My most sincere apologies for not updating recently! Yesterday was a big... uh... "fun" day on my campus, so parties had to happen. Hah.
I might post two chapters today, though, so stay tuned! And thanks to everyone for your great enthusiasm for this story. It's been a fantastic journey so far.
Chapter 7!
Heat – infernal, relentless, tormenting. Loki could feel waves of fire bathe his face, flames licking at the little cuts and bruises, washing over his limbs and burying deep in his gut. His mind reeled and spun in this fury of fumes and he reached out for a flicker of magic to bring him back to the edge of sanity. A tiny white spark in the corner of all the infernal blackness, and then nothing. No magic. No force. He summoned every bit of organic willpower he could muster and wrenched his eyes open – a sliver, a crack of light, a blurred image of desert sands.
He saw her first as a pinpoint on the dusty horizon. A white… chariot, with sand billowing out in sheets as it advanced down the dirt road. It drew closer and stopped outside of his field of vision – he let his eyelids drape closed again. He detected a change in brightness and forced them back open: a woman stood over him, blocking out the sun so that its rays formed a shimmering halo around her dark form. Her body compact, regal, draped with long dusky hair. A small, soft voice speaking to his brother; Loki's head buzzed so loudly that he could not make out the words. Her voice sounded gentle, concerned. She reached out a hand, cool and soothing, and pressed it to his brow. The hand must have contained some magic property, he thought, because the moment it touched his forehead he felt his mind clear, as though it had been dipped in cold spring water. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, letting the breath originate from the hand on his head and wash the coolness all the way down through the depths of his agony. Loki knew who this was – knew who this must have been. He let the name roll off his parched lips:
"Sigyn."
He opened his eyes, his head now cleared, and knew instantly that he had been wrong.
"Um, no," said the woman. "Sorry if you… It's Jane, actually. Jane Foster."
He could have laughed aloud at his own weakness and stupidity if he'd possessed the energy. Absolutely inane, letting physical injury alter his mental state to such a capacity that he thought his former wife, of all people, had come to his aid. The two had not, to put it gently, left one another on friendly terms. In all likelihood she might have been present at this moment if only to give his cracked ribs a well-aimed kick.
Regardless, the discovery that the woman standing over him was little piffling Jane Foster did nothing for Loki's injuries. He felt any perceived coolness melt abruptly away, leaving him with a hot dead sea of aches and searing chills and sweat. He gasped, gulping for air, hissing as a wave of pain crashed into his lungs, his brain, his guts. In a desperate attempt at relief he visualized all of that pain forming a massive orb, twisting and gathering and–
Suddenly he saw Jane and Thor leap into the air as though thrown and land a few feet away from his broken body. He began to wonder woozily how that might have happened when everything went black.
Jane Foster had a long time in the van on the way to the crash site to think about how absolutely insane her life had become. For starters, this morning she had been standing in her bedroom at SHIELD labs and her fiancé had pointed a gun at her face.
Her fiancé had pointed a gun at her face.
At first she thought she had been crazy to put her hands in the air at the sight of the gun. Who had she been kidding? It was Garrett, Garrett who she had let so completely into her world. Garrett who had helped her forget that the man – the god – she thought she'd loved was probably never coming back. Garrett who had made life in the bunker... bearable. But who had he been, really? What had she known about him? She knew she'd loved him... though she'd loved him... still loved him? She had known, when she was with him, that she was probably going through a classic "two-people-are-attracted-to-each-other-and-decide-to-get-married-because-why-not" scenario. Anything of relative importance, Jane had never bothered to ask him. What was his family like? Did he want a destination wedding? A big honeymoon? Kids? He'd made their engagement ring in the labs, for Pete's sake. With materials from SHIELD storage. Or at least, that's what he'd told her.
Now that she thought about it, Garrett had told her a lot of unbelievable things.
Like how his skin never changed color despite the lack of sunlight because that was just "how his genes worked." ("I ran some tests on myself in the lab. I guess I'm an anomaly"). How he had access to this room of stored goods that Jane had never seen in all her time exploring the place. She'd assumed that because he had been there longer, he had been given special privileges. But how long could he possibly have been there? The lab seemed to be pretty new when Jane had first arrived: she had seen guards going through orientation, scientists shaking hands as though they'd just been introduced.
Absolutely nothing about Garrett, she realized now, added up.
So now she sat in the van, still crying – still crying – and feeling like an idiot for crying, and kind of wanting her engagement ring back, and everything that went with it. She had screwed up so, so badly by taking that SHIELD position. She knew now that the offer had been partially meant to protect her from Loki, who apparently, according to Thor, had promised to "pay her a visit." But then how messed up was it that she had ended up paying him a visit? Had Loki gotten what he wanted after all? Was he feigning reluctance at seeing her, when deep down he wanted to meet her, use her? And if so, for what?
Jane tried to tell herself that she had the upper hand in this situation. Loki was badly hurt, and now probably weakened to the point of immobility. She had done him a favor, keeping him away from Asgardian custody. And she had witnessed a moment during which he had lost control of his own power – had sent a signal into the universe that he hadn't meant to send. She knew there had to be more behind the haunting "We're done" than met the eye... or, in this case, ear. This was, at best, an opportunity not only to discover something groundbreaking about the connection between magic and science, but also to help Loki realize that his magic could do more good than harm.
And at worst... it was an adventure.
It had already been an adventure. She had scrambled onto the roof of SHIELD labs, faced streaked with tears, practically screaming in panic, to run smack into Nick Fury.
"Looks like you're pretty fed up with being here," Fury said. He'd stared straight down at her. His expression was absolutely, unequivocally unreadable. Blank as a bald rock face (no pun intended). "There are people who want to keep you pent up here. I'm not one of them. The battle is over, Loki is detained, and you owe us nothing."
So he didn't know about Loki. One wrong move on Jane's part, however, and he would. Jane had taken a deep breath and said, "I really would like to... to go home, if that's okay."
He had taken her gently by the arm and led her toward a helicopter. He'd scanned her face carefully with his good eye, looking for anything that might have prevented him from letting her leave. Finally he'd nodded to the helicopter pilot.
"Territory Two-Alpha. She'll show you where to land."
Jane saw them first as two pinpoints on a dusty horizon. One of them light, red, and strong, supporting a weak, dark shadow. Jane was reminded vaguely of Pietà, Michelangelo's Vatican statue of Mary holding her son after his crucifixion. What a vastly inappropriate reference for this situation, Jane laughed to herself.
Jane parked the van far enough away from the two that she did not scatter more dust on their already sandy forms. She stepped out onto the dirt and waved at Thor. He returned her greeting with a nod; both of his hands supported his brother, whose face looked like a wane dollop of white against his dark armor. Jane rummaged in the back of the van for a first aid kit, although she knew it probably wouldn't do much good.
"How is he?" she asked Thor as she stood over the wayward pair. It was such a pointless question that Thor didn't even bother responding. Loki looked as though someone had poured white wax over badly bruised bone and musculature. The demigod had lapsed into a state of barely-consciousness, with one hand on his stomach and the other across his forehead in a final vain attempt to nurse his injuries. The area around his eyes looked like it had been made up for a role in Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video – the dark circles were almost comical. The lids inside the rings of black opened faintly and glassy eyes peered out at Jane, fevered and unfocused. Jane was struck once more by how green they were. She carefully reached out a hand to feel Loki's forehead but stopped just short of touching him. Jane hesitated, fearful that Loki's eyes might snap open and his hand might dart out and crush her wrist the second she made contact. She looked at Thor. He didn't meet her gaze; his eyes were fixated with worry on Loki's face.
Oh, what the hell, she thought, and reached out and laid her palm Loki's brow.
The skin was smooth but scorching. A fever for sure, and a bad one. But although the touch burned, Jane was oddly content to keep her hand there; she felt as if she were touching a sleeping tiger, something immensely dangerous that was made more endearing when it was weakened, vulnerable. Loki's eyes closed again when he felt her hand on his face. His features seemed to smooth out like a sail after a storm. Despite the gravity of his health, Jane couldn't help but smile a bit – she was doing something right.
Her spirits fell, however, when Loki opened his lips and whispered: "Sigyn."
Crap, thought Jane. He doesn't know it's me. Delirium had ruined the moment after all. There was some part of her that wanted to croon, "Yes, my love, I'm here" – partially for amusement but also to give him some sort of comfort. But the strangeness of it all was too much: why on earth was she finding herself wanting to comfort him? He was here, she was Jane, and this was all ridiculous.
"Um, no," said Jane. "Sorry if you… It's Jane, actually. Jane Foster."
Loki's brow furrowed immensely and he began to shiver, as if all the respite her hand had given him had vanished. Jane was about to tell Thor they needed to get him back to the lab when–
Bam. Jane felt as if an immense hand had blasted up through the sand and vaulted her off the face of the earth. She landed several feet away from the fallen demigod, the breath knocked out of her and her hair in knots. She coughed dust out of her throat, let her vision clear, and searched for Thor in the clearing clouds. Thor shook his head rapidly.
"Are you injured, Jane?" he called out.
"What...?" was all Jane could think to say. "What was that?"
She whipped her head in Loki's direction, fully expecting him to be standing upright in full battle armor, staff gleaming, restored to his former glory. Everything up to that point would have been his elaborate prank, a fantastic job of feigning weakness up until the exact moment that Loki was alone with just Jane and Thor, in a desert in the middle of nowhere.
No such thing. Loki was sprawled flat on his back, totally out cold.
How about them apples? The three of them are together now, for better or for worse, and as Jane suspected, there's more to Loki than meets the eye.
Nick Fury, I can assure you, isn't totally out of the picture. And what on earth is taking Odin so long to act up?
More soon! Thanks everyone!
