.-.
Beneath
Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Five – Obstacles
Loki had negotiated for his life, for Thor's life, for random others' lives at various times and places. For free lodging, for things he didn't want to do, for things he did want to do, for a large seaship, and for a small moon, which he wasn't quite sure if he still owned, or had ever actually owned, seeing as the legality of the negotiations was murky. And he had just successfully negotiated for a treaty ending a multi-realm war.
This talk with Mari Koppel would call for something different. Different strategy, different attitude. Nothing was at stake but his personal preference to remain. It was his preference, and he had decided to advocate for himself. But how? He was not the aggrieved party. He had attacked their realm, and lied to each of them, and they had every right to not want him living among them. Clustered around the tables behind the galley door sat no Svartalfheim, Alfheim, or Vanaheim to blame everything on, to paint himself in a better light, not in any way he was willing to pursue. And he had little to offer in these negotiations.
Olivia had said something about listening instead of talking. Negotiations obviously required both, and Loki considered himself skilled in both, but his real strength in listening was putting to use what he heard – saying exactly what he needed to in order to get the outcome he desired. Any attempt to manipulate Mari, to use her words against her, seemed inappropriate under the circumstances. It was an instinct he would have to resist, and he feared it would leave him toothless. Helpless. How was he supposed to convince her by simply listening? By really simply listening, and not merely appearing to simply listen? He would be at her mercy, and he did not have the impression that she felt particularly merciful toward him.
Still, Farbauti of Jotunheim had once stood between him and what he wanted, and he'd left with what he wanted.
He wished that affirmation made him feel as confident as it should have.
"The Computer Room?" Mari said.
Loki nodded his agreement.
"Mari, are you sure you—"
"I'm sure, Paul. It's fine."
They've become a couple. The way Paul looked her, how closely together they stood, Loki was almost certain, though Paul had never once mentioned it. He vaguely wondered when it had happened, or if it had been true all along, a secret he'd failed to notice any hint of.
"Okay. Um, Loki…I just wanted to say, on behalf of all of us, it's true that Mari's not the only one with concerns, and maybe we all have a few questions. But Mari feels the strongest about it, and, uh…"
"And I'm the one who doesn't mind saying so."
"Right," Paul said, glancing away for a moment. "What I'm trying to say is, Mari wanted to talk to you on her own, but she's not alone. We're all with her, in solidarity."
"As you should be. It's all right," Loki said, although it smarted a bit that Paul was the one to say it. Paul was among those here he would have called friend, or something close to it. Over poker games and breaks and a few other random encounters, Loki had heard stories about growing up in Indiana with a younger sister and an older brother, playing football and baseball, continued studies with a scholarship, then a broken betrothal that had led Paul to decide he didn't want the rest of his life to be all planned out. A string of adventures had followed, some working out better than others, each contributing to a rich well of stories. Loki had told a few edited stories himself. He might have told himself now that Paul was only speaking up out of a sense of obligatory allegiance, a need to stand, literally, by his woman. But Paul had just explicitly told him otherwise.
"Should I…?" Jane asked, peeling herself off the wall and approaching. Gary had already gone back into the galley, as had Paul.
Loki turned her way and for a moment could hardly think. Memories from Asgard blurred together, moments when he'd wanted and needed Jane's presence so badly it was a near physical craving. He didn't need her for this. A little distance between them might even relieve some of the pressure on his chest. But then he realized that if Jane didn't accompany them, she would rejoin the group in the galley.
"May we have a moment?" he asked, turning back to Mari.
"No problem. I'll be in the Computer Room."
Loki's gaze dropped to the floor; in his peripheral vision Mari receded from view.
Jane approached gingerly, trying to get a sense of what Loki was thinking. His expression was serious, all business, and she didn't know what to make of it.
"If you go in there, what do you intend to tell them?"
His voice was quiet; he didn't sound mad. He was, though. She knew him well enough to know. Jane swallowed over a lump. "Nothing. Nothing about you."
"They'll ask."
"They might. I'll tell them they'll have to ask you."
Loki's eyes drifted closed a little too long for a blink. He didn't want them to ask him, either. They shouldn't have had any basis to ask such things. Toquestion events as they understood them.
"I won't say anything else, I promise. I made a mistake, okay? It won't happen again. I just…I got carried away, and I betrayed your confidence. I knew what I—. Oh, God."
"What?" Loki asked uneasily. He was disinclined toward sympathy toward Jane and her clamoring for absolution. He still couldn't quite believe what she had done. But the earnest imploring she was vibrating with a second before had disintegrated and she was sagging as though the life had poured out of her. He wavered.
Jane swallowed hard. She didn't want to say it out loud. It was humiliating. But besides that, it was her screw-up and it was Loki who'd been hurt, and making it about her would be wrong. "Nothing. I just realized what a bad friend I was in there. I'll say I'm sorry as many times as I have to. I hope you at least know I mean it."
"I…I understand," he said, because he had to say something. "Mari's waiting."
"Yeah. Will you be okay, or do you want me to come with you?"
"Of course I'll be okay with her. I don't need a nursemaid."
Jane drew back. "That was uncalled for."
Loki allowed himself the time to draw in a slow steadying breath. "I apologize. I am…unsettled. But no, I think it's best if I meet with her alone."
"Okay. I understand," Jane said, then grimaced, realizing she was just repeating Loki. She didn't know what to say any more than he did, maybe. As she waited – for what, she didn't know – and awkwardly shifted her weight, Loki nodded languidly. Then turned and walked away.
She didn't think her heart could possibly sink any further, but it did. Probably she was expecting too much too fast. But what if she really had ruined things, and Loki was more than temporarily "unsettled"? What if she got what she wanted, what she knew was for the best, and Loki stayed…but he wanted nothing to do with her? He trusted her, Jane knew, more than maybe anyone. She knew why, too. Everyone else had betrayed him, in his eyes at least. Or believed he'd betrayed Asgard. Or believed he'd murdered his younger brother. Or grew up hating Frost Giants. Up until now, none of that was true of her. He'd confided in her about things she'd long suspected – and now knew for certain – that he shared with no one else. And that meant, she realized, that she was truly important to him. Of course he wasn't going to disappear for the next fifty years. He wanted her in his life as much as she wanted him in hers, maybe even more so. He needed her.
Jane swore under her breath. It was one mistake. It was far from his biggest secret, and one she didn't even understand why he insisted remain secret. In her head she did, maybe, a little. She'd had a glimpse of an insight, that first night she'd woken him from a nightmare, when he'd vacillated between distraught and cruel. Between vulnerability and doing everything in his power to appear invulnerable. Looking back, she'd had a form of power over him then. She had agreed to keep the secret of his presence, but she could have broken that agreement at any time, and she had powerful friends that he would have called enemies, including his own brother. But she didn't see how any of that was relevant to the rest of the Polies, especially now. They weren't his enemies, they weren't his competitors. They did have power over him, in the sense of urging him to stay or to leave, but he'd been trying to talk them out of wanting him to stay, and if he did want to stay…. She couldn't make sense of it. In her gut, his behavior seemed counterproductive and pointlessly pigheaded.
Whether she understood why he wanted to keep a secret was irrelevant to respecting the fact that he did, though. It was his choice, and she had taken it away from him, and she couldn't even blame it on some slip of the tongue. Worse, Loki's life story was one of broken trust.
"I betrayed your confidence. I knew what I was doing and I did it anyway." Her thoughts had instantly snapped back to Niskit and what she and Loki had talked about in the jamesway. She'd been so critical of that woman, but Niskit had never done to Loki what she just did. It was as crushing now as it was the instant it hit her: She was a worse friend than Niskit.
/
/
"Why did you do it?" Mari asked before he had even closed the door behind him.
He'd traversed the short distance down the main corridor from the galley entrance to the Computer Room next door, the weight of Jane's stare on his back. As much as he dreaded this, if he had to be alone with one of them right now, Mari was an easy choice.
"I don't care if it's personal," she continued when he didn't immediately respond. "I still want to know. What happened to people I care about is also personal. It sounded like Jane wanted to make excuses for you. I guess she feels sympathy for you, for whatever was going on. This is not the place where you're going to find any sympathy," Mari said, pointing to the floor at her feet. "Some people said maybe you have what they call 'daddy issues.' I really hope you didn't attack my city because of daddy issues."
Loki's jaw tightened at the mention of "daddy issues," a belittling turn of phrase that suggested a childish temper tantrum, but he showed no reaction otherwise. "Jane doesn't speak for me. I have no interest in making excuses."
"Explanations, then."
"I normally don't answer that question, for a multitude of reasons. But as I'm asking something of you, something I understand is difficult, it's only fair that you ask something of me that is also difficult."
Mari said nothing, and Loki found himself grasping at the silence. He didn't have a prepared answer, other than a refusal to provide one, and Mari was an impenetrable wall, giving him little to go on. Her anger was cold, hardened. Calcified, even. Justified, and she knew it.
"I had just discovered a secret that had been kept from me my entire life. Don't ask me to tell you what it was, because I won't. I ca—"
"Something traumatic."
Loki stopped mid-syllable. His stomach dropped to somewhere more in the vicinity of his feet. "Has Jane said—"
"Not Jane. Your mother."
"What?" he got out, the word little more than breath.
"Her radio address. Well, we heard it on the ham radio. You didn't hear it? It went like this: You went through something traumatic, and you acted out on a really big scale. It makes you sound like an overgrown toddler. But I don't think that's who you are."
"Yes, well…," Loki said, pulling the nearest chair out from the row of tables and computers and sinking into it, leaving Mari standing further down the aisle between the tables. It was too much, and he was overwhelmed and worn down. What exactly had his mother said about him, broadcast to the entire realm? He hadn't given it much thought before; he supposed he'd never had the time, as with so many other things going on in that frenzied handful of days.
"You have more control over yourself than a toddler. And toddlers aren't responsible for their behavior. You are. Whatever traumatic thing you found out, that doesn't make it okay for you to invade and attack my planet, whether you were in charge of every little decision or not, whatever other so-called unseen hands might've been out there. So I—"
"Unseen hands?"
"Your mother said there were unseen hands. But your hands are the ones we saw. Maybe the only ones we saw, since I'm not sure those other things that were here even had hands. So why Earth? Why New York? That's what I want to know. Or did you find out some terrible thing that New York did to you or your family?"
Loki shook his head at the absurdity of the idea, still reeling over the further revelation of words his mother had spoken publicly, trying to drag himself past that and on to Mari's questions. He'd never even heard of New York before arriving on Earth in that underground cavern where the mortals were ignorantly experimenting on the Tesseract. In attempting to formulate an answer, he found it difficult in yet another way. He needed to explain, in some manner that was acceptable both to him and, if possible, to Mari, what he had done and why. The first word of any explanation should be "I." Yet every way he sought to begin put another name first. Your people located and activated a powerful artifact, without understanding what they were toying with. It wasn't an excuse, an effort to shift blame; it was simply the truth, and the first event, from Loki's perspective, in a series that had led to his arrival specifically on Midgard. Another being – he would not use the name "Thanos" with her – thus learned that this artifact was located on Earth. His lackey gave me a weapon. He showed me how to use it. Showed me how to influence thoughts. Demonstrated it on me. Dug into my mind. Toyed with my memories. He showed me what would happen if I didn't cooperate. Did he snap my spine? He decided when and whether I was allowed to eat, or drink, or sleep. Toyed with my memories. But he didn't succeed. He did not. Except he could still remember Thor throwing him off the bridge. But he knew that wasn't what really happened, and he also remembered letting go of the scepter, Thor on the other end of it. He didn't succeed. But he kept trying. And then he offered me an opportunity. I took it. Gave me the scepter. I took it.
I took it. He offered. I took.
He raged against it in silence, expression unchanged. How could it possibly take so long to reach an "I"? An "I" in which he was the one doing something, rather than something being done to him. Everything that had happened to him there, on Thanos's jagged rock skirting the edge of the abyss, he'd dismissed it as irrelevant, inconsequential. He'd borne far worse. No food for a few days? A minor discomfort, and who needed food when you had rage?. Hours spent sifting and examining his memories each time the fingers slipped out of his brain? No more than an inconvenience, as long as in the end he could discern memory from fabrication, and he always could. But when he laid it all out, as though to explain in simple terms, it was more. It was worse. It was, perhaps, consequential.
His thoughts could race only so long and so far in that direction, though, and his mind slammed shut against it along with his eyes, which had long since become unfocused and unseeing anyway.
He had a final image of himself being hauled up bodily and slammed headfirst into a door – used as a literal bludgeon to batter down an entrance. Not a door, but a portal. To Midgard.
That wasn't what happened, though. No matter how far Thanos and his nameless minion may have burrowed under his skin and into his mind, digging for and finding things to attempt to manipulate him with, his decisions were unquestionably his own. He was escaping, as he'd aimed to do all along, and would have agreed to anything that resulted in passage out of Thanos's realm. Any realm, any plan, any role, any means. That Midgard held more appeal than some random world he'd never heard of was undeniable, though. It wasn't solely escape. By the time escape came, he wasn't quite thinking of it as escape.
He knew he could chase his own tail in circles all day on this with nothing to show for the exercise. And Mari was still there, standing in the middle row of computers, watching him with a remarkable degree of patience.
"I don't have all of the answers you seek. They are…messy, you might say. But 'why Midgard' is simple enough. A powerful artifact was located on Earth, and I was sent to obtain it." Such a useful grammatical construction, the passive, for getting around that "I" problem.
"By someone else?" Mari asked, arms going up to cross over her chest.
Loki frowned. The passive hadn't helped as much as he'd hoped. "Yes. I made a bargain. I would deliver the artifact, and keep Earth for myself."
"So there was a deal. And you liked the deal, and you didn't care who got hurt in the process. But it wasn't about Earth? We were just…random? Unlucky enough to happen to have this thing laying around that you came for?"
Loki couldn't disagree with her statements, but at her questions he was shaking his head before he'd decided how to respond. "Have you ever heard of Earth?" Thanos had asked him. Thanos, of course, followed the rule of argumentation which stated that one should only ask questions to which one already knew the answers. And if it hadn't been Earth? "Have you ever heard of Randomgard?" Would he have attempted to follow through with the deal on some other realm, instead of abandoning it and Thanos the instant he was free of the deranged man? His first thought was no, because what interest did he have in ruling some unknown realm? King of Randomgard?
Then again, he had been denied so much, everything, it seemed, and he had felt at the time that he deserved a throne. Of course, he'd been thinking that he deserved Asgard's, and then Midgard's, but had he so truly mindlessly craved it – needed it – that any throne would have done? Would he have been satisfied simply knowing he had faced the challenge of setting out to take something as his and had succeeded? Gut instinct told him no, that was ridiculous, only Midgard held that kind of allure for him. But that was gut instinct of today, when his thoughts had shifted and grown less turbulent than the maelstrom they'd been at the time. He couldn't be sure. It was possible.
He could not explain all of this to Mari. It wouldn't mean anything to her. It wouldn't make any difference. And "escape" was not a word that would ever fall from his lips.
"The other party didn't care about Earth in particular. I did, though. It was random in a sense, but my interest in claiming this world was not."
"Okay. I knew that already. Just checking. What about New York, why New York?"
"New York…was…it seemed the right place. One of your most significant cities, Tony Stark's building…how did you already know that?" Loki asked as soon as he managed to cobble together some minimal answer to her question.
"Jane and I talked. I just wanted to see if you would try to lie about it."
The floor had already collapsed beneath him, but now Loki felt as though another level or two cracked and snapped and gave way, sending him plunging further down. "What did she tell you?" he asked, keeping his tone as neutral as he could.
"Not your deep dark secrets, whatever they are, whatever you're so afraid of anybody else here finding out about. I was pissed off at her for letting you hide here and keeping us in the dark. And I was maybe a little unfair. We talked, and I get that she had nothing but bad choices."
"I wasn't hiding," he said in knee-jerk fashion, the only part of all that he knew how to respond to without much more additional consideration.
"Don't give me that BS. You were literally hiding. From us, from the Avengers, from Gullveig and all those other people that wanted to—"
"I didn't even know about that when I arrived here, Mari."
"Okay, fine, whatever. You weren't hiding, you were just out to use Jane somehow, in the most isolated and inaccessible place on Earth. And now she's your number one advocate. Impressive. How did you recruit her to your side, anyway?"
"I have no idea," Loki answered without pause. "I didn't even want her on my side, not at first. Jane is…." Remarkable. Maddening. Stubborn. Infectious. How could she? "She's kind," he finally said when the swirl of adjectives failed to coalesce into something simple and clear quickly enough.
"Maybe," Mari said after a beat, two uncertain syllables and an inscrutable expression leaving Loki again backfooted, at a loss over what she might be thinking. Though he had paid little attention before, he had never noticed Mari to be so unreadable. In the next heartbeat, though, he considered that Mari might not be the true cause of his predicament. She was controlling the conversation, bordering on interrogation, and he wasn't twitching a finger to wrest that control out from under her. Perhaps it was time for that to change. Olivia had advised him to listen, but Mari wasn't giving him much to listen to, mostly asking questions that she didn't seem to know how to follow up on. She wanted something from all this, but he couldn't decipher what.
"This thing you came here for, where is it now?" she asked.
"Ah…on Asgard," Loki said, hesitating only due to the sudden shift in topic. "It's well protected there." Even from me, he thought, remembering his ill-fated opportunistic attempt to reclaim it. Circumstances had changed since then, of course, and swiping the Ice Casket right in front of Thor hadn't exactly been a challenge, though the same form of subterfuge might not work so well a second time. "No one else is going to come here looking for it, if you were worried about that."
Mari gave an uncertain nod.
"If I might ask…do you have much experience at interrogation?"
She fixed him with a frown full of annoyance. "No."
"I mean no offense. In fact, I commend you for your courage. But it seems to me you're trying to be something you're not."
"Wow. If that's not the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is. Or maybe it's just projection."
"Mmm, maybe," Loki murmured, a hint of smile flickering over his face, gone before fully formed. "I'm trying not to be the pot. Are you sure you need to be the kettle?"
Mari regarded him with an unpleasant expression combining confusion and distaste, but said nothing.
"Perhaps I can help. You asked to speak with me. What did you want out of that? What did you hope to gain?" "What did you want out of that?" The memory was jarring; he'd asked Jane the same thing about the stack of paper she'd left in his room when they brokered their "truce." "I was angry," she'd said. "I wanted you to feel at least a little of the pain you caused." His question had been a challenge, with a touch of a taunt, and behind Jane's calm words anger still simmered. He hardly recognized himself. The question was the same, the intent entirely different. He wanted to reach some form of understanding or compromise with Mari, and not simply for his own expediency. He did want to understand her and what she wanted. But she wasn't a problem to be solved or a puzzle to be pieced together, as he'd thought of Jane in the beginning. Strange and discomfiting as it was, he cared. He barely knew her, but she was one of this group – one of his group? – and he cared.
Mari sighed loudly and looked away after a moment; Loki relaxed minutely as he finally found purchase and traded his position on the back foot to Mari. "I thought maybe I could figure you out. Figure out why you're really here. What you really want. Who you really are."
For nearly a full minute Loki merely blinked. A dark, quiet laugh followed. "No wonder your questions weren't getting you anywhere. I can save you a bit of effort, if you'd like. Questioning me won't elicit the answers you seek, for the simple reason that I don't know them myself. I was a separate party to the peace treaty Asgard signed a few days ago. I signed 'Loki of Asgard.' That much I'm sure of, and little else. A few months ago, not even that."
"So you want to, what, find yourself here?"
Loki shook his head. Perhaps he should want to "find himself," find the answers to those questions. But instinctively he knew that wasn't what he wanted out of the South Pole, if he remained. "I think…I would rather shed the expectations of who I am, or who I should be. I'm weary of them. More easily done when you believed I was Lucas, of course."
"That sounds like finding yourself."
He shook his head again. "I'm not interested in finding or discovering. I see now what Zeke was saying in the galley. I would like to simply be."
"Why couldn't you 'simply be' when you showed up on my planet? When you went to my city? That would've been a great time to 'be.' Or does 'being' include wanton destruction?"
"It doesn't. And you're not wrong. I wasn't capable of 'being' then. I'm sorry that you and your people suffered for it. You didn't deserve what I unleashed upon you. If I may hazard a guess, understanding isn't the only thing you seek, perhaps not even the main thing. You want also to confront. To give rein to your anger. But you don't know how, do you? If you wish to shout or enumerate my wrongs, you need not fear my response. I was…ignorant, before, perhaps willfully so, but now I know what I've done. I can accept whatever you care to say, however you care to say it. Or do you fear your own pent-up anger, and what it will do to you if you truly finally release it? What you might do with it?"
It was Mari's turn to stare. After a moment she pulled out the nearest chair and sat. "I don't know. Maybe. I just…I don't think you should be able to walk around like it never happened. It happened."
"If you think I'll forget, I won't. I can't. You know I count Jane a friend. She was personally affected."
Mari nodded, her expression contemplative. "She told me. How she got flown out to Norway like overnight. About her old roommate that was killed."
Loki opened his mouth, then closed it when he realized he'd anticipated incorrectly. He'd been thinking of Erik Selvig. He knew nothing about the roommate. Jane had mentioned it before, at the same time that he'd asked her about the papers and she'd tried to explain the anger that had driven her. He hadn't inquired further; Jane hadn't offered. Why would she have? He hadn't cared then about the death of some random Midgardian that Jane had once cared about, and he hadn't tried to feign otherwise. He had forgotten. Someone Jane cared about no longer lived, because of him, and he had forgotten.
"I thought maybe I could figure out what you really want. Who you really are."
He was Loki of Asgard. And for this winter season – the full winter season, if he handled this well – he was a Polie. "I know that you still have questions. That you're still seeking. You may continue to question me as much as you like, but I suspect that nothing you ask and no answer I could give would bring you satisfaction. You may not even believe my answers. You barely know me, but one thing you know well is that I lied to you and everyone else here about those fundamental questions you raised."
"You're a talented liar, Brother. Always have been."
For a moment, his head swam. He swallowed.
"I don't know how to undo that damage. I don't know that I can. But I'd like the opportunity to try. If I'm not intruding, then, I'd like to ask a question of you."
"About something other than my interrogation skills? Why? This isn't about me."
"Of course it isn't, for you. But from my perspective it is. Others have concerns but you have objections. You were also personally affected by what I did. Will you tell me about it?"
"You want to know…what happened to me? Why? I told Jane. Haven't you heard enough about it from her?"
"Some," he said, though he realized with some surprise he'd never asked Jane what he was asking Mari, not really. He knew Jane had been sent away. He didn't know how she found out why Tromso had come up so suddenly. How she reacted, whether fear, anger, or, knowing Jane, all-consuming curiosity and maddening frustration at being lied to and relocated half a world away from where she would have most wanted to be. How she found out what he'd done to Erik. Or anything at all about this former roommate. "Very little. I'd like to hear your story, from you."
"Okay," Mari said after a dragging silence, during which she looked just as unsettled as he'd felt earlier. "It's just…it isn't my story."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean it didn't happen to me," Mari said, face drawn, expression stormy and bitter. She didn't immediately continue, but Loki resisted the urge to prod. He could almost see her thoughts churning. "You tore through my office. Or those monsters you brought here. One of my coworkers died. Eight were hurt bad enough they had to go to the hospital. My best friend there, Rachel? She's got some kind of PTSD. She just started going to a shrink, hopefully it's helping. Oh, a shrink is, uh—"
"I know."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess you've been here a while. Or do they have those in Asgard, too?"
"Not really, not as a specialty. Perhaps they should," Loki said with a small, tight smile.
Mari nodded, but Loki didn't think the nature of Asgardian healing was on her mind. "The thing is, I wasn't there. I left the company two days before. I was tired of sitting at a desk all day, tired of working crazy hours for a promotion or a bonus so I wouldn't have to live in a crappy little shared apartment anymore. It was a good job, and I was good at it. I could've stayed, I would've climbed the ladder, at least enough to live okay. But I loved cooking, too. And I was starting to single-handedly keep food delivery services in business. I wasn't happy, you know?"
She looked up at him with earnest eyes. He could see the exact moment she remembered who she was looking at.
"I got an opportunity to work with a chef I really admired – I worked at his restaurant when I was doing my MBA. I did that weekends, some weeknights, and I loved it but the schedule was killing me and I was barely keeping up at my day job without the extra hours there. Then I found out they were hiring here, last-minute replacement. The chef I was working under knew somebody who knew somebody – he told me about the job and wrote me a recommendation. I was still waiting to hear if I'd gotten it, but I knew I couldn't keep going the way I was. So I took a leap. Gave my notice, packed up my desk, gave my plants to Rachel. Two days later…my office turned into a battlefield, except there weren't any soldiers there. Just a bunch of insurance company desk jockeys.
"You see what I mean? It happened to everybody except me. Rachel said my plants got knocked over and the pots broke. It even happened to my plants."
"You weren't there, but you are here. You're standing up for them, by standing up to me."
Mari threaded her fingers up into her hair, further loosening her short ponytail. Then she laughed, though she wasn't quite smiling. "That sounds nice. Yeah, that makes me sound almost like a hero. Defending the innocent. I like it. And I do want to do that. But I think I'm really doing it for me. Because I'm just mad, and…I don't know. I passed the psych eval to come here but maybe I'm the one who needs the shrink. Sometimes I still think I'm going to wake up and find out this was all one extra-level dream and not only are you not here, but I'm not here. I'm nodding off at my old desk on a Friday night, reviewing spreadsheets. I hate spreadsheets."
"They sound dreadful."
"You don't have be patronizing."
"I'm not. I don't mean to be, at least. I don't know what spreadsheets are, but if you were falling asleep over them at your office on a Friday night, they must be dreadful." It was untrue; he knew perfectly well what spreadsheets were. Jane tracked some of her data in them, and he had done so as well in his role as her assistant. Perhaps he should have said that, said that he found them dull, too, but the lie had come more naturally. And he didn't always find them dull. He gave a little shrug. "You left your job because you wanted something more fulfilling. More exciting. You got a little more than you bargained for here."
"I guess that's true," she said, eyebrows raised, eyes lowered.
Loki let the silence linger a while, trying to gauge whether he should say what he was thinking. In the end, he decided to go with honesty this time. "It's not quite the same, but I understand what you mean about everyone else experiencing something you didn't, even though it affected you deeply as well."
"Right. Okay," Mari said, back to glaring at him like before. "This is the part where you show sympathy and understanding, tell me how you've been there, too, right?"
For a long moment, Loki could not find words. He took a deliberate deep breath, then shifted to straighten himself in his chair. "That was not my intent. I—." Or was it? Is it so engrained that I don't know how not to manipulate? He had genuinely not consciously thought of it as such. Every exchange is an attempt to coax out from it what you want, whether you're conscious of it or not. "Never mind."
"You look like a kicked puppy."
"I— what?"
"You heard me."
"I do not. And I'm not trying to—"
"Whatever. Look, I'm not going to apologize, because…well, I'm just not. But whatever you were going to say, go ahead."
"No."
"I want to hear it."
"I don't care if you want to hear it. I'm not going to say it for— entertainment value, or whatever it would be now. It's personal."
"You were going to tell me before."
"I was. And I'm not now. It was a bad idea. Let's move on. When did you find out what happened at your office?"
"You're going to make me say it?"
"I'm not going to make you say anything."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so dismissive. Well, I did, but I take it back, okay? I don't know how to talk to you. You're…you're like this monster in my head, and you sit here and you look like a regular person."
"I can help out there, too, perhaps," he said after a few seconds. "I'm not a regular person."
Mari stood back up, clearly uncomfortable again, but Loki couldn't bring himself to regret saying it.
"Is that a cryptic way of saying you're a monster without saying you're a monster?"
Yes. "You're a monster," Jane had spat at him, with just as much conviction as she'd later insisted he wasn't. The things he'd said and done to earn him that label still stood, along with the thing he was beneath this skin.
But that kind of bitterness wouldn't serve him if he wanted to stay here as a part of this group. No one here wanted to share this isolated, vulnerable home with a monster. "Perhaps a monster is simply where we believe one to be. In the eye of the beholder. As you said, I'm a monster in your head. Who am I to say what I am in your head? But perhaps 'monster' and 'regular person' aren't the only two options. I hope they aren't."
Loki watched her as she considered what he'd said. Her reactions were not nearly as transparent as Jane's, but he was starting to get a better sense of it. When she leaned against the table and hiked one leg up partly onto it, he knew – he hoped – he had made positive progress.
"What were you going to tell me? I haven't forgotten."
He dug the heels of his palms into his thighs and again decided to tell her. He knew it might be a mistake, but it was a risk he'd already been willing to take. He wanted to tell her, it struck him only now. Not her, precisely. Anyone. He wanted to say it. The bottle had been sealed for over a thousand years; speaking of it proved the seal was no more. "The death of my younger brother. The thing that everyone else experienced without me."
"You weren't there when he died?"
Loki's laugh was genuine, if tinged with darkness. "Oh, I was there. He died in my arms. His blood was…. It's just that everyone quickly came to believe I was the one who killed him. Before you panic, I didn't. But I was judged guilty and severely punished, while everyone else mourned. Now they all know I didn't kill him, but that came much later. I was never able to share in their grief."
Mari's response was long in coming, and when it came, he was unsurprised. "How am I supposed to know if any of that is even true?"
"Normally I'd say you'd have to trust me, or choose not to, but in this case you could ask Jane if you like. She was there when the true killer was quite unexpectedly discovered and confessed."
"Wait, this just happened? Were you on the lam for that when you came here?"
"No," he said, taking her instant suspicion in stride. He'd never heard the odd expression about lambs, but he saw no need to ask. "That was centuries ago, when I was quite young. His death, my punishment. All over long ago."
"Centuries…they spent centuries thinking you killed your brother when you didn't? That's awful," she continued when he nodded. "I'm sorry."
"I'm not attempting to engender sympathy…but thank you."
"You talk about it like it's no big deal. It doesn't make you sound very credible."
"I'm sorry that I sound insufficiently credible to you," he said sourly, and if it reversed his progress, at the moment he didn't care. He wasn't seeking sympathy, but neither was he willing to passively accept having his honesty spat upon in this particular matter, either.
"Okay, geez, you don't have to be nasty. It's just facts."
"All right. Consider a few more facts. I was also released from punishment for my brother's death – Baldur, his name was Baldur – about a thousand years ago. On Asgard, once a crime is paid for, everyone involved must find a way to leave it in the past, because many years of life remain. Admittedly, with a crime such is this it's harder than with, say, theft of a goat. Moreover, if one has been released from punishment, on Asgard and surely here, too, 'but I didn't do it' is likely not the most beneficial thing one could say. So when I say it was all over long ago, I mean it. However, if you'd like me to repeat it with a trembling voice and few tears, I'll give it my best effort."
"Now you're just being a drama queen. But I see what you're saying. And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get you all riled up about it."
Loki tried out a conciliatory smile and consciously let go of his resentment. He did recognize how she might perceive his words as so lacking in the expected emotion as to seem false. "It's all right. I understand how it must sound to you. And I find that I like talking about it. I haven't been able to, until very recently."
"I guess you put it behind you somewhere around the year one thousand? That puts it in perspective. You accepted that they all believed you killed him because you didn't have another choice, right? Let sleeping dogs lie. You know that one?"
"No, but I understand. Best not to rouse them lest they attack."
"I never thought about it before, but yeah. So, um…that whole scenario really sucks. I mean, 'sucks' doesn't begin to describe it, but okay, it happened a long time ago. Your story, that story, is nothing like my story, though. You went through that differently than everybody else. I didn't go through it at all."
"No, they're nothing alike. Except that I do understand what you mean when you speak of…of frustration that people you were close to experienced something that you couldn't share with them. I would rather not have experienced Baldur's death at all, of course, but perhaps it would have been easier had I experienced it as they did."
"That's exactly my problem, though," Mari said, pushing up from the table. She looked agitated again, but at least this time it didn't seem directed at him. "They had it so much worse than me. It's the total opposite of your story. And it's not like I wish I'd been there. I'm glad I wasn't…and I feel like such trash because of that. That I'm glad I was gone."
"Why should you feel like trash for what must be the normal, rational reaction? You had no ability to prevent what was happening. Of course you're glad you weren't there, that you weren't in danger. Injured or worse."
"Okay, when I said maybe I should see a shrink, I didn't mean I was trying to enlist you."
"I'm afraid I'm not qualified regardless. But that's simple logic. Now if you're glad that they were there, well…then perhaps you should feel like trash."
Mari stared off into the distance before fixing him with that hard look that betrayed so little of her thoughts. "I wish you hadn't been there. I wish it hadn't happened."
Loki gave a slow nod. "But I was there, and it did happen, and there's no use wasting energy on wishing for things that can't be, is there? Mari…haven't you ever made a decision that you were certain was right at the time, but that you later came to question? Haven't you ever made a mistake?"
"That's such a BS question, and you know it. Obviously I have. Have I ever cheated on a test? Yes. Ruined a souffle? Yes. Invaded another planet and killed a bunch of people? No, I haven't."
"I promise you I'm not trying to diminish it. But I can't change it. Your people were never my enemy, Mari. I didn't consider you worthy of the designation."
"Wow," Mari muttered.
"As I got to know Jane here, she gained my respect. I thought she was an aberration. But when I started to pay attention, I realized she wasn't. She tricked me, you know. It wasn't my birthday that day."
"When I made a cake for you, without knowing who I was really making it for."
"It wasn't my idea. I'm sorry. It turns out Jane has a flare for manipulation, when she puts her mind to it. She was trying to force me to engage in activities with others here." That she had perhaps learned it from him didn't bear mentioning. He shifted in discomfort over a new idea: Might she also have learned betraying a trust to get what she wanted…from him? To get what she wanted…she wanted me to stay…. He pushed past the distraction. "It was devious of her…but it worked. You have all gained my respect. Casting myself as a friend to all of you, collectively, would be presumptuous and…perhaps more magnanimous than is my nature. But Gary referred to me as an ally, and…, as I've considered it, I think it would not be inaccurate to say that I am now your ally. If this building was again shaken from its columns…well, I'm not sure I could support it on my own, but I would try, without question. Hm. Actually, I like to think I'd devise something a little more clever than brute strength," Loki said, finishing with a muted smirk.
"Do you always talk like that?" Mari asked after staring at him for a moment.
"Like what?"
She rolled her eyes and glanced away. "So you thought we weren't worthy of your respect, and then you played cards and watched a volleyball game and somehow you decided we were, and now you want to stay the winter with us? That's it?"
In her words, it sounded preposterous. And it was, of course; that was not "it." But he wasn't sure he could fully articulate what "it" was even for himself, much less for Mari. "There's much more, but it isn't terribly relevant at this point," he said, pressing forward. "I think I've already proven myself an ally. When I assisted your evacuation, I wasn't expecting anything in return. I didn't think I'd ever see any of you again. Jane asked me to return here, to collect my things. I'd hoped to avoid being seen. I didn't want to worry anyone, or create any…" – he gave an amused huff of breath at the irony – "chaos. I certainly didn't expect any possibility of remaining here for the rest of the season. But now that it's arisen…I would like to stay. If no one, let me reiterate no one, objects."
Mari turned around, facing away from him, while he bit back a noise of frustration. He thought he was getting somewhere with her; she was unquestionably more relaxed around him than at any point since she'd learned who he was. But she remained mostly closed off to him, now physically hiding her face from him. And she still had no real reason to agree to his presence here and plenty of reasons to object.
"I'm not afraid of you," she said as she turned back to look him in the eye in the again, lips pressed into a hard line as soon as the words were out.
"All right," Loki said in a guarded tone, bracing for whatever might follow.
"I don't mean I couldn't be. Obviously you're a lot stronger than me, and you have a giant sword, and you can do…whatever all you can do with magic. But just to be in a room with you, to know you're in this building, I'm not afraid of you."
"All right," he repeated, this time more confidently, with a nod.
"So it's not that."
He nodded again, preparing himself for the no. He should have known better than to hope otherwise.
"And I'm not some college freshman who has to hide out in a 'safe space' with blankets and stuffed animals because somebody I don't like is hanging around."
She was watching him, watching for his reaction, but he had no idea what she was talking about and thought it wisest to refrain.
"And I get that there are some valid reasons for you to stick around."
He ventured another cautious nod.
"And Iron Man knows you're here. Captain America must know you're here, they all know you're here. Thor knows you're here."
Loki dared not even blink at any of that. They didn't. None of them knew. But all of them would know. It was a yes that was coming; he was certain of it now…almost certain. SHIELD and the little group of "Avengers" wouldn't like it. Thor, probably, wouldn't like it. He was a free man, though, and while he would respect any objection from the Polies, he would respect none from anyone else.
"I will never pretend that you didn't do what you did, and I will never forget."
"I would never ask you to, or expect it of you."
"And whatever Jane was talking about, that you didn't want her to? I don't care. It doesn't make any difference to me who was giving the orders. Although I guess…maybe I can kind of respect that you aren't trying to pass the buck and pull some 'I was just following orders' BS."
Loki was uncertain how to respond to that, so he didn't.
"But here's the thing. I take my job seriously. A lot of love goes into my cooking. And I'm not sure I want to cook for you."
"I…." The solution, the means of resolving her "thing" to her satisfaction, that he expected to materialize did not. Every single meal he'd eaten here, with possibly one or two exceptions when someone else had cooked something on a Sunday, she had prepared, or at least helped prepare. There was no feasible way around it. "There are granola bars. Beef jerky."
Mari rolled her eyes. "You can't live on granola bars and beef jerky for the next four or five months."
"I can, in fact," he said with more confidence than when he'd suggested it. "I can't say I would enjoy it, but it wouldn't harm me in the slightest to live on it."
"I think that probably goes against some kind of chef oath, like the doctors have," Mari said, scrunching up her face.
"I've survived eating nothing at all for much longer than five months. I'll be fine."
"Nothing?"
"Only water. I should have been so fortunate as to have granola bars and beef jerky," he said with an easy smile he hoped would reassure her that he really would be fine without any of the cooked meals.
Mari didn't look pleased with the idea at all, though. Or perhaps she was stuck on the idea of starvation – too disturbing, perhaps, to a mortal. Perhaps he shouldn't have mentioned it. "What if I cook for you?" he asked with an effort at continuing the smile.
"Can you cook?"
"Mmmm…no. You could give me a lesson. I would do exactly as you instruct. It isn't as though I'm incapable. I've simply never had much of a need."
"Prince, right. I'm not sure teaching you how to cook is any better than just cooking for you, though."
"Perhaps not. Merely an idea."
"What would I get out of that, anyway? Bad food?"
"I see your point. It's a poor bargain."
"I get what Jane sees in you, you know."
Loki's smile froze awkwardly for a moment before he let himself relax, certain his expression would betray nothing.
"I mean, obviously she sees something redeemable."
He'd had no specific hopes for how Mari might elucidate her remark; nevertheless he was disappointed. "Jane has perhaps extended more compassion than I deserve, considering I was initially unwilling to extend the same to her. But I'm not seeking redemption. All I'm looking for here is…some level of acceptance, I suppose."
"You're what they call a charmer. You know how to charm. That guy Gullveig warned everybody about that. He said you were a charmer, too."
Loki considered offering to be more irritating and insolent if she preferred, but in the end merely waited for her to continue. Charm was a word with many shades of meaning, and he wasn't sure which hue she had in mind. Or if she was thinking of herself or of Jane or of Gullveig. He did know what Gullveig meant by it.
"I don't object."
He took a slow, deep breath. He was staying. He was staying. They knew who he was and still he was staying. Not because he'd asked; it would never have occurred to him to do so. They wanted him to stay. Or, at a minimum, those who might not actively wantit didn't oppose it.
"What really pissed me off was that I cooked for you without knowing it. So I don't cook for you without knowing I'm cooking for you. You can have beef jerky today. Tomorrow you can eat what everybody else is having."
"As you wish. Thank you."
"Would you really have left if I said no?"
"Yes. I want to stay here as a Polie. Not as an interloper, or an occupier."
"I believe you. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do, and I think it's why I'm okay with you staying. That and what you said about Jane being a reminder of all the damage you caused."
"You will be now, too. Thank you for sharing your story. Would you rather I keep my distance from you?"
"There's fifty of us here, all living in the same building. That's not practical, and besides, I don't want to feel like there's anywhere I can't go here. I don't want to walk into a room and feel like I have to leave it because you're there."
"I'd be the one leaving."
"That's stupid. It still makes it seem like a place is off limits until you leave it, and I don't want to be some kind of human bulldozer, shoving you out every time I enter. But if every now and then I don't want you around for something…"
"Say the word and I'll find somewhere else to be."
"Okay."
"Mari…"
"Yeah?" she said, squaring her shoulders and thrusting her hands into the pockets of her jeans.
"Would you mind if I ask you a few questions from time to time? Speak with you about cooking, or other matters?"
"Um…I guess not. I don't want to be played. I already said you can stay."
"I understand. I just thought that if I had a question, perhaps I might—"
"Do you have a question?"
Loki opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. He was staying. Mari didn't want him to try to avoid her. They were both a part of this group now, openly and honestly so. His behavior needed to reflect that. "Now isn't the time, I know, but later, would you mind telling me how one prepares a souffle?"
"A souffle," Mari deadpanned after staring at him in silence for a few seconds.
"You mentioned you'd ruined one. I assume that you've made many others that weren't ruined."
"Okay," she said after a moment. "Yeah, I can tell you how to make a souffle someday. I don't know how we never noticed you were an alien."
Loki quickly reviewed what he'd just said, and could find no obvious trigger for her remark. "Because I asked about souffles?"
"Because you're just so…you. Come on, let's do this. I have to get back to dinner prep." Mari turned to go, then stood waiting at the door, holding it open. "I'm really sorry about your brother, and that you didn't get to have a normal period of mourning or anything. Nobody deserves that."
The response took longer than it should have. No one extended such sympathies to him for Baldur's death; no one even mentioned Baldur to him. That he himself had brought it up moments earlier did little to lessen the surprise of it. "That's very kind of you," he said, the words a bit tentative.
Mari nodded; Loki hesitated. "Let's do this." Everyone else was still waiting in the galley, unless Olivia had shooed them back to work already. Jane was still waiting in the galley. He wasn't certain what lay ahead, with Jane or with any of the others. He'd had a split-second decision to make. What if he'd made the wrong one? It wasn't only for Jane that he wanted to stay. But if she no longer was to him what he'd thought, would he have chosen to stay? Would he have stayed with her amid an atmosphere of betrayal and distrust? Would he have stayed without her? Was Midgard's South Pole to be not a respite but a torment?
Mari was staring at him, hands on hips, plainly impatient.
The decision was made. Whatever lay ahead, he wasn't going to stand here cowering from it. Let's do this. He strode through the door Mari held open, ready to begin his unexpected second phase as a winterover Polie…come what may.
/
Long one so not much from me here. I still haven't made that change to 223 I expect to...I think when it's become so much harder to press forward I tend to not want to look backward. But I do want to change up that one bit there. As for this chapter, kind of a weird one, maybe, but I felt an important one, too.
Previews for 226: He's staying! There are some things that need to be worked out, and a relationship in need of mending.
Excerpt:
"I'll see what I can do. Although I'll need to take care not to go too far beyond what your people could accomplish, lest it raise more of those questions you'd rather not have to answer."
"That's sensible," Olivia said. "We can talk more about that later. But watch your language, Lucas."
"Pardon?"
"Now that you're staying, you're one of our people."
