Incalculability

Summary: After the sacking of Asgard, a journey to Svartalfheim goes terribly wrong. But in a bid to exact vengeance, those who think themselves strong learn there are things that are hidden beyond what they can perceive.

Rating: T

Author's notes: Just my own twisted (and ship-induced) AU take on the trailer for Thor: The Dark World. This is probably as anti-canon as it gets. Apart from the fantastic, sassy scene where Jane slaps Loki, I have no idea whether we could come to expect any more interaction between these two, so this is my mind making up for it in a series of short scenes. This was originally meant to be a one-shot, or rather, my way of trying to provide a Loki/Jane spin for the second movie, but it's getting slightly out of hand at the moment. I'm just splitting this into maybe two or three parts.

oOo

The unnatural silence only amplifies the pounding of her heart.

Jane swallows hard as a brightly-lit glass enclosure comes into sight, the only beacon of light in all-encompassing darkness. Only the reassuring presence of Thor by her side gives her the courage she needs to shuffle forward for a closer look.

In the forgotten bowels of Asgard, an emaciated man sits motionless with his back to the wall, his face shielded by a long mane of hair so dark that it seems to repel light.

He is in dire need of a haircut.

Straight on the heels of that inappropriate and ridiculous thought comes hysterical laughter that Jane tries to stifle as she tries to reconcile this helpless man with the one who tried to destroy New York. He's a figure straight out of mythology, now paying his dues, caged and powerless, suffering a form of humiliation that Odin has seen fit to mete out for a disgraced prince of Asgard who had thought himself fit to sit on a throne.

It's a fitting punishment and one that hits at the heart of a megalomaniac's tendencies, or so she reminds herself with indignation and more than a smidgen of fear, because of the destruction he'd wrought on New York and whatever war crimes he'd committed in the name of trickery.

The god by her side takes a step towards the enclosure, his face hard as he faces a brother who refuses to acknowledge him as such. Jane chooses not to follow, hanging back in the shadows that shield her from Loki's sight and perception.

"After all this time, now you come to visit your brother. Why? To mock?"

A contemptuous voice rings out, eloquent and modulated such that it sounds as though he'd spoken directly into her head. For a second, Jane panics and wonders about the strength of Odin's protective magic that fortifies this place. Then she realises that he has merely spoken aloud and with some relief, tries to excuse her skittishness as a typical reaction to meeting a criminal.

The fallen prince finally lifts his head, revealing even from this distance, a pair of unnaturally sharp green eyes that seem to see everything – even the things which are hidden, like her fear. There's fierce, calculating intelligence in them and from where she stands, it's easy to imagine that they are tinged with a measure of madness.

Thor however, wastes no time in getting to the point. "I need your help."

"You must be truly desperate, to come to me for help." Loki simply stands with casual grace, turning his back to them and looks out of the other side of the glass wall.

The silence that ensues is deliberate.

For all that Jane has been told about Loki by Thor, nothing prepares her for the predatory presence that makes her feel as though she's the incarcerated one.

"Loki." Thor's harsh impatience cuts through the thick tension, but does nothing to alleviate the knot anxiety that's building in her gut. "Asgard is overrun."

The mournful note of desperation that enters Thor's voice makes Jane's heart break for the amazing place that the greatest of poets probably can't put words to. As short-lived as her presence has been on Asgard, she has seen sights so strongly imprinted in her memory banks that she knows will not fade until her last breath leaves her mortal body. In this realm where magic and science reside harmoniously in a way that she can never in her lifetime fully understand, it had merely taken her a fraction of a second to accept that Asgard has been and should continue to be a separate world from Midgard.

There had been a growing darkness, an inexplicable spate of disasters that brought Thor back to Earth and straight back to Asgard with her in tow in a move so sudden that all she could do was to simply hold on for the ride.

A part of her is relieved that he hadn't forgotten her. Another part however, cynically wonders if Thor would have even returned had Earth not been threatened.

But what she hadn't known then was that she had been simply savouring the last days of bliss and peace in the Realm Eternal.

Asgard had indeed been overrun, as have Vanaheim and Midgard, she'd learned later on, sacked by a power that has been barely held at bay by Odin's protective spells. The sudden attack of the dark elves of Svartalfheim at the behest of Malekith had come without warning, an efficient, horrifying blitzkrieg that had scattered the elite guard of Asgard and slain many of their finest warriors.

Only the place where Loki was kept – the most forsaken corner of the Realm Eternal that was not even worth mentioning – had been left intact and forgotten.

They needed Loki, as Thor had told her solemnly, an hour after he and the Asgardian soldiers had barely held the fort down. His disgraced brother was, after all, the only one who knew how to travel between realms without the Bifrost and it was the magic he alone wielded that could counter what Malekith planned to unleash.

In response, Jane had only nodded numbly, frozen in shock, after seeing the enormous amount of bloodshed over a short period of time. There wasn't much else that she could have mustered up in an attack that had literally turned over worlds in minutes.

"Have you nothing to say, brother?"

Thor's irate cry brings Jane back to the present. Finally, she sees the god of mischief turn around, his clenched fists the only indication of simmering emotion that is completely lacking on his angular face. But the smile that slowly stretches across Loki's face as his only response to Thor's plea is at best, enigmatic and sinister, and one that Jane cannot read.

But what exactly, had she hoped to achieve by accompanying Thor in that impulsive moment when she insisted on going to Loki's prison with him? A chance to catch a glimpse of the god who'd tried to subjugate Earth from a safe distance, the same way humans caged wild animals in zoos, thinking that an enclosure limited their potential to cause harm? Or had she, in some way, hoped to understand what had driven Loki to commit the misdeeds simply by taking a look at him up close? To set his atrocious deeds within a framework of sorts that made sense to her?

It's only as she's standing here, separated by an innocuous glass panel, that the magnitude of her delusional thoughts hits her.

As though Jane had spoken her thoughts aloud, the trickster snaps his head up a fraction to glare at her, even though Thor has long assured her that Loki's magic is securely bound by the four walls of his enclosure.

"I see you've brought company." Loki takes few steps forward in his glass cage until he's standing in her direct line of sight. "The little mortal," he pauses, his eyes piercing the darkness where she stands, "You would do well to fear me."

Suddenly, Jane's not entirely sure if Odin's all-encompassing magic reaches that far down in this forgotten corner of Asgard. A comforting weight that's Thor's arm falls on her shoulder, an action that reassures her less than she'd hoped. It's ancient, timeless magic that brought her here; it's that selfsame magic she hopes is greater than the caged mage's that will get her out of there.

Safely.

Or would it?

"You touch her and I will kill you." Thor's threatening growl simply makes Loki's smile widen.

"So quick to attribute any treacherous deed to my name," Loki says with a smirk as he moves to stand with his hands behind his back, his dishevelled appearance doing nothing to detract from his commanding stance. "Perhaps I should be flattered by the manner by which you judge the extent of my powers to think that I could even touch your mortal from where I stand."

Jane resists the urge to bolt. The hostile words that Thor and Loki exchange however, give her pause. Their soured relationship had only been a recent development, or at least that was what she'd managed to glean from the little Thor had spoken about Loki.

We grew up together, fought together, laughed together. I would give my powers just to get back the brother that I know and remember.

That was all that he'd said after she'd asked about New York. Left to her own conclusions, all she could piece together was an incomplete tale of two brothers who were once inseparable, torn apart by the younger one's ambition and jealousy.

Or had she gotten it wrong altogether?

"I don't trust you." Thor's proclamation cuts through her musings as she hears the resigned sadness in his voice.

The smirk on Loki's face drops momentarily, replaced by a sudden, hollow expression that flits by so quickly that she nearly misses it. "If you did, you'd be the fool I always took you for."

"As I said, I see no choice but to do so in the matter."

As though a switch is flipped, an unholy light of menacing mischief starts to fill those green, green eyes, making a thrill of exhilarated terror snake up her spine – a perfectly timed reminder that he's dangerous and…insane.

"Excellent. Where do we begin?"