doctor doctor gimme the news

[greenisnteasy]

Who: Bruce and Sam, and also Loki
When: Afternoon of Day 16
Where: The clinic
What: Sam checks in with Bruce.

Bruce doesn't have any idea how many people might expect to walk through the door today, but he's dutifully here and only moderately bored. He dug through the library to try to find books on norns, whatever they are, or wood fae in general, and he tried to check indexes but "scary black goo" isn't generally listed. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of progress is being made in attempting to find out what the hell's going on with Kenzi's arm, but he's trying. He's starting to think about people he might be able to talk to who might be more familiar. Mina, maybe, but he keeps coming back to Loki and wondering.

Maybe the Sex and Candy Loki would be a better option.

He leans over his desk and pulls over another book. His hair is getting bigger with his frustration.

Comments

[laevisilaufeyson]

Loki obeys, lips pressed thin. Bruce's touch is uncomfortable, too warm against the unnatural chill of his own skin, strange after so long alone in the dark, but his words are more so.

"You speak as though it was a choice I made," he says. On the surface his voice is mild, indulgent, but there's a tension in it as well, buried and restrained.

"In all but the most superficial aspects," he adds, conceding, "I did not."

Mostly true. He had desired it, yes. Had, at the start, desired a throne, desired admiration, wanted more than all of that to be feared, to be powerful enough to deserve that fear. To prove that he could.

But how much of that was him, and how much was Thanos? How much had been desperation?

Most of it had been a lie. Nearly all. But he had convinced himself, to start.

Loki sucks on his lower lip, thoughtful. Thoughtful on a subject that's much more interesting than his own distant past. "Does it worry you, that he might?"

[greenisnteasy]

"That he might what? Be your friend? Not overly." He knows what Loki means and he's purposely avoiding it. He checks his other eye, and then sets the flashlight down to use both hands to examine the tissue damage. His touch is light, directing Loki's face slightly to the side and down; it's more than an examination, too, as he's curious as to what the hell was happening to this guy's face for that long. Seeing the damage up close is a weird experience while Loki tries to act like he wasn't all that involved in the Hulking out plan.

He steps back and holds his hands in front of him, clenching them briefly.

"Well, you're making immortality sound so swell, I don't know how I could be worried." And life's fantastic as it is, but he won't throw that in.

[laevisilaufeyson]

"You're supposed to want it," Loki responds, amused. "Some small taste of immortality. Eternal youth; I've long since lost count of the number of times I've been asked for that."

And never has he granted it. He can't, not eternally, though he could extend a human lifetime nearly as long as his own.

"And, indeed, if you want to spite him that desperately, I could assist you, but the cost would be high." For all involved. It isn't easy, slowing the insidious process of oxidation. Of age.

And then there's the need for renewal. For the process to be undergone again and again, to turn to Loki again and again, to need him — which is a higher cost still.

"But perhaps you can take some pleasure in that you shouldn't envy him. Pity him, Doctor Banner. If he does persist some hundreds of years hence he'll deserve it wholly. Even breaking things grows tired after so long." And after that, after even wholesale destruction loses its flavour, what's left? The Hulk starts at a disadvantage. He's skipped straight ahead to rage.

"And if he drags you with him, then you've that. The satisfaction of foiling him still, long after you ought to be able." Loki knows a great deal about spite, about its intricacies and complexities, its contradictions... and about how, when all else fails, it nearly always continues to please.

"If that is your concern then you should be well satisfied, not worried. Either way you win." And so does the Hulk, but that goes without saying.

[greenisnteasy]

He narrows his eyes, and he thinks for a second he'll just let it go. He turns around to put the flashlight down and look for some kind of cream for Loki to put on his skin, if he even wants medicine, but he can't just let that comment go, in the end. It's too completely contrary to everything, and maybe -- maybe he's been hiding from this for too long. When has he ever had the chance to talk about what he's afraid of with someone who might understand?

That it's Loki is the problem, but what's Loki going to do? Kill him? Ha.

"I don't want it. There's nothing satisfying about foiling him indefinitely, long after I'm able, when all I want is for that to stop." He turns around and holds his hands in front of him, fingers locking. "He's dragging me into an immortality that I don't want, and I don't have a choice." He opens his hands and shrugs, the hurt filling his eyes, unbidden.

"There's nothing to envy about him or me, about this whole situation."

[laevisilaufeyson]

"No," Loki agrees. There isn't. "But we work with what we are given, do we not?"

It's possible to choose not to, of course. To not work at all, to permit it to happen, and perhaps for some that's satisfactory in its own way, but Loki can't see how.

"We make do. I see no reason not to take some small pleasure from what little there is about which to be pleased." And if Bruce does, well, that's entirely his own business -- but it is a shame. It truly is.

"I do not relish having been given the choice to fetch, either; to take your planet and present the Tesseract to my masters and betters. No, but I made that choice and I did enjoy it, after a fashion." He doesn't mind admitting as much either. The morality of that act means nothing to him. Morality in general has long since lost its meaning, so wildly has that pendulum swung here on Earth, so varied is its meaning and purpose elsewhere.

"I certainly don't relish having been born what I am. That I chose no more than you did your monster." He gives a sweeping gesture. "If creatures are built of happenstance and cause and effect then choice is merely a matter of scale. As is responsibility. Guilt. Enviable; no, but envy has nothing to do with any of this. One survives being pitiable. Moves on, or regrets, or more realistically both, but that hardly leaves one with no room for small satisfactions."

Which isn't, in the end, as optimistic as it might sound. It's simply that there is nothing else.

[greenisnteasy]

The strangest, most uncomfortable thing about this is that he agrees with Loki, which is just fantastic, because what does that say about him? About his future, about what he has to look forward to? This is what being called a monster, being a monster looks like over time, and is this what Bruce is going to be, if he's even still around? And if that's the case, maybe it would be a mercy to dissolve into the Hulk's mind, become the voice in the back of his mind (literally) -- but as willing as Bruce is to give up this life, he isn't willing to give it up to him. There's where the spite comes in. Either they both go, or Bruce gets himself back.

"Yeah, well no offense, but you made some pretty crummy choices. Just because you can't escape being a monster doesn't mean you should give into it."

[laevisilaufeyson]

“Yes.” There's naught else to say to that. Yes, he did. “Often intentionally.”

He smiles thinly. “One may submit to a thing or one may own it. I opted for the latter, frequently to my own detriment – and found it worth the cost.”

Is what was gained greater than what was lost? Perhaps not, but what was gained is more satisfying. It means more.

“I have not given in. Had I meekly submitted to my captors, had I died when I was meant to, had I become all that the Allfather wished me to be and in doing so sacrificed myself for him and his, then that would be a claim one might freely make.” Under the circumstances... under the circumstances he disagrees. Giving in to what he was urged to be is a different thing entirely from choosing to be what it was said he could not escape .

“I am their monster. Perhaps yours. Not mine.” A lie, but a work in progress. “Not that of those who would use me. Tell me, Doctor – who is correct? You're a scientist; give me evidence.”

[greenisnteasy]

"Evidence of what? You're choosing to become a monster, any way you slice it. How you look at yourself is pretty small in comparison to how the rest of the world sees you." And even Bruce, who's chosen to disregard as much as he can the way everyone thinks of him, because he can trust more often than not that it'd be terrible, knows that that position is small and fragile.

He refuses to think that choosing to become a monster, or whatever it is that Loki's done, is the right answer. His entire life has been about showing how Loki's path is the wrong answer, and even though he's wavered -- even though he's not about to be so naive as to think he could avoid succumbing as Loki's done -- he can't let himself believe in that.

"What do you believe in? Is it just hate and spite? Seems like a pretty bleak cause to me."

[laevisilaufeyson]

"Of the objective veracity of that claim, of course. If you can give me any proof at all that morality is a universal constant, some law, then I needs must admit defeat and would do so freely. Until you can do so, monster is but a word, and words are but wind." Loki sighs softly, leaning back where he sits.

"What I am is not your concern, nor yours to dictate. It clearly isn't yours to know, either, though how amusing it is that you try. I would have thought that you of all people might know better than to condense the whole of what I am and have been down to such an arbitrary and meaningless definition... but clearly I was mistaken." He smiles and tilts his head to one side.

"For that I do pity you. You needn't believe them. The world cares not. Your stars care less. What will be left after us will care less still. Draw your value where you will. Myself, I refuse to sit idly by and permit the institutions which have ruined me to stand. I am Asgard's great mistake, and I would not have them go without a reminder. I will give them clarity." If he's lucky he'll have given some already, but what would satisfy him would be to make every last wrong turn, every cruelty, every foolish act stand out in stark and painful relief. He would have them know the whole of it, feel the whole of it.

He would drive them all mad. It would only be fair.

"And I gave you purpose. A shame you have taken it so meekly." But no matter.

"Your perspective upon me is a curious one. Do you think I play so neatly into your tropes? Shall I urge you to give into your anger? Come over to the dark side? Shall we play out that dynamic? I am not your father. Perhaps you think I am. Was he as bad as I am?" Loki grins, wide and mocking.

"If you could see what I see you would not think me so simple. Once I lived to know things. To learn. To invent. I would have been pleased to have been left to my spellwork and no more. Now I live to be capable of finding that again. Cruelty is not my wont, Doctor, but it is a useful tool, and like any useful tool I feel no shame in using it. There is the whole of my great evil."

[greenisnteasy]

He rolls his eyes. "No, nothing's that black and white. You're not some cartoon villain skipping around killing people. You said that they see you as a monster, nothing more, and I'm trying to figure out what you're doing with that. Proving them right? Playing into their hand, and making them regret it? Are you playing into their tropes? Because I still don't see how that's... satisfying. How that's not giving up and embracing something... something you're not."

He runs out of steam and backs up too, until he hits the counter behind him, and he hugs it, pressing himself back against it. He's getting too excited here, not that he thinks that Loki's egging him on, though he could be. The jab about his father just gets narrowed eyes; he still doesn't know what Loki knows or doesn't know about that, what any of them knows or doesn't know.

"A lot of people say I'm a monster, and some of the time, I don't even have a choice about that, but I'm still trying to... not be that. Because I don't want people to reduce me to some movie villain, only good for mobs with pitchforks and torches."

Reaching up, he pinches the bridge of his nose. Come on, Banner. Don't get off track.

"Look, I'm not telling you what to be, I'm just... disagreeing with your method. I guess." Because he's afraid of going down that path himself one day.

[laevisilaufeyson]

Loki sets his lips thin and sighs through his nose. "Your androcentrism astounds me. No, you don't see. You see little and less; that much is obvious. You are human. Nobody took you. Nobody owned you and fed you lies and taught you to kill your own kind. Always you will have something to go back to. The companionship of your own kind; they kept you, they needed you. Asgard only coveted what use I could be to them."

Not that he was unhappy, to start. He'd not argue as much. He would say, though, that he hadn't known better, at the time. "You fail to see also that when I say I am Asgard's monster, my meaning could be twofold. I plague them, perhaps... or I do for them what they are unwilling. I am the scourge they wield against the nine worlds. Do you think it was wholly out of my own interest that I sought to rule your planet?"

He leans forward. "I will show you something. Fear not, it's only a trick of the light. Even if I meant you harm I would not be so foolish as to attempt to inflict it now."

A gesture of the hand, the twitching of fingers, and another room overlays itself over this one. Two boys sit, cross-legged and rapt, one small and dark-haired and the other bright, always bright. Loki there, Thor alongside him. In front of them, then, can only be Odin, tall, imposing.

And he instructs. He speaks of nine worlds, of dark and frightening places. Of Jǫtunheimr, the home of Asgard's great enemies. Midgard, the home of men. And above them all, Asgard. Great and golden.

Odin speaks of their righteousness and their right to rule, the old wisdom of their people. Loki watches, as does his illusory, child form on the floor.

And of the Jǫtnar?

"I will hunt the monsters down and slay them all!" Thor speaks, exuberant, as the room shifts alarmingly and becomes another entirely. Loki the boy gazes on his brother with awe, with admiration, love, yes, but the Loki of how's face only twists.

Yes. All of them. Even him, these days.

There is more. Common people in the streets as the princelings run and play. The words they speak. Rumours of war. Words of suspicion, fear, hate. The old enemies have been brought low, but do they not plot? Are they not wicked and cruel? Would it not be better, for the sake of all the worlds, to end their threat now and for good?

Loki waves his hand and they all disappear. Now Odin, the Odinsleep, and Laufey with his blade of ice. They are still, utterly still while Loki speaks.

"In whose name do you think I slew my sire?" he asks, and the scene explodes into action. Laufey dies at the hand of the son of Odin, words one Loki speaks, icy, while the other murmurs along with the memory.

"It wasn't enough. I would have done it, I'd have killed them all, but even that was insufficient. I fell. I should have died. I should have died when Laufey left me out on the ice. He was right; I am a poor son of his. Small and weak. Treacherous." Another gesture and it's gone, all of it.

"When I came to take your planet it was not wholly for myself. You belong to Asgard; whatever sweet and stupid things brother darling told you, that is how Asgard sees you. Weak. Harmless. Insignificant. In need of our guidance — though naturally they could not be bothered to give it to you any longer. Your wars, the starvation of so many of your species while others glut themselves to death; this is insignificant. Make no mistake; my actions were not out of keeping with their cosmology. Thor was sent to aid you because I have shamed them by giving life to their own words; no more that that." Oh, there are excuses, and no doubt the Æsir believe them — but to do so means to eat old words. Old traditions.

And that is no great shame. "They stole from the Jǫtnar the Casket of Ancient Winters, the life force of their planet, without which it decays and dies. Make no mistake, they have done as I tried to do — they only drew out the suffering involved in the process. If my actions in killing Balder were not righteous in my own name, then are they in the name of my species? Of my children, who were stolen from me? Tell me, Doctor; what does your human morality say to that?"

[greenisnteasy]

"I'm human." Not the Hulk, and what does that make the man who carries around something inhuman inside him? Where does he fall? Because so far he's mostly fallen on the outside. When he's around people who don't know, he's living a lie and can't get close. When he's around people who do know, they don't want to get close. He's half-in, half-out, and mostly responsible for doing everyone the favor of not feeling obligated to get close to him. That's the way he sees it, the way he treats people. And the Hulk has hurt people, killed humans, and Bruce has to take responsibility for that. The scale isn't the same, and the psychology isn't the same; he has to get past that, he thinks. But it's hard to let go of that bitterness.

Androcentric, sure; it's not like he's had much chance to be anything else yet, and he's trying to understand, but some parts of this are so foreign that he has to try to filter it first. He sighs too, more in preparation, and pays attention, listens; his eyes widen at the display, but after a moment of uncertainty, looking between the images and Loki, he gets past the questions (how the hell) and just watches.

"I told you; I know nothing's that black and white." He'll buy the Asgardians are really jerks, or far more problematic than they let on; that sounds more plausible to him anyway, and he's not shocked to hear that racism and genocide exist on other worlds, or that the Asgardians are gleeful participants.

"This is what I was driving at. I want to know why." He stops, gives his head a short shake. "Obviously you don't owe it to me and you could tell me to piss off, but I'm trying to understand. I'm a pacifist who's spent most of his life resisting violence, even in the face of vengeance, okay. This is another planet for me, on top of being another actual planet."

Curious, maybe. Maybe that's all it is, curiosity over someone reacting to damaging childhood trauma and brainwashing in a completely different way from Bruce, so far as he knows. He rolled over and took his father back, after all, when they let him out of the institution.

"So... Tell me again about the thing where you tried to take over my planet." Because he's reorienting his mind here. He looks up, lifting his eyebrows. "Please."

[laevisilaufeyson]

"I'm Loki." The singular. The only one. Neither Asgardian nor Jǫtunn, certainly not human, and therein lies the greatest distinction between them. Whatever Bruce imposes upon himself because he feels he has no choice, the option remains.

Loki has none. Nor will he ever again.

"And had I resisted violence I would have died in my first hólmganga. You speak in human terms again. Pacifism is not an option on Asgard, not if one values survival." And survival is strength, and strength sanctifies. He waves a dismissive hand.

"You would have had me use your tools in a context in which they are less than meaningless; why? Nothing would have come of my refusal to engage but derision. Already I am weak. Already I am small of form, already I lack the might of a true Asgardian. I resort to magics to save my own worthless skin, pathetic, argr. Magic is the work of women and all others who permit themselves to be fucked by their betters and refusal to fight is worse still." The curl to his lip shows quite clearly what he thinks of all that, but Bruce was right earlier. What other people see matters -- and what a human sees, a human of this age, of Bruce's upbringing, is not at all what an Asgardian sees.

"Acts speak," he adds insistently, leaning forward, "words are wind."

And some acts speak far more loudly than others.

"So to your planet. Observe." He slips down from the table and executes a turn, hand reaching up, up towards nothing at first, until his hand closes around the illusory haft of Gungnir. Everything else is play. The twisting up of his features into expressions once worn, tears gathering in ruined eyes. Words and falling, falling into nothing. Blackness. Void.

Dying. Slowly. Nothing is felt of the bitter cold of that place but the illusion of ice crystals drifting at what should have been a final exhalation. Snow in space. A fitting oddity to hold as final thought.

Until something reached out and grabbed him. Loki steps aside and lets the illusion take over, spinning spells of memory. Of the Chitauri. Of Thanos. Of the scrying of the Tesseract and the offer made. A deal, an army for the Tesseract, Earth (and thus a way home, perhaps) in return for some small act of loyalty, some favour.

The placing of the staff into Loki's hands. The journey. The arrival. Sickness, weakness, and the inevitable, unavoidable push. The promise of pain worse than pain, should he fail.

"You want to know the truth of my stab at playing the glorious conqueror, there it is. Nothing more or less than that." A pause. "I wanted something of my own. Your planet, well. The Tesseract was there, was it not? Unlucky you. He told me I should want it, want to be restored to my throne, any throne, and I did. It was offered to me, if I should bow, and I did that too."

He sighs. "And why not? You were ours anyway, whether or not you knew it. Why should I not have you? I, at least, thought more of you than the rest of my kind. I would have done my best, and they would see me capable. All of Asgard would see me. So I told myself, at the time."

[greenisnteasy]

"I wasn't saying -- I said I'm a pacifist. Yeah, I was pushing for it, but now I'm just trying to explain why it's taking me time to catch up to you."

Loki's speech about being worthless and submissive does get some narrowed eyes from Bruce, but he's quiet, crossing his arms over his chest instead to listen. Loki's plan makes a little more sense now, but he's still concerned with this idea that Loki thought he might've done a good job being in charge. Most of what Bruce saw supported the opposite, and he could cite some dictators to back that up, but he doesn't actually think it would get anywhere, and he doesn't want to just argue with everything Loki's saying.

"Thanks for taking the time to explain. I appreciate it." He smiles and hugs his arms tighter across his chest for a second before he points at him. "Do you want to hear about your eyes?"