A/N: One night my brain said, "what if soulmate au but dark?" and then held me hostage until I wrote it. The theme song for this is Chase Holfelder's dark cinematic version of Tainted Love. Enjoy? (I hope.)
(I watched Avengers 2012 more than a dozen times in a row for this. Help me.)
THE ONE
Jane is in the lab, having a quiet conversation with Bruce about tracking gamma radiation when he trails off mid-sentence, suddenly distracted. It's a second before Jane can hear it too—the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of several sets of boots hitting the deck in perfect cadence, though one pair is out of sync. She turns, following Bruce's gaze toward the steel-reinforced window that separates them from an adjoining corridor. Outside, a large retinue of soldiers in black gear march past, surrounding a tall man in burnished exotic armor.
Loki. Thor's brother. The demi-god who has stolen her mentor's mind and forced him to do his bidding.
The being in question turns his head, gaze fixing on Bruce as his mouth stretches in a malevolent grin. His pale eyes turn on Jane next and—
A sudden kaleidoscope of color flares in those eyes, rippling over the geometric planes of his face and then bursting outward in a breathtaking explosion that leaves nothing within view untouched.
No.
Jane's heart bangs in her chest as he stops, as he stares at her, smile replaced with a startled dip in his raven brows, acute interest written in his features. He moves toward the window, and in defiance of the overwhelming impulse to mirror him, she forces a conscious step backward. But she can't bring herself to look away.
A guard nudges Loki with the butt of his rifle, and finally—finally—he turns, breaking the disquieting connection between them. He glowers at the offender, but allows his escort to lead him on without complaint. Jane sags against the table behind her, drawing in a quivering breath once he's completely out of sight.
"That was...disturbing," Bruce murmurs, and she glances up at him. Is that what purple looks like—his shirt? Is "purple" even the right name for that color? She's never seen it before.
"Doctor Foster?"
"Yeah, disturbing." She closes her eyes, praying that when she opens them again her surroundings will be painted with the muted spectrum she's always known. But they aren't. Everything is incredibly vibrant. So alive. Her first instinct is to exult in this surprise awakening, but bile stirs thick in her middle when she recalls the reason for the change.
This can't be happening. Not him. He can't be the one.
"They're probably going to want us on the bridge," Bruce says.
Jane makes a noise of agreement, follows him out of the lab and tries to act as if she's not seeing everything for the first time.
Thor is there. Thor! She waited for him for a year, tried to build a wormhole generator that would reach the Realm Eternal, though she wouldn't have the first clue where to point the thing once it was complete. She remembers that night on the roof when he explained space in Asgardian terms to her. The soft flutters in her stomach as he smiled at her. The feel of his lips pressed against hers before he had to return home to stop Loki.
Loki.
Him, she only knew as a faceless antagonist. Anger would twist in her gut whenever she thought of him. She still feels it, but there's a thrill woven now into that dark emotion.
In a heartbeat, Thor is in front of her, pulling her into his strong arms as he explains about the destruction of the Bifrost. In the heartbeat after, he's kissing her, and oh, she understands now. She and her ex, Donald, vowed that they would remain true to each other, even if one of them crossed paths with their "fated" other half. The romantic phenomenon isn't rare, but it also isn't as common as movies, television, and books make it out to be. She and Donald used to mock people who spent their lives chasing it.
But one night after a shift at the hospital, he came home different—off. The next morning she woke to him sitting at the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped. His suitcases were waiting by the bedroom door.
"You don't get it," he said in a dejected voice. "You can't until it happens to you."
He was right. Because Thor's mouth on hers tastes like ash. It's wrong. It's so wrong, and she wants to cry. But she doesn't. She pulls back, gives him a smile that doesn't reach her eyes, and tells him they can catch up later. She ignores just how deep the red is in the accents on his armor.
During the meeting, she's a wind-up doll with all the right answers, physically present but disconnected. The others stare at her when she lets out a wet laugh at Thor's defense of Loki. Is that supposed to be her job now? Defending the indefensible? Simply because some greater power in the universe paired her up with the maniacal prince?
She'll die first.
Or maybe he will. (She hates the dark part of her that hopes he will.)
The meeting adjourns, everyone given their task, and Jane excuses herself. To take a moment, she reasons. To find untainted air. She walks the long corridors for what seems like miles, taking apart this equation, rearranging the variables in the vain hope that she can find a solution that isn't horrifying.
Her heart climbs into her throat when she becomes aware of her surroundings. Like a child following the pied piper, she's been led to a crystalline cage. Loki stands at the center of it, back to her, but as she takes a tentative step onto the metal grating, he turns slowly. He's striking, otherworldly, sharper as if nothing else is real—only him. He studies her, chin tipped up in an imperious expression. She glares at him in return.
"Jane Foster." His baritone is sandpapery, smooth and edged with some unnamed thing that pebbles her skin with chills. An algid smile lifts the corners of his lips, presses long dimples into his cheeks. He's beautiful and deadly. Like a red dwarf balanced on the precipice of going supernova.
"What?" he asks in a caustic tone. "Not overjoyed to have finally met your destiny?"
The serrated question neatly slices the lifeline she's latched onto for the sake of her sanity: the theory that foreordained romance is an anomaly that exists solely on Earth. Cut loose from the false idea, she's in a free fall, spiraling toward an appalling fact that will obliterate her.
With a quiet, raspy laugh, he gives voice to her rising fear. "What does that say about you, I wonder—that out of the billions who live among the branches of Yggdrasil, I am your best match." He assesses her in liquid perusal. "And you are mine."
No. She shakes her head, grits her teeth against the plasma arc of his unwavering gaze. "Never."
"He speaks of you often—Doctor Selvig," Loki says, unmoved by her declaration. "He's so terribly proud of his bright young protegé."
Her fingers curl against her palm as an ember of indignation flickers to life inside of her. How dare he. How dare he mention Erik as though her mentor isn't one of his living victims. "Stop."
"He boasts that you're not only intelligent, but exceptionally clever," Loki continues. "Apparently one day your work will eclipse all those who came before. You will become the impossible standard that others futilely throw themselves against."
"Stop it," she warns again, pulse thrumming erratically in her ears.
"Do you know how often he's asked me to find you? Begged me to open your eyes as I have done for him?" Loki inches toward the wall between them. "Oh, but I don't think I will now. I won't risk muddling that singular mind of yours."
"Stop it!" Outrage blazes through her veins, and she dashes the short distance to the cell, swinging at it as if she could somehow reach him. Hurt him. Pain splinters through her knuckles when her fist slams against the unyielding glass.
Loki bends forward, expression turning manic as he splays his long fingers over the smooth surface opposite her hand. "Did you feel it, Jane? Did you feel that impregnable tether snap into place between us the moment we laid eyes on one another?" He glances at her fist, brushes the wall there, and she almost feels his fingertips ghosting on her skin.
She snatches her hand back, sick from the answering heat in her middle.
"Open the door," he murmurs, his breath misting the glass. "Open it." In his feverish eyes, she can read what he leaves unsaid. Let me out. Let me touch you.
Let me have you.
It's a siren song, crackling along the invisible cord that binds them, tugging her toward him.
No.
Jane retreats, looks away, and her gaze lands on the console—on the clear box that covers a large red button. Her heart pounds heavy in her chest as she recalls the demonstration Fury gave Loki a half hour ago. She could push the button, put an end to this distorted new universe before it can suffocate her with its thorny vines.
But he's the murderer, not her.
She blows out an anemic exhale and turns on unsteady legs.
"You can't run from me, Jane Foster," Loki says. "I am inevitable."
Jane leaves without a backward glance, repulsed that a part of her needs him to be right—no matter how badly she doesn't want him to be.
She heads to the tiny cabin she was assigned, lets the door fall closed behind her with a soft clank. The air is too thin, but she gulps for it anyway. More and more and more until she becomes dizzy from want of oxygen. He's stolen all of it. She can't breathe. She can't—
She dashes toward the closet that serves as a bathroom, and the sensored light blinks on with a tinny whine. Cool water streams over her hands when she thrusts them under the faucet, and she splashes her face. Inhale. One, two, three. Exhale. One, two, three, four, five. Again. And again.
What is she going to do? What can she do? She took Introduction to Predetermination Studies years ago as an undergrad, but it was a throwaway course—something to fulfill a humanities requirement. Did the professor talk about this kind of anomaly, this awful link between a decent person and someone so wretched? Can the soulmate bond be broken?
Or is it only death that can sever it?
Her gaze drifts to her hand, at the red and purple blooming like a blurred flower over her skin. So vivid. Is that what a bruise has always looked like? She brushes a shaky thumb over it.
I am inevitable.
"Doctor Foster to the lab."
Jane starts at the voice coming over the intercom, and she shakes off the conflicting swell of emotions. She will not have her agency stolen from her this way. She'll watch that smug expression melt off of his angular features when he learns that she found the Tesseract, that she stopped him. Then Fury or Thor can do with him what they will.
Loki will never have her.
A few feet from her destination, Fury steps into her path, Agent Hill at his shoulder. "Doctor Foster," he greets her in his usual gruff manner. "Care to explain how you know Loki?"
The answer is a barb in Jane's throat, chokes her voice. She can't tell him. She won't. Because it's irrelevant. Because Fury will tie her hands, and she needs to get to work. "I was there when he tried to kill Thor with the Destroyer last year," she says. Not a lie. She does her best to stand tall under his scrutiny.
He snorts with disbelief, swipes a finger over the tablet he holds, and turns the display toward her. It's a video of the holding cell, of Loki's hand against the glass where her fist is, and dread sinks like poisoned lead in her stomach.
Did you feel it, Jane?
"You were saying?"
She looks up at Fury, forces on an impassive mask to hide the trepidation pinking her cheeks. "I've never spoken to him before today." Another parceled out truth, but she needs him to accept it, to let her go.
Fury opens his mouth, but swallows back whatever he was going to say. Instead, he glances over her head, pressing a finger to the comm in his ear. "Copy that." And then his focus back on Jane. "Agent Hill here is going to keep an eye on you until we can finish this conversation." He spins toward the lab, his leather duster swirling behind him.
"Fine. Let's go, then," Jane says to her new keeper with a nod toward Fury's retreating back.
But Agent Hill doesn't let her into the lab. She escorts them to the bridge instead, points to the conference table with a significant look, and Jane is rendered useless. She refuses to sit, though. She can't. Voltaic apprehension scurries across her nerves, and she falls into the elementary school habit of reciting the planets of the solar system as she paces the platform. Back and forth. Back and forth. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter…
Asgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Midgard—
No. Stop.
It's no longer Thor's voice in her memory labeling the realms of Yggdrasil for her. It's not the image of his open smile that flashes across her vision, but the predatory grin of the dark fallen prince. The spike those hungry white teeth send down her spine is disconcertingly close to anticipation. She presses her palms to her eyes to chase it away. She's losing her mind.
"You've got to let me go to the lab," she says to Agent Hill. Desperation cracks her voice, and she hopes the other woman will take pity on her.
Agent Hill only spares her a cool glance. "I don't have to let you do anything, Doctor Foster," she replies. "Not until we can vet your story."
Jane wants to scream. She wants to laugh. "I told Fury the truth." The part that matters, anyway.
"And you can prove that when he's back," Agent Hill returns. "Until then, please have a seat." Her tone is firm. There's no more arguing.
Before Jane can reach for one of the chairs, the ship reels with an explosion and again with an aftershock that reverberates an ear-splitting boom. Hands on her ears to muffle the sudden cacophony of alarms and shouts, Jane watches a cloud of black smoke whip by the windows.
Agent Hill dashes to a station to report. "External detonation. Number three engine is down."
All hands to stations. All hands to stations.
Loki.
Jane breaks for the exit and, with the pandemonium, no one stops her. An agent jumps out of her way as she races down the corridor toward the detention center. Toward him. A tide of adrenaline makes her faster, more agile as she dodges others. She knows what she has to do now. A horrible roar echoes through the ship, and urgency becomes paramount. Hurry. Hurry before it's too late.
She lies to the guards outside the chamber, tells them that Fury sent her to check on their prisoner. (Was this how she got past them the first time? It frightens her that she doesn't remember.) The pair of square-jawed men point their muzzles down, letting her pass. She steps inside, heart knocking against her ribcage, but she waits until the thick doors latch shut behind her before she faces Loki.
He's seated on the bench, head tilted as he studies her, unblinking. "Couldn't stay away?" he says as if he isn't surprised—as if he expected her.
Jane presses her lips together to stay the well of scathing retorts unfurling on her tongue. He likes wringing a reaction from her, craves it by the dare in his eyes, and she won't glut his sadistic appetite. There's a distant clamor on the Helicarrier, resounding through the bulkheads.
Hurry.
Loki's indifference vanishes when she turns to the control panel. He's on his feet, crossing the cell, planting his hands on the glass. His gaze follows her fingers as she flips up the acrylic cover over the release button. It's so red.
Will that go away when he's gone?
"I underestimated you, Jane Foster," Loki says. "When Thor returned to Asgard so...soft—" he spits the word, "—I had thought you some gentle goddess of unfailing virtue. But you aren't." He presses closer to the barrier. "You're like me."
"I'm nothing like you!" she snaps. Why? Why is she shackled to him? "I don't kill innocent people."
"But you would kill someone who is utterly defenseless." He casts a telling glance at her hand hovering over his demise. "How is that any more moral than what I have done?"
He's wrong. He's committed countless atrocities for his own self-interest. She's committing one sin to save millions. To save herself. No, no. This isn't about her—about their aberrant bond. This is about stopping him. Even if she has to sell her soul to do it.
She forces herself to look at him, to take in the rapid rise and fall of his chest that belies his insolence. He stares back at her, silently challenging her to prove him wrong. Or to prove him right. Do it, she commands herself. End this nightmare for everyone. She touches the button, sucks in a breath, and—
Her hand is yanked away from the console, arms wrenched behind her back. "No!" she cries out. She struggles against her captor, a man in charcoal S.H.I.E.L.D. battle gear—a man with dazzling blue eyes and an iron grip.
Loki backs away with a laugh, but she sees the infinitesimal drop in his shoulders. She made him afraid, and that revelation—that she has any power over him—is terrifyingly heady. Her diseased triumph is short-lived, however, replaced by the bilious rise of panic when the cell door hisses open. He steps out of his prison, boots ringing against the grating as he rounds the cage toward her. A knot pulls tight in her middle as he draws close.
Let me have you.
He measures her with a keen gaze, amused when she attempts to tear her arms free. "Hesitation," he says, "will always cost you the advantage." He leans in close and, warm breath against her ear, whispers, "Remember that for next time, darling."
"Why wait?" Jane grinds out as he straightens back to his towering height. "I'm ready for another round right now." In a distant corner of her mind, she realizes how irrational it is to goad him. But contempt has eclipsed any logic she has left.
Loki makes a noise of approval, and the sound transudes beneath her skin like hot black tar. "I don't doubt it," he says. "Unfortunately, I've a more pressing engagement."
He raises a hand, twists his wrist, and she gasps. Because he's back in the cell, marking the perimeter like an untamed animal. Ignoring her as if he hadn't just been standing in front of her, smelling like leather and brass—like the air before a December storm. What's happening? Is this a dream?
(Please let it be a dream.)
He pauses at the door, waits for it to open—again. Steps out. Again.
"Loki, no!"
Jane's eyes go wide as Thor leaps through a side door, hurtles toward Loki and falls through him. With a swish of the hermetic lock, the God of Thunder is sealed inside.
Loki reappears near her in a ripple of green light. "Are you ever not going to fall for that?" he asks his brother.
Thor jabs a finger toward Loki. "You open this cage or I will…" The rest of his thunderous warning tapers off when his gaze finds her. Anxiety washes over his guileless features, and when he turns back to his brother, his tone is solicitous. "Let her go. Your quarrel is with me, not Jane." The appeal slashes her heart. If he knew, would he still beg for her safety?
"You're right," Loki agrees, spreading his hands in concession. "I have no quarrel with the good doctor—even if she did make a worthy attempt on my life. But surely you must know that I cannot let her go."
"Don't—" Jane begins through gritted teeth the same time Thor says, "If this is about revenge—"
"It isn't about revenge," Loki cuts in with a lip curled in a sneer. "Not this. Not anymore." He draws closer to the cell. "Did she not tell you?"
Thor's gaze darts to Jane with a question in his furrowed brows, but she can't manage the words to explain the hideous snare that fate has tangled her in.
What does that say about you, I wonder, that I am your best match.
Loki clicks his tongue in mock disappointment. "Oh, Jane. How wicked of you to keep such glad tidings to yourself." He gives his brother a cocksure grin. "Doctor Foster and I are bound. We are lýst yfir."
The news hits Thor like a physical blow. He staggers back, caves into himself as shock and anguish contort his features. "No," he breathes. "That can't be. Jane?"
With every cell in her body, she wants to dispute Loki's claim, to say it's a weaponized lie meant to hack at Thor's heart. She can't, though. "I'm going to find a way to break it!"
"The young are so recklessly optimistic," Loki replies with a dismissive snort, addressing his brother. "I do like her fire, but she's so terribly…mortal. Do you think Mother will still approve?"
Thor lets out a feral growl, swings at the cell wall with his massive hammer. The glass fractures an inch with tiny spidery lines, and Loki takes a step back, laughing—reveling in Thor's impotence.
"Take her to the ship," he orders, tossing a glance at the man who holds Jane. "I have unfinished business with my brother."
Jane digs her heels into the grating, leans forward with all of her strength to slip out of her captor's vise-like grip. She locks her jaw against the pain splintering down from her shoulders. If she has to dislocate them to get free, then so be it. Loki can't have her. He can't!
She shrieks in frustration when his minion easily lifts her up, drags her backward to the exit. Thor is shouting, but it's Loki's voice that congeals her blood as she's wrestled over the threshold into the corridor.
"The humans think us immortal. Shall we test that?"
Her screams rebound fruitlessly off the closing doors.
The journey through the Helicarrier is a blur of pealing klaxons, smoke, and chaos. She battles every step, yells for help from anyone rushing past, but it's pointless. After a quick glance at her warden's uniform, her desperate cries fall on deaf ears.
And when they finally don't—the good samaritan gets a bullet in the chest.
It's so sudden, so senseless, that Jane can only watch in a stupor while the poor flight deck operator crumples to the tarmac. Horror and guilt intertwine in her chest, drain the fight from her as Loki's minion manhandles her into a stolen Quinjet, as he shoves her into one of the jump seats and straps her into the harness, as he zip-ties her hands together.
Someone died because of her.
No. Her nails dig into her palms. Someone died because of him.
As if summoned by her furious thoughts, Loki appears at the bottom of the ramp. There's a slight hitch in his step as he enters the jet, scepter in one hand and the other folded across his torso. The muscles in his jaw flex briefly when he takes his seat. He's hurt and good.
Or at least, that's what she has to tell herself, scream it internally to smother the bond growing like a noxious weed behind her sternum, reaching toward him, demanding that she care. She stifles the compulsive worry for his condition. He doesn't deserve it.
Her stomach dips as the jet lifts into the air, bay door closing. Smiling, Loki takes a final glimpse of the havoc he's caused before leaning back in his seat. His gaze slides over to Jane, and his eyes on hers is a closed circuit, electricity zinging across the space between them. She pretends she doesn't feel it, glares at him in spite of her faltering pulse. Displeasure pulls his lips into a thin line, but he's no longer interested in her bravado. Instead, he's zeroed in on the thick black bands circling her wrists.
"Release her," he commands in a flat tone.
The man who hauled her aboard doesn't agree, though, as he dares to protest, "But—"
"She'll behave," Loki says with a confidence that grates on her.
"Why?" she shoots back as his man hurries to obey. She rubs at the angry red marks on her wrists. "Because we're soulmates?"
"No," Loki replies. "Because your cooperation ensures Doctor Selvig's safety." Somehow his dispassionate delivery makes the threat more reprehensible.
Eyes narrowed, Jane gives him her own cold warning: "You better not hurt him."
"Or what?" He grins as if she's nothing more than a little girl stamping her foot. "Do go on, dear Jane. Describe in illicit detail what violence you intend to mete out upon my person." He looks her over, tongue wetting his bottom lip. "You have my rapt attention."
Let me—
She turns away, mouth clamped shut. This is a depraved game to him, and she's not playing.
The jet lands minutes later, and the bay doors open to a city landscape. They're on a skyscraper in New York—a tall one, by the view. She scrambles to unbuckle her harness when Loki stands to exit.
"I want to see Erik," she says. When he cants a brow at her demand, she crosses her arms over her chest. "You want me to cooperate? I want proof that he's okay first."
Loki hums as though he likes the flavor of her boldness, and again, it's a clarion bell ringing through her body. He extends a hand toward her. "How can I deny my lady?"
She doesn't move, gives his slender fingers a glower instead. But the truth is she's afraid to touch him, afraid that it will somehow amplify the gnarled thing between them. She's more afraid that he'll force the issue—or try to. He's stolen minds, taken lives, plans to rain terror down on her world. What other malicious liberties would a demigod like that be willing to take?
With a soft laugh, he lets his hand drop to his side, and her lungs remember how to function.
He leads her to the pinnacle of the building, and looking down, she thinks she recognizes this place from some news segment she caught a few months ago: the newly minted Stark Tower. She'd find Loki's audacity hilarious if there wasn't a very real chance that he'll succeed.
At the top, Erik drags equipment across the graveled roof, assembling it together with deranged focus. It takes a moment before he notices his audience, and his face lights up when his gaze lands on her.
"Jane! He found you!" He almost trips as he rushes over to pull her into a bruising hug. Just as quickly, he steps back, gripping her by the shoulders. His unnatural cerulean eyes search her face, but he's looking through her rather than at her. "Can you see it? Did he awaken you?"
"Oh, yes," Loki answers with perverse amusement. "Doctor Foster is seeing everything in a whole new light."
"That's wonderful!" Erik exclaims. "You can help me complete the generator!" He enthusiastically returns to the device without a backward glance.
Tears of helpless anger brim in Jane's eyes. She'd known what happened to Erik, what Loki had done to him within minutes of his arrival, but witnessing it first hand—watching her friend and mentor aid in the demise of Earth with brainwashed glee—the breadth of this cruelty is staggering.
The devil behind it all glances at her. "Come. You've had your curiosity satisfied." He takes a step toward the ladder where one of his human automatons waits for them. When she doesn't immediately follow, he turns his head, profile cut in angles by the sunlight, and again she's reminded of how hazy the rest of the world seems in comparison to him. "Keep your promise, and I'll keep mine."
Jane looks back at Erik, stomach writhing as she leaves him behind—but not without a silent pledge that she will come back for him. Somehow.
Loki is quiet on the elevator ride to the residence, says nothing as he crosses the great room to the floor-to-ceiling windows—to the glass door leading out onto a circular terrace. His brief glance back at her is an unspoken command to join him. With his lackey shadowing her, she understands that this is not a battle worth fighting.
Outside, Manhattan is spread before them in a sea of glistering buildings. They're too far up to hear the day-to-day noise of the city, but she thinks of the faceless population, going about their routines wholly unaware that they are on the cusp of a ruthless alien invasion. The thought is overwhelming, and she turns away, glances up at the silver glint at the top of the high-rise. Maybe…maybe she can save them all by saving one.
"Let him go," she says to Loki. It's not a plea, not quite. "I'll take his place. I'll finish it for you."
Loki cocks his head. "Would you?" he asks, advancing on her in languid footfalls. "Would you submit as this"—he raises the scepter, gleaming tip mere centimeters from her chest—"digs its talons into your mind, claws out your will and fills the void with its own?" He gives her a brittle smile. "Don't be so hasty to offer up your neck when you don't understand the cost."
She shudders at the image he painted, but it's his white-knuckled grip on the staff, the wet glaze in his pale eyes that smothers her breath. The first drops of aching sympathy begin to gather around her heart and—no! He's done unspeakable things, even before his appearance on her world. The Destroyer he sent to Puente Antiguo. The attempt at genocide on Jotunheim, as told to her by Thor.
Thor.
"What did you do to Thor?"
The scepter drops, and Loki's gaze slips from hers, years falling away from his expression, leaving behind a haunted boy. "I let him go," he says in a quiet, hollow baritone.
Jane stares at him, and no matter how she shouts his iniquities in her mind, she can't see beyond his broken vulnerability to the villain he's played. White knuckles. Glassy eyes. Is he…is he under duress, too?
"You don't have to do this." She's pleading now. If there's a chance—a chance that the man she's chained to isn't a remorseless demon, a chance that she can somehow head off this disaster before it begins—she has to try. "Loki, you can stop this."
But these are the wrong words. He comes back to himself, shutters away the lost child behind a veneer of malice. "Why? So you can save me from myself?" he asks, bending forward so he's nearly nose to nose with her. "Will you cut me apart, bleed out all my darkness, stitch me back together as a tame, benevolent god?" He straightens to his full height, spreads his arms. "Ah, but I have already been reborn. Make no mistake, Jane Foster. You are not my redemption. I am your curse."
Each syllable is tinder for her ubiquitous rage, stoking it from a controlled flame to a violent bonfire, and she swings her fist at his jaw. Her bruised knuckles connect with a stinging crack. "You're nothing to me!"
He touches the rosy mark budding on his pallid skin, lips tipping up in the corners. "No, I am everything." Before she can let loose a cutting retort, he glances past her at his underling. "It's time to secure Doctor Foster elsewhere."
She crosses her arms, plants her feet as the nameless man approaches. "I'm not going anywhere."
Loki lifts her chin to draw her attention back to him, and his fingertip is a brand, searing an invisible, indelible print into her flesh. "Remember the stakes, darling," he murmurs.
Her heart stops when his eyes drop to her mouth. Because she doesn't think he's talking about her mentor anymore. That pernicious vine inside of her grows, stretches and twists from her chest outward. "I don't want this." The confession comes out as a strangled whisper.
Loki laughs and the sound is colorless. "Freedom has ever been an illusion. Your lot was cast from your first breath. As was mine." It's there again, a trace of something in his watery gaze, breaking at the fringe of his voice. But in the next blink, it's gone. "Take her."
Jane wants to fight. It feels so wrong not to, but his threat is an axe hanging over Erik. She'll let herself be guided from the terrace and locked up somewhere in the tower—though not before giving Loki a final, stabbing glare. He nods in return, impervious to her hostility, and then his gaze points heavenward.
The room she's sequestered in is meant for guests—visiting dignitaries, perhaps, or Tony's billionaire associates. It's made of sleek greys and steel, and she's irrationally offended by the monochromatic theme. As if it's a subliminal reminder of the life full of naive dreams and bright possibilities ripped from her moment she crossed paths with Loki. A reminder, too, of what she might lose if she manages to cleave their snarled connection.
A distant boom cuts into her scan of her decadent prison cell, and gelid anticipation clambers up into her chest as she crosses the large room to the tinted windows on the far side. She crowds against the cool glass, willing it to grant her a better view of the world outside. One breath passes, then another with no change in the afternoon cityscape, but she doesn't find relief in the fixed scenery. No, these are the ticking seconds before a neutron collides with plutonium.
And there it is. Something flung from the building, falling, falling, falling, chased by a glimmer of metal. The something becomes someone, shooting back up in a blur of red and gold. Iron Man. Tony Stark. Not long after, a swarm descends from the sky, mottled grey—no, grey-green—creatures in brass and tin armor flying in like locusts to raze everything. They come and come and come without end. Bursts of red and charcoal grey mushroom from nearby buildings, leaving craters in the cement and metal, and she's frozen by the unreality of it all, fingers listlessly sliding down, streaking the clear surface of the window.
The only reprieve from this relentless devastation is when lightning charges upward, wielded by a distant figure with a hammer. Thor is alive. But that's a thin consolation.
She watches until she can't stomach the relentless mayhem anymore, until large ships with serrated, snapping teeth swoop into the fray, destroying, consuming. Hatred roars in her ears, louder than the overlapping chorus of explosions. She is going to stop him. And then she's going to make him pay for every drop of blood spilt by him or on his behalf.
There's no way out of the room, though. The door is locked, guarded by not one but two of his puppets. She tries the closet, the bathroom, but she's met with immutable walls. For an absurd second, she considers trying to breach the windows with the heavy bedside lamp, but the panes are too thick—and she wouldn't know how to scale the sheer drop on the other side. With a shout of frustration, she slaps her palms against the impliable glass, then jumps back when it lights up.
But it's not a bomb or blaster fire that has come too close to the windows. It's some kind of computer interface winking to life over the glossy surface in rich color.
"Can I help you, Doctor Foster?" a crisp British voice says, and she whirls around in search of its source. She's alone, though.
"Who are you? How do you know my name?"
"I am JARVIS, Mr. Stark's automated aide. Part of my programming includes personnel files of his colleagues," the voice answers. "Your heart rate and respiration indicates distress. How may I be of assistance?"
Jane licks her lips. It's a long shot, but— "Can you get me out of here?"
There's a protracted pause, and then: "First, Mr. Stark would like me to ask if you've been compromised."
Dread sprouts anew in her middle. He can't know, can he? "Compromised?"
"His exact words were, 'Find out if Marilyn Manson used his evil wizard staff on her and turned her brain to mush.'"
Jane blows out a sigh, offering thanks to the universe for keeping her horrible secret a little while longer. "No," she says. "I haven't been compromised. In fact, if you can help me get to the roof, I think I can find a way to shut down the portal."
It's Tony who responds through the hidden speakers. "Good enough for me. JARVIS, she's all yours. I've got a party to get back to."
The display on the windows changes to a schematic of the residence floors. "In order to avoid Loki's men, I'm afraid you'll have to take an unconventional route," JARVIS explains as a yellow line traces a path through the blueprints.
She steps closer to the plans, narrows her eyes at the exit from her temporary cell. "Are those air ducts?"
"Unfortunately, yes," he—it?—replies. "I'll be able to track your movement."
"And Tony?" she asks. "Does this mean you're not helping him?" As anxious as she is to get to Erik, to undercut Loki's brutal rise to power, she remembers now that Tony's suit relies on an AI, and New York needs Iron Man more than she needs to escape.
"Although a significant portion of my central processing unit is dedicated to Mr. Stark's assistance, I am capable of being in two or more places at once."
She nods, glances at the vent in the corner. "I guess we better get to it."
The crawl through the ducts takes longer than she hoped for. As she inches on her belly through the maze of galvanized steel, she lists stars by classification, murmurs constellation names and their current position in the heavens. The first one hundred digits of pi. The atomic numbers of all the elements she can name. (But not the planets of the solar system.) She's not claustrophobic, but in the cramped, dark tunnels with only a disembodied voice to guide her, panic laps at the edge of her thoughts.
When she finally makes it to the end of the last duct, she's nearly undone by a vent cover. It won't budge at first, and in the confined space, she's stuck head first with only her hands to produce any kind of force. She swallows down a scream, afraid she'll be overheard, and using her toes to press her body forward, shoves with everything she has. With her fear of being too late. With her contempt for Loki. The cover gives way with a creak, and she shimmies out to the floor on the other side, guzzling the fresh air for a painfully short respite.
The next leg in her clandestine journey is a series of sprints, timed to avoid Loki's soldiers prowling nearby. Her heart pounds thickly as she darts from hiding place to hiding place. She doesn't breathe until she makes it to the stairwell and slips into its relative safety. JARVIS tells her that it's six stories to the roof access. She runs every step, ignores the burning in her lungs, the ache in her thighs.
"I'm afraid that we must part ways here," JARVIS says when, panting, she finally reaches the door. "My surveillance of the roof is limited."
"Thanks."
"Good luck, Doctor Foster."
She pushes open the door.
It's so loud out here. The sharp bang and echoing rumble of alien ships crashing into buildings. The zip and zing of energy weapons. The savagery around claws at her, turns the oxygen in her chest stale, and Jane is tempted to fold into herself, to cover her eyes like she did as a little girl when reality became an oppressive, suffocating weight. But she's not a little girl, and she has the power to end this.
(She hopes.)
She climbs the ladder to the final peak and discovers there are worse catastrophes than a fatal alien encounter and a madman bent on world domination. Erik is lying on the ground, face down and unmoving. No! She dashes to him, rolls him over. He can't be dead. Loki promised. He promised.
Did she really expect the God of Mischief to keep his word?
No, but she unconsciously believed that her soulmate would.
Erik stirs, and she lets out a wet sob. His eyes stutter open, and the inhuman bright blue in his irises fades away.
"Jane?" he asks, brows furrowing. He twists, crawls toward the edge to take in his surroundings. Horror blanches his face as he sees the decimation. "What have I done?"
She opens her mouth to reassure him that this wasn't his doing, to tell him that they need to shut down the generator, but an explosion booms nearby. A figure in black lands on the roof in a roll. Natasha. Jane only catches a glance of the other woman before a deafening bellow draws her attention below—just as the Hulk flings himself into the building. What is he doing?
Loki.
An unwanted filament of unease quivers inside of her.
"The scepter," Erik murmurs. "Loki's scepter."
Jane follows his gaze and sees it, shining on the terrace. Abandoned. But he would never leave it behind. Her unease magnifies into alarm.
"The energy," Erik goes on. "The Tesseract can't fight, but you can't fight against yourself."
Natasha replies, but it's lost to Jane. She hears something else, a distinct sound above the din of the invasion. Craters slammed into marble. Everything turns sideways, spinning, and she clutches at the ground to anchor herself. She glances at Erik, worried that the high-rise's foundation has been shaken, but he's unperturbed. He's explaining to Natasha that they can use the scepter to stop the generator.
It's not the building. It's him. It's the tether, urgently yanking at her.
She's down the ladder, racing toward the stairwell on another wave of adrenaline. Natasha is hot on her heels; she seems to think they have the same goal. They should. Jane wants an end to it all. But she knows that it must start with the puppet master plucking at the strings.
Natasha makes it to the scepter first, and Jane yells for her to get it back upstairs. She lets the other woman believe that she'll follow. She doesn't.
Her pulse strikes an erratic rhythm as she enters the great room. The floor is splintered, chunks of stone displaced, and Loki lies in a depression, wheezing softly. She shoves back at the obligatory compassion the bond is attempting to force on her. No, she will not have any sympathy for this devil. If only she'd been able to push that red button. She could have prevented the insanity that followed, the lives lost.
He has to be stopped. She has to stop him.
There's a knife in her hand, and she has only a vague notion of picking it up from the set on the wet bar. She grips it tighter as she walks over the man who exists solely to contaminate everything he touches. Alert, Loki watches every step she takes toward him, gaze trailing the blade. His handsome features are marred with dark bruises, with a cut across the bridge of his nose, another through his bottom lip. When she stops above him, his eyes meet hers and he angles his head, stretches his neck as a challenge—as an invitation. The taunt is fuel tossed on the inferno inside of her. She can do it. She will.
She drops to her knees, pushes the sharpened steel against his throat. He grunts when it nips at his skin, just enough to release a tiny bead of blood. Crimson. A color she's never seen before today but experienced enough of to last a lifetime. Both because of him.
Do it. Save the world from him.
Save yourself.
He stares at her, a smile ghosting across his mouth. Not in ridicule but in resignation—as if he had always expected it would come to this. As if he knows that he's a malignant tumor, one that has unlocked parts of her mind, given her a glimpse of a different way of existing but will kill her eventually. A cancerous thing that has to be excised. She tries to make her quaking hand finish the deed, tries to ignore the maelstrom of emotion—guilt, terror, longing—frothing in her stomach. Do it.
He reaches up, drags a thumb across her wet cheek. "Tell me," he says, his deep timbre hoarse.
"What?" Her question is barely more than air.
"Tell me what you've done to earn the ire of the Norns."
"Shut up," she whispers, but it's not a demand like she intends. It's an appeal.
He glances toward the trembling knife at his neck. "Make me." When he looks back at her, the curtain of megalomaniac parts briefly, and again, she catches a glimpse of the fragmented boy behind those onyx lashes.
She squeezes her eyes shut in a desperate attempt to unsee the fathomless pain in his gaze, to blot out the image conjured by her mind of a man who has been locked in a perpetual cycle of torment so long that he no longer begs for release. Stop, stop, stop! But it's too late. It was too late from the moment he set foot on the Helicarrier.
She can't do it. She can't.
With a dejected cry, she lets the knife fall to the floor with a clatter. Loki knots his fingers in her hair, pulls her down to him, and captures her misery with his lips. Thor's kiss was ash, but Loki's is a gamma-ray burst—an preternatural blossom of florid wavelengths overlapping one another, so bright that it scorches her from the inside out, burning away everything she thought she understood. About the cosmos. About herself. Replaced by something new. A primal metamorphosis, coded into her DNA from birth, needing only the catalyst.
Needing only him.
The bond isn't merely a physical thing, but deeper, visceral. Shards of a half-remembered life never lived—or a life not yet lived. It's belonging, home, even as turmoil wraps its spindly fingers around her heart and squeezes. As he sits up, chasing her mouth when she draws back, as he snakes an arm around her waist, crushing her against him in an attempt to make whole what the universe apparently sundered eons ago, she finally believes him.
She is cursed.
Because none of this changes who he is and what he's done. She's the one irrevocably altered, and she's frightened of the Jane who will emerge from the remaking.
Their vitiated communion is interrupted by a series of crashes outside. Ships and Chitauri alike drop from the sky, lifeless, and she scrambles upright, inches toward the window, chips of stone and broken glass crackling beneath her feet. The invasion is over. He lost. She laughs softly, basking in the victory even though she ultimately had no part in it. Loki staggers to her side, surveying his defeat with an oddly sedate reaction. No sneers or snarls. No threats. Only a fractional droop in his shoulders as if the thread of tension sewn there has finally been snipped. Only a wisp of a smile that appears almost like relief.
His gaze cuts to her, and he wordlessly offers her his hand.
Open the door.
Every atom that makes up her body, her mind, her soul—if such a thing exists—lurches to answer the silent request, but she doesn't move. She clings weakly to the disintegrating belief that she has any say in the matter. That she can still somehow stop his charred darkness from consuming her, stop him from resurrecting her in his image.
He raises his brows at her reluctance, makes a derisive noise. "Have you truly not understood our roles?" he asks. "I'm a scourge. I'm ruination, but you, dear one? You're the bit and bridle meant to rein this monster in."
He's telling the truth. He is a blight—septic, venomous. He needs to be restrained, rendered fangless. But he's lying as well. Because a monster isn't all that he is. Raw truth bleeds out from the fissures in his mask, though she can't discern the full size and shape of what lies hidden beneath. Can she coax it out, subvert the beast? What if—
What if he is the one to save in order to save them all? To save herself?
She takes his hand.
An illusion hides their hobbling trek to the roof, Loki's teeth clenching with each step as he leans on her for support. Natasha unknowingly passes them on the stairs, carrying the scepter as she descends, and his gaze follows it with an unreadable expression. Jane worries that he'll try to reach for the staff, but he turns back to the risers going up.
Erik is still on the roof, dismantling the machine that had allowed another universe to infest theirs. He starts when Loki releases his magic, backs away from the demigod in terror, his shoes scraping precariously close to the brink of a fatal drop. Jane darts forward to catch him by his shirt, to embrace him.
"Jane," her mentor whispers urgently. "You have to run, get away from him."
She chokes back a sob, blinks away a surge of tears, and confesses, "I can't." She doesn't expound further; he won't understand. She's not sure she does.
"It's time," Loki says, and she glances at him. The Tesseract balances on the fingertips of his right hand, frenetic energy dancing and twisting within the cube. A discarded case lies open at his feet.
Jane pulls out of Erik's fervent grasp, pained by the betrayal in her mentor's eyes as she joins the man who ruthlessly imprisoned his mind. "I'm sorry," she murmurs.
"W-what are you doing?" Erik stumbles forward, reaching for her.
Loki steps in front of her and ticks a finger. "I wouldn't if I were you." The warning has jagged teeth, ready to snap at the first provocation.
"Loki." She lays a hand on his bicep, and the gesture feels right—familiar. But then, this is her role. Rising up on her toes, she parrots his earlier words back to him: "Keep your promise, and I'll keep mine."
With a quiet, rasping laugh, he slants his head toward her. "Yes, darling." He drops his arm, wraps it around her middle, and tows her against his side. To Erik, he says, "I'm afraid we really must be going. Do send my regards to your Avengers. I'd apologize for the mess but"—he gives the carnage a flippant glance—"I don't actually care."
His large hand envelops Jane's, lifts it as he brings the Tesseract down to her level. She resists when she realizes that he intends for her to touch it. She can't. She won't. At best, the ethereal power has left others permanently incoherent. Institutionalized for life. At worst, they don't survive at all. Loki leans down, nose nudging the crown of her head as his breath stirs her hair.
"Promises, Jane."
Her palm kisses the smooth side of the cube and the world falls away into an eddy of vertiginous color, luminescent beyond anything she's ever witnessed before. Worlds, galaxies, universes swirl around her, born, expanding, dying. Born again. Billions—no, trillions of civilizations rise and fall. Over and over and over. And she knows every single one, every life from first wail to final exhale. The Tesseract brushes against her mind, a beguiling invitation to come and play. To create.
To destroy.
Loki is at the center of the onslaught, his flesh a fulgent, leathery azure, marked with raised patterns. It's his eyes that frighten her, though. They're lurid red. A hue she's coming to associate with death. He advances on her, exigent hunger pulling his mouth in a wide grin, and with each step, phantoms—each a different version of him—appear and fade away behind him like discordant echoes. When he speaks, their distant voices follow.
"Now do you see what I am?" he asks.
What am I?
Tell me!
Because I-I-I'm the monster that parents tell their children about at night?
Jane shrinks from him, but the Tesseract stalls her retreat, pushes back from the other side, begs to be let in. No. No. Her own echo shouts behind her, but the sound is hardly above a whisper.
You're nothing to me!
Loki cups her cheek with fingers so cold, they burn. He forces her gaze to his. "I shall make you my equal."
I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness.
I never wanted the throne! I only ever wanted to be your equal.
He tips forward, down, and breathes ice against her lips. "Stop defying fate."
It's too late. It's too late to stop it.
Open the door.
Open it.
And then, impatient, the polluted force of the Tesseract floods into her. Everything it showed her before cascading like a relentless, violent waterfall. Worlds, Galaxies, Civilizations. All inside of her now, infecting her cells like a virus, filling them to bursting. She opens her mouth to find air, to scream, and with his frozen tongue, Loki drinks the deluge from her lips until her drowning is complete.
As darkness creeps over her, she irrationally recalls that black is every color—absorbed. Devoured.
She wakes in a garden of striking greens, dramatic purples, lively pinks, and a dozen other colors she has no name for. Before her is an ancient tree, its trunk wider than she is tall. Glowing, gilded fruit hangs from its bowing limbs. Idun's Tree. Before she can ask herself how she knows it, the answer slithers underneath her skin: a part of the Tesseract left inside of her—a parasite feeding her knowledge so far beyond human imagination that it twists her mind. What is it taking in return?
A rustle draws her out of these unsettling thoughts, and she glances up to find Loki standing beneath a bough laden with apples. His skin is fair, eyes pale, and when he looks at her, it's a closed circuit again, only this time more. So much more. The tether that binds them seemed unassailable before, but it's become an invincible iron serpent. Living, breathing, winding them tighter together, and the Space Stone—the Tesseract's true name—is woven inextricably in its scales, delighting in the eternal connection between its two hosts.
Loki reaches up, curls long fingers around a large fruit, and yanks it from the tree. She stares at it as he crosses the lush grass to her, as he crouches down and casually holds it within reach. She understands the significance of this gift. He won't let her escape him through her mortality.
"You're not going to corrupt me," she says with steel in her voice, but she leaves the cogent word unformed on her tongue: further. He's taken too much already. The Tesseract will take more.
Loki is undaunted by her resolve, even smiles as though he likes it, but there is an unspoken "We shall see" in his brow. "What sort of goddess will you make, I wonder? I have dominion over mischief and lies. What will you rule over?" he says. "Perhaps compassion for your bleeding heart. And"—he tilts his head, his expression sobering with a heart-clenching intensity—"fidelity."
The weight of that word is beyond the loyalty she displayed toward her mentor, toward her world. Loki means unwavering fidelity to him. There's a nuance in his hooded gaze that hints of a need unfulfilled. A flash of the broken boy—whom she truly reached for in Stark Tower when she put her hand in Loki's. Who she hopes will keep her from eventually becoming someone unrecognizable to herself.
It's too late.
She takes the proffered apple and bites.
~FIN~
A/N: Thank you so much for reading! If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!