I carry band-aids: steve x loki

found

It was raining, storming furiously with lightning striking fiercely through the dark skies, but such small inconvenience couldn't stop or even slow the Captain down. An informant, a reliable informant, told him about HYDRA secret hideout, hidden away not only in the middle of the woods but also buried underneath the ground, only one way in and one way out. Steve was also told an experiment took place there, but only that. Any deeper detail was unknown. Though Steve wasn't entirely clueless. His assumption was that they were making the Winter Soldiers. His friend - Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes - wasn't the only one. And if his assumption was right, Steve would stop at nothing until he destroyed each and every single one of them.

Agent Romanoff had offered to tag along, turned out Steve politely turning down her offer and coming here alone was the right decision, for it would be a waste of time, her time. The base was recently empty. Whoever was here, left in a hurry. "Damnit," Steve cursed under his breath. He was so close it was frustrating. They knew he was coming, then.

Though Steve wouldn't just leave. He didn't go through all the trouble coming here just so he could leave the minute he realized it was yet another dead end. There were doors. Rooms. The place was basically a maze, and even if HYDRA took everything that might help Steve track them down, Steve thought it wouldn't hurt checking. With his shield held up in front of him, Steve started with the closest room on his left.

He was... irritated. He didn't know what he hoped to find, but he hoped he would find something. So far, after thoroughly examining room after room, the Captain had no luck. The last room at the end of the corridor proved this little trip of his was, indeed, a total waste of time.

There was nothing. Not a living soul. Not a single thing that would be useful or even interesting. Just garbages. HYDRA may have left in a hurry, but they did manage not to leave anything important behind. Steve sighed, he hated feeling defeated, but right now he felt just that. That no matter how fast he ran, his enemies were always one step ahead and he was so damn exhausted.

But it was what it was. They were smart, and, as much as Steve hated to admit, perhaps smarter than him. He was on his way out when his foot stepped on something. A floor, of course it was a floor, except it cracked underneath his weight and it shifted just slightly, just enough for Steve to feel it through his boot. What the hell, Steve crouched down, there was a rug. There wasn't a rug anywhere in the base except here on the spot. Which could mean nothing, but Steve got a strange feeling in his chest that it was something.

He pulled the rug away, and if he could, he might just jump around and cry tears of joy. The spark of hope flared up in Steve's chest. His little trip might not be a waste of time, after all. There was a door. A secret door on the floor that he figured would lead into yet another underground level, deeper into the ground than this underground base Steve already was in.

There was a lock attached to it. Steve gave it a light tug, just to measure its ability. It wasn't really a problem, it would be a problem for someone without the serum - Steve had been given, injected into their bloodstream that rendered them God-like strength. Once the light tug failed, Steve gave it a hard yank and, just like expected, the lock gave out and so was the door, creaking open with nothing more to shelter whatever secret it might hold.

Looking down, there was a set of stairs leading down to darkness awaiting. And just by looking at the extremely narrow and seemingly airless passage gave Steve claustrophobia vibes. He took a deep breath and tightened the grip of his shield, preparing himself for anything. Then he started descending the stairs.

Once reaching the ground, Steve silently thanked the Lord he brought a flashlight with him. Here it was pitch black, it wasn't like someone had turned off the light or threw a bag over his head but it felt exactly like he had suddenly gone blind. Here it was that dark. Steve clicked his flashlight open and let the beam shine through his surroundings, studying what was around him.

He learned soon enough, with a pang of disappointment gnawing at his chest, that here was nothing more than a tiny four-walls. There was no equipment, no experiment drug in a freezer or whatever he might have expected. This, Steve realized, this was no workshop nor laboratory but a cell. A dark, tiny cell that smelt like death.

But who was the prisoner, then?

Steve's breath hitched. He thought he was alone, he almost dropped the flashlight altogether when the beam landed on something - someone - a figure curling in a ball on the cold, dirty floor in the far corner. The thing didn't move or react in any way as Steve shone his flashlight directly at it. And it took him this long to conclude it was, in fact, a man.

A man who was either out cold or dead. But he was clearly tortured, beaten down, judged by the fact he was lying in the pool of crimson liquid. Green and purple bruises blooming all across his skin stood in stark contrast with open, red wounds that were oozing out blood. His clothes torn and ruined and thin, Steve doubted it'd do anything to protect him from the cold. He looked starved, too.

So this was, no doubt, the prisoner.

After a good minute of Steve standing still, examining, it became quite clear the man, whoever he was, was in no condition to attack. Whoever he was, dead or alive, Steve knew he couldn't just walk away. He cautiously crossed the spaces between them until he was in front of him. He knelt down, the man's face was well hidden behind his tangled, raven hair. Steve pushed the locks away with careful fingers. And momentarily forgot how to breath when the light from his flashlight landed on the man's pale face.

Loki.

Steve knew too well who the man was. This was Loki. But how? He tried to think straight, to make any sense out of the whole situation that did not make any sense. The last time he saw Loki... the last time Steve saw Loki was during the New York attack, Loki escaping with the Tesseract in the end. But what if Loki never actually escaped? Somehow HYDRA got him, it seemed. And the duration between that time and now had been... years. If what Steve assumed was correct, then it'd mean Loki had always been locked up here, tortured and beaten down until Steve hardly recognized him.

And them leaving Loki here could only mean two things - either he was dead or he was no longer useful and so they decided to leave him here to die, if Steve hadn't stumbled upon the secret door. Steve slowly reached for the side of Loki's neck, pressing two fingers there to see if he could find a pulse. He was surprised by the fact that he was relieved he found a pulse there. Barely. But it was there. Though Steve doubted it would stay this way for much longer, if he refused to do something.

His gaze found Loki's battered face again, Loki's eyes swallowed shut, a deep cut slithered across his cheek. Skin decorated in dark, ugly bruises. He didn't want to imagine what was underneath those torn out clothes he was wearing that was out of Steve's sight, how severe his condition was. And even if what Loki did in New York was in no way acceptable, what had been done to him was unacceptable still. This wasn't right. Loki deserved punishment for his crimes, sure, but not like this.

Leaving Loki here would mean killing him. He had to take Loki out, and then what? Hospital would be the most suitable answer if this were anyone else. For some reason, Steve doubted taking Loki to a hospital was a good idea, because hospitals were easy to track down. And because Steve knew even the government would be more than eager to cut Loki to pieces and study each of his every organ. And that was just wrong. So hospital was out of options.

"Damnit," Steve muttered under his breath. He inserted careful, gentle arms under Loki's back and knees, scooping his unconscious body off of the ground, at the same time trying to ignore the dreadful feeling weighed in his chest; Loki weighed almost nothing. Like his body was nothing more than bones and skin. Like he hadn't eaten anything in... how long Steve didn't dare guess.

He still found it unbelievable that he was doing this. But oh well. "Well," looking down at Loki's face resting limply against the hard metal of his chest-protector he wore underneath his suit. "I guess you're not gonna like this any better than I do, huh?"

~~~

Walking into HYDRA underground hideout, Steve Rogers had hoped he would walk out with handful of informations in which would help his team take them down. All of them.

He was walking out not with the informations he had hoped but with an unconscious world's-first-supervillain, that was also his enemy, cradling in his arms.

Today just wasn't Steve's day, was it?