Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen – Decisions
"You…need to contact Earth?" Thor asked, trying to follow the seemingly random question.
"I might. No phone?"
"No."
"Okay. Keep going. I'm listening. Just listening."
"You must expect that I will ask you to resume your search for him..."
"Mmmm-hm."
"…but I would actually prefer that you not at this point. Something else known to none but me and my mother, and now you…she knows of some way to possibly find Loki. It must make use of magic, but she has been deliberately vague and told me nothing of that. I asked her if we should not attempt it now, but she said…that the time is not right."
"Really? That's good news," Tony said, eyebrows raised, nodding.
"I don't know whether it's good or bad, but I must trust her in this. As I said, I don't believe he's on your realm, but it is better, for the moment, if no one knows where he is, whichever realm it may be. On Midgard or any of the other realms he would become prey. The situation here…we are not winning this war, Tony. We avoid putting it in blunt terms, but the reality of it is…bleak. Understand that I cannot say this to my own people. I'm only even beginning to be able to say it to myself. We may…we probably will reach a point when difficult decisions must be made. Already there are some murmurings of discontent here, though we have worked hard to reassure our people, but I fear that even on Asgard, the temptation would be great, for some…to capture him and turn him over of their own accord. Not that Loki would simply accept such a thing."
"You mean he would fight tooth and nail."
"Yes, exactly. I think," he amended. He assumed the expression simply meant that Loki would fight hard, but he couldn't help the rather odd image of Loki sinking teeth and fingernails into his attackers' flesh – not precisely Loki's usual manner of fighting. "Wouldn't you?"
"Yep," Tony said immediately. "I would. I've kind of been there done that, the whole grabbed-by-the-enemy thing. I'd highly recommend avoiding it."
"I'm sorry for what befell you, friend. But I thank you for understanding. I know it would not…bother you so greatly, were Loki to be captured."
"Well…who's to say?" Tony said with a shrug and some strange expression Thor couldn't interpret. "Some things bother me one day and not the next. Or one minute and not the next. I'm kind of fickle like that. I'm not defending him but…it has been over four months and he hasn't tried to conquer or destroy any realms yet. You know, that we know of. Maybe he's behaving."
"Maybe. I am hoping."
"How're you holding up? Not Asgard, you."
Thor thought that over for a moment. No one else had really asked, except his mother, whom he without fail told that he was fine. "I don't honestly know. As king, there's so much I must do, so many different duties I must fulfill, and all of the most important decisions rest with me. I should have been more prepared for this – I've always known I would be king one day – but I spent most of my life avoiding such responsibility. Between us…I don't always know if I'm doing the right thing. My father still sleeps. If only he were here…he's been king for millennia, and he's led Asgard in wartime before. He would know the right-"
"But your father's not here. Dads are many things but they're definitely not perfect, either, you know. And you've got this, bro. You don't see that? Nobody knows everything. I mean, I come pretty close, but I've got lawyers and architects and PR and HR and, well, Pepper, and… Look, you've got smart people around you. Case in point," he said, angling his right hand back at his own chest. "And Jolgeir and Geirmund and Krusa…they've been easy to work with and it's obvious they know what they're doing. Okay, Krusa's a little crusty around the edges…that's actually my mnemonic to remember his name…Crusty Krusa, Gingerbread Geirmund… Anyway, it's also obvious that they respect you and think you're doing a good job. I swear I can actually see Jolgeir's heart glowing a little whenever your name comes up. So I don't think… Are you blushing? You're blushing. I just made the king of Asgard blush."
"Tony, enough," Thor said, fidgeting a little with Mjolnir. "I do not blush."
"Sure you do, Big Guy. I, uhhh, I think I had a point in there somewhere… It sucks being the one who has to make the hard decisions. I would know. That's why I basically handed my company over to Pepper. I've never been that big on responsibility and all that other grown-up stuff, either - think that guy in Office Space but way richer and obviously way smarter, I mean, a penny-fraction scheme? - and anyway I guess I finally realized that somebody had to take care of all that. But you…you've got this."
Thor clapped a hand on Tony's shoulder, careful not to use too much force – Tony Stark outside his Iron Man armor was not nearly as strong as he was inside it. "Tony…my friend…I didn't understand half of what you just said. As usual. But…again I thank you for it," Thor said with a warm smile for Tony's expression of confidence in him, when earlier he'd seemed to suggest he wouldn't want to be under his rule. He had the impression, too, that Tony was not the type of man to say things he didn't mean just to make someone else feel better. Those thoughts gave him pause, and brought a sterner expression to his face…with some effort. "And to your earlier question, while you need not bow…a little decorum might be appreciated. Along with the occasional 'your majesty.'"
Tony, not fooled for a moment because Thor really wasn't very good at this as he well knew, laughed and cocked an eyebrow. "Okay, but only when it's just the two of us, before a warm crackling fire."
Thor stared back at Tony for a moment in confusion, then burst out laughing and clapped his hand on Tony's shoulder again, forgetting himself this time and sending the man staggering a bit. Tony didn't seem to mind, and the laughter felt too good to worry about apologizing. "I shall keep it in mind," he said, thinking of a crackling fire and permitting himself for a moment to imagine being alone with Jane in front of it. Tony he would introduce to the part of the Healing Room where they made the healing stones, along with the rest of the Avenger warriors. Such thoughts of a time without war had grown few and far between, and all the more precious because of it. "I must take my leave now, before I forget that a battle awaits me. Go between those two columns to the far wall and you'll find my advisors waiting for you. Be well, Tony Stark," he said, extending his right arm to grasp Tony's.
"You, too, Your Majesty," Tony said, reciprocating the gesture. "Okay, I tried it out, and nope, that just doesn't work for me. May the Force be with you, Goldilocks."
Thor shook his head. "Someday you will explain all these names you call me and everyone else."
"Uh, that's probably not such a good idea. Let's leave it a mystery, huh? Mysteries are fun. But hey, one more thing before you go…can I keep the clothes?"
"I thought you didn't like them," Thor said. Tony had complained that they were tight and pinched in uncomfortable places when he first emerged in a black tunic, simple gold jacket and bracers, black leather pants, and lightly armored boots.
"I didn't at first. It's growing on me."
"Keep it. But in return, you must include coffee in your next shipment."
"Eh, I'm cheap. You've got a deal."
Thor thought as he left that initiating real trade with Midgard could prove quite beneficial to Asgard. Earth had its coffee and its PopTarts and surely many other things not found in the other realms that Asgardians would enjoy, and Asgard surely had goods that would be welcomed on Midgard. But that, too, was for a time without war.
/
/
Loki was angry. He was looking for a place where he could return to his own time and not be seen, but everywhere he turned were mortals and more mortals. He wanted to hate them. Or, not precisely hate them, he had no problem with that, but see them as nothing. Pointless minimally intelligent creatures who breathed the air, took up space, and died before anyone from any other realm even noticed they'd existed. He could no longer see them that way, and he hated them for it. Hated the ones at the Pole for making him see that Jane was not such an exception to her kind. Hated Jane for manipulating him into getting to know them. Hated Odin for sending him here with shackles he'd thought he could get removed, Thanos for "rescuing" him and sending him to Midgard, Thor for taking a perfectly good manipulation and running much too far with it and getting himself banished and making conquering Midgard seem like an attractive proposal in the first place.
Even the fact that he was angry angered him, for he should not be angry, but rather energized, excited, buoyed by the thrill of the exercise of power after so long, even though it had only been in a small, subtle way. Those feelings had already faded. He'd left Selby's wife in fear of him without lifting a finger against her, without even truly threatening her. He'd walked into a fine restaurant, commandeered one of its best tables, and eaten and drunk his fill. Through it all he'd defied Odin and flouted all of his supposed lessons. Yet he was not satisfied, not in the slightest. His stomach was full, but all he felt was emptiness.
He hated the emptiness.
And there was nothing to fill it with but more anger. And more hate.
There was nothing remotely good about returning to the South Pole. Everyone there reviled him now, even if they didn't yet know it was him they reviled. Jane does not, he thought. The idea gnawed at him, because he could not understand it. She knew what he'd done, what he was. Not what lay beneath his liars' skin, but enough. Enough to revile him along with the rest. He wanted to push her away, because she should revile him, and would if she ever found out the rest. But as much as he hated himself for it, as much as it sickened him, he wanted nothing more than to be with her right now. How much better the steak would have tasted, had he had her to share it with – the only person in all the Nine Realms, save possibly his mother, who would still gladly do so, even knowing his name was Loki. He remembered then, with something of a fond smile that broke through the anger, that Jane did not often eat red meat. That red meat, however was exceedingly good, and he thought he could have convinced her to have it.
The smile turned bitter. Jane would be furious at him for the first half of his visit to Chicago. Perhaps he could convince her that he'd done no real harm, that he'd merely engaged in a little mischief, but he doubted it. He'd done it precisely because it wasn't permitted. Because it was wrong, and he'd felt the urgent need to do wrong. I can hardly be blamed for it, he thought, the smile turning even darker, into an ugly twist of lips. Just look at what gave me birth.
It changed everything. Absolutely everything. That single moment, as cloth and metal crumbled away under the freezing steel grip of a Frost Giant that did not burn him but transformed him, made his skin the shade of his childhood nightmares…it was the moment around which his whole life pivoted, rewriting it, recasting it, exposing its lies, dividing it into Before and After. What followed had been nothing more than excruciating confirmation of what he'd somehow already realized was true once they were safely off Jotunheim and Thor was gone, his world awash in far more chaos than he'd ever intended. He'd found a way to bring order to that chaos – he was considerably less fond of chaos when he did not ultimately control it – but Thor had returned and ruined it all, and nothing had gone right since.
He'd once divided his life around another point, for he'd fallen so far and so hard then that he'd thought he would never again be able to return to anything like his old life. But he'd still had his name then – the name Odinson. He'd still had his own real body – the body of an Aesir.
"I want to leave this bed…but where will I go? How can I ever show my face again? How will anyone ever accept me again?"
Mother's face smiling down at him was full of compassion, as it always was. Loki wondered how she never ran out of it. "It won't be easy. But the people know what you've suffered. No one can say that you haven't sufficiently paid for what you did. And they will see that we, your family, and their king and queen, accept you fully. It will take time, just like your physical recovery, but time will heal those wounds, too."
What was there to heal now? What punishment, what amount of pain and humiliation would purge the blue that stained him all the way down to his soul? If the serpent hadn't done it, then nothing ever would. Nothing ever could. What was, was.
If he did nothing, he would eventually lose all control of magic. Was that to be his new humiliation? On the surface it seemed minor compared to years spent chained to rocks with venom slowly dripping onto him, but really it was so much worse. There would be no recovery from this. He would be powerless. Helpless. Stronger than the mortals, yes, but that would not be saying much. Magic was the only thing he had left. He had no name, no heritage, no shining realm to call home, nothing else. And now Odin was slowly stripping him of the one thing he could still call his own. The one thing that set him apart. That he had, and Thor did not.
Its inevitability clanged in his head, a clapper repeatedly striking the mouth of a heavy bell. Between each bone-rattling strike his blind refusal to accept that inevitability reasserted itself, and he felt he could drive himself straight to madness as he swung back and forth. It reminded him of the worst of his time in the company of Thanos and his lackey, when his memories were forcefully ripped from his mind during the day and turned against him as insidious weapons at night. Escape had seemed impossible, yet between each thought of hopelessness had pulsed the conviction that he would, somehow, find an escape. And I did, did I not? In a manner of speaking. I will find the escape from this, too. The precise moment in history when everything can be changed, or shaped… You've lost so much already, Odin made it impossible, you'll lose it all…
He rubbed his forehead for a moment, his only concession to the physical toll all this was taking on him, and tried to ignore the competing thoughts and voices in his head. He found a utility area behind one of the buildings where no one else was and quickly got into position. A couple of minutes later he was back at the South Pole, staring at Pathfinder, and entirely unconcerned about whether anyone had seen the flash.
He couldn't deal with this right now. He needed a break. To think about something else for a little while, to not think about this for a little while. He could not go back to being Lucas; that was over. But with Jane he didn't have to be. With her, he merely needed to keep her firmly outside of his head. That much, he could do. He knew her very well now, knew exactly what to say to assuage her concerns and to then to distract her from them. They could watch a movie, perhaps – one of the comedies, something that would let him forget and laugh. Or he could tell her about Nidavellir's star system; she was bound to find that interesting and he would enjoy seeing her captivated by his words.
With a plan in mind, the clanging grew quieter, and Loki headed back to the station. He went first to his own room, where he changed into brown silk slacks and the expensive white shirt with blue, green, and brown vertical stripes. He cinched a leather belt around his waist and retied the green silk tie around his neck. He'd begun to drift toward his more casual items here but now, if he could not wear real clothing he would at least wear the best version from Midgard that he could.
He knocked on Jane's door next, thinking she might be there waiting to pounce on him for that talk she wanted to have. When no one answered, he moved on to the Science Lab down the main corridor. It was nearly 10:00 in the morning; she must have given up on waiting. He would have to explain his absence, and quickly decided he would tell her he'd gone for a walk to clear his head.
Austin, Carlo, and Wright were there when he arrived, their chairs pulled out from their desks facing each other, talking. About him, most likely, though they'd fallen silent when he entered. It was an unpleasant feeling, and one he did not wish to dwell on.
"Morning, Lucas," Austin said.
Loki forced a smile. He could pretend for a short while. "Good morning. Did Jane go out to the DSL?"
The other men exchanged glances and Loki narrowed his eyes, instantly aware that something was amiss. "You haven't heard?" Wright asked.
"Heard what?" Loki asked cautiously, mind working furiously through the possibilities. Jane had said she talked to Tony – had his gallant protector actually shown up here, and Jane was with him now? Had they informed Thor of his presence? Was Thor here now? Pathfinder was unattended – it would have to be a fast decision but he could go to some other place and time and-
"She's still in Club Med. Spent the night there. She's got a concussion," Wright explained.
Everything that had been racing along just a second ago came to a screeching halt, all of it replaced by the word "concussion." The term was not regularly used on Asgard, but he thought he knew what it was. An impact injury to the brain.
"I'm sure she'll be okay," Austin put in.
Loki's eyes jumped to his, and he was suddenly acutely aware of his own silence, and that he'd lost track of how long it had lasted. "Yes, of course," he said with a nod and a look of what he hoped was polite concern. "That explains why I couldn't find her. We were supposed to meet this morning to work on some of her data, and I-" Shut up, he hissed at himself. It was the most amateur of errors when lying – running off at the mouth, betraying the nervousness behind the lie.
"Have a seat, man," Wright said, looking a little worried.
Loki wanted to strangle him. Literally. For no reason he could particularly identify, though something about Wright had always irritated him. "No, thank you. I think I'll go get a cup of coffee," he said, nodding at them and turning away.
"We've got the best coffee in the station right here. I just made a fresh pot," Carlo said as Loki walked away.
He ground his teeth. Another amateur mistake. Lies spat out with no thought, which held no logic, which required more lies to buttress them. Loki ignored Carlo and just kept walking. He walked back down the corridor and toward the double doors with the "Club Med" sign above them. Only his eyes turned that way.
"Morning, Lucas," Gary said. Loki nodded and kept walking, going down the stairs and making a mindless loop through the building before winding up back on the second level, right next to Club Med, where his eyes fell on the "Computer Room" sign. He detoured into that room without conscious thought. The satellite window continuously drifted earlier, and as he settled at one of the computers he realized it wouldn't be open much longer today. "Concussion," he typed into the search engine.
The symptoms read almost like a checklist of everything that, in retrospect, he'd observed in her. She'd been knocked unconscious. She'd complained of a headache. She'd been dizzy. He was certain she'd been nauseous when they returned, but she'd had some nausea before when they'd traveled via Pathfinder and this time he'd ignored it and turned his back on her and walked away because he hadn't wanted to deal with her at that moment. She'd been tired. How many times did she say she was tired? She fell asleep leaning against you, which she has never done before, and you were attracted to her, and you wanted to touch her, and you wanted to escape with her, and all the while she had a brain injury! Loki swore loudly and colorfully in terms no Midgardian would recognize, glancing up afterward to reassure himself he was still alone.
Difficulty thinking. That would explain why she'd let things go so easily last night, when she was in part defined by her inability to let things go easily, or at all. Sensitivity to light. He remembered how she'd squinted and shielded her eyes against the dull light in the carriage. He'd thought nothing of it at the time. She'd been unconscious on the floor and as soon as she'd woken up and spoken he'd assumed she was fine. It had never even occurred to him she might not be. He'd known she was truly afraid and he'd tried to reassure her, but never once did he think that perhaps he ought to check her for a hidden injury. He probably could have detected it. He wouldn't have been able to heal it, but he would have at least known right away that she needed a real healer, and he could have taken her to one right then and there on Alfheim, carrying her kicking and screaming if he had to.
But he hadn't. He'd done everything wrong, from beginning to end. He'd allowed her to go with him to Alfheim in the first place. He'd resented her for complicating what had seemed a very straightforward bit of time travel, but at the same time, part of him was glad to have her with him. Had that affected his judgement? Jane had insisted she accompany him, but since when did he let a mortal – or anyone – dictate his decisions like that? He'd put her in that position, dressed her up as a Vanir, and Niskit had treated her as one. If he'd simply told Niskit from the start that Jane was Midgardian – and what would it have mattered, since Niskit had figured it out anyway – then Niskit never would have thrown those glasses down at them. It was his fault that Jane was there in the first place. His fault that she was knocked unconscious. His fault that she was neither examined nor treated, not until hours and hours later.
It was his fault that she'd ever come to know him at all.
His eyes refocused on the text on the computer. Each of the websites he looked at said basically the same thing. Concussions could be serious, but in the United States alone there were over three million cases per year, and most often they were minor, self-diagnosed, and cared for at home, as long as someone was there to check regularly on the injured person. Not ignore it, as he had done. Jane was now in Club Med, and the healer Nora Ellison was checking on her. Because I did not.
Angrily he looked away. It didn't matter if Jane's injury was minor or severe. It didn't change his inaction. His oblivion. His selfishness. It could have killed her. If it happened to not kill her – he told himself it would not – that was no reflection on him.
The whole thing, of course, that was a reflection on him. Who was he to want to laugh at a movie alongside Jane, as though he were some normal Midgardian, or anything normal at all? Who was he to ever imagine hiding away in a cottage with her and never stepping foot outside it again? It was disgusting. She deserved so much better than that cruel fate. Thor, came the whispered thought from some far corner of his mind. He wished to rip it out like a weed and tear its leaves to shreds and set fire to its roots so that it could never take hold again. But weeds were not so easily eradicated. Could Thor really be so much better than him? Thor, who'd brought war to Asgard within hours of nearly being made king, and who'd done so with a smile on his face? But yes, of course he was, of course he was. Because as foolish and naïve and immature and irresponsible and hammer-happy as Thor was, Thor was Thor Odinson. Thor was Aesir. Thor was by definition better than him. Odin had always known it.
Thor, despite his arrogance, would still probably have noticed that Jane was a walking checklist of brain injury symptoms. It wasn't as though either of them were ignorant of the problem. Both of them had hurt themselves in this way as boys, Thor being thrown from a horse, Loki falling from a tree. It had even happened to both of them in adulthood, when it was far less common among those of the other realms. Loki had woken up to being carried over Thor's shoulder and promptly vomited all down his back, but Thor had thoroughly deserved it for a careless move that had resulted in Mjolnir clipping Loki in the head. When he'd recovered and months passed but still he refused to fight with Thor – gone were the days when Loki forgave easily – Thor had made an offer.
Thor had only spent three days in the Healing Room to Loki's six, but Loki had spent thirty days in a prison cell, and the next ten years required to assist in the Healing Room like some fifty-year-old trainee. It didn't seem to matter to anyone that Thor had given his permission to be bludgeoned over the head. But what Thor had done by accident, Loki had done deliberately. He'd felt a few twinges of guilt over it, actually, but never admitted it to anyone. He'd certainly never apologized, either – not really. "You have my deepest, sincerest apologies," he'd said to Thor in front of those he then called family, as required by Odin, who'd handled the matter himself, "for doing exactly what you asked me to do." That was when ten years in the Healing Room was added to his punishment.
His was a heart of ice, perhaps. Softened, melted in his childhood with a mother's loving care, but slowly freezing to its natural icy hardness as the years passed and his mother's influence over him waned.
And now he'd endangered the life of the only other person he cared about. He'd abandoned the other one to a war Asgard was likely to lose, with no way for her to reach him if she needed him.
He felt for the red gem hidden away under his shirt. He had a way to reach her. But he wouldn't know when or if she was in real danger. If he went to Asgard, it would be straight back to prison. He didn't like prison. He had no intention of ever returning there.
If only Thor had not returned when he did…or better yet, ever. Everything always went back to Thor, it seemed. He wouldn't have been sitting in that prison cell, stomping on firegrubs, if it weren't for Thor showing up back on Asgard.
Loki paused at that thought, one he'd had hundreds of times before. If Thor had not returned…
Everyone would have known he'd saved Odin's life. Odin could rot now, but Loki would have earned the adulation and adoration of all of Asgard, the high regard and respect that Thor had always had without even trying, just by flashing that big confident smile of his.
His mother would've seen him as a hero.
Jotunheim would be space dust, its inhabitants no more than a bad memory, the villains of tapestries and sagas.
He would have been welcomed and lauded as king, instead of being viewed with suspicion.
He would have never had to find out what it was like to suffocate, to wonder how long he could go without air before his cells finally began to die, to wish that they would go ahead and start dying.
He would never have been so grateful for a lungful of air that he'd babbled and rambled answers without filter, worse even than Tony Stark.
He would never have met Tony Stark, or impetuously stolen trinkets and alcohol from him, or killed some innocent man who'd had the misfortune of being in an elevator when the building lost all power. When Loki made it lose all power.
He would never even have known that time travel was possible, because he would never have known about Pathfinder, or read about Einstein's theory of general relativity, or gone to the South Pole.
Because he never would have met - much less sought out - Jane Foster.
Not if Thor were stopped before he could return to Asgard. Jane would have held no relevance to Loki then whatsoever – one mortal out of seven billion.
It would make his life better. It would make her life better.
Just like Back to the Future.
/
/
Fighter jets roared overhead, too close, shaking the tower.
"I feel the need, the need for speed," Tom Cruise said to her, grinning cockily, all decked out in his fighter pilot suit.
"Aren't you hungry?" Jane asked him, holding out a sweet log.
"Yeah," he said with a really slow, dramatic nod, his helmet now sprouting horns.
"How do you fit in the cockpit with that on your head?"
"I always check first," Tom said seriously, mouth full of honey-sweetened grains.
The building shook from another fly-by. And that moment, when she realized she was on a runway next to a bunch of fighter jets and not in the building even though she felt the shaking as if she were, brought the first small taste of lucidity. "Will you guys cut that out? Stop showing off."
She and Tom came to a stop in front of Erik, in a rumpled suit, aviator's sunglasses, and a white Navy hat. "Your body's writing checks…no, your ego's writing checks your body can't cash," he told them both.
"My ego's fine. And Erik, you can't be in Top Gun if you don't know the lines," Jane said, even as wakefulness continued to encroach and she realized that if Erik was getting the line wrong, it was because she was getting it wrong.
She gave a groan and let the last tendrils of the dream slip away. The real world hadn't yet replaced it, but somehow Jane knew that hanging out in Top Gun was way better than whatever was waiting for her on the other side of her eyelids.
The building gave another shake.
Jane was at the South Pole. There weren't any fighter jets at the South Pole.
Her eyes shot open, and she looked around in surprise, having expected to see the room she'd been sleeping in for the past four months. Instead, she was in Club Med. After a moment of bewilderment, it started to come back. Consussion, her memory supplied. Because Niskit…because we went…and Loki… Her eyes grew wider. Loki…
She swung her legs over the side of the bed - no stepstool needed for this one - and hopped down, grabbing the boots she'd removed last night and tugging them on, ignoring the crusty socks beside them.
"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Nora Ellison said, bustling over to the side of the clinic where Jane had slept.
"I really need to talk to Lucas," Jane answered, not looking up from her boots. The laces weren't cooperating, maybe because she couldn't get her hands to slow down enough to work out the knot she'd somehow gotten in them last night.
"Not until I clear you to leave. Jane…is there something going on between you and Lucas?"
"What? No. I mean…we're just friends. He's going through some stuff, and I was…" Jane stopped and made a sound of frustration. "I think he's really upset and I should have talked to him more about it last night but I was really kind of out of it and I could hardly think straight and-"
"Jane," Nora said, putting her hands gently yet firmly over Jane's and stilling them. "Slow down. Take a deep breath."
Jane did as Nora said, then answered her questions, the ones clearly intended to ensure her brain wasn't misfiring all over the place. Her head was clear now if anxious, her thoughts flowed with their familiar order if faster than she could voice them, the headache was gone, the rest had renewed her energy. The physical exam checked out fine, and Jane was cleared to go. It was already 10:50; she could hardly believe she'd slept so late.
"Take it easy for a few days, all right? Make sure you're drinking plenty of water, and if the headache comes back, take a couple of Tylenol and go lie down for a little while. I want to see you every afternoon for the next three days, just for a quick check. Okay?"
"Okay. Thanks, Nora. Sorry for being such a bad patient."
"Oh, please," Nora said, rolling her eyes. "You're far from the worst patient I've ever had. And hey, Jane…if Lucas wants to talk…I'm not a therapist but I'm the closest thing we've got here, and I'd be happy to lend a professional ear. Please let him know, okay? He keeps to himself a lot, and that's not always a healthy thing here."
"Yeah, I know. He's gotten better about that. I'll let him know you offered," Jane said, sadness casting a shadow over her heart. Loki would never talk to Nora. Not the way he needed to. She wondered if they had anything at all like therapists on Asgard, or if in their pursuit of the kind of warrior ideal that Loki suggested reigned there, they were expected to simply suck it up in the face of emotional trauma. Jane tried to get Loki to talk to her; she tried to be a friend to him. But so often she didn't know what to say, or the right thing to say, and she knew there were layers of something in him that she'd never reached. He needed a therapist. His whole family needed a therapist.
Don had once called psychiatrists "rent-a-friends," which Jane had thought was incredibly insensitive of him, especially as a physician himself. He'd defended the statement with a long monologue about the breakdown of close personal relationships in modern society and how many people saw therapists because they simply needed someone to talk to, because they had no true friends to go to instead. It was still a really insensitive thing to say, but as that argument came back to her now, she thought maybe there was a grain of truth in Don's position. Loki had no friends, as far as Jane could tell. No one to talk to, maybe not since whenever he'd stopped talking to Thor. Unless you counted Brokk and Niskit, but Jane had the sense that neither of them had ever been "that kind" of friend. He needed someone who would listen, who wouldn't judge, and who knew how to help him work through all the things that ate at him and deal with them in healthy ways - he needed a therapist even more so because he didn't have friends who tried to help, or at least friends he'd be willing to talk to.
That put Jane right back where she'd started. She was his friend. He'd even said so, more or less. She was the only one he might be willing to talk to, certainly here on Earth, even if she didn't always know the right thing to say in response. So much had happened yesterday, and he'd been so calm about it once they'd left Niskit's after first nearly attempting to kill her…he'd been disturbingly calm.
Scarily calm, as she thought back on it now. He'd erupted at Niskit's. He'd been irrational and unreasonable. They'd come back and discovered a new crisis. And Loki was cool as a cucumber. Right, Jane thought. Even last night she'd known he wasn't showing his true reaction.
She bent over again and finished tying her laces, then started out of Club Med, but came to a stop again when she saw Nora sweeping glass up from the floor.
"Just a sec," Nora said, sweeping the shards away from the path to the door. "Did it wake you?"
"No, I didn't hear it."
"Hear it?"
"The glass breaking."
"No, I meant the earthquake. You woke up right after it."
"That was real?" Jane asked to Nora's nod. "Stronger than the last one?"
"Yeah. Lasted longer, and the shaking was a little worse. I'm going to start securing things in here in case…you know…"
Jane nodded, almost absently, for the first time in a long time really feeling the vulnerability of everyone's existence here. The station was up on stilts basically. Really thick sturdy pillar-stilts that could be raised some as snowdrift built up, but stilts all the same. Were they built to withstand earthquakes? Why would they be? This wasn't California or Japan. Earthquakes were all but unheard of here. And now they'd had three…
Jane let out a breath and shuddered a bit as her lungs filled again. There was only one other unusual thing going on at the South Pole. Pathfinder. Yggdrasil.
The door opened; it was Drew Bronowski, the science support manager for the winter. Jane hadn't had that much contact with him, since her work was really independent of the US Antarctic Program and the other scientific projects here, but they'd had a few conversations over the course of the winter.
"Hey, Doc, is Jane cleared?"
"She's cleared. I'll send something official to Olivia soon."
"Good. Jane, we're about to have an all-hands meeting, and I'd really like to make sure all the scientists are there. 11:30, the conference room."
"Okay, I'll be there."
"See you then," Drew said, hurrying out.
Nora had swept up all the glass by then and Jane got past her. "There are some messages for you, on the chair there. I almost forgot."
Jane thanked Nora, grabbed the messages, and hurried out across the main corridor toward her room.
"Please stop by my room, I need to see you. Selby." She frowned. Whatever was up with Selby now she didn't have time for. She had to deal with Loki and go to this meeting that was surely about the earthquakes.
"Jane, Maria Hill called for you on the sat phone. Said she just wanted to check on you and find out if you'd heard anything from your friend. She wants you to call her back as soon as you can, doesn't matter when." The number followed. There was only one "friend" Maria Hill could be asking about - she wanted to know if Thor had told her anything about Loki being on Earth. She didn't have time to deal with that, either, though she knew there was only so long she could put off SHIELD.
"Eric Sellvig called, said he was worried about you, asked you to get in touch and let him know you're okay." That was another story. She didn't have time to call, but she could at least dash off an e-mail before they lost the satellites, which was exactly what she did when she got to her room.
"I'm fine. Please don't worry about me. How about you?" she typed, grimacing as she realized it hadn't even occurred to her that the news of Loki's return to Earth must be having an effect on him, and probably not a good one. "If he wanted to cause any trouble he would have by now, so please try not to worry about him. I'm sure everything will be fine." It wasn't the most thoughtful note she'd ever written him, but she hoped it would suffice for now.
Her next stop was two doors down, Loki's door. She knocked, but he didn't answer. After a minute she opened the door and peeked in; there was no sign of him. Just as well, she thought. There wasn't much time before the meeting, and she really needed to shower and wash her hair, and her conversation with Loki was going to take a while and shouldn't be some rush job. She eyed Selby's door, across from Loki's, then hurried back to her room to get ready for her shower. She'd see Loki at the meeting and they'd talk afterward.
/
/
A cool wind brushed across barren land. Land, not ice, and cool, not freezing.
This would again change everything. Everything that he could change, anyway. Jane would go on to lead a normal life, whatever "normal" was for Jane. And he…perhaps he would still be king, perhaps not. But he would not have Odin's magic flowing insidiously through his veins, choking off his own magic. From there he could figure out what he would do next, without that stranglehold slowly crippling him.
In the distance, swirling light appeared in a suddenly turbulent sky. A stilled vehicle lurched forward. Inside it, Dr. Jane Foster fearlessly rushed headlong toward a fate that he would alter.
Something had prevented him from saving the life of his younger brother.
He had a feeling that whatever it was, that same something wouldn't prevent him from ending the life of his older brother.
If one brother was meant to die by his hand, surely the other was, too.
/
This chapter takes place on June 9, precisely four months after Loki and Jane arrived at the South Pole.
I'm not a fan of "real person fiction," so just to be clear, while Tom Cruise's name is in this, Tom Cruise isn't really in this, his character in Top Gun is...sort of.
Did you notice that Thor failed to mention he knows Loki has been seen off of Midgard? In the course of that convo, bearing in mind it was solely from Thor's POV, when writing it I forgot that Tony didn't know that, so there was actually no "contrivance" of Thor not mentioning it, it just didn't come up. Which as it turns out is really lucky for Loki, or that conversation would have gone a whole different way.
Guest March 11 - you read this in FOUR DAYS? I have no words. Except that I wish I could do that. As we approach the climax of the story my terror grows that I will forget some detail I've always intended to circle back to. I need to re-read the whole thing in order, in one go, and take notes! Thanks so much for your kind words.
Previews for Ch. 120, tentatively titled "Fault": The station deals with earthquakes; Jane deals with realizations and doubts and inquiries and suspicion; Loki deals with the past...or, you know, not.
Excerpt:
Has he been lying about everything? Did he never stop lying…and just switched to a different lie instead? To manipulate me again? So I wouldn't get in the way of what he really wanted to do?
Her instincts resisted the idea. But he'd had her believing every word he said hook, line, and sinker in the beginning, when he was lying through his teeth the whole time.
