Chapter Text
”Bruce? What's this?”
Banner turned from the monitor he had been studying to frown at Tony. ”I'm pretty sure I told you to stay away from my classified files.”
”Hey! It was right here on the table! What was I supposed to do? Walk in here with my eyes closed?”
”Was it wide open on the table?”
”Well, no...” Tony looked at least a little bit like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but only for a moment.
”Then which part of 'leave my private, closed, classified files alone' didn't register with your genius mind?”
”Oooh!” Tony flashed him a grin. ”Someone woke up on the sassy side of the bed this morning! I kinda like it.”
”And I would like it if you closed that thing and left it alone now.”
”Yeah, no.” Looking down again Tony pulled the top thing from the file free of the paper clip holding it. It was what looked like a polaroid photo. (And who the hell even used those anymore?) He turned it around to show Bruce what he was talking about. ”You think I can see something like this and let it drop?”
With a sigh, Banner pulled his glasses off, rubbed at his tired eyes and didn't answer. He was clearly giving up the fight before it even started. He knew the ones he couldn't win, and this one had been lost the moment he had forgotten to remove the file from the table before Tony came to the lab.
Tony turned the picture to stare at it again. ”Beacuse, A – what the hell? And B – what in the actual fuck?”
Another sigh reached him, but Tony couldn't look away from the photo. ”I wish I could tell you, Tony, but I was asked by SHIELD to get on the case as a consultant only last night, and I really don't know a lot more than what you have in that file right there.” He paused a moment. ”At least not yet. I'm waiting for their most recent data to reach my computers.”
By now Tony was barely even listening. He was still staring at the photo, trying to believe that it was something real, and not a joke. But if SHIELD had involved Banner, it wouldn't be a joke, would it? Not bloody likely. He wasn't the guy you pulled insane pranks on. (Even though Tony couldn't stop himself sometimes.)
The little square photo showed the off-white and dull gray corner of a room that just had to be in some sort of institution; only hospitals and the like were allowed to have walls and floors that soulcrushingly boring. In the corner was a boy, almost angled into it, like he was trying to hide from the camera, his head half turned away. He was just wearing a pair of white briefs, and it was glaringly obvious that he wasn't even a little comfortable being nearly naked – one of his lanky arms was reaching across his chest so he could hold on to the opposite one, and the bony knees on his foal-like legs were rubbing against each other. Most likely he was no more than seven, skinny and nervous and probably cold, if Tony's experience with rooms that colour was anything to go by. His black hair, rumpled and falling into his forehead, probably after pulling a sweater or something off, half shadowed his thin face from the harsh light from the ceiling, but his downturned little mouth and squeezed shut eyes were still visible. And all of that was enough to make him feel sort of bad for the kid, so obviously miserable, but that wasn't even the main thing.
No, the main thing, the ”what the actual fuck?” thing, was the fact that the boy was blue.
Blue. Not in a ”it's chilly in here” sort of way where you turn a bit blueish in places. No, all of him was a dark but still clear shade of blue, like the western sky on a summer night, right before stars show through. There were lines running through the blue, reminiscent of scarifications, raised markings in the skin, everywhere on his arms, chest, legs, even his face. Tony really hoped they weren't actual scarifications though, because damn... Anyone who did that to a child would have to be a fucking monster.
Reluctantly, Tony put the picture down and instead scanned the surprisingly few documents in the file. It was obvious that this was old information, and it didn't surprise him that the more recent data would be digital. There was just some basic personal information on the kid, like his name (Loki Jarlson – now what kind of name was that?), his date of birth (making him twenty today, so yeah, picture definitely old), and his weight and some measurements that had to have been taken about the same time as the picture, becuase no way was the guy this short at twenty. At least Tony hoped so; being blue had to suck enough without being tiny on top of it. Just imagine all the smurf jokes, right?
Added to this information there was some pretty extensive bloodwork that looked like the most recent addition to the file, along with similar tests run on three other individuals, all with the same family name. An Odin and a Frigga, who judging by their ages had to be the boy's parents, and a Thor, likely a brother.
Only... No, they couldn't be. Because nothing here matched. Like, even a little.
”So, he's adopted?” But even as he said it, he wondered. Because why would you need to do this kind of comparison to know that? It could have been news to the boy and his brother, sure, but parents tended to know one kid wasn't theirs. And didn't he just see a copy of a birth certificate, with a completely different blood type, matching Thor's?
”No, he's not”, Bruce said, slowly.
Tony frowned at the papers. ”Hospital mix-up?”
”First thing they checked, obviously, and again, no.” Banner shrugged when Tony faced him with an eyebrow raised. ”The results are nothing even close to any other child born on the days Mrs. Jarlson spent in the maternity ward. And then there is, of course, the part where he's not even, you know...” Bruce pulled a face.
”Human.” Tony nodded and dropped his head to eye the numbers again. ”Yeah, I got that part.” Everything was just a hint off. Not hugely. But still off. Apart from the fact that the kid was blue. Which was hugely off, no doubt about it. ”I'm guessing he didn't always look like this though?”
”No”, Bruce confirmed. ”As I understand it from the briefing I got from the SHIELD doctor in charge of the case, he doesn't look like that now either. Not all the time, at least.” He sat down in a chair across the table from Tony before he started telling the story that was obviously coming. ”Apparently the whole family was out ice skating when the ice on the lake cracked and both the boys fell through. Thor is just two years older, by the way, so they were seven and nine. Their mother was close enough that she could crawl to the edge and pull them out pretty fast, so no harm was done. But when they had the kids in safety, they noticed that Loki looked like that. Needless to say, they panicked.”
”I bet.” He scratched his neck and tried to imagine it. ”The kid looks cute as a freaking button, but that blue thing is definitely sort of... disturbing.”
”Yes.” Bruce made a little noise, probably thinking about the disturbing thing about sometimes turning a different colour. ”But as soon as he warmed up, he turned back to normal.”
”You mean they had to get him cold to turn him like that?” Incredulous, Tony pointed to the photo.
”The temperature in the room when that picture was taken, was minus thirty degrees celcius. That's minus twentytwo fahrenheit.”
”Pretty damn cold. A lot colder than the water under that ice”, he added, thoughtful.
”A lot”, Bruce agreed. ”The theory was that the shock was part guilty for triggering the change the first time. In this more controlled environment, they had to lower the temperature a lot more to get a reaction.”
Controlled environment. Yeah, right... Tony wondered how controlled it had felt to Loki, nearly naked in the freezing cold, likely surrounded by grown ups in winter jackets. Not very controlled at all, by the look of him in that polaroid.
”So”, Tony muttered, thoughtful, ”either something happened to the boy in that frozen over lake to change him into this, or...” He frowned. ”Or, what?”
Bruce met his eyes. ”Or someone switched.”
”Switched.” At first Tony could just stare at the doctor. ”You mean, switched, like...? No, Bruce, please, be serious! This is the real world! It's not a fucking fairytale!”
With a shrug, Banner crossed his arms over his chest, leaning with his elbows on the table. ”Maybe not. But the fact of the matter is that that Loki”, he nodded to the open file on the table, ”is not the same Loki those people brought home from the hospital. Somewhere after he was three days old, and before he turned seven, someone took that child away and left this one instead. Whatever he really is.”
It was difficult to believe that it could be true, but when Tony again felt his eyes drawn to the picture of the blue-skinned child, he had to agree that there was something in the story that felt like it fit. And what was the alternative? Mutation? Radioactive blueberries? Damn, it was the only answer that even sort of made sense. A fucked up sort of sense, yeah, but still...
”A changeling”, he muttered, running a finger along the white border of the photo. ”That's what he is.”
There came a little ding! from Banner's computer then, and he turned to open the new file on Loki Jarlson. Tony, of course, moved in to stand where he could read over the other man's shoulder, and Bruce didn't even try to stop him.
A lot more data here, just like Tony had suspected there would be. It would take hours to go through all of it. But his eyes were caught by two new pictures, side by side on one of the first pages, and he leaned in to point at them. Without asking, Banner zoomed in on them so they both could see every clear, strange, disturbing detail.
The left photo showed a simple portrait shot, the kind you take for a passport or ID, of a young man who appeared completely normal in every way. Apart from being pretty damn... well, pretty. Pale, flawless skin, looking smooth and almost glowing from within, like marble, perfectly cut emeralds for eyes, shiny black hair combed back and cut just below his ears. The elegant, aristocratic face was serious and the eyes and expression gave nothing away, the thin mouth a straight line, not a hint of a curve either up or down in the corners.
The photo on the right was so different it was difficult to understand that it showed the same individual, but Tony knew now that it did. The lines of the face were the same, from the fine jaw and the sharp cheekbones to the high forehead, the hairline and the neat eyebrows. But the pale, flawless skin had turned a scored blue, and the emeralds had turned to rubies now. Loki's eyes had been closed in the first picture, but here they were wide open and glaring into the camera. Red all over, not just the irises, even though those were a shade different enough to stand out. What was the biggest difference between the photos was the expression on the young man's face, though. In the first, completely neutral. In the second, the faint curl of a snarl, hinting at the sort of rage that is so cold it burns your fingers, teeth white behind the darker blue lip.
”Not a fan of science, I take it?” Tony studied the furious face of Loki on the right, and was sure no-one could blame the kid after what they had most likely put him through over the years.
”Doesn't look that way.” It sounded like Banner agreed on Tony's unspoken thoughts, too.
In silence they studied the images on the screen for a while.
”When are you going to see him?”
”Wednesday.”
”I'm coming with you”, Tony stated.
”Tony, no.” Bruce spun the chair around to look at him with wide eyes, pleading with him to see sense. ”You're no medical doctor. Why would you go?”
”Hey!” Crossing his arms in front of himself, scowling in a not totally convincing way, he leaned in closer to the man on the chair. ”I'm Iron Man! I can go visit a kid in a hospital if I want to. That's what superheroes do!”
”He's not really a kid anymore, Tony. And the SHIELD facility where he's kept isn't really a hospital.”
With a snort Tony just shook his head. ”He's twenty, Bruce. Nobody thinks they're a kid at twenty, but then you grow up and you know better.” He turned, offering Banner a wave over his shoulder as he started walking out of the lab. ”I say he's a kid, and I'm visiting. Especially if the facility fits the description of a place where someone's 'kept'. See you wednesday!”
Things were not exactly the way Tony had expected.
The SHIELD research facility where Bruce guided him was in the middle of Manhattan, for one thing. It was a tiny place and the more he looked around, the more he got the impression that it served one purpose and one propose only - to study Loki Jarlson.
Also, the young man wasn't kept there. Not the way Banner had made it sound. He was apparently brought there six times a year for more tests, but otherwise lived with his family. Who, to Tony's surprise, were right there now as well. He saw a woman with an impressively straight back and silver-and-gold curls falling around her shoulders, dressed in soft, golden wool pants and a dark blue, loose but elegant tunic. And a just as impressively well built young man with blond hair, the heroic attempt at a beard a few shades darker trying to cover his jaw, wearing blue-gray jeans and a bright red shirt, straining over his shoulders. They were both sitting in a comfortable waiting area just off the entrance hall. So when Bruce was swept away to start working, Tony slipped aside to join the two civilians.
The woman spotted him first. She looked surprised for a moment, before she stood from her chair and graciously offered him a long, slim hand, just faintly wrinkled with age. "Mr. Stark", she said with a smile, making the kid in the other chair snap his head up from the phone he had been bent over. "I am Frigga Jarlson. It's an honour to meet you. After all, the city wouldn't be here if not for you."
Tony took her hand and gave it a short shake, giving her a bland smile. "Yeah, don't mention it." He noticed the kid stand and start to open his mouth, and threw a dark glance his way. "Really. Don't."
The kid was smart enough to snap his mouth shut. Instead he stepped up to offer his own huge hand, gold tan and all.
"This is our son Thor", Frigga introduced the young man. 'Our', even though she was the only parent there with him, by the look of it.
"Pleasure to meet you, sir." Thor practically beamed as he gave Tony's hand a firm shake.
Tony again answered with the same bland smile he always used in these situations.
"I usually come here with Loki so he will have at least some company", the woman continued when Tony turned back to face her, a small but warm smile on her own lips.
"Yeah, I have to admit that I thought he was staying here on a, well, more permanent basis." He decided to be blunt. Frigga looked like she could handle it.
"Oh, no doubt they would like him to." The smile didn't shift, but there was a glint of steel in her gray eyes suddenly. She was not to be messed with, that was obvious. "But I refused. He's young still. He needs to live a normal life, as much as possible, and I couldn't let them ruin it completely. He is my son, after all."
The different wording there told Tony a lot. Thor was "our son". Loki was "my son". But he still couldn't stop himself finding out if his suspicions were correct.
"And your husband shares this sentiment, I guess?"
The quick, sharp glance passing between Frigga and Thor at that wasn't lost on Tony. At all. And then Thor turned completely away and walked out of the room, without another word.
Frigga sighed and turned to Tony again, her face at once more lined and tired than before. "Please excuse him, Mr. Stark. These last years haven't been kind on our family, and he feels the strain of it."
"Of course." He gave the woman a smile that was a bit more heartfelt than the previous one, feeling a bit like a jerk all of a sudden. "And, hey, call me Tony."
She sat down in the chair she had left when he walked into the room, and he chose one to her left. ”I assume you are here to see Loki”, she said a few silent moments later. ”May I ask why?”
”In part because I'm a curious bastard.” It felt like he owed her some honesty after being a bit of an ass. ”And in part because I wanted to make sure he was treated all right.”
Her cool, gray eyes met his, and then she nodded, once, before raising that slim hand again to point across the room. When Tony turned his head, he saw a screen hung on the wall, showing what had to be streamed surveillance footage, presumably from another part of the facitily.
”I demanded to be able to see him at all times, no matter what.”
Tony nodded, understanding, without taking his eyes off the screen. It showed a large room, mostly empty, and cut off in roughly the middle by a thick glass wall. On the other side of the wall was what could be considered a cell, if the person in it hadn't been there more or less voluntarily. There was a desk, a chair, and a bed in a corner.
And there was Loki. He was on his back on the bed, placed so his ass was close to the wall, legs propped up against it, crossed at the ankles, so he was almost in a ninty degree angle against the wall with his feet in the air. In one hand he held a worn paperback, thumb and little finger spreading the pages open, while the other arm was curled under his head. His hair looked longer than it had been in the latest photos Tony had seen, and he was dressed in black jeans and a longsleeved t-shirt a dark petroleum green colour. Beneath the cloth, his skin was the same blue it had been in the pictures.
When Tony's eyes searched the numbers showing on the side of the screen he noticed the temperature in the room and blinked. It was so far below freezing the young man should have been huddled in a corner, rubbing his arms and rattling his teeth out. But no, he was just lying there, casually flipping a page with completely steady hands, before getting his hand back in under his head.
He had been sure that the way they had exposed Loki to that kind of temperatures as a child must have been pure torture, but now he found himself reconsidering at least that part of it.
”He's just fine with the cold, isn't he?” Tony at last tore his eyes from the footage to look at Frigga again.
”Physically, yes”, she said, still watching the screen. ”The cold is not the problem in itself; it's what it brings out.”
There was no need to explain that, of course. The cold dip under the cracked ice had been what had revealed the truth about who and what Loki was – or at least the fact that no-one really knew the truth – and who would like being reminded of that every other month, regular as clockwork?
In the end, Tony spent almost an hour sitting in that room. Thor returned shortly after they had sat down, but he didn't add to the light conversation between Tony and his mother, he just pulled his phone out again and ignored both them and the screen. For his part, Tony had a hard time keeping his eyes off the footage. Not because Loki ever did anything beside lying in that odd position on the bed, reading. But it was kind of soothing to watch it, in a way he couldn't put his finger on. Except for the way he always ended up staring at the raised lines and patterns on the back of Loki's hands whenever he turned a page.
Then two new figures suddenly showed up on the screen. One was very familiar – Bruce – while the other was unknown to Tony, but dressed in a white lab coat and probably the doctor in charge. The live feed didn't have audio, so there was no way to know what they said to Loki, but whatever it was it made him close the book and put it down on the bed before he swung those long, elegant legs down and sat up on the edge of the mattress. Now Tony suddenly had a better view of the bright, red eyes and he had to swallow. The blue skin had sort of become familiar over the last hour, but those eyes... Yeah, disturbing.
On screen Loki nodded, his lips moved now and then as he spoke to the two doctors, probably answering questions. In the meantime Tony noticed the temperature in the glass cell slowly rising, and while Loki spoke the blue colour looked like it was draining out of his skin, leaving his pale, human-looking complexion behind. Somehow, that looked more alien to Tony now, after seeing the other form for so long. He was a bit relieved to see the red eyes turn green though, with whites around the sparkling colour.
Not long after that the glass wall slid away, Loki got up from the bed and all three people left the room, disappearing off the screen. A while later the young man showed up in the doorway to the waiting area, alone, and stopping short when he realized that there was a stranger in the room. The way he did a double take and his eyes widened just a fraction made it clear that Tony wasn't really unknown, though. But then he rarely was.
Tony himself felt almost as shocked at seeing Loki now, suddenly there and real and present and all life-size and 3D after being something on paper and in pixels up until this moment. It had been way too easy to forget that Loki was an actual person, even though that was the reason Tony had felt like he had to come visit him in the first place. The young man was surprisingly tall, slim and long-limbed and moving with elegant grace when he finally started walking through the room again.
”I thought Iron Man only visited the bedside of terminally ill children”, Loki said through a lopsided little smile while he came to a halt a couple of steps from the chairs. His voice shouldn't be allowed on someone that young, really. Something that creamy and rich should have to be earned through hard work and long years, damnit.
”You mean this isn't the cancer ward?” Tony smirked up at the pale face. The kid was obviously not as easy to impress as his brother, and Tony liked that. ”Someone must have given me bad directions.”
”Most likely.” The corner of Loki's mouth twitched a bit higher.
Frigga chose that moment to get up from her chair and take a minute for motherly fussing, running her hands along the outside of Loki's long arms, hanging by his sides, combing his slightly tousled hair back from his forehead, placing a gentle kiss on his cheek. All of which he accepted with good grace and a tiny smile, which was at least honest.
”Everything all right, darling?”
He nodded. ”Just fine, mom. But I would like to go home now.”
”Of course.” She turned to the blond youngster. ”Thor, it's time to leave.”
When the other kid stood Tony did the same, and cleared his throat.
”Any way I could have a private word with you before you leave, Loki?”
The green eyes shifted his way, and he could see the wish behind them to tell Tony to piss off and leave him alone, but a touch of his mother's hand to the back of his made the kid sigh, and then nod. ”Sure, Mr. Stark.”
”Promise I won't keep you that long”, Tony assured before he said goodbye to Frigga and Thor, and then sat down to watch them leave. He made a gesture to the chair Frigga had just vacated. ”Have a seat, would you?”
Loki obviously didn't feel up to it, but after a moment's hesitation he sat down anyway. The new position made his eyes fall on the screen on the wall, still showing his now empty cell. He made a little huff of a laugh and turned to look at Tony again. "Did you enjoy the freak show, Mr. Stark?" There was no missing the bitter twist to Loki's thin mouth.
"Definitely freaky", Tony said, unperturbed. "That's not why I'm here, though. Or why I wanted to talk to you."
"Really?" Loki didn't sound even a little bit convinced.
"I came to make you an offer."
Wait. What?
Loki's emerald eyes narrowed a hint, and it looked like he was asking the same internal question.
Tony was almost as curious to hear what would come out of his mouth next, when he felt himself speak up again. "Just that if you ever want to get away, you'd be welcome to stay in my tower."
The bitter twist to Loki's lips came back, after briefly having been replaced by slack confusion. "So you can poke and prod at me personally, instead of the doctors here? Why, I'm flattered, Mr. Stark, but no thank you."
With that Loki got up from his chair to walk out, and before Tony could think his next course of action all the way through, he was leaning forward to grab the kid's wrist, as gently as he could. He just wanted to stop him from bolting immediately.
"That's not it."
Loki glanced back at him, an eyebrow raised, daring him to make himself even a little bit clear.
"I just figured living with your mom and dad", he started, putting just a bit more emphasis on the last word, "isn't really that awsome when you're twenty. And when the only option is being stared at by doctors and scientists, you might like having a third alternative."
The green eyes traveled all over Tony's face, searching. "Correct me if I'm wrong", Loki drawled, "but aren't you a scientist?"
"Yeah, sure, but I'm the good kind of scientist." When he saw Loki's eyebrow travel even higher toward that black hairline, he grinned. "I make shit blow up." He shrugged. "And I'm not asking as a scientist. It's just an offer of good oldfashioned hospitality. You're free to take it or not. Whatever you want."
Loki threw a pointed glance at Tony's hand still holding on to his wrist, dark against the white skin, before giving him a look that very clearly said it seemed otherwise.
Tony let go at once, holding both hands up with palms out in a belated sign of peace.
Then Loki's eyes made that searching move over his face again, before the kid gave a slow nod. "I'll think about it, Mr. Stark."
"You know where to find me."
"I do." With another little nod to accompany the words Loki just turned and walked out of the room.
Tony found himself sitting in the chair for a while longer, wondering where the hell that idea had come from. What had he been thinking? Why would he want a snarky not-even-human kid moping around his tower? He'd even been honest about it not being about the science. What was up with that?
He tried telling himself he didn't know. But that was bullshit.
It was because in Loki's bitter mouth and tired eyes he had seen a reflection of the scared boy in that old photo, and in many ways Tony knew what it was like to be that boy. Once, he had also been the oddity, the freak, the specimen to study. Make it run through mazes! Poke it and see what it does! In a less literal way than Loki, absoloutely, but still... The similarities were there.
Tony knew a kid who desperately needed a break when he saw one. And he wanted to give Loki his break, if he would be allowed to. He wasn't sure Loki would take him up on his offer after all, and why should he? Yeah, Iron Man was a hero and had saved the world and all, but Tony Stark? He was just a self-destructive playboy who drank too much and didn't play well with others, after all. What reason did the kid have to trust him?
No reason what so ever, of course. But Tony found himself hoping that Loki still would.