Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Eight – Slumber
"It seems a contradictory term. If it's a party, there can't be much slumber. If there's slumber, it can't be much of a party."
"You're not wrong. It's something kids do. Teenagers. You stay over at somebody's house, and you stay up late, maybe all night if you can make it, talking, watching movies, playing games, trying not to be so loud your parents come out and yell at you. Sometimes you pull pranks on whoever falls asleep first."
"That could be a party after all," Loki said with the best smile he could manage. "We call it a sleepover."
"Oh. We call it that, too, actually. So you've done it then, sleepovers."
"Less than others, I'm sure, but yes."
"Why? Oh, because you were a prince?"
"In part, probably. Also because the first time I went to one, I nearly died."
Jane's eyebrows went up. "That sounds way more exciting, and, okay, scary, than any slumber party I ever went to. But hold that story. I need to-"
"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."
"It does not," Loki conceded, his smile now a little more natural.
"Thank goodness for that. So I want to hear the story, but I just have to grab a few things first. I'll be right back."
"What…what are you…you don't mean you think you're going to sleep in here tonight," Loki said.
"Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean."
"But there's…," Loki began, highly conscious of the tiny space around him. "There's only one bed, and…" He couldn't bring himself to continue. He felt like a fool. Jane knew exactly how many beds were in the room. And sleepovers didn't work like this. Not that kind of sleepover. If Jane thought she was going to share his bed…Loki couldn't imagine much slumber happening. The thought made him feel more youthfully awkward than he had in an incredibly long time. Jane, though, was shaking her head, eyes wide. Loki was relieved. It wasn't that thinking of Jane in that way was so terrible – it wasn't – it was just more than he could deal with at the moment. And he really did need to get some sleep. Not lay awake all night on the narrow bed pressed next to Jane Foster, who obviously did not have carnal passions on her mind. He'd known that much even before she started shaking her head.
"I've got a sleeping bag. And I'll get my pillow. And I'll make a quick trip to the bathroom. Okay? I'll be right back," she said, flashing him a big grin before dashing out of the room and down to hers to grab her toothbrush and toothpaste.
Loki stared at the door for long seconds after Jane left. Jane Foster, apparently, was going to spend the night in his room. He hadn't agreed to it, but then she hadn't ever actually asked. He wasn't sure why she was suddenly consumed by a desire to sleep on his floor – he assumed a "sleeping bag" was something that one slept in on the floor – and he certainly wasn't giving up his bed for her and sleeping on the floor himself. If she wanted to force him out of his bed, he'd just sleep in hers instead. No, he reminded himself then, I'd sleep out in the jamesway as I intended.
Jane Foster, who knew exactly what he'd done, nearly every terrible thing, was going to spend the night in his room. By her own choice. And he, apparently, was going to let her. "What has become of me?" he asked aloud, in resignation. He'd hated her. Hated her before he even knew her name. He'd held her responsible for returning Thor, and not just any Thor, but a Thor who suddenly wanted to protect his most hated enemies, Frost Giants. A Thor who had cost him everything.
Except Thor had cost him nothing. Not then, anyway. Nothing except the chance to rid the cosmos of every last Frost Giant. Everything else, though…Thor had nothing to do with it. He saw that clearly now, just as clearly as he'd once seen how Thor had cost him everything. Thor didn't take the throne from him. Thor didn't take his pride from him. Thor didn't take Asgard from him. Thor didn't take Odin from him. He'd lost whatever he'd had of those things as soon as he learned the truth about himself, and Thor was not to blame for that discovery. Nor was he to blame for the lies told that meant that there was something to be discovered. That none of those things had ever really been his in the first place.
He looked toward the door again. Thor may be in Yggdrasil's crown and Loki among its roots, but among those roots was Jane, too. Jane was his. At least for tonight. If she wanted to hear about non-stories from his childhood, he would tell her. He would tell her anything. Almost anything.
She would also be back soon. He pushed himself into action and hurried to get into his sleepwear. He wasn't sleeping on the floor, and he wasn't sleeping in day clothes. He did hope that there would in fact be some slumber amid the party.
/
/
Jane got ready as quickly as she could, cutting corners on her twice-daily moisturizing routine and flinging things across the floor from the stuff she'd consolidated into one suitcase until she came to her red and gray sleeping bag, on the very bottom, where it could also serve as extra protective padding. It was a nice one, a major upgrade from the basic one she'd bought in grad school, and it came in handy when she wound up camping out to get those cool clear skies she needed for her work.
She didn't want to leave Loki alone. He wasn't acting himself, and he'd done some really rash, risky things over the last 24 hours. Should some other crazy idea come to him in the middle of the night, she also didn't want him sleeping steps away from Pathfinder – that wouldn't give him much time to remember his promise not to use it. So, a slumber party it was.
The idea, weirdly enough, had come from Tony.
"We'll have to figure out what to do after winter, now that everybody outside Antarctica knows what he looks like."
"Not a problem. He can bunk at my place."
"Really?" she asked, surprised. Tony would have the means to help hide Loki's presence…but she couldn't imagine either man begin particularly happy about the arrangement.
"Sure, why not? It'll be kind of like a slumber party. We'll light a fire, roast marshmallows, sing camp songs. Maybe even work toward a Boy Scout badge or two."
Ah. "Are you just pulling my leg? About the whole thing? Not just the slumber party and the Boy Scouts?"
"Uh…yeah. I thought that was fairly obvious, actually."
"Oh."
"You weren't? I mean, Loki and fire? That can't be a good combination. Chicago 1871 all over again."
She hadn't been. It was easy to forget sometimes that Tony still didn't know the Loki she knew. His most personal interaction with him, as far as she knew, involved Loki tossing him out a window at the top of a skyscraper. And his patience was wearing thin. He really didn't trust that Loki wouldn't use Pathfinder again, and he knew Jane had no good way to physically stop him from doing so if he decided to go back on his word – not unless she made good on her threat to take an ax to it. And she didn't want to do that. Tony hadn't seen it, and Jane hadn't tried to explain it to him – they were private, those moments she'd shared with Loki – but she was certain Loki really had turned a corner, and that he was done with threatening or harassing random women and attempts to kill Thor or anyone else. Except for that weird state that he was in, that led him to such reckless acts in the first place.
Which was why, she reminded herself, picking up her slowed pace, she wasn't leaving him alone. Just in case. Mini-backpack stuffed and hands full, Jane peeked out her door, saw no Selby, and hurried down to Loki's room. She hurried even faster when she realized what it might look like to anyone who happened to see her. Someone else was at the end of the hall, but that person – Jane couldn't tell who it was – was walking away from her and never turned as she knocked lightly and slipped in after Loki opened the door.
"I brought granola bars. Sorry, I'm all out of sweet logs," Jane said, bending down to lay her sleeping bag out on the floor over the dark green comforter he'd taken from his bed and laid out for her for extra cushioning. On his bed was now the standard issue blanket the rooms had come with. "Thanks," she said as she stood back up, then jerked back as she bumped heads with Loki, who'd been bending over, too.
"Sorry. Are you all right?"
"Fine," Jane said with an awkward smile. She'd forgotten just how clingy Loki's pajamas were and he was right there and maybe this might be a little weirder than she'd expected.
"I just wanted to get a look at the sleeping bag."
"Oh, sure, go ahead," she said, stepping back – as far back as she could. Which was about two steps, at which point she bumped into the desk. "So you don't use them on Asgard?" she asked as Loki rubbed the material between his fingers and ran his hand over the headrest.
"Not quite like this. The shape is odd."
"It's called mummy-style. It's narrower at the bottom to keep the warmth in around your legs. Not good if you're a restless sleeper, but it's pretty amazing at keeping you warm. I'll keep it unzipped tonight. Not exactly the tundra inside. You, uh, you want to try it out?" she asked when Loki kept inspecting it.
Loki started to nod – something like this could make spending the night outdoors while mountain climbing considerably more pleasant. But then he thought better of it. That part of his life, frivolous adventuring, was over, and there was no going back. "No, thank you. I don't think I'd fit," he said, straightening up.
Jane laughed. "They make them in different sizes. Here, want a couple of granola bars?"
Loki took them; he wasn't particularly hungry, having eaten some snack foods during the movie, but he figured he may as well eat something if Jane was going to. He got his water bottle – he'd broken down and bought one from the "Pole-Mart" a while back with poker earnings – and climbed up onto the bed, which he'd cleared off while Jane was gone.
"Selby's going to kill me," Jane said, turning her radio back off. They normally didn't need to keep them on inside the station, unless they simply wanted to know if someone reported an extra-jaw-dropping aurora, but with the earthquake situation they'd been asked to keep them on at all times. Loki's, next to hers on the desk, was still on.
"Not while I'm near. And if I'm not, rest assured I'll return the favor at the first opportunity."
Jane whipped around to face Loki, who was fluffing his pillow and didn't particularly seem to be joking. "That's just an expression, you know. I meant he's going to be mad that I told him I'd come find him when I got back from SPRESSO and now I've avoided him the whole rest of the day."
"Expression or no, I meant exactly what I said," Loki stated matter-of-factly, fixing her with a steady gaze.
"Okay, well…you do know that I wouldn't actually want you to kill anybody, don't you?" Jane asked, unsure what she'd done to now have two men in one day vowing to commit violence for her sake. "What do you have against Selby, anyway?"
"He irritates me."
Jane waited, thinking there'd be more of an explanation, but none was forthcoming. She mentally shrugged it off. Sometimes people just really did rub you the wrong way, for no reason you could put your finger on, and she knew now that Selby had drawn his attention when the discovery of their common grad school and shared knowledge of the Tesseract and Norse gods threatened Loki's monopoly on her time. She took two more granola bars and her water bottle from her bag, then got down on the floor in the sleeping bag, still sitting up. "Leave him alone, though, okay?"
"Fine," Loki said, and was glad when Jane didn't press him to say anything more definitive about it. He wasn't sure how this slumber party was supposed to work, and sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed, legs dangling over the edge. "What do we do now? For the 'party' portion of the slumber party?"
"Weeeeelll, there's 'Truth or Dare.' Usually you have more people. One person-"
"I believe I can guess. And no. I've given and undertaken more than enough dares in my life, and truth…," Loki said, letting the sentence dangle and finishing with a roguish smile.
"Yeah, okay," Jane said with an easy nod, though she didn't know what exactly he meant by that look. It seemed like he meant to suggest she'd never get the truth out of him about anything, despite the fact that he'd done nothing but confess truths all evening, even truths that she knew he feared would lead to trouble for him. "There's 'Have You Ever? Never Never.' You have to say something you've never done that you think the other players …no, that won't work."
"Why not?"
"You have to compare with the other players. Or…player. And usually the players don't have over a thousand years of age gap and corresponding life experience gap between them. We're not exactly evenly matched."
"Of course we aren't. Haven't we had this discussion before, Jane?"
Jane rolled her eyes at him. "There's scavenger hunts – but I guess we can't really go anywhere, and it would take a long time anyway – and fashion design contests, and-"
"No."
"-blindfold makeovers – one person is blindfolded and puts makeup on the other person."
"Oh, yes, that one. We should try that one."
Jane looked over at Loki from the ceiling tile from which she'd been trying to extract more slumber party memories. His face was perfectly serious. She broke into laughter. "Sorry. I guess I don't know that many slumber party games that aren't meant for teenage girls."
"No games. I would feel compelled to win, and I'm too tired to make much of an effort."
"Okay. You don't have to have games to have a slumber party. We can just talk for a little while. How's that?" Jane asked to Loki's surprisingly willing nod. She opened up a chocolate chip granola bar and got a bite down. "You were going to tell me about your first sleepover that didn't go so well."
"There truly isn't much of a story. I was seven. I had never gone anywhere without Thor before, but I'd played with this boy a couple of times at one of the children's parks, and he was a few months younger than me, so closer to my age than Thor's, and I suppose his mother mentioned it to mine, and suddenly I was spending the night in his home. That was the plan, anyway. We never made it that far. I had dinner at his family's house, and my tongue started to feel strange, and I remember being very frightened and everything turning blurry. The next thing I knew I was waking up in the Healing Room."
"I'm guessing since you said there wasn't much of a story that they weren't trying to poison you in some kind of political intrigue."
"No," Loki said with a surprised laugh. His eyebrows went up then. "Though I imagine they were investigated for it. I don't know. I was unconscious. But no, it was an allergic reaction to the bean cakes they served. They were made with a bean native only to Nidavellir, and I'd never had it before. Hm. Probably they were investigated. Regardless, I doubt anyone else felt particularly encouraged to invite me over when the first people to do so nearly had a dead prince on their hands. Not the best way to get in the good graces of the king and queen if their child dies while visiting your home." The smile faded from his lips. He didn't remember much detail about that incident or its immediate aftermath; recovery had taken a while and in the meantime he'd spent a lot of time sleeping. But he remembered the worried faces of Frigga and Odin. Frigga and Odin. Well, I suppose he couldn't install his puppet on Jotunheim's throne if the puppet were to die or be left mentally deficient.
"Sounds like anaphylaxis."
"I don't recall a special name for it," he said, biting into a granola bar.
"Did you have to keep medicine nearby, in case you accidentally ate those beans again? Do you still now?" she asked, eying the satchel hanging from the bedpost. It would explain why he never went anywhere without that bag.
"My mother did. And my guards. I didn't know it at the time. But no, I don't carry it now. Allergies are all but unheard of among adults on Asgard. I'm sure I grew out of it. Hmph, though I wouldn't be surprised if my mother ordered the Palace Einherjar to continue carrying a vial of it, just in case. She was always a bit overprotective of me."
"Yeah? That was my dad. My mother was more of a free spirit, she was always saying I needed to experience life, and then my dad would say, 'She needs to be alive to experience it.' It didn't take long to figure out who to go to for permission if I wanted to do something."
"Jane, I'm shocked. Scandalized. You manipulated your parents?"
"I was a kid," she said with a laugh. "I think every kid on the face of the Earth does that. And I think they start even before they hit two years old. Anyway, mine figured out what was going on before long. They had a fight about it – I mean, Dad was peeved that Mom said I could go to this fair, um, like a festival, with a friend of mine that they didn't really know, and I was told to go hang at our neighbors' house for a while, so I'm pretty sure they had a fight, but when they called for me to come back you'd never know it, and the next time I asked Mom something like that I got 'I'll talk to your dad about it' instead of 'Sure, go ahead.'"
"How did it work when you moved in with Erik?"
"Wellll, that was complicated, I guess. We had some rough patches, when I went through a rebellious stage. You know, the 'you aren't my dad, I don't have to listen to you' kind of stuff, storming out of the house. It was a short one, though, and pretty tame compared to what some kids get into. Once I settled down he pretty much let me do what I wanted to do, but I asked his permission, and I didn't lie to him about stuff. Honestly I was a pretty good kid, really. I was more likely to beg to borrow Erik's car to drive out at crazy hours to some local college's Mars Party than to sneak out to a rave or something. It might be more accurate to say I was a pretty boring kid."
"I doubt that. A Mars Party sounds fun," Loki said, the words You aren't my dad, I don't have to listen to you echoing through his head. He was a bit old for a "rebellious stage," but he did recall Odin referring to his behavior as such. It might be fun to speak those words aloud to him, just to see the reaction: "You aren't my dad, I don't have to listen to you."
"It's a bunch of geeks standing in lines to look through a few telescopes that are all pointed at Mars. I think they threw in cheap pancakes once," she said with a wry smile.
"All right. Perhaps you led a boring life then. But look what it prepared you for. Whether for better or for worse, your life is anything but boring now."
"That's a good point," she said with a laugh. "So hey, I've been meaning to ask you for ages, I'd love for you to tell me more about your mother."
Loki squinted his eyes at her. "Why?"
"Well, I know your other family relationships aren't that great, but I've never heard you say anything bad about your mother. It's clear that you love her a lot. And yet…sometimes you refer to her by her name, like…like you're trying to distance yourself. I'm sorry, I don't mean to get into all that, though. I was just hoping you'd tell me more about her. You don't tell me very many nice stories about your family."
"I suppose not," Loki said with a short laugh. "I could tell you many nice stories about my mother. But it's complicated now. I don't look back at those memories the same way I once did."
"Why not?"
He held back on answering, uncertain whether he actually would. But Jane already knew this much, so he decided he may as well. "Because she's not really my mother." He glanced around the room – anywhere but at Jane – and hopped down from the bed. "You know, Jane, I remember that you said the goal of a slumber party is to stay up as late as possible, but I'm being perfectly honest with you when I tell you I'm tired and I do want to get some sleep. Truth."
"I know. Me, too. Can't we talk for just a little while longer, though?"
"We can. But I'm turning off the light and getting into bed properly. And in the unlikely event that I begin making noise in my sleep and wake you up…would you mind waking me? As quickly as possible? Preferably with…an object, rather than yourself. The radio perhaps. So that if I react badly again I won't hurt you." He hated it, bringing this weakness, this defenselessness up with her, but she already knew about the earlier nightmare, and he'd already warned her he was nervous about a recurrence, so he swallowed his pride lest he scare her half to death or worse yet injure her when she tried to wake him.
"Okay," Jane agreed as the room was plunged into darkness. She tracked Loki back to his bed, on top of it, and under the covers with her ears. He'd said before that he hardly ever had nightmares, so she'd thought that that one night was a fluke. Now she realized he had to have been telling the truth before when he said he was going to sleep in the freezing cold jamesway out of fear of a nightmare. And looking back, it would be a really big coincidence if the one night his soundproofing failed was the one night he had a nightmare vivid enough to have him calling out in his sleep. She wondered how often it really happened, and if it was always about Baldur, or if there were other things in his life traumatic enough to be fodder for such terrible dreams. Obviously, though, he didn't want to talk about this, and anyway now – lights out and Loki settled into his bed – wasn't exactly the right time to ask.
Jane reached up and put her two empty granola bar wrappers on top of Loki's desk, took a long swallow of water, then capped her bottle and slid it underneath the desk where she could easily retrieve it. She then followed Loki's suit and lay down, turning onto her side and resting her head against her palm. She could just make out Loki's outline now, with what little light came in around the door. "Just because there was a piece of information you didn't have that you do now, your mom's no more or less your mom than she ever was. She always knew the truth."
"I know that. She did, and I didn't. And now everything looks different. Would you not feel the same? Would you not look back and…and question everything you thought you'd understood, or the things you never understood and think that perhaps now you do? But before we get dragged down into a debate about nothing, I'll also tell you that I do love her. I tried to tell myself that she was nothing to me, but I never succeeded for very long. She lied to me my entire life, and I'm angry at her for that, but I know she has always loved me. I have never questioned it. Perhaps once or twice, actually…out of sheer foolishness."
"I'm really glad you have her." Now, in the dark, it was hard to believe this was the same Loki at all, speaking to her of love, when not all that long ago it seemed he was only able to spew vicious hate and rejected all notions of love.
"Do I?" Loki asked rhetorically, then sighed and hurried to continue before Jane could treat the question as another opportunity to try to assure him that all was well. "You wanted me to tell you more about her, so I shall. I learned something new about her recently. About two weeks ago as a matter of fact."
"Oh yeah? What's that? Wait, two weeks ago? When we were on Asgard?"
"Exactly. That Harvest Day celebration that we attended, the one that I told you had never been celebrated that way before, and was never celebrated quite that same way again? It wasn't about Harvest Day at all. There was no reason for the pipers and lines to perform for Harvest Day. Asgardian culture and tradition do revolve around the sword, but the harvest revolves around the scythe. Harvest Day is about food and games and competitions and enjoying the outdoors before the weather turns colder. In fact, it's mostly about food. Even most of the games and competitions are related to food. It isn't and has never been connected to Asgard's warriors. Yet that one year the pipers and lines led a parade. The only chance for me to play the pipe."
Jane nodded, following what he was saying now. "Because you were sick on Victory Day and missed your chance then. And since she's the queen, if she says she wants a parade with pipers and lines for Harvest Day, then she gets a parade with pipers and lines for Harvest Day."
"She made it into something grand, all for my benefit, because she knew how disappointed I was to miss the Victory Day parade that year. Before that, it was fairly dull holiday. Possibly a notch or two above a Mars Party, but still, fairly boring."
She laughed at the unexpected – and incongruos – reference to the Mars Parties of her high school days alongside Harvest Day on Asgard. "And she didn't tell you that she arranged it all? You didn't figure it out until we went back there?"
"No. I never suspected a thing."
"Quite a sneaky mom you've got there."
"I suppose you're right," Loki said with a soft chuckle. He'd never particularly thought of his mother that way before but… "Perhaps I got it from her."
Jane breathed out a laugh. "Well, you've also got a seriously awesome mom. I mean, my mom used to call down to my school and push hard to try to get me the best teachers. But your mom…wow."
"A seriously awesome mom." "Perhaps I'll tell her that someday, in those exact words, if I ever get the chance."
"Of course you'll get the chance. But maybe I'll just tell her that myself someday, if I get the chance."
"I hope that you will, Jane Foster. I hope that you will. You may tell her that I concur with your assessment."
"Okay, I will. In those exact words."
Loki smiled, but it was a rueful smile, full of melancholy and regret, and he was glad that it was too dark for Jane to see it.
/
/
On Asgard, dawn was about to break, which meant that the War Council was meeting in the protected confines of the throne room. Thor's heart sank as he approached, healing stone dust still tingling on his neck, where an arrow had managed to penetrate – another assassination attempt, really, for twenty Ljosalf archers had taken him on from one direction, which Thor had thought foolish since he easily knocked most of them aside and scattered the rest with Mjolnir, but one had been hidden off to the side waiting for that moment and loosed his arrow. Thor had caught a glimmer of reflected moonlight off of it at the last second and begun to turn, empty hand still reaching for Mjolnir, and that small movement spared him a much more severe injury, with blood loss that could have felled him again. He'd once found such battle invigorating – the challenge of it, needing to always be at his physical and mental peak, aware of everything around him on all sides, the enemy sending their best to take on him, Asgard's best. Even in this war, in the beginning, there had been times when a warrior's roar began in his blood and filled his lungs and escaped in a shout of life and purpose and pride and confidence. In victory. Now if he roared it was in nothing but anger and frustration.
The War Council, too, was again in a battle of its own. He'd told Bragi he wanted them to have options, not more arguments. He couldn't hear them, for Maeva was blocking sound, but he could see the tense postures, angry faces, fists shaking. Standing at the periphery and apparently keeping out of the argument, Maeva spotted him first, and expanded the sound bubble around him.
"-nothing more than arguing amongst ourselves and slamming our weapons into walls. We have to give him alternatives!"
"You still have no viable suggestions?" Thor said angrily, heads snapping his way.
"We have suggestions, my king," Hergils said hastily.
"We cannot agree on how viable they are," Fandral said.
"Tyr?" Thor said. Tyr was not the head of the War Council; as king Thor in fact technically was, but in his absence, Hergils, as First Einherjar, headed it, while Thor also placed particular weight on Volstagg's words. But Tyr, called out of retirement for this war, was unquestionably the most experienced warrior and leader of warriors on Asgard, other than Odin himself.
"We don't have nearly enough warriors to attack Vanaheim or any of the other realms. But we can send a small group there, as soon as we have word from Heimdall that Gullveig is vulnerable. We capture him, and bring him to Asgard as our prisoner."
"This was already suggested and rejected," Thor said tightly, temper simmering. He'd withdrawn from heavy fighting for this?
"Times are different now," Tyr responded. "The situation more dire. Bragi suggested that you may be willing to consider some things that you weren't before."
"What does this really gain us?" Thor asked. "You think Vanaheim's war effort will collapse without Gullveig's leadership?"
It was Hergils who answered. "If we succeed in capturing him, we leave Vanaheim without a strong leader. His eldest son was meant to lead farmers, not warriors, and not a realm. His daughter is a competent woman, but Vanaheim has no more a tradition of women ruling than does Asgard. His younger son might be up to the task, but he's incredibly unpopular with the realm's agricultural workers and landowners; he would never be accepted. And should one of their generals attempt to rule…" Hergils shook his head. "Vanaheim is not Asgard. Their people most respect those who are intimately familiar with the land, not the sword. If Vanaheim and Alfheim both have absentee leaders, then the alliance itself has no leader. Neither Svartalfheim nor the other realms have established any leadership role in the conduct of the war."
"So it could throw their realm into chaos. Force them to focus internally, rather than on the war," Thor said.
"It could," Volstagg agreed with a firm nod. "But we can't predict the timing. Can they hold things together long enough to…to defeat us? Or can they resolve things so quickly that we only delay the war's progress for a week or two and gain no advantage in the end?"
"Many Vanir now oppose this war," Bragi pointed out. "Removing Gullveig may be the catalyst they need to fully reject it. To refuse to fight in it."
"Or," Hogun said, "it may turn a king into a martyr, and cause his people to rally around him and fight with greater vigor."
"Killing him turns him into a martyr. We don't kill him. We only take him prisoner," Huskol said.
"We took King Nadrith prisoner, and he has only become more popular."
"He was always popular. He became more popular with the war. His capture didn't cause that."
Thor gripped Gungnir harder and clenched his jaw as the dispute continued. Bragi had warned them that there would be additional risk associated with any action that they took, and that they had reached the point where they would have to accept that risk if they did not wish to experience defeat.
Bragi cut off the arguing with a few handclaps. He had no status in the War Council at all, but he had the respect of every Asgardian warrior. "Maeva, you had a different sort of idea."
She nodded and stepped forward with glances left and right that were wary but unafraid. Maeva was not and never had been a warrior, and did not command the same broad respect in this forum. Still, when she spoke, it was with confidence, which Thor appreciated. He had no time for anything else. "We could use King Gullveig's own tactics against him. We're already spreading whispers in the dark. Why not do so in broad daylight, and at a shout? Deliver a message that will be heard by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Vanir. Reinforce the things we know they're already thinking. Your farmers and food distributors suffer, your people bear the brunt of a horrendous number of dead, warriors who've been released upon their honor not to return with weapon raised have been forced to break their oaths. For what? Loss of life, loss of livelihood, loss of honor. What does any individual Vanir gain from all this?"
Thor knitted his brow. He had to credit Maeva with coming up with a novel idea, at least. "What would be the goal?" he asked. "We hope that they simply refuse to fight?"
"Or that they overthrow Gullveig," Bragi said.
"If they overthrow him themselves, he is no martyr," Hogun said.
And if they don't? he thought.
"What if we do both?"
Thor turned to Jolgeir, who'd remained silent thus far. "What do you mean?" he asked. They obviously could not both remove Gullveig from the throne and try to push the Vanir to do so themselves.
"We capture him, removing Vanaheim's only ruler who's truly feasible at the moment, but we also deliver the message Maeva speaks of. Perhaps then we can…prevent him from becoming a martyr. Encourage the Vanir to rally against him rather than for him."
The discussion continued and a few more ideas were presented – unimpressive ones, Thor thought – but the more he considered it, the more he liked this option, even as others pointed out all the associated risks, all the things that could go wrong. Nothing worth achieving was without risk. And this idea, the combination of two ideas, seemed to him to have the best chance of making a real difference in this war, a difference that might still allow Asgard to prevail.
The decision was made, and they moved on to the issue of timing. There was little time to waste, yet no one wanted a repeat of the failed attempt to rescue Jormik, a failure in part because they'd had to act too hastily, without sufficient planning. When the arguing settled on either four or five days from today, Thor ended it with a pronouncement that they would make their raid on Vanaheim five days hence, with the exact timing to be determined by Heimdall's observations that day.
"We will do everything we can to succeed," Thor said, but these were not ordinary warriors, and with these men, and Maeva, he felt he should be blunt. "If it fails…we must be prepared to discuss terms."
"We will be," Bragi said with a slow nod. "But we will not fail."
Thor nodded back. "We must not fail."
The meeting turned next to the details of how they would conduct this raid, but planning was not Thor's strength. Battle was, and it waited for him beyond Asgard's walls. He handed Gungnir back over to Hergils for its safekeeping and he and Bragi both stepped away from the larger group, Bragi headed to his office to begin work on the message they would announce over Vanaheim's capital, and Thor to the porticoed public entrance to the throne room, the fastest way back to the battle.
Just as he hefted Mjolnir into a spin, he saw someone entering the throne room from the side…the side where the door that led to the private areas of the palace was located. He lowered his arm and hurried in that direction, for the figure had light hair and he was certain who it was even before he could clearly see her face. "Mother, are you well?" he asked when he reached her. "You weren't at Assembly last night. Is Father well?"
"I wasn't there because I recognized the signs. He was beginning to stir, and now he has woken. He's getting ready," she said with a hint of a frown.
"Ready?"
"He'll put himself right back in the Sleep." She looked away, and when she met Thor's gaze again the anger on her face had so thoroughly vanished that it was as though it had never been there. "He wants to speak with you in private."
"Of course," Thor answered with a nod, relieved beyond measure. His mother may have been unhappy about it, but Asgard needed its king. Its real king, Thor thought, glad to be removed of the burden so that he could focus on the fight.
"You'll find him in our chambers. But first…I understand you have a task for me."
/
/
Frigga was trapped. Surrounded. Elves and dwarves and Frost Giants. She gripped a sword but one of the beasts grabbed the flat of the blade and the ice shot up it and she cried out and dropped it, her hand badly burnt. They were in the garden, perhaps, something like the garden anyway, backing her up steadily against the wall, blocking her escape. Loki stood atop Stark's tower in New York and watched it all happen but he couldn't go to her; it was happening right in front of him and he couldn't even get off this cursed balcony. Behind him, behind the glass, the room was full of people, Midgardians, screaming at him and banging fists on the windows. On all other sides was a long fall to the ground. He needed to escape these people and this place. He needed to go to her, to protect her. He could do neither.
Somehow, she found a way into the palace. Weapon gone, her fists clutched at the fabric of her gown, keeping it free of the feet hurtling her forward. He willed her to run faster, for every single attacker now poured into the palace after her, and her fastest, longest stride was no match for a Frost Giant's. He was there behind her now, between her and the enemy, on the stairs. He tried to create a duplicate Frigga, and send it fleeing down the corridor instead of up the next flight, but nothing appeared. He tried other illusions, concealments, transformations, one frantically after the other, and nothing happened. The attackers kept coming. Toward him. Through him. They didn't care about him. They wanted her. Somewhere above him, she screamed.
He turned in horror, and found her standing there holding out his nightclothes. "Ready for bed, Loki?" she asked, her voice calm and kind and smooth as honey.
"Yes, Mother," he said, glancing back at the closed door of his bedchambers. Hadn't someone just been chasing her? And why was the door closed? "Where's Thor?" he asked, his eyes falling on the second bed in the room.
"He'll be along soon, don't you worry about him, precious boy. You aren't sleeping enough lately, you know. I can never find you anymore. Growing boys need their sleep."
/
A few responses to guests: "Qwerty" (Ch. 126/7): Occasionally as time/space permit I drop some guest review responses here, so not always rhetorical. And, for everyone, my average used to be 6-7 days per chapter. Then I remembered I was Midgardian and needed to sleep and it became 8 days average. Since the move hit it's been probably around a 10-day average. Sometimes it's been two weeks and I *hate* that. Virtual hug accepted! Thanks. "Guest" (July 4): Who am I to judge this type of obsession? And thanks! A realistic transformation of Loki, the "real Loki" from the movies, was Goal Number One in this story. "Macalaure": Thanks! Superlatives make my day. (Unless, you know, they're like "awfulest" or something.) "Dakota": Hm. Yep, you could sell me on the idea that Loki "would rip apart the cosmos to save her." And ditto re that obsession thing, above. ;-) "Guest" (July 15): Any bets on whether the other Polies will find out who "Lucas" really is? "Servantatheart1": Thanks so much! I've heard from small handful of people who've said this story touched them in some way or meant something special somehow, and that just means the world to me. Thanks for sharing. I hope the respiratory condition will become well-managed - I had the tiniest taste of this in a case of severe bronchitis once and it was incredibly traumatic. I wish you all the best! "Screeney": You may be right, that now "Loki est un peu trop présomptueux envers elle." And, there's a risk there, you're right, given what Loki struggles with, and his relationship with Thor, "qu'il finisse par la voir comme une sorte de trophée par rapport à Thor déjà." (Not me speaking French. Me quoting Screeney...via Google Translate.) ;-)
It's (past) bedtime so no more from me - except to those I didn't specifically respond to, THANK YOU for commenting, thank you everyone for reading, you don't know how much I wish we could all party together once this thing is complete.
Previews from Ch. 129: Previews? I said I wasn't giving you any more! Well, okay, there's trouble in paradise...though you've probably figured that one out already. Trouble comes in many forms.
Excerpt:
"I've changed my mind," Loki said, carefully avoiding looking at Jane.
"About what?"
"You. Here. You should go."