Chapter 27
It started on a crisp November morning, just days after Halloween.
Steve woke up late, a red flag in and of itself, and sat at the kitchen counter with his chin resting on his hand. There were dark circles under his eyes, pronounced against his deathly pale skin.
“M’m not hungry,” he muttered when Clint asked if he was going to eat breakfast twenty minutes later.
Natasha told him to stay at the tower when the Avengers left to deal with Tyr again.
When they got back a few hours later, Steve had moved to the living room couch, but it didn’t seem like he had moved much more than that. He only seemed more tired than before. Loki made him some soup, but he barely touched it.
They skipped movie night.
Steve didn’t have the energy to go to his bed to sleep.
Worried, Loki had been up all night, shifting between trying to fall asleep on the couch across from Steve and trying to figure out what might’ve caused his illness.
It wasn’t supposed to be possible.
The next morning, when Loki felt that it was a reasonable time to try to wake Steve up, he gently shook his shoulder. Called his name. Prodded him in the side.
He didn’t wake up.
His hands were cold and clammy, but his forehead burned with heat.
Panicked, Loki went to Bruce’s room. He didn’t bother knocking, going straight to his bedside and shaking the professor awake.
“Ugh, what time is—Loki?” Dr. Banner squinted, grabbing his glasses off his nightstand, “What—?”
“It’s Steve,” Loki stammered, “He’s not getting up.”
Bruce didn’t need to hear any more. He quickly got out of bed and strode to the living room, where Steve still lay. He hadn’t moved from the previous night, his skin unnaturally pale and clammy. If he hadn’t been breathing, Loki would have thought he’d been dead.
With a worried frown, Dr. Banner pressed a hand to Steve’s forehead, checked his vitals, and looked up at Loki.
“We need to get him to the Med Bay. Now.”
From the Med Bay, Bruce called in four different doctors, each from different fields.
Each of them examined Steve for themselves, shaking their heads in confusion and disbelief.
Loki’s worry descended further into absolute terror as each doctor admitted that they had no idea what to do.
The fourth and last doctor, a biochemist named Jemma Simmons, seemed just as shocked and confused as the other three. However, when she turned to face Bruce, it wasn’t to apologize and admit she didn’t know what to do.
“I think . . . I know what it is.”
By that time, the other Avengers had shown up in the Med Bay, anxious to receive any information on their Captain, and Tony quicker than Banner to speak.
“What is it?”
“It’s a virus. Though one I’ve never encountered before,” she looked pointedly towards Loki, “It most likely came from an alien source.”
A rush of indignant anger rushed through him, “Are you saying that this is my fault?”
“That can’t be right,” Banner quickly pointed out, “Loki has been around since May. If it was from Loki, he would've gotten sick a lot sooner.”
“All I’m saying is that Captain Rogers had to have contracted it from an alien species,” she gestured towards a live feed of Steve’s brain, her index finger lightly brushing the screen, “See those cells? They’ve got a structure similar to the cells in the Chitauri Virus, but they don’t reproduce the same way.”
“What about that Chitauri that we brought into SHIELD?” Natasha suggested.
“Did Steve come in contact with it?”
“Yeah, he was the one that caught him.”
“Does SHIELD still have it?” Jemma asked, urgent, “Is it still alive?”
“They should still have ‘em,” Tony answered, “Why?”
“It may give us a clue as to what this is.”
“So, you don’t, in fact, know what this is?” Loki let the panic flow from his lips, an aggravated accusation, “Then, what are you still doing here?”
“Loki!” Natasha scolded him.
“Steve’s sick!”
“And don’t you want him to get better?”
“Of course I do!”
“It’s alright,” Dr. Simmons said, apparently used to this kind of anger, “I’ll do my best, Loki.”
“You’d better.”
“Why don’t we search the books Frigga left for you?” Natasha suggested, gently nudging him out of the room.
A twinge of pain stabbed through Loki’s heart.
“Of course.”
Mother would’ve known what to do.
Frigga was an excellent healer. She would’ve known what the virus was, how to get rid of it. This sickness would’ve been nothing, and Steve wouldn’t be lying in the med bay, in a coma, barely clinging to life.
After days of searching through volumes of spell books and magic notes, Loki found something.
He met with Bucky later that night, leaving a note at the tower that he would return the next day.
“Steve’s in danger,” Loki had explained the situation quickly, “I need to go to Alfheim. It’s his only hope. I need you to make sure they’re all safe while I’m gone.”
Bucky took it in stride, pressing their foreheads together and wishing him luck before Loki left Midgard behind.
Bright, tiny lights lit up the walls of the cave to create a faint blue atmosphere. Beside him, the lights reflected in a stream that ran past him, leading deeper into the cave.
Loki shuddered.
Normally, he loved Alfheim.
A number of the tiny lights along the walls flickered.
However, this was no normal day, and Loki had no time to waste.
Loki cast an invisibility spell and started forward.
As he left the entrance behind him, the cave grew colder, and the walls grew brighter with the blue lights, no longer illuminated by the stones in them, but by the thousands of electro-bugs crawling there. Gone were the chatty bugs at the entrance, replaced with the ever-silent elder-bugs.
The silence had never been so deafening.
He had heard stories, of course, of people driven mad because of such silence, but that didn’t make it any easier to ignore it. The invisibility spell got harder to maintain the further he went.
After hours of walking in silence, Loki was getting anxious to find the tea tree and leave.
A flash of gold just ahead.
The tree!
A spike of hope shot through Loki. He started to run. In his haste, he nearly stumbled over a dip in the ground.
He regained his balance, but for a split second, his glamour dropped.
The reaction was instant, and Loki barely had time to use the last of his magic to set up a weak shield to protect against it. Electro-bugs swarmed around him, buzzing in a frenzy of rage and astonishment. Already, the bugs were gnawing their way through the shield, and Loki cursed his inability to renew it.
“Stranger,” they hissed as one, their booming voice echoing in the vast recesses of the cave.
“Perhaps we can come to an arrangement,” he said, trying to buy time.
Suddenly, the cave plunged into darkness, and a single electro-bug glowed a short distance from Loki’s face.
Inside the now-nonexistent shield.
“What could you possibly have to offer us?” it grumbled. The electro-bug sounded more bored than anything, its many eyes only partially focussed on him. If the situation were different, Loki might have been amused, “While you are skinnier than most that wander here, we do not often gather a meal.”
“Would you perhaps rather have an eight-eyed deer?”
The electro-bug seemed to ponder this, then answered, “Perhaps.”
“I shall bring one to you, in exchange for my safe passage through here.”
“Tempting, God of Mischief,” the electro-bug said knowingly, “How do I know you will not simply leave us with nothing?”
“That tree,” Loki tilted his head towards where he last saw it, “My . . . friend has fallen ill, and I need its leaves. I will return.”
The bug stayed silent, its beady eyes narrowed at the god, before the cave again lit up with billions of flickering lights.
“We accept.”
Loki made quick work of it, bringing back the largest eight-eyed deer he could find. The bugs’ demeanor calmed to a unanimous sort of respectful truce after he brought it.
He plucked a handful of leaves from the golden tree, and nearly ran to the mouth of the cave.
When he paused at the mouth of the cave, the head electro-bug came to hover near his shoulder, apparently seeing him off.
“May you travel with swift feet, and bring your friend great strength.”
“Thank you.”
When Loki returned to the tower, Thor was livid.
“You would leave your shield brother in his darkest hour?” he spat, “I had thought you changed.”
“I didn’t leave him,” Loki fought to keep his voice calm as he started heating water over the kitchen stove.
He took Frigga’s book from his pocket dimension, and flipped through the pages to where he’d found the information. He gestured to the page, already starting to feel drained from the minuscule use of magic.
He gestured to the page again as Thor peered over his shoulder.
Thor’s icy expression of fury quickly morphed into one of distress.
“Brother, this can’t be safe.”
Loki poured the now-boiling water into two separate mugs.
“It isn’t,” Loki answered evenly.
“We don’t even know how much life-force you have to spare,” Thor argued, “And Steve’s life-force is so low . . . “
“That is why I must act while I can,” Loki answered, setting the tea leaves in the mugs and moving towards Steve’s room.
If he was lucky, Loki would have life-force to spare. After all, the little beast within him had to have been collecting it. He could almost see it now, when he dropped his glamour. A little bump. It had been growing, slowly, but surely.
Would it hurt it, though? What if this killed it?
He caught himself.
Why should he care? He had to get rid of it, anyway.
So why was he even worrying about it?
Thor stood in his way, “You don’t have to do this.”
“I have to try,” Loki met his concerned gaze with one of firm resignation, and stepped around him.
Thor followed him into the room, where Loki saw Steve for the first time since he’d left for Alfheim.
Somehow, he looked even worse than when he left.
Paler than death itself, and completely still. Even the monitor that stood beside his bed seemed unchanging, a grim image of the infection spreading through his brain. The only indication that he was still living was the shallow breathing movements of his chest.
What seemed like dozens of tubes and wires were attached to various parts of his body, making him more like a lifeless puppet on strings than human.
Loki glanced at Thor pleadingly.
Wordlessly, Thor dipped his head and gestured to one of the tubes that led through to one of Steve’s veins.
Loki replaced the substance of the bag with the tea, drank his own, and squeezed Steve’s hand.
He gasped painfully at the tugging in his chest as his life-force fled his body.
He tried to focus on his hand in Steve’s, knuckles white with the effort, but his vision began to swim, a fuzzy black film quickly creeping into the edges.
The last thing he remembered before passing out was Thor’s arm wrapping around his chest, and pure terror in his voice.
“Loki!”