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He could not breathe properly, but he could neither stop to allow himself to.
If he stopped, the breath he caught would be the last he took. Of this, he was certain, so he forced his body to endure, to push through the burning of his lungs, forget the way each gasp of air clawed at his dry throat, keep moving his legs regardless of the screaming of his muscles. Ignore the faces he passed, ignore the shouting of the mortals, the pounding of his heart, the absence of seidr, his useless want to shift forms, ignore, ignore, ignore.
Forget everything except run.
Loki would survive this.
He would survive this, if only to spite Odin. Despite Odin.
Bitterness swelled like fire in his chest. He had been disowned, crippled, banished, tossed aside like so much garbage. Thor would be king, and Loki would rot away on Midgard. He had expected the dungeons, maybe had wanted them – at least there he would be safe. He should have known when Frigga told him not to make it worse that she was saying something more, but he could barely feel the seidr in her words, and Odin commanded his attention like a particularly unpleasant taste. They were face to face for the first time since he had tumbled through the Void. The Allfather regarded him with anger and disappointment. Loki reveled in making that a permanent fixture in his single eye.
He did not expect dark magic. His wrists still burned from the runes branded into his flesh as Odin spoke his sentence. The physical chains had vanished, but bound he still was, cut off from all the magic in the nine realms and trapped in a useless mortal form.
Odin might as well have condemned him to death.
He slammed bodily into a man who stepped unexpectedly into his path, and both tumbled roughly to the ground. Loki’s head found the pavement as the world spun out of focus, cursed as his hands skidded over the rough surface as he fought to push himself back up. His feet searched desperately for purchase. Shouts behind him alerted him to his pursuers attempting to take advantage of his fall just as he found it.
Curse Odin. Curse this punishment. Curse the Nornir. If this was how his thread was to be woven, he would rather have had the ax to his neck. Frigga’s pleading may have spared him a formal execution, but Odin was cunning, and now Loki was here.
Banished to Midgard.
Separated from magic.
Effectively mortal.
The final nail in his proverbial coffin was that he recognized his surroundings. He had been tossed away into a city still knee-deep in rubble, among people still bound by their own terror and ignorance, and barely had the time to recover from the fall before someone was shouting. Of all the places to have been thrown to on this miserable planet, the Allfather had chosen the location of his attempted conquest, of his defeat. He would be a fool to think it merely coincidence or mistake.
Humiliating.
All of it. Every defeat, every mistake, every moment he was under Thanos’ command was humiliating. In a year he had gone from King of Asgard to an outcast retching from nausea and pain in the middle of a Midgardian city. From commander of an army to an outcast bound in a mortal form, running from the very weaklings he had once attempted to subjugate. Banished to live among them, a joke he was surprised Odin was able to deliver with a straight face.
The joke would be on him, though, because Loki would live. He just had to find somewhere to hide.
He stumbled over debris as he tore through an alley, hoping he was faster than those who chased him, and that the rubble would slow them more than himself.
A risk -
Crack!
- that would not be in his favor.
As he rounded the corner of the building, Loki cried out when pain tore through his left arm, and the resulting loss of focus sent him stumbling over his own feet and crashing into a door that gave under his weight. The floor was unforgiving. He gritted his teeth as he hissed out panicked breaths, resisting the urge to curl up around the injury even as it bled through his fingers. He needed to keep moving, or he would be caught, killed.
He hooked the door with his foot and kicked, swinging it back into its frame, though it did not remain shut. Ignoring it in favor of escaping, he looked around the space he had found himself in until he spotted a staircase through a set of double doors. The building went deeper beyond that, he knew, recalling the length of the brick wall down the alley. No reception, a wall of locked boxes, numbers corresponding with floors and units – a Midgardian dwelling. He had seen one in the mind of one of those he had controlled, though this one was significantly less kept.
The stairs were under his feet in short order. Though he tried to lighten his steps, each moment of contact created noise on the metal, and when the sounds of his pursuers echoed up the stairwell after him, Loki abandoned them for the hall. The first doorknob he was forced to quickly wipe clean, having forgotten the blood on his hand. His left would not close properly, but it didn’t matter – every handle was immovable, and he had no access to seidr to persuade them otherwise.
Reaching the end of the hall yielded him nothing, but he did find a second flight of stairs, and took them quickly up. Down had too many risks, risks he could not take now. Two points of access made it more likely that he would simply be cut off rather than be able to -
Shouts echoed from below and he stumbled over the last step to the landing. No more stairs. No more options. He was trapped, he was trapped, he was trapped-
A handle turned fully under his fumbling grasp.
The surprise stalled him momentarily, but he forced it away and pushed the door open, slipping inside. It was dark within the dwelling, but he could make out the shapes of furniture enough to avoid them as he moved further in, aiming for the door directly across the room. One more barrier between him and the mob. He cared not what may lie beyond it.
Once the door gently clicked shut behind him, he collapsed against the wall next to it. He couldn’t control his breathing properly, gasping for air too loudly to be considered quiet, but trying to reign it into silence nonetheless. His legs buckled beneath him and he forced his knees to lock to keep himself upright. There was still no guarantee that he was safe, so he ignored the desperate want for rest.
Movement caught his eye from across the room, and suddenly Loki realized he was not alone. A mortal girl shot up in her bed, startled out of sleep and not at all pleased by his presence. Gritting his teeth, he launched himself after her as she made to shout. Adrenaline was the only reason his hands reached her mouth in time.
He would get no second chance if she exposed him.
“Hide me.”
He meant for his words to be a demand, but they came out in a broken plea instead, syllables forced through breathless lungs and a throat too raw to speak. Instead of commanding the mortal in his grasp, his tone suggested that he was begging, and he scoffed at himself for the embarrassment. He expected the rest of his appearance wasn’t assisting the matter.
Blue eyes stared him down, but the trepidation in their gaze faded quickly to inquisitive, a change as unexpected as the fact that girl had been an improper term. Shallow lines and wiser eyes betrayed her age now that he was closer, and his hands dropped from the woman’s mouth in surprise. The fist he belatedly realized had been raised to strike him instead opened to wipe at her mouth, trailing blood across her chin before she smeared that away, too. Sharp eyes remained on him, a crinkle in her brow and a slight tilt to her head that demanded an answer to a question she did not ask. Eventually her gaze wandered over his shoulder, and then noise made it to his ears.
Footsteps, voices, the main door rattling loudly; his whole body turned to the door in alarm. He should have locked it behind him. His breath caught in his throat when pressure came down lightly on his back, and he swung his arm out only to have it caught by the woman’s hand before he could harm her. She quickly released it to point toward a door further along the wall, and then gently shoved him toward it.
That she intended for him to hide was a realization he made after his legs had already carried out her instructions.
He ducked quickly into the small closet after it was opened, a hand on his shoulder guiding him down so that he would avoid the shelf too low for his stature, though he was left to brush the hanging clothes aside himself. The door was shut before he could turn to reach for it, shrouding him in darkness.
He had never known himself to be claustrophobic, but the small space and inability to see left him feeling particularly unprepared and anxious. Nonetheless, he sank to the floor. His whole body ached. Between his violent arrival on Midgard and the chase that proceeded it, everything about him was spent, and yet he could not relax, could not rest. He clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle his breaths as footsteps echoed through the floor.
The bedroom door flew open a moment later, quickly followed by the alarmed shriek of the woman. His heart had been pounding, but now it shuttered, and the fear he felt made his humiliation that much stronger. Cowering in a closet, protected by a mortal – how low he had fallen.
“Stop!” the woman shouted, her voice more stentorian than Loki expected, and the noise beyond the door quieted. “What the hell are you people in my apartment for?! Get out!”
“Ma’am, we have reason to believe-”
She quickly cut him off, shouting, “I’ll call the police!”
“We’re helping them!” an offended voice replied, different from the first.
“I don’t care what you’re doing! Get out!”
A grunt and a thump preceded an indignant noise, as though something had been thrown in warning. Loki couldn’t imagine what, or that it was very effective, as there were no retreating footsteps following.
“A very dangerous man may have come this way,” the first man continued in a calmer tone. “He matches the description of the terrorist responsible for the attack on the city, ma’am.”
There was silence.
Loki fully expected that the mortal now realized just who she had hidden in her closet. He clenched his fist until pain shot down his arm, biting his tongue against the hiss that threatened to escape. Without seidr, he had few options but to try to fight his way out, regardless of his current state.
“A dangerous man…”
He braced himself to attack.
“…that, if Tony Stark is to be believed, was taken back to whatever planet he came from via Thor.”
It took a moment for the words she spoke to sink in. Loki abruptly found his expectations extinguished, jaw slackened by the result. Was the mortal truly so stupid that she did not put the facts presented to her together properly? What other explanation could there be for the mortal to hide his presence?
“Because we definitely believe the rich weapons guy,” the offended voice from before offered sarcastically. “I saw the guy fall from space, lady. The police running around with sirens blaring should be proof enough!”
“The police are always running around here,” she retorted lowly. “And I’m partial to a man who, oh, I don’t know, maybe helped save a number of your asses.”
“Regardless of Stark,” the calmer voice interjected, “I don’t think we’re wrong about this. He escaped into this building, and judging by the blood and your door being unlocked – ”
“And you presume that gives you permission?” she interrupted once again, anger returning to color her voice with a dangerous tone. “You come in here on a maybe, barge in on a woman in her bedroom on a guess that someone came in here?!”
“Would you just shut up and let us-!”
“OUT!”
Another grunt and a thump – the same sort of noise that he figured had come from something ineffectively being thrown – before the sound of wood scraping against wood, a slam, and several voices proclaiming surprise.
“Out, or I’ll use it.”
Her tone left no room for argument, despite the words not being loudly delivered. Apparently his pursuers now had reason to take her more seriously, because he could hear footsteps falling back.
Finally, “Sorry to have disturbed you, ma’am.”
“I doubt my neighbors appreciate being woken up at four in the morning, either, so you best apologize to any of the folks you meet on your way out.”
“…Of course.”
The shuffling of feet and voices steadily fell back, and Loki could just make out the tones of an animated exchange until that too died away. He strained his ears to listen for the retreating footsteps on the staircase, finally allowing himself a deep breath, and then another, and then another, until all he could focus on was trying to get air in his lungs again, regardless of how loud he was or how much it pained his throat and chest to move the air through.
The front door shutting loudly stifled his attempts once again. A light was switched on in the bedroom, some of it seeping into the closet around the door, and it was quiet in the room aside from footsteps that he hoped belonged to the woman. They eventually stopped just beyond his hiding spot.
When the door opened, she was glaring down at him, a device in her hands that she kept held out in his direction. Determining that it was likely what had turned his pursuers away, Loki assumed it was dangerous to him, especially as he was now. He raised his hands slightly in a placating gesture, though he returned her glare with one of his own.
A moment later and it was schooled into something more neutral. He needed to rest, and she was currently allowing that; he could take advantage of this situation, but not by behaving inappropriately.
“Out, then explain,” she demanded. “I need a better look at you.”
He nodded, and then moved slowly, purposefully back out into the bedroom where they could both see each other more clearly. Keeping to the wall for support and making sure she could see his hands, Loki took a moment to survey the room. A window, but not large enough for him to fit through, pillows discarded at the edge of the bed (what she had thrown, perhaps?), little to use as a weapon save for the one she held, and the door to his right, should he need it. His eyes settled back on hers…
…and then away once again. Confused by the unnerving way the woman’s eyes seemed to be reading his whole being, he tried to focus on the rest of her. Finding that she was indecently dressed pushed his gaze further to the floor, and he glowered at the reaction. Being forced into a mortal form should not also cause him to behave like a child. He forced his eyes back up to her own, penetrating gaze be damned.
“So you are the fool who tried to take over the world.”
He had to remind himself that he needed to remain appropriate.
“I -” He stopped himself immediately when the sound exiting his mouth was unexpectedly course and hindered by his sore throat. He coughed to clear it, winced at the pain, and tried to swallow what little moisture was in his mouth. “I hardly think fool is acceptable.”
“It’s kind compared to what you brought down upon this city,” she replied, annoyance in her tone. “Murderer, dumbass, raving lunatic from space; you’ve earned yourself a long list of names, the least of which has to do with your ridiculous ambitions and poorly executed assault.”
Poorly executed… He tried to hold back a sneer. “Poor indeed,” he agreed superficially, “as it ended in defeat.”
“No shit,” she responded, and suddenly her stance relaxed as though this had gone from an interrogation to a scolding, though her weapon remained pointed at him. “This world is huge. Even if you had won, it wouldn't have lasted long. Mortals may be weak, but they’re far from pushovers.”
Loki stared at her, torn between a biting comeback and figuring out what about this conversation was making him feel distinctly childish. He had been so powerful, so beyond the strength of mortal comprehension, and yet this mortal seemed to deem it necessary to lecture him…
“Did you really think you could do it?” she continued before his thoughts could travel further along that path.
“At the time, I had an army,” he reminded her.
“Serving you and you alone, I’m sure.”
Her tone was flippant, and the implication within the words took him aback. She spoke as though she knew that he had had a benefactor.
“…Borrowed,” he conceded, “to fulfill my purpose.” And theirs, but that detail remained his.
“How generous of them,” she said flatly, as though privy to that detail as well, and he found himself unsure how to respond, words failing to form for fear that she might unravel him further.
Loki was not sure what to make of the woman before him; turning his pursuers away made her appear helpful, but then her tone while questioning him made him wary of her intentions, and he contemplated how quickly her weapon could respond to an escape attempt. Staying here might be wise, but finding himself unable to trust his infamous silver tongue left him hoping to avoid further exchanges.
“…You’re getting blood all over my floor, you know,” she suddenly noted.
Pulled from his thoughts, it took a moment for the words to completely register, even as he followed her line of sight to the growing puddle on the floor and up to the wound it was originating from. Whether it was the adrenaline or simply being distracted, he didn’t know, but suddenly his arm was pain, and he slumped against the wall as he clutched at it, hissing through his teeth as the action failed to relieve any of it.
“That had been blissfully forgotten, thank you,” he ground out, sarcasm stitched jaggedly into his words.
He tried to look at the wound better, but most of it was to the back of his upper arm, and he could not fathom trying to move it that much at the moment. His armor and leathers had been stripped from him, and what was left did nothing more than properly clothe him. The seidr he so desperately wanted to feel again was apparently not to be reached for healing either.
He huffed through his nose in something of a self-deprecating laugh. Odin certainly had thought of everything.
“Get yourself in the bathroom. To the left out the door,” the woman instructed with finality, leaving him blinking back at her in confusion as she turned away from him and toward a chest of drawers, where she proceeded to set her weapon aside as she pulled one open. “Let me get some clothes on and I’ll take a look at that.”
It took Loki several moments to catch up to her sudden shift in attitude, which prompted the woman to look back at him, raise an eyebrow, and then gesture impatiently as he still remained in place. With an uncertain nod, he finally left the room. The small bathroom he was directed to was not very big, but it seemed to serve its purpose. The woman herself was small, so the size was probably just fine for her, but he wondered briefly how she thought she would maneuver herself in the space to see to his injury.
And then he wondered why.
It wasn’t as though she had been very hostile toward him, but this was entirely beyond what he had expected. Surely she did not intend to help him. He who was at least mostly responsible for the destruction to the city she called home…
“Take a seat on the edge of the tub,” the woman instructed as she entered behind him. She now sported pants and a less revealing shirt. “I have to get behind the door here.”
He hesitated for a moment, but a further prompt from her got him sitting right where she had instructed, if not somewhat awkwardly. The tub’s edge was a bit short for his height, and with little room to stretch his legs, he found his knees a bit too far up. The woman could swing the door away from the wall, though, which revealed a small closet. From there, she grabbed a clear case. Its contents appeared to be medical.
Undoing its latches, she removed a bottle from the case, opened the lid, and dumped a few small tablets into her open hand. She held them out to him.
“For the pain. Do you need water to swallow them? Your throat sounded a bit rough.”
He stared at her.
“They aren’t poisoned,” she informed him with something of amusement in her tone.
“…I’ll take the water,” he eventually relented.
She left the tablets on the counter and went to retrieve a glass, leaving Loki to himself for a few moments. A part of him was elated that he seemed to have acquired somewhere to lie low, despite his reservations about the woman’s intuitive responses. That the mortal was suddenly taking on the role of healer was… off-putting, however, and Loki didn't know what to attribute that to other than it being unexpected. Something in his chest tightened uncomfortably as he tried to examine her intentions.
When she returned, it was with the water as well as a damp rag, and she had him wipe some of the blood from his hands, revealing scrapes and cuts on his palms that became agitated by the texture of the fabric, before passing him the tablets and the glass. He took the three at once, swallowing around the irritation, and then proceeded to empty the cup. He stopped short of demanding more as he took in the woman's pleased expression, feeling frustratingly weak and loath to appear desperate.
The amusement in her eyes died, and she looked him over with a critical eye for a moment before speaking. “The sleeve of your shirt is in the way, and it looks like it’s not loose enough to roll up over your shoulder. I can cut it off so you can at least keep the shirt, since I don’t own anything that would fit you in the slightest, or you can risk opening up that wound more and just take it off.”
He was reluctant to attempt the latter, both for the promise of pain and because it would leave him quite exposed, a state that would likely reveal the number of bruises he was sporting from the use of dark magic to throw him between worlds. Honestly, he was surprised that hadn’t outright killed him.
“Cut it off,” he told her.
She left once again and returned with a pair of scissors. Standing somehow in the space between the tub and the toilet, she carefully took the blades to the seam of the fabric, and it eventually gave way. She worked first toward the front. He watched as she gently tugged the fabric, twisting the scissors and deftly separating the threads. The metal never touched his flesh.
“What should I call you?” she suddenly asked. When he didn’t respond, a light smile formed on her lips and she continued, “I could pick from a number of your nicknames, if you’d like. Fool is easy enough, though I’ve found alien mastermind to be quite popular, if a little long.”
“Loki,” he ground out, unamused.
“Loki it is,” she acquiesced. A strange pang of familiarity accompanied her words, and he shoved it away. There was no reason simply hearing someone speak his name should cause him to feel homesick. “Want to explain why you’re hiding here instead of attempting round two of your original plan?”
He refused to answer for a time, ashamed and embarrassed by his loss of power, his loss of everything. The woman didn’t press, instead keeping her focus on her task. He was grateful she seemed to understand when her comments weren’t wanted.
Eventually, he figured if she was treating him, she might as well have some understanding as to why.
“The Allfather’s choice of punishment,” he explained, not bothering to contain his bitterness as he spoke. “Stripped of my power and thrown to the wolves, as it were.”
“The civilians have been on edge since your bid for power,” she noted. “I’m not surprised your sudden return invited violence. Given the amount of death and suffering they’ve experienced recently, your presence would trigger a lot of anger.”
He did not think creatures with such fleeting lives should feel it necessary to be so angry about a few ending just a bit earlier, but out of deference to his host, he bit his tongue on the remark.
“Lift your arm, please,” she instructed, changing topics suddenly. “I’m almost finished here.”
He tried, but the pain and weakness hindered his ability too much, and so she straddled the side of the tub and helped him to rest it on her shoulder, much to his chagrin. She had to duck her head in order to see properly, but the awkward angle did not prevent her from continuing to work in the same practiced manner. She paid no mind, even, to the blood that seeped onto her own shoulder.
Loki tried not to contemplate the woman’s apparent ease and trust around him, but her proximity to him made it difficult to set it aside. He could kill her; it would be so simple to end her life, even despite his current state. She had to know that, especially given the impression of himself he had originally given this realm.
Yet, here they were. That uneasy feeling of wrongness grew in the pit of his stomach.
He felt the tool come free of the fabric, and with a quick word of warning, she eased his arm down once again. Taking hold of the sleeve at the shoulder, she flipped it down over the wound without aggravating it much more than it already was. The rest of it came off easily enough after that.
Her eyes lingered for a moment on his exposed wrist, but she said nothing of the runes seared into the flesh there. He turned his eyes away from them.
The blood dripping into the tub was a welcome distraction from his thoughts. She maneuvered around him to reach the knob on the wall, turning it until water began to flow in a steady stream. The washcloth with which he had wiped his hands was rinsed under the water before she turned her discerning eyes on him, her expression grave.
“This is going to hurt, at least until the medication sets in and takes the edge off. I don’t have access to antibiotics or the proper tools to stitch this, so for now, I’m going to be as thorough as possible to prevent infection. You should be going to a hospital, but your image is public knowledge. I shouldn’t have to explain what would occur if we simply waltzed into one.”
He nodded. It wasn’t as though he would have agreed to go, anyway, so she set to work, and Loki bit his tongue against the pain.
“They shot you, I assume?” she asked after a few minutes, looking carefully over the wound as the water revealed its details.
“Obviously.” His response came out in a hiss, unable to keep the pain from his voice. The wound shouldn’t even exist, given that the mortal’s weapons barely bruised him before, but apparently his forced shapeshifting had been quite thorough.
He caught her rolling her eyes at his tone. “They had terrible aim. You should count yourself lucky. Looks like the bullet badly grazed you.”
He wanted to refute the use of the word lucky, but was too busy gritting his teeth to prevent himself from crying out every time the cloth brushed the tender flesh.
“This won’t heal quickly,” she continued, her words level and eyes reflecting seriousness. “You’ll find you won’t be able to move your arm much as the muscle heals, but I’ve seen you move your hand, so I don’t expect you’ll have lasting damage. A scar, perhaps, but that will depend on how long you’re to serve this punishment.”
Indefinitely, a voice distinctly like Odin’s sneered within him.
Eventually she finished with the water. Returning to the small closet behind the door, she produced from it a black bottle, and then pulled several cotton pads from her medical case. Twisting the lid off, she tipped it quickly over onto one of the pads a couple of times.
“This will sting,” she informed him. “I’ll use some on the cut above your brow to give you an idea of what to expect.”
He reached up to touch the tender area above his eye. He didn’t even realize it had bled, and he wasn't sure when it had occurred, either. She batted his hand away like he was a child poking at something he shouldn’t, and then gently began to dab at the small cut. At first, it felt no different from the water on his arm, but shortly it became a sharp pain he wasn’t expecting, and he flinched away from her touch with a hiss.
“It’s unpleasant, I know, but it does the job. Try to bear with it.”
She dumped the bottle on his arm.
It was, at least, not unexpected. He was watching her actions, knew what she was going to do when she abandoned the cotton and brought the bottle up to his arm, but the amount of burning he felt was so beyond what the minor cut had produced that he pushed away from her on reflex, nearly losing his balance if not for the grip she suddenly had on his shirt. She apologized quickly, pulling him forward until he was steady again, and then pressed that it would have to be done, regardless of the pain. He was given a couple of moments to regain his composure, and then he gave her a curt nod. She was quick, but nonetheless thorough, switching over to a cotton pad and working on cleansing every part of the wound. Loki was left tasting copper in his mouth from biting the inside of his cheek.
After what seemed like an eternity, the woman moved on to an ointment, applying it gently and generously before having him hold a pad of gauze to the wound while she collected more, and finally she was wrapping up his arm with the rest of it. As he watched her, that sense of wrongness gripped him again, and he finally relented to the urge to ask the question he had wondered silently before.
“Why?”
She paused long enough to give him a questioning look. “Why what?”
What did she mean- “Why help me?” he clarified in frustration.
She did not answer him, and instead opted to finish up the wrapping on his arm before moving back to the smaller cut above his eye.
When she finally spoke, it was with her own question. “Answer me something first,” she requested, eyes on her task instead of meeting his. “Is the fact that you feel guilty about me treating you stemming from regret for your actions, or something else?”
Loki felt his eyes widen.
Guilt.
That uncomfortable knot in his stomach tightened into a stranglehold, and he realized jarringly that it had a proper name. More jarring still was the realization that he hadn’t felt much more than anger for... for a long time, and suddenly there existed something more than that, and he couldn’t figure out why or where everything else had gone, as though he was missing something-
“Breathe, Loki.”
Her voice cut through the pounding of his blood in his ears, and he looked up to find her gazing at him with something akin to worry (don’t, something within him demanded). Her hands were no longer cleaning his wounds, instead gripping his shoulders firmly, gently squeezing in a reassuring and anchoring manner, and he took a deep, if unstable breath. She copied him, steadier, and he tried again and again until they matched. For a few moments, they simply breathed in sync with one another.
“...We can talk about what just happened here another time,” she eventually spoke when he felt properly in control again. He was grateful, unsure he even wanted to attempt to put into words what that was, uncertain that he could. “To answer your question, I believe that people can learn from their mistakes. If there is guilt, then there is a chance to learn. You have the ability to do good, and so I will offer you the chance to do so.”
“…You think to find good in me?” It was a ridiculous notion.
“You will find it in yourself.”
That wasn’t possible any longer, he thought, imagining the blue that truly tainted his skin.
“Aside from which,” she continued, amusement suddenly lightening her tone, “you can’t serve a banishment properly if you’re dead. I’ll see to it that you survive your time here. Agreed?”
Loki was not often left speechless, but he found his ability to form words lost to him as he stared up at her now smiling face. This mortal was just so... Of all the mortal dwellings to have found refuge in, this was the one he was fated? If nothing else, he supposed it was convenient. He could hide, rest, receive aid; it was far beyond anything he could have expected on Midgard.
He would survive this.
“I suppose I at least have a chance here,” he conceded.
Her laugh was amicable, he found, and he allowed a small smile to form on his own lips in response to it.
A short time later, she had treated the cut on his brow along with the scrapes on his palms, and then helped clean off the remaining blood from his person. She left to find something suitable to prop his arm up in. No longer a hazard to the cleanliness of her floors and walls, Loki decided he couldn’t sit where he was any longer, and made to follow after.
His first mistake was standing.
His vision quickly wavered and then left him, and his legs gave out below him as his sense of up and down shifted dramatically sideways, leaving him reaching blindly for support. He caught nothing but air until his knees hit the ground. Using both hands in an attempt to catch the rest of him sent pain shooting up his wounded arm, and he couldn’t stop himself from crying out.
“Careful!” the woman reprimanded him, quickly at his aid and supporting him with arms stronger than his own. He latched onto her before he had even realized he was moving to do so, and despite his efforts to keep his head up, the weight of it proved too much to bear, and instead he was left with it resting on her shoulder as his head swam under vertigo. He swallowed back the bile in his throat. “You lost a bit of blood, you know. There was a reason I told you to wait a moment.”
He realized that now, of course, and he could feel what little was left of his pride ebbing away the longer he was forced to remain in the compromising position. His head spun, and his limbs were weak – such a pitifully mortal thing, all of it. She held him steady, though, and after several minutes his strength returned enough that he could lean back on his heels. Her gaze on him was piercingly watchful, unpleasant in its scrutiny but apparently driven by good intentions. He sighed. Her kindness did not deserve his current frustrations, at least.
Appropriate, he reminded himself.
“Would you mind…?”
“Let’s get you to the couch,” she agreed, taking the arm he offered her and helping him to his feet. She insisted that he lean on her for support, but the difference in height between them made that somewhat difficult. They reached the living area without incident, however; the distance itself wasn’t exactly far. The couch there was large for the space, asymmetrical in design but plain in color, comfortable enough when he was eased onto it. It took him a few moments too long to realize she was helping him to lie down, that he was tired, that standing had been that much of a mistake. She said something about water, turning away, and he grabbed for her wrist out of reflex. Something… there was something he wanted to ask…
“Your name.”
He struggled to keep his eyes open, watching as her expression turned to something unreadable.
“You can call me Caleigh,” she answered as his exhaustion took hold.