Beneath

Chapter Twenty-Six – Sunset

"Jane, this is Rodrigo, you on?"

Jane jumped in surprise at the unexpected voice coming from her hip. She glanced over at Lucas with raised eyebrows. Other than once during a fire alarm – a false one it turned out – when there'd been a station all-call, she'd never received a call on her Kenwood radio.

She unclipped it and thumbed the button. "Yeah, I'm out at the DSL. What's up?"

"You've got a phone call on the Iridium. Can you come in to the station?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. Okay. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Thanks for letting me know."

"No prob. See you in fifteen."

"The satellite phone?" Lucas asked once Jane had reclipped her radio to her belt.

She nodded, grabbing for the sweater she'd taken off a few hours earlier. "I wonder who's calling." She froze for a second and stared up at Lucas, who'd risen with her. "Oh, God. I hope nothing's happened to Erik." When she went back into motion it was in a frenzy. At the last moment before she pulled on the sweater she saw the tag on the wrong side but ignored it and ran out toward the door where her ECW gear was left.

Lucas followed her out and started suiting up beside her. She spared him a quick curious glance as she yanked up her black Carharrts over her khakis.

"It's lunchtime anyway. I'll walk with you."

"Oh, right. Okay," she said. He looked a little concerned; it was unexpectedly sweet of him, but she didn't spare it much thought. As soon as her gear was on, Lucas just seconds behind her, she was out the door and on her way, running while staring at the ground to make sure she didn't trip or slip, both of which she had a tendency to do, blaming the sastrugi for the trips and the relatively poor traction of the bunny boots for the slips, and not at all any lack of coordination on her part. Lucas easily kept up with her with his longer stride, more at a brisk walk than her slow run.

She shaved several minutes off her normal "commute" time and ran up both flights of the exterior DZ stairs as fast as she dared, entering at the second floor, just down the corridor from Communications. She didn't bother with removing her gear except to rip off the hat and iced-over balaclava and shove them into the pocket of her jacket, even though she knew this would result in a damp yucky mess in her pocket. Lucas followed her, lingering in the doorway, still in his own gear as well. "Hey, I made it," she said, panting. She'd acclimatized to the altitude, but thin air was thin air.

"Fast, too, Foster. Too bad you won't be here at Christmas for the Race Around the World. I told your caller to try back in 15. Any minute now then. The line was kind of noisy, but that's typical. Just press here once when it beeps, it works pretty much like a regular phone," he instructed, pointing to a button on the phone. "You can take it in here for some privacy. I'll go grab a coffee. Give me a shout on the radio when you're done, okay?"

"Okay, thanks a lot, Rodrigo. I appreciate it."

He turned and left the room; Lucas gave her a final glance and followed. She heard Rodrigo say something to him in the corridor but couldn't make out the words. She felt a surge of guilt for how she'd avoided Rodrigo, remembering again how much she liked him and how he'd never been anything but friendly toward her. She felt it particularly keenly today, when the sun would officially set and the station would celebrate with gusto. The sense of excitement in the air was palpable; Jane had felt it at breakfast as fellow Polies were volunteering to get the preparations going bright and early. Jane wasn't part of any of it, having cut herself off almost entirely from the social scene except for the occasional movie night and gym time which she tried to squeeze into the morning – neither of which required much personal interaction.

The sat phone rang. Jane grabbed it and pressed the button, probably a little harder than she needed to. It really did look like a regular phone, just with a big black antenna sticking up from the top at an angle. "Hello?"

"Jane, is that you?" a crackling male voice asked.

"Yes, who's this?"

"This is Thor. You don't recognize my voice? How are you?"

Jane's eyes bulged. "Thor? Really? Is that you? What, do they have satellite phones on…where you're from?" Stupid, stupid, stupid. She knew how satellites worked. They didn't send signals to Asgard.

The caller laughed, and even with the noise on the line she would have recognized that warm, rich sound. "We have nothing of the sort. I'm in New York, with Tony Stark. He offered to let me contact you with…the satellite phone. You didn't answer me, how are you?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm great now that I know nothing's wrong. Wait, nothing's wrong, is it? Why are you with Tony Stark?"

There was a pause, and Jane didn't think it was related to any time delay in the connection, which was pretty good except for some static. "I needed to fill him in on some of the things I told you about before. Let's not discuss it further."

Jane got the message; Thor didn't trust these lines of communication any more than she did. "Are things still calm back home?"

"They are. Tense, but calm. And you? No troublesome visitors?"

She laughed. She knew exactly who he was referring to, but troublesome wasn't the first word to come to mind when she thought of Loki. "No. And there won't be. No visitors at all until the end of October. No way to get them here even if they wanted to come. The research station I'm at closed to all flights over a month ago. I told you, it's extremely remote. Please don't worry about me. I know you have other things to deal with right now."

"Impossible. I'll always worry about you. But I'll worry less now."

"Okay, if that's the best you can do, I'll take it. Oh, hey, Thor, uhhhh…"

"Yes? Did you say something? Your voice isn't very clear."

Did you ever dress up like a bride to trick some giants into getting your hammer back and then beat them all to death once you did? And by the way, exactly how close are you and this Sif woman?

"No, sorry. No. I just wish I could see you. We're having our sunset party here tonight. I wish you could be here."

"As do I. The sunsets in such a remote place must be beautiful."

"Oh, well, I don't know how beautiful it'll be, but it only happens once a year, so it's pretty exciting. Ask Tony to explain it, okay? And I hope you get everything straightened out back home quickly. At least by November, when I'm leaving here."

"I'll take it as added encouragement. Jane…I'm sorry, I have to go now. My meeting with Tony lasted longer than I expected."

"I bet it did. I bet that also means it was a good meeting. I…I'm glad you called."

"Thank Tony Stark. I hadn't known it was possible."

"I will," she said, and she would. She wasn't sure what you got for someone who could buy absolutely anything he wanted himself, but she resolved to get creative and express her gratitude for a growing list of favors from Tony, whom she still hadn't even met in person. "Take care of yourself," she said a little awkwardly. She hated goodbyes.

Thor chuckled. "If you insist. And if you do the same. Goodbye, Jane."

"Goodbye," she answered, and another few seconds later the connection terminated. She sagged back against Rodrigo's desk. She hoped he truly would have solved Asgard's problems by the time she left here. It would be a welcome change of pace to have an actual planned visit that didn't involve Thor saying "I have to go." If the tension with Svartalfheim and Jotunheim could be resolved earlier, she wouldn't be all that shocked if he showed up out of the blue at the South Pole. He would be in for quite the rude awakening if he showed up outdoors somewhere around July. Even before things had gone so wrong here Jane had already decided she would probably not participate in the 300 Club, but she could imagine Thor relishing it for the challenge; the idea made her both laugh and blush. And the auroras would be in full swing by then, she realized. She hadn't thought about auroras in weeks. She hadn't thought about much other than work in weeks.

Her thoughts wandered back to her first few days here, to her crisscrossing of the globe, to the excitement and nerves and even the fear when her altitude symptoms didn't immediately abate. Not too long ago she was marshalling a plane with lightsabers and Princess Leia hair, for Pete's sake. She was here for her work; that had never changed. What had changed was her. She had traded an adventure for what was essentially an extension of SHIELD's "protective custody" in Norway…just a lot colder.

What happened to me? she asked herself. She was a scientist. She was a bit of a geek, which she was totally fine with. She used to joke with her friends that when you got your PhD you checked your social skills at the door. But she hadn't done that. Well, maybe not everyone would agree with her on that point, but she was pretty sure she hadn't. At least not to this extent, not to become a total loner of her own choosing. She needed friends. She needed people to share this experience with. She needed to have the experiences in the first place. Lucas wasn't enough. He hardly even counted in some ways. Oh, she laughed with him occasionally, chatted about this or that, though not about personal things since he'd told her about changing his name to get away from Dad and his branding iron. He didn't seem to have the slightest interest in the South Pole experience. He cared only about work. Jane needed people around her to remind her not to spend every waking minute working. Like Rodrigo had once, she recalled.

What were the odds that Rodrigo, or John from Materials, or Victor the dining attendant, or Macy from the greenhouse, or anyone else here other than Selby, was here to spy on her? She wasn't that important. And even if they were reporting to SHIELD…let them. She had precisely two secrets from them: Loki's presence on Earth, which Tony probably knew about now, and the extra project that now had her working up to sixteen hours a day, and at which she and Lucas had made tremendous progress in the last couple of weeks. All she had to do was not talk about those two things. Easy. She could allow herself to make friends while still protecting herself, assuming the best about people instead of the worst as she had been doing, which really wasn't like her at all. She was only hurting herself and her own South Pole experience by making herself an outcast here.

The sun was setting tonight, officially at 8:41. It happened once per year, and that happened in only two places in the world. And Jane was living at one of them. Except she hadn't been living at the South Pole. Only working. Work still had to remain her top priority – it was why she was here, she loved it, and she wanted Lucas to get what he needed out of it. But she needed to start living as well. It would be nice to have someone to share all this with. It would be nice if that someone could be Thor. Or Erik, or Darcy, or any of her handful of close friends she'd maintained from childhood, college, and grad school. But since it couldn't, then why couldn't it be her fellow winterovers? The thought was still slightly scary, like a first date, she thought, or maybe closer to a second date, when you already knew you wanted to trust the guy but weren't yet quite sure you should.

Thinking about dates made her thoughts come full circle, back to Thor, with whom she hadn't had a real date, not a conventional one anyway. She wished she could hit rewind on her life and experience that night under the Tromso sky with him again. It would be incredible if she could share something like that with him here. Polar auroras and once-a-year sunsets. Laughing with braver souls than she after they sat in a sauna at 200 degrees then streaked out to the Ceremonial Pole in the buff at -100 degrees. The Midwinter gala. She wasn't going to voluntarily miss these unique life experiences out of paranoia and fear and anger. Life was too short. She of all people should know that.

And it would change tonight. Maybe she could see what Rodrigo was up to. Her eyes snapped over to the radio and she jumped off the desk, only now realizing she was sweating big-time standing there in all her gear, her thoughts too inwardly focused to remember to let Rodrigo know she was off the sat phone. She dialed him up and told him she was done, then worked her way out of Big Red for a little relief.

"Hey, so, are you going to the sunset dinner tonight?" she asked as soon as Rodrigo returned and she'd thanked him for the use of the room.

"Are you kidding? Of course," he said, settling in at his desk and taking a quick glance through his monitors. "I'm serving at the first seating. I figure that way if I fall asleep it'll be more likely to be in my own plate instead of while pouring someone else's wine. I don't know if I'll be able to hold up through the party but I'm going to try. At least for a little while. What about you? You better not be bowing out of this, Foster."

"I never even signed up. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Are you serious? I don't know what you were thinking, either. You beakers.* You know what they say about 'all work and no play.'"

Jane wiped a hand over her brow. She was still sweating, wearing too many layers of clothes for indoors. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it too late? I'd like to volunteer to be a server, too, if I can, even if it's too late to join the dinner."

"I think you can still sign up. They plan for everybody. I think it's pretty much unheard of for anybody not to go. It's not like there's competing social obligations, you know? And it's kind of a big deal here. But you may not have a choice in which seating you get at this point. Macy's managing the servers, she used to wait tables at some fancy-schmancy place and she'll show you how to carry the plates just-so and how to pour without dripping. Call her up on the radio once you know which seating you're available for."

"Okay," Jane said, finding herself ridiculously, deliriously happy at the prospect of learning how to pour without dripping. She couldn't believe she'd ever walked away from all this. And besides, if this whole wormhole generator thing didn't work out and SHIELD found out and SISI dropped her like a hot coal and she was right back to where she started…having an extra employable skill might not be such a bad idea. She'd been pretty much down to her last dime in New Mexico. Oddly enough, the job of independent researcher didn't pay well. "Listen, thanks again. Sorry I've been kind of a jerk lately."

"Don't worry about it. I'm just glad you're snapping out of it, otherwise come toasty August you'll be one scary beaker."

Jane laughed. If she still used Facebook she would have posted that: I am one scary beaker. "Okay, well, I'll see you tonight one way or another, I guess."

"Your other half is waiting for you in the galley. He's going to be a scary beaker by June, if not sooner."

"I'll try to work on that," she answered with a grimace and a wave before ducking out.

Lucas, however, wasn't waiting in the galley. He was waiting outside the galley, in the main corridor very close by, and their eyes met as soon as she stepped outside of Communications. As she approached him she realized he was watching her with an intensity he hadn't for some time. "What's up? Is everything okay?" she asked once she'd covered the few steps between them.

"Yes, of course. Is everything…okay…with you?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't bad news or anything. Just a friend checking in. Hey, I know we didn't talk about it, but I think we should go to the sunset dinner and the party tonight. Remember what I was saying about balance last week? I really need to get a little of that back."

Lucas narrowed his eyes at her and the skin on his face tightened in places. She rarely liked what followed this hardening of his features. "But we were going to-"

"We can still do it. After sunset and before the party."

"Hey, Jane, Lucas," a voice called from behind her. She turned around to see Ken Ryan, the station support supervisor, headed their way. He was carrying oversized rolls of red and yellow streamers.

"Hey, Ken. Is that for the party?" she asked, pointing at the streamers.

"Nah. They're going more with the Christmas lights and disco balls for that. A few of us are decorating the galley."

"Oh yeah? Need any help?"

"Sure, the more the merrier. Come on down, we're about to get started," Ken said, continuing on past and turning into the narrower side corner that led into the galley.

"I thought you wanted to avoid all these people. Now you want to spend your entire day with them?" Lucas asked. It sounded more like an accusation.

She took a deep breath, preparing herself for another argument. They'd still had some tense moments since The Talk, but no more out-and-out arguments. "I need a break, Lucas. I need to…I need to feel human and normal again. I need friends, acquaintances, whatever, just people around me. I try to live my life without regrets, and if I do nothing here all winter but eat, sleep, and work, I'm definitely going to have regrets. If we don't go to this thing we'll be the only two people in the entire station who don't. Look, you can do what you want, but I'm going."

Lucas watched her but said nothing. After a moment she rolled her eyes and walked past him to the sign-up sheet outside the galley. There were 24 names down for the first seating and 24 for the second. Jane turned to ask Lucas which seating he wanted, if in fact he had decided to go, but before she got the words out she turned back to the wall, took the pen from the clipboard, and put her name down for the second seating. She held the pen out to Lucas.

"Jane…who were you on the satellite phone with?"

She blinked back at him a few times. Conversations with Lucas…sometimes interesting, sometimes dry, sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating, sometimes downright annoying, sometimes just plain weird. "I told you. A friend. I have no idea what that has to do with whether or not you're going to sign up for the dinner." She reached for his hand; he snatched it away. She reached for it again and pressed the pen into it. "Do what you want. If you come, wear one of those fancy suits you brought with you," she said, then walked away.

/


/

Loki watched her back until she disappeared around the corner into the galley. He didn't like being interrupted. He didn't like being ignored. He didn't like people turning their backs on him. Jane had just done all three in the space of a few minutes. He was used to it, though, or had been until it stopped when he became king. He looked down at the pen in his hand and gave a small hard laugh, because actually, he realized, it hadn't stopped even then. Each time it mattered, his commands had been ignored.

He commanded no one and nothing here. Not even Jane. Not even after all the work he'd put into controlling her. One phone call and she was turning back time as if he'd done nothing.

It was only one day – an afternoon and an evening. Let her have her fill of feasting and revelry. He couldn't stop her at this point anyway; he'd already played all his cards. He would consider what she'd said, though. It might be possible to design a new card.

He had no interest in the South Pole's version of a feast – it would probably be an insult to the word, but if Jane was going, then he would go, too. He stepped forward and quickly realized that he could go, but not with Jane. There was only one open slot left, and it was for the first seating while she had just signed up for the second. He drew in a slow breath then exhaled equally slowly. With a clenched jaw he wrote his name, the one on his Canadian passport. Skipping the dinner to work with Jane would make them look like dedicated hard workers, or according to some talk he'd heard, like they worked too much. Skipping the dinner by himself would make him stand out as something very odd.

Loki clipped the pen back to the sign-up sheet and angled his head to the left. Do what you want, she'd said, as though he needed her consent for that. He didn't want to decorate the galley. He'd already done enough house mouse duties for a lifetime. He did want to keep an eye on her, especially with this sudden reversal of attitude. But he'd pushed his luck enough today by hovering in the corridor once her phone call was over. She knew him well enough now to know that he wouldn't choose to do whatever it was they were doing with that colored paper. He spun around and backtracked to the DZ entrance to reclaim his gear, put it on, and headed out toward the dark sector as the sun continued its slow spiral, tracing its path around the horizon and sinking ever downward.

/


/

Loki arrived for dinner in the gray-on-white seersucker suit he'd last worn on the flight from Sydney to Christchurch. He was rather fond of it, casual, comfortable attire one could still look good in, with a dark green tie that meant nothing to anyone else and reminded him that he was the god and these people were the ants. It was casual to him, but most of the other men here seemed to think the mere addition of a tie transformed common garments into formal attire, so perhaps to them he may as well have been wearing all his best leathers and gold right up to his helmet.

The women were another story. Most were in gowns of some sort or another – not the long-skirted swirling things of Asgard, but styles that required considerably less fabric. He hadn't seen a woman's legs since New Zealand, and as he found the place setting with his name written on the card at the first of the two long tables, he allowed himself to look. He wasn't the only one looking, he realized with a quick glance around him. He watched as one pair of long legs approached the table and sat across from him – Macy from the greenhouse, he realized once she reached her seat. Shorter legs approached from behind Macy, and as his eyes traveled upward past the bare knees to the fitted black material to the pearl choker at the neck to the face…he blinked heavily, willed his face to betray no reaction.

"Would you like some wine to start off with? I have the Shiraz, but we also have some Malbec floating around and Pinot Grigio if you want white," Jane said, a white cloth draped over her left forearm.

Jane poured first for Macy, wrapping the cloth around the neck of the bottle, filling her glass half-full, and twisting the bottle over the glass with a flourish at the end. No one ever poured alcohol so gracefully in Asgard. And no one ever filled a glass only half-full.

"Lucas?"

"What?" he said, startled, his gaze jumping up from the bottle to her face.

"Wine?"

"No, thank you."

"You sure? Is there something else I can get for you? I can look around. And there's whiskey for later, but I could get you some now, if you want."

His eyebrows went up at the mention of whiskey, but he gathered that Johnnie Walker Blue Label was expensive, and quite likely not what would be served here. Not that it mattered. He wouldn't touch it if an unopened bottle of Blue Label were set down in the middle of his plate. "No. I don't drink alcohol."

"Oh! I'm sorry. Well, something else? We have iced tea. Soda? Hot tea? Water?"

"Water will be fine," he said, feeling everyone's eyes on him. He glanced around as Jane walked back toward the kitchen; he was imagining it. His eyes fell on Jane again. Now that he knew it was her, the legs were no longer distracting. But it made him shudder to think he'd admired them for a moment. Jane was not a woman. She was a means to an end.

Jane filled glasses and brought plates, beginning with a small salad of entirely fresh vegetables and a lobster bisque in a bread bowl with a garnish of some kind of greenery that had never been frozen. The meal, it turned out, was creative and visually pleasing, the best he'd had here, even if that wasn't saying all that much. Macy explained how she'd been cultivating cabbages and tomatoes and cucumbers and various other things specifically for this dinner, and for the first time Lucas could recall he found himself interested in dinner conversation with someone other than Jane. He even asked a few questions.

As the dinner broke up with the approach of the second seating, Austin, sitting two people down from Lucas, asked if he wanted to play darts while they waited for the second seating to finish. He would normally have declined without a second thought, but he really had nothing better to do in the meantime with Jane part of the second seating.

He followed Austin and Wright – no Selby, which Loki couldn't decide was a relief or a disappointment – down the corridor into the Game Room in the B Wing. The room was dominated by its pool table and ping-pong table – he knew what these were now, if not the rules of play – but they walked over to stand near a patch of bare wall, the rest hidden by cabinets and bookshelves and a small refrigerator.

"Five-oh-one?" Austin asked.

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 quiet 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 equivalent of Would you mind showing me how to use a knife and fork? "It's been a while since I've played."

Austin explained – while Wright interrupted frequently – the scoring system, the double ring, triple ring, bull, and bull's eye, and then the point, which was to be the first to bring one's score down from 501 to precisely zero. They'd clearly left some things out, probably assuming he knew them already, but it was enough to get the gist, and if Loki could master Earth's astrophysics he was confident he would master this game.

Wright went to one of the cabinets and took out a box from which he withdrew three small blue cylindrical objects reminiscent of tiny arrows, complete with something like a fletching at the end. He handed one to Loki and one to Austin. Loki rolled it in the fingers of his right hand. Very small, very lightweight, not at all the same aerodynamics of an arrow, certainly not of a knife. A plastic shaft with a silver metal tip and barrel. Not a very useful weapon, unless perhaps thrown with a great deal of force at precisely the right spot in the neck, possibly the chest; he doubted it could penetrate the skull. Merely a game then, like something for children to practice with. Children and Midgardian scientists. And him. Loki suppressed a sigh. He might prefer to throw something more substantial at this target, but what he had was this flimsy "dart." It would do.

Austin and Wright had already agreed to determine the order of play with an initial throw, with the highest scorer going first. Wright aimed, probably, for the triple 20 above the bull's eye, but struck low and to the left, receiving only 5 points. Austin aimed for the bull's eye for 50 points and hit the green outer bull for 25. Loki watched them carefully as they threw – their stance, how and where they held the dart, how fast and how far forward they moved their arms when they released it. He rolled his own dart constantly between his fingers and thumb, trying to find the most natural way to grip it. His turn. He took his place on the strip of silver tape on the floor, lifted the dart to somewhere level with his jaw, held it lightly almost as he would a pen. Suddenly a very old memory came back to him; he had actually thrown something like these darts before, during a self-imposed exile on Svartalfheim. But those darts – "fire needles" – burst into flame upon impact. Precision was somewhat less of an issue.

His hand flew forward, the dart launching from it and toward the triple twenty. Loki knew precision in aiming. But he did not know precision in aiming tiny, flimsy plastic darts as opposed to knives and javelins and even axes, with which he was quite good. The dart struck high and to the right of his triple 20 goal for one point. And then it fell to the floor.

"Hey, Lucas, you were supposed to be going for high score, there, not low score," Wright said, stepping up to retrieve the dart from the floor.

"I was merely warming up," he said, giving Wright the hunter's smile. He hadn't been around Wright much without Selby also there, and he realized he found him less tolerable without his colleague. Wright reminded him too much of Thor, even in build, although his chest was rather more like Volstagg's than Thor's.

"I guess talk is all you guys have left since you threw away your pride for a grand total of five points between you," Austin said, making a little get-out-of-the-way waving motion with his hand. Wright handed him his and Loki's darts. He stepped up to the line and threw, this time getting his triple 20. Wright recorded the score, and Austin released a second dart – obviously one of the rules they'd neglected to mention. The game began to make more sense to him. It would be very difficult indeed to sink all three darts into the tiny space for the triple 20, or the bull's eye. He'd wondered why, if triple 20 was the highest that could be scored, one wouldn't simply aim every single dart for that spot until the end, when bringing the score to zero.

Austin walked away with 101 points to take from his 501, and Wright stepped up for 58. Loki watched throughout. He decided to change his strategy and aim first for the bull's eye, even though the triple 20 outscored it; it was a more natural target to begin with. His first throw – gentler than the practice one, as he thought of it – earned 16 points and landed just outside the outer bull, low and to the left. He knew exactly how he'd thrown it; he need only adjust based on the results. The next throw hit the green outer bull, 25 points. On the next throw he overcompensated and missed the bull high and to the right, for just 4 points, 45 in total.

"45 times better than your last throw, I guess that's saying something," Wright said as he noted down the score and subtracted it from 501.

"45 times zero is zero. Where'd you say you got your degree from?" Austin asked.

"Still warming up," Loki said.

Wright and Austin talked and exchanged the occasional mocking insult while Loki watched and adjusted. He scored his first bull's eye, but Austin had scored two more triple 20s and in three more turns he hit zero.

"I would like a rematch," Loki said as soon as Austin retrieved his darts.

"You were starting to look like you could at least give Wright a run for his money there at the end. Yeah, sure, we've got time, Wright?"

Wright agreed and they began again, starting with a single dart to determine order. Loki hit a bull's eye and won the right to go first. On his first turn he got two bull's eyes and a bull – 125 points. He was tempted to move on to the triple 20 but stuck with the bull's eye through two more turns to ensure he was comfortable with his mastery of it. At the end of his third turn, all similar to his first, he realized Wright and Austin had fallen silent and were staring at him. He frowned. So much for his pursuit of perfection. He watched as the other two finished their turns and he worked out his new version of perfection. There was no less challenge in hitting the triple 1 area than the triple 20, and it would appear as though he'd missed his actual target. Besides he was close enough now to zero that he couldn't try for three triple 20's anyway – it would take him below zero and void his score for the turn.

On his fourth turn, he hit a carefully aimed triple 1. Wright let out a laugh. "You were starting to kinda scare me there, Cane. I thought we'd created a monster. And you, you were supposed to find a chump and you got this ESPN wunderkind."

Loki had no idea what an ESPN wunderkind was but it made him smile. Oh, yes, they'd created a dart-throwing monster. Smoothly, gently, he almost placed rather than threw his second dart into the dead center. Of the triple 20. He half-turned to give Wright another predatory grin, this one broader than before. Austin was smiling and nodding in admiration, perhaps appreciating the competition. He decided to aim his third dart for the precise juncture of four specific scoring areas, and find out what the rule was when that happened. But he was off by a hair, and scored a plain 20.

Austin won that round too, but they played a third, in which Loki learned the rule he'd wondered about, in which he scored three triple-20s in a single turn, and in which he won despite some very deliberate, precisely aimed "misses."

"Not bad, Mr. 'I don't remember the rules.' Not bad," Austin said, sticking out his hand to concede defeat.

The gesture still felt odd to him, but he shook it. "I told you I only needed to warm up."

"Yeah, well, next time I'm choosing who plays with us," Wright grumbled. "If we were betting I'd swear you were a ringer."

"If we were betting I would have started out much worse than that," Loki said with a smirk.

"Worse than zero? Come on, let's see if they're done stuffing their gullets yet. I'm ready to be rid of that sun for a while," Wright said, putting the darts back in the cabinet.

They left the Game Room and retraced their steps back to the galley, Loki barely listening as they talked about some movie they had watched recently. His thoughts lingered on Wright's comment about the sun. Jane had said similar things, and he knew she was excited to see the sunset, had been even before she'd suddenly decided she had to go to feasts and parties for it. Loki didn't understand the excitement. It was a sun. It set. Like every other sun he'd ever seen. Some may set more or less frequently than others, but it was just a sun, just a star. He saw no reason to celebrate its disappearance and their imminent descent into darkness.

Jane was standing near the windows along the back wall, talking with Rodrigo. She caught sight of him and a moment later excused herself and hurried over in her moderately high heels. He couldn't understand why women here wore such things. They looked nice but they were hardly practical, and even formal attire, or what counted as such on Midgard, should still retain some practicality. Loki could fight a war in his formal attire. The Asgardian version of formal attire, anyway.

"Where did you go off to?" she asked, her eyes a little brighter than normal.

He wondered if she'd been drinking. "I was throwing darts with Austin and Wright."

"Really?" she asked, her eyes going wide. "Did you have fun?"

"I…yes," he said, and was moderately surprised to realize that yes, in fact, he actually did have fun. Not the most fun of his life, to be sure, but considering the circumstances, it was a remarkable amount of fun. Hurling projectiles at a target, it was hard for that not to be fun. And he'd missed friendly competition. Though considering those men were not his friends and never would be, friendly was perhaps not the best choice of words. Non-violent, possibly, he thought. With the illusion of friendliness. Yes, an illusion. Everything about him was, after all, an illusion, from Lucas to Loki to the unwanted Jotun orphan – had he even been given a name before he'd been abandoned? Had those men seen past the illusion, there would have been no friendly competition. But they hadn't. Such illusions, bitter though they made him now, were not always bad things.

Loki and Jane split up to go get their ECW gear on; he wasn't sure what Jane was doing but he decided to keep on the searsucker suit except the jacket and tie, and add the other layers on top. They joined the gathering crowd outside as the minutes ticked down, the sun no more than an orange sliver sitting atop the horizon. When it came to seconds, someone started counting down and others laughed or joined in; Jane did both. Loki observed the surreal scene as though from the outside even though he stood among them. He remembered Barton going over the precise timing necessary for specific stages of their assault on SHIELD's helicarrier. Precise timing was rarely so valued on Asgard.

The sun here did not cooperate. It was using a bit of an illusion, too. The cold atmosphere here increased the sunlight's refraction; he'd heard estimates that it would continue to look like the sun hadn't set for another 36 hours. Most people didn't seem bothered by the fact that they'd stood around outside in the freezing cold staring at the horizon to watch a sun not set.

The crowd dispersed to get ready for the party and some to go to the pre-party concert; Jane would be going to both. But they had other plans first. They exchanged a glance, then headed out to the unused Jamesway they'd moved a few pieces of equipment to and done a little interior redecorating in, detaching and setting aside particle board "walls" to open up a work area and repurposing a small round table as a desk. They'd turned on the heat but kept it low to avoid drawing attention; the temperature inside was just below freezing, warm compared to outdoors and enough to allow them to work and the laptop with external hard drive to do its job recording data.

They had moved the device powered by Stark's arc reactor from the DSL to rest right behind the Jamesway, and wired it up to Jane's work laptop through one of the gaps in the walls. Loki was grateful he was not expected to sleep in one of these buildings, with its lack of real privacy and possibility of indoor snowfall. The device they now called "Pathfinder," but only after nearly a week of mostly passive arguing. Jane had started calling it "the Arc Launcher," but Loki knew its real purpose and disliked the imagery of himself "launching." "Pathfinder" was infinitely more elegant, and appropriate for every stage of its intended use. Jane had insisted the name "Pathfinder" was already in use for at least half a dozen other things. But eventually she tired of the week of Did you recalibrate the Arc Launcher? Yes, I recalibrated Pathfinder. She rolled her eyes, muttered under her breath, and gave in. Loki had been pleased with his victory.

The computer was ready to record; Pathfinder was ready to find the path to Yggdrasil. They had added a sturdy metal stand to rest above the arc reactor without disrupting the energy burst. Jane placed the spherical probe on the stand that had been crafted to support it before she'd even come here. She had modified the probe for its new mission, Loki observing intently in case he needed to make his own modifications that she would never know about. She straightened up and looked at him, eyebrows raised. "You want to do the honors?" she asked.

It should have been more climactic. Something to compare to a gleaming stern Heimdall plunging his enchanted sword into place. It was just a button. Loki pressed it.

There was a five-second delay, enough time to take several steps back, just in case.

The probe exploded. Its structural integrity field flared so brightly Loki instinctively closed his eyes. Then with a snap of energy the field dissipated and glittering microscopic bits of metal floated to the ground.

Loki swallowed hard.

"That could have gone better," Jane said. They stared at Pathfinder for a moment. "I'll just go check the sensor log," she said, and Loki followed her back inside.

She found a wobble in the energy field and made a slight alteration in one of her equations to account for it. She took another probe and they went back out to try again. She had insisted on "managing his expectations" throughout the week, once they'd gotten access to the data from the failed event and begun working toward this moment in earnest. Loki didn't want his expectations managed. He wanted them met. Nothing more, nothing less.

They repeated the process. Probe on its stand. Press the button. Five-second delay. Step back. Wait.

There was a flash of bright blue energy, similar enough to the explosion half an hour earlier that Loki sighed and presumed failure.

"It's gone. It worked," Jane said from his left.

He looked more closely; she was right. No sparkling remains of a probe. No sign a probe had ever rested on the stand. It had happened so fast it hadn't even been visible. He turned to look at Jane, who was grinning up at him. She stuck out her gloved hand and he accepted it, but she squeezed rather than shook.

"Come on," she said.

He nodded. She squeezed his hand again and turned around to head back into the Jamesway, letting go of him only when he similarly turned to join her.

Back inside, Jane was nearly shaking with energy and excitement. She checked the laptop; raw data was streaming in. "How am I ever going to sleep tonight?" she asked, but Loki figured she wasn't actually asking him. "Let's go to the party," she said, turning to face him.

"I'm not going to the party."

"We can't do anything with this yet. There's no point staying out here. Everyone will be there. It'll be fun, come on."

"I'm not going to the party."

"Yes, you are. You're coming with me."

"No, Jane, I'm not."

"I can stand here and do this all night."

"As can I. While Pathfinder feeds us data."

"I'm not budging on this one," she said with a huff.

Loki stared down hard at her, but she didn't appear intimidated in the slightest. And she looked like she really wasn't going to budge, either. He could walk away, but that would likely make her angry, when right now she felt badly for the suffering Lucas had endured and she wanted to help him. "How long would you require me to remain at this party?" he asked with narrowed eyes.

She narrowed hers right back, which amused him, though of course he didn't show it. "Thirty minutes."

"Five."

"Five? Give me a break. Twenty."

"Ten."

"Fifteen."

"Fine."

"Luc- Oh. Okay, good. Deal. Let's go back to the station. We have something to celebrate."


/

*Couple of real-life South Pole notes: 1. "Beaker" is South Pole slang for a scientist. 2. 300 Club - yup. Google it, you'll see some striking pictures.

I meant to say on the last chapter, I've gone ahead and put up Magic & Mead, the story that started life as a flashback with no particular home...not the best way to go about things. So I figured I'd share it. You certainly don't need to read it to make anything in Beneath work, but it's the same characters in the same universe (well, not Jane, she wasn't born yet!), so you might enjoy it. You'll find in this story the "real story" (vice Loki's manipulated nightmare version of it a few chapters back) of Loki getting drunk when he was 14. It's a much simpler, much shorter story, taking place when Loki's 14 and Thor's 15. You can find it from my profile page if you're interested. As of 12/30/12 it's about 95% done, I just have to type it up from the notebook it was written in.

As for *this* chapter, I hope you enjoyed it. Loki & Jane have really settled into a routine, but it's a routine Jane has realized she's not satisfied with. Loki, on the other hand, was quite satisfied with it, and he's really being pushed out of it now. And I've wanted to get the darts thing in for a long time, I figured it would be something he'd have a natural affinity for and I haven't seen it done elsewhere - this was the first time it made sense to me that Loki might actually say yes.

Teasers for "Chapter 27: Fun" (yes, "fun"): bickering, bantering, reflections on fun, actual fun, non-fun for Loki (or is it?) and Thor.

And excerpt:

"Hey, uh, Lucas, I'm sorry if I pushed you too hard last night. I didn't mean to be…uh…I just wanted you to have a good time, you know?"

The laugh went a little further this time. "Dr. Foster, you'll know it if you've pushed me too hard."

Jane smiled weakly. Because that definitely sounded creepy.

[And is that foreshadowing? Why yes, indeed it is.]

Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing, thanks also to Guests to whom I could not respond, I love hearing from you too!