Comprehension

Post-battle fic where the gang figures out what to do with Loki.

When the adrenaline started to wear off, Tony started to worry. He hadn't taken the suit off, but there were plenty of people in this room who Loki could hurt if he went apeshit… and while he appeared to be sitting quietly at the moment, he wasn't exactly known for his predictability.

So when there was a lull in conversation, Tony opened his faceplate and cleared his throat. "Uh, guys? Are we going to be doing anything about him?" Pointing to the pitiful heap on the floor.

Thor spoke up. "Loki will be returned to Asgard, to face Asgardian justice."

And after Thor, the good Captain had to have his say. "I'm not sure our government will be okay with that, actually," he said. Chest out and arms crossed. "Loki did a lot of damage here, and we like to bring people to justice ourselves."

A tense silence fell. And was broken by none other than Loki himself. "Might I interject," he began smoothly.

"No," Thor snapped, "You might not."

Loki shut his mouth.

It seemed they were at an impasse, which was fine by Tony because he didn't much care whose prison Loki spent the rest of forever rotting in. Though on second thought, from a practical standpoint it would be nice if they sent him in Asgard's direction, since Tony foresaw an enormously complicated and annoying process of constructing some sort of magic-proof cage himself (since SHEILD obviously sucked at it)… but again, that brought him back to his original concern.

"No: I mean right now," he clarified. "Somehow I suspect NYPD handcuffs won't do the trick, but I don't like him just sitting there as is. He should be in some kind of cage." Preferably one very far away from here.

Thor laughed. "I assure you, Mjolnir will keep him exactly where he is."

The hammer was in Loki's lap, and Tony would admit that so far Loki had had no luck even shifting underneath it, and yet.

"He could do hocus-pocus from exactly where he is," Tony argued. "He could call more of those alien things. He could pee on my floor."

Someone sighed.

But his point was well taken, it seemed, because after a moment Thor nodded and stood up. "I will petition my father for restraints," he said. "Something that will bind Loki – and his magic – until we can arrange a means of transporting him home." Without any further discussion he turned and walked out onto the terrace. Closed the door behind him.

"But we get reception in here! I've got four bars." Everyone else looked just as perplexed, so he turned to Loki. "Hey. Rudolph. What is Hammertime doing out there?"

Loki blinked. "It, ah, consists largely of shouting up into the air," he explained. "He expects that Heimdall, our Guardian, will hear him and will convey the message on to our- to his father. Odin will then summon up the magic necessary to grant him his request."

"Oh, okay." Never a big fan of silence, Tony went on: "What kind of restraints are we talking, anyway? I mean, there's a couple of stores down the Village where I'm sure you could get any kind of-"

"Tony." Steve cut in, hard. "This guy killed Phil. Not to mention all the hundreds – probably thousands of people the aliens took out."

There was that. He joked as a reflex, not as an actual overture of friendship, but still, Tony supposed on reflection that he shouldn't be talking to Loki at all. He turned his back and went to watch what was going on on the terrace.

(It was thousands, certainly. Tony had enough experience estimating the cost in lives of a damaged building, of gunfire into a crowd, of an explosion, to know.)

Anyway. Thor's prayer had been answered, it looked like, because suddenly a glowing rainbow beam burst down from the clouds and a small carved chest materialized. Thor waved up into the sky and then brought the box indoors.

Tony clapped – as best he could in the suit – and hovered over him while he opened it. "Let's see what Santa's brought us, kids!"

The first thing was a pair of cuffs – heavy silvery cuffs with a long connecting chain. Tony hefted them, looked at the metal closely, and took whatever readings he could using his sensors.

"Verdict?" Bruce said from his seat.

"No idea. It's not from earth, that's for sure." He handed them back to Thor and peeked down into the box. "What the hell is that?"

Thor held up a curved metallic plate. "It is a muzzle. After his magic, Loki's words are his greatest weapon. Until they are taken from him he is not truly disarmed."

Tony shot the prisoner a quick look, expecting to see smugness… but instead, Loki's brow was creased hard. "Just a muzzle, Thor?" he said – tense.

Thor reached once more into the box. "No. I am sorry, brother," he said, and opened his hand to show a curved needle threaded with a long golden cord.

Tony was not slow, but that still took a second to process. When he got it he took a step back. "Whoa," he said. "Wait a second. We don't do that here. That is officially nasty."

"What is?" Apparently Steve, on the other hand, was slow.

Natasha told him, cool as anything: "He's supposed to sew Loki's mouth shut before he puts the gag on."

Bruce sucked his breath in.

Clint chuckled. "This I gotta see."

Bruce looked to Loki to see his reaction, but besides a quick hateful look in Clint's direction, he seemed mostly impassive. Had this been done to him before?

If it had – given the clumsy way Thor handled the needle (with his unwashed, battle-grimy hands!) – it had hopefully been someone else to do it.

Tony seemed to have the same idea. "Wait wait wait. You look like a t-rex doing brain surgery. Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Loki laughed - softly and not at all happily. "That's never stopped him before."

Thor put the needle down. "You act as if I sew your mouth closed on a daily basis!"

"You would like to."

"Can you blame me?"

While the brothers bickered, Bruce was trying not to look at the needle thrown carelessly on the table – where Tony probably ate and drank and god-knows-what else. Well, for all they knew Loki was immune to earth-germs anyway. (Or, he was extremely sensitive to them. Wasn't that how the War of the Worlds aliens died?)

"Ahem." Tony got between them. "Much as I hate to interrupt this cute little family quarrel, I have to point out that my question has still not been answered. Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Thor shrugged. "Father has demanded it. I cannot bring Loki before him if it hasn't been done."

"I am in full agreement with you, Thor," Loki said firmly. "I am in enough trouble as it is. Let us not provoke him."

Tony was looking at him as if he were crazy. "Whoa whoa whoa. Aside from the fact that that is gross, and that it's going to fucking hurt… how the hell are you supposed to eat?"

Loki shrugged. He looked… very defeated. What the Hulk had done with him was starting to show up in lumps and bruises, but it was more than that.

"It will not be long until the trial," Thor explained after a moment, "And Loki will certainly be allowed to speak for himself then."

Tony's hands went to his hips with a faint mechanical whirr. "So, the stitches would come out in…?"

It was Loki who answered. "No more than a couple of weeks. Even if the Allfather were to convene a full court of all the-"

"Weeks?"

Bruce finally opened his mouth. "They're not human, Tony," he reminded. Best shut this conversation down as quickly as possible; if Tony took it into his head to become Loki's protector they would be arguing for another three hours. He turned to Loki. "Are you okay without food for a couple of weeks?"

Thor tried to break in. "It is not Loki's decision-"

"Because, a human would starve to death in that much time."

Silence.

Tony gestured to him. "Yeah, listen to the man: he's a doctor."

Thor sat with mouth pressed shut tight for a while. Finally he said just: "Loki will not starve."

Tony snorted. "He'll just get very, very hungry."

Bruce stole another quick look at Loki. Loki looked… smart. He was watching Tony carefully. He knew where his best chances lay.

Or, not. Tony raised his head and said: "Fine. I want him back up in your castle in the clouds, and if this Frankenstein shit is the way it has to be, then fine. But I am going to feed him first. My house," he said over Steve, who attempted to interrupt, "My rules. JARVIS?"

The disembodied voice answered at once. "Yes, sir?"

"Pizza. Lots of it. Order… at least six pizzas. We're probably all starving, and Point Break'll eat a whole one by himself."

Pizza sounded good, actually. Bruce felt glad, for half a second… until Tony burst his bubble by pointing to him suddenly. (In the Iron Man suit, even a finger-point from across the room was pretty intimidating.) "You!"

Bruce winced. "Me?"

"You're going to do it. You're a doctor. And you're not the kind of guy who could just sit by and watch some yahoo stab away at a dude's face with a needle, when you know damn well you could do it better yourself."

Actually, Bruce thought he was exactly that kind of guy. He'd gotten quite good at the whole detachment thing recently.

Now that he'd been called out, however, it would feel a little cruel. "I- I don't have any of my stuff here, Tony," he objected anyway.

"Gimme a list. I'll make some calls and get you whatever you need."

After consuming an entire pizza (it was a point of honor; if Thor could eat so much then so could he), Loki volunteered that he was ready. There was no such thing as ready, of course, but delaying would gain him nothing and it seemed best to proceed while everyone was feeling kindly disposed towards him.

"Okay," the doctor said calmly. "Tony will take you to the bathroom and get you a toothbrush and some mouthwash. You don't want bits of rotting food stuck in your mouth."

Fully encased in his suit once again, the Iron Man said with his mechanical voice: "I think I just threw up a little bit in my helmet."

Loki allowed himself to be taken down the hall. His hands were shackled in front of him, and there was an metal hand on his arm the entire time. For a moment he felt offended at being led around like a prisoner, but he reminded himself that he was a prisoner and made himself swallow the indignity.

He cleaned his teeth as directed and took a sip of the green fluid the Iron Man handed him.

He choked on it.

Mechanical laugher issued forth from the suit. "No – no, Bambi, no, not at all. Don't you people have mouthwash at home?" The faceplate slid away. "Watch: it's like this. You swish it around in your mouth – and yeah, it stings, but it's good for you, and then spit it out. Like so."

He demonstrated, and he looked ridiculous with his cheeks all puffed, but afterwards the cloud of breath he blew in Loki's face was sweet and smelled of mint.

Loki tried it himself. It felt caustic, almost painful, and for a moment he worried that it was burning away the skin inside his mouth. But the human had just demonstrated it for him, and seemed none the worse for wear, so he continued for the count of twenty before spitting it all into the sink.

"There. Good to go?" The Iron Man waited for a nod before putting his faceplate back on and gesturing Loki out again. "Come on. Let's get this over with."

The green beast – the doctor – beckoned him over to the couch. There was a bright light set up on a stand beside it, and a white cloth with an array of instruments spread out on the coffee table.

"Lie down."

Loki had steeled himself to cooperate, but this was too big an affront to his pride. "I'm not an invalid and I don't need to be restrained," he said. "I will sit, and I will hold still for you. I swear it."

The doctor shrugged. "If you want to sit you can sit – but Steve will stand behind your chair and help hold you steady for me. I know you swear," he said, over Loki's attempt to talk, "But if you flinch, or faint, or sneeze while I'm working, it won't go well for you."

He scowled. "I don't flinch, or faint, or sneeze."

"And I don't put stitches in people until I'm confident they're not moving," the doctor said. "If you can't work with that, Thor will just have to sew you up himself."

He had been on the receiving end of Thor's attempt to use a needle on a number of occasions. None had been pleasant. Without a word, he sat down on the couch, on the white sheet that had been spread out, and lay back.

He discovered that there were cushions arranged under the sheet, so that he wasn't really lying flat. More… reclining. He felt less vulnerable than he had expected.

"Now. Thor says we have to use this gold string here and this particular needle," the doctor began, "Which he already put his paws all over. But I sterilized them as best I can."

Loki nodded.

"You'll get lidocaine first, and we'll wait a couple minutes for it to kick in, and then you'll get the stitches."

The female sniffed. "He gets lidocaine?" she said, heavy with disdain.

What is lidocaine? But he wasn't about to ask that, so instead he asked how many stitches he would be enduring. It would be easier to bear if he knew how much longer he had to go.

"The fewer I put in, the more likely you are to tear them by accident," the doctor answered, "So I'm going to put in a lot. You'll just have to be patient."

He took a breath. Willed himself to stay calm.

Then he chanced to look over at what the doctor was doing. His hands – gloved, which made Loki very uneasy for some reason – were doing something with a long wicked-looking syringe. "What is that?"

The doctor looked surprised. "It's the lidocaine. I told you-…" he frowned. "You don't know what that is, do you."

Loki shook his head.

"It's an anesthetic. I inject it so that you don't have to feel the stitches go in."

Loki tried to think of a reason besides the obvious for giving him an anesthetic … and came up with nothing. That, in combination with the pizza, was now too much to let pass unexplained. "What have I done to deserve your mercy?" he said.

The doctor smiled – a little bitterly. "Nothing, Loki. I'm just a nice guy. Now open your mouth."

Loki did as he was told, but instead of reaching for the syringe, the doctor approached his face with a little puff-ball that had been soaked in an alarming-smelling solution of some kind. "What is that?" he said, flinching away a little.

The doctor heaved a sigh. "Just something to numb you up a little for the injection. Open your mouth." When he obeyed the doctor pressed the puff-ball inside his lip, against his gum. "Close." The doctor prodded at his jaw from the outside and nodded. "Let that sit there for a second."

A chemical taste was seeping across his mouth, making his tongue feel odd – and numb. They really were just giving him an anesthetic for the anesthetic.

Which was incomprehensible. He could understand the impulse to make him insensible to the sewing itself; stitches might be hard to accomplish if he was writhing around and some people found a prisoner's prolonged agony unpleasant to watch. But this… there was no reason at all for this besides his comfort. It was inexplicable.

He must have been giving the doctor a look that said as much, because the doctor chuckled. "I told you, Loki: I'm a nice guy. Okay: open up."

The doctor removed the puff-ball and readied the syringe. "There were probably a lot of nice guys out there who got killed today," he said neutrally. "I hope you find that really upsetting. Open your mouth, wider."

That was… unexpected. Loki would have tried to say something (what, he wasn't sure), except that his mouth was being held open. "You'll still feel a pinch and burn," the doctor said. "Just hold still." The needle did pinch, and he let out a breath that was audible. "Sorry. Little more." The pinch moved. He kept quiet this time but his eyes were squeezed shut. "Good, last one."

After the third time the needle was withdrawn and the doctor let go of his face. "Now we wait a minute or two for that to kick in. Let me know when you can't feel your mouth."

His mouth felt odd, yes, but he thought he would still be able to talk and after this it would be a while before he got another chance. "I am sorry for the loss of life on your planet," he said as sincerely as he could.

The doctor looked him in the face. "No you're not. Numb yet?"

He shrugged. Pressing his tongue against different parts of his mouth did not feel the way it ought to, so he thought the medicine must be working.

"Okay. I'll put a little out here, too." A finger brushed his lip, and he felt it only as pressure and not really as touch.

The injections outside of his mouth didn't really pinch at all, and he was now confident that the stitches were not going to hurt him. Which, again, he did not understand.

After letting him sit in silence for a bit, the doctor picked up the needle and thread. "This should be obvious," he said, "But: once I start, don't open your mouth or try to talk. If something's wrong, if you need a break, just raise your hand. Got it?"

Loki nodded.

"Okay. Here we go."

He closed his eyes. He felt pulling and pressure on his face, and knew that the doctor must be sewing, but there was no pain at all. This was infinitely better than the time Thor had done it to him – and Thor was supposed to love him. These humans were supposed to be his enemies.

He really didn't understand.

The End.