Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Thirteen: Underground

Loki crept forward, hands in front of him, hoping he wouldn't grab onto something Jane would try to make him regret. Hoping he would, because that would mean she was simply too frightened to speak at the moment, instead of somehow disappearing. Before his hands made contact with anything, though, his foot hit something. He reached further forward until his hands met the ladder – nothing had been there on the floor before, and that meant that Jane was on the ground.

He grit his teeth and crouched down. Five seconds of trouble and she's… He found her arm and the anger passed. This wasn't her fault; she'd done nothing wrong. Nothing but follow him. He had let this happen, he reminded himself as he felt slowly up Jane's arm…to the material of the gown on her shoulder…to her neck… He should never have left her right underneath the hidden entrance, first to be found if someone discovered the firepit wasn't really a firepit, first to have happen to her whatever had just happened. She was a mere mortal, unable to protect herself from-

Loki stopped his exploration. He'd come to her head, and he felt something wet on his fingers. His stomach fell. You stupid… He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. The liquid was cool, sticky, thin… It didn't feel like quite like blood. He brought it to his lips, then sat back further on his heels as some of the tension drained from him. Kiva juice. Of course. There had been three glasses on the table upstairs. Niskit must have hurled at least two of them down; one or both had struck Jane in the head.

They were regular glasses, not even that large, not made of the heavy crystal used in many wine goblets, and to an Aesir they would have done no damage. Jane, he could hear, was still breathing, but she wasn't moving, and hadn't responded to him touching her. He had no idea what a glass thrown by an angry Ljosalf might do to her head.

He felt around her head, pushing the scarf back a little, and found no actual blood, as far as he could tell. He thought about creating a light to check her over more carefully, but figured if Niskit had them down here in complete darkness there was a reason for it. He considered trying to heal the injury, but head injuries were best left to actual healers, and in these conditions, with his abilities limited, he could do more harm than good. He looked around him, feeling for the way energy flowed through the space. The hidden chamber had been made soundproof, but light, perhaps, might somehow be detected. "Jane," Loki said a little louder. There was no change in her breathing.

He really needed her to wake up. As long as she lay here in a heap on the floor, he was stuck playing nursemaid and couldn't do what he should be doing now: exploring, searching for exits or resources. How long has it been? He wondered. A minute already? More? The longer she was unconscious, he knew, the more likely she had received a brain injury. It was hard for him to fathom a juice glass doing such damage, but Jane wasn't stirring. If she did have a brain injury… She couldn't, really. It didn't bear consideration.

He slapped her. Tapped her cheek, really. He wasn't sure how hard he could hit her. He got no response, so he slapped her again, harder, and this time he felt it. It stung. It felt like Thor hitting him, back when they used to fight for fun instead of the fates of worlds.

And there was an unpleasant thought. Loki gave a macabre laugh as he contemplated hitting Jane again. If he wanted that epic final battle with Thor, Thor appearing at this very moment would certainly give it to him. He looked up in the general direction of the secret entrance and half-expected his once-brother to actually appear there, blinding him with his light. At the moment, though, limited as he was, enraged as Thor would be, it wouldn't really be that epic. It would be rather short. And painful.

He steeled himself for the next strike, still vaguely imagining Thor showing up as he also tried to remember exactly how much force he'd used before in order to avoid exceeding it, when Jane finally stirred. "Good. Can you stand?" Loki asked. His tone was harsh, more than he meant it to be.

"Wha…what happened?" Jane said, feeling around slowly with her hands. "I can't see."

"You aren't blind. Hm. As far as I know, you aren't," he added. The complete darkness made it impossible to know for certain at the moment. "There's no light down here," he explained. "You were hit in the head with a glass of juice."

"A what?" Jane asked. Her head hurt and she thought she'd probably misunderstood somehow.

"A glass of juice. Are you well? Can you stand? I can carry you if not. We need to move away from the ladder."

"Okay, yeah. I think I can get up. Just give me a hand. Ow."

"What's wrong?"

"I hit my elbow on something. It hurt."

"Is your arm broken?"

"I'm pretty sure I would've said something more than 'ow' if it was broken. Come on, help me up. I can't see anything."

"Neither can I, you know," Loki said, finding her hand and wrapping his around it.

"Oh, yeah? So much for all that 'my sight is better than yours,' huh?"

"And allow me to express my relief that you are obviously not suffering from a head injury, since your behavior hasn't changed a bit." Jane didn't answer; Loki figured she was too busy concentrating on getting to her feet in the dark and trying to avoid banging anything else on the ladder behind her. "All right?" he asked when she was standing.

"Yeah. Just a little dizzy."

"Then put your hand on my shoulder and stay behind me," he said, immediately letting go of her hand – he needed his hands after all, and he was hardly going to lead her around like that – and turning his back to her.

Reaching up to keep a hand on Loki's shoulder quickly proved awkward, but he conveniently had a strap running diagonally across his back, over his coat, and Jane wrapped her fingers around that instead.

Loki moved forward slowly, with smooth even steps that he counted, hands in front of him at eye-level and waist-level. At nine paces both hands reached what was most likely a wall. He felt up and down it, reaching out with a foot also, then stretched and felt around to the right and left. "I'm directly in front of a wall," he told Jane. "Come around me, put your back to it. Stay there."

"Okay," Jane agreed, letting go of the strap and moving around him until she too found the wall. "Where are you going?"

"To explore the space," he said, already taking measured steps away, along the wall. He paused then. "Will you be all right? Your head…"

"I think it's okay. It hurts a little, but the dizziness is gone. I'm fine." In response she heard Loki moving further away from her. She listened carefully to every step, and with each one she felt maybe a little less fine. She wasn't particularly afraid of the dark, or claustrophobic, but this dark was absolute, and the room could have been three feet wide and shrinking like that garbage chute in Star Wars for all she knew. At first, she'd just been confused, stunned, and Loki asking simple questions and giving simple commands was comforting. Now that she didn't have that to focus on, fear was growing, and growing rapidly, as though it were something tangible, steadily expanding and taking up whatever space was left in this secret chamber and sucking all the air out. It took her a moment even to remember the events that led to her and Loki being down here, and she wasn't sure whether to attribute that to the shock of it all, or to the bump on her head.

It seemed to take forever, but eventually the sound of Loki's footsteps drew close again. "Did you find anything?" Jane asked.

"Broken glass, a water canister, a box full of books and loose paper. Nothing of use…unless we're down here for a long time. No other exits. It's not an escape route. It's meant solely for remaining hidden."

Jane nodded, trying to come to terms with their situation. "So…basically we're trapped down here."

"I wouldn't say that. I suppose we could go back up if we wanted to, but that would seem to be a bad idea. We'll just have to wait down here for a while." Loki wasn't just waiting, really – he had his Asgardian-bladed knife in his right hand and one of the less effective Midgardian-bladed ones in his left. He was listening, and he now knew this space well enough to fight blind if he needed to. The only problem was Jane. "If anything happens, I need you to stay exactly where you are, but drop low to the ground. If I have to fight, I'll need to be sure of your location, and I'll want you out of the way."

"But she…Niskit said if you fight we'll be… Oh, my God, Loki, what have we walked into? She… I can't believe that of all the days in all of history you could have chosen, you chose the one when Niskit tried to assassinate Nadrith. She said she tried to 'end his reign,' that's what she meant, right?"

"I assume so. And I didn't know that, of course," Loki said, strangely offended in the midst of this insanity.

"And the police figured it out, and now they're probably right over our heads arresting her. And then they'll search her house, and-"

"They won't arrest her."

"You don't know that."

"I do. I would have known if Niskit had been arrested for attempting to kill Nadrith."

"Loki, you didn't know she tried to do that in the first place! And you didn't know Thor came back to Alfheim. What makes you think you'd know if Niskit were arrested?"

That gave Loki pause. But he wouldn't admit it to Jane. "I simply would. It would be big news."

"Did you know there was any assassination attempt at all?"

Loki grit his teeth and let out an audible breath through his nose. "No. They must have covered it up. It would be considered a major embarrassment, an assassination attempt so soon after a succession. Which, I suppose, is precisely why it was timed as it was. But listen, Jane, I know things seem…frightening…but I don't think anything will happen to Niskit, or to us. I knew Niskit beyond this day; she still lives in this same house in our present. She obviously wasn't executed, so they must not have any real evidence against her. They may not have any evidence against her, in fact."

"They wouldn't have come here if they didn't have evidence."

"Of course they would have. Niskit is known to be a powerful user of magic, and she is known to hate Nadrith. His father, really, at this point. She has no loyalty toward him. It's part of why I came to her for assistance today, and it's also part of why I never wanted to be publicly associated with her. I took my responsibilities as a Prince of Asgard seriously back then, you see, and it would have looked very bad for me to be spending time with someone with Niskit's political views. I didn't care what she thought of Nadrith or anyone else, but I had no idea she had ever taken any action against him, or even considered it. Both of us…we spoke strong words sometimes, but we never…I thought neither of us meant them."

"Obviously she did. What are we going to do if they find us down here? You can't possibly know whether they did or didn't search her house."

"No, I don't know that. But, I do know that I have been a guest in Niskit's home many times, and never guessed that that fire pit wasn't what it seemed. I never noticed anything amiss. I even asked her about it once, when I was here in winter and there was a chill in the house and she wouldn't light that fire. She must have put an extraordinary amount of time and effort into constructing it, and masking the evidence of the magic involved. So I don't think we'll be discovered. But you're right, we can't be completely certain. And that's why I want you to stay where you are against the wall."

"Okay," Jane said. The ramifications if they were found were terrifying. The possibility of changing history, so momentous before, now seemed trivial. The possibility of winding up dead had largely eclipsed it. "If they do find us, though, what do you think would happen?"

Loki tried to imagine it, first ignoring the fact that they were not in the right time period. He'd gotten into trouble once or twice on other realms, though nothing with the implications of this situation. "I think I would be put under polite but heavy guard, while a senior representative of Alfheim paid an emergency visit to Odin. You…I suppose you would be kept with me. What would happen when they found me there in Asgard reclining on my own balcony watching the sun set, or lying down in front of a fire with a book…that is another question entirely. Wouldn't it be interesting if I met myself?" Loki thought aloud, easily forgetting Jane for a moment in the dark. "I think I would have some incredibly enlightening conversations with myself."

Jane felt her way down the wall and sat on the floor, then hugged her knees up to her chest. It wasn't supposed to happen like this…all of that planning… "What about Thor? He's nearby."

"What about him?" Loki asked with a frown, glancing instinctively in the direction of the ladder.

"Do you think they would get him? Bring him to wherever they were holding us?"

Loki thought it over, pushing past the resistance in his mind to the hypotheticals of time travel that Jane seemed so comfortable with. If Thor showed up here, or anywhere he and Jane might be detained, it would be the Thor of 90 years ago, the one who didn't know Jane, the one who was glad to help those in need, the one who still thought Loki was his younger brother who would follow his lead, the one who a thousand years later still occasionally thought of himself as Loki's protector – or could be easily made to feel that way – the one who knew his brother lied but would still bend to Loki's manipulations almost every time. "If he isn't too inebriated, possibly," he finally answered. "That could work out well. Much better than Odin getting involved. I know how to play Thor, and the fact that he's almost certainly inebriated to some extent would only make it that much easier."

Jane wasn't sure she wanted to see Loki manipulating a drunk and trusting Thor the way she knew he'd manipulated her in the beginning – not to mention the changes to history that would be all but unavoidable from such an encounter – but at this point she supposed it was better than a lot of the alternatives. Then another thought occurred to her. What if Loki, and those elves back when they'd first arrived here, had been wrong about why Thor returned? What if Thor wasn't here partying like it was 1899? "Do you think he could be involved?" she asked.

Loki wrinkled his brow. She wants to know if Thor was with a woman? Ah, he thought then, quickly realizing what she was asking. But that question was even more ridiculous. "Thor would not be involved in trying to kill or otherwise end Nadrith's reign. He was happy for Nadrith, and busy trying to figure out how to make sure his own succession celebrations would be bigger and better."

"No, I mean, in stopping it. In saving Nadrith."

"Impossible," Loki answered immediately. "He would have bragged about that without ceasing for the next millennium. He would have dragged out old composition manuals and written poems about it and sung them every night. Or more likely he would have gotten someone else to do it for him. Thor can't keep a secret to save his life."

Jane couldn't help smiling, even though Loki was again trying to paint Thor in a bad light. She could picture him and that brash, confident smile, and how eager he would be to tell that story. She hugged herself a little tighter and could almost imagine it was him. "Jane, you'll never believe what happened!" she imagined him saying. Of course, if she met Thor here, he would be much more likely to say "Who are you?"

"Whatever was done, if Niskit was involved, it made use of magic. Thor wouldn't have been able to do much about that anyway, even if he'd been aware of it."

"Okay. What about me, then? I mean…how would we explain all this? Me being here. The time travel."

He gave a short laugh. "I would probably be better off saying nothing. You should explain it. Perhaps they'll actually believe you."

"I think they'll be more likely to believe you. At least, once you're standing right next to your past self. Or I mean your present self."

"You'd be surprised. They have an amazing capacity to believe what they wish of me, when it suits them. They might simply think I'd created a duplicate of myself."

"Like in Stuttgart."

"Like in many places, at many times."

Jane thought about duplicates and tried to picture two Lokis facing off with each other and her head simply swam. She thought back to the South Pole instead. They were supposed to be back there by the evening, hopefully in time for dinner. There was always the risk that an unannounced fire drill could take place, and they would have some explaining to do if they missed an accountability check. But what would people think if they went missing and were never found? "We'll be like Amelia Earhart."

"Who is Amelia Earhart?" Loki asked a second later, distracted as he tried to think this through for himself, to decide what he would need to do to get them out of this while still accomplishing what they came here for. "One of your movie characters?"

"No. She was a real person. She was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She was trying to make a solo flight around the entire planet, back in the thirties, oh, I mean the nineteen-thirties, but she disappeared somewhere over the Pacific and no one ever found her plane or any sign of her. People are still searching for a crash site. Some people think she survived and started a new life with some isolated islanders, some people have crazy conspiracy theories…she lives on in people's imaginations, but no one knows what really happened to her. We'll be like that. No trace of us. They'll think we froze to death somewhere out on the ice but they'll never find our bodies."

Loki looked in the direction of Jane's voice. "That's rather gruesome. I don't wish to die that way. Or to be thought to have died that way. When I die, it will be spectacular, and no one will need to wonder what happened."

Jane grimaced. "Why do I think you've spent more time thinking about that than we'd consider healthy here on Earth? There on Earth," she corrected, shaking her head. "Okay, we'll work hard on not dying. We'll find a way out of this. Won't we?" Jane asked. "I mean…we just need a plan. A better one than sitting here and hoping we don't get dragged back to Asgard and charged with attempted…what do you call that? Regicide?"

"Yes, we do need a plan," Loki said, setting aside the fact that he was already guilty of regicide, no "attempted" necessary. Technically, by law, he supposed perhaps it wasn't regicide…Asgard had been again in a state of war and Laufey was a foolish casualty of that war. But he preferred to think of it as regicide. "I have no intention of letting myself be captured," he said, articulating the conclusion he'd come to somewhere along the way. It would be gratifying, in a way, to give himself a 90-year advance notice on the secret of his birth, but that wasn't what he was here for. Jane wanted to get out alive, without changing history. He wanted to get out alive, without Odin's mark on his foot.

But the circumstances were a challenge. He had no idea what was going on above. He'd told Jane the truth, though – whatever happened here today, Niskit was neither executed nor imprisoned for any significant length of time. That meant that there was insufficient or no evidence actually implicating her. Perhaps there was some evidence, but more likely there was simply suspicion; it was possible that the Ljosalf authorities were questioning everyone known to have been disgruntled with Nadrith or his father.

Above was perhaps no more than one clerk, asking a series of routine questions. Or above him could be a team of armed and armored men.

Loki would have the element of surprise if they were discovered. He might be able to take them. He was poorly armed, but he was better trained than most. He had Jane to think about, though. He would have to take them before she was discovered, because she would be unable to defend herself against them. He also had history to think of. Not in the way Jane thought of it – though he was doing his best to respect her concerns on this trip - but in a considerably more selfish way. This day needed to end the way he assumed – he hoped – it had ended 90 years ago, with Niskit left free and unharmed in her home. With her able to remove Odin's magic. 90 years ago, if someone did search the dwelling, they would not have found anyone hiding underneath it. If they were discovered now…it would change everything. What could look more suspicious than having two people, one of them a supposed son of Odin, hiding under a firepit, disguised with sophisticated magic? If Loki fought, even if Loki incapacitated or slew every Light Elf sent to investigate, he would not be able to then simply settle himself back down in Niskit's living room while she worked on removing the curse and Jane vomited in the corner from the blood and dead bodies surrounding them.

Loki quietly put away his knives. "The plan is we will not be found. I'll make us invisible if this location is discovered. I don't think I'll be punished for it. I wasn't when I had to defend myself from Dark Elves; it should be no different with Light Elves. And this is to preserve history. It will require more effort than it should, but it should work."

Jane nodded, forgetting entirely that it wouldn't be seen. Invisible. Loki had done that before, when he'd followed her to Asgard. She wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of being made invisible, but she preferred it infinitely to what Niskit had said about fighting and being arrested and executed.

A few minutes had passed in nervous silence when Jane, trying to think practically about their situation but stuck in a loop of incredulity at their bad luck and her own lingering fear, suddenly remembered Loki's "probably nothing" as they'd walked through the alley alongside Niskit's house. "You knew there was something wrong here, didn't you? I know you did. Loki…why did you keep going? We should have turned back."

"I knew there was something different. That's not the same thing as knowing there's something wrong. It was the wall. It's always been just a wall. Niskit values her privacy. But there was magic woven into it. It must have been some kind of alert system."

"And you said she wasn't acting like herself. And you made that cryptic remark about candles. No, you knew something was wrong, not just different."

"All right, Jane, yes, I knew something was wrong. But believe me, I didn't think it was anything like this. Niskit is…I always knew she was a little unhinged, but this… I thought maybe she was dabbling in some kind of forbidden magic, or maybe she had someone else in there with her that she didn't want me to see, someone she'd be sneaking out the back door. Or maybe she was just in one of her moods. She's a bitter old lady but it never occurred to me she could be involved in anything like this."

Jane sighed. It was so frustrating not to be able to see Loki's face. "Why would she want to kill Nadrith? Why did she hate his father?"

"Remember what I told you about her husband? That he died fighting the Dark Elves? Years later, centuries, Nadrith's father made peace with them. And…Jane, it's a very long story."

"We're trapped in a basement in the dark," Jane said dryly. "I think it's a great time for storytelling."

Loki shook his head. He wasn't in the mood for telling stories at the moment, but he supposed it would help Jane stay calm and keep her mind occupied. Better a condensed dose of Nine Realms history than a panic attack over their present circumstances. He told her how Alfheim and Svartalfheim were once both ruled by Alfheim's king, how the Dark Elves grew more conscious of their distinct identity and purposely strove to further differentiate themselves from their cousins, how they grew to resent rule from afar, how a devastating protracted war broke out between the two, how Alfheim's king came to realize that victory would be far too costly and peace impossible to enforce, and a truce had been formalized that gave Svartalfheim supervised and then complete independence, but with many economic and political terms favorable to Alfheim. How peace returned but resentments lingered and festered in some. How smaller clashes popped up with some regularity. How after many centuries had passed, in the midst of another war that had started over some minor conflict but grew quickly and threatened to engulf both realms in another decades-long war, Nadrith's father decided that he wanted to make a more durable peace with Svartalfheim. "He did so," Loki explained, "on terms that seemed fair to most of the Dark Elves, but that seemed overly generous to some of the Light Elves, who saw it as a humiliating capitulation to a realm they used to rule and perhaps still should. Some, like Niskit, saw it as little less than treason on the part of the king against his own realm, after all the sacrifices Alfheim made to keep Svartalfheim in line. And still, the occasional skirmish cropped up, but they've been kept from spiraling out of control. Those who are grateful for the peace are also willing to accept the compromises to maintain it. Those who resent the nature of the peace also resent the compromises."

"I hate politics," Jane muttered.

Loki smiled bitterly and held back an unkind laugh. Then you really should have kept right on driving after you struck the heir to Asgard's throne with your vehicle.

"Okay, I get why she's mad at Nadrith's father now. But she said she tried to assassinate Nadrith. Why him?"

"She always thought he was little different from his father."

"Is he?"

Loki laughed darkly at that. "Well, his father never declared war on Asgard." Once the words were out, Loki began to think about them more soberly. Unhappy with your father's legacy, were you? You didn't want to be known as the one who compromised too much? How much did an assassination attempt mere days into your reign shape your thoughts on Alfheim's place in the Nine Realms?owHo

"I'm really not happy with your choice in friends," Jane said a couple of minutes later.

"Neither am I at the moment," Loki agreed easily. "Present company excepted."

A smile slowly spread over Jane's face. By implication at least, Loki had just called her his friend. It made her feel a little safer, in the midst of the darkness and uncertainty. She wasn't going to ruin it by drawing any additional attention to it.

"I wonder what's taking so long," Loki said simply for the noise. He knew what Jane had to be thinking, and he didn't want her to make too much of it. She could use whatever words she wanted for what they were, and "friendship," he supposed, was good enough, for the time being. He'd learned to accept his temporary life on Earth, and even enjoy some aspects of it. There was no point pretending he didn't sometimes – often – enjoy the time he spent with Jane.

"Yeah, me too. Listen, Loki…"

"What?"

"I just…I can't stop thinking about… Things could go really, really wrong here. Maybe before, they searched and no one was here. Or maybe we were always here. It depends how time travel actually works. But maybe we're found here, and maybe Niskit wasn't arrested before but she is now, and us with her, and…and I don't…"

"Just say what you mean to say, Jane," Loki said. It was unlike her to talk around something so much instead of coming rather directly to the point.

"Okay. If something happens and somehow you make it out of here and I don't, I want you to get a message to Erik. I want you to tell him-"

"When we both make it out of here, you're going to need to get a healer to look at your head. That is the worst idea I have ever heard."

"My head is fine," Jane said automatically, though it was throbbing. She wasn't nauseous, she wasn't dizzy, she wasn't worried. "Write it in a letter or something. Don't just show up out of the blue on his doorstep, of course. Tell him-"

"Jane-"

"Tell him I made my own choices, nobody forced me to do anything, and I'm sorry to leave him, and I hope he'll keep healing and be happy. Okay?" There was more, really, so much more she'd want to say to him, to thank him for everything he'd done for her. To tell him she hoped things would work out with Audrey, that she didn't want him to be lonely. But she'd already said those things, and it was really best to keep things simple. Even keeping things simple, Loki wasn't answering. "Okay?" she repeated.

"Your hypothetical scenario isn't going to happen."

"Loki, please. I'm all he's got. This is really important to me."

"All right," Loki said, just to get her to stop pestering him about this. "In the highly unlikely event that your scenario does happen, I'll find a way to get him a message."

"Good. Thank you," Jane said, swallowing and preparing for the next part. "And I want you to get a message to Thor, too."

Loki turned immediately turned away from Jane as his mouth fell open, though she could not see his face. She has lost her mind. "Oh, really?" he asked when he'd recovered. "Well, I want to rule Midgard. We don't always get what we want."

"I'm serious."

"So was I."

"Loki, I mean it. I want you-"

"I don't take orders from you, Jane," Loki said, raising his voice. He got better control of himself before he continued. "If I ever exchange any words with him again, they won't be friendly. Especially if they begin with 'I regret to inform you that Jane Foster is dead.'"

Jane lowered her head and rubbed at her bare arms to keep the returning chill at bay. "I guess you have a point there. But surely you can find a-"

"Your postal system, impressive though it may be, does not reach Asgard, nor does your e-mail. Jane, why don't we sing a song to keep our spirits up? I've learned the words to many of them now, and some of them are quite rousing."

"A song," Jane said flatly. "You want to sing. You and me."

"It would be better than this conversation."

She sighed in frustration. Loki might suddenly be willing to talk about her relationship with Thor, but he wasn't in the slightest ready to talk to Thor, not if he was more willing to burst out singing pop songs. "I don't want Thor to blame you if anything happens to me. And I really hope that-"

"But why shouldn't he?" Loki snapped, for he had no doubt at all that Thor would blame him, and since he also blamed himself, he could hardly fault Thor for this logical assumption. "Don't you? You wouldn't be here if it weren't for me."

"Will you just stop and let me say something nice here? Yes, it was your idea to come here on this day…and to keep going when you knew something was wrong…but-"

"Please, do go on, Jane. I'm greatly enjoying hearing you say something nice."

"You could just as well say you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me."

"Is that so."

"It is. Pathfinder. If I hadn't worked with SHIELD and later Tony Stark to create Pathfinder, neither of us would be here."

"Very convenient logic. Let's blame Thor, then. If he hadn't gotten himself banished, none of this would have happened."

"But then I never would have met either of you. And I never would have figured out what that atmospheric disturbance was. And from what I understand, getting banished was kind of good for Thor."

"It was good for me, too. It made me king."

"It must have been a big surprise. Or…did you plan all that?"

"I did not. I was rather stunned by it, actually."

"Loki…do you still want to rule Earth?"

"I've already told you I don't."

"But you did before."

"It was…a passing fancy. It seemed a good idea at the time. I thought little of your world…and I had just lost Asgard."

"And you knew that Thor cared about Midgard."

"Yes."

"And you knew he cared about me."

"Yes. Though you had nothing to do with that."

"And you won't give him-"

"No."

"Is there anything I can say t-"

"No."

"Then I'll just have to get out of here in one piece, no arrests, no executions, back to the…" Jane paused for a nervous little laugh. "Back to the future."

"I suppose so."

"Will you really give my message to Erik, though?" Jane asked quietly, several seconds later.

"If it's necessary. Yes, I'll try." And he thought maybe he really would. It would depend on the surrounding circumstances, he imagined. But yes, he would try.

"Thank you. I, uh, I'm sure it wouldn't be easy."

"It wouldn't. I don't particularly want to see him again." I don't want to have to look him in the eye, and I wouldn't be able to let myself look away. "I know how much he means to you. And I know how much you mean to him."

Jane looked hard in Loki's direction, as though if she just put enough effort into it, she'd be able to see him. "He told you about me?"

Loki hesitated, but only for a second. "I made him tell me about you," he admitted. It was easier in the dark. "He had no choice in the matter."

"Did you make him tell you…personal things? Things he regrets now?"Jane asked. She wasn't angry, and it somewhat surprised her that she wasn't, but it was over and done with, and now she just hoped to find out something of what Erik was dealing with now, and why he wouldn't tell her much about it.

"I don't know if he regrets it now; we haven't exactly discussed it, you know. He told me about your parents' death, about how he took you in, about some of the difficulties you faced. He spoke of you gladly. Eagerly. He's very proud of you, Jane. He loves you as he would his own daughter."

Jane nodded to herself. Even if Erik had said nothing but positive things about her, he was a private man, and would be bothered by the fact that he had told Loki some pretty personal things about her. But Erik was more than "bothered." "What did it do to him, Loki? Do you know? Is there anything you can tell me that might help him?"

"It made him want what I wanted. I wanted him to use the Tesseract to create a large and stable enough portal to allow the Chitauri army through, so he wanted that, too. He's a good man, and I imagine he feels a great deal of guilt over his role in that, over the knowledge he freely gave me and put to my use. He enjoyed it, too, working with the Tesseract, learning from it, without all the safety precautions SHIELD insisted on. He probably feels guilty that he took pleasure from what I made him do. He shouldn't, though. He had no choice in any of it. I took the choice away from him, and I didn't care what he thought about it. I don't know how to…how to help him. You could tell him to be angry at me instead of himself. That is only as it should be, after all."

Jane thought that over for a moment. She already knew he felt guilty. She hadn't known he'd enjoyed what Loki made him do. That would make it worse. "So he was still…him? He still had his own personality and everything? I didn't know what he was working on at the time, he couldn't tell me, but I knew he was excited by it."

"He was still himself, yes. Only with my will directing his own."

"And he still remembers all of it?"

"I don't really know. I assume so."

"I think I understand why he's struggling so much. Morality stops you from doing some of the things you might like to, if you were completely selfish and had no concern for negative consequences to yourself or others. And even if it doesn't stop you from doing it, it stops you from fully enjoying it, because you feel guilty. You took morality out of the equation, so he not only did things he would never have done otherwise, he felt no guilt over it, or over enjoying it."

"I took everything out of the equation but what I wanted. Morality, guilt, second thoughts… Things are simpler without them. I didn't have them…so Erik didn't have them, either."

Jane nodded to herself. She wasn't sure how he'd react to all that – to Loki not having morality or guilt or second thoughts – but she sort of wished Erik could be hearing all this. Maybe it would help.

"I am sorry, Jane," Loki said. If he'd come this far, he may as well continue. "I didn't…I never actually wanted to hurt anyone, including Erik. I just didn't care. And maybe that's worse, really. But that's what I do. The worst. You keep asking if I regret it, if I would do it over again. But there's little point in regret, is there not? It's a tool to exact an emotional response. It always rings false. There's a path, for better or worse, right or wrong, that led me here, and I have to see it through. To go where it leads. Even if I don't yet know where it leads. Even if I regret it."

The silence afterward was oppressive, as heavy as the darkness. Jane didn't know what to make of it all – this unspecified, unknown "path" that Loki might regret worried her – but one thing stood out to her through it all: Loki did regret what he'd done on Earth. She knew it. He hadn't always. He did now. Maybe he couldn't really say so, maybe he didn't know how. Maybe regretting his actions was as hard for him to deal with as forgiving him was for her. Forgiveness certainly felt a little less complicated now that she knew of his regret. "I don't think regret always rings false," Jane suddenly said, remembering something else Loki had said. "But I think…I think regrets try to tell you something, you know? Maybe you can try to avoid that path that you think will lead to re-"

Light then flooded down on them. Jane squeezed her eyes shut; Loki blinked but then forced his eyes to stay open, hands flying first to his knives out of long-trained instinct, then away from them as he prepared to make himself and Jane invisible.

"Come on up. It's all clear," came Niskit's voice from above.

"Saved by the trumpet," Loki muttered, avoiding looking at Jane, shoulders relaxing as his eyes adjusted. He should have known Jane didn't know how to let something go when for whatever reason he decided to start virtually baring his soul to her.

"Bell," Jane supplied, relaxing herself, since Loki clearly was. "Saved by the bell."

"On Asgard one says 'trumpet,'" Loki said, extending a hand out toward the ladder as Jane stood up from the floor. From what he could hear, and from what little he could see in his limited field of vision, all was well.

"We aren't on Asgard," Jane said, picking her way over the broken glass around the ladder.

"Nor are we on Vanaheim, Jana," Loki said.

Jane winced. She wouldn't be happy to admit it, but after all this time alone down here, and with another unexpected fresh round of openness from Loki, she had forgotten her end of the ruse. She wouldn't need to admit it – she knew Loki knew.

"Would you two prefer it if I left you down there a little longer? I'm in no hurry."

"No!" Jane shouted, reaching up for a rung, just as Loki said the same in a quieter yet firm voice.

/


Did I mention the next 25 chapters all take place on the same day? Just kidding. But this day's definitely not over.

Back in time in Beneath: At the end of the first section of Ch. 58 "Distraction," Loki decides to focus his plans for getting rid of the "curses" on Niskit, in large measure because she's not loyal to Nadrith; this was before time travel, and Loki wanted to avoid another Brokk situation.

Mildly-mildly spoilery excerpt below. Similarly mildly-mildly spoilery preview (this is your warning if you want to avoid it).

"Momorulz," I didn't have anywhere to send you a preview for this chapter, sorry! And "Melluky," I was just referring to my profile page on this website, the link should be somewhere there near the top of the screen when you're reading one of my stories. BTW, this will be the last chapter in which folks can "fairly" vote in the poll.

Special thanks to those who've taken the time to review, and a Happy New Year to all!

Teaser: In Ch. 114, Niskit gets down to business, and removing "curses" turns out not to be easy, not when the All-Father put them there.

Excerpt:

"Shut up. Can you take more?"

Loki looked at her incredulously. She was looking up at him with determination and a type of eagerness he'd seen in her before when she was faced with particularly challenging enchantments.

"What's going on?" Jane asked, stepping forward. It was better if she stayed out of this – she was here to make sure Loki didn't do anything to significantly change history – but the woman who'd just confessed to trying to murder one man was now apparently inflicting pain of some sort on Loki. And Loki wanted this badly enough, she knew, that he might not stop her no matter how much she was hurting him.