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Chapter Text

He was a very beautiful child.

When he was seven, Apollo saw him and was so smitten by his beauty and his boldness, the keenness already of his wit and intellect, that he claimed him wholly for his own.

Apollo was the last Loki saw of the physical; the sight was stilled etched into his memory, and for all its beauty, he hated it.

The day after Apollo took his sight and gave him another, he was taken to Delphi.

***

A few times, he tried to escape, each ending in failure. For all he knew the steps-smells-sounds of Delphi’s temple, what lay beyond was a dark cacophony, labyrinth fit for a minotaur or twelve.

The addition of a dog to guide his steps did not make it easier to leave.

That came later.

***

Life proceeded predictably from there: lessons, truth-telling, future-seeing, kings and senators and nobles alike eager for a future better left unsaid. Glory to Apollo in all things, for what blessing he had been given.

Loki lied, sometimes, about what he saw, when he was coherent enough to lie.

Those came true, too.

***

When he was twenty-two and bored beyond compare, Angrboda was announced. He was not asked if he were too tired to entertain; his ‘care-takers’ had long since learned their new seer had few qualms with lying about the state of his health.

She smelled of night air and sea breeze, smell he had missed and which yet brought taste of salt to his tongue. Fitting, for Angrboda belonged to Artemis, huntress and sister to Apollo. A dangerous woman.

At the least she might be interesting.

“What fortune does Artemis’ priestess need from me?” Loki drawled, not bothering to sit up from his sprawl, one hand buried in Fenrir’s fur, other toying with a date.

“Only your own, hawkling,” Angrboda purred, the rustle of her clothing giving away her movement—not closer, no, but sideways and edgeways. A knife balanced. “How would you like to fly?”

There was fire in the word—fly—edged in familiar sun-scorched madness.

He popped the date in his mouth, languid and easy. Disinterested, then:

“Why?”

“Someone stole something from his sister.”

Loki reached for his wine, movement slow by necessity but habit making it seem planned and not the blind-seeking it was. A sip, tilting his head slightly to follow the sound of Angrboda’s pacing.

To be made a petty act of revenge between gods—not so unlike the caged bird he had become, left blind to the physical, singing and burning in equal measure with a light he never wanted.

It had been years since he last tried escaping, and never with aid before. Who would risk Apollo’s wrath, Apollo most beloved of the gods?

“Why not?” Loki said with a shrug, and in his head, pressing out and through, down down down into his bones to marrow to soul: blue, and fire, ring of metal on metal, smoke, heat pressed tight into his skin.

Not a vision, not quite.

Not yet.

***

All things considered, he had traveled farther than he ever had before.

Then, naturally, like lightning drawn to earth, stupid and oh so maddening Thor caught up. Three quarters a day traversed, sun sunk deep in his skin a hot ache, feet unsure on new ground for the first time in a life-time, interrupted by the unfortunately still familiar thunder of horses beneath his feet. Part of him wished to sigh and simply return.

The rest, vicious and starved from unwanted dark and gilded cage both, prowled and snarled at the mere suggestion.

“—I will not go back, a relic locked away, asked to sing answer for those who ask but have no right to! If I must be cursed—”

“Loki, you are not cursed—”

“So you say, you can see!”

“Please, Loki, be reasonable, you do not even know which way you go.”

Loki’s hand gripped more tightly in Fenrir’s fur as Thor stepped forward, swirl of dust and Fenrir’s growl both as warning.

“I am going to Athens,” Loki said firmly, confidence drawn from pride and spite but no true certainty. Follow the road, Angrboda had said—the gods will see to the rest.

Loki should have known much better than to trust that.

“How?” Thor cried, voice wrought with sorrow and confusion—as it always was when Loki would not simply listen, when Loki did not understand his gift. If he but allowed Thor close enough, he’d like smell tears mixed with the dirt and horse smell of the road; the thought was enough to make Loki scowl, lips drawn thin by distaste and anger.

“I’m going to Athens,” a stranger said.

Fire and heat and blaze, metal on metal, heat, blue, bright-blinding-white-blue, need before love, need need need—

“—to be trusted?”

Loki felt adrift, torn, teetering on the edge of endless spiral and flicker-flame blaze, shuddering, divine raw across his nerves, skin too tight, worse as the stranger he did not notice approach replied:

“There’s a festival in Athen’s—”

Temple, echoing high and arched and forge-fired, forge heat, forging and creation, smell of copper and—

“—the wolf will maul me if I try anything anyway.”

“I am going with him,” Loki interrupted, sure they had been speaking despite how he was struggling to push back against the gift coursing through his frame. Fenrir stepped close, shoulder bumping into his legs, and for all he nearly stumbled, it grounded him. He only hoped he did not sound half so drunk as he felt, tongue heavy and thick in his mouth, as finely fuzzed as a moth’s wing; hoped he did not look how he felt, newborn-fawn weakness settling in the hollow spaces vacated by visions as swiftly left as they had arrived.

“But Loki—”

“Do not whine, Thor,” Loki snapped, “it is unbecoming. And he is right—Fenrir will keep me safe from his incompetencies.”

“You know what will happen when—”

“I do, and I do not care.” Loki paused, and took a breath. For all Thor infuriated him, he well knew that Thor also cared—beyond just a future warrior-priest looking after a seer, but as someone he had been raised with. It was not a bond to toss aside carelessly; he only regretted Thor had been gifted all things good and so could not understand Loki’s own dissatisfactions. “There is a path there, Thor. When it is done, I will send word, and return.”

Never mind that Loki had no intention of returning, not if he could avoid it—the promise, he knew, would be enough for Thor.

It always was, even as Loki broke them as often as he kept them.

“See? Great. Works out for everyone.” The stranger clapped his hands. “Loki, right? Let’s go, there’s day left and road to travel.”

***

“Call me Tony,” the stranger said, and Loki could not help but think the name, metallic on the tongue, fit him far more than the rolling slur of Anthony. Fit with his gait—short, Loki thought, or weak-limbed, but he had not touched him, not yet, and so was not sure. Fit with his voice—fast, words rapid quick on the air, voice gravel and roughened by alcohol. Fit his smell—copper and tin and bronze, ash so seeped into his skin his sweat was the smell of the forge.

His height—or his weakness—pleased Loki, if only because his own steps were slow and unsure. A hand gripped tight to leather—fashioned six-hundred heartbeats from Thor, Tony insisting it would be better, more convenient.

Trusting Fenrir was not hard, because Loki had trusted Fenrir since the dog was his. More intriguing was how readily he found himself trusting Tony, but then Tony did not know who Loki was.

Refreshing, in its own way.

“There is a festival in Athens?” Loki asked when they stopped for the night, skin heat-buzzing-warm, not able to tell if was the light he had not spent so much time under since a child or threat of vision that lingered hot as the memory of the blue-white heart of a flame, threatening to overtake him once more.

“For Athena,” Tony supplied. “A few moons from now, actually, but there’s work to be done and they’re crazy enough to trade for it, so…” A rustle of cloth, then “Sorry. You can’t see that, I keep forgetting. You’re missing half the conversation.”

Loki smiled, small but hemlock bitter.

“I’ll just have to talk more, exaggerate. I could probably whisper and you’d hear me—isn’t that how it works? The rest of you sensitive?”

“You are a smith?” Loki asked. A rush of air; a head turning sharply, he thought, and offered a smile in the direction he knew Tony was. “I can smell it on you—the smoke.”

Tony laughed.

“That answers that then. Yes, I’m a smith. Finest one there is, if you ask me, but no one ever does. Athens knows it, that’s why they sent for me. What are you going for? You said something about a path?”

Loki’s smile turned sincere without his permission, pleased Tony was willing to let the subject of his sightlessness pass so… easily between them. Odd, in its own way, but then he was learning there was much about Tony which was odd.

“Yes,” Loki said, reaching and Fenrir’s head immediately at his touch. He stroked behind his dog’s ears, deciding what more to say, if he should say more.

“Huh. So you were going to just trot your way there, not able to see? You have everything in order in your head? Does the dog—”

“Fenrir.”

“—Fenrir—by the way, he looks like a wolf, are you sure he’s a dog?—know the way?”

“I was told,” Loki admitted, “to trust in the gods.”

“Oh, so you’re a fool.”

“You are here, are you not?”

Tony snorted, dirt scuffing beneath his feet as he moved. Closer, but not in reach and beneath his hands, Fenrir did not growl or tense.

“Right, you can’t see that. I made a face at you. I’m going to teach your dog—”

“Fenrir.”

“—Fenrir, right—to let you know when I make faces at you.”

“I look forward to it,” Loki said, and could not help his smile.

***

Tony, as it happened, enjoyed conversing.

He talked with his hands, Loki thought—rustle of cloth and air beyond just walking. But for all he spoke with his hands, there were other things, unsaid: rhythms beat upon skin-cloth-ground, tempos in his pace and step.

Loki did not find himself losing track of where Tony was in relation to him, not even with all the dizzy noise of vision that tried to sweep through him once more, something base and earth and grounding in him, the heart of a star just in hearing.

***

“—realized it sooner. 'Probably just one of those blind guys Apollo's priests are always taking in,' I thought, 'I can get behind wanting to travel, what's the worst that can happen?' No one said anything about the blessed Oracle of Delphi—"

“Anthony,” Loki said, the name wrong on his tongue, but it called halt at last to Tony’s worried and tiresome panic. Called halt to all sound, and for a moment, a beat, Loki could not hear him, could not sense him, did not know where he was, and wondered if all the sounds before had been intentional.

“I need to take you back to Delphi,” Tony finally said.

“No,” Loki snarled, and at his feet Fenrir growled, the rustle slide of Tony taking a step and then backing up again hastily, near stumble fall. “I will not go back!”

In retrospect, Loki should not have spoken to Oedipus at all, but the man was being infuriating, crass and bold and then had cast insult on Tony—Tony who was kind, and who Loki found he loved, a little, in his sound and ease and scent—and it had been the last straw, mind caught upon a prophecy passed to him by the former Oracle and spit out hardly before the words came to mind, future as a curse for someone else for once though Loki was left weak-limbed by channeled divine.

He had not expected Tony to be familiar with the prophecy told to King Laius near two decades ago, had not expected his clever-quick mind to piece together how Thor had been so insistent Loki return with Loki's blindness and leap to realization.

It left Loki feeling nauseous, and not only from the after-effects of prophecy, but also from loss, deep and aching, chasm to Hades opened in his chest. Loss of… conversation, and ease, and being only Loki-who-was-blind. To be not Oracle of Delphi, beloved of Apollo, but simply Loki, as he had not been since he lost one sight and was given another.

“Why?” Tony finally asked, and in his why Loki could hear other questions, multitudes. But most importantly, what he heard was a lack of conviction. That in spite of Tony's upset by the realization that Loki was not just some blind man taken in by Apollo's priests, he wanted to be convinced to do else. If Loki could only vocalize why well enough, then perhaps, perhaps, he could convince Tony to part ways with him instead of going back to Delphi.

“Because it is a cage,” Loki said. “Gilded and pretty, but a cage. I’d risk Apollo’s rage a thousand times over to stumble blindly, to escape the-the demands for what I see that I want no part of. Because if the gods see fit to curse me, then I will at least go where I will to live as I will.” He paused, but he could still not hear Tony—not breath, not movement—though the breeze turned and there was smoke-forge-metal. Not gone. Listening and still, but not gone.

“It is said to be a blessing,” Tony said quietly, “not a curse.”

“But it is a curse! I did not ask for this! I was a child whose only fault was being too curious and too pretty, and lo, one sight was taken and replaced with another, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. There is nothing left to me—not sight, not loved ones, only a cage so that I can be looked on fondly like one might a pet! He has taken all human happiness I might have found and in its place is only him, is only light and fire and the divine, surrounded by those who adore him and do not acknowledge his faults so that when—and it is always when, there is no choice in this—when light bounces and reflects back a thousand futures to writhe on my tongue, my words can be gathered like grapes from the vine even as I collapse, weak and hollowed and raw in their wake.” Loki stopped, trying to gasp in breath, to breathe, impossible knot sat heavy in his chest, and tears spilled down his face without his leave. He wiped his face with his hands. “I do not want to grow and live and die chained to the one who did this to me,” he finished weakly, voice ragged.

"I'm going to regret this," Tony sighed.

And there, outside of himself, was movement, rustle of cloth and skin and steps over ground, Fenrir’s low growl and Tony tsk-ing at the dog.

“You realize he’s going to be furious if you don’t go back.” Calloused hands pushed his own away, thumbs wiping tears from his face. Another time, the touch might have been a jolt, but now Loki was so exhausted that it was little more than dull surprise. Tony’s hands were warm, fingers broad and heavy, but for all their heaviness—solidity, solid as the sound of his voice—they were gentle and sure.

“What shall he do? Kill me?”

Tony chuckled, the huff of air hot on Loki’s throat. “That’s not the point. And you’re still young.”

“If I change my mind, I can find my own way back to Delphi.”

Tony hummed.

“Come on then. We’re nearly to Athens, if you can stop dooming the other travelers to sex with their mother.”

Loki gave a startled laugh.

Tony stepped away, leaving Loki’s skin chilled where Tony’s hands had been as the air touched it once more, step and sound and movement echoing need and copper.

***

“Yes, I know who he looks like, but he’s my apprentice, not some fortune-teller in a cave.”

Loki almost was appalled by the disdain in Tony’s voice. Primarily, his mind was caught upon the word apprentice. He was not the only one.

“He’s blind,” the priest pointed out.

“Hey, are you saying that he’s wrong to follow the divine calling to Hephaestus’ service? It takes all types, you know.” Tony snorted. “Did you bring the measurements like I asked, or are you going to call me a liar?”

It was nearly an effort of will to keep a straight face, but Loki managed, aided in no small part by a tug, familiar, inwards, light and fire there is—

“I did.”

“Great,” and Tony clapped his hands together, smooth rub of them together. “Gimme.”

***

“Rise and shine!”

Loki rolled onto his side, dragging the blanket over his head, not yet entirely willing to leave the pleasant swirl of dreams and sleep he’d been in before Tony decided to wake him.

“Up!” and then blanket was yanked from his hands and Fenrir whined at his feet. “You’re meant to be my apprentice, it’s going to look weird if I don’t drag you along.” A moment, then the blanket shook. “That’s not half so effective as it is on me.”

“I can’t see,” Loki grumbled, irritated to need remind Tony but pushing himself up all the same. “I can’t, actually. What do you expect me to do?”

“Learn,” Tony said cheerfully. “Besides, I’m not letting you sleep in if I’ve got to be up early. Move it.”

Loki grumbled a bit, but he pushed himself up, hand reaching for his peplos before it was shoved against his chest by Tony.

Learn. As if there was anything to learn with forging when he could not see.

***

There was, in fact, a great deal to learn.

The warmth of Tony’s breath, the scorch and heat of a forge, sound of hammer brought down on metal not yet shaped, smell of garlic and metal, smell of salty sweat to make the mouth water, itch of fingers to touch and map and understand, because threaded in all of it joy. Tony’s joy, that echoed and resounded and rebounded, crashed like waves, like the tremble of the earth, like—

“Loki?”

“I am listening.”

A rustle, then:

“I’m smiling at you. Since you can’t see it and your dog—”

“Fenrir,” Loki said, a smile of his own tugging his lips.

“—Fenrir, right—is on guard duty. It’s a work in progress. Come here—” and then Tony grabbed his wrist, pulled him to standing. Loki stumbled—echo and high arched and temple temple temple—free hand reaching out, seeking, landed on scar-smooth-hard—

“Shit, Lo—”

blue, blue, blue of skies barely remembered, cold glass that cuts and aches, all of him aches—

“I’ll have that drink now”—

Need, need, he will pick what he needs, indecision created silence and heat racing up his back and seas of sweat leaking from him, stumbled, temple echo and arch and high-ceilinged and he cannot hear over roar of flame of divine of—

A stack of paper, bound, unfamiliar words, smug and smug and smug, he wrote this for me, this is for me—

fire there is a fire, Tony, Anthony, where—please don’t—

Eight days, eight nights, and it is agony, dying and rebirth tearing and pulling, and then smoothing, smoothing into cool, into blue, blue of skies barely remembered, and left with nothing nothing nothing but a gift

“Loki, dammit, breathe,” Tony said, hands cradling his face, nails painfully digging into Loki's skin, drawing him back a moment, a breath. “Breathe. Come on. Shit, is this what it's usually like, how the—" weight in his hand, thrown, performance issues, affects—“No, hey, stop strangling me, stay here,” Tony said, yanking his hair, a jolt as if doused in ice. “Huh. I didn’t expect that to actually work.”

Fire and need over want, need—

“Fuck, Loki, you have to breathe,” and Tony tugged him up. His head lolled to rest on his shoulder, the angle awkward, half-tangled against Tony. “In-in—” and he gasped in, air soothing his lungs, cool, cold, not fire, filling him. “Out. Yes. Yes, there you go, keep—shit, you scared me.” Tony stroked a hand through his hair, and Loki shuddered at the sensation, everything too much as it poured in, expanding into the spaces left barren.

"Question," Loki gasped before visions pressed back down, hands twisting into Tony's peplos clumsily, distant and disjointed and barely able to move, to have, if just for this moment, no matter how he wished. "Ques—"

"Bosie? Are you alright?" and he turned, disoriented, assaulted by colours he had no names for anymore, papers clutched tight in one hand—

—steps resounded, high-arched and blessed and divine, divine divine divine, burning and blazing and sun, glory to Apollo, blessings, come home, need over want, sweat slick down his spine, stood next to light-fire that bounced and reflected and threatened to drown, please Tony—

gates high above his head, closed, frozen and shut and bone and he so close to passing through as he laid beside them, aching, eight days, eight nights, eight and pain-ache, driving horrible pain like water, like ice, seeping through visions, blooming bright in his mind.

"—don't," Tony was saying in his ear, Tony was bruising his arm, grip tight, pulling his hair, pinning him down to the floor, and Loki shuddered, back taut and arched, heat and fire and echoes of high-arched temples in his not-sight, light. Light, need, Tony tugged his hair again, and he let out a wounded sob, shaking, torn between future and present. “Listen to me,” Tony said, “listen,” and Loki gripped tight to Tony’s wrist, strained to hold on, skin hot, everything hot, hot fire there is “Loki, tell me about copper, listen, talk to me, come on, stay here, tell me about copper, you need to answer a question, my question is what is copper for you,” and he could feel the scratch of stubble against his skin, feel Tony’s breath against his ear, words sliding in the cracks, earthen and grounding and metal.

“Fire,” Loki choked. “What you love will burn—”

Tony tugged his hair, tugged him back, murmur and whisper and low soothing noise washed around him, arm wrapped around his waist.

“Copper, Loki, tell me about copper. How does copper sound?”

“Rough, rough, impure, hollow until until—” He tossed his head, eyes wide and fire raced across the floor, twisting and licking higher, yellow white light. He jerked back, gasped out “fire, everything will—”

“There’s no fire, Loki, it’s not there, look, turn your head, look, you can’t see me, can you?”

“Fire,” Loki repeated, helpless, panting, gasping because there was no air, sight or no sight, and he could feel it, heat licking up against his skin, blistering and crackling and—

“What does copper mean to you?” Tony asked again, another sharp tug of hair to emphasize the question—tug like water, like ice, momentary blessed relief, as grounding as the voice in his ear, more.

“You,” Loki breathed, chanted, prayed, “you-you-you, your joy, copper is joy resounding-rebounding, sound, it sounds so hollow until it sounds like you.”

“Huh,” Tony said, grip loosening, and Loki clawed to keep him near, not soon enough, not soon enough—fire, light, divine, divinity made real, what you love will burn and blaze light unending, and you will take only what you need—

Lips. Slick and wet, wine-flavoured and spice, cool, thin, pressed against his own, jolt of contact crashing, tidal, fluid, and he moaned, hands twisting in cloth as calloused familiar hands framed his face. Focused on teeth scraping over his bottom lip, rough scratch of stubble on his skin, and smell—sweat, salt and sweat and smoke, forge-smoke, real smoke, and though he shook as Tony pulled away, eyes yet wide, the divine no longer flooded his veins.

"Oh," Loki breathed. "You—"

"You're good." Tony stroked his face, pushed sweat slick hair back, and pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth, along the line of his cheekbone. "You're here. Now," and Loki could feel the curve of a smile against his skin.

"No one has ever stopped—" Loki choked off and reached his hands up, seeking Tony's face with unsteady fingers as Tony's own traced down his throat to his collarbone, followed tendon and muscle to shoulder and pressed into his biceps. "No one," Loki whispered, fingerpads finding the curve of Tony's jaw and scratched by facial hair—at his chin, his lips, but only short buzz of stubble along his jawline. Above him, Tony pulled back, just a little, and went still. A fingers' length from jaw to cheek; nose rounded, a smooth and unbroken path from tip to brow bone. He traced over eyebrows—thick, but thinned at the edges, moved to eyes closed and a huffed chuckle brushed over Loki's skin as he traced over lines that mapped laughter and smiles and sunlight at the corners, before following the curve of his face back to Tony's lips—thin, still a little damp.

"Like what you feel?" Tony asked softly as Loki stroked his thumb over the bottom lip.

"What colour are your eyes?" Loki asked, other hand pushing through Tony's hair—thick, straight but wild, barely tamed.

"Brown."

"Like trees?" He shuddered as Tony licked at his finger, catching the thumb between his teeth.

"Like good soil after rain."

"I don't remember that," Loki said, leaving Tony's lips to explore his throat; as if it were permission, Tony began to move again, settled one leg between his, a hand tracing his side as he leaned down and pressed kisses into Loki's skin.

"Bet you don't remember tree brown either," Tony said as he pushed Loki's peplos up, broad hand following his hipbone and thumb digging into the join; he could not help shuddering at the cool air contrasted against Tony's warmth, achingly dizzyingly hard as he had not been in years.

"Dark," Loki admitted, "dark and silhouettes annnngh—" Tony smirked against his neck, teeth digging into the flesh just beneath the ear as he hiked Loki closer. Loki grabbed a fistful of Tony's hair and hooked a leg around him for more leverage, rocking against Tony's thigh. Glorious breathless friction—a whimper escaped his throat, precome beading a sticky trail across Tony's flesh. Against his skin, Tony was murmuring between open-mouthed kisses and teeth grazed over his pulse; along his spine, pressing up and through, to the backs of his eyes and arches of his feet, warmth, aching sweet human warmth.

"Tony," he said, pulling on Tony's hair, other hand clawing for purchase-focus-coherence across Tony's shoulders and Tony hissed in his ear, Tony laughed, and Tony purred, "Loki," with a rumble Loki felt through all of him, everywhere, loosening the last of his control and he came with a cry, gripping tight to Tony because he did not want to lose this.

Vaguely, dizzy in a different way, he was aware Tony was murmuring, soft pleasant words against his skin as steady and soothing as a hot summer rain, stroke of a calloused thumb along the length of his throat and other hand through his hair.

"Sleep," Tony suggested; for a moment, Loki thought of protesting, but his eyes were heavy and already exhaustion inking itself across his bones.

“You will—” Loki paused, licked his lips.

“Be right here. Not going anywhere.” Tony went quiet, breath deep the way it went when he was thinking. “No one is ever there when you wake?"

Loki did not answer.

“They aren't,” Tony said, his voice flat and low, anger trembling beneath the surface—

“You will—”

“Still be here,” Tony said. “Get some actual sleep. No sudden panic-inducing visions.”

“I will try,” Loki murmured. He meant to stay awake longer—to make sure that Tony was not leaving, that he was not dreaming, perhaps to ask questions, but before he could open his mouth again, he was asleep.

***

He woke in bed, soft linen rubbing against his skin and smell of dog assaulting his nose. Loki rubbed his face against Fenrir as the dog gave a pleased whine, nosing Loki's face.

Footsteps echoed and bounced, directionless.

"Oh great, you're awake. Awesome. We have a problem."

Loki rubbed his face, trying to push through the haze of disorientation and timelessness still fogging his skull, echoes of divine fire burned low for the moment.

"I think I am going to starve," Loki said dazedly.

"Then we'll get food, but problem means you need to—" A hand cupped his chin, pulling his head up, as Tony’s breath deepened. "You are entirely out of it." Tony sighed, thumb stroking along Loki's jaw and Loki leaned a little into the touch, one arm still comfortably draped around Fenrir's shoulders. "So I have a problem. Multiple problems."

“You’re hungry too then?”

Tony chuckled, then pressed a kiss to Loki’s brow.

“I am not, and would that were the only problem I have. Do you remember that priest?”

Loki stumbled on his feet, caught both by Fenrir’s shoulder pressing into his back and Tony’s hands steadying his arms. Even as he dressed himself with shaking hands, he swayed a little, struggling to pick out and place the soft white noises of the room and orient himself.

“No?” Loki finally said, taking the leather lead placed in his right hand, Tony settling on his left.

“Well, the priest you don’t remember got curious or something. He’s here with Thor.”

Loki stopped abruptly.

“Thor.”

“One and the same. He’s asking after you, and our oh so friendly priest has pointed him this direction.”

“I am not going back,” Loki said, mouth dry, anger flaring hot in his empty stomach, licking its way up the back of his throat.

“Nope,” Tony said, pushing him to walk again, guiding him… somewhere. Vaguely, he could smell wine and fruit, and the ghost of a breeze from outdoors. “I wouldn’t let you anyway. Ah, here we are. Fenrir—”

“You know his name!”

“—only in emergencies—Fenrir, keep him here. Stay. You understand that? Stay. Loki—”

“I am not—”

Tony kissed him, one hand at his face and other at his neck and pulling him down slightly.

“I know. There’s food, here,” and Tony guided his hand to a table, traced fingertips across the wood to the dish, “wine here,” dragged higher, “so do me a favour and stay here and eat. You said you were starving, right?”

Loki nodded.

“I’ll be back.”

Fire. Loki pressed his hand more firmly against the grain of the table as Fenrir bumped against his legs. Fire heat hot blazing—

“Tony,” Loki called, but the footsteps he heard were only echoes in his head, dim and dulled as whisper visions flickering up. He swallowed and buried a hand in Fenrir’s fur, shaken and shaking, grasping desperately at details of visions he had been pulled back from.

***

Fenrir whined.

“Quiet. You could have stayed in the kitchens,” Loki snapped, one hand on the wall partly for guidance and mostly for steadiness. “If either of you think I’m going to simply stay,” he grumbled, pausing to listen for conversation—Thor would not be quiet nor easily missed. He never was. “Find Tony,” he added to the dog. Surely Tony would have already found Thor.

Fenrir’s breath huffed at the edge of his peplos before the dog tugged at his lead.

***

“That,” Loki said, eyes wide and leaned hard against the wall before the doorway, “is not Thor.”

He listened to the ring of words in the room before him, mind caught entirely upon the echo and divinity flickering at the edges of Thor’s voice, ringing with promise of vision and sunfire, pulsing in the air even when this supposed Thor went silent and Tony spoke. At the edges of not-sight there was light—light he was familiar with, and he recalled golden skin and sun-kissed hair and laughter, the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, the last sight he had ever seen.

“Oh,” he whispered as visions threatened to rekindle once more.

Fire.

“Apollo,” Loki said, forcing himself forward into the room, one hand buried in Fenrir’s fur.

The room went silent, time stretched out as two sets of feet turned towards him. Loki forced himself still, chin high and a smirk curling his lips.

“I am right.”

“Loki, I told you—”

“Loki, what is this nonsense of Apollo? I am here to bring you home.”

Loki’s smirk grew into a full smile, teeth bared.

“Thor would never call Apollo nonsense—he is far too devout. And even if you had not made so obvious an error, you fail to account for your gift,” Loki said, shoulders tense even as he tried to keep his voice steady. “You can no more hide yourself from me than I relearn how to see.”

He heard movement, then whatever glamour that had kept Apollo’s glory from showing fell away, and for a heartbeat, Loki allowed himself to bask in the idea of sight once more, for Apollo stood before him in what was otherwise darkness, glorious and fire and divine, beautiful, but when he turned his head towards Tony’s swearing, all illusion broke. For Tony, he could not see—not Tony, not the room, not Fenrir growling by his feet as Apollo stepped towards him. Only Apollo, and Loki grit his teeth, equal measures of anger and despair twisting around his heart.

“You have always been very clever,” Apollo said, admiration and fondness in his voice. “Come home, Loki. You’ve had your fun, your adventure. You and Artemis both have made your points.”

Loki laughed, dry and brittle, sharp pain breaking apart in his chest.

“No,” he said, shuddering and forcing himself to remember the feel of Tony’s skin as heat-fire-burning crackled along his nerves, threatening to bowl him over. If he was fated to a fire, he would at least embrace it—how little point there was to fighting his visions, when even his lies became truth.

“It was not a choice,” Apollo said, pretense of kindness dropped.

“And yet I have made it one,” Loki said, grinning, freedom straining at his edges. “What shall you do, oh Apollo? You’ve already cursed me to your visions and fire to burn me hollow the rest of my life, and if you think I would not prefer death to returning to your cage you have not been paying overmuch attention. How shocking.”

“Loki, you sho—”

“No,” Loki snarled, cutting Tony off, taking a step towards both god and man. “I will not be silent. I will not return, I will not be your pet, Apollo, and I only wish I could have told you sooner. I have flown your cage and I will not return.”

The air shuddered with heat, and sweat trickled from Loki’s hairline down his back, but he did not look away from Apollo, did not allow himself to be bent by the god’s barely pent fury.

“So be it,” Apollo said, fury only just restrained in his voice; Loki saw Apollo's hand move, heard Tony and half-words formed before a snap, air rushing over his skin hot, blisteringly hot, and he stumbled, reaching for a wall, Fenrir, something to steady himself on and finding nothing, hearing nothing, everything dark and Apollo gone and in his place fire leapt up and seared his hand.

He staggered back, senses catching up with the sudden shift and realizing the acoustics of this room were different—not the same room that he had been at all, removed from Tony and Fenrir, left stranded somewhere, and he did not know where.

He will choose what he needs. Loki thought of Tony's months of work, copper shaped and coaxed into the form of a spear for Athena, tools and all things needed for Tony’s craft, and he tipped his head back and laughed, coughing on smoke clouding the room and tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

He forced himself to move away from the worst of the heat, pushing back panic that wished to close his throat, unharmed hand careful in its seeking until it touched edge of stone not afire with divine spite. Distantly, he could hear the panic of others caught unawares and grit his teeth against the guilt that joined panic.

They could see. They would escape.

Loki near fell into the hallway as he found the entrance of the room, sweat slicking down his spine and soaking through his clothing. Fire to his left, and so he went right though he did not know if he were heading deeper, only that there was less heat in that direction. No less smoke, and belatedly he tugged part of his peplos up to cover both mouth and nose, off-center and struggling to breathe.

Tony, Anthony, where—please don’t—

Loki shook his head and scraped his singed hand against the wall, pain grounding in a way that he could use. Teeth grit against words that wished to spill from his throat, he kept moving; Tony would not be coming because Loki was no need of his. Vision had warned him as much; he would find his own way to spite this fate, and Tony would save his work. He only hopes Fenrir would escape, too.

Stopping again, he leaned against the wall before sliding down. Vaguely, he realized the air had less smoke closer to the ground even as he tried to push himself to keep moving away from the heat that was already fast approaching again. A crack and shift of air, sparks flung up against a quickly raised arm as he ducked his head, and Loki found himself laughing until it turned to choked coughs—because of course it would be Apollo's fire to kill him, just as it had ruined the rest of him over and over and over.

A bark. Several barks, and then familiar scrape of claws over ground, a wet nose pressed to him, distressed whines and head shoved by his own.

"You stupid stupid dog," Loki said as he pushed at Fenrir, tears spilled over as he ran his hand over Fenrir's fur.

Fenrir only huffed before latching onto part of Loki's peplos and tugging. Loki grabbed tight to him, pushing himself to his knees before stopping to rest, darkness twisting and spinning around him. Distantly, he registered Fenrir barking, the vibrations against his chest thrumming through him steady as a drumbeat, matching slow overhot pulse of his injured hand, and when he tried to murmur to soothe him, Fenrir only barked more, louder, shaking, Loki's world rippling with each call.

Then stopped, silence; beneath him, Fenrir moved slightly forward and Loki tried to shift his grip enough to keep hold before hands gripped his arms—calloused hands, familiar and broad and grounding, and his heart skipped, shock making eyes open wide though there was nothing for him to see.

"Shit, you're tall and gangly as a newborn lamb," Tony—Tony—said, voice thick with relief and smoke roughed as he hefted Loki into his arms.

"But—need, your work, your tools, they will—what are you—"

"Hey, shush, hold this to your mouth," and a scrap of cloth pressed against his face, "breathe through that, Fenrir, come—" another crack and resounding shudder, Tony muscles tensing as he braced and sparks flying up "—t out."

"You weren't—but—I saw I saw, Saw, you you—"

"Loki, if I've got to stop every two seconds to cover your mouth we aren't going to—fuck, that was close—Fenrir, where—good dog, yes," and stumble-movement-heat, then air, sweet smokeless air that nearly seared his lungs as he breathed in, sending him into another painful coughing fit, tears leaking from of the corners of his eyes.

"Got you," Tony said, jolt traveling through Loki as Tony stopped, sound of the fire grown distant as Tony set him on the grass. "Got you," Tony said as he pulled Loki close before Loki let himself lay on the ground. He rocked, one hand stroking the back of Loki's neck, and only now that they were relatively still did Loki realize Tony was shaking. "You idiot, I told you I wasn't—I told you to stay put, I was going to take care of everything, I told you I wasn't letting you go." Tony pressed another kiss to Loki's head, then to his lips—forceful, as if the motion might convey the words he kept repeating, and Loki shuddered, cradled his burnt hand close and reached for Tony's face with the other. Tony grabbed his hand and pressed kisses to the palm, thumb rubbing over the flesh, a wet and shuddering breath soothing against Loki's skin.

"But you—" Loki started, then stopped, dazed. "Your work—you need—"

"You," Tony said, tugging Loki close again, "you and your sass and your smile and how absolutely horrible you are to everyone, how you hear things, and you went and pissed off a god, you idiot," and Tony smacked him upside the head even as he kept holding tight, Fenrir growling, "no, no, he deserved that one, he did, and you! You were supposed to keep him there! Stay! I told you to stay! Loki, your dog is the most undertrained and shameful dog I have ever—"

Loki laughed, sound welling up in his chest and pressing out before he could stop it, sputtering and half-choking, resting his forehead in the crook of Tony's neck even as he heard Fenrir's shamed whined and the dog pressed against his thigh. He reached out with his uninjured hand to scratch behind Fenrir's ears.

"Me," Loki said. "Me."

Tony went quiet and still as Loki laughed, a hand running through his hair.

"Why," Tony asked, "do I get the feeling I'm missing something?"

Loki only laughed harder, wheezing, trying to push Fenrir away as the dog pressed closer, nose cold wet against his skin.