A/N: All of you are beyond amazing! I am happily drowning in love and feels from all your awesome reviews! You'll notice that the structure of this chapter is a little different from the others. It's intentional. Bonus points to those that figure out why. Also, I'm an accountant, which means anything having to do with science-y stuff is a product of research and is all way over my head. So if you're a physics expert, feel free to gloss over any mistakes I might have made.

As always, thank you to my fabulous beta Hr'awkryn!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything having to do with Marvel Comics or any of its creations. I can only appreciate the characters they've given us to work with.

Chapter Thirteen

"She yearns to learn how his tide is turned, to understand each grain of sand he knows, to move in rhythm with his ebb and flow."

1995: Norway

"What are you doing?"

"Come now, Jane, I would think it fairly obvious."

"You're distracting me."

"That would be the general point."

"Well, could you stop?"

"No."

Jane tried her best to focus on the textbook laid out on the coffee table instead of the body that had slid into the empty space between her back and the couch. It wasn't easy, though. Heat seemed to radiate in the minimal space between them, a direct result of the hands that were steadily kneading their way down her sides and the mouth that had affixed itself to the juncture where her neck met her shoulder.

Despite her resolve, she shivered when Loki sucked particularly hard, barely managing to hide the reaction in the motion of her pulling away. "I have an exam in a couple days and an unreal amount of studying to do before then to prepare, so if you don't mind…" She slapped away the hands that had begun to slink between her thighs.

"Actually, I do mind."

But then, Jane already knew that.

The lips that couldn't quite reach her neck anymore brushed down the length of her spine, and not to be deterred, his fingers settled back at her waist for only a moment before moving once again, tracing meandering paths across her abdomen. Their continued pattern was tolerable, but when he began to dip a little lower with each rotation, the words on the page started to blur and her hips shifted of their own accord.

She withstood the teasing for as long as possible, but in the end, she was only human. So when Loki's fingers brushed a little too close – but not nearly close enough – she huffed in mock exasperation, slammed the textbook closed, and twisted, knees pushing against his inner thigh.

"I will never understand how you do it."

Loki was all smirk and bravado and pure, unadulterated confidence as he tugged her impossibly closer to breathe into her ear. "Do what?"

"Always get your way." A soft exhale forced its way out when his fingers dipped between her legs. "I mean, it doesn't always happen, but still… most of the time you just assume you can get away with anything and start doing whatever you want without asking. You believe you're going to succeed, and you do." Exam completely forgotten, she shook her head and buried it in his chest. "It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy."

As his thumb moved in lazy circles, the sigh dissolved into a groan and her hands fisted in his surcoat. "One you seem to be enjoying."

"Stroking your own ego is not attractive, Loki."

"Perhaps not." Then his lips curled around an even wider smirk against her shoulder. "But if you'd prefer, there are other things you could stroke, such as—"

Jane's head snapped up so quickly she almost knocked into his. "Don't even think about finishing that sentence."

"It was just a suggestion."

All signs of mischief and manipulation had been wiped clean in favor of an innocence that appeared to be so genuine it was frightening, and Jane was absolutely sure that level of skill was exactly how he got away with all his tricks and had earned his title. However, spending countless centuries in the company of the God of Mischief had given her plenty of ideas of her own and a playful streak to match it.

"Just a suggestion…" She schooled her features into a carefully unassuming expression that was an almost perfect mirror of Loki's. "Well, if we're trading suggestions, maybe I can offer something comparable?"

They both knew that, no matter how hard she tried, she'd never be able to match him when it came to mischief… but every once in a while, she was able to take him by surprise. So she couldn't help but feel smug at the way Loki's breath hitched as she deftly unclasped his pants and slid onto the floor between his legs.

"Who was he?"

Around a brow furrowed in concentration and a mind preoccupied by the game at hand, Jane absentmindedly responded as her knight moved, taking the spot of Loki's remaining bishop. "Who was who?"

"The boy." Without so much as a second's pause, Loki nudged his rook two spaces forward. "The one here the other night."

She was so absorbed in trying to figure out what moves he had planned that it took a moment for understanding to filter through. When it did, she blinked and looked up. "Øyvind?"

"His name is of little importance. I'm more interested in who he is to you." Time dragged out into minutes, and realizing her focus was no longer on the game, he met her eyes. "It's your move, Jane."

After introducing Loki to chess one stormy night, it had become a regular pastime of theirs during his visits. Initially, she believed it was the tactics of the game that had attracted him to it. Now she thought it had more to do with the fact he liked to toy with her before delivering the final kill. He was a strategist to the core.

Normally, she would be intent on the game, immune to distractions of any kind in a bid to win – her victories were few and far in between; he was virtually impossible to beat – but there was something in his voice that gave her pause.

"I knew that was you." Jane leaned back in the chair, abandoning the game for a moment. "It was cold enough to where I thought it might have just been a chill, but really it was you sneaking into my flat." Arms crossed, she arched an eyebrow imperiously. "I thought we were past you lurking around unseen."

"And I thought we were past you believing I submitted to a human's whims."

"Fair enough…" Having learned early on to pick and choose her battles when it came to Loki, she let the comment go. Then she held out her hands and sighed dramatically. "But you were making such progress. You were doing so well."

Biting her lip to stifle her grin, Jane ignored Loki's deadpan expression and stretched forward just enough to move her queen across the board to take one of his pawns. Setting the piece aside, her eyes flitted over the remaining chessmen as she tried to read his strategy. There were several options. He could either try to corner her between his rook and his knight, use his knight and a pawn to force her directly into the rook's path, or…

"Who was the boy, Jane?"

Conversation interrupted for the second time in the same game, she frowned. "I already told you, his name is Øyvind." But as she brought a glass of wine to her mouth, she could still see the determination laced through Loki's features and knew he wouldn't let go of the subject. So after taking a sip, she fixed him with a perceptive gaze, carefully fingering the delicate stem of the glass. "Why do you want to know so badly?"

With the tables turned, though, and the focus shifted onto him, Loki's eyes flicked down to the board. "I don't." He moved his knight closer to her king, taking away one of her pawns. "Your move."

"Nice try, Loki."

Slowly, she rotated the glass in her hand as she continued to regard him. An abundance of time and experience had made Loki a master of deception, the God of both Mischief and Lies, but the same things had granted Jane the ability to read between the lines to the things he tried to keep hidden. On the surface, there was only the smooth face of indifference and possibly a hint of annoyance for their game being disrupted, but underneath… beneath the cool façade was something that made her own confidence falter and stumble if only because it was so unexpected.

"Don't tell me you're…" She sat up a little straighter, leaned forward almost imperceptibly. "Are you jealous?"

"Of a mortal boy?" Loki snorted a dismissive laugh. "Hardly." But there was an edge to the wry quirk of his lips that wasn't quite right, was a little too far from typical.

"You are." The words were a borderline whisper, almost in awe that the cause of his questions could be something so… human. "You're jealous that I spent so much time with him the other night."

That hard edge at the corners of his mouth extended to his eyes, darkening the normally cool grey-green to a steel-colored storm. "How much time you spend with your mortal lover is inconsequential when it will only—"

"Is that what you think he is? My lover?" It was difficult to tell if the frown that stole across his face was because she'd interrupted or because she was correct. "Øyvind and I are just working on a group project for one of my classes. We're not sleeping together."

"Not yet." Dark eyes bored into hers before briefly roaming across her features. "He is quite taken with you, Jane… and I am not in the habit of sharing things that are mine."

The wine glass completed three more revolutions in her hand before she set it down. On the table, her fingers remained around the stem, one nail tapping lightly against the crystal as her thumb followed a back and forth track around its base, but her other hand came up to cup her chin when she leaned on the table.

"You don't have to be worried, you know. This might be a strange thing we have going on, but it's worked well so far." Jane held his gaze, despite its intensity. Or maybe it was because of its intensity, because she knew that even gods needed reassurance from time to time. "I'm not unhappy."

The clock on the wall ticked away the time as Loki observed her. His eyes flicked between hers, but then he blinked, reached out to move a piece, and sat back in the chair with a small grin.

"Checkmate."

And as she knocked over her king in surrender, she pretended not to know that Loki's grin was about more than the game he'd just won.

Jane stirred the pot of soup, attention drifting from the simmering concoction to the God of Mischief seated on the other side of the island more often than not. Perched on the barstool, he was poring over some book he'd plucked from her bookshelf, had been for the past ten or so minutes. Whatever it was that had captured his interest, though, she didn't know. Her mind was too focused on a different book.

"So I was reading the Prose Edda again the other day…" The long fingers that had been steadily flipping through the pages stilled as Loki's body visibly tensed. "Don't get all weird when you don't even know what I'm going to say. I promised I wouldn't bring up those stories anymore."

It took only one instance in addition to their initial discussion of the stories involving Loki's supposed children back in nineteenth century England for Jane to be convinced not to bring up the subject anymore. Being unexpectedly taken through space to the snow-covered peak of Mont Blanc wearing nothing but her pajamas wasn't something she was keen on experiencing again.

"I was just wondering if there was anyone named Heimdall in Asgard."

Immediately, the tension eased from his shoulders, but a wary sort of cautiousness remained as he turned another page. "There is."

"And is it true that he can see everything that's happening in all the realms?"

"It is."

"Does he know about us, then?" Jane peeked at him from beneath her lashes. "Is he aware of everything that's happened between us?"

For one long moment, she stared at his downcast eyes. For another, she stared at the page still held upright between his fingers. And she'd never really considered herself a patient person, but when his gaze lifted to hers, she turned off the stove and waited for him to answer. It was a stalemate, one of their countless impasses. In the end, though, whether centuries of life had granted her more patience or just made Loki more apt to giving in, she had to fight a small smile when he responded.

"Heimdall is the watcher of all the realms, the sentry of the Realm Eternal, an eternal guard that stands at the edge of the Bi-Frost where the Great Sea pours over the edge of the land. There, he stares out into the Void and sees all. He is constantly monitoring all that transpires and reporting items of interest to the All-Father." Loki closed the book without breaking their gaze. "Everything, that is, except you."

It was the answer to a question that had been on her mind since she'd first read about the Gatekeeper in the Poetic Edda, but as was the norm with any of Loki's answers, they only led to more questions, a perpetual circle to which she should've been accustomed to by now.

"What do you mean?" Leaning forward, Jane rested her elbows on the countertop, clasping her hands out in front of her, regarding him carefully through narrowed eyes. "If Heimdall can see everything that's happening, what stops him from seeing me?" But then she paused, and the breath caught in her throat even before the corners of his mouth twitched in a half-smirk. "You stop him." Almost in wonder, she murmured the question that wasn't really a question. "How?"

"Magic."

And the look he leveled her with was so casual, so blasé, so do you even have to ask? that Jane shook her head in amazement.

She knew Loki was powerful. There had never been any doubt about that. If all the times she'd witnessed his magic wasn't proof enough, the ease with which he'd dispatched the fire giants was. What she didn't know was that his capacity for magic extended to the point that he could deceive the watcher of the realms for over nine hundred years.

"So he doesn't know about me." Loki's chin dipped in a silent affirmation of the statement. "Does he know you've been frequenting Midgard all these years?"

"No."

She paused, trying to figure out how best to continue. Ask the right question and she'd receive an answer. Ask the wrong one and the conversation would come to an end. But even though rationality insisted not to wander too far into territory she knew might cause him to shut down, she couldn't help but pursue the thoughts that constantly burned at the back of her mind.

"Does he know you can travel between the realms without the Bi-Frost?"

"No."

"Does he know you gave away one of Iðunn's apples?"

"No."

"Did he even know you had one of the apples?"

"No."

"Does he know the fire giants have been coming to this realm?"

"No."

"Does he know they can move between the realms without the Bi-Frost?"

"No."

Jane ground out a frustrated growl. "Damn it, does he know anything?" And in the split-second before she lowered her head onto her forearms, she saw Loki's now full-blown smirk dissolve into a laugh.

Any other time, she would've enjoyed hearing him laugh. In the past, it had often been tainted with the occasionally cruel edge to his disposition, but now it was one of those things she felt didn't happen very much and wished would happen more. So long as it was genuine, it was pleasant and habitually forced a smile from her.

But right then she neither smiled nor appreciated his laughter.

Not when it came at her expense.

"Debatable." Loki's laugh tapered off to a chuckle. "The Gatekeeper is not quite as ignorant as I make out, though. He knows the fire giants search for me."

Trying not to let the instinctive rush of excitement make her too optimistic, Jane spoke into the triangular space between her arms and the countertop, the words muffled in the narrow area. "Does he know why they're looking for you?"

"No."

"Figures…" She bit back her sigh, folded her arms over each other, and lifted her head enough to rest her chin on them. It was staggering to think that Loki could keep so many things hidden from the all-seeing Heimdall. "Can you at least tell me why?"

The movement of Loki's brow rising caught her eye. "Why I conceal you from his view?"

Jane nodded as best she could with her awkward position. "But not just me. The apple, all of our interactions, the fact that you come to this realm, the mess with the fire giants…"

The still-bubbling soup needed to be stirred and the book Loki had been reading needed to be put away, but aside from Jane shifting her weight from one foot to the other, neither of them moved. They remained where they were, staring at each other impassively, until Loki's chin dipped slightly.

"There will always be things I cannot tell you, Jane… no matter how many times you ask or how badly you wish to know."

It was the response she expected, even if she'd held out a tiny sliver of hope for something different. She was an immortal human, an unchanging figure in a world full of change. Surrounding her were things beyond her control and understanding, and their mystery was an endless dance in which she was caught.

With a sigh, Jane straightened off the counter and picked up the spoon to stir the soup. However, avoiding Loki's eyes didn't prevent her from noticing the pensive look on his face as he stood.

"What do you think?"

"I think you hide me because you want to keep me all to yourself." There was no doubt it was far more complicated than that, but it sounded good, if nothing else. "I think you hide everything else because you like to be the one holding all the cards." That supposition probably landed much closer to the truth. "And I don't think I've ever met someone so complicated as you."

Water edged higher and higher on the beach until it finally encased Jane's feet in what felt like ice. After spending a few years roaming the states that bordered the United States' Gulf of Mexico and enjoying their moderate temperatures, the cold of the Baltic Sea was a shock. Long ago, she would've jumped in and swam in spite of its frigidity. Now she was doing well to let it lap at her feet for a few minutes before drying off and slipping them back into her wool socks and boots.

She slowly stepped out of the surf, and farther up the bank, away from the incoming tide, she dropped to the ground to bury her toes in the sand.

When she'd arrived, a handful of people had dotted the beach. Their actions, however, were an inverse correlation to the weather. As it grew more ominous – sky darkening, wind picking up, lightning flashing in the distance – they grew more scant. One gentleman had remained longer than the rest, but a cursory glance revealed him to be gone as well.

Now there was nothing but Jane, the smooth expanse of the beach, the clouds that hung dark and heavy overhead with the promise of rain, and the weight of the past.

Without warning, her nose tingled and her vision blurred. Memories that walked the edge of painful and pleasant had always come up at the strangest times, but they seemed to be plaguing her even more as of late. Normally, she could handle them – their bittersweet sting wasn't quite as harsh as it had once been – but there was something about the icy sea, the smooth beach, the rugged land that unraveled the threads of control she'd built up over the years.

It was easier to blame the ache in her chest on the ever-changing social and political issues of the world, the rise and fall of power, the constant struggle between nations that had led her to seek out a place that was more isolated, but to do so, to cast all blame on whatever wild thought had convinced her to move back to Norway, would be a lie. Because the hard truth of it was that she'd wanted to return.

After so long, she'd believed herself to be ready to face the past.

But she wasn't any more ready now than when she'd woken on the Christians' ship.

The open field behind her that had once contained an entire village of Vikings was empty. No buildings or dirt paths; no children practicing with short swords as they dreamed of the days when they'd be old enough to sail to other lands; no wives with their eyes on the horizon, waiting for the ships that carried their husbands back to them to appear. No brown-haired, bright-eyed, freckle-faced little girl playing and laughing with her parents.

Jane felt the telltale shift in the air before she felt the shift in the sand and, from the corner of her eye, saw the dark line of Loki's clothing fold in on itself as he sat beside her. For a long time they said nothing, just sat there in a companionable silence while they listened to the waves and watched the clouds roil overhead. It wasn't until the moisture in her eyes built up enough for a single tear to slide down her cheek that he breached the silence.

"You smell like salt."

It was only the briny air clinging to her skin that made her smell that way, but it was easy to imagine it was the salt crusted in her eyelashes, the remnants left in the wet track down her cheek, that were the cause.

"If you don't mind, I'd rather be alone right now."

Undeterred, Loki shifted to rest his arms on his bent legs, the motion bringing them so close their legs and shoulders were touching. "Who are you in this place?"

Jane issued a dispassionate sigh very nearly hidden in the southern wind. Throughout most of their time spent together, it had been obvious that Loki would sooner disappear than delve too deeply into her personal life. Human emotions were messy. That was what he'd once told her. Sometimes his aloofness bothered her, but most of the time, she was indifferent on the matter.

How ironic that the one time she actually wanted him to do what he'd always done so well was the one time he didn't.

"I'm a student attending the University of Tromsø, and I'm renting a flat for an exorbitant amount of money each month because my parents are wealthy enough to help support me. They're not around, though. They've left trusted people in charge of the corporation that helped make them so rich and have decided to go on a permanent staycation to New Zealand."

"Quite an elaborate ruse for someone who usually remains discreet." He continued without waiting for her to comment. "And your name?"

"Signe."

Beside her, Loki repeated it in a murmur, tested the weight of a name he'd known was hers but had never called her. Respect was one thing she'd never been able to hold against him. He'd always recognized her need to keep the past separate. They might have brought it up in a passing reference, but neither of them had ever dwelled on the topic. It was one of their unspoken agreements.

A part of her had died with the rest of her people, had been buried in the desolate and wasted ruins of that village. The person who had walked those paths was not the same one who walked them now. Leaving Norway was the defining moment of her life, the moment everything had changed.

Signe had been left behind.

Jane had been born.

But the line between the past and the present was fading because returning had opened a door that had been tightly shut for so long. Things were merging together. Sometimes she saw Jane in the mirror, sometimes she saw Signe… and sometimes she didn't know who she saw because she didn't know who she was.

"So the restless wanderer returns home at last." The words pulled Jane from her thoughts, and when she turned to Loki, she found him to be already staring down at her. "You've come full circle."

"I suppose so." Although the thought only made her eyes blur all the more. "Did you know the first time I heard someone actually call my name, I cried?" Unable to hold his gaze, she turned back to the sea. "Broke down right there in the middle of the street and cried so hard I couldn't breathe."

It had felt right to assume her original identity, to be herself… right until she'd heard someone say it.

"Understandable."

"Not really." Her laugh sounded harsh, grating over her tongue like sandpaper. "I shouldn't still be so…"

Loki picked up the strands of the conversation when she trailed off. "It would be unnatural for you to feel nothing, Jane. You are only human."

Struggling to hold back the tears, to hold on to the shattered fragments of her self-control, she sucked in deep breaths and tried to calm the rush of blood in her ears, the frantic pace of her heart. But then Loki was slipping an arm around her shoulders. He pulled her against his side, and in the warmth of his embrace, she couldn't fight it anymore, didn't want to fight it, didn't even want to try.

"After all this time, I didn't think it would hurt this much, but it does. God, it does. It hurts so much, and I can't take it. I can't take it. I feel like my heart's being ripped from my chest, but it's not. My heart is still there, and I almost wish it wasn't because having it torn out would probably hurt less."

As if to match her despondency, the growing storm reached its breaking point right as Jane reached hers, and it was with a crack of thunder that the skies emptied themselves on top of the pair. The rain soothed the fire of her pain, but the blaze had already done its work, burned up all her words and left her hollow and empty, a shell, a husk.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm in limbo." Jane blinked away the raindrops collecting on her eyelashes, head lowered and pressed to Loki's chest as she all but curled into him. "Like I'm not quite dead, but I'm not sure how to live."

Loki didn't respond, just sat there while the hand not wrapped around her shoulders carded gently through her hair. And, really, she wasn't sure if she wanted him to say anything because sometimes silence, a comforting embrace, and the presence of the one person who knew her better than anyone in all the realms were the things she needed most.

"Sometimes I think it would be more conducive to my sanity to have a relationship with someone normal."

Crossing her arms over the binder she held, Jane leaned back against the table, eyeing Loki carefully as he wended her way. "As in your Øyvind?"

"Perhaps." Her shoulders rose and fell in a nonchalant shrug. "It would certainly make him happy."

Loki had been right when he'd said Øyvind was taken with her. The number of times he'd asked her to dinner or to the movies or if she just wanted to hang out at his place spanned well into the double digits. His persistence was admirable. And somewhat flattering.

"I doubt any mortal lover you adopt would hold your interest for long."

"Oh?" When he stopped with no more than a few inches separating them, she was forced to crane her head to hold his gaze. She did so boldly, though, jaw set and eyes sharp. "And why's that?"

For a moment, he seemed content to observe her, attention roaming her face. Then slowly, deliberately, with smooth motions that brought to mind a predator stalking its prey, he placed both hands on the tabletop, arms on either side of her body, trapping her in place, and as he leaned in, Jane leaned away to maintain what little distance there was between them. Doing so was a necessity. If she didn't, she ran the risk of forgetting to play the game of power they'd started and simply crushing her lips to his instead.

It was a delicate balance, a tightrope she'd never been very skilled at walking.

Her back arched over the edge of the table, crossed arms pressing to his chest while the binder pressed to hers. They remained at their impasse for a while, long enough for the determination laced through her features to waver, but it wasn't until her legs began to tremble that his hands left the tabletop, slipped beneath her thighs to lift her onto the surface. And once she was seated, he stepped forward to occupy the space between her legs.

"I've heard the sounds you make when I touch you, Jane."

Loki's hands slid along the outside of her thighs, curled around her hips before flattening over her lower back. With the slightest pressure, he pulled her to the edge of the table, just close enough to where he could press himself firmly against her.

"I've seen the expression on your face when you're in the throes of passion."

Lost in the sea of his eyes, Jane allowed the binder to be plucked from her hands and tossed haphazardly to the floor. She didn't know how he always managed to captivate her so thoroughly. Then again, the feelings he evoked weren't entirely unwelcome.

"You think another man could make you feel that way?" His hands dragged up her sides, taking her shirt with them. "Could leave you gasping?" The material was like water as it ghosted over her arms that lifted automatically. "Could make you burn the way I do?"

Like the binder, her shirt was cast aside. It was impossible to care about either of them, though, not when Loki splayed his fingers around her waist and kissed a heated path from her shoulder to her neck, from her neck to her ear, from her ear to her lips.

"You think you make me burn?" Denial, self-control, and resolve were all contradicted by the breathy quality of her voice.

Loki grinned against her mouth. "I do."

"And what gives you that idea?"

"Because I know I'm not the only one to feel it." He pulled back then, just enough to meet her gaze. The grin still curled his lips, but when he pressed his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, it faltered, lowered, shifted to one that was a little less teasing and a little more resigned, wanting. "I burn for you, Jane."

The sky overhead was still dark, but the far horizon was painted with the beginnings of sunrise. Reds, oranges, pinks, and yellows all danced together, bleeding from one color to the next, ever-expanding to chase away the lingering pinpricks of stars and the waning moon that dangled in the opposite corner of the sky.

Lounging on an old sleeping bag, Jane crossed her arms beneath her head and watched the slow progression. Around her, the dew on the grass turned to ice, but buried beneath two wool blankets, she didn't feel the bite of Norway's autumn mornings. What she did feel, though, was the familiar whisper of magic across her skin.

"It's not very often I find you awake this early."

Her head fell to the side so she could watch Loki step through space. "Says the one who keeps me in bed all day whenever he spends the night." The jab was made null by the wide grin on her face.

In the distance, the edge of the sun crept over the skyline, a brilliant and bloody red. The light gradually stole over the land, and Jane felt the first real traces of warmth chase away the chill of daybreak when it touched her face. With a wonder that hadn't been lost in almost one thousand years, she watched the sky brighten under the myriad of hues.

"It's amazing, really, how something so beautiful can be the result of something so small… the right combination of molecules and small particles and wavelengths." She spared a glance for the God of Mischief now lying beside her. "You used to say there was nothing in this realm that could ever compare to the Realm Eternal."

"I did."

"But here you are watching the sunrise with me."

"So it would seem."

"Be careful, Loki…" His attention was still on the sky, but he didn't need to see her expression. The teasing quality was too obvious to be mistaken. "Spend too much time admiring sunrises and sunsets with me and I'll start to think you prefer Midgard to Asgard."

"That is something that will never come to pass." Almost languidly, Loki rolled onto his side to stare down at her. He studied her for a little while before the backs of his fingers began to trace the outline of her face. "But Midgard is not without its merits."

The grin from earlier was back, hovering just on the edge of a playful smirk. "Are you talking about me?"

Loki's fingers reached her chin, settled there, held gently as he leaned down to capture her lips in a soft kiss. His thumb stroked a repeated path across her jawbone, continuing even after he'd pulled away to murmur quietly.

"Don't be silly, Jane."

"It's looped around like this, u-shaped and open on this side…"

Snagging a piece of paper, Jane drew a rough outline of the model. Science was her forte, not sketching or artistry, but the diagram was basic enough even for her. When finished, she leaned back against the chair to admire her work even as Loki pulled the drawing across the table to inspect it. He turned it first one way and then the other before glancing up.

"That doesn't make any sense."

She frowned at the quick dismissal. "Yes, it does."

"No…" He emphasized the word as he pushed the paper back towards her. "It doesn't."

Still frowning, she reached for another blank piece of paper from the stack to her right. The fact that it remained there was a surprise considering their activities on the surface of the table a few minutes ago. All the other papers and books that had been there now littered the floor, having been swept aside by Loki's arm in one smooth motion as he'd lowered Jane onto the table and taken her.

"The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right?"

"Correct."

"Wrong." Being able to say Loki was wrong felt even better when he walked right into it. "I mean, you could just go the straight route…" She scribbled an A and a B on opposite ends of the paper and a line between them. "Or you could fold the paper so the two points meet. Instead of using propulsion to get to point B, you manipulate space-time to bring the destination closer to you."

Slowly, Loki brought an elbow to the table, resting his chin on his thumb and draping his fingers across his lips. There was an intense focus in his eyes as he looked between the folded piece of paper between them and the model from before.

"They call it folded space-time."

His attention continued to flick back and forth for a moment before lifting to meet her gaze. "And humans believe they can discover a way to control space-time?"

"Why couldn't we?" With a shrug, Jane brought both legs up to cross them beneath her on the chair. "Do you remember that time you looked through my telescope?" Loki's blank expression did nothing to either confirm or deny her question. "I told you that some of the stars you could see were actually behind the sun and the only reason they were visible was because the sun's mass and gravity bent space enough for light waves to do likewise?"

When she paused to force a response, Loki mumbled from between his fingers. "I remember."

"Okay, so if gravity can bend space, it means the principle is sound." Jane leaned forward to repeatedly unfold and refold the paper. "We just need to figure out a way to generate and manipulate a sufficient amount of gravity, enough that we could bend space-time and fold it over on itself."

Two and a quarter centuries of studies, and it all boiled down to that. She understood the concept, had travelled through space often enough with Loki to comprehend the general workings of it. What she lacked was the ability to put the theory into motion, a source of energy.

It was the last piece of the puzzle.

It was the last thing she needed.

Where Jane's focus lingered on the two sheets of paper, Loki's was fixed on her face, keenly regarding her. She didn't need to look up to feel it. "Midgardian science has progressed throughout the years, I'll admit… but manipulating space? Folding it?" He shook his head, dismissing the idea. "It's ridiculous, Jane."

"I know it can be hard to imagine, but it makes sense." She reached for the initial drawing and the pen, darkened two circles on either side of the u-shaped model. "Say each of these circles is the entrance to a realm." Then she drew a tube between them. "After you fold space-time, an Einstein-Rosen bridge would connect the gap between them and allow passage."

"Jane…"

"It's what you do when you move through space. I know you say you're opening seams but the area between one place and another is space-time and anytime you're in that space, you've created an Einstein-Rosen bridge, which means that every time you step from place to place, what you're really doing is travelling through a bridge just like this one."

"Jane."

"And I know on paper it seems like it would take a while to get from one point to the next, but it only takes a couple seconds to travel from realm to realm and if you can do it and the Bi-Frost can do it and the fire giants can do it, so can we."

"Jane."

Loki's tone was finally forceful enough to break through her thoughts, and in the wake of her rambling, all she could do was stare across the table at him, jaw somewhat slack and pen loose in her fingers. The excitement of the moment bled away, leaving her partially deflated.

It wasn't very often she got caught up in the subject like she had – that was a habit she'd broken herself of many years ago – but Loki had been the one to bring it up. He'd asked about her studies when a page of her notes had stuck to his sweat-slick forearm after they'd finished, and it was only her duty to explain them as best she could.

That was what she'd told herself, at least.

She'd slipped off the table, pulled on her underwear and an old tank top, and righted one of the overturned chairs. Then, plopping down into it, she'd starting her explanation. In the end, it didn't matter if Loki refused to agree with or believe her because she knew. Jane knew that it was only a matter of time now before the secrets of inter-realm travel revealed themselves to her.

She was so close she could almost taste it.

"Even if what you're saying is possible…" Loki's voice was significantly softer than when he'd silenced her. "The amount of power needed to fold space and open one of your bridges would be astronomical."

Despite his almost soothing tone, Jane deflated even more. "I know. We'd need the source to be extreme… like harnessing the energy of a supernova or something equally as impossible to capture."

"And that doesn't even take into account the gravitational forces of all the objects in this realm."

"What do you mean?"

Loki unfolded the second piece of paper and laid it flat on the table between them. With a flick of his fingers, numerous dots appeared across the page, the difference in each of the dots' size helping to create a three-dimensional universe on the two-dimensional plane. They were various colors also, all of them containing such detail that there was no mistaking which one was Earth versus Saturn, the sun versus Jupiter.

"If gravity is what holds all the celestial bodies in place, what would happen if you manipulated space-time?" He curled up each side to form the u-shape they'd been discussing. "By folding the paper, wouldn't you be disrupting that force and possibly throwing them out of orbit?"

Head tilted to the side in contemplation, she nibbled her lower lip. Jane had always known Loki to be intelligent, but at what point he became well-versed enough in her studies to carry on a discussion about it, much less one that left her wondering how to respond, she couldn't say. Then the light bulb in her mind flared.

"Well, if space can be bent, maybe it's elastic." The idea took hold, and she ran with it. "And if that were true, whenever you control space-time, it would only be a local anomaly. Only the part you were manipulating would shift. There wouldn't be any effect on the rest of the universe."

"Or it might break."

Her mouth snapped closed, and she frowned. As much as she didn't like to hear it, she couldn't deny the truth of his statement, and after rolling the words around in her mouth, she echoed his words in agreement. "Or it might break." And realizing that, in spite of their debate, she was still stuck in the same place without a concrete answer, Jane drug a hand down her face. "Damn it."

For a long moment, the world consisted only of the hand that covered her eyes. She could hear the legs of Loki's chair scrape against the floor and his quiet footsteps as he stepped around the table, but the only thing she could do was see the lines that crisscrossed her palm, fuzzy with the closeness, and smell the faint scent of Loki and sex that still clung to her skin. Not until the paper under her elbow shifted did she lower her hand.

He'd turned the model towards himself, and when her attention slid up the length of his arm, across his bare chest, and over to his face, she saw it painted with an expression she couldn't put a name to. It wasn't anger or confusion or frustration on their own. Maybe it was a combination of all three, along with a dash of candid interest. Whatever it was also created a slight furrow between his brows as he regarded the page.

"So this is what you study?"

It was a return to the original question that had started their entire discussion. "At the University of Tromsø?" His chin dipped in an almost imperceptible nod, eyes meeting hers. "Yes… among other things. I'll be able to fine-tune my studies when I transfer to the University of Oslo next term."

"And you maintain that science can find a way to do what only magic has been able to accomplish in every other realm."

"Yes." Jane looked down at the drawing and felt the familiar stir of determination. It alone was the reason she had never – could never – abandon her goal no matter how many disappointments and dead-ends she experienced. "All I need is an energy source powerful enough to handle it."

Loki hummed an indistinct sound that went unacknowledged, pushed away from the table, and disappeared into the bedroom, but Jane remained seated there, staring at the models for quite some time before joining him in bed.

She could do this.

She knew she could do this.

She could figure it out.

"I want you." The force of Loki's fingers at her hips was hard enough to bruise, but Jane just arched her back and relished the feel of those same fingers tracing a line over the lithe arc of her body. "I want to take you… right here, right now, right on this god damn table."

"Then do it."

His gaze was somewhat startled when it found hers, but then he jerked back to life. With a half-growl, half-groan, he slid her further onto the piece of furniture and settled himself on top of her. And she couldn't be sure exactly when – she was too distracted by the feeling of his mouth on her neck – but somewhere in between all of that, he also made both their clothes vanish with a hasty gesture.

Wasting no more time, Loki joined them in one smooth stroke.

The pace he set was punishing. He moved with a desperation Jane had hardly ever seen in him before, but she refused to ask him to slow, just met him thrust for thrust, nails digging into his back and exhales huffing in time with his movements.

"I'm not the only one." Loki all but panted into the hollow of her throat. "I can't be the only one."

The words combined with the distressed edge to his tone made her pause. "Loki…" But not wanting her to voice the concern that was probably clear in her eyes, he just stole her breath and her words with a kiss.

"You feel it too. I know you do." His eyes never left hers as he continued to move, and Jane knew she'd never seen anything so vibrantly green as Loki's eyes were in that moment. "Tell me you feel it." Their rhythm faltered just long enough for him to lower himself onto his elbows. "Tell me I'm not the only one."

Words echoed in Jane's head.

And she was two centuries past the point of denying it.

"You're not." The energy in the air crackled along her skin like lightning, ignited the tension in the room to something tangible, something so palpable she could slice through it with a knife, and she felt her nerves tingle with the thunder reverberating through them. "You're not the only one who burns."

"Do you believe in fate, Jane Foster?"

"I believe in chance." The words came out in the rush of her contented sigh as Loki drew vague, invisible patterns on her bare back. "And maybe a bit of luck."

He was quiet for so long Jane believed that would be the end of their brief conversation, but just when she was slipping into that timeless place between sleep and awake, his voice pulled her back. "The Norns govern everything."

There was more to the comment than he let on, despite the offhand way in which he said it. That much was obvious. What she didn't know was the intention of their discussion. "So you're saying we were destined to meet on that battlefield? That a millennium ago, the Norns decided you would appear at that exact time and place?"

"That is what both our ancestors tell us."

"Maybe so, but I find it hard to believe that, of all things, we were ordained to meet. Looking back, it seems like there was an awful lot of chance involved." Jane peered up at him from the corner of one cracked eye. "Do you believe in fate, Loki Odinson?"

"I…" Moonlight filtered through the window, the only source of light in the room. It was just enough for her to make out Loki's profile as he stared off into the darkness. "I don't know anymore."

A/N2: History facts for this chapter – the University of Tromsø is the world's northernmost university. Its seal consists of two ravens flying in opposite directions, which are meant to be Hugin and Munin, Odin's two ravens from Norse mythology. The University of Oslo, the one Jane mentioned she'd be transferring to, is the oldest and largest university in Norway and is also one of Northern Europe's most prestigious. There, people can attend the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics to receive their Master's in Cosmology or Solar Physics.

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