Jane stared up at Loki. Every breath ached and every movement brought a new burst of pain. Her arms and upper body were pinned. She had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. She realized that she had no idea how she could get out of this one.
Well, I guess this is it. She thought. I guess he's going to take me like a cheap hooker. I can't stop that. But I can do my best to make it unpleasant.
She looked straight into Loki's eyes.
"Is this the only way you can get women?" she asked.
Loki looked up from her jeans.
"By holding them down and beating them into submission?"
The hand that held the zipper clenched into a fist. The one that had been pinioning her drew back to strike her.
Leaving his neck wide open.
Jane lunged forward and clamped her teeth into his throat. He reared backward, carrying her with him. She felt his blood in her mouth and running down her chin as she bit harder. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he coughed lightly.
She felt one arm grab her hair and another circle her waist. There was a dull ripping sound as Loki's flesh gave away instead of her jaw and she flew back into a pile of cardboard boxes with a strip of Loki still in her mouth.
She leapt to her feet. Loki was already coming for her, staggering slightly as he gripped his bleeding throat. He was trembling with savagery like a bow stretched to its breaking point.
Jane ran across the basement floor, flinging anything she could reach at Loki to slow him down. He just looked confused at the cardboard boxes. The wrench was a little more helpful.
When she reached the transdimensional circuit Loki was still halfway across the room. She frantically pressed the necessary buttons to call up the portal. The machine gave a quiet hum for a moment and then lay still. She turned around.
An abyss filled with stars greeted her. The portal, about four feet in diameter, was slightly translucent. She saw Loki's vague, darkened silhouette in it as he lurched forward.
Jane crumpled to the ground. She'd done it. She'd opened a portal to another world.
A one-sided portal.
Loki POV:
Loki felt the last of his charm and decorum leave him. He had no time for them. As he limped toward Jane, who was fiddling with some primitive Midgardian contraption, he reconsidered his plans. He still intended to break her in every way he could think of, but he was beginning to realize that she was going to make him pay in blood for every victory he won. It was time to get the job done and leave this awful place behind.
He wasn't sure why Jane hadn't run for the stairs. She couldn't think her pathetic technology could stop a being who traveled the stars. He watched as she continued to press buttons and flip switches.
She turned, like she expected something to have come from her machine. There was nothing but air between them. She folded in on herself and curled on the ground.
"You're out of tricks, Jane Foster." Loki couldn't help but slow long enough for that. His voice was reedy and ragged. His throat ached and blood trickled out as he spoke. "I am going to shatter you like crystal. You can't withstand me. I am a god." And he lunged for her.
Jane POV:
Jane sobbed on the floor, trying to look like she was utterly broken. It wasn't hard. She turned her head to peek at Loki, who was still lurching her way. He stopped for one final taunt, then pounced forward. As he cut through the air, she looked up at him and smiled.
It was quite a thing to watch him reach the portal. He pressed in and suddenly, part of him wasn't there. It wasn't cut off and it didn't vanish. It just wasn't there. In less than a second he had passed entirely into the portal, and he was simply gone.
Jane grabbed the top of the circuit with her good arm and hauled herself up. She hurriedly shut down the portal. Then she shut the machine off entirely. Then she unplugged it. She would have smashed it if she didn't still hold hope for Thor.
When she was completely sure the portal was closed, she slid back to the ground and leaned against the circuit. She felt at once completely at peace and entirely overwhelmed. She decided to take an inventory of her situation.
Most importantly, Loki was gone. She wasn't confident he couldn't find his way back, since he'd fallen from the sky at the start of this whole nightmare, but it was a long time between Thor's disappearance and Loki's arrival. She was confident she'd have time to get to someone who could help.
She wasn't critically wounded. Her body ached from being thrown around. Her ribs throbbed and she supposed they might have been bruised or cracked. The worst was her arm. She didn't know enough about medicine to try to pop it back into place, so she tried to hold it steady with her other hand.
She sat there for a few minutes, dazed and partially in shock. She didn't feel much of anything except a general sense of relief from some great danger. She dimly thought that perhaps emotions would come later, after the adrenaline and other hormones normalized.
She looked dispassionately at the empty air which had held the portal. Looks like she'd had one more trick than Loki had reckoned on.
