Chapter Text
You’re pretty sure you’re not qualified for this.
Training at S.H.I.E.L.D. takes up a lot of time, even for new agents - and you’re hardly new. You’ve been through a bunch of the worst of it: you’ve got bullet scars in your leg and trauma scars in your brain, but you’re still one of the sturdiest field medics they have and today of all days, they need you.
The city is still burning. There are alien corpses in the streets. Huge buildings are hanging onto their stability by slender threads. Every breath of air you take smells tainted and unnatural.
Your organisation is barely holding it together. Your boss is dead. Your team are scattered to all corners. But you - as luck would have it - you have been chosen. The hand of fate, or more accurately the hand of Nick Fury, fell upon your shoulder and destiny spoke thusly: “You qualified? Get your kit now and come with me.”
Again, now you’ve found out what this is, you’re pretty sure you’re not qualified. Actually, you’re not sure anyone is.
This is Stark Tower, where the heaviest of the heavy shit apparently went down. A lot of it seems to be missing, or is lying in piles of rubble in the streets below. Here in the penthouse, there’s a ring of combat specialists with their backs to you. Two deep. All heavily armed, all the weapons pointing downwards at something on the floor.
And standing slightly to one side, looking all golden and glowing but also slightly like somebody just ate the last slice of his pizza, it’s the Asgardian god of thunder. Thor has his arms folded. He’s ludicrously huge, grimy from combat and his lips are pursed in an unmistakeable sign of upset, the famous hammer clasped loosely in one fist.
Despite the lack of activity, this place still feels like an active war zone. On instinct, you yell out: “Medic!” to announce your status and purpose (and to avoid getting shot on sight).
Thor and a couple of the combat grunts turn to look at you. The nearest grunt jerks his head, motioning you forward, and he steps aside enough to let you through.
At the centre of the circle, Loki gives you the most venomous glare you’ve ever seen from any living thing, but he doesn’t move. He’s half-lying across a wrecked crater in the floor and he’s about as broken as you’ve ever seen anyone look without being actually scattered across the freeway in asymmetrical lumps. Even from this distance you can hear the air wheezing in and out as he breathes. That’s…not good.
“He‘s not getting off on a technicality by crying prisoner maltreatment,” says Fury, from somewhere behind the wall of guns. “Check him out. Document every fucking busted fingernail. Sign the paperwork. And make sure he doesn’t die out of spite before we lock his ass up for good.”
“He won’t hurt you,” adds Thor, in a bass rumble that sounds like it’s echoing in a cave. “I won’t allow it.” From the floor, Loki makes an ugly noise between a laugh and a choke.
In war zones you’ve treated patients under fire. You’ve taken bullets while saving lives. You’ve dressed burns while the building next to you explodes. The focus must always be on the life under your hands - a steady brain goes with steady hands.
It’s harder to be calm now than it has ever been.
He’s just a patient. He’s just a patient.
Who is looking at you with the eyes of a rabid cat, glittering and feral and totally mad.
Just another patient.
You kneel down and reach out a hand to start the examination. His eyes narrow just a little, the bruised-looking skin around them creasing. Thor clears his throat, warningly, and Loki’s shoulders, which had been tensing for attack, slump back again. He lowers his head in grudging compliance and his long hair curtains his face. It’s only then you notice that he’s trembling all over, a tiny, almost invisible sign of strain.
When you lay your hands on him it feels like a hum, the buzz of a million frantic bees in a hive. He makes a hissing sound which is probably meant to be threatening but sounds a lot more like misery as you start to examine him.
Alien he may be, but he’s close enough built to human to carry out the usual checks. Broken ribs. All of them. Collapsed lung, at least one. Dislocated shoulder, possible fracture. Skull intact, by some miracle. Internal bleeding, almost certainly, and judging by the way he’s holding himself it’s in the stomach. Check for sweat, chilled skin, oedema, patches of pooled blood beneath the skin. Your hands move swiftly, carefully, trained by years of practice to be thorough but gentle. There are old scars here as well as new. Loki snarls almost continually under his breath in a low mutter, but with no real strength behind the sound, like a bad-tempered but whipped circus tiger.
Just a patient.
You’re not sure when you pull out of your professional focus long enough to realise that Loki isn’t snarling at you anymore. He’s quiet. And he’s heavy.
Once when you were young you stayed for a summer with your cousins on their dude ranch. You helped them tend the horses. The horses had been big soft creatures built like armchairs, designed to be easy for city boys to handle. You remember picking out their hooves and cleaning the dirt from their flanks, and many times you’d almost been crushed by half a ton of horse deciding you were doing a wonderful job and you would also make a great leaning post while they took a nap.
Loki is leaning against your shoulder now as you work, putting his full weight on you, just like one of those long-ago horses. The crazy eyes are closed, and his painful whistling breathing is levelling out, becoming quieter. You are uncomfortably reminded that it’s been a long day for him. Invasion, mass murder, defeat. It’ll take it out of a guy. Your hands move with less and less focus as you are distracted by the sheer absurdity of it all. Loki turns his forehead against your arm and seems to be dozing. The lines of his face smooth out, and just for a moment you can look past the crazy and just see him. Broken, pale, fucked-up beyond recognition, but beautiful. Like something that fell out of a fairytale, and not the monster either.
“He heals quickly,” says a quiet voice, and you look up to meet Thor’s eyes. You realise that you’re actually holding Loki in your arms, the pretence of examining him lost to you in favour of just hugging him close. Loki lolls against you, unconscious now and utterly trusting in that state. Thor looks down at him and adds, very sadly: “Do not mistake him. My brother is very dangerous.”
There is blood on Thor’s armour and you doubt that it belongs to either him or Loki. Thousands have died today. Your skin crawls. Against all sense you clutch more tightly onto Loki, as if by doing so you can prevent him from leaping up and becoming the uncontrollable demon he is. Because right here, right now, he’s just a patient. He’s helpless. And he’s yours.
“Will you sign the paperwork now.”
“Yes,” you say, as Thor gathers the limp form of New York’s destroyer into his arms and takes him from you. Your voice is hoarse, your throat constricted. “Yes. I will.”