strangetrip | [EP] Community service for some reason

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[EP] Community service for some reason

That morning, Loki had finally gotten around to the piece of paper he'd been handed along with his room key, and... well, it was definitely interesting. Apparently not checking in for two weeks in favor of scouting the Inn as a kitten meant that he'd been involuntarily assigned to 'community service' in the infirmary.

It was ridiculous. He wasn't a healer. Oh, ~~his mother~~ ~~Frigga~~ his mother had tried to teach him healing magic, and the theory had been easy enough, but barring one or two minor successes healing his brother of minor injuries, the practical had always escaped him. Eventually his mother had removed healing from his lessons, and not long after that Loki himself had stopped trying.

It was ridiculous.

It didn't matter, though, where he did his reading and thinking, and at least waving vaguely in the direction of being productive would probably very slightly soothe the fears of anyone who thought he, for example, made a habit out of flinging people out of windows. (He'd only done that once. It wasn't a habit.)

Therefore he swung by the library, relieved it of all the medical texts a quick rummage presented, hauled the books to the clininc, and staked out a desk area more or less out of the way. As nearly as he could tell, anyway; regardless, a small wall made of books hopefully separated him nicely from anyone looking for help.

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"I heard you were working here," Thor calls out from the doorway. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, trying hard not to look amused at the prospect of his brother working anywhere, let alone in an infirmary. Normally, Loki would insist this kind of work was beneath him, and yet, here he was, hidden behind a tower of books, hard at work.

Edited 2018-08-21 17:22 (UTC)

Normally, this sort of thing was beneath him, or at least he claimed it was in order to get out of showing off his inability to do it. It was the same thing, really. "Technically, yes," he replied. "But should you actually need healing, find someone else."

Thor walks in and settles down in a chair. "You wouldn't bandage me up if I were wounded?" he asks, feigning a wounded look. He leans back in his chair. "You did a better job taking care of your older brother as a child than you are as an adult."

"Do you actually remember the last time I tried healing? We had to go to Mother, I botched it so badly." The wound had been barely anything before the effort, and after... well, that had probably been the main reason Frigga had decided to stop trying to teach her younger son to heal.

Edited 2018-08-21 18:19 (UTC)

Thor did remember it. It hadn't been a particularly pleasant experience, even though he made a considerable effort to hide his pain.

"So if I were bleeding out here on the floor, on the verge of death, you would just leave me to die because of something that happened when we were thirteen?"

"That depends quite a bit on whether I'm the reason you're bleeding in the first place in this scenario." Loki shook his head and sat back. "Never mind, brother. I only wanted to remind you that I'm not a healer."

"You'd never really hurt-hurt me," Thor says. But then he remembers that time Loki tried healing and rephrases. "Not intentionally."

Then Thor remembers several events over the past ten years in which Loki could be thought to really be trying to hurt him, at least by someone on the outside looking in. "Not anymore, right?" he asks, cheerily.

"Not without a very good reason." It was entirely possible that such a reason didn't exist, but there was no sense closing the door completely. "So if you're bleeding on the floor, expect me to find someone else to fix it."

Thor seems satisfied with at least the first half of this answer.

"So, you're saying that if I'm on the ground and I have fifteen seconds until I perish -- 'Loki," he says, in an exaggerated act of self-impersonation. "Help me! I'm dying!'"

Thor lets out a choked sound.

"-- you'd just leave me there to die alone while you looked for someone else to help?"

"It's that or cut your throat to make it quick, I'm afraid." With 15 seconds, it would have to be the knife. "I could try to heal you as an alternative to throat-cutting. A quick death either way."

Despite Loki's assertion that he'd kill him, Thor seems to be taking it in stride. You had to with a brother like Loki.

"We could test it out," Thor suggests amiably. "You knife me --" The way Loki frequently did. "-- then heal me. I'm more durable now than I was at age thirteen."

"I think being invited would make stabbing you less fun." Thor did tend to survive knife wounds. He'd had a lot of practice, after all. It wasn't actually a bad idea. Peaceful as the Inn seemed to be, there wouldn't be a lot of options for regular practice even without a volunteer who apparently didn't mind failure. "I'm game to find out, though."

Thor holds out his arms, as if presenting himself.

"So is that now, or whenever you find it convenient?"

"Can't it be both?" Before either of them overthought, Loki conjured a knife and sliced Thor's forearm with it. Shallowly, if (when) Loki failed to heal it, it wouldn't even need stitches. It would heal on its own very quickly.

In many ways, it was the least severe injury he'd ever dealt his brother, and when he'd been all but invited to do his worst. It was almost a pity.

"Ow!" Thor yelps, the way a child might if their brother had just hit them. It was far from being the worst injury he had sustained from either sibling, but that didn't stop him from making a show of it anyway.

"You couldn't have given me a little warning?"

"Apparently not." Loki kept hold of his brother's arm with one hand and hovered the fingers of the other over the cut, which insisted on dramatically welling blood. A faint green glow shone off his fingertips as magic investigated the wound.

He could see how to widen the wound, use a form of illusion to deaden or enhance the pain, but actually repairing the split skin and flesh? Loki frowned.

Thor looks down at his arm, then over at his brother, whose brow is wrinkled in thought and concentration. Thor finds it increasingly more difficult to hide his smile. He really is proud of his brother.

"Just try something," Thor says encouragingly. "Don't overanalyze it."

"Shut up. You've never been any good at magic." And this wasn't just a matter of not being good at it, it had always been all but an inability. Barring one or two very minor healings, the best Loki had ever managed was doing nothing. The worst had been... worse. It was all very well for Thor to say 'just try something'.

But he did have to try something. Start with the basics, Frigga had repeated over and over, so Loki tried twisting his magic into the configurations that were supposed to heal minor injuries.

When the edges of the knife cut turned green, and not just magic settling in, he stopped. "Damn."

If Thor is at all bothered at all by Loki's words, he doesn't show it. "I'm good at the lightning thing," he reminds him, but he sees Loki's back to focusing again, and he decides that maybe this time, he should keep his mouth shut.

As difficult as that was sometimes.

He watches Loki for the briefest of moments, then looks down at his arm, waiting for something to happen. At any moment, he's convinced, Loki will have patched him through. He looks back at Loki, and in that moment, Loki swears, and when Thor finally looks down at his arm, he finds the flesh around it is a little green. Not quite Hulk green, but definitely on its way to getting there.

"Well," he says. "At least it's a nice color."

"It's rot. Of some kind." Loki scowled. Why had it done that? There was nothing in the seidr configuration that should have led to this. And healing wasn't like illusions, it couldn't just be dispelled if you were wrong. You had to try again and pray it didn't get worse.

It wasn't as bad as what had happened when they were thirteen, but it was still aggravating. Another attempt to heal, a few threads banished the green in favor of restoring healthy pink flesh. Still slashed, probably hurt like being slashed all over again, but no longer green at least.

"Ow!" Suddenly, it's almost the exact response when Loki injured him to begin with.

Still, that doesn't stop Thor from badgering his brother into making another attempt.

"Do it again!"

He foists his arm out in front of Loki. When he doesn't immediately do something about it, he shakes his arm impatiently.

"If I take your arm off, I'll remind you you told me to." But until then, until a 'worst case' actually happened, Loki was willing to try again. It was Thor, minor injuries barely registered most of the time.

He sent out another twist of magic to try and close the cut, formulated slightly differently to avoid the green rot again. Doing the same thing multiple times in a row was never a good idea.

And... nothing. The cut just sat there, oozing blood.

"I'm bleeding out, Loki," he says shaking his arm. "Are you just going to let me die here?"

Thor, God of Drama.

"You are a gigantic infant, brother." Frustration wasn't helping. It never helped. Magic required focus and precision, and frustration sabotaged both.

Loki took a breath and closed his eyes, both to rely on other senses and to ignore Thor's ridiculousness more easily, then tried again. One more try. This spell was less physical, in a way, more trying to convince the cells to knit back together. Persuasion rather than force, which at least had the benefit of being closer to his actual skill set. Stop being assholes, cells.

Thor grins at his brother's insult in a way that was quite befitting an infant. Thor gazes down at his arm expectantly, waiting for it to mend.

He knows Loki can do it. All he needs is some encoura --

Then suddenly, Thor's injured arm launches itself towards his face; his fist hits the top of his forehead. Thor stumbles backwards and then falls onto his ass, temporarily stunned by the force of his own blow.

His arm is still bleeding. His head is still spinning.

Loki just needed some encouragement.

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