In this chapter and into the next, Loki takes the reins, and things won't be quite the same for Jane afterward.
/
"Jealous": Intolerant of rivalry; Hostile toward one enjoying an advantage; Zealously vigilant in guarding a possession
"Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy one's self-respect. For jealous people, like dope-fiends, stoop to the lowest level and in the end inspire only disgust and loathing." - anarchist Emma Goldman
"Jealousy fuses megalomania and self-abandonment." - aphorist Mason Cooley
Beneath
Chapter Seventeen – Lies
Jane was going to have to figure out how to build a bifrost soon. At times Loki told himself he could keep up this façade and maintain control under the restraints of Odin's curses as long as he needed to. At other times he knew better.
Walking in silence with Selby toward Destination Zulu, now that his attention was neither on Selby's words nor on how he should respond to them, he had noticed that in the time they'd been standing around outside a layer of ice crystals had developed over Selby's neck gaiter around his mouth, and over his eyelashes and eyebrows where he'd removed his goggles. Of course, there were no ice crystals on his own projected balaclava, so with a small motion of his hand and a dip of his head he modified the illusion to add them. As for what his bare face might look like, Loki had no idea because it had gone entirely numb. A great deal had happened between his visits to Jotunheim and this journey to Midgard's South Pole, so he wasn't certain how the cold compared. But if his face had ever gone numb in the land of the Frost Giants he'd been too preoccupied to notice it.
And this was summer.
As good as it had felt leaving his room that morning in his own clothing, he was no longer convinced that his indulgence in personal comfort was worth all the problems it created.
They went up the stairs and entered at the second level; as Loki pulled off his jacket to hang it up he hid his head for a moment and pulled away the illusion of the balaclava, hat, and goggles. Selby never noticed, but every time he did this it was a risk.
"Wow, your face is really red. You okay?" Selby asked when he turned away from the coat rack.
"I'm fine. Just a bit flushed." He hoped it was a satisfactory answer; it was what his mother had always said to him when he would turn up pink-faced from the sun or over-exertion.
Selby seemed to think so, since he merely nodded. "Let's go to the lab. Austin and Carlo should be there, and Carlo keeps the coffee fresh. Hope you like it strong."
Loki nodded. He was not overly fond of this drink, but it didn't matter. He hadn't accompanied Selby for the coffee. They turned left, past the galley, medical, and the computer lab, then across the divide from Pod A to Pod B.
"So what do you think of the South Pole so far, Lucas?" Selby asked as they approached the entrance to the Science Lab.
"So far…I would say it's cold."
"I'm trying to convince myself it's warm," he said with a laugh. "So winter won't be such a shock."
"And is that working?"
"Mmmm…not really. No, I can't say that it is."
"It's…an impressive facility. Especially the telescopes."
Selby nodded. "It's pretty amazing. Sometimes I still can hardly believe I'm here. It was kind of last-minute. Not as last-minute as you, though. Jane told me you had a week's notice. You want cream or sugar?"
Loki accepted a red mug full of steaming coffee and took one sugar packet. Selby rolled his chair around toward Loki and sat; Loki followed his lead and pulled up another chair. He couldn't stop a quick sigh of relief to be off his right foot after standing on it for so long. Selby was waiting, so Loki began the tale of how he'd wound up at the South Pole, substituting Stark's research foundation for SHIELD as needed to maintain the secret inside the lie. In the meantime he began to sip his coffee and was surprised to find it much better than what he'd had during his previous visit to this realm.
Conversation turned to Christchurch, and while Loki let Selby do most of the talking, he shared a few of his own memories and observations as well.
Mugs empty, Selby suggested they head back out and started to lift himself up from his chair.
Loki leaned forward in his and put out an uncertain hand. "Actually, if you don't mind, there's something I wanted to mention to you."
"What?" Selby asked, settling back down.
"I noticed…this is awkward." He broke eye contact with Selby and stared down at his mug.
"What?" Selby repeated after a moment.
Loki could hear the nervousness in his voice. He lowered his own voice – Austin and Carlo were in the room, but not nearby – and explained. "It's just…I've noticed you've been spending a lot of time with Jane."
"Uh, I guess so. Not just her, but sure. What's…is there…"
"I'm not the only one who's noticed. I heard…well, I heard some talk," he said with a grimace that showed his discomfort over the words when he lifted his face back toward Selby.
Selby's eyes drifted to the side. His eyebrows knitted and inhaled and exhaled deeply. "Talk…that there's something going on between me and Jane?"
"Speculation, I suppose," Loki allowed with a small shrug.
Again he inhaled and exhaled deeply. "There isn't. Anything between me and Jane, I mean. We're just friends. Barely even that, I mean, I hardly know her. We went to the same grad school and we- We're just friends."
Loki nodded sympathetically. "I understand. But if there were…something…you're a long way from home, and it must be difficult for such a new young couple to be apart from each other for so long without looking for a little comfort elsewhere."
Selby set his jaw and sat up straighter, his eyes centering back on Loki. "There's nothing going on. Really. I know I was joking around earlier, but I love my wife. I would never be unfaithful to her. No matter how far away she is."
Loki nodded again. "Of course. I'm sorry to have mentioned it. I just thought you should know."
"Yeah, well…thanks, I guess. I could really do without being the star of the rumor mill." He continued after a moment. "Have you mentioned this to Jane?"
"Of course not," Loki said, shaking his head firmly. "That would be even more awkward."
"Okay. Um, maybe don't mention it, then, if you don't mind. I'm sure it would just worry her. Or make her think that I- Yeah, just don't mention it. Please?"
"I won't." You can trust me, Selby Higgins,Loki thought, grinning on the inside yet easily projecting Lucas's sympathy and solidarity. This was second-nature to him. A variation on a play he'd enacted countless times across the centuries. This young mortal was a laughably easy target.
The men stood to leave without another word on the subject, but Loki noticed that Selby threw a glance over his shoulder at the photo of his smiling wife. And in that glance was worry.
Loki asked about Selby's snowmobile training at McMurdo and kept the mortal engaged in conversation all the way through the station to their gear, out DZ and along the trail marked by the red flags to the Dark Sector Lab. Selby was clearly unfocused, responding almost mechanically, with occasional bursts of enthusiasm attempting to mask his distraction. Loki entertained himself by trying to guess what bothered him more – what people here were saying about him and Jane or whether his wife back home was able to make the same declaration of undying faithfulness that he was.
/
/
"Where'd you guys go off to?" Jane asked when Lucas and Selby returned. She had been sitting at her desk in the Dark Sector Lab, watching data stream past on her computer screen.
"We went inside for some coffee," Selby said.
She nodded. "The cold really sinks into your bones when you just stand around out there. But while you two were inside relaxing, Wright helped me finish getting my instruments set up outside."
"All of them?" Lucas asked.
"Every last one. It didn't take long, we'd already run most of the checks. Quick and easy. Wright's already back there inspecting something else on the detector array. And I," she paused, turning back to the computer and pointing toward the steady flow of jagged lines that looked like several dozen heartbeats, "have been checking out my very first South Pole data." She couldn't keep the pride from her voice.
Lucas peered closer and narrowed his eyes; Selby nodded and smiled, but the smile seemed a little distant. Neither one of them was sufficiently excited.
"Of course I'll have to start running this through all of the software for analysis," she added.
"You'll get better data when the temperatures drop," Selby said.
Jane nodded, disappointed. It felt almost like criticism. It was just a bunch of squiggly lines anyway; you couldn't look at it and tell whether it was good data or bad data. You could just tell that it was data. From equipment she'd built herself. And she knew the data would be better the colder it got. That was one of the reasons she'd been so eager to come here.
"When will you start showing me how to interpret your data?" Lucas asked after a moment.
Her eyebrows went up. "Well…I guess we can start tomorrow morning. I should have some results from the analysis software by then. A lot of it will be familiar to you, I'm sure, but I have a couple of my own programs, too. Mine in the sense that some people I know generously came up with them for me. Software's not my thing."
"It's not mine, either," Lucas agreed. "I would appreciate your showing me even the ones I'm familiar with. I'd like to learn how you look at them and apply them to your data."
"Okay, sure."
Selby cleared his throat. "I, uh, I should probably go see if Wright needs any help," he said.
Jane nodded and he headed out into the corridor toward the telescope side of the building.
"So," Lucas began, resting a long arm casually across the top of a bookcase. "What do we do now?"
She leaned back in her chair and sighed. Good question. "There's not much more we can do until we start getting results in. I can't wait to start digging into it…but there's nothing to dig into yet. Everything's set up and hooked up and all the data streams are working. And everything's being recorded onto servers. That's all for now. Tomorrow feels like it's a long way away." Only a day away, she thought with a wry smile as the lyrics popped into her mind out of nowhere.
"If we're done for the day, then may I ask you a question?"
"Sure," she said with a shrug.
"What led you to pursue this field of study? I know you said your father was a physicist. But you could have easily followed your mother into anthropology instead. Or taken a different path entirely. Why this?" he asked, leaning against the bookcase and gesturing around him with his hand.
"When you put it like that, it seems almost like an impossible question," she answered.
"Why?"
"Because…it's almost like you're asking about destiny." And while Jane did sometimes think about destiny, she found the concept made her mind run in loops. She couldn't even decide if she believed in it or not, or if she thought it was a good thing or a bad thing. And if it were real, could you break free from it if you decided it was bad – in general or your particular instantiation of it – or were you bound to it without recourse? She let out a short laugh. "You did say you read philosophy for fun. Maybe you can teach me a thing or two. The only time I ever really kind of got philosophy, sort of, was once when I wrote a class paper that tied philosophy in to science. Or science fiction, maybe.
"Anyway, why astrophysics. It's true my dad was a physicist and exposed me to that, but long before that, as far back as I can remember, I always loved looking up at the stars. We would go camping sometimes when I was a kid, and in the daytime it was all about swimming and hiking and canoeing, and then at night I'd never want to go to bed because I just wanted to stay up and stargaze. I can remember sitting on my dad's lap while he held on to my arm and guided it through the sky, pointing out each star and constellation until I knew them all by heart. And I don't really know how to explain it but I always knew they meant something. Something more than just lights in the sky.
"So I don't know. I don't really have any explanation for why one field and not another drew me to it so early on. It just did."
"Any regrets?"
Jane stared for a moment, then shifted positions, crossing her arms over her chest. "Everybody has regrets," she said softly.
"I mean about your career choice. Given the obstacles you've faced."
"Honestly? I don't think I've ever looked back. Too stubborn, I guess," she said with a little laugh. "But what about you? You've faced the same obstacles."
Lucas took an audible breath. "Everybody has regrets, Jane."
His gaze was intense, enough so that Jane was the one to break it and glance back at her computer for a moment. "How did you wind up studying astrophysics?" she asked, looking back at him only in the end.
"I made my own path. My father runs a family business, and I didn't want to be a part of it. So I pursued something else. I too grew up gazing at the stars and wondering what was out there. I decided I would find out."
Jane smiled at that. This was the presumptuous Lucas who had knocked on her door in Christchurch, presumptuous in a way that fit in with her slowly growing understanding of him, as though all the answers were there for the taking if you merely stated your intention to take them. That way was not so different from how she herself felt. The stubborn persistence that she believed she saw in him was certainly in her as well.
Her eyes were drawn for a moment to his left wrist, hanging at his side, but she quickly looked away. "Hey, by the way, I'm really sorry about this morning. I didn't mean to grab for you like that."
"Apology accepted."
"What happened?"
"I was burned," he answered immediately.
Jane swallowed, nodded. She'd guessed that much already. His tone was neutral, casual, but the words nonetheless somehow had an edge to them. Probably he was self-conscious about the scar. If there was a story to tell, he could tell it. She decided she wouldn't ask any further questions about it, though.
"Well, there isn't anything more to do here and it's dinnertime anyway. You wanna go? You must be starving," she added, recalling he'd skipped lunch again.
He gave an almost imperceptible tilt of his head, which she chose to interpret as agreement, so she swiveled around in her chair to log off the computer.
They went through the cluttered corridor across the building and found Selby and Wright still tinkering with the detector array, Wright with a pair of wire cutters in his left hand.
"You guys about done for the day?" Jane asked.
"Almost," Wright announced.
"No need to wait, though. You two go ahead if you're ready," Selby said.
"Yeah, we'll lock up," Wright added.
"Uh-huh," Jane said with a nod. "You do that, Wright. Shall we then?" She turned toward Lucas.
"After you, Jane," he said, with a slow, deep nod and outstretched arm.
Jane looked at him curiously for a moment. There was something oddly familiar in the formality of the gesture, something she couldn't put her finger on, and she felt an inexplicable giggle bubbling up inside her. She pressed her lips together, smiled, and headed back into the corridor; giggling somehow seemed rather inappropriate.
They got the outer layer of their gear back on and headed out. The wind had picked up, sending the wind chill plummeting, and Jane pulled her hood up over her head as they walked back to the station in silence. Longer legs, she thought with a glance over at Lucas, would be helpful right about now. And poor Lucas was having to slow his gait because of her.
Her thoughts wandered back to the burn on his wrist, and to the handful of times she'd burned herself working with homemade instruments badly enough to leave marks. A small rough spot on her right palm and a roundish red mark just below the crook of her right elbow were apparently permanent reminders.
Jane's gaze grew unfocused and she soon tripped over her own two feet in the bulky boots, now hard like blocks of wood beneath her soles. She recovered and continued on; Lucas had paused a few steps ahead to wait for her to catch up.
She knew now why what Lucas had said about his scar bothered her, why the words had sounded off somehow. When you got burned by something, you said I burned myself. I was burned meant something else entirely. It meant someone had burned you.
Jane shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. It doesn't have to mean that, she thought. And as little as Lucas said about himself, she figured she was unlikely to ever learn the truth.
/
/
Over the next two days Jane went through all of the data analysis programs she was running on the data collected through her own instruments. She found Lucas a conundrum. One minute she could swear he'd never heard of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, and the next he would ask which of her devices would best capture their decay. He seemed to enjoy provoking her in some strange way, and she was never sure whether he was just pretending not to know certain things to get her to explain them for whatever reason, or whether he'd actually slept through some of his lectures and taken his reading assignments as multiple choice. It didn't really matter; she didn't mind explaining. It was helpful for her as well, talking through what the software could and couldn't do, reminding herself of all the various ways of looking at the data that fed into the analysis programs. She would be collecting far more data here than she would be able to go through in real time, and as the initial results came in she would need to sift through them and decide which pieces of the puzzle to focus on very quickly.
They worked late on Saturday, staying out at the DSL in case any problems crept up with the instruments, and they barely made it back in time for dinner. The supper crowd had dwindled; they wound up sitting with Sue, the first time Jane had seen her in the galley.
"You're running out of time to marshal an airplane, Jane. No flights on Sunday. Monday's your last chance," Sue said.
Jane nodded; she knew. Monday was the 15th. Station closing. Last flight. There was something thrilling about it. You weren't really a winterover, your adventure not truly begun, until that last airplane took off. But there was also something ominous about it, the other side of the coin of a thrill, the vague sense of danger, much like a ride on a roller coaster. Tiny though the risk may be, people had gotten injured and seriously ill here during the winter, beyond what could normally be treated in medical, and fire or power interruption could happen. But Jane understood those risks, understood all the precautions that were taken to prevent them. And she liked roller coasters.
"I talked to Terrence today," she said. Terrence was one of the fuelies, the people who transferred the jet fuel to and from the planes that landed at the Pole. "He's going to let me do the passenger flight."
"Yeah? Okay. But did he insist on props?"
"Mm-hm," Jane breathed, savoring a bite of carrot. The main dish was lasagna, but the carrots were the best part of the meal – they were fresh, and that wouldn't last much longer. "And I've got a great idea. I just need something Iong and tube-shaped."
"PVC piping?"
"That would be perfect!"
"What size?"
Jane held her hands out, imagining herself holding the objects she wanted to create. She gave Sue the rough dimensions and Sue promised to bring the pipes in from another outbuilding that night after she came back in from work. Jane decided if she needed to find absolutely anything at the South Pole she knew who to go to, and said so.
"And what are these props you're planning to use?" Lucas asked, having finished his meal already.
"You'll see. It's a surprise."
"Bring your camera," Sue advised. "I'll get a picture for you."
A few minutes later Jane excused herself to go do laundry. She hoped Lucas and Sue would make friends; he didn't seem to talk much to anyone except her. She was glad he had gone for coffee with Selby that day, although she realized she hadn't seen much of Selby since then, which meant Lucas probably hadn't seen much of him either. It would get pretty lonely here for Lucas if he only had her to talk to the whole nine months. Even if he did seem like a bit of a loner, the circumstances here were extreme.
Putting her orange ECW gear bag back to work as a laundry bag, Jane turned into the laundry room on the first level and found Selby pulling clothes out of one of the washing machines.
They exchanged greetings as she walked around checking the machines. "Good timing on my part. All the other machines are in use."
"Yeah, I think it'll get a little easier once the rest of the summer people have left," he said, tossing his damp clothes into a plastic bin.
"You aren't going to dry them?" Jane asked.
"Little tip I learned," he said with a grin. "Dry them on a line in your room. Helps with the humidity, at least a little bit. And it doesn't take them long to dry."
Eyebrows raised, Jane nodded. The humidity in the Sahara Desert was 11%. At the South Pole it was 4%. Cherry-flavored Chapstick had already become her constant companion and shea butter hand lotion a part of her nightly routine. "That's a great idea."
"I can- well, Wright can show you where to get some tough string you can use for a line, and there's clothespins down in skua," he said, referring to the collection of items left behind by previous Polies, named for some reason for an Antarctic sea bird.
Jane sighed with pleasure, imagining waking up to a humid tropical paradise instead of a cracked lip like she had this morning. Damp clothes weren't going to give off that much moisture, but there was nothing wrong with daydreams.
"Hey, I haven't seen you around so much the last couple of days," she said as Selby was about to leave.
He paused in the doorway. "Uh, yeah. Just busy, you know. Oh, why, did you need something? Any problems at the DSL?"
"No, no," she said, shaking her head. "Everything's going pretty smoothly, and Lucas is getting up to speed."
"Oh, okay. Well, I'm going to go get these hung up. I'll see you later, okay?"
"Sure, see you later." Jane's eyes lingered on the door after he left. He wasn't acting quite like himself, she thought. But then, she'd known him for less than a week, who was she to say what was himself and what wasn't? Besides, he'd been one newbie looking out for the even newer newbies when she and Lucas had first arrived – maybe now he was simply shifting his focus back to his work. And maybe he'd gotten over his initial intrigue and was more interested in galaxy clusters and less in Asgard.
Whatever was or wasn't going on with Selby, the laundry wasn't going to do itself. She pulled her clothes out of the orange bag and put them into the machine, added a scoop of Tide, closed the door, and got the machine going. Leaving the bag on the table in the middle of the room, she repeated the trek she'd been making each evening since the e-mail from Darcy saying she'd sent her a package. She didn't have far to go from the laundry room; just down the hall was the day's delivery, larger than the previous days', and this time she was in luck.
With an unabashed squeal of delight she snatched up a large box with her name on it, only to find Erik Selvig as the return addressee. She smiled and furrowed her brow, feeling happy like a kid again to get a package from him, but at the same time sad and kind of guilty that in his emotional turmoil he'd taken time out to buy something for her and mail it to the South Pole. She decided when she left here she'd convince Erik to go away somewhere relaxing with her, where he could talk about what Thor's brother had done to him, or everything but that, or nothing at all, and she would simply wait, ready to listen to him as he had been for her after her parents died. Maybe Tony Stark's Malibu place. She knew Tony wouldn't object.
Poking through the rest of the cargo delivery, she found the box from Darcy, smaller than the one from Erik. On the off chance that who-knew-who-else had sent her something, she went through the rest of the boxes. She recognized a lot of the recipients' names now, and was excited for Rodrigo to see he'd gotten something, but that was it for her.
She bounded up the stairs – and was thrilled to reach the top and realize she'd "bounded" and wasn't out of breath – and hurried back to her room to open the packages. Ripping into Darcy's first, she found soft cream-colored cloth on top, and when she pulled it out she realized it was a folded flannel sheet. She rubbed her hand against it, turned it over, saw the crocheted lace edging that made her eyebrows go up. Sheets like that deserved to be on something nicer than the black metal frame bed she was sleeping on, but they would definitely bring some class – and comfortable warmth – to what otherwise reminded her an awful lot of her college dorm room.
Under the sheet was a knit cap, ice blue except for a white ring around the edge, a white circle on top, and a white knit bow on the side. Probably not as warm as the ones she'd gotten from the CDC, but definitely much cuter. Jane pulled it on and hopped up from her desk to admire it with a smile. She'd have to take a picture in it outside and send it to Darcy.
She sat down again and reached back in the box for the book, lying on top of the rest of the sheet set. "The Complete Guide to Norse Mythology," she read out loud, then sighed. It didn't matter how hard she tried to leave all this behind for a while. First Lucas, then Selby, now more of this craziness. She'd read through some of the book Erik had borrowed from the library, a children's book with lots of big pictures and brief descriptions of the figures the Vikings had believed to be gods. Initially fascinating, the weird-factor had crept up until she didn't want to read it anymore. She could have done without knowing that the guy that made her heart flutter had a day of the week named after him.
She flipped randomly through pages in the book. Fewer pictures, and these were images of paintings and engravings, not artists' drawings for children. So the guy that made her heart flutter had a painting of him in the British Museum. Great. She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and dropped the book in. She knew she'd have to at least look at whatever Darcy found so entertaining on page 38 before she wrote to her and thanked her for the gifts. It was beyond sweet of her to send these things. The sheets were soft and beautiful, the hat was adorable, and the book…well, it was the thought that counted. Jane wanted the person she'd met in Puente Antiguo, not medieval Viking stories about him and his family. Thor could tell her those stories himself. Maybe. Someday.
She frowned and shook her head, trying to clear the rising emotion. There was no point in getting worked up about things you couldn't change. She closed the drawer, then pulled out the other sheet and pillowcase from the box. A single sheet of paper, torn from a notebook, was left at the bottom. Who says flannel can't be pretty? the short note said. Followed by Read page 38! and Love ya! Darcy. "Okay, okay," Jane acquiesced with a laugh. "But not right now." She still had another box, and laundry.
Erik, Jane found, had sent her a deep sapphire blue down comforter – she suspected he had coordinated with Darcy – an orange Caltech-logoed Snuggie that had her laughing hysterically, and something far less warm and cozy but even more practical and precious: a humidifier. It was already out of its packaging and Jane set it up and plugged it in right away, pouring in water straight from a fresh Nalgene bottle. Her dorm room was fast turning into a palace and though she wasn't tired she could hardly wait for bedtime. She'd intended to be social that evening, maybe go see the movie showing in the gym, but curling up in bed with the rose book was sounding like heaven on earth.
/
/
Jane slept late on Sunday morning and didn't go down to the galley until nearly 9:30, dressed in jeans and her blue Australia T-shirt. The station was a little cooler than she would keep her own thermostat, but not cold, and she was getting used to it. She grabbed a package of strawberry Pop-Tarts and a cup of coffee and dropped into a chair at one of the long tables with Lucas, Rodrigo, and Austin. "Breakfast of champions," she said as she set her tray down, laughing at her private joke.
"How are you this morning, Jane?" Lucas asked.
"Fabulous. You?"
"Well, thank you."
Jane wrinkled her nose at the lasagna Rodrigo was eating. "For breakfast?" she asked, pointing at the leftovers on his plate.
"Lunch," he said shaking his head, and she remembered his schedule was ahead of theirs. Austin was polishing off an English muffin and Lucas had only coffee. Sunday was the station's day off, and that included the kitchen staff.
"When do you want to start work today, Jane?" Lucas asked during a lull in conversation a few minutes later.
"Maybe-"
"Hey, the correct answer to that question is 'Monday.' You new guys come in here and think you can work 24-7. You'll burn out. Seriously. I saw it happen to a guy last year. Take your day off. Relax, have some fun."
Jane glanced between Rodrigo and Lucas; Lucas looked annoyed. As grantees rather than contract staff, Jane and Lucas could work whatever schedule they wanted, but the rational side of her knew Rodrigo was right. She should take a break, and it was convenient enough to take that break at the same time as everyone else.
"Me and Rodrigo and a couple others are going to make a bunch of pizzas tonight for dinner, wanna join us?" Austin asked.
"Yeah? Well…okay, sure, why not? Sounds fun."
"Change your mind, Lucas?"
"No, thank you. I've got some reading to do," he answered. Jane surmised they'd already asked him.
As the day progressed, Jane resisted the urge to run down to the Science Lab and see what latest results the software had returned, knowing she would never be able to keep it to a quick peek. Instead, she got in some cycling time on the stationary bike in the gym, chatted with fuelie Terrence in the wonderfully humid greenhouse sitting area, helped clear snow from the emergency stairs outside her berthing wing, got her PVC pipes from Sue and prepared her plane-marshalling props in the arts and crafts room, sent some e-mails, and made pizza after pizza with a small group of fellow volunteers in the kitchen.
After dinner she headed to her room and saw Selby emerging from his, across from Lucas's. "Hey," she called, "hold on! I have to show you something." She hurried into her room and grabbed the Caltech Snuggie.
She thought Selby might have followed, but he stood there in the hallway, still closer to his door than hers. She trotted back out and held out the giant whatever-it-was.
He took it and opened it up before his face broke into a smile. "Oh. That's great, I didn't know they made these, with the logos."
"Me either. A friend sent it. I just got it yesterday in a cargo delivery."
"Good friend."
"Very good friend," she agreed. And then they just stood there, and Jane wondered why she suddenly felt so awkward. "Is everything okay?" she asked.
"What?" he asked, as though she'd startled him. "Oh, sure, yeah. I'm sorry. Really. I'm just kind of distracted. But, uhhh, hey, I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast, okay?" He handed the Snuggie back to her.
"Okay," she said, shrugging and returning to her room once he'd continued past.
/
/
Jane stood in front of the taxiing LC-130 holding a PVC pipe in each hand, one swathed in iridescent green wrapping paper and the other in iridescent red, both wrapped with black electrical tape at the bottom to make a handle. She crossed her mock lightsabers at the right moment per instruction, and the plane came to a halt. A large crowd had gathered – the last of the summer crowd with their carry-on bags looking much as Jane had a week ago, and the winterovers coming out to see off the last passenger flight of the season – and some of them were applauding. Jane turned around grinning as Sue continued snapping pictures with her camera.
The show was over; it was cold. Jane dropped the lightsabers for a moment and pulled out the hat Darcy had sent, tugging it down onto her head and over her best effort at Princess Leia braids, coiled above her ears. Nope, not as warm as the CDC's stuff. She pulled up Big Red's hood, grabbed the lightsabers and accepted her camera back, then walked back into the sea of red and occasional black or brown. Someone touched her shoulder and she turned around to see Wright holding up a hand for a high-five, which she met with a grin. "Help me, Jane Foster, you're my only hope!" he shouted with a gloved palm over his heart. She rolled her eyes and turned back toward the plane.
Two passengers bundled in red disembarked – Jane knew one of them was the winter doctor – along with the crew. The fuelies got to work, cargo was unloaded, and handshakes and hugs were exchanged. Jane looked for Dr. Brissett, but couldn't find him in the mass of people, some 60 or 70 individuals who for the most part looked alike out here, bundled up as they were.
She didn't really know any of the other people departing, but watching them board the plane still brought on some rather strange and intense feelings. It made her think back to that first day of being dropped off at Space Camp, her first away-from-family experience, the moment when it hit her that her parents were really-really leaving and she would be on her own and have to make friends with all these strangers. She was glad it worked out that she was on the next-to-last passenger flight instead of the last; she'd already made friends, already knew her way around.
She looked around her, at the jamesways and other Summer Camp buildings, the berms, Cryogenics, all the other buildings out there she still had no idea about, and then in the distance, the Ice Cube Lab and South Pole Telescope and MAPO…for the next nine months this was the extent of her world. A one-mile radius, she thought as an unexpected wave of trepidation passed over her.
And then she looked up. And smiled. A one-mile radius on the ground. It was another story entirely out in the cosmos.
The plane took off. The crowd dispersed. And just like that it was winter. Not really, not technically. The sun was still up and low, noticeably lower than when she'd first arrived. But it was winter nonetheless. Everyone here was in for the long haul, and no one else was coming.
Trying to shake the last of the anxiety, Jane started to walk out toward the dark sector. Lucas – or at least a tall slender figure who really could only have been Lucas – fell into step beside her, and they continued on in silence until they reached the DSL and shed their outer layers. Jane changed her mind about the hat and pulled it back on; Princess Leia braids felt a bit goofy sans lightsabers.
She took a quick look through the building; Wright and Selby weren't there. "Did you see Selby outside?" Jane asked when she returned to the lab and found Lucas settled in at his desk.
He turned to look at her. "No."
"Hm. I saw Wright…I guess they went back to the station."
"Probably," Lucas agreed, looking up at her with a slight frown.
Jane frowned back at him; he looked like he was worried about something. "What?"
"Jane…sit down."
Her frown deepened, but she grabbed her own desk chair and sat down to face him. "Okaaaayyy…"
He took a breath before speaking. "There's something I haven't been entirely honest with you about."
/
Reviews/questions/comments welcome and appreciated as always!
This chapter and the next kick off the next stage of this story. What's Loki going to tell Jane? There's a lot to choose from, he hasn't been entirely honest with her about much of anything...and why start now? But it's something that he believes will help him reach his goal.
A few teasers: Loki clears up his lack of honesty with Jane (yeah, right); Thor is pushed toward confronting Vanaheim's king and his own promises; Jane begins to feel a little rebellious.
An excerpt - hard to choose one this time, and this one I think must come off as rather enigmatic, so completely void of context:
"I know this isn't easy for you. I know you and he were close."
Close. The word was almost offensive, ringing out like an empty goblet clattering against a table. Thor had servants he was close to. He had only one brother. "I've answered all of your questions," he finally recovered enough to say. "You still haven't answered mine."