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Beneath

Chapter Two Hundred Thirteen – Catharsis

Thor nodded slowly, eyes locked on Loki's as something passed between them. He wasn't certain what name to put to it, but it felt like something positive. He hadn't made this decision for Loki, not in the sense of a gift to appease his brother. He'd done it because Loki was right, and ignoring the situation was wrong. He'd done it because it was the right thing to do. Even though it was painful. And Loki, probably, had not been so lenient as a gift to Thor, either. Perhaps he'd been moved by memories of better times between them all, but more likely, Loki, too, had simply done what he thought was right. Asgard needed the Warriors Three and Sif. Asgard also needed loyalty, and to the throne above any individual. He hoped the punishment was in fact not too lenient; he'd have to speak with Chief Register Warden Ruskel and ensure that the register made the complex circumstances as clear as possible, lest anyone get the idea that six months in prison plus a public letter of confession was the current standard punishment for treason on Asgard. Then there were the details of Geirmund's punishment to be worked out, a discussion with Ruskel about that, too, a meeting with Tony Stark…

"Hey," Jane said, slipping an arm around Thor's. "You both look like you have the weight of the world on you."

"Nine of them," Thor said with a weary smile, pulled from his drifting thoughts.

"Personally, I feel as light as a cloud," Loki said, brushing past Thor and Jane, turning back to them once past, ignoring the intertwined arms. He removed his helmet and sent it away, then reverted his attire to what he'd first worn into the throne room, including the yellow cape. "You'll need to gather your things, I presume, Jane?"

"Um, yeah," she said, startled at the abruptness of it. "I didn't bring that much, but I should grab my bag."

"Surely you don't need to go just yet," Thor said. "It's late, but not that late. Earlier for you, Jane, yes? The time is earlier at the South Pole?"

"Yes, but I guess I really should go. I didn't expect to be here as long as I have. And when we get there Loki still has to gather up all his stuff. I think that'll take a little while. It's a lot of stuff."

"A little while, yes," Loki said. In truth it wouldn't take much time at all, but he didn't care to linger here. Better to get himself – and Jane – to the South Pole promptly. He saw the way Thor and Jane were looking at each other, though. Better also for them to say their goodbyes here, while he left to take care of his own matters, and perhaps avoid having to endure it later. "I'll just—"

"Once you've—"

"After you," Loki said with a magnanimous grin. It came naturally, for the moment at least, and he absolutely intended to enjoy the feeling.

"No, after you," Thor hastened to say. If he let Loki take the lead, perhaps it would be easier to maintain this fragile new…whatever it was between them now.

Loki clenched his jaw, but only for a moment. Thor really was infuriating. But he would not let that spoil his good mood. "I was going to say, I'll just go and gather up some things myself, and then I'll meet Jane out where Heimdall has set up the Tesseract."

"But you—. Loki. You can't just leave immediately. Not after all this."

"In fact, I can. As soon as I've finished at the Pole and Heimdall's brought me back, I'll have him send me straight to Alfheim. My business here is finished. Thor," Loki quickly got in before Thor could lodge his next objection. "Did you really think we would sit around and…what, chat? Reminisce? Especially after all this? And do you have so little to do that you're bored and have time for such things?"

"Must I be bored to—." Thor stopped himself, shook his head. It was a losing battle. An already lost battle. Continuing to fight it wasn't going to help matters. "Alfheim, then? Do I need to speak to their ambassador?"

"No need," Loki said, surprised Thor didn't already know he was going to Alfheim. Of course, he hadn't told Thor, but he'd thought Jane would have. He hadn't told Jane much about it either, though. "I arranged it with Nadrith yesterday before the signing. All taken care of. That reminds me, I'm bringing Lifhilda. I'll have her readied while I'm on Midgard."

"All right. How long will you be away?"

"As long as I feel like. I suppose I'll have to come back in twenty years or so to deal with the child."

"Twenty years?" Jane echoed. She hoped Loki was only saying that to rile up Thor, because Loki disappearing for a significant chunk of the rest of her life was exactly what she'd feared.

"Mm. Or better, I could delegate that decision to you. Permit the wife another choice at that point, whether to remain on Midgard forever or to permanently return to Asgard. Following her husband may have lost its appeal after twenty years of it, and she may prefer to stay with her daughter. As for the child herself…" He glanced Jane's way. He'd thought of her when pondering how to handle all this. Not about her opinions on punishment, but about what she'd told him of losing both of her parents at fourteen. Twenty was not so different. Loki didn't care if Geirmund never saw his child again, and while Dagrun's decision would surely be a painful one, it was still hers – she was a grown woman and would learn to live with the consequences of it, and that, too, was none of Loki's concern. But a child should not be deprived of all contact with a mother and father who loved her, even if the father had brought such shame on himself as to merit permanent exile. An execution would have been simpler. He hadn't decided against it for the child's sake, but having left the man alive… "I don't want even the child given free rein to come and go at a whim, but to the extent it can be avoided I don't want to make her suffer to further her father's punishment. She should not be forbidden all access to him, assuming she does desire access in the first place. Or to her mother, if her mother remains on Midgard. A compromise will be required. Will you make the ruling in my absence?"

"If I must. I'd rather not, I'd rather you be here."

"And I'd rather not be here. How fortunate for me that I don't have to be," Loki said, voice turning chipper again. "I think I'll find myself a nice ocean view somewhere, then go exploring. Farewell, then." He paused. His voice had been a little too chipper just then. "Farewell," he repeated in a more formal tone, dipping his head slightly in recognition of what Thor had done here tonight, and of whatever it was that remained between them, some remnant of brotherhood or long-ago friendship.

"Farewell," Thor said, flustered and uncertain what to do with himself. Was this to be their goodbye? He wanted to embrace Loki, or grip his arm, or possibly wring his neck for leaving so abruptly, when so much was still unsaid, when their family was still fractured. His muscles tensed with the need to do something, and it occurred to him that in the past, he would have simply insisted Loki stay, with every expectation that Loki would acquiesce, and…Loki would probably have acquiesced. The realization made the tension fade, except in his brow.

"See you a little later," Loki said quietly to Jane, then slipped away before Thor could come back to himself and try to prolong his stay any further. He couldn't wait to talk to her – alone, obviously – but the instant that thought crossed his mind it dampened his mood. They wouldn't have much time together. And putting all the things he'd left at the South Pole back into storage would require him to pay attention to what he was doing, at least if he wanted to be able to easily find any of it again. And regardless of time differences, Jane had to be tired. It was better than nothing, though. The coffee should help keep her going.

"Do you think he was joking?" he heard Jane ask, probably not realizing he could still hear her.

He was through the door before Thor's answer came, soon bounding up the stairs two at a time. There hadn't been time to put much thought into what he would bring with him, but a few things had caught his eye. He wouldn't bother with too many items of basic daily use, just enough to get him started. He could purchase more on Alfheim. Unless his stipend had been cut off…

His nearly missed a step and scaled back to one at a time. That had never occurred to him. He hadn't had access to his account on Midgard, of course. On Svartalfheim he'd won his money over cards, on Alfheim he'd charged his only purchases to his past self, and on Asgard, on Harvest Day, he'd used counterfeit money just as on Midgard. In the last few days he'd charged a number of expenses, but not once had he inquired about the balance, or whether money was still flowing into it. He could find a way around a dwindling account if he had to, of course, but he would rather not have to worry about that. Probably Illugi would have mentioned it he'd been cut off.

He was wondering if it might be worth checking on when he rounded a bend and found his mother coming toward him on the landing of whichever floor he was on.

"I was hoping you weren't going to go slinking up the service stairs or the lift and make me miss you."

He gave a breathy laugh that betrayed his sudden nervousness. "Are you making a habit of ambushing people now?"

"No, unless I think it's the only way I can get a few minutes alone with them. Come, Loki," she said, stepping further back onto the landing, waiting for him to follow.

He didn't follow. "Mother. The hour is growing late. I have to pack before—"

"I said come."

Loki stared up at his mother the queen. When she spoke with that voice, one did not argue. He took the last two steps to the landing and followed.

He knew which floor they were on now – the eighth, on which his mother kept a large space for entertaining private guests. With nothing scheduled to take place there, no guard was posted at the door, so Frigga opened it and indicated that he should enter first.

"Shield us from all eyes and ears," she said as soon as she'd closed the door behind them and engaged the extra lock.

Loki did so, and stood waiting for an explanation in the chamber's muted nighttime lighting. Jotunheim. Odin bringing me to Asgard. Farbauti. Farbauti's idiot sons, he thought ticking off the list of possible things she must want to talk to him about, given her instruction. None of which he wanted to spend a second thinking about tonight.

The silence dragged until Loki felt compelled to break it. "Mother, if this is something that can possibly wait for the next…several centuries or so, then—"

"It cannot."

"All right," Loki said, chastened. Her eyes glistened in a way that presaged tears. A separate farewell, then. He'd hoped to avoid that. But if his mother sought it out, insisted on it, he couldn't deny her. Especially not once she'd led him into a private room, sealed them in, and physically blocked the door.

"You…," Frigga began, shaking her head. "You are the most…." She'd argued wildly with herself, thought of little else, from the time the ground beneath her had shifted and she understood. Some secrets were meant to remain secret. Loki didn't need to know she knew. Even as she'd exchanged perfunctory greetings with a handful of others who'd passed, even as she'd listened to the quick steps she knew to be his approach, she'd told herself perhaps she should say nothing. In the end, she knew there was no way she could keep this from Loki.

"Yes?" Loki prompted, bracing himself. It was his mother, the person whose love he'd doubted only in the darkest of times, who'd rarely spoken a harsh word to him, who'd encouraged and praised him, never ridiculed him. Even after Baldur's death, her words to him had been few; she'd simply stayed away rather than tear into him with her anger and pain. Rationally, then, he knew she had not sequestered him here to berate him. To admonish, perhaps, even to scold. He could endure that from her, if he had to.

"Your father suspected from the start that you weren't telling us everything about your time travel."

Loki's jaw went slack. She had no reason to bring this up now. No reason except one. He knew his reaction had shown – he'd been too taken aback to even try to conceal it – but he held himself still and resolved to show nothing else, just in case he was mistaken. "A person should be permitted one or two secrets, don't you think?"

Frigga smiled. Loki had never been one to reveal his secrets easily. Perhaps he'd gotten it from them, from how his name, his birth, his own body were all veiled in secrecy since his infancy. "You tried," she said. A question, but one she was certain she knew the answer to. He wouldn't have wanted to relive that day out of curiosity or some other form of prurient interest.

She knows. She knows, she knows. The words repeated in his head as he continued to do nothing more than breathe. He saw himself, so long ago, saw it so clearly he could feel it, feel her arms holding him up because he couldn't stand unaided, feel himself clinging to her as though to life itself. "I swear on my life, Mother, if there was any way to undo it, I would."

"I tried." There was no pretending otherwise, not when she knew. "I tried, and tried, and tried, and tried."

"Loki," she breathed. Of all the feelings that had cycled through her since she'd figured it out, worry hadn't been one of them until now. "You could have gone mad."

He gave a small, tight smile. "Some would say I already had."

"Perhaps you had, for a short while," she said, reaching for his hand, giving it a squeeze. She started to let it go but instead found herself gripping tighter, and tighter and tighter until it hurt. "This was not madness. This was love."

"Mother, please," he whispered. His hand was tingling from how hard she was squeezing.

"You tried." Tears brimmed in her eyes.

"I tried." His voice shook.

She pulled and he let her. Her arms encircled him and she crushed him to her.

His head fell to her shoulder as though his neck could no longer hold it up.

"My sweet boy. Oh, my sweet boy," she said into his hair.

Loki didn't know if she meant Baldur or him. It didn't matter. Strength was bleeding out of him so fast he couldn't think straight.

"It's all right. Let it out, it's all right." She pressed a kiss to the side of head.

His chest was trembling with unsteady breaths, his cheeks were damp. He didn't care. He was a child again. A youth, a broken young man. Of course he could cry in his mother's arms. Of course it was all right. Her strength was enough for both of them. His knees buckled and that, too, was all right, because she had him. Down they went. Down, down, down to the floor, and they could have been in the throne room, they could have had an audience, and still it was just the two of them, like no time had passed at all. He cried and he shook and he sobbed in the strength and safety of her arms, his own remaining limp at his side.

Frigga held him, one arm tight around his back, the other up and over the yellow cape, fingers dug into black hair that grew damp with her tears. "It was love. It was all love," she murmured, the words for him, for her, for now, for then. She remembered holding him like this, remembered the shock and horror at his condition and what he'd endured because of what she had done, remembered trying to will her love into him like the breath of life. She would do it again and again, whenever it was needed.

They remained there in two moments in time and a sense of being outside time entirely, kneeling up on the floor, Frigga supporting the both of them, even after the tears dried up. Loki's breathing calmed; one arm made its way weakly around her back, a first tentative effort at reclaiming his strength. When he became conscious of the damp patch in her gown against his cheek and her collarbone pressing against his jaw he started slowly pulling away. Her arms immediately relaxed their grip and let him, and soon he was lowering himself further to sit on his heels while she crouched down opposite him with her feet flat.

Frigga wiped a tear from his cheek, then pulled out a kerchief for him and one from her. He still looked like the grown man he was, even with a tear-streaked face and sitting on his shins, but she saw in him now also the much softer man he'd been centuries ago. It brought into aching relief just how much he'd hardened over the years, how much it affected even his physical appearance. "You tried to change history for your brother."

Loki paused in his dabbing, then dropped the kerchief to the floor. "It was all love," she'd just been telling him. "Was there not also love in it?" she'd said earlier. There was. But his was so selfish. Jaded. Twisted. What love had he offered her when she confessed her suffering over guilt for her role in the circumstances leading to Baldur's death? What had he offered her at all? His words of comfort were shallow and few.

His love was fleeting. Fickle, capricious, like the rest of him, according to Midgard's mythology. There when it was convenient, but pushed aside, ignored, or simply forgotten when it wasn't. Love wasn't the right word for it at all. And what love had there been for Baldur in his desperate attempt to rewrite history? None at all. None for Baldur, anyway. He'd not only not mourned Baldur, he'd forgotten him. Never thought of him even once as The Other sifted through the memories that surfaced. Was this mourning, what he'd done here, letting his mother hold him up as his walls fell and his strength disappeared and he wet her gown with his tears? Was it love? Something else entirely? Every time he thought he knew himself, the rug was ripped out from under him and he thought perhaps he didn't know himself at all.

Warm hands gripped his and his eyes regained focus.

"I don't know where you've gone, but I want you to come back."

"I'm here."

"When you go away, you go to dark places, Loki. It worries me."

"I'm here," he said again, his voice firmer. "But I didn't do it for him."

"If you're going to try to tell me you did it for yourself, I'm not going to believe you. I don't understand why you feel the need to deny the good in you."

Loki gave a short bitter laugh, turning his head to the side for a moment. "Is that what I'm doing?"

"It seems so, to me," she said, reaching out to cup his cheek.

He shifted back, then pushed up on his knees and got back to his feet, his mother rising along with him. "I did do it for myself. In a manner of speaking. I made an oath. To you."

"What oath?"

"Right after my confession. I swore an oath to you, that if I there was any way to undo what I'd done, I would."

Frigga tried to look back on that day, to recall specifically what Loki had said, but stopped after a few seconds. It was more painful now than ever to dwell on how he'd looked, the things he'd said, knowing the added responsibility she bore for it. "I don't even remember your oath. But you tried to keep it for yourself, hm?"

"Of course. I did swear on my life, after all," Loki said, mustering a slight smile. "I made the oath for you, though."

She nodded, then slipped an arm around Loki's back and drew him over to a sofa, where they both took a seat. "And you could have driven yourself mad trying to keep it."

"No. I didn't make repeated journeys. I made many attempts to prevent his death, but only one journey."

"You still could have driven yourself mad, Loki. I can't imagine what you must have experienced. And you didn't know why you failed, did you? You didn't know then that it was impossible."

He looked down, gave a minute shake of his head. "I watched myself racing toward a cliff and I could do nothing to stop it, not even to slow it down. I thought it was simply fate. Possibly in the guise of someone else present, ensuring things went as intended. I…observed things I didn't before. Sounds, as though someone might be following me, the original me. I made myself invisible when I went back. I saw someone else in the stables besides that boy."

"Odin's magic reacted when you made yourself invisible, didn't it?"

Loki only furrowed his brow at the unexpected question.

"When we were on Midgard you said that there were times when your motivation for the journey was a good one, yet you were punished for using magic. I wondered what you meant by that. I think I know now."

He nodded. He remembered well the frustration and anger when he seemed to have been judged for doing wrong even when trying to save Baldur's life. But he didn't want to dwell on it anymore. "How did you know? That I tried, I mean?"

Frigga breathed a quiet laugh. "Once I realized, it seemed so obvious I couldn't understand how Odin and Thor hadn't figured it out, too. It was nagging at me from the beginning, in some little corner of my mind, as soon as you said you'd recognized him, and by the back of his head, no less. When Odin and I talked this morning, it bothered me more. Perhaps one must hear things in threes? When you said it again during the pronouncement, somehow I just knew. Not only because of the implausibility of you recognizing him from over a thousand years ago. But because had you seen someone else in the stables back then, someone who never came forward or was otherwise identified, someone who thus might have been involved somehow…why would you never have mentioned it? You and your advocate tried every alternate theory you could think of. Yet none of them involved this mystery man lurking in the stables, watching you? Last night you even said he'd followed you. You couldn't possibly have known then that someone had followed you into the wood, and never once mentioned it. Your advocate would have argued you were set up, that this mystery person was the true killer."

"I never noticed him at all, the first time."

"I'm sorry for the pain I know it caused you, but I'm grateful for the good that came of it. And I'm so proud of you for trying, and that you were able to come back to us when saving his life proved to be impossible. It was the act of a hero."

Loki leaned back at an angle, away from Frigga, and looked at her askance. "Let's not get carried away."

"It was," Frigga said, voice firm. "And I wish I could say I believed you were denying it out of modesty."

"I'm not modest."

Frigga laughed. "No, my dear boy, you aren't." She wanted to embrace him again, but his reactions to that were inconstant, and she suspected it would not be so warmly received at the moment. "There's nothing wrong with being good, you know. With doing good."

There was nothing wrong with it, no. But there wasn't much use in it, either. His mother wouldn't understand that, though, and he had no interest in trying to explain it, not when that would require putting more thought into it than a simple instinctive reaction. "You may call me a hero if it makes you happy, Mother. But not in front of anyone else, please. I already suffered that term once at the South Pole. Thor's 'Avenger' friends fancy themselves heroes, and if they were to hear of me being referred to as such…it would sew confusion and chaos among them. Hmmm, I've changed my mind. Please contact them at the earliest opportunity and inform them that I'm a hero and they should be expecting my application to join."

"You aren't that much of a joiner, though, either, are you?"

"Mmm, no, I suppose not."

"You join, but not fully. You hold back. Keep yourself apart."

Loki shifted a little, glancing aimlessly around the room. His mother could've been speaking of just about any of his relationships, but he was thinking, for some reason, of the Polies he'd left behind. What a wasted opportunity, he thought. He wished he could have embraced living there, the people he'd lived there with, from the beginning. For the first time it occurred to him that going back there tonight might actually be difficult. It was no longer home, he was no longer Lucas, they were no longer his friends, and he'd been too stubborn and arrogant and foolish to think of them that way when he was actually living there. Now he was going to be slipping in and out, avoiding being seen, like he was a criminal. The criminal they now saw him as.

"Come back to me," Frigga said, watching Loki's face turn dark and stormy again and cupping her hand over his to give it a squeeze.

"Sorry," he answered quickly. "I'm here. I have a lot on my mind."

"Of that I have no doubt. But Loki…don't keep yourself so far apart. I understand you're planning to go to Alfheim. Are you meeting anyone there?"

"No. I think being on my own for a while is just what I need. Time to myself, to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I'm bringing Lifhilda."

"That would be good. But better someone who can talk. Loki…I know things are difficult for you here. On Asgard, with your brother and father, with me, too. We hurt you, we broke your trust. But we're still your family. We still love you."

"This all sounds familiar. 'It will be difficult, it will take time.'"

Frigga bowed her head in a moment of guilt. Those were her words he was quoting, her attempts to reassure him as he recuperated in the Healing Room that yes, his life would continue, and things would eventually return to normal.

"I'm not the person I was then. I have no intention of sitting around here waiting for some point at which it won't be 'difficult' anymore. Nor do I actually believe that point will ever come. Nothing's ever going to change the fact that I am who I am, that I came from where I came from, and that you lied to me about it my entire life." He paused, eyes blinking to keep further tears at bay, even as his chest hitched to keep a macabre laugh at bay because he suddenly pictured himself sitting here looking like Helblindi and Byleister, Frigga's hand over his freezing dark blue one. He drew his hand away and clasped it in his other one, folded over his lap, with neither tears nor laughter. "Nothing's going to change that, and I'm never going to forget it. I trust your love. But please understand that there's not much else I do trust at the moment. Certainly not here."

"I do. I do understand that. But trust cannot be earned in your absence. You say you aren't the same person, but you're doing the same thing. You left then, too. And I really hope you aren't planning on repeating that episode, because, Loki, when you came home after that, you were simply in a different type of poor condition than you were when you left."

Loki smiled at his mother's worry. "I suppose I am doing the same thing, but only superficially so. I promise I shall stay away from travelers' taverns of ill repute. Look at me," he said, growing his smile for her and projecting confidence, leaning away to let her get a good look. Leather flexing over his puffed-out chest, the rise in his cape making his shoulders look bigger and broader than they were. "I'm not in poor condition at all."

"Come here, you," she said, slipping an arm beneath the cape and around his back to pull him back closer. "You're in fine condition, what I can see of you. Beneath the surface…how am I to know? I listened to you tell Odin how much you hated Baldur, how you burned against him in envy, how you decided you had to kill him. I had no idea what was really going on inside you, that your mind was so damaged that you believed those things when they weren't true. How much is churning away inside you that I don't know about now? You've been through so much. You were distraught when you came back from Jotunheim just a few days ago. I really don't think you should be off by yourself right now."

"I would rather be off by myself than here. The decision is already made."

Frigga gave a frustrated sigh. On his own, away from everyone who loved him, away from everyone who cared about him at all, Loki, she feared, would descend back into darkness.

"It really isn't like before. I'm not running away. And it's not only about where I was born. It's…." Loki had to pause. He'd been reaching for the next lie, only to realize that it wasn't a lie. Not even a lie concealed amid truth. It took a further moment to wrestle with whether he wished to in fact share this truth. But today had been a day of truths, and his mother, he thought, might understand. "I'm not who I thought I was."

"You are—"

"Mother," he said, putting a hand out to physically halt her as he interrupted. "Too much of my life has been defined by someone other than me. I'm not sure I even know who I am outside Thor's shadow." Or under Odin's heel, he silently added. "I need to be my own man. Before I can do that, I have to find out who I am. I cannot do that here."

"Finding out who you are…that can be the work of a lifetime. We all change as we age and grow, as we let new people into our lives and experience new things…you don't need to go to Alfheim by yourself for that."

"We will have to disagree on that." He looked down for a moment, took a deep breath, made sure to look back up at her with disappointment and vulnerability that was feigned only in that he had to force himself to show it. "I had hoped you'd understand."

She frowned at him; she knew she was being manipulated, especially when Loki wasn't being very subtle about it. That didn't mean it wasn't working. "I do understand. Thor casts a heavy shadow, one he's long been unable to see. Your father, too. A heavy shadow, a heavy hand. I know it's not easy…I just worry for you. You need the support of your family."

Loki swallowed hard. He didn't want to hurt his mother. But she needed to know this truth. "Your hand, too, is sometimes heavy, in its own way. Full of love," he hastened to add. "But heavy."

Frigga was stricken by that, throat trying to close up on her. "He needs all the love you can give him," the apparition – Jane – had told her so long ago. Had she given him too much, given it in the wrong way? Had she drowned him in it, trying to make up for the guilty knowledge of his true origin? She would always wonder. She would never know. "I only want to do what's best for you. I don't always know what that is, but it's always what I want."

"Then don't protest my leaving. That's what's best for me. You say I need the support of my family. I don't even begin to know how to react to that right now. The two key words are both…marred. Complicated. I don't know what they mean anymore."

"That breaks my heart. I want to fix all this for you so badly."

"If only it was that easy," he said with a rueful smile. And then he had second thoughts. He could see himself sitting beside his mother, as though watching this time with her unfold from the outside. It surprised him how much it was like before. He wasn't unguarded with her precisely, but he hadn't been unguarded with her for a long time. His reasons for being guarded had changed, and the things he was holding back were new. Still, he was speaking openly with her, and mostly truthfully. Perhaps more openly and truthfully than he had in decades or even centuries. "I don't mean to break your heart, Mother. And I don't need to be fixed."

"I didn't say you needed to be fixed," she responded instinctively. "You don't…do you?" she asked, more of a statement than a question. "You seem…remarkably reasonable. Other than your continued insistence on leaving," she added, softening the words with a smile. Though she hadn't particularly considered it before, now that she was, she had to admit that even the way he spoke of going away by himself was reasonable.

"Perhaps I'm simply too exhausted to launch into any mad ravings," he said, keeping his tone light even as he remembered with shame the loss of control he'd experienced upon returning from Jotunheim. "I'm probably the wrong one to ask about that. A madman is the last person to believe he's mad."

"Your mother can vouch for you in this case. Your pieces may not quite all be put back together…but you're not mad." The things he'd done on Midgard previously, the things she'd learned more details about when she went there herself – the sober young man sitting beside her would not have done such things, not as he was now. She was certain of it.

The muscles in Loki's jaw twitched at her reference to pieces not put back together, at the implication that he was indeed broken, but he remained silent.

"Whether you go or stay is your choice, of course. I can't help trying to dissuade you, in part because I can tell there's something you're keeping from me. I can see it in you…perhaps simply because you've yet to say 'Don't worry, Mother, I'll only be gone a short time.'" She waited, watching him, but he betrayed no reaction, gaze fixed elsewhere as it had been before. "How long?"

It wasn't a secret, precisely. He'd simply hoped to avoid the reactions. Especially hers. Cowardice, perhaps. "I'm not sure. I expect a long time." He hoped she would let him leave it at that. And she was…seemingly. She wasn't responding at all. His eyes flickered to her, and he couldn't quite look away again. "Perhaps I'll remain on Alfheim," he continued, the words pulled from him reluctantly.

"Permanently?" she asked, carefully keeping her voice steady.

"Possibly."

"Loki, come now," Frigga said, leaning forward, unable to continue holding back. "You would voluntarily undertake an action you've just pronounced as a punishment on another? This is your home."

"The difference is it would be my choice. And yes…this is my home. Sometimes one's home is no longer quite suitable…one must find a new home. Mother…I know how you feel about it. I know you don't want me to go. But as you said, it is my choice, and nothing you say will dissuade me from it. Can we please not waste time arguing about it?"

Frigga suspected that Loki didn't know what he was asking. To simply accept that her son was leaving, perhaps never to return. But she couldn't force him to stay, and she told herself that the more he felt he was being forced or even simply pressured into staying, the more he would want to leave, and the more he would want to stay away. "The difference is that it doesn't have to be permanent. You can return any time you like, even if just for a short visit. And the difference is that you are permitted visitors. Will you? Accept visitors? And Loki…there is only one correct answer here. Or we will be arguing about it."

Loki tried to picture it, him, strolling along a sun-warmed white sandy beach as gentle waves tumbled over and withdrew back into the ocean, alone with his thoughts, or exploring some town he'd never been to before, combing through the markets for anything new and different, settling in to some rented chambers to inspect his purchases…and his mother suddenly appearing in a dazzling flash of Tesseract blue. Or worse yet, Thor. Odin would certainly not bother. "Not right away. In time. It's not the case that I don't want to see you again."

"All right," she said. Her relief was not so much over what Loki said – she'd been certain he didn't mean to cut her fully and irrevocably from his life – but that he'd been willing to say it aloud, that he hadn't felt the need to try to deny it or avoid answering. "You won't hide yourself?"

He gave a light chuckle, hoping it would serve to lighten the somber mood. "Don't ask me to make promises I can't keep."

"Not all the time, then, at least? Not like last time."

"This isn't last time. This has nothing to do with that. I'm sitting here telling you, aren't I? Not slipping away in secret. I've even told you where I'm going."

"You've told me which realm you're going to, Loki. Alfheim is massive."

"I don't know exactly where I'm going yet. But no, I won't hide myself all the time. Perhaps hardly at all. I've no need to hide."

"No, you don't. Good," Frigga said with a crisp nod. That was that, Loki was leaving, and she would have to accept it. She'd done enough crying for the evening. She could wait a while to cry over this. "What will you do about packing? How are you supposed to take care of all that tonight?"

"I won't need much. I'll take a few treasured items, but if I'm to start a new life I can't surround myself with all the trappings of the old. It won't take long."

"And what about Jane?"

"What about her?" he asked, after a brief hesitation over the unexpected question.

"Her time is brief. She's been a good friend to you, and you to her. She makes you smile."

Loki glanced away in discomfort.

"I know you were trying to make us think otherwise, before. You were trying to protect her, which tells me all the more how important she is to you, even if you hadn't already dropped the pretense that you think so little of her. I think she would be quite displeased if you disappeared to Alfheim for the rest of her life." And I think you need her, Frigga silently added, wishing the thought could slip right into Loki's own. Were she to say it aloud, she knew he would instinctively reject it out of hand.

"I suppose I do owe her for saving my life," Loki said with a slight shrug. He could not speak of Jane with his mother, not about serious matters. She saw too much. Deflecting was easy enough, though. He had already decided that he would have to figure out some way to keep her in his life, but he hadn't had time to figure it out yet. Or perhaps he'd been avoiding the problem for its multiple points of difficulty. "Perhaps we can work something out."

"I hope you will. You're going there first, yes? And then Heimdall will bring you back and send you to Alfheim?"

"That's right."

"All right. Then I won't bid you farewell now. It's a lovely evening, and it's been too long since I've been able to take a late-night stroll. I'll save my goodbyes for when you return from Midgard."

"Mother, you—"

"No, I will be there, waiting with Heimdall. Should I be delayed you will not depart before I arrive." Loki's expression reflected acquiescence, and she forced a smile. "Perhaps I'll have a travel basket put together for you, since you'll apparently be packing sparsely."

Loki laughed again, still lightly, subdued, but it was a little more genuine than a few minutes ago. "If you're planning to slip any little vials into it, I'd appreciate some advance warning this time. A more thorough explanation, too."

"No vials," Frigga said, relaxing minutely. "That one was difficult enough to prepare, and I'd need a little more time to procure the proper ingredients."

"I told Jane what was in the one she drank, you know. What gave it its color. She was displeased."

Frigga cringed, mouth distorting with it. "I wish you had told me that earlier. Did it disturb her badly?"

"It did once I told her it had turned her into a vampire."

"Oh, my boy." Frigga recognized that particular glint in Loki's eyes. She had missed it. "And what is a vampire?"

Loki laughed, and this time it wasn't feigned at all. "Midgardian foolishness," he said with a wave of his hand. The smile faded. "She makes you smile," his mother had said. She does. He needed to be more circumspect about letting others see it; with the release of tension following his pronouncement over Geirmund, he'd let himself become too lax.

"I'll ask Jane, then."

Loki drew back. "I'd really rather you not." It was just a bit of light-hearted teasing, really. But it reminded him of something more serious that he hadn't had a chance to say. "Mother…I would prefer that you not tell anyone else…that I tried. I know it may be asking a lot…but it was private. Difficult. Nothing was changed in the end, and no one else was affected. No one else has any need to know."

"Loki…Thor won't hear it from me. But why must you ask me to keep secrets from your father? No, I…I understand. It's just…"

"If it was up to me, no one would know it ever happened. Including you."

"Does Jane know?"

"Not because I told her," Loki said with a frown. "She knew the year I traveled to, on her calendar. She knew how old I was at the Harvest Festival parade, she knew that year on her calendar, she knew how old Baldur was when he died, how old I was when he was born…she knew just enough to figure it out. Or almost. She thought I'd succeeded. We didn't understand how it worked then." He gave a dark laugh and looked away.

"What," Frigga said, cupping a hand around his jaw and pulling it back to her.

"Oh, just another reason for you to call me a hero. Before I took her to the parade, I'd been trying to convince her that time travel could be used for good. I wanted her help, I wanted…." He wasn't sure what he'd wanted. At the time, Jane had guessed only that he was working on a theory of time travel. Planning trips, not taking them. He could have easily lied. Yet despite the risk, he couldn't resist the thrill of telling her the truth. Of revealing his discovery. Of throwing her understanding into chaos. Of sharing the experience with her. Even back then, she already meant more to him than he realized. And he'd still behaved so terribly toward her. "I tried to convince Jane that she could go back and save her parents. When I knew I hadn't been able to save Baldur. I would have sent her on a path to madness."

"You didn't know. You said you thought someone or something was interfering and preventing you from saving Baldur. I'm sure you thought Jane would be successful."

"I did."

"Then stop being so hard on yourself."

"Such simple words."

"I know. I do know. All right, I won't raise it. If he brings it up, if he guesses it himself, I won't lie, but I won't be the one to bring it up."

"Thank you, Mother," he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek.

"You're welcome. I want you to feel you can talk openly with me about anything, but you know it can put me in a difficult position. He knows about…." She looked down, took a moment to start again. "He knows why you were on Asgard so long ago, why you had that knife Jane left behind. I held back for a few days, but when he asked me directly a second time, I had to tell him."

Loki nodded, the relief of a moment before already gone. Odin knowing the truth of that time journey made him shudder; he couldn't even think about it. At least Odin hadn't questioned him on it. The old man hadn't even given any indication that he knew. It wasn't just Odin; he would prefer no one knew that particular truth, even his mother, for how intensely personal it was, how close to the bone it cut. And for his mother, he hated that it caused her to worry about him in uncomfortable ways, that it added to her burdens. "Just so you know…the knife is gone."

"Oh?" Frigga waited, to let Loki continue as he chose. She knew he hadn't forgotten the significance of that knife, and of her returning it to him.

"It's buried on Svartalfheim. Inside Brokk."

"I see," she answered with a nod. She'd always known there was more to that brief version of events on Svartalfheim Thor had told her; now she knew for certain who'd killed the Dark Elf. "Well…I suppose you had no further use for it."

"No. It had a good end."

"It was a well-travelled knife."

Loki broke into laughter, subdued but genuine. "It was indeed." He pushed himself up, expanded his chest with a long deep breath while his mother stood beside him. "I'd best go pack. I shouldn't keep Jane waiting."

"She must be exhausted, the poor thing. Go pack, and I'll see you outside. Don't worry, I'll save my farewells with you for your return from Midgard, but I must bid Jane farewell."

"All right," Loki said, tamping down his reaction. He'd hoped for a quiet departure, but at this rate all of Asgard would be seeing him and Jane off. He could hardly begrudge his mother this, though, or Jane.

"I'm so glad you came back to me," Frigga said, embracing her son again. She'd told herself she would keep it quick and light, but found her arms tightening regardless. Before she could grow too maudlin, though, she pulled back to grasp his upper arms. "You must always come back to me."

Loki smiled. It would be easy – too easy – to say he would. To make a promise that later he might not be able to keep. He would see her again, beyond this night. That much he knew. Where he would see her…that was another matter, and not one he wished to address again. He kept up his smile, kissed her cheek again, and slipped away.

/


I was going to drop some extra comments in here but yet again it's past my bedtime (you know, day that ends in -y). Here's something I've been meaning to add to a chapter many many chapters back and never remember but randomly do now...do you recall when Tony says French is a language that nobody speaks anymore? He's being facetious of course. And self-deprecating as well, because in fact, in Iron Man 2 we see that Tony speaks French. That's the reason I gave him that line. I've always meant to note this, in case anyone might be offended thinking Tony is seriously insulting French (or I am, ha). Next up: random things I meant to tell you about Chapter 5. :-) Guest reviewers, welcome, when you catch up, I got a kick out of seeing the things you mentioned that stood out to you.

Previews for Ch. 214: Time to pack. Maybe time to talk, too. (This is "Beneath." It's *always* time to talk, folks. Or to think. Or both!)

Excerpt:

"I'm pretty sure he was just being a jerk, anyway," Jane said with a smile.

"Ah. That I can imagine," Thor said, heart warmed with a flush of fond nostalgia. "Loki long ago raised his skill at that to the level of a master."

"Did he ever try to have a seeing contest with you?"