AN: I hadn't intended to show quite this much of Loki and Jane's conversation, but a lot of you said you wanted to see it. I hope this is okay.

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22. Crime

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Jane was using all of her concentration to slow her breathing, counting the seconds for each inhalation through the nose and each exhalation through the mouth. Her chest ached from hyperventilating, and her head was pounding. To her messed up eyes the individual grains of sand at her feet loomed as large as boulders, the adrenaline rush having her perceiving her environment at what felt like a superhuman level of vigilance.

When SHIELD sailed in to steal all of her research and equipment from her- again- she didn't worry too much that the situation could get any worse than them succeeding in doing exactly that. Not when she was on the eve of her breakthrough, not when the device was built and ready, not when this was the most important moment of her life and they were taking it away from her. But it could get worse.

It had occurred to her that they might do more than just rip her off. They might chain her up in some secure government basement and make her brain just another tool they'd acquired to serve their own purposes. She would have caved eventually, she would have done the work they asked of her; she'd go insane if she just sat in a cell. It occurred to her, but it never felt real. It was almost a joke she told herself because that's how ridiculous her life was. She never believed it would really happen until a SHIELD agent was standing in front of her telling her it was happening, complete with thinly veiled threats about coming willingly.

There was no terror like knowing these people could make you disappear without a trace, there was nothing you could do to stop it, and no one would ever find you. Them stealing her research and setting her up so people would think she was crazy was an almost pleasant alternative, in retrospect.

On the edge of her consciousness, she gradually became aware that someone was lightly brushing their fingers over the crown of her head. She knew instantly that it was him. The sensation of his presence was as unmistakable and luminous and compelling in her mind as a star's corona.

When that SHIELD agent aimed his gun at Luke (Loki, Loki, it was a continual, conscious effort to change his signifier, to redefine his identity), it felt like she was having her own, localised earthquake. When he fired, her brain had momentarily shut down. It was as if time had stopped, someone had hit the pause button on her life, and all she could think was that she didn't want this to happen. The bullet was moving through the air like a boat through molasses, slow enough for her to notice its drag leaving ripples in the airborne dust particles.

This is hyper-perception, she'd thought. Time isn't actually slowing down, Jane, this is just a really traumatising thing right now. You can't actually push him out of the way.

That was when she panicked.

In the present, Loki's hand was smoothing her hair and he was saying something. She heard only the pleasing thrum of his voice, rising and falling with the cadence of the words, the words themselves might as well have been in Greek.

He was alive. For what felt to her like hours that was the only thought which mattered. He was alive.

The bullet hit him square in the chest, right above his heart, and she was numb with shock, then it fell away on impact as if it were no more than a tossed pebble and she couldn't even be shocked any more. He'd gathered her close to him and draped her with the heavy green fabric of his cape. She was pressed into his back by its weight, the metal of his armour cool against her cheek and palm. He smelled like ozone and rain and she was sure that rang a bell, meant something, but she couldn't think. She couldn't think, but he was alive.

"Keep close, keep covered," he whispered insistently to her under his arm. "It will keep you safe."

After everything he'd told her, she didn't know what to believe or how to feel about him, but in this moment she knew with unshakeable certainty that he would and could protect her from any power on earth.

He was alive, even in the present where she was sitting in the dirt and SHIELD had gone and things seemed to be all right, she could barely accept it. Her fingers found the edge of the worked metal that wrapped around his sides like folded wings and she clutched at the fabric underneath, wanting to feel his body heat and the give of flesh beneath her hands.

A bullet bounced off of him and he was still the same man who complained about her food and leaned on her when he was exhausted and whose jokes were so dry she couldn't always tell when he was kidding. He was still Luke even though that wasn't his real name.

"Jane?"

She counted breaths and the present started to solidify, her field of awareness to widen from its laser focus. Loki was kneeling beside her, frowning at her in worry. She pushed herself up only enough to fall towards him, reaching up and hanging from around his neck in a weak hug.

"I'm so glad you're not dead," she said.

His hand rested on her back, supporting her, but he did not return the embrace. He knew it was the extremity of the moment talking, not real forgiveness. Not real acceptance.

"Can you please get away from him?" Erik's voice rasped somewhere to her left. Now that she noticed him, she could hear him wheezing in leftover fright.

Jane lifted her head to look at the man in her arms, his familiar features sharply framed by the intimidating alien helmet which she was only just now fully appreciating for the first time. He watched her face in return and, reacting to something in her eyes, he reached up and pulled the helmet off. It didn't help her forget what he was, it didn't shrink him back down to manageable proportions. His eyes were so old and so young.

She wanted to kiss him and wanted to hit him and wanted to escape from all of this. She wished it could be yesterday again, just for a few minutes, just so she could properly savour how good it was for a moment while knowing that it wouldn't last.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

'I'll listen to all of it.'

'You won't believe me.'

'Try me.'

They stared at each other, the rictus of his forced grin dropping off his face like a discarded mask. The momentum of the silence threatened to engulf them, to lock them in this purgatory forever. Jane couldn't bear it.

He was like a fucking Russian novel, she thought absurdly. In the sheer amount of conflict and desolation and tragedy glossed over with wordy humour and speechifying, he was exactly like reading Dostoevsky. She walked across the roof to her ratty lawn chair and threw herself down on it. He would follow her, he couldn't help it, she'd challenged him.

"What are you talking about you're Loki, but you're not Thor's brother?" she asked the desert, diving right into the deep end.

His shadow fell over her, but she didn't look up. He needed drawing out and she thought a little distance was the way to do it; she wouldn't live long enough to wait for him to go at his own pace. It was a good thing she'd never had any trouble being violently blunt and detaching from her judgement centres when she was pursuing brand new knowledge from potentially insane evidence.

"You remember you asked me if I had lied to you?" his voice was hoarse, as if he had already been talking a long time. His hands still shook as he pulled the other chair a little further away from hers before sitting down parallel to her instead of facing her.

"You said no."

He cleared his throat, "I said 'not particularly'."

Jane felt her face scrunch up in irritation and confusion, she was getting too impatient and overwhelmed to think clearly. She had to stay in emotional limbo, she couldn't possibly deal with this little Story Time session without being mostly numb. She reminded herself that this wasn't a normal, enjoyable verbal sparring match with her edgy and fascinating partner, this was the person who sent a giant indestructible Deathbot to her town attempting to explain why he felt that was necessary. That did it, the cognitive dissonance was like an electric shock. "What's your point? How much of what you told me is in any way true?"

"All of it. In 'a way'."

Her teeth ground together so hard that it sounded like a steam train chugging through her skull, "Stop being cute or so help me-"

"Thor and I were raised as brothers on Asgard, the sons of Odin the All-father, who is king in our Realm and the sworn protector of all nine worlds of the cosmos." He recited mechanically, as if by rote. "The eternal enemy of Asgard, of all other sentient races, are the Jotuns, the Frost Giants."

Thor had told her about the Nine Realms, had mentioned the name of Jotunheim, but she had pressed him about abstractions and details on Yggdrasil before he told her much about his culture or theirs. He spoke of his father only on a personal level, he hadn't told her who he was or what it meant. All she had to go on as far as external references was a children's book of mythology, and none of it matched up terribly well to what she gathered from Thor. At the time she hadn't known what to believe, but Thor had proved that at least some of what he said was true and that had been enough to be going along with. Jane always liked to think the best of people, where possible. She looked up at Luke (not Luke: Loki), and tried to encourage him with her eyes.

"Frost Giants attacked Midgard- that is, Earth- many years ago, and Asgard- my father- drove them back to Jotunheim. That was the last great war. They were our bogeymen, monsters, the simple evil which we dreamt of vanquishing. Do you understand, Jane?"

She blinked- was he trying to distract her from her demands for explanations (again) or was this really somehow relevant? She decided to give him a chance to build to his point, "I guess like the Nazis have sort of become for us?"

"But they are human, yes?"

She nodded, and he shook his head emphatically, like she'd grabbed the wrong end of the stick.

"The Jotuns are not. They are humanoid in shape but giant in stature, savage, ugly and gnarled, with blue skin and cold blood… their world is one of ice and darkness..." he trailed off, swallowing hard. He looked as though he might be sick.

"Okay," Jane allowed, choosing to believe this could be important.

"Just before Thor's banishment and arrival here, we went to Jotunheim. The fault was mainly mine, I deliberately incited him to it. I never intended us to actually go through- it is forbidden and- but he… I lost control of events."

"Why would you do that at all?" There was so much context she was clearly missing which she would need to decide what to think of his account that she wondered whether it was possible for her to make a reasonable decision to trust him or not.

"I had to. Someone had to. Thor was about to succeed our father and it couldn't be allowed. He was dangerous, Jane, impetuous and foolhardy and petty. He would have plunged the Nine into war." His eyes were pleading but slid away from hers, his words running together as he hurried to explain, "I never intended…"

She stared at him in silence, utterly unable to reassure him until she knew exactly what it was he had done and what she would be condoning. The image she'd formed of Thor's unseen brother who had been so cruel and the familiar figure of 'Luke' were at loggerheads in her mind's eye.

"It was only supposed to show Father that he was not ready. To open their eyes to his true nature. All our lives, Thor could do no wrong and it was poised to become a matter of life and death that they were so blind to his faults. Their perfect warrior prince was a hot-headed child and he would send the Realm Eternal to ruin."

He was jealous, Jane surmised. He felt ill-used. That didn't mean she could disregard what he was saying, she'd met Thor and she didn't doubt there was considerable truth to the idea that he was spoiled and needed taking down a peg. The question was, how much stock could she put in Loki's perceptions when he was clearly biased? Assuming he was being honest to begin with.

"We went to Jotunheim with Thor's companions, and the Jotuns accosted us. We could have made good a clean escape with no harm done, Laufey- their king- dismissed us outright. But Thor was true to his nature," the seething frustration, the resignation in his voice was palpable. "He killed a giant and started a fight, a massacre at first, but even the Mighty Thor is but one man. The Jotun surrounded us. We all would have died if Odin had not interfered, and I discovered the truth." He swallowed again, folding his hands over and over each other in his lap.

Jane almost thought he looked frightened, "What truth?"

"Thor was stripped of his dignities and banished for almost getting us all killed, and for restarting the war with Laufey after there had been peace throughout the universe for our entire lives. And once he was gone, Odin admitted it. The truth." He wobbled slightly in his seat as he straightened his back, a greenish cast to his pallor. Jane was thinking seriously about running for a barf bucket when his eyes met hers. His fathomless gaze immobilised her, he looked ill and blank and desolate.

"Thor is not my brother, because Odin is not my father. He found me on the battlefield when he was stripping the Jotuns of their power. I am a Frost Giant. Laufey's son."

Jane shook her head, reaching her limit on stuff she could just accept, even temporarily, "But-"

"He must have changed me then, to make me seem Asgardian. I was a runt and Odin is powerful. He said I was abandoned in their Temple. He had some plan for me, I was yet another weapon in his arsenal, a pawn for his cosmic chessboard," he was raving, his speech jittery and uneven as he tried to bite back reflexive tears. "I spoiled a masterful play, I'm sure. That is, if I was not merely security against his old opponents."

Jane didn't know where to begin. "So you're like an immigrant on your home planet…" she said, thinking out loud, reminded of 'So you see, I am a culture of one'.

Loki snorted at her choice of words. "I am a creature, Jane," he corrected with bitterly cold confidence.

Holy shit, this is all making so much terrible sense. Now she remembered another insane thing he had said when she'd asked him why he couldn't have value just as a person: 'because that's not what I am.' She wasn't prepared to deal with this, she wasn't equipped. Her heart hurt. "You're not. You're a person like anyone else."

"What do you know, mortal?" he hissed contemptuously. The veil of anger covering his despair was thin, it lacked conviction. He was fading, she thought, caring less and less about putting up a front for her.

"You. I know you," it was the first thing she'd been sure of in a while. "And I know you're certainly not less than human whatever else you are. Finish telling me what happened."

He let out a breath he'd been holding, his eyes sliding away. Suddenly he pressed on, "Father fell into the Odinsleep, I thought at first that I had killed him. My mother gave me the throne. I was the only remaining heir, but she shouldn't… she should have…"

Jane waved her hand, trying to stem the tide, "Wait. The Odinsleep?"

"He succumbs to an enchanted slumber when the strain on his power becomes too great. Being the custodian of the entire cosmos is a tremendous burden for one mind to bear. I… drove him into it. Unexpectedly."

"How?"

"I confronted him about what I was."

Jane tilted her head, still waiting.

"I shouted."

Why did he have to make everything sound so much worse than it was? "Okay," she said.

"My father's most trusted servant betrayed me. Thor's friends plotted against me. No one accepted my rule, but I… I knew I could prove I wasn't simply a Jotun pawn, I could show my father that I was worthy to be his son. That I could become an honourable warrior, equal to Thor." He licked his lips, edging further away from her. "Father always told us about the great victory over the Jotuns, the peace he established, the good it brought into the universe. Thor declared from childhood that he would finish Odin's work. I formed a plan to make good on that boast."

"What about the thing you sent here? Why did you do that?" She couldn't escape the remembered terror, she couldn't fully invest in anything else until she heard how he justified that.

"Thor's idiot companions demanded I bring him home from exile, of course I could not."

"Because your father banished him?"

He inclined his head in the positive, but his expression was murky, his mouth twitching to one side.

"What else?" she prompted.

"No one had ever anticipated or desired my ascension, I was never a suitable or popular prince in the eyes of Asgard. My hold on the throne was therefore somewhat tenuous, but it was passed to me legitimately by law and custom. If Thor had returned, there would have been those who would wish to see him crowned in my place in spite of Odin, and there would have been those who would uphold the lawful succession and Odin's final commandment."

"Civil war," Jane concluded, easily picking up what he was implying. He acknowledged her with a tip of his hand. "Why did you say that Thor would kill you?"

He drew his hands into his lap, scowling down at them and starting to worry his thumbnail again, "Did I not just speak of his oath to destroy the Frost Giants- every one?"

She pushed at the air between them in vehement denial, shaking her head, "He would never..."

Loki's eyes were penetrating. "No?"

"I knew Thor," Jane began, ready to go to the mat over this.

"For three days," Loki finished for her with an air of clinical finality. "He was my brother, Jane. How well do you suppose that I know him?"

She lowered her head, slightly chastened by his undeniable point, but she was still sure of her instincts and willing to bet on Thor. "He changed a lot while he was here, I saw it happen. Even if he would have done it once, and I'm not saying I believe that but even if, he wouldn't now."

"I could perhaps be forgiven if it was not a gamble I was prepared take with the safety of the known universe at stake."

Jane thought that was a cop out, but she didn't think he needed her to tell him that. "So how did they end up here?" she steered them back to the subject at hand.

"Asgard's gatekeeper was willing to commit treason based on his dislike and distrust of me, and he did. So did they by taking advantage of it. They went to Earth to bring Thor back after I forbid it and ordered the bifrost remain closed. The Destroyer is the King's enforcer, I sent it to prevent their return. Traitors are subject to death or exile. It would have been exile for them if Thor had remained mortal, but it seems Odin never intended for Thor's banishment to be permanent. Of course not."

She knew that part of the story. "Something happened with the hammer."

"It deemed him worthy of his former power and restored his strength and title." He sounded tired.

"What happened when Thor went through the wormhole?"

"He interrupted my plans to annihilate Jotunheim and its monsters finally and forever. We fought. Thor destroyed the bifrost to save the Jotuns."

So that settled one big question. If Thor could have come back as he'd promised, he would have. Jane was too detached to know how that made her feel at this point. What to think about giants and monsters and the blatantly questionable nature of Asgardian politics, she had no idea. If Loki was telling the truth, he had attacked his own race because he thought they were beasts and repudiating them would make him a real person; there was no way she could tackle making sense of that even if she could believe it. "How did you get here?"

Loki smiled at her and it sent a chill down her spine. She almost reached for him in spite of everything, wanting to do something- anything- to wipe away the utter hopelessness, the sardonic apathy, which she saw behind his eyes.

"I fell into the broken bridge."

She studied him, knowing there was more and knowing he was so far gone that he would tell her absolutely anything if she just let him talk.

"I let go."

"You mean-"

"I wanted to die."

That agreed totally with many of her suspicions about him, but the confirmation still hit her like a splash of ice water. "But how-?"

"I don't need a bifrost to travel between worlds. I am a magical prodigy, gifted beyond all reasonable expectation, it's very likely I am second as a sorcerer only to Odin himself. Of course, it is honourable for Odin to be wise, it is cowardice for me. It's ironic no one wanted me because of my lack of more traditional virtues, as I could have been so useful to whichever people would have me." His eyes rolled up to the sky overhead, a sour twist to his lips. "I had thought it would be the last time I needed my skills, just to die in space somewhere away from… somewhere else. But instead, I landed here and I survived."

There was far too much to say to that, so Jane decided to start with the biggest problem, "Magic?"

"Of course, Dr. Foster. You have observed it enough."

"There's no such thing as magic, Luke. I know you have very advanced technology and Thor thought he had to describe it that way for me to understand, but there isn't really magic."

"Isn't there?" He leaned over and reached behind her neck with both hands, then he was tucking a scarf around her throat which hadn't been there before. It was transparent and delicate as spider silk, glimmering between different shades of purple and green with flecks of sparkling white. It looked like the Northern Lights.

"You pulled that out of your sleeve. I'm not five." She crossed her arms. All of her awe of him, her insecurity, could his whole technical genius be explained away as simply a well-prepared con using products of his superior culture? There was no way and she knew it, but the thought nagged at her because it was still an easier thing to believe than that her entire world view needed to be realigned again. Or more like overhauled. Thor and the hammer and the wormhole she could slip in, she could shroud with Clarke's Law, but if there was genuinely supernatural magic that wasn't just tech she didn't understand yet, she would need a stiff drink and some therapy. If he was that much smarter than anyone she had ever heard of and had bona fide magic powers, what chance did she have of ever catching up?

He swirled his index finger in the air, dark purplish smoke forming a ring around it, then solidifying into a gold bangle. He picked up her hand and slid the bracelet onto her wrist. It was heavy and undeniably real, carved with straight runes which reminded her very much of his peculiar handwriting. "After everything I've told you about magic, Jane, can you really pretend ignorance?"

"You never told me about magic."

"Oh, did I not? What do you imagine I've been telling you all this while? Magic is will. To exert your will on the universe is only to acknowledge that your will exists, or to accept and use the downward causal efficacy of the conscious mind, if you must. The childish materialism which has crippled the minds of so many of your great scientists is very easily overcome, Jane. This," he turned his wrist and a set of silvery blue throwing knives appeared between his fingers, "may be beyond the reach of mortal power, but your people ought to have learned by now that their intentions can shape the world even when their actions are small.

"You, of all humans, Jane, should know that your will is the greatest single arbiter of your success or failure." He threw the knives, one at a time in very rapid succession, into the blacktop of the roof in the pattern of a star. It lit up with blue flame and burned bright lines into the backs of her eyelids. "I suspect I am here because of you."

She shook her head. She couldn't process all of this. All of her frames of reference were useless. "How much of… of any of this has been you?"

He raised an eyebrow at her, a casual wave of his hand causing the star and the knives to disappear. "What do you mean?"

"The breakthroughs in the lab, the science, how much of it was really you and how much of it is…?"

"I could have opened a path and left this Realm at any time, but that does not mean I knew how to build a bifrost. You understand combustion, that does not mean you could go into the laboratory and build a car out of scrap. I haven't misled you, Jane. What would it profit me?"

"What does any of this profit you!" her head ached, she was going to have an adrenaline crash soon if she wasn't already having it.

His jaw jutted and he looked down.

"How can I know what's real about any of this?" she asked herself more than him.

"I had to learn from you, Midgardians approach the world entirely differently and at first I could do nothing with your tools, your elements, even your first principles. Our physics is not expressed like yours. We don't use metal wires and bits of silicon on Asgard, but it was simple to incorporate your approach once I had read your theories and watched you work. I hardly needed to pretend anything, though I admit to a great deal of withholding. Everything I told you was… part of the truth. You were the only connection I had left in the universe, the only one who could tell me what had happened to Thor. I am no one now and…"

"Oh yes, right, you're a monster."

He practically crackled with energy, his glare dangerous. "Do you mock?"

"Something so stupid and pointless and melodramatic? Yeah! I do!"

"Will you absolve me then, Jane Foster! Will you pardon me the blood of my kin on my hands and a madness I cannot be certain was wrong? My father is a destroyer of worlds and he is a hero, my brother is a slayer of Frost Giants and he is the beloved prince, and I walk in their footsteps and I am a monster. Born of monsters and monstrous for wishing to be otherwise! I saw evil in it, but I am not to be trusted because I have never been what they are or what I should have been, I still see evil in it, yet I know not how my actions so differ from theirs! It is my birth that makes me wrong, and it is my greatest sin that I failed to end this miserable farce that is my life. They were all right to call me coward, if I were not I would-"

She screamed at him, wordlessly, just to make him stop.

Panting, he shook his head, like he didn't get what her problem was. "I will never be worthy. Before I fell, Odin... I know that now."

"I don't give a shit what your father said to you-"

"I killed him myself, my real father-"

"Shut up, I know what you're doing!" She grabbed him to anchor herself, hearing stitches pop on his jacket as she yanked on it. "Your society is a mess and you being a misfit, you obviously knew it. Thor was a big asshole and you could see it because of point one above, but he wasn't a bad person inside and neither are you. Okay, I don't know what we're going to do, but you are not going scare me away and you are not going to kill yourself. You're not going to kill yourself."

Leaning away from her like a caged animal, he looked hunted and hysterical as his eyes darted between the machine and her fiery stare. "They know of the bridge. SHIELD. It was a momentary lapse, but I let them hear and it was enough. They will come."

Her mouth dropped open, her grip on him going slack.

"If you would join them against me, I should like to know now."

Jane fought down the very strong urge to punch him in the face, figuring she would probably break her hand on his jaw anyway, and squared her shoulders. "Not today."

Now stop trying to distract me, I am so on to you and it's not going to work. I only start things I intend to finish.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

"Get away," Erik's voice echoed, like they were underwater.

"I'm staying with him. He's staying with us." It might have been better to say 'staying with me', because she didn't know if she would be including Erik in anything for a long, long time, but she could clarify that later. She could scream at him later. She could finish feeling betrayed later.

Right now, she was busy passing out.

Between being up all night trying to make sense of a very complicated man and his alien society, no food since the previous afternoon, almost being kidnapped, and thinking she was going to watch him die, she could not find a single atom in her body prepared to fight the fact that she was going to black out against Loki's chest.