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batsutousaiTitle: The God's Woods
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Loki/Tony Stark
Warnings: Obie's alive
Summary: Fleeing from Obadiah's attack, Tony is taken in by someone unexpected.
A/N: Every winter season, I send out cards to anyone willing to give me their address, and I decided two winters ago to start adding fic to the cards. This year, I settled on the very loose prompt of getting stuck in a cabin because of a snowstorm. Which some fics held to better than others, whoops. XD
Running, running, running.
He'd been running for so long, he wasn't certain he remembered what he was running from. Only that, if whatever it was caught up to him, he'd be dead.
So he ran. Until his feet were bleeding and numb, his knees were stained from dozens of falls, and his palms stung from pebbles and bits of bark that had lodged in his skin when he'd caught himself every time he stumbled. He was fairly certain that he'd stopped breathing oxygen and started breathing fire, at some point, because his chest felt like it was about to combust, and his throat and mouth felt dry and cracked like charcoal.
(He wondered if breathing fire would help against whatever was chasing him.)
He stumbled again, and there was nothing to catch himself on. He was going to fall.
He didn't fall.
"What," a light, cultured voice said, "is a mortal doing out in this wood?"
"Help me," he somehow got out.
And then everything faded to black.
It was an old rule – one that most had forgotten, and one he doubted this frail human was aware that he'd just invoked – that if a mortal in need pleaded to one of the Asgardian nobility, they were duty-bound to help. And while Loki was less a member of that nobility and more the wolf in the sheepskin, to borrow a mortal fable, he was not so far removed from who he had been as to ignore an honest plea. Especially when it came from the only mortal he knew of who'd managed to not only stumble on and pass through the portal to his pocket dimension, but had survived the ever-changing dangers of the wood he'd created long enough to make it to the only safe harbour.
"You," he said to the unconscious mortal, "promise to be quite the curiosity, don't you my little mortal?"
Then he picked the human up and carried him inside his little cottage, intent on bathing and dressing his wounds.
And there were quite a number of wounds, he soon found. Many of them looked to be gifts of the wood, but there was also a line of burns across his chest and a faintly glowing circle of mortal technology shoved in the centre of his chest, neither of which were from his wood. The burns, though, did suggest that it wasn't curiosity or greed which had brought this mortal to his dimension, but true need.
He daren't touch the technology until he knew exactly what it was for, but he could help along the healing of the other wounds, and he did so. Then he settled the mortal into the spare cot near his magical workstation, where he sometimes lay down after overexerting himself, and returned to the work he'd been doing before the interruption.
He was long practised at patience, and he would have his answers soon enough.
'Obie,' was his first thought upon waking, and it wasn't a happy one, was too full of terror and grief and that wretched, sickening sense of betrayal that he'd used to only associate with his parents. Obie had made that old wound better, had been the stand-in for his stupid old man for so long...
"You're awake," someone said, their voice low and oddly soothing. Also, an accent that wasn't quite British, but Tony couldn't really figure out anything else it came close enough to to compare.
He opened his eyes and found a man standing some few feet away, holding a book in one hand, while the other was doing something on the table behind him. His eyes were a piercing green, and Tony tried not to shrink away from the man's stare, which became a heck of a lot harder once he realised he wasn't wearing a shirt, which meant the arc reactor was on display. "Uh, yeah," he said while looking around for his shirt. Or maybe a blanket?
The man hummed and didn't attempt to converse any further, instead turning back to whatever he'd been doing while Tony slept.
Which suited Tony fine, as he finally turned up his shirt next to the cot he was lying on. He winced pre-emptively – he didn't quite remember finding this strange man or falling asleep on a cot, but he remembered well how much his body had hurt before he turned all his focus and energy to running – then shoved himself into a sitting position. Only to discover that he ached a little bit, still, but as a whole...
"Wh-where–?" he heard himself say pressing a hand to the swath of skin that had got burnt by Obie's attack. (The one that had mostly missed him only because Pepper had grabbed Obie from behind, had screamed at Tony to run. And he'd left her there because he was a massive coward; if she was dead, it would be his fault.)
"I saw to your wounds," the man said with a careless sort of tone, not bothering to look at Tony. "Those I was able to, at least."
Tony assumed that meant he hadn't wanted to touch the arc reactor, which he appreciated. Still... "How long was I out? Because unless it's been, like, weeks, that's some pretty crazy medicine you've got in stock." Tony could think of quite a few places who could use medicine like that, and even though a part of him could see dollar signs in it, a much larger part of him – the part that was still trapped in a desert prison, hearing about all the lives his company had destroyed – however, could see only the good that would come of free medicine for those most in need.
"My healing is not for your profit," the man said in a flat, unimpressed voice, and his eyes were cold in a way that had Tony flinching back as soon as he met them.
"I wasn't–" Okay, a part of him was. "Sorry."
The man hummed again and turned back to whatever he was working on. "A surprisingly honest apology from a human unused to giving them."
Well, at least Tony's host knew he'd meant that apology? Also, he clearly knew who Tony was, which wasn't surprising, but it did put him at a bit of a disadvantage. "So, uh, thank you? Whoever you are."
The man tapped what sounded like a wooden spoon against the side of some sort of metal container and set it down on the table, followed by the book, then he turned and faced Tony fully for the first time. "I am Loki," he said with the same sort of haughty tone that Tony might use when introducing himself. Like he expected Tony to know who he was.
Tony suddenly felt a lot more sympathy for those handful of people he'd met over the years who didn't know who he was, because, wow, it felt kind of awkward.
The man, Loki, sighed like he'd actually expected Tony's non-reaction. "You requested my assistance, and I will grant it," he said, instead of explaining how he was important. "Who harmed and chases you?"
Tony blinked, thrown. And then his brain conjured a helpful image of Pepper's most likely fate, and he had to swallow down bile; he couldn't get anyone else involved in his mess, especially not someone as nice and helpful as Loki. "Look," he said as he pushed himself up from the cot, "I appreciate the, uh–" he motioned toward his chest "–the healing, and giving me a place to crash for a bit. I do. You're...super nice. Like, amazingly nice. And if I had any money on me right now, I'd give you all of it, I really would, but I don't... I'm good from here. Thanks."
And then he ran for the door he was fairly certain led outside.
It did lead outside, but Tony didn't even manage to make it all the way out of the building before the air in front of him was suddenly taken up by Loki. Who Tony barely managed to not crash into. Somehow.
His reaction may or may not have included some relatively clever curses, and it turned out that Loki had one of the most stunning smiles that Tony had ever seen.
"I am Loki, silver-tongue and magic-maker, the god of mischief."
"God of–" Tony started with his usual disdain for religion and magic. And then he stopped himself, looked back at the empty space in front of the table, then at where Loki was standing in front of him, smirking in a way that said he could see the realisation dawning that he wasn't pulling Tony's leg.
Loki tilted his head up and to the side slightly, and Tony swore his eyes actually gleamed. "Who harmed and chases you, mortal?"
Tony was probably going crazy, but given what had happened to him over the course of the last couple months, that was only to be expected.
At any rate, Tony needed help, and it seemed Loki could pull a vanishing act if things got too hot, so Tony wouldn't have to worry about leaving another person behind. So he filled Loki in.
Judging by the gleam of violence in Loki's eyes when Tony was done, Obie wouldn't take another life ever again. And that was something that Tony, at least, could live with.
.
