Thank you my dear commenters, you say the nicest things! :P This chapter was the most fun to write so far, so I hope you guys enjoy it.

The Hangman's Hands

Chapter 6: Shatter an Illusion

Days rushed by in a blur as Jane focused all her energy on solving the problem. Numbers danced in her head day and night; she would toss and turn in bed, mind churning pitilessly until it finally exhausted itself enough to allow her a few hours of light sleep. Then she'd wake again with a bevy of new questions and run down to the cage to ask them. She didn't always succeed in getting in anymore; security had tightened, including brief random checks on Loki carried out by actual humans, usually led by Agent Hill. It had made her worried about being discovered at first, but she soon grew used to them - and stealthy enough to avoid them.

The first time a random patrol walked in on her with Loki, she almost shrieked, scrambling hopelessly for excuses, justifications, defenses, anything to explain her presence. But Loki's hand tightened on her forearm to the point of pain, making her gasp instead. He gave her a warning look and said, "How nice to see you again, Maria. Not coming in this time?"

Hill flashed him an annoyed look and didn't reply. She didn't react to Jane's presence at all. With a rush of relief, Jane realized Hill couldn't see her; Loki had hidden her with his magic.

When Hill had left, Jane said, "Can you teach me how to do that?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Do you want all my secrets, mortal? I could, but I won't."

She let it go; the teleportation problem was taking up all her mental energy anyway. She was making progress, very good progress, especially when it came to practical aspects of the theory. Current computer and energy technology should actually be able to harness the probability field. The fact that space-time wasn't being manipulated obviated the need for the massive power sources that something like an Einstein-Rosen bridge would require, which would certainly make the project physically - and financially - much more feasible.

The main theoretical issue she hadn't been able to approach at all was that of limiting the probability field to something mathematically manageable. The potential positions, characteristics, and interactions of the subatomic particles making up a person simply represented an inconceivable - and ever-changing - amount of information. Loki had been little help in this respect, merely looking at her as if she'd grown an extra head when she talked about whether quark spin was a relevant factor that needed to be included. But she soldiered on with what she could.

The work kept her so busy, in fact, that she had no time to think about Asgard or S.H.I.E.L.D. or what Thor might think or anything else. Even through the tunnel vision of her research, however, she couldn't help but be disturbed by the effects of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s parallel investigations. If Natasha hadn't reported to her every time another attempt at interrogation failed, she still would have been able to tell when they were scheduled. Afterward, Loki was always grim and tight-lipped, eyes shining with pain. He bristled at her whenever he thought she was trying to show a bit of compassion, but somehow that made it even worse.

Much as she tried to stop, she couldn't help feeling sorry for him. She reminded herself of the destruction he'd caused, the people he'd killed - even looked up the names of the victims of his attacks. Herbert Schlünken, Katherine Darnley, Sarah O'Keefe, Dwayne Brown, Phil Coulson, she repeated to herself whenever she had the urge to laugh at something he said or admire some exploit he was telling her about in the course of explaining how the magic worked.

Yet the names remained frustratingly abstract, swept away by the living, breathing presence of the person in front of her. And he had presence - he was turning the full force of his charm on her. She knew he must be doing it on purpose, but that didn't mean it wasn't working. She found herself thinking that if only he hadn't killed so many people, she might possibly like him. He was profoundly unpredictable, incredibly ancient and experienced, but strangely emotionally frail. The odd cocktail of his personality fascinated her.

She began to resent S.H.I.E.L.D. a little more every day. She couldn't believe how brutishly incompetent they were. Weren't these people supposed to be professionals? The absolute top of the heap? Masters of spycraft and surveillance and information-gathering, funded with obscene amounts of taxpayer money? Yet here she was succeeding where they failed, right under their noses - and with no one the wiser. Best of all, she'd gotten what they needed without having to resort to torture. The more quickly her work advanced, the more trigger-happy and misguided S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to her. She was going to have everything worked out before they even noticed. And then -

And then her thought process floundered. Part of her knew that going back on the deal and sending Loki to Asgard after all was still the smartest thing to do, but an increasingly insistent part was rebelling against the plan. He had grown so weak, so isolated - no allies, no powers except his illusions left, and what could those really do? With the Avengers protecting Earth, he could hardly be a threat even if he did come back. And who knew what was waiting in Asgard - what was happening in Asgard?

Most of all, she felt a recurring need to prove - to herself if no one else - that she wasn't S.H.I.E.L.D. Just because she was working with them didn't mean she had to obey them. Or approve of everything they did. She knew more about the science, more about Loki, quite likely more about Asgard than any human, and that put her in a better position to make decisions about all three of those topics.

Her work and her secrets consumed her until she barely noticed the other people passing through her life. Only Thor felt real and immediate - an anchor, a beam of sunlight breaking through storm clouds. As for the others, she barely spoke to Agent Hill or Steve Rogers, and she found herself snapping at Natasha whenever they met. The woman who had seemed so cool and glamorous when she'd first arrived on board now gave her the creeps. How could Natasha retain that porcelain calm while doing - what she was doing? She informed Jane twice a week that the torture had failed again and sounded like she was saying that they'd run out of milk.

When a little wrinkle began appearing between Natasha's brows whenever they spoke, Jane knew that the agent had noticed her new-found hostility. After that, Jane avoided her as much as possible; she didn't want Natasha wondering why Jane suddenly disliked her and catching on that she was hiding something. Worse, Natasha might get the idea that Jane was the security breach - she was perceptive, and it was far too logical a conclusion based on the evidence.

Tony Stark, meanwhile, presented a whole different set of problems.

Normally, Jane would have been thrilled to have Tony Stark interested in her research - even if he was kind of a dick - but now it made her nervous. If anyone was going to notice that she was making discoveries much too quickly, it was him. Unfortunately, he seemed deeply curious about what she was doing, hunting her down at the most random times and places to ply her with questions.

It was a few weeks after the night-time attack when she found him lounging at her workstation, browsing through her files.

"Hey!" she said, running over and covering the screen with her hand. "What do you think you're doing?"

"This is fantastic," he said, completely unabashed at being caught snooping. "I think you've invented metaphysical statistics and probabilistic dynamics. Can't remember the last time I had this much fun reading theoretical math."

"How did you get into those?" She tried not to sound panicky. There was nothing incriminating, but she didn't want S.H.I.E.L.D. to find out how much she'd done, and if Tony could break in, they might be able to as well.

"Hacked it. Good encryption, though. Took me only 30 seconds less time than breaking into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computer system. A gold star for the loveliest astrophysicist on board."

He gave her a look too appreciative to be respectful, too friendly to be a leer. She took him by the shoulders and removed him forcibly from her chair, which he accepted with passive good grace.

"Those are private," she said.

"That's some damn brilliant work. How old are you? Don't tell me. Thirty? Youngest Nobel Prize winner since the 19th century, right here."

In spite of her annoyance, she could feel herself blushing from neck to hairline.

Stark noticed, all right. He grinned. "Don't worry, that happens to everyone. I'm very charming. So, why the hardcore encryption?"

She'd prepared this excuse in advance, just in case. "I just don't want anyone reading it until I manage to write a paper or two. Last time I ran into S.H.I.E.L.D., they stole all my research."

"Ah, yes," Stark nodded. "They are bastards, aren't they. I mean, tell me about it. Actually, I'll tell you - "

"Please don't let this slip to anyone, OK?" she interrupted. She knew Stark wasn't best friends with S.H.I.E.L.D. - he might keep the secret if he didn't have any particular reason to tell.

"My lips are sealed, scout's honor. How did you come up with this stuff so fast? Last I heard, the god of getting his ass kicked preferred more ass-kicking to talking. You did all this yourself in a couple of weeks?"

She tried for a half-smile and an embarrassed shrug. "I guess I'm... kind of a genius? Actually there's some stuff you could help me with. I mean, if you don't mind?"

That got his full attention, safely away from the topic of where her inspiration was coming from. "Hit me with whatever you got."

"I was working on the probability field manipulator yesterday and I keep running into the materials problem - once it's built, it seems like the device's own probability field will interfere with the one I actually want to affect, which belongs to the person who's going to be transported." It was really a smaller and more immediate aspect of the problem of excluding the rest of the universe as a variable.

"Hrmm. Maybe a very inert material, probabilistically? Something with very stable electron energy levels?"

Jane smiled. That had been her first idea, too.

"I thought of that, but even a very stable material still has a structural matrix that could vary based on chance, not to mention quantum uncertainty."

"Good point."

"Unless you're planning to discover a perfectly stable new element sometime in the near future?"

"It's on my to-do list. Right below inventing time travel and actually reading the papers Pepper puts on my desk."

She laughed. "Pepper?"

"Friend of mine. Well, I say friend... You know, you could try integrating the device's field into the subject's. The calculations would be more complicated, but they're already pretty whack, so it won't make that much difference."

Now there was an idea. She felt a tingle of excitement. "You'd probably have to wear the device, then..." she thought out loud, "Which means small but powerful computing, really powerful."

"Quantum should do it."

" - and a bigger power source than I was hoping for - "

"I've got that one covered," Stark grinned. "Consider Stark Industries at your service. The temperature problems are going to be hell, though, what with - "

The conversation that followed was the most exhilarating one Jane could ever remember having. She kicked herself mentally for not seeking Tony Stark out earlier. Genius was no exaggeration. And once you got used to the stream of cheeky comments, he was actually pretty fun. It was surprisingly like hanging out with Darcy, if Darcy were a brilliant self-centered billionaire industrialist.

She didn't even notice that hours had passed until her stomach rumbled.

"Dinner?" Tony said.

"Do you usually eat here? I've never seen you around the cafeteria. Mess hall. Whatever."

He made a face. "S.H.I.E.L.D. spends too much money on guns to have any left for butter. Nah, we're about an hour from New York by Iron Man Airlines. Alain Ducasse? It's five-star."

"Are you serious?" She'd never been to a five-star restaurant in her life.

He shrugged. "Bit of a commute, but I promise the view's great. We can stop by the Tower and I'll get you some better encryption for those files. I'm pretty sure S.H.I.E.L.D. is fishing, so you'll want better security - for your backups, too."

"What do you mean, fishing?" Jane said.

"The lovely Agent Romanoff has been very sneakily trying to get some tech off me. She should really know better, since she worked for me... You might be next on her go-to list, even though it's not strictly speaking your field."

"Wait - Natasha? But she isn't on their scientific staff, is she?" Why would they send Natasha to ask for unreleased Stark tech? And had he said Natasha had worked for him?

Tony shook his head. "It's not for your project. You know how they're bug-zapping Loki down there? Turns out Asgardians are even tougher than we thought. Loki might be afraid of Thor's lightning, but only because it's got enough power to supercharge even my arc reactor to 400%. The stuff they're hitting him with probably feels like a nice exfoliation. Guy keeps laughing in their faces, apparently. Natasha asked me to cook up something with more juice, but - "

Tony kept talking, she could see his lips moving, but Jane didn't hear another word.

Damn tough. A nice exfoliation. Laughing in their faces.

It had all been an act. That bastard, he'd played her like a fiddle.

Tony could hardly have missed the shell-shocked look on her face, but she managed to get rid of him with an excuse about the talk of torture making her lose her appetite. When he had left, she sat in front of the computer, hands clenched into fists so hard her knuckles turned white. She kept hearing Tony's words over and over in her head. Laughing in their faces. And seeing Natasha's confused look at her sudden coldness. And Loki's pale, suffering features, over and over.

Her face felt hot.

She got up and walked down to the cage. It was still daytime, but she didn't care. Before she went in, she put her hand against the wall, breathed, tried to compose herself. She'd already danced to his tune enough; she wanted to stay in control.

Loki looked mildly surprised to see her. He was wan and haggard, the shadows under his eyes blue as bruises.

"Why don't you drop that stupid mask?" she said by way of a greeting.

His expression didn't change. "Mask?"

"You know what I'm talking about. I know you're faking it. S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't been hurting you at all. You're just - you're trying to play on my sympathy. Those things you said... acting like you were angry I felt sorry for you - Jesus." He'd used fucking reverse psychology on her like you would on a two-year-old. And it had worked.

He exhaled, slowly, painfully. He looked exhausted. "Isn't that - what was your phrase - stupidly circuitous? That I'd bother play-acting for weeks? And to what end? You'd already agreed to help me."

The fact that he was still denying it was so brazen it made her want to scream. She floundered for a retort through the buzz of her anger. To what end? "You suspected that I - " She stopped.

He'd gone very still. "Suspected that you what?"

"The first time we talked, you said for all you knew I was planning on double-crossing you. You never trusted me. You're playing on my sympathy to make me want to send you somewhere safe." That was it, the only thing that made sense. She knew it was true because that had been working, too.

"My intrigues seem to be getting more and more elaborate as you tell it."

"Don't mock me! I know you're faking it. Tony told me Natasha asked him for better tech because what they have can't actually hurt you. He said you just laughed in their faces when they tried."

A light seemed to dawn in his eyes. "Of course I laughed in their faces."

"What?"

"Did you expect me to grovel? In front of that woman? No," he caught her gaze and held it, "I won't give them that pleasure."

Jane wavered. "You're lying to me."

"No. I'm lying to Agent Romanoff."

She threw her hands up in the air. "You're lying to someone!"

"To her, Jane, not to you. Why would I lie to my only ally and tell the truth to my enemy?"

Even as he said it, the certainty that he was lying settled on her like a yoke. He'd played her for a fool, and it had almost worked. She had seriously considered letting him escape for real, had nearly talked herself into doing it. Anger and hurt pride ate at her insides like acid until she had to spit them out at him.

"Stop it, just stop it - don't you get it? Your game is up, I'm not falling for it anymore. You've been trying to drive a wedge between me and S.H.I.E.L.D., making me hate them and - and Natasha, because of what they supposedly did. You tried to flip me. I bet you were loving it, too, weren't you? Thinking you were tricking me behind Thor's back? Well, I'm not fooled." She shouted the last three words with a kind of righteous satisfaction.

But in the heat of emotion, she'd strayed within reach of his arm; in a flash he had her by the throat. He slammed her body down onto the table and pinned her there, helpless. Her hands flew reflexively to his fingers, but she couldn't budge so much as his pinky. A small sound of fear escaped her lips, but he only held her tightly enough to prevent her from getting away, not enough to hurt her or stop her from breathing.

"You should calm down," he said. "Before you make me angry. Things have been going well, haven't they? We - "

She laid her hand against his cheek, stopping the words cold. The illusion shimmered, shattered, fell away in a slide of gold. Behind it, his face was smooth and hale, not a trace of fatigue, bruising, or scarring to be seen.

"I knew it," she breathed.

He looked utterly dumb-founded. His breath tickled her palm. She took her hand away.

He swallowed.

"I should have realized," she said vaguely. "It's Natasha's usual play. She would never have fallen for it, no wonder you didn't try it on her. It could never have been real."

His eyes searched her face. "They didn't fail at torturing me through lack of trying. How does that make them any better?"

"Because," she said, "they're up against something so much stronger than themselves."

His hand tightened infinitesimally on her neck. "I'm glad you understand that much, at least."

"Being stronger doesn't make you right."

"But it does make this so much easier. Do you still pity me? Aren't you afraid?"

"No," she said recklessly. "You still need me. No one else can get you out of here. You know it's true."

He smiled and bent down to whisper in her ear. "Since we're telling truths, tell me this one: were you ever really planning on helping me?"

"Yes," she lied with all her might.

He laughed softly. "You don't lie to the god of lies, little mortal. It's a shame you puzzled it out. If you'd only continued to believe, I would've escaped the easy way and you would've lived."

The pressure on her throat was increasing. It was getting harder to breathe.

"Thor will kill you if you hurt me," she gasped.

She saw him hesitate, but the steel fingers on her skin didn't ease.

"Do you think so? Do you really think he loves you more than he does me?"

And then she was afraid.

"No," she said, "Wait - " Black spots were dancing in front of her eyes. "Please, I'll, I'll stick to the deal, I wasn't going to - "

Before she could finish, everything exploded with light. White light blazed from every particle of the room, from Loki, from her own body. The air was luminous in her lungs. Her eyes saw nothing but white on white on white, dancing, shimmering, waterfalls upon veils upon ice sheets of light. A rainbow sheen glanced off the edge of her vision. For a split second, she thought she had died and heaven was real after all.

Then it was gone and the cage seemed dingy in contrast. Loki's grip on her throat had slackened in shock and she wrenched herself away, rolling off the table and scrambling out of reach.

"Oh my God," she said, "Oh my God. What the hell was that?" The afterimage burned on her eyelids in a rainbow riot of color. She blinked and blinked, trying to wash it away. It reminded her of something; she groped in vain for the memory. Then she caught sight of Loki and yelped in surprise.

"What?" he said. He was half-standing as if he'd tried to bolt from his chair, looking around wildly like a hunted animal.

"You're... blue!"

His skin had turned blue. She couldn't see very well through the afterimage, but she thought his eyes were red as well.

He looked at his blue arm and seemed to come to an instantaneous decision. He began to jerk frantically at the hand pinned down by Mjolnir, cursing under his breath. He kicked at the legs of the table, but they didn't break or move. Jane felt like she was watching a rat caught in a trap. He was going to tear his arm off.

As if hearing her thought, he made a gesture with his free hand and a knife appeared there. She gaped. Obviously he'd been hiding the fact that he still had other kinds of magic besides illusion.

He placed the edge of the knife against the skin of his trapped forearm, then raised it in the air.

"Oh my God!" Jane shrieked, and covered her eyes. But when she dared to look, he had faltered, the hand with the knife still raised, quivering. A breath exploded out of him and he hurled the knife away and kicked the table again.

"Well," he said, sparing her a glance. "It will have to be Plan C."

"What?"

He made another gesture and a gun appeared in his hand. Jane cringed away, back hitting the wall, but there was nowhere to hide.

He aimed the gun at the glass wall of the cage and fired. The bullet ricocheted violently and Jane screamed. Not even a scratch appeared on the glass.

"What are you doing?" she yelled. "You'll kill us!" Vaguely, she became aware of an earsplitting shrieking from the helicarrier above them. It sounded like sheets of metal were being torn in half. The floor shuddered beneath her feet and a stab of vertigo made her wobble.

He took aim again. "There's a small chance the fall will dislodge Mjolnir quickly enough for me to escape before the cage hits the ground." He fired five shots in rapid succession.

A crack appeared in the glass.

Jane's ears were still ringing from the retort when the floor opened under her. She stared down 30,000 feet of crystal clear sky to the placid, sunset ocean below. The wind howled, shaking the cage. He was really going to do it; whatever that white light meant, it was bad enough that Loki preferred free fall. She ran for the door. It didn't open. Her hands were shaking too much; she took a deep breath and forced them to enter the access code. Nothing. She tried the emergency exit switch, activated by fingerprint. Again nothing. She pounded on it with her fist.

With a burst of insight, she remembered how the outer door had mysteriously been open on the night the attack happened. The incident, in fact, that had gotten Fury suspicious about a security breach. There was no end to these machinations. She whirled to face Loki.

"Let me out!"

He had conjured a bigger gun and was aiming at the glass once more.

"Please!" she said. "You might survive the fall, I won't! What's the point in killing me now? It's not like I can go tell someone you're escaping!"

He allowed her the briefest indifferent glance. But the door finally slid open.

Just as it did so, the outer door rolled back as well. Three huge blue-skinned figures stepped in - twice as tall as a man - bare-chested and grim-faced. This time she could make out the red eyes clearly. An icy cold seemed to step inside with them. She stopped, frozen on the small catwalk bridge between the cage and the edge of the room.

Gunshots behind her made her throw herself to the ground. Loki was shooting at the giants, with no apparent effect. She cowered in the middle of the catwalk, unable to go forward or back. Now that her ears had stopped ringing, she could hear people screaming outside in the corridor. The blue giants paid no attention to her at all.

"We have traveled a long way to find you," one of them said. He sounded smug. "But I believed capturing you would be even more difficult. How helpful of the Midgardians to do it for us."

"Then you've traveled a long way for nothing!" Loki said. "Only to watch me escape."

One of the giant blue men growled. Then several things happened at once. The giants rushed the cage; the cage dropped straight down, taking them with it; the sudden change in air pressure tipped Jane over the edge of the catwalk; a shrill whistle split the air and she saw Mjolnir hurtle past her as she fell. She made a weak grab for it, but it was far out of reach.

She fell into the sky.

It was bitter cold and the air shrieked all around her. She couldn't draw a breath. The helicarrier was above her, then below, then above again; she was tumbling end over end. She saw the cage falling beneath her, giants clinging to it, one of them inside and wrestling with Loki. A brilliant flash of light seared her eyes; when she could see again, the cage was gone, and she was falling alone. The red ocean sparkled with failing sunlight in an endless sweep below. It was beautiful. She didn't feel cold or frightened, only bone-tired. Her eyes drifted shut.

Something hard wrapped itself around her middle, braking her descent. Gradually, the fall slowed and became controlled, until it was a flight rather than a plummet. Jane found she could suck air into her lungs again - and think. As her head cleared, she realized they had come low enough for the atmosphere to be breathable again. In a trade-off, she could now feel the terrible cold more keenly. The helicarrier had been cruising over the North Atlantic, and she was wearing only a t-shirt and jeans.

Someone had caught her. The arm around her waist was a metallic red. She twisted to see.

"Tony!" she said. The wind tore the words away, but apparently the Iron Man suit still detected the sound.

"Hey," the robotic helmet said. "Funny hobbies you have. Hanging out with psychopaths, jumping out of air-borne vehicles."

"They got him!" she shouted into the wind. "Those things took Loki! I have to tell Thor. We have to go back!"

"Negative on that. Look behind us."

He helped her shift until she could see back over his shoulder.

The helicarrier was sinking down through the atmosphere in a long, majestic, inevitable slide. All the lights had gone dark. She could just make out a few planes taking off from the surface.

"What h-happened?" she screamed.

"Power completely gone. That white light," Tony said. "Don't know what it was, but it shorted out every last thing run on electricity in the place."

"S-shouldn't we go back? What about the p-people?" She was shivering violently.

"Honey, if we go back up there the only question is whether you'll die of hypoxia or hypothermia before we make it somewhere with oxygen and heat." There was no trace of his usual humor in his voice. "Not to mention the place is going down, if you hadn't noticed. We're finding the closest land and dropping you off."

"I'm sorry," she said. If he wasn't stuck saving her, he could be off helping a lot more people.

"Don't worry, they've got lifeboats. I don't think those run on electricity."

Icy numbness stole over her limbs, accompanied by a heavy feeling of failure as she watched the helicarrier's descent. Thor was there, somewhere; she'd seen the hammer, he had it back and that meant he could fly. She hoped fervently that he was all right, but realistically he was probably in better shape than she was. Most likely saving people. The thought brought a spark of warmth to her heart. But all her work was there too, crashing into the sea.

The fall seemed to take a long time; the colossal metal structure finally struck the water just when it reached the limits of her vision. It was too far away for the sound to carry, but she could still make out the huge, white-tipped waves the crash whipped up. They made momentary silhouettes against the starlit sky, and then subsided.

Afterward, she watched the stars instead, like she always did, and thought of nothing.