Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Eight – Stones

"What are you doing?!" Frigga cried, running forward to position herself between the two men and Eir, Wright hurrying in behind her though she paid him no mind.

"There's another one!" one of the men accosting Eir said, the one not holding the knife.

"Get them both out of here now! You too, Wright," the woman by the bed with the patient ordered. Her eyes were cast downward, her hands in the patient's – Selby's – chest; this was Nora, the healer. Two more men were with her, less focused on Selby at the moment.

"It's my knife, Your Majesty. They didn't cut me – I did it myself. Just a little demonstration to convince my fellow healers that I speak the truth."

"Tristan, for God's sake…," Nora said, glancing up over the blue mask she wore over her nose and mouth for a fraction of a second.

"Okay, look lady, that's enough. Let's go," the man with the knife said as he tossed it on the floor behind him and took hold of Eir's wrist; Frigga drew closer at the same time and saw that in that hand Eir held a healing stone. "Ronny, get her a bandage."

Eir resisted, easily breaking Tristan's hold. "I don't need a bandage, and neither will Selby."

"Just allow her a few more seconds, Tristan," Frigga said, keeping her voice calm and steady, and locking eyes on the man who now hesitated. With the exception of Nora, they all seemed nervous and confused and perhaps even scared, and she really couldn't blame them.

With smooth, slow movements, Eir broke off a small piece of the stone, and crumbled the fragment over her lower arm, where she'd pushed up her sleeve and made a small cut with a knife Frigga hadn't known she'd been carrying.

"Woah," Ronny said as the wound closed.

Eir held up her arm to give them a closer look.

"Uh, Doc? It actually worked. I don't get it, but she is telling the truth," Tristan said.

"Yeah, she's legit. Unless she's some kind of Houdini."

"He's lost a lot of blood, hasn't he?" Eir asked, stepping closer to Selby and the three other people and their equipment surrounding him. "Please, let me heal him before he loses any more."

"I'm almost finished," the doctor said, finally pausing in her work and really looking up at Eir and the no-longer-bleeding arm she held up. "I would've already finished if we hadn't had another earthquake in the middle of the surgery. He's on his second bag of O-neg. A couple of blood vessels were… Okay. All right. Everybody step back. If this doesn't work…"

"It will," Eir assured the Midgardian healer, who took a metal instrument and a bloody pack of material from Selby's chest. Eir withdrew another stone, one that hadn't had a piece broken off, dropped the other one back in her satchel, and crumbled the larger one over Selby. Frigga came up behind Eir and watched the area where the healer had been working close up exactly as it should, the flesh knitting back together seamlessly.

"Well," Nora said after a moment. "Surgery over." To Frigga's relief, while she still seemed bewildered, she also looked calm, even accepting, as she removed her bloodied gloves and untied the mask from behind her head. "Did that thing also replenish his blood volume?"

"No. It only healed the wound."

"Does it take away pain?"

"There may be a little residual soreness, as from a bruise. I'm very experienced in the healing and recovery of those of my world…much less so those of yours, but regardless, the wound itself is fully healed, so there should be little pain."

"Okay. I'm stopping the anesthetic drip, then. I think his right wrist is fractured. Can you fix that with another of those rocks?"

"I'm sorry, we have a shortage of them at the moment and I brought only two. But even if I had more, no, they would not heal broken bones," Eir explained, examining the wrist with its bruising and swelling. "It isn't bad. Possibly only a crack. I can return later and treat it another way."

"So we keep the transfusion going and I'll keep him on oxygen for the hypovolemia, and I'll X-ray the wrist, and…thank you," Nora said, adjusting some of her equipment and stepping around the table to stand in front of Eir. "Surgery carries an extra risk here. I'm the only doctor we've got. Normally for something like this I'd have an anesthesiologist, another doctor, a couple of nurses… Here I've got two of the few people who happened to have not been drinking, neither of whom have any medical training beyond basic first aid. So…thank you. I don't know if you saved his life, but you've certainly reduced the fear of an unsuccessful surgery or complications. And basically eliminated his recovery time. I'm sorry I doubted you, though I hope you can understand why I did. On this world, we have nothing like what you just did."

"I'm glad I was able to help. And I could see that you had everything under control. I didn't save his life – you and your team, healers or no, did that in caring for him as you did, and as you said, I merely hastened the healing and recovery."

"With a rock," Ronny said with a pained expression somewhere between a grimace and a grin.

"Not an ordinary rock," Eir said, smiling patiently.

"And you came here, to the South Pole, all the way from…"

"Asgard," Wright supplied, from where he now stood beside Frigga.

"All the way from Asgard," Nora continued, "just to treat Selby Higgins?" Her expression made clear her skepticism.

"No," Frigga put in, glad for the opening to put them back on their course. She was growing anxious, and she knew Eir well enough to know that despite her calm demeanor, Eir was anxious, too. "Not just for Mr. Higgins."

"Dr. Higgins," Wright said.

"Dr. Higgins," Frigga repeated. "It's a long story, and one we don't yet know the details of, but we came here first to heal-"

"Lucas," Wright interrupted, stepping forward. "Lucas and Selby both got hurt."

"Lucas? Where is he?" Nora asked immediately. "Jane said there was a scuffle of some sort. It was with Lucas? Is he all right? And why did you come all this way for him?"

"Please continue to care for Selby," Eir said. "I'll heal Lucas with the other stone."

"I know you have questions, and we will provide answers," Frigga tried to reassure them, her words spilling out more quickly as her focus returned to Loki. "We must take care of…Lucas, first, though. And I beg you, as much as your conscience allows, not to reveal our presence here to anyone outside this place, not until we've had a chance to explain."

"Doc, she's the queen of Asgard. The one on the radio earlier," Wright said.

"Queen, huh?" Nora remarked. "I don't really care about titles. But my patient, and my friend, is whole again, as if he'd never been stabbed, and for that, we'll wait. This was a successful surgery, end of story. Got it?" she asked, looking around the room and catching the eye of each of her fellow Midgardians.

They all assented, in nods and various quiet words.

"Thank you," Frigga said. "Eir, let's go, quickly." Selby was healed. Loki was still struggling to live.

/


/

Come on, hurry up, Jane thought.

"It wasn't your first journey, was it?"

Yep, gruff and harsh. He hadn't exactly asked in a conversational tone. But she hesitated, not certain what she should say. Odin had gone ballistic on Loki over a childhood play involving time travel. She couldn't imagine him reacting well to him having actually done it. To her having done it. She wondered then for the first time if she'd actually committed a crime on Asgard by traveling through time. Asgard doled out some pretty hardcore sentences.

"I hope you aren't going to waste my time trying to deny it. You appear in our records. Over a thousand years ago, on Harvest Day."

Jane closed her eyes for a moment. You just had to go and play games with Jolgeir, didn't you, Loki? She felt as though she were inside some kind of game with Odin, one that Loki was equipped to play and she definitely wasn't. But she'd learned at least a few things from Loki, and she wasn't going to be pushed into explaining all this, not without discussing it first with him. "I guess maybe you don't know that much about Midgard, then. I wasn't alive a thousand years ago. The average life span here, at least where I live, is somewhere around eighty years these days. Harvest Day sounds like fun, though. What's that like?"

Odin smiled thinly at her. "There's a piece of red fabric stored in the Central Magistrate's Office which is an exact match for the fabric on that coat," he said, pointing first to the one he sat on, on the bed, then to the one on the floor by the desk, nearer Jane. He didn't actually know that, of course, but the calculated guess seemed a reasonable one. "His, or yours?"

Jane swallowed. That hadn't been in the past, when a piece of her coat had been sheared off in her first return from Asgard. No time travel. "Mine," she admitted to the man with the golden eye patch, who looked every bit the part of a king.

Odin pursed his lips in thought he hid behind steady eyes. That was unexpected. He'd assumed, upon seeing the coat where Loki had obviously been lying earlier and now lay again, that the material had to have come from Loki's, and not Jane's as Frigga had believed. "And my wife spoke with you in our chambers, when Loki and Thor were both still in a cradle."

"That…doesn't really seem possible. Like I said, I wasn't born then."

"No, you weren't."

Loki made a sudden jerky movement, then fell still again. His eyes never opened; Jane hoped it was some kind of normal muscle reflex and not a sign of things getting even worse. The only thing worse than his condition right now, she thought with a shuddering breath, was probably death. She hadn't gotten split into two or whatever exactly it was Thor had been trying to tell her for that to happen. After all this, after everything they'd been through, that couldn't happen.

"You care about him a great deal, don't you?"

Jane pulled her eyes away from Loki and up to his father with his penetrating one-eyed stare. "Yeah. I do." That one, at least, was easy to answer.

A few seconds passed in silence.

"She's never forgotten what you told her. In our chambers."

Loki needs all the love you can give him. "Please don't stab me?" Jane said, mustering a weak smile. He knew anyway. It wasn't like her stupid evasive answers were going to give him any doubts. But then she glanced down at Loki's chest and regretted the flip comment.

"How many times have you been to Asgard?"

"I don't know. Does that last one count?"

Odin drew in a breath, steadying himself through a swell of anger. She wasn't nearly as subtle as Loki – Loki knew better than to speak to him like that, or rather, Loki used to know better – more like Loki in his youth and early adulthood, but he was certain he saw Loki's influence in her. "When there's no pre-existing agreement in place, it is customary to obtain permission before visiting a foreign land."

"Sorry. I didn't have time to get a visa," Jane muttered, right after catching the undercurrent of irritation in Odin's tone, but too late to stop the words from popping out. Nervousness. She was nervous, and it was making her say inappropriate things. Really inappropriate things, she thought, remembering then what Niskit had told her about Odin. That if she hung around Loki long enough she'd meet him, and that she should be on her best behavior and call him 'Your Majesty,' and do lots of bowing. Oops. "Your Majesty," she tacked on, way too late for it to sound like it was part of the crack about the visa, instead dangling out there alone, awkward, the lone figure being stared down by a pair of headlights careening toward her. That's a little overly dramatic, she told herself. Calm down. "Sorry," she said again, thinking she should try to make this right, and maybe not get off on a bad foot with the king of Asgard and Thor's and Loki's dad if she could help it. "I'm just worried about Loki, and this…this is all a little new to me."

Odin didn't respond – he didn't seem upset, but he wasn't cracking a smile, either, not that she could blame him – so Jane just stood there, looking down at Loki, willing him to hang on just a little while longer. And then he started to shake again. Worse this time. Paper-thin sheets of ice that she hadn't realized had formed on him cracked and broke off from bared skin, falling onto Odin, the bed, the floor. Underneath it his skin was even grayer, a pale gray-blue that looked like death. "Loki," she said, futilely for Loki certainly couldn't hear it, a desperate plea more than anything.

Odin held onto him, trying to keep the seizure under enough control that he could maintain steady pressure over the wound. Finally the movements calmed and then stilled, and Loki felt if anything limper than before, though he thought objectively that that wasn't possible. He could hear his own breathing and tried to quieten it, but he could no longer hear Loki's. He held himself perfectly still, held his breath, and could just barely feel the tiny movements of Loki's chest that indicated he was still breathing, but only just; his heart was beating rapidly. "Sit down," he told the mortal woman who was staring at Loki with wide eyes and so much fear he thought she might collapse. "Eir will return soon," he said, echoing her earlier words.

The woman sat. Odin stared stubbornly ahead and fought to think about nothing but what was physically, concretely, around him. Everything else had to wait; idle speculation and worry were useless. He looked over at the woman, watched how she watched Loki, clearly not the helpless victim of Loki's machinations that Thor thought her to be. He thought perhaps he should say something else to her, something more gracious – she had apologized, after all – but such things were not his forte, and he did not yet know exactly what she and Loki had been up to here. She was calm and quiet now, and he decided he preferred it that way, since she was being entirely uncooperative. He had expected to be talking to Loki now. Had hoped that he might be ready to listen. Instead, his hand was going numb from pressing a blood-soaked icy cloth to Loki's chest.

/


/

Loki's breathing turned louder again, jerking and shuddering breaths that saw his chest inflating and deflating in similar erratic movements – but more fully than it had before, Jane was certain. "What's going on?" she asked.

Odin didn't know. These were not more convulsions; Loki was otherwise still. In less than a minute his breathing had steadied, and, more importantly, it had eased. With Jane back at the side of the bed, Odin carefully lifted up one side of the cloth. The stab wound was still there, but even lacking much knowledge of Jotun biology, he was certain that it didn't look as bad as before, a little smaller, perhaps a little shallower, the color a little more natural, at least for Loki's native skin. "He's healing," Odin finally said. "A little," he added, when the area didn't seem to improve further. The damage to his lung, however, had obviously healed enough that he no longer struggled to breathe.

"That's good," Jane said, then bit her lip. That's really good, she thought, lacking any better words with which to express her relief, in particular in front of Odin. "That means Selby's doing better then, too, right? Does Loki even still need another healing stone?"

"Yes. It's not nearly complete." Another healing stone. "You used one on his wound already?" Odin asked, to confirm something she'd said earlier.

Jane nodded, deflating a bit from her initial elation. He still had a stab wound, he'd still lost a ton of blood, but at least there was finally some improvement in his condition. "It didn't do any good, though. I was so anxious to try to help him that I used the only stone he had on him, instead of on Selby."

"Then he owes to you the fact that he can breathe without difficulty now. It has to be the result of the remaining active properties in the stone's dust."

"Really?" Jane said, shaky little smile making it to her lips. "I'm glad it wasn't a complete waste. I felt so horrible that I screwed that up. I mean if he had… I'm glad you came." Her smile smoothed out, and she tried her best for a make-nice face. Glad was an incredible understatement. Loki wouldn't have survived this otherwise. And he was going to survive. He wasn't out of the woods, but she felt confident he would be.

"Of course I came."

The smile faltered, for Odin's tone was again gruff; they fell into silence over Loki's steady breathing.

"Thank you," he said several minutes later. "For what you did for him."

Jane blinked in surprise but had no chance to respond, for the door then opened and her focus instantly changed. At the back of her mind was the knowledge that the secret of Loki's presence here, of Lucas's true identity, was fast becoming not-so-secret. Instead of someone showing up to demand answers Jane was in no mood to give, however, the gray-blond doctor Eir entered, making a beeline for Loki, Frigga close on her heels, glass crunching under their feet. Jane went to the foot of the bed, close but out of the way, she hoped, while Eir took up position on Loki's left and Frigga at his right, alongside Odin's legs. Odin removed the cloth he'd been holding against Loki's wound, and Frigga pushed his shirt further up to his neck, holding it there, out of the way.

Jane recognized what came out of Eir's bag then.

"Is it enough for him?" Frigga asked worriedly. This was the stone Eir had broken off a small piece of in order to gain the other healer's trust.

"Enough to get him out of immediate danger. Then we can… The other stone. The one Jane used," Eir said glancing between the other three and catching Odin's nod. Jane watched as she moved her hands over Loki's chest, not touching but hovering just above it. "This stone will be enough to heal the injury completely. The puncture of the lung has already healed, and the lung has almost fully reinflated."

Jane stared at the strange mess that was Loki's chest – ghastly wound through taut gray-blue cold skin over his clearly defined abdominal muscles, ringed below the breast by a bony protrusion that wasn't normally there – as Eir crumbled the stone. The wound closed up from inside out, the skin sealing smoothly over it, and when it was completely gone, no sign even of a scratch, Jane thought it was the best-looking chest she'd ever seen. Which made her smile grow, because his chest still looked really strange. But it was whole.

Eir withdrew a small cloth from her bag and began to wipe away the blood – some red, some blue, some a deep purple where the two had mixed. Jane watched in fascination for the cloth was apparently something like the small towels she and Loki had used on Alfheim, highly absorbent, soaking up all the blood that covered Loki's chest and had dripped down his sides and to his waist. A frustrated flinching movement from Frigga's hand and a sharp inhale drew her attention to Loki's mother. She'd been trying to hold his hand. Jane immediately pulled the gloves from her own hands – she'd kept them on just in case – and held them out to Frigga.

"Thank you, Jane," Frigga said, smiling warmly.

"It's nothing," Jane said with a half-smile and a one-shoulder shrug.

"It's not nothing," Frigga replied, then slipped the gloves on – they were a little tight on her but fit. She took Loki's hand and cradled his palm in hers, gently feeling for and finding an injury in his wrist, which was quite swollen. "Eir? Loki's wrist is broken, too. But I think it's a bad break."

"Then I assume he had the same injury as Selby at first, and then further injured it, when it was already weakened. And Selby's will have to heal first?"

"Yes," Odin said quietly. "If Loki caused it. He's also injured this hand," he said, stretching to his left to grasp Loki's left arm and hold it up. He took a moment to turn his hand enough to see the scar, partly hidden under his sleeve, but there he saw no sign of damage. Loki had not tried to scratch off the mark. Odin was glad to see it, but tried not to make too much of it; he was certain Loki must have attempted to scratch it off or otherwise remove it at some point over these last months. And he was certain the gouges on the back of the hand were made by Loki himself, for the dark, sharpened fingernails on his right hand were stained with Jotun blood.

Eir took the hand from Odin and inspected it. "This will heal on its own, but…" She placed Loki's hand over his bare, now-cleaned blue chest and opened up her bag.

"But what?" Jane asked nervously. She hadn't noticed the damage to his hand; it must have happened after she'd left. And no one else had been out here, she was pretty sure…which meant Loki had done that to himself for some reason.

"I broke the stone I used on him; perhaps some additional small fragment broke off from it. Hm. Well, it's something," she said, pulling out two little gray chips, both about the size of a fingertip, but thin. She crushed them over Loki's hand, and Jane leaned in to try to get a better view of the ragged skin as it smoothed over. "Not quite enough," Eir announced, "but it's better than it was, and it shouldn't take long to heal the rest of the way. Do you have pure water, to rinse the wound with? And perhaps something to prevent infection?"

Jane took a moment to respond, not expecting medical questions to be directed to her. "Right outside the door is totally pure water. The ice. Loki knew how to just melt it. With magic."

"So do I," Frigga said with a nod as Eir pulled out a small container from her bag and handed it to her across Loki.

"You'll need to scoop up a lot of ice. The moisture content in it is low."

"It expands," Frigga said, carefully placing Loki's right hand back at his side.

Of course it does, Jane thought, suddenly acutely aware of how out of place she was here, among these people, and yet they hadn't tried to exclude her, even though they'd never met her, if you didn't count Frigga pointing a sword at her earlier today. Even Odin, really. He'd made her feel intensely uncomfortable, but not exactly unwelcome. Frigga went outside; Jane remembered the other part of Eir's request and got the first aid kit she'd left on the table. "We use this for small cuts," she said, giving the tube of Neosporin to Eir. "It's probably not what they use in hospitals, or I mean healing rooms, but a lot of people use it at home." She watched as Eir peered at the small-print writing on the tube.

"Thank you. I believe this will be fine. It's probably not necessary, Loki wouldn't normally be susceptible to infection, but…the circumstances are unusual, so better not to take chances," Eir said with a reassuring smile.

Frigga returned with a container of water about twice the size of what she'd left with, and Eir used it to rinse the wound…or tried to. "Should have thought of this," she murmured as the water turned sluggish and began to freeze to Loki's hand. She changed tactics, pouring a bit of water then gently wiping it away before it could freeze. When the wound was clean – Jane assumed it was clean when Eir set aside the water – Eir picked up the tube of Neosporin. Jane smiled at that, the latest in a series – a whole austral winter's worth actually – of surreal moments, but the first of this day she'd been able to step back from and actually marvel at. The same thing her mom had put on her skinned elbows was going on Loki's scratched-up blue Asgardian hand.

The ointment congealed on Loki's cold skin, but still Eir managed to swab it over the entire hand, then wrapped it in a bandage she took from her bag. Moving to Loki's other side, she placed a translucent disk underneath his wrist, then ran her fingers over it. The break was a bad one, Eir explained, but Jane didn't need the explanation because a projection of some sort appeared above Loki showing the internal structure of his hand and lower arm. And while Jane had never studied anatomy beyond the basics of a high school science class and couldn't put her finger on it exactly, she thought something about it looked a little different than what she was familiar with – besides the fact that one of his bones was broken and the two pieces didn't line up anymore. Jane wasn't sure what Eir was doing, but a couple of minutes later the projection showed that the pieces of the bone were lined up again, and the break didn't seem to go all the way through the bone. "I can go back and heal Selby's injury, and then finish healing Loki's," Eir explained as she wrapped his wrist in bandages that kept shifting after Eir let go of them – self-positioning, or self-tightening, or both. Jane knew that at some more convenient time, Nora would love to sit down with Eir for a while.

"Your Majesty, you can lay him down now. He's breathing normally; there's no need to hold him up any longer."

Odin looked to Eir, then looked through her.

"You need to go to him. Apologize to him. Reassure him."

"He's exhausted, Frigga. He's half-asleep."

"You need to do it anyway. Don't wait. Don't let him see you as an enemy."

He hesitated. Not because he doubted Frigga's urging; he saw the wisdom in what she said. But reassuring a frightened child – a child who might now be frightened of him – was not something he really knew how to do.

"Odin, don't make him question his trust in you."

He went to where he and Frigga had laid Loki on a blanket and wrapped it loosely around him, spoke his words of apology, promised his son they wouldn't do this again if Loki wasn't ready. He'd miscalculated. Loki's fear of the water was irrational, and Thor dragging him into the water with no ability to ensure Loki was safe in it had only exacerbated matters. Months had passed since that incident, and Odin had decided it was time to get Loki back into the water, perfectly safe in Odin's own arms. Loki hadn't wanted to do it, then Odin had pressed him and Loki had agreed, but by the time the water reached Loki's knees his fear had exploded into a panic. Irrational, yes, but it was very real to Loki, deeply engrained in him, and no amount of logic or persuasion would heal that fear. Only time would do that. Odin understood that now.

Loki was reluctant to let him hold him at first, but when he did, after a moment, he went boneless against his chest, resting his head in the crook of Odin's neck. He stood there for a while, hand over Loki's back, and eventually sat down with Loki like that, in one of the lounge chairs set up by the pond. Loki fell asleep; Odin squeezed Frigga's hand and smiled at her with all his love. "You were right. Thank you," he told her without words. He ran a hand over Loki's dark hair, damp from splashing about in his desperation to get away from the water. They had entered a time when Loki's future was less clear, the purpose Odin had intended for him now irrelevant. It was frustrating, even troubling in some moments, the quandary they were now in; they had taken in a Frost Giant child and made him their own, but now he would live out his days on Asgard, no different from any other Aesir. There was something freeing in it, as well. Now, Loki was simply their son. Nothing more, nothing less. Odin closed his eyes and let the flood of emotion carry him away, just for a moment.

"Your Majesty?" Eir repeated, a hand lightly on Odin's arm. "With the degree of blood loss he's experienced, it would be better for his circulation if he were to lie flat, with his feet elevated."

"Yes, of course," Odin said, sliding off the side of the bed and lowering Loki carefully. Things hadn't always been easy then. But it was child's play compared to what they'd been dealing with since Loki learned the truth.

"He'll need a day, possibly two, for his blood volume to be restored, at least assuming his biology is- Is not impaired. He's healed, but he's still very weak from the blood loss; I don't think he'll regain consciousness for at least a few hours."

"We understand, Eir," Frigga said. There were uncertainties with Loki in this form – no one on Asgard, not even Eir, knew much about Jotun biology – but Eir was limited in what she could say about it in front of Jane. Frigga knew, though, from centuries of dealing with injured sons, that Eir was now confident Loki would recover.

"Your turn," Eir said a minute later, when Loki's blood-soaked shirt had been fully removed and the similarly blood-soaked bib of his overalls folded down over his waist, his hands placed over his bare chest.

Jane stood by, watching his chest, still at the foot of the bed, trying to let it sink in that he was okay, really-truly okay, just a couple of minor injuries to his hands, low blood volume that was apparently a lot less of a concern for Aesir than it was for humans, and the whole bald-and-blue thing. Then she realized everyone was looking at her. "What?"

"I'd like to examine you."

"Me? Oh, I'm fine."

"You sound Aesir," Frigga said, perched on the side of Loki's bed.

"No, really. I never got hurt."

"You recently ingested a tonic that activated magic that stripped your consciousness from your body, created a duplicate body, and sent one to Asgard while leaving the other here," Eir said.

"Okay, well, there was that. But I'm fine now," Jane asserted, then belatedly got Eir's point. That wasn't exactly an everyday occurrence; how could she be sure she was fine? "Um, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a check-up just in case. Do you want me to lay down on the other bed over there?"

"It's not necessary. You can remain as you are."

Jane nodded and Eir came up beside her, placing her hands over her body and beginning to move them slowly about, not unlike what she'd seen Niskit do to Loki.

"Are you all right?" Eir asked, hands pausing over Jane's shoulders.

She realized only then that she'd had an unabashed grimace on her face. "Yeah, just…is this going to hurt?"

"No, not at all. If I heal something, you may feel a tingle or a minor itch, or you may feel nothing at all. But from the examination, you won't feel anything."

"Oh. Okay."

"May I continue?"

"Sure," Jane said, relaxing, though her heart sped up a little again when Eir reached her calves, but a few seconds later she was done.

"Is it all right if I take a further look at your head?"

"My head? Is something wr- Oh, that's from a couple of days ago. Minor concussion. Is that what you saw?"

"Yes. You still have some swelling, which I can further reduce. May I?"

Jane nodded, the clear disk came out of Eir's bag again, and then Jane was looking at a projection of the inside of her own head. "Wow," she breathed, reaching out a finger to touch the image. It sent ripples through it, and Eir smiled and gently pushed her hand away. "Sorry." She felt a strangle little tickle – strange because it seemed to come from under her skin, and in fact probably did – and then the disk was moved down to her right shoulder and then her left knee.

"Minor bruising and swelling. More recent?" Eir asked, already putting the disk away and cupping her hands over the injured areas.

Jane nodded, remembering the fall she'd taken running out to the jamesway, and Loki rushing at her on Asgard, trying to flip her RF toggle, to send her back to Earth without him. She glanced over at Loki – he would have the same shoulder injury – but it was nothing serious, and she figured it would quickly heal on its own now that Eir was healing hers. Eir hadn't even checked Loki for minor injuries like this. "Yeah," she finally said, having forgotten for a moment that Eir had asked her a question. "Today," she added.

Frigga watched the exchange, caught the flicker of Jane's eyes toward Loki, and wondered if Loki had caused Jane's injuries. Her eyes found Odin's, and from the frown he wore she was certain he was wondering the same. She was glad Thor had returned to Asgard. If anything could send him over the edge where Loki was concerned, it would be the belief that Loki had harmed Jane. She'd seen him teetering on it already, when he realized the implication of her necklace around Jane's neck and imagined the worst.

"All done," Eir said, stepping back.

Jane's hand went to the top of her head; the bump was gone. "Thanks, Eir. And, uh, nothing weird because of the whole out-of-body-experience thing?"

"Everything appears to be perfectly in order."

"That's a relief," Frigga said. "Jane Foster, we owe you a great deal for what you did for Loki today. I'm sorry for the ordeal you endured – it must have given you a terrible fright – but I'm grateful that you came to us despite the risk, more than I can express. We have lost Loki before…and I don't care to endure it again."

Jane smiled awkwardly. In some ways she felt like she already knew Frigga, and yet, they'd probably exchanged more words on Asgard when Frigga thought she was there to kill her kids than they had here at the South Pole. "I didn't know what else to do. Loki was pretty out of it, but once he actually understood what I was doing he tried to tell me not to. Actually," she said with a sudden giddy laugh, "I think he said 'I forbid it.' Or…I guess that was something else he didn't want me to do, actually. He could barely breathe, he could barely get two words out at a time, and he managed to get out 'I forbid it.' He…," Jane trailed off, pausing to catch her own breath and finding it a little shaky. "I just didn't want him to die. He doesn't deserve that. I couldn't stand there and let him die." She felt her throat tightening and reached up to wipe at the corners of her eyes.

"Oh, Jane," Frigga said, closing the distance between them and wrapping her arms around the younger woman, hugging her tightly, feeling tears prick at her own eyes. She didn't know what had happened here, much less what had happened when her boys were still in their cradle and Jane should not have existed. There was a great deal she and Odin needed to find out, but for right now, none of that mattered. Loki was well, and she held in her arms the woman who had made that possible.

He would not have died, Odin thought, as his wife embraced the mortal woman and Eir returned to Loki's side, on the opposite side of the bed from where Odin now stood. I would have arrived sooner were it not for the mortal appearing on Asgard as a threat to Frigga. Eir would not have been with me, but I would have sent for her as soon as I saw his injury. By then, of course, the Tesseract would be on its way back to its protected location, and a new travel site would have to have been arranged, he had to admit to himself. The mortal, possibly, had saved them some time. For now, he would continue to reserve judgement on her.

"I'll see Selby again," Eir said, "if Nora will allow it. But I think I should stay with Loki until he wakes, just in case he experiences any setbacks."

"Are you worried about setbacks?" Odin asked as Frigga and Jane came back over to the bed. Loki appeared to be resting peacefully.

"No. I simply think that given the extraordinary circumstances, an additional dose of prudence is warranted."

"You're right, of course, Eir," Frigga said. "The wrists can wait. For now…I think we owe the people here an explanation."

"Oh, boy," Jane breathed. "I guess part of me always knew this was coming, but…we've been lying to everybody here for months, and this is…this is going to be bad."

"Loki's been living here under a false name," Frigga said for Odin's benefit.

Odin nodded; it was the first thing he'd heard since Jane Foster turned up in the palace that hadn't surprised him.

"I'll go now," Jane said with a bracing smile. "You, uh, you might want to wear Loki's jacket."

Frigga agreed – before she'd had an urgent goal and had set aside how savagely the cold bit here, but now she had time to think about comfort. They got the jacket out from underneath Loki – it had a little blood on it, Loki's blood, but she ignored it and put it on, and Jane helped her seal it up. "It's very warm," Frigga said. In here, actually, it was rather hot.

"It's specially made for extreme weather. We call it Big Red."

"I can see why," Frigga said with a chuckle. "All right, shall we go?"

Jane had no idea what they were going to say in there. She'd been in this position before, sort of, when Loki went back to Asgard supposedly for good. She'd wanted him to go then, but realized only after he was gone that his departure created a terrible conundrum for her in how to explain his disappearance to everyone else. Now it wasn't just Lucas's disappearance she had to explain. It was that Lucas was Loki. That he didn't want to hurt anyone…except Selby, she thought with an extra grimace on top of the one she already wore, but those were unique circumstances. That Asgardians – actual aliens from outer space – were running around the South Pole, and that yes, Lucas-slash-Loki was one of them. And they were going to hate Loki. And they were going to hate her. And they were her friends. Loki's, too. Jane wondered in a moment of dark humor how open Asgard might be to an application for emergency asylum. Luckily, its king liked her. Its former king, and the guy who sort of still seemed to call the shots, she wasn't so sure of.

"Putting it off isn't going to change it," Frigga said in the face of Jane's obvious reluctance. Loki and Jane had been living a lie here, and she did not envy the position the mortal woman now found herself in. But she would not face it alone. "We'll do our best to help them understand, hm?"

Jane nodded. "You're right," she said, then made her way to the door, with Asgard's queen behind her.

Odin watched them go, then turned to Eir, whose focus was on Loki. "How close was he?"

Eir looked up, her expression purely professional though he knew she cared for Loki as more than a typical patient. "Very close, Your Majesty. I don't know how he managed to keep breathing as long as he did."

Odin knew. He'd been afraid Loki might do something rash. Once more gather together the mortals that had defeated him, possibly, and annihilate them somehow, uncaring that it would end his own life as well. He hadn't forgotten the look on Loki's face when he let go. He would never forget it. The enchantment had taken this into account. Where death encroached on life, life would be strengthened. Not sustained indefinitely – no magic could actually do that – but strengthened, for a time. Loki's potential victims deserved that. And so did Loki. An opportunity for Loki to explain himself. For Odin to determine whether the fatal blow had been struck in unadulterated shameless murder, or in something considerably murkier that had still triggered the enchantment. Odin had thought this possibility unlikely – he'd thought it more likely that Loki would initially try to exploit his unexpected freedom in some scheme for his own advancement. But if it had happened, this worst of possible outcomes, he'd thought it would happen early on. Weeks, even days into his return to Midgard. Not months. The signal was the same for both enchantments, and Odin had assumed that at this point, it had to indicate that Loki's connection to magic was gone. Even that he'd expected would happen much sooner.

The plan had never been more than an outline, one Odin had thought – had hoped – would nevertheless end in the proper place, much as with Thor. But he hadn't expected Asgard to be embroiled in war, and he hadn't expected time travel and whatever else had taken place here, in quite possibly the last place on this entire world he would have expected Loki to be. To stay.

Loki had been and still was too weak to offer any explanations, and the mortal Jane Foster was stubbornly unwilling to offer them. I should have come more quickly, he thought. Loki had been talking earlier, apparently, based on what Jane said. He'd expected to be sitting in the throne room, or watching his warriors practice in one of the courtyards. Or dining in the Feasting Hall. Or having a quiet moment with Frigga. He'd expected to be in or very near the palace, very near the Tesseract. He'd not expected to be out beyond the wall, fending off Asgard's ruin. He would not have died, he told himself again.

Right now, all that mattered was that Loki was alive, and for this Odin was relieved beyond measure. There would be time for the rest, soon.

/


/

"Are you okay?" Jane asked almost as soon as they stepped outside. "Your legs must be freezing out here. I was out here for only about a minute in a dress a couple of times and it was pretty awful."

Frigga glanced over at Jane, tearing her eyes from the striking green light in the dark sky that she'd noticed before but had not dwelt on. "Would that be the lovely pink dress that you wore to the Harvest Festival a little over a thousand years ago?"

Rose quartz, Jane thought with a cringe that was covered by the balaclava she now had back on, along with the rest of the gear she still had, including the gloves she'd taken back from Frigga after giving her the larger pair from the first aid kit. She kept her face down, eyes fixed on the ice, and didn't answer, although she felt a little guiltier about it with Frigga.

"Did you watch the parade? If so, you must have seen my boys. I was so proud of them. I always was. I remember Thor was a little grumpy about it – it was his second time performing in the first line…do you know about the pipers and lines? Loki must have told you about it. In any event, Thor wanted to perform in the second line, but his trainers didn't believe he knew the second series well enough yet. And if you saw the parade, then you know why you have to know the routine perfectly."

"This is why you have to know the routine perfectly," Jane could hear Loki saying, his words overlapping with his mother's. It made her smile to herself despite the situation.

"Loki performed with the children on the bellpipe, leading the lines. He was so excited. He didn't often get something for himself, something that was all his to be proud of, and not his and Thor's both. I can still see him running toward me after it was over, how he was near to bursting with joy. I can see it almost like it was yesterday. I imagine you can, too. What I can't imagine is how. I have never heard of such magic."

"We should talk about the station. What happened when you went in there for Eir to treat Selby?" Jane asked. She didn't want to get into any verbal sparring with Frigga – she wanted to tell her that yes, she'd seen little Thor and Loki, and yes, they were both impressive and utterly adorable. But even with Frigga she wasn't going to start talking about stuff that stood a good chance of getting Loki – and herself, though she tried not to think about that – in trouble while he was flat on his back unconscious recovering from nearly dying. Even Niskit, lousy excuse for a friend that she was, kept her mouth shut about Loki's private matters when Loki was passed out. And it would be a good idea for them to spend the walk back to the station sharing information on the situation there and coming up with at least the basics of a plan.

"All right," Frigga agreed. She suspected there would be no avoiding discussing this later, but there was no reason they had to discuss it now. "We encountered a few others, and one of them I inadvertently revealed Loki's identity to. I didn't realize he was using a false name here. I suppose I should have…I was distracted by his condition."

"That's okay. Selby already figured it out today anyway. I'm afraid that cat's out of the bag. Do you know who it was that you told?"

"Cyrus Wright."

"Okay. Selby actually already told him, but he said Wright didn't believe him."

"I gathered as much. We met Nora, and there were four others with her in the Healing Room, ah, Club Med."

Jane held back an unexpected laugh. "And I know that you call your Healing Rooms 'Club Med,'" she remembered Loki telling her with a pretty snooty tone of voice, back when he was annoyed at something or other that she couldn't recall. Back when he'd had another stab wound.

"Let's see, they were…Tristan and…"

"Ronny?" Jane guessed. Tristan and Ronny weren't particularly close friends, that Jane knew of – as far as she knew they'd just happened to be in the men's room at roughly the same time when Jane came looking for help.

"That's right. We didn't hear the names of the others, those assisting Nora."

"Well, we've only got the one healer. There was a big party going on. Probably whoever was assisting with the surgery was whoever hadn't been drinking. Gary was probably one of them."

"Do you know everyone here, Jane?"

"Yeah," Jane answered, surprised. This place had become home, and she was used to it, and had forgotten that others were not. "There's only fifty of us, and we've all been here together since early February. Um, four months ago," she added, in case Asgard didn't call the months by the same names. "Loki, too."

"Really," Frigga mused, intrigued by the idea of Loki living here all this time…or most of it…with 49 mortals, and apparently getting along well enough with them, given that Wright seemed to like him and no one had reacted negatively, except in concern, to his name being brought up in the Healing Room. "Jane…I'm sorry to change the subject, but…your doctor said that there was an earthquake here while she was performing her surgery on Selby. Is that why this building looks the way it does? When Eir and I approached it before, I assumed it was simply an engineering design peculiar to Midgard, but now that I look more closely...is the building damaged?"

/


Long one so I'll try to keep it short here. ;-) Long wait for this one, huh?! Sorry, I thought I'd have all this ideal writing time on my recent little vacation but it didn't work out that way.

I wanted to address one very minor thing that I think a number of people interpreted differently than intended - the images of Jane that were captured on Asgard were actually both from the Harvest Day visit, just one was more of a close-up and the other more of a full-body image, so there were no images from the time they transited Asgard to go to Alfheim (at least not in those records). Down the line (don't hold your breath, ha) I'll try to go back and make that a little clearer.

Previews for Ch. 139: Stuff to deal with on Midgard, stuff to deal with on Asgard.

Excerpt:

[...] "Are things about to get any worse here than they are right now?"

Frigga looked Jane's way; Jane would have a better idea of how to answer that.

"Um," Jane began, realizing Frigga was waiting for her to respond, "it depends on how you look at it?"