I am going to be too busy this weekend with schoolwork so I needed to post this early! Please review and enjoy! Music: During the dream, Plumb "In my arms" or you can listen to it through Once Upon a Time video "You Will be safe" by xxbrlyxx (Love your vids)
OK, this chapter is going to get a little touchy, so pleased be forewarned. I do not know where you are on your stance with abortion, but I have my belief system and I will not trounce on anyone's stance, belief, or entitlement. This passage I often think about when this topic is approached. It comes from the NIV Bible.
Psalms 139:13-16
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
Chapter Twenty-Two - Spiritual energy
Midgard - Icehawk Mountain
Icehawk Mountain was surrounded in a sparkling oasis of stars. The sun glistened off the snow.
A magical vortex opened up and dumped the two Asgardian women out onto a snowy mound. Eir screamed as she fell to the ground and into the cold. The healer had to brush off her bare legs from the frosty coating.
"Is this Midgard?" she asked as they looked around. "It feels like Jotunheim."
"I believe that is why Loki put his palace here," the queen said. "It is this way. We are near."
The castle was a few lengths away, but they were able to see the tall spires in the distance. Once they were close, it became a search for a way into the castle. Guards surrounded the towers and patrolled heavily.
It seemed an insurmountable task of entering Loki's palace.
Then Queen Frigga saw a chance. Several large transporting vehicles had people unloading supplies.
The gathering of servants grabbed items from the people in the vehicle and carried them inside. A diversion of pretending to be servants would be the way to Jane.
"Come," the queen whispered and they jogged toward the palace.
Eir and Frigga each grabbed a bushel of fruits and carried them into the kitchen. They set them inside and headed into the castle without being questioned.
The pair walked cautiously through Loki's palace. They had to tread lightly in effort to not be seen. If they were seen, they would no doubt be taken captive.
They would not be able to restore Lady Jane to life.
"How much further my queen?" Eir asked.
"We are nearly to her bedchamber," she said. "I just hope that we are not too late."
The women approached the door and entered.
They saw what they did not expect to see.
The couple's bed was empty and was tattered and destroyed. A wall and windows were decimated.
But Jane was not there.
"Oh no," Frigga said, "we are too late." She feared that Jane had passed and Loki had destroyed his bedchamber. The mother fell to her knees. "I will lose both of my boys...I cannot bear that suffering."
Eir attempted to come over and comfort her.
There was a gasp behind them.
They looked and Frigga recognized the youth there. It was Ashlyn, Jane's personal servant.
"What are you doing here?" the servant asked.
"I am here for your lady," Frigga replied climbing to her feet. "Has she passed?"
"No," Ashlyn replied. "After Dr. Doom attacked, my queen was relocated to a different room."
"Will you take us to her?" Eir asked. "I am Eir and I am a healing goddess. I can save your queen."
"Can you?" she asked.
"Do not doubt her child," Frigga replied. "We can stop this war before it even starts."
"Considering that my three brothers and many of my fellow servers' sons and friends are out there," Ashlyn said, "I will comply. Please follow me."
The trio traversed the halls much differently than when they had arrived. They walked out in the open, freely to the stares of everyone else that worked in the castle.
Torston, the king's personal guard stood outside the large doors.
And he became defensive, drawing his sword as they approached. "Miss Drake," the guard said, "what are you doing escorting these demons through the castle?"
"Rogero, they are our king's mother and the great healer from Asgard," Ashlyn told them. "They are here to heal our queen and bring her back to life. I had to bring them."
"We seek to save your queen and stop this potential skirmish between our realms," Frigga replied. "Please allow us the chance to do so."
"I am under strict orders to protect her majesty from anyone and everyone," Torston told them. "I will let no one passed."
"Then I am sorry," the queen said as she reached into her satchel, taking grasp of some magical powder within. She blew it into his face, creating a large smoke cloud. "Sleep now guard," she told him. "Rest and recharge your energies."
The guard collapsed into a chair and went to sleep.
The three made their way inside the bedchamber.
Oh, how he hated guard duty. So not the way to exemplify his skills and technology, by sitting at the side of his comatose queen.
Oh what was he kidding, Tony Stark thought. It was an honor to be sitting here in his Iron Man uniform protecting Jane from anymore insurgent attacks.
He had once kept Jane safe from Loki, and his king had asked him (not ordered) to watch over Jane until his return; whether it was dead or alive.
If somehow Thor was able to defeat Loki, Tony promised to take the queen and lock her up somewhere that no one would find her and be her guardian until he was old and gray. He would find the best physicians to take care of her and he would keep her protected.
The door to the chamber opened and there appeared Ashlyn, Jane's servant.
"Did you get it?" he asked. He had dispatched the servant to get a new dressing gown for Jane so she could be bathed and changed.
But she came back with much more; in the form of Loki's mother and a fiery redhead.
Standing sharply, Tony poured energy from his reactor into the stabilizer in his right hand, humming loudly as it was aimed in the direction of the Asgardians.
"Not what I asked for Ashlyn," he remarked. "How about we return them to sender?"
"Mr. Stark," the servant said. "These people claim they can save our queen."
"I do not care," he replied. "These women are from Asgard and in case you have been a space cadet and off our realm, we are preparing to go to war against them."
"Son of Stark," Loki's mother said. "I have come to save your precious queen. I brought our healer, Eir who can heal any sort of ailment. We want to save her."
"Nice try ladies," he snapped back, the unit growing louder with its potential release. "Best doctors in all of Midgard have been on it and no luck. We are just waiting for her to kick the bucket and then our king is going to lay waste to your realm."
"At the costs of thousands of innocent lives," Frigga replied. "Give us a chance."
Tony had to admit that they did seem to be sincere. Maybe they were not here to harm Jane at all.
"I have my eyes on you both," he said and powered down his weapon.
The women raced around and passed him to be at Jane's side.
They first began their initial inspection of her body.
"Eir, what do you think?" Frigga asked.
"I generally cannot cure self-inflictions," the healer responded. "And it is clear that she did this to herself."
"You must try," the mother begged. "To save Loki and to save Thor."
"Young girl," Eir directed to her servant. "I need several herbs. Can you take me to your apothecary?"
"What?" the girl asked.
"She means the pantry downstairs," Son of Stark said.
"Oh yes," the servant replied.
The mother smiled once the server and Eir were gone.
"Who would have thought that learning Romeo and Juliet in high school would come back an haunt me with knowledge to help my present? Thank you Mrs. Smith," Tony prayed out loud.
She looked. "Sometimes our earliest lessons are the ones that we may cherish and look back upon to make our futures brighter," she replied.
The healer returned with several herbs and oils from where she had been taken. Eir was mixing and grinding the items to make an elixir for Jane.
However the queen was focusing on trying to use her own magic to communicate with Jane's mind. Give her strength to at least speak to her.
"Come now my daughter," the mother spoke to her daughter-in-law as she brushed her hair with her fingers. "You have to awaken. Your husband and lord need you now." Her hand smoothed down her body, but she was suddenly jolted by a force unfelt before.
"Did you feel that?" she asked.
"Feel what?"
Frigga put her hand on Jane's midsection again and could feel the energy field that connected their bodies together.
"Jane has something in her body that is drawing energy. Something that is...oh my." She turned and faced her ironed guardian. "Did you know that your queen is with child?"
"Jane, pregnant?" the man called Tony said. "No. None of us knew. How...?"
A faint voice spoke to her. "Nana," the soft male voice said. "Are you my grandmother?"
The queen looked to Jane's eyes again and then back to her hand. "Yes," she replied. "Are you..."
"I am the one inside," he spoke to her. "I need your help grandmother."
"What is happening?" Tony asked.
She shh'ed him.
"I am Lukas, or I desire to be baby Lukas," the child inside said. "I want to be the son of my mother and father, but I am very weak. I am trying to keep my mother alive, but I do not know how much longer I can."
"Tell me what I can do for you Baby Lukas," she spoke out loud.
"Lukas," Tony said. "Cute name."
"He says that he is Lukas, son of Loki and Jane Odinson, Prince of Jotunheim and Midgard," Frigga told the both of them. "He is so handsome."
"Is anyone just little bit concerned that she is talking to a cellular structure that barely has a heartbeat and brainpower?" he said.
"He says to not take it personally," the grandmother joked. "Magic and love has given him life. Here," she said as she reached out for his hands. "He wants you to see him."
The one called Tony Stark was apprehensive in doing it, but he gave his hand to her. Both hands rested onto Jane's abdomen.
Suddenly, they were drawn into a flashpoint of memories and visions.
Jane and Loki welcomed their son through birth, the Earth continued to grow in prosperity, and the boy grew up to be a handsome prince. His hair was brown like Jane's but short and spiky.
The prince used magic as a child and was beloved by all who knew him.
Their hands were pulled away.
"How is it that I was able to see the future of Jane and Loki's child when he barely has a pulse or brainpower," Stark said.
"He needs our help," Frigga said. "We need to give Jane some strength and energy so she can regain consciousness. That is why she has not died. Lukas is keeping her alive so he can be borne. What can we give her that would give her energy?"
Tony thought for a moment. "I suppose giving her blood might help, but if she is pregnant, caffeine is not going to work," he said.
Eir continued to her task while Frigga was giving her energy. "I have what I need to make a healing dram, but I will give him what energy I can my queen," Eir said, "but I cannot give much if I am needed to heal her."
"Understood," the queen replied. "Lukas, darling, I need you to take what energy we give you and link up with your mother's mind. Let her meet you the way we have. It should inspire her to wake."
"I will try," the baby replied.
Frigga began to feel the energy come from within the womb, interlacing with her own energy that attached together. The delicate rope braided together and began to move throughout Jane's sleeping form.
Was she dead...yet?
Jane continued to float between the realms of life and death, hoping that the energy in her body would eventually give out and allow her to leave the land of the living.
She felt guilty for what she had done. Even thought about climbing out of the tub a couple of times. She stared up through the ripples of the water at the bathroom above her, but her shame kept her below the cool surface.
She prayed that someone would find her and lift her from her deathly abyss, but if she was where she was, she apparently had been found. Her body was staying awake and so she walked around in this perilous void of white.
Jane could barely see her skin masked in the white light and the gown that she had been wearing.
She prayed that Loki had not been the one that had found her. It would destroy him and that split her heart in two.
However, she felt unworthy to be his queen and his wife.
If not for Thor, the baby in her body would have been able to see the light of day.
So she would wait until her physical form gave out.
"Mother," she believed that she heard a voice call out to her. "Mother."
What? How could she be hearing someone calling her mother. Her baby was barely a month gestation and now she was hearing them call.
Perhaps the baby was dead now and they were going to cross over into the afterlife together.
"Mother," the sharp male voice called out and Jane turned around.
From a glowing doorway, someone walked briskly toward her. They wore all black in a rugged royal finery from head to toe.
His hair was a dark auburn like hers and was short and spiky, but was disheveled in appearance.
The young man was youthful with a well defined profile. His dark brown eyes locked onto hers as he strode gracefully toward her.
"Mother," he said when they met.
"Mother?" she inquired. "You...you cannot...be...my..."
"Son," the young man asked. "Yes mother, I am your son, or what I will look like when I am older. Do you approve?" He slowly turned around so she could see him.
He appeared to be strong and showed very little to his frame; just like his father. His eyes were a piercing gaze that appeared to glow with an immortal light.
Jane reached out and touched him. She grasped and felt the muscle in his bicep, the softness of his skin near his neck and face. He was taller than her.
"But...how," she asked. "You are still only a gathering of cells in my body. You cannot be this old."
The boy who claimed to be her offspring took her hands in his soft grasp, just as his father had when she had surrendered to him.
"I have come to you in the way that I will be," he said. "My name is Lukas, son of Loki and Jane, King and Queen of Midgard and Jotunheim; if you will allow me to be."
Lukas. That name seemed to haunt her. It was the name of the man that Loki had killed upon his fall to Midgard and it was the name that he first appeared to her. Now it was the name of this youth who was saying he would be her son.
"What do you..."
Lukas released her hands and turned to step away from her.
"I see the world and I learn through your eyes," he told her. "From the moment that you and father created me, I have an identity. I have a life." He took her hand and placed it on his heart. "Feel this mother."
Jane began to tear up.
"This is my heart," he told her. "The heart that was created and given life out of the love that you and father have. Because you felt ashamed as to what my uncle did, you chose to take your life." He reached out and put a hand on her chest as well. "By taking your life, you are extinguishing my life before I have had a change to see what my realm has to offer."
The tears drained down her cheeks as she could feel her son's heart as it beat delicately at first, but then started to pound.
Lukas was no doubt scared that he would not live if she died. Tears welled in his eyes and stroked down his lightly tanned cheeks.
"Please my baby," she begged, "do not cry." Her hand reached, as a mother, to wipe away his tears.
Her son took her hand and kissed the inside of her palm.
"Please mother, my father is going to need you. He is lost without you. Initially, he did want to kill you, but he fell in love with you. You, Jane Foster, have captured his heart."
Her son was wiser than person that she had ever met, and yet he was still only an embryo inside her body.
Lukas was right. She did not want to die. She wanted them to live.
"How?" she asked. "If you have come to beg me to live, how do we do it?"
Her son took her hand. "We do it together," he replied. "Just come with me." He offered his hand to her.
A hand that she took and grasped tightly.
Jane and Lukas walked back toward the light that he had appeared from. The gait was steady, yet fearful. She was not sure if she was going to be able to rouse herself from her death-like state, but for the love and life of her son, she sure was going to try.
They passed through the heavenly light and into the unknown.
Tony Stark watched as Queen Frigga of Asgard slowly withdrew her hand, the golden essence of energy was fading.
He watched as tears escaped her eyes.
"That's it?" he asked.
She shh'ed him with a hand to stop him from speaking. "Just wait Son of Stark," she told him. "Just wait."
And his eyes returned to his good friend Jane.
They witnessed as her eyes scrunched together lightly followed by her eye-sockets moving underneath her lids.
The healer Eir gasped lightly for joy.
Not so much him as he gasped powerfully. Whatever the Queen of Asgard did, it was working. Jane's pulse on the heart monitor increased to a normal, stronger rhythm.
Jane's stiff fingers also began to flex and move about at her side.
"Come on Janie," he prayed. "Come on back to us."
Finally her eyes softly opened. Her brown spheres were lightened and surrounded in blood-shot veins. She blinked several times and finally said something underneath the mask.
"Wh..." she said.
Tony rushed to her side so she could focus on something or someone. He smoothed her matted locks away from her face.
"There you are," he said.
She searched around the bedchamber, trying to focus, and figure out the elements around her.
"Tony," she lightly said his name beyond the dryness in her throat.
"Water," he asked for someone to bring him.
The redhead was the one that retrieved his water while he unclipped the mask from Jane's face.
"Gave us quite a scare there your majesty," he told her and took the glass. "Think you can take this down."
Jane nodded.
He brought the water to her lips and assisted in helping her to get it down. She tried to hold it in her unsteady hands, but he remained close.
Her eyes locked on the mother of her husband as she sipped the liquid down.
"Thank you," she told her.
"Anything my dear," Frigga replied. "From one mother to another."
He looked to her. "Is it true Janie?" he asked. "Are you pregnant?"
Jane nodded softly. "How long have I been asleep?"
"Nearly three weeks," he answered.
"So I am six weeks along," she said. "Where's Loki?" she asked as she leaned back into her mountain of pillows. "I...I need to see him...tell him."
He looked back to the other ladies in the room. Did they want to tell her that her husband and brother-in-law where in the middle of an epic battle where only one of them was going to come out alive? It could send her over the edge.
"Janie, Loki went to Asgard. He went to find his brother and was challenged to Mortal Kombat."
"What?" she gasped.
And her heart-rate went through the roof.
"OK Jane, my queen, you need to relax," he told her.
"Your friend is right Lady Jane," the healer added. "You are still weak and this stress is not going to aid in your recovery."
Jane flung off the numerous covers from her body and ripped the IVs from her hand. "I need to get to him," she said. Her feet reached the floor, but as she attempted to stand, her legs gave out.
But Tony was there to catch her.
"Walking definitely not on your list of things to do after being in a coma," he said.
"Tony," she asked, their eyes locked, "you once sheltered me. To keep Loki from finding me. Now, as your queen, I am begging you to take me to him. Please, take me to Loki; to save our kingdom."
Jane was right, Tony thought. If Loki fell to Thor, the kingdom would fall into chaos and attempt to overthrow Jane. And with her pregnancy, it would be a fight that she could not win.
The Avengers would not be able to fight for her very long against the rebel forces who would attempt to destroy her and her child.
And so his decision was made.
"Why is it that the pretty ones always have to be so persuasive?" he said.
Jane smiled up at him.
"But since you will not listen to me," he said, as he reached down and scooped her up into his arms, "I am at least going to carry you."
Frigga gathered up her cloak and the two Asgardians followed him out of the royal bedchamber toward the portal room.
Oh come on, you know I couldn't kill Jane so easily! How long have you known me? According to the log, at least since October. Please review...you know you want to!
To note: if you need a visual on Lukas Lokison, think of Shiloh Fernandez (Peter) from "Red Riding Hood." I watch the movie now and instantly think, "That is Loki and Jane's son!"