theirlithium | [Locked] If I only could make a deal with God, and get him to swap our places

[Locked] If I only could make a deal with God, and get him to swap our places

THE EMOTIONAL IMPORT MEME
What's that traumatic event that you always try to shove away to the dark recesses of your mind? What about a horrible, embarrassing story that you can't even try to get over, because you don't want to relive it?

The more you try to run away from that memory, those feelings, the more vivid they are as they're given to others. That memory you tried to run away from? Now your mom, best friend and a few dozen strangers are living through it as if they were you, experiencing every twist of emotion--panic, sadness, anger--you did at that same moment, like it was really happening to them.

What're you going to do? Accept their reaction--empathy, pity, sorrow--or reject it, and keep running away?

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[Tony Stark has a headache when he wakes up.

But this wasn't new. Someone that drank as much and as often as Tony did got used to the cocktail of events that followed: headaches, light sensitivity, vomiting. But usually when those symptoms are present, there had been a night of binge drinking and dissolving the inner lining of his liver to hold responsible.

He remembers fighting Dr. Doom and Loki on a solo mission, until Loki came after him and became his top priority. The rest is a nauseating whirl of information that makes it hard to determine just how long he had been asleep, because his mind had never been truly resting.

The dungeon doesn't even line up where he was before. The deep reaches of space, plunging inside a dark vacuum without air or heat, was suddenly condensed into a small, solid room. It's been a long time since he had a nightmare about space.

Then again, it wasn't Tony's nightmare.

"Too much information" was something that people said when their room mate was too forthcoming about what they were just doing in the bathroom, or their parents told them how often they have sex. It was uncomfortable; it wasn't painful. His brain feels like it had been pumped full of water and it was pressing against the sides of his skull. His brain was full of Loki data. That was TMI.

Tony grunts and shifts against the ground, covering his eyes with his hand to shield his eyes from the disorienting visual information while pulling himself into a sitting position. Though it doesn't seem wise to be upright in the condition he was, he doesn't want to be lying down.]

[ The sound of movement is like a roar against his ears-- not because he felt ill, he had been awake long enough to regain his ability to breathe properly-- but because the room had been painfully silent before then. Reaching that point of silence which caused disorientation, caused Loki to pace if only so he could hear the sound of his own footsteps and the clink of the thin chain that ran from one wrist to the other. It isn't that the metal couldn't be broken-- even as he was he could break it, but that the object itself seemed to draw upon Loki's own magic, caused him exhaustion when he attempted such things. Even were the chain broken, the cuffs remained and for the time being he will retain the illusion of being somewhat docile.

It's easy to tell whom it was-- even were it not for the flashes of memory he had where he had been scooped from the ground like trash and deposited with another body before his subconscious dragged him into a world he was entirely unfamiliar with. The light, blue with lines too clean to be a product of nature, bright against the dim and shadowy surroundings. He pauses in his pacing, watches for a long moment and wonders if he should speak. ] I had thought you dead.

[ Perhaps not the most comforting thing to say, but what does one say when your mind is filled with the memories of someone you had taken great effort to hate? Perhaps not hate, hate was reserved for others; but surely torment and antagonize fit the bill. Stark with all his slick comments and snark, he was easy to target if only because, like Loki, he favored words even on the battlefield. Now he had an understanding of why.

He was not sure he liked that. ]

Doom has made no demands or offers; nor as Amora paid a visit, you have missed very little.

[He squeezes his eyes shut behind the palm of his hand--a very obvious cringe. The last thing Tony wants to hear right now is Loki's voice and all the things it brings back, making a list with the sound of nails on a chalkboard, police sirens, and babies screaming nonstop on a twelve-hour flight. And Rudolph was there, right at the bottom.]

You were wrong. [His deadpan scratches against the inside of his throat like gravel and he tastes his breath: swamp water and--for some reason--eggplant.] And your relief is oozing off you like golden rays of sunshine.

You know what, Rudolph? I'm going to go ahead and keep my eyes closed. Just in case you decided the o celebrate with nothing but your party hat. [Slick comments was how he was going to gloss over the fact that he was sitting in a cage right now, with cold moisture seeping through the back of his T-shirt (meaning someone took his armor off him. Joy). And he was cell mates with a Norse god-slash-horned super villain he often tangled with.]

Amora. [Tony slaps his hand down on the concrete.] What does Tinkerbell have to do with any of this?

[ There was a gruff snort passing his lips, mocking the suggestion that he would allow himself to be bared in such a way. He knows that he does not need to retort, because the statement itself seems like a throw away comment more than anything. Loki doesn't let himself be baited, at least not by that. ] She is most displeased with me; she is the one who inflicted the spell upon us. [ A beat passes because acknowledging the memories-- the shared knowledge that had passed between them-- settles uncomfortably in his stomach. He knew more about an enemy than he ever cared to. ]

The spell was meant for Thor; she believes herself to be in love with him, and was attempting to garner the same sort of emotional response in return. It backfired, obviously. [ Though Stark may not see it, he rolls his eyes regardless. ] She is a fool, but one who cannot be helped.

It reacted poorly against Mjolnir and instead struck you and I-- hence rendering us unconcious. [ A low hum, as he leans forward, letting his fingertips brush against the bars, not quite holding on so much as feeling the cold under his fingertips. ] As I am sure you have surmised; we are imprisoned in Doom's dungeon, have been for perhaps a day or two-- there is no sign of your compatriots, either.

[Tony's displeasure comes out as one long enduring exhale through his nostrils. He fucking hates magic. Tony could handle one of Doom's robots blasting him out of the sky; he could handle Anton Vanko's drone army and Doc Ock making a fight feel a little too close to a Japanese hentai, because that was science. He knows next to nothing about magic, and as far as he's seen, it's even more unpredictable and easy to abuse as weapons.] As soon as Fabio gets his ass back here to spring us out, we're going to have a serious sit-down about restraining orders.

[Though with that said, he doesn't exactly feel comfortable about the idea that more than a day might've gone by and the Avengers still haven't shown up to save him.] I guess the bright side of this is it wasn't an actual love spell--you have those things, right? Or is that where it gets ridiculous?

[He turns around. First with his neck, looking at the partition of iron bars cutting off his side of the prison cell from Loki's. Then Tony actually faces Loki--at least as much as he can face him when he doesn't want to look into his eyes just yet. The one dash of comfort Tony gets from this is that Loki seems as uncomfortable about this as he is--even if it's just the notion that Tony knows as much about him as Loki now knows about him. Tony takes a gross amount of comfort in the fact that Loki wasn't gloating about his life, even though he could. And even if he does, he has canon fodder.

But silence stretches between them, dark and endless. And if Loki wasn't going to say anything, if the awkwardness was going to build into a giant monster with teeth holding their emotions hostage, Tony feels compelled to diffuse it.] ...So are we going to say something or just pretend it never happened? Personally I vote on the second one.

Before we do that, though, I just want to say you were one dopey-looking kid. [Thor had a pig nose, but Loki looked like the kid whose parents dressed him, participated in all the school plays, and kept getting his math homework stolen.] Thank god you grew into your ears. It would've been even harder to take you seriously.

I think a love spell, were they able to be created, are probably beyond her ability-- worry not. [ The idea itself was silly but he didn't feel the need to tell Stark that; let him live with the fear he might at some point be forced to succumb to unnecessary and unwanted emotions. Truth be told he knew of many spells, but there were probably many more he had not come across-- but he doubted he would come across such thing son Midgard.

However the turn in coversation, the commentary on his looks in his youth actually causes a frown to crease his brow. He's silent for a moment before he turns his gaze upon Stark, the look sidelong and calculating before the smallest smirk curls at the corner of his mouth. ] At least I grew. [ A glance downward to Stark's legs, entertaining the implication that he had not grown since childhood; while it may not be true, he's sure he's gotten his point across. ]

That said, attempting to ignore what has happened seems like the better option; though I do doubt that is possible. [ It was in their nature to use information offered, beings who thrived intellectually. He could easily say he would ignore what he now knew about Stark, as the Man of Iron could attempt the same but he knows it won't work that way-- they do not work that way. ]

Nor were you the pinnacle of fashion, Stark.

[Tony looks at where Loki's line of vision is going and then raises his eyebrows. Somehow, even with the comment he made about his Dumbo ears as a kid, Loki's jab at his height still feels surprisingly catty. Maybe because it was a rejoinder, where he was just making conversation. Not pleasant conversation, but they never managed to keep that guise up for very long.] We can't all be talking Redwoods.

[Loki is wrong--yet Tony doesn't disagree with him because he still has a point. They probably could sit out the rest of their captivity together without addressing what they both saw. But they weren't going to forget it. Tony has a hard enough time forgetting his own memories and mistakes: he might have to drink twice as much to push Loki to the back of his brain. He wasn't sure what Loki planned to do with it.

Even with his previous comment, he remembers the little boy trying to grab his father's attention, unsure even as he walks beside him. But at least they could take control of this now in one of the other methods Tony knows to deal with his shit: making fun of it.] Because I don't rock a cape and leather shoulder pads on a regular basis?

Everyone on your planet dresses like they're in a school play. Yet somehow you still have the weirdest helmet out of all of them. Possible tie with your old man. That part surprised me, I'll admit.

I believe it is meant to be an owl, [ He answers in a rather non-committal tone; the curved perch like feathers, owls were said to be wise-- at least at the time of it's creation; he did not know if Midgardian's held true to such things still. ] As Thor's a hawk. [ A scrunch of his nose, paused thoughtfully. ] And a crown of stars, too, depending. [ And he scoffs because it's far easier to laugh at that sort of thing than be offended by it. ]

Though as you know it was not a choice I had made, [ His helm was not meant to look like Odins; if anything Heimdall's looked far more like it than Loki's own. It had been a farce at first, large to cover the fact that Loki himself was so far less golden, at least as far as he was concerned-- but neither Thor or he had taken to wearing them outside of battle. It was a weight, one he wore often, perhaps in jest-- to be a display of the ugly truth that was no longer denied. A beast not of Asgard; surely. ]

It would be the same to say everyone in your planet looks like they're running about in their underclothes. [ Though this banter is a bit lackluster; as the comparisons are frivolous really. ]

I do think shoulder pads may be of some use to you; perhaps you ought to reconsider.

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[Locked] If I only could make a deal with God, and get him to swap our places

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