Beneath
Chapter Ninety-Two – Grails
Saturday morning passed quickly into Saturday evening. Jane's VOIP call to Tony went smoothly, after which she met Loki in the Science Lab and the two headed out to the Dark Sector Lab. Selby and Wright weren't in the Science Lab, and Jane's suspicion that they'd be in the DSL was soon confirmed. Selby had been a bit less standoffish toward her when they both wound up playing in the weekly darts game, perhaps because he was too busy being excited about his dream job at Berkeley to worry about whatever had so gotten under his skin about her, but in the DSL he shot her an inexplicably angry look, then ignored her, then announced an hour or so later that he was going back to the elevated station. Jane thought it was terribly immature, but decided not to waste any more thought on it.
It was unfortunate that Wright and Selby were there at all, because their presence prevented her from talking openly with Loki about the results she was getting from her instruments, half of which were now focused on the area of space where Yggdrasil opened up, far above Earth. To Jane, the changes she'd observed in the data recently suggested an increased concentration of presumably dark matter, or an increase in dark energy that was causing kinetic reactions in the dark matter. She wanted to be able to discuss it with Loki, since he often had ideas that were unorthodox – her favorite kind – but the confirmed discovery of a wormhole, one mentioned in Norse mythology no less, was an off-limits topic when anyone else was around. Had they not been there, though, it still might not have made a difference, for it had been some time since Loki had been truly engaged in their work. Her work, really, at this point. He did everything she asked him to, but perfunctorily. If it wasn't going to take him back safely to Asgard, Loki apparently wasn't interested.
After lunch, which Jane and Wright went in for but Loki did not, Wright asked Loki to go to the Music Room after dinner and Loki agreed, though she noticed some stiffness in Loki's reactions. She knew now from having observed him at the darts game last night that there was some sort of barrier between those two, at least on Loki's part, but he seemed genuinely relaxed among some of the others, particularly Austin, and she wondered if he agreed because Austin and Carlo would be there, or if he simply liked going to their jam sessions. Most likely out of simple politeness, Wright invited her as well, but she knew Selby would also be there, and petty though it may have been, she was only too happy to explain that she couldn't make it because she was with the Saturday night volleyball group.
Dinnertime came, and she and Loki split paths in the berthing wing, and wound up at different tables at dinner. Loki, Jane saw, was one person removed from Macy. She hoped she hadn't made a terrible mistake in bringing that whole thing up; if Loki wanted to cause trouble without actually causing any physical harm, she'd handed him the perfect means to do so on a silver platter. As far as she could tell from the next table over, though, he wasn't behaving any differently or paying Macy any undue attention. Jane let herself get drawn into the conversation at her own table and forgot about Loki's. When next she looked up, he was already gone.
/
/
Thor sank heavily into the chair at the head of the table. He was tired. His mother was right; he could not go without sleep indefinitely. By the schedule she had insisted on – but that as king, he told himself, he was no longer beholden to – he should have slept last night. But after the debacle with Jormik and his inability to say anything useful afterward at all, he'd been afraid of what thoughts might keep him awake or follow him into sleep. Thoughts of failure. Uselessness. Pointlessness. Hopelessness. Defeat. These were not the thoughts a king should convey to his people, even to those close to him, not ever, much less in wartime.
Instead he'd rushed back out into battle, where he could instead think about how best to kill the enemy, especially any Svartalf warriors unlucky enough to cross his path. Giving himself over to a berserker state of mind felt good, but it left him hollow. Even this maelstrom into which he threw himself could not fully make him forget what had happened late last night, his failure to address it as a king should…or the task he had avoided, claiming at the time that it was far too late to do anything about.
So today he'd withdrawn from the fighting two hours early and sought out Jormik's family. She was only a few hundred years old, unmarried as most were at that age. Her parents lived in one of the towers at the edge of the city, but neither were home, he was told; Thor was instead directed to an office in a building near the palace, where Jormik's mother Lenaris, a Dark Elf, had volunteered to assist with the refugees still trickling into the city from more distant locations under threat from the invaders. Her Aesir father was out fighting, as was her younger brother.
Though she wore her white hair short and loose so that it covered her ears, it was easy to pick her out. She'd tensed as soon as she saw him making his way toward her. Thor had no idea how his father handled such things, or even if he handled them himself or delegated them to others, but he'd taken the woman aside to empty room, explained to her what happened, put an arm on her shoulder, and fought to keep his own emotions in check when hers finally overcame her and she suddenly burst into tears and embraced him. When finally she'd calmed, he stepped back from her and put both hands on her shoulders and spoke words that ignited his spirit: "She will not have died in vain."
They seemed to have ignited Lenaris's spirit as well, for she straightened up and nodded and spoke to him with renewed strength about how proud she was of her courageous and honorable daughter for fighting in her own way for what she believed in, and what she had believed in was Asgard.
Settling in now at the High Table, Thor hoped similar words could ignite others' spirits as well. The meal began, and Thor motioned for the Einherjar he'd spoken to earlier; he and another guard stepped up to the table, each with a large platter filled with tankards of mead, which they mostly managed not to spill. His mother gave him a curious look, for she knew he'd decided to forego mead, but he ignored it for the moment.
Thor stood, and the subdued chatter around the table quickly came to an end. He glanced at the Warriors Three and Sif at the other end of the table, invited to join the Assembly for this night; Thor knew that were their skills not better used on the battlefield in this time of war, he would find a place for each of these dear, trusted friends among his official advisors. The thought distracted him for a moment; he'd always assumed Loki would be his closest advisor. Of course, he'd also ignored Loki's advice half the time – or more – over the years. That didn't mean he didn't appreciate the advice, though. Usually. When Loki wasn't pushing him too hard. Perhaps he'd been too stubborn and childish to say so. After all, Loki had almost managed to get them out of Jotunheim a year and a half or so ago without starting a war, despite Thor's brashness. "Come on, Brother," he remembered Loki brusquely telling him, as though Loki were the older and he the younger, Loki the leader and Thor the follower, and that had stung and smarted and offended and that insulting jibe from a Frost Giant that followed had pushed his already foul temper right over the edge. What would Loki advise, were he here? Thor could hardly imagine. They thought in different ways, his brother and him.
To his left, Bragi cleared his throat. "Your Majesty?"
"My apologies," Thor said, refocusing his attention on the matter at hand. "Last night, we lost another fellow Asgardian, the first we have lost in this war who was not on Asgard, and whose body we do not yet have to send on its final journey. Jormik Sutadottir died for Asgard, like so many others before her, like others will after her. She knew the risk she faced in going to another realm in secret, yet she volunteered for this duty. She believed in Asgard, her mother told me. She loved this realm and what it stands for enough to risk her life for it, and ultimately, to give her life for it.
"There is no doubt we are outnumbered, but we have the high ground here, in every way. This is our realm. We know it like none other. We must use that to our advantage to defend it. We will fight with honor, even when our enemies do not, and in doing so we may yet convince the citizens of the other realms to turn against their leaders in this unjustifiable aggression against Asgard. We will do this in Jormik's name, those of us in this hall, each in our own way.
"Her sacrifice must remain a secret to all but us, though it is the duty of each of us to ensure it was not for nothing. We will speak of those who have sacrificed for Asgard – those who have died, those who fight on, those who heal, those who cook, those who manage supplies, those who assist refugees…those who are Aesir, and those who are not. Jormik's mother is of Svartalfheim, yet she is part of Jolgeir's new effort to help refugees, and her allegiance is fully to Asgard in this conflict. I challenge any of you to tell me her contributions are less valuable than those of any Aesir." Thor paused, swallowed. A couple of his advisors wore looks of confusion, and he realized he was again not entirely thinking of Jormik and her family. There were jests and stereotypes about the Dark Elves on Asgard as there were about any group, even the Aesir themselves, but among most people they were good-natured. Hatred and belief in the stereotypes as actually universally true was reserved for the Frost Giants, at least on Asgard.
"We will fight, and we will prevail, all of us, all Asgardians, together." Thor looked around the table, starting with Bragi on his left, meeting each person's eyes, and waiting for a nod before moving on. His mother was last, and her slow, closed-eyed nod was so entirely serious and full of the same respect he'd seen in everyone else's eyes that for the first time he thought perhaps he really could do this, and didn't need to try to convince himself.
"For Jormik," Bragi said, standing and lifting his tankard.
Thor could not have been more grateful, especially knowing that Bragi and he were not always in agreement and that Bragi was his father's closest advisor. Thor had forgotten about the mead already. He lifted his tankard as well. "For Jormik," he said with a nod. Almost as one, everyone else at the table stood, echoed these words, and lifted their mugs – Huskol lifted Jolgeir's for him, and when Thor downed his drink, everyone else did likewise.
"For Asgard," Hogun said quietly at the other end of the table, as soon as the tankards were refilled.
Thor met his eyes. "For Asgard," he said, along with everyone else, and drank. In a private moment late last night, Hogun, one of the most stoic men Thor knew, had wept over his inability to reach Jormik when he saw a fresh contingent of guards chasing her.
Their regular meeting soon began, and although Thor thought the advisors seemed somewhat energized, and more confident, little stood out to him from their reports. Bragi said that the largest protest yet was expected on Vanaheim tomorrow, and that several more protest leaders had been arrested. It was an encouraging sign, that this movement was continuing to grow there and Gullveig was continuing to antagonize his own people with his response; Thor was beginning to think maybe this plan really would make a tangible difference. The Aesir and loyal Vanir Asgardians on Vanaheim were doing as Thor had earlier suggested, bringing up the Principle Treaties when they could, and questioning why Vanaheim was suddenly treating Asgard as an enemy when Asgard had been nothing but a friend to Vanaheim for millennia. The Vanir now had plenty of reasons to oppose this war, from the sake of their honor to the sake of their freedom to the sake of their pockets. And if Vanaheim could be convinced to withdraw from the alliance against Asgard, the odds would not be so heavily stacked against the Realm Eternal.
The only other item of immediate interest, from Thor's perspective, was that Geirmund and Krusa were planning another trip to Midgard the next day, to discuss the next batch of food delivery and payment; Vafri had already given his report on the continued slow recovery of the rivers, and the negative impact on the food chain, which was just beginning to affect game animals. The mention of Midgard immediately made Thor think of Jane, though, which then caused a flash of guilt, for he hadn't thought of Jane now in days. He'd been far too preoccupied. He had a sudden image of Jane up on the roof of her workplace in Puente Antiguo, how her eyes lit up when he told her about the Nine Realms. Though the memory was a good one, it caused a dull ache in him now. How dreadful those days had been! And how peaceful those moments with Jane had felt in the midst of it all. He wished he could sit on that roof with her again, right now, and not say a word, but just hold her, feel her warmth against him…
"Jolgeir, are you going with Geirmund?"
"I hadn't intended to, Your Majesty. I believe the Lady Pepper understands the needs of our warriors now, but should you have need of me there, it is of course my honor to help however I'm needed."
"No, that won't be necessary," Thor said, turning to the next advisor. He may not always make the best decisions for Asgard, but he certainly knew better than to send someone to Midgard for the sole purpose of speaking with Jane on his behalf, when every spare hand was needed here. He glanced back at Jolgeir and grimaced; it was a poor turn of phrase.
When everyone had spoken – and Heimdall had no more stories of Yggdrasil groaning or trembling and neither Vafri nor Bragi through his contacts on the other realms had heard anything more of any seismic…whatever they were, the minor earthquakes – the Assembly came to a close and Thor began making his way to Tyr. Before he could get there, First Einherjar Hergils reached him.
"Come to take Gungnir back, Hergils?" Thor asked with a half-serious smile. The spear was now kept in Thor's chambers, to which the extra layers of protective magic Maeva had placed around his parents' chambers had been extended once he was made king.
"I would never dream of it, my king. I was wondering if you might consider speaking to our warriors. They love their realm and possess fine spirits, but the battles never cease and they could use some encouragement from their king."
Thor nodded slowly. It was hard to imagine Asgard's warriors finding his words – versus his fists – so encouraging, but if Hergils had appreciated what he'd said today to the Assembly, he supposed he could say it again more broadly, instead of the advisors passing his message on themselves. When a skirmish ended, he usually went straight to the next battle, wherever it seemed he was needed most, but it would take only a few minutes more to stay behind and speak with those at whose side he'd just fought.
"Yes, if you think it worthwhile, I can do this, Hergils."
"I do, Your Majesty. I truly do. The men love you, and follow you gladly. Your words will mean much to them."
"Then it will be done," Thor said, then excused himself and caught up to Tyr, whom he pulled aside to speak to quietly.
"Do you remember, when this war had just begun, Tyr, you said defending Asgard would not be enough? That the numbers were not sustainable?"
"I do, Your Majesty."
"Based on your comments last night, you still believe this, do you not? Even though we do have some other efforts underway now?"
"I do."
"Well I am beginning to agree. I understand that we cannot undermine our position as the realm that has been attacked and is innocent of wrongdoing against all the others, except for Jotunheim, but we have to do something more. We need a victory, Tyr. A real one. I want to capture Nadrith. But Heimdall hasn't seen him on Asgard again. If not with Nadrith here…then we need to send a message in some other way. I want you to consider how we could go after Gullveig on Vanaheim."
"Gullveig himself?" Tyr repeated, surprise on his face. "That is bold, Your Majesty. And risky. Bragi won't like it. His special project has had no greater success than on Vanaheim."
"I didn't ask Bragi. I'm asking you. Our efforts on Vanaheim may make a difference, eventually, but we can't hold out forever. Consider how we might go about it, without undoing what Bragi's accomplished. I welcome alternatives, as well. Remember, my father wanted an attack plan for Vanaheim once we found out it was Gullveig who set up the explosion in the palace. Discuss it with the War Council tomorrow morning and remind them that I want this kept in strict secrecy. Tell me what ideas you've come up with tomorrow evening after Assembly. We need our own strategy. We can't just keep reacting to theirs. Bring me ideas. The bolder, the better."
/
/
"Sax Man!" Wright called as soon as Loki walked in the door of the Music Room.
Loki drew in a breath and made himself keep going. Why do I continue to put up with him?
Carlo rolled his eyes. "Are you sure you don't want to learn the saxophone, Lucas? It might make the nickname more appropriate."
"Perhaps in my next thousand years of life," Loki said with a good-natured smile that the others all returned, entirely ignorant of the fact that he really did have another thousand years of life ahead of him, several, even, assuming nothing unfortunate happened along the way. Not necessarily a safe assumption these days.
"In that case," Austin said, "how about taking up the recorder again? We were trying to come up with a theme for the Midwinter party, and we remembered your rendition of the Jurassic Park theme, and we got to thinking maybe a movie theme would be cool. People can even dress up as movie characters if they want. And we can work in a lot of movie theme songs into the set. Maybe not Jurassic Park, you can't exactly dance to it, but if we play the pre-dinner Happy Hour we could use it then. What do you think, want to join us?"
Loki stared at him for a moment, for what felt like a little longer than he should have based on the look that flickered across Austin's face. "You want me to play a children's instrument at this dance?"
Austin laughed, and Carlo stepped forward. "It's not just a children's instrument. A lot of children learn to play it because the basic fingering is simple. It's a good introduction to music. But it's used in various ensembles. Even in some popular music – the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Siouxsie and the Banshees." Do a lot of film scores use it? No, probably not, but that's okay. We like having a unique sound."
"It's the South Pole," Jeff said. "What better place to be unique?"
"What better place indeed," Loki said with a slow nod. At the others' insistence, he went back to his chambers to get the recorder Selby had insisted he keep, a strange feeling pulling at him all the while. What better place to be unique? There was, quite possibly, no one more unique than him in all the Nine Realms. Born a prince of one realm and cast out, raised a prince in another, in another people's flesh, and cast out from there, too, in hiding at the most remote place on yet another realm, disguising himself amongst a third people. And Carlo thought he was unique here because he was Italian. Carlo accepted him. Austin accepted him. They all accepted him, even Wright, who accepted him in ways Loki would rather he not, for no particular reason he could name, and Selby, whose mere existence had begun to annoy him. They accepted him, though he knew even in his disguise they recognized he was different from them, in the way he dressed and carried himself and expressed himself, in the cultural references he could only smile and nod at, pretending he knew the songs and movies and historical events and the capital of Iceland – Reykjavik, he'd looked it up while Jane called Tony.
They would feel differently if they knew the truth, of course, but for now, Loki could also accept them. Laughable as it seemed to him in one way, it was infinitely better here, sharing a meal with Jane or playing a not-just-for-children children's instrument with Austin and Carlo and Jeff and Wright and Selby or throwing darts with Austin and Carlo and Wright and Gary and whomever else might show up or going skiing with Ken or any of the other things he did here now. Infinitely better than being in a prison cell or anywhere else on Asgard being thought a traitor, being hunted on Svartalfheim or Vanaheim or Alfheim or any of the other realms, breathing Jotun air, or watching his younger brother die a painful pointless death all over again.
The unsettling thought came to him unexpectedly – part of him wished he didn't have to leave here. But that was the part of him that had never liked facing reality. "Reality is sometimes a terrible thing to have to face, Loki, but you do have to face it, and you'd better do so quickly," he remembered his mother…Frigga saying to him when he was just shy of twenty and it seemed the world was crashing down around him. He'd wanted to crawl into his bed and never show his face outside his chambers for the rest of his life in that moment. He'd thought he could not be called a warrior. How small such problems seemed now, when he could not be called Odinson or even Aesir.
He was no longer so young, so naïve. Yes, a part of him, surprisingly enough, wished he could stay, that this strange interlude in his life could continue, but he knew reality from childish fantasy. Even if he stayed, Jane and the others would not, and a life at the South Pole was not one he truly desired to continue indefinitely, anyway. He had never been meant to live on ice, he supposed. He would enjoy the weekend here at the Pole, then on Monday review all his notes on visiting Niskit 90 years ago, and leave for Alfheim via Asgard the same day. When he came back he should be free of Odin's curses, and then he would figure out what he needed to do to change history in his favor.
When he got back to the Music Room, the one person who hadn't been there before still wasn't there, and the others were in the middle of a song Loki supposed he should have recognized. "Where's Selby?" he asked when they reached the end of the song.
"Wasn't feeling well," Wright said. "He begged off."
Loki pictured him miserable and ill and indeed begging to be excused. Even better, he thought.
/
/
Sunday morning came, and Jane let herself sleep in a little. She got ready and went down to grab a simple breakfast – granola cereal with dried fruit, coffee, and a mini-muffin. The kitchen staff had the day off on Sunday, so the choices were far fewer. She sat down with Olivia, the winter site manager, who happened to mention that Ken had just left with Lucas to get ready to go skiing. That was a strange one to Jane. Loki claimed not to like it, yet he'd done it every Sunday morning for four weeks now without fail, ever since his "birthday" party.
After breakfast, Jane put in a VOIP call to a high school friend she didn't manage to reach, then to Darcy, who was friendly but distracted, cramming for final exams, then to Erik, whom she'd clearly woken from a nap though he tried to hide it. The calls left her feeling a little sad, and she started absently flipping through photos on her computer, soon coming to the ones Hastings had taken while spying on her and Thor in Tromso. She wondered how he was doing. She wished he could see Loki playing darts here and going skiing; she thought it would make him happy.
She didn't have any plans until afternoon, so she slipped a note under Loki's door to remind him of the continuation of the Indiana Jones marathon, then went off in search of a new book to read in the Green House, where she thought the increased humidity might do her some good.
/
/
"Hey, man, how's it going?" Ronny asked when Loki made it to the lounge for the third Indiana Jones movie at a few minutes before 1:00.
"Fine, thanks," Loki said with a nod, noticing that Ronny was glancing off to the side, where Jane was already sitting on one of the sofas. He realized then why Ronny was asking. It was Ronny who had heard him three nights ago, saying whatever he'd said during the dream inflicted by The Other, and from the glances toward Jane, he surmised the two had discussed his wellbeing. Wonderful.
"Good, good. Listen, we're trying to put together another poker game tonight. You want to play? We need another person. Around 7:00 or so?"
"All right," Loki said, somewhat surprised Ronny would want him to join the game, since he must now think an insane person lived next to him. "Especially if I can win another week off of house mouse."
"No guarantees there, man, we'll see how it goes. So you're in?"
"I'm in."
"Awesome. So which Indy movie's your favorite?"
"Hm. Difficult to say." Particularly since I've only seen the first two and wasn't paying terribly close attention. He knew he hadn't thought much of the second, anyway. "Perhaps the first."
"Yeah, it's a classic. That's probably my favorite one, too. Anyway, I guess everybody's here who was here last time. Let's get this show in gear, huh?"
Loki nodded and went to take a spot on one of the sofas, next to Jane. It might prove helpful, since he figured he'd pay more attention this time and perhaps be able to whisper the occasional question for clarification to her.
"Hey, good day?" Jane said, keeping it brief because Ronny was already getting the movie started.
"Reasonably so. And you?"
"Reasonably so," she echoed with a dour expression.
Is that what I looked like? he wondered. He'd intended something a bit more neutral. But, then, he supposed his "neutral" these days tended toward the dour.
The movie got underway, and Loki liked it immediately. It began not with a grown, heroic Indiana Jones, but with a boy of perhaps twelve or fourteen out having an adventure and getting into mischief and danger. It reminded him very much of his own youth, and watching young Indiana nearly get killed more than once, he wondered how Frigga had survived it.
After dangerous encounters with snakes and other creatures, Indiana raced home, and even though he was in real trouble, his father could not be bothered to lift his head from the book he was studying to speak with him. He knew his expression had gone far beyond dour, and he liked Indiana Jones even more.
The adventures of the adult Indiana were entertaining, and Loki enjoyed the action of it and the cleverness that Indiana applied – sometimes – to get out of the problems he encountered. He felt a little sick to his stomach when the man realized his father and he had both taken the Nazi woman Elsa to bed. The very idea of it was…best not thought of, Loki decided, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
He sat up a little straighter when Indiana told his father – who insisted on calling him not "Indiana" or "Indy" but "Junior," apparently something of an insult on Midgard – that he wanted to talk. Loki felt like he was watching a scene from his own life play out, or at least one he could imagine happening in his own life. Henry Jones told his son that he'd never coddled him, told him when to go to bed or do his homework. Instead, he'd respected his privacy and taught him self-reliance. Indiana was every bit as dissatisfied as Loki. "You taught me that I was less important to you than people who had been dead for five hundred years in another country…," Indiana told his self-righteous father.
Loki could barely breathe, and if he didn't know Jane well enough to know she was nowhere near manipulative enough to pull it off, he'd think she arranged this whole thing just to get a reaction out of him. It was certainly working. Don't you understand? He didn't want privacy and self-reliance. He wanted a father. He wanted you to tell him when to go to bed, to ask about his homework. He wanted you to talk to him. He wanted you to be a real part of his life, and not just for a day or two here and there. He wanted to know that you cared. He didn't want a king. He wanted a father.
Then, inside the old structure containing the grail they sought, the Nazi Donovan shot Henry. Loki's jaw fell slightly open. This moment, too, was an unpleasantly familiar one. For a moment, Loki's eyes glazed over and he lost track entirely of the movie. Instead, he saw his own father, the man he'd always believed to be his father, collapsed, helpless, on the cold stone steps of the Weapons Vault. He remembered his own sense of shock, of being overcome with so many emotions he hadn't known what to do and could only stare down at him, reach for his hand as though to reach for the past, for some naïve reassurance of something, for everything that had been, for everything he'd wanted and never had, for everything that he still hadn't comprehended he'd already lost for good. He'd cried out for the Einherjar as though there was something left in that room to be saved.
"I'll be right back," he whispered to Jane, then hurried out of the room. Let them think he needed the restroom. He just needed a moment to untangle himself from that memory, one of the worst of his entire life…though the competition for worst memory was getting tougher, now that he'd seen Baldur die twice. Still, those few minutes in the Weapons Vault were probably the worst of all. There he'd lost Baldur, too, and Thor, and father and mother and uncles and aunts and cousins and titles and heritage and past and future, and then as he held onto Gungnir over the edge of the shattered bifrost, Odin had ever-so-efficiently, with two little words, snipped the last threads of hope he'd clung to.
Loki laughed at himself. This is hardly helping matters. Su-Ji was walking down the corridor in his direction; he gave her a quick wave, took a deep breath, grit his teeth, and went back in. Indiana was talking to a very old man who said he'd lived 700 years. "Looks more like 5,700," Loki whispered with a grin to Jane, who gave him a good-humoredly chiding look as she rolled her eyes. And with that, the memory faded away and Loki again became engrossed in the movie. The grail, a goblet of some sort, was one of many that the old man guarded, and Indy, along with Elsa and Donovan, had to guess which one was the grail they sought, the one that would apparently give powerful healing magic to whatever was drunk from it. Elsa chose one that she felt looked suited to royalty – Loki thought it looked gaudy, but then, on Nidavellir they probably would have liked it. She made a bad choice, though, for Donovan drank water from it and quickly aged and died. Indiana then chose a plain one he found more suited to the humble man it had belonged to – yet again relying on his intelligence and wit – and soon the adventure was on again.
Indy healed his father with water from the goblet – I wonder if he'll bother to be grateful – and Elsa took it and tried to leave, disobeying the old warrior's warning not to take it beyond the seal marked on the floor. The ground began to shake, and the building to break apart. "That was me," Loki whispered.
Jane looked at him with confusion, then wrinkled up her face in distaste. "The earthquake? Not funny."
He matched her confusion, then remembered that the story about him causing earthquakes, which she'd first mentioned some time ago, had come from the story about his punishment for killing Baldur. He frowned and turned back to the movie.
The goblet had fallen down into some fissure in the ground, and Elsa was desperate to reach it, so desperate she was foolishly not letting Indiana pull her up. She slipped and fell, presumably to her death, but who really knew, Loki thought with a shudder – he would never forget that sensation of falling, and the moment when it had turned from something that felt awful but right into something that felt wrong, and terrifying and agonizing and unending and… Loki cleared his throat. Indiana had fallen in after Elsa. His father tried to pull him up, but he too strained to reach down instead of up, to regain the goblet. His father spoke sharply to him, and Indiana gave up on the goblet, choosing his safety over the perfect health and long life the goblet could have provided him, or others if he so chose. Loki thought it didn't seem fair, or a good way to end the movie. The magic of the ark, Loki recalled, was dangerous. The magic of the goblet was beneficial. But now it was lost for all time; Indiana had failed in his quest.
The typical quips meant for laughs followed. Everyone else seemed to think it was funny when Indiana again stated his distaste for being called "Junior," and his father said their dog's name was "Indiana." Loki didn't see the humor. In rejecting being named for his father and instead choosing to name himself after the family pet, Indiana's message to his father was clear, and not at all funny. Loki, too, had rejected his supposed father's name, and hurled it as an epithet against Thor, and it certainly wasn't funny.
"Does he get it back in the fourth one?" Loki asked Jane when they had a moment alone as everyone came and went during a break between the movies.
"Does he get what back?"
"The goblet. The grail."
"No, the next movie takes place, I don't know, twenty years later, and it's about something completely different. The grail's gone, as it should be."
"As it should be? He could have healed all injuries with it. Cured all disease. He could have…" He could have cured your disease. "To lose a relic like that…it would be a crushing defeat."
Jane frowned, a little confused by how seriously Loki was taking it. She'd never thought that much about Indiana Jones in terms of reality…it patently wasn't reality. Then she saw it – Loki had come to Earth for an object with supernatural powers, and he'd lost in what for him was a pretty crushing defeat. "How would you line people up to drink from it? The entire population of the planet? It wouldn't be possible. Everyone would want it. The world would descend into chaos and war. One faction would want it for their people, and to deny it to everyone else, so they would live while their enemies died off. I mean, I think that was…" I think that was the whole point of the search for the grail. "I think that was why they showed the Nazis ready to kill anyone just to get the grail. If the Nazis had really gotten their hands on something like that, they would have only let their own people, the people they considered the pure race use it, and I guess it would have made their soldiers unstoppable and they would have won World War II."
"And I'd be dead," Olivia said, having come back in time to catch part of what Jane was saying. "My grandpa was Jewish. 25% was enough for the gas chamber."
Loki hesitated, not really certain what Olivia was talking about. "But if Indiana had gotten the grail, he would have used it to good end, would he not have?"
"He probably would have tried to, but with something that powerful, with such ability to turn the tide of history, how long would he have lived before someone managed to force him to hand it over?" Jane asked.
"He could have recruited guards. Assistants better qualified than those who worked with him in this movie."
"An army?" Jane asked with raised eyebrows.
Loki narrowed his eyes at her and held his tongue.
In the meantime, Paul returned, and Olivia quickly filled him in on the discussion. "Even if Indy managed to hold onto the grail," he said, "and started, I don't know, traveling the world, country by country and village by village, what would have happened once the war broke out? Even if ol' Indy was the most generous-hearted, neutral, peace-loving person in the world, the US wouldn't want the Germans using grail-water, or the Japanese…half the world wouldn't want the other half having access to it. And there's always wars going on somewhere in the world. There's always somebody who wouldn't want to let somebody else have it and would resort to violence to stop it."
I could have stopped the wars, Loki thought reflexively, though his heart wasn't in it.
"Guys, I leave for like fifteen minutes and you're psychoanalyzing Indiana Jones?" Ronny asked, a big bowl of popcorn in his hands. "It's a movie. There's no such thing as the Holy Grail. Or I mean, I guess there is, but it's not sitting in some desert guarded by a seven-hundred-year-old Crusader waiting to cure your mortal wounds. If The Last Crusade gets you guys this worked up, I'm making a mad dash out of here when The Crystal Skull is over. How 'bout that tank scene, huh?"
Everyone laughed – Loki joined in order to blend in – and discussion turned to the movie's action sequences. Loki had enjoyed them, but he'd had enough of these movies for one day. And he didn't want to see any more of Henry Jones. He told the others he couldn't stay for the fourth movie, and the others made what he supposed were friendly efforts to get him to change his mind, but he politely excused himself. He didn't get far down the corridor before Jane caught up to him.
"Hey, Lucas," she began, glancing behind her to make sure no one else had left. "I understand where you're coming from. And I'm sure there are a lot of people on Earth who knew about the Tesseract who didn't want to give it up to Asgard. I hope that that's mostly because of all the good things I assume we could have done with it, but I'm not naïve enough to think all the intentions were pure. Everybody wants a weapon stronger than the other guy's. We're better off without it. It didn't exactly do us much good while we did have it."
"I suppose not. It brought you me," Loki said, keeping his tone even.
Jane shook her head. "That's not what I meant."
"Of course that's what you meant. You'd have been better off if I'd never come here."
"Loki…" He was right, of course…but he was wrong at the same time, and it took her a moment to figure out how to say that, during which thankfully he simply waited. "We'd have been better off if you'd never come here the way you came here. It's not you. It's the things you did while you were here before. Things are okay now, aren't they?"
Not as much as you think, Jane. "Couldn't be better," he answered with a dry smile. "All the same, you'll have to tell me about Indiana Jones's latest adventure later. I've had enough of it for one day."
"Okay, I'll see you later then," Jane said, and watched him head off down the hallway before going back in.
Loki, meanwhile, went back to his room. He needed some time to himself before being thrown into another social gathering here early this evening. He couldn't stop thinking of that image of Indiana, stretching down to try to reach the grail. He knew he would have done everything in his power to obtain it. And if it had proven impossible…he supposed he would have fallen to his death trying, like Elsa. Would his purposes have been altruistic? Probably not.
He'd told Thor, not so very long ago, that he'd never claimed to be wise. Yet he had been, once, hadn't he? Hadn't he been the wise one, and Thor the foolish one? He'd certainly thought himself wise. What had happened to that wisdom? When had he tossed it aside for the pursuit of something else? His thoughts grew jumbled and confused. Perhaps he'd never been wise to begin with. Perhaps he'd never tossed it away and his doubts were pure foolishness. Perhaps he didn't care anymore, either way.
He didn't want to think about it. He built up his sound blanket, carefully, thoroughly, took the recorder from the top shelf of his desk, and began trying to work his way through one of the songs the band had played last night.
/
/
The Crystal Skull, it turned out, had seemed a lot weirder the first time Jane saw it than this time. Jane had always believed in the possibility of alien life, without really believing it terribly likely, given how narrow the parameters were for the conditions that allowed life to flourish. Now, of course, she knew there were aliens out there, and not just on Asgard, and not even just in the nine realms the Asgardians associated with Yggdrasil. So if Indiana Jones met aliens through a crystal skull, who was she to thumb a nose at it?
Thinking of Yggdrasil made her think again of what Loki might be looking for in Pathfinder's data. She'd never managed to follow up on that, after finding out Loki had gone out behind the jamesway because he was feeling sick from all those resurfaced memories surrounding his other brother's death. It stayed on her mind through dinner, and afterward she begged off a Monopoly invitation from Mari, deciding to take another look at what Loki had been doing on the laptop. The timing was good; Ronny had mentioned that he'd put together another poker group for after dinner and Lucas was joining them.
She hadn't dressed for going outside today, so she went back to her room and got out of the long brown skirt and rose blouse she had on, and started pulling on the long underwear and all the other layers that followed. It was a pain, really, but it would all be worth it if she could finally satisfy her curiosity – and frankly her concern – about what Loki might be up to.
Outside she flipped on her red headlamp and set off for the jamesway, shedding layers again once she got there, down to the Carharrts and a beige cardigan. She sat down at the table and powered up the laptop. She'd shut it down on Friday and gone in right after Loki, and the data he'd had up at the time popped up now. The data she couldn't think of anything worthy of interest in. She checked the View Data History tab to see what else he'd looked at, and was surprised to find it showed nothing. She checked View Analysis History and again found nothing. That was odd. She'd seen herself that he'd looked at Pathfinder's data on here before, and further back they both had of course looked extensively at the far more detailed data the probe had brought back.
At least for once, Jane thought, it was a good thing that she was paranoid. Whether from an uncontrolled power surge, a hardware failure, or SHIELD changing their minds and deciding to sabotage her work, Jane was paranoid about catastrophic data loss, and had two automated background programs running whenever her laptop was on, which constantly backed up data and actions to a portion of the hard drive segmented off from the rest, and, when fully networked, to storage on a cloud as well.
She opened up the local backup – which she'd never mentioned to Loki, simply because it hadn't come up – and ran through the logs, going back through the last two weeks of his activity. Jane was stymied by what she saw: the same data stream, over and over again. What can he possibly find so fascinating about this? What am I missing? She stared at the next-to-last instance of Pathfinder data. Maybe it isn't the same one he's looking at? Maybe he's comparing them? There were four trips total that we made to Asgard: his, mine, his following me, and his last one. There were three returns to Midgard, because on my trip we came back together. Which one, or ones, is he looking at?
Alongside the next-to-last instance she opened up the most recent one, the one he'd been looking at on Friday, then opened a program that would compare the two files and highlight any differences. Relatively speaking, these data files weren't that large, and just a few minutes later the program had finished running. Jane started scrolling through the two identical-looking data files, and came to the first discrepancy right away: a date tag.
That can't be right, she said, squinting her eyes in confusion as she stared at the two dates on the split screen.
/
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, of course, was not written by me. Screenplay by Jeff Boam, story by George Lucas and Menno Meyjes, according to IMDB.
Thanks for joining me for another chapter! Thanks for reading, reviewing, following, etc., and in general for your support. In the next chapter...the station catches fire and Jane forgets all about those dates that don't look right. Naaaah, just kidding!
Previews for Ch. 93 (I SWEAR there's an end to this story...): Loki and Jane have a chat. What?! That's what happens!
Excerpt:
[...] "Loki, when I agreed to keep quiet about you being here, about you staying here, you said you would be honest with me."
Loki scratched his jaw for a moment. "I'm fairly certain I put some kind of qualification on that…and if I didn't, I really should have."
