~
A/N:
Because I can't physically lean through the computer screen to hug each and every one of you,
here's a longer chapter to do it for me.
~
I want to hide the truth
I want to shelter you
but with the beast inside,
there's nowhere we can hide
~
It was not anger that seeped from the coiled ball of heat pressed firmly up against his breast bone, as he'd dug his heels into the sand and hastily slid down the final steep slope of the range. He had not stormed her with the fury she rightfully deserved for trying to run from him when he'd come across her, face down in the piling dirt.
Loki turned tormented eyes to the storm forming well beyond the cave as he continued to wonder just what exactly had stopped him.
Had it been the way her spirit so clearly left her eyes? Or maybe it'd been the expression she wore when he'd tilted her face up; reminding him of every glass prison he'd ever been forcefully contained in; so perfectly matching the forlorn mask that reflected back at him each blistering time.
What did it matter.
Jane had trumped his magic once again. She'd ruined everything.
Everything.
And yet he found himself standing guard at the front door of the dark hideout she'd just placed a beaming spot light upon like some sort of housebroken hound.
All while she slept in a pitiful heap of dirt and tears across the floor.
As if she actually did feel safe.
His eyes wandered to her with the disturbing notion.
She had cried well into her sleep, the hollows of her eyes and the glossy skin just beneath them nearly clean of dirt altogether after the onslaught. Even from his distance he could see that her eyes were swollen beneath their puffy lids. Her strained face showed none of the comfort sleep had provided her on her first night with him.
The entire fit had been one of silence after her apology; both acts showing such defiant strength in one so small.
From the first day they'd landed within Svartalfheim's grasp, he'd known her already chipping fractures would give and she would break entirely, just as this land did to any living entity prone to light.
He had even waited with sick fascination to witness it occur after everything she'd brought upon him, never imagining the sight would vex him so deeply.
No heroes… just brothers.
Loki shut the words between his teeth. They were heavy ash in his mouth.
Gods, how did she know exactly where to strike him each time he unknowingly lay the opportunity before her. His silver tongue held nothing against the gashing sinew of hers.
He had never felt so outdone.
It burdened him in a way he couldn't put a name to because he knew her words were never meant to strike him back – yet they did so with a skill unbeknownst to him. He was so used to digging beneath the most vulnerable skin; enjoyed it – finding the rawest of wounds in places his victims believed them to be well hidden and bringing them to the surface with a wicked twist of carefully chosen invectives.
She'd found his own as if they still gaped open along his bared skin.
Even took it upon herself to bandage them with the salted gauze of regret.
Though she had always seemed to have a certain amount of difficulty accepting her true purpose, he supposed.
But who was he to admonish such a flaw?
Jane flinched awake.
She could feel something crawling over her outstretched legs and she tilted her head down toward it automatically.
The quick movement ached in the sore muscles of her neck.
Not crawling; slithering.
She gasped and pushed herself back hard against the solid rock.
The vibrant, multi-colored stripes instantly brought Erik's cautious words of warning to the front of her hastened thoughts.
Red on black, venom lack…
She blinked twice, trying to will her mind to focus through the heart pounding fear.
Red on yellow…
"Will kill a fellow," she whispered fighting against the sudden urge to thrash her legs.
A Coral snake, bigger than any she had ever come across in her nightly studies within the deserts of New Mexico slithered in a lazy zigzag down the length of her right shin. Erik had told her repeatedly, in excruciatingly vivid detail, of just what it meant to be bit by one.
She hadn't feared snakes until then.
It left goosebumps in its wake where it brushed up against her jeans and ducked beneath the raised curve of her ankle. Its head reappeared over her left boot, tasting the air with its forked tongue as it slid languidly up her shin to explore her knee.
With every lax swivel of its head in her direction, panic broke loose within her.
She placed her hand flat against the ground in an attempt to push herself up, but found that her muscles failed her.
She slid her left heel an inch along the ground toward her in preparation to shake her leg but the searing pain that filled her joints made it feel as if she were cemented to the stone.
Her hand shot for the dagger at her side.
Her chest filled with heat.
"Loki!"
She frantically swiped over its middle with the back of her left hand as it climbed higher along her thigh. The serpent released a chilling hiss at her efforts; its blackened tail curling around the contours of her knee as its striped head rose and flinched back in swift agitation. Just as she drew the blade to slash at it, the snake struck.
Jane tried to jerk her hand away just as sharp teeth buried deep into soft flesh.
She felt every needling point as it bit down and locked its jaw in place, its top sinking just behind her knuckles and its bottom encircling the entirety of her inner palm. The snake trashed through the air as she frantically shook her hand. Her scream caught in her throat at the stinging pain, starting from where it pierced her and shooting through every nerve of her wrist, searing up, around the bend of her elbow and rounding her shoulder in its race to reach her heart.
"Jane."
A calm voice called to her and a cool sensation restrained one of her forearms. She felt the dagger being slid from her grasp.
"Jane…Shhh."
His softly rolling voice pierced through the haze but the scorch was red and blinding.
"Look at me, you need to control yourself."
Jane heard the words but her heart did not.
Her veins burned.
His grip tightened. He shook her softly.
"Look at me."
Loki's voice sharpened around the repeated command and her eyes snapped to focus up at him.
She stilled when she found him crouched at her side, his eyes peering into hers, and his fingers locked around her just beneath her wrists.
"It is not real…" His eyes widened to crease his brow with the promise as he shook his head at her. "Whatever you see, it is not there."
He lifted her hands up an inch into the space between them.
Jane ran her eyes down the faint splotches of glowing red along the back of her dirtied hands. The scarlet deepened between his pale fingers but she found none of the punctures or blood she'd expected. Her gaze fell to frantically search the ground around her lap.
"There was a snake…"
He shook his head at her again.
"There are no such specimens here. This land cannot support them." He assured her with science. "Breathe, Jane."
Jane searched both her hand and the ground once more before she allowed herself to take a full breath of air and released a rattled coughed at the feel of it in her lungs. She exhaled and took another until her chest ached.
"It bit me." She supplied distractedly, turning against his hold so that her palms faced her as she searched for the arch of blood that should have marked her palm. Her fingers trembled slightly before her eyes.
Loki's hold released her forearms to reach for her right hand. He spread hers out flat, flipping her palm up, then turning it over toward her in show with a soft raise of his brow to prove his word.
"It was imagined. You are unscathed. And you need to calm down before you blow us both to pieces."
She watched on fixedly as his warning sunk in and the Aether retreated from the surface of her skin with her slowing pulse.
"What was that?" She breathed. "Was I dreaming?"
When her gaze rose to question him, he released her entirely and eased back into a more relaxed crouch. For a moment he turned his attention to the cave entrance. She met his gaze there and saw that black clouds painted the horizon.
He tensed and she turned her eyes back on him to watch as realization struck like a long lost voice had called his name.
"No. I believe you are being hunted," his tone was grim with awareness. His gaze hardened past her, a sudden wicked grin teasing his lips. "He thinks he can outsmart me with rudiment trickery… The Accursed grows desperate."
She wasn't sure if his last muttered words were meant for her ears, but when his eyes lowered to her they were alive with a current that both ebbed and flowed.
It restarted her heart.
"They're close, aren't they?"
"Are you well?"
The urgency behind his inquiry answered her own.
"I don't think so," she admitted honestly, taking a moment to test her legs without the added weight of panic. They still screamed. "Ever since the blast, the Aether's been behaving differently. I can feel it now. Constantly," she paused with a wince as she relaxed the back of her knee against the ground. "It's exhausting."
"Then so can he. It is not meant for your kind," he supplied feebly, his tone heavy but lacking the usual distaste for the recognition.
Jane noted it with a furrowed brow, mentally thumbing through his warnings in the silence. One of his first to her stood out amongst the others.
"It's going to kill me, isn't it?"
It was barely a question.
His mouth fell to a mild frown.
"It will serve its purpose if allowed," he nodded carefully.
For a long while, he studied her in a way that made her anxious to know the intentions that lie hidden just behind his eyes; even more so than usual.
He reached down to pick the dagger up from the ground beside him. The glistening emerald embedded tastefully within its golden hilt gleamed in the soft fire light and nearly matched his distant eyes.
"Do you remember what else I taught you?"
Jane swallowed, realizing that his thoughts had gone back to the same place as her own. To a time where she couldn't have imagined him caring what information she chose to store away for future use. Because he had made it very clear then that she may not have much of one left before her.
The despair must have touched her eyes.
Loki reached to lift her right hand from her lap and pressed the heavy handle into her palm.
She looked down to watch him wrap his large hand around hers, trapping her warm fingers firmly between the two chilling surfaces.
Her head nodded up at him on its own endeavor.
"I remember."
He waited for her eyes to follow to speak.
"Good. Then it is time for your next lesson." The toe of his boot scraped against the ground as he slid his crouched form back some. "Close your eyes."
Her heart flipped in her chest at his unwarranted request. She stared at him in wary indecision.
"Do not make me repeat myself."
The threat was low and empty but it still quietly rumbled through her core in a way that caused instinct to take over.
She slipped her eyes closed and automatically tensed at the sound of leather moving over stone.
"Now open them."
And she did with haste – to spot three Loki's standing tall in front of her.
She fought the urge to smile as she remembered the first time he'd tried this trick.
Their faces soured at her terrible effort.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Jane," he scolded blithely, his eyes tightening a fraction to chide her wit. "It will be your undoing. I am no snake."
It was her turn to scoff lightly at him. She lifted the tip of the dagger and pointed it in their direction.
"And I am not your prey."
They cocked a brow at that and she shifted the blade to target the far left Loki.
She grinned.
"See."
All at once she felt the surface she leaned against disappear from behind her.
A flutter of panic flipped in her chest at the idea of the back of her head colliding against the unforgiving ground.
Before she had the chance to react, the curve of her neck fell back comfortably over something much softer in comparison.
Jane gazed up wide-eyed and behind her to find a satisfied smile gleaming only within his eyes. They hovered over her.
Her head rested just above his bent knee as he crouched sideways, his shoulder leaned in a show of total ease against the relocated boulder.
"Aren't you?"
She glared up at him for only a second – then she lunged.
Only this time she moved slowly; controlled. Turning the dagger so that its dangerous end faced up and bending her elbow to move the glistening blade even with her leaning torso. She tested him, inching her loaded hand toward him over her head. From her position, she could see the small snag she'd left the first time. She stopped only when the deadly point hovered a hair's breadth before it.
Her hand held steady.
His unmoving features returned the challenge as he made no motion to stop her; no movement at all, until his eyes flicked from where the steel nearly grazed his chest to meet her gaze.
They softened.
"You've already failed."
He rose swiftly to stand before the quiet declaration had finished dissolving her frustration fueled courage.
Her hands fell to her sides to support her weight.
"I fail to see the point too," she muttered, using her free hand to angle herself back against the stirred rock.
The remaining light of victory faded from his face.
"The point is that your brain is being targeted by dark magic," he began, "and you must learn to keep control over it or it will turn against you."
"You say that like it hasn't already…" A fresh burst of frustration nipped along her skin. "Do you really think I haven't been trying? I'm sorry, but it's a little difficult for me to control my temper when I'm constantly being ridiculed."
His eyebrow languidly rose high over nonchalant eyes.
"You don't say."
She blinked, bewildered and effectively silenced.
Loki strode evenly to the edge of the cave and took advantage of it.
He looked back at her.
"I am stepping out to assess matters. With you being debilitated, you would be dead weight to me beyond the cave's fortification and for the time being, you will have to stay here. You should be safe, so long as you do not lose your head or try anything stupid."
Again. He didn't even have to say it.
Her gaze fell with his mess of threats and cautions and her heart fell with it.
"Thor said something similar to me while I was imprisoned… He told me I would be safer," her heavy eyes lifted from the ground. "As if it was a valid enough excuse to just leave me in there… I was trying to get him to see just how wrong he was before you beat him over the head."
Loki exhaled in revulsion.
"And I would do so again for much less," he replied matter-of-factly. "Thor blindly believed that he would have some sort of home front advantage by bringing this battle onto Asgardian soil. If he would have gotten his way, your abandonment issues would be the very least of your worries…" He stopped short, a sickness touching the corners of his eyes. "My brother has never been one of the brighter stars above us."
Jane only looked at him for a while. His words had a knack for carrying more than one meaning and she wondered just when exactly it was that she had gotten so good at picking up on it. Or why they didn't quite match the lines etched above his brow...
Why they didn't hurt so much anymore.
"What happens now?" She asked of him warily, both in a desperate search for information and to distract herself from such profound thought.
His frown deepened at the question.
"That depends entirely on who I come across first."
The implication behind his words took shape almost instantly and it frightened her more than any threat he'd made against her own being.
"That's not an answer."
He turned to step across the threshold.
"None I give you would suffice."
Jane leaned her heavy head back, nearly defeated, against the rock. Her eyes stared into the blackness above as she listened to his parting paces. Her thumb slid lightly along the dagger's hilt.
"You owe me one, Loki," she prodded gently at the shadows.
His steps stopped short.
She lifted her head to find him.
Her eyes met his as they just barely shown from the deepening darkness beyond the cave. They watched her in waiting.
There were a million questions she could ask him at that moment and she knew just by the fact that he remained there that he would answer any one within reason.
Still, the freshest cut burned deepest.
"Why did I fail?"
Silence surrounded them for a long moment.
His eyes disappeared from view.
He took a single step forward into the edge of light and she watched the shadows refuse to leave the lines of his drawn features.
"Because you have heart, Jane," her name rung alive upon his lips before his voice fell flat, "and like your imagined snake, this cursed darkness will not support such a tragedy."
He turned and left her; numb where she sat.
Epigram: Demons - Imagine Dragons