This takes place right after the end of THE AVENGERS movie's events, but it doesn't refer to them in the least, as it is written from Sif's point of view, who is fighting with her feelings regarding everything they've been through lately, in THOR's storyline. Actually I don't care much for Sif, or didn't so far, but I needed someone to present the events from their point of view and, after considering several characters for that, including Thor, I settled for her because I needed a bit of a cooler PoV so to say, from a person still close enough to the family to be a part of everything - and close enough especially to the two royal brothers. Hope you'll enjoy.
WHAT HAVE WE DONE?
We have all been fools.
The proud, almighty Asgardians.
Protectors of the poor, pathetic mortals in Midgard. And overlords of every other realm.
That's how we saw ourselves, all of us: Fandral, Volstagg, even Hogun, who wasn't a true Aesir to begin with.
And me. Even me.
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Now a true king of Asgard lies in his bed in the healing chambers, and there is nothing we can do. Or if there is, we do not even know.
I had always thought of us as being the superior race, the one to outshine them all.
I have never known any better.
I had it easy of course. Growing up next to the royal family, inside the royal house of Asgard, together with princes Thor and Loki.
Life was so good!
We had so much fun together. Battles to fight, horses to train, love to make. Pranks to play. We were the shiny guild of the happy-go-lucky scamps.
Yes, life was good.
Between Fandral's vaingloriousness, Volstagg's endless goofs and Hogun's aloofness, it felt so great to spend our time, our lives, doing nothing in fact with them.
Because doing such nothings next to Thor was so easy and funny and... sweet.
To fight next to him. To laugh together with him.
To make fun of Loki.
In the most good-natured way of course. After all, he never seemed to be fazed by any of our pranks and was fully capable of responding to them in the most devastating ways – which he certainly did each time, copiously testing our skills and vigilance to ravaging extents.
He was wondrous himself, though I had never cared to see it before the way I finally see it now. Because of Thor of course.
By Odin, I swear that, had I not already been smitten by Thor... had it not been for Thor to compare him with every moment, maybe Loki could have stood a chance to smite me too.
But as things were...
Thor had always treated Loki with condescendence ever since we were all kids. Maybe in the beginning it had been only because Loki was younger – or at least that had always been implied – even though physically this age difference didn't show at all. But it had been said that Thor was the elder and we never suspected any different.
Even now I am not certain of this thing. They were both just as tall. Loki even seemed at times a little taller, though I suspected that he may have used some tricks just to play a bit with Thor's well-known haughtiness.
But they looked the same age.
And yet somehow, in a certain way, Loki acted as if he were the elder in fact between them two; the wiser one. The one who thought before acting, instead of just throwing in a rash manner in everything, head forward, like his brother.
When Thor was out with us, riding our horses to sheer exhaustion and having picnics, Loki was many times in the study rooms or in the library. Not always but oh so many times.
When we would sneak to Midgard to have fun messing around with the mortals, Loki wouldn't always come with us but would prefer to spend his time instead in the training halls, working to improve his battle skills and fighting techniques with various weapons, together with the court's best weapon masters.
Once though he disappeared for a few good months, only for us to find out when he came back that he had been on Midgard too, all alone, yet not for sheer fun but to learn a strange fighting technique the Midgardians called „capoeira".
How we split our sides with laugh upon hearing that!
I mean, to go nowhere else than down to Midgard to actually learn something from those mere mortals! Something that to us looked more like a dance, not a fighting algorithm!
How pathetic. And what a good laughing material had this proved to be, to keep us entertained for more good months!
Thor based himself on strength – and his strength was his hammer, Mjolnir.
Loki couldn't handle the hammer – another endless fountain of jokes for us – but his strength lay within himself and it was his tremendous Magic power.
We were used to launching ourselves in battles with wild cries, howling like a pack of feral creatures and brandishing our weapons high in the air. Loki would fight much more silent, to the point where most of the time we wouldn't even know where he was for real. It would seem sometimes like he was all over the place at once – and none of us could tell which one of all those clones was him for real. He would wipe the enemies out with his magic, at the same time throwing daggers to divert the ones who were trying to take us from behind or from the sides, performing his lethal „dances" learnt on Midgard when someone got too close to him and occasionally screening the battle scene with deceiving veils of smoke when we needed to retreat in a haste.
But when all was over we only belittled his deeds and despised him for not fighting „manly" enough, like us that is. We called his magic „tricks", his dagger-throwing to hit enemies from afar „cowardice" and his close combat technique „a mad rabbit's hopping".
I mean what! Was magic manly? Was dancing around your enemy and tripping him with your legs while blowing smoke in his face a true man's way of fighting? No, we all thought.
But truth be told, his so-called „tricks" had saved our lives countless times when everything seemed to be lost and he was the one who got us back home safe. For he was the most powerful sorcerer we had ever known and a fierce warrior, not a coward, and we were oh so used to rely on him in battle, to know that he was there for us.
Not that we ever thanked him. Emotions were only for the weak and the grateful blabbering was not to leave anyone's lips. A wicked jest was far more likely to be heard. And upon returning to Asgard, unharmed thanks to him, we swung our heavy blades merrily over our shoulders like the swashbucklers that we were, boasted on our newest victory and then we ate and we drank and we boasted some more.
And we laughed some more too, recalling moments from the earlier battle:
„Did you see him how he hopped like a Midgardian cricket? The horror of it all! Hahahaha!"
„And that trick with the frogs and snakes blown under their armors! Only someone as wicked as Loki could think of such a devilish thing to do, I kid you not! I shudder at the mere thought!"
And we would feast until morn rose again upon the glorious realm of Asgard.
While Loki would retire early to his chambers or go visit Queen Frigga to ease her mind on our fates, to tell her that he kept and brought us safe once more, just as he must have promised her, and then to rest at last if not maybe to study again some more.
I now acknowledge that he was just as good as any of us in battle.
No, he was even better.
He could face each and every one, if not more than only one of us in open fight, either bare-handed or with various weapons – and he had done it numerous times, showing neither fear, nor hesitation when he had been challenged.
And he defeated us easily and decidedly every time, even without using his magic. He was stronger, faster, more agile and a cool thinker, able to anticipate our next moves. And I could still remember how his body, clashing with mine in our spars, felt like a mass of steel cables twisted around each other, despite his deceiving leaner build.
The only one who could stand up to him was Thor of course. But even he wouldn't have been able to win decisively, had it not been for Mjolnir multiplying his power.
When he would happen to be able to have Loki down, occasionally, he would put the hammer on his brother's chest.
And the fight would be finally over.
Then we would all laugh and challenge Loki to rid himself of Mjolnir. And we would go to lunch, leaving him to boil in the sun under the heated metal of the hammer.
And later on, Thor would maybe need his weapon or simply remember of it and call it back to him with a flick of his wrist, without bothering though to check on how his brother was.
It was humiliating for Loki and cruel, to say the least, but we didn't use to think of it as such. After all, Loki would promptly come with an elaborate prank to avenge himself and make us pay for this and thus we believed things to be even.
So we never thought of Loki as a victim.
Then one day Thor told us of how the Allfather had taken both of them once, when they were children, to show them the relics' vault. And he had told them about the ancient war with the Jotuns. Then concluded that both of them had been born to be kings, even though only one would ascend to the throne.
And I thought I understood:
Loki was jealous on Thor. He had to be!
That must have been the reason why he was constantly struggling to learn so much, to train more than Thor, to spend more time than Thor with their parents, being closer to Queen Frigga and staying near the Allfather to learn from him the secrets of governing over the realm of Asgard.
He wanted to outshine Thor in Odin's eyes, to take his place in Frigga's heart. To show them that he would be better as a king than Thor.
To steal the throne from his older brother.
But seemingly he didn't manage – and we sighed in relief when Odin announced that he had finally decided to pass the crown to his first born.
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„It was just another test," Thor whispered some days ago, as we both sat on a bench in the palace's garden.
That was one of the very rare moments now when he wasn't beside his brother's sickness bed, where he'd been spending almost all of his time ever since he had brought Loki back from Midgard.
The moment they had set foot in Asgard, Loki's fingers had slid from the tesseract's handle and he dropped unconscious on the bridge, his skin turning the deepest Jotun blue.
It had all happened in an instant and he hadn't regained his senses ever since.
And Thor was devastated.
He had always loved his brother dearly, of course. Everyone knew that. Only he didn't show it. Men don't usually make a display of such feelings, do they?
Or, how this new Thor said, sitting hunched and looking blankly in the distance, he had been too arrogant, too self-absorbed and too happy to have met himself to manifest this love towards his brother other than as a humiliating condescendence.
But now things were completely different. And it had all started that day, the day of his supposed coronation.
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„It was to be a test," Thor murmured in a monotonous, dry tone, looking with tiredness and sorrow at the void in front of him.
„The ultimate test, to see how I would treat all this, what I would do, had I the fate of the entire Asgard placed in my hands. And I treated it like a joke and I acted like a Midgardian pig trundling in its trough just like I trundled in my glory, besmirching everything around. All this while my father sat on the throne patiently, watching my show of vanity with a grim face, waiting for me to end that pathetic display of tomfoolery and pettiness."
„Surely Allfather must have understood that this was only the enthusiasm and playfulness of a young heart," I said, incredulous of how he could bash himself like this.
He let out a stifled sound of sorrow.
„No, Sif."
And in the sound of his voice I heard vibrating, maybe for the first time, the dry inflexions of Odin's voice, his father.
„No. He must have known I was not ready. He knew of course. He only wanted to make me get a sight of myself in the mirror of my own vaingloriousness – and I have failed at that."
His chin fell down to his chest and I didn't know what to say, how to comfort him, his troubled self. I was only good with weapons, much less with words.
It hurt me more than I was willing to admit, but I felt like this new Thor who had come back from his exile in Midgard escaped me ever since. He slid from my grasp, I could not read him. I could not reach at him. I could not follow him in this realm of sadness where he was lost.
I felt as if I did not know him anymore at all.
They said something about a girl he met down there, while amongst the mortals.
But I knew this was not it. My brother Heimdall had told me how, since Loki's fall, Thor had come to him numerous times to sit on Bifrost, at the very edge of the bridge's ragged remains. And he had asked Heimdall about that girl, if he could still see her now, with the connection between our worlds being destroyed.
But Heimdall said it wasn't the girl Thor wished to know about in fact.
There was another painful question he did not dare to ask, for fear that the answer would be a final „no".
It was his brother Loki he wished to ask about in fact. If Heimdall could still see him, wherever he was.
If he was still alive.
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I could not understand.
Loki had done terrible things. Things none of us could even comprehend. The Jotun infiltration in Asgard that had ruined Thor's coronation day had been his deed in fact, as I learned later on. And the way he always played on Thor's buttons, pushing them to his will, manipulating his brother's feelings while he pretended he was supporting him in fact was something that would madden us to no ends, because we never knew when Loki would speak the truth and when he would lie – and Thor would always fall for it, just like us all.
But he had saved our lives once again in Jotunheim and the war ensued between us and the Jotuns was not his doing but Thor's own.
Yet, when we found out that he was in fact of Jotun blood, we felt stunned and frozen. We thought this explained everything.
He was of a cursed birth.
He belonged to a cursed race. An evil race.
That was what we all thought. It was so easy in the end, to blame it all on him like this. It comforted us for the insidious guilt we still bore, buried somewhere deep inside our beings, eating at our souls, for how things had gone over the years.
Thor wasn't guilty for how Loki was. None of us were. It was all Loki's own fault for he was a wicked, cold-blooded being of the frost, one of those monsters our parents told us about at night, before putting us to bed.
How else could one explain his so horrible doings?
For who would murder in cold blood his own parent who bestowed upon him the greatest gift of all – life? Who would be able to even think of wiping out his entire race, his whole birth world, just like that?
Only a monster.
That was why, when this new Thor I couldn't understand finally spoke to me these days ago, on that bench, I simply refused to accept what he said.
I felt mad.
„Sif," he told me quietly, „do not make the mistake to blame what happened on my brother. It is I who have to take the blame for all this grief and destruction. Not Loki."
„How is it you to blame?" I shouted, attempting to shake him out of that state of prostration unworthy of a warrior, as I thought.
He just gazed at me like from another world.
„Do you not know?" he asked with a pale grimace of grief I had never seen on him before.
„He was never my equal. I always put him down. I always pushed him aside, even when we were small. I had to be the first – and I was, stepping over him if that it took. I made him what he is today. I pushed him to all this," Thor's voice sounded wavering and estranged.
„No," I shouted at him again. „No! If that is truly so, then we all did it. For we all laughed at him with you."
But I didn't really believe what I was saying. I only said it to ease his troubled mind.
He just huffed.
„You would have never done it, had it not been for me setting the tone."
„But he grabbed Gungnir taking advantage of the Allfather falling to his sleep and kept you away from the throne that should have been rightfully yours!", I kept shouting, not understanding how Thor could still take Loki's part after all he had done to all of us.
„He did not! It was Mother who gave him the reign, did you not know? He would have never thought of claiming it."
How could he believe this?
„He said he never wanted the throne. He told me so himself." Thor murmured, chin fallen on his chest.
„And you believed him?" I asked, incredulously.
He threw me a grievous glance.
„You weren't there, Sif. Yes, I believed him. He said he only wanted to be my equal."
I fell silent, not knowing what to say.
„Mother entrusted him with Gungnir as a scepter. And the priest who handed it over to him told me how he wouldn't even touch it. How he drew back. How he turned to our mother and looked at her, seeking to see what SHE expected from him. How only when she entrusted him with the fate of all Asgard did he finally agree to receive the scepter. And all these months he ruled Asgard firmly and wisely. Having to keep the Asgardians at peace, to keep them reassured and ease their minds while being on the verge of war and bereft of their Allfather, maybe even bereaved. On the verge of a war I had madly caused myself, on the verge of becoming bereaved of a beloved king whose grave state was caused in the greatest part by ME."
I felt frozen on the inside, my mind empty of thoughts.
„But... but we all went to him and asked him to bring you back! Wouldn't that have helped for the war to come, to have you here? And all he had to say to this was that he couldn't undo the Allfather's last command?"
„He was right. He respected our father's wishes more than I have ever done. Don't you understand? I may have been the charming prince loved by everyone and forgiven when I messed things up, but at the bottom of it all, I was but a foolish boy, just like father had said to king Laufey. A spoiled brat, too self-infatuated to care about dragging his whole world into a war, spitting my contempt at my wiser brother when he tried to reason with me in Jotunheim. I put all our lives in danger – yours, Loki's, our friends', every Asgardian life – just for my foolish pride. I lashed at my father and I called him an old fool. I wished to strip him of the throne and climb on it myself, so full I was of my own emptiness. I was mad! Stupid and mad! And you wished Loki to bring me back? What for? How could I have been of any help to you? I did not deserve to be brought back. I would have only been a liability hanging on his neck in the war. I didn't deserve to handle Mjolnir anymore, nor was I able to. I had no powers and no wisdom to share with anyone at that time."
My hands trembled in my lap while listening to him.
This wasn't right. It couldn't be. Could things be twisted in this way?
„He... he sent the Destroyer after you. After all of us," I stammered pitifully, choking on my words. „He tried to kill you... us... Wasn't that too much already?"
„No, Sif."
His voice, Odin's voice, sounded dry and final again, seemingly devoid of emotions.
„No. That is not true. The Destroyer was recovered and repaired, enough to be able to unveil the last orders it received. Loki never ordered it to kill us. He ordered it to stop me from returning to Asgard. To destroy everything that would help me return. Not to kill. He never ordered the Destroyer to kill anyone of us. He just wanted to keep me away until he could have solved the mess I left behind."
I could not believe. I wouldn't! I felt helpless and somehow betrayed and between me and Thor had grown a barrier I could not break. I was not able to comprehend how, after all that had happened, Thor could now keep defending Loki. How he would stick with him, especially after the latest mayhem he had inflicted only recently upon Midgard.
Yes, the exile on Midgard had changed Thor deeply.
Not enough though, as he said.
That day, when we all saw him facing the Destroyer back in the humans' world... when we all heard him apologizing to his brother...
How we all thought he was humiliating himself beyond necessary just for the greater good of everyone and how we all looked up to him for that! How we all admired his humbleness and nobility of spirit!
„Yes, I was so noble, wasn't I? And so full of my nobleness," he almost whispered from the hands in which he had hidden his face.
I watched helpless and wordless his sturdy form hunched in defeat on the stone bench.
„I was so humble that the first thing I did, returned to Asgard, was to go after my brother in a rage and throw at him accusations about murder and lies, to just spit my contempt in his face once more. Even though, had it not been for me, he would not have done any of these things in the first place."
„You mean to try and wipe out an entire race, his own?" I asked, drops of sarcasm dripping from my voice.
Thor's head shot up from his hands, his fierce gaze locked with mine, looking dark and angry for the first time.
„Do not dare to judge my brother, Sif! The damage had been inflicted already, by my own hand, and he was left but with the shards, to mend the things for everyone. Does this choice of his seem monstrous to you? Does it? Yes, he managed to bring Laufey into father's own resting chamber and killed him right there, killed the one who brought him into this world... only to leave him to die right after that. His true father was Odin. His true home world was Asgard. And Odin was the one he chose. He was so willing to show father how much he loved him, how much he loved all of us, that he would go all the way to kill the one who had never wished to be a real parent to him, just to show his love. Does it sound extreme and wrong to you? Maybe it is. But to me it only sounds desperate and terrible and grievous. And I see now how we pushed him towards this over all these years."
I kept my silence. I did not want to make Thor madder than he had already felt now. But there was still a wisp of a venomous breath, eating at the heart of my being.
„At the cost of an entire world?..." I murmured almost inaudibly.
Thor wiped his eyes with an unconscious gesture, not even trying to hide the tears brimming in them.
„Dreadful, isn't it?" he whispered. „To have to make such a... a devastating choice just to mend the mistake of a brother who treated you like a nobody all of your life! To be driven to decide the destruction of a world – your own! – which you never even had the chance to know that well, just to put an end to a war foolishly ensued by someone else! To kill your chance of learning anything about your birth world just for the sake of saving the lives of all the ones living in your foster one! How could a man not go insane with a choice like this cast upon him to make?"
No. Do not say that. It could not have been like this.
„He chose to do it. I could have not. And I can only imagine what did this to his soul, how damaged he must be by such a terrible doing. It took all this to shake off me all the stupidity in which I have been wallowing all of my petty life so far. I called my own brother's wrath upon myself. I brought him to the brink of madness. I made him reach and go beyond every limit just to mend what I have done. And now I can only hope to ever be the king he could have been. I can only hope to ever love Asgard so much as he does, to be able to sacrifice everything for it without a second thought, like he already did."
I hid my face in my own hands this time.
Thor just stood up from the bench.
„I stayed too much away from him already," he said softly, his anger on me gone in but a moment. Then he turned towards me, looking straight into my eyes and added:
„Do you know how it's like to see your brother falling into the abyss forever?"
I could have found out, had it not been for Heimdall being in the healing chambers at that time, a tiny little poisonous thought still tugged at my hardened heart.
„Do you know how it's like to see him letting go of your hand stretched to him and falling farther and farther from you? To think that he is gone for good? Do you know how it feels to see the endless pain in his eyes and know that it was you who put it there?"
No. No, I didn't know of that.
„Do you know how it's like to hear about his return after so long, after all this time of him being gone – and to rush at him with your heart pulled out in the cup of your hands, only to see him so painfully changed, looking so much older and hardened and... sick?... I cannot even imagine what he must have been through all this time, but..."
Thor crossed his arms and huffed softly.
„I do know now one thing for sure: That I have two loving parents. And a whole gang of friends, loyal and devoted to me, following me everywhere. I humbly thank you for that. I am thankful to all of you, believe me, now that I finally learned to truly value our fellowship, my friends, not to take it for granted like before. And I have a whole world to love me as their, maybe, future ruler – if I ever become worthy of that – regardless of my childish foolishness and my rash behavior. And girls to love will always be. And friends are always here with me..."
He paused and smiled with that beautiful smile of his that managed to melt my hardened shell each time.
„...but I only have one brother, Sif. He may be a foster one, yes, but who has been, until now, much more of a brother to me than I have ever been to him. And I will NOT lose him again. I do not care what he does. When he wakes up – because he has to, he has to! – if father decides to banish him for a while, then I will go with him. Whatever he may choose to do, I will be there for him. And I will keep being there, until he finally thinks that I have paid enough for what I did to him and he forgives me too, once and for all. An eternity if it may take, I do not care. For he's my only brother and I love him more than I love myself, I know that now."
He then just turned his back at me and returned to the healing chambers to stand guard beside his brother, where he took turns with Odin and Queen Frigga, so Loki would never feel deserted when he woke up from the deep coma he was sunk into for weeks now.
While I was left behind, confused and lost, not understanding, not willing to accept.
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It took me days.
For a long time, I simply couldn't comprehend. How Thor could change like this on Midgard. But he hadn't changed that much while being there, in truth.
How he could defend his brother like this, despite Loki's apparent madness. But I knew he always loved his brother. He had just been too infatuated to admit – too much of an arrogant, conceited bastard, as he would put it. He wasn't that now, not anymore.
How he could commit to someone like this, like he had never done before, not with us, not with any girl he had been with. Not even with me.
It brought a pang of jealously stinging me in the heart each time I thought about it.
I found myself in some moments, quite often, unwillingly falling into a kind of dreamy state when I could see ourselves, from our group, all of us together. Having fun as youngsters. Me, Thor, Fandral. Hogun. The older Volstagg. And Loki.
I could see the moments when one word, one gesture, one mockery, had opened a wound. Over another older wound. Over another older wound.
I could see how things could have gone differently. How another word could have been said instead of the hurtful one. How another gesture could have been made. How the biting mockeries could have been replaced by genuinely harmless jokes.
I could see how Loki could have been one of us for real, just as it should have happened in reality.
It was a guilt we all shared. A shame we all bore.
A pain I'm growing to know now, day by day.
An understanding I didn't know I would ever be able to gain sometime.
I look at Loki's deeds in my mind. At the incomprehensible he dared to do only to feel like one of us and to protect us all.
And the pain and the understanding weave together, day after day.
Until I cannot hold them anymore within myself.
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Thor will not go alone through this, not without us, his friends. And neither will be Loki left by us.
So I sit here next to Thor, beside Loki's bed.
Beside the bed of the one true, worthy king Asgard knew after Odin.
He is still unresponsive and his pale skin makes me think of the sky being crossed by waves of clouds blown by a strong wind, while wisps of Jotun blue run on its surface, over his hands, his face.
I tentatively stretch my hand and touch his weakened, colder one, passively resting over the blanket. He doesn't even flinch.
I do not know if he can hear me, but we speak to him in the hope that he does. And I tell him how sorry I am for everything and how now I finally understand better what he means to us.
And how we all wish him to wake up and return to his rightful place among us, within the royal family, back to his home in Asgard where he belongs.
I keep talking while Queen Frigga enters and comes to sit with us.
I come and talk to him again, in the evenings, when King Odin – the Allfather – leaves the kingdom's cares and comes to take his place next to his sleeping son, letting his powerful hand rest over Loki's Jotun blue.
We will always be here.
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Well, I thought of this as a oneshot. But if someone else thinks we should at least find out what happens in the end with Loki, as in if he wakes up eventually or not, then, I don't know... let me know maybe?...