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Beneath
Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-One – Posing
"We didn't expect to see you back here."
"I didn't expect to be back. I apologize that I didn't obtain your approval before doing so." Tony Stark's approval was irrelevant. Olivia was in charge here, and it struck Loki for the first time that he did appreciate her blunt no-nonsense manner. That her authority – that acknowledging her authority – did not bother him. She ran the place competently, and if her concern for following rules exceeded his own, well, life here was precarious and he couldn't hold that against her.
"The circumstances of your departure weren't exactly normal. You lived here the same as the rest of us, as far as I can tell. You should have the same right to collect your belongings. It's not like the station reopening in a few months is going to make it any more possible for us to ship your things to Asgard."
"I suppose not. I thank you for your understanding."
"About the oranges."
"Yes?" Loki asked with unpleasant nervousness. He wasn't sure if they were still where he'd left them; the people standing in the food service area were blocking his view. Glancing that way made his eye catch on Mari, standing behind the counter and watching him back.
"First of all, thank you. It was kind of you to think of us."
It was the least I could do. For the sake of the secrets involved, he would never tell them that the damage to the building they were all standing in was, unintentionally, his fault. But he knew. "I missed fresh fruit. I knew everyone else did, too. I thought it could serve as a token of apology for the disruption I caused here." He looked around, took in the small crowd as individuals. Gary and Zeke, who'd both moved closer and now stood not far behind Olivia. Macy, behind them. Ken and Ronny, off to the side closer to the windows. Rodrigo not far away, a mug of probably coffee held in both hands. Further to the back, behind gaps formed by the tables, everyone from last night, except for Austin who stood near the tray slide. Not far from him, Macy, watching him intently. They were all watching him intently.
Olivia, meanwhile, was continuing. "Second, we have special authorization for fresh produce shipments. I don't think they're meant to cover shipments from other planets. I know it must seem…trivial to you, but we have to take those rules seriously. Our continued presence here depends on it. Are you sure they're just regular oranges?"
An instinct to laugh battled one to grumble – of course Olivia was concerned about the rules for bringing in organic matter – but in the end he nodded his understanding of her position. "I'm not an expert in agronomy, but as far as I know they're no different from the oranges grown on your world. A slightly different cultivar, I'm sure, but you can't plant them here regardless. Macy would know better than I," he said with a pointed look in her direction.
"I already told Olivia I'd make sure all the seeds are destroyed, just in case. But we're not set up here to run molecular analysis on oranges." She shrugged, held up a partially-peeled orange that had been out of sight before. "They look and smell like regular oranges to me. Taste like it, too." She pulled out a section and popped it in her mouth, pursing her lips around it.
"I hope that will suffice," Loki said, turning back to Olivia. "I'm afraid it's the best I can do."
"I'll take your word for it. I don't have much choice. I'd have a riot on my hands if I told you to take them back."
"I suspect you could handle it. You've already handled worse."
"I don't know how to handle this. I had to go through a lot of training before I came down here. Memorize a lot of rules and regs, emergency procedures. It included emergency evacuations. But none of it covered this."
"To be honest, I don't know how to handle it either. I didn't expect to see anyone else while I was here. It's…awkward. I don't wish to make anyone uncomfortable. But I'm appreciative of the time I spent here, and of how you welcomed me, so a proper farewell seemed—"
"We welcomed you because we believed you were Lucas Cane. One of us. We welcomed you because you lied to us and we fell for it."
"Yes," Loki said, looking toward Mari but not lingering on her. She'd said the words, perhaps she was the angriest at him, but she couldn't be the only one thinking them. "That's true. I took advantage of your welcome. It wasn't fair to you."
Gary cleared his throat and stepped around the end of a table to edge closer. "You took advantage of some security procedures that obviously need to be tightened up, but I have to say I'm not so sure you took advantage of us. Jane, maybe, but that's between you and her and it doesn't look like she's holding it against you at this point. I mean…were you getting anything out of those poker games, for example?"
Loki hesitated, drawing in a deep breath before speaking. The answer had come to him instantly, in perfect clarity. The decision to admit to it was less instantaneous. "Companionship."
"I'm guessing you didn't come here for the companionship."
It was something in the upward quirk of Gary's mouth as he spoke that propelled Loki's laughter before he cut it off as perhaps inappropriate. "No. That wasn't what I was looking for. But with many of you I found it, nonetheless…and I thank you for it."
"We got something out of it, too."
Loki found Wright, back in the middle of the group. "Do tell."
"A reasonably good note-taker. Even if you didn't know how to spell half the names of the groups and wrote 'gifts' instead of 'GIFs.'"
Loki could tell from the smattering of laughter who knew what Wright was referring to and who didn't. Unless they all knew, and those not laughing were those who found nothing humorous in the situation and simply wanted him to leave. Mari certainly wasn't laughing. He remembered then that he'd brought his old instruments with him, and if it was just him and the band, perhaps he would bring them out and see if he remembered anything about how to play them. He could at least show them to the others. Carlo had expressed particular interest in the instruments he'd mentioned in vague terms. A foolish idea, yet one whose appeal he could not deny.
"All right. Here's what we're going to do," Olivia said. The quiet exchanges that had sprung up after the laughter trailed off. "The oranges can stay. Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets any ideas about hanging onto a seed or two to send off for genetic analysis or just bury them in your backyard to see what happens. Paul and Macy, work together to make sure every single seed is destroyed. If you eat the seed, I think we can go ahead and consider that destroyed. It's been suggested that we don't turn breakfast into some big thing. We weren't expecting it, and most of us don't usually stick around long, not even as long as we already have. We have work to do. Instead, we're arranging a lunch. Can you be back here by eleven?"
Loki glanced toward Jane, who looked just as surprised as he felt. "Yes, I think so."
"Good. Lunch service won't be ready yet, but if you can be here and stick around for a couple of hours then everyone who wants to speak with you can do so as they're able, instead of everybody piling on all at the same time. Sound reasonable?"
"Yes." He'd thought to say more, but Olivia was continuing.
"This doesn't go in anybody's e-mail or VOIP or blog or anything else. We have fifty Polies here, including Lucas Cane as an astrophysics researcher on a privately-sponsored project." She paused, shook her head. "I still haven't figured out how I'm going to make the paperwork show we've also had fifty Polies leaving here after the station opens. At least I've still got a few months to figure it out. Welcome back, Lucas, and Jane, too. I'll be back later to say goodbye."
Olivia was gone before Loki could get out a response.
Most of the others started filtering out, some of them with a few friendly words, for him and for Jane. Some of them with suspicious looks…or simply curious, if he was less paranoid. Zeke shook his hand, and after Zeke did, a few others did, too. All told, it had been easier than he'd expected. Of course, that was because all they'd done was delay the actual goodbye.
Not everyone left. Austin had joined the group from last night in conversation. Before Loki could drift too far into wondering what they were discussing in hushed voices, he realized that Gary and Paul, who'd been talking, and Macy, who'd been lingering by the tray slide, were headed not past him, toward the exit, but straight for him.
Macy got there first. "Jane. Lucas. Loki, I guess. Welcome back."
"Thanks, Macy," Jane said at the same as Loki said, "Thank you," with a solicitous bow of his head.
"You got some sun, didn't you?" Macy asked when her attention turned from Loki to Jane. "Of course you did. What are the odds that you went somewhere on Asgard that also has no sunlight 24 hours a day? I hope you're going to tell me all about it later."
"Sure, I'll be glad to," Jane said with a glance to Loki that she hoped conveyed that she would respect Loki's privacy in what she told Macy. "It'll be fun to have someone to talk about it with."
"I'll hold you to it. Everybody's going to want that dish, but I want the private version, not the public one for mass consumption."
"Right." She knew her smile was strained. The private version was exactly what she wouldn't be able to say much about. The private version, most of it, was very private, for Loki and his family, at least.
"Macy," Loki said to intervene – Jane was looking uncomfortable, and little wonder, though he wasn't worried, "I wonder if I might impose on you for some literary expertise."
"Really? Yeah, of course. I mean, I'll try. What do you want to know?"
"Jane and I were discussing that poem by Tennyson, the one with the line 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'"
"Oh, right! 'Ulysses.' What about it?"
"We each had our own interpretations, and we wondered what meaning the author intended."
"I'd like to hear that, too," Gary said, drawing up next to Macy, along with Paul. "You guys do the hike up Ob Hill and see the quote there?"
Jane and Macy nodded while Loki minutely shook his head. It was ages ago. She'd gone with Cody and Morgan, whom she'd just met, right after that nerve-wracking conversation with Lucas, completely ignorant of who he really was and of what the austral winter would have in store for her.
"It helps if you're familiar with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Ulysses is the Latin version of the Greek Odysseus. But I guess you wouldn't be, would you, Loki? Maybe most people haven't read them, but you've never even heard of the Iliad and the Odyssey, have you? Or even Shakespeare."
"No. But…Ulysses is actually Odysseus? The warrior king?"
"King of Ithaca, right. What, did you look that up already?"
"No. I read it. Parts of it, rather. We had to read the Iliad when I was fifteen or sixteen, the battles in it. Achilles. Achilles is mentioned in Ulysses – I didn't make the connection before."
"I read it when I was nineteen," Macy said, grinning in delight.
"I tried to read it once, picked it up when I was in Greece. Can't say I got very far," Gary said.
"You got farther than me," Jane said, watching Macy with curiosity.
"Maybe you read Shakespeare then, too, but you knew it by another name? There's some controversy…do you know who really wrote all his plays?" Macy's eyes had grown wide. "Hamlet, King Lear, Othello? Romeo and Juliet? The histories, Henry IV, Henry V…there's a lot. Any of those ring a bell?"
"I can't say that they do. When did he live?"
"Late sixteenth century, early seventeenth."
"No wonder. That's far too recent. My basics studies took place in your late tenth century."
"You were born before Shakespeare," Macy said, voice breathy with wonder. Jane supposed she could relate; although the Aesirs' long life had lost some of its shock power, if she made a parallel to Macy's Shakespeare, the fact that Loki was born hundreds of years before Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler was nothing less than awe-inspiring.
"You're ancient," Gary said. "And not a gray hair in sight. No justice in this universe."
"It's a matter of perspective, isn't it?" Loki said with a slight shrug. "I don't feel ancient. Sometimes I feel quite young."
"Words of wisdom from the ancient guy," Gary said.
Loki breathed a quiet laugh and shook his head. Words he had plenty of. Words of wisdom, far fewer.
"What did you think of it? The Iliad?" Macy asked.
"It was required reading, about an unfamiliar people with unfamiliar beliefs, written in an unfamiliar style, and as I said we didn't read all of it. I don't think I could judge it fairly."
As Macy asked about a few other works of classical literature, Jane could only stand and listen, and it was beginning to feel a little weird. And as Loki indulged Macy, no he had not read this and no he had not read that, she realized why. That used to be her. Jane was the one who asked Loki about his life, his experiences, what he'd seen of Earth, but only when they were alone, because to everyone else here he was a graduate student at the University of Toronto, and only she knew the truth. And it used to be like pulling teeth. A mention of goats on rooftops was an exciting revelation, because she wasn't going to be able to drag anything more out of him. And here he was answering everything, freely. For Macy, and anyone else who happened to be listening. It was a good thing…but weird. And maybe a little uncomfortable. She wondered how it had "just happened" that Macy and Loki had wound up dancing here as the building swayed on its columns. She wondered if Loki remembered what she'd told him about Macy being interested in him, and not just in his reading history.
"No…wait. Beowulf?"
"Yes! You know that one?"
"He kills a monster, and the monster's mother, and a dragon?"
"That's the one. You read that?"
"I did, when I was a child. Nine or ten? That one I liked. It felt more familiar, and I found it very exciting at the time."
"I had to read that in high school," Gary said. "I liked it, too. Well, better than the Iliad, at least."
Jane had had to read it, too. Constant fighting and killing, displaying the severed arm of a defeated monster. Not her preferred reading material. Macy was giddy with excitement, though, extracting dates from Loki for when he'd read Beowulf, because no one knew when the story was written and the fact that Loki had read it in 976, give or take a year or so, would be a critical contribution to scholarship. That Asgard might still have the copy of it that had been taken from Earth…the literary find of the century, apparently.
"I'm not surprised you found Beowulf more familiar. It's got Scandinavian influence, the Old Norse Scandinavia we get the mythology about you from. It's full of kennings, for example."
"Kennings, yes!" Loki said, excited. He hadn't expected anyone here to know about them. He hadn't thought of Beowulf in centuries, hadn't remembered that it had come from Midgard, hadn't in the slightest imagined that something he'd read as a boy might have also been read by others here. "Jane, I was telling you about them, remember?"
"Feeder of bluewings, yeah, I remember," Jane said with a cringing smile.
"What's that?"
"A warrior."
"Oh. Ohhh," Macy repeated, wrinkling her nose.
Jane couldn't help a laugh; her own initial reaction to that had been about the same.
Loki listened with unfeigned interest. It was remarkable, the degree of significance that Macy – and apparently others who shared her interest – attached to what had been for him just another childhood tale of monsters and bravery. Remarkable and enjoyable, both Macy's interest and his ability to speak openly, unfortunately including crushing her hopes when he told her he had no idea how his tutors had obtained the work. Her unfeigned attention, too, was flattering. She'd been attracted to him before, and perhaps, although it defied all reason, she still was. It felt good, this interaction. The most comfortable he'd been with the Polies yet since they'd learned who he was.
But Jane was waiting, and, he could tell, not nearly as captivated as Macy. Gary and Paul were waiting – everyone else had left by now – and a task was waiting for him in the jamesway. He could not indulge himself in this way all morning, despite how unexpectedly easy it would be to do so.
"What about Ulysses, though?" he asked at the first opening. "And that final line."
"Okay, well, he's had all these adventures, fought all these battles, and now he's king, getting older, his people don't appreciate him and don't know him. He's restless, he's unhappy. He wants to roam the world again, so he decides he'll set to the seas for new adventures and new discoveries with his old pals. That's where his heart is. And even though they're not as physically strong as they used to be, they're strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. It's about pushing life to the very edge of its limits."
"So…it's about a guy who quits his job because he'd rather go travel the world and experience life than sit tied to a desk until he keels over it and dies?" Paul asked.
"You could put it that way, yeah," Macy said.
"That sounds familiar," Paul said. "That could apply to a lot of us here. No wonder that line's on the cross on Ob Hill.
"Not just a 'guy,' though," Loki said. "Not just a job. A king. One who'd rather go off on adventures than sit tied to a throne. That makes the final line sound less like an ode to courage and conviction and more like selfish abdication of responsibility." Odin doing such a thing, or even Thor, who he knew would rather be adventuring that figuring out supplies and repairs and renewed defenses, was unimaginable.
Macy was shaking her head. "He doesn't just make a break for it the middle of the night, he leaves the throne to his son. He thinks his son has a better temperament for ruling and will be a better king than him. He thinks he's doing the right thing for his people. Maybe he's being irresponsible. Or maybe leaving his throne to someone who's better suited to it is the most responsible thing he could've done. It's open to interpretation," she said with a shrug. "There's also that nice little dose of misogyny in it – he's leaving his wife, Penelope, because she got old. Never mind that he did, too."
"Maybe he feels young, and she doesn't," Gary said with a nod toward Loki.
"And maybe he's an old geezer who thinks his wife isn't hot enough for him anymore," Macy fired back.
Jane dutifully nodded when Macy looked her way, but she wasn't eager to dwell on Ulysses and his old and not-hot wife. Maybe he felt young, but he wasn't. She'd seen those pictures Frigga had. She'd be gray and wrinkled and Thor wouldn't have visibly aged a day. She wasn't planning the rest of her life, though; what she and Thor needed to figure out was more immediate.
"Okay, so Ulysses is a courageous traveler and explorer, maybe shirking his responsibilities to his kingdom, and also kind of a jerk in his personal life," Gary said. "But speaking of old geezers, Loki, I think I might have tried to give you advice once or twice. I was working on the presumption you were the troubled young whipper-snapper and I was the wizened old coot who'd seen it all. Obviously I didn't know you had me beat by a millennium. If I came off as an obnoxious know-it-all, I apologize. I meant well."
"I know. And you didn't. You live your lives more quickly here. You've experienced things I haven't. I, ah…I appreciated your kindness."
"Well, shucks. That's decent of you."
"You know, so many things make sense now that seemed a little off before," Zeke said. "Like some of the things you said, when we were prepping the MCI drill. Remember that?"
"How could I forget? Your smoke machine, Jane dragging me from the B3 lounge, being strapped down onto a spine board," he continued with a wince they didn't need to know the reason for. "It was memorable."
"Like, how did you manage to overwinter at the South Pole and not seem to know about the generators? But I didn't make anything of it. Just thought you were weird. Quirky. We were talking about that, some of us. This being the place it is, weird doesn't stand out so much. And it was just little things here and there. How did you hide it all that time? That you…" – Zeke paused to flutter a hand in Loki's direction – "you're from another planet. An honest-to-God alien, who read Beowulf when it first came out."
"It didn't exactly come out, like from tenth-century Random House or something," Macy interjected. "It probably existed in oral tradition for a while before it was ever copied down."
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah," Macy said with a nod.
"It wasn't so hard. I'm observant. Speaking less and listening more helps."
"Observant, huh?" Zeke said. "Elliot thought you were studying us. I guess you kind of were."
"I wasn't studying you," Loki quickly got out, glancing around the galley for Elliot, but it was just the five of them now.
"I know. I don't mean it like that. That was crazy talk, somebody thinking we're way more important than we really are down here. You winding up here, with us…it didn't have anything to do with us, or with the South Pole, did it?"
"It didn't. It was certainly a…a unique experience. I don't know that you'll appreciate me saying this…but I assure you it's well-intentioned. I'm glad it was here. I'm glad it was with you. What I experienced here will remain a part of me. And I wish I hadn't squandered so much of it in anger and discontent."
"Give it another couple of months. We'll all be wallowing in anger and discontent. They call it toasty August," Gary said.
"I do appreciate it," Zeke said.
"Me, too," Macy said. "You'll remember us?"
"How could I not?"
Macy smiled, then looked away and shook her head.
"So, uh, Loki…," Gary said, "what's next for you? You're not on that other king's Most Wanted list anymore, are you?"
"No." He was tempted to say more; Gary had once been a warrior and would understand war and its aftermath more than most here, probably. But while they knew his real name now, and the names Gullveig and Vanaheim and Asgard, they had not even the rudimentary understanding of the Nine Realms and the relationships among them that Jane now did. He could not speak of such things with Gary or the other Polies the way he could with Jane. "I can travel more or less freely. I intend to find a scenic place to relax, then perhaps do some exploring."
"Someplace warm?" Paul asked.
"Is that a real question?" His tone and Paul's responding laugh were both more subdued than he imagined they would have been at the poker table, when they were calling him Lucas.
"Where, exactly? Where do you go when the universe is your oyster?"
"Alfheim. It's a planet. Where exactly, though, I haven't decided. I'll figure it out when I get there."
"You don't know that one, do you?" Macy said as soon as he fell silent, eyes bright with triumph. "See? He just pretends he understands. And then nobody notices."
"Understands what?" Gary asked.
"Notices what?" Paul added.
"'The universe is my oyster'? Oysters must be opened, the universe is open to me now? The expression is unfamiliar but not a challenge for comprehension."
"That's not exactly it," Jane said, watching Loki with interest. She wondered how often he'd guessed at the meaning of some word or expression without even her realizing, and recalled his assumption that an Asgardian healing room translated to 'Club Med' on Earth because he'd heard the one at the Pole called that. She glanced uneasily at the others sharing this moment that would have once been between only Loki and her.
"Close enough," Macy said. "Probably more about finding a pearl inside. All the possibilities and opportunities in life. But that saying's from Shakespeare. 'The world's my oyster.' That's how I knew you wouldn't know it."
"Didn't know I was quoting Shakespeare."
"Most people don't. He gave us a lot of common expressions people don't realize came from him."
"I thank you, then, for enlightening me about one of them." The world is my oyster. Possibilities. Opportunities. He should feel such a sense, something like Macy's enthusiasm for her discovery. The world is my oyster. The more he pondered the words and their meaning, the more keenly he felt instead a sense of emptiness. An oyster without a pearl. Or perhaps one whose pearl had been removed before he found it.
Paul was commenting on Shakespeare – apparently the language was difficult to read – and when he finished, Loki took the opportunity to excuse himself before the new topic could take off. He would see them all again a little later, and he and Jane had only a few hours left now. The thought had an unpleasant air of finality, even though he had every intention that nothing with Jane was final, that he would see her again, as they'd discussed. But it would never again be like this. And how could it? Nothing about this place was normal, not for any of them. The time spent here with Jane, the isolation, the intensity, the intimacy of it…it would never be replicated. Even now it wasn't the same. The secrets they shared were fewer.
"Why so quiet?" Jane asked. They'd gotten their outerwear on together in silence and headed outside into the sunless day, the only sounds their boots crunching over the ice.
"I forgot how cold it is out here," Loki said, casting a glance Jane's way, along with a smile she wouldn't be able to see.
"Are you okay?" Jane asked, not buying that for a second. "Nobody was massing for attack."
"They were all kind, those who spoke up this morning, those last night. Unexpectedly so. But they…it's as though they're simply ignoring what they now know about me."
"That's not true. They were all talking about it. You let them hold your sword. You—." A choked-back laugh prevented her from continuing. Loki, thankfully, didn't ask.
"They're ignoring the one thing they knew about me before they knew Lucas. The one thing that's salient for them."
"I don't know, Loki…that's something they knew about, as a fact, sure. But they didn't really know anything about you, per se. They heard more about you, the you before they met you as Lucas, from King Gullveig. And I think what's most salient to everybody here, to most of us anyway, is the person we got to know. And it's…." She paused to catch her breath; Loki's pace was brisk and she had to watch her step. "It's not easy trying to…I guess to reconcile the person they heard about in the news and that Gullveig talked about with the person they got to know here. Believe me, I know. So maybe it's not so much that they're ignoring it, as they haven't had a chance to reconcile all that. Can you slow down a little?"
"I—. Sorry. I'm sorry," Loki said, stopping for a second then resuming at a more leisurely pace. They were almost at their jamesway anyway, but it took a moment even to remember why they were going there. Mainly, to collect the belongings he'd abandoned here after his storage had emptied itself out. He was supposed to have done it in the middle of the night and he was supposed to have been on Alfheim by now, but his time here kept getting extended. "It's just…it's ironic, isn't it? I'm uncomfortable because they aren't dealing with me honestly now, even though I never dealt honestly with them." And even that wasn't quite true. He remembered telling the poker group how he was never good enough for his father, how much he wished he could have heard "I'm proud of you, Son," from Odin's lips, how he'd never measured up to his brother. He remembered Zeke asking "What makes your brother so special?" An astounding question, really. Only someone who didn't know who Thor was, who didn't know that Thor was his brother, would ask such a thing. But Zeke had asked it. Loki treasured that moment – a moment as honest as any moment could be. More so, in fact. The feelings he'd shared were not new. Admitting them to others, an entire group of others, that was new. A prince could not speak openly of discontent or conflict within the family, especially not when it involved the king or the heir. A researcher at the South Pole in the dead of winter, playing poker with his fellow researchers and support staff, could say whatever was on his mind.
His freedom here had been far greater than he'd understood at the time.
"Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, you will know peace."
I've been such a fool. He kicked at the ice with his next step, sending a few small chips flying and startling Jane who looked up at him, probably with concern hidden behind her balaclava. "Sorry," he muttered again. It had been a lie, of course. He was a prince, and not a researcher. But accepting it brought no peace. He'd realized at that night's poker group that he would miss the games, the camaraderie, the freedom he'd experienced here, once he left.
"I don't know what else to say, Loki. I don't think it's dishonesty or avoidance."
He would miss Jane, too. "You don't have to say anything. I know you want to make things right, to fix things. But a vase that breaks and is put together again is still a broken vase that's been put back together; it'll never be unbroken again. Some things can't be mended. I appreciate that you try, though. Truly. It's one of the things I understood about you early on, that you try to fix broken things."
"Do I? Broken equipment, sure. I couldn't afford to take stuff in for repairs, and a lot of it I built myself, anyway."
"When you knew almost nothing about me and still called me Lucas, you wanted to contact my mother to tell her I was all right."
Jane let out a surprised laugh. "I did, didn't I? I'd forgotten about that, it seems like ages ago now. I must have sounded like such a fool."
"You sounded kind. I was surprised. That you would care, even when you didn't particularly like me."
"I didn't dislike you."
"You hated me."
Jane had been reaching for the door, but wheeled around, hands on hips. "I did not hate you."
Loki fixed her with an exaggerated skeptical look that did not result in the expected laughter, then remembered she couldn't see his expression. He shook his head and pushed past Jane and into the jamesway. "If another plane had shown up and you could have sent me back on it, you would have done so in a heartbeat."
"Maybe," Jane said, following Loki in and joining him in stripping off her outer layers. "That probably changed on an hourly basis back then."
"And still you wanted to fix things between me and my supposed family."
"You know why."
"I know why."
"How are things now? It was nice to see you and Thor talking, before we left. Maybe it's a little better between you two?"
The instinct to deny it tugged insistently at him, but it would be a lie, and he saw no point in lying to Jane, or to himself, about this. "Perhaps a little. I was surprised that he granted me the opportunity to respond to his friends' betrayal. To be honest, I still am."
"I didn't expect it either. I thought he was trying to figure out what he should do himself."
Loki still wondered exactly what was said in that conversation – the idea of Thor and Jane talking about him was distinctly uncomfortable – but his curiosity wasn't sufficient for him to ask. He had little interest in dwelling further on what he now considered a closed matter, and even less in hearing about the time Thor and Jane had spent together on Asgard. "We both loved Baldur."
Jane nodded. "You shared that. And it wasn't marred by what you found out a couple of years ago."
"No, it was marred by everyone thinking I murdered him."
"And now everyone knows the truth, including Thor." She'd grown so accustomed to Loki's statements meant to shock or scandalize that she didn't even look up from the balaclava she was hanging up on coat hook.
"Yes. Thank you, by the way."
"For what? I didn't have anything to do with that," Jane said, finally down to her Carhartts and sweater, head and hands free, and facing Loki.
"For reminding me that it wasn't my fault. I keep forgetting. Arguing with myself. I played a role, but many people played a role. If that man hadn't interfered, Baldur wouldn't have died that day."
"I'll tell you again any time you need to hear it. You believed it for over a thousand years. It's going to take a while to really sink in."
Loki nodded, gaze vacant.
Jane thought he looked lost. "Hey. How are you doing? You've had so much to take in over the last couple of days. You must still be so overwhelmed."
"I'm fine," he said with a shrug, eyes focusing in on Jane, who was back to looking as she always did here. A small thing, but there was comfort in it, even in his own familiar used clothing, especially once he looked around and took in the jamesway they'd spent so much time in, looking much as it had before but with added boxes. Here they'd laughed and fought and worked and made discoveries that had ultimately changed his entire life, again. Perhaps it hadn't directly changed his life, but it had at least changed what he thought about it when he looked back on it. What he thought about himself, in some ways. He was not a parasite, meant to destroy a co-opted family from the inside out. What was he instead? What was he to replace that with?
"I don't know," he muttered, eyes lingering on the bed where he'd lain in freezing blue skin, where Odin had told him about tapestries and where his mother told him about Odin trying and failing to force a Jotun form on him and where Jane figured out the truth and told him that who the Frost Giants were had nothing to do with who he was.
"You don't know what?"
"Nothing," he said, about to change the subject on instinct. But with Jane, there was no need. "I feel…unmoored. Do you really know anything if you don't even know yourself? Two years ago, I believed I was Aesir. I believed I was born to Odin and Frigga, that I was Thor's younger brother, by blood. That I was Baldur's older brother, by blood. And that I had killed my younger brother. Now I know that none of these things are true. And I…I don't know what is true anymore. When I learned the truth of my birth, I was angry. I'm still angry," he hastened to add. "But it doesn't consume me as it once did." He shook his head, mustered a smile for Jane's sake. "I don't know that there any grand answers out there. Perhaps I just need some time to…." He shook his head again. "I don't know. I believe that sums it up the best."
"You do need time. Anybody would after all that. It's what they call an identity crisis."
"Identity crisis," Loki repeated, trying the words out. "Yes. Ever since that miserable day Thor dragged us to Jotunheim, I've been in an interminable identity crisis, even when I didn't realize it."
Jane grimaced. "Maybe posing as Lucas Cane here all this time didn't help."
"No."
Her heart sank. She liked to think that Loki's time here, on the whole, had been positive, a good thing for him – he himself had spoken positively of it more than once including just now in the galley – not that it had further damaged his shattered sense of who he was.
"No, that's not what I meant," Loki said, catching Jane's disappointed reaction. "Everyone else may be having an identity crisis about me, but I always knew I wasn't a University of Toronto graduate student named Lucas Cane. Here, though, no one ever thought I was Aesir, or Odin's and Frigga's son, or Thor's brother, or that I had killed my other brother. You did, but…but you believed me when I told you it was an accident. I'm sorry, I don't know how to explain. I don't even understand it myself. But when I said I didn't know what was real? This place is real. I don't know why, when you're right, so much of it was built on lies, but…it's real."
Jane waited, letting the words linger, letting Loki continue if he felt like it. She didn't understand it either, but she knew what he meant. "It feels real to me, too."
A few seconds after Jane spoke, Loki realized the tension had seeped from his muscles and a smile had spread over his face. She makes you smile, his mother had told him. He swallowed and looked away, glancing around the jamesway again. "I wish I could have a portrait of this place. Such a strange little…I was going to say building. Glorified tent."
"Oh!" Jane darted over to the little brown backpack she'd dropped on the floor by their ECW gear. "I don't know how portraits work on Asgard," she said while fumbling around in it, "but look what I brought."
"A little black tube?"
"Not this. This is mascara." She dropped it on the table, followed by a few other items getting in her way before her fingers latched onto the canvas bag she was scrounging for.
"Is that what you keep in that bag? What is that?"
Jane followed Loki's finger to the deodorant she'd taken to Asgard. "Nothing. Here. This."
"A black bag inside your brown bag?"
"It's amazing you've managed to live this long. My camera. The one Peter Larson…you don't know him. A sort-of friend sent it to me when I first got here."
"When postal delivery was still open here, right. I'm still awaiting your report on that, by the way."
"Do you think I looked it up last night?"
"No. The satellite window was closed then. But you could have this morning."
Jane threw her mascara at him. Loki caught it with lightning reflexes, not a single bobble, and held it back out to her. "All the more incentive for you to come back and see me."
"Do you really think I wouldn't?"
For an instant, she froze, about to drop a bottle of moisturizer back into her bag. Then in it went. "I don't know," she said, going for nonchalant. Loki's smile had faltered, and between one heartbeat in the next the atmosphere had turned weird.
Loki meandered over toward Jane, toward the table, where a few boxes of presumably his belongings rested atop and around it. He'd been teasing. But Jane, clearly, at some point had thought he might not. And he, for a time, had thought the same. He'd been a stubborn fool.
"I've only known you for a handful of months. An infinitesimal fraction of a percent of your life. I wasn't sure," she said with a shrug.
"Jane, I think I once had an entire century that was less memorable, less…significant, than this particular handful of months. You know…" – he paused until she finally looked up at him from her bag – "you were trying to befriend me, before you knew who I really was. And then, later, for some reason, even after. I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted nothing to do with you. I resented you, but I needed you. You were a means to an end. I don't know how all that changed, but it did."
"Because I'm like acid?" Jane offered with a small smile.
"Oh, right. That's it, of course. I'd forgotten," he said over light laughter. "Your friendship means a great deal to me. I don't say that lightly. Or easily. I trust you. I—." He had to stop. If he continued, he would say too much.
"So it never even occurred to you to just…leave here, move on, never look back?"
He hesitated. Long enough that if she'd been paying attention, if she remembered what he taught her, she would likely question his sincerity if he denied it. He saw no need to lie, though. "It occurred to me. I rejected it as a terrible idea."
"I'm sorry," Jane said, glancing up at Loki, so much closer now. "I know you already said you'll come back. It's just…it's like when Thor left. I don't have any control. If you get distracted, or something goes wrong and you get stuck on Alfheim, I won't be able to do anything about it. I can't pick up the phone or send an e-mail or—"
"No, but you can call on you-know-who. And you seem to have gotten on well with Nadrith. You could probably convince him to allow you to search for me, if you felt the need."
"Huh. I guess you're right. I could, and I would. It's not like when Thor left. I have more options now. And I could always rebuild Pathfinder, too."
"Will you?" he asked, intrigued. He hadn't considered how Jane might focus her work now and how she would deal with the loss of her most advanced – and most potentially dangerous – machine.
"Probably? I don't know. I haven't decided. It works. We can get to Asgard on our own with Pathfinder."
"Yes. But it does come with a few complications."
"Right. Like dropping you off where a bridge used to be."
"And possessing the ability to destroy the Nine Realms."
"I think if I make it so the code can't be altered, the Nine Realms will be okay. But if you figured out…you know, then—"
"Glodir's path. A new kenning, one whose meaning is known only to a few."
"Okay. If you figured out Glodir's path, then someone else could, too. I don't know what I can do to fully prevent that, whether I rebuild Pathfinder or not."
"You can't prevent every dangerous thing from happening. And it's not your responsibility to do so."
"I know, but…you can't just throw this together in your backyard. You need a massive power source. And I had help from Tony in designing Pathfinder," Jane said, staring at her lifeless laptop. Her gaze then snapped back up to Loki. "You know who's most likely to figure it out, at least in the near term? Tony. He has the resources and the knowledge. He also has access to the coordinates where the bifrost opened up."
"Is there any particular reason for him to think along those lines? Does he feel the same level of desperation to change his reality that I did? The same need to seize control of and shape reality to his preference? Hmm. I should stop. The answer to that last is probably yes."
"No, I don't think so, but anyone could be tempted. I was tempted."
"And I'm sorry that I tempted you. But Jane, regardless, it isn't your responsibility. Will you listen to me on this? The way I've listened to you? You cannot take this burden upon yourself. If someone else, someday, makes the same mistake that I did…all right, that we did," he amended at Jane's sharp frown, "you aren't responsible. It wouldn't be your fault. It's as simple as that."
"You're right, I guess."
"You guess?"
"All right, you're right. Okay? I know that intellectually. It's just…. You understand that, don't you?"
"I do. Every 'but.' Every 'it's just.'"
Jane nodded over a deep breath. It felt like she'd opened Pandora's Box here. At the very least she'd created Pandora's Box and brought it here, then Loki had opened it and she'd joined in. But he was right. If someone managed to figure out what Loki first had, that wasn't on her. As long as she made sure she didn't do anything to help that someone get there. "We have to make sure there's nothing left on that laptop that could give anyone ideas. Can you do anything about that?"
Loki joined Jane in peering down at the laptop. He stepped around the table to stand in front of it, then trailed a finger over it. Where he touched, it rippled and shimmered in a green haze, and when he withdrew his hand it had the look of smooth marbled onyx. Then in a small green flash it disappeared. "Even if it was somehow recovered, it would have no detectable electronic parts."
"Perfect. There's also my backups, on my other laptop. I need that one, though, at least for the rest of the season. I'll delete everything as thoroughly as I can, and as soon as I leave here I'll degauss it. Maybe hang onto it for you to turn it into a flower pot or something. That should do it."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry. This is a strange day."
"It's a very strange day. Though honestly…is it any stranger than yesterday? Or the day before? Or the day before that? Shall I continue?"
"Different kind of strange. In some ways. It's normal. You and me back at the Pole, out here in the jamesway working in secret. Everything's different, though. You're leaving," she said with a shrug.
"It would hardly be the same if I was staying. We have no laptop here to work from anymore," he said with a slow grin.
"True. The jamesway's time has come and gone."
"As far as glorified tents go, it served with distinction."
Jane laughed. "It did." Everywhere she looked were memories. Laughter and arguments, frustrations and discoveries. Loki bleeding, twice. Drinking that stuff in the vial.
"What?" Loki asked at Jane's scrunched up nose.
"Nothing. Just a lot of memories here. Come on, let's get some pictures."
Jane started with the jamesway itself – the table where they'd worked, the entryway, the coatrack with their gear hanging off it, looking down the corridor that ran the length of it. She didn't worry about capturing the boxes around the table, but she didn't take any pictures of the "bedroom" just down the corridor that held the bulk of them. Loki grimaced when she turned the camera on him, but he didn't tell her to stop, and quickly smoothed his expression into a slightly stiff-looking smile. "Don't worry. No one will see these but me. And I can print out copies for you before you go, if you want. The quality won't be great, but it's the best I can do from here."
"I don't need any pictures of myself."
"Not you. Us."
"Us?"
"Yeah. Ummm…that little end table over there, that ought to work."
At Jane's direction, Loki pulled over the small flimsy table from near the entryway, good perhaps for holding a few magazines and not much else. Jane placed the camera atop it and peered into it, aimed at him, then pulled the table back a little further.
"Perfect. I'll set a timer and get a couple of us. Okay, ummm…hold on, I haven't actually used this camera all that much yet…"
Loki watched as Jane leaned over behind the camera doing whatever one did with a camera – he'd never used one – with growing nervousness. He didn't know why. He knew Jane wouldn't make these pictures public. For himself, he no longer cared if others saw pictures of him here, though for the sake of the Polies it was best if they didn't. Still, his heart was beginning to race just standing there, waiting.
He understood once Jane darted around the table to his side and slipped an arm around his waist.
Only a thousand years of practice smiling for an audience saved him, and he wasn't certain even that had saved him in the first second or two. "When is it—"
"Now. See the red light? It's going to take several. Smile. Or glower, your choice."
"I would not—." Glower. He would not glower. He wasn't glowering. He was stiff, he realized, and Jane probably thought he was irritated. And glowering. He made a conscious effort to let his smile soften into something more natural, to relax his posture. He lifted his arm, aware of the pull and stretch of every muscle, and wrapped it loosely around Jane's shoulders until his palm lightly cupped her shoulder. He could feel her smile in the way she further relaxed against him.
His own relaxation was feigned. He wasn't looking at Jane, or wherever else his eyes drew him, but staring at a camera lens, one recording his image at some unknown speed and frequency, preserving every flicker of his discomfort, whether visible to anyone else or not.
"This feels weird."
Loki yanked his arm back to his side and twisted away. "Yes, it does. Very weird." He watched as Jane went over to the camera and pressed something that made the red light turn off.
"We're supposed to be capturing memories. We should pretend like we're working. Except we don't have a laptop anymore," Jane said with a laugh.
"I could…bring it back? It wouldn't be quite the same as before but it would probably be close enough for…or…." He waved his hand and her laptop, an illusion of it, appeared back on the table. What he should have thought of first, of course.
"That's perfect! But wait, will it work in photos? Will it still look real?"
"How should I know?" he snapped, though there was no bite in it. "I've never…taken pictures of my illusions with a Midgardian camera."
"Let's find out."
Jane spent the next few minutes positioning and repositioning them to something that both felt natural in terms of all the time they'd spent at this desk and would photograph well, with neither blocking the other or facing the camera. In the end, the camera, too, was repositioned, and Jane was in a chair in front of the non-existent laptop, while Loki stood behind her, leaning down with his hands on her chair. The red light was on.
"We're capturing a memory, right? How about this. Remember when we saw those first images? The infrared ones, and you said it was Asgard? And we knew for the first time that it really worked?"
"I remember."
"Think of that."
Loki thought of it. A wondrous moment, Asgard as he'd never seen it before but instantly recognizable. Home and not home, loved and reviled. Less complicated for Jane, probably. Success. Validation. One step closer to the stars that had always beguiled her, one step closer to Asgard. And, at the time, one step closer to being rid of him.
The red light went off; he pointed it out to Jane, who was apparently so deep in her reminiscing that she didn't notice.
He stepped away and she hopped up, retrieving the camera and bringing it back over to where he stood. She pressed something and held it up so they could both see what was on the screen. He might not readily admit it, but he was curious, too, about how well his illusions stood up under scrutiny of such a close and, according to Jane, high-quality camera. He tilted his head in to peer more closely at the small screen. There they were, both caught up in their own memories, while focused on—
"It worked!" Jane said, head whipping around, clearly startling Loki, whose eyes flared before he jerked back. "Sorry. But look, it worked. It's there and it looks completely real."
Loki nodded and took a perfunctory glance at the screen. No words formed. For a second, less than a second, perhaps, his heart had seized. Her face had been mere inches from his. Her eyes, animated with delight. Her nose, practically brushing his own. Her lips, curved into a grin around her words. Her breath smelled of mint.
"What do you think?"
"What?"
"To your eye. Since you see better than me, remember? Does it look real to you?"
"Ah…yes."
"You're not even looking at it."
"Oh." Oh. "I looked at it before. Give it to me, I'll check more carefully."
"Okay. Here. You can zoom in, too. Give it back a sec."
Loki drew his hand back, moving the camera out of her reach for a moment. "I can do it."
"Okay," Jane said, narrowing her eyes. "You don't have to be touchy about it."
His attention to the camera faltered. No, he did not have to be touchy. "Sorry. It's just that your mortal technology isn't that complicated." He flashed her a grin to let her know he was teasing.
Let it go, Jane told herself. It was an emotional day, after a series of emotional and stressful days. And Loki had a tendency toward flares of prickliness on days that ended in "y." "As I recall, you needed me to show you how to use a washing machine. This is way more complicated than a washing machine."
"As I recall, I explained to you that if I'd simply had a few minutes to examine the machine with no fear of anyone walking in, I could have figured it out on my own."
"Ooooh, right, I forgot."
Loki found the right option to select to zoom in and flashed Jane a smirk. "All zoomed in, and yes, it looks completely real. Hm. Except…no, not quite."
"What's wrong?" Jane asked, sidling up to Loki to see for herself, but Loki again held the camera out away from her.
"It's missing your water bottle. Your notebook. Your pen. And those empty crinkly wrappers you always left lying around everywhere."
"We could always open up the granola bars we brought but I don't think we don't have to make it that real," she said with mock annoyance. "It's a good picture, though, don't you think? Do you like it? We could try a different version."
He examined the tiny image in the screen again. Him leaning over Jane, both of them seemingly absorbed in a laptop that wasn't really there. The perfect combination of truth and lie, reality and fantasy. What better way to capture all of this, even this very moment? "I like it," he said, handing the camera back to her and mustering a smile.
/
Well, folks, someday life will hopefully be "normal" again but we aren't there yet. Sorry for the continued long delays. Please continue to know that my commitment to this story hasn't waned. Actually while I don't in the slightest mind hearing "hey, I'm eager for an update!" (I don't understand why some fanfic writers complain about this, from my perspective it's a compliment and makes me happy to know that readers want more!) it's remarkable how few such questions I've gotten. I interpret that as a level of trust, and that I appreciate, too. (Or it could just mean no one's interested anymore, ha! Even if no one was...I would keep writing until this is finished. :-) )
Previews for 222: Loki and Jane work on "packing." Well, mostly Loki. In long-winded excruciating detail. "Loki and Jane are locked in a room together. They talk."
Excerpt:
"We weren't discussing feelings, if that's what you're thinking. It wasn't personal. I conveyed all the information I'd gleaned there. For better or for worse, he's king, and a king needs to know his enemy."
"Maybe Asgard and Jotunheim don't have to stay enemies."
Loki shook his head. "Thor is…he's used to getting what he wants." He sent another box away, possibly with a tiny bit more force than necessary. "But not even for Thor does the cosmos realign itself to his every fantastical whim."