Nine Lives 18
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A/N: Kudos to those of you who knew why I picked spider lilies as Hela's favorite flower! And the answer is: in Japanese and Chinese mythology, the spider lily is associated with death and the land of the dying. Cool stuff.
Eh, well, anyway. I'm sorry I took so long to post this. It wasn't through lack of interest or inspiration; trust me, if I could spend all day every day writing this stuff, I would. But I'm still getting over a bout of the flu that has left me draaaaained, and I've gotten two more illustration job offers (whoo!).
Also, my Nell, the kitty I've been mentioning who inspired this piece passed away on Christmas Eve. Her liver started failing that morning, and she just pressed herself against me and purred so loudly she made little squeaking noises, which she hasn't done since she was a kitten. At least I got to hold her as she went.
I miss her terribly, but the New Year is all about new beginnings and, as of this week, I am the proud mama of two adorable kittens named Loki and Sigyn (both girls, haaaaa). Unsurprisingly, Loki is already my cat. After spending the day hiding inside my furniture (including the copy machine, and I have no idea how that happened), she spent the night sprawled across my chest with her paw around my neck. Sigyn, on the other hand, has been terrorizing our old, blind dog, trailing after my parents and me, and... trying to jump on my lap while I'm on the toilet. Ow.
tl;dr: YAY KITTIEZ! 8D
wore glasses and sighed dejectedly. As a friend, boyfriend, or whatever, he was crap at relationships.'>Choices
Pepper chewed on the end of her glasses as she regarded Tony over the table, her eyes dark and intense and a small crease forming between her eyebrows. Tony realized that he didn't even know she wore glasses and sighed dejectedly. As a friend, boyfriend, or whatever, he was crap at relationships.
“Are you going to say anything?” he groused after a while. He squirmed in his seat and scratched at the day's worth of stubble sprouting along his jaw.
“Hang on,” Pepper lisped around the stem of her glasses. She twirled them in her fingers. “Still trying to digest all of this.”
Tony rolled his eyes and wondered if he really should have told her. She had said nothing after picking him up - again - after a... disagreement with Loki, had said nothing at the sight of his black eye or the reek of alcohol. But this afternoon, when she had found him still lying in bed and staring at the wall, that was when she had decided to sit him down (after getting him up) and had demanded Story Time.
While poking at the breakfast she had shoved under his nose, Tony had half expected a black cat with green eyes to jump onto the table and wordlessly demand he relinquish his bacon. The thought sent a bittersweet pang through his chest in the vicinity of his arc reactor. He couldn't force any food past the lump in his throat after that.
Pepper had watched and waited, questioned him about last night and about Loki, deflecting his deflections.
Just sleeping off a hang-over, he had told her concerned expression. Why should I care about the God of Assholery?
But she had replied, as calm and blunt as you please: I don't know why, but obviously you do.
So Tony had told her: his long, only half-sober conversation with a strangely insecure Loki, their night together - “Really don't need the sordid details, thank you...” - Tony's misunderstanding and then Loki's misunderstanding of that misunderstanding.
Finally Pepper removed the glasses from between her teeth and set them down on the table with a click that echoed in the tense silence. The chair creaked as she leaned back. “I can't believe I'm saying this,” she huffed, shaking her head at the ceiling, “but I think Loki actually has feelings for you.”
“Feelings,” Tony echoed with a grimace and an eyebrow tilted as if to say oh please.
The crease between Pepper's eyebrows deepened, and she pursed her lips, giving him an unimpressed look. “Don't you think so?” she asked dryly.
“Hell, I don't know!” Tony griped. “Following his moods is like riding a see-saw.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at his now-cold plate of half-eaten eggs.
“This is Loki we're talking about. Stability not included.”
Tony muttered under his breath. All the more reason why it was disastrous for the two of them to be together; Tony wasn't exactly stable himself.
“The thing with Loki,” Pepper said softly, leaning over the table to catch Tony's eye, “is that you can't always trust what he says. The stuff he said to you is confusing and contradictory; he says he doesn't want to see you again and then says something about it not being a one-night stand. So... listen to his actions, not his words.”
Tony frowned. “Like back-handing me into a wall?”
“Like,” Pepper continued, silencing Tony with a look, “sleeping with you and then getting upset when he sees you with another wom- er, someone else.”
Tony's frown deepened, but...
“He wouldn't have reacted that way if he didn't care about you in some capacity,” Pepper said. “Seems to me like he's into you and just doesn't know how to handle it.”
A fraction of tension eased from Tony's shoulders as he mulled this over. And yet.
He doesn't know how to handle it? Then how the Hell should I?
“That or you're overanalyzing this,” Tony muttered, “and he's just screwing with me. In more ways than one.” His lips quirked wryly at the bad pun.
Pepper rolled her eyes. “Would serve you right.”
Tony mustered up the energy to glare. Her smile turned apologetic.
“But what if I'm right?” she prodded gently. “Think about it. You have the rare opportunity to be a positive influence on a super-villain here!”
Tony was still less than thrilled with the term “super-villain” in general, but she had a point. “What are you saying?”
“I'm saying that you need to get off your ass and find him before he does something stupid.”
Loki smiled coyly over the rim of his wineglass, keeping his posture and demeanor calculatedly relaxed and unconcerned even as he catalogued every minute action and reaction from the armor-clad man at the other end of the table. He was achingly curious about the plan Victor kept hinting at, but this was a game of chess, mind to mind, move for move, and Loki knew better than to let all of that curiosity show. So he patiently sat through dinner and smalltalk with his sometime-ally, keeping his mind clear of - tonystark - anything inconveniently distracting. Only after much of his food was gone and his glass half-empty did Loki ask the question that had been at the forefront of his mind all evening.
“So, Victor,” Loki said, setting down his glass with a clink and spinning the stem between his thumb and forefinger, “you mentioned an alternative power-source earlier?”
“Yes,” said Doom, and when he tilted his head just so, the shadows of his cowl fell across his eyes and closed even that tiny window to Loki's scrutiny. “As I said, it is of a nature that should deeply interest you.”
Loki tapped at his lower lip as he considered this. “Magical in nature, then?” he mused.
Doom chuckled, and it echoed strangely from behind his mask. Loki kept his face blank, hating how exposed he felt next to the masked man, every bend of his feature on display for scrutiny and dissection where Doom's was hidden. He thought of Tony then, of his voice, and how the human was honest and expressive enough that Loki could read his moods even behind his metal mask. That thought set an ache in his chest that Loki told himself was festering anger.
“More of a marriage between magic and science, I should think,” Doom answered. “But the fuel itself is, I suppose, magical at its essence.”
Loki allowed his interest to show in the faintest arch of one brow.
Doom folded his hands on the table in front of him and shifted enough for the light to fall back across his eyes, which glinted now with excitement and something... wicked. “A continuous power source,” he said, “which my magic can tap into. A living battery, almost.”
Something about his tone fired off a warning in Loki's mind. The shadows at the periphery of his vision seemed to shift, but when Loki glanced over his shoulder, he saw nothing. Am I being paranoid? he wondered.
No. With Doom, one was never “paranoid”, only over-prepared.
Loki straightened in his seat and turned back to Doom. “Oh?” he prompted. “Do tell.”
“I was actually thinking more in terms of providing a... demonstration.”
Then Loki heard that hiss, that stuttering, percussive hiss he had come to dread, and he realized that Doom had had another chess piece all along. In a blink, he was up and reaching for his magic, but the shadows shifted and enveloped him. Claw-like fingers curled about his throat.
“Victor!” The gasping plea fell from his lips before he could think better of it.
Pain blossomed under those bone-white fingers, and the sickly-sweet stench of burnt flesh filled the air. Worse still than the blistering pain was the familiar but terrifying pull on Loki's soul, and he thrashed and screamed as panic burst like a supernova behind his eyes.
He had to remember... there was something... something had frightened off the creature last time.
For once, Loki was grateful to be Jotun as he willed a layer of ice to form on his skin. The creature wailed and flew back and away, releasing its hold on Loki, who gasped and crumpled to the floor in a heap of shaking, boneless limbs. He reached for his flagging magic again and sobbed in frustration when he could not organize his dizzied thoughts enough for a teleportation spell.
Loki tried to push himself up, but his arms and legs had forgotten how to work. The Horseman clone hovered at the far edge of the room, but then Doom's boots filled Loki's vision. Loki packed as much venom as he could into one glare as he looked up.
“S-so I'm y-your 'battery', a-am I?” he wheezed through a bruised throat and a jaw too weak to work properly. “A-a-an immortal sorcerer?”
Doom grabbed fistfuls of Loki's tunic and hauled him upright, pressing him back against a wall when the god slumped like a ragdoll. The very air seemed to crackle with energy around Doom. Loki's eyelids drooped and then flickered open.
“I am sorry about this, my dear.”
Loki did not have the energy to scoff. “Victor,” he murmured. His voice sounded far away even to him. He forced his lips up into a lopsided smile as he molded a trembling hand to the cold metal of Doom's mask. “I-I could give you p-power witho-o-out all this. Can't we come to s-some agreement?”
He made sure the curve of his grin was such that Doom would clearly understand his meaning. I suppose I have a thing for men in metal suits, Loki would have said if speaking did not take so much effort.
A metal hand pressed against Loki's cheek in a mockery of affection, and the other splayed across his chest, pinning him to the wall and keeping him upright. “Oh, Loki, Loki,” Doom said softly, sweetly. “What is it you think you have that I could not just take from you?” The hand on Loki's cheek fell to curl about Loki's injured throat and press.
Loki wheezed and clawed at the gauntleted hand, eyes wide and fixed on Doom's, which regarded him coldly and calmly. Black spots encroached on Loki's vision and still Doom squeezed.
As Loki slipped into unconsciousness, faces swam in the periphery of his vision, faces he associated with warmth and safety: his mother, his brother... and Tony.
“Really, Jarvis. How hard is it to trace the only Frost Giant on Earth? A destructive, sorcerous, pigmy Frost Giant at that.” Tony paused to think that over, and his grip tightened against the keyboard. “Wait, he didn't leave Earth, did he?” Oh God, what if he did? Tony wondered if he could convince Thor to let him use the Bifrost.
“Unlikely, sir,” Jarvis replied in that pleasant, patient voice that sounded just a bit condescending today. “But his magic has a distinctive signature, and I was able to trace it until a few hours ago. Then the signal all but disappeared.”
Tony chewed at the end of a pen and stared off into space as he considered, cataloguing every disastrous possibility. “Where was he just before the signal stopped?” he asked.
“Latveria, sir. In the vicinity of one Victor von Doom's castle.”
Tony scowled and cursed under his breath. The last thing he needed was Doom messing with Loki's head.
“Sir?”
Tony brought himself back to the present. “Yeah?”
“I'm picking up on another distinctive energy signature in the same vicinity. It appears to be the Horseman, sir.”
Tony did not like where this was going. He sprang from his chair.
As engrossed as Thor was in watching The Kardashians, he couldn't help but look up when Tony clomped into the room in full armor, his helmet under his arm and a grim look on his face.
“You,” Tony grunted.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. We're going to Latveria.”
A/N: Kudos to those of you who knew why I picked spider lilies as Hela's favorite flower! And the answer is: in Japanese and Chinese mythology, the spider lily is associated with death and the land of the dying. Cool stuff.
Eh, well, anyway. I'm sorry I took so long to post this. It wasn't through lack of interest or inspiration; trust me, if I could spend all day every day writing this stuff, I would. But I'm still getting over a bout of the flu that has left me draaaaained, and I've gotten two more illustration job offers (whoo!).
Also, my Nell, the kitty I've been mentioning who inspired this piece passed away on Christmas Eve. Her liver started failing that morning, and she just pressed herself against me and purred so loudly she made little squeaking noises, which she hasn't done since she was a kitten. At least I got to hold her as she went.
I miss her terribly, but the New Year is all about new beginnings and, as of this week, I am the proud mama of two adorable kittens named Loki and Sigyn (both girls, haaaaa). Unsurprisingly, Loki is already my cat. After spending the day hiding inside my furniture (including the copy machine, and I have no idea how that happened), she spent the night sprawled across my chest with her paw around my neck. Sigyn, on the other hand, has been terrorizing our old, blind dog, trailing after my parents and me, and... trying to jump on my lap while I'm on the toilet. Ow.
tl;dr: YAY KITTIEZ! 8D
wore glasses and sighed dejectedly. As a friend, boyfriend, or whatever, he was crap at relationships.'>Choices
Pepper chewed on the end of her glasses as she regarded Tony over the table, her eyes dark and intense and a small crease forming between her eyebrows. Tony realized that he didn't even know she wore glasses and sighed dejectedly. As a friend, boyfriend, or whatever, he was crap at relationships.
“Are you going to say anything?” he groused after a while. He squirmed in his seat and scratched at the day's worth of stubble sprouting along his jaw.
“Hang on,” Pepper lisped around the stem of her glasses. She twirled them in her fingers. “Still trying to digest all of this.”
Tony rolled his eyes and wondered if he really should have told her. She had said nothing after picking him up - again - after a... disagreement with Loki, had said nothing at the sight of his black eye or the reek of alcohol. But this afternoon, when she had found him still lying in bed and staring at the wall, that was when she had decided to sit him down (after getting him up) and had demanded Story Time.
While poking at the breakfast she had shoved under his nose, Tony had half expected a black cat with green eyes to jump onto the table and wordlessly demand he relinquish his bacon. The thought sent a bittersweet pang through his chest in the vicinity of his arc reactor. He couldn't force any food past the lump in his throat after that.
Pepper had watched and waited, questioned him about last night and about Loki, deflecting his deflections.
Just sleeping off a hang-over, he had told her concerned expression. Why should I care about the God of Assholery?
But she had replied, as calm and blunt as you please: I don't know why, but obviously you do.
So Tony had told her: his long, only half-sober conversation with a strangely insecure Loki, their night together - “Really don't need the sordid details, thank you...” - Tony's misunderstanding and then Loki's misunderstanding of that misunderstanding.
Finally Pepper removed the glasses from between her teeth and set them down on the table with a click that echoed in the tense silence. The chair creaked as she leaned back. “I can't believe I'm saying this,” she huffed, shaking her head at the ceiling, “but I think Loki actually has feelings for you.”
“Feelings,” Tony echoed with a grimace and an eyebrow tilted as if to say oh please.
The crease between Pepper's eyebrows deepened, and she pursed her lips, giving him an unimpressed look. “Don't you think so?” she asked dryly.
“Hell, I don't know!” Tony griped. “Following his moods is like riding a see-saw.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at his now-cold plate of half-eaten eggs.
“This is Loki we're talking about. Stability not included.”
Tony muttered under his breath. All the more reason why it was disastrous for the two of them to be together; Tony wasn't exactly stable himself.
“The thing with Loki,” Pepper said softly, leaning over the table to catch Tony's eye, “is that you can't always trust what he says. The stuff he said to you is confusing and contradictory; he says he doesn't want to see you again and then says something about it not being a one-night stand. So... listen to his actions, not his words.”
Tony frowned. “Like back-handing me into a wall?”
“Like,” Pepper continued, silencing Tony with a look, “sleeping with you and then getting upset when he sees you with another wom- er, someone else.”
Tony's frown deepened, but...
“He wouldn't have reacted that way if he didn't care about you in some capacity,” Pepper said. “Seems to me like he's into you and just doesn't know how to handle it.”
A fraction of tension eased from Tony's shoulders as he mulled this over. And yet.
He doesn't know how to handle it? Then how the Hell should I?
“That or you're overanalyzing this,” Tony muttered, “and he's just screwing with me. In more ways than one.” His lips quirked wryly at the bad pun.
Pepper rolled her eyes. “Would serve you right.”
Tony mustered up the energy to glare. Her smile turned apologetic.
“But what if I'm right?” she prodded gently. “Think about it. You have the rare opportunity to be a positive influence on a super-villain here!”
Tony was still less than thrilled with the term “super-villain” in general, but she had a point. “What are you saying?”
“I'm saying that you need to get off your ass and find him before he does something stupid.”
Loki smiled coyly over the rim of his wineglass, keeping his posture and demeanor calculatedly relaxed and unconcerned even as he catalogued every minute action and reaction from the armor-clad man at the other end of the table. He was achingly curious about the plan Victor kept hinting at, but this was a game of chess, mind to mind, move for move, and Loki knew better than to let all of that curiosity show. So he patiently sat through dinner and smalltalk with his sometime-ally, keeping his mind clear of - tonystark - anything inconveniently distracting. Only after much of his food was gone and his glass half-empty did Loki ask the question that had been at the forefront of his mind all evening.
“So, Victor,” Loki said, setting down his glass with a clink and spinning the stem between his thumb and forefinger, “you mentioned an alternative power-source earlier?”
“Yes,” said Doom, and when he tilted his head just so, the shadows of his cowl fell across his eyes and closed even that tiny window to Loki's scrutiny. “As I said, it is of a nature that should deeply interest you.”
Loki tapped at his lower lip as he considered this. “Magical in nature, then?” he mused.
Doom chuckled, and it echoed strangely from behind his mask. Loki kept his face blank, hating how exposed he felt next to the masked man, every bend of his feature on display for scrutiny and dissection where Doom's was hidden. He thought of Tony then, of his voice, and how the human was honest and expressive enough that Loki could read his moods even behind his metal mask. That thought set an ache in his chest that Loki told himself was festering anger.
“More of a marriage between magic and science, I should think,” Doom answered. “But the fuel itself is, I suppose, magical at its essence.”
Loki allowed his interest to show in the faintest arch of one brow.
Doom folded his hands on the table in front of him and shifted enough for the light to fall back across his eyes, which glinted now with excitement and something... wicked. “A continuous power source,” he said, “which my magic can tap into. A living battery, almost.”
Something about his tone fired off a warning in Loki's mind. The shadows at the periphery of his vision seemed to shift, but when Loki glanced over his shoulder, he saw nothing. Am I being paranoid? he wondered.
No. With Doom, one was never “paranoid”, only over-prepared.
Loki straightened in his seat and turned back to Doom. “Oh?” he prompted. “Do tell.”
“I was actually thinking more in terms of providing a... demonstration.”
Then Loki heard that hiss, that stuttering, percussive hiss he had come to dread, and he realized that Doom had had another chess piece all along. In a blink, he was up and reaching for his magic, but the shadows shifted and enveloped him. Claw-like fingers curled about his throat.
“Victor!” The gasping plea fell from his lips before he could think better of it.
Pain blossomed under those bone-white fingers, and the sickly-sweet stench of burnt flesh filled the air. Worse still than the blistering pain was the familiar but terrifying pull on Loki's soul, and he thrashed and screamed as panic burst like a supernova behind his eyes.
He had to remember... there was something... something had frightened off the creature last time.
For once, Loki was grateful to be Jotun as he willed a layer of ice to form on his skin. The creature wailed and flew back and away, releasing its hold on Loki, who gasped and crumpled to the floor in a heap of shaking, boneless limbs. He reached for his flagging magic again and sobbed in frustration when he could not organize his dizzied thoughts enough for a teleportation spell.
Loki tried to push himself up, but his arms and legs had forgotten how to work. The Horseman clone hovered at the far edge of the room, but then Doom's boots filled Loki's vision. Loki packed as much venom as he could into one glare as he looked up.
“S-so I'm y-your 'battery', a-am I?” he wheezed through a bruised throat and a jaw too weak to work properly. “A-a-an immortal sorcerer?”
Doom grabbed fistfuls of Loki's tunic and hauled him upright, pressing him back against a wall when the god slumped like a ragdoll. The very air seemed to crackle with energy around Doom. Loki's eyelids drooped and then flickered open.
“I am sorry about this, my dear.”
Loki did not have the energy to scoff. “Victor,” he murmured. His voice sounded far away even to him. He forced his lips up into a lopsided smile as he molded a trembling hand to the cold metal of Doom's mask. “I-I could give you p-power witho-o-out all this. Can't we come to s-some agreement?”
He made sure the curve of his grin was such that Doom would clearly understand his meaning. I suppose I have a thing for men in metal suits, Loki would have said if speaking did not take so much effort.
A metal hand pressed against Loki's cheek in a mockery of affection, and the other splayed across his chest, pinning him to the wall and keeping him upright. “Oh, Loki, Loki,” Doom said softly, sweetly. “What is it you think you have that I could not just take from you?” The hand on Loki's cheek fell to curl about Loki's injured throat and press.
Loki wheezed and clawed at the gauntleted hand, eyes wide and fixed on Doom's, which regarded him coldly and calmly. Black spots encroached on Loki's vision and still Doom squeezed.
As Loki slipped into unconsciousness, faces swam in the periphery of his vision, faces he associated with warmth and safety: his mother, his brother... and Tony.
“Really, Jarvis. How hard is it to trace the only Frost Giant on Earth? A destructive, sorcerous, pigmy Frost Giant at that.” Tony paused to think that over, and his grip tightened against the keyboard. “Wait, he didn't leave Earth, did he?” Oh God, what if he did? Tony wondered if he could convince Thor to let him use the Bifrost.
“Unlikely, sir,” Jarvis replied in that pleasant, patient voice that sounded just a bit condescending today. “But his magic has a distinctive signature, and I was able to trace it until a few hours ago. Then the signal all but disappeared.”
Tony chewed at the end of a pen and stared off into space as he considered, cataloguing every disastrous possibility. “Where was he just before the signal stopped?” he asked.
“Latveria, sir. In the vicinity of one Victor von Doom's castle.”
Tony scowled and cursed under his breath. The last thing he needed was Doom messing with Loki's head.
“Sir?”
Tony brought himself back to the present. “Yeah?”
“I'm picking up on another distinctive energy signature in the same vicinity. It appears to be the Horseman, sir.”
Tony did not like where this was going. He sprang from his chair.
As engrossed as Thor was in watching The Kardashians, he couldn't help but look up when Tony clomped into the room in full armor, his helmet under his arm and a grim look on his face.
“You,” Tony grunted.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. We're going to Latveria.”