A/N: Just because I can't let this go that easily. Rated M/R for...well, sex.
Puente Antiguo is unrecognisable.
Jane Foster doesn't know much about the rest of Earth, but all that matters is this small hole of a place that had been a watchful sentinel over her non-life. It's the gritty aftermath that's the worst, where shock has given way to desolation that hasn't yet given way to hope.
Her eyelids shut against her will and she doesn't fight the wave of weary exhaustion that she feels as she looks at expanse of destruction.
Life with an unpredictable god of mischief is nomadic and unexpected, a dizzying tumble of contradictions wrapped up in a day's travel. Only a month into their forays did she ask to visit Earth.
If that request makes him the slightest bit nervous, she'll never know it.
Loki is no less opaque to her than he was the day she saw him behind the glass walls of his Asgardian prison. He isn't as familiar to her as she'd like to think. He'll never be.
But there's something different now. A sort of conciliatory peace that's the product of having each other for company 24/7, as she seeks to balance his meandering ways by keeping her own part as uncomplicated as she can.
Her success, as usual, is hampered by the rings of twisted reason that he blithely winds around her.
Jane takes a tiny step forward and ignores the suspicious voices that raise their objections about the god who stands next to her. Concentrating on the landscape instead, she tries to pick out Isabella's Diner and the spot that her trailer used to occupy – and fails.
To say that the town has been flattened would be an understatement. But as much as she aches for what isn't there anymore, this small town in New Mexico holds the story of a past life best relegated to the rosy tint of memories.
The strain of academia, the science that she strives to prove…they're no longer small orbits around her mind when the god beside her is physical proof that her imagination is truly too small to contain the riches and the horror of all the realms.
She can let go. Or can she?
It's a mantra shaded within the obscure edges of a lie than on the clear sheet of truth.
"Shall we?" Loki's voice is oddly gentle, a modulated caress that makes Jane wonder if it's genuine. As she's learning, that's yet another facet of him which she's only just seeing because he wants her to.
She sighs her agreement. "Yeah. But there's something else I need to do."
His arm winds around her waist and she finds herself leaning into him as he whisks them both elsewhere.
oOo
Jane scours the comprehensive list of missing persons that's kept, strangely enough, under lock and key in S.H.I.E.L.D's headquarters. A beat of panic trips up her heart when she sees a name that resembles Darcy's or Erik's but that false moment of despair is quickly smoothed over by the realisation that her eyes are making welcome mistakes.
Her feet take her to Central Park or what's left of it. Under the shade of a tree, they watch a team of men in blue vests led by a pack of well-behaved dogs.
She sees Loki's eyes widen slightly at the sight.
"They are hunting," he observes clinically.
"They're cadaver dogs. Recovery efforts," Jane corrects automatically. "I was ten. Erik and I were walking in the park shortly after my parents' deaths. A group of policemen passed us in a hurry with a group of dogs straining at the ground."
He says nothing, simply watching how trails are wrought in the mud by both man and animal.
The quiet, hollow click of a gun's safety flipping off makes them both turn.
"Who the hell are you both?"
A man who looks to be about twenty-six aims the offending weapon at them with the cocky bravado of a law-enforcement officer who has just risen in rank.
Jane's response is nothing more than a huff of annoyance. A gunshot could end a single life; she's seen countless lives and realms destroyed at the mere flick of a hand gesture. It's the god at her side who, through his own antics, has helped the most in making fear bow to her.
"Someone you don't have to bother with," Loki says easily. There is no contact between them, but he's so close behind her that she feels the heat from his body warming her back, making her all to conscious of his silent, forbidding presence.
Jane throws a startled look back at him and what's meant to be an assessing glance turns into an astonishing stare that lasts seconds. Gone is the Asgardian armour; in its place are well-cut black pants, boots and a white shirt that stretches over the expanse of a muscular chest. His hair, however, remains as it always was, as though resisting the disguise that he conjured.
The gun doesn't move. "Tell me your name, your identifica-"
With a bored sigh, Loki cuts in, "Have it your way."
The air shimmers with his magic and the man disappears.
Her mouth hangs open with shock but it seems as though he's already anticipating her outraged questions.
"Fear not, Jane. This tiresome man is presently wondering how he managed to find himself in a place your Midgardians know as China."
She chokes a broken laugh and doesn't attempt to even shrug off his arm that has found its way around her waist. A month or so with Loki has given her the alarming capability to ignore his aversion to Earth and its mortal inhabitants.
"I tire of this," he says with an arched brow.
"Yeah, me too," Jane tells him quietly.
oOo
Jane thinks she knows exactly what she had left behind the day she threw her dice in with Loki.
But the full ramification of this action comes only as she sees that Earth has also forgotten her in that short period of time she found herself between worlds. She could laugh or she could cry but she chooses neither, seeking redress only in the most extreme of emotions. Life and death matter little when she feels his urgent nips on her skin and she flings her desperate pleas into the void as she urges him to make her feel again. Maybe he'll be the one to redeem her after she makes her journey to hell and back.
Loki's mouth isn't gentle over hers, but that isn't what she's looking for anyway. It's reminiscent of the kiss he'd forced on her after their escape from Svartalfheim, but this time, she simply draws him in, consumes him as much as he tries to consume her, digging her fingers into his scalp and savours the shudder that runs through him.
"No. Now." Loki seems to understand her demand. Against a hard brick wall, she feels him hoist her up and hears the sound of fabric ripping.
She's giving him leave to take what he wants and he does.
There's jarring, skin-rending pain as he invades her body, pain enough to draw blood from his teeth that rake across the unaccustomed flesh on her neck, breasts and thighs. His first thrust is deep and heavy and his second is harder, more forceful. As though feeding on her fractured self, he absorbs her pain and gives her more to drown in. Jane cries out and tightens her legs around his hips, welcoming the hurt that she thinks she needs.
Later, there'll be time for a softer illusion of lovemaking. Right now, she just wants to be fucked and taken mindlessly, not caring that she hasn't felt this raw and stretched in years.
Pain reminds her that she's alive and breathing amidst a fallen world. Pain that she welcomes because it shouldn't be carnal pleasure that she feels as he moves in her.
But Loki doesn't give her what she wants.
Instead, he slips a hand between them, his fingers pressing against dry flesh and stroke until moisture coats her internal walls, creating a delicious friction from his thrusts that turns her whimpers into groans of wordless bliss. Led only by instinct and the need for mindless completion, Jane arches into him until only sharp blades of her shoulders rest against the hard wall. Feeling his hands tighten around her hips, she thrusts back into him, grinding her want and need into him as he pistons into her.
She resists the orgasm that quivers threateningly from the base of her spine, clamping down on its imminent spread that will wash her world in nothing but light. Perhaps she wants to linger in this darkness a little longer, because what she sees is his face cast into shadow by the shaft of light from a streetlamp illuminating all that she finds beautiful about him.
Again, he will not allow her that leeway. In this, the lost is tethering the forgotten.
"Let go."
Loki's command is gritted out as a harsh growl that scores the delicate skin of her neck. His fingers slide more roughly along her wet slit, coaxing a deeper groan of agony from her. Bowing her head slightly, she touches her lips to his, then lets him take over the kiss that's broken only when she clenches experimentally around him.
His answering moan is a warm, shuddering breath that punctures and halts the steady rhythm of his hips.
"Not yet," she says against his lips and tilts her head back, closing her world down to pure sensation and monosyllables. Blinking, she's vaguely surprised to find a tear carving a slow, hot trail down her cheek.
"Please. More."
Loki complies for a while longer, changing the angle of his thrusts until unremitting pleasure sluices down the length of her spine. Then his lips find hers and she drops into her climax as suddenly as he wishes it.
oOo
The bright morning sun is in her eyes.
From where she's lying, Jane can see the whitewashed buildings dotting the hillside that stand proudly against the bright blue horizon. It's an image that she immediately associates with the picture-perfect postcards she has seen of Greek islands.
Or maybe they're really there.
Because of a strange combination of time and circumstance, she finds that she doesn't really care where they are, but only that the one whom she needs is here.
The landscape's natural beauty is momentarily forgotten as a warm, heavy body pushes hers back down into the mattress. A hungry mouth seeks her breasts, his circling tongue drawing shapes on her chest that shouldn't feel as exquisite as it does. His viridian orbs never leave her half-lidded eyes as he probes her with a finger, with a gentleness that she has never known him capable of.
In the distance, the cicadas chirp as she closes her eyes, circles her legs around him again and finally gives into the heat that he coaxes too easily from her.
-Fin