A big shout out and thank you to my lovely beta glamourraisedfromperdition.
As always, fans. This is for you, Tony and Loki. The rest is stardust.

o0o0o0o0o0o

Tony didn't want to think when he came home alone, the edges of his human compassion raw and bleeding from the dinner. Tired of faking and being someone he's not anymore. He's not been in a very long time. He craves an old song and dance that no longer fits him.

Tossing his suit jacket to the small table off from the elevator, he waits in the darkness for Jarvis to turn on the lights.

"Jarvis?"

Nothingness. It's amazing how silence and darkness can turn a familiar space into a threatening abyss. Lamps turn into the monsters that haunt children's nightmares; a hat on a table turns to a severed head. A macabre picture show put on by an overly creative mind left with a blank canvas of black and shadows.

Humming to himself he tries to calm the race of his heart as it beats not only against his ribs but reactor as well, trying to do the job for the shrapnel as it leaps up for his throat.

Shadows that move and slink in the darkness wrap around him, pressing and clawing.

Backlit against the city lights spread out the window like a thousand shining diamonds against a black cloth, a silhouette moves by his bar. Green eyes shining like flames in the darkness.

"Oh. You." Tony swallows, trying to school his voice into mild humor to hide his inner terror.

The head on proud shoulders dips in acknowledgement silently, the tap of boots against marble floor as the wavering shadows of the room pull back to pool at the approaching feet. The sharp smile is nothing but a Cheshire moon in the thick darkness.

Finding his voice Tony drops his keys onto the table next to his jacket and points to the bar still anchored in the darkness of the room.

"I take it you're here for that drink at last hua?" The head only tips again, toxic smoking green eyes watch him like a spider appreciates a fly caught in its web. Letting it wiggle and bounce in futile attempts of escape before death comes down from above.

Walking across the space he does his best to skirt the inky shadows that still move and writhe on the floor like a thousand crawling snakes.

"For as well as I know this bar, I'd still appreciate a little light." He says, keeping his eyes on the darkness as he comes around the bar. The shadow of an elegant hand rising from the blanket of black, snapping fingers.

"Hua. That's got to be handy in a power outage." Tony tries, blinking back the white spots that dance over his vision. Focusing on the god in front of him.

God in need this time. Those toxic eyes are lacking what ever sliver of sanity held them together once, the seething torment and hate pouring from the ever changing green debts and chilling the room.

"What do you drink?" He asks, turning away from the eyes, eyes that, if he lives through this, will haunt him forever more. Two glasses clinking together as his hands shake.

"What? Nothing? I can guess. Scotch? Who doesn't like scotch." He says with a cool confidence he doesn't feel, grabbing the crystal decanter from the shelf behind him and pouring a short inch only to add more to it on an after thought. He needs more. He defiantly needs more.

He looks up to slide the crystal glass across the bar to find the ghost of a man standing closer. He never heard him move weather it was because his own still pounding heart had drowned out the sound or because the god had moved on a thought alone. Neither answer bodes well for him, sliding like ice down his back as he holds out one of the drinks.

"Are you here to talk or just brood?"

He regrets the words the moment they leave his mouth. Tony spends much time regretting many things, most of all things he says.

Long fingers wrap around his neck and a well placed thumb presses into his windpipe cutting his airflow down to a rasping wheeze as he stumbles back against the shelving. The glass bottles and decanters tingling together as their humble world is disrupted.

"You will listen and listen well now Anthony Stark. I am here to brook a deal unlike any other you've ever known."

Loki's voice is velvet and steel as it sinks into his mind and chokes a wheezing scream from his heart. The grip tightening for a moment. A threat of power; a display that he's not here this time to dice idol banter as those eyes narrow dangerously, dancing something between crystalline blue and forest green in the light of the room.

He buckles down his own fear, balling it into his belly till it sits like a hank of lead that weighs him down. The grip loosens up slowly and the glass from his hand is plucked away in almost a mockingly gentle manner.

"I don't make deals with murderers. You need to be punished for your crimes, locked down in some deep dark, dungeon and never let out."

Loki sneers, throwing the glass to the wall near by and tightening his hold once more. Blocking Tony's air till black spots dance in front of his eyes and he's sure this is death. In the peaceful calmness that comes with his brain shutting down he only hopes that they don't bury him with his father and mother.

"I have been punished. Tortured for crimes that were ill fit upon me, Odin wanted a monster under his thumb and when it lashed out and killed he struck it away in anger. So do not speak to me of punishment. Your mortal mind could not even begin to understand the tortures I have survived to stand here once more."

The voice rifling though his mind is a hard slap that rattles him from near unconsciousness. Fanning an age old fire in his belly as he pushes the god away.

"Fuck that bullshit. You don't get to sing your sad song to me you little bastard. I've been there. I've been tortured and you don't get to use that word when in reference to what ever the hell piss poor punishment your father heaped upon your head." He seethes, pushing away from the shelves and against the god. His fists fast and hard as it connects with Loki's jaw gaining him the breathing room he needs.

The god doesn't stumble but turns away for a moment. Self absorbed in a pity party, so what if big daddy Odin banished him like he did Thor. Who gives a fuck? That's not torture, not the kind that Tony's danced the steps of.

What ever toxic words are going to leave Tony's mouth die on his tongue in a wheezed breath as he's grabbed once more. Loki pulling at the leather collar of his own jacket around his neck, wrenching the material down with bared teeth. The thin jagged line of the scar at the hallow of the gods throat makes Tony's knees weak.

A million years ago he'd sat in a cave and held his own tongue between his teeth till it bleed as they tortured him. Their haunting taunts that if he screamed too much they'd do him the ill favor of removing his vocal cords.

"You... screamed... too... much." Tony chokes out, his dying breaths coming shallow.

"Yes." Loki's voice echoes in his mind long after his hand leaves Tony's throat. Slipping away and down to his side where it clenches and unclenches. Seeming to ignore Tony as he gags miserably onto the floor.

The combination of old memories and new horrors an arsenic mix to his belly leaving him heaving as his head spins.

If it takes him an hour to move up from the floor and his mess there the god says nothing, not that he could if he wanted to. He'd long moved away from standing over Tony to watch the slumbering city out the window. The lines of red and white lights down below moving much like blood in veins. The heartbeat of the world in Technicolor.

"What did they do? I want to know what they did." His voice is a ruin from throwing up and being choked as he drags his carcass from the floor. Stumbling across the room to stand by Loki's side at the window.

"I want to know what the fuck they did." He demands, watching Loki nod once before reaching out again, the grip against his neck isn't strangling this time. A soothing thumb brushing over the small hairs on the back of his neck as his eyes lift to meet the ever changing ones of the god.

"Tell me."

"I will show you." Loki's voice comes once more, pinging between Tony's ears before setting somewhere in his heart as the world around him turns black.

It is there in the darkness not so much unlike a cave in Afghanistan that Tony remembers why he'd had to bite so hard to hold back his screams.

He doesn't this time.

This time he screams for himself and for the deity. His voice echoing though both Loki's vivid memories that play though his head and the penthouse around them.

When his own voice is nearly gone and his ears are ringing from the sound of it. When his eyes are wet and his mouth tastes of bile and blood he looks to the god. Having to lick his lips and keep his buckling knees locked before he falls.

Those long fingered hands hold his jaw gently, dead eyes locked onto his.

"Wh-what do you want?"

"Revenge. Justice."

Tony knows that, he can understand that feeling that will drive you to do anything at all costs to get back at the ones who hurt you the most.

Nodding his head slowly he's rewarded with a broken smile that doesn't reach haunted eyes.

"How?"

"The weapon you used against the portal. I want many of them."

Tony finds himself nodding once more as Loki's thumb brushes the tears from his cheeks.

He can be the Merchant of Death once more. One last dance. One last song.