Apologies for the unexpected delay in this one. (It was really more due to delays in the next one which is now complete!)
Thank you for the reviews! Forgive the quick diversion here for me to thank "A Nonny Mouse" since I couldn't reply by PM - I'm sincerely happy for your stamp of approval on Australia & NZ as I'm guessing you're from one or the other. Australia was based on tourist experience but NZ solely on research (hopefully someday I will add experience, it is so beautiful there!). The day I looked up Christchurch's newspaper online the lead story was indeed about a dog mauling sheep.
Many sincere thanks to reader & reviewer Timid Timbuktu who has actually been to McMurdo and kindly agreed to look at advance copies of this chapter and the next to help keep me accurate and the places Loki and Jane go feel real.
In this chapter, Jane and "Lucas" reach their next-to-final destination and as I have kept teasing, tables indeed turn. I hope you're looking forward to it as much as Loki is...and he's really looking forward to it.
/
Beneath
Chapter Ten – Ice
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
Bags weighed and checked except for one of the big orange bags and a carry-on "boomerang bag" – with a change of clothes and a few other things she'd need if the plane had to turn back due to weather – Jane sat in the waiting area at the passenger terminal next to Morgan Reed. She wore her black Carhartt overalls over one of her favorite old flannels, while Big Red was slung over the back of her chair. Long underwear had been recommended, but Jane couldn't bring herself to put in on. It was summer here. She hoped she wouldn't regret the decision when she stepped off the plane at McMurdo, where summer was defined a bit differently.
They were a motley group, Jane thought, looking around her. Some, like Morgan and the man to Morgan's right, were in animated conversation, but many, like the man to Jane's left, had made themselves an island of isolation and oblivion to the outside world, heads down over books, lost in unknown music piped in through wires from hidden Mp3 players. Enough bunny-booted feet to overpopulate a warren were visible along the floor, broken by the occasional dark blue or black boot that a few had somehow wound up with. Some looked like they were still in their teens. A man sitting behind her and to the right looked to be in his sixties and sported a scraggly beard more salt than pepper; he looked like a mountain man version of Dr. Eichmann, her very first astronomy professor. Everyone had Big Red, though. And everyone was going to the ice.
"Did you have fun on your last night in Cheech?" Morgan asked, turning to Jane.
"Yeah. Low-key. I walked around the Botanic Gardens, got some dinner, did a little shopping. You?"
"Cody and I went to the beach," she said, pointing to the man next to her. She had introduced them earlier.
"Nice!"
"Hey, did you ever meet the other Polie?"
"Yeah, I met him," Jane said, keeping her voice even. Lucas was somewhere behind her.
"We should all do something together when we get there. Cody said there's this hill, Observation Hill-"
"Ob Hill," Cody threw in, leaning over.
"Ob Hill, 750 feet high, steep but pretty easy climb with great views. Wanna go?"
Jane's eyebrows went up. "Sure, that sounds great." She hadn't expected to have a chance to do any hiking in Antarctica.
"You should ask…what's his name?"
"Lucas. But I don't think he'd want to go."
"He does seem like one of the loners. He doesn't talk much."
Jane nodded, fighting the urge to turn around and look for Lucas. Eye contact could be construed as an invitation.
/
/
Loki sat with a book resting on his lap, grateful that he could avoid all interaction with the insignificant and bothersome creatures around him while still entirely blending in with them. He did not belong here; every particle of his being screamed a continual reminder of this fact. He felt heat emanating from the men sitting entirely too closely to either side of him – no one save his immediate family dared come so close to him on Asgard. He was continually conscious of the roughness and lingering stench of the clothes he was required to wear, clothes that had been worn by who knew how many others before him. The couch he'd wound up in the middle of was worn, fragile, too short, uncomfortable like almost every seat he'd sat on in Midgard. He suspected if Thor sat on it with his armor it would split under his weight.
He longed for the familiar comforts of home. For people who knew how to show proper respect. For supple, soft materials that molded to his body, protected and warmed without stifling, and were stitched together by skilled hands for him and him alone, such that the very clothing he wore proclaimed his identity to all who beheld him. For space and scale and something as basic as a chair befitting his stature.
The home he longed for, however, was not his to inhabit. It was a home that no longer even existed for him, a home that had ceased to be his the day he'd reluctantly followed Thor to Jotunheim, a home that had never truly been his to begin with. And in the end, all these symbols of who he was had been unceremoniously stripped from him. The clothing and finery that announced him as a prince of Asgard. The space and scale and comforts. The respect. The people of Asgard had certainly kept their distance upon his return…but in those few moments they had seen him, they looked at him with pity, or scorn, or derision, or horrified curiosity, or whatever else had taken the place of respect and fear. The weight of their gazes as they looked down at him instead of up had been heavy as he was led to his cell.
There had to be a way to change all that. There was always a way. He looked up briefly at Jane, dressed identically to him and almost everyone else here, but easily identifiable by her small frame and the long brown hair hanging loosely down her back.
His one consolation in this squalor lay in his conviction that in Midgard he sacrificed these things by choice. If he merely willed it, he could transform anything and everything in this dingy room. He could command respect and fear with a well-aimed toss of a knife or a clever illusion. These things were child's play. Enjoyable, but ultimately not at all useful, and certainly not worth the price he risked paying – not at this time and place, anyway.
He forced himself to concentrate on the words of the book he'd purchased in Christchurch, Understanding the Physics of the Universe. Tedious as it was to read about such elementary concepts, mastering the terminology the mortals used to discuss those concepts could prove extremely useful.
He did not belong here, he reminded himself yet again, but he needed the mortals around him to believe that he did. He spared a quick glance up at the New Zealand Air Force staff standing at the entry to the hangar's waiting room, his first direct encounter with any of this realm's many competing and warring militaries. They had examined his documents and let him pass. He had smiled through tightly pressed lips once past them, reminding himself that here they were more concerned about dogs attacking their sheep than about a supposed Asgardian intent on uniting them under his rule by whatever means necessary.
/
/
Having secured his own version of a boomerang bag underneath his seat, Loki dropped into the seat that was part of a row lining the C-17's hull, oddly facing into the center of the aircraft and stacks of cargo instead of forward with no cargo in sight like the other planes he'd been on. He placed the heavy red jacket in the seat next to him to discourage anyone from occupying it. This five-hour flight would test even his patience, he knew. He felt it keenly, viscerally, even physically.
Anticipation.
It danced over his flesh and through his mind, a crackling energy that began when he boarded the plane and made his whole body tingle. Though his face revealed nothing but a studied indifference, those few who knew him well would have detected something incongruous in the slightly increased rate of breathing, the subtle brightness in his eyes, or perhaps the raised heart rate had they placed a hand over his wrist. Known for his composure and calm, particularly in contrast with brash, impetuous, quick-tempered Thor, Loki recognized this inability to completely control his reaction as a kind of volatility that was new to him – or perhaps it had always been there in some measure and he had only newly recognized it.
There was no good reason for this strong reaction, this relative lack of control. Not to such a small thing, simply a new gambit to try where others had failed. But there had been so much waiting, so much wandering, so much sitting and doing nothing, unable even to plan adequately because there remained too many unknowns. The promise – or at least the logical hope – of a step forward at last was what electrified his nerves and tugged at the built-up energy inside him. That he had restrained this energy – his very nature – for so long now was a rather remarkable demonstration of self-control, actually. Perhaps that was a sufficient reason for his reaction then, after all. But it made it no less unacceptable.
So now, as the time and place approached, it was time to review and push further the planning he'd begun in Christchurch. He would remain Lucas but project his inverse. He would transform himself from obsequious to assertive. From deferential to disdainful. From pursuer to pursued. From beneath to above.
He began to work through every possible permutation of their interaction that he could conceive of. If she grew belligerent, how should he respond? If she reached out a metaphorical hand to smooth over his sudden roughness, should he accept it, immediately parry it, or not accept it at all? And what if it were a physical hand she extended, would he let her touch him? What if she were indifferent to him – would that be a failure, or would further provocation salvage it? What if despite his efforts to isolate her, one of her newfound friends interrupted them – how could that be twisted to his advantage?
As he sank deeper into the weighing and sifting of variables, the anticipation cooled and settled into its appropriate dimensions. In the tiny part of his mind that he tasked with remaining cognizant of his surroundings he registered the aircraft's movement and the smattering of applause from a few particularly childish passengers when its wheels left the ground.
No one seemed bothered by the expression of detached boredom on his face – in the last three days he'd been on five commercial flights and hadn't felt the urge to clap even once – and a few of the others seemed equally disconnected from their surroundings. Perhaps they were also on their fifth flight, he thought.
But he didn't actually care why any of these people looked or behaved the way they did. There was only one person on this flight who held the slightest interest for him. Indeed, there was only one person in this entire realm who held any real interest for him now. She was seated near the front of the plane, facing forward, her small body entirely hidden by her seat. He had arrived here so distant from her, had circled this globe in one direction while she circled it in the other, until their paths met, joined, intertwined. Perhaps they were not intertwined just yet, he admitted to himself, but they would be. Of that he had no doubt.
/
/
Five hours was a long time for a loud flight filled with anticipation and nearly lacking windows. Jane got up and stretched her legs from time to time, peered out one of the few small windows behind her, ate most of the bagged lunch she'd been given before they left Christchurch, and took advantage of the opportunity to go up to the cockpit, chat with the pilots, and take a few pictures out the much bigger windows there. She allowed herself a glance back at Lucas just once; he had appeared to be sleeping.
The weather held, and at last someone from the cockpit announced they were landing. Jane knew the runway was made of ice. And even though she also knew that this was normal, and that these C-17s and their US Air Force pilots landed on the ice all the time, she couldn't help clenching her fists while she waited for and willed the plane to come to a safe, complete stop. Scattered applause broke out, Morgan and Cody part of that chorus as Jane gratefully uncurled her fingers. The same distorted voice from the cockpit announced it was a sunny 25 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
Jane exchanged her earplugs for sunglasses – the good ones, not the "I love Australia" ones – and pulled on Big Red.
Outside it was windy, and she pulled her black wool hat out of her pocket and tugged it on tightly over her head. In a few minutes everyone was climbing on board an enormous red and white bus with "Ivan the Terra Bus" painted in white letters on its side and wheels that were almost as tall as Jane. Ivan lumbered away from the ice runway and toward the little town that made up McMurdo station – "Mactown" as Antarctic returnee Cody had informed her – looking kind of like an old dirty mining town surrounded by rocks and snow and ice.
What came next was less an adventure than a long exercise in bureaucracy. Briefing after briefing on rules and regulations, safety, recycling, health, some of which she'd already heard in Christchurch, and much of which seemed overkill considering she didn't expect to be here more than 24 hours. Morgan was trying to take it all in just as conscientiously as Jane, but Cody was looking down under lowered eyelids at his camera, where he was thumbing through pictures.
Then there were the tasks. Planning for departing Antarctica when she hadn't even made it to the Pole yet. Getting a room assignment and a key. Filling in paperwork. Dropping off her boomerang bag and orange bag in the large dorm room she'd been assigned in big blue Building 155, home to the station's galley. Grabbing sheets from the laundry room, taking them back to the dorm room with its six beds and only one of them seemingly claimed, and making a bed. Claiming her bags once they were hauled off the plane. Getting internet access set up. After dinner more tasks remained – repeating the "bag-drag" ritual of hauling her bags back out of her room for weighing and checking them in for the next day's flight and reporting to the South Pole travel briefing.
Finally she made her way to the galley from her dorm room at the other end of the building and got an apple and a bottle of water, stuffing them in the backpack she'd removed from her boomerang bag. While she waited for Morgan and Cody to arrive she sat down at a round table for four in a large room that strongly reminded her of the main cafeteria at her college.
"May I join you?" a familiar, polite voice said from behind her.
She hesitated too long for what should normally be an automatic response. "Sure. But I'm not staying long."
He stepped around her and took the seat across from her. He unscrewed the cap on his water bottle and took a tiny sip. Jane noticed that his lips only barely touched the bottle. She averted her eyes.
"Headed out for some exploring?"
Jane nodded, made herself smile with as much friendliness as she could muster.
"So am I," Lucas said. "I would ask if you wanted to join me, but I assume you still prefer to enjoy your solitude."
"Oh…" Jane found herself looking at the ceiling, the walls, the other tables, the handful of other people in the galley at this time of the afternoon, anywhere but the steady gaze of his bright green eyes. "Well, I was actually going to go on a short hike with a couple of other people I met." She searched for some way to draw out her response while she tried to decide whether she should stick with her resolution to be nicer and invite him along, but her brain was not cooperating. They call that "guilt," Jane, she thought.
His posture grew more rigid. "Dr. Foster…have I said something inappropriate to you? If I have, I apologize. It certainly was not my intention."
"No, it's not-"
"Then what's going on? Clearly it's not that you want to be alone, you just don't want to be around me. What do you have against me, Dr. Foster?" Lucas asked, pressing his lips into a thin line. Just a hint of anger was plainly visible in what was otherwise an expressionless face.
Before Jane could come up with a response Morgan appeared at the edge of the galley, waving at her as she walked over. "Ready, Jane? Hi, I'm Morgan," she said, offering a hand and a smile to Lucas.
"Nice to meet you, Morgan," Lucas said without looking up, without acknowledging the hand. "Do you mind if we have a minute alone?"
"Oh, uh, sure," Morgan said, glancing uncertainly at Jane.
"Sorry, Morgan. I, uh, I'll meet you in a few minutes. Up by the entrance?"
"Okay," she said with a slightly more confident nod.
When she was out of hearing range Jane stood and turned to look down at Lucas. He quickly stood and she found herself craning her neck upward. "Look, it's nothing personal, okay? It's nothing to do with you."
"You're lying," he said matter-of-factly.
"What? I'm- I'm not-"
"Yes, you are. And I've done nothing to deserve that from you. I've been friendly and respectful toward you since we first met and you've treated me like…like some unwanted tag-along. You've been unfair and frankly unkind. And you've made the thought of the next nine months seem like an insufferable burden," he said, his voice growing deeper and angrier as he spoke.
"You? I've made…?" Jane sputtered in a raised voice, glancing around to check whether anyone had noticed; it seemed no one had, not so far, anyway. She grabbed onto his arm to tug him out of the galley and found she couldn't budge him in the slightest. She glanced up at him; he looked surprised, and not as strong as he apparently was.
"We need to talk in private," she said, and this time when she pulled on his arm he relented and let her lead him out of the galley and down the long corridor to the far end of the building, into the dorm area, and into the activity room. It was mercifully empty; Jane hadn't wanted to drag him into her own dorm room. "Let me get this straight," she said as soon as the door was closed behind them. "You think this is going to be hard on you? I'm not blind, you know. I know exactly who you are and exactly what you're here for. You think you've been treated unfairly? You're not the one with your own personal minder, spying on everything you do and reporting it back to SHIELD. This is my one chance to get away from…from all this craziness that's been in my life lately and find some kind of normalcy and peace and focus with nobody looking over my shoulder. And then you show up, postage paid by SHIELD. So if spying on me is going to be such an insufferable burden to you then I suggest you do us both a favor and accidentally miss the flight tomorrow, okay?"
/
/
Loki allowed his genuine confusion to show on his face. But while Lucas's confusion lingered, Loki's was gone in little more than a heartbeat. He had never imagined his original plan for gaining her acceptance could so horribly backfire. More pieces of the puzzle that was Jane Foster fell into place. "Is that what you think?" he asked. "That I'm here to report on you to SHIELD?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I think," she said. Her unclouded expression, straight spine, and slightly extended neck spoke to her anger and to the strength of her conviction. Rarely had anyone stood up to him so boldly, and perhaps never someone so ultimately powerless.
"You couldn't be further from the truth." And really she couldn't.
"Is that so? Why else would they get some random graduate student out here like that, with one week's notice? People don't have their own personal assistants out there, not over the winter. There aren't even that many scientists there in the winter in the first place. And you can't get all those medical tests done in a week; they had to have paid a fortune and moved mountains to make all that happen. I know because they paid a fortune and moved mountains to get me in the door and I had two weeks. So why go to all that trouble? Because they decided somebody had to keep an eye on me, just like they always have."
Loki took a couple of steadying breaths, letting anger plainly show now. "Excuse me, Doctor Foster, I don't mean to be obnoxious but I don't consider myself 'random.' I'm not a political science student, I actually study real science. Real physics and real astronomy. Like you I've refused to look at science as a popularity contest and dared to pursue alternative theories. And like you I've paid a price for it. I'm familiar if just barely with your work; I've read your dissertation. You haven't been able to publish much else, have you? I think I was a logical choice for your assistant, and I was excited at the opportunity. At the time, at least." He'd skimmed her dissertation anyway. It was long and full of technical terminology and theoretical concepts that differed significantly from the Asgardian understanding of matter and energy. With sufficient time he could have married all of her terms and concepts to his and deciphered it, but sufficient time had not yet been available.
"As for the medical tests," he continued. "I don't know how they accomplished all that. They just told me where to go for the appointments and I went. Look, I suppose I have no way of convincing you I'm not here for some nefarious purpose. I had hoped to learn from you, yes, but I am no one's lackey. Not SHIELD's, and not yours either. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that this world revolves around you. I'm not here for you; I'm here for my own purposes. For what this opportunity could mean for my own future. And there's no way I'm going to let you take that from me."
Loki paused, reigned himself in. He was letting too much anger through now – his own anger, which dwarfed what Lucas needed to express. He had taken two steps toward her and made her acutely aware of the difference in their sizes, and she had taken a step back and bumped into a large table covered with green felt. He wanted to shift the balance of power between them, not send her scampering away in fear. Not now.
Calmer now, he resumed, noting Jane's widened eyes and failed attempt to speak. "I'm not going to accidentally miss the flight to make you feel better. It's too late for that. But I'll find…something else to work on out there, some other project, and gladly stay as far away from you as I can. I would simply ask that you do me the small favor of telling whomever asks that I am a good and diligent assistant, so that your self-obsessed paranoia doesn't end up reflecting badly on me." He abruptly turned and left the room.
He kept his pace slow and his stride short as he made his way out of the dorm area and back down the corridor toward the galley. And then he heard it: the satisfying sound of success.
/
/
Jane stared at the open door. She licked lips that had gone dry while her mouth had dropped open. Could she really have misjudged him, and his sudden appearance, that badly? Had SHIELD and their secrecy and their need to know and control everything so warped her that she would make false assumptions about complete strangers? Had they made her so suspicious – so paranoid – that she had convicted on presumption? There had been so many little things, though. How he just happened to find her in Australia's biggest metropolis. How he seemed to know things about her. How he appeared everywhere she went. How he'd brought up her family in what appeared to be little more than an effort to get some kind of rise out of her. Could all those things have been no more than coincidence that she had spun into an irrational narrative born purely of her imagination?
If he were telling the truth…
She darted out of the office and into the corridor, just in time to see him turn into the cafeteria.
Ignoring the stares from a group of young men she raced past, she rounded the corner and called his name. His first one.
He turned, eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. A few other heads turned – people were already showing up for dinner – but their gazes didn't appear to linger.
She caught up to him, stopping very close, again conscious of how he towered over her but less intimidated now that they were in a public place. She glanced around them, then spoke in a quiet, low voice. "So…SHIELD didn't send you here to spy on me?"
He frowned. He was clearly annoyed, but his anger had already mingled with what looked like resignation earlier, and now it seemed to have faded entirely. "I already told you that's not why I'm here."
"And they didn't…show you a file on me?"
"A file?" he asked, confusion knitting his brow. "They told me a little about your research. There was no file."
Jane gave a little huff and looked down, then to her left. Grow up. This part is what's called being a grown-up, she scolded herself. She looked back up at him. He looked down at her impassively, perhaps a bit impatiently. "I'm sorry. Really. It's just…everything I've done ever since…they've been watching me. And I've never really trusted them. Even the ones I'd call friends, it's…I don't know. It's complicated. But none of that's your fault. I'm truly sorry that I made assumptions about you like that. You're catching me at kind of a bad time, I guess. My life is really-" Jane cut herself off by biting down on her tongue, literally. Making excuses wouldn't help anything. She closed her eyes briefly, took a quick breath.
"I'm sorry. I'm rambling. I just wanted to apologize. And to try to start over. Jane Foster. Call me Jane. Nobody calls me Dr. Foster." She held out her hand to him with a tentative smile.
He looked down at the hand as though he would really rather not touch it, and Jane wondered if she had messed this up so badly it could never really be fixed. But he seemed to relax, a little, his shoulders dropping a bit from their rigid squared-back position. And then he took her hand, gently, politely. Not really a proper handshake at all, as if he weren't used to shaking hands with women. She didn't recall noticing this the first time she'd shaken his hand, in Sydney, when she'd been dismayed and filled with dread.
"A pleasure to meet you…Jane."
"Good," she said with a relieved smile. "I mean, good that we can start over. I'm really not half as awful as I must have seemed. And now I guess we have a lot to talk about…but…"
"But your friends are waiting for you."
"Right," she said sheepishly. "Oh, but you know, why don't you come with us? We're just going out for a short hike. There's a hill nearby that's supposed to have nice views."
"Thank you, but no. I'm going to get dinner, go to that briefing and take care of my bags, then go to bed early. Enjoy your hike, though. I'll see you tomorrow." He nodded his head to her and resumed his walk toward the growing galley line.
Jane pursed her lips and sighed. "See you tomorrow," she called after him weakly. Maybe he was telling the truth, but she suspected she'd pushed him so far with her rude behavior that he wasn't quite ready to let bygones be bygones. And she couldn't blame him. At least they'd cleared the air. At least she'd managed what she hoped was a decent apology.
"Jane?"
She whirled around. Morgan was standing behind her.
"We were starting to wonder if we should give up and go without you. Is everything okay?" she asked, lifting her head toward Lucas's receding figure.
"Yeah. We just kind of got off on a bad foot. I think it'll be okay now. But hey, I'm so sorry to have held you up. Let's go!" she urged, corralling some of her earlier enthusiasm and pushing the lingering tension with Lucas from her mind.
"He seems kind of…intense," Morgan said as they approached the building's entrance, where Cody was leaning against the wall just inside the door.
Jane shrugged. "I guess so," she said absently. She wasn't really sure how he "seemed" anymore. She'd been so busy building him into something he apparently wasn't she realized she really would be starting over with him.
"There's snow on the hill," Cody said, bending down to the floor and picking up something made of metal. "You're going to want these."
Cleats, Jane realized. She took them with a nod and a grin.
In about an hour the three had summitted Ob Hill – it was less than a mile away – and stood at the top panting. Jane, at least, was panting, and casting the occasional glance toward Morgan and Cody to see if they were as winded as she was. She had been putting in some gym time at the SHIELD facility in Tromso to build stamina, but only for about a week and a half, and she hadn't been climbing straight up the steep side of a snowy, rocky 750-foot big-hill-slash-little-mountain in Antarctica during that time. She took in the spectacular views; she was bundled up in more of her gear now than when they'd started, but let the sharp wind burn her uncovered face so as not to obstruct her vision.
Cody kept up his tour guide role and told them about all the things they saw as Jane snapped pictures on her phone – on the summit the wooden cross memorial to Robert Scott and his party who'd died on their way back from the South Pole in 1912, the active volcano Mt. Erebus that still sometimes emitted puffs of smoke, New Zealand's Scott Base, Mactown itself of course, Mt. Discovery, Discovery Hut that Scott built in 1902 and in which some of his team's supplies remained, the Pegasus ice field their plane had landed on earlier that day, and lots and lots of Antarctica and water and chunks of sea ice, one of which supported five Weddell seals. The skies were clear and visibility was excellent.
When her breathing returned to normal and Cody was expounding on the merits of Scott Base's gift shop over McMurdo's, Jane, who wouldn't be visiting New Zealand's Scott Base, drifted back over to the wooden cross and looked up at it. She put it at around eleven feet tall; her head didn't even come close to the horizontal beam, at least where she was standing. If she perched carefully on some snow-free rocks and peered closely she could get higher and make out most of what was carved into it. It listed the names of the explorers who'd perished and explained that they'd died in March 1912 on their way back from the Pole. And underneath that was the line from a poem Cody had said was by Tennyson.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Jane had never been particularly interested in literature – least of all poetry – and in college had taken no more of it than what was required; the name Tennyson was only vaguely familiar to her. She read the quote again.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
She found herself nodding. She didn't put herself in the same league as Robert Scott – she'd risked her reputation and career while he'd risked, and lost, his life – but this concise yet profound string of infinitives told her story as well. They were words to remember when days were long and filled with adversity and it felt like the whole world was squaring off against you.
"Hey, Jane!" Cody called, pulling her out of her reverie. "Show me those pipes!"
She looked at him with confusion.
"Time for hero shots!" Morgan shouted, putting her arms up to demonstrate some kind of cross between a victory-V and a body builder's pose – it was hard to tell underneath a sweater, a zipped-up Big Red, and gloved hands.
Cody had one hand bared and gripping his camera.
Jane grinned, showed her non-existent pipes with her raised left arm, and with her right she pointed Vanna-White-style at the Tennyson quote.
/
/
Loki perused the offerings of McMurdo's galley with feigned interest. He eyed the stack of red apples, picked one up, found that under light pressure it bruised and gave way. They were not particularly fresh, which would make them even more intolerable than the average apple in this realm. He didn't know how the mortals could willingly consume them. Asgardian apples were sweet and rich and firm and some were even magical.
His mouth watered.
He took a deep breath and pushed away irrelevant memories.
He swept his gaze casually around the galley; there was no sign of Jane or her friends.
He abandoned his pretense of selecting dinner items, although it was true he had not eaten a proper meal in days and was hungry.
There was something he'd realized he needed to do, during the flight from Christchurch. With Jane otherwise occupied for an extended period of time outdoors, now was the perfect time to do it.
/
Please review, I so love hearing your thoughts. You often make me think about things in ways I haven't before which always makes me happy.
Teasers for "Chapter 11: Unpacking" - Loki takes advantage of the hole in SHIELD's computer security again and runs afoul of Odin's enchantments twice more; Jane and Loki both start unpacking, and Loki finds something surprising among his belongings.
And excerpt:
"This is it, home sweet home," Selby said quietly in case anyone working nights was sleeping in nearby rooms. He pushed the door open for Jane.
She stared at the door knob on the open door for a moment, realized she hadn't been given a key. "No locks?" she asked.
"No need," Wright said with a grin. "Our closest neighbors are the Russians at Vostok Station and they're a very long way away with a whole lot of ice and cold between us. Uninvited guests aren't exactly a problem here. Nothing's locked. This is the safest place in the world."
Temporary additional note: And finally - this kills me but I've recently watched Thor again on my new larger TV and have decided I simply must change Loki's eye color. They just aren't green. They seem to only be green in that poster image from Thor, which is what I've gone by since it's a nice close-up image. But they aren't green in the movie, they're blue. I hate to go back and change things, but as much as that annoys me it will annoy me more to continue referencing his green eyes when I've decided this was just a beguiling trick on Marvel's part when they made those posters. There's a "green eyes" reference even in this chapter (it was written a couple weeks ago), but because some people are very vested in Loki's eye color one way or the other I figured I'd put this notice up before going back and making changes so regular readers don't think I've lost my mind (not yet, anyway). Loki is still Loki whether he goes by Lucas or Loki or wears Big Red or horns or has green eyes or blue, so the only thing changing will be the references to his eye color, which I'll probably now refer to as something along the lines of "steel blue."
