Beneath

Chapter Ninety-Three – Suspicion

"I've been practicing," Loki said.

"So has Carlo," Austin said. "Oh, wait, that's just Carlo being himself, not specifically practicing for anything. Unless somebody's planning a butt-scratching competition, too?"

"For your information I have been practicing. You're going down, Lucas. Your reign is over. Il tuo regno è finito," he repeated in recognizable Italian, slashing his hand through the air for emphasis.

"Hm, where have I heard that before? You are but words, gentlemen."

"'You are but words?'" Ronny echoed. "Where do you get this stuff from, man? Try this one out: 'Put up or shut up.'"

"Yes, that too. Put up or shut up," Loki said with a grin. It wasn't a bad phrase, really.

"Same stakes as last time?" Paul asked.

"Two weeks off," Loki said.

Laughter and little comments and whistles followed. "You're really convinced you're going to win this thing, aren't you?" Zeke said.

"You provided such unimpressive competition last time, what have I to fear?"

Ronny laughed, shook his head, and set his whiskey down hard on the table. "Man, I have never heard anybody talk smack in such fancy words. Okay, but if we make it two weeks, and we keep this game going, like, every week, then what do we bet on for the Three D's next time?"

"Losers cook a meal for the winner the next Sunday," Austin suggested.

"Four people cooking for one? That doesn't make much sense," Paul said.

"It means hopefully at least one of the four actually knows how to cook something," Austin said.

Loki was about to take back his suggestion to switch to two weeks – there was no meal that could be prepared here at the Pole that would justify him debasing himself with this Three D's game, and avoiding house mouse chores was in fact the only thing worthwhile that he could win here – when he got a call on his radio. He looked at it with surprise, then unclipped it from his belt loop; it was Jane. His expression turned wary – he wasn't sure why Jane would be calling him, or whether she would realize he might be around other people. He stood and walked away, over toward the other side of the B-3 Lounge, where they'd set up the game this time, then thumbed it on. "Yes? Lucas here," he added as a reminder.

"Lucas, hi, listen, I'm outside working on Pathfinder, and I've found some really interesting data from the latest scans. Can you come out here for a little while and take a look at it with me?"

"Now?" he asked skeptically. "Can't it wait until tomorrow?" He scowled then. He wasn't working with her tomorrow, and he had his own plans for Pathfinder then, important ones.

"It really can't. This is pretty important. Can you come out?"

What are you doing working on a Sunday night, anyway, Jane? A while back she'd stated her intention to make a concerted effort to take the day off on Sunday, and as far as he knew, she'd stuck to it. "All right, fine. I'll have to get the ECW gear on, it'll take me a while."

"Just hurry, okay?"

"All right, Jane, I'll be there as quickly as I can," he said, trying not to sound as annoyed as he felt since he was not alone. We he turned around, only Austin and Carlo, who probably knew Jane better than the others in this group, had the decency to pretend like they hadn't been listening.

Zeke whistled. "I guess we know who's the boss, huh?"

Paul chuckled, and Loki forced a smile to his face. He did not like being thought of as Jane's lackey, and he would be sure to let Jane know that her treating him this way in front of others was unacceptable.

"Forget that, man," Ronny said, screwing up his face. "I know you said there's nothing there…but it kind of sounds like there's something there. Like that was all code for 'Oh, baby, I need you, I need you right now,'" he said, going into a high-pitched overly-dramatic impersonation of a woman who was definitely not Jane, and making a face to go along with it, someone in the throes of passion or of pain, Loki wasn't sure which.

"Would that it were so," Loki answered with a smirk, not quite in the mood for defending Jane's honor again. Austin and Carlo were clearly holding back a bit of laughter, which made Loki think Ronny's words were not quite as insulting to Jane as it seemed to him.

"Well, I guess you can bow out here if duty calls, but not before the Three D's," Ronny said, beckoning him to come sit back down.

Zeke nodded, stood, actually grabbed onto his arm and physically pulled him over to the table. "Yeah, Lucas, you can't just walk away after all that. Jane'll understand. Especially if you do happen to win again, and get her a free pass on house mouse and dishpit."

"I guess we know who's the boss." A grin spread over his lips as he lowered himself into his chair. Not Jane. "When I win again, Zeke. When. And let's go back to one week as the spoils. I would like to defeat you all every week."

/


/

Jane looked back at the data, paced, looked back at the data, paced. The numbers didn't add up. Specifically the dates. She had never even noticed dates – and times – within the raw data stream. The raw data had been fed into analysis programs, and dates hadn't exactly been a topic of interest for her or worthy of any analysis. But these dates…

They didn't make any sense at all. Jane opened up a third file straight from the directory of saved Pathfinder files – Loki's first trip to Asgard, uploaded to the laptop from the transmitter strapped to his wrist – and added it to the comparison program. Several new differences showed up, one of them obvious simply from differences in the file size: the third file was over twice as large. Second, a series of long numbers at almost the very end of the two files Loki had last viewed were the same, while the corresponding number series in this third file, in the middle of the data stream, was very close, but off by a few numbers. Based on a similarly formatted number series at the beginning of each of the data streams, Jane's first suspicion was that the numbers indicated location. Specifically, the point of arrival on Asgard, using some kind of geospatial grid system that Pathfinder had created on its own, since it wasn't like it had been programmed with Asgardian GPS. Third, there were odd strings of equations present in the two shorter files that were missing from the longer file. Odd…but familiar, Jane thought, as she stared at them. After a minute she recognized one string, and then many of the others fell into place like dominoes. Loki's variations on the FLRW equations. His solution to Einstein's field equations. They were familiar because she'd checked them for him. But what are they doing in the Pathfinder data?

There were still some strings of source code she didn't recognize, and weren't found in the file of his first trip to Asgard, but she knew Loki's equations could not have spontaneously appeared. He had to have programmed it in himself, which meant that maybe these were not records of travel at all, but attempts to program Pathfinder for directed travel…

Jane grabbed for her radio and put in a call to Loki. He was reluctant to come, but she wasn't walking away from this again. This time he was going to have to give her some answers.

Once he'd agreed to come out to the jamesway promptly, she turned her attention back to the data files. The time/date stamps in the third file also differed from what she found in the two Loki had viewed, but in this file at least they made sense. Year, date – April 3 – and a long continuation of numbers that she presumed demarcated time down to picoseconds.

The shorter two files contained only half the data they should have, if they'd come from the transmitter – it seemed clear, given additional time and place markers in the third file, that they covered only the journey to Asgard and the arrival there, and not the journey back to Earth and the arrival here. And that, too, made no sense, unless of course the shorter two files were indeed attempts to program Pathfinder. Assuming it was indeed possible to direct travel through Yggdrasil, the traveler would only program the journey to the other realm; Pathfinder would handle the return automatically.

The initial date/time stamps in the shorter two files were worrisome. Assuming they were what Jane believed them to be, and what it certainly appeared to be in the longer file, they indicated dates of May 19 and May 21. But Loki's third and last trip to Asgard, when he'd been caught in some kind of trap on the bridge, was April 25. The last one I know about, anyway, Jane thought, remembering how she'd wondered just a couple of days ago, on May 21, the day she'd found Loki out behind the jamesway having just thrown up, if he was trying to figure out how to instruct Pathfinder to send him somewhere other than Asgard. Did he really adjust the source code himself? Did he succeed in going somewhere else?

She followed the date/time string to its end, where the numbers ended in a long group of zeroes. More evidence of programming. He would hardly have entered a specific time down to the picosecond.

It was the other date/time stamps – assuming that's what they were – that were truly baffling. From Loki's last known trip to Asgard, there was a string of numbers about halfway through that certainly appeared to indicate date and time. The year and the date matched those of the departure, and the time differed by seconds. It should correspond to his arrival on Asgard. The corresponding string of numbers in the shorter, possibly-programmed files didn't seem to represent dates, though, since one would have been about a week before departure, and the other – Jane enlarged that file to look at the numbers more closely. She laughed. Definitely not a date. If it were, it would be over a thousand years off.

For a second her eyes widened. No. That is ridiculous. Pure science-fiction.

"A precursor to science fact!" she heard herself insisting to Erik.

No, she thought again, more hesitant. She laughed again, but this time it was more of a nervous laugh.

No, she thought a third time, now more resolute. Pathfinder isn't some kind of time travel device. And wormholes aren't…but they could be…according to some theories… Jane started reviewing what she knew of scientific theories on the possibility of time travel through wormholes, a subject that had never particularly attracted her despite its relevance to her studies, and quickly remembered that none of those theories painted terribly rosy pictures. Philosophical theories were another thing altogether, but Jane wasn't a philosopher.

Maybe he'd been trying to program Pathfinder to handle time travel. Or maybe the numbers meant something else entirely and she was getting crazy ideas from having watched too much Star Trek over the years. Either way, he'd been up to something with Pathfinder. She remembered now how just a few days ago he'd requested that she not move the device back out to the roof of the DSL as she'd intended, because he wanted to be able to retreat if Tony showed up as Iron Man…and why didn't that sound as suspicious then as it did now? she wondered. Loki was going to walk away from a fight? She supposed she'd wanted to believe it was true. All this time, as much as Loki had opened up to her about his life, even the painful parts of it, he was also still lying to her. She'd known it was possible, she'd known he was still keeping some things from her, yet it still stung to have it essentially confirmed.

He'd been up to something, and it was high time she found out what.

/


/

Loki finally started the trek out to Summer Camp – he assumed from what Jane had said that that was where she was – and wondered again what was so exciting that she had to share it with him now. Her research was back to the slower, more systematic process of pointing various devices up to the darkened skies and recording endless data and trying to turn a thousand books' worth of numbers into something meaningful. He admired her patience in working her way through it; he supposed he used to have patience like that, too. All that had changed in one terrifying moment on Jotunheim.

He set that aside and refocused on Jane. If she wanted to meet him in the jamesway, that meant she wanted to talk about something other than the increased neutrino collisions she'd found indications of, or some other results of her SHIELD-approved research, unless she simply preferred the jamesway because Summer Camp was a little closer than the Dark Sector. Unlikely, though, he thought. She'd never worked on her "regular" projects from the jamesway. The jamesway meant Pathfinder.

Loki faltered in his steps for a moment. The last time he'd used Pathfinder, two days ago, he'd hadn't cleared out the last travel program he'd created. Jane had found him outside in a moment of weakness when he wasn't thinking clearly, and he'd wanted simply to get away and be alone for a while. Then, for him, the whole incident was a closed chapter, one he did not wish to revisit, and he'd simply forgotten that he'd never physically closed the chapter by deleting the file, as he had the others he'd created. If she looked closely enough, she'd see some indications of time and place that didn't match the data logs from any of the four earlier trips to Asgard that she knew about and retained all the data from, and some additional bits of source code as well. And all she'd have to do to see that it wasn't a data file from one of those trips would be to scroll to the bottom and see that this file did not include a return trip, for of course he had only programmed in the outbound journey.

This could be a problem. He slowed his pace to allow himself the extra minute or two to think, for he needed to decide now what excuse he would give her for the discrepancies in that file, though he still hoped – the rational side of him did, anyway – that she'd called him out for something else entirely.

/


/

When he entered, she said nothing, just looked at him. There was something in the look, something a little harder, perhaps, than he'd seen there in a while. He turned away from her and started working on his gear; as soon as his head was free and he was working on the jacket he turned back to her, looking her straight in the eye. "Good news. I won you another boon."

Jane swallowed, waited for him to finishing getting his gear off.

It wasn't the response Loki had hoped for. Once he'd hung Big Red up on a hook by the door he came over to the table she sat behind, laptop open. "Don't you want to hear what I-"

"No. Not right now," she said, standing up. "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."

"This isn't a joke."

"The fact that you aren't laughing, or even smiling, did suggest as much. But I'm afraid I don't know what you want me to say, Jane. I've been more honest with you than I have with anyone else…perhaps in a few centuries. What more can you ask from me?"

"I can ask you what you've been trying to do with Pathfinder. And I expect you to answer me. Truthfully."

"Trying." Whatever she suspects, she doesn't know I've succeeded at anything.

"Well?" Jane prompted.

"Well, what? You haven't actually asked me anything."

Jane looked away and let out a huff of air. Like talking to a child. A really strong, smart child with a lot of anger management issues. She turned back to Loki and schooled her expression to something she hoped was unyielding but not entirely unfriendly. "What have you been trying to accomplish with Pathfinder?"

"I would say…scientific progress," Loki answered with a smile intended to charm. Not that he expected to entirely charm his way out of this. Jane wasn't the type to fall for such a thing, anyway.

"Scientific progress," Jane echoed flatly. "What kind of scientific progress? Are you trying to figure out how to make Pathfinder take you to some other realm?"

"Not specifically. I'm trying to determine what Pathfinder is capable of. What Yggdrasil is capable of."

"Time travel?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. He's going to laugh. He's going to laugh. He didn't laugh.

"It's one possibility," he said evenly. He should have denied it. He was supposed to have denied it. He'd intended to deny it. She would have believed him. She was clearly skeptical of it.

"No, it's not. Time travel is completely theoretical, and if it were possible you probably wouldn't survive it, and if you somehow survived it…the consequences could be catastrophic. If that's what you're working on, then you're wasting your time."

"Says who?" Loki asked.

"Says the entire scientific community worldwide."

"Since when is Jane Foster concerned with what the rest of the scientific community thinks?" He could see the cliff ahead of him with crystal clarity and there was still time to turn and avoid it, but no cliff had ever looked more attractive than this one.

Jane stood there in silence for a moment, then sank down onto her chair and rubbed her forehead. "Well, you've got me there," she said with a tired little laugh. "But what makes you so sure it's actually possible?"

Loki sat down in the chair next to hers and leaned in, putting him at the same eye level as her. He barely had time to hope he didn't regret this impulsive decision to race straight over the cliff before the words were out. "Because I've done it."

"How do you know you've done it?"

Again, not the reaction he was expecting. "What do you mean, 'how do I know I've done it?'"

"I mean just what I said. I saw the code you've been working on, how you modified data recorded by Pathfinder. And I found the pieces of the field equations you worked on, and I can see the theoretical application in the way you went about solving them. But Loki, that's a long way – a really long way – from it actually working, and an even farther way from it working safely."

Loki smiled. Still time to turn from the cliff after all. But he'd already committed. He was running at full speed for the edge; it was just a little farther than he'd thought. He'd wanted to share this with her since his first success. And if she insisted on worrying about non-existent disastrous consequences and trying to prevent him from doing what he needed to with Pathfinder, he'd just have to convince her otherwise. Loki was good at convincing people of things. He thought, though, that his accomplishment would thrill her. He hoped. "No. I don't mean that I think I've successfully figured out how to make it work. I mean that I've done it. I've tested it. I've been to the past."

Jane stared at him, waiting for the punchline to the joke. None seemed forthcoming. He was grinning like a schoolboy, as if he was letting her in on some secret, and Jane couldn't help wondering if she ever sounded like that to other people. What she talked about, however, was backed up by rigorous scientific research and sound if unpopular theory. What Loki was talking about…reworking the data stream produced by a space travel device into source code simply did not turn a space travel device into a time travel device, assuming time travel was even possible in any meaningful sense. Jane reached out a hand to Loki's forehead.

Loki swatted her hand away. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I was trying to check if you have some kind of really high fever. Because you've either turned delusional or you've been out here doing something I'm really not going to like, and I'm just hoping for a high fever and delusions."

"I don't have a fever," Loki said crossly. "I don't get fevers. I'm telling you the truth, just as you asked me to. Shall I lie to you instead? I can still do that, if you prefer. What do you think I might have been doing out here that you're really not going to like?"

"I don't know…calling in backup from outer space? It's not like you haven't done that before." It was about the worst thing she could think of, and she didn't really think he'd do it…but it had crossed her mind.

"Backup," Loki repeated coldly. "Are you thinking of the Chitauri?"

"Or the Chitauri's leader."

Loki recoiled. "Even if I knew how to contact him, I would never do so. I have no desire to ever see him again, and I would not wish on your realm what he would do to it."

"You did before."

"Circumstances were different," Loki bit out, then closed his eyes for a moment to calm himself. "This is descending into nonsense. I haven't been trying to contact anyone, Jane. What I have done is prove what your own scientists have written about the time-axis as well as the space-axis… It is possible to travel along both, and I know this because I have done it myself."

"You have. Okay, Loki, so tell me. If you really made the trips from the two files I looked at, then-"

"Two?"

"Two. My laptop automatically backs up every file and logs every action into a separate area of the hard drive. I guess it's a good thing you didn't know about that."

Loki's lips pressed together thinly. So she's been spying on me. No, he thought then, unlikely. If she'd been actively watching everything I worked on, she would have come to me with questions weeks ago. "Go ahead, then."

"Based on what I saw in those files, and if what you're saying is true, then you went to Asgard around a week ago and over a thousand years ago. Nice weather?"

Loki narrowed his eyes. He had really not expected this reaction. "In fact, yes. Mostly sunny, though a thousand years ago a bit cloudy in the afternoon. Do you not recall noticing the color in my cheeks?" Loki watched as Jane's face slowly transformed. He wasn't sure if she quite believed him yet, but she didn't think it was all a jest anymore, either.

She did remember seeing a little pink in his cheeks, a couple of times. Macy had noticed it first, about a week ago. "You said that was from working out in the gym," Jane said cautiously. He seems serious.

"I said I'd been in the gym earlier. You made an assumption." It was, of course, precisely the assumption he'd intended her to make.

Jane nodded, but she barely processed the words. It was knocking around the edges of her mind now, trying to gain entry, but part of her still resisted. And the other part of her didn't know why. She'd never been afraid of unorthodox theories. Orthodox theories had always seemed a bit dull to her: why spend your career trying to simply affirm what everyone else around you is saying? But Loki wasn't even talking about theory. He was talking about practice. Reality. Experience. With time travel. With time travel. Somewhere, a door began to open. "You're serious."

"Completely," Loki said. At last, we're getting somewhere. "Shall I give you proof?"

"Um…okay?" A door was open, but that didn't mean she was ready to believe it and walk through just because he'd said it. He'd just admitted he was still lying to her, or at least twisting the truth.

"Do you remember the orange I gave you a couple of weeks ago?"

"Of course."

"Where do you think I got it from?"

"You said it was magic."

"In a manner of speaking. But not really. I also showed you an illusion of an orange – that was magic. And I could also take" – he paused and glanced around the room – "my hat and transform it to look like an orange. It would be solid…but I wouldn't advise eating it. At some level, you'd still be eating my hat."

"So you're saying…you're saying the orange you gave me, the one I ate, came from the past," Jane said, eyes pinned on Loki, watching every move, every expression, for any indication of falsehood, even though she wasn't sure she'd even see one if it was there.

"Precisely six months before that day, yes."

"You asked me about the date," Jane said, sitting up straighter and then rising from her chair. "You had to know the date. You…weren't sure if you returned to the right time?"

"That's correct," Loki said, keeping his seat. "That was my first test."

"Six months before that day…it was…May…"

"May 11th. And I traveled to November 11th."

"Where? Here?"

"Yes."

"November 11th…before we got here…summer season… Frederick," she said. Her gaze had drifted; now it snapped back to Loki. "Does this have anything to do with Frederick? That guy you were asking Wright about last Friday night?" That incident had always seemed off to her.

"I was Frederick. I changed my appearance so no one would recognize me, in case any of the winterovers that were already here then saw me. And indeed, Wright saw me. I told him my name was Frederick. He called me Fred, because apparently he cannot resist renaming me in whatever form I take, and he asked me about someone named Wilma. And Pebbles."

"The Flintstones. He was making a joke about The Flintstones. It was this cartoon, before I was born, but they still…" Jane's mouth fell open. The door flew off its hinges. "You talked to Wright…before we ever met him. You really did it. You went to the past and…" Jane shoved her chair aside and closed the small distance between her and Loki, then bent down and put her hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. "Tell me one more time. Tell me you did this, you used Pathfinder to travel to the past. And don't you dare lie to me."

"I'm not lying," Loki said, gritting his teeth for a moment to not react to Jane putting herself in this physically dominant position over him. "I did travel to the past, and I used Pathfinder to do it. But Pathfinder is nothing on its own. It's Yggdrasil that makes time travel possible; Pathfinder is merely a means of reaching and communicating with Yggdrasil."

Jane stood up, stepped back, and a moment later collapsed back into her chair, thoughts racing. Finally she looked up at Loki, who was watching her expectantly. "Show me," she said.

/


/

Loki rightly assumed Jane did not mean "Show me medieval Europe." They spent the next nearly three hours exploring the science of time travel, starting with Loki's explanation of how the idea had first occurred to him while reviewing what he'd read about Einstein's theory of general relativity.

"So you really were interested in Einstein," she said.

"He was quite a brilliant man," Loki conceded with a dip of his head. He showed her the image her friend Young-Soo had rendered of the interior of Yggdrasil, with far more tunnels that they'd been able to account for originally, and the evidence that each of those tunnels further branched.

Jane's eyes lit up. "But…they would have to be essentially infinite, if they lead to every point in time and to every place in all nine realms."

Loki nodded his agreement. Yggdrasil was a marvel, magnificent. Far more so than probably even Heimdall had ever realized.

Together they pored over the programming he'd used for Pathfinder. Jane was thoroughly engrossed, and Loki with her, reveling in the ability to actually discuss this with someone. And not just anyone, but Jane, who understood and appreciated everything he'd done.

When they reached the end of the file, which just happened to be the one from his next-to-last trip, four days ago, the ill-fated one when he'd gone to Asgard to try to see if his attempt to send a message of sorts to Thor had worked, Jane sat back and let her arms dangle down at her sides, letting everything percolate for a few minutes, while Loki sat by her in silence and let her.

Jane stared straight ahead, eyes entirely unfocused. The science of it, the numbers, the unique interpretation of the field equations…all of it was fascinating. It really shouldn't be possible. Every theory of it she knew of was problematic. Closed time-like curves required the universe to have physical characteristic that it didn't. Time travel through a wormhole required the violation of several energy conditions.

But apparently, Loki and that orange he'd brought back were living proof that it was. And that brought her back to the reality of time travel, the practical aspects of it, the actual travel. Because that was also really, really problematic. She looked over at Loki, still watching her with silent patience, as excited as she'd been to go through the data. Really, really problematic. To put it mildly.

"What have you been doing when you've…made these time trips?" There's a reason he didn't tell me about it…

"Nothing. Just testing it. The first test was as I told you, six months in the past right here at the South Pole. The last, a millennium ago on Asgard. In this manner I've determined that neither time nor location is an issue, as long as they're properly programmed."

"But you didn't just go and come back. When you went to November at the Pole, you went inside the Station and talked to people. You went to the galley. You took an orange. You-"

"I took more than one orange. I only gave you one orange," he said with a smirk.

Jane was getting too nervous to care about his teasing or even really notice it. "You interacted with people. You talked to Wright, Loki. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I wanted to go inside to confirm the date on the screens in the galley. I had no intention or desire to talk to Wright, not now, and not then. But once there I did develop the desire to eat something that hadn't been frozen for months, so I got a meal and sat down and he sat at my table. What was I to do? Tell him we hadn't met yet so he should go sit somewhere else? Get up and walk away? We talked for just a few minutes, with another person who joined us, and then I left. That's all."

"But you have no idea what the consequences of even that short interaction could be. I can't…oh, wow, I can't believe I'm even having this conversation," she said, squeezing her hands as her entire body went taut. "Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect?"

"No. But do go ahead and enlighten me, Dr. Foster," Loki said, his face cold and hard. This conversation was beginning to feel unpleasantly familiar. But Jane was not Odin, and Loki was not a boy. He would not capitulate to petty fears this time.

"It's part of chaos theory," she said, frowning deeply, perfectly aware that Loki wasn't actually interested in her explanation but determined to give it anyway. "It's the idea of sensitive dependency on initial conditions. It gets-"

"Fascinating."

"-its name from the possibility of the flapping of a butterfly's wings being the distinguishing event that results in the formation of a hurricane. In other words, seemingly inconsequential events can have a huge impact. So just by having that short conversation, just by bumping into someone in a hallway, just by taking an orange, you-"

"Three oranges, a banana, two apricots, a pear, and two carrots."

"Whatever. Would you please be serious? Any of those things could have consequences that you would never have imagined. You could change history. You…you did change history. When you…Wright remembers meeting you…or Frederick…before you actually met him when we first got here. And the other person…I remember, it was a guy named Vijay, he was here working on the Ten-Meter Telescope in the summer. You changed his history, too. You… Oh." Jane's stomach fell. "Oh, my God. That's… Loki, you aren't a scientist. You aren't doing this to prove some theory. You want to change history, don't you? That's what this is all about," Jane said, horrified at the prospect. The idea of anyone trying to change history – once she could get past the gut reaction that it wasn't possible in the first place – was frightening. But the idea of Loki trying to do it…that was truly terrifying. "That's why you didn't tell me about any of this."

"You have the wrong idea, Jane," Loki said. "I haven't changed anything. Nothing of importance. A two-minute conversation about televised entertainment has even less effect than a butterfly flapping its wings. It was merely an innocuous little test, no harm done," he said in his most reassuring voice. She need not know about his trip to New York. He would find that file in her backups and destroy it.

"Maybe not that time. What about the others? Wait…how many others? How many trips have you made?"

"Six," he answered. Plus the one to New York.

"Six," Jane breathed. "Okay…no more. It has to stop, Loki. God only knows what damage you've done already. I'm taking Pathfinder-"

"Why do you assume it can only be damage?" Loki asked, trying hard to remain calm. He had laid a lot on the line here with Jane, and he could not afford to let her sabotage it…and he didn't want to put himself in the position of having to stop her from sabotaging it. "Good can be done, Jane." Not when he tried to do it, apparently, but perhaps when others tried. Perhaps when she tried.

"Good? What, like saving the whales?"

"What?"

"In Star Trek, when…never mind. No. Nobody's saving any whales. No more time travel."

"Are you certain? What if it wasn't whales? What if it was something far more important? What if it was your parents?"

/


A big thank you as always to all of you dear readers and reviewers...I still hear from new readers who are somehow not daunted by the word count and I stand amazed. Thank you so much for your support. It means a great deal to me. Several people mentioned particularly liking the last chapter, which was quite a surprise to me, because I figured most folks wouldn't particularly care for it, actually.

Responses to guest reviews from the last two chapters (scroll down to skip to previews/excerpt):

"beneathisLOVE": Loki has indeed changed a LOT. But hopefully at every step along the way the changes have been more subtle, natural, believable - that's always been the goal. Yes, we're getting closer to the end. There's still stuff to go for sure, but I very much feel the looming of the climax. Thanks for the super kind words. But yes, be happy for the end! ;-)

"Guest" (May 3): I really, really do hope to fully write Eighteen. When I was writing the heavy Baldur stuff for this story it made me want to all the more. We'll see what happens when Beneath is done. In the meantime, Trials is about half done, and I think (hope!) folks will enjoy that one. Others are underway, too. Eighteen is long, heavy, ridiculously angsty, and not something I can undertake at the same time as Beneath.

"Guest" (May 2, May 1): Thank you!

"jackiemack916": Ha, I hope I didn't ruin Indy 3 for you! Do note that Loki's perception of Henry is a bit skewed, or colored through Loki's particular lens. And thanks!

"Emma": Ha, feel free to send donations! On second thought...that might result in my being sued by several billion-dollar corporations and ultimately my being homeless. For free is good. The "payment" for me is all the practice I get writing things I never would have written otherwise, the discipline I have learned, and all the awesome people I get to chat with on here. I'm glad you've enjoyed the character development! It's really the important thing for me here. So Jane knows more of what Loki's up to now... On my other stories see above, and as for "why did Loki want to hurt him in the first place?", you'll actually learn more about that in this story. Thank you!

"Guest" (April 23): I love me some angst. Glad you enjoyed!

"jacquelinelittle": Re arrows in the backside, yes, it would've been funny, and probably some kind of cosmic justice, really. Their armor does help protect them from the arrows, but they aren't wearing it everywhere. As for the breakout, Sif, Hogun, and Huskol did the best they could given the limited time available for planning and the restrictions on what they were able to do...yeah, if they had managed to take out all the guards, things might have gone differently.

And on to the usual previews! Except there's not much I can really say about the next chapter. Ch. 94 is titled "Temptation," and you can probably guess what it's about.

Excerpt:

She sat down at her desk and stared at the one picture of family she had there, of her and Erik after her hooding at Caltech. Everything had happened so quickly from the time SHIELD whisked her away to Tromso to the chaos of New York playing out on her television to the hectic preparations to come to the South Pole, that she had few personal items with her. All her photos of her parents were either back in New Mexico, or else in storage.

What if I could have more than photos?