Tony is burning.

It's all he can process right now. His hand is consumed with fire, a blistering force so cold it's hot. He wants to pull away his hand, but when he moves it, it only increases the pain. His vision is blurry with tears and sweat that stings his eyes.

Someone is howling, a horrible, drawn out shriek, and Tony realizes it's himself.

He blinks sluggishly and catches a glimpse of the scene in front of him, staring with disbelief before he has to blink his eyes shut again. By now, his hand has gone numb with pain, occasional arcs of fire flashing through it.

The Tesseract is glowing, a brightness so powerful it makes Loki's destruction of the Oriddarith look like a light show. Tony squeezes his eyes shut, but he can still see the afterimage burned into his eyelids. The shield underneath the Tesseract is absorbing the light, a dark silhouette amidst the icy blue, and then—and—

Where Tony's hand is pressing the triangle of vibranium to the Tesseract, where his bones and skin are practically melting into the metal of his gauntlet, a singular beam of blue is shooting straight up into the sky until it disappears into the pinkish dawn.

Somewhere, in between the haze of pain and his slowly numbing mind, he thinks dazedly that it worked. The energized vibranium triangle is drawing the Tesseract's explosive force into it to force the energy into a focused beam.

A beam that's going right through his hand.

Shit. He needs to get out of there before his arm burns off, Tony realizes numbly.

Best to get it done quick, like ripping off a band-aid. He pushes away the fact that this is absolutely nothing like ripping off a band-aid. He screws his face up and yanks his hand toward him.

Another scream beats against his lips before the sound is cut off by the bile rising in his throat. He chokes, retching, dropping from his kneeling position to land squarely on his ass. He pointedly doesn't look at his hand.

There are muffled voices that slowly come into focus in his ear, but it's hard to tell when he keeps blanking out. Each blink seems to last at least a minute, and he can feel his breath coming in short pants. Oh. Right. He took out the one thing preventing his death.

Tony can't even muster the energy to be angry about it.

Suddenly, the Tesseract shuts down, going completely dark before cracks lace their way through it to split it into shards of glassy-looking material. Far, far up into the sky, where the blue beam disappeared to, a noise like a thunderclap rings through the air and blue light explodes in a magnificent arc that follows the curve of the earth. It looks like a giant force field, or a bubble, or something else equally fantastical and amazing.

Tony drinks in the sight before realizing that means that he can reach his vibranium triangle now that the Tesseract has stopped emitting energy, but he can't move. His blood feels like liquid lead running through his veins and his breathing is growing more ragged with each inhale and exhale he takes. Sharp pains stab into his chest and arc through his whole body.

A whirring sound filters into his ears and he realizes dully it's the quinjet. Well. They're a little late.

Someone is standing over him—no, three people are standing over him, and he can see exactly when they notice his hand—they all inhale sharply and wince. Which. He hasn't really noticed the hand himself, yet.

"Tony? Tony, goddammit, keep your eyes open," Natasha growls, and oh. His faceplate is gone and he's been tipped over to lie on his back. When did that happen?

He can see Steve's and Bruce's faces swimming blurrily in the background. Clint must be piloting the jet.

"H—heart," he mumbles jaggedly up to Natasha, willing her to understand. Her curls are blindingly red in the sunrise.

Her eyes widen and her gaze drops down to his chest. "Bruce," she calls, warningly. "What the hell did you do to yourself?" She mutters, turning her eyes back to him.

Tony sighs in response, his eyes dropping closed again. Steve apparently doesn't like this, as he hits Tony's helmet pretty hard. The ringing makes his head spin and he groans, but opens his eyes.

Bruce is doing something busily behind Steve, but Tony can't see what it is. It looks important, though. Probably. He's wearing those god-awful stretch pants that Tony made him, that are ugly as fuck and look like leggings but work amazingly well. He notices absentmindedly that all three of them are covered in white sand and that it doesn't seem to be burning the flesh off their bones.

"Here, here," Bruce says breathlessly. He's pinching—oh. The triangle of vibranium. "Tony, you crazy bastard, that was a stupid plan," Bruce mumbles as he shoves the triangle back into place.

Tony exhales slowly and coughs, untainted air filling his lungs. The taste of coconut permeates his mouth, metal-tinged and familiar, and he blinks his eyes shut.

"Tony? You with me?" That's Bruce, trying to see if he put the vibranium in right—as if he hadn't already memorized the arc reactor's specs when Tony first shared them with him a few months after New York.

He opens his eyes and focuses his gaze on Bruce. Bruce's expression drops, then, and he says quietly, "Tony, your hand…"

Tony shakes his head, cutting him off. "I don't—" His voice is too hoarse from his screaming earlier, when fire invaded his flesh. He tries again. "Just—wait."

He doesn't mention how he already tried to flex his fingers, roll his wrist, and couldn't. He doesn't feel anything. Just numb, empty blankness starting at his wrist and ending… he doesn't know where. His faceplate is gone, so he can't run any scans, and honestly, he's not sure he wants to.

When he takes stock of his surroundings again, he realizes his arms are draped over Steve's broad shoulders and Bruce's slightly smaller ones. The two of them are manhandling him to the quinjet that hovers at the edge of the statue. Steve has his shield in one hand, and although the straps on the back have been completely burned away, it otherwise looks undamaged.

They haul him into the jet, Steve going in first and steadying Tony when he stumbles in through the open side panel. Natasha drags Thor behind her in a way that can't be good for his burned skin and Bruce enters after her. Clint cranes his head around from the pilot's seat, shoving his headphones down to hang around his neck.

"What—" he begins, and then his gaze drops to Tony's mangled hand and Thor's burned skin. He inhales, a sharp hiss of breath drawn through teeth. "Never mind. Hospital sound good?"

Tony hears Steve make a noise of affirmation. The white sand dusting their hair and shoulders is covering Clint, too, and he wonders what happened to the Oriddarith. Their "life-force" must have been connected to the Tesseract.

He sits down heavily into one of the seats that line the inside of the jet. The movement jostles his hand and although the hand itself isn't exactly in pain, his wrist hurts like a bitch. He clenches his teeth so hard his jaw aches and decides against trying to strap himself in.

Clint presses the button to close the open side door and puts his headphones on, though he leaves it so one ear is uncovered to hear the conversation inside the jet. The jet rotates slowly to face Manhattan, the light of the rising sun hitting the right side of the jet and streaming in through the windows.

They're about to take off for the mansion or the hospital or wherever, Clint pulling back the throttle and checking all the necessary buttons and dials, when something crashes into the tail of the quinjet. It knocks them off balance and out of the air, the jet spinning around before Clint manages to get it under control.

Natasha shoves Tony's faceplate at him—which, handy, he hadn't known she'd grabbed that—before she climbs into the seat next to Clint to co-pilot. Tony clumsily holds the faceplate up to his eyes with his good hand. "Jarvis, what was that?"

The HUD lights up—thank God—which means that the wireless chip must be working. Jarvis answers by pulling up a scan of the surrounding area and Tony directs him to where the projected trajectory says the object should have landed.

Clint shouts back at them that they're going to have to land because whatever it was took out one of their two main turbines in the back. Tony tunes him out, instead focusing on the scans Jarvis is drawing up for him.

The object that hit the jet looks… human. Or at least, human-shaped.

Tony plucks the first-aid kit from Steve's hands, and pries off a wrist panel on his suit to give himself an injection for local anesthetic for his wrist. His hand is still numb and the entire gauntlet covering his hand looks melted and deformed. The red and gold paint has blackened, as though he dipped his hand in soot.

"What do you think you're doing?" Bruce asks. He looks a bit comical, dressed in stretch pants and no shirt, an irritated expression on his face and sand covering his shoulders and settled into his hair. Bruce reaches out to grab the syringe from him, but it's too late.

"What—whatever crashed into the quinjet looks like a person," Tony explains, only stumbling over his words a little bit. Now that the vibranium is back in his chest his thoughts are clearer, his breathing less labored.

Clint touches the quinjet down on the star-shaped base of the Statue, skidding the underbelly of the plane slightly on the smooth stone before he straightens it out. He opens the side door, because smoke is starting to leak into the cabin, and they all climb out quickly, Steve hauling Thor over his shoulders and grunting at his weight. Behind them, the back of the jet is vomiting black smoke into the pink sky. A small explosion makes a popping noise and a mini fireball flares into being before subduing itself.

"There goes our ride home," Clint says dejectedly.

Tony hears him only vaguely, too busy following Jarvis' directions to reach the man-thing that crashed into their plane. He probably looks like a bumbling idiot, his good hand holding the mask up to his face and running awkwardly in the suit because his stability isn't the best when he doesn't have use of either of his hands. The rest of the team is following behind him.

He reaches the spot that the object-person was supposed to land, and… nothing. Just a small crater and a few splotches of blood that look black in the light. They're on the western side of the statue, where the light of the rising sun can't reach, and the massive metal sculpture casts a huge shadow that stretches out over the water.

Over the water, where a whirling cloud of black smoke, thicker and more oily than the smoke pouring out of the quinjet, churns and heaves in the nonexistent wind.

As Tony watches, the swirl of motion abruptly stops, and someone is thrown towards them, out of where the cloud used to be, to land solidly on the top of the water. When he squints closer, he realizes that it's Loki.

"What the fuck—" Clint mutters, his sharp eyes already having picked out Loki's familiar form.

Loki struggles to his feet, standing defiantly on the fucking water, his legs braced. He's a scant few yards away from them now, having skidded after being blown backwards, and he glances back at them quickly, a fierce expression on his face. Tony lov—is so glad to see him it's making his chest weak just looking at him.

"Get away, you imbeciles," Loki hisses at them, something almost like concern tightening his face. He's panting, and although his skin doesn't show wounds easily there are cuts and bruises covering his hands and face. "Run!"

"Plane's broken," Clint says, waving offhandedly towards the smoking quinjet, though his muscles are tensed with wariness. "There's no way to get off the island."

Darkness colors Loki's face and he mutters something unsavory. His fists are clenched at his sides, engulfed in emerald flames that whisper and pop in the still morning.

Loki opens his mouth to say something else, but the whirling storm interrupts him, buffeting them all with a strong wind. Bits of debris fly by and Tony covers his face with his mask again. The others don't get off so easy, and when the wind dies down suddenly their exposed skin is dotted with crimson.

And standing on the water is—is—

Tony has seen his silhouette before; a shadow crouched in the corner of a white hospital room.

Thanos.

He is immense, towering over their huddled team, jaw square and nose straight. Tony can see how he is related to the Chitauri in some way, but next to Thanos those mercenaries would look like parasites. The darkness is drawn to him like a cloak, wrapping him up in its folds, and the brilliant sunrise of red and pink and orange is muted down to dull greys and tans with his arrival.

Thanos' skin is dark purple that seems to reflect no light. By contrast, the fitted gold armor pieces that cover his body shine with an unnatural luster. His irises are a molten gold that gleams even more brightly than his armor, but the whites of his eyes are instead black, cunning and wicked. He is beautiful and terrible all at once and he terrifies Tony more than the blank-eyed Oriddarith or the smoky Nathgir ever could.

When he smiles his teeth are startlingly white, a cruel slash of bone against his dark face.

"Princeling," he rumbles, and his voice is the voice, the one that's been taunting Tony since the beginning of all of this. Fire and lightning and bone. His tone is almost conversational as he directs it at Loki. "These are the filth you have chosen to ally yourself with."

Loki, who is made out of coiled steel and green fire and blue Jotun ice, quakes under Thanos' golden gaze and does not answer.

Thanos sighs, his breath powerful enough to feel like a breeze in the air that smells like ash. "You always were a disappointment," he says regretfully, but his eyes are sharp and smirking. "Alas."

They are still as the huge metal statue behind them. Tony's feet feel rooted to the ground, because there's such a presence to Thanos, one that makes Tony feel small and insignificant but is also painfully alluring. Thanos is ancient, more ancient than the earth, and unlike anything Tony has seen before.

Next to him, Loki's thousand-year-old face looks young, his pale face torn between determination and stone-cold blankness. But behind that blankness is fear that dances in his eyes like the flames engulfing his hands.

Thanos' gaze flicks to Tony and it's all he can do not to wilt under the pressure of it. The sour taste of fear floods his mouth like oil. He's trapped, staring paralyzed back at Thanos, a rabbit frozen in front of car headlights.

"You cannot trust him, Anthony Stark," Thanos says cuttingly, his voice scraping and his gaze unwavering. "He is the Trickster, and he shall always betray you and your kind in the end."

They are, all of them, silent.

"Not, of course, that he shall have the chance," Thanos amends, turning his eyes back to Loki. Tony lets out an involuntary sigh of relief to feel that gaze move on from him. "You, as weak and unfortunate as you are, have thwarted the power of the Tesseract. The sacrifice I promised Death has been saved, a lamb led away from the block."

His voice rolls across the water to contort the very air, curling into Tony's ears and leaving him with a cold feeling in his gut. Before, Tony realizes shakily, Thanos had been playing around. Now there is a dark undertone to his voice, a hidden malice in his expression that speaks of the true volume of anger that Thanos is harboring.

"She must be appeased," Thanos says. His smile is still a bone-white slash against his dark face. "I think Earth's Mightiest Heroes and the one who betrayed them would be a pleasant start."

Tony sees Loki give a near-imperceptible flinch, his fists clenching tighter. The fire around his hands flares up.

Thanos notices, his sharp gaze picking out the movement with little trouble. He huffs a laugh that sounds like crackling fire. "I am merely pointing out the facts, princeling," he says, blinking his golden eyes wide with innocence. The whites—or perhaps blacks—of his eyes reflect the muted sky like polished obsidian.

His head tilts to the side like a cat as he looks appraisingly at Loki. "Your sacrifice would be… unworthy. Impure of blood and tainted of heart—yet a death nonetheless. I, in particular, will derive great pleasure in killing you."

Loki's eyes close, briefly, his expression resigned. He glances over his shoulder at Tony and in his gaze is a desperate warning. Tony starts forward, against his own will, but something wraps around his foot and anchors him to the ground.

"I think not," Thanos says, eyes trained on Tony's outstretched arm, the one holding his faceplate. He contemplates something briefly before he holds out one massive, gauntleted purple hand in front of him and clenches it into a fist.

Immediately, a thunderclap of cold air resonates from his clenched hand, hitting Tony in the face and making him choke on the thickness of it. The rest of the team makes startled noises and grunts of pain as something twists around their ankles and creeps up their legs to pin their arms to their sides. Thor's head lolls freely, his eyes blinking sluggishly, as Steve is overtaken and the curling lengths take over in supporting his body.

Tony stifles a yelp of surprise as the tangling vines smash his arms flush with his sides, the faceplate clattering to the ground. Sharp stabs of pain lance through his wrist and he flinches.

When he squints closer at the things wrapping his teammates up, immobile up to their necks, it looks just like… darkness.

Oh, they were stupid, utterly foolish, to come back here behind the sun. Thanos' realm is in the gloom and lightless places. With the Statue of Liberty shielding them from their one saving grace, they are drowned in shadow that slinks out from cracks and crevices to render them helpless.

Loki is watching them in horror, his mouth slightly open in a silent gasp. A curling tentacle of shadow plays along his jawline before wrenching Loki's head back to stare at Thanos. No light reflects off the solid water where their armored feet are planted.

"We shall make this enjoyable," Thanos says, his eyes gleaming in the nonexistent light. "Single combat is fair, is it not? You always hated anything fair."

Loki's pale skin is shockingly bright in the growing darkness. Even though a few moments ago it was sunrise, now the sky is dark as midnight. The bright green flames surrounding his hands shine a ghostly green light that flickers across his face.

"I will not bow to you," Loki says, his voice steady but almost mournful. Tony is reminded of again of honey-smoothness, liquid and soothing, such a contrast to Thanos' scraping voice.

But Thanos' smile only widens, curving against his face like a crescent moon, his golden eyes burning and surging with power. "You did once. And you shall do so again."

Loki blasts a tidal wave of green fire at him that roars across the solid water with magic. Tony is helpless, unable to even cry out, a shadowy vine covering his mouth and absorbing any sound he makes.

Thanos brings his clenched fists together and then draws them apart, the space in between them filling with some kind of golden rod. He draws it out completely to reveal it to be a plain and undecorated staff. But as Tony watches, Thanos brings it down on the watery ground and it crackles with golden lightning that fizzles the wave in its tracks.

Even the fire around Loki's hands is extinguished. Tony struggles helplessly against his bonds, but it only causes the darkness to tighten its hold around him, the metal of his suit creaking ominously.

Thanos retaliates before Loki can muster up the power to defend himself, throwing the golden rod javelin-style at him. It transforms into a huge net spun out of thick golden cables, lightning racing along its patterns, and it wraps Loki up in the blink of an eye and pins him to the ground.

Loki's back arches under the net and he cries out, the crackling energy from the net crawling over his skin and seeming to electrify him. He writhes underneath it, and now the whole team is yelling, muffled and incomprehensible messages through the darkness in their mouths.

Thanos simply watches, his golden eyes glowing brighter than the net Loki is trapped under, his expression made out of carved marble. Impassive.

Loki stops struggling under the neck, his chest heaving wildly and his face drenched with sweat. Trembles occasionally shake his body, but for the most part he is still, seeming to concentrate. He presses both palms against the surface of the solid water.

"This water will not bow to you, princeling," Thanos growls, the sound grating in Tony's ears and making his teeth ache. A glint of white teeth shows against his face, sharp and wicked. "It is not alive."

Loki snarls wordlessly, the skin on his hands bleeding into blue and becoming encased with ice. He grabs ahold of the net with both hands, flinching at the electricity that transfers eagerly from it. Frost creeps out from where his hands have clenched the golden cables, turning the net a milky white. Loki lifts it off him and tosses it away, where it skids on the water in a stiff mold.

Thanos looks at him in contemplation. "Not bad, Jotun," Thanos says, the words biting.

But Loki only rolls his shoulders as he stands up and turns blood-red eyes on him. "I am not your plaything any longer," he hisses, shifting his weight from foot to foot in anticipation. The two of them are treading carefully now in a dance of attack and counter-attack.

"All creatures are my playthings," Thanos says, his words grating on the ears like shrieking metal. "And the nine realms are my playground. I am in every shadow, every crack and crevice, every spot where the light dares not enter. I own the darkness."

He opens his fist and a winding trail of shadow emerges, twisting through the air to wrap around Loki's throat and bind him like Tony's team is bound behind him. Loki manages to get one arm out and his hand bursts into flame with a whooshing sound. He bares his teeth in anger and smashes through the tentacle with a fiery fist, the darkness dispersing at its touch.

Thanos steps forwards, the frozen net now clasped in his hand, dripping and running like wax. The frost burns away from it and the net glows with the same unnatural shine as his armor. Its indefinable shape lengthens, turning wickedly sharp, until Thanos is left holding a curved scythe that's as tall as a lamppost.

He whirls the blade around, a shining arc of gold whipping through the air, and Loki blocks it with an arm encased in ice. He grunts in pain as the blade shears off a chunk.

And just like that, they're fighting like—well, like gods. They move faster than Tony can keep track of, a whirling dance of green and black versus gold and purple. Loki flicks a dozen thin, needle-sharp knives at Thanos, conjures flames and ice to engulf his hands, spits on the ground and transforms it into a red serpent that attacks Thanos' ankles.

Yet even with all his power and trickery, Loki can't match Thanos' brute strength, especially after being attacked by the crackling net. Thanos' golden rod morphs from a scythe to an axe to a storm of sharp arrows that have Loki dodging desperately. Darkness winds around his form, encircles his wrists and forearms in twisted bracelets, snatches at Loki's clothes and curls around his skull.

Tony is yelling nonsense into the gag, a muffled buzzing filling his ears. He can't look away from Loki and Thanos' fight—it's horribly alluring, like watching a car crash—and his suit is screaming all sorts of warnings in his ears from his straining. The darkness only wraps tighter.

Tony can only watch, his heart in his throat and terror in his mouth, as Thanos bears down on Loki with the strength of a hurricane. He rains blows that ring with the sound of thunder against Loki's slowly weakening shield of ice-green energy.

Suddenly, Loki heaves upward, throwing Thanos off balance. Thanos stumbles backward slightly, a snarl on his lips, and Loki slings a bolt of green light at the still-smoldering wreckage of the quinjet.

The bolt of energy races through the twisted metal structure and it comes to life, bending and folding in on itself to resemble a massive, four-legged beast. A chunk of the wing sticks out of its nose like a horn and it charges at Thanos across the solid water, snorting fire and smoke.

Thanos' golden staff melts into a massive club that he swings at the creature, sending it skidding across the water with a screech, a dent in deforming its right side. Loki is standing, stock-still, his eyes closed and one hand stretched out towards the Statue of Liberty.

It doesn't look like he's doing anything to defend himself, and instead of pressing his advantage in Thanos' brief distraction, he's practically meditating.

Tony's shouting at him to move, because Thanos is bearing down on him and his staff has morphed into a serrated dagger that gleams wickedly at its tip. Loki ignores them all, shooting a second bolt of energy from his resting hand that reanimates the wrecked quinjet, which limps toward Thanos with the shrieking sound of metal.

Thanos flicks aside the impeding creature with one hand, grabbing its head and tossing it carelessly to the side. Loki's face screws up, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth set into a dark line. Tendons and veins stand out harshly from his trembling hand.

Thanos comes to a stop right in front of Loki, dwarfing him. Loki's form is all sharp lines and clean edges, slim shoulders and long fingers. Thanos is massive, created out of bulging muscle that ripples as he walks, and despite his size he carries himself lightly and with predatory grace. Unlike Loki's self-contained form, he bleeds out at the edges, blending into the shadow and reappearing from it.

He holds the dagger in his hand delicately, like an instrument or a paintbrush. Loki is shaking all over now, his eyes squeezed shut, and the Thanos' smile curls across his face like poison.

"No resistance?" He asks quietly, a low, lazy purr creeping into his voice. "No fight? I should have known it would end this way, princeling." Thanos traces the golden dagger tenderly along Loki's cheekbones, watching him flinch with eyes like burning coins. His expression speaks of hunger.

Suddenly, Thanos' eyes blaze gold, a flare of something uncontrollable appearing in his face, and he draws a deep cut that follows the line of Loki's cheekbone, the knife splitting his skin like butter. Loki lets out an unwilling cry, eyes flying open, before he clamps his mouth shut with lips white from strain. His skin shouldn't have split under a cut like that, but… Tony looks closer and realizes the edges of the cut are burning with golden light. It's preventing Loki from healing.

Thanos slices another cut deep into Loki's face, under his cheekbone and parallel to the first. Loki's face is tight with pain as the golden light eats away at his flesh, ruby droplets of blood rolling down his skin like tears.

There's an earth-shaking roar from behind Tony, and he twists his head as far as he can manage to see Thor fighting like a wounded animal against his bonds. His face is twisted up with grief and rage. The skin Tony can see is still blistered and red from the Oriddarith's attack, and Mjolnir lays bound in darkness on the ground.

The gag muffles Thor's words, but Tony can get the gist. It's exactly what's running through his head right now as he strains against the darkness.

Thanos cuts two more wounds into the other side of Loki's face, mirror images of the first ones. Still, Loki won't move, instead shutting his expression down firmly, though each time Thanos starts a new wound he makes a small, pained gasp.

Tears and sweat are blurring Tony's vision. He's never felt so helpless. A mantra of desperate curses and threats are running through his brain on repeat, yet all he can do is watch as Loki is mutilated by Thanos.

His voice is hoarse from all the yelling he did earlier, but still he shouts on, as if Loki could possibly hear him through the shadow wrapping around his mouth like a muzzle. Why won't you do something, you fucking idiot? He shouts. Do something!

Loki doesn't move.

Thanos carves a u-shaped arc onto Loki's forehead, and that's when Tony realizes he's carving in Loki's Jotun marks. The thought makes him sick.

Thanos slices into Loki's skin without madness and without the clinical coldness of an operation. Instead, he draws designs onto Loki's face like art. The only way Tony can tell that he's actually getting enjoyment out of this is through the hunger in his eyes.

He finished Loki's forehead and moves on to cut two small wounds into his chin, parallel lines that curve up to meet his bottom lip. Blood runs down Loki's face freely now, painting him with it, staining the collar of his shirt and dripping onto the solid water with the soft plinking of raindrops.

And still Loki does nothing—

There's a small object flying through the air.

Tony can't tell what it is, the darkness turning it only into a blurring shape, but it flies to the air silently, heading directly for Loki's outstretched hand. Thanos looks up too late as Loki catches the thing in his palm and clenches his hand into a fist. Fine black powder leaks from his curled fingers.

Loki unclenches his fingers to reveal a handful of muted blue shards.

Thanos' eyes go wide with realization, burning gold on black, his bone-white grin disappearing from his face like smoke. The Tesseract.

Loki, blood dripping from his wounds to pour down his face, his bright green eyes shadowed dark with determination, drives the shards deep into Thanos' golden breastplate to pierce his heart.

His golden eyes betray his surprise, mouth frozen in a snarl of disbelief and anger. The shards glow bright blue from where they splinter out of his chest like needles. And Thanos crumples to the ground, disintegrating into white ash that is whirled away by a smoky breeze.

The darkness dissipates, warm sunlight breaking out into the now-blue sky. Their bonds dissolve into the air and Tony stumbles forward to regain his balance, choking in a breath that isn't gagged by shadow.

Loki turns to face them, his eyes wide and broken, the fire around his hands long extinguished. He walks shakily on a path of solid water, the rest having turned back into gently lapping waves, until he reaches the shore.

Tony takes off his helmet, dropping it to land on the ground with his faceplate, and breathes, watching Loki approach them. Loki wipes his face off with his sleeve with a wince. He stops for a brief second, touching two fingers to his own forehead, and the deep slices start to knit closed without Thanos' venomous golden light to stop them.

"We—" Steve says faintly, before closing his mouth with a snap. He's standing with slightly shaky feet on the stone base of the Statue. It echoes what he said after the Chitauri battle, with we won, but maybe Steve is realizing they didn't have as clean of a win as last time.

Loki comes to a stop in front of them, looking weary. The blood he missed streaks his face and neck like warpaint.

Thor rushes over to grab his brother in a crushing hug that draws a sharp inhale of breath from Loki. Thor pulls back, grasping Loki by his shoulders, a grin made of daylight beaming from his face. Loki looks confused and also suspicious; as if he's concerned Thor is mocking him.

"Brother," Thor says solemnly, heedless of his blistered skin and his blue eyes fierce with love, "Thank you."

He steps back, then, and now they're all looking at Tony. Bruce and Clint and Natasha and Steve and Thor all staring at him with expectation, as if they think—as if—

Tony strides forward, coming to a stop right in front of Loki, nearly chest-to-chest. He's at eye level with him in the suit. With his uninjured hand, he cups Loki's face, the polished metal barely grazing Loki's skin.

Tony stares searchingly into Loki's eyes for a brief second, wide and open and impossibly green, and kisses him hard on the mouth.

It's not delicate or chaste. It's filled with all the desperation Tony felt wrapped up in those snaking bonds, all the betrayal and fear and hopelessness, and their teeth crash together messily and Tony can taste blood in Loki's mouth. Something cracks open in his chest, and it burns, right beneath the cool glow of the arc reactor.

Loki is frozen, stock-still against him and cold as ice, and Tony starts to pull back, worried that he's fucked everything up. The whole thing was on impulse, but it was real, and he can't pass it off as a joke or—

But then Loki kisses him back, wraps his hands around Tony's neck and threads his fingers through his hair. And it's messy and sloppy but Tony can still read the question in it, a tentative plea for forgiveness.

Tony pulls back reluctantly, stares into Loki's green, green eyes, a smile lighting up his face. A flush has filled Loki's cheeks and he gives a small smile in return, fragile but genuine.

"Welcome home," Tony whispers, and leans his forehead forward to touch Loki's.

The sun pours down from the blazingly blue sky, crisp autumn air ruffling Loki's hair, his team standing around them, and this—

This is family.

"Sir."

"Oh my god, Jarvis, no," Tony mumbles. His face is muffled by Loki's hair, though, so it comes out garbled, a drunken mess of syllables.

"Sir, I'm afraid I must insist. There's a disturbance in the city." Jarvis sounds so bitingly patient Tony gets the feeling this isn't the first time he's tried to wake him.

Loki raises his head drowsily from where it's pillowed on Tony's chest, his jade green eyes half-lidded with sleep. He's most definitely not a morning person, and Tony loves to see him like this, unguarded and strangely sweet.

He runs a hand through Loki's hair, the silvered joints working smoothly and silently. Tony built the hand soon after what the public chose to call "the Battle of Liberty" (Fury and Coulson, along with SI, dealt with the PR mess), after his right hand was too damaged to heal. Loki had tried all that he could, as well as the best doctors from around the world, but there was only so much they could do when his hand had literally been burned away by the Tesseract's energy.

"Sir," Jarvis says again, this time with a definite note of eyebrow-raising impatience in his voice.

Tony rolls reluctantly out of the warm bed, Loki making a protesting noise behind him. He drops a kiss onto Loki's forehead in apology before he brutally rips off the covers, the cold air flooding against Loki's skin.

Loki scowls at him, sitting straight up, pulling the sheets up enough so that they tangle around his legs. His hair is sticking every which way. "For that, I will turn you into a frog. Or perhaps a slug; that species is closer to your intelligence level."

Tony pulls on the pants of his under armor, hiding the smile on his face. "Well, if I was a slug, you wouldn't get anymore of my—and I quote—'marvelous' blowjobs." He turns, smirking, and he doesn't miss the red flush that spreads over Loki's cheeks.

Loki sniffs haughtily, his face still pink, staring at Tony with a gleam of mischief in his eye. "I'm sure I could find someone better. After all, a slug is really not a suitable partner."

Tony laughs, pure and free, stopping in front of Loki to kiss him soundly on the lips. He pulls away, grinning.

"Come on, lazybones," he says, happiness a warm glow in his chest. "We have a city to save."

A/N: Guys, this has been an amazing journey! This is by far the longest project I've worked on, and it could of never happened without support from a few precious people. My best friend, Kate, thank you for being the sounding board for all of my insane ideas. Kiera and Chloe, thank you for supporting me the whole way through, even though I hid this as my dirty secret from you guys for a while. And finally, thank you a million times over to my beta, the incredible Ruby Casablanca! I can't begin to express how thankful I am for her sharp eyes - she contributed immensely to making this the best story it could be. And, of course, all of you readers - thank you so much for your support and lovely comments!