Lucius saw the missile coming in, saw Tony angling towards it, and decided at once that if the playboy insisted on collecting fresh trauma, then he might as well do it with company.
Before Tony even settled properly beneath the warhead, Lucius cast his senses outward across the ruined avenues and swept for every alien scrap still worth stealing, from Chitauri rifles lodged in wrecked cabs and armour shards embedded in concrete to broken helm-pieces, drone carcasses, severed control webs, and bodies that still had enough machinery in them to matter. Thousands of pieces tore free from streets, rooftops, shattered windows, bus roofs and smoking craters. They rose in a jagged storm behind him and went screaming back through the portal in a dense river.
There were still leftovers here and there, but he stopped caring once the worthwhile things were gone. Let the mongrels in labs fight over scraps and ash. The real meat had already gone back where it belonged.
Tony was already under the missile by then, suit straining, thrusters shrieking at full output while the nuke tried very hard to obey gravity, momentum, and poor human decision-making all at once.
Lucius flew up beside him.
Even through the armour, Tony managed to sound offended.
"Really?"
Lucius gave the missile a quick, dismissive glance.
"Such a hero you are, playboy."
He laid telekinetic reinforcement over Tony's armour in three fast layers, then wrapped both of them in a thicker pressure shell and filled it with enough air to make the crossing easy.
Tony felt the extra support at once.
"Oh, now you help."
"My dear Tony, I am improving the quality of the suicide attempt."
Together, they drove the missile up and through the portal.
The blue rim swallowed them, and then the sky vanished.
For the first time in his life, Tony Stark saw open space with nothing between himself and it except failing machinery, telekinetic pressure, and his own very expensive problems.
The stars were not the warm decorative things shown to children on bedroom ceilings. They were cold points punched into black depth without pity or proportion. Beyond them hung the Chitauri mothership, vast enough to make the portal look like a puncture in a wall. It sprawled across the void like a floating war-factory built by a species that had mistaken scale for taste. Smaller craft and brood vessels moved around it in disciplined lines. The whole thing radiated industrial advancement and hostility that made Earth look small, crowded, and embarrassingly improvised.
Tony stared, and for one second, there was no joke in him at all. He finally understood the gap, not the gap between one weapon and another or between Stark Industries and the Pentagon, but the real one between Earth and this, between a planet still arguing over borders and budgets and a civilisation that could traverse space, throw armies through holes in the sky, and treat Manhattan like a logistical inconvenience.
Lucius watched the misunderstanding and kept silent.
"A bit sobering, isn't it?"
Tony's faceplate stayed up. His eyes moved over the mothership, the traffic around it, the endless dark behind it.
"That thing is too big."
"It is large, ugly, and intelligently placed," Lucius said. "Which is why humanity should never be allowed near its leftovers."
Tony twisted slightly. "Funny. I was going to say something similar about you."
Lucius followed his gaze forward.
The missile was on course, but the suit was struggling. Readouts flashed erratically across Tony's display. The portal crossing and the stress on the thrusters had drained more than they should have.
Then the repulsor balance dipped.
Tony cursed.
Lucius saw the fault before Tony voiced it. He lifted one hand and drove a sharp lance of lightning through the armour, feeding the damaged systems a brutal charge.
Tony jerked in the suit.
"Did you just electrocute me?"
"I recharged your armour. The invoice will be sent to your office."
The thrusters steadied for a few more seconds, and it was enough.
Tony watched the missile as it sailed towards the mothership's centre.
The air inside Lucius's telekinetic bubble was already thinning, and the problem worsened every second. The suit's systems were chewing through what little oxygen remained far faster than Lucius liked. Tony's breath went harsh in the comm. His responses slowed. His suit began to stutter again, less from power now than from the very ordinary inconvenience of fire needing oxygen.
Tony blinked hard.
The edges of his vision greyed.
"That," he said, voice thinner now, "is a lot of stars."
Lucius grabbed the suit harder in a telekinetic hold and shoved the missile the last fraction into its final line.
"Yes, do try not to die looking impressed."
Tony tried to answer. He got halfway to a word, and then the oxygen loss hit him properly. His head dropped. The suit's thruster pattern faltered with him.
Lucius turned both of them back towards the portal at full speed just as the missile vanished into the guts of the brood-ship.
--
Below them, on the roof of Stark Tower, Thor, Rogers, Romanoff, and Barton had reached Selvig.
The old man was pale, shaking, and still only partly himself, the shock had burned enough of Loki's grip loose for thought to crawl back in.
"The sceptre," he gasped. "The sceptre can close it. The device is protected. Only the sceptre."
Natasha seized that at once.
Barton was already at the edge, eyes tracking the portal, when he saw Noctis and Stark cut back through the blue wound, one rigid in armour and the other hauling him by force alone.
He did not waste breath on drama.
"Wait."
Natasha held.
Tony and Lucius burst through the portal as the nuke hit home.
Far beyond the breach, the Chitauri mothership turned to fireworks with attitude.
The explosion swallowed the central mass first, then ran through the command network faster than the structure could understand death. Sections blew out. Power lines flashed white and failed. Smaller craft near the blast turned to sparks and fragments. The linked minds of the Chitauri below simply stopped.
Across Manhattan, chariots dropped from the sky. Infantry locked in place, spasmed, and folded. Leviathans went dead in the air and crashed where momentum took them.
Barton saw the collapse and chopped one hand down.
"Now."
Natasha drove the sceptre into the device.
The portal screamed closed behind Lucius and Tony in a folding sheet of blue light.
Tony's suit had already gone slack. Lucius lowered him slowly, and would have settled him there like expensive luggage if the Hulk had not landed in a skid of broken stone and grabbed Stark with both huge green hands.
The beast stared at Tony's unconscious face, huffed once, and then unleashed a roar at point-blank range that rattled the broken glass around the tower.
Tony jerked like somebody had pushed his soul back through his arse.
His eyes flew open.
"Huh."
The Hulk's job done, at least by Hulk standards, ended the second memory caught up with instinct.
He turned from Tony to Lucius, and something dark and simple lit behind those eyes as recognition caught up with memory. He remembered the sneering man pushing him off the fighter jet, and the rage returned all at once.
Hulk roared again and swung.
Lucius raised one eyebrow and flicked him into the air with enough force to hurl him away.
The green giant went up, arms pinwheeling once before he vanished over the edge of the tower.
Lucius watched the trajectory with mild distaste.
"Mongrels will be mongrels," he muttered, "no matter their size or colour."
Tony was still sitting on the roof, breathing hard, staring between the closed sky and Lucius as the shock settled into his bones.
Lucius looked down at him.
"Another save, Playboy."
Tony dragged in one more breath and pushed himself partly upright.
"You keep billing this friendship very aggressively."
Before Lucius could answer, boots, footsteps, and a very different kind of presence reached the roof from the access side.
The X-Men arrived, led by Ororo and Wolverine.
-
Storm crossed the roof first, grey eyes taking in the cleared sky, the dead Chitauri lying like broken puppets, Tony Stark alive on the rooftop, and Lucius Noctis floating a few inches above the stone like he owned altitude personally. Logan came beside her with the relaxed readiness of a man who expected trouble to restart simply because the universe had not yet had enough fun.
Behind them came Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Kitty, Josh Foley, and Piotr.
Storm stopped in front of Lucius and let one brow rise.
"Impressive abilities you displayed, Mr Noctis."
Lucius looked at her properly, she was one hot piece of smoking arse.
"Not as impressive as the Goddess of Thunder."
That made Thor turn his head immediately.
His gaze settled on the dark-skinned woman with open interest, then on the weather still slowly uncoiling above Manhattan.
Ororo's hair shifted in the rooftop wind. Whether that was weather, vanity, or simple amusement, Lucius had no intention of interrogating the miracle too closely.
"I did not know," she said, and the hint of flirtation entering her tone was subtle enough to pass most people and wasted on none of them, "that you could command the weather and lightning, and heal others on top of everything else. Truly, one of a kind."
Lucius smiled the way men did when they wanted dinner to become several other things later.
"I would be delighted to discuss my gifts, and your own, over dinner, Ms Monroe."
Behind her, Scott stiffened so hard he might as well have been taking structural lessons from Piotr.
Jean and Kitty noticed. Foley, who had spent the day patching civilians and still had blood on his sleeves, looked between Storm and Lucius as though this had become a different emergency than the one he had trained for.
Thor, meanwhile, appeared almost offended on abstract mythological grounds.
Lucius turned from the lady to Tony.
"Tony, meet Wolverine. Or Logan, if one prefers honesty over branding. He is a connoisseur of cigars and a man of taste." His eyes slid to Scott. "Unlike some pests."
Scott took one step forward.
Jean put her hand lightly on his arm before he had fully decided it was a good idea.
Tony got to his feet, armour partly open, still pale from vacuum and adrenaline and a roar-induced return to consciousness. He extended a hand to Logan.
"Tony Stark."
Logan clasped it once.
"Logan."
Lucius produced a cigar from nowhere Tony could see, which was unfortunately no longer unusual enough to question. He held it out to Logan.
Logan took it with a smile that looked almost civil.
"Now that's decent."
Tony watched this exchange with tired suspicion.
"So this is just a thing you do? Near-death, global invasion, cigar diplomacy?"
Lucius gave him a level look.
"Culture must be defended in all circumstances."
Piotr stepped forward then, broad as a doorway even without armoured skin. Lucius's eyes shifted to him, and the smile turned sincere.
When he spoke, it was in Russian.
"You carry yourself well under fire."
Piotr answered in the same language, surprised but not unpleasantly so.
"You were noticeable."
"That is because I put effort into it."
A ghost of a smile touched Piotr's face.
"That much is believable."
Lucius dipped his head once in acknowledgement. The exchange was brief, respectful, and incomprehensible to half the roof, which improved it considerably.
Captain America stepped in next. The man had the instincts of a lab-built patriot and the manners of a funeral home.
"Mr Noctis." Steve's voice carried the steady weight of someone who meant what he said and did not decorate it. "Whatever sits between you and the people above us, you helped save a lot of lives today. Thank you."
Lucius looked at him for a long moment. The thanks was real, but the uniform still was not.
"You are welcome, Mr Rogers." His tone stayed controlled, polite, and several degrees colder than the words. "I prefer my cities populated and intact."
Steve heard the distance in it and accepted the limit without pressing. Which, Lucius had to admit, was wiser than most of the institutions currently claiming ownership of the flag.
Natasha moved half a step, enough to enter his near field.
"Noctis..."
Lucius did not look at her, not once.
He turned instead to Barton, whose bow hung low now that the sky had finally stopped vomiting enemies.
"I see you are still keeping the lowest company you could find for yourself."
Barton barked out one tired laugh.
"Good to see you too."
Natasha's face did not change, which was perhaps the only dignity left available in that exchange.
Ororo, either too amused or too practical to let the roof become another argument pit, drew out her phone and held it towards Lucius.
"If you are serious about that dinner."
Lucius took the phone at once.
"My dear, on matters of food and beautiful women, I am always serious."
Scott's jaw set like poured concrete.
Jean looked away for a second, and that alone kept her from smiling where everyone could see it.
Lucius dialled his number and handed the phone back with ease.
Thor stepped closer, still looking between Storm and Lucius as though both had offended some personal principle.
"You two command lightning."
Ororo's mouth curved faintly.
"I've been told."
Lucius's expression remained perfectly innocent, which on him usually meant the opposite.
Tony watched all of them, then looked to Logan, then to the cigar in Logan's hand, then back to Lucius.
"I go to space with a nuke, almost die, wake up to a Hulk in my face, and somehow you still found time to flirt, insult three people, and build a smoking circle."
Lucius gave him a patient look. "Efficiency."