st_ratagem | [Loki, Thor, Valkyrie] Asgardians play rough

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[Loki, Thor, Valkyrie] Asgardians play rough

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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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?

“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.”

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

"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?"

“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.

"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.

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

“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.”

"So everyone needs to be careful the next few days," Thor concludes. "No sparring until we figure this all out."

Whatever this was.

Her gaze lingering on Loki, her urge to argue faded. Instead, she took the sandwich and took as much as she could fit in her mouth in one bite.

“No fretting.” She proclaimed after she swallowed before shoving the other half between her teeth to finish.

“I’ll fret if I want to.” It should have been light, just a quip to return fire. It wasn’t. Loki finished the bottle of water, then stood. It was strange, him being the only one on the ground, especially since he hadn’t just gotten broken. “We should test - carefully! - to see if anything other than your durability and reflexes are affected, though.”

"Not now," Thor says, shaking his head. He doesn't feel comfortable with the idea of Valkyrie being laid out again, or his brother having his lifeforce drained.

“One test is easy enough.” Loki gestured at Thor and flashed a small smile at Valkyrie. “Punch one of us as hard as you can, a test of strength that can’t hurt much.” Valkyrie hadn’t even wanted to stop fighting when she couldn’t move. She’d find some way to ignore her odd weakness unless the extent of it was clear... maybe she’d still ignore it even then, but theeffort would have been made.

Without hesitation, Valkyrie was back on her feet again, carrying on as if her bruised ribs were as fit as they’d been just a half hour before. She glanced at Loki and visibly disregarded the thought of lashing out at him, exhausted as he was. Instead, she sent a roundhouse kick around aimed straight at Thor’s ear.

He didn’t even budge. The ache made itself known unwelcomingly but still she stubbornly ignored it.

The hit came so totally unexpectedly that it should have thrown Thor to the ground, but it didn't. The impact registered, but it wasn't nearly as strong as it should have been. All he felt was a dull, quickly-dissipating ache, the way humans sometimes did a minute or two after stubbing their toe.

It's all very wrong.

Had he been less concerned with Valkyrie's welfare, he might have encouraged her to hit him again so he could be convinced this was a one-off fluke, but he was already bristling with irritation and worry that she'd even pushed herself that much after being so badly injured.

"I'm taking you both back to Loki's room," Thor announces and before either can protest, he lifts Valkyrie up off the ground with one arm. "Are you good to walk?" he asks of his brother.

There were times when it was useless to argue with Thor, and this was clearly one of those times. The only thing protest would do was take the choice out of Loki’s hands, as he got picked up regardless of whether he wanted to be carried. And, honestly, he didn’t feel like arguing. He needed to rest, the best place to do it was his own room, “If it’s walk or be carried, I’ll walk.”

“My legs work fine, Your Majesty.” Even if she could set the record straight, it was useless to fight it. Instead, she turned her attention to Loki, brows crinkling slightly in concern.

"You should not be working your legs, and you probably shouldn't be working your mouth," Thor says, making his way down the path to Loki's room. "What you should be doing is resting."

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