Time-travel AU prompt.
Jane knew something was wrong the second her watering eyes blinked away the disorienting haze of travel. A gust of wind sent ice clawing across her face, whipping her hair about her in a tangled frenzy and cutting through her t-shirt and jeans as if she wore no clothes at all. Buried up to her calves in a drift of snow, her socks and toes gradually grew damp as melting flakes soaked into her sneakers. Bracing one hand on the rough bark of the spruce before her, she pulled one leg free, stepping forward only to immediately sink up to her thigh, sending her sprawling into the cold embrace of the loose snow.
Sputtering and wiping unruly damp hair from her face as she struggled upright, she almost missed the pale thin hand proffered. Gritting her teeth, she resolutely ignored the offer of assistance and flailed her own way to solid footing, chin lifted imperiously.
"Too proud to accept even a little assistance from the likes of me, Miss Foster?"
Fury had her rounding on one heel, a glare slitting her eyes. "Don't you think you've helped enough, Loki? You messed with the parameters again, didn't you? After I specifically told you not to!"
A delicate pout curled his lips, a practiced moue she didn't buy for a second. "I saved us from blinking somewhere into open space just outside Alfheim, in fact. If you'd just listen to me about compensating for the curvature, I wouldn't have to follow behind you and try to clean up your messes. I've been doing this since your grandmother's grandmother was alive, after all."
Jane threw up her hands and let out an exasperated growl, knowing full well the futility of arguing with Loki about anything. He'd start twisting her words around soon, and before she knew it she'd somehow be apologizing for things she hadn't even done. "You should have run it by me first," she groused, as she bent to retrieve the wormhole generator that had been half-buried in the snow.
He merely lifted one brow in a smirk as he stood with his arms crossed, tall and dark and irritatingly unruffled by the cold. "We could just do this my way, and save all the hassle."
She angrily brushed packed snow from the crevices of her device. She didn't like the amount of moisture that had gotten into the inner workings, and it would be practically useless until she got a chance to dry it out. Attempting a jump now might short out the delicate circuitry Tony had crafted. When she finally answered, unease lent her tongue a sharper edge than usual. "And then I'd learn nothing, and be utterly dependent on you. Thanks, but no thanks - that's not why I struck this deal."
And I don't trust you was on the tip of her tongue, but she held back the rote reply. After months of wary partnership, she knew it wasn't true. He could have crushed her as easily as a cockroach a thousand times over, and she rather thought he'd come close the first few times she'd angered him. Now he seemed to find her pique amusing, for some reason she struggled to understand.
Maybe living a thousand years simply meant that you sought out any sort of novelty, no matter how trivial.
He merely shrugged, and stepped away to survey the landscape around the hopefully temporarily defunct device into the bag on her shoulder, Jane waded through the snow until she reached his side, trying desperately not to shiver as another gust of wind buffeted her.
The broken treeline of furred evergreens they stood in gave way to an open expanse, studded with boulders that huddled beneath blankets of downy white. Across that unwelcoming plain was a village of small wooden buildings, clustered around a long hall that towered above them all. Smoke curled lazily up from each roof, hazing purple in the setting sun, and Jane had to stop herself from tearing off across the field towards those fires. Something was wrong here…there was no road to be seen, no power lines tethering those buildings. No cars parked outside. Flexing fingers that were slowly numbing, she frowned over at Loki. "Where are we? Is this some other realm?"
The glance he angled at her was uncharacteristically sober, and Jane's already sinking stomach spiraled ever faster downward. "I'm not so sure that where is the question, Miss Foster, so much as when. And unfortunately, even my magic cannot slip the stream of time."
Before her stuttering mind could catch up he began walking towards the small village, and she had to scramble to follow, stepping in the path he broke through the snow as she tried to process what he'd said. "When?" she echoed wanly, recalling a spirited debate she and Erik had had once over the plausibility of time travel via wormholes. "Oh crap…what if we created a Roman ring? That shouldn't be possible…" She trailed off and trotted to keep up.
Inexplicably, Loki's stride grew even more eager as they closed in on the large hall, and the beginnings of a smile hovered about his mouth and sparked in his eyes. Solid walls of timber loomed over them, broken by large doors on one end, and as they stopped just shy of them Jane eyed the structure, memory stirring to life. She'd seen a building almost like this, reconstructed in the museum at the Tromsø University in Norway.
They were standing outside an honest-to-God Viking mead hall.
As she gaped in disbelief, Loki's hand fell on her shoulder and she leapt at the unaccustomed contact. "Jane," he said as he stared intently down at her, and a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold raced through her at the sound, the familiar syllable made new by his sinuous voice. He'd never called her by her first name before. "We can find shelter here, and food. A place for you to examine your device, and come up with a way to send us home."
"But?" She voiced the unspoken word he'd left hanging in the air.
"These will be good men, but rough. Not like the men of your day, or my world even. Not a place for an unmarried woman." His ominous tone told her all she needed to know, and as much as she hated to admit it, he was probably right. She'd be hard pressed to be taken seriously or move freely here.
"So what do you suggest?"
He gently cupped her chin in one hand, and the startling warmth of his skin against her chilled flesh had her sighing into the contact. Embarrassed, she lifted her gaze to find his jade eyes locked gleefully on hers and a wicked smile playing about his lips. "How quickly do you think you could learn to answer to Sigyn?"
The blush that heated her cheeks was almost enough to make her forget about the cold.