"Once I called you brother.
Once I thought the chance to make you laugh
Was all I ever wanted…"
—The Prince of Egypt
Loki watched Thor tuck the blanket around Jane's fragile shoulders, and smirked to himself at the absurd display of tenderness from a brute. The ship hummed beneath them as they drifted through the wreckage of Svartalheim. On any other night, Loki might have peered over the edge to admire the sheer desolation of this rugged world; the raw chaos still lingering in the darkness sent a tingle through his veins. But tonight, a darker energy hummed in his blood. He sat beside the steering console, his bound hands guiding the ship with practiced skill through the deadly debris littering the planet.
He let his eyes trail over Jane's face. Not even in sleep did the little mortal seem to relax. The smooth contours of her face pulled together in a frown, the hair trailing over her pale cheek. She looked far too small to be here, in this world. Far too vulnerable.
And yet she housed the most destructive power known to the Nine Realms.
"What I could do with the power that flows through those veins," he murmured.
Thor shot him an uncharacteristically grave look. "It would consume you."
Loki smirked at his brother, enjoying the protective glint in the elder god's eye when he watched the young woman sleep.
"She's holding up all right… for now."
Thor's deep voice returned with conviction. "She's strong in ways you'd never even know."
Loki pressed his lips together and shook his head. He almost pitied the fool. "Say goodbye."
"Not this day."
Loki got to his feet, riling up his brother more out of habit and boredom than any real malice. "This day, the next, a hundred years. It's nothing. It's a heartbeat. You'll never be ready. The only woman whose love you prized will be snatched from you—"
"And will that satisfy you?" Thor snapped.
"Satisfaction's not in my nature."
"Surrender is not in mine." Thor held his gaze with a cold stare, attempting to cow him into submission. The likeness to their—Thor's—father was uncanny. Loki tilted his head.
"Son of Odin—"
"No, not just of Odin!" Thor stood, pent-up rage and grief coloring his face. "You think you alone loved mother? You had her tricks but I had her trust."
A pain like a dagger lanced through Loki's chest. He stepped forward. "Trust?" he hissed. "Was that her last expression? Trust? When you let her die?"
"What help were you in her cell?" Thor taunted.
"Who put me there?" Loki snarled. "Who put me there?"
Thor lunged, catching Loki by the shoulders and slamming him back into the ship's siding. "You know damn well, you know damn well who!"
The fist was there, just inches from his face, and Loki braced himself for the blow. Thor's furious blue eyes ticked between his, and he could see the struggle there. But the higher road—his brother always took the higher road—won out.
He lowered his arm. His breath came ragged.
"She wouldn't want us to fight."
The brokenness of Thor's voice made Loki's own defenses slacken. He pushed himself up off the wall. For the most fleeting of moments, he could almost see their mother's face, drawn with disapproval over her boys' antics, though the love she could never hide still burned fiercely behind her eyes.
"Well," he muttered, just a hint of a smile tipping his lips. "She wouldn't exactly be shocked."
Thor must have felt it too, for his pained expression eased slightly, a humorless smile on the corner of his mouth.
"I wish I could trust you," he murmured. To Loki's surprise, the longing in his voice was real. Thor stepped back, his eyes still on his, before slowly turning away, back to Jane. Loki watched him settle himself across from his lady. Then he leaned forward, the low intensity of his voice almost too soft for Thor to hear.
"Trust my rage."
Thor does hear. He turns, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes briefly brush his brother's. Then he leans back against bench a few feet from Jane, his hammer resting across his knees, and closes his eyes. After a few moments, his brother's breathing evens, and all goes still on the little craft.
Loki's gaze narrows. In all the years he'd known Thor, the bloke always knew how to knock him down a notch. It was beyond insulting—to fall asleep in his presence with his lady lying vulnerable between them. As if Loki posed no threat, helpless and cuffed as he was. Resentment burned within him. Oh, he posed far more a threat than Thor would ever know. Metal bonds or not, Loki had enough magic to cross the pod, slit his brother's throat with a Jötunn ice blade and leap away into the wilds of Svartalheim before Heimdall could even bat his golden eyes.
But no. He was here for a purpose. As much as he despised Thor, he would have to put aside his bitterness until he could extract revenge on the beast who took his mother.
He let his eyes fall back to his brother lying there, a slight pucker between his blonde brows. An odd sense of mutual pain, of something he shared with this hammer-toting oaf he once called kin, rose in his chest.
Their mother.
"He loves you, you know."
Loki looked up, startled to hear Jane speak. The young mortal lay where Thor had left her, curled under the blanket with her hair wind-tossed over her face, yet her brown eyes were open, fixed on him.
He turned toward her. "What?"
"He might not show it," Jane murmured, and he wondered if she fully knew what she was saying. Her voice was faint, on the borders of sleep. "Not always," she continued. "But he does. He's adamant about the fact that you're still his brother, no matter what you did. No matter how much you push him away."
Loki smiled down at her, a cold sort of smile that would make most Aesir—let alone humans—scuttle away in fear. Jane was either too tired, or too thick, to fully appreciate the effect.
"And I suppose you would be an expert on Thor's love."
Her dark eyes slid away from his, the hint of a flush tinting her cheeks. He found his own eyes drawn to the color.
"I'm not, actually," she mumbled, almost too quiet for him to hear.
"Oh?" He pushed himself off from his resting place on the wall and sauntered toward her, his steps slow and deliberate. She didn't shrink back, only watched his approach with veiled eyes.
He leaned against the ship side an arm's length from her and peered down. "Is my brother not madly in love with you?"
He saw her delicate throat bob in a nervous swallow. Was it his proximity? The fact that Thor lay unawares too far away from her reach? He leaned forward, expecting to see fear cross her features. But her eyes flicked away from his, toward his brother—and there was confusion there. He frowned at that.
"Thor loves the idea of me," she whispered. A slight shrug of her shoulder made the blanket slip down over her arm. "I guess he's never had a woman who hasn't fallen head over heels for his image: legendary warrior, charming prince of Asgard."
Loki chuckled darkly. "And many have fallen indeed. I suppose you'll insist you're different from the hopeless wenches who follow doe-eyed at his heels? Are you not also in love with the idea of my brother?"
Silence fell between them a moment. Jane's eyes dropped from his, and Loki nodded in satisfaction that he'd won the brief battle of wills. He looked away, out over the desolate landscape.
"I suppose I am," Jane whispered.
Loki turned back to her in surprise.
Jane laughed softly to herself and continued, "What sane human girl wouldn't be? A tall handsome blonde prince falls out of the sky into my lap, bumbling around with no idea how to so much as work a coffee maker." A private kind of smile lit her dark eyes, a secret joy Loki found himself wishing he could be privy to. "It was too endearing not to fall for."
He stared at her for a moment. Then he arced an eyebrow. "So you admit you do not love my brother."
She yawned, unaware of the dark intensity of his scrutiny. "I love him. But perhaps not in the way… he wants." Her eyes closed in a slow, tired flutter. She sighed. "I suppose we're both in love with the ideas we've constructed of the other."
Loki watched her a moment, watched the cinnamon hair skiff across her cheekbones in the gentle wind. The soft rise and fall of her chest as she nuzzles deeper into the cushioned bench. He smirked at how easily she again succumbed to sleep.
He remained at her side, for reasons he couldn't describe why, and let his gaze wander back to Thor's lightly snoring form. His brother's hands remained curled around the handle of his hammer, as if he so much as sensed an approach from Loki he'd be ready to leap up with complete alertness. Loki allowed himself a grim smile while he watched his brother slumber.
Thor claimed not to trust him. But his desperation showed otherwise. Thor fell back on the only alliance he knew—he couldn't help it. Loki shook his head with a low sigh. He truly was the fool he'd always took him for.
"The opposite of you, I think."
Loki blinked, startled, and looked down at Jane. He'd thought her asleep. But when he turned he found her sleepy brown eyes watching him, half-lidded.
"What?"
She let her eyes drift closed again, curling tighter into her makeshift ball with a sigh. "I'm the opposite of you," she murmured. "You hate idea of having a brother."
He chuckled under his breath. "That's the truth."
Jane yawned, and the little sound she made was strangely endearing.
"Mm, you hate the idea of him," she murmured. "But you love Thor."
Loki froze. He stared down at her, his mouth snapping open to retort, to flay her with words at her ignorant statement, but her soft breathing stilled him. She'd truly fallen asleep.
He sat there beside her, unable to take his eyes from her small form. And for the first time in a long, long time, Loki Laufeyson was unsure of his own thoughts.
An immeasurable moment passed. Then, ever so slowly, Loki reached out and tucked the blanket up over her shoulders. Jane sighed in contentment, and the softest ghost of a smile touched her lips. He couldn't pull his gaze from it.
And so the little ship traveled through the wreckage, two passengers oblivious to the dark world around them, while the last struggled with a world of bewilderment within himself.
Hell-O dearies!
I'll just start by saying, I really do ship ThorxJane, but for some reason I keep having these dreams about these two characters falling in love, and I just love it so I'm going to post it. :) I don't know if this will be a one-shot or a full-blown story, I'm still thinking. Tell me what you think, and I may add more if it's well-received. I'm trying to balance this with my other Loki story, Shades of Red.
Enjoy. Feedback and reviews much appreciated.