28. Nightfall

.

She and Loki stared at each other in mutual discombobulation, then he closed his eyes and grimaced.

Well, she definitely couldn't blame him for being pessimistic on this one. She'd been inches from guaranteeing that the dirty laundry was well and truly aired in front of the worst possible audience, and there was zero chance said audience hadn't guessed exactly what was going on. No way could she play this off. Even just the practically weeping in Loki's arms part would have been a tough sell in retrospect.

Jane wouldn't have done this to Thor in a million years if she'd been thinking straight, this was no way for him to find out, rubbing his face in it out of nowhere. God, she wanted to believe she would have sat him down and told him properly if there had been time and it was safe to do so, if she'd felt completely certain it was going to keep being an issue long enough to make the meltdown worthwhile. No denying there was something to tell, but with the rest of the drama it had seemed a minor point.

"Thor, I..." she risked looking at him, groping for something to say, but he only had eyes for Loki and his face was utterly closed off.

"Even when you threatened it," Thor said, his voice low and rough but getting louder with every word as his control frayed, "even in my anger, I tried not to believe it of you! I tried to think you would never slither so low on your belly that you..."

Thor's raging became a wordless cry and he charged Loki like a linebacker going for a tackle. Loki neatly avoided the blow with a pivot just as it would have landed, grabbed Thor's outside arm and rolled him ass over tea kettle into the sand with his own momentum. Thor bounced back up in seconds and seized Loki by his shirt collar before he could get out of the way again.

"Stop it!" Jane shrieked, horrified at how quickly violence had erupted and how out of her control it was.

"Coward, you asked me!" Thor scoffed, raising the hammer, "That is too generous a word for what you are!"

Loki turned his wrists and grasped at the air as a spear materialised into his hands, the shaft pressing up under Mjolnir's head, ready to fend off the attack if it fell. Infuriatingly, he said nothing at all.

"Wielding a mortal woman scholar as your shiv in my back, can you be..."

"Shut up!"

"...be the brother who bled with me in battle? Can you then bewitch-"

"Shut up!" she screamed again, this time at the most ear piercing pitch she could manage.

Thor froze for a moment, a crease of confusion forming in his brow before it was blotted out by a new wave of fury. "Heimdall knew!"

He shoved Loki away from him and they both lifted their weapons, circling each other with intent stares, probing each other's guards occasionally. Loki looked catastrophically undefended in his normal, purely decorative human dress shirt and trousers- no armour, no shield- facing Thor's massive bulk of metal and cape and hammer.

"I thought he might," Loki said, sounding remarkably unconcerned and unruffled by the fight. "A most unfortunate mistake. I let my guard down."

The same 'mistake' which had given SHIELD an earful, and she knew exactly what had distracted him so much. It was funny how her desire to make out with him was turning out to be such a pivotal issue. Funny in a terrifying sort of way.

"Thor, please listen, I'm so sorry you had to find out like this," she started cautiously, slowly moving closer, preparing herself to get between them and grab at the hammer.

"Do you know what you are saying?" he demanded, his eyes sliding back and forth as he split his attention in monitoring her movements and following Loki.

Jane was offended and she was scared and this was going to stop. "Of course I do! He's not Svengali!"

"I have heard tell of magic which breaks the will," Thor said, blowing right past the Svengali comment, which Jane now remembered was an unhelpfully human reference.

"Don't be absurd," Loki chastised, the butt of the spear nudging Mjolnir as it edged too close. "Do you imagine power of that kind is so easy to come by?"

"Lies, then, honeyed words! You lured Laufey into the heartland of his greatest foe-"

"And it was child's play! Odin's chamber was the place he wanted most to be in the universe, his hatred rendered him as blind as your arrogance does you. He trusted my ambition because he saw himself reflected there, any idiot could have likewise turned him to their purpose. Jane's will could stop this world from turning, honeyed words would not break it if they were spoken ceaselessly until Asgard falls."

Jane and Thor both stared at him.

Then Thor turned to her, caught between accusation and helplessness.

"I never could have stolen her affections," Loki went on conversationally, but there was a slight crack in his voice and she knew something wasn't copesetic, "pity is not affection."

"You admit you tried!" Thor growled, not letting himself be swayed from the point.

"I admit I considered it." Loki glanced at her and quickly away again when he found her looking back. "I considered it and was too tired."

Jane's throat seemed full of razorblades, her hands curled at her sides.

"What of your words to me today? That your place here was in the likeness of a trade agreement between you, that you were honour bound to fulfil your part in her science and it was the business of that deal which keeps you at her side until she has completed her study."

"I did swear an oath. It was not business."

Thor startled as he watched his brother, apparently seeing something he hadn't expected.

Loki set his jaw and tipped his head back defiantly. "It is not honour, either."

Thor went suddenly to Jane, beside her before she was finished noticing he was moving, his free hand gathering her close to him in an utterly irresistible grip.

"Hey!" she protested, "Let me go!"

"Jane Foster," he said softly, his mouth just above her ear, his eyes still tracking his opponent, "even if this could be trusted, and he has laboured earnestly to erode such faith in his word, you do not want his devotion. It is a fire which burns."

Loki was there in a flash, the spear was clashing against Mjolnir and he was snarling in Thor's face, then he was gone again, retreating to a safe distance. He panted, clearly more from upset than exertion, watching Jane for signs of how she would react to what Thor was whispering to her.

Thor's grip tightened on her shoulder, pushing her slightly behind him and against his side under his arm. "I have every regret for the part I played in it, Jane, but still his loyalty has a death toll. For love of our father, he-"

"Let her go, Thor," Loki said, his delivery crisp, "they are fragile creatures."

"If this is sincerity, it is as like to be dangerous as any lie."

"Get down!" Loki threw the spear through the air above her head and as Thor released her to swat at it, another projectile clipped him in the ribs and he staggered back a step. She dove towards the sand, aiming for a graceful roll to break her fall and managing to only half eat shit. As soon as she was clear, the thunderclap and searing twister of light that was the wormhole enclosed and swallowed Thor. When the dust cleared, he was gone.

Jane blinked the stars out of her eyes and stared at Loki in shock. "Did you do that?"

He nodded gravely, his lips pursed.

"You sent him back to Asgard?"

Another nod.

Jane let out a breath and stood up, slapping sand out of her jeans and sweater. "Well, okay then."

"You are not displeased?" He sounded surprised.

"Not really." She frowned at her shoes, annoyed she hadn't thought to do something like kick Thor in the shin and break the deadlock. Then she could have talked him down instead of tossing him off the planet like it wasn't a semi-understandable reaction she could have easily predicted. "Situation was getting a bit out of hand."

Loki suppressed a smile, his dimples winking in and out of existence. He really looked like he'd been through the wars now, missing the first three buttons on his shirt, covered in sand, his hair a mad tangle of wind tossed curls. Definitely the most unkempt she'd ever seen him. It made him possibly even more relentlessly gorgeous than usual.

"Plan for that eventuality, did you?" she said, sizing him up. It was a thing he would do.

"Not precisely. Even my so-called 'super genius' bestows only limited clairvoyance. I primed the bridge for other reasons, but it didn't escape my attention that something of this kind might happen."

"Right." She put her hands on her hips. "What other reasons?"

"I began to tell you before, Thor wished to send a message directly and I did not object, but there was more. I have feared for some time it would be a problem, and those fears were not unfounded. You recall I thought that your human alloys and primitive construction methods may perhaps be too flimsy to long withstand the power of the bifrost?"

"Yeah." She'd told him he was being a snobby hyper advanced alien, her predictive models said it'd be fine.

"They are," he announced with a palpable smug air of 'I am being the bigger person and not saying I told you so but I told you so'. "The device can survive likely two or three further activations before it sustains any potentially serious structural fatigue, but cascade failure could be abrupt and I would recommend with complete confidence only one."

"One!" Jane's mind reeled, her happy little plan B of at least running a full barrage of tests from the ground if more ambitious ideas became too infeasible shattering. What did that actually leave her with? "But..."

Loki folded his hands in front of him, using the careful, affectedly breezy tone which meant he was laying track for something, "I have supposed all this while that the culmination of your work would be to use the bridge yourself, to see Asgard, walk the soil of another world. Am I correct in thinking so?"

Jane eyeballed him warily, not sure what he could be nervous about at this point. "Well you're not wrong, anyway. Ultimately, I'm- um- theoretically an academic and, you know, as an academic it was all about proving that my theories are a valid direction for further research, and it's more about the fact that the machine is possible in the first place than it is really going somewhere through it."

"Very well, Dr. Foster, academic. What of 'as Jane'?" There was something terribly serious in his eyes, but a deliberate warmth and lightness in his voice. "Jane Foster, incorrigible human? What is her end?"

She shrugged sheepishly. "Well, obviously I fully intended to throw myself into the void the second I was half-sure I was going to come out okay on the other side and I can barely imagine it without passing out from excitement, if that's what you mean." Her enthusiasm dimmed. "But I guess it's not really on the cards, is it?"

Loki threaded his fingers together, his thumbs rolling over each other. "The device can still transport you to Asgard perfectly safely. Your glory is there to be seized at leisure."

She shook her head. "You said one trip, that's a one way ticket and I have to get back. There's no bridge operational on the other side, even if someone stayed here to man this machine- and, I mean, if it weren't also over the safety threshold, maybe I could see myself risking it and asking Erik to help, but I don't… I don't think it's justifiable to compound risks crazily and potentially endanger the whole planet just for my own satisfaction."

More almost-realised dreams for Jane's giant pile of almosts.

"I'd meant to tell you when next we met," Loki said, like he'd just remembered- which she kind of doubted, "I looked in on Erik Selvig."

Jane paused, slightly worried by the sudden change of subject. "You did? You mean when you left the lab earlier?"

He flicked his hand towards her in confirmation. "I found him brooding over his portable computer in the public library. SHIELD is watching him, but they have not directly interfered with his habits. No electronic ears, only an armed shadow who kept her distance."

She wondered if that should make her feel better or not. It might mean he'd taken some of her reprimand to heart and was waiting at the sidelines in case she decided to call him, or it might mean he'd told SHIELD everything and they had no further use for him at the moment.

"He seemed good?"

"He looked weary, but otherwise well."

She'd bet he was weary. God, why did everything have to cut two ways?

"Thank you," she said, reaching out to touch his arm, "that was really thoughtful of you. I'm… Loki, I'm sorry I did that in front of Thor. I wasn't thinking and now..."

Loki chewed at his bottom lip and let it slowly pull back through his teeth, his eyebrows drawn together and quirked up in the middle. She waited.

"If we use your bridge to go to Asgard," he paused to clear his throat, trying to sound careless and casual and patently failing, "my abilities are such… I don't need the bifrost. I can bring you back myself."

Her heart skipped a beat, but she played along, pretending not to immediately see this for what it was. "What are you saying?"

"It wouldn't matter- the risk they will not complete repairs, the strain on the device here, it doesn't matter. The secret paths are eternal, we can travel those."

"Secret paths only you know," she said, trying to draw him out.

He looked squirrelly, rubbing his left wrist like he'd been shackled. "Yes."

"That even the all-seeing Asgardian Illuminati can't find- just you."

Now his chin drifted down towards his chest, he was gazing at her keenly from beneath his brow, shadows making the angles of his face more pronounced. "Yes."

"But they'll definitely work no matter what? No one can… close them down?"

God damn it, that face of his could break her heart. "No one else has ever found them."

She held her breath, feeling the weight of two worlds on her shoulders. This was it. All the times she'd ever thought 'this is it' in her life, she'd been wrong. This was the it.

"Can I think about it?" She tilted her head and tried to smile disarmingly.

Loki's lips twitched and then he nodded swiftly, some of his painfully rigid posture relaxing.

"Where will you be?"

He smiled, only the tiniest bit tremulously. "Afraid opportunity will yet slip away from you, Jane? Fear not, I shall be here."

"Right here?" She pointed at the ground, raising an eyebrow. "Did you just sleep in the desert all those months you weren't staying at the lab?"

"Not always. Not mostly."

She drifted closer as his answer sank in volume to muttering under his breath, letting herself grin at his evasiveness.

"I'm trying to imagine you as a camper. I have to say, it's not coming naturally."

"I wouldn't think you would object to sleeping rough beneath the stars, Jane Foster." He didn't sound defensive, but she wasn't sure if she detected a note of teasing or not. "I am no stranger to it. It is perfectly enjoyable, to be surrounded by the dark as deep as the roots of Yggrasil and the glitter of other worlds in the firmament. Silence has always been the most constant of my companions."

Her hands slid along his forearms, her head falling back to look up at him. "Part of your culture of one?"

"I want to take you to Asgard, Jane Foster. I want to watch you see it, to see it with you. And I will wait; yes, right here."

Her fingers trailed up his throat, slipping around the base of his skull and giving a tiny pull. He bent his head and this time she let herself strain all the way up onto her toes, arching her neck to meet his mouth with hers. He kissed her very carefully, his hand barely touching her cheek and the artful press of his lips delicate and fleeting. She wanted to push forward, to surrender caution, but knew she couldn't, and though his arm supported her, he made no move to pull her close, to lift her up. Her skin burned and tears threatened; it felt as if letting go of him would mean the world ending.

Long before she was ready, he pulled away, his hands gently guiding her back down to her heels. She gasped for breath, feeling as if she couldn't catch it, her field of vision completely full of his pale blue eyes.

"Until then," he said. She felt the deep vibration of his voice where her left hand rested over his heart.

"Yeah. Until then." Spinny, spinny, spinny. Shouldn't have kissed him, what are you doing, no reasonableness in a three billion mile radius.

She drew herself away with greatest reluctance, staring back over her shoulder no less than five times as she trudged to the van. He stood there motionless, just watching, his long hair stirred by the wind.

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to say I called it," Darcy said dryly when she opened the door to get in.

Jane clutched her hand to her chest in fright. "Fuck! I completely forgot you were here."

"Oh, really? I'm shocked. Wonder why?"

"Do not start, I am having the longest day anyone has ever had. What were you doing?"

Darcy snorted as Jane climbed into the driver's seat. "Are you kidding? I was waiting out the carnage. Like I'm going to jump in that ring before absolutely necessary. Enough people were yelling. Look at it this way, you wouldn't have gotten to make out with your semi-evil boyfriend if I were over there."

"He is not...! Oh, shut up."

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

"Okay, I'm confused. What were we originally going to do if not charge right in like idiots? That was always the impression I got. I mean, if you'd had the thing up and running a month after Thor left, I figured we would turn it on and bring him back and then we'd all go through. Of course, I'm assuming he'd tell us stuff was cool on the other side. What was your plan?"

Jane handed Darcy her cup of tea and sank heavily into one of the kitchen chairs, clutching her own cup for dear life. That was just the freaking trouble wasn't it, she hadn't had a plan. Now everything was mixed up and nothing she could do in her mental elimination game could make it straightforward again, because it never actually was straightforward.

"I guess that's what I thought, too," she said, not sure any more what she had thought. "Or maybe that… I don't know, I was laser focussed on building the thing, I didn't even worry about it. I was so confident and excited at first, it felt like it would all fall into place."

"Yeah, and then it didn't and you went for the full funk."

Jane took a sip of tea which burned her tongue and winced. "Obviously I wanted to go there- I still want to go there, that's a no brainer- but is it really a good idea? Assume getting there and back is no problem, do you think the whole thing is, in itself, something I should do?"

"Really? You're asking me?" Darcy twisted her face up. "Are you really going to listen if I say it isn't?"

"Are you saying that?"

"No." She wrinkled her nose and squinted, as if Jane were suggesting they swallow spiders or something. "I just- it doesn't seem like you to even stop and seriously consider not doing it."

"Hey, I have a sense of responsibility, okay. It exists, I'm not a train wreck." Well. Maybe that was debatable on a couple levels. She soldiered on, "I feel like maybe there should be some kind of official representative of, not mankind, because I guess that could be me, but like global governments, and someone trained for… I don't know, exploration and foreign diplomacy. And non-interference with other cultures. Or something."

Darcy laughed shortly. "Are you having a crisis right now?"

"Tiny one, maybe. These are really powerful people, not just Thor and Loki, but their dad is super important and seems like he can do almost anything. What if I screw up? Really bad? Thor is half-convinced I've been brainwashed, the entire ethos of the place has some real shady patches from the sound of it, there's the small matter of that major catastrophe the guy I'd be going with caused- what if…?"

"But Loki said he could sneak you out the back door. And he said his family are galactic peacekeepers or whatever and we're too tiny and helpless for them to do anything other than babysit us. And-and, Thor said he'd be our guardian angel if we needed one and he's still in their good books. Or back in them."

Jane blew her breath out through her teeth. "So you think it's cool as far as the whole dangerous aliens and space politics thing goes?"

"I think the Earth is probably safe, yeah." Darcy smiled wryly. She paused, putting her cup down. "Really. Thor's a good dude, and he's nearly top of the heap at his place, it can't be that bad. Not 'destroy all humans because Jane said the wrong thing' bad."

"I mean, I'm trying hard to play devil's advocate for myself here, but this is a professional opportunity beyond what I could have imagined in my wildest dreams and as a scientist, in a spirit of inquiry, I feel like I have basically a moral obligation to take it unless I'm very sure it's indefensibly dangerous." Jane faltered. "But also, if I'm making that argument, it means nothing to science or humanity for me to go if I don't make it back. So it boils down to what it's really about, and the truth is that it's really about him. It's about: do I believe he can and will get me home?"

Darcy hesitated, probably not sure what to say, or maybe not wanting to tackle all of that ramble at once. "Well, do you think they'll lock him up if he shows his face? Is that the level of friction?"

"I don't know," Jane said honestly, taken off guard by the question and sure she was being talked around to something. She pushed her hair out of the way and scratched at her forehead, searching the ceiling for some kind of divine guidance. "You know, I doubt it, I doubt it a lot. Thor was ecstatic to see him until he ruined the moment, and he is a prince and everything. And I'm kind of confident he wouldn't let them anyway, even if they tried. Not that it doesn't worry me a little, but…"

Darcy watched her struggle, looking mussed and tired but surprisingly patient.

Jane decided to talk to her tea, following little ripples on the surface as she disturbed it by fidgeting with her fingers around the cup. "He's asking me to trust him. Absolutely any of my work meaning anything, ever seeing my friends and family again, seeing my whole literal world again- that would be on him. In both a very literal and in a metaphorical way, he's asking me to put my life in his hands."

"So he's testing you."

She shook her head. "It's not a test. It's… it's more like an invitation. This is… for him, this is the biggest and hardest thing that he could ask."

The hum of the lab computers battled with a cricket to fill the silence. Darcy took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, leaning so far forward that her dark hair fell around her like a curtain.

"Do I sound that crazy?" Jane asked. "More than usual?"

Waving a hand in denial, Darcy sat up and tucked her bangs behind her ear. "It's not that. Like, don't worry about crazy. It's just, I told you I was out of my depth with this stuff. I don't know, Jane. If you think he's putting himself way out there, then you're probably right. The question doesn't really change whether he is or not, and the question is still: do you trust him that much?"

That was definitely it and it was the it which was going to decide the rest of her life, one way or another, and she was terrified. She'd never been this far outside of her comfort zone, ever. She pressed her lips together, hard, and swallowed around the lump in her throat.

"You know, I want to so bad, but it seems like that can't be the right choice. Thor said… but it was nothing I didn't already know, no matter what he thinks. It's not like it doesn't get to me, but it also doesn't make nearly as much difference as… I've just been dealing and dealing with these bombshells as they come and shouldn't I be a lot… more... something?"

Darcy dismissed that, "You feel however you feel. This isn't some craziness you threw yourself into on a- well, it is, but you know what I mean. You've been more or less living with this guy for a long time now, and the fact that you were barely shocked finding out all this bonkers shit really says something about how not over your eyes the wool ever was. I think you know how you really feel."

Jane snuffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Her eyes were burning no matter how fast she blinked.

"I thought you'd just do it, you know, full speed ahead no matter what. For science!"

She nodded, blinking frantically. "I would! But I can't..."

Darcy's eyebrows rose.

"He knows what he asked, okay."

"Right..." She leaned on the table, hanging on Jane's words. "And?"

Jane's lip wobbled and then the flood came, tears streaking down her cheeks as quickly as she could wipe them away. "I'm not crying."

"Sure."

"I know it sounds incredibly stupid, I really know, and I definitely need to work on my life choices, but I have never felt like this and I cannot sit around and watch him implode."

Looking a little shaken, Darcy glanced around uncertainly before getting up to cross the table and pat Jane on the shoulder. "It's… it's okay, boss. Hey. It's okay. You wanted to go through anyway. Just go."

"I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what he's expecting when he gets there, whether he has some plan to deal with everything, but I know a part of him wishes he was actually going home, back to his life. He just wants to be who he used to be- and he can't. He'll have to see his father, and God only knows what that'll be like. I can't bail on all this emotional crap, and I can't help him avoid the reality of what he did."

Darcy's hand rubbed circles over her back, the awkward comfort all she was able to offer.

"Is there the slightest chance this won't end in tears?"

"What do you think?" Darcy said, deflecting responsibility to her again.

She stared through her fingers at the table, wanting to believe things weren't as impossibly fucked up as they appeared, that there might be a way forward. "I can't go unless I mean it. I refuse to use him. You know, on principle, but also because it seems like everyone in his life always has. And I need for him to be okay."

"Does that mean that he has to go back or that he shouldn't?"

"It means..." Jane slumped down in her chair and finally looked up at Darcy's worried, inquisitive face hovering over her. "It means I only tell him that I trust him if I actually do, and then I tell him we don't have to go for my sake even though I trust him- he can stay right here where his biggest problem is SHIELD and be my research partner for as long as he wants."

"Are you going to tell him you'll take his side if he wants to argue with Thor some more?"

Jane felt the tiniest stirrings of a smile, but her answer was dead serious because it was too important to gloss over, "I only take his side when he's right."

"Duh," Darcy said with mock offence. "And you're totally objective, of course."

She did smile then. "Well, I guess there's taking a side and there's being on a side. I can be whichever is the one where I still let him know when he's being a prick."