Who: Thor Odinson, Loki, and some unsavory underworld elements What: Someone takes a shot at the God of Thunda. When: Friday afternoon. Rating/Warning: Yellow, for gunshot wound/blood.
Being on Midgard this time had been quite an education for Thor. It was the small, mundane tasks that he found so interesting. Washing dishes, looking at apartments, adopting dogs… and now grocery shopping. They were starting to run low on finances, so rather than ask Tony for money, since that just seemed wrong somehow, Thor had decreed that they go on a budget of sorts. Because of that, he took Loki shopping with him. Loki was the most likely to pinch their pennies, at least in terms of the communal items. He might hoard some extra aside to splurge upon himself, but it was a risk Thor was willing to take.
“Have you the list of things that we need, brother?” he asked, as they strolled in the general direction of the closest Whole Foods. It wasn’t too far a walk, and he’d all but given up on attempting to use a vehicle upon the overcrowded city streets.
The only splurges had been buying food and drink. Loki was being mindful of how much money was left and how far it might get them. He had grand plans on how to make money, which he shared with Sif recently. He hoped that he could talk Valkyrie and even Thor into the venture, but was left waiting for the right moment to approach the subject. Sure, things were better with Darcy now, and his mood was considerably lightened. But he was still being overly cautious where Thor was concerned, left wondering if his brother was onto his schemes. It meant that more often than not, he was holed up in their shared room (or he appeared to be in their room) reading or scouring the internet for information.
For the moment, Loki was overdressed compared to what Thor was wearing. Not that it mattered, as everyone else would see him as a Midgardian bag lady and think that Thor was doing some good deed helping an old lady with her shopping. He was staring with concern at the list on his cellphone. Feeding three Asgardians and a Jotun was expensive. They would need to make money, with great haste.
"I do. Remind me to speak to you regarding money, when you wish your mood to grow sour," Loki said. "We would be better off buying several sides of cow from a butcher, than paying such exorbitant prices. How do Midgardians afford to eat?"
He glanced over at Thor and said the dreaded words, "Perhaps we should go to a...shop with discounted pricing."
Surely a horrifying prospect for two princes.
Thor hadn’t been thinking about that. He didn’t realize how low on funds they were, although he did wish they could just slay some deer. He thought there might be some in the center park. “Do you know of such a discount market?” he asked. He wasn’t opposed to purchasing less expensive goods. “It is a bad time of year for fresh vegetables. We should consume more meats and grains.” Thor was mostly removed from food production back on Asgard, but he was aware of the different offerings for different seasons. He wondered if there was decent farming land in Thorway.
Loki not only paid attention to the expenditures, but also what foods were available in what seasons, so that it could be stored in the extremely rare occurance of a siege. Since other realms sometimes called upon Asgard for aid (the exception being Midgard) he was mindful of such things. He hadn't yet checked into what could be farmed or hunted in Thorway, as that was deemed a task for when the coffers were filled enough that Thorway could exist.
"There is one, but it is further than the Whole Foods," Loki said, putting his phone back into his coat pocket. This might be an opportunity to talk to Thor about his financial plan, while he had his brother's ear. "Fruit as well, for I believe it is imported. It has been a cold winter, so who knows how the crops here shall fare. We should obtain only the essentials. Speaking of essentials? I wished to speak with you about our dwindling funds...."
It was what he was raised to be doing when Thor was king, to advise on the finer details and negotiate. He spent a while shunning the notion out of jealousy and spite, and yet he ended up doing that very thing, regardless. He didn't feel very much jealousy or spite now. How odd it was, that everything had come full circle.
There was a gunshot. The sound echoed off the buildings around them.
Thor was instantly alert to the sound, but the direction was difficult to gauge. “Can you tell where it’s coming from, Loki?” he asked. He was looking around to see what Midgardians might be around or in danger. He turned down an alley, thinking it had come from that direction. He looked up at the rooftops, seeking the source of the gunshot.
Loki gave a long suffering sigh while trailing after his well-meaning brother. Thor was already down the alleyway before he could formally protest. This seemed like a matter that the local constables should handle, not the King of Asgard.
He ran to catch up with Thor's quick pace and looked around.
"Oh Thor, really. I believe it came from up there," he said when he was finally by Thor's side, idly gesturing toward the general direction of some rooftops. It was then he noticed a tiny flicker of reflected sunlight gleaming from a nearby rooftop. He squinted and frowned, before a second shot rang out. It wasn't even enough time for him to raise his hand and throw a magic shield against it.
The bullet caught Thor completely off guard and he fell back against the brick wall. It was more than a simple bullet. The sound and the pain that ripped through him was more like an explosion. He was certain he was hit and wounded fairly badly, but just for the moment moving was not an option.
His ears were ringing from the loud noise and he looked up at Loki, wide-eyed. He looked down at himself and in one of the spots where his brother had often stabbed him over the centuries there was now a sizable gash. He put his hand over it and used the other to try to push himself upright.
An equally wide-eyed Loki saw Thor fall back and it was like all the air was knocked out of his lungs. He got the shielding up and wove a spell into it, to make them seem as though they had disappeared from view.
"...Thor?" he said, softly and hesitantly, his hands reaching out to where Thor was trying to cover the wound. There was blood. More blood than one of those meager projectiles should rightfully cause. He looked into Thor's eyes, momentarily at a loss on what to do.
It was but a moment, though. Someone was going to die a truly horrible and painful death for daring to harm Thor. Loki's temper flared within him like a raging wildfire. He lobbed a dangerous glare up toward the rooftop where the shot came from, but the tiny glimmer of light was no longer there. He couldn't possibly hope to catch up to them now, and definitely not while Thor was injured. He quickly conjured up a cloth and desperately wished that Eir was with them, or at the very least, that they had some of the healer's stones for mending burns and wounds.
"Let me see," Loki whispered, his fingers gently clasping around Thor's wrist.
Thor could hear the worry in Loki’s voice and it reassured him. “I will live, Loki,” he said tightly, because it did legitimately hurt very badly. He moved his hand so his brother could look, however.
“Tis but a scratch,” he croaked. He knew it was worse than that. If they’d managed to hit the other eye, he’d be in dire straights. Even his powers probably wouldn’t be enough to help him if he were completely blinded. “Help me up. They are either gone, or they draw closer. In either case, staying here would be a poor plan.”
This was no scratch. Loki drew in a stuttering hiss at the sight of the gaping wound that had bored its way into Thor's flesh. He tried to mend it by placing one hand over it and trying to weave a spell, but it would not close. Whatever the bullet was made of was far beyond what Midgardians seemed to normally possess. It might mend swiftly, but Thor was right. They needed to depart, quickly.
"Here. Hold this in place," he said, pressing the cloth over it and gently coaxing Thor's hand back in place. "I'll open a path for us, to your room."
There was no time to waste, and Loki put Thor's other arm around his shoulder, looping his own arm around Thor's waist. With his free hand he frantically reached out and tore open what was probably the most unstable path he'd ever created, held in place only by the fact he had left a rune in their room that he could always return to.
"Walk and do not let go," he said, leading Thor through the short but stifling trek to the warehouse, where he staggered out with Thor in tow. It was one time he would never notice how worse for wear he was, since his concern was fully on Thor. Just as much as it was when Thor was getting beat on by the Kursed on the Dark World. If anyone was going to be hurting his brother, it would be him. Because he knew how much he could get away with, without going this far and Thor dying because of it.
In fact, he looked truly worried as he sat Thor down on a bed in their room. Worried to the point that his eyes were looking glassy with unshed tears as he stared down at the cloth which was now tinted red.
If he wasn’t feeling so weak and in such acute pain, Thor might have commented upon the look in Loki’s eyes. He might have said something teasing. But he could not muster it up. “I will be fine,” he said, trying to reassure him.
He sank back onto the bed, unmindful of the potential consequences to his mattress. He reached out with his free hand and took hold of Loki’s, giving it a squeeze. “They must have been after me,” he said hoarsely. “It is fortunate that you were disguised.”
Such a thought both terrified and infuriated him. Thor had done everything in his power to protect this miserable realm. This was the thanks he received? He wanted to render everything to ash, sparing only those he deemed worthy. An act that Thor would surely condemn, and Loki knew he would never actually do. And although he would forever deny it, he was holding onto Thor's hand as though afraid of letting go.
"Perhaps you need a disguise after this," he suggested, his voice faint and unsteady.
He momentarily lost the battle to hold back any tears, and angrily scrubbed the back of his other hand over his face to dash them away. He needed to focus and try to mend this without any distractions, or they would need to call the sorcerer. That was a thought that did not sit well and might not do much good considering their physiology. It didn't seem the sorcerer could heal as well as the Asgardian healer women could, or Tony Stark wouldn't have been in such dire straits.
If he was unable to cleanse and close this wound himself, then he would resort to asking for help. The last thing he would do was let Thor linger in pain or suffer for longer than necessary.
Shedding tears served no purpose other than sheer embarrassment, despite how worried he was over his last surviving family member. To stop himself from such unsightly displays, he gave Thor's hand a reassuring squeeze and mustered up a watery smile. He even managed a half-hearted jest while summoning forth clean cloths and a basin of water, "Would you like me to kiss it better?"
Thor coughed out a short laugh and winced. “Do not jest with me, Loki. It hurts to laugh,” he said. He leaned up on one elbow to look down at the wound. He knew that his brother would be loathe to admit that he got emotional over it, so he didn’t point it out. Nonetheless, it made Thor feel quite happy.
He had no idea who the perpetrator might have been, but he felt certain that he ought to warn the others. If they were targeting him, it was likely he wasn’t the only one, and not all of them would survive such a wound. “Can you repair it?” he asked, looking up at his brother again. “What manner of weapon was this? We should inform Stark right away.”
"We do know how much I like to cause you pain," was his reply. Although it was a jest, it also held a somber note to it. "I shall do my best to mend this. I'll attempt to numb it first and take a closer look."
After concentrating and casting a green glow around the area to ease most of the pain, he set to work cleaning the wound. It was a mangled mess, and one that would have killed a mere mortal in an instant. He held one hand up over the wound to draw out any shrapnel. He had read up on all manner of Midgardian weapons, and bullets were supposed to leave some trace which needed to be removed.
"That's odd," he said aloud, his brows knitting together. "There is nothing in this wound, at all."
With a perplexed frown, he instead set to work trying to mend the damage. The hole was closing gradually, not as swift to mend as he hoped it would be. It was jagged and didn't have clean edges, which complicated things. Slightly. He refused to admit defeat.
"This may take more than one healing," Loki was saying while he tried to focus his will into weaving flesh back together. Not exactly his forte, but he was worried enough that he was going to see it done. "You will need rest, brother."
Thor felt instantly better when Loki numbed the area. He watched Loki’s expression to try to gauge how it was going. “Rest? I am sure with a little bandaging I will be fine. We must find out who did this, and what kind of weapon this was.” Of course he wasn’t going to leap right up, but he wasn’t going to ‘rest’ for any extensive time. Thor did not relish the idea of being a patient. He had rarely been incapacitated for more than an hour for any injury. Sitting still was not in his nature.
“At least I should speak to Stark about this. He is the Midgardian weapons expert. Mayhaps he will know.” Thor was worried about the others, whoever wasn’t disguised. “Maybe I ought to speak of it on the network, to alert everyone at once. What do you think, brother?”
"One moment." Loki was frowning with a look of intense concentration on his face. The hole continued to close in on itself, which was good. But the sheer amount of spellwork needed to fix this damage on an Asgardian was monumental. Just as monumental a task as it was going to be to keep Thor from moving around and tearing open all of his hard work.
He finished as best he could, and the hole was significantly smaller. He could probably fit the tip of his thumb in there. But he wasn't about to do that, not even to give Thor a painful reminder of why he should stay still. The bleeding was staunched and the pain should be less than before. Loki summoned what looked to be bandages, which would need changed until Thor's body healed it on its own. Once everything was in place, the supplies all disappeared with the casual wave of one hand, including changing the stained sheet for clean bedding.
He lobbed a knowing look at Thor to stay put as he went to fetch their laptops, returning so he could carefully nudge Thor over and prop his brother's head up with some pillows. Then he laid down so they were shoulder to shoulder, side by side.
"I know full well how you are. You need one or two days rest, at the most. If you wish to mend without ripping it open again," he advised, turning on the laptop and placing it on Thor's lap. "I will watch over you and fetch whatever you need. In the meantime? Yes. It is a wise course of action to warn others, including Stark. They think themselves recently freed of their rulers' oppression, only to find themselves targets. A far more deadly fate may await some of them."
Loki wasted no time in turning on his laptop and directing the web page to Twitter, where he could show his brother how easy it was to trace someone so well known:
Thor Watch
@ThorWatch
@ThorAlerts Norse God of Sexiness sighted helping little old ladies and running toward gunfire! #BoltThoseBaddiesBigBoy
Thor looked at Loki’s computer and was surprised to see the report of his whereabouts. Then again, it wasn’t as if he’d done anything to keep it a secret. “I will not hide, brother. I will recover for you two days, but then I intend to seek out this threat.” But first he would warn the others.