A/N: I think I basically think I made a huge mistake in taking a shortcut some chapters back and it's been difficult since; last chapter especially, I have been tinkering with endlessly and just have NOT been happy with. It's had substantial addition, so do check that out if you haven't. Anyway, that, along with Life, has been why we've had such a long hiatus. Kind of a mess but I want to finish this story and I desperately need to give Loki the kind of ending and closure he deserves (these are dark fucking times, for fiction and otherwise, I will see a sad beautiful space prince get a happy ending if it kills me) so we soldier on. I will probably be editing this chapter pretty extensively because I currently hate it, but if I don't break the stalemate I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at it again. If anyone is still reading, please let me know your thoughts. I've been doing some more minor editing throughout the story as well, hopefully to the better. I'm sorry I'm like this.

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35. Salvation

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Loki's grip clenched at her waist and the fingers which were threaded through her hair at the base of her skull flexed reflexively, as if maybe he were considering snatching her closer rather than letting her go, but then his hands fell away and he subsided against the back of his chair. Jane sat frozen in his lap for a solid ten seconds, staring into his unreadable face, before she turned and put her feet down and slid off his thigh. She deliberately didn't hurry, feeling guilty and certainly over-thinking like a champ, but not wanting anyone present to imagine for one moment that she was ashamed. They had not been caught doing anything actually wrong and Jane was not going to act like it.

She stood up, acutely aware that she looked thoroughly kissed in a way she likely hadn't since some time in her first year at uni. Her lips tingled, the air felt chilly on her flushed skin. The atmosphere felt a little chilly in general, really.

"Do you misunderstand, brother?" Loki asked philosophically, not getting up, his hands hanging limply over the arms of his chair.

Thor scowled at him, his brow furrowed over narrow eyes. "No one is amused, Loki."

"Aren't they? I am."

"Thor, I don't know what he told you yesterday," Jane said quickly, knowing the 'explanation' which smoothed things over definitely made the scene he'd walked in on worse, "but whatever it was, he shouldn't have and-"

But Thor was not listening and had begun stomping forward towards his brother with obvious intent, absolutely murderous fury written in the curling of his fists. Jane gave up diplomacy and jumped into his path, putting a restraining hand on his heaving chest.

"Don't you..." was all she managed before Thor seized her by the shoulders and slightly shook her back and forth for emphasis as he shouted at her.

"Do you still not heed, Jane Foster? Your kindness does you credit, but has pity so blinded you that-"

Jane wanted to kick him somewhere soft and only barely resisted the impulse, trying instead to squirm out of his hold. "Pity again! I'm going to start hating that word! What do you space snobs not get about…!"

Thor rattled her shoulders harder, drawing her towards him as he leaned down even further into her face, going on and steam rolling her interruption without seeming to hear it at all. "Has it so consumed your judgement? Have I not tried to warn you, to tell you? Even if he feels guilt, even if he must respect your intellect, he will always use you for his private purposes. You are a barb which is directed at me, sharpened by his abuse of your generosity. Nothing can yet be greater than his pride and I am the eternal thorn in it- am I not, brother? The truth which will always out your lies."

Thor was looking across the top of her head now, presumably at Loki who must have stood up. She'd be proud of him for not having yet escalated the situation if she weren't afraid it was taking longer because he was planning something worse than throwing a punch, but she didn't wait for whatever idiocy was going to happen next. She pushed Thor's chest with her palms as hard as she could, grunting with frustration and whacking his armour when he didn't even notice.

"Is that what you think of him?" She smacked the breast plate again, demanding his attention. "Hey! for real, is that what you think of your brother?"

The glare turned on her, softened from a promise of violence to a mere petulant indignation, but his teeth were still clenched and his brow was still stormy and Jane could suddenly see his father in him so clearly that it was startling. The broad curve of his jaw, the brief length of his nose and its blunt tip, even the icy bright blue of his eyes- paler and less varied than Loki's, without grey or flecks of dark- and it gave her the most profound flash of insight.

Putting these youthful mirrors for Odin next to Loki's longer, more angular face, his Grecian profile and the razor sharp jut of his chin, she knew how clearly he must have suddenly seen it when the secret was out. How stark the difference must have always been, how obvious the explanation for his blatant failure to belong must have seemed. She knew with total certainty how stupid he had felt, how instantly he would have internalised all fault for being fooled even as he lashed out with blame. She knew he'd probably heard whispers and taunts since boyhood, terrible ones which in the end had actually fallen short of reality.

She stabbed at Thor's breastplate with her index finger right as he started to open his mouth. "How dare you come in here and tell me I need to know the truth about him when I have obviously paid more attention to him in less than two years than any of you have in God only knows how long. Grow up! What pride? Who has any pride? You arrogant prick."

The brothers both stared at her in total silence. Thor was so shocked the anger had completely dropped off his face, but she could still see the rigid lines of tension through his back and neck.

"If it's any consolation, brother," Loki said at painful length, his tone conversational, "she was just as firm in correcting me when I said so."

Thor made a noise of disgust. "Jesting, Loki?"

"Quite serious." He did seem serious, even sober, about more than just Jane's intolerance for being told what her motivations were.

"He's not wrong," Jane said, because he wasn't, but also trying to send out a feeler for what Loki was building towards. He had that fidgety air about him which meant he was going to admit to something.

Thor ignored her and kept an unfriendly gaze levelled at Loki over her head. "Why do you persist in this? I have tried to apologise, I have taken your prevarications and lies in good faith even when my instincts warned me off- there are those who would call me fool for even listening. Amends can never be made while you have a dagger in my heart, while you favour your wounds and tear off their dressings. This revenge of yours is of a piece with your madness. Mortals are not playthings."

Jane felt her eyes bug out at bit at the hypocrisy of that weighty pronouncement.

Loki shook his head when she turned to look at him, an apologetic little smile just touching his lips before the neutral line reappeared. Almost a sheepish smile, if that didn't undercut the gravity of it. "Certainly not any more than anyone else is, no. I wonder, Thor, if you'd care to know what I have learnt about mortals in my time on Earth?"

"That they are not mere pawns? Have you learnt that?" Thor sounded mocking, confident, and she was deeply annoyed by the dismissive cast of his expression. As if he'd really fully internalised that himself. Jane didn't think so.

"Indeed they are not, and neither is their world a training yard for spoilt princes." Loki was calm and this businesslike directness seemed to brush aside Thor's veil of arrogance like a troublesome mosquito. His voice was penetrating, unprevaricating. "Yet Father saw fit to make it one, for you. Stripped of your powers, granted, so your capacity for lasting damage was somewhat limited. Perhaps not limited enough, one might argue… considering."

"Father was trying to teach me something," Thor snapped back after grinding his jaw and crossing his arms. "Something which I had grown too cocksure to see any other way."

Loki nodded, tugging lightly at the middle of his lower lip between his index finger and thumb, pretending to be very deep in thought though Jane could tell he already knew exactly what he was going to say. "And was it such a heavy punishment- to be mortal?"

"Yes, it..." Thor trailed off, suspicious. "No, not punishment. To be banished was the punishment. He took the hammer and my title to show me I was not worthy to carry them."

"And to be mortal was to be humbled, so you would feel the consequences of being banished. And if this lesson has taken such thrilling effect with you, has worked so beautifully, why has Father not imposed this miraculously efficient instruction on me?" Loki was playing nonchalant, poking the bear, but Jane could read the uneasiness in his body language and knew he was driving at something deeper. Trying to tell his brother something difficult, not just to provoke him.

She wondered if that was the first question he'd had when the judgement came down. Why hadn't he been banished if Odin didn't see fit to kill him? If he were really still thought of as a son, why had he not been treated as the son was treated?

Thor was smug now, not caught out at all. He spread his hands expansively, inviting Loki to see. "The reason is simple, so simple perhaps you have overlooked it in your love of tangled webs. Father would never tell you if you did not know. They are none of his: your gifts, your title, your birthright, they are not of his line and you are none of his subjects. He cannot take it. Your magic is not of Asgard or her blood, he has no power over you."

Wherever Loki had intended the conversation to go, it wasn't here. He paled and blinked, his slender fingers twitching as he worried at his hands. She moved instinctively towards him, feeling helpless to do anything to comfort him, but he held her off with a frown and tugged at the edge of her robe until she was behind the line of his shoulder.

"No power over me," Loki finally said, his voice drawn and weary. It had a deep, reedy tone which told her a lot about his emotional state. "What a cutting wit you sometimes have, brother."

Jane reached for him again, her hand hovering at his sleeve, knowing his blank expression was hiding devastation. "Sweetheart, it's-"

Thor snorted at the endearment. "Do you not realise what a keen observer he is, how precisely he can corner a character? When we were boys, he was a perfect mimic. Do you know, Jane Foster, that my brother explained it all very sensibly to me? How your passionate desire to know more of magic and the stars was all that was needed to create a place for him at your side- you wanted nothing else from him and there was no cause to sway you. How he allowed you to believe he was trusting you blindly so you would trust him in turn, how he relied upon your pity and your soft mortal heart has been so consumed with it that you mistake it for something more."

Jane sighed and contemplated a nap. Just a few thousand years. In a cave somewhere.

Thor pressed on eagerly, seeming to think he was breaking through to her, "And, of course it is true and it worked, you are so quick to see the best in others, but you'll realise now… you realise he does not care for you, that it was all merely an advantage, and you see, you are not heartbroken."

"Whatever Loki feels about me," Jane started, not knowing how many more times she could give a speech in defence of knowing her own mind before she actually lost it.

"Whatever I feel?" Loki interjected, looking terribly offended.

She let her lecturing finger droop towards her side, flushed and vulnerable. He'd never said… and she was already wounded. No matter what Darcy had told her or what she wanted to believe, she wouldn't presume on anything. Especially not in front of Thor.

Loki blinked at her a moment, with his tired eyes and messy curls, his pale skin luminous in the warm light of the brazier against his dark hair and clothes- like a chiaroscuro painting. Like a Caravaggio angel. He was a vision and she'd never seen him seem so steady, never seen such a gentle inward-turned reproach on his face.

"The thought has occurred to me many times, Jane Foster," he said softly, "that surely you must know how I love you. Surely I have been… obvious. But I suppose none should understand better than I how little such a sentiment can be taken for granted. It has been remiss of me to never tell you."

She felt like she was swallowing hair and her eyes burned. The world fuzzed out into a haze and nothing existed outside this instant, this terrifying unprecedented sensation. Nothing existed but his contrite gaze, his brow quirked up in apology.

"There is always so much lost time in a life, even one as long as ours, and I should not waste a moment of yours with equivocations. Don't mistake that I do love you. I shall love you until the World's Tree withers, after every star falls. Forever."

A knot loosened in her chest and the confession hit her like a full body tackle. She covered her mouth and was unable to suppress a tiny squeak as she battled to swallow sobs.

Loki's smile was infinitely tender and his hand described an arc alongside her face, the backs of his fingers lightly brushing her forehead and disturbing the fine hairs above her ear so that she shivered. "Oh best beloved, I am sorry to have denied you the words. I had thought it a mercy you would appreciate until… until this interminable night and its ceaseless holocaust of my most cherished defences."

She waved her hand, the other one still clapped over her mouth as if she could hold in the tears. His eyes sparkled as a grin slowly broke across face to see her speechless.

"More words." Thor's voice was like a bucket of cold water. "Who can believe them, now? Your last lie was a great deal more convincing."

Loki seemed unperturbed by this, though the deep breath he drew as he turned his gaze from Jane was slightly shaky with emotion. "I am sorry to you, too, brother. For many things. Particularly, at the moment, I am sorry for misleading you with little parts of the truth. It hasn't been the first time, I'm sure you know. And I am most heartily sorry to have caused you grief in the matter of your concern for Jane's welfare. It is the matter closest to my own heart."

Thor looked completely incredulous. "What is your game now? You've already turned her against me."

"No one's turned me against you," Jane said sharply, recovering herself. "I don't want to pit any part of your family against any other part."

"This seems a hollow saying under the circumstances."

"I never wanted to hurt you, Thor, and I still don't, but I'm going to be honest."

"And what is honesty? Falling into his plans and allowing yourself to be the tip of the spear for a chance to keep his knowledge and power at your side? I would never have believed it of you, Jane, but perhaps I have misjudged you after all. Perhaps my clever brother didn't have such a task before him in swinging you to his purposes after all?"

That hurt and seeing the cold expression on his face hurt more. She wouldn't have thought someone who seemed so open and straightforward when she first met him could wound her so insidiously, could know exactly what to say to get under her skin. The real meat of the family drama made more and more sense the longer she saw them in their natural environment and she was beginning to develop a strong conviction about what she was going to do next.

"Thor, I'm here with Loki because I love him. It really has nothing to do with you."

If she'd set off a bomb she couldn't have had more impact on the atmosphere. In the oppressive silence which followed, she could swear she could hear dust falling on the scrolls and books. Loki was looking at her with the kind of intensity she'd only seen on his face when he was doing magic. There was no smell of petrichor, just a subtle scent of smoke and paper, and she knew it wasn't the will of the universe he was trying to fathom- it was her. Having his full attention had always frightened her a tiny bit even after she'd known him a long time, but she welcomed it, loved the thrill of knowing she'd engaged the complete focus of that vast intellect. Heady to think she was one of the few things he couldn't figure out.

"Did you want him to banish you?" Thor suddenly asked, his voice rough. She hadn't noticed what he was doing, hadn't noticed his shifting mood. He seemed to be bargaining. "Did you hope for it?"

Loki immediately picked up the dropped thread of his point as if their original argument had never been interrupted. "Do you think he would have? Do you suppose your malady and mine were one and the same?"

Thor squinted at his brother, his eyes tracked over to Jane and then back.

Jane waited, wondering if she should contribute to this speculation. She had her own thoughts on Odin.

"What was said behind those doors, what did he tell you?"

Loki ignored the question. "It was not entirely different, but it was not the same. Jane has been telling me it was not. I think you have never doubted your place in life, brother, never for an instant. And I think our father wanted you to- to prevent you from taking your birthright for granted." He paused and swallowed. "Odin said… he said it was true I was not born with the right to his love, as I had feared, nor was I born with the right to his throne or kingdom. Odin said..."

She lay her hand on his arm and he covered it with his own. His eyes crinkled at the corners slightly, but he did not look at her. She rubbed his wrist bone with her thumb in gentle circles. "What did he say, sweetheart?"

"Odin said that he knew it was his love I sought and not his throne. He said he knew I was the most loyal of Asgard's sons and to banish me would be the gravest injustice. He said I could not learn from being denied and he would not deny me."

Thor's brow wrinkled in doubt and he crossed his meaty arms over his chest in clear discontent. "Is it loyalty to plan and abet the admittance of enemies into Asgard's bosom? To endanger our father's life?"

Loki flashed a pained smile which reminded her of when she had first known him and made her realise how much he had changed towards her without appearing to change at all. "I offered the same objection, brother."

"Gotta admit, it ultimately was probably for the best," Jane muttered.

"My father thought so, also." Loki sounded like he might be able to laugh about this one day, maybe in a few millennia, but Thor didn't seem to see any humour in it.

Jane felt herself frowning fiercely at the floor, toying with the necklace Frigga had given her. These people had really done a number on their children in her book. She couldn't understand why Loki seemed so much more balanced than he had only yesterday, couldn't imagine hearing all that bullshit from his dad really made him feel any better. Any more acceptable, any more loved.

"But if you have no right to his duty as your father, he's got no right to your loyalty. I mean, was that his argument? He decided to pick you up and take you in, he signed up to raise you. You're his kid because he wanted you to be- you never had a choice any more than any kid does." It occurred to Jane with a sinking sense of being out of her depth in this drama that it might very well be Odin's fault that Loki's biological mother wasn't around. She might have wanted him, she might just have been killed in the battle. You don't abandon a baby to die in a temple, do you? Her grip on his wrist was tightening and she felt Loki's index finger start to slide back and forth across her skin in a soothing caress. She hoped he hadn't guessed the direction of her thoughts. Just once, let him not be able to read her mind.

"No natural right," Loki said, very quietly. "I wasn't born his son, but he chose that I should become a son. He said… he admitted he never entirely abandoned his plans. For my future. My utility. There was always the possibility I would earn my keep."

The brothers made eye contact and it lingered a long time. Thor's steely expression cracked slightly and he looked down in shame.

"I understood my place. He could not tell me I was mistaken. My mistake was in thinking I had right to something better, something equal."

"Loki, no," Jane objected in distress, reaching up to touch his jaw and turn his face to hers. "I keep trying to tell you..."

He raised his hand to her head, his fingers curled around the base of her skull, and she leaned into it, comforted. "And I have been listening, best beloved. I have been listening." He kissed her chastely on the forehead and slipped out of her arms, putting just enough distance between them to not be awkward in front of Thor.

"Odin said his plans had become a distant dream when I still toddled. He said his love was not my birthright, but the right of having been myself. The fruit of my labour, as it were."

"He did not tell you that you earned a place in your family when you were baby." Jane was appalled, doubly so because no one else seemed to be appalled by this.

"I'm afraid..." Loki titled his head at her, as if to say 'what can you do?' and her heart ached for him. She could have saved a lot of breath telling him love wasn't something you worked for if his parents didn't apparently spend his whole life giving him that impression. Although, if not for this, she would never have known him. It was a thought which sent ice lancing through her heart and made her want to clutch him tight, but she'd still have spared him this awful conviction that he was unworthy even if it meant she'd never meet him. She would spare anyone thinking love was transactional.

Thor's arms had loosened and finally fell down to his sides. "Brother, I… I realised after… after, that you were always afraid and I thought… I thought- how could you be? It was the thing I most struggled to forgive, that you could prize my word so little. How could you doubt my esteem?"

Loki shrank back slightly as Thor came closer, his arm lifting instinctively to shield Jane and tuck her behind him, but Thor only put a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"I had learnt to my cost how greatly I took for granted not only my power, but my friends. I was humbled on earth. It took further lessons for me to begin to see how I had wronged you. But I came to you chastened, with contrite heart, and you lied to me. You pretended to be at your worst, using Jane against me and without care for her."

Shrugging off Thor's hand, Loki sighed. "Did I? Or did you assume that instantly once you knew I'd been with her this whole time? Did you not refuse to listen when I said over and over that Jane was too fierce and clever for any such trick?"

Thor frowned.

"I do not blame you for it in my case, only hers. I deserved the assumption."

"I don't know that you really-" she broke in, sensitive to him chiding himself, but Loki shook his head at her.

"Jane, you are charity itself and I am eternally grateful, but you know it was justified." He smiled at her briefly, then turned back to Thor with a grimace. "When I told you that Jane pitied me and it was curiosity only on her side… it was not a lie. I had really thought so. I expected at any moment she would realise she no longer needed me, that her guilt would pass when she saw how little I was worthy of her concern, how misplaced such guilt must be. I wanted to avoid soiling her chance to resume relations with the person she had been seeking- the one for whom I was a means to reunion. I remained convinced she would prefer your company once it was again available."

He was the most impossible man. Her face must have been broadcasting the thought because he bowed his head over her hand and kissed her knuckles.

"I have been informed this was not the case and will not be no matter on how many occasions the choice arises," Loki announced with genuinely impressive understatement. He lost the perfect deadpan right at the end, his mouth tugging upwards on the left side as he fought back a smile. "Nor was it ever merely a mutually beneficial business arrangement in her eyes."

"Maybe you're not so up on diplomacy after all if you ever thought it was." Jane smirked at him. "Or did you deal with all your dad's barons and foreign dignitaries or whatever that way?"

He blushed and obviously did not enjoy that line of teasing. "Jane," he admonished.

"I love you," she shot back, sing-song, enjoying the way his blush deepened and his face scrunched up. The freedom of saying it and meaning it and really knowing how those words were supposed to feel was like a flock of songbirds in her chest. She felt weightless and terrified and it was wonderful. Jane didn't know how long exactly she'd been bottling up this increasingly serious pressure cooker of emotion, but it felt like eternity.

Thor was studying them when she remembered he was there, the set of his lips into a slightly parted little 'o' of surprise and the distant sadness in his eyes drew her up short.

"Brother, I… I wish I had looked more outside myself." Thor seemed shaken. "I wish I had seen myself more clearly and realised everything I was given was not anything I was owed."

Loki froze, shocked.

"Father… even Mother… they set us apart. Our friends set you apart. Until this moment I have never understood what it was to be the shadow. To see the sun shine on another face and not mine." Thor clenched his hands, but not in anger, and his jaw flexed. "To be humbled is different than to be unwanted. I see now… how different your malady was."

Loki's fine eyebrows pinched towards each other and his eyes were glassy with genuine pain, but there was a hardness about his mouth. Compassion and bitter satisfaction were, incongruously, mixed in his complex expression.

"I'm sorry, Thor. Truly I am," he finally said.

"As am I." Thor exhaled heavily, then straightened his shoulders as if bracing himself to face the world as a new man all over again. "I have not understood you, brother, and I should like to."

Loki's face softened. "Some of it was not for you to know… some of it was. Perhaps one day soon I shall understand myself and can enlighten you."

"Did Father apologise?" Thor smiled, a bit ruefully, as if he knew it was a silly question.

"Have the waters stopped flowing in Asgard?" Loki asked sardonically in a tone which made clear this was the 'have pigs flown? Has Hell frozen over?' equivalent for space royalty.

"I think he really is sorry and he knows how bad he fucked up, though he'd probably pop out his other eye before he actually says the words," Jane said flatly.

Loki looked her over affectionately, almost proudly. "You knew that last evening, didn't you, Jane?"

"Well, yeah."

"'Yeah'," he echoed, amused. The word sounded funny coming from him. "It has taken me longer to accept there are things he will not say."

She ran her hand up his arm and over his shoulder. "You know it's not your fault? None of his decisions are your fault."

"I begin to, with an enormous amount of help, I do begin to," he said, reaching across his chest to cover her hand again. The heat of his palm seemed to flow through her whole body and concentrate in her heart, the feeling making her bold.

"You know what might help?"

"I do," Thor said, too loudly, shattering the moment. "If either of you wonders why I came searching for you?"