Still Holding On

Chapter 32

"Shit."

Loki looks up from the book he'd been reading — some Jodi Picoult romance novel that Pepper must have left here at some point — and gives Tony a curious look. "Is everything alright?"

Tony sucks in a breath through his teeth. "You know what? I will answer that in a minute."

He scurries out of the room, ignoring the confused look on Loki's face, and finds himself a quiet spot down the hallway. He sits down cross-legged on the floor and looks down at the message on his phone.

Nick Fury: Call me. Now.

Tony does not, in fact, want to call Nick Fury right now. There are very few things he would like less than calling Nick Fury right now. But he knows how this works. This is Fury playing nice. The fact that the building isn't already surrounded by SHIELD's best is a telling notion. Fury doesn't want to escalate the situation. The best thing Tony can do is play along.

So, reluctantly, he does just that. He gives Fury a call, and as the line rings, he does his best to ignore the pounding of his heart. It's stupid to be nervous. He knows that. But at the same time, this is SHIELD. This is a whole ass government entity. They may not have stood a chance against Loki the first time, but now that he seems largely pacifistic, Tony's not overly confident that Loki could – or even would – stop them if they decided to do something rash.

Fortunately, Fury picks up fairly quickly, so the suspense doesn't last too long. "You are the dumbest person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting in my entire life."

Tony raises his gaze to the ceiling, exasperated. "Hi, Nick. How are you, Nick? How's your day been, Nick?"

"How about I save the pleasantries for when you're not harboring a dangerous criminal?"

"A dangerous criminal?" Tony repeats, as though this is the first he's heard of it. "There's no dangerous criminal here. A harmless, reformed criminal, yes, but then again, aren't we all criminals? Haven't we all committed some sort of crime in our lives? Is it fair to define somebody based on one—"

"When that one action almost gets an entire American city nuked to hell and back, yes, it is fair," Fury says. Tony has to wonder if he threw in "American" on purpose, because his own mistakes would have sounded remarkably similar if he'd included the rest of the world. "You're smarter than this, Stark. What are you doing?"

Tony smacks his head against the wall behind him. "Okay, it wasn't supposed to go down this way," he says. "I thought going back to Asgard was part of Loki's plan, so Thor and I decided to keep him here for a day. Then it got weird and one thing led to another and now he's kind of stuck here. But I swear, he's like a completely different person."

"Uh-huh," Fury says sarcastically. "Romanoff told me he has you convinced he doesn't remember anything."

"Because he doesn't," Tony says. "I watched him forget it. It was this whole big thing. You should've seen it."

"Yeah, I should've," Fury says. "If only somebody had invited me."

Oh.

Right.

"Look, you don't have to worry about it," Tony says. "I have it under control. Just stay out of his way and he'll stay out of yours."

"Well, that's not really an option, now, is it?" Fury says. "If word got out that Iron Man was harboring—"

"Word's not going to get out," Tony interrupts. "I'm telling you, I have this under control. Sticking your nose where it doesn't belong is just going to make things worse."