.-.
Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Six – Family
Jane woke up not from her alarm, which she hadn't set, or from her body clock, which was shot from the last few days and was never all that reliable in the first place. An urgently needed trip down the hall to the ladies' room instead woke her and drove her from her bed. Once she was up, though, she was up. It was 7:30; she'd slept a good long time.
She took her time getting ready for the day; when it came to her shower, she took Loki's time too – he wasn't here, so his two minutes were available, and she let her hair get the benefit of it. As she stood in her room, damp hair combed out, wearing her most comfortable pair of cargo pants and her softest flannel over her old Caltech T-shirt, she realized she didn't know what to do next. She felt lost. Life here would be slowly returning to normal today, and it had been a long time since what she did with her day had nothing to do with Loki. Whether he was deftly manipulating her into focusing on how to put together a wormhole generator, or they were building Pathfinder and testing it and analyzing its data, or he was endlessly drilling her on all things Alfheim, the most she'd worked on what she originally came here for was half-time. And at the moment, for maybe the first time in her life, going back to that work, as though none of this had happened, held little appeal.
Jane looked down at her laptop. The world outside this place still existed, and she hadn't checked her e-mail in…two days? She couldn't remember. And those earthquakes would've made the news. It didn't help her figure out how to plan her day, but she did know what she needed to do next.
Her inbox was full of red e-mails. A quick scroll through them told her that virtually everyone who knew she'd gone to the South Pole had heard about the most recent, more severe earthquakes – it must have made headlines – and wanted to know if she was okay. It would be a good time to have a blog. Or to not have deactivated her Facebook account. Spotting the e-mails from Erik wasn't hard – there was more than one – but she didn't bother opening them, instead opening the VOIP and dialing him. The time difference was convenient; it was a quarter past 2PM – yesterday – in New York.
"Jane, is that really you?" Erik asked as soon as the connection was established.
"It's me. It's good-"
"Oh, Jane, thank God! I was worried when you didn't reply all this time."
"I'm sorry, Erik. I really am. We had to evacuate the building for a while, and by the time we got back in yesterday afternoon the satellite window had passed."
"I know, about the evacuation. Tony dropped by and told me all about it, if you can believe it. Nearly gave me a heart attack. I barely know him and he just showed up, Iron Man suit and all, and my first thought…well. His first words were 'Jane is fine,' but that's really not quite as reassuring as you might think."
"I…yeah, I can imagine," Jane said, mind racing in a new panic. Tony had told him "all about it"?
"Is everything really okay now? Tony said he helped some of your team out there make repairs, that the building is completely stable."
"Yeah," Jane breathed on a relieved exhale. If Tony had told Erik about Loki, he wouldn't have just mentioned "the team," and Loki definitely would have come up. She told him about how Tony had welded the damaged pillars, knowing he would appreciate hearing it, but leaving out Loki's and Thor's contributions. It was still a little unsettling to make these lies by omission, but a little more unsettling that at this point it came pretty naturally.
"Incredible," he said. "I don't know how he did it. I'm no engineer, but I do know that steel doesn't behave normally in such extreme temperatures. I'm amazed he was able to make reliable welds under those conditions."
"He's always enhancing that suit somehow," she said, hoping it didn't sound quite as lame to Erik as it did to her. Tony's welds weren't reliable because of some astonishing suit enhancement – they were reliable because of Loki. Jane quickly changed the subject, telling Erik about the clean-up efforts and all of the equipment that would now have to be recalibrated, and quickly, if they were to get all of the data collection back on track for the season. She supposed that helping out with that wherever she could would be a good start to the question of what to do today.
"I'm just glad Tony was able to get there. You know I don't mean to be clucking over you like a mother hen, but you run in some dangerous circles these days, and… Well, you know how much you mean to me."
"I know, Erik, and you know I feel the same," Jane said. He really had been a little more expressive with his emotions toward her since…since Loki. "But I could say the same of you. We'll both have to try to keep our worrying under control."
"Speaking of worrying…I guess with all your earthquakes you haven't had much time to worry about Loki being sent back to Earth."
Jane grimaced, pictured herself grabbing that shovel Loki had stolen from Asgard's past, and digging herself into a hole with it. "No, but I'm really not worried. How are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm fine."
"Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, I'm going to ask you again. How are you doing?"
"I really am fine. I guess I haven't been sleeping as well…but I wasn't sleeping all that well to begin with. And I know it's not rational. I'm no one to him, he didn't go after me, personally. He took me because I was there, working on the…you know. Whatever he wants now…it won't have anything to do with me. I just don't understand why Thor would let him be sent right back to Earth, and not even warn us, much less…I don't know, put one of those ankle bracelet trackers on him, like they put on people under house arrest, so the Avengers can keep an eye on him."
"Yeah," Jane said, just to say something. Thor had warned someone; he'd warned her. Erik could just as well be asking why she had known and said nothing. And she had known far, far more than just that Loki was somewhere on Earth. "We'll have to talk about all this after I leave here, when we can sit down together. I just want you to be okay. I don't want you to be…trapped by all this."
"I'm not trapped. It just caught me off guard. And I don't need a mother hen any more than you do."
"All right, all right. So how's Audrey?"
"A long way away. Jane, have you thought about where you're going to go after this?"
Jane exhaled slowly. She hadn't given much thought to that. SHIELD, she felt fairly certain, would continue to fund her work, and would continue to open doors for her. But she hadn't been keeping things from them before. Now she'd be keeping half of what she'd done this summer a secret from them, and she would want to continue working on some aspects of it, probably. Working as an independent researcher would free her up from having to constantly watch what she said and did and making sure that some portions of her data and research never made it into SHIELD hands. Working as an independent researcher would also free her up from having a paycheck. Which would make conducting that independent research a real challenge. Tough decisions lay ahead. But she didn't have to make them right now. "No, not much. I'll probably stick with the plan and stay at Tony's place in Malibu right after here, but after that…I don't know. But you're changing the subject. What about Audrey?"
"I'm not changing the subject. We're keeping in touch. Modern communication is little short of a miracle. But it only takes you so far. I'm just wondering if you think you might stay in California. Because I think…I'm thinking I'd like to live somewhere near you. It would be nice to live closer to Audrey, too, but you're family, Jane. You're the only close family I have left. And with everything that's happened…well, I'd just rather be closer to you."
"I'd really like that, too," Jane said with a smile. "Okay, I'll start trying to figure it out. And why don't you plan to come visit me in Malibu? I'm sure Tony has like a dozen bedrooms, he won't care. We can hang out and catch up, and you can go see Audrey. I'd like to meet her, too. Where did you say she lives?"
"A little place called Clayton, about an hour, hour and a half north of Palo Alto."
"Not too far away, especially if you meet in the middle."
"At the moment the middle would be…maybe Kansas. Just let me know when you figure it out, and I'll go from there."
"I will."
"And call your Uncle Van. He's been calling me and I know he'd rather hear you're okay directly from you than second-hand from me."
"Okay, he's my next call. Sorry to have worried you and everyone else so much. It really is okay now, and getting back to normal." The last was an exaggeration; getting entirely back to "normal" wasn't really going to be possible without Loki, but hopefully at least getting back into the rhythm of station life wouldn't take long.
"Just as a reminder, Jane, your normal, living in the middle of a giant ice desert, isn't very normal."
Jane laughed. "Yeah, I know. It's amazing what you can get used to."
"Don't get too used to that place. I'm looking forward to you leaving it. But I'll let you go now, I know you must be anxious to get back to work."
"Okay. It was great to hear your voice, Erik. Love you."
"Love you too, Jane. Goodbye."
Jane said goodbye, too, and afterward felt a little lighter. She clicked on Uncle Van's number, and smiled when he answered.
/
/
Loki's response was slow, his expression frozen on his face. The instinct was strong – very strong – to say no. Less to say no, more to scream no as he ran at full speed from this chamber again without visible exit to the outdoors and to shout for Heimdall to bring him immediately back to Asgard and to never set foot on this cursed realm or ever even think its name again. The Frost Giant from whose body he had emerged. The woman he despised because she was not Frigga. The woman he now despised even more because she had personally left him to die. He didn't want to see her. He didn't want to know what she looked like, what her voice sounded like. He'd never even considered that she might still be alive. She didn't exist in his world, and he didn't want that to change.
But he hadn't been able to get anywhere with Helblindi and Byleister. And while he may have found a weakness to exploit in Helblindi, it was Helblindi now who was waiting for him to go obediently for this little family visit. If Loki refused, might he lose what tiny bit of persuasive power he had gained?
And then began the other argument, the one Loki clenched his jaw against. What sway might he be able to gain from the woman? Perhaps she felt guilty for tossing out her infant like trash. Perhaps she was more rational than her sons, and could be convinced to accept the Ice Casket on their behalf, along with its modification to protect Midgard and Asgard. Perhaps if the princes refused to agree to announce their withdrawal from the alliance, their mother could be convinced to overrule them, or convince them herself, if her voice held such sway.
To look that creature in the eye, and know that he had come from it, and speak reasonably and persuasively, to manipulate, to play off a supposed familial relationship when the very thought of it made him literally nauseous…to do that he would need to be as unshakable as Yggdrasil – as unshakeable as he'd believed Yggdrasil to be – not an ounce of weakness in him. But the idea he'd once had that there was nothing of the sort left in him was patently false, a lie he'd told himself as much as everyone else. He was weak, humiliatingly so, and all his life he'd just been hiding it.
"Loki?" Thor asked with concern, stepping behind Loki's shoulder to speak quietly to him. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Loki left so speechless, as though he were paralyzed while still standing. "You don't have to-"
"If she wishes it, then of course I will see her," Loki all but blurted out. He wasn't going to display that weakness in front of Thor. Or these two idiot Frost Giants. "Rejecting such an invitation would be terribly impolite. Lead the way."
"Sit," Byleister ordered Thor.
Thor continued to watch Loki, to be ready, should Loki change his mind, to hopefully show him that he truly did not have to do this, that some things were too much to ask. But then, he reconsidered, as Loki turned to him with a steely gaze and raised an eyebrow. "Sit," he heard in the expression. After all, there was nothing Thor himself would not do for Asgard…save sacrifice his brother who had asked him not to. A well of strength existed in him that he could not explain, and had never particularly thought to try to. It existed in Loki, too; it was just of a slightly different sort. He nodded, stepped backward a few feet, then turned and made his way to the ice ledge where he sat, toes just brushing the floor for they'd made the ledge at bit high for him.
Helblindi entered the arched doorway, watching over his shoulder as though he feared Loki might grab another knife and aim for his back this time. Loki gave him a little credit for not being quite as stupid as he looked. Byleister, who'd sealed his chest wound with a patch of ice, fell in behind them, and a guard who had stepped to the side again took up position just inside the doorway. The ice walls soon gave way to stone walls – they were in a cave, Loki suspected. A big one, he thought, as ceilings grew higher and other corridors chiseled into rock disappeared off to his right and left.
They came to a halt – Helblindi blocked most of Loki's view so he didn't know why – and at the sound of clanking chains they started forward again. They proceeded through another doorless doorway, this one with at least four strips of ice-crusted metal chain hanging at the side. Helblindi stepped to the left and Loki stood next to him carefully keeping his face blank, while Byleister now took up position on Loki's right. They weren't alone. Another Frost Giant was in the small chamber, facing away from them and seemingly staring at a random patch of ice on the wall, figure obscured by a long cloak of deep purple.
"Leave us. I'll send for you if I need you," the other giant said. Its voice was pitched low, but not as low as the other giants Loki had heard. He'd also never seen any other giant in a hooded cloak. Female, he thought. His stomach turned as he thought about who it surely was, who she surely was, and who stood at his left and right, and suddenly breathing required far more effort than normal as the walls seemed to press in all around him.
"Muzz, you should-"
"Go."
Helblindi fell silent, and the two giants beside him turned and left, and Loki couldn't decide if that was actually an improvement. Now it was just him and her.
The space they stood in was clearly lived in – furnished, if one could call it that, with various ledges and chairs and shelves and platforms of ice at heights convenient to giants, along with a handful of items made of bone and skins. White furs draped some of the pieces, and a low lidless box made of ice was full of random cluttered items, bits of ice and bone and feather and cloth, and more color than he'd ever seen on this realm before. Three other doorways besides the one he'd come through were chiseled into the stone. He caught a shifting of light in the patch of ice the Frost Giant was still fixated on, and suspected it was showing images or recordings of some sort and the angle simply prevented him from seeing it, too. He wondered if she had been watching him.
Loathe as he was to speak to this woman, he hadn't come here to stare at the back of her cloak all day. "Thank you for the invi-"
Movement to his left caught his eye. Ambush, Loki thought, reaching across his chest for a knife – he was surprised there hadn't been any attempt to take them – but stopping short well before his hand got there. Another Frost Giant had entered, but this one was shorter than Loki, not even quite reaching his waist, and naked. And a little unsteady on its legs. Her legs, he figured. A child. A very young one, with a few faint raised markings visible on her forehead peeking out beneath a short shock of black hair, nothing like the rough protrusions on the adults, or at least the adult males; he still hadn't seen an adult female, to his knowledge, if he didn't count the back of that cloak.
The girl was not watching where she was going, intent instead on something on the other side of the room, and didn't notice Loki until she was about to run into him. Her head jerked up, her red eyes – so unsettling to see that in a child – widened, and she promptly collapsed onto the floor, curling up and covering her head. Loki took a couple of startled steps back; he had no idea what was wrong with the creature, and the last thing he needed was to be accused of harming a child here.
"I'm coming!" Loki followed the voice to the doorway the child had come through. A Frost Giant woman quickly emerged, black hair in a long braid that reached the floor, dressed in a thin off-white cloth that was tied behind the neck, belted with what looked like black leather at the waist, and ended barely below her hips. She stared at Loki in fear despite having a good foot on him, but continued toward the child, scooping her into her arms and then ignoring Loki. "I've got you, Tahi, you're safe, hush now, you're safe. Forgive me, Farbauti, I didn't realize she'd slipped away."
At that name, Loki looked up. The woman in the cloak had turned. Her face was hidden in shadow, and her cloak, adorned with a series of latches formed from what looked like teeth, concealed most of the rest of her.
"That's all right. We have a special guest today. His sudden appearance was upsetting, but there's nothing for little Tahindel to be afraid of. Is there, Prince?"
"Of course not," Loki said, with only the briefest of hesitation, though his voice was wooden. Talking to this woman he could manage. Comforting a Frost Giant child…surely the mother, who was stroking a hand over the child's hair, was more equipped to do that. "I didn't mean to frighten her," he added for good measure, in case his tone had been disrespectful.
"She's not used to such pale faces," Farbauti said. "Such strange clothing. The face of our enemy."
The girl pressed in tighter to the woman holding her as a fresh litany of words of assurance began.
"Get her a toy, Prince."
Loki looked to Farbauti, confused. Was I supposed to have brought some with me? he thought with irritation. She flipped back the edge of her cloak – she wore brown leather, he saw now, little more than two scraps over her chest and hips – and pointed at the box on the floor full of odd colorful items. A toy chest, he realized. He looked at her again; her expression hadn't changed, but the cloak was back in place. He tightened his jaw, then quickly forced it to relax, then strode over to the box and pulled out the first item his hand brushed. A perfectly smooth ball of ice that fit in his palm, with a single feather sticking out of it. If this is their idea of children's toys, little wonder their kind are what they are.
The mother, he assumed, of the little girl looked no happier about this than he did, and took the toy in a free hand – both of them careful not to actually touch the other – while telling her eerily silent child to hush. "With your permission…?"
"Yes, go. Seal the door behind you, not that I expect Tahi will be coming back this way soon."
Loki watched as the Frost Giant woman left with the child, and realized then that the woman's hair did not just reach the floor, but was even longer, looping back up and tied back into the braid about halfway up. The hair was black, exactly the shade of his own.
"They are your cousins."
Loki's head jerked back around toward Farbauti. Cousins. He did not wish to know the details. "The child wasn't crying," he said quickly in an effort to sidestep a description of this family tree.
"No, of course not. She's a good child."
"But the mother kept telling her to hush."
Farbauti didn't respond immediately, and Loki wondered if he'd inadvertently offended. He should have asked about something much less personal, like the furniture.
"The mother's name is Dilbi. She knew that Tahi was upset, through their bond."
"A parent-child bond, of course," Loki said with a crisp nod, simply to remain polite; after all, even most animal species' offspring had some kind of bond at least with the mother. It was becoming a little easier. Despite the talk of parents and children, the conversation was sufficiently detached, and the shock of the initial encounter was wearing off.
"No, a mother-child bond. The father doesn't have it. He didn't carry the baby inside his own body for fourteen months. Do you really not know about it? I've heard that your mothers don't have such a bond, but you don't have it at all on Asgard?"
Loki took a moment to collect his thoughts, to keep them on track. She is the Frost Giant queen, he reminded himself. That is all. Speak politely to her. With respect and reserve. "I know that a mother has a special bond with her child," he said, looking upward into red eyes and trying his best to imagine that he was speaking instead to the queen of Alfheim, at some formal event that required him to behave with the greatest discipline. "That is certainly true of Aesir mothers as well."
"I don't mean an emotional bond of closeness. I mean an actual bond. A Jotun mother knows when her baby has strong reactions to something, even without seeing it, and she can then tend to him. The child has no need to cry. The other realms lack this. Your infants pierce lungs with their incessant cries." Farbauti dipped her head to the side, then looked down at Loki again. "I've observed this on other realms. Terrible for all involved, including innocent bystanders. Their infants would not survive Jotunheim's great beasts like that, announcing their vulnerability to everything for miles around."
A bond such that the mother in the next chamber knew that her silent child was frightened and came after her? His first thought was of scent emissions, similar to the signals some animals instinctively used. But then a vague memory stirred, of a time in his very early childhood when he'd believed Thor knew what he was thinking without him saying a word. "You mean that your people hear each other's thoughts?" That was a disturbing possibility. Had she heard him thinking that he found her repulsive? Did she hear him thinking it again now?
"Of course not. What kind of ignorant fool have they raised you to be on Asgard? Strangers don't have it, other family members don't have it. I told you, only the mother carried the baby as part of her own body. It's a special connection between a mother and her baby."
"Then do you know what I'm thinking now?" he asked, voice growing colder. That you're a washed up hideous old hag who thinks she's far better than what she is? There goes any hope for a deal. Loki didn't bother trying to control his thoughts. Some things were simply impossible.
Farbauti made a series of croaking sounds that was clearly laughter, only inhaled instead of exhaled. "I should hope not, though I suspect I could guess with some accuracy. But it's nothing as solid as 'hearing thoughts'…it's more primal than that. And the bond weakens over time. It only lasts two or three years. While the child can't express what he needs or wants and crying would invite danger. And you wouldn't have had it with that woman who raised you. It's biological, formed while the child is in the womb. She was never a real mother to you."
Loki's fingers slowly curled up into his palms. His gaze drifted down to that place in her chest where a heart was meant to beat. Where a blade was meant to be plunged in. He looked back up to her hooded face. "Speak ill of her again and I will leave here right now. Let there be war. Do not doubt me when I say I will ensure that there will be nothing left of the Ice Casket but a few shards of useless glass. Heimdall stands ready to return me to Asgard at my command." It wasn't true, not the last – Heimdall could no longer see him – but Loki could easily fix that.
"You love her."
"She loves me. She-" Loki pressed his lips together. This is not what you are here for. This is business, and Frigga does not need your defense.
"She took you in, raised you, after I left you. You were going to say something like that?"
She is my mother, Loki thought, and here he did wish this woman could hear his thoughts. He had wrestled all this time with who Frigga was to him, with how she could have lied to him all those years, with why she would keep such fundamental facts from him, but it had never been so crystal clear and certain since the first doubt was introduced. He had thought her perfect before. The epitome of grace and wisdom and motherhood. Now he knew she wasn't perfect. She was fallible, but she was his mother, and he would never question that again. "I suggest that we discuss something else. I did come here on official business."
"You did. But let's not speak lies to each other. We do not now breathe the same air because of official matters. You should learn from this opportunity. I saw you staring at Dilbi's hair."
"I meant no offense," Loki said automatically, and sincerely. If this failed it would be because the Frost Giants were uncivilized brutes who couldn't recognize a good deal when one was staring them in the face, not because he had trampled on a random social convention involving hair, of all things. And if Farbauti wished to point out his errors along the way, he would indulge her, express his regret, and eventually be able to get down to business. Hair was better than mothers and babies and insults toward Frigga.
"Offense? What strange things do they teach you about us on your world?"
"They teach us little about you," Loki said with a thin smile, since the more specific "They teach us how to kill you as efficiently as possible" would not be a helpful response.
"There is nothing offensive in a woman's hair, not on Jotunheim. It is her pride and privilege and power."
"I see," Loki answered with a nod, putting real effort into not rolling his eyes. And just what power does your hair hold, Farbauti? It had better hold the power of persuasion over your sons.
"You don't flinch in the slightest when you tell a lie, do you? Your official name here is Lie-Bringer. I thought it was too dramatic, but perhaps the title suits. You're as blind as a beaterfish. I know what you see. What you think you see. Your smugness is an affront. How many times did you empty your stomach when you learned who you were? Do you think I'm stupid, because I'm Jotun? It's a dangerous thing for you to think, isn't it?"
"I meant no offense," Loki repeated, smile frozen in place.
"Not on the surface of your words, no. Everything beneath that is another story. It will serve you well to listen and learn." At that, Farbauti reached up for the edges of her hood and pushed it back, letting it fall down around her neck. Her hair, he saw with some surprise, was closely cropped to her head, as though it had been shaved and was just beginning to grow out; on Asgard no one would wear his or her hair so short. Her face, now that he saw it without shadow, looked much the same as any Frost Giant's, with nothing obviously feminine in the features. Below the bony protrusions of her scalp was a raised, slightly darker line that curved around her forehead and disappeared into the short black hair. "A Jotun woman never cuts her hair," Farbauti said.
Loki nearly opened his mouth to point out the rather obvious contradiction, but Farbauti was continuing, and he supposed that he was now in for a fascinating lecture on the follicular customs of Jotunheim.
"It grows and grows along with her, and when it brushes the ground, she may marry if she so chooses. She leaves it free, and taming it is her daily duty. When she agrees to a match, her betrothed must prove himself in a number of specific ways. He proves his patience and devotion by braiding her hair every day until they are united. You get to know a suitor very well, you see, when he has never braided before and must take all that hair and create from it a flawless braid. Once they marry, he's no longer required to braid every day, though he is expected to keep his skills up. My hair was once so long I could coil it around me, tie it to something else and use it as rope, or loop it around to the ground and back up again and again," she said, touching a hand to the side of her head, gaze drifting away. Then she looked at Loki again. "I cut it all off when my husband died."
Loki blinked, but did not otherwise react, taking care to neither confront nor flee from what they both knew, that it was Loki who had killed her husband. "Is that custom as well?"
"It is."
"And why do you say that a woman's hair holds power?"
Farbauti cracked a wide grin; Loki noted a missing upper front tooth. "Our men love our hair. They don't have any, you see," she said with a gesture in the general direction of Loki's head and an odd expression accompanying it. "And I'm told that upon impact, it delivers quite a sharp sting."
"Ah," Loki said, uncertain whether he was meant to participate in these little out-of-place jests, but certain that he would not be able to. He didn't find the idea of amorous Frost Giants humorous, and humor in general sat poorly on Farbauti's thick brow.
"I would ask how you wound up with hair, but that is one drop of water from a lake."
"I would not know the answer if you asked."
"You are so strange. I have many questions."
Loki took a deep breath. "You may ask them, if you wish. But I ask you to remember why we are here. I speak to you as Prince of Asgard to the Queen of Jotunheim. Nothing more. The past cannot be changed."
"'Nothing more.' You lie to yourself as well as to me. Let me be blunt. I gave birth to you, and you are correct, that cannot be changed. I was your mother, for a short time. But I am that no longer. And you are not my son. My baby was lost. Corrupted beyond all recognition."
Whose fault is that? Loki thought. My apologies for surviving.
"I suppose it worked out well for you, though. They gave you a life we could not have. Of course it worked out significantly less well for us. But you haven't always known where you came from, have you? I heard what you said. You 'found out you were a Frost Giant.' When? How?"
"Only recently. When-" When Thor reignited war between us, he'd been about to say. But it was not in his interest now to undermine Thor. "When fighting broke out between us again. One of your warriors grabbed my wrist. Their touch burned my friends, but it turned my skin blue. Then I asked and was told the truth." He wouldn't have wanted to tell any Frost Giant about that, especially not this one, but it bothered him much less than he would have thought. He'd told Jane, he'd told Thor, and each telling became easier. But it wasn't just that, it couldn't be. The circumstances were different. Jane mattered to him; he cared what she thought. Thor…the reasons were more complicated, but Thor mattered. This woman – this insult to motherhood – the only thing about her that mattered was whether she could talk sense into her sons. Distancing himself from that incident and all that followed wasn't so difficult. It wasn't personal. That, Loki realized, was probably why he looked at her and mostly felt numb beneath the loathing that never fully abated.
Farbauti, meanwhile, was looking him over intently. Too intently. He started to feel uneasy, and he knew what she was going to do in the second before she did it.
He didn't let her. He twisted away from the hand that reached down for his, then took a full step back. "Don't. I am not here to be your entertainment."
"If I were seeking entertainment, I'm certain I could think of something much better."
"Be that as it may, it's different now. I control it. No one else."
Farbauti drew her hand back, tucking her arm back into her cloak. "It must have been impressive magic, for you to live all those years in a body you weren't born to, without realizing it."
"Yes. An interweaving of my own instinctive magic, and Odin's," he said, noticing the air of haughtiness that accompanied the words and unable to stop it. He'd scorned this story when Odin told it. Now he was just shy of spouting off Odin's tales of tapestries.
"Instinctive magic? Of what kind?"
"I…don't know. I was an infant. I could change my appearance."
"You must have absorbed it," Farbauti said, looking down but not at Loki.
Loki couldn't help a new appraising glance, wondering if Farbauti was a magic-user herself.
"Not from me," she said, gaze returning to Loki and apparently correctly interpreting his reaction. "You weren't growing properly. I saw every healer and sorcerer I could. Much magic was laid upon my belly. It was meant to make you grow. But you were born just as stunted as feared."
"I have a reputation for not behaving quite as expected."
"Since before you were born, it seems."
Loki swallowed and did not respond. Farbauti's tone had remained largely aloof, even when speaking of giving birth or the death of her husband. But just now her voice had held an air of fondness, and it made Loki's stomach churn anew.
"Let me see you."
"I believe you can see me perfectly well," Loki said, absent any outward emotion.
"That's not what I meant."
"I know."
"You aren't mine, I know that. You aren't even Jotun now, in any real sense. I have no more interest in being your mother than you do in being my son, or in ruling Jotunheim. But as I said, you were mine, for a short time. And until you came to my shelter I thought my firstborn was dead. I would like to see your true face."
"This is my true face," Loki bit back, more harshly than intended, certainly with more emotion than intended, but he didn't regret it. She thought her firstborn was dead because she meant to kill him. What right did she have to ask him for anything, much less this? If she wanted to see his Frost Giant face, she should have thought about that before leaving him for dead.
"I would like to see what the face you were born with looks like now."
"It's clear that you heard what was said here before, in the outer chamber made of ice. Did you not see enough there?"
"I only heard; I did not see. Is it so abhorrent to you that you cannot show it again?"
Yes, Loki thought, his silence lingering long enough that she had to know his true feelings. You came here with a goal. You will leave only upon achieving it. On the inside, in further silence, he screamed. And then he pushed his feelings aside. "If it's that important to you," he said with a brief sweep of a hand. As though it held no significance to him whatsoever. Let it not be said that he'd lost his ability to tell a convincing lie.
She stared at him eagerly, red eyes growing even wider, and Loki concentrated on his form. The room remained cold. He looked down at his hands, and found them still pale and unmarked. His breathing grew heavier with exertion, but she was right there in front of him, watching, waiting, staring so hard he could feel the eyes boring into him. He closed his eyes – he could still feel the penetrating gaze – squeezed them tightly, visualized the change, imagined pushing the blue outward, and slowly, finally, the cold receded as his own temperature dropped.
He opened his eyes and endured Farbauti's examination of every foreign pore and ridge and plain on the face he himself had never seen.
"It's really you," she said, arm emerging again from the folds of her cloak to reach for his face.
Loki fought against his instincts but when she stuck out a thumb with the clear intent to touch his forehead he angled his head away from her.
"You had clear traces here, visible even when you were born," she said, running her thumb across his forehead but without touching, while Loki held himself still and watched closely for any attempt to close the remaining gap and touch.
"Traces of what?" Loki asked, reluctantly, torn between a desire to zealously guard his ignorance of all things Jotunheim and a morbid curiosity that would not let him leave the question unasked.
"Traces. Marks. We all have them. They usually develop in infancy, then they shift as the body grows and develops. Sometimes they fade away entirely. You had three clear lines here," she said repeating the motion over his forehead. "Now just one clear line, and a second one very faint. This part is the same, though," she said, pointing to an area high in the middle of his forehead. "Do you see this line on my forehead?"
She pointed; Loki nodded. He'd noticed it before.
"The same trace. Not exactly the same, they rarely are. But close enough. Take off those clothes."
Loki breathed out something between a laugh and a choke. "I'm not familiar with hospitality customs on Jotunheim, but on Asgard that request would be considered quite rude." He chose to ignore the fact that it had been phrased as a command rather than a request.
"And on Jotunheim you look quite ridiculous. Cloth is precious here. No one would wear so much of it, even if he wouldn't suffocate from the heat. I'm not asking you to remove everything, only above the waist. I wish to see your chest."
Whatever for? Loki thought, and was on the verge of asking when he thought perhaps he knew. "Traces?"
"Something like that."
He considered it. It was odd. In appropriate circumstances, it was perfectly acceptable on Asgard for men to be bare-chested in front of others. Loki hadn't been quite as comfortable with it as most others, largely because Thor was very comfortable with it and Loki didn't like the comparisons that were easily drawn between them, how so many women looked past him and ogled Thor's physique, how so many men nodded politely to him and marveled at Thor's muscles. These were hardly normal circumstances, so who was to say what was appropriate? He would be the one ogled now, but not in any way he had ever desired. And it was a small thing, but it would be no quick matter to shed everything down to his bare chest, and he did not wish to undress in front of her.
A compromise occurred to him. He rubbed a thumb over the leather of his surcoat and shifted its state, along with the layers beneath it until they appeared as nothing more than thin translucent gossamer. He craned his neck back up and found Farbauti with a look of confusion, which suddenly turned to more of that odd inhaled laughing sound. Loki took a deep breath and focused on not losing his temper. He had complied with a frankly unreasonable and impolite request and her response was to laugh at him? "Have you seen enough, then?" Loki asked, keeping his voice measured.
"I don't…you look odd. For a grown Jotun," she specified, laughter fading. "It's not your fault. It's not…you've lived as an Aesir. Of course you're unadorned. But here it makes you look like an adolescent. Surely you've noticed the other men? The adornments on their chest? They're fused into wounds, sometimes natural ones, but more often chosen to mark a significant accomplishment." She laughed again. "A man with no accomplishments will still have a few, so the others don't laugh at him, and he'll have at least one to mark his entry into manhood. You have nothing similar on Asgard?"
"We take pride in battle wounds as a sign of courage and honor, but we heal them when we can, and we don't inflict them on ourselves if we lack them." Because we are not barbarians, he added only to himself.
Farbauti nodded. "Aesir flesh is soft. I suppose you can't tolerate it. See these lines here?" she asked, gesturing toward the center of his chest. "These are also the remnants of your traces, and these you got from Laufey."
Loki straightened up from bending his neck to look at the bony blue of his chest and the marks he'd never even noticed before, in the general area where he'd been stabbed on Midgard. She had never answered, but he decided that she had indeed seen enough. His clothing shifted back to its natural state. That part was easy. He turned and took a few slow steps away, as though to look around the room, then closed his eyes and concentrated on becoming Aesir again. It still took more effort, but it was easier than when he'd changed forms with Farbauti ogling his face, and the ice in the room looked like dull normal ice again, losing the odd colorations he saw in it through red Jotun eyes. He turned back toward her, feeling considerably more comfortable and even more confident. "Your Majesty. I know you're aware of my reasons for coming here, and the generous offer I bring. Asgard does not wish to interfere in Jotun affairs. Who rules it is no concern of ours, and as I said, I will happily provide a confidential signed statement renouncing any claim of my own to Jotunheim's throne. We do prefer, however, that Helblindi and Byleister overpower Dirnolek, because of the attack his warriors carried out on Asgard. They emptied three major rivers, contributing to a food shortage that affected not only Asgard's warriors but her children as well. Asgardians understand battle, but this kind of attack we cannot so easily forget."
Farbauti pursed her lips, and Loki waited to give her a chance to respond. "Dirnolek be cursed. I should cast him to the marshes."
Loki paused, surprised by Farbauti's words. He hadn't expected an outpouring of sympathies for Asgard's starving children – and they weren't actually starving, thanks to Asgard's secret deal with Tony Stark – but it sounded like she was in fact angry at Dirnolek for attacking so indiscriminately, as though she cared about Asgardian children. Perhaps, then, she would indeed prove more reasonable than her sons. "To my offer, then. Asgard has not kept the Casket of Ancient Winters to punish Jotunheim. We have kept it to protect the other realms, Midgard in particular, given your repeated attacks on them and the mortals' general inability to defend themselves from such attacks. We are willing to return the Casket to you now, this very day in fact, in return for a few words from you which will help put an end to a pointless but devastating war which your allies now want out of but need an excuse to actually withdraw. But please understand that we can only do that if we first take precautions to ensure the Casket cannot be used to attack." A new argument occurred to him then, one which he wished he'd thought of before, though he suspected it would have made no difference. "The restriction prevents attack on another realm. It doesn't prevent you from using the Casket for defense, should anyone dare to come here and attack you."
"Even if the one who made it manifest has Jotun blood, it is still a restriction imposed by Asgard. No Jotun will find that acceptable."
"Must it be all or nothing? All is not possible. Is nothing really better for Jotunheim than nearly all? Jotunheim spent years using the Casket to travel to other realms and destroy, especially on Midgard where many innocent lives were lost." Loki paused, forgetting what he'd been about to continue with, at the reminder that his own actions on Midgard had followed that pattern, doing just as his Jotun forebears had. But he had renounced those actions, that single incident, if not precisely in words then in deeds, by living peacefully among the mortals for months. "You have not given us any cause to believe you won't do so again."
"That was Laufey. He's dead now, you know."
"It started before Laufey," Loki responded immediately, refusing to be baited. "Nal led attacks on Vanaheim. Jotunheim has a long history of unprovoked attacks."
"Who says they were unprovoked? Just because you don't know the reasons doesn't mean there weren't any. Typical Aesir arrogance."
"Yes, I was raised Aesir. I was raised with the understanding that Asgard has a duty to protect the Nine Realms. Therefore it is Asgard's obligation to ensure that by returning the Casket to Jotunheim we aren't putting any other realm in danger."
Farbauti laughed again, louder and shriller and uglier than previously. "You speak to me of not wanting to put other realms in danger? Do you know how many you killed here when you nearly ripped this realm apart? Is it acceptable for you to attack Midgard, but not us? Arrogance and hippocracy, Lie-Bringer. Perhaps not so overly dramatic after all."
"You call me Lie-Bringer, but I was the one who was lied to, all my life. There is no love between our two realms, we both know this. It was not an easy thing to learn. I was angry." See: "understatement," Loki thought, somewhat surprised at how easily these words came to him, and how calm and rational they sounded once given voice. "I reacted badly. Yet here I am, ready to make peace, to return Jotunheim's greatest source of power, and this after living on Midgard for months without harming anyone." And if it wasn't quite true, Farbauti didn't know that, nor did she need to. He'd done nothing on Midgard even close to the scale of what he – and Jotunheim – had done before.
"Jotunheim's greatest source of power isn't the Casket of Ancient Winters. It is the Jotuns. Our resilience. Our might. Our courage. Our pride. These strengths have done us well."
Loki's eyes closed in frustration as he scrambled for his next argument. Farbauti, though, continued.
"But strengths can unwittingly become weaknesses. And Jotunheim has become weakened. I loved my husband, but as he grew older he did us few favors. What good is your pride when your world begins to crumble away beneath your feet? I understand why you did what you did. Even then I understood it, without knowing who you really were, or that you had just found out. We were at war again, one which he refused to back down from. Laufey's death came in battle; he knew the risk and he took it. You exploited his weakness and he paid for it with his life. If I slept in your bed, I'd want to do the same. And if you had the opportunity to kill me, I have little doubt you'd take it, and I couldn't blame you for the attempt."
Loki had no time to process that before Farbauti was speaking again. She had something she wished to say, and for once he felt himself in the presence of a queen, who was accustomed to others' silence when she chose to speak her mind.
"I had no idea the bifrost could do what it did to Jotunheim. I suppose I should be grateful that no one on Asgard turned it against us before; it would have been an easy and enduring way for the Aesir to win that war. Gratitude is a difficult sentiment, though, when one's realm is brought that much closer to its ultimate destruction. That it was you who did it, you who had just tried to play the peace-maker to Thor Odinson's warmongering…now that I know this was mere days after you learned of your origins, I understand this, too, though it hardly absolves you of such an odious act."
Farbauti took a few strides across the chamber, first away from Loki, then back toward him. Loki waited, for she was clearly still thinking, and his hopes were growing, despite what she'd said earlier about no Jotun accepting an Ice Casket with a restriction dictated by Asgard.
"I believe we should accept your offer," she said, coming to a halt right in front of Loki.
Loki felt like shouting his relief – and frankly, at this point, his surprise – at the victory. He managed to hold himself to a sage nod.
"But I do not rule Jotunheim."
/
Thanks to each of you who gave me some ideas about the "ice in his veins" phrase, I really appreciate it! You all had great ideas and it took me quite a while, until today actually, to come to a decision. I considered a modified reference to steel "something stronger than Midgardian steel" and a reference to "uru," but with the latter in the end although it's the ultimate metaphor for strength in the comics, the word might be known by everyone and I wouldn't have a way in-story to explain what uru is. (In the comics, and maybe in the movies, Mjolnir and Gungnir are made from this metal.) So in the end I went with Kyermehtar's "unshakable as Yggdrasil," but with a modification, since as she pointed out, Yggdrasil has indeed been shaken now!
I was wondering also if anyone caught any of the clues in the last chapter, itsy bitsy little things that *might* have pointed you to wonder what was "special" about the place where Loki and Thor were taken. Why that place was the neutral place and the warring brothers stopped warring there, why the brothers acted like you'd hope brothers would only when they thought that place might come under attack, that sort of things.
Also, my father called his mother "Muzz." I wanted to work in some term of endearment, another of the little glimpses that this *is* a family, despite how little insight Loki and Thor have into it, so rather than try to just make something up I took an odd one from my family.
Guest (Mar. 2): Glad you're enjoying Thor's and Loki's interactions! Loki is really on edge with all this. Yo-Yo: Hopefully future chapters will be more up your alley. Guest (Mar. 9): I went back and forth over that one, it's a bit of a groaner really, I'm not a fan of overly blunt repurposing of movie script, but this one...the situation really was a reversal of the one in the movie, so, what the heck, I went for it. (But I bet some others of you groaned. I'm okay with that, ha.) Glitter Queen (Ch. 40, when you catch up): Thanks! I take this about as seriously as one can (or should, let's say, ha) take fanfiction, so I do try hard to have everything properly edited - though there's probably not a chapter in here where there's not at least one typo still. For a lot of writers, especially younger ones, I think it's more just about having fun, getting a story out, and they're not always concerned with the "technical stuff" so much. And that's fine, it's fanfic, you can do what you want with it. (Like utterly ignoring the standard novel length!) I wonder too how many of the younger writers are only reading other fanfic, which is definitely not a not a good idea. 100% of stuff on here has not been professionally edited and probably isn't the best model. As for me, I'd totally go to the South Pole. (If they'd warm it up a bit and reduce the altitude, ha.) Maybe not for winter!
LOL, oops, I thought I had already released this, but I was looking to see if there was anything in the next chapter I could use for a preview and I got caught up reading the chapter and forgot I was supposed to be looking for something. Ha. (I guess that tells you I enjoyed reading it - I hope you will too!) Eh, I can't find anything that's not too spoilery. 'Til next time!
