Loki Month #6 - Lionheart 1/1 - Loki/Tony - R
Here’s my contribution for Prompt 6 (21st-24th February 2014): Loki’s villainy.
A long time ago, I was having all of these Merlin feels that suddenly became Ragnarok feels and I couldn’t help myself. So I combined the idea with this prompt (above).
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“Lionheart”
Disclaimer: The Avengers, Tony, Loki, etc belong to Marvel, Stan Lee, et co. I make no money from this and own nothing, don’t sue.
Summary: Written for Loki Month 2014: Prompt 6. They spent twenty years avoiding the End, years spent together keeping the madness and the darkness at bay. But without the other his sanity like walls came crumbling down, his resistance like driftwood washed away, and with their end the End came. With it the armies of Helheimr rose, Fenris and Jörmungandr did as Fate bid them do, and in the midst of it all, Tony Stark waited with Loki’s army to fight at the side of his King.
Warnings: Slash. Loki/Tony. Post-Avengers. Established relationship. Reformed Loki, at the start at least. Language. AU. Character Death. Resurrection. Ragnarök. FrostIron. End of the world feels. Loki feels, because I love him really but I’m cruel to be kind to him (jk I’m cruel because of reasons)… Loki Month. Thor 2 compliant.
Rating: NC-17.
A/N: Ok, we all know I have issues, and Loki feels, so there is nothing else to say. Except, yeah, suddenly Ragnarök feels. I didn’t want to write 2 Ragnarok fics, so I’ve used the idea I already had for Loki Month’s 6th Prompt.
XXX
“As the world comes to an end I’ll be here to hold your hand ‘cause you’re my king and I’m your lionheart.” - Of Monsters and Men: “King and Lionheart”.
Words: 5,251
Chapter 1
Faking his death had led Loki further from the throne of Asgard, rather than closer to it. He stayed, seated upon Hlidskjalf until the Allfather woke from his Odinsleep. Though it was the longest one Loki could remember Odin ever entering, he woke eventually, and he healed well, so Loki left him before memory could catch up with his body. By the time Odin remembered what had happened - what Loki had done - his one eye turned cold with regret, instead of the wide-eyed relief that lit Odin’s face when he first gazed upon his son who should be dead, Loki was long gone from Asgard.
There was no Thor there to hide behind, no Frigga to run to for comfort. It was not his home, so he left it behind him, and Loki travelled. He walked through dreams and worlds and along pathways that twisted and turned their way through the Void, seeped in between the cracks that separated worlds and curled their way around the hearts of important individuals, those who were destined to make a difference. Loki visited each stranger in turn, curious but careful, like a cat who was offered a petting but unsure of the hand that came towards it. Occasionally, he bit, hissed and scratched and ran away, but there were some people he stayed with, some he was more curious about than others.
And then there was Tony Stark.
The Void led him to Stark one rainy afternoon, the pathway leading him silently towards Midgard and dropping him at the edge of the balcony that overlooked the city of New York. Here, he had once built a machine, had opened a portal that invited evil into this world. Here, he had once been defeated, put down like a mad dog and beaten. And it was here that he saw Tony Stark for the first time in four years. The mortal stood with one knee pressed between the railing around the balcony and a glass of whiskey in one hand while the other hung limply over the edge of the building. His head was bowed, but Loki could make out the barest hint of a smile from the corner of his eyes.
Stark turned to look straight at Loki and the smile widened until it stretched his mouth enough to show teeth. “Was wondering when you were planning to drop in,” the mortal said, sound casual and unaffected by Loki’s unexpected presence. “Jarvis has noticed you popping around all over the world for the last two years. Honestly, I was starting to feel a little offended that I hadn’t warranted a visit. Suppose,” he added, taking a pause to drain the alcohol from his glass in one quick gulp, “you can make it up to me now.”
He was wearing no suit, no special bracelets to call the suit to him, but he walked towards Loki bravely, unashamed that his shirt was hanging open and he was wearing his underwear instead of trousers while greeting his enemy. The glowing orb in his chest had been replaced by something that was red and orange and lit up the veins that snaked their way through Tony’s chest beneath the skin. It was like a badly drawn painting, all lines of colour that didn’t match up or make sense and Loki was enthralled at the sight of it.
There was no denying the God was a little mad. Chaos had always been a part of his nature, viciousness and hate had flourished later, but he had always been mischievous and uncontrollable: like fire. Tony burned now, from the inside out, with a fire that Loki couldn’t hope to match, couldn’t contain, but he wanted to reach out and touch it nonetheless, to feel the heat of it to see if he would melt or if it would be the mortal that would bow out first. So he reached forward, driven by the whispers inside of his mind, left behind all those years ago from his first fall through the Void (the words that made him want to hurt others, made him hurt himself, made him hate and fear and tremble in the dark when he was alone at night). Pale fingers closed around a thin wrist and Tony only grinned at him, unafraid. Loki’s eyes had gone wide, half-terrified and half-awed, as the voices in his head were suddenly, blessedly silent.
“How did you?” Loki began to ask, before silencing himself by biting his tongue. He hissed from the pain of it, but it bought him enough control over himself to wrench his hand away when Tony’s other hand was suddenly around his own wrist. The mortal’s grip was unnaturally tight, but Loki freed himself with a vicious tug. He did not wait for an answer; he did not wait for anything, not even for the voices to start whispering again. Loki fled, as Loki always did when he knew he couldn’t win a fight or cheat his way out of a bad situation.
It wasn’t until he was on Svartalfheimr, worlds away from the mortal, that Loki could hear the voices again. They had started out as a humming once Tony’s skin was no longer within Loki’s grasp, louder they had grown once the fire that burned within the human had stopped warming Loki’s face, had stopped calling to Loki’s own fire, his magic, his soul. Now they screamed, wild and dangerous, and called to Loki to appease them, to burn and burn and burn until nothing was left upon Svartalfheimr but them two. He had been ignoring the voice for so long that it was almost second nature by now, like how his heart beat without having to consciously think about it, Loki ignored the voice. But as the days passed, the voice grew more and more persuasive, as if having met Tony again had torn down barriers Loki hadn’t known existed within his mind.
It was after three months of desperately clinging to his self-control that Loki finally snapped. He went in search of the mortal again, and found him at a restaurant with a woman that Loki didn’t recognize. The voices went silent, and Loki was finally able to breathe, the weight that had sat upon his chest for three months having finally lifted once the heat from Tony’s body could be felt from across the room. He didn’t look any older than he had during the failed invasion, in fact he looked a little younger, his hair darker and his face less wrinkled around the eyes, but he was the same old playboy that he had been before Pepper, and as he reached across the table to kiss the woman the table between them caught fire.
Loki’s mind was awash with horrible feelings, screaming, and darkness. He couldn’t see; his eyes felt like they were seared shut by the sight of Tony’s lips against someone else’s (not that Loki wanted to kiss him either, but it was the principle. Stark was his, Stark calmed his insanity, steadied his mind, tempered him. Stark was his). The Void screamed within him, white noise and desperation, and it told him to destroy. To let loose his magic and tear this world to bits and pieces, to rip that woman apart limb from limb until Asgard had no choice but to come down to Midgard and end him. That was his goal, to call Asgard forth, and though Loki knew it he tried to ignore the reason for it, so he left the woman alone and set the table on fire instead. He laughed, head thrown back as he took pleasure in the way Tony scrambled backwards, falling out of his seat, eyes wide and hands glowing orange as they burnt craters into the floor where they touched.
“Have you missed me, human?” Loki stalked towards them, ignoring the woman, ignoring the voice in his head that demanded she beg for her life, to apologise for her slight against him. He grabbed Tony by the throat, and the maelstrom within his mind disappeared at the first touch, calming like the eye of the hurricane just waiting until it was time to start up again. But for now, all was calm and still and sane, and Loki squeezed Tony’s throat as he pulled the mortal off of the ground and into his arms. They disappeared from the restaurant together, Loki’s free arm around Tony’s waist and their foreheads pressed together; something needy in the way Loki slumped against him, in the way Tony’s hands carefully took hold of Loki’s shoulders as magic stole him away.
Maybe Stark was mad too, because he never tried to escape. He simply leaned further into Loki's embrace, eyes closed and breathing shallow as they appeared somewhere that was not on Earth. The air was heavier, and it made Tony's eyes flutter, made his head hurt to hold it up; so he rested it on Loki's shoulder, just for a moment he told himself, unconcerned because after Extremis there was nothing Loki could do to seriously hurt him.
He slept.
The air on Muspelheimr was unsuitable for humans, but Loki kept Tony there anyway, because otherwise the human would leave. Loki carried him to a bed, in the cave he had made a home (well, a residence, rather). It was a pile of furs and feather-stuffed leather pillows, arranged in the shape of a birds nest, and Loki lay Tony down into the middle of it and then curled in beside him. He held the human, eyes slipping closed as he revelled in the silence in his head. There were no voices, no screaming or wailing or crying. No one asked him to burn the world down, no one wanted revenge against his enemies, and more importantly no one demanded Asgard come to execute him. They would send Balder, because they always sent Balder to carry out the jobs that Odin did not wish to tarnish Thor with, and Loki was destined to kill him: nobody wanted that destiny fulfilled, not even Loki, bringer of chaos.
The destruction of Jötunheimr had been something Loki once sought, but he had since seen the error of his ways. He had no love for the Frost Giants, nor would he mourn their passing into extinction, but Loki had experienced the instability of the Void first hand, and he would not wish such suffering upon the rest of the nine realms, for to destroy one world was to destroy them all eventually. The Yggdrasil would shatter, branches cracking and worlds colliding, until none were left but he, the Bringer. Ragnarok would ruin all, but him. And he would be alone until the Norns saw fit to spin them all again into existence, to destroy Loki and remake him, to damn them all into repeating the same vicious cycle again and again.
But now he had found Anthony Stark, and Stark drove the madness away.
XXX
While Tony's presence kept Loki sane, the same mightn't be said for Tony. He was wilder in Loki's company, louder, more reckless. Perhaps he was just bored, or maybe he was mad, or lonely, (there were numerous reasons for whiling the time away with a God as attractive as Loki), but no matter what he claimed, Tony stayed with Loki. They didn't stay on Muspelheimr. Tony couldn't breathe the air properly there, couldn't see without feeling dizzy or making his head hurt, but Loki had no such aversion to Earth. So they travelled back there together, appearing on the same rooftop ledge that Loki had stolen Tony away from in the first place.
They weren't lovers, or even friends, so they didn't share a room, but Loki didn't want to be too far away from the only thing he had found that silenced the voices. He slept in the room right next door to Tony's, separated by a bathroom and a door on either side (both of which more often than not remained open all night, so that if Loki squinted he could see the Extremis heating the air above Tony's bare chest).
"And where are your cavalries?" Loki joked a week after he had made himself at home. They were eating breakfast at the kitchen counter, with Tony leaning back against it and Loki sitting on top of it with both legs swinging over the side. Jarvis was on mute, because he was firmly against Loki moving in with his creator and Tony hadn't wanted anyone to ruin his fun.
"You didn't know? Figured Thor or someone would have told you, or you'd have seen it on the news or something?" Loki didn't respond, merely kept spooning cereal into his mouth and chewing loudly. Tony laughed lightly, at himself or at Loki neither was sure, because sometimes Tony laughed for no reason now. "I'm not an Avenger… I never was. Freelance consultant, that's what they called. I got paid for my time, and the others did it for free, but Pepper asked me to give up being Iron Man. I did it, you know, for her; blew all of my suits to pieces, but I couldn't help myself, couldn't stop myself from using Extremis. I had to you know, for science," he glanced up at Loki pleadingly, brown eyes wide and mouth agape, silently begging the God to understand (no one else had understood). "I cured Pepper and infected myself. She hated me for it."
Loki winced. He offered a small shrug but didn't speak. Though he too knew well the betrayal of those who were supposed to love you, who should have trusted you, he didn't want to talk about it.
"I've been alone for three years when you think about it. I can have as many nameless faces in my bed, as many bodies crowding around me when I go for a drink or some food or gamble away my money some place on the wrong side of town. My planes are filled with gorgeous women who wait on me or dance around poles when I fly. But I'm alone, right? Pepper hates me, I'm not an Avenger-- wouldn't wanna be one anyway, fuck them! Rhodey and Happy won't talk to me ‘cause Pepper said I'm "a danger to them" or was it to myself? I'm not sure. Anyway. It's just me. No cavalry. Just me and you, Oh God of Mischief, so don't let things get too boring around here, alright?" Tony was drinking, Loki noticed; a glass of scotch this time in one hand and the bottle in the other where his breakfast should have been, but wasn't.
"Would I?" Loki asked, his mouth curving up into a teasing smile. Imagine, him, boring? Not a chance. Jötunheimr would melt and Muspelheimr would freeze over first!
He felt no pity and he offered no sympathy, for if Stark's friends had not abandoned him, Stark would not have been so quick to welcome Loki into his home. Without him, Loki would still be at the mercy of the voices, one whisper closer to the end of all time as madness encouraged him towards actions that he knew he shouldn't take (but couldn't help himself, couldn't stop him. So alike were they in that respect).
XXX
Tony did well for himself. Even without the title of 'Avenger' the people considered him a hero. He still called himself Iron Man (having easily been persuaded by Loki to take up the mantle, since Pepper had already left him, why should he be forced to keep such promises). But instead of flying the suit, which he continued to build in his free time, he wore armour made of melted gold that Loki had gifted him with on his fourth month in residence. Tony had cooled it and beaten it into shape around his feet to thighs (to protect the arteries), chest and his throat. Underneath it, he wore the skin tight flame resistant bodysuit he had used for the Iron Man suit, with the armour over it in certain parts. He wore the gold like boots, with a gap at the knees so he could bend his legs easily. They wrapped around his neck like a collar, or a torque, engraved at the front with Tony's own symbols. The S.I. logo and the defunct arc reactor were left off; he chose instead to use the marking Loki had designed for him, his name in runes with an ouroboros looping around them. Loki had called the snake something that Tony couldn't pronounce, tone fond and mouth smiling sadly, something "your commander" but Tony's repetition was obviously wrong because it made the God throw his head back and laugh.
“Nice try,” he had said, before leaning forward to kiss Tony for the first time.
They didn’t speak of it; just carried on with their day, building suits and engraving sigils and watching a movie with a drink or two at hand to round off the night. They didn't make a big deal about it; kissing simply became a part of their routine. They made breakfast in the morning, kissing each other softly as Tony leant around Loki to get to the fridge; Iron Man fought the villains of New York and Loki would help, kissing his armoured hand jokingly each time he swooped in to save him; mouths would meet over the kitchen counter as they ate, or as Tony hogged Loki's pillow, or as they curled up on the couch together to watch TV.
Most often, their mouths would meet when their bodies did, naked and writhing as they fucked each other into the mattress, alternating positions depending on their mood. Loki preferred to bottom, loved the rush it gave him when Tony was above him, staring down at him with dark eyes and licking his lips as Loki arched up towards him, taking more of him in with every roll of his hips. But what he loved best was the silence. When Tony bottomed he was loud, wailing and begging and pleading as his nails raked groves down Loki’s back or tore chunks out of his upper thighs and hips, tongue only still when Loki was sucking on it or Tony was sinking his teeth into Loki’s throat. But when he topped he didn’t make a sound other than to encourage Loki to spread his legs wider or to “beg for it, babe”. And Loki loved the silence, because when he was around Tony the voices stopped whispering their vicious lies to him, stopped taunting him, and then when Tony was silent too it was just him inside of his head, and peace was a hard to come by commodity for the God of Chaos. Loki cherished it when he could get it, though that wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy the feel of Tony stretching him wide, fucking into him roughly until even he was hard pressed to walk (accelerated healing and all) straight afterwards. In fact, he loved it.
That, and silence, were not all that Loki loved though, for he loved Anthony too, and he made no secret of it, the words slipping out six months after his having moved in and after he had just healed Tony from a rather vicious stomach wound. Tony had whispered the words back to him, eyes narrowed suspiciously like he thought Loki might have known how he felt and was only saying it first to get him to admit it; so Loki said it again, and again, in between kisses to Tony’s cheeks and brow until the mortal was smiling as widely as he was.
Twenty years passed like that, and they were happy and in love and the voices no longer stirred up the madness that dwelt within Loki’s broken mind. Ragnarok was all but averted, and Loki no longer feared the coming of the end for he no longer considered himself the Bringer. With Tony by his side, he brought nothing but happiness to the lives of those he surrounded himself with; he even encouraged Tony to make up with his friends and old Avengers teammates. With Extremis Tony’s aging was much slower, but his hair had started to grey in the last few years and there were a few more wrinkles around his mouth. Loki now feared for Tony, instead of himself, because his lover was already in his sixties: how much longer would mortals live? Would Extremis extend his life as it made him appear younger, or would Tony die of old age looking like he was still in his mid-forties? Neither knew the answer, and it frightened Loki (and Tony though he laughed the fear away, joked and smiled and lied through his teeth about how everything would be ok, so stop worrying about it, babe).
Tony retired, hung up his suits and only pulled them out to reminisce over when he had visitors over.
But it was not a supervillain or a terrorist organisation or even a natural catastrophe that brought about the end of the Invincible Iron Man. Rather, it was something as ordinary - as human - as a stroke. It started with a pain in his chest that Tony ignored, because his chest had always hurt since the arc reactor, even after it had been taken out. The he felt dizzy. Extremis healed his wounds, internal and external (though often Loki would rush to the rescue instead of waiting idly at the side-lines for Tony’s body to do the work), and it fixed whatever problems the stroke caused, healed his brain and its burst blood vessels, made his chest stop aching and kept his heart beating steadily. But it didn’t stop Tony for losing consciousness for that split second when the pain first hit him, the shortness of breath that made his legs collapse under him. And Extremis couldn’t change the fact that Tony had been standing at the top of the stairs when he collapsed.
Loki found him there, an hour later, with his legs splayed and his neck broken, and no amount of magic would wake him up again.
XXX
Like a damn bursting, the noise flooded back in. The sudden rush of sound took Loki by complete surprise, so long had he gone without it. The ferociousness of the voices inside of his head knocked him off of his feet, and he sank to the floor beside Tony’s body, hands shaking as they clutched at his ears, trying to cover them and rip them from his head simultaneously. His eyes remained fixed on Tony, pupils blown and watering up, tears soon falling steadily down his cheeks as the noise became a hurricane, loud and raging and damaging. The eye had long passed, and all that was left now was destruction and danger and “destroy, destroy, destroy” it told him.
So Loki did.
He left Tony where he lay, eyes unseeing as they stared up at Loki, mouth slack and unsmiling. Loki did not look at his lover as he left, did not look at anything in all honesty nor could he see it. All he saw, all he knew, was fire, and it spread out around him, his magic acting without will (or perhaps it was his will to destroy, now that there was nothing tying him to this life, now that his reason for postponing the end was gone?)
Ragnarok began in that moment. Though it took a fortnight for Asgard to respond, for them to send Balder and his legion of guards down to Midgard to apprehend the previously ‘rehabilitated’ Prince, it was in the moment between Tony’s heart ceasing to beat and Loki’s mind registering that loss that the Norns ceased to spin and began to wait. They waited for the end, for when it came it would be time for them to begin their job again, to spin and weave and forge until the world was as it once was, and all those who had died would rise again, simply so that they could kill them all once more. Everyone died in the end, it was the journey that differed, but the Bringer was always the same, the Bringer was always hate and chaos and betrayal; Loki was always cursed, doomed to loneliness and suffering, and the next time the world ended he would stand alone at the final moment before Karnilla struck him down herself. Just like the last time the cycle ended, and just like this time, though he didn’t know it yet and he couldn’t remember it from the last.
But this was the first time he had Anthony Stark by his side. This would be the first time that Stark would be welcomed into Helheimr, to stand alongside the Bringer’s army, selected and collected lovingly by his daughter, Hel.
When Balder came, and Loki drove a dagger through his eye, Tony waited with the army of the dead until Hel gave the order. When Loki shoved Balder back, mouth snarling and eyes wild and dark, black as the Void he had lost his mind in, the other God fell upon a branch, snapped away from the tree at such an angle that it impaled him from behind, driving through his back and into his heart until it burst through his chest, pointing up towards Loki’s blood spattered face. The Bringer stepped away from him, unfeeling, leaving him hanging like a puppet on a shelf, and he turned to face his brother as the ground beneath them rumbled and cracked, fissures spreading along the earth before them as the armies of Niflheimr and Helheimr pushed their way through. They crawled out of the underworld, like zombies from a grave in a bad horror movie, and those who had been too fixated upon Tony Stark’s crazy husband to run away finally began to scream.
The humans ran away, and the Asgardians charged forward in their defence. Thor and Loki fought to one side, lost in a world of their own, as the dead fought around them. Bodies fell to the ground, and only those already dead stood back up again. Hel waited behind, unable to leave Helheimr, but in her stead at the head of the army stood Tony Stark. He made straight for Loki, ignoring everyone who crossed his path, brushing away the swords that swung towards him with his gold-armoured arm, and ducking beneath the arms of those who reached out to tackle him, or who simply got too close while fighting another. He didn’t care about them; he cared only for Loki, who was starting to look worse for wear, mouth and nose bloody and hands shaking as Thor struck him again with Mjölnir.
Loki could not die, for he was always to be the last to fall. The one who would start the end and the one who must remain until the end, but that did not mean he could not be hurt. Thor had hurt him, and Thor continued to hurt him, swinging his hammer again and again until Loki could no longer push himself up off of the ground. His arms trembled and gave out beneath him, shaking from the effort of just uncurling his fingers to find purchase on the ground. Thor raised Mjölnir again, swinging wide-
-Until suddenly he wasn’t, having been tackled sideways by someone he knew to be dead. Thor did not fall over, because dead or not Tony had still be human in life and Thor was a God. But he was shocked enough by the sight of his friend, brain unable to translate what it already knew into solid thought (Tony was alive? Tony was alive! Even though Thor knew he was dead and his being there boded badly for his side of the battle), that Thor stood there while Tony blasted Mjölnir out of his hand.
The oceans churned out of sight, a serpent rising from the depths in order to swallow the world whole. In Asgard, Fenris broke free of his chains and went, howling, in search of the Allfather, jaws dripping with saliva at the thought of finally, finally tearing into the flesh of his captor. It was their fate, what they had been made to do, just as it had become Tony’s fate to stand by Loki’s side. So, side to side they stood, facing down Thor who had his hammer back and held it aloft, waiting, as he tried to reason with someone who couldn’t be reasoned with.
“It is not too late, brother!” Thor pleaded.
Loki’s eyes, dark and strange, unfamiliar even to Tony who had seen him in every mood imaginable and loved him through them all but could not place the emotion he saw now, focused on Thor. They blinked twice, as Loki’s face flushed with amusement, lips stretched wide and nose crinkled. “It was too early,” Loki countered, offering a sly grin as he narrowed his eyes. He turned his gaze to Tony, features softening because he recognized the face before him, loved the man before him. “And what say you, mortal?”
“You and me against the world, babe,” Tony said, calmly offer Thor a shrug of apology, because this was his fate now too.
“There will be no world left,” Loki whispered. The voices wailed inside of his mind again, because he was no longer fighting, nor burning, nor destroying and they were left wanting. “There will be no worlds left, no race left. None but I will remain until the end.”
“Then it’s you and me, for as long as you’ll have me.”
Loki’s hand reached out for Tony’s face. For a moment, Tony thought he might hit him, but there was something familiar now in Loki’s gaze so he held still and let the God cup his cheek. A thumb stroked lightly across his bottom lip, over and over until Loki eventually smiled. “You and I shall be all that is left of this world, and I shall be your King.” He kissed Tony then, seemingly having forgotten that Thor was even there. “Until the Norns remake us both,” he continued, before reaching down for Tony’s hand. He pulled it up, to hug it or kiss it or just to hold it perhaps. But instead he stretched it out, and fire burst from the palm of Tony’s hand when Loki squeezed his wrist tight enough to have him crying out in pain, and Thor fell backwards with a hole burnt through his chest.
Around them, the armies battled and fires spread. Ragnarok had begun and like dragon fire it would not end until it had burnt itself out. In the middle of it all, he the proverbial eye of the storm, waited the Bringer. He who was ignored by all but one until the last body upon this world (and all others) had fallen. By his side stood his lover, who had loved him and left him for death, and then waited patiently with Loki’s army for the chance to return to him. Though he did not fight now, held in place by a pale hand clasped tightly around his wrist, Tony knew that his purpose was to fight by his King’s side. If the universe had to suffer for it, well, Tony Stark always got what he wanted and Loki did as Loki pleased.
Tony twisted his wrist free. His hand slipped lower, searching without looking, until his fingers could curl around Loki’s. They held hands as the world came to an end.
The End
Well. That escalated quickly, right?
A long time ago, I was having all of these Merlin feels that suddenly became Ragnarok feels and I couldn’t help myself. So I combined the idea with this prompt (above).
* * *
“Lionheart”
Disclaimer: The Avengers, Tony, Loki, etc belong to Marvel, Stan Lee, et co. I make no money from this and own nothing, don’t sue.
Summary: Written for Loki Month 2014: Prompt 6. They spent twenty years avoiding the End, years spent together keeping the madness and the darkness at bay. But without the other his sanity like walls came crumbling down, his resistance like driftwood washed away, and with their end the End came. With it the armies of Helheimr rose, Fenris and Jörmungandr did as Fate bid them do, and in the midst of it all, Tony Stark waited with Loki’s army to fight at the side of his King.
Warnings: Slash. Loki/Tony. Post-Avengers. Established relationship. Reformed Loki, at the start at least. Language. AU. Character Death. Resurrection. Ragnarök. FrostIron. End of the world feels. Loki feels, because I love him really but I’m cruel to be kind to him (jk I’m cruel because of reasons)… Loki Month. Thor 2 compliant.
Rating: NC-17.
A/N: Ok, we all know I have issues, and Loki feels, so there is nothing else to say. Except, yeah, suddenly Ragnarök feels. I didn’t want to write 2 Ragnarok fics, so I’ve used the idea I already had for Loki Month’s 6th Prompt.
XXX
“As the world comes to an end I’ll be here to hold your hand ‘cause you’re my king and I’m your lionheart.” - Of Monsters and Men: “King and Lionheart”.
Words: 5,251
Chapter 1
Faking his death had led Loki further from the throne of Asgard, rather than closer to it. He stayed, seated upon Hlidskjalf until the Allfather woke from his Odinsleep. Though it was the longest one Loki could remember Odin ever entering, he woke eventually, and he healed well, so Loki left him before memory could catch up with his body. By the time Odin remembered what had happened - what Loki had done - his one eye turned cold with regret, instead of the wide-eyed relief that lit Odin’s face when he first gazed upon his son who should be dead, Loki was long gone from Asgard.
There was no Thor there to hide behind, no Frigga to run to for comfort. It was not his home, so he left it behind him, and Loki travelled. He walked through dreams and worlds and along pathways that twisted and turned their way through the Void, seeped in between the cracks that separated worlds and curled their way around the hearts of important individuals, those who were destined to make a difference. Loki visited each stranger in turn, curious but careful, like a cat who was offered a petting but unsure of the hand that came towards it. Occasionally, he bit, hissed and scratched and ran away, but there were some people he stayed with, some he was more curious about than others.
And then there was Tony Stark.
The Void led him to Stark one rainy afternoon, the pathway leading him silently towards Midgard and dropping him at the edge of the balcony that overlooked the city of New York. Here, he had once built a machine, had opened a portal that invited evil into this world. Here, he had once been defeated, put down like a mad dog and beaten. And it was here that he saw Tony Stark for the first time in four years. The mortal stood with one knee pressed between the railing around the balcony and a glass of whiskey in one hand while the other hung limply over the edge of the building. His head was bowed, but Loki could make out the barest hint of a smile from the corner of his eyes.
Stark turned to look straight at Loki and the smile widened until it stretched his mouth enough to show teeth. “Was wondering when you were planning to drop in,” the mortal said, sound casual and unaffected by Loki’s unexpected presence. “Jarvis has noticed you popping around all over the world for the last two years. Honestly, I was starting to feel a little offended that I hadn’t warranted a visit. Suppose,” he added, taking a pause to drain the alcohol from his glass in one quick gulp, “you can make it up to me now.”
He was wearing no suit, no special bracelets to call the suit to him, but he walked towards Loki bravely, unashamed that his shirt was hanging open and he was wearing his underwear instead of trousers while greeting his enemy. The glowing orb in his chest had been replaced by something that was red and orange and lit up the veins that snaked their way through Tony’s chest beneath the skin. It was like a badly drawn painting, all lines of colour that didn’t match up or make sense and Loki was enthralled at the sight of it.
There was no denying the God was a little mad. Chaos had always been a part of his nature, viciousness and hate had flourished later, but he had always been mischievous and uncontrollable: like fire. Tony burned now, from the inside out, with a fire that Loki couldn’t hope to match, couldn’t contain, but he wanted to reach out and touch it nonetheless, to feel the heat of it to see if he would melt or if it would be the mortal that would bow out first. So he reached forward, driven by the whispers inside of his mind, left behind all those years ago from his first fall through the Void (the words that made him want to hurt others, made him hurt himself, made him hate and fear and tremble in the dark when he was alone at night). Pale fingers closed around a thin wrist and Tony only grinned at him, unafraid. Loki’s eyes had gone wide, half-terrified and half-awed, as the voices in his head were suddenly, blessedly silent.
“How did you?” Loki began to ask, before silencing himself by biting his tongue. He hissed from the pain of it, but it bought him enough control over himself to wrench his hand away when Tony’s other hand was suddenly around his own wrist. The mortal’s grip was unnaturally tight, but Loki freed himself with a vicious tug. He did not wait for an answer; he did not wait for anything, not even for the voices to start whispering again. Loki fled, as Loki always did when he knew he couldn’t win a fight or cheat his way out of a bad situation.
It wasn’t until he was on Svartalfheimr, worlds away from the mortal, that Loki could hear the voices again. They had started out as a humming once Tony’s skin was no longer within Loki’s grasp, louder they had grown once the fire that burned within the human had stopped warming Loki’s face, had stopped calling to Loki’s own fire, his magic, his soul. Now they screamed, wild and dangerous, and called to Loki to appease them, to burn and burn and burn until nothing was left upon Svartalfheimr but them two. He had been ignoring the voice for so long that it was almost second nature by now, like how his heart beat without having to consciously think about it, Loki ignored the voice. But as the days passed, the voice grew more and more persuasive, as if having met Tony again had torn down barriers Loki hadn’t known existed within his mind.
It was after three months of desperately clinging to his self-control that Loki finally snapped. He went in search of the mortal again, and found him at a restaurant with a woman that Loki didn’t recognize. The voices went silent, and Loki was finally able to breathe, the weight that had sat upon his chest for three months having finally lifted once the heat from Tony’s body could be felt from across the room. He didn’t look any older than he had during the failed invasion, in fact he looked a little younger, his hair darker and his face less wrinkled around the eyes, but he was the same old playboy that he had been before Pepper, and as he reached across the table to kiss the woman the table between them caught fire.
Loki’s mind was awash with horrible feelings, screaming, and darkness. He couldn’t see; his eyes felt like they were seared shut by the sight of Tony’s lips against someone else’s (not that Loki wanted to kiss him either, but it was the principle. Stark was his, Stark calmed his insanity, steadied his mind, tempered him. Stark was his). The Void screamed within him, white noise and desperation, and it told him to destroy. To let loose his magic and tear this world to bits and pieces, to rip that woman apart limb from limb until Asgard had no choice but to come down to Midgard and end him. That was his goal, to call Asgard forth, and though Loki knew it he tried to ignore the reason for it, so he left the woman alone and set the table on fire instead. He laughed, head thrown back as he took pleasure in the way Tony scrambled backwards, falling out of his seat, eyes wide and hands glowing orange as they burnt craters into the floor where they touched.
“Have you missed me, human?” Loki stalked towards them, ignoring the woman, ignoring the voice in his head that demanded she beg for her life, to apologise for her slight against him. He grabbed Tony by the throat, and the maelstrom within his mind disappeared at the first touch, calming like the eye of the hurricane just waiting until it was time to start up again. But for now, all was calm and still and sane, and Loki squeezed Tony’s throat as he pulled the mortal off of the ground and into his arms. They disappeared from the restaurant together, Loki’s free arm around Tony’s waist and their foreheads pressed together; something needy in the way Loki slumped against him, in the way Tony’s hands carefully took hold of Loki’s shoulders as magic stole him away.
Maybe Stark was mad too, because he never tried to escape. He simply leaned further into Loki's embrace, eyes closed and breathing shallow as they appeared somewhere that was not on Earth. The air was heavier, and it made Tony's eyes flutter, made his head hurt to hold it up; so he rested it on Loki's shoulder, just for a moment he told himself, unconcerned because after Extremis there was nothing Loki could do to seriously hurt him.
He slept.
The air on Muspelheimr was unsuitable for humans, but Loki kept Tony there anyway, because otherwise the human would leave. Loki carried him to a bed, in the cave he had made a home (well, a residence, rather). It was a pile of furs and feather-stuffed leather pillows, arranged in the shape of a birds nest, and Loki lay Tony down into the middle of it and then curled in beside him. He held the human, eyes slipping closed as he revelled in the silence in his head. There were no voices, no screaming or wailing or crying. No one asked him to burn the world down, no one wanted revenge against his enemies, and more importantly no one demanded Asgard come to execute him. They would send Balder, because they always sent Balder to carry out the jobs that Odin did not wish to tarnish Thor with, and Loki was destined to kill him: nobody wanted that destiny fulfilled, not even Loki, bringer of chaos.
The destruction of Jötunheimr had been something Loki once sought, but he had since seen the error of his ways. He had no love for the Frost Giants, nor would he mourn their passing into extinction, but Loki had experienced the instability of the Void first hand, and he would not wish such suffering upon the rest of the nine realms, for to destroy one world was to destroy them all eventually. The Yggdrasil would shatter, branches cracking and worlds colliding, until none were left but he, the Bringer. Ragnarok would ruin all, but him. And he would be alone until the Norns saw fit to spin them all again into existence, to destroy Loki and remake him, to damn them all into repeating the same vicious cycle again and again.
But now he had found Anthony Stark, and Stark drove the madness away.
XXX
While Tony's presence kept Loki sane, the same mightn't be said for Tony. He was wilder in Loki's company, louder, more reckless. Perhaps he was just bored, or maybe he was mad, or lonely, (there were numerous reasons for whiling the time away with a God as attractive as Loki), but no matter what he claimed, Tony stayed with Loki. They didn't stay on Muspelheimr. Tony couldn't breathe the air properly there, couldn't see without feeling dizzy or making his head hurt, but Loki had no such aversion to Earth. So they travelled back there together, appearing on the same rooftop ledge that Loki had stolen Tony away from in the first place.
They weren't lovers, or even friends, so they didn't share a room, but Loki didn't want to be too far away from the only thing he had found that silenced the voices. He slept in the room right next door to Tony's, separated by a bathroom and a door on either side (both of which more often than not remained open all night, so that if Loki squinted he could see the Extremis heating the air above Tony's bare chest).
"And where are your cavalries?" Loki joked a week after he had made himself at home. They were eating breakfast at the kitchen counter, with Tony leaning back against it and Loki sitting on top of it with both legs swinging over the side. Jarvis was on mute, because he was firmly against Loki moving in with his creator and Tony hadn't wanted anyone to ruin his fun.
"You didn't know? Figured Thor or someone would have told you, or you'd have seen it on the news or something?" Loki didn't respond, merely kept spooning cereal into his mouth and chewing loudly. Tony laughed lightly, at himself or at Loki neither was sure, because sometimes Tony laughed for no reason now. "I'm not an Avenger… I never was. Freelance consultant, that's what they called. I got paid for my time, and the others did it for free, but Pepper asked me to give up being Iron Man. I did it, you know, for her; blew all of my suits to pieces, but I couldn't help myself, couldn't stop myself from using Extremis. I had to you know, for science," he glanced up at Loki pleadingly, brown eyes wide and mouth agape, silently begging the God to understand (no one else had understood). "I cured Pepper and infected myself. She hated me for it."
Loki winced. He offered a small shrug but didn't speak. Though he too knew well the betrayal of those who were supposed to love you, who should have trusted you, he didn't want to talk about it.
"I've been alone for three years when you think about it. I can have as many nameless faces in my bed, as many bodies crowding around me when I go for a drink or some food or gamble away my money some place on the wrong side of town. My planes are filled with gorgeous women who wait on me or dance around poles when I fly. But I'm alone, right? Pepper hates me, I'm not an Avenger-- wouldn't wanna be one anyway, fuck them! Rhodey and Happy won't talk to me ‘cause Pepper said I'm "a danger to them" or was it to myself? I'm not sure. Anyway. It's just me. No cavalry. Just me and you, Oh God of Mischief, so don't let things get too boring around here, alright?" Tony was drinking, Loki noticed; a glass of scotch this time in one hand and the bottle in the other where his breakfast should have been, but wasn't.
"Would I?" Loki asked, his mouth curving up into a teasing smile. Imagine, him, boring? Not a chance. Jötunheimr would melt and Muspelheimr would freeze over first!
He felt no pity and he offered no sympathy, for if Stark's friends had not abandoned him, Stark would not have been so quick to welcome Loki into his home. Without him, Loki would still be at the mercy of the voices, one whisper closer to the end of all time as madness encouraged him towards actions that he knew he shouldn't take (but couldn't help himself, couldn't stop him. So alike were they in that respect).
XXX
Tony did well for himself. Even without the title of 'Avenger' the people considered him a hero. He still called himself Iron Man (having easily been persuaded by Loki to take up the mantle, since Pepper had already left him, why should he be forced to keep such promises). But instead of flying the suit, which he continued to build in his free time, he wore armour made of melted gold that Loki had gifted him with on his fourth month in residence. Tony had cooled it and beaten it into shape around his feet to thighs (to protect the arteries), chest and his throat. Underneath it, he wore the skin tight flame resistant bodysuit he had used for the Iron Man suit, with the armour over it in certain parts. He wore the gold like boots, with a gap at the knees so he could bend his legs easily. They wrapped around his neck like a collar, or a torque, engraved at the front with Tony's own symbols. The S.I. logo and the defunct arc reactor were left off; he chose instead to use the marking Loki had designed for him, his name in runes with an ouroboros looping around them. Loki had called the snake something that Tony couldn't pronounce, tone fond and mouth smiling sadly, something "your commander" but Tony's repetition was obviously wrong because it made the God throw his head back and laugh.
“Nice try,” he had said, before leaning forward to kiss Tony for the first time.
They didn’t speak of it; just carried on with their day, building suits and engraving sigils and watching a movie with a drink or two at hand to round off the night. They didn't make a big deal about it; kissing simply became a part of their routine. They made breakfast in the morning, kissing each other softly as Tony leant around Loki to get to the fridge; Iron Man fought the villains of New York and Loki would help, kissing his armoured hand jokingly each time he swooped in to save him; mouths would meet over the kitchen counter as they ate, or as Tony hogged Loki's pillow, or as they curled up on the couch together to watch TV.
Most often, their mouths would meet when their bodies did, naked and writhing as they fucked each other into the mattress, alternating positions depending on their mood. Loki preferred to bottom, loved the rush it gave him when Tony was above him, staring down at him with dark eyes and licking his lips as Loki arched up towards him, taking more of him in with every roll of his hips. But what he loved best was the silence. When Tony bottomed he was loud, wailing and begging and pleading as his nails raked groves down Loki’s back or tore chunks out of his upper thighs and hips, tongue only still when Loki was sucking on it or Tony was sinking his teeth into Loki’s throat. But when he topped he didn’t make a sound other than to encourage Loki to spread his legs wider or to “beg for it, babe”. And Loki loved the silence, because when he was around Tony the voices stopped whispering their vicious lies to him, stopped taunting him, and then when Tony was silent too it was just him inside of his head, and peace was a hard to come by commodity for the God of Chaos. Loki cherished it when he could get it, though that wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy the feel of Tony stretching him wide, fucking into him roughly until even he was hard pressed to walk (accelerated healing and all) straight afterwards. In fact, he loved it.
That, and silence, were not all that Loki loved though, for he loved Anthony too, and he made no secret of it, the words slipping out six months after his having moved in and after he had just healed Tony from a rather vicious stomach wound. Tony had whispered the words back to him, eyes narrowed suspiciously like he thought Loki might have known how he felt and was only saying it first to get him to admit it; so Loki said it again, and again, in between kisses to Tony’s cheeks and brow until the mortal was smiling as widely as he was.
Twenty years passed like that, and they were happy and in love and the voices no longer stirred up the madness that dwelt within Loki’s broken mind. Ragnarok was all but averted, and Loki no longer feared the coming of the end for he no longer considered himself the Bringer. With Tony by his side, he brought nothing but happiness to the lives of those he surrounded himself with; he even encouraged Tony to make up with his friends and old Avengers teammates. With Extremis Tony’s aging was much slower, but his hair had started to grey in the last few years and there were a few more wrinkles around his mouth. Loki now feared for Tony, instead of himself, because his lover was already in his sixties: how much longer would mortals live? Would Extremis extend his life as it made him appear younger, or would Tony die of old age looking like he was still in his mid-forties? Neither knew the answer, and it frightened Loki (and Tony though he laughed the fear away, joked and smiled and lied through his teeth about how everything would be ok, so stop worrying about it, babe).
Tony retired, hung up his suits and only pulled them out to reminisce over when he had visitors over.
But it was not a supervillain or a terrorist organisation or even a natural catastrophe that brought about the end of the Invincible Iron Man. Rather, it was something as ordinary - as human - as a stroke. It started with a pain in his chest that Tony ignored, because his chest had always hurt since the arc reactor, even after it had been taken out. The he felt dizzy. Extremis healed his wounds, internal and external (though often Loki would rush to the rescue instead of waiting idly at the side-lines for Tony’s body to do the work), and it fixed whatever problems the stroke caused, healed his brain and its burst blood vessels, made his chest stop aching and kept his heart beating steadily. But it didn’t stop Tony for losing consciousness for that split second when the pain first hit him, the shortness of breath that made his legs collapse under him. And Extremis couldn’t change the fact that Tony had been standing at the top of the stairs when he collapsed.
Loki found him there, an hour later, with his legs splayed and his neck broken, and no amount of magic would wake him up again.
XXX
Like a damn bursting, the noise flooded back in. The sudden rush of sound took Loki by complete surprise, so long had he gone without it. The ferociousness of the voices inside of his head knocked him off of his feet, and he sank to the floor beside Tony’s body, hands shaking as they clutched at his ears, trying to cover them and rip them from his head simultaneously. His eyes remained fixed on Tony, pupils blown and watering up, tears soon falling steadily down his cheeks as the noise became a hurricane, loud and raging and damaging. The eye had long passed, and all that was left now was destruction and danger and “destroy, destroy, destroy” it told him.
So Loki did.
He left Tony where he lay, eyes unseeing as they stared up at Loki, mouth slack and unsmiling. Loki did not look at his lover as he left, did not look at anything in all honesty nor could he see it. All he saw, all he knew, was fire, and it spread out around him, his magic acting without will (or perhaps it was his will to destroy, now that there was nothing tying him to this life, now that his reason for postponing the end was gone?)
Ragnarok began in that moment. Though it took a fortnight for Asgard to respond, for them to send Balder and his legion of guards down to Midgard to apprehend the previously ‘rehabilitated’ Prince, it was in the moment between Tony’s heart ceasing to beat and Loki’s mind registering that loss that the Norns ceased to spin and began to wait. They waited for the end, for when it came it would be time for them to begin their job again, to spin and weave and forge until the world was as it once was, and all those who had died would rise again, simply so that they could kill them all once more. Everyone died in the end, it was the journey that differed, but the Bringer was always the same, the Bringer was always hate and chaos and betrayal; Loki was always cursed, doomed to loneliness and suffering, and the next time the world ended he would stand alone at the final moment before Karnilla struck him down herself. Just like the last time the cycle ended, and just like this time, though he didn’t know it yet and he couldn’t remember it from the last.
But this was the first time he had Anthony Stark by his side. This would be the first time that Stark would be welcomed into Helheimr, to stand alongside the Bringer’s army, selected and collected lovingly by his daughter, Hel.
When Balder came, and Loki drove a dagger through his eye, Tony waited with the army of the dead until Hel gave the order. When Loki shoved Balder back, mouth snarling and eyes wild and dark, black as the Void he had lost his mind in, the other God fell upon a branch, snapped away from the tree at such an angle that it impaled him from behind, driving through his back and into his heart until it burst through his chest, pointing up towards Loki’s blood spattered face. The Bringer stepped away from him, unfeeling, leaving him hanging like a puppet on a shelf, and he turned to face his brother as the ground beneath them rumbled and cracked, fissures spreading along the earth before them as the armies of Niflheimr and Helheimr pushed their way through. They crawled out of the underworld, like zombies from a grave in a bad horror movie, and those who had been too fixated upon Tony Stark’s crazy husband to run away finally began to scream.
The humans ran away, and the Asgardians charged forward in their defence. Thor and Loki fought to one side, lost in a world of their own, as the dead fought around them. Bodies fell to the ground, and only those already dead stood back up again. Hel waited behind, unable to leave Helheimr, but in her stead at the head of the army stood Tony Stark. He made straight for Loki, ignoring everyone who crossed his path, brushing away the swords that swung towards him with his gold-armoured arm, and ducking beneath the arms of those who reached out to tackle him, or who simply got too close while fighting another. He didn’t care about them; he cared only for Loki, who was starting to look worse for wear, mouth and nose bloody and hands shaking as Thor struck him again with Mjölnir.
Loki could not die, for he was always to be the last to fall. The one who would start the end and the one who must remain until the end, but that did not mean he could not be hurt. Thor had hurt him, and Thor continued to hurt him, swinging his hammer again and again until Loki could no longer push himself up off of the ground. His arms trembled and gave out beneath him, shaking from the effort of just uncurling his fingers to find purchase on the ground. Thor raised Mjölnir again, swinging wide-
-Until suddenly he wasn’t, having been tackled sideways by someone he knew to be dead. Thor did not fall over, because dead or not Tony had still be human in life and Thor was a God. But he was shocked enough by the sight of his friend, brain unable to translate what it already knew into solid thought (Tony was alive? Tony was alive! Even though Thor knew he was dead and his being there boded badly for his side of the battle), that Thor stood there while Tony blasted Mjölnir out of his hand.
The oceans churned out of sight, a serpent rising from the depths in order to swallow the world whole. In Asgard, Fenris broke free of his chains and went, howling, in search of the Allfather, jaws dripping with saliva at the thought of finally, finally tearing into the flesh of his captor. It was their fate, what they had been made to do, just as it had become Tony’s fate to stand by Loki’s side. So, side to side they stood, facing down Thor who had his hammer back and held it aloft, waiting, as he tried to reason with someone who couldn’t be reasoned with.
“It is not too late, brother!” Thor pleaded.
Loki’s eyes, dark and strange, unfamiliar even to Tony who had seen him in every mood imaginable and loved him through them all but could not place the emotion he saw now, focused on Thor. They blinked twice, as Loki’s face flushed with amusement, lips stretched wide and nose crinkled. “It was too early,” Loki countered, offering a sly grin as he narrowed his eyes. He turned his gaze to Tony, features softening because he recognized the face before him, loved the man before him. “And what say you, mortal?”
“You and me against the world, babe,” Tony said, calmly offer Thor a shrug of apology, because this was his fate now too.
“There will be no world left,” Loki whispered. The voices wailed inside of his mind again, because he was no longer fighting, nor burning, nor destroying and they were left wanting. “There will be no worlds left, no race left. None but I will remain until the end.”
“Then it’s you and me, for as long as you’ll have me.”
Loki’s hand reached out for Tony’s face. For a moment, Tony thought he might hit him, but there was something familiar now in Loki’s gaze so he held still and let the God cup his cheek. A thumb stroked lightly across his bottom lip, over and over until Loki eventually smiled. “You and I shall be all that is left of this world, and I shall be your King.” He kissed Tony then, seemingly having forgotten that Thor was even there. “Until the Norns remake us both,” he continued, before reaching down for Tony’s hand. He pulled it up, to hug it or kiss it or just to hold it perhaps. But instead he stretched it out, and fire burst from the palm of Tony’s hand when Loki squeezed his wrist tight enough to have him crying out in pain, and Thor fell backwards with a hole burnt through his chest.
Around them, the armies battled and fires spread. Ragnarok had begun and like dragon fire it would not end until it had burnt itself out. In the middle of it all, he the proverbial eye of the storm, waited the Bringer. He who was ignored by all but one until the last body upon this world (and all others) had fallen. By his side stood his lover, who had loved him and left him for death, and then waited patiently with Loki’s army for the chance to return to him. Though he did not fight now, held in place by a pale hand clasped tightly around his wrist, Tony knew that his purpose was to fight by his King’s side. If the universe had to suffer for it, well, Tony Stark always got what he wanted and Loki did as Loki pleased.
Tony twisted his wrist free. His hand slipped lower, searching without looking, until his fingers could curl around Loki’s. They held hands as the world came to an end.
The End
Well. That escalated quickly, right?