23. Charity

.

"Jane?" her name slipped out almost involuntarily as she drooped towards him, starting to fall awkwardly across his lap.

Loki caught her and cradled the back of her head with his arm, tilting her face towards his with his free hand. Her eyes did not flutter and her breathing was smooth and slow, her strong pulse beating sedately beneath the skin of her cheek. He could not be surprised to find that she had fallen into such a faint after the night they had passed. She had drowned him in a tenacious onslaught of judicious inquiry such as he had never experienced; though it did remind him uncomfortably of being caught in a compromising position by the Queen and facing her lethally patient dismantling of his attempts at obfuscation.

The questions had lasted through the entire afternoon, the evening, the night, and far into a new day. Until the imminent arrival of their unwanted visitors sent her into a flurry of panic, her weariness had showed no sign of getting the best of her. Jane had slept little for weeks and hardly ate, so great was her abstraction as she worked on the bifrost, and he had spent days half expecting her to fall ill. He was impressed at the stamina of her frail mortal form even as he grew concerned that she would exhaust herself before completing her task.

No, it did not surprise him that she had now reached the end of human endurance, but he found he was surprised at how much he disliked to see her felled by mere circumstance. He recognised such power in her, such fortitude, it seemed contrary to her dignity to swoon from anything less than a mortal wound.

Loki could almost laugh at his thoughts; bitterly, at any rate. It seemed he was still a son of Asgard in all things but his cursed blood, not half so able as he had once imagined to escape the near-sighted, hard-headed values of his upbringing, and somehow he had begun to think of this tiny Midgardian woman as an honourable warrior. In character and temperament, she fitted the bill perhaps better than he did. How funny.

Jane sniffed in protest as he laid his fingers across her forehead and tried to decide if her pathetic flicker of an aura was normal or not. Her eyebrows pushed together in a slight frown when he let a minute thread of magic press against her mind, but she did not wake. Her unconscious will instinctively tried to repel the invasion and this satisfied Loki that her sleep was ordinary and nothing to concern him. He supposed her anger at SHIELD and frustration with their impertinence had taken the very last of her energy. She would recover with some hours rest and a substantial meal. Then they could resume their plans to open the bridge.

Loki still could not guess what he would do when it was opened, having no notion of either what he ought to do or what he wanted. When he allowed his mind to wander down that path towards the inevitable confrontation with everything he had left behind, his suspicions and fears of what might be found there rushed and shifted with such speed that rational thought was impossible. His heart beat quickened and his steadiness abandoned him even at the slightest glance in that direction, so he left it lie. He had never had an end in sight for this endeavour, never knew what he hoped to gain from its pursuit, but the pursuit had quieted his mind and so he had gone on in blind obedience to that which granted any fraction of peace. He had become a creature of the present moment.

He slid his left hand beneath Jane's knees and drew her upper body close to his breast, then stood with her in his arms. Her head fell against his shoulder, her breath stirring his hair so that it tickled his neck. He suppressed a shiver, turning his chin to avoid a recurrence. He couldn't escape her scent, recognising the light lavender perfume of the soap she used to wash herself combined with the sweet smell of the cream she put on her hands, and it filled him with discomfort that he knew such intimate details of her ordinary life. She would not have welcomed him into her home or her confidence if she had known what he was. If he had not used her curiosity against her.

He started to walk towards Jane's strange quarters, the single chamber in the metal tube which served her for every purpose. He had slept rough and stayed in many odd places when he went adventuring with his brother, but Jane's boudoir struck him as one of the least suitable accommodations in which he had ever seen a civilised creature dwell of its own free will. He hadn't bothered to find out if mortals lacked regard for decorum in general or if Jane were a special case, but now he wondered.

Erik Selvig was following him, he observed, having almost forgotten the man's presence. His focus on Jane and lapse into wool gathering had silenced such trivialities as rambled accusations. Perhaps he was losing his sharpness, as there was also the business of his dropped guard allowing SHIELD to eavesdrop when it was most inconvenient. If he was, he decided, it hardly mattered any more. There was no damage left to be done.

"What are you doing?" Selvig's voice wobbled, the apparently terrific strain of the day adding the weight of many years to his already slouched frame. He trailed after Loki with hunched shoulders and a halting step, his hand held out as if to pull Jane out of Loki's grasp. "Leave her. Leave us. SHIELD will be back- you can't..."

Loki turned, lifting his eyebrows in exaggerated curiosity. "What do you suppose they can do, Erik Selvig?"

Selvig flinched away as if in fear of attack, his mouth working soundlessly. How utterly appropriate and predictable. They will all come to see the truth and they will all shy away.

"You saw how effective their weapons are- or rather, are not- against me, and you must have some notion of my capacity as a warrior. You watched the battle between Thor's companions and the Destroyer, which I should say was quite enough for a demonstration. So I'll ask again, if I decided to use force, do you really think they could stop me?"

"They have more than just those weapons, than just conventional weapons. I've heard of clandestine projects in development-"

Loki sighed. The movement of Jane's breath creating slight pressure against his chest was pleasant to him at this specific junction in a way he could not define or articulate, but it could ease only so much and he was very tired. "Erik Selvig, if I came to this planet plotting secret harm to your people, would those to whom I exposed my identity and who dared attack my person have left here alive? Or was that this protection of theirs acting on me- very clandestine indeed, so much so that none of us perceived it."

Selvig's eyes dropped to Jane, his fleshy chin pressing on his collar as he tucked his head. His hand still warded Loki off, as if Loki intended to rush him, as if he could do anything to prevent it. The overwhelming desire he felt to take the woman he saw as his charge away from the danger he thought she was in was obvious.

Loki sighed again, letting his eyes close for an instant of quiet despondency. That determined yet helpless twist to Selvig's lips, the fierce and wary look in his watery blue eyes, the wrinkle of caring on his brow: this worry had a distinctly paternal character.

Loki sometimes thought of Volstagg when he looked at Erik Selvig, something about that cautious shiftiness and amiable grumbling put him in mind of the feckless, formidable figure which had been such a fixture of his adolescence. Volstagg was much older than Thor's other companions, a man grown with lands and family to tend. He was jolly and good for a fight, but he had long lost the true berserker fierceness of youth, and he was quick to remind them that even the highest nobility could gamble and lose. Death and dishonour would not respect their small years or their exalted status.

Odin had likely tasked him with minding the heir didn't get himself killed, to risk being called a coward by a beardless boy for his king's sake. But while he might have begun the acquaintance with duty to his king, his first loyalty had long been to Thor. The love he bore for the prince was that of a subject and a brother in arms, but it also had something akin to the love he bestowed on his many children.

Which was why Volstagg had risked his life and his family's station, had thrown away his service to Odin's throne, only for the slightest chance of Thor's return. The fat fool had no such love for the other prince. Patience had always been too great a boon for the second son to ask, so much less anything more than that.

Loki licked his lips, reburying things he wished had not surfaced at all, and tried again. "I have no quarrel with humans, SHIELD perhaps excepted. I would have no quarrel with you, either. I sympathise and would likely have done as you did in your place."

Erik looked stunned, but said nothing. It was impossible to guess at the nature of his astonishment, though Loki found he still cared to try. Perversely, it mattered to him what this tetchy mortal thorn in his side might think. The prince felt growing certainty in his conviction that the norn who had come to his birth to direct his fate was the most capricious creature in all eternity.

"I won't strike first whilst I'm here, you have my word."

Sputtering and gesturing, Erik looked like he couldn't decide what to object to first. "You won't… you nearly levelled this whole town! An ambassador! What kind of horseshit snake oil could you have possibly peddled to Jane that she would ever consider taking your side against SHIELD knowing what you are? You- you- and the absurd, the ridiculous crap you're still trying to sell me who isn't… isn't… Loki's not even Odin's son!"

The eerinesses of the landscape was like a shadow seen from the corner of one's eye, the unsettling feeling of not being alone, of some lurking incorporeal unknown. The winds swirled over the broken tundra and through the jagged remains of monolithic stone carved structures, howling and whispering by turns, freezing you to your bones.

Everything was dark, murky, shrouded in gloom and ice. Blueness seeped from the emptiness and into your blood.

"You've come a long way to die, Asgardians."

The gravelly rumble of that voice, like the rock falls accompanying it, seemed without beginning and without end. An echo of grinding earth, of stars cooling and worlds forming. This desolate planet, so old that its ages dragged on the feet of those walking it.

His hands trembling in front of him as he struggled to hold the Casket of Ancient Winters without hurling it away in denial, without dropping it in disgust. Shivers of dread making his knees weak, planting his feet and squaring his shoulders to hide all of this from the all-seeing eye he could feel upon him.

"Am I cursed?"

"What do you know of it!" Loki's own demand sounded shrill and childish in his ears. There was no shame beyond his reach, there was no depth of degradation to which he could not sink. If the bloody humans knew of his nature, it seemed foretelling of his fate had preceded his very birth here among the least of the Nine. Everything is written and the snake swallows its own tail.

"They're only stories! I don't believe them and I don't believe you! Whatever you are you're no prince, you're no ambassador, and you're no friend to Jane. We're not so helpless, we're not playthings for you aliens to come toss around at will. We will stand up to you, whatever you're planning."

Suddenly he didn't care, the fathoms to which he did not care could not be counted. "Erik Selvig, you vastly overestimate your race's importance. Your world survives because of Asgard's honour alone, because of your colossal helplessness. You would find, if you were to challenge the place you hold in the universe by making your death more honourable than your life, that- amongst the powerful- compassion is not a grace granted to folly."

He turned to continue toward the trailer, Jane's weight so slight that she hardly seemed substantial. She hardly seemed real. Perhaps she was not. Perhaps he was still falling in space, his magic was now expended and no longer protecting him, the lack of oxygen conjuring all of these preposterous affairs in his dying brain. Perhaps he had merely dreamt the entirety of this second life on Earth. It would be considerably more in keeping with an orderly universe than the alternative.

It certainly seemed more in keeping with life as he knew it that he was dreaming rather than that Jane had genuinely decided not to aide her people in his capture, that she had suspended her judgement upon him. She knew enough now, her good sense knew enough to overcome her curiosity and to make the reasonable choice.

No woman would embrace him as she had. After everything he had told her, still she fell into his arms with apparent trust.

What did it signify, he wondered, if he dreamt of himself so enslaved to the whims of Thor's pet mortal that her inexplicable trust that he would not hurt her consumed him with ratifying pain.

"Anything to avoid admitting it," Erik spat from behind him, weaving in his steps as he tried to decide between keeping his distance and taking a stand. "Anything to keep from taking responsibility! It was you who attacked us, the other Asgardians did everything they could to protect this town- Thor went to his death!"

'I could have done it, Father! For you! For all of us.'

Was I right? Isn't this what you wanted?

'No, Loki.'

His father's voice changed in his memory from a whisper to a sneer. He remembered it slightly differently every time, every thousandth time these words rose again to batter him with recriminations when he became tempted to lay blame anywhere other than at his own feet. But he was simply wrong. It was not Asgard which was faulty, not the All-father's teachings, it was Loki.

Odin's one, piercing eye and its unerring judgement flayed him naked of pride or illusion or hope. He had been found wanting- why was he still alive? With oblivion encroaching the courage had come to ask, to expose the pitiful truth behind his ambitions, to call down his father's discernment and discover if there were anything the monster pawn could do to become a son. To erase his nature, to be more than a useful pet. He had asked and he had received his answer. Why couldn't the fall have killed him the way it should? And now he was ruining Jane's life the way he had endeavoured to ruin Thor's.

Such a fool, thinking anything his bestial mind could conceive or his tainted hands could effect would be the right thing. Asking at all was arrogance. Of course he was wrong, of course nothing would make him worthy. If his reason could be trusted he wouldn't be this thing that he was.

He had not been passed over unfairly. There was no injustice. How many times must he realise this.

There was a stinging wind rushing around him, his hair flying in his eyes and dust swirling into miniature storms at his feet. Jane whimpered and he nearly dropped her in his haste to release the hold which had become far too tight. Her skin was hot where he touched her, doubtless it would bruise in an exact shadow of his grip. The wind ceased abruptly as he regained control, and Loki looked up at Selvig's now bloodless face in anguish that he had betrayed himself so thoroughly.

"Take her, take her from me." He lifted Jane out towards her would-be protector, as far from himself as possible. Her limbs fell limp, her head lolling. She was defenceless, utterly defenceless. Why had she not pushed away from him when she felt the darkness coming, why had she no sense...

Erik stepped forward, then stopped.

"I shouldn't be in her chambers, I have not been invited," Loki babbled, desperate to cover his sudden change of mind, desperate to pretend he didn't fear his own strength. And it was true enough. He had no right to impose on her, a private dressing room was verboten without express permission. The only women's closet he had been inside was his mother's, when he was too little for it to matter. "Take her."

"I can't," Erik said, looking miserable. "My back won't have it."

Loki looked down at Jane, a wrinkle of disapproval at being jostled about so much appearing on her brow. Her sleep was growing lighter, the dead faint passing. She might wake if she was disturbed any further. Loki chewed the inside of his cheek, hating to be trapped in this nonsensical comedy of embarrassment. He couldn't die or live with dignity, it seemed.

"Did the Destroyer target any humans?" he asked suddenly. He had watched from the throne, but his recall was somewhat fragmentary. Idiot, shameful tears were gathering in his eyes. They would not fall. He would spend ten thousand eternities damned for a coward before he humiliated himself any further.

"What?"

"The machine which came-"

"Not... not really, I guess." Erik sounded very uncertain, as if he had not thought about it and couldn't comprehend the turn of the subject.

"I was acting as a king when I sent it here. Its mission was to prevent Thor's return to Asgard. None of it concerned your people or your world."

Jane's voice from somewhere around dawn echoed in his head, If you're looking for absolution, I can't give you that. No one can. I can't tell you all this stuff will be okay or if it's fixable. I can forgive you and maybe I will, but don't ask me to be your keeper. It's for you to decide whether you need to make it up or what that would be.

"I am here for Jane, Erik Selvig. That was never a lie."

In what capacity he was 'here for her' had always been an entirely open question. Whether to punish her, to understand her, to use her… it was never to admire her, but now he did. There was a time he could have hurt her, might have hurt her without conscious thought. She was a lifeline, a touchstone which he might have destroyed in some childish fit. Then what? A cold hand seemed to grasp his heart.

"I swear by this day that, while I live, she will be safe from every harm. And my life has shown itself very far from amenable to ending. In this, I lay my sword at her feet, and I will be gone if she asks it of me."

Erik ran a hand over his thinning hair, leaving it in a disarray which Loki found slightly painful. When they had spent all night in the lab, arguing good-naturedly about the stars and about the limitations of Selvig's perspective on the world, he had often looked thus. Sometimes, when he admitted defeat, he had smiled wryly in Loki's direction. As if they shared a joke. Sometimes there was almost something like acceptance in his manner, something akin to warmth.

But camaraderie was ended. There was a sour, uncompromising twist to Selvig's mouth.

"You will not be consulted. Your opinion has already been noted," Loki added waspishly, regretting that he had succumbed to his compulsion towards justifying himself. "If you disapprove, you are free to go and join your new allies against us. Jane is forgiving, I doubt she would scorn you indefinitely."

Selvig huffed out a breath, his hand clutching his brow even as he shook his head no. "I think she'd forgive you for plotting world domination or God knows what long before she'll even consider forgiving me."

Loki had no notion what to make of that assessment.

"Let's get her to bed," Erik said tiredly.

Erik Selvig held the door open while Loki cautiously manoeuvred into the tiny stairwell, careful not to bump Jane's head or knees. Inside, it was as cramped and dark as a cave, and he could not stand to his full height under the curving portion of the ceiling. It was awkward to stoop in armour, so he folded it away again into a pocket of magic, his less restrictive Earth clothing taking its place.

He glanced back and forth, only locating the bed the second time he looked to his left. Jane's few articles of furniture filled every available bit of space, almost hiding it from view. Clutter abounded. Loki felt a blush creep up his neck when he saw Jane's under things draped over the bench which served as her dining room table.

Was that permissible, he wondered, to leave her intimates strewn about in the open even in her own quarters? She had only one room and it was hardly private by the standard to which he was accustomed. As a child he had been often in the company of girls, but his childhood playmates had all been brief companions, separated from the princes as they entered training for service as ladies in waiting to the high nobility. He knew none of them long enough to ask such things when he was sufficiently innocent to do so with impunity. Except Sif. And Sif hardly counted. Exposing weakness (Loki considered this ignorance a profound weakness) to her was like showing one's jugular to a lioness.

He was laying Jane down on her bed when he caught sight of the astrolabe which he had made for her. It hung on the wall beside her pillow, right in the place to which her face would be addressed if she slept on her side. A thin chain had been looped between the plate and one of the faces to hang it, and it looked as though she might mean for it to also serve her as a pendant.

He thought of Sif's pin, never worn. Not prized.

Jane's thick eyelashes made long shadows on her cheeks in the column of light which broke in from the open door. The beauty mark by her full mouth perfectly offset the symmetry of her elfin features, but the effect seemed subtler with her fierceness quieted, her powerful mind occupied by dreams and rest. He gently lifted her head and drew her hair back over the pillow so that it would not tangle beneath her or disturb her if she shifted. He watched a moment as her breast rose and fell with her breath, catching hold of her wrist to feel for the aura of her life energy again.

She was well. He should leave her. He did not belong here in her sanctuary.

He looked at the astrolabe and bent over her hand to kiss her fingers.

"Sleep peacefully, Jane Foster. Sleep the sleep of the charitable and the just."

He went outside and Erik Selvig watched him with blatant speculation.

"What if that thing you two built actually works? What do they think of you back at your place?"

"I suppose we shall cross that bridge when we come to it, Dr. Selvig."

Erik frowned, his nose crinkling with disgust. "Was that a damned pun? Did you honestly just pun at me?"

Loki said nothing.