Snowflake

"Do you know what it feels like, to be eternal?"

It was warm, outside. Tony felt the rustling of leaves on his skin, saw the fickle shadows the treetops cast on the soft ground. It smelled of spring and autumn.

There was no one here. Not even the man he was currently talking to. Maybe he had been talking to himself? No. There had been someone.

"Do you know what immortality feels like?"

The voise resonated inside of him. Filled his mind with- No. His heart, it filled his heart, he corrected.

Life, it was. The thing that it filled him with, and he could not even begin to explain.

He wanted to answer, but his tongue was missing.

"You will die."

There was no sadness in the other's voice and he felt a smile, somewhere in those words.

He was kissed, then. Loki was there, close to him. Then he left again and Tony was left with that presence around him.

"I don't want to!"

Oh, his tongue was back. Loki must have given it back when he had kissed him. Good. He needed that.

"You will die, though, and it doesn't matter, really."

"Does it matter to you?"

The words felt too big for his mouth and they dropped to the ground as soon as they left his lips. Lying there like unsightly lumps of clay, he could not help but regret them.

"Do you know what it feels like, to be eternal?"

"You already asked me that! I don't!"

There was a laugh, somewhere, hidden between pale green birch leaves over his head, sun trickled through and clung to them golden, like dew in the first light of day.

"Questions, answers. Don't try to understand the difference, my mortal."

More clay lumps were threatening to leave him and drop, but he refused to utter those words. I'm not yours.

Loki was here, he was by his side. Tony looked at him for answers he knew the other to be unwilling to give, yet he could not help but stare.

"Do you know what it feels like, to be eternal?"

Answers, questions.

"You are forever, I am mortal. Yes. That's no reason, though. It's not."

Loki smiled, bright as the leaves overhead, and Tony melted.

The ground was warm and rich, moss was a soft cushion under his back and a couple of grass blades tickled his ears.

Loki looked confused, worried even.

"Are you dying now?"

"No, I'm just lying down a little."

"Just one letter!", Loki looked a little bit furious now, Tony did not understand. "One letter for one second, one blimp. Might aswell~"

The god let himself tumble down next to him and together they watched the leaves sway and rustle, the wind warm on their skin. A tiny piece of Bliss.

A hand held his, it was probably Loki's, but you could never be sure, so he looked. It was Loki's.

They slep together then. At least Tony thought that's what it was. They didn't move or touch, except for the hand he was holding in his, and none of them really did anything, but they came nonetheless and it was nice, very nice.

"That was weird."

"It's your dream, not mine."

"Fourth wall, Loki!"

"They will hurt me, you know. It's written, up there. It's all written down."

"I'm sorry. Will I be there?"

A laugh, a sad one.

"No, you will be dust."

"Oh."

"Maybe you will be there. Somewhere, some remnants of..."

"You will bring my dust? That's... sentimental."

"I might bring but a thought with me, to that place."

"That's sentimental."

"No, that's hurtful. A thought of dust."

"So it matters?"

"Do you know what it feels like, to be eternal?"

"Stretched?"

"Forever."

Then, silence.

"What choice do I have? Forget what matters or hurtful memory. It is too cruel."

---

Tony awoke, and the first thing he saw was the painted metal oft his cabin's ceiling. Harsh.

Forcing yourself onto me was cruel, killing me was cruel, betrayal was cruel.

Remnants.

He shivered at the sudden cold, remembered it was winter. The rustling of leaves was still so close, he felt as if he could hear it, if he just tried hard enough, but he was not granted the chance to try.

Cap knocked, polite little soldier, but proceeded to open the door with a forceful push anyway. One that send a gust of harsh, ice-cold wind towards Tony.

"I'm awake, thanks. Very much so. And freezing, no need to pull your little military waky-waky routine."

"Grumpy, hm?"

Then Steve seemed to remember the last few weeks and decided to shut up.

"Lemme guess... Fury, bridge.. important..?"

"Exactly. How long?"

"I'ma be right there, hold on."

It took him five minutes. The sooner he got moving the better, the helicarrier was drafty as hell.

As he reached the bridge all eyes turned. Fury, Cap, Thor, Agent Hill and, to Tony's relief, Natasha were there.

She looked groggy, determination to not let it show apparent in the tightness of her face.

When he hurried towards the small group and pulled her into a crushing hug, however, she relaxed and hugged him back.

It's not your fault, that hug said, and it meant so much.

Neither of them said anything, one look was enough to know everything left unsaid. Kinship. Not something Tony was used to.

"Now that we're all here, let's discuss the plan.", Fury had no time for sentimentality, of course not.

Tony disentangled himself from Natasha, but he stayed close. They could both use the moral support now.

"We have a plan yet?", he asked. Had they started without him? Not unlikely.

"No. What we do have is a vague idea of how things might work, but we needed you to work out the details."

"Okay, shoot."

"You probably remember that little trap we set for Loki, right after the Chitauri?"

The magic-disturbance field thingy, right.

"Yes, I do."

He remembered the relief on Loki's face as Tony had been wheeled out, looking like hell, but alive. He remembered the hurt in the man's eyes, when he had realized he had been caught. The agony, as he had tried to teleport, and last but not least, the way he had, without the slightest hint of hesitation, saved the two traitors that had freed him.

He had also killled one of the two later, his mind supplied. Sadist.

"Well, if we could manage to replicate the wave length and exact energy signature we used on that and make it work at Stark Tower, we might have a shot at pinning him there. We don't have enough data to be entirely sure, but the one time we tried it it had worked out alright, so... Unless someone decides to shoot at the energy distributors again, we should be fine. Question is, if that fancy tower of yours can create the thing we need and if it can do so through your AI, remote controlled. If not, we might have to get you back in there, and I don't like the thought of that."

Cap stepped beside him and added: "No one likes the thought of that."

Feeling like he dodged a bullet, Tony got his mind to thinking mode. A good mode for his mind to be in right now.

"The tower is powered entirely by the arc reactor. So we had to rethink everything. Heating, light. There actually are energy distributors inside of the walls, we use them for heating but they can do far more than that. Indirect lighting, for example. The wavelength can be altered and light in any colour can be easily created. I would need to have a look at what you have done to block his teleportation there, and maybe find out what else it does. I mean. It would be good to know if he would just be forced to stay put or if he will be completely unable to cast any magic. So, yeah. I would probably need to see your work to see how I could integrate it into my tower, and if it's anything that could be done through JARVIS."

He did a spin, the promise of work finally driving some fire back into his frozen bones.

"Is Banner around? He might be able to help us, energy and all.. that's sort of his thing."

Fury just shook his head.

"We're going to have to do this without him. I thought it best to let him get back to India after what transpired on here."

Tony just frowned at that. Things would never have gotten this out of control if Fury hadn't chosen to play spy-master.

It couldn't be helped now. He would have to do this on his own, like he always had.

"I'll figure something out then, have the files accessible and make sure no one comes poking at me in the lab, yeah?"

He was already on his way when he heard Fury's grumbled sounds of consent.

Work, lots of it. Just what he needed.

If only there weren't that immortal involved, whom he wanted to get out of his head once and for all. Nothing as much as that.

"Do you know what it feels like, to be eternal?"

---

To say that Loki was in mourning would be an overstatement.

To say that he regretted how things had gone down, more likely.

Sure, he would have liked Tony to stay, would have liked him to understand why he did what he did. But after all, he had always known how things would change once the mortal realised what was truly happening.

Might aswell have my fun with it.

Maybe, if he hadn't had his fun, maybe, if there was no corpse in the other room... But who cared, in the end. Now it was only him, the harness completed, and the Tesseract soon to lower her defenses. He couldn't wait for the moment, the power.

Like fireworks, some things are just bound to vanish, that does not lessen their beauty, did it?

So Loki chose to abandon all thoughts of the pleasant little spark he had had and focus on the situation at hand, the so called big picture.

She was more talkative than usual today. Almost as if she sensed the changes in the atmosphere. Well, of course she did, the cube was a sentient being after all.

Loki grew tired of their wordless banter, but it wouldn't do to let it show.

He saw the entry-point before him, the gateway into infinite energy, channelled by the Vindicator's Hand. He saw more gateways, still inaccessible to him. It mattered little, all he needed was the one. He could not help but notice the number of points, though. Eight. Including his own, that made for nine. Nine realms, that was the obvious conclusion. Loki did not like the obvious, so he kept arguing.

He had the access, it all worked. He felt it work! So why wasn't there any energy? Any power? Nothing came through, no matter how hard or how delicately he pulled at her. She would not give a thing.

The simple touch of his mind's fingertips on the doorway to everything he had craved for so long had been ecstatic. Why, why did it end here? It made no sense and frustrated him more than he cared to admit. He knew he had to be patient, careful. If she came to dislike him the outcome might be very unfortunate. For him and New York.

So he turned around and walked away. He would return later, to argue, to bargain, to plead.

He entered the lounge with a purposeful strut and threw himself onto the couch.

Beside him the dark leather was still stained with Tony's release, so he lifted his hand to wipe it away, only to stop and smile. Sentiment came in weird shapes sometimes.

The body was still propped up in the chair, the Hawk's blue eyes looked nearly as dead as they had had, when the man had been under his control.

They did not portray any emotion, no fear, no hatred, not even recognition of Loki's change. The last one had a particularly enraging quality to it.

He would have liked to see the horror, the dying of a smile on the man's face, but no such luck.

Did he hate the man before him? Not truly. He hadn't liked him either, one could say he had been indifferent.

Enough so, to use him for his tiny display of power. Fun. Well, sort of. He had just needed that, after such a long time spent holding fleshy, warm hands and cooing meaningless little nothings into Tony's ear. Enjoyable as it had been from time to time, the beast inside wanted to be fed.

Maybe, if I had been more honest from the beginning... admit to the monster he was while staying civil as much as possible, maybe it wouldn't have come to this, but the process of gaining their trust had relied on him being their friendly neighborhood Trickster God, safe to be around, safe to scold, when he was bad. Yes, it would have taken them years to gain the sort of trust he needed, and they would have very likely run out on him at some point. Mortals did not like to feel power above their own. The hero's knew that all too well, people just loved to see them tumble down into the mud at their feet like the pathetic little mortals they all were, in the end.

Still, no matter how much he pondered over irrelevant possibilitis and alternatives and could-have-beens, he could not help but notice the one thing: it had been nice having them around. It hadn't been like the company he was used to, with Thor and the Warrior's Three, as little as he liked to think back on that. This had been less of a struggle, it had come so naturally.

Clint was still looking at him with his dead eyes, mouth slightly open and lopsided. Loki could not stand it.

Every molecule in the space surrounding him seemed to be set on irritating him today. Frustrating him to his wit's end. So he got up and paced a while.

Snow was still falling outside and he did not dare to look down. He hadn't looked. Not even once. Maybe the stain would be covered by now? He knew the beauty of blood on freshly fallen snow, but what about snow on freshly shed blood? Would it be soaked from underneath, layer by layer, until the snow got thick enough? Would it be the sickening pink of cut flesh, would the harsh scent of ice swallow the smell of iron in the air? Had they removed his body by now? They must have. They never liked seeing bodies, never liked being reminded of their mortality. How these people could properly mourn a death, he would never know. The only thing they ever seemed to miss were the merits that person had offered. Selfish.

If Thor died, Loki would mourn. He knew that. He did not know, if he was currently mourning Tony, it certainly felt... sad. But the flashes of thoughts that tormented his mind where those of selfish need, and he had chosen to abandon weakness of that kind. He did not need it, could not afford to need it. He had an eternity to survive, how could he stop to think on fleeting bliss, now taken from him by his very own hands. A corward's kill, a push. He should have twisted his neck or strangled him. This way, there was too much room for questions. Had he really wanted the other dead, was he too weak, to see him dead by his own hands, and so on.

He already knew the answer and despised the question all the more.

If I can't have you, no one will.

And he had lost the man the second he had revealed his power, he knew. It had been in that kiss, all the truth his mind had hidden, but deep inside he had always known the other could never love him. And it hurt his heart as much as it did his pride, and hurt pride was not something he got over easily.

Yes, yes. He knew all this. There was no use tormenting himself further.

He found he was incapable of truly mourning the man, all he did was miss him and that was a lot worse.

Tesseract! He needed to work, make it function.

He focussed on the other dots, the other gateways, and found them to each be so very unique. Their tastes and hues reminded him instantly, he felt the essence of all the realms. So it was true, those were the nine realms and she was accessible from each of them. Interesting, certainly. But why?

It was then, that he decided to take a step back.

She was irritating, she was moody, she liked to speak in riddles and as much as those qualities appealed to him on some level, it did not make for a good working environment.

He mentally leaned back, tried to relax the stance he had been in, tense and rigid with concentration.

For once, he was silent. And she talked.

The Tesseract was prone to adopt her wielder's personality and behavior, that much was known. What hadn't been, was the amount of control she held over her assimilation.

Apparently, she had developed her own mind very early. There were no traces of the Red Skull or Loki or any other being he knew in her, which was an incredible feat, assuming it were only the most powerful that had held her before him.

"So, choices...", he prompted and she complied, for once. She told him of all the bad she has seen, all the evil and power-hungry, and she could not help but question her part in all of it. Because apparently, power is bad. Apparently, she was power. So the conclusion that had to be drawn was, that she's bad. Thing was, she did not want to be.

Loki listened, growing more restless with every passing minute.

"Nine Realms, then.", again, his impatient nudge in the desired direction proved successful. War, she complained, was a natural state. There were truces as brittle as frozen leaves and more likely to breed animosity than vanquish it, then there was open hostility and peaceful dependency with no love lost between the parties involved. All in all, she did not like it.

Loki began to fear the direction this was taking. "So, then?"

He could have sworn she laughed at him right now.

"Peace is a great prize, but if it is power they want, peace might aswell give them power, too."

He flinched. She had never talked this clearly, vague flashes and associations was all he had gotten before, and now this.

He knew, that was all he would get. It would not get clearer than this.

Peace. The Tesseract as an instrument to create peace? Between the Nine Realms? He thought of gateways, thought of artefacts and suddenly it all made sense. He thought of the combined effort of magic and midgardian technology it had taken, to finish the harness. What, if there are still parts missing? Dwarven craftmanship? Elven finesse? Asgardian enchantments? But not only that. The harness worked, in a way. Maybe not to its full potential, but it did work.

Power, though, not accessible by one, even though he had all the ingredients at hand. What he needed were the other gateways, manned by men from the respective worlds. The energy... it would only flow, if it was asked to by them all.

A prize. A bloody prize, the big win, if they ever achieved the unachievable.

And there she was, dangling unlimited power in front of his nose and talking of world peace... and that was when he cracked.

Frozen fingers clenched arond the eerie blue glow as he ripped her out and stormed back into the lounge. His eyes were bloodred with rage as he threw her out of the hole Tony's body had left in the large window front and he really couldn't care less what SHE would look like when she landed. Unscathed, most likely. Which is why he did not wish to see it. He wanted her destroyed, dead, gone. That bitch... how dared she...

He whirled around a couple of times, in desperate need of a new idea, a new plan, a new purpose, as the old one had been taken from him, again.

His eyes fell on the cold and stiff body of Clint Barton, and he laughed.