Beneath
Chapter Seventy-Four – Regrets
Jane's screen had gone blank, but the video was still there, Loki thought once he eventually wandered back to the office area. He knew how he remembered that incident; he wondered now, after seeing Jane's reaction, how the camera had captured it.
He sat down at Jane's desk – awkwardly, because she'd lowered the seat – ran a finger over the mousepad, and pressed play once the screen came to life.
There was the man, his target, Dr. Heinrich Schäfer, the scientist whose detailed retinal and iris scan would gain Barton access to the material Erik Selvig had said was needed. And then there he was, taking hold of the target. He missed that long black coat, reminiscent of familiar Asgardian design but in the soft cloth of Midgardian fashion. The scarf, green and gold, had been the crowning touch, and he'd been pleased with his design.
He smiled as he watched himself flip Schäfer. He'd learned that move long ago but hadn't used it in some time. In the video, he lifted the scanner he'd made by adapting Midgardian technology so that it would capture a perfect image of the man's entire eye. He watched as he brought it down onto the target's eye, really with more force than was, strictly speaking, necessary. The man jerked and convulsed, he saw; he didn't remember seeing it at the time, and then realized that in the video he wasn't looking down. But it wasn't like he hadn't known that the adapted scanner would cause pain. He just hadn't much cared.
Pain, and blood, he saw now. Jane didn't react well to the sight of blood. It must have been what sent her running outside without most of her gear. It was a little gruesome, he could concede, though he'd certainly seen far worse in his life.
Then he looked up, and his eyes met those of his recorded self's, just for an instant. He went still except for a sudden cold shiver that originated in his gut and spread throughout his body. He remembered it. Every second of it. The convenient sculpture or table or whatever it was that he'd flipped the target onto. The man's flat chest, and something in it – perhaps a rib – giving way under the pressure of his hand before he subdued him with the scepter instead. The screams of the terrified ants fleeing in their Midgardian finery. He remembered it all, and yet at the same time it was like watching a stranger. His eyes, sliding to the left and right as he watched the chaos unfolding around him. A smile playing across his lips and only growing as the scan progressed, because he'd enjoyed this. Enjoyed it while a man lay twitching and trembling like a leaf beneath him. The corner of his past self's mouth rose even higher as his own sank deeper into a frown. He had delighted in this. It wasn't the blood that had made Jane ill, he knew now without question. It was the smile. The sickening delight.
Sickening… Disturbing, at least, he thought. Discomforting. But it wasn't what it looked like. Jane thought now, perhaps, that she was here with a madman. He laughed. Some days he, too, thought he might be a madman, when the rage pressed against the last threads of his control and he wasn't sure he could keep those threads from snapping. Thor had called his actions madness, back on Asgard, in the observatory, but that wasn't madness. It was cold, careful, planning. If Thor had learned about himself what he had learned, not a building in Asgard would have been left standing from his rage. He laughed again. No one would ever even believe such a thing of Thor. Of himself, however, he had no doubt they'd believe it as easily as they believed him a traitor.
With a surge of will-power devoid of real conviction he closed the video file, logged Jane off the computer, picked up the little pack she'd left behind in her haste to get away from him, slung his satchel back over his head, and went to suit up. He didn't think Jane would call anyone, not if she were to keep her word – she'd seen something from the past, not any sign that he intended to repeat such a thing – but he needed to correct her misunderstanding. She could think of him what she wanted really, it didn't matter. Except that he still had to work with her, to some extent, and that would be made difficult if she thought of him as such a…
A monster, he thought, the word coming unbidden to his mind. Instead of angering him, as that word usually did, it pained him. I don't want her to see me that way. He tamped down on that thought as soon as it came. It was dangerous. No illusions, he reminded himself. I am what I am. But she must be reassured, because I still need her.
He nodded, a moment's reassurance to himself, and headed out into the red-lit darkness and back to the station to look for Jane.
/
/
Jane sat in the sagging chair by the covered window in her room. In her whole life, really, there were just a handful of things she'd seen that she desperately wished she could unsee. The agonizing guilt on Aunt Vivian's face when she told her she and Uncle Van wouldn't be able to take her in because her aunt's health was so bad. Walking in on Jocelyn and her husband. A broken blade sticking out of Loki's back like something straight from a horror movie. And an eye socket transformed into a miniature swimming pool of blood and Loki smiling gleefully over having caused it.
"Thanks, Tony, thanks a lot," she muttered.
She'd spent the walk back to the station and her room – after getting sick she'd skipped the galley – angry at Tony because she'd said she hadn't forgotten what he'd done, then the time since, slouched in the old stuffed chair, letting the anger dissipate. Because while she hadn't really forgotten, neither had she really been confronted with it in quite such shocking, gory detail. Maybe she had gotten too relaxed around Loki. Maybe she'd begun to trust him too much. What he'd done to that scientist was sick. At the thought of it her stomach started clenching again, so she twisted around a bit and looked at the view out over the ocean in Malibu taped up over her desk and tried to think about what it would be like to vacation in Tony's mansion there when this was all over. Her eyes strayed over to the right corners of the poster. Loki had taped those down, back when she thought he was a grad student at the University of Toronto. She'd unknowingly invited Loki right into her room, and he'd done no more than help her put up the poster, just like she'd asked.
There was the Loki who taped posters to walls and was a pretty good assistant when he wasn't too busy arguing with her and who had seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself when he told her that he had "defended her honor." There was the Loki who had some weird compulsion to be better at everything, from playing the recorder to seeing. And she'd watched him at the birthday party, how he turned to her and smirked after placing his tail, making it clear to her at least that he'd done exactly as he'd intended – better than her, and how his "misses" on the dartboard were perfectly centered, so that again to her it was clear he could have hit the bull's-eye or the triple twenty every time if he'd chosen to – he was proving to himself that he was better than the others without drawing undue attention. There was the Loki who'd begun his manipulation of her the very first time they'd met in Sydney and continued it until paranoia – and Loki – controlled her. There was the Loki who'd begun to open up more about himself and even a little about Thor, and to treat her like a real person, with stories and experiences and feelings of her own.
And there was the Loki in that video.
That, too, was a part of him. Cold, cruel, sadistic.
She'd thought she could change him by forcing him to face what he'd done, and it hadn't worked; it had instead backfired spectacularly. Then she'd thought maybe she could change him, or somehow make a difference, by just listening, trying to understand more about him, trying to relax and be herself.
Maybe I went too far. Maybe I'm being naïve. Maybe he really doesn't want to change. She sighed and slouched back against the chair. But he has changed. I know he has…. She thought back to the moment when his hand had been wrapped around her neck, tried to picture him as he did it. It was hard. She'd been nearly out of her mind in terror, completely unable to get away from him or do anything to make him stop. Angry, she thought as she swallowed with some difficulty, for her mouth was dry and her throat was tight. He was angry. He didn't look like he was getting some sick thrill out of it. She also realized then, given how she'd seen him flip Dr. Schäfer like he weighed nothing, that he really, truly, hadn't been trying to hurt her. If he'd wanted to, he could have crushed her windpipe or snapped her neck effortlessly. She had never met the Loki that Schäfer had the misfortune to encounter that day. She'd never seen the worst he had to offer, not in person. But that part existed, as Tony had reminded her, and she wondered if there was really any guarantee she never would meet that side of him. The thought made her shudder.
She swallowed again and it verged on painful, so she got up to get her water bottle, then realized she'd left her backpack out at the DSL. Her other bottle was on her desk, empty. Reluctantly, she took the one she was left with and went out to the hallway to refill it at the water fountain. Most people would be back to work after their lunch break, but a few still passed by in the main corridor and said hi. Jane was grateful no one tried to start up a conversation, because she was still upset and not in the mood to pretend she wasn't.
A few minutes later, though, a knock on the door came, and there was most likely only one person who'd think she might be in her room in the middle of the day. And sure enough, there he was. He'd gotten rid of his gear and was in brown silk trousers and the green turtleneck he often sported.
"I would like to try to explain," he said calmly.
"I really don't want to see you right now, okay? I just…I need some time."
"You can have time after I explain. Please," he added, his expression free of emotion, when she started to close the door on him.
Jane stared at him a moment longer before relenting. "Fine," she said, opening the door wider and stepping back.
Loki walked through the doorway, relieved to see that she wasn't crying or otherwise worked up. A check first with Rodrigo had confirmed she hadn't used a satellite phone. "You forgot your backpack," he said, dropping it on the floor by the door. "May I sit?" he asked, indicating her desk chair. He wasn't here to intimidate, and sitting would eliminate some of the height difference.
"Why not," Jane said with resignation.
"How are your hands?" he asked as he got settled and sound-proofed the room, making a large gesture with his hands so Jane would be sure to see it.
She glanced down at them. "They're okay." They were a little sensitive, as were her cheeks, but he'd healed all the damage she'd stupidly done to herself without thinking. She walked past him and sat back down on the chair by the window.
"Good. I'm glad. Jane…I know what you saw, or rather, what you thought you saw in that video, and-"
"Wait, are you going to try to tell me that somehow…I don't know, that wasn't really you? Or Tony faked the whole thing? Because I know that's not true. I knew about this already, Loki, I just hadn't seen it in color right in front of me before." She glanced only furtively at him, finding it difficult to look him in the eye now.
"No, that's not what I mean. Of course it happened. Do you know why it happened?"
The first responses that passed through her mind were venomous and would not be helpful. Because you're a sick, twisted… "Do you mean why you went after Dr. Schäfer?"
He nodded once.
"He was the world's foremost expert on iridium isomers and gamma ray absorption for biochemistry, and he had access to the type of iridium that you needed so Erik could adapt the Tesseract to open a wormhole that let a Chitauri army attack New York as a first wave in your plan to conquer Earth."
"A very thorough answer, Jane," he said, ignoring the obvious needling. "Erik Selvig said he needed iridium, and Clint Barton told me what was necessary to obtain it. So I-"
Jane stood up, shaking with anger. "Get out."
Loki raised an eyebrow, wary of the sudden change. "Not slang, I take it?"
"Plain English. Get. Out. I'm not going to listen to you sit here and blame Erik or anybody else for what you did."
Ah. "Calm down, Jane. That isn't at all what I meant. My actions were my own. I did what I felt was necessary." Because they told me it was necessary. He kept his gaze fixed calmly on Jane, while his thoughts whirled in conflict. I was trying to evade blame, he realized. But why? One man out of so many, it was insignificant. I didn't even kill him. And it was necessary. Of course she sees it as wrong. But what does right or wrong matter for me? It only matters what I desire. He remembered then that his thoughts had led him down this path once before, when he'd thought perhaps there might be boundaries even for him, and that Jane might be beyond those boundaries. But Jane is Jane. She isn't like the others. That German scientist was no one special, just a means to an end.
Jane was shaking her head, and had shoved her hands in her pockets to stop them from trembling and hopefully get herself under control. Loki was making no move to get up, and she couldn't physically force him out if he refused. Finally she gave up the idea that she would get him to leave before he was good and ready and started pouring out her anger and frustration. "I don't understand how you can talk about people like that. I mean, 'it was necessary?' You're so cold and dispassionate about it, like he was a thing and not even a person. Well he was a person, Loki. An innocent person. You said you didn't hurt any innocent people. He had a wife and two grown kids, a couple of grandkids. He was a major donor to that museum you attacked him in. I'm sure he had hobbies and things he liked and disliked and a favorite color and…and he was a person. And you destroyed him and you got off on it. That's slang for you enjoyed his suffering like some sick freak." By the end her voice had risen to a shout, and she looked down and realized she was standing almost exactly where she had been when Loki attacked her before. She quickly took a few more steps to her right, positioning herself right next to the door, ready to grab for it and run if necessary.
Loki watched her do it and quickly schooled his features into the cold dispassion she'd spoken of instead of the rage that bubbled inside him. He had no reason to feel such rage, anyway, he told himself. A "sick freak." Isn't that exactly what I am? What Jotunheim produced, what Asgard shaped, and what Midgard reaped the benefit of. But Jane cannot work with a "sick freak." "You misunderstand," he said, rotating around in her desk chair to face her and carefully keeping his voice soft and calm. "I didn't 'get off on it,' not the way you think. It had nothing to do with what that man was experiencing." I wasn't even aware of it, he thought, but he didn't dare say, knowing it would not help his case.
"Right. So what exactly did it have to do with, then?"
Loki drew in a breath and frowned. He hadn't exactly thought that one through. The truth may not go over any better than her false assumption. He decided to give it to her nonetheless – part of it, anyway. "The pandemonium. I enjoy it."
Dumbstruck again, Jane was at least able to look at him for longer than half a second now. "By 'pandemonium,'" she said a minute later, "you mean the people who were running away because they were scared to death that you might do that to them next?"
"I wouldn't put it like that, precisely," he said drily…not that it was untrue. Her cause-and-effect implications were simply off. "I hope you know I wouldn't have done that to any of the others. It never even occurred to me to do so. I'm not a…a torturer, Jane. I didn't do what I did for the purpose of causing a complete stranger pain."
"You were going to kill that old man. In the crowd. Outside."
Loki gritted his teeth. He'd been prepared to discuss Schäfer. Not the litany of every wrong Jane would lay at his doorstep. "He defied me. Someone had to be an example, so that no one else did so."
"And what's going to happen the first time someone here defies you?"
"You defy me almost every day, Jane. In fact, you did so for the first time the very day we met. Does that answer your question? I have no interest in ruling your realm anymore, regardless." A slight exaggeration perhaps, but essentially true.
Jane leaned against the wall, concerns for her safety quickly evaporating. "I don't understand you, Loki. I try, I mean, I've really, really tried. And just when I think I'm starting to, something like this happens, and…I just… How could you do that to someone who'd never so much as looked at you the wrong way, much less 'defied' you by refusing to bow, and then grin like a maniac at everyone being so afraid of you?"
"It was…I was…The circumstances were different," Loki said. He'd been about to say "I was different," because he tried to picture himself setting fire to the station as the forty-nine others tried desperately to put it out and ran for their lives when they couldn't, as he'd imagined before, and found that it didn't provoke any pleasure in him. But he wasn't different. Circumstances were. Burning down the station now would put an end to his ability to work with Pathfinder. Or at least make it considerably more difficult. "Besides, there's really no need for you to understand me. It would be a fool's errand."
"Thanks for calling me a fool on top of everything else," Jane said, shooting him an annoyed look.
"That's not-" Loki gave up and closed his eyes for a moment in frustration. "How do you know so much about…" Oh. Oh, no. That would be…bad. "Do you know him? Schäfer?" He wasn't in Jane's line of work, but iridium was also used in astrophysical applications, the whole reason Erik Selvig had needed it in the first place. He pictured that moment again in the video when he'd jammed the scanner down into the man's eye, remembered how eagerly he'd carried it out, then saw it through Jane's eyes instead of his, him doing this to her friend. It left him feeling rather aghast.
"No," she answered, watching Loki and noting with surprise that the thought that she might have known Heinrich Schäfer bothered him. "I knew of him, but that's all."
Loki nodded once and carefully hid his relief in mild disdain and sarcasm. "I'm sure he's fully recovered by now. Perhaps he lost the eye, but Odin has done well for himself with just the one. SHIELD's Nick Fury, too."
"You don't know? I guess you wouldn't," Jane said, almost immediately answering her own question. "He had a heart attack, Loki. Remember those papers I gave you that made you so angry? He's in them. He's dead."
Loki released a breath and swiveled around in the chair to face the desk instead of Jane. He berated himself for not at least questioning it, because as soon as she said that he realized why she'd spoken of Schäfer only in the past tense. He'd assumed it was because she was referring to an event that took place in that past. "That was not my intention," he said after a long moment of silence, still facing her desk, his eyes falling on the familiar Ulysses quote. "Jane," he began, standing, pushing her chair in, and turning to face her again, "I have never tried to pretend with you that I'm a good person. I'm not a good person. It's not in my nature. But I have kept my word to you, and I'll continue to do so." He paused, then decided he had to keep going, because even though part of him still demanded he deny it, it was true. "There are limits, even for me."
Jane pulled her hands from her pockets and ran them up and down her arms for a moment while she watched Loki from under lowered lids. "Am I one of your limits?" she asked a long moment later, looking straight at him.
"Yes," Loki answered after only a brief moment of hesitation.
"Why?"
Loki looked down and took a deep breath before again meeting Jane's gaze. This was getting far afield from what he'd come here for. She was calm enough now, and he was fairly certain she'd still be willing to work with him. "I've told you. I respect your work. I…I respect you. I won't harm you, or anyone else here. Will you still be able to accept that, despite what you've seen of what happened in the past?" he asked, and then had to hold back the beginnings of a smile. If she couldn't accept it, he could go back and change it. Change what he'd done, or how he'd done it, or better yet, simply ensure she never saw that video. Things had been going quite smoothly up until now. How much simpler everything would be if he had in fact killed Tony Stark. That course of action was looking more and more compelling.
She nodded. "I don't have much choice, do I? It's just…it's hard to look at you and think…or…not think… Has anything changed? You didn't know any humans then. If you had it to do over again, would you still do that? What you did to Heinrich Schäfer?"
Loki held her gaze and put every ounce of control he had into not showing the slightest reaction.
No. Let Jane think her "caring" and her birthday parties and her attempts to understand him had changed him, even a little. Regain what has been lost with a simple lie. She'll believe you. She wants to believe you.
Yes. Show her that her caring was meaningless and ineffective, that he had not changed in the slightest, because he didn't wish to change, that he was what destiny made him. Cling stubbornly to harsh reality. Let her see the truth of who you are. She's already said she has no choice.
She was asking a hypothetical question, a counterfactual which was, for him, no longer hypothetical. "If you had it to do over again, would you still do that?" She stood there waiting, while he stared in silence. He approached her and reached for the doorknob. "I would appreciate it if you could still look over my equations."
"I guess I got my answer then," Jane said, not moving from her position though Loki was now very close. She was angry and disappointed, but trying to hold back on fully expressing either reaction.
"I told you once before, Jane, as you also told me: everyone has regrets." He opened the door and stepped out, but then turned back toward her once more before going. "If I had my entire life to do over again, I would do a great many things differently."
/
/
The next day, Sunday morning, as soon as Jane got her laptop going she heard the familiar beeping indicating a VOIP call. She opened the program and saw it was from user "Pepper." "Hmmm," Jane murmured. She clicked on "Accept Call."
"Hi, Pepper, how are you?"Jane asked.
The response was several seconds of silence, followed by a rush of words that were definitely not from Pepper Potts. "Okay, right, I'm using Pepper's phone, I'm logged in as her. So is that why you asked? Or were you wanting to ask about her? Can you just clarify that? This is not a fully encrypted connection, by the way."
Jane felt a headache kicking in and grabbed for her water bottle. She'd been upset yesterday, gotten sick, and probably had let herself get a little dehydrated. "Um, what?" And she wasn't fully awake yet, either.
"I just wanted to know if you were really asking about Pepper, Jane. Hmmm? Everything okay?"
She took a swig of water, set down the bottle, then shot up ramrod straight in her chair. "No! Uh, no, Tony, I wasn't concerned about Pepper at all. You're right, it was just that, you know, the computer said 'Pepper' was calling."
"Ooookay. Thank God. You gave me a scare there for a second. And now would be kind of a bad time for you to need to ask about Pepper anyway. I mean, I'd figure something out, Captain Spangles, he's apparently pretty hardy when it comes to the frozen tundra…sorry, listen, I'm a little distracted right now. I just wanted to apologize for that video I sent. I may've been a little hasty. I know it was kind of…graphic, and I really should've given you a warning before just springing it on you like that."
"What did you send her?" Jane heard in the background.
"Nothing, dearest. So, uh, everything's cucumber cool, then, yeah?"
"Yeah, I guess so. But Tony, the next time you think it's a good idea to send me something a little…provocative, you should consider that I'm not always in my room when I check my e-mail. Sometimes I'm in the Science Lab or the Dark Sector Lab with all the other scientists. All of them, Tony."
"All of them meaning…including…"
"Yeah."
"Oh."
"Uh-huh."
"Oooh. Uhhh, how'd that go?"
"It really wasn't fun. But it's okay now, I think."
"Sorry, kiddo. I should've thought more before clicking. Not the first time that's gotten me into trouble."
"Tony. What did you send her?"
"Maybe you were right," Jane conceded. "Maybe I did need a reminder. But…my eyes are open on this, okay, Tony? No more. Really."
"Got it, Doc. If you say you're fine, you're fine. I can make myself deal with that. Just check in on weekends. So, listen, if you don't reach me at my number, try Pepper's, okay? I've got a few…problems going on with my systems."
"What kind of problems? Is there something going on in New York again?" she asked, remembering now what he'd said about somehow sending Captain America here instead of coming himself, though she'd assumed he was just indulging in his particular brand of humor at the time. She realized then he hadn't really been joking around at all during this call.
"Nothing like that. Just a little computer glitch, really. A computer glitch that's knocked every single one of my systems offline, since virtually everything in this entire building is networked and runs through my AI. I'm even having trouble getting the electricity back. No elevator. Getting up to the R&D levels at the top? Let's just say nobody's going to need a StairMaster during gym time. The suits aren't powering up, my AI is MIA, and even my fish went belly-up. It's been the most fun I've had since…well, since you-know-who came to town. That was irony, by the way."
"Yeah, I got that. I'm sure you'll get it figured out soon, Mr. MIT. If you need any help from a Caltech alum, I'll be here waiting with all the solutions to your problems."
"Very funny. Did you hear that? She's thinks she's a comedian. Okay, I gotta go. Call me next weekend. Earlier if you need anything. Don't hesitate."
"Sure thing, Tony."
They hung up shortly, and Jane was surprised at how smoothly the conversation had gone. It probably worked in her favor, she figured, that he had other things to worry about now besides just Loki. Cosmic justice for sending me that video, she thought with a faint smile, then took another long drink of water and set about to finish getting ready for the day.
/
/
After Saturday's video incident, for the rest of the weekend Loki gave Jane the space she'd first asked for when he knocked on her door to deal with her reaction to the video. Otherwise, he kept to the pattern he'd established the previous weekend. He'd already thrown darts on Friday night, on Saturday night he again joined the musicians and surprised them with his passable rendition of the Jurassic Park tune – Wright said he'd have to tell his niece to learn it – and on Sunday morning he even went skiing again. He still didn't enjoy the skiing, but as Jane had suggested, he didn't back down from a challenge, and he'd already figured out a couple of ways to increase his speed over the ice.
On Monday morning Loki was at breakfast before Jane, but she sought him out, familiar papers in hand. "Here," she said, standing behind him and reaching over his shoulder. "I made a couple of notes, there's one variable I think you might want to limit a bit further, but otherwise, this is excellent. You could publish it."
"What's that?" Wright asked, reaching across the table and snatching the papers away before Loki could wipe his hands and take them himself.
Loki shot him a scathing look which he quickly toned down to one of mild annoyance. Of course Wright would do that. I wonder if he has a predilection for hammers, too.
Selby leaned in toward Wright and looked over the equations as well. Loki hadn't chosen to sit across from them; they'd arrived a few minutes ago and claimed two recently abandoned chairs.
"You adapted the FLRW equations?" Selby asked.
Loki inclined his head and restrained himself from grabbing the papers back.
"The way you account for the scale factor of the universe looks weird," Wright said.
Loki smirked, refusing to respond – aloud, at least. That's because your experience of the scale factor of the universe is extremely limited, mortal.
"I know it looks weird," Jane said, meanwhile, "but actually it works. Or, I mean, it could work."
"This is pretty good, Lucas, can we get a copy?" Wright then asked. "I bet Austin and Carlo and Sue would like to take a look, too."
"I…all right," he said, reaching out to accept the papers back. "I suppose that could be arranged." He folded them away inside his satchel and took a quick gulp of unpleasant orange juice to rid himself of the equally unpleasant warmth that those words kindled in him. Jane's opinion mattered. Theirs…did not.
"So are those kind of like…LPGA equations?" Ronny asked, two people down the table to Loki's left.
Selby and Wright laughed; Loki had no idea what LPGA meant but followed their cue. It was Jane who answered. "The FLRW solution is one of the exact-"
"Ah-ah-ah, Jane," Ronny said with a hand up in what Loki presumed was a universal indication to stop. "It is way too early in the day for beaker talk."
"Okay, then, yeah," she said, "it's a mathematically guaranteed means of predicting who's going to win each of the LPGA tournaments, and if you want access to the secrets, sorry, guys, you'll have to join the beaker club, and that includes a fifty-dollar buy-in."
"For the LPGA? Not enough incentive," Ronny said. "If you come up with one for the NFL, I'm in."
Loki listened as a few more comments bounced around the table, deciding that the LPGA and the NFL must be more sporting events he knew nothing about. Midgardian games and sports and tournaments hadn't exactly been high on his list of things to study when preparing for his attack.
After uneventful house mouse duties, Loki went out to the jamesway armed with equations Jane had validated, ready to pore over every bit of Pathfinder's computer code – or source code, as Jane called it – relevant to his needs. When he realized just how much code that was, he eyed the beds with their bare mattresses, the two visible after he and Jane had taken down a couple of the flimsy "walls" in the front of the jamesway, and decided to work through the night with a short nap at some point to rest his eyes from constantly staring at the computer screen, which he didn't like any more than Jane did.
On Tuesday he worked with Jane, but by unspoken agreement they worked where Selby and Wright did, which happened to be in the main station. Their work went smoothly, the only change a slight increase in formality. Intellectually, this suited Loki fine. By the end of the day, however, he was fully aware that he missed the easy, relaxed interactions that had become so common between them. More weakness – weakness that he should miss that, weakness that he should desire its return. But he was not here to trade jests and life stories with Jane Foster. He was here to conquer time.
By late in the evening on Wednesday, he had identified all the pertinent computer code, and was quite confident in which bits he would need to adjust, and where he would need to add new bits. He had already meshed the existing code with all the data they'd gathered from within Yggdrasil, including the mapping of the branches that Young-Soo had sent. Thursday was Jane's day again, and he would stick to the schedule. On Friday, May 14, he would make the necessary changes with fresh eyes, and conduct his first test.
/
/
Nearly two dozen Nidavellir dwarves all rushed at Thor at once, each with a short sword in both hands. He saw their approach off to his right as he finished off a particularly imposing Dark Elf. He turned to face them, swinging Mjolnir. Nidavellir was home to multiple races of dwarves; these were the ones who were nearly his height, with long spindly limbs and quick jerky movements that made them unpredictable in battle. Thor had encountered few of them thus far in this war.
He took out one with a blow of Mjolnir's head to the man's chest, the next with the full force of his left fist, a third as he pivoted around and struck the side of the dwarf's knee with a heavy kick, a fourth with another swing of Mjolnir, all with one continuous set of motions. No blade reached him.
The next wave was close on the heels of the first, and this was going to take far too long, Thor decided. A small group of Aesir warriors were fighting nearby, heavily outnumbered as they most often were, and he wished to join them and help even their odds. The dwarves were grouped fairly close together, almost in lines in their approach, a very convenient – for him, foolish for them – pattern of attack. He snapped his wrist forward and released Mjolnir, letting it quickly thin the ranks, while he continued to make short work of these attackers who seemed to simply throw themselves at him with little rhyme or reason. They were hardly the fiercest warriors of the Nine, these dwarves, but perhaps they thought that in sufficient number they could bring down the mighty Thor. Three swords in all made contact with him; none pierced his armor.
He was facing the final three of them, with Mjolnir on its return path, when he felt fire searing his arm and his shoulder slump. At almost the same moment, Mjolnir's handle struck the edge of his outstretched palm and kept going, spinning him around and sending him face-first into what was left of the grass. Its energy buzzed in the distance and he called to it even as he tried to push himself up, but the buzzing stayed exactly where it was; there was no sense of that familiar pull in his hand that told him the hammer was approaching. His right arm, the one that had exploded in pain but he could no longer feel, was completely useless, so he twisted and rolled hard to the right, covering the right arm and opening up his left, barely avoiding a sword coming down over his head.
Pain then shot through the left side of his chest, and with a glance Thor saw something he had no time to process – a chink in his armor pulling further apart and blood welling up behind it, but nothing there to cause the wound he felt and saw.
It had been a long time since Thor had been put on his back in battle, but he still remembered how to get up from it. He planted his palms up beside his head – or tried, only one actually went there – lifted his knees up to his head, then tucked his neck into his chest and shoved out hard with his legs, lifting him up enough to bend his knees again and get his feet under him. He wound up off-balance because of the useless arm, but he was on his feet ready to fight, and that was all that mattered. He wrapped his left arm around the neck of the closest dwarf, then squeezed, lifted, and slammed the still-struggling dwarf into the ground. He dodged the strikes of the two still on their feet and maneuvered his way around them, allowing them to get between him and the city. It was necessary, he thought, because something else had been between him and the city before.
His right hand hung limply at his side, but Thor had once had a little brother who needled him endlessly for being so dependent on his right hand until he finally caved and allowed his right arm to be incapacitated and started his training all over again. Thor held out his left hand, and immediately felt the answering electric jolt of Mjolnir racing to it. He dodged three more blows, one glancing off the armor over his right arm, then welcomed Mjolnir's return by thrusting it immediately upward and drawing down a concentrated burst of lightning that lit up the early evening and slammed into the ground – and into the enemy warriors – in his immediate vicinity. No more dwarves disturbed him. But he wasn't interested in the dwarves. With only two left before the lightning, he could have handled them with one arm and no Mjolnir.
Instead, he paced about in a careful spiral, stamping heavily to mark his path, until twenty-three paces out, his foot hit something. Not a dwarf; he'd cautiously stepped over and in between their bodies. At least, not a visible dwarf. Nothing visible at all. He nudged it further with his toe, and could tell that it shifted with the prodding. He dropped Mjolnir at his side and bent over to feel for the hidden object, to gauge its dimensions, and confirmed his suspicion that the unseen thing had the shape of a person, tall and lean, and wore some form of leather and metal armor. Tall and lean. Leather and metal. Thor's head swam and a chill passed through him.
With his left hand he found a shoulder, grabbed it, shook it. "Loki," he whispered, and had to let go of the shoulder and brace his palm on the ground lest he topple over, he grew so dizzy. "Loki," he said again, more loudly this time, pushing up from the ground and feeling for the face, which he found, then the cheek, which he slapped. "Loki, get up."
"Prince Thor!" a man's voice shouted in the distance
"What?!" he roared, wrenching his body upright again, then falling, falling, falling…
/
You guys crack me up, encourage me, challenge me, and I love you. ;-)
I can't help two responses to guest reviewers: "jaquelinelittle," I have to defend Jane's honor, LOL, no, she didn't swear to Loki not to bring it up again, nor in the "oath-making" sense at all, she just meant the casual "I swore I'd never drink that much Coke during a movie again!" sense. And "guest" Nov. 12, again with the LOL, I do! Ha. But only once we actually do reach the end.
Another story (Trials) has magically appeared on my profile page. It's short, I'll write it (that's the plan, 1.5 chapters done), but I won't put it up til I'm done with it most likely. The chapter-after of The Memory Casket is also underway, I hope to give you a new chapter of that one this weekend, for those of you reading it. I don't want you to think I've forgotten or abandoned it. If I start something on here, it will be finished.
My blog (address on profile page) now has a TDW "Top 10 Delightful Moments" and a "Top 10 Touching Moments" (with poll!) on it now. Still planning to put a "quibbles" post up also, should be this weekend. Total spoilers, of course.
Thanks for reading, reviewing, favoriting, etc., and welcome to all of you new readers, there's plenty of room on this train!
Previews from Ch. 75, possibly "Curiosity": Loki puts his efforts to the test; Thor gets some answers; Jane tries to figure out her next move (and her personal grooming habits are discussed); Loki sees a familiar face in a familiar place.
And the excerpt (it's a flashback):
"But if it never melts, how do they grow crops? Or graze animals?"
Thor laughed and beat Nestur to an answer. "Do you think they're a bunch of farmers, Loki? They're beasts who do nothing but attack and pillage and destroy."