.-.
Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Nine – Recognition
Jane stood in front of him now; Loki was glad of her lack of height because she didn't obstruct his view.
"Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
A ghost…an apparition… It crossed his mind that he might have imagined it. That his sanity truly was in question. The guard didn't seem to have any idea who he was talking about, and he was taking a long time to return.
He quickly dismissed the thought, though. He hadn't imagined it, not then and not now. And the guards were on duty for defense – largely a ceremonial function – not to catalog normal comings and goings of people who, presumably, were supposed to be there. A protocol clerk would have been at the outer entrance to ensure that those arriving were invited; if the guard failed to find the man who'd just departed, Loki would find the clerk and examine the list. That would take longer, though, and had more room for error.
He was considering stepping outside the hall to see where the guard had gone, and perhaps joining the search himself, when the guard did finally return. Coming into view once the guard stepped aside and assumed his prior position against the wall next to the doorway was a man somewhere near his own age, narrow nose, neatly trimmed beard, facial hair a little redder than that on his head. His eyes found Loki's. He looked nervous.
Loki had no idea who he was.
"You wanted to see me, my prince?"
His voice wasn't familiar, either, not that Loki had expected it to be. "Who are you?"
Before the auburn-haired man answered, though, Thor appeared at Loki's left side and did it for him.
"Loki, this is Geirmund. I've told you about him, our new supplies advisor, remember? I wanted to introduce you. Geirmund Faldarson – Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard. And this is my guest, Lady Jane Foster of Midgard. You spoke with her on one of your visits to New York."
"I remember it well. It's an honor to meet you. And you as well, of course, my prince."
"Likewise," Jane said, glancing at Loki in curiosity.
Loki wondered why Geirmund failed to come forward and kiss Jane's hand per the usual custom. His tone and body language were polite, even deferential, but something was clearly off.
"You weren't leaving already, were you?" Thor asked. "Come, take a drink with us."
"Thank you, Your Majesty, but I, ah, I told my wife I would come home early."
"It is early. You still have time for one tankard then, and afterward we'll send you straight home." Thor started toward Geirmund, reaching an arm out toward him to encourage him back inside.
"Did you once work in the royal stables?"
Geirmund's eyes snapped back to Loki's; he seemed to have frozen stiff with nerves. It wasn't that uncommon of a reaction when someone realized he or she had attracted Loki's attention. But Geirmund was still standing across the threshold, technically in the reception area rather than the Feasting Hall proper, which was beginning to feel quite odd. Thor, meanwhile, had stopped where he was, looking at Loki with surprise, but Loki paid him no mind.
"Did you?" Loki prompted.
"I did not," Geirmund responded, quickly this time.
The answer – assuming it was truthful, and Loki thought that it was – was unexpected. "Have you ever been granted the privilege of riding any of the horses there?"
"Loki, what's this about?"
Geirmund glanced Thor's way before answering. "I have not."
"If you'd like to, it can easily be arranged," Thor said, confused.
There were only two proper reasons for Geirmund to have been in the stable that day, and he'd just denied both of them. With both proper reasons eliminated, only improper reasons remained. Unless he was wrong. The shade of hair was less common but not rare. The weight of it and the amount of curl at the ends of it looked the same. In his gut, though, he knew he wasn't wrong. He didn't remember seeing anyone there on the actual day, but he'd been preoccupied at the time, and unaware that he was about to commit a murder and might need to meticulously take note of everyone he encountered along the way. Regardless, the memory of that head of hair wasn't a thousand years old; it was from mere weeks ago. Fresh. Clear. A burst of bright color on a canvas of gray, the one thing he'd observed in his time travel that he hadn't already known about from either his original experience of the day or the investigation and trial that followed.
And other than being a couple of inches longer then, the head of hair he'd seen was exactly the same as this man's.
Thor was speaking; Loki interrupted. "Then why is it that I once saw you there? If you had no legitimate reason to be there."
"Loki," Thor said, dropping his volume, "Geirmund is a respected member of the Assembly. It's inappropriate to address him in this manner."
Tiny tremors were breaking out all over Geirmund's body; Loki was looking for signs of a reaction and spotted them easily. The trembling in the hands. The little spasms of the facial muscles. The bobbing throat and rapid rise and fall of the chest. Loki was not wrong. "Do I need to specify the day?" he asked in a low voice.
Geirmund looked down at the floor. The confrontation had gained the attention of several others nearby, including the Einherjar who'd sent Geirmund back.
If anything, Loki thought, his frame now bore the posture of a defeated man.
Still staring at the ground, Geirmund took a single step forward, across the threshold. When his head rose he looked straight at Loki. The tremors were gone, the frame straightened somewhat from its slump, and Loki knew that expression. Surrender. "No, my prince."
"Why were you there?"
"I followed you."
Loki was thrown, again. Nothing this man said made sense. Followed me…why? For how long? He had taken the mistletoe to the stable to shape it. He had gone there from that lightly wooded area, where he'd climbed the birch and cut off the mistletoe.
Thor's hand was on his arm; Loki shook it off and ignored Thor urging him to step outside.
Mistletoe… It had stood out to Loki only because he'd noticed the difference in it, and figured out that it had escaped his mother's protective magic. It was unworthy of attention. There was certainly no reason to follow someone gathering its twigs. To anyone else's eyes it was just a plant, deadly only to the tree it took as host, and no more capable of harming Baldur than any other thing on Asgard. To anyone else's eyes except someone like himself.
"Do you have an affinity for magic, Geirmund?"
The answer came after no more than a few seconds' hesitation, though they seemed interminable to Loki.
"I do."
"Magic was found on the arrow." He still remembered the raw terror those words had caused. The denials that no one had believed. No one. He hadn't been able to explain it, either. He knew he'd never altered its size or shape or mass with magic. And his mother's magic hadn't touched the mistletoe; that was the whole point. He'd offered half a dozen other possibilities that he found just as implausible as everyone else, except that they had a default explanation to fall back on.
"The arrow that took Baldur's life was Loki's. The witness's statement confirmed it. But Loki denied it, again and again. Loki lied. It is therefore no surprise that Loki now denies the magic is his. It is, in fact, predictable. Loki has lied throughout this process, and he is lying about this, too."
The first notes of a welcome tune startled Loki out of the distant past. An invitation tune would follow, and then the dancing would begin. Behind him, people were enjoying themselves. Celebrating, laughing, eating, drinking, soon dancing, continuing on merrily with their lives while…
He'd never had an explanation. Until now.
"Everyone out."
No one moved. Not a single person. The music continued without a faltering note. He might not be in the line of succession anymore but he was still the prince of this infernal realm and he expected his orders to be followed. He caught the eye of the Einherjar who'd carried out his earlier order, and found his eyes nervously jumping between him and Thor. The other guard, further away at the other side of the doorway, was standing at attention as though entirely unaware of what was going on.
It was only then that Loki realized how quiet his voice must have been. Thor and Jane were staring at him, probably questioning his sanity, and Thor was saying his name, again, reaching for his arm, again.
Loki pivoted on his heel, took a deep breath, lifted his chin, and pushed his shoulders back. "Everyone out now!"
/
/
Thor grabbed Loki's arm this time, no longer tentative or faltering, and spun him around to face him. "Have you lost your mind?! We're—"
Loki's expression didn't change. Anger, determination, who-knew-what-else lay behind that set jaw…but not madness.
Every eye he met – Jane's, the guards', the other guests' – was on him. As king, it was his feast, and Loki, he realized, did not have the authority to end it prematurely.
"Am I…misplaced, Brother?"
The confusion lasted less than a second. "Know your place," he heard himself saying, and of all the times he'd played those words back in his head, they'd never sounded more putrid.
He wouldn't say the words. Loki had already said them, twice now. He had no idea what had gotten under Loki's skin about Geirmund, why Loki was questioning him about stables and magic, but he had to trust that his brother had a good reason. Otherwise, what good were all the things he'd said to Loki that one night? The apologies for the disrespect he'd shown Loki, for degrading Loki in front of others? He'd meant those things. It was a risk, but one he had to take. He had assured Loki that his actions would follow his words.
And so they would. Thor released Loki's arm, turned to the nearest Einherjar, and nodded.
Around him everything flew into motion at once, as though the entire hall had been holding its collective breath.
"Everyone clear the hall! Servants through the kitchen exits, guests this way!" the Einherjar called even as he stepped forward and began ushering people toward the doors. The guard at the other side of the entryway was doing the same, and the two just outside in the reception hall emerged to join them.
"He stays," Loki said, indicating Geirmund.
"Geirmund, come in. Let's get away from the doors," Thor said.
The crowd parted around them as they flowed toward the exit, most staring openly and leaving reluctantly with a final lingering look back.
Thor felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.
"What is going on?" Odin demanded.
"Something between Loki and Geirmund. I don't know."
Odin's gaze settled on Loki, who was glaring at Geirmund, who in turn stood calmly nearby, eyes cast downward. "He can't let us have even one day of peace?"
It was a rhetorical question, and Thor didn't attempt an answer. He didn't have one. He breathed in deeply – more shakily than he would have wanted to admit – and watched the exodus.
/
/
In disbelief, Jane remained at Loki's side as the Asgardians poured out around her. Loki kept staring at Geirmund as though if he looked away the other man might blink out of existence. He seemed to have forgotten she existed, and she wasn't sure if "everyone out" included her.
She'd immediately recognized the name "Geirmund" from one of her VOIP calls with Tony, when she'd briefly spoken with Geirmund. He'd sounded different from Jolgeir, in the way he spoke about Thor, like he was a little less at ease, perhaps, and didn't know Loki as well as Jolgeir did. It wasn't a huge difference, nothing she'd consciously thought about at the time, and both men had seemed kind and friendly, and respectful toward Thor. Jolgeir had mentioned Geirmund to her, while leading her through the palace for the first time to meet Thor; he'd said Geirmund was the youngest of the Thor's advisors, barely over a thousand, and that his position was a new one. She knew she was grasping at straws for every paltry little detail she could wrest from her memories about him, but nothing she came up with provided a clue to what had Loki so worked up, or what any of this had to do with stables and horses and magic.
Loki's head jerked to the left. "Finnulfur," he called, stopping the older man as he approached the doors. "Stay."
Finnulfur's surprise was undisguised. "Yes, my prince," he said before urging the nervous-looking woman with him to continue on without him.
"Jolgeir, stay."
Jolgeir similarly sent his wife and daughter ahead, but Jane could see in him the soldier he still was, in the brevity of his initial reaction, his prompt assumption of a stiff position against the wall beside the open doorway.
Volstagg's wife Gudda came by bent over, keeping her kids corralled as closely to her as she could; Volstagg and Thor's other friends, right behind her, came to a stop. Sif exchanged a few words with Thor, while the others looked at Loki and waited. Jane was certain she was less surprised than they were when Loki looked their way, no change in his expression, then turned back to Geirmund without saying a word. The four of them left, Fandral looking back to give her a lopsided smile.
Jane returned the smile; it was nice to be acknowledged, since the more the crowd dwindled, the more she doubted whether she was meant to remain. Loki might ask her to leave, too, eventually. But for the moment, she decided she'd stay until he did. Whatever was going on with him and Geirmund, he didn't want a crowd but he clearly wasn't looking for complete privacy.
/
/
Loki hesitated over the last, until he'd already passed through the doorway. "Heimdall," he called. The gatekeeper hadn't seen anything useful that day. He might have something to add now, though, and regardless…Loki decided he simply wanted Heimdall to be present.
He filtered through the rest as they filed out, all but a handful of faces familiar. He let them all go. Others had been involved, but no one else who'd played a critical role then was present. Some, like Maeva's father, one of the other magistrates, and Loki's advocate, were dead. The rest simply hadn't made it onto tonight's exclusive invitation list. Finnulfur, Jolgeir, and Heimdall would have to do.
Behind him and to his left, he knew Thor stood huddled with Odin and Frigga. They would have to remain, too…but for the moment, he preferred not to acknowledge them. To his right, he remembered then, still stood Jane. He turned to her as much as he dared, unwilling to let this Geirmund fully out of his sight, and found it so jarring he momentarily lost the sense of where he was. Of when he was.
Not the South Pole, not a thousand years ago, not a week ago. Here, Asgard, the Feasting Hall, surrounded by those entangled in his life's history. She knew about Baldur. To her alone it would be no shock to hear the name spoken aloud. He'd told her…and she'd believed him. She'd said so, but he knew she meant it, too. He knew not just because he trusted her, but because she'd raised it with Thor, asked Thor to talk to him about it. Foolish, yes, but…she believed him. She was the only person in this hall – on all of Asgard – who did. Even the advocate representing him hadn't believed him.
He didn't know exactly how Geirmund was involved, much less why, and he didn't know what he might say or do when he found out…or if Geirmund refused to speak further. He knew he might not want Jane to see it. He also knew he wanted her here. He hadn't spoken that name in these halls for a thousand years, either. He thought he might even need her here.
"Jane," he whispered. An elegant, beautiful woman immediately looked up at him. The woman who rejected him over and over, in the beginning. The woman he'd hunched over a computer with, forged paths through Yggdrasil with. The woman he was accustomed to seeing in laborer's clothes and flannel pajamas and a wearable blanket printed with beavers. Brilliant and funny and stern and uncompromising and compassionate and he'd sat with her right out there on a hillside not far from here and told her the truth and she believed him. "Will you stay? No matter what happens?"
"Of course."
Not a second's hesitation.
She believed him.
/
/
"Have we ever met, before today?"
Geirmund shook his head.
The hall had finally been emptied, the Einherjar stepping out last and closing the door behind them per Loki's order. Geirmund still stood with his back to the doors; Loki still faced him. Heimdall, dressed in off-duty finery and bare-headed, had gone to stand by Jane, on Loki's right, while everyone else was to his left – Thor closest, with Odin, Frigga, and Finnulfur clustered together behind him, and Jolgeir against the closed doors.
"Did I ever offend you in some way? You bore me ill will for some reason?"
"No, my prince. Never," Geirmund answered, eyes closed and shaking his head, expression pained.
If it wasn't because of me, then… "How…" He stopped, swallowed, let himself hear the name in his head. Tried again. "How did you know Baldur?"
Silence followed. But only for a second.
"Loki, what are you doing? This isn't… Mother, Father, I apologize. This is my fault. Just yesterday I asked Loki something about…what happened back then. That was obviously a mistake. And so was this. Geirmund, you may go. With my apologies."
Loki didn't look away, and Geirmund didn't move. "Not everything is about you, Thor. Some things have nothing to do with you at all." Behind Geirmund, Jolgeir's eyes had lost focus.
"Loki." Odin's voice came from behind him, but in the next instant he had planted himself in front of Loki, forcing him to break eye contact with Geirmund. "Hear me. What you have accomplished for Asgard, and how quickly you accomplished it, most would have thought impossible. You have made great strides, following a difficult period. Do not throw that away. Do not bring shame on yourself."
"I was declared guilty of…of murdering my younger brother. I believe that damage is already done…don't you?" The words came haltingly, with difficulty, with an unsettling desire to hide himself away and speak them without being seen. But they came. By sheer force of will against a thousand-year wall of silence.
"You were forgiven, restored in full, and protected by edict. Attempting to hang vague insinuations around a random unfamiliar neck will weigh far more heavily upon your own. The time for such obfuscations is long, long past, Loki. If there is any wisdom in you at all, you will cease this immediately."
"He tried to save his own neck by casting blame onto an innocent blind elder. You need look no further to see that the accused has no principles, and no sense of honor."
Loki set his jaw. This was not that. His neck was no longer on the line, and his honor…well. Honor wasn't something he spent much time worrying about anymore. "His face is unfamiliar, I'll grant you that. The back of his head, less so."
"The back of his head!" Thor repeated incredulously.
"Do you want to go, Geirmund?" Loki asked, sidestepping Odin.
"Yes," he answered immediately, before adding, "but I won't."
"I'll repeat my question, then. How did you know him?"
"I didn't. Not really."
He looked as though he'd been going to say more, but changed his mind. He will answer direct questions, but he won't volunteer what he hasn't been asked.
"Then did he cause you some offense?"
"He… There was a girl."
Offense over a girl? Loki thought, dumbfounded; beside him, he heard a short gasp.
"Was it Nanna?" Jane asked.
Geirmund's surprise reflected Loki's own. "How do you know that name?" Geirmund asked.
At Loki's other side, a hand slipped into his and tugged until he turned. Facing any of them while speaking of Baldur was hard enough, but his mother would surely be hardest of all.
"Loki, these are painful things you're bringing up. Will you tell us why?"
He'd expected her to be distraught, but she wasn't. Sometimes in his sensitivity to her emotions, he forgot her strength. Still, beneath the calm she projected he could see the strain. "He was there that day. In the stables. Yet he never came forward. Beyond that…the why is going to have to come from him," Loki said, facing Geirmund again. "And apparently it has something to do with a youth whose name I barely recall. Did you know he's a magic-user?" he asked with a glance toward his mother; she and Odin hadn't been there when he'd asked that question.
"I did," Thor put in. "He mentioned it once. He hasn't made a secret of it."
Thor, Loki thought, was more subdued now – still angry, but with confusion turning the boil to a simmer. None of them, though, he was certain, had an inkling of why that mattered. For everyone else, the magic on the arrow was merely another thing he'd lied about.
Idea still forming, Loki's eyes lighted on a table pushed against the back wall only a few feet from where Jolgeir stood. It was laden with unclaimed dessert plates; Loki strode over and relieved it of two of them.
Stopping in front of Geirmund, he held out one of the plates. "Make it heavier."
Geirmund looked down at the plate, then back up at Loki, starting to stammer something. He wasn't taking the plate, which was all Loki cared about.
Loki tightened his grip on the plate for just a second, then with full force slammed it onto the floor. It shattered on impact, making a mess of the orange tart and sending bits of ceramic skittering across the floor, as Geirmund flinched and Jane gave a short startled shriek.
One plate still in hand, Loki marched back over to the table and retrieved another. When he turned back, he found Thor in his path. His fingers clenched again, preparing to smash both plates into Thor's head if he didn't move.
"Thor."
Loki, too, looked Odin's way, briefly meeting his eyes before Odin turned his attention to Thor. "No one has been harmed. And we can afford a few broken plates."
Another second passed, and Thor stepped out of the way without having said a word.
Loki resumed his path, and held out a plate to Geirmund. "Make it heavier."
This time Geirmund accepted the plate. He balanced it on his palm, then stretched out his other hand above it and closed his eyes. His fingers moved minutely over the plate. When he opened his eyes a minute later they were moist.
Loki took the plate. What he now held was exactly what he'd expected, and still something clawed at his throat, choking off his breath. He closed his own eyes, taking the time to rein himself in before he flew apart at the implications.
"Would anyone like to test them?" he asked once he had control of himself, though still he heard in his own voice the thread of delirium. His eyes fell first on Finnulfur, observing quietly at a distance, but then he remembered Jane.
Her eyes were widened; it was shock, he knew, but it was also understanding. He had told her about this. She believed him. And like him, she now knew exactly how the arrow had become heavy enough to pierce Baldur's flesh.
"Take it."
She took the plate with both hands. "It, um, it feels normal."
He nodded; he'd given her the plate Geirmund hadn't touched. "Now this one."
She shifted the first plate fully to her left hand without trouble, then grasped the second one. The instant he let go of it, she lurched forward, scrambling to get a firmer grip, get more of her hand underneath it, but in no more than two seconds she lost the battle and it crashed to the floor. "Sorry. Um…it's a lot heavier."
"It's all right," Loki said, gracing her with a smile that came easily but faded quickly. "I have it on good authority we can afford a few broken plates." By the end he was facing Odin.
Loki turned next to Finnulfur. "I confessed, didn't I? I confessed to everything. Everything except that. I never confessed to making the arrow heavier, did I? I'm asking you. Did I?"
"I…I'm sorry. It was a long time ago. I don't remember the details."
"Details! It's not a detail. It's proof. Never mind. I wasn't speaking to you, anyway, not then. I knew who mattered at that point. All-Father," he said, voice taking on new bitterness. "You must remember. I told you everything and you finally believed me, because I told you I intended to kill him all along. But I never told you I made the arrow heavier."
Odin's face was maddeningly blank. He swallowed before he spoke. "I can't remember, Loki," he said quietly.
"Mother?" he asked, desperation creeping into his voice.
She was shaking her head even before the words came. "I'm sorry. I only remember how…how you…"
She didn't seem able to get anything else out, and he waved a half-hearted hand at her to stop her from trying. He should have expected it, anyway, that none of them could remember this one little "detail." He didn't know why it had suddenly mattered so much that they did. As he thought back on it, he was no longer so certain himself that he hadn't admitted to that. Confessions had spilled like vomit from the depths of his guts, emptying him of everything he'd held onto for so long, truth and lie intermingled with nothing marking where one ended and the other began, not even in his own mind. His memories of it held little clarity.
Whatever exactly he'd said then, it was irrelevant now.
Clarity was standing right before him.
"You made the arrow heavier." He didn't ask. He didn't need to. He wasn't even looking at Geirmund.
"Yes," came the whispered response.
"Why?" Thor asked.
Thor, apparently, still didn't get it, not enough to take it to its logical conclusion. It was true, of course, that Thor found it exceptionally difficult to let go of thousand-year-old beliefs.
"Didn't you hear? There was a girl," Loki said with an oily smile. "So, tell us, Geirmund. Who doesn't love a good story? It starts with the girl, doesn't it? Let's hear it."
Geirmund looked far from comfortable, but he nodded, and began to speak, which was enough to satisfy Loki for the moment; he didn't care in the slightest about Geirmund's comfort.
"Her name was Nanna, and I was in love with her. I thought I was, at least. I was twenty-two, and she was nineteen. It couldn't be what I wanted it to be, not until she turned twenty, so we were friends."
"Don't stop now," Loki said when Geirmund paused too long for his liking. "You haven't gotten to any of the good parts yet. Like the part where you found out that Nanna preferred Baldur to you."
"I know how petty it sounds now. But at the time…she was all that mattered to me. We were poor. My father died when I was sixteen. He was a laborer at a fishery and he managed our household farm. But after that, it was just me and my mother, so I-"
"If you're expecting sympathy, you'll find none here."
"I'm not. I swear I'm not. But if you want a story…that's part of it. My life was an endlessly grieving mother, poor results from my studies, and physical labor on a farm, which I wasn't well-suited for. Nanna was from the neighboring village. Her family didn't have much, either, but she had her father and two much older brothers…her parents were so happy to have a daughter they doted on her. Spoiled her. She hardly had to lift a finger. She had a lot of free time, and she spent almost all of it with me. She was a ray of sunshine in what I thought was an unbearably gloomy existence. She would talk about the boys her age, laugh at how immature they were. 'Not like you,' she would always say. Perhaps she never felt for me what I did for her, but at the time…I thought she was in love with me, too, that we were just waiting for her to turn twenty before we spoke openly of it."
"Something changed," Loki said.
Geirmund nodded. "She started talking about him."
"I think we may as well say his name now."
"Yes. She started talking about Baldur. Just a mention here and there, at first. He was a year younger and just another of those immature boys. But yes, it changed, over time. He started paying attention to her. Taking her places, showing her things, giving her things that I could only dream of. She started coming around less. Jealousy gnawed at me. In my mind…she was mine. And Baldur was taking her away from me. Luring her away with things I couldn't offer."
"The letters," Loki heard from just behind him, his mother's breathless voice. Stunned, as everyone surely was, but still in such firm control of her emotions that Loki could only guess at how badly it must be affecting her. "You sent the letters?"
"Yes. I…only meant to scare him. Make him withdraw. Hide himself in this palace and stay away from Nanna."
"But that isn't what happened," Frigga said, a tremor to her voice that hadn't been there before.
When Loki twisted to see her again, her eyes brimmed with tears. When he looked back at Geirmund, the man was swiping a hand over his eye. Rage sudden, pure, and bright welled up in him. He clenched his fists, digging fingernails painfully into palms, to hold onto it. Its time would come.
"Your plan failed," Loki said, voice low. "So you came up with a new one."
"No," Geirmund said with a sharp shake of his head. "There wasn't a plan, not like that. But I was…obsessed. I went to Vanaheim sometimes for trade. I thought about buying something there, something that could hurt him…not kill him, just hurt him, to cut through his arrogance. But I found out all the controls that were put in place at the public portals, and I knew it wouldn't work. And then…because I was paying so much attention to Baldur, I saw you sometimes, too, and I knew you were arguing with him, wanting him to stop that game he was playing. I saw the argument you had with him that day. I saw the look on your face when you walked away. I don't know why but something told me to follow. I kept my distance; you were so focused you never noticed me. No one did. I was a nobody, and still a youth in most eyes."
"Not in the eyes of the law," Loki quickly cut in. "You were twenty-two."
Geirmund inhaled sharply, and slowly let it out. "Not in the eyes of the law, no. I was twenty-three by that time."
"You saw me climb the birch that had the mistletoe growing in it," Loki said, his own voice gone nearly breathless as they approached what had to be the climax of the story. It was unnerving, the way the images in his mind now fractured. He remembered going out into the wood, firmly set on a course he'd turned over in his mind before in moments of anger. He remembered his second trip out to that same tree, hours ahead of his younger self. And now there was Geirmund with a third trip to the tree, and having watched his younger self going about that fateful day unimpeded he could easily picture that third trip, too. "You knew what it was?" he prompted.
"I knew it was important, but not why. After you left, I climbed the tree, too. My…talent for magic is modest, but I've always had a sensitivity to it. I knew immediately why you'd taken a piece of the mistletoe. I-"
"I heard you. I heard…something. As I was leaving." He regretted the outburst almost as soon as he made it. He hadn't heard anything on the original day – or if he had, he didn't remember it – and he had no intention of revealing his recent return to that day. "You followed me back."
"Yes, at even more of a distance. I almost lost you."
"You followed me to the stables."
He nodded.
"The boy didn't see you?"
"No one notices a farmer when a prince is nearby."
Loki searched for and couldn't find the anger or bitterness the words suggested. "I closed the door to the stall. You couldn't have seen what I was doing."
"I knew the sound of whittling. And I saw the mistletoe, what was left on the tree. I knew it was light and flimsy. I was certain of how you intended to use it, and I thought…understand that I had a low opinion of the princes…I thought you were too ignorant, too pampered by your life of privilege, to know how to shape an arrow properly."
"So you decided to help," Loki said, the words nearly strangled out of him by his tightening throat.
"I thought…I stayed there, in the stables. Trying to make a decision. I…I decided it was a gift. How could I walk away from…from such a perfect opportunity?" he said, voice shaking. "I was…it seemed right. I thought it was meant to be. Fate. You'd made a mistake, and I happened to know it, and I had the ability to fix it."
"How? You weren't there."
"I was," Geirmund said with a steadier voice. "I knew where you were going. I ran. I caught up just as you reached the crowd. I didn't have to touch the arrow. I was good at making things heavier, or lighter – it was the only way I was able to keep up on the farm after my father died."
"When it was already in Hodur's hands?"
"When it was nocked."
When it was too late. If the weight had changed while it was still in Loki's hands, he would have felt it. He would have known something was wrong. He never would have given it to Hodur.
"Geirmund," Thor said, "you made the arrow heavy enough to…to pierce his flesh?"
"I did, Your Majesty. I-"
Thor stopped him with a raised hand. "If you hadn't…" He turned to face Loki.
"He would have had nothing worse than a scratch," Loki supplied. "Exactly as I intended."
"Then you…Baldur's death was your fault," Thor said, face contorted. "Loki suffered for years because everyone thought it was hisfault, and he didn't…you didn't…you stood by and allowed that to happen? You were too much of a coward to come forward and speak the truth?"
Geirmund started to answer, but Loki interrupted; that Thor spoke up didn't concern him, but that Thor might try to wrest control away from him was intolerable. "You've spoken very openly here, Geirmund. Openly and, it seems, truthfully. Back then, though, I heard not a peep from you. I never heard your name. Finnulfur…did you ever hear his name back then?"
"I don't believe so," Finnulfur said quietly. "Certainly not in connection with information of this sort."
"I was a coward. But I didn't know what had happened to you. I fled right after he died. I went to Vanaheim. I was in hiding. I stayed on the move, away from the cities…I didn't even know you'd been accused of murder. I thought they would know it was an accident, if they even knew the arrow came from you in the first place. I didn't find out until decades later. I thought about coming forward then…but I couldn't. I told myself it wouldn't make any difference at that point. I struggled with it for years. And then I decided…if I was ever asked, I wouldn't lie. But" – he paused to take a breath, then swallow – "I wouldn't volunteer it, either."
"Convenient," Loki said. "Since you knew no one would ever have any reason to ask at that point."
"I was a coward," he said. "I am a coward."
"But you're not," Thor said. "You were ready to risk your life to save Jormik's. Everyone agreed your idea was too dangerous but you wanted to try it."
"I thought-"
"I trusted you," Thor said, stepping closer as comprehension overtook disbelief and shock and tipped fully into outrage. "I relied on you as one of my key advisors."
"I'm so sorry. I never sought it. I worked hard, I wanted to…to atone for what I'd done somehow. When Krusa told me he was recommending me I tried to convince him not to, but-"
"You defended Loki. You said…you said Loki was often accused of things because of assumptions. And I thanked you for speaking up for him. People made assumptions…because you let them."
"I'm sorry," Geirmund repeated, the words barely audible.
"Why is it, I wonder, that you keep apologizing to Thor?" Loki asked coldly.
"Because…," he began, trailing off as his eyes again met Loki's and seemed to struggle to maintain the eye contact. "I never wanted to face you. There's no apology that could ever make right what…what happened to you because of what I did. But I am sorry. Truly sorry."
"I am sorry," Loki heard again. "I'm sorry." Geirmund's voice, in his mind, blended with his own. "I'm sorry." A breathy laugh worked its way up from somewhere deep inside and escaped through his nose. It came again, louder, and his lips pulled into a smile. "You're sorry," he said.
Geirmund's eyes fell closed, his head hung low.
Loki turned to Thor, still smiling, still laughing. "He's sorry. Did you hear that? He's sorry." His gaze found Odin and Finnulfur, while carefully avoiding his mother. "If I'd started there…do you think it might have gone better for me? What do you think, Thor, or rather Your Majesty?" It was easier with Thor; Odin and Finnulfur's faces were drawn and guarded, but Thor's emotions were written all over his body. "He's confessed. He's sorry. He's…Geirmund, are you remorseful?"
"I am," came the quiet answer.
"He's remorseful. Good enough? Ready to pardon him and put all this behind us?"
Thor said nothing, just stood there, tensely coiled, so Loki turned to Heimdall, eyes sliding past Jane. "Did you ever see any of this? This…upstanding citizen ensuring the arrow would kill Baldur?"
Geirmund, Loki saw out of the corner of his eye, started to say something, but closed his mouth before the first sound escaped.
"Did you see him following me? Did you see him escape to Vanaheim? Did you see him hiding there?"
"I did not. Would that I had."
"No."
Loki put his back to Heimdall to face Thor again. He knew it was Thor who had spoken, but he didn't continue, and his eyes were unfocused. "What?"
When Thor's eyes locked on Loki's, it wasn't because of Loki's sharp tone, or because of Loki's question at all, which he hadn't really heard. It was because he'd come to a decision.
"What?" Loki repeated, eyes narrowed at the complete change in Thor's physical stance.
"Loki…you were declared guilty of a crime you didn't commit. You bore a punishment that wasn't yours to bear. Geirmund, you have confessed to being guilty of that crime. To fleeing afterward. To maintaining your silence ever since, allowing Loki to continue to bear the blame for something…for something he didn't do. Your decisions resulted not only in Baldur's death, but in Loki's suffering for it in your place. Finnulfur…there's an allowance for this in the law, is there not?"
Before Finnulfur could answer, Loki knew what this meant, what Thor was invoking. His muscles went slack and he thought he must have paled for all the blood draining downward, unable to pump its way back up again. Every sense focused on Geirmund. A wolf sighting its prey.
"There is."
"I find it appropriate in this case."
"Thor, you should discuss this first," Odin said.
"I see no reason to discuss it. Loki, you are not only pardoned for Baldur's murder – you are exonerated. And the right to determine Geirmund's punishment is yours."
/
So...you know me; there *were* clues. But they're tiny, and "clue" might be too strong a word. I will leave you a list of them, probably in the next chapter. Or would you rather find them yourself? Well...you have until probably the next chapter, ha.
Guest review replies: Guest (ch. 197/8) I think at the table there was sort of a sense of not talking "business" although that did still happen (as it seems to also among my work-friends when we swear to each we aren't going to talk about work, ha), and you're right, that *would* be interesting to see how it goes when Jotuns are brought up, and I do sort of wish it had happened. But there was so much to cover and that one didn't happen. I strongly suspect it would have by someone at some point...had things not been interrupted. Erik *would* be a hurdle, agreed. It would be very interesting to see Erik's reaction to how important Loki is to Jane, even just as a friend. / "ladymouse2" (ch. 197/8) Loki is getting better, but under pressure that hits the right buttons, he still sometimes doesn't exactly act his own best interests, ha. Some of that though I think is just a trickster's "unleash some chaos and see how it plays out." But yeah there's a lot of back-and-forth for him in dealing with Jane-and-Thor; he's struggling with it, and alone with his thoughts is different from having them right before his eyes. / Guest (ch. 198, Feb. 20) Sorry? :-) / "ladymouse2" (ch. 198/9) Ha, yes, very apt. (And more "intentional" writing than I usual do, in that sense that it did need to be apt!) "he seems almost irrationally attached to not appearing weak and manipulated over that" Yes. His dignity and self-respect took a huge hit with the events of Thor, followed by his defeat on Earth; how much worse if he lets people think he was manipulated in a period of weakness? He clings to having 100% made his own decisions free of any outside influence, it's crucially important to him. He *did* make his own decisions, but he was also manipulated into them ("influence" vs. "control"). Thor picked up Loki's little "bomb" pretty well! He wasn't perfect, but he handled it. I think before he would've just found a way to blow it off. To your Q, in 180/181 Thor learns that Loki told Thanos he'd tried to destroy Jotunheim, and in 184/185 Thor learns that Loki also told them he's Jotun. I'm glad you mentioned it; there *are* a handful of small continuity errors in here in intend to fix when it's done. Re Loki's plans for Jotunheim, I believe Loki intended to destroy Jotunheim regardless of Thor's return. If he only wanted to kill Laufey, he could have done that on Jotunheim when they meet alone. He could have done it at any other point on Asgard. I believe he specifically wanted to kill Laufey as Laufey tried to kill Odin as the pretext he needed to wipe out every last FG in one fell swoop - you need a really good excuse for that (versus simply sending soldiers), and an attempt to kill your king and father as he lies entirely helpless in bed is a good one. I don't see any reason why destroying Jotunheim would be Loki's reaction to Thor returning; I believe it was the goal of his plan all along. Loki tells Frigga, after Laufey's death and *before* Thor's return, "I swear to you, Mother, they will pay for what they've done today." And he would have succeeded in making good on that oath, had the W3 not brought Thor back (...for the wrong reasons). Re Brokk...he's maybe a psychopath or similar...I think he really just didn't care what happened to that family. However, to not necessarily make it *too* harrowing, he actually says "when the crying stopped," and I deliberately left that ambiguous, as to whether he meant the unfortunate family, or perhaps their loved ones or neighbors who discovered them, and it also isn't specified how they died...perhaps he killed them before setting the fire. Callous regardless! The entirety of the Baldur episode is like an inevitable march toward tragedy at every turn. And right, even if all of that has faded entirely from public consciousness, there's no way to know for certain to what extent it influences how others think of Loki, even subconsciously, and in turn how Loki thinks of others. Just tragedy everywhere you turn. When Thor says the Four were better friends to Loki, he means better than he (Thor) was a friend to Loki. Thor had a *lot* of internal struggle with all this - Loki is his brother and was always his closest friend...but Loki murdered his other brother who he also loved. Thor was inconsistent in his behavior toward Loki after Loki was released, but he asked the Four to be kind to him, and they were, it was easier for them than for Thor because Baldur's loss wasn't personal for them. But Jane is correct (and you, too) in saying that they were always more Thor's friends than Loki's. Ha, true that re therapists! Ha, that was over a thousand years ago, Loki had forgotten that lesson by then! / Guest (Ch. 198/9, Feb. 21) Why thank you! / "Long time Lurker" (prologue/1): You had me doing some thinking! Stay tuned!
CHAPTER *200* is up next! Unbelievable. In the next chapter, we check in with the Polies to see how they're doing. Ha, come on, no. I'm predictable in saying dumb things like this. No, we pick up right where this one left off.
Excerpt:
"Do you remember what happened the last time power was so abruptly thrust upon him amidst trying circumstances?"
"Do you remember what it was like in those years? What he was like, after?"
"He is still standing right here," Loki said, glowering at both of them before focusing on Odin. "He has already been granted right of retribution by the current king of Asgard. Who are you?"