Thank you to all my readers! It's really exciting to read all your thoughts. I hope I can continue to entertain!

The Hangman's Hands

Chapter 10: But Your Enemies Closer

The small mound of snow melted slowly in Jane's cupped hands. As soon as it was liquid, she gulped it down. It barely wet her parched throat. She waited patiently for another handful to melt. She was thirsty enough to drink the entire snowdrift. And she was starving.

"Perhaps we should get you a bowl with your name on it," Loki said behind her.

She ignored him. Ever since they'd escaped from the black mountain, he'd oscillated between amused condescension and just plain meanness. Nothing escaped a cutting observation or veiled insult. Since she was about as good at repartee as she was at baking, she'd mostly said nothing back. If you couldn't win, it was better not to play.

She'd gotten a brief respite while he slept, but apparently he was starting up exactly where he'd left off.

"Sleep well?" she rasped.

Instead of answering, he stood up and walked a few paces back and forth, slowly but without wobbling. Thank God, at least she wouldn't have to be his crutch anymore.

She had no idea how much time had passed. They'd wandered for hour after hour through the forests of pillars stretching up to the sky, through canyons and over ridges - always sticking to the rockiest ground and darkest shadows. Loki had made them double back more than once to muddy their trail. She had noticed no signs of pursuit, but he had grown more tense and irritable as time went on. Maybe the silence troubled him, or maybe he was just in pain. He hadn't said anything about it, but she'd noticed the tremors that went through him whenever the burned part of his skin grazed her.

They had finally stopped in the shelter of an overhang. Loki had slept like a stone, but her rest had been fitful, full of starts and stops and plagued by nightmares. She had dreamed once again that she was falling from the helicarrier, drowning in icy air without end. Below her tumbled Loki in his cage. He looked up at her and laughed before vanishing to leave her to die alone.

When she woke, she watched the sky, trying to block out the gnawing of her stomach by searching for landmarks and constellations. If she could navigate by the stars, she wouldn't be entirely dependent on Loki to find her way. Not that they were going anywhere in particular at the moment.

"How soon will you be able to teleport?" she asked now, scrubbing her face with snow-water. She dried her hands on the front of her coat and then stuck them back in its pockets.

"It will be at least another week." Walking or not, his hands still hung in gnarled, scabby claws at his sides, and his torso probably remained a mess, too.

She had no idea when that would be, here. "When is the sun going to come up?"

"I'm afraid Jotunheim lacks many civilized comforts. Such as a sun."

"Really?" she said, curiosity piqued. No sun? She wondered what had happened to it. Planets needed a star to form, and Jotunheim was still fairly warm - it must have an active core, so it couldn't be that old. Maybe something had knocked it out of its orbit and more, all the way out of its stellar system. That would require one hell of an impact. It hardly seemed plausible that a planet could survive something on that scale intact, but well, here she was on a sun-less world.

"Starting to feel at home?" Loki said. "It's a barbaric place, but compared to where you come from no doubt it seems impressive."

She got to her feet and a wave of dizziness nearly put her right back on the ground. Her stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself.

"Food," she said. "Food would be really good right now." What she wouldn't give for a BLT and some onion rings.

"Then I hope you like meat. Jotunheim isn't known for its pastries."

"Meat sounds amazing. I'll eat anything they have. Unless it's people." She wouldn't put it past them to be the fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman type of giant. In which case, Loki sounded worryingly English.

"Why do you have a British accent?" she asked, falling in beside him as they left the shelter of the overhang. It was gusty, fast-moving clouds covering and uncovering the sky. A few grainy snowflakes fell. She huddled down in her coat against the wind; Loki appeared unbothered. Her dagger hung limply in her hand, its point nearly dragging on the ground. She could still see some of her newly discovered stars: a very bright white one that hung low above the horizon and an almost straight row of five, the last with a reddish tint.

"A what?"

"You sound like you're from a part of Earth called England."

"Don't be silly, Jane," he said, giving her a disdainful look. "You know I'm not from Earth."

"Yeah, that's why it's weird! And how come Thor has a different accent than you do?"

"Thor never paid proper attention to his elocution tutors."

She boggled at the image of Thor sitting at a desk trying to learn - the Queen's English?

"Why does everyone speak English?"

"Who?"

"You, Thor, the giants. Everyone. Seriously, why do frost giants speak English?"

"And here I'd come to believe that you possessed some glimmer of intelligence... No one speaks your Midgardian babble, woman. The giants speak their own uncouth tongue."

"But I can understand them."

He gave an immense, long-suffering sigh. "Yes, the giants are immortal, thus the jotun tongue is also immortal. Naturally it's comprehensible on the lower level upon which you mortals operate."

So basically, complete nonsense, also known as magic. She was getting royally sick of magic.

"We're going somewhere with food, right?"

"Such a fragile creature you are. How long can you survive without food?"

"I'm not sure, probably a couple of weeks."

"Ah, then it's not urgent?"

"Yes, it is! It's very, very urgent." She shouldn't have said that. Hunger was making her slow-witted.

"Then I can hardly fail to find you some." There was the faintest edge to his voice.

Jane fell silent, but that left her with nothing to think about except how hungry she was. She studied the stars again. Maybe one of them was the Sun. Probably not, though. It was only G-class, not visible from any great distance. The thought made her feel incredibly alone.

They came out of a tight cluster of rock pillars into an open space. A frozen river meandered across a stony plain, flowing down out of the hills rising ahead of them. The sight of it made her thirsty again. At the top of the ridge she could see - huge towers with jagged, broken tops crowning the bluffs. One of them had fallen over and was leaning against another. All black, of course. Jotunheim had a limited palette of colors.

"Is it all you dreamed it would be?" Loki said. For once, he didn't sound mocking.

"What do you mean?"

"You studied the stars, did you not? You sought ways to travel to the other realms. Now you've seen one. Is it all you hoped for?"

She looked at the strange sky, the broken black towers, the river of ice. At Loki. He was an alien, after all, even if he didn't look like one. "I don't know. It's... strange, but also familiar. I thought it would be more - unimaginable. More shocking. Instead it's like something I knew, but forgot about a long time ago. That sounds really sentimental, I know."

He led them toward the riverbank. "The Nine Realms are linked by the branches of the World Tree. None of them are truly strangers to one another."

"What are the other realms like?"

"Muspelheim is hot, Niflheim is damp, Vanaheim tries too hard to be Asgard, Alfheim is beautiful, Svartalfheim is... not. And Hel is for the dead. Perhaps you'll see some of them as well, someday. We cross here."

He took a running leap onto the ice. Even barefoot and with his arms held out stiffly, he slid across the surface as gracefully as a figure skater, spinning halfway around to laugh back at her. His momentum carried him to the middle of the river. "Come on, Jane."

"Is it frozen all the way through?" she asked, cautious. She was a southwestern girl, not used to frozen bodies of water.

"Near enough. It's perfectly safe."

She put a foot on the ice and it nearly slipped out from under her.

"Don't step, slide," Loki said.

She complied and ended up shuffling, zombie-like, a few yards onto the river, her arms stretched out for balance. The fact that Loki was watching in amusement didn't make it easier. She had almost reached him when she slipped again. She dropped her dagger in shock and grabbed the front of his coat with both hands to stop herself from falling.

"I've heard that the giants have a great love for all manner of fools and jesters and buffoons," Loki said, still grinning. "With those skills, you should tender your application to the king. I have no doubt you'd make a memorable impression."

"Shut up," she said. "Can you reach my knife?"

"No," he said, holding up his damaged hands.

She kept one hand on his coat and stretched down for the dagger with the other. The surface of the ice was too far away. She tugged on the coat until he leaned forward far enough for her fingers to grasp the hilt. She straightened, and her forehead nearly bumped his chin on the way back up. He didn't look at all annoyed to be used as a living scaffold; an impish smile tugged at his lips.

She let go hurriedly and continued her shuffle to the other bank. Loki slid past her and waited until she was on solid ground again.

"Up there, you see?" he said, jerking his chin toward the hills. "The fishermen's huts."

She squinted. She could make out some buildings on the lower part of the slopes. The thought of fish made her stomach growl. "What do they catch?"

"Giant eels," he said, starting toward the houses.

In the river they'd just crossed? She looked back at the ice, imagining huge slimy bodies squirming under the surface. She was glad he'd said that after they were across it. Still, she kept glancing over her shoulder as they left, just in case something came writhing out in pursuit.

The buildings turned out to be a cluster of three houses huddled around a hollow. A white fence surrounded the little settlement, and as they drew closer it became increasingly clear that it was made of bone. Huge, long, thick bones crisscrossed like warning signs. She tried to imagine what kind of animal they might come from. Hopefully an animal, anyway.

The houses themselves were giant-sized, the doors twenty feet high and the steep roofs reaching forty, but they seemed fairly simple, with probably only one room each. The largest one had a skull above the door, grinning out into the night. It looked like it might well have belonged to a giant eel: long, narrow, with hundreds of small, needle-like teeth. The walls were made of uneven stones, closely fit; the overall appearance was both rustic and cold. There was an abandoned look about the place and the roof of one house had collapsed inward.

It was quiet: she couldn't see any people or animals. But Loki approached cautiously, slipping between the bones and staying under the eaves of the collapsed house, and she gripped the hilt of her dagger as she followed.

"Smoke," he said in a low voice. "Someone's cooking."

He was right. A thin, gray tendril rose from the chimney of the largest house. So there was warmth, and probably food, and at least one frost giant between those things and herself.

"What do we do?" she said.

He pondered the question for a moment. "Go in front of the house and scream."

"What is wrong with your brain?"

"It'll lure him out."

"And then he'll grind my bones for his bread!"

"Don't be silly, I'm going to kill him."

"With what, your teeth?"

He gave her a dirty look. "Fine. I'll do it myself." And before she could protest, he walked out into the hollow and shouted, "Loki of Asgard says come out and fight, faintheart!"

"What the hell are you doing?" she hissed at him. He winked at her. Winked. Jane got ready to run.

There was a moment of absolute silence. Then the door opened and the house's resident stepped out. He was big; he had to duck his head to get under the lintel. His blue face was lined with age, but he certainly looked formidable enough.

"Loki of Asgard, that cowardly cur who tried to burn us all from afar?" He glared down at his challenger, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Are you not still bound under the snake, wailing like a woman?"

"I have escaped to make your women wail instead."

"This I do not believe, for I have always heard that Loki preferred the attentions of men."

"I cannot help it if all desire me," Loki shrugged.

"All desire your death, Asgardian. But I shall be the one with the deed to my name."

"Mighty words for such an old man. I cleaved those towers in the mountains, I made a terrible war upon your people. Do you not fear me?"

The giant snorted. "You are a liar through and through. It was Thor Odinson who made the war and Odin's Bifrost that clove the towers. I do not fear a man who did nothing but pull a switch."

Thor? She must have heard that wrong. Her heart was pounding in her ears, that was why.

"Do you not? I think I see your limbs trembling, old prune," Loki said.

The giant spat. Quick as a flash, he reached inside the door to pull out a club, swung it over his head, and brought it down on Loki with the force of a freight train.

Jane shouted a warning too late and before she knew it, she had run out into the hollow brandishing her knife - even as the illusion of Loki shimmered and vanished into nothing. Which left her standing by herself, face to face with an angry twenty-five foot man with a club. Stupid mortal, the wind seemed to whisper.

"Who are you, girl?" the giant said.

She swallowed. "Um. I'm. A friend of giants everywhere?"

"You wear the garb of Asgard." The club rose again and then stopped, suspended in mid-air as the giant's eyes widened.

She found herself surrounded by - herself. Twenty, thirty Janes stood in the hollow, complete with long coats and daggers, blinking around at each other with a rather foolish expression.

"Sorceress!" the giant bellowed, and crushed one of the false Janes.

She ran, and so did the others, thirty Janes tearing around like rabbits, all mirror images of each other. Every move she made was reflected on thirty different axes, a chaos of mirage and illusion.

It was just her bad luck that the giant picked the real her to follow.

She pelted around the building with the collapsed roof, feeling massive footsteps thudding behind her. She could hear his breath roaring and when she threw a glance behind her, she saw the club at the top of its arc, just beginning to descend. She threw herself to the side, toward the fence and away from the houses.

The club crashed into the ground a few feet away, sending chunks of dirt and rock flying into the air. Her helm - too big anyway - flew off. Her head hit one of the fence posts hard; bright sparks swam before her eyes. Dirt got in her mouth and she coughed, choked, lying dazed as she tried to draw breath. Heavy steps vibrated through the earth to shake her entire body. She looked up to see the giant looming over her.

The club rose again. She rolled to the side just as it smashed into the fence, splinters of bone flying everywhere. The bulge at the end lodged in the cross made by two bones and the giant tugged at it, his head turning to scowl at her. He looked for all the world like a crotchety old man shaking his stick at the kids invading his front lawn. Except blue and huge and deadly.

She made a break for it, but had barely struggled to her feet when the giant's hand closed on the back of her coat. A spear of cold thrust down her spine. It wiped every thought from her mind; her muscles seized up, her teeth clamped down, her back was a sheet of ice. She couldn't even scream. Her world collapsed into one sensation: cold.

The giant let go and she dropped to the ground in a limp bundle of limbs.

"Loki of Asgard!" he bellowed. "Show yourself!"

"Run into the house and fetch a burning log from the fire," Loki's voice said in her ear, although she couldn't see him anywhere.

She hadn't thought she could move, but the enraged screams of a giant were incredibly motivating. She tottered across the hollow, not looking back. Whatever Loki was doing to distract the giant was making him furious - and keeping him busy.

The inside of the giant's house did indeed consist of one huge room, with a table taller than her head filling the center of it. She didn't have time to get a good look at her surroundings; she headed straight for the small fire in the hearth against one of the walls. There was a cauldron hanging over it, bubbling with some kind of stew. She pulled a burning stick out of the flames and ran back outside.

The giant was still roaring, but coming closer now. He stomped from behind the ruined house shouting, "Trickery! A coward's guile!" His eyes alighted on her and his lips pulled back in a snarl.

She held her tiny stick and stared back, too scared to move.

Next to her, the night moved; a veil of shadow pulled back, and suddenly Loki was standing where there had been nothing before.

"Hold up the fire," he murmured, "Steady, now."

She raised the flickering brand as high as she could as the giant came closer, step after step, closer still, until he was almost on them -

The flames sputtered, turned a lurid green, and suddenly roared, an arc of pale fire shooting out to catch the giant in the face. The fire raced along his skin as if he'd been doused in gasoline, ravenous and unstoppable. Where the screams had been angry before, now they were shrill and panic-stricken. The giant dropped his club and flailed his arms, spreading the fire around his body even more. He began to run, blinded, blundering into first one building and then the next, over and over, trapped like a burning moth inside a lamp.

She backed away and ran into Loki's chest, solid as a wall behind her. He didn't move.

"They don't like fire much, do they?" he said.

She glanced up at him. Green flames danced in his eyes. He looked delighted.

"That's horrible," she said, the stick shaking in her hand. "Horrible."

"But effective."

The giant finally crashed through the fence and barreled down the slope, lighting the darkness as he went. They could hear him screaming for a long while yet.

"You can put that back now," Loki said.

It was snowing more heavily and the wind had picked up. The fire had turned back into ordinary flame. She dropped the stick on the ground, where the growing carpet of snow extinguished it. The stench of burning flesh lingered. She couldn't seem to stop shuddering.

"Skadi sends her storms to bar our way," Loki said. "We'll have to stay here until this has passed. Did he touch you?"

"No. Almost." Her back still had no feeling. She felt numb all over, in fact, inside and out. "It was really cold."

"Wait a moment."

He went into the house and came out a moment later with a bronze flask dangling from a strap looped around his elbow.

"Drink this," he said, slinging it at her.

She caught it. The sloshing of the liquid inside made her throat ache with thirst. "What is it?"

"Mead. It will warm you."

She opened it dubiously. The sharp, hot smell that wafted from inside was certainly inviting. She drank a deep draft.

"Whoa," she said. It was sweet - and strong. Warmth shot through her body, bringing the life back to her stupefied muscles. It went straight to her head as well, empty as her stomach was. She didn't mind; it dulled the horror a bit. She put a hand against the wall to steady herself. She was drinking a dead guy's booze and she was about to go stay in his house. Someone she'd helped kill. Someone whose death she could still smell all around her.

He'd been trying to kill them, though. That made it different. And he wasn't human. Did that matter? It probably shouldn't, but it was hard to think of the frost giants as people when they'd done nothing but attack them. It was hard to think in general. She was inundated by the same feeling of confused dislocation that had descended on her after the Destroyer had burned its path of destruction through Puente Antiguo. Loki's path of destruction.

She tried to focus on something else. There had been an important question she'd wanted to ask. Before the burning had happened. She groped for it in her memory; anything to take her mind off that smell. Yes, she remembered: something about Thor.

"What did that giant mean," she said, "when he said Thor had started a terrible war?"

"Hasn't he told you why he was banished to Earth?"

"He said it was for disobeying his father." Thor had told her a lot of things about Asgard, but not very much about his family. He'd been especially reluctant to discuss anything involving Loki - and she'd asked, back when they'd been on the helicarrier. It felt like a million years ago.

Loki chuckled. "It's not a falsehood, exactly. Perhaps Thor is getting better at lie-craft - half-truths make the best lies. He was banished, Jane, for leading a raid against Jotunheim in a time of peace, which began the most recent war between our realms."

"The war in which you tried to destroy all of Jotunheim?"

"Yes. It had escalated so far, I felt there was no other choice."

He would think that. Just like he thought burning someone alive was a good idea. She felt cold inside. She was going to remember that, she was going to see those images in her head for the rest of her life.

"You should drink more," Loki said.

That might not be such a great idea. This stuff would make her drunk way too quickly. But it made her feel so warm. She took another drink. The heat spread through her from the tips of her ears to the tips of her toes. Her mind swam in a haze.

"So why did Thor organize an attack in the first place?" she asked, emboldened by the alcohol.

Loki shrugged. "Killing frost giants is what heroes do. They're our ancient enemy. And Thor, he oh so loves being a hero. There was a minor skirmish and he took it as an excuse to attack."

"So it wasn't entirely unprovoked."

"It was a serious strike in retaliation for a negligible incident. Odin was angrier than I had ever seen him. He wouldn't banish his favorite son for something less than criminal - it was treason, after all."

She looked at him. He was leaning against the wall next to her, watching the snow dance in the hollow between the houses. She heard Thor's voice whisper in her memory, he is not called Silvertongue for nothing. But Thor had also said, I have killed many giants myself, even when we had peace. And it wasn't Loki who had brought up Thor starting the war, it was some random frost giant they'd run into by chance.

"I just can't imagine Thor doing something like that," she said. "He's so thoughtful."

Loki turned his head. His face was drawn; transforming that fire must have sapped his energy. "You know him hardly at all. For a thousand years, he was not thoughtful. Whatever change you've wrought in him, it won't last."

She shook her head, then stopped. Too much movement. "It wasn't me."

His eyes bored into her, narrow and piercing like the very first time she'd seen him. "Oh, but it was. You made him soft. You, something about you turned him into a different man."

She couldn't quite meet that gaze. "I don't think it works like that. Maybe he just had to become mortal to grow up. That's what we mortals do. We grow up fast."

A crease appeared between his brows as he studied her. He said nothing in reply.

She was starving. She remembered the cauldron of stew over the fire. Whatever it was, she was going to eat it. She offered a silent apology to the giant. At least she hadn't liked doing this.

"I'm going inside," she announced, and took a step toward the door.

And suddenly, she was somewhere else. The hills and houses were gone; Loki was gone. She was standing next to a red cliff with a sheet of blue ice rippling down it. Before her stretched a long slope covered with boulders and scree.

"What the fuck - " she said, taking a step back.

The world whirled around her again and she was in an empty channel between two rock pillars. They leaned so close together that they almost touched, a tiny patch of sky caught between them. God, what was in that mead? Was she hallucinating now?

Her mind worked through the alcohol buzzing in her brain. The sensation of the world moving around her felt just like it had when she'd first been transported to Jotunheim. Tony! she realized. It must be Tony and Thor on the other end, on Earth. They were trying to get her back! Maybe if she simply kept walking, she could walk right out of here and home this very minute. Home, home to sunlight and showers and Thor and telephones and stars she knew. She ached for it.

The next step took her into the midst of a party of frost giants watering their big gray beasts at a series of steaming pools. Five huge blue heads turned to look down at her, mouths opening in shock. She yelped and threw herself forward -

Only to find her toes hanging over the edge of a precipice. She was on top of one of the rock pillars, teetering at the edge of a hundred-foot drop. Her arms flailed for balance - oh God, she had too much momentum, her head was spinning from the mead, she was going to fall - and she threw her weight backward and crashed down onto the solid stone of the pillar instead. She lay there, taking huge breaths and staring up at the twinkling stars.

"Jesus, Tony," she said aloud. "Figure it out."

This was all wrong. She'd been jumping around Jotunheim instead of toward home. And why hadn't Tony sent Thor after her instead of mucking around with her probability field from light-years away? No wonder it wasn't working.

Unless there was a reason he couldn't send Thor. Tony wasn't an idiot, after all.

She put an arm over her eyes, blocking out the shaky stars above. An inkling was forming at the back of her brain. She had been so stupid. Why hadn't she tested the device more thoroughly? Why hadn't she tested it on someone other than herself?

She remembered that perfect moment of insight when she'd discovered the equation that tied it all together. The equation that defined the probability field of an individual as separate from the rest of the universe. Any individual, she had thought. Unless it defined only her own probability field - the data she'd been running all her simulations on. In which case the teleporter programmed with that equation would work only for her, and anyone else would need different math. If Tony couldn't come up with an equation for Thor or himself, he might think it was easier to yank her back to Earth instead. It would require truly spectacular amounts of power, but that was Tony's specialty.

Very carefully, she got back to her feet. She could see for miles in every direction. There was a long chain of mountains far away in front of her, the summits peaked with ice. To the right the sky was clouded - probably the snowstorm she'd just come out of. To the left it was clear, and not far-off she saw a cluster of silver towers, square and thick as slabs of rock. In the center of the cluster was a white dome pulsing with light - a white light with rainbows flickering across it. The row of one red and four white stars that she'd noticed before hung over the complex.

She filed the strange buildings away to mull over later. She didn't know how long Tony could keep this up.

She walked, and each step took her somewhere in Jotunheim, around and around in circles. She saw the same group of giants four times, looking progressively more and more shocked and confused. There were other places: a frozen ocean, plains of blue and red, forests of ice instead of rock. Huge buildings like cathedrals and skyscrapers - so many of them ruined it seemed the planet was half-deserted. It must have been magnificent once. But as fascinating and alien as it was, she wished with every step for it to disappear and turn into the physics lab in Stark Tower instead.

Finally, one of her jumps deposited her back at the little hollow. The snow had piled up in her absence and the wind was strong now, swirling flakes around with a vengeance.

"Loki!" she shouted.

He came skidding out of the giant's house. Her knife was hanging at his belt and he had a bag over his shoulder. He must have been about to go look for her.

"Jane! What happened?"

"Stay back!" she said. "Tony's trying to teleport me home, I don't know what'll happen if you - "

In two quick strides, he was by her side. His arms closed around her waist in an awkward embrace that kept his hands clear; he lifted her clean off the ground. Her feet dangled.

"Hey! Hey, what are you doing? Put me down!" If she couldn't walk, she couldn't teleport. "I'm supposed to be going back to Earth!" Earth, home, Thor, showers, sunlight, damn it, she didn't know how long the window of opportunity would last.

"That is, in fact, the bone of contention," Loki said.

It took a moment for that to sink in. The last of the alcohol buzz cleared from her head, seared away by anger. "You ungrateful bastard. You promised!" It sounded weak when she said it out loud.

"Did you have faith in me?" His smile was mocking. "Charming. But no one has ever called me the god of keeping promises."

"You're - you are," she groped for a word nasty enough to describe him. There really wasn't one. "Such an asshole. Why can't you just let me go home? If Tony can bring me back, you won't even have to do anything! Are you really that jealous of Thor that you have to keep me even now that you can't hurt me?"

"Well, I won't deny that tweaking Thor's nose has its appeal. But this is really all your own fault, Jane. I can't exactly prevent you from coming to harm if we're in different realms, can I? And I have no desire to return to that dingy backwater you call home."

Oh, fuck. "Are you for real? This is because of the oath? We have to be neighbors forever now?" She had a vision of herself, aged seventy, sitting on a porch drinking iced tea while Loki glowered at her, making sure she didn't choke. She almost laughed out loud. The stuff of nightmares. Though the way things were going, she probably wasn't going to live long enough to reach retirement age anyway.

"How did you think this was going to work?" Loki hissed.

"There wasn't exactly a manual!"

"You shouldn't have meddled." He shook her once so her teeth clicked and then froze as if paralyzed, angry frustration playing over his face.

"Ha!" she said. She hoped trying to break the oath hurt. She punched him in the chest and thrashed, trying to make him drop her. Her hand throbbed as if she'd hit a block of stone; he went pale and his lips pulled back in a grimace, but his grip didn't loosen.

"Tell me," he said, his voice like honey, "have you considered how broad the definition of 'harm' might be? You're a scientist - perhaps we could conduct some experiments." His voice dropped. "I could make you very uncomfortable."

Her skin crawled. "Don't."

His smile didn't touch his eyes. "Why ever not?"

"Because! I just rescued you from excruciating torture and then saved your life! That has to mean something, even to you."

"Are you appealing to my better nature?"

"I'm trying to appeal to your reason, if you have any left. How long do you think you're going to live, making enemies left and right? Who's going to help you when the next guys come to cash in their revenge check, if not Thor and me?"

"I don't need help from the likes of you, you miniscule creature."

"You just did," she said, grabbing one of his burned hands and twisting.

He cried out and dropped her in the snow. She landed on her hands and knees. The look on his face was pure murder; he was trembling with rage. At that moment she was extremely grateful for the blood oath, no matter the inconvenient side effects.

"Don't pretend it didn't happen," she said. "You looked up at me and cried and said you would do anything for me."

He kicked a pile of snow in her face. She sputtered; it stung, and not just physically.

"You can forget about seeing your precious Earth ever again," he said. "Count yourself lucky I don't simply lock you in a cage and cart you around like a beast."

He stalked off, but stopped after only a few steps. He turned halfway and said, more moderately, "I owe you a debt. But I am not your tame god. Don't mistake me for Thor." And then vanished into the giant's house.

Sitting there in a snowstorm light-years from home, she felt a more perfect harmony with Thor than she ever had when they were together. So this was what he had to put up with. She wiped the snow off her face. There was nothing she wanted less than to go inside that house. But it was freezing, and she had to eat before she fainted.

She got up and walked a few experimental paces. Nothing happened; whatever Tony and Thor had been doing was over. She'd probably reverted back to her starting point in the first place because the attempt had failed. But they would try again, and Tony would find a way. She had an out. All she had to do was wait. Loki could rage all he liked, it made no difference. She was going to Earth, and he would have to follow.

Jane gathered her feelings, the anger, the humiliation, surprisingly enough the hurt. It wasn't the first of Loki's temper tantrums she'd weathered, but it had never felt so personal before. She squeezed all the emotions into a ball and put the ball in a box and put the box away in the back of her mind. She wouldn't forget this. She was going to save that box and someday she was going to bring it out again and smack Loki in the face with it. And it would be beautiful.

She went inside.