Freyja’s words settled her a little but she kept herself near her injured son and the other woman. It was horrible to be this useless. Perhaps later she would attempt to heal but… she could feel her knees going soft and eyes itching as her body finally felt the exhaustion take hold.
There was some sort of commotion at the door and a shift of emotions but it all seemed to settle down shortly.
A small black feline itched it’s way closer to the towering strangers.
“Thor,” Odin called his other son to his side, no room in his tone for argument. Though he did not remove his eye from the challenging stare he levelled at Freyja, a tremor ran through his hand, and the golden light around his son flickered for the briefest of moments.
Odin grimaced, willing his connection to the spell to hold on, watching as the slow rise and fall of Loki’s chest gave him a sign that his son was there for that much longer—one breath, then another. He could feel a chilled pain begin to spread outward from his chest and through his arm as he forced more of his power into the transferred Odin-Sleep. Odin was drawing too deeply, and as he watched the veins in his hand darken through the skin, lacing down like spreading branches to his fingertips, he knew it would take a grievous toll on him—but it had to hold.
“Thor, come here,” he insisted, barely able to indicate the spot beside the bed. There was a chance, he thought distantly, but it was hardly a plan, and even then it would only scratch the surface.
Gently, Freyja stepped forward once more. Her fingers left their resting place on Loki’s cheek, instead bringing both hands up to lay gently on the great king’s. She reached deep inside herself, seeking down into her pool of magic and bringing a slow draw from it. By the tiniest increments, the glow was tinged with a soft blue.
After several moments of standing very still, eyes lightly closed; Freyja stumbled. She breathed heavily, but paused it to hear the slow rise and fall of Loki’s chest. Sure enough, there was a less ragged note to the air that fell out of the battered prince’s lips.
She looked into the single glowering eye of the All-father for just a moment before gently lowering her head, turning and seating herself quietly at the foot of the bed. She waited there now, not as a collector of souls, but as a concerned friend.
“He should live, he can breathe again.”
Loki’s breaths indeed were coming easier—the force or Frejya’s and Odin’s combined touch had gently healed up the failing lung, punctured as it had been by the sharp edge of a shattered rib. He had bled elsewhere inside, now, and those deadly trickles had ebbed and stopped.
Cat dodged feet and made a beeline for Loki, clawing his way up the blankets at the foot of the bed before scampering along the sheets towards his person.
Sif’s search of her room was fast and frenzied — when she’d finished, no healing stone to be found, the chamber looked as though a whirlwind had hit it. Still, she’d come up with needle, thread, bandages, tape, potent Asgardian tea herbs, and what remained of a bottle of mead. It would have to be enough.
With her bag on her shoulder, she made for Stark Tower once more. She knew not where to look for Jane Foster, or if JARVIS was busy elsewhere, unable to aid her. She took the elevator to the semi-demolished floor they’d left, for she could think of no other place to start. “Jane?”
No luck. Heart aching, Summer slumped on the stairs outside Loki’s door, unwilling to be driven away entirely. What worth an empath, indeed? She could feel his pain, physical, blood-red and oddly muffled; could feel the anguish of the several people inside. Death hovered, shadow-winged, then retreated along with some of Loki’s pain.
She didn’t know what had happened. He’d been gone for a while, and that was all she knew. Trying not to cry, pressing her lips together, Summer settled down to wait, watching the door and projecting love and comfort as hard as she could into Loki’s tiny flat.
