SHADOW OF DEATH
Chapter 26: Destroyed
The rain pounded against the windows of the long, wood-paneled walls of the medical center hallway. Thunder shook the floor again. Shuri clung to her brother's arm and they paced up and down the length of the clay tiled floor. Her sobs had stilled enough for her to attempt to speak now, though the shoulder of her brother's shirt gave evidence of how long she had cried.
"T'Challa, she is dead," Shuri tried to force out. "I told her never to work on that alone. There are lab technicians, guards, servants, even Goose. But she is too too stubborn.
"Tutafanya nini kaka? Madaktari have tried everything they could think of for the past six hours. Hakuna. Zuri came with the waganga. Hakuna. Baba even came and gave permission for the protections to be removed so the mgeni could try to heal her with his magic. Now her burns are gone, the internal damage is repaired, but what power can call a soul back into the body?
"The mgeni has not left and he refuses to accept that she is dead. He is shouting and sputtering alien curses at whoever tries to go in there and he sends everyone away. I do not know what we should do next."
T'Challa clicked his tongue under his breath. "He is not one I would like to see upset, especially within the borders of the city."
"He is not one I would like to see upset by burnt eggs," Shuri said. "Convincing him that his pet scientist, his last connection to his dead brother and his home – convincing him that she is dead, I fear he will tear down all Birnin Zana in his grief and anger."
"You are right," T'Challa said. "But what can be done?"
"Brother, I do not know. Go back in time? Refuse him entry to Wakanda? Keep whatever it was from taking over Jane's mind? I do not think there is an easy fix for this and you know how much I dislike problems I cannot solve in my lab."
"I will speak with him," T'Challa said with a nod.
"I do not think that is a good idea. Wakanda still needs their future king," she said. She strained her neck to see up into his face and gave him such an imploring expression that he patted her on her braided cornrows.
"It is good they have a spare ready to replace me," he said and gave her a light smile. Shuri pushed his shoulder and clicked her tongue.
"Eh! Eh! Eh! A spare? Wakanda may have a spare, but I do not. I will not accept a replacement brother," she said.
"I will be cautious," he responded over his shoulder as he walked away. He left her to pace the halls and watch the large drops of rain drip down the window panes, momentarily calmed, but lost in her thoughts.
ooooooo
Through the window on the door to a large, private room in the medical center, T'Challa could see the hunched shoulders of the mgeni. He sat beside Jane's body, her limp hand in his, speaking softly to her. T'Challa hesitated outside the door for a moment before he knocked lightly and entered.
"Bwana," T'Challa said with a polite nod of the head and a tight smile. He and the alien prince were hardly on familiar terms with each other and he doubted his presence would be seen as a comfort now. T'Challa sat down on a bench a few meters from the hospital bed. He simply sat, hands clasped, elbows leaning against his knees, without saying another word.
The mgeni gave him a scathing glance and pulled himself tall. He tossed his slightly singed cape behind him, tensed his muscles, and pulled his chair closer to the hospital bed in an almost possessive manner. The Asgardian's face was streaked red with dried mud. Bits of grass still clung to his messed hair. A long gash cut through the fabric of his shoulder and into the skin beneath and dried blood stained his arm.
"Leave me be," Loki hissed.
T'Challa shook his head.
"I SAID LEAVE!" Loki shouted. He jumped up from his chair and flung out his arms to point towards the door. When T'Challa failed to moved, the mgeni swung around to forcefully knock over three tables of equipment. Glass smashed against the floor along with metal instruments, fresh rolls of gauze, and a basin of water.
T'Challa did not flinch. His cool, pitying stare fell upon Loki again. Loki haughtily tossed his head and turned his back to T'Challa. He kicked at a pair of scissors and watched them spin across the floor and hit a wall. Then the tense anger coiled in his muscles drained as if he were a punctured wineskin. He collapsed back on the chair and leaned his head against the hospital bed so that T'Challa could not see his face.
Neither prince spoke for the better part of an hour. Footsteps, rolling carts, and calls for hospital workers were the only sounds that could be heard apart from the relentless rain on the tiled roof above them. The mgeni broke the silence first.
"May the Infinity Stones be cursed to the very deepest fires in the heart of Muspelheim," he whispered. "Four remain. Will they claim my father and mother and all Asgard next? I swear, by the handle of Gungnir, I will destroy them all for this."
"The scepter, it is finished?" T'Challa asked.
"Yes."
T'Challa nodded. He had reviewed the footage with Okoye after the explosion in the garden and assumed it to be destroyed.
"I repaid her ill for the kindness she showed my brother," Loki whispered, speaking to the floor now rather than to T'Challa. T'Challa noticed the slight change in intonationthat signified Loki now spoke of Jane. "Who does not suffer for their loyalty to me?" he continued and stared at his hands, clenching and unclenching his fist.
T'Challa sighed heavily and leaned even deeper onto his elbows. The rain grew stronger outside, drenching the tile roof with what sounded like a waterfall of pebbles. Another flash of lightning lit the entire room for a moment and then vanished, making the lights in the room flicker for a moment before returning to full strength.
"By the Norns," Loki continued. He no longer whispered his words, but they came out flat and lifeless, absent the emotion that must have compelled them. "I sought out other scientists, but none could do what she could. Is it not despicable? Weak? That I would be reduced to depending on a woman, and a mortal one at that? I rule all Midgard save this one space-the one space I find myself inhabiting-and I find myself depending on the one person who has been taken from me. I pursue my own death without hesitation and yet death is meted out upon my closest companions instead of to the one who sought to claim it, the one destined for it. Like the serpent who chased its own tail, am I forever fated to be tied under the fangs of this vile snake and never to fully break free?"
Loki descended into the tumultuous mires of his own mind as the shadows on the walls stretched longer and longer into the receding day. T'Challa's hand sent away three rounds of doctors and nurses, guarding the solemn stillness for as long as he could. The rain tired to a light drizzle and extinguished by the time night fell.
Another knock on the door drew T'Challa's attention. As he turned to see who wished to enter, his eyes fell upon the prone woman, her dark hair in a sweeping disarray around her head. He blinked. He thought his eyes must be deceiving him because he thought he saw her chest rise. He shook his head and turned to her again. This time, her left pinky finger twitched.
"Bwana," he said tentatively. Loki's eyes flicked to him, rimmed red and slightly bloodshot. "Are my eyes deceiving me?" T'Challa said and pointed his chin in Jane's direction. In the direction where two eyes were now opened, staring at him with pupils a brighter blue than Lake Nyanza at midday. Her fists clenched and unclenched on the bed and she gave a slow yawn before blinking rapidly a few times.
Loki's eyes grew wide and he stared with a dumbstruck expression on his face. A deep inhale from Jane broke him from his stupor and he ran to grasp her hands again. His eyes swept over her from head to toe, fixating on her chest as it rose and fell in an impossible sign of life.
T'Challa went to the door where a servant held a tray of food for him. He sent the servant away with urgent summons for the doctors to come as quickly as possible. He returned to the room again and pulled a chair besides the bed.
"I'm really thirsty," Jane croaked in a hoarse voice.
"By Valhalla, what magic is this?" Loki whispered, no longer minding to maintain his mask or his dignity and allowing tears to freely pour down his cheeks. Three doctors arrived and they all stared in equal shock at the patient.
"Can we give her some water?" T'Challa asked, rising to fetch a glass that survived the mgeni's fit.
"Yes, yes," Dr. Okapi replied as he hurried to read over test results as they projected on a nearby screen.
T'Challa brought the cup to her and she sipped cautiously on the straw through dry lips, slowly but methodically draining the entire glass.
"Another?" she asked with a slight smile.
Ooooooooooooooooooooo
Before the chaos of healers finally subsided, Loki's patience had long since been extinguished and he barely restrained himself from forcibly removing them all from the premises. Before he could act on his impulse, the last healer bid him goodnight and charged him to let the patient sleep.
Loki sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and basked in the silence. It was too much. The swing of his emotions during this last night and day left him feeling like a drained cask of mead after a victory revel. He had yet to release Jane's hand, fearful that if he did so, if he didn't keep a physical reminder of her living, present being, that he would open his eyes and find she had disappeared again.
"Loki," Jane's quiet voice said. He opened his eyes and met hers. They shone as deep blue as the oceans surrounding Asgard and he shuddered at the sight.
Was her mind her own? Why did the mind spell linger after the Stone's demise? Was she herself or someone else? Could he banish the interloper if such an interloper existed?
"Are you ok?" Jane said. "You, uh, look terrible."
"Your flattery leaves something to be desired," Loki said as he raised one eyebrow.
She laughed weakly. "I guess I was out for awhile?"
"Jane, you were not simply 'out', you were dead," he responded.
She shrugged and tried to sit herself up in the bed.
"Rest," he said, trying to keep her down. She swatted his hand away and stuck her tongue out and lifted herself upright.
"I slept enough. Let me sit up."
He sighed and relented. She pulled her hand away from his and ran her fingers through her hair in a vain attempt to organize it. She paused to examine a large section and gave a light squeak.
"It's white! Why is this section of my hair white?"
Loki leaned closer to examine and he held it between his fingers. "It is indeed."
She wrinkled her nose in disgust then she looked down at her arms. Not a scar remained. She ran her fingers along where the burns had been.
"They're gone," she said.
"You remember the burns?" he asked.
"Of course," she said. "I remember nearly everything."
"Jane, what do you remember?" He asked. "Of what happened, I mean."
She released her arms back to the bed and pulled the grey blanket higher to cover her shoulders. Her white and brown stripes of hair fell down over her face, still in tangles.
"Yeah. Ok. It was weird. I was working on some tests on the scepter and all the sudden I heard a voice speaking to me, but not really speaking. It's hard to explain. It spoke to me, but it didn't use verbal words but I could still understand and knew it was from the Stone. It, uh, this is going to sound really insane, but I promise I'm not insane…well, you may not agree and my college professors and most of the scientific community may not agree, but I am not. Anyhow, the Stone spoke to me and she said she had been searching me for awhile and she liked me. She said she needed my help and in return, she would help me. She told me to touch the Stone," she gave a nervous laugh and glanced at Loki.
"Don't say it. I know. I know. Curiosity will be the death of me. I can't even argue with you about it this time. But I couldn't not touch it. I mean, here this Stone we've known for a long time has some kind of intelligence and will and mind is volunteering contact with me. I know. Terrible idea, right? Well, that's where it gets foggy. It's like I was in a mental haze after that. I was observing but not an active participant in any of the rest. You remember all that part, I'm assuming, since you were, uh, kinda there with me and I was talking to you but not talking to you."
"Unfortunately, I do seem to recall all of that," Loki said. "Including you dying."
"Yeah, about that…It's not like I could stop it…the Stone wanted to be destroyed. So then this is where it gets even crazier, when the Stone exploded, it was like my consciousness was sucked from my body. I know that sounds weird, but it felt pretty weird too. People talk about 'out of body experiences' and I can't come up with a better explanation than that. I could look down and see myself and see you and everyone here but I also wasn't fully here.
"It was like I was in two places at once. I could see and hear everything that happened here and I was also somewhere else….some kind of place between places. I can't describe it. It was somewhere so very bright. There was so much brightness I could almost feel it and taste it and hear it. I wasn't alone. There were voices speaking to me. Not really voices-more like consciousnesses. I don't know how I knew but I did know. It was the Stones. All of them-even the broken ones. They were holding together the universe and in all the universe and being held together by something outside the universe in something almost like a tapestry of forces or powers.
"The Mind Stone let me see it all. From one side of the universe to the other. It is something I'll never be able to put into words, I think, but I saw it all, while at the same time I could see everything here. Then she said 'the others are waiting.' They want you to finish what you've set out to do. You swore to free the others. You will, too."
She said this last with a smile that shone with perfect assurance in what she spoke.
Loki found himself at a loss for words.
"Your eyes are still blue," he finally decided on and then bit his tongue in frustration. It seemed a poor reply after all she had said.
"Are they? That's weird. I wonder if they'll go back? I liked my brown eyes."
"They suited you well," he said. "But the blue is…unusual."
"Now whose flattery leaves something to be desired?" she asked with a laugh. Loki gave a half-smile.
"Jane, truly, is your mind your own?"
"I'm not really sure how to prove or disprove that," she said with a shrug that dislodged her blanket. She pulled it up over her shoulders again. "I'm not really sure myself. I'm not fully back yet to how I was before. My mind, my senses, my body-I feel strange. Not bad. I mean, not like how I should be feeling after basically dying, but different."
Loki's mind ran through all she had said, circling it through him again and again. Pieces began to click and fall into place, like stones in an archway, and he swung towards her with wide eyes. "You were here, the whole time?"
"Yes."
"You could hear?"
"Yes."
He swallowed and stood, preferring to hide his embarrassment than face her in it.
"Don't," she said.
"What do you refer to?'
"Put on a mask. I prefer to hear your unfiltered thoughts. You've been more honest with me, and I suspect, with yourself, in the past few days than you've been in a long time. Don't hide again," she said, reaching out her hand to draw him back. "I'm back. I'm not going anywhere. And we've got a lot to do still."
"Indeed," he said, and he fell back into silence. He collapsed into his chair besides where she lay, and let her take his hand.
In the morning, the doctors found them still in this position, both asleep.
Ooooooooooooooooooo
Author's Notes: With how the last chapter ended, I didn't want to go too long between updates. Let me know what you think. ;)
Translations:
Tutafanya nini, kaka?: What will we do, brother?
Madaktari: The doctors
Hakuna: nothing.
Waganga: traditional healers.
Mgeni: outsider
Bwana: sir/term of respect
Lake Nyanza: Lake Victoria...it had a name (actually lots of local names, depending on tribe and language) before the British explorers named it in honor of Queen Victoria. I use the Kiswahili name.