Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three – Conviction

Loki quickly slipped his knife back in its sheath, hooked inside his blazer, at the same time taking a couple of steps back. He smoothed his expression and slowed his accelerated breathing. If he remained calm, presented no threat to Thor, he could still thrust aside his hesitation and do this, and maybe it wouldn't even be as bad for Jane this way, if Thor moved away from her. He already doesn't see you as a threat, he reminded himself. The last time he saw you, he thanked you. You defeated him with mere words.

"Brother?" Thor said once his eyes focused on Loki. Instead of settling on his other side, he sat up, glancing behind him at Jane as he did so. "What is it?" he whispered, face lined with worry. "Has something else happened? Is Mother all right?"

He has accepted it. He doesn't even ask to be allowed back to Asgard anymore.

"Brother?" Thor said again, standing this time and moving toward Loki.

Loki tensed slightly, but fought the instinct to pull back into a defensive stance or lash out in an attack while Thor still wasn't expecting it. Because Thor truly wasn't expecting it. This Thor had no idea he was at war with the man he called "brother" in ignorance; his movements were not confrontational. "I wouldn't know, Brother," he forced out, seizing onto new idea. You defeated him with mere words. "I know only what you know. You're dreaming."

Thor narrowed his eyes in confusion, then glanced back once more at Jane. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, Brother, I'm sure," he said patiently. You idiot, he thought. "I am not Loki. I am you, since this is your dream."

Thor still looked confused – skeptical, really – for while he'd always been far too trusting, particularly of Loki, he was not, in fact, a complete idiot. Loki knew he couldn't allow Thor too much time to actually think about this. And, as he also quickly realized, this unexpected development could prove useful. "I'm here to get you to think about some things you've been avoiding."

"Like what?" Thor asked, a fish whose struggles on the line were weakening. Not difficult to achieve, given how weakened and beaten down he already was.

"You must accept your life as it is. You must find a way to live on Midgard. To make it your home."

"I will," Thor said, nodding slowly. "I understand. My actions…they were rash. Full of too much pride. They have cost me much. I wish there was something I could do to make it right, but…but I do accept that this is how it must be now."

Incredible. No tears, no pleading, no denial… "Good," Loki said, putting a small smile on his lips that should appear distant but with a hint of brotherly affection, hopefully something like how Thor would imagine him in this moment. "You know there is more."

"What more? I'll do whatever I must."

Of course you will. Always so noble. "You already know," Loki answered, voice as soft as he could make it, giving a pointed look behind Thor. "You told Erik you would leave, didn't you?"

"I…," Thor began, then looked down guiltily at the graveled surface of the roof.

Loki masked his relief. It had been a gamble, but given what he'd overheard and how protective he knew Erik was of Jane, he'd been fairly confident in his guess. "Yes. And now you must keep your word." If Thor left, and if Heimdall still sent the betrayers to Puente Antiguo…it wasn't a likely scenario, but it was a cleaner way to solve many of his problems. Thor would still never have the chance to play the hero and regain Mjolnir, at least not this day.

"If he still wants me to, I'll leave in the morning as I said. But Erik and I drank and sang together this night. We fought together. Hardly a battle worthy of a tale on Asgard, but…I would call him friend now, and I hope he would say the same."

"You have known him for all of a day," Loki said, not entirely succeeding in keeping the annoyance from his voice. A few hours out drinking in a tavern somewhere and Thor was convinced he had an ally in someone who mere hours before had told him to get out of this town. And he was probably right. Loki could accomplish that, too, of course. But Loki did it by lying and manipulating. Thor did it without any effort at all, just by being himself.

"No, Brother," Thor said with a grin reminiscent of bygone days, if not quite so brilliant. "Two, now, I think. Though he did not care much for me the first day." He paused, and there was that look again, the look of defeat, making his shoulders sag and bringing him down nearly to Loki's height. "I cannot blame him. I was…exactly as Father said me to be."

Loki stared hard at Thor, who was lost in his own thoughts, all trace of humor gone. The words were dragged out of him, almost against his will. "And now?" he asked, throat tightened.

"I don't know," he answered, only lifting his gaze and straightening his shoulders after a long moment. "I will have to start a new life, from nothing. Erik told me something tonight, he said it's not a bad thing to admit you don't have all the answers. It's a comforting thing to hear…because I don't have any of the answers. My title is meaningless here, my future is no longer set, my family is gone…except for you, perhaps?" he asked with a hopeful smile that Loki carefully ignored. "I have nowhere of my own to sleep, and I don't even own the clothes I wear. This won't be easy…but I can do it. I have to. And these people have been good to me."

"They have been," Loki agreed, scrambling to think. This was all wrong. Thor was neither a broken wreck, unable to function without accolades and power and unquestioned respect, nor arrogantly assured of his return to those things, biding his time until fate – Loki – gave him a chance to prove himself worthy of Mjolnir and of Asgard. "But Erik asked you to leave for a reason…did he not? This is your conscience speaking. You wouldn't be dreaming it otherwise."

Thor twisted around yet again – Jane was still not stirring, for which Loki was exceedingly grateful – and when he turned back again his whole expression had softened into something Loki had never seen before. A kind of affection or…it could not be love. An infatuation, perhaps. Lust, to put it plainly. But those he had seen. And this he had not. But it could not be love. Even Jane herself had said that she didn't know if she loved him, that they needed time they had never gotten.

"I like her," Thor said, and for a moment, Loki thought that was all that he would say. "She doesn't care who I am, or that I…I don't fit in on her world. She's kind to me when I don't deserve it. I like her laugh. The way her eyes light up when she's interested in something. She makes me believe that I can make a life for myself here. I'll not break my word but…I don't want to leave her."

Again Loki struggled to continue. He agreed with everything Thor had said. And he wanted to stab him in the gut for it. He was nothing like Thor, and he did not agree with him about things, least of all Jane. I have been with her for over four months! he wanted to shout. He didn't, though he wasn't even sure why. He wasn't sure of anything anymore. He wasn't sure why he was here. Why he was having this inane conversation with a once-brother who stupidly thought he was dreaming. To make things right. To change things. To…return me to… To protect Jane. "I don't want to leave her." "But you know you must," Loki said.

Thor's lips quirked into a hint of a smile. "You're a persistent dream, Brother. Why don't you want to admit that this is real? If you could visit me from time to time, I would keep it a secret if you wished…and it would make this easier to bear."

"Brother." "Easier to bear?" Even though I would be a constant reminder of all you'd lost? You wouldn't say that if you knew the truth… But Thor didn't know the truth. He knew only what he'd believed all his life. What he'd been told, the same as Loki. Memories of their past together came flooding back, memories of much happier times, the same memories Thor would later try to force on him and Loki would block them from his mind with a wall of rage. "I wish it were real. But wishes are for children, and it isn't. How do you think I knew what Erik asked of you? I know because I am you. I know all of your secrets, Thor."

"I have no secrets from you, Brother."

He means it. It may not be the truth…but he means it. "Pity. I have some from you." Thor looked concerned, so Loki let a smile grace his lips and spread to his eyes. "If I were really here…would I be dressed like this?"

Thor's eyes for the first time traced Loki's clothing, from the charcoal blazer and tie over a buttoned white shirt to the slim-cut matching slacks and shining black dress shoes. As his gaze came back up to Loki's face he started to laugh, but pressed his lips together and held it back, probably because of Jane – they'd both kept their voices lowered as they spoke – and shook his head.

But then that confused look came to his face again and Loki knew he was about to try to apply logic to the situation. Logic came slowly to Thor, though, and Loki also knew he could nip it in the bud by simply plowing right past it. "Lie back down, Brother," he said, this time unsure what he even meant by the term. It felt familiar and comfortable on the tongue, yet it was deliberate and manipulative, yet for once it didn't leave a sour taste behind. There was something inexplicably sad in it, but it was a dry sadness. It felt like loss, and like all emotion had been leeched from him so that he could only stare at it blankly from the outside. Like this was only a dream. He didn't want to feel anything anyway, but he'd never truly felt nothing – he'd felt anger. He'd felt hatred. But Thor had somehow succeeded in denying him both of those, without even trying. "Lie back down," he said again, "and your dream will fade. And I along with it."

"Then I won't. I don't want you to go, Loki."

"You must. This is how it must be. All things come to an end. Lie down."

Thor sighed and acquiesced. The long metal-and-plastic chair sagged under his weight and Loki again wondered how it managed to hold him up.

"Turn over," he instructed.

Thor looked up at him for several long seconds, then turned away as he'd been before, facing Jane.

This is how it must be. Not as I thought it must. He braced himself and reached for the particles around him, bending and shifting them and straining with the effort until he knew he was invisible. It was only then, sweat broken out on his forehead, that he realized the pain that he'd expected to shoot up from his foot never had. He didn't know why. He'd thought he'd figured this out; now he thought he'd figured nothing out.

Thor suddenly twisted around and Loki held himself still, careful to keep his breathing silent, too. How simple this had once been!

He waited there on the roof for a long time, watching as Thor adjusted Jane's blanket again to pull it more snugly against her neck, then pulled his own blanket back up to his chest and settled down. Only when Loki was certain he'd fallen back asleep did he move, making his way back over to the ladder and silently descending.

/

/

"One good thing that's come of my talks with Nadrith – we have an idea of what they may be willing to compromise on."

Bragi nodded. "Yes, unless it's only Nadrith who's willing to compromise, in his eagerness to be the one who obtains our…our surrender."

Thor steadfastly ignored that word. "Their warriors are dying, too. More of theirs than ours. They'll want to end this. As long as they get what they most want."

"The Tesseract," Volstagg said.

"The Tesseract," Thor echoed. "Perhaps the most powerful, and most dangerous, item we possess. I wish the mortals had never found it."

"If they hadn't we'd have no means of traveling anywhere other than Vanaheim and Alfheim," Tyr said.

And Loki would never have gone to Midgard. Where was he, before? Where would he have gone, if he'd never gone to Midgard? What would he have done instead? And why didn't I ask him these things when I had the chance? You tried, he answered himself. He wouldn't have answered.

Together they determined starting positions and final positions for the Ice Casket and the Tesseract. The Ice Casket they would insist be stored on a third realm when not being actively used for peaceful purposes on Jotunheim, but they knew that was unlikely to find agreement, given that Jotunheim itself somehow drew power from the Casket. They would concede to its housing on Jotunheim, as long as it was guarded by those from other realms to ensure the Frost Giants did not use it to attack. The Tesseract was much more difficult. They would agree to the multirealm guard, but insist that it remain on Asgard. If that failed as they expected it to, they would agree to relinquish it to Vanaheim, but only if Asgardian warriors and magic-wielders of Asgard's own choosing were included in the guard – and Asgard would be sure to send its absolute best. Bragi voiced doubt that the other realms would accept this, but Thor was unwilling to discuss the possibility of allowing the Tesseract to fall completely outside Asgard's protection.

That left Loki.

"He did commit a terrible crime against Jotunheim," Volstagg said, the first to speak on the final demand and break through the discomfort surrounding it.

"He's an Aesir," Tyr said. "No matter what else he's done, never mind even that he is still a Prince of Asgard, he is an Aesir. There could be nothing more degrading than being held prisoner by those beasts."

Thor looked away. He felt the itch to say something, to tell Tyr that the Jotuns should not be called beasts, even as Thor himself still struggled with the instinct that they were. But this was no time for such a discussion.

It hit him then that this, perhaps, was precisely what his mother and father had always thought: It's not a good time. He won't listen. She won't change her mind. It would be uncomfortable to bring it up now. And in this way, a thousand years had passed and nothing had ever changed.

"If we're going to form a real peace this time, we're going to have to stop calling them beasts and monsters. And savages. We're going to have to stop thinking of them that way."

"Your Majesty?" Tyr said, brow furrowed.

Thor knew it must sound strange, coming from him of all people – he'd used all those words and worse to refer to Frost Giants all his life, and unabashedly so. "They are people, and people who have of late endured much suffering, for which Asgard is in part to blame."

Bragi was nodding thoughtfully. "It wouldn't be easy for us, but perhaps if we treated them…with more respect…with perhaps a kind of…compassion…perhaps if we can negotiate separately with the Jotuns, we can have Loki removed from the bargaining table altogether."

"That would be best," Tyr said with a cautious nod.

"Especially since we no longer have him, or even know which realm he's on," Volstagg pointed out.

"This does not go beyond the four of us, but I may have a way to retrieve him. I will say nothing further on it."

"All right," Bragi said without questioning Thor's enigmatic statement. There were benefits to being king. "The All-Father already attempted a more…friendly attitude with them and made no progress. But there's no harm in trying again. Our opening position, then, will be no Loki. Our final position can be much as Nadrith suggested – we turn him over to the Frost Giants, but with multirealm guards, just like the Ice Casket."

"No."

"Some other means of guaranteeing his safety, then?" Bragi asked.

"No. I'm not concerned about his safety on Jotunheim. That's not-"

"Thor," Volstagg said, putting a hand on his shoulder in a familiar gesture. "We may be forced to take a more appeasing approach in our dealings with them, but that can only go so far. We've been enemies as long as anyone can remember, and that won't change overnight, even under the best of circumstances. We can't trust them not to tear Loki's limbs off one by one in retaliation, no matter what we do or don't call them. He deserves to be punished…but surely we can't allow him to be…tortured?"

"No, I mean… You may as well all know, before Loki was exiled to Midgard, I made an oath to him. He asked me, as a brother, not to allow him to be sent to Jotunheim. And I swore I would not."

"Thor…I understand how..how important Loki is to you, despite everything," Bragi said, voice quiet. "But that was before the war. I remember well the discussions surrounding his punishment. That must have been what he spoke of. Circumstances have changed. You did keep your oath. This isn't about Loki's punishment anymore. It's about the sacrifices that may be necessary to save Asgard."

Thor hesitated. Bragi was giving him a way out of his oath. And he was right; Loki had been speaking specifically of his punishment, the one doled out by Asgard. It would be their final position, not their starting one; Bragi would negotiate hard to get the others to accept the starting position, or some version of it that fell short of actually relinquishing Loki to Jotunheim. They could convince Jotunheim, and the other realms could not ask for more severe conditions for Loki than Jotunheim itself. And that was if they even got that far at all – as he had told the Assembly, this discussion of negotiating positions was only for preparedness – there were no immediate plans to actually enter such negotiations.

"If you still think of me as a brother…if I could ask you for only one thing…please don't let them send me to Jotunheim."

Loki had placed no limitations on his request; he could not have known this war would develop – at least Thor was fairly certain he hadn't known. Loki did not want to be forcibly sent to Jotunheim, no matter the reason, no matter at whose demand.

And he'd been sincere. Thor was absolutely certain of this. Had he been insincere, had he been merely trying to manipulate, he would have directly called him "Brother." He would have apologized profusely, brought up some fond memories of their youth…others might do such things, but Loki, Thor knew, would not. Not with sincerity. He'd spoken simply; he'd merely acknowledged that Thor still considered him a brother and placed a qualifier of "if" even on that…he'd been sincere. Loki had been desperate enough to avoid that fate that he'd pleaded with him. How difficult that must have been for him. What a blow to his pride. Yet he asked anyway.

It was unwise, part of him warned, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't agree to even the possibility of Loki winding up a prisoner on Jotunheim. He could not give that his approval. Even if it never came to that, and Loki never knew his decision, it was the principle, and not just the principle of an oath, whether it applied to this situation or not. "If you still think of me as a brother as you say you do…" Perhaps this would prove to Loki that he did.

"Sacrifices that may be necessary to save Asgard." Thor would sacrifice much for Asgard…but he could not sacrifice his brother, when his brother had specifically asked for just this one thing from him. He had already told Loki what he would do in order to ensure Loki was not sent to Jotunheim.

"What if he were imprisoned elsewhere?" Volstagg put in when the silence dragged on. "As we've said for the Casket and the Tesseract. Here, or a third realm. With Einherjar included in all shifts of his guard, and regular visits from family."

Thor nodded, slowly, shifting from his own thoughts back to the discussion. "Yes," he said after a moment. "If we must. I'll not see Loki prisoner on Jotunheim. If we have no other choice, if we cannot convince Jotunheim…then they will have to accept me in Loki's place."

"Surely you jest," Bragi said after a long moment of eyes fixed silently on Thor. "You are king. We cannot send our king to be imprisoned on another realm."

"My mother would rule well until my father awakens."

"This is ludicrous, Thor, we cannot send you in Loki's place. That is not possible," Bragi said, while Tyr wore a look of disapproval and Volstagg shook his head.

"It is if I say it is," Thor said. "But I've no wish to relocate to Jotunheim, so let's do everything we can to make sure that never happens."

/

/

Jane and Ronny were both staring out the back window of the PistenBully, straining to see the station's red lights through the slight haze of the ice crystals in the air, when the knock came on the front window. Jane whipped around with a startled gasp and caught Paul's eye; Paul had looked out the back window a while back and not since. For some time now already they hadn't been able to see anything at all. Maybe Loki could see it, she thought, but then reconsidered. Loki's sight might be superior to that of humans, but even he could not see below the curvature of the planet, beneath the horizon. SPRESSO – the South Pole Remote Earth Science and Seismological Observatory – was about three miles out from the elevated station, and that was the approximate limit of what was visible on the horizon. Maybe without the blowing ice crystals they'd be able to see the lights, but probably not even then.

Leaning forward and to the left to see around Wright, Jane strained now to see in front of them and in the PistenBully's headlights in the distance were the battered green and red flags on bamboo poles that marked the location of the buried GSN station and warned vehicles not to drive over the area. Other than the flags, there was no sign that anyone had ever been here.

"Are we really sure there's something down there?" Ronny asked.

Jane looked at him and figured he must have been trying to make a joke. She laughed a little, awkward- and nervous-sounding.

"Come on, let's get the shovels ready so we can jump out and this thing can get moving again. I don't want to get stuck out here," Paul said, picking up the tools they'd brought and dividing them between him and Ronny, all the while avoiding looking anyone in the eye.

"Are you okay?" Jane asked; Paul didn't respond. "So far so good. We made it here, no problems, no sudden stops. Just think of it as a big adventure. Where no man has gone before, right?"

"Man's gone here before…just not in winter. Because man is usually smarter than that." He took a big breath and let it out. "Yeah, I'll be okay. I don't like the waiting."

A minute later the waiting came to an end with the PistenBully coming to a halt and Ken turning around, rapping on the window, and nodding. Paul opened up the door and he and Ronny climbed out with their shovels. They were still probably a hundred feet away, but driving much closer would be a risk. As soon as they were out and the door closed, Ken started forward; if they kept the machine idle or worse turned it off altogether, they'd probably never get it moving again.

Now Jane had nothing to do but wait, and it was harder, and creepier, doing so by herself. She wished she were out there shoveling, too, but the area to be cleared was pretty small and a third person would just get in the way. Ronny and Paul both lifted weights and could probably shovel rings around Jane. And Loki could shovel rings around them, she thought. And that sent her right back to worrying about Loki, when she'd told herself she wasn't going to think about him anymore until she got back to the station. Instead she leaned close to the side window and looked out at the sky. Not much of an aurora today, just one small hazy streak of lime green. It calmed her, looking at the sky. It always had. At some point in college she'd realized that part of it was because of the associations it held for her – the warmth and comfort and closeness and love she'd felt for her father when he would teach her the constellations and other features of the nighttime sky. Some of her best memories had taken place under the stars. And then there was that one night when the course of her entire life had changed. Maybe not changed, exactly…it seemed like everything she'd studied and researched and believed had been leading to that moment outside Puente Antiguo. It wasn't so much change, really, as fulfillment. And then the next night, on the roof with Thor, when he'd seemed so different, so sweet, so much more to him than a stunningly well-chiseled body and an equally stunning sense of entitlement. At least now she understood where the sense of entitlement came from. And he'd dropped it really fast, because of the lies Loki had fed him, she knew now. She wished she'd understood then how abandoned and alone he must have been feeling. But she'd been too preoccupied with her problems at the time, and then spellbound by Thor's tale of nine realms and by, well, Thor.

Abandoned and alone… The phrase came back to her and Puente Antiguo drifted away. Loki wasn't in so different a position now, booted out of Asgard, no real friends that she knew of, estranged from his family except his mother, and at times he seemed a little ambivalent even about her. Thor had spent just a few days on Earth without flying and Mjolnir and lightning and whatever else he could do, and Loki had been here for months already, and, just as he'd said, there was no object or symbol that would indicate that anything had changed, and no sign that anything would change, even though Loki had actually changed a lot over the last couple of months.

Jane then pictured him, just yesterday, yanking Niskit out of her chair, shoving her against a wall, drawing a knife. Maybe not.

She set that aside, because she didn't know what else to do with it.

Thor's "thing" was Mjolnir, and his strength. Loki had said Thor was the strongest and the best in "everything that mattered." But he'd also said that not everyone could do magic, and he'd strongly implied that Thor couldn't do magic, at least not like Loki. So if Thor was the best at what mattered and he wasn't the best at magic…did magic not "matter" on Asgard? That was hard to fathom, when magic was so amazing, so intriguing. Maybe magic wasn't as highly valued as physical strength, but it obviously had some value, or it wouldn't have been on public display in such a positive context in the parade Loki had taken her to. She frowned. It obviously had value to Loki. He'd enjoyed giving her a visualization of his sound barrier, and his delight in her delight when he made the illusion-orange was obvious. He took pride in it. He hadn't wanted her to see how much he was struggling when he made the grand Alfheim illusions. And she remembered now how he'd looked away when Niskit shrank the cloak back down to its original size so effortlessly. She wished she'd seen it earlier, that Loki wasn't having an outbreak of overblown ego in that moment, but rather suffering a blow to his pride – the healthy kind of pride. Self-esteem. It was such a strange thought, that Loki might truly have a problem with self-esteem, and yet at the same time it sort of seemed obvious once she thought about it. She'd seen little hints of it here and there; she'd just never really thought much about it because attempts to destroy or conquer entire worlds and unrepentant arrogance didn't exactly scream "self-esteem issues."

But it made sense that magic could be tied up in his sense of self-worth, especially if magic was his "thing." In the highly competitive world he'd grown up in, as she'd understood from the bits and pieces he'd told her…magic was what made him "better." Maybe not better than everyone – Loki had never told her he was Asgard's best, the way he'd said Thor was Asgard's strongest – but he had fairly unambiguously said he was better at it than Thor. Much better. Their rivalry, Jane supposed, was natural, with two brothers so close in age. Somewhere along the way the rivalry had turned unhealthy, at least for Loki – and what a further blow it must have been to learn he was adopted! A further blow to his self-esteem. She grasped that now in a way she hadn't when Loki had first told her about it, or let it slip, really. But magic…she imagined that maybe it was kind of an anchor for him. And without it he was set adrift…

The knock came again, this time from Wright, who'd set down his display screen for the ground penetrating radar. Jane was annoyed with herself for being unable to make herself stop thinking about Loki, but also kind of excited that maybe she understood Loki a little better now – he certainly didn't make it easy. It also wasn't such a bad thing that she'd been so immersed in thinking about Loki that she'd entirely forgotten that she was sitting alone in the back of a big tracked vehicle, driving around a hidden buried chamber in wide circles. Wright was climbing out, so Jane hoisted her case and quickly climbed out too.

Jane didn't dwell on it, but it was definitely weird and a little creepy that she couldn't see a single building or other structure anywhere. At the DSL she could face one direction and see endless ice, but she could also turn around and see Ice Cube, MAPO, and all the structures nearer the elevated station. Here 360 degrees of turning revealed exactly the same thing: nothing.

Nothing except a bright red PistenBully, engine humming away at idle, Paul and Ronny rubbing their hands, a handful of colored flags, and maybe a twelve-foot square area of disturbed snow. She and Wright approached Paul and Ronny as their ride resumed its circular path.

"All clear," Paul said.

Jane looked down. In the middle of the ring of shoveled snow was what looked like a particle-board box, about three feet by five feet. It looked like a box. A cheap packing crate she would use to store her equipment in before she had funds from SHIELD to store it more securely. She exchanged a glance with Wright.

"I'm sure it's really cozy on the inside," Wright said.

No bottom of the "box," was visible, of course, lying in the snow as it was, because it wasn't a box, but a hatch, and on closer inspection while the outside and inside were lined with particle board, the interior of the box's walls, which were actually fairly thick, looked more substantial.

"Let's find out," Jane said, stepping forward and awkwardly working open the simple latch on the lid. It opened up, and inside attached to one of the walls was a yellow ladder descending and vanishing into darkness. Déjà vu struck, and for a split second Jane could've sworn it must be Loki towering next to her, and Niskit somewhere nearby ready to give her a shove into the shaft if she didn't scramble down fast enough. There were lights down there, though, and heat. This was far from Alfheim. Literally, Jane thought with a nervous laugh.

"You okay?" Wright asked.

"Yeah. I'll go first," Jane said, taking the last step down to the edge of the plywood "wall," then stepping over it and putting a foot on the ladder rung. She moved her foot around a bit to make sure it felt secure, then got her other leg on the ladder, looked up at Wright, nodded, and started down.

The vertical tunnel she was descending through was an addition to the original underground structure and shorter shaft – a series of additions, actually. Just like everywhere else at the South Pole, snow continually built up here, and as the vault slowly became further below "ground" level, the ladder and the shaft had be extended further above it.

Everyone had their red headlamps on, and Paul and Ronny were aiming flashlights down at the rungs, and maybe yesterday's ladder-climbing while in a state of near-panic had something to do with it, but Jane's steps were now confident and smooth. Before long her feet were entering the vault itself, and then she found the light switch and then the whole chamber was flooded with light. Jane stepped easily off the ladder and out of the way for Wright to come down. You can do this, she thought, suddenly feeling like not only could she enter a marathon, but she could win it, too.

"Everything good to go?" Paul called down once Wright, too, reached the bottom.

"Yeah," they both called up.

"Okay. One of us will be here the whole time."

From the sort of entry vestibule they were in, Jane and Wright went over to a tightly-sealed metal door, behind which lay the electronics and the heating. The vault wasn't heated for human comfort; it was heated for the equipment inside it.

"Close quarters," Wright said once they were inside and shedding some of the outer layers, careful to keep any melting ice away from the electronics.

"Yeah," Jane agreed, attention on her case, which she sat down on a small patch of free table space and began emptying. They had several tasks to accomplish, from as simple as manually uploading a couple of new programs to calibration checks to repairing two pieces of equipment that had stopped sending data after yesterday's earthquake to opening up the guts of one of the computers and installing a couple of new processors that were supposed to have been installed this past summer but had been delayed.

They started with the easy stuff, dividing up the work and moving as quickly as they could; the longer they stayed out here the greater the risk of the PistenBully – and maybe them – meeting an untimely death.

"Hey, I think I figured out what's wrong here," Wright said, holding a cable with a sensor connection – a fat bell-shaped plug – in one hand. "Would you believe a cable came loose on the sensor interface box? Hopefully that'll do it on this one."

"Yeah, let's try to tighten everything up. Too bad they're not all that simple."

"How's your head doing?" Wright asked in a lull a few minutes later, running through a couple of simple calibration steps on.

Jane glanced over at him from the piece of equipment she was working on, and it took a couple of seconds for what he was asking about to click. "Fine. No problems. It really was just a minor concussion."

"How'd that happen, anyway?"

"Ummm," Jane began, quickly reminding herself of the story she'd told. She hadn't told it since the night before, and a lot had happened since then. "I fell. Got juice in my hair."

"Huh?"

"What?" She stopped and turned Wright's way. He was looking back at her.

"What does juice have to do with it?"

"Nothing. I mean…nothing."

"You got a concussion just from falling? What, like, down the stairs or something?"

"No," Jane answered, turning away again. Wright was really fixing her with a look, when his attention should have been on his work. "I hit my head when I fell."

"You walked into a door?"

Jane gave up and set down the tweezers she was holding. "I told you, I fell. What are getting at, Wright?"

"You sound like you're making excuses."

"I…I'm not making-"

"You sound like you're making excuses for somebody."

"You think…" Deflect, deflect, deflect, Jane thought, but her mind was blank. How does he do this? He always thinks of something to say. She was making excuses for somebody, of course, but she could hardly tell Wright about Niskit. "Everything here's locked into place the way it should be. I don't think the earthquakes damaged any of these sensors." Lame, Jane, lame.

"You know I don't like drama. But I don't like my friends getting hurt, either. So if somebody did do that to you…I can make sure he doesn't do it again. I can take that guy."

Jane shook her head. "What guy?"

"The guy you disappeared with all day yesterday."

"Lucas? You think Lucas…hit me over the head or something?"

"He's always seemed like a decent enough guy to me. Kind of eccentric, but you almost have to be a little bit eccentric to want to hang out here the better part of a year. But he was acting really strange this morning."

"He was? How?"

"I don't know, just…strange. He didn't really show it, because, you know, he just doesn't show stuff that much, but he was really upset when we told him you were in Club Med. He just seemed kind of…'off.' It wasn't a normal reaction."

He was really upset? She hadn't even known Loki knew about the concussion. "I'm sure he was just worried. He knew I hit my head, but he didn't realize there was anything wrong. Neither did I. But he didn't hurt me, Wright."

"If he was worried he would have asked questions, or he would have stuck around to check on you, but instead he just disappeared again. He wasn't himself, Jane. It looked like guilt to me."

Jane's mouth fell open a little at that. She could have kicked herself. Guilt. Of course it was guilt. All that preparation they'd done for going to Alfheim, delaying the trip from Loki had wanted to make it, it wasn't for him, and it wasn't for the fun of showing her all those cool illusions, it was for her protection. Contingency planning, just like they'd done in abbreviated fashion for this trip out to SPRESSO. And there'd been a hitch in the plan that Loki hadn't anticipated and she'd come out of it with a concussion, and Loki… He blamed himself? It wasn't his fault.

Her eyes flitted around room, having been reminded of the planning for this trip. They had to stay focused and finish what they'd come here to accomplish as quickly as possible. "I'm going to talk to Lucas as soon as we get back, and figure out what's up with him. But I promise you, Lucas did not cause my concussion. He's not some abusive…wait, did you think… It's not like that between us. He's not my boyfriend, just my friend. I have a boyfriend. Or…sort of, maybe. It's a long-distance thing, and I hardly ever see him, and-"

"Jane? I didn't ask. Don't need to know. No drama. I just wanted to mention it down here, where no one else can overhear. And it's not like we have police or whatever out here, Whiteout aside…so I just wanted to say, if you ever need me to…make a statement…I can take him. Any of them. Maybe not Paul. That guy's got some triceps on him."

Wright cracked a grin, then, and while Jane thought it looked a little awkward, she appreciated it nonetheless. And she appreciated Wright. He was boisterous and almost always had a joke, but it wasn't the first time he'd taken a quiet moment to basically say he'd be there if she needed him, without ever pressing or trying to get too personal. In fact this was the hardest he'd probably pressed on anything, because he'd apparently been worried about her safety. But there was absolutely no way he could take Loki. He looked heavier and stronger than Loki, but in this case looks were highly deceiving. "Thanks, Wright. That's kind of sweet…I think. Nobody ever offered to beat somebody up for me before."

He looked at her like she was crazy, then turned his back to her to focus on the calibrations again. "Who said anything about beating anybody up? I said I could make a statement."

Jane laughed and went back to the diagnostics, and soon they were chatting amiably about Mid-Winter, a much lighter topic that didn't distract from their work.

"You sure we can't get you to sing something? We've got songs we really need girls to sing," Wright said as the two of them huddled together, crouched behind a metal rack of data acquisition systems they'd pushed out from the wall. Wright was working on a set of screws on the right, and Jane was working on the ones on the left.

"No way. I'm serious, I'm practically tone-deaf. I'll be in the videos, though, if you need me. And I can help Lucas with the animated GIFs."

"Oh, yeah," Wright said, briefly glancing her way before they pulled the back off the metal housing for one of the systems in careful tandem. "You should do that. Lucas…I think he must have grown up in a cave or something. He picks it up fast but it's like he stepped out of the last century. No, the one before that. He hardly knows any songs at all. Hardly any movies or movie themes." He gave a subdued laugh then, reaching into the box to open up a series of tiny clips. "Actually he may as well have stepped off another planet somewhere. I mean, why not? They're falling from the sky every time you turn around now."

Jane kept her eyes glued on the equipment and started carefully disconnecting wires. "You should ask Macy about singing. She told me that back home she goes out to karaoke clubs almost-" Jane froze, partly-disconnected short black wire held still between her thumb and forefinger. "Do you feel that?" she asked, turning to her right.

"I was kind of hoping I was imagining it."

"Maybe we both imagined it," Jane said, but then in place of barely-noticeable shaking there was a strong jolt followed by violent shaking. The electronics rattled on the rack, and Jane realized she'd better try to keep it in place. She tried to brace herself against the rack, not because it was particularly steady – it wasn't – but to prevent any of the equipment from being jostled right off it, while next to her Wright got unsteadily to his feet and went to do the same with one of the other racks. She looked up to the top of her rack and saw the equipment box on the very top sliding back, then pushed herself, up, too, and reached up to block it from falling. She couldn't help looking further up, to the ceiling that lay well below the top of the ice.

/

Thanks this time to "QQuina" for finding a passage I was looking for, the one in 40 "Strategies," where Jane finds out not everybody in Asgard can use magic. Speaking of past passages, here's some suggested re-reading for you: Ch. 1 "Prison," in which Thor makes that oath to Loki...and Ch. 61 "Strength." The only slipped-in time-travel bit that absolutely no one has ever mentioned or questioned. Have a look back, you'll see what I mean.

"fourdevils" - there are one or two who might deserve your disapproving eye...; "Alphabetizingsin" - how's about some more claustrophobia? glad you're enjoying it the second time 'round too; "jaquelinelittle" - if they get tired of boar, Thor could always start slaughtering his regenerating goats!; Guest (May 7) - I hardly ever confirm theories though I love to hear them, but there is logic in what you say...as for Jane, Loki wasn't around, and she felt she had a responsibility to undertake this task...I actually liked the A2 much more on 3rd viewing, that movie is SO ripe for fanfic to fill in the gaps though, and as for Tony, his line "Yay" is all you need to see how awesome RDJ and Tony are, ha. THANK YOU to all readers and reviewers!

Previews for Ch. 124: Problems for Jane at SPRESSO, problems for Loki, problems for Thor. Bet you could have guessed these!

Excerpt:

"I'll sacrifice the equipment in favor of not being buried alive, thanks," [Wright] said, suddenly appearing behind the shelving with Jane and helping her keep it steady. "We don't know how bad this is. We need to get out of here."