Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Two – Betrayal

Thor stood outside the chambers where Nadrith had been imprisoned, just a few floors below his own, before dawn. He'd conferred with Bragi and Tyr, and then with his mother, who held vigil at Odin's bedside when she was not needed elsewhere, then took his mother's advice and went up to his chambers to rest. He hadn't thought he'd be able to sleep, but he hadn't been horizontal for long before he was pulled under.

He felt a little better now, his mind a little clearer. And how many Aesir had died while he slept?

He clenched his jaw, drew in a breath, pushed open the door, stepped through. Nadrith wasn't there in the front room, but the chambers were large.

"Treat him as a king, Your Majesty. Not a common enemy," Bragi told him.

"He isn't a king to me. He's the man I wrestled to the ground every day centuries ago. The man I went to taverns with, adventured with. The man I celebrated with when he took his father's throne, as he would have with me when my time came."

"To Alfheim he is a king. Their king. They love him dearly. You must remember that, Thor. Your Majesty."

Bragi though he had treated Nadrith as a common enemy, in his treatment of him after capturing him. But he did not treat common enemies the way he'd treated Nadrith. Nadrith was no common enemy. Nadrith was an old friend who'd betrayed him. The last time he'd thrown someone to the ground in anger like that…it was Loki.

"Loki is alive."

The words didn't sink in immediately. Thor had flown here to the emptied throne room upon being informed that he was needed urgently. He'd found his father slightly slumped in his throne and his mother sitting on the steps near his feet, cheeks stained with tears. He'd feared whatever news they had to tell him. He'd never expected those words.

It was Heimdall, the only other person present, who spoke them,.

"How is that…" How is that possible…does it matter? "Where is he? Is he all right?"

"He is on Midgard. He appears weary, but well."

"Midgard," Thor echoed, stunned. "How did he…" He clenched his jaw for a moment. These questions didn't matter. They could wait. He turned to Odin. "Is there any way you can send me there? I'll bring him home. I…I can't believe this," his gaze dropping vacantly to the polished floor. "Loki, my brother…alive." That they did not share blood, that Loki had sent the Destroyer after him, that they'd fought when last they'd seen each other, none of this was of any import; it did not even occur to him in this moment. He turned to Frigga. "I'll bring him home to you, Mother." He leaned down and clasped her hand. She looked up and smiled weakly, and he saw fresh tears forming in her eyes.

"It isn't that simple, my son," his father said. "Heimdall?"

Thor laughed, an absurd-sounding thing in the empty throne room, in these circumstances. Loki is involved, he thought, so of course it isn't that simple. He fell from the bridge, into the remnants of the open bifrost, and survived. Of course it isn't that simple.

"Loki is not on Midgard by accident," Heimdall began. "He journeyed there through an unstable gateway from a distant part of the cosmos, outside the branches of Yggdrasil. He did so with the help of an army of a race called Chitauri. I saw the words they exchanged just before Loki entered the gateway. They are his allies, and they mean to follow him once he's created a more stable portal. He intends to rule Midgard by force."

Thor stood there, reeling. He loved his brother. He wanted to rescue him, bring him home to rest and recover from his fall and wherever he'd been that had somehow eventually spat him out upon Midgard, hear his stories of how he'd survived it, turn back the clock and have everything be the way it was before. His mother had been a shadow of herself for months after Loki's death; his father too had grieved deeply over what had happened. Loki had done terrible things, but he'd been dragged into madness by the terrible thing he'd learned about himself. If he could just be brought home, made to listen, made to understand, it could all be made right. But now… Loki had arrived on Midgard not after a year of plummeting through the empty void of space, but instead after a year of plotting to conquer that realm? The realm Thor had declared to be under his personal protection? Jane's realm? The realm he could not even reach now, whether to help defend it or to see Jane again?

He listened to the rest of Heimdall's report – the Tesseract, the lives Loki had ended, the device he carried that could either take life or enslave it to his will, the destruction of a Midgardian facility filled with Midgardian workers – in growing rage.

When Heimdall was done, Thor turned to his father again and repeated his earlier question, each word slow and heavy with anger and determination. "Is there any way you can send me there?"

"It will not be easy…but yes, I can. You will bring him back, whether he wishes it or not."

Betrayal. Thrust like molten metal into his body, lighting him on fire with pain and impotent fury. Impotent until he got his hands on Loki.

Nadrith, Thor thought as he reached the bedchambers in time to find the Ljosalf king rising from the bed and smoothing down the thick leather armor he hadn't removed before lying down. Not Loki. This is not about Loki, he reminded himself. Except that in many ways, it was.

"I hope you aren't disappointed that I wasn't waiting anxiously, desperately wondering when someone would come. I'm leading a realm in wartime and leading our warriors as well. I'm actually rather tired. I imagine the nap did me good."

"I hope you aren't disappointed that I wasn't waiting outside the door for you to become anxious. I was also asleep."

"You must be very tired, indeed, Thor. I am busy, but you are overwhelmed."

Thor breathed out heavily through his nose and looked away. Nadrith had always been this way, quick with verbal games, though he'd never before been an adversary, except in good-natured teasing. Listening to him in a verbal sparring match with Loki had left him staring in dazed silence; facing down the both of them teaming up on him had left him wanting to shrink away in humiliated defeat, and since that was not an option, verbal sparring usually then turned to physical sparring.

"Do you truly have no regrets in this?" Thor asked, his gaze sliding back to the man he'd once called friend. "Have you truly had no second thoughts? Do you know how many have died?" He spoke without the anger he'd expected to be battling now. If anything, he thought, he would have to say he felt sad. And tired, despite the hours he'd slept. The anger, had, for the moment, fizzled out. He had asked the same questions of Loki more than once, and he'd never gotten an answer that made him feel any better.

Nadrith looked down, and Thor thought that for once he did not appear so calculating, so haughty. "I do regret that it came to this. Your realm has far fewer lives to give in total, but mine has already given far more than yours." He met Thor's eyes again, and stepped forward until he was close enough to embrace Thor, though he made no move to do so. "Surrender. For all our sakes."

Thor shook his head and turned away. "You know that's not going to happen. Come with me," Thor said, leaving the bedchamber; the sound of footsteps behind him told him Nadrith was following.

"What is the sticking point for you? I wouldn't think it's the Ice Casket. As a condition of our alliance, the Frost Giants have sworn not to use it against you. It's understandable if you doubt their word, but the rest of us stand behind it. If they attacked you with it, we would come to your defense."

Grateful his back was to Nadrith Thor grit his teeth so hard he wouldn't have been surprised had one or two of them shattered under the pressure. For Asgard to be defenseless, depending on the other realms from protection against the realm his father had devastated when Thor was just a baby, then beholden to other realms for Asgard's very existence – such humiliation was unfathomable.

"Is it the Tesseract? You were without it for a long time already, when it was buried away on Midgard. What does it matter if you're without it again?"

"I'm surprised that you're so willing to play to Gullveig's vanity. To deliver the Tesseract to Vanaheim. What do you get out of all this, Nadrith, for all the Light Elves who are feeding the bluewings?" They'd entered the small office within these chambers, and Thor turned in time to see Nadrith's expression tightening.

"Who are you to speak of another man's vanity, Thor?"

"You haven't answered the question," Thor said, trying to avoid letting Nadrith lead the conversation this time. "What are you getting out of this war?"

Nadrith regarded him in silence for a moment. "A rebalancing of the Nine Realms," he finally said.

"What imbalance do you perceive?"

"We have already discussed this. And I have discussed it with your father as well. Too much rests on Asgard's stability."

Thor gave a snort and shook his head. "And your solution to Asgard's supposed instability is to attempt to destabilize it through war?"

"Accept our terms," he said. "I am fond of Asgard. I don't wish to see it brought to ruin. Don't let it go that far, Thor."

"I don't intend to. But Asgardians do not capitulate. Besides, I think you have forgotten which of us is the captive here."

"Is it Loki, then? Your father was reluctant to see him sent to Jotunheim."

"Loki will never be sent to Jotunheim. We do not bargain with our relics, and we do not bargain with our citizens."

"It is Loki. I must admit I'm surprised that it's him you're most reluctant to part with, after everything he's done to sully Asgard's name. To sully your name."

Thor turned his back a moment to hide his rage and get it under control, then stepped further into the study, and to the other side of a small rectangular table in the center of the room. The tabletop, a simple old slab of weathered wood, was cleared of all but a heavy box of dark gold metal that Thor had set there a few minutes ago on his way through the chambers. "Sit," he commanded, pointing to the chair on Nadrith's side of the table.

"You tried to escape," Thor said once Nadrith acquiesced and he had taken the seat across from him. "With this," he added, pulling the small yellow amulet and gold chain from a pocket and holding it out for Nadrith to see, though he kept it safely in his grasp. "It was a foolish attempt."

Nadrith drew in a slow breath and let it out in a sigh. "My options were few. As you might imagine, I thought it best that I not become a prisoner here, if I could avoid it. It can't really disagree with you that it was foolish, but it was worth a try, even a foolish one."

"It opens a microportal to wherever the talisman it's bound to is located, and signals that the bearer requires a return portal."

"You've been studying. Never one of your favorite pastimes as I recall."

"I have good advisors." Tyr and Bragi were both familiar with the Dark Elf amulet Thor had shown them, taken from Nadrith's loosened grip while he was still unconscious, and Maeva had confirmed it.

"You have good advisors?"

Thor tried not to react, but he could feel muscles in his face and jaw moving and knew he hadn't succeeded. "My father has good advisors."

"But they're yours now, aren't they? None of my men or any of the others have spotted him in over a week. Thor…has he fallen?" Nadrith asked, looking less haughtily confident than before, though Thor would not be swayed by any expressions of concern, no matter how genuine they may seem.

"He is a king now, Thor," Loki whispered through barely-parted lips. "You may think of him as a friend, but he is not loyal to you, or to me, or to any of us. Don't forget that."

Loki had been trying to lecture him, as he occasionally – and most tiresomely – did. Thor had known it was true, technically speaking, but he'd never thought it would actually matter. And it wasn't like Loki had any great credibility in lecturing him on who his friends were. Father had never banned any of Thor's friends from Asgard. "He has not fallen, and we are not here to discuss my father. This is Dark Elf magic," he said, gesturing with his hand and sending the amulet swinging on its chain.

"If we had such magic ourselves we would use it. Since we do not, we use our allies' abilities. Would you expect anything different?"

"And whose idea was all this to begin with? Heimdall saw a Dark Elf delegation going from realm to realm before this all started."

"We can meet with whomever we please, can we not? Should we seek Asgard's permission first? We are a sovereign realm, as are our cousins on Svartalfheim."

"Your cousins with whom you go to war at least once a century or so, on average. What did they say to you, Nadrith, to convince you to ally with them and go to war against Asgard?"

"If anyone wanted you to know that, the Dark Elves would not have stopped Heimdall from eavesdropping."

"What did they promise you?"

Nadrith stared back at him unblinking, and Thor made himself wait for an answer. "Perhaps you weren't listening to what I told you before. A more equitable balance in the Nine Realms."

"What do you need that you do not have? What balance do you lack?"

Another long silence tried Thor's patience, but he thought perhaps he was getting somewhere when Nadrith, so quick with his well-measured words, had to pause to gather his thoughts before speaking. "We lack the array of powerful relics you control on Asgard. Relics that give you the ability to wreak unspeakable destruction on the Nine Realms with little more than a thought."

"And what will this war give you? Partial control over the Tesseract, while it sits on Vanaheim? What greater weight do you seek in this rebalancing?"

"There's really nothing more to say about this, Thor. Our conditions have been clear from the beginning, and they are not unreasonable. If Loki is the condition you have the most difficulty swallowing, I'm sure we can amend that one to forbid them to execute him." Nadrith looked down for a moment while Thor clenched his jaw and held his tongue. "I always liked him. I can't say that I would rejoice in his death, even after everything he's done. And the Jotuns will be so happy to have their little casket back that I'm sure they wouldn't object. Thor…when I spoke to your father, he was as stubborn as you always said he was. He wouldn't even listen. He wouldn't even discuss the terms."

Thor would not be goaded into speaking of Loki again, though it burned that Nadrith could think that Thor would be fine with sending Loki to be imprisoned and possibly tortured by those beasts, so long as he wasn't executed. Beasts. They are beasts, he thought stubbornly. By their behavior, not their biology. Loki is not one of them. Though Loki has done terrible things... He tried to set that aside and focus on the rest of what Nadrith had said. That Odin was as stubborn as he'd always said… "Are you attempting to play me against my father? It might have worked at one point, when I was eager to prove myself my own man…but not now."

"Even when he is so obviously not around? You carry yourself differently. You behave differently. You even speak differently. Do you think I don't see it? I hope he truly hasn't fallen, for your sake. I know what it's like to lose a father. And I do know what it is to need to prove yourself. Bring peace to your people, Thor. The cost is so very low. We can discuss it, you know. Find ways to make it more palatable for you. Let this be the next generation of rulers of the Nine Realms. Let it begin with you and me, right here, right now."

"You're remarkably bold for a man being held prisoner in another realm's palace. Bold…or perhaps desperate," Thor said, narrowing his eyes as Nadrith frowned and sat back in his chair. "Why would you be desperate, Nadrith? And this is the second time you've spoken to me of new generations. I assumed you were trying to appeal to me, over the resentments I expressed to you as a friend when I was more of a fool than I am now. But I wonder if your fixation on generations and change is about you instead of me. You have been king just ninety years. Your father was well-loved for the peace he made among the realms, but some resented him for the compromises he made to achieve it. Are you already worrying for your legacy? You're very young for it, but you've always been shrewd and ambitious. Do you send your men to die on Asgardian soil because you want to be known as the Ljosalf king who brought down Asgard?"

"I don't wish to bring down Asgard," Nadrith said, his face and voice now bitter, and Thor knew – to his own amazement, really – that he was finally getting somewhere.

"No, you wouldn't want to bring it down fully, to destroy it, that wouldn't look so good for your legacy, would it? No, a peaceful capitulation would be highly preferable, especially if you're the one to have convinced us to capitulate. That's it, isn't it, Nadrith? You spent all those years here on Asgard training, living, and you liked it. You liked it so much that you wanted to bring some of that back to Alfheim. You increased training requirements for Light Elf warriors, and then you led them out against the land that taught you how to do just that. You're just looking to earn a little glory for yourself, aren't you?"

"Say what you will. You seem to be having a very entertaining conversation with yourself."

Thor forged ahead, for Nadrith's expression was now neutral to the point of blankness, but when Nadrith had thought he was in control his charisma and confidence had been on full display. "Do you know what this is?" he asked, reaching for the metal box on the end of the table and pushing it toward Nadrith. He pocketed the amulet.

"Should I?" he asked, not even sparing it a glance.

"I thought perhaps you should. Open it."

Nadrith looked at him skeptically.

"You are not on Vanaheim, Nadrith. It's not going to explode in your face."

Nadrith's jaw tightened; he took the heavy dark gold box, about the size of his full open palm. He pulled out the pin that prevented the latches from opening, then pressed both of them and the lid popped open. "What am I looking at?" he asked when he pushed the lid open the rest of the way.

Thor watched him closely. If Nadrith recognized the blue gem, he was doing an excellent job of not showing it. It was a risk, what Thor was doing now. They still sent Vigdis out to meet Brokk when they could, and gave her a mixture of true and false information to pass along. It was one more tactic that was keeping Asgard afloat, and one they did not wish to lose. Brokk still didn't know that Vigdis now spoke to him at Asgard's direction, and he didn't know that the magical gemstone he'd somehow managed to get underneath her bed had been discovered. Revealing it to Nadrith meant they would have to ensure Nadrith could not communicate any of this back to his allies. Thor thought it worth the risk, for the gem and its seeming similarity to the one in Loki's scepter remained a mystery. It could be merely a coincidence, but Thor was not inclined to believe in those at the moment.

"It's imbued with magic," Thor finally said when Nadrith said nothing more.

Nadrith leaned back in his chair again. Thor had grown up around magic and was comfortable with it even if he could not use much of it himself; Nadrith's family were not magic users and he had always been uneasy around unfamiliar magic. "I assume there's a reason you're showing me this?"

"A Dark Elf put this under the bed of an Asgardian citizen, before this war began. He used it to cause her severe nightmares and prevent her from getting any real sleep. He drove her nearly mad until she agreed to spy on us for him."

"If you wish to lodge a complaint, you've come to the wrong race of elf, I'm afraid."

Thor grabbed the box, slammed the lid shut, and banged it on the table; Nadrith barely flinched. "This is who you have allied yourself with. It is shameful, Nadrith. Disgraceful."

Nadrith smiled darkly. "Aesir notions of honor aside, Thor, don't tell me you wouldn't jump at the chance to have a spy inside Alfheim's palace."

Deliberately keeping his eyes on Nadrith and not letting himself blink – Loki had once told him he blinked too much when he tried to lie, and he did not want Nadrith to suspect that they did have what might be called spies on Alfheim, if not quite in Alfheim's palace – Thor shook his head. "Information is an important part of war. I understand that now. But we would not torment an innocent youth to obtain our information. That's right," he said when Nadrith's brow furrowed slightly at that, "she is not yet twenty years old. You know we would never do such a thing. Nor would we cause an explosion to kill innocents, much less before war has even been declared. This is what your allies have done. This is the legacy you're preparing for yourself. This is the future you're shaping for your son and heir. Is this what the Dark Elves told you would happen when they convinced you to ally with them?"

Thor's voice was raised in anger by the end, and Nadrith met his eyes with the same anger behind them. The two stared at each other for a long tense moment, neither moving except for the rise and fall of their chests. "I have nothing more to say to you, other than to accept your surrender," Nadrith said.

Thor immediately stood and pushed his chair in. "Then you had best get comfortable here. You will remain in these chambers for the duration of the war. Meals will be brought to you. You will be treated with respect. If you wish to speak with me or my father or have some other need, simply knock on the door and a guard will check on you. Should you attempt escape, though, the Einherjar will kill you. Shall I place this under your bed?" he asked, looking down harshly at Nadrith, who looked back up at him with continued anger he knew better than to act on. He picked up the box and the pin, slipped the pin into the latches, and sealed the box closed again, then turned and strode from the room.

/


/

A few floors up, at the palace's peak, above even what was considered the top floor, Frigga sat at Odin's bedside as he slept deeply, the ravens Hugin and Munin perched on either side of him. She wondered what, if anything, he saw. Just as the realms were rife with rumors of her special sight, some believed Odin All-Father was all-knowing, all-hearing, all-seeing. He was not, yet he could sometimes see beyond himself while he lay in the Odinsleep, a state far beyond mere sleep. He had seen Thor's death, what would have been Thor's death by Loki's hand. She knew that much; she'd seen the tear form as he slept.

Now she couldn't help but check the corners of his eyes from time to time. She worried for Thor, but he was nearby, and so was help, if he needed it. It wasn't for Thor that she checked Odin's closed eyes.

Loki could be anywhere. Midgard, Asgard, Svartalfheim, anywhere. Her boy was so clever – too clever for his own good at times – and had found his own way to move among the realms. His role in the conflagration on Asgard, indirect though she and Odin both believed it to be, remained uncertain, and he would find few friendly faces anywhere he went. She wished yet again that he would have done as expected and remained on Midgard, but Loki almost seemed to pride himself on not doing what was expected. Her heart was torn, because she wished to have Loki here, but it might be safer for him elsewhere. If he were not here, no one could be tempted to send him to Jotunheim to bring this war to an end.

Her eyes traveled slowly across the details of Odin's face. Every line on his forehead was a worry, a fear, for their children, for her, for Asgard. Every wrinkle around his eyes, especially the long ones that ran almost to his hairline, was a smile, a laugh, a moment of joy and celebration. His lips were slightly parted, his breaths gentle, smooth, peaceful. She smiled and ran her thumb across the corner of his mouth. Frigga knew his heart. She knew that Loki had a place in it still, despite Odin's anger at what he'd done. But it beat to the rhythm of Asgard.

If things did not change, the time would come when Odin would have to consider the conditions set by the realms allied against them. Honor and bravery and steadfastness and pride in the Realm Eternal were values inculcated in all Asgardians, Aesir or otherwise – fine values that she herself had gladly raised her boys with. But what use were such values if the Realm Eternal lay in ruin, a shrunken bleeding population struggling to survive after a crushing defeat? Would Odin let it reach that point, or would he concede? He had said, not so long ago, in a moment of what must have been bitterness, that Loki would tear their family apart. He had once said something far worse. But if Odin made the decision to surrender Loki to Jotunheim…Odin would be tearing it apart. She hoped that at least if they did reach that point, it would indeed be Odin faced with the decision and not Thor. Odin would survive it, even if their marriage did not, even if Thor turned his back on him forever for it. Thor she was not so sure about.

Frigga's head jerked up from the servant she'd been talking to; in that fraction of a second she'd already forgotten whatever had seemed so important that she'd taken her eyes off the boys for a moment even though the stairs were nearby. She'd heard something that made her turn – she feared she knew what – and now Thor and Loki were no longer in the corridor. She rushed to the stairs and reached them just as the wailing started.

"Loki!" she screamed, feet flying down the stairs, an Einherjar behind her and another racing up from the floor below. By the time she reached them on the landing at the halfway point between the two floors, Thor's much more familiar cries had joined Loki's, and he was tugging at his little brother's hand.

"I'm sorry, Loki. Don't cry. I didn't mean to drop you," he said through heavy tears, the childish pronunciation only recognizable because Frigga was accustomed to it.

Frigga shook her head at the memory, fondness there now where once she'd been terrified, despite the fact that Loki's screams had at least demonstrated the good health of his lungs. Both boys had been resilient, which was lucky since otherwise they likely would never have survived each other.

Her gaze darted back to Odin's eyes. They were dry.

She wondered if he'd seen Loki at all. She didn't know what he'd planned, or how he would know when Loki was ready to be brought home – and she refused to think of it as an "if" instead of a "when." She didn't know, and she hadn't pushed him to tell her, because Odin didn't know what she'd done, either.

Would you still shed a tear for Loki? Odin remained as silent and still as ever. Thor had fallen a hero, offering up his life to the Destroyer, to Loki, for his friends, and for a village of Midgardians, few of whom he even knew. Loki had fallen, too, but not as a hero. He had fallen in disgrace. Now under Odin's punishment as Thor had been, if Loki fell again, would it be into another abyss, or could he, like Thor, prove himself a better man? Frigga hoped so – she knew that Loki's anger hadn't burned all the good out of him, and she knew that he'd warned Asgard, telling Jolgeir about Vigdis and about the attack on the Felingard Forest and the Einherjar barracks there. She hoped, but at the same time she couldn't stop herself from doubting. Would you still shed a tear for him, even for a less noble fall?

And if he falls, nobly or not, will he be returned to his full strength, as Thor was? Surely, she thought, Loki had lost some of his ability to use magic by now. Odin had said Loki would be at war within himself, and he would push himself to the brink. She still didn't know exactly what he'd meant by that, but she hoped it didn't mean Odin believed Loki would find himself without or nearly without magic. She didn't know what that would mean for him; magic had been a part of him, in one way or another, his entire life. She hoped that if things got too bad he would use the gift she'd given him.

Thor had found friends on Midgard, and a woman he particularly cared about. Frigga hoped that Loki would find friends, too, somehow, that he would not be alone in his struggle, that someone could help calm his war. People that he would listen to when he no longer listened to his family, people he could trust when he no longer trusted anyone or anything. Loki, though, had become so different from Thor in that respect; for years now his own friends, those separate from Thor's, had tended to not be the most reputable sort, not the sort Frigga wanted him to listen to. And Loki, she was certain, had not arrived on Midgard with any interest in making friends there. Neither had Thor, perhaps, but Thor had not been as damaged as Loki was…and Thor had not tried to conquer Midgard just a few weeks before being sent there.

Thor, at least, she knew was doing well. He had matured tremendously since his banishment, and was growing into his new role as king, though the circumstances were not permitting him much time to learn or reflect. She helped where she could, taking on many of the responsibilities Thor would bear were he not needed on the battlefield as much as possible. It was not an unfamiliar role for her; she had done the same for Odin. In private, Thor sometimes asked her advice, and she gave it freely if she had it. He'd stopped by not long ago to ask her thoughts on Nadrith. She didn't know him well – she'd known his father better – but she'd reminded him that like Thor himself, Nadrith was a relatively new king and had until now played no significant role in affairs between the realms. She reminded him that Nadrith's father had died less than twenty years ago, and that he had an infant son. Thor knew all these things, of course, but they'd all happened long after the period when Nadrith had trained on Asgard with her sons and spent so much time with them, and she thought Thor might not sufficiently take them into account as events that had shaped Nadrith's life in the last century. She'd also reminded him of the highlights of Nadrith's father's reign – again, facts Thor knew already, either from happening during his lifetime or from studying them when he was a boy – because she had married an heir to a throne, and she knew something of what it was like to make that transition, from prince and son to king and then father. She hoped Thor's meeting with Nadrith would prove fruitful, and that Thor's obvious anger at his once-friend and now-enemy would not get in the way.

She would find out soon enough. Every other hour she left Odin's side to go to the throne room or the Assembly Chamber or the Healing Room for updates and to provide decisions and guidance and encouragement where they were needed. It was time to go now, in fact, she realized when she saw the Einherjar standing at the door beyond the foot of Odin's richly carved bed. No clocks were permitted in this chamber, so she'd asked the Einherjar to watch the time for her and notify her when it was time to make her rounds.

She signaled the guard to leave, and once he had, she leaned down over her husband and kissed the corner of his mouth, her lips brushing gray beard and mustache. "Sleep well, and wake soon, my love," she whispered. She wrapped her hand around his and took one last look at the corner of his eye, where she saw nothing but familiar weathered skin. Dry.

/


/

"Making up your own sky chart?"

Jane jerked around in her chair, startled. Wright wasn't exactly a stealthy guy, but she'd been so engrossed in trying to sketch out the stars she'd seen in Asgard she hadn't noticed him standing behind her and looking over her shoulder. "Uh, yeah, well, just doodling, really. Waiting for this data package to go through."

Loki looked up at her from his desk and raised an eyebrow; Jane frowned at him. It was just the three of them at the moment in the Science Lab inside the station – Selby had been there, too, until a few minutes ago.

"Looks like it went through," Wright said, pointing behind her to her screen.

Jane turned and saw the "upload complete" message. She had no idea how long it might have been there. "Thanks," she said, turning back to Wright and sticking her sketch into the desk drawer. "I guess I'm a little distracted."

"Are you starting to get antsy here? I was feeling it last night. I grabbed Paul and we went down to the gym and shot hoops for half an hour or so. It helped, you know, just burning off some energy, I guess."

"I don't know, just…I guess I've got a lot on my mind," Jane answered, suddenly very conscious of the powder on her face hiding the mild sunburn she'd gotten on her face yesterday. The tip of Loki's nose was a little pink, not even noticeable unless you were looking for it, but on her it was plain as day that she'd been in the sun and very much not cooped up and antsy in the South Pole's 24-hour winter darkness. She felt disingenuous and guilty and didn't want to have to flat-out lie to Wright, or to anyone else.

"Everything okay back home?" he asked, grabbing the chair from the empty desk around the corner from hers and sitting. It made Jane feel even worse, because in trying to obfuscate she'd caused Wright to become concerned.

"Oh, yeah, it's nothing like that. No, everything's good." And it was good. She'd had an e-mail from Erik this morning telling her about the date he'd been on with his lady friend, and another one from Uncle Van just checking in and saying hi.

"Work okay? What's it really like, working for Tony Stark? Does he get involved at all?"

"Involved? No, not really. He just endows the foundation that sponsors me. And Lucas," she hastily added. "He gets copied on everything I send in, but he told me he doesn't read any of it. He has a really good grasp of physics, but astronomy's not his thing. He helped out a lot in getting me set up to come here, though. Especially with the design of…of one of the pieces of equipment I'm using."

"I'm guessing that wouldn't be the one with the dish attached by duct tape," Wright said with a broad grin.

"No," Jane agreed, laughing. "That's one of my oldest creations. It's pretty useless compared to some of the stuff I have now…but, you know, sentimental value."

"Yeah, I get it, I get it. Anyway, if you need anything, I'll be glad to do whatever I can. Just ask. You know me and Selby have times when we're just making sure the equipment's running smoothly, without a whole lot to do. So we can help out with all those gizmos you brought, if you need it. Well…I can help out anyway. I don't know what bee's gotten up Selby's bonnet."

"Thank, Wright, I appreciate it," Jane said, ignoring the comment about Selby. She knew Wright was annoyed by the tension between them, but Jane had tried to talk to Selby and hadn't gotten anywhere. "Lucas is a big help, but I'll let you know if we need anything. It is a lot to stay on top of." Of course, that was because of all the time she'd sunk into working on Pathfinder, and because Loki was only acting as Lucas-the-assistant part-time now….because he'd been busy working on Pathfinder, too, secretly figuring out how to use it for time travel.

"No problem," Wright said, and went back to his desk.

Jane turned to her computer and its "upload complete" message. She had more data to wade through, and her usual eagerness just wasn't there. It was 10:00 in the morning and she'd accomplished very little. She looked at numbers on the screen and remembered seeing galaxies in Asgard's sky. Then all the other memories started. The random Asgardians she'd seen, the Einherjar and the women and the little boy in the tree and the man next to them at the parade and the vendors and Jolgeir and pint-sized Thor and Loki and Frigga's back and a prince of another realm – the realm she was going to with Loki. And if that didn't distract her from her distraction, wondering what Alfheim was like, then she would start thinking about the parade, especially the moment when the girls whipped out their white blindfolds and ran out to tie them around the heads of the kneeling boys. "This is why you have to know the routine perfectly," she could still hear Loki saying. And then she would think about the man she'd spent that entire day with, the things they'd talked about and done, the laughing and teasing and excitement, the deeply personal things he'd opened up to her about and she to him, and how in all that time, an entire day, Loki had only shown one flash of temper and kept even that under control. And she couldn't really blame him for it. He had his plans that he'd been working on for a while, and she was insisting he change them to include her. Loki liked being the one in control, she thought, remembering how he'd stood among that crowd in Stuttgart and made them kneel, and she'd taken control away from him. Given the temper flares she'd seen from him in the past – "loose cannon" wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration – the extent to which he'd kept a lid on it this time was pretty impressive, she thought with raised eyebrows.

Her eyes focused and she realized Loki was staring at her. He held up his hands and mimed typing, then widened his eyes. "You're supposed to be getting work done," she imagined him to be telling her. But then, maybe that was just her own guilty conscience. Probably he just wanted her to keep up appearances. Loki didn't actually care much about her work. She mimed typing back at him, plastering an overly large smile on her face. Loki rolled his eyes and turned back to his computer.

Jane decided there was only one way to stop the endless cycle of distracted reflection. She had to finish that sketch. And it didn't belong on scrap paper, it belonged in her black notebook with all her other ideas and random musings and sources of inspiration. If she could just finish it, she reasoned with herself – rationalized, a voice in the back of her head whispered, which she resolutely ignored – then she would be able to concentrate on work. She hadn't brought the notebook with her today. "Back in a few," she announced for Loki's and Wright's benefit, then left the lab and headed for her room.

Hand on her doorknob, Jane paused. From across the hall came the indistinct sounds of a male voice. She turned her head toward it and looked at the doors; it sounded like it came from Selby's room. It went quiet then, and stayed that way for a while as she waited, and she wondered if maybe he'd just gotten off a VOIP call. With Wright's comment still on her mind, she thought maybe she should try again with Selby. The last couple of times she'd talked to him the conversations were frustrating and bordering on bizarre. As often as they found themselves working in the same space, though, she thought maybe it was worth another try.

Jane let go of the doorknob she'd held onto the whole time and walked down the hall a few steps to the room across from Loki's. Before she could knock, the door opened. Jane's eyes widened; Selby's thinning hair was mussed and his expression was rapidly turning angry.

"Were you standing out here listening?" he demanded.

"What? No, I…" She had been, though, sort of, just not the way he meant it. "I thought we-"

Selby took a quick step forward, and Jane, startled, took a quick step back. Selby looked left and right down the hallway, then grabbed Jane's arm and tugged her toward him.

/


/

Loki waited until Jane had been gone precisely two minutes – he didn't know how much time might actually be meant by "a few," but there wasn't much she could do in under three minutes except get a drink of water, and her water bottle was right there on her desk. With casual confidence he went to Jane's desk in full view of Wright, who showed no interest. He picked up a file folder with some printouts of her muon findings and looked through it, at the same time opening up her desk drawer. Without taking his eyes off the contents of the folder, he felt for and withdrew the single loose sheet of paper there.

Once in hand, Loki's instinct was to send the paper away, then retrieve it under more convenient circumstances. He didn't think he would be punished for it, but he wasn't certain – how was he supposed to know precisely where Odin drew the line between acceptable and unacceptable mischief, good intentions and bad intentions? – and at this point he didn't want to risk it. Instead he lowered the folder back to the desk and simply slipped the paper smoothly inside. Wright didn't seem to have noticed. Loki took the folder to his desk.

Once there, he opened the folder again. He saw the sketch on top and couldn't help smiling. He'd thought perhaps she had some artistic talent he hadn't been aware of, but what he was looking at didn't attempt artistry, it simply demonstrated enthusiasm for the subject matter. She'd penciled in and erased and repositioned the stars and other bodies they'd seen last night on Asgard. It was an admirable effort, really, for one evening of stargazing. If she'd known the constellations she would have probably done an even better job with the stars' and star clusters' positions relative to each other.

He looked up in the direction of the door, wondering how long Jane might be gone. She'd corrected his work once before. He may as well make some corrections to hers.

/


Hmmmm... Well, I hope you enjoyed it. I think the way this ends there's nothing I can tell you by way of previews and so forth that wouldn't be too spoilery; I'd rather let the suspense hang. ;-) I'll just say the next chapter features Jane, Selby, and Loki. Several of you did tell me at various times that you had a bad feeling about Selby.

And handy-dandy, because of the circumstances under which I wrote Ch. 103, away from home and sans thumb drive, I already have about 2 pages done of Ch. 104. When such things happen I feel like I got them "for free." Also, starting chapters, usually, is THE WORST. So sticking in a break and BOOM having two pages is awesome.

Til next time, my fellow Loki fans!