Months of spending time with Jane in London had made her grow fond of her and even Darcy. She had managed to fool them with her fake PhD in Astrophysics and had been working alongside of them trying to figure out ways to get a connection with Asgard. Jane wasn't doing much, still distracted by being upset over Thor and eventually she began questioning the motives of her new colleague. Raven had eventually told Jane in confidence that she was trying to find Loki since the woman wouldn't believe any of her other stories. She said she just wanted to make sure that he was alright, playing everything off that happened in New York as a promise that she had made him and didn't realize that's what was going to happen and when she did she left. Jane had accepted this after a few weeks and a lot of anger, but she understood that Raven hadn't known what was going to happen and that she was still helping them find a way to get to Thor.
Sitting at the breakfast table with all the equipment she turned her head when something started beeping. She went over to a sensor and grabbed it, "Darcy, I don't think this is normal."
Darcy came over and took the sensor from her hand, hitting it on the side of her hand, "That is weird."
"Yeah, well hitting it won't help, let's go find Jane." She said grabbing her jacket, "I think she said she had a date."
"Woah, no way, it has to be a cover. Jane would never go on a date unless Muscles was back." Darcy followed her with the car keys.
After waiting for Darcy to talk to Jane they were in their car following Ians directions to the area the sensors were pointing them towards. They arrived at an abandoned warehouse and were met by a group of kids. When one of them moved a truck with two fingers Jane and Raven shared a look and they looked back at the kids, Jane quickly asking, "Is there more?"
The kids nodded and took them up a set of stairs and threw a bottle over, they watched as a bottle went through something at the bottom and then again up at the top, over and over. Raven muttered, "It's some kind of set of portals that must be aligned on both ends."
Jane threw an empty can over and it didn't come back and she looked to Raven, "They must be moving if it doesn't come back all the time."
"That's so strange, maybe it depends on the weight of the object?" Raven looked up as Jane grabbed a sensor from Ian.
"I haven't seen readings like this since…" She looked at the sensor closely.
"Since New Mexico." Darcy spoke with a smirk.
Jane and Raven looked at each other and they both went up the stairs trying to find where the sensor was the strongest. Jane yelled back, "Don't touch anything!"
They walked side by side, both eyes on the sensor as they approached a hallway. The reading became stronger as they walked down it and a gust of wind passed by them. The wind got stronger and as they started getting pulled forward Raven wrapped her arms around Jane, trying to stop them from sliding across the floor. In the blink of an eye the building around them was gone and they were about to fall off a cliff in a place that was dark and cold. She pulled Jane back from the edge of the ledge and looked around as Jane called Darcys name, "Jane, I don't think were in the warehouse anymore."
Jane looked at where she was looking and there was a giant monolith behind them, a spilt towards the bottom of it emitting a red light. They walked up to it slowly and bent down to look at where the light was coming from, a red type of liquid swirling in between the slabs of stone. Jane reached her hand up and Raven hissed at her, "Don't touch it we don't know what it is."
Before Jane could reply the liquid lunged at her and the monolith sealed itself. Jane backed away looking at her arm and Raven came up to her inspecting it as well, "You okay?"
Jane looked up at her before passing out, Raven catching her. She cursed silently and lifted Jane onto her back easily and began searching for a way back to where they were. Going back to the place they had come through at, she walked around multiple times trying to make her way through the portal again. Then she thought, they were dragged in, maybe if she went back to where they began getting pulled she would be able to recreate it. She tried this a few times then tried it backwards. She heard the sensor go off from Janes pocket and she moved around until it matched the beeping they had heard in the hallway until the ground below her gave out and she was landing on the floor of the warehouse.
Taking Jane off her back she laid her on the ground, "Jane, come on. Jane wake up!"
Slowly the woman began opening her eyes and looked up, "Raven? What happened? How did we get back here?"
"I used the sensor while we were…where ever the hell we were to get us back here." She explained helping her up off of the ground, "How do you feel?"
They went outside to see Darcy with the police and she and Jane started bickering while Raven was distracted by the thunder clouds quickly rolling in. She only started paying attention when she heard Darcy say they had been gone for five hours. Raven looked at Darcy, "That's impossible, it was an hour at most."
Darcy shook her head as the rain poured all around them but not on them. They looked around and Jane saw Thor standing across the courtyard and quickly began moving towards him, the barrier of rain following her as Raven and Darcy began getting drenched. They spoke to the police while Jane and Thor spoke. Darcy looked at her, "Should we tell Jane that we're in trouble?"
"You want to interrupt that you go right on ahead." Raven smirked.
"Okay." Darcy began to run over to Jane.
Jane came over to where she was with the police officer and when he went to grab her Jane released a red explosion from her skin. Raven grabbed onto her as she went flying back from the force and held her tight as they landed making sure Jane didn't get hurt. Before Thor could make it to them Raven was already helping Jane sit up, "Jane, Jane are you alright?"
Thor came over and saw her there, his face displeased but Raven stopped him, "Somethings wrong, the place we went to, something attacked her."
"What happened?" Jane asked as they helped her stand, Thor still unhappy about seeing Raven. The police approached them telling them to put their hands on their heads.
"This woman is unwell." Thor spoke to him. He told Jane to hold onto him and Raven didn't move away, "You back up."
"No, Raven, she was there too, she can help, she could even be sick too." Jane looked up at him, trying to help her friend.
"Fine." Thor said upset at this. "But she and I will have words. Both of you, hold on to me."
He wrapped his arm around Jane and Raven took hold of his cape, not wanting to touch him too much.
Once they had arrived on Asgard Raven was quiet. Not wanting to do anything that would get her locked away or killed, she had to find Loki first. Before they left the observatory Thor pulled Raven to the side out of ear shot of Jane so that if he didn't like what she said Heimdall could send her back immediately, "Why are you with her?"
"We both were looking for the same thing. A way to get to Asgard." She answered honestly.
"Have you hurt her? Manipulated her in anyway?" He growled.
"No I've protected her." Raven crossed her arms, "From those that want to take her for that big brain she has and from the people that know she has the protection of a certain God."
Thor looked down at her realized she did protect Jane from hurting herself during the blast, "Is it Loki you seek?"
"Yes." She was honest again, she knew lying to him would get her nowhere, plus she wasn't sure if Heimdall could tell if she was or not.
"Behave and help us heal Jane and maybe I will let you see him." Thor relaxed, "But only see."
She nodded and they headed out of the observatory. She was checked out first and was done quickly, no alien substance inside of her but some strange things the women pointed out that she knew was from all the experiments on her. Raven couldn't help but laugh as Jane asked if what she was laying on was a quantum field generator and when Jane looked at them nodding that what she'd said was right Raven looked at her and mouthed back at her, "Nerd."
As Odin entered she remained quiet again, not wanting him to jeopardize her chance to get to Loki. When Odin gave the order to take them back to Earth she saw them reaching for Jane and ignored the fact that ones were closing in on her and reached out to grab her as the blast happened again knocking the guards back.
After seeing this Odin lead them to a place where he told them about the Aether, the liquid energy now within Jane. They were given a change of clothes to fit in more around the city and Raven followed behind Thor and Jane, not wanting to bother the girl who was spending time with the person she had been searching for. She looked away as they kissed and was only brought back to what was happening as Frigga approached them. Thor called her over, "Raven, please come meet my mother. Mother this is Raven…A friend of Janes…and Loki."
"You knew Loki?" Frigga smiled at her.
"Yes. We met a few years ago." Raven tried to relax, not knowing why Thor was being so pleasant to her or how Frigga would react to knowing that she had known Loki.
"How? How did you meet him?" Frigga wondered and Thor had as well, a few years was more than the battle of New York.
"Uh…We met in a bar." Raven decided the truth was still the best option at the moment.
"Really?" Jane whispered to her as Thor and Frigga looked at her confused.
Raven whispered back, "At least I didn't hit him with a van."
Jane couldn't help but agree and the four of them continued on until alarms started going off. They said it was the prisoners and Thor looked to Raven, "If you help I will let you in to speak with him. If you betray us I will kill you."
"Thor." Jane looked up at him.
"Don't worry about me Jane, you stay safe." Raven said standing next to Thor nodding that she was ready to go.
Loki was sitting reading as the fighting happened until Thor arrived. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted someone with him, a short girl with dark brown hair. It was Raven. He stood, she was fighting alongside his brother. He watched as someone tried to stab her and she dodged taking the sword between her two arms and bending it, without even trying. She spun and used the sword to stab the man.
She wasn't using all of her abilities to their full potential, in fact she had yet to since she had been helped by Rogers. Turning to fight another man she was thrown back into a barrier, the one on Lokis cell. She saw him there and gave him a grin before being slammed up against the fake wall, her face being pushed into it, burning through her skin. She placed her hands on the man's face and chest and pushed, only moving him back slightly. She began to yell from the pressure the man was putting on her body and the places her hands touched on him began to glow red before catching fire and melting his skin. She dropped to the floor and the skin on her face healed immediately. Loki had never seen her do this, Thor had not been told of her abilities to do this, and she hadn't realized she could do this now. Raven looked at her hands before calling out, "Thor! Call your men back!"
He nodded giving the order and once they were past her she put her hands in front of her, fire spewing out from them, creating a line between the Asgardians and the prisoners. Thor rushed her and grabbed her by the collar, pinning her against the barrier, "How do you have this ability?"
"I got an upgrade." She said putting her hand on the wrist that had her pinned, "Plus I used it to help protect your girlfriend and keep the prisoners from escaping, do you really want to complain about it?"
Thor looked from her to Loki standing behind her in the cell and then back to her, his voice low, "You continue to help us and I will allow you time with him, and allow you back out."
She looked back to Loki, "Point me where you want me to go."
The ceiling above them shook and pieces of rocks fell, and Thor pointed up, "There."
Loki watched as she nodded and as Raven passed by him their eyes met for a moment and he wondered how she had these new abilities.
Thor and Raven made it to the room Jane was in in time to see Frigga stabbed. Thor ran after the creatures and Raven rushed to the womans side. She watched as the light drained from her eyes and just before she died she smiled, "I'm glad someone else cared about him as much as I do."
She was talking about Loki. Raven tried to stop the bleeding but it was too late, the woman had died, her last breath leaving her with her last sentence. Raven looked up at Thor and shook her head before moving out of the way for Odin to be with his wife.
As they left the room Thor found a guard, "Please escort her to my brother's cell and allow her in until I tell you to bring her out. Raven, please inform him of our mother's death."
The guard nodded and Raven followed him back down to the cells where Loki was. The guard opened the door just long enough for her to enter. Loki watched as she slowly approached him but he took a step back, "You're stronger now and working with my brother."
"Yes and no." She replied.
"Then what? You were only doing what he said to save face?" He asked.
"I was doing what he asked to stay alive and to get into this room." She was confused, "Are you mad at me?"
"I'm just wondering how it is you can spit fire from your hands when you never could before and why you show up here fighting alongside Thor." Loki moved in closer, his voice not teasing, instead slightly angered, had she truly betrayed him?
"I was following your orders. To find you if I could." She spat back at him, "For months I've gone through treatments to stop my dependence on the injections so that I could look for you uninhibited and spent months with a woman who was on the search for Thor looking at sensors and graphs trying to find a way to get here and once he finally showed back up on Earth I had to tip toe around everything to be able to stay on his good side so that I might be able to come down here and see you. I've spent a year trying to get here, went through more experiments, more tests to get here, to do what you told me to do, and I'm greeted with this? Missed me that much huh?"
It had been a year? He wasn't sure how long it had been on Asgard but for her it had been a year. She hadn't forgotten him, she hadn't betrayed him to help his brother. He put an illusion up, so that none of the guards would see as he grabbed her waist with one hand and her face with the other, "What kind of experiments? Was it S.H.I.E.L.D.?"
"No, it was someone who found people to help me, someone who felt bad for me." She looked up at him.
"I was worried about you." He put his forehead to hers, he had been, worried she had succumb to her injuries, that she hadn't made it out and that her enemies had gotten to her, worried that she had given up on him, "I know it shouldn't have, but I did."
"You don't need to worry any more. I'm stronger now, better now." She placed her hand on his arm.
"Is Thor planning on imprisoning you with me?" He asked.
"No. We only have a little time before I have to leave."
A smile snaked across his face, "How much is a little?"
"At least a few hours." She said and before he leaned in she stopped him, "Loki."
"What?" He sensed a slight bit of hesitation from her.
"There's something else." She swallowed hard, "Your moth- Frigga, she died in the attack."
His eyes grew wide as he nodded slowly, "I see."
"She cared about you very much." Raven placed a hand on his chest.
"Did she now?"
She lowered her head, "Her last words were of you, she said that she was glad someone else cared for you."
"Do you?" He asked, "Care for me?"
"Would I be here if I didn't?" She said and he pressed his lips to hers.
He whispered on her lips, trying to fight how upset he was over the loss of his mother, "Then comfort me in this loss."
"Okay." She kissed him back her fingers at the base of his skull, running through his hair.