Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Three – Truth
Loki was looking away, jaw working sporadically. He wasn't answering, but he didn't have to. Everything fit now. Everything. The last detail that tied everything else together. Snippets of things he'd told her continued bursting forth from her memories, flying at her in a jumble too fast to analyze it all but every bit of it finding its place and filling a gap.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Jane asked. She still remembered everything he'd said about the Frost Giants; it was burned into her mind with the intensity behind his words. How he wished he'd done a more thorough job of blowing Jotunheim to bits. How they were ugly and half-naked, and how she had made them sound like tavern wenches when she repeated her version of his words back to him, as he'd told her in just about the only time he'd halfway relaxed when talking about Jotunheim. How they were liars and all around lousy people. How they grew swords of ice from their arms and, just like Loki, froze whatever they touched. Loki was steadfastly looking away from her and seemed no more likely to answer that question than the last, so she continued. "I didn't grow up hating Frost Giants. If there was anyone you could have talked to about it without worrying about…some kneejerk reaction, it was me. You could have told me."
"I never wanted you to know," Loki whispered, staring at the other side of the jamesway. Now, he thought. Now, finally, she will turn away. Now she knows this isn't some temporary curse or strange aberration. Now she knows this is what I really am.
"But I feel like maybe you did. All those things you said about Frost Giants…you were saying them about yourself. And you…Loki, all those times you ranted about Frost Giants or anybody else with so much hatred that you looked and sounded like a madman…" Jane shook her head, seeing it all in a new light. "It was never anybody else you hated that much. It was yourself."
"Trust me," he said. "I really do hate the Frost Giants."
"You don't even know anything about them. All you know is how to kill them." "We learned where to place the blade." Dear God, Jane thought. No wonder things went so wrong. No wonder he completely lost it when he found out.
"I know enough."
"Are they really hated that much on Asgard?" She remembered before he could answer; he'd told her he was certain he wasn't the only one who thought the nine realms would be better off as eight realms. And all the little warriors-in-training had "learned where to place the blade," she assumed. "Okay. You said they are. But your parents…they knew the truth. And they let you grow up thinking that way? And the rest of Asgard, too?" They're the king and queen. Couldn't they have changed things, for his sake?
"I don't have any answers, Jane," Loki said, taking in a shaking breath. Odin, perhaps, might have found it useful for him to detest Frost Giants, as it might in turn strengthen his loyalty to the Aesir. But it was hard to see his mother in that role. He remembered again the book he'd managed to buy as a child without anyone but Thor knowing what he'd purchased. He remembered paging through it with Thor, up on a tree branch where no one else could see, both of them enthralled with its vivid, bloody pages, perfectly aware they were looking at something forbidden – forbidden at least to them. He remembered the graphic images of Frost Giants meting out frighteningly cruel deaths to everyone whose paths they crossed, and valiant Einherjar in shining armor slaughtering them in gory detail. He remembered how upset his mother was when she'd seen it. And he remembered how uncomfortable she was whenever he and Thor had played Frost Giant Versus Aesir, or started talking too much about the Ice War. He'd always thought it was because she didn't like the violence, and didn't like being reminded so much of a difficult time. Who knew what had actually gone through her mind back then? Or Odin's, for that matter.
"I think you should get them," Jane said after pulling up a chair and sitting. "Answers. I can't claim to understand all this, the history between Jotunheim and Asgard, and how that affects what people think about Frost Giants. But when you found out where you came from…my God, Loki, that's why you tried to wipe out Jotunheim, right? You…you hadn't turned on Asgard yet, had you? You wanted to…to prove you were really Aesir? You wanted to make sure no one questioned your loyalty? Or you just…you hated yourself so much that you turned it on them?"
"We were at war," Loki bit out quietly. "They've never brought the other realms anything but deception and destruction. They deserved no mercy."
"They were stuck on their own realm! You were the aggressor, Loki. Why did you really do it?"
"They aren't like you, Jane. They aren't like any of these people here, or any of the rest of the people of the Nine Realms. They had a baby that was too small, abnormal, and what kind of mercy did they show it? They left it to die. To starve to death. Or freeze to death, if that's even possible for them. That is an act of soulless barbarians. Do you not see?"
"It's terrible. Of course it's terrible. But who are you really mad at, then? Them for abandoning you, or Odin for taking you away from there and keeping it a secret from you?"
"All of them!" Loki shouted. "All of them," he repeated a moment later, more quietly.
They sat there in silence for a moment, Jane still reeling from what she'd discovered. She felt gobsmacked over learning this secret about someone else, someone she'd only known for a few months. She couldn't fathom how Loki must have felt, learning it about himself, a thousand years of basic biographical facts about himself swept away, a thousand years of reviling Frost Giants only to find out he himself was one. "No wonder you sounded crazy sometimes."
"Thank you," Loki muttered.
"No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean… It's just… It must have thrown your whole sense of identity into question. Your sense of who you were and where you belonged. So you…you walked away from who you were before. You were talking about freedom that time, do you remember? How freedom is a lie? And you weren't making much sense to me. But you said something about being who you're born to be, not having a choice in it. Not really being free because of that? And all those awful things you said about Frost Giants…you think you have to be that? You think you are that? You aren't! I don't know the first thing about actual Frost Giants, only what you've told me. But I know you. And you aren't that. You just aren't. And you really don't know that, do you? I remember when things were at their absolute worst with us, when you were choking me," Jane said, pausing to quickly swallow. She'd never liked talking about this, dredging it up and reliving it, but it came easily now. "You kept squeezing because you thought I was choking you and you just couldn't back down. But really you were fighting yourself. All this time, you've always been fighting yourself, in the end. You may not know who you are, Loki, but I do. There's no destiny or fate or whatever that you're bound to, just because of where you were born, or what you really look like."
"You think not?" Loki asked, choosing not to dwell on the choking incident. He'd been a fool then, and Jane and he had both paid for it. "You already know the worst, so you may as well know the rest. I was no random foundling. Do you remember what your mythology book said about my parentage?"
Jane's eyebrows shot up. She'd forgotten. "It said you were a giant."
"And what else did it say?"
Jane thought back on that passage she'd read about Loki, the introductory one in the Prose Edda, "cunning" and "beautiful" and… "Laufey," she blurted out. "It said your father was Laufey. Or…actually it said your mother was Laufey, but you said Laufey was the king of Jotunheim… Are you telling me Laufey is your father? Jotunheim's king?" Jane asked, wondering if her jaw might just affix itself permanently to the floor. She asked only out of astonishment; she already knew it had to be true.
"You're almost correct. Laufey was my father. In the technical sense of the term," he added to try to dislodge some of the rotten taste that the previous sentence had left on his tongue.
The rest of that conversation flooded back to her. The part that she remembered vividly. Loki had urged her to ask him what happened to his birth father, so she did, while filled with a sense of dread and the certainty that she wouldn't like the answer. "I killed him," Loki had said, sending shivers up her spine. "You were talking about Laufey," she breathed. "When you said you killed your birth father. Did you already know?"
"Of course I knew. I tricked him. Lured him to Asgard. It was easy. He was a bloodthirsty power-hungry warmonger. I told him he could kill Odin and take the Ice Casket back to Jotunheim."
"What?" Jane asked, eyes wide. One king to kill another king, one father to kill another father…
"I killed him just as he was attempting to kill Odin as he slept. He would have murdered him in his sleep. Do you see how foul they are? And I saved Odin's life and killed Asgard's longstanding enemy. I should have been the greatest king Asgard had ever known. But Thor came back from Midgard, hale and rather angry with me, and started painting a different picture…he ruined it. All my plans, shattered. There was one last thing I could accomplish, though."
"Destroying Jotunheim," Jane supplied, fitting Loki's story into the portions of a timeline she already knew.
"Destroying Jotunheim," Loki echoed. "The bifrost, you see, generates a great deal of energy. Left open, its energy simply builds. It destroys. And Thor ruined that, too. There was nothing else for me there after that."
"You let yourself fall. You tried to kill yourself."
"I told you, it was a rather spontaneous decision. And I also told you I don't want to talk about that."
"I think you should. If it were me, going through all that…I'd definitely have to have somebody to talk to about it. A counselor. Or a really good friend that I completely trusted. Ideally both."
"You have to confront this," Odin had said. "You have run from it, destroyed for it, killed for it." Perhaps so, Loki acknowledged in the privacy of his own mind, but Odin wasn't going to dictate whether or when he did. "I trust you. And I'm already talking to you about it more than I have to anyone else. I've heard about and talked about what happened then enough today."
"Okay. Fair enough," Jane said. "You know," she continued a few seconds later, "on Earth, well, at least in the United States, there's a legal defense of temporary insanity. With everything that happened, you could probably win with that defense, at least for attacking Jotunheim."
"I wasn't insane. I didn't start the war. That was Thor's doing. I sought to end it."
"By committing genocide? Insanity as a legal defense means not knowing the difference between right and wrong. If you truly thought genocide was okay, ready to shout it from the rooftops, then yeah, you were legally insane."
"Then I suppose I still am. And I'll keep it in mind should the United States ever put me before a magistrate. Now can we stop talking about this?"
Jane nodded, but hearing him talk like that was unsettling. She couldn't imagine that level of hatred, and she couldn't shake the feeling that a lot of it was directed inward. After all, Loki had had a thousand years before that to try to wipe Jotunheim off the map if he really thought it needed to be done so badly and there wasn't a thing in the world wrong with it. She supposed he hadn't been king all that time, but still. "So…is this what you really look like?"
"That's a matter of perspective," Loki said sullenly.
"I'm sorry. I just mean…it's not an illusion or anything?"
"No. The other was the falsehood."
"You never bothered to mention that Frost Giants are blue. And then there's the whole 'giant' part."
"I was obviously born an abnormality. A mistake of nature. As far as I know, my height is what it would be had they not chosen to throw me out and I'd grown up there instead."
"Okay, just stop, Loki."
"What?" he snapped.
Jane stared at him a moment. She'd never really gotten through to him at all on Asgard, she realized. She'd only worn him down until he'd given in and agreed to go back without killing his infant self. She felt like she was hitting her head against a brick wall, and he was the brick wall. He was immovable, his ideas about Frost Giants and thus himself thoroughly entrenched, and the same tactics would only bloody her forehead. Maybe it's time for a new tactic. "I can't put up with this anymore. I would never stand by and let someone talk about my friend like that. And you're talking about my friend. My friend. Granted, my friend is pretty wrong-headed about some things, but that doesn't mean I would ever put up with anyone saying about him the things you do. They're insulting. And hurtful. And they're wrong. I don't want to hear that stuff again. But more than that, I don't want you to think it again. Not about my friend."
Loki was taken aback. Jane's words were impassioned. Heartfelt. Jarring in their stridency. She'd become a better liar under his instruction, but she was nowhere near that good. "You would look at me, like this, and know that this is the truth and the other was a lie, and still call me friend?"
"How can you even question that? Yes, Loki. Do you think of me as a friend?" Jane asked, then almost wished she hadn't. She was a little afraid of the answer. She was pretty sure she knew the real answer, but Loki being the way he was now, she was afraid he'd say no just to try to push her away.
Loki's gaze drifted downward, briefly, to where he assumed the necklace still was tucked away, wondering whether the gem was glowing. "Yes," he said softly. It was surprisingly easy to say.
Jane blinked a couple of times and tried hard to hold in a sigh of relief. "And if I suddenly turned purple, or, I don't know, sprouted two heads, would you still think of me as a friend?"
Loki smiled. "You sprouted two bodies and I still thought of you as a friend."
Jane broke into startled laughter and the tension melted. "Then please believe me," she said, leaning in closer. "I don't care if everything you ever told me about them was true, every word of it. I don't care if they're cannibals. Or if they kick puppies and refuse to help old ladies cross the street. Who they are has nothing to do with who you are."
Who they are has nothing to do with who I am. He almost could believe it, when Jane said it with such tangible conviction, eyes peering resolutely, unflinchingly into his. Perhaps it is true, he thought, eyes still fixed on Jane's. It was what he'd been trying to prove, before, that he was one of the Aesir, and not one of them. But does it matter? he wondered, and broke eye contact.
"What? What are you thinking?" Jane asked, noticing the moment when doubt began to creep in and cloud over his gaze.
"I'm thinking…that if everyone thinks I'm the same as them…is that any different than if I actually am the same as them?" He pressed his lips together afterward, somewhat perturbed with himself that he had told her exactly what he was thinking. But Jane wasn't laughing, or otherwise dismissing what he'd said. The feeling passed.
"Yes. It is different. If people make assumptions about you because of how you look or where you were born, that's their problem. It doesn't make it true."
"Easy to say."
"Yeah, I know. But it doesn't make it true. It makes them wrong if they think that way."
"But do your people not also believe that each person has certain traits he's born with? Traits that are woven into the fabric of your being, inescapable?"
"Like DNA? Genes? Yeah, some things you inherit from your biological parents. I got my dad's nose and my mom's hair."
"I don't mean that. Though you'd think that might have been a clue, that I never physically resembled any of the people I believed were my family. But I mean…are there not traits inherent in your nature, that are a result of who and what you came from?"
"Oh," Jane said with a nod, finally relaxing again. "You mean the nature versus nurture debate. I don't know the answers to that question. I don't think anybody does. I understand why it's important to you, but I wish you could see it from my perspective. In the time we've spent together here, I've gotten to know you pretty well, and after an admittedly rough start, I like who I've gotten to know. It doesn't matter to me how you came to be that person, I mean in terms of what I think about you."
Loki considered it. They were nice, these ideas of Jane's. But "it doesn't matter" was a little more than he could embrace. "It's different on Asgard," he finally said.
"Yeah, I understand. Your people have a lot of prejudice against Frost Giants."
He opened his mouth to remind her that it wasn't prejudice, but realized Jane wouldn't appreciate him saying that and held his tongue.
"I can still tell it's you, you know. You look different, of course, but the underlying shape of your face is the same."
"He must have done something to me. When he took me. All my life…I looked as you knew me. Never like this."
Jane watched him, heart breaking for him. The disgust with which he said that was palpable.
"It was my first real clue – the first clue I paid any attention to, I suppose. When Thor dragged us to Jotunheim and had us drawn into battle within minutes, Volstagg…he's-"
"I met him."
"Oh, that's right. One of the Frost Giants grabbed his arm and left him severely frostbitten. His skin was blackened and charred and from the looks of it, quite painful. But when one of them grabbed my wrist…"
"What?" Jane prompted. His breathing had grown unsteady.
"No burning. No freezing. My hand turned blue. The blue started spreading up my arm. Like an infection. I could tell he was surprised, the one I was fighting. And I was…I knew there was something wrong. It didn't hurt. It should have hurt." He trailed off, lost in the memory of that pivotal moment. "I snapped out of my shock and he was still distracted so I withdrew another knife and finished him. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to fear what it meant." He paused for a dry laugh. "I suspect Macy won't be so eager to dance with me anymore."
Jane looked at Loki, confused, wondering if there was some Macy on one of the other realms that Loki had neglected to mention. "Did I miss something?"
Loki thought back on it – beer in his hand, woman pressed to his body…he should have just stayed there, given himself over to that surreal moment, let himself go. If he had, he wouldn't be lying here now, looking like he did, at Odin's mercy. Though it was also true that if he had, he wouldn't have known how far Jane was willing to go to save his life. He wouldn't have seen that gem glow when she slipped it on over her neck. "A moment of stupidity on my part. One that won't be repeated," he said with a dark laugh, "as I don't imagine I'm welcome at their parties any longer."
"You went to the party?" Jane asked. "Do you remember the night of the sunset? How hard I had to push you to get you to go to that dance for just fifteen minutes? And you just stood against the wall the whole time, being stubborn. You went to this party, and you actually danced?"
"To call it dancing would be a stretch. And it wasn't my intent. It just…happened. I was looking for you."
"Hm. Okay. I'm glad you did it anyway, I guess."
"I've done many things here I never thought I would. Especially not among mortals." Loki's gaze grew distant as he thought back over his time at the South Pole, the things he'd been a part of here and the people he'd gotten to know. "I always knew this wouldn't last. And for much of the time, of course, I didn't want it to. I wanted to regain my freedom – my true freedom," he added, remembering Odin's words, "and leave this place at the earliest opportunity. And then, as time passed…I didn't even realize it at first, but I felt…I felt…"
"You felt at home."
Loki smiled and laughed lightly. "Perhaps not exactly that. But something like it. That part of it, whatever it was…I wish that it weren't over. Tell anyone this and I may have to kill you – merely a jest, Jane-"
"I know."
"I liked it here. Sometimes."
"I know," Jane said with a smile. "But I never thought I'd hear you admit it quite so clearly. I, uh…I don't suppose you talked about that with your father?"
"No," Loki said immediately, face tightening. "And that would be where the 'I may have to kill you' applies."
"Don't worry, I won't say anything. I haven't really told him anything specific. I'm sorry, I should have told you that earlier. Oh! Loki…I should have warned you. He-"
"What?" Loki asked, pushing himself up enough to sit. Jane looked nervous. More than nervous, afraid, even.
Jane glanced toward the short partition that blocked the door. She'd lost track of time, but now that she thought about it, she hadn't really expected to have that much of it. She remembered, too – could still hear Loki saying it in that condescending amusement – that their hearing was better than a mortal's. "He knows about the time travel," she whispered. "He asked me about it. More than once. Mostly kind of indirectly, I guess. I never admitted anything, but it was obvious that he knew anyway. I mean…it's not that hard to figure out, really – your mother saw me in her room when you were a baby, and that little stunt you pulled with Jolgeir apparently did get me into their records because your father mentioned something about it. But your mom asked me about it, too, and I don't think she knew it was time travel."
"He didn't mention it to me. I suppose he's saving that for the next round," he said bleakly. The rigidity of a moment before was bleeding out of his muscles, but he didn't feel any dizziness, so he stayed upright. "This has never been about punishment." Loki was still quite certain he disagreed on that point, but even if somehow in Odin's mind it hadn't been about punishment before, it would be now. He hadn't actively thought about it before, what would become of him after this, short of nonsensical ideas of wandering around Antarctica for the rest of his pathetic life. Nonsensical because the thought implied he would not be in chains, in the deepest dankest dungeon Asgard had to offer, absent all magic including the disguise that allowed him what was left of his pride. No, he thought, he will deem even that too good for me. It will be Jotunheim. Now that the first round was over, he realized – and could admit to himself, if not entirely to Jane – that he was afraid. "On Asgard, I suspect most have never even heard of the concept of time travel. My mother has, but still she would be more likely to ascribe it to something else, some kind of magic – memory disturbance, dream interference…I'm sure she's curious."
"She found me in her bedroom, next to the cradle where both of her babies were, holding a knife. And she had a sword and there's no doubt in my mind she would have sliced me in half with it to protect you two. Yeah, I think she's probably a little curious. But she hasn't pushed."
"Jane…I'm so sorry," Loki said, stricken. He hadn't known there'd been a confrontation, one for which Jane would have been woefully unprepared for, yet somehow she'd gotten herself out of it unscathed. "I never should have gone there. Well," he added with a huff that was at least partly for show, "you never should have followed. But…I shouldn't have gone. I shouldn't have left without you."
"It was a few minutes of abject fear I could have done without. Not exactly the way I would have chosen to meet your mom for the first time, either. And I know you didn't mean to leave without me. Anyway, it all worked out okay. I just wanted you to know that your father knows."
He nodded. "I'll keep you out of it. It wasn't your idea. I'll tell him I forced you to go along with it. I can-"
"You can forget that right now. You didn't force me to do anything. And besides, do you think it'll help your case to tell him you were forcing Midgardians to do stuff?"
"Like the best of lies, it's not that far from the truth. You were adamant that time travel was a bad idea. Jane, I…I manipulated you into accepting it. I said whatever I had to say to convince you to go along with it. I will not allow you to shoulder any of the blame."
"And I will not allow you to be some kind of martyr for me. I'm a big girl, and I made my own decisions, and I'll answer for them, okay? No, I take that back, I won't lie about what I did, and neither will you, but I won't answer for it either, not to anybody on Asgard. Last I looked I'm not Asgardian and I'm pretty sure time travel isn't illegal anywhere on Earth. Though it should be," she couldn't help adding, then shook her head at herself. "We'll figure something out for you, too. I mean, if most of Asgard's never heard of time travel, then it's probably not actually written into Asgardian laws either, right? As for manipulating me…look, Loki, I knew you well enough by then to know you were manipulating me. You were trying, anyway. I knew you didn't see the problems with it that I did. That's why I insisted on going with you to Alfheim. My decisions were still my own, okay? And don't think there wasn't some small part of me…maybe a big part of me that the more practical part of me normally has control over…some part of me was really excited to see the past."
"I remember that part well. I remember how quickly you changed from 'Loki, oh, wait, what am I supposed to call you? We're going to see Asgard's past as quickly as we can and then immediately leave, and don't you dare breathe on anyone while we're there,' to 'Can we stay longer? Oh, please, can't we? Look! That's the entire royal family over there, can't we go say hello?'"
"Hey!" Jane said, giving his shoulder a smack with the back of her hand, then wincing through her laughter at how it her knuckles smarted. "I never said I wanted to say hello. And my voice is not that high-pitched. Or whiny."
"Had you gone closer as you wished to, you would most likely have been saying hello to the Chief Palace Einherjar. And I'll grant you your voice is not that high-pitched. Whiny, though…"
Jane grinned at him. Those were the most incredible memories, even the stressful bits, and it felt so good to sit here and laugh with Loki again after the strain of the last couple of days, when even the slumber party of just last night seemed like ages ago. For a moment, it was like none of that had happened, like she and he were taking a break from working here in the jamesway, just like old times. But the old times were over, and any minute now, surely, Loki's father, or his mother or brother or all of them together, was going to return. "What's going to happen?" she asked once both their smiles had faded.
Loki looked away. He didn't need to ask what Jane meant. "I don't know."
"Did you talk? I mean…I know words were spoken, but…did you talk?"
He thought about it and sighed. He'd felt so alive for a moment, laughing with Jane as though nothing had changed, even as he hid how it bothered him that he'd pitched his mimicking too high because he didn't have quite his normal voice. Thinking about Odin, the "conversation" they'd had and the one that was surely still to come, made him feel so tired. "I don't really know that, either. He said a lot of words, and most of them made me angry, and I said words back. Saying a lot of words…that was new for him. Of course, the words I said back, that was largely new for me."
Jane grimaced. "I'm not a hundred percent sure what all that means, but it doesn't sound like it went that well, huh?"
"You'd have to ask an unbiased observer" – Loki paused for just a second at the remembrance that Heimdall, while far from unbiased, could indeed have observed everything that happened here since his magic was lost, including what he and Jane had just discussed about time travel – "but I'd say that's a fair assessment."
"So…those words you said back, were you trying?"
"Why do you ask whether I was trying?" he bit back in irritation. "Why do you expect me to try? And to try what? Why do you ask about my words and not his?"
"Because I'm not talking to him, I'm talking to you," Jane answered calmly, neither surprised nor put off by the sudden change in Loki's demeanor. "You can't control him, and what he says. You can only control yourself."
Quicker than it could fully rise, his anger was deflated. Jane wasn't berating him, of course she wasn't. There was no need to be so defensive with her. Control… "Are you nothing more than a ship pushed about by a capricious wind, no sails, no rudder, not even any oars?" "I do not feel like I have any great amount of control over anything at the moment. But you're right. I should at least have control of myself. As for whether I 'tried'…that is probably debatable. You might say that I tried to try…when I remembered to. And wanted to. Which wasn't often." He started to say more, but wasn't sure how to express himself on this, and the fact that Heimdall could be watching was still at the back of his mind.
"Okay," Jane said, trying hard to project nothing more than understanding. She wished so badly for Loki to work things out with his father, for him to see that even a problematic relationship, even a strained one, was better than no relationship, but that wasn't up to her. She couldn't recall him ever speaking this calmly about Odin, and that, perhaps, was at least some form of progress. "Did he say why your appearance changed? I assume it's related to the other things that happened today."
Loki breathed out a short laugh. "It happened when the last tatters of my grasp on magic were swept away. As best I can gather…he thought it would be good for me."
"So you knew this would happen? That's why you wanted Niskit to take that enchantment off you so badly? That's why…Loki, you turned so cold there for a minute, and there was fatty bloom on your leather pants, and then the leather started just crumbling…what she was doing, it was unraveling the magic that made you look Aesir?" On the pants he wore now, she saw, there was a little bit of cracking but no visible white spots.
"I don't really know. Perhaps. That magic must have been just as intertwined with my body as Odin's curses. I certainly never knew it was there. Perhaps Odin deliberately connected the two. Probably when she was trying to remove the curse, she was inadvertently pulling at the magic for the disguise, too. But no, I didn't know it would happen."
"So you didn't have any kind of warning? Just…boom, now you look like a Frost Giant? Or, since you're on Earth where no one's ever heard of Frost Giants unless they've read Norse mythology where by the way it also doesn't say anything about them being blue, suddenly you just look…well...I knew it was you, and I knew about magic and how you can change the way you look, and…but frankly, I think most people on Earth would be scared."
"I imagine so," Loki said quietly, appreciating how obviously hard she was trying to avoid directly saying that his appearance was frightful. "And yes. Just boom. It would be a gross understatement to say it was an unpleasant surprise."
"Hm," Jane said, trying to think that through before she responded, but the sound of the door opening pulled her from her thoughts. She pushed the chair back and stood up.
"It's me," Frigga called, a couple of seconds before Jane and Loki could see her; Loki didn't bother trying to hide his relief from Jane.
"Did, uh, the king have to go back to Asgard?" Jane asked, realizing she didn't actually know how she was supposed to address him. She was pretty sure first names weren't appropriate with kings. At least kings other than Thor.
"No, he's still here. I wanted to have a few minutes with Loki, too."
"Oh, sure. I'll just-"
"Jane?"
"Yeah?" Jane asked, turning back to Loki.
He made a small motion with his hand, signaling her to come a little closer, and was grateful when she said nothing and simply came back to his side. He kept his voice quiet, words intended for Jane alone, and although his mother would still hear them, only Jane would know what they meant. "I wish I'd told you."
/
Thank you to all readers, reviewers, favers, followers. This was a long time coming and I hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks to "ildragodoro" who found the places in the story where Loki talks about, in essence, being unable to escape who he believes he's fated to be. I really didn't intend for that to come up so explicitly as it did in this chapter, but Loki is actually rather more self-aware at this point than I expected him to be, and ever calmer and more comfortable being open with Jane. To those who've asked for the original version of part of the last chapter, if you've not yet gotten it, you will, this is just me still being behind on PMs. But I will catch up!
Key prior chapters for this (there are a ton, actually) in which Loki talks about how much loves Frost Giants, are 39 "Answers" (Loki's first big rant on Jotunheim, and the one Jane remembers that triggers her realization that Loki is Jotun), Ch. 81 "Smoke" (on Loki killing his birth father), and Ch. 105 "Deals" (where Loki's convinced he's not the only one who would rather have just eight realms). It's kind of interesting to look back at these three chapters and see some of Loki's evolution.
Responses to guest reviews as this chapter's a bit shorter than average: "AvengersLoki" - Odin's certainly trying. Lots of room for opinion in terms of how to grade his efforts, but at least he is trying. Ha, not trying to destroy anyone's hope for any romantic pairing. Loki and Jane's relationship has had the time and opportunity to grow in ways that Thor and Jane's has not. That's not to say it couldn't, if they had the kind of time together Loki and Jane did. Yep, nothing is ruled out, and anything is possible. "Bogo" - Not rude, it's okay! And "nothing is really happening" describes vast swaths of this story. :-) I'm known for saying that my ideal plot of Thor 2 would be "Thor and Loki are locked in a room together. They talk." Most fans are looking for more action. There will be more action, more developments, but, there will always be more "people sit in a room, they talk" in this story than anything else. "k" - I think some of my readers may have had children and then grandchildren since I started this thing...ha. "Guest" (Feb. 12) - Odin getting off the hook too easily *is* a possibility - depends how badly you want him to suffer, too! Though honestly I think Odin is judged a thousand times more harshly than Loki is in the fandom. (Though also true that my corner of the fandom is all people who adore Loki; probably there's a segment out there that dislike him and see him as truly, purely, a villain.) You raise an excellent point about Odin not doing anything (that we know of at least, nothing successful apparently) to try to change the Aesir's racist beliefs about the FGs. Many other things about him, I think, can be seen in more than one light. This one I see as an indisputable failure (and it's Frigga's failure, too). "irongates" - Thanks! Jane from "Thor" I think has the potential to be a compelling character but doesn't fully get there, so I think in that sense she probably required the most effort on my part to try to bring her to life and have her be a hopefully three-dimensional realistic and compelling character. I'm glad you've enjoyed her! "akuma" - from the prologue, if you make it this far, yup, "that many" chapters. :-) "Guest" (Feb. 21) - No particular romantic pairing promised, lack of devastation not guaranteed. :-) I hope you'll enjoy it no matter how it ends up. "Guest" (Feb. 25) - I hope you enjoyed what happened next. And thank you! "Guest" (Feb. 27) - Well, I suppose you *could* be living in the Twilight Zone. I hope your profile similarities with mine haven't included having a parasite. Though if they do, I can recommend an excellent medication. :-) Cheers! (But I don't know how I can let you know if I ever publish a novel or script - I suggest "following" me on here for that, as, should I ever be so lucky, I figure that's how I'd let folks on here know, I'd release some wee Loki story as an excuse to say "hey, guys, I got something published!")
Whew! And previews? Here's an excerpt:
"Did you think I would never find out? What changed? He told me he meant me to be some kind of pawn to unite Jotunheim and Asgard. Did he decide I was unworthy even of that lowly role?"
Frigga gave a frustrated click of her tongue, wishing there was some form of magic that would allow him to see inside hearts, to know that he was not thought of that way. "Have you asked your father?"
"I'm asking you."