Beneath
Chapter Ninety-Nine – Revelations
"The first test you already know about. There's nothing more to tell about it. And before that, you'll be happy to know, I did first send a probe."
Jane nodded. She was happy to hear that. Especially considering he obviously hadn't bothered to do that before he'd attempted his trip into the future. He'd apparently just assumed that if travel to the past worked, then travel to the future would as well. She was really going to have to find him some sci-fi books with time-travel-gone-wrong stories to get him to think this stuff through more.
"For the second test, I combined travel on the time-axis and space-axis. That was when I went to Christchurch. You know what I did there."
You changed history, she thought. To Loki, she only nodded again. There was no point getting into all that again.
"For the third test, I went to the South Pole again," he said, skipping over his actual third test, the trip to New York. That tale wouldn't exactly help his cause. He also couldn't tell her his true actions during this test, when he'd placed into her desk the book he'd bought in New York. He'd already come up with a substitute story as they'd made their way to the hillside. "I took a fork from the galley and placed it atop my wardrobe the day before we arrived there. When I returned to our own time, I checked and found the fork there." It was close enough to the truth; the date was the important thing to keep the same, because that she could check in her backup records.
Jane thought that one through quickly. "Did you take the fork from our present, or from the past?"
"The past," Loki answered quickly. He wasn't sure if one answer or the other was "right," but hesitation often suggested a lie. The book had come from the past, so it was at least the answer closest to the truth.
"And you never noticed it up there before?"
"No."
"Did you ever look up there before?"
"No. What difference would that make?"
"Well, it begs the question of whether it was there the whole time. I mean…was it there before you went back in time and put it there?"
"I wouldn't know," Loki said, pressing his eyes closed for a moment. He still didn't see why it mattered, the presence or absence of something when no one was aware of its existence. Had Jane found that book before he'd gone back in time and put it there? Such questions had crossed his mind a few times before, but he disliked thinking of these things and the endless spirals they sent his thoughts into. A short journey into madness, he thought with a sardonic smile.
"Okay. The fourth one?"
"I extrapolated a spatial reference system for Asgard based on our earlier trips there to test time travel to another realm, and I left a book there with a message. Then on the fifth, I returned to a few days later in an attempt to determine whether the message had been received, and as I told you earlier, I'm almost certain it was."
"What message?" Jane asked with an expression of discomfort. "To who?"
"It's complicated, and I don't wish to get into it. But it was nothing of great importance." She might view his attempt to provide Asgard with a small strategic advantage in its war positively, even though he'd really only done it as a test of what time travel would allow, but after her unexpectedly negative reaction to his suggestion to save her parents he suspected she would not.
"Loki, what did-"
"I don't actually have to tell you everything, you know. It was just a test. It's personal."
"Personal," Jane repeated flatly. He'd already told her some pretty personal stuff, and she him. What was so personal about a book? He's lying, she thought, and as the thought crystallized, so did her certainty that it was true.
"Yes."
"Just so you know, I know you're hiding something from me, and not just because it's personal. And that makes me nervous."
"I'm always hiding something, Jane. It's my nature. All my life I've been hiding something. But there's no need to be nervous. No harm was done." Except to four Vanir. But she doesn't need to know that.
Jane studied his face carefully. She saw no anger, no pain, no sign of any particular emotion at all. He wasn't going to budge. "Okay. So the sixth then? Wait, I remember, you went…wow."
"What?" Loki asked warily.
"You went to Asgard, right? Because the coordinates were really close to your fifth trip," she said. It was his fifth and sixth time travel trips she'd first studied the files for. "And…this is really amazing. You went to the year 1000…which…with respect to now, is the future. Wow. So why 1000?"
"It was an even number. I simply wanted to attempt travelling to the more distant past."
"But you said the dates are different here. That year on Asgard wouldn't have been anything special. And it wouldn't have been so long ago for you. If you wanted to test the distant past, you should have gone…I don't know, five thousand years in the past. So what happened in the year 1000?"
"I wasn't entering the date by Asgardian dating conventions. For your western Midgardian calendar, 1000 was a simple date to test."
Jane looked at him askance, then fell back into her thoughts. Loki wasn't budging, not even telling her it was "personal." But something again didn't seem right. Loki's first trip to the past was indeed random, simply six months earlier. His other trips, though, they'd had a purpose. People he'd wanted to try to see. A specific time or place he'd wanted to visit. A message he'd wanted to try passing, and which she tried not to think too much about, because he wasn't talking and all she could do was worry about it, which was pointless. And then he'd suddenly just picked an even number? "What did you do on that trip?"
"Nothing. I visited the realm, much as we're doing now. I confirmed the date and I returned to Midgard, to the present. And you see? No horrible consequences. I got to enjoy a bit of sunshine. I have missed the sun terribly, I must say. Haven't you?" Loki asked, trying to keep his tone and even the pace of his words even. He could tell Jane was thinking, and it would probably be best if she didn't think about that too much. This wasn't among the things he'd intended to talk to her about.
"Um, yeah," Jane said, when she caught up with what Loki was saying. "Yeah, it's really beautiful here. And the sky…," she looked up at it, past Loki. It was a clear blue, but in that one direction – toward the broken end of the bridge, she knew instinctively, though she hadn't seen it on this trip – diffuse wisps of pink were visible, and a few brighter spots of light…stars close enough to be visible in broad daylight? But only in that direction? And she hadn't seen it when Loki left her on the bridge.
Loki craned his neck around to see the portion of the sky she was watching. "The layers of the atmosphere are different there. The water molecules are-"
"Loki, stop," Jane interrupted as some basic math ran through her head. 976, and Loki was ten. He'd gone to 1000, when he was 34. Baldur was born when he was fifteen. So Baldur was nineteen when he'd gone back. Or, since Baldur had died at eighteen, sometime before Baldur's birthday that year. It wasn't a coincidence. Out of over a thousand years just from Loki's own life to choose from, there was no way that was a coincidence.
"What?" He'd had her. He knew he'd had her. She should have been listening with rapt attention. He chastised himself. He'd somehow forgotten Jane's fierce intelligence for a moment. With Thor, and with most others, a distraction would have been enough. With Jane, he should have prepared a story, an actual reason to give her for that trip. She clearly didn't believe it was random. And no amount of distraction would work now, certainly not for longer than a moment. So he had a decision to make. To weave a story for her that was most beneficial to himself…or to tell her the truth. Ultimately, whatever else it may be, this visit to Asgard was meant to be beneficial to himself. But he'd meant to achieve that benefit through honesty. He began to feel hollow inside, his thoughts sluggish. He didn't know what he would say; he couldn't think clearly enough to make a decision.
Memories flashed through Jane's mind. Loki had encouraged her to go back in time and change her parents' fate. "It would be so easy," he'd said. "You could have them back again."
Loki stared down at the grass and waited for her to ask.
"You saved Baldur's life?" Jane asked amidst shallow, tight breaths. What damage had it done? None? And if it had done no damage, then maybe…maybe…
"No," Loki said, startled. He hadn't expected her to go that far in her conclusion.
"Then…what? I studied differential equations and mathematical physics. I can add and subtract, you know. You went back to a time either right before Baldur died, or right after, and I can't imagine why you'd go back right after. Unless…" Another thought occurred to her. "To escape the punishment?"
"No," Loki said again, harshly this time. I would never do such a thing, he thought, and almost said, but held his tongue. From Jane's perspective, had he not already done so much worse? Did his own heritage not ensure, in fact, that honor was for him a foreign concept, drilled into him in Asgard but never fully taking root? He swallowed back the bitterness.
Then what?! Jane wanted to ask – demand – but instead she waited. Loki had done something on that trip, of that she had no doubt, and surely it was connected to Baldur. But if she still remembered talking about Baldur with him, the night terror he'd had about it, the horrific punishment he'd told her about…didn't that mean he hadn't changed any of that? If he'd never been tied up under a giant snake, how could he later tell her about being tied up under a giant snake? And, in the present, if he'd never been tied up under a giant snake, how would he know that he needed to go to the past to ensure he didn't get tied up under a giant snake? It was a classic paradox.
Loki, meanwhile forced himself to gather his thoughts as though they were physical things, frayed ends clenched tightly in his fists. He needed Jane's trust. And he was on the verge of losing it yet again. But judging by her unwillingness to use time travel to save even her own parents and how strictly she opposed even the smallest changes to history, he couldn't imagine she would react well to this. On the other hand, in the end, he decided he had no real choice at this point.
"I tried to prevent his death," he finally said. "I failed."
Jane's lips parted, but no sound came out. Loki had sounded detached, facing straight ahead so she was watching his profile, with no particular expression on his face. He'd tried to change something…and he'd failed to do so. That simple statement begged so many questions, for depending on what had happened, it could hold the key to the ultimate understanding of the implications of time travel. He'd made small changes that apparently hadn't resulted in significant consequences. He'd tried something much bigger, and he hadn't even been able to do it. Why? she wondered. What are all the factors that made it different?
But Loki wasn't a science experiment. He hadn't failed at just anything. He'd failed at saving his brother's life. Jane set aside the science. Though the competition wasn't always an easy one with her, human compassion had to come first. Loki sat still, hands resting on the grass on either side of him, and she suddenly remembered him sitting on the ice near Pathfinder grieving deeply, having thrown up, just a few days earlier. Four days, to be precise, she thought. May 21st. The day of his sixth trip… She chastised herself for not having connected those two things before. "Loki? What happened? What went wrong?" she asked quietly.
Loki gave her a sidelong look, never moving his head, and stared back down the hill again. "I thought perhaps we could get the shouting over first."
Jane knitted her brow in confusion, but only for a second. "No shouting. Look, I'm convinced that trying to change history is a really bad idea. But I can't be mad at you for trying to save your brother's life. The impulse to do something like that…it comes out of a good place. It comes out of love."
Loki scoffed at that and turned further away, looking now out in the general direction of the bifrost and the sky he'd tried and failed to distract Jane with. These failures were becoming something of a pattern with him, really, he thought sullenly. "It came out of an oath. An oath I made to Baldur's mother a very long time ago. I try to keep my oaths. It's as simple as that."
Jane shook her head. Does he actually think anyone would believe that? "Why do you pretend to be so cold? It's obvious that you aren't."
"Is it? Don't be so certain. Cold is in my nature."
A minute or two passed in silence. Jane had the sense that there was something deeper there, as she often did with Loki. He was one of the most frustrating people she'd ever met, and she didn't even know where to begin in responding to what he'd just said. "Okay. So on this trip to the past, which you only made because of some ancient promise and not at all for any other reason whatsoever…will you tell me what happened? It must've been bad. A few days ago when I found you behind the jamesway, and I thought you just needed to get outside and clear your head…you'd just come back from Asgard's past. Right?"
Loki swallowed. He may as well tell it. She knew the worst of it already, from her perspective. There wasn't really that much more to tell. "I tried to stop myself from killing him. Something stopped me from doing so."
"Something stopped you? What do you mean?" Jane asked, grimacing as she realized the scientific curiosity was perhaps eclipsing the human compassion a bit.
"I don't know. It was like…a form of magic, but one I'm not familiar with. My future self, making sure I played my role, or some other force. I simply don't know. But someone was making sure that I could not do anything to stop my past self from ending Baldur's life. I tried everything I could think of, and nothing worked. Nothing. I should have been able to stop it. It should have been simple. It should never have happened in the first place. I was careful. I never meant to…" Loki swallowed again. He was getting too worked up about this. It was over. "It should never have happened," he repeated.
She'd decided she wasn't going to bring this up again, wasn't going to ask him about it again, certainly wasn't going to push him on it. But he seemed ready to talk about it, maybe, and he didn't seem like he was particularly tense or at risk of exploding; then again, his moods could shift on a dime. "Why shouldn't it have happened?"
Loki let himself look in Jane's direction again, but his gaze was unfocused and angled downward, somewhere in the vicinity of the grass near her feet. The memories were burdensome, and just like that night with Jane in his chambers at the South Pole, the urge to unload them was overwhelming and he gave in with barely a thought. "The arrow was thin. Thin and light. Do you know what mistletoe looks like, Jane?" His eyes finally went up to hers.
"I, uh, I guess just the sprigs they-"
"No one forms weapons from mistletoe, for good reason. Its branches are thin and light and weak and I made it thinner and lighter and I put it in the hands of an old blind man. He was eighteen, nearly at the full strength of an Aesir, his flesh was already denser, more resistant to injury than that of a child or a mortal. It should have barely pierced his skin. It pierced his heart. He died in seconds. Again." Loki realized his eyes had become moist, and quickly faced forward again to try to quell these emotions that should have remained buried, before actual tears could form. He was not going to cry in front of Jane. There were limits to how far he could permit himself to go, even with her.
It was a strange story, Jane thought as Loki spoke; she wondered how Loki could have been so confident he wouldn't actually harm Baldur and then been so very, very wrong. But he'd been confident, apparently, that he could also prevent Baldur's death, and he'd been confident that he could go to the future and find a cure for Huntington's, and he'd been wrong on both counts. Recklessness? Even though he'd done some reckless things at the South Pole, the glimpses he'd let her see of his life gave her the impression that he was not generally reckless, that instead it was Thor who'd been more reckless. Loki, of course, could create whatever impression he chose, she supposed.
Those thoughts flickered past quickly, and a few seconds passed before Jane realized what Loki had said at the end. And that his eyes were glassy with what appeared to be unshed tears. It made her uncomfortable, though she couldn't say why. Maybe just because she knew it made him uncomfortable. Maybe because if it were anyone other than Loki, she would probably be offering a hug right about now. But it was Loki, and she felt a little uneasy. She swallowed hard before speaking. "You, uh, you saw him die again? In the past?"
Loki nodded. "Because I kept trying, right up until the last moment. But it was all in vain."
The decision didn't take long. Loki was different from anyone else she'd ever known in a lot of ways. But in a lot of other ways he was no different at all. His grief and pain, those were no different from anyone else's. No different from hers. She came up to her knees and moved back over to Loki's side to sit again, then reached an arm up behind his and around his back, her fingers giving a light squeeze to his opposite side as she felt him tense up and she tried not to do the same.
Loki held his breath in an attempt to remain utterly still, stunned out of his memories and aware of nothing else now except Jane's nearness, and her arm around him.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you lost your brother. I'm sorry you had to go through it again. I'm sorry for all the guilt you've carried because of it. I'm sorry for the awful way you were punished."
At that Loki leaned sharply away from her far enough to dislodge her arm before sitting up straight again, gaze fixed ahead of him. "Save your sympathy. I deserved it. I deserved what I suffered and more. He was being lenient. The penalty for killing any immediate family member of the ruling king is death. I should have been killed." How many times have I escaped death? Even when I chose it…
"Is that considered…lenient, then, on Asgard? What was done to you?" Jane asked, her arm resting awkwardly at her side now.
"No," Loki said with a bitter half-laugh. "I suppose not. And no one else was punished that way afterward." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to force the tension from his muscles. "It was a lifetime ago."
Jane nodded. There really wasn't anything more to say about that, she supposed, since she didn't particularly want to get into an argument with him about whether he'd deserved his sentence. "Loki…"
"What?" he asked, turning his head and looking her way again. "You may as well ask," he said when she hesitated further. If he had told her this – words he hadn't dared speak since uttering them in his own frantic defense and finding them not believed – then he could tell her anything. Almost anything.
"Why did you want to shoot an arrow at him in the first place?"
Another deep breath. More words that had never been believed. Words that hadn't been considered sufficient to be believed. "There were threats against him. We never learned who sent them, though some later believed it was me. Baldur was afraid, and afraid to show that he was afraid, and it was destroying him. My mother-" Another deep breath. "Frigga gathered an unbelievable amount of energy for a massive enchantment…not unlike what your mythology records. Then afterward…perhaps because he'd been so…so on edge before, the seeming invincibility made him arrogant and foolish. He took not even the most basic measures to protect himself. No armor. No weapons. No Einherjar. He stopped going to training, because he had more fun taking absurd risks and letting people throw things at him, and taunting them to come up with more and more inventive and dangerous things to try to hurt him with. Frigga's enchantment was powerful and wide-ranging…but there's no enchantment in the Nine Realms that will make a person completely impervious to harm. Baldur wouldn't listen to reason. I wanted to…I felt like I had to do something to get through to him, to convince him to take his safety more seriously, because if whoever was threatening him was persistent enough, he would find a way to kill him. So I…designed a lesson, you might say."
"You were trying to protect him," Jane said. Loki wasn't particularly emotional now; if anything he seemed kind of distant. She could almost see it through his eyes, and could only imagine the devastation he must have felt when his attempt to ensure his brother paid more attention to his safety – even if it was obviously riskier than he'd thought – resulted in his death. Maybe that was why he'd brushed aside her sympathy at his punishment today. Maybe he really did think he deserved it. Jane felt tears pricking at her eyes.
"My demonstration was a little too successful. I certainly proved he wasn't invulnerable. Ironic, isn't it?" he asked with an arched brow.
Jane frowned, and they sat there for a while in silence that was remarkably comfortable given what they'd just been talking about. The sun had begun to sink off to their left before Jane spoke again. "I need to ask you something. And I…I don't want you to take it the wrong way, okay? I get that what you did…I mean, what you wanted me to do, for my parents, that you thought it was a good thing. And I…it means a lots to me, Loki, it really does. But…if you knew you weren't able to save Baldur…why did you want me to go back to try to save them, when you knew how awful it was for you to not be able to stop his death, and to see it happen all over again?"
"It would work for you. Whatever it was that was stopping me…it wouldn't stop you."
"But how do you know that?"
"Because nothing stopped me from anything else I did," he said. She didn't know about the biggest change he'd made, at Tony Stark's tower, but she knew the smaller ones, more or less; she knew enough for it to be clear. "The only thing I was stopped from doing was preventing myself from killing Baldur. I was meant to kill Baldur."
"Loki, you can't-"
"I don't want to discuss it, Jane."
"But-"
"I mean it. I will not discuss this."
Jane let out a frustrated sigh. So Loki had never thought he would make her suffer the way he had. She hadn't thought so anyway; she knew he wouldn't harm her physically, and while he could say some cruel things when he wanted to push her away and he'd said some spiteful things about Thor in the past, she was pretty sure he would never be that cruel to her emotionally. But his certainty that the same thing wouldn't happen to her seemed naïve. She was grateful beyond expression now that she hadn't given in to the temptation to go back to try to prevent her parents' deaths. A thousand times worse than not having them in her life right now would be shoving a dozen nails in a tire that remained inflated, or trying to delay her younger self getting in the car long enough to miss the time of the accident, or whatever else she might try, only to see the car pull away on schedule for its date with destiny. Was there something truly unique about Loki's attempt to save Baldur? Or just something that made it different from the things he happened to have done on his previous trips to the past? There was no way to know if he wouldn't tell her more about it. And there was probably no ethical way to test it, either.
When several minutes had passed and it seemed Jane was done with her questions, Loki bent forward and began tugging off his boots, setting them on his other side, eye momentarily drawn to the spot where he could still see the damage one of them had taken from an Einherjar's blade, even if Jane perhaps could not. He next pulled off his socks, and dropped them in the boots. For an instant, he felt young again – really young – and could imagine himself flopping back into the grass, hands clasped under his head, or perhaps taking off and running barefoot, solely for the fun of it. He would do neither. It was time to get to what he'd brought Jane to the privacy of this hillside to tell her.
"I don't trust easily, Jane. But you have…proven trustworthy, and there's something that I need to trust you with now."
"Okay," Jane said, growing a little nervous. Loki sounded strange, guarded.
"And to be honest, I'm only telling you this because I need you to trust me…and I know I haven't given you much cause to do so."
"In the biggest things you have, that you wouldn't hurt me or anyone else here, I mean at the Pole."
Loki glanced away for a moment. She would never know how close he'd come to violating even that trust. "I don't trust easily, and I don't like admitting to weakness. Nearly two months ago, I told you about an enchantment that Odin placed on me. The one that causes me to receive any injury I inflict on a mortal."
Jane nodded, thinking back to the moment when he'd told her. Right after he'd healed the damage he'd caused from nearly choking her to death. It seemed like ages and ages ago, far more than two months, and it made her realize just how much her relationship with Loki had changed in all that time. That was not a Loki she could joke with, or tell about what it was like when her parents died. That was not a Loki who told her anything unless it was to manipulate her in some way, much less confide in her about things she suspected he told no one else.
"And I told you about the mark. The scar on my wrist. Such a mark is common with certain types of enchantments. It's not usually a necessary part of the magic itself, rather it serves as a reminder of the enchantment's existence."
Jane listened, and waited for Loki to continue. He had told her about that scar twice now – once as Lucas, and once as Loki – and both times he'd been so angry and bitter. Now he sounded more like some kind of magic school teacher or something – albeit a sort of grim one – for an elective Jane would happily sign up for.
Loki ran his tongue around his teeth. He did not want to do this. But he felt he had to. He cleared his throat. "It's not the only one I bear," he said then, and drew up his right leg, crossing it over his left knee and turning his ankle to the side so that the sole angled upward, toward Jane.
Jane's eyes were immediately drawn to it – several black marks, surrounded by a puffy white blister, some kind of untreated wound. The whole foot was a bit swollen, and reddened in marks from his boot. "What happened?" she asked, looking back up at Loki and quickly getting rid of the grimace she realized she wore.
"I stepped on a tiny creature with poisonous spines, and I forgot I was in prison and without my boots. As it turned out, it was part of an enchantment. When I use magic for something Odin wouldn't approve of…" For causing mischief, Loki thought, faltering, remembering Odin's terse words that had left him to figure out on his own what was allowed and what was not. And he had figured it out, he'd thought, had been punished less, had begun to think before using magic, to consider his motivations, just as his dear old "father" had intended. Until Baldur. He'd had the purest of motivations, the most honorable of intentions, and he'd still been punished. His eyes refocused on Jane, watching him curiously but waiting in silence. He took a steadying breath and continued. "The wound sends severe pain up my leg, but it has an even worse consequence. Do you remember Friday night, when you woke me from a dream?" Loki asked.
"Yes, of course." How could I ever forget?
"Ronny…overheard me," Loki began, recalling that he still didn't know exactly what it was that Ronny had overheard, only that it was enough for him to go get Jane to wake him in the middle of the night, "because the sound barrier that I created is not as strong as it once was. It failed, like a knot slipping loose, in one corner of the room, on the side shared with Ronny. My ability to use magic has been greatly weakened. It simply…doesn't respond to me as it should. It has grown weaker with each transgression or simple miscalculation on my part about what is acceptable and what is not. Do you remember when I made myself look like you?"
"Yeah," Jane said with something halfway between a smile and a grimace.
"But not completely, remember?"
"Right…you weren't able to change completely?"
"I was not. I've been able to track the decline through my ability to transform my own body. This enchantment…it's like a curse. A poison born from magic. Odin even referred to it as such. It spreads, and prevents my own energy – the energy that enables magic – from responding as I wish. This is also why I did not wish to try to make us invisible on any trip to the past. There is a risk, small but growing, that the illusion would fail."
"So you've, uh…you've had that," Jane said, sticking her chin out toward Loki's foot and trying not to look at it again, "this whole time? Since the beginning of February?" She thought it must hurt, but she couldn't recall seeing him with even a hint of a limp.
"A wound which will not heal. Yes."
"And the magic loss…it's like a punishment?"
"It was meant to be a lesson. But I've learned it, like it or not, and it doesn't happen often now." Except for when related to time travel…but inconsistently. "The problem is, I still suffer with the consequences, and I've been weakened far worse than was his aim. Odin didn't intend to leave me here forever, you know. I have enemies, Jane. On your world, on this world, throughout the Nine Realms and beyond. I told you before, the other realms wish to capture me and deliver me to Jotunheim, and on Asgard they think me a traitor. Odin never intended me to be unprotected, unable to properly defend myself. He said so explicitly," Loki added, to bolster the bit of truth interspersed with lies. At least he thought it was truth. Odin hadn't said that explicitly, but Loki hadn't been punished for defending himself with magic on Svartalfheim, anyway. Defending himself, at least from anyone other than Asgard's Einherjar, to whom he was instead apparently supposed to just surrender, wasn't making mischief of the sort he was disallowed.
"What was the lesson?" Jane asked, remembering how Loki used to speak of a lesson he was to learn –to accomplish something with Earth's science rather than magic. She'd figured out that one was a lie back in early April.
"To consider my actions before using magic. To use it only" – in ways Odin deems acceptable! – "in appropriate ways. To become" – this one smarted even worse, and Loki had to pull all his effort into not letting his ire show at having to say such an insipid, pandering, humiliating thing – "a better person."
It sounded plausible, Jane thought. But then, she'd thought the explanation that Loki could fulfill his task on Earth by using Pathfinder to get home, giving up magic like Thor had to give up his full strength, plausible at first, too. Though she'd always had doubts. Still, this seemed more likely. "You have," she said after a moment. "I mean…you're-"
"Don't. Spare us both, Jane," Loki said, feeling like his skin was crawling. A better person. Her standards didn't need to be very high, really, for him to achieve that in her eyes. By any Midgardian standards, the fact that the South Pole's research outpost still stood undamaged could be taken as evidence that he was a better person. But it was true – he'd changed in his time at the Pole, and in ways Jane would describe as better. He was associating regularly, freely, with mortals. He even actually liked some of them, and he enjoyed time spent with Jane more often than not. He'd enjoyed showing her Asgard, and if he enjoyed it a little bit more because Thor surely would have liked to but it was him who'd gotten to do it instead, that didn't negate the better. He'd begun, at times, to feel insidious creeping guilt gnawing away at him for some of his actions on Midgard, despite how hard he tried to place himself above it and ignore it. For all these things he blamed Jane, yet he couldn't even really call it "blame," because somewhere along the way he'd given up fighting her and become a more or less willing party to her influence, he realized. Whose fault was it, if he chose to surrender?
And yet, am I not still simply doing what is in my own best interest to do? I need her trust, now more than ever. The rest is temporary. All of it. This winter will come to an end, and I will cast this off. I will cast her off, along with this "better person." Even as he thought it, though, he wondered if there weren't an element of self-deception in it. Leaving the South Pole wasn't going to be easy. Settling on a new purpose, dedicating himself to it with complete focus and doing whatever was necessary to achieve it no matter who or what stood in his way… He'd calmed at the South Pole. Relaxed. Grown soft. That would have to change. But it was hard to feel the hatred and rage that still simmered beneath the surface while sitting on this peaceful hillside with Jane sitting quietly at his side, both of them looking as though they belonged here. Yet neither of them did. If anything, she belonged here more than he; her race had never been an enemy of Asgard.
"Is it really that you're supposed to become a better person…," Jane began, giving voice to what she'd been thinking, "or the person you used to be? Before New York, before Puente Antiguo, before…things got so tense with your family?"
"I can never be the person I was before. That person exists only in the past." That person was a fiction.
Jane nodded. "I guess that's true for everybody, really. Time changes us. Experiences. Other people. I just meant…you spent a thousand years not trying to take over other people's planets…so maybe…" She trailed off, not quite sure how to say what she was wanted to, not quite sure what she was even getting at herself. Loki wasn't helping her out, barely reacting at all, so she gave up and switched tacts. "Anyway, if that's true, what you said about Odin's lesson and you learning it…and if what you said before is also true, about Thor also having to learn a lesson when he was sent to Earth…well, it was pretty obvious when Odin thought he'd learned it."
"Yes, it was, wasn't it?" Loki said, pausing then, relaxing his fingers from where's they'd dug into the carpet of grass, hoping he hadn't sounded too eager. The lines of thought he'd drifted into moments earlier were highly uncomfortable. This he seized upon. This he could work with. A burst of guilt flared up. He forged ahead anyway. "Thor was also sent his hammer to reclaim, something to respond to him as soon as he'd proven himself worthy in Odin's eye, even when Odin's eye was not upon him. I was sent nothing. Even if I permitted myself to be seen here, even if Odin would choose to recognize any improvements in my character" – Loki couldn't mask his sarcasm here – "instead of simply imprisoning me unjustly for treason… Asgard is rather busy at the moment. And therein lies the problem. It doesn't matter what I do or don't do at this point. I will languish on Midgard, suffering, my condition surely worsening as I make further errors, until an enemy comes for me, and finds me severely weakened and struggling to protect myself."
The words – and Loki's drawn face – swam in Jane's mind. All this time, he'd said nothing about any of this. She wondered briefly if he was making it all up, since if he could show her an illusion of an orange, and make all those illusions of himself in Stuttgart, he could surely make an illusion of a gross-looking wound on the bottom of his foot. But she couldn't imagine why, and it seemed to fit with other things she knew. She remembered, too, now, that Thor had said "enchantments," plural. And if it was all true…then Loki could really be in danger. Maybe not right now, but he wouldn't be able to remain hidden forever. Someone would recognize him, or the other realms would somehow figure out where he was… She didn't doubt for an instant what he'd said about his problem with magic. There was no way he would have willingly let himself be overheard in the grips of a night terror. "You have to go to Asgard and- I mean, in our time, and-"
"We've discussed that. They've laid a trap. They're at war, and they think I instigated it."
"Thor wouldn't turn his back on you, Loki, I know he wouldn't. And your mother-"
"Thor thinks I tried to kill him. When I saw him in the past, someone hidden with invisibility attacked him from behind, and he thought it was me. Frigga, she too believes I'm involved in the plot against Asgard; this I overheard during your first trip to Asgard. The Einherjar will find me first, anyway, and they'll not spare me after losing so many of their number in this war." The last was probably not true, Loki thought; the Einherjar were highly disciplined and would not carry out an unsanctioned killing of a trapped man…but it was also possible that they would consider him simply an enemy, and his death therefore sanctioned.
"Thor-" Jane sighed and looked away, down the hillside where she noticed the treeline was no longer as distinct as it once was. She glanced up and to the left; the sun was sinking low. She turned back to Loki. She'd wanted to contradict him, that Thor wouldn't really believe Loki had done such a thing. But he'd already tried to kill Thor before, so why wouldn't he believe he'd done so again? She had so many other questions, too – how, and why, had he gone to see Thor? How was Thor? Who was trying to kill him, and had he been hurt? But this information was old now anyway, so she let it go to focus on the problem at hand. Loki was in danger, and Asgard couldn't – or wouldn't – help. Maybe someone else could… "I can talk to Tony."
"Oh, yes, Jane, do that, please. I'm sure he'll simply extend his invitation to use his lovely home on California's coast to me as well, and gladly provide my security. I'm certain SHIELD will have no problem with that arrangement at all. Perhaps his fellow Avengers can even join us. The archer, the green beast, all of them. We can have a rousing game of Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey and afterward share bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and reminisce about the good old days when I enslaved them or tried to kill them. We could invite Fury, too, and I could finally repay the hospitality he showed me when-"
"Okay, okay, I get it." Even if Tony could be persuaded to help, it wasn't a long-term solution, and there was no way SHIELD would stand by content to let Loki live it up in freedom and comfort in Malibu…or anywhere else. And no matter what they thought on Asgard now, Thor had said in the beginning that neither he nor Odin wanted Loki hunted. "But what, then? What do you- No. No, Loki," Jane said, figuring out what he must want. "You can't go back and change history, whatever it is you're thinking, preventing those enchantments or whatever, you can't-"
"That's not it," Loki said, swallowing back a burst of some unpleasant emotion. "No, Loki." "I don't need to change anything. But I do need assistance, and because of the trap on Asgard, the only way to get it is through the past. There's someone I know on Alfheim, someone who's a strong master of magic, one of the strongest in the Nine. She should be able to remove Odin's curses. Enchantments," he quickly corrected for Jane's benefit. "I have no way to know what type of coordinates to use to program Pathfinder to send me anywhere on Alfheim, but I know how to get to Alfheim from Asgard. The problem there is the trap."
"-the trap," Jane finished with him. "So…you want to go to Asgard sometime before the trap was set, and from there go to Alfheim and this person who can remove the enchantments," she said, slowly, trying to think it through as she spoke.
"Correct."
"Loki…that would really be interfering in-"
"It would not be. No more than…than talking to Jolgeir a thousand years in the past. Or talking to Wright six months in the past. It won't affect her. And it won't affect me, not in my past. As soon as I'm free, I'll go right back to the future."
"Oh, God. I really wish you hadn't said that."
"What? Why?"
"That's what Marty McFly thought, too."
"Who is- Never mind. Jane…I have to do this. It's the only way. I have to be able to defend myself. If the forces who come against me are strong enough, and numerous enough, magic will be the only way I'll be able to. I will go to Alfheim in secret. I will get the assistance I need. I will leave in secret. I will come back…to the South Pole," Loki said, remembering then the movie that Jane had once invited him to and changing his wording, "and all will be well. It will change nothing except enabling me to protect myself as I know best. And this isn't a new idea. When I tried to return to Asgard and barely made it back, my intention even then was to go to Alfheim. I have planned everything out to the last detail, when to go, how to get there unnoticed, what to say, what to do, contingencies… I could have done all of this without telling you. I could have lied to you about the time travel. You didn't believe I'd actually succeeded in it, remember? But I wanted you to know. I wanted…I wanted to share it with you." It was true, of course – all of this was true. Somehow saying it out loud, though, that last…it sounded far more sentimental than it ever had inside his own head. Sentimental, though, he figured, could actually work in his favor. Still, if he'd realized it beforehand, he wasn't sure he would have said it. "I would like your support," he added, and decided he should stop there and give Jane – who was looking a little overwhelmed – time to respond.
Jane let her eyes fall closed for a moment, then squared her shoulders and opened them. She was tiring of these constant ethical quandaries. Loki's face was open. Honest. Even earnest, she might say. But that was no guarantee of anything; Loki was a master manipulator. At the same time, he was right, he could have pulled the wool over her eyes about his time travel success if he'd tried, though she thought she would have figured it all out anyway with more time to study those files. He had trusted her with it. She could have told Tony, she could have contacted SHIELD. Instead, she'd wound up sitting next to him on a hill on Asgard in the past.
Should she be helping him do this at all? Allowing him to do it? In a sense it felt kind of like assisting a jail break. Those enchantments were there for a reason. They stopped him from hurting anyone, and from causing trouble with magic. And despite what she'd said when he first told her about the one connected to the scar on his wrist, it sounded like they were working. On the other hand, these were special circumstances. Odin hadn't known Asgard would be embroiled in war when he sent Loki to Earth with these punishments. Maybe he really hadn't intended to leave him here this long, or let him be so weakened in his use of magic.
Would Loki really stick to what he said? Would it mean something to him if she trusted him? He seemed to think there was no one left on Asgard who cared about him, and that couldn't be healthy, so maybe it did help him. But she didn't trust him, not completely. She'd be naive to. In the big picture, yes. In the details…no. And the devil, so the saying went, was in the details. Yet she'd trusted him to come here with him, when she hadn't even known when or exactly where they were going. And other than that incident with Jolgeir it had gone really smoothly, with nothing likely to have any real impact on the timeline. He knew how strongly she felt about that, and maybe because she'd been at his side the entire time…
"I hope I don't regret this," she finally said, looking him steadily in the eye, "but I'll support you doing this on two conditions."
"And they are?" Loki asked, his voice carefully even.
"First, there are two enchantments you've told me about, but only one of them is affecting your use of magic. So only one of them comes off."
He worked his jaw. He could live with that, for now at least; the one on his wrist was not a priority. It was the principle of the thing, that Jane thought she could dictate such things to him. Of course, the reality was, if he wanted to keep things simple, she could. "Agreed. Your other condition?"
"I'm going with you."
/
I hope you're still enjoying Loki-and-Jane-on-Asgard...I expected this to be two chapters and it became four! This is so sadly typical. ;-) One downside of it is the warped time perception that results...Ch. 96 "Proposal" through this chapter and the next all take place on the same day, May 25 (and December 3, 976!).
Gold stars to "MrsSwords" and "ladyblakeney99" for guessing that Loki might tell Jane the truth (Loki-style truth) about the curses. And "QQina," "MrsSwords," and "paige-dot-louise94" got their wish for a hug. Sort of? You can decide if it "counts." ;-)
If you mentioned it in a review then we've chatted about it already, but just wanted to clarify for anyone who wondered if yellow was also Frigga's color, thus leaving Loki seriously on the outs of "that color thing," it was a coincidence that Frigga was wearing yellow. In the background I've developed for all this in my head, her color would actually be red, but since Thor was given red as heir she hasn't really worn it much, to avoid identifying with one son over the other.
We have passed the two-year anniversary of my obsession with Loki, and are a few days from the two-year anniversary of my first planning for this story, an exploration of Loki's motivations. Maybe I'll share those notes when the story's over. I never expected I wouldn't be done with this story by now; I thought I'd be back to a commercial novel by now, which is in part how I justified the amount of time I've sunk into this fic. Of course I enjoy it immensely regardless, and I will get there eventually!
Teasers from [still can't believe I'm typing this] Ch. 100: Jane and Loki have a wee difference of opinion, but there's also some laughter and emotion. And some inter-realm wildlife education.
Excerpt:
"Who controls your laptop, Jane?" Loki asked with a small, cool smile.
"Who knows where the axes and the ice picks are kept, and where the laptop and Pathfinder are?"
