Sol's Notes: Thanks (again) to everyone who's reviewed! Those of you who check in every chapter to let me know how you like it have no idea how much I look forward to and appreciate your words. Your feedback is a large part of what keeps me going. I can only hope you enjoy the rest of the story, too!

.9.

It was easier not to think about Loki this time. Her mind, she speculated with a clinical sort of detachment, had finally reached the point where it couldn't handle any further fear, uncertainty or sorrow. It had shut itself down temporarily, a very convenient coping mechanism. Sitting on the couch in her living room, staring into the darkened heart of the wood stove, Jane mused on the fact that she really didn't feel anything at all. It was harder not to think about what would happen soon, when S.H.I.E.L.D finally arrived. Fury's wrath would bring with it harsh repercussions for what she had failed to do, even if Bruce tried to intervene. And given the increasingly erratic pattern and scope of her most recent decisions she wasn't so sure her friend would want to.

After a time, she decided to focus on issues she could control. The first on the list was removing the cast from her arm now that it was no longer needed. Rising, she began to move through the house, her gait surprisingly steady and controlled. In the coat closet in the porch, in a bag of tools on the floor, she located what she had wanted: a pair of tin snips she'd found in the outside shed not long after moving onto the property.

She then chose the kitchen counter as her workspace, laying her offending arm out flat while she pondered how to proceed. Manoeuvering awkwardly with the tin snips in her left hand, she began the very slow and arduous process of cutting through the fibreglass.

Which is how S.H.I.E.L.D's agents found her not twenty minutes later, after the door was kicked in and they had poured into her house shouting her name and Loki's. No longer holding the tin snips, in the process of carefully extracting her arm from the loose fibreglass shell, she looked around at the barrels of five different handguns pointed in her direction and realized what she'd both expected and feared was true.

Jane Foster was now a criminal.

.x.

She was tired. After they'd swarmed through her house like armed, efficient insects in order to determine if Loki was there, they'd handcuffed her and trundled her into—what else?—a nondescript shiny black SUV with tinted windows. She'd shared the back seat with an impassive female agent that Jane was vaguely familiar with—Maria Hill. Jane hadn't asked where they were going. She knew it didn't matter. She'd passed the time staring out the window and watching as they drove away from her home. She was somewhat surprised that rather than heading east they were heading northwest, further into the foothills. Gradually the heavily forested hills gave way to the snow laden crags and peaks of the Rockies. Unable to find anything else in her life that would give her even a modicum of tranquility, Jane gladly focused on absorbing their stark, haggard beauty.

They hadn't driven long, less than two hours by Jane's estimate. When finally the vehicle had stopped Jane had been assisted out of the vehicle—it was difficult for her to get out on her own with her hands cuffed as they were—and propelled forward by an unrelenting hand at her back. Their destination was a large metal door set into a black building with three stories and no outward hints whatsoever as to what its purpose was. Jane glanced around swiftly, attempting to get her bearings, and immediately noticed that they were within a huge fenced-in compound, complete with rolls of razor wire. Looming with wild imperiousness over the compound were the blue-grey shadows of the mountains. She hadn't really been all that surprised, because of course S.H.I.E.L.D. would have a secret complex hidden deep within the Canadian Rockies.

She'd been taken to a small room with only one door, a chair, and a table. The handcuffs were removed. The agent—Maria Hill—had deposited two items on the table, casting Jane an unreadable glance before turning and leaving the room, closing the door behind her. Jane's attention had immediately focused on what sat on the table. It was the same duffel bag she'd packed when she'd fled from Loki along with her purse. It seemed they'd had a team trace her movements to Regina, after all.

Jane had checked her purse to ensure all things were intact. Grabbing her phone, she saw she'd missed several calls and texts, all from Bruce. Her throat tightened at the thought of her friend. If he was here—and she had a sneaking suspicion he was—he was almost certainly going to be privy to whatever interrogations awaited her. Even though she'd appraised him briefly of what had transpired over the past couple months, he didn't know it all.

And she didn't want him to.

.x.

Nick Fury would have been a very intimidating man. Standing before him and an assembled group of S.H.I.E.L.D. members, Jane reflected on that fact with a detached sense of ease that was entirely out of place given the situation. Standing as he was, clad entirely in militaristic black gear with his arms folded tightly over his chest, the glare Fury was levelling on her was impressive in its intensity considering he only had one eye. In another time and another place, Jane would have felt cowed by Fury's obvious ire. Having stood toe to toe with Loki during his numerous rages, however, she felt notably underwhelmed.

"Tell me why exactly," Fury was saying in a voice that would have intimidated even the most hardened of men, "you neglected to inform anyone that Loki had returned to Earth?"

Jane deliberated for long moments before answering. Her eyes brushed over everyone in the room, those that stood and those sitting at a long table off to the side. Bruce was among the seated. So was Steve Rogers. This was less of an audience and more of a tribunal, a fact that made Jane more than a little nervous. It also made her angry, though she was currently keeping that emotion under tight rein.

"As I've already told you, I believed it was Thor's wish that nobody know."

"You believed? As in, Thor never actually told you?"

The emphasis Fury put on that one word set Jane's teeth on edge. Fury had little time or respect for civilians. Jane was acutely aware that that's all she was to him. Despite what she'd done, despite her own admitted guilt, his condescension grated on her nerves.

Her gaze had been wandering again, a nervous habit. She swung it back to meet Fury's own, struggling to match his icy stare with one of her own. "No, Thor never told me."

"Then why did you assume—"

"Why else would he send Loki to me?"

"It could have been a mistake. A miscalculated wormhole."

His use of the erroneous term annoyed her, but she ignored it and replied with her own brand of withering sarcasm, "A hell of a mistake, wouldn't you say? Sending Loki within less than half a mile of my home when you consider that he could have been sent anywhere else in the world? No, he was sent to me on purpose. I surmised the reason for that was that he wished to keep Loki's exile secret."

"Loki's exile." Fury exhaled loudly and slowly, his nostrils flaring. "Miss Foster, are you aware of what kind of things Loki is capable of?"

Jane felt an unpleasant smile curve her lips. "Very aware."

Her unexpected reaction gave Fury pause. He considered her with his one narrowed eye for a moment before continuing. "Then you know that he's not a nice man. He's a murderer and a terrorist on a level we've never known before—intergalactic. And when he showed up on your doorstep, you let him in and kept him hidden."

Jane felt the control she had over her temper turn suddenly tenuous. "I didn't let him in. I left him where I found him. In the snow."

"He found you anyway."

"Yes."

"And you never thought to—"

"Of course I did! You think I sat back and welcomed him with open arms into my home?" A memory needled at her, the vivid recollection of Loki lying in the snow below her, arms protectively raised over his face to protect himself from the blows of the baton. "I deliberated. I didn't know what to do. I suspected Thor wanted him hidden. What Loki told me confirmed as much later."

"What Loki told you …" Fury half-turned and glanced down at some papers that were laid out on the desk behind him, the reports that Agent Hill had put together after grilling Jane for hours the day before. "That he knew where Odin was. That if something happened to him, Odin would be lost permanently."

Jane's reply was a single terse nod.

Fury raised an eyebrow in mocking disbelief. "And you never thought for one minute that he might be lying?"

Jane felt her cheeks flush with the first ungentle stirrings of anger. "I know what Loki is. Thor told me. I saw what he did to New York. I was always aware that he might be lying. The fact of the matter was that Thor sent him to me. There had to be some truth in Loki's explanation. I had no desire to be the reason that Asgard lost its king."

"You might be the reason that Earth suffers a greater loss than that, Miss Foster."

His barb struck home. Jane found to her great shame that she couldn't hold his gaze any longer. She looked away, her eyes instinctively locating Bruce. His expression as he watched the proceedings was forebodingly solemn. Unwanted tears of frustration and rage began to prick at her eyes; Jane shook her head, inhaled deeply and straightened her back, returning her attention to Fury.

"I know that," she said, her voice low and intense. "You think I haven't realized that? Consider my position—I was fucked no matter what choice I made. If I turned Loki over to you I risked the life of Odin. And I chose to keep him a secret, and now he has his powers back …" Jane smiled again, bitter and angry. "I did what I thought best. I had no idea he'd regain his powers. I couldn't know that. I assumed Thor would return for him. And he didn't, and now I've put everything at risk."

Her voice had begun to waver before she'd finished speaking. She paused, swallowed hard, and went on, "I'm sorry."

Fury's expression was implacable. "So am I," he said.

.x.

They'd provided her with quarters. They weren't large, nothing more than a small kitchen with an attached sitting area, a small bedroom and tiny bathroom. She was thankful regardless, even though she knew with certainty that this was meant to be nothing more than a holding cell. That belief was solidified by the fact that Fury had assigned a guard to be with her at all times. The only true privacy she had was when she was in the bathroom. Otherwise, there was a guard standing beside the door during every moment of the day. After four days she became familiar with their rotation. There were four of them, working 8 hour shifts. Keeping an eye on her. Keeping an eye out, more importantly, for Loki. Fury had asked her if she thought he would return. And she'd given him the most honest answer she could.

She thought boredom would drive her mad. The first day after she'd met with Fury, she'd spent hours sitting in uncomfortably cheap armchair she'd dragged over to the window. She'd give S.H.I.E.L.D that much, at least—the view from her quarters was breathtaking. It looked out over a small valley, shadowed for most of the day by the mountains that blocked out the sky. Between the dense clusters of trees, a small creek meandered from one end of the valley to the other.

Jane could and did appreciate the scenery. But after spending 10 hours staring at it, lost in the convoluted mire of her own thoughts, it began to lose its appeal. She finally turned to the guard and made an earnest request for a newspaper, a book, a magazine, anything. He listened to her stone faced, nodded, but made no move to call someone and relay what she had said. Defeated, Jane had flopped back into the chair and stared moodily out into the valley as dusk crept over the world.

The next morning when she woke up there was a new guard stationed at the door and a pile of magazines and newspapers situated on the small kitchen table. Jane was more than a little heartened. Her imprisonment had become slightly more tolerable.

.x.

On the seventh day, Bruce came to see her. She'd just finished eating her breakfast—two fried eggs, two pieces of toast, two slices of ham, brought to her on a covered tray by a different guard just like every meal—when the door had opened to admit him.

The food she'd just ingested instantly turned to lead in her stomach. She set the fork down in the empty food tray, covered it again, and pushed it to the side of the table. She flashed him a hesitant, uncertain smile. "Hello."

He nodded at her before turning to the guard and speaking softly. Without a word, the guard opened the door and exited the room. Alone now with Bruce, Jane struggled to find something—anything—to say.

She was saved from the effort. "They treating you okay in here?" He asked.

"I can't complain too much."

Bruce was having a hard time meeting her eyes. He was dressed casually in dark jeans and a gray long sleeved shirt. With his hands in his pockets he wandered through the laughably small space that passed as a living room, making his way to the window. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, peering out into the landscape of white and gray without. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. Fury doesn't want me talking to you."

Watching him, feeling that awful ache of sorrow, she said softly, "I'm sorry, Bruce."

He nodded again, the movement jerky. "I know you are, Jane." He sighed and turned so that he was facing her, still leaning against the wall. "I know why you did what you did. What you said to Fury—you were screwed no matter what you did … you were right. But I still can't understand why you wouldn't tell me."

He cut her off before she could reply. "Scratch that. I know why you didn't tell me. I just … Jane, after what happened to you—and all of it because of Thor … you could have asked me for help. You didn't have to do it alone."

"Loki knows you. He knows your weakness. Even without his powers he's capable of harm. What if I'd told you? What if he'd gotten around your defenses? What then?"

Bruce regarded her for long seconds, his dark eyes grave behind the lenses of his glasses. "I guess we'll never know," he said finally.

Once again, Jane felt shame flood through her. She dropped her eyes, unable to bear witness to what she read in his own. He was hurt, she knew that. He had thought he'd had her confidence. She'd proven him wrong.

This time, the tears weren't so easy to control. The floor at her feet blurred in her vision. She lifted her head to stare at the ceiling instead, blinking hard in a furious struggle to keep them at bay. In an effort to keep herself together, she asked, "I'm going to jail, aren't I?"

She heard defeat and sadness in his voice as he answered. "I think so."

"Hiding a criminal applies even when the criminal isn't from this planet," she said in a bid for ironic humor. "Who knew? Although I suppose criminal isn't really the right word for Loki. He's a terrorist."

"Yes."

Jane propped her elbows up on the table and rubbed hard at her eyes, feeling then a gritty, clinging weariness beyond anything she'd ever known. There were no more words. There was only what she'd done and the desolate finality that awaited her.

"I could try to get you out." Bruce's voice was soft.

"Lots of guns and agents to go through."

"It's nothing the Other Guy couldn't handle."

Jane's head shot up at his words and she twisted to face him. There was no trace of a joke on his face, no hint that what he was saying wasn't serious. He meant every word.

"You couldn't—"

"Why not?"

"Bruce," she breathed. "You can't let him loose just to get me out of here."

He smiled suddenly, an unhappy twist of the lips that served as an unwanted, unsettling reminder of Loki. "Jane," he said, crossing the room to stand before her, pulling the other chair around the corner of the table and sitting down on it. "I don't think you understand what's in store for you. We're not talking regular jail. We're talking something much, much worse. You're not only a minor criminal in Fury's eyes. You're a perpetual walking threat. You've been privy to information Fury considers more than top secret. You know all about the Avengers Initiative. You know about other realms. And you've harbored a wanted criminal from one of those other realms in your own home for months. As long as you're on Earth, Fury will always consider you a risk on a global level. He's going to put you somewhere very, very secure that is far, far away. And I don't think I'll ever be able to see you again, not without doing something incredibly drastic involving the Other Guy."

Jane had suspected as much, but the urgency in his words twisted her stomach into knots. She's know the fallout was going to be bad, of course it was, but suddenly the future that loomed before her was terrifying, devoid of any reprieve no matter how small and insignificant.

Bruce kept talking, his words low and fast. "I can get you out. I can take you somewhere, anywhere you want to go."

"They'll hunt you too."

Again, he smiled that smile that hurt Jane to see. "I've been hunted before."

Jane finally lost her struggle to contain everything she felt. Tears spilled over warm, large drops, obscuring Bruce and the world around him. Jane wiped them away but was unable to stifle the small sob that left her. Blinking hard, she shook her head with her own sad smile.

"I won't let you do that."

"Jane." In that one word she heard everything she'd suspected, everything he'd sequestered away, hidden from view because he was a good man, because he didn't want to confuse or hurt her any more than she already had been. It tore at her heart. More tears came, streaming in quick succession down her face.

"Jane," he said again. "Please."

She wanted him to. She wanted him to get her out of here, to carry her beyond Fury's reach. But the truth she had to face, the truth that neither she nor Bruce wanted to acknowledge was that there was no limit to Fury's reach, not on Earth. She might escape imprisonment but she would never escape his search for her. As long as she lived she'd be a fugitive and so would Bruce along with her. And Bruce, who'd been hunted for so long, who'd been persecuted for all the reasons he couldn't control …

She couldn't do it. She wouldn't.

Reaching up, she took his face in her hands. Studied with a kind of desperate sorrow the gentle lines of his face, the bold dark sweep of his brows, the warmth of his eyes framed by the thick fringe of lashes. And she found herself wishing so very, very hard that life had thrown them together in a different way. She could have loved him. She could have needed him and wanted him and deserved him.

In another life. In a life that she'd never know, a life that was no longer possible for Jane Foster. Because Jane Foster had in the beginning loved the god of thunder, and then …

And then she'd fallen, in a brutal twist of fate so callous and cruel that she was certain that everyand any god mocked her, for Loki. Fallen not in love, but into some nebulous and chaotic state of craving him. Of wanting him. Of needing him, on some level so fucked up that she couldn't bear to think about it—she couldn't. Some part of her soul, warped beyond its original grace by what had happened to her, had sought him out. Had recognized him. Had forced her entire being into accepting this viciously reluctant realization.

She ached. She hurt for Bruce and for the Jane that had been, for the Jane she wanted so fervently to be. She hurt for what she was being denied, was hurt by what she was denying herself. Staring at Bruce through the sheen of anguished tears, she shook her head slowly.

"You deserve to be free," she whispered.

He reached up, pulled her hand—the hand not whole—from his cheek. Cradled it tightly between his own. "So do you," he said with a catch in his voice that shredded the remnants of her heart not already broken.

It would be so easy, so very easy, to give in. To accept his offer. She felt her resolve—such as it was, tattered and worn—began to fail. And so she leaned in quickly and pressed a hard kiss against his brow before standing, shoving back her chair and tugging her hand free. She escaped to the window and wrapped her arms around her body tightly. Fought with the urge to whirl around and leave with his other self, out of this facility and away from the grim, lonely future that loomed imminent.

"We can't," she said softly.

She heard him sigh, a shaky exhale. Heard him stand. Heard him take one step in her direction and then stop.

"If you change your mind, Jane …"

"I won't."

"Don't make this decision because of me. I can survive. I have survived before."

"So have I."

There was a long silence. And then: "I'll be back tomorrow."

She heard his footsteps take him to the door, heard it open, heard the muted exchange between Bruce and the guard. Heard the guard enter the room again and take up his post beside the door.

Jane turned and reached for the armchair behind her. She dragged it as close to the window as she possibly could before sinking down into it and pulling her knees up tight to her chest. She stared unseeing out into the valley for a long time, no longer bothering to check her tears.

.x.

He didn't come back the next day or the day after that. Jane, while acutely disappointed, wasn't really surprised. Bruce's alter ego may have been the Hulk, but that didn't mean that Fury couldn't stop him from visiting. The Hulk was a method of last resort, called to action when things were at their most dire. He was difficult to control and a tremendously unpredictable liability. Which is why Bruce's offer had been so startling and had held such meaning. Jane suspected her room was bugged and was positive she was under video surveillance. If Fury had even the remotest indication of what Bruce had offered he'd make absolutely certain they couldn't meet again.

And so the days passed. Jane, who had long ago read everything they'd given her, went over it all again. And then again. Her life consisted of reading, meals brought to her, the view outside her window, and the tedious, uninterrupted silence shared by herself and her four guards. She wondered why she hadn't already been moved to a more secure location and realized that in essence, she was bait. Fury was waiting for Loki. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. alone weren't going to contend with the trickster, but she knew for a fact that Steve Rogers and Bruce were here. Visualizing what would happen should Loki reappear here made Jane feel ill. She didn't want to think about Bruce being forced into confrontation with Loki. She didn't want to think about who she'd be concerned about more.

On the twelfth day of her confinement, things changed.

Most of her days she spent either standing before the window or seated in the chair in front of it. She'd spent so much time staring out at the valley that it felt as though she'd memorized every aspect of it. So when the day that had dawned bright and clear swiftly darkened, as the valley fell under thick shadow, Jane's attention snapped immediately to the cause.

A mass of ominous clouds had gathered in the sky, roiling and growing as they circulated. Jane shot to her feet and took the two small steps she needed to be right at the window. Her good hand gripping the sill so tightly it hurt, she stared upward with wide eyes. She couldn't see the conduit form—it was happening on the other side of the building—but she could feel it as it struck the ground with fury and force, causing tremors that rocked the building more than a little. She knew who had come. Loki moved from realm to realm through other paths by his own admittance. Thor relied on the storm to carry him.

Jane leaned her head against the pane of glass, closing her eyes. Thor had finally returned to Earth. She imagined him walking toward the secure entrance of the complex, imagined armed agents rushing out to meet him. Imagined Fury confronting Thor about the truth and the reason of Loki's exile. Had she been wrong? Had Loki actually lied? Had his appearance in what basically amounted to her backyard been nothing more than chance? Would Thor's explanation condemn her to life in prison for doing what she'd thought he wanted?

"No excitement in the face of his dramatic return?"

Her eyes opened at the sound of Loki's voice before fluttering shut again. She didn't need to turn around to know that the guard that had been with her all morning now wore Loki's face. It worried her on some distant level to know that she wasn't surprised or alarmed by this.

"How long have you been here?" She spoke with her forehead still pressed against the cold glass of the window.

"Hours only."

"And Asgard?"

"Secure once again beneath the benevolent rule of my brother."

"What happened?"

"Nothing more than the perpetual ebb and flow of power and greed. It all happened on a rather large scale, this time."

"All instigated by you?"

She heard the amusement in his voice. "I cannot say I'm blameless."

"So what now?" She laid her palms flat against the glass, tensing a little at the cold before pushing herself back and turning to face him. He was as she'd envisioned him, leaning with his arms folded against the wall, outfitted in the uniform all her guards wore. He looked as natural and at ease as she'd ever seen him, entirely capable of being comfortable no matter what role he adopted.

"Now …?" He lifted his eyes skyward and made a pretense of pondering. "I imagine Thor has gained entrance to this facility already, in spite of the fact that Director Fury is no longer certain whether he can be considered an ally. Despite the plethora of flaws my brother possesses, he excels at using physical intimidation to his advantage. He will have to speak with Fury first, of course. But after that he will make strong insistence that he be led here to you. After that I cannot possibly predict what might happen, but I've a good guess. Do you?"

Jane also had a very good inclination of what would happen then. Thor would either validate what Loki had already told her or he wouldn't. And she would either hate him for it, or …

Loki was watching her intently, reading her inner conflict as each emotion manifested itself in brief, flickering changes of expression. "Regardless of what my brother tells them, Fury will always consider you a threat for sheltering me. You know this."

Jane, who had been making a pointed effort not to look at him, finally glanced his way. "I know."

Loki pushed himself away from the wall and began walking a slow circuit around the small room. Glancing sidelong at Jane, he said, "I've seen where Fury intends to put you, Jane."

She turned a bit to keep him in her view, sinking down into the chair by the kitchen table. "How …?"

"As I told you, I have been here for hours. Time enough to gain access to the innermost sanctum. Time enough to hide among Fury's select inner circle and overhear plans being made. Where he wants to send you, Jane, there will be no coming back from."

"If Thor explains the situation—"

"You've already acknowledged that Fury will never forgive or forget this transgression. The only way you will avoid lifelong incarceration is to leave."

"Leave Earth," she said, her voice hollow.

"You know it to be true."

"With you."

He paused in his pacing, turning to face her and clasping his hands together behind his back. Inclining his head slightly to the side, he replied, "I made you an offer. It stands even now."

"Your offer …" Jane took a deep breath and released it slow. "You meant for us to be … lovers." To her great dismay that one word came out strangled; she watched his smile flicker in and out of existence. "What if I—"

"We do not have the luxury of time to ponder certainties and absolutes, Jane. If you are to come with me, it must be soon."

"Why are you being so …" As she struggled to find the right word, his smile manifested itself again in full. She felt her temper begin to flare up at the fact that he was so blatantly amused at her expense. "Before, you said you'd come for me. That you'd return for me. That I was …"

"Mine," he helpfully supplied, smiling still and rocking back on his heels, looking in that instant like a casual acquaintance that had just dropped by for a happy chat.

Jane's teeth ground together. Making a concentrated effort to unclench her jaw, she went on, "What's changed?"

Even though she was used to it, even though she expected it, she was still startled by how quickly his expression altered, how fluidly he could transition from mood to mood. No trace of amusement now on his face, no carefree and easygoing demeanor. "Nothing has changed. All that I said I meant."

"But you just gave me a choice?"

"If you desire to stay here and face the edict we both know Fury will issue, I will not force you to leave. But that eventuality is not for you, Jane. It could never be."

She knew he spoke the truth but she mulishly clung to the faintest and flimsiest of hopes anyway. "But Thor could—"

"Could what?" Loki spread his arms out wide. "Could sweep in and carry you off with him as he has before? Take you back to Asgard and name you his ward?" He let his arms fall to his sides and shook his head, his expression one of mocking sympathy. "You could be nothing else, not in the eyes of the realm. Lovers, perhaps, for a time—if still you wished it. But never his equal. Never his queen. And I do not think that you, Jane Foster, could ever live a life such as that."

His words were exactly as he meant to them to be. Calculated. Biting. Cruel. All of the things combined that were so very Loki. Undeterred by the glare of unmitigated rage she leveled upon him, he continued speaking. "But perhaps you cling to the hope that my brother could negotiate your release, use his position as one of the … Avengers … as leverage. Again, you deceive yourself. What you have done has marked you forever in the eyes of Nick Fury as a traitor to all humanity. He'll only let you go if you no longer pose a threat to Earth. And the only solution that has a hope of satisfying him is that you no longer be on Earth."

"So," he went on, approaching her one slow step at a time, "those are your choices, Jane. Remain and be imprisoned. Return to Asgard with Thor and know what it is to live always being regarded as something lesser. Or …"

Jane's fury has faded as quickly as it had flared. With weary resignation she ran a hand over her face. "Where would we go?"

"Anywhere. Everywhere."

She looked up and met his gaze. "You could do that?"

He smiled. "You have no idea what I can do."

"And if I …"

The unspoken words hung between them as clearly as if she'd spoken them. "I would not force you."

"But you'd still take me with you?"

"There are more worlds than you can imagine, Jane. You could live another life on any one of them if you so choose."

Despite herself, despite everything, she felt the first faintest stirrings of excitement. Wasn't it what she had spent so long speculating about—life on worlds beyond this one? What was there to regret leaving behind? Darcy, yes, but if she remained she would never see her friend again anyways, would never be able to see Bruce, either. To go to Asgard with Thor—if he made the offer—would have exactly the same outcome. She would never be permitted to return to Earth. So why not take Loki up on his offer …?

Because he's a murderer! Because he can never, ever be trusted!

But Jane easily ignored that inner voice—she'd had a lot of practice recently—and adeptly parceled it away into one of the most remote corners of her mind. Of the three choices she was presented with, there was only one that offered her any modicum of freedom. And above all things, Jane knew that she couldn't live a life in which she was fettered.

She swallowed hard. In anticipation of what she was about to say her heart rate had increased. This was without question the most significant choice she'd ever made. She opened her mouth to voice her acceptance, but no words escaped. Instead, her voice was arrested by the sounds that filtered into the room from the hall outside. Both she and Loki turned as the door to her room flew open, propelled by the powerful hand of Thor.

Jane shot to her feet, the chair clattering to the floor behind her. Thor, his eyes sliding from Jane to Loki, came to an abrupt, startled halt. Behind Thor she saw other faces. Nick Fury. Steve Rogers. Maria Hill. And Bruce, whose gaze found and held hers and contained only fear for her wellbeing.

In the blink of an eye Thor was moving, leaping forward with his hammer in one hand, his intent clearly to subdue his brother. Loki was moving too; she felt him behind her, felt his arm snake around her waist, and had a sliver of a second to realize that she'd never really had a choice after all. Colors flared and merged, blinding her, and then the floor at her feet fell away. And then the only thing corporeal was the pressure of Loki's arm around her waist and the solidness of his body at her back.

How long they traveled, she didn't know. Her awareness had expanded beyond her capacity to understand. She knew only the stars as they swirled through her mind in a graceful, alien dance, knew only that her body was in motion, moving in every direction yet remaining tethered together by the most minute, subatomic bonds. When finally she regained physical form it was a harsh happening, rendering her mute and deaf and blind as she struggled to remember how to be human again.

Gradually, she became aware that she wasn't standing. Instead she lay crumpled on her side, the ground beneath her uncomfortably uneven. As her senses returned she was overwhelmed by sound and sensation; her eyes remained tightly shut because she feared to open them.

"Breathe, Jane."

Unable to do anything else, she could only comply with Loki's directive. She breathed. Her body shook uncontrollably, a reaction in light of what had just happened. She was mortal. She was not meant to travel through the cosmos as Loki did, could never do it so easily. Every part of her being felt odd, felt out of place. Lying on the hard ground somewhere far from Earth, Jane began to panic with the sudden thought that perhaps she hadn't arrived all in one piece.

"It will pass." Loki's voice was directly near her ear, low and soothing. As more of her physical awareness returned in fits and starts, she realized he was kneeling over her. She felt his arms—thought she felt them—go around her, felt her body shift and tilt as he pulled her into his lap. Her eyes were still closed. She couldn't handle a visual assault yet, not when all her other senses were threatening to overwhelm her sanity with their discord.

Jane kept breathing, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. She couldn't control the tremors, but she could now feel and recognize most of her body. She concentrated on the sound of Loki's voice. "I was forced to carry us farther than I had originally intended. I meant to accustom you to this method of travel slowly, in smaller leaps. What you are feeling will pass in time. You need only relax."

His advice sounded better than anything else she could come up with. So she focused then on the simple, soothing rhythm of breathing. Eventually she became aware of his touch, the slight, gentle caress of his fingers through her hair. The shivers that wracked her form slowly began to subside, leaving behind only a bone deep sense of exhaustion. Cradled in Loki's arms, lulled by his soft touch, she felt sleep begin to pull at the edges of her consciousness. In an effort to fight it off, she made a gamble and opened her eyes.

Loki's face filled her vision, the familiar icy hue of his eyes as he gazed down at her a strangely comforting sight. His hand stilled in its motion when first she stirred; it resumed a heartbeat later, his fingers tracing light paths through the loose strands of her hair.

When she spoke, her voice was nothing more than a hoarse croak, her mouth and tongue and teeth still feeling utterly alien to her. "Where?"

Loki raised his head to glance around. "Nidavellir. The Dark Fields. Home of the dwarves of Hreidmar."

Jane tried to turn her head to look around and immediately abandoned that movement as waves of dizziness flooded her mind. "Are we safe here?"

Loki's expression as he returned his gaze to her was unreadable. "Relatively. Safer than we'd be in Asgard, certainly, or Svartalfheim."

Jane thought on that for a moment before another realization struck her. She was no longer on Earth. And if what she suspected was true she could never return to Earth, either. The thought struck her with a hard, sharp pang of grief.

Loki read it in her eyes and an unhappy smile formed on his face. "You regret leaving Thor."

"No," she said in a rough whisper. "I regret leaving my home."

His expression softened somewhat. It appeared for a moment as if he would say something, but he pursed his lips together and looked away, scanning their surroundings. Jane closed her eyes again, unable to beat back the combined strength of sorrow and exhaustion. She no longer had a home, was a traveler now through the realms of the cosmos with only Loki as her guard. She felt an incredible sense of isolation. Loki was familiar with this type of existence. She was not.

"Jane."

His voice startled her out of thoughts and she opened her eyes. He was looking at her again, his gaze so focused and intense that it momentarily stopped her breath. She knew before he began moving what would happen next and remained silent and still as his lips descended to touch hers.

It was a feather light touch, almost tentative and chaste. It confused her in the way it sent her heart skittering in her chest, in the way it made her want to reach up and grasp his face and kiss him harder. Obeying the whims she could only half suppress, her arms moved, lifting. And then she'd framed his face in her hands and he'd pulled back a hairsbreadth, his eyes a little wide, his lips parted as he awaited her next move.

She ran her thumbs over the elegant, defined line of his cheekbones. Studied his face with the intent to memorize how he looked in this moment, beautiful and vulnerable and unsure. He lowered his head again and her heart leapt, but she stopped him with her voice.

"Loki, please … give me time."

He regarded her for a long moment, motionless. And then came that smile, that brittle, insincere smile that carried everything within it except what she wanted to see. She closed her eyes in dismay as he began to move, began to extricate his body from hers with icy detachment. She propped herself up on her elbows as he stood and stepped away from her, casting his gaze out over the world they now inhabited.

"We must move soon," he said, and his voice was one of pointed disinterest.

Jane slowly shifted into a sitting position, resting her head in her hands as everything around her tilted alarmingly with the movement. "Loki …" she said softly, pitching her tone to supplicate, to soothe. She raised her head and looked to him where he stood.

He met her eyes. "It will be problematic for you," he said, "should the dwarves happen to find us. They are notoriously unkind to those who trespass."

She didn't miss his deliberate wording. He was threatening to leave her behind. For a moment, lying in his lap with his breath warm upon her lips, she'd forgotten his true nature. Forgotten that he could slide from quiet passion to anger in the blink of an eye. Forgotten that he'd been without a home far longer than she had, that that fact had taken a toll on him. Forgotten that he was accustomed to always getting his way, and when he didn't …

Jane, surprising herself, heaved herself to her feet in one quick and very unsteady motion. The world spun a little and then righted itself. Gritting her teeth, trying to ignore the fact that her body still didn't feel like it belonged to her, she said, "Then let's go."

.x.