The changes
Bruce had been all over trying to help people. The sick and the poor came to him for an easy option, but this was something else. Loki’s eyes are so sunk into his head that Bruce might’ve guessed they had liquified, if he had not checked that they were still there that is. And they're definitely still there, he can see them, red and bloodshot when he goes to check motor functions. It’s worse than looking at pinkeye, and even one of the guards that Fury sent with them flinches when he looks over. Thor taps his foot in the corner, peeking his head over the shoulders of Bruce as he works and Tony as he takes notes and generally helps Bruce with what he calls “the squishy sciences”.
Tony takes count, just for his own knowledge, of all the scars that are visible on only the upper side of Loki’s body. He counts over 250 scars of different lengths, depths, and colours. The worst ones are around Loki’s wrists, and on his stomach. The ones around his wrists are a deep purple, like an eggplantish colour, and they’re clearly in the shape of shackles. The gash on his stomach is what Bruce focuses on the most.
It’s still open, and a yellow runny liquid oozes out of it. It looks like hell and smells ten times worse, and when Bruce looks for internal bleeding he not only finds it but also finds stitch marks not only on the outside, but on the inside as well! It looks as if, in ways Bruce didn’t think medically possible, Loki’s organs had been removed from his body entirely and sewn back in. The look on his face is soon mirrored on Tony’s as he points out what the medical camera he’s using to see inside is seeing on a monitor nearby. Thousands of small gashes on internal organs and streaks of white scar tissue scoring his skin both inside and out. Tony hadn’t had an episode in a while, but looking at the massacre on the table he began to feel his breaths coming up a bit short.
He can feel the pounding of his heart against his ribcage, phantom pains mimic the scratches and scrapes on every inch of carnage that's revealed on his so-called enemies body, and he finds that he can’t take it much longer. He needs a break. So he puts down the tool in his hands, and with the excuse of “going to get snacks” he flees the room. Thor watches him go, feeling his anxiousness from across the space. He isn’t doing much better.
Thor is watching Bruce put together the remains of the brother that only a couple hours ago he had still thought lost to him, and yet again he can do nothing but watch. Is that his fate? Are the Norns trying to punish him? Why in this way? He still feels guilty, and he guesses he has for a while. His father promised him the feeling would go away, that everyone mourned but he was getting too old for trivial things like death to affect him. If he was to follow in his father’s footsteps, if he was to rule, he couldn’t let things so unimportant bother him.
But it never went away, the gnawing feeling that he could do more, could have done more, and it made him feel helpless. Now, stuck in the corner, he can’t help but let the waves of guilt crash over him. And when Bruce finishes up and leaves to get some rest, taking Steve with him and nudging Thor in the direction of sleep, Thor does not leave the room. His guilt won’t let him.
(3 days later)
Natasha’s stuck with watching over Loki in his government sanctioned “prison cubicle” hospital room. Not her favourite thing to do at 3:00 am, but certainly not the worst thing. At least after two and a half days of searching for the tesseract and the fools who have it, Barton included, her mind can use the rest.
Crash!
Ah, there it is. She was thinking things were getting a bit too calm.
She shoots up from her frankly very inviting chair that she could probably just slip back into and let someone else deal with whatever is going on… but the alarm starts going off and she doubts she could relax like this. So, up she goes, alert in stance and ready to find out what's going on so she can get back to her small moment’s rest. Aaaaaand all hope of that goes out the window when she sees the cause of the emergency. Loki, awake.
He… she? Natasha blinks. Blinks again. It’s very clearly Loki that just fell off… their? Bed and is now forcing themselves into a corner, but whenever she blinks the gender of the corner monster seems to change. Shoulder length hair shifts for hair just past the shoulders, a flat chest seems to inflate and then recede again, and the soft round of his nose changes into sharp defined lines on her face. Natasha had to process what she was seeing for a second before reacting, but as she stepped closer she could clearly see that things were not right.
Somehow over the past three days Loki had healed a lot more than should have been possible in that time, not because of any of their efforts but because of something Thor calls Loki’s repair period. Thor explained it as a period of time when Loki could not both mentally and physically handle what is happening around him, and so his body shuts down until he is an acceptable level of healed. What makes this time period so crucial is Loki’s seídr, or the magic that is allowed to work to its fullest capacity when he is unconscious. If all of Loki’s other functions take a back seat, the seídr that flows through him all the time anyway can truly stand out.
So as Natasha gets closer, not only can she see Loki’s gender explosion settle on girl, she can also see that the circles under her eyes have lightened, and any visible bruising is fading. She can also see obvious signs of a panic attack. The only thing in Natsha’s experience worse than a panic attack is being too scared to hide it. The red room had fucked her up in terms of letting people see her weaknesses, and when in a new environment, beat up and bruised, having people witness your fear like Loki might be having in a few minute, (the alarms meant avengers storming the room at the least), let’s just say Natasha could sympathise with Loki’s silent plea from across the room, even if she doesn’t know she’s sending it.
So quickly and deftly, making as little noise as possible, Natasha approaches. When the door to the room closes behind her, Loki jumps a little in her corner, and the little heart monitor goes flying off the table it’s resting on. Natasha doesn’t look to see where it lands, she just bends down to Loki’s level and rests her hand on one of Loki’s knees. Her eyes whip over to the hand on her knee, and the shaking stops slightly. Loki’s eyes are a piercing green when they settle on Natasha’s own, but she can see the colours swirling around in her irises. Natasha smiles a little private smile, one that she would give the younger girls in the red room. It was fake, of course. Perfectly rehearsed over the years, but that's just why it was so useful. It was the one she used to assure someone scared out of their mind that things would be ok. She squeezes Loki’s hand into her own, trying to ground her, and she can see when Loki’s breaths slow.
Loki shakes her head a bit, returning to her own mind. The illusion of a cave and a snake fading into the clinical smell of her surroundings and the tug of a hand on her knee. She lets herself enjoy the feeling for only a moment, before rethinking her situation. She pushes the hand off, a scared face morphing into a perfectly practised snarl, predatory and venomous.
And just in time too, she thinks as the avengers, bar one archer rush into the room. Steve is first, ready before all the others as usual, then Bruce concerned for his patient, then Tony, (frankly just here for the drama and, “FOR SCIENCE!” he had said grabbing a bottle of wine when the alarm had sounded), and then Thor who was frankly a bit hesitant to be in the same room with Loki after he had spent a whole night sitting in the same room as him and had begun to blame himself for everything.
Natasha backs up to give the rest of the crew space as they file into the room. Thor reaches out a hand, expecting Loki to take it. She doesn’t. She slaps his hand away and revels in the look on Thor’s face when she does.
“I am fine. I do not need help. Not from you.”
Thor sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Come now brother, not this again. Why will you not drop the hostilities? I have apologised many times!”
Loki’s face darkens as she pushes herself up to standing, ripping wires and tubes out of her arms. Much to Bruce’s chagrin, the attachments are all discarded and clatter to the floor.
“It’s sister right now, and you have apologised not once. And if you have I was too busy slowly dying to notice it.”
Loki can see Thor roll his eyes, and a couple of heads turn in her direction at her previous statement, but she is used to the argument she’s about to have. It bothers her not at this point, anything Thor may say always goes in one ear and flies out the other anyway. Speaking of, he says with a lofty tone,
“You know of my feelings on this subject. You were born with a perfectly fine body. It’s bad enough that you practise womanly magic. You are my brother, and I shall not be convinced to call you otherwise.”
“You mean the seídr that just saved my life while your manly behind could do nothing to help me? Do not pretend you're so high and mighty as to determine what I can and cannot be. If you proceed to berate me with this drivel I shall turn you of the fairer gender, see how long you can keep up the tough “guy” act. We shall see then who is weak and why it is most definitely you.”
Thor’s grimace grows wide as Tony snickers in the background, and Loki dawns a triumphant look. She still feels as if her skull would split open the second a strong breeze comes along, but all of her wounds have closed up and she can now maintain a composed image.
It’s unfortunate that she’s stuck here, but that will soon change. And maybe the time will not be wasted here. As far as Loki is aware, she is in the most highly secure yet greatly informed prison of all time. They have scanners and information on the happenings of Midgard, enough that if she looks she can probably find out where on Earth her son is. But before any of that, she has to actually get them to let her see the information, and just asking for that will not look good after she just tried to take over their world. Even if it wasn’t her fault she still feels somewhat guilty.
The thought of it sends a shiver down her spine, the tell tale feel of her magic working. And for a second it’s not her magic, but his magic, and then that second passes and she’s back to female agin. She can see the look of disgust on Thor’s face. “Good.” She thinks, “Maybe he’ll leave me alone.” Bruce swerves in between the crowd of people in front of him and raises his hand, still intrigued by the argument that had just happened between Loki and Thor. He had many questions, the forefront of which being,
“How are you doing that?”
Loki raises her eyebrow and puts a hand on her hip.
“I’m currently doing many things. You may have to elaborate.”
Tony likes Loki’s attitude now that they’re no longer enemies. It will be fun having someone around who can keep up with his snark. Bruce however does not seem so amused as just plain old curious, and frankly Tony feels the same. There's a distinct difference to Loki, Tony just can’t tell what. Bruce elaborates.
“How are you female? How is it that your appearance has changed?”
Loki’s smile softens a little, she can tell Bruce’s question is genuine and out of pure curiosity. However she isn’t sure this man of what Earth called science would quite grasp it if she explained fully the uses of seídr. So, she just goes with the answer that might get the most reaction, and says with a shrug,
“If I try, I can be whatever I want to be.”
Bruce's face, if possible scrunches up even more. Tony scoffs.
“That's a bit pretentious don’t you think? Even if you do call yourselves gods…”
Loki smirks and waves her hand, and in a cloud of green smoke she disappears and in her place stands a meerkat, upright on its hind legs with its little hands dangling in front of it. It scuffles out from its place in the corner and runs around Tony’s feet and up his leg, onto his shoulder. Tony tries to bat her off, but by the time she gets to his shoulder he’s hit himself about five times and when the meerkats mouth starts moving, strangely human, it creeps him out enough to stop.
“I can be that, I can be this, and I can be this too,”
While still on Tony’s shoulder Loki turns back into the form of himself they met him in, hair shorter and chest flatter than it was before. The only thing wrong with that in Tony’s mind is the on top of him part of that. The air knocked out of his lungs and the floor pressed against his cheek, he’s otherwise unimpressed with Loki’s little magic trick, but everyone else in the room besides Thor is certainly moved. Tony can see the shine in Bruce's eyes, but the shine in his own is about to go out, so he slaps Loki’s leg until he gets off of him.
“Am I truly that heavy? I thought I’d lost at least half my body weight in that damn void. Guess I was wrong. Hmm.”
Tony gasps dramatically, even though he wasn’t that out of breath, and swoons into Natasha’s arms. She promptly returns him to the floor to the amusement of all in the room. Getting up once more, (let no one tell him he’s not persistent,) he points to the ceiling.
“Jarvis! Delete that footage!”
The laughs die down, and Bruce revisits his question.
“I get that you CAN be what you want, but HOW do you do it? And what was that flicker before? And how did you…”
Steve puts a hand on Bruce's shoulder to slow him down.
“Listen, he just woke up after…. after a lot. The questions can wait, I'm sure. And don’t you have to do a checkup on him? He is your patient after all.”
Bruce blushes slightly at his early excitement. It would seem they had all forgotten who they were in a room with. He’s still sickly looking even after all that healing, and he’s still their only hope for any clues towards their impending doom at the hands of the Chitauri. Bruce concedes, and everyone is led out of the room.