Connecting : Chapter 8 (TonyxReader)

Chapter 8: Even in a Heart as Frozen as Steel There is a World Worth Saving


“Who else would it be? Certainly, you weren't expecting those abominable avengers?”

Loki is swift, elegant, as he makes his way over to one of thrones, sitting as though the extravagant chair had been fashioned for no one but he, tastefully laid back with his legs spread leisurely apart, his posture rather holier than thou. You bestowed him a flat look, a quiet sign of disapproval. Your words were received yet unheeded as Loki rolled his eyes in that refined manner that you'd come to conclude only he and Tony can do. Mystified by him, as you frequently, as of late, had been, you approached without a single thought to steer you from such action. He quirked a brow, feigning intrigue and disinterest all in one gesture, as you perched yourself upon the glacial armrest.

Something about this place was so surreal and utterly familiar, its very essence tangling with your body and soul, home.

“Loki, where are we?”

He silently gazed at you, as though he knew everything and nothing, secretive yet open.

“Where do you suppose we are?”

The question sounded genuine enough, but with Loki it was always difficult to tell. He tilts he head to the side, away from you, and patiently observes you, as though his question had every right to override yours. The nerve!
Promptly you reached out a hand and enacted your all-deserving revenge. Loki let out a whine of disapproval as he snatched his arm from your reach, soothing the offended region of his person. You grinned pleased as you watched him nurse the wounded appendage.

“Are you mad?!”

“Maybe next time you’ll answer my question and then I won’t have to pinch you,” you replied nonchalantly, fighting back the triumphant smile that aimed to invade your poker face, all in vain.

Loki eyed his slightly reddening hand with discontent before looking back to you, face set in a manner that relayed just how much he could not believe you did that. Your smile only grew.

“Seriously though, where are we?”

Anything Loki had been planning to say was swept clean from his head as well as his vocal capabilities, rendering him speechless. He looked—gazed—longingly at you with broken eyes, but it was brief, just as all the times before. He had been so sure that perhaps you remembered. You were here after all, so it’s only natural for him to assume, to hope that…

Perhaps it was time he stopped waiting. Patience. It was the man’s most notable trait. If he had something in mind, Loki would—could—wait, lay the path, and wait. Still, it had been so long, so very long. Loki laughed bitterly at the thought, the boy who waited and waited until one day he became the man too afraid to do anything. A coward for all the right things and daring for all the wrong ones, for the ones that didn't matter. Stop, no  more delaying and, most certainly, no more hiding. With his mind made up, melding together to form a resolve from the most resilient of steel, he stretched out his hand and took your wrist.

You startled at the sudden contact. Loki had never reached out to you before, always the other way around, always so very unreciprocated. Not today. The touch caught you unaware, but it certainly was most welcomed. With this gesture alone you felt close to him, closer, just as it should be.

“I have something I wish to show you, if you’ll allow.”

You nodded once, slowly, afraid to speak; worried you’d all but demolish the moment, bulldoze his newly found resolve, and cement the ever present and most undesired gap between you both. The corner of his mouth quirks upward and you find there to be bubbles in your chest. He delicately flips your arm over as though you were china—he’s already broken so much before—exposing the under half of your arm. Scrupulously he wraps a hand around the entirety of your wrist and closes his eyes. They twitch beneath the lid, as though her were concentrating, focusing. It burns, not so much as to be excruciatingly painful, but still entirely present, a dull pain. Like the sting of a bee or the duration of a shot, fleeting but ever-present, a lingering ‘sort of’ pain. He takes his hand from your person just as he opens his eyes, locking them perfectly with yours.

You are almost afraid to look down, but you feel—know—that if you wait the revelation to come will slips by, exiting from your knowing without so much as a goodbye. Swiftly you veer your eyes downward in pursuit of what Loki so very wants you to know.

Blue. Your wrist is icy cold and blue.

There’s a tingling in the back of your head, a numbing ubiquitous call. It’s only then do you realize that the numbness has always been there, lingering, waiting for the day to manifest. It pushes at the back of your brain, struggling to force words to fill its absence, to explain its existence. There’s a ringing pushing the words back but you fight to ignore it and to make the words—word!—surface!

You look to Loki hurriedly, expectantly. The reason, the story is there, so very close, yet so very out of reach. It’s aggravating! The ringing is growing, expanding as it bounces and reverberates off the arctic walls. Time is almost up! You search his eyes for the answer and you find yourself on the verge of discovery. Loki smiled as the ringing, buzzing, noise swallowed you whole.

~~~

You wake up with heavy uneven breaths, shaky and unsure. The beeping noise is silenced only when you manage to remember the passcode to your phone. Sitting upright, you struggle to get your bearings. You remembered, some, but not all. That place; home, Skin; cold and blue, and Loki; what was Loki to you. Important. You couldn't explain why he was so important as of now, but you were fairly certain that if it ever boiled down to it, you would die for him. And he for you, after all, he did promise. Promise? He promised? When? Why?
Your thoughts were a mess, tangling balls of yarn rolling about your cranium. You had to find Loki, to get him to explain. Leaping out of bed in pursuit of clothing you heard a knock, but before you could call out a reply the window opened. Wait? The window? Yup, and standing before it was Loki himself, trademark smirk in place.

“Loki!” you thought about your place of residence and lowered your voice to a harsh whisper,

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you, of course. Consider yourself lucky because typically I would never dare tread upon the ground of imbeciles.”

For a moment you were fairly sure he was talking about you, but again you recalled where you were. Geez, he certainly did not like the avengers. You snatched up a pair of jeans from the drawers and proceeded to slip them on, hooping lightly in place to pull them into place. While you pursued a shirt, Loki sauntered over and made himself at home upon your bed. Finally dressed, you turned to face him, hands on your hips and lips in a fine line.

“I’m supposing by the look on you face that I am in the utmost of trouble,” his voice is almost sincere but that smug grin on his face negates it all.

You let out a weary sigh before urging him to move over so that you could sit beside him ( not that he needed to do so seeing how large the bed was, but making him move made you feel as though you’d given him a punishment of sort). You looked at him hopefully and he just grinned secretively. Another sigh was released as you laid your head upon his shoulder.

“Loki, don’t be a jerk. Just tell me…please.”

“All you need do but ask.”  The smirk was apparent in his voice.

“Don’t make me pinch you again,” you emptily threatened and Loki laughed.

Loki…laughed…the sound of it was nostalgic, uncannily familiar. The tremor of it was deeper that you remembered—thought you remembered—but the mannerism, the characteristics were so much the same. A smile slipped onto your face and you slipped an arm under his own, crossing your looped arm with your free one, thus embracing Loki’s limb and nestling closer. A silence falls as you wait…you can wait.

“My family…I was never familiar with my family.”
You paused to ponder. What about Thor? Wasn’t Thor his brother? But you remained voiceless, intent on allowing Loki to do the talking.

“At least not my biological family. As a child I always wondered about them. Were they dead or had they simply wanted nothing to do with me? The more I thought about them, the more this…this power grew.”

He paused to peer over at you and then down at his hands.

“A window. It started off like that, initially. I could see a girl. It was so very apparent she human—at least it seemed that way at first—but she was clearly different, but I had no means of speaking to her. So I simply settled with watching. I even found myself talking to her as though she could hear me…she cried a lot. She always claimed that she was happy and that she didn’t understand her tears. She’d tell her mother every day: “I’m happy, so I don’t understand why I’m crying.
One night, as she cried herself to sleep, I began to speak to her as I often did—I believe I called her a crybaby—and she responded. She sat up in bed and looked at me, right at me.”

He stopped, “Perhaps it’d be best to show you.”

He took your hand in his, twining fingers before tightening his grip.

~~~

“I am not!”

Loki startled as her sudden reply and found himself searching about his chambers for some unknown guest. Finally, he looked back to her with wide eyes.

“What?”

“I am not a crybaby!”

“You can hear me?” he asked, crawling forward on his bed on hands in knees, as though he could approach the girl by doing so.

“Duh!” was her simply reply as she rolled her eyes after having wiped any trace evidence of her tears.

Loki was rather stunned. He hadn’t really spent time with girls before. There was his mother and whatever girl Thor brought over to play with, but Loki never stuck around, preferring to curl up with a book.

“What’s your name?”

Her sudden question surprised the young god and he visibly startled.
“It’s…uh…I’m Loki,” he paused to ponder his demeanor and quickly corrected it, “Prince Loki of Asgard!”

“You’re prince? You don’t look like a prince…”she mumbled as she searched Loki for princely qualities.

“What do you mean I do not resemble a prince?” Loki asked with puffed cheeks as he huffily wrapped his arms over his chest clearly put out.

“I’ve seen enough Disney movies to know what a prince looks like.”

Loki furrowed his brows and frown, “What in Asgard is a Disney?”

The girl frowned in turn, tilting her head to the side as though the new angle would supply her with a reasonable explanation. She bites at her bottom lip, averting baffled eyes downward to the sheets and blankets bundled up in her lap.

“I’m (y/n). It’s very nice to meet you, Loki.”

And Loki knows from her smile that she means it.

Loki found peace in his new half. Of course he had Thor, but Thor as time passed, he and Thor grew distant, separate. Thor had a burning passion, a hunger, to fight the beasts, conquer lands, and bed every maiden that came his way. Loki had no interest in such trivial matters, preferring his time alone, his time in his head…with her, with you. Loki had been so very young the day he spoke to you, now it had been many years. You were both much older and had grown far closer, but something was—had changed.

You’d both meet every night and create worlds of your own, your combined imaginations—your powers—taking you both to wherever you pleased. Loki found that the window had become a door, allowing he and you to meet in magical places.

Loki’s favorite place was the Ice Palace, a splendid structure you both conjured together, elegant and flawless. The perfect stronghold and the best place to get away to. Despite having built the fortress yourselves, you’d both always stumbled across new rooms offering new tales, allowing for new memories to be made. The two of you were inseparable. Just Loki and you, you and Loki. No Thor, no worldly obligations, and no feelings of displacement. No, every night under the stars, you both laid your bodies to rest and let your minds meld, fleeing to a world of wondrous dreams.

That was until you forgot. Faded encounters and childlike fantasies, that’s what you’d become so certain these excursions were and Loki but an imaginary friend. All good things must come to an end. For you, the dreams became less frequent, withering, vanishing into to forgotten nothingness.

Loki was alone…waiting and waiting, all in vain, as though he called only to have his cries rejected, bound in betrayal and tossed aside like a filthy stray mutt on the street. You left…him. He was but a distant, faint, lingering memory. You’d moved on, bonding with your family, amassing acquaintances that shifted into the best of companions, studying to achieve your aspirations, acquiring said dreams…you went on, moving forward and growing—flourishing—with each metaphorical step into a world of success…and happiness.

You were happy…he was not.

The door shriveled up into a window, his one-way window with him only ever looking out and never you looking in. Loki wasn’t sure what hurt more, you leaving him in his youth or discovering his life was a well execute lie…perhaps the latter would’ve hurt less if you had been there.

~

You listened—watched— Loki recount his—your—story. He was in your mind and you in his, fusing your subconscious into one. There was swelling in your chest as the oxygen fled weary lungs, stirring in your chest, taut, pulling at your innards and pushing the air up and out. Even with closed eyes did the wetness slip down your cheeks, a lingering trail of salt and bitter guilt. Your brain was slowly recollecting, rummaging through the mental box of fragments and pieces, but even without them you could validate Loki’s story. Not only by the genuine sorrow in his voice or the tremble of his hand in yours, but by the acute sharpness in your heart. That was enough verification. Loki had fallen silent when he felt you tremble against him and he looked down at you. You weren’t often inclined to shed tears, not to say you were a cold individual, but tears simply were not your method of grieving, but this hurt! You swallowed hard before taking your hand back and standing to your feet, rubbing at reddening eyes. You placed yourself before the so very vulnerable god and dropped to your knees, wedging yourself between his legs. Loki visibly startled but you paid no mind as you wrapped your arms around his waist, head resting up the lower half of his chest.

“I won’t apologize because no amount of words will make things right,” you paused to inhale a shaky breath, “But I’m going to try, okay?”

You could hear—feel—his heart beat against his chest, quick and uneven. Perhaps you could fix it…it was so very damaged.

“I haven’t done this in so very long.”

You rolled your eyes up in an effort to peer at the man, but found that at the odd angle the only thing you could acquire was a bout of dizziness.

“What?” you asked, squeezing your eyes open and shut to obtain a steady world once more.

“Touch someone.”
His reply was so soft that had you not been so close you likely would not have heard. You shifted, preparing to move back to look at him, but Loki quickly locked his arms around you, keeping you in place. You let out a huff of discontent and he chuckled.

“You should consider yourself fortunate. I do not allow people to lay a hand upon my person.”

There was that smugness gain. You yanked yourself away, almost tumbling back, and swiftly stood your feet, hands upon your hips and smile in place.

“Oh, whatever! Wait until the world gets a load of this! I can picture the headlines. “Loki: Menacing God of Mischief or Fiendish Cuddler. Tonight at 11.”

Loki’s face does appear menacing, but the crinkles at the corner of his eyes let you know otherwise, they always have since you were both little—! That thought was warming. Your mind managed to remember something about Loki, casually pushing it to the surface. You moved forward again and took his hands yours, squeezing them tightly. The skin to skin contact reminded you…blue.

“Loki, back in that castle place, you touched me and my wrist turned blue. Why did that happen?” Your eyes were earnest as you searched him and his smile grew.

“That is because, (y/n), we are the same.”

“The same?”

“The very same, you and I.”

~~~

You woke up…again? Slowly you sit up, upper half the blanket and fabrics sliding down and pooling into your lap.

“Huh? A dream…within a dream.” You paused as you looked about the room for Loki, “That was like Inception in my head…”

After swinging your feet over the edge of the bed, you stood to your feet just as your stomach growled. It is only when you looked down to your stomach that you realize you are fully clothed. A dream it was not. Loki actually came and visited you and that thought was warm. You smile fondly as you turn to peer at the digital clock, your clock from the apartment, to acquire the time. But it’s not the earliness of the morning that catches your eye, but the strange vile-like object bedside. Gently you take it into hand, eyeing the thick blue liquid that seemed to float within the object, hugging its walls as it glided up and down. Its consistency reminded you of a lava lamp, bubbles that floated up and sank back down in a cycle.

Blue. Liquid. Same. Could this be—!

You quickly inhale, hugging the small vile to your chest.

“JARVIS!”

The AI is quick to respond to your sudden summons, inquiring as to what services he could provide.

“What floor is Bruce on?” The words are rushed and almost smothered by your eager breaths as you head to the door.

JARVIS cooperatively offers you’re the appropriate digits, “Miss Carlton. Is everything alright? I sense that your blood pressure is elevated and your heartbeat is rather rapid.”

You hurriedly shake your head as you slip into a pair of ballet flats, though you’re almost sure the AI cannot see you do so…then again.

“I’m fine, JARVIS, I promise.”

JARVIS’ silence is clear sign that he is not convinced, but having Tony for an employer has taught him that certain things are best left not readdressed. You sigh guiltily. You didn't want to make him worry.

“Honest, I’m fine. Just a bit excited, is all. Tell you what, you can monitor my vitals, or whatever it is you monitor, until they go back to normal.”

If JARVIS could laugh, you were sure that, in this pint of time, he would've, "I always monitor vitals, Miss Carlton.”

Oh. That made sense actually but you shook the thought aside as you opened the door, “Oh and JARVIS.”

“Yes, Miss Carlton?”

“It’s just (y/n).”

JARVIS falls silent in the span you shut the door and call for the elevator. Just as the bell dings, relaying the arrival of the metal conveyor, JARVIS speaks.

“As you wish…(y/n).”

The seemingly hesitance in JARVIS’ reply made you ponder as you entered the lift. Tony’s inventions were surprisingly lifelike, JARVIS in particular. Dummy seemed keen on attaining affection and VEE sure liked to cuddle and JARVIS…well he was the way he was. You physically shrug your shoulders, mentally shrugging the thought off in the process. That was a thought for another day. Right now, you had to get to Bruce!