Disclaimer: The characters and original story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me; this story is not for sale or profit.

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A/N: Sorry this took so long, busy times! Thanks to everyone who's left reviews, you guys are the best! Did your prediction come true? Let's find out!

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"I fear your smile and the promise inside.
It's in your eyes, what's on your mind.
I fear your presence; I'm frozen inside."
-Within Temptation
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The king sat forward in his golden seat, an uncommon energy stirring his regal form. His single eye was diamond hard, set in the grave lines of his ancient face, and his breath arrested in his chest. A fine tremor shook the hand that brushed the detonator at his side, the only outward sign of the maelstrom of anxious tension within. He lifted his finger away from the trigger.

Not yet.

The king had no desire to send the finest warriors in all the realms plunging to a senseless death. The Einherjar were his army, the mightiest he had ever commanded.

But if Thor learned the truth, they would shortly become the army of his enemies. His own powers turned against him as the weapon of his defeat. He would not deliver that weapon willingly into the hands of those who would use it to destroy him; he would deliver them to the void first.

But not yet. Not until she spoke the words that would damn them all.

"Jane… I believe in you."

Even so, his fingers twitched towards the trigger. Ever ready.
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"What?" Thor frowned, his shoulders tightening at the mention the name. "What about Loki?"

"He… he was…"

Jane took a deep breath. The moment had come.

She would tell him everything. She had to.

She opened her mouth, felt herself teetering on the edge of a precipice…

"Are you so eager to burn another world with me, Jane?"

… and, feeling like a coward, stepped back from it.

"It's just… being in New York… I… couldn't help thinking about him."

Not a lie. Not really. But not the truth either.

Thor pulled her into an embrace, making comforting noises that she didn't deserve. They rumbled in his chest, vibrating through her in a calming way that made her feel like wilting with guilt.

"Thor…" she said tentatively, pulling back to look up at him. It hadn't occurred to her to ask before the words were on the tip of her tongue, but as they left her mouth, she found that she needed to know. "What… what was he like? I mean… you know, before…"

Before he lost his mind, betrayed you, and turned into a hostile alien invader bent on conquering planets and enslaving worlds.

The words didn't need to be said; Thor understood her meaning. He looked down at her for a moment in consternation, clearly perplexed by the turn their reunion had taken. But ultimately unconcerned. It was plain as day that didn't suspect a thing. And how could he? Jane wanted to hide under a rock.

He pulled away from her, but his hand found hers, and he drew her farther into the flat. They sat down on the couch, Thor staring off into the middle distance, and Jane watching him, hawk-like, while he descended into memory.

"How do I explain Loki?" he said. A small, wistful smile quirked his lips. "Mere words may not suffice. In so many ways he was a mass of contradictions."

He shook his head, still smiling but troubled, as though mystified by the man he was seeing in his memories, and only just realizing it.

"He was… elegant and a bit vain, but unafraid of getting his hands dirty. Reserved, but obsessively curious. Manipulative, but honest about his own dishonesty; unashamed of it, I would say. He was quiet, observant, but never shy. Uncertain at times, but unafraid – Loki was no coward. He was devious, but loyal to those he loved. He was the kind to betray you for your own good, and then make a joke when you were forced to admit he'd been right to do it. He was practical, but took pride in artistry and irony. He loved competition, be it against another, or against himself, but he never sought glory for its own sake. It was the love of the challenge that drove him. And… there was a sort of grudging kindness in him, as though he thought it a weakness, but could not help it. And he was never cruel… not then."

Thor looked down, and had to clear his throat before he continued.

"He was thoughtful. Intelligent. Witty. Passionate about whatever took his interest. He loved books the way I love weapons and warcraft. And he was second to none in magical skill."

Thor chuckled at some distant memory, his eyes sparkling with thoughtful fondness.

"And he loved to play tricks on people. My mother used to say his one true talent was making people furious with him. I disagreed. His real talent was not for getting into trouble, but rather for getting out of it. My friends and I used make all sorts of mischief throughout the Nine Realms in our younger days, but there was no situation, no matter how dire, that Loki could not talk our way out of. His eloquence was unmatched, and he could be devastatingly charming. Many a lady traded her virtue to his silver tongue," he chuckled. "And to the golden trinkets he used to shape with magic for them. He was quite the craftsman, and quite well known for it; you could pick out all of his conquests at court by the jewelry they wore. It was quite the scandal for a time, but after tempers had cooled for a few centuries, it became something of an inside joke amongst the ladies, that Loki's love was like a goldfly – er, an insect on Asgard, similar to Midgardian fireflies, except that they are golden in color. The saying went that you could catch Prince Loki's attention, but you couldn't keep it, because it died after one night, and left only a bit of gold behind."

Oh really… Thor seemed to be genuinely enjoying his reminiscence, so he did not notice Jane's eyebrows shoot up her forehead at that anecdote. The beautifully crafted gold disc suddenly felt intensely conspicuous inside her pocket, and she furitively brushed her hand over the bulge to make sure no edge was sticking out to be spotted. Playboy… she thought sullenly, then frowned inwardly at her own petulance. It's not like it really matters… at least I told him that I knew he wasn't serious, so he won't think I'm blind enough to become another dew-eyed conquest …

Not the point, dummy. Focus.

Thor was still talking, revealing more than Jane ever imagined she might learn. He sobered, the weight of his loss revealing itself on his expressive face as he went on.

"He adored our mother, and she him. And I think he desperately wanted Father to be proud of him. But… he never felt he measured up." Thor's face drew in, shuttering with quiet grief. "He knew just how to make me laugh, and how to comfort me or calm me when I was in a rage or a sulk. He was mischievous, but responsible in ways I never was. Ambitious, but unpretentious." Thor shrugged and shook his head, still at a loss. "He was all conflicting truths, but all those truths met in him somehow and… There was no one in all the realms like him. He was just… Loki."

Jane made herself meet his heartbroken gaze, at a loss herself. The memory he described was no doubt skewed, the loss of his brother and the means of their parting making him remember the good and gloss over the bad in his own mind. But if even half of it were true, the man he described sounded like a perfect stranger to the one that had assaulted her in her hotel room and burned Manhattan to the ground.

What had happened to change him so drastically?

"The universe is… unkind. It finds creative ways to make you suffer…"

Jane shivered, her gut coiling tightly with the vague threat of whatever unspoken horror he had been referring to.

"I truly believe he never wanted the throne. Not before…" Thor continued, utterly lost now in his soliloquy. "As I said, he never craved glory for himself as an object, only as a means to an end; he wanted to be what our father thought a prince of Asgard should be. He both detested and relished his own uniqueness, always seemed just a little bit annoyed or amused by turns at the difference in his nature… or he did, before he knew how truly different he was from the rest of us…"

"What do you mean?" Jane asked distractedly, working hard to assimilate everything he told her into the image she had formed of Loki in her mind. "Why was he so different?"

"That's right, I never told you…" Thor sighed. "Loki was… not my brother by birth."

"What?" That caught Jane's attention. "You mean... like, he was adopted?"

Thor nodded reluctantly, his mouth tensing with unease.

"His parents… were Jotuns. He was raised a son of Asgard, but in truth, he was the son of Laufey, the king of the Frost Giants."

A Frost Giant… Jane blinked several times, an image of Loki filling her mind beside the image of a Frost Giant she'd seen depicted in a painting on Asgard. Trying to mesh the two images was like trying to hammer a round peg into a square hole. Thinking of him in those terms caused a paradigm shift, made him seem even more alien in her mind… but at the same time, it somehow made his alien-ness make more sense. He seemed so much different from anyone else she'd ever met, because he was different from anyone else she'd ever met. This new piece of the puzzle somehow made his incongruities easier to swallow.

"Not very tall…" she murmured, her brain whirling. "I mean… he was really tall," she amended at Thor's questioning look. "But he's not exactly big enough to be called a giant."

Thor chuckled at her rambling, casting her a grateful look of subdued amusement, as though he assumed she was acting silly to distract him from his sorrows. Jane didn't know whether to cringe at her own incoherence, or be glad he was giving her so much more credit than she deserved.

"He was indeed small for a giant. My father found him abandoned in the great temple upon Jotunheim, and brought him home to raise as his own son. But… he never told any of us. For over a thousand years, only he and my mother knew the truth." He sighed heavily, his brow furrowing with the burden of heavy thoughts. "And rightly so, I now believe. The Jotuns have been our sworn enemies since before the time of the Great Beginning. No one would have treated Loki as a person, much less as a prince, if they had known the truth. We were taught from infancy that Jotuns are savages and monsters. We have been trained to fight and kill them since we were old enough to hold a blade." Thor shook his head and looked away. "When Loki found out what he was… I cannot imagine…"

Jane thought maybe she could imagine, but only in a vague, abstract way.

She thought about how she felt when she'd realized Loki's mark had been on her forehead all along, and she'd never known it. The sense of intrusion, invasion, uncertainty and powerlessness had chilled her on a primal level. The intimacy of knowing one's own body should be sacrosanct.

How much worse would it be to find out that it wasn't just a little patch of skin, but instead it was her entire body that was not what it seemed? Not just for a few weeks, but for her entire life? And not only that she wasn't human, but that she was a creature she'd been taught from infancy to fear and despise?

"…ice bound savages… a planet full of monsters…"

What would that do to a person?

"That is why I was able to forgive him for killing me in New Mexico, and for all else he did while I was banished. The horror of that knowledge had overthrown his senses." Thor looked down at his hands where they rested in his lap. "He said he could no longer recall anything of our lives on Asgard but living in my shadow. I can only assume those shadows swallowed him up…"

Jane reached out and laid a tentative hand on his forearm, squeezing gently in a gesture of support. She wished she could brush her hand over his brow and smooth away all his sorrows. He wasn't meant to look so morose. He had a mind and body made for either uncomplicated happiness or righteous anger. Sadness didn't fit on his face.

But… she was on a mission. This wasn't just curiosity, this was data collection. She remembered their first meeting, when she'd disregarded his deranged, incoherent ramblings in favor of recording the scientific data of the Bifrost site. What was a stranger's head injury, compared to soil samples from the site of a gravimetric disturbance of that magnitude? A belated guilt twisted through her like a pinch deep in her chest, sparking the beginnings of a tension headache behind her eyes, and for an instant she thought she heard a quiet ringing in her ears, though it was gone quickly. Now, as then, she found herself putting her search for knowledge before his well-being. She needed to know these right now. More than she needed to spare him this pain.

For what felt like the millionth time, she wondered if she were heartless.

"If he were still alive…" she said quietly, her mind carefully shuffling aside her feelings of self-castigation and pouring over this strange, intriguing new Loki, that Thor assured her had once been the same Loki that had leveled Manhattan. "If it were possible… would he still be worth saving?"

Thor looked up at her sharply, his eyes hauntingly sad, and she was suddenly struck by the years she saw reflected in them – it was easy to forget sometimes how old he really was. Moments like these simultaneously made her feel incredibly fortunate and incredibly insignificant.

"When I took him from his cell on Asgard, I told him that I no longer believed that my brother was alive inside of him. But when I held him in my arms on Svartalfheim… when his life was flowing out of him, and I was powerless to stop it… I realized in that moment, too late, that something in me would always call him brother. Was he worth saving?" Thor shook his head. Then nodded decisively. The sincerity in his face, made somehow more profound by the display of timeless knowing in his eyes, struck her hard in the chest and stole her breath. "Yes."

"Yes?" she heard herself ask faintly.

"I do not know if he could have been saved," Thor went on, nodding his head minutely as he spoke, as though confirming his own words to himself. "And many might say they disagree. But in spite of everything, he was my brother. Nothing can change that. Nor would I have it change. It doesn't matter if it was impossible. I would never have stopped trying."

It was Jane's turn to look away, her mind racing. She shifted, the disc in her pocket digging into her hip. Suddenly, the symbols of the healing sun, the need to be filled, and the gift that breeds loyalty, all took on new facets of meaning.

Loki believed there could be healing. And she could be a part of it.

Thor could have his beloved brother back. She could help give that to him.

But not if she told him what she knew. In fact, if she told him now, Thor would likely be forced to fight the brother he loved and missed so much. And she would be to blame.

In that moment, all her worry and vacillating and rationalizing came to nothing, because the answer was clear to her. She didn't know if it was the right one, but she knew it was the one she would choose.

Not for Loki! For Thor!

The distinction comforted her, even though she knew it really didn't make any difference. The lie was the same. As was the outcome.

The moment for honesty was gone. Loki's secret would stay secret. For now. There was no way she could trust him, but she would listen to what he had to say. If he'd just stop being so obscure… All this symbolic language, riddling in runes, a trail of breadcrumbs leading her from clue to clue as though she were deciphering a treasure map… it was, she again admitted grudgingly to herself, rather intriguing, but it was getting her nowhere and it made her anxious. Afraid even. He was treating this like a game, even though the consequences were deadly serious…

Mischievous, practical, creative, intelligent, challenging… The man Thor had described abruptly clicked with the man she had encountered in unexpected and disorienting ways. A link forged in an instant, joining the man worth saving, with the man she might have a chance to help save…

She would listen. But he was going to have to do more than smooth-talk her with that supposed silver tongue if he expected her help.

"I am sorry, Jane, I understand your curiosity, but may we speak of something else now?" Thor asked dully. "This sorrow still weighs heavily on me."

Jane shook off her musings. There was no point in chewing on them further. The choice was made. It was his move now. And she'd tortured Thor enough for one day.

"I'm sorry," she sighed, rubbing a guilty hand over her brow, unable to quite look at him as her conscience at last caught up with her curiosity. "Of course this is hard for you. I can't believe how selfish I'm being."

Thor shook his head, taking her hand in his and tracing her fingers with his own, as though it were some fascinating and delicate relic.

"No, think nothing of it. It was merely unexpected." He smiled more warmly at her, his tone deepening with as his eyes grew intent. "I am simply happy to have you back. I would endure much worse to have you in my arms."

Jane felt her cheeks heat, and she tilted her head, giving Thor a coy, sidelong look before she reached for him. Thor's expression swiftly morphed into something intent and intimate as he allowed himself to be drawn down into a passionate kiss. The world spun slightly and the indistinct ringing in her ears spiked momentarily as he pushed her gently down onto her back. A baseless sense of unease twisted low in her abdomen alongside her desire, nagging at her. Her decision was made, and it felt like the right one. So why did she still feel so restless? So wrong?

But Thor's lips, teasing at her neck and moving ever lower, drew her attention inescapably, and Jane sighed and melted against him, letting her lingering doubts slough away under the electrifying onslaught of his touch.
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The king turned his eye away, having absolutely no desire to see what came next. With a soft, controlled sigh, he lifted his finger carefully from the detonator and let it fall back into the folds of his cloak, blessedly unnecessary. For now. But still within reach, should the need arise. And it might yet. Whether she knew it or not, his beloved mortal was not finished choosing. And he would do what he must.

Jealousy burned like the fires of Muspelheim deep in the pit of his being to imagine his chosen queen in the arms of her lover even now, but in spite of it all, his heart was lighter than it had ever been since his brother's ill-fated coronation day.

Of her own will, the mortal goddess had taken the first step towards him. It had been a delightful surprise when she had asked to know about him. She had listened intently, her magnificent mind working hard. He would have given much to know what she made of all she'd learned. She had not, at least, recoiled or displayed disgust to learn his true species. Though he had taken note, where her lover had not, of her annoyance at the mention of his romances.

"Jealous, Jane?" the king murmured under his breath, allowing a whisper of a smirk to play on his lips. He didn't really believe it, but it was a nice fantasy.

Nearly as nice as the reality: that she had kept his secret.

He could feel each moment of this truth washing over him in little drops of time – crystal drops, cool and cleansing. Rain. Relief. Strength. Control…

It was only the first choice she would have to make. It was a battle won, not the war. But this time she had chosen him.

"Someday I will crown you in stars, my Jane, if only you will let me…"

Restless and wanting distraction, the king rose from his golden seat and strode from the golden hall. He swept through the vaulted marble passages and soaring ivory archways. Guards and courtiers stood to attention or bowed at his passing; none questioned or hindered him. To all that looked upon him, he was king. The thrill of it was still delicious. And yet at the same time it was but a feeble stopgap – a false victory. For all practical purposes, Odin Allfather was still king of the Realm Eternal; it mattered little who wore his face. And without his beloved here beside him, the charade wore thin. Someday, if the gods, and his mortal goddess, were kind, walk these halls free in his accustomed form - though not his natural one, never that – and be called a king for it. Until then, the secret knowledge that he had them all dancing like mummers in the palm of his hand, and none of them any the wiser, would have to be enough. And it would suffice; despite his regal majesty, the king enjoyed nothing quite like a well played trick.

His purposeful stride carried him at last to the grand balcony overlooking the approach to the palace. From here, the entire realm spread out before him, seeming to roll away like a fertile field of grain, gilded in the last fiery arrows of sunset. The light streamed like liquid gold, radiating and refracting over the architecture of blade sharp angles, flowing arches, glittering spires and undulating folds in patterns long burned into the king's memory.

His eyelid drooped as he savored the breeze blowing inland off of the edge waters glittering in the distance. The evening air smelled of water and wood smoke, and spice and stone, and apple blossoms and baking bread. Amidst the artwork of the cityscape moved the realm's inhabitants, even the simplest of which showed himself graceful, cheerful, beautiful and bold. Their every interaction and activity proved a study and testament to their innate majesty and superiority as a people.

The king let his eye focus as it traversed the city streets from afar, his mind stretching lazily back into the distant past, picking out memories from each place his gaze alighted like bright jewels winking at him out of the misty haze of time.

There was the tower where, as a boy, he had once climbed, on a dare, to the very pinnacle without using any magic. He had tied his mother's silk scarf to the needle-slender tip of the spire at the top to prove he'd made it. He had not been allowed to play out of doors for a fortnight afterward, but for months he was a hero amongst his peers.

There was the broad lane where they had raced their horses between lessons, before the market place had expanded into that section of the city. Thor had had the audacity to demand that a law be made to clear the street for two hours each day so that they might continue as they always had; it was one of the few instances in his long life when he had to remember the meaning of the word "no".

There was the tavern where he'd drunk and played dice long into the night with the ambassador from Nidavellir, softening his will of iron with clever words and strong mead, and in the end sealing the last of the Seven Treaties, though no history scroll would tell ever it that way.

There was the courtyard between the old temple and the guard tower where a pretty girl named Sigyn had given him his first kiss. He'd been enchanted by her dark eyes, and had given her a gift – a bracelet he'd made of gold and garnet during his magic lesson – and she had rewarded him for it. A fleeting liaison in the grand scheme, though at the time he'd convinced himself, as all young people do, that his first love was greater than any that had ever been, and that it would last until the all the stars died. Little could he have known then what he knew now, or that it would be a thousand years before he learned how deeply love could cut, and that it was the depth of peace, not excitement, that was a truer measure of love's strength…

There was the bridge where he and his brother had warred with and slain the Valorian water wyrm that had been sinking the fishing boats at the mouth of the Silver River. They still sang songs about that battle on the docks.

There was the rooftop alcove from which he'd played his most infamous trick on his brother's friends; it had been over five hundred years, and the Lady Sif was still holding a grudge over what he'd done to her hair. And they called him vain.

There was the old fire oak, where he'd spent countless hours in the sun dappled shade, reading, dozing, practicing his magic, or just daydreaming.

A thousand moments in a thousand places, all running together so that the city was overrun in the mind's eye with a thousand young kings crafting a thousand precious memories into a tower of shivering sugar glass. Too fragile to endure. Destined to shatter.

"We were raised together. We played together. We fought together. Do you remember none of that?"

The king had walked these city streets, called this golden palace home, and known these high born people as his kindred and subjects for many an age and countless generations of mortal men. Yet he had never seen them as he saw them now.

For so long, these memories of uncomplicated happiness had been like shards of splintered stone in his flesh, piercing him with the searing agony of betrayal. Yet ever since he had held his beloved in his arms for that one brief, blessed instant as the Aether detonated – close enough, to his eternal shame, to forge a connection of blue fire between them - something in him had twisted to a disconcerting new angle. Despite the danger, her brightness drove back the shadows, and in her healing light, the sting pain of his connection to this place had become bittersweet rather than torturous. The shards of memory were ground into sand, and he discovered that they softened with the grinding; each grain of sand a memory, neither lost nor destroyed, but transformed. They could never be what they were. But they remained, and something new might yet be made from them. Sheltered in her radiance, he slowly discovered that he could once again glance towards those distant, happy lights of the past without constantly shedding tears and screams and other peoples' blood for them.

He would never be what he once was, that stood beyond a shadow of a doubt, and this place would never be what it had been to him. But there were moments his heart physically ached with longing for this shining oasis in the black, hateful putrescence of the void. He wanted to belong here again, truly, unabashedly and legitimately.

And though he hardly understood his own weakness on the matter, he found he wanted to offer it to his beloved, not as a thief with a stolen treasure, but as a rightful king to his queen. It was hardly necessary. Circumstance, ill-luck and cunning had conspired to provide her with surer protection than even queenship of the Realm Eternal could endow. And she was not the sort of creature to be won with honors and jewels. No, it was far less practical than that. It was, perhaps, a matter of pride. The perverse desire he had developed for her fear and submission while his mind had been enslaved in blue fire faded more and more with each passing day and each new link of control he forged over the silken strands still clinging irascibly and irrevocably to his mind. More and more he discovered that he wanted to see pride in her eyes when she looked at him. Admiration. Welcome. Desire.

To achieve that, it was no longer enough to simply possess and rule this place; ever since he had protected her, he found he had developed a disconcerting and inconvenient need to protect it as well.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, testing his balance in constant reminder of this unaccustomed form, and felt the slight weight of the detonator still concealed in his cloak sway against the armor of his leg. He lifted his eyes momentarily from he landscape to stare out into the oncoming night beyond the edge waters, out into the black pit of emptiness between the wink of the stars. For a dizzying moment, he thought he felt it staring back. He was the first to look away.

Asgard's king would protect it. Even if it meant destroying it in the process.

"For her."

For her, because that was the only way he could trust himself to do what was right. He could not count on any other motivation to remain uncorrupted. The blue fire no longer ruled him. But he could not trust himself without her light to guide him.

Unbidden, his imagination stabbed at him with an image of his mortal, moaning and panting beneath her straining lover. His bright, dark eye flashed pale blue for an instant, and a chunk of the marble railing cracked and crumbled with the force of his fist tightening around it, rage and helplessness and acidic jealousy boiling in his blood for a long, precarious instant before he mastered himself once more. He cast aside the jagged chunks of marble in frustration and disgust.

Whatever she was doing right now… didn't bear consideration. There was time, and given enough of it, anything could change. Her choice this day gave him hope. And the mark on her brow would be what sealed it. She would come around with time… and maybe some subtle direction... She would find her way to the right choice. She had to. None of these thoughts, memories or plans mattered if she did not. He had only come to this new peace through her. She was the anchor around which he drifted, the beacon that had led him back home, the rock that had steadied him and given him strength when his world was shaken to its very foundations, and the rain that had purified his tainted mind and washed him clean enough to touch this little island of light again without crushing it.

If she was gone, he would be lost again.

He was born a monster, raised a failure, and exiled, a vagabond and a slave. In a universe filled with abyssal darkness, she was the only star. If she made the wrong choice, and decided against him, nothing in all the worlds would hold any meaning except for his emptiness. Without her, all the universe could burn and nothing of value would be lost. If she could not accept him, he would reject all else.

The evening bells began to ring as the last rays of the sun slipped beyond the edge waters, casting a undulating rainbow aurora against the sky for a few brief moments as its rays refracted through the mists of the falls. The haunting chime of the bells seemed to ring through the sound and meld with it, giving brief, glorious life to a new sense that was both sight and sound. The people all paused, as was customary, to glance skyward at the twisting cascade of light and color, but they quickly went on with their business. After all, it happened every day; there would always be tomorrow to marvel at it.

The king alone in all the realm stopped to truly absorb the wonder, beauty and worth of the land in which he stood, with an appreciation that only deprivation could breed. That powerful desire accosted him once more, to stand amongst these people as himself, and gaze up at the sky at sunset as one of them, and revel in the luxury of taking it for granted. Would he ever be allowed again?

The king smiled with cynical mirth. That decision was yet to be made.

"Uncomfortably touching as that soliloquy may have been, brother," he murmured, "you do not decide whether I am worthy of redemption. She does."

If she could find a hero in him, perhaps he could be heroic. If she decided there was only villainy in him, he would be play villain with relish. But before she could choose his fate… she had to choose her own.

He shuddered, his hard eye sliding closed for a moment as a chill stole through his bones, and the flicker of blue fire cast a long shadow across his memory for an instant. The choice was something that could not be taught. He had done all he could to guide her to it. She would have to find the rest inside herself.

His eye opened once more, and traced the skyline with a covetous longing gone hollow with worry. Even his longing for his childhood homeland could not outweigh her power over him. The fate she chose - for herself or for him, the difference was negligible - was the fate she chose for all. He would save this little island of light from the darkness waiting beyond the edge of night, or he would sink it beyond even the reach of darkness, and as on Midgard, all that he did, he did for her.

"Choose carefully, Jane," he murmured softly to the evening breeze as the aurora descended into dusk. "Asgard lives or dies by your will."

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TBC…

A/N: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." [-TS Eliot] I feel like that pretty thoroughly sums up how Loki feels about Asgard now. He sees something he wants to protect as well as rule.

So this was lots of character development, not a ton of plot advancement, but kind of necessary if Loki is to be the dynamic character I want him to be. Jane is still the main protagonist, but Loki needs to grow too! Hopefully this chapter was as much fun to read as it was to write – which was rather a lot.

Let me know what you think in your review! You cannot imagine how appreciated they are. And helpful! The muse is a lazy little drunk that needs constant motivation, and your feedback is just the push he needs to get his monkey tail in gear. Without them, I have to resort to caffeine and a cattle prod, and it's just not conducive to a productive working relationship.