Beneath

Chapter Ninety-Four – Temptation

"You did not just say what I think you just said."

"Why not? I've proven it can be done. In small things, inconsequential things. A conversation. A piece of fruit…or a dozen. I marked a passage in a book on Asgard, and I'm almost certain it was seen. It's the tip of the iceberg. Do you have that expression?" Jane's eyes had lost focus, and she wasn't responding, so he continued. He needed her agreement on this, or things would become very difficult for him here. "So much more could be done, Jane. Don't you see? Now is not the time to end the research, just because there are unknowns. There are always unknowns, are there not? Think of the good you could do, how much better you could make your life."

"Thanks, Chrissy, you're the best! I'm coming, I'm coming," she grumbled under her breath to her dad, who was gesturing impatiently at her.

"You are one of the most courageous mortals I have ever met…at least among those who lack a metal suit covered in weaponry, or some other unusual battle skill. Don't let fear close your eyes to the possibilities. I'm sure you remember the exact date when they died. It would be so easy to change it. I know it's a lot to take in right now, but just imagine it, Jane. You could have them back again. Or if not you, if it doesn't work that way, then at least your younger self. Jane…say something," Loki finally said, met only by Jane's continued blank stare. She was giving him nothing to go on, no idea whether anything he was saying was having any effect at all. The response she should be giving was, to him, obvious. And it worried him that she wasn't giving it. "I won't act without you," he continued a moment later, in case she was worried about that. It was even true, for the most part; his only specific time travel plan remaining at the moment had nothing to do with changing the past, and everything to do with changing his present and his future; only after that would he concern himself with his past again. "It's your choice."

"Stop it," Jane said, the very second she realized she couldn't take any more of this, the very second every confused and shocked and horrified and hopeful and painful reaction coalesced into one thing: anger. "How could you bring my parents into this? How could you… Loki, I didn't tell you about them, and what I went through afterward, so you could throw it back at me to try to…to…to make a point? I don't even know what you're trying to do here. You can't just dangle something out there in front of me like that like it's just…nothing, and like you could just…" With no idea how to give voice to the conflicting tumultuous feelings surging through her, Jane buried her face in her hands for a moment to escape Loki's stare. Then she pushed her chair back and stood. "I can't do this right now, okay? I need to…to step away from this. Clear my head. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Just…don't do anything…crazy in the meantime. No Pathfinder. Promise me."

"I promise," Loki said quietly. "But I wasn't trying to make a point. I was trying to give you-"

"No, I'm serious, Loki, enough. I don't want to hear this. I really, really don't. It's late, I'm tired, and…yeah. Like I said, tomorrow," she said, pulling on her jacket.

"All right, tomorrow." Loki watched as she rushed to get her gear on piece by piece and hurried outside.

/

/

Jane made her way back to the station and her room in a daze.

"Geez, my dad's going to bust a gasket. I've got to go. Call me when you get home, okay? I still can't decide what I should wear."

"Okay. And maybe we can go check out that vintage shop Veronica told me about. Anyway, I'll think about it some more during dinner."

"Thanks, Chrissy, you're the best! I'm coming, I'm coming," she grumbled under her breath to her dad, gesturing impatiently at her from the driver's seat.

"Jane, gas isn't free, you know," her mom said from the passenger seat once she'd tossed in her gym bag and backpack and climbed in the back.

"Yeah, Mom, I know," Jane said with a smile and an eye-roll. "Can you switch it over to 96.5?"

It was the last thing she remembered saying to them. Maybe not the last thing she'd actually said, but if there had been anything else, it was even less memorable than her standard radio station request, and she'd never been able to remember the accident itself. In the million and one times after, when she'd replayed those moments in her mind, she'd imagined versions where her parents were angry with her, versions where she'd been horrible and rude to them, versions where an argument had distracted her dad and caused him to lose control of the car. None of it was true.

"What if it was something far more important? What if it was your parents?"

She used to dream about things like this. In her million and one versions in the days and months and even years following the accident, she'd also imagined versions where it never happened. Where the collision was narrowly avoided and they all laughed nervously about what a close call it was. Where she'd gone straight to the car instead of trying to finish her conversation with Chrissy and they'd made it home without incident. Where she got sick at school and skipped softball practice and her mom picked her up early. Where she had a premonition it was going to happen, and insisted her dad pull over, and he listened, and she prevented it from happening.

Sometimes, back then, she'd let herself descend into fantasy and truly believe in one of the happy-ending versions. Those days were never good ones, because the fantasy always came to an end.

Eventually, she'd come to terms with it. Accepted it. Rebuilt her life, with Erik, with the handful of friends who'd stuck by her no matter what kind of stage she was going through that hadn't necessarily made her the easiest person to be around.

And now, with a little trip through Pathfinder, into one of Yggdrasil's branches, and right back out again, the fantasy could be reality, if what Loki said was true. And she'd seen the evidence for herself, in her laptop's data logs. She'd tasted the evidence for herself, in that "magic" orange, that Loki had given to her with such mischief in his eyes. She'd helped him figure the whole thing out, unknowingly, when she'd helped him work out the kinks in his solution to Einstein's field equations nearly three weeks ago. He'd made her a part of it from the very beginning; he just hadn't told her that he was doing so.

She sat down at her desk and stared at the one picture of family she had there, of her and Erik after her hooding at Caltech. Everything had happened so quickly from the time SHIELD whisked her away to Tromso to the chaos of New York playing out on her television to the hectic preparations to come to the South Pole, that she had few personal items with her. All her photos of her parents were either back in New Mexico, or else in storage.

What if I could have more than photos?

She shook her head and looked away, turning physically in the chair so that she faced the bed instead of the desk with its absence of her mom and dad.

He already made me a part of it. I'm already involved. What if…

It was a bad idea. It was a terrible idea. She'd seen the movies. Movies, she scoffed. This isn't the movies. This is real. Pathfinder's sitting right out there. But she'd seen the movies. She'd mentioned the butterfly effect to Loki. She hadn't bothered mentioning the movie by the same name; it wouldn't have meant anything to him. But she'd seen it. Every time the main character, whose name she no longer recalled, tried to change something bad about his past, something even worse happened – someone wound up dead, in prison, a double-amputee…. That was a Hollywood script. Ashton Kutcher, for God's sake. What about in Star Trek? They brought the whales back, didn't they? And the…thing that wanted to hear the whales…it decided not to destroy Earth…whatever. They brought the whales back. It worked.

Jane made a face at herself. Forget the movies. Forget whales and Kirk and Spock and Ashton Kutcher. Loki already proved it works. He said he tested it. He said he talked to Wright, and Wright remembers it. And he said something about a book on Asgard. A flicker of concern crossed her mind. Loki went to Asgard and all he did was something with a book? That seemed suspect. But she didn't dwell on it. He went to the past, did something with a book, and someone saw it. It became part of the current timeline. So if I went to the past, and… She found she couldn't quite fully formulate the thought. If I changed something, it would become part of the current timeline…

But what else would it change? A butterfly's wings, a two-minute conversation about The Flintstones, that was nothing compared to the death of two people. Someone had taken her father's job. Someone had bought their house. She'd gone to live with Erik. It was impossible to calculate just how much their deaths had changed the world, or how much would be different if they had lived.

Her father had just begun a new project at work; at the time she'd known little about it, but as she began her own study of physics, she'd dug up his notes from the computer files she'd saved and the thick black leather notebook where he kept his sketches and doodles and inspiration. She'd wanted to get to know the researcher side of him that she'd never really had a chance to as a child and young teen. He'd had an idea to make gamma-ray telescopes on Earth more feasible and with better resolution, and the National Science Foundation had been impressed enough to offer him a grant to pursue it. He'd been in the process of hiring on some grad fellows as assistants when the accident happened. Once she'd pieced together what she could of his idea, she'd thought continuing his work on gamma-ray telescopes would be a great way to honor him, but the NSF wasn't going to give a grant for something like that to a grad student, much less a college senior. Just as she finished her doctorate, someone else developed the new technology. It was now used in multiple telescopes around the world, and furthering mankind's understanding of the universe. What if her father had gotten there first, a decade earlier?

Her mother had become good friends with another woman, a sociologist, who'd also left an academic career behind. They talked a lot about urban sprawl and cultural displacement and gangs and other things that hadn't interested Jane at all, and sometimes they talked about writing a book together. What if they'd had the time to actually do it?

Jane frowned. Who cares if he invented that improved telescope ten years earlier? Who cares if she ever wrote some book? You're just justifying it to yourself. You would have them back, and that's all you really care about, that's all that really matters. You wouldn't have had to live through that hell. You could tell him about your work and he would be so excited. You could get her to teach you how to bake, and tell you more about those cultures she studied, and all about roses, instead of having to read about them in a book.

And then it became even simpler. The sound of her father's voice calling her "Janey." The comfort of her mother's arms when she was hurting. Sitting out under the sky with her father and stargazing. Dancing around the house with her mother, belting out the 60's and 70's songs her mother loved, not caring that neither of them could carry a tune in a bucket. I could have all that again.

Could I do it? Could I really do it? she asked herself.

How can I not? a voice inside her answered, the voice that didn't care what could go wrong, what any of the unforeseen consequences could be. If I have the ability to do it… For the first time she let the thought form into concrete words in her head. If I have the ability to go back in time, and prevent their deaths, and I don't do it…isn't that the same as letting them die?

Jane's hands were hurting; she realized she was gripping the top of the chair so hard her hands were a splotchy red and white. She let go of it abruptly and stood up, shaking her hands to get the blood flowing again. She had to get out of this room; it felt like the walls were closing in on her. It was after 2 AM now, and hardly anyone would be up and about. She headed out into the hallway, figuring she'd have the station to herself. She wrapped her cardigan tightly around herself and started walking aimlessly. Her dad would've loved it here, she thought, then gave a laugh. He would have loved the research opportunities, but he also loved California's climate.

"Don't you ever miss living in Colorado?"

"All the time, Janey. And then we go back for a few days over Christmas break and I have to shovel driveways and sanity returns and I thank God for California."

They would be proud of her. Maybe they'd be nervous for her, too. Her dad had been a bit of a pacifist, and her involvement with SHIELD would probably concern him. That made her smile. Her involvement with SHIELD concerned her.

So if I did it…if I did it…how would I do it? Loki was right, she knew the date. She knew the time, more or less. Softball practice always ended at five, so they would have picked her up not long after that. She pictured herself running up to her fourteen-year-old self, and trying to get her to stop thinking about what dress to wear to that stupid dance long enough to instead…cause some delay? So the timing would change?

How does it even work? she wondered. Time travel was, until now, entirely theoretical. Science dealt with it, but it was more often the realm of philosophy and science-fiction than hard science. If Loki had truly thoroughly tested it and found he was able to make small changes to the past – again a highly unsettling thought, though clearly he hadn't gone back and set himself up as Earth's ruler, so maybe he was telling the truth when he said he'd only conducted limited tests with no consequences of note – with effects felt in the present, then maybe…maybe a lot of the philosophies, and at least some of the science, was wrong. One major theory said that a potential time traveller who returned would never appear to have left, because he would return in the same instant that he left. But Loki had told her that time passed normally, and Pathfinder pulled him back exactly the same in the past as it had when they'd used it for travelling only through space, on the programmed five-minute interval system. The science of it would be incredible to explore…

So how would I do it? She wandered to the far end of the second floor corridor, past colorful checkerboard tiled walls, framed photographs, memorabilia from the station's history, then down the stairs to the first floor, where she ducked into the Music Room and sat down in one of the chairs there. An audience of one in a silent room.

She would have to avoid paradoxes, and in that case it might be safer to avoid interacting with herself. Or even better, with anyone at all. As they'd often done, her mother had driven her father to work that day, then kept the car to run errands and get to the class she was teaching that semester at a nearby community college, and from there she'd gone back to pick up her father before they both picked Jane up from her school. All she had to do was interrupt that schedule somehow.

A nail in the tire. It was simple. Exceedingly simple. She didn't need to say a word to anyone at all. She just had to go to the parking lot where the car would be – she had a brief moment of panic then that she could only vaguely recall what it looked like, before she remembered it was a silver Geo Metro – and shove in a nail. A half-dozen nails, just to be sure. Money was tight, her mom wouldn't be happy to come out and find a flat tire, but she'd be alive. Even if she didn't get a new tire that afternoon, she'd at least have to get the spare on to drive it, and that would make her late. Eventually her parents would pick her up from school, and all three of them would live on in blissful ignorance of the fate barely avoided that day. They would be there for her birthdays. The swim meets she'd competed in – or maybe she would never have given up softball. The college acceptance letters. Prom night. High school graduation. Parents' Day at college. College graduation. Her doctoral hooding. All those milestones along the way that she'd wished so badly they could have been there for…now they could.

If it really worked. Changing the timeline like that, those were the things that tended to be part of philosophy rather than science, and Jane knew something of the philosophies as well. Some said it wasn't possible; some said it was. Some placed heavy restrictions on it, and then there was the grandfather paradox. According to some theories, going back in time to save her parents would create a paradox even without killing her grandfather. And some theories said the universe, somehow, wouldn't permit paradoxes to form. And then there were all the theories about consequences to the universe writ large when the timeline was altered – would it split the universe in two along a time axis? Create an alternate reality?

Nervous energy – anxiety, really – bloomed in her again and she stood up and began to pace the room, full of instruments she couldn't play, except for that one tune on the piano. The universe writ large. What was the universe compared to David and Naomi Foster?

And anyway, Loki had already tested it, she reminded herself. She again pulled the cardigan tight again, then sat down at the piano. She would have to ask him more about his tests, which he'd spoken of only vaguely, other than the six-months-previous one to the South Pole. When they'd done the initial tests with Pathfinder, she'd been the one insisting on the tests, and he'd been the one wanting to leap without looking. But he said he'd tested it six times, and he hadn't mentioned any problems. On the other hand, he had a habit of not telling her things. Including major things. Like the fact that he was testing time travel.

What would Mom and Dad think of Loki? Jane gave a little laugh and idly pressed a few of the piano keys. Her parents, she figured, and especially her mom with the cultural anthropology work she'd done in Central America, were pretty open and accepting people. Loki might be pushing the bounds of their acceptance, though, given that some of his past actions had directly endangered her life, on top of the other things he'd done on Earth. She thought then of Thor. It had crossed her mind once before, to wonder what they would think of Thor, and she'd dismissed the thought as too far from reality to even consider. It didn't seem quite as unrealistic now. Now she could almost picture them in the same room, in their old living room actually, Thor looking real and her mom and dad looking a little hazy and vague, but about the same as they had some fifteen or so years ago. Her dad would pepper him with astronomy questions that Thor would have a hard time following, but he was a teacher, and he would figure out what terminology to use so that Thor would understand. And then when Thor left, her dad, who along with being a bit of a pacifist was a bit of a traditionalist, would tell her that he should really cut his hair. Her mom would keep him busy with questions about Asgardian society, the things that Jane might also enjoy hearing about but would almost never think to ask herself, and she imagined them doing just as much laughing as talking, and her mom peppering the conversation with stories from her studies.

She shrugged her shoulders, though there was no one there to see it. There was, she supposed, no reason those same things couldn't happen with Loki. Loki, of course, by now, wouldn't require that extra effort of finding common vocabulary to talk about astronomy. Her dad would find Yggdrasil mesmerizing, and Loki now knew far more about it than Thor, or, she assumed, anyone else in Asgard. And Loki, at least if he was in one of his good moods, would delight her mother with his stories just as much as Thor would.

Loki.

Her parents safe at home, in her mind, as though nothing had ever happened, a new idea occurred to her. What if I could stop the damage that Loki did when he came here? That wouldn't be so easy; certainly a few nails in a tire wouldn't do it. He'd appeared right in the heart of SHIELD's brand new super-secure research facility in New Mexico. She couldn't think of any way she could change it without interacting. She could warn Erik, and… Erik. She could stop Loki from ever getting to him. If she just took Erik out of the equation, then Erik would be fine, and Loki, maybe he would never have been able to get the Tesseract to open up a portal to the Chitauri. Or maybe Loki would just take one of the other scientists instead. Erik had been made the principal investigator, but surely there were others there who understood it just as well as he did, or almost so.

Her elbows caused a discordant sound when she rested them on the keys and slouched. This one wasn't at all so easily changed. Saving Erik from the trauma he went through at Loki's hands would be wonderful. But it would seem to create a paradox. If she somehow managed to stop Loki from letting hordes of Chitauri invade Earth, would he still wind up at the South Pole with her, telling her about the time travel that would enable her to go back and…but if he hadn't caused all that havoc, all those deaths, in the first place, then she wouldn't need to go back and stop him from doing so… Elbows still on the keys, Jane rested her head in her hands and rubbed her forehead. What a mess.

She would have to think more about Loki later. Maybe he wouldn't be so thrilled with the idea of her trying to go back and change his own past, anyway. But over a thousand dead…surely there was something she could do?

A thousand dead… It was nothing. Crass, Jane thought, wincing at the reaction, but, in the grand scheme of things, true. How many had died in natural disasters – earthquakes and tsunamis and flooding? Time travel wouldn't give her the ability to stop an earthquake, but it would give her the ability to give a warning, so people could evacuate. How many had died in wars? In genocides? She thought of World War II, unfathomable millions dead around the globe. Her dad had been a big admirer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who'd been a pacifist but nevertheless became part of a plot to assassinate Hitler, and was later executed. Maybe she could help him somehow. Or even better, stop Hitler before he ever got started on his Third Reich.

Jane shuddered and sat up from where she'd been leaning against the piano. You're thinking about killing someone, she told herself. But it wasn't much different from what Bonhoeffer had been part of, was it? If a pacifist pastor found the cause sufficiently just to join an assassination plot, couldn't an astrophysicist opposed to changing history also make an exception?

It was a heady thought. Jane was no historian, but she knew it wouldn't be as simple as just deciding to do it. She knew her parents' schedule, more or less, on the day of the accident. She didn't know Adolf Hitler's schedule on any day, but she supposed that information was available, for some days at least. But Hitler wasn't the whole of the Nazi Party – if he were to be killed, someone else might simply step into his place with nothing really changing. It wouldn't be easy, but it didn't have to be easy, it only had to possible.

"I've proven it can be done."

Hitler was certainly western society's favorite go-to example of a mass-murdering dictator, but what about all the rest? Jane struggled for names and a few came to mind – Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin. Anybody ruling North Korea and spending money on whatever luxuries they spent it on while their people starved. Jane's head swam with the growing ideas. She couldn't even remember which country Pol Pot had tried to run into the ground, somewhere in Asia. What she didn't know, she could find out. So many atrocities in history, and I could stop them all. I could do it. Me.

She clasped her hands – they were shaking – and let out a shuddering breath. She set her hands back on the keyboard and looked down at herself. Same 5-foot-3 body. How would I ever know when to stop? she asked herself, finding herself a little frightened at her own increasingly grandiose thinking.

She forced her thoughts away from the grandiose and back to the more personal and immediate. Her parents first. Then Loki. Erik. Phil. Jocelyn. Even Mari, right here at the South Pole, and the survivors' guilt she felt over the trauma her former coworkers in a Manhattan insurance firm endured. What if she could change it all? It came to her then – she didn't need to go to Erik, to convince him not to go to work that day, or not to agree to work on SHIELD's super-secret project. She could go directly to Phil. He'd been there, in Puente Antiguo. He'd seen everything that happened there. She could convince him to shut down the Tesseract project before it even began, well before Loki ever came here. He would believe her, because she hadn't even known of the Tesseract's existence then.

Her eyes narrowed. She was back to the paradox problem. If Loki never came to Earth at all, then he certainly would never have come to the South Pole, and even more certainly he never would have learned how to use Pathfinder to enable time travel to allow her to go back and prevent his arrival. Maybe I wouldn't need to do it again. Are there multiple, infinite timelines in constant motion, or only the one? If there's only the one, then maybe I would only need to go back once, and it would just change everything from that point forward. She shook her head. That was problematic, too. But for the sake of argument, and to not get dragged down too many theoretical rabbit holes, she set it aside. She pictured herself doing it, going back, maybe to the moment right after Thor had pulled her close and taken to the sky to show her the bifrost. Phil would realize it couldn't possibly be the same her, and he was ridiculously unflappable – he'd register her reappearance in different clothes with a blink and then be ready to listen. It could work. It would be easy.

Except for ooooone little problem, she thought, remembering who she'd left out there with Pathfinder. Loki could try to stop her. Or he could program Pathfinder and follow her, going back in time to stop her from stopping him. And if he did that, then why wouldn't he just take it a step further and ensure he actually won this time? They could be stuck in an endless cycle of competing time changes. Something about this problem seemed weirdly familiar to Jane, and her brow knitted for a moment before she realized why.

It's the Holy Grail problem. If she went back to stop Loki, Loki could simply go back to stop her. If she went back to somehow stop Hitler from ever coming to power, what if some Nazi figured it out, attacked her in the middle of it, stole the devices that allowed Pathfinder to recall her, and he went back instead and stole Pathfinder and used it to ensure the Nazis conquered the world? Okay, maybe not that likely, but forget the Nazis. As soon as somebody else figures out we can change history, everyone will want Pathfinder. Maybe to do evil, but maybe to do good. Someone whose life they want to save. A bad decision they want to undo. A missed opportunity they want another chance to pursue.

Chaos, she thought. It would be utter chaos. The entire world would scramble to control Pathfinder and Yggdrasil and fate itself.

Jane believed in God, in a kind of vague, undefined sense, not having put too much thought into who He was, preferring to view the world solely through the lens of science but allowing for the possibility or even likelihood of something more. The one thing she knew for certain about that was that she wasn't God; she found her desire to remake the world in her preferred image shrinking. There was reluctance and even a certain sadness in the shift, but along with it a growing sense that she'd just pulled herself back from a very dangerous edge, maybe one not too unlike the one Elsa had fallen from in Indiana Jones, and Indy had nearly followed her over. They were better off without the Tesseract. And they'd be better off without the Holy Grail. And Pathfinder, with its time travel capability? Would they be better off without it? But Indy used the grail to save his father's life. Why can't I do the same? It's not asking too much, is it? I don't have to change the world. Just a few lives. Just my life. What's so wrong with that?

"Look at the two of you. The only people in Palo Alto who are actually happy about the power outage."

"Mom, come look!" Jane called to her mother, who shook her head and laughed and left the doorway for the front yard where Jane and her father had carried two of the folding chairs they used for camping.

"Show her Pegasus, Janey."

Her mother knelt down on her knees next to her. "Give me your hand," Jane said, and just like her dad did with her, she pointed to the stars that made up the constellation in question. "Pegasus is a winged horse in Greek mythology. And that star, the bright one there, is Enif, and it's the horse's mouth."

"Muzzle," her father corrected.

"Muzzle," Jane repeated with a nod, then continued.

Jane sat, lost in thought, eventually rising and absently pacing. The hour grew later and turned to morning with nothing to show for it.

/

/

Loki sat out in the jamesway for hours, convinced Jane would return before long. He'd given her a way to regain two people she'd loved deeply and lost. Why was the answer not simple? As soon as the possibility had occurred to him, as soon as he'd remembered that oath to Frigga, his decision was made. There was no doubt, no second-guessing, no hesitation, there was certainly no anger. Pathfinder afforded an opportunity to make things better. He hadn't, of course, done it for himself – he'd made peace with Baldur's death long, long ago – he'd done it for Frigga. Tried, anyway. Jane's loss was so much more recent. He couldn't fathom why she wouldn't jump at the chance to change it.

And while there was a certain degree of manipulation in what he'd said to her – he did need for her to accept this use of Pathfinder – he also truly wanted it for her. If he couldn't bring Baldur back, then some true good could still come from all this if she could bring her parents back. It wasn't as though some future Loki, or fate, or whatever it was, would try to stop her from doing good. She wasn't a monster. She is honorable, he thought. She can't possibly turn her back on a chance like this.

He wondered how it would change her life, to have continued her journey to adulthood with her parents, instead of going to live with Erik at age 14. He wondered what would have happened to him had his parents, those he'd believed were his parents, died when he was 14. He and Thor would perhaps have gone to live with Uncle Ve, who he supposed would have ruled in Thor's stead until he turned twenty. Twenty-year-old King Thor, Loki thought with disgust. A Midgardian teenager. Asgard would have fallen to Nidavellir while Thor was busy doing his best to personally empty the taverns of their mead. And what would have become of me? I was hardly grown then, either. Where would I have been, without her guidance and support, her strength when I was weak? How much I still depended on her then. Better to have had her, or at least believe he had her, for as long as he did and lose her, than to have lost her way back then.

But Jane did not return.

And Loki decided that if she was too worried about butterflies flapping their wings to do what she surely wanted to, then he would need to go further to convince her of the merits of his discovery. He would need a backup plan.

/

/

"Loki?"

"No. Go away," he mumbled.

"Loki, wake up."

He opened first one eye, then the other. He'd fallen asleep on the nearest bed in the jamesway, and he'd thought Jane's voice had been part of a dream. Given that his dreams were rarely all that pleasant, even when not controlled by Thanos's minion, he hadn't wanted Jane to be a part of it. Certainly the last time he'd dreamt of Jane, when it had been her whose eye he'd needed, it hadn't been pleasant. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and stood. He hoped he hadn't been talking in his sleep again. He didn't remember any actual dreams, which he supposed was a good sign, and Jane didn't seem concerned. Though she did seem very serious. He remembered then – he'd confessed to her about his visits to the past – and glanced over at the laptop, still open.

"Well, then. Shall I program Pathfinder? You recall the date?" he asked, going over to the laptop. "Do you want me to assist?"

"Where would it end?"

Loki narrowed his eyes in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean…if I went back and saved them…what would I want to go back and do next? What about Erik? He lost his wife. What about 9-11? If I could stop that, all those people in New York and Washington and on the planes would have lived, and maybe a couple of wars would have been avoided. What about Hitler, and Stalin, and serial killers, and…where would it end?"

"It ends where you want it to end. You can't save everyone."

"But why should it be up to me who to save and who not to? No one should have that kind of power. It's dangerous. It's…corrupting."

Loki stood near the table; Jane still stood near the bed, several paces away. He closed the distance. She needed reassurance. "Then it ends with your parents. Only them," he said softly, reaching tentatively for her arm.

Jane pushed his arm aside and stepped around him, toward the more open area of the jamesway. "No, Loki, aren't you listening? I can't do it. Not even…" She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, feeling the tightening in her throat and trying to keep the tears at bay. "Not even for them," she said once she opened her eyes again and looked steadily at Loki. "Not even for me."

"Why not?" Loki asked, his voice tinged with anger. Does she truly believe it to be wrong? Would she believe it was wrong that I tried to save Baldur?

"It's…it's like a door that…once you opened it, you could never shut it again. Like Pandora's box."

"Who is Pandora?" he asked testily, already knowing he didn't care in the slightest who Pandora was, he just wanted Jane to do this.

Jane waved her hand, wishing she hadn't mentioned it. "Different mythology. Greek. Pandora opened a box she wasn't supposed to, but she couldn't resist temptation and bad things started to escape from it. She tried to close it but she couldn't until everything evil had spread all over the world and the only thing left in the box was hope. It means…when you do something you think is innocent, or trivial, but it turns out to have really negative consequences. I just meant to say it's something I don't think you could leave aside and walk away from after doing one thing that seems good and right. The temptation would be too great. And once other people started finding out about it, it would be the same as the grail from Indiana Jones. Or the Tesseract. These are abilities we weren't meant to have, Loki. In this case, changing time…no one was meant to have that kind of ability. I can't do it. And you have to stop doing it, too."

Anger continued to build as Jane explained. "You're saying this is evil?" he asked, thrusting his arm out to the side, palm open, in the general direction of the laptop and, beyond the jamesway's wall, Pathfinder. "How self-righteous you are! It isn't evil to save a life, Jane. To try to save one. You think it's evil both to take lives and to save them? You suddenly think using Pathfinder is evil? You built it, Dr. Foster, I had nothing to do with that. By your logic doesn't that make you evil, too?" he demanded, only marginally aware of what he was saying anymore; he certainly wasn't thinking before the words came out. He couldn't believe that Jane did not want to save her parents' lives, and that she had the gall to call the attempt – his attempt – evil. Like Odin had made him feel with his reaction to the drama he'd staged as a youth, based on the book from Nidavellir. And all the while a tiny part of him, a flicker somewhere along his spine that he couldn't bear to acknowledge, said she was right. That he had done it, and therefore it was obvious that it was evil.

Jane, meanwhile, was shaking her head. "No, that's not…that's not what I meant." Stupid Pandora's box. "It's not…the desire to save someone's life, of course that's not evil. But that kind of interference in history just isn't right. Things happen, and…good things and bad things…and…nobody has the right to go back and undo them and change everything that happened since. Reality as we know it wouldn't exist anymore. Anything that happened that you didn't like, you could just go and change it. No more mistakes. But we learn from our mistakes, hopefully. And we just…Loki, can't you see it? It's just not right."

"Can't you see it?" The question kept repeating in his mind. No, he couldn't see it. And "reality as we know it" not existing anymore…that sounded perfectly acceptable to him. "So you don't think any good can come of it?" he asked, anger cooling into acceptance that her opinion was firm.

"I think…the intentions can be good," Jane said, treading as carefully as she could. Loki was taking this way more personally than she'd expected, and on top of her exhaustion from being up all night, her own feelings were still in a messy emotional whirl over how deeply personal this was for her. For a time, her parents had lived again, in her thoughts and imagination, and now they were dead again, for all time. "But no, ultimately I don't think any good can come of it."

Loki nodded. "I see." He stepped back over to the table and slid the transmitter and structural integrity field generator onto his wrists and the RF switch into his satchel, which he then got into position under his right arm.

Jane watched him in something approaching a stupor, but when he zipped up Big Red and started walking calmly to the door, the stupor fell away. "What are you doing? Where are you going? Loki, stop," she said, grabbing onto his arm. He shook it off with ease and kept going. She let him go – she couldn't physically stop him – and instead ran back over to the laptop. She brushed a finger quickly back and forth over the mousepad, but when the screen lit up, a password control box appeared. Jane stared at it, dumbfounded. She had never set a password on it. Loki had locked her out of her own laptop.

/

I've been meaning to mention for ages, check out the Simon & Garfunkel "I am a Rock" song lyrics "feederofthepack" posted in a review, under "chapter 92" (my Ch. 91 "Words") on the tab - to a stunning degree in tune with Loki (like, it could be his theme song), at least as I've elaborated on him here. Also "Helvegen" by Wardruna, mentioned by "jackelinelittle", very cool-sounding.

Also, 500 follows! Woo-hoo! ;-)

If you've PMed me and I haven't responded (I think I still haven't even responded to all reviews from the last chapter yet!), I'm not ignoring you, I just haven't been home much lately. I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

Previews? Nope. There's nothing I could put here, pretty much, that wouldn't be overly spoilery. But I'll give you an early excerpt:

"Loki, please let go. You said you would wait. You said you wouldn't do anything without me. You said it was my choice. I made my choice, okay? Please."

"You don't understand. I'm going to prove you wrong."