X

Just a quick note: this chapter carries a trigger warning for discussions of suicide. If this will disturb you, please do not read any further.

A beat passed between them, pregnant with possibilities. Then, Loki threw his head back, boyish and abandoned, and laughed. He laughed as he had often laughed at her before, high and light, full of superior joy at her posturing, secure and in control of their dynamic, confident in his utter disdain. He laughed at her as she might have laughed at a dog attempting to carry a stick far too large for it, or at a cat trying to squash its massive body into a tiny box.

However little she liked being treated like his slightly idiotic pet, Jane had expected this; she weathered his carefree ridicule, her sole sign of irritation a tightening of her jaw. If her nails actually bruised the soft skin of her upper arms when the dug in hard, at least that was disguised underneath her tunic and he need never know. She gritted her teeth and waited for him to finish, dizzied by the lurching, panicked beat of her heart.

After a long minute, he did. "Oh, little thing," he brushed an illusory tear from the corner of his eye, "It does thrill me when you pretend to knowledge you could never hope to possess. Do you know what would happen to Yggdrasil if Odin no longer held sway? No," he shook his head fondly, smiling, "Of course you don't. Even if such a thing were possible, why should I depose my own father? What could I hope to gain from that?"

"You're right," Jane began, "I don'tknow what would happen. And I don't care. And I don't think you care either. You hate Odin, don't you?"

He acceded easily, spreading his hands with a shrug. "If I do, that hardly translates to wanting him out of power, especially when I am not his firstborn. Hela would take the throne, and Thor after her, before it could ever be mine. Besides, doesn't every child want their parents dead?"

Her stomach churned; he seemed so earnest. "I didn't," she murmured. The day the names George and Helen Foster had shown up on a list of casualties—before such lists became too long and grim to print—was a black spot in her mind, a patch of rot she had to ignore so it wouldn't eat her from the inside out. Like many on Earth in the sunset days of the war, she had blocked out all memories of the past and all acknowledgment of her great sorrow, fearing that to revisit them would be to fall down a labyrinthine rabbit-hole she'd never climb out of alive.

At least they had been together at the end. Dying together, as she knew to her grief, was better than living alone.

"Then your father was better to you than mine ever was," his humor soured as his smile twisted sharply, bitter at the corners, "Although that would be no difficult feat to achieve. A Frost Giant would have been a more suitable parent, and warmer, too."

"Then it wouldn't matter that you wouldn't inherit, would it? You'd want him gone because it would hurt him, punish him for what he's done to you."

Still chuckling at his own joke, Loki shook her comment off and sat forward, hands resting lightly on his knees. His vitriol faded to something wistful, open and honest. "No, Jane. We must all bear the scars our parents inflict upon us without resorting to bloodshed. That alone cannot have led you to this very entertaining conclusion."

"It didn't," she cut her eyes towards the research bench, "I found the information you left for me. All those hints...you want me to recreate my portal tech. Having your own Bifrosts, wherever and whenever you want them…what could that be for but an invasion force? Especially since Odin only has one. You could outflank him easily."

His eyes widened. "Perhaps I have underestimated you all this time. For such a tame woman, you seem to have given the possibility of intergalactic war a great deal of consideration. Are you angling for a new job as my tactical advisor?"

"So you don't deny it?"

"Deny what?"

"All the data you linked into my files."

He threw his hands up, snorting like a wounded buffalo. "I can never win, can I? Play the jailer, and you fling accusations of cruelty at me. Play the considerate host who provides you with data I believe you may find intriguing, and I have an ulterior motive. Some day you must limit the expectations you place upon me, or I will run myself ragged trying to live up to them."

"If that'sall it was," Jane struck back, leaning forward herself, "you would have just left it in a clearly-marked file for me to find. But you didn't want me to figure things out this fast, did you? That's why you hid it. After all, why would I voluntarily go back into my own research, when it would just remind me of—" she cut herself off, throat working around a sudden hard lump of tears. The rot within her pounded and pulsed, soft and sweet and sickening.

He finished her thought for her. "Of your past? Did you not perhaps think that I didn't wish to distress you until you were ready to revisit it? That perhaps I know you well enough to understand that thinking of your old research would be too painful for the moment?"

She looked away, blinking furiously. His voice was too soft, too solicitous, and he was too good of a liar for her not to wish his feigned sincerity were real, to hope that there was some softness in him for her. But she knew what he was doing, what he wanted to achieve with this act.

"You're trying to distract me," she fixed him with as straight a stare as she could manage, willing her heartache away, "I know what I know."

"Jane," he reached out, touched her knee, "I believe that you think you know. You want to believe there's more to what's happened to you than this, that your life has more value to me than mere entertainment. You want there to be some grand plan, some purpose to your suffering. But what did I say to you, when I first told you I meant to take you from Midgard?"

"You said," she swallowed, shifting her leg away from his hand; it dropped into the space between them, "you thought I had more to give. You wanted me to tell you more stories."

He nodded. "If you looked through your files, you would have seen other materials there, surely? What else did you find?"

It tore her to admit. "Stories."

He spread his hands in a mute there you go gesture and sat back. Small mercy, but he didn't gloat, silently or aloud. He just waited, studying her face, as realization dawned and all Jane's suspicions tumbled in on themselves like a house of cards.

"That's all you want?" her lips were numb; it was hard to force them to shape the words. "That's really all you want?"

"Hmm. I thought I made my other…desires known?"

Bile surged up her throat, bitter and burning. Slowly, holding herself otherwise so tense and tight she could barely feel her heart pounding, she nodded.

Loki saw her fear. "I will not force you, Jane," he said, though whether he intended to put her at ease or on edge by this spoken-unspoken threat was impossible to tell. "What happened between us last night was...I have no wish to put either of us through that again. Whatever you believe of me, you are not as other mortals. There is something in you I would understand."

She took an unsteady breath. "Before you kill me? Or turn me over to your father so hecan do it?"

"Odin will forget you," he shrugged, "He forgets much of what is not in his sight."

"So I'll just…be here? In these rooms. Until I die, or until you get what you want?"

"Is that so horrible a fate? Consider your fellow humans, and the pointless, painful manner in which so many of them died. Here I provide you a life of ease and comfort; you can study what you wish, upon such subjects you had never before even dreamed existed. All I ask in return is conversation. How many of your compatriots would happily accept such a future?"

She wouldn't cry, she wouldn't, even as she felt her world narrowing unbearably about her, the walls tightening imperceptibly until she would be crushed between them, with nothing to salvage her sanity but his even, reasonable voice singing in her ears. How long would it take for that voice to become a soothing, welcome presence? How long could she sustain her hate, keep him at arm's length, when otherwise all she would have to live on would be her broken, wasted heart?

"You stole me," she whispered, almost breathless, "You stole my whole world from me, everything and everyone that I cared about. How...what..." she almost laughed, it was all so absurd, "What do you think you could give me that could ever make up for that?"

He regarded her a distant kind of pity, face blank and tone bland. "Your world would have been stolen regardless, nor was it I who made the decision to take it from you. What have I given you? I have given you your life. Would you throw it away now, to benefit nothing and no one?"

"You saved my life so I could amuse you," she snarled, "You're a petty child."

Her barb landed harmlessly, glancing off his flawless skin. "Perhaps. It has been said. But never mind that. What matters is that you have a very limited capacity to change what's happened to you. From here, you have a choice. Die, and be done with it, or live, and find meaning where you can. You mortals never had much hope of ascending beyond daily survival; I fail to see how what I offer you is worse than the grind of your mean little former life."

Jane crossed her arms and buried her face into the soft fabric of her tunic, letting it absorb her sweat and tears. Once she was certain her eyes were too dry to betray her, she lifted her head, trying for a wry shrug.

"Would you let me die, if that's what I wanted? Would you really let me die?"

An emotion—anger, irritation, frustration?—flickered behind his eyes and turned his face to granite. Jane thought she knew its source. He couldn't be with her all the time, and—how many times had he said it himself?—humans were so fragile. She had never really considered suicide before, not even when everything was crashing down around them and Aesir shock troops were beating down her doors, but even she knew a blanket could become a noose and a shard of mirror could open her veins wide. If she wanted, she could thwart Loki's plans for her, and it wouldn't even be that difficult.

She could take control of her life, even if only to end it. She could escape; how he must hate her for reminding him!

"You are stronger than this, Jane," his voice was a warning, "I had not wanted to do this, but let me remind you that it is not only your life I hold sway over. Do you think your friend would be able to survive her disappointment if you died?"

"Leave her out of this."

"I would have had no objection if you'd done so from the start."

She swallowed. "You bastard. But I knew it. I knew it. All this talk about wanting the best for me, about saving me. It's not about me at all, you liar. It's about you, and what you want, and to hell with anyone who gets in the way!"

His smile sickened her; it was wide and unrepentant, full of teeth that gleamed in the brightening morning light. For a second, the stark outline of this smile, framed by his harsh cheekbones, became a grinning skull.

"Of course, Jane. Of course."

Phew! Sorry for the delay, I got really stuck in the middle of this chapter, and was also dealing with some personal and job problems around the same time. Kind of threw me into a tailspin for a week or two (or three, it's been not the best month), but I'm getting out of it now, which is nice. Things are...I don't want to say 'solved' because the world is very uncertain right now, but 'solved-ish', perhaps.

Anyway, please leave me a comment to brighten my day if you are so inclined! I know this chapter's pretty dark, but Jane's tough, and things are going to get better.