Loki/Harry - The Sum Of All Your Fears 1/1 - NC17
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“The Sum Of All Your Fears”
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros, et all. Avengers, Thor, Loki, etc belong to Marvel, Stan Lee, et co. I make no money from this and own nothing, don’t sue.
Summary: [Loki/HP] The Chitauri found him after he fell. They promised him revenge and the boy from his dreams, the boy with the lightning bolt scar that Loki should know but couldn’t remember. The Tesseract invaded his mind, polluting it, emptying it, until all that remained was fear and anger and he didn’t know who he was anymore. But Harry would save him. Because that’s what heroes did.
Warnings: Slash. Loki/HP. Pre-Movies; through Iron Man; post-Avengers. Violence. Language. AU. Implied Torture. Typos. Character death. Creepiness. Eventual happy ending. Mind Control. Induced Insanity.
Rating: NC-17.
A/N: Hmm. I seem to have a new obsession. Fellow Lokeans, arise!! ALSO! I HAVE CHANGED THE HP DATES. Harry was born in 1990, not 1980. Add ten years to everything (it was that, or make this another master of death story). Harry born: 1990. Hogwarts: 2001. Iron Man: 2008. Iron Man 2: 2010. Thor: April 2011. Captain America: July 2011. Avengers: April 2012.
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“We have finally learned, at far too great a cost, that if the most powerful weapons ever created are ever unleashed, they will be fired not in anger... but fear.” - President Fowler: The Sum of All Fears (2002).
Words: 21,253
Chapter 3
April 8th 2012.
There was something vaguely familiar about the man seated beside him. Tony couldn’t help but stare at him, his helmet off and slightly scuffed from his fight with Thor earlier. Loki sat still and silent, though there was a strange curve to his lips that reminded him of Harry that time Tony asked him if ‘Loki’ was magical.
Tony’s eyes narrowed suddenly. Opposite him, Thor and Steve both leaned forward in their seats cautiously. Tony’s hand shot out, grabbing hold of Loki’s chin and turning his head towards him. Loki allowed himself to be moved, the smirk on his mouth growing wider, as Tony continued to turn his head so that from the position his brother and Captain America were in it looked as if they were kissing. “Take a photo, Jarvis, would you?”
“Already done, sir,” a voice intoned within his helmet, the ear piece he wore buzzing with static.
Tony let go of Loki’s face, pulling out his phone instead and pulling up the photo he had Jarvis send him. If Tony ignored the fact that it was him in the photo and not Harry, and that their prisoner was dressed differently, it could have been the same picture that Pepper kept hidden in a drawer in the lounge of Stark Tower.
“What did you say your name was?” Tony practically growled out, now staring once more at the side of Loki’s head.
The Asgardian turned back to him, blue eyes looking out of place on his face, set within the dark, wide rings of exhaustion around his eyes. “I am Loki, of Asgard.”
Tony thought about it for a moment, about how the eyes should have been green, but of how magic was possible and Harry had once given his teacher blue hair when he was eight. “You are Loki?” Tony asked, clenching his metal encased hands at his sides, “of 1232 Mayfair, London?”
Loki said nothing in response to that, but his eyebrows rose high on his forehead and his mouth pursed and in his mind he remembered the boy with the scar signing the deed to the flat they shared in both of their names. A gift from the boy’s father, Loki remembered, but a gift to them both, an approval of a relationship from a man who had never met him. There had been a circle of metal on the door when they moved in, with “1232” engraved onto it, but Loki later replaced the circle of gold with a silver fleur de lis that had their house number poured onto it in melted copper. Loki narrowed his eyes at the man of iron, silently asking how he knew that, how was it possible that he had known that when Loki had only remembered just now.
It was enough of a reaction, enough of a confirmation. Tony stood up, towering over the seated, chained man, and he punched him hard, once in the jaw. He pulled his fist back, aiming another swing at the man, but Steve’s arms were locked around his shoulders, and Thor’s hand was clenching over his own fist, and they were pulling him back and away, until Tony was slumped angrily in between them on the bench opposite Loki’s own. Tony watched, satisfied, justified, as a bruise began to form on the pale chin, but it was gone and healed by the time the jet landed on the helicarrier.
“That was for Harry, asshole.” Tony told him, as guards surged onto the jet, guns raised and helmets down, and crowded around the captured god.
“Harry?” Loki whispered, trying to remember why anyone named Harry would matter to him. And there, in his memories, was his boy with the scar, smiling and laughing and kissing him, but answering to the nickname of Snow. “I love you, Harry,” the Loki of his memories whispered into the dark hair of the boy who slept in his arms in their bed in their flat in Mayfair. “I will never leave you, Harry. Never,” he had promised in another memory, pressing desperate kisses to unresponsive lips just before Thor had thrown him from the bifrost.
“Harry?” Loki asked again, turning around as the guards led him away, so that he could search out Tony Stark’s steely expression for any hint or idea of where he might find his lover.
Stark stared back at him blankly, fists clenched at his sides, before he pulled the helmet on and took off into the sky. He had to blow stuff up, he had to work off all of the anger and frustration and fuck-you-you-bastard-you-broke-my-son’s-heart that was building up inside of him with every breath. Tony couldn’t go back in there, not after chasing after Thor earlier to keep Loki alive so that they could find the Tesseract. Because now Loki was in a cage, defenceless, unarmed, and magic or no magic (because Harry had shown him ways to defend himself from that and Tony had built them in to his newest arc reactor), Tony wouldn’t be able to keep himself from beating the living shit out of a arsehole. That would lose them the Tesseract for sure, because Tony didn’t think he would be able to stop if he started until Loki was dead or someone was dragging him away with the force of a thousand wild horses. He should care about the Tesseract, but he didn’t; Harry was more important, and Harry had been heartbroken and destroyed by the fucking god back there, and Tony needed desperately to do something about it now that he finally could.
But he didn’t. He blew up statues and rocks and chased seagulls into the ocean until Jarvis informed him that SHIELD had started their meeting without him. Tony headed back to the helicarrier, landing shakily on the deck of the moving airbase, and making his way inside, glad that the titanium his suit was made from was heavy enough to keep him from blowing away. He changed quickly, Jarvis removing the suit and storing it safely. And all of the witty comments he had been planning to make, thinking each response within nano-seconds of the words before, spoken through Jarvis’ interference with SHIELD’s intercoms, by those in the meeting without him, and there were many witty comments he was planning to make, each of them flew from his head the second he walked into the room.
Seated at the table, (along with Fury, Coulson, Hill, and all those who would later make up the Avengers), with his wrists handcuffed to the arms of his chair, was Harry Potter.
“What the fuck did you do to my son, Fury?” Tony hissed, striding up to the dark-skinned man with eyes like daggers.
“It’s just a precaution, Stark. To keep him from running off to help a certain criminal we all know. Now, sit the fuck down and shut up.” Fury turned his one eye on Harry, glancing him up and down curiously. The boy had come with him easily enough, following Fury onto his jet and back to base. He had made the odd protest, insisting he didn’t know where Loki was, or why they would be interested in Loki, because Loki hadn’t been on earth in a year as far as Harry knew, and even if he had why would Harry know? Loki had left him. Loki was gone.
“Loki is in Asgard!” Harry said again, rolling his eyes at his father as the elder Stark moved to tug at the handcuffs. “I already told you that. There’s no reason to chain me up.” And yet, Fury reminded himself, Harry had been the one to suggest they restrain him if they were so afraid of him, of what he could do, of what his connection to Loki was.
“Is he, indeed?” Nick asked, tilting his head just enough that Natasha Romanoff would notice it. A giant screen appeared in the centre of the table they were seated around, or rather, the table became a giant screen. It showed a cell, a cage suspended over a steel trap that would open into thin air, and in the cage Loki stood stock still with his arms folded calmly behind his back. Blue eyes stared up at the camera that he knew was watching him, and at the people on the other end of the camera that were thus watching him too. And he smirked, like a shark before its prey, or like Bellatrix as she cackled at him that she had killed Sirius Black, and it was a terrifying sight but it would have hurt more if Harry had known who Sirius Black was at the time. Just as Harry would have been more afraid if he hadn’t known who Loki was.
He was straining in his seat, leaning forward as far as the cuffs would allow until he could see Loki completely, until he was right over the image. He wanted to reach out and touch it, wanted to feel Loki’s hair and skin and make sure the man was real and there and back, but it was an image on a computer screen Harry reminded himself as he slumped back into his chair.
“What do you want from me?” Harry asked softly, sounding as broken as he had the day he turned up without Loki’s ring on his finger and told Tony that “he broke up with me!”
“Help us stop Loki, Harry.” Fury said softly, giving himself a congratulatory mental pat on the back when Harry turned his full attention from the computer to Fury. Harry nodded, listening, and so Nick spoke. “If he gives back the Tesseract, if he stops whatever he is planning, and doesn’t hurt anymore people, SHIELD is willing to go easy on him. There will be no execution, no banishment, perhaps no imprisonment, not if he concedes now, before it is too late.”
“I haven’t seen Loki in a year, Director. What makes you think he’ll listen to anything I have to say?” Harry was genuinely curious. If Loki had not come back to him as he had promised, why would Loki care enough about him now to stop this madness?
Fury didn’t give him any genuine reasons, he had simply touched one hand to his chest, and told him it was just a hunch he had. Nick figured that gods didn’t propose to mortals on a normal basis, and the fact that from what he could find out while Natasha flew Loki from Germany to them, Harry had been wearing that ring since before Iron Man had even been invented. That was enough to motivate his thought process, enough to act upon, and Nick Fury always acted upon his gut instincts. They had never led him astray yet.
“Fine,” Harry conceded quietly. “But if anyone else is planning to try, you’ve all got to go first. Just in case he reacts badly to seeing me. I don’t want to ruin anything for any of you. I want to help stop him,” Harry promised. Inside of his head a voice screamed, and he imagined that if his hands were unbound he would be clawing at his face or his chest, because the voice in his head sounded so desperate, so tormented, and Harry’s heart ached at the look his reflection wore upon his face every day since Loki left-
Just please don’t kill him I love him I love him I love him Loki what are you doing please don’t leave me what did I do wrong why don’t you love me Loki don’t hurt anyone please don’t kill Loki I love him I love him please come back to me
-The voice continued to scream, unheard by anyone but him, but Bruce Banner took one look at Harry’s face and winced. Because he had demons too, and a monster that he couldn’t kill without suffering through a death of his own too, and he knew exactly how Harry was feeling as the boy glanced back down at the image of Loki on the computer screen. Bruce reached out to rest his hand lightly on Harry’s arm; it was shaking so hard the handcuffs were rattling, and on his other side, Tony did the same thing. Tony also happened to be picking the lock.
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Fury had tried, as they first put Loki in his cage. There was an allegory about a boot and an ant that Harry didn’t understand but that seemed to amuse Nick and Loki too for that matter. Bruce and Steve avoided Loki, and Tony took it upon himself once to simply stand outside of the cage, just staring, until a metaphorical light bulb seemed to go off above Loki’s head and his blue eyes widened.
“You are Harry’s father?” He asked, though he needn’t have had. Because he now remembered the name on the top of the deed, reading Anthony Stark, before Harry had signed it over into their names. “That would explain why you punched me,” Loki conceded quietly. “But my absence is a quarrel between my fiancé and myself, and I politely request that you stay out of it, man of iron.”
“Fiancé?” Tony snorted, his arms folded across his chest, just under the glow of the arc reactor. One hand moved down to root through his pocket, and when he pulled it out there was a ring sitting innocuously in the palm of Stark’s hand. “Harry hasn’t worn your ring in nine months, asshole. He isn’t your anything, and if you come near him, Tesseract be damned, I’ll kill you myself.” Tony threw the ring down on the ground, and it rolled to a stop beneath one of the metal railings that wove its way around the edge of the platform that led to the cage.
Loki watched the ring as it moved across the floor, eyes wide until it finally came to a stop. He could not reach for it through the glass, not while he was pretending to be bound and magic-less, but it had not landed on the metal beneath him, and he resolved to recover the ring as soon as he was freed and it was time to flee. With the ring in his possession, he would find Harry, and bring Harry away with him where the boy would be safe while the Chitauri invaded earth.
Natasha spoke to him next, and Harry appeared in a different doorway to the one she left through, having only caught the very last part of the conversation. “Co-operation?” Harry asked with a small chuckle, “that doesn’t sound like the Loki I used to know.”
Confused and disorientated (and secretly impressed) as he was by Black Widow’s impressive display, Loki did not think to check himself. Instead he answered casually, without thought, and with unexpected honestly. “It was tricked out of me, I’m afraid. A relatively decent performance on her part, though I appeared to have been woefully lacking in some respects. Nonetheless, I’ll have the chance to make up for it now, will I not, agent-?” Loki trailed off, expecting the SHIELD agent to fill in the blank with his own name.
Harry chuckled again.
When the human didn’t speak, Loki turned from the direction Natasha had disappeared in. His eyes widened as they landed on Harry, then softened, and one pale hand pressed desperately against the glass that separated them. Harry’s heart almost stopped beating as he noticed that Loki still wore his ring, gold and tight around his wedding finger with a cracked onyx stone on top engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.
“Snow?” Loki whispered, before the other hand came up to press against glass, as if Loki could simply push it down and bare the way to Harry.
“You’re wearing my ring?” Harry asked, ignoring Loki’s use of his old nickname. No one had called him that in a year, not since Loki had promised Snow he’d come back to him and didn’t, and Tony had used that name and Harry had flinched so hard he fell over and knocked himself unconscious, and Tony had sued the reporter who innocently asked why Snow wasn’t wearing the unorthodox engagement ring anymore and Harry had been inconsolable and blind drunk for four days afterwards.
“You used to wear mine. I remember that much.”
Harry glanced down at the bare finger on his left hand, before offering Loki a sad, soft smile. “And you left me,” he said, though he thought quickly about Loki’s second comment and wondered what it meant. He couldn’t think of a reason, and so to be spiteful, he simply repeated it. “I remember that much.”
“I was supposed to come back?” Loki asked, though he remembered the answer. He had made a promise he could not remember and he had dreamt of Harry’s hate and disappointment. But he had fallen for months and that was hardly his fault, so surely, once Harry was away from these humans and from Thor Harry would forgive him and love him once more. “I took too long, did I not? Did you grow tired of waiting for me?” Loki waited for the answer, his breath held and his forehead pressing to the glass above his hands.
“It was a long time ago, Loki. Let’s talk about now instead, yeah?”
It was the longest Loki had gone without insulting anyone, and it was the most honest he had been since Thor could actually remember, and each of the Avengers should have been watching Harry talk to Loki but none of them were. Because Harry wasn’t supposed to speak with Loki until tomorrow morning, and today they were too busy fighting in Doctor Banner’s laboratory while the sceptre tried to influence their minds.
“Why are you doing this?” Harry asked, but he never got an answer. An explosion rocked the ship, and Harry stumbled forward with a cry, catching himself on the metal railing in front of him. “What the hell?” He wondered out loud, unnerved by the smirk that was growing across Loki’s face.
“Forgive me,” the man whispered, folding his arms serenely behind his back again. “You will understand in time, my love.”
Behind Harry, one of the soldiers the Tesseract had already infected snuck silently into the room. Loki watched him calmly, making no move to warn Harry, or to stop the soldier, who raised his gun and hit Harry across the back of the head with the butt of it. Harry slumped forward, but the soldier caught him and carried him carefully to the corner of the room and tucked him into an alcove out of sight. The man released Loki then, and the god stepped out of the cage, leaving an illusion behind, just in time for Thor to charge into the room, at Loki, and get himself locked in the cage instead.
Harry’s eyes fluttered open just as someone croaked something about lacking conviction and the sound of a small explosion filled the room. He turned his face away, feeling nauseas and dizzy, and didn’t look back again until whatever had blown up no longer seemed as bright or as hot. Loki was gone, actually the whole cage was gone and Harry hoped that Loki hadn’t been in it when it fell. Phil Coulson was slumped against a wall, wheezing and bleeding, and Harry crawled towards him, his head spinning too much for him to consider walking just yet.
“Hey kid,” Coulson choked down, spitting out a mouthful of blood a few seconds later. “Get out of here kid, before he comes back.” Harry turned his head in the direction that the agent was staring into.
Through a doorway, surrounded by broken bits of wall and ammunition, Loki slowly pushed himself to his feet. When Loki made his way back into the room, snarling darkly and thinking of all of the wonderful ways he could torture that human in the miniscule time he had left to live, Agent Coulson and Harry were both gone. Loki screamed in rage, memories of losing Harry the first time warping inside of his mind, the Tesseract’s power twisting them and him, blaming Thor because that was who Loki had always blamed for his suffering as a child, and this time blaming SHIELD, because they must have taken Harry from him. Who else could have? He had just been about to pick Harry up, to carry him to the stolen quinjet his mind-enslaved soldiers were planning to lead him to, when that agent had shown up with his gun, interrupted his defeat of Thor, and blasted him through a fucking doorway. SHIELD had distracted him, and while he was downed, SHIELD had stolen Harry from him.
It was the man of iron’s fault, Loki told himself squeezing the ring he had given Harry, which Stark had thrown at him, which he had retrieved just now, as the jet took him away. It was Tony’s fault because the man had sworn Loki off of his son, and SHIELD must have been doing his bidding.
“To Stark Tower,” Loki told the pilot angrily, because if Stark could take what was his, he would take what was Stark’s.
When Stark figured out what was happening and where Loki had gone, the newly assembled Avengers followed him. Harry remained on the helicarrier, because he wasn’t an Avenger and no one wanted to risk Loki kidnapping him, or (though no one dared to say it out loud) Harry willingly siding with Loki against them. Phil Coulson recovered slowly but surely under Harry’s magical healing care, and Nick Fury sheepishly presented him with his newly-blood-stained trading cards when Phil opened his eyes. To say the man was pissed was an understatement, but the cards had done their job, as had Phil’s ‘death’, and Fury was happy enough at the moment to promise his agent a brand new set, he’d even collect them himself this time to save Phil the bother.
Harry sat in Banner’s abandoned laboratory. The Stark-computer was open in front of him, still tracking Gamma radiation across the world. It was the one of two pieces of technological equipment still working on board the helicarrier including the surveillance systems, and Harry used the privacy to silently will the machine to hurry up and tell him where Loki was. No one else had, no one else knew, except his father who had gone without him for his own protection apparently. But it was as Tony explained through Jarvis, over the Stark-phone Harry always carried, that Loki was out of his mind and didn’t seem anything like the person Harry used to crow about or loved, that Harry understood what had happened. It was like Ron, in the Forest of Dean, pale and gaunt with dark circles around each eye and the Locket of Slytherin hanging like a noose around his neck. It wasn’t the same thing, but it had the same effect. Just like the Locket had controlled Ron’s emotions and influenced his actions and words, the Tesseract had done to same to Agent Barton and Doctor Selvig. And the little blue stone embedded just below the point of Loki’s sceptre had been doing the same to him.
Communications came back online just as Loki threw Tony Stark threw a window, and Iron Man returned to blast Loki into a wall. Harry figured out where they were as Thor appeared to fight his brother, listening in confusion as Loki snarled out accusations and insults that were mostly untrue. As Thor begged Loki to stop, to give up this harmful quest and to come home with him, Loki remembers suddenly, vividly, the Others’ threat to him the one time Loki questioned the plan.
“And if I change my mind?” Loki had asked back then, his arms folded casually across his chest, the sceptre tucked against his body. “If I feel that I would find my boy faster on my own, extract my own brand of vengeance sweeter on my own, what then?”
“You think we do not know where your boy is hidden, Asgardian?” The Other had hissed in angry almost-silence, “you think He does not know, He who put the sceptre in your hand, who gave you this power, this knowledge? You think we could not find the boy before you could even hope to remember his name, Asgardian? What do you think you could do to Him, to stop Him, should He choose to tear your human apart limb by pathetically fragile limb until he is nothing but a bloody mass of flesh, all that remains of your boy, your human, but a stain upon the floor by His feet?” There was nothing cruel about the expression on the Others’ face, but Loki shuddered as their eyes met anyway. He thought of his boy with the scar, and he remembered a man in a hooded robe pointing a stick at the boy and making him scream, and of green light that should have killed him except Loki was there to protect him over and over, until the close and it was time to die. This time there would be no protection, this time Loki would not come to Harry’s aid, because the Other was right and there would be nothing Loki could do to stop Him. Except uphold his end of the bargain. To save Harry’s life, (and his greatest fear was losing him, to death or his own foolishness or to another), Midgard had to bow before him. To save Harry, Loki would give the Tesseract to Thanos and doom the universe to his omnicidal rule. Loki would have Midgard and Loki would have Harry and all other sentiment beings could burn, Asgardians included.
So Loki stabbed Thor in the side, throwing himself off of the balcony of Stark Tower and onto the flying chariot that awaited him. The Chitauri flew around him, destroying and killing, and Loki flew among them, directing them, instructing them to aim for the so-called Avengers because without them the rest of humanity would fall to their knees and beg for mercy. Without the Avengers, without Tony Stark and Thor, there was no one to keep Harry from his side.
When Clint Barton shot an arrow at his face, Loki caught it in mid-air. But it exploded, and threw him through the air, off of his chariot and in through the window of Stark Tower again. He slid across the lounge, landing beside the bar Tony had earlier offered him a drink from. There were no Avengers there now, but Harry Potter glanced down at him instead, with the sceptre held between both hands. Loki smiled up at him, holding one hand out for the sceptre and the other hand out for Harry’s own, but Harry handed neither over.
“I loved you,” Harry whispered.
“Past tense?” Loki asked, feeling suddenly small and afraid as he waited for the answer. His eyes flashed green for half a second as Harry tugged with one hand at the little blue gem just below the point of the sceptre’s blade.
Harry offered him a soft smile, the kind that Harry had always offered him when Loki was unsure of himself, questioning himself or Harry’s love for him.
“I love you,” Harry corrected his earlier statement.
Loki rose warily to his knees, hands still reaching for Harry. The gem broke away from the sceptre, and the blue light drained out of it until all that was left was a small clear crystal in the palm of Harry’s hands. As the blue faded from the gem, the blue drained from Loki’s eyes until Harry was staring into ones as green as his own, until those eyes fluttered shut and Loki slumped unconscious to the floor at Harry’s feet.
Outside, Iron Man flew a nuclear missile into space with no intention of coming back alive, and Thor and Captain America fought bravely and Hawkeye ran out of arrows. Black Widow searched for Loki’s sceptre, needing it to close the portal, and having overheard her as she muttered to herself outside on the balcony, Harry handed it over.
“I’ll need to put the gem back in though,” he told her, before going outside, away from Loki’s prone form to do so. The gem flashed blue again, powered by the presence of the sceptre, or vice versa, but neither worked without the other regardless. Natasha used the sceptre to close the portal, just as Iron Man fell back through to earth, and the Hulk swung across buildings to catch the unconscious man and break his fall. Harry watched, with his wand out, ready to catch his father if he had to, even from such a distance, until Tony was safely on the ground.
“Thank you,” he whispered to the Hulk, though he doubted the green creature could hear anything over the sound of its own proud roars. Harry turned back then, after he was sure his father was safe, and he glanced sadly down at Loki. “What am I going to do with you?” He asked softly, crouching down against the bottom of the small set of stairs that led up to the bar. He pulled Loki until the man was cradled against him, his head in Harry’s lap, body across his legs, with Harry’s arms around him.
When Loki woke, he was warm and safe and Harry was carding patient fingers through his hair the way he used to when Loki fell asleep on their sofa or in their clearing on a bed of leaves. Each of the Avengers stood over him, in a semi-circle of frowns and glares and hands on hips, and though he should be repentant and worried, Loki was relieved. If the Avengers had won, the Chitauri had been defeated, and hopefully with them Thanos. Harry was safe, and surely it was not Loki’s fault that the Others’ army had been too weak for the task? Loki had upheld his part of the deal: he had brought the Chitauri to earth and he had handed them the Tesseract for the taking, it was not his fault that none of the Chitauri had thought to take it.
His head felt clearer than it had in months, and though the strange messed up memories were still there, they were fewer than before, and Loki could remember how it was he had truly fallen. He remembered why he had lived in Midgard, not because he was king there, but because Harry was there. He had been the usurped king of Asgard, and so it should have been Asgard the Chitauri had invaded to reclaim Loki’s throne. But the Tesseract had not been on Asgard, and so Thanos had not sent Loki there, but to Midgard, to the Tesseract and to Harry and to failure. But with his failure came the freedom of his mind, and Loki glanced up at Harry in thanks, his head still pillowed in the boy’s lap with long fingers running patiently through his hair.
Tony cleared his throat, not looking at all pleased to see Loki anywhere near his son.
The Asgardian turned his head slowly, his usual half-smirk present as soon as he was turned from Harry. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said slowly but surely, smirk growing wider as he gazed at each of their narrowed eyes in turn, “I’ll have that drink now.”
It was Harry who got Loki a drink, and Tony who handcuffed him, and the Hulk who dragged Loki roughly to another jet. But Loki allowed it without complaint, because Harry walked along beside him, unafraid of the Hulk, with his left hand lightly brushing Loki’s side with every other step they took. Later, when Loki was chained a little tighter in a different cage, pretending to be unable to escape once more because this time Director Fury threatened to gas him to unconsciousness if he took so much as a step towards the glass, Harry came to him again.
The Avengers had spoken first, and Thor had been firmly against Midgardian punishment because Clint kept throwing the word ‘execution’ around like it was going out of style. Natasha and Clint had agreed with one another, because they weren’t dumb enough to believe that Loki was staying on board this time for any reason other than the fact that Harry was on board, and though the others agreed with that fact, the assassins rightly pointed out that they didn’t have anywhere to imprison Loki that would hold him. Tony had offered to build them a prison, somewhere far away from Harry, like the moon maybe, which had startled a laugh out of Fury against his will.
“Will you be imprisoning or executing agent Barton as well, Director Fury?” Harry asked politely, once the man had schooled his expression back into his default ‘fuck you, that’s why’ mode. Fury’s eyebrows furrowed, expression startled once more into changing before it slipped back firmly into place.
“Of course not. Agent Barton wasn’t in control of his own actions.”
“Neither was Loki,” Harry told them firmly. Thor looked hopeful, pleading silently with Harry to continue defending the brother who had broken the boy’s heart. Bruce looked intrigued, especially when Harry compared the effects of the sceptre on Loki’s mind to Bruce grabbing hold of the sceptre in the lab as he began to lose their temper when they fought earlier. Steve thought it was only fair, if they excused one set of actions, to excuse another, because you didn’t punish people with mental illnesses. Natasha looked put out, and Clint horrified, but arguing to punish Loki after Fury had agreed with Harry’s discovery meant arguing to punish himself, so he bit his tongue to keep himself quiet.
Tony looked resigned, and he nodded his head slowly when Fury turned to look at him. “It doesn’t change the fact that he hurt you, kiddo,” Tony whispered, reaching out to touch one hand to Harry’s cheek. He added then, almost as an afterthought, though Harry knew the guilt of it weighed heavily on his father’s mind, “and doesn’t change the fact that he killed Phil.”
Harry had only smiled at him, turned to Fury to mutter, “You should tell them soon”. Then he made his way unhindered to Loki’s new cell.
“I was lost,” Loki whispered, moving to press his hands hesitantly against the glass. He waited, to see if Director Fury made good on his threat, but when nothing happened, Loki leant his head against the glass too, smiling softly as Harry moved to press his hands against his own, pretending the glass did not separate them. “You were lost as well, and I could not remember your name, but I remembered you, and I missed you, but you were lost to me. They promised to give you back to me, Harry, after I had lost you.” He paused, closing his eyes tightly, refusing to cry when he knew that others were watching and listening. “Did I lose you, Harry?”
Harry was gone in the blink of an eye. With a crack of apparition, Harry was inside of the cage, and the chains that wove around each of Loki’s hands and around his neck and waist and feet were gone. “You could never lose me, Loki.”
Loki turned slowly, eyeing Harry for a second until his brain caught up with his eyes and his ears, and then he had the boy pinned against the glass behind them, pressed tight against his own body as their mouths moved as one and hands slid under shirts and down the back of trousers. “I love you,” Loki whispered into Harry’s mouth, moving his hand into his own pocket and pulling out the ring he had once given Harry. He pushed the ring back onto Harry’s fourth finger on his left hand where it belonged without asking for permission.
Harry glanced down at it, a crooked smile on his lips. “Gifts are met with like gifts on Asgard, no?” Harry asked coyly, fluttering his eyelashes.
“They are,” Loki agreed, his mouth moving to claim Harry’s own again. “What will you gift me with?” Fingers stroked against a pale cheek, thumb pressing against red lips, and Loki’s mouth moved to follow the path his hand had traced first.
“Unfortunately,” Harry said, pushing Loki back just far enough to give him room to pull his t-shirt over his head. He threw it to the floor, “I only have myself to offer.”
“I accept,” Loki murmured, his hands moving to tug at Harry’s belt, to reach inside and reclaim what was once his. “I accept gladly.”
“Good,” Harry snapped, unbuckling the metal straps across Loki’s shoulders. “I wasn’t giving you a choice!”
In the control room, the moment the chains were gone from Loki’s person, Fury’s hand was hovering over the big red button that would release the knock out gas into the cage. It was more than enough to tranquilise the Hulk, and they’d tested it, so they knew: it was how they had got Bruce back on the helicarrier after the battle. It would be more than enough to knock out Loki Odinson. But Tony’s hand on his wrist stopped Nick from pushing the button. Tony kept Fury’s hand still, just out of reach of its target, and Fury let him because he was interested in seeing whatever Tony was so interested in watching.
On the screen, Loki had Harry pinned against a glass wall, and after they kissed, Loki pushed that familiar ring back into its place and Harry took his shirt off. Tony managed to watch, keeping an eye on Harry in case this was some sort of trick and Loki was using his kid to make a quick escape, until they were completely naked. But when one of Loki’s hands disappeared completely from view and Harry’s head fell back and his mouth dropped open with a moan, hips arching up beneath the god, Tony turned his face away and gritted his teeth.
“Jarvis,” he ordered, “shut it off.” All around them, computer screens went black, and the sounds of Harry’s moaning cut off abruptly over the speakers.
Awkward silence spread out over the room, like fog across the ground in the mornings, until the sun rose to dissipate it. Going with that metaphor, Phil Coulson happened to be the sun that morning. He strode into the room, hands in his pockets and a wry grin on his face as everyone but Nick Fury turned to look at him with surprise and shock on their faces. “What, guys?” He asked, pretending he didn’t know why they were staring at him. “Do I have something on my face?”
As each of them came towards Phil, pulled him into a hug, or slapped him on the back, or welcomed him home, Harry and Loki made love for the first time in a year. When they were together, in one another’s’ arms, their bodies joined, breath and sweat mingling, and seed sticking to their skin, it was as if the rest of the world had fallen away. There was no one else but them remaining, just them and this forever, and Loki no longer feared and Harry no longer second-guessed himself. There were no insecurities or worries. There was nothing to regret or resent. Lost in the love they felt for one another, they were left with nothing to be ashamed of.
XXX
April 12th 2012.
While Harry had successfully spared Loki from Midgardian punishments, the same couldn’t be said for what awaited him upon his return to Asgard. Thor, naive but kind hearted Thor, was determined to bring his brother home, promising Harry that Loki would return soon this time, and promising Loki that he needn’t fear punishment from the All Father, for Harry had been right and those with mental illness should not be persecuted. Odin had agreed, punishing Loki who had been under the influence of the Tesseract (which was now stored safely in the weapons vault) would be unnecessary and cruel. But, Odin had continued, Loki still had to answer for his crimes against Asgard.
He allowed Jötuns to invade during Thor’s coronation. He had manipulated Thor into venturing to Jötunheimr and nearly got five Asgardians and himself killed. He had caused a war with the Frost Giants and then destroyed the bifrost in an attempt to implode a planet. They were weighty crimes, carrying heavy punishments, but Loki was his son, and Odin had already wronged him so badly, had failed him in so many ways and he understood now that Loki had only been trying to impress him and Loki understood now that he had gone about it the wrong way. There was nothing like a foreign presence within your mind, forcing you to do things against your will, to help you understand the difference between right and wrong actions, when before you might have struggled alone to figure it out.
Because Loki had admitted to his mistakes, and had asked, without being prodded, for forgiveness, and then shockingly for his mother’s blessing to marry a mortal that he had loved for almost eight years, Odin punished him less harshly than he had first planned to. But, just like with Thor’s banishment, Odin did nothing without reason.
XXX
April 18th 2012.
Thor had helped him find somewhere to live, and Thor had sat before him scowling and pretending to be Tony Stark while Loki practised his speech on him. Silvertongue, though he was, Loki had no doubt that he would be nervous before the father of the man he loved, the same father Loki had defenestrated. He had no desire to mess things up more than he already had, and he certainly had no desire to test whom Harry might chose if he were forced to pick between them, because given the recent hurts that he had been responsible for Loki had no doubt that he would not come out favourably.
When he was ready, after he had gotten accustomed to being banished to earth (though he still retained his magic, thankfully), Loki found himself standing at the door of a rather large, rented house in New York. Thor had informed him, just before the All Father cast him out, that this was Tony Stark’s current, new address since Loki had partially destroyed his last.
He knocked twice on the door, and Bruce Banner opened it wide some moments later. The greeting that had been on the man’s lips stuck there at the sight of Loki in a suit and green stripped scarf, dark wooden cane raised to knock on the door a second time. “Good afternoon, Doctor. I was wondering if Harry might be home.”
“Loki?” Bruce’s voice trailed off midway into a squeak, and he took a step backwards into the house. “I thought you were in Asgard?”
“I am living out the terms of my sentence upon the planet I tried to conquer. The All Father hopes it might teach me some empathy… or something.” It was a lie, of course. Odin had sent Loki there because he had to be seen to be punishing his wayward son, and earth was where Harry was. After the sentence was over, which lasted for the time it took for Loki to convince Tony Stark to let him marry his son, Loki would be free to come and go as he pleased, the only stipulation being the next time he came home he had to bring Harry with him to meet his family.
Harry appeared then in the doorway, and Bruce happily disappeared back inside of the house and away from Loki’s unnerving stare. “Loki? What are you doing here?” Harry seemed confused. Despite Thor promising to return Loki to him from Asgard soon, Harry had half expected him to never keep that promise, and half expected that even if he had that ‘soon’ meant something different to near-immortals.
“Well, I figured that since I have asked you to marry me officially once and twice now unofficially,” he said while glancing down to check that Harry still wore the ring he had given him four years ago. He did. “It was about time I asked your father for his blessing.”
Harry snorted in amusement, before realising that Loki was serious. “You’re going to ask my dad, who you threw out of a window, which I’m annoyed with you about by the way mind control or otherwise, for his permission to let me marry you, after you threw him out of a window and wrecked his house?” Harry laughed softly, leaning forward to press a soft kiss against Loki’s pursed lips. “Fat chance of that happening, but I’m more than happy to elope with you if you want.”
“I will do this correctly, Snow, it is the least I can do to make up for my mistakes.” Tony appeared behind Harry, glaring at Loki’s head until the god looked up and met brown eyes dead on. “Mr Stark,” Loki purred, pulling away from Harry to hold his hand out to Tony to shake, “it is a pleasure to meet you again. Perhaps we could put my past mistakes behind us, as I humbly ask your forgiveness for my words and actions, regardless of the fact that I was being controlled as much as Agent Barton and Doctor Selvig.”
“And whose fault was that?” Tony asked with a raised eyebrow, purposely ignoring the hand Loki had held out to him. “I don’t like being handed stuff,” he said, glancing pointedly at the hand as Loki continued to keep it suspended between them.
“Fortunately, I do,” Pepper chimed in softly, pushing her way passed Tony so that she could reach out and shake Loki’s hand firmly. “Virginia Potts, though everyone calls me Pepper. It’s nice to meet you, Mr Odinson.”
“Loki will do, Lady Pepper.” Loki raised her hand, kissing the back of it lightly, and suppressing a smirk as she smiled warmly back at him. She would be easy enough to convince, Loki thought to himself, before glancing warily in Stark’s direction.
Tony had his arms folded across his chest, under the arc reactor that glowed through his shirt, and his face looked decidedly unimpressed. At his side, Harry had one hand over his mouth to hide his laughter, but he moved the hand aside long enough to mouth, “Good luck”, at Loki before nodding his head in Tony’s direction.
“Come in, come in,” Pepper said still smiling as she led Loki into the house by his arm linked through hers. Tony stepped out of the way, pressing up close against the wall, even though he had been nowhere near them to begin with, but Loki understood it for the insult it was. He pursed his lips again, frowning as the man of iron slammed the front door rather roughly behind him and Harry laughed softly as they made their way into the living room. It would be more difficult than he had first assumed, Loki conceded. Yes, his ability to be persuasive and to talk his way into and out of any situation was the stuff of legends, it had earned him several nicknames in fact, but Anthony Stark, it appeared, was a man to hold a grudge. Loki wondered silently, if Tony was angrier about being thrown from a window and having his house broken or about the year where his son’s heart had been broken instead? If it were the second, Loki clearly could understand the cold reception, because he hadn’t forgiven himself still for leaving Harry behind through no fault of his own. He doubted Stark wanted to listen to his explanations or his excuses, but Loki offered to express them regardless. Stark continued to stare back at him with the same I-will-destroy-you glare that seemed to cross his face anytime Loki and Harry were brought up in the same conversation or were in the same room together.
It would be much more difficult than he had first presumed, Loki corrected his earlier correction, glancing resignedly at Tony Stark once more. But then his eyes searched the room, landing on Harry who was leaning against the bar that was a must have in every Stark household, and his eyes were bright and his mouth was curving up, and he whispered, “I love you,” just loud enough for them all to hear, and Loki consoled himself that no matter how hard it would be to win Stark’s approval, nor how long it took, and thus how long his freedom was denied to him for, the end result would be more than worth it.
“I love you too,” Loki whispered back. Though, he did take great, secret, satisfaction in the ugly scowl that crossed Tony’s face.
“Fuck this,” Stark growled, jumping out of his seat and making his way hurriedly to the bar, ignoring Pepper and Harry’s laughs, “I need a drink.” He turned to Harry, “you want a drink? Pepper, you want a drink?” They both shook their heads as Tony grabbed an unopened bottle of scotch.
“You never did give me that drink I was offered, Mr Stark. If I recall correctly, I received one from Harry, but not you.” Loki folded his hands demurely in his lap, keeping his expression innocent as Tony turned slowly, one eye twitching, to stare straight at him again. “May I perhaps have a drink, please?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” Tony grunted at him, before drinking straight from the bottle. Five minute later, Tony moved to pour himself an actual drink from a second bottle he pulled out from behind the bar. When he sat down, he had two glasses with him, and he slid one silently across the table towards Loki. Loki picked it up unhesitantly, and sipped from it, nodding his thanks even as Stark took a rather large mouthful from his own drink, grimacing at the sight of Harry moving to sit beside Loki, pressed closely against the god’s side.
“Well, Loki, huh?” He asked Harry after Pepper had brought him his third drink.
“Yeah,” Harry whispered, glancing besottedly up at the dark haired man, “Loki.”
Harry sounded so happy, so different from the Harry he had known this past year that Tony wondered if the year had really happened at all or if it had all been a figment of his imagination. But no, they were living in a rented house, because Loki had tried to take over Asgard, fallen into insanity apparently, been mind controlled, tried to take over earth so that he could find Harry and marry him (and what a backwards, fucked up fairy tale this was starting to sound like within Tony’s slightly buzzed mind) and save him from the evil Prince Thor, and then had smashed up Tony’s house along with a lot more of New York, resulting in them living in this rented house. And through it all, Harry had been lonely, heartbroken and insecure, but now, with Loki pressed against his side, smiling softly down at Harry, who raised his chin occasionally to beg for chaste kisses Harry didn’t look any of those things. He looked happy. It was because Harry looked so happy that Tony forced down the anger and resentment, (and damn, but he was a spiteful bastard), and ignored the voice in his head that whispered this person was planning to take his son away from him, and held out his hand instead.
“Anthony Stark, but if you call me Anthony I’ll have Hulk use you to make a mosaic out of the floor, got it? It’s Tony, or Stark, or, well, anything but Anthony.” Tony finished the rest of his drink, reaching for the bottle that Pepper had kept cradled on her lap beside him. “Want another?”
“Sure,” Loki answered, holding his glass out. “Thank you, Tony. Then I insist you call me Loki in return, deal?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever, bottoms up.” They sipped from their drinks, and made awkward small talk, and Tony decided Loki wasn’t too bad when he wasn’t breaking up with people or breaking up cities, and he rolled his eyes when he caught Harry’s mouthed, ‘thank you, dad’, and responded with, “so, exiled god that you are, you got somewhere to stay? Cause there’s plenty of room here.” He paused, thinking about it, and then added, “but you’re staying in your own room, got it?”
“Yes, Tony, I ‘got it’. I thank you for the offer, and I will gladly accept it.”
It turned out that Thor had wasted his time finding Loki somewhere to live on Midgard, because Loki continued to spend every night at Tony Stark’s temporary home and every day with Tony Stark’s son. They never did sleep in separate rooms, but Tony knew enough now about holding on to what you’ve got with both hands to hold his tongue and just let Harry be happy. He did throw in the odd comment now and then, mostly to watch Harry blush, or see Bruce choke on his cereal, though Loki only ever smirked deviously at him, and threw back his own comment that had Pepper flushing a rather fetching shade of pink.
When the Avengers Tower was rebuilt and renamed, each Avenger got their own floor, if they wanted it. Tony got the top two floors to himself; the first, topmost floor was his workshop and no one was allowed in there, ever, but he shared the second with Pepper. The floor below Tony’s was Harry’s, and he shared it with Loki.
The End
1 - Kept wanting to say “the boy with the bread”!
2 - Burdened with glorious Porpoise, anyone? See this: http :// 25(dot)media(dot)tumblr(dot)com/tumblr_m46ze5QHJG1qinkz0o1_500(dot)jpg
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Thank you all for reading. Please consider leaving a review, because LoKitty will purr for you if you do! And, now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to destroy Jötunheimr…! (Walks away, all BAMF, with my sceptre, activates the full power of the bifrost… freaks everyone out, turns the bifrost off again. Laughs. Just kidding, Frost Giants, LOL jokes. Loki’d) XD
“The Sum Of All Your Fears”
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros, et all. Avengers, Thor, Loki, etc belong to Marvel, Stan Lee, et co. I make no money from this and own nothing, don’t sue.
Summary: [Loki/HP] The Chitauri found him after he fell. They promised him revenge and the boy from his dreams, the boy with the lightning bolt scar that Loki should know but couldn’t remember. The Tesseract invaded his mind, polluting it, emptying it, until all that remained was fear and anger and he didn’t know who he was anymore. But Harry would save him. Because that’s what heroes did.
Warnings: Slash. Loki/HP. Pre-Movies; through Iron Man; post-Avengers. Violence. Language. AU. Implied Torture. Typos. Character death. Creepiness. Eventual happy ending. Mind Control. Induced Insanity.
Rating: NC-17.
A/N: Hmm. I seem to have a new obsession. Fellow Lokeans, arise!! ALSO! I HAVE CHANGED THE HP DATES. Harry was born in 1990, not 1980. Add ten years to everything (it was that, or make this another master of death story). Harry born: 1990. Hogwarts: 2001. Iron Man: 2008. Iron Man 2: 2010. Thor: April 2011. Captain America: July 2011. Avengers: April 2012.
XXX
“We have finally learned, at far too great a cost, that if the most powerful weapons ever created are ever unleashed, they will be fired not in anger... but fear.” - President Fowler: The Sum of All Fears (2002).
Words: 21,253
Chapter 3
April 8th 2012.
There was something vaguely familiar about the man seated beside him. Tony couldn’t help but stare at him, his helmet off and slightly scuffed from his fight with Thor earlier. Loki sat still and silent, though there was a strange curve to his lips that reminded him of Harry that time Tony asked him if ‘Loki’ was magical.
Tony’s eyes narrowed suddenly. Opposite him, Thor and Steve both leaned forward in their seats cautiously. Tony’s hand shot out, grabbing hold of Loki’s chin and turning his head towards him. Loki allowed himself to be moved, the smirk on his mouth growing wider, as Tony continued to turn his head so that from the position his brother and Captain America were in it looked as if they were kissing. “Take a photo, Jarvis, would you?”
“Already done, sir,” a voice intoned within his helmet, the ear piece he wore buzzing with static.
Tony let go of Loki’s face, pulling out his phone instead and pulling up the photo he had Jarvis send him. If Tony ignored the fact that it was him in the photo and not Harry, and that their prisoner was dressed differently, it could have been the same picture that Pepper kept hidden in a drawer in the lounge of Stark Tower.
“What did you say your name was?” Tony practically growled out, now staring once more at the side of Loki’s head.
The Asgardian turned back to him, blue eyes looking out of place on his face, set within the dark, wide rings of exhaustion around his eyes. “I am Loki, of Asgard.”
Tony thought about it for a moment, about how the eyes should have been green, but of how magic was possible and Harry had once given his teacher blue hair when he was eight. “You are Loki?” Tony asked, clenching his metal encased hands at his sides, “of 1232 Mayfair, London?”
Loki said nothing in response to that, but his eyebrows rose high on his forehead and his mouth pursed and in his mind he remembered the boy with the scar signing the deed to the flat they shared in both of their names. A gift from the boy’s father, Loki remembered, but a gift to them both, an approval of a relationship from a man who had never met him. There had been a circle of metal on the door when they moved in, with “1232” engraved onto it, but Loki later replaced the circle of gold with a silver fleur de lis that had their house number poured onto it in melted copper. Loki narrowed his eyes at the man of iron, silently asking how he knew that, how was it possible that he had known that when Loki had only remembered just now.
It was enough of a reaction, enough of a confirmation. Tony stood up, towering over the seated, chained man, and he punched him hard, once in the jaw. He pulled his fist back, aiming another swing at the man, but Steve’s arms were locked around his shoulders, and Thor’s hand was clenching over his own fist, and they were pulling him back and away, until Tony was slumped angrily in between them on the bench opposite Loki’s own. Tony watched, satisfied, justified, as a bruise began to form on the pale chin, but it was gone and healed by the time the jet landed on the helicarrier.
“That was for Harry, asshole.” Tony told him, as guards surged onto the jet, guns raised and helmets down, and crowded around the captured god.
“Harry?” Loki whispered, trying to remember why anyone named Harry would matter to him. And there, in his memories, was his boy with the scar, smiling and laughing and kissing him, but answering to the nickname of Snow. “I love you, Harry,” the Loki of his memories whispered into the dark hair of the boy who slept in his arms in their bed in their flat in Mayfair. “I will never leave you, Harry. Never,” he had promised in another memory, pressing desperate kisses to unresponsive lips just before Thor had thrown him from the bifrost.
“Harry?” Loki asked again, turning around as the guards led him away, so that he could search out Tony Stark’s steely expression for any hint or idea of where he might find his lover.
Stark stared back at him blankly, fists clenched at his sides, before he pulled the helmet on and took off into the sky. He had to blow stuff up, he had to work off all of the anger and frustration and fuck-you-you-bastard-you-broke-my-son’s-heart that was building up inside of him with every breath. Tony couldn’t go back in there, not after chasing after Thor earlier to keep Loki alive so that they could find the Tesseract. Because now Loki was in a cage, defenceless, unarmed, and magic or no magic (because Harry had shown him ways to defend himself from that and Tony had built them in to his newest arc reactor), Tony wouldn’t be able to keep himself from beating the living shit out of a arsehole. That would lose them the Tesseract for sure, because Tony didn’t think he would be able to stop if he started until Loki was dead or someone was dragging him away with the force of a thousand wild horses. He should care about the Tesseract, but he didn’t; Harry was more important, and Harry had been heartbroken and destroyed by the fucking god back there, and Tony needed desperately to do something about it now that he finally could.
But he didn’t. He blew up statues and rocks and chased seagulls into the ocean until Jarvis informed him that SHIELD had started their meeting without him. Tony headed back to the helicarrier, landing shakily on the deck of the moving airbase, and making his way inside, glad that the titanium his suit was made from was heavy enough to keep him from blowing away. He changed quickly, Jarvis removing the suit and storing it safely. And all of the witty comments he had been planning to make, thinking each response within nano-seconds of the words before, spoken through Jarvis’ interference with SHIELD’s intercoms, by those in the meeting without him, and there were many witty comments he was planning to make, each of them flew from his head the second he walked into the room.
Seated at the table, (along with Fury, Coulson, Hill, and all those who would later make up the Avengers), with his wrists handcuffed to the arms of his chair, was Harry Potter.
“What the fuck did you do to my son, Fury?” Tony hissed, striding up to the dark-skinned man with eyes like daggers.
“It’s just a precaution, Stark. To keep him from running off to help a certain criminal we all know. Now, sit the fuck down and shut up.” Fury turned his one eye on Harry, glancing him up and down curiously. The boy had come with him easily enough, following Fury onto his jet and back to base. He had made the odd protest, insisting he didn’t know where Loki was, or why they would be interested in Loki, because Loki hadn’t been on earth in a year as far as Harry knew, and even if he had why would Harry know? Loki had left him. Loki was gone.
“Loki is in Asgard!” Harry said again, rolling his eyes at his father as the elder Stark moved to tug at the handcuffs. “I already told you that. There’s no reason to chain me up.” And yet, Fury reminded himself, Harry had been the one to suggest they restrain him if they were so afraid of him, of what he could do, of what his connection to Loki was.
“Is he, indeed?” Nick asked, tilting his head just enough that Natasha Romanoff would notice it. A giant screen appeared in the centre of the table they were seated around, or rather, the table became a giant screen. It showed a cell, a cage suspended over a steel trap that would open into thin air, and in the cage Loki stood stock still with his arms folded calmly behind his back. Blue eyes stared up at the camera that he knew was watching him, and at the people on the other end of the camera that were thus watching him too. And he smirked, like a shark before its prey, or like Bellatrix as she cackled at him that she had killed Sirius Black, and it was a terrifying sight but it would have hurt more if Harry had known who Sirius Black was at the time. Just as Harry would have been more afraid if he hadn’t known who Loki was.
He was straining in his seat, leaning forward as far as the cuffs would allow until he could see Loki completely, until he was right over the image. He wanted to reach out and touch it, wanted to feel Loki’s hair and skin and make sure the man was real and there and back, but it was an image on a computer screen Harry reminded himself as he slumped back into his chair.
“What do you want from me?” Harry asked softly, sounding as broken as he had the day he turned up without Loki’s ring on his finger and told Tony that “he broke up with me!”
“Help us stop Loki, Harry.” Fury said softly, giving himself a congratulatory mental pat on the back when Harry turned his full attention from the computer to Fury. Harry nodded, listening, and so Nick spoke. “If he gives back the Tesseract, if he stops whatever he is planning, and doesn’t hurt anymore people, SHIELD is willing to go easy on him. There will be no execution, no banishment, perhaps no imprisonment, not if he concedes now, before it is too late.”
“I haven’t seen Loki in a year, Director. What makes you think he’ll listen to anything I have to say?” Harry was genuinely curious. If Loki had not come back to him as he had promised, why would Loki care enough about him now to stop this madness?
Fury didn’t give him any genuine reasons, he had simply touched one hand to his chest, and told him it was just a hunch he had. Nick figured that gods didn’t propose to mortals on a normal basis, and the fact that from what he could find out while Natasha flew Loki from Germany to them, Harry had been wearing that ring since before Iron Man had even been invented. That was enough to motivate his thought process, enough to act upon, and Nick Fury always acted upon his gut instincts. They had never led him astray yet.
“Fine,” Harry conceded quietly. “But if anyone else is planning to try, you’ve all got to go first. Just in case he reacts badly to seeing me. I don’t want to ruin anything for any of you. I want to help stop him,” Harry promised. Inside of his head a voice screamed, and he imagined that if his hands were unbound he would be clawing at his face or his chest, because the voice in his head sounded so desperate, so tormented, and Harry’s heart ached at the look his reflection wore upon his face every day since Loki left-
Just please don’t kill him I love him I love him I love him Loki what are you doing please don’t leave me what did I do wrong why don’t you love me Loki don’t hurt anyone please don’t kill Loki I love him I love him please come back to me
-The voice continued to scream, unheard by anyone but him, but Bruce Banner took one look at Harry’s face and winced. Because he had demons too, and a monster that he couldn’t kill without suffering through a death of his own too, and he knew exactly how Harry was feeling as the boy glanced back down at the image of Loki on the computer screen. Bruce reached out to rest his hand lightly on Harry’s arm; it was shaking so hard the handcuffs were rattling, and on his other side, Tony did the same thing. Tony also happened to be picking the lock.
XXX
Fury had tried, as they first put Loki in his cage. There was an allegory about a boot and an ant that Harry didn’t understand but that seemed to amuse Nick and Loki too for that matter. Bruce and Steve avoided Loki, and Tony took it upon himself once to simply stand outside of the cage, just staring, until a metaphorical light bulb seemed to go off above Loki’s head and his blue eyes widened.
“You are Harry’s father?” He asked, though he needn’t have had. Because he now remembered the name on the top of the deed, reading Anthony Stark, before Harry had signed it over into their names. “That would explain why you punched me,” Loki conceded quietly. “But my absence is a quarrel between my fiancé and myself, and I politely request that you stay out of it, man of iron.”
“Fiancé?” Tony snorted, his arms folded across his chest, just under the glow of the arc reactor. One hand moved down to root through his pocket, and when he pulled it out there was a ring sitting innocuously in the palm of Stark’s hand. “Harry hasn’t worn your ring in nine months, asshole. He isn’t your anything, and if you come near him, Tesseract be damned, I’ll kill you myself.” Tony threw the ring down on the ground, and it rolled to a stop beneath one of the metal railings that wove its way around the edge of the platform that led to the cage.
Loki watched the ring as it moved across the floor, eyes wide until it finally came to a stop. He could not reach for it through the glass, not while he was pretending to be bound and magic-less, but it had not landed on the metal beneath him, and he resolved to recover the ring as soon as he was freed and it was time to flee. With the ring in his possession, he would find Harry, and bring Harry away with him where the boy would be safe while the Chitauri invaded earth.
Natasha spoke to him next, and Harry appeared in a different doorway to the one she left through, having only caught the very last part of the conversation. “Co-operation?” Harry asked with a small chuckle, “that doesn’t sound like the Loki I used to know.”
Confused and disorientated (and secretly impressed) as he was by Black Widow’s impressive display, Loki did not think to check himself. Instead he answered casually, without thought, and with unexpected honestly. “It was tricked out of me, I’m afraid. A relatively decent performance on her part, though I appeared to have been woefully lacking in some respects. Nonetheless, I’ll have the chance to make up for it now, will I not, agent-?” Loki trailed off, expecting the SHIELD agent to fill in the blank with his own name.
Harry chuckled again.
When the human didn’t speak, Loki turned from the direction Natasha had disappeared in. His eyes widened as they landed on Harry, then softened, and one pale hand pressed desperately against the glass that separated them. Harry’s heart almost stopped beating as he noticed that Loki still wore his ring, gold and tight around his wedding finger with a cracked onyx stone on top engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.
“Snow?” Loki whispered, before the other hand came up to press against glass, as if Loki could simply push it down and bare the way to Harry.
“You’re wearing my ring?” Harry asked, ignoring Loki’s use of his old nickname. No one had called him that in a year, not since Loki had promised Snow he’d come back to him and didn’t, and Tony had used that name and Harry had flinched so hard he fell over and knocked himself unconscious, and Tony had sued the reporter who innocently asked why Snow wasn’t wearing the unorthodox engagement ring anymore and Harry had been inconsolable and blind drunk for four days afterwards.
“You used to wear mine. I remember that much.”
Harry glanced down at the bare finger on his left hand, before offering Loki a sad, soft smile. “And you left me,” he said, though he thought quickly about Loki’s second comment and wondered what it meant. He couldn’t think of a reason, and so to be spiteful, he simply repeated it. “I remember that much.”
“I was supposed to come back?” Loki asked, though he remembered the answer. He had made a promise he could not remember and he had dreamt of Harry’s hate and disappointment. But he had fallen for months and that was hardly his fault, so surely, once Harry was away from these humans and from Thor Harry would forgive him and love him once more. “I took too long, did I not? Did you grow tired of waiting for me?” Loki waited for the answer, his breath held and his forehead pressing to the glass above his hands.
“It was a long time ago, Loki. Let’s talk about now instead, yeah?”
It was the longest Loki had gone without insulting anyone, and it was the most honest he had been since Thor could actually remember, and each of the Avengers should have been watching Harry talk to Loki but none of them were. Because Harry wasn’t supposed to speak with Loki until tomorrow morning, and today they were too busy fighting in Doctor Banner’s laboratory while the sceptre tried to influence their minds.
“Why are you doing this?” Harry asked, but he never got an answer. An explosion rocked the ship, and Harry stumbled forward with a cry, catching himself on the metal railing in front of him. “What the hell?” He wondered out loud, unnerved by the smirk that was growing across Loki’s face.
“Forgive me,” the man whispered, folding his arms serenely behind his back again. “You will understand in time, my love.”
Behind Harry, one of the soldiers the Tesseract had already infected snuck silently into the room. Loki watched him calmly, making no move to warn Harry, or to stop the soldier, who raised his gun and hit Harry across the back of the head with the butt of it. Harry slumped forward, but the soldier caught him and carried him carefully to the corner of the room and tucked him into an alcove out of sight. The man released Loki then, and the god stepped out of the cage, leaving an illusion behind, just in time for Thor to charge into the room, at Loki, and get himself locked in the cage instead.
Harry’s eyes fluttered open just as someone croaked something about lacking conviction and the sound of a small explosion filled the room. He turned his face away, feeling nauseas and dizzy, and didn’t look back again until whatever had blown up no longer seemed as bright or as hot. Loki was gone, actually the whole cage was gone and Harry hoped that Loki hadn’t been in it when it fell. Phil Coulson was slumped against a wall, wheezing and bleeding, and Harry crawled towards him, his head spinning too much for him to consider walking just yet.
“Hey kid,” Coulson choked down, spitting out a mouthful of blood a few seconds later. “Get out of here kid, before he comes back.” Harry turned his head in the direction that the agent was staring into.
Through a doorway, surrounded by broken bits of wall and ammunition, Loki slowly pushed himself to his feet. When Loki made his way back into the room, snarling darkly and thinking of all of the wonderful ways he could torture that human in the miniscule time he had left to live, Agent Coulson and Harry were both gone. Loki screamed in rage, memories of losing Harry the first time warping inside of his mind, the Tesseract’s power twisting them and him, blaming Thor because that was who Loki had always blamed for his suffering as a child, and this time blaming SHIELD, because they must have taken Harry from him. Who else could have? He had just been about to pick Harry up, to carry him to the stolen quinjet his mind-enslaved soldiers were planning to lead him to, when that agent had shown up with his gun, interrupted his defeat of Thor, and blasted him through a fucking doorway. SHIELD had distracted him, and while he was downed, SHIELD had stolen Harry from him.
It was the man of iron’s fault, Loki told himself squeezing the ring he had given Harry, which Stark had thrown at him, which he had retrieved just now, as the jet took him away. It was Tony’s fault because the man had sworn Loki off of his son, and SHIELD must have been doing his bidding.
“To Stark Tower,” Loki told the pilot angrily, because if Stark could take what was his, he would take what was Stark’s.
When Stark figured out what was happening and where Loki had gone, the newly assembled Avengers followed him. Harry remained on the helicarrier, because he wasn’t an Avenger and no one wanted to risk Loki kidnapping him, or (though no one dared to say it out loud) Harry willingly siding with Loki against them. Phil Coulson recovered slowly but surely under Harry’s magical healing care, and Nick Fury sheepishly presented him with his newly-blood-stained trading cards when Phil opened his eyes. To say the man was pissed was an understatement, but the cards had done their job, as had Phil’s ‘death’, and Fury was happy enough at the moment to promise his agent a brand new set, he’d even collect them himself this time to save Phil the bother.
Harry sat in Banner’s abandoned laboratory. The Stark-computer was open in front of him, still tracking Gamma radiation across the world. It was the one of two pieces of technological equipment still working on board the helicarrier including the surveillance systems, and Harry used the privacy to silently will the machine to hurry up and tell him where Loki was. No one else had, no one else knew, except his father who had gone without him for his own protection apparently. But it was as Tony explained through Jarvis, over the Stark-phone Harry always carried, that Loki was out of his mind and didn’t seem anything like the person Harry used to crow about or loved, that Harry understood what had happened. It was like Ron, in the Forest of Dean, pale and gaunt with dark circles around each eye and the Locket of Slytherin hanging like a noose around his neck. It wasn’t the same thing, but it had the same effect. Just like the Locket had controlled Ron’s emotions and influenced his actions and words, the Tesseract had done to same to Agent Barton and Doctor Selvig. And the little blue stone embedded just below the point of Loki’s sceptre had been doing the same to him.
Communications came back online just as Loki threw Tony Stark threw a window, and Iron Man returned to blast Loki into a wall. Harry figured out where they were as Thor appeared to fight his brother, listening in confusion as Loki snarled out accusations and insults that were mostly untrue. As Thor begged Loki to stop, to give up this harmful quest and to come home with him, Loki remembers suddenly, vividly, the Others’ threat to him the one time Loki questioned the plan.
“And if I change my mind?” Loki had asked back then, his arms folded casually across his chest, the sceptre tucked against his body. “If I feel that I would find my boy faster on my own, extract my own brand of vengeance sweeter on my own, what then?”
“You think we do not know where your boy is hidden, Asgardian?” The Other had hissed in angry almost-silence, “you think He does not know, He who put the sceptre in your hand, who gave you this power, this knowledge? You think we could not find the boy before you could even hope to remember his name, Asgardian? What do you think you could do to Him, to stop Him, should He choose to tear your human apart limb by pathetically fragile limb until he is nothing but a bloody mass of flesh, all that remains of your boy, your human, but a stain upon the floor by His feet?” There was nothing cruel about the expression on the Others’ face, but Loki shuddered as their eyes met anyway. He thought of his boy with the scar, and he remembered a man in a hooded robe pointing a stick at the boy and making him scream, and of green light that should have killed him except Loki was there to protect him over and over, until the close and it was time to die. This time there would be no protection, this time Loki would not come to Harry’s aid, because the Other was right and there would be nothing Loki could do to stop Him. Except uphold his end of the bargain. To save Harry’s life, (and his greatest fear was losing him, to death or his own foolishness or to another), Midgard had to bow before him. To save Harry, Loki would give the Tesseract to Thanos and doom the universe to his omnicidal rule. Loki would have Midgard and Loki would have Harry and all other sentiment beings could burn, Asgardians included.
So Loki stabbed Thor in the side, throwing himself off of the balcony of Stark Tower and onto the flying chariot that awaited him. The Chitauri flew around him, destroying and killing, and Loki flew among them, directing them, instructing them to aim for the so-called Avengers because without them the rest of humanity would fall to their knees and beg for mercy. Without the Avengers, without Tony Stark and Thor, there was no one to keep Harry from his side.
When Clint Barton shot an arrow at his face, Loki caught it in mid-air. But it exploded, and threw him through the air, off of his chariot and in through the window of Stark Tower again. He slid across the lounge, landing beside the bar Tony had earlier offered him a drink from. There were no Avengers there now, but Harry Potter glanced down at him instead, with the sceptre held between both hands. Loki smiled up at him, holding one hand out for the sceptre and the other hand out for Harry’s own, but Harry handed neither over.
“I loved you,” Harry whispered.
“Past tense?” Loki asked, feeling suddenly small and afraid as he waited for the answer. His eyes flashed green for half a second as Harry tugged with one hand at the little blue gem just below the point of the sceptre’s blade.
Harry offered him a soft smile, the kind that Harry had always offered him when Loki was unsure of himself, questioning himself or Harry’s love for him.
“I love you,” Harry corrected his earlier statement.
Loki rose warily to his knees, hands still reaching for Harry. The gem broke away from the sceptre, and the blue light drained out of it until all that was left was a small clear crystal in the palm of Harry’s hands. As the blue faded from the gem, the blue drained from Loki’s eyes until Harry was staring into ones as green as his own, until those eyes fluttered shut and Loki slumped unconscious to the floor at Harry’s feet.
Outside, Iron Man flew a nuclear missile into space with no intention of coming back alive, and Thor and Captain America fought bravely and Hawkeye ran out of arrows. Black Widow searched for Loki’s sceptre, needing it to close the portal, and having overheard her as she muttered to herself outside on the balcony, Harry handed it over.
“I’ll need to put the gem back in though,” he told her, before going outside, away from Loki’s prone form to do so. The gem flashed blue again, powered by the presence of the sceptre, or vice versa, but neither worked without the other regardless. Natasha used the sceptre to close the portal, just as Iron Man fell back through to earth, and the Hulk swung across buildings to catch the unconscious man and break his fall. Harry watched, with his wand out, ready to catch his father if he had to, even from such a distance, until Tony was safely on the ground.
“Thank you,” he whispered to the Hulk, though he doubted the green creature could hear anything over the sound of its own proud roars. Harry turned back then, after he was sure his father was safe, and he glanced sadly down at Loki. “What am I going to do with you?” He asked softly, crouching down against the bottom of the small set of stairs that led up to the bar. He pulled Loki until the man was cradled against him, his head in Harry’s lap, body across his legs, with Harry’s arms around him.
When Loki woke, he was warm and safe and Harry was carding patient fingers through his hair the way he used to when Loki fell asleep on their sofa or in their clearing on a bed of leaves. Each of the Avengers stood over him, in a semi-circle of frowns and glares and hands on hips, and though he should be repentant and worried, Loki was relieved. If the Avengers had won, the Chitauri had been defeated, and hopefully with them Thanos. Harry was safe, and surely it was not Loki’s fault that the Others’ army had been too weak for the task? Loki had upheld his part of the deal: he had brought the Chitauri to earth and he had handed them the Tesseract for the taking, it was not his fault that none of the Chitauri had thought to take it.
His head felt clearer than it had in months, and though the strange messed up memories were still there, they were fewer than before, and Loki could remember how it was he had truly fallen. He remembered why he had lived in Midgard, not because he was king there, but because Harry was there. He had been the usurped king of Asgard, and so it should have been Asgard the Chitauri had invaded to reclaim Loki’s throne. But the Tesseract had not been on Asgard, and so Thanos had not sent Loki there, but to Midgard, to the Tesseract and to Harry and to failure. But with his failure came the freedom of his mind, and Loki glanced up at Harry in thanks, his head still pillowed in the boy’s lap with long fingers running patiently through his hair.
Tony cleared his throat, not looking at all pleased to see Loki anywhere near his son.
The Asgardian turned his head slowly, his usual half-smirk present as soon as he was turned from Harry. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said slowly but surely, smirk growing wider as he gazed at each of their narrowed eyes in turn, “I’ll have that drink now.”
It was Harry who got Loki a drink, and Tony who handcuffed him, and the Hulk who dragged Loki roughly to another jet. But Loki allowed it without complaint, because Harry walked along beside him, unafraid of the Hulk, with his left hand lightly brushing Loki’s side with every other step they took. Later, when Loki was chained a little tighter in a different cage, pretending to be unable to escape once more because this time Director Fury threatened to gas him to unconsciousness if he took so much as a step towards the glass, Harry came to him again.
The Avengers had spoken first, and Thor had been firmly against Midgardian punishment because Clint kept throwing the word ‘execution’ around like it was going out of style. Natasha and Clint had agreed with one another, because they weren’t dumb enough to believe that Loki was staying on board this time for any reason other than the fact that Harry was on board, and though the others agreed with that fact, the assassins rightly pointed out that they didn’t have anywhere to imprison Loki that would hold him. Tony had offered to build them a prison, somewhere far away from Harry, like the moon maybe, which had startled a laugh out of Fury against his will.
“Will you be imprisoning or executing agent Barton as well, Director Fury?” Harry asked politely, once the man had schooled his expression back into his default ‘fuck you, that’s why’ mode. Fury’s eyebrows furrowed, expression startled once more into changing before it slipped back firmly into place.
“Of course not. Agent Barton wasn’t in control of his own actions.”
“Neither was Loki,” Harry told them firmly. Thor looked hopeful, pleading silently with Harry to continue defending the brother who had broken the boy’s heart. Bruce looked intrigued, especially when Harry compared the effects of the sceptre on Loki’s mind to Bruce grabbing hold of the sceptre in the lab as he began to lose their temper when they fought earlier. Steve thought it was only fair, if they excused one set of actions, to excuse another, because you didn’t punish people with mental illnesses. Natasha looked put out, and Clint horrified, but arguing to punish Loki after Fury had agreed with Harry’s discovery meant arguing to punish himself, so he bit his tongue to keep himself quiet.
Tony looked resigned, and he nodded his head slowly when Fury turned to look at him. “It doesn’t change the fact that he hurt you, kiddo,” Tony whispered, reaching out to touch one hand to Harry’s cheek. He added then, almost as an afterthought, though Harry knew the guilt of it weighed heavily on his father’s mind, “and doesn’t change the fact that he killed Phil.”
Harry had only smiled at him, turned to Fury to mutter, “You should tell them soon”. Then he made his way unhindered to Loki’s new cell.
“I was lost,” Loki whispered, moving to press his hands hesitantly against the glass. He waited, to see if Director Fury made good on his threat, but when nothing happened, Loki leant his head against the glass too, smiling softly as Harry moved to press his hands against his own, pretending the glass did not separate them. “You were lost as well, and I could not remember your name, but I remembered you, and I missed you, but you were lost to me. They promised to give you back to me, Harry, after I had lost you.” He paused, closing his eyes tightly, refusing to cry when he knew that others were watching and listening. “Did I lose you, Harry?”
Harry was gone in the blink of an eye. With a crack of apparition, Harry was inside of the cage, and the chains that wove around each of Loki’s hands and around his neck and waist and feet were gone. “You could never lose me, Loki.”
Loki turned slowly, eyeing Harry for a second until his brain caught up with his eyes and his ears, and then he had the boy pinned against the glass behind them, pressed tight against his own body as their mouths moved as one and hands slid under shirts and down the back of trousers. “I love you,” Loki whispered into Harry’s mouth, moving his hand into his own pocket and pulling out the ring he had once given Harry. He pushed the ring back onto Harry’s fourth finger on his left hand where it belonged without asking for permission.
Harry glanced down at it, a crooked smile on his lips. “Gifts are met with like gifts on Asgard, no?” Harry asked coyly, fluttering his eyelashes.
“They are,” Loki agreed, his mouth moving to claim Harry’s own again. “What will you gift me with?” Fingers stroked against a pale cheek, thumb pressing against red lips, and Loki’s mouth moved to follow the path his hand had traced first.
“Unfortunately,” Harry said, pushing Loki back just far enough to give him room to pull his t-shirt over his head. He threw it to the floor, “I only have myself to offer.”
“I accept,” Loki murmured, his hands moving to tug at Harry’s belt, to reach inside and reclaim what was once his. “I accept gladly.”
“Good,” Harry snapped, unbuckling the metal straps across Loki’s shoulders. “I wasn’t giving you a choice!”
In the control room, the moment the chains were gone from Loki’s person, Fury’s hand was hovering over the big red button that would release the knock out gas into the cage. It was more than enough to tranquilise the Hulk, and they’d tested it, so they knew: it was how they had got Bruce back on the helicarrier after the battle. It would be more than enough to knock out Loki Odinson. But Tony’s hand on his wrist stopped Nick from pushing the button. Tony kept Fury’s hand still, just out of reach of its target, and Fury let him because he was interested in seeing whatever Tony was so interested in watching.
On the screen, Loki had Harry pinned against a glass wall, and after they kissed, Loki pushed that familiar ring back into its place and Harry took his shirt off. Tony managed to watch, keeping an eye on Harry in case this was some sort of trick and Loki was using his kid to make a quick escape, until they were completely naked. But when one of Loki’s hands disappeared completely from view and Harry’s head fell back and his mouth dropped open with a moan, hips arching up beneath the god, Tony turned his face away and gritted his teeth.
“Jarvis,” he ordered, “shut it off.” All around them, computer screens went black, and the sounds of Harry’s moaning cut off abruptly over the speakers.
Awkward silence spread out over the room, like fog across the ground in the mornings, until the sun rose to dissipate it. Going with that metaphor, Phil Coulson happened to be the sun that morning. He strode into the room, hands in his pockets and a wry grin on his face as everyone but Nick Fury turned to look at him with surprise and shock on their faces. “What, guys?” He asked, pretending he didn’t know why they were staring at him. “Do I have something on my face?”
As each of them came towards Phil, pulled him into a hug, or slapped him on the back, or welcomed him home, Harry and Loki made love for the first time in a year. When they were together, in one another’s’ arms, their bodies joined, breath and sweat mingling, and seed sticking to their skin, it was as if the rest of the world had fallen away. There was no one else but them remaining, just them and this forever, and Loki no longer feared and Harry no longer second-guessed himself. There were no insecurities or worries. There was nothing to regret or resent. Lost in the love they felt for one another, they were left with nothing to be ashamed of.
XXX
April 12th 2012.
While Harry had successfully spared Loki from Midgardian punishments, the same couldn’t be said for what awaited him upon his return to Asgard. Thor, naive but kind hearted Thor, was determined to bring his brother home, promising Harry that Loki would return soon this time, and promising Loki that he needn’t fear punishment from the All Father, for Harry had been right and those with mental illness should not be persecuted. Odin had agreed, punishing Loki who had been under the influence of the Tesseract (which was now stored safely in the weapons vault) would be unnecessary and cruel. But, Odin had continued, Loki still had to answer for his crimes against Asgard.
He allowed Jötuns to invade during Thor’s coronation. He had manipulated Thor into venturing to Jötunheimr and nearly got five Asgardians and himself killed. He had caused a war with the Frost Giants and then destroyed the bifrost in an attempt to implode a planet. They were weighty crimes, carrying heavy punishments, but Loki was his son, and Odin had already wronged him so badly, had failed him in so many ways and he understood now that Loki had only been trying to impress him and Loki understood now that he had gone about it the wrong way. There was nothing like a foreign presence within your mind, forcing you to do things against your will, to help you understand the difference between right and wrong actions, when before you might have struggled alone to figure it out.
Because Loki had admitted to his mistakes, and had asked, without being prodded, for forgiveness, and then shockingly for his mother’s blessing to marry a mortal that he had loved for almost eight years, Odin punished him less harshly than he had first planned to. But, just like with Thor’s banishment, Odin did nothing without reason.
XXX
April 18th 2012.
Thor had helped him find somewhere to live, and Thor had sat before him scowling and pretending to be Tony Stark while Loki practised his speech on him. Silvertongue, though he was, Loki had no doubt that he would be nervous before the father of the man he loved, the same father Loki had defenestrated. He had no desire to mess things up more than he already had, and he certainly had no desire to test whom Harry might chose if he were forced to pick between them, because given the recent hurts that he had been responsible for Loki had no doubt that he would not come out favourably.
When he was ready, after he had gotten accustomed to being banished to earth (though he still retained his magic, thankfully), Loki found himself standing at the door of a rather large, rented house in New York. Thor had informed him, just before the All Father cast him out, that this was Tony Stark’s current, new address since Loki had partially destroyed his last.
He knocked twice on the door, and Bruce Banner opened it wide some moments later. The greeting that had been on the man’s lips stuck there at the sight of Loki in a suit and green stripped scarf, dark wooden cane raised to knock on the door a second time. “Good afternoon, Doctor. I was wondering if Harry might be home.”
“Loki?” Bruce’s voice trailed off midway into a squeak, and he took a step backwards into the house. “I thought you were in Asgard?”
“I am living out the terms of my sentence upon the planet I tried to conquer. The All Father hopes it might teach me some empathy… or something.” It was a lie, of course. Odin had sent Loki there because he had to be seen to be punishing his wayward son, and earth was where Harry was. After the sentence was over, which lasted for the time it took for Loki to convince Tony Stark to let him marry his son, Loki would be free to come and go as he pleased, the only stipulation being the next time he came home he had to bring Harry with him to meet his family.
Harry appeared then in the doorway, and Bruce happily disappeared back inside of the house and away from Loki’s unnerving stare. “Loki? What are you doing here?” Harry seemed confused. Despite Thor promising to return Loki to him from Asgard soon, Harry had half expected him to never keep that promise, and half expected that even if he had that ‘soon’ meant something different to near-immortals.
“Well, I figured that since I have asked you to marry me officially once and twice now unofficially,” he said while glancing down to check that Harry still wore the ring he had given him four years ago. He did. “It was about time I asked your father for his blessing.”
Harry snorted in amusement, before realising that Loki was serious. “You’re going to ask my dad, who you threw out of a window, which I’m annoyed with you about by the way mind control or otherwise, for his permission to let me marry you, after you threw him out of a window and wrecked his house?” Harry laughed softly, leaning forward to press a soft kiss against Loki’s pursed lips. “Fat chance of that happening, but I’m more than happy to elope with you if you want.”
“I will do this correctly, Snow, it is the least I can do to make up for my mistakes.” Tony appeared behind Harry, glaring at Loki’s head until the god looked up and met brown eyes dead on. “Mr Stark,” Loki purred, pulling away from Harry to hold his hand out to Tony to shake, “it is a pleasure to meet you again. Perhaps we could put my past mistakes behind us, as I humbly ask your forgiveness for my words and actions, regardless of the fact that I was being controlled as much as Agent Barton and Doctor Selvig.”
“And whose fault was that?” Tony asked with a raised eyebrow, purposely ignoring the hand Loki had held out to him. “I don’t like being handed stuff,” he said, glancing pointedly at the hand as Loki continued to keep it suspended between them.
“Fortunately, I do,” Pepper chimed in softly, pushing her way passed Tony so that she could reach out and shake Loki’s hand firmly. “Virginia Potts, though everyone calls me Pepper. It’s nice to meet you, Mr Odinson.”
“Loki will do, Lady Pepper.” Loki raised her hand, kissing the back of it lightly, and suppressing a smirk as she smiled warmly back at him. She would be easy enough to convince, Loki thought to himself, before glancing warily in Stark’s direction.
Tony had his arms folded across his chest, under the arc reactor that glowed through his shirt, and his face looked decidedly unimpressed. At his side, Harry had one hand over his mouth to hide his laughter, but he moved the hand aside long enough to mouth, “Good luck”, at Loki before nodding his head in Tony’s direction.
“Come in, come in,” Pepper said still smiling as she led Loki into the house by his arm linked through hers. Tony stepped out of the way, pressing up close against the wall, even though he had been nowhere near them to begin with, but Loki understood it for the insult it was. He pursed his lips again, frowning as the man of iron slammed the front door rather roughly behind him and Harry laughed softly as they made their way into the living room. It would be more difficult than he had first assumed, Loki conceded. Yes, his ability to be persuasive and to talk his way into and out of any situation was the stuff of legends, it had earned him several nicknames in fact, but Anthony Stark, it appeared, was a man to hold a grudge. Loki wondered silently, if Tony was angrier about being thrown from a window and having his house broken or about the year where his son’s heart had been broken instead? If it were the second, Loki clearly could understand the cold reception, because he hadn’t forgiven himself still for leaving Harry behind through no fault of his own. He doubted Stark wanted to listen to his explanations or his excuses, but Loki offered to express them regardless. Stark continued to stare back at him with the same I-will-destroy-you glare that seemed to cross his face anytime Loki and Harry were brought up in the same conversation or were in the same room together.
It would be much more difficult than he had first presumed, Loki corrected his earlier correction, glancing resignedly at Tony Stark once more. But then his eyes searched the room, landing on Harry who was leaning against the bar that was a must have in every Stark household, and his eyes were bright and his mouth was curving up, and he whispered, “I love you,” just loud enough for them all to hear, and Loki consoled himself that no matter how hard it would be to win Stark’s approval, nor how long it took, and thus how long his freedom was denied to him for, the end result would be more than worth it.
“I love you too,” Loki whispered back. Though, he did take great, secret, satisfaction in the ugly scowl that crossed Tony’s face.
“Fuck this,” Stark growled, jumping out of his seat and making his way hurriedly to the bar, ignoring Pepper and Harry’s laughs, “I need a drink.” He turned to Harry, “you want a drink? Pepper, you want a drink?” They both shook their heads as Tony grabbed an unopened bottle of scotch.
“You never did give me that drink I was offered, Mr Stark. If I recall correctly, I received one from Harry, but not you.” Loki folded his hands demurely in his lap, keeping his expression innocent as Tony turned slowly, one eye twitching, to stare straight at him again. “May I perhaps have a drink, please?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” Tony grunted at him, before drinking straight from the bottle. Five minute later, Tony moved to pour himself an actual drink from a second bottle he pulled out from behind the bar. When he sat down, he had two glasses with him, and he slid one silently across the table towards Loki. Loki picked it up unhesitantly, and sipped from it, nodding his thanks even as Stark took a rather large mouthful from his own drink, grimacing at the sight of Harry moving to sit beside Loki, pressed closely against the god’s side.
“Well, Loki, huh?” He asked Harry after Pepper had brought him his third drink.
“Yeah,” Harry whispered, glancing besottedly up at the dark haired man, “Loki.”
Harry sounded so happy, so different from the Harry he had known this past year that Tony wondered if the year had really happened at all or if it had all been a figment of his imagination. But no, they were living in a rented house, because Loki had tried to take over Asgard, fallen into insanity apparently, been mind controlled, tried to take over earth so that he could find Harry and marry him (and what a backwards, fucked up fairy tale this was starting to sound like within Tony’s slightly buzzed mind) and save him from the evil Prince Thor, and then had smashed up Tony’s house along with a lot more of New York, resulting in them living in this rented house. And through it all, Harry had been lonely, heartbroken and insecure, but now, with Loki pressed against his side, smiling softly down at Harry, who raised his chin occasionally to beg for chaste kisses Harry didn’t look any of those things. He looked happy. It was because Harry looked so happy that Tony forced down the anger and resentment, (and damn, but he was a spiteful bastard), and ignored the voice in his head that whispered this person was planning to take his son away from him, and held out his hand instead.
“Anthony Stark, but if you call me Anthony I’ll have Hulk use you to make a mosaic out of the floor, got it? It’s Tony, or Stark, or, well, anything but Anthony.” Tony finished the rest of his drink, reaching for the bottle that Pepper had kept cradled on her lap beside him. “Want another?”
“Sure,” Loki answered, holding his glass out. “Thank you, Tony. Then I insist you call me Loki in return, deal?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever, bottoms up.” They sipped from their drinks, and made awkward small talk, and Tony decided Loki wasn’t too bad when he wasn’t breaking up with people or breaking up cities, and he rolled his eyes when he caught Harry’s mouthed, ‘thank you, dad’, and responded with, “so, exiled god that you are, you got somewhere to stay? Cause there’s plenty of room here.” He paused, thinking about it, and then added, “but you’re staying in your own room, got it?”
“Yes, Tony, I ‘got it’. I thank you for the offer, and I will gladly accept it.”
It turned out that Thor had wasted his time finding Loki somewhere to live on Midgard, because Loki continued to spend every night at Tony Stark’s temporary home and every day with Tony Stark’s son. They never did sleep in separate rooms, but Tony knew enough now about holding on to what you’ve got with both hands to hold his tongue and just let Harry be happy. He did throw in the odd comment now and then, mostly to watch Harry blush, or see Bruce choke on his cereal, though Loki only ever smirked deviously at him, and threw back his own comment that had Pepper flushing a rather fetching shade of pink.
When the Avengers Tower was rebuilt and renamed, each Avenger got their own floor, if they wanted it. Tony got the top two floors to himself; the first, topmost floor was his workshop and no one was allowed in there, ever, but he shared the second with Pepper. The floor below Tony’s was Harry’s, and he shared it with Loki.
The End
1 - Kept wanting to say “the boy with the bread”!
2 - Burdened with glorious Porpoise, anyone? See this: http :// 25(dot)media(dot)tumblr(dot)com/tumblr_m46ze5QHJG1qinkz0o1_500(dot)jpg
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Thank you all for reading. Please consider leaving a review, because LoKitty will purr for you if you do! And, now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to destroy Jötunheimr…! (Walks away, all BAMF, with my sceptre, activates the full power of the bifrost… freaks everyone out, turns the bifrost off again. Laughs. Just kidding, Frost Giants, LOL jokes. Loki’d) XD