damned_institute | Night 65: M71-M80 Hallway

"I wish I had your confidence," Loki murmured. "I think I prefer to remain quiet about it for the time being, however, unless you think it best I don't. I will tell Sora, however. That seems a good idea." And perhaps Tsubaki as well. People he could rely to have on his side if something went a bit awry later.

Foundations. It was all about foundations.

Loki turned to the pharmacopoeia, moving to the page about Ketamine that he'd marked previously. He scanned over it again, checked the vial that Soma had brought, and then measured a precise amount with the syringe. "All right. This ought to be enough to keep the pain from being beyond simple discomfort, but you should still be... mostly conscious. Though it apparently may cause you to hallucinate. Lovely."

Well, there was nothing for it, he supposed. She wished him to try this madness, and he would do his best. He should have considered it a win-win situation; either Soma would recover and be well again, or he would inadvertently kill her and that would count as a death for Landel.

Somehow, he found the latter option quite unappealing.

He injected the drug into the IV and checked the book again, setting his mental clock for when he might have to give her another dose. Considering this was to be a brutal, makeshift operation, he would hopefully be done before that was necessary.

"Let's have you lay down now. It shouldn't take long for the drug to have its effect." While waiting for that, he collected up the small supply of swabs to clean the skin of her abdomen. After a moment of consideration, he tied a makeshift mask over his mouth and nose as well, then stripped open one of the suture kits for a clean pair of gloves.

She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment, carefully pushing herself further back on the bed and lying down. This, at least, was familiar, even if the crude setup wasn't. Marie spun worriedly in the back of her head, but thankfully said nothing. If what Landel was saying about people turning into monsters was true, they didn't have much choice. Even Marie had to admit that.

Soma wondered distantly if the nanomachines in her body were still working. It was hard to tell in a place like this, where everyone's healing was apparently sped up. She definitely hadn't noticed any increase in her own abilities that outstripped anyone else's.

It was a few more minutes before the edges of her vision began to blur, and a faint numbness gradually overtook her arms and legs. She wasn't so much sleepy as she was feeling increasingly detached from her body. It wasn't a pleasant feeling for someone who was used to being in full control, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant, either.

"I think it's working," she mumbled.

"All right."

No turning back now.

Loki took one last look at the pitiful collection of supplies, everything arranged to be within easy reach. He picked up the first scalpel and cut.

For all that the blade was flimsy, it was pleasingly sharp. This, he had no reason to shy from. He'd slid a dagger through enough bellies and in between enough ribs. Though this was different in that he was trying to be careful, precise, and avoid damage rather than cause it. That was what made it a challenge. Healing of any sort was always far more difficult that hurting or killing.

Thankfully, it also meant that he was not one to shy at the sight of blood, because there was blood. There was one small frission that ran through his belly knowing it was the blood of a friend, and he ruthlessly cut that emotion off and did his best to proceed clinically. He'd do neither of them favors by allowing himself nervousness or hesitation.

And it was a bloody business indeed. He had to cut through skin and muscle, pausing to soak up blood with the sponges, to cauterize a large vessel he'd accidentally nicked - that required a quick glance at the anatomy book - to prop the wound he'd made in Soma's side open with the metal tools he'd acquired from the operating room earlier.

That was only the beginning of it. He was soon smeared with blood to the elbow despite his best efforts to be careful. He had to pause and stitch another blood vessel, clumsily but good enough for now. Then finally he'd cleared the way to her stomach, around and under the ribcage. He carefully palpated the organ with his fingertips, feeling something hard inside it - that made him suck in a quick breath.

Well, he'd seen that drawing. He now knew it to be true.

Carefully, he cut the smallest possible incision, using a pair of forceps from the suture kit to retrieve the little object. He dropped it on the desk, to be examined later. After all, getting to the horrid little thing was only half the battle. The more difficult half was getting back out.

He could feel the beating of Soma's heart, no delicate flutter, but something powerful and vital so close to his hands. This, he thought, was true power. He could stop it, that endless rush of blood. Perhaps should, out of concern for his own purposes. But he found he didn't want to; if anything there was the strange urge to protect that vital force, keep it going. She was, after all, the first person who had been willing to trust him in quite some time.

Right now, that trust was worth far more to him than a slight leg up on his deal with Landel. There would be other nights. And in a way - and sometimes he damned himself, for always thinking of these multiple angles even in his rare moments of trying to be even the slightest bit selfless - it would be to his advantage as well, to see Soma safely through.

Loki used up all of the suture kits in stitching, first her stomach, then the layers of muscle, the few blood vessels he'd had to clamp off, and finally skin.

Sweat was rolling down his forehead when he finished, pressing a generous wad of gauze against her gory side. Any sounds Soma had made, he'd tuned out until now, not wanting his concentration broken when he was attempting to do something so foreign and delicate. He glanced up at her face. "Are you still with me?" he asked, voice muffled behind the makeshift mask.

The IV had hurt less than Soma had expected, but this hurt more. Lingormr hadn't given her a full dose of ketamine, which made sense. They'd agreed to keep her conscious for the duration of the operation, after all. Still, as fuzzy as her head had felt at the start, the drug had only taken the edge off the pain: enough to keep her still on the bed, fists bunching the sheets so tightly her knuckles ached, and nothing more.

If Lingormr had heard the muffled noises that occasionally forced their way up her throat, he didn't give any indication of it, which she appreciated. For her part, she only clutched the sheets as tightly as her drugged mind would permit and tried to ignore the smell of blood and burning flesh. It was stupid, she thought, that it would bother a trained soldier like this, but the mobile suit cockpit had always filtered the scent from the air. Here there was too much of it to ignore, and all of it was hers.

She didn't know how much time passed before Lingormr spoke again, his voice sounding strangely tinny and distant to her ear. It was difficult to make out what he'd said, but she could guess.

"Did..." she began, then had to pause as a small wave of nausea swept over her. "Did you...get it?"

"Yes." Loki straightened, fetching another wad of gauze to put on Soma's side and propping it there with the pillow from his roommate's bed. He assumed they would be miraculously furnished with clean linens come morning as well.

He finally turned his attention to the little device he'd set on the desk. A square of gauze cleaned it off well enough, and he inspected it. It did, indeed, look like the drawing, and not all the malevolent until one thought that it had been inserted into Soma's stomach. He stripped off the gloves and carelessly tossed them on the floor, then placed the little butterfly-like thing in Soma's hand. "Do you wish to keep it? Otherwise, I shall stow it away in my belongings in the hopes that I will be able to examine it more fully on the morrow."

He hesitated, then added, "I can give you another dose of the drug as well, if you wish."

So there had been something. She'd been afraid there wouldn't be, that all of this would have been for nothing. At least the information had been trustworthy, even if the second clue wasn't much help.

She felt rather than saw Lingormr place something in her hand, and with some effort she brought it up to her field of vision, raising her head a little to get a better look at it.

"'S actually a butterfly," she said stupidly. "Thought it would be..."

She trailed off, her mouth and her mind still refusing to cooperate. What had she expected? Some kind of device? Some complex bit of machinery? A pill, even?

"You keep it," she said after a moment's thought. "Don't have anything like it in my world. Wouldn't know what it is. Whatever it is."

She let her head fall back on the pillow, concentrating. "No. I think...better to wait it out." She smiled up at him, or tried to, and this time she was a little more successful than her previous attempts. "Thank you, Lingormr."

Loki nodded, taking the little thing back from her. Perhaps he should force himself to look at it tonight, but he felt so mentally exhausted - strange, that - he didn't think he'd learn anything at all useful. "I haven't anything like it in my world either. But perhaps someone can be found who might have some better grasp of the principles under which it might operate." He carefully rolled the object up in a bit of gauze and hid it away in his closet, tucking it into the toe of one of the boots. Who knew if it would do any good, but he could hope.

He returned to her side and gave her a wan smile of his own, sinking down to sit on the bed near her head. "All right. You know well how you feel better than I do. But if the pain grows worse, please tell me."

He fell silent for a moment, then reached out and hesitantly smoothed her hair back. It was a gesture he often remembered from Frigga, during times when he'd been sick.

Soma closed her eyes as Lingormr put the device away and tried to focus on her breathing. Now that the bulk of the anesthetic effect had faded, the sheer enormity of what had just happened was finally beginning to catch up with her.

It was true, she had always been the type to act first and think later, but that had generally been limited to charging headfirst into battle and leaving it to the lieutenant colonel to actually talk tactics. Persuading a trusted friend to perform makeshift abdominal surgery on her was something else entirely. She was suddenly grateful for the anesthesia, for having been mostly spared that trauma. Lingormr hadn't been that lucky, and all of this must have seemed terribly foreign to him, on top of everything else.

She tried to think of something else to talk about, something more reassuring, but her brain was still refusing to cooperate. All that was coming to mind was the image of Lingormr on his feet in the visitors' room, shouting at a tall blond man with a rage and a hurt she'd never seen in his eyes before. Even in her drugged state, she knew that was a conversation neither of them would want to have right now.

Lingormr returned then, sitting down beside her, and she responded to his comment with a faint noise of assent, her eyes still mostly closed. After a moment, she felt a gentle pressure against her forehead, Lingormr's fingers surprisingly cool as he brushed her hair back. Simple as the gesture was, she felt the beginnings of tears prickle at her eyes. She hadn't had time to think about how scared she was, either.

"I mean it," she said quietly. "Thank you. When we get out...my world's not perfect. But it's better than most."

And considering what he'd done for her, he'd always have a place at their house, she wanted to add. But she didn't have the energy to say it, and she wasn't sure how he'd react, either.

That hurt, somehow, in a way he could not begin to define, an intense twist of emotion.

Loki's hand hesitated, and then he stroked her hair again, soothing. "The lady is too kind," he whispered.

It hurt, and that made words feel strangely clumsy on his tongue. "Shall I tell you a story?"

Soma offered a slight upward quirk of her lips, blinking hard in another attempt to clear away the blurriness. "You're the one who just operated on me."

A story. She was reminded, sharply and suddenly, of a boy who'd read her a book a long time ago, who'd turned pages and described pictures she couldn't see. She swallowed hard.

"'d like that," she said softly.

Loki laughed softly. "Yes, and it may be premature to thank me for such butchery. We shall see."

It had seemed like such a good thing to suggest, in that moment. Something else Frigga had always done for him, one more bit of comfort. But Loki realized the weakness of it now. He could spin a lie better than any, but that wasn't the same as telling a good story from whole cloth. All he could really think of were his own stories, and those were painful, and far too revealing.

He smoothed his hand over Soma's hair again, licked his lips nervously, and tried to grasp some memory that would not bruise with being shared. Finally, he said:

"Once there was a girl in a great house. She wanted to be a warrior, but everyone said that women could not be warriors. Her parents forced her to wear pretty dresses that she loathed, and tied her golden hair in elaborate braids. She was friends with the two sons of the great house, and they did their best to help her. One taught her all of he tricks he knew from arms practice. The other listened to her cry and did his best to comfort her with words, for he was useless at anything else.

"One day, after hearing her fury that she might be forced to marry, for she was quite pretty and sought after by those who wanted her as a bauble rather than a friend or a staunch defender, one of the sons had an idea. He snuck into her room when she was asleep and cut all of her hair off with a pair of iron scissors. For he thought, if she was no longer seen as beautiful - though he knew, always, she was beautiful because she was strong, and good, and clever, not because of something so superficial as her golden hair - then the men she so hated would leave her alone.

"And they did. Everyone was shocked, but the removal of the hair she had so hated for making her an object gave her the chance to do as she had always wanted. She said if she now looked like a boy, she would train as a boy as well. And this time, no one dared stand in her way. They thought she had cut off her hair herself, though she was so mad and bold."

Loki smiled, a softness to the expression wholly uncharacteristic for him. "And when her hair grew back, instead of blonde it was black like those iron shears. It only made her more fierce. She became one of the greatest warriors in the kingdom."

Soma would like Sif, he thought. And Sif would like Soma. It was a shame they would never meet. But that was one thing he could think of with no pain beyond the pang of separation. He missed Sif as well, though he was under no illusion at all that she would be pleased to see him again.

Edited 2012-08-31 05:41 (UTC)

Even through the fog, Soma listened intently, hanging on to Lingormr's every word. He had a voice suited to storytelling, she thought muzzily. Piecemeal as her knowledge of his life before Landel's was, she thought she could see him seated before a fire, telling tales to a rapt audience.

There was a small smile on his face as he finished the story, like the echo of a fond memory. Had he told this story to someone else before, or was the story real? Probably both. Either way, it was good to see not all of his memories of his own world were unpleasant ones.

She was quiet for a moment longer. Then, looking up, "Did she ever find out who cut her hair?"

"She did," Loki said, laughing quietly. "She was far more clever than she thought. She could have been a great scholar if she'd wanted, but what she wished was to fight with the men, and that was what she achieved."

Because that was the sad truth of it. Sif had faced wall after wall to her ambition, but socially it had been still more acceptable for a woman to want to be like men, to be a warrior. For a man to wish to be like a woman... well, that hadn't turned out well for Loki.

He breathe out a quiet sigh. That was an avenue of thought not useful. "Shall I tell you another story?"

"I'm glad," said Soma simply. How much of Lingormr's tale was actually true, she didn't know, but he was clearly remembering something when he spoke. She had to wonder if the girl he was talking about actually existed, or if that was the part that was made up.

She offered a smile of her own, taking a deep, slow breath and gauging the pain. Tolerable, for now. Probably not worth risking another dose of ketamine.

She only hesitated for a moment, but the eagerness in her eyes was obvious, despite her exhaustion. "If you don't mind," she said, then just as quickly: "You don't have to on my account. I know you're tired."

Loki laughed quietly. "Not so tired as that. My hands feel a bit weak, but I don't think I could sleep now if I tried."

He thought of a few more entertaining, light things on which he could speak. Those seemed best. Now was not a time to tell Soma grim things.

He cleared his throat. "That same great house had an armsmaster, a one-eyed man who was an old soldier. He had no use for a girl in his practice court, and no use for a boy who was too clever for his own good. He was quite cruel to both of them, trying to humiliate them and give them bruises in an effort to force them to run away like cowards. The girl refused to give in and showed up every day, no matter her bruises, no matter if her arm was in a sling.

"The boy was not so dedicated. He didn't want to be there anyway. Instead he hid away in his mother's gardens and read books he wasn't supposed to read. Even as his brother and father taunted him constantly for shirking his duties. If he could not be found, he could not be forced to do what he did not want.

"His brother found him one day and dragged him to the practice ring..."

He hesitated, realizing at that point this story made it very clear that the boy in question was him, though he supposed Soma had already assumed as much. He snorted quietly.

"The boy decided that he was tired of the game. He cast a spell so that there were illusions of him and the armsmaster didn't know which to strike. While the man was distracted, the boy climbed onto the man's back like a monkey and held a dagger to the man's throat.

"The armsmaster had no choice but to yield. But everyone was angry with the boy, because he'd humiliated a good warrior, and embarrassed his family. He got strapped for that. But he didn't cry because he knew he'd won, and they never made him go to practice again if he didn't wish."

Edited 2012-09-02 20:36 (UTC)

She liked the girl, Soma decided, and by now she was almost certain she existed. And as for the boy...

Well, it was obvious now, though she hadn't been entirely certain before. While some innate part of her protested at the idea of shirking one's duties like that, it was clear where Lingormr's true talents lay. She supposed she would have struggled as much if she'd been forced to be a scholar of some sort.

And as different as Lingormr's combat style was from hers, she couldn't deny she liked a story with a good fight in it, especially when it sounded to her like the armsmaster was more of a bully than a proper warrior.

"The armsmaster should have learned how to confront enemies who could use magic," she said thoughtfully. "That was remiss of him. And the boy must have been very talented to catch him off guard like that."

Loki laughed quietly. "Well, in this silly land, magic is only the work of women. No man with a shred of honor to his name would willingly fight a woman. That's why..." he almost said 'Sif' but caught himself, "the girl had such difficulties until she made herself impossible to ignore."

He laughed. "Well, it's not very difficult to catch stupid people off guard, I'm sure. They're not terribly good at expecting the unexpected."

"It's still a potential threat," Soma said, frowning slightly. Lingormr picked things up so quickly here it was sometimes easy to forget just how far in the past he'd lived, formal manner of speech or not. "Y--the boy proved as much. If you have a good weapon, why limit it like that?"

Still, Lingormr's explanation went a good way towards explaining just why he'd felt so rejected for being a scholar of magic in his village. She thought, fleetingly, of afternoons spent in front of the television, listening to the lieutenant colonel explain the political maneuverings of countries she'd barely even heard of before she'd left the HEA. He'd always made an effort to include her in the discussion, ignoring her purpose as an unthinking weapon.

She closed her eyes against the sudden pang of homesickness. "Where I come from, it's important to learn everything you can about the world, even if you're just a soldier. You can't fight anyone well unless you understand how they think."

He went silent for a time, then laughed dryly. "Well yes, you and I both know that. But perhaps men who wish only to wield an axe think everything looks like a tree. It all bleeds the same."

He knew that to be true. Hadn't he been an enemy in the midst of Asgard the entire time? And none had been interested in how he thought, only that he should think like them. Loki fell silent again, then said, "Allow me to give you an example of the sort of attitude I mean. One more story."

"Once there was a great house. They were in a feud with a clan of monsters, hideous creatures that were wholly unlike humans. The parents of this house's families used stories of those monsters to frighten their children. There was a great war between this house and the clan. The monsters were devastated utterly by the great house's head. He went back to their homelands and sowed their fields with salt, slaughtered their brood animals and took their greatest treasures as his prizes..."

Loki paused, his hands stilling against Soma's hair for a moment, then continued on, "There was an infant belonging to these monsters that had been exposed to die, because it was a weakling. The leader of the great house found that mewling little thing and decided to take it home for reasons his own. With trickery, he hid that it was a monster and raised it as if it were a real child.

"But everyone knew, that there was something wrong with this supposed child. It was weak and unsuitable, and could not fit in with the great house, though it tried. As you have said before... it thought differently, and could not think like them no matter how hard they tried to force it to change."

Another long pause.

"One day the secret was revealed to the monster. Suddenly it knew, why it had always been so despised, and the members of the great house knew why always the monster's so-called brother had been beloved. They could not understand the monster, and did not wish to do so. Desperate, the little monster tried to prove itself, but the great house recoiled in horror and the monster fled."

He laughed without humor, his voice oddly hoarse. "So you see, Soma. This sort of thinking is perhaps in fashion in your age, but not in the days from which I come."

Edited 2012-09-02 22:01 (UTC)

Soma was quiet for long enough afterward that Lingormr could have been forgiven for thinking she'd simply fallen asleep.

Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't this. A sly dig at the armsmaster, maybe, or a light comment to break the tension--but not a story unlike the others, about great wars and houses she wasn't sure she understood...

It was a metaphor, of course. It had to be one. A clever metaphor, wrapped up in the guise of a fairy tale, and delivered convincingly with Lingormr's not inconsiderable skill. But at the same time it was impossible to miss the tone of his voice, something so muddled she was sure her brainwaves wouldn't have been able to parse it even if she were operating in peak condition. Enough of it was real to hurt.

So then the man who visited you-- she thought, but didn't say.

"Lingormr," she said softly, "how much of this is true?"

He had wondered if maybe she was falling asleep and remained silent so as to not bother her. He was a bit surprised when she spoke again, though not of what she spoke. He carefully smoothed her hair down, not sure how to react.

He shouldn't have said any of those things at all, really. But he had, and to a certain extent it was a relief to have that out there.

Loki gave her a crooked, painful smile. "Don't be silly, dearest. Everyone knows there's no such thing as monsters." It was the most patently ridiculous thing he could say, in a place such as this where monsters apparently were quite real.

And there was the Lingormr she was used to, trying to laugh it off and only half-succeeding, if at all. Soma reached up with some effort, catching his wrist and squeezing gently, but insistently.

She couldn't say she understood all of what he was saying. It was difficult to, considering the story he'd told. But what she did understand was clear enough, and it explained more than she thought she'd understood about his behavior in the last few days.

"I mean it," she said. "Is that why you...why you left?"

He hadn't really expected her to be diverted so easily, not when he was apparently so mentally fatigued that he wasn't thinking nearly clearly enough. It had been a stupid path to go down, but there was not escaping it now.

Loki sighed quietly, then in a calm tone, as if none of this really mattered anyway, said, "Yes."

Gently, he attempted to disengage her hand from his wrist, thinking he probably ought to move away now. It couldn't be a pleasant realization, though he rather doubted she knew what he meant by monster.

Edited 2012-09-04 06:50 (UTC)

She didn't resist as Lingormr disentangled his wrist, but she gave one last squeeze before she let go.

There really wasn't anything she thought she could say in response to what he'd told her. Any kind of reassurance about his life would just be empty words. And when the alternative in a place like this was living out the rest of his life thinking he was someone he wasn't...

"Whatever they thought," she said at last, "I hope you don't think it'll change my opinion of you."

Loki had begun to shift his weight to stand, then paused. Really, he'd been expecting some kind of recrimination for having previously not told her the full truth of the situation. Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised at such unwise acceptance, but he was.

"They already thought me pathetically weak and incomprehensibly unmanly, unsuitable as a second son. I think any further revelations just served to justify opinions already formed." He sighed quietly again, resting his hands on his knees. "Well, I suppose you didn't grow up on stories of the depravity of the Jotun," he remarked. "But were I less selfish, I think I'd probably chide you for being unwise."

But he wasn't the sort to try to argue himself out of a friend, that was certain. He had few enough of those to begin with. It felt very strange, though, a sort of painful tug that was unfamiliar.

He hesitated, then reached over to lightly touch her forehead again, knowing at this point that she would not recoil, and that was another strange feeling as well.

Edited 2012-09-04 19:40 (UTC)

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