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In a Crowd of Thousands

Chapter 6

"Shadows of Loki"

Loki stood alone on the sidewalk, taking deep breaths and trying to calm himself down. The afternoon air felt cool and moist, as if carried in by the sea—though he couldn't glimpse the sea anywhere nearby. Cold had never bothered him before in his life, but now he felt it cutting through his sweaty shirt. Perhaps that's the reason he was shivering.

He braced his hands on his hips and hung his head, closing his eyes and taking another deep breath. His head kept spinning—he couldn't seem to stop it. Spinning so fast that he felt dizzy, disoriented. Nothing felt right or familiar. Not his clothes, not the smell of the air, not the noises on the street, not the feel of the ground under his shoes.

He spun and raked a hand through his hair, turning to glance up at the building behind him for the hundredth time. It was white stone, five stories high, with elegant black bars over the windows, and a black door with a black, iron-wrought gate guarding it. The lintel bore the brass numbers 324. Yellow flowers grew in the window boxes. Nothing and no one moved inside.

It had taken him several hours to get here. First, he had simply wandered aimlessly through the throngs of people, asking passers-by on the street the way to 89th street. However, the majority of them didn't know, and three people gave him the wrong directions. After that, he tried two shops and an Irish tavern. Finally, at the tavern, he found a young Irish lady with a delightful lilt to her voice, who gave him a map of the city, and graciously pointed out to him where he currently was, and where 89th street was. After thanking her profusely, he had bolted out the door and started his journey.

It had turned into a very long walk. At every bustling, roaring corner, he had feverishly stopped to consult his map, jostled by men and women who clearly knew where they were going, and he was simply an obstacle in their paths. How could he not be? There seemed to be millions of people here, all crowded on top of one another amidst constant raging noise. Loki had wondered how they all didn't go mad. No fresh air, no peace, no quiet…

At long last, he had found his way to a quieter portion of the city, where stately buildings stood right next to each other, no space at all between. Little trees grew in this lane, like weeds pushing up through cracks in pavement. Vehicles drove by in threes and fours instead of by the thousands.

And he stood alone in front of number 324. Waiting for Jane Foster.

He ground his teeth, folding his arms and facing the street again. Had he even heard her correctly? What if he'd come to the entirely wrong side of the city?

Worse yet…

What if she'd lied to him? What if he'd frightened her, and she had just given him an at-random address to make him release her and go away…?

Loki suddenly felt sick to his stomach, and lightheaded. He pressed a hand to his forehead, then dragged it down his face and covered his mouth. How long had he been standing here? How long had it taken him to get here? What if she had waited for him here, and when he hadn't appeared, she'd gone somewhere else?

His head started to spin again, and he got dizzy. He stepped back to lean against the stone wall…

The noise of an engine drew near—and slowed. Loki opened his eyes and frowned.

A black vehicle drew up to the curb and stopped. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, a woman opened the back door and climbed out. She was a portly woman with black hair, wearing a blue short sleeved shirt and the same color trousers, with white shoes. She had a rosy complexion and kindly, dark eyes. Immediately, she turned and reached back inside.

"Here, give me your purse, sweetheart," she instructed gently. She then lifted a plain brown purse, put it in her other hand, then grasped the hand of someone else and pulled.

Jane Foster stepped out of the car. Carefully. She still wore her long white dress, but now she had a grey fleece shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She frowned in concentration as she stepped up onto the curb, and the other woman shut the car door. The vehicle drove away. The woman looped her arm through Jane's…

Loki took a step forward. Jane's head came up.

Her eyes widened again. A reflexive smile crossed her face.

Loki stopped, floored—and suddenly, he couldn't speak.

"See," Jane said quietly to the other woman, though she didn't look away from Loki. "I told you."

Loki, confused, glanced back and forth between them. The other woman watched him, unsure. Finally, Loki cleared his throat and slowly approached them.

"Forgive me," he said, inclining his head and putting his hand to his chest. "My name is Loki Odinson. I've begged Jane for the opportunity to intrude upon your time for a few minutes."

"Loki, this is my good friend, Rose," Jane said, her voice still low. "Rose, this is Loki. Thor's younger brother."

"Thor!" Rose's eyes lit up, and she finally smiled genuinely. "He's my favorite person in the world!"

Loki couldn't help but laugh for an instant—though it hurt.

"Yes, he's…A lot of people feel that way about him."

"Then I'm sure I'll like you, too," Rose decided, nodding. "Come inside with us!"

"Thank you," Loki managed. Rose assisted Jane up the long flight of stone stairs, which they took slowly. And Loki felt a pang of bewilderment. Was something wrong with her…?

Cautiously, he followed after them, pausing several steps below as Rose produced a set of keys and unlocked the iron gate, and then the door behind that. As the door swung open and they went inside, Loki finally crossed the threshold and stepped into the entryway.

It was a short, airy hallway, and just to the right opened up to a sitting room that was plainly but elegantly decorated with warm colors: light yellow walls, wooden floor with a red-and-gold rug, and soft maroon couch and chairs. Lace curtains hung at the window, and the morning sun came through. Their footsteps made the floors creak as they entered.

"Rose, could you get a hot bath ready for me?" Jane asked. "I think I'd like to take one after I talk to Loki for a little bit."

"Sure," Rose nodded. "You'll be all right alone down here?"

Jane smiled again.

"Don't worry, I can handle him."

Rose smiled back, then started up the wooden stairs at the far end of the entryway. Every single one of those steps creaked, too. Jane turned slightly to Loki and gestured to the sitting room.

"Would you like to sit down?"

"Yes, thank you," Loki answered absently, still watching her. She led the way with shuffling steps, reached out and braced her hand on the armrest of the couch, then came around and sank slowly down into the corner seat. Loki approached, then sat down on the other side of the little table from her, in a loveseat. For a long moment, Jane just gazed at him, a delicate line between her eyebrows, as her fingers thoughtfully rubbed against each other.

Loki let her look at him—let her study his face, his hair, his disheveled clothes, his unusual shoes, his empty scabbard. At last, she took a breath.

"You've changed," she murmured, a trifle hoarse. "You're different."

He didn't say anything in reply—because he was thinking the same about her. He had caught glimpses of her when he had been using the All Father's powers, reigning in the king's stead during Odinsleep. At that time, she had reminded him of a small bird: energetic, talkative, with intelligent eyes constantly searching, hands always working.

Now, she seemed subdued, her thoughts heavy and careful. Her gaze steady and weighty, with shadows around her eyes. Her beauty hadn't diminished—but instead, it had gained something like the first chill of late autumn, which put a frost upon the leaves.

"I don't understand something," Jane said.

"Only one thing?" Loki smiled weakly, his eyebrows lifting.

"You died," she said plainly. "I saw you, on Svartaelfheim. That monster killed you when you were protecting Thor. You died."

Loki swallowed.

"I…" He took a deep, shaking breath, and ran his hand through his hair again. "I honestly don't remember that. Any of it. Because…" He laughed softly, helplessly. He shrugged. "Because it didn't happen to me."

Jane frowned sharply.

"What do you mean?"

"First of all," Loki held up a finger. "Could you—and I'll explain in a moment—but could you please tell me what you remember about me?"

She blinked a few times, then wrapped her right arm around one of the accent pillows.

"I…Well, Thor brought me to Asgard because the Aether had somehow gotten inside me."

"The Aether," Loki interrupted. "As in…one of the Infinity Stones."

"Yes," Jane nodded. "And it happened during the Convergence, so portals were opening up between realms. Thor came and found me, took me to Asgard, and the healers tried to cure me of what the Aether had done, but they couldn't. We decided that we had to let Malekith get it out of me, since he was the only person who knew how. Then, Thor was going to destroy it. He managed to sneak you out of prison, and the three of us went to Svartaelfheim." She paused, now fiddling with the tassel on the pillow, but never looking away from him. "You pretended to betray Thor, and gave me to Malekith. Malekith performed some sort of…" She took a deep breath. "Some sort of magic, and drew the Aether out. Then, you protected me while Thor tried to destroy the Aether. But…it didn't work." Jane's face grew even more grave. "Malekith took the Aether and left, and his men started fighting the two of you. Along with a monster he had. I almost got pulled into one of those…one of those black-hole grenades. But you pushed me out of the way, and almost got pulled in yourself. But Thor saved you. And then, when the monster was about to kill Thor, you stabbed the monster, and it turned and stabbed you…" Jane's distant gaze focused again, and came back to Loki's face. "And then the monster was crushed in the grenade you'd planted on him. But you died." She lifted her eyebrows. "You died."

Loki took yet another deep, unsteady breath.

"And…" he tried. "That's all you've heard of me?"

Jane's expression shrugged slightly.

"Thor never talked about it afterward," she said, shaking her head. "He never talked about anything. Not his parents, Asgard, you, nothing. He kept leaving for weeks at a time, never telling me where he was going. Never telling me what he was thinking or feeling." Jane glanced down at her hands. "So I finally told him we couldn't be together anymore. And I haven't heard from him since." She lifted one shoulder. "I've heard of him, of course. What happened with Thanos. But I…" she smiled faintly. "Unfortunately, I got dusted in the Snap."

"Dusted?" Loki frowned. She looked up at him strangely.

"What? You don't know what that means?"

"Please explain, and then I'll explain," Loki promised quickly.

"Well, um…" She laughed slightly in confusion, still giving him an odd look. But when he simply waited, earnest and frozen, she went on.

"Well, when Thanos got all the Infinity Stones, and put them in the gauntlet, he snapped his fingers, and eliminated fifty percent of the universe's population," she said. "I was just one of the fifty percent."

Loki stared at her, then held up a hand.

"I'm…afraid I don't understand," he confessed. "If he eliminated you—"

"Tony Stark managed to get the stones away from him in the end," Jane said. "He undid the Snap. Brought everybody back. But we…" She smiled—and it haunted him. "We'd missed five years of our lives. We came back exactly as we had been, but everyone else…" She shook her head again, focusing hard on him. "How do you not know about that? Didn't it happen on Asgard?"

"I…haven't been in Asgard," Loki said slowly, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the nonsensical information he needed to convey to her. However, Jane simply waited, pale and quiet, her fingers running against the edge of that pillow. Loki sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees and interlacing his fingers.

"I…" His brow furrowed as he held her gaze. "Something happened during the fight for the Infinity Stones. The Avengers were trying to go back in time to retrieve them. But while they were in the past, the tesseract got loose, and literally skidded across the floor and hit me in the foot. I'd just been captured you see, and I wasn't about to go back to Asgard to face punishment if I could help it, so…" He mimed the motions. "I picked it up and used it to transport myself—somewhere, I don't know. Bangladesh or someplace." He waved a hand in dismissal. "But I was only there for a matter of seconds before I was apprehended by the TVA."

"The TVA?" Jane pressed, leaning forward a little too.

"The Time Variance Authority," Loki said, deliberate with every syllable. "It was their job to trim 'variants' from the Sacred Timeline—meaning, they had decided which timeline they liked best, and if anyone deviated from the prescribed order of things, he was 'pruned'—which really meant that he was sent to a massive pit of endless chaos. And apparently," Loki threw out his hands to either side. "By doing what I'd done with the tesseract, I had become a variant." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that, I shouldn't exist. The TVA were going to do something with me at that point, probably kill me, I don't know—but then an analyst there rescued me to get my help in finding yet another Loki variant who was…well, murdering all sorts of TVA agents." Loki swallowed a hard knot of pain that suddenly rose in his chest, and forcefully moved on. He cleared his throat. "Long story short, I made a…brief…alliance with this other Loki, and together, we got pruned, found our way through that pit of chaos and into the citadel at the end of time, which is this huge, decaying castle, where this talking orange clock…" Loki stopped.

He had suddenly realized how that sounded. How it all sounded.

But Jane didn't say anything. Her brow furrowed, her hands had gone still—but she was listening.

Feeling sick and cold again, Loki managed to continue.

"And…Well, while we were in the citadel," he said, trying not to wince. "We met the One Who Remains. He was…or is…a man from a long time ago, when there were thousands of thousands of timelines…and a war. And he…He deciphered a way to eliminate all but one timeline, and he created the TVA. And he's been running it ever since. Secretly. He offered to let me and the other Loki continue in his place, because he said…Well, he said he was tired of the job. But the…The other Loki…" Loki's chest tightened in pain again, and he battled it back. "The other Loki wanted revenge. Revenge for a stolen life. So the other Loki pushed me through a portal, and killed the One Who Remains." Loki sat back in the chair. Something inside him weakened. "At least, that's what I assume happened. Because the timeline just…It shattered." He held his hands out. "It started branching off in millions of directions. Billions. It's chaos, everything is chaos. And now…Now one, or several, variants of the One Who Remains will be looking to fill that power vacuum left behind by the one who was killed."

For a long time, no one spoke. Jane rested her forefinger against her bottom lip.

"Mhm," she finally hummed. "That makes sense."

Loki stared at her—and kept staring.

Then, he shot to his feet.

"You can't…I mean, you can't believe anything that I've just said!" he laughed, waving an arm. "You're a sensible woman, and you know that it's madness—absolute, utter madness." He gave her a look. "You're just toying with me, aren't you, pretending to be calm until the authorities come, is that it?"

Jane just gazed ahead of her, not seeing anything.

"I've heard of the One Who Remains," she murmured.

"Wh—" Loki yelped, almost tripping. "What?"

She glanced up at him.

"I didn't know what he was called," she amended quietly. "We've been calling him the Pendulum, for lack of a better word."

"We?" Loki cried, swept over again by a wave of fresh confusion. Jane nodded a little…

Then looked up at him with a different light in her eyes.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "When was the last time you ate anything?"

"I…" Loki stopped, stammering. "Honestly?" He put a hand to his head, then folded his arms and sighed wearily. "I can't remember. I honestly can't."

Still watching him, Jane smiled a little.

"Why don't I make the two of us some hot soup and tea," she suggested mildly, easing forward and slowly standing up. "I'm feeling kinda hungry, too. We can keep talking after we can both think straight again."

She gingerly took off her shawl and draped it on the armrest, stepped around the corner of the couch and started toward a door to the rear of the room that opened into what looked like a kitchen.

"Are you sure?" Loki asked, holding a hand out in reflex.

"Yes, yes, sit down," she scolded gently, waving him off. "It'll just take a minute."

Loki watched her progress as she left the sitting room and entered the kitchen, then turned and left his line of sight. He winced slightly, biting the inside of his cheek, but obediently sat back down. And in the ensuing silence, his mind started to spin again. He clenched his teeth and shook his head.

"How long have you lived here?" he called, latching onto idle chit-chat as if it were a lifeline in a storm. "Here, in this house?"

"About six months," Jane answered. "It used to belong to my friend, Erik Selvig."

"Are you doing work here, then?" Loki pressed.

She didn't reply. Loki waited.

Still no reply.

"Jane?" he spoke up, sitting forward.

Something glass smashed—

And he heard the sound of Jane Foster's body thud to the floor.

To be continued…

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