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Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Nine – Glass

Nadrith would not be moved.

Thor tried. Jotunheim wouldn't listen to Asgard. Odin had already gone there and offered both apologies and aid; Jotunheim had refused. Jotunheim had no single voice but was, as Loki had not known, beset by civil war. Jotunheim was, borrowing Loki's words, irrelevant – barely involved in the war and unable to become much more involved even if they wanted to.

Loki merely listened, and held himself very still. "As long as they think they can win, they aren't going to walk away from it," he'd told Jane. Even apparently believing what Loki had told him about Brokk's role and his connection to Thanos, Nadrith was unwilling to walk away unless he took some form of a win back with him. In the reasoned, methodical part of him that listened to Thor as argument after argument failed to bear fruit, Loki understood that. Nadrith was being asked to swallow a bitter pill of humiliation today in hopes of avoiding an attack that might come many tomorrows later, and that he couldn't know for certain would ever come at all. He wanted the moral thread removed, and he wanted the most visible leader of the alliance knocked down from his high perch along with him, further down than Nadrith if at all possible. Svartalfheim's deception – Brokk's, really, but Nadrith wouldn't be quibbling – in convincing the other realms to ally against Asgard would be a welcome bonus, in the end essentially giving the Ljosalf king what he'd wanted all along.

It wouldn't be quite that easy for him, of course. Thousands, probably tens of thousands of Light Elves had died on Asgardian soil for a folly of a war that Nadrith had personally convinced them was worth the shedding of their blood. He and perhaps his family, too, would pay a price for that, no matter how popular he was right now, and no matter how favorable a light he was able to portray himself in compared to his counterparts.

Following the one-sided conversation at a certain distance, it took a couple of seconds for Loki to realize Thor had said his name. He met Thor's gaze.

"Let's go," Thor said, wondering if Loki had been paying attention. "We need to discuss this."

Loki nodded and turned to go.

"And take your friends with you," Nadrith said.

"Not my friends. But don't worry, they'll fade away eventually. In the meantime, let them be a reminder to you of what you've gotten yourself and the rest of us into." They wouldn't fade; they'd be there until Loki dissolved them, or until Nadrith touched them, disrupting the cohesion of the magic. Given how ill at ease Nadrith was with them, though, Loki didn't think they would be going anywhere anytime soon.

"To my chambers?" Thor asked when the door had closed behind them.

"Mine," Loki said, though he wasn't happy about that, either. He didn't really think of them as "his" rooms anymore, but as a part of the lie of his past. But they would have to talk somewhere; Loki needed more information.

Loki took the lead and Thor followed him up the stairs, watching Loki's back and wondering what exactly had happened after Loki let go of Gungnir and fell into the void. The creatures Loki had encountered, they looked fearsome. He remembered Odin's shocked "Loki met Thanos?" and how quickly, after hearing that name, he had recast Loki's alliance with the Chitauri's leader as one-way. And now Loki said he'd been a lackey. If that was true, then "alliance" wasn't the right word at all, and Thor wondered if his certainty that no coercion was involved in Loki's attack on Midgard wasn't overstated. If he'd understood correctly what Loki said, then his brother had been deceived in some way, made a lackey to a being who saw mass murder as a romantic gift. Loki said he "loathed" The Other. These were not, and, Thor suspected, never had been friend or ally to his brother.

"Loki," Thor began when they reached his brother's chambers, "were you tricked into attacking Midgard?"

"Is that what you took from that? Focus."

"It's a fair question."

"Oh, I see. In that case, no. Take Midgard, deliver the Tesseract. It was fairly straightforward. Now, to questions which are actually relevant. Civil war on Jotunheim. The brothers are leading the two factions, I take it? Byleister and Hel…bindi?" He knew the name; pretending otherwise was juvenile, but it had simply come out that way.

"Helblindi. Yes, but there are three factions, actually. The third is led by Dirnolek, the leader of their warriors. We know little of him."

"Three factions? Did I do no damage to their realm at all?" Loki asked, mostly to himself, but the question wasn't entirely rhetorical. They hadn't told him any details of Jotunheim's condition, upon his forcible return to Asgard. He would have thought the Frost Giants would be too weakened – too few – to fight a three-way war amongst themselves.

"You did severe damage to them," Thor said, the sympathy he'd been feeling toward Loki fading. "They have been thrown into chaos. Their society has all but collapsed."

"Society," Loki echoed. As though they put on their best loincloths and went out for dinner and dancing. "Who did the other realms make their agreement with?"

"The Dark Elves somehow convinced all three to meet with them together, and…I suppose it's an assumption, actually, since Heimdall was prevented from observing, but we believe all three factions agreed to the alliance."

"They can ally with other realms but not each other?" Loki scoffed. "And their only involvement was the freezing of the Eilif Springs, correct?"

"As far as we know, yes," Thor answered with a flash of guilt. Loki wasn't meeting his gaze, eyes drifting, never really focusing on anything, as he thought. But Thor was watching Loki closely, and remembering that Frost Giant he'd unnecessarily killed out at the springs.

"Which faction sent them?"

Thor opened his mouth, ready to roll off another simple answer, only to realize he had no idea. "I don't know," he said. It had never occurred to him, or probably to anyone else, to question this detail, but he imagined it could be important. "Heimdall may know," he added, "but he is kept busy watching for warriors arriving to do battle."

"And not for those arriving to do tricks?" Loki asked, finally halting his racing thoughts to really look at Thor.

"That's not what I meant. But he did miss their arrival."

"Of course that's what you meant. Did he by any chance notice their departure?"

Thor frowned. It wasn't what he'd meant. It wasn't what he'd meant to mean. But maybe, possibly, somewhere deep in some dark obscure corner of his heart, it was what he'd been thinking after all. The more he considered it, the less sure he was. Loki had a talent for that, of course, for making you doubt your own thoughts. It took a moment for the question to sink in, and when it did, it didn't help his discomfort. "None of them departed. Volstagg and I…we killed them all."

"Unfortunate, in this particular case," Loki said. "Did-"

"But Brokk was with them," Thor interrupted. "He escaped."

Loki's jaw tightened at the name. Focus, he told himself. It wasn't only Thor he'd said that to earlier. "Then perhaps Heimdall saw where Brokk went. He may have opened a portal to Jotunheim, intending to return the survivors, or to explain that there weren't any. Perhaps where he went or who he met with there will tell us which faction sent them."

Thor nodded. He wasn't sure why it mattered, but recognized that at some point it could hold significance. "I will ask."

"And what happened when Odin went to Jotunheim? Who did he meet with?"

"He's been there twice. The first time was a few weeks after you…after we thought you had died. They had already split into factions then. The bifrost caused Jotunheim to become unstable – the land, the ice, whatever it is, not just the people. The brothers turned on each other almost immediately, and Dirnolek turned on both of them. Father met with each of them, separately, and tried to offer them assistance. Reparations, rebuilding, whatever they required. They wouldn't accept. There were only two words they wanted to hear: Ice Casket. Helblindi's men tried to kill him for his trouble. He returned once Gullveig presented his ultimatum. He was hoping even then to peel off individual realms from the alliance. He again met with them separately, and he gained no ground. Each wanted you and the Ice Casket delivered to his own faction. Father said he didn't think they were actually interested in the Tesseract, although they always took care to include it with the list of demands. That's all I know; I'm not sure if there's anything else. You'd have to ask Father."

Loki turned, strode over to the dark wood bench against the wall in the entryway – the area where he used to remove his boots – sank down onto it, and dropped his chin into his hand. Odin was the last person in the Nine Realms he wanted to talk to about Byleister and Helblindi Laufeyson. But if he had useful information, perhaps, perhaps, it would be worth it. "Which factions appear least and most powerful?"

"I have no idea. The last I heard on that…Helblindi held the most ground. But that was months ago, before the war even started. With everything going on on Asgard, I doubt Heimdall has been following it. But I will ask that, too."

Loki didn't react, and so Thor waited, watched Loki thinking, and when the next question didn't come, he spoke up. "I can go to Jotunheim. Perhaps with the passage of more time, they'll be ready to accept Asgard's offer of assistance."

"They've lived in ruins for over a millennium, Thor, I don't think a few more months of war is going to have made them suddenly change their attitudes."

"What if we take a side? Back one of them to unify Jotunheim under his rule and gain his support. We don't offer to help them rebuild. We offer to help one of them to the throne." Thor could hardly believe what he'd just suggested, and from Loki's slightly widened eyes when he finally looked up at him, neither could his brother.

"How very cunning and devious of you. I must admit I'm surprised you would consider something so underhanded."

"Not underhanded. We would have to do it openly. It's…perhaps it's a bad idea. There would be long-term consequences."

"There would indeed. Not least of which would be Asgard's defeat, since Nadrith would hardly find an Asgardian-backed puppet ruler on Jotunheim a fitting resolution to his 'moral thread' of liberating Jotunheim from Asgardian oppression."

Thor grimaced, recognizing the obvious once Loki had stated it, but his frustration with himself quickly honed in on Loki. "You don't have to be so condescending, you know. At least I've got some ideas. I haven't heard any from you yet."

"Bad ideas are better than no ideas, so by all means, do keep them coming," Loki said, gaze drifting away again.

"You really do need that nap," Thor said testily.

Loki stood back up and stepped deliberately into Thor's space. "You think my temperament will improve with a nap? I'll become nice?"

"One can hope."

"Being nice isn't necessary to winning a war."

"Neither is being belligerent."

"You don't care whether I'm nice or belligerent. You want to pretend that nothing has changed. Everything has changed, Thor. Accept that and cease this nonsense. Stop constantly calling me your brother. The truth is that we were never brothers. If I call Frigga 'Mother,' it's only because I could never accustom myself to calling her 'Frigga' in my mind," Loki said, expression as bitter as his words. It wasn't even true, there was more to it than that, but he couldn't stop himself. "But this family tree is rotten and twisted, and whatever my relationship to her is, it doesn't make me your brother. Can you get that through your tiny head?"

Thor glared at Loki. "If you have the right to define words however you like, then so do I. As much as you insist you are not my brother, I will continue to insist that you are."

"What does that word mean to you?"

"What do you mean?" Thor asked.

Loki sighed. "It's a word. I asked you what it means."

"You know what it means. You ask to trick me. To twist my words. To malign me and my feelings."

"You wound me, Thor. Such a low opinion of me you have. I asked because there is no definition of that word that applies to us. There is only your…your…obstinance and your clinging to the past as though you were still a child. It's time to grow up."

Thor took a couple of steps back, regarding Loki with a sadness blooming in his heart that felt like grief. He refused to give in to it, though. He refused to accept Loki's words. Loki was, after all, a talented liar. "Do you know what that word means to me?" he asked softly.

"That is in fact precisely what I asked you, so no, I don't know. I asked you to tell me."

"It means you. It's synonymous with 'Loki.' When you tell me you aren't my brother, it's the same as if you're telling me you aren't Loki. It's as though you say mountains are not tall, deserts not dry, rivers not wet, and it's impossible for me to fathom. You are Loki. You are my brother. They are one and the same. From the beginning, and for all eternity, unchanging."

Loki's eyes were locked onto Thor's as he spoke; it was obvious how much Thor believed what he was saying. Loki wanted to believe it, too. He wanted it to be true. But he swallowed and tamped down the emotion that had begun to well up in him. Because no matter how much Thor believed it, and no matter how much Loki wanted to believe it, it simply wasn't true, and Loki had spent enough of his life living a lie. "Mountains can crumble, rain can fall in the desert, and rivers can be frozen solid. Things are not so unchanging as you believe them to be. The truth is ugly, but that doesn't make it not truth. You were the one who brought up family trees. My name is not actually found on yours. Do you know which names mine is found beside? Helblindi and Byleister. The two princes who love their realm so much they're willing to destroy what little is left of it in some pointless power struggle over an icen wasteland. They are my brothers," Loki said with disgust.

"Only by biology. By upbringing you are Asgardian, the son of Odin and Frigga, and yes, my brother. You aren't one of them. You're one of us."

At that Loki turned his back to Thor. "You're one of us." The heights of self-deception. And so like Thor. If the Mighty Thor insisted it was true, and did it loudly enough, then most would, in the end, agree that it was true. And how easy to insist on it and not be dissuaded, Loki thought, when he looked like this. The way Thor had always known him to look, nothing like Thor of course, but like Loki, like Brother. Like indeed nothing had changed. Loki concentrated, pictured ice and rough flesh pushing outward, soft pale skin retreating inward. It wasn't instantaneous and it wasn't easy, but that was fine; he did not anticipate any need to become adept at this. He knew it had worked when it struck him just how hot and stifling his light clothing – transformed from insulating ECW clothing – had become.

Thor sucked in a breath even before Loki turned back around. He'd seen the back of his head, his black hair, shift and shimmer and over the course of several long seconds settle into a deep blue scalp absent of hair. Thor found himself staring into the small black pupils of large red eyes, forcing himself to stare there and not gawk at or even really look at all at Loki's strange appearance, trying desperately to avoid any negative reaction, just as he'd intended when he returned to Midgard thinking he would find Loki still looking like this. His heart was racing, though; he'd never stood so close to a Frost Giant before. Not one that he wasn't trying to kill, anyway.

With that thought, though, he blinked a few times and some of the rigidness that had shot up his spine relaxed. He'd stood this close, even closer, to a Frost Giant countless times before. He'd shared a childhood bed with a Frost Giant, he'd studied math and history and culture and swordplay with a Frost Giant, he'd tumbled in the mud and ridden horses and climbed and hiked and swam and laughed and fought with a Frost Giant. Just because he hadn't known it at the time didn't make it untrue. His best friend was a Frost Giant. Loki was a Frost Giant. And still his brother. His let his field of vision expand, and saw even through the heavy brow and ridged forehead and jaw that his brother was angry. He started to speak, but Loki hurried to cut him off.

"Look at me, Thor. Do I look like one of you? Listen to me! Do I even sound like one of you?"

"You look like a Frost Giant, obviously. And your voice…you sound like you, but…your voice sounds…gravelly, I would say. It's a little lower, and it rumbles. But you are still you. Your appearance or the exact timber of your voice has nothing to do with that."

Loki closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. Ignorant fool. Easy for you to say, he thought, when you look like that and always have and always will. Changing forms was a stupid, hastily-made decision, one Loki already regretted, since it hadn't gotten the rise out of Thor he'd expected. He threw all his effort into changing back, but it was a struggle, with Thor standing there and acting as though all this were normal. When he finally felt confident that he looked himself and would stay that way, he opened his eyes and found Thor still standing there, and without that odd slightly luminescent quality that people had when he wore the other form. "So. Removing Jotunheim from the war. Any more ideas you care to share, good or bad?"

"Nothing comes to mind," Thor grumbled. He may as well be slamming his head against a mountain. "What about you?"

"I don't know, it's hard to get past my first idea."

"What idea? You still haven't mentioned any."

"I didn't need to mention it. You were there, unfortunately. You should have let me destroy them."

Thor sighed and shook his head.

"Don't give me that look. We wouldn't have this problem now if I'd accomplished what I set out to then. The easiest way to remove them from the war would be to remove them from the cosmos."

"Yes, Loki, that's true," Thor said, no longer shocked by Loki's outrageous statements, and uncertain whether he was really serious about them or simply trying yet again to provoke him. "Though by that logic, the easiest way to win the war would be to remove all of the other realms from the cosmos. It is no more an option for dealing with Jotunheim than it is with any of the others."

"Of course it isn't, not now. Then, yes. Now, no. Nadrith would find that just as untenable a tale to bring back to his people and the other rulers as a Jotunheim with its ruler installed by Asgard."

Thor nodded, reluctantly. That Loki agreed that they should not destroy Jotunheim was good. That he did so in purely practical calculation, absent any honorable moral reasoning, was considerably less good. "Can it be done, then? Perhaps you can think of a way to convince Nadrith to change his mind on Jotunheim."

"It can be done." Loki went over to the bench again, sat down, and this time used it as he always had, removing his boots and leaving them there on the floor. He would normally put them away, but he did not want to settle in or treat this as his home in any way. The boots could stay there until he put them back on when he left again.

"How?"

"I'll have to think about it. It's time for that nap now," Loki said, standing again.

"Ah," Thor said with a growing smile. "When you said you wanted a nap, you meant you wanted to have time alone to think."

"No. I meant I wanted a nap. I haven't slept for a while and to accomplish all of this I'll need to. Being unconscious isn't exactly the same as being asleep, you know."

Thor watched as Loki's clothing transformed into the heavy black overalls he'd seen on several of the others at the South Pole, including Jane. For a second there, he'd really thought he had Loki figured out. "I'll get a message to Heimdall, then. To ask if he saw where Brokk went after the Eilif Springs incident and what he can tell us about the current state of the internal war on Jotunheim, and then I suppose I'll wait in your study and take a nap of my own on the lounger. Do you need anything else?"

Loki took a second to give Thor an angry look. But the close quarters, perhaps, could not be helped. And it wouldn't really matter; Loki would close and seal the door and still have his privacy while he wrestled between sleep and trying to come up with some plan that would give Nadrith what he needed to back out of this war with his adoring subjects still adoring him. "He seemed nice," he remembered Jane saying, about having seen Nadrith at Harvest Day. You should see him now, Jane, he thought.

"I won't be long," Thor said, turning to go, when Loki did not respond.

"Wait, I do need one more thing. Let's make it…five more things, actually. The five best books available on Asgard on how Ljosalf building construction manages the intense sunlight. Preferably the physical books, rather than on a notebook."

Thor blinked heavily, but did not hesitate long. Questioning Loki's random request would take longer than simply seeing that it was taken care of. Part of him thought perhaps it was nothing more than a test, a let's-see-how-much-Thor-will-do-without-questioning-me test. The task wouldn't be as easy as it sounded, actually – none of Asgard's libraries were currently tended – but if Thor ordered it done it would be done. And if it was a test, he would pass.

Loki left Thor to his tasks and headed back to the bedchamber, keeping his gaze fixed in front of him to avoid getting caught up in the familiar. Once inside, he closed the door, sealed it, and threw up a hasty sound blanket. "What have I gotten myself into?" he murmured. Remove Jotunheim from the war, he thought, then repeated it aloud. "Certainly, Nadrith. Of course it can be done, Thor. I'll just snap my fingers and your wish will come true." He pictured the birthday cake made for him, how everyone stared at him waiting for something, how Jane had managed to tell him that he had to make a wish and blow out the candles and not tell anyone what the wish was or else it wouldn't come true. He'd wished to be free of the curses, and now he was, sort of. How long would that last if he failed to win this war for Asgard? If he failed to come up with some way to get Jotunheim to publicly back out of the alliance? Where's a birthday cake when you need one? Where is Jane when I need her?

Loki shook his head at himself. He would not let Jane become a crutch. She had a creative mind, but it wasn't her ideas he wanted, it was her. But even were she here, they would not be sitting around watching movies or comparing notes on Norse mythology. It wasn't even Jane he wanted, not exactly – mostly it was to not be here. He arched an annoyed eyebrow at himself, for if there was one place that was not here that he would most want to be right now, it was with Jane.

He was going to have to deal with Jotunheim. The realm that not so long ago he'd thought he would never have to deal with again, literally. Everything had unraveled so quickly, more quickly than he could ever have imagined. He found himself drifting to the full-length mirror next to his dresser. He'd become accustomed to and even comfortable looking like this, like a laborer, in this Midgardian clothing, now with the odd discoloration of mottled orange and purple blood stains on heavy black cloth. For most of his life, though, he'd taken great pride in his appearance, in his attire, adornments, and grooming. He hadn't thought he'd ever be back here in these chambers, where just outside in his dressing room – if things there were as unchanged as everything else seemed to be from his cursory glances – were all of his fine royal garments, the best cloth and leather and intricate metal armor available in all the Nine Realms. In one instant he wasn't sure he could do this; in the next he reminded himself that he could do anything he set his mind to. He had traveled through time, only the second person to ever do so and the first without any special sight into Yggdrasil, and he wasn't living in a cave slowly going mad.

In the next instant, though, he remembered that his time travel held no successes of any importance. He'd been unable to bring himself to kill Thor, and he'd failed again and again to prevent Baldur's death, and he hadn't even managed to write his own life out of history, and he wouldn't have been able to do any of those things even if he'd spent the next decade going back and trying over and over. A lost cause. What if this, too, was a lost cause?

Jotunheim. He had to deal with Jotunheim. Vanaheim wouldn't be so much of a problem; Asgard already had evidence, they simply needed more. After all this time, after everything he'd done, it all came down to Jotunheim.

He met his own eyes in the mirror. Eyes that were not quite the shade of any in his false family. Eyes that lied. His own eyes, lying even to him. How could he not be known as the ultimate liar, when he had looked into the mirror for over a thousand years of life and seen eyes, a face, a body, that had lied just as effectively to himself as to everyone else he met?

Before he could put any thought into it his fist was flying forward and smashing into the mirror, shattering the glass into flying and falling shards. He stayed where he was for a moment, fist outstretched, the impact of the strike, of the wall behind the mirror, refreshing solid and honest under his knuckles. At the sound of the door crashing open, he yanked his fist back and swung around. Thor stood just inside the door, gaze landing first on Loki and the mirror, then swiftly taking in the rest of the space. Mjolnir was in his hand.

"Are you all right?" Thor asked when he was satisfied no one else was in the chambers and nothing had exploded.

Loki raised his fist and eyed it. The second knuckle was a bit red. "Fine. And you?"

"I…I heard glass breaking and I feared something had happened."

"Something did happen. I broke a mirror. And now you can… You heard it?"

Thor nodded.

Loki pulled back the sound blanket in frustration. Obviously he still needed to pay more attention to his use of magic, until it was fully reliable again without that attention.

"Loki," Thor said, hesitating as he glanced from Loki to the shattered mirror and back to Loki again, "if you want to talk, even if it's difficult, we can-"

"Yes, let's do that. You have another bed sent up, and we'll have a slumber party. We'll stay up all night talking, and we'll put makeup on each other's faces while blindfolded. It will be so much fun!"

It was the last straw, and Thor exploded. "Why must you continually try to make me turn away from you? Why must you… I keep trying despite everything you've said and done, because you're my brother and you cannot change that no matter how you look or where you were born or how cruel you are. You sharpen your words into knives, Loki, and they hurt. Do you even care how much damage you do, how much pain you cause?"

Loki simply stared for a moment. All of the callous things he'd said to Thor, and this was what finally made him lose his temper? But he didn't feel like rehashing the family tree debate again, or who had the edge on doling out damage and pain. "It was a jest, Thor. I could have simply said, 'No, I don't want to talk to you,' but that would have been so dull."

"Oh," Thor said, feeling a little sheepish, now that the initial burst of adrenaline-fueled anger had passed. "I overreacted. I'm sorry."

Loki waved a hand in the air, as much to wave away Thor's apology – unnecessary, since the "overreaction" had simply come a little later than Loki had expected – as to stretch the hand he had slammed into the wall.

"What's a slumber party?"

"A Midgardian sleepover, with games."

"You…participated in this?"

"Yes, of course. And I look wonderful with makeup. It brings out my eyes."

It took a moment, in which Thor searched Loki's face, trying to picture it with makeup and then realizing he could not imagine Loki ever allowing such a thing to be done to him, before his face broke into a cautious smile. "A jest?"

Loki held back on the eye-roll and instead put his hands up to head-height and gave a few claps. "Now will you leave? You're cutting into my naptime."

"Yes, but…I was actually on my way back here anyway. A servant is here for you. She says Eir sent her."

Loki took a second to ensure his excitement and relief were under control. "Then send her in."

Thor nodded, took one last look at the broken mirror, and headed back to the front door, where he admitted the young woman who stood there and directed her back to Loki's bedchamber.

"My prince," the woman said in greeting, putting a fist to her chest somewhat nervously. Loki wasn't surprised at the nervousness; whatever most people thought of him now, it couldn't be anything good, and this woman he suspected was not accustomed to dealing with royalty at all.

"You have something for me?" he asked perfunctorily.

"Lady Eir sent these," she said with a nod, withdrawing a three-inch-tall anatomy model, a vial of clear liquid with a stopper, and a folded piece of paper, all of which she held out to Loki. "She asked me to wait until you read her note, in case you wanted to write any questions for her."

Loki took the odd collection of items. The model was gray and genderless, kept in this form for easy storage, but was easily converted into male or female, any height and weight, any skin tone, any physical condition, used by healers to aid their explanations to patients or healers in training. Loki hadn't expected Eir's solution to be so complex that he would need one of them. He unfolded the piece of paper – made private, so that only he and Eir could read it, he was grateful to see – and saw that it had considerably fewer words on it than he'd expected given the delivery of an anatomy model.

"Loki," it read, "the model conceals a device that transmits a signal mimicking your waking-state brain activity. To anyone searching for you through the connection we spoke of, you will appear awake, and your actual brain activity will not be accessible. Its effective radius is just over five feet, but keep it within four to be safe. The vial contains a tonic to help you fall asleep, should you need it. It breaks down in about half an hour, so it will not interfere with your waking. Return this note with questions if you have them. Sleep well. Eir."

A hint of fondness pushed Loki's lips up into a smile. The model, he assumed, had no more significance than that it was something Eir happened to have on hand to house the transmitter. And the vial, which he'd assumed held something he'd have to drink every time before he slept, was perfect, because he really did need this sleep, and with the new Jotunheim dilemma, he'd feared his mind wouldn't settle enough to allow it.

"I have no questions. You may go," he told the servant, a young woman who was probably training in something not directly relevant to the war effort and thus pressed into service in the Healing Room. She gave another awkward salute, and hurried from the room; Loki wondered if it was because of how busy everyone surely was, or because she was alone with him. Perhaps both.

He closed the door behind her and sealed it, checking it carefully afterward, because he'd apparently gotten that wrong before, too, then followed it up with a carefully-made sound blanket. There would be no more broken mirrors, and there would be no more dreams manipulated from beyond Yggdrasil, but there was still the possibility of dreams of the regular sort, the kind he'd occasionally had since falling from the bifrost, that left him waking with a gasp or even a shout.

Outside, it was nighttime, and Loki wished that he could actually sleep for the whole night rather than a few hours. But for some reason he'd told Thor and Odin that he could win the war for them in two days. He'd have to take what he could get. He stripped out of the stained Carhartts he'd worn over his bare chest, realizing only then that that servant girl had seen him like that, which probably had also contributed to her discomfort and haste to leave, and then the old leather pants he'd worn under them, given to him by Niskit. The leather was ruined, cracking from the repeated dramatic temperature changes, and with a few of the white snow spew spots that had adorned the ruined pair he'd left behind at Niskit's place. He left behind socks and underpants and granted himself a few minutes under the waterspray in the bathtub without actually filling it; short showers had become normal to him. He dried off, collected sleepwear, and placed the anatomy model and the sleeping tonic on the bedside table before climbing into bed. The bed that had never belonged to anyone but him, the bed that was wide enough for six or eight of him and long enough that he didn't need to press his head to the carved wood headboard to keep his feet from hanging off the end. Familiar, comfortable, and yet wrong in its comfort. The beguiling comfort of lies.

Jotunheim, he thought yet again, settling himself in the fresh bedding that his mother must have arranged for. His mother, and not his mother. He'd had a mother, in the sense of a female who'd given birth to him, on Jotunheim, and she had left him to a slow lonely death. These savages, these "brothers" as he'd said to Thor though he would never actually think of them that way, he now had to convince to renounce the alliance, renounce the war, along with a third random Frost Giant whose name he'd never even heard before. Why would they ever choose to do so, when refusal to do what was good for them even in the face of utter disaster was one of their defining traits, when they fought each other over a ruined, powerless realm? Why would they accept anything that Asgard came to offer, much less anything from him?

He could think of only one thing that could work, and his thoughts had been fleeing from it ever since Nadrith had made his position clear.

Now he had a way to ensure he didn't think about it, at least for three hours. He directed the clock in his bedside table to wake him in that time, looked at the little gray figure by his bed that would keep The Other out of his head, and picked up the vial beside it. As he downed its contents and set it back down next to the model, he wondered what Jane was doing right now. It was earlier in the artificial day at the South Pole; she would still be up and about. He hoped the other Polies weren't being too hard on her; his lies were not her fault. His eyelids grew irresistibly heavy, the other Polies drifted away, and then Jane, and then, finally, so did Jotunheim.

/


/

Thor lay on his back on the lounger in Loki's study, the space minimally lit by the moonlight filtering in through the sheers. He couldn't stop seeing the broken glass in Loki's bedchamber. And how calm Loki had looked and sounded. Loki, though, was obviously not as calm as he seemed. Loki was never quite what he seemed. He would never forget the "I love you" Loki had offered while sabotaging Thor's accession. He'd known that Loki was critical of him, even harshly so in some things, but he'd never imagined the extent to which Loki had resented and even hated him. Loki had hidden it well.

With the glass he obviously wasn't meant to have heard breaking and Loki's calm exterior, he knew that Loki was again hiding what was really going on in his mind. He wondered what the truth was. Whether Loki was angry, and about what, exactly? Loki had cause for being angry, Thor knew that, but Loki's anger was as complicated as the rest of him. Perhaps Loki was instead annoyed, or frustrated, or worried, or even afraid. He had taken on a difficult task, and he surely hadn't expected it to hinge on convincing Jotunheim of anything; Thor certainly hadn't. They hadn't even mentioned Nidavellir or Muspelheim by name and Thor would have thought either of them would have proved more important to the solution to ending the war than Jotunheim.

Loki, surely, had never imagined he'd find himself in this position. Neither Loki nor Thor had ever met Helblindi or Byleister, Loki's brothers by birth; contact between Asgard and Jotunheim had been severely limited throughout their lives. Even having finally had a chance to take in Loki's Jotun appearance, he couldn't see Loki as their brother, only his own. Because he wasn't their brother, and Thor knew Loki agreed, no matter what he'd said earlier. Saying such things, changing his appearance to goad Thor into a reaction that would prove Loki's claims about who they were – or rather were not – to each other now, drew Thor back to that glass and to hidden truths. He wondered if it might all be a symptom of what Jane had told him about, that Loki's cruel barbs were some kind of tactic to push people away because he didn't like feeling vulnerable.

It wasn't easy to imagine Loki feeling vulnerable, not at first, not given how he behaved, so confident, so brash, so arrogant. But then he thought yet again about the broken glass and Loki's calm demeanor. And he remembered the last time he thought Loki had been truly honest with him, shouting madness at him while tears slipped from his eyes, the destruction of Jotunheim set in relentless motion behind him.

Loki would not intentionally give any indication of this "vulnerability" – Asgardians, whether men or women, were not particularly encouraged to openly admit to such things. But among the closest of friends and family there was no stigma to confessing to one's weaknesses and fears. He and Loki had certainly been like that once. They could adventure and argue and even fight, but there were also moments of stillness, between just the two of them. Quiet conversations where jests and boasts fell away and raw truth came out. Thor would never forget that conversation on Svartalfheim before Loki finally came home, or when, after weeks of rages and phenomenally foul moods that Thor had borne the brunt of, Loki wept over Maeva. Loki had come to that moment, to admitting how much pain their break-up had caused him, in his own time. He was stubborn, and had become less and less open with his feelings over the decades. Thor supposed that was partly his fault, because he'd become less and less willing to listen, without those jests and boasts.

He sighed, surrounded by Loki's furniture, books, various collected items, many of which Thor had his own generally good memories of. He didn't really know what happened or why; he wished Loki would talk to him seriously, without the constant insults, and help him understand, from Loki's perspective, because he wanted to be a good brother to Loki but he wasn't having any success on his own. He thought he'd done all right – as well as anyone could have in the face of Loki's constant provocation – especially when he'd handled Loki's sudden switch to Frost Giant shape well. But his ability to relax and accept the other form as just as much his brother had not impressed or even assuaged Loki. He'd only shown more frustration and then acted like the whole incident had never happened. Because he hadn't gotten what he wanted. What he wanted, Thor thought with frustration of his own. To provoke me. To make me walk away from him. To prove his own belief that our brotherhood is no more. That he will never be truly accepted here, by me or by anyone else.

Thor sat up to retrieve the thin decorative blanket that was folded over the top of the lounger and spread it over himself as best he could – it only went to his knees – pondering the problem. Loki, Jane had said, felt like he'd lost everything; Thor did understand that feeling, having had to face the prospect of building a new life and a new identity, and never being welcome on Asgard again. It had been a lie, though – Loki's lie – real in his mind only for a day or two. That Loki was Jotun, though, wasn't going to go away or be proven a lie; that he was Aesir had been the lie. So Loki believed he'd lost everything, and no one could convince him otherwise, in part because Loki no longer trusted anyone. Thor thought, then, that constantly trying to force the issue was only giving both of them bloody brows. There were no magic words that would set their relationship to rights, no single acts that would convince Loki of his place in their family. He would have to try to exercise restraint, and to simply be consistent. To treat Loki as a brother, with care and respect, and with as much trust as he could grant him, under the circumstances. It might mean nothing to Loki now. But perhaps, in time, it would.

/


Thank you thank you to everyone who took the time to drop in a comment. I'm always happy and interested to hear your reactions. It has really stuck with me that back in the verrrrry early days I dropped a comment on a story with a lot of reviews beginning with "I know you don't need any more reviews but..." and the author wrote back and set me straight. :-) Please believe me that if this thing hit a million reviews I'd still be thankful and appreciative of every single one, so again, thank you. Every now and then I feel the need to reiterate that, and that I remain amazed and thrilled that there are people out there who like this story and even who love it. I guess I'm feeling a little gushy at the moment!

Anyway, tough to give previews without getting too spoilery? On Asgard Loki sets out on his early day, readying himself to brave his Jotunheim dilemma, and on Midgard Jane readies herself to brave the galley.

Excerpt:

"So…," Macy said, chasing a bit of carrot around the bottom of her otherwise empty bowl.

Jane waited, but she didn't continue. "Whatever you need to say, just say it, Macy. It's okay. I can take it."

"You said he had 'issues.'"