24. Recognition
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It wasn't until she realised that the sound in her dream which had been a robot maid she'd built to do the dishes yelling at Luke and Erik for making a mess in a series of angry beeps was actually her cell phone's snooze alert that Jane even knew she'd been asleep. And that she was now awake. Sort of.
She slid her hand along the crack between her mattress and the wall where her phone typically ended up, because she tended to pass out with it clutched in her fist while lying to herself that she was totally going to get up and plug it in. Remembering little daily tasks like that wasn't a strength of hers. But the phone wasn't in the crack. She frowned in defeat and tried to snuggle so deeply into the warm, comfy softness of her bed that the shrill beeping would no longer be able to reach her. Something hard dug into her hip.
Finally, she admitted defeat. Turning the light on, she paused to curse a bit and blink rapidly until she could see again, then noticed that she was still fully dressed, her phone was still in her pocket, and she could swear the last thing she remembered it was barely after lunch time. Had she been drinking or had she really slept for eighteen hours straight?
Her head throbbed and sitting up caused an alarming wave of dizziness. Oh yeah, food wasn't optional, was it? As if on cue, her stomach gurgled unpleasantly and seemed to roll over in her gut. She puffed out her cheeks and blew her hair out of her face, waiting for the sensation to pass so she could make an attempt at standing. Someone was going to revoke her 'adulthood' privileges one of these days. It wasn't like it was entirely her fault this time, there were circumstances beyond her control.
SHIELD had raided her and been turned away by aliens. Again. She didn't think a little flash and intimidation was going to be enough the next time, either. Diplomacy had completely failed until they saw they wouldn't win with force and might be called upon to justify themselves to someone they couldn't make disappear.
A stab of pain behind her eyes had her shuffling towards what could charitably be called the trailer's kitchen, where she pounded down some aspirin and water, then started in on a box of granola bars. She slid gracelessly into the bench at her dining table and sat chewing and trying to collect her bearings.
She was pretty much screwed in the long term at this point. SHIELD showed every intention of snatching all approaching discoveries from her grip as soon as they were close enough to breakthrough to be worth something. Jane wasn't entertaining any illusions that they would permit her to publish her findings, not with the way they jumped on her before she could run any tests which might attract attention. They had their motives and their motives weren't conducive to letting her go along with hers. If a star-walking superbeing didn't stand, armed and dangerous, between her and them, she would either go underground in chains or she'd be left to become the crazy desert crackpot laughingstock that everyone always thought she was.
Erik had betrayed her confidence, had decided to go over to the other side in spite of his massive animosity for them because that's how little he felt he could trust her judgement. Chock up one more concurrence with the crackpot diagnosis. He must think she was a silly girl, him who had always pushed her to follow every bit of data all the way no matter what; when she did, he told her it was a wild goose chase. And clearly it wasn't that he figured out the truth about Luke, because he'd sure thrown a freak out when Loki finally resorted to giving his name. She wondered if Loki resisted so hard for Erik's sake or if he resented having to identify himself in general. It was obvious why he hadn't wanted her to know, but she would have thought the damage was more or less done from his perspective once she did.
Maybe if Erik had figured it out, she'd be more understanding, but he hadn't and she was so disappointed in her mentor. The sting of rejection that came with the realisation wasn't quite logical and it wasn't something she was proud of feeling, but the wounds from grad school and begging for this grant until she made a spectacle of herself were still fresh. No one in her field seemed to have any faith in her and she knew they were wrong, she'd gotten the crap kicked out of her reputation because she was that sure they were wrong, but it ate away at her anyway. No one thought she made good decisions about her work, even the man who half raised her, the one person she thought she could count on to encourage and support her.
Well, she would still be in the right even if Einstein and her father both came back from the dead to tell her to stop. The disappointment, that was the emotion she should keep feeling, not rejection: disappointment and anger. Erik could have and might yet ruin everything with his meddling, he'd put them in more danger and could easily have set the whole human race back from the lip of world-changing progress. Hell, he could conceivably have started some intergalactic incident if Loki weren't bulletproof.
God, that bullet, she couldn't get over it.
The horrible moment of understanding when she knew he'd been shot, then the paralysing shock, and her silent plea for this to just not happensomehow seeming to work. She'd see that thing bouncing off of him with vivid clarity for the rest of her life if she lived to be one hundred. It was more insane than watching her life's work sail past her in the street in the back of a truck, more dismaying than seeing Thor take a robot backhand and go down like a tonne of bricks. Something the very man she cared so much about had deliberately caused.
Her heart seemed to hiccup in her chest at the guilt of that thought. Fuck, what had she gotten herself into? Maybe she couldn't be trusted with her own best interests, but that was her problem, that was her thing to figure out or let go or whatever she had to do. Erik's total absence of faith in her as a professional or a scientist, that wasn't something she deserved and it wasn't something she could look past. Even if she needed saving from herself, the Earth didn't need saving from her (she was more confident of that than ever, thank you very much), and going behind her back to the shady black ops assholes who had proven they didn't respect her was never the right answer.
Granted there was still the lingering possibility that she really was crazy (if she wasn't hallucinating from lack of sleep, she would have to come to terms with the existence of full-on magic eventually), but she would think that the man who raised her to climb every mountain could give her the benefit of the doubt for one lousy experiment.
Wait, how did she get here? She'd made it through most of the box of rocky road granola bars plus a banana and her brain was sputtering back to semi-functional life. She definitely hadn't gotten to bed under her own power. Her imagination supplied her with a ridiculous image of Loki floating her around on an invisible board like a stage magician doing a trick. She shook her head, annoyed that her mind was still wandering off into flights of whimsy when there was so much serious shit she hadn't begun to process.
Would they just go on? Just carry out the test they'd planned?
Well, Erik wouldn't. He was officially uninvited. She experienced a stab of discontent that he wouldn't be there at what would probably be the greatest moment of her whole existence, wouldn't see her triumph over all the obstacles she'd faced her whole career, wouldn't share the euphoria of the accomplishment with her and tell her Dad would be proud. Especially, she hated that he wouldn't be there to be proved spectacularly wrong first hand, a surrogate for every scoffer and doubter who had tried to tear her down.
But she couldn't be childish about this. He wasn't safe or trustworthy enough to get anywhere near their future plans. He couldn't be there. It was his own damn fault he couldn't, not hers.
Jane's lip wobbled and she sniffed haughtily to herself, refusing to cry over this. She pulled her sweater up over her chin and closed her eyes as she slid down the bench, lifting her knees to press against the edge of the table. If it was weird that Loki was still her partner while her lifelong mentor was on the outs, she didn't care. Nothing he'd done was a betrayal, that was the difference. At the thought, she realised something was a little off about her attempts at deep, calm breathing, something was making her insides twist slightly with a flutter of nascent emotion.
Her shirt smelled like Loki.
She remembered the hug, remembered fainting in his arms like some squeamish Victorian lady (though she'd more than earned the right to black out at that particular juncture and she refused to be embarrassed about it). Her imagination wasn't quite so addled as she'd thought, she guessed. He probably didn't float her around with a magic wand wearing a top hat, but he had almost certainly carried her.
She tugged the sleeve of her sweater up over her hand, pressed her face into it and inhaled deeply.
Rain.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.
More or less fully awake, fed, and loosely speaking freshened up, Jane stalked across the parking lot towards the lab in a state of high dudgeon. She glanced up and stopped before making it half way.
Loki sat cross-legged on the edge of the roof, his elbows resting on his thighs and his hands clasped in front of him. In normal clothes again and taking this disarming posture, the full impact of his true identity was softened by mundane familiarity. He pleated the cuff of his black jeans between his fingers as the wind stirred the dress shirt he wore, whispering down the open collar and lifting the fabric away from his rigid frame like a sail. By all rights he should be freezing, but Jane highly doubted he felt the cold any more than he had seemed to feel the heat back in summer.
It was so easy to accept that he was not of this Earth at the same time that it was really, really hard. She watched the tiny, repetitive motions of his slender fingers and thought of the latent power in his long limbs. The pull of the wind outlined the hard musculature of his lean build, but this suggested nothing of his real strength. He took up enormous space in her life, she thought, more than even someone of his stature needed.
Just behind Loki, Erik was standing over him like a vigilant watch dog, staring at the back of his head with wild attention. He looked absolutely dead on his feet, his face weathered and severe with fatigue. The idiot was probably up all night, guarding someone who wasn't going to do anything and who he couldn't have stopped anyway. All this to protect her? She wondered.
Neither of them seemed to notice her, so she gathered her wits about her and made for the stairs to the roof. When she let the trap door fall open with a heavy clunk and stomped out into the sun, Erik jumped about a mile and Loki's subtle fidgeting stilled. It figured she couldn't surprise him. A gust of wind tossed his hair into his face and he ran a hand through it as he turned only enough to catch a glimpse of her, peeking out the corner of half-lidded eyes as if not looking directly would limit his exposure to whatever reaction she decided to have to him now that she was rested. She frowned in contemplation at this slight shrinking, wanting to pick at him, knowing he was going to be slippery and that time was running out for satisfying her personal curiosity, but first things were first.
"You," she accused, pointing at Erik, "you're not staying. Not in my lab."
Loki's head whipped around fully now, his eyes wide.
"Jane," Erik started, his tone placating and his hands spread out in a conciliatory gesture.
"Nope," she said. "You're not part of this project any more. You're not in the loop any more. I can't trust you."
Erik's mouth flapped soundlessly, his cheeks flushing a dangerous shade as he stared at her with pure incredulity. "Me! You can't trust me! What about him!" He waved both arms frantically in Loki's direction, like he couldn't possibly overemphasise how ludicrous it was that he needed to bring this to her attention.
Loki swallowed and the nervous emptiness of his expression as he watched for Jane's response, the anticipation, made him look gaunt and ill. She had never understood why he, self-important as he could be, was always so passive about being discussed like he wasn't even in the room, but it was fine with her for right now. There were only so many fires she could put out at a time.
"This isn't about him. This is about you and me." She put up her hands to stave off interruption. "Erik, I never for one second thought that you would go behind my back like this, I never suspected you thought that little of me after everything we've been through. I know you worry and you've known me since I was born, but this is my life! And I really thought you understood. I really thought we had a professional respect for each other as well as a personal relationship, but we clearly don't, so we can't work together. If you can't even follow my lead for one experiment in mylab on my work, then what does that say?"
Erik was dumbstruck, he shook his head in flat denial of everything she was saying.
"This is about him," he thundered, his Swedish accent thicker than she had heard it in years, "you knew he wasn't who he said he was, you knew he knew things he shouldn't know, and you refused to consider the danger you were putting- not just you, but this whole town, maybe the whole planet-"
"Yeah, I did know, and I made a decision! It was my decision to make!"
"And you were wrong!"
"How was I wrong?"
"He tried to kill us, all of us, he's worse than I ever thought!"
Loki, who had turned to watch the argument, crossed his arms with precise, pointed movements. "If I had tried to kill you, Dr. Selvig, I would have succeeded. We've discussed this."
Jane whirled on him with a violent 'zip it' motion. "Excuse me! Asshole sarcastic comments are not helpful!"
"Merely a statement of fact, Jane," he drawled, suddenly cocky.
She wondered if him showing some spirit again out of nowhere was a good sign or not, but she was too angry to give it much thought. She stalked closer and leaned down beside him to threaten, "Help me out here, okay?"
The intensity of his steady, measuring gaze caught her like a fly in a web, the world melted away and there was only the steel in his eyes. "It will do no good to use reason. Nothing I say, nor nothing you could say for me, will make the slightest difference.
"Isn't that right, Dr. Selvig?" he raised his voice, his tone almost jovial.
"Please stop," Erik begged, rubbing his eyes rather harder than Jane thought was advisable. "All night with this."
"And here I supposed we were reaching an understanding, even a tentative agreement." Loki almost pouted.
Jane looked between the two of them, more than a little mystified. Erik was definitely pissed, but the mood swing fairy seemed to be blessing them all equally because the bluster had gone out of him. And if she didn't know better, she'd swear Loki was teasing him.
"What are you talking about, an agreement?" she asked, hating the idea that she was already out of the loop again.
Loki sprang to his feet, sliding one hand into his pocket and looking nonchalant. "I commiserated with Dr. Selvig, sympathised with his motives in going to the mortal defence organisation, and I said I would tell you so. Not that I expect to change your mind, Jane, but some leniency of action would surely be appropriate."
"You actually want him here for the experiment?" she said, incredulous. It wouldn't change anything, but she couldn't believe that was what he meant.
"I didn't say that."
"He's just playing mind games, just… Jane, can't you see this is rolling the dice on lives? You've got to realise that he's only out for his own gain. Whatever that is." Erik dropped his fist, which was rising to pound his palm in emphasis, when Loki grinned at him. "He's trying to keep you off balance, from seeing what's really going on."
Jane smacked Loki in the chest as he opened his mouth again, ignoring his affronted glare. "What is really going on according to you?"
"He wants to use you for something, who knows what!"
"I've told you, Erik Selvig, that my wish is to assist Jane in opening the bifrost, I've also told you that I do not need its power to leave. I seem to recall you offered me whatever you could give without endangering this world if I would agree to do so in the night without alerting her to my departure."
Jane made an undignified snorting sound at this, clasping her hand to her forehead in frustration. "Erik, stop trying to make decisions for me. Seriously. Right now I'm only kicking you out of my lab, don't make me kick you out of my life. You," she poked Loki in the stomach, "stop antagonising him."
She fell through a moment of profound unreality as he grinned at the admonition, the interaction striking her as amazingly petty and normal. She was touching him still, feeling the firm spring of muscle under her finger, exactly as if he were human and just Luke and just… but he wasn't. He was warm and near and touchable, yet he was something beyond her grasp. She looked up into his eyes and saw that he sensed her abstraction, the sparkle of mischief going out in his face. He had felt normal for a second too, she realised.
What must Asgard be like?
"How much time do you think we have? Before SHIELD comes back?" she asked, gripped with the anxiety of reality intruding.
Loki shook his head, making her ache to slide her fingertips across the elegant curve of his cheekbone and into his wonderfully messy hair, to run her nose along the line of his throat and kiss his pulse. He looked so beautiful and so sad and she wanted to keep him. "Not long."
"Wait for them, Jane," Erik pleaded. "I'm not trying to control you, I'm afraid that..."
"You're just as afraid of me being right as of me being wrong. Go. We're fine here. We've got work to do." She crossed her arms, deliberately shifting to stand shoulder to shoulder with Loki. "I'll call you when I'm ready to talk to you."
Appalled, Erik shook his head vehemently. "Jane, you can't be serious, you can't be alone with..." He gestured at Loki again, as if words failed him to describe their latest alien house guest.
"I've been practically living with him for months and nothing has actually changed. This isn't about you protecting me and me being stubborn, so don't pretend it is. Besides, it's not like either of us could take him in a fight. You're being ridiculous."
Loki tutted in distaste. "As if such an encounter could be called a fight. An Asgardian infant would not be greatly troubled by your efforts."
"Rude and unnecessary," Jane snapped, not in the mood to take it lying down. "I'm scrappy."
"You are formidable in many arenas, Jane Foster," he agreed smoothly, "but you could not even lift a sword."
"What about a gun?" Erik put in nastily.
"Oh yes," Loki lingered on the sibilant hiss of his last syllable, revelling in it, "such useful weapons."
Erik grimaced, caught out for forgetting the recent demonstration of how very effective firearms weren't. Jane still had that uncomfortable churning in her gut at the reminder of it, too unsettled even to begin to resolve the experience. She let her arm brush Loki's and wasn't at all ashamed that he caught her doing it because he'd said he wanted to die, and she couldn't live with herself if she didn't try to change that.
"No more dick measuring contest," she announced, ignoring the offended male looks this prompted. "Erik, go home. I'll be downstairs getting back to work."
As she was making her way down the narrow steps she heard Loki say, "Surely she means your home in the village?" in what was nearly a reassuring tone and barely stopped herself from glancing back to see what mask of tragedy had fallen over Erik's face in order to prompt this attempt at encouragement from such an unlikely corner. She didn't need to feel bad about this, but it sent unnameable tingles of emotion through her bloodstream that it seemed like maybe Loki did.
Not to mention she was sure that he wasn't being patronising, as Erik would certainly assume, he really did understand choosing to break a trust for the greater good. That was, after all, what he said he had done to his brother. Of course, he didn't pretend it was a martyrdom, which was the thing she found most irritating about Erik's attitude.
Maybe she was too forgiving on one hand and too stubborn on the other, but the verdict was still out at this point. She considered herself to be allowing the evidence to shape the hypothesis.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
She surveyed her lab and her semi-organised chaos of work and research and plans like a brooding tiger checking over her cubs. She needed to reassure herself it was all here, that SHIELD hadn't been able to get in and steal anything, that no one was going to sabotage her or take things out of her hands. She didn't know if she regretted the pang of suspicion that Erik might have tampered with something, but she probably would eventually.
She plunked herself down at a table and kidded herself she was pouring over the carefully constructed schedule for the bridge experiment which she would now have to rework. Really, her thoughts were still turning over and over, for once refusing to focus themselves on the stars.
It must have been some time she sat there, because when she noticed Loki's hand leaning on the desk at her elbow she startled so hard that she bit her tongue. Turning, she found his face close to hers, and he sprang backward.
"You seemed asleep with your eyes open," he explained, sounding mildly apologetic and moderately defensive.
Jane stretched and yawned, blinking her dry eyes. He was right, she guessed, she'd been staring down at nothing while she was lost in her thoughts. She watched him, taking in the elegant lines of his causally regal stance. He didn't work at it, at least she was reasonably certain he didn't, but he often looked like he was posing for his portrait. "So, Thor when he was here was about to become some supreme cosmic referee and king of your home town, but he got knocked all the way down to nobody for being a jerk?"
His eyebrows lowered and his eyes narrowed, she could see him trying to anticipate how she wanted to use his answer against him. He was so paranoid. "Is that not what I told you?"
"I like to double check, I'm a scientist. I guess it explains his attitude problem." Jane shrugged. "It's not that I don't believe you, you know, it's just really hard to believe."
He cupped one hand in the other in front of him like he often did, his left thumb under his right so he could worry the nail without drawing too much attention to the fact that he was doing it. "I was raised a prince all my life, and while I have always felt the burden of that privilege, it has never seemed extraordinary that it was so. It simply is. Or it was. Chide me not again for saying it, but truly I am nothing now, and I cannot bear your mockery when I plainly state an unalterable fact."
Jane frowned, looking down and away from him. "It doesn't feel real to me. Any of this."
He made a non committal noise in his throat, his mouth a thin line.
She stood up and carefully put her hand on his arm. "Do you still want to open the bridge? Were you going to point it at Asgard when- I mean, is that what you wanted?"
His big blue eyes still had the power to hit her right in the heart even after everything. "I don't know what I want. What I wanted. I could have gone to Asgard at any moment once I recovered from the fall, but... I have no place there to go back to."
"Thor's punishment was temporary, maybe your father-"
"You don't understand," he clenched his teeth on the last word, his lips pulled back in a subtle snarl. "I was never his child, I cannot be his heir; Laufey is dead and I can have no further value for him. Thor is not the favourite son, he is the only son. Of course we must be treated differently."
"Loki," she admonished gently, interrupting his rant before he could spiral. His real name felt alien in her mouth, but his face relaxed fractionally at her use of it and she was glad she'd made the leap.
He sighed. "I have no notion what they would do with me now."
She chewed her lip a moment. She was standing very close to him, not having moved away as her hand slipped off his arm. His looming height didn't feel annoying or intimidating to her any more.
"My thoughts of the future ended with ensuring your bridge was operational. Once it is opened, I can imagine no further."
"Why?"
"I had a small wish to know what you had done to Thor and I needed an excuse to be near to you. I was making a bid to pretend there was still some sense to be made of the universe for me, nothing more tangible."
Jane shook her head, smiling sadly. "I mean, why can't you imagine the future even if you don't have a long-term goal yet? You're such a planner."
The corner of his mouth tugged upward at the fond teasing in that observation, but he seemed pained. "You will charge me with amateur dramatics if I tell you the truth, Jane."
"I won't. Scout's honour."
He cocked his head ironically at her use of a turn of phrase she knew he couldn't possibly recognise, but he took the intent behind it easily enough. "The man I thought that I was, was never born. What's left is a wandering spirit without past or destiny. Worse than a shade. What am I to do with this life which is not mine to live and which has no purpose? You were a thin tether to a home in which I never belonged, yet for which I could not help yearning."
Jane held her tongue, tempted to break her promise a little bit. She didn't think he'd take it in the sense that she meant it. She would never get how he could hate himself so much and still be so vain.
"Learning is a purpose," she suggested gently.
The point of his chin lifted mutinously. "It is not considered an end of itself-"
"On Asgard?"
A muscle jumped in his cheek as his jaw clenched.
"Yeah, exactly. Who cares what they think if they'll never accept you, anyway? Honestly, sweetheart, either let the place go or don't, but make up your mind."
They both froze at her unthinking use of a pet name, something she had never done often but found herself doing more and more when she was affectionately exasperated. Jane felt heat rising in her cheeks that she'd forgotten all the reasons she shouldn't be that intimate, forgotten she had no idea what she was okay with when it came to her feelings for him. Everything was too close, too familiar for her to keep the new reality in the forefront of her mind, for her to remember she needed to maintain a sensible distance. She could still have compassion for him without throwing caution completely to the wind.
"Sorry," she muttered, not sure if it was a good idea or if it would makes things worse.
Loki wouldn't look at her. She wanted desperately to know what he was thinking and he was denying her the opportunity even to guess.
Taking the hint, she moved along, "What do you think will happen if we turn the bridge on just to see if it works?"
"I doubt the bifrost has been repaired. Not if it is to be rebuilt as it once was. They will have a limited ability to take any action at all," his accent seemed sharper, crisp with formality. He was disassociating again, switching off. "They very likely believe me dead. It is possible Heimdall has noticed something amiss, or that he was watching when I allowed my guard to drop."
"Heimdall? Thor yelled that a couple times. Is he like a security guard?"
Loki smiled at her choice of words. "Just so. He is a man who can see whatever he would turn his gaze upon, be it on the far side of the universe. Asgard's gatekeeper. I'm certain he has been watching you. I disguise myself as a human where possible, but he may have deduced the truth if he has looked while I was blocking him completely. He knows of no one else who can shroud his sight."
Jane, a little lost, told herself to swallow the magic stuff for now and worry about it later. She nodded with what she hoped was a sage expression.
"You truly mean to go forward with me, Jane Foster? Just as we had planned?"
Well, she was hardly about to start being sober and practical at this stage of the game. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Do you not fear me even now? Fear at last that Erik Selvig is right and I do have some nefarious trick winding up? That I bide my time to turn upon you?"
"Acting based on fear has never got me anywhere I wanted to go. I'll never know if I don't take the chance."
"On occasion, Jane, you provide me with miserable insights about why you and my brother found such accord in your short time together."
She waggled her finger at him. "He said as if it didn't just as easily explain why I get along with you. Not charging in guns blazing doesn't mean you don't take big dumb risks to find things out just like me. Calculated risks are still risks. You're the one hanging out here, the only place anyone would ever look for you, so you can satisfy your curiosity. I've got infinitely more in common with..." she trailed off, suddenly thinking about what she was saying.
"I am not impetuous," Loki complained, letting her off the hook.
She felt again that urge to touch him, make contact, to slip her arm around his waist and hug him tight, to show him that she poked fun at him because she understood. Because she liked him. She put her hands in her pockets and didn't call him on his contrariness and didn't tell him how full of shit he was. It was so hard to resist falling back into the easy swing of their relationship before she had found out the truth, to remember not to tease and push at his barriers as if nothing serious were at stake.
"Okay," she breezed by it awkwardly. "Well, come help me re-rig our test set up now that you're not withholding. Then I should probably call Darcy."
And he certainly wasn't withholding any more. Her brain was shorting out trying to follow as he went over the composition and properties of the Asgardian materials which allowed the short beamline and spun her particles into spirals without loss of velocity, this time free to tell her about how they were made. The runes he'd avoided translating for her the first time, he now explained channelled and entrapped the will of a sorcerer, permitting the permanent infusion of magic into the inanimate.
Jane couldn't help her continuing efforts to comprehend it as something that fit into her world, something she would be able to explain as technology with some hitherto undiscovered wrinkle of quantum mechanics. Loki seemed to find this approach endearing, but he had no sympathy for her futile quest to turn magic into science.
"Dark energy has nothing whatsoever to do with it, Dr. Foster, though it has its own uses."
She rubbed her temples and tried again to grasp his lecture about where 'mortal science' ended in the atom smasher, 'Asgardian science' began, and how 'simple magic' wound its way through both.
He'd told her he didn't need to pretend to be slower than he was when they'd worked through these things originally, her way, but she was feeling less and less inclined to believe that.
"I was hobbled by the necessary moratorium on magic at even the most basic level. Imagine being asked to build a complex mechanical system without the use of your right hand, to describe stellar dynamics without calculus. Magic is as intrinsic to my thought as mathematics is to yours."
She did call Darcy, but she spent a lot of time holding the phone away from her ear and the conversation ended with an ominous command to 'not do anything too Jane until I get there'.
Jane told Loki they were going ahead ASAP. They had probably one more day if Darcy was serious, and Darcy had sounded pretty serious.
They bolted the bridge machine to a massive piece of reinforced steel platform which Lucio from the junk shop assured her weighed in excess of a metric tonne (but which Loki carried around like it was made of cardboard- she now felt moronic for doubting him when he said could move the server without help), and drove it out to the bifrost site.
"It will make it easier. It could be done from the roof as planned, if you prefer," Loki had said, uncharacteristically sanguine. She thought changing the test site was a good idea regardless of what was easier. Not that they would exactly be hidden, but they would at least be slightly less obvious.
He buried the platform in the sand, shoring it up with artistic waves of his elegant hands to which huge quantities of earth responded as if a conducted symphony and which seemed to alter the chemical composition of the dirt as it settled into place. Nothing was going to move now. Except the van, which she backed a good thirty metres or so away. Just in case.
It had been three days total since the confrontation with SHIELD and Jane was uncomfortably convinced that they were cutting their window of opportunity very fine even rushing headlong into things like this. When Loki asked again if she was certain she wanted to go on, she nodded decisively. If this was a huge mistake, she was long-since committed to making it.
The observational array was fully online in the van, taking up every single atom of space in the back except a tiny niche with a stool for her to sit on that barely cleared the door. The machine was ready and no one was here to bear witness except the duplicitous alien who had somehow become the most important person in her life.
She gave him the signal and they went to their stations, hands hovering at the ready to make adjustments. She knew how to open her own personal rip in the fabric of space-time. She understood. She still needed Loki's superhuman abilities to make cheap antimatter in order to run the equipment as it currently stood, but she, Jane Foster, knew how and she'd jumped the last hurdle without any help. Her brain was steering this ship, these were her designs.
"You're going to work," she told her creation under her breath, "and everyone's gonna know it."
With a terrific crack, a pulsating and glorious beam of light and energy exploded into the sky; it looked almost like a double helix made of lightning. Sensors chirped all around her, but she couldn't tear her attention away long enough to heed their readings even though her eyes were dazzled by the brightness. Almost as soon as it appeared, the vortex vanished. Her vision spotty, she jumped out of the van's open back door and dashed towards Loki's position by the machine. He threw his hand out at his side in warning, making her stop short.
A man stood, looking dazed, in a rough circle in the sand. He was tall and fully encased in ostentatious golden armour and a menacing, oversized helmet with stylised, geometric horns. By his clothes, his sudden materialisation, and the way he thrust a spear out in front of him, she could guess he was an Asgardian, too.
"What mortal dares?" the guard? soldier? demanded, coming closer and sticking his spear out threateningly towards Loki's chest.
Loki grabbed it with both hands, rolling it towards the other man's body and yanking it out of his weakened grip, all too fast for Jane to completely follow how it was done. The Asgardian drew a dagger and readied another battle stance, but his expression became a mask of utter shock as he looked his opponent in the face.
"Imposter! Show yourself!" he shouted.
"What Heimdall witnesses, the All-father judges, and never to go unpunished are crimes against the son of Odin," Loki recited in a strange cadence, his voice reverberating in a way that shouldn't have been possible in the middle of an open plain. His own resplendent garments seemed to gather around him and coalesce from light, his intricate woven armour and his towering, crown-like helm.
The Asgardian's mouth fell open and he seemed momentarily paralysed, then his fist snapped to his chest and he dropped to one knee. "I implore Your Highness to pardon me."
Jane's brain, usually a pretty reliable source of useful observations, supplied her only with the staggeringly unhelpful thought, 'Holy shit, he really is a prince.' Of course, she knew that, but she hadn't known that. The unexpected confrontation with the proof was just the last straw on her coping skills, it defeated her rationalisation impulse. His airs and the aura he sometimes had that came perilously close to inducing an emotion like awe, it was all pointing to this incredible, fairytale nonsense that was the truth. She had been hanging out with genuine, bona fide alien royalty and it wasn't just a scam on SHIELD or on Erik or anyone else. People bowed.
Inexplicably, this made some things easier to understand. She felt inclined to look at Thor and Loki and their hang-ups with greater charity.
"It is forgiven, einherjar, you knew me not. I assume the All-father has acknowledged my death?" Loki asked, his magisterial tone seeming exactly appropriate in a way that it never had before.
He nodded.
"The crown prince? He believes in it also?"
"He was said to have received a sign this past fortnight, Your Highness. A white feather fell in his footprint."
Loki twisted the stolen spear between his hands, his mouth twitching to the side as he thought over this- to Jane, totally cryptic- response.
"Fetch him," Loki said with sudden decision.
The einherjar, whatever that was, appeared to stifle an instinct to glance up in surprise. "The prince your brother, Highness?" he sounded uncertain.
"Yes. Go to him directly." Smoke seemed to emanate from Loki's hands and swirl around the shaft of the spear, which glowed slightly. He tossed it into the sand at the einherjar's feet like a javelin. "Give him this, but tell him nothing, waste no time. It will bring him here to me. I require his aid."
Nodding so sharply that his chin seemed to bob on his chest, the guard only had time to grab hold of the spear before the bifrost was activated, apparently by magic.
"I think it is farewell for us, Jane," Loki said softly as he turned to her with a wistful smile, his cape swirling about his heels. From being every inch the majestic titan seconds before, he suddenly looked like a boy playing dress up. "I ought to have known it would end like this. Perhaps I did, really.
"I am a frightfully good liar."