Summary: You are tasked with the job of talking to the god, Loki, and teaching him compassion and human nature. You think the job is pointless, but you get under his skin more than he would want to admit.
Triggers: cursing, deaths of family mentioned, a little angst
Thanks for reading! Please take a moment, if you can, to message me with a review and any ideas. I love getting feedback! -Eve
I folded up on the couch and read my favorite, worn copy of Slaughter House Five. Banner sat down next to me. “What’s up, Doc?” I said, not looking up from my book.
“I wanted to do a check in. Mind if I take your blood pressure?” He asked, showing me a cuff and putting his stethoscope to his ears. I nodded and he placed it around my arm, pumping pressure into the cuff.
He nodded to himself, and rehung the stethoscope around his neck. “Normal, as usual. Just want to make sure you medicine isn’t affecting you adversely.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, returning my attention to my book.
“Are you taking your medication?”
“Every morning with breakfast,” I responded. He was going through the whole damn checkup.
“And depression, if you were to rate it on a scale of 1-10?”
“Fleeting and passive.” I exhaled, trying to focus on the passage in front of me.
“And how is your project going? I advised against it, but Thor and Tony thought it would-“
“Well enough,” I said. “I still think it’s pointless, but Steve is making sure I set boundaries and Loki himself- he’s… Unresponsive.”
“Better than other options.”
“Such as?” I probed, looking over to Bruce as he settled into the couch.
“What do you mean by that?” I questioned.
“Loki has a sense of juvenile entitlement and he might start to feel entitled to you.”
When I closed the book and stared him down, he explained more.
“He might become interested in you. In what you are. In what you could be.” He continued.
“In what my hand can do.” I put in.
“More than that even- he might feel like he can own you. Use you. Manipulate you. Use you to get out of his cage.”
“I’m not some weak little girl who’s going to go weak in the knees for the first person to pay attention to me and talk to me.” If that was true, I thought, I would have fallen for Steve so hard I would have broken my nose.
“He’s just- he’s just him. And right now you’re not the most mentally stable person, not that I have much to say on the subject, but he can sense that. He could use that. He could make you get sick again, or sicker, or”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised again, for a second time in the last twenty four hours.
“Just keep a monitor on your mood, any down swig could mean,” he paused, searching for the right word, “trouble.”
“Thanks Banner. For the worry. And the care. The everything.” I said, and swung my legs around, leaving the room. It was time for me to do my project.
I walked down the stairs with a sense, no burden, of anxiety. It was the worry of fruition: that what Steve and Bruce warned me about would come true. I stepped into the hallway, staring past the glass, and at the god. He seemed completely at peace, lying on his bed. I almost breathed a sigh of relief and went to leave, go back to the book I held in my hand, read it for a fifth or sixth time, when Loki spoke up.
“You’re back.” He said, not opening his eyes.
“You don’t seem like the kind to follow orders. Unless they suit you.” He chuckled, sitting up in bed and moving closer to the glass. He sat down, cross-legged.
“Not untrue.” I shrugged.
“So, what will we talk about today? Do you have more to tell me about, like I’m another one of your doctors?” He played.
I bristled, knowing he was just trying to get under my skin. “My doctors usually aren’t locked up narcissists.”
He smirked. “I wouldn’t say I’m a narcissist.”
“What would you call yourself, then?”
“Ambitious people don’t destroy what they want to achieve.” I said, referencing his try at decimating New York.
“Not unless they plan to rebuild it.”
“And how would you rebuild it?” I questioned.
“Narcissist.” I threw in.
He chuckled softly. I was perturbed by the amount of smiling the man was doing. “What’re you playing at?” I asked.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What’re you doing? You’re smiling. You’re laughing.”
He bit his bottom lips, his expression unreadable for a moment, then he returned to a smirk. “Maybe I’m having the speedy recovery they’re hoping for. That’s why they sent you down here to talk to me, right? They’re hoping you’ll fix me.”
I nodded, slowly, in affirmation.
“And what do you think of this business? You agreed to be enlisted. And as we said before, you don’t actually seem like you’d be one to follow orders.”
“They’ve helped me. They’ve saved me. I owe them a little help here and there.” I confessed.
“Couldn’t you be useful in other- capacities?” He probed. I sat down, leaning on the wall behind me. I tried to maintain a neutral expression.
“I won’t use it.” I said, pointedly.
“But wouldn’t it be useful? You seem like you’d be a great interrogator.”
“I refuse to be that. I refuse to be you.”
He looked a little shocked, for half a moment. “I’m not some monster.”
“You relinquished any right to call yourself human when you murdered all those people.”
“So I’m a god. That’s what your species used to call me.”
“You’re not my god.” I spat.
He turned his head to the side, rubbing his jawline. “You could use some manners.”
“And you could use some morals.” I shot back.
“Touché, my dear.” He chuckled.
“Then whose are you?” He asked.
“Lie. You think you belong to someone. Or you owe someone something. More than you owe the others. I can tell. That’s why you followed the orders, truly. You owe one of them something.”
I cracked my neck and ignored him.
“Which one is it? I wouldn’t guess Stark, though you live under his, technical roof. I wouldn’t even think it was my brother. He isn’t the kind to understand your value against using your hand. Nor would I guess Natasha or Clint. They trained themselves into weapons.”
“You’re wrong. Wrong about all of them. About who they are.”
“And I’ve known them longer than you. So who do you think is right? Someone who has seen them when there are tipping into death, or someone who needed them, needed their help?”
“I’m not going to argue philosophy with you.”
“Then who is it? Banner?”
“Stop playing this game, stop playing with me.”
“It is the dashing Captain? Did he save you?”
“Stop playing with me. I’m not a fucking toy.” I said, neutrally.
“I’ll narrow it down. I have time to figure it out.” He threatened.
“And why, in all the name that is good and not you, would you want to know?”
“I want to know you.” He smirked. “I want to see how you tick. Don’t you want to understand me?”
He looked suddenly angry. It made me sit up, it made me jump, ready to fight or run. Then I remembered the glass, the precautions, and rested my back on the wall once again.
“I want to know one thing, though.” I admitted.
His face softened and he opened his arms up, as if in surrender. “Anything, if you’ll answer my next two questions.”
“If your questions are about me owing someone-“
“It’s not, I swear.” He said, folding his hands together.
I continued on, asking the one thing I had wondered this whole time. “What can I possibly do for you? In the given situation.”
He stared at me, puzzled.
“I know what they want me to do- show you compassion. Maybe even make you repentant. But what do you think I could do for you? What do think I could possibly accomplish?” I asked.
He stared at me, rather soberly. We were quiet, to the uncomfortable point of silence, for a few moments, before he said, honestly, almost warmly, “I wouldn’t actually mind being shown some compassion. Having some company.”
I nodded, settling on figuring out that answer later, with the comfort of people I knew around me. I filed it away for the Avengers to figure out. “And your question?”
“First, what exactly can your hand do?”
I nodded, and collected my thoughts. “Scientifically, they don’t know yet or why or how. They don’t know what happened to me that I got- this. But what it can do? It can make people feel sensations. And emotions. It can make people truthful or prideful or happy or peaceful or whatever I want. Or it can make them feel pain. Or a rush of dopamine. Or like they’re high off their minds. Whatever I want. But more than that,” I shrugged, “I was working on it, practicing on James before he got too addicted. It can make them see things. More than feel things. Envelop them in a memory of mine or of my making. Anything I want.”
“Interesting. Quite the blessing, maybe from the gods.”
“Next question.” I demanded.
“Do you believe that I could change? I could be shown compassion and repent?”
“After your last answer,” I answered, honestly as ever, “I’m not at all sure.” And I got up, and left.
The girl was driving Loki insane. He waited for her to come again, waited with baited breath, on the edge of his bed. The girl was- what was she exactly? Again explanation was lost to him. She was extraordinary. She was honest with him. She was true. She was righteous. She had a spark of compassion. And she made him- was this even right? She made him want more of her. Her constant company. Her affections. She made him impatient. She was becoming his weak point. And he fought it, but always ended up giving in, dreaming of her even in his broken sleep.
