.-.
Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Seventy – Confrontation
The anxiousness, the sense of being trapped – with Thor, on Asgard, in his own false skin – the near overwhelming need to escape that trap, all that had mostly passed, settling into something lurking beneath the surface, something bearable. Controllable. Loki supposed he owed that mostly to his mother, but he also owed it, oddly enough, to Maeva's braid, the braid he'd found unattractive until he grew to love it because he'd grown to love Maeva. It gave welcome proof to what Frigga had said, that abnormal Frost Giant instincts and proclivities weren't surreptitiously dictating his life choices.
Talking to Thor about something other than Jotunheim, Midgard, brothers, or mothers had been similarly – and similarly oddly – calming. And with Thor's acquiescence to Loki's wishes, he'd quickly left before Thor could return to those other topics, as he inevitably would have.
What Bragi had written wasn't bad. Loki was a little disappointed that it wasn't; his disinterest in claiming credit for anything before a random woman and child was genuine, but for the sake of the bargain he'd made with Odin, he would hoard up as much credit with him as he possibly could. While they would get their message out to as many people on as many realms as possible, Bragi understood that Vanaheim was the key audience, and tailored his words accordingly, just as Loki would have. But Bragi knew Vanaheim well, better even than Loki who had himself spent plenty of time there. Loki added in the news from Jotunheim and made a few other changes, and in very little time, with only minor disagreements, the text was finalized. Loki knew the facts, he knew manipulation, and he knew how Thor spoke, which words and phrases would fall most comfortably from his lips. It was easy. Of course, he thought, after that last visit to Jotunheim, probably nothing would ever seem hard again.
/
/
"We're ready."
Volstagg answered with such eagerness that Thor felt a flash of shame over his initial refusal to even consider moving up the mission. "You're certain?"
"Yes. We've practiced, we've planned for as many wrinkles as we can think of, we've met with Heimdall to learn Gullveig's routines. Just put us with Heimdall an hour before the earliest you want us to go so we have a good sense of where he is, what he's doing, who he's with, where he's going. We're ready," he repeated.
"Good," Thor said, Volstagg's confidence bolstering his own. "You'll need to make some adjustments to your planning, though," he said as the door to the office began to open. He knew only one person who would open that door without knocking. "Loki will be joining you."
Volstagg was already turning as Thor spoke, and watched as Loki sauntered inside and seated himself on Thor's desk as though it were his. This particular wrinkle they had definitely not planned for. Volstagg threw a wary glance to Thor. "Welcome back, Loki. It's good to see you."
"Ah, Volstagg," Loki said with a smile and overwrought nostalgia, "if I didn't know you so well I'd suspect you might not entirely mean that."
Volstagg took a moment to consider his words before he spoke; these were dangerous waters – Loki swam in them. "I do mean it. I'm glad to see you returned hale and hearty. Hale, at least," he said, going for an old line of jests that Loki merely smiled thinly – coldly – at.
"Oh, and I you, of course. It's been a while. I haven't seen you since…oh yes, that time you blatantly disregarded the orders of your king," he said, at the end dropping even the barest pretense of friendliness and letting his face reflect the full disregard in which he held Volstagg and the rest of Thor's merry band. Volstagg bristled and Loki's sneer of a smile grew.
"Now is not the time," Thor said, interrupting Volstagg. "Loki, I cannot speak to what happened then. But-"
"Can't or won't?" Loki asked. It was, after all, a simple scenario. He'd been king, seated on Asgard's throne with Gungnir in his hand, he'd given a clear order, and Thor's friends – the close circle that Loki had once called his friends, too, but had always been Thor's first and foremost – had deliberately disobeyed it because they didn't like that it was Loki who'd given it. Thor didn't need to have witnessed what happened to address it.
Thor sighed. Volstagg was inspecting his beard and Loki was waiting patiently for an answer. There was no way to answer that question, though, or to address what happened during his banishment, without falling down a rabbit hole of grievances and recriminations. "I wish only to make the point that Volstagg has been among your supporters here, Loki. You do have them. Volstagg more than once commented that we could have used your help. Jolgeir has consistently spoken out in your defense. Geirmund stood before the rest of the Assembly and reprimanded those who were jumping to conclusions about your involvement in the war."
"Why? I don't even know him," Loki said, noticing that it was not an interruption – Thor had given three names and stopped. Three names.
"Supplies Advisor. A new position. He's a few years younger than us, until recently he was just a clerk. There's no reason you would know him. But do you see? Even those who don't know you personally support you."
"Actually, I think those who don't know you personally might be more likely to support you," Sif said, striding into the office.
Loki shot her an acidic smile. "So good to see you, too, Lady Sif." The office – not the larger one that Odin used – began to feel crowded with the arrival of the other two-thirds of the Warriors Three behind Volstagg and Sif.
"Loki! We'd heard you were back," Fandral said boisterously. His good cheer was more complicated than that, really, but he saw no point in wallowing in any unpleasantness. Loki was back, and obviously welcomed by Thor, therefore best to welcome him back as well and accept this latest twist. It wasn't falsehood, it wasn't even reluctant; it was an instinctive choice to focus on the positive. A choice that became a little more difficult to stick to when Loki looked down at the hand Fandral had clapped on his shoulder as though it bore a contagious disease. His smile faded to something forced as he quickly removed his hand.
"Let's all agree then," Loki said when Fandral's hand was back at his own side and Hogun, unsurprisingly, gave no sign of offering his own words of welcome, or of anything else. "We're positively delighted to see one another again. We should celebrate, in fact. On Midgard they have reunion parties, where people make merry and reminisce on all the good times they've spent together. And I do believe we're approaching the two-year anniversary of the time you all committed treason and I sent the Destroyer to kill you for it. Thor, why don't you send for the mead? I understand there's no shortage of it at the moment."
"Enough, Loki," Thor said. Loki was already making him regret his decision to allow him to join the Warriors Three and Sif. "What good can come of these provocations? Not one of us here is without blame. Right now…each of us has a task before us."
"I understand that. And if we're to work together on Vanaheim, it does us no benefit to have lies between us. I do so detest lies, you know," Loki said with a smirk.
"No one is lying, Loki. Volstagg-"
"I can speak for myself, Thor. I do not lie when I say I'm glad you've returned, Loki. You have a way of looking at things differently than the rest of us, and especially in time of war we have need of those different voices. And I have never truly wished you ill."
"Nor I," Fandral said. "We've long fought well together. We shall do so again."
Volstagg glanced to Loki, glad to see his gaze was not returned. He was less convinced of that last point than Fandral, who no doubt believed it, or at least wanted to believe it. The last time they'd fought, Loki had indeed been trying to kill them by proxy through the Destroyer. Fighting well together required trust. And while Volstagg had spoken true when he said he was glad Loki was back and that he did not wish Loki ill…he also did not trust Loki now.
Loki turned to Sif, with a flicker of a look to Hogun, too. "What, no words of how you've never wished me ill, Sif?"
Sif looked him in the eye, unflinching. "You said you didn't want to have lies between us."
"Indeed," Loki said with a nod. His relationship with Sif had long been marked by an edge of unease, and in her particular expression of loyalty, she was unlikely to ever let go of his betrayal of Thor. "And you, Hogun?"
Hogun looked instead to Thor. "I am not certain this is wise." He hadn't heard any official announcement that Loki was going with them to Vanaheim, but Loki had made it clear that that was the new plan, decided without consulting them. "How can we know he won't betray us?"
"If I did," Loki put in before Thor could answer, "it would only be fair, wouldn't it?"
"Loki, for once in your life would you just stay silent?"
Loki laughed giddily. If he did keep this up, he probably could push Thor into physically gagging him, if he wanted – which he didn't, actually, yet he couldn't stop. Like Sif, Loki could not let go of a betrayal. "Don't forget, Father already has a custom-made gag ready and waiting to be fitted on his beloved son again." His eyebrows went up at a sudden memory, and Thor's predictable words of protest, weary like many of the things he said and did now, floated past him, ignored. "Brokk sewed your lips together to silence you." It was nonsense from Jane's book of Norse myth. But it did throw a different shade on Thor's friends. Yes, they'd distrusted him so much they'd defied his order and gone to Midgard to bring Thor back to Asgard, to an end they'd never had the chance to make manifest, but it had surely involved forcing Loki from the throne and replacing him with Thor – in short, mutiny. Brokk had delighted in his humiliation and offered his mind up to be tortured while his body slowly rotted back on Svartalfheim. He met the wary looks of each of the others in the office – Sif alone did not look wary, but rather haughty and determined – and considered the fact that there were enemies and then there were enemies.
And there was a point to all this, after all, even if Thor couldn't see it.
He stood from Thor's desk, saw out of the corner of his eye how Thor started to speak, probably fearing whatever Loki was about to say or do, but stopped short. Loki was surprised, but gave no indication that he'd noticed. "I meant what I said. I'll not stand here and make play that what happened did not. Nor will I act under a guise that we are friends. I'll not be fighting with you, not really. My role will be to secure Gullveig, to allow you to focus on defeating whatever guards are present and holding off any more who arrive before we return to Asgard. But how can you know that I won't betray you? I suppose one can never truly know such a thing. But know that Gullveig agreed to lead a war against Asgard that named me as a war prize, an object for bargain alongside the Ice Casket and the Tesseract. Hm. A compliment, I suppose, that I should be considered as valuable as the Tesseract, in particular, but it's difficult to see it that way when I suspect I would have been treated with considerably less reverence than either object. Know that I made my own bargain, my freedom in exchange for winning this war, and winning it quickly, however one can define 'winning' after so much loss. Know that my motivation to succeed is unshakable, and that it has nothing to do with my loyalty to any of you…or the lack thereof.
"Hogun," he continued, shifting gaze now settling. "I know that your answer will be both honest and blunt. Is the revised plan acceptable to you?"
Hogun did not answer immediately. The question was unexpected. He was more often the last to offer his opinion, when he felt the need to at all. It wasn't that he was reluctant to share it; he simply preferred to first hear and weigh the thoughts of his fellow warriors. And the question wasn't difficult. Loki had always been fond of tricks and deception, but he'd also long ago earned the trust of their cohort when fighting, reliably remaining conscious of his surroundings and lending a hand or more likely a well-aimed dagger when one of the others was overwhelmed or caught unawares and stared death in the face. The last time they'd fought on the same side, Loki had been the one to save Fandral's life when Thor was too caught up in his own personal quest for glory to even notice how close they'd come to becoming the Warriors Two. Hogun didn't trust that any of them could count on Loki in the same way now, but with their roles outlined as Loki had, that shouldn't be an issue. As usual, Hogun's answer was indeed honest and blunt…and brief. "Yes."
"Well then," Loki said, then took a deep breath and turned to the others as though the matter was settled. Because it was. Thor would have convinced them his own way, cajoling with his charm and force of personality, but just as on Jotunheim, they would have started thinking for themselves again once the task was actually underway. Or perhaps, with the title of king on his brow, Thor would have simply ordered them, which wouldn't have even temporarily convinced them. Loki had convinced them in a way they would not later turn from. "Thor, while it's encouraging to hear that among Asgard's masses I have the support of three, I don't need that kind of support. I would find it helpful if no one slipped a sword in my back while we're capturing Gullveig," he said, turning now to Sif. "There remains the issue of my ability to trust you."
She gritted her teeth. She agreed with Hogun, but that didn't mean she was happy about the situation. "Not in your back at least." The look Thor gave her prompted her to continue. "A jest, Loki."
Volstagg waved a hand in annoyance. "None of us would ever slip a sword in your back."
"Truly? Because my back is still smarting from the last time you did so."
"Oh, for the love of all things sacred, Loki, we thought you were trying to steal the throne," Fandral exclaimed, grimacing as soon as the words were out, words that had flashed through his head but that he hadn't meant to speak aloud.
"And you were mistaken. When I told you that I had no idea Thor would be banished, I was telling you the truth. And I had no idea that my mother would grant me the throne. But Thor was banished, and Mother did grant me the throne, and I stole nothing."
"This is different," Volstagg said. "We're all here, we all want the same thing. You have nothing to fear from us on this raid."
"Good," Loki said, satisfied. A few minutes later they left, Sif and the Warriors Three, with an agreement for Loki to join them, spend some time practicing as they adjusted their plans to include him, then meet Heimdall for the final phase of their preparation before departing for Vanaheim.
"Why did you have to keep provoking them? Why couldn't you just let it be? You will all kill each other if that's the best you can do," Thor bit out in frustration once they were alone again. "This must work, Loki. I understand these are not small matters, but they cannot get in the way of the goal."
"I'm well aware. What was said needed to be said. Things can go wrong in battle, as you well know. Better for it to be said here than there."
"It wasn't resolved."
"No. Do you think it ever will be? I think they should be in prison, and I'm sure they think I should be in prison. As you won't allow one and I won't allow the other…I believe we are at an impasse. We don't need much from each other, just to know that none of us will sabotage another."
Thor nodded, deciding there was no point commenting on what Loki had said about prison. He understood Loki's reasoning, even if he wasn't entirely sold on it. As difficult as it had been to stand around doing nothing but waiting while others went after Jormik, the second time, with Gullveig, would be a thousand times worse, now that he'd seen the varying degrees of animosity between his friends and his brother, and with the fate of Asgard hanging in the balance. Why does everything have to be so complicated now? he asked himself. It used to be so simple. He studied his brother, standing there looking reasonable yet so aloof, so distant. Emotion welled up in him, sudden and entirely unexpected. "I miss the way things used to be," he murmured through a tightened throat.
Loki took a moment, watching Thor, knowing what Thor wanted from him and knowing equally well that he couldn't provide it. There was a strange temptation to nevertheless say something that could be interpreted as mildly comforting, or at least noncommittal, perhaps a jest to make light of Thor's emotion without belittling it, but he didn't have such falsehoods in him at the moment. A cruel, cold-hearted insult, that he didn't quite have in him either. "I don't," he said in the end. And if Thor interpreted that as cruel and cold-hearted…well, Thor was never terribly good with nuance.
/
/
Thor watched Loki go, melancholy drifting over him and muffling the intensity of what he'd been feeling just a moment before. This war had tested his optimism. Loki had tested it before that. Even when stranded on Midgard, when seemingly all had been lost, it wasn't long before Erik had cheered him up and Jane had made him feel alive and he'd again felt hope. But ever since Loki's fall – starting with the literal one but far more so with the figurative one – he'd struggled with moments like this, a sense of resignation that he'd lost his brother and would never get him back, even though physically he was back now. Hope always – thus far – returned and buoyed him, but it was hard to remind himself of that when he sank into the valley.
He wished he could rejoin the battle. He wasn't even bothering to maintain a charade of remaining at Loki's side at all times anymore. But he had to stay near the palace now, for as soon as Gullveig was on Asgard – assuming the plan went well – he would need to be on hand to deliver the message to Vanaheim and the other realms. He thought he should update his father on their plans, and what Loki had accomplished on Jotunheim, but Odin was out fighting, and unless and until the other realms ended the war, that was where at least one of them should be.
So Thor slowly made his way out to find Heimdall, stopping in briefly to greet his mother, without mentioning either Loki or the bold move his friends were about to attempt without him.
Not so long ago – not so long ago at all – he'd thought it would fun to be king, that he would be able to do anything he wanted, that everything and everyone would be at his command. But what good was being king, when nothing that really mattered was under his control? He held his head high as he walked, and projected a confidence that had once required no conscious projection, for it had contained no artifice. All he had now was hope. Loki had given him that hope, really, certainly more than he'd had before. And if Loki's success on Jotunheim breathed new hope into the plan to convince the rest of the realms to withdraw, then surely some of that hope had to attach to Loki himself. Thor's strides grew longer as his confidence grew and the artifice shrank, lifting him further out of the valley with every step. The plan would work; it had to. And things with Loki, that would all work out, too, somehow. Because it also had to. Asgard might stagger but it would not fall, and neither would a thousand years of brotherhood and friendship.
/
/
It wasn't precisely true, what he'd said, Loki thought as he watched Thor's friends physically run through the attack-cordon-defend scenarios they'd planned and were now modifying to account for Loki being there and taking sole responsibility for both keeping Gullveig under physical control and ensuring he was safe from the clash of weapons around him. If he let himself sink backward in time, forget everything since that fateful journey to Jotunheim, he could look at the artificial one-sided battle around him and keenly feel Thor's absence – miss him, even, in a way. And there was something in that earlier conversation with Thor, recognizing a rare moment of weakness in him and talking him through it as Thor listened and took him seriously and not a single word was spoken of Jotunheim or Frost Giants or brotherhood or any of the other myriad things Thor was constantly trying to bring up…there was something in that that Loki missed as well. Those moments when things were shared between the two of them that wouldn't have been shared with anyone else, not even Thor's closest friends. Though that had probably changed now, anyway. Thor would have needed someone else to talk to, and to talk to him when he wasn't quite able – or willing – to verbalize what was bothering him. Volstagg, Loki thought based on what Thor had said, had perhaps taken on that role. Loki had stopped speaking truly openly with Thor long before Jotunheim, but for him Jane now filled that long-empty role, anyway. Or had. And would again, somehow, he hoped, but that was a problem to work out at another time.
But there was so much that Loki didn't miss. The constant struggle to prove himself to be just as good as, or even better than, his favored older brother. The constant failure. The constant reminders that he was second in more than just birth order. Being stuck in Thor's shadow, no matter how much of a fool Thor made of himself, no matter how many times Loki steered him clear of trouble despite Thor's best attempts at throwing himself into it head-first – or hammer-first. All of that could be summed as Thor's "the way things used to be." That, Loki didn't miss.
Not that his current status – prisoner cursed and exiled to Midgard only to gain a few days' reprieve while kept on a long leash – was an improvement, on the surface of it. But Thor could keep his "the way things used to be." Loki wasn't going back.
/
/
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," Wright said. "I'll talk it over with the principals at Chicago, but I think that's about all we can do here for now. What about you, need some help with your stuff?"
"I'd appreciate it," Jane said. "But tomorrow? I've got a couple of other things I need to take care of today."
"Works for me, as long as I don't get tied up with the ten-meter. Want to go in for lunch then?"
Jane nodded, and she and Wright started getting ready for the trek to the elevated station from the Dark Sector Lab. Gary and Tony had already declared it safe, so Jane had grabbed coffee and snacks from the Science Lab and gone out to the DSL to help Wright start the inspections of the instruments there. None of the winterover scientists – except for Jane herself – were the principal researchers for the projects they worked on here; a big part of their jobs was to manage the equipment over the long brutal winter. Wright, then, was well-suited to the type of work they had to do now at the DSL, and earlier for the type of work they'd done for SPRESSO underneath the ice. He would be a big help with all the devices on the roof that Jane needed to inspect and recalibrate, and Jane had found that away from Selby and Loki and the myriad tensions that had come between them all at various times – and absent Wright's recent concern that Lucas was using her for a punching bag, causing her minor concussion – working with Wright was actually a lot of fun. They joked around on their way back to the station, about the foibles of their college days mostly, where it turned out Wright, who in high school had been more of a jock than a science nerd, had joined a fraternity that got suspended for too many alcohol violations, which had been pretty funny until it became something of a wake-up call that changed his life along with his GPA. He didn't stop partying, but he did start studying. And, as he told her pointedly, entirely straight-faced before the laughter resumed, he stayed away from drama.
"Drama doesn't seem to want to stay away from me, though," Wright said.
"Yeah," Jane said with a nod and a guilty glance toward Wright. "Sorry about that."
"Stop apologizing. Not your fault. From what I understand, you were doing your darndest to keep the drama at bay."
Jane nodded. That was true. "Selby said the same thing. 'Stop apologizing.'"
"Yeah, well, Selby and I are pretty much like night and day, but at the same time…"
"You're kind of like brothers?" Jane filled in when Wright trailed off, recalling her thoughts as she'd talked with Selby.
Wright gave a surprised laugh. "I wouldn't say that. We're…I guess you could say we're on the same page about a few things. Look, Jane," he said, stopping her at the Destination Alpha stairs, "not everyone is going to be your friend."
"I know that," Jane said indignantly. She had never expected that, or needed it, whether here or anywhere else. But she'd also never so blatantly lied to such a large group of people, or any group of people really, not about something as significant and potentially dangerous as this.
"Let me finish. Not everyone's going to easily let go of what happened here, and the fact that you kept it from us while it was happening. But you did it for all the right reasons. It was a huge shock when we all first found out, and there was some anger and resentment. Most of us get it now, though, I think, especially after what Lucas…Loki…whatever, what he did for us when this building was on the brink of collapse. If somebody hasn't gotten it yet, then 'I'm sorry' number eight isn't going to change that. Give it some more time. And the rest of us that do get it will try to help where we can. If we didn't know it before the earthquakes we sure know it now – we're all in this together."
/
/
Wright went back to his room to stow his gear and change, since he wasn't going back out today, but Jane did intend to go back outside, so just shrugged out of Big Red and the smaller accessories and left them in the ECW storage area near the central Destination Zulu and headed on to the galley in her Carhartt overalls and blue plaid flannel.
The kitchen was back in full swing. Lunch was chicken Kiev or sweet potato-kidney bean Kiev. The latter was weird, though not too weird to pique her interest, but the chicken was fried to a perfect light golden crisp and Jane couldn't resist. She added green beans and a little of the rice with bits of chopped up vegetable, all while surreptitiously eyeing Perry and Mari – the first time she'd seen Mari since they'd returned to the station. Mari was cleaning up one of the prep areas and Perry was frying up more chicken rolls. We're all in this together, Jane thought, taking a deep breath. "The chicken looks great." Lame. So lame. But totally true.
Perry glanced over to Jane, then to Mari; his head had been over the frying pan, and Mari's back had been to her, so neither had noticed her standing there until she spoke. "Thanks," he said, still looking at Mari for a moment before turning back to Jane. "I can't seem to convince anybody that lightly breaded white sweet potato and kidney beans bursting with coriander and golden butter in the center is an excellent alternative." He wasn't exactly smiling when he said it, but at least he was talking to her, which was better than yesterday.
Jane did her best to smile without it looking forced. "Not when you put it right next to chicken that looks like that. Kidney beans don't compare."
"Hence more chicken," he said, momentarily lifting his spatula. "But guess what the leftovers fridge is going to be filled with." This time an actual smile, albeit a brief one, followed.
"I'll try it later, then."
"Putting those things in a microwave is a travesty. But oh well," Perry said with a shrug, before turning off the burner and scooping the freshly-fried chicken from the fryer.
"Hi, Mari," Jane said to the blond young woman who had said nothing but hadn't turned back around, either. Ronny, meanwhile, had joined her at the serving area and taken a piece of chicken, but stopped and stared the moment Jane said Mari's name.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence Mari spoke, but it wasn't to her. "Do you think that'll do it for the chicken?"
"Um, yeah," Perry answered. "Should be enough now."
Mari nodded and turned to go, back deeper into the kitchen.
"Mari…"Jane said, then realized she didn't have any words to follow that up with. Or maybe she'd just lost her nerve. Ronny was still blatantly watching, Perry was glancing between Jane and Mari…and Mari was watching Jane with a hint of anger. She could feel herself crumbling, apology bubbling up and pressing at her lips for release. But Selby and Wright, so different in so many ways, had both told her the same thing. And they were right. And throwing herself on others' mercy, ready to meekly accept her castigation – not just once but over and over and over – that just wasn't her. She couldn't make decisions for anyone else, but she could certainly make them for herself…she could be herself. "I've already told you I'm sorry about everything that happened, about Lucas being Loki and me keeping it secret, and I really am. I mean it. I hope that you'll be okay, that you can feel safe here again. I know it's not an easy thing to deal with, especially for you, because of what happened to your old office in New York and what your friends and coworkers went through. But you know what? It wasn't easy for me, either. And it was personal for me, too. Really personal. He didn't have any idea who you were, that your lives had ever indirectly intersected, but he knew exactly who I was and he followed me here, and I was scared to death when I figured it out. And at first, I was all alone with that, and that made it so much worse. In some ways it would've been easier to tell you, to tell all of you. I didn't keep it from you out of…selfishness or spite or…I don't know, like it was some giant joke or something, for the fun of it – I kept it from you because I was afraid of what might happen if I didn't. Loki was still so angry then, and he didn't care about any of you at all, and he would've done anything to protect himself. I kept his secret to protect myself, and to protect each and every one of you here, too. By the time he was…better, I guess, by the time his attitudes had changed enough that I knew he would never hurt any of you, months had passed, and I had found out about the war and all the realms that wanted to capture him and hand him over like some trophy, like a thing…it just seemed like it made more sense by then to leave things as they were, to let the season end and the station re-open and Loki slip out without anybody ever knowing. Without anybody panicking." Wright, she saw in her peripheral vision, had come in at some point and was standing next to Ronny now. "Without drama. About the cake…please remember that I didn't ask you to make him a birthday cake. You volunteered, and you were excited about it, and it's not like I could tell you not to. So in the end, Mari, I just want you to know that when I apologized I meant it. But at the same time, I won't keep apologizing. I can't." She took a moment to swallow, to gather up another little burst of courage, since the initial one was waning now; the rest needed to be said, too. "Not when I don't regret my decisions."
Jane could see Mari's chest moving – she must have been breathing hard – and waited as long as she could before it felt too weird to just stand there with no response. She picked up her tray and turned, to find everyone in the galley, some 35 or so people, staring. Great, Jane muttered in her head with a sigh. She should have talked to Mari alone. Mari deserved that. Well, whoever said I had to be perfect? So I screw things up sometimes. I'm doing the best I can. She took a deep breath and headed toward one of the small tables, prepared to have her lunch alone after her public one-sided conversation with Mari in which, maybe, her frustration had made her come off a little more aggressive than she'd meant to.
"Jane," Gary said quietly in the otherwise silent galley, motioning her over to one of the long tables.
At some point, Jane was going to have to think of something nice to do for Gary. Because just standing there with everyone staring at her, averting their eyes as she looked their way, was one of the most awkward moments of her life, and he had rescued her. "Thanks," she murmured as she approached the table; Nathan got up to drag over another chair, and everyone scooted over to squeeze her in.
"Mari, you, too," Gary said, a little louder, since Mari was further away. "Come on, take a break, sit down with the rest of us."
Jane smiled. She wasn't bad with people, really, but numbers, theories, formulas, those came more naturally to her. Gary, however, he had a gift. He was making sure Jane didn't feel excluded, but also making sure that by including her, Mari didn't feel excluded either. Jane turned to peer over her shoulder so Mari could see her smiling, so hopefully Mari would know that Jane didn't want to exclude her either.
Mari glanced toward Perry, who gave her a little shrug. The moment was tense and seemed longer than it probably was, but eventually Mari made her way over to the table. Chairs were shifted again and Mari sat on the other side, not right across from Jane but close enough that they could be part of the same conversation.
"So…no more earthquakes?" Tristan asked the group at large; the long table past theirs was silent and listening, too. "Are we really back to normal?"
"Actually, I just swung by Olivia's office," Wright said, mouth full, from the round table where he and Ronnie had just sat down. He quickly swallowed before continuing. "She said SPRESSO recorded a 2.1 aftershock a couple of hours ago. The geologists say it's a good sign, we're in the clear. Normal I don't know about…but we're safe."
Jane smiled at that. We're safe. The words echoed in her head, calling up a different emotion with each repetition. She thought about the times she hadn't felt safe here, and how, somewhere along the way, she'd begun to feel safe with Loki even when he fell into one of his moods. The decisions she'd made to try to keep everyone else safe, which she hoped all of her fellow Polies could come to understand. The times she'd feared for Thor's safety, and for Loki's safety, her safety and Loki's on Alfheim, the safety of the entire universe when she found out that Loki had discovered time travel and she had helped. "This is the safest place in the world," she remembered Wright telling her on her very first day here, when she'd realized her room didn't have a lock.
"Jane?"
"Hm?" Lost in her thoughts, Jane wasn't sure who'd said her name.
"Volleyball tonight?"
It was Elliot. "Is it Saturday?" she asked, surprised. She'd lost track of the days.
"Yep."
There was something incongruous in it, a regular Saturday night volleyball game after everything that happened…but they did need to get on with their lives here. Jane needed to get on with her life and maybe focus on hitting a ball for a while instead of all the more stressful things weighing her down. Her mouth was already open to agree when her eyes suddenly locked on Mari's. On her teammate Mari's.
"We should play," Mari said after a moment. "It'll be good to think about something else for a while."
Jane's tense muscles relaxed in relief. "I was just thinking the same thing."
/
/
After a second of haziness that Loki was learning was typical of Tesseract travel, King Gullveig's indoor garden retreat solidified into view. Unfortunately, that second was a critical one, allowing the eight guards accompanying him to react to the arrival of intruders, including calling for reinforcements. They'd expected that, of course, and arrived with weapons raised. And thanks to Heimdall, they knew how many more were in the vicinity. Only four.
Daggers were not the most effective weapon against a well-controlled sword in close quarters, but Loki was very good with daggers and knives of all sorts. With the blade in his right hand he deflected the sword aiming for his neck just enough to push the arc of its swing off course, then twisted around to his left and delivered a hard blow to the guard's throat with his elbow, following that up with a slashing cut from the blade in his left hand to the unprotected underside of the man's upper arm. It wouldn't incapacitate him, but it slowed him down for a moment, long enough for Loki to turn his attention to his target.
Gullveig looked suitably shocked when Loki rushed straight at him, waylaid for only a few seconds by another guard before Hogun managed to shift his way and draw the guard's attacks toward him instead. Loki slipped past them and in just seconds more reached Gullveig, yanking an arm behind the old king's back. Everything was going according to plan; the others were drawing the guards into fighting them instead of taking up defensive postures protecting their king. Heimdall believed, based on the fact that Gullveig never left his palace, that the Vanir thought that the Tesseract – like the bifrost – could only be safely used outdoors. From Gullveig's continued sputtering shock as he craned his neck around to stare at Loki and battle raged around them, Loki thought Heimdall was correct. The bifrost was brute force; the Tesseract was wild power, capable of either brute force or incredible finesse, and Heimdall had enough experience with it now to ensure finesse.
Though aged and no longer the warrior he once was, Gullveig had been trained as a warrior, had even led warriors against Asgard, and once he got past the shock, he clearly wasn't going to passively accept this assault, or Loki's grasp on him. Before Loki had Gullveig's other arm secured, the king clutched fingers around the back of the black-and-silver belt at his waist and from it whipped out a knife. The blade scraped against his bracer doing no harm, but Gullveig's wrist was twisting to aim it backwards into Loki's belly. The blade probably wouldn't make it through the leather, not with what little force Gullveig would be able to put into it in this position, but regardless, Loki couldn't let the man keep slashing at him in such close proximity until he happened to get lucky, and he couldn't let go of him and he couldn't injure him. He contorted himself to minimize the strike to the stomach, twisting again to avoid the next sweep of the blade, then came to a decision: hurting wasn't quite the same thing as injuring.
In a move too sudden for Gullveig to effectively react to, Loki loosened his grip on Gullveig's arm and pivoted around to face him, then behind him again as Gullveig changed his direction of attack and swung his free arm forward. Careful of the dagger still in his own left hand, Loki got his arms locked around the elbow of Gullveig's knife-wielding arm before the man could readjust. He pivoted around Gullveig again, pushing downward and back on the elbow. Gullveig cried out in pain and his knife clattered to the marble floor.
Loki looked up over Gullveig's pained struggles to see Volstagg staring at them in wide-eyed worry, probably thinking Loki had just broken the old king's arm. Loki flashed him a grin dripping with malevolence and was just wondering to himself how much of it was real and how much for show when the expression disappeared instantly. He kicked Gullveig's knife away, released his own wrist thus relieving the pressure on Gullveig's elbow, and launched his dagger in the direction of Volstagg's head. Volstagg's eyes went wider still, comically so, but then he turned and quickly sidestepped the Vanir guard stumbling toward him, still clutching his sword but staring down in shock at the dagger embedded in his chest.
"No more of that, now," Loki said to Gullveig in a quiet voice, not waiting for Volstagg's reaction to restrain the man again, less tightly this time. He pulled his other dagger back out and quickly sliced off the king's belt, lest he have more knives hidden in there; Loki knew if it were him, he definitely would. Hurry up, he thought. The pounding of boots in the distance spoke of reinforcements on their way, and it wasn't easy holding onto someone like this, someone who would happily kill him but who he couldn't injure, much less kill.
"Don't be a fool, Loki," Gullveig panted out, spittle flying over the furious words. "I'm the king but I'm only one man, you think you can somehow turn your defeat into victory by kidnapping me?"
"Kidnapping you? You needn't worry so, Your Majesty. We're only borrowing you."
Gullveig gave another jerk, but Loki tightened his grasp and wrenched out a grunt from the king. And then he saw it, out of the chaos, a ring beginning to form. Volstagg, Hogun, Fandral, Sif, drawing in slowly toward him and his captive. He glanced upward, but no one would need to tell Heimdall when to act. The circle drew tighter, and the Vanir guards grew more hesitant in their attacks; the wrong move, they knew, could endanger their king. Familiar blue light flooded Loki's vision. They'd succeeded, and the Vanir king and leader of the alliance was in Loki's grasp.
/
Jane realizes it's Saturday above. You don't know how much effort it took for me to figure that out. :-) The date in the story is Saturday, June 12.
Tomorrow marks the five-year anniversary of this story. Yikes.
Responses to guest reviewers: "ladymouse2" - Sometimes I get *so* anxious to write "Eighteen," because there is - to me - such really interesting psychology at play there in these brothers' relationships, and how they see themselves and each other at that time, and I think it will make the little glimpses of it you get in "Beneath" make a lot more sense. Glad the Thor/Loki conflict there worked for you - it felt like a little bit of a leap since it's not really a side of them we've seen since their family fell apart, but I was happy with it in the end (especially since Loki retains his manipulative streak that tinges nearly everything does with a bit of insincerity...even when he's being sincere), and then the repercussions of that continue somewhat in this chapter. And yeah, you're right, there's a little arrogance in what Loki's doing, but that's not at all what's at the heart of it. Thor is defensive and angry and he goes where he goes. As for the thing with Maeva and her braid...this is something no one else in Loki's life really gets and maybe never fully will, how very thoroughly the rug was ripped out from under him - he envisages himself something of a puppet master, or even the guy who flicks the first little domino over that sets that massive complex chain of dominoes to tipping over one after the other, and suddenly it's like he's never been in control of *anything* - a hidden past, a hidden nature (the nature of monsters no less) has been pulling his strings all his life and it calls *everything* he's ever thought, known, done into question. But this is progress, that he was able to step back and look at this rationally, logically, and talk himself down from that particular ledge. And... thank you. :-) ; "Imogen74" - Thanks, glad you enjoyed Jane's bit. She's really beginning to recover her bearings. ; Guest (June 10) - Hee hee, yay! Jane really is a refuge for Loki, someone he trusts completely, someone who doesn't have the "thousand years of baggage" about him and about Jotunheim. Yeah, the stabilizing of his relationship with Frigga, that's an important, positive step for him. Odin just has such a different personality from Loki, it makes it hard for him to relate to him, and I think he hasn't much felt the need to *try* all that much, or all that often, as he's not really a "touchy-feely" kind of person, for him it's like, Loki's his son so *of course* he loves him, it doesn't need to be said or demonstrated, it's an obvious fact. But he's beginning to realize he probably should have tried a lot more. It wasn't all that obvious to Loki! There's more than that to it, of course, but it's that complexity that I love, and love exploring.
Previews for Ch. 171: The pressure's on in Asgard...but come on, you know Loki's always got some ideas of his own; Jane continues to deal with the fallout from Loki's departure.
Excerpt:
Thor exhaled slowly, and just as slowly turned to Loki. And said nothing. He waited. But his patience had never come close to matching Loki's. "What did you do?"