A/N:
1) Sincere thanks for reviews, encouragement, and great ideas goes to: cara-tanaka, Maia2, I'vebeenLOKI'Dyetagain, PlushChrome, Mystic777, Kerttu, Anna the Lynx, Sadie Aurora Night, NoToLogins, and VictoriaSherrat. As usual, I'll respond via PM to anyone I can.
Also, thanks for all the faves, alerts, etc, it is very encouraging!
2) Belatedly (for most of them I know), Happy Holidays!
3) I know the waiting has been just insane. Real life sucks! I just hope it hasn't bent my muse out of shape too much, and I am deeply sorry for the long wait.
[Rant and some probably very useful advice moved to my profile. Who needs my baggage here?]
4) On a lighter note, I've been having plot bunnies for a fic that focuses on JARVIS's and Tony's relationship through the various films (a great idea suggested to me by Wolfy in his/her review for "BitterSweet Lies") but one of my great weaknesses is titles. I'm both fussy and uncreative in that regard which is a bad combination. Any ideas? I can't promise to use a particular title but would be grateful for any suggestions nontheless!
5) This chapter draws alot on suggestions made by many of you, especially I'vebeenLOKI'Dyetagain, so thanks a million!
6) Dear NoToLogins, Thank you for the many reviews. Just love the screenname since you don't log in :-) That was me for a really long time...
And Dear Victoria Sherrat, Thank you for your review! This site deletes emails, but I did get your review nontheless, and yes I'm not abandoning the fic, however long it takes me to update :-)
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Tony had for the most part expected Thor's reaction, the roar of pained rage – because he's hacked SHIELD's records and knows that the Asgardian is remarkably unrepressed – the furious rounding on him demanding an explanation which had Tony for a fraction of a second wondering if he was about to have his head ripped off, the devastation with which he'd hovered over his brother afraid to touch for fear of hurting him more.
He expected the storm that is raging over his tower where Thor had gone, all but rushing through him in an effort to get outside so he could freely express his fury. And despite all that, he isn't content to just wait for this to pass because Loki's temperature is still getting colder with each passing second, what is visible of his usually pale skin beneath the bandages is deathly blue, and Tony doesn't have the time to wait.
When he gets out on the roof, after having JARVIS quickly check that their resident Thunder god hadn't fried the medical equipment - even sans hammer he puts off serious ESD - the wind is howling, forming a miniature hurricane around Thor who is now holding Mjolnir but hanging at his side, rather than raised to call lightning from the raging clouds above.
Stepping closer, barely able to stand in the force of the wind, Tony calls out, not especially caring that it is a bad time to be barking up the wrong tree:
"Snap out of it Point Break, I didn't call you to throw a tantrum."
He'd hoped to break the Thunderer out of his misery, even if it meant pissing him off, but his effort fails flatly – he doubts he simply wasn't heard even in the deafening wind, because hell, Thor's a god after all – and so, Tony finds himself climbing to the loftiest perch of his tower, blown by the wind and slipping in the torrential rain to get Thor's attention directly.
When he finally does reach his destination, even in the pouring rain that has both of them soaked to the bone, he can see that Thor is crying, and his chest constricts, but even then the Thunderer doesn't respond to him, instead raising his arm suddenly, calling a steady torrent of lightning from the sky with Mjolnir as he cries out with wounded rage that reminds Tony all too bitterly of Loki:
"How could you have let this happen to your son! How could you not have told me?"
Barely standing on a slippery ledge in freezing rain and winds too strong to stand in and surrounded by a full scale electrical storm which has put his suit seriously on the fritz if the numerous system malfunction alarms sounding in his helmet are anything to go by, Tony has never been more aware of his mortality, of his utter fragility before the being mad with grief before him, but strangely he cares even less about the fact than the times before, instead stepping even closer to the epicenter of the storm as he places a metal clad hand on the Asgardian's shoulder insisting more than requesting:
"Help me help him."
That finally gets through to Thor, because the lightning stops abruptly, hammer falling to be held loosely at his side as the Thunderer seems worn out in the aftermath of his rage, and Tony steers him back inside.
"He's turning blue and supportive intervention isn't helping. His temperature is dropping. What do you know about this?"
Tony doesn't waste time with pleasantries, or to close his faceplate long enough to interact with the diagnostics running on his armor . He needs information now, because it may already be too late, and almost wants to scream at the moody and not particularly helpful response:
"That is natural."
"The hell it isn't." Tony spits back, too frustrated for levity: "I've seen you run cold, but not like this. He's freezing."
This time Thor gives him a little more, with surprising reluctance:
"As I said, Man of Iron, it is natural for him. Loki is not of Asgard, but rather of Jotunheim. What you are seeing is his natural form. His customary appearance is a glamour, a spell to hide his form. As long as you keep him safe, my brother can heal himself."
"And his body temperature?", Tony demands.
Again, Thor's reply is oddly pained and reluctant:
"Jotuns are cold. Your ancestors called them Frost Giants. Their touch can freeze the life from a mortal."
As if on cue, JARVIS silently brings up a holographic projection of Loki's latest scan, overlaying one of the first, and now that he isn't distracted – desperate if he feels like being brutally honest - by what had seemed to be a fatal plunge in temperature, Tony can appreciate in a different light the staggering amount of healing that had already taken place. Loki will survive this. Tony decides that much right there and then. Thor had been confident of that much
Tony breathes a sigh of relief, slumping down against the wall across from where Loki lies deeply unconscious as the crippling worry drains out of him letting him register how battered he actually is. On the other hand well, shit, Thor had said that his brother was adopted, but that typically didn't mean from a whole other planet, and Tony cannot help the fissure of panic that rises up within him remembering how he had assumed that the brothers' physiology was similar when treating Loki.
In any case it seems that Tony's assumption hadn't in fact caused any harm, but there is something else bothering Tony now about what he has just heard: It sounded like a warning.
Amusingly, last time Loki had tried to kill him – or more precisely pretended to do so – or the times before that were in actual combat, Loki hadn't tried to turn him into the Iron-Popsicle, but he cannot help but think from the tone of Thor's voice that the ability was something to be frowned upon, and considering that apparently various superpowers were not that unusual on Asgard, he cannot help the sickening suspicion that there is a bitter story to be told.
It also is a story that Thor doesn't seem eager to share, so Tony decides that small nudges are best. He already is going to have Loki royally pissed at him when he finds that Thor was indeed informed of his condition. Tony doesn't need Thor out to barbecue him too, though in the back of his mind, he starts drafting schematics for yet another round of armor upgrades.
"Loki never told me he was from Jotunheim. He knows, right?"
Tony's pretty certain that Loki knows – in retrospect it explains a lot of Loki's behavior – and omitting telling him was an understatement. Loki had hidden his past fiercely, guarding it like a wounded limb. Still, no need to deny himself an explanation, as according to JARVIS's extrapolations, Loki is apparently going to be unconscious for a long time.
Eventually the Thunderer sighs:
"He wouldn't have told anyone. On our world, the Jotuns are looked down upon as … uncivilized… monsters even. And why would he talk to you? Why did he come to you?"
That last statement is spoken with more than a little wounded bitterness, because Loki had come to Tony, not his brother, so Tony omits an explanation regarding the strange bond that had started to form between him and Loki, instead sighing:
"We have spoken more than might be expected, and my tower is well defended. What about within the family Loki grew up in? How did they speak of his kind?"
The answer is only too easy to guess, too obvious really from Loki's boundless bitterness, but Tony asks for it anyway, not surprised by the pained weight of Thor's answer which sounds like a confession:
"No better than the rest of Asgard. In our youth I'd always boast of how I'd slay all the Jotuns with my bare hands."
In response perhaps to Tony's simmering anger, which he isn't exactly trying to hide, Thor adds quickly:
"Neither of us knew then of his heritage, and our father never meant for him to know. I would that he never had learned the truth."
And Tony had thought Howard Stark severely lacked parenting skills. Everything comes into sickening clarity for Tony now as he recollects Thor once telling him while they rested after a particularly vicious battle with Loki, that the fracturing of his brother's mind was something that had happened suddenly, because before Loki had limited his activities to small pranks and admitting that while he envied Thor, he still loved him. The change from that reluctant painful kinship that Thor only realized in retrospect was poisoned by bitterness to actual enmity had been a sudden one. The change from isolation to madness had been a sudden one, and it had taken place while Thor was on Earth, based on the Asgardian's description.
Of course, Tony's been down a similar road, to a point. He knows too well what it was like growing up in another's shadow, and the fact that Cap wasn't a present living sibling hadn't helped. He knows that Loki was already unhappy before, hence his isolation and his pranks – it couldn't have been easy for a physically small but intellectually gifted child to grow up with a healthy sense of self esteem in a culture with so much emphasis on physical prowess, and by his own admission, Thor had been utterly blind to Loki's pain till it blew up in his face – but there had been a breaking point, and Tony would bet one of his suits of armor that he knows what it is:
"He found out while you were on Earth."
Thor confirms that much and then goes on to explain, grief showing through as he speaks of the brother he lost in Loki, but Tony barely hears him, because Loki had probably always thought of himself as everyone's last choice, but what broke him was the belief that he was a monster, that he was not capable of being loved – or of loving, most likely – and so his life was a lie.
Had he thought himself a weapon then too? That the only reason they'd take in a monster child was to make use of him? Or had he simply become resigned to the only fate he felt was left to him?
In any case, Tony knows with more raw painful certainty than ever before that there is a lot more in Loki that needs to heal beside his body, especially now. And he also knows why Loki is so terrified of letting anyone in, because that's what it is, for all that Loki would die before admitting it: fear. It was fear that had driven Loki to attack him that night on the roof, fear that had driven every drop of pain Loki had caused him – fear of the vulnerability which results from being understood.
Tony gets it because he doesn't like baring his soul to people. He's gradually learning to with Pepper but JARVIS, DUM-E and U are the only ones he's ever been able to trust with all that he is, down to his fears and the old scars which never really heal, and he built them. For most of his life he has been pushing people away, and it had gotten worse after Obie's betrayal, but even then, he'd still had JARVIS and his Bots.
He had that one solace, that refuge.
Loki needs someone too, and at some level, Tony always knew that, but now that the truth is raw and painful and bitterly clear, Tony knows that however much Loki fights him, he cannot let Loki isolate himself, because alone, he'll collapse like a burnt out star under its own weight, and Tony isn't about to just let that happen any more than he'll just roll over for Thanos.
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