Another AU! You can find this on my AO3 account under the same name and username.
My Tumblr username is catsbythegreat.
Enjoy!
(Also sorry for all the posts for anyone who's been following me. Trying to bring my account in line with my AO3 account.)
Coulson would come to call every once in awhile to check up on Loki, to see that he was adjusting well to normal human life and, more importantly, to make sure he wasn't causing trouble.
Loki wasn't surprised when he was woken up from his sleep by a knock at the door. Then he looked at his clock and received a shock: it was past noon. He jumped out of bed, nearly fell over as a wave of dizziness hit him, and stumbled towards the door. Right before he opened it, he straightened himself and took a deep breath, trying to retain some sense of composure.
Coulson stood on the other side. His eyebrows shot up at the sight of Loki. "Did I interrupt something?" he asked.
"No," Loki said. "Can I help you?"
For the past few months, Loki had asked every week, and every week Coulson simply said, "No." But Loki thought it was SHIELD's idea of revenge, sending the agent that he'd almost killed to check up on him.
Coulson said, "You look sick."
"Pardon?"
"Sick," Coulson repeated. "Not well. You're pale, you look exhausted, and-" He touched Loki's forehead with a cold hand, and Loki jerked away with a snarl. "You have a fever. I'm making an appointment for you."
"An appointment?" Loki said. "What do you mean?"
"With a doctor," Coulson clarified. "We haven't actually really done any examinations on you, but now that you're sick that's going to change. SHIELD has an agreement with one of the hospitals uptown. Can I come in?"
Loki didn't really have a choice. Grudgingly, he stepped aside to allow Coulson entrance. Coulson walked into the kitchen and sat down at the counter, typing on his phone. Loki hovered by the door, not wanting to get any closer to the agent.
"I'll have a doctor check you, take your blood, measure your height and weight, that sort of thing," Coulson said, not looking up from his phone. "Honestly, we should've done this three months ago but given the situation, well. I'm not entirely sure you would've been up to it. Anyway." He looked up. "It's nothing to worry about. You'll be right as rain in no time."
"These doctors," Loki said, "they can fix me."
"Yes." Coulson seemed to be trying not to smirk. "Or did you think that you were supposed to feel bad all the time?"
"I don't know what I'm supposed to feel," Loki snapped. He didn't tell Coulson that he had been feeling achy and tired for weeks, almost the whole time he'd been banished to Earth and stripped of his immortality. He assumed that he was simply acutely aware of the weaknesses of the human body. "I have never been human before." Thor had, but Loki hadn't been in the mood to ask him.
"Well." Coulson checked his phone again. "I'm going to send you an e-mail. It'll tell you the time and location of your appointment and the name of your doctor. Incidentally, the appointment is tomorrow morning. Is that fine?"
Loki scoffed—like he had plans. Coulson stood up and straightened his suit. "I'll be in touch," he said, and swept past Loki out the door.
Loki stood there for a moment. His own phone buzzed with the message Coulson had just sent him.
Tomorrow he would have to drag himself out of bed to be poked and prodded by doctors.
But for now, he would sleep.
After Odin had banished Loki to Earth and made him human, stripping him of his immortal body and his magic, Loki had been angry at everyone. He demanded that SHIELD not let Thor near him. SHIELD was in charge of Loki's integration into human society—they gave him money, food, housing, clothes, and technology, but beyond that, they left him alone. They only would interfere if Loki made trouble.
For the first few weeks, Loki had walked around New York City without really seeing it. One day he had come across a huge bookstore and ended up buying tons of books, which he read within the week. He returned again and again and began exploring other parts of the city, anger fading into a dull sort of melancholy. But for awhile, he played at being human.
And then he stopped. His body's weakness caught up with him and he spent more time inside, sleeping or reading and unwilling to put on the appearance of being a normal person.
Until the appointment with the healer, he hadn't planned to change this routine.
The healer's name was Doctor Erikson, and he worked at a hospital on the upper west side of Manhattan. Loki took the subway and tried to ignore the people surrounding him as much as possible. New York City had so much humanity everywhere; it seemed impossible to have space or to ignore anyone. The waiting room in the hospital was much the same way, filled with other humans and some children. Loki's skin crawled at the reminder that he, too, was one of them now.
Dr. Erikson was a nice man with blond hair and blue eyes. He reminded Loki vaguely of Thor, but his hair was shorter and he was thinner, and he wore glasses. He wrote Loki's information on a chart, shook his hand, and told him that his "caretakers" had taken care of payment and insurance matters.
Loki had no idea what any of that meant, so he simply nodded.
Erikson then began his examination. He measured Loki's height (above average) and weight (average), measured his heartbeat and his blood-pressure (somewhat low), and then his temperature. With a frown, he pronounced that Loki was running a fever and asked how Loki felt.
"Tired," was Loki's clipped response, "and I ache."
Erikson ended the exam by taking his blood, which he warned might hurt, but Loki had dealt with worse pain before. He wondered at how fragile humans were, that they would fall apart at the prick of a small needle. Apparently some humans were extremely afraid of blood tests.
Afterwards, Erikson said, "I'll let you and your caretakers know the results of everything. In the mean time, take some ibuprofen, drink plenty of fluids, and make sure to get enough rest. You'll feel better."
Loki nodded and left the office and hoped never to come back. The experience had been unpleasant, being poked and prodded at. Asgard's healers tended to use magic to sense problems in the body, and so Loki wasn't used to the huge amount of physical contact.
(In Asgard, the healers would have had him cured before he left, but Loki decided to ignore that particular difference, even if he still felt ill.)
He took the train back to his apartment and had nearly fallen asleep on the couch when his phone rang.
He considered not picking it up, but remembered Erickson promising to call back. He picked up and asked, "Who is this?"
"Loki, this is Dr. Erikson calling about your exam," the doctor said. "I need to run more tests on you. There was something strange in your blood results that I'd like to rule out."
"I have to go back," Loki said, a frown twisting his lips.
"Hopefully it will not take long," Erikson told him, "and hopefully it will be the last time. I would like to take a look at your bone marrow."
"My bone marrow," Loki repeated.
The doctor did not elaborate, but made an appointment for Loki the next day. Loki made his way back to the hospital, where Erikson stuck a long needle into the bone of his hip. It felt like Loki's insides were being sucked out, but he remained outwardly unaffected, and soon the test was over.
That night, Loki got another call asking him to come in the next day. He considered not going, annoyed that the doctor simply hadn't healed him already, but curiosity got the best of him. After all, this human body seemed to work much differently than his original body. It got sick easier. It needed testing. It was fragile, as evidenced by the huge bruise on Loki's hip.
Erikson sat him down in the office and closed the door. In front of him were what Loki presumed to be the test results, sheets of paper with meaningless words.
"Loki," Erikson said, "I hate to be the one to give you the bad news. But you have leukemia."
"What?" Loki asked. He had never heard of such a word.
"It's a type of cancer of the blood," Erikson explained. "It works its way through the body rather quickly and without treatment, it is deadly. Which is why I need to start treating you. I have informed your caretakers of the issue and they will be here after the appointment to pick you up. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Loki's mouth felt dry. "Words."
Erikson sighed. "Leukemia," he repeated. "You're very sick. Now, we can start treatment tomorrow. You'll have to get several rounds of chemotherapy, and we'll be doing plenty of testing, unfortunately. There are side effects—I've prepared a document for you to read at home. I ask you to read through it. All of the information is very important."
He handed Loki a thick packet of papers. And then he kept talking. But the words made no sense. Loki understood that he was sick, and that he needed treatment. That what he was feeling wasn't how mortals normally felt. But Erikson looked serious. If this were an illness that could be cured, what was so serious about it? It would pass like a fever would pass.
Erikson sent him off with a slip for an appointment for the next day on a different floor of the hospital. When Loki walked into the waiting room, Coulson was waiting there.
He, too, looked serious.
"Come on," Coulson said, gesturing for Loki to follow him outside. "We need to have a debriefing."
Something cold began to uncurl in Loki's chest.
"How on Earth does a guy who's only been human for a few months get cancer?" Fury demanded of the agents surrounding him. "Most humans don't get it in their lifetime. We did not sign up for this."
"What did you sign up for?" Loki asked.
"Not to play nurse to a sick patient," Fury snapped.
"It will pass," Loki said. "The doctors will cure me and then you need not worry yourself over my wellbeing."
"And if they don't?" Fury asked. "What then? Tell Thor that we couldn't prevent his brother's death?"
"Why wouldn't they?" Loki shot back, ignoring the part about Thor, even though it made his skin crawl. "Why wouldn't I recover?"
Silence. The agents in the room looked at each other, and suddenly Loki felt completely out of his element, even more so than when he'd first been stripped of everything.
Quietly, Coulson spoke up. "Loki, do you understand what cancer is?"
"It's an illness," Loki said. "It can be deadly if not healed, as many illnesses can become deadly if left unchecked."
Coulson swallowed, visibly. He looked uncomfortable, his veneer of calm slipping. "It's more deadly than your typical disease," he said. "The cure is not really a cure. You're not guaranteed anything. And the treatment is harsh. I don't know if they have diseases on Asgard that can't be cured in a straightforward manner-"
"They are exceedingly rare," Loki told him.
"They aren't rare here," Coulson said. "And unless we know why you got sick, you might not recover."
Loki stared at him. "You mean, I'll die," he said. "But mortals die quickly. Your lives are nothing but the flicker of a flame, there and gone in an instant. Why should this be any different? I may not feel well, but-"
"No," Coulson interrupted. "You don't understand. Most humans, if healthy, live past the age of seventy. If you were healthy, you would live another forty, fifty, maybe sixty years given modern medicine's advances. But you're not. You could die within five years, if this gets out of hand."
"I've never seen cancer in an alien," Agent Hill commented.
"That's because he isn't," Fury said. "He's human now. But something went wrong."
"Five years," Loki murmured. And then Fury's words caught his attention. "Wrong? Something went wrong? This whole punishment is wrong. Making me mortal, taking away the very body that made me myself and attempting to make me something else. And now I find that this new vessel is faulty. This is not fair punishment, director. This is cruelty."
"There's no other option but to get treatment and study this the best we can," Coulson said. "I'll have Stark on it. He can keep a secret."
"I would rather you didn't," Loki said.
"You don't have a choice," Fury told him. "Now, do we tell Thor?"
"No." Everyone looked towards Loki, who glared right back. "This concerns my body, and for matters that concern my body I should be able to decide who can know and who should not. Part of our agreement was to not involve Thor. And I don't want him involved in this."
"Thor might be able to help you," Coulson said.
"Thor can't help me," Loki said. "Not with this."
Erikson placed Loki in a chair. There were other chairs in the room, and other people attached to IV lines like the one Erikson was currently setting up by Loki's chair. The whole thing seemed strange, a meeting of sick people sharing misery.
The man across from him was reading a book.
Loki looked up at the various bags full of liquid that would soon be inside of him, coursing through his blood. He had read about the side effects and none of them sounded pleasant, but it seemed that he had no choice in the matter. SHIELD wanted him to go through with treatment in order to prolong his life, and though Loki might have, at one point, wanted to die, now he wanted to live, if only to spite those who would see him put down.
And so he endured the doctor sticking him with needles and watched as the medicine coursed its way down plastic tubes and into the vein in Loki's arm. And he waited for it to be over so he could return to his apartment and get on with his life until the next appointment.
Hours later, he rose from the chair feeling more tired than when he got there. He ached, but that was nothing new. Erikson set him up with another appointment and gave him a phone number he could call if he needed help. Loki took the number and vowed not to call.
He took the bus home and nearly fell asleep, but made it to his apartment in one piece. At which point his cell phone rang.
"How was your appointment?" Coulson asked.
Loki resisted the temptation to throw the phone. "It was fine."
"I'll be over tomorrow to help you," Coulson said.
"I don't need help," Loki snapped. "I'm fine."
"You won't be saying that tomorrow," Coulson told him, "and if you are then you're very lucky."
"I don't understand-" Loki started, but Coulson hung up. He groaned and collapsed onto the couch. The humans treated him like he was going to break. And yes, humans were fragile and he was a human. But still.
He would live.
He retrieved one of the books from his shelves and curled up on the couch and started reading. He intended to stay there for the rest of the night, and for the next few days up until his next appointment.
His body had other plans.
The nausea that accompanied his medication was slow and insidious; by the time Loki realized what he was feeling he couldn't do anything except run to the bathroom, where he emptied his stomach of everything and then some. He cursed this body's weakness, cursed the doctors who were supposed to make him better and cursed Odin for making him mortal in the first place.
Loki imagined that if Odin could see him now, he would be laughing.
Loki could not move. He could barely sleep, even though he was tired enough to sleep for days. Everything hurt. He couldn't eat. He couldn't even keep down water. And after awhile his anger faded because he could hardly think beyond how wretched he felt.
Coulson came over the next day, and didn't even bother to knock. Loki, with his head leaning against the toilet, felt panic bubbling up within him. He was weak, defenseless, and Coulson wasn't his friend. He didn't want Coulson to see him this way and take advantage. He didn't trust SHIELD as much as they didn't trust him, and for a wild moment he began to think that this was part of SHIELD's plan.
He heard Coulson walking around the apartment, re-arranging things in the kitchen, and eventually his footsteps came towards the bathroom and he knocked on the unlocked door.
"Go away," Loki snarled, gripping the toilet harder than was necessary.
"Loki, I want to make sure you're okay," Coulson said.
"Lies," Loki hissed. "You and your SHIELD. Do not pretend you care about my well-being."
"I do," Coulson said. "In fact, we've been studying your case to try and figure out what happened. We want Stark to run tests-"
"I want nothing to do with him," Loki snapped. "He will poison me like your healers have poisoned me."
Coulson opened the door and Loki wanted more than anything to be able to rise and stick a knife through Coulson's chest and then slash his throat simply to make sure that the job was done. Anger flowed through him like the chemicals poisoning his blood, like the very disease that SHIELD claimed was killing him.
But he couldn't move.
And Coulson looked at him like he cared. It made Loki feel a sickness that had nothing to do with his physical illness.
"It has that effect on every human," Coulson said. "Cancer's tough. It has to be destroyed with harsh chemicals that are also poisonous to the body."
"What?" Loki breathed.
"You're right, there is poison in your body," Coulson told him, "but it isn't meant to harm you. It's just a side effect."
"Side effect," Loki repeated. "The destruction of my body is simply a side effect? Making me ill doesn't matter?"
"It's hard to explain if you aren't familiar with human biology-"
"I'm not," Loki snapped. "You cannot expect me to believe that something that is meant to cure an illness destroys the body even more and causes illness and pain itself. That is absurd. That is not healing." His breath hitched. "What are you doing to me?"
"Loki-"
Loki's breathing was not his to control anymore. "I refuse," he said.
"Refuse what?" Coulson asked.
"I refuse this so-called treatment," Loki said. "I refuse to be poisoned. I will not go to the hospital to continue this-this-madness."
They stared at each other. "Loki, just read up on it-"
"They could be lies!" Loki cried. "You expect me to trust you and I am your enemy. I am still the monster among you—you all believe it to be true. You can't deny this. You would love nothing more to watch me waste away. And you would convince me that this medicine is helping me while it kills me. You would convince me that I am ill and in need of treatment in order to have an excuse-"
"Loki," Coulson snapped.
Loki took a deep breath and looked away. His eyes burned. His throat ached. He clutched the toilet as if it were a solid foundation that would keep him from falling.
"Loki," Coulson repeated, kneeling down next to Loki.
"Don't touch me," Loki hissed.
Coulson placed his hand on Loki's shoulder, warm and strong, and Loki jerked away.
"I know you don't believe me," Coulson said, "but none of this was in our plan. We meant to integrate you into society so that you wouldn't become a danger to anyone. This is a real human disease and a real human treatment. We aren't as advanced as Asgard. We don't have definite cures and sometimes the treatments for certain diseases involve pain or extra damage. We're trying to change that, but it happens. We didn't think you would have to deal with this when you became mortal because a lot of people don't."
Loki stared at the tiled floor and Coulson's words swirled around in his head. "I have known the most convincing liars," he breathed. "Why should you be any different?"
"I'm not," Coulson said. "I'm not even someone you can trust-"
"I can trust no-one," Loki snapped. "Even those I have trusted have lied. I can only-" He cut himself off.
"Trust yourself?" Coulson supplied. "I'm not saying that you should trust us, but if you do some research you'll find everything I told you is true."
"You want revenge," Loki said. "I nearly killed you, I intended to kill you."
"It really isn't," Coulson said, shaking his head. "I'm not a vengeful god. I'm just a man with a lot of responsibility. And honestly, you being mortal is enough."
"You almost died," Loki said.
"And I didn't," Coulson said, "and some people did. And you're being punished. I'm not a cruel man, Loki."
Loki realized he was shaking. He gasped and Coulson put his hand on his shoulder again, a comforting gesture that made Loki's skin crawl. He retched and brought up bile, and his eyes watered. Once he was done, he leaned back.
Coulson's hand was still on his shoulder.
Loki groaned and rested his head against the toilet.
"I'll get you a blanket," Coulson told him, and he stood up.
Loki ignored the way his eyes were tearing and focused on the coolness of the toilet and the hard beating of his heart.
As it turned out, Stark couldn't see him until after his second treatment, which Coulson managed to get Loki to go to after pointing out that after a few days, Loki had begun to feel better and could actually do more than lie on the bathroom floor.
Loki hadn't wanted to believe Coulson, but the agent's confession had no fault. Loki had done thorough research on the internet, and besides, he could detect no lie in the agent. And that worried him. Either he couldn't tell Coulson was lying, or he was damned to suffer in order to get better.
The reason didn't have so much to do with Stark not having time as a series of several events that called the Avengers' attention. The latest was Doctor Doom.
"He's not actually a doctor," Stark said. Loki was a few days out of his second treatment and still feeling like hell, though he could function. Judging from the shocked look on Stark's face when Loki and Coulson first arrived, he looked like hell, too. He knew he'd lost weight and he'd started to lose hair, though not enough to make a difference quiet yet, and he was ghostly pale. It was discouraging, to put it mildly.
"Then what is he?" Loki asked. He was sitting on a makeshift examination table covered in a towel while Stark prepped his tech.
"He rules a small country in Europe," Stark explained. "He's a dictator. But the citizens get tons of benefits and have to be loyal. Which is fine because they live well and, okay, I don't like dictators but I can deal with that as long as everyone's treated well. But Doom builds robots and dabbles in magic and he likes to attack other countries, and that's not okay."
"If Doom rules his country well, then why should he not rule the rest of the world?" Loki asked
Stark dropped whatever he was holding and turned around. "I'm really glad you don't have magic at the moment," he said.
Loki looked around the lab and asked, "Are you working alone?" Coulson had gone to sit with Pepper and drink coffee.
"Um, no, actually Dr. Banner's coming."
Loki stiffened, and for a moment he felt like he would be sick in Stark's lab. "Dr. Banner?" he repeated.
"Yeah, but don't worry," Tony said, "he's got a complete lid on his Hulk thing. Trust me. You're not going to, but you don't really have a choice. It'll work out. He knows about medical stuff and I don't. I just have tech."
Loki made a choking sound and then the door opened, revealing Banner himself. He looked the same as he had the last time they met, and he did indeed look calm. Without his magic, Loki couldn't feel the essence of the monster radiating from him, but he knew and that was enough. He had seen first hand what damage Banner could do.
Banner looked surprised to see Loki, but he hid the surprise with a small smile and said, "Hey, Loki. I'm gonna be helping Tony today."
"I have been told," Loki said, stiffly. "Dr. Banner."
"Right," said Stark, handing one of his strange metal devices to Banner, "enough small talk. Coulson'll kill me if I take too long. And if Thor comes back we'll really be in trouble."
Loki made a noise of protest at the mention of Thor.
Stark laughed. "Don't worry, Reindeer Games, he's off planet by now. But the less you're here, the better, because when he's here, he's here all the time. Except when he's with Jane."
"The mortal woman?" Loki asked. "He still sees her?"
"They do more than see," Stark said with a wink.
"Tony," Banner said, and then he turned to Loki. "Anyway, we'll take some blood and take some scans and x-rays and you'll probably be bored. We'll also ask questions. It shouldn't take more than a few weeks."
"I have nothing but time," Loki said, rolling his eyes.
"Good," said Stark. "We'll take up all of it."
And they began.
Loki tended to think a lot, but his treatments stripped him even of this. Sometimes it was a blessing, because Loki's mind could go to terrible places, places of darkness and falling and falling and falling.
But his mind was also clever and kept him alert. And now he was kept in the hands of Coulson and SHIELD and Stark and Banner and his doctor and he could hardly muster up the energy to think on their motives or search their words for lies. There were days where he could hardly stay awake, and he remembered when he would not sleep for days at a time because he didn't trust his surroundings, and now he couldn't go a few hours without falling into blackness (so much like the void.)
And if he died, he would fall.
Permanently.
When he could think, he often thought of this and it made him feel like he'd felt back in the void, hopeless and scared, like a child separated from its parents. He wondered if humans often thought of sleep being like death. It would be so easy for them to not awaken.
It was frustrating, to not be able to think, to read, to analyze, to keep up with Stark and Banner's work even though, for the first two weeks, he understood the purpose of x-rays and the various body scanning machines, and then he couldn't bring himself to care, not with how bad he was feeling. If Stark and Banner had noticed, they didn't show it, but Loki hated how they could see him becoming weaker even if they weren't going to take advantage.
This treatment had taken from him his body and it was slowly working on his mind, and he couldn't even pretend that Coulson might be exacting revenge on him anymore. He could only take his word that everything would be fine even though he felt like he was dying.
He had to go outside with a mask because otherwise, according to Doctor Erikson, he'd fall ill and not recover. His hair fell out. He looked strange and so unlike himself that he stumbled back from the mirror one day, barely able to breath and remembering the time he'd looked and seen blue skin and red eyes, but this time there was no Frost Giant, this was only what mortality had taken from him, scrubbed him and left him bare and raw. Even his eyes looked washed of their color.
Shaking, he'd slid to the bathroom floor. He didn't remember the rest of that day, only knew that he'd woken up with water on his cheeks and red-rimmed eyes.
To his credit, Stark didn't treat Loki delicately.
"Are you almost done?" Loki asked from where he was lying, beneath a machine that resembled a long tube. An MRI machine, according to Banner, that Stark had built himself.
"Fuck you," Stark said. He operated the machinery from afar, but his voice still reverberated in the room. Then he made a noise of frustration.
"What is the matter this time?" Loki asked.
"I wish we had a before file on you," Stark said. "I mean, we do, but it's not extensive. And you're missing your magic. I want to see the magic in action."
"I'm sorry," Loki said. Then he thought about. "Actually I'm not. Magic would not suit you, Stark."
"Why? Is it because I'm prone to delusions of grandeur? Oh wait," Stark laughed, "that's you."
Loki glared at the ceiling. "I did not build a tower in my name in the middle of one of the largest cities on the planet," he countered.
"And I'm planning another Stark Tower in LA," Stark told him. "Don't hate."
The machine whirred and then fell silent. Stark made a humming noise and then said, "Hey, Brucy, come look?"
Banner walked over to look at the images that had popped up on the screen in front of Tony. "Weird," he said.
It wasn't an unusual reaction. Stark and Banner had found a handful of anomalies that they couldn't explain in Loki's blood, in his scans, in his DNA even, which Bruce needed to analyze further. Stark had wanted to attribute these anomalies to Loki's origins, but Banner decided that further analysis was necessary.
"Loki," Banner said, "did your magic mess with technology?"
"Mortal technology?" Loki thought about it. "I was not here long, but there were some difficulties I remember. Interference with some of Selvig's devices." A pause. "Communications devices had a hard time working around me, especially cellphones."
"Hmmm." Stark ran a hand through his hair and Loki felt a pang of jealousy. He missed his own hair.
"The effect was negligible," Loki added. "We could work around it."
"I'll have to talk to Clint," Stark said. "He won't be happy but, well, he'd know."
Hazy memories of working with Barton underground surfaced in Loki's mind and he asked, "How is Barton?"
"Peachy keen," Stark said.
Banner tapped Stark on the shoulder and murmured, "I'll talk to Clint. I know how you talk to people and he won't be happy."
"Fine," Stark said, rolling his eyes. Banner nodded and left the room. "So, we have some time to kill."
"Do we," Loki said. Usually they had no time for small talk, other than the banter they engaged in during testing. Which mostly involved Stark complaining that the one time he was able to test someone with magic, they didn't have their magic.
"Yeah," Stark said. "We've got plenty to look over. Especially the body scans. You know it comes up blurred every time we've tried, no matter what machine we use?"
"I didn't," Loki said.
"Have you ever tried doing magic in this body?" Stark asked.
"No." It hadn't even occurred to him. He'd felt so weak and hollow when he'd been made mortal that he assumed it was impossible. "Why? Do you think I could?"
"Well, I mean, the scans seem to reflect some sort of interference," Stark said, "and a normal human wouldn't really, you know, interfere. Not even a sick human. So that leaves someone who's not human. Or something that's been added to a human. Like magic. Or huge amounts of radiation. You'd have to literally be radiating radiation."
"Odin took my magic away," Loki said. "He would not leave me with such power."
"It's just a theory," Stark said, "but, you know. We have to consider all possibilities. It was actually Bruce's idea but it's caught on."
"Has it." For a second, something like hope bloomed in Loki's chest, but he banished it from his thoughts. What Stark was saying was ridiculous.
"Yeah." Stark sighed. "Anyway, either way, I hope we find answers. I want you to get better, you see. Even though you were a huge space dick. I can tell you're smart and, well, you know."
"I don't know," Loki said.
"Yeah, neither do I," Stark admitted. "I feel like you'd enjoy life in the lab though. And you could help me develop new tech. I mean, you seem like someone who would know all about that future tech of Asgard's."
Loki laughed, softly. He had been reading more and more about biology and the sort of science Stark did at the beginning of his treatment to pass the time, and to learn more about his condition, but now it seemed he couldn't focus. He wasn't sure he could reconcile that sort of science, which he didn't even know, with the principals behind Asgard's technology. One time, perhaps, but lately…
"What?" Stark asked.
"Nothing," Loki said. "It seems I haven't the mind for educating myself these days."
Stark frowned. "Thor says you were a scholar."
"I am" Loki said, a touch defensively. "I just find it hard to concentrate. I'm tired. My mind slips from my grasp more often than not." He stopped talking.
He must have looked upset, because Stark said, "Hey, it's fine. You can't be expected to be completely alert when you're going through all this crap."
"It is merely an illness," Loki snapped. "I should not be effected so. I should be cured already."
"They don't have long-term illness in Asgard, do they?" Stark asked.
Loki sighed. "Rarely." His memories of Asgard were becoming hazy, like a particularly vivid dream he'd once had that started to fade upon waking.
Stark was quiet for a moment. Then he asked, "Do you miss it?"
Loki threw him a sharp look, but Stark wasn't deterred. Instead, Stark continued, "Because I thought I would never miss home, or my parents, because I had issues. Like you. My parents were always busy doing something else and what I did was never good enough. I spent my life looking for my dad's love, but he was a genius and he was paying attention to everything else. I thought when I was on my own I would be fine. Even after they died, I sort of shut down that part of my emotions. But I've been realizing that I do miss them. Sometimes. I just wondered if Asgard was like that, or…people."
They both knew that "people" meant Thor.
Loki thought about the golden light of Asgard that seemed to burn with its brightness, like Thor could burn. He thought of the all-seeing eye of Odin, constantly critical, of working towards goals that were never enough. He thought about Frigga stroking his hair, talking to him about magic when no one else would, and the soft golden light of her hair that was warm. He thought of the Warriors Three and Sif and their adventures to new realms before conflict began to cause strain within their group.
"I don't know," Loki admitted.
Stark nodded. "I know that feeling." He laughed. "I never thought I'd understand you."
"What?"
"Thor said you were hard to understand," Stark said, "and considering what you did last time you were here I was inclined to believe him. But, you know, you're not completely insane."
Loki stared at him.
Stark smirked. "Bruce said that your mind was a bag of cats."
"I was," Loki said.
Stark's smirk disappeared. "What?"
"I was insane," Loki said, "at least in part. It was an insanity of my own making, influenced by the lies told to me by my so-called family, of the void, of my own monstrosity." He couldn't say why he was telling Stark any of this, but it seemed that with his very essence stripped from him, he had nothing left to lose. Stark, thus far, seemed like the only one who was interested in him for his mind and his emotions, not his body or because it was a responsibility.
"Damn," Stark breathed. "Yeah, I guess, you know, it would be hard to swallow, that sort of thing. I'm surprised you're not insane now."
"What if I am?" Loki asked.
"You're doing a good job hiding it."
And Loki thought that this was how it had always been. He had always hid. Always.
Coulson chose that moment to stride into the room, and Loki deliberately did not look at Stark as he left.
By some strange coincidence, and a stroke of luck, Stark got hold of a Doombot to run tests on. The Doombots, he explained, had some sort of magical element that allowed them to function differently to normal robots, and hopefully by having one in his lab, he could test Banner's magic theory.
Loki was at a sort of crossroads. He'd finished his treatment, technically, but Erikson said that although it seemed that he was free of cancer, his blood still showed strange deformities in the red blood cells. They wouldn't carry enough oxygen, and he wanted to do further testing to make sure that this wasn't a different manifestation, or a continuation, of the cancer.
Stark called Loki the day after this and demanded that he come to Stark Tower.
So Loki went and sat in Stark's lab in a chair only mildly less uncomfortable than the hard metal surfaces where he'd spent so much of his time being poked, prodded, and scanned by Stark and Banner.
Stark and Banner looked uneasy, standing in front of him with Starkpads in hand, presumably pulled up to his various scans and test results.
"So," Stark said, drawing the word out. Banner gave him a worried look. Stark ignored him. "I think we've figured this thing out. What's so weird about your results."
"What?" Loki asked. And if his voice shook a little, he couldn't be blamed.
"Magic," Stark told him. "Obviously it's not a hundred percent but the results are pretty solid. Your magic interacts with my tech the same way Doom's does, or even the magic from Thor's hammer when I tried to take readings off it and got nothing. And I did. Just to be sure. He came back so I thought, why not?"
"No," Loki said. His mind seemed to stop working. He'd been getting his focus back, but now it was gone again. He didn't understand what they were saying.
"Yeah, I know you said it's impossible, but maybe you want to have a talk with the old man about that?" Stark asked. "Or try doing some magic. And I'm not saying that the magic is the reason for your illness but at the same time, it would explain a lot."
"No," Loki repeated. He stood up and the world spun. Stark rushed over and steadied him. Loki tore himself away from Stark's grip and backed away.
"It's okay," Stark said. "Trust me, it's fine. I can think of plenty of worse things. I mean, hey, magic's pretty cool. Probably not as much as you used to have, but still. And hopefully this whole illness thing is a one-time thing. We don't have enough to prove that it causes-"
"No," Loki breathed. Everything swayed alarmingly and then one thought emerged from the mess of his mind: Leave.
He turned and raced out of the room, towards the elevator. Somehow he ended up on the street and continued walking, allowing his feet to guide him towards solitude.
Loki stood in front of the mirror, shaking. His reflection, gaunt and pale, stared back at him.
This was not the sorcerer who could claim to be one of the most powerful magic wielders in the nine realms.
This was a weak man. A mortal.
(A monster.)
Loki raised one of his hands in front of him. With the other he turned on the faucet and water rushed down the train.
Water manipulation: one of the easiest forms of magic, and the first form of physical manipulation that any sorcerer learned.
Loki made the familiar motions with his hand, thought the familiar thoughts, and he expected the water to continue running down the drain, and he could go back to living his life, reading books in his apartment and avoiding people and being completely and utterly ordinary.
The water leapt up towards his hand and formed a circle of clear liquid in front of Loki's face.
He stared at it.
He only got to see for a moment, because a blinding pain then drove him to his knees. It felt as if his blood was being boiled within his veins, and that his veins were being pulled through his skin. The water splashed onto the floor in front of him, but he couldn't see it, could only feel the coolness against his skin. Everything was white and he could hardly breathe.
He writhed on the ground in agony and slowly, too slow, the pain started to fade and his vision returned. And then he could only lie there, gasping.
Simple magic, painful and draining enough to bring him to agony.
But it was still there, and it was magic and it was his in a way that this body and this life was not.
Loki began to laugh until tears ran down his face, and even then he didn't stop.
Days passed, and Loki refused to answer his calls, whether they came from Coulson, his doctor, or Stark and Banner. He only dared to test his magic once more, just to make sure he hadn't had a strange dream brought on by exhaustion. He'd frozen water with his hands and fought the agony until he passed out, but when he woke up he didn't regret it. The pain felt good. He could take the pain if it meant he had his magic.
Part of him wondered why, and an even smaller part of him feared that with this discovery, the rest of his magic would be taken from him.
Then Stark knocked on his door, and wouldn't leave. It became annoying to the point where Loki felt he had no other choice but to answer.
Stark had the decency to look sheepish when Loki swung the door open. "What is it?"
Stark handed him an envelope. "From Thor," he said. "Um, I was right about the magic thing. But I think you figured that out."
Loki nodded and took the letter. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to be alone or whether he wanted Stark to stay. He wasn't even sure if he would reply. In the end he told Stark, "Sit. I need to consider this."
Stark sat and Loki walked into the bedroom to open the letter. He recognized Thor's large loopy handwriting. The letter was written in black pen, and Loki set to reading.
The letter was more than Thor begging to speak to Loki. It also contained information, and useful information at that. Thor wrote that he had been called back to Asgard recently, where Odin told him that Loki had discovered his magic (and Loki felt his stomach churn a little at the thought of Odin constantly watching him, and of finding out about this.) However, Odin had also told Thor that Loki was a creature of magic, and magic had infused itself into his very being, like it did with most sorcerers. He could not take the magic away entirely without killing Loki.
But there was a problem. The magic itself was wreaking havoc on Loki's body, because mortals were not meant to have the sort of magic Loki had. It was taking from him his vitality, causing his body to react in deadly ways, and there were very few solutions.
One of them was to return to prison in Asgard, where Loki would be restored to immortality and to his full magic. But he would be in a cage.
The other would be to stay mortal, but to deal with the illness that magic would cause to his person and the death that would follow sooner rather than later.
Thor hadn't given his opinion on the matter. He simply wrote, "Choose well, brother. And I hope that, no matter which choice you make, you will speak to me again. I miss you."
"Sentiment," Loki muttered, but there was no bite to it. He walked back into the living room, where Stark was playing with his phone.
Stark looked up and barely hid his concern behind a mask of indifference. "How was it?"
Loki folded up the letter and replaced it in the envelope. "I am done with treatment," he said. "You said that I would enjoy working in your lab."
"Yeah, I did," Stark said. "You seem like a guy who'd enjoy exercising his brain. And besides, I meant it about helping me mix science with whatever you guys do to make new tech."
"Hmmm." Loki walked across the room and leaned against the wall, facing Stark. "And you have no idea how magic effects the human body."
"I don't," Stark agreed.
"And," Loki continued, "you now have a magic wielder, human as I am. You can still study magic."
Stark frowned. "But doesn't it hurt you?" he asked.
"It does," Loki told him, "but I don't care. I am not long for this world and I would rather do something."
"Is that an invitation for me to study your magic?" Stark asked, eyes lighting up, though he attempted to keep his expression blank.
"Within reason," Loki said. "It will not be pleasant and I would not like to overextend myself at every session. And there is a good chance I might remain ill."
"I can take care of anything medical," Stark said. "I have the money and the resources. So, are you in?"
"Is that an offer?" Loki asked.
Stark smirked. "Is that you asking?"
Loki's lips twitched upwards. "Stark."
"It is," Stark said. "It always was. You're not an asshole when you're not taking over the world, and I don't know enough people who're interested in what I do and who are intelligent enough to keep up. But you are. You have quite the mind."
"What interest have you with my mind?" Loki asked.
"Everything. And the mind is the last to go."
Loki nodded. "I can come by tomorrow."
"I'll have to break it to the others," Stark sighed, standing up. "Oh, well. They'll have to get used to it." He started towards the door but then turned around again. "Anything you want me to bring back to the Tower?"
"Not at the moment, no."
"Right." Stark gave a sharp nod. "Then I'll see you tomorrow."
He left.
Loki returned to his bedroom and sat down, letter in hand.
This was his choice to make, and he was choosing. He would stay. He would die early, but he would not be caged like an animal.
Like a monster.
He would be a mortal sorcerer. Even if he could barely use his magic. Even if it was killing him. It was better than the alternative, and he shuddered to think of spending his days in prison.
Here, he could have use.
And then there was Thor.
He could not see himself having a conversation with Thor. He could not see returning to normal. Too much had changed, and Thor was part of that change.
But that did not exclude any possibility of communication.
Loki no longer had an infinity to hate Thor, or to forgive him. Forgiveness would not come within a few hours, but as he placed the letter on his desk and set out a blank piece of paper before him, he thought that he might be able to start on the path leading away from hatred and anger.
Loki took a pen and began to write.