Loki was right – the Other could still put up an almighty fight. It was still agile and quick, seeming at times to be little more than smoke on the wind as he sought to batter it to bits. Loki, hanging back, was clearly suffering under whatever silent attempts it was making to break down whatever mental shielding he had thrown up to block it on that front. The important thing, however, what had really changed, was that Thor could see when his blows did strike true. The Other was wounded already, wounded and beaten as they were, but the most important difference was that it was alone. When it sent out creeping tendrils of darkness to try and snare Thor, they broke harmlessly on a shield of ice. When one of its hits like a speeding truck managed to slip past Thor's guard to strike home, he landed on snow instead of hard-packed earth. He could feel it still, battering and beating at his mind, but his mind was defended now. Even if the attacks made Loki falter or hiss in pain instead, Thor was free to repay them in kind on his brother's behalf.
It was a long, hard fight that might have taken minutes, hours, days, or years. In the end, however, there was absolutely no contest. With the two of them fighting together, there was no other way it could end.
So when, at long last, Loki surged forward with a sound that might almost have been a snarl tearing free from his lips, Thor stepped back to let him. He knew how this had to end, as well as his brother did, and Thor would not deny him that after long last.
Loki grabbed hold of the Other's cowl, and it fell back to reveal the creature's jagged, alien face. Panting heavily, Loki let frost and ice spill forth from his hands, over the creature, and Thor realized after a moment that he wasn't just witnessing an imprisoning.
He was witnessing a transformation. The monster that had started all of this, turning to ice before his eyes.
Whatever last words were being exchanged between them were only in the minds of his brother and his former tormentor. Whatever last words were being exchanged, however, clearly hit home. Loki's expression twisted into a rectus of hate, and the Other smiled, just before its mouth froze for good.
Loki smashed the statue against the ground. It shattered with a sound that split the otherwise still air. But he didn't stop there – Loki continued to smash the pieces into smaller pieces into fragments into dust, all the while drawing in ragged, desperate pants of air as though he were dying all over again. Then the gasps became weeping, became huge, wracking sobs tearing free from his chest and shaking Loki like a leaf. He curled up there amidst the fragments of the monster, arms wrapped tightly around his chest as though to keep himself from falling to pieces then and there.
Thor found that he couldn't stay away any longer, after that. Loki's moment of triumph had passed, and now Thor had to be there to make sure Loki still came out the other side of it. He went to his brother, knelt down beside him, and pulled Loki into a hug. Loki twisted in his grip, but only as much as it took to cling to Thor in turn, pressing his face to Thor's chest as he cried.
Thor held him, saying nothing, because he understood. Tears stung his eyes as well, because even Thor had his limits, and he had passed them hours ago. If he cried silently, it was with no less need. Alone in the dark on a dead, abandoned world at the very outer edges of everything they knew, the brothers clung to one another and sobbed.
Eventually, Loki found his voice again, trembling and stammering and lead-tongued with the force of all the many emotions that had been wrenched from him in the last long while. Thor actually smiled when the first thing his brother did on recovering his wits was beat a fist against his shoulder.
"Idiot. Fool. You had a kingdom, you had friends, you had Jane…"
"…and I have a brother," Thor finished, cutting him off firmly. He shook his head in defiance of the very idea of what Loki was implying he should have done. That leaving Loki to the final torment of that hideous Other was anything Thor could have ever considered doing. "I have you. And I could not let you fall again. I could not let you go alone when I could follow this time."
Thor tried to breathe. Tried to steady himself, tried to recover his wits. Because for all that he was so, so tired, their road was not over yet. He felt perfectly confident that if there had ever been a chance for Jane to open a pathway back to Earth for them using the Other's portal, they had long since missed it. Wherever they were, they were alone in getting back home.
"I can still feel the World Tree," Thor said. Start with the small positives and work their way up – that seemed to be the best thing for it. "If we can only reach one of the other Nine Realms, we can go home. Heimdall can send down the Bifrost, or we might find our way right back to Asgard."
And here he faltered, remembering that this had all started because they had been barred from returning to Asgard. Had that changed? Had he and Loki done what needed to be done to ensure that they would both be allowed to return home?
Thor shook his head, chasing the thought away. It didn't matter. One thing most definitely had not changed, and that was his resolution to stay with Loki no matter what his home or his friends might have decided. Loki had proved himself worthy of that much and more.
He gave his brother a gentle shake, trying to draw Loki a little further out of his stupor. "You can travel between realms without the Bifrost, can you not?"
"You make it sound so simple." Loki sounded as exhausted and drained as Thor felt, but he was speaking, responding, aware, and Thor's spirits lifted a little further. "It's not a matter of just…waving my hand and wishing, Thor. The hidden pathways exist on their own. With more power, I might be able to open up temporary passage, but there would be no way to guide us, no way to be certain where we'd end up, what might be waiting for us on the other side."
"We have time. We will find our way home eventually, Loki. All we have to do is keep moving forward."
"We could fall into a lava pit on Muspelheim. Or worse."
"Or we could wither and rot to bones and dust sitting here doing nothing."
Even Thor was a little surprised at how cheerful he sounded. It was true, though, that in trying to lay out their situation, he felt better. In doing so, he realized that they had a way forward. It was an uncertain, dangerous way and there was no telling how long it would take, what would be waiting to stop them. It was still a chance, however. A hope.
That had always been enough for him, especially if Loki was here to face it with him.
"And if you are in need of power, Loki, I have it to spare. Especially for this."
Loki let out a huff that took Thor a second to recognize as a laugh, and he smiled to hear it. "You really are a fool, he murmured, his grip tightening for just a moment around Thor.
"Still, always, and forever," Thor agreed cheerfully. But he knew now that his brother shared his resolve. "Loki…you fought well today. Any ten of father's warriors could not have shown half the valiance you displayed. Whatever happens…I won't forget that. When we make it home, I will make sure Mother and Father don't either. I will tell them what you've done here today."
Loki looked up at him and smiled, the expression teasing. "Well, Thor," he said, and his voice had taken on the same manic note of cheerfulness that Thor's had. "After seeing what a splendid job your mortal friends were doing in putting up a fight, I could hardly let them show me up. That would have just been embarrassing."
Thor laughed, and then Loki laughed, and it wasn't necessarily because what he'd just said was funny. No, it was just because they were here, together, alive, determined, and the teasing was a reminder that whatever hells they'd suffered hadn't broken them. More than that, there was only so far the tension could stretch before it snapped like a twig. The dead world almost seemed to come a little more alive with the sound. The sky seemed a little less empty, the air tasted sweeter.
In the end, after both laughter and tears had faded, Loki and Thor stretched out on the ground together. They laid down, back to back, confident enough in the presence of the other to surrender to sleep at long last. It claimed them and held them and didn't let them go for a very long time.
She'd tried her best. When Fitz and Simmons had arrived on the scene with the rest of Coulson's team, they'd tried with her. Skye, whose knowledge seemed more technical than scientific, had done what she could to help them find a solution.
But in the end, just as she had years ago on a flat, dusty, silent stretch of desert in New Mexico, Jane conceded defeat. Coulson had even called in to get them thirty seconds of the entire power grid to work with, but without Thor or Loki's knowledge of how to activate the damn thing, it had all been for nothing. Even SHIELD's understanding of Asgardian technology was just too new to fill in the gaps.
And that was even if there was still a trail to follow. Jane hadn't really been bothering to keep track of time, but had the dim sense that it had been hours. Whatever path Thor had been able to find to go haring after Loki had probably long since faded.
She let her hands fall away from the wires she'd been adjusting, the pieces she'd been trying to put back together and fix. The motion, slight as it was, served as a silent signal. Fitz and Simmons looked up from whatever reports they were receiving from their little flying drones, Skye looked up from the files she was busily scanning on screen.
One look at her face apparently told her everything they needed to know. The three agents exchanged a look, and Jane could tell that a lot passed unsaid between them even if she didn't quite know what. It ended with Skye getting to her feet and coming over to wrap an arm around Jane's shoulder, rubbing soothingly.
It was absolutely pathetic to be getting comfort from, of all things, a SHIELD agent. Jane was long past caring. She leaned her head against Skye's shoulder and let herself be comforted. Especially since it seemed to be that or breaking down in tears. Swallowing past the lump in her throat was leaving it hard to breathe.
She was strong and of course she hadn't had as hard a day as some of the other people here but she was so tired and she'd lost her boyfriend again and damn it. Damn it all.
"How about we give you a ride back?" the younger girl asked.
"Your van is still back at the plane!" Simmons added, obviously trying for bright. "May and Coulson even put new tires on!"
"I won't have to stay for questioning?" Jane asked, feeling her mouth twist in a wry smile. "Or 'helping you with your inquiries'?"
"Honestly? I think we're going to have more witnesses than we know what to do with for a while." Skye rolled her eyes in exasperation that Jane couldn't quite tell if it was genuine or not. "We'll be fine. Come on."
Surrounding her like an honor guard, the three agents led Jane outside into the late night. And, indeed, the streets were still a study in barely controlled chaos, as a couple dozen panicking people who could not possibly have lived through what they'd just spent weeks living through were shuffled between two SHIELD teams for processing.
"Coulson!" Skye called, waving, and Coulson looked up from where he was deep in conversation with Clint Barton. Clint offered Jane a nod, one professional and survivor to another, but said nothing. Jane returned it, no longer trusting herself to say anything.
"We were going to take Jane back to the bus. Send her on her way." Skye shrugged, looking to Coulson for approval. "We can swing by to get you guys later, but you look pretty busy. We figured having one less person to keep track of might be a good thing."
"That's fine. HQ's been informed."
Coulson then looked over Skye's shoulder to Jane. Jane looked back at him, remembering a small town in New Mexico that had never been re-settled. Remembering that he'd been there at the start, when everything had changed.
For all that he'd tried to stop it, she still felt a strange kinship with him, there and then. If the way Coulson looked back at her was any indication, he felt the same. The world was changing, more and more by the year, and the fact that they understood the how's and why's didn't always make it easier to stay afloat.
"Doctor Foster," he said, bowing his head just a bit. "My condolences."
He sounded like he meant them, and so Jane found that she could manage a small smile in turn. "Thanks," she said. "But if you confiscate Erik, I'm going to come back and kick your ass all over again."
"And none of us want that." He smiled that thin, inscrutable little smile that was far more familiar to her than the man he'd become. "We're just getting everyone checked over, make sure there's no damage, and we'll give you a call to come and get him. SHIELD's honor. We have a spare room on the Bus if you need it."
She did need it. And even now, after everything, Jane had no intention of going anywhere until Erik was sitting in the passenger's seat with her. She'd come too far for that.
They did give him back, though, after a debriefing, a couple of days of study, and rudimentary medical care to tend to exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition. So that was all right, then. Jane hugged him and could hardly stand to let go again, even if only to get him bundled into the van and on the way home.
At the least, taking care of Erik and helping him get settled back into something approaching a normal life helped her keep her mind off her own problems. After all, there were other matters to take care of – further medical care, and therapy that she fought with him tooth and nail to get him into and made absolutely sure he kept up with no matter how much she had to nag. On top of all of that, she had her own work to return to. Research, reports, lessons to attend and teach, a few more conferences. Weeks went by that she barely noticed at all. Hard work and rigid focus kept her mind from wandering too long over what she'd lost and might never get back.
Then one day she came back to her apartment to find Sif waiting there.
What should have been a deeply awkward meeting was mitigated with good news brought from Asgard. Heimdall could see them, Sif said. They were alive, and they were trying to find their way home. Although they'd had a few false starts along the way, they were heading in the right direction. As soon as they reached a world that the Bifrost could access, they would be brought home.
Jane demanded, on Thor's and Loki's behalf, to know why they hadn't been brought home sooner, before circumstances could have led to them being taken away at all. The answer surprised her, and she made a note to tell it to Thor later when, when, she got the chance.
She'd never doubted that she would, of course. Or at least, she'd desperately tried not to. Thor might be a while in getting to it, but so far, he'd always been as good as his word. It was the rest of creation she didn't trust, in that regard.
According to Sif, they had never barred Loki or Thor from returning home. That was because Heimdall had lost sight of Loki shortly after their confrontation with Coulson's SHIELD team. Thor, he could still see well enough, but even after bringing news of the situation to Odin and Frigga, all had agreed that to take Thor home without Loki would be an exercise in futility. He would only have begged, bartered, demanded, and threatened to be sent back again to retrieve his brother.
The Other's influence and dark magic at work, no doubt.
Jane, having seen this dogged, steadfast determination in Thor for herself, couldn't deny that they'd been right. She might have wished the situation hadn't come to this, but with the players involved being who they were, perhaps there'd been no other way it could go.
Sif's news didn't change anything. Not really. Jane was grateful for getting it anyway, though, and even if Sif declined to stay and talk any longer than necessary, Jane walked her back up to the rooftop gardens for Heimdall to bear here safely back home. She saw more than a little of herself in the other woman, at the least some of the vibrating tension that she knew firsthand came from waiting and being able to do nothing else. She did what she could to try and cheer Sif up.
Maybe she succeeded, maybe she didn't, but Sif still gave her a nod of understanding – one fighter to another – before she was whisked away.