Hi everyone! Happy Thorsday eve (considering it's officially Wednesday here in the US Midwest).
First of all, thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! I had a great day, ate tons of chocolate cashews, shopped at J. Crew and generally loved life.
Again, my reviewers are stellar human beings. You guys comment on how surprised you are for the fast updates, when really it's all of you who make them possible! So cheers!
Like last time: shorter(ish) chapter, but stuff happens. Enjoy!
"Thor... Thor, hey..."
Jane's face appeared before his opening eyes. Sometimes when Thor looked upon her he could not believe he was looking at a mortal. Jane Foster was stars and moon and sun in a body so small, so perfect. Her head hovered so close to his; he wanted to reach out and pull it in, comfort her, feel her…
"He turned blue."
"What?" Thor was off the couch in a second, striding over to his prone brother.
"Oh yes, Jane Foster," said Loki quietly, his dark-haired head still turned inward toward the back of the couch. "Please do immediately tell that dolt about my mortifying outburst."
"Jane was right to tell me," said Thor defensively. "You could have been dying."
"Because you cared ever so much about my mortality when you let me drop off the Bifrost into oblivion-"
"It was your decision to let go and we all suffered for it!" Thor roared.
"I think," said Jane, "I'll leave you two… alone for a bit." She adjusted the bag of ice on Loki's chest and walked out to the van, leaving Thor fuming next to the couch.
"I cannot believe you would snap at her like that, and after all the aid she's given you!"
"I would have been perfectly content," growled Loki, "to return to Asgard. For some absurd reason the both of you determined that my thoroughly injured body would be better off in your incapable hands."
"You do not know everything there is to know about Jane, Loki. She has been a great help."
"Relatively speaking, yes," said the injured demigod, wrapping his arms tighter about himself beneath the ice bags, as though talking was painful.
"Then you have nothing to complain about."
"Besides the myriad forms of agony wracking my body, about which I can do nothing."
"Not for long," said Thor, his spirits already lifting at the opportunity to impress his brother. "Look here, brother." He pulled a small gold disc from the folds of his armor.
Loki turned his head from the back of the couch, wincing. "I'm looking."
"It is a coin," said Thor, employing his best descriptive skills, "I found in that chair's cushions, imprinted with a Midgardian lady."
Loki sighed and dipped his eyes downward. "A Sacajawea dollar."
"Well, yes," said Thor, surprised at the Jotun's knowledge. "I suppose it is. How did you come to know that?"
Loki grinned, almost imperceptibly. "If you spent half the time in the Asgardian libraries that you did making eyes at Sif across the feast table, you would know a fair amount about Earth currency as well."
Thor bristled at the comment. "But what do you care for Midgardian currency? Or Midgard at all? It was you who tried to conquer it–"
"You cannot aim to rule any people you do not know," snapped Loki. "Regardless of how beneath you they may be."
"So you care about human currency and customs, but not whether you murder any of them on your path to ruling them–"
Loki's eyes flashed and whipped he head up in Thor's direction. "Oh," he spat, "you think yourself such a capable ruler. Such a virtuous king. The white knight, treading the path of the righteous, kissing babes on their ruddy foreheads and assisting the elderly in carting their shabby wares to their ramshackle cottages. Fighting for good because that is what is right. Sentimental placations mean nothing, nothing without knowledge. When the Chitauri were not mercilessly torturing me I was hiding, studying Midgard, reaching out to survey the planet with whatever magical capabilities I possessed. I learnt of Midgard's geography, its populations and cultures. I discovered its most beautiful locations and persons, and its gravest weaknesses: that which brings pleasure to the most humans and that which keeps the most awake, tossing in their fitful slumbers. I grasped hope, fear, wealth, poverty, emotion, love – yes, love. I could have sought out Jane Foster and bent her to my will without so much as moving a muscle. I could have forced her emotional and physical desires, hooked them towards myself and away from your sorry mug as revenge for the crown your pure birthright stole from me. Why did I not do that? What had I to lose? Only your good graces, which, shockingly enough, proved extremely valuable to me after my unlikely downfall in that hideous Stark Tower. But alas," he growled, his voice dripping with venom, "I relied on your aid only to discover that not only were you unable to acquire adequate medical care, but my attempts to wrest Jane's affections from you would have been moot considering she had forgotten about you enough to commit herself to a drooling, wimpish mortal rather than pine over your big blundering-"
Thor let out a bellow louder than a wild boar's and raised the back of his hand over Loki's face. "If you say one more word," he boomed, "I swear to you I shall break your jaw."
Loki's eyes went wide. He cocked an eyebrow. He made his face into the most obnoxious, condescending, smug facade he possibly could.
But he did not utter a single sound.
"Good," said Thor. "It is my turn to speak, brother. You owe me that much."
Loki shifted, grimaced, making himself marginally more comfortable. Thor knelt down at the edge of the couch.
"When you let go on the Bifrost, you broke the heart of an entire nation. Do not jeer at it brother, I do not aim to flatter you. Regardless of your actions against Midgardian and Asgardian peace, no one thought you evil. None of us blamed you for your anger; instead, we lamented the path you had chosen by letting go - a path we were certain could lead only to death. Our friends were beside themselves. The All-Father was bedridden once more. The people wore mourning garments from sunrise to sunset for days. And our mother-" Thor cleared his throat, trying to fight tears. They rolled down his cheeks regardless. "Frigga... she wept, Loki. She wept harder than I have... than I have ever seen another being weep. You may say... what you wish about Odin, about our companions, about myself... But Frigga was and is your mother. She cared for you... raised you... loved you. She was utterly inconsolable when you fell. She could not eat, could not sleep, often refused to speak even to her husband. She suffered from nightmares, Loki, about your torture at the hands of the Chitauri. She could see it all happen to you when she closed her eyes, such was the intensity with which she grieved for you. And you returned her love, her suffering, by appearing on Midgard and wreaking havoc on its citizens. She thought you must have been under the Chitauri's total control, must have been cursed, possessed... but no..."
Thor could control his tears no longer; they fell unbound onto the ice packs covering Loki's broken body. When he lifted his head to look at his brother, Loki's head was turned away, his eyes tightly shut, his eyebrows drawn together.
Thor evened his breathing, unfolded his hand and pressed the gold coin into Loki's palm. He closed the Jotun's hand around the warm metal.
"You most likely know already," said Thor, his breath hitching with the remnants of a sob, "that young Midgardian magicians begin their craft by toying with coins, by vanishing and reappearing them. This... 'Sacajawea dollar,' as you so name it, is my way of telling you, from the bottom of my heart, that Asgard will receive you back with open arms when you are ready to be forgiven. The All-Father is not blind, nor is he daft; you and I both know full well he has been watching us here, in this place, and judging your actions and your words. Use the coin, brother, in regaining your magical strength. Let it be a vessel for you to begin to work some sort of good, for yourself and for me and for Jane. It will be tedious for you, I am sure, to have to begin with such a simple prop. It is the most I can offer you now. And the least you could do to thank me, to thank Jane, to redeem yourself – the very least you could do is accept this gift."
Loki opened his eyes again and looked down at his hand, the bruised knuckles of which Thor was supporting as he kept the coin inside. Thor studied the younger prince's eyes for tears – nothing. Dry as a bone.
But when Thor removed his hand from his brother's, Loki did not let go of the coin.
"One oh one point nine," said Jane after shaking out the thermometer. She went about her nursing routine for the eighth time in eight hours: replace compresses, put melted ice in the freezer, make coffee, uncap a new bottle of Tylenol, and – her newest addition to the repertoire, after the ice-shooting-from-Loki's-hands incident – get a warm comforter out of the oven and tuck it around her patient.
Jane held back a giggle at the sight of him. If only Thor could see it; she had trusted him to take the van and get more ice. Swaddled up in blankets with the consistency of giant marshmallows and covered head-to-toe in ice and white rags, Loki looked like a demented snowman. The glare he was sending her from the dark circles underneath his eyes was not helping him look any less comical. A picture of all this would be worth a thousand- no, a million words, Jane thought.
Speaking of words...
"You're being pretty quiet," she said, filling a glass of water in the sink so Loki could take the Tylenol. "Usually you have plenty to say about how I'm 'irritating your fragile wounds.'"
Silence.
"Well, since you're letting me speak..." said Jane, pouring some red pills out into her palm, "could I run something by you?" She waited for Loki to stretch out his own hand and take the pills before continuing. Loki put the pills in his mouth with a glower and stood by for the water while Jane talked. "When you and Thor first landed her, in New Mexico... You were semi-conscious and you... Well... You called me 'Sigyn' and then made the ground explode."
Loki spat the pills all over the comforter.
"Oh boy," said Jane, and was moving to clean the pills up when she felt Loki's hand on her wrist, cold and clammy.
"Forget... that ever happened," he said, his voice terse and hoarse. Tiny beads of sweat were forming at his hairline. His pale eyes looked... It was entirely new emotion, something Jane had never seen expressed by the fallen demigod.
He looked absolutely terrified.
"Um..." said Jane. "I'm assuming you mean forget the ground exploding, not the fact that you just spat Tylenol all over my blanket. Alright. I'll drop it. But only because I don't want to deterioriate your health more – this seems to be causing you a lot of distress." She picked the pills off the blanket one by one; the dye on each of them left a little red stain on the white fabric. Jane sighed. She wondered how many blankets would be ruined by the time she was through with her ministrations. She was walking to the kitchen to get a rag and some stain cleaner when she heard a tiny, low voice say:
"Thank you."
She whirled around, hoping (hoping? why hoping?) that Loki would be looking at her. But his head was turned toward the back of the couch once more. She was almost positive that she had imagined the "thank you" – she had to have imagined it. She turned back to the cabinet under the sink and rummaged for the cleaner.
As she rotated again towards the couch, something flashed in her peripheral. Jane had just enough time to register Loki's eyes intensely focusing on his own hand as he gently flipped a gold coin through his fingers.
But milliseconds later he had vanished it. He glanced up at Jane, and she could have sworn she saw him blush.
Or maybe it was the lingering fever that was staining his cheekbones pink.
Yes, that had to be it.
Awwwwwww.
Review if you like, guys! More on the way!
