Neutral Omens

Loki was watching his rat feeling quite proud of himself. He was almost sure that it had been two days since Adam had caught the little animal for him and he still remembered it.

In fact he had snippets of memories from several, maybe all, visits he'd had since then and felt confident that he'd recognise those people again. They weren't as clear as the much older memories of his life in Asgard which had finally returned, but it was a lot better than the huge gaping hole between Asgard and the hospital.

He even wondered whether it had anything to do with Adam, but then he thought Adam might have said something about not being a healer. He looked a bit too young for it anyway. Still, even if it was just a coincidence that Adam had been the first thing to stick in his memory again, Loki felt very grateful towards him for giving him the rat.

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Anathema opened the door and walked in, not looking at anything other than Loki's face to try and see what kind of mood the god was in.

Then her eyes fell on the rat and she screeched, before covering her mouth quickly. She wasn't really afraid of rats, but why one would be in the hospial wing she didn't know.

"Loki? Where did you find your new little friend?" she asked, seeing as how the rat actually seemed to make Loki happy she was wondering if it was a good idea to take it away. It might help him to have a furry friend around, as Loki quite liked animals.

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The shriek startled Loki causing him to sit up straight ready to ... well, he wasn't actually in any shape to fight or flee. And then Anathema asked about the rat. Hadn't she seen him yesterday? Oh well, maybe the rat had been asleep when Anathema had checked up on him. She should have noticed the cage, though.

"Oh, Adam caught him for me. Isn't he cute?" Loki thought his rat had the most adorable little snout and naked tail ever. Not to mention the cute little black eyes.

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Anathema started to idly wonder if maybe she had seen the rat somewhere before. Either way, Lokiwas right. She went inside and closed the door behind her, walking over to Loki's bed to look closely at the rat.

"Yes, he is cute," she replied to the question. It was true too. She had always liked rats as pets.

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Loki smiled. He liked to hear somebody agree about his pet. From what he could remember of his life people had a tendency to dislike any animal he adopted.

"I'm trying to find out what his favourite foods are," he explained. "If I can manage to remember what I've fed him, that is. Are you here to feed us?" She hadn't brought the expected tray of food.

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He'd been putting it off way too long, and he knew it. The truth was, he was being a bloody coward (again): he already had plenty of guilt dragging him down, and didn't especially want to shoulder any more, however well-deserved it was--especially from someone who might or might not ever remember what had happened (or even that they had ever been friends.) He also felt like he was in hot water with Crowley on a couple of counts now over Loki-related incidents; the demon had been uncharacteristically tolerant about the whole thing, but John knew his patience had limits, and he preferred not to test them.

But he'd talked Loki into letting himself be magicked, or had helped anyway, and he had probably been at least partly to blame for things going pear-shaped, and he knew only too well how profoundly amnesia could fuck with a person. Plus Loki still wasn't out of the woods yet, even if he'd been de-cursed.

When it came down to it though, what finally led John back to the hospital wing in defiance of his worse-if-wiser self was that friend thing: neither one of them had many to spare. Walking away really wasn't an option, no matter how much simpler it might have made his life. It'd still be a life with an uncomfortably Loki-shaped hole in it.

He knocked tentatively on the god's door, not sure what kind of welcome to expect.

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Loki was surprised to hear another visitor knock on the door. Of course his memories of this place went back little more than a day, but he'd thought that only Anathema and that Gabriel fellow who'd been here during the night worked in the hospital. did Anathema have an assistant he wasn't aware of, yet? Or was this Adam returning for another chat?

Well, only one way to find out. "It's open!" Loki called out happily.

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John peered around the edge of the door for a moment before stepping inside, not quite certain how to handle this. Loki wasn't looking too bad, he thought, considering. "Hey, Loki. You, ah, might not remember me. I'm John." He glanced at Ana, silently asking for help, though he had no idea what she could do.

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"John! Good to see you. I was just going to tell Loki some news. It'd be nice to have some...support when I do." She may just need John's help in convincing Loki to go along with the treatment that could save the god's life.

She looked down to Loki. "Do you remember John? He's a friend of yours."

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Loki looked at John pretending to try and remember something, but actually just to buy time. Was it wiser to tell the truth, even if it hurt and possibly alienated John, or to pretend that he recognised him and risk being caught in a lie.

"Maybe," he said. "I'm not sure. The clearest memories I have at the moment are from my childhood. Everything else is a bit ... blurry?" He thought it was a good not-quite-truth.

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John smiled ruefully. "Yeah, 'sall right. I know how it is. Give it some time, it'll come back to you." He (mostly) hoped that was true. "I just thought I'd drop by, see how you were doing."

He looked at Anathema questioningly. "News...?"

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"Oh right," Loki remembered. "News. I thought you were going to give us breakfast."

His memory might be improving, but there was clearly still something wrong with his attention span.

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"Well, you can have a bit of breakfast soon. I just thought that it might interest you, considering it might help get you out of this hospital bed. Well, given a bit of time that is."

Walking closer to the bed, she watched the rat for a bit, before looking into Loki's eyes. "There is a treatment to help get rid of the leukaemia. It won't necessarily be very comfortable, but it will help. It's called a bone marrow transplant. Do you know what that is?"

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Loki shuddered. Yes, he knew what that was. He'd read about it, thought about it and realised that it was one step he couldn't take even if it were a guaranteed cure.

"That's out of the question," he said in a cold determined tone that Anathema had probably never heard from him before. This wasn't something he'd joke about.

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"It's the only option this late that you have, Loki."

The tone of his voice was more serious than she had ever heard before. He was truly not wanting to do this, which made things hard, very hard.

She would probably need help in changing his mind.

If only there was another god of his pantheon here, maybe then he wouldn't refuse. But there wasn't.

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"It isn't an option," Loki repeated. "We've discussed these things before."

Okay, so they'd actually only discussed blood transfusions and in Loki's mind this was even worse, but it was the same principle.

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"It's the ONLY option Loki. I know you don't want blood transfusions and things like them, and this is like that, but it may be your only chance at beating the leukaemia. Don't you want to get rid of it? To win?"

She looked to John out of the corner of her eye, hoping the man got the hint and helped her out a bit.

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John shifted uncomfortably. His insistence that Loki should go through with the cursebreaking was a primary reason why Loki was now minus his memory, and had almost got several people killed to boot. And why should the god listen to someone he didn't even know he knew? Still, Ana knew her stuff, and if she said a transfusion was the only way, it's be plain stupid not to go ahead with it after so much trouble and risk had gone into getting Loki this far...

He cleared his throat. "I've talked to people who've had it done," he said reluctantly, remembering the cancer ward he'd visited. "It's not fun, but mebbe not as bad as it sounds." He cocked his head to one side as something else occurred to him. Just how much did Loki remember, at this point? "Or is that not the problem?" Transfusions between humans and immortals, as he had personal reason to know from an unrelated incident, could have all sorts of unforseen complications and consequences.

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"I don't care about whether it's fun or not," Loki snapped at the man he still didn't really remember. "My blood would no longer be my own. Do you have any idea what blood means to us?"

These humans did not understand his culture. He wasn't completely sure what they were, but definitely not Norse. It was frightening that they didn't understand such basic concepts as the relevance of blood, though. Did they have any family ties at all?

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"This probably wouldn't be a problem if Odin was still around, but he left..." she said under her breath, more to herself then the others in the room, but she understood what the problem was, or at least she thought she did. Loki didn't want to have a humans blood because it would be like tainting his own.

"Well, what if someone from your pantheon became....available? Would you do it then?"

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Loki shook his head. "It's about my blood," he tried to explain. "The blood I share with my children. The blood I shared with Odin. I cannot accept breaking those ties."

It was surprising even to himself how much he felt defined by hose bonds, but that only proved that he was right not to want a stranger's blood in his veins.

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Anathema winced. Yes she knew his ties to his family were important, but right now he was her patient and she wanted him to live. Was it selfish of her to push?

No, she didn't think Loki wanted to die. He wanted to get better and strong and find Odin again. He wanted to shapeshift into whatever he wanted and get up to the mischief he couldn't while stuck in a bed.

And right now his own blood was stopping him from being healthy, and from getting better. Because if he would allow someone who matches (if someone matched that is) he could recover fully given time, and he had plenty of that.

If he didn't die first that is.

"Loki...don't you think it would be unfair to your children if you just...wasted away in a bed without even trying?"

It was a cheap shot but she had read a bit about the Norse pantheon, and they liked their strength, in whatever form that took. And while Hel may be his daughter, she really didn't think he would want to meet her like this...sick and weak and dead.

"I thought your pantheon was strong..."

And that was seeming to hit below the belt. She cast a sideways glance to John before she looked back to Loki and hoped to at least begin to get somewhere with convincing him.

Go for his weaknesses, she thought and she frowned, thinking it completely unfair.

But she really didn't want Loki to die.

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Loki laughed bitterly. "The only one of my children I've seen at all in centuries is Sleipnir and he's well cared for by Odin. Besides do you really think he'll give a damn about me, if we no longer share a blood connection?"

Actually Sleipnir probably would. He was no more intelligent than any other horse so the concept of exchanging a person's blood was not something that'd ever occur to him. It didn't matter, though, because the one deciding who Sleipnir associated with was Odin and there was no hiding something as big as this from him.

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Anathema frowned, followed closely by letting out a long drawn sigh. "Fine. I get it. You really are weak, and you would prefer to die than live. I get it. Fine. Come on John, maybe it would be better to leave him in here on his own. Oh, and the rat...it really isn't exactly the best place for such a thing."

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For once, John was at a loss. How did you save someone who adamantly didn't want to be saved, a friend who didn't even know you were his friend? He could remind Loki about the debts he owed, but he wouldn't remember those either and had no reason to believe they actually existed. And there came a point where badgering a mate for his own good just started to get cruel.

"Look," he said finally, deciding to give it one last shot before he finally wrote Loki off as a lost cause, "you've got no reason to listen to me, so I won't blame you if you just tell me to bugger off. But I gotta tell you, Loki, if blood was the only thing that tied us to people, you'd already be dead. If it matters so much, it should be Odin standing here telling you to live, not Ana and me. And if you kick off because you wouldn't risk that bond, then it's Odin who's killed you, not the disease. Is that what you want us to tell him when he finally gets around to coming back for you?" He shrugged. "Besides, he was willing to make you his brother once, great bloody pain-in-the-arse that you are. What makes you think he wouldn't do it again?"

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