Loki's response was to turn the shield opaque to his vision. He was still angry. He remembered the obtuseness of SHIELD's reasoning, but to be faced with it again was painful.

"They have learned nothing from the battle. Where I have faced my many mistakes, my flaws that were so well exploited by another, they have not even taken the basic lessons from war. It sickens me."

Jane didn't know all of what he was talking about, but she knew him. "What more can you do? They won't listen to me, and they definitely won't listen to you."

Loki turned from the edge to look at her. "I was sent here to serve my time. I suspect Odin hoped that eventually, after enough good behavior, the temptation of my talents would be enough to persuade Fury and others like him to approach me for help. I doubt he foresaw my…hormonal surge."

"I like your hormones," Jane teased him slightly, not liking the perturbed expression on his face. She tried to smoothe it away with her hand, but it persisted. Jane, ever perceptive, knew that he was disturbed by more than just Natasha and Clint's arrival and SHIELD's resistance to their marriage.

"Odin expected you would work with them. That's why he sent you back to Midgard. It was meant to be a lesson for you, and for them as well."

Loki was no longer surprised by the quickness of her mind. "I dislike being the subject of Odin's manipulations. Sooner rather than later, the enemies of which I spoke will find me here. I do not know what will happen." He sighed. "I have probably accelerated their arrival with our marriage."

"You're scaring me." He could feel it, the cold wellspring of fear. It was achingly familiar, made his head hurt and his heart pound.

He turned to her fully and put his arms around her waist. "Don't be scared, Jane. I will do anything to protect you. I would die for you, and with my last breath send you safely to Asgard. No matter what happens, I will keep you from harm."

Jane felt his words wash over her, but it was his eyes that provided the surety. One was red, one green. Both parts of his nature were united, the words having a weight that settled over her like gold dust. She could taste him in the magic in the air between them, bitter honey to her senses.

"Dear Jane, you have not encountered so much darkness before. I am sorry to taint you by association." His voice was laced with real regret, and Jane felt she was finally getting at the deeper layers of him, beginning to understand the swirling vortices that existed at the heart of him.

"You're wrong." Jane's voice was determined, her touch on his arm demanding his attention. "I could not appreciate light without the shadows to throw detail into relief. Plain, undivided light may be pure, but it's the most useless when it comes to exploring and understanding the world." Jane suspected that Loki had never thought about it, merely considered the dark side of his nature an indication that something was flawed within him.

"Everyone has darkness inside them, Loki. You are more blessed than most, because you know how to manipulate it."

Loki threaded his fingers through her hair, cradling her head in his hand. "Ah, Jane. There is always an answer to the equation for you." He tasted her sweet lips, needing it more with the thought of the Others.

"There always is one. Even if you haven't identified all the variables yet."

"I love your determination," he whispered in her ear, tucked her face into his neck as she folded her arms around him. "And perhaps now Odin will take a hand. If they will not listen to me, they will listen to him."

"You mean Thor?"

Loki drew back to look at her. "Does this bother you?" His tone was snarky, but Jane smiled. She was beginning to know him very well.

"No. I just hope he doesn't mind that I went from potential girlfriend to sister-in-law." Loki's eyes softened.

"I really am beginning to care for you, Jane Foster, my lovely wife. And I know for certain that you will never bore me."

"You're the first man to find me not boring, well, other than your brother—but he wasn't around long enough to count, really."

"No, he most certainly was not," Loki agreed. "And I can guarantee that I will count, forever." If he caressed her abdomen she didn't notice, but he was sure. He could feel it, buried in her womb, creating the connections that would sustain life. She was carrying his child.

"Can you call them? I think we need to get this straightened out, before it's the Hulk next."

Loki caressed her face and gave her a wry grin. "I confess I have little fondness for the green man. He was responsible for most of my injuries the last time we…met."

Jane kissed his cheek, allowed her fingers to whisper down his shoulders and arms as she told him again wordlessly that she did love him, even with the ink black darkness that was swirling through him now. "You said you were possessed. Who was it that possessed you?"

She drew back, forced him to look at her with a hand at the back of his head. He was only permitting it, a courtesy he would give only to her, only to his mate. Jane realized that he would tell her things that he would never share with anyone else. "I can take it. I promise."

Loki considered the sincerity of her caramel eyes. She was not worried, no matter what he said to her. She trusted him to protect her. The darkness receded, the terrible memories of being consumed by the worst part of himself leaving a bitter feeling in his heart. "You know that I fell from the broken Bifrost. I was dying. At the very moment that my life was about to end, I felt…a presence. He offered me a chance to retrieve what I thought was mine. He appealed to every base instinct I had."

Loki paused and set her apart from him. He could not bear to have her touching him when he spoke of it. It felt like it would taint them, the poison of it still stabbing his psyche. He knew she could feel it roiling through him, but there was nothing he could do about it. "You asked for this," he snarled before he could help himself, the defensive mechanism always to lash out.

"Yes, I did. I need to understand." Jane wrapped her arms around herself, trying to make sense of the torrent of feeling and darkness that was consuming him. Rage, impotent fury, power, greed, hate…all of them were there, a sick, dark mass.

"I was given power, the power to control as he controlled me, fed on and encouraged my darkest emotions. Even my memories of childhood were warped, tainted. I thought Odin was always laughing at me, that he and Thor were conspiring to embarrass me, to keep me as a pet, always inferior. I even thought Thor had dropped me from the bridge, laughing as he did so."

The look he darted to Jane at this was one of pure hate, exactly as he had felt. "So you were going to get revenge on him." Her tone was measured, but inside she was terribly upset. This was why she had been sent to Tromso. If Loki had gotten to her like this, she would be dead. Thor had known what his brother was capable of.

"Revenge on him, and all of your kind who were responsible for him getting back into Odin's good graces." Loki stopped, the thin thread of light that had existed in him even then asserting its claim. "Even though I hated him, I still craved Odin's affection, his approval. Thanos could not strip me of that, no matter how many times he punished me."

Jane shivered, Loki's emphasis on the word 'punishment' leaving her in little doubt of how viciously he had been tortured. "How long did that go on?"

"There is no time, Jane. No end. Time is irrelevant when you are there. It is a place apart from Yggdrasil, a place of unspeakable evil. I do not know how long I dwelled there, but when he was prepared to release me, I was more than ready to assume dominance over your entire race."

Jane shivered again, and could not bear the tortured spiral of his darker feelings any longer. She pulled him to her through the bond, not even sure how she was doing it. But he came, gentling her thoughts with a touch and word in her ear. "Calm. It is in the past."

"You would have killed me." She nuzzled into his embrace, heard his heart beating, slowing to match her own.

"Yes." It was a terrible thing to think about, but completing the internal actualization of that reality was not as jarring as she thought it would be. He hadn't done so. He had been stopped.

"I'm glad you didn't."

"Nowhere near as glad as I am, I assure you," Loki smelled her hair, kissed it. "I cannot tell you more about Thanos. It upsets you, unnecessarily so. But now you understand, perhaps, a bit better, what went on that year."

Jane met his eyes with her own. "I already understood it, partially. I knew that something had happened to you. Thor said, when he came back to explain why he was leaving—he said that you were not yourself. He would not explain it further to me, but he said you were being restored to yourself."

Loki's anger shimmered slightly between them. "I would not have you deceive yourself, Jane! I am the god of mischief and lies for a reason. I hated my brother already, hated him and loved him alternately. I sent the Destroyer to your town on my own. No one compelled me to do that, nor to initiate the Bifrost to destroy Jotunheim. I am not some honorable god who was twisted into what you see today. Thanos had plenty to work with as I was." He was gripping her arms tightly now, and released her as he became aware of the sensation of pain she felt.

"Do you think I don't know that?" she whispered it, but her voice had venom in it, penetrating his self-loathing. "What do you think I thought you were going to do to me when you ripped the wall off my trailer? I knew you were dark, that you have undercurrents of pain and anger. I know it now. I can feel it in you! But you control it now. You didn't have control then, Loki." She twined her arms around his, encircled his fingers with her own so they were drawn together, face to face. "You have control now. And more than control, you have goodness in you. I see it, alongside the dark. I don't pretend to understand it, but I know who you are, Loki. I know more than anyone."

Loki wordlessly met her eyes, amused in spite of himself by the fierceness of her anger that she was directing to him. "You're angry at me, angry that I'm denigrating myself. You're quite the spitfire, aren't you, Jane?"

His voice was darkly sensual, and Jane felt the danger of her words too late. "Loki, this is hardly the time…"

"Au contraire, wife, this is the perfect time." He slammed her against the wall, then brought his teeth into use on her neck. His hands were dissolving her clothes everywhere he touched, and a whispered spell caused the bruises he'd made on her arms to vanish without a trace.

"We can't have make-up sex yet, we haven't finished arguing," Jane's protest sounded weak to her own ears. "Damn it, I'm still angry at you!" She shoved ineffectively against him, and he stopped his attentions to her breasts long enough to meet her eyes.

"I know, Jane. It makes it different, does it not?" His eyes were hot and filled with the spice of lust and a bit of his own anger. "But we cannot hurt each other."

She shoved back against him, hard, and he stumbled back far enough that she launched herself at him. "I hate you like this," she hissed at him between bites of her own.

Loki's laugh was deep and dark. "Your actions belie your words, dear."

"Shut up," and Jane made him do so.