XXVII

When reality at last returned to her, it was an uncertain, skittish thing. Images and impressions flashed before her eyes, hazy as fever-dreams, there and gone before she could decide what to think or feel about them. Not that she had much of a mind left to think with. Pain had fragmented her normally orderly thoughts into jagged shards that hurt more than they helped. Questions which she could not hope to answer became torments. Eventually, Jane let herself drift in a sea of uncertainty, riding the waves of her physical sensations, not even permitting herself to hope that things would start making sense again. All she could hope was for an end, one way or another.

The end came.

With a gasp, Jane's eyes snapped open. There was something soggy and sticky under her cheek, but when she rolled her cheek to escape it, a stinging flash ran from the top of her skull to the bottom of her toes. She grunted—because forming an 'ow' was beyond her—and lay still. Oh. She knew what that dampness was. Lying on her stomach had plugged her nose, which meant she was breathing through her mouth, which meant she'd drooled all over her pillow.

Charming.

Wait, was it a pillow? Gingerly, millimeter by millimeter, she raised her chin, hoping that her next movement wouldn't trigger the same lightning bolt of pain. It wasn't. She was lying on a mounded heap of fur, the dark brown fibers soft and silky, fringing her bare skin in a cozy embrace, warming her without overheating.

Hang on, bare skin?

She couldn't turn her head, but she could—slowly, carefully—shift her legs and arms, though one of her arms was so tightly mummified she couldn't wiggle her fingers. All she felt was fur. Yes, she was definitely naked, though the fur was draped over everything strategic. And there was a course strip of something running the length of her spine. A cast? No, too flexible. Probably a bandage.

Twisting her arm around, breathing through the pain, Jane's fingers brushed its edge. A bandage. She remembered something hitting her there, a hard, bruising impact followed by a sharp, tearing agony. A knife? A spear? Whatever it had been didn't matter. All that mattered—and she double-checked to make sure—was that she could still wiggle her toes. Not paralyzed. Good.

All her investigations had drained what little reserves she had. Sweat popped along her brow and trickled lazily down her temples; she rolled her face into the furs to dry it off, but only succeeded in making her yelp when her spine sang. She groaned and lay still again, breathing shallowly.

Maybe she slept or maybe she fainted, but darkness took her again.

A patter of raindrops woke her. Raindrops? Here? The sound came again, water dripping in a quick burst before something cool and damp swept down her side. She hissed, fearing the pain, but it didn't come. Coolness spread to her other side. She opened her eyes.

Her tongue was still hard to manipulate, so all she could manage was a bleary, "Wha—"

"How are you feeling, Jane?"

She knew that voice. She ought to hate that voice. But here, now, after everything…she couldn't help but relax at the sound of something familiar.

"Fine," she lied, clearing her dry throat, wishing she could roll over and away from his hands. "What're you doing?"

"I need to change your bandage. Forgive me, but it will hurt."

With no other prelude, Loki's fingers lifted the edge of her wound's dressing, the coarse fibers snagging on her tender, healing skin. She whined, but the cry died on her tongue as his finger ran the edge of her wound, numb coolness spreading from his touch. Once the pain was gone, he poked and prodded a few more things into her skin, before covering it with another broad patch and sealing down the edges with something sticky that tickled. She huffed as a droplet slid down her side towards her belly, before laughing outright as he wiped it away.

"Ow," she moaned, but it was perfunctory. Whatever he'd done had, at least for the moment, left her feeling almost as 'fine' as she'd declared herself to be.

His hands stilled. "It still hurts?"

"No," she said, truthfully this time. "It's much better. Thank you."

"I hardly deserve your thanks," he resumed cleaning the edges of her dressing. "It has been made abundantly clear that our plot would not have worked without you. You have become something of a celebrity on Jotunheim, a fact which I am sure will thrill you. There is talk of enshrining you as one of their patron saints, the barbarian woman who returned the Casket to its rightful home."

"Ugh," she groaned. "Hang on, 'barbarian'?"

"Well, they are grateful to you. Not unprejudiced."

Once her bandage was clean, Loki returned to washing the rest of her, sweeping a damp cloth over her bare legs and feet. Jane tensed, muscles locking so that a ghost of pain resurfaced, despite what Loki had done to quiet it.

"I'm fine," she ground out, as he began cleaning between her toes. "Can you help me turn over?"

"No, I cannot," she recognized his straightforward answer to her question, but at least he wasn't making things harder by fighting her. "You are some days yet from being able to bear weight on your wound," he replied. Realizing that Jane's discomfort stemmed from being unable to see him, he shifted to lean against the wall to Jane's left. She propped her chin on her unbound hand and stared.

"Are you okay?" It was an unwilling question, but the bruising on Loki's face was too extensive to politely ignore. It had healed, but only to a sickly yellow-green that made him look jaundiced. One of his eyes was so deeply blacked that Jane suspected his orbital bone was fractured.

"Quite well. What you see is only Thor's frustrations at my failures to adequately safeguard the Casket."

She scoffed. "Like he did any better."

"Naturally. But in Asgard, a scapegoat must always be had, and since it that may never be Thor, such has been my role since time immemorial," Loki's smirk was hard and bitter. "At least I managed to convince them my failure was only incompetence, not malice. Though Odin has told me he will not lay eyes on me again until I stand before him with the Casket. A welcome punishment, though my tears on our parting, oh," he pressed a hand to his heart, allowing those same crocodile tears to mist his eyes, "would have moved the poets to song."

Jane smiled. "I bet. Is Darcy okay?"

"She is. Still beguiling as ever, though her stock has fallen along with mine. Even Fandral senses she is no longer the valuable conquest he sought to make, though Darcy always had better taste than to value his affections. She does not feel his loss."

"How long have I been out?"

"Eight days."

She sucked in a breath. Eight days. "Okay. So...the plan. Have you started going through the drive I brought? Did it survive the trip?"

"Yes, it did, and no, I have not," he blinked. "The plan for the moment is for you to recover. You almost lost one arm to frostbite and your mobility—if not your life—to one of Hela's putrefying blades. The rot had almost eaten into your heart before I was able to remove it. Rest, Jane. Recover."

"I'm not good at resting," she grumbled. "But fine. You can go through it for me. I'm thinking we can run a few targeted searches to narrow down the data before—"

"No. Are you not listening, foolish woman? Do you value your life so little?"

She glared. "Thank you for saving my life. I appreciate it. Really. But what's the point of it if we don't pull off your coup?"

"Your life has a greater value than that. I begin to think you are more eager to see me on Asgard's throne than I. I can wait until you are healed," he reached to touch her bare arm, just above the bandage. "I poured my magic into you, but it can only do so much. Time must play its part."

"How much time?"

"Another week until you can stand. As for your arm," he hesitated, dodging the intensity of her stare, "that will take longer."

It was just an arm. After everything, if all she lost was an arm—just her forearm, really, and her elbow—she should count herself lucky. She swallowed hard, and her voice wavered. "How much longer?"

He still did not meet her eyes. "It is hard to say. Your—the skin was dead and the bone was frozen. Aesir healers have done much to reverse the effects of such frostbite after losing so many soldiers to exposure during their war on Jotunheim, but their medicines are meant for Aesir physiology, not yours. I do not know whether it will be effective."

"It's been a week," she looked at the bandage, as if willing herself to see beneath the layers of clean linen to the wasted flesh below. Her stomach churned. "There hasn't been any improvement?"

"I have not seen any yet, but the medication works best undisturbed. I had meant to change it again when you were asleep."

This was a bad idea. She knew it was, but she couldn't help herself. Jane always had to know. "Do it now."

Loki shifted. "It will not help you to see it."

"I'd rather," she had to take a breath, because the truth was she had much rather not, but she couldn't stare at the blank respectability of the wrappings and let her mind conjure up an image of the decay underneath. "I'd rather know how bad it is. Please."

"Jane—"

"Please," she stressed, looking down so he wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. Her shoulders heaved. "You owe me. You know it. You owe me for a lot more than this."

He relented. "It will hurt. Let me know when you feel pain; I will do my best to take it from you."

How thoughtful, she wanted to scoff, but when his nimble fingers began peeling the bandage away, Jane was more distracted by the fact that she couldn't feel anything at all. As the layers unwrapped and unraveled, drawing closer and closer to her damaged arm, she began to pray for pain. Anything would be better than this…deadness.

The flesh of her arm was mottled black and white, layered with a sheen of glossy medication that made it look like a beached fish, dragged out of the ocean to gasp, dying, on the sand. As soon as the image occurred to her, the smell hit her like a wall.

She gagged. "Oh," she turned away, burying her face into the furs as Loki smoothed in more ointment. She couldn't feel it on the skin itself; she could only feel him manipulating her elbow so he could get at every inch of damaged tissue. Still, there was no pain.

It was her left arm. Even if she lost it, even it if was gone, she was right-handed. It would be okay. There were one-handed keyboards, talk-to-text programs. And prosthetics! Prosthetics were getting better every day, just look at what Wakanda had developed for Rhodey, or Bucky! She'd be fine. Fine. Just fine. This was okay. This was nothing. She was alive, still breathing. That was enough.

Jane sobbed, gasping into the fur until she choked. It was fine, it would be fine, but it wasn't, not right that second, no matter how much she desperately wanted it to be. Her whole body trembled, spasms she couldn't mitigate or control, shaking her until her teeth chattered.

His hand was on her shoulder, smoothing over the skin, anchoring her. His way of trying to comfort her, his way of being kind.

"Don't touch me!" she snarled, but she couldn't jerk away, couldn't walk away, couldn't push him away. However gentle he was trying to be, he was just a walking reminder that even though her decisions had brought them both to that point, he would always suffer less for them than she would. His wounds would heal, whereas hers…

He didn't reply. His only answer was to carefully and quickly bind up her arm again, hiding the ruined flesh from sight. But burying it under medicine and cloth could only do so much; the smell was still in the air.

The days passed in slow boredom and nagging fear, marked by intervals where Jane pushed her healing body to its limit and then collapsed into insensibility when it failed her. Still, she couldn't just relax; her mind was almost as itchy as her arm, but she welcomed the latter. If she felt anything from the skin beneath the bandage, hope tightened in her chest.

At the very least, Loki became her devoted slave. Once the first flash of her rage had burned itself out and she tired of fighting the cosmic injustice of an uncaring universe, he distracted her from boredom, pain, and worry by doing the research she couldn't. Soon, that wasn't enough. After two days, she browbeat him into providing her a tablet she could prop in front of her chin. The day after that, she made him run a search series to isolate the specific data they needed for their tunnel. And three days after that, she leaned on him and levered herself upright for the first time in two weeks.

Vertigo made her lightheaded, and her feet ached to bear her weight again, but none of that mattered. With her feet on the ground, she felt, well, grounded. More than that, she could finally complete her mental image of the room that had been her home for the past fourteen days. It was both larger and more comfortable than she'd assumed, hardly an underground den making the most of Jotunheim's geothermal vents.

Her bed was hung around with draperies in a shifting silvery fabric thick with gilt embroidery. The low table was carved of what looked to be gleaming ivory, and soft pillows were heaped around it to serve as chairs. But Jane had no more interest in observing the rest of the space, because best of all—

She pointed at the giant tub sitting beside the yawning fireplace. "I want a bath," she declared. "Do the Jotuns do baths too? Doesn't hot water hurt them?"

"They have a series of open-air baths that are quite famous for being the death of any non-Jotun who sets foot in them, but which they find quite pleasant. Hot water, while not fatal, is decidedly unpleasant for them. I presume you do not mean that?"

"Nah," she said, taking her first unaided step towards the tub, sighing in relief when only a ghostly twinge pinged through her spine. "I want a bath hot enough to cook me in my shell. Been frostbitten enough for a lifetime."

She thoroughly enjoyed his wince at her jab, but the only reason she could bring herself to make it was because her arm was swarming like a hive of bees that morning. It was taking more energy than she wanted to keep from tearing her bandage off and scratching until her skin peeled off.

Did that mean healing? She couldn't be sure. But the medication needed to be changed today anyway, so she'd see it sooner than later.

"So, can I get a bath?"

"Yes," Loki shook his head, breaking his gaze on Jane's arm. They'd both been preoccupied with it over the past week. "Of course. However, you are not recovered enough to get into and out of it without assistance. You will not mind if I stay to help you?"

She sighed. Although she'd slung her arms into a robe before standing and was clutching it closed behind her with her good right hand, she was well aware that Loki had already seen her in much greater detail than she'd ever wanted. Having a Jotun assistant was impossible, even if any of them were willing to take on the menial task of caring for her, so Loki had been washing her down and carrying her to and from the toilet all this time. Any hope of defending her modesty or privacy was well and truly flown.

Did she like that? No. Was it a fact? Yes. Jane wasn't in the habit of fighting facts.

"Fine, but one smug remark," she brandished her bandaged arm in his direction, smiling again as he flinched, "and I'll drown you."

"You wound me," he grumbled, "after all the comments I have withheld about your lovely—"

"Watch it."

"—attributes," he finished smoothly, waving one hand over the tub and swirling the water within as it filled. Were there hidden pipes, Jane wondered, or was they magical waters? "I should have thought to have more of your trust by now."

"I trust you, all right. Trust you to push your luck."

The tub filled in minutes, and when it was ready Jane leveled a glare in his direction.

"Turn around."

"Jane, if you fall—"

"If I fall, you'll hear a splash, and then you have my permission to help me. But until then, you keep your eyes the other way."

He sighed. "Very well. There are mineral salts and oils, should you wish to add them."

"Great," she nodded. "Now turn."

He did. After a tense moment, Jane tossed off her robe and braced her good hand against the tub. Swinging her leg into it made her whimper as her spine moved in a way it emphatically disagreed with, but the other leg followed without too much fanfare, and soon she was sinking into the blissfully hot water and all her worries evaporated in the steam.

The hard lines of her face melted into a smile, the first she'd given in days. The water took pressure off her back and soothed her muscles, sliding against her skin like a masseuse's skilled fingers. She wiggled her toes, poking them an inch above the water, grinning like a loon when they responded eagerly to her every command. Just because she could, she rocked them back and forth, conjuring up tiny tsunamis that washed over the side of the tub and slopped to the tiled floor.

"You sound very pleased."

"I am," she sighed. "This is amazing."

She lowered her head into the water, swinging her head from side to side, enjoying how her hair tickled across her neck. Loki would have to wash it; she couldn't work up a lather with one hand. Unless…

"Come over here, please," she lifted herself up, shaking water from her ears. "I want to wash my arm. It's itchy."

"It is?" his boots scraped the stone as he whipped around. "You said nothing of it."

Hope was a vise around her lungs. "It's only been really bad today," she murmured, caught by the piercing intensity of his eyes. "Can you check it?"

He nodded, tight and tense. Drawing a stool to the side of the bath, he reached for her arm and lowered it into his lap. Turn by turn, he unraveled the bandages. Jane strained to look, trying and failing to ward herself against disappointment.

The skin was still pale, but the darkest patches of it had lightened considerably. Loki lowered a cupped hand into the tub and bathed the skin lightly, rinsing away the remaining ointment. Her fingers were still frightful, as the flesh there had shrunk and wasted down to the bone, but her joints were more mobile than she remembered. Loki could bend them all, though she felt nothing as he did it. When the skin was clean, he patted it dry with a linen towel, twisting and turning the arm to inspect it.

Jane gasped. The course texture of the linen raised goosebumps on her upper arm, but even on the forearm…

"I feel that," she whispered, "Do it again."

A muscle in his jaw jumped and clenched. Slowly, he dragged the cloth down her arm.

"Yes!" she laughed, "Not where it's darkest, but there," she jabbed at her pale underarm, "some feeling is definitely coming back."

She leaned over and dug a fingernail into the soft, pink skin, reveling as the formerly deadened nerves sent faint, but unmistakable signals to her brain. Responses in the sensory cells. Her body returning to life. Whatever the medication was doing, however it was doing it, it was working.

The thundercloud on Loki's face hadn't cleared, making a stark contrast to the sunny, warm grin that spread over hers.

"What's wrong? This is good news."

"The 'wrong' here is you referring to this as 'good news'," he repeated, almost scoffing. His hand swooped under hers, long fingers resting lightly, supporting hers. She couldn't feel either the pressure or the warmth, but she didn't pull away. If this was part of her future, better to face it now. But she had hope it wouldn't be.

"It is. A week ago I thought my whole arm was going to rot off. As far as I'm concerned, this is a win."

"I think you have let your expectations fall too low."

"Well," she hesitated, "I remember where all this started. After someone threatens your life, that puts a lot of other things in perspective."

He swallowed. Gently, he rested her arm along the side of the tub, and slid his chair away. Jane watched him, watched the clouds drift over his face, watched as he parsed what she'd said and his own emotional reaction to it. There was something there she'd very rarely seen, perhaps because he'd always hidden it away from her. She could read it in the way his hands knotted into each other, in the hunch of his shoulders, in the almost imperceptible thinning of his lips.

Shame. He was ashamed.

Good.

Jane slid her arm into the water, gasping when the heat made her skin erupt like a wasp's nest, buzzing and humming away. Swishing her hand back and forth in the tub, Jane watched her numb fingers bend and flex. If she focused all her will on them, she could almost imagine—

"I want to make you a promise, Jane."

She looked up, curious. Curious enough to prod him with: "What promise?"

He waited, waited until his brow furrowed and the magic forced him to answer. "I have caused harm to come to you. Harm I cared nothing for, until...until I began to care for you."

She flinched, but said nothing.

"Even after that, I still...bargained with you. I withheld what I could do for both you and Midgard, unless you agreed to still further harm. This was unworthy of me. It was an insult to you. So here is my promise: should we survive, should I ascend to Asgard's throne, I will assist Midgard in whatever way you desire. I will ask nothing from you in exchange. And should you want for anything for yourself that lies within my power to grant, you will have it from me the moment you ask."

Jane sat back in the tub, glad for once that Loki seemed to be unable to look at her, because her jaw had, quite literally, dropped from shock. Her mind raced, her heart pounded. It was true; the spell guaranteed that his words were the truth. She could see the pain leeching from his tense shoulders, see the relief in his body.

He'd given her a gift. And not a gift like so many of his others, given for his benefit while ostensibly belonging to her. This was a gift for the people he'd hurt; for Jane, yes, but for every mortal who had survived Asgard's brutal invasion.

Had he learned from his shame? Did he finally feel a hint of remorse? Was this really for Earth, or just for her? She could pose the questions to him and force the answers. The instant she had that thought, she let it go. It was a true promise. Did the motivation behind it really matter?

"Thank you," she said. Rolling onto her side, she reached out with her good hand and placed it on his forearm. His muscles bunched under her fingers. "I am definitely going to take you up on that. When we win."

"'When'?" he shrugged, "You are more an optimist than I."

"We've gone too far to go back," she replied, leaning back again into the tub. "We have an expression for situations like this: "the only way out is through". The universe won't be safe for either of us unless we win. So we're going to win. That's all there is to it. Now," she reached for the pots ranged against the side of the bath, "which one of these is shampoo?"

Note: Poor Jane. But at least Loki is finally, incrementally, beginning to learn something like a lesson. As always, please let me know what you thought! I love hearing from y'all.