For my sister...
Beneath
Chapter Ninety – Thaw
Jane woke up at a little after ten in the morning with a terrible crick in her neck, after having dropped off to sleep just a couple of hours earlier. She felt disoriented and headachy, and had a sudden hazy memory of that one New Year's Eve when she'd had way too much to drink and had spent January first with her head either hidden under a pillow or aimed over a toilet. She groaned and rolled slowly onto her side; the soreness there reminded her of why she was in this condition. No appletinis and whatever that other stuff was that they'd moved onto when the good stuff ran out. Just Loki. And too little sleep, and the equivalent of jetlag, because she was usually out of bed by six here.
Everything from their middle-of-the-night discussions came back. She wondered how many other major events Loki had experienced in his long life, and began trying to piece this one into the bigger picture. He'd said Baldur was eighteen, and he'd said Baldur was younger, but he'd never said how much younger. Was Loki twenty? Two hundred? Thor, too, had lost a brother. Loki had once said he was placed in Thor's crib…so Thor was older than Loki – though she'd assumed that, anyway – and probably not by much. He'd said Baldur's death was a thousand years ago, and piecing together what Loki had told her about the Ice War and his birth, she figured Loki was somewhere around 1,050 years old. So Loki couldn't have been more than around 50 when Baldur died. Middle-aged on Earth, young on Asgard, however that worked. And he'd never said how long he'd spent tied up with poison dripping on his face…
"Ooookay, time to get up," Jane said, rolling over and swinging her legs over the bed. She massaged her temple for a moment, then got down from the bed. Laying around until noon wasn't going to salvage this day.
She got to the bathroom and into the shower, but she couldn't stop thinking about Loki. Emerging in a sulk from magic-cleaning the shower stall. Happily informing her he'd defended her honor. Confessing to killing a father and a brother. Looking around crazy-eyed at people fleeing in terror. Staring down in a rage at the hammer-shaped scar on his wrist. Grabbing a blood-stained Asgardian shirt away from her. Tied up and calling out for a father who walked away…
Other voices in the bathroom snapped Jane from her thoughts, and in the next second she was shutting the water off as quickly as she could. Her hair was long, and she occasionally went a teensy bit over the two-minute limit, but she'd completely lost track of time now and a glance at the clock on the wall made her cringe. She'd gone way more than a teensy bit over. Even worse, she'd been too zoned out to appreciate the extra five minutes.
"Late start?" someone called as Jane pulled her towel in to dry off. She thought it was Mari.
"Yeah. Couldn't sleep," Jane answered, glad she was at least feeling more awake now. It was Mari, it turned out, and they chatted for a minute or so before Mari left and Jane got her pajamas back on and a towel wrapped around her hair.
Back in her room she got dressed and tried to figure out what to do with her day. Loki would be off doing whatever Loki did on the days he wasn't with her, assuming he wasn't sleeping away the day.
Her eyes fell on the 4x6 photo of her and Erik she'd managed to get a print of in Tromso when she found out she was headed to the South Pole – she was in all her ceremonial regalia, black gown, cap, blue-and-orange doctoral hood draped over her shoulders and down her back, and Erik, who vastly preferred casual attire, was in his best suit and bursting with pride. Loki had once asked her about her happiest moment, and this was certainly among the happiest. She'd told him the memories of the purest happiness, though, came from the years before she lost her parents, before she knew the truth of mortality. When other kids her age still thought they were invincible, Jane knew better. No one was invincible.
Not even Asgardian princes. Loki, too, had said with what seemed to be a certain reluctance that his happiest memories were from his childhood. Something he'd said last night as an aside popped into mind – about putting on some kind of plays with Thor when they were kids. Had his happy memories ended with Baldur's death? Yet Loki had survived all that. It hadn't broken him, and, judging by what little Thor had told her, it somehow hadn't broken apart his family. Spend some time beneath a snake and all is forgiven? I wonder what family dinners were like after that. Maybe kings and queens and princes don't do family dinners…
For all Jane had learned now about Loki, about Asgard – family, culture, history, poems, sweet logs, dressing up as women – what she didn't know still far outweighed what she knew. He'd never said anything about how Baldur died, or even why, other than to suggest that the mythology wasn't far from the truth. No matter how cruelly Loki had been punished for whatever role he'd played in Baldur's death, it didn't excuse what he'd done here on Earth. Nothing would ever excuse that. But the hatred Jane had once felt for Loki, hatred that had begun to soften not long after she started getting to know him, that was long gone, difficult to resurrect even in memory. Loki's barbs and accusations aside, it was impossible not to feel sympathy for what he'd gone through…for her, at least. She wondered what Erik would think. He was a compassionate man; she knew from firsthand experience. But he'd suffered – and was still suffering – in a way she had not, at Loki's hands, and no mere human being's compassion was limitless. It was the one thing in this budding friendship – friendship? she questioned herself…yes, friendship, whether Loki thinks so or not – that still bothered her. She could live with what anyone else thought; she was used to her judgement being questioned, though it was usually in matters of science. Erik's disapproval would hurt, and hurt badly.
Sitting at her desk, Jane put her elbows on either side of her laptop and rested her face in her hands. In some ways, it would be easier just to stay here at the South Pole forever. Easier in the sense of cowardly. The day was going to come when the sun peeked above the horizon again, the temperatures grew less extreme, and the planes began to land. This strange, isolated existence would come to an end, and confession time would come. Tony would have questions, and for all he'd done for her, she wouldn't be able to blow him off. He'd complicated things for her here, but she knew he'd done it because he worried about her, because he cared, and she couldn't hold that against him. And Jane hadn't really thought about it since Loki came back from his last trip to Asgard via Pathfinder, but Loki was right, at some point after she left here, she was going to have to talk to SHIELD. They'd figure it out, or Tony would insist, or Jane herself would crack, unable to keep up the lies of omission and eager to conduct further tests with Pathfinder. SHIELD would be unhappy, to put it mildly, she knew. But she'd stood up to them before and she could do so again. Telling Erik…even the thought of it made her stomach cramp painfully in revolt.
Coffee might help, she thought. The distraction might, at least. There was no point in getting all worked up about events that were months away. First things first. Today. She was supposed to be working, but it was already past eleven now, and all the showers and all the double espressos in the world were not going to turn this into a particularly productive day. What is Loki up to? she wondered as she walked the short distance to the galley. It gave her pause, literally, standing in front of the espresso machine with an empty coffee mug in her hand, when she thought about the deeply personal things he'd revealed to her last night, even once she'd gone back and he'd snapped out of whatever funk he'd been in because of the dream. He'd put his vulnerabilities on display, told her things he'd only lied about before, and he was sufficiently aware of it that he'd asked her not to tell SHIELD. So why won't he tell me what he's so fascinated by in Pathfinder's data? There's not even that much of it. And we already ran it through all the analysis programs I have here, plus the run at it that Young-Soo took. Maybe he found something in it…new evidence for or against one of Einstein's theories? Something that inspired him with a new solution to the field equations? Something that I missed? He's smart, but I'm the one with the doctorate in astrophysics. That would be…kind of embarrassing…
"Hey, Jane, you going to actually get some coffee, or just give the machine dirty looks all day?" Rodrigo said; Jane hadn't noticed him come up beside her.
"Maybe both," she said with a shrug. "Sorry, you go first. I'll just give it dirty looks a little while longer."
"No, I came for the regular stuff. Espresso makes me all twitchy. Were you getting lunch, too, or just liquid fuel?"
Jane cocked an eyebrow. She'd planned on liquid fuel, but now that he mentioned it, she decided lunch wouldn't be such a bad idea. Rodrigo sat with her, though he'd already eaten due to his early schedule. He told her about his sister's failed efforts to start up a cactus farm – Rodrigo had so many strange family stories she'd once jokingly accused him of making it all up, but he'd sworn he just came from a large and eccentric family – and laughter steadily melted away Jane's stress.
They were walking out of the galley and just turning right into the main corridor, Rodrigo back to Comms and Jane to the Science Lab figuring she may as well try to make something of the short day, when she heard her name being called from further down. She watched as Ronny broke off from a small group of men and made a beeline for her. Rodrigo excused himself and Jane told him goodbye.
"Everything okay with Lucas?" he asked in a lowered voice as soon as the others he'd been with had passed them by, headed for the galley. Others were coming and going, though, so she urged him into the entryway to their berthing wing.
"Yeah, he was just having a really vivid dream, but he's okay."
"Oh, yeah? Like one of those 'night terror' things? I saw a show about that on TV one time. You think the stuff you're seeing in the nightmare is real."
"Something like that, I guess," Jane said with an uneasy nod. He might be right. Loki had sounded more or less coherent when he'd talked in his sleep, and he seemed really confused when he first woke up. "Listen, um, please don't say anything to anybody else. He's kind of sensitive about it."
Ronny quickly nodded. "Sure, I get it. I'd be pretty embarrassed if I was shouting about some bad dream and everybody heard me. I'll get him in on a poker game or something this weekend, get him drunk and make him forget all about it."
Jane laughed. I suppose that's one solution. "Sounds fun. Except he doesn't drink."
"Yeah, I know. Well, I forgot for a second there. We'll let him win, how about that?" Ronny said with a grin.
Jane laughed again, this time holding it back so it wouldn't seem out of place. Loki had basically said he'd lost on purpose when they played a week ago, and she supposed he did it to avoid drawing unnecessarily inquisitive attention to himself. It could prove pretty entertaining to watch everyone trying to let Loki win while Loki tried just as hard to lose. "Drunk on victory? Yeah, I like that," she said. But, she supposed, she really shouldn't set Loki up for something like that. "Probably it would be better just to act normally, though. I'm sure he wouldn't want a big deal made of it."
"You're right, I guess," Ronny said with a shrug. "He's pretty private. I used to never even see him around, you know? Now he's not so much of a room-eater, but he still doesn't say much about himself."
Jane smiled, but wasn't really sure what to say to that without either lying or violating Loki's privacy.
"Oh, well, whatever. Some of these people around here talk too much about themselves. Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap," he said, sticking up a hand and opening it and closing it like a mouth. "Anyway, I'll make sure he gets in on some game this weekend. Don't worry, it'll all be chill."
Ronny headed on to the galley a moment later, and Jane on to the Science Lab, the smile lingering on her lips. She didn't really know Ronny, and was a little surprised by his show of friendly concern. He was a few years younger than her, part of the group here that was a bit more into partying than Jane was. She'd made assumptions about him without knowing him, she realized, something she generally tried not to do. She'd done the same with Loki, of course, in the beginning – now she figured there was probably nothing Loki could say or do that would truly surprise her anymore.
She wondered briefly if she should let Loki know what was up, that he should expect an invitation, but decided that he'd begun managing his social life perfectly fine without her and she wouldn't get involved. I should check on him, though, she thought, as she reached her desk in the Science Lab and got settled, exchanging quick greetings with Austin and Carlo, who were hunched over a computer screen together. She took a moment to think in advance of what she would say to him, uncertain whether she should bring up what happened during the night. She settled on "How are you doing?" – simple, neutral. If he wanted to talk about it, he could, and if he didn't, she wouldn't press, and they could talk about something else instead. She frowned as her computer whirred to life. Maybe we can talk about what he's finding so interesting in Pathfinder's data that he doesn't want to tell me about.
/
/
Under moonlight and red lights, Jane hurried past the front row of jamesways to the one where she hoped she might find Loki. It was 5:00, and she was hoping to catch him before dinner, if he actually showed up at the galley for it – he didn't always. She'd checked inside the elevated station and not found him anywhere, and she doubted he'd be out at the DSL, so she figured he was probably studying the Pathfinder data again. The perfect chance both to check on him, and to check up on him. Acknowledging the latter gave her a flash of guilt, but it was a small one. Loki may have opened up to her more than ever, and the percentage of truth in what he told her may have shot up astronomically since their first meeting, but she wasn't naïve enough to think he was being honest about absolutely everything. He hadn't yet mentioned a word – not a serious one, anyway – about what he intended to do when winter ended, and he'd had a lot of time to think about it by now. Loki had had a plan when he tried to take over Earth, and she thought surely he had to be planning something, good or bad – Jane fervently hoped it was good – for when flights resumed and it became possible to leave here.
Once she got inside the jamesway she was surprised and disappointed to find Loki wasn't there. And yet, like before, the laptop was open.
Jane frowned and stared at the laptop, lost in thought. Loki didn't particularly like coming and going out here more than was necessary, so it was unlikely he would have just gone for a stroll outside, and he wasn't really the forgetful type, so it was also unlikely he'd left for the day and neglected to close up the laptop. Then again, she thought, maybe he acts differently when he's not around me. She rolled her eyes at herself as another possibility came to mind – maybe he just left to use the bathroom. If that was the case, then he'd be back. She decided to wait for a while.
She took a few minutes to get the outer gear stripped off and sat down at the little table they'd spent so much time at when they were working out how to use Pathfinder to travel through Yggdrasil and safely return. Once she woke up the laptop and quickly scrolled through what was up on the screen, she saw that Loki had again been looking at the data logged from one of their trips to Asgard. What was odd about it, though, was that she couldn't really think of a good reason why he would be so interested in this particular data. It wasn't like they'd carried with them the probe's array of collection platforms – they'd only taken those components of the probe necessary for travel, protection in transit, and return. Telemetry data, time stamps, five-minute interval markers for each attempt of Pathfinder to pull the traveler back, some readings that could be converted into very basic data on gravitational shifts, these things could be found in the data streams from their own travel, but little else, and there was nothing particularly revelatory or insightful about it, especially not in comparison to the data the actual probe they'd sent brought back with it.
Unless…
Back in the early days of their Pathfinder work, once the data from the bifrost travel events had allowed them to locate Yggdrasil, Jane had thought they would need to program Pathfinder to direct travel within Yggdrasil. They'd found instead that undirected travel would simply take them to Asgard, which was in fact their intended destination. It was fortuitous, because it shaved who-knew-how-much time off their plans. But programming it should still be possible. Loki couldn't go to Asgard anymore because of some trap that had been laid after his last visit. Maybe he's trying to figure out how to get Yggdrasil to send him to one of the other realms instead? Jane sat back and let that thought percolate. He'd need a reference point, and we don't have any for any realms except Asgard and Midgard. Earth, she corrected herself with a shake of her head. How would he do that? Trial and error? She glanced back to the crates against the wall where the few remaining probes were. No way. But if he could figure out how to convert the telemetry we have for Asgard and Earth into some system of measurement more familiar to him, and if he knows where the other realms are relevant to each other, and if he knows that in three-dimensional space and not just distance, and if he could convert that into something that could be programmed into Pathfinder… It was a lot of "ifs." Loki was brilliant, though, and it wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility, she figured. It would still require an element of trial and error, though. Even if Loki knew all the requisite figures – Nine Realms Astronomy 101 or whatever he'd studied in his "lessons" – surely he wouldn't know them with the precision necessary for-
Jane sat up straighter and turned her head to the side. She could have sworn she'd heard something behind the jamesway. She stood and walked down the center path closer to the back, and a few steps in she heard it again. A chill went through her that had nothing to do with the temperature. The last time she'd heard noise back there and gone to investigate, she'd found a blood-spattered Loki popping into existence with a bloody sword in his hand and a broken sword stuck in his back. Well, she thought, bracing herself for what she knew she had to do, what are the odds of that happening again?
/
/
When gravity returned, Loki's stomach was in knots, and his knees buckled under him. He managed to catch himself, though, and twist around, and in the end went mostly under his own power into a sitting position, back to the jamesway, legs splayed out before him, facing the endless expanse of ice without really seeing it. For the first time in over a thousand years he'd had a glimpse of Baldur. The same moment as the very last one, just from a different vantage point. His younger self had been off to the right, a hand on someone else's shoulder to establish his presence there. He'd gotten there just in time to see Baldur's stunned reaction, having missed the actual arrow strike. And he'd stood there watching as reality slowly and brutally battered down what he'd thought he was seeing, what he'd thought he would see. He'd stood and watched – pitiful, pathetic, mewling, cowering…
His stomach twisted again and he felt it coming and he forced it back because there was nothing there to come up. The images wouldn't go away though. Baldur stumbling back, falling… At least he hadn't seen his face. Loki never wanted to see that again.
His head whipped to the side and he bent over; he did not even have time to try to stop it as he vomited bile onto the snow. When it was done he coughed and spat, then coughed and spat again. He remembered Jane similarly becoming sick after watching the video of what he'd done to that scientist in Germany. I suppose it's the reaction I induce in people. Even in myself, he thought darkly. His eyes narrowed as he wondered then what the difference was between those incidents, Baldur and the scientist. He'd been angry. He'd done what he believed had to be done. And someone had died. His mind immediately jumped to Nigel, the accountant who worked in Stark Tower. The same. A cold, traitorous thought slipped in then: how was that different from everyone else in New York?
He sucked in a deep breath of bracingly cold air and forced his thoughts back to Baldur, oddly the least offensive in that uncomfortable train of thought. Guilt in Baldur's death had been determined, accepted, and punished long, long ago. Something was in place, it seemed, in the designs of the cosmos itself, that ensured he would take Baldur's life. Because no matter what anyone else said or believed, he had not meant for that to happen. He'd taken pains to ensure it would not happen. Yet it had. Just like today. Why? he asked himself, though he was not actually quite able to process everything that had happened on Asgard yet, and the thought simply went in a loop. It shouldn't have happened…
He heard the familiar sounds of boots crunching over dry hardened ice and quickly looked down at himself. Big Red had grass stuck in the zipper, an ax hung on his right, and a shovel on his left. He waved his hand and sent all three items away.
"What are you doing out here? Where's your gear?" Jane asked once she rounded the corner and a wave of relief flooded through her that she didn't see any swords or any blood, just Loki sitting on the ground outside. Loki sitting on the ground outside, when the temperature was -76 degrees Fahrenheit the last she'd seen, and without his jacket or gloves or head coverings. She came closer and he turned toward her and she gasped. She ran the last few steps. "Loki, get up, come inside. You're completely frozen."
Loki's head jerked down to look at his hands, but thankfully they looked normal other than some frost on them. At least someone could see him again.
"Your face, your whole head," Jane said. "You must have been sweating. You…" She stood right in front of him now, and saw on his other side what she knew had to be the evidence of him getting sick.
In the meantime, Loki reached a hand up to his face, and was surprised to touch ice. He reached up his other hand, and found his whole face coated in ice crystals, and his hair frozen solid with them. His face had gone numb and he hadn't realized it. He brought heat back slowly to his hands, then pressed them to his face and around his head until the ice was gone, some of it melted into cool water that dripped down the midnight blue shirt he wore, some of it directly sublimating into the air.
"It's just going to freeze again. Come inside," Jane said, sticking out a hand for him as he had for her last night.
Loki gave a low chuckle. "You don't want to do that."
"Why not?"
"I would pull you down with me."
Jane frowned, the words making her uneasy. "Okay, just come back inside then, all right?" she said, letting her hand fall back to her side. "You can't just sit out here and turn into a block of ice."
Back to whence I came… He started to stand, and it was slower and more awkward than he'd expected. He had been sweating, a great deal, and with Big Red gone his damp shirt was freezing and the water trickling down his back turned solid before it could get far.
What was I going to say to him? Jane asked herself as she watched him slowly rise. He was already up before she could recall. "How are you doing?" She didn't ask it; the answer was clear.
"Come in and warm up," she said as Loki started walking stiffly around the jamesway and she fell in at his side. The jamesway was only heated to around thirty degrees, but "warm" was a relative concept, and at a hundred degrees warmer than the outside temperature, it would be warm indeed.
"I'm going back to the station."
"Okay, I'll go with you."
"There's no need."
"Maybe not, but-"
"Jane…," he stopped and turned to face her; they were very near the entrance to the jamesway. "I thank you for your concern. You have been…far kinder than I deserve. But I would like to be alone right now."
Jane was disappointed, and worried. But she knew, too, from her own experience, that sometimes when you were grieving you needed friends and loved ones, and sometimes you really did need time to think your own thoughts and let the turmoil settle. And maybe all this had happened a thousand years ago, but grief had no time limit. Waves of grief still crept up on her sometimes, or pangs of longing, of a keen awareness of what was missing from her life. If she were to live for a thousand years, she supposed that would never change. "Okay, I understand. If you want to talk, though, day or night, I mean it. Any time. I'm here."
Why? Loki thought. He had little of himself left to devote to trying to figure Jane out, though. He gave a slight nod and continued on toward the station, conjuring an illusion of the ubiquitous red jacket around him in case he was seen on the walk back from Summer Camp.
Jane went back in the jamesway to shut down the laptop, then headed back to the station to get dinner. She had a feeling Loki wouldn't be there.
/
/
Loki reached his chambers and closed the door behind him in relief. He'd only passed two people along the way, talking to each other and sparing him only a quick "hi." Most people were probably in the galley, for it was in the middle of dinnertime. He'd really had no idea what time it was here, since the sky gave no hint of it, but it made sense, given that he'd left here in the early morning, traveling to Asgard's early morning and staying all day.
He stood there a moment longer, eyes closed, letting some of the tension fall away from him, then let the illusion of Big Red drop and started getting out of the ECW gear until he was wearing just his socks, leather pants, and deep blue shirt. He climbed up onto the bed and sat with his back against the wall, knees bent and legs crossed in front of him on the bed. He'd just experienced an entire day's worth of impossible events, and it was time to try to bring some sense to them.
It had started off perfectly. No one had noticed his arrival. Taking the supposed oil, the lighter, the shovel – child's play. He'd found the tree easily. From there on out, nothing had gone right. He'd loosened a piece of bark near the mistletoe, and had been unable to affect anything around him afterward. That wasn't precisely true, though, he thought, remembering how he'd sunk the ax into the aspen, how Lifhilda had recognized him. He hadn't been able to affect anything that could have changed fate.
It was my fate, then. He'd told Jane as much, that it was his destiny. But he'd said it out of something dark and bitter inside him, something that ran icy cold through his veins. With Thor, yes, he felt a sense of destiny – born to rival thrones, raised together with one meant to be beneath the other's heel, eventually to meet again when one would take far more from the other than the eye Laufey had taken from Odin. But Baldur…Jane was right. He hadn't truly meant it. This day was evidence enough, though, that he'd been right, whether he'd meant it or not. He was the parasite, born to stunt and kill Odin's family tree from the inside out. First the younger son, then the older…or die trying.
He saw no other explanation. Briefly he'd thought perhaps it was the amount of time he'd traveled, that perhaps somehow having gone so far back made him unable to interact with the Asgard of that time period. But he had interacted. He'd stolen, and it had been noticed; he'd driven a wedge into a different tree; he'd been nuzzled by Lifhilda.
But what was fate? Should he not be able to change it, circumvent it, overpower it, by traveling through time?
He remembered then that at one point he'd suspected that magic was at play. Magic that he couldn't detect. If it were magic then, it would have to have come from a supremely skilled master, the likes of which did not live on Asgard that he knew of, except for Mordi. Mordi was now dead, but had still been alive at the time of Baldur's death, when Loki had known him only as one of his father's many advisors. He could think of no reason why Mordi would have any involvement in Baldur's death, or in preventing Loki from stopping it.
Loki took a deep, frustrated breath. His thoughts weren't even making sense anymore. How could Mordi have anything to do with this? He's dead, you fool. He could not know now that you went back in time, and he could not have known then that you would do so.
Then he forgot to breathe entirely for a moment, and drew in a more ragged breath when he began to feel the lack of air. Only one person in all the Nine Realms and beyond knew what he had done today. Me. He remembered the membrane that had prevented him from touching Hodur, and that it was, in concept at least, not so different from something he knew, and had used. But he did not know how to cause a functioning blade to strike yet not cut, or to create a wind so perfectly concentrated and contained. If I don't know such magic now…might I know it in the future?
It was a troublesome thought. He'd forgotten about the future, if he was honest with himself. He'd meant to test that as well. Whoever he was, wherever he was in the future, he would know about time travel. He would know what he had done on this day. Could my future self have gone back to stop my present self from stopping my past self? The thought twisted in on itself and suddenly Loki was picturing ten, fifty, a hundred Lokis battling in secret around the birch tree.
Absurd. Why would any version of me from any time want him to die? He didn't quite acknowledge it, but somewhere lurking behind that thought was the much darker one that in fact, perhaps, there was some reason why his future self had decided that it had to happen, that this piece of his past could not be changed.
He had no answers. None that made any sense, at least. It was, in a way, the same as what had happened during his brief kingship. He'd done everything in his power and beyond, drawing on Gungnir and the bifrost and even the Ice Casket to prove himself worthy. And none of it had gained him anything. If he went back in time and somehow ensured that he did not just damage Jotunheim but that he fully and irrevocably wiped it from existence along with every last Jotun on its surface, would it change anything? No. Odin knew what he'd been attempting. And Odin had sided with Thor. As always.
Neither would it do any good to revisit the day of Baldur's death again. Other ideas flitted through his mind, there, half-formed, quickly dismissed. It was all wishful thinking. He could go back and get rid of the birch tree when it was still a sapling, when he could pull it out with his bare hands. He could slaughter the bird that left the mistletoe seed on the branch. He could kidnap Baldur when he was a baby, give him to some other king to raise who would not also have a Frost Giant son born to destroy him; that one almost made him laugh, for Baldur would have been older than Nadrith, and if he could have somehow convinced the Ljosalf king to raise Baldur as his own, Baldur would now be King Baldur Ljosalf of Alfheim. But if his fate was somehow preventing him from changing what happened to Baldur, it wouldn't make the slightest difference, no matter how creative or cunning or utterly outrageous his plan.
So that was it. Baldur was dead, once, twice, for all time.
A wasted day. Worse than a wasted day. All because of a nightmare, and an oath he'd forgotten until early this morning. It had seemed so simple when he'd set off for the past.
There was nothing to do now but move on. He still had his earlier plan, to go to Niskit in the past. Thinking about it made him feel the exhaustion from what he'd experienced today, and from the lack of sleep over the last few nights. He would wait a few days – recover, get himself back into the right frame of mind – and then go to Alfheim, perhaps on Monday or Wednesday.
His stomach gave a growl, but he didn't feel like interacting with the mortals at the moment, so he decided to wait until dinner service was over and get something from the leftovers refrigerator. His lips pulled up into a smile. He would get his meal from the Game Room refrigerator, from a container labeled "Selby." In the meantime, he had other things to keep him busy. He pulled out his knife with the Asgardian blade and began to try to repair the damage to it.
/
/
The knock came, and Loki hesitated. It was probably Jane, and if he didn't get up and go to the door, she would think he couldn't hear her and take it upon herself to come in uninvited. Which, he supposed, would be fine, depending on what she wanted to talk about. Still, it wasn't a behavior he should be encouraging. He slid his knife under the pillow and went to the door.
"Hey, Lucas, you coming?" Austin asked when he opened the door.
Loki's confusion lasted less than a second. "Darts," he said. Austin had reminded him just this morning, but it seemed like days ago. "I'm sorry, I got distracted and forgot. I don't think-"
"Oh, come on, don't back out on us. Selby's joining in tonight. He's celebrating."
"Is he?" Loki asked, keeping his voice neutral. The mention of Selby's name confirmed his desire to skip the dartboard this time, but then his curiosity kicked in. "What's going on?"
"I don't actually know yet. Wright just said he's celebrating something. We're trying to class it up for tonight."
"Class it up?" Loki asked with a wry smile, the meaning clear even if the phrasing was, for him, a bit odd. "The Game Room? Is that even possible?"
"You might have to use your imagination. You bring a tux?"
"Unfortunately, I did not," Loki said, uncertain what a tux was.
"Too bad. If you'd had one I don't think I would have been all that surprised. You bring enough class without the tux, though, and we need all the help we can get in that department. So you're not backing out, are you? Much as it pains me to say so, you're our best player, you know."
"I know," Loki said with a smirk. He'd slowly improved his play so that he nearly always won, while still making enough intentionally "flawed" throws not to raise too many eyebrows.
"Good, so get your shoes on and let's go."
"Shoes are required for class?"
"I guess not, now that you mention it."
Loki looked down at his sock-clad feet. He'd only been jesting, really, but something took hold of him, something small and unrecognizable, and this small act of rebellion against expectation somehow felt right. "Well, then," Loki said, lifting his hand and motioning with his fingers for Austin to move back. He did, and Loki stepped right out of his room and closed the door behind him.
Down the main corridor in the Game Room, someone had hung up blue and gold streamers from light fixtures and ceiling panels and the round table was covered with bowls and bottles and cans and music was playing from one of those black speaker sets that the mortals connected their portable devices to. All of the Dark Sector scientists were there, including Jane, and Elliott from the Clean Sector.
"Okay, everybody, Lucas would only agree to come if we made it shoes-optional," Austin announced.
"Yeah? I say we make it shoes-not-allowed," Wright said, immediately dropping down to unlace the black leather boots he wore.
One-upsmanship, Loki thought. Typical.
"That gives you an unfair advantage, Wright," Selby said.
"How so?"
"I've had a whiff of your feet before," Selby answered. "They emit toxic fumes. Our vision'll get blurry."
"And you think I'm immune? We'll all suffer equally. Come on, shoes off, everybody!"
Loki caught Jane smiling at him and promptly looked away, turning to Selby, who was pulling off his own brown loafers. "What are you celebrating, Selby? Austin and I haven't heard yet."
"Oh! Well, before I came out here I applied for a couple of tenure-track positions for the next academic year, and I'd made the short list for two of them, and, well, to make a long story short, for some reason UC-Berkeley offered me the job. It's, uh, it's pretty much my dream job," Selby said. Loki thought he looked annoyingly uncomfortable with his own apparent success, as though he were proud and trying not to appear proud.
"UC-Berkeley? Wow. That's awesome, man, congratulations," Austin said, bumping his knuckles against Selby's in a gesture he'd seen various versions of on Midgard, all of which looked rather strange to Loki.
Jane, meanwhile, came around to Loki's side to explain without sounding too obvious. "It's one of the best astronomy departments in the country. In the world, actually."
"The best, depending on who you talk to or what you want to specialize in," Su-Ji added.
"Indeed," Loki said. "Congratulations are certainly in order. But…I was under the impression that you had other plans when you left here…?" Loki said, letting his intonation imply the question. He already knew the answer, and wondered if Selby had forgotten the little note Loki had sent him, courtesy of "SHIELD Security Operations." "We advise that you immediately cease contact with anyone you have been discussing classified information with, and that you make no long-term plans following your time at the South Pole."
"Um…no, I don't…well, I don't think so. Not really. I'll have to finish out some things in Chicago, and maybe my wife and I will do that honeymoon in Hawaii after all. I don't start at Berkeley until January."
"I see. Well, it seems as though luck is turning your way, then, doesn't it?" Loki said with a friendly smile.
"Yeah, I guess so," Selby said with an affable smile of his own.
Conversation drifted to the drinks and snacks; someone had supplied champagne, and Loki noted the mortals commenting in particular on that. He picked up a tall thin glass of it that had already been poured, but noticed Austin giving him a funny look, then glanced Jane's way and saw her give a quick shake of her head. Alcohol, then. Too bad the mortals thought him entirely averse to the idea – he wouldn't have minded trying it, simply because the others seemed impressed to have it. It was better that he not, though, he knew, for it was probably more the day's events speaking to him than actual curiosity. For show, he held the glass up to the light and admired the bubbles racing elegantly up the sides of the glass, then set it back down and took a can of 7-Up. The mortals liked having bubbles in their drinks, he supposed.
Su-Ji and Jane joked about being cheerleaders for the game, and from the men's comments Loki thought he would have liked to have seen it, but in the end Jane played, as she had once before, and Su-Ji decided to be the scorekeeper.
"Oh, Lucas, I almost forgot. I was going to tell you about Iceland," Gary said around a half hour into the game, after Loki's turn.
"I recall. You said it was a big block of ice, correct? How does it differ from our own home here, then?"
Gary laughed and picked up a can of beer from the table. "Not a big block of ice. Important word there."
"I know, actually. I've been there. But I was very young. I don't remember it well." The latter wasn't entirely true, but he was unlikely to remember any of the same things Gary had seen there.
"Yeah? Where?"
"Just the capital, I suppose." He wasn't sure what the capital was, and even if the settlements he'd visited in his boyhood still existed, Loki didn't remember their names.
"I was stationed at Keflavik for a year. The Navy had a base there then. And I mean, don't get me wrong, it is cold there. But it's all relative, you know? Summer in Iceland was the best. Great sightseeing driving through town. You see, all the Icelandic ladies wanted to do a little sunbathing, and they'd just climb up on top of their roof and take their tops off. And as soon as it hit 65, the ladies that did our laundry at the base would start complaining, 'Oh, it's so hot!' And they'd take their tops off to do the laundry."
"I'm sure you were the first one to the laundry room on warm days," Carlo, who'd joined them after his turn at the dartboard, said.
Gary chuckled and shrugged. "Out of respect for my better half, I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me."
"You weren't opposed to such practices, at least?" Loki prompted.
"Opposed? Of course not. It's their country, their culture. I was raised to always respect other cultures."
"The dartboard awaits you, Gary. But I do look forward to hearing more about Iceland," Loki said with a smile that was almost entirely genuine.
Gary left the table, Carlo picked up a beer and followed him, and Jane stepped into the space where Gary had been, retrieving her glass of champagne.
"Did you hear that story?" Loki asked her.
"Yeah," Jane said, laughing lightly. "And after a few months here, I think I sympathize with the ladies there."
Loki raised an eyebrow and nodded. "You know, Jane, Iceland has changed since the last time I was there. It sounds like it may be time for another visit."
Jane laughed again, and Loki pursed his lips, on the verge of laughing, too.
/
Holy moly I made you guys wait a long time for this one! Sorry about that. The next one will probably also take longer than usual; as you might have seen on my profile page I'm going to be out of town (out of the country, actually) for the next 3 weeks. I have a ton to get done before I leave, and then there's the travel itself. I'll still be writing while away though. Fair warning: in fact, in a few months I'm going to be making a major move, and my writing schedule will probably fall apart for a while at some point. So you may in general note the pace of new chapters slowing, I wish it weren't so for myself, believe me!
It was lovely to keep getting the occasional review as time passed between the last two chapters - new readers, welcome to the story! There is more dark stuff ahead, but there's also a chapter on the way that's about as fluffy as I ever get, and I am so anxious to get there. I feel the need for some fluff right about now. The Iceland story, BTW, is a family story. ;-)
Previews from Ch. 91: Thor has his own ways of handling annoying Light Elves; little good news is to be found from Thor's advisors; Jane and Loki discuss Loki's anatomy (oh, come on, you know I'm just teasing you on that one), along with some considerably more serious things.
And excerpt:
"You're hopeful?" Thor asked, all his attention zeroing in on Bragi now. "It's been three days, and this is the best you come up with? To hope that they won't execute her because we ask it? Why do we not simply mount an assault and take her?!"
