Beneath
Chapter Fourteen – Keys
New Mexico and New York and places further away. Australia? Maybe Norway? Jane wondered as she followed Selby down the stairs and into the empty arts and crafts room. Because he couldn't possibly mean Asgard-further-away. That part of her life was not supposed to be following her here. This was supposed to be about good old-fashioned research, albeit with phenomenally high-tech equipment.
The door closed behind them and scenes from some ridiculous horror movie she'd seen years ago that took place at the South Pole suddenly flashed through her mind and it occurred to her to wonder if she should be getting scared now, like that point in pretty much any horror movie when you yell at the heroine for being stupid and going somewhere alone with the guy who just said something unexpectedly cryptic and kind of creepy…
Selby looked a little scared himself, though, and Jane tamped down rambling thoughts about horror movies, figuring evil bad guys probably didn't look scared before they went all evil bad guy on you. And those horror movie scenes didn't usually happen when model airplanes were hanging over your head and sewing machines and rolls of iridescent wrapping paper were on the shelves behind you and you were standing right next to a waist-high inflated plastic penguin.
"So, uh, what did you want to talk to me about?" she asked with a forced smile. Denial was fading fast. He knew something. The only question was how much.
He frowned, wiped his palms over his jeans. If she hadn't known – or thought she knew, at least – who he was she would have described him as shifty.
"Okay…well…it was at my bachelor party…"
Now he really looked shifty, averting his eyes and rubbing his fingers against his palms. And saying unexpected things. What did New York and New Mexico and "places further away" have to do with Selby Higgins's bachelor party? "I don't follow," she finally said.
"Okay, look, I wasn't going to say anything. I mean I know all this is super secret and I'm not supposed to know anything about it. And I was just going to pretend I didn't, but then…I guess I'm not that good at keeping secrets. Or at lying. I couldn't just keep talking to you and pretending like I didn't know something that I did…you know?"
"Not really," Jane said in as a light a tone as possible. She'd seen that in a few movies, too, where the bad guy tells you he knows all your secrets so you spill them, only to find out that he knew nothing and you just gave it all away.
Selby straightened up and got some of his fidgeting under control as the conflict and unease plainly visible on his face also lessened. "A friend of mine – don't ask who because that secret I've got to keep – he got really wasted at my bachelor party. He didn't even remember what he told me afterward, but I don't drink, not much anyway, and I remember everything. He said that before New York, he'd been hired on to work for this organization called SHIELD, that one there were so many whispers about afterward. He was working with a team of physicists on this hypercube they were calling a tesseract, that they thought could be a source of limitless clean energy."
Selby took a breath, and it reminded Jane to do so as well. Her eyes had widened, the skin around them pulled taut. Not talking about SHIELD had been a strong suggestion. But tesseract was a word she'd been ordered never to give voice to unless reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time aloud.
"He told me about the Foster Theory, and stable wormholes, and the New Mexico Incidents…and that those mythological Norse gods really exist and some of them came through a wormhole from Asgard and showed up on your doorstep."
Jane's heart skipped a beat. Asgard. Another word on the absolutely-not-never-ever-mention-it list.
"Well…on a Jane Foster's doorstep, anyway, a Jane Foster out in the middle of nowhere doing independent research. But when I saw your name on the arrivals list, and what you were going to be researching, and how you were a little cagey about talking about it when normally you can't shut any of us up about our research interests…I knew you were that Jane Foster." He stilled completely and stared at her, waiting for her to confirm it. Almost desperate for her to confirm it.
Jane wasn't quite ready for that. "And…you didn't think that sounded…I don't know…kind of crazy?"
"Are you kidding?" he said immediately, wide-eyed. "Of course I did. I thought he'd drunk so much he'd lost his grip on reality, confusing some sci-fi book with his actual life. But…when I thought about it, it all made sense, especially in the aftermath of what happened in New York. I saw the same things on TV that everybody else saw, Jane. Things coming out of the sky. And beyond that, glimpses of stars that aren't ours. A lot of us…we're in denial. We can't explain it, it doesn't fit the theory…so we ignore it. Act as though nothing ever happened. And down here…I'm the only one of the science techs that wasn't at the Pole then. I asked Wright about it once. He said the Satcom guy rigged up a radio and they listened to the equivalent of an FDR Fireside Chat when all that was going on. Later they had the internet, but..."
"I was in Norway," Jane whispered. "I stayed up all night watching it on TV." She offered him a small, tentative smile. Confirmed. She still wasn't quite able to say it.
He nodded. Understood.
"Did you tell anyone else?"
"No. And I wouldn't. I mean, I understand it's national security and all. International security. And my friend could get into a lot of trouble for having told me what he did. I, uh…I grew up reading Asimov, you know? So I always wondered, I always accepted the possibility that…but Norse gods? I've been wanting to talk to someone about that for the longest time," he said, shaking his head. He was completely calm and his posture relaxed now that everything was out in the open.
"They aren't gods," Jane said. "But I can't talk about it."
"I know, but-"
"I really can't talk about it. I'm sorry. And I'm not here for any so-called Norse gods. I'm just a scientist, doing the research I've always wanted to be able to do, because I happened to be at the right time and place in New Mexico to observe something amazing. And that's all I want to be here, just a scientist. Okay?"
He nodded, but she could tell he was disappointed. "Okay. I just didn't want to have to pretend I didn't know anymore. And if you ever need any help with anything that maybe you don't want anyone else here to know about…"
Jane put a hand over his arm and gave it a quick squeeze. "Thanks, but it won't be necessary. I'm really not working on anything secret. And just so you know, Lucas doesn't even know about all that other stuff, so please don't mention it around him." Lucas who apparently had ideas even "crazier" than her own. Lucas who thought she was going to somehow recreate Asgardian magic on Earth and build her very own personal bifrost, skipping right by who-knew-how-many decades or centuries of research and development. She reminded herself to ask him what exactly he was focusing on in his studies. He seemed to have made it a point to let her do all the talking.
"Yeah, I got it. Our secret."
Jane couldn't decide if she was disappointed or relieved that someone here now shared that secret. She had been eager to forget about the stress of SHIELD and their prying eyes and control issues and to take a break from the seemingly supernatural to return to the solid ground of the natural, but it might be nice to have one person here who knew the truth.
/
/
Taking advantage of the last hour of internet connectivity for the day, Loki sat in the computer lab and approved two new e-mails to Jane, then looked up neutrinos, which led him to protons, electrons, and neutrons, and quarks. He sat back from the computer as connections fell into place. No one else was in the room – most people were still working and most had their own laptops anyway. With one final glance around him to confirm he was alone, he placed his palms close together in front of him, almost touching but not quite, fingers pointed upward. As he slowly drew his hands apart to shoulder width, a small, softly humming light appeared there.
To Loki's eyes, the light had structure, and the magnified structure caused the humming. Within the structure he saw the particles he'd read about, the particles he'd learned to manipulate early in life. He looked at them now in a new way; he'd never consciously thought about positive charges and negative charges and spin momentum and all the other characteristics Earth science ascribed to them, but he realized as he observed them with fresh eyes that he had instinctively known these things to be true, had seen and felt them. Interesting things happened when you reached out and changed one or more of those characteristics.
It fascinated him to observe how what was for him so instinctive and tangible was expressed here in dry words and numbers.
He observed and manipulated for several minutes, committing those words and numbers to memory, then pushed his palms back toward each other. The light shrank and the humming ceased.
Next he wanted to look up dark matter and dark energy – Jane had used both terms and he presumed they must be distinct, but when he entered his search terms on the computer he realized the period of satellite connectivity must have passed. He glanced at the corner of the screen: 4:35, too late for any more computer searches. He still had his textbook, but the more he used the computer the more he found he preferred it when time was of the essence.
The textbook would have to do, at least until early the next morning when he could instead return to the jumbled yet exceedingly useful internet. He needed to think. Things had changed. Progressed. He needed to reassess. To plan. He needed privacy.
Back in his room, he peered out his narrow window at the snowy landscape beyond the station. Two people were outside stacking boxes. There was no other sign of life.
He pulled the shade and hoisted himself up onto the bed, pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged. He forced an unbidden recent memory sharply from his mind – Thor sitting across from him explaining his "situation" while he sat on a similar-sized bed in a similar position.
Thor no longer figured into his plans. Not for the moment, anyway. There was no need.
Still, it was important to work through all the variables again, now that things had changed. He needed to be certain he was making the right decision.
Through Jane, he could have controlled Thor. Had the Chitauri's master threatened him, he could have revealed himself to Heimdall while threatening her life, and Thor would have come running, ready and willing to do whatever Loki demanded in exchange for sparing her – relocation to another realm, protection, or perhaps, the most entertaining option, an attack supported by the very group of mortals who had risen up against him. Much less complex and much less risky, though, was the escape route conveniently provided by his mother, he thought, rubbing his right hand absently over the satchel at his side. Loki delighted in complexity and thrived on risk, but the risk of finding himself at his mercy again – Loki did not even want to think his name for fear he could hear it – was not worth any cheap thrill.
And in any event, he'd been on Asgard for two weeks and Midgard for one, and the Chitauri had made no move against him, nor had anyone else who might have been sent to exact some kind of horrific retribution from him. Perhaps he was safe. After all, from his perspective, what would be the point? What was done was done. He had failed. And really, it was the Chitauri who failed, not him. He had done everything he had agreed to on his side of the bargain. He gained control of the tesseract. He gained control of the Midgardians he needed to stabilize its energy and hold the portal open. It was his army that had failed to do its job, his mammoth spaceship that had been left vulnerable to Midgard's weapons. Why should he be held accountable for someone else's failure?
If he no longer needed Jane to ensure his protection, then, there were still other concessions he could extract from Thor with Jane under his control. When he had taunted Thor with his reference to Norway, he had also tested. He had learned that Thor also knew where Jane was, and that he intended to protect her. And now he knew that he had gone so far as to leave Asgard while Odin teetered on the brink of a long sleep, just so he could warn her about his presence. Thor would go quite far to protect his mortal woman, Loki concluded.
He tried to picture how such a scenario might work. He would have to reveal himself to Heimdall. He would threaten to kill Jane, first injuring her in some painful but non-permanent manner so that it was clear his threat was serious. Heimdall could go to Odin rather than Thor, though; that was a risk. Odin could prevent Thor from making a deal, and Loki would be forced to make good on his threat while gaining nothing, a prospect that left him cold. But if Thor did accede to his demands, there would come a point when he would have to free Jane and he would become vulnerable. Thor and Odin could – and probably would – come after him. So whatever he demanded, it would have to include some means of protecting himself from them, or he would have to spend the rest of his long life running or hiding or fighting. It was a real gamble, and he would only get one attempt.
What would he even ask of Thor? Nothing tenable came to mind. Thor could not undo Odin's curses, though perhaps Odin would acquiesce to his golden son if Loki sufficiently motivated Thor to beg hard enough. Thor himself actually had little to give, other than his strength. Almost anything Loki demanded would have to go through Odin.
Unless Thor could also be motivated to defy Odin…and Loki knew that he could. The tesseract was heavily guarded, and while it was the treasure he most valued it was also the means by which any other Asgardian treasure would be brought to him. And it was guarded and monitored by Heimdall. Thor could steal the Ice Casket or any number of other powerful relics from the weapons vault, but he would have to get past Heimdall to use the tesseract to bring it to Midgard – and Heimdall would see exactly what Thor was doing and never permit it. He should have killed Heimdall when he had the chance, rather than let him stand there as a frozen warning to anyone who considered defying Asgard's king.
If he eliminated using Jane as a bargaining chip from his plans, he was left with two more options he had thought of earlier.
He could spend the winter as Lucas, forget Jane and go somewhere else afterward, allow Heimdall to see him, and wait Odin out. Be good. Behave himself. It was the easy path. The safe path. It did not appeal to Loki in the slightest. And there was no way to know how long he would have to endure it.
If he was not willing to wait the months, years, decades, even centuries before Odin decided he was properly reformed, he could take more active measures to speed things up. Thor had been banished for an unspecified period of time Loki had assumed to be permanent, only to return triumphant just three days after nearly getting himself killed to save his friends. Perhaps there was an equivalent sacrifice to be made at the South Pole. If he brought Jane back into the equation, he could provoke Thor into coming here to attack him, and push him into that berserker state of mind such that he endangered the station in some way. Loki could then step forward and save it.
He shook his head. There was no point pursuing that line of thought any further. In any scenario that involved him and Thor, there was no question whose side Odin would take, no matter how foolish he schemed to make Thor look or how courageous and selfless he schemed to make himself look.
And if Thor was not involved…they were extremely concerned about fire here. As well they should be if the likes of Jane Foster is supposed to save them from it, he thought with a dark laugh. He had seen Earth's firefighters in New York and couldn't imagine Jane being capable of handling such large, heavy equipment. But he could start a fire, one the station's emergency response team could not control, then make himself known to Heimdall, walk into the flames, and put the fire out. Would it be enough? He could ensure that he stayed within the flames long enough for them to sear his skin, but he would not be able to lay down his life, since the fire could not kill him in the first place. Loki laughed. As if he would lay down his life for any of these people. It would never work. Odin didn't trust him, and letting Heimdall see him just as he walked into the blaze would make everyone question the timing and what had happened before, such as how the fire had started in the first place.
If a large-scale event would look too suspicious, there was still the small-scale version, which he needed to re-investigate. Could using magic to do good things reverse the loss of magic? If so, then he had found his loophole. He could do whatever he wanted with magic, grit his teeth through the pain, then turn someone's ten-year-old vehicle into the brand new make and model of his or her dreams and gain back every bit of magic he'd just lost. It might not get him back into Odin's good graces – he would have to let Heimdall see him on his do-good spree for that – but who needed Odin's good graces if the full use of magic was available? The actual testing – and the doing, if it worked – would not be easy, though, certainly not while remaining Lucas. He would have to do something nice without revealing he'd done it through magic, and without getting coffee thrown in his face. It was worth a try, but he was less than confident of its actual success.
With sufficient thought and effort, Loki thought, he might be able to make one of these ideas work. But since none of them were particularly promising on the surface, it was remarkably fortuitous that Jane herself had presented a new variable. A bifrost. She was close to understanding travel between the realms, or at least she believed herself to be. And despite what she'd said about current limitations in Midgard's science and technology, he knew from Selvig that she was ingenious at designing and building her own gadgets when what she needed was too expensive or simply didn't exist yet. And once he had mastered her science, with any luck at all he could fill any remaining gaps with his magic. He only need nudge her in the right direction, and her own intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge would do the rest.
Loki inhaled deeply, then slowly pushed the breath out through his mouth. He clasped his hands together to stop their trembling. With his own bifrost, even its ramshackle Midgardian equivalent, he could see the possibilities increasing toward infinity. He could go anywhere in the nine realms, no permission needed, and Heimdall need never even know he'd left Midgard.
He could go back to Asgard. To all those things he missed from his previous life – some of them, anyway. He would never be welcomed back with open arms, but he could disguise himself and walk through the markets with their familiar sights and sounds and smells, lie on the grass in the sun on his favorite hillside, climb worn paths up snow-capped mountains, swim in his favorite lake and let himself be pummeled by the waterfall. He could pretend he belonged in these places. He could live a lie.
No.
Nothing in Asgard was his. What could he possibly gain from going there? His every understanding of what Asgard was and what his place in it was had been turned on its head. He would not return to Asgard except as its king. And he was highly unlikely to be able to make that happen without completely draining himself of his use of magic, even with the most brilliant and audacious of plans.
Odin's curses were his biggest obstacle, no matter what he sought to accomplish. He had to find a way to break them.
And then something incredibly obvious occurred to him for the very first time, making his mouth fall open for a moment. The loophole. The loophole he'd hoped was there from the moment Odin had pressed fingers into his burnt wrist to augment Curse Number One. Any harm he did to mortals would be also done to him. Mortals. In all the nine realms that term referred only to the short-lived Midgardians. There was no injunction against harming anyone else. And while he might prefer talking and thinking his way out of unnecessary battles, he was perfectly capable of fighting his way through one as well – after all, he'd spent his entire life sparring with the greatest warriors Asgard had to offer. He could go to Alfheim, or better yet Svartalfheim, where the dark elves were renowned for their masters of magic – Loki had even learned a few things from them himself. He could go there, try to convince them to help him, and if they did not, he'd insist, flaunting Curse Number One and showing Odin how badly he'd underestimated his stolen Frost Giant runt.
With both curses out of the way…a smile that looked like madness spread over his face. The possibilities were endless and he could not slow his thoughts down enough to even begin to consider them.
He would show Odin.
He would show Thor.
Eventually, maybe he would even show these ungrateful Midgardians.
But, he reminded himself, his smile settling into one of determination and the mischief that Odin sought to rid him of, all of this was contingent upon a functioning Midgardian bifrost. And that was contingent upon Jane, who knew not only Midgardian science but also Midgardian technology. His plans had changed, but Jane was still the key. Keys needed to be shaped to properly do their jobs.
Loki looked down at his watch. Just past six. Time for dinner.
He jumped down from the bed, slinging his black satchel over his neck, and left the room. He would not knock on her door, but he would also not make her come to him in the galley. He had won that battle already. It was time to press forward.
/
/
Dinner did not provide the opportunities Loki had hoped for. When he reached the galley, Rodrigo Ortiz waved him over to one of the long tables at the far end of the room. He knew he would have no chance to talk privately with Jane there, but he also knew he needed to blend in among these people and could not simply ignore them all when Jane did not, so he nodded and sat down across from Rodrigo after getting his food. Rodrigo was almost finished with dinner and headed off to his room before long, but by then Selby, Wright, and the Ice Cube team members Carlo Tofani and Austin Shipley had joined them, followed by Jane after Rodrigo had already left.
He said little, vaguely answering a few questions from Rodrigo and promising that he and Jane would stop by the next day to pick up their radios. When the others arrived, conversation turned to the party the night before, which made it easy for him to half-listen and nod at appropriate times while keeping his attention on Jane out of the corner of his eye.
Jane had also not attended the party and also said little, so he watched her mannerisms, how she tugged her sweater more tightly across her chest, how she several times shook her hands before grasping her cutlery, how she drank water as though in a desert, how her brown eyes remained bright and engaged even though she had not shared in the experiences the others were discussing. They were finishing their dinner when those eyes turned fully to him. "How about you, Lucas?"
Loki blinked, quickly pulling up what he could recall of what had just been said. An invitation to do something. She had already agreed. "All right."
"Do you play anything?"
He opened his mouth, but hesitated, not sure what she meant.
"Lucas is a saxophone man, look at him! Am I right?" Wright asked.
Loki smiled in relief, doubling for Lucas's friendly smile. "Hardly. I took some music lessons when I was a child, but that was a very long time ago. I don't remember a thing. And you, Jane?"
She laughed and shook her head. "I used to be able to play the high part of Heart and Soul on the piano. Oh! And Mary Had a Little Lamb on the…what's that thing called…the recorder. That's the extent of it."
"No recorder but we've got a keyboard, maybe we can get a guest performance out of you," Austin said.
Jane shook her head more vehemently this time. "No way. I promise to be an enthusiastic audience member, though."
"Okay, let's ditch this place then, come on," Wright said, shoving his chair back and standing up.
Jane chugged more water before slapping the lid closed on her bottle and standing up as well; Loki followed suit. They crossed the length of the galley to deposit their trays, Wright and Austin pausing along the way to invite others to whatever type of concert they were organizing, then headed downstairs to the music room. There were probably more useful things he could be doing, Loki thought, but learning more about Jane was always potentially useful, and he was rather curious about her songs about hearts and souls and little lambs. Just as full of childish sentiment as Thor, how appropriate.
/
/
Along with the other dozen or so audience members, Jane clapped and laughed good-naturedly at the rather odd rendition of Huey Lewis & The News's Heart of Rock & Roll, with Wright and Austin on guitar, Selby on keyboard, Carlo on clarinet, and someone named Jeff, whom she hadn't met, on drums. The addition of a saxophone would have been nice, and Wright tried hard to convince Lucas to come up and play, still insisting that he had to be a saxophone man. Lucas had politely but firmly refused.
"Okay, guys, last number. Any requests?" Wright asked, strumming a few bars.
"I've got one," Selby said.
"You don't count," Wright said.
"I just think that if we couldn't get Lucas up here to guest-star, then we have to get Jane. And since we don't have a recorder, I request Heart and Soul."
Jane's eyebrows went up. "Oh, no, really. I haven't even tried it since…I don't know, since college or something."
"It'll come back, come on up," Selby said.
"Fos-ter, Fos-ter," Wright started chanting.
Jane looked around the room and saw even Lucas was chanting her name and getting a laugh at her expense it seemed. She bent over and buried her face in her hands. Then she stood up and joined Selby, taking a seat in the chair he pulled up to his right.
"Start here," Selby said, pointing to one of the white keys.
Jane pressed it tentatively.
"Ready?"
"No," she said with a laugh. "But I'm as ready as I'll ever be, so we might as well give it a try."
"Okay. I'll start, and you jump in the second time through, okay? Then when you've got it, we'll bring up the orchestra."
She nodded and flexed her fingers. And sure enough, after he'd made it through the bottom part, she hit her starting note and it started to come back, even the one black key she had to hit. She didn't know the names of the notes or how to read music at all, so she could only attribute it to some deeply engrained muscle memory from the many times she'd played the song with a childhood friend who had a piano and took lessons and insisted on teaching Jane Heart and Soul so they could play it together.
When the other instruments joined in with their own variations on the tune she was startled and got lost, but Selby moved her hand to the right spot and got her started again, and then she was fine. After a number of unique iterations – unique except for Jane's part which stayed precisely the same except for the occasional missed or off-beat note – someone had clearly given a signal to slow down for the end of the song, and Jane managed to slow her beat as well to more or less match the others.
Carlo stood off to the side laughing while the others joined hands and bowed to clapping and even a few catcalls. Selby lifted Jane's hand and nudged her forward for her own bow while Wright provided a few bars of Heart and Soul theme music. She did her best version of a curtsy, even pulling imaginary skirts out to the side. Although laughing hard, Jane was sure her face must be flushed crimson.
"Well, what do you know? Your musical debut at the South Pole," Selby said with a big smile after the applause died away and people started drifting toward the door.
"Such as it was! And by the way…" She punched him lightly in the shoulder.
"What was that for?! You did great."
"Okay, 'great,' is just a tiny bit of an exaggeration, wouldn't you say, Selby?"
"It was Heart and Soul. No one expects Schubert. You were great. Really. And everybody had fun. Most importantly, you had fun, right?"
"Yeah, well, I've never been accompanied by an orchestra before," she said with a laugh. And it had been fun.
Wright came over and clapped Jane on the back. "Nice job, Foster. And you, Selby," he said, pointing, "I like this guest musician idea. Let's make that a tradition."
"Yeah, good job, Jane," Austin said as Carlo and the drummer nodded. "And audience participation, good idea. Especially since it was actually mine," he reminded them.
"Thanks for letting me put you on the spot," Selby said once the others had moved on toward the door.
"No problem. But find yourself another guest musician next time!"
"Hm, I don't know. I think everybody liked having you up here. You bring a certain…something to the group that we lack."
"Women?"
Selby looked away for a moment, and when he turned back he was both grinning and blushing. "Yeah, well, the male-female ratio is sort of out of whack."
"Lucky for me I went to Caltech. Just like home." She'd learned a lot in grad school beyond just the academics, including not to be intimidated in the slightest when she found herself the only woman among a group of men.
"Yeah, I guess, so," he said with a nod.
"But hey, you're really good," Jane said, angling her head toward the keyboard. "Did you study in school or something?"
"Nah, actually my dad is a concert violinist. So I was exposed to music a lot as a kid and I grew up with piano and violin lessons, a little bit of trumpet. I tried to keep up with it in college, but, you know, I had other interests, and not enough time. It's just a hobby now."
"Pretty cool that you can keep it up in the middle of Antarctica."
"Yeah. Oh! And I had an idea, while we were playing. I know a guy here who's really good with woodwork, so I'm going to find a nice piece of scrap wood and get a recorder made for you. Then you can be our guest star for Mary Had a Little Lamb," he said with a broad grin.
Jane was shaking her head as soon as she heard the word recorder. "No. No way. I'm sure I don't remember it. And anyway, don't you know I want to be taken seriously here? I don't want to be known as the lady who plays children's songs badly on a fake flute. What are you trying to do to me?" she asked in mock exasperation.
"Come on, it'd be fun. Besides, we'd all be up here playing it with you. We can do a jazz version. Carlo might have to learn it first, I don't know if they know that song in Italy."
"When Carlo plays it for me on the clarinet, then I'll consider playing it on-"
"Jane?"
She turned around. Lucas was standing just inside the doorway. The other last two stragglers slipped past him. "Yeah?"
"Shall we meet for breakfast tomorrow?"
"Oh, uh…yeah, sure."
"7:00?"
She made a face. "How about eight? In case I'm able to actually stay asleep tonight. No, wait, you're right, we should get an early start. Selby, when can we go out to the Dark Sector Lab?"
"Uh, well, anytime, really. We can go right after breakfast. Oh, I guess you should check in with the doc first, huh?"
Jane sighed glumly. She'd conveniently forgotten about that. "He told me to come by at noon, but maybe I'll go after breakfast instead."
"So…seven?" Lucas asked, his hand on the doorframe.
"Yes, okay. Seven it is. See you then."
Lucas nodded and left, and Jane and Selby continued talking for a few more minutes before Jane returned to her room to read about a rose and get ready for bed in hopes of a good night's sleep.
/
/
Loki walked back to his room, putting some effort into keeping his face neutral. He'd been premature to think this battle won. This would not do. She had forgotten he was even in the room. She was the only reason he was on this wretched block of ice in the first place, and she'd forgotten he existed.
Loki didn't mind being hated. He understood it. Hatred was a strong fiery intoxicating emotion that kept you alive when all the forces of the universe conspired to see you dead. Love was less reliable, though occasionally useful. Thor's version of love – whatever that really was, probably some lingering sense of honor or duty to his childhood playmate – would keep him out of Jotunheim, and his mother's love would keep him free of the Chitauri's master.
Indifference, being forgotten, being ignored – these made his blood boil. He had accepted these things for far too long; those days were over.
She was talking with Selby like they were old friends, when they'd only just met. And he'd allowed it to happen, by leaving her alone with him for an entire afternoon when they must have somehow formed a friendship. That could not happen again. He would have to keep an eye on them, and on anyone else Jane decided to spend time with. Jane's work – her work for him – needed to be her first and only priority. Not Selby, not Wright, not Rodrigo, not some band made up of minimally talented musicians. Nothing and no one else.
Tomorrow she would begin her work. Tonight he would assess the damage to his use of magic from the two times he'd broken the rules in McMurdo, then read his textbook, perhaps foregoing sleep to get through as much of it as possible, ready to assist. To shape his key.
/
Thanks to a friend who read the early chapters of this before seeing The Avengers and mentioned that a "tesseract" is mentioned in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. I kind of wish I could say I've read this book, but I haven't. Had no idea "tesseract" was anything other than a made-up-by-Joss-Whedon word to sound cooler and more modern than "cosmic cube." Look it up on Wikipedia if you're interested.
Teasers for next chapter: Loki does something nice for Jane, but his motives are hardly pure. And there are snowmobiles. ;-)
And excerpt:
"A-ha, so you're an optimist, hm?" Jane asked.
Loki considered that for a moment; he'd never particularly thought of himself as either an optimist or a pessimist. "I suppose you could say I believe in creating the conditions that turn optimism into realism."
Jane raised her eyebrows. "Not exactly lacking in confidence, are you?"
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