In the hallway, Bruce almost ran headlong into Thor, who staggered around groggily.
"Ah, Banner," he said, voice slurred with sleep and painkillers. "Which room belongs to Loki?"
"Um –" Bruce surveyed Thor, clad in only a pair of borrowed pajama pants, barefoot, hair tangled with bits of the city still caught in the strands. "We're gonna let him get some rest."
Thor's brow knit confusedly, and he said, "But I wish to see him."
"Yeah, but he needs to rest," Bruce told him. "Doctor's orders."
"But –"
"Thor," Bruce cut him off. "Look, nobody's in the bathroom right now. Why don't you clean up a little bit in the meantime?"
Thor considered this, giving Bruce a skeptical eye. "And then I can see him?" he asked.
Bruce shrugged. "I can't make any promises."
Thor paused, thinking this over. "Banner, how bad are his injuries?" His voice was smaller – quieter. Worried.
"No worse than anyone else's," Bruce said. And it wasn't a lie. The actual injuries that nicked away at Loki's body were nothing exceptional by comparison. "It's his energy that needs healing. The best thing we can do for him is give him time to get back on his feet."
Pensively, Thor rubbed the back of his neck. "It is not natural, summoning the wastes like that. I have never heard of a Frost Giant who could do it. That is why the Casket was invented. To have all that power coursing through him all at once – it must have been agony." Before Bruce got a chance to respond, Thor snapped out of his thoughtful state. "I shall check on him later," he told Bruce, nodding once.
"How about you check with me first?"
"As you wish." And he turned and went down the hall until he came to his room again. A minute later, as Bruce was checking his charts, he saw Thor go into the bathroom with a towel over his shoulder.
Good. That would keep Thor busy for a little while.
Preventing the man from getting to his brother had been a bit of a job thus far. Luckily , he had slipped a slight sedative into Thor's medicine injection, so he had slept most of the hours away. He jotted down on Thor's chart to possibly increase the dosage until Loki stopped fluctuating between stable and not.
He peeked in on Natasha and found her to be asleep. Clint, in the room next-door, was just the same. Bruce was quietly glad that they were sleeping; their nights were always restless, and they had spent the last one lying awake. When he had checked in on them at two in the morning, he had found Natasha in Clint's room, lying horizontally across the foot of his bed, her head resting in her hand. Clint had crossed his legs, sitting up against the headboard. On the comforter between them, their hands rested, Clint's gently covering hers, his thumb drawing patterns on the soft skin behind her knuckles. The only light was that cast by the full moon beaming down through Clint's open window. They just laid there, talking in hushed voices – about what, Bruce wasn't sure he wanted to know. There was a reason they hardly ever slept, and it wasn't that they were too happy to rest.
He was so glad that he never had to see what they had seen. Do what they had done.
He didn't need that much red in his ledger.
Neither, he reasoned, did they. And talking in the middle of the night – exchanging stories and telling the truth to one another under the cover of darkness when nobody else would hear – was their way of clearing it.
So Bruce let them sleep now, moving on to Steve's door.
"Morning Cap," he said by way of greeting as he entered the room.
"Morning, Doc," Steve returned. He was already up and out of bed, dressed, and shrugging into his favorite bomber jacket. "How goes the recovery?"
Bruce stuck his stethoscope in his ears again, saying, "It goes. How are you feeling?"
"Like I had a good workout."
After listening to Steve's heart and lungs a minute, Bruce packed up the stethoscope once more. "Well, that's all you sound like. And no one looking at you would guess that, not a full day ago, you were defending the earth from an alien army."
Steve sat down on the edge of his bed, pulling on his boots. "I guess that's one of the up-sides to being a lab rat."
"Hey, you and me both, pal," Bruce said, clapping a hand onto Steve's shoulder.
Steve laughed a little at that. "So I'm clear for duty, Doc?"
Bruce hemmed and hawed for a moment, looking over Steve's charts. "I guess so," he finally said. "I mean, your vitals are perfectly normal, I'm not seeing adverse effects to any of your injuries, and, well, to be honest, you look just about healed. But, do me a favor and be careful anyway, alright?"
"Yes sir," Steve replied, standing.
"Out of curiosity," Bruce said, packing his things back onto his cart, "where are you going?"
Steve smiled as he made for the door. "SHIELD. I'm dropping off my suit for repairs."
"Take Clint's too," Bruce recommended. "His vest got it bad yesterday."
"I remember." Steve paused a moment, then said, "Do you think they're going to ask?"
With a slight grimace, Bruce replied, "I think they already know."
"And what should I tell them about Loki?"
Bruce hesitated. "Tell them the truth: that he hasn't said a word to any of us, but, given his actions yesterday, we're treating him as one of our own."
Steve nodded. "So, subtly tell them to mind their own business."
"Pretty much." Bruce chuckled to himself. "This could get interesting."
"We'll see." And, with one last smile over his shoulder, he added, "Thanks for patching me up, Doc."
Bruce shrugged. "No problem. You did most of the hard stuff yourself anyway."
Steve just laughed, and then, he said, "I shouldn't be out too long, but, if he starts talking –"
"I'll call you."
"Thanks."
The instant Bruce had left her room, Sif had waited only thirty seconds before swinging herself out of bed and following him out the door. The hallway was deserted – thank the Norns – and Loki's bracelet would conceal her, but she crept along nonetheless.
When she finally got through the labyrinthine halls, she found the room she was after, and she stopped.
Bruce wouldn't like it; that much she knew for certain.
But, a certain friend of hers had always showed her that flouting the rules could bring about worthwhile results. If done correctly, of course. And, naturally, he had also shown her the correct way.
His words crooned in her head as her hand hovered over the knob: "Rules are in place to keep us safe, yes, but a safe life is rarely a meaningful one." It was true; he always had lived for moments like this, fuelled by the thrill of expressly ignoring instructions and boundaries.
She shoved deliberations aside and opened the door.
He was so pale.
Sitting more or less upright in bed, dark shadows under his eyes, he looked the picture of exhaustion. Still, when he saw her, he didn't speak, only folding the blankets back and climbing out of bed. It was a slow, painstaking process.
He stood there, barefooted on the hardwood floor, watching her.
She strode up to him, fists bunched, and, without missing a beat – without truly realizing what she was doing – she swung at him.
Where her knuckles should have collided jarringly with his jaw, though, her fist passed straight through him. Then, once the stirred pixels had come back together, the entire image dissipated like smoke.
From around a corner, Loki stepped cautiously, silently. He looked just as weary as his projection had. "I figured you would do that," he said softly as he arduously crossed the room to sit on the edge of his bed. Every step looked like a trial.
"You deserve it," she told him, holding her chin high, trying to stave off the warmth of remorse that threatened to color her cheeks; she shouldn't have tried to hit him, and she knew it.
For a long moment, he stared at her. His eyes lacked the unfeeling dullness that had befallen them in the last year, and the precious, beautiful realization made a knot ball up tight in Sif's throat.
"You've been gone so long," she said, the words pouring forth, stumbling over themselves now that they had finally been unfettered. "None of us knew what had transpired. We all worried that – that, this time, you might not actually. . . . I worried that I might never. . . . Meanwhile, here you've been on Midgard. The whole time, I thought something terrible had happened to you, and yet –" She felt tears burning at her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Not again. "Heimdall couldn't see you; I had no way of knowing."
He said not a word, but she thought she saw a drawn look to his lips that seemed almost sad. Not for himself; for her. He fidgeted guiltily with the cuffs of his shirtsleeves, playing at buttoning them and unbuttoning them several times before giving up. "I prayed for you," he said quietly. "Every day that I was here. I hoped that you would find peace and not fear for me"
At this, she rolled her eyes. "You baffle me, Loki Odinson," she told him. "For being so clever, there remain some things that you truly must not be capable of comprehending." For a moment, his brow creased as though he had been taken aback by her remark; so, she closed the gap between them with long, war-bent strides. "I will always fear for you when you're away," she iterated. "And I will always, always try to find you."
A silence stretched uncomfortably between them, stifling the air itself with tension. Loki's mouth opened, closed, and opened once more before he spoke. "And if I am somewhere you cannot go?"
"Then I shall pray that you will find your way back to me," she replied. With a glance down at his hands, she added, "Even if it is in chains."
His eyes dropped to the ground. "My lady of course knows that I was not sent here for a simple lark and that this was never merely a pleasure trip."
"Your lady knows," she responded, taking one step closer, arms crossed obstinately. "But she cares not for it."
"I thought," he said, reaching a pale finger out to touch the strip of leather he had given her eons ago, "you were not my lady."
"I wasn't." When his eyes flickered up at her, calling her bluff without a word, she amended, "I'm not." His gaze didn't waver. "You are my prince," she stated, frustration seeping into her tone. "I am duty-bound to serve you with my life."
A wave of gratitude washed over her when his eyes slid back to the floor, taking with them his oppressive, omniscient implications. He was only quiet a moment, though, before he said, "Perhaps you could tell me how it came to pass that your portal deposited you right on top of me."
"I said Thor's name, and it so happened that you were standing alongside him," she returned with whiplash efficiency.
"The portal is your vessel, but your thoughts are the compass," he said.
"I've no taste for your riddles," she shot. "I said Thor's name."
"Yes, I'm sure you did." He looked up. His suffocating green eyes bored a hole straight through her, painfully peeling back her body to see the soul that lay underneath; she knew it was pointless to lie to him – he, the one worshiped on Midgard as the god of lies. It would never be anything but pointless; she had pitted herself against him enough times now to know that much for certain.
"Fine," she conceded. Then, with a decisive sort of resolve, she stepped forward, taking his lapel in her fist. Before he had a chance to react, though, she was kissing him.
At first, that was all it was – Sif kissing him: hard and fast and the only way she knew how. Then, one of his hands fell softly upon her cheek, and it became something quite different.
Very gently, he slowed everything down, and she remembered just how exhausted he had looked. For a half a second, she tried to pull back, wanting to apologize and let him rest, but he would have none of that. Her heart skipped a beat when he didn't let her go, and he kissed her back with enough slow, sinuous passion to make her blood boil.
Sif had kissed plenty of lips before. She had even kissed Loki a time or two, ages ago, before everything had fallen apart. But nothing she had ever experienced, even from Loki himself, had ever felt so sweet. So free. It wasn't the unbridled passion that she had longed for; somehow, though, in its innocence and peace, it was even better.
She wasn't ready when he reclaimed his lips, curving them into a grin as he pulled back. "I had imagined that was why," he amusedly said in continuation of their earlier conversation – one which Sif had all but forgotten. "But I hadn't dared hope for it, given who you are and your rather . . . unpredictable tendencies."
With a none-too-kind shove to the shoulder, she tried to find a remark worthy of his; all she that surfaced was: "Shut up, Loki."
"If my lady wills it," he teased with a stately bow of his head.
For once, she didn't protest the title, instead just smirking. "Indeed she does," she said, and she would have kissed him again if he hadn't looked so terribly tired. She could see his energy slipping away, like water through his fingers; with one last smile, she told him, "I'm leaving now. You need your rest."
He laid down again, giving a long exhale as he closed his eyes. The shadow of a grin still touched his lips. "I can't believe you were actually going to punch me," he muttered. "What did I ever do to you?"
She laughed a dry, sardonic laugh as she paused at the door and said, "You made me care, you scum. Back when we were young. And I've never stopped caring since." Then, with a softer expression, she added, "I'll come back to see you soon."
"I'll be waiting." He shot her a sleepy smile, and she slipped out the door, closing it quietly behind her.