The sight that met Jane's eyes when they stepped through into the room beyond was one that she knew would haunt her nightmares. If she ever got out of here to have nightmares again, of course. Not because of anything outright horrific, but then again, weren't the most awful nightmares subtle?

She'd known there was something wrong with Erik for weeks, now, but she hadn't expected to find him so far gone. She'd come looking for him in the hopes that he would at least know he needed rescuing. Yet here he was, standing in this gathering of lost, stolen people, like it was exactly where he'd always wanted to be. He was clearly comfortable here, all of them were, despite living like rats.

Admittedly, rats with one hell of an electrician. The device in the corner kept drawing her gaze. But these people were hidden away, and now she knew with a sick feeling in her stomach that it was because they'd been waiting.

And Jane caught herself wondering if Loki really wasn't behind absolutely all of this after all.

Her heart felt like it stopped beating and the air felt as though it had been sucked from her lungs when Loki pulled his hand free from hers'. She hadn't realized just how much she'd come to depend on that small sign of unity, over the last few minutes.

He took a few steps forward, until he was standing at the top of the small flight of stairs leading down to the people. Wildly, trying not to panic and slowly failing, Jane reached out to grab ahold of him again. "Loki, wait!"

The sharp smack that was him swatting her hand aside echoed loudly in the otherwise silent space. Jane pulled her hand back sharply, biting back a wince at the sting.

Loki didn't even look back at her. "Silence," he said, calm and cold, and it was an order given with the absolute expectation that he would be obeyed.

Jane didn't want to obey. She also didn't want to die. She didn't want to stay, but she couldn't leave Erik here, and found she could only compromise by drawing further back into the shadows. Erik watched her, seeming almost curious at her reluctance, at her fear, before he turned his gaze back to stare fixedly at Loki.

She heard the gleeful smile in Loki's voice as he spoke. Triumph dripped from every word.

"My most faithful. My army when even the Chitauri deserted me, failed me. Your devotion does you credit. Your trust honors me. And your waiting is at an end."

The others were rising, now, getting to their feet. Jane heard further movement down the second hallway, silently confirming her worst fears that there really were more people down here. She wondered just how many.

"When the Earth burns around us, when others flock to serve me, you will be remembered as the first. After all, you alone remembered my words. Remembered the truth about your ultimate place in life."

"At your feet, sir." Words spoken by Black Widow, who had strode in from the other hallway just in time to hear these words. Loki looked to her, and she saluted without so much as a pause.

Loki looked to her, and after a long moment, he nodded. "At my feet," he said, his voice quiet but carrying all the same. "In my shadow. Even those who resisted me once knows now the truth. In the end…you will always kneel."

He beckoned imperiously to Natasha. "For being the first among many to see the truth…Natasha Romanoff, step forward. I have a gift to grant you."

She stepped obediently forward, the crowd parting before her like the sea before a prophet. Loki, in turn, stepped down to meet her.

Jane knew she should run, but her feet felt rooted to the spot. Her limbs felt heavy as lead with fear, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps that left her dizzy. She wanted to scream for all of this to stop, but it was clear that they wouldn't hear. She wanted to hit Loki and never stop for causing all of this, but she knew it would be the last thing she ever did. Much as she cursed herself for her fear, Jane did not want to die.

So she watched. She committed the sight before her to memory, like any scientist would a particularly fascinating and dire experiment.

Loki lifted his hands to Natasha's face, fingers lightly resting on her temples. He bowed his head, and as though at some silent mental command, she did the same. For several seconds, all was silent, as though the universe itself held its breath. It was a silence so loud that even the sound of her heart pounding in her chest seemed to dim.

Then, slow and languid, like smoke rising from a fire, tendrils of blue light came into view, swirling around Natasha's body and Loki's as well. For a moment, they simply stood there, watched by the silent army and the terrified scientist. Two figures, heads bowed and eyes closed, joined by a touch, wreathed in cold blue light.

And then, something changed.

It was nothing Jane saw or felt, except as a shivering of goosebumps up her arms and a prickling tension behind her eyes. It felt like a breeze had just blown through the room, there and gone in a flash, but the air remained musty and warm.

But no, something had changed. Was changing, starting with the way Natasha gasped in something like pain. Then, like dust spiraling up in a breeze, the blue fire dancing and swirling around Natasha's body began to drift up, towards her head, towards Loki's outstretched hands. As Jane watched, the light of the Tesseract left Natasha entirely, spiraling instead along Loki's arms to join the light still burning around him.

His brightened. Hers' died. And Natasha slumped to her knees, suddenly breathing in great, shuddering gasps. One hand flew to her chest, the other clutched at her head. The woman stared up at Loki, wide-eyed and wild, and like this, eased out from her hiding place in the doorway, Jane realized with a lurch in her heart that her eyes were green.

She didn't see the look on Loki's face. He only reached out and nudged Natasha lightly, insistently, with the toe of one shoe. Something unsaid passed between them, or some predetermined signal that they couldn't possibly have had any time to set. Natasha nodded anyway, her expression shifting from one of dazed panic to cold, calm professionalism. She pushed herself to her feet, and strode up the short flight of steps to join Jane.

"Sir," said Barton. He sounded confused, even wary. "What are you doing?"

"Do you doubt me, Barton?" Loki turned his head to regard the archer, and Jane slid just close enough to see him smiling, an expression that put her in mind of nothing so much as a gleaming knife. That was all she had time to see, however, before Natasha grabbed an arm to pull her back. Jane opened her mouth to cry out in shock, but the woman clapped a hand over it as well.

"Sssh," she hissed in Jane's ear. "We're not safe yet."

"No, sir," Barton was saying. Caught in Loki's gaze like a bug beneath a pin, he looked downright ashamed. "Of course not."

"Of course not," Loki agreed easily. "Never fear, Barton. Your beloved woman is safe in my hands. You trust me, do you not?"

He answered without hesitation. "With my life."

Loki beckoned. Barton came. "Then you may join her." He laid his hand on the human's temples, and they both closed their eyes.

It was like bleeding out a poison.

This poison couldn't just be left bled, however. It couldn't be left to drift free. This was the sort of energy that could tear holes between worlds. It might even have been turned to the same purpose, infecting others.

With the Tesseract contained, however, these were only scraps of power. Only fragments left behind in the hearts and minds and bodies of those who had come into contact with the scepter. Contain this power, and nothing else could take its place.

And so Loki contained the power binding it within himself. Bled the poison out of them, and into him. Their minds had already been joined once before, and it was an immutable truth of the universe that anything that had been done once was easier to do again.

Besides, he knew their minds, even after all this time. Knew them as he did his own – in some ways, even better. He had held them all inside him, their sparkling minds full of hopes and dreams and fears. They had been his, and been made his again.

Therefore, it was his right to let them go. The Other had never had a claim to them, not really, and Loki would not let it make one now.

Even so, he hadn't realized then the full extent of just what he'd been making use of. He'd felt it, but he hadn't noticed. Or, truth be told, he hadn't cared. He felt it now, all of it – the light of their dreams, stifled but not extinguished, the threaded web of connections and love they had left behind them to be drawn here, the hum of terror and fear and loss buried deep down inside their minds. He felt and understood them, all the impossibly intricate little pieces that made them people, an impossible and glorious design.

And in those seconds where their minds were truly joined once more, even if only as long as it took for him to free them from this, Loki realized that this was it felt like to truly regret. He had bound these people to him. He had made this possible. These people, with their lives and thoughts and wants and dreams and sisters and brothers, and he had subjugated them simply because they'd been convenient. Maybe he had not ravaged their minds as the Other had attempted to ravage his, but that didn't matter.

"I'm sorry." He left them with that thought as he untied the knots, left them with his true sincerity and his regret as, perhaps, the last feelings he would ever truly feel. For their pain and loss, he gave them something in return that even Thor had almost never had. "Escape. Stay safe. Don't die. I'm sorry."

And even if, just for the barest moment, he'd considered using all this gathered power for himself, even though he still remembered that rush of power all too well and how it made him feel so very powerful, especially compared to how he'd felt the last couple of years, now it just felt like he was drowning. Every chain he undid only bound him more tightly to the dark thing that had started this at all. And the Other was happy to let him do so. An army of humans as its thralls would have served its goals well enough – the Chitauri could always use more slaves – but now he knew that they had only ever been bait.

Bait he'd swallowed whole, even when he'd figured out what was to come when he did. Oh, how times had changed.

Brother, damn you.

"You always were an astute student," it whispered, voice bubbling over with mocking glee.

Loki kept at it anyway. Person after person, life after life. At least he wasn't having to exert anymore energy to impose his will over the Other's. Maybe it wasn't fighting him anymore. Or maybe, on some level, these people now knew what he was trying to do for them, and were fighting it themselves.

One of his very first lessons about the glories of humanity had been that it was stronger than it appeared, after all.

But Loki was weak, had always been weak. It was getting hard to see, hard to think, and he couldn't remember if he had ever felt so cold before. His thoughts felt subsumed, buried, blotted out by the light. The more he tried to hold on to something, anything, the more of him was lost by the second. There were moments where he forgot where he ended and they began.

He was drowning, falling, coming undone. There was no one who would save him even if he could reach out. He was alone, wrapped in the web of a monster.

All he knew now was fear.

"Why do you insist on fighting? Why do you persist in wasting your breath? When you should be saving it to scream. Meet your fate quietly, and I might even let you meet it alone. If I told you to raise your arm and slit her throat, do you really think you wouldn't?"

He felt his hand twitch. He'd gone utterly numb before now, but at its whispered musings, he felt his hand twitch. And power like this, even borrowed, scavenged power, was more than enough to undo Odin's bindings.

With all the power he'd taken into himself, power that originated from the scepter, it's scepter…he'd placed himself more under its control than he'd ever been before. Loki knew now that it would be the simplest thing in the world to summon a blade and strike absolutely all of them down, weak and dazed and frightened and human as they were.

Human enough to hold the hand of a monster as he went to meet his fate.

Yes. If it tore the muscles from my bones, yes.

"Patience, little god. We'll get to that soon enough. Say your farewells first. Not that any will mourn you when you fall."

Brother, help me.