A/N: I don't know how much time I've spent re-writing, re-reading and obsessively editing this chapter. Right now, I'm still not certain if it's any better than the first draft. But it'll probably get worse the more I muck around with it, so I figured it best to get it up before I screw everything up. I feel somewhat obligated to give my readers some warning about twisted behaviour in this chapter (do note that it's a direct continuation of chapter 9).
Thanks for reading as always.
The journey within the spaces of time and realms lasts an eternity hidden within a heartbeat.
Jane lands in yet another pathway, preparing to compensate for the sudden loss of balance but the arm around her steadies her unexpectedly and is released so quickly that it nearly makes her keel over again. She opens her eyes and looks up, hoping for another glimpse of the emotion that had shone through earlier, but Loki's eyes are hooded, their green duller, a little more opaque.
His face gives nothing away. "This will suffice for now."
The full armour is gone mid-teleport, leaving him in the usual leather outfit that she's gotten used to.
"Where are we?"
Her breath frosts as she stares out onto a harsh winter landscape of jagged peaks and dark grey skies, the elemental desolation of the place making her shiver more than the cold does. As though sensing her discomfort, the cloak that she wears seems to curl itself around her more tightly, emanating unusual warmth despite its thinness.
"A place through which Malekith's army has not yet marched."
The ringing silence is pounding hard in her head, loud and disorienting. The newly-closed wound in her side throbs and she rushes to place a hand there, willing the phantom soreness away.
A cold hand comes to rest over hers lightly and the unsettling sensation fades. Again, it is gone before she can even process what Loki has done.
"The strain of constant travel between pathways is exacerbated with previously-sustained injury," he tells her clinically, as though dispensing medical advice she doesn't really need.
It is disconcerting to think of Loki as her unwilling saviour, just as he'd callously taken the lives of thousands without blinking. Had he really done so because he'd felt indebted – the Norse god of mischief – to a mere mortal?
Even she knows better than to believe this flimsy excuse.
Rather than entertain her inward thoughts any further, Jane simply voices her instinctive reactions. "What is this? Why are we here? Where is this place?"
Loki gives her a long, hard stare. "Somewhere between Midgard, Svartalfheim and Niflheim."
She takes a look around again, marvelling again at the drastic change found within a single jump.
This is the astrophysicist's dream and much more. This is where mathematics and science become something she cannot explain, leaving her unable to do anything but feast her eyes on the most incredible sights she could have seen ever since Thor had come for her.
But now, even the prospect of pathway-hopping isn't as exciting as it should have been when overwhelming worry for Darcy, Erik and Thor is quickly overriding its heady, initial thrill.
Superimposed over these starry skies is the lone memory of an uncomplicated, routine set-up in Puente Antiguo where the biggest headaches come from thick files that wouldn't close and sets of data that don't correlate and not from magical beings that wield their sorcery with malice.
"Does this mean we're going from branch to branch just to avoid Malekith's armies?"
He gives her a sideways glance, then casts an assessing look around the barren, icy wasteland. "I have, as you mortals would say, affairs of my own to attend to."
It's entirely expected that she isn't part of the picture. She has never really been, until Thor had made it his business to insert her in the middle of a longstanding, cosmic feud that she doesn't really understand.
The desperate yearning for home washes over her again. Even if home means being on the outside of the respected circles of academia, looking in wistfully.
Then the horrifying thought sinks in…does Loki mean to leave her here? But why then, would he bother saving her life, given the number of deviously creative ways – that don't even involve magic – he has up his sleeve to end it?
As resourceful as she can be, Jane knows that there are no plans she can make, no compass she can use to get where she needs to be. Which leaves her no choice but to push the issue, again.
"So you're deciding for the both of us now?" Bravado will always be the instinctive way she approaches him.
A mock-innocent expression settles on his face. "I don't see you having a choice in this matter."
"Can't we go back?"
"Back?"
"Home," Jane says softly, then braces herself for a scathing reply. It is after all, a non-place for him, a deceptively simple notion that's powerful enough to strip him of his peace and his sanity.
She isn't disappointed. He rounds on her, the savage fierceness in his piercing stare nearly making her take an involuntary step back.
"And where is home?"
"To Earth, maybe? Or even Asgard?" She supplies weakly, suddenly uncertain of herself in the wake of his volatility. "To see if everything…or if Thor-"
With narrowed eyes, Loki cuts in swiftly with a brutal rebuttal that pulls the rug from under her feet.
She tumbles spectacularly, landing in a place that shouldn't hurt that much but does.
"But what we want aren't necessarily the things we get, isn't it? With Midgard subjugated by Malekith's forces, where can you go? Asgard's no more home to you than it is to me. And it will never be yours to call it such," he bites out, "No more than Thor Odinson can be yours."
Her breath leaves her chest almost painfully, his carefully-enunciated words cutting her to shreds as easily as one of his sharp blades would have. With the little he has said he's managed to articulate the insecurities about herself that she's had to face time and again ever since Thor had swept her away from the destruction wrought by Malekith's forces on Earth. To hear it spoken out loud by someone who had nothing but disdain for the entire human race felt like the greatest violation of all, only because it had become increasingly clear in the past days that he seemed to have always understood more than anyone else because he'd been forced to live her weaknesses.
But unlike Thor, whose three days on Earth had taught him about placing the grander notions of sacrifice and loyalty above his inbred sense of entitlement, Loki would never accept anything less than what he'd been promised. To suffer far beneath what he thinks he ought to have is punishment he will never accept. But to suffer the frailties of a race he despises had been utter, devastating abasement from the very start – an identical chastisement that he hadn't hesitated to turn on her.
Jane feels the hot, humiliating sting of tears gathering against her lids. Only pride and rising anger refuse to let him have the satisfaction of seeing them fall. So she takes his thrust and parries, even though she knows she'll never win against the Liesmith.
"There is no home that I haven't rejected."
He stiffens immediately. "You know nothing of what you speak, Jane Foster. Your counsel is best left to your own."
"I haven't rejected the love of a family, a brother who never gives up on you-"
"They are nothing to me."
Now that she knows he bleeds and feels much more than what he lets on, words can also be her true ally as much as they have been his twisted one.
"Oh, really? From what I've seen, they're everything to you," she retorts, "You wouldn't have done the things you did if you didn't care what they thought."
"The things I did? To cause mayhem? To further my rule on Midgard? To subjugate? If that is your definition of caring, then I like it," he says with callous amusement.
He's messing with her, twisting her words, deflecting the turn of the conversation. "That's not what I meant and you know it," she swallows hard, chagrined at how weak she sounds.
She finds a cool hand snaking up the back column of her neck, his touch on her skin creating sensations inchoate. She won't shrug away, not if that gives him any latitude to think she's cowering in fear.
"Then what do you mean, Jane?" He questions silkily as the pressure at her neck intensifies a fraction. "What then, is your special brand of caring that has brought the mighty son of Asgard to his knees?"
That's what it all comes down to, isn't it? That obsessive jealousy with his brother whom he thought had everything.
A hysterical laugh bubbles out of her as she swipes surreptitiously at the traitorous wetness that she finds on her cheeks. Shaking with the effort to hold onto a beacon of logic and reasoning as his words seek to ensnare her, defiance becomes her only weapon against the sharp end of his silver tongue.
"Why don't you ask him that then?" She challenges, painfully aware of his proximity and the bright burn of his eyes on her. "Every answer I give won't be good enough."
He shakes his head minutely and tilts it downwards as though murmuring a secret meant for her ears alone. "Quite the contrary, my dear. In fact, I find seeking answers from the source more to my liking."
Tilting her chin upwards, Jane tries to meet his gaze, emboldened by a sudden burst of inspiration.
"You really want to know? Maybe it's about showing kindness when it's most needed and giving help when it isn't deserved." The contempt that she throws into her reply is however, merely a translucent film shielding her growing discomfort and she's sure Loki sees through it immediately. "As I've said before, maybe it's something you wouldn't understand."
His lips simply tilt upward in response to her short, scornful tirade.
"Was that all it'd taken to change Odinson? To have made him a self-proclaimed protector of Midgard? Unremitting kindness shown to a fool who only knew human strength in his limbs, which made him weak and soft?"
Is that what he really thinks? Had he viewed his brother's transformation so simplistically that he'd search far and wide for a single answer where there is none?
Or is he seeking an answer for his own weakness, now that he himself had been in the same position as Thor was when she found him – powerless, humiliated, yet with all the arrogance in all the realms that befitted a prince of Asgard?
"Are we still talking about Thor or about you?"
There's intended malice in her words even as a hard grip falls on her upper arms, strong enough to bruise. But there's still something else inside of her that will not give into his games that she'd unwittingly learned to play.
His gaze sharpens with rage and for a terrifying instant, she's convinced that she has just signed her own death warrant. Instead, all she hears is a soft question, more deadly in its hushed delivery than his spitting fury.
"You presume to know everything about gods, don't you? You believe me to be as readable as your golden prince-"
"Thor spent three days on earth, Loki! Three goddamned days! It takes more than an infatuation to change that much in three days," she bites out, frustration and bitterness lacing her words. "If you really believe that, then maybe you don't understand human nature at a-"
His hands find their way into her hair and Jane forgets to breathe.
"Maybe it's you who doesn't understand my brother," he snarls back without missing a beat, "and what he was before he met you."
A broken sob rises and dies in her throat and she's sure that every emotion is scraped raw and presented to him on a plate to devour. Immobilised by his cruel embrace, she reminds herself that he's irredeemable, a merciless destroyer, an unfeeling bastard who manipulates and stops at nothing to get what he wants.
"If you really believe that," she repeats her previous phrase for emphasis, "then maybe you're more deluded than I thought."
"I'm no more deluded than you are if you truly believe no one is beyond redemption," Loki hisses and chuckles humourlessly as he turns the full force of his glare on her. "Is that the reason you threw yourself in front of the blade that was intended for me? Why would you otherwise sacrifice yourself for a monster?"
Frigga's blade appears in a flash of light in his hands and the metal's gentle touch against her face is cold but temporary, disappearing into thin air before she can say another word.
The initial terror that she'd felt near him, lulled into false sense of security, returns with the force of a hurricane. Yet the force behind Loki's glare is tempered by a raw, brittle emotion that she cannot name, as though he himself earnestly seeks the answer to the questions that he had just thrown at her.
The accusations leave her slack-jawed and discomfited, forcing her to confront that moment of madness when she'd dived in front of the Svartalfar blade coming for him. She should have known Loki wouldn't have ever let this go. At least, not without wrangling an answer from her that will satisfy him fully.
Chagrined, Jane knows that there'd been no lofty reasons for her impulsive actions. No grand, structured plan of redemption, save for her possibly deluded idea that he had slowly become less and less a faceless monster and more like a man who bled, bruised and hurt.
All the little things that she has seen…she thinks it's more than anger than drives him; it's jealousy and resentment and hate rolled into one, a pulsing groan and a deep cry of twisted humanity that a fallen and damaged god of mischief will never admit to. And it's this anchoring conviction that prevents her from giving into the temptation to reduce him to an uncontrollable force of chaos wrapped deceptively in human form, a trickster who'd long fallen over the precipice of sanity.
He'd hung her out to dry, baited her, wrung her raw with his relentless questions…but he'd also saved her life a few times over, when he'd been less than obliged to do so.
Even then, a part of her both recognises and welcomes the brokenness that comes from failure.
It's not something she wants to examine too closely, much preferring the easier notion that there're distinct lines between them demarcating the clear separation of good and evil. But Loki's penchant for dwelling in shades of grey has all but brought her mind up to speed to what her heart had already suspected.
And there's no way in hell she's ever going to let him know that.
As a deflection, Jane tries extricating herself from his hold on her. But the motion is a futile struggle, a foregone conclusion. Instead, it only results in the tightening of the circle of his arms around her, the dark familiarity of it thrilling a part of her that he's awakened.
"I know what I am," she says, choosing only to answer the first part of his question.
"Do you? Go on, enlighten me," he hisses.
"I'm Jane Foster, astrophysicist, failed academic. Outsider." The last word comes out as a choked admission. She ploughs on blindly, "But no more than you are an outcast of Asgard, a-"
"The truth hurts, doesn't it?"
Unbelievably, there's a flash of understanding – or perhaps of aching empathy? – that seeps into his answer. It's gone as soon as she blinks, his stance stiffening contrarily to the mockingly polite look that settles over his face.
"Answer the question, Miss Foster," he repeats darkly, "What is it about you that changed Odinson?"
"I don't know," she tells him baldly. "I don't know the answer, okay?"
"You simply underestimate yourself. You do know the answer, Jane." Loki's voice drops low, taking on an unexpected, mesmerising quality that both attracts and repulses her. But beyond that tinge of madness, she thinks she sees something else-
"Let me make it a little easier for you then," he says, "Why don't you show me? Show me what you despise about me. Show me how a god should so wrongfully crave and desire a mortal," he continues, his face now a calculated mask of placid indifference.
"Wh-"
Unheeding of her interruption, he barrels through her growing shock.
"-touch me how you would touch a monster and not a hero. Kiss me the way you will never kiss Thor."
Oh fuck. No, god, this can't be happening.
"No! I…I-" she stammers more in shame than horror, hating the surge of heat that reflexively courses through her body at his words.
Any minute now, she's convinced that she is going to wake up in her trailer and stumble through the routine of studying the skies for anomalies that-
Her incredulous disbelief is wiped from conscious thought as Loki leaves her no time to consider his demand. Tilting his head downwards just as he hauls her smaller frame upwards to meet his, his mouth claims hers in a punishing kiss.
Reality sets in a second later as she forcibly breaks away and swings her fist at him. As though anticipating that move, Loki simply stops her brace in mid-air with a single hand, then presses in again, slanting his lips against her own to muffle the groan that escapes hers. The pressure of his lips gradually lessens, but all Jane can think about is the dominating heat and the curious, desperate yearning that seem to creep into the kiss as the winds pick up and swirl a cloak of snow around them.
Shoving reason and logic aside, she reaches upwards and fists her hands in the hard leather bands underneath the high collar of his surcoat until the tips of her fingers brush the gently curling ends of his hair, losing herself in his heady scent of leather and pine.
As though sensing her capitulation, Loki wordlessly coaxes her lips open, deepening the kiss. Helpless not to follow him down, she feels his smile against her mouth when she finally matches his movements. Only then does he pull away without warning, putting enough distance between them before she's able to find steady ground beneath her feet.
For once, Jane sees a barely-caged wildness that swirls in that emerald gaze when all she'd expected was smug triumph. But before coherent thought can even return, Loki is already bending the pathways again, plunging her into breathless sensation as the jagged mountain peaks fade from her vision.