The harsh wind whipped at the black, dry dirt, carrying it up into the breeze in brief gusts. The ground crunched beneath Cassandra's feet as she knelt behind the rocks at the edge of the cliff a few feet ahead, mirroring Thor and Loki's position to her left. Jane was hunched between them, leaning toward Thor. Her eyes remained black even now—and it was uncomfortable to look at. Cassandra avoided Jane's gaze entirely as she looked to find Thor's. "What if this doesn't work?" she asked. "Do you have a backup plan?"

"It's going to work," Thor insisted.

Cassandra exhaled a sharp breath of mild frustration. "No offense, but this whole thing is riding on me, so I'm going to need a little more than that to believe it."

"Do your part and I'll do mine," he said, his own worries manifesting in the frustration of his response. He looked to Loki before asking, "Are you ready?"

Loki simply nodded in response, biting his tongue. A group of Dark Elves marched across the expanse of dirt toward the cliff from their ship, Malekith at the forefront. There was no doubt that they were following the Aether within Jane. The energy called out to them like a flame does a moth and they were determined to have it. "I could just kill them all right now," Cassandra mumbled beneath the wind. Anxiety crept up her back like an unwelcome bug, digging her fingers into the black dirt to disrupt the feeling. To counteract it. Though, it didn't work as well as she'd hoped.

"Yee of little faith," Loki turned only his head to look at her, his lips set into their usual smirk of confidence, and she felt the air drain from her body.

This could be the last time he ever looked at her like that. The last time he looked at her at all. If they were lucky, it would happen to both of them, and they wouldn't know what it was like to be without the other like that. But that was it, wasn't it? If they were lucky. If they'd proven worthy by the universe. At least, if it were him, Cassandra thought, she had an expiration date. She had ways of dying not so violently. There was still a way out.

It turned her stomach to think about it so strategically—though, what else could she do? She reached forward then, placing both palms on either side of his face, and she didn't need to do much pulling. He was already leaning toward her, falling into the sudden embrace with gracefully ease. Their lips met with a sweet desperation. There was no second, minute, hour long enough in all the realms to explain what was so easily said then.

"I love you," Cassandra said it aloud anyway, when they parted.

Loki's fingers encircled her wrist, thumb gliding gently over the exposed skin. "I love you."

The back of her throat burned. She tried so desperately to swallow it as he stood to join Thor at the edge of the cliff, to shake off the dreadful swirl of her stomach. The plan was not entirely foolproof but they wouldn't know to what extent until they tried. So, with a nod from Thor, Loki loosed a dagger from his sleeve. The blade sunk into Thor's torso with a hollow, wet sound, and his knees buckled.

Loki pulled the knife free before giving him a shove, sending Thor tumbling over the edge and down the hill. Bouncing along the slope of the hill in rolls that sent black dirt into the air where he touched the ground. Loki followed down the hill after him, and Jane's response was quite dramatic—gasping loudly and flailing her arms as she ran behind them both. But Cassandra stilled. Malekith didn't need to know she was there until absolutely necessary.

If they had anything on their side, it was the element of surprise. Act one was meant to drum up belief in betrayal. And Loki played the part beautifully. After all, he had to admit—at least to himself—that hurting Thor was a bit cathartic. There was an edge to his kick, Thor groaning as he rolled one final time in the dirt. Thor reached out his hand for Mjölnir as he looked to the distance wistfully and the elves continued to approach. Their guns were ready as they watched the spectacle.

However, they came to a halt as the hammer soared through the air toward the Asgardians. Then, in a shocking twist, Loki grabbed hold of Thor's outstretched arm and ran a knife through it. His hand dropped free from his wrist and Thor cried out, Jane running to him frantically—and Cassandra almost could've believed it. She held back an eye-roll at the theatrics while she watched from the hill. She could see it all as Loki slung an arm around Jane and hefted her up, away from Thor, and angled them both toward the elves.

"Malekith! I am Loki of Jotunheim, and I bring you a gift," he shoved Jane forward—all but throwing her into the dirt—and she landed near Malekith's feet. "I ask only one thing in return—a good seat from which to watch Asgard burn."

The Kursed elf beside Malekith turned his head to say something in their own language. Explaining to his leader where he'd found Loki during the siege on Asgard. It seemed to intrigue Malekith, and he didn't hesitate to take a step toward Jane. To him, she was an offering of goodwill between two outsiders with common goals. A means to an end. No more, no less. She was a vessel for the thing he prized, and Jane meant nothing to him as he stretched out his hand, calling to the Aether.

Jane lifted from the ground, her arms outstretching like a crucifix, and every muscle in Cassandra's body stiffened. The time was coming. She could feel the surge of energy swelling up within Jane, oozing from the deepest parts. It bled from Jane's orifices in a weightless, crimson stream that pooled in the air before her. The Aether was like liquid and air at the same time. It was not the solid energy that the Tesseract had been, and it only further added to Cassandra's doubts.

But there was no time to consider it, to truly weigh the risks. She told herself the same thing she'd told herself on the roof of Stark Tower, staring down the barrel of a loaded energy gun—it's necessary. The last of the Aether pouring out of Jane was the signal for her entrance. So, she inhaled a deep breath and disappeared into the lavender, allowing it to spit her out in the middle of it all, on the other side of Jane.

Her appearance was startling to the other elves. Malekith wasn't as affected by it as he would be, too preoccupied with the Aether, but Cassandra immediately reached out. Jane fell to the ground as the Aether touched Cassandra's palm with a searing heat she'd never felt before. Not even the hot lick of John's flame in the danger room elicited the kind of burning that began eating away at her skin. Still, she held onto the feeling, gripping the blade of the knife with clenched teeth.

It flooded her gut, turning her stomach on its head, and her chest tightened with a near-crippling ache. The Aether was still where it remained in the air, trapped between the call of two potential wielders. Loki restored Thor's hand, dispatching the illusion, and the god of thunder called to his hammer as he climbed to his feet. The elves charged.

Thor and Loki took opposite sides, reacting to the elves closest to them. However, Thor thrust Mjölnir in Malekith's direction as he charged the elves. The hammer's face hit Malekith's back at full force, pushing him aside into the dirt with its trajectory, before it curved on a path back toward Thor. Malekith quite literally knocked out of the metaphorical race, Cassandra felt the full brunt of the Aether. The heat chewed at her bones like a rush of lava coating her spine, and it spread through her limbs until there was nothing left untouched, threatening to cook her from the inside.

Her knees nearly buckled beneath the weight. She extended another hand and she could feel it at the base of her skull. The liquid-esque energy slithered toward her in the air as she called to it. Though, as it neared, purple tinged its front edges, coating her fingers with a hissing and popping lavender electricity. The Aether had no intention of letting her destroy it, and she could feel it. It was going to fight her at every angle, every second.

Cassandra's legs trembled as she pressed it, the skin of her hands tinging a soft pink beneath the lavender. It came to her then in the flash of an image before her eyes—the memory of that day on the tower. She hadn't been alone. Logan had volunteered himself as a kind of rechargeable battery and, without his help, she would not have had the energy within herself to close the portal. The thought sent her eyes darting out in every direction, looking for the state of the others.

The Kursed elf had targeted Thor, throwing the god around like a ragdoll. He lifted a mass of rock three times his own size to hurl at Thor and he did so without struggle. The other elves Thor had been fighting were dead on the ground. Loki, however, was dragging the blade of a dagger over an elf's throat. It was the last, by the look of it. "Loki!" Cassandra called out, arms trembling from her wrists to her shoulders.

Her voice turned his head almost immediately. His eyes were quick to find her, and the sight forced his heart into his throat. Loki turned on his heel and hurried toward her where she struggled with the Aether. "What do you need?" he asked her.

"I-I need a boost," she forced the words through her teeth. "It's too strong."

Without hesitation, he stepped forward. Loki moved to stand at her right side, sidling near enough to carefully place his hands on her shoulders, and it was like touching an exposed wire. The shock was sudden and his instinct was to let go—but he forced himself to stay still as the electricity poured into his arms as though they were conductors. And, in a way, they were. Immediately, Cassandra could feel a rush of cold, an ounce of relief to her muscles.

Again, the energy she felt was unlike any she'd felt before, an odd swirl of things she could almost feel against her fingertips. The purple-pink energy pushing against the crimson Aether flared a deeper hue. It crawled over an inch of space, darkening the energy in the cloud. In the distance, Thor was thrown into the cliffside. The force shook the earth beneath their feet, vibration echoing all the way to Loki and Cassandra's position, and Loki spared a glance in that direction.

Cuts littered Thor's face and he struggled to hold himself up against the dirt, on his knees in a heap of rock rubble. He was acting as the perfect distraction—but at what cost? How much longer could he withstand the hits? Would the Kursed elf become bored? Pick up on the trick? A sharp pain rocketed through Loki's body, startling his focus back to the task at hand with a jolt.

Cassandra's eyes screwed shut, curling her fingers against the wishes of her strained muscles to centralize the combined energy within her palms. Energy erupted from them in a steady beam that struck the cloudlike Aether. This was how it started, Loki remembered. There wasn't a lot that he remembered from that day quite like the defeat of the Tesseract. His hands were buzzing, an ever-present ache causing him to clench his jaw.

The heat had reached Cassandra's skull. She felt it stretching its fingers out from the base, slithering over the bone, before clamping down from all sides. Her head tilted quickly in a sudden but brief movement as though someone had pushed her, and she hissed. It's in there, kid. Logan's voice echoed from somewhere deep into the shadowed corner of her mind. Find it. Yes, it was in there. It had always been there.

But the instinct to push it down was so incredibly strong. It was like telling someone with a compulsion disorder to relax and expecting it to help. Still, she dug her heels in, buckling down despite the strong urge to simply let go and walk away. Then, she felt it—another energy. It surged through her in a jolt and, however brief, forced its way up her body. The energy combined thrust out of her like a final breath, the force a kick to the stomach.

Her eyes erupted with a fiery purple hue, forced open by the rush. The lavender swallowed the Aether whole like a snake. And in the same seconds that the energy surged, it depleted just as fast—but the damage was done. Strength returned to her muscles and the pain all but ceased. There was no earth, there was no sky, there was no wind lapping at her face like the tide. Nothing existed but the swirl of purple guided by every move of her fingers. It was almost hypnotic, the way it swayed. Was this what being drunk on power felt like?

However, the world around her was beginning to crumble. Thor struggled to push against the dirt, his lower half all but given up as he watched the scene before him in utter horror. The Kursed elf threw Loki into the ground and his body almost skipped like a stone. A blip of hope flushed through Thor as a second Loki appeared behind the large elf, a mirror image. The second one took the Kursed's large sword from its belt and drove it through the elf's back as the first disappeared.

Relief and joy mixed in an exhale and Thor almost smiled. But then his lips began to curve down, weak legs pushing and kicking at the ground to stand, to get up—to do something. The Aether parted as Cassandra drew her hands apart, drawing close enough she could almost touch it. Electricity popped and zizzled its way up and down her arms, sparks bouncing off her as she turned around. It was then that the Kursed elf gripped Loki by his shoulders and pulled him close in a quick tug.

Their chests nearly met as the sword lodged in the Kursed elf's torso also cut through Loki's, and Thor cried out a bellow, "No!"

Pain rippled through his body in white hot waves, almost so hot Loki couldn't feel anything at all. As though the nerves had become overloaded and decided they'd felt enough. They'd been damaged enough. The Kursed elf shoved him away and he felt it all again. His body fell to the ground, pulled with a force by gravity, and a third wave washed over him.

The lavender flickered. Her blue irises almost won as a brick formed in her gut, the heat lingering under her skin, threatening to take back control. Cassandra blinked. It was all she could do for a moment. She stared like a doe faced with the brightest headlights of her life and her knees were starting to buckle. It balled up at the back of her throat with an aching burn—a scream. The heat flared in her chest and it swirled with the sinking emptiness, the lung-clenching pressure, and she thrusted her hands forward.

Purple and red devoured the Kursed elf's frame like rust being eaten away and the creature howled and screamed as it melted in front of her, but she didn't stop. Not until he was a pile of ashes amongst the loose dirt on the ground. Instinctively, she turned around to face Malekith, standing now as he watched in horror. His features had only a second to contort before they were eaten away, too. The thing he'd worshiped come to maul him like a lion caged.

"Cassandra!"

Thor's voice called out to her, drowning in the rage that burned her ears. She turned to look at him once Malekith was gone. He stood now, though haphazardly, and he drunkenly stumbled toward her against the wind. "Destroy it!" he told her. "There are no enemies left. Let it go before it consumes you, too!"

There was an urge deep within her chest to ignore him. The Aether whispered to her from over her shoulder, begging her to hold on, to let it in. But she didn't want to be angry anymore. It was despair that knocked on her door now, an anxious sadness that lived in the center of her bones. She couldn't keep the Aether and help Loki. So, she drew the energy together in a single cluster before her and began to squeeze.

The last of her own energy was all she could give it. It burned and contorted and constricted—and finally, erupted. The Aether burst into dust-like particles of red that fell on the dark earth like rain. With it, Cassandra's energy was gone. Her knees buckled, eyes flushing to reveal their natural state, and her palms met the dirt as she collapsed. Every muscle trembled violently. Her head swirled, vision blurring at the edges. She fell to her elbows, unable to keep her own weight on her hands, and an overwhelming nausea set into her gut.

It truly felt as though she were going to wretch. The only question was when. Still, she turned her head to look, eyes desperately trying to focus as they searched for him. For any sign he was still alive. Loki was still breathing, though every breath felt like it required every muscle in his body, his hands splayed over the wound in his abdomen as he fought the urge to writhe. Thor finally reached them, approaching with a slanted gate. Cassandra lifted a hand to wave him away, gesturing toward Loki instead.

"Help him," she said, before Thor could even attempt to approach her.

Jane's eyes fluttered open. She'd been laying face down in the dirt for several minutes but it felt like a single second. Despite an overall ache, she was nearly in perfect health, returned to the state she held before the Aether took home within her. There was a moment of disorientation as her gaze lifted to see the bleak and dark atmosphere surrounding her. Then, it all flooded in, and she jolted against the dirt. Jane scrambled to her feet, fighting the fabric of her dress for sure footing.

Dead elves lay around her. It was a jarring sight, but a relief nonetheless. Then, she took in the sight of the others as she turned to face them all. Thor was beside Loki, injured on the ground, with visible injuries of his own. Cassandra was swaying ever so slightly in her position, clawing at the ground to wriggle toward them like some kind of drunken worm. Jane rushed forward and slung her arms under Cassandra's shoulders. She didn't stop when Cassandra audibly grimaced, muttering an apology under her breath as she struggled to drag her over the dirt.

As they got closer, Loki's injury became more visible, and Jane gasped. "What happened?" she asked, to anyone listening. Cassandra pulled free from her grasp once close enough, falling back to the ground to crawl to Loki's left side.

Her hand slid over Loki's, still clutching at the hole in his abdomen, as she propped herself up to see his face. There was no pain in his eyes. Only emptiness. Cassandra's features sank with the thudding of her heart, crashing through the levels of ribcage and stomach before splattering against the ground floor of her heels. "Loki? Hey, I'm here. You're gonna be okay," she assured him, despite the shake of her voice. "You're- we're going to get you help, okay? Just hang on."

Warmth touched her arm and she glanced down to find a smattering of droplets. Was she crying? When did it start? When she lifted her head, Loki was looking at her, a bit of consciousness to those empty eyes. There was urgency in them. So much that needed to be said. Then again, 'forever' never seemed to truly encompass its own meaning, anyway. "I'm sorry," the words made it past his lips, his features stiff. The skin visible from the neckline up was graying, bleeding into a lifeless blue color, and he stilled.

"No. No, Loki, don't do this."

His eyelids fell closed as the muscles once tensed hard enough to shake relaxed. Something in Cassandra's chest snapped. She pushed against the dirt to perch on her knees, the sudden rise bringing a doubling to her vision, but her hands rushed to his face. "Loki, please," she pleaded with him, palms against the frigid skin of his cheeks, the dark webbing texture of the gray blurring in a mixture of tears and dizziness. "Please."

Thor swallowed in an attempt to ease the burning in his own throat, but it did nothing. How could it? He reached out a hand toward her. "Cassandra-"

But she swatted him away in a fit of rage, a brief outburst of anger dampened by sadness. It was a kind of despair she'd never felt before. It drilled into her chest bone with merciless speed, carving a hole so large you could almost see right through her, and there was nothing left but anger to fester in the emptiness like a mold amidst the ache of her bones. Still, she cried. She cried so hard her lungs seized, and she gasped her air as her fingers gripped the leather on Loki's still chest, her eyelids screwed shut tight enough to burst the balls behind them.

This was not better. This was so incredibly worse. It should've been me, she thought, the phrase rattling around her mind in a chorus of echoes. The energy should've been too much and she should've died a second time. That's what was supposed to happen. How could she accept this? How could she ever leave this spot?

Thor's shoulders shuddered as they relaxed. He sat back on the black dirt and averted his eyes. He would cover his ears if he could will himself to move, but there was something inside him that said he deserved this. Deserved this pain. Deserved to sit in his guilt as he watched the horror before him, the brother he'd spent so long bullying and disliking lying dead. He deserved to feel all of his regrets atop his head like hot coals until they burned through what remained of him.

There wasn't much that Jane could do. She felt utterly helpless as she looked at both of them, these people she cared about. All she could do was place her hand on Thor's shoulder to remind him she was there, she was with him. To silently offer any comfort she could possibly give. There was no comforting Cassandra, she knew. If she tried, she may end up dead, too. No, there was nothing else to do for her but watch her suffer. A loud cry escaped Cassandra in a blind surge of sorrow, and Jane's muscles jolted, the broken sound cutting through the wind so easily.

It should've been me. Cassandra's forehead fell into the center of Loki's chest and her lungs burned. She wondered, then, if this was what he felt when he saw her on the roof, lying dead in Logan's arms, however brief. Or, perhaps, he didn't feel it quite like this because he knew he could fix it? He could compel such a simple and frail thing as the human heart to mend and to beat. What was there to fear? What was there to mourn? It was then that she sat upright.

There were so many conversations during his visits to Earth, but a few came back to her then, and they shuddered an icicle of hope down the length of her spine. Being what he'd called a Frost Giant, there were many things he could do that might be called superhuman—and an increased rate of healing just might be one of them. It wasn't near the rate at which someone like Logan could heal, but it was fast enough that she wondered if more energy, more strength to his heart, might help it along.

Thor watched with concern as her features fell flat, slack as she slipped into a state of thought. "Cassandra?" he called to her in an effort to reassure himself.

"I can fix it," she muttered, her voice a mess of tones and volumes spluttered together. Her eyes lifted to find Thor's face. "I can restart his heart. Give him enough energy to heal."

"You're so weak already," Jane gently pointed out.

Cassandra's features remained flat. "Then I'll die."

"Do you have anything left to give?" Thor questioned, honestly. "What good will it do for you to die and he live? That's no different than now."

"I want to die. If I don't try this, I'm going home and I'm killing myself. I'm not living past today. Let me try this."

Something sharp slithered through Thor's chest, and he grimaced. He knew she could live a long life after this. If anyone could recover from this horror, it was her. But she didn't want to. Why would she? Her whole heart had just been torn from her chest and burned to ash. So, he gave a single nod, unable to put the approval into words, and Jane surged with panic. "What? No, we can't just let her kill herself right in front of us," she spoke up quickly, tongue tripping over itself to get the words out.

Though, Cassandra wasn't listening. She was lifting a trembling hand and moving it to the center of Loki's chest and breathing deep. As she exhaled, the energy surged through her like the kind that ruptures a bulb. It burned her palm with a searing white heat, a knife slashing at the skin. Her vision flooded an iridescent purple that coated everything in front of her with thick color.

Then, black.