._.
Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Four – Rejuvenation
"When are you planning to go out tomorrow?" Wright asked.
Jane stood by the water fountain, bottle in hand, waiting her turn while Wright filled his. The question caught her off guard, and she was racking her brains trying to come up with how he knew she was going to be outside.
"So I can help with your equipment?" he prompted.
"Oh! Right. Um, maybe first thing?" Jane suggested. She'd actually forgotten about that plan, and had expected to spend the whole day packing up Loki's stuff and trying to get alien blood stains out of a mattress. But her own checks and calibrations needed to get done, too, and if Wright helped, it would go a lot faster. Wright finished filling his bottle and they traded places.
"Sounds good. Some of us were talking about meeting around lunchtime to get the planning for Mid-Winter back on track. If we get started early, and if we don't run into any major problems, we should be able to knock it out by then."
"Mid-Winter. I'd almost forgotten," she said, turning to see Tristan coming through the double doors from the berthing wing.
"Yeah, well, we've had a few distractions, Foster. But tomorrow's Sunday, good time to work on it."
"Speaking of Mid-Winter…sort of…," Tristan said.
"What's up?" Jane asked.
"I was just looking for you. I wanted…but you're off to volleyball?"
Jane glanced down at her old Caltech T-shirt and gray sweatpants; her hair was looped through a schrunchee, keeping it up and out of the way. "Yeah. But I've got a few minutes."
"Great," Tristan. "Can I show you something?"
"Um, okay." She followed Tristan back through the double doors, glancing over her shoulder to see Wright tagging along, but stopped when he reached for Loki's doorknob and opened the door. "What are you doing?"
"He told me to come here, to get the song list. For the GIFs, for Mid-Winter?"
"Ooookay," Jane said. Tristan continued inside then, and Jane followed reluctantly. As far as she knew, Loki had never let anyone else into his room, and this felt like a violation. Her mouth fell open as she got her first look at the state of Loki's room. Behind her, Wright whistled. "What did you do?" she asked, too shocked to be angry yet.
"Hey, I didn't do this. So he wasn't just a huge slob?"
"Loki?" Jane asked, incredulous.
"Loki was definitely not a slob, man," Wright said.
"Well, how was I supposed to know? I didn't exactly know he was a prince from another planet, either. Or the guy who wrecked New York. He could've been a slob."
She went over to Loki's bed, where the box spring was pulled halfway off the bed frame, the mattress lying at an angle on top of it, the bedding all disheveled, every drawer of the storage area underneath pulled open, empty. The armoire, too, was open, and some of Loki's clothes were on the floor, along with the baseball cap he'd worn once, months ago, and Jane hadn't seen since. Somebody had come in here sometime after she and Frigga were here, and completely ransacked Loki's room. "Who did this?" she asked, voice trembling, anger out in full force now.
"I don't know," Tristan said. "It was like this when I got here."
"Jane?" Wright said, taking her arm and nudging her to face him. "Do we need to call somebody? Iron Man, maybe?"
"What? Why?"
"Could somebody else be here? Looking for him?"
"Somebody else?"
"You mean somebody like Gullvine?" Tristan asked
Jane looked at Tristan and saw the fear on his face, then back at Wright, and realized that while it wasn't quite as obvious, he, too, was afraid. "No. Nobody knows he's… Iron Man."
Wright immediately unclipped his radio and turned one of the dials.
"No, stop. You don't need to call anybody."
"I'm calling Rodrigo. He can call Tony Stark at whatever number he was-"
"No, seriously, Wright, stop. I didn't mean you should call Iron Man. It's… Look, the only person on the entire planet who knew about Loki being here was and is Tony. Tony must have done this. He must've been looking for…I don't know, weapons or something."
Wright held onto the radio a moment longer, then clipped it back through his belt loop. "Do you think he found any?"
Jane shrugged, taking another look around the room with new eyes. She was still angry that Tony had done this, but for some reason not nearly as angry as when she'd thought Tristan or one of the other Polies had. "I don't know. Probably not. He had a sword, but he kept that in this magic place he has."
"A sword?" Wright repeated.
When Jane turned back to him, his eyes were wide in shock. "It's not like that," she put in quickly. She shouldn't have mentioned that; she hadn't been thinking clearly. "It's normal where they're from. On Asgard. Everybody's got a sword, I think. All the boys start learning how to use them when they're ten years old."
"Wow. Like Sparta," Tristan said.
"Huh?"
"Sparta. Ancient Greece? I think the boys started soldier training there when they were seven."
Jane nodded uncertainly. She didn't remember much about ancient Greece, but she was glad Tristan didn't seem as disturbed as Wright did by the idea of Loki having had a sword all this time. She couldn't blame Wright, of course; she'd once been pretty disturbed by that sword, too. Of course, it was dripping blood at the time.
"Didn't they take the boys away from their parents, too, for the training?" Tristan asked. "I think so. Do they do that on Asgard?"
"No," Jane said indignantly. "They still go to school and live at home and…I don't know, do normal things. They marched in parades. Loki took music lessons, and played in a parade. And they had to learn these routines with their swords so well they could do them blindfolded. See? Normal stuff." Jane thought for a minute. "Okay, normal for them." She began to relax a little when she saw Wright relaxing. But then he started laughing, and she wasn't sure what she'd said that was funny.
"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle," Wright said, grinning as the laughter faded.
"You lost me," Jane said.
"Me, too," Tristan put in. "But I've been feeling like that for days now."
Jane shot him a smile, and was glad to see him return it.
"I was just thinking about him being in parades. He played a bellpipe, didn't he? That one you mentioned yesterday? Lucas said his mother was interested in…ancient instruments, something like that. I thought he meant…I don't know…replicas from archaeology. Stuff they dig up studying extinct civilizations, you know? This is so weird. So Lucas played a bellpipe in parades when he was a kid."
Jane nodded. She remembered arguing with Loki about this very thing, her urging him to be more open with the others, and him snapping that he couldn't, because her "musician friends" wouldn't know what a bellpipe and a bonepipe were. "And a bonepipe," she added when the word came back to her. Apparently, he'd found a way around it, she thought, unsurprised but glad to hear it. Loki hadn't told her much about his time with the band.
"He did pick up the recorder pretty fast. Oh. Oh, man. I was calling him Sax Man all this time. I bet he doesn't even know what a saxophone is. Do they have saxophones on Asgard?"
"Ummm, I don't know. Somehow I don't think so."
"The more I think about it the more I can't believe how he was able to pull this off. Convince us all that he was…just a guy."
"He is just a guy, in a lot of ways."
"Just a guy from Earth," Wright clarified, making a face.
"Okay, but what about this 'magic place' you mentioned. What did you mean by that?" Tristan asked.
"Um, just…I'm sorry, I shouldn't be rambling on with all these stories about Loki. I just didn't want you to be worried about the sword."
"You know what I want now?" Wright asked. "I want to see a bellpipe. Or a bonepipe. I want to see Lucas playing a bellpipe or a bonepipe. I really want to see that."
Jane smiled; she had seen that.
"I saw Loki playing a recorder," Wright continued. "Why didn't I get that on video?"
"Okay, that's enough," Jane said after a cut-off burst of laughter. Loki would not have reacted well to that; he wouldn't react well even to hearing Wright suggest it. "We should get out of here. I'll come clean his room up later."
"No, wait," Tristan cut in. "This isn't what I wanted to show you. Remember? I just thought he was a slob."
"Seriously? Even a slob doesn't leave his mattress hanging halfway off his bed," Jane said.
"Maybe he does if he's Loki the warlord. Sorry, Jane. But come on, he's not just a guy. How am I supposed to know what's normal for him, behind closed doors? So, as I was saying before, I found the list and his notes, which are…interesting. Once you know, it's really obvious that he's not from Earth. Remember when he asked about making 'animated gifts'? It looks like that's really what he thought it was, he wrote down 'animated gifts.' And he got a bunch of names wrong in weird ways…like he clearly never heard of some pretty famous groups and movies. Anyway…I started looking around at the rest of his stuff."
"You were snooping? Tristan, this isn't-"
"Jane, calm down. He's gone. And he's not coming back, right? He wasn't here for fun, he was creeping on you, and then…hiding out from a war I guess. Whatever he left here, it's abandoned. And besides, if he didn't want me to see anything, he wouldn't have told me to go right in and open up his desk drawer."
Her heart clenched up at "he's not coming back." Tristan was right about that, at least. Even if Loki came back to see her here, he wasn't going to be moving back into this little space his mother could hardly believe he'd endured. But he wasn't right about everything. "Did he tell you to open up all of them?"
"They were already open," Tristan said, annoyance flashing over his face. "And I found these." He picked up a pile of paper from the bottom drawer.
"What is it?" Wright asked.
Jane thought he looked a little uneasy, and she hoped it was because he also didn't think nosing around Loki's things was okay. She was definitely going to have to have all his stuff from the jamesway boxed up – and sealed – before the end of the day tomorrow.
"A bunch of drawings. A lot of maps, some sketches of buildings…nothing that looks familiar to me. Jane…are you sure he wasn't…plotting something while he was here?"
She hesitated; Loki would have scolded her. And looking at that stack of drawings, it was all too easy to imagine the scolding. The problem was, he had been plotting something. But she couldn't tell Tristan and Wright, or anyone else, about that. "I know what those are. He was telling me about some places he knew. Not even on Earth, all right? He wasn't plotting an attack."
"Asgard?" Tristan immediately asked, eyes flickering to the sketches. "These are of Asgard?"
"Um…no," Jane said, waffling for a moment and deciding, as Loki had taught her, to keep as close to the truth as possible. "Alfheim, actually."
"Alfheim…"
"Yes, Alfheim. Another one of the Nine Realms."
"Meaning one of the planets at war with Asgard now?" Wright asked, stepping around to Tristan's side to get a better look.
Jane stuck her hand out and Tristan reluctantly gave her the papers. "Yes. But it wasn't always like that."
"Jane…can I photograph those? That's what I wanted to talk to you about."
"No! No, these are Loki's. You can't just take pictures of his stuff."
"I don't want to just take pictures. I want to photograph them. There's a difference, you know. And now that you tell me what these are, what I really want to do is go to Alfheim and photograph that. To be the first photographer there. The first human one, anyway. But in lieu of that, I'd like to photograph these drawings."
Jane's anger ebbed. Tristan wasn't a bad guy. A little nosy sometimes, but friendly and generous and helpful and he could have taken all the photos he wanted in Loki's room without ever asking. He was a semi-professional photographer who would drop the "semi-" if he could get a break in figuring out how to make a living out of it, and quality photos of Loki's stuff from when he'd been living on Earth with a secret identity, including drawings of another planet, could be just the break he needed. And Jane certainly understood being passionate about your work. "I can relate to that, Tristan. Really. But these are personal for Loki. I know he wouldn't be comfortable with that." Not to mention, those maps led right to Niskit's house, a location Loki said no one else knew had any connection to him. That didn't need to be documented, especially not from here at the South Pole; if Loki's family somehow found out, it could create all sorts of complications for Loki and for Niskit, maybe even for the war, given Niskit's role in an assassination attempt on Nadrith. "I'm sorry."
Tristan nodded, unhappily. "Okay. But Jane…when they start opening up travel to these other…realms, for those first trips, they should really have a photographer as part of the expedition. And if you have any say in it…just put in a good word for me, okay? Even if I'm an old man by the time it happens."
Jane's brow went up in surprise at the idea of regular travel between Earth and the other realms, though her next thought was that it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Pathfinder had proven that travel through Yggdrasil, at least to Asgard, could be initiated safely from Earth, and the Tesseract was now proven safe for human travel, given that Tony had been to Asgard and back. Someday, then, surely, people would be able to cross galaxies the way they now crossed oceans. Only faster. "I don't know that I'll have any say in it, but yeah, if it happens, I'll do that."
"Jane?" Wright said.
"Yeah?"
"I want on that list, too."
"Done," Jane said with a laugh. "Now can we get out of here?"
After she shooed Tristan and Wright out, she stopped off at her own room and stuck the drawings of Alfheim under her pillow, next to the book Loki had given her in secret, the receipt for its purchase now tucked behind the front cover. When she read about another rose tonight, it would have a whole new meaning. Smiling, she smoothed out the pillow then hurried down to the gym for volleyball. It hadn't been an easy day, really. But so far it hadn't been a bad one either.
/
/
Loki's eyes bolted open. His heart was thudding, his breathing was heavy. They were staring. Everyone was staring. He couldn't change it back. Odin had done something, something terrible, and now he couldn't change it back. All of Asgard was staring at him, Thor was backing away from him, and he was blue, cold as ice, and his eyes were filled with the red that Thor ranted about in his journal.
A chime sounded. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. He was alone. The chime was for the door. The door to his chambers. A hand came tentatively up into view – pale, smooth, unmarked. It wasn't quite enough. Slowly, carefully, he reached for his own forehead. Upon finding it similarly smooth and his hair just above it, his arm fell back to the bed and every tensed muscle relaxed to warm liquid.
The chime sounded again. It must have sounded earlier. It must have woken me. It was merely a dream. At that thought he tensed again and pushed himself up in bed. The dream was disappearing like smoke through his fingers even as he stretched his memory to retrieve it. He'd been standing in front of the Assembly. Or on the steps of the palace. Or both, somehow, which made no sense. Remembering something far more important, his head whipped to the side and there on his bedside table was Eir's anatomy model, the random trinket that concealed whatever she'd come up with to block The Other from finding him in sleep.
It started quiet, born of nervousness and fear, but his laughter soon grew and he was relaxing again. His dream had been just that – a dream. Ridiculous and meaningless, not so unlike childhood dreams of playing in the children's park and suddenly realizing you had somehow managed to make it there without a scrap of clothing. The thought made him laugh even harder, but then he remembered the night before and sobered. His dream hadn't been manipulated by the lackey, but it wasn't entirely meaningless. Next to the shapeless anatomy model lay Thor's journal. He'd thought about reading some more of it, but once he'd climbed into bed exhaustion hit and he abandoned the idea.
Loki swiped his hand over the table, next to the model, and the time appeared there. 10:28. His stared at the numbers, dumbfounded. He had slept for over eleven hours. The chime sounded again. Whoever was there was persistent. Thor, he thought. He threw back the coverings, rubbed grit from his eyes, and got up with a stretch. It occurred to him then that perhaps Thor was being persistent not because he was stubborn and bothersome, but because something had gone wrong. Armies had returned, Asgard was under attack. He picked up his pace considerably and hurried straight to his front door.
It wasn't Thor. It was instead a guard, one Loki didn't recognize, with a heavily bandaged hand. "What?" Loki said, eyes narrowed.
"My apologies, my lord. His Majesty has requested your presence in the throne room."
Loki's stomach clenched in an icy grip. "Which 'His Majesty'?" he bit out, masking his spike of alarm with angry impatience.
"Ah, my apologies again. King Thor."
Probably, then, he had nothing to be concerned about. If there was punishment to be doled out it would come from Odin, and Odin wouldn't have sent this inexperienced, injured guard to retrieve him. And if Thor was in the throne room, then Asgard was almost certainly not under attack. "You have no message?"
"I was given no message," the Einherjar answered, but something in his eyes, and in the twitching of his lips said there was more.
"If you have something further to say, then say it, or else leave so I can dress."
The guard hesitated, but not for long. "There's been no official pronouncement yet, but…the war is over."
/
/
It wasn't that simple, of course. Multirealm conflagrations didn't truly end that quickly. Loki let himself lean against the closed door in sheer indulgence for a long moment, grinning and almost shivering with the pleasure of knowing he would soon be completely free, and the stimulating thrill of not knowing what would follow, but that whatever it was, it would not be dictated by either Odin or Thor. Fear lay in that direction, too, but he refused to indulge in it right now.
Dressing still required thought, if not as much as yesterday. Staring at all of the leather, cloth, and metal, and the various ways he could combine it, he drifted back to the South Pole for a moment and missed the months he'd spent there, thinking less with each passing day about exactly what he should wear until eventually it came down largely to whatever was clean. Liberating, he thought. That was the word for it; it had been liberating. The thought drew an ironic laugh from him. He'd been trapped there, yet freed there at the same time. Here, he needed to look as though he belonged in the throne room, and not someone skulking about in the shadows, not meekly returning to the role of obedient second son. That was his throne room. He'd sat on that throne, Gungnir in his fist. But it was his no longer, and he would not be seen pining over it in petty jealousy, either.
In the end he settled on a simple black tunic and pants, no green in sight, but with a generous overlay of gleaming gold armor around his torso and down his arms and legs. He considered the helmet, but decided against it. Satisfied that he appeared somewhat casual without at all appearing common, he left his chambers and took the stairs two at a time, moving quickly without appearing rushed. When he reached the throne room, he approached the doors without a break in his stride and the Einherjar opened them. When he entered, he slowed his pace and strode toward the throne as though it were his. Or perhaps more precisely, as though it would be his if he desired it.
At the foot of the stairs leading to the throne, several clusters of men and a few women stood loosely gathered in conversation and the occasional laughter. Odin and Thor were among them; Loki supposed that having neither actually sitting on the throne avoided the unpleasant question of who was really ruling Asgard.
"Loki!" Hergils called, the first to spot him, or at least the first to acknowledge having spotted him. Other conversations started dropping off. "I understand we have you to thank for removing Jotunheim from the war. A brilliant move. You knocked a leg out from under our enemies and left them tottering and ripe for defeat."
"We gave them what they wanted," Oblauder, public welfare advisor, said. The throne room fell into silence.
The words were few, but Loki heard all of the unspoken ones, too. You gave in. Capitulated. Gained us a reprieve, but at an appallingly high price. Surrendered what our fathers died for, what our king gave an eye for. Oblaudur had carefully said "we," but Loki also clearly heard the "you." "I gave them only half of what they wanted," Loki said with a cold smile, speaking only to Oblaudur and ignoring all the others looking his way, before turning to Hergils and accepting his salute. Hergils had given him Gungnir and knelt before him, and, as far as Loki knew, had never betrayed or even questioned him.
"It seems a simple thing," Thor said, making his way through the others to stand at Loki's side, "but only because you were not there. They very nearly refused to accept the Ice Casket once Loki explained that they wouldn't be able to use it to leave Jotunheim. But Loki convinced them to see reason. They have their Ice Casket now, but they can't use it to threaten another realm."
"Astounding!" Fandral said, approaching to stand beside Thor. "I've always heard that the only way to make a Frost Giant listen to you was to plunge a blade into his chest."
Loki had heard that one before. So had everyone else. It was an old jest, not particularly creative, but then Fandral's jests rarely were. Fandral's laughter was infectious and the sentiment was certainly shared, and in the obvious general good humor in the throne room today whatever tension had settled on those gathered there quickly faded. Except for from Thor, who Loki saw out of the corner of his eye stood stiff as Gungnir. Which was in Odin's hand. Which was headed Loki's way. Thor's, though, was even closer, making its way to his shoulder. Loki avoided Thor's hand by smoothly turning to face Fandral, and avoided whatever words were about to come from Thor's mouth by speaking first. "True. But as it turns out, dangling an ice-spewing trinket close enough in front of their eyes gets their attention, too."
"It was a shrewd plan," Odin said, remaining at the fringes of the coalescing group, which turned to him in deference. "The Jotuns are a stubborn, proud people, to the point of foolishness at times. Not unlike the Aesir in that regard."
Laughter again followed, lighter this time, and Loki wondered if Odin had ever said such things Before – if so he couldn't remember, but could he have heard them while simply dismissing and ignoring them? – and whether the laughter reflected anything more than the absurdity of the statement, beginning with calling the Jotuns "people."
"Well-said, Father," Thor said, looking to his father gratefully.
Thor, Loki was certain, had never said such things Before, or responded as he just had. It was condescending and false and Loki thought he preferred the old Thor in that moment as much as Thor preferred the old Loki. "Yes, Father, very well said," Loki echoed in an ingratiating voice that went beyond the one he might once have used to attempt to curry favor; Odin was probably the only person present who would recognize it for what it was. "I know you're very busy now, but might I have a moment of your time, in private?"
Odin nodded deeply while his gaze remained fixed on Loki's, an acknowledgement as much as an agreement. He headed to his office then, knowing that Loki would follow. "What can I do for you, Loki?" he asked as soon as they were both inside, door closed behind them.
"I believe you know."
"Yes, I believe so, too. Still, I've no doubt you have also learned that it's often useful to let the other person speak first."
"Fine. It's clear what's going on out there. There's a truce. And that truce will soon be finalized into the other realms walking away without subduing Asgard. That truce will become their defeat and Asgard's victory. I said I would win a war for you. I said I would do it two days. I believe I did it in…a day and a half. We made a bargain. And I have fulfilled my end of it. It's time for you to fulfill your end."
Odin planted Gungnir more firmly on the ground, its end making a dull thud, and leaned a bit of his weight onto it. "What you have done, what I've been able to piece together of it from what Thor and Frigga have told me, is remarkable, both with Nadrith and with the Jotuns. And I know it cannot have been easy to seek out and confront the Jotun princes, and to speak with their queen as well. I'm sorry that you were put in such a position."
"I've also learned that it's often useful to ignore what the other person has just said, and say what I wish to say to recast a narrative. And I've learned to recognize it when others do that, too. We were speaking of a bargain."
Odin frowned and began to slowly pace the length of his office, thinking, unbothered by Loki's unwavering stare. He had thought to give Loki a chance to speak of his experiences on Jotunheim, even if that "speaking" consisted only of venting anger and resentment. In the past he had occasionally tried to give Loki such opportunities, but Loki either hadn't picked up on them or chose to ignore them – and perhaps they'd been poorly presented – and Odin had never had a good sense of how to proceed from there. He still didn't. He ended his pacing at the door, opening it and stepping outside to signal the nearest Einherjar and instruct him to send Finnulfur, who was among those gathered in the throne room.
"What you have achieved," Odin said when he again faced Loki, "required both agility of thought and strength of spirit. I commend you."
Loki smiled blandly. They actually seemed sincere, these words of Odin; had he heard them two years ago, he might have simply burst with pride. Now there was something hollow in them.
"And I wish I could honestly tell you otherwise, but I still don't entirely trust you."
His smile grew as they returned to more familiar ground. That was why they sounded hollow, perhaps. Subconsciously, he'd known there was a "but." "Odin All-Father speaks of breaking his oath?" he asked, the smile turning brittle.
"Not at all. We did, and do, have a bargain. Ambassadors will be arriving later today, the terms of the treaty will be worked out. When that treaty is final…Finnulfur, come in. Close the door behind you."
"All-Father," the law advisor said with a nod. "Prince Loki."
"We were just discussing Loki's status. Do you have any objection to Loki being fully released from all judgement and obligation once the treaty is signed?"
"You didn't think to ask him that before our agreement?" Loki put in before Finnulfur could answer, already imagining the loophole Odin could argue for. "I am honoring our agreement, Loki; it is Finnulfur who is preventing it from being implemented."
"He wasn't present when we made our agreement, if you recall. I discussed it with him afterward. And I was confident that if Finnulfur did have objections, we could find a way around them."
Loki started to respond, but forgot what he was going to say before he got the first word out. "Find a way around them." Yes, Finnulfur is skilled at that.
"The law clearly and unambiguously states the penalty for deliberately taking the life of a direct relation of Asgard's ruler: death. I now read from the law…"
"If I may…?" Finnulfur said, pulling Loki out of the past. For centuries he'd been free of memories such as those, but that period of his life had been brought back into the present at the South Pole, and he had even been brought back into the past to revisit parts of it. What preceded and followed had long been a blur, but that moment, the pronouncement of the prescribed punishment and then the one he was actually being given, that he remembered as though it were yesterday.
At Odin's nod, Finnulfur continued. "This matter was handled formally outside the Magistrate's Office, while in informal consultation with it, as is the king's prerogative. Therefore I have no objections to how you choose to resolve it, Your Majesty, neither on point of law nor on point of principle."
"Very good," Odin said.
"And Loki? I'm not at all surprised you managed to convince the Frost Giants to withdraw from the alliance. I always thought you had a certain flare for good argumentation."
"Mmm," Loki said in disinterested response; Finnulfur saluted Odin and left.
"Satisfied?"
Loki gave a falsely polite smile. "Not particularly."
Odin regarded Loki for a moment, how tightly-wound he was, how uncomfortable in his own skin Odin suspected him to be. It was all understandable, but it grieved him. "You should learn to find satisfaction…peace, even when life is not as you would wish. You'll never be happy otherwise."
Then I suppose I'm doomed to unhappiness, he thought, before wondering if Odin actually cared about his happiness in the first place. He didn't think it had ever occurred to him before to wonder, and it was hard to imagine that the answer could be anything other than no. "I see you still hold Gungnir," he said, ignoring Odin's unsolicited advice for happy living.
Odin inclined his head a fraction. Loki, of course, was not prepared to respond to any overtures. Also understandable, he supposed, if frustrating; making such overtures did not come naturally or easily to Odin, not in personal relationships. "Your vision is in good order," he said; he saw no point in trying to force an actual discussion at the moment.
"Will you reclaim the throne once the treaty's signed?" he asked, his boldness, his confidence in his boldness, surprising and invigorating. He was neither tired nor flustered nor half-dead nor blue, nor even particularly desperate. The path to his freedom lay well-marked before him, witnessed and confirmed by Finnulfur, and he would do everything in his power to ensure that it was short. Odin was neither a father whose respect he yearned for nor a king whose authority he feared. It was odd, he thought while Odin watched him without answering, but he felt in that moment at least, like he was speaking to an equal.
"I haven't decided," Odin finally said.
"Does he know that?"
"We haven't had time to discuss it. Much work remains before peace officially reigns."
"And if he is disinclined to relinquish his new title?"
"Thor knows that if he does not retain the throne now, it will fall to him again before long. He will do as he is told."
Loki shook his head as he breathed out a soft laugh. "Are you so certain of that? He swore to me that he would defy you if needed, to ensure the Frost Giants didn't receive everything that they wanted. I think he was quite sincere when he said he would refuse to hand me over."
"I'm sure he was. And so would I. Except as a true last resort. The Tesseract was not the most precious of the three things demanded of us."
"Precious?" Loki echoed. "You were precious," he heard in a flash of a memory. "Interesting. Farbauti said I was precious. And she abandoned me to a slow death. Her, personally. Not Laufey. Perhaps there are additional meanings of the word I'm unaware of. Answer me this, All-Father, honestly, if you please. How many times did you regret taking me and thwarting her plan for me to die?"
"Comparing me to them, and what they did to you, what they did to a helpless infant, is unwarranted, Loki. I have never regretted taking you."
"You're a liar," Loki said immediately, something trembling at the base of his spine as he spoke the words. Anger. A twinge of cold fear seeking to dampen his confidence. "I don't believe you," he recast. The sentiment was the same, but the wording was less likely to get him thrown into a cell again. "I have caused you nothing but trouble, which would have been avoided had you left me there." He tried to ensure that pride came through in his voice, and if pride wasn't exactly what he was feeling, it at least ensured that guilt or shame didn't come through, because that was assuredly not what he was feeling.
"Over a thousand years and nothing but trouble? I think you must be speaking in deliberate exaggeration because you cannot possibly be that short-sighted. Besides, trouble I can handle." Odin met Loki's defiant gaze impassively and remembered another time that his son had looked up at him with defiant posture and defiant words over "trouble" he had caused. And then he realized that Loki was correct. "Once," he amended. "There was one time. Left to the dust of the past long ago."
Loki stood there in such stunned disbelief that for a long moment he simply stopped breathing, before a quiet breath finally left him and fresh air rushed in to fill his lungs again. Odin could not have spoken much more obliquely, but "the dust of the past" clearly referred to Baldur's death, something Odin hadn't done since his decree that Baldur would no longer be a topic of discussion. So, Odin had regretted bringing him to Asgard because he had killed Odin's real son. Parasite, Loki's brain hissed at him. He'd learned to live with this so long ago, rebuilt his life and rebuilt himself, but it was fresh, so fresh now. He wished it had never occurred to him to try to use time travel to save Baldur. It hadn't done Baldur or him any good; it had only brought to the surface guilt, horror, and shame that had indeed been left to the dust of the past long ago.
"I apologize, Loki. But you wanted the truth, and that is the truth."
Loki swallowed to try to moisten his mouth. "I see," he said, eyes lowered despite how hard he was trying to raise them. So much for that confidence, he thought. But he could find no words; whether harsh ones that made light of what happened then, conciliatory ones to express that he could hardly blame Odin for that reaction, or any at all. He wasn't certain he'd even spoken Baldur's name to Odin since before he'd been taken out to the serpent. The silence lingered, and it was only once Loki managed to meet Odin's gaze again that Odin broke it.
"Farbauti spoke to you of personal matters?"
For a second, Loki could think only of gratitude. First, that Odin had changed the subject, and second, that Frigga had apparently not relayed that part of their conversation to Odin, something he hadn't even thought of before now. "If you don't mind, I don't wish to discuss that. And I believe that part of our agreement ended at the South Pole."
"It did. It was merely a question. And you asked to speak with me, not the other way around. You're under no compulsion to remain."
"Then if I may…?" Loki asked, gesturing to the door.
"You may."
Loki went immediately to the door, returned to the central hall of the throne room, and easily found Thor. "A moment, Thor?" Loki asked, interrupting his conversation with the Warriors Three, Sif, and Facilities Advisor Bosi. He didn't pause to wait for Thor's response, but grasped his arm and half-dragged him away. He stopped at one of the columns running the length of the throne room, beside the burnt-orange sheers, far enough away to be out of easy earshot.
"I told them they shouldn't speak of the Jotuns like that any longer. That we will have to learn to deal with them again, and not just as enemies."
Loki waited impatiently; Thor was lost in his own thoughts and had an look of confusion about him. "And?" he finally prompted.
Thor's eyes fixed on Loki. "They looked at me as though I'd lost my mind. And then they started laughing. They thought I was jesting."
"Of course they did. You more or less told them they had to be friends with Frost Giants."
"I didn't say 'friends,' but…"
"Thor. Listen to me," Loki said as Thor's attention shifted again. "You've never said anything truly controversial in your entire life. They have no context to interpret what you said as anything other than a jest." When Thor merely stared, Loki continued. "You've only spoken negatively about Frost Giants before. Now suddenly you speak of them positively. What else are they to think? A, you've lost your mind. B, you're jesting."
"But I raised the issue before. Someone called them beasts. We were talking about you, actually. Not like that," he said at Loki's swiftly arched eyebrow. "We were talking about negotiating over terms, and how we couldn't turn you over to Jotunheim. And I said that we would have to adjust how we speak about them, and even how we think of them, if we wanted to convince them to exclude you from their demands. They listened. Some of the same ones who laughed now, they listened then." Volstagg. He wouldn't say it to Loki, but it was only Volstagg who had been part of both the earlier discussion, with him and Bragi and Tyr, and the one today.
"And you thought they were taking you seriously because they listened then? They thought you were asking them only to play at talking politely about the Frost Giants, for the sake of politics. Believe me, it never occurred to anyone who heard you say that that you meant they should truly change their outlook."
Thor nodded, mulling it over. What Loki said made sense. It didn't seem so strange an idea to him, but the others, including Volstagg, didn't know what he knew, and hadn't thought about it as he had. Shifting attitudes on Asgard wasn't going to be easy.
"Now, can we talk about something that's actually important?"
Thor looked at Loki indignantly. "You are important."
"I couldn't agree more. And I need you to unlock another door for me."
/
Quick real-life update: I've got another international move coming up in about a month, and my life will very soon turn very hectic. I'm also going to be trying to squeeze in every last bit of local travel I can on the weekends. So if you hear from me less often and if the chapter pace slows waaaay down, don't worry, it's not permanent.
Previews for Ch. 175: Loki continues to (try to) deal with being back on Asgard but gets an unexpected opportunity to leave; Loki continues to (try to) deal with Thor.
Excerpt:
Thor scowled at Loki, who was right, of course. In the old days, he would be punching Loki right now, and Loki would punch him back, and they would emerge from it bruised and laughing. Probably laughing. "What I'm trying to say," he began slowly, still trying to piece it together, because fighting was so much easier than talking, "is that you're perfect for this, because you're very Aesir, and say what you will but I know that you still love this realm, else you wouldn't have bothered to take out those incendiaries, but at the same time, you don't feel like you must…be obedient to Asgard or Asgardian tradition. I mean no insult," Thor hastened to add.
