Wow, it's been a while since I updated this (three months for those of you on , about a month and a half before when I posted this on AO3). Honestly, I went almost two months without even looking at this... my bad. Sorry.
Just a reminder, this takes place in the middle of chapter 34, before the therapy session and before... you know, the kind of plot twist thing regarding a certain character... (I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free)
Sorry if it's confusing that "Loki" and "Tony" refer to different people depending on which Loki or Tony they are and/or are familiar with... it's somewhat confusing for me, too. I'm trying to have nicknames for them. Eventually, MCU Tony also thinks of my Loki as "Snoopy"
(Tony- MCU)
Tony scrubs a hand over his face, longing for a drink- or, rather, several drinks- to get rid of some of the craziness. The past few days have been absolutely insane, what with a Norse deity trying to take over the world, a freaking alien invasion like out of a sci-fi movie, and Tony himself almost dying while flying a nuke into a portal in the sky that led to somewhere in outer space, possibly another realm thing like what Thor keeps talking about.
As if Tony didn't already have enough nightmare fuel. He's pretty sure the past few days are going to cause him a ton of nights with even less sleep than normal. Especially the part where he was thrown out the window and almost fell to his death before his suit reached him.
In the end, Tony and his new teammates- including another Norse deity, two master assassins, the Captain who Howard wouldn't shut up about during Tony's childhood and who always cast Tony in a shadow in Howard's eyes, and a brilliant scientist who really knows how to go into a rage- had defeated Loki.
They'd been seeing Loki, chained and gagged, on his way to Asgard to probably be locked in a dungeon for a few centuries or some other just punishment, when the Tesseract had whisked Thor and Loki away but grabbed Tony as well.
The first thing Tony remembers from after the Tesseract's blue light enveloping him as it did with Thor and Loki is waking up on one of the guest floors of his tower, a few minutes ago. But that guest floor had been decorated completely differently. The whole place was entirely red, white and blue, stars and stripes featured in every way imaginable. Furthermore, there was a ton of Captain America merchandise. It was like the wet dream of a Captain America fanboy, like Howard or Coulson. Tony once again feels a pang at the thought of Coulson's death, more than he'd felt with Howard's.
Actually, the Cap-fanboy floor looked like what Tony would have chosen if he made a floor for Steve, with the not at all subtle way of poking fun of Steve's extreme patriotism. Plus it would be hilarious to see Steve's face if he saw that.
Except he hadn't decorated that floor for Steve. He'd been planning on fixing all of the Avengers their own floors, probably even separate ones for Bruce and Hulk, but he hadn't had time, because somehow this happened when Thor was taking Loki off to Asgard, and now Tony's back here.
Even stranger than that Spangles floor is that, here in the penthouse, there are no Loki-shaped craters from when Hulk smashed Loki around like a rag doll. Not only is the window pristine, the huge floor-to-ceiling window Loki had hurled him out of is completely intact.
Speaking of the devil, he sees the megalomaniacal wannabe world conquerer almost immediately after stepping out of the elevator.
"What the hell is going on?!" Tony demands.
Loki is now suddenly invading Tony's personal space, so close he blocks out most of Tony's view of the room. Not that Tony himself hasn't invaded other people's personal space plenty of times, but this is Loki.
"You..." Loki says in a hushed voice that has an oddly childlike vibe to it. "Tony, you have a shiny, glowy arc reactor too." Now he's reaching a long-fingered hand towards Tony's chest, and oh no, he is not doing that again. "My Tony said he's the only one. It's keeping him 'live, just likes with you." Great, Tony really doesn't need the psychopathic Norse guy knowing the glowing circle that had fascinated him is keeping him alive.
Some part of Tony's brain realizes something about this whole situation is very off. Tony may have only fought against Loki for a few days, but he knows that Loki is nicknamed Silvertongue for a reason. What he just said is not at all like the way he wields words as a weapon and lets them slip easily from his mouth.
"Get the hell away from me, Reindeer Games." Tony grabs Loki's wrist and shoves his outstretched hand back. Of course, Loki's stronger than him and shaking off Tony's attempts at restraining him without an Iron Man suit would probably be like shaking off a fly. "If you think I'm your Tony, you're even more batshit crazy than I thought. Because, you know, you kinda failed at the whole enslaving humanity thing, and last I checked we weren't in a relationship, so you can't really lay claim to me in any way."
"She's not here, nope nope nope." Loki says, which makes no sense. See? Batshit crazy. "Tony, why's you squeezing hard?" The man's expression is one of confusion and slight hurt, and his green eyes are wide and slightly glazed. He's not fighting Tony's grip around his wrist, oddly enough, but the fingers on that hand are flicking anxiously as the man rocks and bounces slightly on his bare toes.
"I swear I'll have Jarvis taser so hard it'll leave you a crying mess at my feet." Tony growls. Loki had tried to do that weird mind-control thing on Tony like he'd done to Clint, but Tony's arc reactor had prevented it.
"I see no reason for violence, sir." Jarvis replies. Jarvis had been mysteriously absent when Tony first woke up on the weird Captain America fanboy floor a few minutes ago.
Could a taser actually do anything against Loki? After all, he'd taken a beating from the Hulk without breaking every bone in his body or even looking especially bruised afterwards. An ordinary human certainly would've died with that treatment.
Tony spies Bruce approaching, looking concerned, and a wave of relief rushes through him. "Hey, Bruce! Didn't know you were here. Did the Tesseract grab you too?" Bruce is wearing different clothes, though. "Hey how about you do that thing where you get angry, turn green and Hulk-smash Loki into the floor again? That was hilarious." Sadly, Tony only ever saw the video of that, though he had seen Loki laying in the (now mysteriously absent) crater in the floor in real life.
"Uh, that never actually happened. The Other Guy likes Loki. A lot. Also, uh, why are you talking about the Tesseract?" Bruce says while adjusting his glasses. Tony snorts, figuring Bruce is joking, except he seems entirely serious and is giving Tony a really strange look as he asks the Tesseract question.
"Come on, Loki, I think you're making him nervous. Or maybe that's me." Bruce gently grabs Loki's shoulder and pulls him backwards.
"Hulk-y doesn't smash as much! He gives reals good big hugs. Safe hugs." Loki says, once again not sounding at all like himself. There's no way Loki would ever call Hulk Hulk-y.
But he doesn't look like himself, either, Tony thinks as he studies Loki.
He's wearing a long coat that looks like the fabric was a picture of a starry night sky, and there's a plush backpack of a blue alien from a Disney movie on his back. Stitch, Tony's mind eventually supplies.
There's a snake around Loki's shoulders, which seems kind of fitting, although it's not moving.
Wait, is that a toy Simba being hugged to Loki's chest with the other arm? In an Iron Man suit? Tony certainly hadn't made a suit for a toy lion, and why would someone go through all the effort building a suit for a stuffed animal? Just by looking at it, Tony's almost certain there are no concealed weapons there, as the tiny grooves in the armor between panels that raise to reveal missiles and the like are gone. The repulsors seem to be merely glowing lights, and all the arc reactor seems to do is glow.
This Loki is so unlike Loki that Tony's convinced this guy really isn't Loki.
Sure he has the same base appearance, but overall his appearance is vastly different, and his behavior is nothing like Loki's whatsoever. This can't be merely one of Loki's tricks.
Okay, so he's just threatened some Loki lookalike. A childish Loki-lookalike. A twin, maybe? Thor had said Loki was adopted when Natasha told him Loki killed eighty people in two days. There could easily be a twin in the equation Thor hadn't mentioned, because why would Thor have brought him up?
No offense to Loki's potential twin or anything, but he seems to have some mental challenges. Okay, so Tony doesn't usually give a shit about offending people, but even he has a limit, and he's not a total asshole. He doesn't make fun of disabled people- or, as Pepper would probably tell him the politically correct phrase is- people with disabilities.
"You know, when I imagined meeting myself, I didn't think the other me would be assaulting my friends and family." Tony's literally listening to his own voice say that from behind him, exactly the way he'd say it, only he's obviously not saying it.
A metallic hand is suddenly on Tony's shoulder. "And Jarvis, disregard those orders." Tony once again hears his own voice coming from someone else.
"I was never planning on tasering Mr. Loki, sir." Jarvis replies as Tony whirls around, still with his hand around Loki's wrist, and sees an Iron Man suit, the one gripping his shoulder. Finally, Jarvis actually sent a suit like he said to.
But then Tony notices that the suit's mask is up, and his own face is looking back at him from within the armor, like he suddenly has a clone or an evil twin or something.
Okay... what? There's another him here, in an Iron Man suit. It's just like looking in the mirror, aside from the fact that Tony's wearing the gray business suit he'd been in when seeing Loki off whereas his Doppelganger is in an Iron Man suit. Except this Doppelganger isn't a reflection in a mirror, he looks real.
"What-? How are-? You can't-" Tony jumps between several sentences before finally asking "What the hell is going on here?!" And sure, maybe he sounds repetitive, but that's mostly what's running through Tony's brain anyways.
Tony's running through everything in his mind. There's some weird, very-different Loki who's not Loki- and now there's another Tony as well. There's now enough evidence to debunk the Loki-has-a-twin theory, because Tony definitely doesn't have a twin.
This is like he popped into another universe, like in Star Trek or something. Almost certainly because the Tesseract was acting up. Alternate universes are actually being seriously considered by scientists, and Tony had just learned that aliens are real.
"I always wanted to be friends with myself." Tony tells his Doppelganger, grinning. "And I must say, you're almost as devilishly handsome and hot as I am."
"Are you kidding? I'm totally the better looking Tony." Tony's Doppelganger says. Bruce rolls his eyes. "Seriously, though, hands off him."
"He's not the Loki you're looking for." Tony's Doppelganger says, waving a hand like he's performing a Jedi mind trick, and Tony has to snort at that. "So, I know you're not an illusion, you were touching Loki- no innuendo intended, honest, just no- and I'm touching you now." Tony's Doppelganger says, studying him critically and arching an eyebrow in the exact same way Tony himself does.
"If I may, sirs, both of you seem entirely real." Jarvis speaks up, confirming Tony's alternate universe theory.
"So you popped out of an alternate universe, right?" Tony's Doppelganger says, and clearly he's been thinking about it as well.
Huh, his Doppelganger reached the same conclusion Tony himself did. His Doppelganger seems pretty much the same as himself, so far, which is sort of weird. Most alternate universes in movies and TV and stuff have the good characters become evil and vice-versa or something.
Admittedly, the weird Loki lookalike kinda seems like a very-different, less evil Loki.
This theory actually seems pretty plausible. It almost seems crazy, but it turns out aliens and Norse deities are real, so Tony's not as surprised as he would've been before the whole invasion. Is this the Thor from his universe or this one? And where's the Loki from his universe?
"I'm pretty sure the others did too." Tony's Doppelganger gestures behind him in the vague direction of Bruce. But the Tesseract hadn't grabbed Bruce, as far as Tony remembers.
Since Tony had been accosted by Snoopy almost immediately after stepping out of the elevator and has been facing away from the bar, he hasn't actually noticed that Thor is here as well, sitting at the bar off to the side.
Tony is shocked that the thunderer hadn't made his presence known until now (and no, that's not hypocritical).
Thor is just looking between Tony and his Doppelganger in confusion.
"Thor, where's Lo-"
"You hurts." The Loki lookalike tells Tony, distracting him. "Gotta heal you, gotta helps my Tony. You're 'nother Tony so I'll fix you again, always." He leans down and starts singing something, his head so close to Tony's that his long hair brushes against Tony's head. "Flower gleam and glow, let your power shine..."
A weird glow emanates from the lookalike's hands, and an odd sensation fills Tony's body. No. What if this weird Loki tries to take over his mind, like the real Loki had tried to do to him and had successfully done to Barton and Selvig?
"Don't you dare use any of that magic voodoo shit on me." Tony growls, trying to shove the weird Loki away, but since he's so heavy, Tony basically pushes himself backwards a few steps.
"He's you, but he's nots, Tony. Not my Tony, like you! He said 's shits an' you don't." The childish Loki lookalike says, sounding frustrated and going to the Tony Doppelganger. To Tony's shock, his own Doppelganger is hugging the Loki-lookalike, rubbing circles on that Loki's back under the Stitch backpack with an armored hand. The hug seems entirely platonic, which is even odder. Why is his Doppelganger doing this? Tony himself isn't that cuddly.
"Yeah, this is pretty weird, Snoopy." Tony's Doppelganger murmurs, before Tony comes up with a better nickname for the Loki-lookalike in his head. "Your magic isn't shit, Loki." But this guy isn't Loki.
Snoopy it is, then, although Tony can't guess why his Doppelganger came up with that particular nickname.
"You're not Loki." Tony points a finger at Snoopy. "Thor, where's Loki?" Had he managed to escape somehow? That would be really bad.
"My brother is right here, Man of Iron." Thor says, leaning back and displaying the figure that had been hidden behind his bulk.
It's another Loki, this one just like how Tony remembers him, dressed in the leather coat with golden bits of armor. The cuffs around his wrists are noticeable mostly because of the chain connecting them. The only thing gone is the muzzle he'd been wearing when they'd seen him off. Loki's casually sipping a glass of scotch, instead of being locked up in a cell in Asgard like he's supposed to be!
Tony already designated the weirdly-dressed, toy-carrying Loki as Snoopy in his mind when his Doppelganger called him that. So that Loki's Snoopy, and the familiar Loki- the megalomaniacal one at the bar- will henceforth be thought of as Loki. Snoopy didn't seem much like Loki anyways and now doesn't even look anything like the trickster.
Loki has a glass of scotch in front of him but isn't drinking, currently, and is instead looking at Tony with a calculating expression that the genius doesn't like.
"Hey, Reindeer Games, what do you think you're doing?" Tony demands. He'd offered Loki a drink, but that was before the window incident.
"I'm merely taking you up on your offer for a drink." Loki says, long fingers wrapped around the tumbler he's using to top off his glass. Unlike Snoopy, this Loki sounds just like the Silvertongue Tony remembers. He's undoubtedly the Loki from Tony's universe.
"Sorry Rudolph, but that drink offer has officially flown out the window." Tony emphasizes the final words, letting Loki know he hasn't forgotten and certainly hasn't forgiven Loki hurling him out the the huge floor-to-ceiling window. He'd almost died, if his suit hadn't gotten to him in time...
"Besides, usually you wait for your host to serve you, and-" Tony continues.
"You gave it to me." Loki replies, glancing pointedly at Tony's Doppelganger.
Tony can tell the trickster knows that the Doppelganger is really some alternate Tony, and is just acting like they're the same to mess with him.
"How come you gets to be Tony?" Snoopy asks, staring at Tony, who's rather taken aback by the question. "You're mores my Tony than Toy Stark, really." The man holds up a plastic action figure of Tony, about eight inches tall, that is eerily realistic, much more so than even the best collector figure. It's like someone simply shrunk Tony down and made him plastic.
"Um, because I'm Tony Stark, and I'm awesome." Tony replies. "And where did you get that toy of me, because I totally need one."
"I wanna be you!" Snoopy-Loki says instead of answering Tony's question.
"Join the club, who doesn't want to be me?" Tony replies flippantly. Sure, pretty much everyone would love being a billionaire and having his looks, but being famous isn't for everybody. Some people, in Tony's position, wouldn't be able to handle the constant media attention and stalking of the paparazzi, or risking their lives fighting psychos like Loki and alien armies as Iron Man.
"I was!" Suddenly, Snoopy starts to shrink and morph before Tony's eyes, so that he no longer even has a base resemblance to Loki.
Soon, Tony is looking at yet another clone of himself (four, now, if one counts the eerily realistic action figure apparently named Toy Stark). Tony's Doppelganger basically seems like Tony himself, but seeing Snoopy-Loki in Tony's body is really bizarre, because now Tony's looking at his own brown eyes as slightly glazed and unfocused, like Snoopy's. It's really unsettling, because this is undoubtedly be what Tony himself would be like if he had Snoopy's mental state.
Tony's Doppelganger and Bruce look as if they've seen this before.
"We tricked my Tony's Rhodey." Snoopy murmurs. The smirk he has looks different than Tony's own smirks, despite being on a replica of his face.
"I have to say, this is an improvement to what you looked like before, but really, looking like me would be an improvement for anyone, because let's face it, I'm the hottest guy in the world." Tony tosses at Snoopy.
"I see your ego hasn't changed at all between universes." Bruce mumbles to Tony's Doppelganger, who shrugs.
"Brother, is this your doing?" Thor looks over at the Loki beside him.
Tony sees Snoopy-Tony hiding behind his Doppelganger at the sound of Thor's voice, fear and guilt painted all over his face. What's up with that? Tony pushes those thoughts from his mind as he focuses his attention back on the two Asgardians.
Loki's only reply to Thor's question is to grumble that he's not Thor's brother, which makes Thor adopt a kicked puppy look before glancing between Tony and his Doppelganger, Loki and Snoopy-Loki.
"Hey, we should actually eat this pizza sometime." Tony's Doppelganger says casually, walking towards the bar with Snoopy still practically hanging off of him. He acts as if the real Loki isn't a problem at all.
The pizza honestly smells delicious.
"Pizza!" Snoopy laughs, flapping his hands. "No bugs this time! Timon and Pumbaa ate 'em all, an' my bug pizza."
"God, I need a drink." Tony moans, which he'd said upon first stumbling into the penthouse before all this happened. He's earned the right to get completely wasted after everything- not that he ever needed a reason to binge alcohol in the past aside from just feeling like it.
Tony glares at Loki and grabs a tumbler, pouring himself a well deserved glass. He sighs in relief at the slight burn the alcohol leaves in his throat, and his Doppelganger hands him a slice of pizza before making grabby hands towards the tumbler Tony's holding.
Tony pours his Doppelganger a glass, passing it over and receiving a grateful nod. He offers another glass to Bruce, who declines, and then turns towards Snoopy, holding the glass out and raising an eyebrow questioningly.
"No thanks you." Snoopy mutters, before sneering. "You're even more idiotic now, freak!" Despite this, he still watches Thor anxiously.
"Well, excuse me for offering you a drink." Tony shoots back sarcastically. "You're really as full of yourself as he is, aren't you?" Tony gestures towards the real Loki. "And that's saying something."
Really, how is Snoopy calling Tony an idiot? He's a freaking genius, and Snoopy is, well, maybe a little touched in the head. Plus Snoopy had seemed to like him, and certainly seems to like the other Tony, so the insult is kind of weird on that level, too.
"He's not talking about you." Tony's Doppelganger tells Tony. "He doesn't drink. I think some jerks used to get him drunk and bully him even more for his drunken actions, and I'm almost certain that last part was what they said to him. He won't touch the stuff now."
Snoopy hangs back away from the bar as Tony's Doppelganger pulls pizza out of boxes. Thor looks at Snoopy curiously, and Snoopy's clearly anxious about it, eyes even wider as he hugs Simba tightly, rocking back and forth.
"Brother, how is there this other you who can shapeshift? And how are there two of Man of Iron as well? Are they illusions? Are your cuffs not working?" Thor asks about the magic-blocking cuffs, as if Loki would honestly tell him if they were malfunctioning and letting him do magic. Thor's too trusting, sometimes.
Thor grabs a few slices of pizza and crams almost three-fourths of a slice into his mouth.
"The answer hasn't changed since the last time you asked me if he was an illusion." Loki says, casting a disdainful look at Snoopy and ignoring the pizza Tony's Doppelganger places in front of him. "Because you can't seem to grasp it, no, he's not. Did you honestly believe I would ever make an illusion of myself that appears to be a feeble-minded simpleton?"
No, Tony truly wouldn't have believed it, even if he had thought Snoopy was some sort of illusion instead of an alternate Loki in an alternate world. Loki's way too arrogant to make an illusion of himself that seems as... odd, as Snoopy. Though Tony doesn't doubt that Loki would like making Tony look stupid, which is sort of what Snoopy's doing now, since he's taken on Tony's body.
"Why are you talking 'bout it arounds Thor?" Snoopy asks Loki, looking panicked like when he'd first morphed into another Tony while simultaneously giving the impression that he thinks Loki is stupid for mentioning illusions. "You don't talk about it, he gets mad! Hits, even when you don't do it!"
"He's not going to hit you, Loki." Tony's Doppelganger soothes Snoopy, even though Snoopy is still in Tony's body. "I won't let him."
"Well, just so you know, I'm real, not an illusion, and Loki here's real as well, Point Break." Tony's Doppelganger nods at Snoopy-Loki, still clearly meaning him when he says Loki, even though he's not Loki, despite sharing the same base appearance. Why doesn't everyone else just call them different names, too?
"That's what my brother would make an illusion say, to trick everyone." Thor eyes Loki, although it looks like the thunderer's starting to have second thoughts about the illusion theory.
"Do you really think someone would be able to flawlessly make an illusion of this masterpiece?" Tony's Doppelganger gestures at himself with a lot of grandeur and the exact same smirk Tony wears. "Plus I'm tangible."
"I really hope you're an illusion, Rudolph." Tony says, before his Doppelganger can voice his protest, and glares at Loki. "You'd better hope you are, too, because-"
"I don't need to hear the end of that." Loki holds up a hand. "You're resorting to brutish threats now, obviously. And here I thought you favored your brains over your brawn." Loki smirks. "Not that either is worth much."
"Hey, I'm a genius." Tony says. Loki actually seems pretty smart, unlike his counterpart, Snoopy.
"I still do not understand how there are two of you, Tony Stark." Thor says, before glancing at Snoopy. "Nay, three of you, even though he looked like my brother."
"Well, what we've got here is probably some kind of alternate universe mix-up. You know, two of me, two Loki's, maybe with evil twins at least on Loki's part." Tony's doppelganger points at Tony. "Now, other me, you don't seem like an evil version of me or anything. There's another you here, HammerTime, well, not here right now, but in this world and he's a real dick to my Loki. Where's your Bruce?"
"Man of Iron, I do not understand-" Thor starts.
"Of course you don't understand, Thor." Loki scoffs at Thor before he finishes saying what he doesn't understand. "You've always had to compensate for your pitiful lack of brains with brawn."
Tony's pretty sure that in Asgard, the jocks are much more highly regarded than the nerds throughout the entire society and culture, not just their equivalent of middle and high school. As a child genius, Tony had always been by far the youngest and smallest of his classmates and had been picked on a lot.
"What I don't understand is why we ended up in my tower! And why you're still here." Tony rounds on the real Loki furiously. Well, presumably the Tesseract dropped Thor and Loki off here as well, but why are they taking a happy hour at Tony's bar instead of going back to Asgard?
"This is my tower, actually." Tony's Doppelganger says, but nobody responds to that.
Loki gives a sigh and says to Tony, as if explaining to a particularly stupid child "The Tesseract dropped us off here, Stark. Surely even your Midgardian mind should be able to grasp what just happened to you, or are you like your particularly clueless counterpart?" Loki gestures towards Tony's Doppelganger, who makes a noise of protest.
"Did you do something with the Tesseract to make it put us here?" Tony asks.
"Of course." Loki deadpans. "I had control of the Tesseract and decided to come to the place where I was just defeated." He laughs bitterly. "Of course I didn't decide to come here. One of you is insufferable enough, Stark, why in the Nine Realms would I want to deal with two of you, or three if you count Snoopy?"
Glancing at Bruce, he adds "Why would I want to ever see that monster again?"
"You came through the Tesseract?" Bruce asks, adjusting his glasses and pointedly ignoring what Loki just called him. His tone is one of recognition and worry, even though he's from this universe.
"Aye." Thor confirms. "I was taking Loki back to Asgard to pay for his crimes, but-"
The rest of Thor's words are drowned by a piercing scream from Snoopy, so loud it's almost inhuman, and Tony winces as the scream goes on and on.
Snoopy is back in the Loki lookalike body now, curled in a ball on the floor by edge of the curved floor-to-ceiling window far away from Thor. The snake has grown and looks like it's squeezing him for dinner.
Snoopy's rocking back and forth, although his scream has died and he now seems to be struggling to breathe, pure terror painted all over his face and tears streaming down his cheeks.
For a brief moment, Loki at the bar grimaces in a less severe version of what Snoopy's doing, but his face quickly clears. He does eye the snake great interest, seeming to recognize it.
Tony's Doppelganger immediately rushes towards the prone form in the fetal position on the floor, not before glaring at Thor. Rather than trying to remove the huge snake squeezing Snoopy, he just wraps Snoopy-Loki in a bear hug.
Tony's Doppelganger ends up being rocked back and forth as Snoopy rocks his own Loki body. He mutters soft words to Snoopy that don't seem to be doing much at the moment.
Tony approaches his Doppelganger and Snoopy. "What's with him? And why aren't you doing something about the snake."
His Doppelganger doesn't answer verbally, just quickly sends Tony a look saying the snake's not a problem, and then says softly to Snoopy "You're never going back to that shithole if I have anything to say to it. You're safe here, remember?"
Then, he starts to sing. "If you find the field where the horses roam, and you need a place to call your home. The moon and the stars will give you light, to sleep in the grass in peace tonight."
Snoopy's shaking subsides a bit, but tears still stream down his face.
"Stop your sniveling." Loki snaps at Snoopy, his own Doppelganger, from the bar. "I do not appreciate you making me look like a pathetic coward."
"You're not helping." Tony's Doppelganger snaps right back. "Besides, you're hardly one to talk. You were having a panic attack earlier right alongside him."
Loki's eyes narrow dangerously, and he gets up from the bar and stalks over towards them.
"Jarvis, deploy Mark Seven." Tony demands, heart thundering in his chest as Loki continues in their direction.
"I'm sorry, sir, but Mark Seven is not available." Jarvis replies. What the hell? Does he not have access to his own suits in this place? His Doppelganger is wearing a suit.
He's just as unprepared as when Loki threw him out of the window before.
A large part of Tony is nervous about facing off with Loki again, although he doesn't show it. He's not scared, though. Not at all, no way. Even though the last time he faced off with Loki in here, he ended up being tossed out a window and almost falling to his death.
Okay, he's kidding himself. He's terrified, but Tony puts on a flippant front as always.
"Maybe we should toss you out the window and see how you like it." Tony glares at him. His Doppelganger has a suit on, surely he can help. Or Thor or Bruce...
"Hello, guys, what are you waiting for?" Tony demands when it seems like a suit isn't coming for him. "Smash him into the floor again, Bruce!"
"Brother, stop this!" Thor bellows, also up from his seat at the bar now. He rests a huge hand on Loki's shoulder and holds Mjolnir in the other hand. Loki snarls that he's not Thor's brother, and Thor's grip on his shoulder tightens as he tries to shake it off.
"Loki cannot harm you. His magic is bound by the cuffs around his wrists... I think." Thor tells them.
"Look, I don't want any trouble." Bruce says, finally stepping in between Loki and Tony and holding his hands out in a gesture of peace.
Loki immediately stops in his tracks, clearly trying to hide the fact that he's scared of Bruce, but failing for once at hiding his emotions.
"Why didn't you send me a suit, Jarvis?" Tony demands.
"I am afraid my protocols don't have anything for there being two of you, sirs." Jarvis replies, being his usual snarky self, although he grows more serious. "I believe you should consider the situation before suiting up, sir. Mr. Loki is not a threat."
"What is there to consider in this situation, Jarvis?! This is Loki, he just tried to take over the world and now he's stalking towards me with a creepy look in his eyes! I don't see how he could be any more of a threat!"
"Hey, let's hold it people!" Tony's Doppelganger gestures wildly, slashing through the air to say cut it out. "What kind of universe did you guys even come from where Loki tries to take over the world?!"
"Not this universe." Tony says.
"Obviously." Tony's Doppelganger smirks somewhat humorlessly, still hugging Snoopy. "I take it you're still Iron Man there, since you were asking for a suit."
"Yeah, and we just defeated Loki and his Chitauri army." Tony glances at Snoopy. "I can't imagine him leading an army."
"He didn't, which is why your universe sounds crazy."
"This Man of Iron said that the Chitauri invasion happened a year and a half ago." Thor says, glancing at Tony's Doppelganger in the Iron Man suit.
"Wait, a year and a half?" Tony asks.
"Approximately, sir. Today's date is November 18, 2013." Jarvis says. But it was May 2012...
Sure, Tony was evidently unconscious, because he woke up on the weird Cap-fanboy floor.
"So first I jumped universes, and now I'm some kind of discount Rip Van Winkle or Sleeping Beauty? Nobody woke me up with a kiss. Same with after the portal, I hope."
"A portal, like flying a nuke through a portal to blow up Chitauri ships?" Tony's Doppelganger asks, brown eyes locked with Tony's identical ones intently.
Did this Tony fly a nuke into a portal too?
"Hang on, I'm not getting the whole story. So, the Chitauri attacked you too?"
Sorry not much happened here, and it was so short (for me, anyways).
So next chapter they'll actually get into discovering more of the differences between their worlds.