Disclaimer: Still don't own the plot or characters of the MCU, and that's probably for the best. Still not for sale or profit - because really, who needs cash? I am rich in cat toys, VHS recordings of DS9 from the 90s, and sarcasm. And I think we all know that that's what's really important.
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"Know your enemy and know yourself, and you need not fear the outcome of one hundred battles.
Know your enemy, but not yourself, and you will wallow in defeat every time."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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"Always so perceptive, Loki. About everyone but yourself…"
–Queen Frigga of Asgard
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Jane stepped out of the stairwell, blinking around her at the transformation of the garden at night. The sky over head was ink black and scattered with a spray of celestial bodies no less impressive than the view from the Hinge. Deprived of sunlight, the crystals soaked in and amplified the starlight instead. Saturated with light too indirect to fracture into its spectrum, the crystals glowed with a soft, silvery inner radiance instead that changed the quality of the garden from a vista of gold-tinged rainbows to a silver-edged twilight.
The scent of apples assailed her at once as the fragrant breeze washed over her, but it was far easier to resist the craving with Finn's warning fresh in her memory. Her mouth still watered for them, but the hunger was manageable now.
Just what are the golden apples…? she wondered all over again as she self-consciously adjusted her robes, running her fingers through her hair for the hundredth time, then sighing in defeat. She probably looked like a rag-doll, having slept slumped over a table. But she was almost too tired to care, and she was never going to get any kind of meaningful rest until she wrested some truths out of the 'god of lies'. The irony made her groan quietly under her breath.
Nevertheless, her mission was clear. Now she just had to find him. Peering around, she found the garden just as deserted as it had been on her first visit.
Well, he was never going to be just waiting around at the top of the stairs… she told herself irritably, chagrined to realize that she may not have given the situation the degree of thought it deserved. Too late now, she groused at herself. She had come for some peace of mind, and she wasn't leaving without it.
Crossing the stream and moving out past the fountains, she scrutinized the courtyard in all directions, wondering where she should start.
An abrupt flicker of gold caught her eye. Brow furrowing, she let curiosity lead her cautiously towards the hint of glitter amidst the lances of silver light. As she approached, the shine resolved itself into a golden character inscribed into the plane of a crystal shaft beside one of the paths out into the garden. Jane recognized it and it brought her up short; the symbol was sowulo, the sign of the healing sun.
Well, at least one of us is showing some forethought.
Loki could not have left her a clearer sign of his presence. It vexed her slightly to think that he knew exactly the right signal to capture her attention – and that it was the same one writ large in the center of his gift to her. It implied all sorts of uncomfortable and irritating things.
As she approached, she was further frustrated to watch the symbol waver, then capriciously evaporate into the ether, leaving no trace of itself behind. She reached out and touched the glass-smooth plane of crystal where it had been, frowning at the curious pang of disappointment she felt at watching the symbol vanish. She was just on the point of thinking now what? when another glimmer of gold winked at her from the corner of her eye. Turning, she spied new gold symbol appear, inscribed on the trunk of a tree at the end of the path, just visible from where she stood. Her eyebrows shot up.
A trail of breadcrumbs, huh? How appropriate for a fairytale garden. Reaching down to touch the hilt of her dagger for reassurance, and hoping wryly that this trail didn't lead to a gingerbread house, she set off into the wild depths of the magical garden towards the distant glimmer of gold in search of a mysterious evil sorcerer. I have definitely wandered into a fairytale.
As the leafy sway of the branches and sharp angles of the spires swallowed her up, keeping track of her direction became harder and harder, the paths forking, twisting and weaving aimlessly ever deeper into the crystal forest. Jane looked over her shoulder more than once, wishing that she had thought to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, or maybe something a little more permanent.
The markers led her deep into the garden, which seemed to unfurl around her in all directions, uniformly lush and lovely, all ethereal silvery crystal, fragrant apple trees and white walkways winding between burbling streams and swaths of rocky, moss-covered ground. She soon lost all sense of time and distance. Until at last she rounded a sharp bend in the path, and came upon something new.
The next golden symbol glittered on a dusky, opaque expanse of rose quartz.
A wall.
It stood twice her height, curving away in both directions, in an arc that suggested that it formed a circle with. Or part of one. The symbol of the sun gleamed beside a gap in the polished expanse of crystal. No… an entrance. A gateway, beyond which she could see nothing but gold-tinged darkness.
An indescribable sensation welled up inside of her, raising the fine hairs on the back of her neck. Without her permission, her arms inched up to fold around her in a protective gesture, her hands fanning and spreading along her sleeves as though seeking something solid to hold onto. That shadowy slash of empty space called to her, beckoning with a pull that was nearly physical, even as some heretofore vestigial structure of her subconscious urged her not to go any nearer. Her stomach roiled and ached suddenly with hunger and she had to swallow as her mouth flooded at the scent of apples. She shook herself, pushing the intensity of both the craving and the aversion aside. It wasn't easy.
Inching tentatively forward, she observed that the stones of the path that led up to the wall were uneven, twisted, broken in places, as though some massive upheaval had rattled them from their foundations. The broken stones were swiftly swallowed up beyond the edge of the gateway, by shadows stained with a mysterious golden glow. The effect was tantalizing, and somehow ominous.
Jane desperately wanted to see what made that warm, alluring light.
But she could feel it, all the way down to her DNA: she was treading on forbidden ground.
What is this place…?
Pursing her lips in defiance, she marshaled, unfolding her arms. It didn't matter. She hadn't come this far to turn back now. Battering back the irrational sense of foreboding, she stepped up to the border of the shadows and peered inside.
"Oh…" she breathed.
It like another world. The dense quartz all around and the thick growth of the foliage interweaving overhead blocked out almost all of the natural light of the garden outside, so that the inner domain was a place of shadows; it was like walking straight from a silver-bright high noon, into a gold-limned twilight. The air was close and intimate, the trees seeming to loom close even as their vaulted canopies soared up and away.
Trees, darker and more robust than the variety without, grew all around the perimeter of this dark inner garden, but only one tree grew at the center. It was huge. Taller, thicker, hardier and stranger than the rest, it dominated the center of the garden like a woodland king presiding over it's court. Alien sigils were its raiment, carved into its bark in black and gold, as though the symbols had been burned into the wood, and then sprinkled with gold dust until the particles caught in the char. Its crown of golden apples, which perfumed the air with an almost overwhelming sweetness, did not merely gleam, they glowed, hanging from their branches like living lamps, and it was their inviting luminescence that drove back the clinging dark.
"Remarkable, isn't it?"
Jane's heart leapt painfully once again, but this time she managed, through a feat of pure obstinacy, to keep from startling at the sound of Loki's voice. She kept her eyes forward, acutely aware of the sound of his approach behind her. Looking back on their earlier encounter, she realized she'd made a fool of herself, letting panic take control of her common sense. This time, she vowed, she would show no fear.
"What is it?" she asked, proud of how even her voice came out, tearing her eyes away to glance up at him as he stepped up beside her, locking on to his profile, which was as carefully blank as her voice. Goosebumps dimpled her arms under her sleeves as she found herself intensely, alarmingly aware of his presence, mere inches away. It was like standing beside a circus lion; no matter how tame they claimed it must be, it was still a lion; no matter how much her intellect rationalized it, instinct insisted that she was about to be eaten alive.
"A tree," he replied, infuriatingly vague. "A very special tree," he amended with a small smile as her expression sharpened with annoyance. She could feel him watching her, as powerfully aware of her presence as she was of his.
"What's so special about it?" she wondered, deliberately taking her eyes off of him and letting them wander over the shapes burned into the trunk. It was almost insurmountably difficult, but that was the thing about a lion; the more fear you showed it, the more it saw you as prey.
"Maybe someday I'll tell you," he said, and Jane could hear in his voice the way his smile widened. "When you're ready."
"Whatever that means," Jane shot back sharply, though his evasion momentarily overrode her anxiety with pique. The tree was… mesmerizing. She wanted to know more about it. But she couldn't lose focus right now. She crossed her arms sternly once more to cover her confusion and pinned him with a hard, sidelong glare from under her brow. "That's not one of the answers I came for anyway."
Loki met her gaze with a sideways glance of his own, his expression sobering, and they watched each other for a long, heavy moment, sizing each other up, the wary silence broken only by the distant singing of the crystal forest in the wind. He was the first to look away, nodding his head once in assent. He stepped past her into the inner garden.
"I won't deny you. After all," he said, and she could hear a hint the smirk returning to his voice, "I am at your mercy. Come," he continued over his shoulder, gesturing expansively for her to follow as he stepped over the flagstone around the huge, protruding roots of the strange tree, "Sit with me. Ask anything. I will answer."
Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Jane hesitated for a beat with something like dismay. Damn it…
At a loss, she crept warily after him, ignoring the chill that stole over her as she passed into the golden shadow of the strange tree's expansive canopy. Pausing to let her eyes adjust, she surveyed her surroundings. The closely-spaced ring of trees inside the wall created a kind of shadowy corridor that circled the inner space, adding a subtly threatening nearness to the otherwise open area, like a campfire holding back the dark of night in a wilderness full of wild beasts; you could tell yourself there was nothing lurking out in the night, but you could never quite make yourself believe it. The central tree had once been surrounded by a kind of flagstones courtyard, but with the exception of a few flat areas, most of the paving had been shifted off center like the path outside, or completely torn up by the expansion of the tree's thick ropes of exposed root. As she drew nearer, she spied one such untouched patch near the back of the inner garden; contained a collection of items was arrayed between two trees, halfway into the shadowed corridor. Among them was a chest with a few articles of clothing spilling haphazardly out from under the lid, a tightly tied bedroll, and, looking oddly natural in such a natural setting, a stack of old leather-bound books, each bearing a distinctive diamond-shaped symbol that marked them as property of the Archive. The items were scattered about in a kind of methodical disarray, as though they all had a place they belonged, but also saw frequent use. It was a kind of campsite, she realized.
"You've really been living here?" she asked.
Loki settled himself onto one of the huge tree's larger exposed roots, one big enough to act as a low bench nestled in amongst the broken, upturned stones where it had burst the borders of the path. He indicated another such root several feet away, watching her with careful curiosity. After a pause that had more to do with principle than actual reluctance, she moved closer and perched rigidly on the proffered seat, shifting awkwardly for a moment, then folding her hands tightly in her lap and going very still, the better to stare critically at the man in front of her.
"All this time?" she pressed.
"Ever since… our last meeting," he said, his expression remote and unreadable. He too was sitting very still, as though afraid she'd spook and flee if he made any sudden movements. "Before that, I remained lower in the Nethermount, close to one of the secret paths between worlds that leads to Midgard."
Jane very carefully steered her thoughts away from her memories of their last meeting.
"No one saw you?" she asked instead, stalling as she worked to gather her thoughts. "How did you manage that?"
"I know the paths within the Nethermount better than anyone alive," he said matter-of-factly. "I kept to the remotest areas, moved about only during the night, and maneuvered through the restricted passages using my access as a master of the Archive."
Jane cocked an eyebrow at him. "I suppose that's how you stole those books," she muttered disapprovingly.
"Technically I am still a member of the Order," Loki countered, lifting one shoulder in a minute shrug. "Albeit posthumously. I merely borrowed them in good faith, as any member may."
"Yes, about your death," Jane's eyes narrowed, latching zealously on to one of the many unanswered questions she'd been dying to ask since very nearly their first moment she realized he was alive. "I saw you die. On the Dark World."
He glanced at her, then away. His mouth quirked in a mirthless half smile.
"I don't suppose you would believe that I made a miraculous and completely unexpected recovery from my grievous wounds and merely took advantage of a golden opportunity…?" He laughed quietly at her deadpan expression. "No, I suppose not…" he sighed.
"I know why you faked your death. Or at least I can guess." Jane shook he head. "What I can't figure out is how you did it."
"What do they say on Midgard? A magician never reveals his tricks?"
"Loki..." Jane said warningly.
"Ooh, I like it when you say my name that way," he teased, offering her a half-hearted leer.
Jane just glared at him, refusing to budge. Loki pursed his lips with a hint of discomfort, and for a moment Jane thought he really might not answer. Then he sighed and visibly relented.
"You know, I assume… what I am?" he asked, looking down at his hands were they rested on his thighs, all traces of flirtatious joking forgotten. "Creatures like me…" his fingers tightened, dimpling the material beneath them, "…frost giants…" he bit the words out like they were made of barbed wire on his tongue, "have a natural ability to freeze parts of their… of our bodies at will. When the Kursed stabbed me, I simply froze the borders of the wound to prevent blood loss until I could heal damage."
Jane cocked her head, trying to decide if she believed that. It seemed too fantastical to be true. But Thor had told her that the main weapon of the Jotuns was their ability to create cold. While it strained credulity in her experience, she was learning more and more just how limited her experience actually was.
"And the rest of it?" Jane asked, her tone faintly accusatory as the memory of him turning gray, shivering with pain, then going perfectly, horribly still while Thor clutched him to his chest and wept, flashed through her mind.
"Mere artifice. The same illusory magic that created the deception of Thor's severed hand." Loki smirked, a reluctant nostalgia invading his expression. "He never has been able to tell reality from illusion."
Jane stared at him as his eyes grew distant with reminiscence, more than mildly appalled at Loki's lack of perspective over Thor's sorrow.
"He misses you," she blurted out, barely keeping from cringing as Loki's head turned sharply towards her at the blunt statement, though he didn't quite meet her eyes. "But I honestly don't know what he'd do, if he knew you were alive." She shook her head, staring at Loki as though she could force him open like a book, through sheer force of will if necessary. "What are you doing here Loki? I mean, what are you really doing here?"
He gave her a speculative look, as though she were asking a question far more complex than it sounded, and he was wondering if she knew it.
"I am healing," he replied, pressing a hand to the center of his chest where the dark elf's blade had pierced him. "My death throes may have been an act, but the wound was real enough. The weaponry of the Svartalves is coated in a poison that inhibits the process. I am in no danger," he said, cocking his eyebrow as though to say 'thanks for asking'; Jane stared unrepentantly back at him and refused to rise to the bait, "but it will be some time before I regain my full strength. So I am, shall we say, taking an extended holiday."
"Uh huh… and what are you planning once the holiday is over?" she asked, plunging right into the danger zone without giving herself time to worry about the consequences.
Loki looked down. Beyond the edge of the inner garden the wind rang audibly through the crystals, while silence hung heavy and thick within the reddish walls. The effect was eerie, leaving Jane restless as she waited with poor patience for his verdict.
"I don't know any longer," he said at length into the hush. "My only immediate objective was to protect you from the Tesseract. Now that that danger is past…" he shook his head, smiling at her faintly. "I have yet to find a new direction."
Jane opened her mouth, then closed, scowling. That was not what she'd been expecting to hear.
"You really expect me to believe that you broke out of prison and faked your own death without some kind of contingency plan?" she demanded, frustrated.
"What contingency can there be?" he shot back, frustration edging his voice with irritation as well. "The people I dealt with to reach Earth - to whom I failed to deliver the Tesseract - are not the forgiving sort. They are powerful and brutal beyond your darkest imaginings, and their reach extends throughout the known universe. Asgard may truly be the only place in the entire cosmos where they cannot reach me," he looked at her with eyes sullen and plaintive with frustration and regret. "What contingency could I make? Even if I wanted it, there is nowhere I can go. Nothing I can do."
He huffed out a bitter little laugh and shook his head at his lot in life and the universe in general, then lapsed into silence.
"Well… well, that's…" Jane was about to say 'that's good', but she stopped herself as she realized how that sounded and hastily fished for a different tact. "I mean… well, what do you want?" she tried instead, then clamped her lips together, wincing. The last time she'd asked him that question, she'd received an extremely disconcerting one-word response – you.
But rather than spouting some off-the-cuff uncouth remark or unwelcome declaration, Loki looked away, then down, sighed, then leaned back and looked up at the glowing apples of the trees, as though searching for some answer amongst the branches.
"The truth?" he asked, self-contempt tightening his brow and teasing around the lines of his mouth. "What I want is a second chance," he said, so quietly she barely heard him. "Pitiful, isn't it? I want a second chance to appreciate what I never valued until I lost it." He smirked, and it was a painful expression to witness. "I want something I cannot have. I want to go home."
He glanced her way again as Jane's shocked silence lengthened, his expression drawing closed, as though he'd just realized how much of himself he'd put on display, and was trying to retract it before she could ridicule him.
Jane couldn't have, even if she wanted to; she hardly knew what to say. Her first instinct was to believe he was lying, despite the display of candor. To her knowledge, he'd never expressed anything but hatred and contempt for Asgard and its residents. But something in his eyes as they shifted away gave her pause.
That incomprehensible disconnect nagged at her again, as it had during their earlier meeting. He was so… quiet. Not just his voice or his tone. Not even stillness of his body. There was a change in his very energy. His passion and the overwhelming depths of emotion were still there, but he wasn't agitated, fervent, over-eager; that terrifying intensity that had so often repelled her with its violence was subdued, as though he'd found some previously untapped reserve of self-control.
"You're…" He glanced back at her and she pursed her lips, uncertain, but then said what she was thinking anyway. "You seem… different."
He cocked his head at her, so that a lock of his hair tumbled down across his cheek. He swept it away almost self-consciously, and when he lowered his hand his eyes had softened. He offered her a tentative smile, and she found herself strangely relieved to see some of the sadness leave his expression.
"As well I might," he replied, letting her change the subject. "I have you to thank for that."
Jane frowned back at him warily. "What do you mean?"
Loki sighed, and the fingers of one hand began drumming against his leg. Jane got the impression that he was once again struggling with embarrassment.
"I told you the truth when I said that the Tesseract's influence over me had waned while was imprisoned. And you experienced yourself the means by which I controlled it. The chains…" Their eyes met briefly, and they both looked down, Jane suppressing a shudder at the memory. "But I had no idea how… how drastically it still affected me."
Jane listened quietly to the admission without pressing him. She had already guessed as much, when she discovered what he meant when he called her "his rain". To believe that that was healthy, sane or right… she fought not to shudder again.
"But… when you banished the Tesseract's magic from your mind," he went on, staring hard at the ground between them again, as though he couldn't bear for her to see him so openly vulnerable, "you severed its influence from me as well. You..." he looked up at her. "You freed me. Again. And this time, completely." A shuttered light of gratitude shone in his eyes, as though he were reluctant to compromise his dignity by expressing it, but neither could he help it. His lips parted slightly, his eyes tightening with an expression that brought to mind a dam holding back a flood. "You're always saving me..."
Jane drew in a sharp breath. She stared at him hard, searching desperately for some sign that he was lying to her. Somehow, incredibly, she didn't think he was. The difference between controlling the Tesseract's influence, and being free of it… she'd only experienced it for a matter of minutes, and even that miniature hell had impressed upon her the significance of the difference it made.
"It was... like I'd been living with a veil over my sight, and I didn't realize it until you swept it aside," he elaborated. He glanced up at her with a pained smile, then away again. "Looking back now, I can see that I was… that is… I cannot believe…"
Suddenly he shot to his feet. Jane tensed, but instead of approaching her, he walked several paces away, as though the dam were about to burst. He reached up to run a hand through his hair before looking back at her almost shyly.
"What…"
"Listen," he interrupted her, and before he turned away again, she thought he caught a distinct tinge of pink in his cheeks. "I realize that I may have been somewhat… forward in the past…"
Jane's eyebrows shot up.
"Understatement of the century," she replied mercilessly, noting the way his shoulders tensed as though she'd throw a bucket of cold water on him.
He nodded in an uncharacteristically defeated manner. "Yes. Well... I suppose... if I had it to do again… well…" he cleared his throat, squaring his shoulders, though he still refused to look at her. "… I would have behaved… differently," he finished stiffly.
Jane's eyebrows shifted higher. She felt it safe to assume this was as close to an apology as she was going to get for… well, every single interaction they'd ever had, really. Better than nothing I guess, she mused. At least he realizes he was wrong... at least he realizes... that... he...
She bit her lip thoughtfully as his words sank in and something else occurred to her.
"Good," she nodded slowly, her brow furrowing as she looked down at the ground, wondering at the curious, bittersweet pang of loss plucking at the hollow behind her sternum. "And… that's good, yeah… I mean, that you've realized it was all... that your… attachment to me was just…" She didn't understand why the words were so hard to articulate.
"Jane, don't misunderstand."Jane looked up just as Loki turned back to her, and her breath caught at the heat that had blazed up in his eyes. "That's not what I'm saying at all."
Jane didn't like the surge of relief that rolled against the edge of her awareness like a balm, so she shoved it aside. Enjoying a man's admiration was one thing; clinging to it like this when she had no intention of returning it was nothing but selfish self-satisfaction. Heartlessness.
"Loki…" she said warningly.
"What I feel for you has not changed," he interjected relentlessly. His eyes were clear and warm with certainty, and Jane felt heat rise into her cheeks as he took a slow, unconscious step towards her, as though drawn in like a moth to a flame.
"Loki, I already told you…"
He shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he told her, his voice softening. "Even if you can never see anything but a monster in me, I cannot help what I feel for you. You were right. You are more than my rain. Because the rains always fade eventually, and I know now that this feeling never will." His voice had taken on a mesmerizing quality, so much so that she couldn't find it in herself to pull away as he stepped up in front of her. "That is the very reason that I should never have treated you so cruelly…" His eyes shone with regret and longing as he reached for her. "Jane," he said, barely above a whisper, "I've missed you…"
His fingers brushed her cheek in a caress that made her eyelids flutter.
Green lightning erupted from the pendant around her neck.
Both of them jumped, startled, and Loki jerked his hand away from her skin, moving back several steps and sitting heavily back down on the tree root across from her, his hand cradled tight against his chest, staring at her with a frustrated, forlorn expression.
"I don't mind confessing that I didn't miss that thing," he muttered sullenly.
Jane made herself focus through sheer force of will and fix her eyes squarely on the man across from her, trying to objectively decipher the implications of all that he'd told her through the dizzying jolt of adrenaline and guilty endorphins that his words and touch had stimulated.
Loki was a famous liar – a legendary liar. Jane would not – could not – allow herself to forget it. But it was true that there was a difference in him. If he really was free of the Tesseract's influence… if he had really come back from the brink of insanity… Against her better judgment, a measure of the tension and alarm eased out of her. But her suspicion did not abate.
Because had he really?
Loki had amassed an impressive set of emotional issues before the blue spider had sunk its fangs into his mind. It wasn't the Tesseract that caused him to send the Destroyer to Puente Antiguo… Just because it was gone now didn't mean he wasn't still dangerous.
But it was also true that time and pain could change people. Jane knew she was a different person than she had been before the Tesseract, before the Aether, before the Bifrost dropped an alien prince on her head in the middle of the New Mexico desert.
"I want something I can never have. I want to go home."
What if he had changed for the better?
And…
What if he could go home?
She rubbed at her eyes, her mind suddenly spinning with an unrealistically rosy picture of a family reunited and peace restored. She really must be exhausted to be entertaining such ridiculous fantasies. There was too much history, too much bad blood and destruction, for them to ever go back. Isn't there? Or... She suppressed a groan. She was terrible at sorting out peoples' feelings; hell, she couldn't even figure out her own. Too many variables, and none of them in her control.
Wishing was one thing. She had to find a way to be sure, define some solid parameters, identify the facts.
Maybe a little experiment…? Did she dare?
She cast back over everything Thor had told her about Loki. And farther back, to her freshman psychology classes - one of the few courses in which she'd actually had to study to get top marks in. If she could figure out how to apply the right amount of pressure...
Loki, meanwhile, seemed to have drawn the ragged edges of his dignity back around himself like armor, rolling his shoulders as though to shrug off the last vestiges of the broken moment. Jane shook herself internally, wishing she could do the same just as easily.
"But enough. Turn about is fair play, wouldn't you agree?" he said smoothly with an ease that had to be false. He smiled lightly at her, his eye flicking over her novice robes questioningly. "Not that I am complaining, but how did you come to be here, Jane?"
Jane, still pondering his suspicious change of heart, eyed him thoughtfully for a beat, but then grudgingly let him change the subject.
"It's a long story," she replied.
Loki spread his hands in an expansive gesture, indicating their deserted surroundings.
"I have nothing but time," he assured her.
.
Slowly, haltingly at first, but with increasing ease, Jane unfolded the story of her journey, from the moment Arild Olafson arrived outside her home, to the moment she stepped into the garden. Loki listened attentively, not simply to ingratiate her, but because he already knew most of what she was telling him, and by listening for what she omitted, he could gauge just how open she was being with him – and therefore how much work lay ahead of him to win her trust.
He noted that she made no mention of the scroll that "Odin" had sent her, nor the mission outlined therein. It told him that she suspected he might play some role in the rumors of unrest circulating through the Archive. Prudent, my dear, but unfounded.
An interesting look passed over her face as she glossed over her drunken "dream" from the night he had visited her bedchamber at the palace, more than mere embarrassment or dismissal. He suffered a moment's anxiety as he witnessed some thought occur to her, watched her contemplate it with undue sobriety and draw into herself for a moment. He kept his own face carefully blank when she raised her eyes to study him thoughtfully. But she did not ask anything of him, and he did not think she suspected that he'd actually been there.
By the time she reached the argument between herself and her triad, she had warmed to her storytelling, offering up inconsequential details and confiding in him her feelings about the incident. He doubted she realized she was even doing it. It was a promising sign.
When her story ceased, her voice trailed away, and she lapsed into a heavy, thoughtful silence, distracted inside her own mind, seeming content for the moment not to question or be questioned as she ordered her thoughts. Her eyes took on that lidded, distant quality they'd acquired earlier, after his calculated admission of his feelings and intentionally vague apology, and Loki remained still, rapt with the pleasure of watching her think.
So far everything was going according to plan. She'd asked all the right questions, and he had given her his carefully calculated answers. With any luck, the scent of the apples was working its way into her subconscious, building an insatiable craving, so that when the time came, she would be helpless against the temptation of a bite. It was a struggle to keep a devious smile off of his face as he watched the strands of his web slowly closing around her, just as he'd designed them to do. In an effort to resist, he focused all of his senses on her.
The quiet hiss and hum of the breeze was like a lullaby as she filled his eyes. She looked tired, he thought, sleepy. An errant image of her curled up by his side, her head on his shoulder, her dark lashes fanned against her cheeks in peaceful, trusting sleep, flitted through his imagination. He wondered how much more soundly he would sleep if she would sleep by his side – or if he would ever get any sleep at all, for drinking in the sight of her in his arms.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, lost in thought, and the gesture arrested him almost painfully. How often had he watched her do that? How often had it fascinated and tantalized him? Yet always from so very far away, the distance blurring the reality of her, making her more idea than woman. Now, here she was beside him, her plump pink lip dimpled delicately under the pearls of her teeth; beside him, of her own volition, real and warm, nothing standing between them but her slowly eroding distrust.
At last they were here, together, in this secret garden at the pinnacle of the world.
Safe.
He was deeply grateful then that Jane was too distracted with her own thoughts to witness the besotted expression that had surely strayed over his features without his permission. He desperately wanted to draw her into his arms, and at the same time, strangely, he didn't. This sweet agony of fulfillment seeded with such a bounty of potential was something close to perfection. For a whimsical heartbeat, he thought he might not mind staying in this moment with her forever.
Then she drew in a deep breath and broke it.
"Loki?"
"Mmm?" he acknowledged her.
"If you could go back to… before. I mean, before it all began, before you knew you were different… if you could go back, and you could have done anything with your life, anything at all… what would you have chosen?"
Loki stared at her for a long moment, completely thrown. He'd prepared all sorts of answers, to all sorts of questions, all sorts of reactions to all sort of declarations and accusations… but what kind of question was that?
"I…" he frowned, as she looked up at him, her gaze clear, placid, so sincerely interested in his response. He couldn't hold her eyes. The peace and clarity of a moment before was shattered by a sudden wave of anxiety. Why is she asking me this? What is she expecting me to say?
"I never…" he cleared his throat. "I had duties as a prince of the realm. I never really considered…"
He glanced up at her, at the way her head tilted so hopefully, so honest in her curiosity, and it was honest curiosity about him…
"… but… I suppose I always dreamed about… about coming back. Here. I mean, to the Archive. Spending my days mapping and stabilizing the lost thoroughfares and rediscovering the lost treasures and texts of the lower halls..."
It was a completely honest answer, and it was a feat of pure willpower to keep a blush from rising to his face. The sudden inquiry had taken him so much by surprise that he hadn't had the wherewithal to think of a less embarrassing lie.
"It… it was a long time ago," he added waspishly, more harshly than he'd meant to.
Jane narrowed her eyes, but didn't seem deterred. In fact, to his complete mystification, he thought he saw her shift a few millimeters closer.
"Maybe you still could," she said thoughtfully. "I mean, Hilde and Finn said that the rules don't really apply to members of the royal family…"
"But I am not a member of the royal family," he snapped, turning hard, cold eyes on her before he could stop himself. "I never was."
Jane was already shaking her head. "You really think being adopted makes you less a part of your family?"
"It's different for…"
"Thor doesn't think so," she said, her voice gaining strength of conviction. "He's still your brother."
"That's not…"
"Frigga was you mom in every way that counted."
The words went through him like a lance, slicing open old wounds…
"Jane…"
"And Odin's still your dad," she concluded decisively.
Loki stared at her, confounded, wondering when he'd so completely lost control of the situation. A moment ago she'd been so conveniently transparent. Now, he could not fathom what she was thinking. It didn't help that a cloud of unwelcome emotions were swarming up from the depths of his memory to sting the edges of his attention.
"Odin has no more use for me, Jane," he said quietly, feeling the first threads of his temper pulled tight. He tried to stop speaking there, let the subject close, but it was as though her words had punctured something vital; his words welled up in the back of his throat, and then hemorrhaged out beyond his control. "He told me as much himself. He took me as a tool, and that tool has become obsolete."
"You can't really believe that," she shook her head decisively, as though she had any idea what she was talking about. "It makes no sense."
"It is the only thing that makes sense," he countered bitterly, leaping to his feet, suddenly completely unable to sit still against the rising tide of ugly emotions that he'd thought completely secured and under control. He was experiencing curiously potent urge to clap his hand over Jane's mouth, if only it would make her stop saying these… these things… He refused to show that kind of weakness. Everything was going so well... "He has never shown the slightest… he's never…"
Silence!
Loki clamped his teeth together, categorically refusing to reopen the scar any further his own words.
Unfortunately, Jane felt no such compunction. She looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting into nervous knots in her lap.
"Maybe you misunderstood," she said softly.
"My ears work just fine," he bristled, and discovered that he was pacing restlessly. He planted his feet and made himself stand still. "I know what I heard," he assured her acidly. "You can't possibly understand what…"
"But I do understand," Jane interrupted, and the firm certainty in her voice gave him pause. "I know what it's like, having a parent that you can never please," she went on, growing introspective as she spoke, as though narrating from some ancient line of memory. "Never being good enough in their eyes, even though you've gone above and beyond to prove yourself. Never being the center of their focus, like you're just in their way, and maybe they'd be happier if you were just gone. Never feeling like they love you. Or like they even see you. Or even want to see you. My mom…"
She trailed off, her face falling, and Loki, against every trace of his will, found himself hanging helplessly on her words, which it pulled viciously at a tight knot in the center of his chest he'd worked very hard to forget was there. After a moment she looked up at him and smiled sadly.
"I hated my mom for a long time." She looked away, as though ashamed. "But I finally figured it out," she told him, quietly, hesitantly, as though imparting a secret she wasn't sure the world was ready to hear. "Sometimes when they act like that, it's not our fault. And sometimes when they act like that, what they're saying, and what we're hearing, are two different things."
"You cannot seriously… you can't… just…"
The words died on his lips, and he could only stare at her profile, desperate to pierce the veil of her thoughts. Why is she saying these things… he wondered desperately around the aching hole her words were gouging in the center of his chest. How does she expect me to answer her? What does she hope to gain?
Jane met his eyes once more, and hers shone with such undeniable certitude that it almost made him flinch.
She wasn't trying to gain anything at all, was she? She was just speaking from the heart.
Jane… his chest constricted tighter until it hurt to breathe.
He needed to regain control of this situation. Immediately.
.
Jane's eyes narrowed with the laserlike focus of a scientist observing a critical chemical reaction as her experiment produced observable results, noting the precise moment that Loki's expertly crafted mask cracked. And found herself, paradoxically, quite a lot more comfortable sitting next to him than she had moments before.
This new, calm, unruffled reasonable Loki was… unfamiliar to her. Convenient. Suspicious. Too approachable. Too easy to swallow. Too tempting to accept. And for that, way too dangerous. It had her on edge; she hadn't realized how tense she'd been until her shoulders sagged slightly as the tension released her.
Counterintuitive as it seemed, a confrontational Loki – a Loki that was more adversarial rather amicable – a Loki she knew she couldn't completely trust – felt somehow safer. A Loki she knew she couldn't trust was more trustworthy than a trustworthy Loki… She ran that through her head a few more times, just to be sure she had all the double-negatives in all the right places, then blinked up convoluted creature in front of her, marveling at the sheer volume of knots he tied her in. A little thrill went through her. An enigma wrapped in a mystery.
Not the point, she reminded herself sternly, refocusing. The point was that now she knew: Loki definitely still had a fault line in his emotions. One she'd just prodded into producing dangerous tremors.
He was pacing again, and she didn't think he even realized he was doing it; it was as though he had some physical, involuntary need to burn off the agitated energy of his emotions, the same way his lungs needed to draw breath or his heart needed to beat. As she watched him struggle the shards of his mask back into place, she wondered if he realized just how much he wanted his father to love him. It seemed painfully obvious to her now.
But only because she'd felt the same way once. Someone who'd never had to move mountains for scraps of approval and affection would never really understand. She wondered all over again if there was some way she could help him, as he'd expected her to do all along.
For Thor's sake. And to repay Frigga for saving me. And to keep Loki stable and out of the world-conquering business… Jane frowned, at a loss as to why she felt the need to justify it to herself. Helping someone should be reason enough, shouldn't it? But then, that wasn't the reason, was it? She wanted to help him because she understood that pain... because she saw herself in him. Jane grimaced at that, disturbed. He had told her they were alike... now she was beginning to see it. That couldn't bode well...
In any case, this was all the more reasons she needed to keep an eye on him. Because people who were still seeking that kind of approval and acceptance could drastic things to get it; and he already had a track record. He needed to be monitored, and he needed some distraction. Her grandmother used to say that 'idle hands are the devil's playthings', and there were few thoughts truly scarier than the idea of Loki sitting idle in the peace and quiet of a secluded garden with nothing to do all day but think.
Jane bit her lip in indecision.
There was, of course, one glaringly obvious solution.
It would give her an excuse to stay close to him.
It would give him a task with which to occupy his mind.
It could benefit her, and her triad.
And it would indulge the guilty burn of her curiosity.
That last was why she hesitated. I want to ask him… more than I should. Was her curiosity blinding her to danger? Was she compromising her safety and her morals for the sake of a covetous whim? She would have thought so less than twenty-four hours ago – back then, she'd been horrified by her own thoughts. Had so much changed since then?
No… she decided. And… yes…
Loki jerked to a halt, as though he'd finally realized he was in motion and swung around towards her, glaring petulantly for an instant before his expression morphed into something that was probably supposed to be ingratiating, but came off almost contemptuous.
"I appreciate your insight, truly," he lied with oily sincerity, "but shouldn't you be less worried about my past, and more about your future?" Compared to his earlier finesse, it felt like a blunt maneuver. I really rattled him, Jane mused, biting down in the inside of her cheek to keep a petty little smirk of guilty satisfaction from creeping onto her face. "If your triad refuses to help you, then your cause is all but lost."
It was a tailor made opening – so much so that made her suspicious. But knowing that she might be walking into a trap didn't change the fact that she had to step into it. Jane took a deep breath. Now or never.
"Actually," she said, keeping her voice light, though she couldn't quite meet his eyes, "I was wondering if you would be willing to help me."
.
Loki kept his face perfectly immobile, despite fearing that his expression had just become brittle with shock. He had just finished stuffing his disordered thoughts and batter emotions back into their boxes, and one more statement from Jane was all it took to upend them again.
It was something he loved about her. But at the moment it was becoming incredibly inconvenient.
"My help?" he asked skeptically, feigning ignorance.
"Yes!" she said, turning more fully towards him, warming to the subject. "I mean, you're a magic master, right?"
Loki cocked an eyebrow, and slowly moved back towards his seat opposite her, letting himself appear to be drawn in both physically and intellectually.
"I have earned mastery in all three priciple disciplines," he replied, "but magic was the first."
"And I've seen how good you are with magic, like on the Dark World. Plus, you made that root move to trip me. And you made that trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow."
"Breadcrumbs?"
"Er, it's a story about these two kids and a witch and a house made of candy and… never mind. The point is, you're really good at magic. So surely if anyone can figure out a way to help me pass this test, it's you."
Loki cocked his head at her. "You wish me to teach you to wield magic?"
"Well, I mean… I'm human, so I don't actually have any magic. But I figure..."
Loki shook his head, cutting her off. "You do," he told her definitively.
Jane frowned. "Do what?"
"You do have innate magic."
"What? No I can't… and... Finn said..."
"I told you," he interrupted again, not giving her any room to gain ground. He wanted this notion put to rest right now, "you freed me from the Tesseract."
"But that was just… you said that it would reflect me, so I kind of… it was just sort of a gut feeling when I…" Jane trailed off, frowning. "I don't actually know how I did it."
"It did reflect your wishes," Loki nodded, turning his head and giving her a sly, sidelong look. "You bent it to your will and forced it to heel. No small feat, I assure you." He held up a demonstrative finger. "And you are the only being in the cosmos that could have done what you did when you did it. But for such a feat, will alone would never have been enough." His eyes sparkled as he spoke in a low, almost hypnotic tone, and he turned his wrist, opening his hand. A flickering green flame sprang to life in his palm, and he caught and kept her eyes across the dancing blaze. "It could only have been magic," he proclaimed, and with a twist of his wrist and a flourish, the flame flared and went out, leaving a shining golden apple in the palm of his hand.
He grinned, delighted, at the way she gasped and leaned in, searching for some trick. A moment later she blinked rapidly and rearranged her face into an expression of determined skepticism.
"People keep saying I must have magical powers… but I'm human. So how is that possible?"
Loki tossed the apple up in the air and let it vanish back to its point of origin in a flash of green fire. Jane watched it go with wide eyes.
"That is a very good question."
Jane looked at him, startled for an instant, her brow furrowing as the question dominated her thoughts. Then she pursed her lips and seemed to shake herself, refocusing. Loki cocked his head, watching her shuffle the question aside. Interesting... Why would someone as naturally curious as Jane dismiss such an interesting puzzle so quickly... too quickly... Very interesting... an errant idea was tickling the edge of his attention, and he tucked it away to examine later.
"Well… whatever the case… would you? Teach me, I mean?" Jane asked, her expression affectedly nonchalant; she was almost comically bad at hiding her emotions. In this case, eagerness, he thought. But though he could see it in her, he didn't understand it.
Events had fallen out just as he'd anticipated; ordering Grete Dahl to plant the duplicitous suggestion of sabotage with Arild Olafson had lead Olafson to compromise Finn Braggiosn, unquestionably the weakest link in Jane's triad, driving a wedve between Jane and her traid and leaving her cut off and vulnerable, in desperate need of a helping hand from any corner that would provide it. It could not have fallen out more neatly.
He'd expected this to happen, but… but he'd expected resistance. He'd expected to have to tempt her, reason with her, seduce her…
Instead she had suggested it herself.
What is this…? he wondered, unnerved.
It doesn't matter, he told himself. She's offering up a perfect opportunity. Take it.
"That wouldn't be very sporting of you, Jane," he said sardonically. "A triad is supposed to pass standard on their own, as a unit."
"So, what, novices aren't allowed to get instruction from a master?" Jane shot back. "I don't believe that!"
"Help from a master isn't expressly forbidden," Loki replied, smirking to make an obviously false show of pretending to be reluctant. "But it goes against tradition. I'm sure you wouldn't want to offend tradition, would you?"
"Apparently my very presence offends tradition," she muttered, then shot him an exasperated look. "Since when have you been a stickler for the rules?"
Loki didn't have to feign a single drop of delight as his face broke into an unrepentant grin. He didn't know the colloquialism "stickler" but he got the gist.
"True enough," he acknowledge with a small bow of the head, real laughter in his voice. He sobered a moment later gave her a long searching look from beneath his brow, one that wasn't entirely for her benefit, and held entirely too much of his genuine confusion and curiosity for his own liking. "But… are you certain that you wish to become my student, Jane?"
Why? What are you thinking, my love?
Jane sighed heavily and pinned him with a piercing look of her own. Her eyes were clear and certain – the eyes she showed me in my dream, he realized with a shiver. Then his heart skipped a beat when they abruptly sparkled with a small, wry smile, softening her whole air.
"I think I am," she said, nodding, as much to herself as to him. "I don't trust you, Loki," she said bluntly. "But I think I trust you not to sabotage me in this. And that's more than I can say for anyone else at the moment. So…" she shrugged one shoulder in an attempt to hide a sudden timid uncertainty that Loki found almost unbearably endearing, "…will you do it?"
.
Jane held her breath while Loki stared at her like she'd had started speaking Sanskrit, and he was trying to decide if it was an actual language, or merely gibberish. She tried to keep her face blank of anything suspicious, remaining cool and confident as she could. This was a battle of wills, and she was trying to deceive the master liar. If he suspected her true motives, there was no chance in hell he'd agree.
So she held his eyes, despite the way her breath caught in her throat; her heart pounded with anxiety and something else that made her blood sizzle disorientingly through her veins. Loki, she realized to her minor dismay, had the most mesmerizing eyes of any man she'd ever met. She found she liked looking into them far more than she should. That, coupled with the knowledge that he was attracted to her was affecting her in ways she did not at all approve of.
It's just chemical… she reassured herself. Animal instincts, biochemical responses to proximity and body language… she smirked inwardly as another idea suddenly dawned on her, sweeping away a measure of her discomfort. No wonder I had no trouble standing up to Amundson. The Master of Masters may be intimidating, but he's nothing compared to Loki.
.
Loki stayed silent for a long beat, still searching her expression for clues and enjoying the way his heart raced with exhilaration when she held his eyes without faltering. He saw an echo of uncertainty play across them and a small, helpless smile crept up the corner of his mouth.
You really believe I might deny you, my lady? Have no fear. I would never deny either of us this chance…
"If that is your wish, then I would be honored," he said, his voice quieter than he'd intended with the weight of real, breathless sincerity.
A warm glow started in his chest when she sighed in relief and smiled at him. It was curiously powerful. How… unexpected… He was, of course, pleased to see that she was pleased with the situation, because it would make her easier to manipulate. But… merely to know that he had pleased her, even in so small a way... to know that she was happy because of something he'd said and done... was… gratifying. To an unexpected degree.
He was further moved by her sweetness as she looked away, fidgeting with her sleeves as though suddenly completely flustered with her own success.
"Okay," she said, again sounding half as though she were speaking to herself "okay, great! Um… but let me finish my project for Master Ebisa before we begin, okay? I want to get the easy stuff out of the way first."
"As you like," Loki nodded, ready to grant her just about any concession, as long as she would keep smiling at him like that. "Just as well. I am strict teacher, Novice," he said, his voice teasing with mock severity.
"I expect nothing less, Master," she shot back, then winced, her face contorting at the title, as though it tasted badly in her mouth.
Loki was genuinely surprised to find he didn't like hearing it any better than she had liked saying it. He might have once thought that he'd like the sound of it, but here and now, it chilled him instead. The word brought to mind… terrible things. Things he never wanted to associate with her.
"Just 'Loki'," he said seriously, banishing the chill and preening inwardly at his resourcefulness as he simultaneously rid himself of the discomfiting convention, ingratiated himself more fully, and garnered the added benefit of being allowed to hear his name on her lips more often. "That is more than enough."
She glanced up at him, nodding after a moment with a knowing little smile of gratitude that made her eyes gleam and her lovely face light with a soft, tempting glow. Loki sobered, suddenly feeling as though he might do something rash and disastrous if he didn't find some distraction. Impulsively he shot to his feet once more.
"I had better get back to work then," Jane said, rising briskly at the same moment. "How do I…"
They were both brought up short as they found themselves standing mere inches apart, staring at each other in startled surprise.
Loki swallowed hard, and his fingers curled into fists at the way the color in Jane's cheeks deepened. How can one woman be so beautiful? To Hel with the bloody pendant standing sentinel between them. How do you tempt me so…? He felt like he might burst into flame at any moment if he did not touch those flushed cheeks, run his fingers through that soft hair or down her slender frame, press those soft pink lips with his own…
What was a little lightening, next to this driving need?
He offered her a small, self-deprecating smile.
Then he carefully, deliberately, stepped to one side and back, giving her space.
Jane blinked, and blinked again, and he felt a surge of predatory glee at the momentary subconscious echo of disappointment that flickered over her face before she banished it. The little flame of elated hope it sparked in him was worth the bone deep ache of denying himself.
"The spell that led you here will lead you back," he assured her, gesturing towards the gateway out into the garden. "I would escort you myself, but for obvious reason, prefer to remain well away from the White Stair. One can never be too careful, wouldn't you agree?"
He stopped then, nearly frowning at his own words. They had carried an almost warning undertone. He didn't understand why he'd voiced them.
"Sure," Jane nodded, and if she caught the odd slip, she didn't let on. She seemed too distracted with straightening and re-straightening her robes and conspicuously not looking at him to notice much of anything. "So… okay… I'm just going to… I'll be back once…" She scrubbed wearily at her eyes, as though organizing her thoughts into coherent sentences had become too much of a chore. She sighed and gave him a level look. "Stay out of trouble, okay?" she half pleaded, screwing up her face almost apologetically, but only as though she regretted the phrasing, not the sentiment. "I'll be back."
"I look forward to it," he assured her, letting the warmth of that truth bleed through, and relishing the rush of pleasure he felt as she offered him a little smile in return.
Turning hesitantly towards the gate, she glanced up at him once as she moved away. Then again, over her shoulder, as she reached the gate. She hesitated there, then made to leave. Then stopped and turned back toward him.
"I'm glad," she blurted, her words tumbling out in a rush. "I can't pretend that I understand it, but if I really did do something that forced the Tesseract to let you go, then…" she nodded, half to herself. "No one deserves that and… Yeah... if that's how it is, then I'm glad things happened the way they did." She met his eyes one final time. "It was worth it."
She was gone before he could do more than blink, stunned at her candor as much as the sentiment itself.
Is she... is she saying that she has forgiven me...?
Ridiculous. Impossible. And yet...
The very idea left him blasted through with such a surge of emotion, and something he could only call gratitude, that it was almost physically painful.
"Don't say such things, Jane," he breathed into her absence, his eyes flashing as he activated the locator spell, so that he could follow her through the garden in his mind, as he longed to do now in body. To hear her say those words bred a confusion that bordered on loss; it was so wonderful that it frightened him. "You mustn't say such things." But when had she ever done just as she was told? He pressed his hand to his chest with a bittersweet smirk.
Despite the strange turn the conversation had taken, despite Jane's inexplicable preemptive openness to an alliance, despite the irrational misgivings he was feeling about the entire exchange, everything was going just as it should. The strands of his web were drawing inexorably into place.
So he shook off the odd echo of foreboding that trailed cold fingers up his back to strum the bowstring tension in his shoulders and brow, and let himself revel in the memory of her bold eyes, the bite of her anger and the soothing reassurance of her conversation. And the fleeting fraction of a moment when his fingers had brushed the warm softness of her skin before the lightening had taken it from him.
Yes, it was foolish to feel so uneasy now. What had he to fear?
.
Jane bit down hard on her lip as she followed the golden trail through the garden, away from the inner garden, the strange tree, and Loki. When would she learn to keep her big mouth shut?
Why did I say that?
It wasn't hard to figure out. Everything had been proceeding on an even keel, and then he'd just suddenly been there, nose to nose with her, mere millimeters away with his mesmerizing eyes full of that desperately hungry look, like a starving man before a forbidden feast who could not resist a bite even though he knew he would be punished for it.
Every other time she had seen that look on his face, he had forced himself on her, anything from a kiss to his hands at her throat. She had expected this time to be no different. Expected... and... anticipated? She frowned, releasing her abused lip as she pondered that. No, of course not. If his attentions had been occasionally... interesting, the sense of helplessness, anger, guilt and fear had repulsed her, more than mitigating any excitement she might have felt.
But this time... this time he didn't force her... gave her space... met her eyes with that wanting look and then stepped away... not taking, but giving... putting her first... she shivered, confused, and also somehow not.
He had acted considerately, and so she'd let slip that reassurance. It frustrated her beyond words. It was an olive branch he had in no way earned. She should not be rewarding him for doing something that in anyone else would be a matter of common decency!
I can't let my guard down! He's too dangerous!
She wouldn't forget.
But even so...
Her jaw stretched in a leonine yawn as the peace that had so long eluded her flooded in, making her eyelids droop with exhaustion. Her thoughts poured back over the exchange as the White Stair finally came back into view, weighing her pain against the fate of a sentient soul, and she nodded slowly to herself as she realized...
...yes. Against all odds and sense, and for all that she didn't entirely understand it, something inside her was certain...
It was worth it.
.
TBC
.
A/n: Chapter became too long, had to cut it in half; and furious as hell because the site failed to save several hours worth of editing, so I had to redo it all, forgot half of the stuff I added, had to cobble together what I could from memory, no where near satisfied with this second version... I swear I am angry enough to put my fist through a wall. So, if there are some areas that seem less... less... less effing everything... apologies; it was so much better the first time, damn it... *seethes*
It's moments like these that I see the profound justice and wisdom of voodoo dolls...
Anyway, I will post the rest of the chapter after while, so more to come shortly!
Point of interest, while writing various sections of this chapter, I had "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses stuck in my head. Absolutely love that song, and I think it is nicely descriptive of Loki's feelings for Jane - the purer ones, and even some of the more selfish ones. Go listen and see what you think!
