Beneath
Chapter Fifty-Five – Stories
Loki rolled over in bed, his stomach growling. He hadn't eaten anything since that package of Pop-Tarts around three days ago. He dreaded going to the galley. Jane would be there, ready to pounce on him with question after question, with accusations, with stacks of paper listing every crime since he was born. And he'd lost track of what day of the week it was, but someone somewhere was probably expecting him to clean bathrooms or dirty dishes today. That wasn't happening anymore. Jane could add it to her little stack of paper with his list of offenses. He'd slept, but poorly, and his right shoulder was stiff and sore.
He'd shut himself up in his chambers all day yesterday, replaying everything he'd done, everything he'd said, everything he'd learned.
He should have killed Brokk when he had the chance, on Asgard, instead of following Vigdis, he'd decided. He should have left his own name carved into the Dark Elf's chest, so there was no doubt who'd done it. So there was no suspicion that he was working with that miserable deceitful creature. Failing that, he should never have given Jolgeir Vigdis's name. What had caused that moment of weakness that led him to do such a thing? He had no idea what they might have learned from her, except that Brokk was involved. Brokk, his "friend," the new Chief Palace Einherjar had called him. There were friends, and then there were people you occasionally had some fun with but whom you never entirely trusted. Brokk wasn't his "friend," not really. He'd thought he was, long ago, but long ago Loki had been wrong about a great many things. He sat up and leaned forward, head in his hands. He'd been wrong about everything then.
He looked down at his chest, bare again because he hadn't bothered to try to repair his sleep tunic. The gem his mother – Frigga – had given him swung back and forth gently on its chain, hitting the muscles of his chest. He caught it in his left hand, stilling its motion, held it up close to his face to better see it in the darkened room. How many times had he been bare-chested over the last few days? On Asgard, on Svartalfheim, when he'd removed it to heal himself, or to change to another tunic. How many times had he seen it glow? Not once. Not once. "It glows with the love that the one who gives feels for the one who receives," she'd said. A lovely, saccharine story. If he'd never seen it glow even on Asgard – not since she'd first given it to him the day he was banished – he could no longer use the excuse that he'd never seen it glow here because she was too distant from him.
Lies. All lies. A nifty trick, then, to make it glow the one time, in the presence of Thor and Odin…to wrench some emotion from him? To make him show weakness? Had he? He couldn't remember what he'd said. He hoped he'd said nothing. A gift from Odin to her originally, she'd said, marking his arrival into their family. More likely marking the victory over the Frost Giants, and the ultimate proof of Odin's conquest. A trinket for a trinket. He gripped it more tightly, fought the urge to crush it in his fist. It was still an option, and one he might have need of at some point. Why did she give it to me in the first place? he wondered. He had believed her, truly believed her. That she really did love him despite what he was, despite what he'd done. Perhaps she'd just felt guilty.
He felt like a fool for falling for it.
He released the gem and rubbed his thumb and forefinger between his eyes; he was surprised to find them damp. He huffed out a deep exhale and wiped his entire face down with the sheet, hairline to chin. All for the best, he thought as he did it. It would be easier now, clearer, knowing there was truly nothing, no one, for him in Asgard anymore. One last bit of weakness to be wiped from him along with the last bit of moisture on his face.
He stood up and began to get dressed.
/
/
"Good morning. Can I join you?" Jane asked, setting her tray down across from Loki.
"Would it matter if I said no?" he asked after swallowing a bite of hash browns. The answer was clearly no; Jane was already sitting down and seemed to have no intention of bothering to answer.
Jane opened up her sugar packet dumped it into her espresso. "I thought we could start over."
Loki looked up at her, wondering what game she was playing at now. "Are you still addled from your fall yesterday? We already had this conversation. When we were in McMurdo."
"Mm-hm. I remember that conversation. You were still lying to me then. Now I know the truth. And I want things to change. They have to change. I'm stuck with you, and you're stuck with me, at least until you decide to leave, or you-know-who decides you've been here long enough, or winter season ends, whichever comes first, and that means we have to figure out how to make this work. What you said before, you were right. Everyone is safer if I keep your secret. So as long as you aren't hurting anybody, I won't tell anyone who you really are, okay? And that means there's no need for you to lie to me about anything. I know you were lying about why you wanted to go to Asgard. Or Svartalfheim, I guess. Please don't do that anymore. If you'd told me the truth about where you were going, I would have warned you. I never wanted you to get hurt. It's not…that's not my job. And it's not who I am."
Jane paused to sip at her coffee, and Loki opened his mouth to respond, but she quickly put down the mug and continued before he could get the first syllable out.
"You can't threaten me anymore," she said, leaning in closer. Some fifteen or twenty other people were in the galley now, but thus far none had tried to approach. "I get that maybe it's fun for you or something, but it's really not fun for me, and those looks you give me sometimes are kind of losing their impact anyway. Besides, we both know there's no point to it, so please just stop. And finally…don't get me wrong, I really am glad you followed me when I went to Asgard…I can't believe I just said 'I went to Asgard'…sorry…I'm glad you followed me, because that would have been a really awful way to die, with no one knowing what had happened to me, but that whole tying me up to a gate thing? That was really dangerous, leaving me there dressed for the Pole, not to mention if somebody did show up…. You could've gotten me killed. I don't think you meant to, but…I need…I just need for you to not do anything like that ever again. I mean, hopefully you feeling the need to tie me up and leave me somewhere isn't going to come up again in the first place, but…but no more, okay? Do we have a deal?"
Loki stared, regretting that he'd ever gotten out of bed. Hunger was unpleasant, but it would hardly kill him. He'd learned that the hard way a long time ago.
"Well?" Jane prompted. She'd worked these points out in her head before coming to the galley, and was relieved she'd actually managed to get them all out. But just as Loki could do little to truly threaten her, she had nothing to hold over his head except a phone call to SHIELD, and she'd just told him she wasn't going to do that. If he wanted to roll his eyes and walk away, there was nothing she could do to stop him, and nothing she could do to retaliate.
"Oh, you're done now? I'm still waiting to hear what I get out of this deal. It sounds rather one-sided. I stop threatening you, I stop giving you 'looks' – you'll have to demonstrate, so I can be certain which looks I'm no longer allowed to give you – and I stop tying you up in other realms unless you're properly dressed for it. But what do you do for me?"
"You left out 'stop lying to me,'" Jane said, refusing to rise to his bait.
"Only because it was so obvious. I'll never lie to you again, Jane. Honestly," he said with the biggest false smile he could stretch his face into.
Jane ignored the smile, and the tone, and the look. "I would appreciate it if you wouldn't. And in return…," In return, Jane scoffed. As if he's going to keep any part of his side of this. What a farce. She closed her eyes for a second. Let it go… "In return…I'll take care of the bathroom when it's our day."
Loki sat back and laughed. "Generous, Jane. Very generous," he said, the smile more genuine now; he had changed his mind entirely on regretting getting out of bed, for this was growing amusing. "But I wasn't planning on doing such chores any longer anyway. Try again."
"You're going to have to do something, or people will notice. And I'm guessing you don't want anyone else questioning you here. If you can cut out the threatening and the lying and yes, the looks, I'll cover for you on bathroom duty."
He leaned forward again, his expression turning shrewd. "You do have a point, I'll grant you that. Throw in dish pit and I'll…make an effort. No promises. Because that might be a lie."
"I don't mind dish pit, and you managed to worm your way out of it half the time anyway. Deal," Jane said quickly, hardly able to believe he'd agreed so quickly…which probably meant he was lying.
"Congratulations, Dr. Foster. You've just concluded your very first interstellar truce," Loki said, glancing down at his plate, where the food had all gone cold and entirely inedible. Pity. It was slightly better than he remembered it, after a few days away.
She gave him an uneasy smile and finally took a bite of her omelet. Kind of cold now, but still good. "I'll add it to my CV." Diplomat, she thought, adding to her running list of potential back-up careers, though she wondered how often diplomats shook hands on agreements they knew they couldn't trust the other side to keep. Hello, Kim Jung-Il…or whoever's running North Korea now.
"Where did all this come from?" Loki asked, eyeing her with genuine curiosity. "No more stacks of papers?"
Okay, no more omelet for you, Jane. Appetite gone. She raised her head slowly, swallowed, forced herself to meet his eyes, forced herself to show no fear. "No papers."
"Oh, but I like this, Jane. You occasionally demonstrate some burst of unpredictability. I like unpredictability. Usually," he added, remembering her running off to use Pathfinder. "What did you want out of that? Those papers. And what do you want out of this?"
"What did I want out of that?" She hesitated. Stay calm. Don't let him rattle you. "I asked you to be honest with me, so I'll be honest with you. I was angry. 'Angry' doesn't begin to cover it, actually. One of my college roommates is in that stack of papers. Her name was Jocelyn. And then there's Erik. And I wanted you to feel at least one ounce of the pain you caused while you were here."
Strangling her was suddenly a very appealing thought. At least in fantasy. Thank you for attempting to introduce me to pain, Jane Foster. Because I've never made its acquaintance. "You're a fool," he simply said, looking out the window over the dark expanse of ice, where yet again the sun had no plans to rise.
"If that's supposed to be an insult you'll have to do better. I spent my graduate career arguing for the existence of traversable Einstein-Rosen bridges. I got called a fool about as often as I got called 'Jane.'" You asked; I answered. As for what I want out of this," she said, waving her hand, palm down, between them, "it's like I said. We're stuck with each other. You're the only one I can talk to about all this, about Pathfinder and everything else. And I'm the only one you can, too. Like it or not."
"You seem to be under the assumption that I need someone to talk to. I don't."
"Everyone needs someone to talk to. Everyone, Loki. And besides, you're Thor's brother. I care about Thor, and Thor cares about you. I don't know what happened between you two, and why you…but you can't change the past. Maybe…every day's a new day, you know? I kind of wish you'd let me get to know you a little bit…maybe from before all the…bad stuff."
Loki leaned in close, far enough to reach Jane's half of the round table. "You mean before I made your friend my slave and launched an invasion of your realm and killed your college roommate?" he asked in a voice so low it was barely audible.
Jane's mouth twitched, but otherwise she gave no visible reaction and did not move away. "Yeah. That. And you're giving me the look right now, by the way. Thanks for saving me from having to demonstrate." She was shaking on the inside and something was trembling in her stomach, but she would not, she would not yield to his attempts to intimidate. It seemed the longer she held on without letting him get a rise out of her, the harder he pushed.
After a moment, Loki's face melted back into a smile and he pulled away somewhat, resting his elbows on the table and relaxing his posture, still leaning in toward her. "Always so curious, Jane. So this is about stories, is it? You-"
"It's not-"
"No, no. You've had your chance to speak; I'll take mine now. You wish to hear about Asgard, about the rest of the Nine, about what I was doing before your great-great-grandfather's great-great-grandfather was born? I understand that. I've always been full of curiosity myself. I'll tell you a story, then. But not my story, because that's not really what you want to hear, is it? No, you want his story. So that's what I shall give you. A story about Thor. Would you like that?"
Jane listened with a sinking heart. His expression was congenial, but his tone was full of menace. What did you expect, Jane? You knew this wasn't going to be easy. "I strongly suspect I'm not going to like it, but if you want to tell me, then I'm willing to listen."
"Good," he said with a curt nod. "And I'll swear to you now, every single word of this story will be the unadulterated truth."
Jane pushed her tray aside, wrapped her hand tightly around the mug with the lukewarm remnants of her coffee, and prepared herself to hear whatever it was he'd decided to try to inflict on her this time.
"Not so long ago – this is how children's stories begin on Asgard, does that detail interest you? – not so long ago, there was a prince who was very angry," he began in an animated tone. "He was angry because vile creatures from another realm came to steal an old relic that had once been theirs, just as he was to have been made king. They were killed trying to steal this relic, but the prince was put out at the disruption to his special day, and their deaths did not satisfy him. So he decided, on this day when he would have been made king of Asgard and protector of all the Nine, that he would go to these creatures' realm, the realm called Jotunheim, to demand answers. His father, who remained king, however, had long ago strictly forbidden any journeys to Jotunheim without his permission. This king, you see, had also concluded an interstellar truce, between Asgard and Jotunheim, at the end of a war known as the Ice War.
"The prince, however, did not believe his father's decrees applied to him, and he convinced his four closest friends to join him on this journey of defiance. When they arrived, the prince threatened, and insulted, and shook his hammer, while the one who followed the prince – that would be me, Jane, in case it was unclear to you – he tried to get him to see reason. The one who followed was successful. Calm prevailed, and the prince and his friends were leaving. And then…but you mentioned something about this before, did you not? Are you able to continue the story yourself?"
Jane took a breath to steady herself before speaking. The condescension that poured out from his "story" was thicker than molasses. "Thor said he did something stupid. Something that ended the truce."
"Mmm. Did he tell you why?"
Jane shook her head.
"Oh, but that's the best part of the story. What a terrible storyteller he is. With one killing, followed by dozens more, perhaps a hundred – the prince can be very efficient with his hammer – he put an end to a truce that had been in place for around a thousand and fifty years. And he did it with a smile on his lips and a taunt on his tongue. All because the king of the Frost Giants called him a princess."
Jane tried to remember exactly what Thor had said about this. Foolish, she remembered. "I did something foolish." That qualifies. In an understatement kind of way. She'd thought his biggest problem was arrogance. And she supposed that was arrogance too…but it was somewhat out of the league of a broken coffee mug. She wondered if Loki was even telling the truth – his claims of "unadulterated truth" held little weight in her book at this point. Still, what he'd said fit with what little she knew of how Asgard and Jotunheim had wound up at war again. And whatever "foolish" thing Thor had done, broken mugs didn't start wars. If I killed somebody every time somebody insulted me… It was unsettling. But she wasn't about to convict Thor of anything. Not when Thor wasn't here. Not when Thor had laid down his life for the residents of a tiny New Mexico town, most of whom he'd never met, and had helped save the entire planet from invading aliens. And not when it was based on Loki's version of a story.
Jane looked at him with confusion when a memory suddenly came to mind. "Where's Part Two of this story? You told me you destroyed Jotunheim. Or tried to. You told me you hated the people there." "They deserve to die," she remembered him saying.
"Ah-ah-ah, Jane. I told you, this isn't my story."
"Okay. Why did you tell it to me?" She knew exactly why he'd told it to her. For whatever reason he was mad at Thor, and he wanted to make Thor look bad. But she wasn't going to accuse. She wasn't going to accuse.
"I thought you might enjoy it," Loki answered with an innocent smile.
"'Enjoy' isn't exactly the word I'd use. But I did learn something from it."
Loki nodded, captivated. There was a certain familiarity to this, and not entirely unpleasantly so. It reminded him of the time at the South Pole before she knew who he really was, this verbal sparring between them. Maybe he even would make an effort to do those things Jane asked of him – if the mood struck him. Tell the truth, no threatening, no "looks." Well, that one might be difficult. It could provide him some entertainment at a time when a little fun might be most welcome. Truth, properly told, properly framed, could be just as entertaining as lies. He may have left out a few details, but every word of the story he'd told Jane was true. "Tell me. What did you learn?"
"I learned that you really don't want to tell me anything about yourself. Except you just did. You told me how much you resent your brother. What went wrong between you and Thor? He told me you used to be the closest of friends. Is there a story for that, too?"
Loki's smile faded. What part of "this story is not about me" did you not understand? "There is. But it is long. Or short, depending upon how it is told. It doesn't matter though; you will never hear it. Unless you hear it from him, though I must warn you I would probably laugh at his version. And do you not already see cause for resentment in the story I've told you? I maneuvered us away from war, and he had us in battle fighting for our lives less than a minute later."
"Yes," she said, nodding. "Yes, I do. And if I were the king that concluded the truce, I think I would have been furious. And maybe I would have banished the prince to Earth to learn some humility and responsibility." Of course, banishment was probably not the first punishment she would think of no matter how badly a child of hers misbehaved…but she was not a parent, nor a king or queen, nor a millennia-old Asgardian, so who really knew? The answer sounded good. And it made her point. Thor did something wrong – really, really wrong – and he was punished for it pretty harshly. "But all right," she continued. "If you aren't going to tell me a story about yourself, how about I do?"
"You want to tell a story about me?" Loki asked in surprise.
"Yes. About another trip to Jotunheim."
Loki sat back, perplexed. She could not possibly know about his other visits to Jotunheim. Even Thor would not have known the details of his other recent visits, and he wouldn't have known about them at all during his banishment. How much could he have told her about them afterward? Other than his solo visits, there'd only been one "educational" trip there, when he and Thor were around eleven or twelve, and there was decidedly no story to tell from that. He, Thor, Odin, Mordi, and four Einherjar had travelled via bifrost, invisible through Mordi's magic, and picked their way among the ruins of an abandoned town. Thor had desperately wanted Frost Giants to show up; Loki had stuck close to Odin's side trying not to let on how desperately he hoped they wouldn't. They didn't, of course – the Einherjar had already scouted the area multiple times and knew it to be truly abandoned. Loki never laid eyes on a real Frost Giant before he discovered a secret passageway there, perhaps a century ago. He realized, looking back, that that must have been quite intentional. Thor had officially met Laufey three times that Loki knew of, all long ago, always when Loki conveniently could not be there. He was just beginning to reflect with new suspicion on what he could recall of his tenth birthday – the tenth anniversary of the truce when Laufey and his wife had come to Asgard and Loki had slept the day away sick in bed – when Jane interrupted his thoughts, reminding him of her presence, that they were in the South Pole station galley, and not alone.
"Yes, please," he said in response to her prompting. He leaned forward again, both so they could keep their voices low and to discourage anyone from approaching and interrupting. "Do share this story. I'm intrigued."
"Not so long ago – did I get that right?"
Loki caught himself in the beginnings of an unaffected smile and nodded, making a small motion with his hand for her to go on.
"Not so long ago, a prince's hammer went missing, and the other prince found out that the Frost Giants had taken it." Jane paused, watching Loki's reactions. At first he'd seemed amused, but now he seemed more confused, and she was guessing this story was pure fiction. Oh, well, she thought, continuing.
"The younger prince went to Jotunheim and learned the Frost Giant king had hidden the hammer away deep in the earth and would never bring it out again unless he got to marry a beautiful Aesir woman named Freya." That got an instantaneous reaction. Freya, Jane presumed, existed.
"The princes then both went to Freya and explained, but Freya was angry and refused to even go to Jotunheim, much less marry their king." Jane gave a short laugh, remembering how Darcy had put that part of the story, but she was going for a different style now, the style Loki had used more or less, and "pervy giant" didn't seem appropriate.
"Unsurprising," Loki commented.
His face was unreadable, and Jane recalled again how he'd spoken of the Frost Giants – with pure hatred. She had a sudden fear that this story would make him angry, which wasn't her intent. "So a great council was held to determine what should be done to get the older prince's hammer back. And a very pale man named Heimdall-"
Loki broke into laughter.
"What?"
"Nothing. Continue. This is a most entertaining story."
"It gets even more entertaining."
"Don't tease, Jane. Continue."
"Okay. So…Heimdall had an ingenious suggestion. If the Frost Giant king wanted Freya under a bridal veil, then Freya under a bridal veil he would have. Only it would not be Freya, but the older prince, in a gown, a veil, and a necklace Freya was known to wear. The older prince objected-"
"Again, unsurprising."
"-and said everyone would call him unmanly if he did this." Loki's expression had settled into mild bemusement, it seemed to Jane – it was clear at least that he didn't look angry. She hoped it would stay that way. "But the younger prince warned the other that the Frost Giants would be able to take over Asgard if he didn't get his hammer back. So the older prince relented, and was dressed in a wedding gown and veil and Freya's necklace, and the younger prince put on a bridesmaid's gown-"
"Out of the goodness of his heart, I'm sure," Loki said with a smirk.
"-and the two of them hurried to Jotunheim. The Frost Giant king welcomed the two princes dressed as maidens, and had a dinner laid out for his guests. The older prince alone drank three casks of mead and ate an ox and eight salmon. The Frost Giant king was amazed, for he'd never seen a woman eat and drink so much, but the clever younger prince explained that Freya had been fasting for eight days out of longing for Jotunheim. The Frost Giant king tried to get a glimpse underneath the veil and steal a kiss, but he caught sight of a pair of eyes that seemed to burn fire and was afraid. The younger prince then explained that Freya had not slept for eight days out of longing for Jotunheim. Before long, the Frost Giant king's sister asked for a dowry of rings from the older prince's hands, and the hammer was brought in and laid on the supposed bride's knees. The older prince laughed, and took up his hammer, and killed the Frost Giant king and all the other giants around, and the princes returned to Asgard with the hammer." The instinct to add "and they lived happily ever after" was strong, but she guessed that wouldn't go over well. Besides, the ending wasn't all that happy from her perspective. When she'd read the summary of this story last night, she'd been disturbed by the killing-everyone-in-sight thing that Darcy had mentioned – "the most violent bride in history," she'd said – and the specific mention of Thor killing Thrym's sister.
"Who told you such a story?" Loki asked, suddenly recalling how much he'd dreaded seeing this mortal today. This was a diversion, unhelpful to him in deciphering everything going on between the realms and then determining his options, but there could hardly be a more amusing and engaging diversion, particularly in light of Odin's restrictions on him.
"A friend of mine at first. I've mentioned her before – Darcy. And then I read about it. It's recorded in Norse mythology."
Loki sat back again, surprised. He'd known of course that they'd been worshipped. He'd known through Erik that their existence – particularly Thor's, predictably – was still known by some, but considered to be myth. But those days had been busy, and while Loki had gathered much information in that time, he hadn't considered the details of Norse myths useful enough to learn more, instead focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the "Avengers" through Clint, and Jane – potentially useful as a pawn at some point – through Erik.
"So…is any of it true? Did Thor really put on a wedding dress and did you-"
"Jane, the next words out of your mouth may determine whether or not you get a 'look,'" Loki said with an overly indulgent smile, relaxing…enjoying himself.
"Did you join him?"
"All right. You've told me such an interesting tale that just this once, I'll indulge you. Yes, something like this did happen, when we were still quite young. Thor was always an idiot, that much has never changed, and he let himself get tricked into losing his hammer. But it was not…it was not Laufey who-"
"Laufey?"
"The Frost Giant king."
"No, the Frost Giant king was Thrym."
"No, Thrym was at that time the commander of the Svartalf army. He was a Dark Elf. He was no king, and he was no Frost Giant. Though I suppose it would make the story more…exciting if he were. Frost Giants make the best villains, after all," he added, thinking back to the children's books he'd read, the stories he'd heard, the sagas he'd studied. The villains were almost always Frost Giants. How appropriate to learn that I am one, he thought, even as another part of him denied it. He pushed the thought aside.
"As for Thor, he looked as lovely as any blushing bride in the gown that was stitched just for him, for our visit to Svartalfheim. And while he did not eat an ox – no one does, I might add – he was stupid enough to eat with his typical voracious appetite and nearly get us caught with his gluttony. The only reason we didn't was that Thrym was even more stupid and his ego even more inflated. Thor kept hold of his temper by stuffing more food in his mouth and draining tankard after tankard of mead – three casks is probably not far off – and when he finally got his precious hammer back he went berserk. By the time we left, one could barely keep one's footing walking through Thrym's hall for all the blood on the floor."
"So what were you doing the whole time?" Jane asked. She knew he was again doing his best to cast Thor in a bad light, and in so doing trying to get a reaction from her, but she refused to give him the satisfaction, not even with that bit about the blood, that she was trying very hard to pretend she hadn't heard. And just as in the other story, he was minimizing his own role, casting himself as someone who stayed in the background and was apparently the only one around who wasn't "stupid."
"Me?" Loki gave a quick laugh. "Trying to keep us alive." His small smile, born of a moment's nostalgia, faded. "Trying to prevent a war." Had so very little ever changed? His eyes grew unfocused. They'd barely reached adulthood then; it was over a thousand years ago.
"Loki…why did you go to Svartalfheim? This time."
Loki let out a sigh and looked around; a couple of people were in the kitchen, but everyone else had left. Finally he could sit back. "I went to see an old friend. It turned out he was holding on to a grudge a little more tightly than I thought. He tried to hand me over to my enemies. And he gave me this," he said, gesturing toward his sore right shoulder.
Nothing weighed more than guilt – Jane knew from the intense survivors' guilt she'd experienced after her parents' death – so she tried not to linger under the return of its weight. She'd apologized, and she'd done so with sincerity. There was nothing more she could do. "You have a lot of enemies, huh?" she said with a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek, but also with what she hoped was a sympathetic smile, when for the most part whatever sympathy she felt for Loki having enemies was no more than a product of a bloom of guilt over not having warned him about Svartalfheim.
"Nine realms' worth," Loki answered, and instantly regretted it. He didn't know why he'd begun telling her these things anyway, but if he told her too much, he would be ceding power to her.
Unsurprising, Jane thought, imitating Loki while trying to keep the sympathetic smile in place. "Wait," she said, the awkward smile falling away. "Are you being serious? All nine realms? Earth isn't a big fan of yours at the moment, but…all the rest? Not Asgard."
"Especially Asgard. But the feeling is mutual."
"But…what about your parents? What about Thor? I know you…you're mad at him, and I don't really know much about that, but he told me-"
"That's enough," he said pushing his chair back. "I don't wish to discuss this any further with you."
"Loki-" Jane glanced around herself. Her voice had gotten too loud. She was going to have to remember to call him "Lucas" when others could hear. And now he was already standing. "Please. What's going on, on Asgard?" she asked, lowering her voice at the end. "I have a right to know."
Loki snorted a laugh of disdain. "You forget your place. You have no rights outside your own backward little realm." He started to walk away, but turned back after only a couple of steps. "And that, Jane, is the truth."
Jane watched him go, and it seemed to take a long time before she remembered to breathe. On the surface of it, perhaps it should have felt like defeat. But as she sat alone with her tray and his own, which he hadn't bothered to take with him, a smile spread over her face because it actually felt a lot like victory. This was the most he'd ever said about himself. The biggest glimpse he'd ever given her of who he was besides the man who'd wanted to rule Earth. And she could already see signs of what Thor had spoken of – him feeling like he was in Thor's shadow, like he was ignored. And somehow along the way he'd made enemies of all nine realms? At least so he thought. Thor had never given her any indication that Loki was considered an "enemy." He was being punished, yes, but…maybe it was perception. Maybe Loki just felt like everyone was his enemy. She remembered how he'd seemed kind of bothered by something, distracted, when he'd come back for her on the bifrost. Like something had gone wrong. So much was still just frustrating speculation…
Zeke rounded the corner, headed for the coffee machine, after which he stopped by her table and they chatted for a few minutes.
She watched him as he disappeared back down the short passageway out to the main corridor, and in her mind replayed Loki doing the same. That was a victory, too, she thought. Sure, he'd walked away basically calling her an inferior being…but he'd implicitly granted that she had rights here on Earth, which was more than he'd done in Stuttgart or New York. And he hadn't threatened, either physically or verbally, hadn't even lied, she didn't think. They hadn't had too many encounters since she'd learned who he was that didn't involve either lying or threatening. It's progress, she told herself, then wondered, progress toward what? She didn't know. She didn't know what was going on in Asgard other than that they were at war, she didn't know why Loki had gone to see this "old friend," she didn't know what had happened when he went back to Asgard again and left her restrained, she didn't know what it was he kept saying he needed to think about. She didn't know if he planned to literally do nothing more than think while he remained here, or if he might show up randomly to use Pathfinder while she was trying to regain focus on her work.
Jane stacked their trays and carried them around the corner to take care of them. Having let her coffee go cold she got another shot of espresso and exchanged quick greetings with Mari, working in the kitchen, before heading out of the galley. The last couple of days – the last week, really, or a little more now – had been harrowing, emotionally and physically exhausting, starting with the MCI drill and ending with mopping up blood from the jamesway floor and falling to what she'd been certain would be her death and nearly getting dehydrated while chained to a gate on a bridge, never even stepping foot on Asgardian soil. Today, she realized, would be the first time in over a week she wasn't worried for her life or for Loki's life, and she was trying not to worry for Thor's life.
She didn't know what Loki was going to do with his day, but she was going to spend hers in her cargo pants and Australia T-shirt and not a single piece of ECW gear in sight, working from the warmth of the station's Science Lab on the project she'd come here for all along. She needed a break from Pathfinder.
/
/
Loki took the first left and turned into the A-1 corridor toward his chambers. He didn't want to return there so soon, but he felt he had little choice. He still had much to think through. He had always liked to do his thinking outdoors, on long walks or on horseback, where walls constricted neither his body nor his mind, but here he had no desire to spend any more time outdoors than was absolutely necessary. Other than in the tiny room he was now entering, he was guaranteed privacy nowhere in the station, and he did not feel like taking even the short walk across the ice to one of the many outbuildings that sat vacant during the winter…primarily because they also sat unheated during the winter. Only the jamesway he and Jane had been using was heated somewhat…and Jane could be there.
Jane. It was always Thor with her. Thor this, Thor that, Thor told me this, what about Thor?, I'm worried about Thor so I'm going to run off like some fool and use Pathfinder on my own. Has she not yet noticed I do not wish to speak about Thor?! I do not wish to think about Thor?
But I brought that on myself, didn't I? he thought with a dry laugh. No one had forced him to tell that story about Thor. He'd thought he would make her angry, at Thor or at him, preferably both. He'd thought he'd make her stalk away, make her question her blind admiration for Asgard's glorious first-born prince. But she'd stayed and it had turned out to be rather a welcome distraction, at least for a while.
Why had she chosen that story to tell him? How many others did she know? Just how much of his life was written down in some ancient book here on Midgard? He wasn't sure how any of it was known to the mortals. He'd been to Midgard several times for field trips including one he'd accompanied Baldur on, and a couple of times in his young adulthood, always with Thor, until they'd gotten in trouble and all travel to Midgard was halted. Or so he'd been told.
"Remember when I pretended to be Freya and we both dressed up as women, and we convinced Heimdall to let us go to Svartalfheim so I could get Mjolnir back? Don't you remember how we laughed so hard I split the seams on my gown?"
Thor had prodded him with this story while he waited in his cell on Asgard, when he was still refusing to talk to him or even acknowledge his presence following Thor's complete abandonment of his "brother" in a cell on Midgard. His words were fingernails scraping across open wounds. No, Brother, I remember other things instead, he remembered thinking, without the slightest bit of fondness or sentiment for this or any other of their youthful adventures.
With Jane it was different. Absent the begging and pleading and nauseating desperation, he'd been able to look back, and for little flickers of moments here and there forget everything that happened after and simply remember. Though he still saw those events in some sort of detached manner, almost as though they'd happened to someone else and he'd merely witnessed them, in those flickers he remembered what it was like to truly exist in those moments…and they'd been good. It was all a lie, so thick were the blinders he wore, but he had, at times, been happy.
"Freya, my beloved, my darling, moon in my night and sun in my day, will you be mine, this day and forever? My love, my rosebud, my-"
Thor's intentions were never subtle, but his face was obscured behind a bridal veil and his typical body language hidden under the layers of a gown, so Loki's only warning was the sight of the fist suddenly arcing down toward his face. He tried to scramble backward on his knees but he was too slow and took Thor's fist directly on the jaw. He fell backward and shook his head and stretched his jaw. His face stung, but it had hardly been a serious blow, not for Thor, anyway.
"Is that a no?" Loki asked, his voice tentative and sad, but hopeful.
Thor started to bend down but Loki rolled away, now nearly flat on the cool marble floor of Thor's sitting room. "My darling Freya, this is most unladylike behavior!" Loki chided as if scandalized.
Thor blew out an angry breath – visible in the way it made his veil puff outward and fall back – and Loki burst into laughter, unable to hold it back any longer.
Thor shook his head, causing the veil to swish back and forth against his well-endowed if lumpy chest, then stepped over Loki, "accidentally" catching his shoulder with his bare foot, hiked up the dress, and sat down on his sofa.
Loki rubbed his shoulder as his laughter finally died away, then hauled himself up to sit beside Thor, staring straight ahead and most likely glowering, and took a moment to catch his breath. His eyes drifted downward, and he found himself staring at Thor's muscled hairy legs and big feet sticking out from the folds of the gown. He fell into hysterics again, only able to point when Thor asked what was so funny now, and this time Thor was soon laughing with him.
"Oh!" Thor exclaimed, his laughter ceasing instantly.
"What?" Loki asked, wiping tears from his eyes.
"I split the seams," Thor said, pointing to his side.
Loki leaned in to look; Thor was right. "We'll have to get the tailor back."
Thor nodded and sighed. Loki had come up with a story they told the tailor, that this was all part of an elaborate trick they were going to play on Baldur, but it was still humiliating for Thor to be seen like this.
"We have another problem," Loki said after he'd straightened up and happened to get a very close look at Thor's veil-covered face. "I can see your beard through that."
"No, you can't."
"Yes , I can. And what if Thrym tries to get a peek at his lovely bride-to-be?"
"We'll have to make sure he doesn't. I'll break his arm if he tries."
"Yes, because that wouldn't cause anyone to question who you are. Brother, a stiff breeze would cause the same problem. Will you break the breeze's arm? Don't answer that, you'll embarrass yourself. You'll just have to shave it. And perhaps color your lips a little."
"Loki…"
This time Loki saw the fist forming and darted off the sofa, arguing and teasing while Thor chased him throughout his chambers. When they finally stopped, after Thor tripped on his gown and tore the hem, Thor collapsed on his bed and Loki on the nearby armchair.
"Why did I let you talk me into this?" Thor moaned.
"First, because Father might take Mjolnir away from you for the next century if he knew about this. Second, because you-"
"All right, all right, all right! Enough, Brother. I just hardly think it's fair…"
"What?"
"Nothing," Thor said, jumping up from the bed.
"What?" Loki asked again. He was trying to hide it, but Thor was miserable at hiding anything – he was up to something.
"I'm just sending for the tailor to come back."
Nearly an hour passed, during which they reviewed the plan to fool Thrym and retrieve Mjolnir and return to Asgard without Father or Mother or anyone else aware of what had happened, save Heimdall, who already knew.
"What is all this?" Loki asked when the tailor arrived with several bolts of cloth and a bag full of supplies.
Thor, having kept the veil in place the whole time and now lounging on a sofa in his antechamber, suddenly sat up. "Good, Bergfinn. My gown already needs some repairs," he said, pointing out the areas. "But before you get to that, it turns out my brother also requires a gown for our little trick."
Loki stared at him in horror. "Nooo, Bergfinn, actually I don't."
"Yeees, Bergfinn, actually he does. Now come over here and look at these fine fabrics, Loki. This silvery one here, for example. Don't you think it would bring out your eyes? And if you colored your lips a little…"
In the end Loki had given in – it was actually a better plan, for Thrym's guard would be lowered if he believed a woman had accompanied his bride instead of a man of Asgard, each of whom received training as a warrior.
Once Thor started killing, Loki had followed him out of necessity, drawing blade after blade that he'd worked into his gown, just in case. He'd never seen so much blood in his life. Thor had laughed and thrown an arm around his shoulders when it was over; Loki had laughed as well, but he remembered feeling a strange numbness.
The same numbness he felt now, standing in the middle of his room and staring blankly at the back wall with its narrow covered window. It was disconcerting, this numbness, this detachment; it bothered him. Where was the anger? Where was the hatred? Thor had ignored a perfectly good plan – Loki's plan – and risked war with Svartalfheim. He could have gotten them both killed, and he did get them in serious trouble with Odin, who of course took serious note of the fact that it was Loki's plan.
So where was it? The anger, the hatred. What was there to hold onto, to keep him going, without it?
/
...Released 6/30/13, one year + one day from the day I wrote the first words of this story. ;-) ...
BTW, for those interested, I started writing my version of the Thrymskvida story (in the flashback). This is a fairly compact story in which the Vikings already gave me the basic plot, so it's highly likely I'll release this one. I already wrote the first chapter. Too much fun.
Teasers from Ch. 56: Loki does a lot of thinking as he finally tries to come up with a new plan given the new circumstances; Huskol and Jolgeir present their cases on Loki's role in the plot against Asgard, bringing out a number of emotions in Loki's family.
Excerpt:
On seven realms he was wanted. On Asgard he was a traitor. On Midgard…no one knew he was here. No one except Jane. And Jane had decided she wanted to get along, and would not tell anyone else. He doubted that would last beyond station opening at the end of October. That didn't matter, of course; the idea of remaining here for another five or six months was unbearable.