iron man's number is (atomic26) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-11-11 18:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, loki, tony stark |
Who: Tony and Loki
What: A zap.
Where: The roof of Stark Tower.
When: Backdated to when Tony was still in NYC. Then I moved him. And idk what to do. So say it happened before he left. Oops. FUZZ THE TIMELINES GUYS.
Warnings/Rating: I think it's safe. Tony might've swore once. I can't remember.
The roof was cool, blustery with the high winds of the top of any skyscraper, and strangely desolate with the exception of the neon light of the tower sign, blazing into the darkness, the backside of its glow giving everything a faint sheen. Clouds scudded by overhead. It wasn’t as stifling at night, now, not even on the ground. Summer was breaking over the brow of September, which suited him better than the dog days. He had never liked the heat.
He wasn’t there, and then the light on the edge of the tower flashed, and he was, hands tucked at his sides, peering over the edge. The city’s desolation was easier to see from up here, even as the humans scrabbled to rebuild.
“Have you ever seen a city razed by war?” he asked, looking up at his companion on the rooftop. He smiled, just a touch. “Ah, but of course you have. No good weaponsmith would go a lifetime without seeing the results of his handiwork and saying, ‘my weapon was not mine.’”
He pressed his toe against the edge. “I have seen cities burned to the ground,” he said, looking down. There were burned out buildings in sight of the tower, but his eyes fell on a rooftop party, lights strung around the edges of the railings. He could see the bodies moving together, but the music was inaudible this far away, whipped by the wind and gone. “Do you know what fire does to a body when it had a whole city for its fuel? It grows hot as a forge, and leaves nothing but dust behind. No bones, only charcoal flakes. The wind picks them up and they cling in your throat and your nostrils and the corners of your eyes.”
He looked a moment longer, then stepped away, stepped toward the other man on the roof. No armor, not today, no regalia. This was classically Midgardian, almost laughably so, a black leather jacket and boots with the flaps open, casual enough that he likely case a small illusion to disguise his face while he walked the streets and no more. Ease of use, blending in. Taking in the sights, maybe, or conserving his energy.
Tony didn’t get up. Partly it was because he couldn’t, he’d been sitting there too long and his legs in particular were slow to recover muscle mass, but mostly it was because he was relieved. Scared, yes. More relieved than scared, so that made a lot of relieved. Oh, and he didn’t think Loki was worth standing up for. Pain in the ass jerkoff was making it hard for Tony to sleep, just a physical in-the-flesh representation of all the shit that could happen out of Tony’s control.
Fortunately, he had about fifty things he could fire at the jerkoff’s head right now, and if he wasn’t really standing there, well, Tony hadn’t seen twenty-five of those things actually blow up yet, so it would be satisfying to see if they worked. Sort of a win-win.
Tony put one elbow forward to lean on his most recent invention, the thing he was here for. It looked like an inside-out satellite made of gold fabric, and it was quite beautiful, in its way. The patterns in the delicate filigree had a faintly Asgardian appearance, the circuits all inspiration off those crashed ships from a few months ago. Tony’s tech had made some significant leaps and bounds since his return from Asgard and his most recent near-death experience: the benefits of alien tech. He was probably a few hundred years forward, if everyone was honest.
“That’s really fascinating,” Tony said, sarcastically. “But nothing you can do can really scare these people.” He gestured with his screwdriver over the edge of the roof. “They’ve seen it all. They just rebuild.”
Tony Stark looked every bit the fragile mortal creature that he was, but he was not dead yet. Loki did not make the mistake of underestimating live and difficult men. He had hardly anticipated that this encounter would not end in Stark at some point firing live rounds at him, but it would interest him greatly if his expectations were overturned.
He stepped toward Stark, close enough that he could have reached out and touched him, but did not. If he had come to kill Thor's 'Man of Iron' he could have used the element of surprise to his advantage, and at least made a good go of it against Stark's machines. Then again, this was Loki.
Instead, he extended his fingers to the dish of fabric under Stark's arm, feeling it out through the skin, swiping his hand across it. "Cheating," he said, and actually grinned. This was an academic and devilish amusement rather than a malevolent one. He did so like clever things, particularly when they involved stealing. "Does the king of Asgard know you've been lifting its concepts for Earthly use?"
"No one needs to scare them," he murmured, still feeling the device out for purpose and studying its oddly runic circuitry, and went no further in explaining himself. He dropped his hand. "That is a quirk of your race," he said, looking at him directly, now. Time went on, and those eyes were still just the same, just as bright and green and intense. Madness was debatable - he didn't believe one could read madness from the eyes, necessarily, not unless they stared past you and saw someone else. It was a bit more subtle than that, wasn't it? "Rebuilding, even when the building itself extends well past the lifetime of the man who sets the first brick down, just for it all to be burned again a few centuries later. They may have seen it all, but one day, they will all die, and their children will remember their stories without the sting, and they will ripen, then." He rolled his shoulders, adding, amicably, "I'm very patient."
Tony didn’t fucking care whether Loki was there to kill him or not. Oh, sure, he was scared of him, but he was fifty times less scared of him when he was standing right there. It took a lot of the suspense out of the thing. If someone just wanted to end Tony, there were a hundred ways they could do it. You didn’t need to wait for his humvee to drive through the desert, you didn’t need to wait for him to get in the suit and fly around, you didn’t even have to send a nuke. All you had to do was wait long enough for his stupid heart to give out, and the problem was solved. Tony thought people going to all this effort was a little ridiculous. His fear was of death, not of Loki. They were not the same thing.
Tony leaned back a little in his chair as Loki approached, watching him. He knew as much as Loki did that if the horny-hat god was there to kill him, he would have done it and left a long time ago. Tony was willing to bet the guy was bored.
When Loki put his hand out to touch the invention, so close, Tony lifted his left hand and slapped at Loki’s fingers. “Hands off, pal. It’s not yours. And we call this inspiration, not cheating.” Tony’s grin had a hint of malice. Okay, a lot of malice. He really hated Loki. These days, he would have been satisfied just to see somebody turn the guy inside out so they could all get on with it, but there were, honestly, bigger fish to fry. Ra’s al Ghul, now that was a guy Tony really wanted fried in his own juices. And if he could kill Crane again? He’d be down.
Hm. A lot of anger. He hadn’t noticed that before. Tony acknowledged, shrugged, and moved on.
“You’re full of shit. You’re the opposite of patient. You couldn’t stand waiting a few centuries just for somebody to get your joke. You want us to know here, now. A few more centuries, and we’ll forget your name and your dumb hat. We did it before, we’ll do it again. Hey, I got a great one about the prom queen you’d like, if you want a joke now.”
Loki and death were not one and the same, as much as one like to fashion himself after the other. Death was usually a side effect of one of his plans, not a goal. So finite, was death, so complete and brutal, and just like everything else, he could only justify it as a complete move in a longer game. There should be a purpose to death, to put fear into someone else, or to galvanize someone to a particular action, to cloud the judgement of survivors or end a source of conflict. Death for death's sake wasn't his game, not really. He did so love the chaos it could spread, but cheering over a kill was a child's game.
The slap from Tony against his hand made him snatch it back and, for a moment, bald-faced surprise flickered across his face before it bubbled up into laughter. That one really could have gone either way, but he was somehow delighted. The unexpected. There was joy in it still. He grinned back, sharper than before. Something had gotten under Stark's skin, and he relished in that. "Does it have an intention outside of flash?" It was pleasing in its utter ostentation, but he hadn't been able to plot out its purpose from his brief contact with it, and he didn't like to not know anything.
"Forgotten, perhaps, but still here, well after you have rotted down to the bone." He shifted his shoulders back. "I like jokes," he said, and it was almost laughable in itself how inscrutable that statement was. Go on.
Tony now knew something he didn’t know before: Loki was actually here, in the flesh. It surprised him for a second, but then he thought, it shouldn’t. What did Loki have to fear from a half-broken scientist? Not too much. Nothing was working right now, not Tony’s bones or his inventions. But they would. Nobody could fault Tony for his confidence. Mostly, Tony was pleased that Loki was standing right there, rather than bringing the building down on Pepper’s head, or taunting Bruce into incoherent rage, or knocking Steve out of an airplane. (He wasn’t sure where those scenarios came from, but lately, his brain hadn’t been big on logic.)
“If it did, I wouldn’t tell you.” Tony blinked. “Actually, yeah I would. I’m totally working on a hundred different ways to kill you. It really keeps me busy, and I need something that’s more entertaining than late-night infomercials, you know what I’m saying?”
And without pausing, Tony launched into a long, rambling story, his voice working in a monotone that wavered consistently, like a metronome ticking from very far away. “There’s this dork kid that asks the head cheerleader to the prom, and she says yes, and so night of the prom he picks out his tux with this ridiculous red cumberbund on it and he drives over to her house in his parents’ minivan and he picks her up, she’s got this amazing blue sequined gown on that goes down to here, you know the kind I mean, it’s sort of just a strip to cover up the important stuff, and they go to the prom in the minivan, him in his red cumberbund and her in her blue sequin strip. They get to the prom and after a couple hours of sweaty awkward dancing she tells him she’s thirsty, so he turns around to go to the drinks table, and there’s no punchline.”
Tony shut his mouth and leaned back in his chair, expression deadpan.
Loki listened to Tony's little story and his claim that he was building a hundred ways to murder him. He actually listened, watching Stark with attentiveness and patience. There had been a time where hearing Tony Stark ramble about Midgardian customs would have meant shutting off halfway through and thinking through the easiest way to murder him at the next stroke. Perhaps that time was still now, depending on the context. Right now, though, with all the time in the world, he was curious what anecdote the man might come up with that seemed important or derisive enough to throw at someone who he spent the rest of his effort trying to kill.
Loki was reasonably well acquainted with day to day life in this world. The nuances of high school were not part of that knowledge. He didn't know what a cheerleader was, or a prom, but context clues filled in most of the gaps. When the story came to an end, he blinked. "I like jokes," he repeated, after a drawn, pained pause. "I did not like that one."
He considered the story for another moment. "Do you tell every villain who comes to visit you the sad anecdotes of your youth, or is that reserved for the ones you spend the most time thinking about in your quiet hours?"
Loki had never seemed particularly blessed with patience. His calm mien worried Tony slightly, as evidenced by a shifting on his chair and a tightening around his eyes as he refrained from rubbing his chest, which pulled tightly. Sometimes Tony felt like he was growing out of his own skin, other times like he was growing too small for it. The former made him feel restless, the latter ineffective. He liked neither one. Tony always made it a point to be comfortable in his own skin.
He smiled. “It wasn’t my prom. I didn’t go to prom. Already in college by then. I made it up.”
Tony was curious as to why the old god didn’t have anything better to do than show up. Unless this was an assassination attempt, in which case, he was doing a shitty job at it. So in true Tony fashion, he just said what he was thinking. “What the hell are you doing here?” This time the hostility was leavened with an honest taste of curiosity. Tony’s curiosity was going to get him killed. This was a known universal fact.
Loki's eye narrowed with understanding. "You like stories," he said, a simply enough observation that carried meaning with it. People who liked stories, like telling them and inhabiting them, they occupied a rarified position in any society and any culture. There were traits that came with that, habits of intelligence and an addiction to attention, to be the storyteller, to have someone rapt on even a perfunctory slice of fabulous musing. "I would wager you make up a great many things, Tony." He seemed almost cheerful at the thought. Tony Stark, god amongst men, spinning tales for anyone who would listen. It was a nice image.
Loki glanced down sharply at Stark. "Visiting," he said, cordially. Well, there were things in motion for him, but these things required time to settle. Time away was just as important as time present and meddling. The rationalization was good enough, very nearly. "I found myself with a bit of time and thought I would see if you were as badly off as I had heard." He scrutinized him. "Which you, of course, are." The casual assessment was shot through with a calculating eye. He paused a moment, then asked, "Do you ever think that you could run things better, Stark? Better than your friends, or the people who think they know best? There is little respect for intelligence in this or any world, when a cheerful smile and a promise that everything will be alright can get a man so very far. Do you ever imagine what things might be if they handed the reins to you? The good that could be done, if the competent held the field over the charming?"
It was typical of him, the analysis and the imagined future to go with it, but much as Tony had, he actually did seem curious. He wanted to know.
Tony smiled with total self-indulgence. He lied all the time, but not because he was hiding anything, and not because he needed to do it to be impressive. He just didn’t find the truth to be all that compelling in and of itself. So if it made it more interesting to tell the joke in the first person, he would. Tony’s life was insane enough that he could be entertaining with the truth if he felt like it. “You think that makes the two of us alike, don’t you? Too bad I have twice as many friends, and I’m so much prettier. Otherwise maybe it would.”
Tony was way better off than he had been, and he was a little better off every day. He wasn’t offended by Loki’s statement, and looked away from the man and back to what he was doing. Man, he really wished this was functional. He had a brief, entertaining fantasy of blowing Loki off the roof with something that had a big boom and a lot of flames. “I do run things better. You’re on my territory, pal. My company. My stuff. And to be honest you’re kind of cramping my style.”
Tony knew that Loki was hinting that Tony might do better at corralling the many-colored personalities of the Avengers than anyone else, and it might have been true, but the fact was that Tony didn’t really have any desire to do so. He didn’t want the responsibility of all those people on him. Companies were different. It was money and movement and livelihoods, but not lives. Not anymore. Tony didn’t trade in lives anymore. “If you’re talking about leading a war, that’s not my gig anymore.”
"I will choose to spare you the tiresome speech about friends presenting weak points," Loki said. It was chiding, like Tony had done his lessons all wrong. "I expect you know that, and we both know that allies can present a strong front, covering one another's weaknesses and offering interlocked shields against a common foe." He rubbed his fingers together, looking over Tony's pretty device with sustained interest. "And you also know the inevitable ending of that scenario. One of the men one day breaks ranks, leaves a hole. An army can be split and flanked with one solitary failure."
Loki flashed a smile when Tony insisted he was 'cramping' him. "Am I?" Quiet delight. "Not a war. You'll excuse military metaphor. No, I was thinking more generally."
Without fanfare, Loki sat down on the roof, legs folded in together. He presented an even more stick like presence in that posture, bent and tucked in. He rested his head on a hand, still considering the device, like a spectator on a bench at a museum. "Anyway, there isn't actually a war. There never has been." His gaze slid to Tony. "You know better than that."
Tony rubbed one finger against his temple, amused by the god’s naivete. It was amazing how somebody could be so old, and so young at the same time. Tony’s impression of Loki was like a spoiled, psychotic child. The kind that make bad horror movies. “Nothing about friends make you weak, buddy. But I think it’s a lost cause anyway. You couldn’t make ‘em if you tried.” A malicious glint touched Tony’s eye, big boy on the playground, despite their comparative strength, size, and age.
After a moment, Tony dropped his hand and speculatively rubbed his first three fingers over the glow on his chest, massaging tight, painful flesh and clearly thinking. A series of lights all over the roof spread out in a geometric pattern all around them, not Tony’s trademark electric blue but in the shades of unnatural green. He appeared not to notice.
“Let me ask you this, Loki. Let’s say I’m interested in the whole ‘rule the world’ thing you were just saying. You want to make a deal?”
Loki sat up a little straighter when the roof lit up in livid green, but he didn't turn his head. He was interested, but he wasn't quite willing to give Stark the satisfaction. It likely meant danger, those lights and a bad choice made in getting comfortable in Stark's presence, with not keeping his guard entirely up, but Stark was right about one thing. He wasn't bored anymore.
He kept his eyes on Stark. "What sort of deal?" he asked.
Tony's eyes were steady, and his smile a mirror of the god's own, in his lighter days. "I don't know. A second ago you were talking about a power grab. So now I'm just curious about what you're offering."
"The ability to shape the world as you see fit," said the god. Even with the apparent signs of trouble, he still seemed as calm as if he'd rehearsed this entire conversation. "The power to mold this world to an image of what would be best for its peoples, without the fetters or restraints of a private citizen in a world of restriction and limited allowances. Free reign to wipe war from the face of this densely concentrated little place." A flash. "The power to make amends, and make good."
“Oh.” Tony put on his disappointed face, a somewhat pleasant face that he used a lot in board rooms and at senate hearings. It irritated people in power to no end, because it had a certain lack of interest in his surroundings that was infuriating. Abruptly the world had no interest to Tony, the people in it, the words coming at him only so much noise. “Alright. Not what I was hoping. I’m already doing all that molding stuff. I know more about this world we’re in than anybody in my time. I don’t really need your help for that. The problem is that I’m the best already, that’s your problem.”
Tony stood up with some difficulty, and he eased around the edge of the device. The green lights crawled in toward the center of the roof, and then zipped twice around the outside. “Guess this conversation is over, then.”
The light wasn’t really a warning. It was a side effect of the polymer conductors he’d put in the roof. “I haven’t figured out how to dim the lights,” he said, mostly to himself, as the superconductors took the power from roots of the Tower and put it all into the roof surface--which wasn’t actually rock and tar anymore. Tony sat down on the seat covered with canvas and put his elbow on the edge of the oversized porch swing so he could pull his feet off the conductors. “Tag, you’re it.”
Then the roof went “ZAP.”