27. Dusk

.

When Jane's rambling narrative finally limped semi-coherently to the moment of Thor's arrival in the desert, the Asgardian in question seized the arms of his chair and heaved himself to his feet with alarming suddenness.

"Forgive me, Jane," he more announced than asked over the tail end of what she had been saying as her voice petered out. He grimaced importantly. "I must see to my brother."

Jane blinked at him in surprise for a few milliseconds before her brain switched gears. "See to him? See to him how? What does that mean?"

"Yeah," Darcy put in. "And that was a bit rude, Thor. I thought we learned this after the cup thing."

"It was rude," Jane agreed, vindicated. "Answer the question. Questions. Whatever."

Thor did look a bit contrite, if slightly more impatient. "I beg your pardon. I would speak to him."

Jane lifted an eyebrow at that. "That's all? That's all 'seeing to him' means?"

"I feel it is my duty as a sworn guardian of this world and as brother to Loki to protect them from each other." Thor bowed his head, as if deferring to her judgement.

An uneasy feeling seeped up into her body, a wafting of suspicion she couldn't fully answer or suppress. Thor definitely didn't see things quite how she might hope. She worried about what was going on in his mind, what he thought he knew and what he feared.

"Okay," she said cautiously, not knowing what else she could really say. "I can understand that. You won't be far, though, right? Loki won't have gone far." She was completely certain of that to an extent which might not be justified solely by her knowledge of how close by the SHIELD base of operations was.

Thor bowed his head again, this time in acquiesce.

"Well, see you later, I guess." She chewed her fingernail nervously.

"Until we meet again, Jane Foster."

He strode toward the door, snatching up the hammer from its place beside his chair and saluting them with it as he left. Jane and Darcy watched him scan the horizon for a moment before he twirled the hammer at his side and tossed himself into the air like some superhuman shot-putter.

"So, then," Darcy said, rolling her index finger towards Jane like a tiny combine harvester.

"Ummm...?"

"So you and Thor made super awkward eye contact, and then…?"

Jane rolled her eyes. "I didn't say it was awkward!"

Darcy waved her protest aside. "You don't really need to say it, some things are obvious. Do I look dumb? You've gotten yourself into a hell of a soap opera here, Jane, and I don't just mean the Shakespearean tragedy that is the royal home life. Your knight in shining armour finally came back for you from his certain doom and, meanwhile, you fell for his brother in disguise."

She wanted to throw up, she was so fed up with everything. "Darcy, for the love of God-"

"You can 'Darcy' me all you want, it's so close to being the stone cold sober truth that I can't even exaggerate for comic effect. Anyway, whatever. Tell me what else happened."

Jane had her qualms at this point, because the rest was pretty much a mountain of Thor and Loki's personal crap- mostly Loki's- and she wasn't sure she had the right to recap that for a peanut gallery, A, and B, she wasn't sure she wanted to add any ammunition to Darcy's arsenal. On the other hand, the two princes weren't exactly shy about carrying on Act V, Scene iii in front of whoever happened to be there, lately including Darcy, and Jane absolutely needed Darcy to know. An outside perspective wasn't something she could keep doing without.

So she told her friend, in as much detail as she could bear, trying not to editorialise too much and leaving out only a few potentially salient particulars. She was musing about her conversation with Loki in her trailer and the way he made his big entrance afterwards when Darcy hummed gently to stave off the flow.

"And this is where I came in," she said, leaning thoughtfully on her hand.

Jane smacked her dry lips, almost relieved to stop talking even as more and more things that needed talking about bubbled to the surface of her mind like panicky submarines.

"Right." Darcy clapped her hands on her knees. "What the hell are you going to do?"

Groaning like she'd been punched, Jane sank despondently into the couch. "You know, I didn't spend three hundred years telling you all this just for your entertainment. I was kind of hoping for, if not advice, at least some kind of… something. Practical direction? I mean, obviously there's SHIELD to worry about and the next step in research pursuits is pretty-"

Darcy leaned over and put her fingers over Jane's mouth, her eyebrows pressing together in sort of annoyed concern. "No, no, no. Shut up. You don't want my advice about your mad science and the terrible life decisions you will definitely make so you can keep on mad sciencing. You already know you're riding that crazy train until it either pulls into Shining Time Station or runs out of track and crashes and burns with no survivors. You know what you're doing about the work, I can't talk you out of that being 'whatever it takes' any more than Erik could.

"You want me to talk you off a completely different ledge, and I'll be honest with you, boss, I may be out of my depth with this. I know I teased you a bunch and I guess I'm sorry about that now, but it really sounds like your biggest actual dilemma isn't even mostly about the science and hasn't been for a while."

The setting sun was searing directly into Jane's brain, the west window a blinding molten orange, and staring at it was still less uncomfortable than trying to look Darcy in the eye. "You're not still planning ways to fix me up with aliens, are you? It's not really funny any more," she joked weakly, knowing she wouldn't get away with it for an instant.

"I'm being straight with you right now. All kidding aside. I just listened to a lot of talking from you and you are sounding like you love him and that is full on craz..."

Jane's teeth clacked painfully together as she flailed in an abrupt attempt to get up, nearly slid off the couch and knocked her chin on her chest. "Ow!"

Darcy's expression contorted dismay and she put her hand on Jane's shoulder to steady her, leaning close, getting in her face, "Jane...!"

"No, no," she babbled helplessly, "I'm… I..."

"Do not tell me right now that you're seriously in love with the guy who tried to kill me before I turned 26. I saved a dog from that Cyclops thing! A cute little dog!"

"I didn't say that!"

"You conspicuously failed to deny it!"

She crossed her arms defiantly, ready to dig her heels in. "He didn't anyway, he didn't try to kill you, he didn't send that thing to kill us, he-"

"Ohh ho ho, you are so not helping your case!" Darcy engaged her in a bit of a bug-eyed staring contest for what felt like eternity before she sat back and started examining her nails as if she'd been cool as a cucumber this whole time. "Well, whatever the deal is on your end, he is definitely in love with you."

Her stomach seemed to hit her shoes and she saw her hand shaking as she lifted it to push her hair back. "He does not, don't be like this. The whole thing is ridiculous."

Darcy shrugged, unmoved. "Usually I would write it off as pandering romantic bullshit when someone lays out some heavy crap about protecting me to the death and fighting an army for me, going to the ends of the earth and all that, but Jane, in your case he means an actual literal army that is after you and I really think he would. And maybe you need me to remind you, maybe it's slipped your mind, but he actually could."

Jane stopped and thought and really tried to reconcile the fact that Darcy was completely right with some level of reality she recognised. He actually could, she had zero doubt, and maybe he even actually would. Go through SHIELD and their scare tactics and their stealing and their secret bunkers like a hot knife through butter. For her. For their work, at least. Either way, it was an incredibly sobering thought.

"They could probably raze the whole planet," she mumbled, either awestruck or horror-struck and not sure which. "Either one of them alone probably could."

"Good thing they took a shine to us, isn't it?" Darcy winked half-heartedly, looking drawn. "I did not guess this internship was going to be so intense. This is going to prepare me for public office, I think. What's a few launch codes to knowing Jane Foster?"

"Glad to be of service, Madame President." Jane saluted her wryly. "At least you still know where you're going. Everything in my life up until now has been leading to this spot, it's all been about getting here, where I am… and I'm honestly not sure how it ends after this. I never imagined an ending, really; I never thought past being right and then making the bridge work. I figured it would come naturally. 'Not sure'- I mean, I have no clue. Supposing I get the chance, do I publish a few papers and go back to my normal career or…"

"Ask him if he's staying."

Jane winced, the dart striking home harder than Darcy could know. They were in it together, she'd told him, but she still wasn't thinking past the bridge, past the work. What was after that?

"You're going to need his help just to have the opportunity to write a paper after this. I can't fix SHIELD's little red wagon for you. Yet."

She rolled into the cushions, pressing her cheek against the unsympathetic vinyl, wishing she could bury herself in it. "Do I want him to stay?"

Darcy's shoulder bobbed in a shrug. "Do you?"

"He needs… a lot." More than I'm equipped to give, really. Who am I to think I can get him through and pick him up and dust him off on the other side?

"You said he needed understanding, someone to try to figure him out, and you wanted to be the one to give him that."

She had said that. She was an even better judge of character than she'd realised. "Well, that was before..." It sounded lame. It felt lame.

Darcy poked her until she sat up, then gave her a frank look. "Yeah, when the possibilities were endless. He could have been a spy, or a SHIELD plant, or something worse, and you didn't even care. Is this a worst case scenario? Or is it just the most interesting?"

Jane stared balefully at the ceiling, not knowing whether she should feel vindicated or not. "I was right about him, though. All this insanity, but I was right about him."

"Meaning?"

"Who he was. Who he is. The stuff I didn't know is a pretty big deal, gotta admit, but..."

"It's a lot to handle, Jane. Who even knows."

"Yeah."

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

Thor had not considered even for a moment the possibility that he would be unable to locate his brother once he decided to look for him. Indeed, either Jane had predicted correctly that Loki would not go far, or he was returned from his business, because he was sitting on a high rock ridge just a league or so east of the human settlement. Fortune smiles on Thor again, he thought, the taste of this accustomed sentiment now sour.

Loki was no longer wearing his fine armour or even ordinary garb, but was clad in human garments much like some of those he had appeared in when Thor was a captive in the desert. Missing the dark outer layers he'd worn on that occasion, he was left in only a shirt and trousers, and it made him look thinner than ever, a reed in white silk. Thor was troubled by a familiar turbulence of primal feelings. He wanted to protect his vulnerable younger brother, and he wanted to purge an obviously weaker rival. He's not as he should be, Sif's voice drifted from some deep recess of his memory. Tricks and spells and dusty books. What kind of prince is that?

He thought of Loki's blunt, unfeeling confirmation of what Odin had with great pain at last explained upon being questioned about Loki's words on the bifrost. I'm not your brother, I never was. He imagined his brother's pale pink skin spreading with dark blue stain, like a bruise, his fine features twisting into a gnarled and hoary ugliness. He imagined cold black blood steaming as it splattered warm Asgardian soil. His fist clenched so hard at his side that the bones creaked; he tasted bile.

"You lower yourself with mortal dress?" he demanded in lieu of greeting, his voice harsher than he had intended.

Loki measured him with an aside glance, as if he had Thor's heart on a scale, as if he could sit in judgement. Then he turned back to squint out over the desert, saying nothing.

"Loki," Thor tried again, searching within himself for the patience he was so earnestly labouring to cultivate. No further words would come to him, he could find no expression for his thought.

Loki unbuttoned his collar and rubbed at his neck. "The guard only bruised me more than your grip would have done. It's ceremonial armour, terribly foolish of me to wear it into battle. This raiment may be lowly, but if we two should fight again, I think I should prefer to die in it than in my borrowed honours. It's closer to the truth."

Thor let the hammer fall and stepped away from it, making certain he was seen to do so. He could form no other response, his mind churning with meanings and implications.

"I never wanted you dead, Thor," Loki went on, his voice so low that it could scarcely be heard. "I cannot deny wanting to kill you, perhaps more often than you could possibly have guessed, but I never wanted you to be dead."

Swallowing hard and commanding himself to have forbearance, Thor nodded acceptance of this odd proclamation. A desire to challenge him he understood. If that were all, it would have been forgiven already.

"Do you think me a coward?"

Thor dropped to a seat on the sand, resting his arms on his knees and avoiding eye contact with his brother. He was of two minds on this topic even before everything bound up in it had become so much more complicated. The situation was hardly improved.

"I cannot take pride in your methods," he said carefully, "but I have never seen you shrink from true battle once engaged."

Loki chuckled under his breath. "I've underestimated your tact, brother. It seems you have heard of such a thing, after all. But don't avoid the question. You can't suppose you'll out talk me. You hardly out talk Hogan."

Thor pushed down a hot wave of anger which threatened to burst over him. "I have answered your question."

"That isn't what I meant," Loki snapped, and it gave Thor comfort that he was not so languid and irreverent as his refuge in low wit would suggest.

"What did you mean?" He was weary of playing riddles and guessing what he was supposed to know. Sick to his grave of it.

Loki wrung his hands in his lap, his nostrils flaring. He was irritated, humiliated; he didn't want to explain himself. That very thing was perhaps the root of all his rhetorical games, and wouldn't that observation take the wind from his sails if Thor gave it voice. Were they such children, still?

"Because you feared me?" Thor asked, grasping the crux of the issue suddenly. A heaviness pulled at his chest, a feeling like the brushing of nettles painting itself over his skin. "No, I do not."

A deeply scrutinising gaze flicked back to him and Loki evidently quested in his expression for any trace of mockery.

Thor's guts heaved at the burning memory of his disgust- the disgust he could not help and which lingered like a shroud even now- and knew in his heart that Loki had not been wrong to fear him.

"It was your duty to protect the throne," he said and hoped that Loki was in fact so good at hearing what was not said as he always boasted of being.

Loki looked stricken by the compromise of this answer, his eyes wide and his lips parted in shock, then he ducked his head and his face went blank.

"Our friends may have done some wrong-" Thor began, attempting a neutral tone.

"Your friends," Loki interrupted savagely, sneering over his words.

Thor allowed the outburst to hang between them for a long moment, letting his brother think of Sif's hairpin and Frandral's generosity and Volstagg's kindness. Let him think of Hogun's sombre fairness. Let him contemplate what friendship was, how many times they had guarded one another's flanks.

"Our friends," he went on as if nothing had been said, "may have been hasty in coming here, I'll not argue it, but you betrayed me, brother, and more, if we are counting sins. You showed enemies into Father's vault and are a traitor too."

Loki scoffed and scowled down at the sand beneath him, picking at his fingernails.

"And what of Jane?" Thor added darkly. This was much more pressing treachery, now.

Loki raked his fingers through his hair and Thor noticed for the first time that it was nearly a span longer than it had been when his brother let go his lifeline and fell from the bifrost in Asgard. Had so much time passed? But Loki was patient. His purposes could wait mortal lifetimes for fulfilment, what was a turn of the Earth?

"I was curious," Loki was saying, sounding far away and cloyingly wistful.

Thor frowned.

"The only part of my heart which still beat was the muscle of intrigue, and with nothing left to pursue in the wide world but satisfaction, why shouldn't curiosity be enough? Unlike you, I didn't require her assistance. If only I didn't wonder, I should never have darkened her door."

"You were always thus, I believe it was our second master of history who dubbed you 'the Relentless'," Thor granted gruffly, in no mood to think fondly on such a childhood recollection at this moment. "But that is not why you sought her out."

Loki sighed, resigned to his fate. "Isn't it?"

"No."

"Why did I then? Enlighten me."

Thor fought against the tensing of his muscles, gritted his teeth to keep his expression controlled. "Revenge."

Leaping to his feet and looking like he wanted nothing more in the universe than to spit in Thor's face, Loki panted with violent anger he was obviously barely containing. He was also obviously completely unsurprised by the accusation. "Because the Norns know, nothing has ever come to pass in all the branches of Yggdrasil since the dawn of the age that wasn't about you."

"Raging against them only makes me firmer in my convictions, brother. I have known you of old, though there is much perhaps I missed, and you protest too heartily for truth."

"You-!" Loki sputtered, at a loss for an insult scathing enough.

"Jane is innocent," Thor said calmly.

Loki let out a pointed laugh. "Hardly."

"She deserves none of your wrath, none of whatever damage your use of her will do when you spring your trap to punish me."

Loki shook his head, his eyes pitying. "More fool you, Thor. I have laid no trap, I would take a dagger in my breast without complaint this very moment. My ambitions have ceased. You understand nothing."

"I understand you can bring her only pain." Her pitiful nature would profit her naught but suffering in this case, Thor was certain. Jane was too kind.

Sinking back into the sand, Loki tipped his chin up and smiled grimly at the sky. "There you have me, brother. There you have me."

Thor did not know, and was consumed with a dreadful suspicion that he did not wish to know, what had passed between Jane Foster and his brother, but he knew he couldn't trust it and needed to break it quickly. Loki could not be left here in any sense, in any trace, unguarded and without curtail. He was too fractious, licking his wounds and lashing out; there was no telling what he might do.

"Then charge your bridge. Return with me to Asgard. Be my brother again and I will know I can begin to forgive you."

Loki's eyes rolled over to him, big and almost frightened, like a war dog fighting the lead.

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

Jane sprawled on the couch, listening to Darcy move around the kitchen looking for something edible to have as a snack. There wasn't a lot. Jane didn't know if she'd be able to eat even if there were. The world still seemed to be spinning a bit too fast.

She had a terrible feeling about Loki and Thor being left alone together and a worse one about what might happen while both her alien bodyguards were off the reservation, possibly never to return.

She twisted at her pinky, telling herself she didn't believe they would do that to her.

"What are we gonna do about dinner?" Darcy wondered aloud. "You can't take the Clash of the Titans to the bar."

"It seems like Loki can dress himself in whatever he wants with his invisible magic wand, and Thor could wear some of Erik's stuff," Jane mumbled from under the arm she'd thrown across her face. "Unless you meant the yelling and potential for violence, but it's not like that's out of place on a Thursday night at the local dive as long as no one goes around calling down thunderstorms and shooting laser beams out of their-"

"Did you see that?" Darcy's tone was urgent and completely serious.

Jane sat up so fast her head spun. "What? Where?"

Darcy was peering out the windows facing the desert. "Flashes- purple smoke, maybe?"

"For fuck's sake!" Jane scrambled for her shoes, her heartbeat like an out of tune timpani being played inside her skull by a rabid chimp. "For fuck's sake, Darcy, if he- if he…!"

Darcy blinked at her, alarmed. "Which one? If he what?"

Jane grabbed her by the sleeve and started dragging. "Van, now. Now."

They wobbled across the desert, absolutely shredding the suspension with a careening pace which had Darcy gripping the handle above her door in white-knuckled terror and whimpering a little every time Jane got more than five seconds of hang time off a bump.

"You know, it'd be nice to know what I'm dying for this time!" she yelled over the clanking of equipment and the dull roar of the tires. "Are they fighting? Is that what that light is?"

"Worse!" Jane shouted, too focussed on her mission for more than one syllable.

"Worse?" Darcy repeated, apparently failing to imagine what could be worse.

"I'll kill him if I'm right. I will kill him."

"Okay, bit scared now."

"I better be wrong!" Jane fumed, not caring as she ran over some shrubs.

"Yeah," Darcy agreed, shell shocked, "yeah, I think you'd better be."

Jane just cranked the wheel as they drew up beside the bridge device and the van drifted sideways a good three metres before it stopped. Sparks of colour were flaring from the spindle of the worm hole projector and arcing back towards the shallow dish at the base. A familiar ozone, petrichor type smell hit her like a slap as she threw her door open and ran towards the two figures standing at her machine. And to think she'd loved that smell, the smell of Loki's magic.

"Hey!" she screamed.

Both heads turned towards her, Thor trying an awkward smile and Loki lifting his hands in a defensive posture with a look on his face that said he knew exactly what she was pissed about.

"Jane, if you would allow me to..." he began in a placating voice as she stomped up to him.

"No!" She thrust an accusing finger into his face. "How dare you? After everything I've put up with from you and everything you watched me put up with from Erik, after how many goddamned conversations about not just fucking off out of nowhere and seriously not making decisions for me? I thought you understood, I really-"

"Please, Jane," Thor interjected in a 'isn't this silly, can't we all just be sensible?' type of tone which made her even more furious than she already was, "you must-"

She pushed an open hand towards his face as if she would just clap it over his mouth. "Shut up, Thor. I'm not mad at you, not relatively speaking. You probably think you're doing the best thing for everyone and blah blah blah responsible and I can't really blame you for thinking so. But you," she rounded on Loki again, grabbing handfuls of his shirt and trying to pull him down to her level so she could yell at him better, "you know me better than that, you know exactly how I feel about this patronising-"

"Jane." Loki lifted his hands to cup her cheeks, and she was so surprised that he was touching her like this in front of other people that her tirade stopped. "I was not going to leave."

She shook her head in his hold. "Don't even try to… you weren't?"

She looked over at Thor. His face was set in an inscrutable mask, but he nodded in confirmation.

Jane stared up at Loki again, his eyes were bright and hopeful, a slight curve pulling at his lips. He nodded too, trying to reassure her. "We should have warned you, Thor wished to send a message and I..."

She was breathing too heavy, she was crying and everything was stupid. "I thought you were abandoning the work."

He shook his head, his thumbs wiping her tears away.

She clenched her eyes closed, making more spill down her face. She hated that she was crying. Just because she was angry. So annoying to cry when you were angry and make everyone think you were being dramatic. Her voice was very small when she added, "I thought you were gonna leave me."

"No, Jane."

"Would have killed you."

"Quite right."

He smiled at her and she started to roll up onto her tiptoes, started stretching her neck to reach his mouth and kiss him until the whole muddled world melted away, when she remembered that Thor was standing right there and dropped to her heels and stepped away and knew it was much too late.