A/N: This story was inspired by and written for the following Lokane prompt: "Jane as a reincarnated former lover of Loki's. Either Angrboda or Sigyn. Some time after The Avengers (A Dark World AU?) Loki figures this out but can't bring himself to believe it's true. At the same time, he can't stay away from Jane either. Jane fells there's something familiar about Loki but for all the evil he's done, she doesn't want to explore her feelings for him..."
I hope I do it justice and that you enjoy!
He was going to watch her burn, and there would be no pulling back.
They had gotten too close to the chaotic abyss of Muspelheim, their final unexplored realm now yawning before them like a rolling sky set aflame. It had always been a risk, but he had miscalculated the landing on the fragments of an ancient Bifrost that still hovered over this forgotten end of the universe. Their momentum had been too great, sending them tumbling over the jagged edge toward the swirling chasm. His arm jerked from its socket as his wrist caught between jutting shards of the broken bridge, but held fast.
Biting back the pain, a red glare filled his vision and seared the back of his mind. Loki tore his gaze away from the raging firestorm around them to focus on her, memorizing every inch of the face before him. He felt her hands tighten around the armor of his other forearm and he responded in kind, pressing long thin fingers into her elbow until his grip ached. From the corner of his eye he could see a flaming tendril stretch up from the whirling chaos and wind itself around her ankle. He felt his stomach plummet at the realization that it would never let her go.
"Forgive me," he rasped, eyes never leaving hers.
"How many times have I heard that before?"
"This is hardly the time for jests, Sig," he said mirthlessly. "But then...you never were much for timing."
"If you're referring to the incident in Vanaheim, that was your own fault."
"Really?" The smirk came despite himself. "I seem to remember you—"
The fiery fingers gave a sharp pull on her leg, and Loki gritted his teeth as he felt her slip farther down his arm.
Her eyes widened, tears glistening along the edges. "Yes, remember me."
"Not like this," Loki's voice was strained, emotion rising hot in his throat and threatening to burn away the last shreds of his voice. "Not in this damned place."
"I thought the stars were worth the risk." Her face fell as she watched his fingers begin to work against their trappings . "Stop it, Loki!"
"As if I would let you go alone."
"Don't be a fool!"
"I am a fool!" he screamed in a hoarse voice as he struggled to work his limp hand free. Though each pull shot a knifing pain to his shoulder, he continued, but still the Bifrost would not yield his wrist. A tingling numbness began to creep down his arm, and a wave of panic crashed over his chest before freezing in the pit of his stomach. His eyes shot open and he dropped his chin to stare at her, open-mouthed.
"Release me."
She shook her head, then winced as another fiery tendril snapped around her.
"Release me!" he cried, writhing to free himself.
"No!" Her voice rang with a finality that he knew all too well, and his body slumped, exhausted.
He shifted to watch the storm rage beneath them, eyes unfocused. When at last he summoned his voice, it cracked nearly in two. "You will come back to me?"
A smile trembled across her lips. "Never stop looking, Lo."
"Sigyn-"
The claws of Muspelheim gave a final, violent jerk and ripped her from his grasp into the howling void as the words fell dead upon his lips.
Loki blinked as the light burned black patterns across his vision. Night had fallen and still he remained on the throne, watching the golden glow of Asgard's second moon spill slowly across the palace floor. As his thoughts slowly melted away into darkness, the flickering torch crackled on in the deep silence, its hue glimmering red. His hand shot forward, wrist twisting in a sharp motion as the flames extinguished, leaving behind a frozen swirl of ice in its place. He needed neither warmth nor light.
The metal of Gungnir rested coolly against his palm, and Loki felt a shivering thrill in holding the Allfather's great weapon in his grasp once more. Asgard was at his command and mercy, though the realm had not yet discerned his greatest illusion: that of Odin himself. Wearing the mask of the Allfather had proven necessary after his near and supposed death at the hands of the dark elves, for had his survival been known, they would have thrown him back to the shimmering dungeons without a hope of another escape. He knew his actions on Svartalfheim would hardly have merited a change in his interminable sentence, at least in the mind of Odin. He absently tapped a thumb against the golden spear. It had been for this purpose that he had forged his demise: if he could not gain the throne as himself, he would do so as another. There was no one left to hold him back now.
A flame danced in his peripheral and his gaze fell on another torch seconds before he guttered it in a spray of icy sparks. He suppressed his brief wonder at the cresset he could not remember lighting, before falling back into his own dark musings.
He had kept her memory hidden for too long, a bitter blade embedded in the soft oblivion of forgetfulness. It would throb at times in the wake of familiar place or action, but he was always quick to banish any thought before the pain could gut him anew. It was always fire that brought her back, and he found himself retreating further into the numbing cold spaces to never feel again that which he had lost in Muspelheim so long ago.
He rose stiffly from the throne and descended the steps slowly, dazed and consumed in thought. Why the nightmare had returned to him so vividly he could not tell, but something had dragged it from the tangled depths against his will to the forefront of his mind. He felt his strides lengthen over the cold, polished floor of the great hall, echoes darting in and out of the solemn statues still holding vigil in the night. He tried to drum the memory back to oblivion with the quickening cadence of his steps, down, down—
Fire sprang up, unbidden, in an iron cresset to his right. Loki faltered only a moment before reaching out to douse it with an icy blast from his fingertips. The unexpected light had startled him and left him shaken. He felt on the verge of a dream, clawing his way through a choking madness to stay afloat in a skiff of his own making, the only haven left for him when the sun fell and darkness reigned silent over the dead halls. He found himself fleeing the throne room with only a glance at the flame still burning within its encasement of ice. A few steps into an adjoining corridor and Loki laughed at himself, shaking his head in wonder at his misplaced anxiety. Distracted, he had let his imagination run wild, and it was only natural that it had fallen upon the only moving force in the room. Still, sleep might not find him easily that night, and he did not wish to lose control of consciousness to the growing unease that still curled icily in his belly.
His pace slowed as he rocked Odin's spear back and forth restlessly in his hand. Moments passed before resolution finally snapped to and he summoned the thin veil of magic that wrapped him in the visage of the Allfather. He smiled, relishing the freedom that came with deception, the actions that demanded no question, only loyalty. Every bow and supplication that the Asgardians had bestowed upon their king had served to gild his pride and lift his spirits, a remedy he would heartily take now over the gloom of his own counsel. It would distract his thoughts tonight, if nothing else.
Finding such citizens in the dead of night might be a challenge, as most respectable folk had taken to bed hours ago. He smirked to himself. He was not respectable folk. Still, he had to always be wary of his guise as the Allfather and remember not to do anything untoward, lest his subjects begin to suspect even the merest hint of a farce. He had little to worry from the palace's main inhabitants: Thor and his warriors were often away, keeping order in far off realms, even unto to the furthest reaches of the worlds where he had sent them himself. Without their raucous banquets and quests for counsel to distract him as the Allfather, Loki had found more time to seek new alliances and weave a tangled web about his throne should anyone pluck a thread too close to the truth. He would have welcomed the Asgardians' presence now, if only to enjoy amusement at their obeisance for the briefest of moments. His glance flitted about the long halls as he rounded another corner. The other wings of the palace remained just as empty, as Frigga was gone and Odin was—he shook his head with the ghost of a smile. It had been too easy.
The glow of pale light down the corridor caught his eye and he found his footsteps carrying him toward the open air of a moon-bathed balcony. Pausing upon the threshold, he looked out upon the night sky and watched listlessly as the heavens whirled above him in rolling hues of blue and green. He had watched the stars thousands of times, noted their galaxies, and tracked their movements until he could predict their fixtures with his eyes closed. They bored him now, too unchanging to ever be of much interest anymore. His chaotic nature chafed at their constancy, and for a brief moment he longed to raise Gungnir and strike out one of the great orbs of light, if only to change space by one star.
"Oh!"
Loki's eyes widened, and he dropped his gaze from the clouds to cast about for the source of the soft voice. Then he saw her, hand pressed lightly against her lips in a frozen reaction of surprise.
"Od-I mean, Allfather…" she corrected herself nervously, ducking her head to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I didn't know—"
"Jane," Loki drew her name out, his lips widening in a thin, mirthless smile behind his illusion. "Did I not order you back to Midgard?" His own thoughts sharpened and heated in anger at having yet another reminder of another's happiness thrust so suddenly before him.
"I went back, but-"
"I believe we had discussed this before. You don't belong in Asgard." Loki felt the fury building in his throat as he fought to keep his imitation of Odin's voice in check.
Jane's jaw shifted as she bit her lip, and Loki paused, momentarily entranced by the action. She raised her hands helplessly, and he noticed their subtle tremor. "I asked Thor to bring me back. I-I wanted to see more."
"Thor has been gone for days. How long have you been secreted here?"
Jane's gaze slipped to the ground. "Um, about that long, I guess."
Loki unconsciously tightened the threaded image of the Allfather about him. How had he been so absorbed in his plans not to notice the little Midgardian woman traipsing about his palace unattended?
"And he left you here?"
She was reaching behind her for the support of stone baluster. "He said he would be back soon, so that there was no harm as long as I stayed hidden for a few days."
"Then someone must be taking care of you? A servant?"
"Well-"
He cut off her response with a wave of his hand, bored with the answer as soon as he had asked the question. "It doesn't matter."
"I'm sorry."
He considered her with a cursory glance. She hardly seemed the same woman who had slapped him as Loki all those months before. He stepped toward her with a tilt of his head, feeling triumph glow in his chest as she took another step backward. Let her grovel now.
"You defied me, Jane Foster. Why?"
She managed a weak smile, her posture slumping in resignation. "I wanted to see the stars."
Ah, yes. Thor had mentioned her being a little connoisseur of the skies, an "astrophysicist", he had called her. Such an unimaginative thing to study, he thought.
"Does Midgard not have stars of its own?" he retorted, annoyance nipping at the edge of his words.
She became more animated despite his icy tone. "Yes, but not like yours! This place has constellations we've never seen on Earth, patterns no astronomer could even imagine!" She gestured wildly, as if desperate to make him see. "What we could add to the study of physical cosmology if we could only study them. Distance, expansionism, redshift, not to mention how NASA would…" she trailed off with a sigh and a shrug. "It's just...I've never been so close to them before."
"Your world must be small, indeed."
Her brow furrowed at his snipe. "Yeah, I guess it is. But yours if bigger, which is why Thor let me stay a little longer."
"Let you stay? What a petulant little guest you are," Loki snapped, closing the distance between them in two strides. "He should never have brought you here in the first place."
"He was trying to save me, to save all of us! To-" Jane's voice had hardened, but caution still held her back.
"Just how were you infected with the Aether?"
She shook her head, bewildered. "I-I found it while looking for-"
"Thor." Loki's voice took on a slithering tone. "You went searching for him and found chaos, then brought it here!"
"I did not mean-"
But his fury was unraveling like a whip. "Asgard burned and lay in ruins from the fires of an ancient enemy, and for what? How many perished because of your thirst for him, for knowledge? Do not forget that Frigga died protecting you, " he spat the last word out, as if Jane herself were a bitter taste in his mouth.
Tears sprang to her eyes and Loki suddenly came to, as if waking from the haze of a dream. This was not like the Allfather at all. He swallowed the remaining fury that still burned his lips, cursing his momentary loss of temper. Forcing a benevolent smile upon his lips, he feigned a ragged sigh. "My grief has quite blinded me. You must forgive me."
"Sure, after I find a way to forgive myself."
Loki bit his tongue, wanting to swallow the sentimental lie even as it left his mouth. "The fault lies with them, Jane. They brandished the sword."
She looked away, her head bobbing briefly in half-hearted assent.
He tried to change the subject. "Your actions have puzzled me, that is all."
The shadow of guilt never quite left her bright brown eyes. "Have you ever wanted—" she faltered, then found the right words. "Have you ever felt this need to explore the unknown?"
He had been asked that question before by another. Something pricked at the back of his mind, but Loki quickly forced it down. "Curiosity has its limits. I have found that they are not always worth testing."
Jane wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "You've never wondered?" she asked, her voice growing stronger.
"Wondered what?"
"About all this." She spread her arms, palms up toward the swirling dome above her. "Space, planets, your nine realms! What they're made of, how they were created, how they all interact in this limitless universe!" She dropped her arms with an exasperated sigh. "Doesn't it fascinate you?"
Loki cast a languid look over the clouds behind her, then shrugged. "Not anymore."
"Why not?"
Her persistent questions irked him, echoing like a chorus of chiming voices in his ear. She would have been less inquisitive if he had taken his true form instead of Odin's familiar, doddering frame. How he longed to see true fear silence her cloying sentiments about science and knowledge.
"Because I have seen all that I wish to see," he answered with flat finality.
"Would you blame a human for trying to do the same?"
"You should have known your actions carried consequences."
Jane scoffed. "What, that a race of monsters had hidden an unbreakable force on the other end of an infractioned wormhole just waiting to take over my body when I got too close to it? That seems a crazy price to pay for poking around an empty warehouse."
A reddening hue in the clouds above her snagged Loki's attention and held it as his voice slipped absently from his lips. "Then perhaps you should not have looked at all."
"Maybe I thought the stars were worth the risk!"
His heart stopped cold at the familiar words. He sensed Jane brush past him, but took no further notice of her, his vision filled with the scarlet storm now erupting across the night sky.