Song of the Chapter - To Pluto's Moon, by My Brightest Diamond
The first thing Jane noticed when she awoke was the pain - a clawed, fanged beast that crouched heavy on her chest and punished her for every breath she drew.
The second was that she was alone.
She lay in a bed with crisp white sheets that were stiff beneath her numbed limbs and fingertips, tangled in a skein of tubes and wires. Soft beeps from the monitors scattered about wove over the subtle hum of a fan moving air through the vents. Sleep gummed her eyes as she blinked around at the grey concrete room. Empty, soulless, and devoid of character. There was no window, no TV to break the flat monotony - only an assortment of medical equipment and a single unoccupied chair pushed against the wall. Even the air smelled wrong for a hospital, without a hint of the acrid tang of disinfectant to be found. She'd spent countless days crammed inside hospital rooms, watching her mother wither away. She was practically an expert on them by now. Wherever she was now was like no institution she'd ever seen before.
A weak cough splintered what small comfort she found inside the haze she knew was drug-fueled, raking her sternum and throat with what felt like splintered glass. She tried to remember what had brought her to this place, but it was a blur. There had been Loki. And Thor. SHIELD. An argument, and a fight. And then...her memory tattered, like a moth-eaten tapestry. Fragments were clear, here and there - agony in her chest, as bitingly cold as an icicle. The sticky wet feeling of her own blood, her name being called. Flying over the desert, the ground speeding below her so fast she had felt like a shooting star.
A quiet click drew her eyes to the door as it swung open, and she nearly wept with relief when Erik Selvig strode through the doorway. Exhaustion pulled heavily at his face and shoulders, bruised the skin beneath his eyes and washed him in an awful pallor under the cold fluorescent lights - but it was a familiar face, and she could have wept with relief. The wrapped sandwich he carried in one hand fell from his slack fingers as he gaped at her blinking face.
"Jane!" he cried as he covered the room in a handful of great strides, food abandoned on the floor. A grin split his face, and he gingerly clasped her hand between both of his own. "You're awake! You've had us all so worried."
She tried for an answer, but her parched throat rebelled at the idea of speech. Weakly she rolled her head and spied a pitcher of water on the small table beside her bed. Erik followed her gaze and reached for the container, pouring a bit of water into a small cup and dropping a straw into it. "Of course you're thirsty, I should have realized." He held the straw to her lips and she drank greedily, the crisp water washing away some of the stinging in her throat.
"W-where are we?" she finally managed after falling back against the pillow, exhausted from even that small effort.
"In the infirmary, at SHIELD Central in New York City," Erik replied as he dragged the chair over to her bedside and sat with a sigh. "After you were injured, Tony Stark managed to fly you to the hospital in Las Cruces in a matter of minutes. Probably the only thing that saved your life. They told me that arrow had nicked your aorta. If it had been a bullet you would have died. Fortunately the arrow stayed in place and helped to keep the bleeding to a minimum. Still..." Erik's face grew somber, and he patted her hand again, mindful of the needle taped to the back of it. "It's a miracle you survived. The nurse here told me only one in ten people survive an injury like that. After you were stabilized they transported you from Las Cruces to here."
She'd been shot? With an arrow? Who even used arrows anymore? Carefully she tilted her view down and took thorough stock of her injuries. A huge square of gauze was taped to her chest, sticking up above the neckline of the flimsy gown she wore. The sheer size of the bandage nearly made her blanch.
Erik hadn't been lying. It really did seem she'd barely escaped death.
"And where are Loki and Thor?" she wondered.
Erik's mouth hardened into an unforgiving line. "Gone back to Asgard we assume, thank God. Jane, I knew nothing good would ever come from being involved with them. I never should have let you go back after Thor that first time." His head shook from side to side sadly. "Your father would have my head if he knew what had happened to you because of them."
She opened her mouth, tried to summon the energy to protest his vehemence, but there seemed to be some vast chasm between her mind and her tongue. Fatigue tugged at her eyelids, each blink lasting longer and longer. The door swung open again, and a scrub-clad nurse was all business as she entered the room.
"Dr. Selvig, would you excuse us?" she asked, the picture of civility but her firm tone brooked no argument. "If Dr. Foster is awake I should check her IV and medications, and change her dressing."
The urge to argue lingered about his eyes, but with a tight nod Erik stood and relinquished her hand. "I'll be back later. Maybe bring you some books or something?"
She tried her best for a smile at that. "Thank you."
As the door closed behind him, a warmer look thawed the nurse's severe features. "He's a sweet man," she told Jane as she bustled about, checking the readouts on a few of the monitors. "Been here every day since you arrived. I think he would have slept here if we hadn't kicked him out."
She turned kind brown eyes on Jane and fussed with the feed valve on her IV. "How are you feeling? Is your pain manageable? If you need more medication, you can press this button here." Her hands hovered over the neckline of Jane's gown. "Let's take a look at that incision."
Jane winced as the tape peeled gently from her skin, painful despite the nurse's best effort. Beneath was a long angry slash of red skin that traced right down the center of her chest, skin puckered slightly around the metal staples that held the edges of the wound together. She licked her dry lips and wry humor curved her mouth. "I look like Frankenstein's monster," she sighed.
Sympathy wrinkled the nurse's brow. "There's no way around it, you'll have quite the scar."
She laid a fresh set of bandages over it and soon had Jane set back to rights, just as Jane was finding it nearly impossible to keep her eyes open any longer. She drifted off into restless, drugged dreams before the nurse had even left the room.
Her rest was interrupted some time later by a wrinkled, wizened psychiatrist who shook her awake long enough to ask her what seemed like a thousand questions. She knew he was trying to see if she had truly been influenced in some way by Loki, but she was too tired and doped to muster any real guile. After an eternity he finally left, a deep scowl on his face, and she drifted back into blessed unconsciousness.
A sharp rap on her door pulled her from sleep, and she struggled with the buttons that would angle the bed higher when Tony Stark walked in. His dark eyes ran over her wan appearance, and she wanted to shrink into the pillows and hide forever. She probably hadn't bathed in days, and she was certain it had been longer than that since her hair had seen a brush.
"Well, if it isn't Lazarus herself," he quipped, and made for the chair that sat nearby. "Glad to see you've rejoined the living, Dr. Foster."
She smiled despite herself and ducked her head shyly, tucking her hair back from her face with her free hand. "Thanks to you, I hear."
He waved a hand dismissively. "You're just lucky I was there. Better than an ambulance."
The good humor of the moment dried up as a man in a long leather duster swept into the room, an eyepatch slung over a head that shone dark and hairless in the brightly lit room. His good eye was flinty and uncompromising as he swept his gaze over the two of them. "Stark," he greeted, and then jerked his head towards the door he'd just entered. "Can you give us a minute please? I need to speak to Dr. Foster."
Tony just slouched deeper into the seat and crossed his arms over his chest, arching his brows impudently. The two men stared at each other in silence for a few moments, tension gelling the air, until with a huff of irritation the visitor turned his back on the flamboyant genius. He drew up beside the bed and fixed Jane with a baleful eye, tapping a sheaf of paper against his thigh absently. There was a time, not so long ago, that she might have faltered beneath that foreboding glare - but she'd stared down a god and somehow lived to tell the tale. This man's ire couldn't hold a candle to that, and so she calmly returned his gaze.
"Dr. Foster, I'm Nick Fury. Executive director of SHIELD," he said at last, his flat voice giving nothing away. "You seem to be recovering."
"Yes, thanks to all of you," she replied. Her lip kept trying to drag itself between her teeth, and she forced herself to relax. She desperately wanted to ask after Thor and Loki, find out exactly what had happened to the two Asgardians, but she had a suspicion that Nick Fury was the last person she should try to pump for information.
He shifted the papers he held from one hand to the other. "I've just finished reading your psychiatric evaluation, Dr. Foster. The results were...inconclusive, at best."
Tony Stark's attention bounced between the two of them at that, and Jane frowned. Did they still believe that Loki had put her under some sort of thrall? Of course they would assume the worst about him - not that she could blame them. Even she was hard pressed to explain the differences she'd seen between the devil that had fallen into her lap and the man she'd come to know. She couldn't trust her tongue anymore, and so she remained silent.
Fury seemed disappointed by her lack of response, and he cut a sharp glance down at her when he continued. "That leaves me in a bit of an awkward situation, Dr. Foster. You see, I can't keep supporting a project when I don't know for sure what your motivation is. But I'm not about to haul you up on charges if I can't say for certain that you were acting independently." He dragged a thoughtful hand across the trim goatee that graced his chin. "We're at a bit of an impasse here, it would seem."
It took Jane a few tries to find her voice, lost amidst the shoals of apprehension. "So what happens now?"
"Now, Dr. Foster?" Fury stepped closer to the bed, and his features grew sharp as knives as he pierced her with the intensity of his gaze. "You recover under the watchful eye of SHIELD. It's only fair, seeing as how you were wounded by an agent of ours. And after that? I send you home."
"Just like that?" She arched her brows. It seemed too easy.
Fury clasped his hands behind his back and bent at the waist, his attention suddenly menacing as his face filled her vision. "Just like that, Dr. Foster. Only...you're no longer on SHIELD payroll. I'm turning control of your research back over to Culver University, and washing my hands of you. You can keep the lab, and the equipment in it now, but that's the end of our connection." She did flinch then, at the thinly veiled threat in his tone. "And you can bet your ass that we willbe watching you. You won't even so much as breathe without my people knowing."
He straightened abruptly, and all hint of malice fell from his posture as he did. "That's all the warning I'm going to give you, Dr. Foster. I hope, for your sake, that this is the last time we meet." Without waiting for a response he nodded a farewell at Tony Stark and stalked out of the room, leaving Jane gaping in his wake.
"That's Fury for you. Subtle as a ton of bricks," Tony piped up after a few moments, and Jane started. She'd nearly forgotten he was even there.
Her fingers worried at the pristine sheets, the cotton dry and cool beneath her damp palms. She'd been so foolish, to think that she could tweak the nose of SHIELD and never be caught. As if some scientist in the sticks could outsmart a vast government agency. Her eyes burned with frustration, but she pasted a brave smile on her face when she lifted her head. "I can't blame him for being cautious. He has a job to do, after all."
Tony scooted to the edge of the seat and draped his forearms over his knees, his dark eyes unreadable. "I'm not so sure he's doing it."
His doubt drew Jane from her musing. "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that crap runs downhill. And we seem to be directly downhill of Asgard. Every time something's gone wrong there lately it we've had to deal with the fallout on Earth. Thor said he needed to take Loki back, and he made it seem very urgent, but he never said why." Tony rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, as if he could relieve the tension that wrinkled his brow. "I don't like it, not after what happened in New York. We need to be finding answers, not sticking our head in the sand."
Jane frowned. "It's not like we can just...call and ask."
"No. Someone's going to have to march in there and demand the truth." Tony pinned her with a considering look before standing, and in his hands was a thin glossy tablet she hadn't noticed before. "And I think I know who."
Her foggy brain sifted through his words, sure that there was something vital she was missing in his insinuations, but it didn't become clear until Tony offered the tablet to her. "Wait...me?" she asked incredulously. "You want me to go to Asgard? But...how...why?"
"It's all here." He jiggled the device in his hand and a smirk tilted his mouth. "Your work. I copied everything, not just the stuff you were planning on sharing with me. I'm sure SHIELD's wiped all your files by now - your lab is probably crawling with agents. But with this, I don't think you're far from a breakthrough of your own even without Loki's help. And I'm still willing to build your prototype."
Her stomach fell at that. She hadn't even considered that SHIELD would pull a repeat of their last stunt, but she realized now that Fury had only said she could keep her equipment. He'd never said anything about her data. "I thought you were sure that I was crazy, or hypnotized."
He didn't respond, just drew the tablet back and ran his fingers over the surface in a complex dance, absorbed by whatever was displayed on its screen. "Jarvis - that's my computer - runs a constant video feed through my Iron Man suit. After what happened at your lab the other day, something kept bothering me about the whole situation...so I queued up the footage from that evening and watched it again."
He moved to her shoulder and held the screen at arm's length, in her field of view, so she could see the screen as easily as he. There was the familiar landscape of her laboratory, whitewashed by the floodlights of SHIELD's transport plane, all seen from the bird's-eye view of Iron Man. With queasy anticipation she saw herself twisting in the arms of the red-haired agent, amidst a cacophony of noise and lights she barely remembered. Silver flashing as Thor leapt across the fight, as easily as she might hop a curb. The low whine and white streaks of Iron Man's energy pulses, careening over the battle like meteors falling. Arrows buzzing through the air in an angry swarm. And throughout it all, the violent green of Loki's swirling cloak and crackling bolts as he wove himself and his magic nimbly about the fight. It was a beautiful, horrific dance - one that only ended when she saw herself crumpling to the desert floor, the black fletching that pierced her chest an exclamation point on her collapse. Pain flared in her ribs all over again just watching it.
Her heart lurched at the echoed sound of her name, rending from two throats in near symmetry. It stopped entirely at the sight of Loki blinking into existence at her side, clutching her limp form with white-knuckled desperation. Numbly she listened as the tinny recording of Tony's voice threatened Loki.
"Stop there." His finger tapped the screen as those ten seconds ticked by, freezing the tableau and shaking Jane free of the film's grip. She blinked eyes that had gone wide and dry as Tony zoomed in on the frame, dominated by Thor's features twisted with anguish, his shoulders drooping in defeat. But it was Loki's face in the foreground that hit her like a punch to the stomach - his broken, wild visage that crumpled her own brow in sympathy. Her hand reached toward the screen before she could check it, a motion that didn't pass unnoticed by Tony's sharp eyes.
He set the tablet, still paused, on the bed-sheets beside her and fixed her with a knowing look. "I don't know what's going on with you three. But I'm starting to think you're the only person on Earth who might get a straight answer from them."
"But...Fury-" she began weakly.
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Forget Fury. He doesn't pull my string. This is strictly between you and me, Jane." Tony turned from the bed and reached for the knob, rapping a couple times in the open doorway thoughtfully as he looked back at her. "Think about it. Let me know." And with the click of a latching door he was gone.
Her room had gone silent except for the soft whisper of fans as Jane turned Tony's offer over in her mind. Reason and rationale told her to forget all of this, to listen to Erik. Go back to Puente Antiguo or Culver University and forget that she'd ever brushed up against gods. She was no superhero or soldier. She was lucky to know which end of a knife was the pointy one in the kitchen. At the end of the day she was just a scientist - a brilliant one, but cannon fodder nonetheless. Jane was well aware that she'd never amount to anything on a battlefield.
But...answers?
Loki's shattered expression haunted her as her hand crept over the cool plastic of the tablet, almost against her will, fingers curling about its edges as she dragged it into her lap and began tapping the screen intently.
She'd always been good at finding those. And she was starting to think Tony wasn't the only person that needed some.
Loki had finally dragged himself from the cold embrace of the floor with a hand up from Thor, scraped too thin and hollow to even muster concern over the spectacle they'd just treated half of Odin's court to. The All-father's commanding voice barked orders that cleared everyone from the throne room in mere moments, scurrying over themselves towards the exits. Thor's arm twined beneath his and he was dragging the both of them through a curtained doorway in the back of the throne room that led to a small council chamber.
Loki fell heavily into a padded chair that sat amongst a handful of its fellows around a small table, all carved and upholstered with an understated elegance. Dimly he recognized this room, one where Odin often met with his advisors on breaks between sessions. Thor sat across from him, dirt and blood bedraggling his armor and face. Loki's own fingers were sticky with drying blood, a scarlet that screamed up at him as he aligned them carefully atop the table. Apathy had seized his limbs and clasped his mind in fetters - he shouldn't be here amongst these people again, he should be halfway across the universe by now - but he couldn't work up the energy to care.
Odin and Frigga filed somberly in behind them, and although his mother had choked back her sobs by the time she entered the room her eyes glistened anew as she gazed at Loki's hands. Her lips were white with worry and distress had pressed dark thumbprints beneath her brows. She looked so much older to him than she had before. Just how long had he been gone from Asgard? The past seemed a fluid thing to him now, filled with shoals and riptides, and as he tried to grip it memory dribbled through his fingers like water.
Or was it like blood? Hot and accusing, staining his skin with his sins. He blinked at the sound of his name, pulled his eyes from the lurid sight of his crimson palms to find them all staring. How many times had they called him?
"My sons," Odin rumbled from his seat at the head of the table. 'What has happened?"
The automatic denial of parentage parted his lips, but the words were hampered by his narrowed throat. He swallowed against the lump, and the scent of copper that hung in the air slid down with the motion to churn his belly. He was no stranger to battle, to the greasy cling of effluvia afterwards. So why did the sight of his gory hands turn his stomach so? When had red suddenly become anathema to him?
Words he'd spoken in what seemed like another lifetime echoed down the hallways of recollection to mock him. There was red in his ledger, so much red...and now Jane's was the brightest of all.
His eyes flickered up towards Thor, watched him drag a grimy hand over the drawn lines of his face. "I had to choose," Thor said at last, and the broken wreck of his voice fell like shards of glass on Loki's ears.
"Oh," came the queen's soft exclamation of sympathy, and her hand crept over Thor's forearm to squeeze it gently - but it was Loki's eyes she held.
"I am sorry," Odin said heavily. "They...can be so terribly fragile." In his eye was an ancient sadness that had Loki wondering just how many mortals Odin had watched pass him by in the river of time.
"She's not dead." He was startled when the words slipped from his mouth, but the very act of speaking them fanned the tiny spark of hope he hadn't realized he'd been cupping. The mortals were clever, a quality he was beginning to realize he'd underestimated. Perhaps there was some way they might have saved her.
Perhaps this stain wasn't permanent.
Resignation dulled Thor's bright eyes. "Loki, we both saw-"
The clatter of his chair tipping backwards as he shot up broke Thor's speech, a sudden blaze of fury turning his apathy to ash. "She is not dead!" Loki shouted, and crimson smudged the table when his hands slammed down atop it for emphasis, the crack of his strike echoing through a room gone silent. Thor blinked up at him, wary realization dawning on his face.
Odin and Frigga exchanged a weighted glance as Loki panted, scrambling for composure. He hated this uncontrollable beast he'd become, one that snarled and gnashed its teeth at the slightest provocation. Every day he seemed less and less the serpent he'd so long admired, and more the roaring lion he loathed. With stiff wooden motions he righted his chair and sat again.
"Why am I here?" he asked dully. "I want to hear it from you, All-father."
Odin drew a deep breath, then sighed. "The frost giants have a new queen, Skadi. She has sent us demands that we produce you, so that you may face punishment for the destruction of Jotunheim. Otherwise, she marches to battle."
The heart in his chest was surely dead and cold. He refused to believe it would shatter beneath this weight. "And so you wish to make an example of me. Slit my throat to save your own?"
"Oh, Loki." The sorrow in Odin's voice was a knife that slid gracefully beneath his armor. "You would believe this of me? Of us?"
He was lost amongst the whorls of the table's grain, unable to look up. "I know not what to believe anymore. Least of all from you."
"I will not stand for it." Thor's faded air had strengthened, determination squaring his jaw. "I have not chosen Loki just to lose him again. Let Skadi come, let her dash her army against the might of Asgard. You caution me against seeking war, Father, but this time it seeks us. We shall be his shield."
Odin only shook his head sadly. "I fear that Asgard will not be the first place she looks. All the realms know of what has happened on Midgard, that Loki was seen there last. Even if we let it be known he is here in Asgard, she will suspect deceit. I believe she is aware of your...fondness for Midgard, Thor. She means to hold it hostage." Odin's fingers curled into a fist atop the table, his knuckles turning white. "Laufey was wily, but this one...she is far cleverer than her predecessor."
The moments stretched out, thin as razor-wire.
"Surely, Odin, there must be some other way," Frigga said at last. "You would not have brought Loki here to face a choice as bleak as that."
The All-father shifted in his seat, and his white head bowed pensively. "There is one, an option that might appease Jotunheim." He lifted his eye to Loki, and the inevitability Loki saw in its blue depths set his heart hammering in his chest. "Dreyri."
Terror cleaved Loki's tongue to the roof of his mouth. It was Thor that flew to his feet this time, his denial explosive. "No, Father! Torture?"
Odin heaved himself upright as well, bracing hands on the tabletop as he leaned into his son's ire. "What other choice does he have? Shall we have him lay his head on the executioner's block? Shall he run for all of eternity, dragging chaos and war in his wake? If his life is too high a price, then his blood will have to suffice. He is not guiltless, Thor."
"I am right here. Do not speak as if I am not," Loki interrupted, a dreadful calm pressing him down in his seat despite the part of him screaming for escape. The snare he'd stepped into on Earth had begun to tighten, the strands of his actions finally woven into the rope that would hang him. He couldn't escape the feeling of deja vu, the realization that he'd seen this all played out before - in black words printed on a page lit by firelight.
Abruptly he stood, choking on the sensation of blundering into fate's web. "I will decide at first light."
Thor's mouth fell open, but his protest was silenced by a sharp gesture from Odin. Frigga was the only one still seated, her anxious gaze bouncing between the three men as they squared off. Slowly she stood and approached Loki, taking his arm in her hands, and the tension drained from the air. He stifled the childish urge to cling to her familiar strength.
"I will take you to your chambers," she murmured, and pulled him unresisting from the room to stumble down hallways and paths his heart hadn't forgotten, even if his hope had.