So, finding an internal medicine textbook in a used book store really helped me figure out the world-building I was working on. Yay for over-thinking things. Also, fun fact, this was written in (really rudimentary, made up on the spot) code in my notebook, because the elderly Japanese lady sitting next to me kept looking over at what I was writing and giving me disturbed looks. It's short again, sorry.
*break*
"But it isn't you."
"It is me."
"It's just a wild, out of control creature, the damaged caused is not your decisions."
"It is my failing, just in a more spectacular way than making a bad decision."
"It isn't you, though."
"It is. It was always inside me, it always came out, the gamma radiation only made it a bit more illustrated."
Coulson tries not to sigh. Bruce and Loki have been talking for an hour, Tony has been not sleeping, and Thor has been snoring copiously.
Coulson sits up. Loki, still too exhausted to sit, is curled on the ground next to Bruce, his head on Bruce's bag of extra clothes. Bruce is sitting, watching him. Tony is sitting, off to the side, shifting every few seconds. Thor is in the middle of all of them, sound asleep.
Coulson is about to speak, say something to the effect of the fact they're all supposed to be resting, when Tony pulls the emergency catch on his suit, and it retracts off his body, into a suitcase shaped cube. He curls up, and Coulson definitely doesn't miss the quiet moan.
"What happened?" Bruce asks, turning to look.
Tony doesn't answer, hugs his arm to his chest, crawls three-limbed to Thor, and lays down, using the insensate god's arm as a pillow and the rest of him as a space heater. Thor wakes enough to notice this, wraps his other arm around Tony's waist, dragging him closer to his own chest, and goes back to sleep.
*break*
When Couson wakes again, he thinks it's because he's cold. He realizes after a moment, that that's not the only reason. Footsteps. He rolls over. Bruce, an arm around Loki's waist, is helping the pale god towards the beacon of warmth that is Thor's back. Thor rolls over, and Bruce gently repositions Tony, so that it's kind of just a big pile of Avengers. Seeing that Coulson is awake, Bruce leaves, comes over to him, and reaches down, "it's too cold. Come on."
And that's how Coulson finds himself with an arm of indeterminate origin around his waist, his feet tangled with several other sets, Bruce's head on his stomach, and Loki's arm across his hips, the pale god's face buried in Bruce's shoulder, his own head on Tony's side.
*break*
Morning comes too soon. Literally, it comes after only four hours of dark, but it's good that it does, because it was dropping close to too cold for the Avengers pile to take.
Natasha, Clint, and Steve return soon after, with the information they need. The Ice Giants are attacking one apparently especially important realm, with all their force. Tony puts the suit back on, before they go, but when he pulls the metal ring to extend the right arm, Steve ends up having to pull it all the way out for him, before the sequence will properly initialize.
There's no way Loki will make it through activating the portal on his feet, or even on his knees, this time. Over Tony's objections, that they don't know if there would be consequences to another person being in contact with him, Bruce holds him up through the whole thing.
Nothing seems wrong, when they sit up. At least, not with how the portal worked. The burning world before them, though, the smell of burning flesh and stone, is a different story.
Coulson helps lift Loki, and is surprised to feel cold, clammy, damp skin, wracked with tiny tremors invisible to the eye. Coulson isn't sure if the greenish tinge to his skin is his power–no. No, that was nausea, Coulson concludes, as Loki throws up, then passes out.
*break*
The world before them was burning in the rain, the high, licking flames engulfing the city hardly touched by the heavy downpour drenching them as they stood atop the hill. dim, heavy grey light, filtered weakly through the thunderclouds made the red fire seem like some kind of twisted hearth.
*break*
There is a classification system, to kinds of biological weaponry. Microbial, chemical, and radiological. Within each, there are many different ways of sorting out what kinds of things do damage in what way, to what people, how much they spread, how long they remain harmful after being dispersed...Coulson had to read all about it, when he was initially assigned to debrief Tony Stark after Afghanistan, since Stark Industries, at the time, had been starting to investigate biological weaponry.
That, and he certainly remembers, when they were used, in other countries he's been assigned to, and in the United States itself. He had only been a senior agent for two weeks, one of which had been by far the worst and most chaotic week he'd ever had, at least, until he started working directly on Fury's special projects.
That was earth. That was SHEILD. That was protocol, and orders, and standing around guarding people in suits who knew what they were doing much more than he did.
This is an amphitheater, the seats filled, the actors on the stage, the strange technology pulsing with what he assumes is music and not just especially rhythmic static. This is a theater of the dead.
It isn't surprising, that they haven't seen a single living soul this week. The burned city, the main inhabited area on this planet, as far as they can tell, has gone silent. There are people, creatures here, but they haven't seen one in a week. The battles, little skirmishes, hardly denting their opposing forces, have done nothing to rouse a fight. They know there are people still alive, here, still running and hiding and staying quiet in the dark. Tony's sensors, the Hulk's nose and ears, have picked them up.
They shouldn't be surprised. The Ice Giants had attacked them where it hit the hardest. Drove them to defeat with fear, and silence, by hitting at their hearts. Not their minds, or government, but making them fear to step outside, to do anything joyful or right, lest they be killed in the next radiation wave, the next biological attack.
Coulson can only conclude that someone is working for the Ice Giants, creating all these things, all these sophisticated, and very, very human methods of attack. He remembers the words, shock and awe, and wonders, at how very well that's worked here. Six attacks every day, for a month, a human, earth, month, and then silence, for a week.
Silence from the attacks, silence from the people.