._.

Beneath

Chapter Two-Hundred Three – Morning

"The guards said you left during the night."

Odin waited, but Frigga did not reply. She wasn't even looking his way, not since a cursory glance when he opened the door to the garden. She sat huddled on one of the lounge chairs, knees tucked up under her chin, dark blue blanket wrapped around her to ward off the early morning chill that the partially risen sun had not yet burned off. Her hair was down, hanging loose over the blanket. She looked smaller and younger than she was.

"Did you sleep at all?"

She shook her head. "Sleeping seemed wrong."

"Wrong?"

"A risk. An undeserved luxury."

"It's a necessity, Frigga."

"Is it? Look at you. You haven't slept."

Odin looked down at himself reflexively. He had changed into something more casual before coming here, but she was right, he hadn't slept. No doubt it showed in the skin around his eye, or perhaps in his stooped shoulders. He was an old man – he'd accepted that years ago – and forgoing a night's sleep came at a cost. If the price grew too high, it would have to be paid in magic-fueled sleep.

"You may as well sit."

"I've been sitting all night."

"As you like."

"Have you seen Loki?"

"No. Have you?"

"No."

"Probably for the best."

"Frigga…are you angry with me?"

She looked up at him for the first time. "Of course I am." She looked away again, out toward what she could see of the garden beyond Odin. "No more so than I am at myself. Right now, though…more than anything I'm numb."

Odin nodded. Anger wasn't unexpected; numbness was apparent. "I don't think I've felt such a shock since I was first informed that Loki had probably done this."

"Killed Baldur. There's no reason not to say it any longer."

"There was always more than one reason not to say it."

"But you know the main one."

They were equally important, Odin thought, but arguing over it wouldn't gain anything. "Have you eaten? Shall I send for breakfast for you?"

"No. Thank you," Frigga added as a perfunctory afterthought.

Odin was disappointed; he thought doing something for her might make him feel better. Doing something good for someone he loved.

"Where have you been all night?" Frigga asked, more from a sense of custom and expectation than genuine curiosity.

"In my office. I got all the records from Finnulfur. He'd already pulled them himself, too."

"The trial records?" she asked, interest finally somewhat stirred.

"Trial, evidence logs, witness statements, everything. I read every word."

"And?"

"And…" Odin stuck his hands out in a rare show of exasperation. "Nothing. I thought I would find an error. Something that was overlooked. Insufficiently or overly weighted. A procedural error. Something. Anything. The magistrates were unanimous. I can find no errors."

"Except the one."

"How much I heard Loki's voice just now. Yes, except the one. But it shouldn't be possible. Such a severe error in judgement in so significant a matter? The confidence in it was complete. Not one of the magistrates recorded any lingering concerns in the decision."

Frigga took it in with little reaction. She had kept a certain distance from the trial, but she knew that the decision had been unanimous.

"Another thing struck me in the records. Loki never mentioned seeing someone else in the stables. Why would he leave that out?"

"Perhaps he was afraid to mention it. Perhaps he thought it was merely someone else who would avow that he made the arrow."

"Perhaps so. In any event, I next spoke to Jolgeir. Told him to review the observation records for the months leading up to his death, to see if we missed our future Supplies Advisor following Baldur around like a jealous hound. His name never appears. There's a handful of references to a young man with auburn hair, or red hair, or copper hair, a handful that each had similar height and build, similar beard, but there's no way to know how many different individuals these sightings may represent, and whether at least one of them was Geirmund. No suspicious behavior. No images."

"It was him. It had to have been. Probably all of them. If they'd recorded his hair color the same way…"

"Yes. If all of them were him, and if they had been recorded in the same way, they would have sought him out. Asked questions. Determined who he was, and that he'd left Asgard immediately after."

"After Baldur's death."

"Yes. And an error of a sort, possibly. But it was just a few sightings, spread out over months, not necessarily Geirmund. Geirmund probably never even met him. Never spoke to him face to face."

"To Baldur."

"They had no reason to suspect him, a complete stranger. And every reason to suspect Loki."

"And that is the mistake they made. That all of us made. The magistrates and us, but especially us. His parents. We didn't believe Loki."

"We did believe Loki. We believed him when he said he knew nothing about that arrow. Reading his statements made me so angry I wanted to throw him right back in a prison cell."

"Don't make this his fault, Odin. It wasn't his fault."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Yes, Frigga. I know. I just can't stop thinking…if he'd been honest from the start, everything would have—"

"But he wasn't. And that is that. What he suffered was still not his fault, and I will not abide the implication that it was. Sit."

"I'm f—"

"I want you to sit."

Odin regarded Frigga a moment longer, then shook his head and relented. He settled himself into the chair beside his wife's. A few seconds later, his eyes were fixed on the topiary. Each of the bushes was trimmed down to a sparse tiny ball. Given the circumstances, he hadn't spent any time here in the garden in months and couldn't recall the last shapes he'd seen them given. But they were always shaped into something. He supposed the bushes must have been so neglected until the last few days that they'd had to be pruned back to almost nothing in order to make a fresh start.

"It spelled 'family.'"

"What?"

"The topiary. I told Arfur that's what I wanted, as soon as he came back to work here from the bakery."

Odin turned to Frigga in confusion. "And then you told him to cut it away?" That wasn't like her at all, no matter how angry she might be.

"Not I. Loki. I sent for Arfur when I saw it like this. He's clearly got the garden almost back into shape, and I wanted to know why he ignored my orders. He said Loki came to the garden while he was working two days ago, so he left. When he returned to convey a message, he found Loki had taken up the sheers he'd left behind and mutilated the bushes so badly that these spheres were all he could manage, until they grow out again."

Disheartening as that was, it made much more sense than Frigga having been responsible for this. Odin could easily picture Loki hacking up bushes shaped to spell "family." It was too literal to qualify as symbolic. Odin wondered if Loki had imagined each of those bushes as his father's head – either Laufey's or his own.

"And this was before Geirmund," Frigga continued, turning back to meet Odin's gaze. "I worry for him so much."

"As do I. But Geirmund changes things for us, not for him. At least he always knew he wasn't guilty."

"I don't think he did. Oh, he knew it wasn't intentional, but he didn't suspect anyone had altered the arrow, not when it was never out of his possession until he gave it to Hodur. If he did, it would have come up. His advocate would have insisted a mystery person was the true killer."

"You're probably correct," Odin said with some surprise, not that Frigga had realized this, but that he had not. "I hadn't fully considered it from his perspective." The guilt he must have borne. One fact had changed, the fact that someone else had caused Baldur's death. But that one fact changed more than Odin had thus far been able to fathom.

"We have to do better at considering things from his perspective, Odin. Both of us. I don't want to lose him. Not again. And no matter how much he may resent us and even rage against us for the mistakes we've made, he still needs his family. We have to find a way to salvage this, now despite another grave injustice we've done him. He would be within his rights to choose to never see any of us again. Could you blame him for that? We were so magnanimous, weren't we? We forgave him, and insisted that all of Asgard forgive him as well. But he didn't need forgiveness. He didn't, but we did. We do."

"He's always known at least that he didn't…intentionally kill Baldur, and that we believed he did. Perhaps it won't be so bad, not for you. He'll forgive you," Odin said, gaze shifting to the topiary again. "His heart has always been soft toward you. And it's long been hard toward me."

"His heart must have been hardening ever since Baldur's death. That level of injustice, his family's lack of faith in him…. What a remarkable man our son is. That there was ever anything soft in him again. That he could ever look upon any of us with warmth, much less love." Her eyes grew unfocused as something new occurred to her; she'd been so consumed with what they'd learned about Baldur's death that she had forgotten what Loki had learned about his own birth. "I wonder if he thinks we didn't believe him because of where he was born."

"That would be irrational," Odin responded sharply. "You and I did not determine his guilt or innocence. A panel of five magistrates did. And none of them knew about that."

"I did not speak of magistrates, or of the official judgement. I spoke of us. And how rational has Loki been since he found out about his birth?"

Odin nodded over a weary sigh. "You have a point."

"He already thought we couldn't look at him without seeing a red-eyed monster. Not telling him the truth was a terrible mistake."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. If he'd known then, he might have believed then that he was distrusted because of his origins. That the magistrates made their decision based on bias rather than evidence."

"I don't mean only that. All of this, Odin. All of this, this place we now find ourselves. Loki and his anger and distrust and…this," she said, gesturing out to the topiary. "After all this, surely you recognize that we made a mistake in not telling him the truth."

"It's an impossible question. If we'd told him from the beginning, would that have solved anything? Or would it have made his childhood miserable and robbed him of every confidence as he grew into a man? Perhaps there were never any good solutions. We gave him everything we could, starting with a good, stable, happy home. But we raised the child of our worst enemy. There was never going to be a good time to tell him that. An impossible choice."

"Difficult and painful isn't the same as impossible. After a time, we simply ignored it. We ignored our responsibility as parents."

"We did n—." Frigga's withering smile wasn't all that made him stop. It was recognition that she was correct. Until the secret came out, they hadn't even talked about the issue of Loki's true origin since his youth. "We wanted him to have a normal life. But we became complacent."

"He had thirty-four years of a normal life. And then we abandoned him."

"Loki was not our only child."

"Neither was Baldur our only child."

"We were grieving, Frigga. Grieving for our boy. And when it became clear…when we believed it was clear that Loki had killed him…of course we put Baldur first."

"We put Baldur first and carved Loki out from our family entirely. Even if he had been guilty, he didn't stop being our son, too. We still should have supported him somehow."

"You're too hard on yourself."

"And you aren't hard enough on yourself, Odin, not in this. Loki needed his father and his mother to believe him, despite all the evidence against him."

"We did believe him. Have you forgotten? We believed the first version. We believed the second. How many should we have believed, when each one in turn was revealed to be a lie? Don't presume to know my feelings. I'm trying to speak from reason, but of course I recognize the enormity of the injustice done to him. Of course I recognize our part in it, mine especially. I feel it keenly. Why do you think I stayed up all night reviewing all those records?"

"You were reviewing facts. This isn't about facts. It's about family."

"It is about facts. Frigga, Loki was formally accused of murder against the throne. By law the same as a crime against me. How could I support him after all his lies? And his fate was not in my hands. All I could do for him was try to keep him alive!"

"You were the king! You could have done anything you wanted. You are the law. You could have precluded him from trial."

Odin clenched his jaw and remained silent, letting the initial responses come to mind and drift away unspoken. Frigga had taken wing on a flight of fancy. She wasn't looking back on those long‑ago events as they were at the time, but as she saw them now, with the benefit of a backward gaze. Guilt burned inside her. It burned in him as well, but where hers escaped in bursts of anger, his smoldered in frustration because he could not identify his error. "Interfering would have come at a cost. You know that. Would I have paid it, knowing what I know now? Of course I would have. Without hesitation. I did what I could," he said wearily. "I wish it had gone differently. I wish I had better discerned the truth. Anger won't change what happened, and neither will guilt. Nothing will. The best we can do is try to rectify it now. Loki will have his retribution, and we will ensure that all of Asgard and beyond knows that Loki was innocent of that crime."

"It's not going to be enough. It'll never be enough. You're right, nothing will ever change what happened. And no wonder he doesn't trust us when we tell him he's our son no matter his birth. Why would he? I can just imagine the things he's been telling himself since he learned the truth."

"What do you suggest we do, then? I welcome your ideas. I have too few of my own."

"To convince him to trust us again? I have no ideas. Mere days ago you would have turned him over to Jotunheim, and he knows that."

"Only as a truly last resort, to prevent Asgard's annihilation."

"Imagine that in his ears, Odin! It's a yes or no question. 'Would my father deliver me into the hands of our most hated enemies?' The answer is yes, no matter how many qualifications follow. It's still 'yes.'"

"I am, or was, as you said, king. I cannot put one man above the entire realm, not even my own son. We have discussed this. You must understand, Frigga."

"I do. I do understand that, in the abstract. You should know that I was prepared to defy you on this to protect my son regardless, to sweep Loki away from here to prevent that from happening. Don't look at me like that. It's a mother's prerogative. I'm a queen, not a king, and in Asgard an immeasurable gulf lies between them. You asked what can be done. You aren't king anymore. But you told Loki you were still his father. Be his father."

"And how do I do that? I've only managed to compel him to speak to me by dangling his freedom over his head, and I've already granted him that now."

"Don't compel him."

"Then he will never speak to me."

"That's easier said than done. We'll all be there for the proclamation. Show him support. Start here: Support him in application of the right of retribution. You opposed him, even physically, at every turn."

"I wasn't opposing him. Only his rush to judgement."

"Yes. Opposing his rush to judgement was opposing him."

"You opposed it, too, Frigga. We all did. Because we all understand that you cannot hear a man's confession and condemn him to death five minutes later. Asgardian law does not—"

"You're still speaking as a king."

"I have been a king for all of our sons' lives. I don't know any other way to be."

"Don't speak from a voice of authority – he's right, you have no real authority over him anymore. Tell him he has your support. Tell him Thor is right, the Law on Retribution and Recompense was created for exactly this purpose. Tell him that granting it to him is the least we can do for him in light of what happened. Tell him that you're concerned, that you want him to have clarity. To have time to reflect, to consult Finnulfur. Let Finnulfur handle questions of law with Loki. Given a chance, you know he'll do so, just as he did tonight. Loki doesn't need his father to lecture him about the law when the Law Advisor is standing right there."

Odin sat back in his chair and looked skyward. He could do that. It went against his instincts, stepping back to allow Finnulfur or anyone else to say what needed to be said to his own son, but he could do it. And he could see that yes, his relationship with his sons was a tangled one, with him holding a degree of authority over them that no other parent of adult children did. Whether it would make any difference to Loki was another matter, but it was worth a try.

"Don't lecture him about anything," Frigga said after a moment. "He's a grown man."

"Anything? And the next time he expresses his burning desire to turn Jotunheim into dust?"

"I'm not suggesting you agree with everything he says. Agreeing and lecturing are not the only options. He's not your subject, he's your son, as you said. Your grown son. Treat him as a man. Treat him with respect."

"I wanted your respect!" Odin could hear the words as loudly and plainly as if Loki stood right beside him. Raw words. The kind Odin associated with Loki being stripped so bare that only truth could escape his lips. Not words he'd expected, but truth nonetheless. "He told me, in essence, that he believed he'd never had my respect," he said quietly. "It's untrue…but I do think he believes it."

"You're often kinder to your advisors than you are to Loki. Or to Thor."

"Kinder? Kindness and respect are hardly the same thing."

"They aren't entirely unrelated, either. But fine. You treat your advisors with more respect."

"My advisors are experts in their fields. They are advisors. They are not my sons."

"They must first prove themselves to you, then? Thor took the throne in wartime and ably led Asgard despite our men being tremendously outnumbered and our resources quickly growing sparse. And Loki delivered us a victory in less than two days, through his handling of the Ljosalf and even the Jotuns of all people. Must they first be named experts in something? They each have a great deal of expertise, Odin. Or must they first reach four thousand years of age? It'll be too late by then because we'll both be dead."

Silence lingered. The sun had risen properly, its heat finally reaching them.

"If I am critical of them, it's because I set high standards that I want them to reach. If I question them, their decisions, it's to push them, to make them think, to make them learn. It isn't because I have no respect for them."

"How far short of those high standards did we fall when we believed Loki willfully took Baldur's life? When we knew Loki didn't have that kind of hatred in him?"

"He does now," Odin said, though an answer gnawed at him: very far indeed.

"He didn't then."

And he does now. Has it been stewing in him all this time? Did he lay in that bed in the Healing Room, unable to rise, hating us, hating me, more with every day? And every day since? Odin shook his head in answer to his own question. He had never seen any sign of that in Loki, not until the day of that ill-fated journey to Jotunheim. But because he had not seen any sign of it, did that mean it wasn't there? Not for the first time, he wished he understood his son. He wished he knew his son. Because he didn't, and now he wondered if he ever had, going as far back as Baldur's death, or even before.

"I have to try to talk to him, Frigga. Perhaps he'll refuse, but I have to try. This can't remain unaddressed. Do you have any suggestions for that?"

"Yes. Don't."

"Don't," Odin echoed, frustration mounting again. "Would you care to explain? How am I to show support if I don't speak to him?"

"I'm reminded that you talked to him more on Midgard than you have in the last decade combined. And now he's leaving."

"You blame me for that?"

"Yes!"

Odin slowly released a swelling of anger with an exhale through parted lips. "All right. What if I leave Asgard? Settle on another realm, in a quiet little village, keep to myself. Do you think he would stay then? Do you think that would solve all of his problems?"

Frigga tried to imagine it – it was absurd; no other realm would want Odin settling there right after going to war against Asgard, even if Odin was actually willing to do it – and while she wanted to imagine that Loki would indeed then stay, the more realistic side of her said that he would not. Loki's biggest conflict might be with Odin – and she wasn't even certain that was true – but it certainly wasn't his only conflict. And yet, so much of Loki's conflict lay fully inside himself, that she couldn't imagine where he thought he could go that he could leave it behind. Which was why she wished he would just stay here, despite the particular set of challenges for him on Asgard. "No. There's more than enough blame to go around. I'm sorry. I do know that it doesn't all fall on you."

"I don't expect it to go well," Odin said. "But I cannot say nothing."

"I suppose not. But be careful, Odin. Don't lecture. Don't talk about law. Don't talk about facts. Think of your son, not your standards. Tell him what you feel. Share your remorse. Even if it means nothing to him now…perhaps someday it will. Quoting law will never mean anything to him."

"I'll leave the law to Finnulfur. I can manage that much."

Frigga nodded. She knew that having decided in advance to say or not some factual thing, Odin would easily abide by the decision. He had millennia of experience as a communicator. It was only on a personal level with his grown sons that he ran into difficulty, and only Loki who had ever been bothered by it, though Thor, too, had lately exhibited moments of tension with his father. "We were blessed with three children," she said. "We've already lost one, and Loki…part of me fears we've already lost him, too, by his own choice. Even with Thor, we must take care, Odin. He no longer follows either blithely or blindly."

"I have noticed," Odin said with a touch of bitterness. That Thor questioned, though, that Thor paid attention enough to question, was a positive development. A king should not follow anyone blithely or blindly, not even his father and former king. That didn't mean he enjoyed the way Thor now occasionally dissected his words in a manner to make Loki proud.

"And Odin?"

"Yes."

"Don't even think about telling him 'we didn't make any mistakes.'"

/

/

Jane woke up by alarm – the Asgardian one built into the bedside table – after a night of fitful sleep, head aching dully. She bathed and washed her hair quickly rather than letting herself soak, applied another layer of Eir's lotion, and got ready quickly, throwing on one of the simpler gowns, a peach-colored iridescent one that left her arms bare. She grabbed a beige shawl in case it was chilly out, and forgot she was trying to hurry. Made of the finest, softest wool she had ever felt, Jane wrapped it around her shoulders and imagined herself getting back in bed, curling up and luxuriating in it.

The moment passed. She slid her feet into the peach satin shoes and hurried to the door while checking her hair, glad to find it almost entirely dry.

When she opened her door, two heads turned her way. Jolgeir and Halfur had clearly been in mid-conversation. "Good morning," she said.

"Good morning," Jolgeir said, quickly echoed by Halfur.

"What's up?"

"Just checking on the security of the floor. His Majesty King Thor would like to speak with you, when you are ready. Perhaps you'd first like to have some breakfast?"

Jane declined and she and Jolgeir set off for the throne room. Halfur returned to his position at the end of the corridor, and Jane quickly confirmed the guards at the other end of the corridor were still there, too.

"Has anything happened since last night?" she asked as they made their way down the stairs. She knew she didn't need to specify further.

"The Assembly met. That's all I'm aware of. They were informed about what happened last night."

"Do they have any role in all this?" Jane had come to think of the Assembly as a panel of experts that the king consulted, but she didn't have much sense of their function beyond that. It wasn't like Congress, she'd already surmised.

"Not directly, no. As Hergils explained it to me – he's the First Einherjar and was my immediate superior, I don't think you've met him – he said he thinks His Majesty simply wanted them to be aware. To not be caught by surprise and…reflexively defend Geirmund," he added, dropping his voice to a near-whisper.

"Would they?" Jane asked in surprise. "Is he that popular?" She didn't know anything of Geirmund other than what she'd seen and heard last night, but she hadn't gotten the impression that he was the Asgardian cool kid. Of course, the Geirmund of last night probably wasn't quite the same person everyone else had gotten to know before last night.

"He's new to the Assembly. I'm not sure if anyone besides Krusa knew him before he was appointed. But he quickly became highly regarded. He fulfilled a critical role for Asgard during the war. And Prince Loki…"

"Yeah," Jane said, to save Jolgeir from having to continue. "Asgard wasn't always kind to Loki," he had told her once before. And she hadn't forgotten whatever exactly had happened at the tavern when they were first seated, with the owner's father who'd been unhappy about Loki returning the Ice Casket to Jotunheim. How much else might she have been oblivious to, without Loki there pointing it out?

"I don't think there'll be any problems. For each of us who was there last night…there's no doubt as to Geirmund's guilt, and Loki's innocence. Even among those who might not take the prince's word for it there'll be no doubt. If any take issue, His Majesty and the All-Father will…Jane?"

Jane had stopped on the second floor and taken a few steps out on the landing, while Jolgeir continued a few more steps down.

"It's one more floor."

"I know. But…I thought there would be more guards here. Why are there so many…guards on my floor?" she asked, though she'd already realized the answer. "Is he on my floor?"

Jolgeir glanced up into the stairwell. "He is. Near the far end of the corridor. I'm sorry, I didn't realize you didn't know. I can assure you he is well guarded. He cannot leave his chambers. But if you're uncomfortable, I'm certain we can find other chambers for you."

"No. That's not necessary. I'm not worried. Just surprised. And this was my last night in those chambers anyway," Jane said, taking another look down the second-floor corridor, longer even than hers but with only one guard present, that she could see. She retraced her steps to rejoin Jolgeir.

"It was most likely his as well," Jolgeir said with a nod.

It took a few seconds for what Jolgeir said to sink in, and when it did, Jane shivered. She'd never met anyone condemned to death, as Geirmund probably would be, and her feelings about the death penalty were mixed. In the most horrific cases, where guilt was 100% clear…maybe. But too many people had been on death row and had their convictions overturned. One innocent person executed was too many. Loki himself was a prime example; he'd been convicted of first-degree murder, in her terms, and sentenced to death. And he wasn't guilty. Geirmund, on the other hand, had confessed, and no one had coerced him to do so. Still…. But this was Asgard, and the way they handled criminal justice was up to them.

It niggled at her, though. Loki wanted to inflict pain and suffering as well. Maybe because it had been inflicted on him, maybe also because it was the normal way things were done here. It used to be done that way on Earth, too. She'd read about it somewhere, how before jail was really a thing, criminals who weren't sentenced to death were beaten, whipped, publicly shamed, or fined or forced to provide free labor. Maybe life sentences, or even ones that were the Asgardian lifespan equivalent of a twenty- or thirty-year sentence, weren't practical here. But Loki wasn't motivated by some kind of philosophy or principles about justice and public order. The more she thought about it, she was certain of that. Loki simply wanted vengeance. The right of retribution and something-or-other, Finnulfur had referred to it as. Something Asgardian law anticipated and allowed for. Legalized vengeance.

She hadn't talked to Loki about it, not one word. She still wasn't sure if she should have. She'd thought it was better to just listen, to let him talk and get things off his chest, say whatever he felt the need to say.

Her opposition to the death penalty was far from strident. Her opposition to torture was a lot firmer. Was it moral cowardice, not to bring it up at all, when Loki was contemplating condemning someone to both torture and death? Was it not her place, as an outsider and literally an alien here? Was it her place regardless, because she was Loki's friend, someone he respected and would listen to?

These thoughts were doing nothing for her headache. She really should have made herself drink a glass of water before she collapsed into bed. Or at least gotten one this morning.

Before she knew it the warm tones of the not-so-private wing were behind her, the endless shining gold of the throne room before her. Jolgeir, who normally kept up the conversation when she was too busy gaping at things to say anything worthwhile, hadn't said another word. Maybe allowing her space for her own thoughts, or maybe caught up in his own. Loki had wanted him there last night, and Jane hadn't asked why. Maybe he'd had something to do with the trial.

"Thanks, Jolgeir," Jane said when she spotted Thor standing near the throne, six or seven others huddled around him, much like when she'd first arrived.

"You're welcome. I'll remain nearby."

One of those Thor was talking with spotted her first. The others scattered by the time Jane reached him. "Good morning, Jane. How are you?"

"Good morning. I'm fine. A little hung over from last night. How are you?"

"Fine. But hung over? You hardly drank at all."

"Apparently it was the mead cake that did me in."

"Mead cake?" It sounded ludicrous – no grown Aesir would feel any effect from a few bites of that cake, but Jane, of course, was not Aesir. "Nusi!" he called.

"Yes, Your Majesty," said the young man who immediately approached from the foot of the throne.

"Go ask Eir about that tonic for drink. Make sure she knows it's for a Midgardian."

"Tonic for drink?" Jane asked as soon as the other man hurried off.

"It eases the symptoms. Eir isn't quick to dispense it, but I'm sure she'll provide it for you."

"Okay," Jane said, figuring she'd find out more about that soon. "So…how's everything going today?"

"As well as it can. I used to think Asgard mostly ran itself. As it turns out, it doesn't. Our resources are stretched too thin to do all they need to. The rebuilding alone will…and all I really want to do is go find Loki."

"Do you know if he's come back? He was going riding last night, after we talked."

"He returned a few hours ago. That's all I know. He went into his chambers and has remained there."

"Hopefully getting some sleep."

Thor nodded. "Jane…come with me for a moment, so we can speak privately."

Jane followed Thor to a small room off to the side of the throne room, empty except for a few basic pieces of furniture. Thor closed the door behind them. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing I can quite call 'wrong.' I had thought…that last night might end differently. The king doesn't usually remain at a feast all night long. My father doesn't. When I asked, I was told that some people find it easier to relax when the king isn't around. That seems a strange notion to me, when the king is me. Nevertheless…I thought that last night I might follow the tradition. I thought" – he reached for her hand, brushed a thumb over the knuckles, then traced gentle fingers over her jaw with his other hand – "that you might come with me."

"Um…oh," Jane managed to get out. The way Thor was looking at her, she thought she knew what he had in mind, and her heartbeat picked up with his proximity. She gave a little shrug, trying to play it cool. "I might have." With a nervous smile that did not look sexy, she broke the intense eye contact and caught her breath. Her jaw tingled with the phantom touch of his fingers. It had been a while since she'd been in a serious relationship, and she'd never been particularly cool.

"And now…I must apologize."

"There's nothing to apologize for," Jane said, shaking her head rapidly until she realized she probably really looked like a dork now.

"There is." He squeezed her hand, then let it go. "I think…I never entirely stopped being skeptical of your friendship with Loki. And I don't think it ever occurred to me that you might somehow know him better than I, in just a handful of months. That you, or anyone, might recognize truth in him better than I. And I did ask him about it, when we were on Svartalfheim. He answered in as few words as possible – typical Loki, he either answers in far fewer words than necessary or a hundredfold more – and looking back on it…what he said was hardly definitive. But in those few words I heard what I expected to hear. If I'm entirely honest…perhaps even what I wanted to hear, because I didn't want to reopen old wounds. So I didn't press him on it. I couldn't conceive of the idea that he might truly be innocent, not after all this time. When you said Loki was shouting in his sleep about all this, I was convinced it was some kind of ruse to manipulate you. But you were right and I was wrong. I'm so sorry I discounted you, Jane. It was a mistake, and one I hope I won't repeat."

"I get it," she said after a few seconds' lag to catch up, because that wasn't where she'd been expecting Thor to go, not after where he'd started. "Rewriting history…trying to consider the possibility that something you'd always believed was true actually wasn't…that's not easy."

"No."

"Loki's had to do that a lot. You both have, I guess."

"Yes, but Loki much more so. Did he tell you what those years under the serpent did to him?"

"Not much. I think I've heard more about it from you than from him. He did say the venom got into his eyes and made him blind."

"It did? I didn't even know about that. It must have happened earlier. That was one of the few problems he didn't have when he was recovering. He couldn't walk for months. He couldn't eat. He couldn't control his bladder. He could barely lift an arm. Probably a dozen other things wrong with him. But on top of all that…he wasn't him anymore. That punishment was meant to spare his life. But…I think in a way it killed him all the same. He recovered, and eventually he did become Loki again, my brother again, and it was like it never happened. Still…with hindsight, I'm not sure if he was ever truly the same person again after that."

"Probably none of you were exactly the same as before. I don't know how you could be."

"Perhaps. You know…it was the first time I had to grow up," he said, just as it occurred to him. "Not when Baldur died. I think I managed to avoid it then, somehow. After Loki left. There was an incident…a misunderstanding, my misunderstanding, and Loki left Asgard for Svartalfheim. None of us knew where he was. I knew I'd made a mistake, a terrible one, and I knew I needed to make things right, and do better. We all did, or neither Loki nor any of the rest of us was ever going to have a normal life again. So I made things right, or tried my best to, and then…afterward…normal life wasn't being grown up. Normal life was adventuring with Loki and our friends…my friends? Leaping without looking, getting in and out of trouble…eternal youth, no matter how many years passed."

"You avoided growing up?"

"Not consciously. But once we were as we were…there was no real reason to change. Nothing forcing us to grow up. We spent our days however we chose." Thor fell into silence, for as soon as he'd spoken those words he realized they rang false. For the most part, they'd spent their days however he chose. And for the most part, he had leaped with looking, and he had ignored responsibility as much as possible. Not Loki. Loki was the one telling him to stop and think. "Loki grew up when Baldur died," he said. "Or maybe when he was judged guilty. But he never retreated from it like I did."

"You aren't retreating from it now."

"No. But I held out for a very long time," Thor said with a smile. "Until I marched my friends into Jotunheim, started a war, and got banished. And met you. Jane…how long do you plan to stay today? You're welcome to stay as long as you like, and I would be pleased to have you here as long as possible. I'll plan accordingly."

"I can stay all day. I told the site manager that I'd be back today but I didn't say when. I'll be here for the…proclamation, is that what it's called? After that I guess I'll play it by ear," she said.

"And Loki? Did he tell you what he plans to name as Geirmund's punishment?"

"We didn't talk about it. Everybody seems to think it'll be the death penalty, though."

"It's the expected price for Geirmund's crime." Thor paused, thoughts drifting for a moment. "Which makes me think perhaps Loki will come up with something else entirely. He tends to prefer the unexpected."

"But there are limits on what he can do, right? Based on what Finnulfur said?"

"There are, though I don't know much about that, and I don't think Loki does, either. I know there's a maximum number of lashes a person can receive before he or she must be provided healing or rest or both. Finnulfur will be there to ensure that whatever Loki decides is within the law."

"How was tying someone up under a snake that drips venom within the law? I know it's not now, but how was it ever within the law?"

"I don't know the history of it. But our bodies are durable and our lives long. Inventive or otherwise nonstandard punishments are sometimes permitted, to try to ensure that an unlawful act is not repeated. Not torture," he said, remembering that Jane had called it that. "Not what we consider torture. What Loki endured…it was outlawed because of how long it took him to recover from it. Punishment that requires such an extended recovery is too severe. Like torture," Thor added after a beat, his stomach giving a twist. It had not seemed so when he believed Loki was guilty. Now that he knew Loki was not… This was a punishment that had far exceeded the body's ability to heal itself naturally, and even a healer's ability to heal it without a great deal of time and effort. But he could not dwell on this further, not now, lest he begin to weep. "I'm glad he's been able to confide in you, Jane. I know now that there are things he's been unable to confide in anyone else about."

Jane nodded; she was glad, too. "He showed me where it happened. Where Baldur died."

"It doesn't look anything like it used to. I don't even think of it that way anymore, as the place he died."

"And your mother showed me old family pictures with him. The anniversary pictures."

"She still has those? I didn't know. I don't think I have anything connected to him. He was a part of our lives for such a short time. Now that I think about him again…I wonder what kind of person he would be, if he had lived. I wonder what kind of adventures we would have had, all three of us, once he was grown."

Jane wrapped her arms around him, and rested her cheek against him. "I wish you'd had the chance," she murmured against his chest. His chin came to rest on her head, and his arms around her, one hand lightly stroking her hair. Jane soon pulled away, though, when a knock came at the door.

"I met a clerk on my way here who gave me this for you, Lady Jane," Bragi said once Thor let him in. "I was told it's been diluted for you, and you should simply drink the contents in one go."

"From Eir?"

Thor nodded.

Jane thanked Bragi and took the small clear bottle of pale yellow liquid, downing it immediately before she could start thinking too much about the last time she'd drunk an unknown liquid from an Asgardian bottle. The taste reminded her of some kind of herbal tea, and though she was instantly on alert for weird side effects, none were kicking in yet, and Thor's attention had turned to Bragi after a reassuring smile.

"Any word from Loki on the register text?"

"Not that I'm aware of, Your Majesty. I'll inquire about it. In the meantime, Alfheim's ambassador arrived almost as soon as the three standing portals were unsealed this morning. He's requesting a meeting with you."

"About what?"

"He says it's merely to make his formal service announcement."

"Did they send a new ambassador?"

"No, the same one. Livondra. But he says his previous announcement and acceptance are no longer valid since our relations were broken by war. I checked with Finnulfur, and he confirmed it. Kaurik is entertaining him now, and I've asked Bosi to divert a team over to the Ambassadorial Estates to prepare it for official occupancy. We had families living in there, evacuated from the villages. I should have thought of this earlier, Your Majesty, I apologize that I did not."

"No need. We all have far too many tasks at the moment. Have we returned any of our ambassadors?"

"Not yet. I was hoping to discuss that with you today."

"Wow."

"Jane?"

"Sorry. It's just…my headache's completely gone. I feel so much better. More energy, too. If you ever find yourself cash-strapped, send an ambassador to Earth to sell that stuff. You'd make millions. Trillions."

"I wouldn't mention that to Eir," Thor said with a laugh. "Not unless you're prepared for a long talk about ethical dilemmas in healing."

Bragi, too, gave a laugh. "Now I know exactly what it was I brought you."

"I'm glad you feel better."

"Thanks. I should go, let you take care of all this. I, um, I'll be around. If you need me. Or if Loki's looking for me. Okay?"

"Yes, Jane, thank you."

Jane tossed an awkward little wave over her shoulder as she exited, leaving Thor to the obligations the morning had brought him; Thor, she thought, looked sad, though his lips quickly pulled upward when she caught his eye.

She'd come here for a feast. Eating and drinking and dancing and an introduction to Thor's and Loki's world that didn't involve her using a fake name. That was last night. Tonight, she'd be sticking around to see Loki, probably, ordering an execution.

/

[Insert meme of Peggy Carter telling Steve "It's been so long!"]

Longest gap between chapters by far! I'm back up online in my new location after the move, hopefully things will be back to normal. If I've left a PM or review dangling with you I'll get back to you soon. I wish this wasn't the chapter to follow a long absence, because honestly it's not one of my faves! Odin and Frigga are both too caught up in their own respective guilt and coping mechanisms to get much of anywhere (all this stuff came out just last night), and the second scene also has little progress. But both were, in my opinion, necessary scenes. Ideally I would have broken it up differently, but, it came out the way it came out. The next chapter has somewhat juicier bits. And you shouldn't have to wait months for it!

Thanks everyone, for all your comments. And for now I just want to say back to "FloofPenguin" - you have not given me enough context! Are you, like, retired with grandchildren now? :-) "Beneath: A story to be passed down through the generations. Because more generations have been born and it's still not finished." :-)

Previews for Ch. 204: Loki's morning kicks off later than the others'; not everyone is as unconcerned about Geirmund being on Jane's floor as Jane was.

Excerpt:

"Is Geirmund still where he's supposed to be?"

"I'm certain he is. His balcony is under constant watch from outside, and Chief Huskol has placed additional guards on the fourth floor. They keep constant eyes on his door."

"The fourth floor?" Loki repeated, stomach knotting.