Jay wakes up to bright sunshine and Thor's pacing. She rolls over in the bed and winces as her head pounds a bit. Too much went on yesterday. Ow, her body. Ow, her brain. After all of the drama in the throne room after the arrival to Asgard, followed by the drama with Steve, Jay went looking for the training rooms. She'd found an old training dummy in the back that looked padded enough and after asking some of the warriors nearby if she could use it, she pounded at it until her knuckles cracked and bled. At first, the warriors had scoffed at her, telling her the training dummy was for kids, but after they watched her beat its face into a pulp, they stayed quiet.

"What are you doing in here?" Jay mumbles to Thor, trying to wake up. He stops his pacing and comes over to her with quick steps, and kneels down in front of the bed, closer and staring into her eyes more intensely than he ever has before.

"You don't have to do this," he says fervently. "You don't have to take the barrier down and let Loki mess with your mind. It's not a good---"

She puts two fingers over his mouth to shush him. "Dude, just woke up," she grumbles and swings herself into a sitting position. "If you think I'm more susceptible to mental coercion since it's morning, then sorry to disappoint. Give me a minute to wake up before you start to try and convince me not to do something I've already set my mind to." Thor smiles sheepishly as she gets up and stretches. Every joint and muscle in her back and shoulders pops and expands as she reached upwards.

"Oh, holy ow, that feels great," she purrs. Thor spots the broken and scabbed skin on her hands and raises an eyebrow at her when she spots him looking. "What?" she says defensively. "The punching dummy needed his face rearranged so I happily obliged."

Thor snorts. "Sure," he says, clearly not believing her.

"True story," she quips and goes behind the changing screen to suit up for the day. While she's behind there Thor tries to think of the best way to talk Jay out of this. He's about to start in on the reasons she should never meet Loki, but her voice beats him to it. "I'm doing this Thor and you can't convince me otherwise," she says, sticking her head around the screen. "Besides," she says as she pulls herself back behind the screen. "It's the best way to figure this whole mystery out."

"It's not that I don't want to know what is going on, Jay," Thor sighs. "I just don't want it to be at the expense of your happiness."

The noise of moving clothing stops behind the screen momentarily and then Jay comes around the other side. Thor doesn't understand the look on her face at first. She looks shy and more vulnerable. "Do....did you really....mean that?"

At first, the question surprises him and he answers without thinking. "Of course I do Jay, why would I say any different?" Then he realizes. She's never really had anyone who cares about her in her life. Happiness and its safe-keeping in her life are new concepts to her. She's never had anyone who puts her needs ahead of their own. She's used to sacrificing her happiness and safety to just survive. He now understands why that upset Rogers so much. Rogers is the type of guy who cares about all of the things that Jay has always had to live without. Happiness, loyalty, and a safe place to call home. Here is why Rogers was so upset when Jay kept putting herself in tough situations. Rogers cares and Jay isn't used to that and her lack of sense of self-preservation scares Rogers.

But Thor understands in part. But unfortunately, only because he knows it's the same with Loki. A shiver of premonition runs through him. Is this how his brother was underneath all the jokes and wit? Was he this broken inside as well, so broken that he didn't care what happened to him? Jay's recklessness takes on a new meaning now.

Jay is looking at him quizzically now and he realizes that he's been staring off into space. She doesn't ask for an explanation though and just accepts it, almost like she knows what he was thinking. Well, maybe she did. She gives him a wink as she passes, on her way out the room and he muses about that for a minute before it hits him that she left the room and he never gave his lecture. Smart girl.

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"Is it ready yet?" The tall, burly man is impatient, something very uncharacteristic for him.

"I ran the last sequence this morning myself," Bradlich says a little bit too proud to be modest.

"Good. We're just missing that one pesky piece that keeps running away."

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Jay knows that today will try her in ways that she's never experienced before. So she decides that instead of stressing about it, she's going to go explore and find a nice quiet spot to dance. She filched Tony's iPod last night when the billionaire was sampling Asgardian liquors and she figures he won't miss it for a couple of hours. He's probably still sleeping last night off.

She wanders outside into the sunlit courtyards and gardens and enjoys the warmth of the sun. Well, maybe not the sun. After all, this is Asgard, not Earth so maybe they have a different sun here. Something to pose to Jane when they go back to Earth. Well, if she goes back to Earth. Who knows what will be revealed today.

But no, she's trying not to think about that crap and relax today. After all, how many humans have ever gotten to see what she's seeing? This place is amazing. In the distance, she spots the rotating tower of curved, golden plates that seem suspended from nothing that she saw when they first came to Asgard. It sits high on a hill towards the edge of the city and looks like the perfect place to go and chill for the day. Looks like a long walk and she's grateful for that. Thor had told her that she would be going to the throne room tonight, just before sunset so she figures she has the rest of the day off.

Her conscious kicks in and tells her she should probably let someone know where she is going. Drat, stupid good girl attitude. Alright, fine, she reasons, just one person though. Who? Who can she rely on? Oddly, the first person who comes to mind is Frigga so Jay thinks that's a good sign and goes to find the queen of Asgard.

Just when she thinks she's desperately lost, she turns a corner and runs straight into Frigga. Literally. Jay goes sprawling backwards. She decides that coordination and a lack of clumsiness would be better superpowers than reading minds. The queen managed to stay on her feet but Jay went sprawling onto her ass and her pride is most certainly bruised now. She's sputtering apologies as she struggles up but Frigga just puts up one hand with a smile.

"Think nothing of it," she tells Jay warmly. "Now, where were you off to in such a rush?"

Jay explains her whole plan to Frigga and the queen agrees that it sounds like a sage plan. "In fact," she says, I'll even take you to the platform. I know the fastest way."

"Thanks," Jay says shyly. Wow, a queen is escorting her. They make small talk on the way to the rotating golden discs which Frigga tells her are called the Circlets of Sigyn, after the Vanir woman who visited Asgard in the olden days from the world of Vanaheim. Jay drinks it all in, the stories of famous warriors and women from the Nine Realms as they head out of the main citadel.

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"This is a fool's errand," Barton bites out as he paces across the room. It's just him, Natasha and Rogers in the room, Tony being too hung over to come and discuss today's plan, Thor being off somewhere with Odin and Banner touring the medical facilities. "We can't allow her to go through with this."

"You really think you can stop that girl?" Natasha asks incredulously. "Have you seen what she's becoming? She's grown a serious backbone and she basically told us to piss off yesterday in front of Odin."

"She's still the youngest of all of us and the newest," Barton argues. "Seniority has got to count for something. And even if it didn't, she's still technically under the jurisdiction of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Oh, and she's going to take well to you telling her that S.H.I.E.L.D. now controls her life?" Natasha retorts scathingly. "She seems pretty opposed to people telling her what to do if you haven't noticed."

"She doesn't trust Fury or S.H.I.E.L.D.," Rogers supplies. "I'm not even sure she really trusts us," he mutters to himself but Barton and Natasha both hear.

"Well, she does trust Thor, that much is certain," Barton says. "Do you think we should tell him to persuade her otherwise?"

"Knowing Thor, he probably already has tried," Rogers says ruefully.

"Yes, but Thor has a softer spot when it comes to issues dealing with Loki, you should know that," Natasha puts in.

"True, but have you seen Thor and Jay together?" Rogers asks. "He looks after her like he would a little sister."

Natasha's voice is brutally honest. "That's because he sees his brother in her." They are all quiet for a moment.

"So Thor is not an option," Rogers says. "Who else could convince her?"

"Why not yourself?" Barton asks. Natasha sighs in irritation.

"If you hadn't noticed Dr. Oblivious, the Captain and Jay aren't exactly on the friendliest of grounds right now," Natasha says with an eye roll that says she's amazed how blind Barton can be.

"Well, Rogers and Thor are out," Barton says, slightly peeved that Natasha is treating him like a first year rookie. "Tony likes her but she wouldn't take anything he said seriously with good reason. She and Banner aren't exactly close although they respect each other. If we asked Banner to talk to her, they'd probably have a nice long conversation about particle physics or some other science baloney and forget to even talk about the matter at hand. That leaves me or Natasha."

"It can't come from me," Natasha says. "She'll see it as a girl to girl talk and dismiss me."

"Well, looks like you drew the short straw, Barton," Rogers says but Clint is shaking his head.

"She'll think I have a personal argument with the Trickster, which I do, and take it as me being prejudiced," Barton argues. "As much as Jay is suspicious by nature, she also tries not to judge people and she's already willing to give Loki more of a chance than any of the rest of us except for Thor."

Natasha considers. "It's true that she doesn't harbor him the grudges that we do. But she is naïve, don't forget that. She's never met the bastard and yet she's willing to give him a chance."

"I'm not sure it's naïveté," Rogers says in a halting manner that catches Barton's and Natasha's attention. "It's more like she sees something she can relate to and to be honest, I can understand that. Our group, for all of its chemical imbalances, is made of people who are considered "good" by society. We have a history of standing up for people that can't stand up for themselves. But in the end, we haven't experienced the amount of pain and abandonment Jay's experienced. She doesn't know who she was, where it all went wrong, or why she was experimented on for the majority of her life. All she knows is that she'd give anything to keep her freedom. She has trouble relating to us because none of us know what it's like to live on the fringes like that. She may not have ever met Loki but she can feel something more towards him because he's lived on the fringes as well."

Silence. Then, "You make a disturbingly good point there Captain." Barton rubs his chin thoughtfully. "What are you proposing this means?"

"It means that instead of treating her like a foundling and someone who could be potentially dangerous, we treat her with respect and convince her she can have a place among us. Start treating her like she could be a potential threat and she very well could become one."

"That's a fine sentiment," Natasha says, "But the fact of the matter is that having the god of lies poking around in her head could very well send her to that place we don't want her to go. I agree with giving her the space she needs to trust us but on this issue, we cannot allow her to go through with this or we risk losing her as an asset."

Steve's voice is low and almost a growl, "Now she's an asset," he says coolly. "You sound like Fury. Tell me, do you know what he was up to?"

Caught slightly off guard by Steve's intensity and the change of topic, Natasha has her mouth open to speak but nothing comes out. Even Barton has turned suspicious eyes toward her. "Something you're not telling us, Nat?" He asks.

As the cold mask returns to Natasha's face, Steve says, "I think we deserve to know how Fury even knew about her, Agent Romanov, and I'm getting the feeling that you know."

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She concentrates on the music, counting in her head to find the beat. One step, flourish, arabesque, reverse lunge, jump. Her body traces the lines on the ground, the old rune marks Frigga had explained when they arrived here. The strong lines of the Viking symbols are interspersed with whirls that remind her of Celtic designs. It makes an elaborate pattern that she tries to follow. She hasn't found the right song yet though and sighs in frustration as her foot slips again and she wobbles off the markings.

As frustrated as she is, she can't deny the magnificence of this place. The platform covers the whole expanse of the rotating disks above her head and more and is laced with markings, old symbols and letters and designs that Jay cannot read. Frigga explained that the markings are part of the old spell that holds the structure above her up, created by Sigyn. Sigyn was a great dancer and a beauty and was offered to Asgard as a potential wife for one of the nobles. But, rather than be wed to a man for a political arrangement, Sigyn challenged the man to a battle of magic. Asgardian magic was different than the magic of Vanaheim and so the Asgardian nobleman thought he could easily win and claim Sigyn as his bride.

However, when the Asgardian had finished his feat of magic, Sigyn strode out onto this very platform and instead of performing magic of the will of the mind, she danced. No Asgardian had ever seen such powerful dancing, liquid movement refined into pure power. At the beginning, the Asgardians all laughed in derision but as the dance progressed and Sigyn challenged the very laws of space and time, it was clear that she would be the master of magic in this duel. When her dance reached its apex, she vanished into the air, leaving behind the marking on the platform. Or so the story went.

Jay loved the story. Frigga told her that over the years, people have tried to recreate the dance performed by the Vanir woman, but no one had ever been able to master the Song of Sigyn. Frigga had left Jay with that thought, almost like a challenge, one Jay had dived in head first after. It's now late afternoon but she still hasn't quite gotten it right. It's said that the woman who masters the Song of Sigyn, can summon the power of the Vanir woman. Jay just likes how Sigyn took her own life into her hands. The dance is a great challenge to take her mind off tonight. What would she do with magical powers anyways? Dealing with this other shit it too much to do anyways.

She sighs. She knows the other Avengers fear what she could become. She hears them talk about it when they think she's not around but she can still hear their thoughts even when they aren't discussing it. She doesn't understand why they think she could abuse her power. It's not like she even wants it. But if they saw her trying to perfect the Song of Sigyn up here, they'd probably get the wrong impression. All she really knows is that no matter how much she wants to trust them, she can't if they don't trust her back.

Then there is the unhappy reminder that Fury has some interest in her as well. She's afraid that what she'll find out tonight will reveal his plans for her and she's so tired of being used. She doesn't want to be a pawn anymore but that doesn't necessarily mean she wants to be a queen. It just means she wants off the chessboard to go live a life that's her own for once. Reading about the world is nice and fine but she's aching to see the world. She knows she has no money but she's willing to work at coffee joints her whole life if it means she can have her own life. The Avengers are her friends even if they want to be leery of her but she does need to know the truth.

Now she's giving herself a headache. She sighs again and returns to the center of the platform. She hasn't found any music on Tony's iPod yet that inspires her to find the steps. She knows Frigga planted the story in her head as a way to encourage Jay to try it to take her mind off tonight and Jay's glad for the excuse to dance. Yet, no matter how hard she tries, she just can't find a melody that matches the way her feet instinctively move. There have been moments where she feels something moving with her, like another soul joining hers as she moves but then the moment fades when the music takes a turn towards the frenetic. Ready to give up, she puts the iPod on the edge of the surface and steps back to the middle.

Slowly, she traces the first spiral with her foot, and then makes three strong, quick movements with her arms to form a rune mark in the air. Her body turns halfway, her arm reaching upwards in an arc and her foot dragging behind on the curved stonework. Some kind of humming fills her brain and she stops and the humming stops. Intrigued, she starts again and the humming buzzes to life in her ears. The faint chords of an aching French horn or cello resonant through her mind as she moves onward and she stops in shock. Maybe it's not about the music at all, she suddenly thinks. When Sigyn performed her dance, she was full of passion and life and she threw herself into an expression of her aching need to be free. There would have been no instruments, no lyrics, just the music inside of her.

Slowly, filled with this new knowledge, Jay steps back to the center in a daze. She is suddenly filled with some kind of strange understanding and she closes her eyes. Instead of forcing the movements and trying to it the markings to a beat, she lets her body and the wonder of this place fill her and tell her what to do. When she takes the first step, the mournful wail of a French horn soars through her soul and she lets everything go.

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Natasha seems nervous, something Rogers has never really seen on her.

"Natasha," Barton says quietly. "We deserve the truth."

Natasha sighs and seems to age before their eyes. Clearly, keeping this secret has been taking its toll. "For the record," she starts, "I never wanted to lie to you all or Jay. But,... there was never the right moment to say it." Here she takes a big breath in. "Fury thinks Jay can expand her ability. That it can be used for interrogations, cognitive reprogramming, force field manipulation, all sorts of projects that could strengthen our intelligence base. To prevent attacks before they happen. But mostly.... Well mind manipulation leads to the ultimate ends of.... Possible mind control."

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Oh, how tedious, Loki thinks as six guards surround him, penning him in front and back in triangular formation. Hardly necessary. It must be time to go meet this mystery girl Thor cares for so much.

The guards march him down the ornate halls with their vaulted ceilings and impressive pillars arching upwards to hold aloft the roof so far above them. They pass the weapons vault and he's almost tempted to grab a dagger or two just for a bit of fun. They pass the archways leading out to the gardens, properly manicured and trimmed precisely. The orderliness chafes at his skin, makes him irritable. He prefers the inexact art of a barren landscape or the wildness of an untamed forest, not these primly delineated walls and trees. He supposes that's probably part of the reason they are now calling him the bringer of chaos.

They pass the doorway that leads to the courtyard, the one with straight canals and fountains that form a square pavilion. A flicker of movement catches his eye and he pauses for a moment to watch the graceful arch of an arm flow into view, connected to the form of a shabby looking little woman. Her movements are not the poised and controlled motions of a choreographed dancer, nor the exacting positions of ballet or another performing art. No, here, he sees raw emotion as her bare feet point and flex and her baggy clothes spin on a sinewy frame. Her feet trace patterns in the ground and a flicker of déjà vu sneaks under his guard.

"Move it!" the guard directly at his back yells and the moment of reverie is broken. In an embarrassed fluster, the girl stops moving and looks over her shoulder and locks eyes with Loki. Sharply focused grey eyes pierce him with a vigorous curiosity and he has to admit he likes the shrewd intelligence he sees there. He gives her his signature smirk before the guards push him out of her line of vision.