Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Twenty – Fault
At 11:29 Jane slipped into the conference room, which was packed. The people to her right scooted in closer together and Jane wedged herself in next to Wright, who was alternating between scratching his beard and biting on a fingernail, something she couldn't recall seeing him do before. She scanned the room for Loki, leaning and stretching to try to see around all the people on their feet, but after a third careful look around she was certain he wasn't there yet. She glanced at the door, just to her left, thinking that could work out well, if he made it there at the last minute and had little choice but to stand next to her. It would make it easier to grab him afterward, before he could run off again.
But she noticed something else in her search of the room: people were worried. At the few big meetings she'd attended in here before, it had been loud, ten conversations at once, people speaking loudly to be heard over everyone else's voice and the steady sprinkling of laughter. Just as many conversations were going on now, but the voices were subdued, and no one was laughing.
"Is this about the earthquake?" Jane said to Wright, who gave a last pull at the corner of his fingernail before shoving his hand into the pocket of his jeans.
"Yeah. Earthquakes, plural. Three now in the last two weeks or so. I did some earth physics in grad school, and I know enough to know this is really weird. There's no San Andreas Fault underneath us here, you know? It's seismically quiet. It's everything quiet, which is one of the reasons we're here."
"But…earthquakes can still happen here, right?" Jane asked, thinking again about Pathfinder.
"Obviously they can. Yeah, I mean it's just…I guess that's why they call it 'rare,'" he said with a shrug. "Rare means it does happen…just our bad luck to be here when it does."
Jane nodded, frowning deeply. Bad luck? Or something else… Three in the last two weeks… When was the first one? Jane asked herself, trying to recall. It was in the Saturday Science, so Saturday…May 29. But that was the day she'd found out about it, not the day it happened. She couldn't remember which day the article said they'd had the tiny earthquake that no one had felt.
Jane's heart sank. She and Loki had gone to Asgard on May 25. And there'd been another quake yesterday, June 8. The day she and Loki had gone to Alfheim. And now one today. Her eyes went wide. Loki isn't here. She pushed that thought aside and ran a hand through her slightly damp hair. Don't jump to conclusions, Jane. Loki and she had both used Pathfinder before, with no earthquakes. Unless repeated use makes it worse… There was no way to know, not with the available facts. But Pathfinder was going to have to be off limits until they could determine whether its use was somehow connected to the quakes.
"Oh, hey, you okay? Doc give you the all-clear?"
"Yeah, I'm good."
Wright started to say something else, but time was up.
"All right, let's get started," winter site manager Olivia said, striding into the conference room, followed by Ken and Drew. The seat at the head of the table had been left empty for her, and she dropped into it, then quickly redid her ponytail which a good quarter of her long curly brown hair had fallen out of. Glancing at her notes from time to time, she summarized the information they had on the earthquakes. The first had occurred on May 26. The day after the trip to Asgard's past. Then one yesterday, and the strongest one yet just an hour and a half or so ago, the day of and the day after the trip to Alfheim's past. The evidence was circumstantial. It could be a coincidence. But the mere fact of having earthquakes here at all – "weird," Wright had called it – made the possible connection hard to dismiss.
If Pathfinder were somehow causing earthquakes, then it appeared its effects were cumulative. Harvest Day on Asgard was hardly the first time Pathfinder had been used for time travel, much less travel in general. Loki had first gone to Asgard at the beginning of April, and the first time he'd used it as a time machine was the middle of May. But no quakes until May 26. None that were detected, anyway, Jane reminded herself. Oh, God, she thought, even glancing skyward with the thought. Did we do this? Tony's voice then popped into her head. "Did Loki do it?" She'd denied it with such confidence, as though Tony had lost his mind to even suggest it. The same way she'd denied that Loki could possibly have gone to Tony's building in New York and taken out the arc reactor.
Her mouth fell open and she quickly closed it again, teeth clamping over her upper lip to hold back a real reaction. Because she'd been wrong then, too. She felt so stupid she could kick herself. Of course Loki had done that. Tony had described a situation of chaos at his tower. Pandemonium. "I like it," Loki had said. Loki had also once said he wanted to kill Tony. Going to the recent past and wrecking up his tower must have seemed like a little prank to Loki by comparison. He'd probably meant it as little more than a test with convenient side benefits.
Conference room forgotten and Olivia's voice no more than white noise, Jane narrowed her eyes as she tried to pull the dates from her memory. She remembered talking about it with Tony, and instantly recalled when the incident at Tony's place in New York had occurred; it was the reason she'd been so certain Loki couldn't have done it. He'd been sitting next to her out at the Dark Sector Lab at the time. Watching the video of what he'd done in Stuttgart. She hadn't known then that he was no longer bound by time.
He'd gone back to that time in particular…for revenge, she realized. Not just a test. Revenge. That same day he'd "joked" – she'd never been entirely certain if it was a joke – about wanting to kill Tony. Tony sending that video had complicated things here for them, just at a time when she and Loki were getting along better. And just as Loki had been working on time travel. When he still needed Pathfinder. When he still needed her to check his field equations.
And he'd lied about all of it. He'd told her about each of his trips to the past, but he'd lied about this one. How many others had he lied about? How many other things had he lied about?
Has he been lying about everything? Did he never stop lying…and just switched to a different lie instead? To manipulate me again? So I wouldn't get in the way of what he really wanted to do?
Her instincts resisted the idea. But he'd had her believing every word he said hook, line, and sinker in the beginning, when he was lying through his teeth the whole time.
But he's different now. I know it. He's made friends, he's told me so many personal things, he likes hanging out with the guys here.
But he's a master manipulator. And he needed you to keep letting him use Pathfinder. To keep using time travel.
He told me about time travel. Voluntarily.
You would've figured it out before long anyway, you were getting there.
He tried to get a cure for Huntington's. I mentioned it to him once. When I first met him he wouldn't lift a finger to do anything for me. He saved my life, she remembered, heart speeding up with the memory of falling and falling and being convinced it was the end, then bouncing in Loki's dusty net. He called me his friend. Sort of.
It wasn't a lie. It couldn't all be a lie. It wasn't that Loki wasn't that good at cons. He obviously was. But if all those things – the signs of kindness and respect in him, his increasing ability to talk to her calmly about things that had once sent him into a frankly scary rage, the time he spent playing darts and poker and whatever he did with the band, the belching contest for God's sake! – if all those were a con, where was the motivation for it all? Loki's cons had a purpose. Maybe a kind of dumb one – petty revenge against Tony for sending that video that cast him in such a bad light and had literally made Jane vomit – but there was a purpose. What did competitive belching get him? Jane laughed then. Oh, right, my mistake. It gets him out of cleaning toilets and scrubbing pots.
"Jane?" Olivia said.
She froze for a second. Everyone was staring at her. She gave a nervous guilty smile. "Sorry, I got distracted."
Olivia nodded and continued, now alternating with Drew, the science support manager.
"What did I miss?" Jane whispered to Wright, who was still standing beside her.
"They got some software updates from the USGS, for the GSN station."
Jane looked up at him in confusion; Wright just raised his eyebrows. What exactly are we supposed to do about that? she thought, realizing she really out to be paying attention to this and not obsessing about Loki. The Global Seismographic Network station, part of a digital seismic network about which Jane knew next to nothing, was about three miles from the station. Anywhere else, three miles was nothing. At the South Pole in winter, three miles may as well have been a trip to the moon. No one ever went further than about a mile, the distance from the elevated station to the DSL out in the Dark Sector.
"…keep the vehicle moving to try to keep the fuel and the tracks from freezing up. We'll need someone up with the driver who can read ground-penetrating radar to watch for any crevasses that may have developed. We'll need a couple of people who'll be comfortable working with unfamiliar hardware. We'll need a couple of strong arms and backs to clear the accumulated snow from the hatch. We'll need-"
"We're sending people out there?" Jane whispered. It was pretty clear that that's what Olivia was saying, but it was also pretty unfathomable.
Wright's eyes were fixed on Olivia, and a few seconds later he spared Jane a glance that felt heavy, intense though not really focused on her. When he turned back to face Olivia, she knew he was going to volunteer for this crazy mission. By the time Olivia actually asked for volunteers, Jane knew she was, too.
"Jane, you just got out of Club Med. You aren't-"
"Yes, and I was fully cleared. Nora didn't put any restrictions on me. You need people good with unfamiliar hardware? All those devices I have out on top of the DSL, I built almost all of them myself. Anything that needs to be done with the equipment out there, I can do." Say yes, Olivia. Come on, say yes, Jane thought, trying not to let her desperation show too much. This might be my fault. You have to say yes.
"Nora?" Olivia asked.
Jane felt Nora's gaze from the other side of the conference room. She hesitated for no more than a couple of seconds. "She's fully cleared. Just leave the snow-clearing to somebody else."
Jane nodded, and so did Olivia; Jane let out a slow breath in relief. It would be her, Wright, Ronny, Ken, and Paul. Ken would drive and Wright would ride up front with him – he knew how to operate and interpret the GPR. Ronny and Paul would dig their way down through the ice to the hatch, and Jane and Wright would go underground and deal with the equipment. She wished Loki was going with them. Nobody here was stronger than him.
Where are you, Loki?
/
/
Upon reflection, he had planned this dismally.
Really, he had planned nothing, other than the time and place.
Thor was surrounded by Jane, Erik, and Darcy the entire time he was out in the desert. Obviously. Everything happened exactly as Jane said it had. Thor struck by the vehicle. Thor knocked out. Jane swooning over him. Or not – Jane ignoring him. Thor shouting out his demands and proclamations loudly enough that far away as Loki was, he could still make out the typically arrogant words. Darcy – he thought he might like this mortal – using some unfamiliar weapon on him that made him jerk like a puppet on a string before being knocked out again; under other circumstances he would have found it uproariously amusing. Thor being loaded into the vehicle and driven away.
Loki left behind in the dust.
He knew what happened next; Jane had told him. They were taking Thor to the local hospital. There he would not be a prince, with his own spacious private room – he was probably surrounded by others, the healers and the sick, and he had caused some kind of problem there, probably throwing a tantrum of some sort when they hadn't treated him with the proper deference and respect. Then Jane would pick him up…and feed him, he thought, scouring his memories of what Jane had told him of this handful of days. Breakfast, most likely. He didn't know everything that had happened that day, or the precise timeline of it. But it seemed likely that Jane had been with him the whole time. That was a problem.
The timing was perfect. As never before in his life, Thor was vulnerable. Weak. That tiny little weapon Darcy had wielded had knocked him out cold. But he would not be able to take advantage of it this night.
Luckily, he thought with a grim smile, he was not bound by the flow of time here in the past. It was a simple enough thing to return to the South Pole and adjust Pathfinder's travel program yet again. It wouldn't take long at all; he wouldn't even have to change the geographic coordinates, only the arrival time. Like pressing the fast-forward button on the remote control.
/
/
Meeting over, Jane hurried down to Comms, where Rodrigo was sitting, one of the few besides Loki to miss the meeting. She filled him in on what happened there – what she'd managed to pay attention to of it, at least – then took one of the sat phones into the same empty office she'd used before, just down the corridor. Rodrigo warned her that she was racking up quite a bill on the phone, but Jane wasn't worried about that. Tony would pay for it; it wasn't like she was using it frivolously. SHIELD should pay for this call. The idea flickered through her mind that she should call collect, but she wasn't even sure that worked on a sat phone. And Maria Hill, what little interaction Jane had had with her, had always been civil and professional toward her.
The phone rang just twice before someone picked up. "Dr. Foster?"
"Yes, it's me. Hi, Maria," Jane said, recognizing the other woman's voice even with the bit of static on the line.
"Thanks for calling me back. Are you all right? I was told you weren't feeling well."
Jane first simply nodded, relieved that she wasn't going to have to go into her fake story about how she wound up with a concussion. "Yeah. I got a good night's sleep, slept late, I feel great, thanks."
"Glad to hear it. SHIELD is a little busy right now, so let me cut to the chase. We're on an encrypted line, Jane, we can both talk freely. Do you know about the man who came to New York, claiming to be the king of another planet, and claiming that Asgard sent Loki back to Earth?"
"Somebody made a phone call here, and then we heard some of it on shortwave radios."
"All right. Are you in touch with Thor?"
"No." It was on the tip of her tongue to say why – for some reason she felt a little weirdly defensive about her answer – but she figured it probably wasn't meant to be up to her to tell SHIELD or anyone else that Asgard was at war.
"When was the last time you saw him?"
Jane pulled back a bit from the phone for a moment, then said exactly what she'd just been thinking. "This feels like an interrogation, Maria. Are you interrogating me?"
"No, it's not like that. Just habit, really. You understand why I'm asking, right?"
"You want to know about Loki," Jane said, trying to keep her voice neutral. She didn't have to try that hard. She really was getting better at high-stakes lying.
"I need to know about Loki. So the last time you saw Thor…?"
"Early February, before I got to Antarctica. In New Zealand."
"Did he tell you anything about Loki then? Did he tell you if Loki's on Earth?"
On the other hand…maybe not so much, Jane thought, brain freezing up. What would Loki do? Get mad. Deflect. "Maria, this really does feel like an interrogation. Whatever did or didn't happen on Asgard…it had nothing to do with me."
"I know that. And I am sorry for being so blunt. But Jane, this is Loki we're talking about. The last time he came to Earth, it really didn't go so well. And SHIELD doesn't like surprises. Especially in the form of aliens who tried to take over our planet. Our Tromso team was watching what Thor said to you. They-"
"You mean they were spying on us," Jane cut in, the anger entirely natural now.
"They were doing their jobs. It wasn't personal. They didn't hear everything. I need to know if they missed anything related to Loki. Jane…again, it's not personal. In light of Loki's attack, SHIELD's job is now to protect the entire planet from outside threats. Loki is the biggest outside threat we know of."
"Then I think you just don't know about that many outside threats. You defeated Loki in what, a few days? If he was running around, causing havoc, and trying to take over the planet again I think you would've heard about it by now, don't you? When Loki showed up here before, he made a grand entrance and announced his name. He chose public venues. He commandeered Stark Tower's rooftop. He wasn't exactly being secretive or even subtle."
"And you're right, that didn't work out so well for him. Maybe he learned from his mistakes and is pursuing a different strategy now. Who knows what goes through his head? We did try to interrogate him, and he gave us absolutely nothing, except when for whatever reason he decided to drink himself into a stupor and got a little chatty with Thor. So why are you defending him?"
"I'm not defending him," Jane said, even as she realized she kind of was.
"Just answer the question. We've got a lot on our plate now, trying to capture all the reported sightings of Loki and sort out the crackpots from the paranoid conspiracy theorists from the people who might have actually seen him. We're really busy. Jane…help me out here, okay?"
Jane's resolve wavered. Maria could be blunt – brusque and no-nonsense – but she could also be warm and friendly and once in a while she displayed an unexpected sense of humor. Thor hadn't wanted SHIELD to find out they'd sent Loki to Earth…but SHIELD and the entire rest of the planet now already knew that. Maria, at least, didn't seem to doubt it. "What would you do about it if you found him?"
Silence. Then, "We'd put a team together to capture him, and we'd lock him up and make sure this never happens again. Do you know where he is, Jane?"
"No, I don't," she answered confidently. She didn't know exactly where he was, anyway. "But yes, Thor told me their father had sent Loki back to Earth. He told me right after it happened, so he's been here for months, with no trouble."
"Why didn't you say anything? Didn't you think we needed to know that?"
"Look, I was furious at first. I thought it was the worst idea ever. But you don't know everything. He-"
"Clearly."
"Thor told me about another Loki, the Loki he grew up with, and-"
"Thor is biased. He doesn't see this situation clearly. It's understandable. We know he cares about his brother. But we aren't talking about the Loki Thor grew up with. We're talking about the Loki who less than a year ago led an invasion that claimed the lives of twelve hundred people."
"He didn't lead it," Jane said, words slipping out along with her thoughts instead of after them. Maria wasn't stupid.
"He didn't? How do you know that?"
"I don't…just…Thor said something. And-"
"Who led it then, if it wasn't Loki?"
"I don't know…whoever was leading the Chitauri." Thanos, Jane thought. She wished she could tell Maria, but Loki's points were valid – a name by itself, entirely unknown on Earth, was useless information.
"Loki was leading the Chitauri."
"No, he wasn't."
"But you don't know who was."
"That's not- What I wanted to tell you was that Loki can't hurt anybody even if he wanted to. Odin…did something to him that means that if he hurts someone he gets the same injury himself. That's what Thor told me. So they didn't just send him here with their fingers crossed that he wouldn't get into trouble. They made sure of it. Earth isn't in any danger from him." There'd been a certain relief in telling all this to Tony. Not so with SHIELD. She would never entirely trust them, never feel entirely comfortable with them. And Loki would hate that she was telling them this, confessing his vulnerability. But things had changed; Loki had a target on his back now, and as long as SHIELD thought of Loki as the "biggest outside threat to Earth," she had a feeling it would be "shoot first, ask questions later."
"What exactly did Odin do to him? And how can we certain it actually works?"
This was quite possibly the most horrible conversation ever. Questions she couldn't answer without giving away so much more than she was willing to. And she didn't have time for it. She was supposed to be getting lunch before going to a prep meeting for the trip out to the Quiet Sector. "If Thor says it works, then it works. You know he wouldn't endanger Earth like that. And I don't know what exactly Odin did. Probably something with magic." Something that…bonded to his cells? Something that infuriated Loki… Jane realized she was going to have to think through everything that happened yesterday; she'd been so exhausted afterward she never really had.
"Magic, great," Maria muttered in the meantime, before resuming her questions. "So who exactly is it that's been going to Stark Tower?"
Jane stared at the phone in silence. She'd had no idea SHIELD knew about that, though apparently they didn't know much about it. And it was getting really hard to keep track of what she could and couldn't say.
"I can tell that you know about it, so save us both some time and just tell me, all right? It's not that hard to track the use of Tesseract energy once you know what you're looking for. We started large-scale scanning about six weeks ago, and we've seen the Tesseract used in a number of places, each time presumably for transportation, but we've see it several times at Stark's place, and that's the only place we've got constant eyes on."
"Okay," Jane prefaced, quickly making up her mind. "I will save us both some time. I know you're just trying to do your job, Maria, I get that," she allowed, though it sounded like Maria just admitted that SHIELD was actually spying on Tony, "but if you want to know who Tony's guests are you're going to have to ask Tony. I'm not there; they aren't visiting me. If Tony wants you to know, he'll tell you."
"Obviously Tony hasn't told us, and believe me, we've asked."
"I'm sorry, but that's not my problem," Jane said firmly, wondering what these other places were where SHIELD tracked Tesseract energy. Food deliveries, she thought. She hadn't really considered it before, but she figured Tony wasn't gathering it all up in his building in Manhattan and shipping it from there. "Look," she said, interrupting Maria, "there's nothing more I can tell you. I'm sorry. And you said you're busy, so…"
Maria gave it one more try, but Jane could be as stubborn as a brick wall when she wanted to be, and she wasn't going to topple. "I'll be in touch," Maria said as a goodbye, clearly annoyed, the words containing the edge of a threat.
It seemed that way to Jane, at least, who recognized that she might be reading more into it than necessary. "Great," she mumbled as she took the phone back to Rodrigo. Now she was going to have Tony and SHIELD asking difficult questions. She was going to have to start keeping lists of who she'd told what.
/
/
In the galley Jane got a serving of quiche Lorraine and a double espresso. She didn't really need the caffeine – she felt as rested and energized as she'd said – but it was essentially a comfort food, like the buttery quiche, and she did need a little comfort. She'd hoped to find Loki here eating, too, but he wasn't. Like the coffee that wasn't really necessary but made her sigh and relax a bit over the strong, almost chocolaty taste, it wasn't really necessary that she see Loki right now. She had little time left before the prep meeting, and she couldn't exactly talk to him about everything that had happened yesterday and today here in front of everyone. But his presence would have brought a measure of comfort, because his absence made her nervous. She was trying very hard not to imagine that he might have hopped onboard the magic carpet ride to who-knew-when to try to force Niskit – or far worse, Brokk – to torture him a while longer in a doomed attempt to remove Odin's enchantment.
The name "Loki" startled Jane out of her thoughts; she certainly wasn't used to hearing it said here by anyone other than herself.
"You really think they'd send him back to New York, after what he did there? Talk about salt in a wound. If we have to start choosing intergalactic allies here, my vote's with Anaheim," Brody said, next to Jane at one of the long tables.
"Vanaheim," Tristan corrected. Jane thought it was him she'd first heard Loki's name from.
"Oh, yeah. Vanaheim. Not Disneyland."
Jane couldn't stop herself from jumping in. "Maybe we should hold off on forming opinions on all this. I mean, if you were really voting, would you cast your vote after listening to only one of the candidates?"
"Fair point," Austin said, across the table from her.
Zeke shook his head. "You beakers can't live in denial anymore, you know. All your searching for habitable planets – any planets – and alien life, with bupkis for results and all of a sudden they're falling from the sky like raindrops. You still don't even know where any of these alien planets are located, do you? Now we know there's at least four more out there. Asgard, Vanaheim, Yodaheim, and whatever you call the place where those things that attacked New York came from. You going to keep pretending like none of it exists?"
"Here we go again," Brody said, dropping his fork and leaning back in his chair with an exaggerated world-weary sigh.
Jane had glimpsed hints of it before, a mostly good-natured debate at the Station that had already died down by the time she and Loki arrived, and which the astrophysicists here were woefully unprepared for and lacked any data to examine themselves. She understood their frustration; it was hard to incorporate radically new and entirely unexpected developments into preconceived notions, despite the general belief that scientists were supposed to be open to new and changing theories in light of new and changing evidence. Jane knew that was a great fiction. But most of these people were already at the Pole when Loki showed up wanting to help Earth out with its freedom problem, so they'd been pretty removed from those events, and she didn't doubt that in some ways it was easier just to pretend it had never happened, at least for the winter. Her thoughts drifted toward Loki again…the South Pole was a good place for pretending.
"I for one don't really care about all this theoretical stuff. I would love to see what excuse Asgard will give for returning that Loki guy," Tristan was saying.
"What's theoretical about it?" Zeke asked. "They're here."
"Actually, we don't know that," Austin said. "At least about Loki, I mean. Jane's right; we shouldn't just take the word of one person nobody ever heard of before. What if the Vanaheim guy was making it all up?"
"What would be the point?" Tristan asked.
"Jane," a voice whispered right behind her ear, making her jump and poke the roof of her mouth with her fork. She quickly got down the last bite of quiche, hoping it was Loki, then hoping it wasn't Loki because as messed up as everything had already become it wouldn't do him any good to hear all this, then realizing it wouldn't matter because he'd almost certainly already heard it if he'd listened to the news broadcast on the shortwave in the galley with half the station. Her name was whispered again and she turned.
"I need to talk to you about something," Selby said, bending over so that his head was at her level.
"Oh, Selby, sorry, I saw your note, but I haven't had a spare minute. What's up?"
"I…," he started, then glanced around the table. "Can we go somewhere? It's, uh…"
Jane's eyes widened briefly. It's about Loki, she finished for him, standing and picking up her tray. He was the only one here who'd known the name Loki – of course he would want to talk about it. "I can't right now. I've got to get to the prep meeting for going out to SPRESSO. When we get back, okay?"
Selby hesitated; Jane could tell he was battling the urge to insist she talk to him right now. He was really kind of tightly wound sometimes. "Okay, but please come find me as soon as you get back. I'll be inside, either in my room or in the lab."
"I have to talk to Lucas when I get back, too…I'll figure it out when I get back."
"Just…it's important, Jane."
"I know. I'll find you," she said with a nod, starting to feel uncomfortable and glad she had to leave the galley. Loki was enough to worry about without adding Selby on top.
"Jane, have you seen Lucas?"
Jane twisted around on her way to the door to see Macy headed her way. "No. Haven't seen him since last night," she answered without stopping.
"Oh, okay."
Jane tried not to think about how disappointed Macy looked. She didn't have time for that, either.
/
/
Puente Antiguo was a flat speck of a town in the middle of nowhere, a few blocks of buildings that just stopped, as though the desert would not permit its further growth and waited hungrily at its borders, ready to pull it back down into the earth at its first opportunity. Perhaps in his own time the desert had done just that.
The town was familiar, in a strange sort of way, for he'd seen through the Destroyer's eyes as it laid waste. He'd acted through the Destroyer's hands when Thor had spoken his sickening drivel. "For whatever I have done to wrong you…" He'd had no idea what wrongs he'd even done. Of course, he hadn't even really meant it. In his view there were no actual wrongs, only "imagined slights." "So take my life instead." You always had to be the hero, didn't you, Thor? Always. Practically from infancy.
"I'm sorry I got scared and didn't help you. It won't happen again. I promise."
"It's okay, Loki," Thor said with a shrug, kneeling on the foot of Loki's bed while Loki lay on his back, hoping to hide from his cowardice in his bed and in sleep just as he'd hidden from the bilgesnipe. "You're younger. It's my duty as your older brother to protect you."
"Ten months older," Loki mumbled into his pillow before looking directly at Thor. "But it won't happen again. I'll work harder and get better, and we'll fight side-by-side and we'll protect each other."
Thor, not at all tired or humiliated and instead buoyed by excitement and pride, stared at something only he could see, but Loki knew well enough from the look on his face that his brother was imagining battle. "I don't know. I like protecting you. It felt good. I want to fight off all our enemies one after the other, and all the bilgesnipe on all the realms, and know that you're safe because of me."
Those words had made him embarrassed and ashamed at the time. Now the memory of them just fed his bitterness and anger. You like the glory it brings you. The accolades. The gratefulness. Your father's pride and respect. The reputation it creates and solidifies for you, that you know will outlive you by millennia. Because everything, always, after all, is about you. "Whatever I have done to lead you to do this…"
Thor had never thought Loki would actually do it. Loki was certain of that. Thor thought that he'd be chastened by his apology, by his pretty words of meekness and humility. That Loki would realize that it was he himself who was in error. Loki who should know his place and offer his own heartfelt apology for the masses in turn.
Loki had seen right through all that. As he'd told Jane, it was all about playing the hero's role. Whatever small risk of actually dying Thor had allowed for, he would have accepted it knowing that in going down in a blaze of glory before his friends, epic sagas would have been composed in his honor, weavers would have enshrined his image in countless tapestries, statues with his likeness would have been erected in every park.
"Whatever I have done to wrong you…" Thor hadn't meant a word of it.
Something struck his lower leg, and Loki swung around in the direction of the impact, hand automatically going to the Asgardian blade tucked away in it sheath and hidden by his suit jacket. A young boy and girl, seven or eight years old, were running toward him, but quickly came to a stop, recognizing at least subconsciously his aggressive posture. He looked down at his leg and saw a white ball a couple of feet away, smaller than the volleyballs and basketballs he'd become familiar with.
He was not invisible; he knew it would be a terrible strain, perhaps not even possible anymore. He walked down this street in the open, for only one person in this dusty town could recognize him, and he was otherwise occupied at the moment, though he would be returning soon.
Loki relaxed his posture, bent down to pick up the ball, and put on his best smile. "I imagine this belongs to you?"
The children came forward again, but still looked a little hesitant. "Yes, sir," the boy said.
"I'm sorry I frightened you. You simply startled me. Here you go," he said, holding out the ball.
The girl took it from his open palm. "Thanks, Mister. Sorry we hit you."
"Quite all right. No damage done," Loki said through his grin. The falseness of it was sickeningly cloying. He preferred not to involve children. But the man he assumed was the father of at least one of them was approaching.
"Hey, sorry about that," the dark-haired overweight man said. "They're still working on their aim. Kids, run on home. Mom's got supper ready." The children took off, the girl with a wave Loki returned with a nod she likely didn't see. "Everything here okay?"
He's worried. How quaint. "Perfectly fine, yes. And there's nothing like practice to improve one's aim, is there?" he said, flashing that friendly smile again. "I'm Loki," he said, thrusting his hand out in the manner of the mortals. He fought to keep his expression under control at the rush of power that simply saying his own name brought him.
"Jack. Good to meet you, uh…Loki. I haven't seen you around here before." The man gave a short laugh. "Everybody knows everybody here."
"Good to meet you, too, Jack. And yes, I imagine you do. Actually, I'm looking for an old friend of mine. Dr. Jane Foster. We're supposed to meet for dinner at the restaurant," he said, angling his head off to the right where he'd passed "Izzy's Diner" a few minutes ago, "but I made it here early, and I thought I'd surprise her. The problem is I don't know exactly where she lives."
"Oh, yeah?" the man, Jack, said, his expression changing to one considerably more approving. "Sure, I know Jane. She needs to get out more, that girl. Always fiddling with some kind of stargazing stuff, I don't understand a word she says when she tries to explain it. She's renting the old Smith Motors place down at the end of the road," he said, pointing.
Loki looked at it and a more genuine smile pulled at his lips. The building's roof had some kind of a spire on it, Jane's very own palace in Puente Antiguo. The smile faded. The palace that Thor had of course found his way to.
"I'm not sure she's around, though. A bunch of feds showed up there today and carted off all her junk. You know, all that stuff she works on. Computers and cameras and everything. I heard she rode out of town with some blond linebacker after that… I don't know what all's up, but you might want to give her a call and make sure you're still on."
"I drove him there." Loki nodded. He knew exactly where Jane had gone, and with whom. "Thanks. If she's not there I'll give her a call."
"Tell her I said hi," Jack said. "Oh, and check around the side, to the left. She just works out of the old dealership. She actually lives in a trailer she keeps parked there."
"She did mention the trailer, yes, thank you, Jack. And I'll be sure to tell her hello for you."
Jack held up a palm then trotted across the street and headed down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Loki started toward Smith Motors. He hoped not to speak to Jane at all. He wasn't here for Jane. But where Jane was, there Thor would also be. Weakened. Vulnerable. There Thor would sacrifice his life one day early, without grand-yet-empty declarations, without anyone around to see his courage and supposed selflessness. Not even Heimdall would see, for the magic that blocked his sight had been employed when Loki's abilities were still at full strength. He needed only a moment alone with the man the mortals had once worshiped as a god. A moment that will set right all the things that Thor made go wrong, he thought. A moment…and a knife.
/
Thank you, readers, reviewers, favers, followers, thanks for sticking with this and patiently (hmmm?) waiting through this unusually long delay. A few quick responses to guest reviewers: "marshmallow," thanks for the laughs and the blushes. Believe me, I'm not offended at all that someone might start this story and decide it's not for them (even if they never come back!). No story is for everyone. I'm glad you're enjoying it now! "JM," the not downplaying what Loki did in order to make him an out-of-the-blue good guy is important to me, thanks for saying that. It was very important to me that I deal with the canon Loki (as I understand him) and not a sort of fairy-tale version of him that is much easier to "redeem". It's a tough line to walk sometimes, to show his darkness and yet to keep him sympathetic...and someone that Jane would reasonably actually want to be around, and not just out of scientific curiosity or obligation or whatever. "Armand" and others - here's to binge reading!
Forgot to mention it here before, "Isabel M-Ameban" has more great artwork, this one from Ch. 97 "Harvest." Find it on her Deviant Art page under "Ameban" or via mine, in my favorites.
Previews from Ch. 121: ninepen rewatches Thor for the hundredth time but in a whole new way; Jane and Loki further their plans; Asgard and its king face more challenges.
Excerpt:
So little time Thor had spent here. Loki would have suspected he'd spent no time here at all were it not for the empty box of Pop-Tarts with four empty silver packages on the kitchen counter. Jane ate the things, too, but he doubted she had polished off a whole box of eight.
Signs of Jane, however, were everywhere, despite all the things that SHIELD had to have stolen from the premises. A flannel shirt she wore at the Pole draped over the back of a chair. Stacks of worn scientific texts in a cabinet next to the coffee mugs, two of which had that ridiculous beaver "mascot" on them. Two pairs of shoes that looked to be Jane's size abandoned in a small heap not far from the door.