Beneath

Chapter Sixty-Six – Surprise

Friday, April 30, began like so many days before it, with breakfast in the galley. Loki didn't want to join in with the others, but he didn't want to lose track of Jane again. They'd already made plans for the evening – Jane thought she would be telling him some story about cooking oxen – but something compelled Loki to keep her in sight, even as he avoided meeting her eyes and answered questions put to him with his typical brevity. It became more difficult when conversation turned to Canada, and more questions came his way when Wright helpfully told everyone he lived there in case they didn't know, though he had in fact spent only one day in Canada and had no idea which Canadian hockey team he should be a fan of or what "curling" was and why everyone was laughing about it. Jane decided to help him with his noncommittal answers on the former, volunteering that he supported the Toronto Maple Leafs and adding that he'd moved around a lot growing up and didn't follow it all that closely. Discussion moved on, and no one seemed to think it was as strange as he did that Jane would speak for him in that manner, or that a sporting team would name itself after a leaf instead of something that conveyed ferocity, bravery, strength, speed, or something along similar lines. Then he remembered the Canadian flag and it all made sense. He should have remembered it right away. He was too distracted. To carry out what he had to, he would need to be at the top of his game.

Loki followed Jane to the Science Lab after breakfast. When she turned to tell him goodbye at the door, she realized he was going in, too. "What's up?" she asked, surprised.

"I thought I would do some assisting today."

"Oh, uh, well…okay, sure," Jane said, and they went in together. It threw a bit of a wrench in the works, because she'd only been planning on working half of the day. She got him working on some of the data coming in from one of the devices on top of the DSL, while she started preparing the next package of results she planned to send SISI by Sunday morning. Loki didn't interact with her once she had him set up, but then, Austin and Carlo were there, too, and further away a few others.

Lunchtime came, and Jane put aside her work reluctantly. It didn't matter what else was going on, it was always hard to pull herself away. "I'm going to go get some lunch," she said, standing and making her way to the door.

Austin and Carlo gave her quick friendly responses, but Loki stood and followed. "I'll join you," he said.

"Oh, well, actually, I was meeting Sue for lunch. There's something I wanted to talk over with her. You know, about that new telescope they're going to be putting in out at MAPO this summer." Jane smiled and shoved her hands in her pockets so she didn't betray any nervous gestures.

"I see. All right," Loki said. He'd never known her to make specific, exclusive lunch plans. More often than not, it seemed, she skipped lunch altogether, and she kept a supply of those "energy bar" things in her desk here in the Science Lab and out at the Dark Sector Lab for just such occasions.

"But I'll see you tonight, yeah? Storytime?"

"Oxen, yes. I haven't forgotten."

"Good. Okay, then," Jane said, and left.

Loki went back to his desk and slogged his way through dry numbers as a good assistant should, growing more irritated with it as time passed. Now more than ever, there was no point at all to him doing this work. He glanced down at the time on the computer and saw Jane had been gone for over an hour. That was also unusual. Technically, for the contract staff, lunch break was thirty minutes, and Jane tended to stick to that pattern. Something was off. Loki wondered if she suspected, but didn't see how she could. He'd done nothing to suggest his intentions.

He went down to the galley, and she wasn't there. He sighed in frustration, but told himself it didn't matter. Wherever she went all day, he knew where she would be at night. He would insist the story be told out in the jamesway where they would be guaranteed privacy. Then he would tell her he first wanted to show her an anomaly he'd noticed on Pathfinder – he'd checked overnight and found she hadn't yet moved it – and he would lead her out behind the insulated tent. Once there, he would ignore Pathfinder, and unveil himself from Heimdall. At the same time, because he knew Heimdall would be so busy now he was probably not even looking for him anymore, he would call out Heimdall's name. Then he would grab Jane with one arm, pull his knife with the other, sink it into her side through the layers of her clothing, and tell Heimdall to bring him back with the Tesseract and send for Thor. He would be careful to keep Jane's back pinned to his chest, because he didn't want to see her face. Once the curses were removed, if the opportunity presented itself, he would take the Tesseract. And if not, no matter. He would go after Brokk, then sit back and wait for a power vacuum to develop – or assist in its development – somewhere as war raged on Asgard. And then he would fill it.

/

/

Jane hurried down the corridor into the A-1 berthing wing, hoping Loki would be where she was expecting him to be. She'd thought he might show up for dinner, but wasn't that surprised when he didn't. Assuming he wasn't planning on backing out – which would be a real problem – she figured he was in his room, waiting for her to show up with her story. It was strange, really. Other than meeting for work, or for breakfast before going to work, they hadn't really made any plans together. Jane hoped he wouldn't be mad over how the plan had changed.

She knocked, and he opened the door immediately. He was dressed for going out, black Carhartt overalls over a couple of shirts, and Big Red in his left hand. It startled her enough to make her forget what she'd planned to say.

"Ready to tell your story? You must have prepared it very well by now," Loki said.

"Yeah, I reviewed it. So, let's go to the galley. The dinner crowd's pretty much gone."

"'Pretty much?' If you're going to tell me stories from your mythology, then we need privacy, Jane. Let's go out to the jamesway instead."

"Hey, I told you about Thor almost getting married to a giant in the galley. It'll be fine. Really, everyone was done eating, there's just a few people left on dishpit duty. We'll be fine," Jane said, turning to go.

"Jane, I insist. I don't want" – Loki paused and lowered his voice which had grown a bit louder than was normal in the berthing wing – "I don't want to be overheard. I'll listen to your story in the jamesway. And I wanted to discuss something about Pathfinder with you."

That gave Jane pause. "Pathfinder? What? Did something happen? Did you try to, you know, use it again?"

"No, of course not. But it's…it's about those tunnels. The other branches. You know," Loki said, leaning out into the hallway and glancing around to create an impression with Jane that he had something very interesting to say which should not be overheard.

Jane hesitated. If anything could distract her from her task it was this. But Yggdrasil's many branches would still be there tomorrow. "Okay, but after," she finally said. "Will you just come with me first? Please?"

"Fine," Loki said with a frown, stepping back into his room for a moment to hang Big Red over the back of his chair. How much longer must this continue? He was ready now to do what he had to. To get it over with. These continued delays were not helpful.

They went through the double doors separating the berthing wing and turned into the main corridor, just a few steps from the smaller corridor on the left to the galley. Jane sped up and got herself in front of Loki. "So, ummm, just play along, okay?"

Loki's jaw tightened. He'd been right; something was going on, and Loki couldn't fathom what. If she suspected what he had planned for the evening, she wouldn't be standing there in front of him so relaxed. "What have you done, Jane?"

"You'll see," she said with a bright smile that hid the renewed fear that maybe this was the worst idea ever. "Just…no swords or anything. No violence. Play along."

Jane continued forward then; Loki inhaled and exhaled deeply before following.

Inside the galley, the lights were out. The bits of light here and there from electronic equipment, though, were enough for him to see that a number of people were standing about, mostly still, waiting for him. Jane stepped further away from him. An ambush. His right hand went inside the pocket in his Carhartts that held the knife he would later use against Jane, but he feared this one wouldn't be enough – he'd selected one of the ones he'd made from Midgardian metals, rather than the more formidable one made from an Asgardian sword – and reached out with his left hand to pull his captured sword from the air.

Suddenly the lights came on. "Surprise!" the group in the galley shouted.

Loki froze, left hand still out but empty, right hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife but only partially out of his pocket. Some thirty or thirty-five people, all South Pole winter residents, stood smiling in the middle of the room, and Jane stood between him and the group, facing him. "What is this?" he asked quietly, carefully.

"Don't be shy, Lucas, it's your birthday," Jane said with an overly-wide grin. "Play along," she mouthed.

"So it is," he said with a slow nod, stepping forward and pressing a smile into service. He brought his left hand back down to his side, and eased the knife in his right back into his pocket, but still kept his moves slow and cautious.

Silence was giving way to conversation and laughter, and Austin was coming toward him. He had a bottle of beer in one hand and a can of Coke, which he held out to Loki, in his other hand. "Happy birthday, man. I'd offer you a beer, but Jane said you don't drink."

"She's correct. Thank you," Loki said, accepting the Coke. He wasn't fond of this type of beverage. A couple of months ago, unfamiliar with the concept of carbonation, he'd taken a large swallow of it for the first time and nearly choked. Still, he felt the pressure to conform to this role, and, in something of a daze as though this were a very realistic dream rather than reality, he popped the tab and took a drink. He expected to feign a smile, but found that he actually liked it this time, perhaps because he was prepared for the fizzing of the carbonation.

"So, no heart attacks or anything, yeah? You looked a little freaked there for a minute," Austin said, and now Wright was coming to join him, while Jane held back, hovering behind them.

"Just…very surprised."

"Good. It's not easy pulling off any kind of surprise in this place. I thought sure you would figure out something was up," Wright said.

"I did think something was up," Loki said, "but…not this." Particularly since it isn't my birthday, he thought, glancing at Jane. She caught his eye and smiled; he quickly looked back at Austin and Wright, who were shaking hands.

"We done good," Wright said with a laugh and some kind of affected accent.

"Come on over," Austin said. "We've got chips and dip, nuts, somebody brought jelly beans for some reason, and best of all – cake. And stupid party games later. And darts. Wright said you were ready to play again, so we set up down here."

"Uh, all right," Loki said with a nod and his best effort at maintaining his faltering smile.

Austin went back over to the group, and the table at the center of it which held a myriad of food and drinks. The furniture had been rearranged, tables pushed out of the way to create an open area in the middle of the galley around the table with the food, and chairs ringing it in small groupings.

"Hey, I just wanted to let you know, I'm sorry about that picture I put up on my blog. I didn't know," Wright said.

"Know what?" Loki asked, again cautiously, every word, every movement here tonight feeling fraught with unknown risk.

"Well, Jane explained that you had some family stuff going on, and you didn't want your picture on the web, so I took it down, from the server and everything. You were barely in it anyway. I'm sure nobody saw it. Nobody looks at my blog but a few friends and family and a couple of classes of schoolkids."

"Oh, right, yes, Jane told me. Thank you, I appreciate your consideration." Jane had not told him, of course, and Loki felt the risk grow even greater. He'd made sure that no images of him were obtained ever since he'd figured out where he was going that night in Mohsin's home in Melfort, but he'd stopped worrying about it once he got to the South Pole. There were no security cameras here, and no one other than Jane – whom he'd quickly reprimanded – had tried to take his picture on personal cameras…that he'd known of before now.

"No problem. But I hope you can work it out. Life's too short, you know?"

Loki nodded, though life – for him – was in fact very, very long. He supposed problems did perhaps look different from a mortal's perspective. Wright went back to the group then, too, motioning for Loki to join him, but Jane was then approaching, and Loki suddenly felt more awkward than he had since his gangly youth after one of those growth spurts when none of his clothing fit anymore.

"Happy birthday," Jane said, smiling, hopeful but a little nervous as well. She couldn't tell yet how Loki was taking this.

"It is not my birthday," he said quietly.

"Well, my mistake. I asked you when it was, and you wouldn't tell me. I guessed April 30th," she said with a shrug.

"We had…we had plans."

"I can tell you a story from mythology any day, even later tonight if you want. But I wanted to get you out of your room, hanging out with people, getting to know people. You can't get much out of this whole experience if you don't do that. And if you're going to be here all winter with the rest of us…well, I just thought throwing a party would be a good way to get you more involved."

"I don't want to be involved," Loki said, the words barely making it out past clenched teeth.

"Try to be, just for tonight, okay? It'll look strange if you turn around and walk out on your own birthday party. Besides it's going to be fun, I guarantee it. Have you ever played Pin the Tail on the Donkey?"

Loki's eyes narrowed in confusion. I have stepped outside the fabric of reality and come to rest here in this warped forsaken land. Why, Jane, why tonight, of all nights…why did I not take care of this yesterday as I'd planned… She was waiting for some sort of response, some indication that he would stay for his "birthday party," and her smile was as bright and guileless as the midday sun and she may not have known whether he would stay or walk out but she knew he wouldn't hurt her because she trusted him. She trusts me… A weight settled on his chest. "What did you say?" he finally managed to get out after clearing his throat. "Pin the…"

"Pin the Tail on the Donkey."

"You will have to explain. There are no donkeys here."

Jane laughed. "I guess that answers that. So will you-"

"Hey, Lucas, get over here. We want cake!" Wright shouted, interrupting Jane.

Loki hadn't been to a party quite like this, but he hadn't forgotten how to behave at such events. He looked toward the others and away from Jane, let a smile warm his face with friendliness and camaraderie, and went to join them. He recognized all of the faces and knew most of the names – all of the scientists were there, Rodrigo, Zeke, Jane's friend Mari, most of the people from the trauma team he was on – but he'd interacted with few of them outside of required duties and meals, and even on those occasions he had kept to himself and said little.

"Okay," Su-Ji said, clearing her throat and tapping a spoon on the side of a bottle, "I think technically maybe the cake's supposed to come later, but we've had to stand here looking at it all this time, and somebody swiped a finger in the icing while the lights were out, so we better do this first thing."

Loki looked down at the cake she was discussing after catching Wright sucking in his cheeks and looking deliberately guilty. It was white on top with some kind of blue decorative border broken in one place no doubt by Wright, and across the top in blue was written, "Happy Birthday Lucas." Around the words were tiny yellow candles, 32 of them to be precise, a strangely specific number until Loki remembered creating a Canadian passport that said he was 31, a number he'd told Jane not long after meeting her. Loki then understood what Jane had said on Monday about fitting candles on the cake.

Gary, meanwhile, was lighting the candles and someone was explaining they'd had to get approval from Olivia to use candles – Loki looked up then to see Olivia was actually there, and watching the tiny flames with a certain amount of nervousness. "And no trick candles, either, right?" she said to general laughter and chatter. Loki followed the others' lead in laughing, while wondering what trick candles were.

Once 32 miniature flames flickered above the cake, with minimal prompting from Su-Ji everyone was singing a short song most likely titled "Happy Birthday to You" given the constant repetition of the line – the only variation was the phrase "dear Lucas," which sounded exceedingly odd – and when they were done the group watched him in near silence, smiling, clearly waiting on some response for him.

"Thank you," he said. "You're very kind to do this." A few people were now giving him funny looks, including Selby, and Wright was rolling his eyes.

"You're making Olivia antsy, Lucas, go ahead and blow out the candles," Jane said from right next to him, and gave his arm a squeeze.

He looked down at her and she widened her eyes slightly and looked pointedly at the cake.

"Don't forget to make a wish!" Mari the cook said.

"But don't tell anyone," Jane added quickly.

Loki nodded; he got it. He thought for a moment. A wish… He had many wishes. Most of the older ones he'd made himself let go of, because they could never come true. He settled back on his most immediate wish: I wish to be rid of these curses. He glanced at Jane, then quickly back at the cake. I wish to be rid of these curses, he repeated in his mind, and leaned over the cake.

"Try for all in one breath," Jane said quietly, but loud enough that she knew he would hear.

Must I blow them out from right to left or from left to right? he asked in frustration, but not aloud. He knew Jane was only trying to make sure he didn't arouse suspicion by not knowing the basics of a ritual that apparently every Midgardian undertook every year of his or her life. He took a deep breath and blew, easily putting out each of the flames. Cheering erupted as though he'd just accomplished some major feat.

Su-Ji leaned across the table and pressed a knife into his left hand. "Birthday boy gets the honors."

He looked down at the knife in his hand. A crude Midgardian thing, low quality metal, not very sharp. It would probably not even be able to break his skin. He was suddenly very conscious of Jane standing next to him, and wished he could move away from her. The knife could break her skin, certainly with the force of his strength behind it. Jane was telling him to go on, to make sure he made the slices small enough for everyone to have a piece. He nodded, and realized someone had taken the candles out and set them on a plate while his thoughts had drifted. He took another moment to slow his breathing which had grown tighter and faster, then set down his drink, switched the knife to his right hand, and sliced his way through soft yellow cake.

/

/

Twenty minutes later, Loki had consumed his slice of cake, which he found reasonably good although he wondered with some suspicion what the icing was made of, and allowed himself to be blindfolded and turned in a circle so he could take a length of wood and try to beat a brightly colored hollow vaguely animal-shaped thing called a piñata, hung from the ceiling, until it burst open and spewed forth similarly brightly-wrapped sweets. He was told he had three attempts, and he could have done it on the first, but he wasn't sure how good he should be at it in his guise as a mortal, so he swung lightly the first time and on the second broke through the animal's side. He realized afterward, when others got to try the other two piñatas, that three swings wasn't normally enough, and some people missed the piñata entirely on all three swings. Jane got one good hit in, on her third swing. He called out encouraging words, following the others' lead.

"I think someone else should go first this time," he said when Su-Ji, who seemed to be basically in charge of the party, marched him over to someone's drawing of a donkey taped to the wall and the black cloth blindfold came out again.

"I'll go!" Jane quickly volunteered, and stepped up to the line that she'd marked off with masking tape earlier.

Loki watched her get spun around then steadied when she was stopped back on the line. He glanced around the room; some were watching, others were sitting or standing in small groups or pairs, drinking beer or soda or coffee, talking and laughing. Jane was walking slowly forward, both of her hands out in front of her, her right hand with something he couldn't identify hanging from it. Then he remembered the game she'd asked him about, and he watched with curiosity as she approached the donkey that he now noticed was missing its tail. She pressed the tail in her hand to the wall, and the donkey gained something which might have been a very long earring, judging from where it wound up. Jane pulled off the blindfold and laughed while a few others joked; Loki found himself smiling, though it faded as soon as Jane's eyes found his.

He wound up going last, and, whether from centuries of training or simply a less easily disturbed equilibrium and sense of place, he knew exactly where the donkey was, but had decided he should not show himself to be better at this than the others as he had with the piñata. It wasn't as though his ego needed the stroking over a game that Jane had quietly admitted to him a few minutes earlier was for children. Still, he remembered where Jane's tail had gone, and placed his closer to its goal, atop the donkey's back. She was laughing at him when he pulled off the blindfold and turned, and he knew that she knew he'd placed the tail exactly where he meant to. Of the fourteen people who'd played – many couldn't be coaxed away from their drinks to participate – Gary the machinist won with the closest-placed tail, and jokingly asked for his prize.

Afterward, Jane led Loki back to the table, explained that everyone had gone in together for a gift, and handed him a large envelope. He opened it and pulled out a thick piece of paper layered over several alternating sheets of brown and white. "Buy one get one free at your local Skua Shopping Center," it read in ornate handwriting he didn't think was Jane's. Skua, named for a bird he'd seen at McMurdo, was the collection of donated items left behind by departing station residents, from which Loki had taken his bedcovers before improving them a bit. "You have my gratitude," Loki said. "It's truly impossible for me to place a value on such a generous gift."

"Look on the back," Jane said as others laughed and commented.

He flipped the card over and saw that the white paper on the back was covered in signatures, what must have been 49 of them, some with short additional messages. He even spotted the name Gillian Waters, the woman who'd flown with him and Jane and Rodrigo to the South Pole, and whom he'd only seen once or twice since.

Someone started playing music from a stereo, and then Austin was taking down the donkey and putting up a large piece of cardboard to which he attached the dartboard.

Loki felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see that Ken, the station support supervisor, had come up beside him. "Lucas, you should come out skiing again. I've got a small group going out on Sunday."

"You're still going?"

"Oh, yeah. Not quite as far, but yeah. I'm playing around with skis and poles and trying to figure out how to get the best glide, but my plan is to keep it up all winter."

"I'll think about it, thank you," he said. He'd only gone because Jane went that one time near the end of March, and had no interest in doing it again, but under these circumstances saying no to things would be socially inappropriate. Someone else joined them and asked Ken how he managed to ski here, and it allowed Loki to drift off in his thoughts and find Jane, currently chatting with Carlo. Very clever, he thought. This was exactly what she'd intended. In order to maintain his façade as Lucas, he would probably now have to participate in an unprecedented number of social activities with these people. Tonight was only the beginning. Tonight was supposed to have been the end. He averted his eyes before she could catch him watching.

"Okay, who's in? Our guest of honor is playing with a bum shoulder, which means some of you losers may actually stand a chance," Austin said after adjusting the location of the tape on the floor.

"My shoulder is doing quite well, thank you, so don't count on it."

"Count me in," Gary said, coming up beside Loki. "I hear you're pretty good."

"I suppose I'm not bad," Loki allowed, not quite comfortable enough to relax all the way into the teasing and taunting as he'd done when he threw darts with Austin and Wright before.

"We'll see, huh?"

Loki nodded, then remembered that the last time he'd seen Gary was out at his shop in MAPO, when Gary had just found out his father had died, and his sense of awkwardness only increased. He wasn't sure if it was polite or impolite to ask in this culture, but in the end, he asked. "How have you been doing?"

"Me? Oh, I'm holding up. I just hate being so far away from the rest of my family. They've got me bumped up to the first flight out, but that's still a long time away."

Loki nodded again. Six months. Jane had reminded him of it more than once just a few days ago. Six months. I cannot endure it. I should not have to endure it. The king of Asgard! Reduced to this. There is still time…still time tonight. She said she would tell her story afterward if I want her to. Again his eyes found Jane, again they flickered away. He glanced back at Gary, who was saying something to Wright. Six months. Life is short. Gary's six months are so much longer than mine. Half a year. A lifetime of 80 or 100 years. Are six months so unmanageable for me? But after the six months have ended…what then? Nothing will change. I will still be stuck here, restrained, aimless, idle…this is my only remaining opportunity…

"Lucas, you take the first trial throw. Try to get the dart to actually stay on the dartboard this time, okay?" Wright said.

He frowned, took the dart in his hand, stepped up to the tape, and aimed straight for the triple 20. He hit the larger plain 1 area right next to it instead, and heard mocking cheers behind him. The failure after having mastered this game earlier stung, and he didn't know whether it stemmed from lingering weakness in his shoulder or the distraction he'd been experiencing all night.

"Relax, Lucas, you're already off to a way better start than last time," Wright said, giving his shoulder a light shove. It reminded Loki of Thor and inspired him to want to win this game.

"All part of my plan to lull you into a false sense of security before I thoroughly defeat you," he said, handing his dart off to the bearded, barrel-chested man. He stepped away from the line, and there was Jane again. For a moment he could have sworn he saw accusation in her eyes. But then he realized she was smiling and her eyes held only laughter, and he knew that the eyes he'd seen in that moment hadn't truly been hers, but a reflection of his own.

/

/

"Your shoulder's obviously doing a lot better," Dr. Nora Ellison said after the crowd had dwindled and Jane , Su-Ji, and Gary were doing the final cleaning and Austin, Wright, and Carlo were putting the furniture back in place.

Loki nodded, hoping his recovery wasn't too unnaturally rapid. "It's not quite full-strength yet, but much better." Light laughter drifted over to him and he turned his head to see Jane listening to something Zeke was saying.

"You've been keeping up with your PT?"

"Of course."

"Good. You should come in for another visit, let me take a look at your strength and range of motion."

"I'll try to do that," Loki said, knowing he never would. He would have to disguise his true strength if he went.

The doctor left, followed soon by the others, and then it was just him and Jane in the galley that looked the same as it did every other day. It felt cavernous.

Jane watched him and tried to figure out what to say. She wanted to ask if he'd enjoyed himself…but he wasn't smiling, and she didn't want to hear a "no." He was pretty good at darts, he'd eaten the food given to him without complaint, and his second whack against the penguin piñata was kind of scary. She decided to steer clear of the party entirely, and let him bring it up on his own, or ask him about it later. "Are you still up for a story about an ox and an eagle?"

Loki stared back at her and hid his incredulity, again highly conscious of the knife in his pocket. He hadn't even bothered to properly hide it away; she could have bumped up against him and felt it there, or seen the outline on his hip. "What, uh" – he paused and licked his lips – "what do I do in this story?"

"You? Well, an eagle makes you mad, so you hurt it, then the eagle carries you off and you get hurt, and…this isn't really a good way to tell a story."

I hurt the eagle. Of course I did. "I thought there were oxen in this story."

"I didn't tell the whole story. There's an ox in the beginning. You and Odin and this other guy Hoenir were trying to cook an ox but it stayed raw no matter how long you cooked it. But…maybe it's better if I tell it with 'he' instead of 'you.' It sounds really weird this way."

"It doesn't matter. There's no need to tell it. I've never been carried off by an eagle. And I've never eaten an ox. We don't even have them on Asgard. A couple of the other realms have them."

"Have you ever turned into a falcon?"

Loki was stunned, and it showed.

"You have? You can do that?" Jane asked, and if she'd been holding a coffee mug she thought she might have dropped another one right then and there. How is that possible? And if he can change himself into a falcon, what else-

"Of course not," Loki said, recovering much more slowly than he should have. "Don't be ridiculous. Those must be stories for children." He had changed his form to that of a falcon, but Jane didn't need to know about that particular ability. Besides, it hadn't gone terribly well, and he had no desire to discuss it with her or anyone else."

"No, I wouldn't say so," Jane said, thinking about the gruesome tale of Loki underneath the serpent.

"Regardless…no, I'm not in the mood for a story right now. Why did you do this?"

Jane blinked, all the time it took to accept that they were done talking about the story and were now talking about the party. "I thought it would be good for you to-"

"Never mind, I know why you did it. But over half the station was here. Most of these people I barely know. How did you get them here?"

"Um…I bribed them?"

"You…with what?"

Jane's face broke into a grin. "Beer. Cake. Whacking piñatas. I'm just kidding, it wasn't hard to get them here. Everybody likes a party. Annnnd…I kind of told them you were feeling a little down and I wanted to cheer you up with a party."

"Feeling a little down." Loki couldn't help his laughter – laughter of disbelief and surrealism rather than mirth. "What else have you been telling them? Wright said there was a picture of me on the internet, and he took it down because you told him I had 'family stuff.'"

"Oh, yeah, that was before…well, when I thought you were really Lucas, and you told me you didn't want your family to know you were here." Jane paused, mulling that over for a moment. Another example of him lying-but-not-really as Lucas. But Loki's family wasn't likely to be cruising the internet. Any number of people who'd seen him up-close and personal, however, including the Avengers and members of SHIELD, might be. "I didn't tell him any more than that. And he did take the picture down. I checked it myself. It's gone."

Loki shook his head and looked away. "I don't know what you were thinking with all this. You're a naïve, stupid woman."

Jane bristled, her back straightening. This wasn't him teasing. This wasn't his dry sense of humor. This was him being plain old rude and mean. "What I was 'thinking with all this' was that you were going to drive yourself crazy stewing alone in your room all the time. What I was thinking was that you've got six more months here to try to learn something about Earth, and about the people who live here. And what I was thinking was that the people right here at the South Pole are pretty interesting, and pretty friendly, and you could learn a lot from them if you would just give them a chance. And I've been working every spare minute to put this party together, with several other people, I might add, some of those people you 'barely know,' so don't call me 'naïve' and 'stupid' because I want to do something nice for you, because I…because I care, okay? Just…" She dropped her head for a moment and rubbed her forehead, then straightened back up again. She felt every bit as naïve and stupid as he'd said, but she wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of letting him see it. "Just don't. If you didn't have a good time, then that's because you didn't want to have a good time. And I guess I can't make you have fun-"

"Jane."

"-or get to know people. And maybe it's stupid to try, but I-"

"Jane," he repeated, reaching for her arm and touching it tentatively. She fell silent, and he looked into her eyes, saw the honesty, the courage, the determination, the fire in them. His throat grew tight even as his resolve grew slack. Then, with two simple words, his eyes still on hers, he yielded. "I'm sorry."

For several seconds, Jane was convinced she must have misheard. She wasn't sure what she was expecting from her sudden inability to stop talking, but an honest-to-goodness apology, the most sincerely remorseful expression she'd ever seen on his face, and a hand gently resting on rather than gripping her arm wasn't it. "Um. Okay," she finally got out. "I mean, apology accepted."

Loki nodded, swallowed, and let his hand fall back to his side, where it brushed against the outline of the knife. If she wanted to think he was apologizing because he'd insulted her birthday party idea, then she was welcome to. He knew the truth.

"Moving on…," Jane said, and it felt so awkward she wished she'd left the phrase in her head where it started. "Oh, what about Pathfinder? You said you wanted to tell me…something about the branches? Do you still want to go out to the jamesway tonight?"

"No," Loki answered quickly, perhaps too quickly. The jamesway was the last place he wanted to go with her right now. "It's late. I'd rather you tell me a story."

Jane laughed, and despite her best effort it came out a little nervous, for she hadn't quite recovered from whatever it was that had just happened. "I thought you weren't interested."

"Not in that one. Tell me about…" He thought for a moment. "Tell me about donkeys."

She bit her bottom lip to hold back a comment about how she sometimes thought he must be competing in a "say the most unexpected thing possible" contest. Then she exclaimed a quick "Oh!" and turned briefly to where the dartboard had most recently been. "You mean Pin the Tail on the Donkey? You didn't do too bad, by the way. If a donkey's tale grew out of his back."

"You have no room to talk. And I intended to pin the tail on the donkey's back, as you know."

"Uh-huh."

"Get it back out sometime and I'll show you."

Jane laughed, and the nervousness was already gone. "I'm going to take you up on that."

The fire in her eyes was gone, but the honesty, the openness was still there, and warmth with it. Did she say she cares? Why? He shook it off; now wasn't the time. "You do that. But no, that's not what I meant. A few weeks ago you said you had ridden on a donkey. I looked up this creature on the internet. Hardly as impressive as a horse. Why did you ride one?"

"Really?" Jane asked with a healthy dose of skepticism. "You want to hear a story about me?"

"Yes. I mean no. I mean…what was it you said to me? 'If you want to tell it, I'm willing to listen.'"

She still hesitated, wondering if he was just making fun of her, but neither his face nor his voice suggested he was teasing, so she walked around the table she was standing closest to, pulled out a chair, and took a seat. A few seconds later Loki pulled out a chair and followed suit.

/

/

Jane's alarm went off early Saturday morning. She'd thought about not setting it, letting herself sleep in a little to make up for the late night, but she'd fallen further behind from where she wanted to be in her work with all the time she'd put into organizing and preparing for the party. So she permitted herself to hit the snooze alarm once, and then she permitted herself to hit it once more, and then she groaned and forced herself up and out of the bed.

She got into her slippers, grabbed her robe, flipped on her computer so it could start booting up, then hurried out to the bathroom. Today was not a shower day, so her hair went into a high ponytail and soon she was back in her room getting dressed – long johns, jeans, and a sweatshirt. She figured sometime today she would go out to the jamesway and find out what Loki had wanted to tell her about Yggdrasil, but first she would check her e-mail, then try to get as much work done as possible so she wouldn't look like a slacker to the Stark Institute for Scientific Innovation, where no one knew about the detour her work here had taken.

She frowned when she saw she had no new e-mails, and wondered if that was become no one had sent her any messages, or because maybe Loki had still never undone the trap he'd put on her account, despite the fact that he'd agreed to do so. He'd looked pretty tired, too, when she'd finished telling him about her summer in Guatemala. Too tired, maybe, to beat her out of bed and sift through her e-mail. She let her eyes wander with her thoughts, and both fell on the Tennyson quote she'd taped to her desk. She wondered if she should bring up the e-mail thing with him again, or if maybe it was better, sometimes, to yield. If he's been reading it all this time anyway… No, that's morning talking, you can't let him get away with stuff like that… As if you could really stop him…

Her laptop started beeping, the sound of an incoming call on her VOIP system. It startled her, for it didn't happen all that often. Everyone she kept in contact with knew her internet connection time was limited, so when phone calls took place, she was usually the one to initiate them. She pressed the talk button and said hello.

"Hey, Jane. How's the girl who bumped astrophysics to first place in the all-time sexiest sciences contest?"

"Uh…sorry?" Jane rubbed between her eyes then peered down at the phone number, a 212 area code, New York.

"Seriously? Do I really still have to introduce myself? Who else would shamelessly flirt with someone dating the Norse god of thunder?"

"Tony?" she said in wide-eyed disbelief.

"Yep. Say, have you run into Santa Claus yet? Because I've started off the year more nice than naughty and I've got pretty high hopes here. I was thinking maybe you could put in a good word, you know, grease the sleigh, so to speak."

"Um, wrong Pole. But if he gets bored and decides to swing by 90 degrees South, I'll be sure to apply a little grease. Listen, I'm sorry I haven't sent in the latest data package. I got kind of tied up, and-"

"Hey, kiddo, sorry if this bursts your CalTech bubble, but I don't actually read all those reports you send in. I pay other people to do that kind of thing for me, one of the benefits of being a billionaire. Unless of course you have some massive breakthrough that will redefine our entire understanding of the universe, you know, then I might read it."

"Uhhh…" She couldn't manage to get anything else out. Tongue-tied and a little bit terrified because she was talking to Tony Stark and Loki was two doors down and she had had a massive breakthrough but had kept it a secret, Jane was just grateful that they couldn't use video on these calls and Tony couldn't see the barely-controlled panic on her face.

"Okay, Jane? That was a joke. I mean, not about not reading your reports. I don't."

"I…yeah, I know it was a joke. And it's okay. I didn't expect that you were personally reading them."

"Good, that's a relief. Now that we've got that out of the way, I just had a little question I wanted to ask."

"Oh, okay, sure. Go ahead."

"I don't suppose you've seen Loki down th-"

/

So, sorry, you got stuck with a day's delay because I had no internet connection for a few days; this chapter could have gone up yesterday (9/18/13). For those of you reading The Memory Casket, same thing there, so I'll post the next chapter of it shortly, too. Or actually, I lost a huge chunk of time to the dude trying to fix my modem today, so I may wait til tomorrow on that one.

Thanks to all readers and reviewers - as always you lift my spirits!

Previews from Ch. 67 "Trust": Hm, sorry, I checked, but there's nothing I can put here that wouldn't be a spoiler.