Chapter 9 Summary: The Chitauri are attacking, and Earth's Mightiest Heroes are fighting a losing battle. Jane puts herself in harm's way to stop what her creation began.

AN1: Sorry! So so sorry. I am so deeply sorry about the lack of updates. Don't worry, I am still in love with this story, and the final two chapters are almost finished, and next chapter is a pretty good working draft. I have been suffering from disgustingly bad writer's block, which sucks because summer is usually when I can literally churn out a chapter every week and a half. I ended up splitting this one, since the whole battle in one go would've been way long, plus the writers block. Anyway. I'll try to get the next one out a bit sooner. I just started college (or uni, depending on where you live) so I'll do my best.


Thor touched down on the Stark Tower balcony. "Loki!" he shouted towards his brother, "Turn off the Tesseract, or I will."

His once-brother didn't look surprised to see him. There was dispassion in his eyes as he gazed upon Thor, but that soon heated to Loki's characteristic mischief, now paired with something that Thor had never dreamed he'd see in his brother's eyes- madness and hatred. "There is no stopping it. There is only the war."

Thor was beyond angry. The words had crossed his mind so many times who is this man where has my brother gone, but now there was just anger; rage and grief coming together in a pinnacle of violence. "So be it," he spat.

With a vicious roar, Loki left the high ground, and the two brothers fought on top of Stark Tower.

He knew he could physically best his brother. He's been able to since they were children. While Loki's domain of cunning and mischief had served him well, Thor was the one who knew battle and strength.

But he has never fought this Loki before. Where once Loki would retreat, stay at the fringes of the fight to survey his options and plan his attack carefully (a decision Thor used to scoff at, but now realized was actually a quite effective battle technique in some situations), there was now physicality and brutal hits Thor didn't remember Loki ever making.

His brother was quicker, faster, and stronger than he once was. The older brother in him wanted to be proud, but was instead stricken with grief.

At one point, he was knocked onto the ground, Loki coming at him with Thor having no effective counter, when his newfound friends saved him. He recognized the Black Widow, looking fierce and battle-ready next to a man who could only be her equal with a battered but strong courage in his eyes, firing at Loki from one of their flying machines. Relief was followed by panic as they drew Loki's attack off of him, allowing him time enough to recover, but not time enough to make it impossible for Loki to fire off another shot. The machine's wing was engulfed in flame, the engines whining and straining in protest as it began to fall towards the ground.

He didn't allow himself time to worry for his comrades, and he trusted that they would be able to help themselves. He had a battle to win.

And in the end, however much he'd changed, Loki was a magician.

Thor finally pinned his brother solidly, remembering what Jane had said about Loki's scepter being the key to shut the portal down.

For an Asgardian warrior who had traveled Yggdrasil's branches many times, being near the unnatural doorway was uncomfortable. Like a room that was a few degrees warmer than normal, like an allergy that had not yet turned to hives, a subtle ring in his ears. The pathway was not natural, forced into the fabric of the universe against its will.

Despite everything telling him to trap Loki with Mjolnir and turn off the device, he once again tried to reach out to his lost little brother. "Look at this!" he commanded harshly, "Look around you! You think this madness will end with your rule?" Loki had always been for logic. Perhaps that hadn't been lost.

Then, something miraculous happened before Thor's eyes. Loki actually looked. Saw the destruction and horror and felt its weight. Thor could see it in Loki's eyes. His brother was back. He wanted to cry out to the heavens in gratitude, anyone who would listen. His brother had returned. He remembered his mother's words and realized exactly how right she was.

Not until we are completely lost or turned around...

"It's too late..."

Do we begin to find ourselves.

"It's too late to stop it," Loki said hoarsely, hopelessly. His eyes darted everywhere except Thor's face.

"No," Thor said, feeling a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. "We can. Together."

Hope flooded him when Loki's gaze finally fell on him, a shaking smile lighting his gaunt, pale face. All the times he'd doubted that his brother had ever loved him, every question he had about his brother being a lost cause disappeared in that moment because of the joy in his heart pushed them to the back of his mind.

And then Thor felt the blade pierce his armor.

He hadn't felt so horrified since Loki fell.

Hadn't felt so wrong since he realized he could never keep his promise to Jane.

The God of Thunder stumbled backwards, loosing the God of Mischief from where he had been trapped.

The blade was small and hadn't gone deep. He already felt his skin and muscle trying to heal around it, but it was painful. But Thor had gotten better at the art of patience, and brute strength would likely not get him the scepter. So he waited, holding his anger and disappointment and sadness in check while he stumbled to his knees with a hand on the knife. Thor made a show of it (it was not entirely a show...), hoping Loki would take the opportunity to indulge his ego. He wasn't wrong.

"It will always be sentiment that gets you in the end, brother," Loki taunted. "How is Jane Foster? Dropping from that altitude couldn't have been good for her," he said with mock concern. His little brother then had the gall to laugh. Thor was quaking with rage trying to remain still. "These little humans are really so, so fragile. How many things do I have to take from you for you to realize that I. Win." Loki copied his actions that he had once done to the Captain in Stuttgart and jabbed the butt of the staff into Thor's bent head.

It was all Thor could do to not react as Loki continued, "I am going to destroy you. I am going to become king. I am going to kill your friends- the little Midgardians who think they are so special, think they can stand against the tide. And, just for a little bit of extra fun, I think I'll go grab your friends from home. Your little minions, Sif, Hogun, Fandral, Volstagg. I am going to kill them, brother. Just like I killed Jane," he finished his speech, and Thor couldn't stand it any longer.

Thor lunged with a roar, landing a powerful punch on his unsuspecting brother. The God of Mischief stumbled back, allowing Thor to engage once more. The blade digging into his abdomen hurt, but he could easily ignore pain. Such was the warrior's way. After trading a few blows, Thor knocked Loki off balance once again. No matter how much his brother had changed, battle would always be Thor's domain. He let his rage shadow the pain as he pulled Loki off his feet, over Thor's head, and slammed him down into the unforgiving stone of the balcony.

"Is this your vengeance then, brother? Did I destroy yet another thing you love?" Loki hissed from his place on the ground.

Thor was all anger and violence now. "You destroyed my brother. That I know with certainty." Readying himself to finish his brother off, either knock him unconscious of trap him with Mjolnir, Thor called his hammer to his hand. In the space of time it took it to reach him, Loki had rolled off the balcony, leaving the scepter behind.

Thor breathed a sigh of relief while simultaneously being impressed- how had Jane managed to keep the failsafe a secret? It didn't matter, he decided. He would shut the portal, and all the pain he'd caused this world would be over. He grasped the blade still embedded in his abdomen and yanked, not even wincing as the muscle and skin tissue tore around it. He tossed the bloodied weapon aside.

But as he reached down towards the staff, he caught sight of a large contingent of the Chitauri gathering around the Stark Tower balcony. Thor's horror multiplied tenfold when he saw his brother at the helm, giving the troops the signal to fire.


The road wasn't incredibly far from where Jane and Thor had come down, so as soon as she got to the deserted road, she looked both ways, hoping for a car to come along that she could hitch a ride in. Normally, she was pretty opposed to hitchhiking, but, well, normal didn't really apply at the moment. Unfortunately, Jane's luck didn't seem to be turning around at all, and with a sigh, she followed the road's direction which headed for the massive city, and the artificial wormhole torn into the sky.

As her feet tapped out an urgent rhythm on the pavement, her mind, newly in-control of itself, began playing through exactly what she had learned through the duration of her captivity.

While she hadn't been fully in the driver's seat throughout her time with Loki, she had been fully aware for the most part. It was her intellect that enabled the doorway to be punched through the sky, after all, and if she hadn't been able to use her mind, then Loki's plan wouldn't have been possible.

She remembered Thor's words about science and magic- I come from a place where they're one and the same thing. The physics she had just done, the math, everything was beyond anything she thought herself capable of, but there was her functioning wormhole in the middle of New York. So she had indeed done magic- she understood it. Magic is just science we don't understand yet. Well, now it was understood.

Concepts she knew she would never have had to capacity to understand within her lifetime had Loki's magic not solidified them in her mind and then to have her own human intellect use them for a practical, working purpose in the waking world.

It was, in the most literal sense, beyond anything she could have dreamed.

The answers which she had doggedly sought were now hers, maybe not in a direct sense (it wasn't as if Loki and the Tesseract had just handed them over on a silver platter, nor was it directly correlated to how to reopen Asgard's Bifrost) but Jane was clever enough to draw her own conclusions and apply the results to other situations.

She understood the universe, and despite the horrible way she got her answers, she couldn't deny the utter satisfaction and peace that came along with that knowledge. A selfish part of her was so fiercely happy, so proud of what she had accomplished. She couldn't deny that thoughts of Nobel prizes and finally getting respect crossed her mind.

But, the fact of the matter stood that without Loki's mind control, she could feel her conscience kicking back into gear, and along with it came the guilt, the shame, and the horror at what exactly she had done.

It made her pick up her pace substantially, though she knew at this rate, it would be at least an hour before she reached the city.

And that's when she came upon the parking lot. She and Thor must have come down in some sort of state park, as the landmark sign leading to the parking lot modestly proclaimed it to be the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

Now, Jane has done some dumb shit in her lifetime. Nothing as monumentally stupid but entirely necessary as she was about to do now.

Her heartrate picked up, her palms beginning to sweat as she darted into the parking lot. Her eyes shifted, as she tried a couple of handles. Jeez, Jane, get a hold of yourself. You helped a Norse god alien open a wormhole; stealing a car shouldn't be nearly as hard.

She was running out of cars to try when her slippery hands finally found an unlocked vehicle. It was a sallow, aged Pinto with peeling orange paint. She was so surprised by the door not being locked, she nearly fell as it swung open.

She slid inside, the skin exposed by her tattered clothing sticking to the vinyl seat. She shut the door behind her, and began to rummage around for a spare key. She rummaged through the glove compartments, only finding kleenex she hoped to god wasn't used and old gas receipts. She checked under the floor carpets, under the seat, in the overhead visor, and everywhere just short of tearing the car apart. She began to feel hopelessly frustrated, thinking that she'd found the only car that was open to find that she had no way to start it.

Then, the tickles of memory came over her, along with a sense of dread. An old boyfriend of hers was a mechanic (no, that didn't last very long) who reveled in showing her just how well he knew how to hotwire cars. And she had a degree in engineering, so she knew she could probably figure out the rest she didn't remember.

Her stomach was erupting with nervous flutters as she used a pen she had found on the floor of the car to disengage the steering wheel lock, and moments later, she used the same pen (thank god it was metallic) to break the plastic access covering to get to the wires behind the ignition. She thanked her luck which was seeming to improve that this car was an older model- those were the only ones she knew how to do this with.

She found the two red wires that were for primary power supply for the ignition switch, the other the connection for the vehicle's electrical circuits. Jane was pleasantly surprised to find them already stripped, as that was a part of the plan she didn't know how she would accomplish without a wire cutter. This car had been hotwired before, obviously.

After twisting the two ends of the wires together, her eyes hunted for the usually-brown ignition wire. She found it stripped and ready like the reds.

She took a deep breath, trying to settle her stomach that was quickly becoming nauseous and steady her shaking hands. Jane brought the ends together, and the corresponding sparks and whines of the engine made her sigh in relief. She hadn't done it wrong. The positive response prompted her hands to steady and she was able to start the car.

The physicist then shoved the wires back into the steering wheel mount, praying they wouldn't short out with any other components, and revved the engine so she wouldn't have to start it all over again.

She'd have to send Nate Shepherd a fruit basket because if she hadn't watched him slide the wires out, which ones to cross, how they sparked she would never ever have gotten to the city. She shifted the car into drive and headed for the road.

She wanted to leave a note or something that said I AM SO SORRY, IT WAS AN EMERGENCY, I SWEAR but Jane didn't want to leave her prints all over. Hopefully this car was insured.

The Pinto was by no means a luxurious ride, but soon she was cruising easily down the highway.


Thor narrowly avoided the first barrage by diving away from the scepter, his grace belying his size when he rolled back to his feet. The onslaught did not let up, only intensified. Soon the stone and metal that held the balcony and Thor and the key to shutting down the portal began to buckle and collapse. In a blaze of energy blasts from the Chitauri weapons and fire from their impact with the balcony, the once-solid stone gave out beneath Thor's feet.

Not wanting to repeat his experience with falling from great distances, Thor managed to take an unsteady flight off of Stark Tower, knowing that no craft could compete with him in flight.

The heavy veil of failure hung over him as he made his way to where his teammates were. He lost the scepter. Just let it slip right out of his grasp in favor of self-preservation. Thor would've dwelled on it, but he was a solider, and this was a war.

And he would fight on.


Jane drove along in the uncomfortably stolen vehicle, feeling worse and worse the longer she was in it.

And then there was a stall in traffic ahead. Roadblock, with several cars behind it. Ahead of the halted cars (which Jane couldn't help but think were all being driven by their legal owners) was the military- what seemed like a small army, in Jane's eyes. Two tanks surrounded by a small contingent of men in military camouflage, all of whom were sporting some kind of rifle.

This was bad. Crap. Couldn't this just go according to plan? Here she was in a stolen car just trying to get to the city to help, to save people, to stop what she started. Panic started to rev up her breathing and heart rate, her already sweaty palms sliding on the steering wheel. Can I just pull a U-turn and find another way around? Shit, that wouldn't look suspicious at all. No, jesus, if they blocked off this road, all of them must be blocked.

Sounds of explosions and the bright flares of light that went along with the tremors drew Jane's attention to the city. The Chitauri were still descending through the bridge. The bridge she had built.

No, Jane. Stop. She forced herself to get a grip. This was her responsibility. They're probably just as freaked as you. There's a fucking alien invasion going on, and you just want to know why you can't get through. No... just... get the hell through. They can't shoot you, right? When did that become a commonplace thought for her? She was just a scientist and here she is walking into a damned war zone! There were roadblocks!

She hopped from the car, not remembering how to shut off said car once the hot-wiring was said and done and not having the time or will to figure out how.

She walked between the lane of unmoving cars, and thinking, Well, here goes nothing, Foster. Once she was within their earshot, she took in a big lungful of air, and shouted, "Hey! I need to get through!" She was happy about how authoritative she sounded.

The National Guardsmen sitting on their tanks blocking the road looked to her suddenly, confusion on their faces and hands twitching for their weapons. They looked just as terrified as she felt. "Ma'am, this is an active battle zone-"

Authority, Jane. Authority. "I don't give two shits that this is an active battle zone! I have authorization from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division to get through," she yelled, not slowing her pace in the least.

That didn't solve anything. "What the hell is the Strategic- Homeland... whatever you said?"

Crap. She'd hoped that name-dropping SHIELD (and the full name, none the less) would be enough to get her through minus any bullet holes. Authority. You got this. "Government agency that you obviously don't have the clearance to know about. Who the hell is in charge here?"

"What happened to you?" another asked, ignoring her question. Seems they finally noticed her bedraggled clothing.

"Do I fucking look like I have time to hold your hand through this? I can't answer your every goddamn question! Let. Me. Through." She didn't remember the last time she swore so much. Maybe being authoritative led to horribly crass language. That would certainly explain Fury's rather colorful choice of words.

A man, older in comparison to the very young guys on the tanks, stepped out to greet her. She tried to not show him her aversion to weaponry with the M16 at his side. "I'm staff sergeant Mitchell. I need you to-"

"No, I need you to get me a sat phone so that I can call the Director so I can get some freaking clearance."

"I need to see some identification, ma'am."

She mustered her most incredulous look, saved usually just for Darcy, "Are you kidding me? Do you have eyeballs? Were you expecting me to hang onto my ID throughout this ordeal?" she said, gesturing to herself. "Look, just give me five minutes with the sat phone, and I'll be out of your hair."

Sergeant Mitchell considered her speculatively for a few heavy seconds, and she met his stare with a flinty one of her own. "Five minutes."


Meanwhile, the Helicarrier was scrambling to reattain order. Above the hurrying technicians on the Bridge, stood Nick Fury.

"Sir," Agent Maria Hill called from below where she was running the repairs and reassessment, "we're getting a call to your direct line from an unknown satellite phone. The ID code used belongs to Jane Foster."

Fury looked up from the battle readouts appearing on his screen, an uncharacteristic look of surprise on his face. "Foster? How the hell is she alive?" The security footage from the Hulk's prison quite clearly showed the moments before her death. It was tragic, and Fury had wondered if her dying was the reason they still had no location on Thor. But now...

Agent Hill looked as clueless as Fury. "Shall I patch her through?"

There were doubts in Fury's mind. Was she still under Loki's control? Was that even Jane? Would receiving this call put the Carrier in more danger? "Yes." Calculated risk. Romanoff said cognitive recalibration, a blow to the head, was enough to knock Loki's magic loose. If she hadn't sustained any head trauma, then Fury had a full head of hair. Even if it wasn't her, Fury knew interrogation, even over the phone. He waited a moment, pressing his earpiece closer to his ear, "Foster? How the hell are you alive?"

"It's a long story, Director," a voice that was undoubtedly Jane Foster replied and Fury wondered what kind of Asgardian powers allowed her to live, "one I plan on sharing, but right now I need to get to the city. And no, Loki is no longer up in my noggin, to answer your question."

Not satisfied with the answer, and wanting to find out more information from the doctor who opened the portal, but prudent enough to be succinct and commanding in battle, Fury advised sternly, "Doctor, there's a full-blown war being fought. Now I understand you might think you need to be there, but trust me when I say you are unequipped to-"

"Fury, I can shut off my machine."

Fury pauses for a second, partly because not many have ever dared to interrupt him. "Say that again?"

"I can shut off the machine, and stop the Chitauri from sending any more reinforcements."

There's a game changer. Fury paced as he ordered, "Tell me how. I can relay it to Agent Romanoff on the ground." He gestured to Hill to get a connection with either Romanoff or Barton. His second-in-command started flying around the consoles, barking orders at her subordinates.

"Director, it's... it's not that simple. I told Thor how to-"

"Then why the fuck are you trying to kill yourself?" Fury interrupted, returning the favor.

"Because it's only a partial solution! It'll disrupt the Tesseract's energy, but only temporarily. If I don't completely shut it down, it'll open up again, except it will be much more unstable, and what happened at the SHIELD base will happen to Manhattan."

"I don't see why you can't tell me how the machine works-"

"Fury, the physics I used to create that thing don't even exist on this planet yet! Even Stark or Dr. Banner wouldn't be able to figure it out." She sounded incredibly impatient.

Well. Fury muted his earpiece momentarily. "Hill, how far out are we from being able to send out a bird?" Fury called out, hoping that it was soon so they could send out a jet to grab Foster.

Hill answered, "At least another hour, sir. Optimistically."

Not enough time. He unmuted his earpiece, finally responding to the scientist who apparently held the fate of the world in her hands. "Then why the hell are you talking to me?"

"There's this military roadblock that won't let me through..."


Thor landed unsteadily nearby the Captain, still feeling the stab wound which was painfully knitting itself back together. "What's the story upstairs?"

"Jane built in a failsafe to shut the portal down, and it requires Loki's staff," Thor explained brusquely.

"Cap, there's a self-generating force-field around the Tesseract," Tony adds via the communicator. Thor can still hear it over the sounds of explosions and terror. "How does Point Break plan to get through it?"

"The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable without Loki's scepter," Thor responds, ignoring Cap's strange look about how he knew what Tony had said, "but it was lost in the collapse of the Stark Tower balcony."

"The collapse of WHAT?!" Tony demanded, but none of his teammates paid him any mind.

"So let's keep the fight here," Natasha suggested. Thor's admiration and respect for her grew. "Without a leader and a focal point, these things are going to run wild."

"I have unfinished business with Loki," Thor interjects, making his position about his brother's standing very clear.

A new voice, one laced with sarcasm, said, "Yeah, well get in line." It came from the newcomer, who held intricately designed arrows in his hand, the one with the sharp eyes and heart of mettle. He has a feeling this was the one the Lady Natasha had referred to earlier. Along with one of ours. Thor did not begrudge the man his lust for vengeance.

"Natasha's right," Cap said, bringing the focus back in, "Loki's going to keep them focused on us. So we got Stark up top, he's going to need us to-"

There was a lull in the sounds of battle as the rattle of a human-built engine pulled up behind them. The four heroes turned to see Bruce Banner, now back to his original form, on a very small Midgardian transport vehicle. He was framed by flames and overturned cars, yet he looked very... serene.

It was strange, seeing two opposites in the same man, but Thor was glad to see his friend was alive and well after the Hulk had taken the same fall he and Jane had.

"So... This all seems horrible," Banner observed dryly as he approached.

The Widow was the first to respond, "I've seen worse."

"Sorry." His apology was short, but even someone daft as a doornail could see the sincerity bleeding from his eyes.

Natasha was quick to amend, "No... We could use a little worse."

"Stark. We got him," Cap informed.

"Banner?"

"Just like you said." The Captain didn't sound like he entirely believed it himself.

"Then tell him to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you."

The small flying form of the Iron Man rounded the corner of the building, headed back towards the group. Following him, crashing through part of a building in order to do so, was something Thor hadn't seen in all his years, but he had a feeling he knew what it was.

"Leviathan," Thor breathed, both in disbelief and awe, "I thought such beasts were legends." Old Asgardian stories depicted huge, flying creatures with teeth longer than a man's height, a shell thicker than any arrow, harpoon, or weapon could cut through and harder than any diamond, more power held within it than in the whole of Yggdrasil.

"I don't see how that's a party," Natasha responded.

Thor hadn't battled one of these beasts before, had never seen one until this day, but he had always reveled in new challenges, and he felt a growl rising in his throat. He raised Mjolnir, the power of Earth's weather surging through him. It was a heady feeling.

"Doctor Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry," the Captain suggested.

Walking towards the creature unprotected, Banner only looked back once. He did not appear afraid. "That's my secret, Captain. I'm always angry." Thor looked at the man holding back the Hulk, admiration growing. This small Midgardian man, so comparatively weak to many of the races of the Realms, yet so much stronger. There seemed to be no end to the things the humans could do to surprise him.

Then Banner let loose the Hulk, clothing tearing to reveal green flesh and such power that even Thor wasn't a completely even match for. That fact was punctuated by a massive fist slamming into the hulking Leviathan. Its massive body followed its momentum, flying upwards. What Thor had assumed was a biological shell turned out to be added body armor, and the plates were obviously not designed for such an assault. The plates began to slide forward, smashing together in a startling cacophony and revealed the unprotected body of the beast beneath.

"Hang on," Thor hears Stark say, despite the noise, "I've got this one."

Stark, even contained in his impressive battle armor, looked so small and weak in comparison to the huge beast. Thor wondered exactly how he planned on destroying the creature. He saw a small projectile leave Stark's arm, and stick in the side of the Leviathan, and he was confused. How could so puny a weapon-

The large, terrific explosion was entirely unexpected, tearing the Leviathan to pieces. He shielded his face from the flames and light, and soon a laugh overcame him, but only briefly. He vowed that this would be the last time he ever underestimated a Midgardian weapon.

Hope flared deep within him. If these humans could destroy a Leviathan, why would it be so presumptuous to think they could defeat the Chitauri?

It was time for battle.

Thor grinned.


Chapter 10 Preview:

"Oh, my dear, I am afraid you just make this too easy."

Jane whirled from her machine in time to see Loki's wicked smile spreading across his face. "Despite the lack of challenge, you are simply too much fun."