Lost Before The Dawn

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Warnings: None

Chapter Playlist: 'Tower Prayers' from 'Snow White and the Huntsman' and 'Anakin and Padme' from 'Star Wars: Attack of the Clones'.

'The truth is rarely pure and never simple.'

- Oscar Wilde

Jane was never certain how long she had been trapped down in those tunnels. The hours blurred into one monotonous blur of boredom and darkness. Her mind raced, and whirled in circles. She'd always hated just sitting around, and she was doing a lot of it lately.

When she couldn't take sitting down anymore, she paced her prison instead, shooting glares at the impersonal back of the enslaved SHIELD agent guarding her.

With every moment, it felt like something was rising in the air, a tangible feeling of anticipation, like when thunderclouds were gathering over the desert in Puente Antiguo, and you could feel the storm coming in.

Something was coming. Something big, and it killed Jane not knowing what.

Her stomach growled, and she grit her teeth silently. She didn't know if it was Loki's plan to starve her to death, but she hoped not. Starvation, not a nice way to go.

The sounds of drilling and footsteps continued throughout the days and nights, or hours and minutes, and she tried to catch glimpses past the burly shoulders of her guard, but he was too wide.

Did SHIELD just employ ex-quarterbacks or something?

Giving that up, she turned away and continued to wear a track into the concrete floor of her prison.

"I'm not boring you, am I, Miss Foster?" a familiar voice asked, and despite the frisson of mingled fear and exhilaration that rushed down Jane's spine, she kept a cool face as she turned to face her captor.

"Oh. You again," she muttered. "Can't say I'm exactly having much fun. Walking around a room ten metres by five isn't exactly the most thrilling way to spend my time."

Loki stood before her, smirking slightly at her show of insolence. It was more amusing than annoying, really.

"Insolence again. How quaint," he replied smoothly, making her stop and glare at him.

"No, but seriously is that your 'grand revenge' on Thor? Driving me insane and killing me slowly through starvation?" she asked, folding her arms and leaning on one foot in mocking impersonation of him. She didn't miss the way his hand shifted at the mention of Thor's name, nor the way his eyes seemed to glow that eerie blue, more strongly either.

"Well, if my lady is so deprived of both sustenance and intellectual stimulation, come with me," he gestured to the doorway, the SHIELD agent moving out of the way. Jane hesitated, suspicious. Loki sighed wearily. "Very well, stay here if you prefer-"

"NO! No, I'm coming," she muttered, forcing her feet to move. Loki preceded her out of the room, and she followed quickly, aware of the icy gaze of her guard watching her.

The tunnels were a hive of activity, yet Loki's pace was so brisk, Jane almost had to jog to keep up with him, preventing her from seeing much. To her surprise, he led her out of the tunnels, and along a dank corridor, with high windows, most cracked or deprived of their glass panes, until they reached a stairwell.

Loki eyed her narrowly, as he opened the fire door, his gaze cold and warning. "Keep walking until I tell you otherwise," he told her, indicating for her to go first. Ignoring the slight numbing feeling in her feet from his tone, she climbed the stairs in near-darkness, her thighs burning. In her head, she counted.

She'd reached 100 before he told her to stop, and she looked up to see the darkness was not as thick as before. She was panting slightly, as he pushed open another fire door, and gestured for her to go through.

She stepped out onto the roof of a desolate, abandoned office building, hemmed in by skyscrapers and other buildings. The open air was cold, but refreshing, as Jane gulped it down.

To her delight, the stars burned brightly overhead.

"Are you mad? You know SHIELD will be looking for you," she asked, turning to face her captor. He smiled easily, and waved his hand indolently in the air between them.

"A simple invisibility spell, to cloak our forms and voices. No one can see or hear us," he replied, walking past her to the edge of the roof, and propping himself against it.

Intrigued, Jane watched him, sinking her hands into her pockets. "How can you do that? Is it some kind of manipulating any nearby camera and audio feeds, or is it true invisibility? I read about someone who could refract light so it bent around them. Is that similar?"

Loki was surprised. He was not aware the humans possessed such skills. "In a nutshell, yes. In practice there is far more to it than that simplistic explanation."

"Well, try me," she muttered. "I'm stubborn, not stupid."

An amused quirk of his brow was her only answer. "Come, sit. I recall something about 'starving you to death'?"

She eyed him narrowly, before capitulating and perching on the wall beside him, although not too close. Not that it would do much good if he did want to grab her or push her. He was faster than any human.

Jane jumped as there came a flare of light by her elbow, and she glanced down to find two steaming silver foil trays, and the smell of Chinese filtered into her senses. Satay chicken and boiled rice. Her favourite.

"How…?" she gasped, but he just chuckled and looked out at the bustling city skyline.

"You forget, Jane. I became well-acquainted with your innermost thoughts and desires. Would the fact you prefer this sort of cuisine escape me?" he asked, and she stared.

"Yeah, well don't think you can buy me off with food. Believe it or not, food is not a way to anyone's heart," she muttered, picking up one tray and finding a pair of chopsticks hidden away in the rice.

"I know one who would disagree with you," he replied, turning to her, and for a moment, his eyes gleamed that forest green before fading back into that eerie blue. Deciding to ignore him, she dug in, and all but moaned with pleasure. She couldn't remember her last meal.

The morning before it all kicked off with the Tesseract? Whatever, the food was heaven.

As she ate, she glanced around her surroundings, and frowned, trying to place it. It wasn't New York, skyline wasn't big enough for a start, and there wasn't enough air traffic. Where were they?

Loki watched the mortal eat, all the while taking in her surroundings with a piercing alertness he respected. He was slightly horrified to find he was coming to respect the woman, and her surprisingly quicksilver mind.

Eventually, she seemed to abandon her contemplation of their location, and looked up at the sky, smiling slightly. That enigmatic sight intrigued him, almost against his will, and he watched her intently.

"I love the stars," she murmured, softly, as if she'd forgotten who she was sitting with. "They're so beautiful, so distant. So free of everything that's dark and wrong."

"You are wrong," he replied, equally as quietly, his voice no longer seductive, as he gazed up at the stars, so much smaller and distant than he'd ever seen them.

Against his will, memories of Asgard infiltrated, filling him with a deep aching sadness.

"They are surrounded by darkness and the cold emptiness," he continued, his gaze seeming to turn inward. "But they burn so brightly that they stay free and untainted in the darkness, even as they are surrounded by it."

Jane had a feeling he was repeating something. He looked lost in a memory, one that transformed his features, making him so much younger, like a little boy lost.

"They are surrounded by darkness and the cold emptiness of the space between the branches of the World Tree, Loki," his father's voice, warm, kind, filtered into his ear as he stood on the window sill, a pair of strong hands around his thin waist. "But look! See how they burn so brightly? With such beauty, their purity can never be tainted although darkness seeks to consume them utterly. They never shall…"

When Loki's eyes met hers, they were a solid, sorrowful, green that made Jane's breath catch.

Then his eye hardened, and she felt fear creep into her, and she wanted so desperately to recoil. Now, she saw a wounded, prowling predator, watching her from behind those ever-changing eyes.

She didn't move, because she couldn't. She was paralysed.

The All-Father's voice echoed in Loki's head, and he wanted to snarl as pain and anguish roiled over him in waves, caught as he was in the gaze of a doe-eyed witch.

Her eyes burned as brightly, in the light of the unfamiliar stars above, as the stars in his memory.

Remember, they betrayed you, Loki. They betrayed you and scorned you. Such memories are merely fantasies.

You are no one's son.

He tore free of the warmth, the false, sickly embrace of those childish fantasies he had long disposed of, and stood, stalking away from the mortal woman, as his fists clenched and his magic stirred at the stimulus of his anger.

When he looked back, she was standing, watching him but there was no wariness in her eyes, no fear.

Just…pity.

"What happened to you?" she asked, in a deadly quiet whisper. From what she remembered, Thor had painted mental pictures of a mischievous, intelligent man, far wiser than he, and with a devilish charm that baffled as much as it entranced.

And then the Warriors Three and Sif had come, and then that image had been overlaid by another. That of a jealous brother, ruthless enough to kill his own kin.

Something in Jane's mind niggled that was not even the start of it.

"I was betrayed by all those I once cared for," he replied, snarling every word, his voice bleak and cold, as icy as his now blue eyes. "Betrayed, scorned, deceived. Does that answer your question, mortal?"

She didn't speak, but that pity didn't leave her eyes. Rage flared, and he was across the rooftop in a single stride, his hand like a steel shackle around her waist.

"I hold your life in my hands, Jane Foster," he hissed in her ear. With every word, he moved her back a step, until the edge of the roof jutted into her back. "I could kill you with barely a twist of my hand, and I would feel no remorse."

Jane stared up at him, eyes wide, panting as her wrist complained. "That would be kind of a waste, since you went to all this trouble to keep me alive," she muttered, forcing back her fear and summoning up every last drop of courage she possessed. She refused to think about his tightening grip on her wrist, about the God know many foot drop below her, or the way she trapped between him and the wall.

She refused to let any of that, nor the fear that they evoked, show in her eyes. It would not rule her, just as he didn't.

"You don't scare me," she hissed, and his face hardened.

"You will be scared, I promise you. I will destroy you and make you anew. You will bow to me, and serve me until the end of your days as my Queen and my slave. You will have no other thought in your head but of me. Does that not frighten you?" he growled against her mouth. She met his gaze steadily, praying he couldn't hear the pounding of her heart.

"I'm not scared of you," she repeated through gritted teeth.

"Foolish mortal," he snapped. Temper riled, Jane snapped back.

"And that is why you won't win. You might bully, threaten, intimidate and hurt as many people as possible, but they won't give in. We will always fight," she snarled. "I do not fear you, Loki."

Suddenly his grip eased, and Jane tottered, and fear rose up that she was about to fall. That he was going to let her fall.

But at the last moment, he pulled her forward by her waist, hard against him, and she panted with relief. His lips brushed her ear, distracting her from the pain in her wrist and side.

"Liar."

The single word was a sensual caress against her ear, and she shuddered. She glanced up at him defiantly, and his grip tightened around her wrist. Without another word, he pulled her away, with him, back into that abandoned building.

Jane could barely breathe when Loki towed her into a large, cavernous chamber filled with people. He pulled her towards a large isolation tent, and she saw with a surge of unease that the Tesseract was inside, resting in a replica of the cradle they'd used back at SHIELD.

"My King…" she glimpsed James watching them submissively, as Loki pulled her through the thick plastic drapes, and forced her onto her knees.

"Leave us!" he barked, before turning back to Jane. Slowly he approached her again, until he stood barely an inch away, and unless she looked up, she was at eye level with his thighs.

He knelt, so slowly and so gracefully, that Jane's body reacted. The Tesseract pulsed beside her, hot and burning, as he almost lovingly caressed her hair.

"My dearest Jane," he murmured, seductively. "You are mine, and you will learn your place. You will learn fear, and respect, for your King."

"Respect caused by fear isn't respect. It's just-" she began to retort, but his sudden grip on her hair stopped her, forcing her to arch her neck back to alleviate the pressure. It wasn't painful, per se, just uncomfortable if she fought back too much.

"Hush, my sweet Jane," he smiled, and his eyes seemed to glow just that little bit brighter in the presence of the Tesseract. "You will see, and understand."

His hold gentled in her hair, transferring to her chin, holding her jaw gently but firmly. With a slight press of his fingers, he turned her to look at the Tesseract, burning bright. It was almost painful to look at.

"Look into it and see. Let it show you the truth," he breathed in her ear. He needn't have bothered, Jane was enthralled even as her mind screamed that it wasn't a good idea and to move away now. Not that she could have done even if she wanted to; Loki's arms were like steel shackles around her.

Her eyes were drawn further and further into the shifting, flashing depths of the Tesseract, as it sensed the presence of a new mind, one untainted by the magic of the Sceptre and those who sought to control it.

One who could save them all.

She was stood on a rocky crevice, surrounded by obsidian spikes of ice and stone, watching as towering giants with skin as dark as their surroundings hemmed in a group of six people. The wind howled, but she didn't feel it.

In the centre stood a tall, crimson-cloaked man she recognised as Thor, golden hair flying in the wind, Mjolnir ready in his hand. She ignored the others, focussing only on him as he spoke angrily up at one of the Giants, sat on some kind of throne far above them.

She vaguely remembered Thor telling her about the Frost Giants. She guessed these giants were one and the same.

And this had to be Jotunheim.

Her eye was drawn by the figure stood next to Thor, pale, dark and handsome. With a surge of shock, she recognised him although he seemed like an entirely different person from the one she knew.

Loki.

He stood, tall and proud, emerald eyes cautiously watching everything, seeing danger where his brother did not, the wind playing with the strands of short black hair falling around his face, the skirt of his surcoat lifting in the breeze.

Jane was surprised by Thor. He seemed proud, and almost antagonistic, as he traded insults with the Frost Giant King. He reminded her of the man he had been when he first fell to Earth. Proud, dismissive and arrogant.

She watched, spellbound, as Loki rushed to his brother's side, whispering frantically into his ear, and how Thor pushed him away with a sneer. The Frost Giants hemmed the group in even more, cutting off escape, their hands turning into wickedly sharp daggers of ice.

Thor turned away, and Jane strained to hear above the wind and the sound of her heart pounding.

"Run back home, little princess!"

"Damn," Loki muttered, as Thor smiled and turned, Mjolnir flying from his hand.

What happened next was sheer chaos, yet there was an odd beauty about it. The warriors flung themselves into battle, fierce and indomitable, while Thor wielded Mjolnir with such awe-inspiring precision that she hadn't seen before, not even in his fight with the Destroyer.

But for all that, he reminded her of a boy playing a game in the playground. He laughed and taunted his foes.

Jane's eyes were drawn once more to Loki, graceful and athletic. He didn't throw himself at his opponents like Thor, but took them down, one by one, at a distance, with ruthlessness that sent a chill down Jane's spine.

He paused, panting, and Jane watched, unseen and unheard in the midst of battle. There came a roar behind Jane, and she turned to see a Frost Giant sprinting towards Loki, bestially triumphant.

There was no panic on Loki's face as he stepped back, glancing over his shoulder at the ravine below his feet, just pure calculation as he faced his foe. It passed through Jane like she was just air, then did the same with Loki, falling over the edge and into the darkness below.

She glimpsed him lean out from behind a pillar and dissipate the double with a graceful flick of his hand.

She lost him for a moment, as the craziness of the fight swallowed him up again, and she stared as Thor and his band of warriors decimated wave upon wave of the Giants, but they kept on coming.

"Don't let them touch you!" one, a portly, hulking red-haired giant called. Volstagg, she remembered. She blinked, and suddenly she was stood between Loki and a Frost Giant, watching as Loki fiercely stabbed it with his dagger, but as the Giant collapsed to its knees, he grabbed Loki's wrist.

Shaking wildly, the armour and cloth fell away, leaving Loki's pristine white skin open to the frigid air, and then as if dipped in dye, it turned the same shade of icy blue as the Giant's own, and strange markings in the skin raised themselves.

Jane looked towards Loki, saw there the confusion and the pain, as realisation filled his eyes. In those eyes, she saw a man slowly being destroyed, as he stared at his arm like he had never seen it before.

When he killed the Giant and wrested his hand away, the blue faded, but the pain in his eyes didn't.

She watched, now from a distance, as he saved the life of the golden-haired warrior, Fandral, and then called out to his brother that they had to leave.

Thor ignored him.

She watched as they ran from the vicious-looking creature with glowing orange eyes that chased them across the landscape, and then the scene faded once more as she blinked.

When her eyes opened again, she was stood in a golden observatory, watching as a tall, snowy-haired man in silver and gold armour shouted at Thor.

Odin.

Loki stood at the side, watching silently after the All-Father growled at him, anguish in those dark eyes. Despite what was happening before her, all that Thor had alluded to in their short time together, she was enthralled by the dark figure watching it all happen. His face had become a mask, and sorrow and anger raged in his eyes.

A growing darkness.

She stood in front of him, eyes locked with his, even though he could not see or hear her. She was not even a ghost to him, here, in this…memory? Vision?

Why was the Tesseract showing her this?

The scene changed again, to a warm, golden room. Around a fire was grouped three sofas, and the Warriors Three and Sif reclined in them.

Loki was stood at the side, a part of the scene yet somehow, still separate. Jane watched him look intently at his hand, horror and pain ill-concealed, to her at least, behind the mask of his face.

She listened as he confessed to telling the All-Father where they'd gone, then his angry snarl at Sif when she begged him to bring Thor back.

"And if I do, then what? I love Thor more dearly than any of you, but you know what he is. He's arrogant, he's reckless, he's dangerous. You saw how he was today! Is that what Asgard really needs of its King?"

She watched after him, heart pounding, as he stalked away. The scene bled away once more, until she was stood in a darkened hallway, lit only by two great torches at the opposite end, and the white light shining from behind a barred gate behind her. In front of her was a gleaming casket, bound in what looked like silver, but it glowed with a cold, icy light within.

Loki walked briskly up the hallway, ignoring the alcoves either side of him. His breath came from him in quiet gasps, and he looked pale. Jane watched as he stopped before the casket in front of her, looking down at it with mingled hope and resignation, as he set his hands to the handles on either side.

He lifted it, and Jane watched as the blue once more consumed the white skin of his hands, chasing its way up his arm. She looked up, into his eyes, as resignation became realisation, and then horror and loathing filtered into those eyes.

It was like watching someone unravel before her very eyes. Jane's heart broke for him.

Instinctively she knew. She didn't know how, or why, but she knew. Loki's entire life had been a lie up to this point, and now he had just discovered it.

"Stop!" a voice called, one Jane recognised as the All-Father's. Loki held the casket aloft, but made no move to lower it. He watched, entranced by the spread of blue up his body.

"Am I cursed?" Loki asked.

"No."

"Then what am I?" he hissed, placing the casket down.

Jane felt a shiver rush down her spine as Loki's eyes deepened from forest green to demonic, glowing red. Red as blood.

It didn't frighten her.

The markings she remembered from before reappeared, tracing their way across his forehead and face. He looked feral and beautiful, some wild, untamed creature from folklore as he turned to face the All-Father.

"You're my son," he replied, standing in golden robes at the head of the stairs leading away from the hallway. Loki's voice was as sardonic as it was pained.

"What more than that?"

Their conversation after that barely impinged on Jane's thoughts. All she could see was Loki, and the destructive anguish that burned hotter and hotter with each word from the All-Father's lips.

Her heart broke with each revelation, until it lay in a million myriad pieces. She almost did not need to see the rest, and watched with detachment, as Loki assumed the throne at his mother's behest, then the confrontation with the Warriors Three and Sif, then the lies he told his brother while he was imprisoned by SHIELD at the compound. The bargain he made with his birth father to kill Odin.

Loki, sat on the throne, while the Destroyer tore apart Puente Antiguo, his face an icy mask. The determination and the pride in his eyes when he killed Laufey, and proclaimed himself Odin's son.

The fight on the Bifrost. Loki and Thor's words to one another, the pain and the growing madness in every word, deed and gesture of Loki's.

She watched as the two Princes dangled precariously from the edge of the broken Bifrost, held only by Loki's grip on the staff, and the All-Father's iron hold on Thor's ankle.

"I could have done it, Father! I could have done it! For you! For all of us!" Loki's pleading voice pierced Jane's already mangled heart as she stared down him, from her place beside the All-Father. Hope burned in his eyes.

Two words was all it took. "No, Loki."

Jane watched as the hope died, and then there was just nothing. She looked into the eyes of a dead man, sightless, bereft of all life and hope.

Loki let go, and Jane cried out his name, her voice lost amid the roar of the wind and the cry of another, equally as heartbroken, equally as hopeless as the eyes of the man falling into nothingness below them.

Now you can understand…

As blackness crawled in at the edges of Jane's vision, blocking out Thor, the broken Bifrost, the black hole below, a new voice echoed in her ears. It was oddly sexless, neither male nor female. It wasn't like Loki's seductive purr, or Thor's husky growl, or the All-Father's commanding bark.

It was like no other voice Jane had ever heard.

Understand, Jane Foster, and you might just save us all…

Loki gently caught Jane as she slumped backwards into his arms, her eyes closed tightly as a slight moan of pain slipped from her lips.

Almost lovingly, he stroked back her hair from her face, before cradling her in his arms. "Now, you will understand," he breathed. "When you wake up, everything will change."