This chapter picks up right where the previous left off, so if you read it a week ago you may want to refresh your memory.

/


Beneath

Chapter Sixty – Aurora Australis

Loki glowered at Jane, and continued to glower at her back when she walked away, into the side corridor that led past the recycling and dish drop areas and into the galley. He didn't care for this bossy side of Jane. He didn't take orders from anyone anymore, much less from mortals, much less from female mortals who barely made it past five feet tall. But he swallowed his pride yet again and followed.

"So you're telling me you already know what's going on with all those anomalous readings in Yggdrasil," Jane said as soon as they were in the galley, standing near the bar. They were alone except for a few kitchen workers out of sight, busy preparing the evening meal.

"Yes."

"Loki…last Friday we spent half the day talking about this data. Why didn't you say anything?"

"We spent half the day with you talking about this data. I merely listened. And you seemed to be having so much fun with your mysteries I didn't want to spoil it for you."

Jane's hands found her hips. "I thought you were going to be honest with me." He didn't want to spoil my fun. Right.

Loki smiled, pressed his lips together, closed his eyes, nodded, all as though he'd just remembered something deeply important. "That's right. The truth is I didn't want to interrupt my own fun, listening to you speculate and theorize." The truth was, in fact, that he simply hadn't wanted to discuss it, hadn't seen the point. It was easier to let her do the talking.

Jane frowned, skeptical of the new version of truth. "All right, so tell me now. What do those readings indicate?"

"They are Yggdrasil's branches."

"Really?" Jane asked, her thoughts immediately racing. "But…but that doesn't make sense. There are nine realms, and two entrances are already accounted for, so there are only seven other branches. But if all those fluctuations and neutrino bombardments resolved into just seven wormhole mouths…the original software should have been able to determine that. So-"

"Your mathematical abilities are truly astonishing. Yes, there are seven other branches corresponding to the other seven realms. But there are also many other branches."

"How do you know that? You never mentioned it before." How many? Jane was already wondering. How many other worlds are out there?

"I know because I saw them."

Jane shook her head in disbelief. "What do you mean you saw them?" She was beginning to think Loki was making this entire thing up.

"My words were quite plain."

"I made the same trip through it that you did. I didn't see anything."

Loki smirked. "Were your eyes even open, Jane Foster?"

Jane opened her mouth and promptly closed it. Going to Asgard, she realized she probably had instinctively shut them. Going back to Midgard, she'd been scared of coming back with missing limbs or sliced vertically in half. "But still, the whole passage through Yggdrasil only takes seconds. You can't possibly have seen anything more than a giant blur."

"I can assure you I saw what I said I did. My vision is far superior to yours."

Jane rolled her eyes. "Oh, because you're a 'god,' huh? Is that it? You're superior to us in every way, right? You can lift more weight and jump higher and type faster and you don't get altitude sickness and you don't have dandruff and your breath is fresher without even using toothpaste. And I bet you can even fit more of you into a telephone booth."

"I'm going to save us both some breath and ignore whatever it was you were going on about there at the end. But to your first question, yes. I am a god. We used to be recognized as such," he said with an expression of patronizing mock patience.

"By people who thought Thor caused thunder and lightning and you cause earthquakes and the shape of a salmon. By people who thought there was a giant snake wrapped around the planet. Yeah, they thought you were gods. Does it give you a nice inflated ego to say stuff like that? Land one of those airplanes with skis on it back in one of their ancient villages and they'd probably worship that, too. How big is your ego now, hm?"

"Thor does cause thunder and lightning. As for the rest…I really have no idea what you're talking about." Earthquakes and salmon? "Regardless," he continued with a dark smirk, "my point stands. My vision is far better than yours. We can have a contest if you like, if you require proof."

Jane stared at him for a moment. The conversation was getting weirder and weirder. "You want to have a…a seeing contest?"

Loki inclined his head. Such a contest would be easy to design, and the expression on Jane's face when she realized how much better his vision was would be amusing.

"You know what? That's fine. Not necessary. I take your word for it. You saw tunnels."

"I did."

"I said I believe you."

"Ah, but you didn't say it like you meant it, Jane."

Jane shook her head; she wasn't going down that route any further. "So…more branches. That means there are more worlds than just the Nine Realms?"

"I suppose. What else would it mean? I haven't seen them before. Pathfinder works but it's crude compared to the bifrost. Slower. Darker. More…unpleasant."

"It does work, though," Jane reiterated, unwilling to let Loki's insults stand. "But you never heard of any other worlds existing before now? Or…before you saw these other tunnels in Yggdrasil?"

Loki frowned. This was beginning to tread on a subject he was unwilling to discuss. "I knew other…places existed."

Jane's eyes lit up. Nine worlds had seemed amazing, incredible, enough to keep her busy for a lifetime. Now after a mere few minutes of conversation, nine seemed insignificant, paltry, no more exciting to her than her own solar system. "How many others? What else do you know about them?"

"I know you don't want to go there," Loki said sharply. Jane's obvious excitement was revolting. He knew of only one other place outside the Nine Realms, though he'd always known that other realms existed, perhaps with their own Yggdrasils. He had no idea if the Yggdrasil of the Nine Realms actually connected to those rocks floating in the dark of space. "And you will regret it if you try," he added, words he'd not intended to say aloud.

It clicked then for Jane; perhaps Loki knew of many other worlds, but she'd read SHIELD's brief report on what was known of the aliens who attacked New York, that Thor had said they weren't from any known world, that Loki had come to Earth from the same place they had. "You're talking about the Chitauri world," she said quietly, hoping Loki might tell her something about it. She knew SHIELD was worried that there might be more Chitauri out there, and was thus desperate for more information about where they'd come from, that they'd questioned Loki about it and he literally hadn't said a word.

"I would not deign to call that place a world. Did you not have something you wished to show me?" he asked impatiently, now feeling on edge.

"What? Oh! Oh, yes. Come on, let's go," she said with an enthusiastic nod. She would have loved to ask him more about the Chitauri homeworld, or not-world, but it was clear he was done talking about it. Besides, she did have something to show him, and had completely forgotten about it somewhere around the time Loki had started insisting on his superior vision. Definitely Thor's brother, she thought as they made their way out of the galley toward Destination Zulu, then tried to shake off the thought. Thor had been kind of a jerk in the beginning…Loki had tried to take over the planet. It was hard to remember that when Loki was challenging her to a seeing contest in complete seriousness and she was teetering on the edge between incredulity and belly laughs.

/


/

Loki almost bumped into Jane a few feet outside the elevated station. "Why are you sto-" His eyes had followed her gaze, and now he realized she had never intended to show him more data, as he'd assumed. Instead, as he looked out toward the Dark Sector, its buildings in the distance tiny and squat beneath the enormous sky and lit by a couple of bright red lights, the sky beyond it was green. At the horizon it was shapeless, a blanket that sat over the ice, rumpled in places, darker and seemingly more solid. Higher up it formed swirls of pale green on the left, while further to the right were swirls of a darker, yellower green. Above the swirls the green rapidly transformed into deep purples and blues and finally pitch black, through which countless pinpricks of starlight could be seen.

Loki stared, mesmerized. It was an aurora – or two distinct ones, he supposed, in two distinct shades of green – just as he'd seen in Canada and yet infinitely more stunning, for here, other than the few Dark Sector buildings, there was nothing but horizon and sky as far as the eye could see. And Loki's eyes could see very, very far, as he'd tried to convince Jane.

Having reminded himself of her, he tore his gaze away from the majestic display before him and looked at Jane. She'd turned off the red headlamp on her forehead – Loki refused to wear his – and her face was hidden behind her gear and her camera. She seemed to have forgotten him as much as he'd forgotten her, so he left her to it and watched the sky again. One of the curved bands in the pale green aurora had shifted slightly so that it now vaguely resembled the letter "s."

The sky above Asgard was something to spoil anyone who grew up there and make the sky above any other realm seem dull and flat and empty. But this grandiose sweep of color was quite possibly more beautiful even than the brilliance of Asgard's stars and moons and galaxies.

"Have you ever seen an aurora before? In person, I mean?" Jane asked.

Loki's head jerked in Jane's direction; he'd already nearly forgotten her again. "Yes," he answered, the option of lying never even occurring to him. "The night I was in Melfort. North of there, actually. But it was not so…"

"Big?" Jane supplied.

"I was thinking of something with more syllables, but yes, it was not so big as this. The horizon was not so unbroken. And at the time I-" He looked away from Jane and back out over the Dark Sector horizon. There was no need to tell her this, but he supposed it hardly mattered now. "I didn't know what it was. I thought it signaled an attack."

Jane looked up at him in confusion, only his left eye visible to her as he stood in profile and covered in neck gaiter, balaclava, and hat. "Why would an aurora make you think the Avengers were going after you?"

Loki turned back to her for a moment with an identical look of confusion behind his gear, then gave a huffing exhale which promptly created ice crystals on his balaclava. "The Avengers. They're no real threat to me. You keep forgetting that you aren't alone in the universe, Jane."

"Who did you think was attacking?" Jane's eyes went wide. "Loki," she began, reaching for his arm and trying to get him to fully turn and face her, "could Svartalfheim and Jotunheim attack Earth? Are we in danger?" Her mind was racing now. If Earth was at risk of attack from other realms, she would have to break her word to Loki that she wouldn't tell anyone he was here, because she would have no choice but to call SHIELD and warn them, and she couldn't exactly say she'd learned of the possibility of this attack by looking through the South Pole Telescope.

"Have you already forgotten the conversation we had not half an hour ago? The Nine Realms are also not alone in the universe."

"So who-"

"No one," Loki said, raising his voice, then glancing around. They weren't alone out here; perhaps a dozen others were scattered around outside in eyeshot, taking in the view or capturing images of it. "No one," he repeated, more quietly. "Someone that I thought could reach me here, but I'm now confident he can't. Nothing you need worry about. And the other realms have no interest in Midgard. Not anymore."

"Not anymore?" Jane asked, struggling to take in Loki's cryptic comments.

Loki nodded. "Jotunheim once had quite an interest in your world. But that was a very long time ago. Before I was born. A story for another day, perhaps."

Reeling, Jane stared back out at the aurora, where a gentle wave of yellowy olive green had curved into a "c" shape. Loki had thought someone had come here to attack him, and that an aurora had been a sign of it. Someone not from the Nine Realms. And suddenly she remembered just what they had been discussing in the galley, and how Loki had spoken of the home of his allies. "I wouldn't deign to call it a world." If her guess was correct, that alliance had been broken. Whatever Jotunheim had to do with Earth so long ago would indeed have to be a story for another time. "You thought the Chitauri were coming here to attack you?"

Loki sighed and gave up on enjoying this moment of beauty in silence, though he too continued to gaze out at the sky. He had opened himself up to it, of course. This was why he didn't speak of such things to her. Part of the reason, anyway. She never stopped thinking, and never stopped asking more questions. "Not the Chitauri. They are an inferior race, and their ranks were thinned by your so-called Avengers. The Chitauri are inconsequential. They were never anything more than a tool. Unlike your people, they yearn for the freedom that accompanies servitude. They long to be ruled. They have a ruler."

Jane found herself nodding. It was maddening, really, that it seemed he could never just answer a question, that he filled every answer with insults and a clear sense of his own superiority, that you had to figure out for yourself what the actual answer was, then try to make sure you were correct. "So you thought their ruler was going to attack you? Because…because you didn't defeat Earth? Because you lost the tesseract?"

"I thought it might be a possibility," Loki answered quietly. He'd thought it near a certainty in the beginning, expected it at any moment as he'd slumped, halfway out of the newly-formed pit in Tony Stark's floor, and seen Natasha Romanov standing there with a direct connection to Thanos in her hands. He'd still thought the same as he'd sat deprived of much of his ability to defend himself in a cell somewhere else in New York with the scepter still presumably nearby, while the idiot who continued to insist at every turn that he was his brother, the only one who might have been of some assistance had Thanos come for him, had left him alone so that he could sate his considerable appetite with strange Midgardian foods.

"What makes you so sure this ruler won't come after you now?"

"He isn't able to. He doesn't have a bifrost, and he doesn't have Pathfinder. He has a certain amount of power, and-" Loki stopped himself and tried to clear his dry throat. He'd been about to tell her everything about how he'd come to Midgard through that small, barely stable portal. "As I said, you have no cause for worry. He has no plans to personally take some sort of revenge on me, nor does he have any right to, since it was his portion of the plan that failed. And Midgard itself was never of much consequence to him. You think you can achieve such power, but you are insignificant. The only thing that made you truly remarkable to him was the presence of the tesseract, and now it rests in Asgard."

Jane nodded; it was getting easier to follow this, to tune out his arrogance. "Do you think he'll attack Asgard, then? To make another attempt at the tesseract? Or…could he already be involved in the war on Asgard?"

"He cannot reach Asgard any more than he can reach Midgard," Loki said. It was a good answer: true, as far as he knew, yet entirely misleading, for Thanos was most certainly involved in the war on Asgard, even if only from a distance, a puppet master working his puppets from behind a thick curtain. "There's nothing more to say about it."

"But if there are other branches in Yggdrasil, and one of them goes to the Chitauri world, or their ruler's world, what if he-"

"Jane, stop. He knows nothing of Yggdrasil. Nothing more than what I told him about the bifrost. And at the time I myself didn't know there was a true physical incarnation of Yggdrasil. Midgard is under no threat."

Jane took a deep breath of frigid air and let her other questions fall away. She was also getting better at recognizing his red lines – the point at which his temper would overtake both his willingness to talk to her and his interest in belittling her with a smile. As the light green aurora rippled gently and the darker one drifted into two "c" shapes, Jane found herself already taking her understanding of him for granted, her thoughts focused elsewhere. She was going to have to report what she'd learned to SHIELD…but with no actual threat, she supposed she could just wait until winter season ended and Loki left.

In the meantime, she thought with a quick glance in his direction – his attention appeared to be fully on the display in the darkened afternoon sky – she tried to come up with something else to say that would hopefully engage him in conversation. Unfortunately, she remembered only after the fact that blurting out something as soon as it popped into her mind, which she had a tendency to do, was really not a good idea around Loki.

"Thor told me you don't have auroras on Asgard." Jane winced, the expression hidden behind her balaclava. Loki had rarely reacted well to hearing Thor's name, and it had not been lost on her that when he'd told her the story of the battle on Jotunheim, Thor was always "the prince."

Loki inclined his head down toward Jane, remembering something he'd seen soon after arriving at the South Pole. "How interesting. You led him outside to see an aurora as well." Loki suddenly wished desperately that Thor could see Jane here with him now. Mjolnir would swing hard enough to crack the ice all the way down to Antarctica's landmass.

Not the reaction I was expecting. Wait… "How did you know that?"

"I saw the pictures. You e-mailed them to your friends Darcy and Erik."

"Right," Jane said with a curt nod. And you were spying on my e-mail.

"I hope you don't expect to take pictures with me out here and mail them to all your friends. That wouldn't look very good for you, Jane. Pictures under the aurora with the prince of the light in Norway and the prince of the dark in Antarctica. The hero and the enemy," Loki needled, smiling underneath the facemask. He remembered just how closely Jane had been pressed to Thor's side in one of those Tromso images. Actually, a couple of images might be useful…for later, he thought, imagining himself taunting Thor, before remembering that he had no particular plans to ever see Thor again.

Jane turned her face away, trying hard not to react to his teasing, and grateful for the balaclava that made it easier. "If Thor causes thunder and lightning, maybe he should be the prince of the dark. Sunny skies don't usually go along with thunderstorms."

"I was referring to his hair color. And his general sunny disposition," Loki said sarcastically.

"Yeah…I guess I wouldn't exactly describe your general disposition as sunny."

It used to be. The words came instantaneously, unbidden, to Loki's mind, along with memories of Thor chasing him through the palace or a garden or a forest and Loki slowing enough to let Thor think he could be caught, rereading a favorite book on his favorite shaded hillside, crafting some drama with Thor for class and performing it for their tutors and Frigga and sometimes even Odin, fussing over Thor in his wedding gown, taking Lifhilda out to a grassy valley and urging her on to outrace the wind, resting under a tree with stories and frozen fruit sticks then sticking his blue or red or yellow or green or purple tongue out at Thor who did the same. Moments of joy and mirth and contentment and peace. His younger years had been full of them. Some of these memories were the very ones Thor had tried so hard to force upon him more than once, After.

He wondered then if Thor was angry over the lie, too, despite his juvenile efforts to pretend they were still brothers. He had never shown it, but how could he not be? The affection between them had not been feigned, and childish vows to never leave the other's side had not been manufactured. Thor hated Frost Giants as much as any Aesir if not more, and he'd been lied to just as Loki had; he must have been horrified to learn the boy he'd pledged eternal friendship and protection to, the man he'd adventured with for centuries, was in fact his worst enemy.

"I'll never let them get you, Loki. I'll kill any of them who come near you," Thor said, huddling with a whimpering Loki in a corner of the boys' bed.

"Promise?" Loki asked, lifting his head weakly from Thor's chest.

"Promise."

It wasn't a clear memory, not tied to any particular event or any particular nightmare, perhaps one of those he'd had in the weeks and months after getting hold of that book with the graphic depictions of the Ice War. How would Thor have reacted had he learned his own arms encircled the very thing he'd promised to kill? And when the tables were turned – when Thor woke from a nightmare about marauding Frost Giants and confided in Loki – how would he have reacted had he learned he'd shared his room, his childhood bed, even his crib with the same creature that made him break out in a cold sweat? The betrayal was extraordinary. Yet it was him Thor's anger kindled against, not Odin and Frigga who'd lied to them both.

He glanced at Jane out of the corner of his eye; her eyes were fixed forward on the aurora, whose light green was losing form, turning to streaks of unnatural color in the sky. How did Jane manage to pull such thoughts from him, he wondered, those pleasant memories that had burst into his mind when Thor's more intentional attempts to do the same were so easily repelled? Because she was a woman? A mortal? Perhaps simply because she hadn't known him Before, and her expectations of him were thus different. Although she was always full of questions, he wasn't interested in telling her anything about himself – anything that mattered, anyway. But wouldn't it be interesting to be able to show her. To show her who he'd once been, how happy, how "sunny," how innocent his mischief, and then show her the truth that had been revealed to him, making everything that had come before a lie. The thought made him queasy. If he had anything to say about it, Thanos's lackey notwithstanding, and with the Ice Casket no longer easily accessible to him, no one would ever see him in Frost Giant skin again. Including her, he thought, glancing Jane's way again.

Jane, meanwhile, was still stuck on how Loki had described himself and Thor: prince of the dark and prince of the light. She'd assumed he'd had in mind a metaphor of good and evil, hero and villain, Anakin Skywalker's light side to Darth Vader's dark side. But maybe not. Maybe Asgard didn't use that particular metaphor. She remembered what Thor had told her Loki said about being in Thor's shadow. Maybe he saw Thor as walking in the sunlight and himself as walking in the darkness. When she'd tried to reject his comment, whatever he'd really meant by it, not wanting to accept that things could really be quite so simple, Loki had pointed to Thor's hair. And his personality – which hadn't actually been all that sunny when she'd first met him. But if he wanted to go with that, she could, too.

"So are the Aesir prejudiced against brunettes or something?" she asked. Thor didn't seem to have anything against brunettes, she thought with a flicker of bemusement, and while the path from her brain to her mouth was pretty short and unfettered, she knew better than to ever say anything like that to him. Emphasizing her relationship with Thor, whatever exactly it was, whatever exactly it could become, wasn't going to help her in dealing with Loki. He'd already tried to use it to get to her several times, and she didn't want to give him any more ammunition.

"What are you talking about?" Loki asked, having fallen so deeply into his own thoughts he'd forgotten how their conversation had trailed off.

"You know. 'Prince of the light, prince of the dark.'"

Loki's brow came together in confusion, then he gave a snort as he realized what she was asking. It was only in jest, most likely, but he answered it anyway. "No. Asgardians are not so petty as to hold prejudice against things like normal hair and skin color."

"Uh…really? 'Normal' hair and skin color? Because that kinda sounds like prejudice to me."

"By 'normal' of course I am referring to those colors naturally occurring among the Aesir."

"So…if someone dyed her hair green…"

"They would think her strange, and her friends and family would try to convince her to choose a normal hair color, but I suppose she could go about her business in peace. I told you, the Aesir do not hold to prejudices."

"But you just said- Loki, every culture has prejudices. It just means 'prejudging.' Making assumptions about someone without-"

"I understand what the word means, Jane," Loki interrupted. He didn't mind learning from Jane, but he didn't like it when she assumed he didn't know something simply because he didn't grow up on her backwater planet.

"But…okay then. What about Midgardians? Mr. I'm-better-at-everything-than-you-are. Clearly you're prejudiced against Midgardians."

"I am not prejudiced against Midgardians."

Jane just stared at him, blinking the ice crystals that had frozen in her lashes, her mind awash with so many degrading things he'd said about humans that she couldn't pick out just one to remind him of.

"It isn't prejudice when it's a fact."

"Ooooo-kay," Jane said with wide eyes, nodding. Nope, I've got nothing to say to that. Maybe if I'd gone to law school. Or psychiatry school.

"I live longer than you. I'm stronger than you. I'm faster than you. I see and hear better than you. I understand more of the nature of the cosmos than you. I-"

"Hey! I taught you things, too."

"I'm taller than you. I have-"

"What's better or worse about height? Taller doesn't mean better."

"Keep telling yourself that, Jane, when you have to rely on the stepstool to get in and out of your bed every day and you have to ask me or Wright to get you something from the top shelf of that one cabinet in the Science Lab because you fell off your chair trying to do it yourself. Did your mother whisper such comforting lies to you to make you feel better about yourself?"

Jane recoiled; the sudden and entirely unexpected insertion of her mother into this absurd argument – and the fact that the answer, essentially, was yes – making her eyes prick and threaten tears. She squeezed them tightly shut for a moment; tears would be a really bad idea when it was already becoming difficult to see through her ice-crusted eyelashes. Not to mention letting Loki make her cry was absolutely unacceptable. "Yeah. She did. She told me none of that stuff on the outside matters, that what matters is what's on the inside. And I know that sounds trite, but…but she was right."

"What matters is what's on the inside." Loki let those words seep through his thoughts for a moment. A wise woman, Jane's mother. She was right, he realized. He need look no further than himself. The outside is nothing more than a shell. A mask. A lie.

Loki's eyes refocused on Jane. Even with only a narrow patch of pale skin visible from the bridge of her nose to her eyebrows, he could tell she was upset from the pinching around her eyes. He'd insulted her a hundred times before and she'd never gotten truly upset. Or perhaps she had, and he hadn't particularly cared. It bothered him now – he knew a little of what her deceased mother meant to her – and it annoyed him that it bothered him. "I, ah, it was not my intention…" What are you doing, you fool? Apologizing to a mortal? She should be kneeling before you with all the rest of them. "Well. You're right, in that you did teach me some new things about the nature of the cosmos, I'll grant you that. But you are an above average specimen of your kind."

Nah, no prejudice there at all. "Thanks, I guess," Jane said after a moment. "That's definitely the most…ummm…unusual compliment I've ever received." A notch or two above being compared to acid.

Loki nodded in acknowledgement. "And taller is still better."

Jane sighed and shook her head. Whatever. "It's helpful at parades," she conceded. "And theaters that don't have stadium seating."

"I consider the point won," Loki said with a grin.

"But most theaters have stadium seating now."

"Name one thing that's better about being your height," Loki said, drawing himself up from the stomach and shoulders and peering down at her.

"Airplane seats," Jane said immediately. Erik was six-foot-three, about the same as Loki, and he always got off of airplanes complaining about his knees.

Loki's smile faded, unpleasant memories of that first flight on a commercial aircraft, from Saskatoon to Toronto. He'd limped for a few minutes after that flight as his legs recovered, and that was with that old lady – Emily, her name was – giving up her aisle seat for him. He'd contemplated attempting to shrink his legs before that…

"Stadium seats," Jane said, remembering another thing Erik had complained about.

"In theaters?" Loki asked, confused by that one. He wasn't entirely certain what she meant by "theaters." Or "stadium seats."

"In stadiums," Jane corrected. "Where you go see sports," she added, when she realized that probably wasn't terribly helpful. "The rows are usually close together, like on airplanes."

Melfort, he remembered, cringing. They called it an arena there, as we do, the Northern Lights Palace Arena. There, too, he'd had to hold his legs carefully or pivot them to the side. He looked back up at the sky, at the Southern Lights, Aurora Australis in the more scientific parlance, he'd learned. The curves of the "c" and the "s" had straightened into gently waving folds of green, the lighter green transitioning seamlessly into the darker green. If someone had told him then, watching the Northern Lights in fear, watching the Mustangs play Thor's team in the Northern Lights Palace Arena and learning for the first time what Odin's curses really meant, that a scant few months later he would be watching the Southern Lights with Thor's woman in a frozen wasteland where no being was meant to live and arguing about…it took him several seconds to recall just what they were actually arguing about…the fact that he was superior to her. So much had changed since then, when Pathfinder didn't exist and he'd still believed his mother's lie and Asgard was at war against only Jotunheim, and that in name only.

And then there was Jane. He could hardly believe he'd once been perfectly willing to injure or even kill her if need be. He couldn't imagine it now. In the beginning, before he'd wound up on Midgard, she'd been no more than a nameless woman glimpsed through the Destroyer's eyes, and she'd quickly become his best means of bending Thor to his will. Now she was…he didn't know what she was, other than the woman who'd made it possible for him to escape this realm and defy Odin, but he knew what she could do. He knew what she was trying to do. Acid, he reminded himself. She weakened Thor. She won't weaken me. Thankfully, it would all end very soon.

Jane watched as Loki stepped in front of her and turned to face her, putting the aurora behind him. This whole time they'd stood side by side, never fully facing each other, and the sudden change unnerved her a little. "What?" she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. Loki looked strange, his eyes dark in the perpetual night, his eyebrows and eyelashes crusted with ice just like hers, and his balaclava coated in strange fuzzy ice crystal growths that reminded her of the inside of her old freezer in Puente Antiguo that she could never get fully defrosted. She supposed hers looked the same way; it was a simple reaction to the moisture in the material from skin and breath.

"I'm leaving."

It took a moment to sink in. When he'd said nothing and she'd just stared at the frost on him, she'd begun to wonder if this was just another attempt to showcase his I'm-better-than-you height. "Back to Asgard?" she finally managed to ask.

"Where else?" he asked. He saw no need to mention that he would only be on Asgard long enough to slip unseen from the bifrost to a magical spring, the source of a cool stream at the foot of the mountains, through which he would depart to Alfheim.

"So, um, what have you been thinking about this whole time? Why go back now?"

"Asgard is at war, Jane. A prince must defend his realm," he said in a chiding tone. He was pleased with the answer, that he'd kept his bargain with Jane and spoken no falsehood. Asgard had one prince, and that prince was no doubt defending his realm.

But why now? Jane wanted badly to ask again, but she strongly suspected he wouldn't answer no matter how many times she asked, and would only begin to grow angry. "So you'll fight with Thor again?"

Loki drew in a sharp breath and averted his eyes. "If I must," he said when his eyes again met Jane's.

"He said-" She stopped and quickly drew her bottom lip between her teeth behind the balaclava, her heart speeding up. No two words seemed to set him off more than "Thor said," especially when it was about him.

"Well?" he asked, his jaw tight.

"He said he missed fighting with you. That you…" She paused, trying to remember how Thor had put it, when they'd lingered over cheesecake and coffee in her Tromso hotel before going up to see the Aurora Borealis. "That you complemented each other, his strengths were your weaknesses and his weaknesses were your strengths."

Loki shook his head, a sardonic smile on his lips. He could hear Thor saying that, and thinking he was saying something profound, something that spoke – condescendingly – of his love for his dear little brother despite his weaknesses. Despite who he was. He doubted Thor had ever even fully accepted that particular truth; he had never seen it for himself. "His weaknesses were your strengths," he silently scoffed. Fine, true. It wasn't a lie; Thor was hardly capable of pulling off such intentional lying. But no one ridiculed Thor's poor skill with magic or poor aim with anything but a giant hammer which hardly needed precise aim, much less his bulging muscles or the power with which he wielded Mjolnir. Such ridicule was saved for Loki's strengths and weaknesses.

"Maybe you can work some things out between you."

"Yes, maybe we can. Most of the other realms do have a reasonable grasp of good manners; I'm sure they'll be glad to cease their attacks long enough for us to have a long, heartfelt conversation, perhaps even a good cry, before we have to resume slaughtering our enemies."

Jane clenched her stomach for a moment. "I really wish you'd never seen me react to all that blood. You're never going to give me a break on that, are you?" She really didn't like to think of Thor doing all that "slaughtering" either. The most she'd ever seen him kill was that giant robot thing in Puente Antiguo.

"Actually I wasn't even trying that time. Your planet, your own country, has experienced plenty of wars; I presumed you knew what happens in war. I was attempting to point out the folly in your hope that my leaving here will lead to some kind of reconciliation between Thor and me."

"I know that. I chose to ignore it."

"Ah," Loki said with a disinterested expression Jane couldn't really see but he felt obliged to make anyway. It irritated him to learn that she was so unfazed by his barbs – some of them, anyway – that she was simply ignoring them. "Regardless, you need not worry yourself over any further talk from me of some irksome faraway war."

"Are you going today?" Even though lately she'd begun to think of him as staying through the winter, him leaving wasn't such a surprise. Him leaving today would be.

"No. Not today. In three days, I think. Four at the most."

She nodded and thought it over for a minute. "I'll be right back to the same problem: what do I tell people about you?"

"I really don't care. It makes no difference to me once I'm gone. Your Avengers can't follow where I'm going."

It isn't you I'm worried about! Jane wanted to exclaim. He didn't seem to ever think about anyone other than himself. But he hadn't been any help with this the last time, and there was no reason to think he would be this time. It's all on you, Jane. Again. You should have made a list of all your bad ideas. "So you're really going, huh?" she simply asked instead. "For good this time?"

"For good. You won't have to be troubled over me any longer."

Jane gave a small shrug of her shoulders. "I wasn't particularly worried," she said, and really it was true, at least in the short term – she had been worried about what might happen when the end of the season came, if he were to still be here then. "We both held up our end of the bargain. Well…you mostly held up your end of the bargain." The aurora was dissipating, now a largely shapeless green cloud quickly bleeding into violet and then black. It was probably something to do with him being framed by the remains of the aurora, but Jane realized that in some ways she would miss him. When the call had come over the radio that the first well-formed aurora of the season was visible over the DSL, there was one name that popped into her mind, one person she wanted to be able to show it to. She sought him out immediately. It was better that he go, without a doubt. But weirdly enough, despite how frustrating he could be, despite all the despicable things he'd done on Earth, he would leave a hole in her life here, she knew from his earlier departure, and it caused her a certain amount of unease. At least this time she wouldn't have to worry about Pathfinder working for human – or Aesir – travel and whether Loki had survived the journey.

Loki, meanwhile, was turning back around to see the demise of the aurora. "I always keep my bargains. Or at least make a sincere effort to do so," he amended, thinking of a very detailed promise he'd made to Romanov on the Helicarrier. He hadn't been able to keep that one at all, despite his full intention to do so at the time. It would have been a waste, he thought now. Romanov was intelligent, though in a very different way from Jane – it might have been interesting to keep her alive for a while first, though he couldn't imagine that cunning woman ever having a conversation with him for any reason other than to try to manipulate him again. Now back standing at Jane's shoulder, he stole a surreptitious glance at her. Romanov and she were about the same height, yet he'd had glimpses of Romanov fighting, and heard her skills detailed and praised by Barton; her short stature was no impediment to her ability to inflict harm on an enemy. It brought him back to a portion of their earlier argument. Airplane seats and stadium seats.

"I'm willing to concede one point to you, Jane."

"Oh yeah?"

"I concede that on your world, shorter may in some unusual instances not be inferior to taller, depending on one's circumstances and abilities."

"Wow. I'm going to have to make a note of that one in my journal," Jane said drily, though still in good humor – what used to infuriate her she now thought of as just him, and didn't even take it all that seriously. "Loki concedes he may be wrong 'in some unusual circumstances.'"

"Your mockery aside – and by the way, may I commend you for your bravery in that – I have in fact been wrong about a great many things in my life." Beginning with which realm I was born on. "But that yours is an inferior race was not one of them." Don't let it trouble you, Jane. There is among the Nine Realms a race still more inferior even than your own in every way except for their physical abilities, Loki thought, caught between clinging to his identity as an Aesir and rejecting the Aesir, wallowing in his identity as a Jotun and stridently – violently – rejecting the Jotuns. In his short time on Asgard since learning the truth he'd given himself over alternately to one and then the other, but he now knew he could never convince the Aesir of his loyalty to Asgard and that such loyalty was therefore not deserved, and that he could never embrace the Jotun part of him, and thus could not seek to regain control of the Ice Casket and wield it like Odin wielded Gungnir – while he'd reveled in the rush of power when he used it against Heimdall, the source of that power left him feeling dirty afterward.

The aurora was little more than a few barely visible wisps of green now; there was nothing more to see and there was nothing more to say. Loki began to walk away.

"We did beat you, though, didn't we? Our supposedly inferior race." Loki was already a few steps toward the station, when those words slipped out of her mouth. Loki froze in the same instant that she sucked in a breath and held it. She was not supposed to be saying things like that, and she'd been doing so much better at it. It wasn't an accusation, and she hadn't said it in anger, but she'd just rubbed his nose in his failure, when she'd intended to never bring up New York again, as not conducive to a long life expectancy, much less civil conversation with Loki.

"Even an inferior race can sometimes get lucky. You can't help what you are. And I can't help what I am," he said, his back still to Jane.

A few more seconds passed before he resumed his return to the station, while Jane stared after him blinking eyelashes heavy with ice.


/

I probably owe some of the thinking behind Jane's comments on Thor being associated with thunder and lightning and so maybe more aptly connected to the dark rather than the light to chats with "Isabel M-Ameban." We both felt that although Thor is frequently paired with the sun and adjectives like "golden" (and it's understandable why, he is, metaphorically speaking, the "golden child," the chosen child), still, thunder/lightning and sun are generally mutually exclusive. And Thor did not display a sunny personality when he first came to Earth.

On 8/8/13 I came up with another story idea, it's short and not plot-heavy, so I'm putting it up soon, so far I have only written the short opening chapter and part of the second. It's called The Memory Casket, and it's an alternate post-Avengers story. The blurb is on my profile page.

Previews from Ch. 61: Thor's plan is put into play though it goes against his nature; Thor thinks about the fact that Loki is a Frost Giant, not something he's done much of before, and recalls the day he found out; and Loki...well, he has another appointment with Pathfinder.

Excerpt (part of a flashback, Thor and Odin speaking):

"Then it was all a trick of some sort. Babies can't change their appearance." And Loki hadn't been able to change his until they were adults.

"Loki had incredibly powerful instinctive magic then. Like none I've seen before or since."

Thor shook his head in determination. "No. This is…" This is madness. A neverending day full of madness followed by even greater madness. "Loki is not a Frost Giant."