.-.

Beneath

Chapter Two Hundred Six – Break

If your friend was a prince – an Asgardian one, anyway – you couldn't just drop by. You had to be summoned, or else your name had to be on a list of individuals pre-approved to access the upper floors, Jane found out, and she wasn't on Loki's list. No one was, though, Jolgeir had informed her. She wasn't on Thor's, either. Which added a layer of unease to Thor's loaded comment about them leaving the party early last night. She could be invited up to his bedroom for the night, but she couldn't swing by to say hi? It was just an oversight, of course, at least on Thor's part. Her visit had been hastily arranged, and Thor was burning the candle at both ends, arranging a peace treaty and getting Asgard back on its feet, things that were slightly more important than adding someone to his list of green-light visitors. It still felt weird, and she was going to make sure that was changed before she left Asgard.

It didn't take long, though, to find out Loki wasn't in his room anyway. The palace guards, Jolgeir explained, kept track of the royal family's location when they were in the city. With a question to the nearest Einherjar on duty, they were off to the royal stable.

Jolgeir pointed out the stable once it came into view – a stone and wood structure that was easily bigger than the house Jane had grown up in – then stepped aside for her to continue on her own with a promise he'd be nearby. Jane turned once to see him headed away. Maybe he was giving her privacy; maybe he was avoiding Loki. Either way, she wished he had stayed with her. But it wasn't her business, and Jolgeir didn't need her input, even if that hadn't stopped her from providing it once already.

The intricately carved horses standing before Asgard's throne on the double doors at the entrance left no doubt what the building was. She gave one of them a push, then more of a push, until it swung open enough for her to slip inside.

"I thought my orders were quite clear. Was there something about 'leave and do not disturb me' that you failed to grasp?"

"I guess I missed that particular order." Jane headed toward the voice that had called out, and watched as a head of black hair leaned out from one of the stalls. A snuffling sound came from one of the horses on the other side.

"What are you doing here?" Loki asked, baffled to see Jane standing there in the middle of the stables.

"Looking for you. But I don't want to bother you. If you'd rather be alone, I'll just say hi and head back to the palace."

"No, it's fine, I simply…I didn't expect to see you," Loki said, stepping fully out of the stall. "Though I should have immediately guessed it was you. Who else completely ignores my orders?"

"Yeah, I'm not much for taking orders. But I'm serious. I just wanted to see how you were doing. I know you've got a lot on your mind, and I don't want to get in the way."

"You aren't in the way. Don't worry, I'll let you know if I change my mind about that," Loki said with a broad smirk. "But in the meantime, I heard you've been getting Heimdall to answer all your questions."

"Not all of them, there wasn't nearly enough time for that. Some of them, though. We could've used you with us. It was hard for us to understand each other. We conceive of astronomy and physics in radically different ways."

"We do indeed. But even we have difficulty understanding how Heimdall conceives of them. He experiences it in a way the rest of us don't. I should have warned you about that. I could give him that astronomy textbook I purchased in Christchurch, order him to study it. Unfortunately, Heimdall does in fact have a proven history of disobeying my orders."

"Yeah, I hear you, but let's not go down that route right now, okay?"

"If you insist."

"I do. So what are you doing here? Because correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you're doing manual labor," Jane said, pointing at the hooked tool in Loki's dirty hand.

Loki glanced down at the hoof pick; a grin spread over his face when he looked back up. "I'm primarily opposed to scrubbing shower stalls and toilets and other people's dirty dishes. I'm not opposed to all manual labor. Would you like to meet Lifhilda?"

"One of the horses? Sure, I'd love to."

"Not just one of the horses," Loki said, beckoning Jane back to the stall he'd emerged from. "My horse. I have several, actually, but Lifhilda is my primary. She's more like an old friend than a simple steed."

"Really? You never mentioned her," Jane said, stepping carefully into the stall behind Loki. She hadn't been around horses much, and Lifhilda was huge.

"I didn't? I suppose not. I thought I'd lost her."

"Why?"

"When I…when I fell from the bifrost. I thought they would have given her to someone else. Stay still. And watch your feet. Those aren't proper shoes for being near horses."

Jane glanced down at her dusty silk shoes, then looked up to see Loki bending down and sliding his hand down Lifhilda's leg. The mare lifted her leg on her own, and Loki held onto the hoof and dug into it with his tool. He looked comfortable, despite the dirt and whatever other debris he was scraping out and sending flying, some of it winding up on his boots. "But she was here waiting for you when you got back?"

"She was. Weren't you, old girl?"

"Old? How old is she? How long do horses live here?"

"We're the same age. She's just about eleven years younger. She was, ah, a gift from Odin, on my twelfth birthday." Loki stood up again and returned the pick to its place in the grooming bag.

"This horse is over a thousand years old," Jane murmured, shaking her head. "Doesn't even seem that weird anymore."

Lifhilda chose that moment to puff up and blow air out her nose with a powerful pppssshhhh, startling Jane back a few steps. "I think she feels you've insulted her age."

"I'm not—. If you're trying to make me think Lifhilda understands English, you can give up on that right now. It would have come up by now if horses here could do that."

Loki didn't miss the way Jane watched him as she spoke, sizing him up. She clearly wasn't certain, no matter how much confidence she sought to project. Convincing her that Lifhilda understood her wouldn't be hard, but he wasn't in quite the right frame of mind to commit to the ruse, so he merely smiled and enjoyed the look of triumph on her face, as though she'd bested him in a game. It was hardly a real victory when he'd chosen not to play, but he felt no need to point that out.

"You could make it up to her with a bite to eat, if you'd like," he said instead.

"Yeah? Okay."

From his pocket he withdrew a pouch that held a couple of small parsnips sliced into strips. As soon as he unsealed the pouch, Lifhilda started to turn. He signaled Jane to his side. "Palm up, flat, thumb tucked close. Horses have teeth. She wouldn't bite you intentionally, but don't let her confuse any of your fingers for a parsnip."

Jane scrunched her nose up at the wiggly feel of the horse's lips on her palm and grinned as Lifhilda gobbled up the parsnip slices one after the other until Loki had no more to give her. It wasn't that different from feeding a carrot to a donkey, but it had been a long time. "Thanks, that was fun. And thank you, Lifhilda, for not confusing my fingers with parsnips."

Loki watched a moment longer, enjoying Jane's obvious delight, and made a quick decision. "I've already taken her through the short version of her grooming routine, but if you'd like to brush her…" – Jane's eyebrows went up in clear interest, and he went back to the grooming bag and pulled out a brush – "this is the soft brush. It's her favorite part, like getting a gentle massage."

Jane eagerly agreed, taking the brush and listening to Loki's simple instructions. "How much pressure?"

Loki blinked, and that decision, too, was made. "Put your hand up to begin the stroke. I'll show you." When Jane was in position, he placed his hand atop her hand and curled his fingers around hers. Pressing down, he guided her hand across Lifhilda's side. "About that much pressure," he said. He carefully withdrew his hand, and was unnaturally aware of it hanging uselessly at his side.

Jane started out with intense concentration, trying to maintain exactly the same of amount of pressure Loki had demonstrated, but soon relaxed into the motions and worried less about precision. If Lifhilda was enjoying herself Jane couldn't tell, but the mare didn't show any sign of objecting, either. "How do you know it's her favorite part?" she asked, crouching down for the legs.

"She told me. She speaks aloud when no one else is around."

Jane gave an exaggerated eyeroll.

"When we're outside she comes to me when she sees this brush. With the other brushes, she's indifferent."

Loki got Lifhilda to turn, to give them plenty of room for Jane to brush her other side.

"So…a horse, huh? That's a pretty nice gift. I mean, I wanted a horse when I was around twelve. But when your family's living on basically one income, and on top of that you're living in a pretty dense suburb, a horse isn't exactly realistic. What about you? Did you get whatever you wanted, when you were growing up?"

"Of course not," Loki answered automatically.

"Really?" Jane asked, glancing up from her brushing.

Loki hesitated this time, considering the question more carefully, until Jane paused and looked up at him. "I suppose I got what I asked for more often than not. I didn't actually ask for Lifhilda, though. I didn't ask for a horse. I could ride whatever horse I wanted, more or less, and I don't think it had occurred to me to ask for one of my own. She was a surprise."

"You must've been excited."

"Very. We'd visited a place where they bred and raised horses, my— my father and I." That's what he was then, wasn't he? What I thought he was, at least? Loki pushed forward, unwilling to dwell on it. "She was just a yearling then, a gangly long-legged thing – not unlike me at the time, in fact – and I fell in love with her almost instantly, in that way children do. We visited and then we left. I was certain I'd never see her again. The next day we returned, and he gifted her to me."

"Sounds like things were better then," Jane said, finishing one last stroke down a leg before handing the brush back to Loki to better focus on him.

"They were," Loki agreed, though he knew his tone reflected the wariness behind his answer. "I was very young. Unaware. And raised on lies. It would probably be more to the point to say things were simpler, but they were simpler due to my youth, and especially to my ignorance."

Ignorance is bliss, Jane thought, a saying she'd always found objectionable. Loki, she thought, would agree. In the next second, though, she wondered if that was true. "Do you ever wish you didn't know?"

Loki picked up where Jane had left off with the brush, getting the inside of Lifhilda's hind legs. He didn't need to contemplate the answer, but saying it aloud required a moment to gather his resolve. "Sometimes," he said, quietly, fixing his gaze on Lifhilda's shining coat. "But I dislike ignorance. Better not to hide oneself in it."

A fleeting smile passed over Jane's face, even a quiet little puff of laughter. The words may have been much more subdued than his usual manner of speaking, but the attitude behind them was exactly what she would have expected from him, and one she fully shared.

"We spent a day and a half on Vanaheim," Loki said, turning back to Jane, "just the two of us. That had never happened before. Thor was quite envious, that I was going without him. I remember those days as joyful. I had his attention all to myself the entire time. I'm not sure I'd realized before then that I craved that. I craved so much more from him than he ever gave me."

"Was it Baldur's death that changed everything?"

"No," Loki answered with a derisive huff. "Well…that did change everything, of course, but…I don't know. I don't know anymore, Jane. By then I already knew that Thor was favored, that Thor was—." He stopped and took a steadying breath. Talking about Thor was easier now, easy enough that he could for a moment forget that Thor was to Jane more than just his brother-not-brother. And that was something he couldn't ever allow himself to forget, much as he might wish he could. "I already recognized that I was different, or that…the path before me was different. I told myself it was because Thor was bound for the throne and I was not. That was part of my conflict with Baldur. I thought he shared my path, as he was even further from the throne than I, but he began to find Thor's footsteps more appealing than mine. It wasn't as petty as that," Loki quickly added. "Or perhaps it was. As I said, I don't know anymore. Things I once thought I understood, things I looked again at, reevaluated, and then thought I understood…it's all shifted so much. I want to pin everything down, examine it, find the meaning in it…and it slips right out of my grasp and shifts again. Sometimes it's enough to drive me mad." A moment later he realized his eyes had lost focus; he gave Jane a quick smile and turned to put the brush back in its place and straighten up the bag.

Jane listened, watching Loki closely, and for what felt like a long time couldn't find a single word to say. "You're talking about being driven mad," she said when he stood up again, "but I want you to know that you sound as sane and rational as I've ever heard you sound. You're just overwhelmed. You probably have been for a long time and now that you're starting to deal with it all…what you're feeling is normal."

Loki cast her a fond smile, trying to ignore the discomfort of how raw he felt, as though he'd unzipped his flesh to be able to so thoroughly bare his heart and mind. "And you're an expert in…this," he said with a vague gesture of his hand, "to assure me it's normal?"

"No. But I don't think you have to be. You just have to be human."

"Very speciesist of you."

Jane rolled her eyes atop a smile. "You just have to be a…an upright, bipedal, sentient being with highly developed brain function."

"Oh, the gifts you give me, dear Jane," Loki said, smile growing into a grin, for it was a gift; the rawness of a moment before was already fading. "A: Still speciesist. And B: You've just ruled out your own species."

"You're horrible, do you know that?"

"Thank you. I try."

"I don't know how you've put up with him for a thousand years," Jane said, running a gentle hand down Lifhilda's neck, and startling a little when the mare shook her head.

"A little firmer there, too. Don't let her confuse your fingers for parsnips or your hand for a fly. I don't know how I put up with you for these interminable months."

"Back atcha."

"So erudite."

"So pretentious."

Loki threw back his head and laughed. There weren't many who could keep with him. There weren't many who tried, and even fewer who didn't quickly give up. Jane, he had no doubt, would keep this up as long as he did. She was in a league all her own.

"You know," Jane said a few seconds later, holding back her own laughter, "wanting a horse was just a phase for me, a short one. I had ridden donkeys a couple of times, and—"

"I looked up your donkeys on Google, you know. Not quite the same thing."

"I know that. But I came back and for a while I wanted a horse and a ranch and a cowboy to fall in love with me and—. A cowboy is a man who rides horses and herds cattle out west," Jane explained at Loki's confused and comically horrified expression. "And then the next thing came along. But when I was younger, what I really wanted was a unicorn. It's a kind of horse with a cone-shaped horn growing out of the top of its head, like this," she said, making a circle with two fingers and tracing a horn on her head.

"Sounds like an ongren," Loki said with a nod.

"A…"

"Ongren."

"Oh, right, an ongren. Do the ongrens live by that same river the Great Spiny River Crickets live by?"

"I'm being serious," Loki said with a laugh. "Ongrens are real. The horn isn't quite cone-shaped. The tip is blunt rather than pointed."

"What color?" Jane asked, not believing a word of it. "Unicorns are white. Unless they're purple or pink." "Purple and pink stripes," Jane expected to hear.

"Purple or pink? You're the one spinning tales, now. Ongrens have a white snout, a white belly, mostly white legs, and a coat that's a variable shade of ruddy brown. They're a little bigger than horses, but not suitable for riding as they can't be readily domesticated. They're native to one of the continents of Alfheim."

"It's a real animal."

"Yes, a real animal. I'll show you one someday. If I can." How that was going to happen, Loki had no idea, but he could try to figure that out later. "Why don't we step out of the stall and leave Lifhilda in peace."

Jane agreed, and watched as Loki ran an affectionate hand over the horse's neck. She followed him out of the stall and washed her hands in a free-standing fountain Loki showed her. "You know, your mother said you liked horses," she said as Loki followed suit. "Carlo asked about it, when we met with everybody to try to explain things. Come to think of it, she mentioned you had a special horse, one that was a gift from your father. She was talking about Lifhilda."

"Mm," Loki said, idly drying his hands. A mutual appreciation for horses, he'd told the poker group he shared with his father, searching for some point of commonality because he'd been asked. Although he'd enjoyed riding, he'd taken no particular interest in horses before that day on Vanaheim, visiting a famed horse farm at his father's side. He'd believed his father was the strongest, bravest, greatest hero and king to ever live. He'd believed his father was Odin. Lifhilda, at least, was a constant amidst all the upheaval. "He was testing me. Whether I'd ever spoken a word of truth to them."

"You have this amazing and kind of disturbing way of casting things in the most negative light possible. What if he just wanted to find out if he'd gotten to know the real you?"

"Different words, same point," Loki said, dropping the cloth he'd dried his hands on into a basket under the fountain.

"Except that your way makes it sound like he's out for your blood. My way makes it sound like he's curious. Like he's willing to give you a chance. And since I was there and you weren't, I think my way is right."

"A chance for what?"

"I'm just saying maybe not everyone thinks the absolute worst of you like you seem to assume."

"They have no reason to think anything but the worst, Carlo included. I attacked his planet, and then I deceived him into playing card games and darts and musical instruments with me."

"Don't forget belching games," Jane said with a sour look.

"Mm. Yes, sadly I don't think I'll ever be able to forget about that. No need to mention it to anyone else here, by the way. Anyone else on Earth, either."

"Don't want your mom to know?"

"No," Loki said immediately and with utter seriousness. "What's that expression? What happens at the South Pole stays at the South Pole?"

"That's the one," Jane answered with a mental shrug that she wasn't going to be able to talk Loki out of his dire assumptions. She wasn't sure she'd ever talked him into or out of anything, not with mere words.

"Good. So how are you finding Asgard, Jane? Now that you've experienced more of it."

Jane couldn't help a little laugh at how thoroughly Loki had discarded the topic. "Hmmm. It's pretty. Shining. So dull, though. Nothing ever happens around here."

"In fact all this is rather unusual. I think I once slept through nearly a full century out of sheer boredom. You've come at an unusually lively time."

"Yeah. You've hardly had a break since you left the Pole. Since before that."

"This is a break."

"I'm not sure this counts."

"I choose to count it. Come out back with me?"

Jane nodded and followed Loki back through the stable, watching as his neck angled to the right and he slowed, gaze lingering for a moment before he continued on to the back gate. Outside, a man scurried past them, into the stables, rake in hand. Trying to get ahead of Loki's "get out," Jane figured. Loki ignored him and headed for a bench of wood slats and branching black metal curves.

"How is this not a break?" Loki asked with a smirk, reclining comfortably on the bench with Jane settling in beside him.

"Okay, it's a little bit of a break. By comparison." They weren't that far from the palace – its spires were easily visible – but their surroundings were quiet and peaceful, a paddock with flattened grass, its edges dotted with broad leafy shade trees like the one they now sat under. Fresh air wafted through the little field; Jane realized for the first time that the air inside the stable had been pretty fresh, too, despite there being a dozen or so horses inside. She'd have to remember to ask about that later, though, because although Loki was still smiling affably, she could tell by his change in posture that his thoughts had turned serious again.

"Now that we're both comfortable, why don't you tell me why you really sought me out."

"I wanted to see how you were doing. I wasn't making that up," Jane said, cringing internally at the defensiveness she heard in her voice.

"I didn't say you were. I simply know you well enough to know there's more."

"I do have…another question, I guess. I don't know what the norms are here. What the limits are. And I know you're…" Jane paused, clamping her jaw in frustration. It wasn't like her to be so careful, so hesitant in her words. She'd learned that from being around Loki, out of a need to navigate his unpredictable moods. Frankly, out of the desire to survive him at his most volatile. Circumstances had changed, Loki had changed, but the habit had stuck.

"Jane, I swear to you. Say what's on your mind. You've no need to fear my reaction."

"I'm not…it's not like that. It's not fear. You've just been through so much, and I don't want to insult you or upset you, or judge you in a way I have no right to. I—"

"And given everything I've been through, I doubt there's anything you could say that would part me from my mind now." As soon as he said it he knew it wasn't quite true, but it was true enough for what was the clear range of possible concerns on her mind at this moment.

"Okay," Jane said, then took a steadying breath. "I grew up hearing a lot about respecting other cultures. Being slow to judge. Not imposing your beliefs on others. So I don't want to interfere. I know you have your own laws and traditions. And I know your sense of morality isn't quite the same as mine. And not just you. All of Asgard, probably. And I…I can accept that. I think. It doesn't mean I like it, or I think it's okay, but I can accept it. You're you, and it's not up to me to change any of that."

"This is the longest preamble I have ever heard," Loki said with a teasing smile. Behind it rumbled weightier thoughts. He wasn't sure what his sense of morality was exactly, but it was different from hers. He had changed already, though. He was, he knew, hardly recognizable from the man who'd arrived in that underground SHIELD facility, or the man who'd pursued Jane all the way to the South Pole with single-minded malevolent intent. But he wasn't quite who he'd been before all of that, either. Was it Jane who had changed him? Or simply time and distance, separating him from Thanos, from that blasted scepter, from his so-called family, from the whole of Asgard? He disliked the idea of anyone holding such power over him…but he'd spent so much of that time and distance with Jane it was hard to imagine her presence in his life playing no role, no more than coincidence. Besides, the more he considered it, while Jane gathered her thoughts for the next words she so fretted over, he realized he didn't actually mind ceding a little power to Jane. His stomach tightened then, recognizing that concession for the self-deception it was. Not that he begrudged her a little power, but that she had already consolidated not a little power over him but a great deal of it. Before he could consider what that might mean, and how he felt about it, Jane was continuing, capturing his full attention.

"Not a preamble. A preface. Context," Jane said when it finally came to her how to proceed.

"If you would consult a dictionary, I be—"

"You once told me you weren't a torturer."

Loki drew in a sharp breath. He'd expected this, of course. Seen it in the way she looked at him at times today – a certain caution and unease in her manner, and in the way she hadn't looked at him, meeting his gaze and then averting hers for a second, after a smile or a laugh. Last night, in the immediate aftermath of the revelation, she hadn't had time to dwell on it, on what it would mean. By today, of course, she had. So he'd expected this. Just not quite so bluntly. She was watching him now. Waiting. "Go on," he said in an even tone.

"I've never forgotten you saying that. I wasn't sure what to do with it then. I didn't know if you'd really thought that through, or if it was just a defensive instinct. I didn't know if you understood that word the same way I did. What I did know was that you meant it. That you believed it."

"I was referring to a specific event," Loki said uneasily. He could already see how this was going to go, and he didn't like it.

"Dr. Schäfer. In Stuttgart. I know. But it was a general statement."

"Yes," Loki said, then fell silent. He remembered it as clearly as Jane obviously did. He'd been horrified to learn Schäfer had died. Not horrified. Ashamed. Jane had been horrified, and in the light of her horror he'd felt one of the first flickers of shame.

Loki thought of Geirmund. Thought of – pictured – the whip coming down on his back. The ax coming down on his neck. A drop of venom splattering his forehead. The images didn't fill him with glee. But they didn't fill him with shame, either. A cold sense of satisfaction, perhaps. Justice.

"It isn't the same," he said at length. "Schäfer was a stranger who had what I needed. I'd be lying if I said I had any concern for his well-being, but–" He clamped his jaw and swallowed; he hadn't meant to be that honest. He'd held back on that before. But in retrospect, it was laughably obvious regardless, and a slight twitching of the lips that could barely be labeled a frown was Jane's only visible reaction. "But my goal was simply to obtain a detailed scan of his eye." He hesitated, though not for long. Honesty had served him well thus far, and besides, this too was laughably obvious. "And to do so in a dramatic fashion. I didn't seek out his suffering, much less delight in it. I wish he hadn't died. This is different."

"I know. I know it's different."

"Schäfer didn't murder my brother and allow me to suffer for his crime."

"I know."

"Whatever punishment I pronounce upon Geirmund, I don't see it as torture. Not…not in the same way."

"But that's—" Jane stopped, took a deep breath to calm herself. "Isn't that what everyone thinks? When people torture other people, don't they think 'but this person really deserves it'? Because of who they are, or what they did? It's still torture, though, no matter who the person is, or what he did. The only difference is whether you think you can justify it. There's no question that what Geirmund did makes it easy to justify whatever happens to him. But torture is still torture. And I don't think a second round of torture cancels out the first. Two wrongs don't make a right."

Loki stood up, because he couldn't stay seated there any longer beside Jane, whose ardent conviction emanated from her like something physical, reflected in her wide expectant eyes, her outstretched hand, the curve of her back as she leaned in closer. Her impassioned pleas for him to see things her way were affecting him. And he couldn't let them.

"Do you disagree?" Jane asked, standing and planting herself in front of Loki so he couldn't push away what he didn't want to hear. Not easily, at least.

"I disagree with the equivalence you're making. What happens to Geirmund won't be about his suffering. There's an element of that, yes. I want him to suffer. I admit that freely. All punishment includes an element of suffering, does it not? Is one meant to enjoy prison? Does one not suffer loneliness and privation there? Indignities?"

"I'm not sure that's the point of prison."

"It also sends a message to the rest of Asgard. That the murder of a prince – of anyone – is not tolerated on this realm, no matter how long it takes before the crime is properly uncovered. That remaining silent and allowing someone else to bear a guilty person's punishment is also not tolerated. That such crimes will be dealt with harshly, no matter who has committed them, no matter how much false atonement the perpetrator has pursued in the meantime."

"That's a common justification, sending a message. Aren't there other ways to send messages than through inflicting torture on someone?"

"Many," Loki said, though he wasn't sure any were as effective, or frankly as satisfying. He'd briefly considered permanent marking of some sort – it was uncommon but allowed, with restrictions including no marking of the face, according to the response Finnulfur had promptly sent him – but deemed it insufficient. Geirmund was long overdue to experience at least some taste of the suffering Loki had endured, and did not deserve the comforts of life on Asgard, even if permanently marked. But Jane was creating a narrative that she would object to no matter how logically he explained his position, simply because of her word choice. "Torture is your word for it, not mine, and not Asgard's. Torture is in fact not permitted. Jane…" – his eyes flickered to her hand as he ignored the irrational impulse to take it – "I will not be swayed in this. I cannot. There will be an execution. And there will be more to it. It will begin tonight, so that I may witness it before I depart. There's…no need for you to be there for that part, though. In fact, I think I'd rather you not. I'm not a monster. But I understand your feelings about this, and I'd rather you not see me that way because of them."

Jane watched him for a moment, trying to gauge whether he was really as resolute as his words sounded. She nodded a few times before she spoke, having decided that he was, and that she wasn't going to win this argument. In the end, it was his decision. She'd said what she felt she should, and her conscience was clear. "Okay. Thanks for hearing me out at least. As for sticking around…if he's getting whipped, or beaten in some other way…I want to support you as your friend even if I don't agree with your decision, but I don't think I could watch that. I need you to know, though…whatever you've decided, no matter what I think of it, even if it's something I would call torture, and something I could never condone, I know you're not a monster. It won't change that."

"Incredible," Loki said after a long moment in which his eyes remained locked on Jane's.

"I mean it."

"I know. I was just thinking how much has changed. Before you saw me…in that other form, in the jamesway, I wouldn't have believed you. I didn't believe you. To be more precise, I didn't trust you. You would speak to me of friendship, of trust and of kindness, and I would think…if you knew the truth, if you knew who I really was, you wouldn't say such things."

"With everything I already knew at that point, it's hard to fathom that you thought that was what would make me call you a monster, but I think I get it now. I saw how people reacted to Farbauti. And I'll never forget the way you looked when you talked about the Jotuns."

"Mmm," Loki murmured. He didn't want to talk about Frost Giants, much less about Farbauti. "You did call me that once, though, you know. A monster. A heartless monster, to be precise. You said so with great conviction."

"I did?" Jane's thoughts scrambled backward, trying to pull the words from her memory. They used to argue a lot – not debated, argued. Sometimes viciously. At that thought, she remembered. They had certainly argued viciously then. They had sneered and shouted and Loki's hands had wound up around her throat and then started clamping down when he'd felt the same pressure around his own throat. "Oh. Right."

"I understand why, of course," Loki put in quickly. "My behavior certainly lent itself to that conclusion." He wouldn't directly say it – they'd more or less agreed not to bring it up again, and he certainly didn't need Heimdall to hear it, if the gatekeeper was listening – but they both knew he was referring to more than just his barbed words.

"Your behavior was so unpredictable. You were defending yourself, like…like you didn't want me to think you were some terrible person, like you didn't think of yourself that way, but at the same time…it was like you enjoyed scaring me in those earlier days." She remembered Loki looming over her, crowding her against a wall and trapping her there. "Ask me what happened to my birth father," he'd insisted. "I killed him," he said when she asked, after first leaning in close to relish her reaction. He'd even admitted he was deliberately trying to scare her.

"I'm sorry."

"I know. It's already forgiven," Jane said, the words coming out almost on auto-pilot as something tickled at the back of her mind, some deeper understanding just beginning to nudge at her. The effect on Loki of finding out he was born a hated Frost Giant, to the hated-above-all-others Laufey no less, couldn't be underestimated. That revelation hadn't upended a previously untroubled life – last night had made that perfectly clear if it somehow hadn't been before – but it had heavily shaded everything that followed, twisting and distorting how Loki felt about his family and about himself, and fueling an instability in him that hadn't appeared out of nowhere on that one fateful day, but had been there for a long, long time. Maybe – probably, Jane corrected herself – going all the way back to Baldur's death. Taken individually, a lot of the things Loki said and did were contradictory and didn't make much sense. Taken as a whole – in a way she never quite had before, the whole that went back a thousand years – the clarity of it was startling. She'd glimpsed this before, that Loki believed he was bound by his biology to be all of the worst things he thought about the Jotuns, but she hadn't grasped the immensity of it, how thoroughly it must have rewritten Loki's understanding of himself. "It was like you couldn't decide for yourself if you were a monster or not."

Loki stared at Jane, then looked away and swallowed hard. For just an instant his vision swam. He backed up the few steps to the bench they'd been on earlier and took care to actually sit and not simply collapse. "I think I did decide," he said once Jane had followed suit and sat back down beside him, though he still wasn't looking her way. "I didn't think it was a decision. I thought it was fate, and the only decision involved was whether or not to accept it. To struggle against it in vain, or to embrace it. And I wasn't myself then." Loki gave a single jerking shake of his head. "I was," he said firmly, "but…a monster did rage inside me. Everything that happened on Asgard, and then Thanos and his blasted lackey and—" And the manipulation, and the dreams…

"You thought you had to be a monster, because you thought you came from monsters."

"Yes. And I did come from monsters," Loki said, glancing around quickly though he knew they were alone, before focusing on Jane again. "But," he continued over Jane's attempted interruption, "a clever and stubborn mortal woman once told me that who they are has nothing to do with who I am. I thought those words to be rather banal at the time. Since then I've decided you were right. They don't define me. I define me."

Jane's grimace had transformed into a grin by the time Loki finished with a familiarly imperious look on his face. She was pretty sure she'd suggested something like that to him a long time ago. He hadn't been ready to hear it then, and she of course hadn't understood just how radical an idea, how impossible an idea it must have sounded like to him at the time. "I like that attitude. Okay, not that first part. But one step at a time, right? If I'd let other people define me, I would've given up on astrophysics a long time ago and…I don't even know what. Become a goat herder or something."

"Oh, Jana, you wouldn't have lasted long as a goat herder, I think. You would study how the others feed and graze and milk the goats, theorize about unorthodox improved methods, and anger the goat-herding community with your wild claims, at least until able to conduct controlled tests and prove your theories correct and their methods inferior. I suspect not letting others define you comes naturally to you."

"Not always. I've had a few moments of weakness," Jane said over her laughter. "But I was lucky that I had Erik. He always believed in me, even if he didn't always believe in all of my ideas. He supported me in following my own path."

Loki was struck by a flash of envy toward Jane's relationship with Erik. She was right; she was lucky for having that kind of support. It was distant now, obscured by matters that had been more pressing then, and more recently by seeing Erik through Jane's eyes, but he remembered feeling a certain disdain for the man's fawning – as he had thought of it then – attitude toward Jane. He knew exactly why now. Envy. He couldn't imagine Odin speaking about him the way Erik had spoken of Jane, had anyone managed to get that scepter over Odin's heart. The very idea of it made him shudder. He'd had such support from his mother, perhaps. Or perhaps he'd never opposed her enough to find out otherwise. Had he ever been encouraged to follow his own path? Or had he simply been ignored amid all the effort to push Thor along the path to the throne?

Loki closed his eyes for a moment; such musings were too heady, too complicated. And ultimately, it didn't matter. "I define me." No one else was included in that statement. "I think…perhaps I've let others define me for most of my life. Even when I was trying rather vigorously to avoid that," he said, falling silent for a moment as he recalled his association with Brokk. How much time and attention would he have ever granted that man if Brokk hadn't been the polar opposite of Thor and the last person in the cosmos that Odin would have wanted him to befriend? Whether following at Thor's heels and clamoring for Odin's approval, or turning away from Thor and seeking companionship from those sure to earn Odin's disapproval, it was all the same. When Midgard was dangled before his nose – the Midgard Odin had personally fought to defend and Thor had later committed himself to personally defend – it was simply more of the same. Stupid. He'd been so stupid. He'd thought himself clever. Thanos and the lackey had recognized him for the fool he was, and as soon as he'd hurtled through that narrow path to the Tesseract they'd probably cackled their laughter at how easily they'd set him on his new path, how fervently he'd embraced it as his own.

"What's wrong?" Jane asked as Loki's expression turned bitter and angry.

"Nothing. Not anymore. I was just thinking about some of the more questionable decisions I've made in my life. Including those that affected you. My aims were misguided when I went to Midgard, and I hope you know I regret that you were caught up in it the way you were. At the same time…I cannot regret it entirely. I wouldn't have come to know you otherwise. You mean a great deal to me, Jane."

"Likewise." It should have felt monumental, this sweeping blanket apology, even despite its very proper wording. But with the trickle of smaller, more specific apologies that had come from him in the last few weeks and his generally changed attitude toward Earth, it seemed entirely mundane, and that, Jane thought, was more surprising than the apology. "Speaking of that…"

"Yes?" Loki prompted, as apprehension spiked behind his open expression.

"If I mean so much to you…I have the same question for you that I do for Thor."

"Yes?" he repeated. He heard the uneasiness in his own voice and his polite smile began to feel forced. He couldn't imagine where she was going with this.

"Why aren't I on your list of approved visitors?"

"My…what? Pardon?"

"Your list of people who can drop in on you to say hi. I tried to earlier, and Jolgeir said it wasn't allowed. He looked pretty embarrassed about it."

"Because his job is to say 'yes' to your every whim," Loki said, relaxing into a bemused grin. It faded when he remembered she wanted to be on Thor's "list," too. It was expected, of course, but that didn't mean he had to like it. And as he considered it further, it was a rather rude oversight on Thor's part not to have granted it already to a woman he supposedly loved. It hadn't occurred to Loki, either, but he hadn't anticipated any such interest on Jane's part. He should have, for the way they'd lived at the South Pole, in close proximity and able to freely knock on any door they liked, was familiar and normal to Jane. Of course she would transfer that expectation to Asgard's palace even though they were merely friends.

"You should talk to him, by the way."

"Should I?"

"Mm-hm. He told me he was the one who arrested you for Baldur's murder."

"Mmm. Feeling guilty about that now?"

"I think so. But you should talk to him."

"Jolgeir's feelings are not among my priorities at the moment, I'm afraid."

"I know. I just thought…when you have a chance. Soooo…are you going to put me on your list?"

"I don't know."

"Hey!" Jane said with an indignant look.

"I like my privacy."

"You like to brood."

"I do not brood." At Jane's raised eyebrow, he added, "Serious contemplation of weighty matters is not the same as brooding. Regardless, you do remember we're both leaving tonight, don't you?"

"Yeah. But I still think I— Unless—" Jane clamped her mouth shut for a second. "Unless you really don't want—"

"I'll make the appropriate notification as soon as I have a chance. You may come by any time and say hi. Do feel free to say something more eloquent and more stimulating if you feel so led, however."

"Only if I feel so led."

"Of course. I wouldn't want you to put any undue pressure on yourself. In the meantime…I have an errand to run. Would you perhaps care to join me? Or do you have other plans?"

"No other plans. Sure, I'll join you. Where are we headed?"

"To visit my tailor."

/

Hi, there! Yep, I'm still here. I feel like I say this a lot lately but it's been hectic for a while now, sorry for being MIA so long! Between the release of the last chapter and this I had a family emergency. Then on the way back to my current home, I had Murphy's Law flight problems that resulted in it being about...50 hours of travel and an overnight in a country not on the original itinerary. (I swear I attract this kind of bad luck.) I was unnaturally exhausted and feeling bad for a week after that. So I've had some hitches along the way to getting back in the saddle, but even though you haven't heard from me via Profile Page or PMs, I'm here. And you *will* hear back from me.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, I'd love to hear from you, and here comes the standard preview and excerpt.

Preview: The break is over...though if you think everything plays out entirely as expected, I've been gone so long you've forgotten how this story goes...

Excerpt:

"Shall we have him brought in, then?"

"Yes. But he will be brought to me first. He owes me something."