Long one, folks.
Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Two – Cracks
Thor had not really known what to expect, but Jotunheim, what little he could see of it, did not look so different from the last time he'd been here. They were further away from the palace than then, and no ruins were visible, only a few piles of ice here and there that may or may not have once been part of a structure. It was dark, desolate, and devoid of any obvious signs of life.
Loki took a step forward then, and Thor heard cracking ice. Loki started tipping forward as the slab of ice they'd been on tilted downward with his step and slush rose up over the edge of the ice. Thor stepped forward and grabbed Loki around the chest with his left arm while with his right he spun Mjolnir, quickly lifting them both up and away from the immediate area. The bifrost, he knew exerted a certain amount of force on surfaces; he wasn't sure about the Tesseract but he hoped that the unstable ice was limited to the immediate area of their arrival.
Loki wrenched himself away as soon as he was on supposedly solid ground again. He pressed his lips together though and said nothing; a sudden tumble into icy slush wouldn't endanger his life, but it wouldn't exactly improve his miserable day, either.
"Do you think it's all like that?" Thor asked, taking a careful step forward. They'd seen cracking ice on Jotunheim before, but not slushy ice. That was different.
"How should I know?"
"We should be careful," Thor said, three steps forward now with no further sign of instability beneath his feet.
Loki cast his gaze skyward for a moment. Whatever would we do without your tactical brilliance? he thought. He looked to Thor then, moving on in the direction Heimdall had them facing, as they'd been instructed, and started off after him. "At this pace it will take us at least two hours, perhaps even three."
"Unless we're spotted earlier. They blend in well to their surroundings."
"Like animals," Loki muttered.
Thor sucked in a breath and held it for a moment. It wasn't like him to ponder and weigh every word before it came out of his mouth, and too much of that would be paralyzing – he'd had some experience with that in his time as king – but he was trying to do a little more weighing than he used to. It seemed, though, that it didn't matter what he said; Loki was predetermined to find something offensive or insulting in it. There wasn't much he could do about that short of never speaking to Loki again. "I would have said that, too, once," Thor admitted, still facing forward. "Purely out of hatred for them."
"It doesn't require hatred. The ability to blend into the surroundings is a characteristic of animals, and not of people."
"Not only animals. The stealth Einherjar have an uncanny ability to sink into the shadows."
"They train extensively for that. It isn't their nature."
"Do you think that's why they wear so little?"
Loki glanced Thor's way in confusion.
"Not the Einherjar. The Frost Giants. The Jotuns," Thor added. "Frost Giant" was not an insulting term, as far as he knew, but "Jotun," he thought, might be more polite; in all of the formal documentation he recalled seeing, they were referred to as "Jotuns," while in normal spoken parlance they were most commonly called "Frost Giant."
"To blend in? I don't know," Loki said distractedly, for the unnecessary conversation, such as it was, had begun to bore him.
"Imagine if they all wore bright red instead, or gold polished to a shine, instead of that tiny bit of cloth around their waist."
The image evoked a bit of a laugh in Loki, despite the circumstances – Frost Giants in shining red and gold, perhaps even something like Tony Stark's metal suit, paired with a flowing red cape like the one draped over Thor's back. Another laugh came when he recalled how Jane had recast his own description of them to her.
"What?" Thor asked, looking over at Loki and the unexpected smile on his lips.
"Nothing."
"Loki…we have a long walk ahead of us. Tell me."
"I told Jane about them," Loki said, fairly certain he would regret mentioning her, but not particularly caring at the moment. "When she later repeated her version of what I'd said, she called them 'scantily-clad.' And I said she made them sound like tavern wenches."
Thor smiled. He could picture Jane saying that. And the Frost Giants as tavern wenches… Before he knew it he had an arm wrapped around his middle and was practically doubled over in laughter, stumbling forward with less attention paid to his steps.
Regretting it already, Loki thought. "We arrived so far away from them to remain undetected, you know. To maintain control over the circumstances of our appearance."
"Yes," Thor said over laughter he tried to stifle but didn't manage it entirely, "but I was just thinking, they would make excellent tavern wenches. Your tankard of ale would always be brought to you perfectly chilled!"
Loki shook his head. Some part of Thor – a not insignificant part – had never left his youth behind, and probably never would.
"I wonder what their women look like," Thor asked more quietly, a smile still on his lips but the laughter now under control.
"You mean you wonder if they wear as little as the men?"
Scandalous images came to mind, and Thor nodded. Scandalous comments were on the tip of his tongue, but he glanced to Loki and decided not to make them. He saw nothing hateful in a jest about the likely size of a female giant's breasts, but Loki wasn't laughing, and he had to admit that he was probably not the best judge of what was and was not appropriate to say about Frost Giants. Perhaps best to say no more, he told himself. He thought next to ask something about Jane, since Loki had brought her up, and Thor had many remaining questions – and concerns. Not the best time for that either, then, probably. Then there was Baldur, and what Jane had insisted he raise with Loki; it was definitely not a good time for that.
"The air feels heavy. I wonder if a storm is coming. And it doesn't seem as cold here as before, don't you think?" Thor finally asked, figuring weather was probably safe.
"Certainly not after the South Pole," Loki said, giving Thor's words little thought and keeping his focus on the ice underneath his feet, particularly since Thor didn't seem to be doing so anymore.
"I still don't know how the mortals manage there. Is it that cold year-round?"
"A little warmer when the sun is above the horizon. Still very cold."
"I would like to see that, the sun in that place. It must be beautiful."
Loki didn't remember it being so beautiful, but then his attitude had been somewhat different at the time. Regardless, Thor hadn't asked a question, so Loki felt no need to respond.
"What did you think of Midgard, now that you've experienced it…in a different way than before?"
"What do I get if I pass the test?" Loki asked dryly.
"No test. No prize. I'm just curious. Jane said you'd tried coffee. I liked it."
"I wouldn't recommend going to the South Pole for the cuisine," Loki said, even though by the time he left he'd come to somewhat appreciate the food, given what they had available to work with.
"Did you ride in any of their vehicles?"
"How do you think I got to the South Pole?"
"I know you used airships to get there. I meant the land vehicles."
"Yes."
"Was Jane driving?" Thor asked with a chuckle.
"We need to check the wind direction," Loki said, coming to a sudden halt. This had gone on long enough. Two hours of it would be unbearable.
"I don't feel any wind."
"I know. Close your eyes and turn in a slow circle. There must be some air movement." Loki closed his eyes, but his attention was on Thor and not the wind. When he heard the slight shuffle of feet that told him Thor was indeed checking the wind, Loki peered under his eyelashes until Thor's back was to him. He braced himself instinctively for pain, remembering only after he'd made himself invisible and masked his sound that his foot was healed and Curse Number Two was gone. He double-checked the magic in place and found no disturbance or weakness in it, then took a careful step to the side, away from Thor; Thor continued his circle. He held still after that; he could hide his own sound and that of the surface right under his feet, but sometimes the ice shifted a bit under their weight and made noise some distance away. He cast an illusion of himself about twenty feet away, to his left, in the wrong direction.
"Here, Loki, but very faint. This direction. Did you find the same?" Thor asked, remaining still so as to keep track of the proper direction, not of the wind but of the Jotun palace; he knew exactly how much he'd turned.
Loki didn't answer. As soon as Thor moved, he would move, so that any creaking of the ice would be timed to Thor's steps. It wouldn't take Thor long to figure out that he was talking to a mere illusion, but the misdirect would buy him needed time and space. Once they were sufficiently separated, Heimdall would return Thor to Asgard, and Loki could continue on alone. He hoped that Thor being taken would not be the same as Thor leaving, if indeed that was what would trigger whatever Odin had done back at the South Pole, and he hoped that mere separation itself wouldn't trigger it, either. He'd gone deep into Frigga's chambers, relatively far from Thor, with no ill effects, so he didn't think that was it.
"Loki? This direction?" Loki wasn't answering, so Thor kept his feet in place and twisted around to check. "We're changing directions?" he asked, but then narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Loki did not look right. He looked a little translucent. "You are not Loki," he said in a low voice that rumbled with the first rush of anger. "What are you up to, Brother?" He forgot about identifying wind direction, forgot about their direction of travel and turned fully.
Loki watched as Thor stared at what he seemed to have recognized as an illusion, and wondered just how he'd picked up such a skill. But then Thor turned further and looked right at him. Loki ran one hand lightly over the other. He knew he was invisible. It was coincidence. Thor was taking stock of his surroundings, and he'd happened to look in just the right direction.
"Why the illusion?" Thor asked, seeing no reason for it. There was no one else around to fool – he quickly scanned around them in the distance to confirm it – and Thor himself was not fooled.
Thor's gaze wandered, but settled right back in Loki's direction. He thought he must be causing some small noise in the ice underneath him, or leaving some imperfection in his invisibility, though he could detect neither. Because now Thor was walking straight toward him, and that could not be coincidence.
"Why do you not answer? What is going on, Loki?" Loki's eyes had slightly widened, and he looked almost as though he were some kind of prey that instinctively froze when cornered, hoping the predator's vision was poor and could only detect motion. But Thor was not predator and Loki was not prey. "Are you all right?" he asked, increasingly worried that something was wrong with his brother. Standing right in front of him now, he reached out to wrap a hand lightly around the back of Loki's neck, but at that moment Loki snapped out of whatever stupor he'd been in and jerked away.
"How can you see me?" Loki demanded.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what I said. How can you see me? I am invisible."
"Obviously you aren't."
"I am."
"You aren't."
"We aren't doing this. You shouldn't be able to hear me, either." Loki quickly removed and then replaced the maskings. "Can you hear me now?"
"Yes. Loki, what are you doing? You're trying to hide from me?"
"Something is going wrong," Loki said, angrily removing and replacing the magic again. "You shouldn't be able to-" Oh. Oh no.
"We are not here thirty minutes and you're trying to trick me? To leave me behind?" Thor said, advancing on Loki, temper again rising.
"What do you see when you look at that illusion?" Loki asked, gesturing toward his duplicate.
"You will not distract me. What are you planning?"
"I'm not trying to distract you. I'm trying to figure out what's gone wrong. Tell me what you see," he repeated, pointing again.
Thor gave a huff and saw his breath in the low light. Loki was trying to distract him, but fighting a determined Loki any way other than physically was useless. "It's a poor one. It's not quite solid," he said, jaw still set in anger. "And it seems to be…moving," he added, unable to describe exactly what he was seeing, the tiny rapid movements all over the duplicate's form, while the duplicate itself stood unmoving.
"And this one?" he asked, creating a duplicate Thor next to the duplicate Loki.
"Much better. It looks as it should."
Loki nodded. And he knew from Thor's earlier reactions that the ones he'd made for Nadrith had been without defect. It was only Thor who saw problems with an illusion, and it was only an illusion of Loki that he saw problems with. And although he'd had no one else to compare with, Loki now felt confident that only Thor would be able to see and hear him right now…and only Thor would have heard the glass shattering and been able to enter his bedchambers; neither the seal nor the sound blanket had been faulty.
"Loki…" Thor's shoulders slumped; the anger had dissipated. Loki was exhausting. "Just be honest with me. Your efforts to deceive me and ensure that we're separated and Heimdall takes me back to Asgard have failed. We are on an enemy realm. You owe me honesty."
Loki glowered at Thor for a moment, but merely on principle. He was truly stuck with Thor now, so while he didn't particularly feel like he owed Thor anything at all, in this one instance Thor probably would need to know the truth. That didn't mean he needed to make it easy. "You could not cease your inane comments, as though we are on some adventure from our youths, and I decided I could not bear your presence any longer."
"And you cannot cease insulting my intelligence. I know what we need to discuss, but you refuse to discuss it. Do you really expect us to walk for miles in silence?"
"When those miles are on Jotunheim, a realm we're at war with…yes."
"Just tell me what's going on, Loki. Tell me what is going wrong with your magic, and what you planned to do once you left me behind."
"Remember that little mystery moment with Gungnir? Odin said I wasn't bound to you. And you aren't bound to me, either. Instead, you were somehow brought inside my use of magic. It seems I cannot hide myself from you, nor can I fool you with an illusion of myself. Odin still doesn't trust me with magic."
"I can't imagine why," Thor grumbled.
"And I doubt…well, it's worth a try. Would you perhaps consider returning to Asgard right now and allowing me to continue on my own?"
Thor raised an eyebrow and let his expression convey the likelihood of that happening.
"As I said, it was worth a try."
"Why do you wish so badly to do this alone? To do…whatever it is you…" Thor searched Loki's face carefully, a new possibility having occurred to him, but Loki's face of course revealed nothing that Loki didn't want it to. "You aren't planning something foolish, are you? You aren't planning to give yourself to them." It came out as a statement rather than a question, because if Loki did intend it, then Thor would be ensuring it didn't happen.
Loki stared at Thor as though he had sprouted those two heads Jane had brought up. Words failed him.
"I will not let you sacrifice your-"
"I would let Asgard burn first."
"I see," Thor said, swallowing heavily. "Do you think he would do the same for you?" he remembered his father asking when he told him he would give himself to Jotunheim in Loki's place if there was no other way to save Asgard. Thor had known that Loki would not, and he didn't want Loki to surrender himself anyway, but that didn't mean that hearing Loki say essentially that, and with such vehemence, did not hurt. It hurt both personally, and with regard to the number of oaths Loki had made on his way to his coming of age and his station as an honorable prince of Asgard that he'd now essentially denied.
"Allow me to disabuse you of such notions. I have no intention of sacrificing myself for anything." Loki put his hands together and pulled them apart, bathing his hands in blue light from the artifact he drew out between them. "However, I do intend to give the Ice Casket back to the Frost Giants."
/
/
"Frigga!"
"In here," Asgard's queen called from a small office a short ways down a corridor off of the throne room.
Odin located the correct space and hurried inside, closing the door behind him. "Did you know he was stealing the Ice Casket?"
Frigga looked up from the document she'd been reading. "Loki?"
"Who else? He was with Thor, but an illusion of the Casket was left behind, and that can only have been for Thor's benefit. Any guard who saw it missing would have simply assumed Thor took it."
"No. He told me he and Thor were going to Jotunheim. He didn't tell me his plans beyond that and I didn't ask."
Odin leaned against the wall and sighed.
Frigga smiled. "You'll bring the palace down like that. Sit."
"What are you working on?" he asked, stepping further into the office and sinking into a brown leather armchair. "I thought you'd be asleep."
"I was, or nearly so. Loki came by. That's when he said he was going to Jotunheim. And he asked me to gather and organize everything we have against Gullveig." She briefly explained what Loki had told her of Nadrith's agreement to withdraw, and the two conditions he'd placed on it.
Odin was impressed. He himself had spoken with Nadrith, twice, before the war broke out, and had made no headway in dissuading him from his path. "You know what he's doing now."
"Convincing the Jotuns to withdraw by returning the Ice Casket to them?" Frigga asked. It was the only thing she could think of. Then another came to mind. "He wouldn't attack Jotunheim to try to force them to withdraw?"
"Loki detests Jotunheim but he's smarter than that. No, he took the Casket and hid that fact from Thor."
"He thought Thor would try to stop him from returning it?"
"I certainly hope he would. Frigga…with the Ice Casket they will be able to attack Midgard again. They will be able to attack Asgard itself. We would not be able to defend against such an onslaught in addition to the other realms' attacks, and the most we could do for Midgard would be to wish them luck."
"They've been weakened, too. Perhaps even more so than us. They may not be capable of launching a serious attack."
"Would you have us take that risk?"
Frigga considered it. It didn't take long. She knew the numbers, the dead and the severely injured, the lost towers, the increasing gaps in the shield. "No."
"I could have Heimdall bring them back…but I must hope that Loki has some further plan. Perhaps it's the only way…and it's the least of the three sacrifices they demanded of us. Perhaps I would make the same decision, given time to consider it. I wonder…he shouldn't have been able to remove the Casket in the first place." He gave a sharp shake of his head. It was out of his hands now. "He wanted latitude, and I will continue to grant it to him. What real choice do we have?"
She thought back over Loki's visit. She'd been pleased to see him, to know that he had come to her instead of struggling alone with his burdens. Now she wondered if she'd missed something in that visit. "Odin…we know they want the Ice Casket. They've always wanted it back. But now Loki himself is among their demands. You don't think he means to…"
"No. No, I don't, Frigg. He's doing this for his freedom. Allowing himself to be made a prisoner of Jotunheim rather defeats the purpose."
"I think he's doing it for more than just his freedom. Loki may be angry…Loki is angry, but it's them he wanted to destroy, not us."
"I suspect that who Loki might like to destroy on any given day has been more complex than simply us versus them. But your point is well taken," Odin said, interrupting Frigga. "His motivations are likely more complex as well."
They sat in silence for a moment, each in their own thoughts, before Frigga spoke again. "I showed him the cloth you found him in. He noticed the color."
"You told him about that?" Odin asked, surprised. He knew Frigga had kept it, but he'd forgotten about it long ago.
"I could hardly not tell him. I wasn't going to lie about it, once he noticed it. Not anymore."
Odin put a hand up as though to ward off the testiness he saw in her expression. "That's your prerogative. Your timing might leave something to be desired."
"My timing? Odin…he was on his way to Jotunheim. How can he expect to convince anyone on Jotunheim of anything if he sees them as closer to animals than to people? He still speaks of them as monsters unworthy even of life. But one of them cared. I know it. They left him to die, yes, but one of them took the time to wrap him. That cloth wasn't threadbare, it wasn't full of holes, it wasn't dirty. If they saw him as nothing more than unwanted refuse, why bother sparing the time and the resources to do that, and in the middle of a protracted war they must have known by then that they were losing?"
"I understand what you're saying, but at day's end, they did still leave him to die. How much comfort can there be for Loki in knowing that they wrapped him in a torn piece of cloth, before doing so? And I doubt he'll be terribly fond of green, now, either."
"It's the story of his very existence. He deserves to know."
"Yes, he deserves to know," Odin agreed, though he did not agree that Loki needed to know that bit of it at that particular moment. He didn't blame Frigga for it, though; his own handling of Loki had turned out to be off target, so he was perhaps not the best judge. "What was he really doing on Asgard when he journeyed to when he first became ours?" he asked, mostly to change the topic but also because he had not been satisfied with Loki's answer and he did want to know the truth. When he saw Frigga swallow and look away, he sat up straighter and gave the matter his full attention. "Frigga? Did he tell you?"
"Not exactly," she answered with a frown.
"But he did tell you something."
Frigga hesitated, her desire not to lie to or otherwise deceive her husband warring with her promise to Loki. "Yes," she finally said. "But he asked me not to speak of it for a time. And I ask you not to press me on that."
Odin took a slow deep breath. If Loki had asked Frigga not to speak of it – and not to speak of it specifically to him, he assumed – then there was more significance to that journey than he'd thought, and far more than Loki had confessed to. "Loki and Thor are alone right now, on an enemy realm, without a single friend or ally. I know that Loki still cares for Thor, but we also both know that even a brother's love is no guarantee against harm. Frigga, if Loki went to the past to harm Thor, I need to know that."
"He didn't, and I ask you to leave it at that."
Odin hesitated, but in the end acquiesced. Loki had sought to change something significant, but, Odin supposed, he had again failed, and if Frigga believed he did not now need to know what it was, then he would take her word for it. "I should return," he said, standing.
Frigga watched his movements with a frown; already he rose more wearily. Not even with Gungnir's power strengthening him could he keep up with the constant demands he was placing on himself. "Tell me something first," she said, hoping selfishly to keep him with her a few more moments. "Why didn't you believe me, all those years ago? When I told you about seeing the woman, seeing Jane, and when physical evidence was left behind?"
Odin chuckled. "That was a long time ago. And you've never really stopped being angry with me about it, have you?"
"I told you I saw her, I told you I spoke to her and she to me. But you thought I'd imagined it all, and you know I'm not prone to such flights of fancy."
"I didn't think you'd imagined it," he said, taking a seat again. "I thought you'd dreamed it. You were taking care of two babies. You were up all hours feeding and changing them, and you would hardly let me help if I asked. Thor cried all the time, and-"
"Thor didn't cry all the time."
"He cried very often," Odin insisted. "And Loki never cried so you were always fretting over him, trying to figure out when he needed to be fed, even what he needed to be fed. Fretting over Loki, and chasing after Thor. You were transitioning out of ruling, your husband had just returned from war with a baby and without an eye and you weren't used to his snoring anymore. The lack of sleep was wearing on you, and there were so many sudden changes…no one ever saw this woman but you, and the knife appeared to have come from an Einherjar…I believed that you had woken from a vivid dream and in your exhaustion believed the dream to be true. You said the woman told you that Loki needed love…a logical thing for you to dream about when you had a newly adopted son who'd been abandoned by his first family. An investigation revealed no intruders in the palace. I'm sorry I didn't believe it was real, but I hope you can understand why I didn't."
Frigga gave Odin a wan smile. "I doubted it at times myself, so I can't be too angry. Still, you could have done a better job of pretending to believe."
"I am not much of a pretender."
"And usually, I'm grateful," she said, smile growing a bit. Odin may have held a few things back from her over the years, but she wasn't sure he'd be capable of lying to her or even falsely patronizing her if he tried. He had tried patronizing her at that time, and she had excoriated him for what had felt like condescension; he'd gotten the message and never done it since. "I still can't believe that was Jane, in the time of her ancestors' ancestors. She's a remarkable woman, don't you think?"
"I haven't met enough Midgardians to compare."
"Odin," Frigga said, voice and face full of reproach. "She has befriended both ofour sons, when both of them dearly needed a friend. And she risked her life to save Loki's."
"I meant no insult. I told her myself that she has my gratitude for what she did for Loki."
"She is courageous and strong, and quite lovely. And just as brilliant as Thor told us, given what she accomplished even without much knowledge of Yggdrasil."
"I've no desire to discuss the strength and loveliness of mortal women, Frigga," Odin said, standing again.
"I think we're going to have to discuss this particular mortal woman, whether you desire it or not. You remember how often Thor spoke of her when he returned from his banishment. He would never have abandoned her had the bifrost not been lost, and Loki tried to make light of it but you cannot have missed how close he and Jane have grown, too. She's very likely to remain a part of their lives."
"I'm needed outside the wall."
"You can't avoid this forever."
"I can avoid it for now. I wish you well in your task. Don't forget the record of what Gullveig said before the four hundred warriors we released early on. He admitted he wanted to kill civilians in the throne room explosion and that he'd sent warriors in the early battles knowing they would be defeated, and he was given an opportunity to deny targeting our food supply and did not take it. It should hold extra weight because some of Gullveig's own warriors were witness; they can attest that it's accurate."
"I have it. And I wish you well in yours."
"Let us both wish Loki well in his." Odin inclined his head to Frigga and left.
Frigga watched him leave for battle, as she had so many times before, enough times that while she worried for him she did not dwell on her fears. She feared more for Loki now, in physical danger while still emotionally fragile. She was already doing all she could for him, though, and could only hope that Odin was wrong about her timing in showing Loki that bit of green cloth. She took a moment then to think about Jane and wonder how she was coping, surrounded with people who may be holding a grudge against her. Jane, she thought, would be all right; none of the mortals had shown any sign that they might go so far as to seek to harm her for her actions, and Jane had all the emotional strength and stability that Loki did not. And once this war was over – she chose for the moment to let herself believe that Loki would in fact win it for Asgard, and quickly – with travel between the Asgard and Midgard made possible if not effortless by the Tesseract, Frigga was confident she would be seeing Jane again.
/
/
By the time Thor found his voice – and before he could think to find his hands and grab – Loki had vanished the Ice Casket again. "Loki…you cannot do this. I cannot believe you lied to-" He saw Loki arching an eyebrow at him. "It's an expression. I can absolutely believe you lied to me. But I mean it, Loki, you cannot just give them the Casket. Their world is ruined. What better way to find better conditions than to create them out of Midgardian cities and fields? Who will stop them? Because it won't be us. You know the size of the armies sent to Midgard during the Ice War, the massive battles fought there. We could not field such an army now, not even a smaller one." Thor grit his teeth in angry frustration. He'd had a similar conversation with his father, discussing Asgard's proposals for concessions in case surrender was unavoidable, with Odin making the arguments Thor was now making. But those proposals included plans for limiting the use of the Casket through a system of joint custody, not simply handing it over and waving a friendly farewell.
"They won't attack Midgard," Loki stated, calm in the face of Thor's storm.
"You can't know that. Once it's in their hands, they can do with it what they like. You continue to confound me. You lived among the Midgardians. I thought you no longer felt as you once did about them. You helped save their lives. I thought that you were friendly with some of them. I know Jane believes you to be her friend. Was that a lie, too? Would you endanger them? Would you endanger Jane?"
"I would not intentionally endanger her, or any of them," he said, expression darkening as Thor dragged Jane into this, accusing him of enabling the Frost Giants to rampage through and plunder her world, to do her harm.
"How can I believe you?" Thor asked, taking a step closer and drawing himself up tall to take every advantage of the two inches he had on Loki. "You have done so before," he said, anger that had never been entirely forgotten quickly rising from simmer to boil. "You threatened her, when we were on Asgard, you spoke of her with such…such hatred in your voice. You taunted me when you were being sent away, you said you wanted to go to Norway, you knew SHIELD sent her there. And the first thing you did when you got to Midgard was to track her down like prey. What were you going to do to her, Loki? What were you going to do?!" he ground out.
"Thor," Loki said, a single, simple syllable to get him started while he struggled to control the volatile mix of emotions that threatened to explode forth. He hated Thor for his low opinion of him, and he hated Thor because he was right, about all of it. And just as Jane said – he remembered her saying it as she stared into Frost-Giant-red eyes, though he hadn't given it much credence at the time – he hated himself even more. But things had changed. And he had no time for burying himself or even Thor with hatred right now. Just as he'd told Jane in response, he did hate the Frost Giants most of all; they were the enduring common enemy. "I spent a great deal of time, relatively speaking, selecting my attire and getting everything perfectly in place. Mangling it will not get you your answers."
Thor looked down at his fist buried in the lapel of Loki's leather surcoat. He hadn't even realized he'd grabbed it. He released it with a shove, making Loki lurch backward a step. "I want the truth, Loki. I need the truth."
"About Jane, or about the Ice Casket? Or had you forgotten all about the Ice Casket already? All right, Thor," Loki said, putting a hand up to Thor's chest, which had already begun puffing up again. With his other hand he smoothed down his lapel as best he could. "Yes, I threatened her on Asgard. Though to be fair, I would have threatened anyone I thought I needed to, to give you the little push you needed to leave behind your platitudes and pleas and show me how you really felt. It still doesn't take much, does it? Wait, I'm not finished," he said, stiffening his arm against Thor's clear desire to charge him again, not that it would do much good if Thor got more serious about it. "Yes, I hated her. Though again, to be fair, there was probably no one on any of the Nine Realms that I didn't hate at the time. It's true that I may have hated her a tiny bit more than most. Yes, I taunted you, I can't help myself, it never ceases to entertain. And yes, I tracked her down…like prey," he conceded, though those words left a sour taste in his mouth and sent a sudden shiver up his side as he recalled those few days when he'd watched and plotted and prepared as though Jane were precisely that, when he'd forced himself to bury whatever remaining or reemerging flecks of decency were in him to commit himself to injuring Jane to get to Thor, all while Jane was secretly plotting and preparing a surprise birthday party for him. That, he would never confess to. "I didn't know her then. She wasn't a person to me. She wasn't even a she. She was an it. A thing. A symbol. A means to an end. Now…yes, I would call her friend," Loki said for his final confession. There was no more fear of Jane being persecuted for his use of time travel, and so Loki spoke the words in stubborn defiance, as though Thor might try to take this from him, as though daring him to try. "And I will not knowingly do anything to endanger her. I swear it."
It took a full minute for everything Loki said to sink in, and nearly that long again for Thor to calm. "If you meant to inflict pain on me, Brother," he said quietly, the last of his rage mingling with a resurgence of the fear he'd felt for Jane and bringing an odd quiver to his voice. "You could not have found a better way to do it. I…I hated you, for a time, when I learned you'd gone after her in Norway. Had you harmed her…"
Thor didn't finish, but Loki didn't need to hear the rest to know there would have been much less "Brother means Loki" and much more Mjolnir. The whole conversation, the implication that despite his claims to the contrary, Thor's concocted "brotherhood" came with conditions attached, flooded him with familiar bitterness. But then, for some reason, among a dozen random thoughts rising up for a second or two before sinking back into the background, he imagined that it was someone else who had threatened Jane. That thought failed to sink away. He imagined that this someone else, some declared enemy of his, threatened to find her when he was unable to reach her, unable to protect her from a foe whose physical strength would easily overwhelm her. Tracked her down like prey, crisscrossed her entire planet to get to her, wormed his way into her life under false pretenses, ready to use her to get to him…and had he then hurt her? Loki would gut him and compose songs to celebrate it. "But I didn't," Loki said as the silence dragged on. Not on purpose. "And I won't."
Thor nodded slowly, replaying the sound of those words in his mind, assuring himself that Loki had sworn, that Loki would not lie about this, not now. "I'm sorry for my temper. It's just…I care deeply for her, and I-"
"Yes," Loki said curtly, more curtly than he meant to. I understand, he thought. "It's obviously something that's been beating at your chest and now you've gotten it off. I suppose it was for the best."
"Yes," Thor said, nodding again, emotions still jumbled and unable to fully disentangle it all just yet. "How did you deceive her so thoroughly? I warned her that you were on Midgard. She…I had the impression that she would recognize you."
Loki took a deep breath. He didn't want to talk to Thor about this. He didn't particularly even want to think about it. But if he didn't assuage Thor's concerns now, they were only going to linger, and eventually grow again, and then they would be right back here again. Better to get it over with now. "She would have recognized me. She did recognize me. She was beginning to."
"But why did it take so long before she realized it was you? Jane is very observant."
"Because I obscured her memories."
"You…you what?" Thor asked, drawing back. "You tampered with her thoughts? Her mind? You can do that?"
Loki watched as Thor's face twisted in horror and disgust. Perhaps this exact moment wasn't the best time for this, he thought. "Yes."
"What else did you do? What else did you make her think?" Thor asked quietly, voice tense with renewed anger.
"Nothing," Loki said immediately. He knew where this was headed: right back to him having duped Jane into befriending him. Thor, he suspected, wouldn't believe that it was Jane who had first befriended him, while he tried his best to keep her at arm's length. "Nothing, Thor. I never did it again. I didn't want to do it then, but it was the only way. I saw the way she looked at me; she was remembering. And I needed her not to."
"You sound so cold when you say that," Thor said, scrutinizing Loki's face for signs of deception, not that he would be likely to spot them if they were there.
I am a Frost Giant after all, Loki thought. "If you tell me how you would prefer that I say it, I'll say it that way instead."
Loki, Thor thought, didn't have to tell him what he had. And if he'd admitted manipulating Jane's very thoughts once, then why would he deny having done it later? The easiest thing for Loki to have done would be to never confess at all. "The others? The mortals at the South Pole?"
"They never recognized me. Most of them were already there when I attacked Midgard; they have no means of viewing what happens elsewhere. And most of the images they captured of me were poor."
"But Jane did recognize you later. Why didn't you…change her thoughts again?" he asked with a shudder. The very idea of such a possibility, without even the scepter Loki had brought to Midgard, was horrific.
"I can't change thoughts. Only influence them a little. And it wouldn't have worked twice."
"Have you done it to me?" he asked, the possibility only now occurring to him. His recent decisions flashed through his mind and he tried to weigh them for anything abnormal.
"No," Loki said with an eyeroll. "Can we move on now? Perhaps you'd like to go back to what you were shouting about before you got off track and started shouting about something else?"
"The Ice Casket?" Thor asked, frowning at Loki's irreverence. And he hadn't been shouting. He didn't think he'd shouted. It might not have been uppermost on his mind for several minutes, but he hadn't entirely forgotten that they were on Jotunheim, only a few miles from a major battle site. "Loki…is that how you plan to make this work without endangering other realms? You will…influence their thoughts?" The idea still made him queasy, but used against their enemy in furtherance of a noble goal, he wondered if perhaps he could convince himself to accept it.
Loki bit back a sarcastic response. He'd broken Thor's trust once today already; losing it entirely wouldn't exactly help his cause. "No. I'm not going to be influencing anyone's thoughts, not now, not ever. You asked a question, I answered it, there is no need to discuss it further."
"But…why not?"
"Do you want me to? Exactly how far from the ideal of honor have you fallen, Odinson?"
"Don't call me that. Not like that. If it saves Asgard, if it stops the continual flow of blood…I will at least hear proposals. I will consider it."
Loki stared, barely able to believe this was Thor. He would consider trickery – genuine trickery, not little sleights of hand, certainly not diplomacy – instead of bashing skulls in? This was not how the Aesir were taught to win battles. This was not how Thor won battles. He had changed, and this change wasn't a result of three days on Midgard. This was a result of ruling over an Asgard that was losing a war. Loki wasn't sure if he thought it was an improvement or not; primarily it was simply strange.
"Well?" Thor prompted.
"No."
"I don't understand. Why not?"
"Because it was done to me," Loki answered sharply, spitting the words out before he could reconsider.
"It was done… What do you mean?"
"I meant exactly what I said," Loki said, releasing a sigh. "I will not do it, because it was done to me, and I didn't care for it. All right?"
"But who did-"
"Why don't you try thinking before you ask that question?"
"Thanos? Thanos…altered your thoughts? He made you-"
"He made me do nothing of consequence. Forget about it, Thor. You keep seeking some means of telling yourself that I didn't choose to attack Earth. I did. No one made me do it."
"You keep giving me reason to believe that your actions were not of your choosing."
"It was The Other, not Thanos. Thanos wouldn't bother dirtying his hands like that. And the most nefarious thing he made me do was drink a glass of water that I had refused to drink despite my thirst. Do you see how it works? A thought not fully formed can be obscured. An already existing thought can be amplified, or nudged. That is all. No convincing Jotunheim to suddenly swear fealty to Asgard and never use the Ice Casket in aggression. Now if you're ready to drop this, I'm ready to tell you about the Ice Casket."
It took another moment, for these few details were far more than Loki had ever before revealed about what he'd experienced after falling from the bifrost. He would have to think on them, and try to speak to Loki about it all again, at some later time. "Yes," he said.
Loki nodded crisply, relieved. "You're the only one who can see and hear me right now." He paused, and this he truly could not help: "If anyone were observing you, they'd think you quite mad." He made a quick gesture and the invisibility went away.
Thor glanced around in annoyance, seeing exactly what he expected to: nothing. He stepped closer as Loki gestured to him to do so. "Go ahead. I'm listening."
"I wasn't lying about the Casket. More…telling the truth creatively. There was an enchantment on it, as I told you. I studied it, and then I modified it, just a little, and made it go dormant. When I withdrew it here a few minutes ago, I reactivated it."
"You want to give it to them…and then snatch it away again? Have it revert back to the Weapons Vault? That would be bad faith on our part, Loki. It would demean us, and almost certainly reignite war between Jotunheim and Asgard."
"No, of course not. The magic doesn't work like that; it never did. The Ice Casket wasn't enchanted to return to the Weapons Vault so much as it was enchanted not to leave Asgard."
"What's the dif-" Thor began, cutting himself off when he thought he finally understood. "You have modified it so it that it cannot leave Jotunheim. And if it cannot leave Jotunheim…"
"Then the Frost Giants can't, either. The Ice Casket must accompany any who use it for travel."
"And if they cannot leave Jotunheim, then they cannot attack any other realm. Asgard is safe from them, as is Midgard."
"Exactly."
Thor sighed in relief. Loki's plan was not a tenth as terrible as it had first seemed. But it still wasn't perfect. "The Jotuns may not accept an altered Ice Casket. An Ice Casket with foreign magic worked into it and limiting its use. And if you try to give it to them without informing them of the restriction, they may again declare war when they try to use it for travel, even legitimate peaceful travel, and discover they cannot."
"I'm going to tell them. And they will have to accept it. It's the only way they will ever see their precious Ice Casket again. I'll make that clear to them. In any event, by all rights it should be mine, should it not? In which case I can do with it as I please." He paused for a moment to see if Thor protested, but he thought this argument might work since Thor seemed to have earlier gotten the insane idea that Loki might actually want to claim Laufey's throne and rule this realm himself. When Thor said nothing, he continued. "We'll make this bargain as quickly as possible, the better to be off this miserable realm all the sooner."
After a moment, Thor nodded, feeling somewhat chastened. Loki had a plan, and it wasn't a bad one. It was a clever one, actually. And it might satisfy the Frost Giants enough to convince them to withdraw from the alliance. It wasn't going to be that easy though, he thought as Loki prompted them to set off again and they did. They were still speaking of "the Frost Giants" as though there was one voice that unified them and spoke for them all, when there were in fact three warring factions and Loki's plan was to make this bargain with just two of them, shutting out the third. And these two were not just any two, but Loki's brothers by blood, who Loki did not want to associate himself with, Thor was certain. The image of the broken mirror behind Loki, the shards of glass all over the floor – it would stay with him always, it seemed – came back again. Loki had already known then, probably, that he would be going to Jotunheim and meeting Helblindi and Byleister. As they walked, in silence this time, Thor tried to imagine that he and not Loki had found out that he was not Odinson and not even Aesir, that he was the son of the Frost Giant king instead, that the face and hair and skin he'd always known as his were not true. Try as he might, the idea was so outlandish that he couldn't quite imagine it. When he'd been told about Loki, too, he'd thought it some poor attempt at an ill-timed jest. Yet it was true. A burden for Loki to bear that Thor could not even fathom. Loki had borne it all alone. He glanced to the brother walking in silence beside him, alternately scanning the horizon and watching for signs of trouble beneath their feet. Loki had borne it all alone. Thor had been banished, their father asleep, their mother preoccupied with their father, and Loki had no friends of the type that he would have trusted with this information. Loki had borne it all alone, and it had crushed him. Shattered him, like the glass in the mirror. The machinations Loki had undertaken, the cold cruelty he'd displayed after falling, it all went far beyond Loki's typical mischief. But since then, since his exile to Midgard…Loki might have threatened, insulted, lied, manipulated, connived, but he'd done no harm. He'd made friends. He'd helped the mortals; the woman in charge of the South Pole had even called Loki a hero. He was helping Asgard, even if for selfish reasons.
Then there was Jane; always there was Jane. She and the others Loki had lived among had perhaps truly helped him, perhaps along with the simple passage of time. Jane had urged him to let go of his anger toward Loki for seeking her out as he had. But Loki was right; he hadn't been able to let go of it without addressing it. Now he had…and he resolved to trust Loki in this. To let it go. For everything Loki had been through, and with his almost surprisingly direct renunciation of any intent to harm Jane when he'd been so resistant to renouncing anything else besides his own family, Thor thought Loki deserved that much. He glanced to Loki. Time to try again. "It's a good idea, Loki. The restriction on the Casket. It might work."
It has to work, Loki thought. He would make it work.
"You could have told me, when you took it."
"I heard an expression on Midgard: better to ask forgiveness than permission. Though I did not intend to ask for either."
"I wish to tell you that I understand how-"
"Thor, please do not start this again," Loki said, mentally reviewing how to seal Thor's lips should it come to that. He had already endured enough of this, had already answered enough questions, had perhaps exhausted his supply of honesty for the day, or perhaps the week. "You are-"
"Just stop, all right? Do not jest, do not insult, do not demean. I will not further aggravate you by dragging this out. I merely wish to say that I recognize…and appreciate that this is stressful and trying for you, and that I stand ready to assist you in any way that I can. You need only ask. And my earlier offer still stands – if you would rather not do it at all, I will do it instead. The plan is still yours, and if it works, the credit with it."
"How do you plan to hide the Casket until the perfect dramatic moment?"
Thor shrugged. "Under my cape?" he asked with a smile.
Loki shook his head. "I remind you again, your track record here isn't terribly impressive. They won't listen to you. I would rather you weren't here at all."
"And I remind you again, your track record here isn't any better. Loki, they know it was you who turned the bifrost against Jotunheim. Why do you think they'll be so much more willing to listen to you than they will to me? I am the king of Asgard. Who better to seal a bargain with?"
"I'm very good at convincing people of things, whether they like me or not, whether they trust me or not. You're used to everyone liking you and trusting you; you've never had to work at convincing anyone of anything. No, I don't want to be here. But I am here, and I'll do what I must. I don't need your assistance."
"Very well," Thor said, lingering for a moment on Loki's insinuation that Thor was not able to persuade as well as Loki because Loki was less liked and less trusted. Loki, he thought, was not disliked, though his penchant for mischief and trickery did make some wary around him, a reaction Thor thought reasonable. "One more thing and then I won't say another word, or I'll try not to, at least. You are perhaps not seeking forgiveness at all, but I forgive you for pursuing and deceiving Jane. And I'm glad that you now call her friend."
Loki fixed his eyes on the horizon and continued walking; Thor stuck to his word and mercifully said no more.
/
Super long one so "brief let me be." Thanks as always to everyone who took the time to drop in a note, and especially to guests who I couldn't say that to "in person." Quick response to a Q - "Renfri": They're using the Tesseract. Bit of a risk, exposing it, but they need the food.
Previews for Ch. 163: Jotunheim is, after all, home to Jotuns.
Excerpt:
Still, whether Thor really had changed in more than just his professed desire to kill all the Frost Giants, or whether he was simply doing an impressive job of restraining his more natural tendencies, what Loki really wanted was to have succeeded in removing Thor from this situation. This was going to be hard enough. He didn't need Thor as an audience. He was stuck with him, though, at least for now, so there was no point in dwelling on it. Eyes still fixed on the battle, he spoke, realizing as he did so that Thor had been remarkably patient in waiting for his response. "I'd hoped they would be at camp. A more controlled environment. If we walk out in the midst of all that even with hands raised, we're likely to be killed before I have a chance to speak."