.-.
Beneath
Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Three – Ticking
"Are you anticipating any specific adventures?"
"Ah…no," Loki said as he grasped at where that question had come from and remembered he'd made some inane comment about adventures lying ahead. It had worked. Jane was moving on; so could he. "Stopping by to see Nadrith will be at least a minor adventure. He has quite the task to pull off at home and it seems he'd like to use my presence to his benefit."
"I thought you said you were retired from politics."
"I lost the throne, and now I'm out of the line of succession, but I suppose I can't leave it entirely behind, at least not right away. After Nadrith…I'll see what I feel like doing when I get there."
"Do you think you'll go see Niskit?"
Loki looked up from the remaining boxes in surprise. "I can't say I was thinking of it. Why do you ask?"
Jane shrugged. "She's the only one I know to ask about, besides Nadrith. Probably better if you don't, though."
"Why not?"
"She's scary," Jane said, making a face.
"I don't find her scary," Loki said with a laugh. "Entertaining, perhaps. She keeps me on my toes."
"She was part of an assassination plot, Loki. And I don't think she has your best interests at heart."
"She wasn't trying to assassinate me."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know. But you only saw her at one particular point in time, when she was in the middle of an assassination plot and therefore under just a pinch of stress, wouldn't you say?"
"That's not—"
"I know. Jane…I'm sure that what she did to me wasn't easy for you to watch. But she didn't do anything I didn't insist she do."
"And I know that. I watched you put a knife to her throat over it. I just want you to be careful if you do see her. She was watching everything. She was watching me like a hawk."
"She watched you reveal yourself to be a mortal when you reacted to the tea as you did."
"How was I supposed to know it was half-full of mead?"
"You couldn't have."
"I'm sorry, though."
"Don't be. I wasn't criticizing, merely teasing. You did nothing wrong. I only wish I could have seen it."
"I was so worried about you. You were unconscious and she just got up to make tea like nothing was wrong."
"She isn't much for patting your head while you cry," Loki said – an understatement, to be sure. "But if you want someone to join you in plotting creative revenge against those who've wronged you, revenge you know neither of you will act on despite how earnestly you plan it, it would be hard to surpass her. Well…I may have acted on it once or twice."
"And you never had any clue she was acting on it against Nadrith?"
"Not one. She was wise enough to shield me from it."
Jane nodded, thinking back on everything she'd experienced at Niskit's. "Why did we never talk about all this?"
Loki sent another box away. He'd kept at it, slowly but surely working through them as he and Jane talked, sometimes taking a quick glance at the contents and sometimes not, and was now nearly done. "Let's see…there was your head injury which I failed to recognize, and—"
"Loki, don't—"
"Simply stating a fact. I'll amend it to simply 'you had a head injury,' if you prefer. Then, not unrelated I suspect, you fell asleep in the carriage. When we returned to Midgard—"
"You didn't want to talk to me."
He sighed. "Not at that moment, no. Then there was Gullveig, and earthquakes, and your foolhardy idea to—"
"Hey!"
"Pardon me, I meant your courageous and selfless idea to go out into the frozen desert and…. There's no reason to continue, is there? We never had the time."
"We never had the time. For a lot of things."
Jane fell silent and watched Loki for a moment as he returned to the boxes. He was back to opening them for at least a glance at the contents before magicking them away, one after the other. Ten, nine, eight….
It was true; from the moment they'd returned from Alfheim, they'd careened practically nonstop from one crisis or shocking revelation to the next. She'd squandered so much time before, being suspicious of "Lucas" – for all the wrong reasons – or being angry or afraid of him. Now things had calmed and there was so much they hadn't had a chance to talk about or do before, and time was running out. Even if he stuck to his promises – and she was certain he at least intended to – it would be a few visits here and there, like those rare dinner meet-ups with old friends from school, people she still cared about but whose lives had gone in different directions. They could laugh over old times over a drink, but it usually didn't get much deeper than that. Maybe it was mostly her fault, for not being good about keeping in touch and losing track of what was going on in their lives, but how was she supposed to do better with Loki? Renewing her Facebook account, pledging to call more often, keeping up with texts, none of that was going to help.
Unless someone invented a means of enabling communications between the Nine Realms.
Which was feasible, Jane realized, though the initial burst of enthusiasm quickly faded. All she had to do was maintain a continuous active signal through Yggdrasil…while preventing the enormous power of an open bifrost from blowing up any planets. Details. She still had a ton of data to analyze, though. If time travel through Yggdrasil was possible, surely she could figure out how to send an intergalactic e-mail to maintain contact with Loki while he was sequestered away on Alfheim.
"Just be careful if you run into Niskit, okay? It could create problems for us if she figures out we weren't from her time."
"She won't. Remember, I've met her many times since then, so she's had plenty of opportunities to raise it if she was going to." Just one box remained now, on the floor by the bed. Loki ignored it in favor of Jane.
"What if she somehow saw me again, though? She knows I'm from Earth and I couldn't look the same as ninety years ago."
"Were you planning on another visit? Even if she somehow got a glimpse of you and tried to make wild claims, many consider her half-mad. She wouldn't be believed. You have nothing to worry about."
"Are you just saying that or do you really believe it?"
"I believe it. She has no desire to become a public figure, or to approach any authorities. The worst that would happen is she would needle me to try to make me squirm. She'd be quite likely to do that. She would see it as a challenge."
"And if you withstood her trying to…to rip magic out of you and turn your body into jelly, you can probably withstand some needling."
"I couldn't have put it better," Loki said. Jane was nodding, her worries likely assuaged. And that was that. He sent the last box away with an exaggerated flourish.
"Okay." Jane's eyes lingered on the empty space where the box had been. "She protected your privacy, by the way. There's something to be said for that. When you were unconscious I asked her what happened, and she wouldn't tell me. She wouldn't tell me hardly anything, and she said she wouldn't until you woke up."
Loki nodded. "There's a great deal to be said for that. Confidentiality is particularly important when one is a prince." He paused for a moment, looking back on his long relationship with Niskit with fresh eyes. "Although I suppose she had her own motivations for guarding my secrets, even the secret of my presence. Whatever the reasons, though, if she discovers this secret, she'll guard it, too. She's a reliable friend in that respect."
Jane still thought it was a stretch to call Niskit a friend, but if confidentiality was his main criterion, maybe she counted. It wasn't hard to imagine that Loki hadn't had too many people he could speak relatively openly with. The nightmare of his wrongful conviction for and false confession to Baldur's death, so early on in Loki's long life, couldn't have helped.
"Do you have any other friends on Alfheim? Acquaintances, people you might look up?"
"I know others there," Loki said. "As to whether I'll seek any of them out, I haven't given it much thought."
"What about visitors?"
"No visitors. If I have to, I'll disguise the door to prevent anyone from knocking."
"That seems kind of…drastic."
"Not when one doesn't want visitors. If I want to see anyone, that'll be my decision." Jane, Loki thought, looked unhappy with his explanation. He suspected she was preparing for an argument, one he hoped he could preempt. "Did my mother or Thor say something to you about visiting me?"
"No. But your father did."
"Odin told you he intends to find me on Alfheim?" he asked, words tumbling out before the shock had subsided. "Did he tell you when? Or why? Or…why?" Hiding the door wouldn't be enough. If he had to permanently hide himself from Heimdall to avoid Odin tracking him down, he would. "Tell me everything he said about it," he continued, and the argument might now be coming from him, since Jane was shaking her head.
"He didn't say anything about him going to Alfheim. He said I could go see you there whenever I wanted, as long as it was okay with you."
Loki drew his head back in renewed surprise. This was just as unfathomable, though in an entirely different way.
"It was kind of nice of him. He didn't do it for me, he was pretty clear on that point. He did it for you. He thinks I'm a good influence," she said, cracking a wry smile.
"Does he." Such a good influence that he would put the power of the bifrost and Asgard's Gatekeeper at the command of a mortal? There had to be more. Loki's first thought was that Odin had asked her to report on him, but Jane had already denied that. Still, perhaps Jane would visit and then, upon her arrival back in Asgard, she would find not Heimdall ready to send her on the second leg of her journey back to Midgard, but Odin waiting with questions.
"There's still that 'as long as it's okay with you' part."
Loki nodded absently. Spending time with Jane on Alfheim while not desperate to get a couple of curses removed sounded like a dream, one far too good to be true. It couldn't be that simple. Not as some kind of a gift from Odin, and not in terms of how anyone else – especially anyone else named Thor – might react to it. Could it be made to work anyway? Perhaps. He looked back at Jane to find her watching him expectantly. "Yes, of course it's…. When I said I didn't want visitors, I meant from Asgard. Not you. Of course you may visit. We should discuss it first, though, lest your visit encourage certain others to do the same." The more he spoke of it, though, the less certain he was that Jane visiting would be a good idea. He wasn't sure why, but being alone with her on Alfheim seemed a far more dangerous and difficult proposition than being alone with her on Midgard.
"Thanks for clarifying. And I get that you want your privacy and some alone time. I wouldn't just show up on your doorstep. Maybe we can alternate visits. Plan something for Alfheim when you come back to Earth."
"That's possible, yes. Did Odin truly ask for nothing in return when he offered you this?"
"No. He didn't ask me to spy on you, I promise. No strings. He even offered to send an astronomy expert to Earth to meet with me, once things settled down from the war. And he didn't—." It struck her at precisely the same moment she registered that Loki was now looking at her like she'd lost her mind. "Wow."
"What?"
"Your dad's a real piece of work."
Loki smiled as he watched Jane stew with some new realization. "Ah. So it was Odin you were speaking with after all. I was beginning to have my doubts. Tell me."
"No, it's nothing. Just…" – she rubbed a hand over her forehead – "it's personal, I guess."
Personal? What is personal between her and Odin? "If it concerns me, Jane…I think I have a right to—"
"It doesn't have anything to do with you. I would tell you if it did, okay? But I don't think we should talk about it."
There was nothing personal between Jane and Odin. Not directly. Indirectly, he was the connection between Jane and Odin, except she had said it wasn't about him, and he trusted her. He wasn't the only connection between them, though. "It's about Thor, then."
Jane sucked in a breath and looked away. She should've known better than to think Loki would let it go, or to think he wouldn't figure it out. She couldn't believe she hadn't figured it out until now. But Odin had caught her back-footed last night and she hadn't given it a second's thought since then.
"If you don't want to talk about it, I—"
"I think he was trying to bribe me into breaking things off with Thor."
Jane faced him with hands on hips, voice angry but controlled, her whole stance defiant but her expression suggesting she almost expected a scolding. Probably he was reading too much into it, too caught up in his own turbulent reactions. He was surprised and yet not: he'd never seen any sign that Odin had acknowledged or even particularly taken note that Thor and Jane were a couple, but he had no doubt that if Odin considered it worthy of notice, then the All-Father would oppose it and have no qualms about intervening. That Odin intervened with Jane instead of with Thor, though, was again surprising. Then again, it also wasn't, because how much easier – and less risky for the relationship between the two kings – would it be for "the mortal woman" to do Odin's dirty work? A problematic romance nipped in the bud without Odin ever having to take up the pruning shears. Assuming Jane took the "bribe," as she'd put it.
Which left him in an ironically miserable position.
He swallowed hard. Jane hadn't asked for his opinion and, probably, she wouldn't. No need to chase his own tail into madness trying to decide on one, then. "What exactly did he say?"
Jane grasped at the memories, disjointed and hazy for multiple reasons, and hastily sifted through them. She wouldn't repeat all of it to Loki. Partly because of the tricky relationship between Thor and Loki and partly because it was personal. It was humiliating. And condescending and infuriating and even if maybe Odin had a valid point or two it was none of his business. What relationship came without challenges? What kind of father threw himself into the mix and tried to chase off a girlfriend like she was some gold-digging hussy who wasn't good enough for his son? So maybe he hadn't used any of those words. No, it was all compliments and praise and gratitude. And a bribe to break up with his son.
"He said he was glad I was friends with you and Thor but Thor would be a distraction from all the incredible work I could accomplish. And I would be a distraction from him being king. So it would obviously be better for everyone if we were just friends."
Nauseating, really, to find himself in agreement with Odin. Especially when Jane was clearly not only angry but hurt. Odin's was not her first rejection, but the rejections she was used to, as far as he knew, were about her work, not about her. And perhaps it also bothered her that it came from Thor's father. Resisting and opposing Odin had become instinctive, all the more so that Odin had angered and hurt Jane. Equally nauseating, then, to find himself wanting to encourage Jane to do all in her power to spite the old man – to do the opposite of what she was asked and to flaunt it in Odin's face. Since simultaneously siding with and against them both wasn't possible, he should at least be trying to provide solace to Jane in some way. He knew enough about friendship to know that. Yet he felt tongue-tied and impotent. Luckily, Jane continued in his silence.
"That's when he offered to send an astronomer to consult with me. Cosmologist, he said. He didn't overtly connect it, it's not like he said there were conditions. More like, look what great things you can achieve if you're not 'distracted.' And he kept saying all these things and I was just trying to keep up, and…. It was a bribe. I know it was. Stop seeing Thor, just be friends, and I'll get you whatever you need for your work. He didn't say it, but that's what he meant."
"It was probably a bribe," he said, deliberately keeping his words few and his tone circumspect. The field before him was a treacherous one, but he could offer her that. That she wasn't imagining things or blowing them out of proportion.
Jane nodded, feeling vindicated. But that was ridiculous. And unfair to Loki. Now that she'd had a chance to consider it, she knew what Odin was doing. She didn't need Loki, who hadn't been there, to tell her. And she had no business dragging him into something that had nothing to do with him, especially given the rift between him and his father and her continued hope that they could someday reconcile. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to badmouth your father."
"Oh, please don't restrain yourself on my account."
"I'm serious. And you should know, when he offered to let me use the bifrost to visit you on Alfheim, that wasn't part of the bribe. That was really about you. He was genuinely concerned about you. Whatever else is going on, he does care about you."
"You seem surprisingly certain of all that."
"I am. He stepped up for you during the pronouncement, remember?"
"I recall him stepping up for himself."
Jane scrutinized Loki before responding. "Do you really see it that way?"
"I—" One syllable in and he was reconsidering. "I don't know what it is about you, Jane, that compels me toward honesty."
"I've been told it's acid."
"Mmm. It's possible you were misinformed. As for Odin…I don't know. I was…perhaps not at my most discerning, at the time. I know he didn't want Geirmund painting a portrait of an innocent accident. But was that about me, or about himself? I wasn't the only one affected by what happened back then. Whether I was culpable or not, he still lost his son that day. His real son."
"I really hate it when you say things like that."
"That Baldur was his real son? That's the truth."
"Adoption doesn't make you any less a 'real' anything, Loki. Please tell me you know that."
"I do know that. But I wasn't adopted."
"Okay, I guess technically you weren't. But what were your parents supposed to do, cart you down to the local Children's Services Center on Jotunheim and start filling out paperwork? Even if they somehow could have, they wouldn't have. Do you know why?"
"I could take a crack at a very long list of reasons but I would still be at it when the sun rises here."
"Your mother was terrified that your birth parents would recognize you, even though you didn't look Jotun anymore. Especially Farbauti. She was terrified they would want you back. She was practically shaking when she told me how much she hated Farbauti for what they did to you. There was no way they were going back and asking to get everything legally documented. And what difference does a piece of paper make, anyway?"
Over a long, deep exhale, Loki allowed himself to soak in what Jane was saying. Such a pleasant, almost romantic take on events, very Jane-like when it came to understanding the family that had raised him – any family, probably. But it was so much more complicated, and not particularly romantic. His mother fearful the Frost Giants would take him away and shaking with hatred for Farbauti, though, that drove away a little of the jamesway chill. He could hold on to that for future chilly days. "He knew who I was when he took me."
"So?"
"So, he had ulterior motives. Why are you defending him? I thought you were angry at him."
"I am," Jane said out of instinct, then repeated it when she remembered she really was, and why. With a sigh she tried to let go of it again, for the moment at least. "Look, even from just a handful of run-ins with him, I get that he wouldn't be the easiest man to have for a father, and he's been yours for over a thousand years. If he was standing in front of me right now, I'd really want to slap him."
"My dear Jane, if I still had the throne I would give it up to bear witness."
"Don't give up any thrones. I said I'd want to. But I do think he loves you, even if he's terrible at showing it. People aren't all good or all bad, and whatever else he is, whatever titles he has, he's still a person."
He once might have disagreed on that "all bad" reference. Regardless, his skin was officially crawling. "Jane?" he said with his most fetching smile.
"Yeah?"
"It's nearly time for us to head back to the galley. And I strongly prefer not to spend what little time we have left here talking about Odin."
Jane mustered a smile back. Though she didn't enjoy the reminder, she could roll with the sentiment; she didn't want to spend all their remaining time on Odin, either. "Even if I go back to badmouthing him?"
He scrunched his face up into an exaggerated cringe. "You do know how to tempt me, but even then, I'm afraid I must decline. I'd hate to run out of time to give you this," he said, twisting his hand to grasp something from storage.
Jane reached out tentatively for the object Loki had just produced out of seeming nothingness, a thin book bound in a soft dimpled black leather. Silvery dots – but no words – adorned the cover. She gave a quizzical look to Loki, who simply watched her with a slight smile, then she opened to the first page. It was blank. "A new journal?"
Loki went to Jane's side and peered down. "No. Various imprimaturs normally go here. Turn the page."
Jane nodded and turned to the next page, which was not blank but full of words printed in a cursive style, just like its facing page. "Look you to the east!" she read. "In the very borderland of the sun! The hall of…. The Ancestors' Star poem? You got me a copy of the Ancestors' Star poem already? That was just…three days ago and you've been busy with so many other things. When did you have the time to do this?" she asked, alternating between flipping through more pages and glancing up at Loki, who was looking fairly pleased with himself, and deservedly so. With everything going on, she would have thought he would have forgotten. She had forgotten.
He feigned modesty with a little shrug while preening at Jane's obvious pleasure. "I had only to inquire with Tassi and then order it done, so it took little of my time. A bit more of Beirul's time, and the printer's and binder's. I still have my title, though, and my title gets things done quickly." His title and his account, which was still receiving funds, as Illugi had confirmed right before Loki asked him to participate in the treaty signing. "I wanted to do more with it; it isn't a proper printing. I had thought to get a cover design burned in with light from the Ancestors' Star, and add a kind of glossary for the kennings, but here my ideas did outpace the available time. Perhaps I'll be able to find a general reference work on Alfheim. Or I could make a basic glossary when next we see each other."
"I'm still stuck on 'light from the Ancestors' Star.' You can do that?"
"Well…yes. The light is isolated, amplified, focused. The process is little too laborious to be done so quickly. But there's no more perfect way to create a cover for such a work."
Jane fixed a curious look on Loki; he seemed genuinely contrite that he'd failed to craft a book cover from starlight for her while in the midst of dealing with yet another life-upending revelation. Before that, he'd gifted her with a corrected and animated version of a drawing she'd made of Asgard's nighttime sky, which he'd also been dissatisfied with since he hadn't finished and hadn't even meant for her to know about it, and a book he'd snuck into her room without ever intending to tell her it was from him. At least he wasn't hiding gifts anymore. "I think you're the best gift-giver I've ever known. And I don't need perfection. I love this, just as it is. Although…I'd really love to see how you harness starlight at some point."
"Easily arranged," Loki said with an agreeable smile that belied a flash of bitterness. Easily arranged by Thor, he didn't bother to add. If Jane thought it through – assuming she hadn't already – she would reach the same conclusion.
"Okay. Thanks for this," she said, closing the book and squeezing her hand around the soft cover. "That was such an incredible day, start to finish, and I'll always cherish this and remember that little tavern, the performance, the fireplace…thank you."
"You're quite welcome. Shall we head back to the station?"
Jane's mouth opened before any words appeared to fill it. "Um…now?"
"As far as I'm aware, I've picked up what I was meant to pick up and dropped off what I was meant to drop off, and we have an appointment."
It felt so abrupt, but she supposed it wasn't. Loki was right about the time; it was ticking away, and they were expected. Avoidance, probably. Leaving the jamesway for the last time would put them one giant step closer to Loki's departure. Dragging things out, though, wouldn't change anything. For a second, she relived that heady moment when Loki had taken her hand and kissed it. Was that his standard goodbye, or reserved for when he was headed off to war? She would find out soon enough.
She nodded and waited for Loki to go first. He seemed to hesitate, but only for a second. His head swung in the direction of their little work table when they emerged from the bedroom, but then he continued past it toward the vestibule where they'd left their discarded ECW gear.
"Ready?" Loki asked, peering out at Jane from behind the balaclava.
"Mm-hm," Jane said, not trusting her voice with actual words.
As they took off at Loki's typically brisk pace and left the jamesway behind, Jane focused on keeping her footing to avoid focusing on the ache in her chest.
/
/
Loki responded more and more perfunctorily to Jane's renewed attempts at light conversation as they entered the main corridor on their way to the galley. When she asked if he would go surfing at the beach he thought he might start out at on Alfheim and he mumbled a "Perhaps," she gave up. She wasn't sure he even knew what surfing was, or if they called it something different on Asgard.
"Something's going on," Loki said, his pace slowing.
"What do you mean?" Jane asked, glancing around and seeing nothing amiss.
"There's no one here."
"I'm sure everyone's in the galley."
"Everyone? Not a single person still on his or her way? No one lingering in conversation out here in the corridor? Olivia said the point of doing this now was to stagger the timing. But the station appears deserted, just like this morning. Something is going on."
Jane looked up at Loki nervously as they made their way through the side corridor to the galley door. He's being paranoid, she told herself even as she registered the indistinct din of voices beyond the door. He was frowning and didn't meet her eyes. The door then burst open and she jumped. It was Austin, also just like earlier this morning.
"—totally inappropriate," Loki heard from within, a man's lowered voice he couldn't quite place, followed by a conspicuous shushing sound. When the door closed and further muffled the words behind it, he could still hear just enough to discern the angry tone of some of them.
"You're early."
"Perhaps by two or three minutes. Not enough to matter, unless something is happening in there that I'm not meant to know about," Loki said, keeping his tone even. Austin's smile, a poor attempt at mimicking his usual one, fell away.
"Okay. Maybe it's not so much you're early as the rest of us were trying to get something resolved before you got here, and apparently without a building falling down around us all we can do is argue."
"If the others no longer wish to do this, I understand. This is your home, and as I said, I don't wish to make anyone uncomfortable in it. I could wait in my old room, or Jane's, if anyone wants to…what?" Austin was shaking his head.
"That's not it. In fact, let's go ahead and get this started. Not like we can do it without you."
Loki turned a critical gaze toward Jane, but she shrugged and flashed him a look that clearly indicated she had no idea what was going on. He supposed she wouldn't; they'd been together the whole morning apart from a quick stop at the bathrooms where he'd seen no one else. What is it now? he wondered.
He nodded to Austin and followed the other man in, shoulders back, steps measured and confident, despite a pit of dread in his stomach and the incongruous sense of protectiveness in his heightened awareness of Jane's location behind him. They were not massing for attack, but they were massing for something.
He was really beginning to dread entering the galley.
/
Since this chapter is shorter than usual (though perfectly average compared to the earlier chapters!), I'm going to do a bit of catch-up responding to guest reviews. These go back to OCTOBER 2020! And I mean I don't always respond to them here anyway, but when I have the time & "space" I try to do so. You can tell when my ability to "keep it together" during #COVID fell apart. So, those of you who wrote these, you may have no memory of it anymore (these are all 2020), but, here we go anyway - warning, I have not tried to be brief. :-) Skim for bold font if you want to skip to the preview/excerpt.
Guest (218/9): Ha, you used to follow it in high school, and now that you're retired and helping out with the grandkids you have time to catch up? :-) (This story really is some level of craziness.) Hahahaha, I'm just happy I actually know what "GOAT" means...though I had to look it up in circa 2019 and still have to stop and think a second. Me, too, there is much I would like, I think, about wintering over there.
Guest (prologue/1): Yeah, FFN was not looking good there for a bit! I have no intent to move stuff over to AO3, though. FFN is a better fit for me, and besides, holy smokes the level of effort to repost all this on there! I did put a couple of my shorter stories up on that site, must've been around this time, sort of testing it out. I don't have time to manage two different websites, though, too. Never fear though, everything I've ever written is in a Word doc, and everything is backed up in at least one location outside my computer.
Purple Jaguar (167/8 & 168/9): If I ever fully write the "Any Other Child" story it will include evidence of that particular early childhood bond between Thor and Loki. And YES, this is a narrative that "works" for Loki, it's okay if he had this FG "vestige" if he did it in a way that was far more powerful and impressive than those "barbarians." :-) / (169/70): Glad it gave you a good laugh. :-) Yeah, Loki's not down for sugar-coating what happened. / (177/8): Steve was so hard to write! I don't feel much "connection" to him, he doesn't pique my interest really as a character, and, of course, these scenes aren't about Steve himself really anyway. It made sense to include him here, in that also Tony doesn't trust Loki, so, back-up on hand, along with someone else Tony can grill afterward for his current assessment of Loki. That scepter...for a few years now I've been longing to come up with a good idea for the scepter being used on Loki, for trying my hand at writing mind-control because I'm usually dissatisfied when I've read it, and examining the aftermath etc. What SHIELD has been up to with the scepter...yeah I think there's a good chance they've tested it. I think of them as the "good guys" who need the "scare quotes" because they operate in some gray areas whose goodness may at times be questionable. / (178/9): Thanks! I was surprised at how many people mentioned appreciating that scene between Odin and Frigga. / (185/6): Brokk is eminently hateable. :-) Probably a true sociopath. And yes, absolutely, that "beneath" is one of the title meanings. / (186/7) I hadn't read that in a while! I like that line too. :-) *This* is brotherhood. And it does mean something to Loki, even if he's not ready to jump back into or even acknowledge brotherhood. But that guileless statement probably enables the thaw between them in this chapter. / (199/200): Yes exactly, Geirmund not wanting to move into the palace and his being nervous around Thor stemmed not from modesty or something as Thor might have assumed, but straight from guilt. / (193/4): Thanks, re Loki & Farbauti saying a similar thing about Thor. I like the idea that there are some real similarities between the two, and kind of leave it open whether that's "nature" or "nurture." / (209/10): Thanks, yeah, it's a unique association for him and he's had a regular encounter with it there so it's a strong one, too. / (216/7): Ha you know me...callbacks are always a strong possibility. :-) It's such a thoughtful gift from Thor, I'm not sure he consciously realizes something like "Loki needs the ball to be in his court right now," and it doesn't come naturally to Thor to *let* a ball be in Loki's court, but that's essentially what he's doing.
Guest (106/7): Woops! Thank you for mentioning the Gullveig/Geirmund switcheroo! I have just now fixed it. (BTW, I normally don't go back and fix the older stuff piecemeal, I have to be at my desktop to do it b/c of changes in how I store files over the years, and then that changed version is not backed up properly in case of desktop-catastrophe. In general all that stuff is on hold til after Beneath is finished. But this one I went ahead and did for whatever reason!)
Guest (1/2): That's amazing! I remember I did look this up when you posted it. And I can't take credit or even really claim luck, I did research scientific theories of time travel (the technical physics is beyond me but conceptually it's all very interesting), and stuck with the rules of the one I chose.
Guest (214/5): Hope springs eternal. :-)
LittleRedDot (219/20): Ha, yes, it's a bit cruel of me, but I'm glad you found things to enjoy in the chapter! And here's a random thing: I've done some thinking about how media might evolve on Asgard, and the non-universality of "celebrity culture," both in terms of internal consistency for "my" Asgard and for working with various elements of my plot. There are no "gossip rags" (not that gossip doesn't happen!), and news is mainly disseminated via "the register," yes, like a newspaper, including royal/governmental decisions and announcements. It's not for profit and so it's generally dry, straight news, no click-bait ha, pics almost never. Re "boat about to be lit," ha, YES, "one foot in the grave" is a great "translation." :-) We don't see much of this side of Asgard (at least in Thor 1), but you have to think when they relax their speech must too, and if Loki & Thor don't know all the idioms & expressions Jane etc. use, it can't be that they don't have such things, they do, theirs are just different. So for me this kind of thing is necessary to making a place feel authentic. Thanks for mentioning it, glad you appreciated it! Re Loki's rule, I'd say there was confusion among the records keepers, of which the register is also part: no public ceremony for transition of rule, chaos over the FG incidents & Thor's banishment & Odin's collapse, Frigga's inaccessibility, combined with some people's bias about Loki. Ha, yes, Mid-Winter is coming up so soon now! And they are definitely in prep-mode for it at the Pole. It would be nice if Loki could be there. So much has changed since then, though, it doesn't seem terribly feasible. On the other hand, hope does spring eternal, and, Loki's plans have occasionally turned out to not go as intended, so, who knows, anything's possible! Thanks for all your comments, and, pretty sure no writer ever complained about a long (positive) review. :-)
Guest (2019/20): Thank you so much for the kind words! Hope you are doing well. :-) Sometimes I feel *I'm* not worthy of all the lovely encouraging comments I get on here.
And now to previews for Ch. 223-turned-224: Loki enters the galley. When Loki exits the galley, things have changed...but not necessarily what you're thinking. (Also, wow, one of the most difficult-to-write passages I've ever written is in this chapter.)
I thought I wouldn't be able to find a non-spoilery excerpt, but then YAY found this:
"You don't have the whole picture."
It could have been a voice in the back of his head. Sometimes it was the voice in the back of his head. This time, though, the voice – Jane's voice – came from his immediate left. Quiet, but easily heard in the room Mari had silenced.
"Jane, don't. Don't get—" Don't get involved, he'd meant to say. You still have to live with them. She didn't give him the chance.
