From the open shoji doors Jane could see into the courtyard where Strange and Wong were rallying their forces. Spells shot skyward—defensive spells, trap charms—in a chaotic swirl of multicolored metallic sparks. The atmosphere crackled with potentiality and the air grew acrid with so much restrained power. Beyond the sanctum's shields, the wide sky grew darker and darker, white clouds taking on a purplish-blue tinge of an old bruise.

A round shape loomed above them, a spinning ring so large it almost broke Jane's mind to conceive of, a ship so implausible it couldn't be real. But the sound it made as its rings rotated—groaning like a suspension bridge caught in a tornado—was too terrible to dismiss. It shuddered through Jane's bones, humming in her teeth like a grinding dental drill. Above that, faintly, she heard tremulous screams from the outside world, and had a sudden, gut-wrenching thought of all the lives she'd just walked through, soon to be changed forever by forces none of them could have anticipated.

Paralysis dripped into her veins, a sedative that clouded her mind and froze her muscles. Any thought of raising the Aether in her defense evaporated from her mind. In view of this overwhelming force, she was nothing, with no power. She might as well be an ant trying to stop a landslide from engulfing her hive.

For a moment, the world held its breath.

Then everything went straight to hell.

A figure emerged from the ships, falling straight down on top of them with all the certainty and inevitability of a nuclear bomb. Jane recoiled from the door, only Loki's hand on hers keeping her from haring away as fast as she could.

"Steady, Jane," he said, but his hand shook where it held hers, and his fingers were cold and corpse-pale, "Courage."

Her throat was too dry to respond.

"Hold!" Strange cried, sweat dripping down his brow as he threw all his magical might behind the shield his acolytes held. A fine tremor ran through his fingers as they strained to strengthen their defenses. "Hold!"

It took Thanos only a few seconds to fall. An instant before he touched the barrier, a wave of purple power flooded from his open palm and shattered it into a thousand amber-gold fragments. When he hit the ground, his boots gnawed deep into the packed ground, leaving jagged scars underfoot.

The next few moments came to Jane in bits and pieces, memories of a nightmare too frightening to watch with both eyes open. She remembered seeing bodies thrown back from Thanos' enormous fists, smashing through walls, leaving streaks of bright blood as they bounced off wood and stone, human beings transformed into dead lumps of bone and gristle before they hit the ground. She remembered Strange and Wong working together in a dance of intricate magic too rapid to track, misdirecting Thanos' attacks back onto him. She saw Wong fall and watched Strange wind back time to give his friend a chance to avoid the attack that, moments before, had ended him.

And then she felt Loki's lips on the shell of her ear, felt his warm breath as he murmured:

"Whatever happens to me, know that I love you. I always will."

By the time she turned to reply, it was too late. Loki had already stepped through the protective cocoon he'd woven for her. She could only watch, helpless, as he turned to her and smiled, bittersweet. Then he was in the courtyard, and all Thanos' attention focused on him.

For the first time, Thanos spoke.

His voice...Jane wanted him to snarl like a monster, like a vicious animal. She wanted him to be mindless and frightening because of his overwhelming physical strength. To hear an even, temperate—even pleasant—voice emerge from a figure stained with blood and dripping with viscera...Jane's knees trembled and she grasped the door jam to keep herself upright. His mind was just as dangerous, if not more so, than his body.

"Loki," he said, brushing off a flaming dart shot from Strange's hand like a bothersome mosquito. He turned swiftly and backhanded Strange across the courtyard. A teetering outbuilding fell; Wong retreated to protect his friend. Loki and Thanos were alone. "What a chase you've led me."

"Mighty Thanos," Loki bowed, his voice silky and ingratiating, "Such was never my intention. I have always acted on your behalf and in defense of your interests."

"Oh? Then abandoning your goal to conquer the Earth and bring me the Tesseract was all part of your plan?" He chuckled, the sound curdling in Jane's blood. It was the laugh of an indulgent parent, watching a baby attempt some deception it was far too feeble to attempt. Paternal. Patronizing. In absolute control.

She wanted to call out to Loki, tell him that it wasn't working, but fear held her tongue. Like the worst kind of nightmare, she was a frozen statue, with nothing to do but stand still and quiet and wait to see what would happen.

Loki tilted his head, looking up smugly, untouched by any worry. "Of course," he smirked, "Now, I have brought you two Infinity Stones instead of one. And the Tesseract awaits you on Asgard. Odin is old and weak; conquering him will be nothing to you."

"Truly you have been a devoted servant," Thanos replied, smiling. One huge hand raised, enveloped in a thick gold gauntlet studded with gems, and its sausage fingers opened. "What can I offer you in return?"

"What I have wanted from the beginning. Control of this world. I will show Odin his bastard son's true worth."

"I gave you the opportunity to control this world; you squandered it. And if I conquer Asgard, its king will die with it. You don't ask me to spare Odin?"

"Not at all," Loki waved his hand, shrugging, "Let the old fool perish with his ancient world. Asgard means nothing to me."

"Oh, Silvertongue," Thanos shook his head, advancing with heavy steps, "Your lies are as tarnished as your title. Do you think I believe any of your feeble falsehoods?"

"Falsehoods, my lord? I offer you no opposition, I offer you two Infinity Stones, and you call me a liar?"

"You are a liar," he cut off the ramping flow of Loki's indignation, "and I can see why. Girl!"

At the imperious gesture of his hand, all Jane's blood absorbed immediately into the tiny space around her heart. It beat crazily, tiny little fluttering thumps, and the rest of her was cold as death. He was looking at her, talking to her, and Loki's expression as he looked back over his shoulder was...

She couldn't look at him. She couldn't think about him. She had to do something.

On wooden legs, she toddled out to the raised walkway around the courtyard. What had been stairs was now a heap of splinters, jagged and smoking, so Jane gripped the railing with one hand and gingerly stepped over the wreckage. In the corner of her eye, she caught the frantic slash of Loki's hand that said 'stay back, get away!' but she kept walking. Halfway across the courtyard, she stopped.

That was as far as her initiative could take her.

Thanos smiled down at her. "Pretty thing," he mused, an aside to Loki, "Not your type, is she? What did she do, to make you forsake your goals? When I met you, vengeance was all you desired."

"I was a pain in his ass," she answered, voice monotone but steady. Her lips moved slowly, shaped the words laboriously. If her brain were working faster, she might have phrased it differently, but they were the first words that jumped out.

He laughed, a resonant, thunderous boom. The stones trembled underfoot. "Ah, a brave woman. No wonder," turning to Loki, he placed one massive palm on the crown of his head, thumb caressing his brow, "I understand, you know. What love can make a man do. How he will betray all he knows for it. The lengths to which he will go."

It happened too fast to be stopped. A hand closed tight around a choked-off cry; Loki was off his feet, dangling in the air, a worm on a hook. His face, bone white, flushed red and then deepened to purple, ripe as a plum. The world went silent, except for the sound of Loki's cloak flapping as his legs churned in empty air.

She watched it happen. Watched. Removed from her body. Absent.

Then she exploded. Power welled in every part of her, deep as her atoms, blooming in her blood vessels. Power from the very heart of her, firing through her neurons, not emanating from her so much as becoming from her. She and the Aether were one and the same, her will directing it to do what she desired, and in that instant, what she desired was Thanos, mashed to a pulp underfoot, threatening as a smashed raisin.

When she finally touched the heart of the Infinity Stone, she understood. Understood everything. She felt the universe's beginnings, billions of years of history and energy accumulated in an ingot the size of her thumb. It was in her, it was her, and she was infinite.

Reality warped, warm and soft in her hands. She took the laws of physics and snapped them between her fingers. Thanos wasn't holding Loki anymore—he had, in fact, never been holding Loki—and his face twisted with the effort of resisting Jane's vision of his death. His golden hand raised, violet light warring with an avalanche of crimson bearing inexorably down on him. Power against Reality. Stone against Stone.

There was no winner. There could be no winner. They would stand, locked against each other, until one of them died.

Jane was willing to do it. She would do it; stand there, a vessel to absolute power, until her atoms melted away and she drifted off on a quiet breeze.

Thanos wasn't. With a cry, he exerted all his might—not to fight her—but to flee.

The last conscious vision Jane knew was Thanos leaping directly up, back to his ship, and the vessel wheeling off into an empty, cloudless sky.

"—never seen anything like it before. Cellular degradation like this...she should be dead."

"Will she die?"

"I—I don't think so. Her cells appear to be repairing themselves, but this is a completely new behavior. Nothing about her condition makes sense to me. I'll have to keep her under observation."

Blunted footsteps. Muffled coughs. A sob, poorly disguised. Noisy detritus tapping on the boundaries of her consciousness.

She was alive. They were alive. The Aether, tested in the fullness of its power, was exhausted, but not destroyed. Because of that, she was exhausted...but not annihilated. She was shards of herself, lying shattered on the bed, but she was already coming together. The voice she had heard was right; Jane could feel her cells knitting, mending with scarlet thread taken from the Aether.

Her eyes opened. She might not have bothered; her ocular nerves were as damaged as the rest of her. Only darkness greeted her. She was functionally blind.

A finger touched her cheek. Hesitant. Wondering.

"Jane?"

Her eyes slid closed again, blissful. The corner of her mouth gave a heroic twitch upward. "Loki," she slurred out, "you're alive."

There was a long pause and a few more suspicious coughs before he replied, "As are you."

Her thoughts came slowly, and Loki was stroking her cheek now. It took her a bit, drifting quietly, before she could ask, "Everyone else? Thanos?"

"Don't worry about that right now. You're safe. You need to rest and heal."

Her lips twitched downward. "I'm fine."

"Oh yes? Sit up, then."

The Aether tried. She tried. Even tightening her stomach in preparation was enough to exhaust her.

"Bastard."

"I thought so," his hair tickled her open, sweaty palm as he kissed her there. "Rest, Jane. The world will still be here when you wake up."

She swallowed.

"Promise?"

Just a quick shout-out to sesame seed, whose review made me smile all day! It's people like you that make writing such a great experience! And thank you, as always, to everyone for your kind words and encouragement.