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Chapter 19

Loki was lying face down on a bench in a darkened room that felt airy and cool and wonderful. His arms were just long enough for his fingers to brush the stone floor.

And a large hand - too large - was stroking his hair and back.

For the first time since he'd been damaged, he tried to speak, hoping that at least in the afterlife he'd have his voice back.

What came out was a mangle of sound that with some intensive contemplation resolved itself as the word, "Who?"

"You know who," came a voice like gravel with the strength of a mountain... and all the warmth of a Midgardian polar bear playing with her cubs.

They were the first words he'd understood, and there was an odd feeling about the whole thing.

He spoke again, longer, more drawn out because the thing he was saying was, and it was a jumble of repeated syllables and sounds attached to more than one syllable and it was something like stuttering but entirely more horrifying. "Laufey." He felt ashamed then, and horrified too, knowing it was clear the damage had come with him even here. And for other reasons. "Suh... Suh..."

"Shh," the Jotun lord hushed him. "You did not know the truth of that day. Odin does not know the truth of that day." The hand moved in firm circles on his back.

"What?" he managed to mangle in the same fashion.

"It is our way," came another voice nearby with similar rough warmth, "for those born too weak to live to get their final suffering over all at once, rather than eking it out over weeks with no hope of changing the outcome."

"I wished you could have lived, back then. I was glad when I found out you had lived. But by the law, I could give you neither recognition as family nor inheritance."

The shame became crushing. He babbled out in the worst mangle yet, "I told you that you could give me Asgard."

"Given that you are still barely over a thousand and that I was older, far older... I should have been the one to stop and think and realize that a child reared as an enemy will not embrace his blood-people when he first learns the truth." Laufey hadn't stopped rubbing his back, and he didn't stop now. "And you were certainly a different person then."

"Which is the official stance of the current Jotun king," the other told him. "You need never fear your own blood-kin now, unless you give them new reason to harm you."

"Who are you?" Loki asked.

He was getting used to his own devastated voice, he was sure of it, and that hurt.

"Farbauti."

"Loki, there is something you must understood," Laufey began. "Not all the changes they forced on you body were without source in you. Some were who you would have been had you not been a shapeshifter or had you not been taken by Odin."

He instantly knew what was meant and it made his skin crawl.

He hadn't even liked to acknowledge that change when he was living with it.

"Loki, you are what you are," Laufey told him. "You are a shapeshifter by nature. What your mind tells you you ought to be, you become."

"So this changes little of who you are," Farbauti reassured him.

He knew the biology term for what he suspected - there were all sorts of systems in use across even just this universe, even if only a few were common among species intelligent enough to become significant in the eyes of other realms - but it was more than he could manage to spit it out. He did manage the word "Jotun" but the next was a hopeless jumble even he could decipher, and he knew exactly what he had been trying to say.

"Jotun are masculine hermaphrodites? This is what you were trying to say?"

"Yes," Loki mangled out.

"And so we are. At least in the scientific framework of Asgardian xenobiological study." Farbauti drew as close to him as Laufey was and tousled his hair. "Although more than a few of us gravitate toward what someone in a binary gender system would consider one pole or the other. If you identify as 'male' enough for your natural abilities to shape you so, who can hope to argue with it? That is who you are."

He was still greatly discomfited by the idea.

Farbauti sighed. "Only Frigga knows. And the Sorcerers Supreme, some of them, but they don't and won't care. Better for Jotunheim that it stays that way. Keep your silence if you wish, and let no one suspect anything different."

"Wait. You're talking like I'm not..." Even mangling, he couldn't get that last word out.

"The Lady has granted you a boon, child," Laufey told him.

"That I get to live?"

Some boon, with the condition he was in. Not that he wanted to die, but a proper boon was supposed to be less value-neutral.

"No. A single skipped heartbeat is enough to arrange this for someone with innate sorcery, should she wish. And they caught your condition just in time for that to be as close as you got to dying." He could almost hear the smile in Farbauti's voice. "And so the Lady wished to grant you, while the opportunity presented itself to her."

"A bit of absolution, a bit of knowing we wanted you, and a bit of putting together who you are."

A thought struck him. A horrible one. But that wasn't the question he asked. "So which one of you two... bore..." He couldn't finish it.

"I was dead months before you were born," Farbauti told him. "An accident, so there is no need to blame anyone from Asgard."

That was a weight off his shoulders. Being responsible for what had happened to Laufey was bad enough!

And then he comprehended the rest of it.

Mother polar bear, indeed.

"Time grows sort. Goodbye, little one," Laufey told him.

"We'll see each other again, someday," Farbauti promised.

The feel of their hands on him, the bench under his body, and the stone against his fingers faded away.

The last thing he knew was the thought that because of the darkness and because he hadn't looked, he didn't know if he'd been pink or blue.

Bruce relaxed after a moment.

"It was close there for a minute. Tony, get that monitoring equipment over here."

"On it."

Steve stood there, just watching as they worked, and it wasn't until they'd taped a few leads on Loki's chest and clipped some sort of plastic thing on one of his fingers that he really understood.

Because that's when a very familiar beeping started.

And then it started screaming at them.

"What?" Steve asked, suddenly worried all over again. What else could go wrong?

"This is set for human body temperature norms."

"So?"

"He's Jotun," Tony said flatly. "His resting temperature even in our climate and even shifted out of his native form is still below our threshold for medical intervention." He put a hand on Loki's forehead. "That's about how warm he usually feels, Bruce."

"Great, now can you hack this thing so it will consider this normal for him?"

Tony got to work on it.

Half of the bag on the IV pole was already gone. Bruce rummaged through some supplies and then hung a second bag, labeled differently, beside it.

And then he noticed Steve.

"He should be all right now," Bruce reassured him. "We just need to monitor him to make sure of it, and so we know how well he's recovering. We're getting fluids into him now, and I've got a glucose solution ready for once that runs out, so we can keep his blood sugar from dropping since he hasn't been eating and can't even try while he's unconscious."

That helped a little.

The warning shrill ended and Tony turned to face him. "Capsicle, we don't just use this stuff on people who are dying or who are in dire enough straits that they might if no one can hear if something goes wrong. Yes, Peggy was being monitored. And so was Phil. And I'm sure you were when they unfroze you, at least once they knew you were alive, even if you don't remember it. But it doesn't take being in that kind of dire condition to make hooking him up worthwhile, especially since we can't ask him and he can't tell us how he's feeling."

"He's going to be terrified when he wakes up."

"He ought to be, he was in bad enough shape when he passed out," Tony replied.

"I don't mean that. He's as unused to modern Earth medical technology as I was when I woke up. Asgardians are more advanced - for all we know they can monitor all of this without touching the patient with anything. What if their IV technology looks completely different? What if he can't even remember any of what their medical technology is like?"

"Then we try to get him calmed down when that happens. And restrain him lightly so he can't hurt himself if he freaks out," Bruce told him. "It's not an uncommon issue when dealing with medical care in the 3rd world. I'm used to it."

"What's that thing on his finger, anyway? Peggy... she didn't have one of those."

"Temperature and blood oxygen levels. And pulse, but the chest leads are more accurate for that."

"Which also lets us be sure he's still getting blood into his extremities. I have no clue what Jotun medical shock states even look like, and given the environment they're naturally adapted to..." Bruce shook his head. "I need all the medical data I can get."

Something about that stuck in Steve's mind. "No. We shouldn't..."

"It's not experimentation, it's getting basic information for his own good," Tony assured him. "And when he recovers, we'll have baseline numbers to compare to if he ever gets hurt or sick again."

Loki moved a little, but there was no sign he was regaining consciousness yet.

"Wonder what got into him," Tony said.

"We won't find out until Dr. Strange gets here," Bruce told them. "If then. And chances are Loki's going to sleep all day - I have a feeling he was crying most of the night." He rummaged in a drawer. "If he's moving, we need to make sure he doesn't pull that out. I'd rather not have to talk him into letting me stick a needle in him later, not when this IV line should be safe to use for as long as he needs this." Bruce pulled out two contraptions made of cloth.

Steve really didn't like this.

"Just his hands," Bruce told him after he saw the look on his face. "Just until we know he won't pull the IV out."

The bed-rails went up and a moment later Loki's left hand was secured to the railing past his head where it would be easy for them to access the IV site if they needed to and his right was secured to the other rail at his waist.

"I need to sleep," Steve reminded them, "but after that I'll sit with him. This wouldn't have happened if I'd realized he was crying."

"I'll take this morning," Tony offered. "And Natasha, Clint, and Phil should be back by tonight. They called very late last night."

"Phil's going to start yelling," Bruce predicted.

"No, he won't," Tony countered. "First, he won't risk the other guy showing up near Loki. Second, until Loki can understand speech, yelling in defense of him within his hearing is incredibly counterproductive."

Steve laid down on one of the other, unoccupied, medical beds.

He felt a little hungry and then he recognized the smell in the air.

"You brought the pancakes?" he asked Tony, suddenly ravenous.

"Yes. I didn't have time to put them down until we got here."

"Well, Loki isn't going to be eating them and I haven't had food yet this morning..."

Bruce laughed.

Frigga was sitting in the stillness after Thor's departure when she saw the tear run down Odin's cheek.

That had never been a good sign.

Something somewhere must have gone wrong. She hoped it wasn't something to do with Loki, not so close to the anniversary of his adoption.

Which was tomorrow, not that she expected anyone outside the family to remember anymore. And Thor was so out of sorts and out of sync with the Asgardian calendar that she really didn't expect him to remember.

It took all her will to resist running down to Heimdall. To resist using the little sorcery she possessed to try to look wherever her husband was looking.

Odin needed her as his constant defender, as always, during the Odinsleep. Asgard needed Thor on the throne.

Who else could be sent to deal with anything?

Sif? The poor girl could hardly be asked right now. And that was if it were something a single warrior could fix. And if Frigga hadn't already told Thor to go talk to her today.

The Warriors Three were so far as Frigga knew still determined to be right there for Thor while he was trapped away from Loki.

No. Everything would need to wait.

She drew her sword from its sheath in the bed frame and sat with it across her lap.

Just in case, she told herself.