"Interrogated"
Steve was calmly having some cereal on his living room when there was a blue poof, and a familiar lanky figure appeared out of nowhere, making him nearly drop his bowl.
It was a wide eyed bloodied Loki, carrying an unconscious blue skinned figure in his arms. There was something desperate in the god's eyes, a beseeching expression Steve had never seen in his face. He was imploring him, the lowly very not godly Steve Rogers, and he was barely standing.
“Help us.” He whispered in a low voice, and promptly collapsed into the floor, making Steve's living room full of long limbs, dried and fresh blood and closed eyes.
There was something about Loki's expression that made Steve think he probably had come to him because he didn't have anyone else, or that going to everyone else would be too dangerous, so he decided not to call anyone, just in case. He'd never had any trouble with fugitives, he had been one himself for a fairly and so had Bucky. And he knew that Loki was mostly on their side now, and that kid he had brought with him seemed nice enough as well.
And so he started trying to fix them up, with as much care as possible, gentle, soft. Perhaps he should have been less trusting and placed Loki and the stranger in cell-like place while he didn't know why they were there and why they needed help, but Steve had never been known for being overly cautious. He would rather be attacked by a stranger than put somebody innocent in a cell, this time and every time.
Both Loki and the stranger looked pretty bad, so Steve put them both in his bed, hoping that being in a bed would be helpful. Loki had a decent blow on the head covered by dried blood and ligature marks on his necks, apart from extensive bruising on his chest, stomach and something that looked like chemical burns in his arms. It would take a while to go through all of that, but Steve was not in a hurry. His left shoulder seemed dislocated too, so that would have to be set. Steve sighed.
The boy seemed to have a broken arm and when Steve took away the torn shirt, he found that there were a lot of gashes in his stomach and chest, some older, some newer, most of them pretty deep. It was unsettling, to say the least. He also had a black eye, a split lip and seemed to have trouble breathing. A lot of work there too.
So, Steve put some music on, took out his first aid kit and started working. He put some cream in Loki's burns, cleaned his head and bandaged the worst of the bruising, carefully, slowly. Then he went to the boy and cleaned and disinfected all his gashes, and then bandaged nearly all his midsection. Then he remembered that Bucky had been paranoid and said that they needed something in case Steve's asthma came back, and “got” some supplies from a hospital, including and oxygen mask with a small tank, and decided to put it on the boy, to help his breathing.
He decided to leave setting Loki's shoulder for last, as he imagined that would probably wake the god up, and putting the burn cream and all those things probably hurt, and it was better to do them while the god was unconscious. And Loki did indeed woke up when his bones where put in their place, bright unfocused green eyes suddenly looking at him.
“Captain...? Why....?”
“You appeared out of nowhere with that boy and collapsed, asked me to help you. I was hoping you could tell me why you're here.”
Loki frowned and slowly sat up and got up, taking Steve's helping hand. He was still a bit fuzzy on how he had got there and why he had gone there, and then he saw the boy next to him and his expression changed.
“Kurt....”
“I did the best for him, but maybe we should take him to a real hospital.”
“No, they would find us there... Please, Steve....”
For Loki to actually call him Steve this had to be serious. They were relatively friendly as they were fairly good strategists the both of them, and enjoyed a good game of chess, but he was still Captain or Rogers most of the time. For him to be pulling the first name thing this needed to be pretty serious.
“Don't worry, I haven't called anybody, and I won't, but you need to tell me who is he and what happened to you guys.”
And so Loki began his tale.
He didn't remember exactly how they snatched him, but at some point he woke up in some sort of communal cell with a bunch of other people. They were separated in two sides: the criminals and the heroes who wanted nothing to do with them. Loki felt like he didn't belong anywhere, but there was somebody else... Somebody who had been shunned “because they didn't know who he was and couldn't be trusted”, they said, but it was probably because of his blue skin and tail.
Loki, who knew what it was to hate blue skin and be hated as well, went to the blue boy and they became a sort of middle ground in that place. There was twelve of them, and to be honest, it was the criminals who had the most ideas to get out. But it didn't matter. One by one, the inhabitants of the cell were taken and “interrogated”. When they came back, they could hardly keep their eyes open.
Kurt tried to help, but people kept shying away from him. Just because he was blue. It was stupid, so Loki stood by him. He hated them all for being afraid. The interrogation kept getting more and more creative, blocking his magic, making him speak the truth... It was an absolute waking nightmare.
“And then we go out.” Loki said, voice low. “I managed to get some spells out of the magic blocks, quite painfully at that, and managed to unplug the electrical field on the cell, and so Kurt was able to get most of the people out... And then... we were going to...finally get back home,put ourselves back together...One of our captors found us...And we were already too weak from so much interrogation...I couldn't protect him...”
Steve passed him a glass of water, which Loki took gratefully.
“At some point, Kurt grabbed me and I thought of you, because I knew that wherever you were, it would some place hidden from the authorities, because of you friend and your... complicated status.I don't really know who it was that took us, but they were from your government, of that I'm sure.”
“They won't find you here.” Steve said, exercising all of his self control not to put a comforting hand on the god's shoulder, comfort him in a more physical way, but they didn't know each other that well. Still, Loki looked terrible, with the bandage on his head, dried blood still in his hair and those red marks on his neck, not to mention how bloodshot his eyes were, and the look of exhaustion and hopelessness in them.
“Why don't I warm up some leftover pasta for you and we can go over what you remember to see if we can figure out who it was, stop them?” Steve tried to smile, and Loki just absent mindedly nodded, while looking at his glass of water, that was shaking slightly.
Steve sighed and went to the kitchen, wishing he could be more. He knew what Loki meant when he talked about interrogation. Agents has “interrogated” Bucky many times too, and it had made him full of scars. And it was always done in the name of the greater good, of safety. When Steve first joined the army he never thought he would end up being the go-to guy for fugitives of the security agencies.
When he returned with the food, Loki was looking at his injured friend, a sad look in his eye, and he seemed in another world.
“He'll be fine, don't worry.”
One of Loki's hand turned blue.
“This is what made approach him, you know, being blue, and feared. But he is so much better than me... So much better. But of course, he was too loyal to his team to say anything...”
Loki took the plate, and his hands were still shaking a bit.
“Is there anything that you can remember that can help us identify...”
Loki touched Steve's cheek, and suddenly Steve was seeing the interior of a cell, a torture room, screams and tears people vomiting blood, electric shocks, symbols, pleading eyes getting taken out of the cell, a pained scream as Loki managed to get the elctric field down, symbols, numbers, glass doors, a blue teen getting everyone out, angry eyes with weapons closing in on a battered god and a boy who couldn't breathe...
“That's all I have.”
Steve wanted to scream.
He knew some of those people. And to think that he had once been in league with the bullies he so hated, with torturers....
“I will handle this. No, even better yet.... I'll let Natasha handle them.”
Loki half smiled at the prospect. The thought of his captors getting taken down by the widow was rather a sweet one.
The next three Loki and Kurt were the recipient of all of Steve's hospitality and cooking. Kurt woke up the next day and seemed amazed to meet him (“Ze Captain of America! Vhat an honor!”) and Steve understood why Loki had taken him under his wing, he was so incredibly nice and enthusiastic, the most wide eyed kid he'd ever seen.
Natasha and some others took care of the interrogators and their whole structure. She sent Loki and only Loki a video, Steve and the others didn't need to know.
But as he was having some dinner in that small apartment, with Kurt badly bruised, one of his eyes swollen shut, but smiling despite everything, teaching the good Captain (Steve, please, call me Steve) some German expressions he liked, tail moving merrily behind him, his own wounds still half healed, still hurting, he smiled.
They could come for them, try to break them, do unspeakable things with them....
But they wouldn't break them.
And they wouldn't ever ever win.