Sokovia - Local Hospital
Three days had passed since the battle with Borgir.
"Doctor Banner, will Eira really be fine?" Thor asked for what felt like the hundredth time, his voice tight with worry. He stood beside the hospital bed where Eira lay unconscious, her face pale but peaceful.
Bruce Banner sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose with one finger. "Yes, Thor. For the thousandth time—just her shoulder was pierced. No vital parts of her body received any kind of serious damage." He gestured to the medical charts. "She's still unconscious because of the excessive blood loss, but we've already given her multiple transfusions. Now we just need to give her body time to recover on its own. She's stable."
"Brother," a weak, aggrieved voice called out from across the room, "are you really going to forget about me after getting that mortal girl?"
Both Thor and Banner's attention shifted to the other hospital bed, where what could only be described as a bandage mummy lay quietly. Loki was wrapped head to toe in medical gauze, looking like an Egyptian pharaoh's badly preserved corpse.
Bruce walked over to Loki's bedside, picking up a medical chart and shaking his head in disbelief. "Mr. Loki, it's really a miracle that you survived at all. Even accounting for the fact that you're an alien with enhanced physiology, I really... I don't know what to say."
He held up a recent X-ray film to the light, and even without medical training, the damage was visible and horrifying. "Every single bone in your body was shattered into multiple pieces. Compound fractures everywhere. Your ribcage looked like gravel. Your spine was—" Banner paused, searching for words. "—essentially powder."
He looked at Loki with genuine scientific curiosity mixed with concern. "Whoever did this to you seems to have really, really hated you. This wasn't just a beating—this was systematic destruction."
"Dr. Banner," Loki said in an aggrieved, bitter tone, "you don't have to pretend you don't know who did it."
"Cough..." Banner let out a nervous chuckle, looking away with obvious embarrassment. "Sorry, I forgot about the detail. My bad."
"Anyway," Banner continued quickly, changing the subject, "your body is recovering at an astonishing rate. Much faster than any human could, obviously. You should be fully healed and mobile within a week or so. Maybe less if your regeneration keeps accelerating."
Thor walked over to his brother's bedside, looking down at the bandaged form with a mixture of concern and exasperation. "Brother, you should really take physical exercise more seriously from now on. Look at your appearance. You look like a mummy."
"You stupid brute," Loki shot back immediately, his voice muffled slightly by the bandages covering his face. "This is all your fault! Everything that happened—all of this—it all started because you wanted to invade Jotunheim to fight frost giants! If you had just listened to Father, none of this would have happened!"
"Okay, okay, brother, you don't have to be angry," Thor said quickly, raising his hands in a placating gesture. He knew Loki was right, which made the criticism sting even more. "Just focus on recovering slowly. Anyway, we're stuck here on Midgard for who knows how long, so there's no rush."
"Can't you really contact Heimdall anymore?" Loki asked, his tone shifting from anger to genuine concern.
"Yeah..." Thor sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping with the weight of their situation. "After telling me that Father is still in the Odinsleep and that we'd have to figure things out ourselves, Heimdall stopped answering my calls entirely. I've tried shouting to him dozens of times. Nothing."
Thor's expression darkened. "The Rainbow Bridge being frozen has cut off almost all communication. We're essentially stranded."
"Oh, yeah!" Thor suddenly exclaimed, his expression shifting to anger as he remembered something. He reached out and knocked on Loki's bandage-covered head with his knuckles.
Thunk thunk thunk.
"You bastard! Why did you tell me Father died? You know that almost gave me a heart attack!" Thor's voice rose with indignation. "I thought Odin was actually dead! Do you know how that felt?"
"Ouch! Ouch! Careful, you oaf!" Loki protested, trying to protect his bandaged head. "Sorry, brother, don't take it so seriously. I was just joking like usual, you know. A little harmless deception."
"You bastard, what kind of joke is that—" Thor began, his voice rising further.
But before he could finish his sentence, the door to the hospital room opened.
Elric entered, accompanied by another young man with distinctive white hair and a confident bearing.
The moment the two Asgardian brothers saw the white-haired man, pain ran down their bodies subconsciously—a phantom echo of the beating they'd received. Their bodies literally flinched, muscles tensing with involuntary fear response.
The white-haired man's eyes focused on Loki immediately upon entering, his gaze cold and assessing. "What a disgrace," Borgir said flatly, his voice carrying disappointment.
Hearing this, Loki's face darkened with anger and humiliation, but he wisely didn't say much. What could he say? Borgir had destroyed him in combat. Arguing would only make it worse.
"Thor," Elric said, getting straight to business without preamble, "here." He pulled out a small device and handed it over. "This shows the exact location of the Tesseract—the Space Stone, as you call it. But it seems it's currently held by an evil organization, so I don't think you'll be able to just walk up and ask nicely for it."
He paused, his expression becoming more serious. "I'd like to help you retrieve it directly, but you know I have a country behind me to take care of now. And I can't just abandon my responsibilities here."
Thor nodded slowly, understanding dawning on his face. "Yeah... I understand perfectly now." His voice was quiet, reflective. "I understand what it means when your loved ones come into danger because of your own actions, and how desperate you feel when you can't protect them properly."
"What kind of evil organization has it?" Loki asked, his tactical mind already working through the problem.
"It's called Hydra," Elric explained, his voice taking on a lecturing tone. "An evil organization spanning hundreds of years. About fifty years ago, Earth's nations united to destroy them during World War II. But another greedy organization called SHIELD thought they could control Hydra's remnants, so they absorbed many of the surviving Hydra personnel, thinking they could use their knowledge."
"But alas, SHIELD overestimated themselves completely. Hydra infiltrated them from within. Now SHIELD is secretly controlled by the very evil organization they thought they'd defeated. It's pathetic, really."
"How monumentally stupid," Loki couldn't help but comment from his hospital bed, his voice dripping with scorn despite his mummified state. "Absorbing your enemy into your own organization? That's not strategy, that's suicide with extra steps."
"They're currently running experiments on the Tesseract," Elric continued, ignoring Loki's commentary. "Trying to create weapons of mass destruction, energy weapons far beyond current human technology. So I definitely don't think they'll give you the Space Stone if you just ask politely. They'll fight to keep it."
"Elric," Thor said, looking at his unlikely ally with hope, "why don't you just destroy this evil organization yourself? With your power, there should be no problem. I've seen what you can do."
Bruce Banner, who had been listening quietly from the side, also looked interested in the answer.
Elric shook his head, his expression darkening. "It's not that simple. Because of SHIELD's influence, Hydra has become incredibly powerful and well-connected. They've infiltrated governments, military organizations, intelligence agencies—everything. They can even control several countries' governments to launch wars if they want to."
He gestured vaguely, indicating the complexity of the situation. "So if I did something rashly—if I just went in and started destroying facilities they will start using normal people."
What he didn't say was the truth: he needed Hydra as a villain for his larger plans. They fit perfectly into his design. He wouldn't move against them until the perfect moment.
Borgir, who had been standing silently near the door, finally spoke up. "A coward's tactic," he said with disgust. "Hiding behind the weak. In the old days, warriors fought warriors. This... infiltration, this hiding in shadows and among civilians... it's dishonorable."
"Welcome to modern Earth," Bruce said dryly. "Honor is optional. Results are what matter."
Thor looked down at the device in his hand, his expresion thoughfull.