Bit of vaguely graphic imagery in this one...

Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Nine – Awakening

Loki shrank back in his bed; it was the same warm smile, the same gentle expression, but this was not his mother. His could not tear his gaze away from her eyes, for a shade of blue not quite her own had clouded over her pupils and it was the most horrifying thing he'd ever seen.

"But I've found you now, my sweet boy. Shall we have some fun together, just the two of us?"

She reached out for him, with her warm smile and unnaturally big blue eyes and he turned away and squeezed himself into the corner where bed met wall as tightly as he could. Her hand touched his shoulder and he screamed at the perversion of it, this unfathomably sickening –

"Loki, wake up." The hand on his shoulder shook him. The voice was not Mother's. "You were having a nightmare. How am I supposed to sleep through all that screaming?"

He recognized that voice, though he hadn't heard it in so very long. "Thor?" he said, rolling over carefully. Thor was crouched on his knees beside him on the bed. He looked about ten. Loki looked down at himself and found himself a child. "Thor, there's something wrong with Mother. Her eyes were so blue, and…" He couldn't think; he couldn't remember it clearly. But something was wrong. Very wrong.

Thor sat back and stuck his chin out. "Her eyes have always been blue. And so are mine, and so are Father's, all the same shade. There's something wrong with you, because yours don't look like ours."

"No. No, that's not true. You don't…you never said that…this isn't…"

"There's definitely something wrong with you, Loki. Come on, let's play a game."

Everything went dark, and Loki felt around him, hands coming to rest on an arm. A heavy blanket was draped over his head, and Thor's. Underneath, it was pitch black. "Their skin is a hideous dark blue, and they blend in perfectly with the nighttime shadows. So that's when they come. One night, the bravest and cruelest of them crept soundlessly through the halls of the boys' home, invisible to their guards, unheard by the boys' sleeping parents. The new litter of Frost Giant young needed toys to play with, and-"

"I don't-" Loki said, intending to say he didn't want to hear this story, but he couldn't physically force the words out, and he suspected they would have been ignored regardless.

"-Aesir children were just the right size to be their dolls. The brutal fearless Frost Giant easily entered the chamber where the boys slept, scooped them up, gagged them with stinking rags, and tossed them into his travel bag. They struggled and cried out but no one heard their muffled voices, and he took them back to Jotunheim where he turned the bag over and shook it and dumped the two frightened Aesir boys out onto the ice. A group of Frost Giant young, towering over them and just as wicked and ugly as the grown ones, gave savage screams of delight as their eyes lit up at their new toys. The boys tried to run, but the Frost Giants grabbed them by their legs and held them dangling in the air upside down. 'Try to keep them alive a little while longer this time, children,' the Frost Giant thief said. 'It's a chore obtaining new ones. And remember, I know you enjoy it, but plucking their eyes out causes a mess.'"

"Thor, stop! I really don't like this story!" Loki insisted, shivering in fear, the words finally bursting past their dam.

"It's too easy to scare you, Brother. Come on, do you really think those idiot Frost Giants could get past Heimdall and all the Einherjar? Afraid they're going to come and pluck out your eyes? You shouldn't worry. No beast of Jotunheim would ever be allowed to wander freely through the Realm Eternal."

Loki wanted to run. He wanted to run badly. But his legs wouldn't move, and instead he stayed there on the floor and started crying.

"What a baby you are, Loki. No wonder you were never as good as me. No wonder you were never worthy," Thor said, voice deeper.

Loki wiped his tears and looked up…and up. He was still a child, but by the light of a candle he was certain hadn't been there before, he saw that Thor, sitting beside him under the blanket on the floor of their bedroom, was fully grown. Loki shook his head, but Thor kept talking.

"Why are you so afraid of your own kind, anyway? You must like plucking out eyeballs."

No no no no no no… He wanted to scream, to explode, but he couldn't move or make a sound. He felt sick. He felt like insects were crawling all over him, their legs skittering across his flesh, their tiny pincers biting.

He heard a sound from beneath him, footsteps. With a shiver he ran his hands up and down his arms to get rid of the lingering crawling sensation, then opened his eyes. He was on the stairs, and the footsteps were rapidly approaching from below. Baldur rounded the corner, eighteen years old, hair mussed and clothing dirtied.

"You're not going to start up again, are you?" he asked, coming to a sudden halt two steps down. "Why do you always feel the need to spoil things? You suck the fun out of everything."

"I don't want to spoil things," Loki said, the words dragged from him against his will. "I just want you to stop this foolishness." He reached out to grab his younger brother's arm, but Baldur wrenched it away from him.

Baldur laughed. "I'm still having fun. Why would I stop?"

"Don't be an idiot. You'll get yourself killed."

"No, I won't. You'll get me killed." He pushed the blond curls off his forehead and took another step up, bright blue eyes locking onto Loki's. "I know what you are. I know the truth now. Frost Giants know only slaughter and mayhem. Is that why you killed me?" he asked as Loki tried to shake his head, tried to speak, tried to back away, but could only stare into those accusing eyes. "Were you secretly an assassin all along? Was it imprinted on you from birth, so that even taken away from them, you remembered somewhere deep in your frozen heart that you were meant to avenge your real father's defeat?"

Finally, finally Loki managed to squeeze his eyes shut, but then through his heavy breaths came the sickening scent of lavender and his eyes were opening again…

/


/

Jane was late for her boat, along with Claire and Chrissy, two of her high school girlfriends. Now they were going to be stuck at the South Pole forever, because it was the last boat out and the water around it was turning to ice. Chrissy then told her it wasn't actually the last boat, that there was still one more, and Jane was relieved, because although she was having lots of fun she didn't want to spend the rest of her life here. Claire then turned into a guy and said, "It's not." Jane stared at her in confusion. "It's not what?" she asked. "It's not," he repeated, and then the random formless guy turned into Loki.

Her eyes sprang open. She was disoriented, not expecting to wake up on the floor, but as soon as she realized where she was she also realized Loki was mumbling in his sleep, it's not, no, not real. He was having a nightmare, just as he'd feared. He wasn't making enough noise for his neighbors to hear, but she figured he might get there, and besides, judging from the last time, this wasn't a "normal" nightmare but rather really intense night terrors, and maybe about some really horrible stuff. She needed to wake him up.

She rubbed at the sleep in her eyes, got up, turned on the light, and went to Loki's side. He was on his stomach facing away from her this time, and he'd fallen silent. Her gaze fell on his hand, clenched so tightly around the corner of his pillow that it looked like he had to be awake. He mumbled something else, then, muffled by the pillow, and she knew he wasn't. She said his name, and, like last time, he didn't respond in the slightest. "The radio," she breathed, remembering how he'd told her to wake him if this happened. Somehow it had seemed perfectly rational at the time…when she hadn't actually imagined throwing a heavy radio at someone. She didn't really want him to panic and shove her across the room again, though, and she suspected that was exactly what would happen if she tried to wake him by giving him a shake.

A few seconds later, radio in hand, Jane stood on Loki's stepstool leaning over him and wondering what the best way to do this was. It's not going to hurt him, she told herself. From what she'd gathered, including that rather annoying incident when he was making fun of her self-defense abilities, about a Light Elf laying down and letting her hit him as long as she wanted without it hurting him at all, it would take a lot more than a smack with a human-built radio to actually harm him. Still, the last time this happened, she'd barely touched him when he bolted up and threw her against his desk. "I'll start easy," she said, as though Loki could hear her. "If you don't wake up, I'll try throwing it, okay?"

Loki didn't object, so with a deep grimace and a teensy bit of fear contorting her face, Jane aimed the radio directly over the back of his head, readied herself to move, and dropped it.

She jerked back, overbalanced and nearly feel from the stool, and quickly jumped off it, all as Loki bolted up, just like before, moving so quickly she couldn't follow what he was doing, but the next thing she knew Loki was staring at her and breathing hard, and the radio was a split-open mess of broken pieces on the floor near her sleeping bag. An out-of-place memory came to mind, of Rodrigo warning her not to take her radio apart. "You okay?" she asked, giving the radio a final frown before focusing on Loki. There were worse things than having to pay for a destroyed radio. "You were dreaming."

Loki nodded, sitting up in bed, legs hanging over the edge, head down, eyes closed. "I can still smell it."

"What?" Jane asked, giving the air a sniff and not noticing any particular smell.

"Lavender." His stomach gave a twist and put a hand to his mouth, swallowing hard. When he had control of himself he opened his eyes and found Jane watching him curiously. "There were lavender bushes behind him. Baldur." Even the name hurt to say aloud.

Jane nodded in understanding. "When he died?"

Loki nodded a couple of times, stopping immediately when it made the queasiness return. "I just…I need a minute. I need to…"

"Do you want me to go?" Jane asked when he didn't continue. She hadn't forgotten how he'd broken down after that other nightmare, also about Baldur, and how combative he'd turned when he realized just how much of his vulnerability he'd allowed her to see.

"No. I mean I… No. Just give me a minute to remember it all. These dreams…they come from memories, but corrupted…hijacked. I don't like to let them stay there, unexamined, to worm their way in to the truth. The truth," he repeated, expression changing as he broke into a sudden laugh. "There is no truth. Only a different casting of the lies."

Jane listened, but had no idea what he was talking about. He thought he would confuse reality with dreams? He sounded a little unhinged really, but then, she supposed he'd sounded like that last time, too. The dreams must be exceptionally realistic to leave him in this state. "Okay," she said hesitatingly. "You dreamed about Baldur's death?"

He started to nod, then shook his head. "No. Not really. You stopped it." His eyes stopped darting around, along with his thoughts, as both settled on Jane. "You stopped it. Thank you."

"Um," Jane began, giving an awkward shrug, "all I did was drop your radio on your head. Most people really don't thank you for dropping radios on their head," she added with a smile and a nervous laugh. "It's a heavy radio."

"I asked you to," he said, ducking his head and scratching at it, then running his fingers through his hair. "I dreamed about him. But not his death. Not yet. One of the last times we talked. We argued. It wasn't the first time. And it…the dream starts off like the memory, but then it… I've barely even thought of him in centuries and now…"

"I'm sorry," Jane said, but Loki had drifted off and didn't seem to hear her.

Before Baldur…what came before Baldur? That story…under the blanket with Thor. He could barely remember it, the real incident. And now he wasn't certain, were his memories poor because of the interference of the dream…or were his memories of it genuinely vague? The latter would mean that Thanos's lackey had simply filled in the gaps, giving actual words to a story Loki remembered only impressionistically, images of being dumped out of a giant sack and tumbling head over heels onto the ice to be a living toy for Frost Giant children. Either prospect was disconcerting. But before the story…it hadn't started the same, he realized. The directed dreams had a pattern. Each dream began with a real memory, based on elements from something he'd actually been dreaming about, and quickly deteriorated into something manipulated and controlled by The Other, then transitioned into the next episode, which began with a real memory that quickly became similarly warped. It had happened the same way when it was done in person, before The Other could only reach him through his dreams. But Thor telling that story…it began with Thor waking him up, saying he was dreaming, but Loki had no specific memory associated with that. Certainly when they were children they'd both sometimes had nightmares. But something was off about this. It began with Thor saying… He struggled to recall the dream. Thor said there was something wrong with him. Because he said there was something wrong with…

His eyes flared along with his anger. It hadn't begun with Thor. It had begun with her. The bastard had dragged his mother into this, and Loki hadn't been able to reject it. "You haven't been getting enough sleep. I've been looking for you." So. He'd angered The Other by denying him this particular sadistic pleasure. He couldn't grasp the fading wisps of memory of whatever else the lackey had said to him in his mother's voice, but he knew they were cruel, barbed words dipped in poison, and he had no way to fight against it because he was helpless in this captive dream state and the bastard had used his mother's voice.

"Hey, um…everything okay?" Jane asked after watching Loki go from upset and off-kilter yet calm, to cold and harsh and something that frankly looked ready to attack.

"I've changed my mind," Loki said, carefully avoiding looking at Jane.

"About what?"

"You. Here. You should go."

"Are you sure?" she asked with a heavy dose of skepticism. "Because now I'm thinking I really shouldn't."

"Jane, if you continue speaking…you won't like the response. I'll say cruel things to you, and maybe I'll-"

"No, you won't."

He looked at her now. The sheer audacity of this woman was at times stunning. "I'm quite certain I will. Go now."

"You won't, and I'm not."

"It will make me feel better."

Jane listened as a madman's laugh followed. She wasn't sure if he was being serious or not. "No, it won't. And I think you know that."

Loki, eyes drawn to the movement, watched passively as Jane's hand rose toward his own resting beside his thigh on the bed, paused above it, then covered it. Her thumb moved minutely over his wrist; her other fingers bent over the side of his hand, only the middle one long enough for the fingertip to touch his palm. He stared at it without comprehension, at the same time thinking he should be comprehending something, but his thoughts – jumbled and frantic and stormy as they had been since he'd woken – were now stuck in place, and he did not dare move even a fraction.

Jane watched Loki watching her hand and forgot what she'd been about to say. Something comforting, reassuring, understanding. She should be saying something like that. But her lips parted, her heart sped up, she grasped the top of his hand a little tighter, and she knew what she was feeling and it felt good and the pull was powerful and it was wrong. Loki was vulnerable, just moments ago he'd been distraught. And she was getting carried away by a moment of attraction that shouldn't be, that she shouldn't let be. Loki swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat; Jane withdrew her hand and as she took a step back she awkwardly tried to put both hands into pockets that her blue flannel pajamas didn't actually have. "I'm waiting," she said with a small smile.

Loki's gaze traveled slowly upward from the hand that could not find a pocket to Jane's face, and it wasn't until he'd gotten there that her words reached him. "Wh- what?" he stammered, taking his pillow and settling it on his lap, where he rested his forearms on it. "Waiting for what?"

"Those cruel things you were so certain you were going to say."

"I, ah… The desire passed," he said, then cleared his throat, trying to ignore the unexpected and uncomfortable effect Jane was having on him at the moment.

"Oh. Okay, well, that's…" And there was another reason it was wrong. Now things felt awkward, when there was really no reason for them to. "Are you okay now?"

"I think so. Yes. It was only a dream."

"Are you sure it was only a dream?"

"Quite sure. Sometimes they just seem very real."

Jane nodded. "You can tell me about it. If you want to."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I don't want to think about it anymore. Sometimes I would really rather just forget it all… No," he said again, forcing his thoughts back to the here and now.

"Okay. Well…in that case…you want to try that blindfold makeup thing? I volunteer my face."

Loki stared for a moment, then broke into quiet laughter, and then the laughter was still quiet only because the walls were far from soundproof and it was the middle of the night, and then he was wiping tears from his eyes, and he wasn't sure whether they were from laughing or if somehow they might be actual tears. The thought brought the laugh under control. "I'm actually rather good with a blindfold, you know. Though I confess, I'm good with swords and daggers with a blindfold…not necessarily with a makeup brush."

"So, do you want to give it a try?"

He shook his head, smiling fondly at her. "I would never dream of so spoiling your face, Jane. And I think we'd best try to get back to sleep."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Though you're probably never going to get that opportunity again. I'm just saying."

"Perhaps I'll regret it in the morning," he said with a smirk, then quickly straightened his face and maneuvered himself back into a lying position under the covers. "You'll get the light?"

"I'll get the light," Jane said with a nod. "You'll be okay?" she asked as she went over to turn the light off.

"I'll be fine. I never have such dreams twice in the same night." He spoke confidently, but that faded once the words were out. He'd never had a dream quite like this one, either. Might The Other, in his annoyance at losing out for so long on what must be one of his favorite sadistic pastimes, and upon being interrupted before completing the dream cycle a second time, not decide to torment him again immediately? He hoped not, but if he did…Jane would wake him. Though his radio would no longer be of much use in that regard, he thought with a smile.

Jane got back into her sleeping bag, jerking back up from her pillow when something poked her in the head. She felt around; it had to be part of the radio, a little corner of broken plastic, it felt like. She placed it above her head and out of the way, then turned onto her side, away from Loki. What a day, she thought. She hoped Loki was right – she hoped he was being honest – and he wouldn't have another nightmare tonight. She wondered if he'd had a nightmare about killing Baldur because he'd intended to kill Thor.

Thor. She twisted her upper body around to get a nervous look at Loki, but she couldn't see him, and he wasn't making any sound except for soft breathing noises, so steady that she wondered if he was already asleep. Thor. The other thing wrong with it, that reaction she'd had standing so close to Loki, her hand resting on his. She tried to think about him, about Thor, about how much she missed him, how much she yearned for him…but he was so very far away, and Loki was right there. And besides, she'd put a lot of effort into trying not to think about Thor, ever since she'd found out Asgard was at war. Because if Asgard was at war, and if she was honest with herself, she knew exactly where Thor would be – in the thick of it, king or not . And he'd already been injured at least once, that she knew of. But it wouldn't do either Thor or her any good to be worrying about him all the time.

And today she'd nearly lost him, exactly the thing she'd tried so hard not to think about. Put in those terms it hit her hard, harder than the first time, when her tears were fueled by fear and guilt. And now Thor was all she could think about. She hadn't lost him to Loki's unique – and thankfully fleeting, apparently – idea for solving his problems. But she could lose him at any moment, because at any moment one of those extra-sharp swords the other realms still used could find him when his attention was elsewhere and… He was risking his life for his people every single day, separated from her because he had no choice, and here she was getting tingly over his brother. And her friend. Her incredibly complicated, not-quite-entirely trustworthy, would-be conqueror friend. She couldn't afford to jeopardize that with a moment of weakness. She was neither some boy-crazy teenager nor a dependent woman unable to live without a man's touch. She could respect a boundary, now that she knew she definitely did need one with Loki.

It was only natural, really. They'd spent so much time together, just the two of them. They knew things about each other, and about the worlds beyond this one, that no one else here knew. They'd shared intense experiences, traveled in secret. It was a moment of attraction, but it didn't have to mean anything.

She just hoped Loki had been oblivious to it. He'd stared at her hand like it was some alien appendage. But she didn't know why. Had he thought it was uncomfortable, or unpleasant? Had he thought she was out of her mind and he'd just been waiting for her to recover her senses? Did he feel something, too? She squeezed her eyes shut. She really, really, really hoped not.

/


/

"Your mother tells me you haven't been leading either the Assembly or the War Council."

"I…no," Thor said, caught off guard by the unexpected comment. He'd just finished updating his father on the most critical issues – the state of the wall, yesterday's incursion into the city, Nadrith, and the intent to capture Gullveig. He'd explained the last part with confidence, but inside he was nervous. He both wanted his father to be pleased with his decisions, and for him to dismiss them and present a much better plan. But Odin hadn't commented on any of that, and his only reaction at all was a brief expression of displeasure at the successful breach of the wall.

"Why not? Have you not been leading Asgard?"

"I have," he answered with a swift nod. "But I thought-" He paused for a second to clear his thoughts, more keenly aware of his father's criticism than he had been for most of his life. "Fighting is my strongest skill, and where I can make the most difference. The meetings were taking up too much of my time. So I asked Mother to lead the Assembly and Tyr to lead the War Council. I met with them at other times so they could fill me in on the meetings and I could make decisions that fell to me. It was more efficient."

"Hmph."

Thor watched as Odin took hold of his cape and sealed it into place. He was dressed to rule, and Thor went back to the entrance of his changing room to retrieve Gungnir, hoping his father didn't think he'd erred too badly.

"What else? What are you not telling me?"

At this Thor wrinkled his brow. There was much he hadn't told his father, but only in an effort to be concise. There was nothing he'd kept from him for any other reason. He'd even told him about the plans for negotiation, and that they had discussed modifications to the original terms which Asgard would seek, if necessary. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Something far worse than this war. I felt it, even in the Sleep, as surely as I felt your mother beside me. You must be aware of it. It must manifest itself in some way in the physical plane."

He shook his head. "Worse than this war? We're facing our destruction, Father. I don't know…" And then he did. Or he suspected. "The earthquake? Is that what you mean? Yggdrasil's groaning?"

Odin's eye narrowed. "Earthquake? Here?"

Thor nodded. "We believe it's caused by all the portals the other realms are using. Dark Elf magic. Someone back on Svartalfheim, or one of the other realms, uses a-"

"I'm familiar with the talismans, Thor. Svartalfheim signed an agreement not to ever use them to travel to another realm without that realm's explicit consent, after they employed them in a series of rather barbaric attacks against Alfheim. We have never known them to have any effect on Yggdrasil, though."

"They're using them far more often than they ever have. Multiple portals, sometimes even dozens, every single day. And we- I…attack them with lightning, to force them to close. Perhaps that has something to do with it as well," Thor said, minutely dropping his head in guilt. It had occurred to him during the night, as he drew bolt after forking bolt down on yet another portal. Was the lightning also entering the portal, and was it then somehow damaging Yggdrasil from the inside? But what was he to do? Stand down and allow the other realms to pour as many of their warriors down onto Asgardian soil as they cared to send? "I told Nadrith about it, to try to convince him to instruct at least Alfheim to cease its attacks. But I have made little progress with him. He wouldn't listen." Thor grit his teeth and looked away. He didn't like conceding failure.

Odin's eyes fell on Gungnir and lingered there. "Nadrith is on the winning side. It's not easy to convince a man who's winning to give up."

"Not easy," Odin had said. He hadn't said "impossible." Thor held out Gungnir to the man who should rightfully possess it.

His father fixed a heavy, scrutinizing stare on him for a long moment. "You have led. You will continue to lead. Now is not the time for another change in rule. Frigga says you've done well. Though I'll reserve judgement. She's an honest woman, but even an honest woman can't help her bias toward her sons."

"All right," Thor said quietly, surprised. He supposed it would be poor timing…and it was good to know that his father at least didn't think he'd been a disaster as king. But he'd somehow expected Odin to grasp Gungnir and the throne and explain his plan for saving Asgard and winning this war. It was a childish expectation, he knew, but it wasn't without cause. Odin had done it before, swooping in and saving his realm or at least his sons from catastrophe. He'd saved Thor from falling from the bifrost, and could have saved Loki had Loki not decided to let go instead. And he'd shown up on Jotunheim in the nick of time, just when Thor realized he'd gotten in way over his head. But then, that one was Loki's doing, he'd later found out, because Loki had gone and snitched to a guard. And saved our lives, he thought, shaking his head as he drew Gungnir back to him.

"Not so fast."

"Father?" Thor wondered if Odin had already changed his mind.

"I haven't fought with a sword since centuries before you were born," he said, reaching for and taking Gungnir, balancing it in his hand for a moment before turning it expertly to the vertical and planting its end on the floor with a resounding clang.

Thor's eyes went wide. This is what Mother was upset about. "Father…we need your wisdom in making decisions. It hasn't been easy, to be both Asgard's king and its champion. I…I have probably not done as well at either as I could have, had I been able to focus solely on one or the other. With you ruling, I can remain with our warriors."

"War isn't easy. You would have also ruled more easily in peacetime. We don't choose our circumstances, Son. Gungnir is a formidable weapon. Can you wield it? Can someone else wield Mjolnir?"

"No, but-"

"Then I will wield Gungnir, and you Mjolnir."

"But you just woke. You are needed, Father, and if you sap your strength as before, then-"

"Have we any choice?" Odin asked sharply.

"Yes, we do," Thor answered, aware Odin was losing his patience, but unwilling to let this go.

Odin's face unexpectedly softened then. He sighed, and Thor thought he looked weary again already, just minutes out of the Sleep. "Someday, Thor…I will lie down and I will not rise. Whether today or tomorrow, next year or next century. Would you sacrifice your life for Asgard, were it necessary for her defense?"

"You know that I would," he said immediately, bristling at his father feeling he needed to ask. "I have sworn to it. More than once."

"Then I ask you to remember this, and not tell me I should do otherwise."

The two kings held each other's gaze for a long moment, before Thor nodded his acquiescence. If his father drained himself again for Asgard's sake, it was his choice to do so. And looking into his eyes, for the briefest moment Thor could imagine himself in his father's place, millennia from now, aged, children grown and considering the next stage in their lives, wife worrying over him and wishing he would finally accept his old age and sit out this battle – he couldn't help picturing Jane there beside him, just for a moment – and Thor knew he would make the same decision. "I always wanted to fight at your side," he said.

"As I remember it, you always wanted to fight against me. Save your nostalgia for another time, Thor. I don't want you confusing the real enemy with your imaginary one," Odin said, the briefest of smiles appearing on his lips before walking past.

Thor chuckled as he made his way out of the chambers at the top of the palace alongside his father. It was Odin who often grew nostalgic after emerging from the Sleep, for whatever reason. Odin hadn't acted as his imaginary enemy in centuries.

Odin drew to a halt just before they reached the golden double doors at the chambers' entrance. "If this plan of yours fails, you know that Gullveig will be unwilling to accept anything less than what he's demanded for an end to the war. He may in fact demand more. We will have no choice but to locate and surrender Loki, along with the Ice Casket and the Tesseract. Are you truly prepared for that possibility?"

Thor hesitated. The question had no simple answer. "I understand the risk," he finally said. "I believe that the situation has grown so dire that we have to take it. The Ice Casket, we can afford to lose if we-"

"Can we? The same Ice Casket that was last used to bring chaos and destruction and death to an innocent Midgard?"

"You defended Midgard."

"I led an army that had not just seen its outnumbered warriors decimated. You think we could so easily stand between Jotunheim and Midgard now?"

"Midgard isn't…they don't live in grass huts and wield dull swords anymore. They have their own powerful weapons. They wouldn't be helpless."

"You're saying Midgard can take care of itself? Do the mortals fare well upon being frozen solid? All right. We can afford to lose the Ice Casket. And the Tesseract?"

"We cannot lose the Tesseract. Its power dwarfs that of the Ice Casket. We have a number of alternative proposals for-"

"Which Gullveig won't accept if you've just attempted to capture him and failed."

"If we don't attempt this, they'll eventually take it anyway. We're losing, Father."

"Yes. And Loki? Have you accepted that you may have no choice but to lose Loki to them?"

Thor steeled himself. If this hadn't gone over well with Bragi, Tyr, and Volstagg, it certainly wasn't going to go over well with his father. "I told you, I made him a promise. I won't break it. If there's no other option, no other version of their demand that will satisfy Jotunheim, then I will surrender myself to the Frost Giants instead."

Odin released a heavy sigh and sagged, as though someone had stuck a pin to his chest and popped something inside him. "And if you're no longer king?" he asked quietly.

"I made him a promise," Thor repeated. "I won't break it. I owe him that much."

"Do you think he would do the same for you?"

Thor huffed out a laugh at the thought. "No," he said. "But that changes nothing."

Odin shook his head. "Sometimes I think I've raised the two most foolish boys in the cosmos."

"You raised me to love my brother."

They shared another long look, before Odin stood to his full height again, chest puffing out. "I suppose I did. Know this, Thor. I won't allow you to jeopardize Asgard for any individual. Including your brother. Is this clear?"

"Yes," Thor answered with a slow nod. It was clear that if they failed in capturing Gullveig, or if capturing Gullveig failed to bring a quick end to the war, he faced the possibility of standing in conflict with his father again. And from the look in Odin's eye, something Thor couldn't put a name to but which he knew held deep significance, Odin knew it, too.

/


/

Loki sat up and looked down. He could just make out Jane on her stomach, no sounds of her stirring despite the obnoxious noise coming from the loudspeaker out in the hall. Oh, for a fully-functioning sound blanket. "Jane," he said, keeping his voice just a notch softer than his normal speaking voice.

"Go away," she muttered without moving.

Not asleep, then. He'd suspected she couldn't truly be sleeping through this din. "I don't think so. These are in fact my chambers."

"'Chambers.' Why can't you just say 'room' like a normal person?" Jane asked, voice muffled against her pillow.

"Because I'm not a normal person. Not by your realm's standards. Hm. Not by any realm's standards, actually. You're quite the grump in the morning, aren't you?"

"I am when I'm tired and I only get a few hours' sleep," she said, finally rolling over and sitting up, though hunched over and resting her head in her hands. "What is that racket?" she asked, just as the blaring words stopped. She'd only caught the end, and nothing had quite penetrated the fog in her skull. She groaned then. "Please tell me it's not a fire drill. That would… Oh my God, please tell me it's not an earthquake," she said, lifting her head, suddenly wide awake.

"I don't think so. I'm not a heavy sleeper. Normally," he hastened to clarify when Jane gave him a funny look. "I think I would have woken. The announcement was for another all-hands meeting." He looked at his watch. "Forty minutes from now."

"Okay," Jane said, sagging again. "Probably just an update. Maybe they'll be able to tell us if they've gotten some improved data from SPRESSO."

"Perhaps. And Jane…I'm sorry. About last night. This morning, I suppose. I'm sorry you had to see that, and I'm sorry it cost you your sleep."

"Oh…I didn't mean it like that. I mean, I don't blame you." She gave a tired laugh. "I guess technically I do blame you, but I'm glad I was here for you. Does that…does it happen every night?"

"No. Thankfully not. But more often than I'd like."

"And that's the real reason you seem to skip sleep so often?"

He looked away, then got down to the floor and went over to flip on the light. "One of the reasons." He turned and got a good look at Jane, and smiled. "I can't believe you slept on my floor. Someday…you will tell Thor all these things, will you not? Other than what you already said you wouldn't," he added, wincing a bit in sudden regret that he'd brought that up again. "Everything we've done this winter? Everything I've done?" It didn't worry him or anger him…he thought perhaps if anything, it saddened him. The secrets they'd shared, he wished could remain between just them.

"Maybe not everything," Jane said after a moment's thought shadowed by a twinge of guilt. She smoothed her long hair as best she could; judging by Loki's mussed bedhead, hers had to look pretty awful. "There's probably a few things that…you know, it's probably not to anyone's benefit to mention. Like when you, um…," she began, hands lingering near her neck.

"Yes, well…," Loki began, noticing where Jane's hands rested and motioning a finger vaguely toward her neck, "if you ever decide you'd rather me be dead than alive, do go ahead and mention that to him. It should bring swift results."

Jane deliberately moved both hands down to her sides. "I wish you wouldn't be so flip about things like that. I hope you know by now, I don't want either of you dead. I want you to work things out."

Loki laughed. He couldn't help himself. Laughing, he supposed, was better than the reaction he realized he probably would have had a few months ago. The reaction he probably did have a few months ago, for this wasn't the first time Jane had expressed such naïve sentiments. Just yesterday he'd had every intention of murdering Thor, but today they could be best friends again, sneaking about and getting into innocent mischief – why not? He could remain silent and let Jane imagine it. Infinitely more likely, however, was that "working things out" between them would be violent and not end well for Loki. But he had no desire to dwell on it, not today. Today he actually felt a little better. Sleep was the most magical of cures. Even sleep interrupted by an ill-tempered impatient lackey.

Jane was rolling up her sleeping bag when her radio crackled to life. His, still lying in pieces on the floor – Jane apparently felt no compunction to pick them up even when she stood right next to them and avoided stepping on them as she moved about – remained blessedly silent. It was the radio all-call that followed the loudspeaker announcement, repeating the same message, and annoying as it was, at least it prevented Jane from expounding on her desire for him to "work things out" with Thor. Though she appeared to have let it drop anyway.

"Okay, we don't have much time left. I need to get back to my room, excuse me, my 'chambers,' and get dressed and get to that meeting. And… Oh, no."

"What?" Loki asked, going to his bureau and looking inside to find something reasonably clean. Laundry hadn't been high on his list of priorities the last couple of days, and he'd gone through several outfits in that time.

"People are going to see me. I mean the morning's already late, but right before a meeting like this? People are going to see."

"See what?" Loki asked, pulling out the dockers. He suddenly didn't really care that much what he wore anymore. He thought if he were offered a properly fitting pair, he might even actually wear jeans. He shook his head at the thought. There is something wrong with me. Then he laughed. Of course there was something wrong with him. Where to begin? "See what?" he asked again, turning, when he realized Jane hadn't moved.

"See me. Leaving your room. In my pajamas."

Loki's look of confusion quickly cleared. "Mmmm. Worried your friends will think you were having a little fun beneath the sheets in here last night?" he asked with a smirk that held an edge of darkness. Yes, that would be intolerable, wouldn't it, Jane?

Jane's eyes went wide, then she stepped forward and swatted Loki's arm with the back of her hand. He jerked away and winced, giving her a pained expression. She rolled her eyes. She hadn't hit him hard enough to hurt even a human. And she knew better than to try to hit him any harder; it would hurt her before it hurt him. "I expect you to act like a grown-up about this, you know."

"Yes, I think you're right. Otherwise…didn't you say that would be illegal? I was over a thousand when you were born."

"Oh, shut up. I'm going," she said, bending over and grabbing her not-entirely-rolled-up sleeping bag and her other stuff. "Don't skip this meeting," she said, shooting him a warning look. "Mandatory attendance."

Loki watched her go with a smile…and thoughts that would also bring swift results from Thor, if he were to ever somehow know of them.

/


/

"Hey, Jane!" Tristan called from behind her. She'd seen him there in her quick left-and-right glance, sticking her head out from Loki's door, but it had been too late to do anything about it. And now he was running to catch up to her. "Walk of shame, huh?" he said with a grin.

"No!" she said, a little too loudly. "No, it's n-"

"Hey, don't worry, I'm just kidding. And I won't say anything. Privacy's hard to come by here."

"There's nothing to say," Jane insisted. They were now outside her door. "Did you happen to notice the sleeping bag?" She waited a second while his eyes went down to the red and gray sleeping bag then back to her face in confusion. "We were talking. He was in the bed, I was in this. Okay?"

"Um…okay. Look, Jane, you don't owe me any explanations. I'm sorry I said anything. I just didn't want you to wonder if I was going to blab."

She gave him the sharp look that had occasionally made her undergrad students take her seriously when her petite 5'3'' frame didn't.

"About you…sleeping on Lucas's floor."

"Exactly. And by the way, if you do hear anybody saying anything else, will you please correct them?" Zeke had been in the hall, too, further away than Tristan, and headed the opposite direction. "Because it's not like that. We're friends, and that's all, and apparently some people have started thinking there's more to it, and I really don't need that complication right now, okay? Lucas has had a…a rough couple of days, and I don't want it getting all weird because people can't-"

"Jane, okay, message received. Loud and clear."

She forced herself to calm down, realizing she was overreacting, and overreacting risked creating a "lady doth protest too much" counter-reaction. "Good," she said with an awkward nod. "So, um, I'll see you at the all-hands?"

"Yeah, see you there," Tristan said, flashing a smile then turning and heading toward the main corridor at what Jane assumed must have been as close as he could get to a run while still calling it technically a walk.

She slipped inside her room, dropped the sleeping bag on the floor, took a minute to shake her head at her idiot self, then started gathering up clothes and toiletries. The clock was ticking.

/


/

Jane was one of the last to the conference room, and found herself yet again standing for the all-hands. Selby caught her eye as soon as her gaze began to sweep the room; his eyebrows went almost to his hairline as he mouthed to her, "Where've you been?" She mustered a weak smile and a shrug and promised herself she'd talk with him after the meeting. She found Loki sitting at the table – he didn't have to take the time to apply moisturizer to prevent his skin from cracking in the dry air here – looking refreshed and alert and undeniably good in the long-sleeved dark green shirt he'd bought on Alfheim.

She felt her cheeks burning and looked away. That one stupid moment was coming back to bite her. When she looked back, she realized that Tristan was two seats away from Loki…and trying to get his attention. Great. Loki, she suspected, was pretending he didn't hear him over the din.

"Okay, everybody, I need your attention," Olivia said, walking in with Drew and Ken right behind her. Their expressions were grim, and Jane was suddenly worried. The room fell silent almost immediately, a near-celebratory mood among the group quickly sobering. "First some good news." Jane let out a breath and nodded for no particular reason. Olivia was just stressed out. Although…good news coming first pretty strongly implied bad news would come later. "Thanks to Wright and Jane, and Ken and Paul and Ronny, we have a good, reliable data stream coming in from SPRESSO, with a few upgrades further increasing the sensitivity of some key instruments. The USGS and a couple of other world geological science bodies are examining it now. Thus far, we've heard from them that some of the data looks anomalous, that the depth of the tremors doesn't correspond to the depth of the tectonic plates. I can't really speak to the significance of that, and they're still analyzing all the data, but it does at least fit with the fact that earthquakes here are pretty anomalous in the first place. In the meantime, Carlo and Austin and I, along with their research team back in the States, have been looking at some IceCube data that also looks anomalous."

Jane perked up at that, literally, pushing up on her toes a bit to get a good look around the room; she found Carlo and Austin in the far corner, their attention on Olivia. IceCube was a newly-built complex neutrino telescope buried a mile under the ice to cut down on the interference of cosmic rays. Jane had always been interested in the team's findings, for one of the goals of the project was to identify probable dark matter. And from the basic outline of preliminary findings that Olivia provided – including a slew of neutrinos detected, dozens, though not from where they would have expected to find them – it sounded like maybe they had. Earthquakes, Jane knew, wouldn't cause that. Not the normal kind, anyway.

"The Russians over at Vostok, where they said it's a toasty -72 Celsius, or -98 for the Celcius-handicapped" – a few looks were exchanged and whistles went up; Vostok Station, their closest neighbor, was the coldest place on Earth – "just got in touch and asked us what exactly we're up to down here. They felt the last earthquake. We're sharing all…"

Olivia's words drifted over her. They felt that? Vostok might be their closest neighbor…but they were 800 miles away.

"Okay. Last but not least," Olivia said, the renewed seriousness of her tone drawing Jane's attention. "I need for everyone to stay calm, and listen carefully."

Jane took a deep breath. Here comes the bad news.

/


For the last chapter, I meant to give a shoutout to "auraizee" and "theunquietthought" for helping me out with tracking down the color of Loki's bed cover - and both found it a different chapter! Which means I couldn't find it with twice the opportunities to do so, ha. Thank you!

This is a long one, so that'll do it from me - thanks as always to all of you dear readers, reviewers, favers, followers!

Previews from the text chapter: "Good news first" usually does mean bad news follows; Asgard gets ready for its first ever press conference.

And excerpt:

"Hey, Jane!" Ronny called from a little further down, near the entrance to the galley. "Come have a drink with us. Zeke's our volunteer barkeep and Austin's opening up the Pole-Mart so everybody can buy extra donations. Music and dancing!"

"Nobody's working?"

"No way, man, not today," he said, having already run up and thrown an arm around her shoulder. "What's that saying? Let them eat cake? Or…eat, drink, party, for…"