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It was as it always was.
Shitty.
Not his fault.
Painful.
The big difference being that that this time he was really alone—no Pepper to blow up the reactor for him, no Rodney to drag him out of his misery, no Natasha with some magical back up drug to keep him going just a little longer. There was literally no-fucking-one because he was kind of about to die in space and the irony of ‘no one can hear you scream’ made him laugh-sob out his last breath before everything went numb.
Down, inward, down and onward
To farther shores than ever was
Drive a man as fast as he can
Drive him till he drowns.
Something cold was pressed against his temple, pulling him back up from the comforting darkness to a world of pain. His entire body ached, which was great, yay, he was alive, but no, ow, please let me go back to that unconsciousness. It was nice, and no one was going to lecture him about responsibility or property damage or endangering others or telling him he needed to be more of a team player.
Wait, I was a team player, they can’t get me for that one this time.
“I can see you thinking, little mortal.”
Tony winced at the weight of the voice that seemed to fill his mind as well as his ears. It wasn’t a particularly nasty voice, or a nice voice, but it was sort of… disconcerting. Like watching someone drag their nails down a chalk board without actually hearing the sound. You flinch anyway, because you just know what it sounds like.
“Ignoring me?” the voice huffed. “I see Midgard has continued on with its talent for spawning mannerless scum.”
Tony found himself almost nodding in agreement, and silently cursed himself to stop, he just insulted you, why are you agreeing?
Instead, he willed himself to open his eyes, and choked on a scream that just wouldn’t come. The cold thing that was against his head, was a clamp, and that nice breeze over his body was because he had no armor, never mind clothing. He was also, apparently, strapped down by his wrists and ankles, and oh, there was also a massive purple chin dude looming over him.
“Who the fuck are you?” he managed weakly.
“Tactful, too.”
“Yeah, just so you know, i’m not a prime example of human, and you’re not exactly one either, so who are you, again?” He flashed a grin, because he could and he would and that was better than screaming and crying. At least, he thought so, until the purple guy shoved his hand over Tony’s mouth and began to squeeze his face painfully. He kept going until something in Tony’s jaw cracked and finally, there was that scream.
“You think your humor—your petty little words can get yourself out of this?” he questioned, voice dropping to what Tony now definitely recognized as ‘nasty’. “Better men have tried, and failed.”
Tony wanted to ask if he was alluding to someone he knew, because it kind of sounded like he was, but he couldn’t imagine who and his jaw felt like it might have broke somewhere in there. This was the kind of trapped he could not handle. Even a cave was better than this, at least there he could talk, he could bargain, he could piss someone off—make them make a stupid mistake. But this guy had done the one thing that both scared and infuriated Tony more than anything.
He silenced him.
“Much better…” the purple guy said, and removed his hand from Tony’s aching jaw. He tasted blood, but even if he wanted to do something about it, he couldn’t. Just the idea of trying to move his tongue was too much, not to mention the fact that his eye were already watering and there was no way in hell he would give this asshole the satisfaction of crying. Not yet, anyway.
“I am Thanos, conqueror of realms, courter of Death, and ruler of this domain,” he continued. “And you, small mortal, are one of the reasons I do not hold the gateway to the Nine Realms in my hand.”
Tony just eyed him and gave a little questioning shrug. At least, that’s what he hoped it looked like, he wasn’t ready for another nonchalant gesture to end up breaking something else of his.
Thanos looked irked, which scared the shit out of him, but apparently it was about something else, because he turned away and began pacing.
“The Lie Smith managed to fool me after all… but he shall not remain free of my grasp for long.”
Tony wrinkled his nose and tried to think of who the hell he was talking about, because it sure as hell wasn’t him.
“This is boring,” Thanos commented, and turned back to Tony with a disappointed sigh. “I shall not continue on a conversation with myself as the only participant. But I warn you, should you attempt at any further amusing comments as you did before, I shall cut out your tongue for a more permeant solution.”
Tony sort of nodded, and decided that he would seriously need to turn some filters on if he was going to survive this.
A big if.
A tingle crawled through his muscles, up his neck and into his jaw. There was a grinding sensation and another crack before everything slid back into place and Tony once again could move his jaw around. He gave it a few exploratory stretches, coughed, licked the blood from his lips, and located the cut on the inside of his cheek with his tongue.
“Okay… so…”
“Did you speak with the Lie Smith?”
“I can’t answer that because I have no idea who the Lie Smith is,” Tony said carefully.
Thanos studied him for a long, panicky moment before he seemed to sense that Tony was being honest and went back to pacing.
“Some know him as Loki, although, not many these days.” The thought seemed to please him, and a smile formed on his weirdly thick, purple lips. “He had fallen from such grace long before I plucked him from the void and made him even lesser.”
Tony licked his lips again, trying to give himself some time to think. He had talked to Loki, sort of. It was more like a threatening than a conversation, and the god hadn’t seemed all that impressed or interested or even all there. In fact, if he was right—and he usually was—there was a whole lot of stuff going on there that he didn’t know about, obviously.
“Yeah, I know Loki. Well, not personally, he’s Thor’s brother—adopted brother?—any way, we’ve met.”
Thanos paused in his pacing to study him again with the same uninterested gaze as before. Tony would take bored over pissed any day, if it kept his jaw intact. He kept staring, and that was creepy, so Tony took a moment to take better stock of his surroundings.
From where he could see without turning his head—thanks clamp—they were in a smallish work room—or actually, maybe it was a torture chamber, because there was a lot of metal shelving with sharp objects on them and the walls were hung, rather appallingly, with more fun-looking tools that Tony had no intention of getting aquatinted with.
Thanos’ voice drew his gaze back to him and away from something that looked suspiciously like it was designed to crush the more gentle part of Tony’s lower anatomy. “Did you speak to him?”
“Not really,” he admitted weakly, hoping that he wasn’t wearing out his usefulness. “I might have threatened him a little, but he threw me out a window after that so there wasn’t really any time makeup sex afterwards.” And why the fuck did he say that? Didn’t this huge, purple asshole just say not to be funny?
“Oh? Threatened him with what, that weak weaponry of yours?” Thanos mused, coming closer to lean over Tony’s table. “Yes, I have dissected that armor of yours. It left me unimpressed.”
“Well, it was a little worse for wear, you know, after that army thing and—“
“What of the device you brought through with you? That power, I shall admit, was… useful.”
Tony managed to keep the scowl that tried to take over his face. There were a lot of things he was willing to talk about with this guy, pretty much anything to keep him talking and interested and not killing him, but nuclear bombs was not one of them. Never again, never-fucking-again.
“That wasn’t mine.”
“Yet you carried it, to your near death.”
“What can I say? I’m a good guy.”
Thanos’ dark eyes narrowed at him in warning. “What use were you in this battle? I am curious to know how you prevailed over such an army and magic-user? Did you truly frighten the little Lie Smith?”
This guy really likes the word ‘little’, Tony thought to himself, and realized it was probably because he was so fucking huge.
“I doubt I scared him that much, but I did shoot him square in the chest. Besides, I have no idea what happened after the bomb went off, so who’s to say he didn’t rise up and take over, after all?”
“He did not,” He replied, once again dipping into that dangerous tone. “He is hidden from me, for now. I can just sense his presence on Midgard, but it is weak. My power over him has been severed, I can no longer pull his soul to me.” He paused to hiss something nasty and alien. “Useless… when I need eyes on the realm, now more than ever, he has become even more useless.”
Tony raised a brow slowly, not sure what that meant for him, exactly. Was he going to be killed just because he shot that leather-wearing cosplayer?
Wait, this is all sounding a lot like that Clint guy, blue eyes, turned ‘bad’, hearing voices that told him to do wicked things.
Tony frowned and glanced away in an attempt to hide his thoughts, but a hand was back around his jaw, jerking him to face Thanos once again.
“I need eyes,” he was saying with a pleased leer. “Such pretty, amber eyes, I think.”
Tony squirmed and maybe screamed against the hand smothering him, but it was pointless. Ice crawled through his veins, and just as it began to cloud his mind, he thought:
It was as it always was.
Shitty.
Not his fault.
Painful.
Everything was so bright, and just look at that mess in the streets out there. Beautiful. Oh god, everything wasbeautiful.
Tony hummed to himself as he landed on the burnt, half collapsed deck of the helipad, and strode across with purpose. He continued past confused stares, gasps of recognition, and even a few brave souls reaching out to him. Humming, he was humming something. A song he was taught, beautiful, it meant something.
He hummed the entire way to the meeting room, which, as he expected, was full of people he knew.
“Hi there,” he called out cheerfully.
They cried out, Rogers launching himself out of his chair and pulling Tony into a hug that should have surprised him, but it didn’t. Nothing did, not even when the solider was soon joined by others and he was being smothered by the Avengers.
A small—very small—voice in the back of his head was saying something snappy about that, which wasn’t really funny to Tony, anymore. So he simply smiled at them from behind his big, red sunglasses, and watched them tell him everything He needed to know.