[Gifs by & co-written with  tzar-of-torture, & cover by IvvyKy]

Jane woke, blinking away the grit in her eyes. A tall shadow sat at the end of the bed, posture rigid as he tilted his head, listening for something beyond her hearing. She clutched the emerald pendant at her chest, relieved when it pulsed faintly.

“Something’s happened,” murmurd a dry, familiar baritone. Loki glanced up at the bulkhead of the cabin, his patrician features drawn in consternation.

She sat up, instinctively pulling the threadbare blanket up to her chin. It was a habit from childhood, when she believed a layer of fabric and batting would protect her from the imaginary monsters in her closet. She’s since learned just how very real monsters were.

A dozen questions lodged in her throat, tangled with a thread of fear. Had they been found? Would they have to pack what little belongings they had and abandon the dilapidated submarine that had served as their refuge for so long? She didn’t want to run, not again.

“What is it?” she asked, drawing near to the man—no, demigod—who had become her unlikely ally in this neverending apocalypse.

He was silent for a beat before answering. “Something's different.”

She rubbed at the chills prickling her skin. Different. That word had come to mean dangerous.

It had been months or years - she was not sure which - since she had stood in that odd courtroom, accused of the baffling crime of building a successful Einstein-Rosen bridge device “too early.” The gavel banged, tried and convicted before Jane could form a single argument in her defense. The sentence was carried out in the next breath when one of the TVA agents jabbed her with a pruning stick.

She woke to a world in a constant state of collapse, a strange man hovering over her with a halo of dark hair framing his handsome face.

He gave her a triumphant smile. “I knew they’d send one of you eventually.” He held out a hand to her. “You had better come with me if you want to live, Jane Foster.”

She ignored his proffered hand, eyeing him with suspicion. “How do you know my name?”

He let out a soft laugh. “I’ll gladly explain everything, however-” he glanced over his shoulder at the angry clouds billowing behind him. Was that purple lightning? “We have more pressing matters at the moment. Namely, survival.”

A head emerged from the storm, a gigantic skull made out of obsidian smoke with smoldering red eyes and chomping fangs. Jane took the man’s hand and scrambled after him to safety.

She used to try to keep track of the passage of time, tried to count hours and days, but it was a place beyond time. A purgatory for outcasts like her, like him, to scrounge a meager living or succumb to their grisly warden, Alioth.

Jane shook off the memories. “Different how?” she asked Loki. “Is it another one?”

When an event or pruning was sent to the Void, Alioth often made short work of the hapless variants who would arrive. But a Loki? A Loki nearly always survived. And the more Lokis, the more treacherous the place became. Most were a combination of rage and chaos, starving for power. Factions of them fought each other for dominance over their prison.

She asked her Loki once why he never joined their deadly game. He is, after all, cut from the same cloth - cunning and mercurial. He sneered in derision, said his ambitions weren’t so pathetically pedestrian. I plan to escape this wasteland, not rule it. That’s why I have you. She suspected there was more he left unsaid, but didn’t push him. Because he got annoyingly broody when she did.

“I’m not certain,” he answered her question, rising from the bed. As he did, his Asgardian armor rippled over his bare chest in a flash of green light.

Jane climbed off the mattress. “I’m going with you.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she leveled him with a flat look. The truth was that she felt safer with him than waiting behind, hoping that he wouldn't be caught by one of the more bloodthirsty versions of himself. “You can’t stop me. You know what happened last time you tried.”

“Oh, indeed,” he agreed with a quiet chuckle. “It is how we ended up in this predicament.”

He drew a fingertip over the small mound in her stomach. She twined her fingers with his, and his expression became a conflict of emotions. Briefly, he looked younger, the hardened veneer -  forged by centuries of anger, jealousy, and vengeance - slipping away to reveal a broken boy who had been given an unexpected miracle. A miracle he believed he didn’t deserve but desperately wanted, all the same.

In the next beat, the awe, the fear and hope vanished from his pale gaze, and he wore again the mask of a volatile trickster tiptoeing at the edge of madness. Sometimes she wished he would drop the facade, give her more than a glimpse of the complicated being that hid beneath. But the prospect scared her, too. He’s told her who he is, what he’s done. He painted the portrait of a villain in graphic detail - and it’s an image she could easily believe after her harrowing run-ins with the other versions of him.

And yet, he had never been a villain with her. Even when they stood toe-to-toe, screaming at each other. Even when she let her fist fly after he confessed to stealing her beloved mentor’s mind during his invasion of New York. He only rubbed his jaw, huffed a laugh.

I like you, Jane Foster.

He sighed, took a step back from her and flicked a wrist in her direction to conjure armor of her own - gear to match his, complete with a set of knives at her side. The pendant she wore now embedded in her breastplate.

Tapping the glittering jewel, he muttered, “So you don’t forget to which Loki you belong to.”

Jane rolled her eyes. One time she was nearly fooled by the wrong Loki - the variant who considers himself the “president.” Once. The gemstone would only glow for the fallen prince in front of her. Fortunately, most of the other Lokis look nothing like him.

“I don’t belong to anyone,” she replied automatically in the old dance between them, but the words were belied by the unconscious touch of her hand to her growing middle.

He didn’t miss the motion and rose a brow as if to say, “Liar.” His fingers curled around her shoulders, and he fixed her with a look that teetered on the verge of being earnest. “Now, Jane Foster, you will stay close to me and not wander off.”

For a heartbeat, she had the irrational urge to stick her tongue out at him. Her nerves were making her giddy. She couldn’t remember the last time he had warned her like this. Not since combat practice became a part of their daily routine.

He was afraid, and that absolutely terrified her.

But she swallowed back the anxiety bubbling in her stomach and set her jaw. “Are we going or what?”

The corner of his mouth ticked upward. “Reckless mortal,” he murmured. “My reckless mortal.” And then his lips were on hers.

He always kissed her as if she was the only thing that could slake his unending thirst, as if he’d never have the chance to drink her in again. It set her body alight with electricity—with power. Too soon, he pulled back, head tilting again toward the bulkhead.

“We must hurry.” The urgency in his tone sent another wave of chills skittering down Jane’s back.

Their boots echoed off the deck as they raced toward the hatch. Loki climbed out first, dagger in one hand in case one or more of his counterparts lay in wait on the other side. When it was clear, he reached back to help her through the hole, though he knew she didn’t need it.

Outside, the wind whipped through the barren landscape, carrying the thunderous bellows of Alioth in its wake. The skies were an infinite lifeless grey beyond the perpetual storm. Loki headed for the nearest crest overlooking the valley where most pruned events arrive - the feasting ground for the cloud-monster. Loki crouched down, gesturing for her to do the same. He magicked himself a pair of binoculars. She had to nudge him before he swiftly created another pair for her.

Her gaze was drawn to a flash of verdant light. A city was rising from the ground, silver and gold, though it shone dully. At the center was an aged Loki, the one who wore a ridiculous costume made out of a leotard and tights. He was raising his arms high in the sky, laughing maniacally as Alioth opened its gargantuan maw in a booming roar.

“Is he trying to kill himself?” Jane whispered. She had never come across a Loki who didn’t have an exaggerated sense of self-preservation, but maybe the eternal monotony of the Void had finally gotten to this one.

Her Loki grasped her chin, turning her gaze to the right. “Look.”

Farther down the valley was one of his doppelgangers holding a woman’s hand - another Loki? - as together they threw seidr at the cloud-monster. Alioth consumed old Loki and turned on the pair, but its crimson suddenly winked out, bursting into a brilliant green. A shockwave sent some of the black fog outward, blanketing the Void with dusk. There was a pathway through the storm in front of the pair, though from their angle, Jane couldn’t see what lay beyond.

Her Loki rose, shock rounding his eyes. “They’ve done it. They’ve subdued the creature.”

A revelation exploded in Jane’s mind and she dropped the binoculars. “We have to get to the lab! Right now!” Without a backward glance, she shot off in the direction of the decaying warehouse where they’d hidden a makeshift Einstein-Rosen bridge generator.

Loki rescued her for this purpose - so she could build the way out for him, for both of them. It took an inordinate amount of time to scavenge or jury-rig the necessary parts, all while ducking the other Lokis or bands of cannibals. The first and only test had drawn the eye of Alioth, and it was only her Loki’s magic that had saved them from being consumed. They’d spent an eternity trying to come up with a way to distract or defeat their lethal warden, and Jane wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.

Loki strode past her on long legs, grabbing her hand as he did. Elation swelled alongside the fear in her chest, and she almost laughed. They were going to do it. They were getting out of this horrible hell. After that… She didn’t know. She didn’t care. Freedom was on the horizon.

And so was President Loki.

Jane slid to a stop, air congealing in her lungs. He was pacing in front of the warehouse, looking for a way in. Aside from the tattered suit and golden horns, he was a near perfect replica of the man beside her, chiseled features and dark hair curling at his shoulders. But the eyes, those were different. Devoid of light.

Her Loki squeezed her hand. “Run,” he commanded in a low voice. “Save yourself and the child.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she returned, reaching for one of her daggers.

Loki shook his head with a brittle laugh. “Do you want to know what my nexus event was?”

She frowned at him. “Now?” He wanted to tell her this now? When he had spent the last several months - years even - refusing to give her that tidbit?

His gaze turned soft, watery in the corners. “It was you, Jane,” he said. “On the hills of Svartalfheim, I chose you over vengeance, over power and domination.” His face hardened. “But you were meant for Thor, and the only role allotted to a Loki is a self-serving foe. And so I shall play on.”

The full magnitude of his confession was difficult for Jane to grasp - she had never experienced the event he referenced. She’d been removed from the timeline before Odin cast Thor to Earth for his insolence.

“Screw that. Screw the TVA,” she hissed, her voice a little shrill. She was not about to go on the lam alone and pregnant with a half-human, half-frost-giant baby. “We’re in this together, for better or worse.”

The president had stopped pacing. He’d finally seen them, and though he cradled one arm to his chest - was he missing a hand? a blade glinted in his other hand, his mouth stretching into a wide, anticipatory smile.

“Are you finished having an existential crisis now?” Jane said, waving a dagger toward the despicable man that stood between them and liberation. “Can we take care of him and get off this intergalactic landfill already?”

Her Loki grinned that beautiful, feral grin. “As my lady commands.” Hand in hers, they charged at their enemy.

President Loki didn’t stand a chance.