No light no light
In your bright blue eyes
I never knew daylight could be so violent
A revelation in the light of day
You can't choose what stays and what fades away
…
— Florence and the Machine —
Jane cursed under her breath over the manual pump up, her biceps burning, and wished for the hundredth time she'd thought to buy an automatic inflator. The cheap rubber mattress she'd managed to find at Marshall's swelled under her tired hands. Finally, the little inflating device became so hard to pump Jane tossed it aside and unclipped the hose. A gust of air rushed out before she smashed on the cap.
Sighing, she ran a forearm across her brow and gave the mattress an experimental poke. It felt firm enough under her finger. No telling whether or not it would deflate by the early hours of morning. Still, it was better than Loki trying to fold his lean frame onto the couch.
And she really wanted her own room back.
Standing up, Jane rolled out her sore shoulders and scooped up the inflator and hose. She turned to the hallway to stash it away in one of the cupboards, when she stopped dead in her tracks.
Loki emerged from the bathroom, rubbing a towel over the still-damp ends of his long hair. If it was possible for this situation to be any more complicated, it now was.
Because Loki—supervillain, megalomaniacal, supercilious Loki—looked like an Adonis in Levi's.
She'd had to take her best guess at his size, so she'd gone with looser just to be safe. A few sweaters and button-down long sleeves; a couple pairs of jeans, socks and the like. But now she felt a rush of self-satisfaction at her success.
The dark green button-up fit snugly around his lean frame, the first several buttons on the top left undone, exposing an ivory throat and hint of collarbone beneath. He'd let the shirt fall untucked over dark blue jeans that sat low on his hips. Finally, a dark gray leather jacket capped it all—the only thing of Donald's that had fit him. Fit him a little too perfectly, judging by the sudden heat that crawled up the back of Jane's neck.
He halted at the end of the hallway, rolled up the towel in his hands, and slapped it over his shoulder. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and for one horrible second, she thought he was going to say something snide and mortifying about her gawking.
"What infernal contraption is that? Some sort of weapon?"
Jane blinked. She looked down at her hands.
"Oh—"
Goodness, was she actually blushing?
"—that's just a pump."
"A pump? To draw water?"
A laugh chuffed its way up her throat. "Um, no. To inflate a bed."
"Inflate? As in… with air?"
"Yeah. See for yourself."
Jane turned and glanced over her shoulder into the living room. The air mattress sat pushed up against the far wall, behind the couch, to give as much semblance of privacy as possible. Jane had decked it out in all the spare sheets and blankets she had, with two flattened pillows at the head. Everything was old and probably thin, and the pillows needed fluffing, but at least it was all clean. It was more than she could say for most of the hotels on this side of the street.
Loki strode past her to investigate, and she caught a whiff of soap and peppermint. Two scents she wouldn't associate with the trickster of the Nine Realms.
Her breath skittered away… but that was definitely due to the weariness of the day, the exhaustion after pumping up the air mattress, and the overall fatigue of the past twenty-four hour's events.
Loki frowned down at the mattress on the ground.
"Am I supposed to sleep on this?"
A bitter feeling swept through her. He could fix his tone, she thought. She'd not only just spent money on every article of clothing he wore, but she was offering him her home.
Not that she had much choice in the matter.
Still, the least he could do was be grateful.
"Yes, you're sleeping on that," she said in a controlled voice. "You're too tall for the couch and I'd like my own bed back. You're welcome."
Loki stretched out a socked foot and tested the spring of the mattress. "Will it not rupture in the night?"
"The worst it could do is sink down slowly until you find yourself on the floor. Which is where you'll be if you decide not to sleep on it. So take your pick."
At her tone, Loki turned back to her with that raised brow. Then a thin smile tipped his mouth.
"Warm hospitality wearing thin, little mortal?"
Jane marched forward and jammed the pump into his hands. He caught it with a startled blink.
"If it starts deflating, just attach that hose to the knob on the side. Pump the handle yourself. Just don't wake me up."
With that, she turned on her heel and strode to her room, not giving herself a chance to look back and see whether that was a smirk or a scowl she felt on the back of her head.
The ceiling should have been painted some other color than white. It should have been inlaid with some form of texture, not such boring, monotonous plains of rolling flatness. Pale streetlight streaked between the blinds, skimming over the charcoal shadows on the ceiling in a kaleidoscope of patterns. Blues and grays and every inky color in between, fading in and out of one another.
Jane lost track of time of how long she stared at the ceiling.
She lost track of how many times she'd rolled over, punched her pillow, twisted up in her sheets, and yanked the blankets up over her ears.
…
"See that star, Jane? "
"Where, Daddy?"
"Follow my finger. The one with the square, and the three points."
"That one there?"
"Yeah. Guess which one this is. They say he looked like a horse with huge, feathery white wings. He helped a hero save a lovely princess from a terrible sea monster. The stories say Zeus put him up in the sky to honor his heroic fighting in battle."
…
Jane pressed her hands over her ears, digging her teeth into the pillow.
Stupid to think that, after twenty-three years, she could drown out the memories.
…
"I know! I know! It's Pegasus."
"Right you are, my little astronomer."
Little Jane giggled when the huge hand ruffled her hair, clinging tight to her father's waist.
"Another one," she pleaded.
"See those twin lines there? Two great fighters, who look like they're holding hands. They were brothers, inseparable, famous warriors. Each one was brave and strong in battle, but when they fought together… they were undefeatable."
Jane tapped her fingers against her chin. "Hmm. That's hard."
"You know 'em. Think really hard."
Jane squinted up at the sky. The stars in question glimmered brightly down at her, winking and twinkling as they waited for the answer. Then a huge grin spread across her face.
"Castor and Pollus!" she crowed triumphantly.
Two big strong arms latched round her waist and heaved her high, right up onto a pair of broad shoulders. Jane squealed happily and grabbed onto her father's forehead for balance.
"Want to hear something neat?"
Jane folded her elbows on her father's head and dropped her chin to rest atop his messy brown hair.
"Yeah."
"In the time the mythologies were written," he began, his voice deep and melodic. "The ancient peoples of the near east used to think this big black sky up above held a thousand secrets. Stories, maps, great beings. But the most beautiful mystery of all were these millions of stars. Back then, each of those lights up there were holes in the floor of Heaven. The stars we see gave us a peek of the brilliance in the Great Beyond."
Jane stared up at the great soft band of the Milky Way above. New Mexico's clear desert sky hung vast and clear, free of any pollution from city lights and suburbia. The stars looked so bright, so close, she felt she could almost reach up and tickle her fingers through the millions of tiny lights. She wondered if she could scatter them like fireflies.
So many of them, small ones, big ones, bright ones, dim ones. Blues, whites, emeralds, silvers. It looked as if the whole lot of them had been tossed up there by a giant hand. Jane stretched her mind and tried to imagine. Each and every one of those faraway stars, pinpricks in the floor of heaven. It looked so glorious that, for a moment, she wondered if a shadow might pass over the stars as God walked by overhead.
"Do you think Mama's up there?"
She felt her father still beneath her. His hands tightened, ever so faintly, on her ankles.
"She sure is, Jane," he whispered. "Your Mama's up there listening to God tell his stories about the universe. She's hearing every secret that's ever been made. Finally getting all her questions answered."
"Just like she always wanted," Jane said with a smile. "I'm going to be just like Mama, Daddy. I'm going to study the stars, and I'm gonna change the world someday."
Between her knees, she could feel her father swallow. His grip on her feet squeezed, warm and solid.
"That you are, honey," he murmured.
For a long, quiet moment the two of them stood in the cool summer air, staring up at the scattered constellations above them.
The soft wind picking up over the sand almost drowned out her father's next whispered breath.
"That you are."
…
Jane closed her eyes, tight and hard against the burn.
She hadn't returned to those memories in… years.
With a low sigh, she rolled herself out of bed. The floor felt cold against her bare feet, and a shiver skittered up through her bones. Gathering her blanket up off her bed, she wrapped it around her shoulders and reached for the binoculars she always kept on her bedside table for nights such as this. Then, moving slowly and quietly so as not to wake the other two occupants of her apartment, she crept out the door.
The kitchen lay in her path to the outside stairwell. She glanced at the microwave clock. The glowing green letters read 3:49. Jane rolled her eyes and headed for the back door. At least she'd gotten a few hours tonight.
Of all the other residents in her eight-apartment duplex, Jane was the only one who ever took advantage of the open roof. In fact, she'd rearranged all the plastic furniture to suit her taste. Tonight, amazingly, broke clear and cold, even though the day had been overcast. As she climbed the metal steps to the edge of the roof, Jane let her eyes trail appreciatively over the spangled sky. Stars glittered across the inky expanse, blue and green and white and silver. There was too much pollution in Manhattan for her to see any of the cloudy Milky Way, but she felt the gentle ache of contentment at just being able to see the heavens.
She mounted the last step and headed for her customary chair, by the edge of the cement railing, drawing her blanket closer around herself when her breath puffed on the wintry air.
Then her breath caught in her throat, her feet freezing to the ground.
She saw the boots first. Black, gleaming, propped up on the edge of the fence, long legs crossed leisurely. Lanky elbows bent above his shoulders, hands locked behind shiny black hair. He was so still, Jane wondered if he were asleep. If she should be so lucky. Holding her breath, she turned as carefully as she could, and headed back for the stairwell.
"Don't let my presence drive you away. Sit."
Jane stopped short, her back tensing. She turned to look back at him. He hadn't turned around, nor moved a muscle, but she just now caught sight of the second chair pulled up close alongside him. A chair she hadn't moved.
Swallowing, she realized she was caught. She may as well do what she came for. Clutching the binoculars a little too tight between her fingers, she shuffled forward to the chair and settled into it. She could feel his gaze on the side of her face.
Several beats of silence fell between them.
"Looks like I wasn't the only one with trouble sleeping," she managed to say.
He said nothing to that.
"The air mattress… too uncomfortable, was it?"
He sighed. "No."
He didn't elaborate.
Fidgeting with the hem of her blanket, Jane finally forced herself to block out the stiff image of him sitting next to her. She adjusted her binoculars and looped the leather cord around her neck, settling back against the chair and lifting them to her eyes. Swimming spirals of stars filled her vision. With the pad of her thumb, she amended the focus, and drew her sights up to the brightest spot in the atmosphere. Sirius, the North Star.
After a few minutes, she'd forgotten her unwelcome company and a small smile tipped her mouth.
"What are you doing?"
She jumped, and the cold rim of the binoculars bit into the bone beneath her eyes. She bit back an angry word, and turned to see Loki's blue eyes gleaming in the starlight.
"Stargazing," she answered.
One perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifted. "Your work studying the stars drives you to a restless night, so you rise again to study the stars?"
"I'm not studying the stars," she protested. "Right now I'm just admiring them. It takes a lot less mental energy, and I can actually… enjoy them."
She put the binoculars back to her eyes. "Besides," she murmured. "It's not work that's keeping me up."
"Oh? And what keeps the ingenious Jane Foster up at so late an hour?"
Crap. She swallowed. "Just… My head's spinning. Things have been crazy lately. Got a lot on my mind."
"Mm. And by crazy, you mean my dramatic reentrance into your life."
She glanced sideways at him. His eyes were back on the stars, his elegant profile awash with the lights of the glowing Manhattan skyline.
"Yeah, that's part of it."
They both returned to their uncompanionable silence.
After a long moment, she heard Loki sigh.
"What are the Midgardian stories of these stars?"
Jane blinked. She lowered the binoculars. "Why do you ask?"
"I've been regaled most of my life by Asgard's tales of how they came to be. Glorious heroes and harrowing adventures, remnants of their bravery tossed up into the sky as mementos. Or apologies, a tribute to some angered power for some foolishness on the part of the Aesir. But I'm curious to hear the literature you Midgardians have come up with to explain the lights in the heavens."
She looked over at him. His light eyes remained on her face, seemingly sincere. No sign he'd turn this around on her in some mocking knife jab that send her reeling with humiliation. But then again, there never was with Loki.
Still. What was the harm in a couple mythologies about stars?
Clearing her throat, Jane shifted closer to him and held out the binoculars.
"See that star? That big, bright one up there. Looks blue. Follow my finger."
The corner of his mouth tipped upward. "I believe I can find it, Lady Foster."
A little unsettled at the unfamiliar way her name rolled off his tongue, Jane stretched an uncertain half smile at him. "Um, yeah. Well, we call that one Sirius."
"And what is the tale of this Sirius?"
"Um… well, we don't actually have a story for that one."
"No stories for the brightest star in your night sky?"
"Not for just one star, no. We have legends mostly about the star clusters and constellations. They make pictures, figures and stuff. You can't exactly make a picture with one star."
"And these… things? They help you to view the stars? Do your eyes fail you?"
Jane rolled her eyes and held the binoculars up in front of his nose. He leaned back and squinted warily at them.
"C'mon, they don't bite."
Lashes fluttered back and forth between her and the binoculars, he slowly tipped his head forward until they rested atop the bridge of his nose. His eyebrows slowly lifted.
"So they are a sort of magnifying device?"
"Basically, yeah."
A low chuckle rumbled from his chest, and he lowered the binoculars.
"Do you know Asgard's legends swirling about that same star?"
Jane blinked. "Asgard… but you would have different stars, right?"
"Some are different, yes. But the wormholes that connect our realms let in light from billions of years away. The Bifrost arcs over all the heavens, and galaxies from across all the realms can be seen spiraling beneath our rainbow bridge."
Jane didn't realize she had leaned forward, fascinated at the description of this link between the realms. She'd perhaps been the very first human to travel to another system, and yet her curiosity for the universe still hadn't been satisfied. She longed to know more. To go further. A little embarrassed at her obvious interest, she drew back.
"What does Asgard think of Sirius?" she asked.
"We call it Lokabrenna," he replied, mouth tipped in a wry, humorless smile.
"'Loki's torch,'" Jane translated, with the little Norse she knew from traveling with Erik to his homeland.
He looked impressed by her knowledge.
"Indeed. Our mythologies are far darker than such a bright star deserves. In their stories, the glowing beacon represents the end of the world. Burning. From the fire that I bring."
"Ragnarök," Jane whispered.
"Ah, so you've brushed up on your Norse history."
"It's just a story," she said in a hollow voice.
"Why, Jane…"
He tipped his head down toward her, blue eyes gleaming bright in the dim light. Jane had to catch her breath at the darkness she saw swirling behind them.
"You don't think I'm capable of bringing this fated destruction to the realms? I am the monster who nearly brought down your own world, after all."
"You're not a monster," she blurted out without thinking.
Both eyebrows rose this time. "Am I not? After all that I have done to cause you pain. To cause pain to those you love. You fear me. Do not try to deny it."
"Yes," she admitted in a shaky breath. "But a monster isn't capable of love."
His eyes crinkled at the corners when he grinned at her. "And what makes you think I'm capable of that? Such trivial sentiment is unbefitting to the destroyer of the Nine."
"I don't think, I know," she replied, holding his gaze. "From the way you reacted when your mother died."
He drew his breath sharply, and his eyes slid away from hers. For a second, his lithe frame went so tense she felt a jolt of fear that he might lash out in some unpredictable way, but he tipped his head back against the chair and released a stiff breath.
"Tell me another one of your tales."
Jane released her own breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She lifted her eyes back to the sky, still aware of the crackle of tension that now lay between their stiffened arms.
"My Dad told me once," she finally murmured. "That the ancient peoples thought those stars were holes in the floor of Heaven."
A low chuckle drifted over to her from his chair. The sound lightened the weight his earlier words had dropped over her.
"I've many doubts those dim twinkling lights would come close to the brilliance of Valhalla."
"Valhalla?" Jane repeated. "So… even the gods have a heaven."
"We are not gods, Jane."
She blinked. It was the last thing in the world she would have expected him to say.
"But, earlier. You told Darcy that you were…"
"I was being facetious. I am no more a god than you are. I am merely a higher form of being. Longer life, stronger body, more refined culture. But I live and die, just the same."
Jane frowned. "Is there any such thing as a god, then? Are all our Earth legends just reports of 'higher beings'?"
"But of course there is. Even my people of Asgard, far less superstitious than you Midgardians, know this. A far more ancient Being than even the Nine realms. There before the dawn of Time, before Odin's line ever began."
"Who is he, then?"
"You know him. His name was translated into Midgardian several millennia ago. Although in your tongue it's difficult to pronounce. No more than a handful of letters, really. Y, H, W, and H."
"Yeh…" Jane tested out the syllables. "Yah…" She gasped. "You can't be serious."
Loki only looked at her.
"Yahweh?" she whispered. "You mean…God God?"
A private sort of light rimmed the edges of his eyes. He returned his eyes to the sky.
"Tell me another one."
Jane's head was still swirling from this new revelation. She'd have to look into this, later. Loki, of all people, acknowledging a very real God… and one that wasn't himself. It took all of her willpower to bring her concentration back to the stars.
More than a little flustered, she blinked a few times before settling on a constellation.
"See that one up there?"
She lifted her finger, a black stain against the indigo sky.
"Looks like a stick figure, with two arms and two legs… yes, there. That's Hercules. The most famous hero in Greek mythology. Movies still get made about him today. He used to travel the world slaying monsters and battling dragons and tricking giants. He was very strong, but most of the stories sound like he was pretty full of himself."
A smirk curved the edge of Loki's mouth. "Sounds like someone we both know."
Jane shot him a glare. Thor had changed a lot from the self-absorbed, brash soldier who'd first crashed into her car in the desert. Mjolnir would never have come to him if it hadn't found him worthy of heart and mind.
Jane's throat tightened at the memory of Thor's resolute form walking slowly toward the Destroyer. Ready and willing to sacrifice himself for the people of her town.
A god, laying down his life. For her.
Her eyes suddenly drank in the stars with a new hunger, searching through the millions of stars and wondering if another pair of eyes, blue and aching, were looking back.
"He's up there somewhere," she whispered. "Isn't he?"
Loki said nothing. For a long moment, the two of them just lay there, side by side, staring up at the night sky.
"Thor wanted to keep you safe," Jane said.
Loki kept his eyes fixed on the stars. His lips remained pressed together.
"That's why he sent you here. Not to stash away whatever secret you're hiding. He could have kept you in Asgard's jail cells for that. You said your home's at war. Thor could have towed you along with him, wherever he ran off to fight, but he sent you away from the bloodshed. He cares about you, Loki."
"I suppose you think yourself clever to come to such a conclusion."
His voice was brittle, a blade sliding over ice.
"Let me enlighten you, little mortal. You are in love with an Aesir. And not just any Aesir. A creature of thunder and glory and legend and war. One day in his time would last your whole lifetime. He could blink, and you'll have gone. Your heartbeat will fade before he acquires one line of age on his face. You think he doesn't realize this? Thor may not be the brightest star in our sky, but he's far from stupid. Why do you think he's been away so long without so much as a visit? He's forgotten you already. And we wants you to do the same. You're a mayfly. A brief, bright flash of light and then nothing. A vapor on the wind. He's moved on, Jane. It's time you do the same."
She choked on the breath in her lungs. "You're wrong."
"Am I? Tell me, if Thor could summon masses of energy to send me here in wartime, could he not—throughout this whole year of peace—summon a little power to come here himself? What has kept him from you, his little mortal pet? Perhaps it's Lady Sif. She has always had eyes for him. It's about time he saw what was standing right in front of him. Beauty, strength, and several thousand years of life. Near immortality. Someone who knows him better than he knows himself, I daresay. He'll turn to her now, in your absence."
Jane squeezed her eyes shut, his every word searing through her chest. Her mouth felt like it was full of sawdust.
"Thor wouldn't…" she rasped. "He'd never…"
But a far darker light had come to Loki's eyes now. He leaned forward, his face just inches away from hers. She felt frozen; she couldn't bring herself to jerk back.
"You've seen the change in him, yourself. After our mother's death, Thor was blindsided by the full impact of mortality. He'd lost one most dear to him. And if I know the man I once called my brother, I know he'll do anything to avoid that pain again. He won't lose another. So he's distanced himself from you, in hopes that you'll forget him in time. He's done with you, Jane. You're only fooling yourself by holding out this vain hope."
The night suddenly felt so much colder. But nothing could compare to the coldness within those blue eyes, mocking, smirking, hovering so close to her own. Jane stared in horror as Loki's mouth curved. A cruel, glittering smile.
"Say goodbye."
Jane lurched back from him. A distant echo, a memory as if from a dream. Of cold black sands and dark alien skies, of two brothers on an aircraft, snarling over the fleetingness of a heartbeat.
Say goodbye.
"No," she sobbed, scrambling back off the chair. The blanket slipped from around her shoulders, and she clutched it like a lifeline.
Wheeling, she scrambled for the stairwell.
Then she skidded to a stop, one hand trembling on the railing, just before the first stair. Slowly, she forced herself to turn. She hated herself for the stinging behind her eyes. Let him see her cry. She had no dignity to salvage from under that razor tongue.
"I was wrong," she whispered. "You're not a monster. You're something much worse. Something capable of love, yet reaches out and tears people apart anyway."
Shaking from head to foot, she fled down the steps into the unwelcome darkness below.
A long while after she'd gone, Loki kept his hands fastened tightly over the binoculars. His eyes never left the sky. But there was no light of triumph in his eyes.
There was no light in his eyes anymore at all.
There you go. The longest chappie yet for this fic! Tell me what you think. This took me a long time and a bunch of elbow grease to crank out!
Review :-)
