Author's Note:
Warnings: depression, vague suicidal ideation
Chapter Thirteen:
NOVEMBER:
He thinks that he should remember how he got here.
He doesn't.
All he can focus on is a persistent haze; a cloud settled over his mind. Rolling fog. Impossible to see through. Pushing through the haze is worse though because he knows that the world is spinning around him. All he has to hold himself in place is that haze.
He wants the haze to go away.
He also never wants to escape it. It's a good thing. He clings to it. With rigid, white-knuckled fingers. He can't let it go. If he lets go...
Then…
…then what?
He doesn't know. It doesn't really matter though. He knows that it's important he not feel anything. When there's the haze, he's not able to focus on the pain.
He doesn't know how he got here.
Thor hazily blinks his eyes open. He can feel himself being dragged somewhere, but he can't dredge up the will to fight. His head feels wrong. Detached. He's honestly not sure if he exists outside of it anymore. His head, that is. But maybe the dragging, too. Surely they must have reached where they were going by now. All there is is that dreadful haze. And the pain, circling, hungry, waiting.
Thor watches the light slowly pass through slits in what he assumes is the ceiling. Little flecks of sunshine.
It takes him a long, long time to realize they've stopped moving. He blinks in a daze, tempted to try and fight the haze, but the dark is lingering now, trying to welcome him into its warm embrace. He wants to, but it laughs when he tries to follow it to the abyss.
Too slow.
Thor's eyelids feel like flickering shadows jumping in and out of his vision. He wishes he would pass out. He doesn't remember why he has to stay awake.
A familiar face leans over him, blinking in and out behind his fluttering eyelids. The features of the woman make something jolt sharply within him. I know you. He tries to move his mouth, tries to speak, to explain, ask for her help. Her name slips away from him, but he knows. Her blonde hair fluttering around her shoulders, hiding the grim lines on her face.
He wants, suddenly, for this dreadful wrongness to go away. He doesn't want the fuzziness anymore. He needs to understand. What is…she…doing here. Gods, if he could just remember a name. What is her name?
She speaks, and the words are far, far away. He only picks up a handful of syllables and the final two words. "Nothing permanent," the woman instructs, resting a hand on his shoulder. It reassures him, the familiarity of that touch.
Her name slips away from him again. He can barely even remember his own.
Another face joins that one, leaning over him, horrid and crooked, like decaying fruit, weathered with rot. The smile is dreadful, the words slurred and barely recognizable as High Eleven, the language of Alfheim. "Define permanent."
Alfheim.
Oh, gods.
The woman. That's-
"Wait," his own tongue is sloppy, and the word comes out more like a gagged sound than language. "Waaaiiit." He grapples for her hand when she starts to walk away.
The woman smiles down at him sadly and kisses his forehead. "This is for your brother," she murmurs, "I hope one day you'll find it in your heart to forgive me."
Brother?
On the Norns, what is happening? Loki-
The woman lets him go, her fingers gentle when they squeeze his own. It's the kindest touch he receives in a long, long time.
000o000
DECEMBER:
S.H.I.E.L.D. shows up a few minutes later and Clint remembers the remainder of the rescue in a haze-filled blur after that. Thor is assessed on sight by the EMTs, who keep sharing grim looks and talking in increasingly indecipherable medical jargon. Bruce's face gathers increasing dread the longer they talk, however, and Thor is put on oxygen, given an IV, and a pulse oximeter before being loaded up on a stretcher.
Clint remembers Fury trying to talk to them, but he doesn't know what the conversation entailed. It wasn't a pleasant one. A trade of horror stories maybe?
Tony argues for taking Thor to Stark Medical, which is only a few minutes away instead of a S.H.I.E.L.D. medical base because the closest one is the Helicarrier, which is several thousand feet above them. No one is entirely sure how Thor's body will handle the pressure change like this.
Tony must have won the argument eventually, because the next thing Clint knows, they're leaving CSU and Fury inside the remains of the NY field office and returning to the Tower. Thor is taken in for medical evaluation by Tony's on-call doctor, Dr. Cho, which then turns into an emergency surgery and a long, long wait without details.
Clint starts it anxiously seated in the chair, playing with an arrow between his fingers, Natasha next to him, hands steepled over her face. Tony and Steve both sit next to each other, the former's foot tapping anxiously, Steve completely still. Loki and Bruce both pace restlessly, looping circles and circles around the room.
By hour six, everyone is seated and drained of any residual energy, just waiting for the worst.
Fury stops by at hour seven, taking in the scene with a frown. "We didn't find any evidence of the Chitauri having been in the building," Fury says at length, after rounding through blundered small talk. "CSU combed the building, but it doesn't even seem like they were there. CSU's preliminary report suggests that Thor was there alone. Their suggestion is that he fell when he was flying, fell, and knocked himself unconscious."
"Which means what?" Tony asks, sounding depleted.
"Thor escaped?" Fury sighs, "Heck if I know. It just means we're not as compromised as I thought we were."
Oh, well at least there's that.
Clint scrubs his hands up and down his face. That makes more sense, doesn't it? That the Chituari didn't have anything to do with Thor being there than them knowing where the field office was? But at the same time, it doesn't, because none of this makes any sense. Thor knew where the base was, if Clint's remembering right.
Why wouldn't he just go to the Tower? If Thor had escaped and was trying to get back to them, why didn't he try to get in contact with any of them? Where was he?
Why did the Chitauri let him leave?
Fury sinks into one of the chairs with a sigh, rubbing at his brow. "Have the doctors said anything?"
"No," Steve answers, looking up from the magazine he's read probably three times by now. It has some sort of technology theme, and the cover is the latest Stark phone, which Tony keeps grimacing at whenever he looks at it. With Steve's memory, Clint is pretty sure the captain could quote entire sections back to them at this point. "They took him back for surgery a while ago, but we haven't heard any updates since."
"Did they say what the surgery was for?" Fury asks.
"No," Steve says, again; this time his tone pessimistic.
"Hemothorax would be my guess," Bruce says from behind his fingers. His head is tilted back against the wall, face buried inside his hands. His glasses are still missing and it makes Clint agitated. "You could hear his broken ribs. I would be surprised if he wasn't bleeding into his chest cavity. Or maybe they're trying to set his broken femur or stitching together the gashes covering his chest. Could be internal bleeding. There were bruises on his neck, maybe they needed to perform an emergency tracheostomy to help with the swelling. Or whatever number of broken bones we couldn't see."
All of them are staring, but Bruce doesn't lift his hands to look at them, instead sinking his face deeper into his palms and digging his fingers into his messy bangs. It's a level of agitation that seems painful.
The longer that Clint stares at him, the more he realizes something.
Despite his insistence that he's not that kind of doctor, Bruce has medical training. He was in med school for years before dropping out, and that level of knowledge, on top of all his Ph.D.'s, must be more like a curse than a blessing. To have a complete, total understanding of how horrible something is instantly…no slow, gradual processing, you just know.
Immediately. Every time.
Clint looked at Thor and saw blood and damage.
Bruce looked at Thor and saw a diagnosis. Broken bones, lacerations, throat damage. He knew what that meant when he caught the first glimpse. He's been churning around that diagnosis in his head for hours, unable to do anything but dread what's coming.
(I have seven Ph.D.s and not one of them can tell me how to help anyone.)
Unbidden, a memory from the Quinjet last week-was that only last week?-comes to mind, after Clint got slashed with the knife in the cafeteria. He'd been hysterical on shock, but Bruce had looked at him with wide eyes of horror. Can one of you keep yourself together for five minutes? Tony had pulled him away and assured him it was fine. Tony knows. He knows that Bruce's brain processes things at an inhuman speed and he was trying to help.
Because the engineer's does the same. Crap. Clint can't even imagine…constant, overwhelming sensory input. It must be terrifying when the input is how damaged someone you care about is.
"Do you think the damage is that bad?" Steve asks Bruce, his tone apprehensive.
"Yes," Bruce mutters.
Tony slaps his own magazine shut and all but lurches to his feet. "I'm going for a coffee run. Does anyone want coffee? Actually, none of us have eaten and it's been a long couple of hours. I'll order in, too, but coffee first. Anyone?"
All of them raise their hands.
Tony nods, pointing a rolled-up magazine at Fury. "I'm going to guess. Straight black?"
Fury rolls his eyes but concedes a moment later. "With cream, if it hasn't expired."
"I should probably be offended you think that I have expired cream in my fridge, but that is completely valid. If it won't poison you, I'll get that. Steve, I need some extra hands." Tony says, tossing the magazine onto the waiting table. Steve nods methodically, getting up to his feet.
The two of them leave, coming back about twenty minutes later with coffee and chinese. Clint doesn't feel particularly hungry but forces food down anyway. The coffee doesn't have a taste. At this point, it's just a drug to him.
Hours eight and nine pass in relative silence. Fury leaves after that, called away by Hill about something that Clint doesn't have the willpower to try and listen in on. The coffee does little for their combined exhaustion.
Natasha falls asleep against his shoulder, but he's too nervous to try and sleep, and any contact with her makes his entire body ache a little. It makes him hate himself a little more. Loki falls asleep slumped against Tony, who is holding amazingly still to try not to disturb him. He can't determine if Steve and Bruce are awake.
He doesn't know what the hour count is when Dr. Cho, looking worse and more fatigued than all of them combined, comes into the room. Her face is grim, pale, and a little pasty.
After several nudges have been passed around, all of them stare at her, blinking away lingering sleep.
Dr. Cho has a folder in her hands, and she takes several steps into the room. "I'm not sure if HIPAA applies here, but I'm just going to assume no. You would all tell each other anyway, I'm assuming?" There are a series of nods.
Dr. Cho sighs, indicating for them to get closer together. "To preface this, Thor is alive and he's stable. That's what I want you to focus on, alright?"
Oh good.
So it's good news then.
Dr. Cho opens up the folder and starts to indicate to various x-rays, "The surgery was successful and we were able to stop the bleeding and drain his lung. But I won't lie to you, he's in bad shape. The left side of his ribs is more of a suggestion than a reality. There are four breaks and two fractures. We have him on oxygen, but this could and probably will develop into some sort of pneumonia. His right femur was broken in three separate places and healed wrong. We broke and rest the bone, but we'll need to monitor it for nerve damage or lingering pain."
Clint grimaces, thinking about Thor's awkward, hobbling stagger.
"There are dozens of open abrasions. I'm not sure what caused those, but a majority of them were infected. There is evidence of severe scarring from some sort of stab wound, and," Dr. Cho flips through a page to pull out a photo. "This."
Clint barely represses a flinch. Loki's mouth sets tightly, eyes darkening in recognition.
An awful, rigid burn scar is sticking out over the skin on his shoulder, infected and leaking pus. A mutilated symbol that Clint recognizes from a dream. They should put it on your face.
"What?" Steve asks, looking between them. "What is it?"
"A Chitauri slave brand," Loki says between his teeth. "Clearly it was meant in humiliation instead of intention, or they would have shorn his hair as well." The Asgardian's teeth set unhappily, his hands rubbing over his wrists, tracing scars. Clint reaches out, squeezing his forearm in reassurance.
Dr. Cho's eyes shudder for a moment, and she looks like she wants to say something, but her professionalism kicks in instead. "...Ah. I had wondered. Thor's healing factor has been severely depleted. It's my understanding that any one of these could have healed in several hours," at this, Loki gives a nod, "but together with prolonged starvation and dehydration has left him very weak. With how weak his body is, we weren't able to give him any sedatives or painkillers. We're worried about what it would do. He's still unconscious, but I'm not sure how long it will last."
Okay. Nothing that can't be fixed with time. That's good. That's good, right? No. It is. Clint is sure.
"Can we see him?" Natasha asks.
Dr. Cho hesitates. "Yes, but I would ask you to keep the visit limited. As I said, he's vulnerable to infection."
All of them get up, and a look of resignation passes over the doctor's face. "Follow me," she says and leaves the room. They follow.
Clint's hand finds Natasha's in the walk. His chest feels tight, the overwhelming crash of emotions from earlier reemerging with a vengeance. This is more than anxiety, it's like a dull, throbbing pain.
Dr. Cho opens a door to a sterile-smelling room. It's white, as is the wont of hospital rooms. Several machines are beeping rhythmically, and Clint watches the rise and fall of the heart monitor for a long moment, reassured by the repetition.
Thor is laying on the bed, looking small. The blood has been cleaned up, leaving behind pale, almost gray skin in its place. Underneath the blanket, Clint can see the outline of a cast on the Asgardian's right leg, presumably for the broken femur Dr. Cho mentioned. Peaking out from the hospital gown, various cuts have been stitched and covered with butterfly bandages. Over his left shoulder, it looks like there's a patch of white gauze.
His chest rises and falls mechanically from the oxygen he's being given.
For a moment, all of them just stand there, breathing. There doesn't seem to be anything they can do or say. Just waiting for something to come and break the awful weight seeping into everything.
Loki takes the first step forward, hand tentatively reaching for Thor before stopping. He looks first at Dr. Cho as if needing someone to give him permission first. The doctor nods in reassurance, and Loki slowly lets his hand touch his brothers. Tentative at first, unsure, before he grips it more firmly.
Thor doesn't even twitch, breathing in, slow and pained.
Clint takes the next step forward. "We got him," he promises, resting a hand on Loki's back. The Asgardian leans into subconsciously, and it makes something in Clint's stomach pull. "He's going to be okay."
Loki nods, a tremulous smile trying to hold onto life on his face and failing. Clint looks at the two of them and is reminded of the scene in June so long ago, where the roles were reversed. When Loki was the one half dead on the hospital bed, Thor was the one afraid to touch his sibling. The realization strikes him as strangely depressing.
What do these two have to give to stop circling this scene? One of them half dead and the other pleading with them to stay alive while the world falls apart around them?
000o000
They orbit Thor.
Clint isn't sure if it's intentional or just a natural effect of everything, but the orbiting happens all the same. Dr. Cho and her medical team don't feel like Thor is strong enough to be taken off of the sedatives, and Clint thinks that's probably for the best. Thor doesn't look like he's getting any better, if anything, he starts looking worse. Every breath dragged out of his body seems like it pains him.
When Fury isn't demanding their help in finding out what happened, trying to put a desperate timeline of events together, then they're sleeping, and if they're not sleeping, they're back in Thor's hospital room.
Clint doesn't know whose decision it was if it was anyone's at all, but they don't contact Frigga and Odin. Part of Clint thinks it's because they aren't actually sure where the royalty ended up. He doesn't really want to look. He thinks it might be spite, which he's honestly okay with. At this point, why not?
Loki spends the majority of his time in Thor's room. Whenever Clint joins him, Loki is watching. Sometimes he has a book on his lap, unopened or he's staring at the pages blankly, but more often than not, he's just staring at Thor. A twisted, horrible expression haunts the Asgardian's face, like there's a physical presence in the room that he has to fight off every time he's inside.
Sometimes Clint feels it too. The weight.
He finds himself restless. He barely remembers to eat, his sleep schedule is squat and riddled with nightmares, but there's little that he can do to ward everything off. He dreams about Loki standing over the Avengers' dead bodies and laughing. Sometimes he dreams that he's standing over their bodies, and watching himself scream in horror from far away. He dreams about the Chitauri. He thinks that everything is smashed inside his brain, crashed and filled with errors because it doesn't feel coherent anymore.
His own terror is bleeding into the nightmares.
It's almost bitterly appropriate.
The rest of the Avengers cycle through this same thing from what he can see, a restlessness intermingled with almost unfathomable exhaustion. After ten days of fighting, of wanting, they've won and now there's nothing to do but wait for the victory to go stale.
It's the evening of day three when it happens. Dr. Cho has been steadily reducing the levels of sedative, allowing Thor's body to metabolize it naturally. He gets an oxygen mask. This, she says, will help Thor wake up when he's ready. Looking at Thor's bruised, battered form, Clint isn't sure that will happen. Thor still looks so sick. So weak.
Two adjectives that Clint didn't even think existed in the same plane of reality as Thor.
But it's day three.
Evening.
Probably.
Clint has spent the last twenty minutes trying to coax Loki into taking a shower, Natasha watching all of this from behind her phone on the other side of the room. She's playing Temple Run, one of the few mindless games that she indulges in.
There isn't some sort of gasping, jerking motion when Thor wakes up. He doesn't spring from the bed and start stabbing people. Not like Loki did. When the younger Asgardian had finally woken from the sedatives in June, he'd panicked and attempted to escape the room. He stabbed a nurse. Thor is different. One moment he's asleep, and the next Clint is acutely aware of the fact that he's staring at them.
Clint stills. Loki, in the middle of his very bad argument, stops at the expression on Clint's face and turns around to face the bed. Natasha leans forward, turning off her phone.
"Thor," Loki says, getting to his feet and moving to the bed. He reaches out for his brother's hand, grasping it tightly. Thor blinks heavily at him, not reacting when Loki touches him. "Brother."
Thor blinks again, releasing an exhausted sigh. "You…okay?"
Loki's expression flickers with momentary surprise, then pain, but his voice is soft. "Yes, brother. I'm fine. You're the one we're worried about."
"Hm," Thor mumbles, and his eyes close again. Every word sounds like it's physically painful for him to form. "Had…the worst…dreams…" he sighs. "Thought…killed you."
In the back of his mind, Clint can hear the Chitauri gleefully telling Thor to hit Loki. The sound that Loki's ribs made as they crunched, Thor's desperation, pain, and fury in his expression as he stared down his brother. Clint can almost smell the sand. He digs his nails inside his arm, shaking his head lightly. The images fade, but the vague nausea lingers.
A dream. Thor thinks it was a dream. After Clint attacked the Helicarrier, it was easier to put the memories together in dreams, otherwise, they were too sporadic. Thor was under the scepter. Maybe it will be similar.
Is that a good or bad thing?
"Yes, well," Loki says after a moment, smoothing his thumb across the back of Thor's hand, "That's all behind us now. Get some rest, brother. We'll be here when you wake up."
"Hm," Thor sighs. His eyes slip closed again. It doesn't take long before the Asgardian's breathing deepens, indicating that he's fallen back asleep. Loki watches his face for long seconds, his own expression blank.
Clint shifts anxiously.
Loki exhales, closing his eyes. "He's coherent. That's all that matters."
"Will he continue to think this was a dream?" Natasha asks.
"I'm not sure," Loki admits. "I was delirious by the end of the attack, but I have a vague memory of attempting to throw off the control with brute force magic. It's possible I may have damaged something. It's too early to say, but it would be best not to overwhelm him. I don't...we shouldn't tell him about Frigga and Odin. Not now. He needs them to be stable."
"Loki," Clint sighs. "We can't just-"
"He thinks I killed them," Loki interrupts before Clint can get another word in edgewise. "That's what he told me. In the fight. That I had committed parricide."
Oh.
Clint had wondered. Loki had looked horrified.
Clint and his partner share a look, but they don't argue.
"Thor needs them to be safe right now. I can't take that away until he's better." Loki adds the last part after a moment. He squeezes Thor's hand tighter, looking worn.
In the back of his mind, he had never considered the possibility that Thor would be anything but okay when they rescued him. He assumed that Thor would forget, like he did, and they would have to give him a brutal fill-in-the-blanks, but Thor would be fine. He never imagined that there would be lingering effects.
But it will be fine. It has to be, right? The worst has to be behind them.
(Ha. Ha. Ha.)
000o000
At first, he's pelted with snapshots of moments that feel like dreams. He feels hands touching him, knives being shoved inside his body. A woman saying that he's conscious again and instructing them to put him back under. He feels himself laying on something soft. No suspension, no tricks, no hard, unforgiving earth. This, more than anything, feels like the most dreamlike.
He hears voices. In and out of focus, like water lapping slowly against a shore. He recognizes most of them, finds comfort in the familiarity, and finds himself slipping further into unconsciousness. He thinks he remembers a brief conversation with Loki.
Everything is exhausting.
He hears them talking. Manages to pick up bits of conversation. Not sure what we're going to tell him, the doctors say that he's getting better, Loki you need to get some rest, we should call Jane, have you seen how bad Clint is? and on and on it goes. With effort, he manages to start to pull together rough lucidity between the overwhelming desire to sleep. It's hard. His need for rest is all-consuming.
His heartbeat pounds in his ears, beating with a weariness that feels intimately familiar. It's ready to give out.
Me too, he thinks, feeling very far away.
What should we tell him? Is a common conversation topic. Admittedly, he finds it sort of funny and infuriating. Why don't you just ask? He wants to say. He wants to scream at them. He wants to shout. Why would you think of hiding something from me now? After everything?
But it doesn't matter. Not really. Nothing does.
Thor wakes up anyway.
He didn't want to wake up. That was the point.
000o000
The Avengers' joy at his waking feels blurred. Like he's looking at it through dirty glass. He doesn't remember much of it, and part of him is disappointed about this. There are well-wishes. They keep touching him. He sees Loki lingering, looking relieved.
He wishes he had good memories to compete with how raw he feels. Maybe even better memories. The healer seeing him shoos them all out before long anyway, and Thor is drowned in her endless questions. He wants to tell her not to bother.
She asks him if he hurts anywhere.
Why don't you just ask me where it doesn't hurt, that would be simpler.
Thor doesn't tell her that everything hurts, though he's tempted. He's not sure he remembers what it's like not to be in pain anymore. Every time he breathes it feels like he's brushing his lungs up against knives. That he does admit, only because it makes talking nearly impossible. The healer assures him that's normal and will fade with time.
Thor wonders if she thinks that makes it better. It still hurts now.
He falls asleep again.
Loki is there when his body drags him into consciousness again, slumped over the edge of the bed, face smashed against folded arms, a book on the bed next to Thor's feet, appearance uncharacteristically messy. His dark hair is a mess around his face. Even in sleep, he looks distressed, his body twitching minutely. Thor idly wonders what time it is. How long he's been here.
(Does it matter at this point? Centuries could have passed. Everything stays the same.)
He wonders if Loki's dreaming about Thor's hands wrapped around his throat. He can hear his own voice, rattling inside his head, I hate you, he'd screamed, over and over, hand wrapped around Loki's throat. He can remember, vividly, the way Loki had jerked beneath the stranglehold, his fingers digging into Thor's arm with desperation.
He never wanted to know what it felt like to have his brother writhing against him, fighting to survive.
And yet.
Thor didn't let him go. Not until Loki had cast sedir on him. The pain of the mind control snapping.
He remembers the Avengers arriving, the brief exchange with Hulk-Norns, the bruises from the Hulk-and the Chitauri pulling him away. He remembers Loki's crumpled body, laying in the sand across from Clint's, gasping. He'd stopped breathing by the time Thor left. Clint had been crying, Natasha leaning over him, wailing.
In another world, maybe it should bring him comfort that Loki is alive and (it does, gods, it does, his brother is alive and whole, and looks better now than he has since before he fell into the Void) he's here, but Thor can only focus on the fact that the Chitauri didn't even have to force him to attack Loki. All they did was invite him and he went along with it gladly.
If the Avengers hadn't arrived, Thor would have killed him.
Loki shouldn't be anywhere near him. He's dangerous.
His brother sleeps on, oblivious, continuing to twitch. It's distracting. He didn't twitch before. Such a succinct way to put that, isn't it? Before the Chitauri, Before his coronation, Before. After, is a dirty, despairing place. After means Loki waking up screaming. Loki covered in scars that Thor doesn't recognize.
After is.
After.
Thor has his own After now.
Thor closes his eyes, wishing he was anywhere else. Somewhere, he knows, the Chitauri are laughing. Days of torture, and it's being returned into the relative safety of his friends and family that breaks him.
Breaks. Ha. You are already broken, Odinson. Look at you. Curled on a bed, unable to talk. You disgrace your family. And yourself. Disgusting creature. Murderer.
Part of Thor, quiet and childish, longs to wake Loki just to hear him talk. He doesn't. He closes his eyes instead, trying to take comfort in Loki's twitching arm pressed against his calf.
He falls asleep before Loki leaves, at least.
It's sometime later when Thor wakes up again. The word feels tinged with gray. He's already laying down, but his body is heavy. A burden. He feels like he's being pulled inside the mattress to be consumed. Thor would let it if given the chance.
He looks around the now-familiar white walls. Only Steve is here, carefully sketching inside a magazine with a pen. It's a comforting scene. Steve often draws inside of newspapers and magazines, "not wanting to waste paper." Sometimes he adds to the ads, which Tony is continually delighted by. An endless source of entertainment, the engineer insisted. Thor had found it funny once, too. Now the idea of laughing seems exhausting.
He is consumed by the inescapable weight of everything.
Waiting for it to drown him. Gasping for relief when there is none.
Steve is scrunched over the paper, face propped up against one fist while the other carefully traces, slumped heavily against one side of the chair with one leg across the other. The position looks uncomfortable. If Thor tried to contort into something similar, he's pretty sure he would slide his rib into his lung.
It takes Steve a while before he looks up, then double takes. "Oh, my g-hey," the captain says, scrambling into something more upright. He nearly drops the magazine in the process. "You're up. Do you need anything? Should I get the doctor?"
What will they do? What can they?
Thor slowly shakes his head. Even that is tiring.
Steve relaxes back into the chair a fraction.
Thor forces in a breath, ignoring the discomfort in his ribs. It's getting better. Thor still doesn't know how long he's been here. He wonders dully if that's information the Avengers will feel is important enough to tell him. He doesn't know how long he's been gone, how long it was before he killed Erik Selvig in cold blood-
"Where…" his voice is raspy and hoarse. He swallows compulsively. "Where's Loki?"
Do you honestly think he'd want to wait by your bedside? A nasty voice whispers in the back of his mind, after all that happened? After that fight before you left, with the argument that descended into rage on both sides, that he would ever want to see you again? What about when you tried to kill him? You told him that you hate him. He's hated you for far longer. Which is no less than you deserve.
Look at you.
Weak.
"He's resting," Steve says, drawing Thor back to the present. "It's the middle of the night," Steve adds after a moment.
Ah.
Thor sighs. "Why…are you…here then?" he asks. Talking is hard. He wasn't expecting that.
"Hang on," Steve says, getting to his feet. When he returns, he holds out a glass of water. Thor's hands are trembling, but he adamantly refuses the captain's help when he tries to offer it. After all that he's done, he doesn't deserve the simple kindness. He is a murderer. The Chitauri insisted this. Branded it inside his mind until it felt like an open wound. But it's the truth.
Thor can still see their faces. Selvig's surprise and pain at being murdered by the man he trusted. Nathan Swenson's resignation, as if he expected nothing less.
"Thank you," Thor says, surprised at how much the water helped. His throat feels better.
Steve nods, taking his seat again. He sets the empty glass on the bedside table, staring at him critically. "How are you doing?" he asks.
Do you want to know? Honestly? I wish you had just let me die.
I didn't want to survive that fall.
"Tired," Thor says, which is true. His skin also itches. It's a minor annoyance. He doesn't have the energy to do much about it. Steve nods to that, as if it's expected. Thor wonders if they've had this conversation before. Everyone seems so much less surprised when he's awake than he was expecting. He's losing time. Part of him is thankful for that. He doesn't want to remember anything anymore.
"How long…was I gone?" Thor asks. It felt like years. He's not naive enough to believe it was.
Steve hesitates. "It's December twenty-fourth. Last we saw you was in November. It's been over a month."
A month.
Only a month.
"Oh," Thor intones without emotion. He wishes he could roll over. He settles for closing his eyes and turning his head away. His leg throbs dully. He remembers when they broke it, when they took him, the crumpled way his body had collapsed and he hadn't been able to get up.
"Hey," Steve gently pokes him with the edge of the pen. Thor does his best not to jump, snapping his eyes open to look back at the captain, fists clenching. Steve withdraws the pen, hands raised a fraction. "Sorry. Do you want to talk?"
Thor sighs, closing his eyes again. "No."
"Okay…we're here. If you need it." Steve assures.
That's kind of the problem, isn't it?
000o000
"Things are looking better," Dr. Cho assures later that morning, looking over several screens on a tablet. She's been talking at it for the majority of the conversation instead of him. Thor doesn't mind as much as he should. It helps him fade into the background. Dr. Cho looks over the tablet again, humming softly. "The break is completely healed, and a majority of the cuts and bruises are looking better. I knew Asgardian healing factors were impressive, but you've only been here for four days."
This, she does look up at him for. Thor isn't sure what she wants him to say, or if he wants her to say anything at all. He stays quiet. In the back of his mind, he can hear Loki drawling a sarcastic yes, congratulations are in order then, and he brushes it off.
His brother feels like a raw subject. He hasn't seen him since he's been more lucid. This, he knows, is a very good thing. He doesn't want to hurt him. It's also a very bad thing. He misses him.
Dr. Cho sets down the tablet. "I think we'll get the cast removed and we'll see about getting you up on your feet again. Does that sound okay?"
No.
He wants to let the bed consume him.
"Yes," his voice is still tired. "That sounds fine," he promises. His fingers tighten in his hair, twisting the small section until it's taut with tension. The woman nods, going over some more things that he doesn't really register. He wishes he had accepted Steve's offer to stay and go everything with him when the woman came inside.
"Do you have anything for the pain?" he asks, more out of habit than anything else. Dr. Cho pauses, and Thor mentally kicks himself. This isn't Asgard, he reminds himself, of course they won't have anything.
"Are you in pain?" Dr. Cho asks, frowning.
Half of my ribcage is broken, what do you think is the answer to that question? He bites on the words before they can escape him.
"Some," he admits.
"Is this…normal? I'm not familiar with Asgardian healing. Anything I know came from your brother," the doctor says. So Loki has been helping, I wondered.
The idea of explaining anything is tiring. Thor wishes Loki was there, but the feeling is intermingled with horror and disgust and fear. He doesn't know what he'll do if his brother does show up. Or Clint. He could have killed both of them. He can't feel the effects of the mind control anymore, but that doesn't mean something isn't there.
And even if he isn't under the effects of the mind control, does it matter?
They forced him to kill Clint.
Thor chose to attack his brother. The lies the Chitauri told him are no excuse.
(If, that voice purrs, they really were lies. What proof do you have that Loki didn't rein hell on Asgard after you let him go? What proof do you have that your parents are alive. You called him a Foreldremorder. And you meant it.)
"There can be lingering pain from injuries," Thor explains. Every word he has to pull out from behind his teeth. "Nerve endings and such," he says, like that actually explained anything. He's not going to get into the biology of it.
The woman shoots him a confused look, for a brief moment, but it passes. "I'll see if I can find anything for pain," Dr. Cho promises. "But first lets get off the cast. I imagine that it itches."
It doesn't.
000o000
Bruce comes back later, holding coffee. The smell makes Thor's stomach roll with nausea. He doesn't say anything, wishing he had closed his eyes so he could pretend to be asleep. His skin does itch without the casts now, ironically. He keeps rubbing his finger over the scar on his leg where the bone broke through, transfixed with it.
He's never really scarred from a broken bone before.
"Hey," Bruce's voice is soft. He takes a seat on the end of the bed, shaking his head softly, "Dr. Cho told us the good news. I can't believe you got a cast off a spiral fracture in four days." That's supposed to be a good thing, isn't it? "How is the brace?"
Thor wishes he would stop talking.
"It's fine," he says.
It feels too tight.
"Oh. I'd offer to show you how to use crutches later, but your ribcage is still more of a suggestion than a reality," Bruce says, frowning. It's his concerned frown. Thor is tired of all of this. He wants to scream. He wants to run. He wants to fall out of the sky again. Maybe this time the fall would actually be fatal.
He just sits there. Waiting. Breathing in the scent of Bruce's coffee and wishing he could throw it.
Bruce tries to keep talking, but Thor doesn't make a good conversationalist. He'll probably feel bad about it later, but right now there's only staggering relief when Bruce finally gets the point and shuts up. The chemist lingers, sipping on his coffee. One of his hands is anxiously picking at the seam of his pants.
Thor closes his eyes. Maybe if he falls into a deep enough sleep he won't wake up next time.
No such luck.
He doesn't have a good grasp of time.
He's not exactly sure when it is that the hospital room is flooded with the Avengers the next day. He wakes up to Tony shaking his shoulder, then blinks through confusion at the string of glittering, blinking lights along one wall. The Avengers have dragged in an impromptu meal, all of them wearing some of the ugliest sweaters he's ever seen in his life.
Even Loki, lingering at the outskirts of the room with obvious anxiety, has somehow been forced into one of those sweaters. There's a red-suited man on it, with letters above that are blurry and jumping around to form No Ho Bo, NO No On, and On Ho NO and back and forth. The words are jumping and Thor squeezes his eyes shut momentarily when he isn't able to make sense of them.
Reading English is no easier for him than Asgardian, but it's worse when he's tired. Normally the letters don't jump this much. Right now it's like the words are fighting him.
"Merry Christmas!" Tony says cheerfully, handing Thor some sort of desert. It's some sort of small, brown little man covered in frosting. The sight of it makes him feel a little ill. He looks up at Tony in bewilderment.
"What?"
Tony frowns at him, taking a swig of some sort of fizzling juice. Nothing alcoholic. Last Thor remembers the engineer had been desperately scraping to get three months sober. Thor wonders if he reached it. He doesn't want to ask.
"You know what Christmas is, don't you?" Tony asks, beginning to pout. The expression is familiar. Teasing.
Everything is so far away. Gods, he can't focus. He's watching himself. A third-party observer of his life.
"Of course I know what-" Thor blinks. Tony's shirt has something on it too. He has no idea what it says. It's starting to make his headache worse. He shifts in the bed a fraction, trying and failing to hide the gasping wince when it sends a sharp pain through his entire chest.
The Avengers stop for a moment to look at him, all with powerful stares of concern or worry, and Thor feels like he sees them. Hiding behind this festivity, but it's glass. He can see it. The rigid, painful tension between all of them. The exhaustion. This celebration is a forced, tired thing, like it's a game they have to play.
Christmas. The Christian holiday. A long, exhaustive game of pretending.
The moment passes.
Tony grips his arm as the Avengers settle back down into their chairs, looking relaxed. Thor knows better than to believe it now. "You okay?" Tony murmurs. In the corner of his eye, Thor can see Loki watching him. Thor wishes he'd get closer. He wants to talk, but he's also grateful for the distance.
At least this way he can't hurt his younger brother.
He gives a soft nod. He takes in a deep breath. Facade, he thinks, spent. "I know what Christmas is, Tony."
"Right. You probably met Jesus and all that." Tony frowns, squinting as a thought occurs to him. "Wait. If you're real and gods, is the big capital G god legit? Oh my gosh, am I going to have to rethink my entire worldview?"
"Not religious?" Natasha asks leaning into a slouch, her tone dry but slightly curious.
"I don't know," Tony shrugs. "Space is pretty big."
Loki rolls his eyes a little, and takes a step closer, taking a seat on one of the chairs they brought in. "For your information, neither Thor or I are old enough to have met the Christian god. As for the question of if he's real…" Loki shrugs. "I have met some of your other gods. Midgardians are unusually sensitive to them. Even if they aren't real, if it does no detriment to your life, why shouldn't you be permitted to believe something is out there?"
"Okay, you are getting way too philosophical, professor." Clint says, jabbing him harshly with the edge of a long red-white stick. It looks like a small shepherd's cane. Loki does roll his eyes then, but before Clint can poke Thor's brother again, Natasha slaps his hand down without looking at him.
Something about their familiarity with each other makes Thor's chest ache.
He tries to blur into the background, but everyone keeps trying to talk with him and he can't. Eventually, he stops trying and just accepts it. He watches them laugh with each other, telling stories. None of them are serious, most are funny. Stupid things.
Bruce goes on in length about the first Christmas he had in college and how that resulted in him breaking two fingers. Thor isn't sure he entirely believes him, but it's an impressive tale.
Clint and Natasha pester Loki until he agrees to tell a misadventure of their youth, and Thor buries his head into his hands and refuses to look at anyone until Loki finishes, laughing. He's never going to live down mistaking Sigyn for a servant when they first met, is he? Something loosens in his chest at the memory. The warmth of reassurance, of Before. When things were better. Easier.
When Loki didn't hate him.
Something about Sigyn niggles at him though, like an itch he can't satisfy.
Natasha tries to teach him how to say Merry Christmas in Russian several times, but Thor's tongue won't wrap around the words. He keeps saying rozhden'ya instead of rozhdestvom by accident. Or something close enough to the former that Natasha starts laughing and at length, Thor joins her.
The laughter is physically painful but somehow exhilarating.
Natasha stills a little at his laugh of despair, her own expression flickering with the edge of relief and pain. It sobers him a little and makes his chest tighten up. He hasn't laughed since he escaped the Chitauri. There hasn't been anything to smile about. Not really. Not in any way that matters.
Her expression cleans up smoothly and she's smiling again. "S' rozh-dest-vom," she repeats the words slowly, enunciating them with care.
"Es Rosdenivomi…ya."
Natasha snorts on laughter. Clint, sitting beside her with his arm wrapped around her shoulder, is beginning to laugh too.
"What am I even saying?" Thor asks, exasperated, but letting a few tired laughs escape him anyway.
"Happy birthday to you too," Clint says in answer. He rests his head against Natasha's, smiling genuinely. She leans into his touch, comfortable, and Thor sees the slightest flinch as the edge of her red hair catches his vision. If Clint himself is aware of it, it isn't visible.
"That is not what he said." Natasha laughs.
"Well, not that time, but I admire his commitment to birthday wishes. He's getting closer. Kind of."
"Rozhden'ya," Natasha says it slowly, poking Clint in the side with every syllable. "Rozh-den-'ya. Does that sound like Rosdenivomya to you?"
"No, no it doesn't. I yield, rozhden'ya, rozhden'ya!" Clint says the word perfectly, slapping her hand away. "Don't be mean to me. It's Christmas."
"Not in Russia," Natasha threatens, lowering her voice to something silky and dangerous. "And it's Birthday, Agent Barton. Haven't you been paying attention?"
Thor sighs in exasperation. "Merry birthday," he says, which only sends the Avengers into another round of giggles. They look drunk, but Thor is positive that there isn't a drop of liquor anywhere in this room. Even Loki is hiding amusement-not well-behind whatever fizzy juice has been passed around. Thor wasn't given any. Bruce warned it might make him throw up. That sort of put a damper on any efforts he had to convince them to let him try it. Tony assured him it tasted like crap, but all of them have been drinking like it's fine wine.
"Schastlivogo Rozhdestva," Loki says, his tongue moving around the original version Natasha was trying to teach him earlier with ease. She switched to S' Rozhdestva later because then he really only had to focus on the one word. Loki must have been paying more attention than Thor was to Natasha's careful teaching.
Loki raises the glass up in a toast and the Avengers follow with their own. Thor lifts up the little man he was given instead of a glass, as both Tony and Clint cheerfully exclaim "S Dnem rozhden'ya!" at the top of their lungs.
That, along with the little man, sends everyone into a fit of laughter again.
It doesn't last.
The Avengers leave eventually. Loki first, claiming the need to sleep. Thor gets the impression that he's avoiding Thor, and this isn't just a massive coincidence. He doesn't blame his brother in the slightest. He doesn't have the heart. Thor tried to kill him. Why would he ever want to speak with Thor again?
Time keeps sort of buzzing. He's aware that it's passing, but he can't keep track of how much.
He spends as much time in bed as possible. Dr. Cho encourages this, saying it will be good for recovery, but he needs to make sure that he's getting some sort of movement so his muscles can recover. Thor is glad that he's appeasing someone. Sort of.
He doesn't tell her he has no desire to get out of bed.
Gods, he doesn't even know what possesses him, but after he's limped the required rounds around the room, ignoring Natasha watching him with poorly hidden concern and nearly getting up from her chair several times when he almost falls flat on his face, he's hiding in the bathroom, taking in deep breaths. He's soaked in sweat, shaking, and has been fighting the urge to vomit valiantly.
He looks up at the mirror.
The reflection looking back is…
It looks like someone else. His face is washed out and pale, the faintest edge of scars near his left eye. His blue eyes are empty. He looks…raw. Like someone scraped him out with knives, intent to maim.
Very slowly, with a deliberation that feels outside of his body, Thor carefully takes off his shirt. It's a little awkward with his still-aching ribcage-Your ribs are looking much better, Dr. Cho had said, earlier, staring at Thor with amazement-but he manages. His chest looks like a battlefield, littered with the dead bodies in the form of scars. White-red scars are overlapping. Burns. Claws. He doesn't even remember what the Chituari did anymore. It's disconcerting.
Staring at them makes him feel sick. He can feel anxiety beginning to pound in his chest like his heart is beginning to pulse outside of his body. It's almost painful. His hands are trembling. He touches his chest, running fingers across the scars.
Loki and he used to have a long-standing war between them about scars Before. They were always trying to one-up each other. Thor was in the lead until After. He's seen Loki's back. He could barely use his hands after Thor brought him for asylum. Thor never said anything about it, but in one of their better moments, Loki had, still delirious from pain and whatever the Norns the Midgardians had given him, said "I win" in such a hoarse, tired voice, it was almost funny. But the topic matter was sobering. Thor didn't laugh.
(Instead, later, in the privacy of a bathroom, he had wept.)
Thor didn't imagine there was a way that he would ever be able to outdo his brother, but looks like I've caught up, after all, he thinks bitterly.
Tempted at the lines extending along his ribs and shoulders, Thor angles himself toward the mirror, trying to look at his back. What he sees is worse. That pressure in his chest is getting harder. Everything feels loud. His breath is echoing. Then he sees it.
Oh gods.
Oh gods.
Oh gods.
His legs won't hold him anymore like his upper body has collapsed in on itself, or his feet have grown far too heavy to stand up anymore. He barely feels himself hit the bathroom floor. His hands cling to the hard, rough skin of the brand. His breaths are coming out in heaving, panting gasps. He's breathing. He must be. No. That's not right.
He doesn't care anymore.
His face is starting to sting.
Distantly, he hears the door open. But he feels it banging. He flinches back bodily, desperately crawling backward. His back slams against the back of the wall, hand appraised. Asgardian, garbled and desperate, comes instinctively to him.
No.
Not this time.
The figure in front of him blurs. Like the letters, impossible to piece together when he's tired. He doesn't understand what they're saying, but he flinches when they grab his arm. His other comes swinging, ready to fight, but the other hand catches his fist with a hiss of pain before he can hit them in the face.
He knows that voice.
"Natasha," her name is a desperate gasp in his throat, "Natasha-"
"It's okay," her voice is soft, "it's okay, it's okay. I promise. Look at me, Thor. Hey," her tone manages to soften further. Her hand slowly reaches up to rest against his cheek. "It's okay. You're safe, I promise…Vet du…hvem jeg er?" the words are a little unfamiliar to him, pronounced with an accent Asgard doesn't have.
Do you know who I am?
He nods.
Natasha relaxes a fraction. Thor takes in gasping, deep breaths, closing his eyes tight against the pain. He feels Natasha settle down next to him rather than see it. Slowly, he stretches out his aching leg and buries his head into his hands, just breathing. Both of them are quiet for a long time.
"I didn't realize…about the"-his mouth is dry-"brand. No one…I didn't realize…" he tilts his head back against the wall, wringing his fingers together. He tugs at his hair.
Natasha watches him carefully. She lifts up her left wrist, licking her finger and rubbing it across the skin. Flakes of make-up come off in smears, revealing a murky black hourglass in the middle of her wrist. It's small, only the size of a thumbnail, but obvious with its intention. She lifts it up for him to see. "It's like they left a part of themselves inside you." She says, quiet. Knowing.
Like they left a darkness.
Like they never left.
"I've been tortured before," his voice is more croaky than he wanted it to be. "This is…I've never been marked before. Not like this. Not…"
Slave brand.
He's never been marked with a slave brand.
"Tainted," Natasha offers. Thor nods. She drops her wrist, shifting a bit so her head is resting against the wall and her legs are outstretched in front of her. "They don't own you, Thor," she rolls her head to look at him. "Not anymore. You're free."
I still tried to kill Loki. Freedom doesn't matter after that.
"Tattoos aren't scars, Natasha," he says, gentle.
"No," her smile is sad. "No, they're not." Then why do you keep it? He wants to ask. Natasha looks up at him, her expression blank, her eyes almost painful with the raw emotion. "That," she gestures with her chin toward the scar, "that is. I'm sorry."
The words are sincere.
Thor wishes she had said anything else. The words rattle inside him, unsettling. I'm sorry. Because there's not much else that can be said, is there? There's only the all-encompassing nothing. He doesn't know what to say. Words get caught in his throat, dangling, waiting to be released. Waiting.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, Thor thinks, feeling far away, me too.
Neither one of them gets off the floor for a while.
000o000
Clint helps him slowly ease down onto the bed of his room in Stark Tower, and Thor gives a long, breathy sigh of relief. His leg aches almost constantly. Dr. Cho isn't sure what's wrong with it. Thor isn't either, and he's really beginning to lose the willpower to care. The cane, about the only support he can manage with his still-knitting ribs, goes against the wall when Clint takes it from him.
Thor lets out a long, worn sigh, looking up at the familiar ceiling.
The sleepless nights he spent staring at this ceiling. Worrying about Loki's injuries. Worrying about Loki. Just worrying, a knot of anxiety settled in his chest, refusing to appease. Sitting with his thoughts was torture. He was waiting. Always waiting. It felt like he was in the battlefield, constantly braced for something to explode. Go off. Die. He wasn't sure who was more sleepless those nights After, him or Loki. It was exhausting.
Clint flops onto the bed beside him, letting out a groan. "Ow."
"Ow?"
Clint shrugs. "I am not Asgardian. My poor mortal body is feeling the last couple of weeks."
When I tried to kill you. The feeling is acidic in his chest. "Ah," he says, after a moment. He should apologize. He just stares back up at the ceiling. Loki isn't here. Thor has barely seen him since Christmas. Clint says that today is January second. Avoidance was Loki's preferred method for dealing with problems Before.
Maybe he does still recognize that person, somewhere, deep beneath the scars of After.
"Natasha says that you still aren't sleeping well," Thor says. It's an open invitation. He'd rather talk about anything beyond how he's feeling.
Clint hesitates, that flickering look of momentary panic gone as soon as it arrived. He sinks further underneath the covers. "You know me. I don't sleep well." Clint says after a moment. Thor takes that in. It's true. For as long as they've been acquaintances, then friends, Clint has always had troubles sleeping.
"My dreams have been a torment themselves as of late," Thor admits. After the medications had been weened and Thor had stopped existing in a state of persistent exhaustion, the nightmares had taken hold.
He thinks he knows the Chitauri's faces better than his own now.
"Yeah," Clint's voice is quieter. "I know the feeling."
Thor thinks about the first couple of days in the hospital, where the Avengers had been whispering about Clint. Something happened. Something they haven't told him. He wants to ask. He wants someone to tell him. Everything he remembers is scattered bits of nothing and a heaping handful of terror. He remembers attacking Loki. He remembers killing Swenson and Selvig, breaking the Chitauri free. He remembers that. Distant bits of the torture, relieved in dreams from what his brain conjures.
But the why lingers.
He doesn't know what the Chitauri wanted. What their end goal was. He was supposed to kill Clint, Swenson, and Selvig, but he doesn't remember why the Chitauri wanted him to. He killed Loki out of anger. From the lies the Chitauri fed him before Loki pulled his memories forward.
(Did he? That voice asks, lurking, always. Or is that what you want to believe, Odinson?)
Why, why, why?
Thor braces himself. "Clint?"
"Hm?"
His next breath is shuddering. "Is Jane okay?"
Clint sits up at that, his eyes a little wide. The information comes out of him in a gust, like he can't stop once he starts. "What the-yes. Yes, she's fine. I promise. Has no one talked to you about what happened? Darcy and Jane are okay. They were just a little banged up. Jane visited, but you were asleep. Director Fury said it would be better to keep things quiet for right now. We don't know where the Chitauri ended up. But yes. She's fine."
Jane is okay.
Jane is alive.
He wishes she was here. He was afraid to consider the possibility that he'd hurt her before, but…he wants to see her. To bury himself in her arms and just be.
Not that he imagines that Jane will want to see him after he murdered her mentor. "Oh," the syllable feels like it contains a stifled scream when it escapes Thor, "I wasn't sure."
Clint shakes his head, looking vaguely sick. "Sorry-we. That wasn't…" he sighs, dropping back onto the bed. "We should have asked you. Do you have any other questions? I really thought you'd given someone else the interrogation. Crap, Thor, it's been weeks."
Maybe he would have cared more, Before.
Now, there's just no energy left.
"How much does Loki hate me?" Thor asks. It's not the first question he should ask, but it's the first one that falls out. His hands curl into reflexive fists at it. It's been circling inside his mind, waiting, always. Lingering.
Clint's expression flickers a bit. He doesn't have a tell for lying. Neither do Natasha or Loki. It's like the words fall out of them as naturally as breathing. But Clint is nervous. Thor can't tell what are lies, only that Clint is worried that Thor can.
"It's…it's not that bad. He doesn't hate you. Things are just…complicated."
Lie number one, then.
"I've barely seen him," Thor says. That sounds like he's whining. He doesn't deserve that. He has no right to Loki's life. Not anymore. Maybe he never did.
"Just…talk to him," Clint says. Like that's an encouragement. Loki could avoid him for the rest of their lives if he really put his mind to it. He's good at things like that. Clint says, annoyed, "He's being an idiot."
That could mean anything.
Thor lets the topic drop, even though he wants to push it. He doesn't want to force Clint to conjure up information he's not willing to share.
"Do you know why the Chitauri took me?" Thor asks.
Clint bites on his lower lip. Nervous, Thor is reminded. "We…ah. We're still putting that together, I guess. Loki implanted memories in me, Selvig, and Swenson before he left Earth. The Chitauri were trying to kill the hosts before he could get them back."
This time, it's Thor's turn to sit up, his ribs be norns-cursed. "Are you joking? Loki did a memory implantation without your consent?"
Gods.
"I mean…we kinda did? I vaguely remember him asking now." Clint says, running a hand through his hair. "So there's that. I guess. Look," resignation now, "Loki said it would be better if we didn't talk to you about this right now, while you're still healing, but having reality warped is…ah, not exactly something I'm willing to do right now. You deserve to know. We need to talk about Frigga."
Thor falters. "Mother? What does she have to do with any of this?"
Clint takes in a deep breath.
000o000
Loki tears the book from his hands, tossing it onto the bed beside him. Thor looks up at him mildly. Inside, rolling waves of nausea and what feels like vague pain are beginning to curl inside his stomach at the sight of his brother's anger.
He hasn't seen him in days, and his brother looks horrible. He's exhausted, he's worn and nearly see-through, what little weight he did gain making a valiant exodus. His hands are steady, which seems about the only improvement. Thor's gaze lingers on them, still struggling to take in what Clint told him about the healing.
They were here.
They helped.
"No." Loki says, the word barely more than a low growl. "Aboslutely not."
"Are we speaking then?" Thor asks, throwing as much frustration and annoyance into his tone as he can. All the pain, all the vented nothing starts to coil inside him, swirling into a mass of anger. He's angry. The feeling is foreign compared to the void of before.
But Thor isn't numb now. He's furious.
"Thor," Loki sighs his name like a curse, rubbing at his forehead. "No. Not right now. You can't handle this right now."
"Clint already agreed."
"Oh, and because Clint agreed-" Loki cuts himself off, and Thor tilts his head a little. Clint? When did he get on a first-name basis with the Avengers? It's always been indifferent Barton. Loki takes in a deep breath. He looks like he's one hard step away from stepping off an edge he can't come back from.
Good.
Just freaking look at me. Just this once.
Look.
At.
Me.
Thor sits up, careful of his ribcage, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. Loki continues to stand, boring down on him. Thor wishes that he could stand up without support. Thor looks up at him, into him.
"I want to see them," Thor says.
"Why?" the word is strangled, and Loki's expression is tight to match it. "You have no idea what she was doing to Clint-"
Right.
Because you TOLD them not to tell me. Because you TOLD THEM not to say anything. Because you thought I couldn't handle it. I didn't know BECAUSE of YOU.
"And whose fault is that?!" Thor shouts. Loki's mouth closes, his eyes narrowing.
Thor isn't done. He hasn't even started. Helplessness crawls inside him, wrapped in a coat of appealing, frigid anger. "You told them not to say anything to me! Nothing! How could I have known?! I have been here for three weeks. Do you know how many times you had the opportunity to tell me something?"
Loki's mouth works. "You couldn't even get out of bed-"
So where were you? Thor wants to demand.
"I had a right to know," Thor snarls, getting to his shaky feet. He grips at the bedpost for support, gesturing at himself, the words cracked. "I had a right to know. She's my mother, too. This is my family, too."
Loki looks away, his jaw flexing minutely as he folds his arms across his chest. "How would this have helped?" Loki asks, "Honestly? Tell me." Loki always gesticulates when he's angry, and this time is no exception. "You could barely speak. I wasn't about to give you another reason not to fight. I know what that fall was-"
"Ha!" A delighted, whispering smile crawls onto Thor's face. It feels more like a vicious baring of teeth. "That's rich, coming from you. Tell me, brother, where were you, then? Do you think that your distance helped? I needed you. I needed you and you couldn't even look me in the eyes-"
"Why would you have wanted to see me?" Now Loki sounds a little hopeless. "I'm the reason this entire thing happened in the first place. The Chitauri wouldn't have had any reason to come after you if I hadn't-"
"Oh my gods," Thor throws up a hand. "Do I really have to spell it out for you?"
Exasperation overtakes the confusion. "I'm not an idiot. There's a reason we didn't tell them about your rescue, Thor."
"You don't get to make that decision for me," Thor says, moving toward the door. His leg aches.
"What do you hope to prove by seeing them?" Loki asks, still sounding desperate.
"That you didn't freaking kill them!?" Thor shouts, turning back to face him. The words escape him before he can stop them, and both of them stare at each other, absorbing it. Loki's wide green eyes meet his own.
"Foreldremorder," Loki curls the word. It sounds venomous and ugly coming out of his mouth.
Thor wants to take it all back at the look on his brother's face, just so he has to stop looking at it.
He doesn't. Instead, he takes in a deep breath. "Three weeks. You didn't say anything. How can I trust you after that? I don't know what happened. I don't understand any of this and the only person who was willing to tell me anything was Clint. I just want to talk with them. They're my parents, they would never hurt me."
Loki wets his lips, but his defenses are dropping slowly. His next words are low and acidic. "Nothing permanent, at least"
"Loki."
"Fine," Loki spreads his hands, "but I want to be there."
"Go to hell." Thor says, moving toward the door again.
Loki walks after him, his tone having lost most of its edge. He grabs Thor's arm. "Thor-brother…I just wanted to keep you safe. I'm sorry."
"No," Thor's voice is firm, and he pulls open the door shaking off his brother's grip, "you're not."
000o000
Frigga smells like home. Her grip is desperate around his shoulders, a level of pain that can't be expressed in words passing between them at the comforting embrace. Thor grips her back as tightly as he dares, keeping on hand firmly around his cane to stop from toppling over.
His parents look old. Worn. Tired.
He feels the part.
Frigga begins to weep openly, drawing back, "I was so worried," her hands are trembling as she cups his face, smoothing away his own tears. "When time kept passing without word…I didn't know what to think. But it's all alright now, we can put this dreadful business behind us."
Thor drinks in the sight of both of them. The last time he saw them, he was furious. He punched Odin hard enough that he broke fingers. Even now, Thor can see a crooked line to his father's nose that wasn't there before.
That fury feels like it belongs to a different person.
Thor is tired.
Odin clasps his shoulder tightly, his expression mostly indifferent, but Thor sees the glimmering edges of relief. They're happy to see him. Thor is too. He falls inside his mothers arms again, letting himself hold onto this weakness.
Behind him on the landing pad, he can feel the Avengers watching, wary. He doesn't want to understand why, but he does. After what happened to Clint, they have some right not to trust his parents. Clint and Loki aren't here, and Thor is privately glad for that. He doesn't want to face his brother right now.
"All that is behind us," Frigga repeats, smiling, and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear.
"I'm glad that you're safe, son," Odin says, gripping Gungnir tightly. Thor catches the eyes of the Warriors and Sif behind his mother. Sif gives him a small smile of reassurance. "We need to return to Asgard immediately. Your safety is paramount. The war drags on and we can't risk something like this happening again."
Thor thinks about the feeling of the Chitauri. "Yes. I-ah. Does we include my brother?"
Do I want it to? Thor wonders privately.
Odin's hand tightens on his spear. He looks up at the Avengers, and Frigga's expression is dark when she matches the stare. "Loki has made his decision. He wants to stay here. We've been instructed to respect that."
Thor hesitates. "I don't want to leave without him."
Odin sighs. "There is nothing more that can be done for him. Come, Asgard's healers will be able to provide the best treatment for you."
He starts to turn.
Thor doesn't really know what happens. It's a familiar feeling as of late. One moment everything is fine, the next a scalding blast of white magic is slamming into his father. He is thrown to the side, tumbling along the length of the landing platform, skin already oozing from burns.
The Einherjar immediately draw their weapons, but they're knocked away from their hands with a ripple of familiar power. I know you.
It draws up memories. The haze, the woman… He thinks about the beginning. Before his kidnapping, before the torutre, before the murders.
It wasn't the Chitauri that took him. It was Alfheim. Those were elven soldiers, breaking his leg, dragging him. They delivered him to the Chitauri. And the woman, she was there-
Thor turns sharply, nearly toppling, as the Avengers are picked up in an invisible fist and slammed into the far wall. They crumple. The sound is like snapping bone. He raises his head up as the Einherjar are split effortlessly and the familiar figure is revealed, unlocking herself from some sort of invisibility.
Short, bristling blonde hair is drawn up into an elaborate braid, pointed ears sticking out sharply. Her dark skin is painted with familiar lines of elven heritage. Dressed for battle, wielding a sword, Thor thinks about that beginning. That voice. He takes a staggered step back.
Oh gods.
No.
Frigga takes a step in front of him, her hands pulsing with magic.
The other woman makes eye contact with him, briefly, but barely even seems to register he's there as she moves toward Odin. His father is trying to get up, but he can barely move from pain.
"All of this," the woman's voice is low, dangerous. "All of this and the solution to your death is so simple after all. Do you know what you forced me to do, Odin Allfather? I consorted with Chitauri to draw you out, I met with the Titan," she spits this, "and you expose yourself for your son? How poetic."
"Sigyn," Frigga's voice is tempered. She lifts up her hands, a shield shimmering into view between them. "What are you doing? Stop this. You aren't a murderer."
Sigyn looks up at them, her deep purple eyes wild. She laughs, delighted, but her voice is dangerous. "Don't you dare try to teach me ethics when you sit on your throne painted with blood. You killed my best friend. I'm only avenging his death. Clearly, Odin believes in revenge, or else he would have given Loki a trial, so I'm returning the favor. Rapid judgment, and the like. This ends now. Someone has to care. You kill Loki, I kill him. Simple."
"Wait-" Thor starts to say, desperate. Loki isn't dead, he wants to scream. Half a second and he would have done it.
It doesn't matter.
None of it matters.
Sigyn shoves the blade down, sliding the sword between Odin's ribs before Thor can finish.
Author's Note:
thanks guys 3 seriously. You helped so much more than you can ever know, I really, really needed that support. It was a pillar for me. Thank you. I'll try to finish responding to comments sometime this week.
счастливого Рождества if you celebrate, happy holidays and happy new year. (or should I say merry birthday?)
I would also like to personally thank this chapter for making me dread writing it so much I was able to write not one, not two, but six chapters of my original story in an effort to avoid it (the book is like 11-12 chapters long for reference). Truly, it took one for the team.
Next chapter: January 2023 sometime.