A/N: Hey everybody! I'm alive! And this story is not gone, I promise. Sorry about the delay, I was separated from my computer for a while and unable to write. But I hope you like this chapter! Not as long as the last, but still a hefty 4,000 words.

gemma (Guest): Thank you! Hope you like this one just as well. Your reviews always make me so happy. :)

x (Guest): That's a high compliment! Thank you so much and welcome to the family.

Devon (Guest): I'm glad you like it. Don't worry, there's still a lot to come!

And now, presenting, CHAPTER NINETEEN - a medical drama.

(Really, ER's got nothing on this.) :D

NINETEEN

Talk to me girl, tell me your lies
Let your secrets have no ties
'Cause the light will never shine on this heart of mine
And all the love we sacrificed
Look at all of the damage you have done in time
You can see what a savage I've become, in my eyes
If you look in my heart you will find

No love, no light, no end inside
And I'm looking for a miracle
And I'm looking for a miracle
But I hope, I pray, and I will fight
'Cause I'm looking for a miracle
'Cause I'm looking for a miracle

- "Miracle," Hurts

"You should be dead," Loki snarled.

Coulson, his face full of the same hardness, replied with, "I could say the same about you."

"Step away from her," the woman said sharply, her hands wrapping more tightly around her gun.

"What did you do to her?" Coulson asked, his eyes like steel.

"What I've done to her?" Loki roared. "YOU WIPED HER MIND!"

The two men were face to face now, barely inches apart. Alana struggled to her feet behind Loki. "Stop. Both of you."

She pushed her way in between the two men, her hand resting warningly on Loki's chest. "Agent Coulson," she asked weakly, "It appears that I…" she winced, "am in need of medical assistance."

"It's Director Coulson now," the woman said.

"She doesn't need your help," Loki snarled, supporting her weight as she leaned against him – he could feel her weakening, but still trying to stand.

"What did you do to her?" the woman asked again.

He glared at them bitterly, but he could feel her hands, burning and clammy, and he bit out, "She's been poisoned."

"Get her to the Bus, May," Coulson said, his gun still trained on Loki's head.

Loki glared at Coulson. "She – is not – going with you."

"Then I'm going to die, Loki," Alana cut in tiredly. "It's all right."

He turned his attention back to her, a hand wrapping protectively around her wrist. "Alana. This is the man who wiped your mind. I am not letting you go anywhere with him."

She looked at Coulson pensively. "No. I'll - " she inhaled sharply – " I'll be okay."

Her eyes flashed pale blue, and she smiled a bit weakly. "He knows how it feels now."

Coulson stiffened a little.

Alana inhaled sharply, knees buckling – he steadied her in his arms as she slumped against him. "Ow," she muttered weakly.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't shoot you, right now, and take her with me."

Alana glared at him. "Because then I'd shoot you." She let out another noise of pain.

He smiled at Coulson, coldly. "Do you remember last time, Agent? What I did when you were done with her, had cast her away?"

He remembered the way it had hurt her, the memories, how he had carried her upstairs, how her hands had trembled and how she had screamed. "If you think I am leaving her with you, again, you are sorely mistaken."

"You're a murderer," Coulson said bluntly. "And I didn't really enjoy being dead."

"Mmm. And I suppose, since you've been tracking her… you wouldn't enjoy it if she were dead, either."

Coulson's eyes narrowed slightly. "Is that a threat?"

Alana moaned a little. By now she was too far gone to keep track of the conversation, and he burned with anger and fear.

"No. A fact. She's been poisoned. Muspellian poison. The cure is only found in legend, and she will die." He let out a deep breath. "But I have an idea that could save her."

Coulson scoffed. "Really? I thought you would have a better plan than that."

Alana was shaking now, feverishly, sweat dripping down her face – he was holding her up, now. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed.

"We don't have time for this!" he snapped. "If you want her alive, you will let me go with her."

Coulson didn't budge. "We have a fair amount of medical technology on the Bus. Why does she need you?"

He breathed, in and out, trying to control himself. Control or she will die.

"Muspellian poison is liquid fire. It is burning her up from the inside, do you understand? And there is only one legend that tells of Muspell, one legend with no name for a cure."

"May, take her to the Bus," Coulson said.

The woman beside him moved forwards, but he could not let them take her.

"You know what happened after you wiped her memory." It was a statement.

Coulson said nothing.

"And if she dies…" He let the words hang in the air around them.

Coulson's eyes narrowed again. "That is a threat."

He closed his eyes for one second. "You need her. And I might be able to save her. And every second that we stand here, she is dying!"

The room was filled with silence. Alana was still shaking in his arms, her eyes moving rapidly under their lids. Please… The word was on the tip of his tongue, and he struggled with it, fighting it, they took her from me.

Coulson grudgingly lowered his gun, at a motion from him, the woman did the same.

Coulson pointed at him. "Don't think that this is over."

He raised his head, gave one harsh smile. "It isn't."

He swept her up in his arms, wincing slightly as his slowly healing ribs ached in protest. She lay limp in his arms, eyes closed, skin pale. Only her breathing indicated she was alive, breathing that was shallow and rapid.

Hold on, Alana. Please.

She was trapped in her house, and it was burning.

Flames rose up around her, and the air was hot and thick and full of smoke, and she coughed, an arm raised over her face to protect her from the heat.

She heard voices and tried to yell for help, but the people – where were they? – seemed to be having an argument, voices raised loud, and they couldn't hear her.

Wait. Where was Loki?

She had to find him, they had to get out of the house, they had to run!

She tried to yell his name, but coughed – the smoke in the air prevented her from speaking.

And the fire was upon her now, the heat rushing through her, the burning in her veins began to spread, white-hot, and she screamed in pain, she was on fire.

He laid her gently on the operating table in the lower levels of the airplane that Coulson had brought them to.

She screamed, writhing on the table, her back arching.

"What's going on?" an agent asked, walking in the door – a young one, about the same age as Alana, perhaps a little younger. Her dark eyes looked at him suspiciously. "Coulson isn't explaining why we have the asshole who destroyed New York on our plane."

"I have no time for your insults," he said sharply. "Are you the doctor?"

Her eyes were wary. "No. Our doctors… aren't around."

He ran a hand through his hair. "Did Coulson send you to help?"

She did not give a response.

He sighed in exasperation and turned back to Alana, struggling on the table. Stay strong.

He flicked his hand at the table, the green magic surging around her, securing her so that she could not hurt herself.

"Where do you keep your needles?" he barked.

"Why do you want to know?"

He let out a noise of exasperation and whirled on her. "Listen to me. This is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent! And she is dying, do you understand?" He ran a hand through his hair. "I know what I have done, but please."

His eyes met hers. "She needs your help."

She sighed. "Fine. But not because of you." She pointed to a cabinet. "The syringes are in there. I think."

He quickly opened the cabinet and grabbed one, ripping open the sterile plastic covering. "Can you get a …" he looked around, spotting the IV, "I need you to set up an IV for her and – do you have blood in here?"

"Why, are you a vampire?" she asked sarcastically, but did as he asked.

The blue crept up his skin and when he could feel that he had completely changed into his Jotunn form, he ripped off his gauntlet and rolled up his sleeve, letting out a small hiss as he pushed the needle into his vein.

Dark blue blood filled the chamber of the syringe as he pulled up on the plunger.

He pulled the needle out of his arm and let the blue fade away.

The woman stood up, having pricked Alana's finger with a small device. She regarded it for a second, then said, "She's AB."

She got out the corresponding blood bag. "What now?"

He laid the syringe on the side table. "When I tell you, I need you to inject her with this, right below the IV port."

She nodded and stepped to the side.

He rolled up her ripped, blood-stained shirt, exposing the wounds, and the woman sucked in a breath. "Oh my god…"

It had gotten worse; there was no denying it. The stitches had dissolved, the wounds were bright and angry, and there were faint lines of red tracing out from them, reaching towards her heart.

He gave a silent apology for the pain he was about to inflict on her.

"Now," he ordered, and she injected Alana with the syringe containing his blood. A small black burn spread from where the needle touched her arm.

The blue crept up her veins, and she let out a small moan of relief.

Suddenly she could feel his cool fingers wrapped around her arm. She let out a sigh of relief. He was here, and the fire was lessening, but the cold of his hands began to spread quickly, and now her arm was burning with cold but her body was burning with fire, and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

"Start the blood," he told the woman, who attached the tube to the IV port and opened it. The red chased away the blue, following it up, but his blood had a head start and was making its way towards the red streaks on her stomach.

I'm sorry, Alana. Forgive me.

He let the blue creep up his fingers, then brushed his forefinger across the first wound, as lightly as he could, barely touching her.

The effect was immediate. The wound smoked and burned black, and she screamed in pain.

He gritted his teeth. She turned her head to the side and let out a small moan, her breathing rapid.

He touched the second gash and she cried out again.

"What are you doing?" the woman asked furiously.

"Sealing the wounds!" he snapped back.

"But the poison's still inside her!"

He brushed his finger along the third wound and she screamed again, struggling futilely on the table, a tear slipping out of her eye.

"I have to chase it down on both ends," he told her. I hope.

And indeed, the blue was spreading from the gashes and down from her heart. It touched the red and the lines turned an angry purple.

Please let this work.

Fire and ice were warring their way around her.

She could feel the cold making its way down through her chest, and the fire coursing up to meet it, and when they touched she screamed in pain.

The fire burned hot and the ice burned cold, and they hissed as they met and grappled with each other, steam and smoke enveloping her.

It felt as if she was being ripped apart, burning and freezing and dying, again and again and again.

And then she could feel his hands, touching her stomach, and the ice flowed from that point and she screamed again, feeling her skin smoking, burning.

The ice was countering the fire now on both sides, and the fire was growing less and less, but the ice was swarming now, covering her, smothering her. She was shivering with cold now, cold that burned inside of her.

Except now there was another feeling, chasing away the ice coming down from her chest, a relief, a stability.

It chased away the ice, which hissed and tried to stake its claim, but this new, warmer feeling continued, driving the ice away, slowly melting it down, eradicating it from inside her.

He stared at the marks he had made on her skin, three ugly black lines streaking their way across her stomach.

The purple lines had faded now; turning merely to blue, but those had slowly faded as well, as the human blood chased the ice away.

The poison was gone now, but at what cost?

He rested a hand on her forehead; it was cold now, and clammy. She shivered on the table below him, and her hands trembled. She was breathing slowly now, shallowly.

The woman disconnected the IV from the port in her arm, then examined the monitor.

"Her temperature's dropped to eighty-eight," she said beside him. "I think that means she has hypothermia."

She passed him several blankets. "She probably needs to be kept warm."

He took the blankets and laid them over her, brushing the hair out of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to her.

The woman cleared her throat and said, "I'm just gonna… leave now."

"What the hell is going on?" Skye asked May.

May just looked at her with that unfathomable glance of hers. "You probably should talk to Coulson about that."

"We've got the guy who killed Coulson on our plane, and it sort of looks like he's in love with a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Who is she?"

"Let me put it this way," said May. "She was on the Index."

Coulson collapsed into his chair.

It had been a very exhausting day.

First, they had got wind of Cooper. After searching for a while, they had tracked her to New York City, and had been about to make contact when she disappeared. The newspaper headlines the next days were about the discovery of alien bodies in a New York warehouse. They had more recently learned of an alien attack in a Pennsylvania shopping mall and a woman who was being chased by them.

A slightly blurry picture on the front page of a local newspaper had showed a brown haired woman, her eyes a flash of yellow, facing off against a hulking gray thing.

Of course it was Cooper. And somehow she had gotten her powers back.

There was such a shortage of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that he had reluctantly been searching for her. He could not deny that her abilities would be useful to them in the fight against HYDRA. And if HYDRA had gotten to her first…

Her virtual erasure from S.H.I.E.L.D. before the Battle of New York and her high classification had meant that she had been protected more than most during HYDRA's search for gifteds.

And then, they'd tracked her here and found corpses of about forty aliens, a poisoned Cooper, and him.

His hands clenched involuntarily.

The god who had killed him was on his plane. With Cooper.

And the feeling in his stomach when he had looked into her eyes (his eyes), when she had said, "He knows how it feels now" had brought back so many memories that he had tried as best he could to push away.

"Let me die!"

And he remembered hearing her scream, years ago, he remembered the pain in Loki's face as he leaned against the wall in his cell, and he rubbed his head.

If he could go back, would he still do it?

He didn't know.

He massaged his temples again and pulled up the feed for the cameras down in the lab.

Loki was pacing around the room, back and forth, back and forth.

She was lying on the operating table, blankets covering her and her head turned to the side.

He rewound the camera feed by swiping left with his finger, watching the scene unfold.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

She heard a noise, felt soft blankets against her skin – she was so cold. She could feel her hands trembling.

Beep.

Where was she? What had happened? Coulson – something with Coulson –

A hand reaching for hers, a voice crying her name. "Loki!" she yells. And then a sharp pain in her neck, the world fading…

She inhaled sharply.

"They're going to erase your memory," he says, and she can see him trying not to cry. His hand grips hers, their fingers entwined for the last time –

She tensed under the blankets.

Beep.

Beep.

So much pain, everywhere – surrounding her, incasing her, through her mind, stabbing through her, ripping through her mind, again, again, and she screams, she doesn't want him to leave her, she can hear his voice, "Hold on, I love you, I love you," and she calms but it hurts so much.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The beeps were getting faster, and she can hear the rustle of clothing as someone crosses opposite her.

"Commencing mind wipe."

And then a flurry of images – her, sixteen, jaw opening in disbelief as she realizes what she can do; her, in her cell, crying in the night; her, at S.H.I.E.L.D. for the first time, locking away her heart; Loki, lying in a hospital bed glaring at her; Loki, his hands touching hers in the garden; and him playing the piano and kissing her and holding her on the roof through the night and sparring with her and kissing her fiercely and sweetly and the whispers and the laughs and the agents ripping them apart –

And then nothing.

She opened her eyes in a haze of panic, and screamed.

Coulson was standing over her, concern in his eyes – he calls her, "Cooper, we need you to come in" – and Loki says, "They're going to wipe your memory," and she screams in pain as they invade her mind.

She screamed, they were going to wipe her again, wipe him away, no, no, please no and the beeps were faster in the background now, one after the other, beepbeepbeepbeep and someone snarled, "Out of the way!" and he was there again, standing next to her. "Alana," he said urgently, "you're safe. You're safe." His hand cups her face. "You're safe."

And now she was not screaming anymore but she was crying, and he held her hand tightly. "You're safe," he whispers. "They won't hurt you again."

She fell asleep quickly after that, the beeping of the heart rate monitor slowing down. He touched her face gently, then turned back to Coulson, his face hardening.

"What did you do?"

He had been dozing in one of the chairs in the lab when he had awoken to her screaming.

She had been in a blind panic, terrified and shaking, her eyes fixed on Coulson.

Coulson shook his head. "Nothing. Her heart rate was going up before she opened her eyes."

He turned to look at her, then turned back to Coulson. "You must have done something."

Coulson's eyes hardened. "She opened her eyes and looked at me, and screamed."

It finally dawned on him, how could I have been so stupid?

"She was remembering the last time you took her to a hospital," he said harshly. "What happened there. And then when she opened her eyes, you were there."

Coulson stepped closer to him. "I did what I had to do."

Loki sneered at him. "So did I. You don't know what I do, Agent." He spat the last word bitterly. "You don't know how she would collapse from the flashbacks, how much pain she was in. How she would scream."

"I do."

He looked at Coulson, reading the tired look in his eyes. "Oh, I see. Fury had to bring you back somehow, didn't he?"

Coulson's jaw clenched. "Enough."

Loki continued. "And whatever he must have done… he must have wiped you after he was done." He smiled tightly. "Did you enjoy it as much as she did?"

"Let me die!"

Coulson turned away from him.

"I knew Cooper for a long time," he said quietly. "It was so easy for her to read people, even without her telepathy. And she was so trusting." He snorted. "Look how she trusted you."

Loki smiled tightly. "Is there something you wish to say to me, Agent?"

Coulson turned back to him. "What happened to her was your fault. All of it. You should have stayed the hell away from her."

"My fault?" he hissed. "Was I the one that wiped her mind?"

"You were the reason why!" Coulson shouted. "She was twenty-one, she was starved for affection – that's what S.H.I.E.L.D. does to you, it either isolates you forever or it makes you desperate! And you, you could have stayed away and none of this would have happened."

He stepped close to Coulson. "Then you should have killed me. Is that what you wish had happened? You would have carried on as you were, no battle, no Avengers," he spat. "You should have killed me."

Coulson just looked at him. "I should've."

He turned and left the lab.

There was a stabbing pain in her side. She opened her eyes – she was covered with blankets, in a white room filled with medical equipment – and caught Loki's eyes.

He gave her a tiny smile. "Are you feeling all right?"

She tried to shift herself into a sitting position, but hissed in pain as the aching feeling shot up her side. "What happened?" she asked, sinking back onto the pillows in resignation.

She pushed back the blankets and pulled up her shirt, seeing the bandages.

"Muspellian poison," Loki said grimly. "The N'itouri's blades must have been coated in it."

"Is that what those aliens were?" she asked, pulling the tape off of her skin. She winced a little. "How did you get it out?"

She pulled the bandages off the wound, inhaling sharply as she saw the burns. "Oh my god."

She looked up at him – his eyes were sad. "Loki, what happened?"

He sat down on the side of her bed and gently began placing the bandages back over the burns. "I happened." He sighed. "Muspell was the land of fire. It is believed that the mixing of the fire of Muspell and the ice of Niflheim formed the first Frost Giant, Ymir."

She looked a little confused, but motioned for him to go on.

"And Muspellian poison is rare, and it is liquid fire. It would have burned you up from the inside." He looked at the small black burn on her arm. "I thought that perhaps since I am descended from Ymir…" and he let the blue course through his fingers, showing them, "that I could chase the fire away."

He looked at her. "I burned you with cold as they had burned you with fire."

She furrowed her brow. "But I've touched you before and I haven't been burned. In your Jotunn form, I mean."

He smiled sadly. "I shielded you from me. A thin layer of magic let us touch, but…" He gestured to her bandages. "You see what it means to truly touch me."

She met his eyes and smiled. "Thank you."

He looked at her in astonishment. "I just scarred you, Alana. For life. And you thank me?"

She stretched her arms above her head. "Well, it sounds like I'd be dead, otherwise." She grinned. "I think I'll take the scars." She winced a little. "Ow." She gestured at the IV port. "Do I still need this?"

"I don't think so."

"Pass me some gauze, would you?" she asked, and gently eased it out of her arm, wincing slightly. He handed her the gauze and she pressed down on the wound. "What's this?" she asked, gesturing to the small black burn on her arm.

"I had to inject you with my blood."

She looked up at him and smiled. "Does this mean I'm going to turn blue too?"

He shook his head. "I think not."

A small silence filled the room as she attempted to bandage her arm with one hand.

He sighed. "Just let me do it." He held the gauze in place and taped it to her arm. "There."

She kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, his hand cupping her face, but her eyes were slightly distracted.

"Is Coulson here?" she asked. "I'd like to talk to him."