A/N: This chapter wrestled with me but I believe that I emerged victorious. Reviews always welcome; I aim to always improve. Thank you, I hope you enjoy.

January, 2001

"Jane Foster."

"…. Jane Foster!"

"Here!"

Out of breath and hands full, she heard her name called just as she pushed into the lecture hall, the door slamming shut behind her with an echoing bang. The professor, a portly man with a receding gray hair line and a general air of having a perpetual temper, eyed her from above the rim of his seventies style glasses silently before moving down the list. A few bored kids in the back turned to give her half hearted sneers, but for the most part no one took any notice of Jane as she made her way to the very first row, one hand clutching the bag hanging off of one shoulder and the other awkwardly balancing folders, a notebook, and a thermos of coffee. She carefully laid out her items on her desk, shoving her galaxy themed L.L Bean bag Erik had gotten her behind her legs and taking up a pen with excitement.

Erik had referred her; the professor would never have allowed a high school student to enroll in his class, university permission be damned. But when Erik Selvig, her father's colleague at Culver, had displayed Jane's grades, a stern eyeball, and the fact that she was graduating a year early, the crotchety man had grunted his assent. Jane loved Erik to death, had done so since she was a little girl and he brought her posters of galaxies and ice cream, but it irked her greatly that she had needed him to display the hard work she had done over the years in order for this professor to accept her. One day her credentials would be enough.

But whether or not this man was a douche bag, Jane thought with the same determination that drove her in everything else, he was the leading astrophysicist professor in the area. His students hated him, but they raved about what he taught. That was what Jane was here for; she wasn't receiving any credit for the class she was enrolled in concurrently with her high school courses anyway, so she might as well learn it all. It was with this determination to learn, and excitement at the diagrams already displayed on the professor's board, that she tapped her pen energetically against her pad of paper.

After the class had ended, and the professor slammed them with a paper due in a week on Coulomb's Law and a discussion on the variables involved in the equation, Jane emerged giddy and empowered, high on the college classroom experience and the knowledge she was being exposed to. She formed rough ideas for her essay as she made her way to her car and drove home in the late afternoon.

She was on the phone ordering a pizza for dinner, as per her dad's instructions he left on the counter, when she walked into her bedroom and nearly fainted.

The man was sitting there again. The tall, scary, pale man with black hair and a smile that had raised the hairs on her arms was sitting on the edge of her bed. This time he let her scream. The phone dropped with a thud onto the carpet as she stood rooted to the spot, the memories she had worked so hard to suppress and shove to the back of her mind resurfacing too fast for her to control the panic. Red started to creep into the corners of her vision and she nearly wept with relief at the familiar sickly feeling. It was her only protection.

"Wait!" The man stood, holding up his hands in a universal gesture of goodwill. All she remembered was his painful grip in the darkness as he laughed at her feeble attempt to injure him. Her body jolted a step backwards, and her back met the hallway across from her doorway.

"Don't," she strangled, the red haze seeping like mist into her vision and blurring his shape to a green and black shimmer. "Don't come near me."

"I will not. I won't hurt you. I swear it." Again, he held his hands up, palms toward her. Jane did not believe him for a second, remembering his slick voice from before as he threatened to kill her father. She spared a second to feel relieved he was not here, even though she was terrified. The red stopped its advance, hovering over her final tunnel of sight.

Her heart was beating too loudly, his words filtering through the rush in her ears.

"I-"

She gasped for air, one hand clutching her chest as she bent over to cough violently, trying to relieve the constant band of tightness around her chest that always accompanied the red. The man's head tilted, and an expression of intrigue crossed his face. "Do you know how to control that?"

She didn't; she had never understood why this had been happening to her, but she wasn't about to tell him that. Though she figured it was obvious enough by the way she was hyperventilating. Tears swam in her eyes as she struggled for control of her body. She felt herself slide down the wall into a crouch, and put her sweaty palms on her knees. The dizziness in her head begged her to close her eyes but she didn't dare take her eyes away from the man who was now openly staring with an unreadable expression. Her cell phone was too far away to reach. She hovered painfully on the edge between control and the wildness of the red power, waiting for the final push.

"Do you need help?" He lowered himself down to her level, remaining across the room. Her eyes met his, and through her narrow vision she could see that though he was impossibly tall, his face was young. Again, he showed her his empty hands, gesturing forward, his face transforming into something more open as she heaved and stared at him with wide eyes.

"Don't come near me," she managed to gasp. Minutes that seemed like years passed, the red sheen finally beginning to recede as he made it clear he wasn't going to move from his crouch across from her.

"You have my word. As I said, I won't hurt you. Though I understand why you don't believe me. Please forgive my first impression; I'm usually quite polite when meeting a lady." The side of his mouth quirked up, his eyes lighting with disarming humour. Jane found herself distracted by how it completely changed his face, softening the intense eyes and malicious tone that had been haunting her for two months.

Her breathing began to even, the pounding in her head and the roar in her ears receding the longer she let herself observe him in the afternoon light. He was dressed in an outfit made of leather and some fine green material Jane didn't know. Gold embroidery made the green color of his shirt all the more vivid. The leather of his pants was obviously high quality, and clung to the man's legs without being restrictive. His boots were sturdy and black. Her eyes flew up to his face once more, where his smirk had vanished. Now his startlingly green eyes met hers impassively, waiting for her, it seemed, to finish her assessment. She continued upward, over the regal nose and smooth forehead to where his jet black hair smoothed away over his skull, before drifting down again to his angular face.

She felt calmer. The red was receding now, taking her symptoms away with it. The sweat in the creases of her palms was cold and clammy, and she rubbed them on the knees of her jeans, letting out a gust of air when the tightness in her chest faded to nothing. His eyebrows rose, and sharp eyes darted over her body before returning to hers.

"Are you well?"

"Um," she coughed to clear the crack in her voice and tried again. "Yes. I'm fine."

He nodded, and they both regarded each other from across the space. Jane could hear the whir of the dryer at the other end of the house.

"Forgive me. I acted poorly when we first met. I was taken off guard by where I was transported. I am Loki, Prince of Asgard." His chin rose as he spoke, and despite how drained she felt, Jane almost laughed.

"Is that supposed to mean something?" The look of shock on his face actually did coax a nearly hysterical laugh from her. Memories of their last encounter came to the forefront of her mind, terms he used like' Midgard' and 'mortal' , that made her think he wasn't sane. Then again, she was the one who thought she saw him literally appear out of nowhere. Her hands balled into fists as she struggled to come to terms with whatever the hell was happening. "Why do you keep showing up in my room, anyway? That's…weird, honestly."

He tried and failed to gracefully rearrange his face into a less shocked expression. "Do they not speak of Asgard here?"

"Here?"

"This is Midgard, is it not?"

The stare she gave him seemed to frustrate him. Running a hand through his hair, he mumbled under his breath, sounds she didn't understand issued in one long stream of breath that she couldn't keep up with, until she heard a familiar term.

"Yes, we're on Earth," she said slowly and apprehensively. His eyes shot up, lighting with satisfaction.

"So that's what you mortals call this realm. I knew there was another term for it I had read somewhere." His triumphant looked faded as he took in her poorly concealed wariness. A small smile appeared and he shook his head. "You think me ill in the head. Or a liar."

Jane found herself unable to respond. On autopilot, her brain began to lay out the facts, a way of making sense of everything that seemed completely unexplainable. He had appeared out of nowhere in her bedroom last time, and there were no signs of the house having been broken into today. He spoke a language that sounded like nothing she had ever heard before. His attire was something out of the Renaissance. She had seen him disappear with a crack and a wisp of green smoke last time. These truths by no means made his story valid, but they did make him sound less crazy.

"I don't know what to think. But I don't believe you." She spoke frankly, less timid of him when he was level with her on the floor. There was also the relief that he had made no move towards her, instead accepting his position. Now he sat cross-legged, back straight and tall against her bed. Wincing at the cramps in her legs, she slowly stretched them out, her shoes extending into the bedroom, and crossed her arms. He obviously wasn't going to leave.

"Fair enough. A fool would take a stranger at their word without proof." She blinked at his candor, and the way he accepted her skepticism with grace. She crossed one foot over the other, feeling unexpectedly sheepish.

"It seems," he continued, his mouth sliding into a charming grin that simultaneously ensnared and unsettled her, "I shall have to prove it."

Before she could feel alarm at the suggestion his words held, he made a series of complex hand movements. His eyes slid past her to focus on a point to the left. Amazingly, unbelievingly, Jane watched a green glow emanate from his pale fingertips, tiny tendrils flowing around his hands and interconnecting into a geometric network. Then the emerald tendrils solidified, hardening into a structure. The green faded, and in his hands sat a symmetrical, gold construction, with more planes than she could count. He glanced up, suppressing a grin at the massive gape Jane knew she had on display. He set the plexus object on the ground and pushed his hand, sending it flying across the floor soundlessly. It came to a stop two inches from her shoes, hovering a hairsbreadth from the floor. Dumbfounded, she stared at it in silent wonder for a minute. Abruptly she snapped her jaw shut and looked up at him almost angrily.

"How are you doing this?" she demanded, forgetting all of her previous apprehension to get on her hands and knees and press her cheek to the floor next to the floating structure. There was no possible way to explain why it was floating. Feeling stupid, but unwilling to disregard any possible variable, she waved her hands above and around it, feeling for an invisible string that would make the whole thing laughable. She found nothing. She fearlessly poked it, and noted with pleasure that it moved in accordance with the laws of physics, yet remained hovering.

"Magic."

"Excuse me?" She whipped her face up from the floor at the delayed response. He hadn't moved from his spot against her bed, except to draw one long leg up from the floor to rest one elbow on. He raised one eyebrow, sporting a look of condescension that both suited his face and annoyed her.

"You asked how I created that. I used magic."

Jane immediately shook her head. "Magic doesn't exist."

"You just witnessed magic with your own eyes. It must exist." His tone was exasperated, his explanation slow as if he were speaking to a child. A fiery urge to slap him welled up within her unexpectedly, expressing itself in a blush that she felt stain her cheeks.

"That doesn't mean-"

"Jane! Where's the pizza?"

Her entire body lurched in surprise, adrenaline rocketing through her as the front door slammed. She cursed reflexively and whipped her head to stare down the hallway, halfway standing up. Keys jangled familiarly as they were dropped onto the dinner table. Shit. What was she going to do? Her dad would either kill her, kill him, or die of a heart attack if he walked in. For some reason she couldn't fathom, she knew without doubt she could not involve anyone else in her tall, dark, handsome problem that kept appearing in her room.

"It seems I shall have to continue to prove it to you some other time." The closeness of his voice made her turn to see him standing halfway across the room, one hand in his pocket. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Lady…?"

"Oh. Um. Jane. It's Jane." She whispered hastily, fretting at the sound of her father's footsteps approaching. With a playful smile and a glint in his eyes she could only label as mischievous, he bowed his head to her.

"It was lovely to meet you, Lady Jane. Perhaps next time we meet there will be less screaming," he murmured, gazing up at her with an amusement that embarrassed her. It was her last image of him as the same crack from before echoed, and he vanished in a wisp of that emerald smoke. His framework creation continued to float on the floor.

She straightened as the floorboards creaked and her dad rounded the corner. "Hey kiddo, where's dinner? Did you see my note?"

"Oh," she leaned against her doorframe as casually as possible, hoping he wouldn't come down the hall. "I ordered it. They haven't come yet? I fell asleep like right after calling. I'll call again."

"Alright. Could you do it soon? I'm starving. How was your first college class?"

Her eyes brightened at his question, and she used her elation on her physics course to distract her from the thought of the young man with the smug face and magical tricks.

He drew in a steady breath, and pulled back the string of the bow from his position behind the tree. His fingers brushed his cheek, stilling by his ear. He kept both eyes open, trained on the animal fifty paces away. Aiming, he let the ambient noises of the forest fade away, until only his heartbeat filled his ears. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Thump. He let it fly. Thump.

His aim was true; the animal fell with a bleat of surprise, the arrow embedded between its ribs. He strode quickly across the field, unsheathing his dagger and crouching down to end the creature's suffering. He was pleased with his prize; this hjort was rare in the parts of the forest the Aesir and Vanir hunted. It made for a highly coveted meal. He began to gut and skin the animal with ease, the routine of hundreds of years allowing his mind freedom to make sense of his harried thoughts. This was his refuge, the forest at the base of the great mountains. The summer air was sharpened by the crisp wind currents, the water cleaner, and the animals more wily and dangerous. Few desired to hunt here, and even fewer took this route when travelling past the mountains.

He had not had much time to come here lately; his training picking up in intensity as his coming of age ceremony neared. As a younger boy he would spend weeks at a time here, perfecting his tracking and survival skills while Thor and his friends ran after the older warriors and snuck into dangerous realms without Odin's permission. He had missed the skill of the hunt, the hard labor of cleaning and skinning the animal himself. In the middle of the field under the high sun, he leaned back on his heels and swiped his sleeve against the sweat that had built on his brow, and let his body get lost in the work. But he could not calm the maelstrom within his mind.

Twice now, the orb had brought him to that mortal girl on Midgard. Lady Jane, as she had informed him, with no small degree of amusing vexation. He spared a thought for her, the scared girl with forgettable features and an entertaining spirit. She truly was a spectacle of emotion, everything from terror to wonder to embarrassment crossing her face in such a short amount of time. His lips quirked at her reaction to his magic, wonder and skepticism all wrapped up in an interesting combination unlike any other reaction he had gotten. But it was not the girl that consumed his thoughts.

He wiped the blade of his dagger in the grass and sheathed it. He began to bag the carcass of the animal. Loki did not believe in coincidence; there was a reason the orb had brought him to the same location twice. He had yet to discover what that reason was. No matter how he analyzed the events, no matter what he recalled of the girl and her bedroom, he could not glean anything except for one puzzling connection. That mortal girl was harnessing magic. Twice now he had seen some unknown force take over her eyes; something red and powerful. When energy had blasted from her fingertips his defensive spells had been in vain; the force of the magic had thrown him back against the wall mercilessly. He had seen the same thing in her eyes during their second encounter, and once he was sure that she had maintained enough control over it, it had been intensely fascinating to watch. It was obvious that she had no idea what she had become host to by her panic and fear towards her own body; Loki knew it was magic, and powerful at that. It was the only current explanation for why the orb wanted to be there. He was just fortunate that he had mastered enough magic to transport himself back to Asgard using his secret portals as well.

Out of habit and a near constant compulsion he took out the orb, fingers running over the intricate work inlaid on the surface. A wave of relief swept through him at the contact, his own magical core humming with content.

There was a massive creak, so loud that Loki at first mistook it for thunder. The mistake nearly cost him. He looked to the left just in time to see a massive, uprooted tree barreling towards him. He hit the ground, the entire tree sailing over his head to roll and crash into a standing tree on the opposite end of the field with an ear splitting crack that rattled his teeth.

There was silence.

Loki dared not lift his head to look at the attacker, instead jamming the orb into his pocket and hastily murmuring the spell that would cloak him in invisibility. When he felt the spell settle on him, he rolled into a crouch in the long grass and unsheathed his knife, eyes raking the ring of trees. His bag with his catch in it sat two paces to his left, as did clear imprints of his boots and body, but he knew that he could not move without certainly giving away his position. He refused to tremble.

"I know you are there, boy. Your seidr shines as bright as a star." The harsh voice carried on the wind to where he crouched in the grass. Loki felt the magical power before he saw it. A hooded figure in a dark cloak that was too heavy for the heat strode out from the trees to the edge of the field, pausing at the edge. Loki's magic spiked at the nearness of a much more powerful sorcerer, potential energy coursing like adrenaline through his arteries and into his fingers. In his pocket, the orb responded, sending out gigantic bursts of energy and buzzing. He could do nothing, clenching his jaw as it sent out magic like a beacon.

The hooded figure laughed, soft and sinister.

"Give it to me, little sorcerer. You know not the magnitude of the power you play with."

Loki paled underneath his spell. The figure raised its arms and threw back its hood. The distance was nothing to Loki. He clearly saw the pale blue face, the dark stripes that ran up each cheek to converge at the bridge of the nose and continue up, the long dark hair knotted in a braid.

He also saw the merciless black eyes that pinned him to his spot.

A wild dread filled him, the kind that fills prey in its final moments. He broke the eye contact and lunged to the right, narrowly missing a crackle of energy and landing on his hands and knees in the grass. He scrambled upright to peer through the brush, conscious of the bent and broken grass next to him. The sorcerer's eyes had followed him, even though Loki could feel his invisibility spell intact. The alien face grinned, arms outstretched from where the magic had originated. It pointed a finger at him.

"Give it to me, and you may live."

Loki's heart pounded in his ears; every fiber of his being at war with himself. If he relinquished the orb he would live. If he did not… He put a hand over the bulge in his pocket, painfully aware of the precious time that passed and the sorcerer's penetrating gaze. Was he ready to die for this? This blasted thing that never obeyed him?p/

He hated to discover that he was.

Rage swept through him, brutal and powerful, which urged him to his feet and expelled any trace of fear. How dare this filthy creature try to take what was his? He would never allow it, not till he was in Hel. His spell dropped from him like a cloak, and he stood firmly in the middle of the field, his magical energy whipping up inside him like a sandstorm.

Across from him the thief smiled. "So be it, little Prince. I will have what I came for, and your head will fetch a pretty price."

A blast of magic shot from his hand.

But Loki heard none of it, the world around him to a ringing silence. Time slowed. His vision blurred. Terror seized him. Then a rage he had never known before filled him, and he felt a foreign presence. The entity entered him as if he had jumped into a lake, suddenly surrounding and invading from all sides. He was powerless to resist; a drunk with a bottle. It seeped through his pores, running through his veins and into his heart, his head, his stomach. Violent energy filled the spaces in his body until there was no room, until he felt close to bursting, and still it came, wave after wave. He struggled to find himself, struggled to latch onto both his terror and his bravery and failing. He felt when it wrapped around his seidr, pulling and twisting, remolding and reshaping, until it was intertwined with his very being. The sheer magnitude of it nearly knocked him backwards, choking the air out of his lungs.

Its depths went on forever.

He could do anything, be anything; he was limitless.

The enemy's blast came into razor sharp focus, hurtling towards him at the pace of a snail. He almost laughed. His arms came up of their own accord, in a way he had done a thousand times. But this was different. Confidence and power sang through him. He felt his magic radiating from his core; with it, he felt the bright, endless, power. A part of the endless energy was wrapped around his, pulsing and vibrant; it hurtled through his body and out of his hands violently. He was almost loathe to share it.

Purple met black.

The force of the explosion sent Loki flying backwards, an ugly brown filling his vision before he realized he was face down in the dirt. But he felt no pain; he only felt a dark euphoria rising with him that pushed him to his feet once more, spinning around to take on the attacker with something akin to glee.

The enemy had fallen, blown back by the blast into a tree. It had cracked under the stress, rent in two at the middle of the trunk with a crack like lightening. An echo of a shocked expression was gone from the harsh face in a moment, twisting into hatred and malice. He gestured violently, and countless orbs of blue flames appeared all around him, suspended for a moment before propelling themselves forward at breakneck speed towards Loki.

He ran towards them. The new magic coursing through him gave him heightened senses, showed him clear lines of trajectory. It was easy to duck and twist around the flames, the colors flaring vivdly. They shot past him with a sizzle. He was closer now, running faster than he ever had in his life, an idea forming in a split second when he could find his own mind in the chaos. It was amazing, it was stupid, he was going to die. He grinned at the new hint of fear he saw in the sorcerer's eyes.

He was ten paces away now, and the creature's arms came up, sending a desperate burst of black magic at him. His plan solidified. He ran two more steps then he tucked, letting the black energy fly over his head as he somersaulted into the long grass.

He sprang up, dagger drawn. The wizard roared in fury, drawing his blade just in time to deflect the blow and send him flying backwards into the field.

A dagger buried itself to the hilt in the enemy's back.

The power left him as swiftly as it had arrived.

Loki's apparition vanished as it hit the ground. The monster screamed in pain, his arm swinging around and catching the real Loki across the chest, sending him sprawling and gasping for air. He rose to his full height in front of Loki, his cloak falling open around him to expose a muscular blue torso slashed with grotesque scars. His face was an ugly, seething contortion of flesh that showed no mercy. Blade in hand, he approached Loki, who was struggling to remember how to breathe and reeling from the loss of magic. His head spun and his vision grew fuzzy as a shadow fell over him.

"Only fools defy me. I will have what I came for. Now I will make you suffer-"

A loud caw pierced the air, immediately echoed by another. In unison, they both looked skywards and Loki almost shook with relief at the sight of Hugin and Munin, circling overhead. Odin was not far.

The sorcerer snarled, eyes darting to the trees before landing on Loki.

"I will have it soon enough, little prince. You cannot protect such ancient power. And when another comes to claim it, I will let them kill you first."

He turned, Loki's dagger protruding from his back, and vanished silently. Not a second later, Thor crashed into the clearing, bringing down four trees as he ran to Loki.

"Loki, what happened? Look at you! Are you wounded? Heimdall said he could not see you." He offered a hand to Loki, who grasped it and stood on shaky legs, his vision swimming. A keen sense of loss swept over him, and he had to still his hand from reaching for the orb, which now burned in his pocket.

"I-"

The sound of trotting approached, and Odin entered the clearing on Sleipnir, his company behind him. Loki steadied himself, forcing his breathing to even out. His vision improved. Nausea that had gripped him upon stabbing the sorcerer eased. His mind was still uneasy; it felt incomplete, stretched too far and rearranged in the wrong order. p/

"Why could Heimdall not see you?" He gripped Gungnir tightly. Loki forced his mind to start functioning again, flipping through the possible lies. If Heimdall could not see him while under the orb's influence could he see it at all? The realization that Heimdall most likely could not made his story all the more easy to spin. The orb was setting his thigh on fire.

"Powerful magic has been here." Odin took in the clearing, eyeing the splintered tree that Loki had thrown the sorcerer at.

"I don't know, Father. I was hunting when the sorcerer attacked me." He did not need to fake his breathlessness. Odin took him in with one eye, no doubt noticing his lack of wounds.

"I was too quick for him. Mother recently taught me how to transport. It probably saved my life. When he saw your birds he took off." He wisely fell silent, letting his story sink in. He banked on Odin becoming more fixated on the foreign presence entering his realm, and he was right. Odin turned his steed sharply, putting Loki on his blind side.

"Start scouting along the borders; take your best warriors," he said to Master Tyr, who was fixing a look of distaste at the younger prince. "I will speak to the mages. No one has slipped Heimdall's watch before. I will find out who did." Without a parting word he dug his heels into Sleipnir and rode off towards the astronomy towers, his company going off in different directions to do his bidding. Above, Odin's ravens ceased their circling to fly away. Loki was left in the field with Thor, who clapped him on the shoulder.

"I am glad you are unharmed, brother. Else I would have had to track down whatever ilk attacked you."

Loki gazed at Thor's sincere face, unable to quell the real affection he felt for his older brother. Like their mother, Thor's love for him was undeniable and unadulterated, and he found it hard to pretend that his true feelings for the fool were anything less than the same in the face of it. Hard, but not impossible. He adopted a haughty look despite how ill he knew he must look.

"The day you defeat a sorcerer with your bare hands is the day I will eat my dagger."

Thor laughed. "Challenge accepted. Where is your dagger?"

The thought of his dagger, embedded in the back of that creature in some sewer of a realm, ruined his mood further. "That damned thief made off with it."

"No matter," Thor said cheerfully. "That one was getting old. Perhaps you shall receive a better one soon, though you did not hear that from me."

Excellent; it would make a perfect gift when he passed his tests. His coming of age ceremony could not come soon enough as it was. He knew Thor was close to bursting with impatience as well. It was common knowledge he would be charged with Mjolnir. Then he would be flying everywhere, like an annoying insect, and the women would all swoon for him even more; it would be a thoroughly irritating affair the first couple of seasons.

He went and picked up his forgotten bag of meat, glad that it had not been trampled on. Together he and Thor made their way on foot back to the palace, talking idly. Loki was glad for it; his hands still shook slightly and he could not shake a vague emptiness in him he could not name or place. Above that was a humble sense of awe at the magnitude of power housed in that tiny stone, and the indescribable feeling that came with having it in him. He could not understand why it had finally interacted with him, but he was grateful. There was no question he would have been dead. He placed a hand over his pocket, feeling more protective of it than ever. He let Thor lead the conversation, lost in his own thoughts regarding the orb and Heimdall.

At the castle, he proudly showed off his catch to his mother, who kissed his cheek with delight and sent him straight to the cooks. That evening they all dined on Loki's catch, Thor eating with gusto, and his mother commenting that she was glad that he had come back alive and with such a delicious meal. She looked at Odin across the table expectantly. He had cleared his throat and agreed with a nod and a curt "of course", and gone back to his usual habit of silent dining.

It was the most Loki could have hoped for. But still, even with all of his mother's praise and Thor's wolfish eating, he felt something missing.

At ten o'clock on a Friday evening, Jane was lounging comfortably on her couch, watching 'Friends' with Darcy when it hit her. There was no trigger, no sign. One minute she was asking how Jennifer Aniston got her hair to sit so straight and the next she was doubled over, popcorn spilling across the floor as the red filled her vision and vomit rose into her throat.

Memory alone allowed her to reach the bathroom in time, retching violently over and over, emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet. When there was nothing left she dry heaved, cold and hot flashes making her clammy and sweaty. She could see nothing, could her almost nothing due to the ringing in her ears. She felt hands gather her hair back, a concerned voice that didn't make sense. Her heart was thumping unevenly.

Pain split her head open and she screamed.

'