Beneath

Chapter Sixty-Four – Intent

Thor reached the palace in the dead of night, closer to dawn than dusk. He'd stopped twice along his route, to inform the first group of Einherjar he'd seen of what had happened at the Eilif Springs and that the cave system and entire surrounding area needed to be thoroughly searched, and then to leave Volstagg at his home to apologize to his wife for disappearing without word.

He was directed to the Feasting Hall, where he found his father, Fjolvar the engineer, Vafri the natural environment advisor, Tyr the war strategist, Huskol the Chief Palace Einherjar, and the unmistakable scents of spiced wine and burnt roast pork.

"The Einherjar are still cooking, then?" Thor asked after responding to the others' greetings and taking the empty seat to Odin's right.

"Geirmund and Bragi are working on a plan to bring in their wives and mothers," Odin said.

"They'll have a strong incentive to protect what is said here," Tyr said.

"And the quality of the meals will improve," Huskol added.

"But what did you find, my prince?" Vafri asked, impatient, as one Einherjar came to the table to fill Thor's cup and another came to slice his way through the dried meat and fill his plate.

Thor took a deep swallow and put his cup back down. "Frost Giants." After a moment of stunned silence, Tyr and Huskol murmured to each other, as did Vafri and Fjolvar, while Odin's eye met Thor's.

"You did not sound the horn. Hergils believed that meant there was no cause for alarm and finally left. Shall I send for him?"

"No, Father. There's no need. There were only seven of them, and Volstagg and I took care of them all. None live, and none…none escaped." Thor glanced around the table and saw Tyr and Huskol exchange an approving nod. "Brokk was with them. He brought them here, and he must be able to hide himself and them from Heimdall. This must be also why Heimdall usually hasn't seen the portals being formed on the other realms. And Brokk escaped."

"What about the rivers?" Vafri asked, and Thor explained what the Frost Giants were doing at the Eilif Springs, and that several Einherjar had gone back to the mountains to search the area just in case a stray Jotun had been left behind.

Odin signaled to the Einherjar along the wall with a brief movement of his hand. "Ensure Heimdall is aware of what has transpired. And send for Geirmund and Maeva." The closest three Einherjar hurried away, leaving two more behind.

"Even if we're able to melt the ice relatively quickly and allow the springs to flow once more…it will take time for the riverbeds to fill, and the loss of the fish…it will be too late," Vafri said, his thin wrinkled face filled with horror. "Your Majesty, I apologize. This is my fault. If I had taken the first report more seriously, and acted more promptly, perhaps we could have stopped them before they did so much damage."

"You could not have expected this. You acted according to the information available. That is all any of us can do. And our young supplies advisor now simply faces more of a challenge. Vafri, work with Geirmund and whomever you require to get the rivers restocked and determine the impact of this attack on the food and water supply. Maeva and I will determine the best way to release the springwater. Thor…come with me. Take his plate and glass to his chambers," Odin said to the next Einherjar against the wall. Such a thing was really a servant's job and not an elite guard's, but one did not question the All-Father, and the man dutifully took Thor's glass, a pitcher, and his untouched plate.

"Something troubles you," Odin said after the small group had all parted and he and Thor were making their way to the private wing of the palace.

Thor looked up at his father in surprise. "How did you know?"

"You're my son. And you have been for a very long time. What happened at the springs?"

"Nothing. Nothing more than what I've already said. We found the Frost Giants and Brokk. We killed the Frost Giants and Brokk escaped."

"Thor…" Odin stopped on the stairs, and Thor, behind him, was forced to come to a sudden halt as well. "Leave us!" he shouted, and every Einherjar up and down the flights of stairs, at least one per floor, disappeared to the far end of the corridor he patrolled.

Thor looked up at Odin and felt a flash of shame. Somehow he knows about the seventh Frost Giant. It wasn't particularly that he wished to hide it, just that it was jumbled up in a mix of difficult thoughts and feelings. Thor didn't really talk about feelings with his father, and his father didn't really ask, and that had always been fine with Thor. But now it would look like he'd wanted to hide it, and that would diminish him in his father's eyes.

Odin took one step down, putting himself one step higher than Thor and at eye level. "You faced Frost Giants for the first time since learning where Loki was born," he said quietly.

Thor nodded. Contact between Jotunheim and Asgard had been restored with the return of the Tesseract, in the form of offers to make restitution, to aid in repairs, to provide food and supplies, but each of these rejected overtures had been made by Odin and Odin alone. No one, Thor included, thought the return of Odin's heir would help matters. He was beginning to think, though, that Odin in fact did not know, and therefore Thor would not bring it up. Except Odin was looking at him. Watching. Waiting. With one unblinking eye. "I killed one," he finally said, clamping his jaw shut afterward to stop its trembling.

"You killed seven."

"No, I…the last one was running. Trying to reach the portal. His back was to me. And I threw Mjolnir at his head and he fell. He never raised a weapon against either of us."

"You made a mistake," Odin said calmly. "In war…such things can happen. And that Frost Giant was attacking Asgard, he just wasn't using a weapon to do it. You mustn't be too harsh on yourself."

"But Father, it wasn't because it was war that I killed him." Thor paused; he had to take a few steadying breaths before he could continue. "It was because it was a Frost Giant. In similar circumstances I have spared others. But I threw Mjolnir straight toward an open portal to another realm and struck him down from behind…all because I could not let a Frost Giant leave Asgard alive. I have always hated them. And Loki has always hated them. And Loki…" Thor could not bring himself to say it. Not now. And not here, where there were no enchantments to prevent eavesdropping.

"Yes," Odin simply said.

"I don't understand. Why was I able to lift Mjolnir afterward?"

"Being worthy of Mjolnir…it doesn't mean you stop making mistakes, Son. No matter how old you grow…no matter how wise you grow…you will still make mistakes. The question is: What do you learn from them?" Odin placed a hand at the back of Thor's neck and gave it a quick squeeze, then turned and continued up the stairs.

Thor lingered, thinking, listening to his father order the Einherjar back to their positions, and wondering what he was supposed to learn from this.

/


/

Loki rotated his almost-recovered shoulder; it ached from clearing the Dark Sector stairs and landings of snow yet again. On Asgard he would have refused to do this kind of work if anyone had dared ask him to, but here it was the one manual labor task he'd never really minded. His back and arms – even with the almost-recovered shoulder – were the strongest by far of any here, and he finished more quickly and without the shortness of breath that all of the others experienced with the physical exertion in thin atmosphere.

From the Ice Cube Lab he looked for and found Jane over at the DSL, lit naturally by the moon and unnaturally by the red lights. With her miniature arms and legs she was always the last one to complete this task. He watched her a moment longer, then took his shovel and crossed the pink-tinted ice over to where Jane was still clearing the large first level landing. The snow that had already been shoveled over the edge that winter reached the first landing in places. And it never even actually snowed; all of the accumulation was from wind blowing the existing snow about.

With all the gear on her head and even Big Red's hood up to block the wind – she'd switched to her back-up jacket because the hood in the other one had a hole in it – Jane didn't see or hear Loki until he snatched the shovel out of her hand and leaned it against the blue side of the building. By the time she got over the surprise he was rapidly shoveling away from her. She grabbed her snow shovel back again and dashed around Loki, stopping right in front of him. "I can do this."

"You're panting. Move."

"I am not- Maybe I am. But that doesn't matter. I can do it."

"I never said you couldn't. Now move."

"You move."

Loki glared at her, but he wasn't truly angry. This was of no consequence, and therefore there was no reason not to take a little pleasure from it. "You do realize you're on incredibly dangerous ground here, Dr. Foster?"

"I'm trying not to think about that too much, actually."

"You remind me of me," he told her. "When I was a very young child."

"You're hilarious. And I'm not moving."

He rolled his eyes, the one facial expression he could be sure she would see, since only his eyes were exposed. "Fine. You work from this end, I'll work from the other end, and we'll meet in the middle at the front stairs."

"Fine," Jane said. Not a victory, not a loss, maybe the best she'd ever do with Loki, she figured. Then she realized he'd given her the side of the landing that was already about half cleared. "Whatever," she mumbled under the balaclava. She dug her shovel in and pushed-pivoted-stepped-dumped her way toward Loki.

And then she looked at Loki doing the same and started to smile. Loki was insisting on helping her shovel snow. Loki, who just months ago had been leading the destruction of New York. Loki, who, when he first arrived here, wouldn't even carry his own bags. Loki, who wouldn't lift a finger for her for the longest time, unless she specifically asked, and even then he usually scowled.

Loki, who had super-human…or non-human…strength, Jane was reminded when they met in the middle even though he'd had twice as much to shovel as her. She looked up at him with a wry grin he couldn't see, then was reminded of something else entirely – that scene from The Lady and the Tramp that had made her younger self sigh with the innocent romanticism of youth, when the lady and the tramp were slurping on opposite ends of the same long strand of spaghetti and wound up nose-to-nose. "I'll get the stairs," Jane said, rushing to the last set of stairs, the ones to the ground, before Loki could say it first. She gave a shiver – not from the cold – as she got to work, because that comparison was so wrong on so many levels.

Then she looked up at Loki and found him looking down at her and she burst out laughing at the sudden image of him pushing a meatball around on his plate with his nose. I don't think I'll ever look at him the same way again, she thought, trying to catch her breath with the combination of laughter and shoveling. She chalked the whole thing up to lack of oxygen and refocused her attention on the task at hand, still chuckling.

Loki watched, waiting impatiently for Jane to finish the work she clung to out of sheer stubbornness. He knew she was insisting on doing her own work because she didn't want to be thought weak; he recognized that much. Growing up alongside The Mighty Thor meant he had expended a great deal of fruitless effort trying to not be thought weak. And he knew she wasn't weak. Or, she was, but she compensated for it with determination. After all, this weak, small woman had pulled him from a simulated fire all by herself.

This weak, small woman, he was fairly confident, was laughing at him right now, and he had no idea why. He knew he should be angry, he should insist she stop this insulting behavior, but again he found himself not really caring. What harm does her laughter do me? Whatever she laughs at…it isn't what they laughed at. She looked up at him again and he patted his heavily-gloved right hand over his left wrist, where his watch was.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Jane said, the words muffled almost beyond recognition.

After another couple of minutes the stairs were completely free of snow and Jane returned to the first landing and went inside to put the shovel away; Loki followed with his shovel. They both pulled off their headgear and shook it free of ice crystals.

"So…do you want to hang out here for a while? Selby and Wright are working in the station today. No interruptions."

"'Hang out?' No, I don't believe so. I'm going back to the station."

"I could go with you. I was really hoping you would tell me what it was like seeing Scandinavia way back then." Jane was behind on her work, as it seemed she always was ever since Pathfinder had begun to consume her time, but there was work, and there was talking to someone who'd just told her about an interstellar war on her planet she'd never heard of and had visited Earth during Europe's Early Middle Ages.

"I was very young. I don't recall much of it anymore. There was…a lot of dirt. And buildings made of wood. And…" Loki thought for a moment, tried to picture the towns and villages he'd seen. "Some of them had grass growing on the roof, and a couple of times we saw goats grazing on the rooftops. It was rather amusing."

Loki didn't look like he was particularly amused at the moment, but he didn't look annoyed either, so Jane smiled, wondering if she could get him to change his mind and stay. "They still do that. They-"

"Graze their livestock on top of their dwellings? I've seen nothing remotely of the sort on your realm recently."

"Not in downtown Oslo or any of the places you've been that I know about. But in villages in Norway, I guess. Erik" – she stopped short, looked away, swallowed, then continued – "Erik's family had some kind of a country home, I've seen the pictures. The house had grass on the roof, even a little tree. So I guess if a goat could manage to get up there, it might decide to do some munching."

"Really," Loki said, trying to picture a young Erik Selvig, with his love of science and the technological marvels of Midgardian modernity, living in a grass-covered home such as he'd seen over a thousand years ago. He shook his head and gave up. "Well, see then? It hasn't changed that much after all, and what little I would have to say about it would be quite dull."

"My mother would've liked to meet you."

"What do you mean by that?" Loki asked, drawing away. He'd never thought much about Jane's mother, though she'd come up a couple of times. He hadn't thought much about her as a person, and when he tried he simply pictured an older Jane and he couldn't fathom why this woman would want to meet him. Except perhaps to shriek at him for how he'd treated her daughter. He cringed at the thought, then let a wave of anger at his ridiculous reaction wash it away.

Jane, too, realized what she'd said seemed a little strange under the circumstances, and tried to clarify. "She was an anthropologist. Being able to talk to you about this stuff, it's like being able to go back in time."

"Apparently traveling to any modern Norwegian village will give you the same experience. I'm entirely superfluous," Loki said, giving his headgear another shake and pulling the neck gaiter back on.

"Oh, come on, that's not what I said. Lots of stuff has changed since…when were you there? You said the Ice War was in the mid-tenth century? And you were there sometime after?"

"Yes. The second half of your tenth century. Once or twice into the eleventh. After that no one was allowed to come here anymore. Now," Loki said, pausing a couple of seconds to pull on his balaclava, "if you'll excuse me…"

Jane started to say something to try to stop him, to not put an end to what was certainly the most pleasant day, even half-day, she'd ever spent with him, when as far as she could tell he hadn't tried to manipulate her, and he'd not gotten angry at her even once. Angry, yes, but not at her. Clearly, though, he was intent on leaving, and maybe the quickest way to sour it would be to keep pushing him to stay. There was one thing though… "Hey, Loki?"

"What?" he asked, his hat back in place, his gloved hand on the doorknob.

His voice had an edge to it, and Jane knew she'd guessed right. "When's your birthday?"

Loki stared for a long moment. "You aren't about to make another foolish attempt to reach Asgard, are you?"

His response was so far off of the range of expected answers – anything from a date to a verbal middle finger – that it took her a few seconds to even comprehend what he'd said. "I'm sorry. Not following the logic on that one."

"The last time you asked me senseless questions I had to prevent you from falling to your death. I won't do it again, and you would be killed instantly if you attempted it." Not true in the slightest, of course. She'd land in one piece, safe and sound, and be found either by some rather surprised and curious Einherjar with an unsheathed sword but no desire to kill an unarmed woman, or an even more surprised – and quickly enraged – Thor. And he couldn't have that.

"No, I'm not going to Asgard. Even if I wouldn't be killed instantly, and thanks for that, by the way, I get that they're at war, and it's not the best time to show up unannounced. And I'm sure Thor's busy." And I'm sure he'd wipe the floor with you if he knew you were here. And that reminded her that just like SHIELD, at some point Thor was going to find out that Loki had tracked her down, the very thing he'd worried about, warned her about, questioned her about, and that was most likely not going to be pretty.

"Why do you want to know my birthday?"

"Well, I was just…just thinking about it. When I was shoveling. You said Thor forgot your birthday last year."

He looked at her with confusion for a second, then gave an exaggerated sigh. "Jane, I'm so sorry. Somewhere along the way I must have overestimated your intelligence. That was merely a jest."

"Uh, yeah, I got that. But seriously, when's your birthday?"

"What does it matter?"

"It…it doesn't, I guess, it's just…something that's normal. Everybody has a birthday, right?"

Loki looked away. The things you ask, Jane. He was no longer certain of the day of his birth.

"Mine's August eighth, if it helps."

How is that supposed to help? he wondered, shooting her an annoyed look. "My birthday is unimportant. I've never been terribly fond of celebrating it."

"Why not?" Jane asked, thinking that sounded pretty sad.

"It coincides with a much more important anniversary, which was always celebrated instead."

"What, like Independence Day?" she asked, only half-serious, mostly trying to lighten the mood which had grown a little tense. It backfired.

"Asgard has no 'Independence Day,'" Loki snapped. "We have always been independent. We have never been dependent. No other realm or race has ever ruled us and none ever will."

"Um, okay, understood. Always independent. No Independence Day," she said, still trying to keep things light, and holding back on the retort she wanted to make about overestimating his intelligence since he didn't recognize what she'd said as a 'jest.'

Loki took a moment to calm himself, surprised and frustrated with how defensive he'd become over a realm that had disowned him and done him no favors in life, a realm he'd in turn disowned. "The Ice War, Jane. My birthday…I was born on the same day as Jotunheim's surrender to Asgard, the day the truce was settled. My birthday was usually marked the following day. The date doesn't matter. I've had many, many birthdays, and one does not usually celebrate them past one thousand."

"I guess I can see that. Definitely hard to fit the candles on the cake."

An image of an apple spice cake with several gold candlesticks perched precariously atop it immediately came to mind, but Loki thought better of asking. "You mortals and your strange customs. I'll see you later," he said, then opened the thick door and headed back to the station.

Jane stayed behind, thinking, and like so many times before, thought maybe she'd been on the cusp of learning something important. That sense was particularly strong now. He was born on the same day as the end of a war against Jotunheim, the realm he says he wishes he'd succeeded in destroying, the people he says deserve to die. It was too much of a coincidence not to be important. But surely he didn't want to kill them all just because they overshadowed his birthday. I guess I'd be pretty annoyed, too, if I never got to celebrate my birthday on my actual birthday, but…I don't think I'd feel the need to destroy a planet over it. And anyway it's not like it's their fault he was born the same day they surrendered.

She used to think she would never get any answers from him. Today had changed that. Now she thought it was possible. More than possible. She wasn't sure if she'd gotten better at talking to him, or he'd gotten better at lightening up, or maybe even a bit of both, but she couldn't help thinking it was a really positive development. Maybe now he would really let her get to know him. Maybe he would let her get him more involved socially with the other winterovers. Maybe he would learn to appreciate humanity. They had the whole winter, some six more months. So much had happened in less than three months, knowing who he really was for not quite one month, that she could hardly imagine what might happen in six more.

Still she could only push him so far, and she had actual work to accomplish here. This morning Young-Soo had sent the 3-D modeling of the interior of Yggdrasil he'd promised, and she was eager to get a look at it. With the DSL to herself today, she decided to work from here and got to work on shedding layers until she got down to Carhartts and flannel.

/


/

Thor woke to sunlight streaming in through the tall windows he hadn't bothered to cover this morning before going to bed. He hadn't intended to sleep here again in the luxury of his private chambers until this war was over, but day was breaking and his father had insisted he get some real rest for he would be heavily relied on once the fighting started again, and his chambers were much closer than the warriors' encampments. Odin believed that when next the other realms attacked – with weapons instead of frost – battle would be nearly continuous.

Despite the comforts of the mattress with just the right degree of firmness, the fat overstuffed down pillows, a soft fur, and the finest linens in the Nine Realms, Thor slept poorly, tossing and turning, plagued by vague and unsettling dreams of Frost Giants attacking, Frost Giants whose faces were always obscured in shadow. Frost Giants he slew one after the other in a rage, but whose hidden faces he was grateful he could not see. He sat up in bed and rubbed his face with the heels of his palms. In midday brightness he knew exactly what face he was afraid of seeing in those dreams.

So many times he'd longed to be able to talk to Loki. To have one more chance to get him to listen, to tell him the things he'd been thinking about, certain that this time it would be different, this time Loki would actually listen. Loki would understand that neither his brother nor anyone else had ever meant him ill. Loki would admit all the wrong he'd done and seek to atone for it.

Now he feared he could not even face Loki.

Emotions jumbled and clashed inside him, too much to sort out and understand, and he had no one he could talk to about it. He didn't have the time to try to think it all through, sort it out, analyze it. He wasn't sure he even had the ability to do that. Loki was the one who analyzed something from a thousand angles; Thor was the one who lived in the moment and dove in head first.

But he knew he needed to think this through. And if he had little time for it now, then it would have to be later. "Loki was my brother. Loki is my brother. Loki will always be my brother. No matter what else comes between us," he said to the empty room. He worried, though, that he would forget. Forget what a blow it was, as he praised Maeva to Odin, to realize he wasn't sure he'd ever done the same for someone far more important to him than Maeva. Forget how Tony ceaselessly teasing him for his relative slowness had smarted after just a few hours, and how he'd realized he'd teased Loki for his weaknesses for centuries. Forget how he'd had just a glimpse of how devastated Loki must have been to learn the truth about himself, and how little a few words of reassurance must have meant in the face of a lifetime of loathing his own kind and knowing how much everyone else, Thor chief among them, loathed them, too. He tried to recall exactly what was said between them on that mountain on Midgard. Had he shouted his words of "reassurance"? Hadn't he raised Mjolnir? The words "Frost Giant" or "Jotun" or "Laufey" had never once been spoken between them, not with regard to Loki.

None of this excused Loki's actions against Jotunheim or Midgard, though; the idea was offensive. Loki maimed and killed and destroyed those who'd done nothing against him. Innocents. Should I have destroyed Melfort because Tony jested at my expense? he asked himself. Preposterous. Then he remembered what a Frost Giant had said after Thor turned his back to go. "Run home, little princess." He'd killed anything that was blue and moved. Because of an insult. A jest.

It isn't the same! he shouted at himself, his face pressed into his palms again. He'd begun to get ready for the day as he thought, and now he sat in the bath in water that was growing cold. They were not innocents, those Jotuns. They were warriors. They fought against me, he told himself. But I took the first swing. I started that war. What else could they have done? And the one at the Eilif Springs, the one who raised no weapon, was he not innocent? Thor shook his head and pushed himself up, grabbing a towel and drying himself. And continuing to argue with himself. No, he was not innocent. He was attacking Asgard, just as Father said. How many might that Frost Giant have indirectly killed, in drying up our three largest rivers and destroying so much of our dwindling food supply? He did not come here in peace. He simply tried to leave as a coward.

His head was spinning. He dressed, still lost in these thoughts in which he could neither find nor force an order, then rang a bell to call a servant. When one appeared, he ordered a light meal to take in his chambers while he emptied his mind of things he had no time to pursue. Except he didn't really want to fully empty his mind of them. He saw then an image of Jane, the breeze lifting her soft brown hair as she sat on the rooftop of her workplace. He remembered how delighted she'd been when he returned her thick black notebook, the one in which she'd recorded her work, but also her thoughts and musings about the cosmos and about life itself.

Could he not do the same? Like one of the palace scribes, but recording his own experiences and thoughts rather than official edicts and events?

He rang for the servant again and asked for a private journal. It arrived with his meal. He ate with his left hand and wrote with his right, words that would be visible only to him and to whomever he gave explicit permission to read. The food was quickly forgotten altogether.

Yesterday I killed a Frost Giant. In truth, I killed five, and Volstagg two, but only one of them do I recall. His eyes were wide, right before he turned his head, right before I split his skull. I do not like their eyes. It is not the color so much, though I do not like the red, but rather that there is no white – every part of the eye is red. It does not look natural. It makes me uneasy. Perhaps it should not. But it does. And I will write only the truth on these pages. Yesterday I killed a Frost Giant. Afterward, I wondered what his name was. And whether he had a brother who loved him…

/


/

Loki sat in his room with his back against the wall, his legs dangling over his bed, his hands holding the collection of poetry by Lord Alfred Tennyson. He'd already read the poem Ulysses perhaps a half dozen times yesterday. It came with a few explanatory notes; they helped in some ways and created confusion in others. Loki had never heard of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, or Dante's Inferno, earlier works Tennyson's poem drew on. He'd never heard of Ulysses himself, apparently a character familiar in at least some segments of Midgardian culture. His literature and culture lessons had never included Midgard.

Despite the history of the character of Ulysses that he did not know, and the terms and cultural references that were unfamiliar, Loki had been drawn in right from the start.

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race…

Had things only gone a little differently here on Midgard, this would be him. King of a realm in which he had no actual interest, trying to stop a bunch of savages from killing each other. Had he taken a wife here, some politically astute match to enamor the people of him, she would have grown aged quickly while he remained unchanged. The "barren crags" made him think of Antarctica…and of a realm beyond the realms. Am I not an idle king? he asked himself. A king without a kingdom? Without purpose? Without a plan? Without a goal? Ulysses, according to the notes, was restless and dissatisfied with his life, and longed for the days of excitement and travel and adventure he'd had in the past. Loki understood him. He'd had centuries of excitement and travel and adventure, then he'd been king of the jewel in Yggdrasil's crown, now he was little short of a refugee in a barren desert of ice.

All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone…

Again and again he returned to this passage. It made him want to weep, now that he was reading it alone in his chambers instead of in the Quiet Reading Room with Paul-the-wastie sitting nearby. The notes said that Tennyson wrote this after the death of a close friend. Loki had no more close friends. No more family. No more that loved him. Alone…

Much have I seen and known – cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all –
And drunk delight of battle with my peers

It reeked of self-deception. It made him think of the days of his young adulthood, when he told himself he should not feel slighted that when Thor and his friends drank to their success in battle, his efforts were often ignored or belittled, his occasional inclusion in a congratulatory toast was an afterthought, and Thor was always – always – the center of everyone's attention. "Drunk delight of battle with my peers" indeed.

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

Loki wondered where his untraveled world was. He wondered where his "arch" was that would take him there. He had paused long enough at the bottom of Midgard. It was time to shine in use again.

that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I am what I am. I claim no realm as home, and no realm claims me as its child. I am certainly not Midgardian, and I will not remain idle here. I will decide what I want, and I will take it.

Loki slammed the book closed and dropped it on the bed, then jumped up and transformed his Midgardian attire into his best Asgardian armor. It was only an illusion, and an imperfect one at that, but it set the blood thrumming in his veins and brought fire to his thoughts.

The bifrost. The arc reactor in Pathfinder has sufficient power to overcome its magic. I could find a way to use that power to free me without taking me back to Midgard. But no. They may strengthen their trap further. My plan cannot begin the same way again. I will fail again, and next time I may not escape.

The Ice Casket. I could go to the bifrost and give myself up. "For the good of Asgard, dear Father, I submit myself. I will deliver the Ice Casket and myself to Jotunheim to serve my punishment there." And then I will take the Ice Casket. It does much more than spew ice and cold. The Jotuns once used it for interstellar travel; so will I. It holds powerful magic, and I will learn to control it. Do I not have a ready advantage in its use? He walked over to the mirror on the back of the door and quickly brought up the sound shield before speaking to his reflection. "For the good of Asgard, I submit myself. Let me bring an end to this blight of a war," he said with his most sincere voice and expression, hands outstretched in front of him. He turned his head and laughed. No one will believe that. No one except Thor, perhaps. Gullible, stupid Thor. He walked back toward his bed, discarding that plan as well. They wouldn't believe him, he wasn't sure he could pretend to debase himself that much in the first place, and he didn't want to look down at his own blue hands when he wielded it, or allow so many others to see what the Ice Casket made him.

I cannot return there as a prisoner. The risk is too great. I must return on my own terms. I must be in control, not Odin, and certainly not Thor. I cannot return there helpless, nothing to bargain with, nothing to secure my freedom. If it cannot be a realm, then something else. Something I've taken. Something I've conquered and can call my own. Something that will wound…

He turned slowly, slowly toward his desk, toward the wall it sat against. Beyond that wall was a room. Beyond that room was another room. In that room lived the one thing that met his requirements. The thing he'd come here for in the first place. The thing he'd decided he would not be able to hurt.

His expression turned cold.


/

Given the number of places online where you can find the full text of Ulysses without reference to copyright, I presume it's old enough that it doesn't fall under copyright protection any longer. Of course I'm no expert in such things. But in case anyone was somehow confused, I of course didn't write this poem, Tennyson did. What I quoted, by the way, isn't the full poem.

As always, thanks so much for reading, reviewing, for all of it. I get giddy-excited when I think about how the end is approaching (because the end, I hope you'll agree when you get there, will be exciting). BUT, it's not in the next few chapters, okay? It's just that we're soon to begin racing toward it, twist and all. A few of you have written at some point or other that you don't want the story to end, most recently "candy flaps" (you made me really LOL, by the way, because I was immediately thinking, dear God, *I* want it to end! Ha. Just because I've given so much of my life to it for over a year now). All good things must come to an end, but this story has a way to go yet.

Some stuff originally intended for the next chapter had to be pushed back to the following one - I mention it for those of you who follow the updates on my profile page and thought the next chapter would be titled "Surprise." Ch. 66 will now be titled "Surprise, and Ch. 65 is titled "Prey." Which brings us to...

Ch. 65 teasers: Loki turns to Sun Tzu who seems to have a message for him; Jane thinks about what Loki's said and tries to put it together and has an idea; Loki recalls a hunt he went on with Odin and Thor and thinks about tactics and prey (and ninepen has to move planned events to the next chapter because of it)...and I should probably leave it at that.

And excerpt:

Double espresso. As usual. Oatmeal. Less common. She'd said whenever she got it she could swear it still had that funny taste she associated with the Diamox she used to take. He wondered why she was getting it today. Brown sugar and raisins added. The scientists seemed to all be congregating this morning, putting Jane and Selby at the same table, also fairly unusual these days. Loki smiled a hard, small smile, knowing that was his doing. It was too bad Thor didn't have some special fondness in his heart for Selby. That would be much easier.