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“Who,” the perfectly even edges of Jane’s bob smacked her in the face, tickling her nose and making her eyes water, as she shook her head in utter disbelief, “could have possibly let you in here?”
“Funny,” came the tart reply. Jane glanced up as Heimdall closed his golden eyes and squeezed tightly. Carefully, he drew a slow and even breath. Jane bit the bottom of her lip, a little quirk that she had always had when she was deep in thought. She knew this voice. She racked her brain because she had definitely heard this voice.
It couldn’t be.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” The figure was unmistakable as he came ambling down the trail behind them happily. Loki stopped just before the two of them and grinned broadly.
Apparently, it could be.
He had looked different than she had seen him last, although she supposed that had been nearly a decade ago. His hair was much shorter than she had seen it, and for once, it looked full and clean and neatly tucked behind his ears. His face still retained its angular shapes, but it looked fuller and less sallow than it had before. His tunic and pants, both dark and muted earth tones, seemed to be made of the same breezy linen her own dress that now fluttered around her ankles was made of. Jane would never deny that he looked good – healthy and well she wanted to clarify, he was never really her type -, it was just that Loki was kind of the last person she wanted to see. She didn’t like him much in life, and she didn’t imagine living together for all eternity was going to change that, even if they technically lived in an idyllic Viking paradise. In fact, Jane felt confident that she could make an educated hypothesis that it would actually make everything rather worse.
Life kind of felt like this horrible cosmic joke lately. She got amazing space Viking powers in an attempt to heal herself, and they only made her incurable and devastating cancer even more incurable and devasting every time she used them. She finally reunited with Thor after years of not seeing him and maybe secretly longing for him, and then she immediately died a few days later. She was granted access to an afterlife of literal paradise for eternity, and she had to spend all of it with her on-again, off-again boyfriend’s annoying and occasionally homicidal younger brother.
Cool. Great.
Heimdall breathed in deeply, his chest rising and falling dramatically, and then snapped his eyes open. He took one piercing glance at Jane and another at Loki.
“Well,” he began, “I ought to get back soon. There’s a grand feast tonight, and I would hate to lose my place in the buffet line. Volstagg will not cut in front of me for the second time this week. Jane, thank you again for all that you’ve done from my son and my people. Your bravery and sacrifice truly have made you one of the finest among us. Oh, I promise you, you will learn to tolerate Loki. Or at least tune him out.”
Loki’s face was dramatically painted with a look of mock pain and horror. Neither Heimdall nor Jane seemed to pay it much mind as Heimdall set off towards the great hall in the distance, and Jane took a few moments to take in her surroundings.
It was beautiful, she would give the afterlife that. Each tree seemed to be covered in rich blossoms of every color imaginable. Their perfume was thick in the air, and all around them, she could hear the gentling rustle of branches and the lazy bubbling of a river. Off in the distance, birds were chirping and people were laughing. The temperature was refreshingly cool like a brisk spring day in the city. The warm and low hanging sun felt wonderful on her face and lit everything in a warm and hazy glaze. It was unlike anything that she had ever seen. It was unlike anything that had ever existed on the earth. Jane could be happy here. Or, well, at least she could try.
“Heimdall,” Loki cupped his hands around his mouth to project his voice to the figure who had already practically reached the half-way point. “You wound me. And here I thought that being murdered by Thanos together would have really been a new leaf for our relationship.”
“I do love proving you wrong, Loki.” Heimdall did not even bother to turn around.
And Jane didn’t even bother to politely hide her chuckle.
Loki scowled down at her. This time happened to be in real annoyance. That only made Jane laugh even harder, until her body was shaking with a genuine laughter she hadn’t experience in months, at least since the cancer diagnosis. Although, in retrospect, maybe even years. It felt good, right even.
“Yes, yes, laugh it up. I can see how this is hilarious.” Loki had waited until her body had stilled and her laughter had been reduced a little cough and Jane wiping the tears from her eyes. He was, of course, still scowling. Although, based on all the times that Jane had met him both here and life, she did imagine that might just be how he looked. “How did you even get here, Jane, my absolutely beloved once and future sister-in-law?”
She wiped the last tear from her eye and then shrugged. “Well, it’s kind of a long story.”
Loki rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers. A single curl began to fall its way onto his forehead. “Allow me to guess. You were dating, all was fine and wonderful. He told his hammer that should anything happen to him, it should do its best to take care of you. Then everything was not fine and wonderful because you were dating my brother, and well, you and I know how he can be. But the hammer worked. It did, and you had the fun thunder and lightning power bit. But of course, you cannot handle that much magic – or what you would call radiation – without having detrimental effects because you are, or were, mortal, and then it killed you.”
“Well, when you put the last like five years of my mortal life like that, it’s kind of a short story. How could you possibly know all of that?”
“I know my brother.” Loki shrugged. “And I also have my ways of seeing what’s going on out there in the moral realm. You cannot possibly think that I would be completely content with sitting her for eternity twiddling my fingers. I have to do something to keep myself entertained.”
Jane’s mood dowered suddenly.
“Glad to see that you haven’t changed at all, you absolute asshole. I hope my misery and suffering was a good enough story to keep you occupied.” It was Jane’s turn to scowl. She grabbed a handful of her skirt. It felt impossibly soft and buttery in her hands. She took a broad step to start her way off to the great hall that lie at the end of the path. Buffet line tonight, apparently. Hopefully, the buffet had some coffee she could sip on and some Hot Cheetos. It wouldn’t really be her idea of a perfect afterlife without them.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Loki jogged after her. “No one was making fun of your misfortune. And your cancer was just that, Jane, an enormous and unfair misfortune that befell you. However, I think it’s quite honorable what you did, saving all of those children, saving Gorr’s daughter. You died a hero.”
“Yeah, and what would you know of honor?” Jane stopped dead in her tracks. Loki skidded a little ahead of her, kicking up a cloud of dust that looked so picturesque that Jane had to stop for a second and appreciate literal dirt.
Loki smiled at her, looking a little sheepish. “Not much, to be quite honest with you, but I did have to learn what little I know the hard way. That little lesson in self-sacrifice and caring about the collective good kind of what ended up bringing me here. I died trying to protect the lives of thousands and so did you. We’re not so different, you and I.”
“I,” Jane exhaled. “Kind of hate that.”
“It’ll pass. We do have all of eternity to work out our differences. Or at least until Thor gets here. If we have not sorted it out by then, he’ll probably force us to get along with each other.”
“Great, can’t wait for it,” huffed Jane. She picked the pace back up, moving forward as quickly as she could. “Can we please go now? I’m getting hungry. Which I guess is weird since I assume that we don’t really have corporal bodies that have needs, but whatever.”
“Yes, it is odd. We do get hungry and full, but imagine this, eating whatever you’d like for the rest of eternity without gaining a singular pound. It is rather pleasant.” Loki fell into step with Jane as the two of them scurried up the path. “Jane, may I ask you a question?”
“If you have to.”
“Why did you keep doing it, picking up the hammer time and time again when you knew that was making you sicker?”
“You’re such a busybody.” Jane sighed and tried to push herself even harder up the hill. Unfortunately for her, even in the afterlife, Loki still had a nearly a foot on her and could easily keep up with her. She tried to push herself even faster, but Loki remained hotly in pursuit. Beyond that, he looked like this pace barely even bothered him at all. “That means ‘huge annoying gossiper’ in case you’re unfamiliar with the term.”
“No, I know what the word meant. I’ve been called worse,” came Loki’s quick response. His voice reverberated off the immaculately and intricately carved pillars that dotted the side of the road. Asgard, all of this reminder her of Asgard when she had visited all of those years ago. She had liked it there. Mostly, she had loved being with Thor. She had loved hearing his stories about his upbringing, about his parents, about the land that he loved so much. A land that was now blown into intergalactic rubble. Although, Jane tired not to think too hard about either of those sentiments. Maybe she could like it here too. Maybe.
“I wanted my life to mean something. I wanted to be remembered. I wanted something that I could live for. That seemed like the easiest way to do it.” She tucked her own falling hair back behind her ear.
Loki made a noise as he sucked on his teeth, clearly thinking. “Wasn’t it enough to be remembered and loved by your friends and respected for the work that you had already done?”
“No.” Jane shook her head, undoing the careful tuck that she had just done with her hair. She blew it out of her face and kept pushing forward. The hall was in sight, and her stomach rumbled louder than it had in months. Chemo had suppressed most of her appetite. When she wasn’t hunched over with nausea, food simply no longer tasted good. Eating became a tragic necessity to get through the day. Even coffee had lost its luster. The idea of finally eating a pleasant meal was enough to make her salivate, even if she was dead. “Yes. Maybe? I don’t know. I also thought I could be something better, something more.”
“I had thought that way too, you know. A long time ago. I had thought that the only thing that mattered was power. I would and have killed for it. But it was love, love of my brother and my people, that I died for.” Loki looked heartbreakingly earnest, and Jane silently cursed herself for two things. First, it was that she left an opening in the conversation for his ridiculous and melodramatic monologuing. Second, it was that his monologuing actually turned out to be quite touching.
“You’ve become quite a philosopher, Loki. I didn’t know you had this in you.”
“Well, when you have the endless vastness of time and space to figure out what you’ve done wrong, it leaves you with plenty of time to reflect.”
There was silence between the two of them. Nothing more than sound of their feet hitting the packed dirt as they wound their way forward.
“Not that it matters,” Jane finally broke the quiet between them, speaking quietly. She took in a deep breath of air, and she relished out cool and clean it felt in her lungs, how strong her lungs finally felt. “We’re stuck here. I know you’ve ‘died’ a few times before, but there’s no coming back from this one. Actually being dead is permanent. Not that I like you that much, but I guess for Thor’s sake because he really did always love you and want the best for you, I hope you can accept that. No time for second chances or do anything different than the way that we did. I’m okay with that.
“Unless…,” and there it was. Of course, Loki had wanted something out of her. That was what Jane had remembered Thor had always mentioned with a wistful thoughtfulness in his voice. It was the undercutting of mischief and cunning that always seemed to permeate every story that he had ever talked about his brother.
Jane hated to admit it, but she was intrigued. She stopped the two of them dead in their tracks. “Unless what?”
“Come now, Jane. I already told you. I didn’t sit around here for years to simply twiddle my thumbs and make small talk with my parents. I figured just as there had been secret ways in and out of Asgard, unknown even to Heimdall or Odin, my father, that there had to be a way to get out of here. It turns out that I was right. I usually am.” Loki had a smug smile on his face. It suited him, and Jane hated to admit it.
Her non-essential heart started to beat rapidly in her chest. She could feel a sense of butterflies in her stomach. Nice to know that followed her even into death; it was one of her favorite feelings – the stomach-flipping excitement of something new. “Your plan is to break out of the afterlife?”
“When you put it that way, it makes me sound foolish, but yes.” Loki crossed his arms in front of his chest. “With a little help and additional expertise, which you just happen to have, I think that we could do it.”
The mischievous glint in his eye was all too apparent. Jane licked her lips.
For the first time in her life, Jane doesn't imagine what she would do with more time to work. Instead, she imagined going to see drive-in movies and gorging on popcorn and soda and dripping soft-serve ice cream with Darcey out in the desert where they had first met and became embarrassingly fast friends. She imagined walking around Cambridge with Erik, listening to him tell the same story about his old Ph.D studies that he had told dozens of times and that she had to say that she was never tired of. She imagined taking Val up on her offer to finally go to one of the New Asgard yoga classes together that overlooked the sea; apparently, they were popular with both cruise ship patrons and former Asgardian housewives. She imagined calling up her father, reconciling with him after so many wasted years. She imagined finally joining the Physics Department weekly trivia team, the taste of stale beer and greasy fries making her already growling stomach even hungrier. She even imagined joining a roller derby league like she always wanted to.
Mostly, she imagined making pancakes with Thor.
“Have you ever had Hot Cheetos?” Jane finally asked as Loki cocked an eyebrow. “They’re like a spicy corn chip.”
“I don’t like spicy foods, and I don’t understand what this has to do with anything.”
Jane smiled wickedly. “At this buffet tonight, I’m definitely going to ask for them because as of right now, this is my dream afterlife. Then you and I are going to stuff our faces with as many Hot Cheetos as we can. Or if you want to be a loser who can’t handle spicy food, you can watch me. Then, once I’m good and finished, Loki, you and I are going to break out of the afterlife.”