you wish you felt better
Thor asks “you’re alive?” loudly, his voice raising to the point of near yelling.
“Thor-“ Natasha tries to imtervene but Thor suddenly looks at her and asks “did you know?” so harshly that he scares the truth out of her.
“yes” she blurts and his face falls, she can’t tell if he’s pissed or sad.
“you knew about this and agreed to keep it from me?”
“Thor, you need to know-“
“I needed to know that my brother is alive!” Thor yells at Sam, the latter backing away in shock. Thor doesn’t even register that he’s acting out right now because they all lied.
They lied to him despite seeing and knowing how much he missed his brother, the last of his family, the person he thought would be by his side forever.
Thor suddenly focuses on him, still sitting on the floor beside Fenrir “was this your plan?” he yells at his brother “sacrifice yourself hoping to become the hero?” Loki inches back, his mouth falling agape as Thor keeps going. “did you think that letting him kill you would make you good person?”
“Thor shut up” Tony commands desperately but Thor doesn’t give a shit if he’s hurting his brother, his brother has hurt him many times before. What’s a little bit of the truth?
“you stole the tesseract-“
“Thor!”
“-you gave it to him. If it weren’t for you then he would’ve failed, we would have won”
“Thor!”
He yells “what!” back at Natasha, turning to face them.
“he’s dying” Clint mumbles “and he doesn’t remember anything” he adds once he sees the tears forming in Ikol’s eyes.
Thor looks back at his brother, he doesn’t believe it. But Ikol’s tears don’t stop as he stutters out “Thanos” and takes a deep breath, staring through Thor as he remembers it.
The happiness being crushed as the Sanctuary showed up, the desperate attempt at saving as many Asgardians as they could, Thor, on his knees and Thanos.
Thanos’ hands around his throat, smirking at Loki as he slowly drains all the air from his lungs.
And then there was nothing.
He passed out, and only when he saw his brother unconscious on the floor did he realize how horribly he took the situation. He promised himself that if he ever saw Loki again he would be a better brother, he intends to keep that promise.
Thor took Loki to the healers and only returned to his friends once he was told that Loki is fine, he fainted because of stress and hunger. He was also told that Loki is weak, to the point that the healer was surprised that he was even standing, not to mention using his seidr.
And he could forgive them for lying to him, but not for this. “why hasn’t my brother been eating?” he asks as soon as he walks back into his cottage.
“nice to see you too” Tony shoots back sarcastically, “your welcome for keeping your brother walking and talking”
“i tried to stop him but..” Clint trails off with a shrug, Thor understands Clints hatred for his brother so he lets it slide.
“why is he so weak?”
“that’s what we’re trying to figure out” Natasha states “he brought himself back and now he’s different-”
“lower body temp, his brain is firing faster than any other brainwaves I’ve seen, he can’t feel pain anymore…” Bruce trails off when Thor closes his eyes and sighs in exhaustion. “you know what’s wrong with him?”
Thor nods “a few hundred years ago our friend Lady Laussa passed and Loki managed to bring her back, there were some consequences though” they don’t say anything, allowing Thor to continue speaking “she didn’t need to sleep or eat anymore, the hunger eventually drove her mad.
Clint frowns, “that’s horrible” and that could be Loki soon. Unsurprisingly, it brings him some amount of joy.
“there’s more consequences, the spell caused too much pain in the aftermath to both Loki and the revived, so my father forbid it” Thor can never forget those nights of Loki screaming in agony, claiming to feel the pain that caused all those peoples deaths. “the consequences didn’t last too long, around thirty years it stopped”
“is there a grimoire on it?” Tony asks calmly, pretending that he’s not intrigued but scared “it’s kinda what we came here for, plus we need some of your blood”
“I’m not sure, some Grimoires got destroyed on Asgard” Thor says regretfully but before he let’s it set in, he suggests “I could ask the healers, they might be able to come up with something” he hopes, they couldn’t find a solution back then but now they have Midgardian technology and medicine, maybe if they all try they could do it.
“we’re giving him blood transfusions and that’s working well enough, with Asgardian blood”
Thor shakes his head, snapping out of his thoughts. “ send me everything you know about my brother so I can give it to the healers, i’ll get some blood sent to you”
“get on it Brucey” Tony commands “I’ll stay here in case Kol wakes up”
Thor ignores odd nickname and adds “I’m here”
“he doesn’t remember you, remember?” Tony says, “he’s knows me and he’s comfortable with me”
“he’s my brother-”
“who doesn’t remember being your brother” Tony shoots back, he’s not trying to be mean he’s just being logical. “he doesn’t know you, he doesn’t trust you but he trusts me and he should wake up to someone he trusts, not to his so-called brother who made him pass out from fear”
“I-” Thor stops talking as the door flies open, revealing Loki, panting as he leans against the door frame.
“let’s go”
“are you okay?” Sam ask
Ikol says “I’m fine, I just want to go home” and doesn’t look at Thor once “so let’s go please” he nearly begs, still not looking at Thor.
The desperation makes Tony give in, he stands up and announces “I’ll send over the files after”
Thor nods and then looks at Ikol “I’m-” the latter doesn’t listen, he walks out as soon as Thor starts speaking and he pretends like that didn’t just break his heart all over again.
“he’s overwhelmed” Tony says at an attempt at comfort “he’ll come around soon”
“I know”
Tony heads for the door, but stops just before he touches the handle. He turns around and leans back against it “you gonna be okay?”
Thor nods “I have my brother back” he says dully “I’ll be okay”
Tony gives him a small smile “okay, see you in a couple days”
He mumbles “bye” and as soon as he’s alone again his nose stings and his vision blurs. Hot tears falling, his eyes feeling heavy and his breathing gets faster.
Loki is going to die again, there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
Tony felt bad, Ikol was distant now, he didn’t talk the whole way back and when they did get back he went straight to his room.
But he gets it, he wouldn’t want to see anyone after they all watched him be yelled at by his brother to the point he fainted. Tony wouldn’t wanna see anyone after that either.
Doesn’t stop him from trying to make it right though.
He knocks on Ikol’s door and only enters when he gets permission, like any normal person would. Ikol doesn’t look up at him, he just keeps reading through a grimoire that Wanda had as he says “If you’re going to tell me that Thor just needs time then I don’t want to hear it”
“actually I was gonna say I’m sorry” now Ikol looks at him, brows furrowed and his lips pressed tightly together “I didn’t know that it was gonna turn out like that”
“then why the fuck did you bring it up?” Ikol asks loudly, “I told you earlier that it was a bad idea, but you still convinced me to do it”
“I know” Tony meets his volume, “I don’t know i just- I thought seeing Thor would help you okay? I didn’t know Fenrir would recognize your scent” hell he didn’t even know Fenrir existed
“it’s fine” Ikol says dully as he squeezes by Tony and walks out. But Tony heard the anger, he instantly follows Ikol all the way to the elevator, slamming his hands over the buttons to prevent Ikol from using them. “leave me alone Stark” Ikol demands as he tries to shove Tony’s arm away but the latter doesn’t budge.
“what happened with the healer?”
“nothing” Ikol spits, trying not to remember how scared the woman was “now move”
“I’m trying to fucking do this right” Tony blurts “I know this is a big deal and I’m sorry that I talked you into it, just-“
“just what?”
“I just wanna know how you feel”
Ikol feels a lot right now, he feels like curling up into a ball and starving to death, he feels like punching Tony is his stupidly perfect face, he wants to apologize to Thor, he feels like running away.
Most of all, he wishes he never came back.
“fuck you” Ikol spits, stunning Tony into silence with how harsh he is “that’s how i feel”. The elevator dings and the doors open, allowing Ikol to walk away and leave Tony standing there, staring at the wall and wondering why that hurt so much.