Sorry for the delay on this, real life decided to be bitchy. Hopefully this chapter was worth the wait!

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Tony already decided a little while ago that he was not crazy about Loki. The current situation wasn't giving him any reason to change his mind on that assessment. The dark-haired prick had already cuffed and gagged him, smacked him around, and now was forcing him to walk through what was, as much as Tony could tell, the inside of a black hole. So yeah, Loki? Definitely not on the Christmas card list this year. That was a sure thing.

Not just using the green metal as a gag, either. When Loki had ordered Tony to follow him, Tony had refused, of course. He might be a prisoner someplace that gave him no real hope of any kind of rescue, but that didn't mean he was just going to roll over and give up. Loki was going to regret the instant that he decided Tony Stark was easy prey, damnit.

Tony had snarled as he planted his ass on the ground stubbornly, refusing to move and fully planning to force Loki to carry him. That was the only way Tony was about to go anywhere with the Trickster, he certainly wasn't about to go of his own volition. But then a weird smile had curled across the leaner man's features, and he idly twitched his fingers in Tony's direction, that smile widening as Tony had suddenly felt a fierce pull at his face, as though the flesh itself might come undone. He'd had no option but to scramble to his feet to stop the strange green metal from tearing his jaw off, and if he fell further than a few feet away from Loki, the pull started again.

He was still rather furious, and if not for the fact that he knew he'd be stopped before he could even do so much as throw a punch, he'd have thrown himself at Loki already. But as it was, just for the sake of staying intact, and thanks to the magical bonds, he had no other option beyond quietly trailing behind the demigod and entertaining himself with thoughts of committing unspeakable acts of violence.

There certainly wasn't any scenery to distract himself with. When he thought of this as the inside of a black hole, that was being overly descriptive. This place was a void...even though he was walking, even though he felt the soles of his feet making contact with something each time they came down, the whole place seemed to be literally nothingness. As much as he was enjoying his fantasies of running Loki through with his own ridiculous helmet, a part of his mind that was always dedicated to problem solving was currently mulling this over. A place couldn't be nothingness...it just couldn't, it was impossible. That would make it a vacuum and, while possibly Loki's weird Asgardian magic mojo could keep him going, Tony knew at least his own insides would have boiled out through his eye sockets already. And since they hadn't, then this wasn't a vacuum. Which meant something had to be here. Even though he couldn't detect anything.

Well, that was easy enough to explain, clearly Loki was manipulating him somehow. Physics were what physics were after all, this couldn't be a place full of nothing and not be a vacuum. That just didn't happen after all, not without all kinds of bad things that a human being, even one like him, shouldn't be able to walk through without a hell of a lot of interesting side effects. So there was stuff here, he just couldn't see it. Clearly.

Why exactly Loki didn't want him seeing stuff was another question to be pondered altogether, because as much as he was certain the answer was just "the giant bastard is a psychopath," he didn't want to accept so simplistic an explanation. It was that logical fallacy thing about events having to balance. No one wanted to believe a lone nut with a rifle could kill a president because those things were so vastly unequal from each other that a person's brain literally just flipped the scale over and rejected the idea as patently absurd. The thought that he'd been kidnapped by Loki to be brought here simply because the guy was insane, and not for anything else, was so depressing and infuriating that he just couldn't even deal with it. So there had to be something else to it, ergo, there was a reason why Loki was blocking his line of sight, ergo, he was not walking through an alien geometry that would have broken the mind of anyone who actually tried to comprehend it. Things might be alien, but they were relatively normal, so there was no reason to panic about what might actually be hiding out there where he couldn't see it. No reason at all.

Loki would stop this seemingly worthless marching any time, and he'd do what he'd been doing all this time, start going on about his glorious destiny or his tidings of happy death or whatever it was the guy'd been going on about, he'd tell Tony what was going on, and while Tony would be no less fucked for the knowledge, at least he'd know exactly how he was fucked, which was a slight comfort.

But then Tony started to realize the void wasn't completely empty. He didn't exactly see anything, but he was slowly starting to become aware of...something...out there. He wasn't sure if it was an animal of some kind, or some sort of wind, but it seemed as though there was movement in the blackness. Not quite a rustling of feathers, not quite a brushing of fur or a sliding of skin, not quite...well, anything. He thought he detected movement out of the corners of his eyes, or possibly a tickle or a crawl at the back of his neck or along his arm, and would turn his head to look or flinch towards the sensation to knock it away...but if anything, there was just a ghost of an afterimage, just the faintest hint that there was something that had just been there, close, not quite enough to feel or touch, but moving and looking and examining him, shifting about just enough to avoid his direct gaze, but too curious or perhaps too interested to stay away.

"It would be best to keep your gaze forward, Stark," Loki abruptly said, and the voice after so long walking in complete silence nearly caused Tony to jump straight out of his own skin. "Despite how you might think, we are in fact not alone in this place, and while I can keep us safe from the things that slide through the abyss, I cannot guarantee that your feeble Midgardian mind could survive the strain of attempting to perceive what those things really are."

Oh God, really? Tony rolled his eyes somewhat. Of course. I'm being walked through Cthulhu's realm and I should not try to see the things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Praise the Dreaded Old Ones.

Of course, even to someone who was as well-versed in denial as Tony Stark, that self-induced sarcasm rang a little hollow. Sure, cosmic horror, at least to him, was nothing more than some stupid literary lark that had more than overstayed it's welcome, and the likes of H.P. Lovecraft had never frightened him because real life was screwed up enough without having to torture himself with the thought of giant monsters of unfathomable existence...but that was before he'd spent a day confronting alien gods from another dimension, fighting weird cyborg monster things pouring through a rip in the sky, and doing this all alongside a fellow scientist with an alterego that made the laws of conservation of energy his bitch.

Short version, within a split second of rolling his eyes at the way Loki made it sound like Yog-Sothoth was shredding around out there, his brain helpfully reminded him that it was entirely possible something like that really could be out there.

If he suddenly found himself walking a little closer behind Loki, that had nothing to do with anything, of course. Even less to do with the fact that he had come to realize that Loki was really walking rather quickly through this space, and had his eyes locked forward, and this was a guy who was strong enough to throw Tony through safety glass with one hand hard enough to shatter it to pieces and had magic good enough to fool his brother who'd known him his entire life. So Tony decided maybe it was a good idea to follow his lead until they were somewhere a little bit less horrible.

He told himself it would have been absurd for Loki to kidnap him just to feed him to whatever monsters were here. If Loki wanted him dead, he'd be dead, the guy had been pissed enough at the start that he'd have had a very easy time just snapping Tony's neck in his hands. No no, Loki wanted him for something. No reason to get scared, illogical to get scared. He was needed, he wasn't going to be ripped to pieces by a creature with seven mouths all set inside each other or something like that.

Although that might be quicker.

"Ah, and here we are," Loki spoke up from ahead of him again, and despite the fact that there was absolutely no reason for it, suddenly Tony found himself standing in a place that, rather than being pure pitch darkness, was now solid, shining, nearly blinding white. He hadn't gone through a doorway, or fallen through a portal or a rabbit-hole, or even blinked. One instant, dark, within that same instant, light. Tony looked around at that, turning a full circle, stepping backwards a couple of steps, trying to return to the darkness or find the doorway or at least figure out what, but the vast eternity had seemingly just changed color on him for no apparent reason.

What. The. Fuck.

Don't ask me, man. I'm every bit as lost on this one as you are.

This can't be happening. None of this makes sense, nothing makes any goddamned sense. Science is an actual thing...an actual thing that actually works!

Go ahead and tell Loki that, because he seems pretty unconcerned with science right now.

Tony turned around to look back at Loki, who was still standing with his back to his victim, seemingly surveying the space. "I realize this is likely not an accommodation that you would find to your taste, Stark, but consider yourself lucky to have it. You will at least be safe from the things which exist in the void."

The giant man turned back to him, that same vaguely insane smile fixed on his face, eyes slightly unfocused and all the more frightening for that, because that implied that he was using all this weird freaky magic shit while distracted, or at the very least without concentrating, which meant that Tony very very much did not want to see what it would be like if he were. But even as he had that thought, Loki's gaze turned squarely onto him, and though it was technically physically impossible for Tony's heart to skip beats with the reactor functioning, he guessed that the organ desperately wanted to.

"This being said...you do still have something to fear, Stark. I cannot touch your heart, but I can see it, and you cannot carry out the duty that fate has chosen for you as you stand before me now. There is a power inside you that I have great need of, for both of our sakes."

Tony did blink that time, and that was the guess he was going with for how Loki had gone from being several steps away to right in front of him and grabbing at the green bands on his wrists before Tony even had time to flinch, and god damn but he was tired of the things around him moving at speeds that should have shattered his ear drums with sonic booms but didn't because fuck physics obviously. Still, as soon as he had processed this, he was letting out a muffled scream and trying to pull away, kicking frantically at shins and yanking hard at hands and trying to pull or twist or do anything to get away, but Loki's grip didn't so much as stutter, and the kicks to his legs might as well have been kitten swipes for all they were reacted to.

"There it is, that pride, that need to be free, that desperate yearning for control and domination of your own life." Loki pulled Tony closer with deliberate slowness, feeling the struggles against every inch of movement. "Yet all this is an illusion, the idea that you have ever had any control over your own destiny, especially now with all that you have allowed inside of you. Even your armor, your pride and joy, was only born of a longing for control, for a cling at taking back the freedom you felt denied to you. Everything you do is only the flailing efforts of a child trying to prove himself an adult, never once realizing that true maturity, true joy, will only ever be found in giving in to those long denied inner longings to be ruled."

This guy was absolutely crackers. Not even the good crackers, he was dried up dollar store saltines three weeks past their expiration date. If Tony had been able to form any more of a functioning thought beyond you're crazy get away from me he might have tried to tell Loki that, but with his mouth still locked closed, all he could do was let out muffled screams of rage-fear-panic and keep trying to get away...

"Your previous entrapments granted you far too much freedom, Anthony Edward Stark," Loki growled as pleasantly as an insane power-mad demigod could. "Gave you too much, granted you an excuse to try and claim more and more. I know exactly how to deal with this, exactly how to deal with you. A prison of a design you are intimately familiar with."

Tony had the good sense to be afraid even though he didn't understand that at all. But Loki's grip tightened suddenly on his arms, to the point that he felt it even through the metal, and then he let go, stepping back quickly. Tony was fast to pull away as well, backing up, but quickly becoming aware that the pressure on his arms hadn't decreased...it actually felt as though it were spreading.

He looked to try and figure out what the hell was happening, and his eyes widened when he saw the gold-tipped gauntlets were in motion...no. Not in motion. Growing. The long sleeves of the shirt he was wearing were being eaten by the metal, taken over by it, the feel of fabric giving way to that of cool metal inching it's way up his skin. He couldn't help the panicked reaction, reaching up to try and grab at it and claw it away, push it off of him, something, but with each centimeter of growth, the metal melded itself against his skin, becoming as snug and as close fitting as the gauntlets had been to start.

Oh God, no. No, no. No no no no no no NO NO NO! Tony kept wildly flailing at the metal as it had crept past his elbows, up onto his shoulders, steadily devouring his clothes as it went. Now and again the green metal left a ring of gold...just above and below his elbows, at his shoulders, and now it...oh God it's coming up my neck get it off get it off get it off!

"Do not bother with your struggles, Stark," Loki intoned with amusement, watching the man fight desperately to try and stop the metal as it began to enrobe his torso as well as crawling along his throat, slithering to join with the gag and wrapping partially up the back of his head. "Though you may refuse to accept it at first, this will finally grant you the ultimate freedom of pure subjugation."

Tony couldn't even listen to him, too busy flailing and pawing at the green patterns shattering their way randomly down his body, to his legs, still leaving gold rings at points...his chest, his waist, twice around each thigh...despite trying to dig his fingers into it, to pull his clothing free or rip it away before it could all be overtaken, but it was inexorable, just taking everything down to his shoes and transforming them into more of the pattered green and gold metal. He was enveloped from his feet to the base of his skull, the last bit to be taken was his hands...leaving him unable to do anything but watch as his fingers were swallowed up as well, though they and his palms were completely encased in the gold rings rather than green.

He had been terrified for a second that whatever mystic voodoo was in this metal that was causing it to eat his clothes might try to eat his reactor as well, especially when a gold circle appeared around the glowing blue light, but aside from his panicked breathing from the desperate exertion, everything in his chest still seemed to be functioning normally. In fact, despite the lack of any of his gadgets or rockets or other additions, this whole get-up looked remarkably similar to one of his suits...except for the fact that he knew how to get his suits off. This? Tony had no clue if this stuff even came off at all.

Also, he could still talk in his suits, as opposed to this, with the metal mask still flush to his face no matter how much he tried to pry any of it free. If he could talk, he'd have liked to ask Loki all sorts of pertinent questions about why he was wearing this now, what the hell was wrong with Loki, did he need more drugs or less drugs because clearly he was in an altered state, but all he could really manage with his lips sealed were faint grunts and groans.

And then, naturally, it got worse. Tony couldn't stop a scream again when his body was suddenly slammed into a ramrod-straight posture, back straightened, arms at his sides, nearly like a statue of a man, and no matter how hard he writhed, he couldn't move so much as one little finger. He didn't stop trying, even as his head was tilted back slightly, aimed so that he would be looking right into Loki's eyes as the demigod walked closer, sneering down at him.

"I have matters with which I must now attend, Stark...but you are safe here, no one can reach you but I. And so long as your new..." Here he chuckled, reaching out to trace the edge of the metal covering Tony's mouth, despite the quickened breathing and that Tony squeezed his eyes closed in anticipation of further blows like before. "...your new armor is intact, here you shall remain, unchanging, unmoving, until such time as I return to grant you back a measure of control. In the while till, take the opportunity to ponder whether or not your beloved sense of freedom is worth the fight."

He flicked his finger across the metal gag, leaving Tony standing there frozen, unable to do much more than move his eyes, not even to incline his head from it's position as Loki strode away across the white barrens. Tony screamed after him, even as it was muffled still, thrashing and kicking and fighting with all his power and unable to do anything but howl uselessly when Loki, just as quickly and unexplainably as anything else that had happened before, vanished from his sight, leaving him completely isolated and alone, locked up tight with nothing and no one but the blank and his own mind.

Stop it, don't, don't leave me here! he wanted to cry, but even if his pride would have allowed him to stoop to begging like that, it wouldn't have mattered. Not a single word could escape him, not a motion or a sound beyond the ragged, hyperventilating breaths getting through his nose.

He spent several minutes, or at least what felt like several minutes, in what would have been wild, contorting seizures, bucking and pushing and flailing to the full capability of his strength, but the green and gold metal held as firm as a clamp, absolutely nothing coming of his furious efforts but running out of breath and feeling sweat coming from his forehead into his eyes. He moaned in frustration when some dripped into his eyes, unable to rub them to try and help the burn that came from it.

He tried thinking of something, eyes darting around for anything, any minute detail or the slightest crack in the illusion or the smallest sign of anything he could use, but even on that, finally Tony had to admit defeat, sagging in his full-bodied cage. He was stuck and there wasn't a goddamn thing he could do about it but wait to see if Loki came back...or die of thirst, whichever happened first.

At the moment, Tony honestly couldn't decide which outcome he was hoping for.