A/N: This is the end, my friends. Enjoy.

16. "Dust devil swept you away; whirling, playful, dancing about you. What's left of you is ash and urn and this silent horizon."

Thanos had not, as Loki might have expected, come through the tear.

Quite the contrary: he had remained behind in the relative safety of his sanctuary.

Perhaps he intended to descend on Earth to claim victory once the battle was well over, or perhaps he intended to remain out of reach in case something went amiss.

A wise choice, but...

"I must admit," Loki remarks as he enters Thanos's command room, "I'm disappointed. I would have expected a strong leader like you to be out at the head of the charge, as it were, not hiding back in the barracks. I hadn't realized you were a coward."

Thanos himself, massive hands casped behind his back, is standing before a screen on which an image of Earth and his advancing army has been projected. On hearing Loki's voice, he turns, gaslight eyes narrowing, a smug, malevolent grin stretching his his mouth. "Godling," he says, sounding both neither surprised nor troubled. "So you have returned again. You truly are a fool."

"I am that, yes," Loki acknowledges, mouth quirking. "A fooled fool, no less." He eases further into the room, noting the Other's shadowy presence at the far side, but otherwise paying no mind to his surroundings. He pauses near a window, leans sideways against it. "I see you decided to make your move rather sooner than you told me."

"So I did." Thanos is all gloating malevolence.

"Tell me, was that in response to my coming to see you earlier?"

"Is that what you really want to know? Or would you rather know whether I planned to use you at all?"

"Oh, I believe you've made your answer to that question quite clear." Loki waves that aside, clasps his hands together behind him, takes another step into the black chamber. He is still quite a ways out of Thanos's reach, and decides, for the moment, to remain there. "No," he says, "I am truly curious as to why you rushed ahead as quickly as you did. A feat, incidentally, that I find most impressive." He has the luxury of admitting that, now. "The scope and size of your army, all that discipline and cohesion, it truly is a thing of beauty. Whether I warned them or not, the humans never stood a chance. I see that now. Still..."

"Had you not come and told me you'd divulged my plans, I might have waited a day. Perhaps. It truly was of no consequence. I always meant to go when my army was ready."

"Do you not care that your sorcerer has, yet again, torn holes between dimensions?" Loki asks. "The walls have already begun to disintegrate. Much longer and they will begin to collapse in on themselves"

Thanos's grin curls, revealing even more teeth. "Lies," he says. "My sorcerer told me – swore under the most perfect agony – that it wasn't true. That it was something you fabricated to save your own skin. It is impossible for a single portal to destroy the entire universe."

"And that is why you sent him back out out," Loki muses. "Fair enough. He's wrong about that, by the way, but I suppose he felt he had to say anything to stop the 'perfect agony.' That is the one downfall with torture." He glances at Thanos's monitor, on which which is showing images of a long row of ships in the Earth sky. "You don't seem surprised to see me."

"You are a fool, godling," Thanos says again, "and a predictable one at that. Of course I expected to see you here once you realized what I'd done. You're here to confront me, perhaps even to threaten me." A quiet chuckle. "Your biggest and last mistake. If you had any inkling what lies in wait for you below..."

Loki gathers his powers to him, lets the Eye's sweet power fill him, but does not strike out, not just yet. "And what would that be?" he asks instead, keeping his tone one of bored indifference.

He could, he supposes, simply seal the compartment now and have done with it, but if he's honest with himself, he's quite enjoying this.

"Agony the likes of which you have never known," Thanos replies with his unwary madman's grin. "It will make what I put my sorcerer through seem like mere child's play. As much as it takes, for as long as it takes, until you learn the true meaning of respect."

"Mm, I see." Loki looks up as if he's considering that for a moment, and then shakes his head. "I must admit, that doesn't sound terribly appealing to me."

"Then you should not have come here," Thanos says.

That is all the warning Loki has, but this time he is prepared for what's coming.

When the guards come, and they most assuredly do, and quite a lot fo them, Loki uses the Eye's power to create a shield around himself, a dense, impenetrable bubble that deflects the guards' shots away from him. Those shots, those blood red energy darts, he now knows, were what had seared through him like fire when he'd been on the roof.

Mephisto had knocked him down, and one, or perhaps several, of the soldiers had begun to shoot him while he was off his feet.

It is an experience has no desire to repeat.

It is an experience, however, he does not mind inflicting on those who dared attempt to inflict on him.

He raises a hand – an unrushed, languid gesture – and gathers the incoming darts to him through his shield. When, after a moment, he feels he has enough, he simply opens his hand and shoots them back.

Every one of the three or so dozen soldiers in the room falls over dead.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Other emerge from the shadows, hand raised and glowing blue with magical energy.

Loki flicks a casual hand his way, lashing out with no more effort than he would use to flick away an annoying insect, and watches with great satisfaction as the Other flies backward into the wall. He crashes into it hard enough to make the room vibrate, hard enough to crack his helmet, hard enough to shatter his bones, hard enough that when he lands he does not move.

"Well," Loki says lightly as he returns his attention to Thanos, "that was rather enjoyable." With a gesture, he closes the command room's door and seals it shut. "But enough of the opening act. Let us get down our featured performance, shall we?" He dismisses his shield. "My apologies, incidentally; I may have neglected to mention that I neutralized your sorcerer and retook the Eye."

Saying this, he lifts his cape enough to reveal the makeshift sling in which he had placed the Eye. It is a comforting weight at his hip.

On seeing this, Thanos's grin flees, leaving behind narrowed eyes and a stony, disquieted expression. He glances over at his monitor and back again. "My portals are still open," he says, voice a troubled rumble.

"I had rather more pressing matters to attend," Loki replies. "You and I did need to have a conversation about the true meaning of respect. It simply could not wait."

An invisible hand closes around his throat just then, lifts him off his feet.

It chokes the very breath out of him, squeezing and squeezing as if to make his head burst.

That fast, Thanos is in Loki's face: all burning eyes and mouth curled into a furious snarl and the dull gleam of sharp teeth. "You dare," he seethes. "You dare speak to me that way?"

The grip tightens around Loki's throat, but he does not panic.

Deep in the back of his mind, a small voice whispers, and he listens to it.

He does what it tells him.

A mere moment later, the pressure eases around his throat and he drops back down to the floor. He lands in an easy crouch, takes a breath, and grins up.

"Oh, yes," he says, and if his voice is still a shade rough, more's the better, "I dare. I most certainly dare. All this time, you thought you'd beaten me. Do you not see? You lost the moment you chose to let me walk away. That was your mistake. Your biggest and last. So, yes, I dare."

Thanos, with his unnerving speed, lashes out with a massive fist, a blow that aims to decapitate.

Loki is still crouched when it comes, and that, along with sheer reflex, save him: he dives forward and rolls over his shoulder.

He leaps to his feet and spins in time to see Thanos gathering himself for a charge. He feels those fingers scrabbling at his throat again, feels something trying to push him over.

He is good, Loki has time to think, quite good. He's faster than he has any right to be, and even stronger than he looks. Even at full magical strength and fully-rested, Loki doubts he could beat Thanos one-on-one, not on his own.

With help, however...

He simply builds another shield around himself, a small energy wall, one that repels the scrabbling fingers and the hand trying to take him off his feet.

When Thanos charges, he runs headfirst into the barrier.

He staggers backward, stunned.

Loki hits him square in the chest with a blast of pure energy: hard enough to disable, but not hard enough to kill him.

Thanos flies backward and lands in a mountainous heap near his monitor.

For good measure, Loki hits him again.

And again.

Hard enough to hurt, to really hurt, but not hard enough to kill.

Satisfied that he has made his point, he releases the shield – it takes a fair bit of energy to maintain that, and even the Eye has its limits – and crosses the room.

He finds as he crouches beside the prone form, that Thanos is still quite conscious.

That great, furious fire is still burning in his eyes.

Good.

Thanos makes a feeble attempt to lift his hands. Loki pins him in place with light magical bonds.

"Kill me, then, godling," Thanos rasps. "End this."

"Oh, I think not, my friend," Loki replies, sitting back on his haunches. "No, I won't be sending you into your lady's embrace anytime soon. In fact, you'll be coming with me. I want you to be my witness."

"To what?"

"You'll see, soon enough," Loki assures him. "I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. But," he adds, smiling, "there's no real hurry. We have plenty of time, you and I, before we go, and I have a good deal to teach you about the meaning of respect. And I can assure you, this will hurt.

"And so we're clear," he continues, "my name is not 'godling.'

"My name is Loki."

xXx

On a rooftop back on Earth, down beneath a shining white scar in the dark skin of the sky, Tony Stark blinks in confusion.

"Loki?" he calls. "Where the hell are you?"

The only sounds he hears are the eletric snaps from the tears' edges, the rumbling sounds from the buildings all around, the constant thunder of explosions, and the roars from the – what the fuck is that?! – things coming out of the tear.

There are things coming out of the tear.

Things that are not ships. Things that have heads. Things that have wings. Things that have giant fucking tails with giant fucking spikes on them. Things that are huge and ungainly and should not, under any laws of physics whatsoever, be able to fly. But somehow still are!

And Loki, that grinning son-of-a-bitch, is gone.

He got his goddamn toy and disappeared, probably like he meant to all along.

One of the giant flying things – big and orange and vaguely dragon-like – makes a pass right over Tony's head. Tony bites off a curse and scrambles to get his helmet back on.

The goddamn thing hisses and spits at him. Whatever that spit hits, it dissolves. Some kind of acid, probably, Tony thinks as he slaps his faceplate down and speeds away.

Which is just great.

Because they need this on top of everything else.

Fortunately for him, the orange thing is big but it's also slow, so he's able to lose it when he threads his way between a couple of narrow buildings.

And Jesus Christ, yeah, okay now it's chaos.

All that discipline and order, all those neat lines, it's all been erased, like some kid has gone through and kicked it all over. It's all been lost in the war going on all around him: as military fighter planes tangle with the alien ships in the air, as the massive army below destroys buildings and tussles with the National Guard and other troops, as large vehicles fire off equally large weapons everywhere.

And on top of that, the things that flew out of the tear have jumped into the mix and are taking out both alien and human fighters.

Half the city is on fire, oppressive heat boiling up from all over the ground, and the smoke is so noxious-thick that Tony knows he'd be having trouble breathing if not for the suits heavy-duty air filters. How anybody can even see what they're doing out there, he has no idea.

"Fuck," he mutters, toggling his 'comm. "Cap? You there?"

"Yeah, Tony," Cap replies. He sounds strained, tired. "What's going on?"

Tony decides not to pussyfoot around. "So Loki screwed us over. We got that Eye thing away from that Mephisto guy, and then Loki took off. I don't know where he went, but I think that means we're on our own here. Oh, and it looks like there are some big flying things coming through the tear now, too. I don't know if they're part of the army or not, but, hey, surprise."

"He just left?" Cap blurts.

"Yeah." Nearby, there's a big explosion of some kind, a big fireball flaring orange a ways below as a couple of ships take each other out. Tony's hand's a fist at his side.

He'd actually believed that fucking bastard when he'd said he was going to fix this.

"Great," Cap finally says. "Well, since we're putting all our cards on the table, we've lost contact with Director Fury. S.H.I.E.L.D. has, too. I talked to one of their agents a few minutes ago. She said she was talking to him, and there was an explosion of some kind. They haven't heard from him since."

"Oh, that's terrific," Tony mutters. "All right, well, I'm kind of at loose ends here – no point hanging around the tear if Loki's not here – so do you want me to go see if I can find him, or do you want me to come to you?"

He might not like Fury, might not even trust the guy, but that doesn't mean he likes the idea of anything actually happening to the guy, especially when he's on their side.

But Cap says, "We need you here, Tony. We're down by the Brooklyn Bridge. Starting to get pretty overrun."

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

xXx

JARVIS informs Tony that the suit is at seventy-four percent power, which is good, but most of his ammo is either on its way to being depleted or already gone: he'd used a whole bunch when he'd gone after the soldiers who'd turned Loki into swiss cheese.

(And what a horrorshow that had been, the sight of Loki lying there against the low parapet wall, bleeding from what had to be five dozen holes in him, skin shredded away, bones visible, organs oozing out. It's kind of like a bad song: the more he tries not to think about it, the more he ends up thinking about it.)

Fucking ungrateful bastard.

So, Tony's ammo situation isn't so hot, but his suit has a fair bit of juice in it.

It will, he guesses, have to be enough.

No time to worry about it now.

xXx

For the next little while, his whole world is reduced to a series of small skirmishes.

The aliens soldiers are well-trained fighters, unquestionably, strong and quick and agile, but they have no more armor than their human counterparts. They are no less vulnerable than any human. Their weapons are a little better, but not much.

Their real strength is in their sheer number.

And they sure as hell keep Tony busy.

"Seventy percent power, sir."

He teams with Hulk for a while to help deal with a couple of big flame-throwing tank-like weapons: Tony drawing their fire so Hulk is able to get in there and smash them to bits.

Hulk gets burned a couple times on his leg, deep enough to cause him to lose maybe a quarter-step on his jump and enough to give him a noticeable limp.

"Sixty-five percent power, sir."

He and Tasha clear out a group of soldiers who've pinned a National Guard platoon in an alleyway. The platoon, in turn, helps them get what civilians they can clear of a building that's about to collapse.

Tasha gets tripped up by a falling chunk of concrete and narrowly avoids getting her head smashed in. Tony takes a couple of those stinging fucking energy darts off his shoulder. They don't penetrate his armor, but for about twenty minutes he can't really move his arm much.

"Sixty percent power, sir."

He leads some flying soldiers on a breathless, merry chase through buildings and smoke to give Cap time to deal with a handful of soldiers who were trying to take control of the few tanks the US Army had been able to provide on such short notice.

Cap gets pulled down at one point and pummeled by a couple of the alien soldiers until one of the Army guys puts a bullet through the alien's head. Tony gets hit with another volley of energy bolts, this time in his leg.

"Fifty-five percent power, sir."

Tony and Hulk all come together to tackle one of the big flying things that comes to drop a load of acid on them. While Tony once again plays decoy, Hulk ends up on its back and manages to rip its head off.

One of its claws tears into Hulk's burned leg, drawing four long, deep claw marks down his thigh.

And so on.

xXx

They win a few skirmishes, but it in the grand scheme of things, even without the tear making everything shake and shudder, their efforts don't amount to much.

It's like building sandcastles at the water's edge during high tide: every time they make progress, to build a wall or get a structure together, the waves come in and wash it all out.

Those waves, they keep coming.

They lose the bridge when an alien ship blows it apart. It's full of people trying to escape when that happens, and most of those people never have a chance.

The ground hasn't stopped shaking, but, for the moment, it doesn't appear the shaking is getting any worse. It's still enough to send debris everywhere and make fighting on the ground a constant challenge.

Smoke and dust makes breathing a chore – so much that even the alien army seems to be slowed by it. It makes seeing a chore, too. Tony has to keep his night vision on, which doesn't help a lot, but it, along with his suit's scanners, at least keeps him from being surprised by anything coming out of the dark.

It's a deep, smothering dark, closed-in and hot.

The rumbling hasn't gotten much worse – thank God – but it hasn't stopped.

Civilian casualties mount by the hundred as buildings collapse and the air becomes too thick to breathe and the alien soldiers abandon any pretense at disciplined killings and start killing indiscriminately.

Military casualties mount by the dozen.

Which is another thing: Tony can't prove it, but given the relative scarcity of National Guard troops and air support, he has a feeling somebody has already declared New York City a lost cause. Yeah, there are military planes flying overhead, and there are troops on the ground, but there aren't many of either, and there's a crying lack of military machinery to be had, too.

Jesus, there are cops – good old NYPD officers – on the ground who have more armor and better gear.

Tony, disgusted and furious, doesn't even know what to make of that.

But he keeps it to himself, and, like the cops and soldiers and the rest of the Avengers, he keeps fighting.

What else is he going to do?

xXx

The Avengers end up abandoning one hot zone for another, this along the southern edge of the city, where the air is at least marginally clearer and the fires aren't quite as intense.

All four of them – Hulk, Tasha, Cap, and Tony – have paused in a vacant parking lot to gather themselves and to take a collective breather before heading off into the next onslaught.

They've been at this for two, maybe three hours, but it feels like it's been days.

They're grim and quiet, nobody really saying anything, everybody hunched over and breathing hard. They're all bleeding from some minor wound or another: Cap's chin is cut open, his suit has a half-dozen bloody holes in it, and his shield is dinged all to hell; Tasha's suit is ripped wide open along her left arm, and there's blood all over; Hulk's got a couple of weeping holes in his arm and another in his shoulder, and there's blood all down the side of his leg from those long, angry-looking gashes; Tony's leg will barely support his weight.

No one wants to say it, of course, but Tony can see it on everybody's faces: that grim tightness, clenched jaws, gray faces, hunched shoulders.

They've all taken some pretty heavy damage, they're getting tired, and they can't hold up forever.

Without some major help, they're not going to make it.

xXx

Which is the point at which Thor marches up with a hundred warriors.

xXx

Cap sounds like a kid who's just woken up Christmas morning to discover everything he's ever wanted under his tree when he walks up to Thor and says, "Thor! You made it, buddy!" His eyes are bright behind his mask and his shoulders, which just moments before were slumped, have squared themselves right back up.

Thor, tall and straight-backed and every inch the warrior in his armor and helmet, grins. "Of course, my friend! I would not abandon you in your time of need! I came as soon as I was able."

"With reinforcements," Tasha says, and even she looks like she wants to crack a smile as she looks at the ten lines of ten warriors all standing in the middle of the empty parking lot in their pristine, bright armor. "It's good to see you."

Thor nods at her. "You as well," he says. "I brought what I could. I hope it will be enough."

"Every little bit helps," Steve says.

Even Hulk, leaning against a parked truck, grunts in what sounds like agreement.

Tony, however, can't help noticing that all Thor brought with him is warriors.

He is careful not to show it, but he finds himself fighting disappointed: he'd sort of hoped Thor would bring back somebody from Asgard who knew how to deal with a tear in the dimensional wall.

Surely somebody up there had to know.

But maybe not.

Beggars, he supposes, can't be choosers, and some help is better than no help at all.

xXx

Tony brings Thor up to speed on the whole situation.

Thor's grin dims when Tony gets to the part about Loki pulling a Houdini with the Eye.

Still, once Tony has finished, Thor squares his shoulders and asks what they're going to do.

Tony looks at Steve who shakes his head and says, "Well, last time I talked to anybody at S.H.I.E.L.D., they said the objective was containment. So I guess we try to keep as many of them in the city as we can."

"They're not gonna nuke again are they?" Tony asks.

"Not that I know of."

"Just checking," Tony says, but he pauses. "Anything from Fury?"

Steve, his blue eyes like a couple of stormy lakes, just shakes his head.

xXx

The one-hundred-plus-five draw a line in the ever-shaking sand, and when the aliens come, they do everything in their combined power to hold it.

Thor's warriors are a godsend.

They're as well-trained as any soldiers Tony has seen, and they fight like Thor does: full-out, like there's no holding back, like they're at their happiest when they're hacking and bashing.

Thor's a dervish with his hammer, and the alien soldiers really aren't any match for him.

He's in his element, swinging away at group after group of aliens, hammer a blur, body in constant motion.

It gives all of them a boost.

Hulk grins as he smashes away; Tasha moves with supple fluid grace to blindside and cut down groups of soldiers in their tracks; Cap swings his shield like it weighs nothing; Tony darts and dives through the crowds like his beat up suit doesn't weight a thing, drawing fire away and playing decoy.

All they need is Clint there, Tony thinks at some point, and this would be just like old times.

For a while, at least, the Avengers and Thor's army manage to drive back the enemy.

For a while.
xXx

Tony's gone off with Hulk and Tasha to round up some aliens flying on their one-manned hover vehicles when things slip ninety degrees to one side, the way the quinjet had right before it crashed.

xXx

It starts with a screech overhead, and Tony, in the middle of of a breathless dive onto one of the black-clad alien riders, nearly getting knocked into a broken building.

One of the big uglies from the tear – this one gray and scaly and some kind of bizarre cross between a antelope, a snake, and a falcon – swoops down out of nowhere and whaps Tony with its tail, sending him careening off to one side. After flailing a little, he manages to fire off his repulsors enough to right himself.

The flying thing takes off after the alien soldiers, so Tony flies off to look for Tasha and Hulk.

He turns, squinting through the smoky haze, and finally finds them back behind him a block or so.

He's gotten maybe a quarter of the way back to them when he hears Tasha scream, "Hulk!"

As Tony darts forward he sees Hulk collapse on the street, shrinking back into Bruce as he hits the pavement. And Tony's maybe a third of the way there when Tasha leaps over a downed soldier and fights her way through a couple more, all flying feet and furious fists. She breaks through and scrambles to Bruce's side.

"They're human!" she yells over the 'comm. "The soldiers who just took him down! They're human! They just shot him with something." She crouches down beside him. "Looks like a tranquilizer dart."

Tony, still a few hundred feet away, can only watch, helpless, as her hand flies to the side of her neck.

Without another word, she collapses across Bruce's chest.

Tony charges down to help, and as he does he sees what looks like a half dozen men dressed in black hovering near her and Bruce.

Men.

Not aliens.

He never makes to her, though, because a swarm of soldiers on their one-manned fighters – ones he never even saw coming – crashes into him. The impact sends him flying off backward. Flipping head over heels, he struggles to reorient himself again, stomach churning the whole way. He bounces off a jagged wall and careens off sideways, but doing so at least slows his head over heels spin enough that he's able to get himself back under control.

He dives low to avoid an oncoming fighter. "Cap!" he calls out, barreling sideways and then back up. "Thor! Bruce and Tasha are down! I can't get to 'em – got a situation on my hands here. We're a couple blocks west of you. Can either of you make it?"

"I'll try, Tony, but I have a situation of my own here," Cap replies, his voice tight.

"As do we," Thor says, and he sounds just as strained and distracted as the captain. "But we will be there as soon as we can."

Tony shoots the gap between a couple of the flying soldiers, just missing getting caught up in their energy weapons. He grunts in satisfaction when they collide and explode mid-air, their flaming fireball falling onto the street below and taking out even more of them. "They were human," he says. "I saw them, too. Looked like our guys in black from the attack yesterday."

Yesterday, Jesus. How is that even possible?

If either Steve or Thor has a reply, Tony loses it as he dive-rolls between a couple more fighters.

He's not so lucky this time, though: before the one crashes into the other, he takes a handful of shots off his legs and back. The shots don't penetrate the suit, but they dent it in, and it hurts like crazy, especially the one right over his kidney.

"We still okay, JARVIS?" he asks.

"No major damage, sir," JARVIS reports. "Power level is at thirty-eight percent. At your current usage rate, I estimate another fifty-seven minutes before you're down to emergency power."

"Hey, do me a favor and prep the Mark VII, would you? Just in case I need to make a quick change."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that won't be possible."

"Why not?" Tony, darting down under the last fighter, blinks as realization slams into him with the force of a wrecking ball. "The tower?"

"Destroyed, sir, eight minutes ago."

"Son of a bitch," Tony curses. "What about the mansion?"

"It is still standing, but it has no power."

"Then how are you...? Oh." Malibu. A couple more bullets bite into his shoulder, and he curses. "Let me know when I get down to ten percent power, okay? Otherwise, I don't want to know."

"Yes, sir."

Tony dives through the flaming window of a building and out the other side, knifing hard to his right to avoid running into the building across from it. His tail, the last of the alien fliers, isn't fast enough and explodes against the brick.

As he turns to head back to where he'd left Tasha and Bruce, something bubbles up through the numb exhaustion: a creeper of grief.

His tower is gone. All his suits, his cars, his – well, everything that was there. It's all gone.

And he wasn't even there.

xXx

Tasha and Bruce aren't where Tony left them. Save a few fallen alien soldiers and a couple of human ones, there is no one on the street at all when Tony touches down.

"Cap? Thor?" he calls over the 'comm. "Did you guys by chance come by and get Bruce and Tasha?"

"No, sorry," Cap replies through a heavy sigh. "They really piled on me."

"And us as well," Thor booms. He never has caught the hang of speaking normally over the 'comms. "We could not get away."

"Are they not there?" Cap asks, his voice sliding up half an octave.

"No," Tony says. "No, they're gone."

Like everything else today – like Cecil, like Pepper, like Loki, like his fucking tower – Bruce and Tasha are gone.

Grief like a stone wedged between Tony's heart and his arc reactor. Standing alone in the middle of a trembling, dead street, he closes his eyes, and lowers his head.

Hears Captain America say, "Oh, hell."

xXx

As soon as Thor and Cap are able to break away from their fights, they join Tony on the street. Like grim bloodhounds, they three of them fan out to hunt for some indication where Tasha and Bruce might have gone.

They don't find anything, though.

It's like Bruce and Tasha were never there.

xXx

Tony, limping and exhausted and frustrated and numb all the way through, has just turned to say something to Steve about maybe heading back to meet up with Thor's warriors when there is a massive boom overhead.

The ground heaves beneath them all hard enough to throw them off their feet.

xXx

When Tony manages to stand back up, he sees that the tear has almost doubled in size.

Where before he'd only been able to see just an edge of the tear, he can now see at least a third of it, a harsh white light cutting through the haze. They're close enough that he can even see these long whip-like things waving from the tear's ragged edges.

Looks like all kinds of things – living and non-living – are blowing through it, caught in a driving, howling wind.

The ground continues to heave and moan.

Tony, feeling like he's on the back of a pissed off bucking bull, slides his mask up and glances over at Steve and Thor. "That can't be good."

Like anything about this damn day has been.

And, seriously, fuck Loki.

Steve, flailing his arms and shield for balance, turns a pale, grim face up to the tear. Says, quietly, "What do we do, Tony? I don't – I can't... I don't know. Nothing we did here – it didn't even matter. We lost Bruce and Tasha, and now this. How do we fight something like this?" His overlarge, wounded eyes find Thor. "You brought a hundred soldiers. You, with all your godly powers, all your might, all your magic – and that's the best you could do? How can Loki be the only person in the whole universe who knows how to stop these things? How you not have anybody else up there in Asgard who knows how to deal with this?"

Tony, wincing, finds himself wishing like hell he'd spoken up earlier. Truth is, Thor's warriors, good as they are, really haven't been much help, not in any way that matters.

Thor's eyes track upward to the tear. "I never even asked," he says softly. "It never occurred to me."

"How could it not have occurred to you? You had to know-!"

"Steve." Tony cuts him off. He lays a hand on Cap's shoulder, and he can't tell if it's shaking because the ground's shaking or because Cap is. "Hey. Don't."

"I am sorry, my friend," Thor says.

"It's not your fault," Tony tells him.

"It is my fault," Thor says. All around him the ground rumbles as if it is nodding in agreement. "I was thinking only about fighting, about war. I did not even think-"

"Hey!" Tony yells. "Seriously. That's enough. It doesn't matter now."

Cap sets his shield down and swipes his mask off. "There has to be something we can do." He turns a frightened, desperate look on Thor. "Everything is going to be wiped out, Thor. Do you understand? Everything. If there's any chance you could get back to Asgard and find somebody who knows how to stop this, then you should go do it."

"That won't be necessary," a quietly amused voice says from the darkness. "Your somebody has found you."

A tall, slender figure wearing armor and a horned helmet emerges out of the haze.

"Loki?" Thor asks. A tentative question.

"Loki," Tony growls. A curse.

Loki, smiling benignly from beneath an ash-covered tree, pauses near them and says, "So we meet again."

He lifts a hand.

Tony feels the air snap-crackling around him in what's becoming a familiar way, and the empty street around him disappears.

xXx

An eyeblink later, he finds himself on a bright-lit rooftop – that rooftop – the one he'd flown off of forever ago after Loki pulled his disappearing act.

Overhead, that massive white scar, bright as the sun, stretches across the sky like it's trying to split it open. Up this close, the tendrils, which are more like long threads that have come unraveled from the tear's shifting, ragged edges, whip and slash mindlessly through the air.

Rocks and debris and flying animals and things Tony can't even begin to identify are flying through it in a steady stream, carried by winds as solid as a wall. Where that wind blows, any alien ships still flying nearby are knocked clean out of the sky.

Down below on the roof, those winds are strong enough that Tony can barely keep his feet. He lowers his faceshield, hunches, and, when he glances around, he finds Cap and Thor doing the same, hands outstretched to protect their faces from the bits of shrapnel that shoot all over the place.

All at once, though, the winds just stop.

Well, they don't stop, exactly, but they seem to kind of bend around the rooftop, like they're deflecting off some sort of invisible dome.

Which, Tony's HUD oh-so-helpfully tells him, is exactly what's over their heads: a dome made of magical energy that stretches across the entire rooftop.

The shaking has eased off too, a little, but it hasn't stopped.

He slides the faceshield out of the way again, and takes another look around. Sees the dead soldiers by the fire escape where he'd left them. Sees Mephisto still over in the corner where he'd fallen. Sees more dead soldiers on the other side of the roof.

Thor and Cap are on either side of him, half a step behind, that's a comfort, and a shield over their heads acting as the only thing separating them from a giant destructive force threatening to rip them apart.

They're still standing, which at this point, is saying something.

Loki, meanwhile, ambles toward them like he's just walking through a patch of sunshine on a lazy afternoon.

He appears to be leading somebody along, some gray-skinned monster of a guy who's bigger and more muscular than Thor by a fair bit, bigger than the soldiers, too, but smaller than Hulk. Seems docile enough, though, and when Loki is close enough to Tony and company, Loki touches the monster's shoulder. The monster stops and stands, blank-faced, staring straight ahead with a couple of eyes that like black holes.

"Tell them who are," Loki says to him, all cool calm. "Tell them what you've done."

In a husked-out, flat voice, one that is just audible over the storm blowing around them, the monster says, "I am Thanos. I am the one responsible for setting this army loose on Earth."

Tony exchanges creeped-out looks with Thor and Cap, and then says, "Okay, uh. That's – interesting. Why is he here, Loki?"

An absent smile, distant and fleeting, and Loki says, "I brought him here to watch me dismantle his army and take it for my own. I wanted him to witness me doing what he could not: namely, to take control of this planet.

"To rule it, as I was meant to."

It's all Tony can do not to roll his eyes.

Because, yeah, that figures.
xXx

"Again with this, Loki?" Thor asks. He sounds as exasperated and annoyed as Tony feels. "Did you learn nothing from your last defeat?"

"Really," Tony says. "And, by the way, what happened to 'I don't want to rule anymore'?"

"That was before I acquired the means to make it possible for me to rule," Loki replies implacably. Like it's no big deal. "And, yes, Thor, I learned a great deal from my last defeat. I learned, for example, to stay away from green monsters. Who, I should add, I did not see with you. Has the beast fallen?"

"No," Cap says. "We lost him somewhere, but he's not dead."

Wintry green eyes cut over to Steve's face, observe it for a long moment. There's a twitch of dark eyebrows, and Loki says, "You're lying. You don't actually know that, do you?"

"I believe it." Steve's chin goes up. "He's not dead."

Loki's smirk knifes sideways as he takes a step closer. "You want to believe it," he says. "But in your heart of hearts, I don't believe you do. Deep down, you fear you've lost him, and it's eating at you."

"Hey!" Tony says, stepping between the two. "Not to interrupt your little head games here, but were you gonna do something about that tear? Because I think I speak for all of us when I say I'd really rather not get ripped apart here."

"There is no need for theatrics, Stark," Loki says. "We have time yet."

But as if to give lie to those words, the tear booms again and the tendril-things lash out in a dozen directions like they're reaching out for something. Two of them hit the dome, but are deflected. The tear widens even more.

If he's at all concerned by this, Loki sure doesn't show it. Still looking at Tony, he says, "It was always my intention to return to seal these. I have no more wish than you to see the universe destroyed."

"Then seal them already," Tony snaps.

Loki's mouth thins, but he doesn't answer.

Instead, he turns away and raises his hands to the sky.

Nothing happens at first.

Just as Tony's getting ready to point that out, though, he notices that instead of things coming out of the tear, things – ships, smoke, debris, animals, anything nearby – start getting sucked into it, a whole long line of them, things being pulled along like liquid being pulled through a straw.

The building's shaking become less pronounced, less apt to rattle fillings out of teeth.

After a few seconds, Loki lowers his hands and returns his attention to the three men in front of him. "Before I seal this, I will draw away as much of this as I can. Above and below. If I'm to rule this world, I would prefer there is something left to rule."

Steve shakes his head. "Where are you sending it all?"

"The soldiers I am sending to a place where I will keep them until I am prepared to make my move. The rest..." Loki makes an elegant, rippling shrug as he turns away. "Away from here. That is all that matters."

"Well, thanks, I guess," Steve says. "But you know we're not just going to let you walk in here and take over, don't you?"

Thor shifts and says, "This is madness, Loki."

"This is purpose, Thor."

"Purpose? Taking what is not yours to take is purpose?"

"Taking what I have the power to take and making it mine, yes." Eyes like a couple of barren snow fields lock onto Cap's. "Oppose me if you wish, but know that if you choose to do so, I will destroy you."

"And me?" Thor says. "Your own brother?"

Loki lifts a hand and makes a quick, cutting gesture.

Tony feels an invisible hand push him down to his knees. Sees, out of the corner of his eye, that everyone else – including Thanos – has been forced down.

"You will kneel," Loki says, "or you will die."

xXx

The Eye, Tony suddenly realizes.

Everything changed with Loki the second he picked up that fucking Eye – like it started controlling him somehow.

That has to be it.

When Tony puts his hands on the ground and pushes up, he finds he's not being held down. He stands, and, with Loki's cold eyes trained on him, takes a step forward.

Placing himself between the others and Loki, ready to fall on that wire again.

There's got to be some way, somehow, to bust through whatever's going on in that crazy fucking head – has to be something that Eye thing is doing – got to be something in there, some little kernel of rationality he can reach.

Because if he can reach Loki, maybe he can stop all this before it gets out of hand.

Maybe he can get the tears closed.

Got nothing to lose at this point.

"So tell me something, Reindeer games," Tony says, hoping like hell he doesn't sound as desperate as he feels. "You have this power now. You're stronger than you were. Sure healed up in no time after you got cut to hamburger earlier – which, you're welcome, by the way. Those scars on your wrists, did they finally heal up?"

Narrowed eyes studying him. After a beat, Loki shakes his head. "I still have them."

"Huh. Interesting." Tony cross his arms, grateful suddenly for his suit's protection. Pretty beat up, but that's nothing new. Story of his life. "Okay, so I'm confused. Maybe I'm not remembering right, but, uh, I think I am. Do you remember a little conversation you and I had about dreams not too long ago? This morning, as a matter of fact."

Again, that surreality hits him: had that really been this morning? Had it?

Wariness in Loki's expression now, which Tony takes as a small maybe-sign of progress. "I remember," Loki finally says. "What about it?'

"You said you killed everybody," Tony says. "That was how you won, right? You killed us all and you burned everything down. And, uh, hey, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think I remember you saying you didn't want things that way. Matter of fact, you seemed pretty freaked out by the whole idea. And by the scars. Remember?"

But Loki shakes his head. "This isn't like those dreams, Stark."

"Really? You just threatened to kill us all if we didn't do what you say. You know we're not going to, which means you're going to end up killing us. So how exactly is that different?"

"The difference is that I will not kill or destroy what I do not have to."

"You're going to have to," Tony says quietly. "So tell me how that's any different."

Come on, Loki, dammit, I know you're in there.

After a long silence, Loki frowns. It's low cloud crossing the sun. "I gloried in your deaths," he finally says, and his voice has gone very quiet. "In the dreams."

"But you wouldn't. Not really. Is that right?"

Gotcha.

"No, but that would not stop me. If I could not convince anyone who opposed me to join me, then, yes, I would kill them."

"Even me?"

Tony's expecting the answer to be 'yes, even you.' No hesitation.

What he's not expecting is another pause, a speculative look, narrowed eyes, and another frown. What he's not expecting is Loki to say, "Actually, Stark, what I would prefer for you is to have you at my side. Ruling with me."

"...excuse me?"

xXx

Loki's expression thaws, something less cold flickering in his eyes, something amused and meant just for Tony. His smile has fewer edges. "You heard me," he says. "I have the means and desire to rule this world, to stop all the senseless fighting, to move it forward, and I want you there with me."

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen." Tony chuckles. "Not that I'm not flattered. But why the hell would you want me, anyway? I'm not exactly qualified to run my own life, let alone rule a world."

"You have greatness in you, Stark," Loki says, his voice becoming quiet again. All the earlier coldness has gone from his eyes now. "More than I think you realize."

They don't have time for this, not with the tear still snap-crackling overhead, but Tony is, at his core, still the same narcissist he's always been, so he can't quite help asking, "I do?"

"Oh, yes," Loki says, suddenly all earnest sincerity, "you do. You're a creator, a builder, a seeker of knowledge. But more than that, you understand. You see the world in ways few do, and you're able to translate what you see into the actual, the tangible.

"People are drawn to you because of that, because you have that spark, that vision. They follow you because of that. You were meant to rule just as much as I.

"Tony," Steve cuts in just then, "don't listen to this-"

Loki makes a quick cutting gesture, and Steve is silenced.

Tony swallows.

"The only problem, Stark," Loki continues, "is that you fear what others-" he glances pointedly at Steve and Thor "-think of you so much that you limit yourself to doing what you believe will earn their approval. Your so-called 'greater good.' All you're doing is trying to avoid their judgment. Why do you think you spend so much time avoiding them?

"Imagine what you could do for the world, what you could build, what genuine good you could do, without all those limitations and obstacles in your path, without all those hands to hold you back or steal from you, without all those voices there to place doubts in your mind. Imagine what you could accomplish with access to unlimited resources, unlimited knowledge. Imagine what you could discover, what new insights you could bring.

"Imagine what it would be like if you could stop trying to avoid being judged for being what you're not, if you were allowed to simply be who you are – nothing more, and nothing less.

"It is entirely possible for you to have all of this," Loki says. "All you have to do is let go of these trivial mortal concerns, and stand with me – as you are. Lead with me. Become who you have it in you to be."

With a great deal of effort, Tony looks away, blinking.

Clears his throat. Says, harshly, "So, what, I just give you my soul in exchange for all the knowledge in the universe?"

Loki huffs a quiet laugh. "Hardly," he says. "This is no exchange. I am offering you a place at my side. Only that. It is up to you to decide what you will and will not take for your own."

"You make it sound so idyllic," Tony says. "Taking things isn't like that."

"True, but few things worth having, worth creating, come easily. Sometimes, in order to promote progress, you must do some damage first."

"Damage. You're talking about killing."

"As a last resort, and if it comes down to that, yes. If you wished," Loki adds, "I could see to it you were spared that part. You needn't get any more blood on your hands."

Tony shakes his head. "You're serious about this."

"I am, yes. I am meant to rule, Stark. And so are you."

The rational part of Tony's mind knows that this is just more mindgames. It's a bag of half-truths and distorted realities all designed to try to manipulate Tony into coming around to his way of looking at things.

It's a distorted picture, sure, but it's distorted in such a way that makes it sound so reasonably, so perfectly tempting. It's distorted in such a way that honestly makes something inside Tony just ache with the desire to let go and follow Loki down this path: forget about the crap going on with his company, to just be able to bring the world his technology without all the hassle and red tape, to not have to worry about rival CEOs gunning for him, to not have to listen to people question and second-guess him or try to set him up or to undermine him ever again.

To not be alone.

As you are.

The real hell of it is, it's nothing he himself hasn't imagined before.

You have greatness in you.

And all he'd have to do is just let go of all the things he already wishes he could.

xXx

Thing is, Loki still has the Eye, and that fucking tear still isn't closed.

And the city is still burning.

And people are still getting massacred below.

And maybe, just maybe, this is the way to stop it.

xXx

So Tony, not letting himself look at Steve or Thor, focuses on Loki (and it is Loki in there after all, he's pretty sure of that), and says, "Couple things: you have to close all those tears before we do anything else. There's no point in any of this if you don't stop that thing from collapsing. Second thing is, I want to find Hulk and Tasha. Fury, to. Either they're dead or somebody took them. I want to find out who did it. They're gonna pay. After that, well, guess the sky's the limit."

Loki, god of mischief and lies, studies Tony with bright green eyes.

Searching, no doubt, for the truth.

"So," he says after a moment, uncertainty in his voice, "you're saying...?"

"I'm saying I'm tired of having my legs cut out from under me every time I stand up," Tony says. "I'm tired of losing. I'm tired of being held back. I just want a chance to do my thing, you know. I'm saying if you want me, you got me. I'm also saying if you're bullshitting me in any way, I will find some way to kill you."

Moment of truth here.

But Tony's not worried: right now, right this second, he means it. Every word of it.

That's just the kind of day it's been.

And Loki's smile is one full of cool victory. "My only condition is this," he says. "If you betray me, I will find the tallest building I can and throw you off of it."

"Fair enough," Tony says.

xXx

So the deal is done.

Sealed with a kiss, even.

Right there, right out in front of Steve and Thor, Loki kisses him, easy and languid, like they have all the time in the world, like the ground isn't still shaking, like the wind isn't howling, like there's no smoke choking the air.

Something warm flares in Tony, like a light touch inside somewhere, but it's gone before he really has a chance to think too much about it.

xXx

Tony's the first one to pull away, to back off. He doesn't even twitch Steve or Thor's way when he says, "The tears?"

Loki, somehow still looking regal in his less-than-pristine armor and tattered cape and dented helmet, nods. "The tears first. You needn't be worried, you know. They have been neutralized since I reversed them."

"Yeah, they still make me nervous." Those whipping white tendrils have grown to two or three times their original length.

An indulgent smile, tinged with something like affection.

It's actually, Tony thinks, kind of a nice smile.

Loki pulls out the Eye and walks over to the side of the building. As Tony looks on from over his shoulder, the tears on the ground – which, like the tear in the sky, had gotten massively big and had been pulling soldiers and debris and smoke into them – close down and disappear.

That done, Loki turns and raises the Eye.

A line of brilliant white energy connects between it and the tear.

xXx

And all hell breaks loose.

xXx

The thing is, Tony never bothered to check and see if Mephisto was dead.

Oh, he'd had a front-row view for Loki's last energy blast catching Mephisto full in the chest, that's for sure, but once Mephisto had hit the ground, Tony forgot all about him.

Tony'd had looked over and had seen Loki's mangled, shot-up body lying on one side of the roof, blood pouring out of what had to be a hundred little holes. After that, he hadn't really stopped to think of anything other than finding the Eye. Because, naïve idiot that he was, he knew, somehow, that if he could just get Loki the Eye, things would be okay.

So, no, he never bothered with Mephisto after that.

xXx

Mephisto wasn't dead.

If Tony had known that, he probably would have done things a lot differently.

xXx

Like a lot of things that day, Tony doesn't really see what happens; like everybody else, he has to piece it together from the various things they tell him later.

What he knows is he's standing back near the still-kneeling Cap and Thor when it goes down, and he's watching with no small amount of relief as Loki finally deals with the tear. He's thinking about nothing in particular, not really even – as he probably should be, and very soon will be – about how or when to get that Eye away from Loki. He's mostly just glad that the heavy-duty rocking and rolling old Mother Earth is doing starts to subside, and that he's happy to see those big white tendril thingies are snapping and crackling back inside the tear instead of out int the sky.

When the shit goes down, it goes down fast.

He sees movement out of the corner of his eye, but before he can turn to focus in on it, something tackles him from behind and drags him down to the rooftop.

Cursing, furious, he fights his way clear of the weight – Steve's, the thinks – pinning him down, at least enough so he can lift his head.

He looks around, but doesn't see Loki anywhere.

"The tear!" Cap says from behind him. "They're in the tear!"

And sure enough, both Mephisto and Loki have somehow gotten up into the tear.

They're both caught: each wrapped up in one of those whip-like tendrils.

In the blink of an eye, Mephisto is consumed: his red body beginning to glow like it's being lit by a thousand fluorescent lightbulbs, and then being pulled and stretched until, at last, it snaps and is consumed by the tendril itself.

Loki, still holding the Eye, is struggling against the tendril holding him.

And maybe Tony's going crazy, maybe he's completely nuts, but in that horrible instant before Loki begins to glow the way Mephisto had, he swears he hears the tear itself sigh the word "Bringer."

Then Loki screams a broken scream like his bones are melting, like he's being ripped apart a tiny piece at a time, like he's dying by inches.

He screams, and the sound rolls and echoes across the distance.

The white consumes Loki, too, draws him in, makes him part of it.

Something deep inside of Tony grows hot enough to burn, but then, as the tear closes down around Loki like some enormous mouth swallowing him whole, it goes cold.

Very cold.

xXx

There's an explosion, a thundering concussive blast that shakes the ground one more time, some dying animal's last frustrated howl.

And then there's silence.

Deep, complete silence.

xXx

Tony is the first to stand.

Ignoring the others behind him, he walks to the parapet and looks up into the sky.

Nothing left of that big tear but a few residual white sparks, tiny and insignificant and soundless.

The rooftop is blessedly still beneath his feet.

It's done. The tear is closed. Mephisto is gone. Loki is gone. And, hell, they even have Thanos.

Tony knows he should feel glad about that, or at least relieved, but all he feels as he stares up into that void is sore and tired and cold and hollow.

This isn't anything like victory, not really.

Sighing, he looks away, looks down into the burning abyss below.

The air is a lot clearer now thanks to a relative lack of smoke and things flying through it, but it's still hard to see much through the choking, orange-kissed haze. What he can see tells him that this once-mighty city, this beacon of light for so many for so long, has been all but wiped off the map. All the buildings nearby have been shaken down into so many mountainous piles of rubble. And he has no doubt that once daylight begins to filter through, it'll reveal the same everywhere.

Like so many other things today, New York City is gone.

And the hell of it is, the sheer, utter hell of it is that they aren't even done.

Off to the east, far off, there are still pockets of explosions like flashes of lightening, no doubt from the part of the alien army that managed to avoid getting pulled back into the tears.

"Hey," a voice says at his shoulder. "You okay?"

Tony turns his back on it all, and sees, as he does that both Steve and Thor have moved up to join him.

They're both watching him like they expect him to turn and dive off the building.

He shakes his head. "I'm fine, guys," he says. "Are you?"

"I am well," Thor says carefully as Steve says, "I'm all right."

Silence, leaden and awkward, falls between them. Tony knows why, but he's too tired to bother breaking it himself. Just stands there in the tense quiet looking back and forth between his two friends here – they are his friends, no matter what – and finally, tired of waiting for one of them to say something, he says, flatly, "It was just so he'd think I was on his side. So he'd close the tears. If I'd known Mephisto was gonna take care of him for us, I wouldn't have bothered."

It's Steve he really say this to, Captain America, old Red, White, and Blue, whose fatigue-ringed eyes are filled with the need to believe, the need to hope. And it's Steve whose weary smile widens with something like relief. "I thought that's what you were doing."

Tony glances over at Thor. Finds Thor's expression closed, unreadable.

Not surprising: Tony's really not sure he bought it, either.

Still, the big guy says nothing, and Tony blesses him for that.

Not the time, or the place.

"So what now, Cap?" Tony asks.

Steve says, quietly, "We should go help out down below first. Take care of those soldiers. And after that we need to find Bruce and Tasha. Fury, too." He nods at the still-kneeling Thanos, grimaces, and adds, "And we need to deal with him."

"I can have him escorted to Asgard, if you wish," Thor offers. "We have a place we can hold him."

Tony and Steve exchange looks. Steve shrugs, fractionally, and Tony says, "Do that, big guy." He would much rather kill the bastard and be done with it, but he knows better than to say so: Steve would never go for it. If nothing else, he'll be off Earth for the time being. "We'll probably have to bring him down here to stand trial or face justice or something when all is said and done, but that'll work for now."

"Thank you," Steve says. He clears his throat. "Thanks for coming, Thor. I mean that."

"Do not thank me yet, my friend. We have much left to do."

"I know," Cap says. "But, still..." He takes a breath like he's going to say something else. Apologize, maybe.

Thor, smiling, drops a meaty hand on his shoulder. "Thank me when we are finished."

"Good idea," Tony says.

There will be time for fatigue and grief later. There will be time to stop and rest later. There will be time to sift through the mountains of confusion later. For now, there's the last of an army to stop and missing friends to find and a city to start digging out.

Iron Man lowers his mask, glances back at Thor and Captain America, and says, "So let's get to work, huh?"

THE END

(30 May 2012 – 22 August 2012)

xXx

Dust devil swept you away
It's still not real
Ash and urn and silence
Talk to me
-Puscifer, "Horizon"

A/N: The sequel is called "To Defy the Stars." Thank you all so much for reading. And thank you all for the comments and reviews and stuff you left the first time I posted this!