"Hello, Princess," was the first thing Loki heard when he woke up the next time. Stark's beaming face was the first thing he saw. "How are you feeling today?"
Loki wasn't sure of the answer right away, so he pulled himself up into a sitting position, with his back against the headboard, trying to decide on one in the process. That alone was enough to set his arms to trembling. The pain was subdued, because of the medicine, but the little boost the energy gave him was wearing off, bit by bit. It wasn't as bad as before, not yet, but he wasn't entirely sure he would be able to walk around like he did yesterday. "Could be worse," he said cagily.
Stark's brows furrowed. "It's getting there again, isn't it?"
Loki pursed his lips and nodded, curtly. He was burning through the energy quickly. Way too quickly. He didn't draw much before he fainted, but it should have been enough, if not for magical feats, then at least enough to heal his injuries and leave some reserve. But here he was, barely two days later and already at the end of it, yet again.
Stark sighed. "Gotta hate Mondays," he grumbled and took a sip of his coffee.
Loki perked up and stared at the man. "It's… Monday already?" He had a good idea about how mortal time measurements worked, but he completely lost the count of days and arrived upon his agreed meeting time with Fury without even realizing it. He scrambled down from the bed, then stood there on shaky legs, holding on to the nightstand for support and trying to get his breathing under control.
Stark crooked his head and raised an eyebrow. "And where do you think you're going?"
"I need to…" His voice broke, so he cleared his throat. "I have to go and meet Director Fury."
"The only place you have to go is your bed. Or the bathroom, if you absolutely need to."
Was Stark going to keep him here against his will? Would he go against Fury's direct orders? He must know what would happen if Loki didn't keep his end of the bargain. Was this what Stark was trying to cause, after all the – perhaps only seemingly – selfless help he and Bruce offered to him? But why?
Stark chuckled and waved his hand. "Romanoff is smoothing it out with Fury right now."
Loki's eyes narrowed. "What is she going to tell him?"
"I don't know," Stark said, throwing his arms to the sides. "Some credibly sounding lie, most likely."
"Stomach flu. Really?" Fury said, sounding entirely not amused.
"Yep," Natasha confirmed, "Turns out Earth food is not a perfect fit for space aliens."
On the other side of the call, Fury hummed with displeasure. "Really."
"I can ask Stark to send you security footage if you feel like looking at your new hire clutching the toilet bowl and looking absolutely miserable."
There was a moment of silence on the other side. "There will be no need. Just have him call me when he feels better."
"Of course. Would that be all, Director?"
"It's you who called me, Romanoff. And yes, that's all."
The call ended and she put down the phone and propped her head with her arms on the table.
"Did he buy it?" Bruce asked, turning away from the stove. It seemed like cooking, hunkering over the equipment in Tony's lab and sitting at Loki's bedside were the only three things he was doing these days.
"No. But he's got the readouts from the tracker, and he knows that Loki's here and that he is alive and would allow the farce to continue for a couple more days before he calls the cavalry in, because he is adamant about getting on Loki's good side. For now."
"And that then?"
She shrugged. "Either Loki gets better, or I will have to call it in and come clean about the whole deal." She let out a sigh.
"What's the problem?"
"I'm starting to think we've made a mistake. Maybe we should have allowed SHIELD to handle it? If someone can do it, it's them. What if we're not doing something that could be saving his life now?"
"Mhm," Banner murmured.
"You don't sound too convinced."
He breathed out in exasperation. "I know you've been running with SHIELD for years and I guess it must look different from the inside, but… I've seen what they've done to Blonsky. Locked him up in cryo to run experiments on his body, because that's what the man was to them. An object, not a person. The same would happen to me if Fury didn't take pity. Who knows what they might do to Loki if they decide he is too dangerous to be left unchecked? And who knows how many more people were not as lucky?"
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Quite a few."
"What happens to them?"
She looked away and rolled her shoulder. "I don't know. The Fridge, The bases on the Pacific, the research centers on Alaska, the prisons in Eastern Europe. The Raft, too, once they finish building it. But that's not a part of my job. My job is to bring in those who can be brought in and eliminate those who cannot. The rest is not my business."
"Maybe it should be."
She pursed her lips and didn't answer.
Maybe it should.
Tony's phone pinged a new message and he brought it up to read it. In the corner of his eye, Loki tensed where he was sitting on the bed, awaiting the news from Romanoff as if it was a presidential pardon and he was ten minutes away from execution, because that was the level of intensity Loki operated on, on a daily basis.
"Looks like you're off the hook for a couple more days at least."
Loki didn't even try concealing the relieved sigh, then he fell back on the bed and pressed his fingers to his eyes.
"You know that Fury is not going to lock you up or torture you for being ill, right?"
Loki let his hands fell to his sides then turned his head to look at Tony. "And how could you possibly know that? You weren't even there. He was quite explicit. My cooperation is the only thing keeping me out of another cell. Does this look like cooperation to you?" He gestured at his face, then continued the gesture all over his body.
"You're not out murdering civilians or blowing up government facilities when you sit on your ass in bed, so, yeah, I'd say it falls neatly into the definition of cooperation," Tony said with a smirk.
Loki blinked at him, huffed out a derisive laugh and turned his gaze back to the ceiling.
"You wanna do the energy transfer thing again?"
"What?"
"It helped you last time, right? Let's do it again."
Loki pulled himself up onto his elbows. "Why?"
"And why not? It doesn't harm any of us."
Loki's eyes narrowed.
"Also, Bruce would like to put you in a resonance machine for a full CAT scan and then run a spectral analysis to find out what happens to that energy once it goes to your body," Tony said, then quickly added, before the suspicious glower fully blossomed on Loki's face, "That step is completely optional, but it might help us figure out what's wrong with you and fix it."
Loki watched him for a moment through slanted eyes, his expression pensive and calculating. "All right."
It didn't escape Tony's attention that he didn't ask about the details of the procedure or what exactly it might look like, but he couldn't tell if it was a comforting observation or not. On one hand, it might mean Loki started to trust them, at least to some extent, on the other – that it played to that "devil may care" mindset of his in which his life had no meaning, because it was already forsaken. He doubted that outright asking Loki would clarify the issue though, so he didn't.
"You think you can make it on your own to the lab?"
Loki frowned.
"That's where the machine is. It's too massive to haul upstairs, hell, I'm not sure if it would even fit in this room. Not to mention the radiation… So, it's one of the 'if the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain' cases. That's a saying and it means…"
"I do understand context, Stark, even when I can't fully comprehend the meaning of your words," Loki said.
"Good for you, Maleficent."
Loki grumbled in displeasure. "Do you want me to go now?"
"I'll have to clear out the lab first. It's on one of the commercial levels downstairs, and it's the morning of a workday."
"And I am a dirty secret you don't want your people to know about," Loki said absently. There was no vitriol in the statement, which probably made it even worse.
"Oh, please, are you for real? I can't wait till people figure out who you are. Can you imagine the headlines? Tony Stark seen with an alien from a distant civilization of Space Vikings who also might or might not be Norse gods. Are they having a secret affair?"
Loki wasn't amused. "Then why?"
"Do you really want a bunch of strangers looking over our shoulders while we crack open the secrets of your body?"
Loki took in a long, deliberate breath. "I'm no stranger to humiliation," he said, quietly, without looking at Tony.
"Me neither," Tony joked, but it came out flat. They ought to be talking about two entirely different things. Not to mention that it wasn't even what Tony meant in the first place. "That's why I know I want to avoid it wherever I can. Thus, we're clearing the lab. We can do all of the social calls you wish once you're better. Okay?"
"Okay," Loki murmured, collapsed back down, and pulled a pillow over his face.