[EP] Community service for some reason

[st_ratagem]

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.

Comments

[st_ormbreaker]

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?"

[st_ratagem]

"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."

[st_ormbreaker]

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."

[st_ratagem]

"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."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor holds out his arms, as if presenting himself.

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

[st_ratagem]

"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.

[st_ormbreaker]

"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?"

[st_ratagem]

"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.

[st_ormbreaker]

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."

[st_ratagem]

"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."

[st_ormbreaker]

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."

[st_ratagem]

"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.

[st_ormbreaker]

"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.

[st_ratagem]

"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.

[st_ormbreaker]

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

Thor, God of Drama.

[st_ratagem]

"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.

[st_ormbreaker]

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.

[st_ratagem]

Loki's eyes flew open at the jerk of the arm, so he got a solid view of Thor punching himself in the head and falling over. "...I wish that had been intentional."

Despite the words, he joined Thor on the floor, fingertips glowing green again, gestures encompassing both the new possible-concussion as well as the cut. He knew how hard Thor could punch. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that this experimentation had actually hurt him non-trivially.

'Persuasion' hadn't worked, force hadn't worked. He might as well try Thor's way and just... do something. It wasn't really a choice, it was almost instinct.

[st_ormbreaker]

The wound on Thor's arm begins to heal, though Thor's attention isn't focused at all on it. His punch was dizzying and the only thing keeping him from giving himself a hard time from being so obviously waylayed by such a blow was that the punch came from the so-obviously Strongest Avenger.

But as the last vestiges of the wound disappear, so slowly does that dizzying, throbbing feeling in his head.

Thor blinks at his brother.

[st_ratagem]

Loki was too busy staring almost as blankly at Thor's no-longer-slashed arm. Oh, there was still blood, of course, but only what had been left behind when the wound healed.

He'd actually healed something.

Aggravatingly, Loki found he couldn't even tell himself what had been different this time versus the rot or the punch. He'd just... done it, without planning, without paying attention to repeatability, without any actual technique or structure. As breakthroughs went? It seemed worthless. And yet.... "Huh."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor's confusion gives way to genuine pride that shows on the tremendous grin on his face. Thor's often smiling, but this smile looks face-breaking.

He claps a hand on Loki's shoulder, so hard that there's an audible smack.

"Good work, brother!"

[st_ratagem]

Loki permitted himself a gritted-teeth not-quite-wince, but didn’t complain about the backslap otherwise. Thor was Thor, overdone enthusiasm came with the territory. “Worthless work. I don’t even know what I did differently.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor holds out his arms again.

"Do you want to stab me again and give it another try?" he asks. "With enough practice, I'm sure you could figure it out."

[st_ratagem]

It was tempting. Something done once could be repeated, at least in theory. But if frustration was sabotaging, frustration plus annoyance plus a shred of achievement was probably worse. “No. I’ll take your arm off some other time.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Save it for a rainy day, then," Thor says, amiably. "At least now you know you can do it."