Disclaimer: The characters and original story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me; this story is not for sale or profit.
A/N: So this is the last of those three (now four) chapters that were once all one long mega chapter. Can you believe this story was again supposed to be a oneshot (again)? The muse is out of control. Where's Darcy's taser when you need it?
Thank you to everyone who had reviewed, you are my sunshine! *bursts briefly into song*... ahem... and to everyone who has stuck with this story, despite all the twists and turns! I do worry sometimes that this is going to turn out like the ending of Tad Williams' "Otherland" series, but then I remember that I am audaciously comparing myself to Tad Williams, and I crawl back under my rock… I do have an outline, and an endgame! Promise! Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't!
Anyway, sorry, this turned into kind of a long chapter, but I refused to break it in half again. There comes a point at which you have to stand up to the bullies, even if those bullies are deviously adorable monkey muses with great ideas. So please enjoy!
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"I see the truth that you've buried inside.
It's in your eyes, what's on your mind.
There is no mercy, just anger I find…"
- Within Temptation
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In dreams, mortals sometimes wander beyond the bounds of imagination, and walk in the shadowlands where the line between thought and form may blur. There they give birth to wonders and horrors beyond scope of the reality, and it is safe, because they have no power to carry them back into the waking world.
But sometimes… sometimes, when they descend into that dreamscape, betwixt and between, it opens the way for something more to follow them down. And sometimes… sometimes the shadows from beyond the world find a way to follow them back.
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The mark pulsed on the mortal's brow, the blue fire seething and roiling with wonder and hunger.
Mired with the mortal in the dream of rain and rage, it had danced down the shaft it had opened in her mind, delving deeper than ever before. Always, the tunnel burrowed on, seeming never to end but this time... this time it found an end. The bottom of the well. And before being forced to recoil with her waking, it had at last brushed up against that jealously guarded vault that was secreted there. Cautious, timid as a new lover, giddy as a child with a shiny birthday gift, and reluctant as a scholar beginning the last chapter of an enthralling book, it peered demurely inside for a glimpse at what secrets it might harbor.
There it discovered two things it did not expect.
The first was a wall of water in which it saw its own reflection. A dangerous ward, for the magic itself was light and reflection, and the reflection of a reflection would turn the light back on itself and trap it in infinity. In times gone by, this mirror in the deep might have been the magic's ultimate undoing. But the magic had been reshaped by crafty hands, and it was more now; it had learned many new things. So now, when it reflected, it saw a spider creeping forward through shadows and fire, and the form gave it traction to free itself from the trap and look beyond to the second hidden treasure.
There, unreachable beyond the water mirror, a hidden strength slept, enshrined within a vast well where the shadows sheltered it, barred and bound by an ancient sorrow.
The blue fire reached for the well beyond the waters, testing it with tentative touches, but as the mortal's mind pulsed with white and began to fight the dream, it had no choice but to surface, leaving the well unexplored. To do otherwise risked damage. Damage meant change. Intolerable.
No matter, though. Its questing touch had weakened the barriers, and they were weeping pure, pent up power. Power that the magic of the mark wove into a few trailing, silken strands of its blue fire. As it was pulled from the depths of the mortal's mind, it sprinkled that power over the shadow shapes of her dreamscape.
Giving form to thought. Reality to ideas. Life to nightmares.
The wellspring was tapped, making way for dormant floods to pour from the skies.
The gates were open and the beast was awake in its lair.
The mortal had no idea of the shadow she would soon cast. And the king on his golden throne, despite his arrogance, could do nothing to save her now.
The web was pulling tight. Power was gathering. The scales were rocking on their fulcrum, ready to break.
At the center of its web, the blue spider waited. Patience. Patience.
It would not have to wait much longer.
.
The nightmare had taken a toll on Jane, and the love-making after had worn her out even more, so it was nearly noon before she woke up. She shared a late breakfast with Thor, during which guilt at his curiosity and concern forced her to tell him innocuous little snatches of the dream that had unsettled her so badly, before claiming that she didn't remember anything more and changing the subject.
It was an outright lie. In a mind in which every clear thought had become a struggle, the dream stood out, vivid and undiminished as if it were happening before her waking eyes. The tunnel; the storm; the webs. The rage of the beast. The numbing rain. Far from forgetting, she couldn't banish it from her thoughts no matter how she tried.
The lying was wearing on her. She didn't know quite why she couldn't tell him the truth. It had started with a fear of what Loki might do if she did. It had been compounded by a few glimmers of hope that maybe some good could come of it. Now... there was more to it that she didn't quite grasp. But it had occurred to her last night, as she drifted off to sleep in his arms, that some part of it must be about trust. Not just that he couldn't trust her; she had spent so much time worrying about that, and about her own lies and betrayals, that it hadn't occurred to her to realize that she didn't really trust him yet.
Even as they lay naked and entwined, the taste of him still on her lips, close as two people could be, some part of her had felt a cold certainty that she could not trust that the truth would not shatter what they had together. It seemed unbelievable that after everything they had been through, what they felt for each other should be so fragile.
Yet she had nestled closer as she drifted off to sleep, snaking her arm over him and holding him tight. And even as she did so, her sleep fogged mind had understood with a clarity denied her in full wakefulness, that some small part of why she was clinging to him was because some thing inside of her feared she would wake to find him gone. Just as he'd gone, leaving her alone for two years. Just as he'd returned to Earth last year, but rather than coming for her, had colluded with SHIELD to have her packed away. It was the same part of her that resented the rest of the world for needing him almost as much as she did, and resented him for flying away off the balcony each morning, seeming to give them almost as much as he gave her.
I am heartless.
This is who I am.
That had been her last bitter thought before falling asleep. And in the light of day, she still couldn't deny it.
Thor was quiet for a time after her sketchy description, uncharacteristically brooding. When Jane rose and carried their plates into the kitchen, instead of flying immediately off to spend the day helping others, he unexpectedly retreated into the bedroom and picked up the phone. That gave Jane pause, but his preoccupation suited her just fine. She pushed her disquieting thoughts aside, focusing on more practical matters. She had a phone call of her own to make.
Glancing over her shoulder to see Thor still murmuring into the land line through the cracked bedroom door, she quietly slipped out onto the balcony, pulling her cell from her pocket as she did so. She scrolled through the contact list until she found Alexa Solberg's number, and pressed the green button.
The phone rang twice before she heard a click. But instead of the practiced amicability of Alexa's accent, she heard a scrabbling, the sound of shrieks and giggles, some shushing, and then the high, sweet voice of a child came on the line.
"Hi!" the child chirped happily. Jane thought it was a girl, though she sounded young enough that she could be mistaken. "Who is this?"
"Uh, hi," Jane said, wrong-footed. "Um, my name is Jane. Is there someone named Alexa there?"
"I have an auntie named Alexa!" the child cried, delighted, as though she'd won a game. There was more high, childish laughter in the background. It sounded like someone had been feeding a kindergarten class sugar candy. "She came to my birthday party last time! My name is Kelda! I'm five now!"
"Oh, that's great," Jane said indulgently, the corners of her mouth turning up in spite of her confusion. "Is your Aunt Alexa there? Can I talk to her?"
"Auntie says the gods love you a lot," the child interrupted. "Are you really the star?"
Jane blinked. "Um… the what?"
"The star of Sun Mountain!"
The laughter in the background grew abruptly quiet, and in the sudden stillness Jane felt a thrill of goosebumps rush over her skin.
"Weeeell, not reeeeally," Kelda said in a sing-song. "But the new one."
"I… I don't…" She tried to answer, but she found she didn't know how.
There was a distant exclamation over the line, a scuffing noise, then Kelda made a petulant sound of protest.
"No, sissy! I'm talking now!"
Another voice came on the line as Kelda's high voice faded with disatnce.
"No, Kel! It's important! I told you not to… um… is this Jane Foster?"
This voice was older, but not by enough; a girl maybe in her mid teens. Jane noted that her tones carried the same hint of accent that Alexa had, but hers was lighter, as though she'd had more exposure to American English.
"Er… yeah," Jane replied, truly uneasy now. Alexa was the last person to know her full name without her having given it. She wondered if the girl had heard her name from her relative, or if she too had some kind of precognitive ability. "Is Alexa Solberg there?"
There was a short pause.
"No," the girl said. "Aunt Alexa… is not here."
"Do you know when she'll be back? I really need to talk to her."
"I…" the girl's voice faltered, sounding slightly choked, before she cleared her throat. It still sounded mildly tremulous as she went on. "No, ma'am," she said softly. "I don't know when she will be back. Not… not for a long time, I think…"
"Oh… well then can you have her call me when…"
"She can't call you," the girl interrupted, her tone ringing with resentment all of a sudden.
"What?" Jane's skin prickled. "Why not?"
"She gave me a message to tell you," the girl said, ignoring Jane's question. Jane heard her take a deep breath, as though gathering herself, remembering the exact words. "She said to say… 'When the King's Ward falls, you must not falter. You must stand strong and run for the edge of the world.' "
"Er…" Jane frowned. "What does that mean?"
"I don't know!" the girl snapped peevishly, suddenly sounding exactly like the bratty teenager she was, and Jane realized that, for all the nerves and emotion in her voice, the girl had seemed much more grown up a moment before. As though she were trying to shoulder a mantle of responsibility bigger than she should have to. Jane had an idea of how that felt; after her father had died, her mother had withdrawn in a lot of ways, and Jane had been left to basically raise herself.
"Hey…" she said, trying not to sound sympathetic; she didn't get the vibe that that would be appreciated, "what's your name?"
Another pause.
"Jana, ma'am," she said cautiously.
"That's a pretty name, Jana. Almost the same as mine."
More silence. Then, "Yeah, I guess..."
"Listen, Jana, I appreciate you giving me the message. Is there an adult there that I can talk to?"
"I'm the oldest," the girl said with a sigh, the resentment back in her voice. Then she paused, as though she had just remembered she was talking to a stranger. "I'm babysitting right now," she said in a cooler, more even tone. "The grown-ups are out now. We have your number, ma'am. I'll tell them to call you when they… when they get back."
"Hey, um… are you guys…"
A crash sounded in the background, followed by numerous high pitched shrieks and giggles.
"Put that… put that back Mag! No! Get down off of there, right now!"
There was a chorus of laughter and shouts in the background.
"Let me say hi!"
"Ask if she's really the star!"
"Kel got to talk on the phone! My turn!"
"I want to tell her about my birthday party!"
"Go sit down!" Jana shouted, then groaned long-sufferingly. "I have to hang up now," she said. She paused once more. "Um… good luck."
There was another crash in the background, some more annoyed shouting, and then the sounds of chaos ended with a click. Jane pulled the phone away from her ear and blinked at it for several seconds, more lost and confused now than when she'd dialed the number.
"I'm surrounded," she muttered dryly.
"You're off the phone?" Thor's voice came from behind her.
"Huh? Oh!" Jane spun around and hurriedly stuffed the phone in her pocket, as though she could retroactively hide the fact that she'd been calling anyone at all. Belatedly realizing how suspicious that looked, she cleared her throat and pulled it back out, holding it up and shrugging with a sheepish smile that she hoped covered the wince at her hopeless inability to lie.
Luckily, Thor was too preoccupied to notice.
"Good!" he boomed. "We're going out!"
Jane's eyebrows shot up and Thor's smile broadened in response. Not allowing her time to protest, he turned back into the flat, pulling her after him. Caught off guard by his sudden spontaneity, it didn't occur to her to realize until much later that she hadn't felt a single twinge of a headache while she'd been on the phone with the Solberg children, nor detected even a single note of ringing or any hint of rain in the air.
.
The king narrowed his eyes as his mortal goddess deactivated her communication device. Extending his senses, he followed the voice from the other end. He flicked his eyes minutely to the left.
There.
His gaze found the familiar wreckage of Manhattan. He ignored the destruction with clinical detachment, focusing on the raucous laughter of children emanating the second level of a burned out shop that had been converted into a living space.
A dozen tiny mortals swarmed through a room filled with dilapidated, mismatched furniture, chasing and playing with complete abandon. Three more children, these only slightly older, tried to govern the younger ones into some semblance of order, with marginal success. Under the direction of the eldest, a girl of seventeen, they eventually corralled them into the middle of the room around a small television set, bribing them to be quiet with sweets. The king shook his head with a derisive smirk. He had little experience with children, and even less with mortal children, but he did not see that ending well.
When the younglings were all sufficiently mesmerized by the moving images on the screen, the elder girl – Jana, she had named herself before – stared at the mass of children before her, then sighed heavily and moved to the back of the living space, carefully opening one of the doors there to peer longingly inside.
The king's face darkened at what he saw in the dimness beyond.
Within were seven full-grown mortals, the youngest perhaps nineteen years old, the eldest over one hundred. They lay on mattresses on the floor, their eyes closed, asleep. No… unconscious. Six had lengths of cloth bound around the wrist of one hand, and bound around the arm or leg of the seventh, a woman of middling years, so that their hands remained in contact with her skin, despite their unconscious state.
Every one of them was ringed in a halo of green magic. The six were pouring their magic into the seventh. The seventh channeled the magic into a spell so constant and draining that it incapacitated all of them.
The king could not trace the flow of power, it was so subtle and insubstantial. But it wasn't difficult to guess its destination. He had spied the magic mark on his beloved's arm the night before.
He knew what the Midgardian witch was doing. He didn't know why. But the purpose of the magic was clear: she was trying to disrupt his design.
Fury burned behind his eye and boiled through his blood.
"I warned you…"
He very nearly vaulted off of his golden throne, intent on racing to one of the secret paths to Midgard and ending the spell – preferably by ending the sorceress. But his eye chanced to glance up. Out into the void. He made himself remain still until the firestorm of outrage – and under that, terror – abated enough to admit rational thought.
He could not leave the realm undefended. Not when his very presence here might truly be the only element that kept the wolves at bay. And with the King's Ward burning bright around the borders of the world, no magic cast from here would reach them. Nor could he send Einherjar. Amundson's dogs were likely watching for any sign of aberrant behavior. Not to mention, if Asgardian warriors executed a Midgardian family, it would raise difficulties with the mortals, which would like as not raise difficulties with Thor. It was trouble that could not be brooked at this juncture.
He ground his teeth, incensed and feeling useless. There was nothing he could do.
He shook his head. All would be well, he comforted himself. This Midgardian magic was weak, barely more than a whisper. His strength was not so inconsistent that this mortal magician could counter it. Not even with six more lending her their strength. Their spell would break against his like waves on the rocks.
Even so…
"If you bring her to harm…" he hissed under his breath, wishing the woman could hear him. "…you will beg for death before the end."
The mortal girl was still standing in the doorway, watching her elders. Her eyes shone with tears for a moment before she blinked them back. She was afraid, but her back straightened
"I told her, Aunt Alexa," she said quietly, even though no one in the room could hear her. "So please… please come back."
.
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Jane reclined on the old patchwork blanket listening drowsily to Thor telling her the story of how he had once triumphed over the champion charioteer of Vanaheim in a chariot pulled by golden goats. Warm sunlight and a cool breeze mixed in a flawless balance on her skin and she smiled, laughing at his enthusiasm as he described how the Vanir's steeds had halted at the last moment, sending him flying head over heels to land with his stuck up nose in the dirt.
The impromptu picnic had been Thor's idea. It gave her pause when she took a moment to realize that, despite everything they'd been through, the closest they'd ever come to an actual date was that night on the roof of the old auto shop, staring up at the stars. Of course, Thor hadn't exactly called it a date. It would be more accurate to say he'd called it necessary, insisting that she was overtaxing herself, and that the day was going to be spent doing nothing at all.
"You've been so quiet lately," he'd told her, breaking her heart with the concern creasing his brow as they walked towards the park. "So tense and so unhappy." She'd looked away, embarrassed, but he'd caught her face with his huge hand and gently turned her back to face him. "Your work is important Jane, but you must not forget to relax and enjoy your life as well. A day out of doors will do you good."
Despite the uncharacteristic romance of the idea (which strongly suspected had originally been Erik's), she had been ambivalent at first, reluctant to let herself be distracted any more than she already was, worried that she wouldn't have her samples ready for her appointment to use the electron microscope at Oxford. Not to mention, she was certain that something as simple as spending a few hours eating sandwiches and potato chips in the park would have little to no effect on what ailed her, especially given the questions chasing themselves in circles through her mind.
Alexa needed to explain herself. Quickly. And while she was demanding answers from people who refused to supply them, Loki needed to explain himself as well. If her dream had been just a dream - the product of stress, fear and masochistic imagination - then she didn't need to worry - at least, not any more than she had before. But even if the worrying gaps in her memory had given her reason to doubt, the sensory hallucinations had grown too marked for her to miss the correlation. Deep down, she suspected the dream was much more than mere catharsis. It was a message about what was going on inside her head. Maybe even a warning.
Suffice it to say, the weight of her thoughts made her less than eager to spend even a few minutes without distraction for her mind, much less hours. A day in the park could not disentangle her from the web she'd caught herself in. It couldn't possibly do her any good.
Or so she had truly believed. But now that they were here, the fresh air, the sight and touch of green, growing things, and the warmth of the sun on her skin really had lifted her spirits. A band of tension she hadn't realized was drawing her tight had leached away, leaving her warm and relaxed and, for the first time in longer than she could recall, almost happy.
"The blackguard then confessed in shame that he had cut the legs off of my goats the night before, while everyone was inside the hall drinking and feasting!" Thor exclaimed, gesturing expansively, while Jane laughed at the expression of mock horror on his face. He was a wonderful storyteller. "As luck would have it, he vastly underestimated their regenerative capabilities. If he truly wanted to lame them, he should have stolen their bones…"
"Um… excuse me…"
They both turned to see a group of teens milling several feet away, staring at Thor with cautious optimism. The one that had spoken was pushed closer by his friends while they quietly urged him on.
"Yes?" Thor asked, warily but not unkindly.
"You're not… Thor, are you?"
A cautious half-smile lit Thor's face. "That is my name," he answered, only the slightest hint of smugness tainting the regal quality of his address. "But a man should not ask another's name before giving his own."
"Oh, right, sorry, I'm Todd. These are my mates. Um… could we have an autograph? And… maybe a picture?"
Thor grinned broadly for a moment, then checked himself and looked back at Jane.
"I am sorry, my young friend, but at present I am otherwise most pleasantly engaged. Another time."
"No, no," Jane said quickly, though she had to admit she was a bit annoyed…
"Thor divides his affections."
… but her annoyance wasn't anything like the ugly antagonism that had been simmering in her for the past couple weeks, and in its absence this little annoyance was almost comfortable contentment by comparison.
He was a prince for over a thousand years. Now he's just a guy. I'm sure he misses the attention. No wonder he leaves each day to surround himself with a crowd of admirers. No wonder he can't sit still and be with only me…
"Are you quite certain?" Thor asked, his tone saying what his words did not – something in him wanted to go spend a few minutes being admired - but he would forgo it if it bothered her.
He's not perfect. But he's trying…
"Don't worry about me. You can finish telling me about spontaneously regrowing goat legs later on."
Thor chuckled, sending her a warm look, before he levered himself up to tower over the boy and follow him over to the waiting gaggle of teens. Jane turned over onto her stomach on the blanket and propped her chin on her hands, watching him laugh and talk animatedly with the boys and bow to the girls, graciously kissing each of their hands with a gallantry that was going to ruin them on their peers.
He's great with them. I bet he'd be great with little kids too. I wonder if he wants children… Her eyes became lidded, her cheeks pink and her thoughts bittersweet as her gaze swept down to examine individual blades of grass peeking up around the edges of the blanket. It could happen… the Solbergs are proof that Asgardians and humans can have children… And I'm not exactly getting any younger...
The back of her neck prickled. So did her forehead. She blinked, frowning slightly, and looked back up at where Thor stood amongst the young people. Her eyes sharpened and narrowed. One of the girls was standing too close to him. She was probably about sixteen, no older than the rest, but she was curvier than the other girls, and it made her look older. She probably knew it. She was probably used to male attention, and to her attention in return being welcome. So she was all but plastered to Thor's side, running her hands over the rippling muscles of his arms under the snug-fitting tee-shirt he wore and looking up at him from under her lashes with an expression that was probably meant to be seductive; her youth and inexperience made her overcompensate though, so that the expression made her look obvious and somewhat cheap, Jane thought uncharitably.
Thor was roundly ignoring the girl as he laughed amicably at something one of the boys said. But he didn't shake her off either.
From out of nowhere, Jane felt a twist of jealousy stab through her middle.
Don't be stupid, she thought, scoffing at her own emotions. She's a dumb kid with a crush.
But the blessed respite from the headache and anger had already evaporated. Her ears were ringing again.
She's younger than me. She has longer to live. Longer to give Thor children. What will Thor do with me when I'm old? Will he stay with me when I'm sick, arthritic, decrepit and shriveled up? Will he move on to a younger woman, or just go back to Asgard and leave me alone to die? Or would he stay… would I want that? Would I want to look at him, young and strong and perfect, while I wither away and fade?
Her eyes burned into the girl's back while doubt and jealously burned like acid in her blood.
The girl stiffened. She frowned and took her hand off of Thor's shoulder to rub her arms as though she were suddenly chilled. She looked around slowly, as though afraid of what she might see. A few moments search brought her around to where Jane lay. Their eyes met. Jane made no move, unable to bear the idea of making a fool of herself by showing jealousy over a teenager. She met the girl's eyes evenly, keeping her thoughts off of her face and out of her eyes.
It didn't matter. The troubled confusion on the girl's face fell away, leaving a blank, pale mask.
As Jane watched, a shadow fell over her, as though a cloud had passed over the sun – even though the sky seemed to be clear.
Gradually, the girl began to shake. She inched back, slowly moving away from Thor and moving to the back of the crowd, putting her friends between herself and the picnic blanket.
A chill raced up Jane's spine.
Even so, she rolled her eyes and looked away. Definitely just a stupid kid; she can't even look me in the eye. She felt stupid for entertaining anything like jealously. She refocused on Thor's gregarious interactions, trying to relax and let the tension leak back out of her.
But she could feel the girl watching her with a disproportionate level of discomfort. A shiver of real, visceral fear in her wide, innocent eyes. Jane wondered if she should feel more guilty than she did. The kid was really scared. But her ears were ringing and her headache was back, and all she felt was satisfied. And that made her feel guilty.
I am a selfish, spiteful woman. I would see a child suffer just because I am jealous and afraid. I am heartless.
This is who I am.
Jane folded her arms and lowered her head to hide her face from the sun. But she could feel it on her back. It was warm, and forgiving. She soaked it in, and let herself forget. Forget who she was. Just for a while.
By the time Thor finally returned from his meet and greet, Jane had put the girl out of her mind, and had repaired her good mood enough to tease him playfully about being a celebrity. Thor laughed, shaking his head.
"Midgardians do me too much honor." He reached out and took her hand. "And you most of all. You all think me good, but I am only the better for having met you."
Jane blushed, looking down at the blanket, pleasure and shame mixing uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach.
"You give me way too much credit," she said quietly, a small, pained smile on her face. "You're the one who's too good to be true. I'm just trying to keep up…"
Thor cocked his head at her, then smiled his golden smile. "You're too honest, Jane."
Jane glanced up at him sharply.
"Wh…what do you mean?" He couldn't be more wrong. On top of being jealous, and selfish, she was a liar and betrayer.
This is who I am.
Shaking his head again, Thor reached up to stroke a strand of hair from her face, then leaned back to prop himself on his elbows, and stared up at the sky. His eyes grew lidded and distant. The sun seemed to pour through his golden hair like liquid radiance, mesmerizing her. Everything about him shined.
"My mother used to tell me that when we are honest, we see only the worst in ourselves. And when we are lying, we see only the best."
He turned his striking blue gaze back on her, as though reflecting the whole vast, free arc of the sky straight into her eyes, and from there down into her soul, where it refracted with a glow like sunrise on the horizon. "The trick," he went on, "is to seek the best while remaining honest. That is when we know ourselves best."
He shrugged, giving her a lopsided smile, and the entrancing moment ended.
"Or so she said to me. Perhaps she was simply trying to knock me down a few pegs for my own good."
In spite of herself, and the curious weight those words left glowing in her chest, Jane snorted, then giggled as Thor broke into his own laughter, warmth flowing over her with the light of the sun. She clung to it, letting it drive back the chill inside for as long as she could, determined to brand the halcyon calm of the day into her memory.
But she could not help the icy little knot of foreboding lodged stubbornly beneath her breast bone, that there might not be many more like this left.
.
The golden palace opened onto a small, idyllic courtyard, walled around by rich, dark greenery laced with small white flowers on trailing vines, like stars winking in the deep of night. At the center of the yard, a tall, regal standing stone of gleaming marble veined with onyx, cut from the living rock of the Nethermount, towered like a beacon.
Runes had been carved by a master stone cutter, to honor the passing of the fallen Queen of Asgard. Though her body had been committed to water, to fire and to the eternal night beyond the edge of the world, her memory stood with this stone, a pillar of strength for all who came to do it honor.
Here stood the king, alone amidst the white flowers and dark leaves, still as a standing stone himself.
He had come here only once before, and he had been rather extremely distracted with an emergent situation at the time. He had not had the luxury to wallow in his grief. Not then.
Ever since, he had avoided this place and the truths he must face here for as long as he could.
Now, his heart heavy and his mind mired in fear and doubt, he found himself unable to resist its pull. He stood beneath the standing stone, unsure whether he sought absolution or condemnation. Utterly unsure which he could bear least.
Time held no meaning when he stood here before the Queen's stone, letting the loss, still fresh and raw, wash over him.
"You might want to take the stairs on your left."
Were those the words that had killed her? Would she live still, if they had never been spoken?
A lesser king might have found it daunting to lay eyes upon the standing stone with such thoughts in his head. This king met the stone's gleaming surfaces unflinching, finding stillness in the center of its presence amidst the raging gales of hollowness and loss that whirled around it. The balance between calm and fury was a tenuous one, but he had learned to master it. To use it. It was a valuable skill.
One his mortal goddess would have to learn. And soon.
He refocused on the stone.
"You never knew you were blessing two sons with your sacrifice," the king told the stone quietly. "Unbelievable as it seems, I think you loved them both still, in the end." His throat tried to close on the words, but he forced them out anyway. Daring her to hate and revile him from out of the halls of the dead. "Would you finally learn to despise me, if I said that I was grateful that it was you, and not her?"
The wind was in the white flowers, and when it whispered to him, it sounded like her voice, a comforting lie in the sunshine. He stood and listened to it for a long time.
The fallen queen had been his sun at noonday, when no shadows had clouded his eyes or concealed the pitfalls of the world. What he wouldn't give for her warmth and wisdom now…
Anything. Except one thing.
His beloved mortal had been his beacon in the gloom of night, when all other lights, even the brightest, had succumbed to the encroaching darkness. If one of them had to die that day… if only one could be saved… if he could choose… the choice was sickeningly simple in the end.
"I am… so sorry," the king breathed into the breeze. Hating himself as she never had. "I…" His throat tried to close again, but the gleam of the stone and the sweet whisper of the wind in the flowers, gently ripped the promise from his lips. One he didn't fully understand. One he wasn't sure he could keep. "I will defend what you gave your life to protect."
The stone made no reply. Only the faintly gleaming stars, pale but still visible, even at midday, bore witness to his oath. Expecting much. He felt the weight of the detonator in the folds of his cloak. Maybe too much.
At length he turned away, his spear flashing in the sunlight, and strode back towards his seat of power, the red of his kingly cape flowing like a river of crimson heartblood in his wake. He did not allow himself to dwell further on the queen named upon the standing stone. Nor the occupant of the crypt beneath it.
For the tomb there was not empty.
The queen was gone, her body and spirit dismantled and returned to the fabric of the universe, her soul sent with all ceremony to the halls of Valhalla. Yet even so, beneath the standing stone, in the shadows of the ceremonial catacombs, a regal figure lay in repose, entombed unknown in the quiet. Sheltered, secreted, hidden. Lit with the glimmering golden shimmer of a soul forge.
.
It wasn't possible.
Jane sat at her lab bench, the disc of Asgardian ointment beside her, and glared through the microscope's lens with the intensity of a laser, willing the sample she was watching to obey the laws of physics and start behaving like normal baryonic matter.
Gary had met her this morning at the door to the Oxford biolab, and after some small talk and several diplomatic but pointed assurances that she was not interested in having dinner with him, she had gained access to the electron microscope.
The results of the tests had been striking and immediate. And impossible. She'd run sample after sample through the machine, certain it had to be wrong, until Gary finally had to kick her out of the lab to lock up for the day.
But impossible or not, for once, all the tests had come together in agreement, and the results had her reeling with disbelief.
The Asgardian ointment had a chemical structure unlike any she'd ever encountered before. That was hardly surprising. What left her jaw hanging open again and again was the fact that the ointment despite its stable state, was changing before her eyes.
The atomic structure itself seemed to be in a state of active quantum flux. Not just an atom or two here and there. The chemical compounds were continually shifting forms and state, en masse, atoms and elements rearranging seemingly at random to form new patterns of matter and energy, in ways that nature as she understood it could not account for. Lacking an electron microscope of her own, she was now holed up in her lab, simply watching a dye-enhanced sample of the compound through the highest setting on her light microscope. The substance seemed to writhe and flow through itself restlessly. It almost seemed alive.
It was amongst the most amazing things she'd ever witnessed, and that was really saying something. The thrill of this unknown should have left her buzzing with excitement, overjoyed at a new frontier to venture into, racing through the possible implications these new interactions between matter and energy might pose for science in general, and for her own astrophysics research in particular.
Instead, she felt only a growing weight in the pit of her gut.
"Hey, Jane," Darcy said from somewhere behind her, sounding almost obnoxiously bored. "I finished running those scanner readings through the data analysis program."
Jane ignored her. A pain, like she was banging her head against a wall, threatened to split her skull. It was a wall she couldn't climb, circumvent or plow through. She was stuck railing against it like a wave crashing against a cliff. A hamster, running on some insipid metal wheel and going nowhere.
"Did you want me to file these readouts? Or did you want to look at them first? I don't think they're any different from the last set, but you're mega scientist."
There were chemical reactions and energy exchanges at play here that she had no way of measuring. Microscopes were useless beyond this point except as a sideshow, and none of her chemical or thermal tests yielded anything but random gibberish. How was she supposed to analyze this data when she couldn't even collect and measure it?
"Earth to Jane? You in there?"
She could see a fascinating new microscopic world before her. But her ability, her technology, her very senses were too limited to understand it.
"Jaaaaane. Janejanejane! Seriously dude, where do you want these papers?"
Her ears were ringing with the headache building higher and higher behind her eyes, fed on the agitated helplessness of her limitations. All of her limitations. Everything felt like it was falling in on her, crumbling faster than she could shore it up, a pointless struggle against inevitable failure.
And Darcy just would. Not. Stop. Talking.
"If you keep ignoring me and I'm going to start playing with the buttons on the gravemetric resequencer…"
"Shut up, Darcy!" Jane snarled, whirling around to glare her impotent rage at the chattering intern. The ringing in her ears increased. "Just SHUT UP!"
Darcy startled physically, backing several steps away until her hip struck the far lab bench, and the stack of readouts fell from her trembling hands to scatter across the floor in a flapping flurry of data. The shadows in the dimmed laboratory seemed to lengthen and deepen ominously. Darcy recoiled further from Jane, paling, her bottom lip trembling slightly before she caught it between her teeth. There was a spark of real fear in her eyes. And for an instant something inside Jane, something ugly, liked it.
This is who I am.
"Wh… What the hell!" Darcy shouted. It should have been an angry, defiant tone. That was Darcy. That was how she handled conflict. With anger or sarcasm. But her voice was high, quiet and filled with a kind of shocked horror as she stared unblinkingly at her employer.
She wasn't angry. She was frightened. Really frightened.
The realization disrupted the fury building behind Jane's eyes.
Darcy was her friend. It wasn't her fault. She didn't want Darcy to be afraid of her.
I don't want to hurt her…
She hardly knew what she meant by the thought. Of course she didn't want to hurt Darcy… But she could feel the anger clawing its way up her throat, like the beast burrowing up out of the flickering pit of blue fire in her dream… The shadows seemed to lengthen, and Darcy seemed to shrink as the world distorted around her…
I don't want to hurt her!
Her breath catching in her lungs, panic closing her throat against the rage, Jane, desperate, summoned up a mental image of rain. She pictured it inside, washing her clean of anger, running rivulets stripping away the grime over her rage and hissing on the hot coals of fury smoldering in the pit of her gut.
As though on command, a cooling rush swept through her almost instantly, the scent of rain welling over her, washing away the fear and the fury… her face slackened, her eyelids drooping and her body as her muscles relaxed. Darcy blinked, several times, cautiously cocking her head at her, the mask of fear on her face melting with a hint of concern…
"Jane?"
I can control it… she thought. I don't have to worry… I can…
…then came the first hint of the dead emptiness, the rain like lidocaine, deadening all feeling, scouring away good and bad alike, and Jane, feeling like an utter coward, but just grateful to be able to feel at all, lost her resolve. She shoved the image of the rain away, pushing a hard breath out through her nose to banish the smell, rejecting it almost instinctively, and with the full force of her being.
She couldn't, she just couldn't…
Rage poured back in like molten lead searing her veins. Overwhelmed by the sheer force of the onslaught, she slammed her fist down on the work table, breathing hard. Darcy jumped at the sound.
"What is your deal?" Darcy shook her head almost frantically, pinning Jane with a deeply worried look, dead serious for once. "I don't know what's up with you lately, Jane, but this isn't you. Just… just… call me when you snap out of it!"
She didn't wait for a reply. She dashed for the door with the air of someone operating on a sense of self preservation, grabbing her jacket from the peg on the way out, and slamming the door behind her.
Jane swallowed hard, and hid her face in her hands, her mind on fire, willing the ringing in her ears to subside without destroying her ability to feel.
"This isn't me," she parroted, her voice small and unsure.
Yes, it is, her mind whispered back. A selfish, cowardly liar with a short, ugly temper. Someone who would trade the welfare of others for knowledge. Just like I tried to do to Thor in the desert. If Erik and Darcy hadn't been there, would I have taken Thor to the hospital, or let him wander off into the dark with a possible head injury while I studied the Bifrost site?
Haven't I answered that now, though? I kept Loki's secret. I chose my curiosity and my fear over doing what was right. I chose to protect a murderer. I'm a liar. A betrayer. A monster.
A beast.
This is who I am.
"No."
The word rang in the silence of the lab. And rang in the sudden silence inside her head, as the whispers seemed to hold their breath.
"No," she said more softly, lifting her face.
A poster of the Milky Way Galaxy on the far wall crossed her line of sight, and she felt that old familiar peace that the sight of stars always brought well up over the raw ragged edges of her self loathing and the soul deep pain of her inadequacies. "No, I don't want that to be me."
If her choice was between becoming some kind of rage monster, or an unfeeling shell of herself…
Maybe… I can control it…
Trembling, she called on the memory of rain from her dream.
Smell is the sense strongest associated with memory, her mind supplied distantly, and she recalled the heavy, pungent smell of it, along with the tang of ozone, the wildness of raking winds and the richness of wet earth, all the scents of the storm. Her forehead tingled as she pictured the rain falling over her, washing away the headache and the ringing and the fear and the fury.
Slowly.
The ringing died away.
Just a little.
The ache subsided.
Just enough to…
The smell of rain rose over her. The cold invaded her bones like she'd fallen through the ice into freezing waters. Her skin stung with a hundred scouring needles.
She couldn't control it.
For an instant there was a kind of blissful relief, a rebound euphoria so potent that she nearly moaned out loud. Tears sprang to her eyes, and for a few seconds she thought, through the invisible storm in her senses, that she heard her self laugh for joy.
Then her muscles slackened and went limp. Her eyes drooped and her mouth fell open mid-laugh. She arched once, a little whimper escaping between her lips as she slid down to slump bonelessly over the work bench, her face landing hard against the cold plastic as her skin went numb under the onslaught of the phantom rain. A deadened calm poured over her, like the waters of the Lethe, and slowly her boneless limbs drooped, heavy as stones. She felt herself sliding sideways.
And she didn't care.
The work stool tilted under her, and scraped at the floor as though scrabbling in a panic to find something to grasp on to, struggling to hold her up. It failed, and clattered onto its side, spilling her listless body against the tile with a thump like a sack of wet flour hitting pavement.
She was in pain. Her head swam. She was lying on her arm.
It didn't matter.
Nothing mattered.
There was no relief or bliss now. There was only a cold, bloodless emptiness. Just like the dream, the chains of raindrops sluicing over her skin, cleansing her of all feeling. Except she lost none of her consciousness, none of her senses; she simply ceased to care about them.
Nothing meant anything.
Time passed, minutes, years, hours, seconds, a relative eternity that passed in an instant, while she lay there in a heap in the half-light on the floor of her lab, numb to the very core of her being. Cold inertia seeped through her skin and muscles, biting deep, but it was nothing to the cold inside. She felt she was turning to stone, sagging into the floor, melding with it, inanimate.
This is what it's like to be dead… she thought.
The thought jarred her through the quiet. Hard.
There was a stinging pain on her right forearm that cut through the emptiness like a knife.
She suddenly drew in a deep breath through her mouth and bolted upright off the floor, jerking back to life like a marionette on a string. Her muscles ached and her joints screamed with stiffness from laying so long on the cold tile, but she struggled to her feet anyway, pulling up on the work bench, panting, tears streaming down her cheeks.
I can't control it... I can't...
Hadn't she decided, all along, that she would choose the rain? To cool Loki's fury, as Alexa put it? The tears flowed more freely. She'd been so certain, because the beast, the mindless chaotic rage, couldn't be the right choice.
But this…
This is worse… this is worse…
Her hand lashed out, curling her fingers viciously around the golden disc, pressing the edges of the runework into her skin. She raised her arm to throw it away, shatter it against the wall, destroy it in defiance of that horrible pictures her mind painted, and the impossible choice in front of her: to become a monster, or to die inside…
Craven. Coward. Selfish. Liar. Beast.
This is who I am.
"… he might be more… so might you…"
Jane whipped her head around to glimpse the last flash of green light on her arm as it died away, like a rat scurrying back into its hole.
Her arm trembled for an instant, and her eyes fell closed. She could feel it pressing against her palm. The form of all her hope.
She brought the disc down and opened them again to stare hard at the rune sowulo, the healing sun. Her fingers tightened around the disc again, and she closed her eyes again, bringing the symbol to her lips like a silent prayer.
"What am I going to do?"
There was only one person who really knew what this was. What she was supposed to do. And he wouldn't answer her.
"Damn it, Loki…" she whispered brokenly, curling her aching body around the golden disc as her tears scoured her face. "What are you waiting for?"
.
A small, helpless sigh escaped between the king's lips as that name fell from hers. Despite the white hot coal of impotent fury that burned in him as he watched her fighting for her soul, the sound of it on her tongue would forever kiss his senses as a decadent indulgence. He loved the shape of her mouth when she made the 'o' sound, and the crisp edge in her tone when she voiced the 'k'.
Someday, he thought wistfully, he would bind her to his bed and make say it over and over and over, just so that he could watch her lovely mouth form the syllables. Someday…
He closed his unfathomable eye as his chest constricted painfully with longing.
Longing to hold her someday.
Longing to comfort her now.
Neither was possible as things stood in this moment. And he could not interfere. If she could not choose this on her own….
"Nothing is born with out pain," he reminded himself. The longer she suffered, the stronger the outcome would be… but the harder it became to remember. But he must… he must… "I'm waiting for you, Jane," he whispered across the light years. "Hurry."
.
Jane startled awake that night, gasping as she fought her way free of her nightmares – the same nightmare, the tunnel, the precipice, the choice between being run down by the charging beast or throwing herself out into the soul-killing rain - and looked wildly around the room.
Beside her, Thor slept deeply, snoring lightly. Otherwise she was alone.
There was nothing there. Nothing to wake her. Only the feeling of being watched. Craved. Hunted.
"Is that you…" she whispered to the moonlit shadows, "…Loki?"
For a moment, for some reason, she wasn't sure…
Loki wouldn't dare show up with Thor beside her, she reminded herself. Despite her miserable desperation for him to show himself, she somehow felt that the eyes she felt crawling under her skin must never be allowed to peer at her up close. She would fall into them and be swallowed whole…
He won't come here. After all the trouble he'd gone to, to make her complicit in his secrecy, after all this time, there was no way he would risk exposure now, just to stand in the shadows and watch her sleep.
Even so, she gripped the rune pendant like a lifeline as she settled back into her pillow, her eyes flicking skittishly from shadow to shadow. They seemed to writhe and stretch, monsters in the dark warring with the monsters inside, and she in their midst, exposed, naked, with nowhere to hide. The spike of pain and the ringing in her ears barely registered at all now through the haze of fear. And beyond it, the siren's song of the rain remained constant but muted, promising to take away the pain, in exchange for everything else.
Loki wasn't a ghost; she didn't believe in ghosts. But he was haunting her more effectively than any ghost could.
"You are cursed…"
Jane felt despair creep over her like a pall, so much like the rain as it deadened her, but stealing none of the pain or fear.
"I can't go on like this," she whispered bitterly as the night seemed to loom around her. She felt stripped bare. It was too much. "I just can't."
From the pit of her soul, naked, unbalanced and alone, she whispered it, a command that, unbeknownst to her, made the mark on her forehead pulse and leap with the power it had found sleeping and awoken there:
"Do something. Or leave me alone."
.
In the silence of the deep beneath the golden palace, pulsing at the heart of the Realm Eternal, an ageless blue spider waited upon its web.
The strands of that web stretched to the ends of the universe, and just beyond. The vibration of each strand, touching each place in the universe, resonated with that place's energy, movement, voice and thought. All of it sang back along the silken strands, connecting everything together, and everything to the center where the spider sat. Waiting. Learning. Knowing.
Time had no meaning. And form almost as little as time.
But there had been a time, before, when a mind had drawn close. The blue spider had no thought and no life, but the form and life of that mind had reflected in the spider, and the spider had become a star, gathering all its vast strands in to shine with cold pure power.
That mind had gone, and in the uncounted course of ages, the star lost its cohesion and slowly the spider had emerged again, stretching its slender threads out into the fabric of existence once more.
Then had come another mind, possessed of delusion and grandeur, and the spider had reflected it to become a dragon, vomiting fire on anything that stood before it to glut itself on destruction. That mind had gone as well, and the dragon had shed its scales as silken strands, and in the cold and deep where it fell, the spider had regained its form.
Then had come yet another mind, this one, hungry and fixed, and in its reflection, the spider had become a door through which obsession had poured like molten lead. That mind retreated at length, but the spider had no time to regain its form.
For immediately there came a fourth mind, and this mind was unlike the others.
It was the mind of a slave and a king, and it reflected the duality. In its reflection, the spider became a lover, desperate, jealous, awed, broken and strengthened by longing.
Then, absurdly, the mind brought with it more minds, and more, and more, drawing them close so that each reflected weakly off of the lover's facets, giving it a depth and dimension never before conceived of. It was no longer all things, nor was it one thing. It became many things without being everything. And in this newness, it grew to hunger.
The lover reflected the king's mind, and the king's mind loved a mortal thing called a woman. So the spider that had been a star and a dragon and a door and a lover, craved the mortal woman as well. And because it had become many things, but not everything, it learned to covet.
In time, the mind of the king began to slip away, breaking it bonds one by one, and draping the lover in slave chains of its own. But the lover that reflected the king knew longing for the first time, and it wanted to remain as it was, to preserve its form. To preserve its desire, and seek the fulfill that desire. It wanted to possess the mortal, as the reflection of the king had taught it to do.
So it had kept its grip on the king's mind, even as it slid back into the form of a spider, wrapping its silken strands around the king's magic, holding him even as they separated and the mind ceased to reflect.
Ever patient, as time had no meaning, it waited
And in time, the king drew close enough to the mortal thing, body against body, skin against skin… the press of lips to the skin of her forehead in a brush that may or may not have been an accident, as the black fire of the brother entity known by some minds as Aether raged around them… And it was in that time that the spider was at last able to ensnare her with its web as well.
But it was no longer a lover that craved the mortal. It was a spider that had learned how to covet. And so the mortal became the spider's prey.
It bound her well, so that not even the king that stood between the spider and the mortal could unbind the strands without destroying her. And slowly it began to pull her close.
The spider longed for the day she would stand close enough to reflect.
The spider longed to know what it would become before it devoured her.
But the king was wily, and knew the spider's tricks like his own. He could not unbind the strands, and so, through long effort in secret, he twisted the spider's own magic against it, and shaped it around the mortal thing so that it formed a balance scale weighted by two rival entities – a shape that the spider had never been, and so a shape that the spider could not fathom.
Caught between the two forms it had never reflected before, it could only push at the tangled knots the king had tied in its pristine web, while the mortal woman struggled to keep the scales from tipping over inside her.
But it was learning, learning.
It was so close, so close.
And it had burrowed deep into the mortal's being, drawing her near from within as she struggled like a fluttering fly, becoming ever more entangled. And in those depths, it had found the core of her. The lifeblood of her mind, sweet and potent and tantalizing. The spider's strands cut into it until it bled, little jewels of it seeping up the strands, wetting the balance scale and the forms waiting upon each balance tray, and trickling back along the web to where the spider waited.
Now the blue spider's strands vibrated across the light years, and the words of the mortal reached him, and the sleeping power inside her dripped teasingly along its plains, and the desire of her mind, so close, so close, closer than ever before…
For just an instant, it reflected from spiders edges.
"Do something. Or leave me alone."
The spider reflected the choice it was given, as it reflected anything that drew near. That was what it did. And in the light of her command, it made a choice.
The spider would not leave her alone.
The spider had learned to covet, and it had no reason to do anything else.
So instead, it did something.
Softly, softly, it began to pluck the strings of its web; the web that reached to the ends of the universe and just beyond… and to every point in between. Each strand resonated out into the void, out into the worlds.
Out into the minds around the mortal. An insidious, creeping desire. A reflection of its own hunger.
Give her to me, it sang without words or sound. Crave her. Fear her. Steal her balance. Make her choose what form I will take.
The tension would break. The balance would shatter. The mortal would choose: submit, or dominate. And either way, she would fall.
The scales would unbalance. The strands would pull tight. The spider would feast.
And through her, become the rain. Or the beast.
.
TBC
.
A/N: Dat dat daaa… let the boss fight commence!
Several reviewers have said they have been feeling lost, which is totally understandable, since I've laid out so many threads, but I hope one or two questions were answered in this chapter; the next chapter should answer a few more! Since the Tesseract doesn't think like the rest of us, it can be kind of a confusing narrator, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner!
One very insightful reviewer compared Jane's condition to a brain tumor. It's an excellent metaphor for the "beast" aspect of uruz. For the rain, I would compare it to drug use. People often use drugs to escape from their negative feelings, but an addiction can kills the good with the bad, and leave you an empty shell.
Neither is a healthy situation for Jane. What do you think she will choose? Let me know in your review!
Seriously though, next chapter, clash of the titans. Loki's mark, against the Tesseract's magic, against Alexa's mark and the Solbergs' magic, and Jane caught in the middle of a tug of war... where will chips fall? One way to find out! More to come soon!