Chapter Text
Tony has had a nagging feeling all day, a mix of hangover nausea and déjà vu. It started after he took a short nap before the installation of the arc reactor with Pepper; JARVIS had woken him up and for a moment Tony had almost gotten sick, the nausea had been so strong. After that initial moment it had dissipated quickly, however, leaving Tony confused and feeling strangely lost, like he was forgetting something, like something was missing.
He's able to ignore it during the setting up of the arc reactor, and then he's distracted by how not at all surprised he is by Coulson's presence. And then he spreads out the data onto his screens and looks at the blurry security camera shot of the person who broke into a SHIELD base, destroyed it very thoroughly and stole a couple of agents in the process.
That is when he does throw up, all over the floor, doesn't even have the time to make for a bowl, much less the toilet. He can't explain it and it freaks him out as he spits the sour taste out of his mouth, how sick he feels, how… how empty. Like he's missing something huge, something infinitely important, and it's too late, the floor has been pulled out from under him and he's in free fall.
There is no logical explanation for this, JARVIS has no suggestion either, so Tony does what he does best with feelings he can't deal with: ignore it. Nevermind that, when he reads up on thermonuclear astrophysics, everything comes to him strangely easily; almost unnaturally so, even for him. Nevermind that he feels barely any aggression towards Rogers, despite the dislike he harbors for everything the man represents, or towards Natasha, who has played him like an instrument. Nevermind that the thought of brainwashed Barton and the sight of Coulson makes something in him twinge painfully, urgently, almost guiltily, even though there is absolutely nothing he could have done about Barton, even though Coulson is perfectly fine, supernaturally calm and bland as usual.
It all comes to a head in Stuttgart. He makes an entrance the way he's wont to but he doesn't feel the way about it he usually would; there's barely any fun in it. He shoots at the alien who vaunts himself a god, has people kneel for him like it's the Dark Ages again, and ignores the strange impulse to bodily fly into him; it's a ridiculous idea anyway.
The guy – Loki, of Asgard, with glorious purpose – looks at Tony with a strange expression, and when Tony takes the mask of for a moment his eyes go wide; he almost looks human, there's something shocking in his face, but it's gone the next moment, and Tony and Rogers lead the guy onto the jet, don't quite know what to do with themselves or him.
They're silent, all three of them, Natasha flying in the front, and Tony replays Loki's expression in front of his inner eye again and again, trying to figure out what the hell it means, why the hell he's so obsessed with it. Eventually he has JARVIS replay the footage inside his helmet in slow-motion, freeze it at the pertaining moment, and… taken out of context, that expression couldn't be anything else but heartbreak.
Which is utterly ridiculous, of course, so Tony tries to look for something else, makes an argument for fear, perhaps even grief (there is no possible way he can make it into anger; the eyes don't make for it at all, bluish-green and something very painful about them), and then he clocks in on desperation and JARVIS says, quietly, that that's what he would have picked, if not the heartbreak.
Desperation. It makes Tony's heart clench and he doesn't know why, it's driving him crazy, how he's feeling things that make absolutely no sense, so he shoves it all aside, fixes the mission at the forefront of his mind: save Barton, figure out what the alien is doing with the tesseract, hopefully get it back. It doesn't matter whether the guy is scared or sad or desperate or even heartbroken; all that matters is that he's here, messing Tony's home up, and that does not fly in Tony Stark's book, not at all.
When everything is over (and nobody came out unscathed, some didn't come out at all, Tony almost got a front seat ticket to death by nuclear bomb in space, which is certainly a new one, even for him) they go to arrest the guy, still in the tower, as JARVIS assures him.
He's lying in a crater in the form of his body, and the Hulk did say "smash", but Tony didn't take it quite so literal – and he laughs because come on, it's comical.
The laugh dies in his throat when Loki turns his head to look at him – at him, not at his brother, or Barton who would still be a more likely option than Tony. This time Tony doesn't need to thoroughly and repeatedly analyze video footage to figure out an expression he has already recognized even if the context doesn't match; if nothing else, he's seen it before, has stared at it in the intimate microcosm of his helmet, trying to give it any other name.
Loki looks at him, and there is no mistaking the heartbreak, the way Tony's belly clenches at the sight of it.
It makes no sense, so he blinks, averts his eyes, pushes it away. He has a city to rebuild.