Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Four – Preparation
"Do you remember the man you saw me and Thor being introduced to on Asgard? The Light Elf?" Loki asked when they were both sitting at his desk, looking at a sketch showing the layout of the arrival area of the portal he intended to use.
"Prince…something like Nathan?"
"Nadrith. He is now king of the Light Elves, the Ljosalf, and at war against Asgard."
"Oh. Oh! I hadn't thought of that. He seemed nice."
"He was being introduced to two young princes in front of the king and queen of Asgard. Of course he seemed nice. It was hardly in his interest to appear anything other than nice."
"Okay, I get it. It was just a comment." You really are in a bad mood today, aren't you? Jane thought. Still, she remembered when she would have called the way he was acting with her today a good mood for him.
"Nadrith is a practical man. And shrewd. He thinks before he acts. Unlike some others I might mention. But-"
"You?"
Loki looked at her sharply. "I was thinking of Thor. But it doesn't matter. Nadrith has nothing to do with this, except indirectly. We're going to Alfheim ninety years ago, when Nadrith's father stepped aside and proclaimed his son king. I chose this time because I knew exactly where I was, and that for a span of several days no one but a servant or two saw me. All of us – Thor, Odin, Frigga, and I – attended the ceremony and some of the celebrations, and on the day we are to visit, everyone had returned to Asgard. So you see, I can keep things simple and travel as myself, with only the cloak to avoid drawing unwanted attention, and without being spotted in two different places. Your presence, however, complicates matters."
"Which is why I'm here to learn as much as I can. To make it no more complicated than necessary," Jane put in. No matter how many ways subtle or glaringly obvious he tried to get her to back out, she would not, and she wanted him to understand and accept that.
Loki released a slow breath and continued. "We'll start from Asgard, since I have no coordinates to use for Alfheim. On Asgard I'll have to be a little more careful – it's best if I'm not recognized, and if no one guesses you aren't Aesir. Which means you must stay silent. I don't want any questions or attention."
"Okay, I can do that. Although I have to tell you, I'm not entirely convinced you aren't just saying that to keep me from arguing with you."
"I won't deny it has its added benefits," Loki said with the barest of smiles.
"Uh-huh. Keep my mouth shut on Asgard. Got it. Was there anything special going on there on the day we're going to?"
"No, nothing. Half the population would have been on Alfheim. A new king had just been proclaimed. That doesn't happen often anywhere but here, Jane."
"I guess that makes sense," Jane agreed readily, though it didn't seem to her that it happened all that often on Earth, either. Maybe if you threw in presidents and prime ministers with kings. "All right. Nadrith just got crowned, and it's a really, really, really big deal. Got that, too."
"No, not crowned. The Fire Giants use a crown. No one else outside whoever uses them on Midgard. You must be careful with your speech there."
"Not crowned. Okay. Do you have something I can take some notes on? Or I could go get my notebook."
Loki opened a drawer, withdrew a blank sheet of printer paper, and handed it to Jane, then held out his hand, grasped, tugged against a slight resistance, and took out a pen. Jane took it from his outstretched palm with something approaching reverence. Loki rolled his eyes. "It's just a pen."
"Asgardian pen. Does it do anything magic-y? Or maybe I should say, does it have any unusual scientific properties?"
"You press the tip onto a piece of paper and it writes."
"Killjoy." She tested it by writing her first name. It wrote in black ink, and didn't seem magic-y at all.
"If you must know," Loki said after her look of disappointment, "this particular model of pen is guaranteed not to run out of ink for at least six hundred years." It was worth taking the time to indulge her – the way she now inspected the pen with narrowed eyes and furrowed brow was comical.
"How is that even possible? Where does the ink come from?"
"From inside. It uses the ink much more efficiently than the ones I've seen here."
"I guess so! But how?"
"You are an exasperating woman. I am a…I was a…" He gave up. He was nothing at all at this particular moment in time except a dethroned king, and Jane would not want to hear that. "I never studied pen-making techniques. Just because I am from Asgard doesn't mean I'm an expert in how every little thing there works."
"Okay, okay. You don't know how the pen works. Got that, too." Jane wrote down what he'd said about crowns and 90 years and Nadrith. "You know, a pen with a six-hundred-year guarantee would be so wasted on me. And I don't mean because I'm not going to reach six hundred. I can't keep track of pens to save my life."
"That's why I store them as I do." Loki wrinkled his brow and thought back. "Actually, these are over six hundred years old. I suppose the ink could run out at any time."
"You remember when you bought your pens? Like…in the 1400's or something?"
"1300's," Loki said, flashing her a grin. "Yes, I remember because…my mother bought them for me, and taught me how to store them and always have them on hand, too."
"Yeah? Your mom got you this pen?"
"In the 1300's," Loki said, still smiling.
"And she uses magic, too, huh? Did she teach you a lot of magic stuff?"
"She taught me some 'magic stuff,' yes. Can we get back to Alfheim now?"
"I'm all ears." It wasn't lost on her that Loki had referred to his mother as such again – yet another of his conflicts she didn't fully understand. She wanted to ask more about her, but she would have to find the right time to do so, and now wasn't it.
Loki frowned; the expression Jane had used created an odd image in his mind's eye. "We will arrive in the rear courtyard of a tavern. I've used it before for this purpose – we'll arrive around dawn when it will be deserted." He took the top two pieces of paper from the nearest pile and held it out to Jane. "This is a diagram of the layout of the courtyard, the tavern itself, and on the second page in somewhat less detail, the surrounding area. I wanted to make it three-dimensional for you but your paper doesn't have the capability and it was taking too long for me to do it myself. Do the best you can with this, and then I'll test you on it."
Jane eyebrows went up – the idea of Loki "testing" her was a little condescending – but said nothing. She was confident she could learn this, especially if it was going to be mostly maps. She was good with spatial relationships. Loki could test her all he wanted.
"I will wear my cloak. We'll see if any others have been forgotten there that you can wear. Otherwise I'll have no choice but to try to change your appearance. Invisibility won't work, even without difficulties on my end. The portal will still register two people entering and we'll set off alarms and be automatically returned to Asgard."
"But why? I didn't have to hide my face last time."
"You may unintentionally do or say something that makes someone suspicious. And last time your face had not been entered into the Einherjars' repository of potential threats to the throne," Loki said with a growing sly grin.
"Threats to the throne? What are you talking-" And then she remembered. "Loki…you…did you…you did not-"
"Asgard has an excellent system of record-keeping, Jane. 'Jana of unknown parentage spotted displaying unusual degree of interest in guard contingent and behaving suspiciously around king and family. Accompanied by unidentified man whose face was partially concealed.' I imagine your entry reads something along those lines."
"You got me entered into some kind of Asgardian threat book?" Jane demanded.
Loki laughed. "I thought it a clever bit of mischief at the time, quite likely to make your first real trip to Asgard a bit more interesting, should you ever actually get to go. It could almost be interesting enough to make me wish to be there to see it when the Einherjar rush forward to pull you off of Thor's arm and declare you a dangerous threat to him," Loki said, picturing it as he spoke the words. The laughter died away, then. It was something he might have pulled on Thor long ago. It was something he had pulled on Thor once, more than once actually, in various ways. And while he might delight in teasing Jane now, once he'd added Thor into his imagined scenario it left a bitter taste in his mouth. If she ever got her "real" trip to Asgard, Loki would not be anywhere around, and he had no interest anymore in innocent mischief where Thor was concerned.
"So getting me arrested is your idea of a practical joke. That's great, Loki. Thanks so much for that."
"Not arrested. Detained temporarily perhaps, but probably not arrested. And you're very welcome." Getting Jane's face recorded in the Einherjars' records hadn't been his intent actually, despite what he'd just told her, but he couldn't say he'd been upset when he'd realized last night that it was a likely consequence of his goading of Jolgeir. Now, because it could complicate his journey to Alfheim, if he had it to do over he would not…probably.
Jane shook her head. Practical jokes had never been her thing. She'd laughed at a lot of the inspired pranks pulled at Caltech, but cringed at some of them, too. Still, as far as Loki was concerned, this was probably pretty mild, at least in intent. Thor would obviously vouch for her if it happened as Loki said, and if she were with Loki, she was fairly confident he wouldn't let her languish in some Asgardian jail. She hadn't even done anything wrong. "The pandemonium. I enjoy it," he'd told her. That's what he'd wanted, she supposed – those few moments when the Einherjar would think she was out to harm Thor or his family. It was mild, considering that he'd used those words to explain the grin on his face as people ran away from him screaming in terror in Stuttgart.
"Jane? Are you all right?" Loki asked. Her face had paled.
"Yeah, fine," she said, letting go of the disturbing image and focusing back on the current problem. "Does it have to be a cloak? If the idea is to make my face a little less visible, what if I wear a scarf? I have two from Tromso. I just haven't worn them here. And anyway, what you're suggesting is stealing. And changing history, when someone comes looking for the cloak we stole."
Loki glanced over at the wardrobe where his cloak was now stored. Jane's eyes followed his and he knew where this was headed before she opened her mouth.
"That's how you got yours, isn't it? You stole it from this same tavern we're going to. I knew that thing looked a little too worn for your tastes. Loki…," Jane said in frustration. She was beginning to fear this was going to turn into a never-ending battle.
"I doubt anyone missed it. And if the owner did come looking for it and found it gone, I imagine he was glad of the prompting to go buy a new one. Please save your indignation for something more serious than a stolen cloak, hm?" I am bound to supply it, after all. "As for your proposal, Asgardian women do not wear scarves on their heads," Loki said, hoping she would forget about the cloak. He had thought nothing of it at the time, and he should think nothing of it now, but it was harder when Jane was looking at him with an expression of disappointment. "However…there are cultures among the Vanir that do. Actually, if we make you look Vanir, from the Vestmar Mountains region, that could work quite well. You can braid your hair?"
"Sure," Jane said. The stolen cloak – or more precisely Loki's utter lack of concern over it – bothered her, but she'd decided a long time ago that she wasn't going to berate him for things he'd already done. He knew what she thought about it, and that would have to be enough. "I don't know how to do anything fancy, but I can do a simple braid."
"Good. Then you will braid your hair, and use the scarf I repurposed for you. I'll show you how the scarf should be worn later. You'll wear it with the gown, and your regular brown boots. The people from that region even tend to be a bit shorter than average, so you could actually wear some other shoes if you prefer, but I would recommend boots. We'll have some walking to do."
"Boots it is. I got used to it already, I guess, wearing boots with a dress, so it's fine."
"I'll get them back to you tomorrow." Loki twisted a bit in his chair and picked up the next piece of paper. "This is the route we'll be taking to the portal. Memorize it."
Jane nodded as she jotted down her dress requirements and "Vestmar Mountains." "Did we go through any of these areas yesterday?"
"No. We were on the east side of the city. We're going to the west now. That's where the portal we're going to is located."
"Not the bifrost?" Jane asked. He'd referred to it as a portal before, but she'd hoped he meant the bifrost.
"Not the bifrost. Alfheim is just close enough that we've been able to build a few other portals between our two realms. Citizens can freely use them. To use the bifrost one must state one's business, and have permission. And I would never make it past Heimdall. Not peacefully, at least."
"We're definitely doing this peacefully. Do the portals use Yggdrasil, too?"
Loki started to answer, then realized he wasn't actually certain. "I'm not sure. I suppose I never thought much about it. I almost always used the bifrost for travel. In the interest of time, though, please try to contain your curiosity, Jane. If you ask me how everything from pens to portals works we'll be here until sunrise. The actual one, in September."
"I'll ask you more about it later then."
"Fine," Loki said, though he wasn't sure how much of a "later" there would be after this. "The portal we're using looks like this," he said, handing over the next sheet of paper. "I don't want you gaping."
Jane studied it. She hadn't seen what the drawing depicted, of course, but it looked very technically accurate – she could picture what it would look like in person, all except the colors, for he'd done the sketch in pencil. "You're a pretty good artist."
"I'm no artist. It's just a technical rendering. And this is what you'll see when we arrive on Alfheim."
Jane took yet another sheet of paper from him. The drawing on this one was of a spacious open courtyard, ringed by arches and cupolas and vine-covered lattice. For "I'm no artist" he was really pretty good, not that she had that much basis on which to judge, she supposed. She knew she couldn't have drawn this, though, except maybe with a compass and protractor and a lot of time. But if he wasn't accepting compliments for it then she wasn't going to force them on him. "No gaping, no problem. See, this isn't going to be hard at all."
Loki looked more closely at Jane as she studied the drawing of their arrival site on Alfheim. Her skin was quite fair, more so now than when he'd first met her, and her face was now covered in a layer of makeup he knew was hiding the pink he'd seen there yesterday evening, more coloration from their day outdoors than he'd come back with. "I'll buy you a cloak on Alfheim. You'll need more than a scarf there."
"We can't go around buying anything we feel like. It's interfering. I'm sure the scarf will be fine."
"It will not be fine. It's sheer. Your arms will be bare, you burn in the sun easily, and Alfheim has two suns. I will buy you a cloak. A basic one costs little; there will no impact on history," Loki said, struggling to remain patient. By the time they reached Niskit he may be on the verge of recovering unhindered use of magic, but he may also be on the verge of losing his sanity. The thought made him give a short laugh. Some would say he'd relinquished his grasp on that already, and some days he might not disagree.
Jane, meanwhile, hadn't really heard anything past "two suns." Those two words lit up her imagination and filled her with questions that fizzed inside her like a shaken bottle of soda and quickly bubbled up to the surface. "Is Alfheim circumbinary or non-circumbinary? I mean, does it orbit both stars or just one? It sounds like it must be circumbinary, but then the distances are so crucial. What's the distance between each of them, between the two stars and between each star and the planet? Does Alfheim have orbital and temperature irregularities?" Jane paused; Loki had given no sign that he was about to answer. "Too many questions at once, I know. So is it circumbinary or non-circumbinary?"
Loki still just stared at her for another moment. "Shall we reschedule our little visit to Alfheim to next winter?"
"Oh, come on, Loki. You can't just casually tell me that Alfheim is part of a binary star system – an actual habitable planet – and leave it at that. Some astronomers don't even believe that's possible."
"Then obviously some astronomers are wrong. You can correct their false beliefs when we return, if you like. Can we move on now?"
"Loki...," Jane began in both frustration and resignation. By the time this preparation was over, Jane was certain she would be able to fill a shelf with books of questions, all written with one of Loki's 600-year-old pens. Pens that wrote for 600 years she could set aside. An honest-to-goodness binary star system with a habitable planet…that was another thing entirely. But Loki looked a little peeved – well, a little more peeved than he'd already looked – and Jane knew how anxious he was to get through this process. Loki was far more willing to answer her questions, generally speaking, than he used to be, so she would just have to ask another time. "Okay, so…two suns…bad sunburns…which really almost has to mean Alfheim is circumbinary otherwise surely it would be thrown out of its orbit if the second sun was close enough to…" Jane let out a groan as she stopped herself. She'd been trying, and had managed to reorient her attention for all of about five seconds. Take two, Jane thought with a deep breath. "What it means is it would be easier if I'd just brought sunscreen, but I didn't. So…maybe we can find some really really cheap cloak. I guess that's okay. I hope."
Loki nodded, relieved Jane was finally dropping her irrelevant questions, but then sighed. She looked miserable. "I'll tell you about it later," he said, even as he realized that in order to do so he'd have to do some thinking about it himself. He'd studied some of these facts about Alfheim and its dual-sun system, but that was a very long time ago and he hadn't thought much about it since. Alfheim was simply Alfheim, and he wasn't sure whether he would be able to answer all of her questions about it. It was mildly vexing, actually, that he had lived a thousand years never bothering to ask some of the questions she did in seconds, as though she could not bear to exist another minute without that knowledge and understanding, this despite the fact that he'd always been known for his curious mind. A difference stemming from our life spans, perhaps, he thought. He regarded Jane thoughtfully; her lips had quirked up into a crooked smile, and he imagined that behind those lips she was biting her tongue to stop herself from demanding the answers now. "We'll have some time when we're on Alfheim. It's about two hours' ride from the capital to the town we'll go to first, from there another two and a half hours, approximately, to where Niskit lives, on foot." He glanced down at her short legs. "At a brisk pace. With a long stride." It would be no sacrifice on his part to tell her such things, and the way her smile brightened her face and banished her gloom brightened his mood as well. But then the smile faded.
"Two hours' ride? As in, on horses?"
"Yes, though we'll charter a coach. Extra anonymity from the public at large, and easier for you, I suspect."
"I can ride. You know I've ridden donkeys, anyway. But that's not my point. I know you don't want to hear this, but Loki, we can't keep interacting with all these other people. What if we got the last coach and stopped someone else from-"
"For the love of all that is sacred, cease this," Loki said, exasperated. "We will neither cause hurricanes nor other natural disasters, nor bring war or peace, nor change the course of anyone's life by renting a coach, Jane. How about this? In the incredibly unlikely event that we find out we would be chartering the last coach in Alfheim's capital city, we will decline it and walk. Your feet will be so tired and blistered you'll beg me for a horse, or perhaps to carry you – I warn you now that that will only cause me to laugh at you– but we will not have deprived of a coach anyone whom history demands must have one. Is that acceptable to you? Jane…we will be breathing the air there. We will see and we will be seen. That doesn't mean we will interfere in history. We will do no more than is necessary, and we will stay no longer than necessary. But avoiding all interaction will not be possible. You must understand that. And if we must argue over every single step we take there, this will never work." And that was not an acceptable outcome.
Jane nodded. He was right. She knew he was right. But she was right, too. And she couldn't help worrying that she was the only one troubled by the consequences of changing history. "Let's lay down some ground rules, then. We'll do what we can to try to blend into the crowd, and not draw any attention to ourselves. And-"
"In the time and place we're visiting, I am a prince, Jane. Rural villagers may not know or care who I am, but in the capital I'll be recognized. You must accept that as well. It's precisely why I chose the time I did, since I know recognition won't be a problem. I understand your concern, though, Jane, I truly do. I…I admit, I don't share it to the same extent." Or at all, really. "But I swear to you I'll make every attempt to keep our interaction minimal, and to do nothing on this trip that one might reasonably expect to change history in any meaningful way." He kept his eyes fixed on hers, kept blinking to a minimum, made sure his hands were out away from his body in a gesture of openness. There was no lie in his words, but there was deception nonetheless, in his deliberate specification of "on this trip."
Jane thought it over for a moment and nodded. That was the best she was going to get from him, and she would certainly take it. "No provoking the Einherjar?"
"The entertainment you deny me, Jane. But no, no provoking the Einherjar. The temptation should be easily avoided, anyway – we won't be on Asgard for long, and there are no Einherjar on Alfheim. They have their own guards. And I promise not to provoke them either," Loki said with an innocent smile.
Jane couldn't help smiling back, though Loki had clearly gone into teasing mode. The smile made her think of the ten-year-old Loki she'd seen just yesterday. And that then made her wonder what had brought that happy little boy to the man before her now, what had led him to commit the horrific acts he had against Jotunheim and against Earth. It wasn't the first time she'd wondered. She knew him so much better now, she knew some of the major events of his life, things that obviously hadn't been easy to endure, things that could easily have jaded him and made him bitter, but she felt no closer to understanding why he'd done what he'd done. "Good, we're agreed," she finally said. "Neither of us is provoking anyone."
"Can I get that in writing? I mean, I presume it means you aren't allowed to provoke me, either," Loki said with a smirk.
"We'll make it a pact. Another interrealm treaty," Jane said, sticking out her hand.
Loki looked at her hand skeptically but took it and gave it a dutiful shake. What an odd gesture, really, he thought, though he had shaken Jane's hand before, and others', but Jane's only when she still thought he was Lucas. There was an intimacy to it, holding another's hand this way, and at the same time an emptiness, a cold formality that felt out of place. Jane's hand was softer, more relaxed in his than it had been when they first met, when it was more coldly formal. He felt his thumb begin to move lightly over the knuckle of hers without being aware of a conscious decision to do so, and quickly released her hand, schooling his features back to complete seriousness. "Now that that's settled, let's move on."
Jane nodded as Loki continued.
"There's a coach desk not far from the portal, in this direction," he said, pointing on the sketch. "I'll lead us there and I'll take care of the arrangements. We'll ride inside and that will keep us out of casual view. When we-"
"Hold on. You're not going to try to hide who you are though, otherwise?"
"No. Not on Alfheim. It would be too much of a risk. It is improper and unseemly for a prince of one realm to go sneaking around on another. Not that I haven't done it many, many times, but in this case if I did it and was caught, the scandal just may in fact change history."
Jane nodded, grateful that even if he didn't fully share her concern, he seemed to be taking it seriously. "What about what you looked like then? Did you look the same 90 years ago?"
"If I stood beside myself then I doubt you would be able to determine which of us was which."
"What about hairstyle? And length?"
That gave Loki pause. He hadn't considered it before. It would have occurred to him, he thought, once he was properly attired, but it was rather embarrassing for Jane of all people, less than two hours into filling her in on the plan, to bring something to his attention he hadn't yet thought of himself. He twisted around to the right, grasped a lock of his hair, and pulled it taut to get a good look at its length. He'd gotten it cut in Sydney as a basic precaution against recognition – he hadn't exactly had time to visit a barber after plummeting into Yggdrasil – but that was nearly four months ago, and it now reached his shoulders. He kept it well-groomed, but in a looser, more relaxed style than he had at the time. "It was shorter then. As when we first met."
"Do you do magic haircuts?"
Loki started to make a sarcastic comment but in the end just shook his head and laughed. "I have learned to do many things with magic, but I have never attempted to cut my hair with it, or anyone else's for that matter. Scissors work well enough. But who serves as barber here?"
/
/
For the rest of the afternoon, Loki and Jane continued working their way through his sketches and lessons, until dinnertime approached and Jane felt like she was reaching capacity for learning about Alfheim's towns and villages and customs and coaches, and they hadn't even begun discussing Niskit's village, much less Niskit herself. Loki was a bit curt with her at times – learn this! memorize that! – but he wasn't mean about it, just business-like. It was clear he took this very seriously, and she understood why and took it just as seriously. When they separated, she took her notes and the papers they'd gone over back to her room with plans to study them further before she went to bed. Loki was not going to regret bringing her; she'd make sure of that. Not unless he broke his word and started interfering in history any more than was absolutely necessary, anyway, but at this point she really didn't think he would do that. She was taking his concerns seriously, and he was doing the same for her.
They wound up at the same table for dinner, though not next to each other, part of a group, and to Jane Loki seemed a little stiff at first, but he quickly relaxed. At one point she turned from a conversation she was in with Tristan about the aurora shots he'd gotten that afternoon to hear Loki talking with Zeke and Gary about how fighter jets took off and landed on carriers. Jane smiled and turned back to Tristan, who offered to give her some pointers on making better use of the digital SLR camera Peter and the rest of the SHIELD crew in Tromso had sent her. She gladly accepted – she hadn't even attempted any photography in a while – but the reminder of SHIELD also made her glance over at Selby, at the next table, with a wave of anger toward the organization with which she'd been inextricably tied up for well over a year now. She could've done without the passive-aggressive way he'd handled things when he thought she was behind SHIELD's sudden interest in him, but she couldn't entirely blame him for losing it a bit. SHIELD could have that effect on people. She blamed SHIELD. And now she would be stuck in passive-aggressive mode, because Selby didn't want her to confront them. Part of her wanted to ignore him and go straight to Maria Hill, but Selby was worried enough and she knew he would freak out if she confronted her like that. It was strange, though, she thought now – if SHIELD was worried about Selby, why wouldn't they just ask her? She was here with him, in close proximity; she could have told them there was nothing to worry about. Selby had asked her questions – she understood his curiosity, it was no different from hers – but he'd never pushed too hard or in inappropriate ways. She could have told them that. Maybe even now they still don't really trust me either, she thought.
"Jane, you coming?"
"Sorry, what?" she said, twisting around.
"Pictionary," Nora said.
"Thanks, but I can't. You guys have fun."
The galley began to empty, but Loki was still talking with Zeke and Gary. Mostly, really, Zeke and Gary were doing the talking, but Loki appeared genuinely interested, nodding and reacting in other small ways to what they were saying.
"Do you want to wait 'til tomorrow?" Jane asked. It wasn't like there was any real urgency to their plan.
"No, I'll be there. Just give me a few minutes."
Jane nodded and left.
"Plans?" Zeke asked.
"Plans that require a significant amount of courage. She's cutting my hair tonight," Loki said, and it was only in the seconds that followed that he realized it never occurred to him to keep this from them, despite the fact that he didn't actually need to tell them about it.
"Jane cuts hair? Will she do mine?" Gary asked. "I've been doing it myself. I wouldn't look too closely. I don't mind growing my beard out but I can't stand long hair. On myself, I mean, no offense, Lucas. It's habit, I guess. The Navy, and then before that, my dad. Which I guess was the Navy, too, really."
"You may want to wait to see what mine looks like before you start lining up at her door. She hasn't precisely inspired my confidence. She last cut someone's hair several years ago, and she has no training in it at all."
"She has steady hands, though. That's something, at least, when you're talking about letting someone hold a pair of scissors to you," Gary said.
"And how exactly do you know about her steady hands, Gary, hm?" Zeke asked.
"I've seen her do soldering work, you dirty old man."
"Hey, it's been a long dry spell, man, you could at least make something up."
"If you'll excuse me," Loki said, a smile playing on his lips. He knew enough of both of these men to know neither meant any ill will toward Jane – and Gary was right, she did have steady hands – but if their jests went any further than this he didn't particularly want to hear it, or to be put in a position where he would have to insist they stop. Besides, he did have an appointment.
Some fifteen minutes later he was knocking on Jane's door. She was expecting him, so he was surprised when the door didn't open right away. He was just starting to step away, thinking perhaps she'd gone to the restroom or gotten distracted by something, when the door opened. She told him to come in, but he stood there, transfixed. She had braided her hair and wrapped the scarf he'd made for her around her head, one end of it trailing down her chest, the other over her shoulder and down her back. The framing brought out her eyes even without makeup and he could not look away.
"How do I look?" she asked.
"You look lovely," he finally managed to get out.
"Oh, well, I, uh, I meant 'do I look Vanir.' But thanks," Jane said, feeling a little awkward. It wasn't that she couldn't take a compliment; it was that he'd said it not like some perfunctory, obligatory response, but like he meant it. She brushed off the odd feeling, hoping that it simply meant that whatever that had been bothering Loki since they got back from Asgard had finally worked itself out. Things had gotten pretty comfortable between them again by the time they broke for dinner. "Come on in," she said when Loki began to look a little awkward himself. He stepped into her room wearing the sweatpants and shirt she'd given him for his "birthday," a patch of dampness on the back from his hair.
"You do look Vanir, or…somewhat. The, ah, the Vanir of the Vestmar Mountains," Loki said. He cleared his throat and focused on the chair Jane had pulled away from her desk, the white towel and scissors on top of it, the second white towel on the floor behind the chair.
"I wasn't sure if my hair should be showing."
Satisfied that he wasn't going to make a further fool of himself, Loki turned back to Jane, whose hands were now lightly underneath the edges of the scarf at her cheeks. "Personal preference, I think. But in this case you should pull it forward enough to obscure more of your face. And they wear them more tightly, I imagine because of the high winds there. The ends are…tucked in somehow, and tied behind the neck, so the braid is visible below it."
Jane played around with the scarf for a minute, eventually winding up with it tight around her face, one end tucked under the other, then wrapped around and tied off as Loki described. It felt a little restrictive, but it would take a pretty strong wind to blow it from her face. "How about now?"
"Yes, I think that's it. Close enough, at least." His face broke into a grin. "I can almost picture you with a little herd of goats surrounding you."
"Um, goats?"
"Didn't I mention? The women of the Vestmar Mountains are famous for their goat herds."
"You turned me into a goat herder. Okay, thanks, Loki," Jane said with a slow nod and a self-deprecating rueful smirk, grudgingly conceding that Loki had set her up well and she had walked eagerly right into it. "Wait. Are you making this up? Great Spiny River Crickets? A set-up within a set-up?"
"You wound me, Jane. Of course I'm not making it up. The Vanir are an agricultural people. But it's difficult to grow crops in the mountains. Their goats do well there, though. They aren't all goat herders, of course, if you find the idea so repugnant."
"It's not so repugnant, it's just…where I grew up? Not a lot of goats running around. So I hope nobody asks me any questions about them."
Loki chuckled. "No one's going to ask you about goats. But they will probably assume you're a goat herder."
"Okay, fine, whatever. I'll be Jana the Goat Herder. Why exactly am I hanging out with Prince Loki of Asgard?"
At that, Loki hesitated. The first thing that came to mind was best not said aloud, he thought, given that she'd been uncomfortable the last time he'd teased her like that. Well, you're a very attractive goat herder. "My interests were always wide-ranging. Perhaps I'm hoping to learn from your skills at animal husbandry," he said with a raised eyebrow.
Jane shook her head and worked the scarf off, setting it carefully atop the raised bed. "I think we better just not talk to anybody. Sit," she said, putting a hand to his arm and giving him a nudge to turn around.
Loki sat down and Jane took the towel from the desk and wrapped it around his neck, tucking it into the neckband of his sweatshirt. "If you do well at this, Gary may wish to engage your services as well."
"Oh, yeah?" Jane said with a laugh. "I guess I could." She took the comb and started working it through his damp hair, preserving the part his hair tended to fall at.
"Not like that," he said. "Straight back. I wore it smoothed back then."
She adjusted how she was combing it, and he showed her the length he wanted it in the back and at the sides. "I wasn't sure you'd want Gary and Zeke to know about this," Jane said, mostly for small talk as she began pulling his hair taut between her fingers and making her first cuts with the sharp craft scissors she'd found in the Arts and Crafts Room – the closest she'd been able to come up with to hair-cutting shears on short notice.
"The haircut will be fairly obvious."
"Yeah, I guess so. But you could've said you did it yourself."
"I don't mind them," Loki said a minute later. "They've led interesting lives, for how short they are."
Jane listened with a smile as Loki related a story Zeke had told last weekend at the poker game. It all felt weirdly domestic and normal, working on his hair as they talked. And it felt good to be so relaxed with him again.
"You must have worn every hairstyle known to man in your lifetime," she said as she started working higher up on his head, sending more black snips to the towel around his neck.
"I never dyed it green. Or any other color. Except as part of a larger disguise, but that doesn't really count. What about you?"
"Oh, my hair's pretty much always been like this. I permed it once, when I was 16. It was so awful. I got a flat iron and straightened it and I didn't really know what I was doing and it wound up so damaged that I cut it short, and that was really the only time I've ever worn it short."
Loki didn't know the word "permed," but as she continued he understood. He tried to picture Jane with curly hair and thought it might look nice, but he also thought he might be picturing it wrong since Jane herself obviously didn't think it looked nice.
Jane paused for a second, thinking of an old memory. She'd had four dolls, and was putting together a doll fashion show for her parents. She'd pressed her father to tell her which doll was prettiest, and while he never really answered that question, he'd reached out and run his hand over her long brown hair and made a simple comment that she'd never forgotten. Loki's head came back into focus – she was standing on her stepstool now to get high enough above him – and she resumed her snipping. "My dad told me one time that he liked girls with long hair, so I…I never really wanted to cut it short. I know that's stupid, I mean, it was just something he said when I was playing with my dolls, but he-"
"It's not stupid. It's natural to want to please one's father. To want his approval."
She sighed and let her hands fall to her sides. "I know. I just mean…I know he wouldn't actually love me any more or less because of the length of my hair. And still I keep it long."
Loki looked down at his right hand, the hand he'd reached out to Odin with, the last time he'd ever touched him. The last time he ever would. His feelings toward the man he'd believed to be his father didn't echo Jane's toward her father, not anymore, but that didn't mean he was incapable of understanding them, when he tried to. "You wish to honor him. His memory."
"Yeah. I guess," Jane said, though she still felt it was probably a little silly. "What about you? Did you want to please your father? I know you don't exactly get along now, but…at some point?"
At every point, Loki thought immediately. It wasn't quite true, though, he next thought. He'd also enjoyed defying him and causing mischief, some of it innocent, some of it a bit less so, but always, always, he'd wanted…something. "When I was young and naïve, yes," he finally answered. "But the length of my hair was nothing to do with him. I can't recall him ever expressing an opinion about it." I can't recall him ever caring. "It was my mother's request that I cut my hair for the ceremony."
Jane gave a soft laugh and resumed working on Loki's hair, pulling together different strands of it to check that it was even and making little trims when it wasn't. "You're over a thousand years old and your mother tells you when to cut your hair?"
"When one's mother is a queen, one does as one is requested to do."
"Yeah, I'm not buying that," Jane said, laughing a little harder. "I think you did it for her, because she wanted it that way and you wanted to make her happy."
"She always preferred it shorter," Loki relented with a sigh. "But you needn't laugh about it."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not making fun. You being kind of reluctant to admit it is funny. It's really sweet, actually."
"Sweet," Loki thought with something of a dazed look he was glad Jane couldn't see. Jane might be the only person in all the Nine Realms who could call him or his behavior "sweet." Frigga wouldn't call him that, even if she were ready to forgive him yet again. No one in New York would call him sweet. No one in Stuttgart. And Jane would retract her comment if she knew the whole truth.
"All set. This is as good as it's going to get," Jane said, setting the scissors down and carefully taking the towel from around Loki's shoulders without dumping the trimmed black locks everywhere. "Come over to the mirror and see what you think."
Loki stood, rotating his neck, feeling the strange lightness in his shortened hair. It wasn't as much as he'd had cut off in Sydney, but the peculiar sensation was at least as strong. He'd had a purpose then – work his way into Jane's life, find a way to use her to regain what he'd lost. He had a purpose now – remove Odin's fetters and undo the damage they'd already caused. Now, though, in a rather ironic twist of fate, Jane would be at his side as he did so. Then he would embark on his new future. He was ready. And he would make sure Jane was ready.
When he stood before the mirror, his mouth fell slightly ajar. It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough that he suspected no one other than his mother and his barber would notice the difference – something in the sides, a little too short, perhaps. He brought a hand down his body and from neck to waist his clothing changed. Not to what he'd worn to Nadrith's ceremony – he couldn't remember the exact details anymore – but what he'd worn to Thor's, which was not all that different and which he remembered perfectly well.
"Wow," Jane couldn't help muttering, stepping around to see the intricate layers of green cloth and brown leather and shiny gold and silver metal on his chest and up to his neck and down his arms, hidden from behind by the rich green cape that faded into nothing at his waist. The cape, the gold disks, the general style, all of it reminded her of greatly of what Thor had worn, when he was dressed Asgardian. Loki looked like he was dressed to impress, rather than intimidate.
Loki stared at himself in the mirror until it grew uncomfortable and he had to look away and release the illusion. He looked the same as before. He could pretend to be the same as before. But he wasn't the same as before.
/
Well, this chapter was delayed for hours over one particular word/phrase that was just driving me nuts, how to express/describe precisely what I meant to. And it's not even particularly important, no more than anything else. Well, I think I'm happy with what I wound up with...on the other hand I thought about it so much I might have just written "sea bass...sea bass...sea bass" and thought it sounded good. So if there's an unusual repetitive mention of a fish some people think is super tasty and I would not rank among my faves, that is why.
Loki's haircut arose due to a mention of the hairstyle issue by "MrsSwords," and Loki's chagrin at not thinking of it earlier is mine! Like Loki, though, I think I would have thought of it before they actually left, but maybe not, so I'm grateful she mentioned it.
Thanks as always to all readers and followers and favers, and extra-special thanks to all who have taken the time to review, registered or not, and share your thoughts. It's such an encouragement.
Previews from Ch. 105, maybe "Explanations": Jane learns more about Niskit...and about a few other people out there that Loki knows; old and new conflicts arise between them.
And excerpt:
"I guess so," Jane said with a slow nod. "So why did Brokk turn on you like that, anyway? You said you were old friends."
Loki looked away, and his gaze fell on his bed, where every night he permitted himself to sleep he also risked being tormented in his dreams, for if Thanos couldn't get him delivered in chains to Jotunheim, apparently he thought a little long-distance memory-twisting for old times' sake was the next best thing. He wouldn't tell Jane about that. He'd already had to highlight his vulnerabilities to her to convince her of the necessity of the trip to Alfheim's past; she didn't need to know about further weakness. As for the rest…it would do no harm to tell her. He wanted to tell her. His gaze shifted back to Jane. "I suppose you might say he found a more useful friend."