Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Thirty-One – Gathering
"What we've prepared to go over with you here today, Your Majesty, is first, some points we would advise you to make to counter Gullveig's messaging, and second, some information on what exactly a major press conference here entails."
Frigga nodded, listening attentively from the head of the large glossy black table where she'd been placed. A portly man named Chase was taking the lead, but four others, two men and two women, were also at the table as part of the "PR" team, and Tony sat just to her left. Pepper had excused herself with an apology, saying she still had a "phone calls" to make.
Chase picked up a rectangular black object and pressed something on it – on the tabletop in front of her, and on all four walls of the sealed room, a bright display appeared, with more flashing, blinking, and moving words appearing each time the man pressed the object in his hand. It was distracting, and Frigga couldn't figure out the purpose of it, since Chase was speaking aloud the same things that appeared on the display. She wondered if they somehow thought she was not intelligent enough to follow their words alone, and tried not to take offense. Smoothing the frown from her face, she reminded herself that there were surely many on Asgard who would doubt the intelligence and competence of the Midgardians.
"Guys, what is all this? I hate PowerPoint," Tony interrupted, running a hand through an identical display in front of him. Frigga wondered if he'd noticed her reaction.
"You said you hated notecards, Tony. You said, 'Don't use notecards.' So we used PowerPoint. My apologies, Your Majesty. As I was saying, this is the first theme we recommend you address, concerning Asgard's relationship to Earth, with the points we believe you should make to communicate that theme in a clear, meaningful, and relatable way."
As Chase and then the others continued, Frigga listened patiently, interrupting just twice to inquire about an unfamiliar term, and twice more to ask for more information on something. Much of it felt a bit condescending – she was no stranger to public speaking and had already decided for herself what she wished to say, but every culture had its own peculiarities, and these PR specialists knew Midgard when she did not. This was no time to treat Midgard or its people with arrogance, not when she planned to address precisely that issue in her remarks. So she gave their recommendations and explanations her full attention, and made a few minor adjustments to her plans based on their guidance.
"Did you bring the pictures we asked about?" Chase asked when they'd gone through most of the themes.
"I did," she said, reaching down to the pouch in her gown and pulling out a set of small thin-backed portraits.
"JARVIS, display the image that Gullveig showed. Horn-free."
Frigga glanced toward Tony, then to the center of the table, where an image of Loki, about as tall as the length of her arm, appeared. The portraits stayed on her lap. "That's from the celebration on Vanaheim for four thousand years of Gullveig's reign. It must be his official portrait. It was…a little over twenty years ago."
"He looks exactly the same. Not quite as…you know…smug, but otherwise exactly the same. How can you tell when it's from?" Tony asked, getting up and leaning in close to the translucent three-dimensional image, then flicking a finger at and through Loki's forehead.
Frigga lifted an eyebrow but held her tongue. "I'm his mother," she said. "I can tell."
Tony squinted hard at Loki a moment longer, then sat down, shaking his head.
"Also," she continued with a smile, "see how short his hair is? I always make him cut it for important events."
They stared at each other, Tony blinking, Frigga smiling, until Tony reached out for the projected image of her son, motioned as if to grab him, and instead turned him around, so that Loki's back was to Tony, who now scrutinized his hair. When he looked her way again, her smile turned mischievous. "He probably wouldn't want me to tell you that."
Tony gave her a sideways smile and shook his head again. "Yeeeeah, probably not. Our secret, okay? And these guys signed a confidentiality agreement. I have to confess, though, my secret-keeping record is shall we say…spotty, as they're always quick to point out," he said, waving a finger around the room at his PR team. "Some secrets are too good to keep, and this just might be one of them."
"Mmmm. Well, tell it at your own risk, I suppose. Would you like to see the images I brought?"
"Love to. I hope you have some embarrassing ones."
/
/
Loki trudged back over to the stairs and went back inside in a daze. He hadn't dared attempt any more "repairs." His repairs were liable to bring down the entire building.
What else did you expect? he asked himself bitterly as he entered the station and began stripping ECW gear. The gloves hurt coming off; underneath them his hands had reddened and turned a little puffy. Grasping the zipper on the jacket with "Lucas Cane" written on it required extra effort, for his fingers felt a little stiff and lacked full sensation.
He hung up his gear there in the changing room instead of taking it back to his room. He needed to find Jane. He had to tell her what he'd tried to do, and the results. He didn't want to tell her. It made him think of an incident that had always stuck with him, from when he was probably five or six years old, and had for some reason felt the overwhelming need to take one of his coloring pens – the dark blue one to be precise – and draw a triangle on the red-and-gold upholstered cushion of one of the sofas in his mother's sitting room. He no longer really remembered why he'd decided to do that, or the actual doing of it; what he remembered was the surprise and quickly growing fear that the ink was really there, that it wasn't going anywhere, that he had no way to erase it away unlike on the special paper he used for his lessons. And that his mother would be angry and he would get in trouble. His ingenious solution was to turn the cushion upside down, hiding the blue triangle. Later he was caught – Frigga had somehow known without a doubt that he had done it and not Thor – and he'd been completely unable to explain why he'd done what he'd done.
He dreaded this like he'd dreaded that, but he was long past five and this was not about a sofa that could simply be replaced because dark blue ink had become permanently set in its delicate fabric. The party in the galley, he thought with a sharp nod to himself. He would check there first. Ronny had said something about saving a drink for her.
He heard the evidence of the party already. It was strange to hear loud music like this at all, much less in the middle of the day. He turned into the narrow side corridor that led to the galley. Through the dishpit area he could see a couple of people working in the kitchen, and once he entered the galley itself he came to a surprised stop. Nearly the entire winter population was here. He stepped in further, scanning for Jane. Even Gillian was here, the woman who'd been on the plane to the South Pole with him and Jane and Rodrigo, the one others described as a "room-eater." Now she was one of a few who were sitting and having a late lunch, a glass of what looked like wine in her hand, talking with Jeff, the drummer who Loki also rarely saw apart from the band.
Most of the rest were near the bar in a large area cleared of tables, dancing, to some song with a driving rhythm and unintelligible lyrics. He'd observed dancing at a party here once before, the night of the sunset, but what he'd seen there was quite a bit more…restrained was perhaps the word…than this. There was writhing and jumping and nothing that would be considered dancing on Asgard – perhaps Nidavellir or some parts of Alfheim, he thought absently – and then there was whatever Macy was doing in between Ronny and Brody, which looked more like sex than dancing except for the fact that each was fully clothed. Paul was in his bathrobe for some reason, Sue wore a bright pink tiny skirt over tight black pants with some kind of crown on her head, and Wright wore a cheap suit that Loki supposed was meant to look impressive.
Loki started pressing into the crowd. He was tall but Jane was short and the music was loud enough that if he tried to call her name he'd have to shout for her to hear it. The song changed then – recorded music, not live, though he saw the instruments had been brought over from the Music Room – and movement slowed and stilled for a second or two before picking up again with the new song. A hand wrapped around his and he turned to his left.
"Where are you going?" Macy asked, having apparently abandoned her two dance partners. "I promise, the acoustics are not any better over there than right here. Neither is the dancing. Come on." She grabbed his other hand, slid up close to him and began swaying hips and shoulders to the music, leaning in further as she did so, then arching her back away from him before leaning in close again.
Loki stood there, not reciprocating but not pulling away. He wouldn't know how to "dance" like this even if he wanted to, but after a few seconds he found himself swaying a bit to the rhythm and appreciating the view. Macy was obviously enjoying herself, they were all enjoying themselves; why couldn't he? After all, what else could he do? At least he wasn't going to make anything worse that way.
"Hey, brothahhhh," Hector said, coming up alongside him and holding up his fist. Loki automatically raised his fist and bumped it against Hector's in the expected returned "greeting." Hector, whose room was next to his, then pressed a bottle into Loki's hand, with "Epic" written in big red letters across the label; Loki knew it to be a New Zealand brand of beer. "Looking good, sister!" he said to Macy. When in a certain mood – usually when alcohol was involved – Hector called everyone "brother" or "sister." Loki didn't know him that well, but he did know he was from California, and his girlfriend had ended their relationship while he was down here, which really was a callous thing to do.
"Thanks, Hector. Where's mine?"
"Lucas just got here and he was empty-handed. I'll give you something to hold if you need it, come on over here."
"I'm good, thanks," Macy said with a laugh, still moving her body to the music, and while Loki still couldn't call this dancing, the appeal of it was undeniable. "I've got something to hold onto right here," she continued, reaching up and lightly wrapping her hands around the back of Loki's neck; he dipped down a little to help her out.
"Hey, Lucas, want to trade?"
Loki tore his eyes away from the entrancing sight before him to Austin, standing to his left. He looked down and saw he was holding out a can of 7-Up. "I…" He looked around him and it was as though some enchantment had been broken. Macy's brown eyes were big and shining and her grin was wide and while her coordination and balance were still rather impressive she was clearly drunk, or well on her way. In his hand was a beer, and if he was going to break his rule and drink, it wasn't going to be for the sake of a cheap Midgardian beer with questionable taste and negligible alcohol. Hector had given him the beer. Hector who didn't know he didn't drink. Hector who was from California. Jane was from California. He'd been looking for Jane… "No, thank you," he said, taking a step backward, but Macy went with him, so he held the beer out to Austin, who took it, then he reached up for Macy's wrists and carefully dislodged them from his neck. "Why don't you two dance? Macy's talented," he said with a nod her way, "but I suspect Austin is no better at dancing than at darts."
"Oh yeah? Who won last week?"
"I was distracted, of course," Loki said with a smile.
"You threw like my blind grandmother."
Loki rolled his eyes. He'd hardly played that badly. "If we ever play again, I'll throw blindfolded, how's that?"
Austin gave a hearty laugh. "If? I guess you would be one of the dire ones," he said, as Macy continued her gyrations in a more subdued fashion and took the beer from Austin. "It's a good excuse for everybody to ditch work and throw a party, but two damaged columns does not Icepocalypse make."
Loki nodded and held his tongue. Austin didn't know it was four columns, not two. Now that he thought about it, he realized Olivia had deliberately used the somewhat imprecise phrase "a couple" to suggest to everyone that only two columns were damaged, presumably to prevent a panic; she had, in essence, lied. Jane might not know the truth, then, either. "Have you seen Jane?" he asked, lifting his head and looking around him again; the crowd had drifted since Macy had started dancing with him and they were now nearer the center of the group.
"Uhhh, no. I don't think she's come by here yet. None of the managers are here either. Or Rodrigo. Maybe she's with them."
Taking one last look around the room – Selby wasn't there either – Loki nodded again, thanked Macy for the dance with a quick bow of his head, and excused himself.
"Sax Man!" he heard from somewhere to his right.
His eyes drifted closed for a moment, before he turned with a polite smile to find Wright headed his way. "Good morning, Wright."
"Afternoon, now. No guilt!" he said, raising a glass with an amber liquid Loki only knew was highly unlikely to be mead. "Listen, we're going to play a set in a few minutes. We were waiting for Selby but eh, he's not showing up so we're going to go ahead and crank it up. We brought the recorder down here, too."
"No."
"Oh, come on, Lucas, why do we always have to talk you into everything? It's a great time to try out a performance before Mid-Winter."
"No," Loki repeated. "I'm sure you'll sound fine without me. Better, actually. And I was on my way out."
"But what about-"
"No," Loki called over his shoulder, making his way resolutely back to the exit corridor.
"We brought the sax, too!"
"No," he said again, and this time a surreal laugh almost escaped with it. Should life ever present him with a period of extreme boredom – say, whiling away eternity in a Jotun prison – he thought in a moment of absurdity that he would have to take up the saxophone and put Wright to shame the next time he brought that up. Of course, if he ever actually did to learn to play the saxophone – not terribly likely – by that point it was highly unlikely he'd ever see Wright again.
He needed to put these people behind him and focus on what mattered now: the damage to the station, his inability to do anything to repair it, and the fact that one small piece of it he'd managed to damage further. Telling Jane.
He'd almost reached the doors to the A-1 berthing wing when they burst open and Paul and Tristan strode through, Tristan with a white sheet draped around his neck and a black knit hat with two seemingly pointless rounded protrusions atop it.
"You're going the wrong way, Lucas," Paul said, trying to get an arm around Loki's shoulder to turn him around, but Loki ducked and twisted and avoided the arm. "Don't miss the show."
"What show?" Loki asked out of curiosity he couldn't help. Paul, he noticed now, had a fuzzy green blanket affixed to his shoulders somehow, hanging down his back. He wore a black sweater and black leather pants. Loki's eyes narrowed and his expression hardened.
"Gullveig and Loki. I'm Gullveig, obviously," Tristan said. "Haven't you seen the pictures?"
"No," he answered, voice tight.
"It wouldn't help. Tristan insisted on the mouse ears, which Gullveig was definitely not wearing."
"Creative license! The guy's from Anaheim."
"Vanaheim," Loki and Paul said at the same time.
"Well, I don't know anything about Vanaheim. But Anaheim has Disneyland. So mouse ears. And I still think you should have done the helmet."
"What helmet?" Loki asked amidst turbulent thoughts. He dreaded the answer but somehow couldn't not ask.
"You need to see the pictures," Paul said. "They're grainy, but, geez. The guy likes leather. Loki's also got that helmet thing with the giant horns on it – compensating for a little something, maybe? But on short notice the closest I could come was a football helmet. Not exactly the same effect. So, no helmet. Give me a few days though, maybe for Mid-Winter I can get Gary to help me weld a…well, if Mid-Winter's still on. But anyway I've got the green cape, at least. I wonder what's up with that, you know? Like, why is it always a green cape? You think maybe it's what a black hat used to mean to us, like in old Westerns?"
"What's that?" Loki asked.
"You know, the villain always wore a black hat," Paul said while Tristan shook his head.
"I don't know," Loki said slowly, words carefully enunciated. "Perhaps his mother liked him in green."
Paul looked confused, but when Tristan started laughing, so did Paul. "Yeah," Tristan said, "that's just about as likely. Paul's obsessed with the cape."
"It's a cape. Who wears capes? When I think of capes for some reason I think of Count Dracula."
"The other guy, the one people say is Thor, he wore a cape. It's probably just an Asgard thing," Tristan-as-Gullveig said with a shrug.
"Yeah, but why-"
"I imagine it's a mark of status. If you'll excuse me," Loki said, pushing past the other two and ignoring whatever they said in response. He walked briskly to Jane's room, and when she didn't respond to his knock he pushed the door slowly open and saw it was dark inside and yellow stars glowed on the ceiling; she wasn't there. His shoulders dropped in relief as he stepped in, turned on the light, and closed the door behind him.
It stung. That his friends would… But of course, they were not his friends. He'd come to care about them, yes, and of the two had gotten to know Paul in particular as part of the poker group, and they'd been accepting of him and even kind, but they thought he was an astrophysics graduate student named Lucas Cane. Loki they did not know. They certainly knew of him, though. And now they were apparently going to make a public mockery of him. He was angry and he felt betrayed, but it twisted inside him without ever fully taking form. They had every right to loathe and ridicule who he really was, and he had no right to feel betrayed, for they were not ridiculing Lucas Cane.
It's for the best, he told himself then. It was another sign that his life here was at an end, a reminder that he had no business dancing with Macy or playing a recorder or drinking either a New Zealand beer or a 7-Up. He thought briefly back over it, his life as Lucas Cane, and even allowed himself to imagine what it might be like to really be him, to not be and never have been Loki Odinson or Loki Laufeyson or Loki Nooneson; it brought a bittersweet smile to his lips. He would attach the green blanket to his own clothing and figure out a way to make the helmet, perhaps out of that paper mache process that Jane and Sue had used to make the piñatas at his birthday party, which of course would have been his actual birthday. And he would find Jane and drag her down to the galley and find out if she could dance like Macy had.
He swallowed and glanced around him. That was getting a little uncouth for being an uninvited guest alone in Jane's chambers. The space was in its typical disarray. Her sleeping bag and backpack were in a heap on the floor, and the blue sleepwear she'd had on the night before was draped over the back of her chair. On her desk amid the clutter – including the empty granola bar packages that she'd at least deigned to take with her from his chambers – were the Tennyson quote, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," and the "water off a duck's back" drawing that she'd explained to him. "You don't have that saying in Canada?" he remembered her asking; she hadn't yet known his true name, either. Colorful paper flowers that Jane had made herself were attached to her desk and other places around the tiny room by their green wiry stems. Above the desk, taking up most of the wall space, was the large image of the ocean over a cliff that he'd help her tape to the wall way back on the tenth of February, the day after they'd arrived here. He still remembered how much he'd resented it at the time; he'd thought she'd called him over for a discussion of something interesting, something that would help him figure out how exactly she was going to help him get off this miserable world, and instead she'd wanted him to hold a piece of paper straight, a gift from Tony Stark, no less. He'd been so different then. He remembered that person, that Loki, and thought life had been simpler then. Even so, he knew he didn't want to return to being that person again.
He'd nourished himself on the blind, indiscriminate hatred that threatened to consume him in turn. And he'd lived in such willful ignorance. That victory was in his future, if he simply fought cleverly and savagely and single-mindedly enough to achieve it. That defeat was everyone else's fault and was never meant to be his lot.
Defeat had always been his lot. He was born to it, quite literally. Never meant to be born in the first place, runt that he was among the Frost Giants. Meant to die on Jotunheim, as the realm was crushed by Asgard. Secreted away to Asgard instead, where he could never measure up to the true Odinson, where there would never be anything but defeat. He should have understood all that, the moment he'd stared in horrified shock as his hand and arm turned blue instead of black.
Perhaps he had, for a time…
But then Thanos had given him a gift, or so he'd thought at the time. A reason to fight on. A cause. A purpose.
What a fool he'd been.
He pulled out Jane's chair and sat. Where are you? he asked, watching the door as though Jane might somehow hear his thoughts and return at that moment. She didn't.
He pictured the shattered metal lying on the ice after his botched attempt to repair it. Shattered metal, shattered lives. Because it wasn't just a single connecting plate he'd ruined. It was the people he or the Chitauri he'd let in had killed in New York. The scientist in Stuttgart. Even the SHIELD guards in New Mexico, because yes, they'd fired their weapons at him and he'd told himself later that he was perfectly justified in killing every last one of them, but he had attacked them with the scepter first – what guard force in the Nine Realms would simply stand there stoically and let him destroy them? The Einherjar would certainly not stand idle while someone showed up and attacked. The two killed by the Frost Giants he'd let into the Weapons Vault hadn't. He'd meant to find out their names, to anonymously compensate their families, since there was nothing else he could do at that point, but everything had happened so quickly, everything had changed so quickly, and he'd forgotten entirely about that intention and hadn't remembered until this moment.
Then there was Erik Selvig and Jane's concern for him. And the archer, who'd told him everything he needed to know about SHIELD and the "Avengers Initiative," and still others he'd merrily used that blue gem's power against. An image from his dream suddenly came back to him, making him shudder; he'd given those others the same haunting blue eyes that had looked down at him from his mother's smiling face. He'd done it, and he'd delighted in it. Were they all still suffering? Did their friends and families fear for them, as Jane did for Erik?
And everything that had happened since…he was the one who'd set it all in motion. It wasn't just metal fragments on the ice, or two nameless Einherjar in Asgard's Weapons Vault, or SHIELD guards in New Mexico, or a single scientist in Stuttgart, or over a thousand names on a list in New York, or one last office worker in Tony Stark's tower. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands from across the realms, to judge by the battle he'd seen on Asgard, had perished by now, in a war begun because he had failed to conquer Earth and deliver the Tesseract to Thanos. On Svartalfheim he'd learned about the explosion that could have killed his mother and he'd been consumed by such rage, directed at Brokk and Gullveig and Svartalfheim and Vanaheim and the entire cosmos really, everyone and everything except for where the true blame lay. All of this because like some ignorant fool he'd leapt at the chance to stab Thor in the metaphorical heart and signed on to Thanos's plan without thinking past anything other than his chance to rule Midgard.
He had to change it. He had to change absolutely everything. He'd tried, by going back to kill a weakened Thor in Puente Antiguo. He'd looked down at the sleeping man he'd always believed was his brother, the man who'd once been a little boy who'd slept beside him. He'd spoken to that man and found his rash arrogance gone, in its place humility and the sparks of maturity he'd searched so hard for in the years leading up to his intended succession. And he hadn't been able to do it.
He'd made a mistake. He'd waited too late. Far, far too late. He'd tried to make a minor course correction when he needed to change the direction of history entirely.
I should have gone earlier.
The tension in his face melted away as everything that had been turbulent and muddy became calm and clear once again. He knew what he had to do.
/
/
Loki wasn't in his room; Jane opened the door and checked just in case he was blocking sound, though she assumed he couldn't do it anymore, or, couldn't do it well enough or easily enough to bother. She considered checking for him out in the jamesway, but he'd given her his word he wouldn't use Pathfinder anymore, and she trusted him in this. She 99% trusted him in this. She'd vouched for him with Tony – again – and if she meant what she'd said to him then she couldn't go running out to the jamesway to look for him every time she couldn't find him. Though maybe if she'd done that more before, they wouldn't be in this dangerous mess.
She frowned at herself and sat down at her desk. That line of thought was a waste of time and energy. More importantly, the satellite window would be closing soon, and Jane hadn't had a chance to check her e-mail yet.
There were a lot of unread messages. The earthquakes, apparently, had finally made the news back home, though the damage to the station hadn't become public yet. She had concerned messages from Uncle Van, two of her cousins, and a number of friends, including Darcy, who made her wince when she asked – jokingly, Jane assumed, but really, who knew? – whether Jane was the one causing the earthquakes with her research. Erik had sent an e-mail and three messages through her VOIP system. These were her family and friends, and they were worried about her. She couldn't just ignore these messages. She could, actually, and before all this she might have put off responding until she'd taken care of other things, but seeing how shattered Loki's relationships were had given her a renewed appreciation for her own, and if things took a further turn for the worse here… She decided everything else could wait.
She dashed off reassuring responses to everyone – it was worse than they knew but there was no point in worrying them further by saying so – and called Erik, who it turned out was waiting by his computer to hear back from her. That was the hardest one. She'd had no intention of telling him about the damage, but found that when he asked about it, she couldn't lie to him. She reassured him that it was only a couple of columns and the building had dozens, that experts were examining everything, that in the worst case scenario they could drop the corridor between the A and B pods and live solely in the A side for the rest of the winter season.
"And what if you have more earthquakes?"
Jane's silence, she knew, was telling, and she could feel the worry radiating off of Erik in his own following silence, even though they were thousands of miles apart. "It's been almost twenty-four hours since the last one. Hopefully there won't be anymore. But if there are, we'll deal with it. The columns are really strong, they're made of steel. We'll be okay."
They didn't speak any further about it, though there wasn't any joking around and right before ending the call Erik got a little uncharacteristically emotional and told her he couldn't wait to see her again. Jane promised to keep in touch and wiped a stray tear from her eye. It wasn't fair that Erik now had this to worry about on top of his own problems. And it occurred to her only then that they still hadn't talked about Gullveig's announcement that Loki was on Earth. There'd been only the briefest references to it in their e-mail exchange from yesterday. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow things will be calmer, and I'm going to call him and we'll have a good long talk. But dear God, it's not going to be easy. There was, of course, no guarantee she could get Erik to open up to her at all about how he was doing; he certainly hadn't thus far. But she could try. She could give him the chance to talk about it. And sometime before then, she was going to have to give serious thought to whether she could continue keeping Loki's presence here a secret from him. She wanted to be able to tell him about it in person. Also, she would really rather continue to put it off because it really wasn't going to be fun.
She had two more e-mails she'd put off opening until the end, both from Maria Hill. Focused so heavily on New York, Maria apparently hadn't heard about the South Pole earthquakes; these were not messages of concern for Jane's welfare. The first, it turned out, was a general inquiry asking if Jane had learned anything new and if so to please call no matter what time, an apology for her impatience during their call yesterday, and an explanation of sorts, that Maria's "boss" was really "concerned" about the "visitor" who had come to New York two days ago. The second, sent about an hour ago, said that Tony had had a "special visitor" today, a woman, whom SHIELD hadn't observed there before, and that Tony wasn't even taking their calls now, and if Jane could please help them out Maria's boss would be eternally grateful and see that Jane's research was fully funded, fully-resourced, and strings-free, all for the rest of her life.
Jane lingered over the last, eyes wide. It was an amazing offer. Amazing, but not at all tempting. She'd heard plenty about that "need-to-know" business and SHIELD, as far as she was concerned, didn't need to know. If Tony or Thor wanted to involve SHIELD that was their call, not hers. She dashed off a message saying she didn't know anything else and she had no idea who had come to see Tony today – she was careful to include the "today" because she did know the names of three others who'd met with him and why, and had even spoken with two of them.
Then she called Tony through the VOIP.
"Good morning, Dr. Foster," said a voice that was definitely not Tony's.
"Uhhh…hello? Oh, Jarvis, is that you?" she asked when she realized the voice sounded vaguely familiar.
"It is. Mr. Stark is in a meeting at the moment and has turned his phone off, but he asked me to answer should you call. Is everything all right?"
"Oh, yeah. Well…yeah. Can you ask him to call me back when he can? It's not urgent. If it becomes urgent, I'll call back."
"Are you certain? He's authorized me to interrupt in case of emergency."
"No, no. No emergency. I know he has a guest, and I'm sure it's important if he turned his phone off. We'll talk later."
She ended the call and wondered for the first time why someone new had shown up at Tony's. Her stomach gave a little flip at the sudden bad feeling it gave her, that something had gone wrong on Asgard. She told herself then that it could just as well mean something had gone right, like maybe they didn't need to import food anymore because the war was over and Asgard had won. Though in that case, she wasn't sure why Tony would feel the need to turn off his phone, when he hadn't turned it off during earlier meetings.
She looked at the time on her computer; the satellite window was about to close. She could call Tony on the Iridium phone later, but with her last few minutes of internet she decided to finally see for herself what was online about Loki. She typed his name into Google. Her eyebrows shot up. There were over 32 million hits. She scanned the first page of results. A couple of them were about Loki as recorded in mythology, but all the rest were about Gullveig's press conference on Loki, or the attack on Manhattan, or some combination of the two.
She opened the second link, a newspaper article. She skimmed the first few paragraphs – basic facts Selby and Tony had already told her – while she waited for the image to show up in the blank space to the right. When it did, she saw Tony's handiwork; although a fairly close image of Loki's face, without the helmet, it was like the photo was a little out of focus, maybe even a little pixilated, too. She could tell it was him because she knew what she was looking for, but his facial features in the photo were too indistinct for anyone else to realize who they were looking at. Loki certainly didn't dress like that here, either. The bottom of the photo was just below his shoulders, with the top of a heavy green cape visible, a thick band of gold metal across his upper chest, a vaguely U-shaped piece of gold in the middle of it, more gold metal on his shoulders, and still more gold metal running up the sides of his chest and forming a tall collar behind his neck – it looked really uncomfortable, and like it must weigh a ton. Tony had said he was smiling, but it was impossible to tell in this photo.
Further down in the article came the quotes. "Each of the other realms knows of Loki's mischief. He smiles and nods politely, knowing just the thing to say to put you at ease, but all the while he is scheming. Good people of Earth, he cannot be trusted. Be wary of his manipulations, his attempts to charm and beguile." Gullveig had warned that Loki was extremely dangerous, that he'd tried to destroy one realm – Jotunheim, Jane assumed he meant – and had tried to conquer Earth. The article went on to say that in addition to these mass crimes, Loki was a convicted murderer on Asgard and wanted for murder on another, unspecified realm; Jane had no idea what the last was about, or whether it was even true. The reporter covered Gullveig's assertion that Asgard had sent Loki here without telling anyone. Not true, she thought, making a face at the screen. Asgard told me. "He walks among you even now, free, doing as he wills," the article quoted Gullveig.
The more she read, the more she bristled. King Gullveig was badmouthing Asgard and scaremongering, pure and simple. The reporter then reminded readers that while an official veil of secrecy still surrounded much of the attack on New York and the tall dark-haired man in green and black seen both there and in Stuttgart, over 1,200 people had died in the attack. It was sobering. People had every right to be afraid, and to feel angry at Asgard for having sent Loki back here. It seemed so long ago now and it was hard to put herself back in her own shoes from then, but she'd reacted exactly that way, exactly the way Gullveig was encouraging, when Thor told her Loki was here. Except she hadn't been scared for more than a minute or two, because she'd been so convinced Loki couldn't find her even if he wanted to. And then Thor had explained – sort of – and she'd felt better about the whole thing.
She closed the article and opened up Twitter. She didn't even have to search. Four of the trending topics listed were related to Loki. She clicked on #ISawLoki. Jane read through a few of them. "#ISawLoki at Burger King. He had that paper crown on his head and the kid he stole it from was crying." "If #ISawLoki I would introduce him to my #Remington870." She clicked on #SomeoneTellAsgard. "#SomeoneTellAsgard Earth is neither your playground nor your prison. #SomeoneTellAsgard when we capture that SOB this time we're keeping him." A lot of the replies to that one were suggestions for means of execution, some of them…inventive. From there she wound up on #SomeoneTellLoki. "#SomeoneTellLoki he can go-" Jane winced. That one was really vulgar. But interestingly enough, someone had responded with the same explicit message to #SomeoneTellGullveig. It seemed a lot of people didn't think much of him, either. They didn't like the sense of superiority they felt he exuded, or the idea that they should bow down and do what he wanted any more than they should to Loki. "#SomeoneTellGullveig we don't need #BigBrother telling us what to think and what to do" had been retweeted over 2,000 times. Jane clicked on another hashtag and nothing happened…the window had passed.
She shut down her laptop and decided it was time to find out what Selby wanted – probably, she thought, to tell her that his wife recognized the undoctored images of Loki she was able to see on TV, and now knew that it was Loki who'd come to her door and harassed her. That wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation, either. But when she knocked, there was no answer. When she tried again at Loki's door, there was also still no answer.
She stood between the two doors, uncertain what to do next. The hallway was deserted. Nearly everybody else, she figured, was either in the galley having an impromptu party, or else in meetings about the building. There was nothing Jane could add to the meetings – confessing her guilt in all this wasn't going to do any good – and she wasn't in the mood for a party. Not when her mistakes were responsible for the crisis that motivated to it.
Still trying to decide what to do, she headed down to the bathroom, which she decided could use a cleaning. Despite what Olivia had said, it seemed no one was bothering with house mouse any more than they were with their jobs. Her chores today – and Loki's, but she was pretty sure that wasn't happening – were to clean a couple of rooms in the B-pod. That, she figured, probably wasn't the best use of her time right now, and since it didn't look like anyone was going to clean this bathroom today, it may as well be her. And it would give her something to do – something to keep her hands busy, if not her mind.
/
/
"You're sure you're ready? Any last-minute questions?"
"Thank you, Tony, no. I may never have spoken to your citizens before, but I've had ample experience with it on Asgard. Though, I must admit, it has been a while. The only peculiarity for me, as I've said, is that I will be speaking to a crowd of cameras instead of a crowd of people. But I will speak to each camera as though it were a person, and I think it…"
"Shoo, shoo!" Tony said, distracted from the conversation like Frigga at the sound of cawing and the appearance of two ravens on the roof of Tony's black car. "Shoo!" he said again when they fluttered at his waving hand but alighted in the same place. "That's a four-million-dollar Veyron you're about to leave droppings on."
"It's all right," she said, placing a hand gently on Tony's arm. "What are you doing here?"
"Uh, well, I'm-"
"No, not you," she said, without taking her eyes off the ravens.
/
In the next chapter, you'll begin to see what this story has been building toward for over three years. To give you a glimpse at how I've written this thing, there is really nothing in this chapter (nothing "concrete," as opposed to things like "mood") that was planned in the beginning. These events either were planned less than a year ago as the other circumstances that would be happening at this time became known to me, or just arose "naturally" as what I think given characters would do or say once I'm "in their head" in a set of circumstances. But the next chapter...well, this is what I was getting so excited over, those of you who saw giddy comments from me on my profile page or on Twitter. So, I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you're excited for the next chapter, and I especially hope you'll drop me a review, since the Stats function on this website hasn't been working for about a week now and I'll have no idea how many people actually read the chapter.
Speaking of Twitter...I do not have the world's cleverest sense of humor, most of the time anyway, so if any clever #ISawLoki ideas come to you, post them to Twitter! You, too, can contribute to Beneath. ;-)
Speaking of contributions...thanks to "theunquietthought" and "QQuina" for finding the chapter in which Loki tells Jane she trusts him too much...doh! Yeah, that would be the chapter called "Trust."
"MrsDL," happy anniversary! "Alphabetizingsin," excellent ideas! Now you'll just have to wait and see... It'd be totally cool to see this as a series, but MAN you'd need a ginormous budget to make it look good. And to all - thank you so much for your support!
Previews for Ch. 132: More Loki, Jane, Frigga, Tony, and a few others sprinkled in for seasoning...
Excerpt:
Jane thanked him enthusiastically, and while she waited, the voice on the ham radio caught her attention. "…rife with speculation about who is making this special appearance, but sources at Stark Industries, whose CEO Pepper Potts organized the press conference, will only reiterate that billionaire Tony Stark himself is not the speaker." "Well, Ruben," another voice continued, "I guess we'll find out in just about twenty minutes from now, if it happens on schedule."
