love me till I'm me again - loki odinson

they took you away on a table. i pace back and forth as you lay still

Thor didn't remember how they made it back to Earth. He only remembered screaming, crying Loki's name and Valkyrie's, and begging Loki to hang in there with him. By the time the ship landed Loki wasn't moving. He didn't have a seizure anymore, and the worst part being Thor had no idea what was worse; his brother continued convulsing or... this. Or Loki laying still like this. Like a lifeless corpse.

Thor felt like his own soul had left his body, and he was watching everything from distance, in slow-motion.  The door opened and people were rushing in. They wore some sort of uniforms and they wore masks. They didn't say hello nor did they ask what happened. Instead they went directly to Loki, pulling him out of Thor's embrace. Thor wanted to fight them, to stop them and to grab Loki so they couldn't steal him away. He was too numb to do anything except watching them taking Loki away.

A hand was placed on his shoulder, and it kind of broke him out of his trance. Thor blinked and when he gathered himself together his body jerked forward, trying to take back Loki. "Hey-"

"Don't!" Valkyrie cut him off. Her hand moved to his chest in a flash to hold him back from doing anything stupid. "They're helping him. Let them work. Your brother can't afford any distraction right now." She said in a warning tone.

It was until now that Thor actually took time to take in his surroundings. The building in front of their ship, the one where Loki disappeared into, had a huge fluorescent sign in front of it, it read; EMERGENCY. So this was what Midgardians called hospital. Val took them to a hospital which might just be what Loki needed. No, it was indeed what Loki needed.

~~~

"Pulse's weakening. We're losing him!" A voice shouted. Another yelled at someone, their team, to start the emergency life-support protocol. It was a whole mess in the ER. Tension, life and death, machine beeping erratically, and a lot of come on's from the surgeon who was trying to get his patient's heart to beat again as the screen of the heart monitor went flat.

~~~

The fluorescent light on the ceiling kept flickering as Thor walked down the long, endless hallway. It was cold, quiet and lonely. The Thunder God didn't see a single face during this journey of his; no hospital stuff, no dying patient, no worried family awaiting on those empty seats in the waiting area, no living soul. Thor kept taking his steady steps forward, eyes glued to nothingness up ahead till his feet took him to a stop in front of two closed swinging-doors; Loki's ward. No one told him it was where Loki was kept, but Thor didn't need to be told. The brothers connected just like that.

Slowly, Thor pulled the door opened and walked inside. His eyebrows drew together when he saw dozen of doctors and nurses surrounding a bed - surrounding a person. Their movements halted the second Thor got close, and without a single word spoken they all melted away, moved out of Thor's way and out the door, and Thor was alone with a body laying limply on the stretcher.

Loki looked so pale it made the veins on his face so visible. Even paler than he already was during the first hour since he took the poison. Thor took a step closer to get a better look; there was a tube down his throat, an IV hook up to the vein on the back of his hand, and many more things, Thor didn't know what they were called, hooked up to his body where he was carelessly left. One hand dangling out of the stretcher, and Thor quickly moved to grab it, gently placed it properly on his stomach. Norns, they should have taken better care of him, should have been more careful with him! His poor little brother. Thor felt sick, and his vision was getting blurry as tears started to well up in his eyes. He reached for Loki's face, pulling a strand of hair away, and just looked at him. Even with his eyes closed, sweat covered his forehead, and dark bruises scattered over his skin Loki still looked so calm, so peaceful it'd be so easy if Thor were to lie to himself that Loki was only sleeping.