Title borrowed from Camus, "In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

Takes place after TDW, sans the final scene in the Throne room where Thor talks to Odin/Loki.

It was winter, that much was obvious. Blue hazed the tepid air with soft magnificence. Steam, like warmth, was seen hovering over the frozen lake in a ponderous dance.

It would be many weeks until the green would grin on the surface of the earth, and until then, Jane Foster would remain.

She was at her grandmother's lake house, having needed a respite after the events in London, after Thor left. Everyone in her family was dead, and Jane had inherited a meagre sum for the trouble of survival. Except this house. This house was loveliness realised in physical form. It was quaint, it was quiet, it was patient, if a house could be called such. It was her grandmother in an ever-living, material form.

And Jane needed her now...now, when she was at her most vulnerable. Now, when she was most unsure, now, the desperation of the word hidden in the mask of her solitude. She desired no one, not even the thunder god, to console her. She wanted only her grandmother and what her love afforded her.

The floorboards creaked under her weight, however minuscule it was. The place was old, it required attention. But Jane really couldn't be bothered with it yet, she was too inside her head to care.

She had suffered possession of the liquid smoke of the Aether, she had fought for Thor, she had nearly died countless times. She should, theoretically, be dead.

But here she was, living, breathing, sipping her tea, in no small part because of Loki.

Loki. What did she think about the mischief maker? He had saved her life. Yet he was, she reminded herself, a villain. A bad guy. A man whose relentless pursuit of power stained any redeeming quality or action he might have or give. It didn't matter, anyway. He was dead.

Dead...like her parents. Dead, like her grandmother. Dead, like the tree outside of the window in the kitchen of the cottage.

Jesus Jane, get ahold of yourself.

She curled herself on the ragged sofa and held her cup close to her face, placing the side of it to her nose for warmth.

She began to think about Thor, and what he was doing. If he would ever give her another thought. Did she care?

A bit, if she was honest. She cared because she had been affectionate. He had worried about her. He had showed her his home, had thought her interesting.

Eh, thought Jane. She should probably just leave it. Too much trouble, really. And she was tired...so very tired of it all.

She had become a master of inheriting impossible situations.

And quaint lakeside homes, she reminded herself.

The sun, in its midwinter rose, began its descent down the horizon. It bade her to bed, for the emotional maze she found herself in was more than a touch distressing.

She got up and went to the bathroom. Jane turned the light on, went to the sink to wash her face. The cold water was a jolt to her warm hands, and she winced. She splashed her face, rubbed it dry, and looked in the mirror.

A face, not her own, was looking back.

She gasped, jumped backwards, but in the blink of an eye, it was gone.

She shook her head. Great. She was going crazy, too.

Jane hurried to bed, but the face she had beheld remained burned to her brain...

Pale, black hair, sharp features...blue eyes...

There was no denying it.

That face belonged to Loki.

Sordidly and scathingly Jane awoke the next morning. Her dreams were peppered with many vile images: of Svartalfheim, of elves with lost eyes, of Thor being pummeled, of red sky, of hunger...

And of a man in green and black who always stood over her in her quaking fear.

Her bones creaked with stiff knots in muscles that screamed from the cold. She felt old in her confinement.

Jane decided not to brush her teeth in the bathroom, she would go downstairs and brush at the sink in the kitchen.

Coffee on. Music playing...the Beatles? She put on "Across the Universe," and listened to Lennon wail about rain and change and paper cups.

She was about eight, and her parents had taken her here in the dead of winter with her grandmother. They got snowed in, so dad lit a fire, they made s'mores, and he taught her how to dance while mom and grandma clapped the beat.

A tear trickled down her face at the memory.

All of her life Jane felt like she was chasing something. Chasing her first crush (Joe something...he couldn't be bothered with her), chasing her dead parents (they died when she was ten in a car wreck, and she imagined the manner of their deaths to be symbolic of them always moving away from her), chasing her education (though she was very, very bright, Jane's field was traditionally male dominated, and she suffered many chastising remarks that nearly broke her), chasing the stars, chasing knowledge, Thor...

All of this wandering added to the weight of her fatigue.

She decided to go outside. Take a walk.

On went her boots. On her heavy coat, her hat and gloves.

She went outside.

The air was wet, and pressed against her like a suffocating hug. The evergreens were drooping with the snow that had fallen in the midnight hours, and her boots crunched the floor as though shards of glass lay at her feet. Her breath hung suspended in the air before her, specter- like and surreal.

She made her way to the lake, it had leafless trees surrounding its expanse, and they reminded Jane of some sort of towering creature with arms splayed in a grotesque embrace. She stopped at the edge. She looked down into the ice of the tub, and her brow furrowed.

A soft green light could be seen under the surface. She squinted in effort to inspect the anomaly better...she knelt down...no...definitely green. She looked around to see if the frozen lake had other places where this strange light could be seen, but no. It appeared to be just in this particular spot.

And it churned slightly, as though it was immune to its solid encasement.

Fascinating.

Jane touched the surface directly above the light. She took off a glove. It felt a bit warmer than its identical neighboring ice patch.

Energy. Energy creates warmth.

She removed the other glove and sank her fingers into the water...the ice a bit scattered.

Something pulled at her, and she lost her wits. She fell completely into the freezing water.

Choking and flailing, Jane panicked. She couldn't see, couldn't breathe, her mind desperately trying to find an answer to her predicament.

Nothing...there was nothing but cold black nothingness. She wanted this...she wanted to surrender to it...it would be so easy...

But then she was being thrust upward. Something was pushing her to the surface...and she emerged, breaking the surface of the water in a heave and the air stung and she choked up the murky lake water.

She crawled onto the bank, grasping the solid surface wet with snow and ice.

Jane collapsed, coughing and retching, delirious from her scare.

She laid there, eyes streaming, and sat up. She delicately stood, and went cautiously to the edge once more. The light seemed darker, closer to the surface.

Get back to the house, Jane.

She turned, and saw a splash of scarlet staining the snow. Blood. It was blood. Her head whipped around her. An animal, probably. The blood didn't look fresh...maybe it had been attacked overnight by a predator.

She staggered her way back and entered the house.

Jane was in her bathtub half an hour later, in an attempt to warm her body from the icy depths of her tumble.

"Jane! Don't stand so close, dear! You'll fall!" Her mother's voice rang out in the summer scene.

"I'm fine, mom!"

It was two weeks before the accident. The dreadful day that had sealed her fate.

There was a scream, and Jane fell into the cool water of the lake she had just fallen into. Luckily, she could swim, but her mom came running over, and dragged her out anyway.

"Jane! You take too many risks! That water is thick. You could've gotten caught on something, and wouldn't have been able to get out."

Jane smiled at her mom. "You worry too much. Everything is gonna be alright!"

She stood from her bath, and wrapped a towel around her.

She was getting dressed when she heard a noise downstairs. Odd, that. The entire area was always so quiet...the snow muffled any sound.

She put on some clothes...hesitated...and took a poker from the fireplace in the bedroom.

She crept slowly, quite forgetting the floorboard's protest, and went into the kitchen.

Nothing.

But when she went to the sitting room, a fire blazed.