Words cannot begin to describe the arduous journey that had begun in earnest once Loki bent the hidden pathways in Yggdrasil's branches and forced them to bow to his will.
Jane's entrance into Svartalfheim is an abrupt journey through a vacuum that sucks all the breath from her lungs as she traverses a million light-years in a dizzying second that seems to last an eternity. She stumbles onto the hard ground heaving and panting, and for the umpteenth time, curses Thor's need to have her perpetually at his side even as they edge into battle with the dark elves.
When her eyes get used to the darkness, she realises that she is standing on an elevated plane surrounded by the jagged tops of encircling cliffs that fade into inky blackness. From this vantage point, the forbidding landscape stretches for miles around, an unchanging gradient of slate grey and black punctuated only by the glint of several rivers that meander through the floodplains in the distance. She shuffles forward uncertainly, then gasps when her foot scrapes the edge of the cliff.
A hard hand clamps onto her upper arm and pulls her back roughly until she stumbles backwards and falls onto her rear.
"Quiet!"
For a moment, Jane simply sits still in bewildered shock, wondering what the hell just happened. Only when her heartbeat returns to normal does she belatedly realise that Loki has teleported them onto the top of a cliff heavily shielded by trees that seem to obscure all light.
And that it had been him who had pulled her back to safety.
But before she can ponder that action, a gentler hand pulls her up and dusts her off as she looks at her saviour with gratitude. Thor's kindness is a soothing balm, but it does not disguise the fact that her presence is unwanted and unwelcome to all but Thor.
The honest truth is that she couldn't agree more, her voice having been the loudest one to object when Thor himself had insisted on the burden he'd placed on himself to ensure that she stayed safe and by his side at all times. Even Loki shouting his own murderous protests at the additional load they were to bring along hadn't been enough to change Thor's mind.
But what really, had she come to expect? That she'd be left in the care of the overtaxed healers in Asgard until Thor and Loki returned triumphant – if they did at all? Or that she'd happily settle into a stilted role carved for her as a citizen of Asgard and possible consort of the god of thunder in the millennia to come?
The mental image of a cage had been a spontaneous but traitorous insert in her mind and one that strangely enough, resembled the sort of enclosure in which Loki himself had been imprisoned. If the trappings of academia had been a beleaguered experience in her years of fighting for professional acceptance, imagining herself on a throne of duty was simply a gilded coop of a different sort.
It certainly hadn't been the life that she'd ever envisioned for herself when she began studying the stars. And perhaps it was this sense of panic and rising anger that had enabled her to do what she'd never thought she'd do in a million years.
She'd slapped Loki, an action borne out of unthinking reflex that Jane knew she would have thought twice about if she'd had both time and chance to ponder it. It was, as she'd said, for New York, but maybe, just maybe it was also an expression of unspoken frustration that after all this time, she'd seen so much and achieved so little.
In the face of her bravado and anger, Loki had simply told her that he liked her as his smirk turned into a grin that was both a threat and a promise of something more.
The problem was, she wasn't too sure that the Silvertongue had been lying then.
oOo
The angry, hushed whispers reach her corner of the tent, jerking her rudely awake. Rolling over and out of her makeshift cot, Jane creeps closer to the tent opening to listen.
"Release me at once."
"I cannot."
"You will not. That is the difference."
A hiss of frustration issues from Thor's lips. "You do not understand-"
"I don't? With Mjolnir, you can break these. They are of the same make as Mjolnir. Look around you, Odinson! I need my magic. Otherwise I will be as useless as your friends in battle with the Svartalfar."
"Father had already said that it is not yet time. Perhaps when we finally open a wide enough pathway for the Asgardian troops will you finally get what you seek. And there is nothing except-"
A mocking chuckle cuts Thor off. "And you take Odin's words as complete truth? He, who has seen fit to disguise what you now know as my true heritage, brother mine? Perhaps it is your foolishness will be our defeat."
"Loki, he is also your fath-"
"Speak no more of this!"
And then there is silence, tense and uneasy.
The conversation however, replays in her mind to no end.
Hadn't Thor told Loki that his bindings were held together by the life force of Odin himself, or was that a lie, as inconceivable as it seems? Had Loki thought that Thor simply wanted to keep him under subjugation for as long as he could? Or had Odin truly assumed that Loki's diminished powers would suffice in Svartalfheim in a gesture of hubristic arrogance that so archetypically exists in beings who pride themselves miles above human understanding?
What exactly did it take to break Loki's cuffs? If now wasn't the right time, then when exactly is it? Yet there had to be another way, as Thor's words seemed to have hinted at, before Loki's infuriated rejoinder cast doubt on Odin's intentions.
Wherever the answer lies, the decision to keep Loki bound is not one she understands herself.
Not for the first time, Jane finds herself pondering the unbridgeable rift between Thor and Loki. She knows that things hadn't always been that way. That much Thor has already mentioned. Yet nothing quite adds up to the angry, bitter god of mischief that she now sees, so full of hatred for his own brother.
To her, it is another piece of a jigsaw puzzle that has been millennia in the making.
The sound of approaching footsteps makes Jane hurry back to her cot where she bundles herself up hurriedly and turns away from the tent opening. She keeps herself still until Thor's movements stutter into silence at the other side of the tent, then squeezes her eyes shut.
Sleep, however, is an elusive entity that sweeps like mist over her head and into nothingness.
oOo
The attack that comes a few hours later is a swift offensive that splits the land in half in the still of the perpetual night. In a blinding flash of lightning and thunder, Mjolnir breaks the ranks of the advancing troops as the skies swirl an ominous purple.
With horror, Jane sees Loki struggle futilely with his bindings, an expression of rage and frustration tight on his face as the Svartalfar army materialises through the dense foliage much too close for comfort. Reflexively, she clumsily pulls a dagger out of its sheath and shifts into a slight crouch, biting down a hysterical laugh at the thought of wielding it as a weapon.
Then all hell breaks loose.
Mjolnir's next elongated trajectory through the skies unleashes a torrent of destruction on the landscape just as the eerie battle cry of the frontline troops echo through the ruined glade. The next harsh flash of lighting that the hammer summons illuminates blanched and humanoid faces that glow an unearthly white, thirsty for bloodlust.
If her conception of battle had, until then, been meagre, Jane now witnesses in a heartbeat what many wouldn't in several lifetimes.
To her left, Loki is locked in combat with several dark elves. Even without his magic, he's quick enough to avoid their blows through sheer strategy and cunning, sidestepping his way through them as he takes them down with calculated moves. With the cuffs still firmly locked around his wrists, his every move is still executed with grace and deadly precision.
But the dark elves keep coming. Her dagger goes momentarily slack in her hand as she sees another hulking figure creep up from behind him as he is busy dispatching yet another soldier.
Loki's their best bet out of this godforsaken place. And right now, Jane's willing to do what it takes to ensure that happens. Without thinking too much, she shouts his name, throws her small blade at him, and prays that her aim isn't pathetically off.
He whirls around instantly, the dark blood of the slain elves thick on his face and snatches the blade out of the air, then slides it hard into the elf behind him. With a yell, he shoves the bulk of the solider off him and in the next second, takes another three down with her dagger.
The carnage is making her head spin. As though from a distance, she hears Thor shout a warning as she is pulled behind him.
"Jane," he whispers her name, running a light finger down her cheek in a gesture so heartbreaking that she can't help but nod in response, in what she hopes is a shaky but reassuring manner.
But Thor isn't looking at her anymore. He's raising Mjolnir towards the heavens, commanding the elements of nature with a sure hand as the hammer begins to weave a protective net of lightning bolts around the area where they stand. Caught in the eye of a perfect storm, the scientist in her rushes to understand the process of charge separation that happens so close to the surface of the ground. The mortality that is inherent in her frame simply shivers from the massive static discharge of the energy that Mjolnir is producing as she flinches at the sharp brightness and the crackling of accompanying thunder.
Yet even Thor's brilliant mesh of fortification does not seem to be enough. The first of the dark elves leap through the gaps in the cracking earth just as he swings Mjolnir hard into the mud, isolating their platform from those that attempt to scrabble for level ground. The elves fall into the newly-formed gorge, their screams issuing from their open mouths as high-pitched wails that make her instinctively clap her hands over her ears.
But how long can this defence be sustained before Thor and Loki are gradually worn down to the point of collapse?
The answer to that question comes abruptly in the next second.
The dark elves suddenly retreat, disappearing through the destroyed foliage as the noise of battle is reduced to the harsh splatter of the driving rain on muddy ground. Mjolnir finally whirls to a halt in Thor's open palm, leaving the lingering scent of ozone in its trail as the bolts of lightning that had formed her temporary safe haven disappear.
What she hears after that heartbeat of silence reduces thunder and lightning to a parody of weather systems.
Through the driving rain and mud, she sees Malekith emerge from nowhere, a hulking figure in black and white that is monstrously familiar. And by his side, is his faithful minion, Algrim the Strong.
There is little that Malekith needs to do to break up an indefensible party of three.
In a flash of grey, white and black, she sees Loki fall to his knees and Thor in mid-swing of his hammer as he mouths her name, then the ground drops beneath her feet without warning. Cast fifty feet into the air with an invisible, choking hold over her neck and tethered to nothing but the web of magic that Malekith is forcing upon her, Jane can't even scream as everything turns a searing white in her field of vision.