Nothing is Sacred

Sometimes people say things in the heat of the moment. And you can’t give any merit to what they said.

That is how Loki chose to deal with the fact that Thor just said that he loves him.

Because he said it with too much heat to be platonic, but if it gets out that Loki turned Thor gay then all hell will rain down on Loki.

So Loki just takes a step back and says, “Take me home. I went to Asgard. I met the Queen. I did as you asked. Now I want to go home. I have papers to grade and I’m done pandering to you.”

Thor nodded. “Very well Loki.” He said.

It’s anti-climactic but Thor returns Loki to his little apartment. He stood awkwardly outside the building.

“I’ll be back to see you.” Thor said quietly.

“You don’t have to rush.” Loki said.

But Thor did rush. And before the week was out Loki stepped outside and saw Thor loitering around outside.

“What are you doing?” Loki asked sharply.

“I was waiting for you.” Thor said innocently. “The doorman wouldn’t let me in. And I wanted to see you.”

Thor’s words made Loki’s stomach flip for some reason, but more pressing was the fact that Thor was loitering. “Get in here.” Loki grabbed him and pulled him in the door. “Before someone with a camera phone takes your picture.”

“I don’t think anyone would do that.” Thor said dumbly.

“You’re blind then.” Loki said. Because all six feet of the guy and his rippling muscles were distracting, add the fact that he’s a superhuman and it’ll draw attention. And Loki doesn’t want attention drawn to him.

“I can see just fine.” Thor said with a smile.

Loki reached his apartment, unlocked the door and pushed Thor inside.

Thor looked around curiously. “I like your lodgings.” He said.

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you.” Thor said. “And I wanted to ask if you wished to have Bruce Banner x-ray you? Maybe he can discover a way to recover your memory.”

Loki sighed. “You’re still on that? Honestly man, if I haven’t ‘remembered’ by now I’m probably not going to.”

“But Dr. Banner just wants to help you.” Thor said.

“I understand. But I don’t want to waste his time. And he isn’t going to find anything out.”

“You won’t be wasting his time! He promised that it wouldn’t take long.”

“No. I’m busy anyway.” Loki said. “I have to get groceries and then I have to finish grading quizzes and I don’t have time to take x-rays.”

“What if I went grocery shopping for you?” Thor asked quickly.

Loki raised an eyebrow. “You know how to grocery shop?”

“Hawkeye took me. I know what I am doing. Just give me a list. And while I’m doing that, you can get x-rays from Dr. Banner.”

And then Thor made a pouty face. That wasn’t fair. Thor was already a good looking guy, making that face made Loki’s heart have feelings.

Loki lasted two minutes before he gave in.

“Fine!” He said with exasperation. “But you had better get everything I want.”

“I intend on it. I shall win on this mission, as I have won countless times before. I swear upon my life, Loki, I will get you what you need.”

Loki rolled his eyes at the melodrama. Shopping for spinach and carrots could hardly qualify as a ‘mission’.

Loki grabbed his wallet and then Thor grabbed him, and they flew to the tower.

Once they had landed Loki pushed Thor away from him. “We could have taken a taxi!” He yelled.

Thor just brushed it off. “It is easier to fly.”

Loki started walking inside and Thor followed. Until Loki reached into his pocket and found his folded grocery list. “Here you go!” He said sharply. “That’s what I need. Go get it. And when you get back we’ll see that x-rays were a waste of time.”

“Aye!” Thor said and then he took off.

Loki couldn’t help the smile he felt when he watched Thor fly away. When one wasn’t hanging onto him for dear life, it was fun to watch him fly around.

Loki let himself inside and he pushed the button for Bruce’s lab in the elevator.

When he steps out he finds Bruce stooped over a microscope. The room is messy, but huge and across the room is a high tech MRI x-ray machine.

“Hello?” Loki asks as he steps in.

Bruce shoots up. “Loki!” He said.

“Yes.” Loki smiles. “Thor wanted you to x-ray me, but if you’re too busy I can leave.”

“No! No, please. I’d love to examine you. If what Thor said about your memory is true it would be fascinating to look at. If it’s true, then your memory cortex has to be much more developed than ours.” Bruce was walking circles around Loki, looking at his brain.

Loki laughed. “Then we should start. Although, I should warn you, I don’t think you’ll find anything.”

“That will be fine too.”

Bruce instructs Loki on how to climb into the machine, and the x-rays take about twenty minutes to complete. Loki tries not to fidget, and he can’t help thinking a small ‘what-if’ about it all. What if Bruce does discover something? And what if Thor is right? But Loki is prepared to be proven right and that this is all a sham.

There’s no way Loki is a God. How can someone who is a God, erase their own memories and then grow up not believing in Gods? No one does that.

Once the x-rays were over Bruce said that Loki could go sit upstairs until they were done.

So Loki shrugs and heads back up to their common floor.

No one was around so Loki flopped on the couch and had their artificial intelligence turn the television on. It’s Sunday though, so there aren’t too many quality programs on.

Loki sees Ancient Aliens on the History channel and keeps scrolling. He likes the show for its entertainment factor, but his life has gotten a little too ridiculous lately and a little too far-fetched like that show.

He turned it on the food network and watched the guy with the spiky white hair try a bunch of greasy food until Steve Rogers walks in the door.

“Hello Loki.” Steve said.

“Hello Steve.” Loki looks him up and down. Steve is in khaki pants and a dress shirt. He looks nice in an All-American way. Like an actual Captain America.

“Were you just at church?” Loki asks with a smirk.

Steve sighs and sits down next to Loki on the couch. “Yes I was. Please don’t berate me, I know you’re an Atheist.”

Loki laughed. “I’m not going to attack you. I was just going to ask, are you a Catholic?”

Steve nodded. “Born and bred.”

“How can you say that?” Loki asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How can you just accept the Catholic faith? Haven’t you thought at least once, ‘hey this seems odd. I’m going to look into it.’”

“No.” Steve said with a frown. “You see, faith is not supposed to be like science. It’s something you’re supposed to believe in. I don’t really expect you to understand. You’ve never believed in anything before.”

Loki licked his lips and thought it over. He hadn’t really believed in anything. He believed in evolution, and the big bang, and in himself. But those were tangible. Religion was different. It was a way of thinking, and Loki had never liked it when people told him how to think.

“You know that the Roman Catholic Church has a bad reputation?” Loki asked.

“People make mistakes.” Steve said.

Loki is about to open his mouth and go on a rant about how the Catholic Church sexually abused and assaulted so many children, and how their view and treatment of women is hurting the world, but before Loki could start Bruce poked his head in the room and said, “Loki?”

“We can continue this later.” Steve said. “Me and my Bible versus you and your brain.”

Loki pointed at him. “You’re on.” He said.

Loki turned to Bruce and saw that he was making a strange face. “Is everything alright?” Loki asked.

“Yes of course. I just think you need to see the x-rays.”

A bolt of anticipation shoots down Loki’s spine. What has the good doctor found?

Once they are alone on the elevator Bruce speaks.

“Have you been x-rayed before?”

“No.” Loki said. “I was always healthy and careful. I never needed doctors or hospitals.”

Bruce nodded. “I see.” He said. “Well, the results were strange. Come look.”

The x-rays are three dimensional projections, and at first Loki makes little sense of them. He sees the outline of his body, and organs inside. Hardly anything to worry about.

“I looked at your brain first.” Bruce began. And he pulled up a 3D projection of just the brain. “And it’s remarkable. Like I thought, your brain is different from ours.”

“In what way?” Loki looked at it and it looked like a normal human brain.

“I did a neuro-scan, and your language and memory centers were firing at a rate I’ve never seen in a human. The lights in those parts of your brain almost never stopped, which means that you can process words and languages at a rate that nothing else on Earth can. It’s groundbreaking.”

Loki watched as the scan played out, and sure enough two parts of his brain were firing off at an alarming speed. But the rest of the brain was nothing to scoff at, it was firing faster than what Loki had seen before.

“Your brain is much more advanced than a human’s.” Bruce said. “And it lends credibility to the thought that you’re not human. Look at your memory cortex, it’s so efficient. It can obviously hold the memories of several life times in it. If you did lose your memories, they’re in there somewhere.”

Bruce continued, “I didn’t see any sign of head trauma or any outward sign for why you lost your memories though. It’s strange.”

“Hmm. Well that’s all interesting.” Loki said. His heart was beating with the implications of it.

“I’m not actually done.” Bruce said.

Loki raised an eyebrow. “What else did you find?”

“I looked at your entire body, and I found some weird stuff.”

Bruce pulls up the whole body projection, and then focuses on Loki’s chest.

“Your heart is in the same place as a human heart would be. That is, in your chest cavity between your lungs. Which doesn’t add up. Because Thor’s is in his abdomen and he said that his people all have their hearts there. But yours isn’t.”

Loki frowned and stepped forward. His heart also didn’t look like a human heart. It’s a little horrifying, looking at the abnormally shaped thing on the x-ray and knowing that the real thing is beating away in his chest.

“Your heart also has six chambers.” Bruce said. And then he zoomed in on the heart and made the hologram of it beat.

Loki’s stomach rolled as he watched the thing beat. “Six? But no animal on earth has six chambers,”

“It’s odd.” Bruce said. “But your heart has two more chambers than a human’s. In fact, it has more chambers than most mammals on Earth.”

“But does Thor have four chambers?”

“Yes.”

Loki looks at the beating heart in horror. What is wrong with him? How has he come to have such a deformed heart?

“It is nothing to be too concerned about.” Bruce said. “Your heart appears healthy. And I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It just means that you get better circulation than anyone else.”

Loki finds himself nodding. His legs feel weak.

“And then I noticed something about your skull.”

Loki looks and the diagram changes to his skull.

“This one is less odd, but the part of your skull covering your frontal cortex is thicker than the rest of your skull. And it’s only thick like that in two circular places.”

Loki looks and notices that he’s right.

“What does it mean?” Loki asked. His hands coming up to rub right at his hairline. The two circles are under his skin, but they are so minuscule that he can’t feel them.

“Honestly, like the heart, I don’t know.” Bruce Banner said. “To me, it looks like horns.”

Loki steps back. Horns?

Bruce reaches out to steady Loki. “It’s nothing to be concerned about.”

“I think I need to sit down.” Loki murmured.

“Let’s look at the last thing I noticed.” Bruce said.

Loki looks at him with wide eyes. “Very well.” Loki swallowed.

“You have a uterus.”

Loki just blinks. Did he hear that right?

And then Bruce pulls the x-ray until they are looking at Loki’s pelvic area. And sure enough, there nestled between the urinary and digestive systems is a triangle.

“What?” Loki murmured in horror as he looked at the obvious uterus in front of him. “That can’t be! I would know about it! I would get a period!”

“Well, from what I can tell you have fully developed ovaries. Your uterus appears to be fine, and uh fertile.” Bruce said. “But the lower part of it, the vagina-“

“I know what a vagina is!” Loki said sharply. He feels a tear drop out of his eye. What kind of freak is he?

“Ah yes, sorry, your vagina is closed off. Like your body closed off your uterus.”

“Why? How?” Loki asked unintelligently as he looked at it. Then he looked down at his own hips. How long has there been a uterus in there?

“My best guess is that your own body sealed it away. Your hips are so narrow that child birth would be dangerous for you. You would need close medical supervision throughout most of your pregnancy because of how small your birth canal is. Plus your male parts are taking up space, quite honestly I’ve never seen anything like you.”

Loki started backing away until he found a trash can and then he leaned over and heaved his guts into it. He can’t think, what does it mean? He has a uterus and a six chambered heart and horns and none of it makes sense, what is he?

Bruce was rubbing Loki’s back. “Hey, it’s okay.” He was murmuring. “It will be okay, I promise.”

“You try to handle the thought that you’re a freak!” Loki said as more tears fell.

Bruce sighed. “I know how it feels.” He said quietly. “But trust me on this, I would happily trade places with you. You can make life, your brain is able to think so much faster than mine, I would love to be able to do all that. But instead I just destroy things.”

Loki’s scrunched his eyes. He had forgotten about the Hulk. “My apologies Doctor.” Loki said. “I must seem pathetic.”

Bruce smiled. “Your whole perception of yourself just changed. It’s okay to freak out. We’ll figure it out I promise. Maybe Thor will know why your body is so different.”

Loki nodded. “I can’t wait to see what Thor thinks about this.”