Chapter 3 - Plea Bargaining
The next morning, Thor ran into Lady Sif on his way to the prison, and when she asked where he was going, he told her.
"You ought not waste your time on him," she said. "He stopped being the precocious child that used to tag along on our adventures a long time ago, Thor. He isn't even your brother, really. He never was. After everything he has done, he ought to be dead to you."
Thor could not quite fathom what she meant by that. Even when he had believed his brother dead, Thor had not stopped caring for or missing him. But he also knew that Sif had reasons for disliking Loki, so he had simply nodded to her and gone on his way.
"Are you here to take my lunch order?" Loki asked, as Thor entered his cell. Stretched out on his bed with another book, he looked like one of their Aunt Freya's cats sunning itself in a window. His brother did not bother to get up, but he did look up from his book this time, smiling tauntingly in a way that made Thor want to knock a few of his teeth out.
"I am afraid I cannot bring you any more meals from Midgard," Thor told him, taking a seat at the end of the bed near Loki's feet. "After thinking about it, I decided it was foolish of me to take the Tesseract out of the treasure room before."
"Odin found out, did he?"
Thor sighed. His brother was much too perceptive. "I am here to speak with you on Odin's behalf, actually. You said you wanted out of this cell. I spoke to Father, and he is prepared to give you that, if you will tell us of your former associates." Thor watched his words. As long as he could give him exactly what was promised, Loki "Silvertongue" might respect Thor for managing to deceive him, once he realized he had been deceived. But if he promised more than he meant to and then seemed to go back on his word, he feared he would lose Loki's trust for good.
Loki's smile faded into bitter disillusionment. "I see. So this is what you wanted the entire time—"
"No," Thor interrupted. "I have not been coming here to try to get information out of you. And you must understand, Loki, I want to know about these people you were with, because I want to be able to protect you from them if necessary."
"If I tell you anything, I will need protection."
"You are frightened of them, then."
"I am not frightened of anything," Loki insisted, "I am just not particularly suicidal."
"It is good to hear that. And I promise, if you cooperate and tell us what you can, you may leave this cell."
"And then what?" Loki asked. "Am I to be banished from Asgard, and have no protection whatsoever from those I'll have betrayed?"
"No, Loki, I will protect you. You will not be cast out of Asgard."
"If I'm not to be banished, what else is there? I'm not stupid enough to think that Odin would let me walk free. Of course, you would have me tell you everything I know, as you escort me to the chopping block."
"No, of course not!"
"It's to be the noose then."
"No, Loki—"
"Or perhaps I am to be given the dignity of ingesting poison."
"Loki, please stop."
"How about stoning? That could be fun for everyone, and you could be the one to cast the first stone. Or crucifixion, that might be appropriate."
"No!" Asgard had never executed prisoners in any of the ways Loki had described. "Brother, where are you getting such morbid ideas?" Just what in the nine was crucifixion, anyway? The word sounded Midgardian, and his All-Speak attempted to parse it, but all it could come up with was definitions for similar words: cruciferous, asphyxiation. Perhaps it was a method of execution that involved being smothered by turnips and cabbages.
He spied the book that Loki had tossed aside. It was bound in black leather, but from the way it had peeled off in places, he knew it was not real leather, but the kind of false leather that Midgardians used in their clothing and on furniture sometimes (all of the seating in Jane's camper had been upholstered in it). The title of the book, in silver block letters on the front cover, had all but worn away.
"What is that you've been reading?" Thor asked. "That doesn't look like one of the books Mother sent you."
"Oh, that. I found it in the drawer of a bedside table in a Midgardian inn. It's quite an interesting read, full of violence and sex."
Thor frowned; cheap, vulgar literature was generally banned in Asgard. He picked up the book a bit apprehensively and leafed through it a bit before coming upon the following passage:
On Herod's birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she said, "Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist." The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother.
Thor slammed the cover shut on the book, as if to seal away the words he had read. But it was too late, and in his head it was Lady Sif dancing for his father, requesting Loki's head be brought to her on a platter of uru.
(Utterly ridiculous, Thor thought, because Sif did not dance, nor would she ever willingly wear the outfit Thor's mind had provided for her, which was naught but a few scraps of scarlet colored fabric sewn together.)
Norns, no wonder his brother's thoughts had turned dark! "I'm confiscating this," Thor decided. "You're too young to read it. I think I'm too young to read it, for that matter, and I'm nearly fifteen hundred."
Loki just shrugged, which probably meant he had already finished with it. He never let someone take a book from him so easily if he were still reading it.
He pocketed the book anyway, and decided to appeal to his brother's reason. "Brother, why would I promise to protect you from your former allies, and then hand you over for execution?"
"What then?" asked Loki. "Like I said, I'm not stupid. Tell me exactly what your plans are for me."
Thor let out another sigh. He should have known that his brother would not agree without getting the details. "Alright, Loki. You are correct, we cannot free you. We had planned to confine you to your own rooms instead."
"My rooms?" Loki asked, blinking at him as if the words didn't quite make sense.
"Yes, your rooms. You know, the ones upstairs, down the hall from mine? I thought you might be more comfortable there, at least."
"I still have rooms upstairs?"
"Yes. They are as you left them, though the servants have been in from time to time to dust."
"They'll have stolen things.
"They know better than that."
Loki rolled his eyes. "Some of the servants have always been light fingered, Thor, and they won't have held themselves back with no one around to notice things going missing."
"Even if that were true, Mother would have noticed, Loki. She goes in there sometimes, to sit on your bed and miss you."
Loki snorted. "That's ridiculous. She can see me any time she wants."
"She does not do it as often as she did when we thought you dead, but even knowing you are here, imprisoned, is not the same as having you down the hall."
"Oh, and it is going to be just like old times if I'm locked upstairs instead?"
"Perhaps it would not be the same, but we can see each other more often, and perhaps we could all eat together sometimes."
"You cannot mean Father wants that?"
Thor blinked. Had Loki just slipped up, and called Odin father? "It may take him time to come around, but it might help if you showed him you were open to reconciling with him. And perhaps it would help if the two of you could meet in a more intimate setting than the throne room."
"It sounds better than being locked up down here."
"Of course it would be."
"But—"
"You're frightened?"
'No, of course not!"
"But you are not particularly suicidal?" Thor guessed, remembering his words from earlier. "Loki, no one will hurt you. You will be safer upstairs."
"Either that, or everyone else will be in more danger. What if one of their assassins comes for me, and hurts Mother instead?"
"You think they will have assassins after you?" Thor found it highly unlikely that any such assassin could sneak into Asgard unnoticed. Besides which—"Loki, how would they even know you've told us their secrets?"
"Because, Thor, I think they might still be—" Loki stopped mid-sentence and clamped his mouth shut.
"Still what?" Thor asked.
"Nothing. I am sorry, but I cannot accept your offer." Loki said this politely, as if he were turning down another another cup of wine at a feast and not a less subterranean existence. "Please leave me alone now."
( ﾟ -ﾟ) ヾ(-_- )ゞ
After Loki had practically begged him to leave, Thor had gone in search of his mother. Frigga was the wisest woman in all of Asgard, as she liked to remind him, and she would know what to do.
He had found her alone, down by the water outside the palace. He sat down beside her on the grass overlooking the place where the skiffs were tied up, including one that belonged to her, larger than the others and painted with real gold. "Where are your handmaidens?" Thor asked. "Or the Einherjar, for that matter? Should they not attend you when you go out?"
"Sometimes I wish to be alone, dear. Is that wrong of me?"
"No, of course not! It just doesn't seem safe, I suppose."
"I was a shield maiden before you were born, darling. You needn't worry about me."
"No, of course not." Thor generally found it a good idea to respect women warriors, though Sif and his mother were the only ones he had ever known. There used to be a whole team of them, the Valkyries, but they had all been killed in battle before he was born. "I'm sorry to have intruded on your solitude, now," he told her.
"Do not worry, it is not your company I'm avoiding. I take it you've spoken to Loki?"
"I could not fool him, Mother, so I had to tell him our exact plans for him. He wanted to accept, I think, but for some reason he thought it dangerous to do so. He mentioned something about assassins."
"I see," Frigga said, looking a little disappointed, but also worried. "But how does he suppose that his enemies would know he had betrayed them?"
"I do not know, Mother, but he seemed convinced they would. Perhaps he is simply paranoid—he accused the servants of thievery as well."
"Thor darling, if you have not noticed—" She scrunched up her nose. "Well, they never take anything too large nor too valuable, but there is a reason only my personal handmaidens have been allowed in to dust your brother's rooms."
Thor blinked in surprise and wondered if he did not own anything worth stealing, or if he had simply been unobservant. Of course, as magicians, his mother and brother and owned many more talismans and things that might be enticing for a casual thief to steal. Thor's most prized possessions had always been his weapons. Even before Father had put an enchantment on her, it would have been difficult for someone to walk off with Mjolnir without being noticed.
Not that it had not happened. There had even been that one time he and Loki had dressed up as women in order to steal her back. Loki had been infinitely more convincing, as he had actually turned himself into a woman. Thor smiled at the memory, until a more recent memory replaced it. "Mother," he said, "what did Father mean, when he said that perhaps Loki's former associates still have a hold over him? How could they?"
Frigga ran her hands through the tall grass at her side, and pulled up a handful of rushes by their roots. "There are certain dark magics that allow the sanctity of the mind to be compromised, and can be used from quite a distance away."
"Are you saying that they could be in his head—literally, actually in his head? I don't like the sound of that."
"No, it isn't a pleasant thought," Frigga agreed, tossing the rushes aside.
Thor took his mother's hand. "Could you, or perhaps the healers, do anything for him, if it is true?"
"I do not know, Thor. Perhaps. But it would require his cooperation."
"I think he would cooperate were he not so frightened, and not only for himself. He seemed most afraid that you might be hurt if these assassins came looking for him."
Frigga nodded. "Thor, you must speak to him again, and convince him to be brave. And you may remind him that his mother was a shield maiden, before she was a mother. He need not worry about me either."
_/\_
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The next day, Thor placed a lidded tray down on the little table in Loki's cell. "Loki, you must eat. I could not go to Midgard to get you food this time, but since you seem to have a liking for Midgardian food, I asked around. As it turned out, Volstagg's wife's mother picked up a few recipes when Asgard was still in contact with Midgard two thousand years ago." Thor whisked the lid off the tray with a flourish. "Look, Loki—I have brought you smoked herring, barley bread with honey, and nettle soup."
"Viking food?" Loki made a face that reminded him of the one the Widow had made when contemplating anchovy and pineapple pizza.
"I know it is not pizza or chocolate eclairs, but at least it isn't prison food."
"I'm not hungry," Loki said, lying back on his bed and turning his attention to the ceiling.
"I spoke to the kitchen staff again. I know you have not eaten anything today."
"Just leave it. I might eat later."
"No, I want you to eat it now. I am going to watch you eat, and then we can talk."
Loki rolled over, putting his back to Thor. "Stop treating me like a child."
Why did Loki always have to be difficult? If his brother wanted to be treated like an adult, he ought to try acting like one. "Loki, I am going to count to three," said Thor, "and if you are not out of bed by the time I am through, something will happen that you will not like." He did not know what that thing would be, but with any luck his brother would not want to find out. "One," he began.
"Oh, for crying out loud—"
"Two."
Loki took his pillow and put it over his head, as if to block out the sound of Thor's voice.
"Two and a half," Thor said, still uncertain what he would do when he got to three.
Loki stirred, and for a moment, Thor thought he might be ready to get out of bed. Instead, he sat up and threw his pillow, which bounced off Thor's forehead and landed in his arms. "I said I would eat later. I want to be left alone now. What are you going to do when you get to three anyway, put me in time out? I'm already locked in this cell, if you haven't noticed. And don't even think about striking me, unless you'd like to bear a closer resemblance to your father—to be clear, I mean that if you so much as touch me, I'll gouge your eye out with the spoon you've brought for that soup."
"I'm not going to strike you," said Thor, a little offended that his brother thought he might. Not that he had never struck Loki—they were brothers after all, and sometimes brothers fought—but he would never fight him when he was in no condition to fight back, and Loki still looked as if he might snap in half if Thor pushed him too hard. "Perhaps I shall keep your pillow, and you won't have it back until you have eaten." Thor hugged the pillow to himself possessively.
"Go ahead. I'll just ask Mother for another."
"I'll tell her not to give you one until you eat again."
Loki groaned. "I'll eat later, just not now."
"What is the matter, Loki? Are you not feeling well?"
"I'm perfectly fine, I'm just not hungry. It's not like I do anything in here to work up an appetite. In fact, I am certain I am gaining weight, as little as I eat. I have no opportunity to expend the energy."
"You could do calisthenics," Thor suggested. "This cell is plenty large enough for you to exercise in."
"I don't feel like it."
"In that case, you shouldn't complain about gaining weight or not working up an appetite."
"I wasn't complaining about it," Loki growled.
"So what do you plan to do, Loki, just lay in bed all day?"
"I want to go outside." Loki had turned his back to him again, and Thor could not see his face, but there was longing in his voice.
"You can't. Not unless you cooperate. Tell us about the people that used you, Loki. Then you can come upstairs and stay in your room, and I am certain you will be allowed to walk in Mother's garden as well. Perhaps you could even use the training grounds, under supervision. We could train together like we did when we were younger."
"You don't know how much I'd like that," Loki said. "But I can't—"
"Mother wanted me to tell you that you needn't worry for her. She was a shield maiden before either of us were born, Loki. She isn't defenseless."
"You don't understand. These people—I cannot—please, please go away, Thor!"
Thor planted himself in one of the two chairs at the little table. "I will go when you have eaten, Brother, and not before."
"Fine," Loki said, sounding dejected. He swung his legs over the edge of bed, groaned as he pushed himself up, and shambled stiffly to the table.
"You do seem to be out of shape," Thor noted. "If you refuse to do anything about it on your own, I think I ought to start coming in the morning, to bring your breakfast and make sure you move around a bit."
"What does it matter, so long as I am stuck in this cell?" Loki asked, as he slumped into his seat. He took up the spoon he had threatened to gouge Thor's eye out with and began dragging it through the limp nettles.
"It matters to me, Loki. I do not like to see you like this. How can you have so little care for your own wellbeing?"
"Sometimes I just wish for the end," Loki said, more to his nettle soup than to Thor.
Thor wanted nothing more than to rush around to the other side of the table and pull his brother into an embrace, but he remembered Loki's earlier threat that involved the spoon he now held. He had told Thor not to touch him, and he doubted he would make exceptions for displays of physical affection, which he had always seemed to hate. "Don't say such things, please. You cannot mean them. What would Mother think?"
"You won't tell her, will you?"
"No, because I don't want to upset her any more than you do. But Mother wants to help you as well. She thinks these associates of yours might have put you under some curse. She wants to try to remove it, but she said she cannot do it unless you allowed it."
"I doubt she can help," said Loki. "Their kind of magic was not like the magic of the Aesir."
"I wonder if Jane could help. She possesses a different kind of magic—"
"It was not like Midgardian science either."
"But it must bear similarities to both. Perhaps if Mother and Jane worked together."
"And why would Jane want to help me, even if she could? I attacked her realm twice. I am certain she thinks me a villain."
"I believe she would do it, knowing what it would mean to me."
"Even then, how will you bring her here? Clearly, Odin found out about you using the Tesseract to pick up pizza."
"Only because I admitted to it. He would not expect for me to do it again."
"No, because even you could not possibly be that stupid. Thor, how would you even explain it if Jane just showed up in Asgard? You know mortals aren't allowed here. Father will be furious for more than one reason."
Thor grinned. "You just called him Father."
"A slip of the tongue, Thor. Don't read anything into it, and don't involve me in whatever you're planning. Though either way, I am certain the All-Father will find a way to hold me responsible for your folly. He always does."
"I shall let him know you protested," Thor said.
"It won't matter. He'll still find a way to hold me responsible," Loki grumped. He took a bite of nettle soup and made a face. "The nettles certainly have a distinct flavor. A bit like eating weeds."
"They grow as weeds in Mother's garden," Thor admitted.
(╯°□°)ノ ⌒{ }(ﾉ_)ﾉ
Jane had been dozing on the couch in her living room, which also doubled as her laboratory these days. She had worked late into the previous night, attempting to perfect a formula that would tell her the difference in the passage of time between Asgard and Earth, or "Midgard." She had theorized that the reason Thor had not come back in a year was that he had not realized it had been a year. She was missing most of the data that she needed to prove her theory, but if Thor ever came back—
The doorbell woke her up. Jane glanced at the time on the oversized atomic clock she had placed on an end table to remind her to stop periodically and take breaks to eat or sleep. Eleven-fifteen. Darcy better have brought donuts and coffee if she was going to come over before noon.
When she opened the door, she decided she must still be dreaming. For a long moment, she stood looking at Thor, wondering what kind of dream this was going to be.
Jane only ever had two kinds of dreams about Thor.
Thor was fully dressed, but she found herself more disappointed that he wasn't holding a box of donuts and a coffee. This must be the second kind of dream, then—the kind of dream in which Thor came back, begging for forgiveness which she would refuse to give him, because gosh darn it, it had been a year since she had heard from him, and the theory she had been working on about time differences was probably wishful thinking. He probably had a girlfriend in Asgard. Maybe it was that woman she had met—what had her name been? Sif?
"Come in, I guess." Jane stepped to the side so she wasn't blocking his entrance.
"Jane?" Thor asked, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. He has no right to be confused, Jane thought, when he's only a dream.
Dream Thor followed her into the kitchen. Time to get started, then. She grabbed the first thing she saw, which was a coffee mug, and threw it at Thor's head. He barely dodged it, and the mug shattered against the wall behind him. "I saw you on TV," she shouted. "You were on Earth, and you didn't even think to leave me a message, while I had been looking for a way to get to Asgard for over a year."
Thor blinked at her. "Um—things have been—"
"You know what? I really don't care." She had heard all his excuses before, in earlier dreams. She grabbed a spatula from the tall container beside the stove and threw it at him.
"The Bifrost—was—destroyed," Thor huffed, as she continued to throw things at him and he danced to avoid them. "Chaos—wars throughout the realm—I had to stop them—Jane!"
Jane had grabbed the toaster from the counter and had been attempting to lift it over her head, but it was proving more difficult than it usually did she threw it at Thor in a dream. "If the Bifrost was destroyed, how are you here now?" she asked.
"I used the Tesseract, see?"
Jane gawked at the Tesseract, which Thor was dangling in front of her in some sort of cylindrical holder, as if it were an oversized key chain. "What the heck, Thor—that thing should be locked up somewhere, not in my kitchen!" Her dream, if it was a dream, had taken a bizarre turn.
"Probably, but I had to see you, and this is the only way to travel between the realms at the moment—could you put that bread toasting machine down, please? That might actually hurt if you hit me with it."
Jane realized she was still holding the toaster above her head, and it was starting to feel heavy. Things weren't supposed to feel heavy in dreams, she realized. She set the toaster down on the counter, then bit the inside of her cheek to see if it would hurt. "Ow," Jane said.
"Are you alright?" Thor asked her.
"You're really here," she said, turning to face him.
"Um—yes?"
"Don't um—yes me, it's been over a year!"
"I know. I'm sorry, Jane. The past year has just been—a lot, I suppose. My brother died, and then he came back to life, and now he's in prison—"
"Let's just go get donuts," Jane said, and started looking around for her jacket and her keys. She was fairly sure she had left them on the kitchen table. It had only been a few days since she'd been out this time, or had it been a few weeks?
Yes, this was real, and Thor was back. But before she could really process what that meant, she really needed those donuts, and a venti Americano.
!(#ﾟДﾟ)ゞ‥･･━━━━━━旦~
"Do you think they will have chocolate eclairs?" Thor asked, as the pulled into the parking lot of the donut shop.
"You really like our junk food, don't you?" Jane asked.
"Oh yes, although I am partial to your 'toaster pastries,'" Thor explained. "Eclairs are Loki's favorite."
Jane clenched the steering wheel in a death grip. "You mean the Loki that attacked us in New Mexico, and led an army of aliens into New York?"
Thor gave her that puppy-eyed look of his. "He is still my little brother. And prison food does not agree with him."
Jane relaxed, just a bit. "He is in prison, then."
"Yes, of course, Jane. We have no choice but to keep him imprisoned when he still refuses to acknowledge or repent of his wrongdoing. To tell the truth, I am not certain he even understands the magnitude of what happened, which truly worries me."
"Probably because he's a sociopath," said Jane. She probably shouldn't have said it, but it had just slipped out.
"What is a sociopath?" Thor asked.
"Someone with antisocial personality disorder," she explained. "It means he doesn't care about other people or feel guilty about hurting them."
Thor shook his head. "No, that is not Loki. His can act selfish at times, but I believe he actually cares quite a bit for others. I am certain he cares deeply for Mother."
Jane grimaced. She really shouldn't have said anything. Loki might be a crazy bastard that let aliens loose in New York, but he was Thor's brother, and he obviously cared about him. "Sorry, forget what I said. I've never even met him."
"I would like for you to meet him," Thor told her.
Jane had been attempting to park, and ended up driving over the curb. She slammed on the brakes. "You want me to visit him in prison?"
"I would be with you, of course, and if you are not comfortable coming inside his cell, you could stay outside of it. But even if you were to enter the cell, I promise you would not be in any danger. He would not hurt you. Even if he wanted to, he would not dare so long as I was with you."
It then occurred to Jane where Loki was imprisoned. "Wait, you mean you want me to go to Asgard with you—when?"
"Ideally, we will leave today, after we have had our donuts, and I have procured some eclairs for my brother. It will be wonderful. I can introduce you to my mother. Do not worry Jane, she will like you, I know it."
He wanted her to meet his mother, now? Suddenly, things were moving a lot faster than she ever could have anticipated. When you got right down to it, she had spent a year obsessing over finding him again, but they had only ever spent the equivalent of a long weekend together.
But realistically, there was no way she was going to say no to Asgard, and her intellectual curiosity overrode any reservations she might have had about departing for another realm at a moment's notice.
╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
Author's Note:
I'm going to try to keep posting on Tuesdays and Fridays. Deadlines are good, they keep me from continuously tweaking my writing past the point of diminishing returns.
Do my characters sound like themselves? Especially the Asgardians? At first I was reluctant to let my Asgardians use contractions, but writing dialog entirely without contractions felt too stiff to me, so I started letting some slip in. As always, any comments/feedback at all will be appreciated.