Beneath
Chapter Forty-Four – Falling
Loki had always enjoyed traveling. Whether it was through an established portal or the bifrost, or even just a journey exploring Asgard itself, he'd relished the thrill of discovery and adventure, and, when he was still a boy, even the small but electrifying undercurrent of fear that accompanied every departure from the familiar surroundings of his own existence. There'd never been any serious concern behind the fear, because his family – the word, the concept rankled him greatly now – and a retinue of guards had always been there to protect him.
Loki had never traveled like this before. And the old undercurrent of fear was back, though it had nothing to do with stepping outside the comfortable boundaries of home. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was returning to those boundaries, though they were no longer comfortable, and they were no longer home. They were full of betrayal and lies. They were fraught with danger.
More so than the last time, because he was in the process of defying the great Odin All-Father yet again.
As soon as he saw light, as soon as he felt something pull at his stomach, he made himself invisible, which, along with cloaking himself from Heimdall's view, should ensure he arrived in Asgard completely unnoticed. As expected – though he'd hoped he was wrong – he paid for it. The light was immediately overpowered by complete darkness, and Loki winced at the pain shooting up his leg, but tried not to move, uncertain how the structural integrity field would react to any big changes in position.
He felt dizzy, and disturbingly disoriented, with no sense of up or down or left or right, so dark he couldn't see his own outline even though he was not invisible to himself. It was nothing like travel via bifrost. Pinpricks of light then appeared, like tiny lasers burning into his eyes, and he blinked against them before he realized the lights were coming from his wrists, where electronic equipment was strapped on. His eyes quickly adjusted, and with his keen vision and concentration so deep it sent pain burrowing equally deeply into his head, he could just make out the edges of the tunnel he was racing through. It was maddening, watching branching tunnels appear and perceiving just the barest sense of their direction only once he was already far past them. A few tunnels seemed to lead off straight out to one side or another, while many others appeared oddly twisted and curved sharply away, all of them to unknown destinations. There were far, far more branches than there were realms.
Suddenly bright light burst through and blinded him and his stomach was doing things that made him clamp his mouth tightly shut, his eyes along with it. Then everything changed so quickly it was for a moment overwhelming. The light that had made it feel like his eyelids no longer existed quickly receded, and a roaring noise filled his ears. He smelled something. He wasn't sure what, but it was familiar. Gravity returned, and another second or two passed before he realized that meant that the structural integrity field had shut off. And that meant he'd arrived. But accompanying the gravity was a strange sensation. His legs were not bearing any weight. He wasn't standing. Wind rushed past him in an odd manner. His eyes snapped open. He was falling. Fast.
His eyes darted around in a growing panic, assessing his surroundings in an instant. Rock, brown, jagged, an endless sheer wall rushed by in front of him. On his right, blue sky, darkening as he fell. On his left, the roar of the Grand Falls in front of the wall, with a backdrop of more sky. He knew exactly what would be there if he twisted around to see what was behind him. His controlled fall was quickly deteriorating into a chaotic and very much uncontrolled tumble. His wits came rushing back to him and he was amazed it had taken this long. He had not come here only to fall again, in the very same spot as before.
Falling was not actually much of a problem for Loki, once he calmed and steadied himself. He manipulated the particles at his feet, and while it took a little longer than he would've liked – levitating out of a freefall wasn't quite as simple as levitating off of solid ground – his direction was soon enough reversed. He breathed in deeply and tilted his head back to bask in the sun's rays.
His next priority was to make sure Pathfinder wasn't able to rip him back for a return trip through Yggdrasil to the icy desert he'd left behind. There would be time for a more permanent solution later, but for right now he simply reached into his satchel for the RF switch – his hand brushed the crinkly packages Jane had stuffed in there for him to deliver to Thor and his lips curled in disgust and loathing – and toggled it, turning off the signal from the transmitter strapped to his wrist.
As he rose higher, the scene before him began to look familiar, though from the infrared imagery from Jane's probe rather than personal experience. Yggdrasil had tried to send him exactly where it normally sent travelers to Asgard: the bifrost observatory. The problem, of course, was that the observatory no longer existed, so he'd "landed" on air. The end of the bifrost was uneven but smooth, not jagged as he remembered it from his last view; they must have made some progress rebuilding it with the tesseract, but not much, since it didn't appear much longer. He crested the end of the bridge, and the spires of the palace far beyond it came into view. He glanced to the left, remembering the blotches of red and orange, but saw nothing there suggestive of such a powerful heat source. His gaze was drawn back to the right, across the bridge and its mammoth gates, to the little wooden building ringed with guards too far away to be seen clearly but there nonetheless, where the tesseract was now kept.
He stepped carefully onto the bridge itself; it was as sturdy as it always had been, no matter the damage done to it. Here Thor had dangled over the edge. Here Odin had stood and spoken his final words of rejection. Here he had stripped Heimdall of his citizenship – he wondered now if they'd ever given it back to him, or just ignored that order as they had all his others. Here Heimdall had stopped him and Thor and Thor's friends, but not for long enough – no, Thor had gone for the direct approach, and Heimdall would of course accept anything Thor said without argument, and off they'd gone to Jotunheim on a fool's errand, to the ruining of what little was left of his life. It occurred to Loki then just how much of this was Heimdall's fault, Heimdall and that incompetent guard, who'd probably decided to stop by the nearest tavern for a tankard before bothering to carry out his order. But it was also Heimdall who'd allowed the Idiots Three and Sif to go after Thor in blatant violation of his command, and if that hadn't happened, he wouldn't have been forced to send the Destroyer to kill Thor, and Thor would have lived out his days happy in his mortal skin – with Jane, he thought with a sneer – for who knew how long, while Loki consolidated his power over Asgard. A Frost Giant on the throne of Asgard. Everything his father – everything Odin had never wanted.
More memories, older ones, flooded back as he picked up his pace. Adventures, "family" journeys, field trips through the bifrost to other realms. Games invented to take advantage of the way the bridge lit up in response to pressure – running, skipping, jumping, throwing things, bringing animals. After he'd mastered – or so he'd thought – making himself invisible, he'd discovered a weakness here, when Heimdall had called him out with another of his impertinent remarks after seeing the bridge light up in response to his invisible feet alighting from his horse. He'd learned from that, of course, and now knew how to negate the force of his own body so that he would leave no footsteps in sand or snow, or light up the bifrost.
He didn't bother with that, now. The bifrost was dead, and would not have lit up under Volstagg's footsteps.
Loki reached the point where the bridge at last intersected with land, and it was glorious land, with tree-lined streets and colorfully blooming gardens here and there as far as the eye could see, growing in actual dirt. He'd never imagined it was possible to miss dirt, but he hadn't seen any since McMurdo, he realized. He also realized now, though, that Asgard did not feel right. He'd seen the guards surrounding the makeshift observatory – had counted them reflexively, the ones seen and the ones unseen that Loki detected nevertheless, for it was a tempting target – and he now walked past two sentries standing ceremonious guard over the broken bifrost. But otherwise, although it was daytime, the streets were nearly empty. He was grateful for it – maintaining invisibility was difficult in a crowd – but at the same time found it slightly unnerving. He passed two young women, heads bent together whispering as they hurried in the opposite direction. It seemed there were more Einherjar out on sentry duty as well, but it could have been simply that they stood out more in the otherwise empty city. Surely no one here is actually concerned about an attack from Jotunheim. The giants must be greatly diminished, and they do not even have the means to leave their realm.
Loki's planned route did not take him past Central Market, but he made a slight detour out of curiosity, passing a large planting bed with nothing but a few trampled remains of dead flowers in it; a great crowd must have passed through here recently. The market, he found, was closed. He could remember only a handful of occasions when that had happened. Thor's would-be succession. Thor's twentieth birthday. Baldur's funeral rites. Not yet officially judged guilty, he'd been released from his prison cell to attend the ceremony; he'd already been unofficially judged guilty, though, and if the thoughts of those who stared at him could have been turned to reality he knew he would have died a thousand horrific deaths that day.
His stomach clenched at the memory…and at the thought that some other terrible thing could have just happened here. But then he chilled his heart against it. If something terrible had happened, it was no concern of his. And for all he knew, Thor could be inside the throne room being officially given the throne at last at this very moment. He laughed darkly at how deliciously ironic it would be if he marched right into the palace and showed himself – a Frost Giant turning up to ruin his succession yet again.
He did not turn back toward the palace, but instead continued through the city and beyond it. His path and Asgard's had diverged, never to meet again, he thought, then revised it – his path and Asgard's had never been the same in the first place. Parallel, perhaps, for a time, close enough together to appear to be one and the same from a distance, but never touching, not really. Throat tightening unacceptably, Loki focused on his current path, following a well-worn trail through a rocky field, into a light wood that appeared to have been damaged by a recent storm, until he found the stream he was looking for. The terrain became moderately rugged as Loki followed the stream uphill to its source, a waterfall that tumbled over a ledge perhaps three times his height. In his youth the land had seemed almost mountainous and the waterfall had seemed as tall as the palace.
He stepped down carefully on the slippery rocks and pebbles, some of them wobbling and clacking together as he moved, and raised a hand to divert the water from above so he could step through the side of the falls without drenching himself.
"Who's there!" a deep voice suddenly called out from somewhere behind him, not far away.
Loki froze. He hadn't seen anyone around. But then, he hadn't been particularly looking for at least the last two hours.
"What is it?" another voice called, further away.
"I heard something."
"You've been hearing things all day."
"I'm telling you, I heard something."
Loki felt one of the rocks he was standing on shift as it sank a little under his weight. He reached out to steady the rock but it was too late; it shifted further and sent the toe of his boot forward, thudding against another rock and causing more clacking.
He heard a heavy thud behind him and twisted his neck around to see an Einherjar guard moving toward him from the base of a large tree. The man, who looked vaguely familiar to Loki, held a sword in his right hand and a ram's horn in his left.
Since when do they guard this portal? Since when does anyone even know about it?! he shouted at himself. If he'd known, he could have muffled his sounds, negated his weight on the ground, slipped past without anyone ever suspecting someone had been there. He evaluated his options quickly, as the Einherjar was approaching equally quickly with a sword pointed in his general direction. Retreat – preferably by levitation, so there would be no more risk of giving his position away. Continue – quickly, counting on whatever element of surprise he could still muster. He'd discovered another pathway to Svartalfheim, but it was far from here, in the mountains, and Loki had already spent hours reaching this one. Continue, he decided, holding himself so still he didn't even allow himself to breathe.
The Einherjar advanced slowly toward him, but a little to his left. Loki tracked him with his eyes. When the man was just passing him to the left, Loki flew into motion, jabbing an elbow sharply into the man's side – armored so it did not harm but instead startled – then the straightened stiffened side of his hand into the guard's throat. The Einherjar's hands flew up to his throat, and Loki caught the grip of the sword the other man released to do so, pulling it into his own invisibility. The Einherjar fell to his knees gagging and Loki raced into the stream and through the curtain of water, emerging on the other side in water just above ankle deep, in front of a wall of slick, polished light gray stone.
It wasn't really stone. It was magic, and Loki had discovered its secret over a thousand years ago.
Loki tossed the sword from his right hand to his left, and with a quick motion changed the wall to something permeable and charged forward on his throbbing right leg…only to slam into the stone so hard he yelped in shock and pain as he stumbled backward, falling into the pool of water at his feet, water pounding over his upturned face and spray slowly soaking the rest of him. He jerked forward, getting his face out of the water.
"Haeringur, what happened?" someone was shouting, the voice that had been more distant. Even through the noise of the waterfall Loki could tell it was much closer now.
"Something…something…can't breathe…creature…couldn't…see…," Haeringur sputtered in an unnaturally harsh, croaking voice.
A ram's horn sounded from behind him, a single clear note.
Loki pushed himself up out of the water, manipulating the sound waves to muffle his movements. Odin's curse gave him another gift of pain shooting up his leg in return and he barely kept himself upright and it was only by the finest threads of self-control that Loki held back from screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. Apparently he was allowed to protect himself from discovery by SHIELD, but not by Asgardian Einherjar.
He reached out to touch the stone wall. This was real stone, as it turned out. Luckily he also knew how to deal with real stone; unluckily, it would cost him more pain, and more magic. But he had no choice at this point. He heard splashing in the water behind him. Steeling himself for the pain he knew was about to take hold of his right leg for the third time in even fewer minutes, Loki stretched his right hand out over the stone and concentrated on changing it. It was more difficult than expected, stone and yet not stone. Modified stone. He clenched his teeth against the pain that shot all the way up to his hip. The stone resisted him and he redoubled his efforts. It occurred to him through the struggle that perhaps it was mere stone after all, and he simply had less grasp of the magic needed for his task. Something pricked at his shoulder blade and his hand began to tremble violently with the effort to get the stone wall out of the way.
"What- Stop right there!" an angry voice bellowed from just a few feet away.
The pricking got worse, growing to a slow burn. Two quick loud notes came from a ram's horn so close behind him he could feel the air rushing out its other end. He could turn and slice the guard nearly in half with the sword he'd taken off the other and he would literally never see it coming, but he was so close, so close-
The stone collapsed in on itself and tumbled to the ground, now dark silty water that disappeared into the pool. The Einherjar behind him jerked in surprise; Loki knew because he felt it through the sword tip buried in his back. With no time to spare, he tried again to make the stone – the not-stone – that now appeared before him permeable, tested it with the sword in his left hand, then threw himself forward as his right leg gave out.
He fell face-first onto cold stone, barely keeping hold of the commandeered sword, and heard pounding behind him, then shouting. Then more than one voice shouting. Haeringur wouldn't be shouting again for some time, so others had arrived. Gasping for air over the pain and the rush of adrenaline, he looked around at the rough dark walls, the small shafts of light piercing in at odd angles through cracks in the stone. Sufficiently oriented, he pushed himself up again and charged forward. The cave was smaller than he remembered and he kept his head ducked as he ran for its rear wall. If these Einherjar had been tasked with guarding the gateway, it stood to reason they would have been given the ability to enter the secret cave.
The sword went back to his right hand as the shouting suddenly grew louder. Let them come, Loki thought with a growl deep in his throat as the back of the cave came into view. He leaned slightly forward, squared his shoulders, and dove for the wall that was already swallowing up his sword.
/
/
Jane waited behind the jamesway, trying not to constantly check her watch. It was hidden under layers of gloves and sleeves, and continually exposing the skin to get to it wasn't a good idea. Especially with no Loki around to heal it, she thought, remembering how he'd basically just looked at her frostbitten right hand and restored its normal condition. She tried to imagine how he'd done that, in light of what he'd said about changing a pen's structure. Can he change cellular structure? She shuddered, for that was a truly scary thought.
Her chest was beginning to ache. She wasn't really cold – the USAP gear was good stuff – but she was breathing unbearably cold air into her lungs. She couldn't stay out here much longer. She unfastened and parted layers of fabric again and found that Loki had already been gone 63 minutes. Then she noticed the second hand wasn't moving. The extreme cold was rough on batteries as well as skin and lungs; her watch battery had given up the ghost. She arranged the material over her wrist, and realized that meant Loki had been gone at least 63 minutes.
Loki had always been prompt. If he said he would meet her at 7:00 AM, he met her at 7:00 AM. If he said he would be back within an hour and he wasn't…he'd been lying. She'd known he might be lying, of course, especially when he agreed so easily to her amendment of his "within a day" proposal. Her face fell out of its scowl before it was fully formed. He'd been lying…or he'd never made it to Asgard. The structural integrity field had failed. Pathfinder had malfunctioned. He had wound up somewhere other than Asgard, somewhere he couldn't survive. He'd shown up in the middle of a war and his transmitter had been destroyed. She drew in a deep breath and grimaced as it burned her lungs.
Leaving Pathfinder where it was, she quickly returned to the jamesway, where the 28 degrees it was heated to felt like a luxurious sauna. She stripped off her outermost layer of gear and collapsed down on the bed nearest the door, just a bare mattress on a basic metal frame. They'd taken down the plywood "walls" to the first two bedrooms on each side early on to provide more of a work area, and pushed the beds back as much as possible to open up the space. It was hard to imagine people living here in the short summer season.
Jane squeezed her eyes shut and let her arms fall awkwardly over the sides of the bed. Now she didn't even know if Loki was dead or alive. She could use the sat phone all she wanted with him gone, but who exactly was she going to call? Hi, Ms. Hill, sorry to bother you, I know you're busy, but you wouldn't by any chance happen to have any super-secret indicators on whether or not Loki – yes, that's right, that Loki – is alive or dead, would you? Why do I ask? Well…. Not for the first time, she wished she could just direct-dial Thor. She took another deep breath, followed by a cough over her painfully dry throat. Thor wanted Loki to come here and learn something, and I sent him on an interstellar trip through Yggdrasil with a piece of barely-tested technology with an 84%-plus-or-minus-2% predicted success rate structural integrity field to keep him from being killed in transit. How's that conversation going to go? Thor, it's so great to talk to you again, it's been so long, by the way, I might have gotten your brother just a little bit killed.
She sat up and opened her eyes, staring straight ahead. She had decisions to make, and wallowing around out in the jamesway wasn't getting her anywhere. There was nothing she could do for Loki now. Absent other information, she would choose to assume that everything had gone well. That he'd made it safely back to Asgard, that he'd had something of a welcome reception – not too welcome, he'd hardly sufficiently paid for what he'd done on Earth, and certainly wasn't remorseful about it – that he was talking with Thor even now over Blueberry Pop-Tarts. She'd choose to believe he lied. He despised her along with the rest of humanity, and never had any intention of confirming for her that Pathfinder and Yggdrasil provided safe travel. He wove truth and lies together so regularly that she wondered if he even knew himself what the truth was anymore.
But what if he does come back? What if he has one of his little flickers of conscience and decides he should let me know he made it there after all? What if Asgard is at war and he's stuck in the middle of it? She couldn't just box Pathfinder up and bring it in. She would need to leave it powered up – not a problem due to the arc reactor providing the power – and it was probably safer to leave it outside, as well. In that case, she'd need to cover it back up in its wood box casing to protect it from getting buried in snowdrift.
That left the question how long. How long to wait for him before assuming he wasn't ever coming back, how long to wait for him before deciding if he did come back it wouldn't be for any good purpose and she wouldn't want him popping back in, how long to wait before finally calling the cavalry, how long to wait before having an extremely uncomfortable station all-hands meeting to explain how Lucas had accomplished the impossible in disappearing from the South Pole in winter. It wasn't an easy question. She decided she didn't have to answer it now. She would give him at least a day. A day in which she'd take no action regarding him. Maybe more, but for now, at least a day. He'd avoided nearly all social activities here, so he wouldn't be missed, more than likely. She cringed at the sudden memory of trying to get him to dance with her at the sunset party, then remembered how he hadn't seemed to know any of the songs from the concert. Some of the weird things about Lucas were starting to make sense now.
Task in mind – protect and secure Pathfinder, go back into the station and act like all is well – Jane got up from the mattress with a frown and started tugging back on everything she'd pulled off. All of this was supposed to be over. He should have come back, told her everything worked, and left again. The End. Instead it was more like on pause. She reminded herself that the pause wouldn't last forever, that in fact it wouldn't last long at all. A day, maybe a little longer. Then The End.
/
/
He should have expected it, he would think later. In the moment, however, there was no time to think. He was supposed to emerge next to an enormous fir tree in a dark, musty forest. Instead, as soon as he cleared the gateway, Loki was falling. Again.
Before his magic could halt his rapid tumbling descent, he'd collected several scratches and nicks. When he came to a stop, he saw he was hovering in a tunnel dug straight down into the earth – where the musty scent was quite strong – almost as wide as he was tall. It was a trap, and one meant to kill any prey who fell into it. Sharp metal blades protruded at various angles from the earth above and below him, and at the bottom, barely visible, five parallel blades spanned the width of the tunnel. He stared down at the death trap in dark fascination. No mutilated bodies rested atop those blades, so he was likely the first to fall into the pit. But how many people even knew this portal existed? Had someone on one side discovered it and done something to provoke someone on the other side badly enough that on the one side it was sealed by real stone and guarded by Einherjar, and on the other side a deadly trap was laid?
He remembered his own discovery of the gateway on Asgard, the stone that even in his untrained youth he knew wasn't really stone, how he'd thought about it almost constantly and experimented with it whenever he had the chance until finally almost by accident he'd stumbled through it…
Startled and off-balance from his unexpected passage through what had appeared to be solid stone, Loki stumbled blindly forward a few steps and fell face-first onto a cold stone floor. He lay there a moment, stunned by the fall, and took in his surroundings – a large, dark cave, just enough shafts of light coming in through the walls to see its boundaries on his left and right and above him, but the back – if there was a back, instead of some other entrance perhaps a month's walk away – he could not see. He spun around into a sitting position to see the entrance he'd used. Solid. Not an entrance at all. Loki's eyes went wide and he began to panic. It was a trap!
"Thor!" he shouted, his heart pounding. But Thor was too far away to hear him, rehashing war stories they'd both already heard a thousand times before with the group of boys they'd gone on this hike into the woods with, at least when Loki left them. No one would ever hear him in here. He hadn't told Thor or anyone else where he was going, just that he was going to do some exploring, and no one had paid him much attention. No one would ever come looking for him in here and he would be alone forever and ever and he didn't have any food or water because he'd left that with Thor and there was no bed in here and there was no one and nothing in here and there was no Thor in here and he would die alone in here and-
He shoved himself up from the ground and practically threw himself at the wall he'd entered through. Not a wall, not a wall! Magic! he shouted to himself as his hands went right through it and he stumbled out into the water and through the waterfall and into the sunshine again. His breaths came in trembling gasps and he'd never been so grateful to see the sky in his life. His gasps morphed into strange nervous laughter as he broke into a run, not even looking back at the waterfall hiding the magic wall, and he was halfway back to where he'd left Thor and the other boys when he had to stop, leaning against a tree and panting, because the laughter had turned into hitching sobs.
When he finally got control of himself and calmed down – reminding himself he'd been trapped in that cave for all of two or three minutes at most – he went to the stream and splashed water on his face, cleared his throat a few times, then continued back to the clearing.
He heard his name being called before he made it; it was Thor. He broke into a run. "Here I am!" he called, winding his way through the last trees to break into the open.
"Hey, where were you? How'd you get wet? I was starting to get worried," Thor said, trotting up to his side, hooking an arm around the back of his neck, and squeezing downward.
Loki knew better than to try to get away, and he didn't really want to this time anyway, so he let Thor drag him forward by the neck until he tired of it and let him go by a fallen hollow tree trunk they then sat down on. "I told you, I was out exploring."
"Find anything interesting?"
"Mmmm…maybe," he answered, not ready to talk about what had happened yet. "Where's everyone else?"
"Hogun and Ingi had to go back, so I told the others to go with them and I'd wait for you. I saved you some smoked meats, want some?"
Loki accepted the meat and some bread to go with it, while Thor told him everything that had happened while he was gone. Loki feigned interest – he was interested, in some of it anyway, he was just distracted – until he found himself jerking away in pain with a finger poking him in the forehead. "Ow," he said, wincing.
"Your forehead's turning red here," Thor said, in typical Thor fashion giving the tender skin another poke.
"Stop it," Loki said, swiping at his hand.
But Thor swiped back, and grabbed his hand, turning it over. "Your palm is all scraped up. What happened?"
And so, reluctantly, because he still wasn't really ready to talk about it but Thor insisted, he told his barely-older brother – they were both fourteen now, Loki just barely – everything that happened. Thor, who hadn't been very interested in the magic wall when Loki first discovered it, was now desperate to experience it for himself and explore the mysterious cave. Loki tried to discourage him but Thor wouldn't hear of it, and before long they'd packed up their few remaining provisions and set off for the waterfall, taking a circuitous route and throwing off their track the Einherjar guard who was somewhere out there keeping an eye on them, while Loki also hid them – he hoped – from Heimdall. He wasn't really sure yet if that particular skill actually worked.
It didn't take Loki long to figure out what he'd been doing when he'd suddenly fallen through the wall – it would have taken even less time had Thor not been impatiently pestering him all the while – and soon they were inside. Loki stuck close to Thor, but the cave didn't seem even half as scary now that he wasn't alone in it. In fact, it seemed…like a cave. Just a regular old cave.
Thor was disappointed, especially once they reached the back of it – it wasn't that deep after all – and complained that Loki had hyped his discovery into something more exciting than it was. Annoyed, Loki was just telling him that no, he'd simply described exactly what he'd found, no more, no less, when Thor huffed, put his back against the cave's rear wall, leaned back, and fell straight through.
"Thor!" Loki called, much as he had a couple of hours earlier, and to about as much effect. Another magic wall, he thought with a gulp, reaching out a tentative hand. His fingers passed right through it, without him working any magic at all, just as Thor had not. Had he paused to think about it, he might have realized that the wiser course of action was to go for help, in case something dangerous was on the other side, or in case they both were then trapped behind the wall with no way to get out. But he didn't pause to think about it. He couldn't leave his brother alone. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and walked through the wall.
Thor was just picking himself up from the ground, and Loki stuck out a hand to help him up the rest of the way. He looked down, around, up, while Thor dusted dirt and dried leaves and dead fir needles from his face and clothes. They stood in a fairly dense forest, a few scraggly trees at perhaps giants' height, and the rest fir trees so tall their tips could not be seen. Sunlight made it to the ground only in diffuse misty patches. The air was musty and damp.
Thor fell still, and Loki's hand found its way into Thor's. "Where are we, Brother?" Loki whispered.
Thor shook his head, his eyes darting around and never settling on one thing for too long. "I was going to ask you the same thing, Brother…"
Loki felt something wet on his left hand, pulling him back to the present. Wet and sticky. He held it up to see, and found a slow but steady stream of blood had been trickling down his arm. Not just nicks and scratches, then, he thought, glancing upward again at the blades sticking out of the tunnel walls. As he thought about it, he realized his entire body was covered in stings and throbs and aches. He flexed his left hand, then the muscles in his left arm. The latter was painful, but he'd dealt with much worse. None of his wounds were anything more than annoyances.
His gaze fell downward again, toward the five blades at the bottom of the tunnel, perhaps a foot between each of them. His chest clenched more painfully than any of his various little injuries as for a moment he imagined what would have happened had Thor fallen through that wall into this, himself right after him. His body might have cushioned my fall, he thought with a macabre smile, trying to displace his initial reaction. And then how awkward it would have been for poor Odin, once Baldur came along, to have to explain to all of Asgard why I was being passed over for the throne in favor of the youngest.
Of course, that was unlikely to have happened; they would both have plummeted to their deaths down this hole. And how different the Nine Realms would be had that happened…
"Enough of this," Loki muttered. He'd spent enough time lost in thought in some giant dank hole in the ground. If any Einherjar followed him, he'd be dodging them as they dropped to their doom. And if any kind of alarm system had been incorporated into this little trap, someone would be arriving soon to check on the ensnared prey. He ascended slowly, carefully, mindful of the spikes along the way. He tested the ground beside the vertical tunnel before resting his full weight on it. The forest looked little different than it had in his youth. His eyes went reluctantly but inevitably, as if pulled by magnetic force, to the trunk of the fir tree that was somehow still standing tall and straight, despite the enormous pit excavated right next to it, surely depriving it of some of its roots. It isn't there anymore, he thought, sadness and satisfaction mingling peculiarly inside him. It had been a millennium, after all. Things changed. Even magic things.
Then his eyes dropped lower, and there it was, carved into the smooth bark at his height at fourteen, a simple "L." He had insisted they mark it, instead of recklessly charging off into the unknown, as Thor had wanted. Some things never change.
Loki glanced around him, easily getting his bearings. He'd visualized this moment so many times while waiting for it at the South Pole that he would know exactly where to go even if blindfolded. For unlike that first trip through a secret magical gateway, Loki knew exactly where he was now.
Svartalfheim.
/
/
"Hey, where's Lucas?"
"Huh?" Jane asked, startled out of her thoughts. She was sitting in the galley, supposedly having dinner, mostly staring into space. "Oh, uh, I don't know, I mean, he doesn't always tell me everywhere he is. Or what he's doing." Jane blinked heavily. Act normal! That deer in headlights has got nothing on you, Jane.
Austin nodded. "Okay, well, when you see him, will you tell him I'm looking for him? We're trying to set up a darts tournament tomorrow night, and he's one of the best here. Don't tell him I said that, though."
"Okay, sure. So…he was really good at it?"
"Yeah," Austin said, eyebrows stretching upward. "He couldn't even get the dart into the dartboard at first, and he said he was out of practice or something, but man, by the end he was hitting bull's eyes and triple 20s almost every time."
"I'll tell him, Austin, but I think he said something about working tomorrow."
Austin rubbed his new beard and grumbled good-naturedly, vowing to track Lucas down and drag him to the darts tournament, and left after a few more minutes of chatting.
He probably cheated, Jane figured. "Changed the structure" of the dart, or the air, or something. "Can't let the little mortals win in their silly Midgardian games!" she thought, mimicking his voice in her mind. Cheating or no, she remembered he'd said he had fun playing darts. He hadn't seemed like he was lying…but then again, who knew?
"Hey, Jane, you still up for volleyball tonight?" Mari asked a little later, dropping into the seat opposite hers. She didn't have a tray with her.
Heavy blinking again. Deer in headlights again.
"Did you forget? 7:00."
"Uh, yeah, I guess I kind of did…" She'd forgotten virtually everything over the last few days. Everything except Loki and the task of getting him off of Earth and back to Asgard where he belonged in the first place.
"Can you still make it? It's awesome to have some more girl power on the team."
"I'm not sure 'girl power' is exactly what I bring to the team," Jane said. If her scientific career finally went belly-up, volleyball player was not exactly going to make a solid fallback career. On the other hand…it was time to forget about Loki now, and immerse herself back into normal station life. "Okay, though, yeah, let's do it. We bring it," she said, putting up her right hand.
"We bring it!" Mari repeated enthusiastically, putting her hand up too for a high-five.
Jane gave up on her cold dinner and headed back to her room to change clothes, eyeing the door two rooms down from hers as she made her way down the berthing wing corridor.
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Alt title for this chapter, borrowing from a review from "clandestine elegance": "Loki is on the Move." ;-) Thank you again, BTW, for all the reviews and comments. And Guest 4/21 ("Please, please update this amazing story soon..."), double-portion thanks to you, you wrote review #500. WOW. I still remember how excited I was to get the very first review - proof that someone's actually reading this thing!
For those of you who like to think about these things, from the last chapter, any thoughts on why Loki voluntarily gave up his last knife and why he wanted to get drunk when he normally doesn't drink?
Previews of Ch. 45, "Bargains": Loki assesses his circumstances, and undertakes some bargaining...but he's not the only one who's doing so; Jane hits the books. Oh, and Loki has a "he's taken Big Red with him" moment.
And excerpt:
Loki pulled on the fresh tunic – "fresh" being a relative term, he was looking forward to having it properly laundered – and tucked it in at the waist. He put the suitcase away, then turned to the sword he'd rested beside him on the rock. In its design and in the precise shape of its blade, to anyone who paid attention to such things it was identifiably the sword of an Asgardian Einherjar. Loki had friends here – "friends" also being a relative term, and probably not quite what Jane would mean by the word – but he also had enemies. A sword could prove useful, but being seen with this sword could prove dangerous. Einherjar did not leave Asgard in official capacity unless it was for guarding the royal family or for war. Loki tucked it away to join the suitcase.
He turned next to the thin rectangular metal casings with their tiny red lights, strapped to each wrist, and quickly slid the elastic bands off. He placed them on the ground. He stared at them. He lifted his right foot, felt it throbbing with the abuse it had taken at the hands of non-Odin-approved magic. He brought his boot down.
