Apparently, New York City was a very big place, as in, so big that the Chitauri whale-ish spacecraft could tear up such a huge part of the city, with parts of the city still unchanged for the most part. Well, except for the terrible traffic as people tried to evacuate, but it was no worse than the terrible traffic as people simply existed in NYC.
So as Loki went to the gala (alone), and got himself captured (solitarily), and spent the night in the glass cell aboard the Helicarrier (without the assistance of a certain twelve-ear-old), Melody was put under the surveillance of a sweet, middle-aged lieutenant called Agent Donners. He was mind-controlled, and Melody felt really bad for him. He seemed like a really nice guy, and the niceness appeared to be deeper than just what Loki had allowed to remain. It was people like Agent Donners who made Melody really think hard about the psychological trauma mind control induced. No one deserved that, but sweet people deserved it the very least.
She wondered how much of the decision-making as to who got their minds reorganized was left to Loki, and how much was just Thanos being the terrible Thanos that he insisted upon being.
The two of them booked a hotel in the safer side of New York, spent the night there, and ate breakfast at IHOP, where Melody discovered there was a reason her parents only allowed her to eat two pancakes in a single sitting. She had a bit of a stomachache when they returned to their hotel, so Agent Donners set her up on the couch in front of the TV.
For a while, she amused herself by watching cartoons, until Agent Donners pulled back the curtain of the hotel window, and peered out with a very grave expression indeed.
Stomachache forgotten, Melody scrambled off the couch, her nest of blankets trailing behind her as she crept over to the window to peep out for herself. She could make out the portal, opened up above Tony Stark's Tower, and little caterpillars that must've been the spacecraft crawling out of it like maggots from the very earth.
"We got about twenty minutes, now." She estimated. She didn't actually know how long it took to stuff the nuke into the wormhole, but given that it was a feature-length movie, they couldn't have had much time.
"Twenty minutes?" Agent Donners echoed.
"Until the Hulk does what he does best, if you catch my drift." Agent Donners did not catch her drift, but she began strapping her shoes on, regardless. "Can we head over there? To Stark Tower?"
"I was instructed to keep you safe, Ms. Brooks." He replied. "And from what it seems, over there is not safe."
"Oh, but it will be." Melody assured him. "In twenty minutes."
"Agent Barton has been instructed to come and get us when it's all over, Miss." She could see his fortitude wavering, and under such little pressure, too. He really was just a big fluffy pushover.
"Agent Barton has already been compromised." She wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but it sounded big and important. "His Highness told you about my superpower, right?"
"You know the stories of how this battle happens?"
"Bingo." Melody shot him double finger guns and a cheesy wink. "And the story isn't exactly clear on whether Agent Barton remembers… anything from under his Highness' control. In fact, the odds are stacked against us. We're going to be forgotten, Donners. Left alone to rust here in this shabby old hotel."
Agent Donners glanced doubtfully back out the window at the enormous portal. "If you're sure…"
"IamIamIam!" Melody hopped on the balls of her feet. No, she wasn't going to mention that she really, really didn't want to miss "his highness" all squished and deflated in a Loki-shaped crater. Who else could say they had a chance to see it in person, besides the Avengers themselves?
Despite Agent Donners' skepticism, ten minutes later found the two of them were in a little sedan, driving towards the center of the action.
Well, Agent Donners was driving. Melody was bouncing in her seat, humming a happy little song as she tuned the radio, trying to locate a frequency still playing something worth listening to.
Sadly, this was 2012, and much of the stuff worth listening to had yet to be written. For a moment, she could have sworn that through the static, she heard someone calling her name. It was unnerving, and she turned the radio off to go back to her own happy humming.
As they got closer and closer to the Tower, the traffic became more and more insufferable, large bits of debris and rubble obscured the road, and the two of them decided it would be better to simply walk the rest of the journey.
It was sobering to think that people had once lived in these buildings. They'd driven to work here every day. The two of them didn't see any casualties, but there remained an aura of total devastation, such solemnity hanging over Melody's head like fog blotting out the sun. For a moment, she paused, a chill sweeping down her spine as she considered exactly how badly the movie had hurt this world.
"You alright, Miss Brooks?" Agent Donners asked, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders to keep her moving along before any Chitauri footsoldiers could happen upon them.
"I'm good." She mumbled back, but she was grateful for the half-hug as the went along.
Just as they got to the tower and found a back exit she could still enter in by, the Hulk's roar rumbled from up above, and she looked up as the enormous green figure crashed into an unspecified floor high above their heads. "Not like they put the floor numbers on the outside of the building," she remarked. No trouble. She could probably figure out which floor it was by herself.
"I suppose this is where we part ways." She turned to Agent Donners with a sad smile. "It was good to get to know you. His highness is in here, though, so I should be okay."
Agent Donners looked as though he was experiencing a terrible migraine, but smiled through the pain. It was this moment that she realized the only reason he had been so easy to persuade was because of his precarious mental state, due to the scepter's work. The first seeds of guilt began to grow in her mind as she realized she'd probably taken advantage of what Loki had done to him. It had been against his better judgement, and she felt like she maybe should have respected that. It was a little late, now, though.
Things weren't turning out the way she had expected at all. In all the fanfictions she'd read, the protagonist would've had at least a bit of fun, by now. It shouldn't all just be boring at best, and extremely sobering, bordering on horrific at worst. Besides the one moment she'd had giggling over canned soup with Loki, though, it really wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
"I really wish I could've punched you hard enough to recalibrate your cognition." She mumbled in Agent Donners' general direction. "But I'm afraid my arms are too wimpy."
Agent Donners looked a little unnerved at that statement, and with good reason. Without the context, she really it was a rather unnerving thing to say. "Find a medic." She advised, with an apologetic grin, and slipped through the back door into a clean white hall with gray carpets. It was quieter in there, the roar of battle dulled and muffled from outside. It didn't take long to find an elevator, and she punched in all the buttons that looked about as high as Hulk's smashing had occurred.
Despite having to check three whole floors for the fallen Trickster, she still managed to find him before the Avengers did.
He looked utterly miserable. In the movies, it had kind of been funny when the Hulk smashed him into the floor, and he'd seemed to be able to brush it off with a witty comment and then be walking around a few moments later. Melody wasn't sure why she didn't realize how hard it would have to be to knock a crater into a floor with a human… well, not exactly human body.
Why the heck was everything so bleak all of a sudden? Why couldn't she just have a single moment in the MCU while in close proximity to her favorite character in which he wasn't threatening her or in immense pain?
He was shaking, his eyes screwed shut, his breath coming ragged and uneven through his bloodless lips, and he didn't even hear Melody creep up close and crouch down near his face. "Hello," she said, almost whispering.
One eye cracked open, and his gaze seemed to have trouble landing on her face. "Hi," he wheezed. Just his acknowledgement of her presence seemed to bring a little less pain, either that or he'd decided to fake being less hurt than he actually was due to her being there. "You…. You knew this was going to happen… didn't you?"
"Yeah." She kind of felt sick about actually being excited to see him in so much pain. What had she been thinking? That it would be funny? "I didn't know it had been… this bad, though."
"S'not so bad." He assured her, lying through his bloodied teeth as he struggled to sit up. "A little war – ow – warning next time?"
Melody nodded in agreement. "As far as I know, you don't get smashed by the Hulk again in the story. If that's any consolation." She bit her thumbnail as he forced himself into a sitting position, the muscles around his jaw so tight she didn't know how his teeth weren't ground out of his gums. "You… You need any help?"
"I'm fine." He forced a tiny laugh, and toppled over onto his side with an agonized grunt. "I think… I think I broke something." For a moment he completely stopped breathing, and Melody worried that he'd actually died, before he slowly, painfully hissed another breath through his clenched teeth.
"Yeah, I think so too." Melody agreed. By now she was basically hopping with worry. "Probably a lot of somethings. Like your ribs?"
There had to be some way she could help. There had to be. What were you supposed to do for broken ribs?
"I… I don't think you should be moving around so much." She offered.
"Avengers coming." Loki whispered. "They'll…" He glanced up at Melody, and it took a second for her to realize that he was actually asking what they would do.
"Oh I don't think they'll hurt you…" Melody wished she could've put more confidence into that, but given that they had made him stand up and walk while in such a state, she wasn't actually sure how careful they would be to his poor bones.
"They already did." Loki pointed out, but despite his contrariness, he flopped over onto his side, and closed his eyes.
"I could try to find you some Ibuprofen?" She offered.
"I don't know what that is."
"Painkillers?" She clarified. "Like Acetaminophen?"
"Gesundheit." Apparently, he was not in too much pain to be a snarky little brat, and despite how nervous she was, Melody snorted a tiny laugh. She was rather relieved to see the corner of his mouth turn up into a tiny grin.
So that was how he handled such darkness throughout his life. He turned everything into something he could simply laugh off. If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink, now. Somewhere, she'd once heard that laughing released happy chemicals in the brain, and if that was true, Loki's brain must be swamped with them.
And he wasn't the only one who did this, she remembered.
Is everything a joke to you?
Funny things are.
It was one of his outer layers of defense mechanisms, a sort of power play. An illusion, conjured by a man who felt weak to inspire fear in the ones who'd tried to break him.
"Fine, find your Midgardian medications." Loki finally huffed, and the very fact that he was giving in worried Melody even more. "Couldn't hurt…" He trailed off, his eyes drifting over to lock with hers. "Melody?"
"Hi." She gave a little wave. "You good?"
"He's gone." He breathed, the snarky little grin melting into something full of wonder and relief, and… his eyes were wet. Oh gosh, he was going to cry. "Melody, he's gone. You knew about him, didn't you? He was… he was part of the story? Please tell me. Melody."
Melody's eyes were about as wide as saucers. "Thanos?"
Given from how hard he flinched at the very mention of the name, that would be the correct answer. "Yeah. Yeah, he was part of the story." She whispered, and pretended not to notice the tear that made it halfway down his bruised cheek before being discreetly wiped away.
He'd thought his torture, his mind control was going to go unnoticed, but that was exactly what Melody was never going to allow to happen. If she was going to be in the MCU and not have any fun, she was certainly not going to allow Loki to remain as unseen as he was throughout… well, everything up until Ragnarok.
Despite her bursting curiosity to know what it was like under mind control, she was pretty sure that would be a question her mother referred to as "untactful" at this point in time. Loki needed a moment of space, so she got up and hopped over to the bar to see if there actually were any painkillers around. In her underaged mind who had never drank any alcohol, it made sense for the painkillers to be near the liquor, considering hangovers and such.
Then again, she didn't really know much about how being drunk worked.
Oh, wait. There was Jarvis! He could help her! "Hey?" She called out experimentally. "Jarvis?"
Loki gave her a very confused look, and startled really badly the moment the AI system responded. Oops. Probably not a good idea to scare the injured members of her party.
"May I inquire as to your name, miss? Along with your connection to Loki?"
That was an excellent point. She couldn't just waltz around here, could she? She was suspect. "I'm Melody. Brooks. I'm not on anyone's side, don't worry." She smiled up at the ceiling, trying to figure out where the security cameras were.
"What do you mean by saying not on anyone's side? Could you please elaborate on that?"
Loki was giving her a rather calculating look, at this point, as well, and she hoped she hadn't dug a hole for herself on both ends. Jarvis probably had some sort of security gun trained on her. "Well… I like everyone, okay? I want to be Loki's friend, but I also want to be Mr. Stark's. So I'm not taking sides. Consider me Finland."
"Finland?" Loki echoed.
"No, that's not right." Melody tapped her fingers on the counter. "Right, it's Switzerland, isn't it? The Neutral party who wants all of you guys happy. I'm just trying to help, okay?"
Jarvis hesitated a second before answering. "What are you doing, here, then?"
"Helping." Melody grinned amiably. "I have a patient who needs medical aid. Do you have ibuprofen around here somewhere?"
"I think it would be wise for me to wait for sir's opinion on this." Jarvis pointed out. "It's his tower, after all."
"Okay, cool." Melody acknowledged as she dug through another drawer under the bar. "How close is he now, would you say?"
"Er… Melody." Loki softly spoke up. She peeked up over the edge of the bar, only to come face-to-face with the billionaire, himself, the mask of his iron man suit already wrenched off, a totally exhausted and fed-up-with-life look in his eyes. Loki was completely surrounded by the remaining Avengers.
TheOnlyHuman.
