Beneath

Chapter Twenty-Five – Discretion

Morning came after a sleepless night, and it was time for Thor to depart as Asgard's emissary. It was not a role he was comfortable with. It was not a role he had any real experience with. The closest he'd come to it was the various times he'd spoken for Odin while his father was in the Sleep, some two or three days here and there, though longer lately. During those times his only real responsibility was to keep the realm running – to approve things that couldn't wait and to postpone things that could, and Odin dealt with most of those decisions in advance. Thor had taken advantage of the additional power the first few times, in rather innocent ways, and his father had not begrudged him the competitions or feasts he ordered. But one year a dam had broken on the Sekin River, and his approval was needed to reassign Einherjar to assist with the recovery. Thor had gone mountain-climbing with the Warriors Three and Loki, who'd tried to convince him not to go. He'd returned to a livid Odin and a punishment of one month in the snowy mountains without provisions, after putting Mjolnir and his back to work rebuilding the dam by himself. He'd undertaken his responsibility slightly more conscientiously after that.

But it wasn't until his recent visit to Vanaheim – which he could not consider a success, except in that he didn't take a swing at anyone – that he'd borne any real responsibility. And even that was not the same – when Odin slept, he spoke for Asgard. With Odin awake, he spoke for Odin. The difference was not just semantics; his duty now was to convey what Odin wanted conveyed and to learn what Odin wanted learned. Thor's freedom lay only in how he would accomplish the assigned task.

As he made his way with slow heavy steps out of his chambers, down the stairs, out of the palace, and toward the Rainbow Bridge where Heimdall stood watch at the wooden structure in lieu of the observatory, Thor thought back to the inappropriately-timed hike into the mountains , ages and ages ago. Was that what Loki had meant by being in his shadow? That Loki would warn him not to do things and he would go ahead and do them anyway? He felt ignored? It was true that Loki seemed to like giving him advice, and it was equally true that Thor frequently, perhaps even usually, ignored it. But Thor also gave Loki advice – more so in their younger years – and Loki heeded it with about the same frequency as Thor.

It made his head hurt to try to make sense out of what little Loki had told him about why he was so angry at him. He wished Loki would just explain it. Not shout. Not rant. Just explain. Perhaps when he returned from Midgard he'd be able to…

"Good morning, my prince."

"Good morning, Heimdall."

"Where have you decided to go?"

Thor explained; Heimdall nodded. Thor had put a great deal of thought into it, and decided there was only one place that made sense, given what he needed to do.

/


/

Thor found himself in the exact location he'd described to Heimdall: the helicopter landing spot high up on Tony Stark's tower in New York. He looked around him; his heart clenched along with his fists. There was the spot he had fought a wild-eyed Loki, where he'd tried to convince him to fight with him instead of against him, where his naïve hope had spiked, where his brother had slipped a knife into his side in response. The whole outdoor area – Thor wasn't sure what to call it, "balcony" didn't seem quite right – looked different now. The device Erik Selvig had been forced to create was gone. Thor followed the stairs up to the door that hadn't been necessary when he'd left here, when the massive glass window had been shattered. Some signs of the battle remained, but much had already been repaired. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that repairs to other buildings were not all coming along as quickly.

The door was locked, so Thor carefully rapped his knuckles on the glass. He didn't see anyone in the large open room beyond and thus doubted he would be heard, but then he remembered the invisible talking machine-man who would surely alert Stark – whose presence in the building Heimdall had confirmed – that he had a visitor.

A couple of minutes later Tony appeared from around a corner trotting toward the door in what had to be the Midgardian equivalent of formal attire, judging by the layers and the materials that even without touching them Thor could tell were finer than anything he'd worn during his time as a mortal on Midgard. Tony mouthed some words that Thor couldn't hear through the glass, and the door opened of its own accord. Thor stepped through and met Tony just inside the threshold.

"Thor!" Tony exclaimed, slapping a hand on his shoulder, then yanking it back and flexing his fingers. "All decked out in the drapes and the full-course armor, hm? Anyone following behind you I might be underdressed for?"

Thor stepped inside while Tony lingered behind a moment, scanning the skyline.

"No one follows me, Tony Stark. I've come alone."

"Hey, that's good. That's really good," he said, stepping away from the door again and allowing it to close behind him. "Social visit then? Catching up with the old pals from Earth? You should've given me some warning, you know. I could've put together a thing."

"A thing?"

Tony was striding over to his bar. "A thing. A get-together. A class reunion. A party, my friend. What can I get you?"

Thor had been following Tony, but stopped short in the middle of the room. The hole in the floor formed by the repeated impact of Loki's body had been cleared of debris and filled with water. Bright red fish swam in it and a steady stream of bubbles rose to the surface from beneath some rocks.

"Too much?" Tony asked, leaving the bar and coming to stand next to Thor and look down at his new indoor fishpond. "Pepper thinks so. Also she says it's a safety hazard. To which I said…"

Thor glanced up at Tony when he didn't continue. Tony rolled his eyes – apparently that was what he'd "said."

"You never met Pepper, did you? She's my…well, she's a lot of things. You can meet her tonight. She's swinging by here in" – he glanced at his watch – "a little over an hour. Charity thing, but we can cancel. Unless you want to come with? I could probably swing you a seat."

"I, uh, no." Thor tore his gaze away from the fishpond again. He wasn't sure what to think about it. He didn't particularly want to think about it. "I've come on my father's behalf. I need to discuss some serious things with you," he said, giving a little extra weight to the word serious. Even when fighting Chitauri monsters, even when nearly dead from hurtling through the void of space, the man Thor had chosen to come to was rarely serious, and there was no jest in anything Thor had to say.

"Huh." Tony squared his shoulders. "Serious as in I'm underdressed?"

Thor wasn't certain, but guessed Tony was referring to his metal suit. "No," he said, then added, "Not at the moment."

"Uh-huh. Okay. Jarvis, call Pepper and cancel. Tell her Thor showed up on my helo pad. She'll understand. And you, should I call anyone else? I know Steve's in town. I think the rest of our merry band is scattered at the moment. Jarvis has everybody on speed dial, though. I mean, literally everybody."

"I would rather you didn't. This matter requires some discretion."

"Discretion, huh? Okay, I can do discretion. Drinks first, though. Somehow I'm guessing I'm going to need one. What'll it be?" Tony crossed back over to the bar and stepped behind it.

It was early for Thor, but in New York it was almost evening. And if this was how Midgardians – or at least Tony Stark – handled official meetings, then that was fine with him. Besides, he knew it would take a good many of these drinks before he would feel any effect. "Johnnie Walker Blue Label," he answered, going for the one Loki had favored.

"Runs in the family, I see."

Thor watched as Tony poured two of the same drink, then accepted the glass handed to him. Tony then led him over to a brown leather sofa, past the fishpond in the middle of the room. "Could we go somewhere else?" Thor asked.

Tony paused, glanced back at the fishpond. "You're right. Too much. Okay, sure. Follow me, Goldilocks."

They got into an elevator and Tony pressed one of the many buttons along the wall. The door opened into a corridor of sorts, a pathway through various rooms not separated by walls. They passed a sitting room and a kitchen and a dining room before going through the first door Thor had seen, into a black-walled room filled with large black leather chairs and sofas and strategically-placed miniature silver tables.

"Home theater," Tony said. "It's soundproofed. Jarvis, scan for bugs."

"None detected, sir," the disembodied voice answered, making Thor uneasy.

"Discretion," Tony explained. "People come and go from this building all day long. This floor is part of my private living space, but even here I'm not the only one who has access. No one can eavesdrop on us in here, though. Satisfied?"

Thor nodded, although he wasn't sure what bugs had to do with anything. It was good enough that they would have privacy here.

Tony dropped into a stuffed leather chair and Thor took the one next to him, though he would have rather remained standing, even if the furniture fit him as comfortably as it did Tony. He took an experimental sip of his drink. It was all right, smooth, a slightly smoky flavor, but he didn't understand why Loki had insisted on drinking bottles of the stuff while incarcerated in a SHIELD facility.

"Hm, what I said before? Maybe not. I forgot, you and Loki aren't genetically related, right? You want something else? Single malt, maybe? Some people are purists. There's a full bar at the back of the room." Tony was already standing.

"No," Thor said, setting his drink down. "This is irrelevant. I'm here to discuss-"

"Right, right. Serious stuff," Tony said, sitting down again, stretching his arms out in front of him and wiggling his fingers, before clasping them loosely over his lap. "Okay, I'm all ears. Shoot."

Thor shook his head minutely, deciding to ignore anything Tony said that didn't directly pertain to what he came here to say. Which was…

Tony sat there watching, waiting, occasionally blinking, and actually remaining silent.

"We fought a grand battle together, did we not, Tony?" Thor finally said with a winsome grin.

"Oh, boy."

"And we forged a strong alliance. We fought well together." Although this was clearly a room meant for sitting, Thor again wished he were standing.

"Okay, spit it out. What's up? Because I'm definitely starting to feel underdressed."

Thor took a deep breath. As if this weren't awkward enough, Tony Stark along with the rest of his realm knew nothing of the other realms. "Asgard is facing some difficulties right now, and we are in need of assistance," he began somewhat bashfully. By his reckoning it was still Asgard which owed Midgard and not the other way around. He gave a brief overview of the Nine Realms and their relationship with each other; Tony only interrupted once, to ask Jarvis to record their conversation to his "personal drive." Next he recounted the journeys of the delegation from Svartalfheim to each of the other realms, except Midgard and Asgard.

"Why didn't they come to Midgard? I mean to Earth?" Tony asked.

"Gullveig – Vanaheim's king – said it was because you don't know enough about the other realms to be able to voice an opinion."

"I think we should still get a vote," Tony said, managing to sound offended.

"And who would cast your vote, if you had one?" Thor asked.

Tony opened his mouth, then closed it again. "You've got a point," he said a second later. "Still, it's the principle. Anyway, what exactly did we miss our chance to vote on?"

Thor explained the demands for Loki, the Ice Casket – which he also had to explain – and the tesseract. If there was any remaining levity in Tony, it disappeared at the mention of the tesseract.

"When somebody starts demanding something like the tesseract out of the blue – I don't care if they're your supposed allies – I start thinking ulterior motive. We would've voted for Asgard. We like fifty percent of you that we've met, and you helped us stop the fifty percent we don't. So what's their game? Vanaheim and the other –heim."

"Svartalfheim? We aren't sure. Father believes Svartalfheim is behind these demands."

"But Svartalfheim isn't demanding the tesseract for itself. Maybe they plan to steal it from Vanaheim?"

"Perhaps. Vanaheim is a primarily an agrarian society. The tesseract belongs on Asgard. We have protected powerful artifacts for millennia, and we don't use them against the other realms. But…because of what Loki did they have cause to doubt us now."

"Because he used the tesseract against us?"

Thor fidgeted in his chair. He decided he'd best not mention that the other realms were not overly concerned about what Loki had done on Midgard. "Partly," he hedged. "But more because he tried to destroy Jotunheim."

Tony narrowed his eyes. "Wait, did he lead some kind of bioengineered army to try to take over Jotunheim, too? What, does he bore easily? ADD with a predilection for subjugation?"

"No. He tried to…to destroy it. Completely. To turn the entire realm into rubble, killing all its inhabitants. I stopped him before he was able to finish the task."

Tony froze for a moment, then drained his glass and set it down with a hard ringing clunk on the table. "So…we got off lucky with the bioengineered army shooting up a city and damaging a lot of buildings."

The intonation didn't indicate a question, so Thor didn't treat it as one.

"So all the rest of these realms are going to gang up on you and go to war if you don't meet their demands. Thor, if you need me, I'm there, buddy. I'm sure the others are all in, too. But there's just a few of us. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to turn over some modesty leaf here, I'm just-"

"We don't need the assistance of the Avenger warriors. You're right. You would be insignificant next to the onslaught of seven realms. We-"

"I never said insignificant."

Thor frowned and ignored him. "That isn't the kind of assistance we need from Midgard. From you."

"From me? Me personally? Wait, your old man is making the rounds of these other realms meeting with kings and queens, and you came to see me?"

Thor frowned and decided to jump straight to the unpleasant part before Tony could start fancying himself a king. "Tony, there's something I need to tell you that may not sit well with you. We couldn't give Loki to the Jotuns even if we wanted to. We don't know exactly where he is. Except that he's on Earth." Tony blinked heavily and sat up straighter, but said nothing, so Thor forged ahead. "Father sent him here with enchantments restricting his actions, as a punishment that we hope he can learn from. But then he hid himself from our gatekeeper, and we don't know where he went. Father would like you to find him, but to do so in secrecy, and to tell his location only to me. We don't want SHIELD or any of Earth's other authorities to pursue him."

"Uh-huh. So Loki's running around on Earth God knows where, doing God knows what, and you want me to find him but not tell anyone else he's back. Does that about cover it?"

Thor nodded. "The other realms also know Loki's on Midgard. He may require protection."

"Okay, no problem," Tony said with a slow, thoughtful nod.

"Really?" Thor asked, releasing a relieved breath.

"Yeah, really. No, not really, Thor," he said, standing. "Do they have hallucinogens on Asgard? Look, maybe in Asgard your memories are super short or something, but it was just a couple of months ago that we were risking our lives to stop Loki, and we sent him back with you to make sure he didn't ever come back here. And you gave him round trip tickets? Without keeping track of him? Without telling anyone? Has Asgard collectively gone off its meds? Do you remember what he did when he was here before? Actually, what he did here twice, if we add in the pre-game show in New Mexico. How can you expect me not to tell anybody that he's right back in our backyard again?"

"He can't hurt anyone, Tony. Any harm he inflicts on another will be inflicted on himself as well. And if he uses the innate magic that he wields for ill intent, he will also suffer for that. If he were wreaking havoc in your realm, you would have heard about it, would you not?"

"You're telling me he's harmless, then?"

Thor started to say yes, because that was the easy answer, the answer Tony wanted to hear, and therefore the answer that would make Thor's task easier. But it also wouldn't be the truth. "Not exactly. Loki is clever, and a skilled manipulator with or without magic. So long as Loki lives he will never be harmless, unless he chooses to be. Loki…I know what you think of him, but he…I know another side of him. His plan here failed. He won't try to repeat a failure. I hope he's chosen to reflect on what's happened and learn from it, as I did when I was on Midgard."

"Why do I get the feeling you guys see us as your personal playground? And by the way, I hate to tell you, buddy, but when bad guys learn from their mistakes, they're usually learning how to be better bad guys. I think you're being way overly optimistic and even venturing into Pollyanna-land, at our expense, I might add."

Thor finally stood up, now looking down at Tony. "He's my brother. I know him. You don't."

"You do, huh? Did you expect him to come here and kill a bunch of people and try to take over the planet? To force a whole crowd of people in Germany to kneel to him or face death? To nearly sever a guy's eyeball and grin at the people running away screaming in terror while he did it? Is that the brother you know? Because that's the Loki I know," he said with a jab of his thumb to his chest.

Thor took a deep breath and turned away. He didn't want Tony to see the effect his words had on him. He hadn't heard about the eyeball, and only a brief reference to enforced kneeling, without explanation. "I am a king! The rightful king of Asgard," Loki had told him on a Midgardian cliff. He desired subjects? Needed them, to make him feel he was Thor's equal? But Thor had never had subjects. Had never been made king. Perhaps Loki needed to feel he was Thor's superior, not his equal. Thor's mind rebelled instantly and stridently against Loki being his superior. He was the first-born, the heir, the natural leader, the… Thor's face fell and his eyes drifted closed for a moment. The superior. He flashed back to the infamous trip to Jotunheim. Pushing Loki aside on the bridge, impatient with his methods of subterfuge. Overruling Loki and telling him to know his place when Loki tried to get him to leave without a fight. But that wasn't always the way things went, was it? Thor tried to remember the last time it didn't, and found he couldn't. He felt sick. He would've given anything to be able to talk to Loki at that very moment, but it wasn't possible. And he still had a task to accomplish.

"Perhaps I don't know my brother, or myself, as well as I ought to," Thor said, turning back to face Tony again, amazed the man had waited so quietly, and then pretending he didn't see what looked like pity on his face. "In time I hope to change that. But for now, you must understand that while we seek Loki's location, the other realms may be seeking Loki himself. As long as they don't know where he is, Midgard is probably the safest place in the universe for him right now."

"You know, you'll have to forgive me if I can't quite bring myself to think of Loki's safety as a top priority. What if the other realms come knocking at Earth's door demanding we hand him over? What if they come here and find him? If you're asking us to go to war against entire planets nobody here's ever even heard of to protect Loki…let's just say you're asking an awful lot."

"Tony…when Loki was imprisoned on Asgard, before he was sent to Midgard, he asked me for only one thing, as a brother. And I swore to him I would not let him be sent to Jotunheim, no matter what. I will defy my father if I have to, to keep my oath. Unless the All-Father can find a way to avert it, there will be war between the realms, perhaps war such as not even he has seen in all his years. Midgard is not prepared for this kind of war, and no mention has been made of involving you. They are insisting we retrieve Loki and surrender him. But this is why we need your discretion. Should someone from Svartalfheim or one of the others begin seeking out your leaders about Loki's presence, they can't be tempted to divulge his location if they don't know it, or even know that he's here. If anyone threatens Earth, the oath of allegiance I made to Phil Coulson still stands; I won't abandon you to the whims of the other realms. But in the end it is my duty to protect Loki, not yours. I understand your reluctance to involve yourself on behalf of my brother. I understand your dislike of him."

Tony's eyes widened, and Thor realized he'd said something wrong. "It's not so much that I dislike him, really. I'm sure he's lots of fun at parties, what with the parlor tricks and all. I'm just really not a fan in general of people who try to take over my planet."

"You have a similar sense of humor, you and my brother." When I can understand yours, Thor silently added.

"Oh, now you're just trying to insult me. Because I don't really remember him having so much of a funny bone. Oh, wait, was him throwing me out a window supposed to be a joke? I don't remember laughing. There were rumors of screaming but I deny them."

"Will you find him for me, and keep his location in confidence?" Thor asked, regretting ever mentioning it.

"I can try, and…maybe. If he's endangering anyone-"

"He won't be. I don't think so, anyway. But if he is, of course, I understand. Still, please alert me before you take action."

"Okay, I can live with that. It might not be that easy to find him, though. Last time Bruce came up with a way to narrow down his location based on signs of gamma radiation that came from the glowstick, and then used that to narrow down the number of camera feeds that had to be scanned. No glowstick means no narrowing it down. There are billions of cameras out there. I can get access to a lot of 'em, a lot more if I have reason to get more aggressive with the more protected ones. You don't have any idea, on the entire planet, where he could be?"

"Father originally sent him to a clearing in a forest in a land called Canada. He was still in the forest when he began hiding himself from our gatekeeper."

"A forest in Canada. I think that's kind of like saying a building in New York, but okay. You could have said a forest in Russia. Canada narrows it down. Slightly," he added and pursed his lips. He picked up his glass and carried it over to the bar, where he set it down and poured a fresh drink. "Not a lot of cameras in Canadian forests, though. Any idea which city this forest is closest to?"

"It lies north of Puente Antiguo, New Mexico."

Tony's eyebrows shot up. "Now that actually narrows it down, assuming you mean more or less directly north, because all of Canada is north of New Mexico. Jarvis, is that Saskatchewan?"

"Yes, sir. Shall I initiate scanning of camera feeds from the province?"

"Do it." Tony issued further instructions that Thor didn't understand, and Thor told him when Loki had been sent to Midgard. The fact that Loki had already been on Earth for about a month and a half seemed to surprise him. Loki was good at hiding, another thing he was better at than Thor. Hiding took patience and an ability to blend in, neither of which was one of Thor's strengths.

Loki was good at hiding… "Tony, would Loki be aware of these camera feeds you're searching?"

Tony was still talking to the invisible Jarvis, but stopped to answer. "Sure. They aren't exactly hidden, most of them. That's part of the point. If you know you're on Candid Camera, you're less likely to go all Bonnie and Clyde. Uh, sorry, commit a bunch of crimes. Anyway, SHIELD found him in no time before. He was mugging for the camera."

"Mugging?"

"Looking up at it and grinning like a Cheshire Cat. He wanted to be found."

"And this is the only way you have to search for him?"

"I guess we could always run searches on sales of Johnnie Walker Blue Label."

"Loki doesn't drink alcohol."

"Could've fooled me."

"He rarely drinks alcohol," Thor corrected.

"Uh-huh. Me, either. Well, if that doesn't do it, does he have anything unusual with him? Something that would give off a fairly uncommon energy signature?"

"He was provided with a few changes of clothes. A satchel to carry them in. That's all. Oh, a necklace from Mother. It's imbued with some kind of magic…but nothing that has an uncommon energy signature, as far as I know."

"Magic to do what?" Tony asked immediately.

"Nothing dangerous. It's…personal."

"And?"

Thor frowned. His brother ought to have a right to some privacy. But he understood Tony's need to know. "It reminds him that our mother loves him."

Tony took a deep breath and nodded. "Wow. That's a weird image." He shook his head rapidly. "Okay, then, yeah, unless you've got some kind of magical Loki-detector I can borrow, running camera feeds through facial recognition software is the only option I've got. But I'm afraid I can see where you're going with this."

"I'm sorry, Tony, I've wasted your time and mine. If Loki doesn't want to be found, if he doesn't want to be seen on these camera feeds, he won't be." Thor stared at the black wall and morosely felt it reflected something of his thoughts at that moment. Warn Midgard about the upheaval in the realms. Find Loki. Protect Loki. The last, his own addition to his instructions, an interpretation of his father's words, would be considerably more difficult without the second. At least he had accomplished the first.

"Yep, that's what I thought. But don't give up. I can focus on hidden cameras. He can't have avoided all of them."

"He doesn't have to avoid them. As I said, he's clever. I'm sure he could come up with many ways to not be seen on them. He can change his appearance."

Tony had been only half-focused on Thor until the last. "Uh, say that part again? I think I must have misheard that. He can change his appearance? As in…"

"He could make himself look like you or me. Or a woman. Or a child. Or an animal."

"We really need to work on your briefing skills, big guy," Tony said, dropping into the nearest chair. "That's kind of an important piece of information right there. You realize you've just told me we're now looking for a particular piece of hay in a haystack instead of a needle?"

Thor didn't know the expression, but this one at least made sense. "It shouldn't be that bad. He probably wouldn't actually change his appearance. Not for long, anyway. He would probably be punished if he did it for any mischievous purposes." He didn't add that hiding himself from security cameras would actually probably fall under Odin's exception for protecting himself from being hunted.

"Okay, well, we'll start with Saskatchewan, and branch out from there. And I think I might still try the Johnnie Walker thing. But it might take a while. Are you sticking around?"

"I can't. My duty right now is to Asgard. Otherwise, I would very much enjoy having a thing with you."

Tony grimaced. "Probably not quite what you meant to say, there, Princess, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. And bonus points for trying. So how do I let you know if I find him?"

"Just call out Heimdall's name. Trust no one else in this. He'll tell me and I'll return as soon as I'm able."

"Asgard's version of a telephone operator? Okay. Trust no one, got it. Very X-Files. Hey, speaking of 'things,' that kind of thing anyway, do you know where your scientist lady friend is right now?"

Thor nodded. "She told me she was going to the Southern Hemisphere," he answered. "Beneath New Zealand."

"Mmm, yeah, you could say that I guess. I'll get you a globe for Christmas. It'll have Saskatchewan and New Mexico and New York and New Zealand and all the hot spots on it. Cold ones, too. So you haven't talked to her since she got to the South Pole?"

"There hasn't been time."

"You want to call her?"

"Call her? You know how to contact her?"

"Uh-huh. I told you, Jarvis has everybody on speed dial. Though it's a little more complicated to the South Pole. They don't exactly have telephone lines. But yeah, I just sent her a bunch of soft-copy stuff a few days ago. She wanted SHIELD's data from whatever it was that happened in the sky after you left New Mexico. So, you wanna talk to her?"


/

Uhhh, okay, so this is the chapter I've worried about for a long time now. I have told a couple of you, I think, that the first thing I said after joining some friends to watch Iron Man (which I only did months after seeing Avengers, I never even really heard about it before then), was "Wow, I could never write Tony Stark." And when I realized a chapter like this would be needed, I think I was quaking in my boots. I'm happier with it now than I was at first, but I dunno, I still don't feel like I "know" Tony the way I feel like I "know" the main characters in Thor (or at least let's say, am comfortable with my understanding of them). So, I hope it works for you, and if you think I failed miserably, please be gentle about it! ;-)

If you're wondering about the Johnnie Walker Blue Label...this will be included as a flashback later (at least that's the current plan, and there's a specific moment planned for it so probably it will stick), which if this were somehow in Chuck-universe (sorry, loved that show), would be titled "Loki Versus the Johnnie Walker Blue Label."

And..."I'm sorry, so sorry," no Loki and no Jane in this chapter at all! Please don't hate me. The next chapter, "Sunset," is all Loki and/or Jane from start to finish. I hope you will enjoy it!

Teasers for "Chapter 26: Sunset": Jane gets a special phone call (well, come on, that's an obvious one!); and...hmmm...maybe I should leave it at that. Except there are darts. I really loved writing the darts. Oh, yes, and there's a sunset. And quite a few other things, actually.

Excerpt:

Loki stared at the wall, on which hung a flat round object, with numbers marked around the outside and two concentric rings marked in broken red and green and a small red circle inside a green circle in the very center. A target. A smile spread over Loki's face – the smile of a hunter spotting his prey after a very long wait. "Would you mind refreshing me on the rules?" he asked, hoping he wasn't asking the Midgardian equivalent of Would you mind showing me how to use a knife and fork? "It's been a while since I've played."

Voila! Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing! You make me happy. ;-)