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Chapter Text

"Thank you," Thor said to what he was fairly sure was just another of Loki's illusions and not his brother in his physical form. "If you were here, I might even give you a hug." And Thor absolutely would.

His little brother's proclivity for giving him stab wounds be damned, Thor would envelop Loki in the strongest hug he could and never let go.

After everything the two of them had lost - after everything that Thor personally had lost - there was nothing he wished more than to have his little brother by his side for the rest of their lives, even though he knew perfectly well that what Loki wanted was the complete opposite.

Absent-mindedly, Thor tossed the metal top of the bottle in Loki's direction, even though the illusion wouldn't be able to catch it.

His expression momentarily faltered, however, when Loki caught the cork. "I'm here," he said with a soft voice.  

And for Thor, hearing that single sentence, uttered by Loki so quietly and so timidly yet with the most beautiful and genuine smile on his face, was all it took for the God of Thunder to bound in several long steps towards the person he loved more than anyone else in the universe. 

Loki tensed when Thor was close enough to spread his arms in eagerness to follow through with his promise of a hug and that made the elder freeze. 

Thor swallowed, feeling a painful tug in his chest, seeing how conflicted Loki appeared to be in this moment. His eyes were wide and swimming with emotions, guilt and sorrow included, and they were welling with tears. His bottom lip quivered and his entire posture was starting to tremble.

For a long stretch there was silence. The brothers stared at one another, no other sound but the quiet humming of the ship's engine and their own breathing in the background, but then Loki sniffled.

A moment later, there was a single tear falling down his cheek and in that moment Thor took the final step towards his brother, gathering him into his arms.

The dam broke and Loki burst into loud sobs, his own thinner arms snaking around Thor's waist as he hid his face in the crook of the other's neck. He was shaking and heaving, nearly screaming out endless apologies. Thor felt his own eyes welling up. 

Hugging Loki closer, holding his baby brother tight as though afraid he might vanish, Thor whispered, "I'm here. It's alright. It's going to be alright, brother. You're safe. I'm safe. We're going to be alright."

I'm sorry for everything.

I wish I could go back in time and do things much differently.

We have each other.

You're all I have left.

Don't leave me. Never leave me.

I forgive you.

I'm sorry.

I love you more than anyone else.

I will always love you.

Everything will turn out just fine in the end.  

We're together.

By the time of Thor's coronation, unconventional but with no interruptions like last one, they both had regained their composure. However, judging by Heimdall's knowing look, it was obvious and written all over their faces that they had just shared a moment of vulnerability.

And strangely enough, Loki was fine with that.

~

"Do you really think it's a good idea to go back to Earth?" Loki asked Thor, his gaze firmly fixed on the endless abyss on the other side of the window.

"Yes," Thor immediately replied, giving Loki a side look that was likely meant to be reassuring. It wasn't. "The people of Earth love me. I'm very popular."

Loki sighed. Of course that's why Thor chose Midgard, of all places, to be the best destination possible for the remaining Asgardians to take refuge in. 

"Let me rephrase that," Loki said after a moment. "Do you really think it's a good idea to bring me back to Earth?"

Thor, arms crossed, voice not betraying any doubt, was quick to answer with a simple, "Probably not, to be honest." Loki felt the beginning of a smile tugging at his lips. "But I wouldn't worry about that brother. I feel like everything is going to be just fine."

Loki smiled more genuinely, hearing the sliver of conviction in the tone of Thor's voice.

He wanted to believe his brother's words. He really did. After everything that happened within the last couple of years, there was nothing Loki wanted more than to have a semblance of tranquillity and peace. While nothing would ever be as it was before Thor's disaster of a coronation, Loki - for the first time in what felt like centuries - dared to hope that things were, in fact, going to turn out alright in the end. 

He had his big brother - his stubborn and reckless oaf of a brother, who always believed in him and loved him, even if Loki didn't deserve it - and perhaps that was enough. Although they lost their world, in a quite literal sense of the word - and neither their father or mother was coming back, Loki felt happy to have Thor. And Thor would have him, even if Loki would never admit it aloud.

They were going to be just fine, like Thor said.

However, Loki cursed himself for this optimism the moment his eyes caught the sight of the last spaceship he'd ever wanted to see again. Sanctuary. Thanos' warship. 

Loki forced himself not to panic, even though his breathing was becoming increasingly erratic and his heart was drumming in his chest. Instead, he bolted out of the room, Thor following close behind, calling after him in confusion, asking questions Loki had no time to answer.

He needed to find Heimdall and the Valkyrie and the beast. 

This was no fight that the Asgardians could win. However, Loki knew that he and Thor, accompanied by the Hulk, might have a shot at saving at least some of their people by posing as a distraction for the Mad Titan, while Valkyrie and Heimdall, or at least the Valkyrie, oversaw evacuation.

Either way, Loki was more than certain that he himself was going to be dead soon enough.

Thanos had found him.

There was no escape. Not this time. 

Not from him.

~~~

Tony Stark sat there, motionlessly, where his kid had vanished into nothing but dust, literally ceasing to exist in his arms, and the weight of failure felt so heavy on his shoulders that the billionaire thought his spine would break under the pressure. Honestly, he would welcome it.

He wanted to die. For the first time in years he wholeheartedly wished he died. 

If he had, perhaps Thanos might not have got that goddamn Stone and Peter would still be here.

God. Peter. That wonderful, extraordinary, selfless to a fault, heroic and self-sacrificing idiot of a boy. He was gone. Not even dead. Just gone.

And it was Tony’s fault.

“He did it,” the alien woman said. Her voice betrayed no emotion at all and, for a fraction of a second, in the haze of heartbreak and boiling rage, Tony wanted to murder her. Simply for not crying in despair when he himself was feeling as though the universe itself was ending.

In a way it was, to Tony at least. His boy was dead. Who knows how many more of his loved ones were gone by now, too. 

“If you are done wasting time on meaningless emotions that will be of no use for neither me nor yourself at the moment, get up and follow,” the alien commanded. “Otherwise, feel free to remain here, but I don’t think you are going to last on Titan very long. Even if you were not wounded.” 

Tony looked up in bewilderment, but the woman turned around and started away before he had the chance to say anything. 

He rose to his feet, nearly losing his balance as the pain shot through his side where Thanos had stabbed him, managed to remain upright and scrambled after his… ally? Not his enemy, at the very least. Even though she called Thanos her father at one point, when they had almost taken the gauntlet off. 

Having remembered that single detail, another wave of white rage washed over Tony, who wordlessly cursed her for ever mentioning that Gamora person and what had become of her to Quill. If only she hadn’t…

But Strange said there were millions of scenarios where they lost to Thanos, so he couldn’t really stay mad at the woman for saying what she had said. After all, if she hadn’t, something else would have gone wrong.

And, honestly, Tony was more angry at Quill for that situation, than he was at the woman he tried to catch up with. The man was, after all, the one to have broken Thanos out of the trans the antenna lady had him in. 

Stubbornly ignoring the burning of his wound, Tony nearly ran after his ally, he decided, towards an orange spaceship. 

“Where are we even going?” Tony asked her.

Glancing over her shoulder but not slowing down, the woman said, “You, I will be dropping off on Terra. If we’re lucky. Myself, I will be going to kill Thanos. Again, if we’re lucky.”

That just made Tony angrier and definitely confused. They had just lost to the overgrown grape and watched how five out of trillions of his victims turned into dust. How was the Blueberry going to take on the bastard on her own?

“And how exactly are you gonna do that?” 

The alien shrugged. 

Irritation boiling right underneath his skin, Tony barely withheld himself from blasting her. That, and he was still in a hell of pain.

“What good will that do anyway?” he pressed on. “We lost.”

As if that was any good point to discourage anyone from taking revenge on Thanos, he thought bitterly. 

The alien woman certainly seemed to be of that same mindset. “Take a very good look at me, human, and perhaps you will then understand why it matters little to me what good will it do for me to kill Thanos, other than just having the satisfaction of getting even.”

Her admission, if nothing else, made Tony at least more sympathetic towards her. 

She looked like a robot and by her own words it seemed she wasn’t always that way. 

If Thanos had done that to her and she called him her father…

Tony never knew another being capable of such cruelty. Not even in the worst moments of his torture, all these years ago, back in Afghanistan. 

With a strangled voice he said, “I get it.” After a pause he amended, “I couldn’t possibly understand. But… I get it.”

The woman gave no hint of whether his words meant anything to her or not. If he were in her place, Tony had an inkling that no sympathy of another person would mean a thing to him. Not after that kind of tragedy. 

Once they reached the spaceship, Tony faltered.

While he had no intention of being left behind on that horrible planet, he also wasn’t very keen on flying off to space with someone whose name he didn’t know.

“Mind telling me your name?” he asked tersely. “Or am I to refer to you as ’Blueberry’?” 

That made the woman turn around and glare at him. “Nebula. That’s my name. Call me that other name again and I’m going to dump you in the first black hole I find.”

Normally, Tony would brush that threat off with some witty comeback, but he was not in the mood for that. Plus, he had a feeling the woman was dead serious and would actually go through with it, so he wisely said nothing of the sort.

“I’m Tony,” was the only suitable response he could think of.

Nebula nodded. “I know. Tony Stark. The man who had once blown up the mothership of the Chitauri fleet Thanos had sent to conquer your planet.”

Tony rubbed the back of his neck. 

“Yep, that’s me,” he shakily admitted. 

Nebula gave him a nod of acknowledgement.

No more words were spoken afterwards and before long the Milano, as the ship was apparently called, set off. Feeling numb, Tony sat in one of several copilot chairs, all of the sudden overwhelmed by the realisation that there used to be a group that this ship belonged to. And they were all gone. 

His mind having wandered back to the dark place, Tony paid no mind to the stars on the other side of the glass window in front of him. Neither did he feel any sort of fascination over the technological wonder this spacecraft absolutely was. Under any other circumstances, Tony would probably be all over the engine, trying to figure out how it worked, or at least stare in wonder at the vast universe that was now literally in front of him.

Instead, he just sat there and wished to have vanished from existence along Peter and so many others.

He didn't even notice when the exhaustion finally caught up with him and he fell into deep slumber. Not for the first time he dreamed of destruction and death.

~

“My god,” Tony uttered, horrified. The sight of dozens of bodies floating right outside the Milano was beyond any horror Tony has seen in his life.

Not even watching Strange, Quill and his crew, and Peter turning into dust was quite as morbid view.

A particularly nasty bile rose in his throat. Minutes before Thanos’ lackeys showed up, Bruce had briefed Tony on his two years long stay on another planet and how he ended up helping Thor and Loki (who hadn’t been killed by the… Dark Elf?... apparently), and a woman he met on that other world as the Hulk,  to save the Asgardians from a crazy goddess, who turned out to be Odin’s firstborn, yikes, and was the reason why Asgard itself was destroyed, double yikes, hence why the Asgaridans themselves were on a spaceship to Earth in the first place.

What if those poor people right on the other side of the viewpoint were them? 

“Asgardians,” Nebula declared, confirming Tony’s theory. The man felt like throwing up. 

Slowly, he turned to give her a quizzical look. “What makes you so sure?” he asked, his hushed voice, terrified of her possible response.

“My father had his eyes fixed on Asgard for many centuries,” Nebula explained, completely unaware that her words were making Tony more and more nauseous as she spoke in that devoid of all emotion, robotic voice of hers. “They were an obstacle between him and something he greatly desired.”

Tony audibly gulped. “Tesseract?” he asked, voice shaking.

“It was a part of it, yes,” Nebula admitted. “However, Thanos’ heart had yearned for another… gem, as he called her… to be returned to his possession. An ultimate warrior, powerful beyond compare - as he had told me on… numerous occasions, who had once flooded entire civilisations in blood and tears.” 

Tony felt his heart drop, the puzzle pieces slowly coming together in his head.

“She was the first Asgardian heir he had broken but not the last,” Nebula continued. “In a very twisted way, he loved her. Or perhaps just thought he did, even though he, by his own admission, ruined her and remade in his image, leaving no trace of her former self left.” 

“Hela,” Tony breathlessly said. “Odin’s firstborn daughter. But that means…” Another realisation hit Tony so hard he thought he might fall. “Nebula! Loki, he… He wasn’t trying to conquer my planet on his own volition, was he?”

Tony was painfully aware of how desperate he sounded in this moment but he didn’t care. He needed to know. He needed to know if he wasted six years of his life hating the wrong person and, to make things worse, for something said person had, apparently, no control over. 

Nebula confirmed his suspicion and Tony wished she didn’t. 

He wiped a hand across his face. Thanos, that son of a bitch!

Taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, Tony looked at Nebula with pleading eyes. "So, if these are the Asgardians, can we see if there is... God, fucking hell. One of my best friends was... He was... Thor." Tony hated how his voice kept breaking as he spoke. His eyes stung with unshed tears. 

He was such a pathetic mess.

"Thor," he rasped, several tears falling down his face despite his best effort to will them back. "Thor was my friend. I need to see if he... I need to know if... I want to... I..." A strangled sob broke its way out of his throat.

Nebula put her hand on his shoulder in a manner that he knew was meant to be comforting. With her expression lacking any shape or form of sympathy, she failed. Regardless, it was nice of her. "I will have the area scanned, if you want. So that you can see whether or not your friend's corpse is there."

"Thank you," Tony managed to utter, nearly overwhelmed with gratitude. 

Nebula shook her head. "Don't. Either way, this will end with heartache for you."

Tony knew she was right, of course, but he was not backing down. He was thankful. Even if Thor was, indeed, among the dead, Tony will have at least a peace of knowing. Otherwise, the thought would haunt him for the rest of his life.

It took Nebula several minutes to do a full scan of the bodies outside and once the viewscreen lit up with dozens of faces, Tony wasted no time analysing each and every one of them.

Looking at all those people, literally frozen with terror and pain in their dead faces, Tony shook with suppressed sobs at the tragedy that had befallen them.

They lost their world, hoping to find refuge on Earth, only to be needlessly but cruelly slaughtered by Thanos.

Such a heartbreaking fate.

They did not deserve this. These Asgardian people did not deserve this.

"I know you believe in the afterlife in Valhalla," Tony whispered, "But may God bless you with peace in death."

Tony scanned faces of the murdered Asgardians for what felt like a very long time. It was so painstaking and mentally tasking but he pressed on, willing himself to endure this torturous experience until he had checked every single face out there.

On the other hand, the prospect of finding Thor out there was equally frightening.

Then, Tony had spotted another familiar face. It wasn't Thor, to his great relief, but the sight of his baby brother did not make Tony feel any better.

"Him," he told Nebula, pointing to the picture.

"Loki," the woman said.

Tony sharply turned his head towards Nebula. "We... We need to... Look, Thor doesn't appear to be there, thank god, but Loki... He is Thor's baby brother. If Thor survived..."

"You wish to bring your friend the body of his fallen brother so that he can give him a proper burial," Nebula concluded, filling in the gap that Tony was not able to with his own words.

"Yes," he whispered.

Nebula nodded. "I will gather the body. You make sure your friend isn't out there after all. We can't afford to linger here for much longer." And with that, she was off.

As though on an autopilot, Tony did as told. He scanned the faces thoroughly and with an utmost care of every detail - from the shape of jawline to the number of pimples - to the point where he was fairly sure he memorised them all, to his great horror, and eventually felt himself breathing a little more easily, now completely sure Thor was not, in fact, among the dead.

Though he wouldn't be at peace until he actually saw Thor, alive and well, and felt the warmth of blood coursing through the god's veins, giving him a hug.

"Note to self, hug the daylights out of Thor... if he survived," Tony added grimly. 

~

Several years ago - not even a week ago, admittedly - the sight of Loki's moulded dead body would have brought Tony joy.

Now, however, he felt sympathy for the victim of Thanos' cruelty and sorrow for a person who had never deserved Tony's hatred to begin with.

"Fuck, Thanos, you absolute monster," Tony whispered, taking in the fallen Asgardian before his eyes. "He was a kid."

Loki's age was equivalent to about twenty-four years in a human's lifespan, according to Thor, who himself would be twenty-eight, give or take, had he been born as a human.

It made Tony sick to his stomach, looking at the corpse of somebody this young.

Then again, Peter was only sixteen when he turned into a pile of dust, sobbing and frightened out of his mind in Tony's arms.

The fallen God of Mischief lay on the metal table Nebula put him on, eyes open wide and frozen with terror and agony. Loki's neck was marred in a horrible shade of purple and bent in an unnatural angle, a dead give-away of how he perished. His death must not have been quick, Tony guessed. The green of Loki's pupils was hardly visible, overshadowed by red of broken blood vessels.

All of the sudden, Tony's heat constricted painfully at yet another heart shattering revelation. If Loki's eyes were naturally green...

"Not only were you coerced into attacking New York. You were controlled and we hadn't noticed!" As if Tony needed more cracks on his already quite battered heart.

He angrily wiped a hand across his eyes and sniffled. 

"Shit. I hate Thanos," he rasped. "Fucking shit. Oh, hell."

With a trembling hand Tony closed Loki's eyes and hoped that his friend's baby brother was now at least in a place better than the hellhole that their universe has become as of recently. 

"Yep, I've decided," Tony managed to utter between strangled giggles that were all of the sudden escaping his throat. Why the hell was he even giggling? What was there to giggle about? "It sucks. Everything sucks. Life sucks. Oh, my god. Fucking hell. Shit. Oh boy."

Unable to stand the sight of Loki's corpse any longer, Tony found a greenish blanket and covered the god with it. Having done that, he sat back down heavily on a stool next to the table. His face hidden in his hands, elbows resting on the surface of the table, Tony succumbed to the darkness of his troubled mind and eventually dozed off. 

~

The next time Tony opened his eyes, it was to the humming of the spaceship and another sound that he couldn't quite identify. 

Tony sat up and stretched himself a bit, not bothering to stand up, his eyes still closed. Honestly, he could use a longer nap in an actual bed. Damn his old bones and that stupid excuse of a stoll.

Speaking of bones, a faint sound of cracking fell on Tony's ears, making him snap out of his tired daze. In fact, the man practically bolted to his feet as another, much louder crack echoed in the room, and snatched the blanked away to reveal Loki's body, his neck now in the right angle as millions of tiny green sparks coated his entire form.

"What the hell," Tony gasped, watching with wide eyes as Loki's wounds were gradually closing and vanishing without a trace, while the giant bruise over his neck slowly faded into a shade of sickly yellow. His chest was moving up and down, and Tony could have sworn he might pinpoint the exact moment the beat of a pulse resumed in Loki's throat. 

A few minutes later, green sparks previously covering the god's form vanished and Loki's eyes flew open. He darted forward to a sitting position, his breathing becoming erratic while he heaved and coughed.

The following manly shriek had erupted out of Tony absolutely not because there was a man-who-was-supposed-to-be-dead-but-lived currently trying and failing to properly breathe in the haze of mind-numbing panic. Nope, not at all.   

"Shit, that's it. I've gone man!" Tony lamented. "Pepper and Rhodey will kill me. Oh, shit. I'm hallucinating. Yes, that's it. I'm definitely high or drunk out of my mind right now. Yep, yep, yep."

Loki then straight out retched, throwing up all over his knees, gagging as the stench filled the room.

Tony blinked several times and then promptly slapped himself across the face.

When the sight did not change and the odour of whatever-there-had-been-in-Loki's-belly intensified, he grimanced. "Nope, not hallucinating after all, damn it!" Because fuck him, that's why! "Oh, shit! Nebula, get your ass over here! He's alive!"   

Chapter Text

By the time Nebula rushed into the room, Loki lost consciousness. Tony barely managed to grab the god, preventing the poor fellow from falling down onto the floor, which would have been rather painful and undesirable in his current condition. 

Green magic sparks of healing or not, Loki was still hurt.

Putting the unconscious God of Mischief back down, as gently as Tony was able to with his own injury throbbing painfully in his side, the man looked up at Nebula with pleading eyes.

“You wouldn't happen to have some awesome magical spells of getting rid of vomit, would you?” Tony pointed towards Loki’s pants.

Nebula, her expression remaining blank, looked the god up and down, and answered, “I do believe Quill will have had something of a similar size.” She glanced back at Tony, face unfailingly blank. “I’ll change him, if you’re going to be a sissy about it.”

Tony sputtered in embarrassment. Unfortunately, Nebula had already begun working on unfastening Loki’s belt, before he had enough time to throw some witty comeback at her, so the only thing Tony could do to save face was swiftly make a break for it. He did just that. Done hating Loki as he might, Tony was not sticking around for Little Loki to make an appearance.

Nope, not in a million years, thank you very much!

He returned to the cockpit, sat in a copilot chair by the viewpoint and hid his burning face in his hands, mumbling about shameless alien ladies and cursed gods. Tony’s only consolation was that the air smelled better on this side of the spaceship.

Several minutes later, Nebula came up to him, face just as blank as any other time he saw her, except for their fight against Thanos, and told him, “Done.”

“Great,” Tony muttered, glancing up at Nebula. He rose to his feet in alarm, seeing a dagger stuck in her shoulder. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Nebula glanced down at the dagger and back at Tony, seeming not even slightly bothered by the fact a sharp piece of weaponry was currently stuck in her flesh. Or was it flesh? Tony had no idea what that woman was even made of at this point.

“Loki woke up for a short moment when I was in the process of putting a new pair of trousers on him,” Nebula explained. “He conjured a dagger and stabbed me with it. I punched him on the forehead and knocked him out. Having done that, I finished redressing him and came to tell you.” 

Tony blinked at Nebula, taken aback. How she had managed to say all of that with a straight face was beyond Tony’s capability of comprehension and, frankly, it creeped him out more than a little bit.

Nebula took the dagger out with a loud hiss. Tony winced, hand instinctively resting on his own shoulder as a phantom sense of pain shot through his body, sympathy bubbling under his skin at the unpleasant sight of Nebula’s face, twisted in discomfort. 

He was about to open his mouth to say something he hoped would be comforting, but Nebula fixed him with a heated glare, letting Tony know the sentiment wouldn’t be appreciated.

Instead, he asked, “So, I take it you two have history?” That much was obvious by now. “Mind catching me up on the details, Nebby?” 

“Why do you wish to know? What use do you have for the information?” Nebula then added, “And do not ever call me that again!”

Tony raised his hands, feigning surrender. “Sorry, sorry. No nicknames. Got it.” He replied, “You told me you’re taking me to Earth, right?”

Nebula nodded. “If by that term you mean Terra, the world of humans, then yes, I am.”

“Good.” Tony inhaled and exhaled. “Okay, look. Where we are going, Loki is going as well, and on Earth he is a wanted man and will be charged with the crimes he committed six years ago in New York.”

The woman tilted her head in what Tony assumed was confusion. “Whatever for? It was not under his own volition that Loki led the invasion.” 

“Exactly!” Tony exclaimed. “You said so. I know so. Loki’s eyes had been blue then; I watched enough footage of our short, eh, exchange of words, from that day, to know as much.”

Many of his days in the aftermath of the battle of New York were spent on analysing video recordings from both the fight itself and his interaction with Loki, prior to being thrown out of the window.

Some of them, Tony remembered by heart.

“I saw his eyes again just a few minutes ago,” he continued, voice fast with passion. “They were green. So, assuming any shape shifting or whatever other body changing spell he might have cast on himself would vanish in case of death or a serious injury, Loki’s natural eye colour is green. Which would mean that he had been under the influence of the Mind Stone himself during the invasion, hence he hadn’t really been in control of his own actions that day, therefore he’s actually innocent!” 

Not entirely. Tony knew. But enough.

Nebula crossed her arms. “And how is any of that relevant?” In a follow-up question, she specified, “How will telling you about our shared past experiences change the fate awaiting Loki once we have landed on your planet?”

 That was a very good question and one Tony was more than happy to answer. “Your testimony! You would be a direct witness of whatever sick methods Thanos used to force Loki to invade the Earth! And the fact that Loki was forced into the entire thing, it makes a difference. It changes the context! That he wasn’t just the perpetrator, but a victim of someone bigger! More powerful.”

And Tony, now knowing the ugly and more complex truth behind Loki’s attack all those years ago, would be damned, if he allowed Ross or anyone else to get their slimy hands on someone undeserving of the hell he was sure they would put him through as a retribution. 

He refused to be the cause of more suffering for Loki. 

If Nebula’s robotic body and Thanos’ history of brutally invading and decimating worlds for centuries were of any indication, it wasn’t all that difficult to imagine the treatment the god had undoubtedly received at the Mad Titan’s hands.

Still, he needed to have a testimony or some other proof than his brilliant deduction skills. Something to hold up in court. 

Tony had already promised himself that he would do his absolute damn best to get Loki the best lawyers and a fair trial. However, in order to prove his innocence to the judge and, most importantly of all, the world, he needed some solid proof. 

Nebula was his best bet. 

The woman sighed. “Alright, I understand your point. I’ll talk.” Tony smiled at her with building gratitude. “However, I fail to see how my word would change anything, seeing as how I am - or was - a daughter of Thanos. How do you think your world leaders will feel about me? Perhaps they’ll throw me in a cell right next to Loki’s.” Tony's face fell at those words.

Shit! He did not think that scenario was a possibility. And knowing Ross, Nebula was totally right. Still, he was not giving up.

“Well,” Tony hesitated. “No offence, but Thanos was not the kindest to you either and… it’s kind of written all over… you.” Nebula looked more like an android than an actual humanoid being. By her own words, Thanos had done that. It had to mean something.  

Such cruelty had to mean something.

Tony shook his head. “Look,” he told Nebula. “I’ll handle my world’s politicians and all that shit, once we have landed on Earth. For now, I just need you to give me something to work with. Alright?”

Nebula nodded slowly. “Alright. But, I warn you, what I have to say will shock you.” Well, wasn’t that ominous? Tony was feeling goosebumps already. “Thanos has decades upon decades of the history of bringing nothing but bloodshed and torture. The horrors he is capable of inflicting upon others… I don’t think ‘cruelty’ is a proper term." The way she stressed every word of the last sentence made Tony shiver in dread. "Loki had suffered unimaginable in the Sanctuary. In every sense of the word.”

Tony snorted at hearing what he was pretty sure might be the name of Thanos’ ship. Such a contradictory name for a craft bringing a complete opposite of sanctuary.

His stomach feeling as though full of lead, hands trembling and sweaty, Tony swallowed down the nausea and looked at Nebula with determined eyes. “I can handle it. I must know.”

The alien sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Tony braced himself for whatever gruesome story Nebula was going to throw at him any second now, but he was not prepared for an actual hologram to appear in front of him, followed by piercing, deafening screams of the God of Mischief himself. 

Thirty minutes later, Tony was puking his guts out in the toilet compartment.