Do-Over, Win or Lose, The End of the World: MCU: Fanfic: Try, Try Again

[thewhitelily]

Title: Try, Try Again
Fandom: MCU
Challenge: Do-Over, Win or Lose, and The End of the World
Rating: PG
Characters: Loki/Tony Stark
Length: 3,400 words
Summary: In which, entirely by accident, someone he'd entirely given up on finally believes Loki.  
Notes: Follows directly on from the stinger scene of a very favourite fic of mine and won't make much sense without it.  If you've never read Rise from Ash by Mikkeneko... go now, dooooo it!  You will not regret it.  Unless it eats your brain with fanfic-of-fanfic, like it did mine.  And you probably still won't regret it.

“Very clever, Tony Stark,” Loki managed bitterly.

It was too little, too late. Far, far too late for any of this.

“But then, you always were.”

Tony blinked.

“I was right?” he said, apparently not having expected that, for all his apparent certainty. 

He paused and then grinned, bright as the sun.

“I was right!” he crowed.

Then he frowned.

“I was, um…”

The corner of Loki’s mouth turned up unwillingly at the abrupt consternation.

“I wouldn’t presume,” he returned with feigned delicacy, “to suggest that any of your conclusions are inaccurate.”

“…right,” Tony finished, trying to wrap his mind around that.

Loki watched with mild interest as the other man apparently shook the disturbing thought off and reanimated.

“So!” he said.

Tony strode closer and pulled a chair towards himself with one hand. He swung it backwards and sat down, straddling it and leaning forward as he fixed his eyes on Loki, the seat back only partially obscuring the glow from his chest.

“You're a time traveller,” he said. “Who, some twenty years ago on your subjective timeline, spent a startling amount of time—months, at least, more probably—”

“Three years,” interjected Loki.

“—years,” Tony completed his sentence, tasting the word carefully. “Years,” he repeated, “with your torso in frequent close proximity to my arc reactor. Very close proximity.”

He took off his sunglasses and regarded Loki with narrowed eyes for a long moment.

“We were…” he said eventually: slowly, apparently choosing his words with great care, “fucking?”

Loki grinned, wide and false and brimming with teeth, utterly immune to the incredulity this time around.

“Come, Tony, don’t be so shy,” he chastened. “As spectacular as I can assure you our physical relationship was, nobody could fuck that much—and don’t try to tell me you didn’t scan the lovely Ms Potts for a comparison of the exposure levels. You’re not bothered about who—or what—you might have fucked in a previous life.”

He leaned forward, pressing the weakness, elbows on knees. The titanium chains on his hands clinked at the end of their short tether.

“This is about the hugging,” he said, throwing the word like a scornful knife to strike Tony’s metal heart. “The holding one another close, all night long. The cuddling in front of the situation monitors in your lab. The happiness, Tony; that’s what bothers you. Your radiation scan showed you the longest, closest, most loving relationship of your life—and it’s lost in a long-extinct time loop you can’t even imagine.”

Loki raised his eyebrows smugly.

“That,’” he said, “is the far more disturbing prospect to you than the idea that someone you once slept with might be inspired to try to kill you.”

“Been there,” agreed Tony without batting an eyelid. “Done that, very nearly bought the farm. No, I’m not here for that—I’ve come for the science, because… time travel!” He made a fluttering gesture with his open palms facing Loki, then clasped them together in a manufactured excitement far too thin to cover the deep hunger even the sunglasses hadn’t hidden. “But by all means, Marty McFly, if the juicy details are where you’d rather start… let’s hear them all!”

Loki told the story, each word dripping with bitter venom, each moment accompanied by bitten out asides about how naive Tony had been, how revoltingly idealistic, how scattered and hopelessly outmatched Earth’s defenders had been been as first he, and then the world, had fallen again and again.

Tony listened quietly: head down, staring at his hands. He ignored all of Loki’s attempts to start a fight, interrupting only to accurately predict Loki’s next logical action—or, irritatingly, to make some snarkily correct prediction on how it would fail.

Loki had almost forgotten how it felt to interact someone who could actually keep up with him.

As the whole story came out, his digs at Tony slowed and eventually petered out. By the time he was describing his years of captivity and eventual escape from the Chitauri, he found himself speaking merely the unvarnished truth. When he released the glamour hiding the scars that had persisted through time, Tony glanced up. Their eyes locked as they once had on the night they’d first met, when Loki had asked “Why me?”

Not pity, Tony had insisted then. Fellow feeling.

This time it was Loki who tore his eyes away. It was all too late for that.

“You needed more firepower,” said Tony, his quick mind having already skipped ahead to the obvious conclusion. “Something to blow them out of the air while you were still sitting on the ground. That’s why there’s a second spike on the graph. Did you actually ask your friendly neighbourhood arms manufacturer to purpose-build you a weapon? Or did I not understand what I was making?”

Loki tipped his head sideways in acknowledgement of the point; Tony shook his head.

“Did it work?” he sighed.

“Do you want it to have worked, Merchant of Death?” asked Loki. “Even to save your whole world?” He waited a beat. “You designed it. Of course it worked. You were… unhappy to add genocide to the list of consequences wrought by your stolen weapons. But you lived, as did the Nine Realms. I was content to play the villain.”

“So it did work,” Tony said. He was watching Loki back with something strange in his guarded expression. “And yet, here you are, doing the time warp again.”

“The invasion never came,” agreed Loki, his mouth twisted at the bitter memory. “No summoning sigil was drawn; not a single drop of blood split upon the ice—and yet, when the day came, Nithhogg appeared, and consumed all.”

He tipped his head back to the ceiling, surprised to find his eyes streaming; even more surprised to find that he had no idea how long they’d been doing so.

“It was me,” he admitted, at last. “The world wyrm comes for me, now he knows my scent. He will come again, and again, and again while I live. This is my final play. The Nine are safe from Thanos, and from the Chitauri once again. I will be executed for treason… and life will go on.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Tony snorted.

“You expect me to believe that?” He shook his head. “No, you’re smarter than that.”

Until the fist of anxiety that had feebly clutched Loki’s chest let go, falling into his stomach and keeping on falling, he hadn’t even realised he’d still been holding on to hope.

It had been too late for that, far too late, even before he’d embarked upon this unendurable cycle of failure.

And he was tired. So tired.

“You have heard my confession,” he said quietly, and rested his head back against the wall, closing his eyes once more, utterly exhausted. It shouldn’t have stung; he knew better than to wish for anything else. “Believe me—don’t believe me—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter that you’re just giving up?” Tony returned, incredulous. “After all you’ve fought for, all you’ve struggled? I don’t believe that. And I don’t believe you could be so stupid as to take the coward’s way out, just because you’re all out of ideas and suddenly the going’s got tough.”

Loki’s eyes snapped open again, incensed. “You dare to call me a coward?”

Not a one of these mortals would ever thank him for what he’d done for them.

Not even one.

“You have no idea what I’ve suffered!” he screamed, spittle spraying from his mouth. “No idea how hard I’ve worked for this!”

“It doesn’t make any sense!” Tony yelled in return, stepping in closer rather than falling back. “You told me Nithhogg waits, outside time and space, waits to be summoned—if it was you he came for, to finish the job he’d already started, he would have followed you back four years to the moment you arrived in the past. Or should have come to you at the appointed time, even when you were imprisoned at the far end of the universe. But he was summoned, what, four times, in the same time and place, and then came there again? Come on, Frodo, I’m not saying you haven’t done bad shit, but this is clearly not about you. If you let yourself die, the rest of us aren’t going to get another chance.”

“You ask a very great deal,” said Loki coldly, and raised his cuffed hands. “And not something that lies within my power to grant.”

He’d made sure of that. A suicide in the heat of a moment of despair was one thing, but this whole plan had been founded on making sure that, when the hour was right and the future was at its brightest, he wouldn’t be able to back out.

But Tony just rolled his eyes. “I think I might have some influence around here. Do it once more, Romeo.” He gave a self-deprecating smirk. “For me. If you’re wrong, and I’m right, Nithhogg will come even if you’re dead—and then everything you’ve worked so hard to save will be destroyed anyway. You just won’t be here to prevent it this time.”

There was a pause.

Loki stared at Tony, suddenly realising what had happened: realising what, precisely, it was that Tony was arguing for and why.

He felt like he was falling between the worlds once more, rewinding time back to the moment when Tony had first taken a stranger to his world into his bed, despite how little he’d known of Loki: falling fast despite the solid cool of the wall behind his back and the clutch of the cuffs on his hands holding him fast to the present moment.

“You…” Loki said, and licked his dry lips. “You believe me?”

After all this, could it really have been so simple?

Tony shrugged. “I wouldn’t say believe,” he said. “You’ve made some extraordinary claims, Cassandra. You’re going to require some extraordinary evidence. But there’s some substantiation, which means I’m not stupid enough to outright dismiss the possibility. Particularly not with a threat this serious. And… if you’re telling the truth? Next time around, come and meet me at the party.”

He stood to go and replaced his sunshades, but tipped them down to meet Loki’s gaze, his eyes dark and intense over the tops.

“Tell me ‘the infinite sum is null’,” he said. “Those exact words. Then…” Tony Stark’s voice rang with that unshakable confidence that drove everything he did. “Then, I’ll believe you.”

---

“Every time,” said Loki, in response.

“Huh?” asked Tony, puzzled.

“It hurts,” repeated Loki slowly, as though for a dullard, “to fall from heaven. Every. Time. But you were here to make a pass at me, I believe: let’s hear it.”

“Right,” said Tony, gathering his wits back around him again with admirable speed. “Never heard that response to a cheesy pickup line before, but yes, I suppose I was.”

“Yes,” said Loki, “is the answer. But I can play hard to get if you’d prefer.” He held out his hand, smile sharp and brittle. “Loki Laufeyjarson.”

“Oh, you can play as hard as you like with me,” returned Tony with a lascivious smile, shaking the offered hand and then not releasing it. The confirmation of Loki’s return interest was apparently permission enough to begin caressing the back of his hand with his thumb, and the contact was electric. Tony’s personal magnetism was as much of an intoxicant as it always was when he turned on the charm. “Tony Stark.”

“I know,” admitted Loki, caressing back, letting a tiny spark of seidh warm and charge his touch in return. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Things progressed quite quickly at that point, and it wasn’t long before Loki was waited for that drink Tony had promised him by the window. He left his host to talk to JARVIS alone; allowed him a few minutes to mull over the results of the entry scan and come to his own conclusions.

The view was still stunning—the changes since he’d last seen the altered New York skyline, three years in the future, enough to make it new all over again. Looking out this window at this city, points of brilliant light arrayed from horizon to horizon, had always felt like coming home.

He’d stopped wishing it was Asgard he was coming home to a long time ago.

“So, now that I’ve invited you back to my crib and everything,” said Tony, abruptly right behind him, suprising Loki with the realisation that he must have been so lost in his thoughts that he’d missed his cue. “Mind telling me what’s up with you?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific,” returned Loki. He raised an eyebrow as he accepted his drink. “Some things are definitely, as you say, ‘up’.”

“Mmmm, promising,” grinned Tony, his tongue darting out to chase a drop of scotch onto his lower lip in a blatant flirt. “But in this case, I was meaning that you’re not human.”

Loki sipped, smirking, as Tony explained in wide gestures, as completely unashamed of the standard scans performed by Jarvis on entry as he ever had been. He was all affable politeness and friendly, nonthreatening curiosity once more; not a hint of guile beneath the exuberance.

Loki knew Tony better at this point. Knew that that tone was backed by serious power and an entirely justified faith in his own ability to handle events, should they turn awry.

Tony sounded like he was just making small talk prior to the main event—and in a way, he was. Loki had no doubt he was interested, in all senses of the word. But this moment was a tipping point: a challenge for his alien visitor to prove his intentions. And if Tony didn’t like those intentions—or found later along the line that Loki had set out deliberately to deceive him—then Tony’s suit would be waiting, bare moments away from assembling around the heart he guarded oh, so carefully that he’d managed to turn full battle armour into an offensive weapon.

Not that Tony was going to be calling the suit—today or at all, again—against Loki.

Hopefully.

“Do you want the version that moves us on to the bedroom faster?” asked Loki archly. “Or the one where you’ll want to spend the rest of the night demanding boring details?”

“Well…” Tony looked Loki up and down again, smirking as he pretended to weigh up the options. “Full details on a hot non-human entity, I suppose, can wait until the morning—so I’m tempted to say the first one. Let’s see how I like it for starters.”

“I’m an alien shapeshifter,” Loki told him baldly, “better remembered in human history as the Norse god Loki Liesmith, and I am infiltrating human society in an attempt to avert a galactic catastrophe.”

Loki paused, watching Tony’s lips part, as though to speak, and then close again soundlessly.

He waited until the other man had taken a sip of the amber liquid in his glass before adding, “Of course I have more reasons than that to be infiltrating your pants.”

Tony snorted, narrowly avoiding the spit-take Loki had tried for, his eyes sparkling.

“I was wondering how that was the bow-chicka-wow-wow version,” he laughed. “You know, I always wanted to be probed by an alien.” He paused for a moment. “Still,” he admitted, “now I’m really curious about the version that could convince me to put things on hold for science.”

“As you wish,” said Loki, inclining his head in a complete lack of surprise. The false choice he’d offered had been little more than a bait. “I’ve been travelling not just through space, but…”

Loki took a deep breath and met Tony’s eyes: this was the moment of truth.

“… through time,” he finished. “Tony. The infinite sum is null.”

“Infinite…” said Tony, then his brain caught up, playful curiosity abruptly doused by a flood of cold sobriety. “What, really?”

“Your words, Tony,” shrugged Loki.

“I’m aware!” snapped Tony. “I made up that password when I was five!  How could you have--wait, no, are you a mind reader?”

“Were you thinking of it?” shrugged Loki. “Such that I could pluck it from your mind, if I were?  You assured me that you’d believe me.  Two years... on, from now.”  He smothered his anxiety in another sip of his drink before spreading his arms out to the sides in an open invitation.  “Scan me for radiation if you require proof.”

Tony glared at him for a moment, then balled his hand in a fist and made a sudden throwing motion. Loki didn’t flinch, standing stock-still as the illusory impact on his chest blossomed into a holographic projection, engulfing him in swirls of blue-white light.

“Is the time-shift stable?” Tony demanded, after a moment, his hands moving fast as the hologram spun and coalesced, spilling out graphs and numbers in the air, dancing as Tony’s fingers pulled them this way and that. “Galactic catastrophe, you said. Do we have multiple tries, or is this our only chance? How much time before it hits?”

Loki laughed at the sudden release of tension in his chest, relieved once again of the instinctive terror of doing this alone, again: a terror which he suspected would never truly go away. He laughed and laughed and—when Tony’s double-take at the radiation scan coincided poorly with a fortifying drink of scotch and sent an actual spray of liquid across the room—he laughed some more.

“Yeah, laugh it up, Peggy Sue,” muttered Tony sourly. “Damn, but that’s a lot of arc-reactor radiation.”

“Yes,” Loki managed at last, smiling back at him fondly. “Yes, it is. We have time. Years yet in this cycle, more cycles if we need them. We’ve made plans together; I’ll bring you up to date tomorrow morning, in exchange for some waffles.” He smirked at Tony from under his eyelashes, and set his drink aside. “I do like your morning-after waffles. It will be all right, Tony. You told me that.”

“Loki,” demanded Tony, eyes aflame. “What are we trying to prevent? Do you need to protect the timeline, or can you tell me that much, at least?”

“The timeline can go fuck itself,” shrugged Loki, who had possibly spent too much time around Tony at this point. “We’re trying to prevent end of this world, and eight others.”

He spread his hands, letting seidh crackle between them in a brief illusion of Midgard crushed in Nithhogg’s coils. He broadened their span to show floating flashes of Jotunheim, Niflheim, Asgard, and the other worlds suspended in the world tree: quaking, falling apart… and then brought his hands together with a hollow clap, snuffing the images out.

“Twenty billion souls,” he said calmly. “Extinguished.”

Tony’s eyes returned to his, wide and horrified—and not a little impressed at the casual display of power.

Loki knew just how much effort Tony put into the holographic projections he threw around with ease; a kinesthetic learner, he’d called himself, thinking his best while elbow-deep in his investigations.

“But perhaps…” said Loki.

He stepped forward out of the middle of the projections still arrayed around him and laid his hand against Tony’s cheek: this fragile mortal whose years outside the loop were numbered in brief decades at best—but who, inside it, could live an infinity of lifetimes with Loki.

Perhaps they would never defeat Nithhogg. Perhaps, once summoned across time and space, it could never be undone. Perhaps Loki would never stop failing, and falling. Perhaps even if they succeeded, Loki would eventually choose to fall nonetheless.

Because despite all of it: this moment that Tony himself had choreographed to ensure he was convinced, this moment when Tony first understood, and believed him… this moment was worth it.

Even though, at this point, Loki had long ago lost count of the number of times it had happened—had long ago stopped hoping it would ever stop happening. He’d been so angry, so lost, so desperate, for so many years, so many turns around the cycle… but time, the humans said, healed all wounds.

And time was something Loki had in abundance.

He drew Tony in, heart fluttering at the way the other man came, curious and unresisting at the too-familar touch of one he barely knew… yet. He was so young, so untouched as yet by suspicion and regrets and arguments and the ultimate inevitability of failure.

“Perhaps the worst of it,” said Loki, his breath barely brushing against Tony’s lips, “each time, is always losing you.”