Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Seven – Fragility
Jane sat at Loki's desk, staring forward, gaze unfocused.
The phone call ended with Tony yet again pledging to help conceal Loki's presence here even though he was obviously highly conflicted about it and thisclose to coming to the Pole no matter what she said. Tony worried about what Loki was up to in Puente Antiguo, when he had all of SHIELD's files from that period and there was nothing in them about Loki being there at all. Jane let him keep thinking that Loki had gone there from Asgard a year and a half ago, instead of from the South Pole…sometime. She didn't know when; in fact, he could have gone there from Asgard a year and a half ago. She knew he'd gone to Thor, when Thor was in SHIELD custody some fifty miles into the desert outside Puente Antiguo. But if SHIELD had no record of that visit, then Loki had obviously hidden himself with magic. And if he'd hidden himself with magic then…why had he been strolling around Puente Antiguo in the open, even introducing himself as Loki? It didn't fit. Her gut told her the latter instance was time travel.
But why? That was the question that disturbed her. Why would he be looking for me in the past? And did he ever find me? She'd never seen him. She'd never met him in person before Sydney. If he'd found her, she would remember it. The effects of travel to the past were felt in her present, even before – or at least she perceived it as before – the travel was undertaken, as she'd seen with Loki's trip to Chicago. Unless he found me and just…watched? Without interacting?
The thought made her shiver. She thought back to that momentous day, to everything that had happened on it. She hadn't actually been home that much. She'd been out to the county hospital, Izzy's Diner, the SHIELD site. She'd been alone for a while out in her trailer, after Erik went to try to get Thor released and Darcy had gone home for the night. The thought of Loki, or of anyone, really, loitering around and watching her creeped her out, but it also just seemed really weird. She couldn't imagine his motivation, what he hoped to gain from it.
And now she was going to ask him…wasn't she? Somehow she had a feeling that was going to be a lot harder than asking about Selby's wife.
/
/
Loki wiped at the corner of his mouth, then at Jane's desk as he thumbed on the radio and spoke a throaty "Yes?" into it. Letting himself fall asleep here had been foolish, but at least nothing had come of it. Nothing other than a twinge in his back from the awkward position, which would work itself out in a minute or two, with a couple of good stretches.
"We're done. You can come back now."
He sighed into the radio and nodded, adding "All right" as an afterthought. He stood up, then paused. He used to control her e-mail, maintain a kill switch over her laptop's internet access, intentionally frighten her nearly enough to drop to the floor after she'd been on the phone, and linger outside her door listening to her VOIP conversation. Now he fell asleep while she and Tony Stark had a conversation that could very possibly determine his fate. Now he wasn't sure if he'd even want to know if the Iron Man was coming for him. The surprise might be more interesting. He hoped he could still at least make it an interesting fight. He still had his physical strength, and it wasn't as though when he'd surrendered to the man in Stuttgart he'd actually been unable to fight him.
At least, he thought, I didn't dream.
A few others were in the corridor – he supposed it was around dinnertime by now, perhaps even past it – but he only had to go two doors down, and he managed to get there without having to interact with anyone. He ignored the instinct to knock at his own door and instead went straight in. Jane was standing by his desk, where she'd obviously been sitting as he had at hers. She looked wary, and Loki thought the South Pole Station population might in fact be about to grow to 51. Thank you, Tony Stark, for ruining things yet again.
"You've been doing some time traveling that you haven't told me about." She still didn't want to be overly confrontational, but she wasn't going to beat around the bush this time, either. "You lied to me."
"I didn't lie. Are we having a guest?" Jessica Higgins. She knows.
"No. And yes, you did lie to me. Your third time travel trip. You said you…went back to…get a fork or something? To put it in your room in the past and see if it was there in the present? That's total BS." She'd forgotten about it before, with everything else going on, with convincing him to stop using Pathfinder so much more important. Now there was a pattern, and one that really made her nervous.
"Ah," Loki said, face blank while he scrambled to catch up. He'd been completely certain about what she must have learned, and this was entirely unexpected. "How did he figure it out? Did he inventory his supply of alcohol after all?"
"What? I don't even know what you're talking about, Loki, but Tony didn't figure it out, he doesn't even know about it at all. I figured it out. This morning, at the all-hands you skipped. I didn't know back then that you'd figure out how to use Pathfinder for time travel. Neither of us did. So it never occurred to me that… Loki…you lied to me. We had an agreement."
"We had an agreement that in return for me not lying and…what was it? Giving you looks? That you would keep my presence here a secret. I believe our agreement was already null and void by then."
"Was it? You know I never told anybody. And for a null and void agreement you stayed pretty insistent that I'm doing bathrooms and dishpit."
Loki gave a small, humorless laugh. "Were you under the impression that I was honorable? Trustworthy?"
"Oh, Loki, cut it out. Look, I'm not even…I wasn't even that mad at you about it. And God help me but I kind of understand. I was angry, too. At Tony, I mean. I'm not a little girl, and I don't need protecting, and I can make up my own mind about things. He had no business sending me that video, not the way he did it. And what you did…what I know about what you did…at the time I even thought he deserved it, before I realized how much damage you caused, anyway. At least you didn't hurt anybody. I guess you couldn't have."
Loki blinked, swallowed. Put all his effort into maintaining that blank expression. He had hurt someone. Unintentional, and indirect, saving him from the same fate…cheating fate, perhaps. Cheating fate. Exactly. It was what he'd done all his life, from the moment he'd been abandoned and meant to die on Jotunheim. Growing up as though he belonged in Asgard – in Asgard's palace no less – until finally he'd even sat on Asgard's throne. What a fool I was to think I could cheat my fate with time travel. There is no greater cheat than my own existence. "I didn't go there to hurt anyone," he told her, and there was such weakness in it, and it should have galled him. It should have. But he didn't want to lose her. Not any sooner than he had to, anyway. Not because she chose to walk away over some petty mischief.
"Not even Tony?"
He grit his teeth and resisted answering. This galled him, at least a little, admitting that his growl had been so void of teeth. That his actions had been so pointless. That he was so pointless. He was not the hero, the idea was preposterous even as a fantasy, but apparently, for all his thoughts of power and revenge and rage, he'd proven he was a failure even as a monster. "No," he answered, thoughts still roiling in conflict but with one overriding desire: that Jane would believe him. There might be a certain face that he wished to show the cosmos, but Jane stood apart from the cosmos. He didn't want her to think him a monster. The thought propelled him further, and in a flash of a moment he could only ascribe to his total abdication from all reality he wished she could think him a hero. He laughed out loud and earned an odd look from Jane. It was too absurd to fathom. As though he were ten years old again, playing the hero in some drama he and Thor had planned. But no, even then, Thor had always played the hero.
"Okay," Jane said uneasily. She believed him – he'd certainly had no problem in the past telling her that he'd actually killed people, including Baldur, accidentally, and his birth father, not so accidentally, and as much of the population of Jotunheim as possible – but the laugh was disturbing and this was only the beginning. "We're going to have to tell Tony. He's done a lot to look out for me, and for you, too. He deserves to know the truth."
"We? I have nothing to say to that man. But I won't try to stop you from saying what you feel you must."
Jane's eyebrows went up. She definitely hadn't expected a "Sure, toss me the phone, Jane," but even this much acceptance was kind of a shock. "I don't mean now. We don't need that complication right now. When the season ends. After we've figured out what's next."
We. After we've figured out what's next. It was…heartwarming. Tenacious, courageous, understanding, foolish little mortal Jane Foster. If he could have his occasional fantasies, Jane could have hers, too. Why continue to try to take them from her? He nodded, and sat down on the footstool again. "What did he want, then, if he doesn't know I went to his tower?"
"He wanted to tell me about a bunch of people who reported seeing you."
"Go ahead and ask me what you wish, Jane." He'd been right the first time, he knew she knew, but that didn't mean he was going to be the one to say it, on the infinitesimal chance she did not.
"I don't need to ask. I know. I know you did more in Chicago than just go to a restaurant."
"Mmm. Still certain I can't make you hate me?"
"Yeah. But I never said you couldn't make me mad. And Tony said you didn't actually break any laws, which is a huge relief. But Loki, how could you be so cruel to her?"
"Cruel? That was nothing. Less than nothing. I merely explained to her that she should not tell anyone else what she knew about SHIELD."
"Right. I know you. You could ask someone to pass the salt and make it sound like you were going to rip their fingernails out one by one."
"It's important to cultivate a skill."
Jane rolled her eyes. This was maddening. His expression was…she didn't know what it was. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Cultivating that particular skill, in this particular incident, freaked out Selby's wife, which in turn freaked Selby out when she obviously told him about it, which resulted in him yanking me into his room to accuse me of being behind it all. And…wait…wait a minute…all this time…all this time, it's always been weird between me and Selby. You made me paranoid about him, and…this isn't the only thing you did, is it? You've been making him paranoid about SHIELD this whole time, haven't you? And he's blamed me for it, as the only person here he knows of that knows about SHIELD and Norse gods and the Tesseract…what else did you do?"
"First of all," Loki began, glad Jane wasn't letting this go, because his last comment wasn't exactly the most helpful thing he could have said – he'd grown so used to wanting others to fear him, to respect him through that fear, that it had simply been instinct…and, basically, true. The rest of what he wanted to say, though, what he knew he needed to say, wasn't easy to get out. He could apologize for unintentionally squeezing her arm too hard, or for saying something harsher than he'd meant to…but this was different. This was apologizing for his decisions, for his intentional actions. This was recognizing both to Jane and to himself that he'd made a choice to engage in some mischief that he'd known was "wrong" all along…but it wasn't just "wrong," it was wrong. A mistake. A mistake that had wound up hurting Jane, the last person he wanted to hurt, because Selby apparently had a problem dealing with anger. He hated Selby, and that thought made the guilt at least a little more tolerable. "First of all, I made a mistake."
"Yeah," Jane said quietly, when Loki didn't continue. "I'd say so."
"I didn't realize that Selby was so unstable."
"He's not unstable. He was afraid for his wife's life, and he's stuck here and can't do anything about it."
"I didn't mean that as an excuse. Only…all right, perhaps I meant it as something of an excuse." And I still think he's unstable. "I regret that I did it. If I could go back and not do it…which I suppose I could were it not for the moratorium on using Pathfinder…I would. It was foolish and careless. And-"
"And reckless. You were walking around Chicago looking pretty much like yourself. You went to see Jessica Higgins, and pretended to work for SHIELD and this was after you found out about Gullveig being here and showing an enormous hologram of you to the entire world. You had to have known that two weeks later she would recognize you. Why would you take such a risk?"
"I've always taken risks. It's part of who I am. And besides…part of the fun was in the risk."
Jane stared at him, trying to piece all this together. She assumed he didn't actually want SHIELD showing up here to try to capture him, given how insistent he'd always been that no one know he was here. But now…it wasn't enough to stand in front of the angry bull – he had to wave the red flag as well. She shook her head in frustration and sat back down in his desk chair.
"You asked what else. You may as well know, now. I noticed early on that there was a…a bond of some sort between you and him."
"A bond? We just went to the same grad school. That's all."
"That's not all. He knew about SHIELD. He knew about Thor. He knew about the Tesseract. You had whispered conversations with him. And I…everyone has always thought me envious. Jealous. They were correct. Though not as correct as they thought. I needed you to focus on your Einstein-Rosen bridges. Not just better understanding the theory, but creating one. I needed you to help me escape this realm, and ultimately my shackles."
"I remember. You made sure I didn't trust anybody else at the Pole, by making me think half the people here were spying on me for SHIELD."
"I never said that. I said things that suggested it, and your mind filled in the rest. But you're right; there was more. I sent Selby an e-mail from a SHIELD account I had access to through their archer, which, incidentally, is also how I controlled your communications. It was a full suite of online tools. In this e-mail, I warned him that SHIELD knew he was discussing classified information and that he must cease doing so immediately. And that we, meaning SHIELD, would be interviewing him as soon as the station opened."
Jane breathed out a sigh as her eyes closed. "That's why he was giving me the cold shoulder, and being all-around rude."
"Not just that. I also…told him that there were rumors about you and he being more than friends."
"You what?! Loki…why would you…okay. Because you wanted me working twenty-four hours a day on your project." Selby had even told her about that at one point, not that it had come from Loki, but that there were rumors. It had seemed so unimportant to her at the time that she'd completely forgotten. "That was a long time ago. What's done is done. But what does that have to do with Selby's wife? You didn't need to manipulate me into… You didn't have any actual reason for doing that at all, did you? You were just thumbing your nose at your father."
Loki's face scrunched up. "What?"
"You were giving him the middle finger. The same as the restaurant. Subverting his control."
Subverting control Loki understood. The middle finger, he understood as well. They had no such gesture on Asgard, but he'd seen it during his time at the Pole and knew well enough what it meant, if not the exact translation. Yes, he'd been giving Odin an enthusiastic middle finger. One Odin not only hadn't been able to see, but he'd happily slept right through. He hadn't hurt Odin. He'd hurt himself. And he'd hurt Jane. For a few minutes of exercising power over a helpless mortal. "You already have all the answers, don't you, Jane? It felt good for a little while. Taking back control. Doing exactly what I knew…was wrong." Galling, Loki thought. It was utterly galling to say such a thing. Not just that he'd done things that he'd known Odin had forbidden; that placed no actual judgements on his actions. But to make himself beholden to a right-and-wrong, to Odin's right-and-wrong or to a mortal's, to any outside standards or code… To accept that they weren't all outside, foisted upon him. They were his. Or they once had been.
Loki walked up to the line. He had for ages. But Thor was the one who crossed it. Not Loki. Loki never lost track of it.
Now he wasn't even sure if he'd recognize the line if he saw it. He'd forgotten it existed. Hadn't wanted it to exist, perhaps.
Jane was waiting, watching him steadily, perhaps listening to every thought in his head, so well she'd seen through him tonight. "Am I one of your limits?" she'd once asked him, two doors down, in her room, he in her chair. That line was vivid, the one right in front of her as he now sat much the same as then, Jane just a couple of feet away. Yet crossing a different line had sent him inadvertently across this one as well, out of pure ignorance. Willful ignorance. Selfishness. Misplaced malice.
And how many times he'd crossed all the others. Not just crossed, but deliberately trampled on with filthy boots as he did so. "It was a mistake. I lost my way, Jane. I lost it badly."
"How? What happened, that you lost it so badly?"Jane asked after a long silence, afraid to say much more. Not because she had any fear of Loki – that was long, long past – but because she felt every bit of the fragility of this profound moment, and she was terrified that the wrong word would shatter it. Loki had a lot more than Jessica Higgins on his mind.
"I didn't know who I was anymore. I still don't," Loki said, eyes unfocused.
"Well…I still think you can be whoever you decide you want to be."
He shook his head slowly. "You always think things are so simple. 'Dye your hair, Loki, everything will be all right.' I wish it were true."
"I don't think it's simple. I know it's not simple. But the decision…that I think is pretty simple."
He shook his head again, this time more purposefully. "It isn't." He wasn't even sure there really was any decision for him to make, or if it would matter if he did. So very little was left in his hands that anything he "decided" would likely be inconsequential.
"You know people here like you, don't you? When we went out to SPRESSO I was riding in the back of a PistenBully with Paul and Ronny, and they were talking about your poker group. They said they liked playing with you. That you had a good sense of humor. They're not the only ones."
"It's playacting. They don't like me. They like Lucas. They don't know me."
"In the beginning it was more of an act. But lately? No. I don't buy it. You used to have to play a certain part, but mostly just with me. You didn't 'playact' with anybody else, you just ignored them. And then I kind of…pretty much forced you into a social life, with your birthday party. But nobody was forcing you to keep it up. Nobody was forcing you to hang out with the band. Or keep skiing with Ken. Or playing poker, or darts. You didn't need to do any 'playacting.' You kept doing all that stuff because you liked it. Because you liked them. So…okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's not about deciding who you want to be. Maybe it's just recognizing who you already are. Because to tell you the truth, after knowing you these last months, I'm thinking you trying to conquer Earth was closer to playacting than you trying to win a belching contest here at the South Pole."
About to protest, a startled laugh verging on a choke burst out instead. Jane at least had a point in that the two things seemed as far away from each other as possible. "There is some truth in what you say. But I told you I wanted Earth. That wasn't playacting either." Or was it? It seemed so remote now…but so did belching contests and darts and horseshoes. And everything else. Everything in Yggdrasil's branches and beyond. He watched Jane watching him. Concerned. Compassionate. Everything seemed remote except her. "Thank you for caring, Jane. Truly. But let's not talk about this anymore, please. I…I don't know what else to say. Or even to think. Sometimes I greatly wish not to think."
"Okay. If that's what you want."
"It is."
"Okay. But I do want to say…I'm glad you felt comfortable enough…I'm glad you trusted me enough to tell me what you did." And please don't do anything like what you did in Chicago again. To say it aloud, though, she thought would be redundant. He knew what he'd done there was wrong, and he regretted it. He couldn't undo it – at least not without more time travel – so there was nothing to do but move on. And they did need to move on. "There's one more thing Tony told me about."
Loki shifted on the footstool, unhappy they weren't done. And worried. The missing wrist device/s? he wondered. He hoped. When he'd gone to Puente Antiguo, he'd thought he'd be changing everything that happened since. He hadn't thought he'd be returning. "Yes?" he asked cautiously.
"Why did you go to Puente Antiguo? What were you doing there?"
Carefully avoiding any visible reaction, Loki's heart sank and he wondered why he bothered with any form of hope at all anymore. "You know that I was in that area at the time."
"Yes. Talking to Thor, a long way outside town. Were you also strolling around Puente Antiguo itself, and introducing yourself as Loki?"
The man with the children and the ball. Jack. What a fool I was. I wanted them to know. I wanted everyone to know. And now they do. Congratulations, Loki. Well done.
"It was time travel, wasn't it? You wanted to change something. What, exactly? To tell me something? To get me to do something? Or not do something?"
Loki looked at her in confusion, then looked away. Of course she thought it was about her. And a small part of it was, but it was mostly about himself, and things much larger than himself.
Jane, meanwhile, noticed the confusion. Or surprise. And remembered that she wasn't the only one in Puente Antiguo that Loki had a close personal relationship with. And now she was even more worried than before about this journey. "You went there because Thor was there? You could have gone to see me any time in the past. You know enough about where I've lived and worked and studied. And you could have seen Thor any time in the past, too. Any time in over a thousand years. But you chose those handful of days while he was in Puente Antiguo. The only thing that makes those days different from any other…he didn't have his full strength. You wanted to see him…when he didn't have his full strength?" Jane swallowed thickly and with difficulty; her mouth had gone dry. "Loki…what did you do?"
Loki stood from the footstool and took the few steps over to the covered window, where the temperature noticeably dropped. Now he did not have to hide his face to avoid seeing Jane's. "It seems I've no longer any need to answer your questions at all. You've already figured it out, so let's not play games."
Jane ran through everything in her memory at a frantic pace – so frantic it was fragmented and out of order – trying to find if anything seemed different, even though her limited time travel experience had not given her any real data to suggest whether she would even know if something had changed. Thor throwing his empty coffee mug on the floor as a means of asking for a refill. Thor wandering down the middle of the street like he owned it. Thor carrying Erik into her trailer which was definitely 100% not meant for drop-in visitors. Trying to find Thor at the hospital and doing so by backing into him in the parking lot. Thor looking better than Don ever had in that T-shirt and jeans. Hearing the word "Yggdrasil" for the first time in her life, and barely registering it because Thor was saying it and she was mesmerized by him.
Thor had been in town, at her place where Loki was looking for him, for a short time in the morning before they headed over to Izzy's for a hot breakfast, and not again until after dark, when they'd gone up to the roof of Smith Motors. She'd been with him the whole time. But on the roof, after talking for a while, she'd fallen asleep. Had something happened then? She hadn't woken up for anything. And none of her recollections of that day seemed anomalous in any way, though that didn't necessarily mean anything. "You waited until that night?"
"Yes."
"And you…did what?"
"I wanted to make things right."
"How?" "Make things right" didn't sound as bad as what she'd been thinking.
"By making sure Thor never came back, and I never fell from a bridge, and I never went to Earth." He could have lied. It would have been child's play to lie. Jane had slept through the whole thing; she had no basis on which to determine whether he spoke truth. But the truth had come out anyway – him stabbing himself in the heart, because…why not? He had little blood left to lose. And Jane had said he could do nothing to make her hate him. Now they would see if she had spoken truth.
"Make things right" also didn't seem to fit with what Loki said, not that first part anyway. And so she thought – she hoped in desperation that felt a bit irrational – that that first part meant something other than what her gut told her it meant. What her gut had told her as soon as she'd realized Loki had sought Thor out specifically during the time when he was, by Asgardian standards, weak. She took a deep breath. "Did you try to-"
"Yes." He stood there, staring at the window as though he could see out it, and waited for her response. There was nothing else to do but wait. There was no defending what he'd done; there were no excuses. A response, however, was not forthcoming. He was certain as much as two minutes had passed – two minutes which sounded like nothing but in pensive silence felt like an eternity – before he heard anything at all from Jane, and then it wasn't what he'd expected. Skin brushing against skin. Followed by a sniff. He turned despite his intention not to, to let her respond first, and saw her bent over, hand rubbing over an eye. Crying. "Jane…," he began, but didn't know what else to say. He felt an oddly instinctive need to comfort her, but comforting her for pain he himself had inflicted would be obscene.
"Tell me he's still alive," she said to her knees.
"He is." "In that case, all is forgiven," he imagined Jane saying, the words doused in heavy sarcasm.
She stood up and faced Loki, eyes still damp. "So…something prevented you from doing it? Like when you tried to save Baldur?" Jane's mind was racing. There was the science. Whatever had happened, it could provide more insight into the practical effects of time travel. There was Thor. Thor whom she loved – yes, loved, she thought now, faced with his possible murder, enabled by what was largely her own invention. And there was Loki, who she was so busy trusting, even when he flat-out told her he'd snuck out with Pathfinder and done things he shouldn't have, who she'd been so certain minutes ago had changed…Loki had tried to kill Thor, sometime in just the last twenty-four hours, probably while she'd been laying there asleep beside him.
"No. Nothing prevented me. Nothing other than myself. I couldn't do it, in the end. I'm a failure at everything I do," he said with a breathy laugh. "You don't want to hear this."
"Maybe this I don't," Jane said, digging her hands into the pockets of her overalls. "But I think I should. I took a huge risk on you. You understand that, don't you? Most people would think I'm crazy, that I let you stay here, and-"
"As I recall you felt you had little choice. You were afraid Tony Stark would come here and in his attempts to capture me and my attempts to ensure he didn't, we would destroy this station and its inhabitants. And you're probably right. I would have fought him with every ounce of strength and skill and magic I possess, and I wouldn't have cared in the slightest who got caught in the middle." He made a decision then, a surprisingly easy one. "If you want him to come for me now…" Easy to decide. Somewhat less easy to speak aloud. "I won't resist. No one will be hurt. Not by me. I give you my word."
With that it felt like all the wind was sucked right out of her. Her head swam and she took a couple of steps back to lean against Loki's desk. She shook her head, and closed her mouth once she realized it had fallen open. "You never make things easy. I never know what to think. I think I've got you figured out, I think I understand you, and then you go and do something like this, you go after Thor, and I think…I think I don't know you at all. And then you basically say you're willing to surrender, and I have no idea what to think at all."
"Welcome to the assembly."
Jane nodded, then looked up at him questionably. "What does that mean?"
"It…means you aren't the only one to be confused. I told you I don't know who I am anymore myself."
Jane nodded again, her lips twitching upward in a small smile. "We say 'welcome to the club.'"
"Ah. Welcome to the club, then."
"Okay, let's take a step back. You said you…you went back to…kill him…" She stopped and swallowed, then cleared her throat. The other things he'd done in the last day paled in comparison to this, and it was much harder for her to accept. "So you wouldn't fall from a bridge? From the bifrost?"
"Yes. Thor's early return…it changed everything. It ruined everything. He destroyed the bifrost before it had finished destroying Jotunheim. And…afterward…I fell."
"You didn't fall," Jane said, remembering something Thor had said, something she'd no context for or understanding of at the time. "Not by accident, anyway. You let go. Thor told me, back in Tromso. He said you were holding onto something, and you just…let go. On purpose. And he couldn't stop you."
"Alas, the hero fails," Loki murmured.
"He said you fell into an abyss. Where did you land? Did you know where this 'abyss' led?"
"You're asking if I had some elaborate plan? No. Normally, if one were to somehow fall from the bifrost despite the safeguards, it would mean death."
"Like when I fell?"
"Yes."
"So you…you wanted to die?" Jane asked quietly. He was answering so emotionlessly. Perfunctorily.
"I wanted to escape Asgard." He'd wanted to escape everything, but it wasn't untrue that he'd wanted to escape Asgard.
"But you thought you would die."
At this he hesitated. He didn't want her hatred. He didn't want her pity, either. "I thought it the most likely outcome. To the extent I thought about it at all. It wasn't exactly premeditated, Jane. Not that part. I would prefer that you not make an issue of it."
"All right," Jane agreed easily, still reeling from everything she was learning tonight, including now that, premeditated or spontaneous decision, Loki had essentially tried to kill himself. "So…normally it would kill you. But things weren't normal?"
"They were not. The bifrost's energy, which was overloading, was still active, but uncontrolled. It died away while I was inside Yggdrasil. I was stuck there. Yggdrasil preserves the lives that travel within it. Though that is meant to last mere seconds. I'm not sure how long I was in there before I was freed."
"Drifting souls…scooping them up…he decided to keep me…" She wasn't sure of the actual words Loki had spoken anymore; they'd been preparing for the trip to Alfheim and he'd started telling her about Brokk and about… "That's when Thanos found you?"
Loki's eyebrows lifted briefly. "Yes."
"And he…he wanted you to get the Tesseract for him. He was going to use it to rule the universe."
"Correct."
Jane nodded slowly, deep in thought. For a long time she'd known only fragments of his story, of what had brought him to Earth, little bits and pieces she'd heard from Thor or from him, even a tiny bit she'd heard from Jolgeir. Now for the first time she thought she understood it, could picture it more or less as a narrative with its flow of A to B to C. What had kicked it all off, why he'd suddenly felt the overwhelming need to wipe out Jotunheim after a thousand years or so of fearing and despising its people, that she still didn't understand. But everything else…it made sense. "That's how you wound up on Earth."
He nodded.
"You wanted to undo all that?"
"Yes. I wanted to not make the pleasure of Thanos's and his lackey's acquaintance. I wanted to not decide that if I could not have Asgard's throne then one on Midgard would do just as well. I wanted to not…complicate your winter," he said, finishing with a smile so polite his mother would be proud.
"I told you I wouldn't want to change that. And as for the rest…we all have things we wish we hadn't done. Words we wish we could take back. Decisions we wish we could reverse. Stuff we wish we could undo or avoid. Maybe, you know, not on quite such a grand scale, but…life doesn't work that way. You can't erase your mistakes. You have to live with them, and deal with them. And you can't go around changing history to suit yourself. Especially not by… But okay. You didn't do it. You didn't do it," she repeated, turning her head away as she started getting choked up again.
"I thought you'd be happy about that part," Loki said with a wry smile, feeling awkward.
"I am, I am," she said, dabbing at her eye before a tear could escape. "Sorry. I'm just…I don't know. Emotional. It's a lot to take in. So what happened? What changed?"
"I don't know. I don't have explanations for everything, much as I know you want them. I suppose…I thought I knew who I was up until that moment."
"You thought you were the kind of person who could murder his brother in cold blood, in his sleep? That is when you were going to do it, right?"
"It was the only opportunity. The only good one. And yes. That's precisely what I thought. I am, after all, a monster."
"Loki…I could have told you that wasn't true, that you weren't that kind of person. And you definitely aren't a monster."
"I definitely am a monster. You even called me one once."
"I did not," Jane said indignantly.
"You did. A 'heartless' one, to be specific."
She was about to deny it again when she remembered it. She had called him that. "I remember now. To be fair, you had just tried to strangle me to death, or so I thought. And you were making jokes."
"I wasn't certain of the proper etiquette after you've just nearly killed an innocent woman you thought was trying to kill you even though you knew she was utterly incapable of it. So jokes it was."
"Well, I'm sorry. I was mad, and I was scared. But you aren't heartless, and you aren't a monster."
"We can agree to disagree."
"Loki…"
"Jane…. It's over. Let it go. Call your Iron Man if you want. I only ask that you give me fair warning, so I can get away from the station. In case I find myself unable to display quite the restraint I intend to."
"I'm not calling Tony. You almost did something really terrible. But almost doesn't count. Tony doesn't need to know. Nobody does."
Loki saw the look in her eye, steady and unblinking, holding more significance than whether she would tell Tony Stark. "You're saying you won't tell Thor?"
Jane took a deep breath. This felt dangerous, and it sort of felt wrong, but on the whole, it felt right more than wrong. "No. I think you should. Someday. When the time is right. But it won't come from me."
I really don't deserve you, Jane Foster, Loki thought, though he couldn't quite bring himself to say it. Not that he particularly cared if she told Thor about what he'd meant to do. But that she was willing not to, for him…he couldn't quite fathom it, that not only did she not now detest him but she still cared, enough to keep a secret like this from Thor…he couldn't quite fathom it, but he treasured it. "Thank you," he said awkwardly, unsure what else to say.
"Hey…," Jane began, eyes going wide as something occurred to her. "You…if you had actually killed Thor…Loki, you would have killed yourself, too. Thor was mortal then. Did you…did you think about that at all?" If he had…the idea was disturbing to put it mildly.
"He may have worn the skin of a mortal, but he wasn't truly a mortal," Loki responded, only a second's thought required. The concept was certainly a familiar one. "He was still Aesir. Only without his Aesir strength and access to-"
"Do you know that for certain?" she asked, relieved at least that this intended murder hadn't been a unique form of intended murder-suicide. "Did Odin stop and have a nice long conversation with you about it, where he explained exactly what he'd done in explicit detail? Because he obviously didn't do that when he sent you here."
"No, he…he didn't explain it, but…" Isn't that interesting? Loki thought, strangely detached from the reflections. In fact he hadn't thought about any of this at all; it had never occurred to him that Thor might be considered mortal, for the purposes of Curse Number One. Wouldn't that have been a surprise? How is it possible that it never occurred to me? Is this how far I've strayed from clear thought? He shook it off; there was no point in dwelling on it. "It hardly matters anymore now, does it? And if you don't mind…Jane, I'm sorry, but I truly am tired."
"Really? It's still not that late I think. Oh. I see. No wonder you're tired. You couldn't have slept much last night with all that travel."
"I didn't sleep at all. And Alfheim was trying."
"You bring new meaning to the word 'understatement.' Okay, though, I understand. Get some sleep. Everything will look better tomorrow. We'll put our heads together and come up with a plan for after the winter, okay?"
Loki smiled, though it was strained. "All right," he agreed. He would even go along with it, he thought, act like he really thought everything would be just as fine as she said it would be. For her sake.
Jane smiled back, and thought about giving him a hug. He looked so lost. In the end, she thought it would be too awkward and she didn't. They said their goodnights and Jane went back to her room. It was nearly 10:00, she saw when she got there, later than she'd thought. Standing there alone in her little room, staring at the clock, it was like a switch flipped inside her and suddenly she was tired too. She'd slept in ridiculously late, but the day had been stressful and demanding. And one heck of an emotional rollercoaster.
She started stripping out of the layers of clothes, thinking back on her conversations with Loki today. She could hardly believe he was the same person who'd once made her tremble in fear. Because, she supposed, he wasn't. He really had turned a corner. He had lost his way, before. And maybe he hadn't found it again, yet, but he knew the path he was on before wasn't the one he belonged on.
She thought that through again as she pulled on an old set of blue flannel pajamas. He'd looked so lost when she left. Not just then, but for much of the time she'd been with him today, and ever since Alfheim, yesterday. Lost. Defeated. Like he'd given up. He seemed to truly not care if she called Tony to come take him into custody. It wasn't right. It wasn't Loki. She bit her lip. She was afraid Loki wouldn't be happy to see her again, but she thought maybe he shouldn't be alone right now.
Pulling her hair out from under the neck of her pajamas, she grabbed her robe and shrugged into it, opened the door, and found Loki almost right in front of her. His ever-present leather bag was on his shoulder, expanded and stuffed full of something. "What's going on?" she asked.
"Ah…I was just…"
"You were going out? I thought you said you were tired." Her face fell. She was going to get sick from being on the see-saw. "You weren't going to use Pathinder, were you?" she whispered, chagrined. Thankfully they were alone in the corridor. Most people would be in bed by now.
"No. I told you I wouldn't. I just…"
"What?"
"I was going to sleep out there, all right? In the jamesway. I…I have nightmares sometimes. As you know. And I can't trust my sound barrier anymore. I don't care to make Ronny or anyone else privy to that."
Jane was relieved, but the relief was fleeting. "You were going to sleep out in the jamesway that's heated to like twenty-eight degrees?"
"I-"
"No. No, you're not doing that. Turn around, mister. Back to your room."
Loki's face scrunched up. Jane was ordering him about in unfettered expectation that he would obey. She was even pointing, as though he didn't know the way to his own chambers. It made him feel like a little boy. Mentally he shrugged – his mother had broken him of the habit of physically doing so long ago – and turned back around. He would be the clay in her hands, if she wanted. He couldn't imagine finer hands to be in.
She followed him the few steps back to his door, went in after him, and closed the door behind him. He turned around to face her and arched an eyebrow. "What now, Dr. Foster?"
"Do you have slumber parties on Asgard?"
/
Releasing this one from Kenya's Maasai Mara...saw two lions and two cheetahs today, along with your standard elephants, zebras, warthogs, impalas, gazelles, etc. I am ridiculously tired. But so happy to FINALLY release this chapter. This chapter, really, is the reason I wrote this story. So, yeah, I'm done now. Haaaa. Just kidding of course. So many things are not resolved, and, I exaggerate, Loki of course is still really not in a good place. And happy fourth of July to my fellow Americans!
So, wow, guys, it's two days away from the THREE YEAR anniversary of the first chapter I released of this story. I was very nervous about it, I had no idea if anyone else would think it was any good...it's been so awesome to have so many of you along on this ride with me. I really apologize, I haven't yet responded to the reviews from the last chapter - busy with work stuff, another internet outage, and then out of town for the weekend. I WILL! I really really enjoy reading your comments, and I also really enjoy responding. (If I don't hear back from you I just hope you aren't annoyed that I respond!) So, if the mood strikes, please do continue to review...and I *will* get back to you.
In Ch. 128...slumber parties on Midgard and more decisions on Asgard...
And a wee excerpt:
"There isn't really a story."
"I'm sorry, you just said you almost died at a slumber party. I think there's a story. Unless that happens all the time at Asgardian sleepovers."