[Loki, Thor, Valkyrie] Asgardians play rough

[st_ratagem]

The Inn, while not technically all that small, seemed to get emptier and smaller with time. That was, in Loki’s experience, one of the features of imprisonment in general. The business of every day was simply filling the day, finding what novelty one could in order to vary the texture of time.

Today, for some reason, he’d opted to appear in the Inn’s fitness room slash sparring arena to watch Thor and the Valkyrie spar. He had no intention of challenging the winner, of course; Thor would demolish him and he generally preferred less public locations for anything involving Valkyrie and violence in his direction. But it would at least be interesting to watch the two have fun or bleed off aggression, and possibly play spoiler of sorts - a few little tricks to tip the scales one way or the other in case one of them got complacent.

Sniping from the sidelines was, after all, entirely his style.

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[st_ormbreaker]

Thor swallows the guilt to focus on what's in front of him. Valkyrie, badly hurt; Loki, uncharacteristically upset. Thor bites back the urge to ask if Loki is okay. He knows exactly what he'd say if he asked, anyway.

"What do you need?" he asks instead.

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie's pained expression softened somewhat, the hand guarding her midsection relaxing. As stubborn as she was, her body seemed to have an understanding of when to behave for a healer.

[st_ratagem]

That was something, at least, that relaxation. Loki looked up at his brother. “Bandages, just in case. Supplies to clean her hands. Painkillers.” Moving Valkyrie seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea, and the clinic didn’t have the supplies or equipment to deal with this kind of internal injury anyway. Leaving her in pain by waiting for natural healing was not an option, even if he was certain that would work. “...Food and water. I’m going to have to try magical healing, so she’ll need that when I’m done.” If his effort didn’t kill her outright.

[st_ormbreaker]

"I'll be back." Thor is immediately on his feet, and a few moments later, is out the room in a flash.

[st_allionofdoom]

Labored as it was, her breathing persisted. Her dark eyes cracked open to gaze at the ceiling, making out shapes and light, though they were slow to make sense at first. Catching movement, her eyes trained on Loki who bore unmistakable features, blurry or no.

[st_ratagem]

Eyes open and focusing, or trying to. That was good, and touched off some frankly idiotic relief: if she was even a little sensible, her head injury at least might not be as bad as he’d feared.

In no small part due to that relief, Loki leaned down and kissed her forehead lightly, careful not to jar anything. “You’ll be all right. We’ll get started when Thor gets back.”

[st_allionofdoom]

Though she couldn’t do much beyond twitch her lips, she wore a brief and tired smirk that asked what that look on his face was for.

‘I’ve had worse.’ True, she barely realized the extent of what she had, but she felt confident of this fact.

[st_ratagem]

“I don’t doubt it.” The magic investigating her body made is easier than it might otherwise have been to hear thing she intended to say but couldn’t. “My threat stands, though, so I’ll repeat it: if you try to move, dearest, I will kill you.”

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie gave a stuttering, coughing sigh and then she was gone again. Her thoughts hadn't held together for more than a second to question how she'd gotten from point A to B or the absurdity of being in the state of that carnival game she and Loki had enjoyed from a few love taps.

[st_ratagem]

The second or two of relief in a lucid Valkyrie meant that Loki was able to keep from returning to the same level of fear and worry that had tried to control him up to then. That meant he could stroke her hair away from her face - for his comfort rather than hers, it had to be said - and wait quietly instead of what the fear wanted him to do: start trying to heal her before Thor got back.

He'd need Thor to knock him away the moment a healing spell went wrong. Valkyrie might not survive errors; this wasn't a little cut to the hand, it actually mattered if he accidentally rotted the wound instead of healing it.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor hurriedly returns, the supplies in question bundled up in his arms: painkillers, bandages, skin cleanser, water, sandwiches. He deposits them next to Loki, then wordlessly takes a few steps away, as if worried his intrusion might prevent Loki from doing his job.

He takes a deep breath as he looks over at Valkyrie. He couldn't have possibly hurt her that badly... could he?

[st_ratagem]

“No, brother.” Loki beckoned and gestured a little jerkily next to him, on the opposite side of the pile of supplies. “Stay close. There’s a lot of damage, and if things start to go wrong,” and Thor knew how Loki’s efforts at healing could go wrong, “you’ll have to knock me away instantly. I don’t... you know I’m not good at this. I can’t risk... just stay close and be ready to protect her.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor reluctantly edges next to Loki, eyes still set on Valkyrie.

[st_ratagem]

That was a relief, it really was. Holding on to the particularly painful what if I hurt her more would, Loki was fairly sure, have inhibited any chance of actually getting things right. With Thor there, he could and did let it go.

Loki took a deep breath, closed his eyes, rested his fingers as lightly as possible on her injured torso. There would be some added pain for her, but that was inevitable. He pushed away upsetness about that, and started weaving the spells, as Frigga had tried to teach him so many years ago, to knit flesh and bone together, tidy blood back into its vessels, all of that.

It had never worked, ever, not really. Small wounds of Thor's, on the third or fourth try, yes. And then Stark, once, in a moment of total desperation. He was less desperate now, but need had worked before, so Loki used it again. He needed Valkyrie to be healed.

[st_allionofdoom]

The magic piecing her broken pieces back together made her body gasp and twitch on reflex, but Valkyrie bore it all well. The exertion made her skin flush and sweat, but color returned to her cheeks and fingertips slowly. The intent, through all the daze, was clear.

[st_ratagem]

Once again, need appeared to be doing the trick, for the moment... or at least Thor hadn't yet knocked him away. With his eyes closed, focusing almost entirely on the magic, Loki couldn't see the improvements in Valkyrie or hear the reactions.

He focused on the most severe damage first: the ruptured organ, the internal bleeding, the concussion. The ribs and glass-cuts could heal themselves with time if they had to, but the rest was dangerous to leave and needed to be handled while the magic had decided to work.

A fair amount of the energy for healing came from the person being healed, but the rest came from Loki. When he reached the end of what power he had to offer, Valkyrie's internal damage and concussion had been healed, and the broken ribs were about half-healed (they'd be tender but no longer in danger of shattering outright or impaling lungs), but the purely external injuries, the cuts from falling glass and some incipient bruising, were still there.

It was far better than he'd thought he'd do, but he was almost too exhausted to be proud of it.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor looks over from Val, whose color is returning back into her face, over to his brother, who is losing his own. He gently sets a hand on Loki's back.

"Everyone all right?" All right probably wasn't the turn of phrase he was looking for, but it was the closest succinct approximation his mind could pull together for the moment.

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie’s lips drew together as she slowly roused and she swallowed reflexively in an attempt to wet her parched throat. Her body was both hot and cold and a sharp ache spread from her ribs as she contracted her abdomen to try and sit, though her strength wasn’t altogether there to make it up.

[st_ratagem]

Loki nodded once, quickly, at Thor’s question. “In a minute. Yes.” He wanted to help Valkyrie up, start cleaning and bandaging her hands, but... in a minute.

[st_ormbreaker]

Healing was never Thor's purview. On the battlefield, there were others who were better-equipped than he was to lend aid; he was a far better fighter than he was a medic. He did, however, have a grasp of the basics. It was hard not to know how to do at least that with as many battles as Thor has seen over the years.

"Rest for a moment," he instructs Loki as he begins to unwrap the bandages. With an almost uncharacteristic gentleness he lifts one of Valkyrie's hands and begins to wrap it. "You think you can sit up long enough to drink?"

[st_allionofdoom]

"Depends." She hoarsely answered, gripping Thor's hand back as she tugged herself up and rubbed at her head. She'd felt like she was hit with a great many rounds of drink as it was.

Then, realization.

"Weren't we just fighting?"

[st_ratagem]

“You were, but very briefly.” Loki took one of the bottles of water Thor had brought, openined it, and drank some. It wouldn’t help with the exhaustion, but it couldn’t hurt. Acting normally was often good enough to go on with. “There’s somethino very wrong. Thor didn’t hit you all that heard, and yet....” A gesture at the broken mirror kept him from having to say it.

[st_ormbreaker]

"I don't think so, anyway," Thor adds. He had struck Valkyrie hard before, and it still had never been this bad. He wasn't generally looking to knock her completely down at the beginning of the fight.

[st_allionofdoom]

Looking at the mirror and casting a doubtful look at the both of them, Valkyrie plucked the water bottle up. “That bad?”

[st_ratagem]

“Several broken ribs, ruptured spleen, heavy concussion, internal bleeding severe enough that I couldn’t define everything else.” Loki handed her one of the sandwiches as well. She needed it, whether she realized that or not. Healing her had drained him, which meant it had taken a fair amount out of her, as well. “It’ll take a day or three to build up my reserves again.”