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Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Eight – Tea Break
"Did Jane know about this?"
They stood in front of the station, Loki and Tony, not far from the red-and-white striped ceremonial South Pole marker and its semi-circle of surrounding national flags. But for the fact that they were on Midgard, surrounded by ice, his opponent a man encased in metal with no traditional weapon in sight, this could almost be an Asgardian sparring ring. Then there was also the minor detail that Loki had no weapon at all.
"I'll ask her next," Tony said, jingling the gold metal wristbands he held between metal thumb and forefinger.
"About visiting your home? She did not. Not at the time." Not at either time, he thought. Not at the time of the travel, much less at the earlier time of its results. "About those, she still does not."
"So you've been lying to her."
Loki hesitated. He did not have only himself to think of, and that complicated matters. Jane did not deserve to be implicated in any wrongdoing, especially not for his wrongdoing. Not that he particularly regretted what he'd done to Stark…but he regretted its unintended consequences. He was afraid neither a "yes" nor a "no" would cast Jane in a good light, though. A "no" made her look complicit and thus untrustworthy; a "yes" made her look naïve and thus untrustworthy. He tried to put it second, but there was his own pride to think of, too. "Everyone lies," he finally said. "Jane had nothing to do with it. She kept it from you, once she found out, to avoid a dangerous conflict between us here. When Jane lies, her motives are much more altruistic than mine."
"I see you feel just as compelled to defend her as she does you. Isn't that interesting. Okay, why did you do it? Were you planning a follow-up attack and got side-tracked?"
"Nothing so nefarious as that, I'm sorry to say."
"Then what? Because I'm telling you, you missed a golden opportunity. I was completely dead in the water for a few days. I was certain an attack was coming. I just didn't know from who."
"I was bored," Loki said, because "I wanted to kill you with my bare hands for sending Jane that video" wouldn't really do. Particularly since by his estimation they'd been watching that video around the time he'd gone to New York.
"You were bored."
"Ever the scintillating conversationalist," Loki mocked.
"Thanks. Still having trouble with that, though. You were bored."
"It seemed a good test of Pathfinder. Jane told me that she told you about it, the ability to use it for travel. And I have a reputation for mischief, Stark. Have you not heard of it?"
"Mischief's not exactly the word I'd use for what you have a reputation for."
"Who better to engage in a bit of mischief with while carrying out a necessary test?" Loki continued, ignoring Stark. "However," Loki said, then hesitated for a moment. For Jane's sake in particular, but not for hers alone, since his guilt was genuine, he did not want the nonchalant attitude he was projecting to extend too far. "I never intended for anyone to be harmed."
"Are you apologizing for frying my fish? Did you think they were the talking kind? Because it was actually just…yesterday? Today? I've lost track with the time change. Anyway, I was just telling your mother that we don't have those. Talking birds, talking fish, you know. Polly want a cracker? Sure, some birds can do that. Actual conversation, not so much. But I have to say I did wonder what you had against a bunch of innocent little koi fish."
Hugin and Munin, Loki thought. Stark had learned of them. Perhaps even met them? If Odin had sent them, it was a bad sign. "No, I was not under the impression that your fish speak. But I couldn't help noticing that your innocent little red koi fish were swimming in a shallow crater formed by the repeated impact of my body. I am most assuredly not apologizing for that. I meant the man in the elevator."
"The man in- Nigel Hawkins?"
"Yes. It was a miscalculation on my part, and I do regret his death," Loki said, trying to sound sincere – which he was – without sounding calculatingly so – which he also was.
"You're sorry?"
"Yes."
"No, no. I want to hear you say it. 'I, Loki of Asgard, am truly, deeply, sorry.'"
"I am sorry, Stark. That is the best I can give you. I suggest you accept it."
"Oh, I accept it. Jarvis, you got that? For posterity?"
"I am sorry, Stark," Loki heard himself say from the metal suit.
"Good job, buddy. News flash, Rudolph, Nigel didn't die. He was hyperventilating. Once they got him some extra oxygen and calmed him down he was just fine. Went home the same day."
Loki forced himself to wait for a solid exhale and inhale before responding. "I should have killed you when I had the chance," Loki said, both furious with Stark for toying with him and relieved that he had in fact not killed anyone on his trip to New York.
"Remind me again, exactly when was that chance?"
"Just an expression, Tony. You shouldn't take it so personally."
"Uh-huh. By the way, these little things?" Tony said, jingling the bracelets again. "What was the plan, hm? Jarvis says they were never even activated."
"I was saving them for a rainy day, isn't that the expression?"
"Okay. At least you didn't say they were souvenirs. That would put you solidly into serial killer territory. Jarvis has never stopped scanning for them, but just so you know, the signal from these was locked out from the suit as soon as I realized they were missing."
"Pity. I enjoyed conversing with your Jarvis. Much more so than you."
"He didn't enjoy you shorting him out in New York."
"Again, nothing personal. Not against Jarvis, anyway. A simple precaution. By the way, you should take better care of all of your possessions. You obviously never noticed that I also reduced your alcohol supply by two bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, or you would have figured out who your uninvited guest was much sooner."
"You stole my booze?"
"I believe I just said that, yes."
"Why does Thor say you don't drink? You drink like a fish and you stole my booze."
"Who knows why Thor says anything? Surely you've noticed he's a bit dull," Loki said with a false grin, speaking essentially automatically. He'd had no particular plans, but he would have made another exception for those bottles, when the time was right. Possibly such as today. Looking back, though, he was fairly confident they'd contributed to the glass he remembered crunching under Jane's feet. Such an unfortunate waste. Like the time they were wasting when they should be repairing the building before any further damage could be done. Before he could get in a pointed comment along those lines, though, Stark was speaking again.
"Jane seems to like him well enough."
Distraction over, Loki's eyes were pinned on the metal mask. He forced himself not to betray any true reaction – mostly a surge of what he knew was irrational anger – because that was exactly what Tony was digging for. "I cannot speak for Jane, but I don't think it's his mind that women are drawn to."
"Huh, really? I don't see it. Anyway, you should've done your research. Blue Label's not cheap, but I have more expensive and better quality whiskeys in my collection that you could have stolen."
"I like Blue Label."
"No kidding. I hadn't noticed. So. You were bored. Propensity for mischief. Testing some new tech. And you stole my booze."
"Yes."
"Huh. This is kind of scary, and assumes I believe you which I can't really say I do, but I actually get that. I mean, you conveniently left out the vengeance aspect, but hey, I get that, too."
"Vengeance? I'm familiar with egos, I grew up surrounded by some rather large ones, but you would do well to keep yours in check. It was your green beast that got the best of me, Man of Iron, not you. Don't forget that."
"Yeah, but it's me you had the best chats with, am I right? On second thought, you and Natasha had a pretty good one. Let me tell you, it holds up to repeat viewing. And you were going down regardless. Your plan failed. But then, I'm guessing that's a familiar refrain for you, isn't it?"
At that Loki tightened his jaw and the conversation ceased to have any merit at all. He was tired, a lot of work and who-knew-how-many more conversations with Odin remained, and his patience was wearing thin. "Why don't we both cease this pointlessness and ensure that this plan does not fail?" Loki said, gesturing to the building behind him. "Loathe as I am to be forced to endure your presence, the timing of your arrival here was fortuitous."
"And after this? Where do you go next?"
"As soon as I know, you'll be the first I tell," Loki said with heavy sarcasm.
"Who's the poor schmuck on the stretcher? Wait! Let me guess. It wouldn't happen to be Selby Higgins, would it?"
"Your deductive reasoning skills are stunning."
"I was hoping I was wrong."
"It was a misunderstanding."
"And harassing his wife in Chicago? Was that a misunderstanding, too?"
This time he needed several inhales and exhales. Think of Jane, he reminded himself. "I was having an unpleasant day," he finally said. "It led to an error in judgement. Perhaps you can relate to that as well," he added. He knew something of Tony Stark's past, thanks to Barton. And he hoped against all hope that Stark would just leave it at that. The ridiculous red and gold metal mask was infinitely worse than a balaclava for being able to interpret another's reactions. Perhaps the man liked being able to hide behind it.
"And the next time you have a bad day? Or get bored?"
"Haven't you heard? I've joined a band. And a poker group. And an ongoing darts tournament. I don't get bored anymore. But they know who I am now, as I'm sure you've noticed. So while I don't know where I'm going next, I know it won't be here. And since Gullveig has set your entire realm on the hunt for me, I doubt it will be anywhere on Midgard. I doubt it will even be my decision. Are you satisfied?"
"No, I can't say I find that particularly satisfying. I think the things I might find more satisfying might be against the Geneva Convention, if that even applies to you. I give you points for not trying to use the bracelets, but you're still in the hole by…enough points that nobody can see the bottom. You did what you did. You didn't break any laws when you took your bad day out on Jessica Higgins. You broke at least a dozen when you broke into my place and went Black Hat on my AI and took out the power to my whole building. And I'm pretty sure that if you put a guy on a stretcher you broke at least one there, too. The Avengers Initiative wasn't created to play Cops and Robbers, though, and it looks like you've got Asgard to deal with again, anyway. If Norse mythology is anything to go on those guys have never heard of the Geneva Convention."
"Was there a point to all of that?" Loki asked. He understood the point, actually: Tony Stark did not intend to interfere, and Loki's fate still rested solely with Odin.
"Yes. I've had enough tea, haven't you? Cricket's a boring game anyway."
Mohsin would disagree, Loki thought with sudden fondness for the man he'd met in Canada, the man Loki had unabashedly lied to and taken advantage of for his own purposes.
Tony was leaving, walking past Loki in the heavy suit, when he stopped, quite close to him, and opened his helmet's faceplate. "You've got issues. I know that. I don't need the details; I don't care. Everybody's got issues. Issues aren't excuses. When you screw something up, and you come far enough out of your fog of arrogance and ignorance to realize it, you do your best to make it right. For your sake and the rest of the universe's sake, I hope you've come out of your own phenomenally dense fog, and I hope that if you can't make it right, that you at least stop screwing it up. I guess that's all anybody can really ask. Got it?"
Loki stared back at Tony, speechless. He didn't know this man well enough to be sure, but right alongside the sanctimony and hubris there was something in there that went beyond non-interference, even beyond peace, almost sounding like an overture of friendship.
"That and, you know, no more trying to conquer my planet. If you do, I'll arrange a little reunion with all your favorite pals. Natasha would love to have another little chat with you I'm sure. Steve would love to lecture you on truth, justice, and the American way. Clint would be thrilled for a chance to put an arrow through your eye socket, and Bruce, well, he'd just go green with excitement if he got to see you again." The faceplate slid back in place. "Good God it's cold here. Jarvis, crank up the heat. Tea break's over. Let's get back to work."
Not an overture of friendship, then. Loki was relieved. His friendships here, temporary though they may have been, were something he valued even more now that they were over, Gary's amiable attitude notwithstanding. Tony Stark he no longer had any intent to seriously harm, but that certainly didn't mean he liked the man or wanted anything at all to do with him beyond the station's repairs. He supposed what they had was essentially a tacit agreement to leave each other alone, and that was all Loki needed from him, that and no blaming of Jane for Loki's actions and Jane's silence. He thought he might have that as well.
All in all, not a bad tea break, Loki thought as he turned to follow. If only Odin could be so easily persuaded to step out of my way.
/
/
They worked through the night, Loki, Thor, Tony, and Odin, holding occasional consultations with Gary, and regular checkups from Olivia, both of whom would have probably stayed out with them all night were it not for the temperature. Frigga went back to Asgard, intending to return once repairs were complete. Toward morning – known as such only because Gary and Olivia updated them on the time – further lifting was not needed, and Odin, too, drifted away, though not back to Asgard, as Loki had vaguely hoped. Instead, he made his way over to the Vehicle Maintenance Facility.
Loki watched him with suspicion, but he was still working on the steel and could not yet step away. Jane was in there. The rest of the Polies were in there. Loki set his jaw and got back to work.
/
/
"Thank you for coming, Jolgeir," Frigga said, setting down her cup of tea.
"Of course, Your Majesty."
"I apologize for the hour." It was the middle of the night on Asgard, a few hours later than the time used at Midgard's South Pole.
"There's no need. I was up anyway, helping in the Healing Room. We're doing our best to get as many men back into fighting shape as we can. This reprieve has bought us some valuable time."
"Yes, Bragi and Tyr told me our builders have been putting our warriors to work assisting with tower repair; they'll get as many towers back in working order as they can. Twenty-four hours is enough to allow them to sleep and to work, all without fear of attack." Frigga had not returned in time for the evening's War Council, but Bragi and Tyr had met privately with her shortly after her return.
"Assuming King Gullveig can be trusted. I cannot say that I trust him, not after the explosion inside the palace."
"Thus far there have been no more attacks since he announced the reprieve…but we have not let down our guard, and Heimdall keeps his watch. I don't trust Gullveig either. How are your wife and daughter?"
"Well, Your Majesty, thank you for asking. Sibba and Dagny are both working in a bakery, and when that's done, Sibba also works in the Healing Room and Dagny helps at one of the armorers."
"The armorers!" Frigga exclaimed, shaking her head. She'd met Jolgeir's little girl a couple of times, and her impression had been of a precocious child who liked dancing on her tip-toes in frilly gowns. "She should be going to lessons with the other children instead of working two positions."
"Things can't always be as they should. She's very proud of both of her positions, though. She tells people that she keeps the warriors' bellies full with the bread she makes, then keeps them safe with the straps and buckles she repairs."
"You must also be very proud."
"I am."
They fell silent for a moment; Frigga supposed she was avoiding the question she needed to ask. They sat in the antechamber just inside the front door to Odin's and her chambers, not where she would normally have met Jolgeir, but Huskol's task was made easier if she minimized her movements, and she trusted Jolgeir without question. Huskol had still resisted allowing Jolgeir into these heavily protected chambers, alone no less, but Frigga had swiftly overruled him.
"Did you see Loki?"
"I did," she answered with a smile. "He was in terrible shape when we arrived, but Eir was able to heal him, with some assistance from our unexpected visitor from Midgard."
"Jane Foster. She's recovered then, too? Did you find out how she got here, how she breached so many layers of security?"
"Yes, it was through magic, a bit of magic I'd provided to Loki, actually, but there's nothing to worry about there, the magic allowed only a single use. No one else will be appearing outside those doors unless they were permitted entry." Until recently Jolgeir had been in charge of the palace's security, and she knew that he, just as his replacement Huskol, must be bothered deeply over how close the intruder had come to making it inside the royal chambers.
"And may I ask, Your Majesty…do you know how it is that she appears in our records so long ago, looking exactly the same as she does now?"
"That I do not know. She's very reluctant to speak of it. How well do you remember her from that day?"
Jolgeir laughed lightly. "Not well at all, I'm afraid. I remember the incident. She drew my attention in little things she did, things the palace Einherjar are trained to look for. I remember that for several years after that, we all kept an eye out for her, to see if she would turn up again near the princes, or you or the All-Father, but we never saw her again. The report contains everything we knew. Her companion suggested that she was Aesir, but we suspected she was Vanir since no one had any idea who she was; there were many Vanir at Harvest Day that year. Midgardian, of course, never occurred to us."
"Understandably so. And what of her companion? What more do you know of him?"
"Nothing. He didn't give his name, and we didn't ask. They hadn't done anything wrong; it was a simple check, to see how she would react. And as you saw in the image, he wore a hooded cloak that obscured his face and his build. Height is all that I recorded about him in the report."
"Is there anything…odd about your memories of it? Anything that could suggest they've been altered somehow, or…suggested, perhaps? Suppressed? Anything unusual at all?"
Jolgeir narrowed his eyes as he considered it, shaking his head several seconds later. "No, although to be honest I'm not sure how I would recognize it if anything like that were true. I've no feel for magic. I'm really not relying on my memory, anyway – I'm relying on my report. And there's nothing in it to suggest tampering. I checked that as best I could, after you all left. It bears my signature and my seal, and the phrasing is mine."
Frigga nodded; she wished Jolgeir could somehow remember more, but perhaps there was nothing more to remember in the first place. The answers to the question of these two sightings of Jane from all those years ago weren't going to come from Jolgeir, they were going to come from Jane. Or, she supposed, from Loki, since Jane refused to speak of it, even when pushed. Jane refused to speak of a number of things. She took a deep steadying breath. She'd pulled Jolgeir from his duties for a reason. "Did you find it?"
"I did. It took some digging; no one is manning the Evidentiary Archives now."
"I imagine no one is manning any of the archives now," Frigga said, though at the time she hadn't thought of that, and she felt a flash of guilt over sending Jolgeir to do it, for the extra difficulty it must have been for him. "Let me see it," she prompted.
Jolgeir glanced down, a moment of hesitation, then bent his neck down deeply, shoulders hunching forward a bit. Frigga wasn't sure what he was doing and was about to offer her help when he came back up, drawing something long and thin out from the leather straps of his light armor, clenched between his lips. When he had it all the way out, she saw that there was a pronged metal grasping tool at the end of it. He nudged open a loose leather pouch at his waist, dipped the tool inside, and withdrew the dagger. He held it out to her with the tool, and she took it.
"Impressive," she said, glancing from the dagger, to the grasping tool, to Jolgeir.
He inclined his head to the side, unable to speak properly until he'd slipped the tool back into its place against his chest. "There are several of us like this. We had some ideas and took them to Oblaudur, and he saw that these were made. When we have more time, we can improve them."
Frigga nodded. "Very clever," she said, swallowing over her emotion. Several who've lost both arms. "Several" was vague, perhaps deliberately so; Frigga wondered if Jolgeir meant four or four hundred. Such details were not reported at Assembly. Casualties were divided into dead, able to return to battle within two days, and unable to return to battle within two days – if healing required more than two days, then it usually wasn't certain how long it would take, or if the warrior would ever be able to return. Injuries like Jolgeir's were rare, though, for a man who somehow lost both arms on the battlefield would not likely survive long enough to be healed.
"I took the liberty of taking it to the armorer my daughter works for," Jolgeir said, gesturing with his head toward the knife in Frigga's palm. "I didn't tell him what it was, of course. He sharpens and repairs blades, too, so he knows them well. He examined it, and said there was nothing remarkable about it. The crossguard, the handle, and the pommel are reasonably well-constructed but far from a master's quality. The blade itself is of a master's quality."
Frigga turned it over in her hand, scrutinizing every part of it. The knife no longer caused the visceral reaction of fear in her that it once had, when simply looking at it was enough to make her hands tremble and her heart pound.
"I asked him if he could tell me anything about its origins, and he said the composition of the metal indicated that it was from a craftsman on Nidavellir that the Einherjar get most of our standard swords from. Nothing remarkable about it."
"That's basically what we were told before, as well, although I don't remember anyone specifically mentioning Nidavellir. We were told that it therefore probably belonged to an Einherjar who had taken an old sword and had it modified to his particular preferences, a personal blade."
"Most of us do carry personal blades. Although I can't imagine any Einherjar deemed worthy enough to be tasked with security inspections of the royal chambers being careless enough to drop his on the floor, and then to somehow not notice he'd done so."
"It wasn't dropped on the floor by an Einherjar. That was everyone else's theory. But I was there. I saw it. It was dropped by Jane Foster, who as far as we know is a Midgardian who could not possibly have been alive then."
"He did say one interesting thing, almost as an afterthought. The exact composition of metal in that dagger, the one used in the swords delivered from Nidavellir, it's a relatively new alloy. Olveig said it was just a tiny adjustment, but a recognizable one. He looked up the year of the change. That dagger can't be more than two hundred and thirteen years old."
Frigga nodded slowly. "I'd forgotten. They told us at the time that the composition was slightly off from anything in mass production, that the owner had probably altered that, as well."
"I don't think so. The blade has been reshaped a bit to function as a dagger, but Olveig was certain it came from a sword from that particular craftsman's shop on Nidavellir."
"So Jane could not have existed then…and neither could this blade."
Jolgeir said nothing; Frigga thanked him, gave her best to his family, and dismissed him. She sat frowning in the stifling silence and emptiness of her chambers.
/
/
"Do you have anything warm to drink?" Odin asked the first person he came to, a middle-aged-looking man who was probably in reality just some thirty or forty years old. The man said nothing but pointed him further back. The people here were clearly in awe of their visitors, but they had no grasp of protocol, or how to show proper respect. Odin noted it, but wasn't bothered by it; other than in some particularly formal situations, Asgard's king and his family did not require showy displays of deference. He was more concerned with the amount of time he'd lost here. At least Frigga had gone back. Were it not for Tony Stark's implicit concurrence that the work was not yet done, he would strongly suspect that Loki was dawdling and malingering for the sole purpose of avoiding him, with the fringe benefit of irritating him as well.
"Coffee?" a taller man said, standing next to a machine that held a container of steaming brown liquid.
Odin nodded, and the other man took a small tankard and filled it with the coffee, the drink Thor had sung the praises of. Some of the mortals still slept on makeshift pallets on the floor, but many were up and milling about, carrying out some task or other, or simply talking quietly among themselves.
"We have sugar out here, no milk or creamer, sorry."
"No sugar," Odin said. He was not opposed to sugar, but was not in the habit of adding it to his drinks. He took a sip to taste and found it bitter, but the bitterness was bracing and went well with the warmth. "Thank you," Odin said.
"You're welcome. So, uh, is it true you're Loki's father?"
"It is," Odin said sharply, an unfortunate defensiveness seeping into his tone that he blamed on the ongoing war on his realm, and, metaphorically at least, in his family. He set the tankard down for a moment to pull off the black gloves and black woven hat Frigga had brought down from Loki's chambers here.
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Ken Ryan, the support supervisor here. My job is to make sure all the support staff do their jobs, and generally to help Olivia make sure that everything's running smoothly. Under the current circumstances…basically it means I'm running the coffee pot," the man said with a friendly smile.
"One goes where one is most needed," Odin said, thinking of his two wars, one in a reprieve announced by Gullveig, one in a reprieve forced by an earthquake. Odin was pleased that Loki had taken charge to assist the mortals, but his pleasure was tempered by the suspicion that it was Loki's own actions – his and those of the mortal woman he'd pursued – that had caused the earthquake in the first place.
"Thank you for coming here and helping us. You've really given us hope, all of you. This is a hardy crowd, but …well, the last few days have been rough. I don't know if Olivia's had time to say it – she can be pretty single-minded – but thanks. Really."
"It's only right that we assist, after what my son has put you through. I apologize for him, on behalf of all of Asgard."
"But that's where it doesn't make sense. He hasn't put us through anything. There's the incident with Selby, but from what I understand, they're both to blame for that, they both got stabbed, and Selby actually started it. We have a lot of questions. About why he came here and what he wanted to accomplish by it."
"So do I."
"For example, he went skiing with me every Sunday."
"Skiing? The land here appears to be too flat for it."
"Lucas said the same thing when I first invited him," the man said with a laugh, as Jane Foster came up beside him. "It's cross-country skiing. For getting around on mostly level ground. But my point is…why? What did he gain from that? There were a few others when I started, but they dropped out and it was just the two of us. We didn't even talk much, too hard to ski out there and talk. So what did he get out of it? Why did he bother? The first time he went, I really had the impression he didn't enjoy it."
"I think he got a normal life out of it," Jane put in.
"I can't imagine there was anything normal about living here for Loki."
Ken laughed. "There's not much normal about life here for any of us. Until you get used to it."
"A different kind of normal," Jane clarified. "I mean, he got to be himself. Without any preconceived ideas of who or what he was supposed to be, whether a prince or Thor's brother or the guy who tried to take over the planet, or anything else."
"You think that's why he came here? He came here to torment Thor, because he knew how much he cares for you."
Here we go, Jane thought. "I know that's part of why he followed me here. But a normal life is what he found when he got here." And if he'd needed some nudging in that direction, she didn't feel the need to say so. "You know, if you expect the worst of him, that's probably what you'll get."
"I expected the best of him, and he gave me the worst," Odin snapped. "And now I have no idea what to expect. That is what I am trying to find out."
Jane glanced at Ken, who was probably putting all his management training into maintaining that polite, respectful expression in the face of a king's anger and a family dispute he surely didn't want to actually get that close to. He'd been having a peaceful conversation and Jane had sent some serious ripples through it without even really intending to. "Sorry," she muttered. "I didn't mean to butt in."
Odin drew in a deep breath and consciously relaxed his expression and stance. He was better than this. "And I didn't mean to respond as I did. I'm tired, and anxious to resolve the situation with Loki."
"We're all tired, sir. Or…is it Your Majesty?"
Odin inclined his head in acknowledgement, and Ken excused himself to pour up more coffee. Jane Foster, it seemed, had no intention of excusing herself, despite her apology. "Would you care to go somewhere more private?"
Jane looked around; there wasn't a lot of privacy to be had here in the VMF, which wasn't meant to house 50 people. But there was a corner that had been cleared for a sleeping area that was now empty.
"Tell me," he said when they were as alone as they were going to get in this space. "How did you go from being Loki's target to being his friend?"
"It took time. And we were pretty much stuck together here, so there was plenty of that."
Time. If there was one thing Odin had little of, it was time. And even if he had endless supplies of it, he didn't think it would do much good in his case. But he also couldn't believe that a mere handful of months had made such a difference for the mortal, either. "Merely time? And enforced close quarters?" It was hard to imagine that that could have been beneficial at all; he would have predicted the opposite, given the extremes of Loki's anger.
"Not just that, no," Jane said, distracted for a moment by Thor's approach.
"Jane, Father," he said. They both looked tense.
"What then? Thor came to your world to warn you of Loki's presence because he threatened to seek you out, and then you found out one of the people living in this isolated place with you was Loki. Yet now you say he is your friend."
Thor listened with interest as well; Jane hadn't given him much of an explanation of this rather unbelievable development, either.
Jane looked away for a moment, thought back to when things had really started to change between them, albeit slowly – it had started with a decision to change her own attitude toward him. And that was something it might be good for Loki's father to hear, maybe even his brother, too. "We had a rocky relationship even before I knew he was Loki. He was moody and arrogant and not particularly friendly, but we figured out how to work together. When I found out the truth, 'rocky' would be putting it mildly. You might even say I hated him for ruining my South Pole experience. You know what changed? It wasn't him, not at first. It was me. Things got better when I stopped trying to punish him."
"How could you punish him in the first place?" Odin asked.
Thor kept quiet and waited for Jane's answer, knowing that she spoke with her own kind of wisdom, and now with experience dealing with Loki as well.
"By constantly reminding him about what he did. By rubbing his face in it. I wanted him to suffer, the way he made so many others suffer. I wanted to take every single thing he did wrong here and shove it in his face until I forced him to cry mercy, until he was overcome with guilt and remorse and begged me and the entire rest of this planet for forgiveness. So I printed out a list of every person that died in New York, and even some of their obituaries, and I left it in his room for him to find."
"Jane, what were you thinking?" Thor asked, horrified at how she'd provoked a very dangerous Loki. "He could have killed you."
"No, he couldn't have, right? In theory, at least?" she asked, looking at Odin, who gave one slow nod while picking her apart one piece of flesh at a time, so it felt. She'd meant what she'd said to Loki, though; neither Thor nor Odin was going to hear about what happened then from her lips, and she hoped they wouldn't hear about it from Loki's, either. Loki had made an even worse mistake in the wake of hers, but it had escalated because of a misinterpretation of a protective enchantment, and Jane knew that nothing like that would ever happen again. What Loki had done was between him and her, and it would stay that way. "But it was stupid. It didn't exactly go well, and it definitely didn't go how I wanted. When I stopped trying to make him suffer, to punish him, and let go of my own anger over the people he hurt on Earth before and just accepted him for who he was here and now…things started getting better."
"You found that ignoring his crimes made him better disposed toward you? I'm sure he did prefer it that way."
"I didn't ignore it. I didn't pretend it didn't happen. I just didn't go around trying to insist he feel guilty about it constantly."
"Jane," Thor began, tentatively, "it's admirable that you have tried to be accepting of Loki, after everything he's done on your world. But that is no small change. Do you remember what you told me about how…how murderers are punished on Midgard?"
She remembered it like it was yesterday. The shock of seeing him at her hotel room door, the green and beige stripes of the sofa they'd sat on, the stupid spaghetti stain on her shirt, and yes, the strength of her indignation that, in her mind at the time, Loki was being let go scot-free after the devastation he'd caused. "Yeah," she said after a moment. "Life imprisonment, or execution. But I'm not a prosecutor, or a judge, or a jury, or a government. I'm just me. Punishing Loki isn't my job. I just tried to…to treat him with basic respect. To allow him his dignity, instead of trying to humiliate him and make him suffer for what he'd done. I guess when you're really emotional about something maybe it's hard to see, but it shouldn't be a surprise that most people respond better to that." Thor nodded, looking deep in thought, while Odin still looked inscrutable. She debated internally for a few seconds, then decided that, for better or for worse, she couldn't not say it. She looked Odin in the eye. "You should try it."
Odin set his jaw. Presumptuous did not begin to describe this woman. "You believe that I desire my own son's suffering?"
"I'm sure that's not what she meant, Father," Thor put in hastily.
I think you aren't opposed to it as much as a father should be, Jane thought, immediately followed by Be diplomatic! He's their father. Thor's presence at her side and prompt interjection drove that home, and she didn't want to put Thor in the middle of a spat any more than she wanted to burn any of her own bridges with his and Loki's family.
"Then what exactly did she mean?" Odin asked Thor, aggravated by his intervention, before turning back to Jane. "You wish not to judge Loki, but to judge me instead? You said yourself, you are not a judge or a government, and it is not your job to punish. You are correct. But I am a king, and a father. Loki's king, and Loki's father. I should think it obvious that our roles are not the same. I do not have the luxury of alleviating him from the burden of punishment, dismissing his crimes and turning a blind eye, merely hoping he won't unleash chaos and destruction again."
"Can't you separate the king and the father parts? He's a grown man, he doesn't need his father doling out punishments."
Odin laughed sharply. "Would you care to explain it to her, Son?"
Thor turned reluctantly to Jane. "Loki is guilty of serious crimes, Jane. The magistrates would not have shown mercy, and many of our advisors advocated far more severe penalties, including death. In sending Loki here as he did, Father was showing him mercy."
"A mercy Thor pleaded for. To give Loki a chance to learn and to change his attitudes."
"This was your idea?" Jane asked, turning back to Thor. "You never told me that."
"We discussed it, and Father agreed. He wasn't sent here to suffer."
"You took away every shred of his ability to use magic."
"He gave up his own magic with every decision he made to use it inappropriately," Odin said. He'd heard this argument from Loki before and thought no better of it now than he did then.
"How are you so sure it was inappropriate? Do enchantments work that way, they know a hundred percent of the time what's inappropriate and what's not? Because he was doing better. He was doing so much better. And then he just got…desperate. When you took his magic-"
"He made his own decisions."
"Whatever. He-"
"'Whatever?'" Odin quoted acerbically, eyebrow raised.
"Yeah. When you took his magic, you took his means of defending himself. You took his dignity."
"Loki is quite capable of defending himself by the traditional means. And the consequences he suffered were a result of his own choices. He knew what those consequences were."
"Why did Loki need to defend himself?" Thor asked as soon as his father fell silent. "Why was he on Asgard? What does he know about the war?"
Jane started to answer, but realized she didn't know how to. "You should ask Loki. He knows more about it than I do."
"Loki won't talk to me, except to bark the occasional order."
"Well maybe you shouldn't have had him turned into a-" Jane paused to glance around them. There was a little distance between them and a few others, but they were hardly alone, and if someone wanted to eavesdrop it wouldn't be that hard, and she couldn't blame the Polies for natural curiosity. Mari was one of those not far away, sitting with her back to the wall and her eyes closed. She didn't need any further reasons to dislike Loki. "You know."
"It was the natural end result of the loss of magic. I didn't turn him into anything. I had hoped that when he reached that point, he would have to confront the truth, and accept that part of him. I would think you would understand that, with your talk of acceptance. The most important person who must accept Loki is Loki himself."
"But was this really the way to get him to accept himself? How did you expect that to work? You wanted him to accept himself by having him experience others' fear of him?"
"Others were already afraid of him, were they not?" Odin said. "Because of his actions, not his appearance. And I did not abandon him to the capriciousness of others, as you can see for yourself."
"Don't you see?" Jane asked, frustrated that what she was trying to say wasn't getting through to him. "This didn't help him, it hurt him. He'd lost everything already, his home, his family, who he understood himself to be-"
"He hasn't lost any of that. He's done his best to walk away from it, however. He's spat on it."
"He felt like he lost it."
"He hasn't, and we have all done what we can to convince him of that."
"Taking more from him was supposed to convince him he hasn't lost the rest? You even took his face. His body, the one he knows as his. You took his ability to drink a glass of water because it turned to ice so fast. You didn't have to do that. He was already getting better. Months ago. Anything he did that he shouldn't have in the last few days, he was driven to that out of desperation and…and…hopelessness."
"You believe his desperation and hopelessness are a new thing, something that began here, in the 'last few days?' It goes back further. Before he committed any crimes on your world. I had an opportunity to reach him then, and I did not recognize it for what it was. Then the opportunity was gone, along with my son. When next I saw him, he was cloaked in pride and stubbornness and hatred so thick it made him blind and deaf, and he'd dragged Asgard's name through filth in his attack here. I was furious. And there was no reaching him. I needed to calm down, and I needed him to be made willing to listen." Odin paused to catch his breath; he needed to calm down again now. And he did not need to defend himself to this mortal. "You cannot imagine what it is to look into your child's eyes and see the moment he… I was willing to take extreme measures, yes. I don't expect you to understand. I speak to you of these things now only out of courtesy, because you obviously care for my son, and for that, I thank you. I need just one thing further from you."
Jane blinked a few times, reeling a bit before she caught up. "What's that?"
"I believe you still have something that belongs to my wife. It was a gift from me, and I would like to return it to her."
Still processing what Odin had said before, trying to picture things that had happened before she'd ever met Loki, it took her a few seconds to follow what he was saying – Frigga hadn't given her anything – before she reached in under her shirt and pulled out the thin gold chain. She lifted it up over her neck and gave it to Odin.
"They're nearly finished, then?" Odin said, pocketing the necklace. Leaving the Tesseract behind on Midgard and thinking it safe had proven to be a terrible mistake; this gem hardly compared to that in terms of power, but he wasn't taking any chances. And it was Frigga's, marking the addition of Loki to their family, and did not belong with a mortal woman.
"Yes," Thor said quietly. "They didn't need my help anymore. Loki told me to get out of the way, so I came here. Father…I wanted the chance to talk to him as he was. To prove that-"
"Shall I change him back just for your sake? I fear Lady Jane would not approve. Now if you will excuse me, there are things I still need to discuss with Loki."
"Of course, Father."
Jane took a moment to look around again; heads turned away as she did so, a few of them after briefly meeting her eyes. There'd definitely been eavesdroppers. Whatever anyone might have heard though, she doubted they would have understood much of it. "Tell me the truth," Jane said, trying to forget the others' presence.
"What would you like to know?"
"What's the likelihood I'm going to wind up in Asgardian jail?"
Thor laughed lightly. "None. Do not concern yourself about that. He's not used to being so openly challenged, but he's not vindictive. And you haven't broken any Asgardian law."
"We'll see about that," Jane muttered.
Thor looked at her curiously. "Have you?" he asked in a quiet voice. "Jane…our records show that you were on Asgard when I was just a child. How is that possible?"
Jane gave a sound of frustration. "Not you, too. Come on, let's see if we can find somewhere else to talk." Thor nodded with enough enthusiasm that Jane figured he was conscious of the less-than-total privacy too, and fell into step beside her.
/
A few brief responses for guest reviewers, last two chapters: Guest (April 20): It's not something I thought consciously of (at first), but I think adding to Jane's and Frigga's affinity for each other (on top of the Odinsons that mean so much to both of them) is that Jane hasn't had a mother figure in her life for a long time, and Frigga has never had a daughter. I like having those bits of bonding between them. Loki doesn't know how the others feel, and a lot of them probably haven't really made up their minds yet, either, but in those circumstances they mostly default to the Lucas they know rather than the Loki they don't. The flying, I think there (younger) Loki was encroaching on Thor's thing and Thor was having none of it, and Loki gave in. Also, when I was a kid I had a recurring dream that if I got a floatie innertube(?)on I could fly. :-) / Priscilla: Yup, Tony, as you now know. :-) / Guest (May 6): Thank you for all of that! I enjoyed reading it, and it's great to be able to see which things stuck out to you, and how you drew different things together. Odin just doesn't really quite get Loki. I think on an intellectual level perhaps he does, like, the "theory," but in terms of actually relating to him, there's a gap there, and it's not a new one. / AvengersLoki: Thanks re Tony. You know I had to Google for what exactly that suit's supposed to be made of? Oh yeah, Loki and Thor *need* to talk. There's real potential for improvement there. But Thor's being a bit selfish, and Loki just doesn't want to deal with him, doesn't know *how* to deal with him. Jane and Thor haven't *seen* each other in over four months. Civil War was awesome good fun and the fight scenes were really creative but I thought some of them lacked real motivation (or real "stakes"? real commitment?). Don't know if it's just me. Hoping to see it 2nd time tomorrow. / Guest (May 7): I'd love for someone to draw it too b/c even though I wrote it I have a hard time picturing that craziness! / Guest (May 10): Tony does bring a nice dose of fun, doesn't he? He can take something very serious and inject it with some levity while maintaining the seriousness. Loki wasn't so fond of Thor and Odin stepping up for him, for his own reasons, but they would have defended him had Tony attacked, and Jane and Gary doing what they can, too, it makes me smile too! Thor and Loki, not going to be a smooth road. / And if I didn't specifically respond here, THANK YOU! :-) I think someone asked how often this story updates though I didn't see it just now - it updates as soon as I'm able to, and these days I think that's most often around 10-14 days.
Previews for Ch. 149 (possibly titled "Conflict"): A bit of conflict here and there occurs. Including some you may not expect.
Excerpt:
[Thor] sighed. "I don't mean to burden you with this. They'll finish out there soon, and I want to enjoy the time we have. This," he said, taking her hands, "feels like the most indulgent of all luxuries. I want to indulge."
"I think you deserve it," Jane said [...]. "Indulge a little more and sit down on the floor with me, Your Majesty?"