A Little Unsteady

Chapter 4

"Loki!" Thor rushed into the medical wing's room, barely having time to take in the sight of Bruce Banner, Tony Stark or Steve Rogers. All he saw in his blue eyes was his world: his younger brother, Loki.

A Loki, who at the moment, was currently residing upon the floor in a crumpled heap. His eyes were scrunched up tightly and his back lay against the trunk of the table where he was meant to be laying upon. Midgardian machines beeped and uttered their grievances of annoyance at being disconnected, and Thor saw, additionally to his brother's plight, that Loki's arm was lightly bleeding.

He took in another moment of Loki's struggling gasps for air before he landed by his brother's other side, placed a heavy hand on his shoulder and aimed his blue eyes at Banner.

"What is the meaning of this? What's wrong with him?" Thor easily demanded, eyes narrowing in distrust as he continued to gather in him brother's ailment.

"Uh, well," Banner began but a hiccup and a cry uttered from Loki's lips as he shuddered out his own response.

"Everything, T-Thor, everything is wrong with me!" Loki sobbed again, a hitch in his breath and tears overwhelmingly pouring down his face. "I was born to die! This is the Allfather's punishment for my having sur-survived. I should be dead, I should be dead," Loki's voice turned into a howling wail, as his eyes expunged countless tears and his throat began to feel like it was constricting. He fought for every breath he took, as he always had, but this time it felt so much worse.

"The Chitauri-" Loki's words were choked off by another sob. His shoulders rattled as his shirt became damp with the tears and the sweat that rolled off his body. "They were right to have t-t-tortured me." Loki hiccupped again, eyes blearily opening to meet Thor's for the briefest of moments. "I-I deserved it. I deserve…" Uncharacteristically to the trickster, Loki leaned forwards towards Thor like he had once done as an upset little boy. He grabbed loosely onto the red cape that Thor wore, burying his face into the soft cloth that reminded him of the mother he shouldn't have been proud to have.

A mother whose love could do nothing to sort through the hell he'd been exposed to in the last few years.

Loki's voice cracked and pleaded behind his cries, muttering nonsensical words and phrases as he pleaded death to his older not-brother.

"Please, please," Loki muttered, as Thor brushed a gentle hand through Loki's hair.

Thor began to make hushing sounds, humming along to a tune that their mother once sung to them as little boys, in the hopes that the familiarity would calm Loki and remind him that he still had a home in Thor's and Frigga's heart, and that he always would.

"It's okay, Loki, it's okay," Thor murmured, voice lowered so that the other team members wouldn't hear. Suddenly, Thor recalled that for the moment, there WERE other team members in the room, and he still had not gotten his questions answered.

Thor glared up at Bruce, then at Tony and Steve. "What have you done to my brother?"

Tony's hands immediately shot up.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa there Goldilocks, I haven't-in fact, WE haven't done a thing to him."

Thor's eyes narrowed further in both suspicion and malice.

"You must have done something to put him into this state!"

Loki whimpered beneath him and Thor's concerned gaze returned to his brother once more, just as Bruce, still holding onto Loki's shoulder began to speak.

"Really, Thor, we haven't done anything to him. We brought him here because…" Bruce glanced at Tony, knowing this might not go the way they had hoped, and Tony nodded in encouragement. "Because well, Loki has been having… 'Attacks' recently." Bruce uttered sheepishly, not sure what to call the incidents that Loki was being afflicted by.

"What kind of attacks? My brother has not been harming anyone, has he?" Thor asked in confusion, his lips dry as he stared between each of his teammates, for the most part ignoring Steve.

"No, Thor, but Loki has been passing out a lot and we're all concerned for his safety as well as ours if something like this should happen while we're all on a mission." Steve replied compassionately, being acknowledged once again by the thunder god.

"Fainting?" Thor questioned, perplexed. "My brother has been fainting and no one had told me?" His cerulean eyes flashed in annoyance once more, his teeth grounding into his bottom lip.

"To be frank, he didn't want us to tell you," Tony replied, hand coming to rest on the back of his neck.

Thor sighed, understanding soon winning over his features.

"Loki never did want to let me know if he was ailed. It was something about him wanting to appear strong and mighty amongst my friends and I, but it would always cost him in the end." Thor smiled bitterly, familiar with this side of Loki.

"Right," Bruce said, nodding. "Well, he's got a lot more people counting on him this time around, so let's all try to get to the bottom of what is happening."

Thor tilted his head.

"I'm sorry doctor Banner, but what is this need to treat his fainting?" Thor noticed his friends shocked expressions and decided to continue before they thought ill of him, as well. "It's just that on Asgard, healers would normally provide rest and potions to help one sleep off the issue, if it were an issue like Loki's as you are describing to me. Not so much run these, er, tests to find out what is happening. I… I merely wish to understand."

Bruce nodded, encouragingly.

"Well, Thor, it hasn't just been one fainting spell. Loki has passed out about three times now-"

"That we know of." Tony cut in.

"-and each time the spell gets worse. He's been experiencing other symptoms alongside the fainting like vomiting, muscle weakness and what we all suspect now is tachycardia, or a fast heart rate." Bruce's eyes scanned over Loki's form, the trickster having spent himself emotionally and physically. He wanted to ask Thor another question but wasn't sure if now was the right time. Then again, when was it ever the right time?

"Do you know Loki's normal heart rate?" Bruce asked and didn't miss a beat as Loki squirmed almost timidly in response to hearing this.

Thor opened and closed his mouth for a moment.

"I…do not. We do not have such primitive machines as yours upon Asgard, and measuring one's heart rate was never deemed important. I… do not even know how we would measure something like this." Thor pointed to his own chest almost as if he were trying to measure his heartbeat himself.

Bruce smiled politely.

"That's okay, Thor, we'll just have to run some tests. Mainly, keep Loki on a Holter monitor for twenty-four hours, or the course of a day. This machine," Bruce demonstrated what the monitor looked like, small and black with wires coming out of it, "will record your brother's heartbeat as he goes about his normal activities. We'll want him to write in a journal what he's doing, in case anything comes up and we can further test if there's a relationship between his behaviors or emotions and the change in heart rate. He can't get wet while wearing this, and you see these wires? They connect to little leads that will be attached to his skin. Yeah, like that." Bruce nodded and his smile widened with encouragement.

"We're going to figure this out," Bruce looked from Thor to Loki, his eyes hovering more on the fallen god. "We'll work something out, I promise, Loki."

Loki sniffled to himself, hands already rubbing at his eyes to cleanse himself from the tear streaks that resided there and to put his brain back into his skull as it felt like it was residing on the outside of his ears.

Loki took a deep breath, air coming into his lungs and cooling inside his chest. His heartbeat had returned to normal but the feeling that he wanted to just stab himself in his beating organ remained. Oh how cruel the Allfather could be.

As Bruce began to further explain the set-up to Loki, Tony leaned into Cap's ear whispering, "Don't forget to ask him more about that whole torture thing, Capsicle. That's the first I've ever heard of it."

Steve glanced at Tony, eyes returning back to Loki as he nodded.

It was the first he had heard of it, too.

A/N: Well, hello again! I am on a WRITING ROLL. I've worked up now 3 fanfics over the last day and yes, you guessed it, this baby is gonna be longer than 7 chapters. I'm thinking at least ten now, and just going with the motions to give the story its room to expand and have justice! I hope you liked this update! Feel free to leave me your thoughts or critiques in the review section! *HUGS* (Update written August 21st 2017). I did NOT read it over again before posting, but will afterwards, so you may see some occasional edits here and there if I repeated myself too much. Also, yes, I AM a cardiophile, hence why I wrote about this shit. Yeaaaah. ^^