have thrown out the practice, but gods were anachronistic things that didn’t understand change. Not really.

He watches Loki’s hands creep slowly over him, coming to rest hesitantly on his arc reactor, and it isn’t fear or disgust he feels. Its pity.

He covers the god’s longer fingers with his own, and watches Loki’s eyelashes flutter finally into rest.

Tony realizes he will never ask if Loki has done this before to someone else, once upon a time. He doesn’t ask if other towers like this exist, standing in remote corners of space like abandoned nests: forlorn and crumbling testaments to the fact that whilst humans had their deaths to escape to, gods had nothing but eternal space, eternal journeys, roads that carried on and on into infinity.

You could break a heart telling a story like this, Tony thinks as he watches Loki slumber, briefly at peace.

Perhaps that’s why in this story, the villain's love interest of had a heart made out of metal.

*

Tony doesn't quite know when he puts it together, but after a while he realizes the creature Loki is hunting for every night is Hugin. And that Munin is likely already dead.

Not one to tarry on testing out a theory, he confronts Loki outright when he appears, carrying a branch and a small satchel of mysterious artifacts which he dumped on Tony’s carpet.

‘Yes,’ Loki says, and Tony reels with this gift of truth, almost collapses under it.

‘Why?’

The god grimaced. ‘It is better you do not know.’

‘Stop saying that,’ Tony said sharply. ‘I’ve handled you so far, and all your bullshit. Tell me the truth.’

‘You ask for truth from me?’ Flashing eyes, electric and edged with something not at all safe shot at him even as the god busied himself with arranging his things. Tony met him glare for glare.

‘I do. Do you dare give it?’

Loki drew back, strange expressions crossing his face. The ghosts of past lies swam around them.

Finally Loki rose to his feet and confessed in a soft voice; ‘I am looking for my father.’

The mortal blinked. Whatever he had been expected from Loki, this had not been it.

The god of lies turns away. ‘Two fathers have betrayed me, yet the Norns have seen fit to lead me to a third; one whom I’ve never met. The old kings of Asgard has locked him away for centuries untold, in a place that evades even the memories of gods. I seek to free him, no more.’

Tony swallowed. ‘And those.. birds of Odin’s, they’ll tell you where he is?’

Loki’s smile was full of bleak promise. ‘Suffice to say I have means of ensuring it.’

Which is to say he’d stop at nothing, and don’t Tony know it. ‘Why do I feel there’s about a hundred things you’re not telling me?’

‘It is nothing that will jeopardize your safety.’

Tony didn’t believe him of course. There are lies, damn lies, and then there’s the god of lies, and Tony wasn’t even going to try to outmanuver an immortal who could bend space and matter to suit his own purpose. People liked to think Tony was reckless, but –

Yeah, scrape that because actually he was reckless. And quite enjoyed it too

‘Enough questions.’ The god pulls him down onto the floor with him. ‘Stay beside me, but let me concentrate on my task.’

Disgruntled, Tony surveyed Loki as the god started arranging small piles of sand and drawing strange diagrams with chalk.

‘So I am to sit here whilst you pour sand on the carpet and listen to you ramble about your clever and cynical ways-’

‘Augury, in this case.’

‘Casting of bones.’ Tony said flatly. ‘You’re planning to put the fate of whole worlds in balance by rattling some skulls in a can.’

‘Actually, we use the branch of a fruit bearing tree.’

‘Apple?’

The god gives him a dry look. ‘Cease your fishing.’

‘And yet,’ Tony snorted and folded his arms, ‘clearly I’m not the one trying to learn things he shouldn’t know.’

‘I am not assured of success. As it is, cleromancy is an indeterminate sort of divination.’

‘Then why resort to it at all?’

‘Hugin evades me still, and Munin remains in stasis, but I am run out of time.’

Tony didn’t know what else to say to that. Stay away from evil would fall on deft ears, and be careful seems a trite and foolishly human thing to say.

He watched the god smooth a frown away, then glance his way. ‘You worry for me.’

‘For a bachelor, I sure worry about a lot of things.’

Loki stares at him, then down at his half completed spellwork. The god shakes his head and puts down the branch he had picked up earlier. Then he crawls over to Tony, who feels his eyes widen and narrow.

‘Don’t-’

‘Do you not know,’ Loki’s voice is a mix of tired and tender, ‘-how thoroughly you have enthralled me.’

Tony tried not to shiver too obviously at his words. ‘And don’t say stuff like that as well.’

Loki’s grip on him tightened. The god always wore his fear of loss around him like a heavy cloak, and tonight it was infectious, seeping into Tony’s bones and soaking him in deepest melancholy.

‘Tell me a story,’ Tony says to stop it – whatever it is - before it begins. Loki looks at him, and for the first time it occurs to the mortal that he does look as old as the stories say. So very tired, and so very old.

‘Who is the storyteller now?’ the god grouses, but he settles beside Tony, wrapping his entire body around the mortal like a large and particularly possessive serpent. ‘My mother had a cloak.’

‘Of invisibility?’

The god’s mouth quirked. ‘Aye, one of its many virtues was that of vanishment. And flight. She would turn into a falcon and soar upon the winds. With her divination, she could alight in places of strive seconds before they happened, and broker peace before a drop of blood was shed.’

‘Nice.’

‘When Thor received Mjöllnir and with it the gift of flight, she left the cloak on my bed, that I too may freely feel the wind on my face.’ The god’s face turned somber. ‘In my jealous wrath, I tore the cloak to shreds, scorning her gift for pity. And after that it was too late, as it takes no ordinary feathers to produce such a cloak.’

‘I have a flying suit, you know.’

‘And I have my magic, but it is different. I cannot describe it – how it feels to be free of one’s own skin.’

Unfortunately Tony could imagine it all too easily. ‘You’ll fly again.’

‘Yes. Once Hugin is mine as his brother is, the cloak of Friga will be as a foolish adornment beside the power of mine raven's cloak. All of Odin's secrets shall be revealed to me, as if I sat on the Hliðskjálf itself.’

Tony pretended the words didn't strike his heart with chill. ‘And then you’ll find your.. conveniently lying around spare father.’

‘Yes.’

‘I expect an introduction.’

A comical look of surpise ran across Loki’s face. ‘If you wish.’

‘What is his name anyways?’ Tony asked, voice muffled against Loki’s chest. ‘Your father.’

Alarm bells rung when the god didn’t answer him. ‘Loki?’

Silence again, and this time the god’s grip turned painful when Tony tried to push himself away. ‘Stop it.'

'Tony Stark,' the god uttered, and his voice seemed to vacillate between begging and defiance, yet did Loki seem unable to continue. 

Feeling defeated, Tony laid againts his chest and suffered his hair being carded. 'Tell me how the story ends, Loki.’

‘I am not gifted in divination,’ his lover spat, hiding a anxiety he plainly could not control. His fingers scrabbled against Tony, transformed into a prison that spoke of Loki’s fear of loss more eloquent than any expression of words.

‘But you have decided the ending, have you not?’

‘The world ends around us, and I cast a spell upon my lover,’ Loki whispers into his hair. ‘Of forgetfulness. And forgiveness.’

Tony closed his eyes as the fight went out of him. So even gods could be sorry for the trespasses they committed.

It was cold comfort.

‘You didn’t mention your father’s name.’

Loki closes his eyes. ‘I dare not.’

Wretched god, Tony thinks, sick with pity and love.

‘It’s Ymir, isin’t it? Progenitor of Jotuns.’

Poison green eyes beseeches him, before finally closing in defeat.

'Yes.’

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

He may construct a thousand forts of lead, but this will do no good, nor will his castles help ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

13

‘You bastard.’ Tony screwed his eyes shut, because he was locked down by the god’s arms and couldn’t  shake his head in denial. ‘You fucking bastard.’

‘He is my father,’ Loki said hoarsely.

‘He’s not your fucking father. You can’t keep looking for a new father just because you don’t get along with the old one.’  This time when Tony pushed away, the god released him. ‘Christ on a stick.‘ He pushed the hair out of his eyes, longer than it ever was after all these months of captivity. ‘I'm such an idiot. All this time getting under my skin, and you’d planned to destroy my world all along.’

Silence stretched between the, before Loki finally spoke.  ‘Tony Stark. I would barter terms with you.’

Tony sat up on the bed, deliberately showing his back to the god. ‘Oh yeah, talk dirty to me. Come on.’

‘I would have you stay.’ His kidnapper placed a persuasive hand above his elbow, preventing him from leaving the bed.

He couldn’t stifle the hysterical laugh bubbling out of him ‘After what you just told me? Gotta love the way you just keep on deluding yourself.‘

Loki narrowed his eyes, changing tack. ‘I tell you now; I have no intentions to relinquish you.’

‘Colour me surprised.’ Tony said scathingly, sour bile churning in his gut as he made to move away, only to be pulled back by a circle of arms. He keeps his back stiff against the god’s efforts to cradle him against his chest.

Loki’s head dips into the space between his neck and murmurs. ‘Are you truly so miserable in mine company? You have said yourself, tis no sentence to remain in this tower.’

‘I said I wouldn’t mind staying if my world was kept safe, which is clearly not happening.’ Tony reminded him sharply. He really was going to die in this tower and it was one thing to consider it in passing, but quite another to be sure of the sentence. ‘You’re going to have to choose, dollface.’

 ‘And what?’ Loki’s voice sharpened into spikes. ‘Relinquish my ambitions? All that I have set in place before one such as you were even born?’

‘And the price? The barter? Or will you just take?’

Loki exhaled into his shoulder, clearly grasping at patience. ‘What would you have of me, Tony Stark? What will buy me time?’

‘Why are you asking me? It’s my world that’s running out of time. You’re the last person who needs time from a… flimsy mortal,’ Tony snapped thoughtlessly. ‘I’ll be dead before you know it.’

And there and then, Tony realized that he’d struck truth by the look of fear that froze Loki’s features into stone, even as the god’s eyes filled with tears.

‘Ah but I do need time, Tony Stark. Time to win your forgiveness. Time to earn your love.’ Loki told him with devastating simplicity. ‘Midgard shall end, but I need you here-‘

‘I’ll never forgive you for destroying my world. You know that.’

Loki’s eyes fluttered shut, denying these words. Tears squeezed out of his eyes and dripped on Tony’s shoulder, cold even through his shirt. ‘You shall, my love. In a year. A decade. I will wait.’

How could he hate someone so much and yet ache with so much want?

Tony clamped his lips shut, and for long moments they stayed that way, with Tony frozen like a petrified piece of wood and Loki dropping small kisses upon him like a shedding willow.

He licks his lips and tries again, because he has to. ‘I want you to stop looking for Hugin.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You’re really a piece of work, you know that.’ Tony shook his head in disbelief. ‘You mean to call destruction upon my world, again, and yet you have the audacity to tell me I should… you have a lot of nerve, asking me for my lov- m-my loyalty in the same breath.’

‘Tony Stark.’

‘Loki Laufeyson,’ the mortal mocked.  It seems their positions had reversed – Loki now the one attempting reason, and Tony was the jagged and unstable one. ‘This is why you’re not Thor – this is why you’ll always hide in shadows. You’re shallow and selfish, Loki. Christ, you disgust me.’

The god attempted to draw closer but Tony shoved him away. ‘Why. First you goddamn tell me why you picked me.’

‘My storyteller,’ Loki caught both his wrist, and don’t Tony feel like a goddamn girl now as the god bents his head to reverently kiss them –

He slaps Loki instead. The god had not expected it and his neck whiplashes sharply as result, pale skin turning into an angry red welt before vanishing like it was never there.

‘I want to know why.’ Tony says again in a low, angry voice. ‘Why is it me – you could have choosen anyone else – chosen to keep a hundred different humans. And just try to lie to me again, come on. ’

‘Gods do not know everything, Tony Stark,’ Loki’s answer is soft, compassionate. And no answer at all.

Tony does not reply, and after a moment his lover stirs from the bed. A wave of magic smooths back the sheets, another cloaks him in leathers. Tony ignored the sound of booted feet coming circling the bed to stand beside him.

‘Loath as I am to leave you in this state-’ Loki begun.

‘Just go,’ Tony looked away. ‘Fuck off.’

‘Tony Stark,’ the god said, voice edged with a warning, placing a hand on his shoulder.

‘I hope that bird pecks both your eyes out.’

There was a heavy silence.

‘You would force me to choose?’ Loki’s fingers tightens almost painfully on Tony’s arm, which the mortal flung away – only, he knew bitterly, because Loki allowed the movement.

‘Course not,’ Tony fixed him with a false and toxic leer. ‘I expect the choice to be obvious. And I expect it to be me.’

‘And so it is, Tony Stark. Which is why I have brought you here.’

‘That’s not a choice,’ the mortal spat. In a low voice he continued, ‘You know I’ll have to stop you. You know the Avengers will stand against you.’

‘That would make a fine story indeed.’

‘Loki-‘

A sigh, wearied. ‘That is why you must stay here, Storyteller, in this tower. I will not see you killed.’

‘Only broken,’ Tony said bitterly. ‘You’d said you wouldn’t do that either.’

Loki looked away. There were no words to say, but Tony tried anyway.

‘Sometimes, there are no stories you can tell yourself to make things better.’

Loki laid a hand on his head. ‘Hush, Tony Stark. It is done.’ And then he disappeared, leaving Tony alone to laugh bitterly to himself in his prison of silk sheets, saffron drapes and golden wind-chimes. 

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time

Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

14 

He dreamt terrible things. Of continents sinking into the sea and exoskeletons of extinct beasts clawing out of the jagged earth. He dreamt of cities cracking apart in the center, of seeing Stark Tower first in flames, then in piles of rubble, taking his friends down with it as it crumbled apart. He saw a large green hand buried under with the building Tony had once insisted The Hulk called home – now turned cemetery.

The very place he’d sworn his friend would be safe in.

He walked the dreamscape, refusing to buckle under the chaos, the sulfurous and suffocating gases escaping from the fractured earth. The air was rife with despair, black feathers floating everywhere – sirens and alarms punctuated with sudden screaming. He saw Captian America’s shield, crushed amidst overturned vehicles and almost doubled over with the effort to hold in his bile.

Tony sucked in his breath, pushed the denial away and kept moving. There had to be somebody left.

He stumbled repeatedly on the uneven asphalt, fell repeatedly, and upon rising back up would force himself to break into another run. He didn’t know what he was looking for - death was everywhere and he was too late, too goddamn late - there was nothing left to save. Only the birds seem to escape the destruction, ravens taking to the air with relative ease as the earth beneath rumbled and cracked further apart. 

Somehow he had the impression of being watched, of the freewheeling birds above him following as he ran around in circles, not knowing what he was here to do. Their cries echoed excitedly in the air. He wants to hide from them, but he knows he can’t – it’s pointless, and he’d just waste precious time - there is a puzzle here -

It takes him a long while, but he finds the black widow and hawkeye, wrapped around each other like lovers, their eyes closed. The widow’s face was serene in death, the slightest hint of a smile upon her lips.

He wants to say goodbye, to call them by their names but deep down Tony knows, he doesn’t think he deserves to – he’d betrayed them, the Avengers, his family, everyone-

Then a sob escapes his lips - and the softest breath of a name, nonono and he’s off running, running, leaping over smoking debris and shouldering past half crushed alleyways. Loki wouldntdothatLokiwouldntdothat

Please, oh god please not her not her anyoneexcepther nopleasethisisnttruegodwhyLokiwhypleasepleasedontwhydontdothis

And then he sees her. And stops running.

WhywouldyouwhyIvedonethisIvestayed

There’s nothing to run from anymore, Tony thinks in dazed. The worst has already come to pass.

Like a trialed man, he approaches the crushed remains of Pepper’s car slowly. When he finally opens  the door a sea of blood comes pouring out, soaking his clothes. Because he cannot extricate her from the mess of twisted metal, he kneels before her - kneels in her blood and shakes apart.

Dontdothis whywhy

And overhead the birds are crying; they’re crying so fucking loud as to drown out everything else.

Tellmeastory

He bats the thought away. It interferes with his grief.

Tell me a storyt he spidercrawl of your brainworkwhenyoucall uponme

You didn’t mention your father’s name, Tony Stark

Yourfatheryourfather

There’s tears streaming down his face. He wants to kneel here and never move again, but its so noisy in his head-

We are nothing except for our storiesourstoriesourstoriesourstories

Finally cognizant of his subconscious mind running interference in his own dream,Tony rose cautiously to his feet.

‘What took you so long?’ the mortal hissed. ‘I’ve been calling on you for hours!’

‘Praying, ’ the god corrected. ‘And I didn’t think you needed me, Tony Stark; you seem to be doing fine.’

‘I’m stuck inside a drain, I almost broke a hand, and now I’m stinking and dying of cold!’

There’s an answer here, he suddenly knows. He takes one last look at Pepper, a look of deep devotion and love. Forces himself to remember her like this – for it was his cross to carry, whether good or ill. Forces himself to walk away from the wreckage of her body.

The voices get louder. Clearer. He hear’s Loki’s voice, clear as a bell. Hear himself arguing.

You will still havetopray,TonyStark

I wouldn’t recognize a prayer if it sat naked in front of me, doused in honey

There’s something here, in his own nightmare. A message.

GoodthingI’mmadeofluck

He’s spinning around the landscape, trying to understand. Smoke and blood. So many people dead.

‘Tell me!’ He screams into the ether. Crows laugh and jeer. He is in a hall of mirrors, shattered - he's the only top still spinning amid a sea of splinters.

‘Let me clarify then: up to this very moment, I simply didn't feel you had ‘put your back into it’, as the natives would say.’

Tony pulls at his hair, scratches bloody lines down his face, trying to put the pieces together.  What was Loki trying to tell him?

‘Wrong god, Tony Stark.’

And just like that the spinning stops.

Thor.

There was no hammer midst the rubble. No symbolic red flowed through the wreck. Thor could still save him, save them all.

Tony’s eyes opens and he jerks awake, tears still running down his cheeks as the first syllable of prayer lurches from his lips.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

When I was alive, I was dust which was, But now I am dust in dust I am dust which never was ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

15

For days Loki does not return, and when he finally does, he returns altered beyond recognition.

Loki returns to him stumbling and bleeding and blind, crashing into the balcony like a hawk shot down from the skies.

Tony half rises, eyebrows shooting up at the sight of the god rolling around the stone floor in agony, moaning as he picked himself up only with the help of the banister.

‘Loki, what-‘

Alarmed, the mortal moves towards the clearly suffering god, only to recoil at the inhuman noise that issued from the cowl Loki wore to cover his face. The sight of his tall frame enveloped in dark flickering robes; robes with a hood that cast deep shadows upon his face, robes clearly made of magic – said plainly to Tony that Loki had done something terrible to himself.

Tony could feel the blood draining from his face as he watched Loki swerve blindly, knocking into furniture and sending plates and books crashing to the floor.

‘‘What happened to you? Were you attacked-’

‘I suffer dearly,’ Loki laments, the wet evidence of sobbing still fresh in his voice, and Tony is harrowed by this unmaking and reaches out without thinking, unable to summon the anger he had worn so well around himself mere moments before.

‘No!’ the cloaked figure recoiled from him and turned away. ‘Do not approach. The spell... I am not as I once was.’

‘I don’t care about that,’ Tony said impatiently, reaching out to grasp the god’s arm, the edge of his cloak. It was a mark of how much pain Loki must have been in to falter under so slight a touch, and Tony could feel his foreboding spike even as he pulled persistently at the hood with his other hand. His words fell away, dried up in his throat as Loki’s hood slipped off, revealing his features.

Tony could feel his face blanching. ‘What have you done to yourself?’     

The god did not answer, merely cringed under Tony’s hands as if they imposed an impossible weight upon him. He looked truly wretched. And so much overwhelming sorrow and regret sat on that once pristine  and haughty face as to make Tony’s knees shake.

Half the flesh was torn from Loki’s face. Set deeply now with scratch marks and deep gouges across his forehead and scalp, Tony saw feathers half-merged into Loki's face and sideburns, weeping sores and blood. 

But what truly made him shudder in horror was the fact that no green eyed gaze received him from Loki’s face. His eye sockets had been gauged out. In its place, Hugin’s beady red eyes gazed upon him, burning and inhuman and alive.

Horror stuttered his tongue as Tony wrenched himself away, involuntary tears leak out of his eyes. ‘Christ, Loki. Oh dear god. Oh Christ.’

Then hurt and broken-hearted anger burst through his grief, sharp as spikes.

‘Was it worth it? Have you now attained your heart’s desire?’

Tony, Tony,’ Loki sobs, if it still Loki anymore, or an altogether different beast, Tony could hardly tell. The god steps toward him, arms reaching out beseechingly. ‘Please, my- ’

Tony fell back, moving back by several steps and watching the despair cross Loki’s face. He couldn't take his eyes off the roiling red eyes – red and round - round as a bird. An animal, a beast.

He watched in horror as Loki sank onto the floor again, wrecked with agony. Blood poured from his new eyes, black and tarlike. His armor had grafted itself into his skin, along with the cloak of feathers. He seemed to be molting, feathers falling from his cloak but also new ones bursting out of his skin like sharp pine needles.

‘What can I do?’ The mortal asks helplessly. He felt pity an disgust, but most of all he still felt Loki’s presence, the man within the monster he’d become. It is to this that Tony tried to reach.

The god sobs his name like sustenance, even as he shys away. ‘Don’t touch me, Tony Stark. Please.’

‘I want to. Let me help you.’

Loki wrenches his arm away and does not answer, merely stumbles away into the darkest part of the room. His arms reach out and savagely rips out a curtain, rod clattering to the floor and rolling between them. Tony watches him sink into a corner of the floor, shedding feathers and shuddering under his cloak.

He’s just about to turn away – give Loki some privacy when he hears the weakly whispered plea.

'Stay.’

And Tony is made helpless against such a request, so he slides to the floor as well, wiping the tears from his eyes.

He doesn’t know how long they both sat like that, in opposite ends of Tony’s circular prison. A long time, judging by the way the sun moved across the room.

‘Do you love me now, like this,’ Loki suddenly, finally says from his corner, huffs of laughter escaping his lips through a shuddering that was visible even in the gloaming light. Tony looked straight at him, and would not turn away until the god found courage enough to return the gaze, though he flinched through several attempts.

Loki truly looked a monster now, wretched and unsavable. They way he’d always imagined himself.

And Tony loved him anyways. 

‘Do I look at you any different?’ Tony asked.

‘No.’

‘Then I love you no differently,’ the mortal said shortly, and shook his head, huffing. ‘The things you take upon yourself.’

‘You think I would do this willingly.’

‘Stop lying to yourself. You wanted this. You’d throw everything away-’ Tony shook his head, denying the exhaustion, the way his own voice shook. ‘God.’

The shadow of Loki stirred at last, unfolded into its original length.

‘Be careful, Tony Stark,’ Loki whispered as he stood, hood thrown back to reveal the pale strips of scared flesh and red eyes. ‘Ere it seem as if you might actually weep for a fallen god.’

He was leaving, Tony somehow knew. Forever.

A strange pain gripped his heart, so tightly that he thought he might black out but Tony ignored it. There was no point examining something so… trite, at a time like this.

They’d both lost.

‘Remember me as I was, Tony Stark,’ the creature said, and moved towards the balcony.

‘Wait!’ Tony called him back, and took a deep breath. He followed Loki onto the balcony and took his arm. ‘Let me go. Let me go and I’ll… forgive you. We can leave this place, leave earth-’

‘Will you look upon me now without hate?’ Loki asked. He shook his head as Tony stood silent. ‘All shall be from pain and blood reborn.’

‘And you get to decide who lives and who dies?’

‘To define fate is the providence of gods, Tony Stark, and although you like to forget you stand before one, there are paths that must be laid out and fulfilled. New stories shall spill out of chaos – and they will say Loki brought definitive end to these tired worlds and tired rules, and in place birthed new dynasties. A new people in his name.’

‘You’re just so fucking delusional you just redefine the word! You want to spin a real story, how about I do it for you?' Tony spat. 'Once upon a time, there lived a pathetic, lonely god. He shunned his kind and looked down upon the races of nine realms as unworthy. He was in other words, full of himself, and full of shit.’

‘You are angry, and right to be so,’ Loki lifted a claw-like finger in warning. ‘But push me not.’

‘So in return for his hubris the Fates cursed him with solitude,’ Tony continued undaunted. ‘He had to bear the burden of loneliness – whole eternities of it –upon his shoulders. And the weight of it was unbearable. So the lonely god wrought out mischief, he laid traps and plotted cheap parlor tricks, he turned the attention of his enemies upon him because he could not bear to be alone.’

'ENOUGH.’

Tony found his wrists seized in claws that dug into tender human flesh. He looked up, into the face of his kidnapper-turned-lover gazing down at him with a wounded, empty expression, braced for the mortal’s vitriol and disgust.Tony's mind went blank, and instead of attempting to break away he instinctively took advantage of the god’s proximity to grab handfuls of Loki’s robes and haul him closer.

Chest to chest, Loki’s grip faltered. The god looked terrified, wary, relieved, and below all that crept a sadness older than Tony knew how to gauge. His voice is thin, disbelieving. ‘Would you kiss a monster?’

Tony batted the god’s hands away. ‘This is nothing. Your monstrosity has always lied within, Loki. Worse of all the monster you turn on yourself.’

Loki smiled; sad, happy, bitter. ‘I know.’

The mortal shook his head, eyes closed as he reached out with everything he had. ‘Just kiss me, asshole.’

Loki moaned when they finally broke apart, a broken sound. Tony knew he will hear this sound haunting his dreams for years to come. Whatever happened, something incontrovertible had taken place. The world might and seemed likely to end, yet a traitorous part of Tony will always whisper: I had this. The world may burn, but I had this and cannot regret it. 

If only he knew what this was, and how he could keep it.

‘You will drive me half mad, Tony Stark. Some days I wonder if you will drive me to-‘ Loki broke off, and turned away. His breath his labored. ‘You must stay here. Only the tower is protected.’

Tony watched his footsteps, waited a moment before calling out, ‘You’re not coming back, are you? You’re going to leave me here, to rot for all eternity.’

One last look. One last gaze. Tony has always been greedy.

‘I’ve come too far to give it up now, Tony Stark.’

‘So this is how the story of the millennial ends. The love of all ages, unraveled by a fucking plot hole.’ Tony nodded tiredly. ‘Goodbye then. You never know these twists and turns.’

What was there to say? Loki would do as he would do, and Tony was sick and tired and sad. He’d say he wanted to go home, but the truth was the last thing he wanted now is to go home.

He watched Loki’s gaze turn to him one last time. ‘Aye,’ Loki’s voice echoed in his ear, and he felt the movement of a caress on his face although the god was already a distance away. Loki’s parting touch was painfully gentle, painfully final. ‘You never know these twists and turns.’

And then he was gone.

*

He was defeated. So very tired, and defeated. Tears leaked down his eyes and his hands hung limply by his sides, but Tony didn’t care about witnesses. He doesn’t have to, for when Thor steps out of the shadowy drapes he had been hiding behind, similar tears ran down the hard plains of his face.

‘Now you see.’

Thor looked aged, if such a thing possible for immortals. ‘Brother,’ Thor wept. He did not seem to hear Tony speak. ‘O my brother, you are go to your doom.’

Tony sank into the cushions, looking out at nothing and everything. ‘There’s nothing we can do now,’ he said duly. He felt little. His heart was covered in a blank fog.

He looks around the tower. It had once been home. A space of breath, he thinks.

For all his captivity, there was a part of him, long ignored, that had never been happier here. Who’d never felt more cherished, nor more tenderly treated.

He takes a deep breath and shoved it all down. ‘Let’s blow this joint with that hammer of yours, Point Break.’

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time

Since I must die," he said, "before I choose the manner of my death, I conjure you on your honour to tell me if you really were in that vase?"  

~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

16

The one consolation about being back in Stark Tower, Tony thinks, is that he gets to see for himself that it’s still whole. That his nightmare had been exactly that, a nightmare, and everyone he cared about still whole and hale.

(Except for one, but he wouldn’t think about that.)

That, and Tony gets Jarvis back, and that means he gets to control again of who gets access to him. So the first thing he does, outside of the most cursory of reports to Steve,  is ensure that he has the luxury to brood away as many hours (days) as necessary without interruptions or interrogations.

Which means Tony’s floor is currently cleared only for Bruce, because Bruce is a pal first, a Big Bad second and an Avengers third, and Bruce recognised the type of invisible scars Tony carried on his chest that made breathing so much harder these days.

Or perhaps he’d just gotten used to the air on somewhere else. (On someone else).

Despite Thor’s repeated attempts to see him, Tony couldn’t bring himself to speak to the fair-haired son of Odin. His memories gathered like bile, acid bitterness that coated his throat.

Months, he’d languished in his mad brother’s cage, yet Thor had only visited once. Long had Tony waited, especially in those early days, convinced of Thor’s eventual return. Day after day, telling himself that surely Thor would come for him any day now. Yet the god of thunder had not show, and Tony was bitter for it now more than ever, oh yes.

If only Thor had looked past his own desires, the fate of his world wouldn’t be hanging on balance. If only he’d come earlier, Tony wouldn’t have fallen in lo-

He turns away from these thoughts.

Alcohol, once an old and reliable friend, had become unfamiliar, poisonous. One of the first things he’d done upon returning was stumble to his bar - and then stood there for long moments, hands clenched to his sides as the chrome unfamiliarity of it sinks in, as once well-loved labels elude him, the experience of attempting to mix himself an old favourite turn so surreal that he felt almost as if he was dancing on his own grave.

He’d left the drink untouched on the counter. It was too much from rote. It was too Old Tony Stark. He’d tee-totalled in the caves too, but it had never been with the option present. Even in the caves, he’d still been Old Tony Stark.

But he wasn’t Old Tony Stark anymore, was he? 

Who was he now?

*

Bruce was the only one Tony dared to show what seemed almost like a new facet of himself too. Pepper – he’d managed to keep her more or less convinced in his Old Tony voice. But he found he wasn’t comfortable. She had this edge of impatience, of harried expectation that he currently felt too raw to deal with.

‘You miss him,’ Bruce finally says over their third cup of coffee and unbroken silence.

‘I fear for him.’ Tony shook his head, wondering a little at the wet, rattling despair that always seems to be a hair’s breath away from choking his lungs.

‘You’ve also changed. A great deal.’

Tony quirked an eyebrow, and Bruce elaborated with a gesture. ‘Honesty wasn’t one of your more evident traits, prior to your… disappearance.’

‘You find out things about yourself— it tends to happen. I’ve changed before.’

‘I know.’ Bruce wryly brushes aside the placebo answer. ‘I mean, I know you’re a big fan of metamorphosis, but it was never your character that changed, only your actions.’  

Tony shrugged his shoulders, but the movement felt false and discordant and he winced. It was true – somehow, in telling all these tales, he’s lost the capacity to lie. Wasn't life strange.

‘Loki was very much in love with you, wasn’t he?’

‘Aye,’ Tony gave a shaky laugh, in equal points surprised and glad that Bruce was forcing him to talk about it. ‘And apparently I’m into older men. Like two thousand odd years older.’

‘I’ve never pegged you for a cradle snatcher.’ Bruce said dryly.

‘He’s a fucking monster.’ Another shaky breath escaped him, bordering on hysterics, but he’s too far gone to stop it now. ‘And fuck, now he even- loo – looks like a monster.’

‘I’ve always felt that monsters resided in our worlds in great part to help us understand it better. I might be a little biased of course, with Big Bad and all,’ Bruce murmured blandly, before his gaze sharpen. ‘Tony, a love offered so desperately and so intensely would have been impossible for anyone to overlook. How could you blame yourself for experiencing what it means to be human?’

‘It’s Stockholm Syndrome, Bruce. Its got to be.’

‘Does it truly matter? We’re Avengers, but they’re gods. Could ever mortal flesh reject the ardour of the gods, for evil or for good?’  Bruce sighed. ‘To be perfectly honest, your admiration isin’t particularly new, or even surprising. You’ve always admired our more flexible adversaries. And out of these, you’ve always admired Loki the most.’

Tears leaked out of his eyes. ‘What should I do?’ he whispered.

‘Talk about him. You knew a Loki that nobody else did.’

'What would be the point?'

'You're the Storyteller. You tell me.'

So Tony licked his salt-crusted lips and begun, ‘Once upon a time-‘

*

Tony couldn’t sleep.

The sheets twisted around his ankles, pulling him under. He could feel his heartbeat thrumming in strange spots on his arms and legs, along his back and forehead. Occasionally an involuntary shiver wracked his body, akin to coming down with a flu.

He embraced this. There was a strange consolation in insomnia, a twisted joy in escaping the dreams of longing that he knew waited for him beneath consciousness.

He roamed his heavily secured chambers, played music. Emptiness clung to him; he didn’t have anything else.

And he missed. Bruce has said it was ok to miss.

He refused to think of Loki’s new form, choosing instead to remember his unblemished visage; haughty, cold, expressive, vulnerable.  More and more over the intervening months Tony had come to see the depths of pain and sorrow hidden in the glade of those forest green eyes. Loki had a face you wanted to pity and believe. Rescue and protect. But Tony knew only of three certain things: death, taxes, and that Loki couldn’t be trusted to do the right by Earth and her people, even if he happens to have come by inexplicable desires for one of them (the worst of them).

Even if he knew that that his love was returned, Loki had turned away to do what he thought he had to do, and now Tony-

Now Tony must do the same.

And so come breakfast he’d walked away from his self-imposed isolation and rode the elevator down to the kitchen, which had fallen into wary silent at his entry.

‘Hey Clint,’ Tony said, actually proud of the way his voice hardly shook as divulged the means to kill his once lover. ‘Did anybody ever tell you the story of Icarus? Because we’ve got one heck of a big bird to shoot down.’

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

A promise is cloud; fulfilment is rain ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

17

So this was what life reduces lovelorn mortals to – pathetic beings who sat alone in the pre-dawn darkness, drinking black coffee.

It’s strange, Tony idly thought to himself, how safe the world out there felt. Like just another day. Greater Manhattan bustled around them, already roaring awake and utterly ignorant that today might just her last.

Not just her, but every city. Not just this city, but human life itself.

Unless of course, they succeeded in taking Loki out.

It had been surprisingly easy to convince SHIELD, and through them, the United States Army. In a heartbeat, Fury and SHIELD had switched streams from thinking of Loki as chaotic semi-allies to Class One threat against the world without batting an eyelash.

Tony could only wish he was that indifferent.

As he gazed at the city’s reflection imposed on his own in the window, Tony critically tried to pick out his own features reflecting back upon him in the glass. He wondered what Loki saw in him. He couldn’t see what was so special.

What a creature like Loki could truly have wanted from Tony, what he supposed a single, short-lived mortal could have offered him – Tony doubted he will ever know now. 

He missed making up stories. Although a sardonic voice whispered that he was in quite the story, where men raced against all odds to stop an evil wizard from turning the earth into a giant reawakened monster from a time before life.

Yeah. Because he really believed in fairy tales and monsters now. 

Tony swallowed more bitter coffee. The past was always filled with monsters.

‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard-’

The memory floated up from the depths, like the walking dead. Like today was Samhain, where the dead and living collided, and maybe it was.

Tony clenched his fists, and before he knew it, the pane of glass vibrated with the force of his punch, but it was made of polycarbonate fibers, in a mix Tony had invented to be unbreakable because being thrown out of a window once was too many times. 

‘Who the hell are you now, Tony Stark?’

Not Iron Man. Not Storyteller. He contained traces of both, and yet felt like neither.

His reflection mouthed the words back at him.

Who are you?

*

In his ears the buzz of Agent Hill’s voice, coordinating armed forces and backup,  and Tony let the noise fill him like a gentle weightless static.

‘You understand your purpose.’

‘Stay hidden until summoned.’ Tony parroted. ‘Come in as bait when all else fails.’

Fury’s voice floated through the comms, heavy with threat. ‘I mean it, Stark. I can’t spare a single pair of hands to watch over your fool self.’

‘I said I got it,’ Tony huffed. To be honest, it all got a little old after the first hundred times they’ve run over the plan.

Contrary to most of their usual gameplay, Fury planned on sending the Hulk first, as a means to gauge Loki’s new capacity. The only hope in hell they had was to throw everything they had at Loki the moment he appeared, before he could awaken Ymir. God alone knows what would happen after that.

They would be depending heavily on Thor’s presence to distract his brother – perhaps too heavily.

‘I could have still been in bed unconscious at this hour,’ Clint complained. ‘Couldn’t you just kiss big bird unconscious or something?’

‘I would kiss you, but for the certainty you’ll give me warts,’ Tony retorted. From a distance he could see Thor’s gaze darting towards him, and ignored it.

‘Of course you’re cackling, you’re the one who has to shoot down a human crow from 500 meters.’

‘You’re not the one who has to fly your fat ass up to the eye of the storm to make said shot.’

‘Naw, you’ll be perfectly safe,’ Hawkeye drawled through the intercom. ‘The storm just wants to kiss you – it’s the rest of us it wants to kill.’

‘Except you’re the official attention whore of the team, I just play wingman. Get it? Wingman-’

‘Shut up, Tony,’ Widow finally growls.

‘Ok stop talking and take your positions,’ Steve’s sigh over the comms was heartfelt and nostalgic. ‘I was going to make pancakes today. Look at the sky. It’s the perfect sky for pancakes.’

‘You can still make pancakes, mamabird- right after we take down the big ugly bird.’

‘Didn’t someone tell you to can it already,’ Tony snapped, although every word he said about Loki felt like a knife in his own chest.

‘Shall we get going?’ Said a dry, seldom heard voice. It seemed as if only Bruce could sense the part of Tony that was in pieces.

‘Sure,’ Tony slid his helm in place. ‘With any luck the falafel store will be opened by the time we finish. We’ll get the one with secretsauce for you, lil Hawk.’

‘I don’t want no sauce on my falafel-‘ Clint argued back, and then abruptly stopped.

The sky had turned red, thunder lighting up the hills. The war cries of a thousand birds filled the air.

Loki had arrived.

*

‘Man of Iron-‘

‘Don’t touch me,’ Ironman snapped; the riffle on one shoulder whirling open in warning.

Thor pulled back immediately, apology in his eyes. ‘Peace. I did not mean to alarm you, merely to ask that you side with caution today of all days.’

Tony was in no mood to be gracious. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

Thor lifted his hands and tried again. ‘Truly you needs be careful, Man of Iron. I know not how much of Loki’s mind and heart remains to him. He would only seek destruction.’

 ‘I am well aware of his intentions,’ Tony grunted. His gauntlets folded back over his wrists, leather gloves creaking against reinforced steel.  He wanted out of Thor’s sight five minutes ago. ‘Gun it, Jarvis.’

‘Anthony-’ Thor finally bellowed at him, harsh breathe hitching through the heartbreak he was struggling to rein in. ‘My brother will die today. I don’t want you to follow-‘ Gasping, the god broke off and tried to find his voice again – ‘Please. I will not mourn more than I have to.’

Tony’s fists clenched as he sped up. He wanted so much to hate, but Thor just wouldn’t play along.

He flew away instead, heading towards the dark shapes taking form overhead. Loki had summoned an army of bird with him – no, not an army; a downpour.  Black specks filled the skies, their screams unholy and unreal. The creatures rained on SHIELD, a surprisingly destructive force; their thoughtless, suicidal tendencies turning them into effective missiles.

He never thought he’s see the day a bunch of birds could be so destructive as to visibly withhold an army from advancing.

Cutting through the hail of falling birds soon proved impossible, even for him.

‘I can’t see a damn thing,’ Hawkeye complained over the comms.

‘Keep your feathers on. Jarvis?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Let’s put some fire in the firepower shall we.’

‘Very good sir,’ Jarvis intoned as his gauntlets whirled into flamethrowers, shooting jets of fire eight feet in multiple directions. The scream of birds and the smell of singled flesh assaulted his nostril even through the suit.

‘Disgusting,’ Tony hacked as he wacked his way through the cloud of birds descending onto him, which was a bit like having a hundred spitting cats land on him at the same time.

‘I think I’m turning vegetation after this,’ Bruce murmured somewhere from the ground.

‘Up yours,’ he grunted, and his flame thrower ploughed relentless through the shrieking veil, until he confronted something dark and terrible that made his breath hitch and all his hair stand with the awareness of his own mortality, all the human frailty of his bones.

Until at last he came face to face with it, the creature that Loki had become. A creature of the wild, horns and feathers standing out on black leather grafted onto flesh and skin. A freshly created monster for a new nightmare. A monster of unspeakable intentions.

Loki cuts through the wind on wings as wide as boats, flashing ink and iridescence. Sour magic rolled off his limbs, played upon his armour like red flashes of thunder. The god’s face was a bag of skin stretched over angles of bone, jarring and painful to witness. Tony is not sure he ever saw so much suffering in his life. It was inhuman. It wasn’t human. To think he was to smite this lonesome, loathsome creature that he had once loved.

‘How very affecting a reunion,’ the half-god, half beast growled. His voice filled the air like ash, wings beating like muscular and feathered tentacles, black as tar, black as the angel of death. 

Tony threw a bird at him - it might have been a pigeon.

Finally Loki turned and caught sight of him, and if Tony hadn’t been there himself he would never have believed how ghostly the god’s face turned as all the blood drained from his face.

‘Tony Stark,’ Loki breathed, and his voice was ragged with despair as red eyes raked over him like claws, ‘will you never for one instant  in your life listen?’ 

‘You know, it’s funny you should say that.’

But Loki was raging, screaming in glorious fury. ‘Why are you here, fool mortal? Why do you defy me still, when I have done everything in my power to spare you?’

Tony swallows. It was a surprise, that either of them was still capable of speech. ‘Because we’re pot and kettle and never listened a day in our lives? Or if you like, two peas in a pod.’

The god’s eyes are volcanic, his face naught but ashes and death. ‘If you must die, storyteller, let it be by my sword, and in my arms.’

‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves,’ Tony choked, ‘I’m not ready to die, Loki.’

‘Then run, mortal. Run like the wind, the myths of winged things that you once whispered in mine ears.’

Tony ran.

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

The day of death is better than the day of birth, a live dog is better than a dead lion ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

18

For a man much accustomed to always having a smart retort, Tony was rendered completely speechless by his teammates.

‘Not coming, whadayamean you’re not coming?’

‘We don’t think Loki will try too hard to kill you, Tony.’ Steve’s voice paused, then continued in what he obviously felt was a tone of great rousing encouragement. ‘Try to hold out a few moments longer.’

Tony ducked behind a cluster of trees as a shot of pure light skittered past him, exploding into the distance.

Holy fucking fuck.

Heart pounding, he yelled into the comms; ‘Did you not get the memo that we’ve broken up and he’s now trying to kill me?’

‘To be fair, Tony, all your girlfriends try to kill you.’

Bruce was such a traitor. Tony would retaliate, if he wasn’t too busy trying not to get fried by Loki’s blasted magic missiles. ‘Son, I don’t think any of my girlfriend went to the lengths you just did to squeeze in a joke.’

‘We need you to distract him, Tony. The army was supposed to be deployed on the eastern front-’ Steve broke off, sounding harried, and Tony could hear the dull roar of a thousand cawing birds in the background. ‘I don’t think a bunch of tanks are going to do much damage against this. And Clint is out of arrows.’

Tony gritted his teeth as another burst of energy shot past him, blasting a cluster of trees into smoking woodchips. ‘So what do you expect me to do, perform a striptease?’

‘The birds here don’t fly in formation when Loki is talking to you,’ Widow added helpfully. ‘We’ll send help once it arrives.’

‘THAT’S IT? That’s your grand plan to keep me safe??’ Tony roared through the comms. ‘Guys, not that I’m complaining, but we need a better plan than turning me into a bird whistle.’

‘Put it this way. At least you’d be a moving target, because the rest of us are sitting ducks. Attaboy Stark.’ This time he hears an audible ‘click’ on the comms after Fury tunes him out.

‘Up yours,’ Tony says again, and then he has to gun it, because Loki had been gaining on him whilst Tony had been arguing fruitlessly with his team.

That, and it was bloody hard to fly whilst being hit by a hail of birds.

The air is brisk despite the pillars of smoke rising from the earth, reaching their shadow skeletal fingers into the sky. Tony could hear the relentless rattle of SHIELD’s machine guns from afar, like a chorus of demented woodpeckers in the distance.

‘Put the pedal to the metal, Jarvy.’

He gunned the suit. Easy for them to tell him to lead Loki around the nose, but in this chaos of birds he was at almost at zero visibility and infrared was completely useless when every whirling thing around him had a heartbeat. Before long Tony was being forced to land, hemmed under the weight of a thousand feathered bodies.

He wondered how Loki was even able to tail him so close - perhaps his new Gothic avian costume came with a built-in bird GPS.

‘HEY GUYS! Fury’s army can show up anytime now. Especially now.’

Captain’s voice is spluttering over the comms. ‘Can you keep him at bay until Thor recovers?’

‘I’m flattered you think me so capable,’ Tony grunts as he narrowly misses another skittering explosion. Goddamn fucking magic.

‘Try to distract him by stripping,’ Hawkeye advised, actually sounding serious for once. He must be really low on arrows.

Tony gnashed his teeth against the multiple retorts implicating Clint’s genealogy that sat against his tongue.

‘Just hurry the fuck up,’ he said instead, eyeing the descending angel of death that is Loki, in his inky carapace armour. Even Silver Hawk’s wings looked like stunted dwarfs compared to Loki’s ridiculous wing spans. Who the hell needs wings that size? 

Well. No time like the present to throw yourself into the pathway of a rampaging monster-ex-lover deity. As he rises unsteadily to his feet Tony thinks again of Šahrāzād, of the woman who had told  stories to her dangerous lover at night – each story a lullaby that stayed the sword at her neck; each story the price of another day of life.

Each told with the purpose to stopper death however temporarily; and as the god swooped down before him, wings stretched wide, his hair whipping an arc that lashed the air, Tony prayed that his last anecdote to Loki would still matter that much.

God knows the fate of the world hinges on it, like any gripping story.

‘You are brave to fight the fate handed you by your gods, Tony Stark, yet it shall come to naught.’

‘But you haven’t even heard me sing yet,’ Tony said feebly. ‘All those free suppers, its rude not to pay.’

Distract and defy. It shouldn’t be too hard.

Why then, did he instead feel like shedding his armour and standing naked and helpless before a monster? His emotions weren’t making any sense.

‘All of the Nine shall rise up in a song of terror once Ymir is released,’ Loki says in a terrible and dead voice that sounded more like a dusty recitation of some tired and prehistoric verse. Its so pathetic that Tony wonders if the wretched thing even knows what he wants anymore.

‘Thus it shall be written,' Loki intones, as if he was speaking to a swelling crowd and not one solitary mortal. 'Today shall be that day. A blood day.’

A red day, Tony couldn’t help but agree; a day of rust and ashes. For hearts and spirits to break, for blood-bonds to sunder. There is shouting in the comms, but he can’t seem to hear them, can’t seem to hear anything past the white fog in his head.

And then he realises that the fog is the sound of Loki’s chanting.

‘By the blood of the Nines and the all-knowing, I awaken thee. With Sight I espy thee, with Thought I give thee form, O ancient and antecedent. Arise, arise, flesh of the Father. Arise and stitch back the forests of flesh upon the mountain of thine bones- arise and awaken to the gift of freedom and vengeance that your heir lays before you.’

He had never felt so small, looking up at the winged monster beating the air above him, filling the air with intonations terrible beyond Tony’s comprehension.

Run, Tony.

But Tony couldn’t run. His eyes burned with images, his brain couldn’t seem to kick into gear. Its as if his heart simply refuses to take in the fantastical proportions of what lay before him. The world – Earth recedes, as if what formed her, her very personality is melting away into the soil, making way for something else. Something much older, and more terrifying.

The smell of spring on the breeze mingled with the smell of ash and fire. Tony counts the seconds between one heartbeat to the next, as time seems to slow down to something thick and viscus.

And then the horizon is moving, growing – rising like a gross and swollen thing before him.

Run, Tony.

Instead of running Tony loses his footing and tumbles to the ground that was cracking open before him. And still the earth continues rising, until Tony was completely eclipsed by the moving earth, growing slowly, as if with great pain. Above him a pair of dreadful wings beat the air, and a pair of red eyes watched Tony fumble along the earth with a raptor’s deadly hunger.

He wants to run, but he presses down on his knees instead and prays. ‘Loki! You can still call Ymir back. Don’t do this. Don’t destroy my world.’

Loki’s sounded regretful, almost gentle. ‘It is too late for that, Tony Stark.’

The comms are silent. Jarvis is silent. And Tony's brain is utterly, utterly silent, supplying nothing - no plans or entreaty or escapes, save for the single hitch of breath as he feels the first tear sliding off his chin.

Defy. Distract. Try not to die.

There is no time for tears, not when so much hangs in balance. With nothing left between them, Tony fell back onto banter. 

‘I’m sure you love it when people confuse all your pretty words with the actual ability to feel anything,’

He wasn’t sure what he’d meant even as the words left his mouth, they were just words, hapless squawking from a mere mortal – their value was as paper blowing in the wind - but the god’s face paled, as if the mortal had struck him an unexpected blow. Somewhere deep within Tony chest, hope rallies, because no true monster would have flinched against so feeble an attack.  

‘Better to die a dragon’s death than live in the shadows with curs,’ Loki says with devastating simplicity, and Tony knows the time for talking is almost over.

‘One last story then, for the road,’ Tony wheezed. He knows Loki would not resist knowing how their tale ends.

‘I would not expect any different, Storyteller.’ Loki smiled at him, a destroyed expression - and lifted his spear. ‘And so, let us begin by telling the story of Man’s fall.’

And thus did Loki strike the ground, producing a crack in the earth as big as a cavern. A column of light rips from his spear, widening along the crust of the earth like a stain, and Tony realizes that Loki intends to crack the earth apart like an egg.

Hawkeyes’s voice echoed though the comms, accompanied with an impressed whistle. ‘Now it’s a actually starting to look like D-Day.’

‘Seriously Clint, who writes your shit?’ Steve shouted over the comms. ‘The east could use some reinforcements!’

The earth trembles ominously as the light widens, bathing Loki’s gaunt face in an eerie glow. Yet even then the god who promises death to all holds out a hand to Tony, a voiceless hunger seething behind his dead expression.

‘You are run out of time, Storyteller. Harken to mine embrace. Or face your death.’

‘No thanks. Your suit looks like it works up a sweat, and I like my AC,’ Tony palavers. ‘Besides, you look like a cosplayer from hell – can’t be standing next to that.’

‘Better to reign in the depths of hell, than serve they who preside midst self-declared heavens.’

Wasn’t that odd, Tony was sure he’d once said something very similar to Pepper. ‘Such extremes does not speak well of you. I prefer a mid-level purgatory myself. ’

‘Let us to Hel then, and we shall see who shall show who around,’ Loki begins to laugh, mad and blind. Then he attacks, and Tony remembers belatedly that Loki has always enjoyed the defiance of the subjugated.

The first blows between them rings upon the earth like a crash of continents. The earth continues to shake apart beneath Tony’s feet. Trees and buildings catch fire. Feathers rain down upon them, the sound of tanks vibrating in the distance.  

Tony thinks of Valkyries and epic opera songs and how trite everything becomes when concepts becomes embodiment, becomes values – as if entering a space with no room for history, no room for stories. He looks at Loki: they are almost not even people anymore.

And stories only works on people.

Loki cannot stop speaking, as if the frenzy within him requires voice to relieve the pressure within. The fallen god keeps up a commentary as if he were a judge on a gameshow.

‘You are as brave as Thor. But your valor is wasted on this poor land; it is little more than fit for worms.’

‘Brave as Thor, uh. You think so? I’m so glad we picked the right brother.’

He was sure Loki’s tears (Tears? When did he start crying?) turned from grief to fury then. 'For less offense I once ate the heart of a Dökkálfr, half cooked.’

‘Funny. You’d think to gain improvement, but you’re still as ugly and cowardly as ever,’ Tony retorted. The blunt end of Loki’s spear catches him at the side of his skull then, and he drops to the still-shaking ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

‘Ow,’ the mortal groaned, cringing onto his knees. His head and shoulders informed him that getting up too soon is ill-advised.

Loki landed beside him, booted feet mere inches away from his fingers. ‘Have you anymore yarn to spin before I behead you, Storyteller?’

‘Naw, that was a most compelling argument. In fact I’d say it was one of your best,’ Tony said when he finally regained the capacity to look up into the face of Death, his once suitor. ‘But here’s another story about us earthworms.’

Grabbing the edge of those inky wings, Tony pulled himself up, and before Loki could react, wrapped his arms around his waist and cuffed himself to the god.

‘When Persia rained enough arrows over Sparta to block out the sun, guess what the king's army said? They didn't say 'damm', and they didn't go crying back to their mamas,' Tony grinned as his thrusters scorched the torn earth, propelling them both into the skies with the last of his suit's strengths.

‘They partied like its 400 BC and boasted how comfortable it is to fight under a Persian shade,' he said with all the insolence he could muster, the only mortal in the world who dared to sink his teeth into the ear of a god and whisper;

'I accept your invitation to dine in hell tonight, Laufeyson. It’s a date.’

*

.

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

If your own breast cannot conceal, how can another better hold? ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

19

They flew past trees and flyovers, shot through the clouds. They traded blows, witticism, stories, gazes heavy with sorrow and anger, eyes blazing old and new scars, grievous betrayals, wistful remembrances. Chained together in private war, the world laid forgotten below. The causes of earth were distractions, leitmotivs – camps to champion; flags to fly and little else.  

‘And thus you yoke yourself to me willingly,’ Loki laughed low in his throat, a sound Tony is sure is at least partially mixed with pain. Tony was sure he had glimpsed genuine tears on Loki’s face, even though the wild, cold wind should have snatched them away the moment they formed.

The mortal could see so much desolation in Loki’s face that he would scream, had he breath to do so. Instead he flies higher, and higher still, pulling the mad god with him. Their blind, meandering flight finally ends when Loki gains enough leverage to shove him hard, and they jostled till they crashed onto the ledge of cliff.

Because Tony is the soul of self-mastery, he barely manages to avoid plunging them both to death. Instead he releases the cuffs binding them together and electrocutes Loki with 10,000 volts. Of course it doesn’t stop the god, who merely hits the side of the cliff like a rag doll and folded onto the ground, blinking. Tony is painfully aware that little will stop the mad god at this point.

‘Think you to kill me now, Tony Stark?’

Tony picked himself up.

‘Unlike some deities I don’t simply drop my guests off a thousand feet drops, even if they profess to be indestructible.’

‘Come to me then, and we will go to Hel together,’ Loki rises and wipes the blood from his lips with ghastly good cheer. Perhaps he too, does not expect to survive the day.

Tony braced his feet and beckoned with a gauntlet. ‘I do hope your seats are quite comfortable, its going to be a one-way trip.’

They fought. The world below them groaned, a lost and broken sound. Between the shorn slips of clouds Tony though he saw the shadows of Titans – monsters from a primordial age. Their faces are bent, wrong. They look like things which should have been lost forever.

Or until Loki had started stirring things up with that great big stupid stick of his.

Distracted by these thoughts and the rolling red eyes on the god’s emancipated face, he executed a shoddy punch, which Loki blocked and returned at twice the wallop, causing Tony to go flying into sharp stone.

‘Laughable,’ the god rasps. ‘To think that you believe yourself capable of the smallest chance of success.’

‘I remember a very similar conversation in the tower, and you still lost.’

‘And were you to kill the monster that stands before you, thinkest thou capable to defeat Ymir?’

‘I’m capable of multitasking,’ Tony says, and kicks him in the face. ‘Which is more than I can say for you. Stop fluffing around and get a real job, Loki.’

‘I did, or have you not noticed that this is what monsters do, Tony Stark? And I am monstrous, even to you now; I see how you flinch from looking at mine profane face.’

Poor, broken Loki, to think that his rendered face is what Tony shys from, but then he is a fool, for a god.  Form is never what it seems, does not all the tales tell? Dragons turn to maidens, and frogs to princes. And gods lose their heart and think it their deaths, when love is the form that changes and changes and always remains the same.

And Tony is sick of explaining.

‘That’s bullshit and you know it,’ he spat, forcing his sympathetic ache away as he drove relentlessly onward. ‘You forget that storytellers See, you sightless vulture. We see the shadow behind the shadows; we walk the line between the lines. You’re not a monster, Loki. Far from it. That would absolve you for way too much. I see you. I only see you. You. Can't. Hide.’

Loki snapped back from whatever dark corner his thoughts had been wondering in. The god wanted, he knew. Despair and desire was both plain on his face, held down in chains as it was. Yet his reflexes remained godlike, inhuman; yet he drove Tony to his knees with a whirl of his spear, reflexes inhuman whilst his face pleaded.

‘Tony Stark-'

‘I don’t care about your stupid Jotun face or your monster’s costume or your prince’s façade,’ Tony interrupted, screamed. ‘You’re the fucking bastard who infected me with this virus.’

‘It is too late for that,’ Loki whispered, sorrow and apology crusting his words, but Tony did not hear, faltering instead at the sounds slipping out of the cracks of the earth somewhere below him. Not quite a voice, nay; but a sound like a multitude – not made by any mouth shaped on Tony’s earth.

Heart dripping dread, he slowly turned around. There is a…thing in front of him. Tony cannot fully see what it is, but it is Death, he knows.

He thinks if mountains could scream, perhaps that was what it would sound like.

Before him there is a great entropic voice that roars – a roar he hears not through his ears, but deep under his veins. There was a great chill that ran through his bones like fire and froze the tears in his eyes.

He felt his fists hang uselessly at his side. Whilst Loki resurrected his golem father and burned his planet to a crisp, Tony would be frozen, useless.

He felt his world narrow down to the tip of a spear, flashes of gold in his iris. His helm had fallen out somewhere in battle, pierced by Loki’s spear.

It is a strange condition that made Tony’s spine shiver not with fear but with hopelessness… for his opponent is a god, old when Tony’s world was new. He felt his arms lowering, as if they were not his to command. Because surely he would not betray his people like this.

‘So is this how it ends? Me killing you or you killing me?’ he wants to spit the words, but it comes out soft and defeated. It doesn’t seem such a bad thing then, to die. Tony was just so tired, and he knew this was a wound that would never heal. He’d stopped fighting for himself awhile back, but now-

He would never heal from this, he knew. He knew.  

There is a moment – a beautiful and terrible moment where everything goes still, as if in a dream, and Loki looked at him, truly looked at him and seemed briefly to come back to himself.  His spear dropped from his hands, and then he is in front of Tony, feathers receding from his face, eyes darkening until he is almost human again.

‘Tony Stark,’ Loki breathed as he ripped off the mortal’s armor, his gauntlets and Tony couldn’t stop him. There was so much desperation on his face, oh god. On both their faces.

He’s sure he isn't crying. Tony doesn’t cry. Only over-sentimental Asgardian immortals cry, not him.

‘I love thee, mortal and beloved,’ Loki says brokenly as his cold hands cradled Tony’s jaw, as his dark wings swept themselves around him, keeping Tony on his feet.  ‘I can no more take your life than mine ow-’

An arrow slices into Tony’s shoulder, and he gasped, a white haze cutting trough the moment, sharp and thick with pain and disbelief. Loki shrieked in response, a dying scream, as inky wings flared up like a black flame and wrapped themselves fiercely around Tony.

Tony’s mouth filled with blood. Loki’s arms keep him from double over as involuntary tears fill his eyes. His whimpering questions come out whispering, like a child. But the god does not answer. Instead, his arms enveloped Tony, tightens until there is no room to struggle and Tony could barely breathe.

'Lok-'

‘Perhaps in another lifetime, Tony Stark, you will love me back.’ Loki’s was mild, almost calm as he buried his face into the mortal’s shoulder.

An obscure panic claws at Tony and he grabs at the god.

‘Loki?’

‘Hush love, we will-‘ the god doesn’t finish, but two fat tears glimmer in his eyes, spilling out over a straining smile. ‘We shall have forever,’ his lover continued to smile, even as tears dripped from his eyes.

‘I-’ Tony wanted badly to reply, but he feared the look on the god’s face more.

And then he felt it, the soft jerk in Loki’s body, then another and another, as the god’s wings wrap ever tighter around him, till he had no space to struggle or elbow away.

A cold, numb denial floods his blood.

‘Why are you- what’s happening?‘  

Tony can feel the sting of a hundred impacts against his feather cage, like a rain of pebbles against a window.

‘I love you,’ the god told again him in lieu of answering. There’s blood dripping out of his mouth, flecking onto Tony’s face as he speaks, but that can’t be, because Tony’s the one who was shot, Loki was fine, he was fine-

The dark shield of his wings finally draw away, twitching, and Tony’s heart catches as he recognized the silver glint of a hundred arrows protruding out of Loki’s black armor. 

‘Onto the end of mine days, Tony Stark. Remember.’

‘No. No no no, this only happens in-‘ Tony choked on his own saliva and continued. ‘-really bad movies.’

Tony tried to grab him, but his fingers come away brightly coated with red, his mouth shapes Loki’s name but the only sound he makes is a wordless scream: denial and bargain both.  

Loki smiled at him, a smile as clean and forgiving as fresh-fallen snow. And although anyone else would call it a grotesque and pitiful sight, to Tony it is akin to a blessing and a touch – a hand that tries to dry his tears.

Then the god falls.

*

Chapter Text

1

21001 Tales of Once Upon a Time 

My story is of such marvel that if it were written with a needle on the corner of an eye, it would yet serve as a lesson to those who seek wisdom ~ 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

20

Despite killing off his thrusters, Tony landed so hard that he dug deep grooves into the ground for several feet and almost planted himself face first into the feather-strewed dirt. The minute he caught his breath his eyes started searching desperately for Loki, hindered by the dying sunlight jabbing spears in his eyes.

Swallowing the taste of ash in his mouth, his hand rose to shield against the setting sun and its unnatural burst of phoenix-like brilliance as he stumbled along, following a trail of blood as black as ink on the ground. 

Finally he spied a dark and fluttering shape lying broken amidst the rocks; Loki's fallen body was as fluid granite, twinkling and twisting amidts the debris of war. Tony had thought his heart already broken, yet against all logic it seem incognizant of this and still attempts to shatter, again and again.

With heartsick inevitability, Tony followed the black and bone white shadows of Loki’s skin. He lay buried amidst a nest of black feathers, a hundred silver arrows laying like silvers of shattered bones amidst them.  The life force was slowly bleading out of him, coating the fields and vying with the red of the sun.

The god was still alive, fervent eyes alight with quicksilver as the mortal sank to his knees, armour instantly coated red and wet. His gauntlets folded away, revealing violently trembling fingers that flitted over Loki’s face like helpless birds. 

‘No, no you can't do this- you're immortal.’

‘And so the story of Loki is finished,’ the god said with such a look of devastating acceptance that a part of Tony’s heart comes alive and screams with loss. ‘This day shall be your ending to write, Storyteller.’

‘God, why did you do that? Goddamn you,’ Tony cursed, but how different it sounded from the anger he'd once summoned so easily whenever he thinks of Loki.  

‘Tears for the villain, Tony Stark? Didn’t anybody tell you-’ He felt the fingers that brushed away the tears falling from his face, ‘-such things are wasted on the black of heart.’

‘Don’t die, Loki. Don’t you dare die.’ Tony inhaled tears and heartbreak past a shattered throat. ‘I’ll make such a terrible pining maid, don’t you see? I haven’t got the figure for it.’

He felt Loki’s gauntleted fists closed over his own. ‘Finish your story, Tony Stark.’

'Fuck you. Why?' Tony sucked in breath. He couldn't do this. He couldn't endure. But Loki's voice broke no argument.

'Finish your story.'

One last swansong for them both.

‘They fought, but then the villain discovered that his villainy wasn’t ti-tied to his godhood, and - the earl- earthling discovered that he didn’t have to be tied to earth. That choice wasn't abandonment. And they.. they realized they could just... they realized they could go back, turn around and swim through the streams of time, and change the story because the villain was no villain but a fucking deity, he was an all-powerful deity and he couldn’t be destroyed, he was just playing tricks, its not real oh god-’ Tony choked, ‘damn you, damn you to hell Loki Laufeyson, I cannot lose you, fucking prick.’

‘Peace, hold your tongue, do not say such things,’ his god sighed shakily, gusting on Tony's cheek with the remnants of his breath. ‘I had a role to play in this universe, and so do you.’

‘I won’t play. I can't-‘

‘Do not reach beyond your role, my storyteller, for you see for yourself the conclusion that shall be.’ He felt Loki’s gauntleted fists closed over his face, cold as death and dear to him as love itself. ‘Tony Stark, a vow from your lips. If Loki’s fate is to die as lesson to the ones who come thereafter, do your duty. Do not let this world forget me.’

‘I promise,’ Tony vowed. ‘This world or the next, men and gods shall remember you. Until the end of days.’

‘Tis a good ending then and worth the wait.’ The god closed his eyes, features slack and almost at peace. ‘Listen. Beyond the fields of the living and dead, there is a drinking hall where the honourable warriors go to retell the stories of past battles and glorious deeps. It is called Valhalla.’ 

‘Sounds tedious.’

Loki’s blood splattered lips curled with humour. ‘Indeed. I would fain shun such a place. But it is the highest honour accorded to a noble heart. I do not doubt, Tony Stark, that when the makers call forth, you will find yourself before its doors.’

Tony gritted his teeth. ‘I’ll never accept any hall that doesn-‘

‘Hush, you are so impatient. Before the halls of Valhalla you will stand, and everything in your soul shall make you yearn to enter its halls. And if such be your heart’s desire, then enter you should, but Loki will not be there. You will have to choose, Tony Stark, and it will be a bitter choice.’

‘You colossal idiot,’ Tony scolded him, ‘How many times must I say I’ve already made my choice.’

Loki’s dying eyes, though guarded, were luminous with relief. ‘Then impede your ears and skirt swiftly beyond the hall until you come upon a field of stars, empty and vast. There Loki shall be, waiting for you through as many cycles of time as necessary. Now stop crying,‘ the god commanded, and stroked his hair. ‘Your life is too brief, Tony Stark, to swallow such oceans of grief within you. I promise, we shall meet again soon.’

The rumble of tanks drew up in the near distance. Tony pressed their foreheads together to drown out the sound of reality. He was pretty sure he was dribbling snoot all over Loki's hair, that his weight on Loki's chest was causing more pain than relief, though the god utter not a word. Viciously, he wished Loki would suffer more. It wasn't fair.

It shouldn't have to be him left crying out in the field, numb beyond ideas of humiliation and betrayal whilst the remaining Avengers observed this wretched tableau from a respectful distance. It should be Loki; it shouldn't be him. 

'I hate you.’

Loki merely smiled, his eyes fluttering into slits, luminous and pure.

‘And I you,’ the god whispered. His mouth quirked in humor, and Tony chased a final kiss from it, for there was nothing left to say. Their lips slid briefly against each other, until finally Loki's eyelids stilled, and his chest stopped heaving after a final heartfelt sigh.

‘Don’t leave,’ Tony begged, fingers digging into armour, grasping at straws as the seconds ticked away with the god lying motionless and cold beneath him. ‘Loki, Loki. Lokes? Don’t leave me.’

There is no answer of course.

'Don't leave,' Tony shook his arm, strange ideas beginning to worm its way into his head. 'Don't leave. Don't leave, you cant leave.'

He continued until Thor’s hand on his shoulder becomes a presence and then a weight, drawing him away and forcing Tony to stumble onto his feet. 

As he stood up a great weariness enveloped him like a cloak weighed down with stones.

Tony shrugged Thor's hand away, although he could barely stand. 

'I'm fine. I'm fine.'

‘I’m sorry, Tony,’ Thor said with great sorrow. ‘Had you but not met mine brother, such heartbreak might have been avoided.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ Tony mumbled, unable to look at the brother who lived. He would not be spiteful, not when it would help nothing. It was over. The wind is warm against his back, the sun is bright and clean.

He swung his arms, loosening the cramped muscles. There was a hundred thousand feathers on the earth, stirred by the wind, as if the world had just emerged from a giant pillow fight. He pulled a feather from his hair and drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with air. Thor joined him in his perusal of the distant horizon and the bright, over-cheerful sun.  Tony finally noticed that his eyes, when shuttered, looked remarkably like Loki’s.

His mouth twisted. Perhaps they were brothers after all.

'Tony?'

The mortal signed. It’s almost funny, really. Someday, it would make a good story. 

He spoke absently to the horizon, refusing to look at the blood-soaked ground. ‘I am sorry for your loss, my friend.’

Even without looking he knew Thor was silently weeping. ‘We had him briefly, did we not? He was truly ours, for a while.’

‘That we did.’ Tony summoned a watery smiled. 'At least for a while.'

‘Ach Tony. He was my brother and I shall feel a part of mine heart forever cleaved from me, but I fear yours was the higher fee. And I am sorry.’  

‘It’s simply the price of loving him,’ was all Tony could say as he held on to his feather, aware his voice was so thin it was mostly carried by the wind. ‘And Thor, I would pay it a hundred times over.’

The blond god clasped him briefly on the shoulder. ‘Take comfort, it is because of you my brother has a chance to take his place Valhalla. For his last great mercy towards you, he will not be turned away. Loki shall dine with kings and be hailed as one, as was ever his heart’s dearest wish.’

‘Thanks, I guess’ Tony said, and a second later broke out laughing.

Thor drew away, almost afraid as Tony choked on the bitter comfort of those words, throwing his head to the skies as the air shook with grievous laughter, stained with loss.

‘Aye Thor, he did get what he wanted after all. But what he wanted was not as you think.’ He picked himself up from the ground and started walking away, the blood of immortal and beloved dripping from his armour and turning into ashes as they fell.

The mortal watched them flutter into  skies, there to join the ether.

Thor's lanky strides caught up with him. ‘Then what did he want?’

‘In the end, a simple enough thing,’ Tony laughed again, genuine mirth merging with sorrow this time and easing the hurt by degrees. ‘The chance to shun Valhalla first, rather than be shunned in turn.’

*

Chapter Text

1001 Tales of Once Upon a Time

‘Who will change old lamps for new ones? New lamps for old?’

 – 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

nce upon a time, there was a lonely god who fell in love with a mortal man.

The God had many jealousies and was deeply unhappy. He had upon him dominion of Trickery and Guile; a curiosity as vast as space itself. Yet despite His gifts the god grew up pensive, and eternity stretched barren and empty before him as vague fears plagued his mind.

Visited by a string of betrayals, He gradually withdrew from the company of His fellow gods. If one must be Blind, thought He, then let it be by Mine own hand, and Mine own Illusions. Thus saying did He wander into the lonely extremities of dark galaxies, thinking only of vengeance. Years fly by as the God tries to remember that He was once both Prince and Fallen Star; He was what kept the incense burning in the temples and the altars of deities wet with offerings of blood and milk. He is the brother of thunder and lusts, the wild intractable son thrice betrayed by three cosmic fathers. He is Loki, birthed of chaos, who wears the scales of the great dragon Fáfnir over His sly green eyes, who wields a golden spear and blindly crushes all underfoot. 

Yet when He became an agent of Chaos and winged carrion of Death, bringing forth blood and flame to blacken the face of Midgard, He chanced upon a creature small, nimble of feet and wiles, with a voice as pure as a mountain stream. And all His ancient remembrances and all His horded hates fell as cards before the steady, swallowing gaze of this tiny creature with its brittle bones and bright, transparent voice. Thus does the God discover, all bemused, that He could be no enemy to this brave mortal, nor could He bear to snuff out so enthralling a flame, despite the tiny wick that hold it. Instead He marveled as shepherds marvels at the birthing of ewes, and in beholding such marvel did real tears fall from his eyes and loosen the scales of the great dragon Fáfnir that sat upon it. Thus with His eyes free of hate did He behold the true shape of His heart for the first time in untold centuries, and lo, it is as glistening and restorative an organ as one of the undying fruits of Idun herself. And He took it upon himself to endear himself to this frail creature.

But bitterly did it rend Loki’s once-black heart to perceive that for all His godly powers, He had not the power to captivate the mortal’s heart as He himself had been captivated. And so He resolved to wait, until the end of days if necessary, for Tony Stark to come to him, assuming he remembers their promise– and trembled He at mortal attention spans that were even shorter than their puny, diminutive lives.  

And so the lonely God stood alone in the Field of Stars and waited for His beloved to choose, His heart a constantly churning river of agony, never knowing what the outcome is to be. Gods come and go bearing gifts and supplications, and powerful demons slink around with lures of artifacts and power. Yet the lonely God would not leave, would not look away from His endless vigil of a single slow-rotating star, green as His own eyes, the very same star He had almost destroyed once upon another life. He watched it day and night, making its slow inexorable path as a flower would follow the sun.

Time passed, sometimes fast and enthralling, sometimes plodding and dull. Some days hope dwindled, and some days hope flared brighter than starlight.

Some days despair rained upon Him like ash upon the fire hearth, and some days, His gaze is caught and His breath stolen by the beckoning horizons.

Whatever happened beyond the chosen spot of His eternal sentry, the God would do naught to interfere. Let the bright star of His own homeland fall into flames, and still the God would remain - till the grass enveloped His waist, till the veins wrapped around His boots.

And still He remained standing; waiting and watching for another to come.

***

nce upon a time, there was a mortal man who was dumbfounded to discover he had fallen in love with a god.

Well fuck my life, the mortal said upon realizing it wasn’t a bad dream.

After much trials of sacrifice and separation, and the long years of waiting that finally come to pass, the mortal passed away one night, after a grand life of heroism, inventiveness and occasional boredom. He wished he could say it was a peaceful death, but in all truth it had hurt like fuck, and he made his passing with a blistering oath upon his lips.

Upon waking up, he found himself on a plain of wide-open field painted in shades of purple. A winding path lead him towards an unremarkable wooden hall, sturdy and humble, with triglyphs and beams carved all about with sprawling runes.  Heart beating in anticipation, the mortal found himself drifting forward with open yearning. The doorway was crowned by winged pediments, pulsing with benign magic. The sounds and voices feasting within were sweet upon his ears as he approached, and he fancied he heard the snatches of conversations of old friends, his own name mentioned as if they waited upon his company.

What a grand adventure! Overcome with some strange brand of shyness, the mortal loitered at the dark doorway which hid the interior of the feasting hall completely from view. Within it, the sounds of merry-making grew increasingly audible and filled his heart with longing. Standing upon the precipice made him think of blessed rest, of jovial fellowship glad to receive him, of drinks and laughter; blessed peace and utter contentment.

The mortal’s heart twisted as he thought about the eternity of concord that awaited within; how much he felt the tiredness of his age upon his shoulders and how desperately he craved for the sweet balm of forgetfulness and innocence brushing at his temples. It was a well-deserved rest, he decided. His fingers drifted to the doorway, which anchored him and pulled him in –

Home sweet home, the man couldn’t help thinking. Blessed peace. He lifted a foot to step over the precipice.

‘May I help you?’ a stranger’s voice suddenly spoke from the darkness. From the dim interior, a thin man emerged with spectacles and a quiet, scholarly air, holding a drink.

Robbed of speech, the mortal shook his head and quickly stepped away from the door, his heart hammering.

‘If you’d like to come in, you are more than welcomed. There’s a great deal waiting for you inside,’ the old man said in a kind and gravelly voice. His face was familiar yet unfamiliar, but something in that kind face wrung terrible emotions from the mortal, who felt his heart clench with tormented desires.  His eyes filled with tears and his lips shook with unsaid things.

‘There, there. Here you may lay down your burdens and your memories, and embrace eternal joy, eternal vigor. There is a place marked for you here, a seat you have earned that will always await you. Although I think…’

The white-haired god drifted closer, eyes twinkling, and the mortal forced an apprehensive smile on his lips as they gazed at each other on opposite sides of the door.

‘You do seem the adventurous type. Perhaps you’d like to look around first before deciding? There’s no hurry, for the door is never closed to those with an invitation. And there’s lots to see, in the fields beyond the stars.’

‘T-thank you,’ the mortal stammered, backing away.

‘Goodbye,’ said the elderly god - he thinks his name might be Yinsen –  who simply raised his cup and then turned away, grey eyes glittering with kindness. The mortal watched in awe and gratitude as the man is swept back into the darkness.

Shaking his shoulders to dispel the magnetic pull of the doorway, the mortal left the drinking hall and ventured away from the road, crossing fields where the wind swept wilder and the grass grew ever taller, until they reached his chest. The deeper he ventured, the darker the skies became, until he alighted at a clearing where herds of stars swirled the inky skies like splashes of milk in a dark bowl.  The mortal watched in awe as the stars pulsated with light, like random Christmas baubles passing Morse codes to each other. Every so often a few would darken and drop down onto the grass below.

The mortal took in this graveyard of stars, glowing out their last moments like fireflies. His heart filled with profound awe and he found his surroundings beautiful beyond comprehension. The grounds are strewed with debris of planets, and he walked like a crab around the glistening stones, observing the collision of solar winds and their resulting auroras draped like strings of silk across the skies in variegated shades of greens and reds. The wind blows long furrows into the high grasses there, bending them till they resembled rows of prostrate mandarins in purple robes.

Yet that was not what he was looking for, and the mortal wandered on, until finally he saw him.

Yes. Yes it was him, and now he knew why he had come.

Summoning his courage, the mortal moved towards the figure standing alone in this clearing where all stars come to die. He thinks he might finally know why he comes to this field.

Beloved yet enemy, a Stranger, yet as familiar to him as his own soul. A name he should know, yet one he has never known before.

The Stranger was standing beside a plain wooden fence, one hand resting on a stump, a pale fingers barely touching the wood. The Stranger’s face was turned away, dark hair sweeping down his shoulders, and although his head is tilted towards the mortal, their eyes did not meet.

Yet the mortal knew this was where he had meant to be; standing beside the Stranger. He knew it with a certainty that outlasted all else.

For a long while, nothing happened.

‘So. Heya.’ The mortal finally said, clearing his throat.

The Stranger looked up. He had moribund eyes, and the mortal could see vast things burning and universes withering within them - bleakness like an endless and motionless sea where the waves had abandoned them. But he also had eyes the shade of evergreens; eternal in their beauty and grace.

The Stranger nudged his chin towards the hall he had just left. ‘You’re missing the party.’

In answer the mortal snorted, unimpressed. ‘The ones I throw are better.’

The Stranger smiled at this answer in shades, like shadows that move and vanish with a quick sweep of light. Together they watched the swirling heartbeats of new universes taking shape around them.

‘It’s pretty,’ the mortal finally volunteered. One of them should talk, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be the Stranger.

Surely they had to start somewhere.

‘There are better views than this,’ the Strange confides, fey eyes measuring the distance between stars. He hasn’t looked once at his new companion beyond that brief glance. There was an air of loneliness about him, bleeding into the space like incense from a thurible.

The mortal leaned against the pillar, gingerly testing his weight. Then he settled into wait.

It was a long time before he finally felt the Stranger’s touch, a slow slide of arm around his waist with every second measured, to give the mortal a chance to turn away.

The Mortal had to swallow an exasperated sigh and refrain from rolling his eyes. For a being who had been waiting so long, all in all the Stranger was taking an excruciatingly long time to chummy up to him.

Always unsure of his welcome is the Stranger, always in doubt of his place amongst things, even now when they were no longer people, no longer even gods, just streams consciousness flying past a field of stars.

Still, the mortal could swallow back his impatience. He’d been waiting a long time for this. Days had turned to years had turned to decades;,when he had been a mere mortal alive. And they could already have been standing here much longer than he realised: it was hard to tell in a place like this, where the milk of the universe churns above them and whole planets litter his feet no larger than Easter eggs. Time and size had become relative things.

The mortal takes time to enjoy the fact that his mind had finally quieten down enough to abandon the need to know. The false sense that where he found answers was the same place fulfillment dwelled.

Life had taught him quite the opposite.

After a moment (or maybe several years) the Strange resumes. ‘I can take you to the utmost edges of space if you wish. All the dark corridors of the universe.’

‘I just got here. Let’s just stay a bit,’

‘As you wish.’

They stayed ‘a bit’, for a given value of a bit. The mortal finally turned and pressed his chin into the Stranger’s shoulder.

 ‘I’m tire of starting new stories,’ the mortal confided into this rather comfortable shoulder. It occurred to him, with no small amount of satisfaction, that he wouldn’t mind being tucked into this shoulder for the next few thousand years.

The Stranger hums, lazy and contented. ‘If you are agreeable with this ending, then let us choose to stay here.’

‘Are you sure you won’t be bored?’

‘Mmmh. I find I’m no longer in a hurry,’ the Stranger said, and the mortal watched him as he tipped his face to the skies and sealed his bleak green eyes, the smallest hint of smile on his lips. Tony watched the pale planes of his face, an odd affection filling the cavities of his chest.

And since there was nothing else to do, the mortal followed suit and tipped his head into the breeze, closing his eyes to better feel the wind furrowing like fingers through his hair. His own fingers twined together with longer ones, like the vines that surrounded them. 

And he couldn’t help but smile into the darkness.

[FINI] 

*

A/N:

I want to talk a little, if you don’t mind, about this story. There are some thoughts I’d like to share, some tribute I wish to make, but please feel free to skip the mad ramblings. Where is my peppermint tea? Ah, yes.

Here we go.

‘Arabian Nights’

Arabian Nights, which need no introduction, are the collected fairy tales of the East. The people of Asia, Arabia, and Persia told them in their own way, not for children, but for grown-up people. 

The events of the Arabian Nights were often supposed to happen in the reign of the great Caliph, Haroun al Raschid, who lived in Bagdad in 786-808 A.D.  Probably the tales were written down about the time of Edward I. Today, it remains a banned book in a number of countries – which I suppose says enough about our progress as a people. I greatly respect a book written centuries ago should feature a woman that is a hero, educated, brave, wiling to play such strategic and psychological games of risk with her life as prize - in other words, all the things we associate today with present day masculinity (however subconscious). The end of every tale in the The One Thousand and One Nights consists of a 'disappearance' of destiny, which sinks back to the somnolence of daily life. This ‘destiny’ is false, and yet too real and dangerous, for a woman tells stories to a man at night - stories that keep her alive. 

I wrote 1001 Tales because I wanted to share that thought: that there is wisdom in having our stories matter that much. They shape our past, and they are the tools which we use to imagine our futures with.

‘Armour’

The artwork from ch1 - 20, entitled ‘Armour’ (ink + digital) is the fantastic work of Jennifer Ngui Hom. I have been captivated by ‘Armour’ from the moment I laid eyes on it, years and years ago. Please visit http://jenniferhom.com/armor to appreciate the original version, plus the process of its creation.

I wrote Loki’s character to great extent the same way I feel myself about certain art that fills my heart to bursting, immediately, irrevocably, upon first sight. And also because I felt if ever we knew two people who spent their lives building up their armour – its these two characters. 

On the nature of ‘storied’ love.

The world no longer believes in that sort of love, except to deposit such feelings into repositories that are static in their communication – art, literature, music – those things that will always express beautifully and perfectly, as they are constant and unchanging. And so we take no risk. And so our hearts shall never break.

I write my stories in part to break my own heart, to burn it into ash (Kleenex should sponsor me) but also to give it rebirth. And love is like that. It can burn you to the ground. But it comes with the ability to constantly regrow.  And so our true immortality beat within our own cage of bones, whilst we search outwards always, longing for things, for people to hold up mirrors that can tell us where our own soul resides.

I wrote this story to remind myself in part that we have an alternative angle which to look through the telescope of art, that it is a reminder of great things. Of a greater sort of living, although of course often with a correspondingly great price. One of the things reasons why I refuse to leave the Avengers fandom is because of the bigger storytelling element the trope seems to have. Myths and monsters, all the ways in which we peer into ourselves and our own infinite forms of darkness, all the ways in which we marvel at our creative use of expression, and the deeper motives within that is so seldom explored in conventional media.

Lastly, my apologies for all the mistakes, assumptions, bad writing days, and lack to response. This fic took a year to finish, although I tried my best, and I thank you for your patience.

If I have offended, distorted or if you feel let down by the story, I am very sorry, and feel free to drop me a line and tell me how I can improve.

See you all back in the Flawed Design story arc soon. [although I'm going to be contributing to Frostiron Big Bang, so see you there as well ^ ^]

-Lucius Complex