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Beneath

Chapter Two Hundred Twenty – Spine

Identifying the exact location of his friends was easier said than done. Like everything else on Asgard, the prison system was still recovering. Prisoners were being moved and consolidated back to the original three prisons, and just this morning, as Thor learned, two Vanir prisoners of war had been discovered lumped in with the common Asgardian prisoners, unaware that they should have already been sent back to Vanaheim. Cells that had been overcrowded and poorly tended had to be emptied and cleaned, while temporary and repurposed spaces had to be torn down or returned to their original uses.

Once someone was finally able to specify their location, Thor was surprised to find the cells empty. He turned back and stopped the first guard he found.

"They were taken into the central yard for their outdoor time about ten minutes ago. All except for one who refused to go."

"Back that way?" Thor asked, pointing in the direction he'd come from.

"That's right, Your Majesty."

Thor thanked the man and retraced his steps. He'd been told they were in three adjacent cells, and he'd looked inside three empty cells. This time he continued farther, and found in a fourth cell not Sif, as he'd expected, but Hogun, who briefly looked his way before facing forward again, feet planted flat, back ramrod straight.

"Hogun?" With no response or any other reaction forthcoming, Thor continued. "One of the guards said you wouldn't go outside with the others. Is, ah…. Are you well?" The answer to the question he'd been about to ask – Is everything all right? – was obvious.

Hogun's lack of answer was answer enough.

"You're refusing to speak to me, then?" he asked when the silence dragged on.

"At the moment…I have nothing to say."

Thor lingered, uncertain what to say himself. He hadn't come here with a plan, and convincing Hogun to talk when he didn't want to was no small task. "I'll return another time," Thor said, retreating at a brisk pace.

He made his way out through the secured exit to the open area in the center of the prison, where he spotted his friends, along with a handful of other prisoners. He caught the eye of the lone guard on duty, who collected the other prisoners and left him alone with his friends.

They had each noticed his presence immediately, Volstagg sitting on a bench with a tankard in one hand, Sif repeatedly bouncing a small leather-wrapped target ball off one of the pale gray stone walls, Fandral using his arms to pull himself up on a bar in the middle of the yard. He'd expected them to be together, but it was as though they were each out here independently, nothing to do with each other. Independently ignoring him, after an initial glance his way. This wasn't going to be easy, but he had to face them and try.

Volstagg, Thor thought, seemed the most open, perhaps simply because he was not otherwise occupied, and he was also the closest. Thor approached him, continuing on to the bench despite the angry set of his jaw, despite how he slid his eyes to the side, away from Thor's.

"I wanted to check on you," he said, once he'd taken a seat next to Volstagg. "See how you were doing."

The only sounds were the rhythmic thumping of the ball against the wall and the thud of Fandral's feet hitting the ground. Fandral stood still for a moment, but then started coming their way.

"You're not speaking to me either, then?" Thor said.

"If I say the wrong thing," Volstagg said without turning to face Thor, "I might have more months tacked on to my time here. Years even. Best to keep it zipped."

"Yelling at the king isn't illegal. Even if it was, I would never do that to you. You were my friend long before I was king."

Volstagg turned to shoot him a withering look just as Fandral reached them.

"What happened?" Thor asked, eyes drawn to Volstagg's mouth. From afar he hadn't noticed, but Volstagg's lower lip was puffy, and a patchy trail of darker red stained his coppery beard.

"He and Hogun got into it," Fandral supplied.

"Why?" Thor asked, surprised but not shocked. Fighting was in their blood, and it occasionally spilled over outside of official sparring. Volstagg didn't look particularly worse for wear, and if Hogun had been injured he hadn't noticed it.

"He declined to come out here looking like a prisoner," Volstagg said, lifting his free hand and shaking it right in front of Thor's face, close enough that Thor instinctively drew back. Encircling his wrist was tarnished-looking gold metal, something between a thick bracelet and a short bracer. Matching cuffs, Thor knew, were on the other wrist, and the ankles, too. This was the medium-security prison, generally for non-violent offenders whose punishments were not terribly long. Thor wasn't certain of the rules, but apparently if they went outside they had to don these cuffs, which he knew would deliver a strong shock, then lock together, in case of escape attempt or attack. Or maybe they went on and stayed on from the first time the prisoner emerged from the cell. Either way, Hogun had refused to emerge.

"And then he hit you?"

Volstagg sniffed. "I told him to come down off his high horse because he was a prisoner. And then he hit me. And I hit him. General hitting followed, of the mutual sort."

"The guards separated them. Put Hogun in another cell," Fandral said.

"We were probably both imagining hitting Loki. Or you," Volstagg said, looking away again.

"The damage would've been a lot worse if that was true," Sif called, evidently listening despite seemingly ignoring them all for her mindless ball-bouncing. The target balls were normally used in sword training, but there were no swords around, for the obvious reasons.

"That's enough of that," Fandral said. "You aren't helping, Sif. Either of you."

The ball struck the wall and exploded in a cloud of dust and cork chunks. Sif stalked over to them. "And what exactly do you think we should be saying or doing that would help? Just what do you think is going to help? It certainly isn't him."

Sif wasn't looking at him when she said it, so it took a few seconds for Thor to realize she meant him. That he, their supposed friend, would not help them. "If…there's anything you need, or…." It sounded weak, and pointless, and it was. In the old days, he would be conspiring with them right now about how to break them out. To make this somehow go away. And Sif was right, in that sense he could not help.

"There is."

Thor's eyes jumped to Fandral's, heart leaping for an instant before it struck him that Fandral was about to ask him to get them out, or else tell him that he could help by going away and never seeing them again. "What?" he asked with a sense of dread.

"Notebooks and a pen. The guard wouldn't allow it. Said the rules on what we're permitted in our cells haven't been laid down yet. But if we're to write our statements, we need notebook and pen."

"You're ready to write them already?" Thor asked in surprise.

"Speak for yourself," Sif said, stomping off and withdrawing another of the brown balls from a bin.

"I am, yes. It needs to be done, and I've never been one for procrastination. If I start now, then in six months it will be polished to a shine, ready to be immortalized in the register."

Thor hesitated. "You know it will have to be…sincere."

Fandral's stiff smile turned brittle and decidedly unpleasant. "Are you saying I'm being insincere? That I would make an oath to my honesty and then lie before the Assembly? I have never lied, Thor. I have never misrepresented myself. Not about serious matters. If we speak of insincerity…that would be your brother."

"Fandral," Thor said, looking down for a few seconds to make sure he would remain calm, "now is not the best time to assail Loki's sincerity."

"You're talking about what happened a thousand years ago, when we were practically still youths? That was dreadful. So dreadful I can hardly fathom it. An injustice too terrible for words. But it can't be a blanket excuse for anything he does wrong for the rest of his life. It isn't an excuse for letting Frost Giants into Asgard, whether any of us thought you were ready for the throne or not, whether you were ready for the throne or not. And it certainly isn't an excuse for that scheme he concocted to kill Laufey and blow up Jotunheim."

"Of course it isn't. But you don't understand wha—." They didn't. But Thor couldn't explain it to them, either.

"We understand more than you think we do. We may even understand more than you do."

"How so," Thor said, his tone dark. He may have never fully understood Loki, but he was certain that no one else, with the exception of their mother, understood him better.

Volstagg tossed his tankard to the ground and stood. "You've never seen Loki the way we do. You've never been able to. He's been envious of you all his life. Whatever you had, he wanted. And when you were getting the throne…you think that was all about you not being ready? I'm sure that was part of it. Loki likes for his voice to carry, not that I can blame him for that, it's natural, and no one was listening to his sly little jibes meant to question your ascension to the throne. But it was also about envy. You can't hack a throne in two, nor can you make a second one. It's an all-or-nothing prize, and it was all yours."

"Loki told me he never wanted the throne. I believed him, Volstagg. I still do."

"Not the throne itself. Not the throne for the throne's sake. He wanted what you had. And he didn't want to be left out. To be left behind."

"You're going too far now," Fandral said. "You're making him sound like a child."

"I know he's not a child," Volstagg said, kicking at the tankard he'd hurled at the ground. They were plain metal, the ones given to prisoners, and did not shatter upon impact. "But that's what it looks like to me. His behavior is the grown-up version of Dora hiding Bjorsi's sword so he couldn't go out to his training and leave her behind."

"For someone so uninterested in a throne, he was awfully quick to head to Midgard and try to set himself up as a king there," Sif said, having abandoned the ball and drifted back over to the bench where Thor alone now sat.

"He wasn't working alone. Sometime after he fell from the bifrost, he encountered another being, somewhere outside the Nine. This being, Thanos, gave him an army, manipulated him into—"

Sif barked out a laugh. "Manipulated Loki? Let me guess, did Loki tell you that story? Loki is the one who manipulates. It's what he does best. And you're his favorite target. Look at you, you're making excuses for him, for invading the realm you vowed to protect. Think about it, Thor. People don't just go around getting thrones offered to them. No one's ever offered me one. Either of you ever been randomly offered a throne to convince you to do something?"

Fandral and Volstagg kept their eyes averted and said nothing.

Thor clenched his jaw tight to ensure he said nothing. He could not defend Loki without revealing Loki's secrets. Once Loki learned the truth of his birth, the throne and all that it signified must have become tangled up in so much more than envy and concern for Thor's readiness. A throne was just as much Loki's birthright as it was Thor's. Loki's, however, was on Jotunheim. A throne he couldn't have even if he wanted it. A throne he was deeply ashamed of. "There are still things you don't understand," he said, quietly.

"I'm sure that's true," Sif said. "But if Loki was offered a throne instead of seeking it out himself, then it's because whoever was manipulating him, assuming that's even true in the first place—"

"It is." Thor stared hard up at Sif, challenging her to disagree. On this point, he could and he would defend Loki. "His name is Thanos, and he is our enemy."

"Then Loki's lust for a throne was so transparent that this Thanos knew exactly what prize to dangle before his eyes. Even after the inexcusable things he's done, you still make excuses for him. Because he knows exactly what to say to you. You have a soft spot for him, and he knows this weakness well. We have long tried to protect you from it."

"A soft spot? Sif, he's my brother. I love him."

"Not a soft spot," Fandral hastened to add. "We all have a soft spot for him. Well…some of us do. You have a blind spot, one shaped precisely like Loki. He uses that. He uses you. Hardly a day has gone by that he hasn't pulled some trick on you or insulted you in some clever way that you never even noticed."

"I noticed," Thor grumbled.

"Please," Sif said. "He sabotaged your ascension and he probably told you how proud he was of you right before he did it. And when we found you afterward he was clearly whispering his poison into your ear to convince you to defy your father and go to Jotunheim."

Thor shot up from the bench. "Is that so? Was Loki whispering poison into each of your ears, then, too? I knew exactly what to say to you. Are you going to say that I used you?"

"You did, didn't you?"

Thor stared at Sif, a phantom pain in his side as though a knife had been slipped in. His instinct was to deny, but that instinct battled with the mantle of guilt he'd come here wrapped in, bolstered by the understanding of how oblivious he'd been of his treatment of Loki and the flicker of fear that now appeared alongside it that maybe it wasn't only Loki. He stood there reeling, until Fandral spoke up again.

"She didn't mean that."

"I think I did," Sif said, a little quieter, a little less instantaneous.

"You didn't mean it the way it sounded. Thor has" – Fandral turned back to Thor – "you have never misled us about what you wanted, or why you wanted it. That's Loki's game. And we would've gone with you to Jotunheim if you wanted us to, no matter what you said."

"That much is true," Sif said, nodding slowly. "Friends will do that for each other, out of loyalty."

Thor watched Sif walk away again, then resume bouncing the ball off the wall with measured flicks of her wrist. He knew what she was trying to say, but he wasn't done talking about Loki. "You're right about me having a blind spot where Loki is concerned. Sometimes I did notice that he was up to some mischief, and I ignored it because it was Loki being Loki and I didn't care. I should have. I tossed Loki to the side so many times, and just like Sif with that ball over there, I never questioned that he would keep coming back."

"You never tossed him to the side," Volstagg said. "You always included him, even when he grumbled about it and claimed to not want to be included."

"I don't mean literally. I included him and then I…I took him for granted. I forgot that he deserved my respect."

"He tried to kill you," Sif called, not even looking their way. "On Midgard? The Destroyer? You were ready to sacrifice your own life to appease him, and he was happy to take you up on it. Respect isn't the first thing that comes to mind that he deserved."

"He was in the wrong. I'm not denying that. I'm not excusing it. But he's not the only one who's been in the wrong. Did you hear how I insulted him on Jotunheim? I told him, Loki, a prince, second in line to the throne, to know his place. Right in front of our enemy's king."

"That was…harsh," Fandral said. "I like to think you would have apologized to him, had things not gone so far off course."

"I wouldn't have," Thor said immediately. "I wouldn't have thought anything of it, not without prodding. It was instinctive. Treating my brother like that was instinctive. Loki was a blind spot for me. I wouldn't have spoken to any of you that way. Only him." He looked away for a moment. This was getting him nowhere. "I understand your anger. You are good people, each of you. Fair-minded. I have been fortunate to have such honorable friends, better friends than I've sometimes deserved. I can only hope that in time you, too, can understand. Fandral…how is it you're already prepared to write the statement Loki requires, when you speak of him as you do?"

Fandral sighed, turned, and all but collapsed onto the bench. Thor thought he looked unnaturally tired. Defeated, even. Perhaps he was. Unlike the others, he wasn't wearing any form of armor at all, just a pale green tunic, dark brown leather pants, simple leather boots with a cloth trim. He certainly didn't look like he was readying himself to fight.

"Because you're right," Fandral said, looking up at him with smile devoid of any hint of happiness or warmth. "Loki wasn't the only one in the wrong. We thought we were doing the right thing. Standing up for you. Protecting you, when we were convinced that you were in danger, that Asgard was in danger. But in doing so, we disobeyed our king's command. Whether it would have been to unseat Loki…it's easy to look back now and think, perhaps not. But at the time we thought he'd seized the throne when it should have gone to you as next in line. We meant to rectify that." He stuck out an upturned hand and shrugged. "There's a price to be paid for that. And I suppose we thought" – he glanced up at Volstagg and then toward Sif, who was surely still listening even if all that came from her was the regular smacking of the leather ball – "I suppose I thought we wouldn't have to pay it since we did it for you."

A long silence followed. Thor had no idea what any of the rest of them might be thinking, and he had no idea how to respond. It sounded like some of what Loki said last night had actually sunk in, at least with Fandral, despite their arguing today.

"I'm still working on regretting it. I feel that…perhaps we did the wrong thing for the right reason. He told you your father was dead, and that you were to blame for it. That is…unconscionable. I've never known Loki to be so utterly cruel."

You've never known Loki to have just found out that our father was not his by blood, that his father was Laufey of Jotunheim. It was irrelevant to any decisions they had made, though. "You didn't know that until after you defied him and found me."

"True," Fandral said with a slow nod.

"Loki was…a little unstable, at the time. Disturbed. But you didn't know that, either. It was a family matter. What happened to our father, what happened to me, it was a strain on him."

"It was a strain on us all. But no one else decided that the solution was to reduce a realm to rubble."

"Which you didn't know at the time, either."

"No. Which is why I say I recognize that we were in the wrong, but that I'm not sure I can regret it."

Thor considered it. "Perhaps you don't have to. At least in order to write the statement."

Fandral's smile finally reached his eyes, and while it wasn't much, at least a glimmer of Thor's old friend was there. "Which is why I said I was ready to write it. Loki's always been a clever one. He didn't ask for feelings. He asked for facts. The facts, as a matter of law, are on his side. Feelings he knew he couldn't compel."

Thor nodded, still contemplating it. It was true; Loki had asked them to state their crime, accept their responsibility for it, and acknowledge that he had been Asgard's legitimate king at the time. It really wasn't much. Now that he thought about it in the manner Fandral had cast it, he wondered why Fandral was alone in his reaction. He didn't see how it could be a simple question of stubbornness. Of the four, only Sif was especially stubborn, rivalling Loki in her refusal to yield. Hogun was more practical, though he could be uncompromising in his ideals. Volstagg had grown a little stuck in his ways, particularly since becoming a father, but Thor would never have described him as stubborn.

"Volstagg? Do you not see things as Fandral does?"

Volstagg harrumphed. "Fandral sees things in the manner most expedient for getting what he wants, which is out of here, with the bare minimum of his pride intact. He's not so unlike Loki in that regard, only Loki has more pride."

Fandral was back on his feet in a flash, fists clenched.

"Friends," Thor said, a hand out to restrain if necessary, but neither man paid him any attention.

"I see things as they are. And I'm the only one of you to do so. You think you can just pretend it away? Neither sulking nor shouting will change anything. We did exactly what he said we did, and like it or not, he was king. Facts, Volstagg. Simple facts. You're letting pride overcome reason. You all are."

As Fandral spoke and, despite an initial flash of anger, Volstagg did not strike, his fists unclenched. In the silence that followed, he turned and walked away. Thor watched him grab another ball and hurl it at the wall with a sweeping motion. He hadn't angled it to be able to catch it, and it went flying off and away. Sif, Thor realized, had fallen still to watch the confrontation. She glared at Fandral as he walked past, then retrieved her own ball and started in again.

They were each on edge, and dealing with it in their own ways. Sif was a tightly stretched cord, bleeding off what little energy she could so that she didn't snap. Thor understood the feeling. Physical confinement was going to be hardest on her.

"Whoever said I had much in the way of pride," Volstagg mumbled, bending over to retrieve his tankard. He stared down at it and sniffed. "Miserable place, this. No one even comes to refill your cup, much less bring you a new one. Who do you have to complain to for better service?"

"I'll see that you get a new one. With fresh, ah…what were you drinking?"

Volstagg straightened up and shot him a look. "It's prison, Thor. What do you think I was drinking? A fine top-quality limited-run mead?"

Thor gave a twitching half-shrug. "Fine top-quality limited-run water, then. I could probably get you your own barrel of mead, too. There must be some perks to being king." He cracked a smile at the end, but it fled from Volstagg's scowl.

"You've discovered some perks, all right. I think I've already had my fill of being on the receiving end of them."

"Volstagg…I did what—"

"No." The word was firm and razor-sharp, no hint of Volstagg's usual jovial nature, not even the dryer version of it he'd shown until now. Somehow it was easy to forget that Volstagg and he were the exact same height, and it was startling to be reminded of it. Thor could not quite get his jaw to unlock. "You always do that. You always come in and convince us. Whatever it is, you convince us, and we…we let you. Because you're you. Because you inspire that kind of friendship. That kind of loyalty," he said, jerking his head toward Sif. "Not this time. Don't come in here expecting loyalty to get you what you want. Not when it only goes one way."

Volstagg's words were a slap in the face, and for the first time Thor's temper truly began to rise, his hands to draw into fists. "My loyalty to you as one of my dearest friends is unchanged. But no loyalty is without limit. Loyalty must end where treason begins."

"Treason! Now you're calling it that, too, are you? It was well over a year ago now, closer to two, and you haven't had a problem with our so-called treason all this time. I wonder what has changed in these last few days? Let me think, oh, I don't know, could it possibly be that Loki returned to Asgard just days ago? Whispering in your ear, like Sif said, making you think your ideas were yours instead of his?"

"What are you saying? Would you rather he hadn't returned? We thought him dead before. Would you rather he had been?"

"No!" Volstagg roared. "No, no, no, no, no!" He hurled the tankard against the metal bench, where it clattered and bobbled and fell back to the ground in one undamaged piece. Volstagg glared at it, huffing like a Svartalf smokestack, until his breathing settled. He sniffed again, ran a hand over his long beard. "That wasn't half as satisfying as I'd hoped. Not even a tenth, if I'm honest."

"You should try a desk. It's a little better," Thor said, already mollified.

"Seen any of those around here?"

"I suppose not."

"If Bjorsi had done that I'd give him a rap on the knuckles and send him to a corner until he calmed down and was ready to apologize. Or Gudda would. She always says I'm too much of a pushover with those hooligans." He shook his head, shoulders sinking. "How could you say that? How could you think that? That I would want him dead. Then, now, ever."

"I spoke in anger. I'm sorry. I don't think that. I truly don't."

"You aren't in here with us, Thor. You don't understand."

"I would like to."

"Gudda is on her own with the children," Volstagg said after a short hesitation. "She's got her mother to help, and her sister, but they both have their own responsibilities, too. How is she supposed to handle all six of our little ruffians by herself? And Dora's birthday is next month. Stavi's two months later. I'm missing six months of their lives. You don't understand how quickly the time flies. You may have them for a couple thousand years, but you blink and this time before they're grown is gone, and you don't get a minute of it back. I'm the one who tells the little ones their bedtime stories. Gudda is a fine woman, a fine wife and mother, but she's a terrible storyteller. How are they supposed to fall asleep at night? How is she supposed to tell them why I'm not there? What are they supposed to tell others, when they're asked where I am? 'My father's in prison for treason?'"

Volstagg looked bitter and sad, and very unlike Volstagg. Thor felt terrible for him. He loved Volstagg's children, and he'd failed to consider what it would be like for them. But it couldn't be helped. Volstagg's own decisions had led him here, and there was no way to insulate his family from the consequences.

"I've always liked him."

Thor was waiting for elaboration when he realized Volstagg was referring to Loki.

"That's the real rub. And I've always known his faults. Perhaps not as much as I thought I did, after yesterday. But…as much as I've always tried to look out for you, I've always tried to look out for him, too. I thought of him as a friend. Family, even. That annoying little cousin that sometimes drives you mad but you still can't help being fond of the rascal. All the adventures we've been on together, all the times we've fought at each other's sides…. I didn't want to believe he was up to some terrible scheme. I tried to reason with him. He wouldn't listen. He was practically oozing terrible scheme. Treason," he scoffed. "Perhaps next time you'd rather us just leave you wherever you're banished to, no matter what's happening on Asgard. Though now that you're king I suppose there won't be a next time."

On the verge of agreeing, Thor remembered that his position in that regard was less secure than Volstagg knew. He could hardly expect his friends' commiseration at the moment, though. "Asgard had a lawful king, and that lawful king refused to bring me back. Yes, you should have left me there."

"That wasn't your reaction when we found you in that village on Midgard."

"It was at first," Sif said, "when you still believed the lies Loki had fed you. Lies designed to convince you to never even try to return to Asgard."

Thor turned to Sif while she spoke. The thudding of the ball never broke its rhythm, though at some point she had switched to alternating the hand she threw and caught with.

"I was furious when I realized he'd made all that up. He told me I killed my father, my mother never wanted to see me again…I wanted to wring his neck. But I didn't know what had happened on Asgard."

"Ah-ah-ah, and did you stop to ask anyone else before you set out to wring the lawful king's neck?" Volstagg asked in a near sing-song voice. "If it was treason for us when we went to get you, then it was also treason for you when you came back with us of your own eager free will."

That gave Thor pause. His mind rebelled at the idea that anything he had done could remotely qualify as treasonous. But it was true that as soon as he found out Loki had delivered him a steaming plate of lies that he'd devoured without question, he hadn't thought of Loki as Asgard's king. He'd thought of Loki as his lying, scheming, conniving little brother who needed to be…. He hated to finish the thought, but it was there anyway: who needed to be put back in his place. It had been personal, though. A matter between brothers, not between a first prince and a second-prince-turned-king. Heimdall didn't need four people's help to get to the Healing Room. Thor could have taken three with him, and any number of Einherjar, to confront Loki. Instead he'd gone alone.

On the other hand, it was personal for his friends as well. They cared about him, worried about him. They had come for him, and he'd been grateful. Their situations, though, had not been quite the same.

"Not a pleasant feeling, is it?" Volstagg said, voice flat. "Being accused of treason."

"It isn't. And there's an element of truth in what you say. Loki lied to me, so I thought he must have lied and manipulated his way onto the throne as well, and no, I didn't stop to ask anyone who might know whether that was true. But we arrived to find Frost Giants on— Jotuns on Asgard, and I raced straight to where Father lay, and found Loki there, and—. He attacked me again, and from there he tried to destroy Jotunheim and I had to stop him. By the time I returned to Asgard, I don't know what I could have done differently. I could only respond. When you came after me, Asgard was calm."

"We could have waited until after he destroyed Jotunheim to come get you."

"You had no way of knowing that was going to happen, Volstagg! You were lucky in that regard. My friend…can you not see that you made a serious mistake? Or can you simply not admit it? The circumstances were extraordinary, and shaded in gray. Loki, too, was not without fault. But he clearly recognized that, or he wouldn't have made your punishment so lenient. I do not say it's easy, but you know that for what you stood accused of, it is lenient. And can you not recognize that in this form of punishment, he has given you the opportunity to tell your side of it? He's not forcing you to call it treason, he explicitly said so. You must admit wrong-doing, yes, but you can also explain why, what led you to it, as long as in doing so you don't seek to shift the blame for your decisions onto Loki. Say what you will about Loki and his scheming…he did let Jotuns into Asgard to disrupt my ascension, and it was reckless and wrong. It's a part of him, a part he sometimes holds the reins on too lightly. But this punishment was fair." He paused to let a rising tide of frustration pass. If Volstagg was moved at all by his words, there was no sign of it. "If I can admit my own mistakes in how I've treated Loki in the past, despite all he's done to me, why can you not do the same?"

A long silence followed. Thor was determined to wait it out, to hear Volstagg's response instead of filling the emptiness with more words that were full of conviction but lacking in Loki's skill.

In the end, instead of responding Volstagg ambled over to Sif. "Any fun to be had with these?" He eyed the short round bin that held the target balls.

"Not really."

"Fine," Thor said after another minute of silence, Volstagg watching Sif's mechanical motions, Fandral leaning against the wall, one foot raised and braced against it, not too far from the door. "I'll come again, when I can. I have to go to Midgard later today, to make arrangements for Geirmund. I'll have some ceramic tankards sent down for you, Volstagg. And a notebook and pen for Fandral. I'll do my best to look in on Gudda and the children tomorrow. I'd do it tonight but I may return late and I wouldn't want to wake them. If you need anything else, send word. The guards all know you're my friends. You may not want to hear this right now but I'll say it again anyway: I remain your friend. I have so many things I wish I could talk to you about. I hope the day comes soon when we can put this behind us."

"Do you think that's possible?" Fandral asked, his tone calm. "Just put it behind us? Like it never happened?"

"I don't know, but I have to believe we can. Loki tried to kill me. More than once," he added with a flicker of a rueful smile. "But we're doing better, I think."

Fandral's expression immediately darkened and Thor knew that he'd said something wrong. To his right, the absence of the ball's regular thumping was jarring.

"And you've put that behind you, have you?" Sif asked. "Both of you?"

"We're working on it," Thor said, cringing a little at how defensive he sounded. "In our own ways."

"You mean you're working on it," Sif said. "When I said you used us, Thor, I did mean it. You used us as one of your 'ways.' You can't stand Loki being mad at you. You never could. You sacrificed us to win points with him by giving his ego a nice big stroke. You couldn't even be bothered to say a word when he went up and sat on your throne. No wonder you sent the All-Father away. He never would have stood for that. He never would have done any of this. And it didn't even work, did it? Your points. They weren't enough. Loki still left. If you'd known that, would you still have done it?"

"Yes, Sif. Because it was the right thing to do. I didn't—"

"He could have ordered our execution, Thor! If you think we're going to just put this behind us and…and laugh over it someday…." She paused, shook her head. "Then you've simply lost your mind."

"He wouldn't have," Thor said after a moment. The words were weak; he'd had no way of knowing that for certain, and Sif was right – Loki could have done that, in theory. "He said something offhand, earlier, when he was sure I would never do anything about it, that he thought you should be in prison. He resented you, what you'd done, but he never called for your blood. You know, today I found out that no one even entered his reign into the Record of Rule. It's just as Loki said, his commands were treated as suggestions, his place on the throne as…as a fiction, or a temporary inconvenience. It was ignored. He was ignored. If you can't see where the problem lies in this when you think of Loki, then don't think of Loki. Think of Asgard. What kind of realm are we if our king can be ignored at the whim of the public? If his decrees are optional, and citizens are free to look wherever they like for alternatives – themselves, their friends, their allies? That is one step from anarchy. And when citizens move to depose a sitting king, it's a path to civil strife, even civil war. For the good of Asgard, such actions cannot be ignored. I wasn't sacrificing you to him. It wasn't a question of choosing him over you. I was choosing right over wrong. It just took me a while to recognize which was which."

Sif's response wasn't instantaneous, but it wasn't long in coming, either. "And what kind of realm are we if we blindly follow a king who attempts to obliterate one of the Nine Realms?"

Thor mustered a wan smile. "The kind where that king can recognize his own earlier poor judgement and punish you with six months and a few written words, instead of the ax. And we don't follow blindly. We advise and counsel, and in such exceedingly rare circumstances as the attempted obliteration of a realm, yes, we do act."

This time Sif didn't reply; Thor wondered if he'd reached her, or if she had simply tired of arguing. Her expression certainly wasn't a friendly one.

"You made a fair point or two there," Volstagg said, clearly begrudgingly. "Things to think about."

Thor nodded. Perhaps he'd made a little progress after all. It would be best to leave now, rather than risk undermining it. He started for the door, but was stopped by a hand on his arm, Fandral's.

"It's going to take time."

"I understand."

"I'll try to talk with Hogun," Fandral said.

"He would barely even speak to me."

"You know Hogun, he's…orgulous."

"Orgulous?"

Fandral shrugged. "Full of pride. I heard Loki call him that a couple of times. Of course, Loki's the one who told me it meant 'full of pride.' It probably means 'desirous of fornicating with goats' or some such."

"It means 'full of pride,'" Volstagg said with an eyeroll. "I knew better than to take Loki's word for it." A brief chuckle followed, a smile flickered and was gone. "He's all coiled up like a rattlesnake ready to strike. He takes it as a grave insult, to be accused of such a thing. To be deemed guilty of such a thing."

"He gravely insulted Asgard's king. Luckily for him, that king has given him a means to repair the damage. It need not be a permanent stain."

"I'll tell him that," Fandral said. "Perhaps while standing behind Volstagg."

"I look forward to hearing how it goes. Sif…don't let me miss you for too long."

Sif turned away from him, threw a ball against the wall, caught it.

Thor nodded. "I'll see you again soon."

/

/

Loki's foot twitched, encountered nothing but air, twitched again, moved more deliberately. With accelerating pulse his eyes blinked open, and what he saw made him suck in a startled breath. He snapped them shut again. Don't let them have it, he told himself, picturing himself back in his chambers on Asgard, every detail he could think of. They could have that. They already had that.

He shifted to curl in on himself, and could not reconcile the comparatively poor mattress and the metal edge of the bed he'd struck his foot on with the palace chambers he was trying to convince himself to think of. Nor could he reconcile it with the rough stone floor of Thanos's abode.

He opened his eyes again, and this time took it all in. The inferior bedding that had been used by who-knew-how-many before him, the sole narrow window covered with cardboard, the chair and simple desk, more cluttered than he usually left it from having unpacked some things onto it late last night.

He didn't remember dreaming about The Other, but he'd woken with his feet hanging off the side of the bed, convinced that his memories were being dragged out of him. This place had to be protected. He couldn't recall ever dreaming about the Pole when The Other's claws had sunk into his mind, and now if he did, it wouldn't matter. The anatomy figure stood perched on the ledge of the inset window box. He didn't like having to rely on it, but he vastly preferred it to the lackey eavesdropping on and interfering in his dreams. He was safe, and this place and its people were safe.

Despite the child-sized bed and poor-quality bedding – which he'd grown used to anyway – he'd slept soundly all night. The watch next to the anatomy model told him his alarm, which he turned off, would have sounded in another twelve minutes. Bare feet on bare floor, he went through some basic stretches, surprised at how good he felt. He could almost imagine he was starting over here. Not just staying for the night, but staying for the rest of the season. Without wasting his time on either detesting the place and its people or on doing everything in his power to leave.

Quite the farce, when you're wasting time right now to avoid stepping outside your chambers.

Loki straightened up, quickly got changed – he'd never gone down to the bathroom in his sleepwear here – combed away the worst of the rebellion in his hair, grabbed what he needed, and opened the door with a show of confidence he didn't feel. He didn't mind seeing these people again. He might even enjoy it, in a somewhat bitter, uncomfortable way. Last night had gone well enough. But he didn't want to face their disdain. Their rejection. It shouldn't matter – it really shouldn't – but it did.

No one else was in the corridor, though, and no one else was in the bathroom. Uncommon at this hour, but not unheard of.

As he showered and groomed himself, uninterrupted, he wondered why he cared what they thought. Why they were different. The only thing he could come up with was that it was the first time in his life he'd been a truly blank slate to a group of people he'd lived among for an extended period. Before they found out his real name, no one here looked nervous when he entered or watched their words and actions around him to avoid his ire. No one wondered if a spate of bad luck was his fault. No one compared him to Thor and found him lacking, or failed to notice him in Thor's shadow in the first place. He'd begun to let his guard down here, because no one's guard went up around him. Again he cursed his lack of appreciation for the gift he'd been given when he still had it, because even if some of them had wanted him to stay another night, even if some of them genuinely wished to send him off with a friendly farewell, there was no going back to the way things had been before.

He had his answer to Carlo's question, at least: No. He was not Lucas Cane. Lucas had never attacked anything but a dart board and the occasional pinata or picture of a donkey. Loki had attacked their realm and when he was led away from it in chains, over a thousand of their people were dead. Lucas was a fiction, and no one here would ever forget that, no matter what they called him.

It made it easier, this breakfast goodbye he would go to shortly, ridding himself of any unhelpful illusions he might like to cast for himself. He would take it for the cultural formality it would be and try to hold on to the earlier memories, the good ones, from before everything changed. Even the memories from last night, with a group of those perhaps most favorably inclined toward him. There was no crime in hanging on to those.

He was imagining all the innovations he could make to his own version of a dartboard once he reached Alfheim when he knocked lightly on Jane's door. Picturing one spinning and zipping about, stilling for no more than a second or two at a time for a strike, lit up his eyes with anticipation.

"Hey," Jane said, opening the door when Loki's hand was still raised from the knock. "You look like you're in a better mood than I was expecting."

"I was imagining stabbing a moving dartboard."

"Yeah? Thinking about stabbing inanimate objects usually perks me right up, too. How did you sleep?"

Loki laughed at the familiar South Pole morning greeting. Jane looked wonderful, comfortably familiar, in jeans and a heavy cream-colored sweater, while he was back in the black pants and midnight-blue shirt he was fond of. "So soundly that if they were gathering outside my door to protest my presence I never heard a peep. You? No altitude issues?"

"No, the same, I guess. But I suspect we weren't woken up by protesters because there weren't any. You slept in that bed for months. Nobody's going to be that upset that you slept in it one more time. Nobody rational, anyway."

Loki's smile remained. He hadn't slept in that bed as much as they thought, not once the risk became clear; it only made him even more appreciative of the gloriously deep and undisturbed sleep he'd had last night. "Sleep is underrated as an agreeable pastime.

"Agreed. I had a call from Tony, by the way."

That gave Loki pause – he'd considered the reactions of others at the Pole to his staying the night, but not of others beyond the Pole. "He knows I'm here? Or was he simply welcoming you back?"

"He knows. Jolgeir's already been to see Tony, and he told Tony that you came back with me to get your stuff. He was a little concerned that the Tesseract was only used once. But it's okay. I filled him in."

"I hope he understands I don't require his approval for where I do and don't go." He also hoped Tony understood that all his shackles were gone now. Should the so-called Iron Man attack, his previous assurance to Jane that he would not fight back was no longer valid. He would make short work of that pest…after leading him far enough away from the Station.

"I don't know if he agrees with that or not, but he's not on his way, if that's what you're worried about."

"I am not worried," Loki said, letting every bit of scorn he felt for that idea drip from his tongue.

"Okay, you're not worried, got it."

Loki frowned at Jane, but she just held his gaze with a light smile that told him nothing. "Are you ready?"

"I'm ready. Are you ready?"

"Let's go," Loki said, stepping back from the doorway to allow Jane to exit. "I can't tell you how much I've missed powdered milk, powdered orange juice, powdered eggs, powdered sausage, powdered—"

"Frozen sausage."

"Frozen, right."

"Have you seen anyone yet?"

"Not a single person."

"Me, either."

"They're either hiding elsewhere in fear, or they're massing for attack in the galley."

"Cut it out," Jane said, then dropped her voice further as they reached the double doors that separated the berthing wing and Loki pushed open the one on the right while she pushed open the one on the left. "Nobody's massing for attack."

"Probably not. But if I expect the worst, then I'll be pleasantly surprised by— Austin, good morning."

"Morning. Did you sleep well? Recover from all that Asgardian partying?" Austin asked, emerging from the short corridor leading into the galley just before Loki and Jane reached it.

"Yeah, thanks, and you?" Jane said while Loki nodded at her side.

"Pretty good, yeah. I wanted to catch you before you went in. It's a full house. Literally a full house, everybody's there. Mari, too. We weren't sure what time you'd come, but Paul and Tristan offered to cover her whole shift in case she didn't want to be here. She turned them down. Wright had the pleasure of waking up Olivia last night to tell her. She wasn't thrilled, but he said she seemed more upset about him waking her up than about you being here. There might be some nerves, you know, but everybody's okay. We didn't want you to be…I don't know, overwhelmed. I just stuck my head in and let them know I heard you coming."

"I don't suppose they're going to sing that birthday song again."

"No songs, no— no surprises. Are we lucky the sword didn't come out then?"

Loki opened his mouth to deny it, as the correct answer rather than the truthful answer, but before the words came out he'd realized there was no real reason to lie. "It nearly did."

"Hey, I told you not to."

"Forgive me, Jane, that your brief admonition did not override a thousand years of being a warrior, and one who knew he was being hunted and who was lying about his identity here."

Jane's gaze slid from Loki to Austin and back again, wondering if Loki felt as strange saying something like that in front of Austin as she did hearing it in front of Austin. She cracked an awkward smile. "Do you see what I've had to put up with all this time?"

Austin shrugged. "It's the same thing we've all had to put up with, just without the references to being a warrior born in the Middle Ages. Definitely the same guy, though."

"Let's just do this," Loki said. He wasn't the "same guy."

"Massing for attack," Loki mouthed to Jane as they followed Austin into the galley, tension wrapped around every one of his muscles despite the attempt at something akin to humor.

Though he knew what he was walking into, more or less, and the tables were in their usual places instead of pushed aside, rounding the corner to find every single head turned toward him he couldn't help being reminded of the night of the birthday party Jane had arranged for him. He hadn't been prepared then – his thoughts had been in decidedly more sinister places and he'd been too busy with his own attempts to deceive Jane to notice that she was deceiving him.

But he wasn't any more prepared now. He could do no more than stand there, staring back, face frozen in whatever it had been frozen in, before he carefully smoothed it out. As Lucas, he'd been able to sink back into his assumed identity as soon as he realized the ambush held no danger. As Loki…. "I am Loki of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose." The last time he'd arrived on Midgard and found a crowd gathered, all eyes – and weapons – trained on him, creeping closer, surrounding him even as some of these were doing now, made a poor template. Still, the instinctive pull to assert himself here, to take command of these premises, as he knew he easily could, was strong. Back at that underground facility he had been full of confidence in his purpose and in his own superiority – no fear, no uncertainty, certainly no weakness.

He flinched at a hand wrapping around his wrist, and thankfully realized it was Jane before reacting more strongly. She squeezed – right over his scar, though he was certain she wasn't thinking about that – and then let go of him. The effect wasn't much, but he relaxed just enough to let whatever had been building inside him dissipate, chest falling, muscles loosening.

He could face this. And he wasn't alone.

/

Been a while, eh? Still here. :-) Keeping it short since this one's long.

Previews for Ch. 221: Loki indeed faces the "massed-for-attack" Polies.

And excerpt (Macy speaking; Loki responding):

"It helps if you're familiar with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Ulysses is the Latin version of the Greek Odysseus. But I guess you wouldn't be, would you, Loki? Maybe most people haven't read them, but you've never even heard of the Iliad and the Odyssey, have you? Have you ever even heard of Shakespeare?"

"No. But…Ulysses is actually Odysseus? The warrior king?"

"King of Ithaca, right. What, did you look that up already?"