Bend Around the Wind by Scyllaya

Chapter 17: Red and Gold [2]

Chapter Seventeen

Red and Gold Part II

Andromeda Galaxy

Huz'deyr System

Planet Ki'eend

He woke up suddenly to a sharp sting as something hit him in his face and knew that someone slapped him. Hard. For a moment it took away his attention from the burning pain in his side, but only for a moment. Now he was in agony again. He blinked open his eyes and saw Loki hovering above him. Shirtless Loki... bloody... wait... oh right that was his blood. Some space dinosaur tried to eat him. Just great. The image was a little blurry at first, but as he blinked again he could finally make out the furious expression on the god's face.

'Stay awake, you hear me Stark?' Loki warned.

'Okay,' Tony mumbled. His mind was fuzzy and slow and he was in pain, he really didn't want to argue with Loki.

The god was gone the next moment from his side, and then Tony heard how the engines started.

'Can you fly?' he asked. He knew the engine was fine, they even sounded fine, the damage should not prevent them from taking off, but Loki never flew the Drake before. Not that Tony didn't believe that he could, he was smart. Loki seemed to be able to learn things very quickly by only watching and he saw Tony fly a few times now.

'Of course I can,' Loki replied. Tony tilted his head to look at him and noticed one of those fucking huge lizard things clawing at the windshield. He felt like he got tossed into Jurassic Park, he seriously expected some sort of T-Rex to just appear out of nowhere. That was not a nice mental image and there was actually a small chance of it happening in some way.

'Fuck.'

'Don't worry about it, just stay alive,' Loki told him not even looking at the snarling beast in front of him on the other side of the window. Then the Drake actually started taking off. Yeah, of course Loki could fly with it. The lizard thing tried to hold onto the plane's frame, but the second they lifted up high enough to increase speed it started sliding off. Its claws uselessly tried to sink into the Drake's body. It was a god-awful sound, how the claws screeched down on the side of the plane.

'That probably fucked up the paint job,' Tony mumbled.

The journey back to the ship was a blur that Tony spent on the edge of unconsciousness. The pain was no longer sharp, but a constant ache in his abdomen. His skin felt warm and cool at the same time and he was sweating like a pig. He was losing too much blood, he knew it. The dizziness in his head got worse as the minutes passed by. He didn't even know how bad the wound was. What if only the fucking shirt kept his guts inside? This was bad, this was so fucking bad.

He only realized that they arrived when Loki was with him again. The god basically picked him up this time, since Tony could not walk any longer.

'I was such a moron walking out like that,' Tony choked out weakly.

'Let us discuss that later, shall we?' Loki told him.

They were soon out of the Drake, but they did not go all the way to their room. Loki lifted him up to one of the still empty tables in Tony's half-finished workshop. Then he looked at the wound, but did not lift the shirt away only for an inch or so.

'Have you ever sewn a wound closed?' Tony asked. He knew that they had everything they needed in the med supplies and it did not matter whether Loki had done anything like this before, it's not like he had anyone else to help him.

'That won't work,' Loki said. 'The wound's too deep, you would die of internal bleeding if I just closed it.'

That one sentence filled Tony with even more dread.