20. Confession

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Jane's brain was in triple overdrive.

She was utterly consumed by her work in a way she hadn't been since right after Thor's departure. Her hands couldn't move fast enough to keep up with her thoughts and her computers took too long to spit out results, so she used three at once, staggering equations so the data kept coming. She left dozens of tasks half-finished everywhere she went, leaping from one thing to another any time physical necessity threatened to slow her down. Sleeping and eating were inconveniences she probably wouldn't have bothered with if she were on her own.

Fortunately, for that reason among others, she wasn't. Luke trailed after her cleaning up her creative carnage, redrafting her woefully inadequate blueprints and covering all of her notes and plans with corrective marginalia. He had the innate visual-spatial skills of an artist, the precision of an architect, and always understood what her plans had intended to convey no matter how poorly she expressed it. He couldn't always follow the actual math in her notes, but he appreciated the processes she was exploring and could tell her when she was barking up the wrong tree. Erik also followed along in her footsteps and checked over the electrical dangers sometimes posed by her many technical kludges, dismantling and rewiring when the threat of a fire hazard or blown computers became imminent.

Erik still did not see how what they were doing was possible, and he had become borderline shifty when Jane tried to talk to him about it. There were days he seemed at the end of his patience, but he still wanted to help, he said, just in case he was wrong. Luke was steadfastly pretending nothing awkward had happened he that was aware of, just as Jane had hoped he would. Failing to follow a good lead, Erik pulled her aside the morning after the interrupted kiss incident wanting to have A Talk. He'd waited until Luke was in the shower and out of earshot, then he'd extracted a promise from Jane that she would try her very best to pay attention.

The promise was not sufficient motivation for her to stop trouble-shooting some software she was tweaking, but she felt she could multi-task.

"We still don't know who he is, what he wants, any of it," Erik insisted, his expression pleading. "I know it's your life Jane, but this is bigger than what you want. This is bigger than just your life. The technology we're developing- it needs to stay in the right hands."

"I may be just a crackpot in the desert, but my hands are fine. Everything was discovered by someone, every giant leap forward has been dangerous," she complained haltingly as she searched for an elusive bug. He was turning into a Luddite. "My first duty is to knowledge, we can't back away from this because it's scary. We're scientists, this is what we do. I can't bury this or lie about it because someone might misuse it. That's how societies get backward, and it's basically playing God."

He held up his hand, nodding and shushing, "That's not what I'm suggesting. We should go to SHIELD-"

Jane's eyes went wide, and she finally glanced away from the computer to meet his pleading gaze, opening her mouth to protest.

"You don't trust them, I know- neither do I, but they are better equipped than us to handle this, Jane. If something goes wrong, we're not equipped at all." He rubbed a hand over his hair, looking tired and unhappy, "I don't like handing them the keys to the kingdom any more than you do, but I think we need them."

"I have them as a safety net, they are nominally the lead investors in my research and unofficially my backup. I don't need to be on their turf, on a leash, getting everything taken away from me as soon as it's worth anything. If I was willing to put up with that, I would be there already." She found what she was pretty sure was the problem area she'd been hunting for the past hour and gritted her teeth as she tried to figure out how to fix it. "If it weren't for Thor, I don't think I would have had a choice."

"But we know what SHIELD wants, we know they aren't going to steal your work and use it for war or-"

"Do we know that?" Jane deleted some lines of code and racked her brain for programming basics she'd neglected of late. There was no guarantee she wouldn't make it worse.

She heard Erik sigh heavily. "All right, no, we don't. But SHIELD at least answers to the government, and they are a better option than a stranger who carries around materials unknown to science and won't explain anything about himself."

"And here I thought you were warming up to him."

"I was, and that's the problem," he insisted, bothered she didn't see it that way. "Why are we letting our guard down? You're bringing him further and further into your work and your life, and you know no more about him than you ever did. You never even told me his last name."

Jane paused in her typing, struck. "Oh God, I don't really remember. I googled him after he left that first day, but... Maybe Woden-something?" Her eye caught on an undeclared function and she gleefully set about fixing it. When she looked up, Erik was gone.

He'd been even more hard to get along with after that, sometimes disappearing for hours at a time, but he seemed determined to stay in the game nonetheless. It wasn't an ideal situation, not having a solid team, but Jane couldn't spare the time or the energy to try to improve it and she was so preoccupied that she barely noticed anyway. Her working situations had rarely been ideal, and this one was probably the best she'd ever had.

She did eventually notice that it seemed like Luke was always at her side, whispering incitement and direction in her ear. Though he did vanish periodically between hovering over her and cleaning up her intellectual loose ends, it was rare that he was not there when she looked up from her work. His voice was a constant soothing hum of encouragement and what she was fond of calling his 'poetic-science', tantalising stanzas on star-walking and willpower and consciousness. Occasionally the thrum of that lovely baritone reminded her that she had emotions other than razor focus and frenzied excitement and she regretted not engaging him when he made little attempts to play games with her.

It took her a while, but she saw that that was what he was doing. Like a wolfhound with a ball, he'd saunter up and drop some harmless but mildly inflammatory comment at her feet, then wait with predatory eyes to see if she would throw it back at him. He wanted her to take the bait. She wasn't sure if that was his way of letting off steam or amusing himself or what, but if it was, it seemed like a vaguely unhealthy life strategy. Though she didn't think it had to be, it had real potential for ugliness. She was reminded of a great aunt who made subtle prods at family dinners until everyone was fighting with everyone except her. Then she sat back and watched.

That was something she hadn't seen him do, though she could imagine it of him. His serves to her were all about provoking her into a completely insincere argument where they could trade escalating sarcasm without any malicious intent. Jane suspected that competitive exponential wordplay might be his favourite pastime. The better his mood, the less she could get away with imprecise statements or unintended connotations. When he was bored (maybe lonely?), he picked fights.

She sometimes returned to the land of living long enough to wonder these things (did he just want her attention?), and recall that he was amazing and beautiful as well as capricious. Jane found herself sometimes lost in his mind, in his gorgeous capacity for understanding, and it stilled her racing thoughts. A flooding tenderness would well up in her chest until she could barely stand it, until she found herself obsessed with some small detail of his, like the shell of his ear or the straight slope of his nose. He was becoming more receptive when she expressed her feelings on those matters, when she just had to caress his cheekbone or press a chaste kiss to his chin. He no longer questioned or rebuked her constant desire to touch him in small ways when she talked with her hands, instead accepting her casual affection like he might accept being trusted by a wild animal he was studying. Cautiously, as if any sudden movements would scare her off.

He tolerated the way she liked to straighten his (always already immaculate) clothes and mess up his (usually already tousled) hair, the impulsive hugs she gave him when her code compiled, and being pressed into service around the lab as a human step ladder, but he never initiated any form of contact. Though he had very much seemed to tacitly enjoy any and all touch which she gave him, she was the one in control. He only followed her lead.

It would have been one of the most wonderful, fulfilling times in her life if Jane were not so frantic with anticipation, her concentration chaotically dedicated to any one of the thousands of things she had to get ready. She would have worried that she was becoming clinically manic if she had time for that sort of thing.

Four days since the semi-mutual promise that the bridge would be completed and testable in a week, Jane's thoughts turned suddenly to Thor. Thor the person as well as what he represented. The person who had been arrogant and oblivious and socially impaired, but who had also adapted to difficult circumstances at break-neck speed and shown pure spirited kindness and tremendous willingness to concede when he had been wrong. Thor who had had such a profound effect on her life. The gnawing unknown about what exactly had happened to him rose again to prominence in her mind.

They had been forced to assume that everything had gone well when he went through the wormhole. It seemed reasonable based on the inconclusive evidence available to them, and the fact that the alternative was unbearably depressing. But the time was drawing near when she might find out otherwise. Her decision to proceed as if things were good may have been the wrong one. Or maybe things were great on his end and he just couldn't be bothered to contact them, which would be less awful and still upsetting.

Of what to expect if she saw him again, she had no inkling. The state of his world and of intergalactic politics was a total unknown, even whether Thor's word that he would protect the earth meant anything about the intentions of the rest of his people. There was also the niggling detail that she'd practically mauled him right before he left. What had he thought that meant? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but she was dealing with an alien culture which appeared pretty archaic in terms of societal construction. Who the hell knew what Thor thought their relationship was?

She felt guilty even worrying about it, since Earth could be in deadly peril if Thor had failed to put right whatever it was that went wrong. She was putting the planet in potential danger and thinking more about possible social awkwardness than about the very real threat posed. Awesome job, Jane. Priorities on point, as usual.

She rolled over in bed, kicking at the wall of her trailer to ground herself in the present, and again tried telling herself to just go to sleep. She only ever thought about all these worst case scenario doubts and terrors when she was trying desperately not to think about work long enough to relax. The attempt to clear her mind just set her off again and she was already reaching for the bed side lamp and her notebook when she caught herself.

Sleep, Jane. You'll be no good to science if your brain starts leaking out your ears.

Hoping to lull herself into a pleasant stupor, she thought about how earlier that day she had suddenly awoken from the concentration of crunching numbers to find Luke holding her hand while he sat beside her making notes on an experimental brief she'd written.

Sensing her gaze, he'd glanced up and smiled at her, squeezing her fingers in acknowledgement and thus stirring a cosy feeling in her chest. She'd leaned over to kiss the corner of his mouth and ruffle his hair so it would curl. Then he'd deliberately ruined the moment by saying something facetious about only holding her hand to stop her from compulsively tapping her fingers while she thought, and she'd mimed smacking him on the shoulder.

The memory worked for a second, distracting her and giving her a dreamy smile. Then she wondered when their tentative connection would grow into something more substantial, whether she could have a real future together with Luke, and the thought was pretty much the death knell of her getting a good night's sleep. What killed her was that she had not realised how much she wanted them to have a future until it occurred to her that it might not be an option.

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They finished building the thing on the roof, reinforcing the assembly of the parts they already had and then fitting it for what remained. The process went shockingly smoothly and now it was done. She wasn't sure what to call it other than Bridge Thing. Maybe if it worked she would make the effort to come up with something fancy. Meanwhile, it was time to move the antimatter into place for the reaction. They would be on a schedule starting the next day, rigidly worked out so that as many parts of the process could be observed as precisely as possible. Jane had drawn up an itinerary with Darcy's over-the-phone advice on what would make it look more like she'd had a secretary do it for her.

Darcy once spent a high school semester working co-op as a personal assistant to a corporate bureaucrat type. She assured Jane that her lab records would be in a museum some day and it was important that they look suitably impressive.

Jane sent Erik back into the city for the day to get more sensitive equipment than she could lay hands on in Puente Antiguo, and she could only pray he made it back in time for them not to have to wait another day to start up the planned order of events. Jane wasn't exactly awesome at adhering to a strict schedule if no one or nothing was actively forcing her. She was a spontaneous, work when you're inspired and don't stop until you pass out type of person. Luckily, her chosen field more or less allowed this philosophy, other than time sensitive stellar phenomenon.

Luke's antimatter Tupperware required minor adjustment on his part before it could go in the bridge thing, but he wouldn't let her wander back to her calculations even once he had told her this and sat down at her desk to work on it. He caught hold of her wrist, not looking at her, and tugged gently until she stepped back to his side. She waited for him to say what he wanted, but he didn't. Even when he needed two hands and was forced to let go, he remained silent.

"Okay," she drew the word out into a question. When he still didn't say anything, she added, "Did you need me?"

"Yes," he said.

Jane waited again. She waited some more. Giving up, she prompted him, "For...?"

"This is ready." Luke spun up to his feet with dramatic flourish and headed for the roof in long, purposeful strides. His free arm came out as he passed and swept her up in his wake. The way just his hand, from palm to fingertips, spanned almost her entire back made her feel all tingly. She packed that overzealous reaction up for later, trying not to think too much about the heat of his skin seeping through her shirt.

"You're acting weird," Jane commented, carefully using her most non-judgemental tone so he would know it wasn't an accusation. She allowed him to practically carry her up the narrow folding stairs which would take them outside.

Distracted, he answered off-handedly, "I have it on your reliable authority that I am weird."

The world's most passive frog march came to an abrupt halt when they reached the bridge device and Luke stopped dead.

Jane looked between her creation and his almost stricken facial expression upon seeing it, feeling a bit out of her depth. "I mean weird even for you."

Not answering, he knelt and started tinkering with the reactor they'd acquired in Vegas, installing the antimatter containment unit and completing the connections which had been waiting for it. It only took a few minutes, then he stood up again. He wiped his hands against each other. At first, it was the normal 'getting the dirt off after doing something mechanical' gesture, but it became less exaggerated until it was basically wringing.

"Jane..." He suddenly turned to her, looking vaguely feverish, a red rim forming around his eyes which made their blueness pop with startling vividness in his pale face. The effect was almost otherworldly, like he wasn't quite real. "We could do it right now. Open it."

Surprised, she let out a single chuckle, more like an exclamation than a laugh. "What are you talking about? We spent hours planning the test down to the millisecond. Tomorrow-"

"None of it is necessary to see..."

"We can't try it without our observational array set up, without a camera, without Erik. And he's going to see if Darcy can come back with him, because she went through the whole thing with us and she deserves to be here, too, if she can get away for a few days. We can't just try it, I mean, what if it works?"

"Jane," he repeated, his normally smooth and measured voice slightly shaky, almost in danger of breaking, "I made a mistake."

A chill went through her heart. Luke could be melodramatic, but he never wanted to look weak; she'd seen him try his hardest to pretend to be a stoic, and he was still trying. This wasn't about testing her or some insignificant little error he'd made. Even he wasn't so proud that something easily fixable would sound like the end of the world. If the thing was going to work, it couldn't be something to do with the bridge, either.

Her voice was measured when she asked, "What kind of mistake?"

"Jane," her name was nearly a plea this time, "I haven't been entirely honest with you."

She couldn't control her mad giggle of disbelief at that announcement. She covered her mouth, talking through her fingers, "Luke, please. You say that like I don't already know. It's okay. We can talk about it, all right? It's waited this long and..."

He silenced her reassurances by stepping forward and gripping both her shoulders. The touch was incredibly light, barely enough to register, but it was totally immoveable. She looked up at him in question and was shocked to find a sheen of tears in his wide eyes, welling up against his lashes and making his eyes look even bigger in his thin face. He swallowed hard and drew her gaze to the tendons in his throat, so tense that they stood out starkly against the muscle. He lifted one hand to stroke her hair away from her face with the backs of his knuckles, then turning it over to cup her cheek and- moving as if compelled- he leaned down to kiss her fiercely.

Her mind flailed, screaming in confusion, but she kissed him back. It was the first time he had ever kissed her and it was staggering.

They parted, breathing hard. He pressed his eyes closed tightly, as if to compose himself, and tears rolled down his cheeks. "I..." his voice did crack then, "I was as honest as I thought I could be. I gave you the spirit, if not the letter, of the truth. I did. But I could not... I couldn't do anything else. I desperately needed the employment, I had nothing... and you were essential. I needed you to..."

She fiddled with his collar, suddenly seeing every thread in the fabric, the uneven glaze on the top button. "Just tell me. Tell me whatever it is that's so terrible and then we'll talk about where we go from there."

He nodded, sucking in a breath through his clenched jaw, his cheeks drawn in against his teeth and his eyes on the ground. A tear rolled off his chin and splattered on her hand.

"It can't be as bad as that, really," she muttered weakly, wanting to comfort him, wanting to believe it.

He choked on a shrill laugh at her words. Clearly swallowing it back to keep it from turning into a fit, he kissed her again with bruising force. The hot wetness of his mouth, messy and rough, was gone as abruptly as it had come, leaving her dazed and shivering as the air seemed suddenly frigid against her skin. His hands slid away from her in a feather-light caress as he stepped slowly backward. It felt disturbingly like a goodbye.

Drawing himself up to his full height, he looked her dead in the eye. "Jane, I am..." he paused, hesitating for so long that she thought he had changed his mind about telling her whatever he'd started to tell her. Then, delivered like a terminal diagnosis, he said, "I am a prince of Asgard."

The silence which followed seemed to Jane less like the absence of sound and more like being in the middle of the desert in a howling wind. She stared at him, his expression half-mad with what she guessed was apprehension. Jane herself was frozen in bewildered shock.

"You're a what?"

His face twisted and he sighed defeatedly. "Like Thor."

Her incomprehension didn't lift, her mind not even processing what it meant that he knew Thor's name.

Reading her look- his eyes flicking rapidly back and forth between hers, searching for dawning understanding which wasn't there- he became more and more incredulous. Gesticulating wildly, he finally demanded, "Did he not tell you? Nothing of his life or how he came to be trapped here? Was it not important? That ignoramus, that unimaginable oaf! How could he possibly...!"

Jane could barely hear his ranting over the hurricane in her brain. "Wait..."

"Self-absorbed, foolhardy, bloody cretinous...!"

"Wait!" she was shouting.

He trailed off mid-tirade, his raised hands sank to his sides.

"You know Thor. You're from Asgard. How did you get here? What are you talking about!" Jane's voice was rising in pitch and decibel and she did not care at all. None of this made any sense.

"Your delightful traveller friend was the Mighty Thor, crown prince of Asgard! You said he'd told you about our world, but it is patently obvious he told you nothing," he sneered the word, disdain seeping from his pores. "He was banished to this Realm for insolence and warmongering the very day he was to ascend his father's throne. No doubt he has inevitably been forgiven and now is heir again. I was the second prince, his brother."

She was about to yell that he wasn't answering any of the questions she had actually asked, but the hurricane winds came to a screeching halt as she actually thought about what he did say. "His brother? But... wait. But that would mean..."

Looking massively pained by the necessity, he finally came to the point, "I am Loki."

He roughly palmed the tears from his cheeks. His pallor was like death as he stared at her expectantly.

"You..." Jane's jaw wouldn't work, it felt like she'd swallowed her tongue. "But they said... but Loki sent that thing. That robot thing that attacked them- us- half the town. That thing killed Thor."

"I do not ask you to understand. They committed treason, they would have brought... and he would have...!" practically shouting, he clamped his mouth shut and visibly reigned in his emotions. "You will, of course, despise me now, and so you should, but I must finish the bridge before your hate may-"

"Oh, get off the cross! Explain it to me, then, and let me tell you whether I hate you or not! For fuck's sake." Furious at everything, she shoved his shoulder as he started to turn away from her to the machine. She nearly shrieked in frustration when he hardly seemed to notice her efforts. She grabbed his lapel, yanking on it uselessly, knowing she wasn't strong enough to make him face her if he decided he didn't want to. "No! No, it doesn't just end like that! I'm in this way too deep and that is your fault. This is where you pay the fuck up, you tell me the full truth, Lu- L-"

"Loki," he provided in a miserable whisper as she sputtered impotently on the well-practised pseudonym.

She just stared at him, flushed with anger and on the cusp of crying. "Tell me."

He licked his lips. "Where shall I start?"

"Okay, okay, okay! You be difficult. That's so helpful!" She was hyperventilating. She tried to stop. "I can't go on with this conversation until you tell me if you really sent the giant suit of armour thing and were controlling it."

He was trying to look unrepentant or triumphant or something, but his "Yes!" was a garbled, guttural thing that was half a sob.

The ground dropped out from beneath her feet. "You tried to kill him!"

"I never expected him to die!"

"Oh! Oh, so attacking someone you think is too strong for you to kill is totally all right!"

"I make no excuses! I had to save my Realm and my father's legacy by all means necessary. And my pig-headed big brother, he's never suffered in his perfect, charmed life. He was never hurt, he never got sick, even when we were... I never thought... I just wanted to protect... I never wanted him to be dead." His hands, shaking, covered his face. "He would have killed me if he knew, he would have succeeded in killing me. He still..."

Jane was numb. "He's your brother," she protested, seeing a bigger and bigger black hole forming in her knowledge about both of them.

"He's not," came the answer, both despairing and vicious.

She did not know what to do with that or what to say. She was completely without reference points. It wasn't at all unexpected that he was an alien, it was only a bit shocking that he was from Asgard, but the rest of it was beyond anything she had been prepared for. An unnatural calm settled over her, a grim determination. She reached up, prying Luke- Loki's- fingers away from his face. "Tell me from the beginning. I'll listen. I'll listen to all of it."

He summoned up a shadow of a grin and it was horrible. "You won't believe me."

In spite of everything, that made her heart ache. "Try me."