a/n: Thanks for the reviews, follows, and favorites, guys! And to answer a question asked in a review, I list this as complete because I don't actually know when I'm going to stop/when the inspiration well will dry up, so just in case, I keep it as complete. This was originally just going to be those first two chapters.

Also, I had no idea how to deal with the canon ending of Thor 2 with Loki taking Odin's place, so I awkwardly left it out. Whatever, it's fanfiction! Suspend your disbelief for me!


The entire drive home, Jane is in shock. It's the only way to explain how empty she feels inside, as if someone has split her open and scooped out everything that makes her human. She is still in shock as she walks into her home, folders and pamphlets in hand. She is still in shock as pours herself cold coffee, as she goes to the CNN website to make sure Thor's not dead, as she returns Darcy and Erik's texts and then turns off her phone. Muscle memory takes over as she nukes herself a Hot Pocket (pepperoni, Thor's favorite), sits down at the table, and promptly burns her tongue with an explosion of cheese that might as well be lava. She spits it out hurriedly and shoves the plate aside.

She wasn't hungry anyway. She stares at the table instead.

As the girlfriend of a living myth, Jane didn't often stop to think about her lifespan. The idea that she might spend the rest of her life with him but he wouldn't spend the rest of his with her had occurred to her before, but only as a distant reality. It wasn't as if every time she looked at the stars, she thought about her tiny timeline. Some things just were. She was still young and relatively healthy, Hot Pocket consumption aside. According to the cover of every women's magazine in existence, thirty-five was the new twenty-five. They never talked about it and they were happy.

A month ago, Jane went in for terrible migraines and her doctor found something. A month later and Jane has just received her final results. Words like oncologists and chemotherapy, radiation and malignant all tumble over each other in her mind, jarring and loud like shoes in a dryer. She's not a doctor of medicine, but she knows what it all means, despite her physician's hushed tones and stellar bedside manner.

More than anything, she wishes Thor were here, though when she told him initially, he did not completely understand the gravity of the situation. Cancer didn't exist on Asgard. Surely, the Midgardian healers would do well by his Jane. Surely, his fierce Jane could pummel any disease into submission. His endless, sunny optimism is well and good. It's a part of him she'll never want to see changed. But she's a realist. And she's human. She can apply that endless, sunny optimism to him because he can't die very easily and she knows all too well that she can.

He's in Dubai right now, working with the Avengers on a diplomatic mission that she doesn't have the security clearance to know anything else about. Jane is so proud of him, but she can't help that selfish wish that he was with her instead, even if he can't do anything for her survival and even if he won't understand that he can't. She wants his reassurances, even if they're born of misunderstanding. His presence is so huge that it wouldn't leave any room for her doubts.

This is the life she chose. When she's with him, she can't imagine anything else. When he's gone, like now, she can kick herself a little bit. She had always accounted for the danger of being with him. She might be a target for his enemies or caught in crossfire - a damsel in distress. It rankles a bit, but it's worth it. Plus, it adds a little bit of excitement to her life, outside of programming and star charts, neither of which warm her bed at night. She didn't take into account her mortality as a whole. A trip to Tromsø won't keep her safe from this.

She leaves her seat to throw away the abandoned Hot Pocket and when she returns, Loki is rifling through her papers. For a moment, she's stunned speechless. Her stomach feels as if it's dropped right out of her body.

"What the hell are you doing here?! You're supposed to be dead! Y-you...you died in Thor's arms..." Her exclamations decrescendo, losing volume and certainty in equal parts.

He gives her a look.

"Obviously not."

Fear ripples through her. The last time she saw him had been shortly after he saved her life, but before that, he had been on the news, in the process of destroying one of the most highly populated cities in the world. If that doesn't confirm him as a psychopath, then, well, not much will. He hadn't seemed exactly stable when they'd sprung him out of jail in Asgard either. It was easy to be brave enough to hit him when Thor was around, but now, she's completely and utterly alone. She's not ready to die. Not before the struggle for her life can actually begin. Her only weapon is a gun, and that is in her bedroom closet. It wouldn't do anything against him anyway, but it would make her feel less at the mercy of a potentially vengeful god. She grabs at her cell phone, but he reaches it first in a display of speed that renders his hand a green and white blur.

"Don't worry, Jane. You turned it off earlier, remember? We shan't be interrupted."

She curses under her breath and flicks her gaze to the door, then back to him. If her adrenaline can carry her at least that far -

"At least listen to what I have to say before you do something foolish," He drawls, crashing her train of thought into a brick wall. "I was your ally for a brief period. I believe you can give audience for a few moments."

"What do you want?" She finds her voice deep in herself and when she pulls it out, it is meek and trembling, and not at all like the one she thought she lost in the first place.

"To save your life. It was so fun the first time, I thought I might do it again."

At first, she doesn't understand and then, her eyes fall to the papers on the table. In her fear, she had forgotten.

"You can...cure me?"

It makes no sense. Cancer is not a thing on Asgard. How would he know how to fix it? Would their healers? Even if they did have superior technology, it would still take study, and she highly doubts the Aesir would want to waste their time studying human ailments. They're not all so open-minded as Thor and Loki wouldn't have access to them anyway.

"I can do better. I can cure you of mortality altogether."

"...What?" She exhales the word in a rush of breath.

"How would you like to live forever, Jane?"

"I wouldn't." She answers automatically. Her first instinct is to deny anything from him and her first instinct is usually the best.

"You are lying," He pauses, shrugs. "But, I could be wrong You could be very happy with the natural order of things. Pets generally die before their masters."

"Pet?-"

"Do you have a secret desire to die tethered to machines in a hospital bed?"

He begins circling around the table, toward her, and she moves with him, parallel. He could strike her from this distance if he really wanted to, but the wood between them offers the illusion of security she's not ready to release yet. Once he nears the kitchen counter overlooking the small dining room, he plucks one of her apples from the bowl she keeps there.

"It's not a death sentence." Her voice is steady, but only just as she repeats the words her doctor told her only an hour or so before. "It's not too late. I can survive - I will survive."

"You will survive through months to years of pain and suffering only to live for another half a century - if you're fortunate. And all the while, while you are surviving, you will lose your beauty and your vigor. Possibly your mind. Everything that has made him love you. All you will have left is his obligation and when you pass, it will be a comfort to him."

His voice is soft but with every sentence, he manages to stab right to her core. He bites into the apple as he studies her, one brow raised. She can't imagine how her face looks right now; it takes every muscle attached to her skull to force it into something vaguely approaching impassivity. She wants him to be wrong, but there are so many realities in which he's right. Her stomach churns as she watches his jaws work over that apple. In her mind, she lives and dies a thousand times in a thousand ways. If she's honest with herself, completely honest, hasn't she considered the same thing? It angers her that he should so easily pull out every one of her insecurities and line them up so neatly in a few sentences.

How ironic that a liesmith would be the one to reveal the truth of her own thoughts.

She's been quiet for longer than she realized. Loki finishes the apple and the core vanishes.

"Thank you for the apple. I have one for you as well."

In his hand appears another fruit, gold instead of red. Not the mottled, speckled green yellow of Earthly varietals, but honest-to-goodness, periodic table element Au gold. It reminds her of her sophomore year in high school, where they read the Iliad. It also reminds her of her more recent studies and Thor's anecdotes. He doesn't need to explain to her what it is and she knows he sees the recognition in her eyes. It's right there, next to the complete shock.

"How did you get that?"

"I stole it."

Of course he did. He offers it to her and hesitantly, she takes it. It's cool and smooth in her hands. Heavy, too, but not as heavy as a solid gold fruit should be. Her mouth is suddenly too dry and her palms too wet.

"What's the catch?"

He smiles at her indulgently, as if he is very proud of her for asking the question. She's human, but she's not dumb - just maybe the tiniest bit desperate. He gives her his terms and they're vague, but she can glean enough of it to know that it's a terrible idea with terrible motivations and even worse intentions.

"Why do you want this? To torture me?"

"No, nothing so crude. To torture Thor."

He tells her he'll give her the day to consider and as soon as he's gone, she throws the apple as far as she can from her. It puts a hole in her wall. Her hands are shaking as she instinctively reorganizes her test results and the next thing she knows, she's on the floor and biting into the apple. It's sweet, mildly acidic, and vaguely metallic. When she returns to the doctor, the tumor is miraculously gone.

When Thor comes home a few days later, she tries to explain everything, from top to bottom, but as soon as she opens her mouth to say Loki's name, her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth painfully. It unsticks as soon as she releases the syllables of his name, but when she tries to say "your brother" instead, the same thing happens. It's a spell. It's magic. She would laugh if she weren't choking on her own organ. Thor eyes her with concern and if she didn't know better, something near distrust.

She saved the core of the apple, though, and when she presents it to him, he utters the name she can't and puts his hammer through the dining room table.