A/N: This is a repost of an old fic. Originally it was posted in a collection as two separate ficlets. I've combined them into one story. This was originally written before the release of Thor: The Dark World.
The first part was inspired by the song Seven Devils by Florence + The Machine. The second part was written with Too Many To Mend by Libby Weaver on repeat.
DYING
He came around the corner, gliding silently, slowly like a prowling cat. A deadly smile curled the corners of his mouth when his pale eyes found hers.
Her steps faltered and she instinctively glanced to the side in the vain hope that someone else—anyone else—was in the torch-lit corridor. She saw nothing. She heard nothing but the rapid thrumming of her heart. They were alone.
His tongue crested his bottom lip in a brief movement as he cocked his head, studying her. "Jane Foster." He said her name in a rumbling murmur that stretched in the air between them.
This is how I die, she thought, retreating a hairsbreadth.
He advanced on her with a deliberate pace, as if he expected her not to flee. As if she knew as well as he did that any attempt to escape would be futile. The enormous marble pillars seemed to close in on her with each liquid fall of his boots. She sucked in a deep breath, willed her heart to stop racing.
"Look at you," he said, brow furrowed in a mockery of concern, "pretending that you aren't afraid of me. I like this—your bravery, foolhardy though it may be." He grinned again. A predator cornering his prey. Toying with it.
She lifted her chin with all the bravado she could muster. "Do I have any other choice?" she asked, flexing her right hand in remembrance of when she had struck him earlier. She hadn't been alone then. She hadn't felt so small then.
He raised a brow—now so close she had to crane her neck to see his face. "You could," he said, "cower before me. Beg me to spare your life." When her only response was the clenching of her jaw, he continued, "No? Perhaps you are right. This is much better."
"What is?" she asked with force, to hide the tremor in her voice. How many ways could he kill her? Would he torture her? Or would it be mercifully quick?
He didn't answer, but instead circled around her, taking her measure. She resisted the urge to follow him with her eyes. His presence was like a creeping fog, chasing away the oxygen in her lungs.
Unable to bear the tension further, she broke the silence. "What do you want?"
"Many things," he replied, turning to face her again. "From you, however, I want to know what draws him to you." He looked genuinely perplexed. "You're nothing. Weak. Mortal."
Anger overtook her fear as she answered him. "Of course you don't understand. Love is something a madman like you wouldn't know anything about."
His mouth twisted into a snarl as his hand flew toward her throat. His long fingers stopped short of bruising that tender flesh, however. Less an imminent threat, more a whispered promise. Icy fear pebbled across her skin all the same.
"Watch your tongue," he bit out. "I have known love long before your ancestors found a way out of their straw huts. Do not dare to tell me what I do and do not know!"
This is the moment, a voice whispered calmly in her head as she stared up at his wild expression.
And then his hand was gone. She sucked in a rasping breath, unconsciously touching her neck. He watched her, gauging her reaction—as if this were some grand experiment. Prod the little human and see what she does. He laughed when she glared back at him.
"Oh, there's fire in you." He rubbed his jaw where her fist had once made contact. "But then, I already knew that. Is this what inspires his affection for you?"
"Why don't you ask him?" Her heart leapt when the cold marble of the pillar pressed up against her back. Had she been backing away from him?
He shook his head. "But I'm asking you. Why. Does. He. Love. You?"
"I don't know," she answered honestly. There wasn't a recipe for attracting the attention of old Norse gods. Neither was there a step-by-step guide on how to escape villainous immortals, and she would have given anything for the latter at this moment.
"Not good enough, I'm afraid." His gaze was piercing, unsettling, as though he could see into the very essence of her if he searched deep enough. "What did you do to him? How did you change him?"
Her brow furrowed. "I didn't do anything," she said, and then added as a deflection, "Are you the same person you were before?"
His eyes widened a fraction; the question had caught him off-guard. He recovered quickly, though, with that smile which promised nothing good. "Aren't you a shrewd creature? No, I am not the same. My life before was…nothing but a ruse." There was something in the almost-quaver of his timbre, cracked and not quite mended, that made her want to pity him.
But she knew this story already. And she knew him. The God of Lies. The purveyor of chaos, of mayhem. There would be no sympathy for the villain. Not from her.
"I wonder if you could change me as you have him," he said. His eyes fell to her lips, and the tone of their encounter took a horrifying turn. "Tame me."
She swallowed thickly, shaking her head. There was no gentling the feral deity who had killed so many innocents in a maniacal grab at world domination, who had attempted genocide to prove himself the worthy son.
He smiled—darkness masked in beauty. "Tame me the same way you tamed him." He fingered a lock of her hair, pushed it behind her ear. "With a kiss."
Gelid blood pounded in her ears. Her hands shook only a little as she pushed his away. "No," she said with all defiance. "You're insane."
His laughter echoed in the empty corridor. "So I've been told." He stared down at her, his expression falling slack with glistening eyes too wide, too exposed. "What if love is the cure for my madness?" The question sounded so earnest—as if he desperately wanted to be free if his delirium, as if he wanted to undo every sin he had committed.
But then, he did have love. From his brother. From his mother. Perhaps even from his father—if not forgiveness. And he had rejected all of it.
"I could never love you." She couldn't. Not after what he'd done to her people. Not after what he'd done to Erik. "I will never love you."
For several trembling heartbeats, he was silent. His face was devoid of any hatred or anger, and it was more chilling than his earlier snarling display. She'd been wrong before. This was how the end would come. Passionless with snowy precision.
"Prove it," he murmured, "if you're so certain. After all, what's a kiss without affection, without desire?" He drew the last word out with a breathy roll. "Nothing but a useless token. What have you to fear, little Jane?"
His reasoning was logical, innocuous. But she was intelligent enough to understand that one did not kiss a deadly viper without getting poisoned. Her objection died in her throat as she looked up at him. The hardness in the corners of his eyes spoke of a line drawn in the sand. He wouldn't let her go until this point was made—either in his favor or hers.
This would be her victory, not his. Even if his defeat thrust him over the precipice into retaliation.
He grinned as though sensing her resolution, as if he liked the flavor of it. The unspoken exchange was enough to let loose the arrow of this irrational challenge. He coiled his hand around the slope of her neck and, leaning forward with parted lips, captured her mouth. Tentatively like a new lover's request. She'd expected calloused force, not subtlety. Not this raw yearning. Her rigid defiance slipped a hair and, unthinking, she relaxed into the kiss.
His other hand brushed her jaw, tangled his fingers in her hair, and then he breathed staggering hunger against her lips. She flinched from the sudden inferno of his tongue on hers, blazing across every nerve-ending. He held her mercilessly against the tide, allowed her no reprieve from his thirst.
She experienced a lifetime in that simple contact. Years of his skin against hers, his hands caressing up her thighs—a motion no less thrilling from its familiarity. A thousand arguments over stupid things, every one ending with the curve of her pressed into him. The comforting feel of her back against his chest as he taught her how to manipulate the unseen matter of the universe. His genuine smiles when she would expound on some new project melding science and magic. The way he melted into his favorite armchair, finger rubbing across his upper lip when he was brooding.
The unabashed wonder that widened his eyes when, hand on her swollen belly, he felt their child kick for the first time.
Stop. Stop. Stop. Stopstopstopstopstop—
She shoved him away with a savage yell, tears making wet tracks down her face. She scrubbed at her mouth, trying to erase the taste of him, to erase her knowledge of him, what had driven him to the brink of lunacy, and how he could fit so well in the space around her heart despite what he had done. It had been too real—their life together. His redemption born from her compassion.
Her love was the antidote. And she could. She could love him.
No. She choked back a sob. No, it was all a lie. A farce meticulously woven by the god of deceit.
His dry laugh pulled her from these terrible thoughts. "You should have begged me to spare you when you had the chance," he said, perverse amusement in the lilt of his baritone.
She blinked, not entirely comprehending his meaning. Fear was becoming a too-familiar companion.
"Death comes in many forms, Jane Foster," he replied as if in answer to the question she dared not voice. "Not all of them kill you."
He drew a thumb across her cheek, collecting the tears that she couldn't stay. "Every night, as you lie in his arms, you'll think of me. You'll know that you could have loved me more than you ever loved him. You'll know your loyalty to me could have transformed the monster you see before you—but you chose to do nothing." Just like the rest of them. She heard the unspoken words as clearly as if he had screamed them.
"So we will go on as before," he continued. "Me, the unfeeling god driven by betrayal and hatred, and you… You'll pretend you came out on the righteous end of this exchange. But no matter what you tell yourself, you'll die inside—just a little at a time until it corrupts every affection you share with him."
"Liar!" she spat back at him, infusing her glare with searing contempt.
"I am when it suits me, and it often does." He was unmoved by her scorn. "But you'll never know for certain whether what you experienced with me was mere artifice—or if I gave you the bald truth." He tilted his head, smiling as though offering her sympathy. "This is my gift to you. This is but a small part of my vengeance against him."
His gaze dropped to her lips and lingered there for a heartbeat, for two. She shivered as the air became too heavy again to breathe, and she closed her eyes, feeling damned by that small part of her which hoped he would repeat the kiss. She hoped he would do more.
"Goodnight, Jane," he whispered. "Sweet dreams."
He was gone.
She sagged against the pillar, her body weak and shaking as though she had gone seven rounds with the devil and barely survived. She wanted to weep from fatigue, from the thorny doubt he had planted in her heart about who she was. About who he was—or who he could be.
Shaking her head, she clenched her jaw. She would not be another one of his victims. She would not carry the blame for his continued treachery. If he had truly wanted to change, then he would have done it already. Without a woman like her at his side.
You'll pretend you came out on the righteous end of this exchange.
The ghost of his words squeezed her chest like a vice, and she hated it.
He was wrong.
He had to be.
He despised her.
His hatred for her was nearly as vast as the loathing he clung to for Thor. She was no different than the others—unforgiving, untrusting, unwilling to see him as anything more than the starless night to Thor's shining day.
Oh, but her crime was even greater. She knew him. She knew a lifetime with him—knew the shape of him against the curve of her—and still she rejected him.
Not that he had truly expected anything less. But in the heartbeat between the kiss and the horrified tears coursing down her cheeks, insidious hope had tightened his throat. An emotion he had eternally forbidden himself once he released the end of Gungnir and slipped into the bleak emptiness between realms.
She, a mere mortal, had somehow coaxed from him the naïve child hidden within—the boy who still believed in happily-ever-afters, who saw a future at his brother's side as a trusted advisor and friend. The boy who gaily swallowed every lie fed to him by his supposed parents.
For one breath, she had made him believe again.
And then shattered that fragile emotion with her invidious refusal.
He hated her. He hated that despite her cruelty, she remained the flame to his moth—the beacon of his every repressed desire. He was drawn to her, even while knowing that to reach for her meant anguish, suffering. Death a thousand times over. Because he wanted. He wanted the serenity on her lips, the intensity of her passion, the comfort of her quiet sighs. More than his vengeance against Thor.
He wanted not love but peace. Peace he thought he would find in the destruction of Jotunheim, in the subjugation of Earth, in the very death of the brother whose shadow had become so long, so dark. He wanted to lay bare his soul and be enough as he had never been. Without trickery. Without machinations. Without lies. But no such peace existed for monsters like himself.
Except with her. She who belonged not to him but to his accursed brother.
Why? Why?
Was he cursed? When he kissed her, had the Norns given him that vision as an everlasting damnation for his transgressions? If they believed he, a god, would accept this penance with humility, then even the Fates severely underestimated him. Because he would have her—or she would join him in Hel. Either suited him just fine.
He stalked toward her in the murky twilight of Svartalfheim. In a few hours, they would exact their retribution against their joint enemy, and then Loki would be gone, his ephemeral bargain with Thor completed. In the stillness before adrenalin and violent action, however, Jane stood on the precipice overlooking the desolate landscape below—outside of the safety of her golden-haired protector who slumbered in their makeshift camp behind. Loki seized this opportunity. For what? To push her over the edge? Or to take her? He wasn't yet certain.
She spun at the sound of the gravel crunching beneath his boots, eyes wide at first, then narrowing with suspicion. He liked that. The sweet taste of the fear quickening her breath despite her futile effort to suppress it. He was danger. He was unpredictability. He was hate and bitterness and vengeance. Lies. Corruption. Mayhem.
And who was she? The savior who refused to save him. Worthless.
"Go away," she hissed quietly with a darting glance toward camp. Toward Thor.
Grinning, Loki decided against throwing her into the chasm. For now. "No." He took her in with a fluid gaze, from the fists clenched at her sides to the taut muscles of her jawline. Why was she significant— this human?
"If you try anything, I'll scream." She issued the threat without emotion, as if merely laying out the terms of their encounter.
He offered her a bare nod in tacit agreement. Clasping his hands behind his back, he surveyed the shadowed outline of Malekith's vessel beyond and swallowed back the rage that rose like bile in his throat.
"Are you afraid?" he asked after a time, giving Jane a sidelong glance.
She frowned at the unexpected question. "Of what? You? Him?" She nodded toward the leviathan below.
He raised a brow, offering no clarification. Let her determine which answer he sought. He learned long ago the less he talked, the more others revealed themselves—particularly the vulnerabilities they believed to be hidden so well.
"Yes," she said with equal ambiguity. "I'm terrified."
He smiled. A dozen acrid remarks danced across his tongue, but he left them unsaid. Just as he left unsaid any encouraging statements to allay her fears. Such fiction dripped from Thor's lips, not his. Why bother with lies when the truth had greater impact?
Silence fell between them, thick like fog. She hugged herself, shivering as if chilled, but didn't attempt to walk away. There was something telling in that, though he had yet to discern what it was.
She was the first to breach the stillness. "Must be nice." He raised a brow, but she went on before he could reply. "I mean, it must be nice to never be afraid. To be the cause of fear rather than the victim of it." She looked up at him, fixing him with a penetrating stare. Such a brave little thing.
The corners of his mouth lifted in amusement. "I do find it advantageous."
She shook her head, mirroring his smile as if she knew the truth concealed beneath his words. The brief expression unsettled him. They had slipped unknowingly into a familiarity that came from sharing a lifetime together—a lifetime they'd never had. One she would never give him. The moment passed, as fleeting as the breeze that ruffled her sorrel locks. Cold enmity flushed through his veins once more.
"Tell me," he said, closing the remaining distance between them, menace in his every movement. "Have you thought of me?" He drew the question out in a licentious murmur.
Rose blossomed on the apples of her cheeks and she turned away. "Don't."
He gave her a ruthless grin, tongue grazing across his bottom lip. "Oh, you have. Does it eat at you? Knowing that you are to blame for this?" He pointed at himself.
She snapped her head up with a steely glare, jabbing a finger toward him. "No, you are to blame for this. Odin saved you—"
"Kidnapped me for his political schemes." Loki bit out, sudden anger snarling in his throat.
"Saved you when you were left to die! And raised you as his own son!" She sucked in a deep breath, and continued in a quieter voice. "You tried to kill Thor, and he still hasn't given up on you, no matter what he says. I can see it in the way he looks at you. I hear it in the way he talks to you—like he forgets sometimes what you've done. And Frigga—"
He cut her off with a savage roar and grabbed the lapels of her coat, wrenching her toward the edge of the cliff. "Do not speak of her!" Fury and grief stung his eyes as he gripped Jane with white-knuckled hatred. Kill her. Kill her. End this torment.
But it wouldn't be the end. Not of his suffering.
It would be the end of hope.
Hope again. That vile disease she had infected him with.
Growling in frustration, he dropped her to the ground, stepped away from her. He inhaled deeply, as if drawing the unrestrained emotion back into himself and crushing it into tight knot behind his heart.
He heard the fabric of her gown whispering as she stood, though he kept his unseeing gaze on the barren panorama. "You didn't scream."
"You wouldn't have killed me."
He forced a raspy laugh. "Not at this moment, no. But I am still possessed with the inclination." He leveled an icy gaze at her, pleased when she shrunk from him. "You would do well not to provoke me with your foolish bravery. And don't believe my brother's wrath to be a sufficient deterrent."
"Why can't you leave me—us—alone?" she asked with no small amount of venom in her tone. "Is there some rulebook that says you have to be evil?"
He kept his expression passive, though her flippant question stoked anew the tinder of his rage. "Why should I want your happiness when it comes at the cost of mine?"
She gestured wildly in the air. "Cost? There is no correlation between your happiness and anyone else's."
"That," he said in a low voice, advancing on her, "is a lie. You can fool yourself now, but there will come a time when you'll no longer be able to deny the truth."
"What truth? That little dream you conjured up?" she returned, though with far less bravado than before. "That's not love, Loki."
"No, it isn't." He loomed over her, followed her when she retreated. "This isn't love. It's something infinitely more—deeper, visceral. This is need. You are the air I would breathe, the wellspring with which I would quench my unending thirst. And you, with your selfish need for something so banal as love—you would deny me life."
She stared up him with wide amber eyes, lips parted as if he'd stolen the air with his indictment of her. He didn't recall reaching for her, but his fingers were knotted in her hair, holding her firm against him as he crushed his mouth over hers. This was not the lazy, curious kiss he had shared with her before, but a consummation of his repressed despair. His heart was flayed open beneath her hands, every secret hers for the taking.
And she took. Oh, she took.
She breathed in all of him and exhaled new images of what they were when united, creating a more complete vision. Of their first time, his fingers scaling down her silken skin as she arched into him. Of the moments she challenged him, forcing him to reevaluate his perspective. Of stealing an apple of Idun and slipping it to her unawares. Of the maddening number of years it took before she forgave him. Of laughter and vicious arguments and heady wonder and her body curled into him.
But most of all, the stillness. Peace.
He tasted brine on her lips, as bitter as the knowledge that she would never give him any of this. He wanted it all the more. Craved her like a dying man grasping at a crust of bread just out of reach. She was salvation and condemnation, and he'd accept the latter if she would only offer him the former.
His arms cinched tighter around her waist as if he could make her a part of him, and for a blessed heartbeat, she was boneless against him, bending to his will. He nearly had her. Nearly. But then she became unmoving stone in his arms. He ended the kiss before she could shove him away.
"Go." He stepped back from her despite the overpowering impulse to grab her and make her understand. "Run off to your hero."
She stared at him wordlessly as several emotions vied for dominance on her face. Disbelief. Confusion. Anger. Horror. Pain. So much pain. He took that as a small consolation for the misery she caused him. She gave him a final, teary glare before making her retreat.
"Remember, Jane," he called to her back. She stopped without turning around. "Remember which brother truly needs you."
She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Stay away from me."
He spread his hands with humorless laugh. "Would that I could, but apparently, it's against the laws of evil."
She sighed, shaking her head as she walked back toward camp. He watched her until she was obscured by the vaporous gloom. She surely hated him more than ever now, but that was of little consequence. Hate, he could work with. Hate was not indifference. Hate was passion. And so was want and need.
So was love.
But, of course, this wasn't love.
He glanced at Malekith's great vessel below. Tomorrow there would be vengeance—blood for blood. And then, when the storm settled, Loki would find her again.
He would always find her.
~FIN~
A/N: Thank you so much for reading! If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!