.-.

Beneath

Chapter Two Hundred Thirty – Visitation

"I was trying to tell you," Thor said. Something in the way Loki managed to look at him, something in the tilt of his head or the narrowing of his eyes, the shape of his mouth, something, was enough to make him want to dash right out of this chamber – to escape. Loki could be terrifying when he wanted to be, no blade required, and Thor was unwilling to fight back in any of the ways that favored brute strength.

"That you're planning to return here."

Thor nodded. He supposed he hadn't been trying very hard. He'd known it wouldn't go over well. "I want to…to be available to you. You don't want to talk to me tonight, but perhaps another time, you—"

"I don't need or want you to be available to me. If for some inexplicable reason I want anything from you, I know exactly where to find you. This is…this is…it's simply unacceptable!"

"I'm not going to try to force you into anything, Loki. If you don't want to confide in me, or you don't even want to see me—"

"I don't. Trust me on that, Thor."

"Then you won't have to. But it's not only you I hold in my heart here."

Loki's eyes flared and, with a grasp so tight it felt like it might snap him in two, reined in the rage that nearly exploded from him again. Thor could not see that, not the extent of it. No one could ever see that. When he spoke, his voice was tight, but controlled. "You said farewell to her. You…you were going to wait until—"

"Yes, I know," Thor said, remaining calm in the face of Loki's continued anger. "But that was because she said she couldn't travel back and forth between here and Asgard. And I won't be able to stay – even tonight I have at least two advisors waiting to meet with me upon my return – but there's no reason I can't come on occasion and spend some time with her."

"Yes, there is!"

"Because you don't want me to? Loki…I'll accept your wishes about seeing you. But you don't control whether or not I see Jane. I'm sure we can figure out a way to avoid running into each other at all, if that's what you truly want."

"That isn't—," Loki began, cutting himself off as he scrambled for and rejected a series of responses. "You upended everything here when you showed up. People were working. On important projects. And you threw everything into chaos."

"Because they didn't expect it," Thor said, setting aside the retort that came to mind about how Loki usually liked a bit of chaos. "I'll be quieter next time and they'll know what's going on. I'll only interrupt Jane, and not for too long."

"Jane is here to work, too, and she's already lost a great deal of a very limited, finite period of time. You're going to keep cutting into it?"

"It's a few hours here and there, Loki. And it's not your decision. It's mine and Jane's."

"Jane's," Loki echoed with a scoff. "You think she'll say no to you? You're the King of Asgard, she can't say no."

"That's ridiculous. And insulting not only to me but to Jane. Of course she can say no. I know she can, and will, if she thinks it best. Before she came here, I asked her to come to Asgard with me. She said no. I didn't push her, even though I wanted to. I respected her work and her wishes."

Loki fell silent for a moment. But there was no time to contemplate this. "Fine. Perhaps she's willing to neglect her work for a visitor. Are you so willing to neglect yours? I thought you were busy. Advisors standing around even now, waiting for you to show your face again. Asgard fresh from war and you're going to be regularly disappearing to Midgard?"

"A few hours here and there. I wouldn't leave if it would result in Asgard's endangerment or neglect."

"You don't know anything about life here. You—"

"I'll find out!" Thor cried, exasperated.

"—don't know how things work here."

"Did you, before you arrived? I can learn. And I'm not moving in, I'm only visiting."

"No one else can do that, Thor. There's no public travel. And no one comes here at all without being vetted and provided with information about—"

"Like you? Were you vetted? If so, it appears this vetting process is lacking."

"I provided my own vetting. Appropriate credentials, which I also studied for, excellent health, perfect teeth, and amazingly enough, a flawless psychological evaluation. And then I attended highly informative required briefings for new arrivals on rules and procedures, both at McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott Stations. I learned forty-three different ways to separate and properly dispose of waste materials."

"You learned all that?"

"I did," Loki asserted. He'd barely paid any attention to those briefings, but that was hardly the point.

Thor broke into a grin. "Good. Then you can replicate the briefings for me."

Loki grit his teeth and glared.

"Loki…did you not accuse me once of thinking everything was about me? You were right; I have been guilty of that. But that's what you're doing now. You've told me what you want, fine. I'll respect that. But it isn't just you. I'm not coming back to spite you. I'm doing it because I want to see Jane."

"Why?" Loki immediately demanded.

Thor blinked heavily, then stared for a few more seconds before responding. "What do you mean, 'why'? Because I miss her, because…. Why do you think I want to see her?"

"You don't even know her!"

The silence after Loki's shouted outburst lingered. Thor stared hard at Loki, searching in vain for understanding. Part of him was angry that Loki seemed to be criticizing his relationship with Jane, something his brother had no business doing, and part of him feared that something had happened with Jane, or to Jane, that he was ignorant of, while Loki, being here with Jane, knew all about it. Mostly, he was confused by Loki's fervor. His brother had barely spoken a word about Jane to him before this. "I ask you to explain what you mean by that," he finally said, taking care to keep his tone, along with his words, as neutral as he could.

If Loki could have taken it back, he would have. Thor was looking at him like he'd grown two heads, and like he was considering crushing at least one of them. His declaration was terribly, terribly improper. But he could not take it back. He'd said what he'd said, and there was nowhere to go but forward. Nothing to do but commit. "I meant what I said. It's strange you're supposedly so insistent on coming back here solely for her, when you barely know her."

"I know her, Loki."

"What do you know about her? Did you know she can't sing? Did you know she knows how to cut hair? Did you know her parents are dead?"

Thor had tried interrupting, but Loki kept talking over him and when Loki paused after mentioning Jane's parents he was left speechless for a moment. He remembered Erik saying something about her father, but he'd been caught up in his own problems then and not absorbing everything said that night. Later, he'd told Jane a little about his parents, but they hadn't spoken about hers.

"I can see the answer is no. Do you know what she likes to read?"

"I—. No. It never came up. What difference does that make?"

"Do you know what she likes to do when she's not drowning herself in her research?"

"Yes," Thor answered, even before Loki had quite finished. "She likes the outdoors. Hiking. She likes…going shopping. Looking," he corrected. "Window shopping, she called it." He was pleased that he remembered it; he'd even recently thought about what Jane had told him on this, when deciding what he'd suggest they do together when she finally came to Asgard. He'd striven to give her what she'd like best: the stars and the outdoors.

Loki took the defeat – he knew better on that one – and continued. "Does the word 'Huntington's' mean anything to you?" It occurred to him only after he'd said it that Jane might not have wanted him to. She hadn't acted as though it was a secret, but he had the strong impression she rarely mentioned it and might prefer privacy in the matter, or at the very least to control who found out and how. A murky cruelty stretched out to easily envelope Jane. If she cared so much about respecting a confidence, then she should have thought about that before casting his aside in front of the entire station. His gut roiled.

"No," Thor said after a failed attempt to connect the word to anything familiar. "What is that?"

"Do you know why she wears her hair long?" Loki quickly asked, hoping Thor would forget all about Huntington's.

"Her hair is beautiful long."

"Beauty has nothing to do with it."

"I assume she wears it long because she likes it that way," Thor retorted, losing patience. He wasn't blind to what was going on; Loki was testing him, and choosing the questions to ensure he failed.

"What about why she stopped swimming competitively?"

"Stopped—. Loki—"

"The troubles she faced getting her doctorate, and the obstacles she continued to face in her career afterward? What this opportunity here really means to her, enough that she would turn down an invitation to travel among the very stars she studies?"

"I know she—. No. I passed my examinations long ago, and I don't need to pass another one from you. You say I don't know Jane. Why? Because I don't know about her hair? I'll learn those things, once I've had the time you've spent with her. It's not my fault that I haven't, and you know that well. It's not out of neglect, or a lack of interest." Thor paused, worry that perhaps Jane thought it was a lack of interest sending a shadow over his thoughts. But Jane had never said or even hinted at that. Jane understood. Loki was the one planting these doubts in him, trying to manipulate him in some way he could not quite fathom.

Loki was starting to speak again; Thor cut him off. "You're treating Jane like she's a list of test questions. I don't know the answers to many of those questions. I may not know everything about her, but I know her."

"You've just demonstrated that you don't. You're always so certain you know everything. You know nothing. And this is no different."

"Me? Loki…you're the one who thinks he knows everything. 'You know nothing' is your favorite thing to say. You've always been that way. You've never missed an opportunity to call me stupid. I don't know everything. I acted like I did, in the past, at times, I know. But believe me, Brother, I know that I don't know everything. Sometimes I feel like I don't know anything. But I know what's important. And I know what Jane means to me."

"What does Jane mean to you, Thor, tell me," Loki sneered.

"She means…"

Loki rolled his eyes when Thor floundered.

Thor felt the strongest desire yet to punch his brother. He forced that instinct aside, though, and thought back to Puente Antiguo, where he'd been stranded, but not alone. To all the times he'd walked the remaining length of the Rainbow Bridge to seek out Heimdall with the same question. To stolen too-brief moments before the war; to lonely, anxious nights during it. To just now, before Loki's return, time passed with thoughts of Jane, and the kernel of the idea that he could come here again just as easily as he had tonight. Loki had no right to any of that. But, Thor thought, he would share some of it anyway.

"Jane cared about me when she had no reason—"

"She cared about her wor—"

"No. You asked, and you will allow me to answer. It wasn't only about her work. She was…interested in me at first, but not fond of me. I wasn't fond of her either, not at first. I couldn't see past my own nose. My own…entitlement. But even before she truly understood who I was, she opened her heart to me. I was broken, and I thought I had lost everything. She opened my heart, too. Made me see inside it in a way I hadn't for a long time. That I was more than my title, my strength, my hammer. That I could be more. That I could be better. She gave me hope for a future when I had none. I may not know many of the answers to your questions about her, Loki, but I know Jane. I know her smile. I know her warmth. I know her spirit, her drive. I know her heart. Do not mock me for this."

Loki stared in agonizing silence, wishing with all he was that he'd never asked. He had no idea what to do with it now. She likes to fix broken things, he remembered thinking about her as he was first getting to know her. She'd wanted to "fix" Thor, too. Maybe she had, in some way. Thor had certainly opened his heart wide enough by the time he returned to Asgard for his brain to fall down into it and insist on saving the Frost Giants.

Loki let his eyes drift closed for a moment. This was getting him nowhere. "I know her heart." He could not bring himself to acknowledge it, much less to give any indication of validation. Nor could he argue with it, and mocking it, while sorely tempting regardless of Thor's command, seemed pointless. And dangerous. Ignoring it was the only remaining option. The last thing he'd said – the last useful thing he'd said – was about what being here meant to Jane. "Everyone here is trying to make the rest of this winter season as normal as possible. You would be ensuring that no one, not just Jane, has that. You making regular visits…I can't even begin to express to you how ridiculous that sounds. They've already dealt with so much disruption, and they're supposed to be keeping my presence here a secret. Connections to Asgard – a secret. It's why they're calling me Lucas. Not because I refuse to be called Loki. If they happen to mention playing darts with Lucas, no one will question it. Now they must also keep secret these visits from the King of Asgard, the Avenger known to them as the old Norse god Thor? You will rob them all of the experience they came here for. You agreed to wait a few months. Wait a few months."

Calmed by his reflections on Jane – reflections his brother somehow managed not to ridicule, which would have reversed their impact – Thor listened intently. By the end, he thought he finally understood. "You speak of Jane," he said, still trying to feel out the realization, and how to speak of it without sending everything into another spiral. He would speak quietly. Kindly. No matter what came between them, this was his brother, and he loved his brother. How could he speak with Loki about this any way other than kindly? "And everyone else. Everyone else except yourself. This is also an experience you have chosen to stay here for. You found friends among these intrepid Midgardians." Loki's friends, Thor reminded himself, now certain he was on the right course. Friends who were not first mine. Foremost mine. And the people here were good and honorable, as best he knew. People driven not by dark and dangerous mischief but by passion for the cosmos, and who wanted Loki to remain with them. He hadn't truly grasped that before, but having seen the behavior of those who'd accompanied Loki…. "Tony said you had a new army here. If I return, even if not to see you…it's you I rob, isn't it?"

Loki dropped his head. To Thor, he should appear to bear the weight of shame. It was fury, but shame would work much, much better. Unknowingly, Thor had handed him a gift. An unwanted one – shame wouldn't be so difficult to project – but a convenient one. "There may be some small grain of truth in that." It was only then, as Loki started to lift his head, that he swore to himself and quickly dropped it again. There was truth in that, and far more than a grain. It was the entire truth. It was supposed to be the entire truth. This time when he lifted his head, his pained expression required no artifice. To admit this to Thor, no matter the deception layered within the truth, made his insides crawl. "Should I not be able to have this experience for myself? Without you…overshadowing everything?"

"I was a shadow, hidden under your shade," Thor remembered Loki saying to him. Thor hadn't understood yet, not then, but still his anger had momentarily dimmed in compassion for what even then he recognized as his brother's genuine pain. His decision was made. "You aren't a shadow, Loki. And I don't want to make of you one, or to make you feel like one. You shall have your winter here with your friends. Your army," Thor said, a slight grin forming for a moment before he banished it. "Jane and I already agreed a few months wasn't so long. Yes, I can wait."

Thank you for your magnanimity in permitting me my winter, Loki thought. "Thank you," Loki said, drawing on centuries of experience saying things he didn't mean. Thor started to reach for his arm; Loki pretended he didn't notice and pushed past to open the door.

Jane's eyes were the first he met. She looked back at him for a moment, worried, Loki thought. She glanced over him, eyes narrowing for a moment at the jeans he wore. He resisted the urge to shift in discomfort. He liked the other clothes he'd worn here, the real ones, regardless of whether his fellow Polies dressed the same. He still didn't like these jeans, and couldn't wait to transform them back.

Even had he not heard it, Loki would have known Thor had emerged behind him from the sudden shift in Jane's gaze, the sudden brightening of her eyes. Her smile. Brighter than the smiles she had for him. Brighter and truer. The smile that fell on him just before she went past him to Thor's side seemed forced, or at least perfunctory.

"Are you…is that blood?"

"It's nothing. Just a scratch."

Loki turned in time to see Jane shrinking away from an embrace that perhaps never quite happened, then somehow managing to looks simultaneously like she wanted to inspect the injury and to be nowhere near it. Such a terrible Aesir you would make, he thought, not for the first time, watching Jane closely, then willfully turning his attention elsewhere.

"Is everything okay here?" Olivia asked as soon as Loki's eyes found hers. No one else was in the corridor, though Loki had no doubt everyone was curious, perhaps even worried.

"Everything is fine. Thor was just leaving."

"What?" Jane asked. "But—"

"Not quite yet. But I won't be staying, ah, Director…"

"Olivia is fine."

"Olivia. I apologize for disrupting the important work going on here, which has already suffered enough disruptions. It wasn't my intent. I only wished to speak with, ah, with my brother," Thor said, faltering as he struggled to recall how he was now permitted to refer to Loki and recognizing he had probably made the wrong choice as soon as he'd made it. "And with Jane. And then I'll be on my way. Duty calls on Asgard."

"I'm sure it does. Okay. Kind of a shame because I had a whole speech ready, but I guess it's not necessary now."

"Oh, I'd still love to hear it," Loki said. Tension had noticeably bled from Olivia's expression and posture when Thor confirmed he was leaving; he was certain he knew the gist of what she'd intended to say.

"I'll keep it in the back pocket in case it comes up again. It turns out they weren't wrong when they told me I had to be prepared to handle anything down here. Thank you again for you and your family's assistance, Thor. Do you need to see our doctor for that injury?" she asked with a flicker of a glance toward Loki. "We don't have any of your special rocks, but we have antiseptic and stitches and bandages."

"No, thank you, it's really nothing. And you're welcome."

Loki allowed himself a satisfied smile. He had won. Thor was leaving, bloodied with a "scratch" that could be described as such only because of the precision with which Loki had struck. Loki was untouched and indeed had an army alongside him, including even the station's leader.

"Jane…can we go somewhere to speak alone?"

The smile remained through practiced discipline. It was a hollow victory, after all – one which merely returned things to the way they were before Thor's surprise arrival.

"Sure, ummm…I can show you my room?"

"I would love to see…. But perhaps somewhere more out of the way?"

"Okay," Jane said, pausing for a few seconds. "We could go to one of the buildings outside. I don't think anybody's out there."

"Hold on," Olivia said before Thor could respond. "Is that…knocking?"

Loki watched Jane twist around in surprise, while Thor narrowed his eyes and started off after Olivia, who had turned toward the stairs by the same "back door" DZ entrance Thor had used. Loki had noticed the knocking when Olivia did; Thor, Loki figured, didn't know which sounds were normal here and which were not. He grabbed Thor's arm. "Who else did you bring?" he growled in a low voice into Thor's ear.

"No one," Thor said.

Loki didn't resist when Thor took hold of his wrist and pulled it away. Briefly catching Jane's eye, he fell in beside Thor and contemplated then rejected transforming his clothing again.

"Olivia," Loki said when they were back on the first floor and had reached the door to the outside. He held his arm out to indicate she should stay behind it.

Olivia acquiesced, though she didn't look happy about it. Loki could respect that; the woman was bold and courageous…but not stupidly so. Whoever else had shown up here, he or she was knocking, not forcing the door off its hinges or simply opening it and walking through, as Thor had done, so Loki was not anticipating attack; still, he didn't know what to expect and that called for someone other than either of the mortals to open the door. His was perhaps also not the ideal first face to appear, but the only other alternative was Thor, and this was his door, not Thor's. He wasn't about to let anyone – much less Thor – respond to a knock on his door.

Loki pushed the hanging strips of thick plastic aside and worked the door open, conscious of Thor right behind him, hand no doubt already on Mjolnir's handle; he suspected the implications of knocking hadn't occurred to Thor. His first view, partly obscured by the dull plastic draped around him, was of a figure shrouded in white with gold accents, even the face almost entirely covered in white. He held the door with one hand while further parting the plastic strips with the other just as the visitor's hand came up to push off a hood and remove the white and gold wrappings – a thick scarf – from the face. The eyes he could now clearly see, though, were already enough.

"Mother?"

"Hello, Loki," Frigga said, words muffled by the scarf that was not yet quite off.

"Mother?" Thor echoed, pushing more of the plastic aside, and Loki along with it. "Loki, get out of the way, let her in."

Loki hesitated long enough to peer out carefully beyond the outdoors DZ stairway as far as he could into the darkness. Failing to spot anyone else out there headed their way, he pushed the door open more fully and held the plastic on his side.

"Welcome back to the South Pole, Your Majesty," Olivia said once the door was closed behind Frigga.

"Hi," Jane said with a nervous wave.

"Thank you, Olivia. It's good to see you again, and you, Jane." Her gaze swept over Loki, then Thor, lingering over the area of the wound. "Boys," she said with a frown.

"Pardon my directness," Olivia said, "but should we be expecting additional visitors?"

Loki peered over at Olivia out of the corner of his eyes, lips curving into a smile that he didn't allow to grow into a grin. For most of his time at the Pole, he'd thought little about Olivia, and thought little of the stringent rules she was the main face of. Now he decided he not only respected her, he liked her. And all the more so because she spoke not out of sympathy for him or some misguided need to protect him, but out of a single-minded determination to defend and protect this entire station and an unquestioned readiness to stand up to anyone who sought to thwart her in that.

"No, and I don't wish to distract you from your duties. I was awaiting my son's return, and it turns out he's postponed it. I merely need a few moments with him, and then I'll be on my way and I won't disturb you again."

While Olivia responded, Loki wondered how much of what had already taken place here Frigga was aware of, through Heimdall. It probably wasn't necessary; Frigga was a keen observer of people with centuries upon centuries of experience, and likely did not need any additional insights to grasp what lay behind Olivia's polite but decidedly unenthusiastic welcome.

"I apologize for keeping you waiting," Loki said once Olivia had left them. "But there was no need for you to come here."

"You've forgotten?" Frigga asked, fixing Loki with a mildly scolding look. "You were supposed to bring me some items to be repaired."

Realization took only a few seconds, but long enough that there was no point in denying it. "You came all the way here, in the dark and frigid cold in literally the middle of nowhere, so you could get the hood on Jane's jacket fixed?"

"I said I would get the damaged clothing repaired, did I not? And my boy said he was coming back last night with those items and he didn't, and my other boy did not inform me he was coming here. I was expecting to see you, Loki. But don't worry, I meant what I said to Olivia. I won't linger or intrude further on your time. I understand that isn't what you want, nor is it the way things work here."

Loki glanced toward Thor, wondering if he might find there some sense of being chastened, but Thor was otherwise occupied by ogling Jane and seemed to take little note of Frigga's words. "All right then. Do you have a bag of some sort? I've already gathered the items."

As Frigga spoke, footsteps sounded on the stairs above them, but soon halted then resumed and receded. Clearly the other Polies were deliberately keeping their distance.

"I do. However, it's already in use and will need to be emptied. Perhaps we might make an exchange somewhere outside the main building, so as not to further disturb your fellows?"

"That's exactly what Jane and I were going to do, Mother."

"Perfect. I will speak with Loki in one of those other buildings, and we can meet afterward and spare Heimdall the effort of bringing us back separately."

Loki responded as soon as Frigga finished. "Yes, a good idea. Jane, why don't you use the jamesway, since the heat is still on? Mother and I will be fine in one of the unheated ones." He didn't like sending Thor and Jane to the jamesway he considered his and Jane's, but Thor had already been there, and Loki and Jane were unlikely to ever go there again at this point; they should have turned the minimal heating off. More importantly, Summer Camp would be both private and relatively close, and the sooner Loki could send Frigga on her way, the sooner he would be rid of Thor, too.

Thor had come with nothing special for the cold, other than wearing the full version of the sturdy armor that covered the length of his arms, and Frigga had only to rewrap the thick white scarf around her face and pull her hood up, while Loki and Jane required a short detour to retrieve the gear they'd hung up in the changing area after coming in from the jamesway earlier. Loki dawdled, letting Jane and Thor go ahead of them to avoid making the walk out to Summer Camp a group activity.

"So," Loki began once the door closed behind them and they started down the outside stairs to the icy ground, "I trust Olivia struck you as sufficiently clear-minded and independently willed?"

"Is that why you think I came? I told you my reasons, Loki."

"Now that we're alone, you could at least respect me enough to be honest." Loki had to pause and look back, for he had reached the ground and his mother had come to a stop a few steps up. A minute or so passed, after which his mother started down the last few stairs and they continued on together as though nothing had happened.

"I was about to tell you that you should respect me enough to believe me," she said after they'd been walking a minute or two. "And then I thought…perhaps that isn't entirely a matter of respect." Frigga kept her eyes forward, partly out of necessity – she wore tall white boots under the thick folds of her gown and robe, but they were meant more for warmth than for the traction necessary for this rough and slippery ground – and partly out of a flash of cowardice in not wanting to see Loki's reaction.

"It's why Thor came," Loki said after another minute passed.

"I'm sorry. He didn't consult with me. He was on Asgard no more than half an hour before he departed again."

"Not even the tiniest part of you thought perhaps I had forced them to allow me to remain?"

"These people are safer here with you than without you, and I have no doubt they've realized that by now if they hadn't already. And Jane is here. No, that idea never occurred to me at all. I wanted a chance to talk with you, and I didn't want to wait until months from now to do it, especially when your plans keep changing. Also, I had something to give you."

"What's that?"

"You'll see. Something Edny wanted you to have."

"Edny? Edny Rikurdottir?" Loki asked, wrinkling his face in confused surprise under the balaclava.

"Mm-hm. Bragi tracked me down this morning, saying Edny wanted to see you but they weren't sure if you were accepting visitors. They didn't realize you'd already left. She gave me the…the gift when I told her I'd see you when you came to Asgard on your way to Alfheim."

Loki nodded. Edny was not in the habit of giving him gifts. No one was, really; outside of trinkets formally presented to commemorate some particular official visit, there was little sense in giving gifts to the royal family. Whatever it was, he'd find out shortly.

"What else did you want to talk about then?" Loki asked after they'd continued on in silence for a while and reached their destination. He'd chosen an unused jamesway he knew contained near the entrance a couple of chairs – stiff, hard ones that did not encourage lingering. "I thought you merely wanted to be able to bid me farewell in private."

"Yes. I'm pleased that you're staying with these mortals for a while longer. But it did deprive me of that farewell. And another chance to try to provide you with a little more encouragement and support. I was truly worried about you going off by yourself."

"And now I'm not," Loki said, pulling off the balaclava and trying to smooth out his hair. "No need to worry."

"I'm relieved. But 'no need to worry'? You silly boy," Frigga said, smiling and reaching out to caress Loki's cheek and further smooth his hair before settling on one of the simple black chairs they'd stopped in front of.

Loki stuffed his gloves and balaclava into a pocket and unzipped Big Red, then pulled a chair over to sit across from Frigga.

"Is it not strange for you here? Are you able to be yourself with these people?"

"I…," Loki began, faltering because he didn't know how to answer. He didn't have answers, and didn't want to delve into his own uncertainties, not here, not now.

"Do you even know what it is to be yourself, after everything that's happened?"

Loki took a deep breath. "Perhaps we might discuss the weather."

"I think cold and dry covers it well enough."

"Mmmm. Quite right. Well, thank you for visiting, Mother."

Frigga laughed. Loki wasn't exactly being subtle. "I know you're trying to get rid of me. You have plenty of heated buildings out here and you brought us to one that lacks only the added chill of the wind outside so that I don't care to take off even my gloves, much less my robe. And I suspect these are the least comfortable chairs in this entire outpost. Grant me just a little of your time, though, I ask you, and in return, I'll come more directly to my point."

After a pointedly heavy breath, Loki nodded.

"You are in the difficult position of forging a new role for yourself, here in this distant land, among people who until recently knew nothing of Asgard or the other realms, much less of you. Perhaps being in such a place will make it easier, or perhaps harder, to build this new role. To decide who you are, apart from where you came from, and the things you've lived through."

Loki of Asgard. The place that had shaped him, for better or worse. The place he thus accepted as part of who he was. The way he'd signed his name to the treaty. Even the way he'd announced himself once he arrived on Midgard, through that unstable portal, full of glorious purpose that in hindsight did not seem terribly glorious. "Jane said I had an identity crisis," Loki said, quietly. He still didn't want to prolong this, but for all of Thor's blather, it was never Thor he talked to about things like this. Perhaps when he was a child, but even before officially coming of age he'd understood that certain thoughts, certain feelings, could not be shared with Thor, or with anyone. Except, on rare occasion, ever rarer as the centuries went past, with his mother. And yesterday's moment of shared grief had perhaps reminded him of something – some form of connection, or understanding, something – that he could get only from her. Or that he could accept only from her. Perhaps that was why he could never quite make himself turn away from her.

"It is a crisis, isn't it?" she continued when Loki failed to elaborate. "What must you have thought of yourself…a Jotun foundling brought into the royal family of Asgard who killed one brother, took the throne of the other, attempted—"

"If this is meant to show encouragement and support, then I'm afraid your skills are slipping."

"Mmm. And yet how easily you receive these words. No shock? No anger? My words merely echo the things you were telling yourself already, do they not?"

Loki braced his jaw and nodded, though not in answer to the question; the strange way Frigga was speaking made sense now. "Thor."

"He shared a concern, when I pressed him on it. Don't be angry with him. He resisted telling me, but he relented because he loves you and worries for you."

"I've had quite enough of his worry. If only he had a realm in ruins that he should be expending this worry upon instead."

"I would have told him not to come if I'd had the chance. I don't know what he was thinking. He should have known you wouldn't have remained here without approval. There remains an impulsiveness in him that he must learn to temper. But you two should not have been fighting. You stabbed him, Loki, really?"

Relieved his mother had not been told – yet, at least – about the other thing that had so filled Thor with pointless sudden worry, Loki intended his tight-lipped frown to be his only response. Frigga's unwavering expectant stare, however, demanded otherwise. "I didn't hurt him badly. He's fine."

"And that makes it acceptable? Or legal, for that matter? Loki," she said, brow rising and eyes widening in incredulous exasperation. She knew her sons were still at odds, and if they had come to blows at some point after Loki's return to Asgard she wouldn't have been surprised. But to draw weapons against each other, to use weapons against each other? She had thought they were past that.

His mother, Loki accepted grudgingly, had not lost the ability she'd had since his childhood to make him feel guilty for things he'd felt fully justified in when he'd done them. But she did not know half of the things that had helped propel that blade into Thor's side, and he was certainly not going to tell her.

"It's not the way to handle things, Loki. Especially not with a brother." His testy frown sobered into an entirely different shade of frown, and she thought she had finally reached him.

"You're right," Loki said after he managed to swallow the enormous lump in his throat. Thor's actual status was moot in the context. An apology danced on the tip of his tongue, then a promise that he wouldn't do it again, then an assurance that he would at least try to do better, but he could not quite bring himself to say such things. He could admit to himself that he had probably overreacted, but if Thor hadn't shown up here then Thor wouldn't have been stabbed and Loki wasn't about to engage in any self-flagellation over the whole thing. And no amateur trick of magic could have made that little blade anything more than a minor aggravation to a fully-grown, full-strength Thor. "If he stays away as he said he would, then it won't happen again," he finally said.

Frigga nodded, choosing not to comment on what was surely the deliberate imprecision as to whether Loki's provision referred to Thor staying away from the South Pole, while Loki was there, or to Thor staying away from Loki, forever. "Your relationship has changed. Not because he isn't your brother; he is. Because you've changed, and he's changed, and that leaves you both with some things to learn. Much as I wish that could happen overnight, I know it won't. Try to extend him a little clemency. He does want to do the right thing. He wants to help, as do we all, and he doesn't know how. He doesn't quite understand that some wounds aren't healed with a stone. Some hurts aren't soothed with a tankard and an offered embrace. Sometimes a little time and space is needed."

Loki barked out a humorless laugh. "Says the woman who also could not let me be for even a day."

"You didn't let me finish, darling boy. I'm old enough to have learned that time and space may help, and may even be necessary. But it can be difficult to grant time and space to one you love when you fear what may be festering in him unchecked. You saw yourself as a parasite, latching onto this family and destroying it from the inside out?"

Loki grimaced; he'd managed to forget that she'd raised this. "Nothing is festering, Mother. If Thor repeated everything I told him in private, then he also told you my thoughts on that have shifted, upon receipt of new information."

"That you were not to blame for Baldur's death? Good," she continued after Loki's clearly uncomfortable nod. "But that you ever thought such a thing about yourself at all…. Loki, you know how much you've given us, don't you? Do you? How much you've given me? All of Asgard?"

"A great deal of pain, for one."

Frigga sat back and tilted her head, as though to physically see Loki in a new light as a new image formed. "You and Thor are so much more alike than you think, than anyone would think, standing the two of you side by side. You've crafted an image of yourself as the central figure of a saga…but instead of the hero, you're the venomous spider at the center of a web of pain and destruction, all doled out by you. Arrogant, wouldn't you say? To claim that role for yourself and yourself alone? You aren't the only one who's done some destroying in this family. We've all dealt each other pain, at one time or another. And as I told you before, we wronged you first. We hurt you first."

Loki shifted uncomfortably. He'd thought Thor was difficult to push out the door. "Perhaps I like being the spider at the center of the web," he said, almost flippantly. Almost.

Frigga considered that for a moment. "Perhaps you do. Better to be the spider than the insect caught in the threads, unable to escape and waiting to be de—."

"That's enough," Loki said, voice harsh. He was standing, and hadn't been conscious of leaving his chair.

"All right," Frigga said immediately. The nerve she'd stepped on blazed red with rawness, a flame she knew of no way to douse. And every time she gained some new understanding of his wounds, the ever-present instinct to try to soothe them away gained renewed strength. Time and space, she reminded herself. "He needs all the love you can give him," though, was there, too. Jane's words, which had long since become her own.

Loki rubbed a hand over his face and looked to the door. He could not even process her words; his thoughts fled from them. He refused. He forced himself to face his mother, who had also stood from her chair. "Did anyone tell you…nothing lives here? Not naturally. There are no spiders. There are no insects. There are fifty Polies, and that is all."

Embarrassment instantly followed his audible gasp of surprise when, after a brief smile Frigga barreled forward and enveloped him in an embrace and squeezed – hard. His arms came up reluctantly, one hand patting her back so weakly he doubted she could feel it through the thick white and gold robe.

Frigga broke off the hug far more quickly than she would have preferred; Loki, she thought, was not in the mood to accept it. "What a perfect number, fifty." She loved all fifty of them. Where before she had thought better Midgard's South Pole than Alfheim, now she thought better Midgard's South Pole than anywhere else in the cosmos, including Asgard's palace. Time and space, for now, was the right answer, without question.

"It's an even one," Loki said with a shrug.

"Loki, listen to me on this, and do me the favor of not arguing and turning it on its head. I want it to be absolutely clear to you, as clear as I can possibly make it, and then I'll let it go, but I have to know you've heard me on this. Nothing left to the imagination, nothing left to doubts and dark thoughts. I know that doesn't ensure it won't haunt you again, but if it does, I want you to remember what I've said to you. To remind yourself. A parasite's relationship with its host is one direction only," she said, charging ahead without giving him a chance to respond. "It takes everything and gives nothing in return. It gives nothing.Butyou have given me so much joy. So much love. And laughter, and pride. Pain at times, yes. Pain, worry, fear, grief. But so much love."

Frigga paused to pull together the rest of her thoughts. Loki, thankfully, was watching her but seemed in no hurry to interrupt.

"We weren't sure what to do with you, when Odin first brought you to Asgard. We discussed whether someone else should raise you as theirs. That didn't last beyond the first day. You would look right at us and smile, right from the start. Infants born Aesir can't do that. But you did, and it was…like magic. Not even a full day had passed before you had filled my heart with love. You brought such joy into our lives then and you bring me joy in this very second. I am so proud to be your mother, and I'm so thankful that you're my son."

"Thank you," Loki said after a moment, then cleared his throat. "For saying that." It was all he could think to say while his head swam.

"It's only the truth. A truth I need you to take to heart and to hold onto, for whenever you might have need of it."

He had considered before, briefly, what it might have been like to be raised as Farbauti's, on Jotunheim. Briefly was all he could bear of it. Had he been raised by someone else on Asgard…it was too much to fathom in the moment before him, how different his life might have been in ways great and small. Without Asgard's demanding king as his father, without Asgard's beloved first prince as his barely-older brother and the constant struggle, in vain, to prove himself equally worthy.

But to be a son of Frigga? She had taken. She had lied, let him believe an all-encompassing falsehood and in so doing set him up for it to someday shatter around him. She had turned away when blame fell on him for Baldur's death. But she had given so much more. She had given and given, even when nothing in him felt worthy of anything good that she gave. He had once thought that if he was taken early enough from her life, that it wouldn't have grieved her overmuch, that she would have been happier. He still couldn't quite comprehend it, but he knew now that he'd been wrong. There was no falsehood in her love, and there never had been. There was no falsehood in her words now.

He took a steadying breath. He needed her to see no falsehood in this. "I am honored to be Loki Friggason."

"The honor is mine," Frigga said. She liked the sound of "Loki Friggason." The "Loki of Asgard" he'd used for the treaty made him sound so unconnected, ungrounded – alone. Loki Friggason was not alone. Loki wasn't smiling, and didn't even look particularly happy. He did look sincere, though. She thought perhaps she could safely say more. "I don't ask or expect this of you right now, I know it will take time, but I do hope you'll be able to forgive me someday. All of us. We've made mistakes, great and small. We've learned from them, I think. I hope. Thor following you here…he's still learning, Loki. We all are. Give him the chance. I hope you'll be able to give us all that chance. Forgiving doesn't mean excusing. Accepting, perhaps. Letting go of anger, in time. Peace can be elusive without learning to forgive. And I want peace for you, Loki."

"What about you?" Loki asked, taking one step back, then another.

"What about me?"

"Forgiveness. Have you forgiven yourself? For what happened to Baldur?"

Frigga drew in a sharp breath. Her shoulders stiffened almost to the point of pain.

"Was it only for my sake that we didn't speak of him?"

She looked away, a brief moment to gather herself. She wasn't prepared to contemplate that, to confront that. Loki's hardened expression felt like looking into a mirror. "I pushed too hard, didn't I? And you pushed back." "If you push people away, then they can't hurt you." Jane had said that to her, about Loki. Loki had tried to do that to Jane. Recognizing what Loki was doing, Jane pushed back. But Frigga had never meant to get into a pushing match. And Jane was innocent in ways Frigga was not.

Loki held his tongue. She expected an apology, perhaps. But while he didn't even really know why he'd said that – except that she was probably right – he knew he had no apology.

"I suppose forgiveness – of self, of others – is something for us both to consider," she finally said.

He swallowed, cast his gaze around the jamesway as though the previous topic had run its course – it had, because he'd decided it had – and he was searching some random new one. "You said Edny sent me something?"

Frigga nodded, then swallowed, taking a moment to more fully regain her composure and refocus her thoughts. Loki was obviously still raw, but so was she, in her own ways, ways she had chosen to reveal to Loki, and Loki had taken advantage of that, used it against her. Protecting himself by hurting another. Not what she hoped to see from him, but at least his only weapon had been words, and wielded against someone who could handle it. Who would never walk away from him for it. She was, in fact, probably the ideal person for him to attack. The safest. In that, she could even find comfort. Nothing he could say to her would ever change what she'd told him today, and she believed he knew that.

From the bag she'd carried with her, she pulled a tightly woven wicker basket, growing to its full bulky size as it emerged. "Shall I leave it with you to open, or…?"

Loki shrugged; Frigga held back her smile. She had relented, so the attack was over. She wasn't running, and in not pushing her out the door, Loki, consciously or not, was signaling peace.

He came closer, taking the heavy basket from Frigga's hands and removing the white cloth cover. His agitation over his mother's talk of forgiveness had shifted into something less bristly, but still restive. "What is this?" More precisely, his question was not "what" – the basket clearly contained a large set of plain white plates – but "why." But before his mother could finish replying that Edny hadn't told her, he remembered.

"What is this…are we to paint them? Or engrave them in some way?"

"What an interesting idea! I'm too much of a rascal, apparently. That never occurred to me. I could get another set for that. No, this set is fated for something less gentle than the brush."

She gave him a pair of boots. His, perhaps – he couldn't remember.

"We're going for a walk? With…plates?" He knew his attempted smile was unlikely to be convincing; his heart wasn't quite in the effort. He couldn't walk, not more than a few steps, not without assistance. Edny knew this well, having just the day before heard the tale of his disastrous and humiliating attempt of the previous night to make it to the bathroom on his own. "I wanted to scream," he'd confessed to her. "I wanted to scream and I couldn't. I can't. I must work hard, and be obedient. Be penitent, and grateful. And I am, I am. It's just that sometimes…." "You want to scream," Edny had finished for him when he couldn't. Those words were no more permitted him than the feelings struggling to find their expression in them. She could not possibly, but he imagined that she knew all the things that made him want to scream.

"Not a walk, but you're going to want to have those on, trust me on this."

"All right," Loki agreed. All he did was what others told him to, so if Edny said he should wear boots, then he would. "I think they'll be too big," he said, eyeing his shrunken calves.

"I don't think it will matter. You won't need to get farther than the foot of the bed in them, and I'll help you get there."

The boots had served Edny's intended purpose, protecting his still-tender feet from the growing layer of debris from shattered plates littering the floor.

Edny had understood him then, had seen the impotent anger beneath his impotent words. No one, including himself, thought he had any real right to that anger. But Edny, whether she'd thought he had such a right or not, had seen that he needed to be able to release some of it, and in a way that would be private and deniable, not undermining the persona he strove to portray. To inhabit. Only to Edny had he revealed some of what lurked behind the façade, and not even she had seen the rage with which he'd smashed plate after plate; she'd had the wisdom to simply help him loosen the stranglehold of his self-control enough to get started, and then leave him to it.

Loki wasn't sure if he regretted or was relieved that he'd never been alone with her during his last brief stay on Asgard. The stacks of plates before him, he supposed, said what she'd wished to say.

Back then, he'd been angry at his circumstances. Angry that he didn't see a future for himself. Angry that they all believed he'd meant to kill his brother, and that he had no choice but to maintain that lie and bury the truth. Angry that he still wasn't certain what the truth was. Angry at the fear he couldn't shake, that everyone would realize he should never have been shown mercy and should instead be returned to the horror of the serpent. Angry that he couldn't be angry, could only be meek and obedient, could only smile – not too widely – and nod and accept. Most of all he'd been angry at himself, because he himself was to blame for every bit of his own suffering. He deserved it, whether he'd intended for Baldur to die or not.

He'd been so young then, still practically a youth, still naïve despite all he'd already endured. He was a different person now. Bitter, jaded, angry, and for so many more reasons.

He pictured himself hurling those plates onto the floor, against the wall, some of the shards ricocheting and cutting his weakened skin, and a fresh rage roared to life. Not at Geirmund – to whom he wished to grant no space in his thoughts – and not in the slightest at himself, but at Odin, at the magistrates, his advocate, Thor, old friends and acquaintances, the women he'd known, Jolgeir, the other Einherjar, the jailors, the people who'd jeered and thrown things at him as he was taken out to the serpent. All of Asgard. The woman before him. Betrayed and abandoned. Years of misery and pain. A struggle for physical recovery so intolerable he'd wished at times they'd left him out there to rot. White-hot, explosive, uncontrollable rage.

These plates…they might allow him to vent some of that in a way that kept everyone here safe from what boiled inside him. Or they might rip the lid off of something he'd never be able to force the lid back onto again. Edny didn't know about the discoveries that were now layered atop what had happened a thousand years ago. Betrayed and abandoned, abandoned and betrayed. Lied to, and lied to, and lied to.

Still, the gift said that she cared, that she understood as much as she could. Perhaps that she was ready again, if he needed it, to listen without judgement as he poured out what he could not say to anyone else. Edny, he knew, could actually do that…unlike Thor.

The image in his mind shifted unbidden from Edny to Jane. Jane had become that person for him. The one he'd allowed to see beneath the facade, sometimes without meaning to, increasingly because he wanted to, then because he needed to. And Jane had believed him when he told her about Baldur. Not even Edny could say that. No one on Asgard could say that. Only Jane.

Betrayed and abandoned.

Jane was in the jamesway with Thor.

Their jamesway.

Where else would she be, though? He'd even suggested it. Earlier she'd told him she was going to the Greenhouse. She'd wanted him to follow. He'd chosen not to.

Loki closed his eyes briefly, took a deep breath in a conscious effort to shake off the positively oppressive atmosphere the freezing jamesway had taken on. His mother, in another remarkable display of restraint, was quietly waiting for his reverie to play out. Watching him, of course. He thought – hoped – he'd managed to keep his face relatively opaque to his inner turmoil.

"Do you want to tell me?" Frigga asked when Loki finally seemed present again.

"No," he said, firmly but not unkindly. "But please extend my sincere appreciation to Edny."

"I asked her what it was for. She said you would understand."

"I do. In fact, tell her also that I extend her a boon, should she have need of it and…should I…. A personal boon, rather than an official one, since I'm no longer in a position to grant one of those."

"You are. You are still a prince. And the demotion is not necessarily permanent, as you know. You've been removed from and restored to the line of succession before."

"Indeed. No matter. I have no need of such things, and especially not here. I have chores here, Mother." He proffered a smile, calculated but sincere, with a pleasant undercurrent of conspiratorial mischief. With a little added flourish, he grasped hold of the satchel he'd packed earlier, the same one he'd been exiled to Midgard with a few months ago. It was now stuffed with two Big Red jackets – one with the back of the hood cleanly shorn off, the other with a more ragged tear and dark blood stains in the front, and the green henley he'd been so fond of before, now torn and horribly stained with two types of blood. Probably he'd have no desire to wear that shirt again, nor the need, by the time he got it back. Still, he'd folded it and put it in the bag. More options, generally, was preferable to fewer. "You'll have some explaining to do. The blood on two of the items is…not all of the expected type."

"I'll think of something. Perhaps work on those myself."

"Yourself? Laundry?" Loki asked, eyes exaggeratedly wide.

"I was not always a queen, dear one. Some of us did learn how to do our own washing." She shook her head. "Chores," she murmured in mock incredulity. "Olivia is an impressive leader to persuade Prince Loki of Asgard to do chores."

"She is tolerable."

"High praise from you," Frigga said with a laugh. The smile faded as she took the bag from Loki and tucked them away in her own. "I'll return the items when they're ready. No visits, simply a drop-off, right here, so check back once in a while until you find them waiting for you. You'll be all right here, won't you?" she asked, though less a question than a statement.

"I will, Mother."

She nodded. "Shall we go find Thor and leave you to it, then? I wouldn't want to keep you from your chores."

/

/

Wow. It's been so long I couldn't remember at first how to upload a chapter! A lot has happened since the last chapter I uploaded. Another international move and all the chaos that brings. Then in December I unexpectedly lost my mother. I was away for a while for that and now I'm still getting my "new" house set up. I just opened Christmas presents my mother had just had mailed to me shortly before her death. Sometimes life is really tough. Well, this story has been underway for so long that probably nearly all of us have had *some* kind of major life events happen! So, thank you for your understanding for the long delay...and maybe just do a quick (ha!) reread from the beginning to remind yourself what was going on if you've forgotten. Let's see if I can get this thing finished this year, hm? Also don't be overly shocked if you hear from me in a response to a PM or review from like...two years ago or something. :-) The COVID lockdown period did a whammy on me that I've never fully recovered from...but I'm trying. :-)

LJ & Taryn - all my sincerest sympathy. LJ, for me, too, Loki's loss of his mother hits differently now, more strongly, more deeply. I have a little partly-written idea for a TVA-Loki-based story that draws on that, something I could not have written before. Taryn, I cried happy tears to read that I - or the words I wrote - am a part of good memories you have of good times with your mom. That means the world to me, so thank you so much for telling me. (And the compliment too, thank you!)

This chapter has been written *forever*, and so, basically, has the next - I'm not sure where it breaks, actually, I may have a tiny bit left at the end to write, but it's close enough and this update is so long overdue I wanted to get it out. So here's some previews for 231: We catch up with Thor and Jane, toss in Frigga and Loki, and the fifth character in the room, the tension between Thor and Loki that, let's face it, is about 99.9% on Loki's end. And maybe sort of a sixth character in the room, too.

And teaser:

Thor was certain that if his cheeks had lost their redness, it was back with a vengeance now. "Jane, I would never do such a dishonorable thing. I am not—"

"I know," Jane said over a laugh. "Calm down. It's actually pretty funny if you think about."

"It is not." He gave a huff. "Loki also tries to insist things are funny which are not. You should not join him, Jane. You know me, and you can laugh. What if I'd said this to someone else? I could have caused grave insult. Or humiliation."

"What did he tell you it meant?"