cuttingremark | For starkingenuity

Opening and closing his mouth, Tony leans back on both hands as Loki's wings make an appearance. And in shades of gold that match his Mark III armor. "I'm sorry, you grew wings?!"

He and Loki are close, but there's a great deal about the other that Tony just hasn't had the time to figure out yet. Like his flying cloak ownership. And his shapeshifting abilities.

As Loki moves out of sight, Tony sighs and bends over the ruined armor. "Time to make the Mark IV," he mutters to himself. "Still with me, J?" No answer. He'll have to wait until he's at a server to uplink again. He really does need to make smaller devices to carry J with him.

And to give to Loki. Then they'll always be connected. He really likes that thought.

Just as Loki returns, a new quinjet will just be touching down with Rogers riding the end of the opened bird. Tony tilts his head at him. "Took you long enough."

"It is mother's. Or was, I suppose. I believe it is a bonding gift." He assumes. It's not like her giving it to him was a super formal thing. Though he would like to know how she gained access to his storage.

Loki gathers several samples of varying size and materials, trying to not make it immediately apparent that any pieces are missing. He returns after having safely stowed them in his pocket dimension just as the Captain jumps out of the quinjet.

"Sorry," Rogers says approaching Stark to offer him a hand up. "Wasn't expecting an attack so soon after the invasion." He looks around at the shredded armor pieces scatters on the ground and raises an eyebrow. "Are the both of you okay?"

Loki keeps the cloak on, just in case, and comes to stand just behind Tony.

"As well as can be expected," the god says.

Though a regular person might not notice, Tony does lean somewhat back towards Loki, turning his shoulders to acknowledge his presence. Steve does notice, just like he notices almost everything, but he keeps his mouth shut. This part isn't his business. Does he trust Loki? No. He's been involved in helping resettle people, tending to the injured, but he is still grateful for the intel he'd brought. It makes Steve more accepting than tolerant.

"We're all right. Armor's shot," Tony says. He's already mostly pulled himself together and while his shirt is ripped, there's enough fabric to cover his chest and the reactor. "Got any of those sweet SHIELD hoodies in there?"

"Matter of fact, we do," Natasha calls from the ramp, tossing a white and black shirt in Tony's direction. It's much too big, and Steve frowns visibly enough for the assassin to smirk. "It's all right, handsome. We'll get you another. Can we give you boys a lift?"

Tony rolls up the arms of the sweatshirt and gestures for Steve to grab the armor. "Bring that with you? Great, thanks," he says, and moves with Loki towards the rescuing quinjet.

Loki thought he would hate seeing Tony in the oversized sweater, the human looks so nice in the tailored clothes he normally sports. He is, as usual, wrong. Not only is he attractive in the hooide that's at least twice his size, it makes Loki want to bundle him up in his arms and whisk him away somewhere safe.

No, no. None of that. Not right now.

With his magic, he could help Steve pick up the armor. Could. Instead he follows Tony into the quinjet, leaving the super soldier to his work. No need to flaunt his abilities to people he doesn't entirely trust.

"Do we know who might be attacking Stark?" He asks to the room in general. He tries to be loud enough to be heard by Rogers, but honestly if anyone had the information it would be the Widow.

“Some idea,” is the redhead’s response, eyes shifting over Loki. The lack of trust is mutual on their parts and she should be forgiven for fantasizing about snapping his neck on the odd occasion. Arms cross loosely over her chest as Tony tries to play off how stiff and pained he is. “The signature given off by your reactor is unique, and you haven’t really tried to keep it private.”

Which is true. Anyone with a bit of tech can scan the frequency Tony gives off when he’s nearby.

“We also caught some movement out of the air as we flew in.” That would be Rogers, putting down the bulk of the Iron Man armor carefully by the back netting. “They jammed our scanners as soon as we got close.”

“Not great but it gives us some sense of where they’re headed. We have STRIKE in position. It looks like they’re headed for the tunnels under Baltimore.”

Loki would very much like to go with this STRIKE and meet the people who did this, but that would mean leaving Tony's side. Even without the distance restriction on them, that is the last thing Loki wants to do at the moment.

"I do hope there is something left when they are done. I would very much like to have a chat with those responsible."

Both Natasha and Steve give Loki a look. He's really trying not to sound like a villain, but they hurt his bonded, only so much restraint can be expected.

"We'll get word as soon as the team has them," Natasha says before turning back to the cockpit. "In the mean time, lets get back to HQ. There's some alien tech for you two to look at."

Tony knows why they’re not being sent to help. Loki’s magic is strong and while Iron Man might be out for the count, he’s notoriously resourceful. The problem comes with the whole huge population of civilians thing, and honestly, Tony doesn’t have his heart in it for a fight right now.

He’s still got those memories floating around his head and they’re bright enough for him not to have grasped just yet that it’s what it must have been like for Loki for that year. Falling through nothing for two minutes had nearly destroyed him.

When it does become clear, they’re headed towards the elevators at the DC office for SHIELD and Tony reaches out to grasp at Loki’s hand. He doesn’t let go either. It’s not just one squeeze. Tony radiates worry and lingering fear and sorrow for Loki to have experienced what he did.

While the bond transfers the emotions Tony is feeling, it doesn't transfer thoughts. Unsure why Tony is suddenly feeling this maelstrom of negative emotions, Loki gives his hand a squeeze and holds on to it for as long as Tony wants, wary looks from SHIELD agents be damned.

Their hands stay interlocked as they land and as they depart the quinjet. Steve and Natasha give it a small glance, but otherwise dutifully ignore the contact as disembark first.

Loki looks down at their hands, then back at Tony. "Are you sure?"

“Later,” is all Tony says, though that doesn’t mean he makes a move to take his hand back. During the entire briefing, and then debriefing, Tony holds onto Loki’s hand as if his life depends upon it. It’s noted by everyone in the room, including Fury and whoever the blond is that Fury reports to. Tony doesn’t notice his name. He doesn’t care that much to deal with more than one person at a time.

The whole of it comes and goes and then Tony and Loki by default are shown to the debris that had been collected from the dead Chitauri that had been left on this side of the portal, their connection to their ships severed.

Once they’re alone, Tony picks through the piles as if it’s just junk. He’d only just released Loki’s hand. His thoughts are elsewhere.

“Hey. Not to rehash bad memories. But I think when I died to saw what you did when you fell from the Bifrost.” He’s under no assumption that he hadn’t died back there, though it’s not quite accurate.

Fortunatly for them both, Loki has centuries of experience pretending to pay attention in long, boring meetings. Especially long boring meetings with a bunch of people who probably hate him. He answers all questions flawlessly, but without giving too much information away. It is the first time SHIELD truly sees the diplomatic son of Odin in action, in his element.

Something about how some of the agents act concerns him. He can't quite put a finger on it, but some of them seem off in a way the average agent doesn't. Perhaps he will inquire into this later, but right now his bonded is in distress and they are finally alone. Well, as alone as one can be at SHIELD HQ when one of you attempted to take over the planet not even a month ago.

Loki doesn't have to ask Tony to explain, the human starts as soon as the door closes. It makes sense: his bonded was in a state of unconsciousness, his body falling and his mind now with access to the sensations and emotions of what plummeting into the void felt like.

"I am sorry you had to experience that," he says. "It is not something I want to repeat, nor something I wish on most. Least of all you."

He frowns, picking up Tony's hand again. "Is that what has been bothering you today? My fall?"

Had anyone else asked this, Tony would have played the entire thing off. He would have rolled his eyes, changed the subject, gotten to work. It’s hard to hide from your feelings when someone else is feeling the whispering edges of them too, though, and when you feel theirs in return. Tony squares his jaw and pulls their once again joined hands up to the bump of the reactor in his chest, just faintly visible beneath the white oversized sweatshirt.

“I’ve been good about not believing in anything. You die and that’s it. There’s nothing. And that was a comfort, you know?” His eyes turn away, downward. He’s not ashamed, though he does feel blindsided by the reality of it. “I felt myself go crazy. You saved me in seconds but it felt like years. And you... I understand why all of that happened. Maybe a little pettiness with Thor and anger over the lies but I would have done anything anyone asked if I was stuck there that long.”

"It felt like eternity." Talking with Thor, piecing together timelines, he could only have been in the void for a month at best. But that was a month with nothing but his thoughts and anger. Without contact or food. Without air.

He pulls Tony into a tight hug if for no other reason to stop his mind from drifting back to that abyss.

"I am glad you understand, but I wish you never experienced anything like that time."

Standing beside Captain America and Black Widow, Fury frowns as they watch the feed on the large screens in front of them. Tony’s arms move around Loki’s narrow waist, hands smoothing out over the back of his suit and cloak. “I’ll be damned.”

This isn’t the Tony Stark he nor Widow have come to know. This vulnerable man, clinging to an enemy, looks almost human.

“This is going to be a problem. Get Rumlow in here as soon as he gets back from the tunnel crawl.” STRIKE hasn’t found anyone yet. It’s worrying.

Tony, though, soaks in the comfort. “Don’t hold this against me,” he tells Loki, “but I’m starting to see the appeal of this soulmate shit.”

Loki lets out a soft chuckle. "Had we met earlier, I suspect it would have started much better for the both of us."

He pulls back, giving Tony a smile before looking directly up into one of the cameras in the corner.

"If you're quite done spying on our private moment," he says to the device and the man he assumes is watching from the other side. "I believe you had technology you needed our expertise on?"

For a moment, Tony thinks about fighting Loki for a longer embrace but that would be a childish and needy and he’s already been vulnerable enough today. Besides, looking at Loki’s chaoticly charming face has a proven track record of calming him down. So, without too much of a fuss, Tony let’s himself be pushed back—

Only to have Loki glance at once of the less obvious cameras in the room.

Shit.

His hands drop immediately and he slips his hands into his pockets. Rookie mistake. “I’d hate to think I was almost killed for nothing,” Tony chips in.

“It’s on its way,” Steve’s voice comes through. He feels bad for the spying but Tony’s relationship with Loki is... absolutely deeper than the last time he’d been with them.

"Hopefully just the items and not, say, a team prepared to take us into custody." Loki doesn't know if it's his general distrust of the organization or of Fury in general, but something feels off. "Because, I would remind the Director, that such an action against a member of the royal family, my bonded included, would been seen as a declaration of war against Asgard."

Diplomatic immunity isn't a concept on Asgard. They don't really need it, after all. Just a promise of what would happen if any of their delegations were harmed.

"He's got a point," Natasha says. Fury glares at her.

"As long as you hold up your end of the bargain, you have nothing to worry about from SHIELD," Steve says into the intercom.

"I trust you believe that, Captain." Loki walks over, placing a hand on the wall to get a better sense of what is outside. Two humans, likely guards. "But we both know there are less honorable men than you running this particular circus."

“Hey now,” Fury grunts. “We would have just picked you both up if this was a set up. It’s not. You’re genuinely here to help out. But we also genuinely don’t trust you.”

Tony glances up at Loki. “I mean, you did try to take over Earth,” he says with a grin. “And they know that they can’t hold us either with that sweet Asgardian teleporting magic.” His eyes slide up to yet another hidden camera. “Right?”

Steve’s hands rest on his hips as he laughs. “Checks and balances. Natasha and I are just waiting for STRIKE to report. We’ll come and help you when they do.”

“How many degrees in physics and mechanics do you have, Cap?” Tony asks. There’s silence for a moment.

“Point taken. But I can bend things?”

Loki lets out a laugh.

"Bending things could be useful." Not that he can't bend things, but he's still keeping all of his abilities as close to his chest as possible.

Switching off the All Speak, he turns to Tony and mutters in Asgardian "Friends are good to have, especially important ones." Obviously if SHIELD really wanted them, nothing would stop them, but Loki feels if they can win over Captain America, the paragon of virtue and dependability, everything else might just fall into place.

Tony makes a small hand gesture for Loki to repeat the last few words, and more slowly, but he gets it on the second go around. His own reply is a little awkward and poorly conjugated but he’s only been at this language for two weeks. That’s an incredibly quick time to pick it up.

“People weirdly acting.” Loki isn’t the only one whose noticed. “All right,” and back to English. “Let’s get cracking.”

The pieces of debris dragged in are very similar to the missiles that were sent at them. Tony frowns.

Loki lets out a laugh and turns to the camera again.

"He said your eyepatch stinks." He winks at Tony, trying to show that he understands and agrees.

"Uh huh." Fury's voice says, clearly not believing them. The fact that he answered seems to indicate that the Captain and the Widow had departed to meet STRIKE. "What language was that, by the way? We don't seem to have it in our database."

"Unsurprising. It is Asgardian." If Loki's trying to not sound smug, it isn't working. "Stark decided to take it up when my mother called us to Asgard weeks ago." He sounds proud of Tony, like a parent bragging about their child's accomplishments.

"It's not some mind language, if that's what you're worried about," Tony says. "But I'm a private person and you haven't given me a choice."

Tony can't even get the words out before Fury starts to laugh, almost as if that was the most amusing thing he'd ever heard. Honestly, that's pretty fair. Tony hasn't really been the sort of person to stay quiet in his shell. His first act as Iron Man, after saving the day of course, was to announce himself as Iron Man.

He has no intention of being anything else.

Banter aside, they get to work on the tech they've found. It's pretty standard fair, but still leaps and bounds beyond Earth technology. Luckily, none of it seems to have a power source. Tony, still the cutting edge of that sort of thing, can;t help but feel better at that. They really don't need legions of cobbled Chitauri tech starting new wars.

They swiftly determine the recovered technology is harmless without a sufficient power source, which Tony would be the sole owner of. Even the strange alloy it is made of is almost impossible to smelt without temperatures rivaling that of Earth's sun. Loki is sure this isn't the only things that were recovered from the battle, but he's also sure that few other people would be able to do anything with it even if it were useful.

Partway through sorting through the hunks of metal Steve and Natasha join them. Steve is true to his word and bends a few things by way of a stress test, while Natasha mostly sits on a nearby crate and heckles. The air in the room is almost light when the door opens again and a stern looking man wearing tacticle gear and carrying several concealed weapons walks in.

"Rumlow." Steve walks over to the man, offering him a hand to shake. Rumlow does, but doesn't take his eyes off Loki.

"Just came down to make sure no one else got brainwashed," the agent says pointedly.

“Pretty sure that was a glowy staff thing. Which Thor brought back to you guys so...” Tony isn’t impressed and doesn’t spend another second looking at Brock Rumlow. It’s not important to him to get to know all of these people. At the start of this Boy Band, he hadn’t wanted to get to know anyone and sure, he is desperate for friendship in ways he refuses to admit, it he has enough between Banner and Loki.

The rest are fine, it’s just that he knows they’re not really thrilled with him or his fate chosen life partner.

There’s a really bad vibe coming off of Rumlow, though. It’s more than just ex military turned SHIELD agent. There’s something deeper. He stinks of secrets.

Though Tony doesn't know it yet, Loki couldn't agree more about the man. He sees the way Rumlow's face changes ever so slightly when Steve turns away from him, like his agreeable disposition masks some kind of resentment to the Captain in particular. With Loki as the main focus of everyone's observations, he doubts even Natasha sees she change.

Interesting. Perhaps they will dig into that later.

For now they have a task and one highly trained agent who really wants to kill him and an assassins who's still thinking about it. Not the worst conditions he's worked under.

"Captian, would you hand me that broken power unit?" He gestures to what appears to be a broken blue glass crystal. Steve makes to move to do so, but is cut off by Rumlow stepping in front of him to grab the crystal first. For a moment Loki wonders is the man is going to withhold it from him, but then he steps over and drops it on the table by Loki.

"...My thanks."

The agent stays uncomfortably close to Loki as he examines it, scratching the occasional string of runes in his notebook. Loki, well use to Thor trying to bug him during his studies, dutifully ignores the man.

"This would be the unit that supplied power to the blasters the Chitahuri wielded. I assume you were unable to collect any still in one piece?"

Natasha shakes her head. "Not a lot made it through the portal and most of them dropped from the sky when it closed."

"Pity. They draw their power from the flagship of their fleet. Had we a whole one, we may be able to trace the connection back and get a vague idea of where they are now."

“What if we back trace it?” Tony asks, running short fingernails over the smooth pieces of debris to find a slotted opening or some way to get at the inner workings of the weapon. He’s genuinely surprised to find a push plate, considering it somewhat low tech for the rest of what he’s seen, but the wiring is utterly foreign.

He’s immediately excited, the hair on the back of his neck raised in genuine pleasure.

“I’m going to need a stand,” he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket so JARVIS can emit a 3D Projection around the room for him to manipulate. “Unless one of you wants to hold this for me the entire time? No? And I need the room cleared. And I need it electronic free. You’ll have to watch through the door. Anything else will interfere with frequencies and ruin what I’m doing.”

No one really seems that apt to want to leave them to it, so Tony gives Steve a little glance and the blond is left sighing and acting like a cattle herder.

Tony owes him and he knows it. He’ll make good with Cap one day.

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Gosh this is one of those days :(

Same here :(

Re: Same here :(

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