Tony/Loki/Jane Dark Fic

[icarus_chained]

Originally for a prompt on comment_fic that went sideways on me. Essentially what happens when I throw Norse Mythology, the Terminator, time travel, magical robots, and a prompt of 'Tony/Loki: fire and ice' in a blender with added Jane Foster. Um. Results may be questionable at best? My apologies in advance -_-;

Title: Ginnungagap
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: Tony Stark, Loki, Jane Foster, Hel. Tony/Loki/Jane
Summary: In a dark future, in a galaxy overrun by unstoppable alien invaders, Tony, Loki and Jane are the last remnants of the resistance. Huddled in a cave on a distant world, they ready themselves to throw magic and science into a last desperate act of vengeance, and a faint hope for the survival of some other world. Or, an engineer, an astrophysicist and an alien magician at the end of the galactic rope, and ready to strike back.
Wordcount: 2189
Warnings/Notes: Dystopian AU Futurefic, with time travel, galactic conquest, love/hate, relationships formed in the face of certain death, AIs, golems and vengeance -_-;
Disclaimer: Not mine

Ginnungagap

It came back to the cave. Somehow, no matter how far he went or how changed he became, no matter what world he lived in or what life he built for himself, it always, always, came back to the cave. To the forge hidden in a desolate hillside, and the hopes and horrors forged in fire from broken scraps. Each time, every time. He always ended up back here.

"Is it done?" Loki asked, limping out of the passageway to join them in front of their monstrosity. Exhausted, Tony thought. The acid scars pitting the other man's face were stretched tight around his frown, and for once Loki hadn't bothered to mask them in illusion. Exhausted, yes. Too tired even for vanity.

Though the vanity had lasted longer than most anything. Tony smirked tiredly. An odd sort of testament, that. A declaration of character. Heh.

"We are, even if it isn't," Jane answered, leaning on Tony's other shoulder as Loki drew even with them on his left. She rubbed absently at her face, smearing dust and metal filings across her cheeks, without so much as a flinch. "If there's anything left to be done, it's too late now. We've got nothing left to throw at it."

Pessimism, once upon a time. Defeatism. Here, now, nothing more than cold, pragmatic truth. They'd given it everything they had, and several things they hadn't, inventing substance from silence on the spot. There was nothing, nothing left to work with. It either worked now, or it didn't. All or nothing, at the end of the galactic rope.

In the end, as in the beginning. The way it always fucking happened. The place it always came back to, even planets and decades separate. God, was Tony ever fucking tired of this shit.

"It'll work," Tony said, feeling them lean into him almost unwillingly, feeling their desperate, cynical determination alongside his own. Their black, willful defiance, snatching fistfuls of firmament to fling at their enemies. Not stopping. None of them. Not for anything. Not ever again.

If only because there was little point, now. They were dead one way or another. Might as well go down swinging, the way only scientists and sly magicians can.

"You never struck me as an optimist," Loki noted with idle malice beside him. Raising one scarred eyebrow in amusement, balancing his chin on Tony's shoulder, careful around the seams of biotech written across it. "Have all those years beside heroes corrupted you, my love?"

Tony barked out a laugh, harsh and reflexive, and Jane snorted sharply only a second behind him. He grinned at her, bright and wicked, and watched the savage little curl of her lip with a bitter sort of joy. She sneered, brightly vicious, and curled her arm around Tony to catch Loki's wrist, to circle her fingers around fragile bones and hold them hard and tight.

"No more than you," she said, with a wealth of history humming blackly behind it, with a tired and hateful sort of knowing. "Of all people I ever thought I'd die beside, on the side of angels, no less ..."

"The resistance," Loki corrected quickly. With amusement, though. "The side of the resistance, my dear. A common enemy does wonders, does it not?" An odd pause, and then: "And a common vengeance, too."

Tony leaned forward a little, out from between them. Making way for Thor's ghost, vast and silent in the shadows of the forge, the weregild they both sought to see paid. The vengeance they sought in blood and despair and nothing less than the utter ruin of the enemy that had torn him down, that had killed him and left this raw emptiness to be filled between them.

There were hundreds in that emptiness, hundreds in that bloodied silence. Worlds and people both. Murdered friends, murdered family. Lovers and children, allies and enemies, homes and homes in exile. One by one fallen before the onslaught, until here they were. They three, huddled in a cave on some forsaken piece of rock, throwing some madness wrought of science and magic into the teeth of the enemy. Forging vengeance in a cave, from the shreds of weapons remaining to them.

And yet who better, he thought. Who better to manage it, to bring that cycle around again and see the world end in ice and fire, in magic and the far reaches of a desperate science? Who better than the three of them, and all their blood behind them?

"... We'll have it, you know," he said distantly, a tinny echo around the cavern, a hollow sound thrown back by the forges and the portal and the silent shapes of their creations. They turned to him, hands still linked around his back, Loki's free hand reaching out to press into Tony's discoloured chest and guide him gently back between them. He went, idle and easy. "Maybe we won't see it, maybe we won't last that long, but we'll have it anyway. We'll kill the fuckers yet."

In the past, if not the present. With science and magic as only they understood it. With a portal flung across dimensions, across time, and a creature forged to step through it and seed their vengeance where nobody would see it until far, far too late. A poison to bring their enemies down behind them. A fatal bite where they lay dying.

"Ragnarok," Loki breathed, with savage eagerness. Curled close around Tony, his breath in Tony's ear and his wrist in the cage of Jane's hand. "The twilight of the gods. I do so love that story."

"Of course you do," Jane murmured, absently stroking the pulse at his wrist, catching Tony's worn knuckles with her other hand. "You're Loki, of course you enjoy that."

"Mmm," he hummed, their sly magician, the ice to their fire and their light. "And you don't, of course. Enjoy the thought of vengeance, the thought of bending all of time to see them dead. You don't like that at all, I suppose."

"Oh, shut up," Tony murmured, and turned in their grasp to pull Loki to his chest, to press blue, acid-scarred skin into discoloured metal and bind it tight. He reached up, cupped hands around that marred face, leaned in to nuzzle gently. Jane made a noise of exasperation behind him. Loki, in front, a different sort of noise entirely. "You know exactly what we like, you bastard. You know exactly what we want."

"... Yes," Loki whispered, eyes alight with some fragile mix of malice and love, a tender sort of hatred. "Oh yes," he murmured, brushing the hair gently from Tony's face, twisting his hand in Jane's grip. "I do, don't I?"

"Then let's make it happen," Jane interrupted. Only a little coldly, still pressed against Loki's side and Tony's back. Still joined with them, on their merry little jaunt to a mutual hell, grinning darkly right alongside them. "Right now, before the pair of you make me any more regretful. Let's do it now."

Tony tilted his head, forehead pressed against Loki's, and looked at her. Considered her, the light of vengeance in her eyes and the white grip she still held on Loki's wrist, the strange love she bore the friend and the enemy yet remaining to her. He looked at the determination in a face grey with metal filings and old despair, and slowly, surely, felt a joy growing inside him. A bitter, familiar thing, warm and comforting, a thing born in one cave only to die in another, worlds distant.

"Now," he echoed, thoughtfully. "Right now. You know what? Why not. Why the fuck not, hmm?"

There wasn't anything pressing left to do, after all. They'd have a few days before the seeker ships caught up with them, a few days before death climbed down the throat of their little cave and swept them finally along. Might as well get the fun stuff out of the way now, right? Press the button long before the enemy would have any hope of stopping it. Insurance. Preventative medicine.

Vengeance that little bit early.

"If you wish," Loki murmured, coiled between them, an odd little smile on his lips. "I've certainly no objection. Although ... I do hope it works. After all that. I do hope we've not gathered here in vain, hmm?"

"It will work," Jane said shortly. Looking at Tony, her eyes fever-bright and weary, too tired to consider failure. "It always does. The numbers don't fail you. Not the way people do."

"No," Tony agreed, wry and grieving. "They don't die the way people do. I've always liked that about them."

Loki watched them, aloof and curious, smiling faintly, and then he nodded. Almost gently. Almost kind.

"Of course," he said, with the writhing of his magic behind his eyes. "Of course they don't. I know."

And then, after that, there was nothing to do but try it. Prove it, prove the fortitude of a mortal science, prove the final victory of a man's machines. Well. A man's and a woman's, technically. And a god's. But you know.

Their golem levered itself to its feet. Tony and Loki's project, mostly. An AI written in magic and metal, a non-organic, non-perishable intelligence to breach the gates of time and carry their vengeance back. The Terminator, as imagined by a robotics engineer and an alien magician, and sent back by a grieving, determined astrophysicist who had built a bridge through time on nothing but the strength of her fury. The portal flared, brute force of science and magic and those strange, unpredictable places where they merged, a hissing gateway to hell or to salvation, and for a brief moment, a brief second, their golem stood framed in its maw and looked at them. Their child, their vengeance, their creation. Hel, to bridge the gap between life and death. She looked at them, the three figures holding white-knuckled to each other in an empty cavern, her parents as they waited for death with all the bright-vicious love they could muster.

And then, with a strange look of almost-grief, their golem turned, and walked away. Into the howl between the gates, swallowed whole by the rushing of an only barely understood force, taking the last of their hope with her. The maw snapped shut, the sound and the fury winking out into silence, and nothing now would tell them whether they won or failed. Nothing now would tell them if it worked.

It was over. They were done.

"... Well then," Jane murmured, with a hitch like a sob in her breathing. "Well. That's that, then."

She curled into herself, hugged herself close, suddenly more small and tired than all the wars had made her up to now. She curled, broke, and it was Loki who moved to her. Loki, who hated her as she him, who pulled her gently back against him and rocked her silently against the rasping of her tears. Tony flinched, twitched away, but not for long. Not ever for long. Meeting Loki's eyes, the dry, laughing look inside them, he came over and wrapped his arms around them both.

"It will work," he whispered softly, an article of a desperate faith. "She's a good girl. She's a hell of kid. She'll make it. She'll make it right."

"Of course she will," Loki agreed, cracked and laughing through his scarred cheeks, hope fever-bright in a dead face. "Of course."

In some other world, of course she would. Some other universe, reshaped by the force of their vengeance, their love. In that world, she would make it, and everything would turn out alright. Thor wouldn't die. Pepper. JARVIS. The world would keep turning, and they'd never love their shattered god, he and Jane, and all the chittering armies of alien overlords would never make it past the gate. In some other world, where they were still mostly whole, where they were still mostly unbroken. In that world, it would work. In that world, she'd make it right.

But not here. Not in this one. In this world, there was nothing left except the cave, and the hope, and the three bodies pressed together against the cold. Dying in ice as once Tony'd been reborn in fire. In this world, there was nothing left to do save curl together, wind white fingers around each other's wrists, and wait for the last of the ships to come hunting. A tender sort of hatred, a bitter sort of love, while they waited steadfast for the end.

In this world, they were done. In the end, as in the beginning. In the silence and the stillness, the hollow echoes of the cave, and the emptiness of a dead gateway. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And not with a terror, but with a hope.

Ragnarok is cyclical, after all. The end always comes again. Each time. Every time. There was, ever and always, in all worlds and all times, the cave. The fire. The ice.

In Ginnungagap, the rime lay waiting for the fire, and Ymir's children, the children of giants, stirred between the gates of time.


A/N: For those unfamiliar with Norse Mythology, I'm referencing primarily the creation myth where Ymir, the father of giants, is created in the void Ginnungagap from the mixing of fire and ice and is later killed so that his body becomes the earth, and then Ragnarok, obviously. I do not, however, promise that I'm using said myths at all accurately -_-;