A/N: I'm hoping this will make up for the last short chapter which got me some protests. Apparently illness can be quite productive when scenes are fuelled by fever-induced deliriums. Thanks for reading and believe or not, we're more than halfway done.
Even with the bindings, a different sensation crawls up Loki's skin, a tingling warning of an imminent offensive, hidden in a mix of shadows and fog that he can't quite yet untangle.
Nonetheless, the surface of Svartalfheim is imbued with Malekith's magic. The wave of seiðr bends and undulates around him like the seductive caress of cold fingers and if he feels it strongly even with his dulled senses, then it could only mean that its actual strength is likely a thousand-fold. With a frown, he takes another sniff of the air, sifting through his memories of the lores that lie forgotten in the library of Asgard. Again, that tinted scent of fire dust is unmistakable and its signature reeks of Midgardian odours and…Muspelheim's pungent rocks.
Clarity comes swiftly as he finally recognises the driving force behind Malekith's power. When this foul time on this forsaken realm is over, he knows that he has some work to do. On Midgard.
But now, as the darkness closes in, there are other things to take care of. Yet there's nowhere to run.
Loki finds himself in a tangle of bloodthirsty jowls and sharp teeth just before he forces them both into a hard tumble down the rest of the incline. The additional weight of the attacking wolves slams them painfully into the hard ground as he rolls and finds himself halfway atop Jane Foster's slight frame.
In the next second, he's springing himself off her and pushing back up onto his feet, the dagger withdrawn and already cutting through the corded neck of a creature that has its teeth embedded into his leg. The fountain of blood stains his face and showers the soil a dark red but he pays it no heed. Instead, he whirls around and brings the blade sharply down through the head of another one that has clawed its way up his back.
To his left, the sounds of a similar struggle reach his ears.
Smaller and unarmed, Jane Foster kicks out hard at the hound that has jumped on her, but even then, the creature is large and its strength far surpasses hers. She twists and flinches in the wet soil, doing all she can to avoid its gaping jaws.
He sees it a split second before she does – a small indentation in the ground that will, in the next second, unseat her balance enough to position the creature's teeth exactly where bone and cords of muscle will break apart easily.
Already, Loki knows that the mortal will lose this fight. Ironically, he truly understands and even appreciates that weakness, as though those selfsame traits run through his own veins. No matter how aversive he finds it, he knows he has partaken more than his better share of it and has been as helpless as the Jotunn runt he really is long enough to be sick and tired of the number of things he can't do.
He leaps after her, hauling the creature off her torso and with a quick snap of his bound hands, twists the hound's head upwards and sharply to the right until a satisfying crack echoes through the grove. Straightening as he lets go of the dead animal, he finally turns to her, feeling as worn-out as she looks.
For a heartbeat, she meets his eyes unflinchingly, holding his own captive as she climbs steadily to her feet. Without intending to, Loki takes a small step forward towards her, not really knowing what he-
She falters and the muted murmur that drifts, ghostlike, at the back of his neck grows into a steady hum that makes everything in him clench in anticipation.
There is something off-kilter, something very wrong.
"Loki!"
He spins at her warning shout as masked figures robed in black and white materialise out of a hidden dimension, taller, larger and more indefatigable than the ones that had ambushed their travelling party.
They are Malekith's own guards are bearing down on them, heralding the imminent arrival of their master.
Summoning the reserves of his strength, Loki throws himself straight into the fight. Wielding Frigga's dagger against Malekith's magic that has grown to suffocating proportions, he takes both its strength and his own to breaking point. The blade sings in battle, but as much as he appreciates its worth, he is outnumbered, merely countering and parrying the swiftness of the Svartalfar to the best of his ability. Still, he keeps on moving, even as his limbs grow heavier and less mobile than he'd liked as he uses the dagger to scythe through them.
But he knows he's tiring too easily, his focus no longer sharp and centred as it bends to the dark magic of the elves. And he fears that it's only a matter of time before he makes a fatal mistake.
That fear becomes reality in the next moment.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Jane stumbling to her feet, eyes wide as she prepares to-.
Realisation dawns quickly and it hits his gut with the same force that Mjolnir would have made had it swung straight into his belly.
No, no, no…
A sharp, stinging pain blooms from his side as she slams into him, taking part of the brunt from a dark elf's blade. It takes him a split-second to centre himself just as he frantically scrambles see if breath has completely left her body.
Stupid, wretched mortal! How dare she! How dare she presume to think that her frail body will do any good? Who in Hel does she think-
The remnants of magic in his body seethes instinctively in response to the myriad of inexplicable emotions that floods his mind, pushing their way to his fingertips until they shimmer gold and green.
A choking groan reassures him that she lives as her bloodied hand cradles her bleeding ribs.
Blinding rage makes Loki push insistently at the wall of magic that the Uru in his bindings has created, harder than he's ever tried before, going past the initial jarring pain that rattles his bones, past the blood that starts to pour from the side of his mouth… finally tearing a hole in the wall that restrains his magic that bubbles and froths impatiently from behind it.
Closing his eyes, he kicks, pushes and hits out at that tiny gap which promises so much. He tries again, driven only by single-minded purpose, unheeding of the ridges that appear of their own accord across pale skin that takes on a blue hue and eyes that start to bleed crimson.
Jane's horrified gasp is a distant sound in his ears as the barrier gives with no warning.
It produces a small, insignificant hum that is lost within the booming noise of the skirmish as his bindings creak and disintegrate into fine, silver dust that dissipates before it can touch the bloodied soil of Svartalfheim. Then it seems as though the sum total of all the nine realms rushes into his head in the space of a heartbeat as the fog lifts, leaving clarity so alarming that he clutches his head until the white rush fades into tingling filaments of life. There's life again his head, in his blood, as the magic gurgles freely and cleaves itself anew to him.
Without hesitating, Loki reaches for their threads…and tugs.
An energy storm ravages the ground, tossing every last standing elf into a large wide crater that he opens before him. Blinding green light rips immediately through the damaged copse of trees, followed by the sibilance of a thousand snakes that slither from the ground like new shoots in an Asgardian spring. They find their way to the Svartalfar, surrounding them, gliding onto them, then melting into a viscous molten silvery grey liquid, muffling even their screams of agony.
Bereft of patience, Loki considers an immediate confrontation with Malekith as he wrestles with the bloodlust that courses through his veins. His magic yearns to be unleashed after being deprived of free reign for so long and he's more than tempted to give into its demands. But that foolish, rash, idiotic mortal is injured because of him – thanks to her stupid antics – and once again, he finds himself unwillingly beholden to this stupid woman who insists on getting between him and his enemies.
As reason reasserts itself, he knows particular battle will need to wait for another day.
The decision made, he scoops her up and rips open a pathway out of Svartalfheim.
oOo
They materialise in a pasture cloaked in the soft, pastel shades of greens and yellows, but Jane is only more distantly aware of its ethereal beauty than she is aware of the hard armour that's pressed into her burning flesh. A shadow crosses her eyes as she feels soft grass beneath her back and it is then that she realises there's a strange kind of warmth coming from her side.
Kneeling next to her is Loki, an inscrutable look on his face as he pours out steady streams of gold and green light from unsteady hands onto her ribcage. Jane doesn't know what he's really doing, but it feels remarkable, as though there is a patchwork of invisible stitching that seamlessly knits skin and bone back together again.
Curiosity gets the better of her as she strains upward to look-
"Don't." His curt command puts paid to that. "Your mortal frailty can't handle anymore than the strain that you've put yourself under."
When he's done, he pushes to his feet and places some distance between them.
Lying back down again, Jane runs a mental check on her own body, leaving him to do…whatever he does. She places an experimental hand where the injury is, marvelling at the pink, healed skin and the curious coolness that seems to linger over it.
Loki is thorough, as usual.
Resisting the exhaustion that threatens to sink her into oblivion, she is left alone to ponder the events that have led up to this moment. There's too much she has seen and too little time to process it all. As a consequence, she feels like she has been scraped raw, flattened and chewed out within the space of what feels only like an hour.
The unfamiliar constellations are mesmerising from where she lies, so she makes no move to get up. They make her think of the time she stared up at Earth's night sky and the sudden pang of homesickness makes her swallow hard. It's in such moments like these where she wishes she hadn't chased after a particular anomaly in the sky and found a broken man who fell from the stars in the heavens.
But this would have meant the spending the best part of her life single-mindedly chasing after a mad dream destined to stay an illusion.
Right now, she's not sure which is the better option.
"Your wounds may be healed, but your body is extremely fatigued. Stay as you are and it will pass soon enough." His voice carries over the slight, cool breeze over to her.
For someone who isn't human, he seems to have a fairly developed understanding of human physiology. But then, hadn't he just spent a prolonged period of time becoming almost human? Jane lifts her head minutely in interest, intending to throw that back as a jibe, stopped only by the arresting sight of him in his full armour, the horned helmet making a hell of a silhouette against the stars. It's the very picture of the half-crazed god that she remembers as he raced madly around New York with his Chitauri army, leaving her more than a little uncomfortable. But it has been some time since then and Jane isn't sure whether rehabilitation has actually changed Loki, if there's even such a term for it.
In the end, she decides to stick with a safe subject matter. "Where are we, anyway?"
"Does that matter?"
She gives that question a bit of thought and decides that it doesn't. But it's in her nature to ask and then spend her whole lifetime searching for answers that may not even exist. She shrugs, "Just curious."
Loki pauses, following her enthralled gaze at the swirling firmament of soft colours. "We're on a long-forgotten pathway of Yggdrasil."
She casts a look of wonder around again, too fascinated by what she sees to pay any attention to his indifference. "It's beautiful and-."
"And impermanent," he interrupts. "We don't have much time here before this pathway ceases to exist."
Somehow, that thought that its beauty is ephemeral fills her with sadness. "Where're we heading to next?"
Loki crosses to her side and peers down critically at her. "It depends."
Her brow furrows. "On?"
"On your body's capability to withstand the stress and pressure of traversing these pathways, which is doubtlessly little."
"Now that you can speak from experience," she says and smirks cynically, but his face remains a passive mask.
"So it would seem to you wouldn't it?"
Jane bites her lip as she weighs her next response. The bland nonchalance that he projects is making it all the more harder for her to say what she needs to say. She forces herself to continue, despite her obvious hesitation.
"Thank you," she tells him finally. "For…this, for saving me."
He stills at her words and it's a long moment before he answers with what sounds like forced politeness. "I am beholden to no one."
The Loki that she thought she knew wouldn't have batted a lid at owing a mortal – or anyone – a debt.
What had changed?
There's also something else that has been bugging her and once again, Jane ponders the wisdom of asking the very question that has been at the heart of this fragile, non-relationship. Inhaling deeply, she does anyway, figuring that she's take her chances with him more that she would with any dark elf.
"How…why did it happen?"
A slight grimace crosses Loki's angular face and from the sudden tenseness in his stance, she knows he'd understood perfectly what she's just asked.
"It was the most opportune moment, wouldn't you agree?"
Jane frowns at the deliberate vagueness that he throws back at her, knowing exactly what she saw despite the burning, blinding pain that had temporarily greyed out the edges of her vision. The raised, blue ridges that appeared on his pale, blue skin and the way in which his eyes had turned red for a split second just as the restraints had broken. She takes in his frame and his slicked back hair and it's as though the last ten days and the ground that they've covered have been utterly erased. That the Loki she thinks she knows…is more out of reach than he has ever been.
The snippet of the conversation that she'd overheard between Thor and Loki surfaces in her mind at his flippant response.
Father had already said that it is not yet time.
You take Odin's words as complete truth? He, who has seen fit to disguise what you now know as my true heritage?
Studying the science of the stars for years has made her prone to reasoned speculation and this puzzle is no different. As she usually does, Jane runs with the little that she has. Unashamedly, her gaze follows him as he moves away yet again to perch lightly on a large rock that faces the sky, already lost in weighing the variables that had constituted all that she's seen and experienced.
What if…she's actually seen Loki's 'true heritage'? The little that she saw when his bonds fell loose makes her wonder if there is in truth, an inaccessible part of Loki that the Odin-force cannot touch or reach.
Had that particular brand of magic been responsible for freeing him?
Or was it something else entirely? Had it taken something more intangible, yet simple enough that Loki, for his aversion to Midgard and their multitude of flaws, hadn't truly experienced until then? That he, being subjected to the same weaknesses that he despised as his magic was restrained, had finally understood a smidgen of the concept of sacrifice that's found in abundance in humanity's banal, daily living? That through this period of weakness, Odin had forced Loki to look into – and live though – a race he deems so prone to indulgent sentiments and ridiculous vicissitudes so that he could experience for himself what he'd always refused to see for millennia?
Or maybe, Jane thinks ruefully, that's more fanciful delusion than reality.
Forced to depend on the very race of beings he believes should be subjugated and ruled over, it's a lesson that's unlikely to go down well, especially if it is transmitted as an exercise in humiliation.
Even if the answer lies somewhere far from her hypotheses, she's just not ready to give this up yet. "But I thought I saw-"
"Your eyes can deceive you in battle."
There's more that she wants to know. "What did you do to the dark elves?"
The look that he gives her is both wicked and sly, a timely reminder of the predator he's always been. "The dark elves show a weakness to an extremely large amount of iron, an element that is most common in Midgard but rare in all the Nine."
"So, revenge is a dish best served cold…as iron," she muses with more than a hint of awe then rushes to explain as confusion briefly appears on his face. "It's just…a saying we have, uh, which I twisted. Somehow it doesn't sound all that funny after I've said it. Sorry, it's just a bad, geek joke. Anyway," she swallows uncomfortably after that awkward ramble and immediately tries to change the subject. "You, uh, conjured iron out of…whatever was around us?"
Impatience slides into his voice as he acknowledges her question. "It's a core lesson in alchemy, yes."
"So, after all that fighting and magic, all we needed to do was pour iron on Malekith to save Earth and all the other realms?" Jane asks in disbelief. That he alone, could have stopped this, had he been released from prison earlier?
A malevolent smirk crosses his face at her naïveté. "I'm afraid, Jane, that Malekith's ambition is bolstered by another being whose powers likely conceived iron into existence. How do you think his forces could have laid waste to Asgard otherwise?"
A chill cuts down her spine at the thought of another force of evil that surpasses Malekith's penchant for conquest and destruction. "But who-"
The sudden, cold sweep of air that moves down her arms makes her jerk upwards again in surprise, cutting off her words. From the way Loki snaps his head up, she knows that he feels it too.
"We must go."
"So, this pathway is closing?" She hazards a guess and struggles to sit up.
"This branch of Yggdrasil – or a twig holding a leaf you might say – is dying."
Jane tries, flails and manages to stand wobbly to her feet. It's not hard to feel proud of that little accomplishment when there has only been too much failure in its wake.
"Let's go. I think I'll make it somehow."
"No," he tells her flatly, "you wouldn't."
She flounders again, proving his point.
But where she'd expected more unsavoury mocking from him, a strong arm simply spins her about and curls around her waist before she can counter that argument. Startled and wide-eyed by the sudden movement, Jane steadies herself by throwing up a hand up against that armoured chest. Belatedly realising what she'd done, she jerks her eyes upwards the unforgiving planes of his handsome face.
Those impossible, green eyes glimmer with an intensity that takes her breath away – in spite of the insult he'd just paid her. And then it is gone, replaced by a hard, familiar loathing with which she's all too well acquainted.
Tilting his head downwards until there is barely any space between their faces, he murmurs harshly, "No, I don't imagine you will, Miss Foster."
Her stammering answer is swallowed up by the pixelated, fractured hues of a New Mexican twilight as Loki's magic whisks open another pathway and flings them into pure space.