"My son," Frigga's voice rang out with a crystalline clarity that very nearly brought Loki to his knees. There was no judgement in her sweet voice, only love and longing and maternal fear.

Without conscious thought, Loki's hands had reached through the bars of the dungeon cell, to clasp his mother's own. He knew the look in his eyes expressed the concern and distaste for their surroundings that he felt. His mother, the loveliest of all the goddesses, did not belong in a dungeon.

Yet Frigga merely smiled at him; a sad tilt of her full, pink lips. She slipped one hand free of his grasp and ran the back of it down the side of his cheek, a motherly caress she had not indulged in since he was very young. "My son," she echoed, her tone carrying within in the pain of the unspoken words: what have you done?

Loki felt the question keenly, and though he had known it would lurk behind every word and glance, he still had no answer for it. He could only cling to his mother's hand, feeling helpless and hopeless and terrified that she would turn away from him at any moment.

"He has betrayed Asgard."

Thor's voice was so calm and low that Loki did not at first recognize it. Peering into the shadows behind his mother, he was able to make out a sort of wooden bench mounted to the side of the dungeon. Upon it was a bulky shape, that had an air of tired defeat. It was Thor, so utterly betrayed and disheartened in a way that Loki had never imagined him capable.

"Hush, Thor," their mother murmured, "Loki has not betrayed Asgard. Not in his heart." She looked at him slightly askance, as if determining the effect of her words. "Betrayed some of Asgard's ideals, yes," she said, more to Loki than Thor, "But not Asgard herself."

Thor's huddled shape stood then. The crumpled lines of his cape and clothes pulling straighter as he became tall and imposing. He cleared the space between the bench and the cell bars in the blink of an eye, glaring harshly upon his once-brother. His blue eyes had a steely effect to them, his beard already growing wild from lack of attention. Judgment poured from every cell of his body. "Are you so sure, Mother?" he demanded, his eyes flashing wildly upon Loki. "He has torn Midgard apart in an attempt to soothe his ego, granted a usurper a right to the throne, and…"

"And he has survived," Frigga murmured. Her soft words washed the others away and Loki felt for the first time in a very long time, a small sense of hope.

"Survived for what?" Thor spat, turning from the bars until his face was shrouded in the dusty darkness.

"Would you rather I were trapped in there with you? Completely helpless?" Loki snapped finally, pulling himself from his mother's partial embrace. He had about him an aura of unsurprised rejection, like a stray cat who has been chased away too many times.

"Boys!" Frigga cried suddenly, her voice carrying a note of heartsick pain, "You are brothers!"

"But we aren't," said Loki sadly, turning to his mother with an expression of sorrow on his lips, as if he hated to admit this truth in her presence.

"Oh Loki," she sighed heavily, her breast rising with the weight of it. "Come here," she motioned with her hands, jutting them through the bars and wrapping them about Loki's own. In the darkness of the dungeon, Loki could see how very pale his skin was compared to her own. He seemed to almost glow in the darkness, a stark contrast to the warm pink tones of Frigga's skin. He was so unlike the family who had raised him.

Frigga shook her head softly, blonde ringlets falling about her face. She looked at him in a manner that suggested that she knew his thoughts and his heart, and it broke her heart to do so. "My Loki," she whispered softly, rubbing her finger tips across his long hands. "You may not have come to me in the way sons normally do, but you have been my son from the moment my husband placed you into my arms. Never doubt this." She squeezed his hands, "A usurper sits upon your brother's throne, but it is his by birth order, not birthright." Her eyes shone in the shadows, "You are the youngest son," her breath caught in her throat, memories of another boy threatening but so quickly pushed away, "It is your place to defend your brother's right, not look to steal it. It is not a power meant for you. You have a power all your own."

Loki looked at her with haunted eyes. The similarity of her words to those of the raven, Huginn, struck him immediately. The weight of them and the heaviness of her tone would bear no debate. In Frigga's eyes, he was her son. The brother to Thor. A rightful prince of Asgard. Nothing would change this for her.

For her, he might try to be something more than the snake he was.

"What must I do?" he begged quietly, his hands limp within Frigga's grasp.

There was a sound of shuffling and Loki found his gaze settling upon Thor's weary features once again. Thor looked at him with a mixture of skepticism and uncertainty, as if he was finally too worn from Loki's games to actually hope but his nature demanded that he do so nonetheless. "Seek out Jane Foster," Thor said quietly, "Build a Bifrost. Collect the warriors of many realms and bring them to Asgard's door."

There was disbelief in both their eyes. "You want me to go back to Midgard?" Loki murmured quietly.

Thor's expression suggested that he himself was uncertain. "Is there another option?" he asked slowly, weighing the words upon his tongue. "Jane Foster is the only being outside of Asgard who truly understands the Bifrost well enough to aid in its construction." He looked remorseful, "And a Bifrost is the only way to bring any amount of strength into Asgard. We… have not the strength or force to mount a resistance from within."

Frigga had freed Loki's hands in the midst of Thor's words and now lay one of her hands upon Thor's shoulder. "It is a sad day for the Aesir," she agreed, her voice calm and full of strength, "But we have allies on other worlds."

Thor smiled weakly at her before lifting his gaze to Loki. "The Avengers," he said softly.

Loki stared at him as if he had grown horns from his head, "I doubt that would be a wise move on my part."

Thor shrugged, "Then perhaps the Alvar and Dvergar will have to do, provided they have not entered alliance with… your queen." Thor's tone had hardened and Loki watched as Frigga's hand tightened upon Thor's shoulder.

She looked to Loki then. "Her magic," she began, shaking her head slightly, "It will not be defeated by normal means, I think. There's something else behind it. Something making her stronger than she should be." Her curls shook slightly, "I should have more to tell you, but I cannot."

Loki nodded abruptly. "If that is all then?" he joked, a bitter quality to his voice.

Frigga sighed again, her hand on Thor's shoulder looking pale and tight. "Do not despair, my son," she said slowly, "You are our only hope."

Loki left the dungeons with a sense of perplexity. The universe seemed determined to make a hero out of him. And that was a not a role he was at all comfortable playing.


Jane Foster was dressed in emerald green. It was, oddly, the first thing Loki noticed. He was less than certain of the plan Thor had proposed, and so here he was, spying on the mortal in question from across all the distance that Asgard could offer. Eyes that didn't have form or matter watched the mortal woman laugh, her fingertips painted a green to match the dress lightly pressing the forearm of the man she stood beside.

It was the same dress she had worn on the night he had first let himself be known to her, he realized dimly. It was, quite possibly, the only cocktail dress she owned. Somehow this idea was disappointing to him, but the sensation was not one he wished to chase further.

Instead, he watched her smile and fuss over the man she was with. A faint sense of something crept across his skin and he threw his consciousness closer. Jane Foster did not flirt. Not with other men. Not… but his confusion was quickly eased as he realized who the man was: Jane's beloved mentor, Erik Selvig. Whom he had treated possibly just a little less gently than he should have, knowing now that he would have to return to Midgard and not as its triumphant ruler.

Despite Loki's treatment, the older man looked little worse for wear. His eyes contained a weariness that stretched down the length and breadth of his soul, but they still held some glimmer of love and joy. The emotions were likely reserved almost entirely for the woman before him, however, as his smile was that of a proud father.

"Really, Jane," Loki heard him say softly, in a tone that carried a paternal warmth that somehow irked Loki's nerves, "I'm so proud of you. Of all you have accomplished."

Jane smiled adoringly up at the older man, relief and love painted across her features. "I wish I could take all the credit," she said, "But it was kinda just luck that Thor fell where he did, don't you think?"

"But that was only the start of it, Jane," Selvig told her, one of his hands reaching forward and grasping her shoulder. "What you did in continuing the work, even after SHIELD pretty much muzzled your work, that's what's brought you this!" he gestured about the room. Apparently the celebration was some sort of reception for the proper unveiling of Jane's Einstein-Rosen Bridge work, finally supported by the undeniable evidence of extraterrestrial beings who happened to also be Norse gods. What SHIELD could no longer hide, they allowed to be revealed in pomp and glory, a triumph of human achievement.

"I don't know," Jane said softly, twisting slightly below Selvig's hand and his regard. "There's so much you missed, I don't even know what to tell you…"

"And if I could take back my decision to work on the Tesseract," Selvig interjected remorsefully, "I would. It's my own fault I ended up in the position I did."

Jane shook her head and stared up Selvig with sadness in her eyes, "Don't say that, Erik," she murmured. "No one has the right to actually physically get into someone's head. That's just… a gross invasion of privacy. It's…"

Selvig's hand moved from Jane's shoulder to her chin, tucking her beneath the chin. Her face jerked upwards from its gradual descent into looking at the floor. "It's over, Jane," he told her earnestly, "What happened doesn't matter any more."

"But it does!" Jane insisted, her brown eyes flashing brilliantly as her chest heaved in consternation.

"No," Erik hushed, "It doesn't. We don't need to worry about lunatic Norse gods running around trying to take over the world anymore. Thor took that crazy brother of his back to Asgard, and with any luck that's the last anyone will ever see of him."

Jane looked up at Erik with a distance in her eyes and a slackness to her jaw. "Right," she agreed miserably. Loki decided she was a terrible liar, based entirely on this exchange.

"Now then," Erik said in a much brighter tone, clapping his hands together and rubbing them in lightly exaggerated excitement, "You still haven't told me how you managed to finagle yourself into access to the Very Large Array!"

If anything, Jane seemed to deflate further. Her gaze fell for a long moment before sweeping across the hall in which they stood. For an instant, Loki could have sworn her eyes stilled on the space where he would have been, had he created a projection to accompany his senses. He watched Jane push a wayward curl from her face, tucking it behind her ear thoughtfully. Her expression remained one of guilt for just a second longer before she smoothed out her features and took a deep breath.

"Let's just say," Loki heard her say as she turned her face back to Selvig, "That I made a deal with the devil and leave it at that?"

The words gave Loki pause as he allowed his senses to drift back across the divide and into his physical self. The devil, he mused. It was a role he had occasionally been assigned in Midgard's younger days, when he and Thor had traveled between realms with the zeal of adolescence and early adulthood. Every god of thunder and goodness had to have an evil shadow to balance him, after all.

It was a lie, of course. And his mother wanted him to play the hero. But, if the shoe fit…