Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Three – Dissonance

"Hi there, good evening, ladies and gents. Everybody good? Refreshed? It's been a hot one today. Everybody got a good view for the camera? You know how much I like hanging out with you, too much for my own good sometimes, usually in slightly more intimate settings than…I mean in smaller groups than this, but today, well, I didn't want to turn anyone with a press pass away. And bloggers, you out there?"

Frigga watched as at least 50 hands went up and a few others shouted or clapped their hands. Tony and his PR team had explained what bloggers were, and that they wanted her remarks to be covered not only by the professional journalists, who wrote news articles for publications or filmed events for audio-visual broadcast, but also by those who independently and often for no pay wrote on the public internet and reached an audience that traditional media elements often did not. "No pressure or anything," Tony had said after they'd explained all this, "but if this doesn't go well, with all this coverage we're getting for it, it'll be an epic fail. Thirteenth Warrior fail. Huge box office bomb? I'll explain later."

"All right, then," Tony continued. "Tonight, for our very special episode, we have a guest who's come a really long way to be with us. Come on up here, Your Majesty," he said, motioning with his hand.

Frigga, standing on the steps of the United Nations building several steps behind Tony next to his chief bodyguard named Happy – amusing both that Tony insisted she needed Midgardian bodyguards and that his chief bodyguard was named "Happy" – stepped forward to Tony's side. Camera flashes went off around her, and it seemed as though every eye shifted from Tony to her, though she had yet to speak a word.

"Two days ago, the guy in charge of a place called Vanaheim dropped by for an unannounced visit and spun quite a tale, complete with a spiffy visual aid. Tonight, Asgard wants to set the record straight, and they sent my friend's mom to do it. You remember the guy – long blond hair, arms like tree trunks, big hammer, bright red cape? Thor. Without further ado, allow me introduce you to his mom. Ladies and gentlemen, Queen Frigga of Asgard."

/


/

There was no blood on the knife, Jane saw with some relief as she began edging closer to the cradle. Before she could get close enough to look inside, over the edges draped with a soft-looking cream-colored blanket, Loki got between her and the cradle and forced her back a few steps.

"You can't do this, Loki. You know you can't do this. This is…" Jane shook her head. As difficult as it had been to believe the Loki she knew could set out to deliberately murder his grown-up brother, this was unfathomable. "This is unspeakably horrific. And this isn't you."

"You don't know me. You know…only what I've let you see. You have no idea, the things I've done, the things I've imagined doing, the things I've fully intended to do. Do you think I followed you to the South Pole out of an abiding interest in General Relativity?" Turn back, turn back! he wanted to scream at her. But screaming would not help matters, and although he knew his ability to intimidate Jane was limited or even absent at this point, he fell back on it out of habit.

"You've dropped enough hints along the way that I have a pretty good idea of why you followed me. And what you intended doesn't matter. What you did matters. Just like now. You…you haven't hurt him, have you? Because if you haven't, then everything's still okay. We can walk away from this. We'll go back, we'll talk about it, and-"

"No more talking. Talking doesn't actually change anything. This will. Go back, Jane, please. You walk away. With any luck you won't remember any of this."

"You don't know that, do you? You don't know what will happen if you do this. You don't know if…if the universe or God or fate or whatever it is will let you do it. But it doesn't matter, because if you try to do it, if you really try…you'll have to live with that forever. You can't. I won't let you."

"You won't?" Loki asked with a raised eyebrow, then lunged for her again, but this time she seemed to be expecting it and immediately twisted away and shoved her left wrist underneath her right arm and crossed her arms over her chest. She looked ridiculous, but now he couldn't get to that stupid RF switch without a high risk of injuring her. "Jane…"

He was panting like a bull about to charge, but Jane stood her ground. There was never a more important moment to stand her ground than this one. "I know you…you keep coming back to this. I know how angry you are at him. Do you remember when you told me you believed you had a destiny to kill each other?"

Loki looked down at her with eyes narrowed in confusion.

"You did. But you can't kill him. Especially not like this. I know you have a conscience, and I can't believe it's not-"

"You think I'm here to kill Thor?" Loki interrupted.

/


/

"I would first like to speak with you about King Gullveig of the realm known as Vanaheim," Frigga said after her remarks of greeting, designed to fill the awkward period when, as she'd been warned, the flashing and clicking would be at their height. A tiny device clipped to her gown helped to carry her already strong public voice.

"King Gullveig omitted a few inconvenient details when he spoke to you. He probably assumed we'd be unable to respond, and it is a difficult time for any of us to be away. You see, our world is under siege, in a sustained attack by the other realms of the Nine, led by Gullveig. This war began with what you would call a terrorist attack – a bomb affixed inside our palace under the guise of a visit from Gullveig himself while under a flag of truce. Two were killed: a guard, and a woman who had been cleaning the floor. Five others were severely injured, and one of those lost both of his arms.

"We did not retaliate. We considered it, but we did not wish to become embroiled in a war against our closest neighbor. Since then, the other realms have attacked countless times, including targeting our food and water supplies. We've had to dedicate additional staff to ensuring our people do not starve." They did have to manage supplies carefully and conserve, but they were nowhere near starving, thanks to Tony and Pepper and those Aesir who worked with them. Midgard's unwitting assistance, however, had to remain a secret for its own protection.

"Our warriors are strong and highly skilled, and have taken many prisoners. When we faced overcrowded prisons that fell short of Asgardian standards, we arranged a parole for any foreign warrior who would swear an oath not to return to the fight. The only warriors known to violate that oath are Vanir – not because they chose to, but because Gullveig forced them to. That is the kind of duplicitous, dishonorable leader who came and told you half-truths in an effort to discredit Asgard to you, and perhaps to entice you to support Gullveig's war of aggression against us. I urge you not to come to hasty conclusions .The reasons for this war are complex, some of them going back thousands of years, and some of them, we now suspect, connected to an outside, unseen hand, the same unseen hand that we now believe was really behind the invasion of New York, that sent the Chitauri army…and Loki…to your world. For you see, the chief demand of Gullveig and the other realms is that we surrender the Tesseract, the same powerful relic that Loki came here for, that he used to allow in the Chitauri, and that Loki lost when he was defeated. In fact, we believe Gullveig used such shocking tactics as the bombing of the palace to try to force us to hand over the Tesseract without a fight. We cannot do this. The Tesseract's power is tremendous, and difficult to control. Though it is in our possession, we have not used it except for travel, despite the considerable advantage that using it as a weapon would give us. With some effort put into taming its power, it would probably be enough to grant us a swift victory. It is safe with us. Nothing has ever been successfully stolen from the vault where the Tesseract is protected, not in millennia upon millennia. Yet Gullveig demands that it be removed from the safest location in the Nine Realms, to Vanaheim.

"Asgard cannot claim to have a spotless record in our relations with the other realms. No realm, and no nation, can make such a claim. But we have never conquered, nor sought to conquer another realm. We have, however, on many occasions, stepped in as a protector in the face of egregious unprovoked attacks. We have done so even here, long ago, when one of the other realms attacked your world at a time when you were incapable of defending yourselves. I'm told this isn't recorded in your history, but I assure you it is true. More recently, my son Thor helped defend this city and this world from the attacking Chitauri. We would have sent more warriors to your aid, but at the time our ability to travel here was virtually nonexistent. Thor, I should tell you, wishes he could be here himself. He has great fondness and admiration for Earth, but he is busy defending his own people just as he defended yours.

"Should you doubt anything I've told you, I would encourage you to ask those three men standing there beside the metal barriers. They are part of the contingent Gullveig left behind here." The sea of heads turned along with their cameras to seek them out. "The ones in the black suits with the turquoise blue ties," Frigga added. "They do not normally dress like that, of course, so I'm not certain, but…Arnkell, is that you?" She was certain. Tony had actually provided images of the fifteen warriors Gullveig left on Midgard. Two of them were among Gullveig's senior-most warriors and thus known to Frigga, and luckily, one of those was among the three attempting to inconspicuously observe the press conference from the other side of the barriers separating the crowds from the United Nations building and its security officers and other workers still present.

She watched as all three glanced around them as though looking for some way to hide, but there was no escape from the attention focused on them, not unless they wanted to be seen running away. "How is your daughter, Arnkell? I heard she has married."

"She is well, Your Majesty," Arnkell said after an awkward silence, dipping his head briefly, an ingrained habit she suspected he was fighting.

"Were you aware of the bombing of Asgard's palace? We understand that not everyone was privy to it."

He was far from her, yet still she could see his expression harden. He knew, she thought. He may not acknowledge it, but it's obvious he isn't denying it.

"King Gullveig left out one other detail that you should know. I don't know why he omitted this one, except that perhaps he wished to give you a simple story, in order to more easily control your opinions. It isn't a simple story. It's anything but." Frigga took a quick moment to prepare herself for the flashes. "Loki, you see, whom you know as the man who attacked your world with the intent to conquer it, is also my son."

/


/

"You're…yes," Jane said, the first doubt creeping in after reading his note and coming to what had certainly seemed the obvious conclusion. "You said this time you had to act. This time. You said I trusted you too much. You… If you're not here to kill Thor…" Her gaze fell back to the cradle and her stomach clenched up and there was relief that he wasn't here to kill Thor tangling right up with the somehow even more chilling fear that it wasn't a baby Thor who was in that cradle. She stepped back further from Loki.

"I'm not. So you see? There's nothing to be so…agitated about. You can go back now, and I swear to you no harm will come to Thor, not by my hand, not this day." Can it be this easy? he wondered, trying to keep his voice and face as calm and reasonable as possible. After all her protestations, will she leave me be if she's certain Thor is safe? There was a certain prickling disappointment in it; after all, he'd assumed since she'd managed to follow him here that she knew exactly what he planned to do. But of course, it was her fear for Thor that was the source of her consternation.

Jane watched as the intense focus in Loki's eyes drifted and dimmed, and in that moment she turned and darted to the left. Loki swept forward and put an arm up to bar her approach, but she was already close and he wasn't fast enough to stop her from getting close enough to see inside the wooden cradle. With Loki's arm curled around her front, she peered over the side and saw not one, but two sleeping infants.

It was easy to tell which was which. One baby was bigger and older, maybe a toddler already, and had big chubby cheeks and a head full of pale golden hair. The other was much smaller, not as chubby, and bald. Both wore matching white outfits. The younger was on his back; the older was right at his side, turned slightly toward the younger, his little arm over the infant's, hand resting loosely over the smaller one.

This close, Jane could hear them breathing.

They were sleeping soundly. They hadn't been disturbed.

She looked back up at Loki, who was at the moment staring blankly over her shoulder, but then his eyes met hers. Cold. Distant. Empty. "I was afraid Niskit was going to kill you." "Would that be such a bad thing?" "You thought you would die." "I thought it was the most likely outcome." Ever since Alfheim, ever since his big plan had failed and he'd been so desperate for it to work that he'd insisted Niskit basically torture him and he'd attacked her when she refused…ever since then he'd been different. More than once she'd noticed that air of defeat. "If you call Iron Man…I won't resist." She looked up at Loki and she saw the pen he'd left on her desk. Giving away his possessions, things that meant something personal to him – a gift from his mother. She'd known he was saying goodbye. Now she knew it wasn't a goodbye out of guilt for a crime he was about to commit, or out of the expectation that he was changing history and wouldn't see her again. It was the goodbye of someone who was planning on killing himself.

He started to push and she didn't fight him. He maneuvered her backward, toward the bed, placing himself more fully between her and the cradle. "You can go now," he said quietly.

"When we were on Alfheim, hiding in Niskit's basement, you told me how you wanted to die. You said it would be spectacular. That was the word you used. 'Spectacular.' You said no one would have to wonder what happened. Is this your idea of 'spectacular'? And were you planning on leaving a note to explain to everyone, so they don't have to wonder… Loki…how could you even consider doing this? It's you. And it's an innocent little baby!"

"Lower your voice," Loki snapped. "Do you think the guards will ask questions when they find us in the king's and queen's bedchamber? And 'innocent'? You think him innocent? He hasn't made his mistakes yet, true, but give him time. He will. He's a parasite here, even now. Parasites start out small and 'innocent,' too, Jane, but they grow, and they become what they must. Thor was meant to live. Baldur was meant to live. All those people in New York, New Mexico, the scientist in Stuttgart, the man on the elevator in Stark's tower…they were all meant to live. I'm the one who was never meant to live. I was meant to die, long before this. I was abandoned. As an infant. I wasn't wanted, so I was left outside to die in the cold, and Odin decided to interfere with fate. He interfered with history, don't you see? If I'd died there as I was meant to…all nine realms would be better for it." He laughed then, as he realized an odd implication of what he was explaining. "It's amazing, isn't it? For a time I craved power above all else, but even I never knew how much I actually wielded. Power over all nine realms."

"I don't…I don't understand," Jane said, reeling, struggling to follow the new revelations and what seemed to pass for logic in Loki's mind. "Your biological parents abandoned you?" She tried to peer over Loki's shoulder to the infant Loki, wondering how soon this was after that, but it was a half-hearted effort and Loki seemed intent on staying between them. Infant Loki had looked perfectly healthy to her…but then she remembered he wasn't as plump as Thor.

"It's quite simple. I was never meant to be. I'm not changing history, Jane. I'm correcting it. Returning it to how it's supposed to be." It was obvious that Jane was upset, and that she wasn't really listening to him. Even if he could somehow make her understand, he knew she wouldn't be able to bear watching this. He put on his most caring, compassionate face, and stepped forward with his arms open a bit to embrace her. Dear overly-trusting Jane let him, and as soon as his arms were loosely around hers and her attention distracted enough, he surreptitiously reached down a little lower and flicked the RF toggle switch on her wrist. He waited a scant couple of seconds – he didn't wish to be accidentally drawn back with her – before giving her arms a friendly squeeze and backing away.

"How it's supposed to be? How do you know how it's supposed to be? You did live, Loki. That's the way it's supposed to be. And what are you talking about, power over all nine realms? What power?"

"They're all at war. They're at war because of me. Because of what I did. Or, perhaps because of what I didn't do. Either way you look at it, it's because of me. I brought eight realms to war, and plenty of destruction to yours, too."

Jane started to shake her head. "You can't…you just can't think like that. You didn't make anybody go to war. They made their own choices when you weren't even there. And how do you know they wouldn't be worse off, without you? This is-" She stopped, a frustrated noise rumbling over her throat. "This is exactly what I was trying to tell you about time travel. Why you can't go messing with the timeline. You have no idea what other changes could result. You have no way to know for certain what will really be better, and what will be worse. You-" She stopped again, this time dropping her head. Think, Jane, think! The device on her left wrist caught her eye, and in an instant the switch was back in the off position. "Don't you dare do that again. Don't you dare. I told you, I'm not leaving here without you."

Loki's lips thinned. At least a minute had passed since he'd managed to turn the RF transmitter on. A 20% chance for her to be taken back to Midgard, but of course, luck had long since abandoned him. He glanced upward then, as a new thought occurred to him. The ceiling. They'd never used Pathfinder indoors. Only outdoors. The speeds at which they traveled with Pathfinder and Yggdrasil perhaps meant that they were able to travel safely through other seemingly solid matter…but perhaps not. He hadn't even thought about it when he went for the switch.

"Okay," Jane said, still trying to take in everything in, and hurt by his false, manipulative affection. "So your birth parents abandoned you. That's terrible. But another family took you in, and they love you. They would be devastated. You can't do that to them. I don't know much about Odin, but you just told me he rescued you, so I assume he must love you. And-"

"Assumptions are the prerogatives of fools."

"And Thor. You should have heard how he sad he sounded. He misses-"

"He won't be able to miss what he never had. He's just ten months old. He'll never know another infant once lay beside him, and he'll be free to cast his shadows as large as he likes."

"And how do you know what he'll become without you growing up beside him? I don't understand how you can be so certain the whole universe will be a better place without you in it. What about your mother? You know how much she loves you. How can you take her son from her?"

/


/

"My older son, Thor, learned so much from the kind, generous people he met on your world, and it was, and is, our hope that our younger son would also learn here. We want him to learn to respect and value the people of Earth, your accomplishments, your intelligence and cleverness, your cultural richness, your compassion. He was still very angry when we sent him here; please know that we did not do this without first taking steps to ensure your safety. I apologize that I cannot go into detail, but there are those, including the three Vanir over there," – they froze in place from where they'd been trying to slip away after the crowd's attention shifted back to her – "who would seek to capture Loki and turn him into a war prize, and I do not wish to make him more vulnerable to such an attack. I hope it will suffice to say that he understands he would face grave repercussions to himself should he harm any one of you. We have not been in contact with Loki, nor were we in contact with Thor when his father sent him here, but Thor told your Tony Stark of Loki's presence about two and a half months ago, and Mr. Stark tells me there has been no sign of Loki causing any problems to your people." It had actually been Tony's idea to make it public that he had known, despite the backlash against him it could cause. "Everybody knows I'm one of the ones who kicked his…who stopped him the first time, and I don't think anyone doubts I'd do it again in a heartbeat at the first sign of trouble," he'd said.

"Nevertheless, citizens of Earth…it was wrong of us not to first seek approval, and not to inform anyone on your world of what we did in advance. It was simply wrong of us. We regret this mistake deeply. Because you developed separately and differently from us, the other realms, Asgard included, have for too long been arrogant in our thoughts and now in our deeds toward you. It is our sincere commitment to change that, beginning right here and right now, with my visit to your world. We look forward to learning more about you and better understanding you. To that end, should your world be willing, we would like to send an ambassador, and we would also welcome the designation of your ambassador to our realm. In fact, we have the Ambassadorial Estates on Asgard, where representatives of each realm are welcomed in chambers designed for their particular comfort and needs, and those of Midgard – that is our name for your realm, Midgard – those chambers have never been occupied. We would be most pleased and honored to rectify that, because we also want you to learn about us.

"For now, though, rather than try to speak for all of Asgard, I'd like to share with you more about myself, and my family, and yes, my son Loki."

/


/

"Jane," he said, swallowing as he refocused after yet another failure to resolve this unexpected situation. "Asgard is facing its destruction. They don't know any strategy but fighting. They fight extremely well, mind you, but no matter how well they fight they cannot overcome the numerical odds. They will be defeated, if they haven't already. By doing this, I'm saving my mother."

"I don't mean a thousand years from now. After a thousand years of changed history…you have no basis on which to say you'd be saving her from a war. I don't mean in our time period. I mean in this one."

"In this one…," Loki repeated, glancing over his shoulder to the door behind him. He'd closed and locked it. The lock was quite secure, and to that he'd added an extra layer of his own magic – a feeble, incomplete one, interrupted by the return of the crippling pain in his foot that by now shot all the way up to his head, for a few seconds making his brain buzz strangely, light burn too brightly, and colors shift and shimmer. Beyond that sealed door was his mother. "She'd only had me a few days now. It won't be so hard. And it'll give her her other son back. It'll spare her a lifetime of pain."

"If you could ask her, Loki, I know she wouldn't want this. I know she wouldn't want to trade one son's life for another. And a lifetime of pain? I've seen you smile so fondly when talking about her. You know it wasn't a lifetime of pain. You know there was love, and happiness, and laughter, and joy, too. She wouldn't give that up, not for anything."

"It's better this way," he said over a tightening jaw. "She can lose me know, when she barely knows me, or she can lose me later." He pictured Frigga, embracing and praising his enthusiastic younger self, after the Harvest Day parade. He pictured her giving him the bellpipe he played in it, physically supporting him when he could not do it himself after being brought in from underneath the serpent for the last time, holding him as he raged and later grieved over Maeva, telling him that Asgard was his, and so many other memories. Jane was speaking, but he interrupted and spoke over her. "I was foisted on her, Jane. Odin brought me back here and shoved me in her arms! She had no choice in the matter. She grew to love me despite everything, yes. She's a good woman. But she doesn't yet now. Right now I'm no more than an obligation to her. A duty assigned by her king. A burden that takes away time with her real son. She may even be grateful."

Jane shook her head again, in complete disbelief. As out of control as his ego was at times, his self-esteem was apparently in a paradoxically bottomless pit; even if Frigga had never set eyes on him or even knew he existed, Jane couldn't imagine that she or anyone would be grateful for a dead baby. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream at him, to wake him up from delusion's grip. But he had that knife, and he was closer to the babies than she was. Keep him talking. If he's talking, he's not using the knife. "She wouldn't be grateful for this. I promise you that. Look, if this is about guilt…I get that. I really do. When I was in the hospital, after my parents died…there were times when I wished I had died, too. It just…it seemed wrong, that I lived and they didn't. That there wouldn't have been an accident in the first place if they hadn't come to pick me up from school. And I didn't want to be an orphan. I didn't want to have to figure out how to live my life without them. I-"

"But you did. It's hardly the same thing. You felt guilty, but you were not. I am guilty," he said, eyes locked on hers, imploring her to understand.

"So you're your own judge, jury, and executioner, too? You've got it all backwards. You were rescued because you were meant to live. That baby, the baby that you were, he deserves his second chance."

Loki choked out a laugh and backed up until the cradle was in reach; Jane glanced nervously between him and it. "How many chances does he deserve? He's well past his second," he said, throat tightening with emotion.

"As many as he needs. Loki…maybe things seem terrible right now. Maybe they are terrible. I know you don't tell me everything. But this is not the way to make things right. This is just taking another life. It doesn't actually change what you did. Let's go back together, okay? We can talk. Better yet, you can talk to your mother. She's on Earth right now."

/


/

"My son had just been through a traumatic experience" – here she wished to say that she believed Loki was not entirely of sound mind at the time, but she knew it was possible that Loki himself would hear this, perhaps was listening even now, and she could not bring herself to say it – "though that doesn't excuse what he did. I look around at this great, bustling city with its towers stretching skyward, much as on my own world, and I see the lingering signs of damage…and as a citizen of the universe we all call home, my heart aches for you, for the lives lost or changed forever, for the fear that you endured then and must continue to feel now. But my heart breaks to know that my son did this, my shy quiet boy who grew into a strong, clever, pensive man. Because you see, what you know of Loki…that is not the man I know. He was not acting like himself then. King Gullveig of Vanaheim showed you an image of Loki – that was his official portrait captured on Vanaheim when we went there to honor the anniversary of Gullveig's rule. When I mentioned that to Mr. Stark, he asked me how I knew exactly when the image was from. I told him it was because I had insisted he cut his hair for the occasion." She managed to briefly meet Tony's eyes, from where he was standing off to her right; he had an eyebrow up and a crooked smile and Frigga suspected that was disappointment mingling with surprise. My story, mine to tell, she thought at him as though he could hear her. It had made an impact on Tony, so she hoped it would on others here as well.

"Ours is a family, you see. A family not so unlike yours, perhaps. Mother and father, husband and wife, sons and brothers. One that has faced its own particular unique challenges and tragedies, like so many of yours have.

"What you witnessed and experienced here, was, unfortunately, a result of an especially challenging set of circumstances. Which of you has not made a mistake? Some of us have made grievous ones, ones that we were convinced were the right decision at the time, but we realized later under a crushing burden of guilt that we were in the wrong, and we had to live with the consequences." Like rejecting your son, refusing to see him for years, because you were too selfish to see past your own suffering to his. Like staying with your husband for whom you could do nothing, instead of giving comfort and counsel to the son who was broken inside and needed it desperately. And so much more, Frigga thought, taking a moment to make eye contact with every person and camera she could.

"What makes Loki different is that he had the power and ability to make his mistakes on a rather grand scale. What he did here, please understand, was in no way sanctioned by Asgard. My older son, Thor, was sent here to bring Loki home to us, and to try to makes him see reason, but he was not yet ready to see reason then. When Thor succeeded in bringing him home, in cooperation with the others of your world known as the Avengers, we still could get nowhere with him. He was angry and defiant and discontent. But he has not always been that way. Our lifespans are much longer than yours; it is one of our chief differences. Loki was born over a thousand years ago, but he has been the way you knew him for less than two years.

"This is a tiny glimpse of the Loki I know," she said, looking to her left where, precisely on cue, Tony projected a two-dimensional reproduction of one of the portraits she'd brought with her, Loki rolling his eyes with mock disdain then breaking into laughter that lit up his face. Then Loki riding Lifhilda. Then a simple still portrait of a young Loki and Thor wet and muddy, breathless and smiling, collapsed against a stone wall after Thor had gleefully demonstrated his new ability to control the rain. Then an even younger Loki grinning ear to ear standing with Lifhilda between him and his father. And finally one of Frigga herself, holding a sleeping infant Loki, kissing his bald head.

"Mr. Stark has now sent these images to you, everyone with a press pass, at your registered e-mail address," she said, careful over these unfamiliar phrases Tony had provided.

When the last image faded, she continued. "I know that to many of you, especially those of you who encountered Loki when he was here several months ago, this must seem like a cheap manipulative ploy, showing you these portraits. After all, each of us, if we had just a bit of luck at the outset, began life as a sweet child cuddled in a mother's arms, no matter what rights and wrongs we may have done later. And I will confess, that if it does seem that way, you are not entirely wrong. I am a mother who loves her son, and wishes for others to see the good in him that I do. But I do not ask you to excuse or dismiss Loki's actions here. I ask only that you…try to understand that he is more than those actions. That like anyone else, he is a whole person, with both strengths and weaknesses, more than just the sum of his recent poor decisions and mistakes. That he…" That he has a sensitive nature and always has, that he was devastated to learn of his origins, that he was so hurt, so fundamentally fractured, more than I knew. She couldn't say that, though. Because Loki might hear, but also because she could not in good conscience ask these people to pity him. Perhaps, though, she could ask for some sort of compassion, just as she asked it of Loki toward them. "That he does have the capacity to recognize his wrongs, to learn from his mistakes, and to rebuild his life in a better direction. I hope you can understand our desire to give him the opportunity to do those things. And I hope that you can find, in our decision to send him here for that opportunity, a compliment."

/


/

"What?" Loki said, brow furrowed in confusion. If he didn't know Jane as he did, he would have suspected she was lying in order to manipulate him.

Jane nodded eagerly, wishing she'd thought to mention this sooner. "She is. She's giving a speech…right now, actually, I think. So come back with me, and I can call Tony and you can talk to her." And maybe she can talk some sense into you! Jane thought, pressing her lips tightly together to keep from saying that or anything else that she figured really wouldn't help.

Loki closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think. He pictured his mother on Earth, in New York, which was where she must be if Jane could call Tony to reach her… Tony Stark. She's with Tony Stark. He'll be giving her a colorful version of my time there. Even more colorful than it actually was. He sucked in a breath, remembering that moment when before he knew what was happening, a terrible pressure had clamped onto his leg and the air was forced from his lungs as he slammed into the concrete ground again and again. And again. Tony probably had a video of it. I'll kill him, he thought, then squeezed his eyes more tightly shut before opening them again. No. It ends here. "You're trying to distract me. I told you to go, Jane. I didn't want to do this in front of you, but I will. This is your last-"

Both of their heads turned at a sound from the direction of the double doors. Jane wasn't sure whether to be afraid or relieved, but as seconds passed, both ebbed in favor of surprise that the door wasn't opening. The sound came again, and lasted longer. Watching Loki's profile, she thought he looked nervous. "That's her, isn't it? Coming to check on her sons. And you sealed the room to keep her out."

"I didn't seal it. I locked it. It seals itself. I tried to strengthen it, to dampen the sound…" He turned around. The babies' positions had shifted only a little – the smaller baby had wrapped the fingers of one hand around Thor's thumb. Time was running out. He raised the knife. He would make it fast. Painless. A hand wrapped around his arm, but it was no Hulk grip. It wouldn't stop him.

"Listen to me, you know she wouldn't want this. Talk to her. Talk to her here. She's just on the other side of that door. Ask her what she would want." She tried to pull on his arm, but she realized then that any time she'd pulled or pushed him before, it was only because he'd let her. His arm wasn't budging.

Another noise came from the door, louder this time. "Jane, let go. You don't want to see this. You don't want to be a part of it."

"I'm not letting go. I'm not letting go of you. Ever," she said, leaning in over the cradle, trying to get him to look at her instead of the baby he was fixated on.

He stood there unmoving for seconds longer. He couldn't do it with Jane clinging to him. He couldn't make her complicit in this. He spun the knife in his hand to point outward instead of down, at the same time twisting to reach around with his left hand and again flip off her RF switch while jerking his right arm up and back, knocking it into Jane's face and sending her stumbling backward with the unexpected motion in the direction she'd been pulling at him. He hadn't used his full strength, but still his own nose stung from the impact, and Jane didn't stop her unsteady backpedaling until she hit the bed, which she caught herself on. He opened his mouth to apologize, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the outline of the doors glowing orange. She was going to get in. She was going to get in and see him here and as difficult as it was in front of Jane it would be impossible in front of his mother.

Jane rubbed a hand against her nose – no blood – then hurriedly turned the RF switch off again, this time with difficulty, from how hard Loki had jammed it in the other direction. She pushed herself off the bed in time to see him turning toward the door and stretching out his left hand. She wasn't sure what he was doing, but it soon became clear it was magic he wasn't supposed to be using, for his right leg almost instantly gave out on him and he grabbed on to the cradle with his left hand to hold himself up, which set it to rocking and left him unsteady.

Loki was still swaying and leaning heavily on his left leg, though that one ached terribly, too, when Jane suddenly appeared in front of him again, blocking some of the over-bright light he squinted against. She wrapped a hand around his arm just above his right wrist, steering clear of the knife and the electronics strapped there, and with the other he realized she was trying to brace the cradle – difficult to do with his weight against it. "Why did you come here?" he blurted out, still unable to put any weight on his right foot. Her face swam before his eyes. "Why did you follow me? I didn't mean for you to. Oh…I'd forgotten already. Because you thought I was going to kill Thor."

"Yes, and because…Loki, I'm not sure you could kill Thor or yourself even if you tried. In the past, I mean. There's-"

"Let go of me and I assure you I can."

"Even if you can't actually do it, I don't want you to have to live with the knowledge that you tried to. But if you can…I don't want you to erase yourself from history, okay?" Jane said, squeezing hard on Loki's arm to emphasize her words. "I don't want you to erase yourself from your family's lives, or from my life. Do you know how much you've given me? How much I've learned and experienced, and on top of that how much fun I've had with you? Who else would have taken me to two other realms' pasts? Who else would have made me memorize practically every nook and cranny on the face of Alfheim, and then created a mock Alfheim for me to practice with? Who else would have brought me an orange in the dead of the South Pole winter? Who else would show me what my own sound waves look like when they disperse and meet a sound barrier? Not to mention trying to bring back a cure from the future for a disease I'm not even have any symptoms of. My life would be emptier without you in it. You can be so charming and funny and warm and caring, when you want to be. And I like how you challenge my assumptions."

The barest of smiles twitched at Loki's lips despite himself. He was a little more stable on his left foot now and leaning less on the crib, which was in turn stabilizing, but now there came a sound, the truncated beginning of a cry, from inside it. He glanced down as Jane continued speaking; Thor was squirming.

"Yeah, remember that? You've challenged a lot of my assumptions, but not just about science. About you. You put up such a front – I mean, a really good front – that I can't believe I'd ever need to say this to you, but…you have value. Your life is worth something. You do know that, don't you?"

He stared at her in disbelief. He'd once thought her life worth nothing; she'd once hated and feared him. When had this happened, that everything had changed so completely? He could feel his resolve weakening, but he tried to fight it. "Jane…let me do this, please. I have to do this."

"No you don't. You really, really don't."

He tried to turn away from her, but she wouldn't let go of his arm. She wasn't going to. She wasn't going to let go of him at all, just as she'd said. His breaths grew shaky as his emotions welled up. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He wasn't supposed to be going back. Everything was supposed to end here and now.

"Loki…give me the knife," Jane said, letting go of the now-still crib and holding out her right hand. "I could have taken it, before, when you could hardly stand, you were barely holding onto it. But I'm not going to take it. I want you to let me have it. I want you to give it to me. I want it to be your choice, just like when you went back to Puente Antiguo."

Loki shook his head and looked back down at the crib. Both of them were squirming now, Thor giving a yawn and the smaller baby moving his arms and looking right up at his future self, despite the fact that he still remembered that Baldur hadn't been able to focus his eyes like that so soon. Either there was something unnaturally Jotun about his eyes…or perhaps… Perhaps I'm not meant to do this? he asked himself with difficulty, his gaze bearing down on his infant self, who stared right back while moving his arm jerkily across his face.

"Loki, please," Jane said, right hand still palm up, left still around his wrist. "I don't want to lose you." A sizzling, crackling sound came from behind her, in the direction of the door, followed by a faint acrid odor as though something were burning. "And I know she doesn't either."

He looked up from the cradle and over Jane's head to the double doors, now surrounded and split by shimmering yellow light. She's coming for Thor, he told himself. But the words rang hollow even in his own mind. He looked down at Jane's palm and saw his hand trembling. Slowly, carefully, he turned his hand, Jane's arm twisting with it, until it was palm down. He open his hand and lay the knife on hers, keeping the blade pointed outward. He felt like collapsing again, but some kind of dignity that stubbornly persisted despite everything that had happened kept him upright. Keeping an eye on Jane, who let out a shuddering breath and bent over the crib, head resting on an arm draped across the narrow end nearer the babies' feet, Loki tested his right foot and grimaced; putting weight on it was little short of agony, but that was already a vast improvement from a couple of minutes ago.

As Jane slowly straightened up, he began to back away, toward the balcony. "I don't know what's next, Jane. I hadn't thought there would be a 'next.' The station…the damage is worse than Olivia said. Four columns. I tried to repair one of them, but I made it worse."

"Okay," she said, nodding, taking one last glance at tiny Thor and Loki; Thor had rolled onto his side and gone back to sleep, face pressed to Loki's cheek, and Loki was looking up at her, which was really kind of eerie. It was hard to pull her thoughts back to the South Pole when there was so much else to think about – the nature of time travel, whether Loki would have done it or been able to do it had she not followed, whether the fact that she had successfully followed and talked him down from the metaphorical ledge was actually evidence that he would not in fact have been able to do it…and then there were the two adorable babies right in front of her, thousand-year-ago versions of the men she knew. "We'll go back, we'll find out what the engineering team has to say. And you can call your mom. Maybe you should."

"I don't want them to know where I am. There's a party in the galley. I think when we get back we should just go there. Perhaps I'll forget everything if I drink enough of your alcohol. That seems to be everyone else's plan. I have a couple of my own bottles, too, though it will barely be enough even to relax me." He shook his head and backed further away, wishing Jane would hurry up and follow; the light shining through the doors had gone near-white and he expected them to give way any minute now. "If I can even get to them," he said distractedly. The pen had been tremendously difficult, and for a while he'd thought he wouldn't be able to retrieve it at all.

Jane started to say something, remembering Niskit's rather sharp insistence that the tea with mead in it not be given to Loki, and whatever it was Tony had said about Loki drinking at lot at the restaurant he went to in Chicago, but in the end thought better of it. One problem at a time, she chided herself. The crackling at the door then grew louder, followed by a weird – and ominous – groaning and creaking sound.

"Jane, we need to go. I don't want her to see me here like this," Loki said, edging deeper into the bedchamber, now closer to the balcony doors than to the cradle.

She nodded and began to follow, but stopped near the foot of the bed. The switch was stuck.

"What are you doing?" Loki whisper-shouted when he turned back from just outside on the balcony to see Jane still standing there, looking down at her wrist.

"It's jammed," she whisper-shouted back. The on-off switch itself, the bypass toggle, had bent a little and wouldn't budge. She could try forcing it, she thought as she set Loki's knife down on the bed and took the device off her wrist to inspect it more carefully, but she was afraid it would snap off and leave her stuck here. Loki could always come back for her…but that would further increase the risk of more earthquakes.

"Just get out here," Loki said, glancing skyward as though he could see the signal from Pathfinder shooting through Yggdrasil. "I'll help y-"

Jane blinked at the spot where Loki had just stood.

For a few seconds, Jane just stood there, staring at the gently fluttering white sheers and the now-empty space in between them, panic beginning to build. She was alone, some 1,050 or so years in the past, on another realm. "Not exactly alone," she reminded herself quietly, twisting around to look at the carved wooden cradle. One Loki had left, having apparently already toggled his RF switch on, but another Loki was still here, along with his pre-toddler older brother.

"Five minutes," she said after a deep breath, forcing everything but the RF switch from her mind. "A little less now. Okay. This is easy. This is really easy. Or it would be if I had my little Phillips head screwdriver." Four small screws dotted the corners of the rectangular metal plate that covered the device's guts and had a small opening through which the toggle emerged. If she could get that plate off, it should allow the toggle to be moved freely back and forth. If something on the inside had been damaged, the mechanics were pretty simple – for the toggle itself, it was not much different than a basic light switch. She looked down at her fingernails, but they were soft, highly unlikely to do any good.

She was just starting to look around the room, when her eye caught on the knife right in front of her, on the bed. Picking it up again, she saw the tip was very narrow and fine, but the screws were tiny electronics screws, and if she angled the knife a bit… It worked. What looked like a changing table was near the cradle; Jane set up there and got to work, trying hard to ignore the bright white light seeping through the bedroom doors, the lingering whiffs of some kind of electrical discharge, and the creaking and groaning noises that were constant now and getting louder. The screws came out in just a few seconds each, and with the cover off a quick inspection showed no visible damage to any of the components – just the bent metal post of the toggle. Once exposed it was easy to carefully straighten it out, so she did so, then got back to work reattaching the screws. By the rough count of seconds in her head, she still had a little over two minutes until the next signal from Pathfinder arrived.

"Step away from my sons if you wish to remain in one piece."

/


Brought to you from the lobby of my lodge in Uganda, woo-hoo!

Lots of references to past stuff here; for example, in Ch. 73 "Reminders" (the aftermath of Tony sending that "this is who you're hanging out with, Jane" video), Loki tells Jane about his belief that he and Thor have a destiny to fight and maybe kill each other. One additional note here (keeping it short b/c the chapter is LONG): Baby Loki who'd been abandoned to die, as seen in "Thor," was one mighty healthy-looking baby. However, this is because legal authorities (and society at large) would frown on Hollywood starving babies so they can look appropriately abandoned in movies. This is why in this one case I do deliberately deviate a tad from what we saw on-screen - I assume Baby Loki was *meant* to look a bit more pitiful and a bit less chubby. Also, I based how Loki and Thor are sleeping on an image I found online, and once a week or two has passed (spoilers and such) I'll post it on Twitter.

Thank you thank you, Best-Thor-Fans-In-The-World! Thank you for all your reviews and support!

(You think you're getting previews? Are you nuts?) ;-)