A/N: I own nothing.


Day 260

The Sanctuary

He could hear her breathing. He refused to acknowledge her, but over the cries and moans in the background—the constant accompaniment to his days—he could hear Jane inhaling and exhaling. She should not be here; he had told her to leave. But Jane Foster very rarely listened to him.

"Thank you," she had said instead.

That woman.

Loki considered that he'd suffered his share—perhaps more than his share—of injustices and misfortunes. His so-called family had lied to him daily for centuries about his very species. He had been thrown out of the only home he'd ever known. A maniac bent on conquering the universe had stripped much of his power. He was continually tortured, violated, forced to wear this alien form.

And yet, Jane Foster was the most distressing problem in his life.

She had been a problem since she'd inexplicably rendered Thor a gelding. Loki had simply observed her working to harness the power of the Tesseract (when he had arrived in her laboratory with the intention of murdering her, but she didn't know that and it was immaterial here) and had decided to employ her skills when he conquered her planet. That was the extent of their association. Suddenly, Jane was appearing in his dreams and he in hers. She made all manner of deranged claims—of rune bonds, of a child—which he consistently, categorically denied.

And the constant throbbing in his head disappeared when he was near her. That he couldn't deny.

He hadn't a single idea how or why—distressing, indeed. He detested the not-knowing. Nothing about this—this farce made sense. Why couldn't he rid himself of her? It was as though he had been given a riddle to solve with a crucial phrase omitted. He had worn himself out, his thoughts swinging from one extreme to another, but he couldn't leave it alone.

Jane didn't know her place. She didn't respect his status as her superior, didn't defer or acquiesce. She pushed and prodded at him—recklessly grilling him, baiting him. Just now he had caught her staring at this grotesque body. Again.

He was a prince, a god, reduced to being a lab specimen for a Midgardian alchemist. And the insult added to injury? He was growing accustomed to it. He waited for the fury to boil up into caustic words to spew at Jane. Again.

Some specimen of vermin squeaked on the other side of the cave-like room. In the corner, water dripped from the ceiling onto the stone floor. Jane shifted her shoulders against the rough wall and sighed.

The outrage cooled. What had he to gain by abusing Jane? Again.

Past diatribes paraded through his memory, verbal knives he had conjured and thrown...Thor's weak-minded mortal...pathetic, homely, barely literate...You leave a lot to be desired...The attacks never gained him an advantage. They hadn't broken her, hadn't caused her to fall in submission at his feet.

Oh, she wasn't immune to his insults. She had lost her temper with him a number of times. (For being so superior, you're being pretty stupid...you're a prick...) She had stayed away from him. But the madness in his head and the pain in his chest would crescendo until he stormed back to her, helpless, humiliated, and enraged, for she was his only refuge.

Simply sitting near her—even in a dream state—cleared his mind and soothed his aching head and torn body. Her hands on his bare skin short-circuited his brain with relief. She was like a drug, more powerful than any Eir had ever dispensed. It incensed him to be so affected by a woman. A mortal woman.

Jane whimpered. Reflexively, he turned to her. She clutched her belly, eyes squeezed tight, forehead tense and frowning. Loki's muscles clenched in response, brow creased. His hand involuntarily reached towards her, hovering, uncertain. A few heartbeats later, Jane's face smoothed and her body relaxed.

Loki's frown deepened. Why was he leaping to Jane's assistance? He was well aware of her theory. According to Jane Foster, Loki Odinson had chosen to take her as his mate. Unthinkable. And not in some simple handfasting ceremony. No, it was an eternally binding runic ritual. Utter nonsense. And then—and this was the really special bit—the whole matter had slipped his mind. Laughable.

No. Obviously someone else had done this to him. And had done it to Jane, as well. It was apparent she had been deceived in some way. She didn't understand the significance of a ritual runic bond, for example. One does not simply forget about sealing yourself to another person for all time. In any case, she could not have orchestrated this appearing-in-dreams-making-the-pain-vanish, not alone, at least. Midgardians had no native ability to use magic.

Of course, he mused, if he had done something as deranged as making Thor's pet his mate, it would be a mercy to forget. To what depths would he have to sink to join himself to a Midgardian? And how would it serve him to bond himself to Jane Foster?

Loki drew his knees up and rested his forearms on them. How would it benefit him to be joined with Jane? He had never truly considered the question. The idea had seemed so outlandish, so offensive, that he'd rejected it out of hand. But unless he could convince Jane of the impossibility of their union, she would not help him discover who had cursed both of them. To convince her, he would need to arm himself with iron-clad arguments.

To that end, he tried to marshal his thoughts, to calmly and logically comb through what he knew of Jane, to build an argument. What benefit could Jane Foster bring him as his consort? His ragged mind, however, careered erratically back and forth.

His mate should be skilled at inter-realm diplomacy and have a working knowledge of the strategies of war. Jane knew nothing of these.

On the other hand, she was quite adept at handling him. Even when he was in his Jotun form, she wasn't intimidated by him, and she was rarely at a loss for words.

He was a mage of the highest order. She didn't even believe in magic. And besides magic, Midgardian development was embarrassingly behind that of other realms. Jane was ignorant of nearly all the technological advances used on Asgard.

Science seemed to have served her well. She understood the Tesseract better than he. And she did have a fairly capable mind, limited as she was by her human condition. If she were his bonded mate, he would secure the services of her intellect, or at least prevent her from aiding his enemies and working against him.

He had lived for centuries already and would live for millennia yet, learning and gathering experience. Hers was a short-lived and fragile race.

Jane had demonstrated that she could learn quickly. And perhaps there was a way to extend her lifespan. He could show her new skies, new constellations that she'd never even dreamed of. What, he wondered, would she make of that? What unthought-of theories would Jane conceive and then prove? How could he use that to his benefit?

His consort must know how royal etiquette and proper comportment. Jane was woefully lacking in manners, royal or otherwise.

On a baser level, Jane Foster could help him damage Thor the way he'd been damaged. For reasons Loki couldn't quite grasp, Thor wanted Jane. And if he possessed Jane, then Thor could not.

He smiled, then scowled. The thought of Thor brought to the forefront one of the least-understandable parts of this whole dreadful mess. Thor wanted Jane. The last that Loki had known, Jane wanted Thor as well. Yet, she claimed that she and Loki had enacted a ritual rune bond. She had never said why she supposedly agreed to the bond. What could have possibly caused her to abandon Thor and choose him? Maybe he should ask her. What would she say to that?

Why would Jane want to tie herself to him? It certainly wasn't rational. There was no clear benefit to being his mate for her. He wasn't the oldest son, wasn't the favored son—wasn't, as it turned out, a son at all. She knew him only as Thor's murderous brother—the one who lied to him about their father's death, who told him Frigga had rejected him, who attempted to kill him (and would have done so if not for that blasted hammer). Not an incentive for tender feelings.

It could be amusing, though, to ask Jane to explain what had attracted her to him. She had made that "bad boy that drives girls wild" comment. He would ask her to elaborate on that. Watching Jane squirm would cheer him up. Because what was she going to say? That she had actually preferred his slighter build over Thor's broadly muscled frame? That she likes her men pale and dark? That long black hair just made her heart flutter?

It didn't matter. No woman—not a single one, not ever, not in any Realm—who had tasted Thor's lips had ever given Loki a second look. It was a universally accepted fact. Which is why he was offended that someone thought he might fall for this poorly designed and executed deception.

And what was supposed to have attracted him to her? Loki considered the lovely princesses who'd been paraded before him most of his life. It was an unspoken, yet unmistakable expectation that his wife would be a grand beauty.

He risked a sideways look at Jane. Her head rested on the filthy wall; her eyes were still closed. Emboldened, Loki shifted to study her more fully. Wayward strands of artificially copper hair stuck up in patches around her head. Dark circles shadowed her eyes and smudges of dried blood (his blood?) contoured her cheeks. He snorted. Jane looked like the losing rooster in a cockfight. That brassy red shade did not flatter her complexion. And why had she hacked her hair off? She paled in comparison to the vivid, voluptuous goddesses of beauty he was accustomed to.

Then again, most of those goddesses weren't known for their dazzling wit. If one was to be attached to another person for the rest of one's life, it might be mildly interesting to chat about more than the latest fashions on Vanaheim or the most efficient way to kill a bilgesnipe.

To be fair (he felt quite generous), it was possible that the stress of her current circumstances was taking a toll. Her natural hair color and previous long length suited her far better. Loki recalled one particular dream set in his chamber on Asgard in which he had stared Jane down until she buckled and spoke with him. While he waited, he had studied the play of the firelight on her burnished walnut waves.

And in her laboratory, completing an important equation, or under the night sky, watching meteors, she came to life in a way that was wholly unexpected. He remembered her rosy cheeks, whiskey eyes, ruby lips. Even now, surrounded by squalor, exhaustion draining the color from her, she still had those delicate cheekbones, the large lash-fringed eyes, the smooth skin, her graceful neck...

The dripping water hammered his mind.

No. No, that theory of Jane's was patently ridiculous. He slammed his eyes shut.