Chapter Text
How long did it take for someone's face to grow back?
It wasn't a question Tony Stark had ever thought he would ask. It wasn't a question that would have had an answer, if life was still normal and sane and he was a selfish billionaire just going on about life without bothering with super-heroing and interstellar villains redemption.
It was a question, nonetheless, he had to deal with.
Thor had come to him in distress. He had needed a while to actually explain, seemingly worried that Tony would feel absolutely no compassion for what brought him here. He was wrong.
Locating the cave had been relatively easy. Breaking Loki out, not so much. Not only had the god been imprisoned with cuffs of a metal unknown to Tony and stronger than anything he had ever encountered, but Tony had struggled to keep his panic at bay through all the screaming and trashing of his once enemy.
Call him sensitive, and he guessed he knew some who might, but torturing people? Not where he was concerned.
Thor and he had taken turns holding a basin just above Loki's face, collecting the venom that drip-drip-dripped constantly upon what had once been the sorcerer's face. The snake that produced it looked frozen in time, its mouth gaping and its white, pale eyes staring at nothing, no matter the deafening shrieking of the man in his shackles or the trembling of the cavern when either of the men threw the content of the basin away, leaving the simmering yellow liquid to fall on its intended victim's face.
Tony built a super-powerful saw, powered by a miniaturized ARK. It took him three days, which felt like the longest of his life. He worked in the lab whenever he wasn't testing his progress, but Loki's screams followed him even when he wasn't there. He hadn't heard the man's voice other than the raw, scrapped sound of his cries since Thor had brought him to the cavern.
When he broke the first shackle, the one at Loki's right ankle, though, Tony thought he heard a rough, pained sound that might have been either a sob or a laugh.
Loki's face was a carnage, but with a stolen war criminal, it was hard to know exactly who to trust. Tony expected most human doctors would have refused to believe that Loki was still alive, but it was impossible to ask an Aesir for help when it was Odin Allfather himself who had ordered the punishment and Thor was technically betraying his father to do this.
That was a matter for another day, the possibility of civil war that this raised. The priority now was to figure out how to fix Loki.
His ankles and wrists were chaffed raw from the way he had trashed in his bonds, and that was the first thing Tony took care of, because it was the only thing he figured was within his reach. He applied generous amounts of antibiotic cream to the red friction burns and wrapped them, disturbed by the fact that Loki was silent through what had to be a painful process.
“Right, well, we're doing great,” Tony babbled, mostly for himself. “Next is just your face, which would make the Red Skull jealous. Any pointers?”
There was no answer.
Tony stared, feeling foolish and powerless, at Loki's face. Despite the fact that the sorcerer no longer had eyes, he felt that he was staring back, waiting for him to do something. He hadn't spoken since they had taken him back to the Tower. Maybe he just couldn't. Most of his face had been melted off by the corrosive venom, including part of his lips, giving him a skull-like grin. Maybe he had swallowed enough that he couldn't produce any sound more precise than a scream.
He was aware, though. Conscious of what was going on, reacting with jumpy movements or trying to push them away. Now he was still, his breath almost even despite what had to be endless pain.
Tony breathed in, looking at the red flesh of burnt cheekbones and the nightmarish gaze of empty eyesockets.
Right.
“Okay. Well, you stop me if that gets to be too much, alright? I'll need to start by disinfecting, don't know where that snake has been, and this is gonna hurt like a bitch.”
He got to work.
Loki's words were the first thing to come back.
“What,” he asked Tony, and he sounded like a crow, speaking without a voice, “do you hope to get from this?”
“A sea of trouble,” Tony told him genuinely. He was sitting next to Loki's bed to keep an eye on him, and watching a crime show on TV.
He had expected to feel at least some fear or discomfort, and maybe it would still come, when Loki would start looking more like himself. For now, it was hard to feel anything other than horror for the poor bastard. And, perhaps, a bit of admiration. Tony didn't think he would manage to sound coherent, leave alone calm, in his place.
“That comes with the whole heroic business, though. Don't feel too bad for me.”
“I'm your enemy,” Loki croaked.
His lips were almost whole, although the flesh was still red and raw. It was a proof that Thor was right; that Loki's flesh would regenerate by itself, in much the way a human's wouldn't have. He certainly looked like a monster out of a bad fantasy serie, but his claim?
“Yeah, not at the moment, you're not,” Tony replied, raising an eyebrow. He hadn't known what to expect of Loki once he would be free. He hadn't expected him to point out that it made no sense to help him. “Maybe if you try to take over the world again. But I'd rather you don't.”
“Your pity will not endebt me.”
“No, I guess not. You'll probably try to kill me the second you can.”
“That's what I do. I kill and destroy,” Loki said, and Tony thought he saw a grim smile on his face.
“Yeah? Well, I try to help and save. To each their own, I suppose,” he said, only half-sarcastically.
Loki scoffed. He didn't answer. Tony pondered their brief exchange for a long time.
Loki healed at an incredible speed. Thor assured him it was unnaturally slow, but it was hard to accept that as truth when Loki grew a nose in three days with no surgery or graft of any kind.
His forehead was almost completely healed, too. Only his eyes, where the poison had dripped most constantly, were still as bad as they had been when Tony had found him: empty, dark, skull eyes looking at nothing while flesh slowly crept back up. When Tony slept, and he didn't do much of that, he dreamt of necromancers, giant snakes, and mad scientists carving Loki's face up. He woke up drenched in sweat from these dreams.
With strength returning to his famished and tired body, Loki started getting out of bed. Tony briefly considered how dangerous that was, but considering the sorcerer was only just capable of walking around the room with his hand on the wall, it would have been cruel to stop him. Still, Tony prepared himself for the inevitable moment when Loki would try to murder him and escape.
As his healing progressed, Loki started speaking more. He was mostly being a sarcastic little shit, which Tony could respect, and otherwise alternated between asking questions and making threats. There was a strange moment when he seemed to realize that Thor had convinced Tony to free him, and Tony, in turn, realized with no small shock Loki expected him to be his new torturer.
“I got you out of that cave because nobody, murderer or not, should get their face melted off slowly,” Tony had to articulate out loud, when it became clear that Loki did not understand this. “Not because I'm taking the next shift. Is that what you were expecting? That I would, what, eat your liver every day or something?”
“Do you eat livers?” Loki asked, with enough of a face to frown.
“I really don't, and especially not the livers of people.”
“It could be argued that I'm not a person.”
“I can't even tell if you're being serious or if you're fucking with me. Loki, you didn't get the fact that we broke you out? If this had been with Odin's consent, I wouldn't have needed half a week to get you out.”
“Ah,” said Loki.
There was something too thoughtful about the look of him for Tony's taste. Like maybe it truly hadn't been certain, in Loki's eyes, that good people didn't torture other people.
Then again, considering his Dad had put him in that cave, with that snake and those cuffs -yeah. Yeah, that would fuck someone's perspective of who he could trust.
“I told you,” Tony said, voice tense. “I try to help people. I also try to do it in the coolest way possible and whatever, but -that's the end goal.”
“Why? Whatever does it bring you?”
“Sometimes, I don't hate myself as much,” Tony replied with half-hearted sarcasm. “It's not like hurting you would make things any better for me, would it?”
“I don't know,” Loki said, which was a little disturbing, and then cocked his head to the side. “So you are helping a monster because you believe it's the right thing to do. And yet, you expect me to kill you?”
“Correction. I expect you to try. I'm hoping I can have the upper hand on a blind, starved guy if it comes to it.”
“And then?” Loki's head was turned his way, and Tony wondered what it was to look at someone when you didn't have eyes. Did he see nothing, or did his brain not even process seeing anymore? “When I turn on you, and you stop me. What then, if not a cage?”
“I didn't say I wouldn't lock you up,” Tony replied. It was weird to have this conversation, so oddly open about this. He thought of how Loki was supposed to be the ultimate liar, and wondered if there was a way this was an elaborate manipulation. He shrugged slightly, even though the sorcerer couldn't see him. “If I need to put you in prison to protect myself and others from you, I'll do it. But I won't hurt you just because I can, and I'm not going to allow anyone else to do it.”
“Sympathy for the devil?”
“Lack of sadistic tendencies, except maybe when both parties feel like it, but that's another topic.”
“I don't do well with captivity.”
“Then don't give me a reason to lock you up.”
“You expect me to believe that? That if I just behave, you'll let me be?” Loki sounded decidedly unconvinced.
“You can always give it a try and see how it goes,” Tony said with a brief smile. “Now that we've established I'm not patching you up just to cut you up again, can I help you with the cream?”
“I'm well enough to do it myself,” Loki scoffed.
Tony didn't argue. He just handed the medicine over, and pointed out when Loki forgot a smear of it somewhere. He wondered about Loki's questions. About the way Loki saw things.
On the next day, Loki had eyeballs. They were disturbingly white. It was a problem, because he didn't have eyelids to moisturize them. Tony procured eyedrops as fast as he could. Thor took the first shift of using the drops every minute or so on his brother's eyes. They must have talked, because after an hour, Tony heard objects clattering and glass breaking against a wall and Thor sheepishly came to ask if he wanted to replace him.
“This process is infuriatingly slow,” Loki groaned, but he allowed Tony to sit to his side and regularly drop the liquid in his eyes.
“What, your face growing back? You know a human would have been disfigured for the rest of their life, right? I mean, I can guess it's not exactly a fun process, but you should count yourself lucky to be Asgardian.”
“I'm not,” Loki said.
“If you say so,” Tony said. He supposed it didn't feel like luck to be able to be tortured to the point of losing your face and living through it. He was silent for a while, finding himself frowning softly. “Your Dad really had this done to you. It's so fucked up.”
“I have no desire to speak of this, least of all with you,” Loki said dryly.
“Yeah, makes sense.” He paused, then a thought crossed his mind. “Is there someone you would want to talk to, though?”
“Thor's head, separated from his body,” Loki suggested.
Tony scoffed, having decided a while ago that this sort of statement was a joke, though he couldn't be entirely sure. He pondered this quietly, wondering about Loki possibly having no friend nor ally to turn to. Again, he wondered how fucked up it had to feel to have something like this done to you by your own family. Thor, at least, had gone against his father's will, even though he was clearly worried about it, but whatever love the blond had for his brother was clearly not reciprocated. Or at least, not in a way that Loki wanted to share.
He switched the empty bottle of synthetic tears for a new one.
Loki walked face-first into the kitchen wall. It was Tony's signal that his ward slash prisoner was well enough to see, and he let out an exclamation of joy.
“Look at you! Eyelids, irises, the whole kit! Well, the eyebrows and lashes are still missing. Makes you look a little like Grima Wormtongue. Speaking of which, do you want a shower? We want you looking all nice and clean for your grand return.”
“Everything remains blurry,” Loki grimaced, rubbing his forehead. “And my magic remains sollicited by the healing process. This is far from back to normal.”
“It's a good step forward,” Tony argued. “Come on, it's been a week too. I bet you're ready to stomach something else than chicken soup and crackers. What do you want to eat to celebrate?”
“Why,” Loki asked, pale green eyes struggling to focus on his face, “are you not worried?”
“'Cause I know I did the right thing. Anything that happens, I won't regret it,” Tony said.
“You're so arrogantly confident,” Loki huffed, guiding himself wih his hands to taking a seat at the table. “What if I murdered innocents? Would you then regret taking me out of that cave?”
“I'd regret not stopping you. Assuming I didn't, which, we don't know, thank you very much. But, no.” Tony looked at him seriously, wondering what Loki was thinking. “I wouldn't.”
“You're an absolute fool. Do you expect me to stay here? Docile and waiting, while the Allfather's hounds chase me?”
“Honestly, I don't know you enough to expect anything.” Loki's reputation had it that he would probably grab a knife from the nearby block and stab Tony in the back anytime now. Tony's impression was that the prince already had a plan he couldn't even begin to guess at to escape and never be seen again. He didn't know what to expect, no. “But you know the Tower by now and you know my rules. No taking over the world, no murder, you can stay all you want.”
“Do you imagine you have tamed me with your supposed kindness?” Loki asked, narrowing his eyes, either to judge his reaction or to make his distrust more palpable.
“I'd imagine I'd have to be a way better manipulator to tame a guy who threw me out of my own window just by offering a celebratory meal.”
Loki's face was back to the way it had been when Tony first met him. Actually, he thought, it looked a little better; he remembered Loki's eyes being sunken and dark, his skin clammy and his cheeks hollow. The chicken soup had really done some good, and Tony congratulated himself on his first care.
“I fear he will leave at any moment now,” Thor confided in him one day, sounding worried. “I wouldn't have him running away defenseless when my father is hunting him. Anthony, he likes you. You must talk to him.”
“He likes me?” Tony repeated, and despite the gravity of the topic, he couldn't help but smile. “Which part of his threatening to put my head in the smoothie blender this morning did you miss?”
“He said it with a smile,” Thor reasoned very seriously.
“Yeah, even if that was true -he's not going to listen to me just because I ask nicely, Thor. Your brother, he wants to be in control of his fate. I get a feeling he didn't have that in a while, and I don't only mean the whole snake situation. If he's going to run, we can't stop him.”
“When his magic returns, he will leave,” Thor said, looking concerned. “Here in your Tower, your many energy sources make him invisible, but when he goes...”
“It'll be because he thinks he can outrun them,” Tony said. He couldn't pretend he wasn't worried, too. He didn't want Loki to be hurt again, maybe in a worse way than before. But- “I'm not going to put him in a cage unless he gives me a reason to. If he wants to leave, he'll leave.”
Loki kept complaining about his magic healing slowly. Apparently, Tony had never explained to him that JARVIS had eyes everywhere to tell him that Loki teleported when no one was looking, or that he filled the bath with a gesture of his hand, or that he created doubles to give himself back massages.
Tony didn't mention it. He waited, hoping that, one day, Loki would feel like talking, not to threaten to blow up the city as soon as he could, but, maybe, to tell Tony what he was thinking.