a/n: so yeah. apparently i have a thing for writing movie-verse AUs. plus Loki is one of my fav Thor characters and i want to redeem him before he goes crazy in The Avengers.

if you guys are interested in hearing more of this story then please review :)

"Wait for it." Jane Foster looks impatiently up at the crystal clear New Mexico sky. She feels the need to repeat herself but refrains. Beneath her, underneath the reflection of the moon on the windshield, Darcy is fiddling with something idly beneath the dashboard, managing to look completely uninterested. Erik, on her other side, begins in a soft, placating voice, "Jane—"

"No." She cuts him off, turning her face back to the sky and refusing to move. "No, Erik, this doesn't make any sense." She huffs out a breath into the night and it fogs a little before her. The stars twinkle merrily, and she is suddenly, irrationally angry at them for misreading her mood entirely. She hunkers back through the sunroof and into the Pinzgauer, amid all the flashing and blinking lights and soft whirr of computer equipment. She pulls her notebook from her jacket pocket and opens it rather violently to a page filled with her neat, precise handwriting. "The last fifteen anomalies have been predictable down to the second—"

"Well, Jane, that doesn't mean that this one is going to be—" Erik's voice is still soft, kind, but disappointment is radiating in her chest like a sun and she hisses stubbornly, interrupting him, "Yes, it does."

"Uh, guys." Darcy looks up from the front seat, or at least, Jane takes her shift in movement to be her looking up—she's too busy scouring her notebook for a mistake in her calculations to actually pay attention. She doesn't answer right away, and Erik just lets out a heavy sort of sigh that seems to actually, physically hang in the car, not helping Jane's temperament. "Guys." Darcy says again, a little more urgently.

"What?" Jane snaps, looking up. Darcy has her face pressed against the windshield, her finger pointing straight ahead. Her iPod ear buds are twirled around it, and Jane thinks she can hear the faint sound of Miike Snow filtering loudly through the speakers.

But honestly, at this moment, the growing color of the horizon sky is the thing most holding her attention.

Jane shuts her notebook, watching as the clouds coalesce into something big and gray and menacing, lightning shooting off into the clear summer sky. She thrusts it back into her jacket and nearly falls over herself trying to get to the video camera lying on the floor. As she flicks it open and hits the record button she shouts, "Drive!"

The old, converted army van pulses unsteadily forward under Darcy's tired foot, and Jane nearly knocks over several pieces of equipment in her haste to thrust the camera out of the sun roof and towards the anomaly. And she repeats, like a prayer, "Drive!"

"It is unwise to be in my company right now, brother."

He sits anyway, long legs folded before him on the steps of the banquet hall, his brother's shoulder touching his own. He wants to remark on his brother's foul temper, but the sight of the overturned, golden table and the succulent food smeared across black floor like blood stops him. He licks his lips and says nothing.

"Today was to be my day of triumph!"

His own mood sours at that comment. He peers sideways at the clenched fist, the blonde hair, the narrow, angry blue eyes. When he opens his mouth what comes out surprises him—or perhaps it doesn't. Either way. "It'll come, in time. If it's any consolation, I think you're right. About the Frost Giants, about Laufey, about everything. If they were able to slip past Asgard's defenses once, whose to say they won't try again. Next time with an army."

Never mind who had let the Frost Giants in in the first place. He clasps his fingers before him, resting his hands on his knees. He knows the effect that his words will have, and he knows, as they echo across the hall, why he has said them, but he feels no need to explain. The plan, to him, makes perfect sense.

If Thor is not king for a few more millennia, so much the better for Asgard.

"Exactly!" Thor beats a fist into an open palm, looking frustrated and easier to read than a book.

"There's nothing you can do without defying father." He continues quietly, looking sternly sideways. Thor returns his gaze, a slow smile spreading over his features, and he immediately shakes his head in response. "No. No, no, no, no, I know that look."

"It's the only way to ensure the safety of our borders!"

"Thor, it's madness."

But he knows right then that his brother will go through with it anyway.

And he couldn't be happier.

He wakes up in pieces.

First, his consciousness, swimming through the heavy blackness surrounding him, a faint light, rainbow and odd, just visible through his closed eyelids.

Then, his feet. He moves them carefully, one and then the other, assessing, silently, the damage done to his legs.

Then, his hands, long, graceful fingers stretching forward one by one until he is rolling them along a tough, gritty surface.

He opens his eyes.

There is a veritable tornado around him, swirling to the beat of a heavy storm that layers the night sky. The ground beneath him is sand, or dirt, or dead grass, or some mixture thereof, and he digs the heels of his hands into it and pushes himself up. A wave of dizziness hits him directly between the eyes and he blanches, shutting them quickly once more and waiting for the world to right. After a moment he tries again, the palms of his hands cutting into invisible rocks as he staggers to his feet.

He manages to stand, struggling a step towards the wall of the storm—then he stumbles forward, knees hitting ground then elbows then hands. He pushes himself back up, feeling like he had one too many sips of ale. Though he is sick he manages to cringe at the thought; his brother was always the one to get roaring drunk at feasts. He had a little more dignity than that—

His brother.

The fight.

He stands a little straighter, looking directly up the funnel-shaped cloud surrounding him. Lightning flashes, and the wind whips his hair over the front of his eyes. He opens his mouth to let out a fury-filled yell—nameless and faceless, it is immediately lost on the wind. He staggers to the side, his mind reeling, his face slick with sweat, his stomach nauseous, and he tries to calm his roaring nerves, for his father will only listen to an appeal to reason. At least, he thinks as the cloud begins to dissipate and he readies his petition to his father, I have not broken any—

The deafening monster barrels through the storm, hits him, and then there is black.

They hit the cool metal of the floor of the observation deck and immediately he feels like falling to his knees from the overwhelming presence in the room. His eyes trace up the steps to where his father stands, Gugnir Spear held loftily in one hand. The powerful lightning running the Bifrost cackles once, twice, and then stops, leaving the room silent except for the heavy breathing of Fandral, supported between Hogun and Volstagg.

"Get him to the healing room." His father snaps into the silence, and the Warriors Three plus one Lady Sif leave the entrance to the Bifrost. He watches as they pass Heimdall, their forms retreating down the Rainbow Bridge, but is startled out of staring by the sharp clack of his father's spear against the smooth floor.

In the silence that follows his gaze travels to his brother. MjoInir hangs loosely from his grasp. His hair is wind-tossed, face alight with his lust for battle.

And Asgard was to be ruled by that?

At last his father speaks, yet Loki still cannot bring himself to meet the man's gaze.

"Thor, Odinson, through your arrogance and stupidity, you have opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and devastation of war..."

"Father—" Loki tries, tries to look like a good brother, only his father roars out, "NAY!" and he stops immediately.

"Who put that idea in your head, boy?" Odin AllFather hisses angrily towards Thor, Gugnir stamping across the floor like a third leg as he approaches his son. Thor looks sideways, but Loki does not return his brother's gaze; his own is fixed near his feet, but he curses his brother's stupidity.

"When I am king I will crush the Jotuns under my foot for the disrespect they showed at my coronation—"

"But you aren't king, yet!" Odin's voice becomes as loud as the waves crashing into nothingness below them and then gets deathly quiet. "Are you?" He continues, "A wise king knows when the best course of action is attack—and when it is not."

"Well," Thor says haughtily, his blue eyes turning up to meet those of Odin, and Loki can sense the anger simmering beneath the surface of his voice, "then you are an old man and a fool!"

"You are a vain, greedy boy!" Odin roars. He stamps back up to the pedestal containing the Bifrost controls and thrusts the spear in the center. Lightning snaps around the room like an angry, captive dog. "You are unworthy of MjoInir, and I take it from you now, in the name of my father, and his father before him!"

Loki looks up at this, and his eyes are wide. Odin's hand reaches before him, grasping for the empty air; only Loki can sense the strings of magic pulling Thor's hammer forcefully from his grasp.

He did not want this.

MjoInir flies into the AllFather's waiting hand; he presses it close to his mouth, as if he is whispering to it a secret. Behind the brothers the gate to the nine realms is opening, a myriad of colors and lights. Loki finds his gaze torn between his father and the hypnotizing glow of the bridge behind him, but then Odin sends the hammer forward with an angry shout and he watches as his brother's most prized and powerful weapon topples into the unknown. Thor stands rigid, his eyes bright, his mouth set in a firm angry line. Loki pulls his head, mouth slightly open, to stare at his father.

"As for you." Loki starts as his father addresses him and only him. "Twisting your brother to your whim, and for what? For what?"

He opens his mouth to respond smoothly but his father forges ahead. "Loki, you must learn to control that silver tongue of yours! I will not have you causing war in Asgard because of some jealous feud—"

"I was not jealous!" He breaks in here. Thor is looking oddly at him, he can sense it. "I will never be jealous of him!" He hisses.

Things are barreling out of control, and so rarely does this happen to him that he is caught off guard, like a physical blow to the chest. He stands raggedly, tiredly in the light of the lightning and looks, mouth slightly agape, at Thor. His brother's thick hands are still open, as if waiting for his hammer to appear suddenly into them. Blue eyes meet green, and then Thor says, "Father, the idea was my own, and I wished to attack Jotunheim long before Loki suggested it—"

Loki cringes. The words hang heavily in the air. Odin looks between his two boys, and there is something sad and weary in his one visible eye.

"Your actions today started a chain that I do not know if I will be able to stop." Odin's voice has grown heavy, continuing on like he never heard Thor. "You follow your brother into unnecessary battle, yet you are the one who pushes him into that battle! You need learn control, Loki Odinson, and until the moment which you do, until the moment which your selfish actions become unselfish, I take from you your power! In the name of my father, and of his father before him, I cast you out!"

"Oh my God!" Jane screeches as she struggles with the steering wheel and Darcy struggles with the break. For a moment after they come to a sudden halt everything is silent except for their thick heavy breathing. Then, as one, Darcy and Erik open their doors and Jane scrambles out after them.

The figure the Pinzgauer hit is lying on his back in the sand. His arms are spread eagle, and she thinks there may be a bloodstain growing on his abdomen, but maybe she's just overreacting—she lurches forward, bending down beside him with worried, concerned eyes. She ignores Darcy behind her ( "Where did he come from?") and pushes a strand of her hair behind her ear, leaning close to the figure's pale face.

"Do me a favor and don't be dead," she breathes out.

The eyes open suddenly and she is left staring straight into ones that are icy, angry, and incredibly green.

"He's alive!" she says, the relief tangible in her voice. She lets out a breath she didn't even know she was holding, though her stomach is still a tight ball of nerves. Darcy's voice sounds behind her again; it sounds muffled, like she's ruffling through her purse or something.

"This is turning out to be one hell of a night."

Jane looks up at the dissipating storm clouds and can't help but agree.