Theft
"Can you feel this?"
Jane's whole body shudders, deep, down to the bone. It's only because her mouth is open and her lips are slack that her teeth don't chatter.
"Yes," she murmurs, eyes fluttering open. "Yes."
There's a minute distortion in the fabric of the air, a prismatic discoloration that shatters the familiar sight of her lab into something magical, something significant. Her fingers and Loki's meander in and out of this distortion, playing with the raw magic he's summoned into the air. Her skin is raised in goosebumps from shoulders to shins; it's as if the tips of her fingers are resting on the hidden heartbeat of the universe.
It's unsettling, exhilarating, and oh yes. She feels it.
"Focus," he whispers, taking a firm hold on her wrist. "Take hold of it."
She laughs—or would, if she had the breath for it. "No way."
"You can," his fingers tighten, sending a further jolt of electricity through her that Jane suspects has nothing to do with the magic in the air, "Trust me. Feel your way to it; it's there."
Jane swallows her instinctive blurt of incredulous laughter and breathes in, shakily. She'd asked for this; she isn't going to chicken out when confronted with the reality of it. She reaches out, pushes forward, uses the leverage point of Loki's hand to reach further into the rift he's holding open.
"I can't feel my fingers," she gasps. Her shoulders tense, her elbow jerks, but Loki holds her firmly in place.
"Push through," he says, soft, reassuring. "It's all right. You're touching the void now, the space between spaces. Reach through to the other side."
Jane takes another breath, one that wheezes through her dry throat, and pushes through. Now it's not her fingers she doesn't feel, but her wrist. Neither is visible, but there is a current of air drifting between her fingers, cold and clear as water.
On the other side of the universe, her fingers are intact, the molecules coalesced together and still under control of her mind. How any of that's possible without the muscular connection of her wrist is beyond her abilities in the moment to contemplate.
"This is insane," she laughs again, "Absolutely insane!"
"Just imagine how it looks to someone on the other side," she feels Loki's grin against her cheek, "seeing your disembodied hand floating through the air."
Jane chokes, giggling helplessly. She waggles her vanished fingers in a jaunty little wave, squealing when she touches something round and firm.
"I've got it," she grips it, feeling the skin of the fruit giving gently under her grasp, "I've got it!"
Loki's hands move to her shoulders, jerking her backwards. In an instant, Jane's reeling on her heels, the apple of Idunn heavy and golden and real in her hand, and Loki's subspace tear is sealed as though it had never been.
"Oh my God," she gasps, "I did it. I did it!"
