Beneath

Chapter Seventy-Five – Curiosity

As soon as Thor woke, he sat up, and then, unable to stop his forward motion, pitched forward, his neck sending his chin to his chest as though his neck muscles had completely atrophied. He was dizzy, and, if he didn't somehow instinctively know that he wasn't, he might have thought that he was extremely drunk. Something pressed hard against his shoulder and his momentum reversed itself, but this time when he fell backward he wound up not horizontal but reclining somewhere between lying down and sitting up.

His eyes fluttered open and he squinted against the light. Jolgeir was standing next to him, very close, blurry but recognizable, and for a moment vague memories also blurred with the present in Thor's mind. "It's been many centuries since I woke up to find you hovering over me, Jolgeir," he said once the memories and his vision cleared.

"Have you ever woken to find me hovering over you?"

Thor chuckled. "A few times, I think."

"Your memories must be sharper than mine. I remember a young prince who insisted he did not need my services."

"Yes," he said with a fond smile. "I did have my-"

"Prince Thor?"

Thor didn't answer, not at first. Memories of the distant past led him back to memories much more recent. The war. The battle he'd been in. Another prince. "Loki. I saw…" But he hadn't seen. Someone invisible had struck him. His arm had been useless. He looked down at his right arm, realized he couldn't feel it, like it wasn't even there even though he was looking at it. He was in a private chamber within the Healing Room. He lifted his eyes back up to Jolgeir in growing apprehension. "Was it Loki?"

"No. The healer who brought you here said there was a Dark Elf who became visible shortly after the healers reached you. He's dead."

Thor nodded and released a shaky breath. It was muddy but he remembered it, his certainty that he'd just killed Loki. Based solely on the fact that someone tall, slender, and invisible had attacked him. His certainty had been irrational. He looked down at his arm again, remembered how Mjolnir would not come to his right hand, and now his apprehension was focused on that. "What happened? What's wrong with my arm?"

Jolgeir gave a bracing smile. "I wasn't there, and an actual healer could give you a better answer – Eir will be back soon I'm sure – but I'm told that you were stabbed in the chest near the left shoulder, and that your right arm was nearly severed. The hidden Dark Elf sliced right through a gap in your armor, under your arm. You lost a terrible amount of blood, enough to have killed you if the healers hadn't gotten to you so quickly. Your arm is being kept immobile and numb while it heals. You're lucky they were able to save it. Eir tended you, and four others, for several hours. You've been unconscious for an entire day."

An entire day, he thought as stared down at his arm and wondered what it looked like under the simple gray tunic he wore. It felt like the arm wasn't there. He couldn't fathom what it would be like if it were really not there. I wouldn't be me anymore, he thought, then looked up at Jolgeir, whose arms both stopped at his shoulders, and felt guilty. Thor forced his thoughts back to Jolgeir's news. "The Dark Elf…was it Brokk?"

Jolgeir shook his head. "Hergils said the All-Father looked at the body and didn't recognize it. But they don't think the magic came from the one who died. They believe he had a partner."

A magic-wielder and a warrior working together. The magic-wielder making the warrior invisible, making sure he remained undetected; the warrior slipping behind me and finding the vulnerability. Dwarves to distract me. War is not meant to be fought this way… In the Ice War that he'd studied so often in his childhood and youth, the Jotuns and the Aesir had met each other on the battlefield face to face. Thor shook his head in incredulity as a strange thought occurred to him. Did the Jotuns fight more honorably than these elves and dwarves? But no, that was not the case, for the Jotuns much more recently had tried to block off most of Asgard's water supply. And of all the realms do they not have reason to be angry with Asgard? Such thoughts were not helpful at the moment. "How does Asgard fare?"

"Asgard stands. From what I hear, it continues as before. We fight, we even the odds, they send fresh warriors. But no one seems to have heard of any other invisible warriors attacking us, or other such tactics. Hergils believes they're targeting you."

It wasn't surprising. He was a natural target, both because of his strength in battle and because of who he was. "Has my father been warned?"

"Hergils has, yes. He said the All-Father can use Gungnir to counteract such magic. Can you use Mjolnir to do the same?"

Instinctively Thor looked toward his right hand, but it was empty and felt nothing. With his left, when he thought about it, he could feel Mjolnir's energy and knew it was in the room, simply out of sight. "I don't know. I've never tried such a thing. But Loki sometimes used to fight me when he was invisible. Now that I'm aware of the possibility, I'll remain vigilant for it. How much longer must I remain here?"

"That I don't know. You'll have to wait for Eir. I deliver supplies, speak with patients, run errands…keep an eye on rambunctious princes…whatever I can do to be of use. And speaking of that…"

"Yes?" Thor asked, trying to focus on the conversation instead of the deadness in his arm and the anxiety of knowing that battles were raging on while he was stuck in bed, and while he'd been unconscious in bed. Now he knew how Sif had felt.

"I spoke with the Lady Jane Foster, it was about a week and a half ago, as you asked."

That held Thor's attention. He'd wondered about that several times, but never had a chance to ask. And now that he was more focused, he realized Jolgeir looked guilty. "How is she?" he asked warily.

"She's well. She asked that you remain safe and not worry about her. She…would not be happy, I think, to know about this," he said, inclining his head toward Thor's right side. "She said that her work at Midgard's South Pole is going well, and that it's dark all day there, that they won't see the sun rise for almost five months. She said that she can only bathe twice per week, and then she asked me not to tell you that, and then she changed her mind and said I could tell you if I also explained that they don't have enough water to be able to bathe more often, and that normally she bathes every day."

Thor laughed; he could hear Jane's voice saying those things, and picture her face as she said them, how she would sometimes get embarrassed and flustered around him, though there was really no need. How she smiled so charmingly even through her embarrassment. "What else?" he asked then, remembering that earlier look of guilt.

"I apologize, my prince, I didn't realize that your friend didn't know about the war. Or that you didn't want her to know. I told her, I'm sorry to say."

Thor sighed and his left shoulder sagged – his right he had no control over. "It's my fault. I didn't think to tell Geirmund that she didn't know. I just didn't want her to worry."

The door meanwhile, had been opening while Thor spoke, and while he'd assumed it to be Eir arriving, it was not. "If you were talking about me, of course I'm going to worry, I'm your mother." Jolgeir stepped back with his head bowed and she moved into his place, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. "And much as I've worried about you getting enough sleep, now I'm relieved to see you're awake. Twenty-six hours in bed? You've always been one for extremes, haven't you?"

"I was just following your wise counsel on getting some rest, Mother," Thor said, sitting up further and swaying a bit in a wave of dizziness.

"Here, let me get this," Jolgeir said, stepping in closer to the bed. Thor couldn't see what he was doing, but the inclined portion of the bed began to lift further, close to vertical, and soon Thor had the soft bed behind him again, the pillow at his lower back where it had fallen earlier. He was proud enough to dislike this sort of fussing, but not too proud to admit that he wasn't sure how long he could have remained upright without it. "I'll go now," Jolgeir said once the bed was securely in its new position.

"No, a moment, please, Jolgeir. Was there anything else from Jane?"

"No, we didn't speak for long. I told her who I was. She said she would like for me to tell her embarrassing stories from when you were a boy."

"Did she, now? What exactly did you tell her?"

"I told her I would think of the most embarrassing one and speak with her again," Jolgeir answered with a smile Thor knew teased.

"I'm sorry to do this, then, but you are hereby banned from all further travel to Midgard."

"Pity. She also asked about Prince Loki."

"Why? About what?" Frigga asked before Thor could respond.

"I told her of the demands of the other realms, and she asked why he tried to destroy Jotunheim, and why he tried to claim Midgard. I…told her what little I knew. I assumed that if she was…important enough that you wished me to speak with her… I hope I didn't overstep my bounds."

"No, no, it's fine. Jane is naturally, endlessly curious. If you hadn't answered her questions she would have pressed until you gave in anyway."

"She sounds like Loki," Frigga said with a wistful smile.

Thor looked from Jolgeir to Frigga in surprise. "She is not like Loki."

She arched an eyebrow. "Your brother is the most curious person I have ever known. He used to ask me questions no one had ever even thought to ask before. And he was never satisfied with 'I don't know.' He would find a different way to ask the same question, or he would ask someone else, or he would search through books, or he would figure it out himself, even when your father and I didn't want him to."

Every word she'd said was true, and he had no doubt it could all be said just as well of Jane. He remembered how forlorn she'd been when SHIELD confiscated all of her work, and how delighted she'd been to get back the book that contained her notes, so she could begin seeking answers anew. "She's like Loki in that respect," he conceded.

"She's very curious about you and your brother. I told her about the time Loki searched Asgard until he showed up on my doorstep with a book about the Ice War that had a picture of Einherjar on the cover."

Thor looked at him with confusion, trying to recall what Jolgeir was speaking of. He couldn't fathom why Loki would do that, but when his mother responded, he realized he'd been picturing an adult Loki but Jolgeir was, of course, speaking of a child Loki.

"I remember it well. That awful book. It was grotesque. It gave him nightmares. You, too," she said, turning to Thor for a moment. "But that was so long ago. What made you think of that, in particular?"

"I don't know. It's just something I've never forgotten." Jolgeir's face broke into a warm smile that, to Thor, spoke clearly of the fondness their former guard still held for his brother. "He was so pleased with himself when I came to the door, and he was so excited to show me that book. And I'll apologize again, my queen, even a thousand years later, when I asked about it he told me had your permission to have that book, and he said it with a perfectly honest face. But it just struck me that he made his way across the city all by himself and somehow found me. When he sets his mind to something, he doesn't let anything stand in his way, not even when he was five years old."

Frigga rested a hand on Thor's shoulder. "And that sounds like my other son. And my husband. I have a family full of stubborn men."

Thor smiled up at her, but this type of talk, particularly in front of someone else, was quickly making him uncomfortable. "Jolgeir, what came of the meeting itself? Has Midgard…" He paused, remembering that there was no guarantee of privacy in this area. They'd already learned of a spy, and Loki himself had been lurking about the Healing Room earlier. "Has the agreement gone into effect?"

"It has. They made some adjustments based on my recommendations, and…yes, it's gone into effect."

"When Eir releases you, come to the palace," Frigga said. "I'll fill you in. To put it briefly for now, we're doing well in that regard, relatively speaking. Your idea to use what we learned from Jolgeir – what he learned from Loki – was a good one, and we've not lost further supplies."

"Good," he said, knowing she was referring to the false information Vigdis had given Brokk, and the attacks the other realms had launched on the false silos Maeva had created through illusions, while the actual remaining food stores had been protected.

Jolgeir then excused himself, and Thor was left with his mother.

"So it wasn't me you didn't want to worry, hm? If your Jane wants embarrassing stories, she should come to me. There are no limits to how deep that pit may be mined."

"I shudder to think. I've already banned Jolgeir from Midgard, I suppose I'll have to ban Jane from Asgard now." It was a jest, but one that he spoke with no laughter and barely even a smile. Even if Asgard were not embroiled in war, Heimdall had said it may not be safe for a mortal to travel via the Tesseract's power. Jane could not visit Asgard until the bifrost was rebuilt, and with progress slow and now halted entirely, it was uncertain when, if ever in her lifetime, her travel here could even be considered. Proper motivation, however, could lead to great accomplishments. He looked down at his arm again, and hoped Eir would return soon. He was feeling better by the minute. But he could not be fully effective with one arm entirely unusable. He flexed his left hand and felt the hammer hum. "Mjolnir…under the bed? How did it get here?"

"Your father brought it. He was here, earlier. We both were. Hergils explained what happened."

"They aren't fighting honorably. Attacking while invisible? Never even showing a face?"

"They're fighting for victory at all cost. Even if it's hollow. We're going to face difficult decisions ourselves in the future."

Thor nodded, but he couldn't think about that right now. Questions of honor, of victory and loss, of the demands of the other realms were far beyond him at the moment. He shifted his position impatiently, wishing Eir would return, wake his arm, and send him out again to fight.

/


/

Loki woke early on Friday, well before the annoying beeping on his watch would begin. If this place were like any normal location, fit for habitation, he would have said he woke well before dawn. The thought made him laugh lightly as he went about getting dressed and into his gear. The South Pole hadn't seen dawn since late September of the previous year.

He crept quietly out of his room and down the hall, frowning in the direction of Jane's room as he passed it, then pausing at the water dispenser to take a few drinks. The lack of humidity didn't bother him the way it did Jane and the other mortals here, but he needed water and food to keep his strength up, the same as anyone else. Food he would have to do without this morning; the galley wasn't serving yet and as little fond he was of their offerings, he was far less fond of the pre-packaged things that Jane sometimes subsisted on.

Still dark outside indeed, he thought drily once he got there. A couple of bands of green light curved over the sky; he'd begun to grow used to the auroras, as had the others winterovers. Station-wide radio calls now only went out for unusual or otherwise particularly striking ones. He hadn't made a special trip out to see one since Jane had dragged him out, shortly before he'd left – he'd thought – for Asgard for the third and final time. It had been his goodbye to her, that night, sort of. A goodbye in advance, he thought with a small smile, then realized he'd paused between the elevated station and the Summer Camp structures. He frowned and pressed on.

Once in the jamesway, he got to work on the small amounts of computer code that he needed to change. He'd realized during the night that it would take even less time than he thought, because this programming was "smart," as Jane sometimes oddly referred to it. If he made an adjustment in one place, it would replicate itself as needed. By 10:00 he was ready, new equations in place, and time and space now treated as variables to be determined and entered into Pathfinder's programming by him rather than determined automatically by Yggdrasil and captured in Pathfinder's data after the fact.

He got his gear back on, opened up the thick plastic container that held their few remaining probes, and carried one outside, behind the jamesway, where he'd set up Pathfinder again after Jane had brought it in. He laughed briefly, recalling the battle they'd had over the name, which he of course had won. He thought about how foolishly eager he'd been in the beginning, so anxious to get off this world and have the curses removed that he would have placed his hand atop Pathfinder's platform without running any tests at all. He thought about how Jane had frustrated him so badly because of her insistence on testing this and simulating that, how it was "no, Lucas," and "not yet, Loki." How she'd so obviously wanted him gone, yet still insisted on these safety precautions that delayed the very thing she desired. How he'd lied to her constantly, telling her that he was eager to return to his "home" and his "family," assuring her that yes, he would return within an hour to confirm he'd arrived safely. He remembered the twinge of guilt he'd felt for that final lie, in the face of all her genuine concern. She is a good person, he thought. Almost as good as Frigga. It would have been in her best interest to adjust Pathfinder to deposit me somewhere in the cold of empty space, or sabotage the structural integrity field generator.

Perhaps she would do so now, he thought, after watching that video. But he didn't really think so. Things had not even been particularly strained between them since then, just more subdued, and that perhaps mostly due to his own decision to avoid being alone with her – though it was true he occasionally caught her sneaking glances at him when she thought he wasn't looking. Being alone with her wasn't necessary. Conversation unrelated to work wasn't necessary. With everything in place for Pathfinder, all he needed from her now was her certainty that he posed no threat to the station's residents, and her continued messages to Tony Stark assuring him of the same. At least until I decide how to handle that particular annoyance, he thought with a grin.

He was staring at the spherical probe resting on the metal prongs over Pathfinder's platform. It was almost like he was waiting for something, he realized, for something about the moment felt empty, lacking. Jane,he realized with a frown. She'd been present at every one of these tests before. He remembered how giddy and exuberant she'd been at that first one, the night of the Sunset feast, how he'd acquiesced and let her drag him to the dance afterward because she insisted they celebrate. He laughed, remembering how she'd wanted him to dance with her; she'd thought he was Lucas Cane, then, of course.

All that had changed. Jane couldn't be here, couldn't know about this. If she found out, he doubted a desire for celebration and dancing would be her reaction. So it was time to stop dawdling and dwelling on the past. It was time to start visiting the past.

He pressed the button, stepped back, braced himself for pain, made the probe invisible and added an extra energy shield into the magic to hide the flash of bright light the probe created upon departure and arrival, the pain came, the probe…well, he assumed it had gone. More than five seconds had passed. He limped forward, reached out a tentative hand where the probe had been, and indeed it was not just invisible, but gone.

Five minutes, now, to wait. Loki, thankfully, had relearned patience. More precisely, he thought with a wry half-smile, he'd relearned the price of impatience.

Still, staring at a piece of Midgardian technology he'd stared at plenty of times before, surrounded by the same jamesway on his left and the same expanse of ice, berms, and a few random outbuildings that lay beyond the far edge of Summer Camp, was a bit like watching grass grow. He parted the layers around his wrist and looked at the watch he'd taken to wearing again, set an alarm, and looked out over the ice into the distance, his back to the jamesway. It was dark, but auroras and a sliver of moon gave some light; out here there were no red lights at least.

Alone with his thoughts in the quiet, never-ending nighttime, he recalled what Jane had asked about Jotunheim, how anyone survived there if there was never any sunlight and it was frozen all the time. It was an interesting question, in a purely intellectual sense. He'd asked once himself, he remembered now, in one of his cosmology lessons, when he'd been perhaps fifteen or sixteen. The tutor had said something about ice covering Jotunheim's entire surface. He'd always heard Jotunheim was icy, but never thought about it covering the whole realm.

"But Nestur, doesn't it melt in the spring?"

"No. It never melts. It's frozen all year long. They are Frost Giants, and they live on a frost world."

"But if it never melts, how do they grow crops? Or graze animals?"

Thor laughed and beat Nestur to an answer. "Do you think they're a bunch of farmers, Loki? They're beasts who do nothing but attack and pillage and destroy."

"Beasts have to eat, too, Thor."

Thor rolled his eyes.

Loki turned back to Nestur. "Have you ever been there?" he asked their tutor.

"Before the war, yes, twice. They sometimes engaged in trade."

"What did they trade?" he asked, surprised. He'd never heard this before.

"Why? Do you want to go market-hunting on Jotunheim?" Thor asked.

"I was there both times for a special market exhibition I'd heard about on Alfheim. It was all very staid, very cold, and more than a little frightening. They glare at you with such disdain that you were never sure if they were going to sell you something or grow an ice dagger and slit your throat. They were selling craftworks and home goods made of bone. Jotunheim is home to enormous, monstrous creatures that yield gigantic bones when they fall."

"Of course they do," Thor said with a laugh. "They're called Frost Giants."

Loki stuck out his tongue at Thor's rather obvious sense of humor, then laughed, too.

"Indeed," Nestur said with a chuckle. "It's important to try to understand the other realms, of course it is, even Jotunheim – don't give me that look, Thor, you would do well to do more of it – but your mistake lies in trying to force them into our image. They aren't like us, Loki."

"You aren't like us, Loki," he could hear old Nestur saying now. Not like them either. Even my bones would be cast aside. Not large enough to make home goods out of. He shook his head at his own absurd thoughts. He had no intention of surrendering his bones to anyone anytime soon, for home goods or anything else.

Unique, he thought. I am unique among all the realms. His mother used to call him unique, said in what always seemed to be warmth and love, though he wondered now what she'd meant by it. Many times, when he was younger, he'd wished he were a little less unique.

His watch beeped faintly; he parted the layers again and turned it off. He walked back over the few steps to Pathfinder, reached out, and touched the probe. He then brushed his hand over it and brought it back into visibility, picked it up, and set it aside atop a small snowdrift. Here he would part ways with Jane – Jane would insist on taking the probe in and analyzing the data it returned fifteen different ways. Loki didn't see the point. The probe returned safely from wherever and whenever it had been, and that meant the next test could proceed.

Loki reached into his satchel, pulled out the transmitter and structural integrity field generator, and strapped them to his wrists. With a deep breath of anticipation he rested a hand on top of one of the metal prongs, then pressed the "go-button," as Jane called it. He remembered doing this the first time, when Jane was standing in front of him instead of the barren ice and abandoned Summer Camp. He made himself invisible, just as he had the probe, and wound up resting more weight on the metal stand than he meant to.

Blinding light struck his eyes and he squeezed them shut against it, frustrated with himself that he'd either gotten something wrong that he hadn't gotten wrong in centuries, or else he'd lost so much magic that he wasn't capable of advanced invisibility magic anymore, because there shouldn't have been a flash. Odin's curse certainly thought he'd worked the magic; his right leg ached all the way up to his hip and his stomach had roiled. He shifted his weight and leaned forward onto Pathfinder…and kept right on leaning until he fell flat on his face and hit hard snow. Startled, he instinctively scrambled back to his feet, ignoring the lingering pain. His eyes had opened to slits, and now slowly opened fully. He looked around him. Same ice. Same jamesway on his left. No Pathfinder. And sunlight reflected dazzlingly off the snow.

/


/

Jane sat lost in thought in the Science Lab. It was a slow day, work-wise. Selby was feeling under the weather and had gone back to his room to try to get some more sleep, Austin and Carlo were out at the Ice Cube Lab, Sue worked weird hours anyway, and Loki was wherever Loki went on the days he was working out solutions to Einstein's general relativity equations and whatever else he did. Wright and Elliot, one of the Clean Sector scientists, had cleared off one of the unused desks and were engrossed in a scintillating game of paper football, something she didn't think she'd seen since high school. She'd never learned the rules for the finger version – it mostly seemed to consist of flicking a piece of paper folded into a triangle back and forth across the table toward the other person, and then, when that got old, standing it up on end and flicking it toward the other person's "goalposts" made of pointer fingers and thumbs. From the grunts and "oh's" and occasional expletives she figured it must be way more exciting than it looked.

They'd asked her before they begun if she minded, and she hadn't. It wasn't like she could concentrate on work, anyway. It was Friday, and tomorrow she'd be working with Loki again and it would be the weekend again, and she needed to figure out a strategy. Since the video incident almost a week ago, he'd been distant, professional really, though the word seemed an odd fit for him. She wondered what Asgardians did for professions, and she remembered that Loki had told her that as a prince he didn't have a job. She didn't know much about princes in general, but she thought the ones in England were in the Army or Air Force or something. Thor was fighting a war now – something she tried hard not to think too much about – so she supposed he was in the equivalent of Asgard's army, and probably spent a lot of time training. What did Loki do all day? she wondered. What does anybody do all day when you live for thousands of years? Jane smiled. She knew what she would do. She would figure out every single secret the universe had to offer. With a few nice, long, tropical island vacations thrown in for the occasional break.

Loki. Strategy, she reminded herself when she realized she'd drifted into daydreaming about the relative merits of the Caribbean versus the South Pacific. As she saw it, she had two options. Let things stay like this, or try to draw him out again and steer things back to the way they'd become. It was easier like this. He was polite, respectful, did what she asked without complaint – not that she asked anything that should be cause for complaint, but that had never stopped him before – and there were no outbursts, no worrying if she should ask this or that, no dancing around one of a million sensitive subjects, and accidentally stumbling onto the one-million-and-first. There was moral clarity. Working out new algorithms for the ratio of dark matter in the universe with Loki didn't raise the same slightly uneasy feeling in her, in the wake of the video, as, say, laughing with him about supposedly giving birth to a horse or planning parties for him or foisting him on her blissfully ignorant fellow Polies.

But there were so many reasons not to let things stay so distant.

Thor. He'd had high hopes for Loki coming to Earth, that Loki could learn something here, as he had. She remembered being upset when he'd told her about it in Tromso, how naïve it seemed, to think that his maniac brother would come down here, meet some friendly Earthlings, and decide to change his wicked world-conquering ways. But Thor wanted this; she couldn't turn her back on that now that she happened to be the friendly Earthling…or usually friendly Earthling, when it came to Loki. And despite having done some pretty horrific maniac-ish things – exhibit one, that video – Loki wasn't the maniac she'd initially imagined him to be.

Loki. He could be playful, he could be charming, and he was quite possibly the smartest person she'd ever met, and in her line of work she'd met a lot of really smart people. But he carried a lot of anger, anger that at times he'd seemed only too happy to show her, and at other times she was certain she'd only seen it because he'd lost control of it for a moment. She still didn't really understand what caused it, because he refused to tell her, though he'd skirted the edges of it a few times – jealousy of Thor, maybe resentment over his adoption. There was pain beneath it, too. There had to be. And while prodding at Loki's anger may be about as bright as prodding at a nest of those killer bees she remembered reading about a few years ago, asking questions, listening, and occasionally pushing him…hadn't it been working? When he'd first started talking to her, it often still seemed like he was trying to manipulate her, especially about Thor, going out of his way to paint him in a bad light. The last time they'd talked about Thor he'd seemed completely genuine, without that smirk that made her question his honesty…or at least his intent. Wasn't that a good thing? And maybe in the end it helped and maybe it didn't, but it certainly seemed to her that talking was better than not talking. She'd gone through a not-talking stage once, a few months after her parents' deaths, and it hadn't been pretty.

Herself. That was the hard one. When he was at his best, his most relaxed, his most open, she liked him. It didn't always feel right, but there was no denying it was true. The birthday party a couple of weeks ago and their talk afterward, Jurassic Park, the time they'd hung out together talking in the Greenhouse, even bringing him to the gift shop… If he weren't Loki, if he hadn't done the things he'd done, the things she'd now seen him do, if it weren't for Erik and Jocelyn and Phil and Heinrich Schäfer and all the rest, especially for Erik, and what he would think of her, they would be friends. She knew that now. And yet because he was Loki, because he was Asgardian and whip-smart in astrophysics – and maybe everything else – there was so much she could learn from him. She would never forget seeing her own sound waves colliding with the wall of her room and being muted before her eyes, or him pulling a pen or a jacket from thin air. She still wanted to know how he actually did it. She wanted to know more about the other realms, about Asgard itself, about Yggdrasil…well, Yggdrasil at least she had the means to learn more about on her own, once she left here and fessed up to Tony about Pathfinder.

She hadn't wanted to leave Thor at the hospital back in New Mexico once she realized he had answers to her questions, and she'd brought him home not knowing a thing about him except his kind-of-weird name. She'd gone back for him, and gotten him. After a couple of setbacks. At least I already know who Loki is, she thought. Setbacks. Such a trivial little word for everything she'd been through here with Loki.

"Hey, Jane, if you're just going to stare into space over there, why don't you come be our cheerleader? Sue's pom-poms are probably around here somewhere," Wright said, looking up from the table where his thumbs and pointer fingers formed goalposts.

Elliot flicked the little trianglular paper football and missed.

"Wide left!" Wright called, while Elliot swore.

"That is so insulting. Because I'm a woman, I can only do the cheerleading?"

"Hey, cheerleading is a noble, time-honored profession. And Selby's wife's a cheerleader, used to be, anyway, so don't let him hear you say that. But, you know, to each her own. Do you want to play? Elliot's so far in the hole this has gotten kind of pointless."

"There was a point before he got in the hole?"

Wright screwed up his face and looked offended. "Yeah."

"Yeah," Elliot echoed. "It's finger football, Jane. Respect the football."

"Respect the football," Wright said with a nod.

Jane rolled her eyes and Wright retrieved the paper football and gave it a flick across the table.

"You're going down, dude," Elliot said when the paper slid off the desk into his lap.

Jane supposed that meant Wright had made a bad move. She watched them a while longer, and it gave her an idea. "Hey, Wright, are you guys still playing darts tonight?"

"Uh-huh," he said, watching the football slide back toward him and stop before it reached the edge. "Except in case of rain or shine, or really, a better offer, but, you know, since none of that's likely to happen…"

"You mind if I join you, or is it a guys-only thing?"

"No, you can join. But for playing or for cheerleading?"

"If she cheerleads, can I join?" Elliot asked.

"Give me that," Jane said, grabbing the folded-up paper out from between Elliot's fingers and giving him a little push to the shoulder; he laughed and yielded his chair. "How do you play?" she asked. It was never too late to learn something new, not even games best left to bored teenage boys.

/


/

Loki smiled. It worked. He'd entered the safest and simplest spatial coordinates he knew of – the same exact ones he departed from – but he'd entered a time code of precisely six months earlier. It should be November 11 here, then. The sun was shining, and he remembered now why sunglasses had been a standard part of the South Pole uniform when he'd arrived, for although the sun was still not very high, the reflection off the ice was so bright it bordered on painful. It was definitely summer here. Summer wasn't good enough, though. He needed to confirm the date, and he couldn't do that from behind a jamesway.

The easiest place to get an answer would be the galley, with its giant screen hanging from the ceiling. His heart sped up in excitement at the thought of this unique exploration, and he flipped the RF switch that would block the transmitter on his wrist from sending a signal to Pathfinder and pulling him back in five minutes. That done, he stepped out from behind the jamesway, then came to an immediate halt. Five people were already in view, one of them heading for the door of the jamesway he thought of as his and Jane's. Summer Camp, he thought. It's summer. People live out here now. He and Jane almost never crossed anyone's path in Summer Camp, but the population was much greater here in the short summer season, 200, 250, he couldn't remember exactly what he'd heard.

That changed things. If the time of day was right – and with twenty-four hour sunlight it was impossible to tell – it was about lunchtime here, and the galley would be crowded. When he and Jane had first arrived it hadn't always been easy getting a seat, and that was with numbers already dwindling for winter. If he went in as he was – invisible – it would be difficult to make it up the stairs and through the corridor without someone bumping into him or seeing a door opening by itself. If he went in visible, he risked being recognized by one of the few winterovers who'd also been there for summer. The safest way in and out, then, was visible, and in disguise. Both would require expending magic. Both would be punished. It's all in the name of science, Father, he thought without any real hope this would work – it never had before – as he ducked behind the jamesway again. He looked around and made the necessary changes. Again, no such luck. He grit his teeth and steadied himself against the jamesway's frame. Of course, you didn't exactly approve of this particular scientific pursuit, did you?

He made his way through the Summer Camp tent with confidence now, for no one here had ever seen Fandral. He heard engine noises, he realized, before emerging from between the last two jamesways. His steps faltered and he hid his shock out of habit even though the black balaclava covered his face. A plane sat out on the skiway, and perhaps half the vehicles he's seen in the Vehicle Maintenance Facility were outside, several of them carrying cargo pallets away from the plane. The DZ entrance he'd intended to use was lined with people passing smaller packages from person to person up the stairs – mail, he presumed.

He stared at everything going on around him a moment longer, then adjusted his path to the right, toward the beer can stairs. He nodded at the man he passed, heading up the stairs, dropping off his gear in the coatroom, then turning up the side corridor to the galley, passing six others chatting and hanging something on the wall. The galley was bustling, loud, and bright, its windows uncovered. He didn't recognize anyone and felt very much an outsider in this place he'd called home for just over three months, then, as he had to squeeze past a small huddle of men in some animated conversation, he realized it was not him who was out of place, but rather all these other people who didn't belong, who were invading his space. Like ants, he thought with a grin that held no particular malice.

He got past enough of the summer Polies to see the screen, but he'd forgotten how many different pages of data it cycled through before the station closed, mostly flight schedules and personnel departure information. And then there it was. November 11. Precisely six months in the past, just as he'd specified in Pathfinder's code, translated, he presumed, into the locations of Yggdrasil's branches.

His careful smile grew and he felt almost as though this were his South Pole and his Antarctica and his Midgard that he'd just conquered in one fell swoop and none of these swarming little creatures knew it.

He looked down at the table he stood next to, on his right. If only you knew who stood beside you, mortals. The closest person, a woman who appeared rather young and had a golden ring through her nose was gesturing wildly as she spoke to the man across from her, as oblivious to his presence as they all were. She stopped gesturing then and reached for an orange which she started to peel. Loki stared at the orange and felt his mouth begin to water. He hadn't seen an orange or any other piece of fresh fruit in months.

His smile turned mischievous. Why not?

Five minutes later, he sat at an empty four-seater table with an orange, a pear, and some kind of chopped vegetable mixture on his plate, and his numerous Carhartt pockets filled with more fruit and three carrots he'd seen on a kitchen counter and asked for. He was hardly an herbivore, but the meat was still not fresh; he'd asked.

Pear and vegetables gone, he was beginning to peel his orange when a man in jeans and a dark blue sweater approached. "Mind if I join you?" he asked at the same time as he pulled out the chair and dropped into it.

It took a second or two to register, and Loki's hands then stilled over the orange. His lower face was covered in the stubbly beginnings of a beard, and such things could really change a person's appearance. "Not at all," Loki said with a tight smile a good five seconds after the man had already sat down.

"Thanks," his new lunch companion said, sticking out a hand. "The name's Wright."


/

So I'm curious if you thought Loki's time travel plan would work, given that his plans have had a tendency not to work. But yeah, it worked.

Thank you to all my dear readers, those who've been around since July 2012, those who've read it all in the last two days (and whose eyes I always worry over!), and all those in between. It's been great seeing all the new names pop up in reviews or faves or follows or PMs or whatever. Just as an FYI, on Monday (which it already is now, argh) I'm headed off on a road trip for Thanksgiving, and thus may not write tomorrow, and I may not have much internet access once I get where I'm headed, so you may not see such frequent updates on my profile page, or my response to your review or PM may be delayed (I still have a number of PMs I need to get back to on this story or TDW, just super busy the last week or so). But even if you don't hear from me, other than the travel days I'll still be writing every day. And I'm going to try my best to get up that quibbles blog post that I've been wanting to for two weeks now, AND get my first short TDW story up. Oh, for a few more hours in the day!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US!

Previews from Ch. 76: Loki chats about cartoons (sort of) with Wright; Jolgeir fetches something for Thor and mentions an odd Midgardian idea to him; Loki and Jane have a chat about magic (at least that's what Jane thinks it's about); neither Loki nor Jane has forgotten that video.

And excerpt:

"Your room? I just need to drop off my gear."

"Okay," she said again, curious now. If he wanted to show her something in her room, he wanted privacy. "I'll see you there in a few minutes?" Loki nodded, and she turned around to walk with him back to the A-1 berthing wing. Loki, she thought, king of unpredictable mood swings.