Song of the chapter: Myth, by Beach House
She woke too early again after a night of restless sleep, sheets and blankets tangled around her sweaty limbs as the wisps of her unsettling dreams lingered. They were burning off rapidly in the pale morning sunlight, leaving little more than a vague sense of dread sitting like a stone atop her chest. Struggling upright Jane shook off the matted bedclothes and sat at the edge of her mattress, head bowed in both hands as she tried to recall something of what had disturbed her sleep the night before.
Blinding agony that splintered in her chest like a shattered icicle.
The lined face of an old man, one eye covered with an ornate patch, the other staring down at her with mingled pity and sorrow.
Lacy patterns traced on a delicately frosted window.
Snow sifting down from an iron sky to blanket a cholla cactus.
There was more but the tighter she tried to grasp the droplets of memory the faster they slipped away, until even those she still remembered were fuzzy and indistinct around the edges. With a huff of exasperation Jane combed fingers through her thick unruly hair, pushing the mass of it away from her face as she walked into the small bathroom and yanked the knobs of her shower.
She emerged from her room some time later, damp hair gathered into a sloppy bun and feeling much more grounded that she had upon rising. Loki was already awake, if he had slept at all - his tall figure a dark slash against the window he stared out of. His arm was free of the sling, although he still held it gingerly at his side. Outside of the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders he was motionless, not even turning as she called out a quiet hello.
She pushed a couple of Pop-Tarts into the toaster and poured herself a glass of juice, sipping it pensively as she stole furtive glances in his direction, as if she expected him to turn around and catch her in the act at any moment. She was halfway through her first pastry when he finally turned, his motions stiff as if he had forgotten how limbs were strung together.
"Do you want the other one?" she offered, pushing her plate across the counter. He just shook his head as he took in the brightly colored frosting and sprinkles.
"Is that food to break a fast, or dessert?" He asked, looking baffled.
Jane guiltily swallowed her mouthful. "Umm...both?" she said hopefully.
Loki just hummed deep in his throat with a disbelieving lift of his brows and swept past her into the kitchen, plucking an apple from the loaded bowl of fruit she had set out. He bit a perfect circle out of the crisp flesh and chewed pensively as he leaned against the counter opposite her. "I would take some of that coffee," he said, and Jane nodded eagerly before preparing a pot. Lord knew she could use some herself.
There was the crunch of another bite, and a moment of silence. "This is a very harsh land you live in, Miss Foster. Hot, and dry." Loki rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, as if some unreachable fly bit at his back. "I cannot say that I enjoy it."
"It's not exactly my favorite either," she said. "But if you want to see the stars you have to find somewhere remote, and here on Earth the only places left like that are extreme." She poured some of the coffee into her favorite mug, a battered white thing with the Drake equation printed on the side she'd picked up in graduate school somewhere. She filled another plain mug and held it out to Loki. "I spent some time in Norway as well, in Oslo and at the University of Tromsø. It's pretty extreme too, but I think I preferred it in some ways. At least the snow was prettier than the sand and rocks here."
His thin hand wrapped around the ceramic, heedless of the heat. "At home," he began, and then seemed to falter. He took a small sip of the heady brew and then cleared his throat. "On Asgard, the stars are always visible. During the day the strongest of them shine through the faint blue wash of the sky, like a tattered canopy spangled with sunlight. And if that constant reminder of the night isn't enough, you can walk to the edge of the world where the curtain of the sky is drawn back to show the cosmos in all its glittering glory, wheeling above and below you as if you stand inside a jewelbox."
Jane stared agape at Loki, transfixed by his words and the wistful cant of his head. It was the most she'd heard him say since she'd found him that hadn't been directed at her in anger, and the poetic turn of his words was a surprise. "It sounds beautiful." And then, before she had even had time for her brain to catch up to her mouth it went and pulled the tiger's tail. "Why did you leave?"
Her words fell in a heavy pile between them, like a cairn of stones. Jane felt as the blood left her face, and she set her mug down carefully beside her, her fight or flight instincts kicking in as Loki's face grew steadily darker. They'd been doing so well, too - almost having real conversations last night and this morning, until she'd just stuck her foot in her mouth.
"I-I'm sorry," she said hastily, her hands fluttering before her like wounded birds. "That was...I mean, I shouldn't have asked. It's really none of my business. I didn't mean to upset you," she finished lamely, and braced for the worst.
The spaces inside his mouth crowded with sharp words and phrases that jostled for supremacy. All it would take was a choice few of them and he could cut her down, put her back in her place. And it would only mean undoing any of the slight progress he'd made so far, breaking any chance of her ever trusting him.
So many things that wanted to be said, but what he managed to pluck from the jumble was a mollifying, "No, I suppose you didn't." With a shock, he realized it was true. The anger that had been building just moments before was snuffed, leaving him feeling hollow. He pasted a wan smile on his face and watched her blink in surprise, then slowly pick her coffee back up.
"So," he said finally, searching for a change of subject. "You wish to pick my brain, Miss Foster?"
And with that, whatever wariness of Jane's that had lingered dissipated in a heartbeat as her eyes widened over the rim of her mug at him. She choked down her sip of coffee and nodded eagerly. "Yes!" Bustling over to her cluttered workstation Jane sifted through piles. "Just a second," she said, hands frantically roaming the desk. "My notebook is around here somewhere...aha!" Triumphantly she held up a battered red book and bounced over to the seating area to sprawl into the armchair. She flipped to an open page and began chewing on the end of her pencil as he settled himself on the couch nearby.
"So the Bifrost is broken, and yet you still managed to travel here to earth, without the use of the relic that SHIELD had." She fixed him with an intent gaze and leaned forward in her seat. "I want to know how. Can you travel between any of the realms? Is there a limit on how far you can go? How many people can you take with you?" Her questions came rapid fire, and Loki held up his hands in surrender.
"One question at a time if you please, Miss Foster," he said, and her face drooped in consternation.
"Sorry," she grimaced, her shoulders lifting as she pulled in a deep breath and composed herself.
Loki tapped his lips with one long finger as he tried to think of where to begin. "As best I can tell, there is no limit on where or how far I can go." Her last question gave him pause, and he tried to recall if he ever had brought anyone into the spaces between with him other than Thor. "I've pulled one person through with me before, but never any more than that. And as for the how?" He broke off and shot Jane a tiny secretive smile as he held up one hand and melded skill and energy, his will becoming manifest in his palm. There was no fanfare - a copy of the small sparrows he'd seen outside her window simply appeared in his hand, as if it had been there all along. "Magic, Miss Foster."
Jane's gasped as he sent the bird winging in her direction to land on the edge of her notebook, tiny orange talons digging into the dog-eared pages. It sat there, preening and warbling up at her as Jane's eyes grew larger and larger. "What? How did you..." she said, tearing her gaze away from the songbird to blink at him in astonishment. "You shouldn't be able to do that."
He did laugh then, an odd sensation in his chest like the squeaking hinge of a door shut too long. Her amazement was priceless though, and it never ceased to amuse him how easily baffled mortals were. "I suppose I haven't, technically. It's only an illusion. But if I had more strength, it could be real."
Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she worked up the courage to reach a hesitant hand out to the sparrow. Her fingers passed through the image, but this time he was strong enough to keep it from fading away. Still passing her hand back and forth through the image, she frowned up at him. "How would that work?" she finally said, frustration plain in her voice. "You can't just...create something from nothing. It violates every principle of physics known!"
Loki folded his arms across his chest as he sat back on the couch, mindful of his tender side. "When I conjure something, I am not simply causing things to appear. It is more like stealing bits of this and bits of that and combining them into what I want."
"Some kind of nucleosynthesis, perhaps." She muttered this in a low voice to herself, one hand still absently poking at the drab brown and grey plumage of the bird. He extended one hand and the small bird collapsed in on itself in a wisp of gold and green, eliciting a small squeak of surprise from her.
Loki shrugged. "That term means nothing to me. I don't know exactly how it works, Miss Foster...only that it does. And when I want to travel from one place to another, I just fold the distance between them and poke a hole where they meet."
She nodded furiously at this, excitement blazing in her eyes. "Yes, yes! A wormhole, an Einstein-Rosen Bridge! Just like the Bifrost, but on a smaller scale. But then...how do you keep it from collapsing? How do you avoid the singularity?"
If he was honest with himself, her interest was flattering. There had been no one in Asgard curious enough to find out the intricacies of how his magic worked - even his 'parents' had accepted it with little more than a shrug...although in light of what he knew now, their reaction seemed less surprising. His magic had been an anomaly because he was an anomaly, a curiosity that earned only scorn and derision from more those with more bellicose tastes.
"To keep it from falling in, you need something pushing out," he said, illustrating his words with his hands. "I alter the nature of the universe to be more contrary and use it to shore up my tunnel." An ironic smile unfurled. "Whatever that says about myself."
"Contrary nature? I'm not sure I follow." Jane puzzled over this for some minutes. He could practically see the gears and wheels inside her head spinning as she frowned down at her now unoccupied page, scribbling out frantic notes and strings of numbers.
"I don't know how to put it any plainer than that for you. It is the opposite of expected, you push and it pushes back." He frowned, searching his memory for some way to make it plainer. "There aren't a lot of terms for what I do. So far I'm the only person who can do this, that I know of, although I'm sure there must be more out there. Someone built the Bifrost, after all."
"I understand," she said, waving one hand at him absently as she continued working, murmuring to herself, and Loki couldn't help but feel vaguely insulted as she proceeded to ignore him for the next few minutes.
When she did finally lay her pencil down and raise her face to look at him, it was with the stunned wide-eyed gaze of a startled deer. "You're talking about exotic matter." She leaned forward and the look on her face grew greedy. "Negative mass. You can...create, summon, conjure, whatever crazy magic word you want to use for it...matter with negative mass."
"I suppose you could call it that."
Jane fell back in her chair, her limbs going slack like a marionette with its strings cut as she blinked off into space. "I think I might faint."
She really did look unwell, he noticed with a frown. Loki stood from his seat and strode to the kitchen, pulling a glass from the cupboard he'd seen Jane use and lifting the handle above the sink, filling it with cool water. He brought it back and pressed it into her limp hand, her thin fingers soft beneath his own. "Please, take a drink Miss Foster. I don't relish the idea of dealing with an unconscious woman."
She lifted it and drained the whole thing in one long pull, still looking dazed but at least her skin was no longer the color of eggshells. Sitting up she placed one hand to her forehead and then shot him an unsteady smile. "I'm sorry. It's just...if you're saying what I think you're saying, it's like I've just found the Holy Grail of physics."
Loki knew his face was blank, her odd phrase having no meaning to him. Jane shook her head, a hesitant smile creeping onto her face. "You have no idea what I'm talking about. Let's just say, it's a really big deal to science."
"If you say so," he said, unconvinced. It seemed quite simple to him.
Tapping the end of her pencil against her chin, Jane eyed him thoughtfully. "Do you think that you could bring some of that...contrariness...here?"
"To Midgard?" He was startled at the prospect, and then thoughtful. He'd only ever created those strange dissident bits in the process of traveling, far away from anything else, and while he hadn't experimented much with them he got the impression they weren't easy to work with. "No, I don't think that would work well. It...doesn't play nice with much else." He spread his hands in apology, unsure of how to make it any clearer.
"What if we had something to contain it?" Jane leapt to her feet, dumping the notebook onto the floor heedlessly and throwing herself into the chair at her desk, fingers flying over the keyboard. Her eyes swept back and forth across the monitor and then swung further to look in his direction, enthusiasm lending their deep brown a sparkle. "Would you then?"
"If that is what you wish, Miss Foster," he said smoothly, offering her a slow smile as satisfaction curled warmly in his belly. As long as she needed what only he could provide, this was his game to lose.
They circled each other around the small space of her lab in a sort of wary détente over the next few days. It wasn't exactly peace, and it wasn't exactly war, but it worked for them. Jane spent most of her time poring over formulas and typing at her computer from what he could tell - breaking occasionally to shovel some food in her mouth, Loki sticking mostly to the occasional fruit or vegetable. Most of what she ate was full of salt or sugar or some other strange chemicals he swore he could taste over the seasonings, and it wasn't as if he needed much to keep from starving anyways. Asgardians were far hardier folk than those of Midgard.
It was boring at times, but he felt a strange peace in this isolated place. There was little to distract the mind here and he found the blandness of it comforting, like closing one's eyes against bright light when a headache pounded. There was solace in the gentle breeze that soughed dryly over his face as he sat in the shade on Jane's roof, and in the still soundless expanse of sand and rock. The desert was an endless stretch of brown flecked with the occasional drab green that spread in all directions until it faded into the shivering horizon, broken about the edges by ragged mountains.
There wasn't much in the way of animals to distract the eye either. Sparrows like the one he'd conjured before flitted from one scraggly cactus to another, their liquid burbling songs the only thing remotely like water in this inhospitable place. Sometimes if he held still long enough he'd catch sight of a lizard as it scurried from one rock to another, the only creatures that seemed to actually enjoy the blistering sunlight. He supposed most things around here came out at night, when it was cooler. He couldn't blame them. He preferred the soft wash of starlight over the harsh sun as well.
His wounds were nearly healed by this point, his strength returning in fits and spurts that seemed to last longer every day. It seemed as if he had been drained by far more than just bruises and breaks, as if he was having to reknit the very marrow that filled his bones. Not for the first time, far removed from the moment he'd cheerfully sold his soul to The Other, he wondered exactly what currency his power had been bought with.
On the fifth day, he stretched languidly on the couch and fiddled with the buttons on a device he'd seen Jane use on occasion, the one that made moving pictures appear within the frame she called a TV that was hung on one wall. She was somewhere behind him, the clicking of her keyboard giving away her presence and he ground his teeth at the irritating little sound. It occupied all her time and attention, and if he admitted it, he was tired of being ignored.
The black rectangle flickered to life with those vibrant crisp images that fascinated him. There were some dramas, vaguely enough like plays back home to be entertaining. Sometimes there were merchants, peddling wares. He sat, heavy-lidded with boredom through a few minutes of these until something else came on, something that had him sitting up and paying earnest attention.
A man and woman were discussing what seemed to be current events, and it seemed as if every other picture shown was filled with grim faced men toting weapons or news of some pending conflict.
"I would have saved humans all from this, you know," he said, pitching his voice loud enough to be heard by Jane across the lab in an unsubtle attempt to goad some reaction out of her.
She lifted her head and squinted across the room, rubbing wearily at her eyes. "From what?" she said, the frown plain in her voice even if her face was indistinct.
Loki waved a hand at the television and swung his legs around to perch at the edge of the cushions. "This. Your self-destructive tendencies. The blind worship of science and progress. Neither of these things do you any favors."
Jane's brows pinched together and she rose from her desk, walking closer to peer at the TV and then at him, aghast. "How can you say that? Science has done so much for humanity! It has cured disease and ended famine, shown us places and things we would never have seen otherwise."
"And it brings brought you death and devastation, misery and horror as well. I have seen what your science brings you, Miss Foster, and it is not the grand and glorious thing you imagine it to be." He slashed a hand in the air between them as she folded her arms and pinned him with a stubborn glare. "Humans swing back and forth wildly between the best and worst of yourselves with no accountability for their actions because you are the universe's equivalent of a mayfly. You scramble over the tops of each other toward what you think are shining heights, but you never have to deal with the consequences. You die before the ramifications of your actions are felt, and you are all the worse for it. You have all the power of your fierce intellects, but none of the responsibility you should."
"Is this why you tried to set yourself up as king here?" she asked in an incredulous voice, her brows winging upwards. "Because you see us as some sort of...children, in need of babysitting?"
"Of course," he said simply with a nod. "You need a...moderating hand. A constant influence, to guide and shape your future. You bow and scrape before these strange metal gods of technology, these bits of plastic and silica, thinking they will save you and your planet. But they care nothing for you. I would not have been so indifferent."
She was silent some moments, as if considering his words. When she did finally look at him her eyes were hot and accusing, her mouth twisted bitterly. "And all those people that died? Is that how you show you care?"
He found he couldn't hold her gaze. "Those deaths were...regrettable." His own chin set stubbornly as he continued. "But necessary."
Her mouth dropped open. "Necessary," she echoed flatly, her eyes narrowing at him venomously. Loki wondered where the woman who had cowered in terror at his temper had disappeared to, for this Jane hardly seemed concerned about his reaction as she railed on, livid in her righteousness. "Necessary for your grand plan? The one you tried to impose on us, unasked for? The end does not justify the means, you know. You have no right to sacrifice anyone for your greater purpose! That doesn't make you a god, or a savior. That just makes you a monster."
His heart did a strange flop at her bald words, listing in his chest like a ship taking on water. His fingers moved restlessly in his lap, lacing and unlacing of their own accord as he heard the doubts that had steadily been gnawing at him echoed in her sentiments. When had it all gone so wrong? He'd come here thinking...thinking what? That he could show up and appoint himself a god, that here on Midgard he could be the hero that Asgard would never let him be? He couldn't even seem to keep it straight himself anymore, memory and intentions all swirling together like an ominous flock of crows. He tried to force a reply to his lips, but for once in his life words failed him. He bowed his head and stared blankly at the floor between his boots, trying to put his thoughts into some semblance of order.
A pair of shoes crept into his field of vision, followed by Jane's face as she crouched down between his knees. He had no idea how long he'd been silent, but judging from the faint crease of worry that marred her brow it had been a while.
"Hey," she said softly, placing a careful hand on his knee as her brown eyes searched his own warily. "I...probably could have said that better."
His eyes were drawn to the sight of her slender fingers, steady and stark and frail against the somber hues he wore. She could have beaten about the bush, but what purpose would that have solved for either of them? He'd been wrong, and she was brave enough to call him on it, even at risk to herself. To hold it against her would be to perpetuate the lie he'd been telling himself since before he'd fallen from the Bifrost the first time, and the thought of that was too ironic for even he to stomach.
Monster.
Was it possible to run so far and so hard from something that you ended up right back where you began?
"You have done nothing worse than offer honesty to the liar, Miss Foster." His voice when he found it sounded hollow and worn, the words scraped thin. The following smile felt even more fragile. "I suppose even I can appreciate that."
Surprise softened her mouth when he placed his hand atop hers and squeezed her fingers gently before rising to stare out at the endless, alien desert.