SHADOW OF DEATH

Chapter 29: Discoveries

Shuri hobbled more than walked into the lab that morning and she pulled herself onto the stool with as much elegance as a hippopotamus on land. She caught Jane's questioning glance and she groaned.

"Aren't you sore?" Shuri asked.

"Apparently not as sore as you are," Jane answered with an arched eyebrow and a poorly suppressed grin.

"It's not fair. Between you, my brother, and the mgeni, I am surrounded by people with special baraka to make them powerful. How am I to keep up? This is why I develop my own weapons – so I do not have to use my muscles."

"You agreed to refresh your training with the Dora Milaje," Jane pointed out. "It's not like Loki has any way to force you to do it."

"He is very persuasive."

"He challenged you with a bet he knew you'd lose."

"He cheated."

"You knew he was going to cheat when you took that bet."

Shuri sighed. They both knew the real reason Loki requested that the Dora Milaje train both the scientists. Events in New York had shaken all of them, Loki included, and they could tell Loki expected more trouble to follow… anytime. He was constantly on edge, when he was with them, and his list of tasks he asked for assistance with continued to increase. When he was away, he still called in nearly every week with an almost desperate edge to his voice as he inquired into the progress. He wrapped his "suggestion" in the veil of a "bet," but Shuri had known what he didn't say. He wanted to make sure she could defend herself and she couldn't say she held that against him.

He had been gone almost three weeks this time. It was long enough for Ayo to run them through an interminable number of drills and combat exercises and Shuri wondered if she could just ask to keep Goose with her always rather than keep it up any longer. T'Challa was no help. He was delighted. He had been chiding her to continue with her training for years… yet it was so far out of her comfort level and her typical areas of strength that she found it more than tedious. She preferred herding goats and digging in the shamba than this.

With an effort, she bent over to pick up her fallen pen and she ran her fingertips across a screen to wake up a computer. It whirred on in a flash of orange lights and Kikanda script and she began to drag open the program she wished to use.

"You are up early," she observed. Not that she was surprised. Ever since the incident with the Mind Stone, Jane had not needed anywhere near as much sleep… or as much caffeine… and she came to the lab with her mind much more lucid than it had ever been before. Shuri wasn't sure if she liked that development. She rather missed the slightly disheveled, groggy version of Jane who she could so easily bribe with freshly made Kikandan coffee.

Jane shrugged. "I woke up early. Instead of sitting in bed not sleeping and thinking about work, I figured I'd come in here and actually do it. Not that I've gotten much done."

"You have been stalled worse than a matatu in Nairobi traffic. What is keeping you?"

"The same. No matter how I change the calculations, I can't get the Bifrost idea to work. We just don't have the technology to pull it off yet. If I work at it for another fifty years, maybe there's a chance – but as soon as Loki seems to think we need it? I'm afraid it's beyond me. I'm not too proud to admit when I've been beat."

"What are you going to do?" Shuri asked, seeing the tell-tale signs of frustration on Jane's face.

"Talk to Loki. I need to ask him at least a million and a half questions… but he's disappeared for an exceedingly long time this time."

"You are missing him, then?" Shuri asked. She gave Jane a sideways glance and a cheeky, dimpled grin. She was rewarded by Jane's sudden blush and she looked away. "Do not be concerned, daktari. I am sure he will return to disturb your peace soon enough."

"It's not like that."

"Oh, but I thought you said he's handsome?"

"He is. But Shuri, I was there when he tried to kill his own brother and destroy the town I lived in. Then he invaded Earth. I just have a hard time glossing over all that with 'he's handsome and charming.'"

"Charming, too? That is a new one. I wish to be there when you tell him you find him 'charming.'"

"Stop."

Shuri laughed. "Sawa sawa. I will stop."

"That's it? No exhortations or chidings or sage words of wisdom?"

Shuri shook her head. "I have no advice on Einstein-Rosen Bridges or alien supervillains who happen to be 'handsome and charming.'"

"I'm surprised."

"Daktari, in case you have forgotten, I am only seventeen and I am a princess of Wakanda. There are certain topics I know are out of my area of expertise. If you wish to discuss aerodynamics of a hovercraft or the tensile density of vibranium, I am more than willing to speak. My own marriage will someday be heavily influenced by politics and I will have very little freedom in the matter. I am not one who should be giving relational advice to anyone."

"You will have to have an arranged marriage?" Jane asked in surprise.

"It is not so much that it would be arranged but that I will have a very limited number of potential candidates to choose from. Any decision I make would be an affair of state. The tribe my husband comes from would benefit from the alliance and increase in power and those I do not wed from will feel slighted and so I must choose very carefully. It is unlikely I can marry a commoner or anyone who is not Wakandan and so that limits my choices exponentially."

"But your brother's girlfriend.."

"Indio. Nakia is a commoner, but she also has refused to wed him because she does not want to be queen. It's been quite the scandal though - first in T'Challa pursuing her at all and then in the fact that they maintain a relationship after she so adamantly refused to be queen. There will be conflict in future over it… either Nakia will be forced to take on a role she does not wish for in order to be with my brother, or my brother will be forced to marry someone who will make a good queen while his heart remains elsewhere. Even if Nakia decided to marry him, half the elders will protest the marriage because of her tribe and status as a commoner."

"That sucks."

Shuri shrugged. "Tell me, Jane, did you expect Prince Thor, the ancestor's keep him, to have any more freedom in his choice in bride?"

"I guess I never thought about it."

"Did you ever stop to wonder if he was betrothed or already married when you met him?"

At Jane's look of surprise, Shuri gave a wry smile. "Royalty follows different rules than ordinary people. You have more freedom than I will ever have, though your voice may never carry quite as far and your face may not be as well-known among your people. Our thrones are both an opportunity for us to stand a head higher than our people and make our voices heard as they are a leash that keeps us tethered to one place, one role."

"I guess I haven't really hung out with many princes and princesses… till recently."

"Baba likes to remind us that 'we do not choose where we are born, but we will choose how we live.' I do not know what it would be like to be someone other than a princess of Wakanda, but I know I can choose to do the best at the roles I have been born to play."

"I think you are the most inspirational princess I have ever met… or seen… ok, wait. You are the only one on both counts. Or read about or seen on T.V. And I like that you wear goggles instead of a crown."

Shuri giggled. "Such compliments, Jane! Now, tell me, if there was no Nakia, would you find my brother handsome… or, maybe, charming?"

"Shuri!"

"He is a prince and you seem to be drawn to princes like a hippo to mud."

"I am not… no, Shuri, I refuse to answer any more questions from you."

"Oh, but I am only just started!"

ooooo

Dr. Okapi flashed a light into the eyes of his patient as Loki watched the progress from the shadows. The myriad of tubes and machines were noticeably absent, though that was of little consequence in comparison with the most obvious change. The Winter Soldier sat upright on the bed of his own accord, as quietly as if hewn of granite. The rise and fall of his chest beneath his hospital gown and the occasional blinking of his eyelids were the only evidence that revealed him to be flesh and blood-and very much alive.

"How do you feel?" Dr. Okapi asked.

The man, at first, didn't appear to understand. He opened and closed his mouth and stared at the doctor. Then he shrugged his good shoulder.

"Ok," he answered.

"Do you know your name?"

At first the man shook his head but appeared to change his mind. "Bucky," he whispered.

"Do you know where you are?"

"No."

The doctor nodded and wrote notes in his digital chart. "You are in the nation of Wakanda. You have been here for nearly ten months."

"Why am I here?" he asked. He used his one hand to brush the long, tangled hair out of his now normal human eyes.

"To make your mind your own again," Dr. Okapi said. "You wish to be free of your Hydra programming, yes?"

Bucky nodded slowly and placed his hand against his head as if he could feel through his fingertips whether his cure was successful or not. "Why bother? Do you know what I have done?"

"Enough," the doctor said.

"Then why?" Bucky asked, his gaze turning intense until he dropped his eyes from the face of the doctor to stare at his palm.

Loki emerged from the shadows, as if materializing from another realm, and he gave the soldier an imperious stare before turning away from him and pacing the space in front of the bed with his hands clasped behind his back.

"You are here because you have potential to be useful, but only if you so choose to be," Loki said. "You did not orchestrate your fate of your own free will. You have been an unwilling tool in the hands of unscrupulous puppet masters and thus your bloodguilt falls on their hands, not your own."

Bucky's sharp intake of breath and heated glare at the prince's appearance was a marked contrast to his previously nearly unnatural stillness.

"You!" he said in a tone that showed both recognition and irritation. "I know you!"

Loki stopped pacing to give a menacing grin. "Indeed?" he asked.

"You…you…you…," Bucky said in accusation before he visibly deflated. "You stole my mind in a different way than the others."

"Yes. You proved quite a useful ally," Loki answered. "I would thank you for your services, but I dare not for services rendered unwillingly."

"You… made me dance a jig in front of thousands of people on the lawn of the National Mall in D.C.!" he accused.

"Would it appease you to know you made a splendid dancer?" Loki replied with a smug, non-repentant grin.

"It would not… ok, it might help a little… and as far as things I've been forced to do over my long life, it probably isn't the worst… but why?"

Loki gave a lazy flick of his hands. "I was bored. The little Midgardians needed something to gossip over that was not so full of gloom and despair. It amused me and kept your publicity outlets busy for half a day with something other than the perpetual chaos."

Bucky grimaced for a moment before his face broke into quiet, rusty laughter. "You brought me here?" he asked as he returned to his more stoic expression.

"Yes."

"Where are the others?"

"Unlike you, they chose their fates. Without their enthrallment, they ceased to be useful," Loki replied.

"They are gone, then?"

"Yes."

"You did it?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"I am glad to know I have your approval," Loki said with an arched eyebrow.

"So, what happens now?" Bucky asked. "Are you gonna make me do more dances or what?"

"If that is how you wish to spend your days, I will not dissuade you. You may choose what happens to you next," Loki answered. "I assume you remember the tumultuous state of your realm?"

Bucky slowly nodded.

"Good. The King and Prince of Wakanda will inquire with you further on how you wish to live out your days. It is of little consequence to me, so long as you are not impeding my aims."

Dr. Okapi stepped in again and interjected. "I need to run more tests and you still have a way to go before we know if you are fully healed. However, we will want to relocate you to a different environment so you are not trapped in a medical facility day and night."

As Dr. Okapi began to outline the continuing treatment and various options for his recuperation, Loki bid them both farewell.

It had taken longer than he hoped to track down his erring Winter Soldiers and make sure they did not fall back in with their Hydra Masters. It took even longer to deal with Alexander Pierce and his suddenly loosened lips. There had been another uprising in Nicaragua and a series of criminal masterminds hoping to take over the newly weakened Japan. Without the aid of the scepter, he had to wield much more circumspect methods to achieve his goals. He had lost more time than he could spare tending to Midgardian affairs and had gotten precious little accomplished on affairs outside of Midgard.

When he left the Medical Center, he found someone waiting for him on a bench in the garden.

"Finally! You are back," Jane said. She rose when she saw him and showed she intended to join him on his walk back to the palace.

"Why Dr. Foster, I have hardly stepped foot in Wakanda for more than an hour and you have already sought me out. Tell me, did you miss me?" he asked, grinning broadly.

"I need your help with a new theory I want to test...," she quickly began and she withdrew a printout from the bag around her shoulder.

He clicked his tongue and moved around her so he was directly in her line of sight. "You are evading my question. Why, pray tell, would you not answer with your usual directness?"

"And what question was that?" she asked. He was rewarded when she looked up at him with wide, overly innocent blue eyes. It was still hard to wrap his mind around all the ways she had changed. He could feel the inert power rolling off her in waves, just daring to be used, to be trained and tapped into like a wellspring of water near the surface of the earth. He could not even begin to grasp the limits of what she was now capable of… and he doubted she even suspected a fraction of it.

Then there were those eyes. They were not sky blue in the way that Thor's or Odin's were. These shone brighter, as if lit from within, and were the same shade as glacial ice. They were beautiful, in a fey, unearthly way, but a far cry from the warm, honey brown of the fragile, terrestrial Jane Foster of Midgard. This woman, really, was someone entirely else, someone other, someone no longer bound to the fragility of mortality or the limitations of humanity. He was desperately curious to explore just how far those limits could be challenged.

"Another evasion," he prodded. "I asked if you missed me? Did you eagerly anticipate my return and eagerly search for me among the halls of Birnin Zana during my absence?"

"I don't have to answer that."

Loki laughed and nearly danced on his toes. He kept his hands clasped behind his back and pursed his lips as he considered her expression. "Dr. Foster refusing to answer a question? Well, I would venture that is as much an admission as an outright declaration. You did, didn't you? Why not admit it forthrightly. Come now. Dr. Foster, I am as much a mystery to be solved as the Bifrost. Is it only your quest for data and information which causes you to seek me out or because you wish for my illustrious company?"

At her glare and attempt to walk away, he skipped alongside her, insufferably delighted grin on his face.

She could not lie. It was impossible. Thus, any reaction, any words from her would be the absolute and utmost truth and to know, certainly and completely, that Jane Foster genuinely wished to be in his presence was enough of a boon for him to work for and not let go.

After so much time spent parading around in the false face of his brother, being sought merely for his appearance as Thor and his ability to fill the roles Thor once filled, he was weary. He was not Thor. He could pretend, but it was like placing a square peg in a round hole and he could never fully inhabit the hole his brother left behind. The more he tried, the inepter he felt. He had been more than ready to return to Wakanda. The thought of being somewhere where he did not have to pretend, did not and could not be anything but what he was, had been at first terrifying and was now tantalizing. It was freedom in captivity. It was a masquerade of a different sort- but one in which the absence of a mask was the prerequisite and after millennia of near-constant masks, it was as terrifying as it was exhilarating to be so stripped bare.

Here, he had neither his magic nor his station. Everything that once gave him his sense of purpose and identity had been stripped away and all that remained was Loki. Outside Wakanda, he may hold sway and voice- but that was only from the shadows. In the light of day and in the blaring equatorial sun, he was nothing.

Jane's penetrating gaze could see straight through whatever illusions he could wield with his words and his attempts at performance. He may have been dubbed the "God of Lies" but that did not mean he had an aversion to truth- only the uncanny ability to discern between truth and lies and wield them both just as adeptly as weapons. At least, he once thought he did. Recent revelations made him doubt any of his past reliance on his ability to ferret out untruths. So much of his life was based on a flimsy paper mâché house of lies and it made him even more desperate to seek out a firmer foundation which would not be swept away in a rainstorm.

Never before had he been so entirely transparent before another person as he found himself before this new version of Jane. He instinctively shied away from her as much as he sought her out. That piercing, unflinching thirst for truth was as repulsive as it was magnetic. He did not know whether to cower in a corner like a cockroach or to bask in her light like a reptile in the sun. With her, at least, no illusions were possible… and he was forced to stumble through what made up Loki- other than illusion.

And he discovered he thirsted for Jane's approval. She who once claimed to love his brother and so derided Loki- if she could change her opinion of him and declare him worthy, well, that was a goal greater than even wielding Mjolnir in his eyes. It also proved a rather delicious challenge which he could not help but chase.

"This sudden reticence is unlike you, doctor. Tell me, is it in fidelity to my brother's memory that you hold your tongue or is it your own aversion to admitting you have turned from the hero to the villain?" he drawled, genuinely enjoying the mix of emotions flickering across her face. He was about to corner her again when he was interrupted by a set of footsteps and voice in the garden behind them.

"Tell me, Prince, what are your primary reasons for seeking out Dr. Foster?" came the stoic voice of Wakanda's General. Okoye gave him a calculating glare which robbed him of all mirth and he stood upright and gave a few paces of space between him and Dr. Foster again. "I suppose it is only for her mind and not for her connection with your brother… or her own physical charms," Okoye continued.

Loki's smile grew wide and forced as he realized there was no way to answer in a way that would not make him as vulnerable as he just sought to make Jane.

"I believe it is time I meet Shuri in the lab," he said, in lieu of an answer.

"I believe that is an eversion," Jane called after him, turning to Okoye with such an expression of relief that Loki almost laughed.

Oh, her gift could be a dangerous one… but it had so many possibilities. He already began to make a list of the next questions he would ask her… and just how to phrase them to ensure she would not wriggle out of them again.

oooooo

It was late the next afternoon before Loki ventured back into the lab. He found Jane there alone, eagerly chewing on the end of a pen and huddled over her notebook and a computer. She looked up when she saw him and waved him over.

"Hey! Are you ready to run through these numbers with me?" Jane asked. The colors of the screen reflected off her face with an eerie glow and made her face appear bathed in orange.

"More data? I do not believe I will ever be ready for such a task," he said.

"Liar."

"Finally! You understand me!"

"Ugh. Come on."

"Insufferably irritating woman," he said.

She grinned. "Now, that's a true statement- but only half true. You aren't speaking the other part."

"And what, pray tell, am I missing?"

"That you like me," she said, her smile unwavering.

"I most certainly do not."

"Not true… I can tell," she said.

"If you are so well-informed on my innermost workings, why must I review your calculations?"

"Prince Loki Odinson, I do believe that was an evasion."

He laughed. "Jane- give me your calculations before I choose to evade them."

"Fine. Here they are. I've done this again and again and I can't figure out a way to make the design for the Bifrost work. In each scenario, it fails."

"It fails?"

"Yeah, you know, like explodes or implodes or vaporizes or punches a hole through the atmosphere- it fails and does so spectacularly. I really wish you had more data or blueprints on the Asgardian Bifrost."

"As we are rather far from Asgard's great libraries, it is not a particularly realistic wish."

"Come on," she said. "What do the other realms use to get around? Is Asgard the only one with a Bifrost?"

"Yes. The Dark Elves and the Dwarves use slow, cumbersome interstellar vehicles. The Light Elves use magic to traverse the paths and portals in-between realms. The Frost Giants do not leave Jotunheim," Loki said. Jane interrupted him before he could continue listing any of the means of transport of other realms.

"Wait- I thought you said those guys invaded Earth. How did they get here if they can't leave Jotunheim?"

"They had their own power source that they used to transport their army between realms," he answered.

"Which they don't have now?"

"Correct."

"Ok. How did that work?" she asked.

"I am unsure," he said. "I never thought of using it that way. It was an ancient relic called the Casket of Ancient Winters. It was Jotunheim's greatest prize and served as power source, weapon, shield, and their method of travel between realms."

"That doesn't sound so different from the Bifrost. Did it have an observatory and a bridge similar to Asgard?" she asked.

Loki shook his head. "No. It is a portable device that is hardly larger than the screen you are working upon. I assume it not only carried Laufey's army to Midgard but was carried by Laufey for him to inflict the poor peasants of Midgard with its full destructive potential. He also used it to transport his army back to Jotunheim upon their expulsion by Asgard's forces. It was captured as a war prize and as punishment for their unprovoked aggression. Odin kept it in the weapon's vault in Asgard and the Frost Giants never forgave the Aesir for its loss."

Jane scribbled notes furiously onto her notepad as he spoke. "So, what powered it?" she asked.

"I do not know."

Jane groaned. "Come on! Have you seen it? You've gotta give me something here."

Loki nodded his head once. "I have done more than seen it. I have wielded it."

"Ok. That's something. What does it do?"

"It coats everything within sixty paces with a thick layer of ice and decreases the temperature of all it comes in contact with until it is well below freezing."

"Wow-I know how much energy it took to run our stupid little air conditioner in New Mexico…that had to be some serious power making it go," Jane mused as she chewed on her pen. "Tell me what it looked like. Or, better yet, draw it for me."

"Would you prefer to see it for yourself?"

Jane dropped her pen and swung her head to face him again. "What?"

"I clearly asked my question. Would you prefer to see the Casket of Ancient Winters for yourself?"

"How?"

"We will have to cross the borders so I may access my magic, but I have it in my storage."

"Wait, wait, wait-you have it with you? You've had it this whole time and never told me?"

Loki nodded and smirked at Jane's dumbstruck expression.

"What are you waiting for?" She finally asked. "Let's go."