"So, how exactly do you intend on- what was it you said? Oh yes- 'spring me' from this place?" Loki drawled and the Midgardian grinned up at him.

He hadn't expected that. He'd expected coyness, cold stoicism not such unabashed mischief.

"Smoke and mirrors."

"Amusing."

"No really, smoke and mirrors."

She returned some time later with a sheet of glass and set it up against the wall at an angle, explaining the whole way.

"This will reflect the empty passage on that side which lets me do my work pretty easily. The guards should make a brief visit in about seven seconds before reporting back to duty at the Bifrost observatory." She took a gun out and Loki recognised it as a smaller version of the one that Agent had shot him with. His hand went to his sternum and rubbed the slight burn that had been left there. It had healed but sometimes he felt its phantom heat more than the injuries done to him by the green berserker.

'You lack conviction'

"You might want to step to the side." The Midgardian interrupted his reminiscing and he rolled his eyes but listened. The gun fired and he could see her muscles tense as she tried to stay in place, keeping it aimed at the barrier just long enough for it to break. The golden shimmer wavered before falling away and just like that Loki was free.

"Nicely done." He wasn't usually so free with compliments but she had just freed him after all.

"I know. Now come on."

"Just like that?" He stepped out of the hollow space that had been his home for the past year. "You know they're going to raise the alarms when they notice I'm gone."

"No, they won't." She pointed back at the cell and the golden shimmer of the shield was up again and behind it his image sat, reading. "Your mother is very good at magic."

"Yes she is." His voice softened.

"Well come on then, let's go."

"Where to?"

"We're crashing a party." Her face was split by a grin, all teeth and mischief and an answering smile grew on his own.


Thor looked around at his friends, gathered around him. Fandral, ready with a quip even though his brow was furrowed, Volstagg, grave and silent not even asking for a flagon of mead as Sif had done and Sif herself at his right hand loyal as ever. Even Heimdall stood ready to listen and Thor was proud that he had such friends at his side.

His plan was risky and dangerous, yes, but he could see no other way to save Jane from a wretched fate nor to keep safe the good citizens of Asgard. Malekith would come to them soon, to take back the Aether and they needed to stop him.

"What I am about to ask of you is treason of the hig-"

The door knocked, the sound resonating in the dark chambers. Thor readied himself for battle, in case the Einherjar were outside, Sif's hand moving to her own sword and Volstagg reaching for his axe. Only Fandral and Heimdall remained unchanged, the former choosing to relax further and sighing loudly.

"I think I know that is." He said but despite Thor's questioning glances he didn't elaborate simply gestured at the door and Thor opened it.

"Hello everyone, how's the little treason plan going?" Alice asked and without waiting for an answer she pushed in, followed by a cloaked figure.

"Lady Alice," Thor blinked in confusion. "What are you doing here?"

Sif's hand tensed around her sword. "Who's your friend?"

"Oh I was just in the area," Came a familiar voice and Thor stepped forward as the hood was dropped and Loki's grinning face was seen. "Thought I'd drop by."

"Loki!" Thor roared and shut up quickly as Alice whipped around with a glare at him.

"Sit down." She hissed and Thor stilled.

"I thought it was you." Fandral said leaning back in his chair, glaring at her.

"Still angry about-"

"Being played like a fiddle? Yes."

"If it makes you feel any better I wasn't really trying that hard." She threw out the words casually while Fandral bristled even more.

"How could that possibly make me feel better?"

"Well I just have a lot of experience in lying. Especially to men, they are just so easy." Thor believed her.

"What is Loki doing here?"

Alice looked at Thor, all surprise and shock and for a moment he believed it. "I thought that was the plan? Break Loki out of prison, rescue Jane and then rush away from Asgard."

"You-"

Thor stopped himself from saying anything. That had been the plan.

Another knock on the door interrupted their little talk. This time everyone stood at arms and while they did so, Loki and Alice took the seats they had emptied.

"I'm not late am I?" Thor was startled to find his mother there. She was supposed to be in the healer's wing under Eir's care.

"Mother, you're hurt you shouldn't-"

"Is Alice there?" Thor stilled again as his mind went blank. What was Jane doing here?

"You're blocking the way." Alice called out and Thor moved, clearing his throat gruffly.

"Will someone please explain what's going on?" Sif said loudly and Thor and his friends agreed with the sentiment, hating being in the dark like this.

"Well I've basically rendered you all unnecessary." Alice smiled nastily and Jane's hand flew out to cuff her on the back of her head.

"Don't make people feel useless!" She chided and Alice rolled her eyes.

"Well it's hardly my fault they're inefficient!"

"I've suddenly remembered why I wanted to take over Midgard." Loki quipped and Jane's eyes went wide.

"You!"

"Me."

Alice laughed. "Take over Midgard, come on man, Phil was right." Thor's ears pricked, certain that she was referring to Agent Coulson. "You lack conviction."

Loki glared but it melted away as Frigga went to stand in front of him and nervously he rose to his feet. Thor was amused to see him ducking his head like he used to when he was in his hundreds'. He turned his attention to Jane instead taking her hands in his. She was so tiny, he'd never met anyone quite as small as her. How she managed to keep all that spirit tucked into herself he never knew and now she had the Aether in her as well.

The Aether. He'd forgotten about it for a moment.

"The Aether." He said and all eyes turned to him.

"First things first, we need to get out of here." Alice took over. "Frigga here has bought us some time and we do have a distraction ready and timed. For the most part we just need the rest of you to go on as usual and act normal."

"I am bound to report all treason to the Allfather." Heimdall said gravely.

"Well it's your lucky day because I'm not a citizen of Asgard so this isn't treason. This isn't an action against my own state, yes?"

"Agreed."

"Good. Now you all need to leave."

"We can't just abandon Thor like that." Sif protested.

"Well then take him with you."

"I refuse to leave Jane in such a state."

"You make it sound like I'm pregnant." Jane muttered and all eyes turned to her instantly. She flushed and cleared her throat. "I'm not."

"Alright here's the deal, the quicker we move the better. And we all know that you're all not coming with us. It'll be Jane, Loki, Thor and me, that's it."

"You'll need a distraction."

"We have one. Don't worry about anything, just make sure to make yourselves absolutely indispensible to Odin." Thor turned to her in surprise but it was Frigga who explained.

"What's going to happen next will go against Odin's orders. We'll need whatever influence we can use to make sure that the punishment for it doesn't cost you too much."

"Mainly because as Odin's heir, Thor is golden but Jane is not and I don't trust Odin not to take it out on her."

"And what about you?" Loki asked and Thor realised that was true as well. As the one behind all of this the consequences would be worst for her.

"I can take it. Besides it's not the first powerful person that I've pissed off. So you can all go now. You have deniability."

"How are we possibly supposed to deny our part in this?" Sif was outraged. She would never tolerate being portrayed as a traitor to him, that much he knew. Her loyalty knew no bounds. Indeed Thor was lucky to have such friends.

Who were being looked at like they were idiots. He wasn't exactly surprised that Alice and Loki weren't pleased with them, but that his own mother would do so was surprising.

"Is it that difficult to say that Thor called you but you were interrupted before you could find out exactly what for? That he was swayed by me blaming him for Jane's being all Aetherised?"

"The Queen-"

"Was only here briefly and you didn't get a chance to verify her identity." Jane said. "You were suspicious what with Loki being here but before you could investigate, Thor sent you off."

"See, even Jane is coming up with excuses. What the hell did you do when you were growing up?" Alice wondered.

"We didn't need to make excuses." A bristling Sif said and Thor's eyes turned automatically to Loki who smiled wryly.

"I did the lying for them."

"Well you shouldn't have done that." Alice chided him which was strange to see. Thor had never seen anyone do that except for his mother and she had always held the air of one who was very disappointed. "How will they ever learn if people keep coddling them?"

"It is dishonest and-"

"Oh shove it Sif, you don't lie because you sucked at it. That's what failures do, they console themselves by saying they never wanted to succeed at it in the first place." Alice rolled her eyes ignoring the dropped jaws. "Take the hint and leave already people, move it!"

This was not how Thor had expected the day to go.


Alice might have been unravelling a bit.

Admittedly she had no reason to be doing so, Jane certainly seemed fine and she was the one with the Aether in her, being chased by a millennia old leader of a species hell bent on destroying the universe but she was taking it well. Alice on the other hand wasn't. Not that anyone would notice it, she managed to hide it well no one thought she was having a panic attack because they were too busy being angry or frustrated with her or in Loki's case just plain amused.

But she was exhausted. Years ago she'd watched her friend's body being wheeled out of her house by the police, killed by her boyfriend and it was her face she kept on seeing now. If she knew then what she knew now she could saved her. She couldn't lose Jane as well.

This though, this was beyond what she was equipped to handle. She'd handled some very strange things in her work with SHIELD but it had never been so personal. Part of her wished Malekith was here so she could fight him, anything would be better than this wait, this slow process of carefully planning was exhausting in a way that a fight never was and she was drained. It was a good thing Jane didn't know what Frigga had found out about the Aether, how it would affect her slowly and steadily ripping her apart from the inside, signs that Frigga had told her to watch out for and she could see it happening already. There were times when Jane's eyes glazed over blue, the whites of her eyes glazing over black instead. It was just a flash, so brief Alice wondered if her mind had made it up, thinking over it too much but when Frigga shared a concerned glance with her as she left she knew it wasn't a hallucination. The Aether was slowly gaining on Jane and they need to get it out of her now.

"Not that I'm not enjoying this," Loki's drawl broke her out of her thoughts. "But mind filling me in on the plan as well? Or will you enlighten me while we're on our way to Svartalfheim?"

"Oh no, we're going to Stark Towers." Jane said flippantly and all eyes turned to her.

"What do you mean?" Thor asked.

"We need to go there." Jane was adamant and Alice was confused.

"Why do we need to go there?"

"Because I have a standing invitation to work there and I need their labs."

A long suffering sigh left Alice and she pressed her splayed fingers onto her face for some measure of comfort and turned to the heavens, whispering a brief prayer asking for strength. "Jane, as transparent as you are you need to be even more transparent and maybe tell us what the hell is going on!"

"Do you remember the quantum field generator?"

"The Soul Forge?" Thor answered and Jane shut her eyes for a brief second.

"It's like a physical pain when you say that."

"Yes the quantum field generator, what about it?" Alice asked. "You said it, transferred molecular energy form one place to another. Which didn't make sense to me then either, I mean it looked more like an MRI or something rather than transferring energy. And if it was transferring energy wouldn't that mean that the Aether energy could also be transferred out of you? It is essentially energy right? Or is it like some Star Wars Antimatter kind of stuff?"

"The...Soul Forge was calibrated so it only transferred a small part of the energy so that whatever the problem was, it could be visualised. Since the Aether is pretty foreign to everything human or even Asgardian it registered very strongly as a separate entity."

"So it could have taken it out of you?"

"If calibrated for it but it would also kill me and I don't want that to happen."

"What does this have with Stark Tower? Or Avengers tower as it's called."

"Look Erik sent me these blueprints of a device he'd been working on, he called them gravimetric spikes. The gravitational anomalies that we'd been experiencing were directly linked to what I now know to be the convergence and Erik postulated that the spikes would allow us to countermand the effects of these anomalies and stabilise the field a bit more."

"What does that have to do with anything?!"

Jane stopped and turned. "Alice, I'm going to Stark Tower because he has really great lab equipment and I need that so that I can do science stuff that allows me to lock in on the Aether and then get it out of me by using the current gravitational anomalies and manipulating them using the spikes Erik made to get it the fuck out of me." Jane never cursed. It was a habit ingrained in her by their father one that had never taken with Alice but Jane never cursed.

Silence followed her statement.

"Why didn't you just say that before?"

"And what about containment?" Loki said dryly. "Once it's out of you it'll latch on to the closest living being."

"Not if we destroy it." Thor said and earned incredulous stares from both Alice and Loki and a very patronising look from Jane.

"With what?" Alice spat. "The whole of Asgard and your grandfather couldn't find a way to destroy it so they hid it away and you think you can destroy it? What do you plan to do, beat it with you hammer?"

The way Thor suddenly cleared his throat and looked everywhere but at them made it obvious that that was exactly what he intended to do.

"You can't solve every problem just by hitting it with you hammer, Thor." Loki said with practised patience.

"You were there when Odin said it was fluid and ever changing, why would you possibly think smashing it would work?" Alice continued to berate him. "Do you also think hitting water with your hammer is a good way to destroy it?!"

Jane patted Thor's shoulder but didn't defend him. Then again, there was really no way she could have defended him at that point.

"So containment, you think Stark would have a way to figure that out?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't we just find the original container." Loki drawled.

"The original container?"

"Well I highly doubt it was just floating about in space before."

"It was another world," Jane said. "The abandoned factory we were at, it opened up some sort of portal, my phase meter went crazy and I got sucked into it. There were these two huge slabs of rocks and one was floating on top of the other, the Aether was in between them. It probably generated a field that kept Malekith from sensing the Aether."

"I need to see this container." Loki said.

"You aren't going anywhere," Thor said imperiously.

"Very well then, we'll just get the Aether out of your Midgardian and then watch as it destroys one of us instead."

"When we get back to Earth you guys go, get to London, see if you can figure something out." Jane said and Thor shot her a puppy look that she ignored. "And pick up Erik and the gravimetric stakes as well. And Darcy! Thor can probably fly me to Stark Tower or something."

"So I suppose this is the part where I come in." Loki said.

"Yes, what exactly do you need to get us to Earth?"

"We'll need a ship."

"You mean the speedboat with wings?"

Loki blinked. "Yes."

"The whole city will be watched we can't just-" Thor was interrupted by Alice.

"The patrols have a shift change coming up in twenty minutes we just need to borrow a ride."

"How do you know all this?" Jane asked, incredulous and Alice shrugged.

"They put up the roster outside the mess hall."

"Of course they did." Jane deadpanned and Loki burst into chuckles then, loud peals of laughter that reverberated in the dark space in the queerest of ways.

"Oh but this is just wonderful, the Nine Realms threatened by the Dark Elves that weren't supposed to exist, a mortal possessed by an artefact of infinite power that also wasn't supposed to exist and another mortal infiltrates the annals of Asgard's finest, in a gown."

He continued laughing and Alice looked at him speculatively.

"I didn't hit you that hard, did I?"

"Hit him?" Jane exclaimed and Alice twisted her mouth.

"Well I might have smacked him around a bit for New York."

"Oh. I'm so proud of you."

Alice beamed only to turn back to business in a heartbeat. "Come on, we have a speedboat with wings to steal."