November 2, 4:37 AM
Jane Foster is burning, every inch of her essence turning to ash, crumbling away like dust. Her screams expire before they even reach her lips, her throat turning to char. The air is painted a sickly yellow, dust so think in the air it looks like fog. Through burning eyes, Jane looks to her blackened feet to the obsidian earth beneath her. Svartalfheim. Jane had gotten used to the touch of fire, the sensation of crumbling away. Jane knows that it's coming for her, the red light. She runs and finds herself in a darkened kitchen. She knows this scene. Jane lies on the tile floor beside two other bodies, the cruel laughter of a beautiful woman above her. She crawls away, footsteps follow her. There is a red door. Jane crawls up to reach the handle, one hand holding in her guts from a wound in her abdomen.
'I killed them' she cries. My fault. All my fault. 'I'll kill you!' she screams at the disembodied laugh of the woman. That terrifyingly beautiful woman. The instant Jane's fingers grasp the gold handle the door dissipates and Jane finds herself in a small dark closet. Jane feels small, like a child. She hears yelling. Mom and Dad fighting, again.
'They never stop fighting' Jane sobs, curling into a ball and willing herself into nothingness. Then she feels it like a cannon blast to her chest. She's standing in Svartalheim again. The red descends above her, and she runs as fast her charred limbs can carry her through the thickened fog.
Jane hears one voice calling her name over and over.
'Jane Foster,' it whispers seductively, in a silvery voice she promised she's never forget.
She wakes with a start, chilled to the center and her body paralyzed. Her breath is shallow and heart thumps wildly in her chest. Something is very different, and perhaps, very very wrong. She hadn't felt that way since London, since…Darcy and Erik.
Danger, Danger, Danger, her instincts chant.
Jane swipes the panic from her mind, telling herself again, as she had many times before, that is was just a dream. Just a dream. There was no feasible way anyone or anything could find her now.
"I'm safe," she murmurs to herself. Yet, she feels the fear coil in her belly like a viper, waiting to strike.
Jane rolls her shoulders with a deep sigh, wondering briefly what day it is, almost certain it could be a Sunday. Jane doesn't bother much with dates anymore. She lives animal-like. The only thing that matters is the rising and setting of the sun and the change of the seasons.
Jane's body is layered thickly in blankets, her furnace not working yet again. She curls her toes, realizing she's shivering. Through crusted eyes and matted hair, Jane rolls and looks out the window to her left. She doesn't bother much with clocks either, the only important times being dawn and dusk. Now, the sun hasn't even begun its journey across the sky, barely touching the horizon.
Clouds smear across the sky, combined with the dawning sun, turn the light various shades of pink and mauve. It looks like God dipped his hand in paint and dragged his fingertips lazily over the sky. Jane smiles to herself, she hadn't thought of God in a long time. Being a scientist, she wasn't exactly a very religious woman. Jane relied on the hard facts, proof, which religion just didn't make the cut. That feeling was amplified by a thousand when Thor first found her in New Mexico, and even more during New York's crisis and London's. Especially after London. Nothing was certain anymore. Not to say that things were 100% before, yet the chances of other life being out there being close to zero made life easier. Most ideas were left to the imagination, most complexities only theoretical. Now, the universe turned itself upside down and poured its contents over Jane's head. That's half the reason why she can't bring herself to look at the stars anymore. The other half…
The Aether writhes in her again.
Jane sips her coffee, rolling the bitter taste over her tongue as she watches an early morning fire burning. The embers click and hiss to each other in a strange language, churning smoke from her chimney. She idly notices that she will need more firewood soon, but remains motionless as the sun rises. Jane sits at the center of her living room on the cinnamon colored wood flooring before the fireplace. The house warms around her nearly instantly with the rising sun, pouring its light through her window curtains. At the center of the room, her body acts as a sundial. Jane notices her shadow growing with each couple of minutes, the embers whispering their strange language to each other. Jane's insides crawl because it's a language she vaguely understands. Popping and hissing and clicking and groaning, crumbling. Crumbling.
The fire dies and Jane sketches. It's the face of that beautiful woman. The pencil scratches deeply into the paper, bleeding flecks of graphite and staining Jane's skin. Over and over again she draws that face and those eyes that spelled death.
Jane retreats upstairs. She fills her claw-foot bathtub nearly to the brim and gingerly eases herself into the prickling water, effectively chasing the chill from her insides. It's a constant battle of chill and warmth, fire and ice in her soul. She feels something different about today. It's a burning at the back of her neck, a sting in her chest, a panic pacing across her mind. Jane thinks through her strange superstition. It had been a year, a year of complete and blessed silence, and nothing. She'd wiped 'Jane Foster' off the map, and grown into her new identity. Not one person she made eye contact with had ever given her this panic feeling she feels now. She knows there's little chance SHIELD or anyone for that matter knew where she was, if they had they would have found her by now. Jane shakes the thoughts from her paranoid brain as she piles on the layers. It had snowed during the night, and she'd have to shovel out her truck to get more food later. She pulls on her favorite forest green jacket, keeping her warm while she picks through the wood pile. The cold burns the tips of her ears, her chest seizing slightly at the frigid air entering her lungs. But the cold is something Jane's gotten used to.
Jane had become a lot stronger since London, really, she's the strongest she's been in her life. The first time Jane had tried to chop wood, she got herself six splinters, blisters, sore back, and only emerged with six small logs for tinder. Since then, Jane's picked up a few tricks. She sheds her coat when she beings to sweat and picks up the axe with ease, swinging it over her shoulder and cracking through the logs as if she were slicing butter. She's noticed herself that her shoulders had broadened and the muscles across her chest and become taut. Besides the red hair, she thought she looked like beefed up Sarah Connor from Terminator.
It doesn't take her very long to get a decent pile to get her through the next couple of days. Pulling on her coat she loads the logs into a cart by her chopping block and hauls the load in through the back door. The minute she closes the door, Jane feels the back of her neck burning again, a striking panic lancing up her spine. Her ears ring with a familiar sense of something watching her, something she hadn't felt in a long time. It was definitely not a welcomed feeling.
Jane stomps her feet off at the back door, her eyes scoping the forest through her window. It's the feeling she gets of being watched, sighted, known. Jane shoves the anxiety back into the depths of her mind, resolving not to think about it until she went into town later. If she saw people looking at her strange, then that would be confirmation enough that someone had been asking about her. A year ago, there had been a good amount of news coverage done on her, her having a hand in saving the world and all. If anyone was going to notice her it would have been a year ago, not now.
Jane inspects her house for a few moments, her eyes touching every surface, looking for something, anything out of place in the slightest of ways. Everything was stilled exactly where she had put it. Her copy of 'Walden' still cracked open to page 48, exactly where she had left it on the sofa. Picture frames still staged on top of the fire place, not an inch out of place. But something is different. Perhaps something not entirely physical.
Looking at it from a visual standpoint, imagine a fishbowl. Jane's home is a fishbowl, Jane a dainty little goldfish. Perhaps there are a few plants, a little fake castle for little fish-Jane to live in, all is well in the fishbowl for a year. Then someone takes a rock and drops it into the bowl. The water volume changes, there are ripples in the water, shaking every little bit of fishy-Jane.
There is a boulder in her fishbowl. Jane is certain she hears a ringing in her ears again. She zips up her coat and turns to the back door. The ringing grows louder as she touches the handle. Perhaps the ringing was coming from outside. Maybe that's exactly what it wants, Jane out in the open. Whatever 'it' may be. Jane bites her lip, a grimace on her face. If someone had found her, Jane had had enough of the fucking suspense bullshit. Her life isn't a Hitchcock movie. Jane knows she's stronger now, strong enough to fight this time. This time she wouldn't be the one left bleeding out. And if not: at least she'd go out surprising or at least impressing the motherfucker that killed her.
With a loud huff from her lips, Jane swings the door open and slams it shut behind her, pulling up her hood and trudging through the snow. She makes sure to pick up her ax at the backdoor. The ringing seems to grow louder as her feet 'crunch, crunch, crunch' closer to the wood line of her property. The sky has already begun to darken, night falling quickly around her in a burnt-orange and lavender display.
She wrings the handle of the ax. The ringing is almost blaring as she stands before the forest, her glare hardened, her chest burning, eyes glistening and a thick coil in her throat. Jane feels a certain kind off fire smoldering inside her, defiant and roaring. The Aether wraps tightly around her, a clenched fist ready to fight.
She throws her arms open to the forest, the ringing screaming in her face so loudly and close she could see its spit flying.
"S'That all you got?!" she roars into the trees, the ringing now a pulsing vibration in her brain, "C'MON!" she screams, a puff of fog coming from her lips. With a few heaving breaths, Jane realizes the ringing has stopped, and is now fairly certain she's lost her mind and has resorted to screaming at trees.
What would Erik think? She muses with a small smile. Erik, she thinks, and her smile falls. What's next? Eating the face off some poor animal? Jane drops her arms at her sides, the ax seeming heavier in her grip. She listens to the tree's snicker to each other, their branches groaning and clacking together loudly. Jane looks up to the clouded sky, hearing a small crack, like the sound the sky makes before lightning.
The sound strikes something deep inside Jane's muscle memory. She had heard that noise before, and it wasn't a coincidence that thunder began to roll immediately after. Jane's heart skips a few beats, the clouds turning dark and swirling. Before Jane can cry or laugh or scream, a beam of pulsing, electrifying light shocks its way into the heart of the forest. The earth shakes beneath Jane's rubber boots and the trees screech and groan at its intrusion. The light, as soon as it touches down like a tornado of brilliant auras vanishes back into the sky.
Jane realizes she's not breathing; her heart beat in her ears, her mind scattered like broken glass. Her feet begin moving before her brain can even process what's just happened.
Could it be? No, couldn't possibly be. Maybe?
Jane drops the ax and finds herself running through the dead trees without abandon, skipping over snow drifts, bolting over frozen streams, nearly stumbling, sometimes falling into the snow, cutting her hands on frozen branches, cheeks burning from the biting wind but Jane doesn't care because all Jane can think about is…
Jane sees a small clearing the Bifrost had made during touchdown. Her heart's in her throat, beating as if it were about to explode, or maybe she'd cough it up if she ran any faster, or maybe it'd just give out there. She comes to the wood line of the clearing, eyes scanning wildly for that familiar crimson. When she finds none, Jane feels the cold catch up with her and she shivers. Jane furrows her brow, her jaw taut as she steps as silent as a mountain lion through the clearing.
Jane recognizes the burn marks of the Bifrost etched into the ground, gobs of half-way melted snow oozing into them. Her ears perk when she hears a fairly audible groan, a very human-sounding groan, so Jane can count out non-human aliens coming to kill her. She hears it again, just behind a rolled over tree trunk. Could it be hurt? What if Thor is hurt. Jane feels her instincts kick in as she quickly jumps to action, nearly leaping over the fallen tree and coming upon the landing site. That's just when she stops dead in her tracks, a twig snapping under her boot.
Its bent over, crunched into a ball on the ground and whimpering, its shoulders shaking like a wounded animal coated in silky black and green and gold. Green and gold woven tunic.
Jane's hand flies to her mouth, a noise escaping her that she wouldn't expect when she's see the God of Mischief. The Lie-Smith. His skin is tainted blue, which could be attributed to his Jotun blood, or quite possibly to his blood that was freezing up in his veins and killing him slowly. He turns, his movement slurred and sloppy, drunk on fatigue. As soon as his emerald eyes meet hers, his thin lips curl into an oddly satisfied grin, as if he wanted to laugh. Before Jane can even react, Loki's eyes roll back into his skull and he exhales a type of tired huff, falling back into the slushy snow with a 'thud'.
Jane Foster is a woman of science. Jane Foster can't bring herself to move. Loki died. He died in Svartalfheim. She'd taken his pulse. That creature drove its blade through his chest. Jane saw it impale just under his sternum, poking out through his back. It would have collapsed his lungs, pierced his heart, having him die in moments for any normal human. He was a god, she realizes, but still. He should be dead. Should be. She saw Loki die in Thor's arms. In Thor's arms, she thinks and immediately aches.
Yet, here Loki was, holding on to life by a thread. She knows Loki is dying. Dying for real this time.
"I didn't do it for him," Loki's barely whispering now, his body convulsing as he struggles to take in breath. He howls an agonized sputter through grit teeth, clawing Thor's chest and screwing his eyes shut. Jane can only watch as Thor holds his brother, tears pooling in his eyes. Jane has no place in this moment, no place to soothe Loki's passing. She feels almost ashamed watching, like a sick voyeur sticking her nose in places she shouldn't. Jane takes in a stuttered breath, standing far from the scene. She wonders if death among Aesir is more tragic, knowing their lives are supposed to last thousands of years. Jane wonder's briefly how Thor would feel in her time of dying, acknowledging the fact that her life was one breathe for him, a heartbeat.
Loki seems to sigh, a short cut off breath from his pale lips before his body stops shaking. His chest stops moving, stops breathing. Jane blinks. Loki is dead. Loki's skin darkens, blackened veins stretching across his face like dark spider webs' tendrils, his eyes vacant and cloudy. Loki is dead. Dead.
Thor is shaking, begging, his breath seizing in his throat.
"Brother," he chokes, cradling Loki's head as if he were a child.
This is a moment that could have brought down religions, caused an apocalyptic uproar to the Vikings that once worshipped Thor and Loki as gods. What would they think of their gods crying, and their gods dying.
Jane isn't sure how long she stands there, barely breathing herself as Thor roars and sobs for Loki. The sounds he makes are unnatural for a person to make, anguished and garbled with animalistic fury. Jane feels tears pinching her eyes, not for Loki, but for Thor. He'd fought so hard for Loki's soul, and now it was lost forever.
"Thor," She murmurs, kneeling at his side with her arms around his shoulders. "I'm so sorry,"
"My brother," he hiccups on his breath, embracing the corpse and burying his face in the crook of Loki's neck. Jane looks to the swirling sky, a small yet foreboding 'crack' in the distance of the Bifrost. She snaps her head back to Thor, squeezing her arms around him.
"Thor," she says as softly as she can, though her own throat catches on her breath, "We need to go, now," she urges.
"I can't leave him here."
"We have to go," Jane says again, nudging his shoulders.
"I can't…My little brother. Can't leave him alone. He will be afraid," Thor barely chokes the words out. The sickly colored sky 'cracks' loudly with a rolling grow of thunder, lightning flashing across the sky. Jane feels hot tears pinching her cheeks. It was as if the sky was a giant eggshell, splitting open above them in a violent display, pouring its dusty, swirling contents over them.
"Please, Thor," Jane begs earnestly, the shout of Aesir soldiers in the distance, echoing across the valley of dead earth.
"I can't…" he sobs, shaking inconsolably.
November 2, 11:00 PM
Jane's heart thuds like a jackrabbit in her chest. Jane can't bring herself to move, her body trembling, hands quivering, her mind reeling. Loki was dead, Jane watched the blood bubble from his lips, his chest seizes in desperate gasps for air while Thor could only attempt to ease his passing. His chest barely moves now but Jane can still hear his ragged, shallow breaths.
Jane does the only she knows how; she turns and runs.
Broken sobs burst from her lips in violent eruptions. A hot wetness coats her face, then instantly crystalizes to her skin as she bounds through the snow drifts with leaden feet. Jane's chest aches, a clawed grasp of anger and grief squeezing her heart. Jane Foster is terrified. She's terrified because this isn't the first enemy to find her since London.
He's come to finish me off. Jane's frenzied mind tries to recall what escape plan she had in order, only to realize she had none. She'd have to pack now, leave in her truck, start up life somewhere else. But who's to say someone else wouldn't come for her? How long until he found her again?
Jane remembers that Loki did saved her life on Svartalfheim, but doesn't let it cloud her judgment. He had saved one life out of the thousands he'd killed, she wasn't ready to trust him so easily, not by a long-shot. Thor wasn't around this time to keep his brother in check, hell, a year ago had Thor turned a blind eye Loki'd probably have slit her throat just for the sick pleasure of it! Thor hadn't come when she needed most, she's certain he won't come now.
It seems like miles to Jane until she reaches the garage, clearing through the drifts, her eyes flat-line of any emotion other than fear. Her body seems to convulse, either from the cold, or from the panic tearing at her insides, she's not sure. Why would Loki be sent here, to her? Who had sent him? But Jane knows the answer to that question.
Thor. He's the only one. Unless Loki had acted alone, but in that case: why Jane?
Why? What would Thor not come himself?
Jane feels her lip quivering, Why?
Jane stops at the doors to her garage, her fingers curling into tight fists at her side. She had to have an answer, Why? And the man in the forest, dying, is the only one who could have the slightest idea. Jane shoves herself against the iced-shut door, once, twice, three times until it swings open with an icy 'crack'. It doesn't take long to power up the ATV.
The roar of the engine shatters the deathly silence of the forest, the sky above a threatening navy blue and the stars like eyes in the darkness. Jane couldn't hope to drag the man from the clearing to her cottage, it was a little less than a mile and by then he would succumb to whatever it is that's killing him. Her eyes sting with the blast of snowflakes and frigid air as she speeds through the forest. Jane Foster's mind explodes under the weight of her panic, her incredulity. She feels tears threatening to pool down her cheeks, her eyes stinging and her throat clenched.
Jane's ATV thunders through the clearing, nearest to Loki's body as the fallen trees would allow.
Jane runs to Loki's catatonic body, forcing her mind to forget what and who exactly this man is. She kneels and touches her ear to his chest, feeling a soft tap of his heart, a lazy rhythm. Jane leans close to his mouth, noticing dried pocks marks or blood lining his lips. Jane listens, only hearing the lightest breaths escaping him. She would have to move quickly or he'd die here in the forest, from what exactly Jane struggles to solve. It couldn't be hypothermia, not when his lineage had been born in ice.
Jane moves to crouch at his head, hooking her arms under his armpits. With clenched teeth, aching chest, and burning legs, Jane hauls Loki's body backward toward the ATV. She forces her mind to forget that she is saving the life of a man that made Erik Selvig go insane. She forces herself to forget that he killed hordes of innocent people in New York. She forces her arms to carry the helpless devil to safety. Because…
Though they weren't blood, Jane had witnessed firsthand the devotion Thor had to Loki. This is Thor's brother. Though Jane loathed the thought, she was saving Loki, if not for herself, then for Thor.
With a grimace, Jane drags his limp body over a fallen tree trunk, ignoring the biting strain in her back and arms. Without the least bit of concern, Jane heaves Loki to the ATV, his torso hanging loosely over the seat. Jane wastes no more time. She throws the ATV into gear and with one hand tangled in Loki's tunic to hold him steady and one hand to steer she blazes through the forest.
Though Jane Foster is a woman of small stature, she manages to 'carry' the six foot five god. It takes more effort than she'd like to awkwardly drag him through the back door and into the living room. With a final callous shove, Jane grunts and finally heaves him to the couch. She figures a cracked rib or two couldn't do more damage that's already been done.
He was after all, a Jotun, Jane isn't sure whether putting him close to the fire was a good idea. Did he need heat? Cold?
Jane throws a few logs into the fireplace and stokes the flames. She had no choice but to use old fashioned trial and error. Her theory being that by exposing Loki to heat, his Jotun nature will eventually adjust his core temperature to offset the heat and become stable. She'd give it a day. Maybe he'd be dead by then. Jane hurls a blanket over his body, her lips twitching to hold back a snarl.
Jane's not even sure what to look for in her first aid kit. Bottles of old prescription pain pills roll over the white tiles beside her feet along with boxes of gauze and toiletries strewn about. He could be suffering from a number of things. She may be a master astrophysicist but the epitome of Jane's knowledge of emergency care is how to properly, and gingerly stick on a band-aid. Jane thinks over his symptoms; violent shaking, blue lips, contorted breathes. However, being a Jotun, hypothermia didn't really apply to him.
Jane knows the dumbest thing she could do would be to take him to an emergency room. First of all, the closest clinic closed at 8 pm and was an hour from here and second; what would they do when they found out he wasn't human? Not to mention the plethora of cellphones and cameras that took pictures of him during New York. The media did ten-page spreads about him for weeks, meaning his face was about as recognizable as the Iron Man suit. Then, SHIELD would come for him, then for her.
Besides the fact, Jane at the back of her mind knows that whatever he's suffering from is not caused from anything from this world. She's not sure of anything that could incapacitate a man of Loki's stature, much less a god that wields magic (except for Hulk that is).
Magic… Jane groans inwardly.
Jane runs back down the stairs into the living room, finding it already toasty and crackling from the fire. The light from the fire bounces off the olive walls of the living room, giving the illusion the room was almost breathing. A soft golden aura filling the small room, from her bookcases lining the wall, to the glass of her grandfather clock. The light glitters brilliantly from the brass pendulum as it swings its measure of time. Everything seems to have been given life from the fire, even Loki.
Jane steps off the staircase to the back of the couch. With a twisted grimace, Jane inspect the man. His pale blue-ish face looks like stone, carved into a placid expression. Jane's furious that she finds his face so peaceful, that a monster like him could look so beautiful and innocent.
But Jane knows that past this beautiful face is a devil. Far from innocent. This was the same man that nearly leveled an entire town full of innocent people just to kill one person: Thor. This was the same man that had nearly brought full out war between Asgard and Jotenheim. The man who snuffed out countless lives for the sake of his own ego. It was ultimately his fault that Thor ever landed on her doorstep in the first place all that time ago in Antiguo, New Mexico. Granted all of Jane's research was proven true by Thor's arrival, she can't help thinking that had Thor not come…
Maybe Darcy and Erik would still be alive, Jane feels her eyes prickle with tears and her palms grow to fists at her sides as she stands looking down at Loki.
Jane can't deny that she'd like to kill Loki, or at the very least make him suffer as much as she has. She wants to have everything he loved and more ripped from him, just like they were her. At this thought Jane chuckles. A man like him can't love anything or anyone. There's no room in a monster's heart for delicate things like love.
With her eyes still on Loki, Jane strides over to her high-backed armchair and sits. Jane keeps both hands gripped on the armrests, her shoulders growing up her spine the longer she looks at him. Thinking of all that could have been had Loki never even existed. How many lives could have been saved?
Jane grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut.
Frigga's life. She would have been saved as well.
But a cold, sharp pang of guilt strikes through Jane as if in protest. Jane knows full and well that Frigga's blood stains her hands, not Loki's. If Jane hadn't released the Aether, Malekith wouldn't have been drawn to Asgard, wouldn't have killed all those in his path to get to her, including Frigga.
And Jane only got a small sample of Loki's grief. Jane, though she was in a half-conscious state, was very aware of Loki and Thor's conversation.
"Who put me there?!"
"You know damn well who!"
It was Frigga they were fighting about and Jane can't help but feel the responsibility for her death weigh on her back like a demon whispering incantations into her ear. *It's your fault, all your fault, if you hadn't touched that damn rock in the cave, wouldn't you stop to think it was put there for a reason! * Jane feels her eyes brim with a poisonous onslaught of fresh tears. Jane doesn't hold back her tears. She feels as if a damn's let loose inside her and the tears flood down her cheeks. Jane grows small in her armchair, curling up like the child in her dreams. Did Loki know that Frigga, his only remaining ally, had died for her? This guilt, like the guilt of Darcy and Erik's deaths are stuck to her. Like a stain that nothing, not even time could wash away. She had been the reason Frigga had been murdered.
That is what frightens Jane most of all: Jane had killed the only person left that loved, truly loved, Loki. The one person in allof the Universe that truly understood Loki, his nature, and loved him for everything that he was. His one reason to be a force of good. His last remaining voice of conscience, and Jane had murdered her.
What then, would hold him back from turning his rage to Jane? What then, if not Frigga, would keep him from whatever horror's he dreamed of releasing?
Jane shakes furiously, sobs wracking her small frame. If he awoke, what dangers waited for her here. There's no way for her to call for help if she were in immediate danger, the landline hadn't worked in months and the nearest neighbor was ten minutes away. No caring neighbor that could stop by and notice something awry. Jane can feel her heartbeat quicken in her chest, thunking deeply in the hollow of her aching throat. Jane wishes now more than ever that she was back in London, with Darcy and Erik. She tries to swallow her cries, but finds her throat completely dry. There's no hope in trying to change what's been done.
Jane can't think of a single thing she could defend herself with against Loki, a six foot five god that went toe to toe with the Hulk and survived.
A new swell of emotions erupt inside Jane, too many for her to delegate with all at once. Aside from her sorrow and hopelessness: Fear, anger, confusion, pain. Jane had waited a year for any sign at all that Thor still harbored one iota of care for Jane or her safety or Midgard for that matter. And does Jane get? For the pain and suffering and heartache? What does Jane Foster get? His psychotic brother.
Jane lingers on that thought as her tears glisten down her cheeks. Though Jane has been out of practice, she is still a clever woman. Jane knows that Loki finding himself here, to the exact place where Jane had tucked herself from the world, is no mistake. So with the improbable out of the way, Jane had to contemplate the probable reasons why Loki, Loki for christsakes, is here in her living room.
He had to have faked his death, Jane mulls over the thought, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place within her mind. He faked his death and Thor was in on it. Thor and Loki would have had to had worked alone, the other warriors would never have allowed Loki to walk free.
And Jane knows that Loki is here, because Thor must know she is here on this lonely Wisconsin peninsula. Which means he knew for a year that Jane had been living in hiding. Almost nothing escaped the gaze of Heimdall, Jane knew that much. Jane's flurry of emotions solidify into one raging fury she feels burn through her chest and eyes.
*He knew this whole time, this whole time and did nothing.*
Jane wants to scream, she wants to tear something apart, render something limb from limb until there was nothing recognizable left. She wants Thor to hurt, hurt until he feels everything she's had bottled up for the past year.
Thor said nothing, not even a messenger for a year.
And how could Thor let a criminal, a complete and utter monster like Loki free? For what reason? But she knows how simple Thor could be. He must have thought that he could redeem Loki by defeating Malekith. But he would have never accomplished this defeat with the help Asgard if they knew Loki was alive. Obviously, Loki had tricked Thor and escaped the second he and Jane fled Svartalheim.
Jane wraps her arms around her knees, her body aching from emotion and her eyes feeling raw and heavy from the tears. She glances to the grandfather clock standing proudly in the corner near her bookcases. It was nearly two in the morning. Jane's tired eyes float to the fireplace, the chaos of her mind stills over the flames as they lick and hiss against the glass panels of the fireplace. As if they begged to be set free.
The fire seeps in through Jane's skin as if it were made of tissue paper. It melts past the cartilage, muscle sinew, and bone, sizzling and hissing as engulfs Jane's body. Her screams drown in the roar of the inferno around her. But only a ghost screams, Jane is no more.
She is on Svartalfheim, the red light descending upon her. She runs. The kitchen, that poisonous laugh. There are two bodies made of what used to be the two people she loved most.
'I killed them…I'll kill you!'
The red door creaks open into a swallowing mouth of darkness. Jane is crouched in a closet with her knees pulled up to her chest, small as a child. Two adults shout just outside the door. 'They never stop fighting…'
Svartlaheim. The cracked and dead earth beneath her bare feet. The burning red light. It's coming. It's here.
"Jane Foster," the sharp-edged voice lures.
The ringing, the drowning, droning ringing.
Jane startles awake. The first thing Jane notices is that she's lying in her bed.
When had I gone upstairs?
The second is the prickling at the back of her neck. Though her room lie swathed in a coat of blackness, Jane can feel another presence near her, as if little fishy Jane had finally come upon the rock in her fishbowl. She knows this isn't like the nightmares she's used to having, where shapes materialized themselves from the darkness and her mind played tricks on her. No, Jane knows this is real. She's hyper aware of the sound of silence encasing her. Too quiet. Like the calm before the storm.
Jane remains still but she feels as if the pounding of her heart shakes her entire body. She squeezes her eyes shut.
"I know you're awake, Foster," A smooth voice says from within the darkness.
