After Bruce administered the drugs, Loki slept for most of the day and in the brief periods when he didn't, he didn't seem entirely there. At least that's what Tony and Bruce were saying. After that visit on midday, she didn't go up to his room and promised herself she wouldn't until she had no other choice.
Not because she was a stranger to sickness and suffering. She had seen enough in her long career to build immunity to those sights. Yet, there was something truly unsettling, seeing a person like this, battered and beaten, having to depend on total strangers in a moment of vulnerability. It should be Thor at Loki's bedside, or his friends, or his parents – his partner? children? did Loki even have a family of his own? – not Tony and Bruce, two people he barely knew, whose world he tried to conquer a couple of days ago.
Even her, straying from human contact for the most part, jumping from one job to another, spending more time on missions than in her own apartment, avoiding ties with people, would have someone who could be there for her – Clint and Laura, Coulson too, if it was bad enough for her to go to him. She knew they would take her in, no matter what happened, no matter what she did.
But there was nobody there for Loki. A thousand years of life, and yet, there was no one. Did he push everybody away? Was he truly the monster he claimed to be? Or did the people around him just do not care enough?
Did it even matter?
"Wanna go out?" Clint said, clapping down on the sofa next to her. "I'm gonna go home for the weekend, we can grab a coffee or something before I go."
"I don't think I should leave Tony and Bruce with my problem," she said, carefully.
"Hey, Stark was the one to invite you two in the first place, so now it's kind of his problem too, right?"
"If it wasn't for Tony, I'd have a dying alien on my couch. The least I can do is stay here and make myself useful."
Clint rolled his eyes. "It's not like he's your friend or anything."
"He is not. But he's my charge now and I'm responsible for his wellbeing. So far, it looks like I suck at my job."
"Hey, that was an undisclosed, preexisting condition. You wouldn't allow him to tag along if you knew, right?"
She shrugged. Would she? "I called Fury. I didn't tell him about what's happening yet and I won't until I have to, but I asked him why he just cut Loki loose without a place to go. You want to know what he told me?"
"You know I do," Clint scoffed and leaned back on the couch, stretching his hand on the backrest above her shoulders.
"Fury offered him a room in Riverhead. Loki refused."
"That's even better! He had a place to go and he shot it down. How can you be responsible for that?"
She shrugged again. "I know, but it still bugs me. Say what you want, but Loki's not a moron, he must've known what he is doing, but he still preferred the uncertainty of tagging along with us over Fury's guaranteed bed and breakfast service."
"So? This is still the alien guy who attacked us, remember? How can you even assume he uses the same logic we do?
"I can't, but I feel there's more to that. I think he's still convinced he's being under persecution and what Fury offered him was not an employee accommodation, but a cell. Not sure if you've noticed, but he doesn't seem to be a huge fan of those."
Clint rolled his shoulder and tapped his fingers on his thigh. "Tough shit. It's not like he couldn't ask."
"I don't think that's how it's done in Asgard," she said vacantly. "You should've seen him this morning. He could barely hold his head up, yet he still tried playing it tough, because that was what he thought we expected of him. You think it's obvious, under such a mindset, to voice your reservations, instead of just swallowing them?"
"I don't know," Clint chuckled. "It's your job to figure people out. I'm just shooting at them with my arrows."
She hid her face in her hands. "This is so frustrating."
"It is? I wouldn't be able to tell," he jeered. "Come on, pack your shit up and come home with me. The kids would love the surprise. You can get back to it on Monday."
She bit her lip, considering. That was an alluring proposition. To just leave this all shitstorm behind and wait for it to die down on its own. It wasn't like she could do anything anyway, right? Either Loki got better on his own, with Bruce's help, or he didn't and they would have to get SHIELD involved. In either case, he would be safely out of her hair.
"I can't," she said. "I'd love to, but…"
Clint waved his hand. "It's always just excuses with you."
"Clint…"
"I'm joking! You know I am. Everybody knows you take your job seriously. That's why Fury is so fond of you. You get a job and you do it. No excuses, no delays. Seriously, he would hang your picture in the atrium, between that photos of Rogers and Carter, if it didn't destroy the whole idea of being a spy."
She smiled at him. "Thanks."
"That was not a compliment. You gotta figure a healthy life-work relationship."
She gave him a sideways glance. "That sounds like something Dr. Curtis would say."
"That's exactly what Dr. Curtis said," Clint laughed.
Clint left and she hovered around the lounge, not sure what to do with herself. She made herself a coffee, then another and another, trying out different settings, until she found a perfect one.
She watched TV for a while, but the regular programming was as mind-numbing as it usually was and there was nothing on the news. SHIELD's algorithms managed to scour all reports about the fiasco with the Pegasus facility and about Germany from the news feeds and the general public remained oblivious. Which meant they did a good job, yet again.
There was a row of bookshelves along the wall behind the TV and she walked along it, dragging her fingers on the spines of the leatherbound tomes. A lot of classics in there, from Greek poetry in original to American Modernism. Did anyone ever read those, or were they placed here just because Stark's interior designer thought it would look fancy? There must not be much time to kick back and sit down with a book and a cup of coffee in the life of someone like Tony Stark, between his projects, his activity as the Iron Man and backseat driving a company she was surprised he even found time to sleep, less alone for leisure.
He changed since she last met him. She couldn't exactly say how, he was still this mouthy, witty guy, overcompensating for his complexes with cutting remarks and flaunting his vast knowledge, or fortune, on occasion, but it was clear he was way more proud of the former. Yet, there was something brittle about him now, a new vulnerability that was not there even when he thought he's dying. Was it Potts' influence or did the weight of the world he was carrying finally settled on his shoulders and crushed his spine?
Maybe that's why he was so hooked on the Avengers initiative. Stark might be the only person besides Fury – and, by extension, Coulson, because Coulson looked up to Fury as if he was a sacred icon and not a flawed, flawed man he truly was – who ever believed it's even possible. Because perhaps this was exactly what he needed. A team of people who knew what's like to do what he did, to run out into the night to save the world from one crisis after the other and then get blamed for the eventual fallout, because they did the same thing. A team of people to mourn your losses and celebrate your victories with.
They were a concoction, a chemical mix waiting to go up in flames, yes. But the same powder that made bombs, made fireworks, too. Maybe they could be more of the latter?
And, she realized with a start, maybe she wanted that too?
She spent the night in the same room Tony showed her to yesterday. He didn't tell her to get lost and she suspected he didn't really care. The tower was awfully empty anyway, the upper one-third of it were only residential floors that served as Tony's living quarters. And Pepper's, when she was in town. There were no live-in services, no human security, no butler, no kitchen staff, just Tony and his robots and his ceiling buddy with its – his? their? – witty banter to match Stark's own humor.
She was lying on the huge bed, watching the New York lights glimmer in the distance and wondering how lonely such an existence must be. To stand in the grand living room of the penthouse, knowing there's not a living soul anywhere in the whole, enormous building. Designed to be inhabited by a whole lot more people, by no one other than Stark himself.
Maybe that was the other reason he wanted them here; the break in the silence they offered outweighing the trouble they brought. Not like a team, but more like a family.
She laughed, out loud, and it sounded empty in the huge room. Was it a coincidence that none of them ever had a proper family or just a result of Fury's profiling?
She was raised in the Red Room, an institute dedicated to training girls of particular talents, after they've been taken from their families at a young age. She was told she was an orphan and she believed that, for years, until SHIELD showed her the file.
Clint really was an orphan, just with his abusive older brother to take care of him, at least until he beat him up too hard one too many times, landing Clint in a hospital for months and then in the clutches of the American foster care.
Bruce's file didn't go on at length about his parents, but what was there, was enough to give her an idea – a mother dying young and a deadbeat dad with an alcohol problem.
Rogers was raised by a single mother and Stark's parents sent him abroad for years on the first chance they got.
And Loki? She knew nothing for sure, but there was no way a guy who would lock their own child in a cave with their goddamned lips stitched shut for years could make a good parental figure. Yeah, she suspected he would fit right in their little band of strays.
A billionaire with a superhero complex, a World War Two relic, an archer with a grudge, a rage monster in disguise, a former KGB spy and an alien wizard. Yep, that's quite a team.
Quite a family, too.
Bruce prepared some late breakfast for them – which involved a potato salad of all things, which was not a famous morning food, but it was delicious and she wasn't going to complain – and they ate in silence. He looked a lot less fresh than yesterday morning, as if he didn't sleep at all, which was probably what happened, as he was holding a self-appointed vigil by Loki's bed. Tony didn't look that much better, as if he just got up from the bed with too little sleep and wandered straight downstairs, which was exactly what happened.
"I still have Fury's homework on my plate. I can't tell him to shove it or he would suspect something's not right," he said quietly, drained the rest of his coffee and got up for a refill.
"You're not going to ask?" said Bruce, not looking up from his plate.
She sighed. "Should I? Did something change?"
Bruce shook his head. "His injuries continue to heal, but the fever is not going down. I brought a scanner from the lab, thinking maybe there's something I missed, but besides a few oddities about Loki's anatomy, I found nothing that could look suspicious. There might be like a ton of things I missed, but without a reference…"
"Yeah, the doc on the Helicarrier said the exact same thing. They had nothing to compare the results to."
Bruce nodded, sadly. "I'm not the most skilled, most knowledgeable medical doctor on the planet, but I'm afraid it doesn't matter. No matter who we – or SHIELD – will get to look after Loki will crash against the same barrier. And our only source of information is currently a barely lucid tangle of anxiety and paranoia."
She bit her lip.
"He's been asking about you," Tony provided, sitting back down with the new serving of coffee in his hand. "But I don't think he would remember anything of it. Which is a grace, if you ask me, because it wasn't pretty, let me tell you. The crying for a mercy killing kind of not pretty. He appears to think Fury only waits to drag him into some dark hole and do the very same shit Thanos did to him, whatever it was." Bruce opened his mouth and Tony stopped him with a raised hand. "Yes, I know you examined him and I know you have guesses, but I don't want to hear them. I like to sleep at night without nightmares and just looking at him gives me enough of an idea."
Bruce pursed his lips and returned to his salad.
"Part of me keeps on wishing for Thanos to come at us right away, so I could kick his head to the orbit for the stuff he did…"
"Tony…"
"Part of me, I said, didn't I? The rest of me knows we are not ready. If an army of Thors could barely kick him out of their world, how can we hope to do it on our own?"
"That's a good question," Bruce mused. "Can we even do that?"
Stark rolled his shoulders carelessly. "I don't know. We don't know what exactly we are up against and the only person who can tell us…" He paused and looked up and somewhere to his right, which was roughly the area where Loki's room was located.
"About that," Bruce said with a sigh. "I'll better bring him some breakfast. Maybe he'd hold it down this time."
"I'll do it," she said. She's been avoiding her duties long enough. "Get some sleep, you look like shit."
Bruce considered for a couple of seconds and nodded. "I'll come by around noon, to change the drip."
Bruce prepared a tray with some toast, a bowl of salad and a glass of milk, then, after a moment of consideration, added a glass of orange juice. "Ask about the milk before you give it to him, I'm not sure how well he could process diary."
"Is he good enough to tell me?"
"Only if you get lucky."
The image in Loki's room changed from that of an upscale bedroom to that of a luxury hospital room, with various machines Bruce hauled up here still set up around the bed, a line of medicine vials on the side table and with the IV setup, with a tube running from the drip bag to Loki's forearm.
He looked even worse than when he did when she'd seen him before, despite all odds. Bruce was right – his physical injuries were healing, but they seemed to stand out more against his ashen skin and his hair was a sweaty mess around his sunken face.
Loki was lying on his side with his eyes closed, but she was almost certain he wasn't asleep this time. His breath hitched and his fingers twitched anxiously when he heard the door closing.
"It's just me," she whispered and set the tray on the table, pushing some of the vials away.
Instead of showing relief at the notion, he pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around himself protectively. "I'm no use to you like this," he breathed, his voice rugged and devoid of all strength. His eyes remained closed, but she could see his eyeballs twitching under his heavy lids.
"Shh, it's all right, we can talk about that when you get better," she said placatingly. "For now, I got you some food. Would you like that?"
He shook his head.
"Just a few bites? You got to eat something."
He shook his head again, putting a bit more dedication in the motion, which was probably the extent to his abilities right now.
"Don't do that," he said. "Please."
"Don't do what?"
"Act like you care."
"I do."
He tried laughing and sent himself into a fit of dry cough. "No one does," he rasped, when he controlled it somewhat.
She rubbed her eyes. There was no point in arguing with him. Bruce and Tony were right, he wasn't in his right mind and verbal struggles would just strain him even more, completely unnecessarily. They could have that discussion later.
There was a stretch of silence, filled just with Loki's labored breathing, before he spoke again. "I am going to die here."
It wasn't a question, just a dry statement of fact and there was no pleading in it, nor self-pity.
"Maybe not," she said carefully. "Not if we can help it. So, how about you work with me for a moment and drink something?"
His shoulders shook and she couldn't tell whether it was a shiver or a shrug.
"Just a few sips? It will make it better, I promise." From the look of his lips and the sound of his voice, his throat must be parched. She put her hand on his hip and ran it in circles, in what she hoped was a soothing motion. "So, what are you saying?"
His eyes finally snapped open then and looked up at her, lost and unfocused. There were red blobs among the green of his irises now. "Why don't you just let me die?"
She smiled at him, but she couldn't make it as sincere as she would like. "Dying is awfully final from what I've seen. Why are you in such a rush to get there?"
It was a shrug this time, she was almost certain.
"How about we make another deal? You try to stay alive just one more day and we talk about it again tomorrow? How does it sound like?"
He blinked and a tear ran down his cheek. He didn't seem to notice. He sighed and nodded.
"Great! So, drink now? I've got milk and juice, but I can get you some water too."
"Juice is fine," he said, then allowed her to raise his head and hold the glass to his lips until it was gone.
Then he let her feed him some of the salad and a few pieces of toast.
He puked it all out a few minutes later, but she still counted it a success.