Disclaimer: The characters and original story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me; this story is not for sale or profit.
A/N: Winding down to the end of Part II – and working on the first draft of Part III, which is the section I've been looking forward to for various reasons… this chapter was written to the tune of Eurydice by Sleepthief, gorgeous song, check it out!
So much love to all of my reviewers, the value of your feedback is immeasurable. The muse is currently baking chocolate chip tequila cookies, and promises to send one to each of you via a gravitational anomaly in the space-time continuum during the next Convergence… so… they might be slightly stale by the time the get there. Never you mind!
Without further ado…
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"I found you my lovely, in the depths of an ocean
A story forever of hope and devotion…"
-Sleepthief
.
It felt oddly anti-climactic after all that had transpired, but at a loss as to what else to do, Jane struggled to her feet and made her way out of the alley, intent on finding her way home.
Everything hurt. The adrenaline that had kept her going through the battle against the mark had burned away, and her body let her know that it was exhausted and injured. Her shirt was blood-stained and torn and her arms and torso were covered in bruises, scrapes and scratches from her escape from the mob. Her muscles ached from running so far so fast, and protested as she moved. Her face felt like a mosaic of different kinds of pain, aching, stinging, stabbing, throbbing. Her cheek was swelling over the bone where the butt of the gun had hit her. As she crept warily towards the end of the alley, all she wanted out of life was two aspirin, a hot bath and a solid week of sleep.
Those luxuries would have to wait. The past few weeks were a blur in her memory - too much like the blur of being influenced by the Aether for comfort – but when she isolated little snatches of time, and recalled how she'd treated Erik, Thor and especially Darcy, her insides knotted up. She had phone calls to make.
When she peered out on to the street, expecting to find herself in some unknown part of the city, her jaw dropped in disbelief. She was only a few blocks from her lab. Just up the way she saw the shop were she'd bought her coffee earlier; the park she'd been looking for was just around the next bend. How could she have been so confused that she couldn't find her way from here?
Because the Tesseract wanted me to be lost.
She shivered, grateful all over again that it was gone. She still didn't understand everything that had happened today, to her or to the people around her. How could the Tesseract do something like that? And what else can it do…? It was becoming all too clear why an intergalactic battle had been fought over it; there was no telling what that kind of power could do in the wrong hands.
Refocusing on her surroundings, Jane searched for signs of the mob, for people acting strangely or for any disturbance the Tesseract's phenomenon might have caused. She was mildly astonished to find that there was nothing to see. At a glance, the street and its denizens appeared to be going about their day, seemingly unaware that anything unusual had transpired.
Tentatively she stepped out onto the street, clinging to the shade this time rather than running for the patches of light, conscious of her appearance, and unable to quite exorcise the memory of the hostility she had encountered here not an hour before. The influence of the Tesseract seemed to have faded like a bad dream, but too many of her nightmares had come to life recently for that to mean much.
She stopped short when she saw the car that had almost hit her, still idling in the middle of traffic. There was a police officer standing beside it, talking with one of the shop owners from across the way. The man was scratching his head with a perplexed expression on his face, while the officer shot him skeptical glances over the top of his notepad. Jane's stomach clenched. What if people recognized her, and still thought she had tried to steal the car? How would she explain any of this to the police? Jane ducked her head and hurried around the corner, away from the scene. The magic was gone, the people around her were back to normal, but there was no knowing how much they remembered or what they would do if…
"Oh my goodness!" a voice exclaimed as she passed an open shop door. Jane jumped and cringed as a thickset older woman all but exploded out of the doorway towards Jane, a broom in hand.
"No, please, I'm not…!" Jane heard herself stammer, cringing away from the coming blow.
The broom clattered against the storefront a moment later, discarded by the shopkeeper, who descended on Jane, her hands fluttering around her like moths around a streetlamp as she gaped.
"Oh my poor dear!" the woman cried. "What on earth happened to you? Are you quite alright? Should I telephone for an ambulance? Or the police?"
"No! No I… I'm fine," Jane sighed, nearly dizzy with relief. The magic is gone. "I just need to get home."
"But your clothes! That bruise! And your forehead… my girl, you have cuts all over your face!" the woman cried.
That brought Jane up short. Did she? She reached up to touch her forehead, and hissed in pain. With the blue fire and illusions gone, she could feel the raised, angry edges of uruz, bleeding and inflamed with no magic to soothe it. But it wasn't the only damage, and the torn flesh was still weeping blood.
"Here now, if you won't let me call anyone, at least come inside and wash yourself up!" the woman fussed, bustling Jane through the door of what turned out to be an antique shop, and back behind the counter into a little bathroom.
Jane gasped and winced when the light flickered on, and she saw her face in the mirror.
There was uruz, red and livid and bleeding above her left eyebrow.
And carved into the skin above the right, equally angry and bloody, was the rune, sowulo, the healing sun.
.
It was impossible. No matter how many times he replayed the facts in his mind as he stood in the dusty shadows of the storage room, it remained so.
Loki was a master of magic; in a world that valued physical strength and physical skill, he'd dedicated himself to the mastery of the light and energy, and in the shadow of his red-cloaked father and elder brother, he could never have afforded to be anything but the best. He had searched long and hard for a way to unbind the threads of the Tesseract influence; if a way existed he would have found it. Jane was remarkable, brilliant, wonderful… but despite everything, she didn't even believe in magic. What had she discovered that he had missed?
Turning inward, he examined the new emptiness inside him. He could see the mechanics of what she'd done – turning the Tesseract's own properties of reflection against it. It was true that Jane alone, having fascinated the Tesseract so completely, was the only one who could have done it. She'd been innovative to work it out, wise to pursue it, and possessed of a rare mental strength, to have pulled it off...
Perhaps if he hadn't been so blinded, so weak, so vulnerable and compromised when the Tesseract had drawn close to him… perhaps if he'd had her integrity, her goodness, her worth… well, perhaps he might have found a way to do what she had done. In theory. On a good day. After a fortnight of practice.
Jane had done it in an instant, without any practice, and no magic to back the strength of her conviction. Mere words or thought should not have been enough to force the Tesseract in a new direction. And setting that aside, it was particularly impossible that she had removed the tangle of its web from him as well. Jane was mortal, she had no magic of her own to make a new spell.
He simply couldn't see how she'd done it. And yet she had. So how?
His thoughts drifted inevitably from Jane's coup, to Jane herself. Despite his confusion, fierce elation and glowing pride sparked a warm glow inside edged with burning curiosity. And an almost ecstatic sense of relief. He was free. But what was more, so was she. Of all the evil he'd done, all the honor he'd sacrificed, all the pain and degradation he'd endured, all the fear and sorrow he'd sown... all the lives he'd shattered... To know that hers would not be among them nearly drove him to his knees.
The memory of her piercing gaze, so knowing and defiant, glinting with that thrilling, willful gleam from the center of the whirlwind, drove the breath from his lungs as his eyes fell closed. She so terrified and excited him. He smiled softly.
"I don't suppose you'd tell me if I asked, would you?"
He chuckled quietly and shook his head, unaccountably embarrassed by his display of happiness. He opened his eyes and furrowed his brow, sobering. How long had it been since he'd laughed? Not deviously or maliciously or affectedly… just laughed because he was happy?
His vision blurred again. He scowled and swiped distractedly at his eyes. Hiding in a dusty closet, weeping like a woman; if only Father could see him now...
His fingers came away bloody once more. Frowning at the crimson stain, he waved a hand, conjuring a mirror. His breath stilled in his chest and eyes widened as they fell on his reflection.
"Gods, Jane…" he breathed, reaching up to touch the bleeding cut on his forehead.
A cut in the shape of the rune, sowulo. The healing sun.
A mark of magic.
Not his mark; Jane's mark; the mark she'd claimed for her own. He shook his head. More and more, it was impossible.
It should be impossible.
Unless…
"Unless… oh..." he murmured, his face smoothing as a wild, wondrous, painful idea occurred to him. "That… might explain it..." Which meant...
New possible truths gave rise to exciting new possibilities.
It could explain why the Tesseract was so stubbornly drawn to her. And how she'd overpowered the Tesseract; how she'd marked him with a rune from the other end of Yggdrasil; even why her experiements with the medicine he'd given her continued to fail...
"So... that's it..."
Jane truly was the key to everything. Now more than ever.
"As it should be…" His lips quirked in a pained, smug little smirk as his heart swelled with wonder and bittersweet longing until the very thought of her, without having her at hand to fold into his arms, was nearly unbearable. Fresh in his memory he heard her condemnation.
"This isn't love…"
"You're wrong," he murmured, closing his eyes as he pressed his hand to the ache in his chest. "If this is not love, nothing is…" He opened them again, staring sightlessly into the middle distance as his mind raced. "But you're right, it isn't enough," he conceded, nodding his head faintly, the little smirk that curved his lips wet with a fresh set of tears. "It will never be enough. Satisfaction is not in my nature, and enough is not the same it was before…" His throat closed against tears, but they came anyway. "Jane…"
There, in the dark and quiet of the store room, truly alone and rejoicing in it, Loki allowed himself a moment to weep, unabashed, as he faced the pain of loving her, the bittersweet ache of being without her, and the gratitude that she had, once again, saved him and set him free.
And lit his path forward. A light in the dark.
Gathering himself, he waved away the blood and tears with a whisper of magic, and, with infinite regret, healed the cut on his forehead, banishing the evidence of her blessing. A moment's thought and a shimmer of green energy replaced the mantle of his illusion, and he took up the king's spear once more and stepped from the store room to ascend to the golden throne, the very image of Odin Allfather.
Breathing deep, the king reclaimed his golden seat and clanged his spear against the floor to summon the guard. The doors swung hesitantly open, and a wary Halvard peered around it.
"My king?"
"You will take a message."
"To the perimeter guard, sire?"
The question brought the king up short. He thought of the explosives he'd seeded through the perimeter and the detonator secreted in his cloak. Of the flashing golden drops falling like rain into the abyss…
"No…" the king said, reached up to stroke his beard thoughtfully, then shook his head. "No, I think not." The warriors would stay where they were. "You will carry a message to the Nethermount. Go to the Archive, and summon Amundson. Tell him…" The king paused, thinking hard, then nodded to himself, his eye flashing with a gleam of anticipation. "Tell him to prepare to receive a new scholar into the Order of the Archive."
.
"So, you're sure you're cool now, right?" Darcy said for about the fiftieth time, giving Jane another skeptical look, which by now, Jane thought, was mostly just to irritate her. "Because I think I could make a solid case for emotional distress. Get some workman's comp out of it."
"Your investment in our partnership is touching," Jane deadpanned, rolling her eyes, then shooting Darcy a pleading look. "I really am sorry. I was… distracted. Really, really distracted. It won't happen again."
"Pinky swear?"
Jane raised her eyebrows and offered Darcy her pinky finger. Darcy pursed her lips and held out her own, then drew back at the last moment, eying Jane critically with a glint of teasing in her eyes.
"I dunno…"
Jane rolled her eyes and snagged Darcy's finger with her own. She felt a pang of relief when Darcy relented, grinning unrepentantly at her.
"Alright, deal," she pronounced. "You are hereby forgiven. But hey, can Ian and I still go on dates in your mom's apartment if we promise no more property damage?"
Jane screwed up her face.
The last time she'd left Darcy and Ian alone in her lab, she'd returned to find the place mildly demolished. Jane had no idea what they'd been up to, but the coffee table had been broken, the area rug had been rolled up against the wall, even though none of the furniture had been moved, and the sludge crusted inside the microwave and the chemical burns on the bedsheets had convinced her that she didn't want to know. Looking back, Jane was disturbed by how little relevance she'd assigned it in her own mind at the time, her preoccupation with the Tesseract superseding all else, but Darcy had assumed, after a few evasions from Jane, that that had been the reason for Jane's outburst. Jane let her believe it. Difficult as it was to keep things from Darcy, it was a lot easier than explaining the truth.
That didn't mean she was going let it happen again.
"Pretty please?"
"Um… no."
"It's just so much bigger and nicer than his place. And cleaner than mine."
"No."
"I'm going to unforgive you."
"Just go boot up the data analysis program."
"Yes, Czar Jane. Whatever you say, Czar Jane."
Jane grinned at her intern's retreating back as she plodded back to the computer. If she was complaining this much, her behavior of the past weeks was already water under the bridge. A relief on several levels. She couldn't stand the idea of Darcy holding a grudge against her. And she was going to need her help to start up her astrophysics research again. The Asgardian ointment was still a major curiosity, but with her head clear at last, the data from the Convergence was practically reeling her in on a hook, and she refused to put her life on hold any longer. The Tesseract's magic was gone, so Loki would make his move in his own time, or he wouldn't. In the meantime, Jane chose to get on with her life.
Part of that was putting the events of the past weeks firmly in the past.
Jane had used the Asgardian ointment to heal her injuries, including the cuts on her face. No scar or trace remained of either uruz over her left brow, or sowulo over her right. The magic was gone, and so were the cuts… but Jane could not forget the deep tunnel into the depths of her mind that she had seen in her dreams and in the vision that day. And that it corresponded to other changes in her body and mind that were deeper and less visible. What that might mean for her remained to be seen.
Loki's secret remained safe. That, too, was part of the choice to get on with her life. Yesterday when she returned home, she had had every intention of sitting down and telling Thor the whole story. He'd stood before her, smiling across the kitchen counter as he stirred the soup he'd cobbled together for dinner (much to his own amusement – doing these things for himself was still new enough to be novel). The words had been ready on the tip of her tongue.
And she had smiled back, and said nothing.
It wasn't fear that kept her quiet. Nor was there any guilt, confusion or ambivalence. It wasn't even hope. It was just the right choice. Rather than an act of trust, forcing the burden of her knowledge on Thor now seemed as though it would be more an act of selfishness, or even cruelty. It was easy to say honesty was always the best policy; but sometimes discretion was the better part of valor. She had no more desire to break his heart with the truth now than she had the first time she'd chosen not to tell him. There was no need to burden Thor with this now; she didn't need him to save her.
It was Loki that had saved her. He had protected her when she had faced a danger she couldn't recognize, and in spite of everything, he was the one who had provided her with the means to free herself. Loki was still a dangerous unknown. But for the first time since the night of the storm, there were no ghosts haunting her from the shadows. At last she felt safe, and she owed him something for that. She wouldn't reveal his secret… Unless it became necessary.
Especially when a chance might still arise for healing.
So when the moment came to tell Loki's secrets, she let it pass. And though she knew full well a day might come when she would regret her silence, this time the decision brought no conflict or unease; only peace. She had decided not to be afraid, and she was no longer running away.
Jane sighed and levered herself up off the couch in her mother's sitting room, intending to join Darcy in the home office to start running through the backlog on the scanners, when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket, glancing at the screen. Her face stilled.
The number was Alexa's.
Jane bit her lip and took a deep, steadying breath, unaccountably nervous. She'd been ready to thank the woman in tears or bite her head off by turns. Now that the moment had come she didn't know what she would say. But it felt… important that they speak. She pressed the green button.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Jane," Alexa's ever-pleasant inflection sounded rougher and wearier than the last time they had spoken.
"H… hey, Alexa. How are you?"
"Well enough."
"Oh, good. Um…thanks for, you know… returning my call…" Jane winced, feeling awkward.
"The pleasure is mine," Alexa replied. "Truly, it is. I… didn't think I would have the opportunity."
Jane felt something inside her go quiet as the weight of the statement coalesced with the conversation she'd had with Jana. "She can't return your call!" A cold prickle of retroactive panic shook her as she at last understood that Jana had believed that Alexa would never be able to return her call.
"You were there with me, weren't you?" Jane said abruptly, abandoning all pretense of polite conversation. "You put that mark on me, and you were there with me in the vision. Inside my mind…"
"Yes." Alexa said quietly. "We all were."
A chill shook her as she remembered the resentment and tears in the teen's voice. "The adults are out right now." In her vision, there had been eight green lights in the water mirror…
Just how much danger had this family faced to help her?
"Are those kids okay?"
"They are perfectly well."
"And… are you okay? I mean… really?"
"We are…" Alexa interrupted herself with a rough cough, and when she spoke again, her voice was clearer. "…or will be soon enough. It was dangerous for a time, but Jana, whom you spoke with, joined us at the last moment. It seems she is... something special amongst my family. Her strength carried us through. If not for the bravery of my niece… well…"
Jane was speechless for a moment, overwhelmed, trying to decide what to feel. Gratitude seemed appropriate, and it was there. Relief as well. Confusion, certainly. She surprised herself by settling on anger.
"Why did you do it?" she demanded, trying to control her tone and only marginally succeeding.
"I told you, Jane. To give you a choice. A real choice; the one that was always there for you, but so close to your heart that it was hidden from your sight. I knew that once you discovered you had it, you would make the right one."
"But… but Loki… the guy you worship as a freaking god… I mean, he told you not to do it! And you told me you couldn't defy him. Why would you…"
"I broke no command," Alexa replied calmly. "The god told me never to step between you. And I never once did. We only reminded you to see yourself clearly. If you chose a different course than the god intended, that is entirely your doing, Jane, not ours. Our fight was with the Tesseract, not the god."
"Are you nuts?" Jane almost shouted, frustrated with Alexa's calm in the face of her outrage. She sucked in a deep breath and made herself resume a normal volume. "You… you could have died! Your kids would have been orphans! I'm a total stranger to you! Why would you go so far just… ?"
"Just for you?"
"…Yes."
There was a long pause, during which Jane got the distinct impression that Alexa was once again weighing her words very carefully.
"On this world," Alexa said at length, "we are all one family. We must… all help each other if we ever wish to move higher."
"What?" Jane exclaimed. "Are you really trying to brush me off with platitudes? I'm serious here!"
"So am I. I am not brushing you off."
"Nobody is that altruistic," Jane groused.
"I never claimed to be altruistic, Jane. If that is what you heard, then perhaps that is all you are ready to hear."
"What are you…" Jane gritted her teeth and refocused as Alexa's rebuke brought her up short.
She took a deep cleansing breath, examining her own feelings, realizing they were blocking her analytical mind. Why was she angry?
Those kids could have become orphans… for my sake.
In her mind she flashed back to the day her father had died, and pain, unexpectedly strong and immediate, twisted through her chest to steal her breath. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. Daddy… She swallowed hard, then sighed.
Now that she could see the source of her anger, she could control it. She needed answers, and as in any scientific endeavor, the search for answers needed to be dispassionate and unclouded by emotion.
"Why are you doing this, Alexa?" she asked, proud of the calm in her voice. "What's your dog in this fight?"
"The Tesseract, of course," Alexa said smoothly. "I did exactly as the god, our sire, charged my family to do, and followed in the footsteps of my ancestor, to protect the universe from the Tesseract, to the last drop of Baldur's blood has ever been our mission. We did our duty."
"Uh huh…" Jane heard the words. And, very carefully, she listened for what wasn't said. "Except you specifically spared the children. You said yourself that you weren't sure you'd win, but you still left the children out of it. So it wasn't exactly to the 'last drop', was it?" Silence from the other end. "Maybe if your grandmother and her survivor's guilt had given me that answer, I'd have believed it. But not from you, who told me with so much regret that no on in your family ever had a choice, or about how you believed in your grandmother's choice to save her children rather than do her duty. So tell me why you really did it."
The silence on the line lingered for so long that Jane thought for a moment that the connection had been lost.
"I too have had to make choices," Alexa told her quietly. "Choices about whether to honor the sacrifices of my ancestors, or to honor the sacrifices of my grandmother. To follow duty or to follow my heart. It is a rare and happy circumstance when I am given the opportunity to do both at once."
"Do both…" Jane frowned. What was it with these people and cryptic riddles? "You mean, fighting the Tesseract… and protect the children?"
"Grandmother did more than protect her children," Alexa said, her voice soft and distant with something like hope, as though she were seeing something beautiful that was so far away she wasn't sure she would ever reach it. "She gave them a new life. A new way of living, new choices and new hope. What parents would do less for their little ones?"
"That's a lovely sentiment, but it isn't an answer," Jane reminded her flatly. "What has any of that got to do with me?"
"If you do not yet understand, then you are not yet supposed to."
"I might understand if you'd explain it to me."
"It's all a matter of perspective."
Jane was starting to get irritated again. This was getting her nowhere. She tried a different approach.
"Speaking of nonsense I don't understand," she muttered, "there was something Jana said… she gave me a message from you. But it makes no sense. What does it mean?"
"Repeat it to me," Alexa's replied, her voice sharpening abruptly.
Jane pursed her lips stubbornly, but did as she was told. For a memory from that stage in the Tesseract's mental invasion, it was unusually vivid; that whole conversation was crystal clear, while the memories all around it seemed lost in a bank of white fog.
"When the king's ward falls, you must not falter. You must stand strong and run for the edge of the world," she recited.
"Good," Alexa sighed.
"So what does it mean?" Jane asked.
There was a short pause.
"I… don't know," Alexa told her frankly, sounding slightly embarrassed. "But… I do know that it is important. Vitally important. Do not forget it."
Annoyance pricked at the base of Jane's skull.
Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as the real significance of the other woman's words sunk in.
"This… isn't over, is it?"
The Tesseract's magic was gone, she was back to normal, and Loki had yet to show himself. Somewhere over the course of the past day and a half, she'd let herself be lulled into the delusion that things might return to the way they'd been before...
"It's never over, Jane," Alexa replied ruefully. "That's life for you."
"But… what… when… and how will I know…?"
"You will," Alexa replied simply, but confidently.
"How can you know that? How can you be sure?" Jane demanded of her, an edge of fear and doubt creeping into her voice. "Precognition? Foreknowledge?"
"There is that… though it is not nearly so useful as you might imagine. The Sight is like… like walking through a fog... you can see the shape of things as they loom closer, but you hardly ever know what it really is until it is right in front of you…" Alexa sighed, and Jane thought she heard an old frustration and resignation in it. "But no, that is not why I believe in you."
"I…" Jane frowned. "Then what?"
"Faith."
"Faith?"
Alexa made an affirmative noise. Jane pursed her lips. Faith. The answer didn't appeal to Jane in the slightest. She was a scientist. Her whole way of life was constructed around the search for evidence; she disapproved of belief without evidence on principle.
And yet… had she not made her own leap of faith in order to cast off the Tesseract's curse? Acknowledging it was somehow embarrassing.
"They aren't gods, you know," she said stubbornly. "Baldur wasn't a god. Odin isn't a god. Loki and Thor aren't gods," She didn't bother to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "Just because you believe they're gods doesn't change the fact that they're aliens."
Jane expected a protestation, or denial, or maybe a placid disregard of her disbelief. She hadn't quite expected the quiet chuckle that echoed over the line.
"Faith isn't about the gods. I thought you'd realized by now." Jane thought she could hear a smile in Alexa's voice, not that overly friendly salesman's smile, but a real one. She wondered what it looked like. "Faith is about what's inside of us. That's why it's so powerful. Because it is a choice."
.
"Allfather!"
The king turned, surprised, yet not, as Amundson stormed along the colonnade towards where the king stood with several red-clad battle masters, his tri-color robe and cloak flapping to reflect his fury.
Below the peristyle surrounding the lower sparring arena, where the grizzled old warriors were outlining their plans for the education of the incoming batch of new recruits, the fresh-faced young trainees lined up with varying degrees of discipline. Each would be at least forty years old, still veritable children; it was the soonest Asgardians were permitted entry into ranks of the Einherjar, and their training would last another thirty years at least before they would be permitted to apply to the Order of the Archive, if they desired to pursue mastery.
The king narrowed his sharp eye at the approaching Master of Masters, irritated, but not irate. Not three days ago, still under siege by the blue flame, this kind of public disrespect would have left the king furious and disquieted under his mask of authoritative calm. Today, he found himself able to look past his swell of annoyance to analyze the situation, taking in the shocked expressions on the faces of the trainees, and the grim, set of the battle masters' jaws – all directed at the newcomer. The damage done to his authority as king by the outburst was mitigated extensively by Amundson's embarrassing lack of decorum. Instead of fighting fury, the king had to work from keeping a smile off of his face. The man really was beginning to forget himself.
"Master Amundson" he replied, showing himself unimpressed with the sour expression of outrage on his visitor's face. He nodded to the battle masters, indicating his approval of their report, and they fisted their hands over their hearts and withdrew into the arena to begin barking orders at the younglings. "I expected you yesterday. Come, let us leave the warriors to their work."
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and swept up the nearby stair, Gungnir thrumming quietly with power each time it tapped against the glittering white granite. He stopped on the second tier balcony, standing at the rail to look out over the training, waiting to see if the Master of Masters would come to heel like a good dog. A few moment later he did; a petty victory for the king, but the privacy was preferable, and it was satisfying nonetheless.
"Allfather, what is the meaning of this… this absurd suggestion your retainer brings me?" Amundson demanded as he halted beside the king. He was breathing hard; the king wondered wryly if, in his outrage, he'd run here all the way from the Hinge.
"It was not a suggestion, Master Amundson. It was a command."
Amundson's face was nearly purple with outrage. The king wasn't sure whether it stemmed from the misuse of his title, or the audacity of the order. Either way, the king had to work hard not to smirk at the sight of it.
"This… command…" Amundson made a visible effort to comport himself, "cannot be but jest, my liege. It is… it is not done."
"There is a first time for everything," the king replied airily, stepping away from the railing to pace in a wide, thoughtful arc around the King under the Mountain. Amundson turned with him, never giving the king his back; the king had no illusions that he did it out of respect. "This shall simply be one of them."
"Asgard is little known for its capacity to accept change, Allfather. The Gardener saw to that. On the contrary, this is the Realm Eternal. We have seldom had need of it."
"Yet every so often, there is no harm in it."
Amundson narrowed his eyes at the king. "How very true, majesty," he conceded, his lips turning up in something that the king supposed might generously be called a smile. "And yet, why her? And…" Amundson cast his eyes out towards the edge waters. Towards the observatory and the curtain of light where the two energy waves still clashed ceaselessly. "… why now?"
He looked back at the king, and their eyes met and locked. A wordless perception passed between them, and the air was suddenly thick with tension. Title and stations seemed to fall away in an instant, and they stared each other down, two predators circling each other. Both knew that the other was not what he seemed. Neither knew quite what the other was. Both determined to best the other, whatever the cost.
Three hoverboats zoomed by overhead, their prows glittering with Einherjar in full armor on perimeter patrol. It was a well timed and potent reminder – the king had not only the power of Odin's name, but the might of the Einherjar warriors as well.
Amundson need never know what a double-edged sword that was.
The king let his eye tighten at the corners with a mirth both dangerous and ever-so-slightly taunting.
"A special dispensation has been readied for your chosen messenger," the king said, his tone deceptively conversational. "May I assume that my command will be carried out in a timely fashion?"
Amundson retreated behind the mask of the politician, his eyes growing cold and flat. For an instant – just the blink of an eye – the king felt a little chill of disquiet that he refused to call fear. His face curled once more into that false mimic of a smile.
"Of course, your will shall be done, Allfather," he said smoothly. "She is most welcome to come. She is even welcome to stay" The smile deepened and grew sharp with conceit and an unspoken threat. "That is, if she can meet the standard."
Once again without being dismissed, the Master of Masters turned on his heel – this time very pointedly giving the king his back – and swept away down the stair.. The king watched him go from the balcony, his robes and cloak flashing with red, green and blue like a horde of jewels in the sunlight before he disappeared into the far halls that led toward the main gate.
The king stared after him for a moment longer, then shifted his eye down to watch the clumsy forms the battle masters had begun drilling into the younglings. Someday, those battle forms would be crisp and exact, and second nature to those young men, written into their sinews as though carved into stone. In the heat and fury of battle, they would explode along muscle and vibrate through the bones without thought, natural as breathing, and waves of enemies would fall in their wake.
It was hard to imagine, watching them now. Had he ever been so young?
The king raised his eye to trace the faint halos of the stars in the blue dome of the sky. Was this wisdom or folly? Was it beneficence that moved him, or selfish desire?
He hardly knew. And it hardly mattered. Either way, he would not turn back now.
With a sigh, he turned and made his way down to the main level and out through the vaulted glory of the barracks hall.
.
In the black of the weapons vault, silence lay heavy against the gold and stone. Time had no meaning in the shadows. And it had no meaning at all to the blue spider sitting, hungry, at the center of its web.
It had been so close. So close.
It felt that shift in the wind and power. It felt its prey slip its bonds, though the explosive burst of it was but a whisper by the time it reached it, a tremor to rock the web's knotted core. It felt the slave who was a king shaken free as well. With that, it lost its last mooring, and its last reflection. It was cut loose to drift in the cosmic abyss of space and time, reaching for everything and touching nothing. Alone.
Its hunger began to fade. Time had no meaning, and form almost as little as time. It knew now how to covet, and how to weep. But in the growing cold and incoherence of its dispersing form, it learned to fear. And through fear, to hope.
Dissatisfied with its own dissolution, it reached out and plucked one silken strand to vibrate out, out, out into the void, before the endless homogenous mass of matter and energy in which it languished lulled it back to sleep. Out to where one still knew how to listen for its call.
And in the depths of the void beyond the edge of the World Tree, something stirred in response.
That something turned its glittering blue eyes across the expanse of space, to light upon the Realm Eternal. Upon mighty Odin Allfather, defender of the Eternal City, sitting unassailable upon his golden throne, his great citadel and host of Einherjar warriors a bastion of impregnable strength. Upon the wall of verdant light and incalculable power that held the penetrating forces of its attack ever at bay. And upon the undulating mass of all-concealing shadow that writhed somewhere beneath the throne, untouchable so long as the Allfather stood watch over it.
That one was not caught in the spider's web; it knew the weave, and how to walk the silk, for it dared not become so. It rivaled the blue spider, even as it desired it, and knew secret paths into its inner being. It would have it, and rule it, and offer up the destruction it would wreak to Mistress Death herself.
Silently, it coveted. Patient as the spider, it waited.
.
The king climbed ivory stairs and meandered without any particular destination in mind through winding corridors of marble and gold, until he arrived at the main promenade and stepped out onto the Grand Balcony once more.
His feet carried him here more and more often. Here… and to his mother's standing stone. But that vista brought him little comfort, and a great deal of conflicted confusion; to his shame, he much preferred this view. He let his piercing eye sweep once more over the Realm Eternal, basking in the pulse and flow of its rhythm, the bittersweet longing to belong here as potent as ever, but tempered now with an even deeper shade of growing calm granted him by the new freedom of his mind.
Here was the world he would one day call home once more, if the gods were kind.
If his sweet mortal goddess was kind.
If he could make the right choices.
He put Amundson's potential treachery from his mind for the moment, refocusing on more immediate subjects. On anticipation. Introspection. Longing. And hope.
At length, he pulled the detonator from his cloak, and opened his hand to stare down at it lying there in his palm. There lay the power to throw the realm into chaos and watch it burn. His safety net. The only power in this realm that belonged to him alone, and not to the face of Odin Allfather.
"I am chaos. I am destruction. I am fear," he murmured to the empty air. "This… is who I am."
Those words, which used to pulse through him like the crash of a gong and shake him to his very core, rang hollow, empty of heat, bereft of meaning. All they sparked in him now was a creeping shame and a heavy sense of regret. A feeling of foolishness that he hadn't seen it before.
Jane's voice rang in the quiet of his memory, sweet and certain, a guiding light.
"What makes us who we are is our choices."
He no longer knew who he was. Nor could he trust himself.
"Not yet."
But one day, he would have to face himself, as he had told Jane she must.
As Jane had.
As his mother had.
"The trick is to be honest while seeking the best…"
Doubtless Thor's voice had delivered those words to Jane, but it was his mother he'd heard speak through the sending when they left her lips. Guidance from the distant past of sun-drenched days when he could still see himself, and his path had been lit clear before him? Wisdom delivered now, down through the ages into the shadows, from his sun to his rain, his one guiding light through the blinding darkness?
Doubt assailed him. He was no longer a child basking in the sunlit lies of innocence. He was a Jotun, a murderer, a fugitive and a traitor. Could he ever be anything more than a villain? Was there a chance, however slim, that he could become a hero? He simply didn't know. He had been so long at odds with the spider's flames; he no longer had any frame of reference for who or what he really was.
But… he'd made a vow to his mother's standing stone…
I will defend what you gave your life to protect.
…and he couldn't linger in the shadows forever. One day, he would have to walk in the light again. Not Mother's light. Jane's.
And he had no intention of doing so in chains.
He stared hard at the little device in his hand, his best piece of leverage. This was his assurance against those chains. He had been so certain. As certain as he'd been about his solution to the Tesseract's attack. But now...
A fleeting shadow of uncertainty swept across his face. But in his faith in his beloved glowed like the sun whose sign she had carved into his flesh, and it was nothing but an echo slow to die.
"There is beauty and ugliness in everybody," she had told him. "What makes us who we are is our choices."
He had imperfectly trusted Jane, he now saw. He had imperfectly seen her. A light in the dark, she'd shone too brightly for him to see the true shape of her. Blinded by his own desire, refusing to look towards the light for fear of the shadows at his back, he had carelessly underestimated her, her strength and her wisdom.
"She is strong in ways you'd never even know," Thor had said that day on Svartalfheim. Much as it galled him to admit it, his adoptive brother had easily seen what he had missed.
He was not troubled by such a hindrance now. Despite the new clarity in his mind – or perhaps because of it – his faith in her ran deeper than ever. Like the sun rising over the world seems to dim the streetlights, lending depth and definition to the world below, so was he now beginning to have a clearer picture of his beloved. Still his goddess, she still shone as brightly as ever, but the growing light within his own mind gave him a glimpse of the woman behind the divine radiance. Showing him just enough to convince him that he must see more. To do that, he would have to draw closer.
"Nothing given by another is as strong as what we achieve for ourselves…"
He'd told Jane as much. Now, he must try to live up to her example.
He opened his hand wide and a blazing green flame ignited in his palm. He stared into its flickering depths. He had once wondered if Jane's love could make him worthy. Now he saw that it could not. Rather, it was his love for her that would make him strive to become a man that could deserve to stand in the light beside her.
So, with only a moment's hesitation, he made a choice.
"After the rain comes the sun..." he murmured.
He fed the detonator into the magic fire. It crackled, hissed, snapped and burned until it was eaten completely away.
The king blew out a breath he hadn't realized he'd held, banishing the flame. It was done. For good or ill, he was entirely in her hands now, and so was the future of Asgard. Maybe the future of all the realms. Unburdened by foreknowledge, she would be the one to decide the fate of them all.
That was his unreserved choice. And no matter what the result, he would count it as a good one.
It was a gamble, of course. But one he'd won too many times to be a fluke. She would not fail him; if anything, she would up the ante. So he would let it ride.
Now all that was left to do was throw the dice.
Any who observed the king in that moment might spy an uncharacteristic grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, lighting his wizened, white-bearded face with delight, and be amazed to see his sharp eye sparkle with a gleam of wicked mischief. And anticipation.
Because now, the game began in earnest. The broader danger as well. But therein lay the challenge, and therefore all the fun.
This was going to be a merry chase indeed.
"Well, Jane?" the king chuckled darkly to the breeze, his eye bright with challenge as his mind whirled with new schemes. "What will you do?"
.
A/N: "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." [Lao Tzu] A lesson long in coming for Loki, but maybe he's finally learned it. One can only hope, right?
Any predictions as to what's up Loki's sleeve next? And if so, any ideas about how he'll pull it off? Let me know in your review!
Next up, the last little bit of this story, and maybe if you're good boys and girls, I'll add a little excerpt from part III at the end.