._.

Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Two – Time

Jane watched with widened eyes. She thought it was probably better if Loki did just tell them what had happened, but she hoped Loki was exaggerating – or basically lying – when he said he was going to tell them everything. Confessing his intention to go back in time and kill Thor wouldn't do anyone any good.

"I first carried out a very basic test. I programmed Pathfinder, Jane's device that I modified in secret, to send me back precisely six months – time axis only, no space axis. That means that I traveled only to a different time, while my place remained unchanged," Loki said, turning to face Thor for the last. He looked somewhat as though he was constipated, with a semblance of a smile appearing awkwardly over pained features.

"It was summer here; the sun was up," Loki continued. "I went into the main station, and I met one of the summer grantees, and one of those who work here now, whom Jane and I otherwise met the day of our arrival here. I of course changed my appearance for it and your curse asserted itself, despite the fact that I was engaging in no mischief beyond a simple conversation and taking advantage of the ability to eat a piece of fresh fruit, something I hadn't done in a couple of months. Thank you for that, All-Father."

"No mischief? I believe it has been safely established that the very act of using Yggdrasil for time transportation is mischief, and of a particularly foul sort."

"Apparently not, not according to your little enchantment. There were a number of times when I used magic in support of time travel and was not punished for it."

Odin considered that. He'd already realized that the complexity of time travel was something the enchantment had not been designed for. For any specific incidents, though, he had only Loki's questionable word, and all of one actual example; it was not enough to form any conclusions. "Continue," he said. "Please," he added, as a tiny – and probably pointless, he thought – sign of the respect Loki had said he sought, even if he claimed he no longer did.

"I-"

"You sent a probe first. Right?" Jane asked. He'd told her so at least, on Asgard.

"That's correct. A mechanical device of Jane's creation that I sent and brought back as an initial test, to ensure that I wasn't killed or without a functional means of returning."

"Then that's another instance of time travel. It sounds like it doesn't matter if it was a person or a thing."

"I believe you are correct," Odin acknowledged. "The relevant fact is that Yggdrasil was forced to behave in ways it was not intended to."

Jane nodded. "'Intended to'… Was Yggdrasil created?"

"All things were created," Odin said impatiently, for while this mortal was apparently as intelligent as Thor had said, she was in some ways rather ignorant.

Jane frowned, a burst of questions flashing through her mind. Does he mean God? Or maybe some ancient alien race? What does he mean by "all"? What does he mean by "created"? But Odin's attention was back on Loki, and he clearly wasn't interested.

"Next, I tested journeying through time and space, and inserting myself into past events I myself had earlier been part of. I went back to a place Jane and I had been, before she knew my real name. I waited until she was alone. I-"

"There's no need to put it that way," Jane quickly stuck in. "He wasn't threatening me," she said for the benefit of the others, mostly for Thor whose face had hardened in anger.

"I waited until she was surrounded by a large crowd of people?"

Jane rolled her eyes. "He got dressed up the same way he'd been that day in Christchurch, before we flew to Antarctica. He came to my hotel room and asked me if I wanted to go out hiking. And he already knew I liked hiking, from later, after we reached the South Pole. I thought there was something off about him…but back then I just thought he was weird. And annoying," she said, glancing toward Loki and giving him a pointed look that she hoped said to him – and only him – still do.

"It was a successful test. My past self, the person who existed in that time, was in shouting distance from where I stood having a normal conversation with Jane. Next, I placed a fork atop my wardrobe the day before I arrived at the South Pole, then journeyed to a time between then and my own time, and found the fork just where I'd put it."

"A fork?" Thor asked.

"Yes. A fork," Loki asserted, challenging Thor to doubt him. He might, in fact. Or his mother might. Jane had not known him as well then, to know that a fork was entirely too mundane for him.

Jane said nothing. The "fork" trip she now knew was in fact the New York trip that he'd lied about before; she wondered if he'd settled on a fork for the lie because it rhymed with "New York."

"The fifth journey, not counting the initial probe. You'll find this one more interesting than the fork. I wished to test whether I could influence events in the past. I'd had an idea, you see. From an old Midgardian book."

"The Art of War," Frigga said with absolute clarity.

Loki regarded her with surprise. "Well done, Mother. I'm impressed."

"I saw it in your chambers here. I knew there was something significant about it. Thor, the idea to use Vigdis against Brokk, that came from The Art of War, didn't it?"

"Yes," Thor said, slowly nodding. "The book was sticking out… Loki, you journeyed to the past-"

"To one week after I warned Jolgeir about her, yes."

"And then you…you marked that passage in the book. About caring for spies so that they serve you instead of your enemy."

"Yes."

"And I saw it after you…but before you…"

"Yes," Loki said with a smirk. "So tell me, Brother, did it work?" he asked, letting sarcasm color his use of the familial term.

"Yes. It did. We've used her to give false information to Brokk. It has lessened their successes against us, made them expend resources for little gain."

"It's good to have it confirmed for certain now, not that it matters anymore. For my sixth journey I returned to Asgard a month later to check if Vigdis was still imprisoned. She was not, and I took that as a strong suggestion that I had in fact been able to influence events that had already happened."

"And to aid Asgard?" Odin asked.

Loki's attention snapped from Thor to Odin. He hesitated, but even if it meant his own condemnation, he couldn't bring himself to give Odin what he wanted. "That was not my goal."

"It was an incredibly convenient byproduct, then," Jane said, unwilling to just sit there while Loki undermined himself out of a frustrating sense of pride.

"For the seventh-"

"A month later," Thor repeated, looking back, double-checking his memory of the timing. "About a month after I found that book was when an invisible assassin nearly severed my arm."

"I know," Loki said over Jane's quiet intake of breath. "I was there. I don't believe even a minute had passed before you'd jumped to the conclusion that I was the one who'd almost deprived you of a limb."

"And do you know how much blood I'd lost by then? I wasn't thinking clearly. I wasn't…analyzing the situation, Loki. The assassin was invisible, and I knew by then that you'd tried to go after Jane, and I just…I…"

"Assumed it was me."

"Right before I passed out from blood loss, yes. How clearly were you thinking when you were lying here with only a few drops left in you?"

Loki took a moment to fully breathe in and out, to ensure his response remained cool and even. "Point taken," he said. Had he been thinking clearly at all, he was quite certain Jane would never have learned about the tonic in his satchel, would never have put herself at such risk that way. "You must have been shocked to learn it wasn't me, after all. I decided I didn't want to be thought dead a second time and went back and removed the magic concealing the Dark Elf I'd killed."

"You…I killed the Dark Elf."

"Oh, really? With your mighty thoughts?"

"No, Loki. With Mjolnir. I called lightning."

"He was already dead then. By my hand. Thank you for the lightning, though. You wouldn't have killed the already dead Dark Elf with that but you very nearly killed me. And yes, I'm still bitter."

"I thought you were there, you know. Somehow."

"Yes. You thought I was trying to murder you."

"I don't mean that. I don't…never mind."

Loki's face softened, melted. "You thought I was close by? You felt my presence?" he asked with cloying sweetness.

"Something like that," Thor said in a dark, low voice. "There's no need to ridicule me for it."

"I was close by. I was holding on to your senseless arm to avoid being electrocuted in your effort to kill the already-dead Dark Elf."

"All right, Loki, I… You killed the Dark Elf."

"I thought we'd already established that fairly well, even by your standards."

"You killed the Dark Elf…who was trying to kill me."

Loki sighed. "It would have been a shameful death. Not even worth a simple poem. Perhaps one corner of a tapestry."

"You thought I should die a more glorious death."

"More glorious than by the hand of an invisible assassin you couldn't even fight back against."

Thor bit back his instinctive response, that he had been fighting back, that he'd used Mjolnir left-handed, that he'd called lightning…but might the Dark Elf have struck a fatal blow before he'd brought down lightning, had Loki not already killed him? It really didn't matter now. What mattered was that no matter how Loki tried to cast it, his brother had intervened to save his life. "Thank you," he said quietly, and tried to ignore Loki's look of annoyance and lack of acknowledgement. Thor thought he even caught an eye-roll right before Loki turned away, and he stared at his inscrutable brother in open curiosity.

"The seventh journey?" Odin prompted when Thor and Loki fell silent; he was loathe to interrupt them while they were still speaking, and civilly, no less. And he thought little of Loki's "shameful death" explanation for saving Thor's life. It was an excuse, and a poor one at that – he wondered if Loki actually believed it himself, if he said it merely to avoid sentimentality or if it was a lie he told himself to maintain his conviction that his family ties were cut. Either way, Odin recognized the truth: Loki still cared about Thor, and not just as an enemy.

"For the seventh journey I tested travel to another realm: Alfheim."

Jane slowly let out the breath she'd begun holding again. Loki's seventh time travel trip was another one he'd lied to her about, or tried to, at first. He was lying again now, trying out a different lie for a different audience; his family wouldn't realize that with no geospatial reference points he had no way of programming Pathfinder to send him directly to Alfheim, and his family hadn't seen the time and place codes in her laptop's records, to know that he'd in fact gone to Asgard, to the day of Baldur's death.

"When?" Odin asked.

"One hundred years ago. There was someone I wished to see, someone I thought might help me with my little curse problem, and by then I knew of the war, so in the interest of not being captured and sent on an involuntary detour to Jotunheim, I chose the past."

Jane's eyes drifted down and to the left, in Loki's direction but not directly on him. He was ten years off from the truth – not much, not in Loki's concept of time. It made sense, she thought, this embellishment. Even if Loki hadn't known there was an assassination attempt against Nadrith ninety years ago, maybe Odin did. Or maybe he would someday find out. Loki was making sure he didn't get tied to that event even by purely idle suspicion.

"Who?" Odin asked.

"I'm not giving you the name. It doesn't matter. She has no idea we weren't from her time, and we were careful not to give her any foreknowledge."

"'We'? You took Jane with you?" Thor asked.

"On the ninth journey. She insisted. She was going to try to prevent me from going if I didn't allow it."

"I wanted to make sure we didn't change anything. And remember? You told her not to tell anyone about our visit. You told her to never mention it even to you. And she didn't, did she? If you hadn't told her that, we wouldn't have been able to see her. The universe would have prevented it. You see? Novikov Self-Consistency Principle," Jane said with a satisfied smile. No one else was smiling, though, she realized. Staring, but not smiling. "If she'd told you about that day, it would have changed things," she said to Loki. "You would have known that it didn't work, and you wouldn't have attempted it. But if you didn't go there and attempt it, she wouldn't have been able to tell you it didn't work, so then later you would have attempted it. It results in two regularly alternating versions of history. Paradox. Inconsistency." Frigga nodded tentatively, but still no one wore a look of dawning comprehension. "Okay. Imagine if Loki-"

"If I tell you that I understand perfectly, that we all do, will that make you cease trying to explain?"

Jane looked at Loki. His tone wasn't teasing. It was cold and impatient. It hurt. But then his face, which had been just as cold, softened a bit.

"Jane, recall that even thinking about time travel is virtually tantamount to treason on Asgard. These concepts will not be internalized easily, or quickly. Or by blunt force."

She nodded, and tried to shake off the earlier insult. Loki hadn't behaved normally with her in front of his family at all, not just with that one remark. It felt weird, and a little uncomfortable, but whatever was going on in his head to make him act that way toward her, more than just trying to minimize her role in their time travel, she knew it was because of his family's presence and she shouldn't take it personally. She looked past Loki to Thor, who was glaring at Loki, and when she caught his eye she sent him a smile and hoped he understood that she was fine, and not to get mad at Loki on her account. He frowned back at her, but his shoulders relaxed a bit, and he hadn't said anything, so she figured he was going to let it go.

"I for one would very much like to better understand this. But I do agree that it can wait," Frigga said. "You skipped the eighth journey."

"So I did. In my defense, I should like to say that I was interrupted by questions. For the eighth journey I took Jane to Asgard, showed her a parade, and bought her sweets."

Jane's eyes narrowed in thought. Put like that, it sounded an awful lot like a date. She wondered if Loki had said it that way on purpose, to annoy Thor. Dumb question, she thought. Loki spoke in precisely-chosen words. She very deliberately focused her attention on Loki and did not look Thor's way, unwilling to even acknowledge Loki's intent.

"I should also mention, the clothing Jane wore that day? My creation. Through magic. In furtherance of time travel. I was not punished."

Odin nodded, mulling it over only briefly before turning to something he'd wondered about. "You drew Jolgeir's attention. What were you attempting?" Odin asked. Loki knew how to not draw attention, so if he'd drawn Jolgeir's it had been intentional.

"In fact it was Jane who drew Jolgeir's attention. Though it's true I prodded her into it. All I was 'attempting' was a bit of fun. Why is it, do you think, that you ascribe to my every action nefarious intent? The tenth journey- Or…does it count as one or as two, when we both went?" Loki asked, turning to Jane.

Jane glanced between Loki and Odin. "In terms of damage to Yggdrasil…I'm not sure. Pathfinder sent us at exactly the same time, and brought us back at exactly the same time. Maybe since we were together…one trip?"

"I don't know, either," Odin said.

"In that case, let's continue to call it one journey, shall we?" Loki said, flashing a bright false smile. "By the time of the tenth journey, I was rather perturbed that my plan for Alfheim had failed. I made a few quick trips to various places on Midgard…including Puente Antiguo."

Jane's mouth fell open in shock, just for a second. If Loki were going to lie about just one trip, she would've bet anything it would've been that one, even more so than Baldur, but he obviously had other ideas.

"Jane's Puente Antiguo?" Thor asked, trying to imagine Loki strolling around the little town as he had, and fearing what he might have done while there.

"No, some other Puente Antiguo," Loki said, voice thick with condescension.

Thor huffed out a breath. "What did you do? What did you change?"

"I believe it has already been explained that I could not actually change anything. Anything that I did, I had already done," he answered as though lecturing, knowing it would set Thor's head spinning.

Thor set the deeper implications of that aside, and supposed that Loki meant that anything Loki did in Puente Antiguo, he already knew about. "But you were never… You mean out in the desert? After I tried to retrieve Mjolnir and could not lift it?"

"Not time travel."

"But you weren't there other than that, not before."

"Are you certain?"

Jane shifted nervously in her chair. This could get very ugly, very fast. Loki hadn't wanted her to tell Thor about this, and now he was going out of his way to taunt Thor with it?

Thor was about to say that yes, he was certain, when he remembered that he had seen Loki one other time then. He stood, eyeing Loki with suspicion. "It wasn't a dream."

"No."

"I didn't think it was, at the time. But when nothing else came of it I thought… You told me I should leave Puente Antiguo. You told me I should leave Jane."

Jane's ears perked up even further at that. Loki hadn't told her that. Only that he'd gone back to kill Thor, and then somehow changed his mind; he'd called himself a failure over it, though she hadn't been sure how to take that.

"Yes. And as usual, you completely ignored me."

"Why should I have listened to you? Why did you want me to leave Jane?" Thor asked, voice steadily increasing in volume.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Perhaps we should discuss this further outside," Thor said, then opened his palm and felt Mjolnir leap up into it.

"Thor, Loki, stop it," Jane said, jumping up from her chair, Frigga doing the same to her right.

"Sit down, Thor."

Thor, Jane could tell – anyone with eyes could tell – was seething, but at Odin's command he sat. And Odin may have been sitting in an old black office chair with one armrest missing, but it may as well have been a throne. She and Frigga sat, too; Loki remained standing.

"I see your temper is no less volatile," Loki said.

"And your tongue is no less wicked."

"I can only surmise that you're assuming my little visit was some sort of effort to harm Jane."

"You threatened to do so. Twice."

Jane was about to speak up again – this was too uncomfortable, and the thought of Thor and Loki coming to blows over her was horrifying – but Loki beat her to it.

"Jane has nothing to fear from me – past, present, or future. I wasn't there because of her. You were remaining in that little speck of a town because of her. I wanted you to leave. I wanted you to give up and go away. I wanted the Traitors Four to arrive there only to find you'd just left. I wanted time to repay Jotunheim for Laufey's attempt on Odin's life, and to solidify my rule. They treated me as a usurper, Thor. Did they tell you that, I wonder? I was not the one who banished you, yet your friends – my supposed friends – behaved as though I were a pretender, betraying all of Asgard by not immediately reversing Odin's order. How was it you put it? That I should give up 'this dream'? Like yours, it wasn't a dream. It was reality. It was merely short-lived. I wished to see it last a little longer."

"Loki…," Frigga said with a pained expression.

"This is indeed a conversation for another time, Loki," Odin said.

"Mmm. Why do I suspect there will never be a convenient time for this particular conversation?"

"I don't know. Remind us all, Loki, how many times you've raised this issue before?"

Loki narrowed his eyes slightly. The answer, of course, was never. He had not raised "issues" from his prison cell or during his swift trial. It had never even crossed his mind that his "issues" would be taken seriously, much less addressed. Odin's engagement in a bit of verbal sparring aside, Loki's thoughts on the matter were unchanged. "That was the eleventh journey," Loki began, ignoring Odin's question. "Actually the eleventh and the twelfth. I arrived too early the first time, so I returned here and then went back to Puente Antiguo, a little later in the day. Lacking an understanding of the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle at the time," he said to Jane, projecting a touch of smugness, before turning back to Thor, "I was unfortunately unaware that nothing I said could have convinced you to walk away from Jane and from Puente Antiguo. My attempts gained me nothing. So I gave up thoughts of changing the past. But my deepest apologies, I again skipped a journey. For the tenth I went to a Midgardian city I'd never been to before – Chicago – and ate at one of its nicest restaurants. You should really send your cooks there, Mother, and have them inquire about soufflés. Incredibly delicious."

"Your cooks, too, Loki," Frigga said.

"They don't deliver to the prisons, I believe."

"You aren't in prison."

"Not one with bars, no. But I'm no longer seated at the high table, either, am I?"

"Loki, enough. No one is eating soufflé, whatever that is, in Asgard," Thor said, still on edge from before. Loki was a showmaster here, more interested in scoring points in a game that no one else was playing than in simply explaining what he'd done, and it was irritating him. "Vigdis worked in the kitchens and was a server. We released all of the kitchen workers. Most often we eat stew prepared by injured Einherjar."

Not merely Einherjar, but injured Einherjar. Because healthy ones cannot be spared? Conditions on Asgard had grown dire indeed. It struck Loki then that even though for months he'd hardly eaten anything that wasn't first frozen, his meals had been prepared by actual cooks, not Einherjar who mostly ate in communal dining halls if single and what their wives cooked for them if married – hence lacking in both training and experience. He'd probably eaten better here at the South Pole than the king of Asgard had at his own high table in the Realm Eternal.

"And that brings us to your final journey, does it not? Or did you visit many Midgardian restaurants, for some reason in the past?" Odin asked, preempting what he feared would become a new argument over food. Thor and Loki did need to talk, to try to work things out between each other now that Loki was talking, but he hoped they would have sufficient sense to wait until no more urgent matters remained, and when no one else was anywhere near them, for their "talk" stood a good chance of becoming physical. As for time travel, while Odin was certain Loki was weaving a complex tapestry of lies amidst the truth, nothing he'd heard thus far concerned him overmuch. It sounded like whatever changes Loki had succeeded in making were small, inconsequential, and not even truly changes to begin with, according to Jane Foster – only interference whose consequences had always been felt. But in this final journey, judging by the mangled remains of the mechanical device outside that Odin presumed had been Pathfinder, Loki's stabbing of the other mortal, and the as yet unexplained appearance of Jane in his chambers near his sons' cradle…something was different about this particular time journey.

"It does," Loki confirmed, ignoring the second question; the timing of his visit to that restaurant of course had nothing to do with the restaurant and everything to do with Selby Higgins. "Time travel had ceased to have any use for me, once I'd found I could not get the curses removed, and had instead become merely a means for some minor amusement. When I took Jane to Asgard, to Harvest Day, she found little Thor so endearing – and so very tiny – that I thought I would show him to her when he was even tinier. I understand that you actually met Jane there, Mother."

"We were not exactly formally introduced," Frigga said, expression guarded.

"Jane, I'm sure, was afraid of changing history; I'm sure she said nothing. I'm sorry that it frightened you; we weren't meant to be discovered."

"A stranger standing next to your babies with a dagger in her hand will tend to frighten you, Loki. It is in fact rather an understatement. Were you there, too, invisible? And why exactly did you feel it was necessary to give Jane an Asgardian blade in order to show her a couple of infants? I could have killed her. I would have killed her had she even started to take a step toward that cradle."

"Loki had already left. We were supposed to leave together, but the RF switch that we used to…one of my devices had a malfunction. I was using the knife to get the screws off and fix it, so I could follow Loki back home. I meant it when I said it wasn't what it looked like."

"You locked me out of my own bedchamber, Loki," Frigga said as soon as Jane finished her explanation. "You locked a mother away from her babies. You didn't think that would 'frighten' me? A mother's first instinct is to protect her children. My babies were behind those doors and I couldn't get to them. I was terrified."

"I'm sorry, Mother," Loki said, chastened and trying to let just enough of it show so that she knew he meant it. He would have killed her child, had Jane not arrived and stopped him. He glanced at Jane, who was looking steadfastly at the floor. Jane had not stopped him. Not really. The universe had stopped him. Physics had stopped him. If Jane hadn't stopped him, something else would have. He would have gone mad trying and failing over and over again to kill a baby, to kill himself. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to force the macabre thoughts from his mind. He was grateful Jane had reached him, that it hadn't gone any further.

"How does Selby Higgins fit into this?" Odin asked.

"Badly," Loki answered immediately. He knew there would have to be more. But while he could cast time travel as something to be proud of in his own snide way, a success and a flouting of expectations, something he'd experienced and understood that his former family did not, it was hard to find anything laudable or worthy of a clever jest in stabbing a frankly rather puny and pathetic mortal.

"He was trying to protect me," Jane said.

Loki turned to her with a harsh glare. "I believe I can speak for myself."

"Apparently not," Jane responded, then pointedly avoided looking his way as she explained what she knew before Loki could again sabotage himself. "Selby had figured out who Loki was. But he didn't know that I already knew. Selby also knew about Asgard and the Tesseract – he knew somebody who was hired to work on the Tesseract project. And he knew I was connected to it. So he was afraid that Loki was here because of me, and that he was going to hurt me. And that's really my fault because I was…I was in a hurry when Selby told me he'd figured it out, and I didn't take the time to explain to him that I already knew, and that Loki wasn't out to get me or anybody else here. I took the path of least resistance, which was to let him keep thinking that I didn't know and that Loki was a potential danger…and it backfired. When I got back from Asgard, five minutes after Loki, he and Selby were scuffling, and Selby had brought a knife from the kitchen…and Selby got stabbed."

"You weren't even there. You don't know what happened."

"I know it was Selby who brought the knife. Zeke said so. And I know he went out to find you, not the other way around. Selby was worried for me, and he went to confront you. Something went wrong with that magic," Jane said turning from Loki to Odin. "Loki didn't mean to hurt Selby. It was an accident."

"Is that true, Loki?" Frigga asked.

Loki suddenly felt very young, his mother questioning him on some mischief he'd gotten up to. "Yes, of course it's true, Mother," seemed a natural, familiar thing to say. But he couldn't do it. "There's no harm done, everything will be fine, nothing to worry about, it was merely an accident." Reassurances with a warm, polite smile – that was the old Loki, and not something he could go back to. Not even if it was to his benefit. He took a deep breath before answering. "I am not so sloppy with a knife."

Jane let out an aggravated sigh and sank back in her chair. What is wrong with you?! she wanted to shout at him. Had they been alone, she would have.

"No, you are not," Odin said. "And had it been merely an accident, you would not have received a reciprocal wound. What really happened?"

"He grates on my nerves. He always has. He thought I was using Pathfinder to bring another army to Earth. To conquer Antarctica. The fool. So he decided to try to destroy it. If he had, Jane would have been trapped with you and your sword, Mother, and your certainty that she was there to harm your children. She would have had a story you would not have believed, and she would probably have been unwilling to tell in the first place, for fear of damaging the timeline. I could not condemn her to the fate that she would have met in Asgard's past, so I decided to stop Selby." He paused a moment, reining in the urge to say something that would make light of what he'd done. He would not boast, neither would he jest. What had happened, happened. It was as simple as that. "I was angry. I lost control."

Silence followed. Jane watched Loki, feeling a little unsettled. It hadn't been entirely an accident, like she'd thought.

Thor was the first to try to speak. "He-"

"I will not endure a lecture from you, not from any of you but especially not from you, Thor. How many died the last time you lost control?"

"I was not going to lecture," Thor said, calmly. "Jane would not have existed here anymore. She would have been imprisoned on Asgard, all alone, when the only two people she knew were both still in a cradle. It was a mistake, Loki…but one that I can understand."

"You wanted to kill him?" Odin asked, cutting off Loki's response to Thor which could not possibly have been helpful.

"In that moment, yes. Grating on my nerves is not normally enough to provoke me to such a response. If it were, Jane would certainly not be sitting here with us. I don't think anyone at all would be left alive here."

"I think I've heard enough," Thor bit out. One minute his brother was insulting Jane, the next he was in essence defending her from a knife-wielding mortal, the next he seemed to be jesting about killing her. Jane, at least, did not look worried. She'd looked annoyed at Loki a few times, or surprised by something he'd said, but she clearly wasn't afraid of him. She seemed comfortable with him. He couldn't figure Loki out, and he thought he wouldn't until they had sufficient time alone together. Perhaps not even then, but at least then there'd be a chance.

"And now?" Odin asked. "Do you still wish him ill?"

"I wouldn't lose sleep over it."

"Oh, give me a break. If Selby was standing here right now and you had a knife, would you stab him?"

"In front of so many witnesses, Jane?" Loki asked with a smirk. Selby's actual near-death was one thing. A hypothetical one was entirely different, fair game.

"Would you have helped him down from the station like everyone else if he'd come out that way, when we thought it might collapse?" Jane asked, expression hardening. She knew the answer, and she wasn't going to just sit there while he kept shoving spokes in his own wheel out of what Jane thought at this point was just an exasperating level of stubbornness.

"Probably," he answered with indifference.

Jane glared at him.

"Yes," Loki relented, then turned back to the others. "I find these questions tiresome and I cannot help but treat them as the folly that they are. I have not been lazing about plotting the mortals' demise; I have already told you I do not wish them ill. I wanted the enchantments gone. I wanted my freedom back. One of your new friends, Thor, I would say he's the obnoxious one but then that rather describes them all, doesn't it? The one whose name speaks of wrath. He told me that I kill because it's fun. I probably would have found it fun to kill him at the time, but no, I do not kill for fun, or out of boredom, or because someone insulted my clothing. Or because someone calls me 'Princess,' by the way; perhaps you're simply confusing the two of us. And I was walking away from Selby until I realized he was going to destroy Pathfinder."

"I suspect this was not exactly your attitude when I first sent you to Midgard."

Loki smiled sharply but otherwise refused to respond. Odin was right, of course. He'd spent some time – not much, but some – early on thinking about killing the Avengers, or changing history in such a way that he was able to kill them the first time around, and the rage that once blinded him to rational thought had left him more than once with a strong desire to kill or at least severely damage, for even less than the minor slights he'd jested of. He remembered a man bumping into him on a busy Sydney street and how a split second of inconsiderate behavior without apology had nearly driven him to violence. But that change in attitude wasn't Odin's doing, and Loki wasn't interested in fueling any belief that he had simply been an obedient little student of Odin's lessons.

"I will interpret your silence as agreement," Odin said, patience with Loki's resistance once again growing thin. They had more time than he'd initially expected, but it was far from infinite. "Here is what I believe happened, based on what you and Jane Foster have said. First, I believe that you did learn, and quickly. You left here in a whirlwind of such malevolent chaos, that I was certain that you would drive yourself to ruin, and that before long you would reach an end that would bring you back to a beginning, back to your family and to Asgard. But you stabilized well before reaching that point. Whether it was the quiet and calm of this place, or the influence of Jane Foster or of other mortals here, or something you've experienced since leaving Asgard, that I do not know. However, once you began experimenting with time journeys, the enchantment against inappropriate use of magic began to behave erratically, is that correct?"

Erratically…yes, Loki thought, eyes narrowed, remembering times the punishment had come entirely unexpectedly and times he'd prepared himself for the pain and it had just as unexpectedly not come, when he'd long since otherwise figured it out and endured the rewiring of his brain to think before he used magic. He nodded slowly.

"The magic that judged your use of magic was complex, but it was never meant to handle that. Time travel itself is unacceptable, but the magic was formulated to assess intent, the motivation for the use of magic; I suspect that the magic thus remained focused on the motivation behind the time journey."

With no little effort, Loki kept his outward appearance unchanging, impassive. Inside, he roared with rage. "No."

"No?"

He hesitated. He would not speak Baldur's name, or even allude to him, but he did want to know why he'd been punished for what had been unquestionably the best of intentions. "When the motivation behind the time journey was a good one, I was still punished for magic that caused no harm or distress to anyone."

"I see," Odin said, pondering it for a moment, both the surface of what Loki had said, and what lay beneath it – that Loki had undertaken some of his travels to the past with positive motivation. He wondered if he might be referring to the Midgardian book, or to something else, which Loki had kept hidden from them. "On this occasion, were you attempting to alter the past?"

"Yes," Loki said after a moment, in which he thought he finally understood. Although the specific result he was trying to achieve was an unquestionably good one, the fact that he was trying to achieve it through deliberately changing the past – the only way he knew to reverse the finality of death – had made Odin's curse judge his overall motivation to be a poor one.

"I can see how this would have caused confusion."

"Mmmm," Loki murmured noncommittally. "Confusion." Frustration. Fury, he thought, the echoes of these pulsing through him now, although he'd calmed himself considerably from a few moments earlier. "There were other instances. When my intent was merely to test the principle of time travel, not to change anything. I sent a probe; I first made it invisible and suffered for it. Could one not say that I was trying not to change anything by making an unknown metal object appear to the South Pole's mortals of six months ago, who had not originally seen such a thing? And similarly, when I undertook my own first journey, I made myself invisible and again paid for it."

"And was your intent then also, ultimately, to change history?"

Loki clenched his jaw briefly before forcing himself to relax. "It was. Do you have an answer for this, then? What of the instances when I was not punished? My intent was always to change my own history." The magic used in transforming Jane's gown and shoes. Creating Asgardian money. Making himself invisible as soon as Thor's eyes were closed, having looked up upon him as a brother for the last time.

"No, Loki, I do not have an answer for everything. Time journeys were a possibility I could not have anticipated, nor the magic I used. Perhaps on those specific occasions you were ultimately attempting to not change history."

He thought back. He'd assured Jane he would ensure he would not alter the past when they went to Asgard, and even though in the end he'd not entirely abided by their agreement, once he'd spotted Jolgeir, he'd meant it sincerely at the time. And as for Thor…he supposed that was when he'd given up on rewriting history; he'd certainly not had any intention of changing anything by making himself invisible, nor any further plans to change anything afterward.

"Just for the record, All-Father, what did your magic anticipate? What did you anticipate? You used some sort of magic on your heir when you banished him, did you not? He was lying dead in the middle of a road, yet suddenly, because he'd decided to think of someone besides himself for once and offered up his life on an undefended platter for a handful of others, life poured back into him and everything you'd taken from him was returned. Why? Because you anticipated. You believed in your heart that Thor could change his arrogant ways, and not that he could, but that he would. I thought, in the beginning, that there might be some similar path for me. I tried it, a few times. 'Random acts of kindness,' they call it here. Do something nice for the mortals, I thought, and perhaps the loss of magic would be reversed. It didn't work, though I confess my motivation was entirely selfish. Do something really nice for the mortals, I thought, and perhaps the curses would be removed instantly, as they were for Thor. No such opportunity presented itself, unfortunately. But tell me honestly, for the record, did you anticipate that I could change my ways? Was there anything, anything at all I could have done, that would have made your magic disintegrate, and return what you'd taken from me?"

Odin held Loki's gaze, and paused just long enough to blink once. "No."

"Mmm. Well, I do thank you for your honesty."

"Have you changed your ways?"

"Back to that, are we?"

"It was not I who raised it."

"An opportunity did present itself," Frigga put in. "What you did for the people here. Helping them evacuate their building. Leading its repairs so they have safe shelter for the winter. And this was after you'd regained your use of magic. Those motivations were not selfish. I saw the way some of them looked at you. But you did not hesitate to come to their aid."

"Well then," Loki said, gaze sliding back to Odin, "perhaps I've changed my evil ways after all."

Odin released a weary sigh. "You are not evil, Loki. You have committed evil. But you are not evil. And I am proud of what you did here today." He remembered then the raw emotion on Loki's face, in the jamesway tent, when he'd shouted that he'd wanted respect. "I respect what you did," he added. Pandering, yes, and as such Loki would probably not appreciate it, but at the same time, it was true.

"Ah," Loki said, face relaxing into an easy smile. He circled around the chair he hadn't sat in since deciding to entertain this little gathering by telling his story in his way and sank into it, sprawling his legs out before him and his arms on the armrests. "In that case, I suppose we can consider all fences mended and go home to a lovely family dinner. Would you care to join us, Jane?"

Jane smiled weakly at him. She wasn't sure what Loki was really thinking or feeling, but she ached on his behalf, that Odin really seemed to have had more faith in Thor, who'd done something pretty terrible and reckless himself, than in Loki. Right or wrong, it had to hurt. His words of pride and respect didn't seem to mean anything to Loki either, and she couldn't blame him for it. Much as she might want it for him, she couldn't picture any friendly family dinners taking place between them any time soon.

"Your sarcasm and flippancy are inappropriate. But I will take it over your silence. Thank you for your relative forthrightness about your use of Yggdrasil for time journeys. Is there anything else you wish to say?"

Loki regarded Odin with a cool smile that hid his curiosity. The question had an air of finality to it. Was judgement to follow? Was he to be banished, tossed away to a cave on Nidavellir with his words forever imprisoned inside him, insanity soon to follow? He thought that might be even worse than being sent to Jotunheim. But that, too, was flippancy; in reality it was a toss-up. The difference was Jane, who was not in danger of freezing to death on Jotunheim, but might be in danger of spending the short remainder of her life stuck with him in that cave, wordless. He was incongruously reminded of his brief and foolish fantasy of a little cabin alone with her, but the circumstances of Glodir's fate were not exactly what he'd imagined. "I wouldn't know where to begin," he finally said. "No," he clarified when Odin didn't respond.

Odin stood. "Then Thor, I would speak with you. And you also, Frigga," he said, rising from his dilapidated chair.

Thor's brow knitted in surprise; he glanced over at Jane, who looked worried, and then at his mother, who was looking at Loki. He stood, but stopped in front of his father before following him out. "I do not wish to be a part of this, Father. It isn't my place."

"You are still king, are you not?"

"I am," Thor answered reluctantly, knowing where this was going and that he would be unable to evade it.

"Then you must be a part of it."

"You really must, Your Majesty," Loki mocked. But it was no mere mockery. Thor had given no oath regarding dwarven caves, but if Odin had Jotunheim on his mind, Loki wanted Thor there.

Thor looked at Loki for a long while, and thought perhaps he understood. He held Loki's gaze for a long moment, then agreed.

"Frigga?" Odin said, turning to see his wife still seated.

"I do not need to be a part of it. I will remain here. I wish to speak with my son."

Odin was surprised by her refusal, having expected her to plead Loki's case stridently. If she chose to stay behind, she had her reasons, likely good ones, and he would not insist as he had with Thor. He nodded, and headed for the doors with Thor.

/

A couple of you commented on the Loki: Agent of Asgard comic series. I have actually been reading that and am near the end. I sortof-kindof like the very "meta" element of those stories, which goes back to the young Loki and Leah, but at the moment I'm stalled out in them because I reached a point where I just could not at all fathom what was going on anymore. The comics often frustrate me because there just aren't enough words to make me understand what's going on. (I am fully willing to accept the possibility that that's on me and not on the comics!) But in any event, all this to say that nothing here about Loki taking "control of the narrative" is meant to emulate anything from Agent of Asgard (sorry!). It's really just a turning point for Loki - instead of resist-resist-resist he's taking charge of his story and telling it the way he wants to. And more to come on that in the next chapter, a moment I've been really looking forward to! "Ladymouse2," thanks for sharing your reasoning! It's not so much how big or small the change is, but whether the change would prevent you from eternally making the same change. Taking Baldur as an example, if Loki had succeeded and prevented Baldur's death (at least as he did it back in "Parasite"), then the Loki in that changed timeline, the younger Loki, now has a living younger brother, and when 1000 years pass he will not have that sudden need to go back and prevent Baldur's death a thousand years ago, because for him Baldur is alive and well. But 1000 years ago, the younger Loki is plotting to...do something...and now there's no older Loki going back to prevent it. You wind up with alternating timelines, one in which Baldur lives and Loki then does not later go back to prevent his earlier death, and one in which Baldur dies and Loki later does go back to prevent that death. The theory says that kind of inconsistency of reality is not permitted. Does that make sense? It took me a long time and lot of reading and examples to feel sure of what would work and what wouldn't, and how to write it to be certain that everything fit the theory. But feel free to slap me like Loki wanted to do to Jane (not literally - in either case!). As for the trip to kill Thor...well, there's a wee clue or two in that chapter (122 "Resolve" / 123 "Conviction") about how the self-consistency theory came into play. But Loki's actions were indeed per his choice there. As for "some more secrets yet"...wellllll...yes. :-) 89 "Parasite" remains one of my favorite chapters. Time travel bits aren't the only thing that's been "seeded" into this story. Guest (July 24) - hee hee, thanks, glad you enjoyed the toilet seat bit. Honestly I can't remember now if I saw a toilet seat in a pic from the real South Pole or not, but I'll tell you when I was first looking at pictures of the Dark Sector Lab wayyyyyy back when what struck me the most was all the JUNK laying around everywhere, I even asked one of the Polies about it ("is it always like that?"). It makes my place look orderly, ha. And to everyone, thanks for commenting!

Previews for Ch. 153: Jane has some things to say, Frigga has some things to say, Loki's in a tough spot (what's new?), Thor's in a tough spot, Odin really has some thinking to do. Maybe Loki can help with that.

Excerpt:

Frigga smiled. If Loki wasn't ready to forgive, or even talk about forgiveness or his own feelings, she wasn't going to push him. "Jane has been a good friend to you, hasn't she?"

Loki gave a little huff. "Our interests intersected."

"You said she wouldn't say anything, but she did."

Loki shifted abruptly from distant, avoiding engagement, to giving his mother his full attention. "What do you mean?"