A Murder of Crows ://: ~Loki~

//Spider//

After maybe two hours of caring for Loki, Tony and Peter had left Thor to look over his stabilized brother while the two went down to the lab. 

As soon as they left the room, Peter demanded an explanation, bombarding Tony with question after question.

"Who was he? What happened to him? Did someone else hurt him? Why was he blue? And why was he so cold?  It is a 'he' right?" Peter rambled as they descended the stairs. The boy frowned at Tony's silence. 

"Mr. Stark, please. I deserve to know!" He paused. "I'm going to be staying here for a while since May is going on a trip, so I'd like to know who that was!" Peter sat down on his chair on the lab, swiveling around to look at Tony. The man sighed. He looked tired and Peter felt bad for being so pushy. 

"Okay, Pete...how old were you during the attack on New York?" Tony asked. 

"Which one?" The boy smiled a little. Tony laughed weakly. 

"Real funny kid. Alright, different question. Did you hear about the time Thor's brother attacked New York?" Peter looked puzzled. 

"Um, yes...?" The teen waited for a moment, then something clicked. 

WAIT

"MR. STARK! IS THAT MR. THOR'S BROTHER?!" Tony breathed out slowly and nodded. Peter panicked. 

"MR. STARK!" The boy chastised the engineer, despite the fact that Tony was a couple of decades older than Peter. Tony's brow furrowed. 

"Please, Pete. I know that he's done some...bad...things, but he's really hurt. I can't just let him die." Tony looked at Peter. He knew that Peter wasn't angry - the boy was just worried about Tony and the others. 

Peter sighed and looked away.

They were silent for a couple of minutes. 

"Alright. What happened to him then?" The teen asked, calming down and accepting the situation, getting over the initial shock. Tony took a breath, this would be difficult to explain. 

He had just opened his mouth to tell Peter about the situation when a voice came on over the intercom. 

"Boss, our guest has woken up." Tony leaped to his feet, rushing to go check on Loki and Thor. Peter followed close behind, upset that he still hadn't gotten an explanation, but he was also glad that Thor's brother was alive. 

Bursting into the room, they were greeted by a heart-warming scene. 

Thor was hugging his brother softly, face buried into the soft, raven curls, while Loki had his face buried into the elder god's shoulder, sobbing. 

Tony walked in more quietly, it wasn't his place to intrude and he felt bad doing so, but they had to get some more vitals from Loki. 

"Hey, nice to see you up Loki," Tony said cautiously. After seeing how cripplingly broken the god was, he was terrified of saying something wrong. 

Loki hesitantly pulled away from his brother's embrace, eyes landing on Tony and growing wide with guilt and...fear?

Tony felt his gut twist at the heart-wrenching expression of terror on the man's face. 

Was Loki afraid of him?

The god began trying to speak, but his voice was rough from crying and the medicine given to him to help get him under and keep him from suffering too much. 

"I-I'm...I'm so sorry..." He paused wincing and gripping at his throat. "I-I'm sorry that you h-had to catch me." He paused again, keeping his eyes off of Tony as if he would be angry at the god for having to save him. 

Loki kept his eyes off Thor as well.

"You didn't have to catch me. I would have gladly fallen." Tony was taken aback. Loki was still crying, his tears shimmering and swirling with frost as they glided over his blue skin. 

Thor made a sound of pain in his throat, Peter just stayed silent, trying to piece together what had happened. 

"Please, brother, do not speak like that." Thor grasped feebly at his brother's bandaged hands. "I would have never forgiven myself for my blindness had you fallen." Thor paused, swallowing thickly and letting a few tears slide down his cheeks. "I doubt I ever will anyway." Thor paused again, a few more tears slipped out, a little faster this time. "I am certain that you must hate me now, right brother?" 

Loki froze, shaking with his sobs and raising one painfully thin hand to his brother's cheek. 

Peter pulled himself away, silently exiting the room and waiting for Tony to follow. Tony knew that he shouldn't be here, that he was intruding on a plainly private moment, but he couldn't bring himself to move as he saw something new in the way Loki held himself, in the way he gently made his brother look at him. 

Loki's eyes shimmered with love and admiration. 

Tony smiled and left the brothers in peace. 

He could come to collect vitals later.