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Just as Jane was about to be impaled, at the last possible second, Loki lunged forward and shoved her clear.
Shluck,
The blade punched through his body.
"You..." Jane stared, frozen.
Loki sank slowly to the ground, a faint, relieved smile still on his face.
"Now... I don't owe Thor anymore... Before, I had no choice... Now, I want to be a good man..."
He coughed up a mouthful of blood. His head lolled to the side. He went still.
"Loki..." Jane bit her lip.
She never could have imagined it, that this man who had been her enemy would sacrifice himself to save her.
How was she supposed to face Thor?
Swish,
A figure appeared out of nowhere. Hermione.
She swept her wand in a wide arc. Spells cracked through the air, and the Dark Elves surrounding them dropped where they stood.
"Hermione, you're back!"
Jane ran toward her like a woman who'd just spotted solid ground, then glanced back at Loki's body. Her expression flickered. She started to speak, then stopped.
"He... he did it to save me..."
Her voice caught. She pointed at the corpse and walked Hermione through what had happened, keeping it brief.
Hermione listened, then let out a sigh that managed to sound almost solemn.
"Loki's sacrifice deserves at least a half-day pause to honor him. But the Convergence has already begun, and Malekith is using the Aether to poison other worlds."
"I'm sending you back to Earth now, then going after Malekith."
She opened a portal.
"Goodbye."
Jane looked at Hermione. Then at Loki. Then she stepped through.
She knew she'd be useless here. Better to find Thor, maybe together they could figure something out.
Jane's figure vanished into the portal.
On the ground, "Loki's" corpse twitched. Then, like a man with absolutely no dignity, he rolled over and sat straight up.
Hermione stood with her arms crossed, watching him with a completely flat expression. "That was some of the worst acting I've ever seen. Lucky for you, Jane will believe anything."
Loki conjured a clean set of clothes around himself, looking entirely unapologetic. "Oh, my acting was the problem? Your script was garbage. Would I actually be stupid enough to pull a knife on a dozen Dark Elves?"
"I'd surrender on the spot and show them the way."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Do you have any idea what kind of mage you are? I genuinely don't know where to start with you."
"And 'I want to be a good man,'" she added. "You watched a lot of movies in prison, didn't you."
Loki opened his mouth. Closed it. He had absolutely nothing to say to that.
They stared at each other in silence, the friendship between them hanging by a thread over an open flame.
After a long moment, Hermione spoke. "Alright. Stop sulking. Once this is over, you go back, put on Odin's face, and take the throne."
"Odin doesn't have much time left. Most of his power is tied up suppressing Hela — he won't be able to fight off illusion magic. You still need to work it out with Frigga first, but she'll say yes. She'll do whatever it takes to hold back Ragnarok."
Loki nodded slowly, the humor dropping from his face. "Understood."
Then, quieter: "I still owe you a thank-you. For saving her."
Hermione waved him off. "Don't. This is only the third job we've run together, there are plenty more coming. You're on the clock, so make sure you're worth keeping around."
Loki's eye twitched. "So I'm just labor to you?"
"What else?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. "You want to run the operation?"
Loki:...
He was starting to think prison hadn't been so bad.
...
Earth. Greenwich.
Thor was pacing in front of the observatory like a man with nowhere to put himself, back and forth, back and forth, glancing at the sky every few seconds as if sheer anxiety could summon news from it.
"Damn it, what's taking so long..."
He'd already done what Hermione told him to: passed everything along to S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury had sworn a blue streak about it, then immediately mobilized everything he had. Tony and Steve had both been notified, but they were still too far out. Still on their way.
Then, out of nowhere, a familiar ring of orange light.
Thor's whole body went alert.
Hermione's portal.
Jane stumbled out of it.
"Jane! Are you hurt?!"
He crossed the distance in two strides and caught her by the shoulders.
Her face was drained of color, but her eyes carried that unmistakable look, the look of someone who'd just barely made it out.
"I'm fine. The Aether's been extracted."
Thor exhaled so hard it nearly buckled him. Something enormous and knotted in his chest finally let go.
Then he saw her expression.
She was holding something back. Her eyes kept sliding away from his, and her jaw was tight, like the words behind her teeth cost something to say.
"But..."
Her voice broke on the word. Her eyes went red at the rims.
Thor's stomach dropped. Cold settled into his chest like an anchor.
"But what? Jane. Tell me."
His voice came out rough. Unsteady.
"Loki... Loki is dead."
She finally said it.
"What?!"
The word hit him like a hammer. He stood completely still, staring at her, wide-eyed, like a man who'd heard wrong and needed someone to correct him.
"What did you say? Loki is dead? That's — no. That's impossible."
He shook his head, hard. Once. Twice.
"Hermione was right there. How could she let this happen?!"
Jane shook her head and told him everything. How the Aether's power had been more than anyone expected, strong enough to break Hermione's control. How Malekith had used it to run. How Hermione had gone after him. How Loki had stepped in front of her, taken the Dark Elves' attack, and gone down.
She told it haltingly, in pieces. Like it hurt to let the words out one by one.
Thor listened, and when she finished, he didn't move.
His mind had gone completely quiet.
Loki was dead.
His brother, the one he'd grown up beside, fought beside, fought against, the one he'd never quite known what to do with, was just gone.
He couldn't make it feel real.
"This can't be..."
The words came out barely above a murmur. The grief inside him was a cold, formless thing, too large to name.
But even through it, a small, clear part of him understood: he couldn't blame Hermione. She'd had to choose, and she'd chosen right. Malekith had the Aether. That came first. It had to.
...
Nearby, in the shadows.
"Loki's dead?"
Skye yanked the earpiece out for a second just to make sure it was still working, then looked over at Coulson. "Did I just hear that right?"
The god of mischief. The one who'd torn through New York, led a Chitauri army through a hole in the sky, and personally put a scepter through Coulson's chest, gone, just like that?
Coulson's face had gone very still. He was clearly still catching up with the news. He opened his mouth once. Closed it. Said nothing.
"Wait—"
Skye's brain caught up.
They'd said Hermione was there too. And the Aether had broken free of her control?
She turned the thought over slowly, and something about it didn't sit right.
That night Hermione had disappeared, Skye had spent half the next day looking for her. Coulson had said a plane came and picked her up, and she'd let it go, but she had never fully believed it. A plane. In the middle of the night. Without anyone on the Bus noticing a single thing?
And now she was listening to Thor talk about Hermione like she was someone he knew. Like she was someone who could control things like the Aether.
Like she was one of them.
Skye stared at the earpiece in her hand.
Hermione was a powered person?
And she knew Thor?
➤ Next: Hogwarts Descends — Clash
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