This chapter follows pretty much directly from "Chapter 22: Allies," which in turn follows pretty directly from "Chapter 21: Breakthrough," and the next chapter follows directly from this one. (You'll see why it must). Busy day on Asgard and Midgard. We're approaching sunset (March 22), Gullveig's and seven realms' deadline, and the next big breakthrough...hopefully for Loki related to wormhole travel and not his dreams.

Thanks as always for your reviews and comments and ideas, they are sincerely appreciated.

I'm supposed to be leaving shortly for a long-awaited dive vacation...unfortunately Cat 5 Typhoon Bopha apparently had the same plans. So we'll see...not sure yet if I have to cancel last minute, not sure what the impact will be on the writing schedule. But I do usually find writing while traveling particularly inspiring. It's always possible however that if I go there won't be internet...if you don't hear from me for a couple of weeks never fear, I promise I'm still writing!

/

Beneath

Chapter Twenty-Three – Tension

"I'll have to be careful about it."

"But you can get it."

"Yes, I just don't want to raise any red flags. They're going to want to know why I want that data."

"I'm sure you can manage," Lucas said, a definite thread of sarcasm in his voice.

Jane frowned at him. She hated when he got like that, even if she could never quite put her finger on what exactly that was. She just knew she hated it and it set her on edge. And it was getting harder to ignore. Jane liked to think of herself as friendly and easy-going, but she was no doormat.

"So am I," she said. "I'll ask Tony Stark."

"Stark? Are you sure?"

"Look, do you want me to get the data or not? Tony has the ability to make that happen and to make it happen fast. I could go lower, but lower means someone having to ask permission. I could ask Erik…but I don't want to involve him in this, not even peripherally. I'll just…tell him I realized I wanted to be able to look at the data from the failed event, too. It's not even a lie. He won't bat an eyelash. I don't know if he actually has that data himself, but if he doesn't, he'll be able to get it. I'll type the message up tonight and send it first thing tomorrow morning."

They were back in the Dark Sector Lab, alone as they had been all day long except for a quick lunch break, and had been going through satellite feeds from the second through fourth events, when discussion circled back to the fifth event.

"All right," he finally said, and Jane heard the galling tone of permission.

"I'm glad you approve," she responded crossly, swiveling back around to her computer so she wouldn't have to see his reaction. He wasn't exactly hovering over her, but she could feel his breath over the top of her head when he released a sigh – more like a huff – before returning to his own computer.

/

/

"Power is going to be a problem," Loki said.

"What?" Jane asked. They remained at their individual desks, Loki running through the obstacles that still lay ahead while waiting for results from yet another data analysis program he'd run.

"Power. Even if we don't have to guide the bridge all the way to…to Asgard," he said, unintentionally stumbling over the word that still felt very strange to speak of here in his role as Lucas, "we still have to create massive amounts of particle reactions and guide them to the mouth of the main bridge. The trunk, if you will." The last he added intentionally. If he could speak of Asgard then he could speak of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, at least in metaphorical terms.

Jane turned to look at him with something akin to exasperation, and he wondered if at this point he was simply expected not to speak. He knew he'd annoyed her earlier, but he hadn't much cared at the time. She was so careful and methodical in her approach. Too slow. Loki had thought he would have all winter to get off this backwater realm and make it to Svartalfheim to get the curses removed. Now that The Other – as that foul creature had introduced himself, though Loki had called him many other names and never that one – had found him, he would prefer to be gone by the time the sun set, about a week from now, and he definitely wanted to be gone before it rose again in September.

"Since you're ready to move on to power, why don't you go build us the device we need, and I'll figure out the power supply, okay?" Jane asked after a moment.

"I was simply pointing out-"

"You were simply skipping half the steps again! We don't need power for a device we don't have and don't know what it even needs to do yet."

"Are you even capable of putting together a sentence that isn't full of 'can't' and 'don't'?" he asked in a low rumble. His fists were clenched tightly over his thighs. He knew this wasn't the right way to deal with Jane, that she would not respond to this in the way he wanted, but his control was less than perfect. He was tired and agitated.

Jane rarely seemed to put much effort into hiding what she was thinking, and this was no exception. She was furious. Let her be, Loki thought, knowing his reaction to be irrational and really not caring. He needed her, but right now he would have happily sealed her mouth and tossed her out into the snow.

He was certain she was going to shout something back at him, and he almost welcomed it. He had kept himself so tightly controlled now for so long – his actions, his speech, his mannerisms, his expressions, his magic, everything that made him him – that a release would bring sweet relief.

But it would also ruin everything he'd worked so hard for here and put his plans in jeopardy, so the wiser part of him was relieved when her face calmed. Instead, she stood up and walked to the door. Not a helpful reaction, either. He couldn't afford to alienate her or drive her away.

"You. Up. Come with me," she said.

Loki didn't even try to hide his surprise. He stared hard at her for a moment and let her feel it, but then did as he was told, ceding his will to hers as he had done many times now. He was conscious of it every time he did it, but that part at least had gotten easier, so long as he reminded himself each time – and he did – that he obeyed because he chose to, not because he had to. And he chose to because it furthered his own plans.

"Suit up," she told him once he'd followed her to the building's entrance.

He watched her for a moment further as she started pulling on layers over her jeans and flannel shirt, then followed her lead. They went outside, but instead of setting off toward the station he followed her carefully up the stairs, each of which was covered with a small amount of snowdrift, up to the roof. The sun peeked only partially above the horizon now, to the right of the Ice Cube Lab, an odd metallic blue structure that from here appeared as though it hung suspended over the snow from a long horizontal white pole attached to thicker while vertical columns to its left and right. The station and other buildings lay off to the left, behind him, while before him, beyond the DSL, lay an empty white nothing. Barren land, he thought with a shudder he told himself was caused by the cold.

Removing the outer mitt from her right hand, Jane flipped the latches on one of the heavy black boxes pushed to the station side of the roof and pulled out a screwdriver, then crossed to the other side and knelt down beside the device she'd said little about thus far, the one that looked the newest and most technologically sophisticated of everything she'd had sent here. She unhooked from its bottom piece the plywood casing that skirted the device to keep it clear of snowdrift and set it aside on her own; she didn't ask for his help and he didn't offer it. She keyed in a sequence on the control pad on its side to power it down, then gripped the screwdriver in her gloved right hand, and worked through the four screws that held the disk-shaped sensor and metal plate in place over the contraption, about the size of three computer towers side-by-side.

Loki forgot his frustration, forgot the cold, forgot the renewed sense of urgency the familiar voice in his dream had instilled in him, as he watched what Jane was doing with intense curiosity. Once she'd removed and set aside the cover plate and sensor with its trailing cables still connecting it, he could see a faint blue glow from inside the box, reflecting off its metal casing. She stood up and stepped aside; he exchanged a glance with her then stepped forward to peer inside. Resting atop the silver metal and thin black cable of the thing's electronic guts was a round object no wider than his open palm, a series of concentric rings glowing cool blue and broken by dark metal that tamed and channeled its power.

"Do you know what that is?" Jane asked when he looked over at her again, her voice slightly muffled in a now familiar way by the balaclava.

He did. "No," he said, because Lucas didn't.

"Maybe you've heard of Tony Stark's arc reactor technology? This one was…kind of a gift, I guess. After…well, after the New Mexico incident. It's a long story," she said, waving her right hand as though brushing away a fly.

After your beloved Thor deserted you, the Man of Iron felt sorry for you? How very sweet of him.

"Anyway," she continued, "let's just say power's not going to be a problem."

The South Pole Station had three main generators running on jet fuel, plus a few smaller backups and boilers for individual buildings. Nothing like what was contained in that little blue ring. "I've heard of this," he said with a slow nod. "It can generate more power than all of the South Pole's generators combined. Far more than this one piece of equipment requires." His gaze slid slowly, pointedly, back over to Jane. He had seen the feed from it. It detected particles in an expanded set of wavelengths, but did nothing to require such massive amounts of energy. Not that he had seen, at least.

"Right now it's in passive mode," Jane explained, looking down at her creation. It wasn't as though she'd forgotten what it looked like in the last two minutes; she was avoiding his eyes, Loki recognized. "It was designed to take a more…active approach to getting signals from space."

"You wanted to be able to create your own wormholes all along," he said. There was no need to make it a question. "For all your protests, you already knew you wanted to do this."

She hesitated long enough for Loki to wonder if she was blushing underneath her balaclava. "Not here. Not now. At first I just wanted to be able to find the source of those original wormholes. And then I wanted to find a way to force specific sub-molecular reactions and get really detailed readings on them, so I designed this to be able emit modulated pulses of various forms of energy, and to be able to launch small probes out beyond the magnetosphere. I haven't had a chance to do much with it, though. I had just finished building it when SHIELD whisked me away on some trumped up consulting job. I thought that's why they sent me to Norway, I thought they were excited and wanted me to test this thing out, but when I got there I was told I couldn't even turn it on. Now I think they were just afraid it would get Loki's attention – that man who was trying to take over the planet."

A chill raced up Loki's spine upon hearing his real name on her lips. He wasn't sure if he or his mortal followers would have noticed this machine launching probes into space or not – he'd been rather busy with other things at the time. But he was sure he couldn't risk Jane's muddled memories suddenly clearing up. He couldn't let her thoughts linger on him in that way. "But you did think that eventually you would attempt to create a wormhole," he said.

"Eventually, yes," she admitted with a nod. "My attitude has always been that if someone else can do something, then I can, too. So if someone else out there can build something that generates wormholes, then why can't we? Why can't I? The only problem is…one of the people from Asgard told me they use magic. And that magic is the same as science there. I know that seems outlandish, but maybe it just means that their science is so advanced compared to us that it looks like magic because we don't understand it, you know? The way a computer might look to someone from 500 years ago. Or maybe it's something more. I've thought about it a lot, and I just can't be sure. But I can't replicate magic. Only science. And there's only so far I can take science at our current level of technology. If I'd figured out how a computer should work a thousand years ago I still wouldn't be able to build one at that time because I wouldn't have the components or the ability to create them. That's my real concern in all this, that science alone just won't be enough."

Her head tilted upward, off to his left, and he wondered if she were metaphorically looking for Asgard. She was full of longing for something more than what she had, more than what she was, and Loki had the sudden foolish urge to give it to her, even though it would result in precisely the thing he'd just been trying to avoid – her learning who he really was. Thor must have spoken of magic to her, but Loki could show it to her. Let her decide for herself if it was science or something more. Assure her that science alone – her science alone – wouldn't have to be enough. That if she could just get close enough, and he knew what remained to be done, he could cause the rest to happen.

And as his desire to give her what she wanted for something resembling selfless reasons began to more closely reflect considerably more selfish motivations, he completely rejected the absurd notion of revealing himself to her. He had worked too hard to get this situation under his control, to get Jane under his control, to throw it away and start over just to see her reaction when he cast multiple duplicates of Lucas and transformed all of their ECW gear into helmets and armor and leather. If she discovered who he was he would have to use altogether different tactics than those he was using now. And if he found the idea of her screaming in terror somewhat amusing…the thought of actually harming her he did not. She could ponder his magic after he left; perhaps he could leave her a parting gift of some sort. Something full of the most delectable mischief since the Dark Elves would soon after be curing him of his afflictions.

"I'm confident we can make it work," he finally said.

"What? Oh, right. Yeah…yeah. Hey, let's go on in for dinner. We need to take a break from this, huh?"

"All right," he agreed. Not because he actually needed or even wanted to take a break, but because he was thinking more clearly now in the dry frigid air and recognized that he had allowed the atmosphere in the DSL to grow too tense. He needed to repair whatever damage may have been done.

"We're quite close, then, aren't we?" Loki asked once they were down the stairs and on their way back to the station.

"Launching probes and launching people isn't exactly the same thing, you know. And I haven't even been able to test the launching-probes part yet. We have to map out exactly where the mouth of the pre-existing bridge is" – he noticed she seemed to have already accepted that he was correct that there was one – "and figure out how to connect a smaller bridge to it, and eventually how to direct the energy beyond the main bridge, and then there's the tiny detail about how to make it all safe for human travel. Oh, and how to ensure it's not a one-way trip. So, yeah, just a few little things left to work out. It'll be up and running tomorrow. Day after at the latest."

Loki pictured himself smoothing the ice in front of her into the texture of glass so that her feet flew out from under her and she fell flat on her face, or perhaps her rear. He had done it to Thor once – well, more than once – when he'd been similarly aggravated. But while Thor had fallen with a delightfully heavy thud and come back up swinging and huffing like a bull – after an amusingly long time trying to gain purchase on the ice, Loki remembered – Jane, although much lighter, was more susceptible to injury…which would mean running afoul of both curses at the same time again. He tried to content himself with the image, and with the knowledge that at least one of her "little things," the part about one-way trips, was entirely unnecessary. If he ever came back to this realm again it certainly wouldn't be through that little contraption on the roof of the DSL.

"No more work talk though, deal? Taking a break means taking an actual break," Jane said a couple of minutes later. Meanwhile, Austin was approaching them from the Ice Cube Lab, providing extra incentive not to talk about work.

"How goes it?" he called once their paths merged.

Jane and Loki slowed to allow him to catch up. They exchanged pleasantries.

"We hardly ever see you two anymore. You'll have to tell me more about your work sometime. Either you've run into problems or your research must be really exciting."

Loki let Jane answer and his own mind wander, but within seconds Austin's words were replaying. We hardly ever see you two anymore. "We" probably indicated that he and Carlo, at the very least, perhaps with others, had been talking about him and Jane. About how they spent all their time alone together. He looked over at Austin with a bemused smile that Austin wouldn't be able to see behind the balaclava, then at diminutive Jane, who was just catching herself from another stumble over a ridge in the ice. Ludicrous. But if Austin and his scientist friends or the entire station wanted to think that he and Jane were in some kind of secret romantic liaison, that was fine with him if it helped ensure they were left alone. Loki imagined such a rumor somehow making its way to Thor, and an image of Thor's head literally exploding from rage popped into his mind.

"What?" Jane asked.

Loki glanced her way, laughter he hadn't even been aware of dying away. "Nothing," he answered, fixing his eyes on the station as they neared it. "Just thinking about something else."

Austin continued on with whatever he'd been saying about the construction of the Ice Cube telescope, and Loki was mildly impressed – Jane had apparently diverted his attention onto his own work, which was a clever move, and one Loki himself frequently made use of. People were always more interested in talking about themselves than about anything else in the universe.

"Wanna join us?" Austin asked once they were inside and rounding the corner to the galley.

Loki watched Jane out of the corner of his eye, and now that her face was uncovered he could read every reaction that played across it. She was tempted – she wasn't antisocial by nature and she missed the company of the others. But she saw who was already sitting at the table Austin was undoubtedly headed for: Selby and Wright. She hated being around Selby because of her sense of betrayal, and that was something Loki understood quite well.

"Thanks, but we can't. Lucas and I still need to discuss some things about the particle data we got back today."

"Oh, sure, right. Well…don't be such a stranger, either of you. Don't even think about missing the sunset party, I think that would actually be illegal. And we're going to play after dinner. It'd be great if you'd join us. In the audience, I mean, unless you want to do a Heart and Soul encore."

"We wouldn't miss it," Loki quickly answered with a warm smile as he took a plate and surveyed the main dish options. They probably would miss it, but agreeing was the quickest way to dismiss Austin and his invitations.

"Ironic excuse, wouldn't you say?" he whispered once their plates were filled and Austin was walking away. "We need to discuss work?"

Jane shot him a rather unkind look. They reached a table and she set her tray down with a little more force than necessary. "I don't like being turned into a liar. I don't like any of this," she said once they were seated.

Loki took a bite of thawed green peas. He hadn't come to like this food, unlike everyone else here who seemed to be quite impressed with it, but he had largely gotten used to it. "Does it help at all to know that you're only lying to those who are lying to you?"

"Not really," she said, stabbing aimlessly at a piece of chicken with her fork. "It's not like I know who's part of this and who's not. I mean, it can't be everybody."

Loki watched as her frown deepened; he was certain she was wondering if it somehow could be everybody, if SHIELD's reach and abilities were that comprehensive. He briefly wondered whether he really could drive her right over the edge into insanity, if he worked hard enough at it. That line of thought was pointless though; he needed a mentally sound Jane Foster. He glanced over her shoulder to the table where the other dark sector scientists were sitting. Them he didn't need mentally sound… But that was a distraction he had no time for at the moment.

"Don't concern yourself about it. We have more important things to worry about. We need to plan a test of your special gadget out there. Perhaps we can use it to help-"

"No shop talk. I meant that. Look, it's hard for me to stop thinking about it, too, but I'm starting to go stir crazy. You're worse than me, you know."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I can get pretty stubborn…some might say obstinate…when I've grabbed onto a new idea. But you're starting to approach that line between bearably and unbearably irritating, to be perfectly honest."

Me? Loki thought sarcastically. But there was no benefit in arguing. "I shall attempt in the future to remain firmly on the side of bearable," he said, letting the sarcasm seep through.

Jane ignored it and they ate in silence. He supposed he should say something else – repair the damage, as he'd intended, but at the moment the things he wanted to say were things that would only further the damage. With this new device at their disposal, they were even closer than he'd originally believed. Work was all he wanted to talk about. Work was all they had in common…except for Thor, perhaps. And they could hardly talk about him. Lucas didn't know him, and Loki had no desire to see strong-willed scientist Jane turn into some kind of lovesick creature pining for the radiance of his brother. Former brother! False brother! Loki shouted at himself. The longer he was here, the easier it was to slip into old habits. Over a thousand years of thinking of Thor as his brother was not easily overcome by the revelation that he never had been, no matter how many times or how harshly Loki reminded himself. Despite all that had happened, sometimes he felt as though he were still trying to stand from having that rug ripped out from under him, still trying to come to terms with the fact that the family and indeed the entire realm he'd never completely fit into were never his to begin with. He'd tried to claw his way back one way, and when that had failed and a strange combination of opportunity and coercion came his way, he'd tried another route, with another goal entirely. Now he would have to find a third way. Svartalfheim was only a means to an end, certainly not an end itself. He would find something else for himself, perhaps outside the Nine Realms entirely. Far from the place that birthed him and rejected him, far from the place that stole him and rejected him. He neither wanted nor needed either of them, or any of the rest of the Nine, Midgard certainly included. He would be sad for his mother, but he suspected even she would get over his loss in time.

"I get it, you know," Jane said, interrupting his thoughts, most likely for the best. He had been growing far too sentimental.

"Get what?" he asked.

"You. At least I think I do. You've got some big decisions to make, right? Problems in your department, problems with your family…you said you're estranged from them? I think in some ways you're a lot like me. You throw yourself into your work because you love it, but even more so when you've got problems going on. I do the same thing. I like numbers. They're…safe. Even at their most complex, even when negative or irrational or filled with variables, they're extraordinarily simple and straightforward in their own way. Numbers are reliable. Focusing on facts and formulas, even theoretical formulas, it's gotten me through some tough times. But…I've also sometimes let myself go a little too far. I've never been good at taking a balanced approach to life."

"I've never thought of numbers quite like that, but I do appreciate having a goal to work toward. If you have a clear goal, why shouldn't you put all your effort into attaining it?"

"Well, you should, but…but balance is still important. Look, I'm not saying I have the answers, I definitely don't. I wish I knew how my mom did it."

"How are you so certain she did?"

"Because I saw it. I saw all the different things she did, the hobbies she had and how she was always trying to learn new things. I think all that really brought her…I don't know, more peace, or fulfillment? It made her happy, anyway. And how she was able to rearrange her priorities when she felt the need. I told you she was an anthropologist, didn't I?"

Loki nodded.

"She loved her work. She would tell me stories about Central American culture and mythology and show me pictures from the digs she went on and she would always get excited when she talked about it. Well, when she was expecting me, she decided to basically give up her career to stay home with me. It had to have been a really hard decision. I heard her talking about it with Mindy once – my friend Erik's late wife? Some of her female colleagues turned on her, as if she was letting down women everywhere for giving up what they'd fought so hard for. But she did what she thought was best for herself and for her family, no matter what anyone else thought. She cooked and sewed and even made some of my clothes herself. I was the only kid I knew whose mom actually sewed. She got into DIY home repairs and I remember how ridiculously joyful she looked scooting out from under our bathroom sink with work gloves on and a wrench in her hand and grease on her arms. We didn't have much money on a single salary so I guess she kind of didn't have a choice in some of that stuff.

"She was a soccer mom before people talked about soccer moms. And I mean literally. Although I was pretty lousy at soccer and eventually I switched to swimming. And she kept roses, about a dozen different varieties. She tried to get me interested in it, but I thought one flower was pretty much the same as the next and I'd rather be reading about Jupiter's moons. Just one of so many things I wish I'd taken the time to learn from her, if I'd only known there wasn't much time left."

"You admired her greatly."

Jane let out a laugh, which surprised Loki. "Well, yes. More so now as an adult myself. She was just Mom to me then. I didn't appreciate how much she accomplished every single day. I wish I'd had the chance to ask her how she did it.

"My mother never cooked or made any of my clothes, though she did often commission them from the tailors without consulting me. I certainly never saw her crawling out from under a sink – the image is both appalling and amusing, in a wicked sort of way." Jane stifled laughter, and Loki smiled to let her know he wouldn't be offended by the laughter. "My brother and I were already enough for a full-time job for her, but she was kept busy with other duties. Still she always made time for me."

Jane's smile faded. "I don't understand."

"You don't understand what?" Loki asked, his smile growing more brittle. Am I so irritating that you don't think my own mother would care for me? He gave a small snort. Perhaps you're correct, he thought, as he realized that in fact the mother who had given birth to him had left him to die of starvation and exposure.

"That you're…oh. Oh. I'm so sorry. You were speaking in the past tense. Has she passed away?"

"No," he answered immediately, because that was a truly horrible thought, and not one he wished to dwell on at all.

"Then…I don't understand. I've never heard you…I can tell that you love her a great deal. Why are you estranged?"

Loki lifted one eyebrow for a moment, tensing, then relaxed and leaned back in his chair. Why not? If you want a story, Jane Foster, you shall have one, he thought. And it may as well be one that was to his benefit. "I'm not so much estranged from her as I am from the rest of my family. Because of the rest of my family. I told you, there's a family business, and I didn't want any part of it. That wasn't acceptable to them. To my father and brother. And my sister," he threw in for good measure, lest this tale ring too familiar from some version of it Thor may have fed her. Otherwise he would stick to truth, since there was no lie more effective than a massaged truth.

"That's not reason enough to turn your back on your family."

"I didn't turn my back on them. They turned their back on me."

"Even your mother?"

"No. But they are…a package deal, you might say. My father is a hard man. He has strict expectations of his children, and I never lived up to them. I was never what he wanted me to be."

"But you're…you're getting a doctorate in astrophysics."

"Which is all well and good for a hobby, but which contributes nothing to the family business."

"Have you tried talking to him? Really talking to him?"

"He isn't very good at listening. He prefers lecturing."

"But still, you can't just give up. It's your family. I mean…" Jane trailed off and her expression changed from one of sickeningly sweet earnestness to something more like wariness. "What line of business is your family in? I looked you up online, and I couldn't find anything."

"Of course you couldn't," he said, not reacting in the slightest to the shift in topic, although he hadn't expected this to come up now. No matter, he was prepared for it anyway.

"Why not?"

"Because Lucas Cane isn't my real name."

/

/

"Why did you have him made king?" Odin suddenly asked in a sharp tone, his voice raised if not quite shouting.

Reclining against an ornately carved heavy desk in his parents' private library, part of their expansive chambers, Thor, who had fallen deeply into his own thoughts, suddenly straightened. His father had been recounting the meeting with Gullveig, and Thor had been present and had already heard it retold once, before the advisors.

"What else was I to do? No one knew when you would awaken, or if you would awaken. And with a state of war renewed with Jotunheim, I-"

"Loki was the one who broke that truce, Frigga! What were you thinking?"

Odin had shed his armor, but the tautness of his body and the power in his clenched fists made him a frightful sight regardless. Thor couldn't recall ever seeing him this angry with his mother. If his parents ever fought, they had never done so in front of him. His gaze shifted to his mother; she was trembling, but he could tell it wasn't from fear or anything of the sort. She was the gentlest of creatures, but even the gentlest of creatures could turn frightful herself where her children were involved.

Thor took a tentative step forward. "It wasn't Loki's fault, Fath-"

"Who let the Frost Giants into Asgard in the first place?" Odin asked, rounding on Thor. "We know now it was Loki. And who was the one who goaded you into going to Jotunheim?"

"But I was the one who-"

"Thor, enough! You aren't a child anymore, and neither is Loki. Would you have ever been on Jotunheim in the first place, in violation of a standing order, were it not for your brother?"

"I…" Thor paused, licked his lips. No one had forced him to do anything, and Loki had tried to get him to leave Jotunheim without starting a fight. The blame for that particular mistake was shared. He knew this. His father knew it, too – after all, he was the one that had been banished. But he wasn't going to win this argument. "No."

"You asked what I was thinking," Frigga interjected. She stood calmly now in the center of the room, her back to shelves of leather-bound tomes, addressing her husband. "I was thinking that Asgard needed a king. I was thinking that our crown prince had been cast out by his father. I was thinking we had another prince. A son who was hurt, who doubted his family's love, and who had always suffered from self-doubt. I was thinking he could prove himself. That he could show all of Asgard that he was capable of it. I thought he could show himself that he was capable of it."

"So you put our hurting, doubting, suffering son on the throne? He was angry, Frigga, he was enraged and full of malice. He was in no condition to take on such responsibility! He proved himself by deceiving and manipulating and murdering Laufey inside the most protected-"

"Stop!" Thor shouted, his voice thundering through the sparsely furnished room. Odin and Frigga turned and stared at him, and he suddenly felt like a child sticking fingers in his ears rather than an adult trying to mediate between two other adults. "None of this matters now. What's done is done." He spoke with the voice of reason, as well as the desire not to be subjected to any more of this aspect of his parents' relationship that he'd never known existed. And maybe it never had until now. And that is Loki's fault, he thought spitefully, then squeezed his eyes shut for a moment to try to take back the unfair accusation.

Her face gone hard and brittle, Frigga turned her back to them and took the few steps over to the books, which she absently traced a finger over.

"You're right," Odin conceded with a deep exhale, calming himself. "We can't change the past. We can only deal with the present, and try to plan for the future. Frigga…you couldn't have known how angry he was. I was the only one who saw it. I hadn't seen him display such raw emotion since…since a long time ago. I'm sure he had composed himself by the time you saw him. And you had no idea what he'd done.

"As for the present…" He paused and ran a hand over down his face. "Many questions remain unanswered. This madness originates with Svartalfheim, not Jotunheim. If the Jotuns had initiated these demands, Gullveig would not have spoken with indifference about which faction we are to give Loki to. The Jotuns are pawns in this game. As for Svartalfheim…they can be a vexing lot, but since when do they seek to overthrow the entire order of the Nine Realms?"

"There is no logic in any of this," Frigga said, appearing to be engrossed in the books but obviously still listening. "Gullveig has always had a streak of vanity. But why would the other realms see Vanaheim as the best protector of the tesseract? If Svartalfheim wanted to ensure the breaking of the Vanir-Aesir alliance, perhaps it was the only carrot valuable enough to dangle in front of Gullveig to get him to bite."

"But what would Svartalfheim gain from such a bargain? We've co-existed with them peacefully for centuries," Thor said.

"Uneasily at times, but yes, peacefully. It's a good question. We'll discuss plans tomorrow morning, but I already know I'll be returning to Svartalfheim. And Thor, even if the Dark Elves ignore Midgard, we cannot. You will still need to return there and meet with their warriors."

Thor nodded grimly. He dreaded this duty, but had no doubts about its necessity. Gone were the days when the other realms could pretend Midgard and its mortals did not exist when it came to matters affecting the Nine Realms. Especially when his brother was there, in hiding and likely ignorant of the rising threat against him.

/

Want to join Loki and Jane on the rooftop of the DSL? You can! Google [google maps "south pole telescope"], it's the first hit. Very cool! You'll almost think you're there.

Teasers for next chapter: Loki/not-Lucas(?) and Jane continue that conversation that ended rather uncomfortably above; Loki does some hard thinking; Odin tells Thor what he expects him to find out on Midgard, and Thor is reticent to do so.

And the excerpt:

Jane thought back to the one thing she'd seen him get emotional about until now – work. To how eager he was to see their project brought to fruition. Jane was eager, too, but she felt like she was dragging her feet compared to him, and sometimes he seemed to feel that way, too. His eagerness at times seemed to border on desperation. As though he needed this more than she did in some way. "You're doing this to prove yourself to your family," she blurted out without explanation.