Drowning
At the age of twelve, Bruce Banner nearly drowned in a frozen lake. They had been playing on the ice and it had cracked open and he’d plunged into the freezing water. It had been agony, the cold on his skin, pulling him down. When he looked back up to try and swim to the surface, all he had seen was the sheet of intact ice. He was trapped down there, in the dark and the cold, and he opened his mouth and his lungs breathed in of their own volition-
He woke up later that day, in a hospital bed, with his mother hysterically crying beside him.
When he first transformed into the Hulk, it felt just like that day, except red hot instead of cold. He was drowning in boiling water, looking up for the surface and only seeing a barrier that he could not cross. It felt like that for a long time, but by the battle of New York something had changed. He wasn’t drowning anymore, he was swimming, voluntarily diving into the depths and ceding his body to the Hulk. He turned away from Steve Rogers in New York and it was like diving into a warm bath of rage. Sakaar was…nothingness. Hulk had the wheel and it seemed like he would never surface. But he did, and on the ship it was like swimming again, the Hulk and he trading back and forth as needed to protect himself, protect his friends, and this ship.
Until the Curse.
Loki dreams of falling, but it always sounds more like drowning. When the nightmares wake him, he gasps for air like he’s starved for it, gripping onto Thor like a life preserver.
“I can’t breathe,” He always says first, before anything else.
“Hush, you can,” Thor whispers back, still half asleep himself. “I know you can.” It always takes a few minutes of soothing to ease Loki back to calm, to return his breaths to a smooth and even rhythm. Bruce hears Thor’s voice as a low murmur, and the sound of rustling fabric as he rubs a circle on his brother’s back. Then their whispers as they talk before easing back into sleep.
It’s practically a routine now. Bruce is barely disturbed by it, as it becomes almost background noise in their room, as regular as the Valkyrie’s snoring. But back when it first happened, it had been an interesting revelation. The next morning he looked at Loki and realized they had more in common than he’d thought.
“…Magic or no, I think I’m going to need this story.”
The Valkyrie smiles, pours him a drink and tells him.
“That is fucked. up.” He says, grabbing the bottle when she’s finished.
“I know. Thor is still beating himself up about it.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“He knows that. And Loki keeps insisting on it, but it’s going to take a while for things to get better.”
That night in their room it is Thor who wakes with nightmares. He wakes alone, Loki too fatigued from the lingering blood loss and magical exhaustion to be stirred. Bruce listens as Thor’s ragged breathing evens out and he settles down.
The next morning, Loki approaches him, looking a little awkward. He’s still disturbingly pale, looking half a ghost. “I apologize for having to ask you to do this, Banner,” He says. “But as I cannot do it myself and I’d rather not burden Thor further…”
“Yeah, shoot, what’s up?”
“The wounds in my arms. I know you’ve heard the story, and you have some experience…if you could…”
“‘Course.” They sit in a quiet room. Loki lays his wrists on a table and barely winces when Bruce peels back the bandages. The wounds are ugly, deep slices into his flesh. “Why haven’t you healed this yet?”
“Don’t know. Could be the blood loss, magic’s too tied up trying to replenish the blood to heal. Or the way I made the wounds. The point was to be a sacrifice. I should have known it would not have been so easy to heal. At least the nerves have reconnected.”
“Show me. Flex your hands. Now make a fist, okay good, yeah you’re right, it looks like the nerves are okay.” Banner takes up a cloth and the basin of warm water they brought. “Sorry if this stings.” Loki holds very still as he cleans the wounds. “It takes a lot of determination to do this to yourself. Especially once you’d cut the first side.”
“I was very determined to break the curse.”
“Thanks for that, by the way.” They fall to silence for a few minutes. “Did you know you were going to survive?” Loki doesn’t answer that but the way he tenses a little tells Bruce all he needs to know. “I tried this once. When I first turned into the Hulk, after it became clear there was no cure, I kept trying…this method didn’t even come close to working. Didn’t even make it through one cut on my wrists before the Hulk took over.”
“You tried several methods?”
“Yeah, kept trying to trick the Hulk. Never worked.”
“Well, I would advise against throwing oneself into the Void. That was exceedingly unpleasant.”
“That’s what you dream about?” Bruce asks quietly.
“Among other things.”
Bruce starts to tape the bandages back into place.
“Is everything alright?” Thor’s voice startles them both. He leans on the door frame, watching them with a haunted look in his eye.
“Of course, brother,” Loki says. “I just wanted a second opinion.”
“Do you guys do blood transfusions on Asgard?” Bruce asks. “I’m a little worried about how much blood you’ve lost.”
“We do but-”
“But I’m not Asgardian.” Loki finishes. “A blood transfusion from anyone on the ship would likely kill me. No, Dr. Banner, I’ll be fine. Thank you for your assistance.” He rises, covering the bandages again with his sleeves. He goes to Thor without another backward glance and the brothers leave Bruce to clean up the bloodied cloths.
After dinner, the guilt worming away at him, he slides onto the bench next to Loki.
“Hey man, sorry about bring that stuff up earlier.”
Loki raises an eyebrow. “What 'stuff?'”
“You know the…low point stuff.”
“What, your attempts at ending your own life?”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t have-”
“Why not?”
“You know, it’s not exactly a light topic, especially for someone who just almost died.”
“Oh. Yes, I understand. But it’s alright. No one talks about it. Thor hasn’t mentioned my fall at all since it happened, except once, when we crashed a few months ago. It was…good to talk about so openly.”
“Yeah, people get awkward with me too. I mentioned it to the team, way back when you were being all ‘crazy dictator’ and it’s been kind of radio silence since then. You know when I was a kid, I almost drowned.”
Loki raises an eyebrow at the abrupt shift in topic. “Oh?”
“Yeah and it seems…it seems unrelated but sometimes I just feel like I’m still drowning. And I think…I’m figuring you still feel like you’re falling.”
Loki looks at his hands instead of looking at Bruce. “To counter your point,” Loki says. “Perhaps we’ve gotten used to it. Drowning, falling. The problem is the people who…aren’t. Used to it.”
Bruce knows precisely who Loki is thinking of. “Thor seems really messed up over all this.”
Loki sighs. “Thor has taken to feeling guilty about everything. He will get over this. He will endure.”
Bruce glances at Thor, talking with the Valkyrie and still looking drawn. “You should talk to him,” He says. “There are people that I wish I could have spoken to openly about the stuff I was going through. I didn’t, and who knows if I’ll get a second chance.”
“Hm,” Is all Loki has to say to that.
But much later, after he’s spent some time hanging out with Korg and the Sakaarans, he tries to return to their room and stops when he hears voices from inside.
“I imagined, a thousand times, since then,” Thor’s voice sounds uncharacteristically thick. “If I had just managed to grab your hand instead, if I had just been that much faster, if I had been there when you needed me…”
“I don’t know that it would have mattered. Thor, you don’t understand, I couldn’t see any other way out-”
Bruce backs carefully away. He goes to the small bar they’ve been using as kind of an unofficial headquarters. The Valkyrie is there, drinking alone.
“So the princes finally decided to air all their problems,” She says, taking a swig from their bottle.
“Yeah, that may have been my fault,” Bruce says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I might have…prodded them in that direction.”
“I’d have preferred it if they didn’t use our room.” She sighs. “But they definitely needed it before they self-destructed. Want a drink?”
“Why not, we’re not going to get to bed any time soon.”
She hands him the bottle. “Had they moved on from the adoption thing?”
“It sounded like they were on the fall from the bifrost.”
The Valkyrie lets her head fall forward onto the table. “We’re going to have to sleep in the floor in here.”
“Sorry.”
The Valkyrie groans.
About a half hour of drinking later, the Valkyrie asks, “So how does it feel, when you’re the Hulk?”
Bruce shrugs. “It depends. Not pleasant, usually. Sometimes it’s okay, like when we were fighting back in New York. This whole curse thing?” The Valkyrie raises an eyebrow. “It kind of felt like drowning.”
“Yeah,” She says. “I know exactly what you mean.” She taps her bottle against Bruce’s.
They don’t end up having to sleep on the floor. Late that night, tipsy and a little giggly, they slip back into their room and flop onto the bed.
“Night, little guy,” Valkyrie says, patting his shoulder.
“Night, Val,” He whispers back.
They all sleep through the night.