Time heals all wounds, even ones not quite noticed or understood or talked much about. The motorcycle accident is a month behind them. Tony's ever increasing need to drink, however, is not. It's truly become some sort of midlife crisis for the aging Guide and it's affecting his work, both as an engineer and as Iron Man.
Loki's escape from Asgard was high profile. Thor's insistence on the help of the Avengers did not go unheeded. But Tony made mistakes. Loki's exploited them. And this time, he's not going to let a little think like an arc reactor get in his way of corrupting the only man he could not manage on Midgard the last time he played take over the world.
They really ought to have known when Stark escaped too easily from Loki's imprisonment that something was wrong. They ought to have seen the look in his eyes. Steve ought to have felt it in their bond. But alas, happiness and the whole damned tower literally collapsing down around them tends to make people miss important things.
And so Loki was captured again and the blackness he set in the arc reactor's well grew until the world was once more at ease. And that just so happens to be when it strikes, coiling around Tony's heart and mind, leaving him a witness and helpless to everything he's doing as he forcefully knocks Steve out one night just after Christmas and drags him off to where Loki's minions are waiting to get their hands on the Super Sentinel.
Jumping all over it as promised, Steeb. <3
Loki's escape from Asgard was high profile. Thor's insistence on the help of the Avengers did not go unheeded. But Tony made mistakes. Loki's exploited them. And this time, he's not going to let a little think like an arc reactor get in his way of corrupting the only man he could not manage on Midgard the last time he played take over the world.
They really ought to have known when Stark escaped too easily from Loki's imprisonment that something was wrong. They ought to have seen the look in his eyes. Steve ought to have felt it in their bond. But alas, happiness and the whole damned tower literally collapsing down around them tends to make people miss important things.
And so Loki was captured again and the blackness he set in the arc reactor's well grew until the world was once more at ease. And that just so happens to be when it strikes, coiling around Tony's heart and mind, leaving him a witness and helpless to everything he's doing as he forcefully knocks Steve out one night just after Christmas and drags him off to where Loki's minions are waiting to get their hands on the Super Sentinel.