The Widower

Warnings: Angst.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Pairings: Lokane, Thor/Loki BrOTP, slight hints of Thor/Jane.

Story Playlist: 'Lily's Theme' from 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II', 'Vesper' from 'Casino Royale', 'Honour Him' from 'Gladiator' and 'A Small Measure of Peace' from 'the Last Samurai'.

A/N: This is one possible direction Veritas might have taken, after Jane was stabbed, but because I'm a softie, it didn't. This will remain just a oneshot.

'For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes

This vault a feasting presence full of light.'

- Romeo, Scene V, Act III. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

It was not supposed to be like this.

Thor had seen his fair share of death and loss in his millennia of life, had held dying friends in his arms as they breathed their last, comforted the loved ones they left behind as they mourned, but this…

The only thought he could think was that it was not supposed to be like this.

Watching a woman he had loved die, in the arms of his brother, killed by her own choice and the cruelty of Thanos, was a dagger to his heart more effective than any could have thrown at him before, even his brother's skill had never pierced his heart and shattered it quite so effectively. The way Jane's unsettling, mismatched, eyes had widened as she'd breathed her last, told her mate she loved him and begged him to take care of their daughter.

It was not supposed to be like this.

Jane was supposed to live, to return to Asgard with them victorious and in glory, but instead they had returned as a funereal procession, bearing Jane and the other dead to be lain in honour.

The Elves and Aesir who had died had long been buried or cremated, as was their peoples' custom, but Jane lay still in the room where they had borne her, washed and clothed in beautiful robes of shifting blues and greens, her hair brushed out and seeded with white flowers, her beauty forever preserved by the magic of the Aesir, protected from the world by a glass casket covering her body.

Aoife had been inconsolable on their return to Asgard. She could not understand why her Mamma would not wake up, nor what death meant. For all her intelligence, she was still just a child. His mother stayed with her now, but she could not replace Jane in the little girl's heart.

A black pall had been cast over the Realm Eternal and the Realm of the Light Elves. No one smiled, no one laughed, and it seemed the very light now grew dim. The Forest was desolate and soulless with the loss of its Queen.

Truly, Thor did not know how anything could ever be the same again. How light or laughter or joy could ever exist in a Universe now so devoid of a presence that had evoked all those things, at once the merry crackle of a fire in winter and the blazing inferno of wildfire raging against the elements. No, nothing could ever be the same.

As Thor walked down the long steps which led to the room where Jane lay, he sighed as his thoughts turned to the creature that now haunted her deathbed.

His brother was a changed man, overnight. As quickly and as fleetingly as the life of a butterfly once it emerged from the chrysalis, his brother had tasted bliss and joy and not it was snatched away from him forever, his light extinguished, his soul broken and left to contemplate and remember in the bitter darkness left by Jane's death.

As he descended into the gloom of the room, lit only by a few torches, he spotted the figure slumped against the side of the raised dais where Jane's casket lay, peaceful and beautiful in death, almost as if she were just sleeping. As dark as the shadows in which he sat, Loki did not look up or acknowledge Thor's arrival, just sat there, legs stretched out like a hunting cat at rest, his eyes unseeing as he stared at the opposite wall.

"Brother…" Thor began, then stopped and just sighed. Their mother had sent him down there to try and coax Loki away from his hopeless vigil, to rest and food, to his daughter who needed him, but Thor knew it was a fruitless cause. Loki would not move, could not move, paralysed by grief and guilt and self-loathing. It had been Jane's choice, but it was Loki's hand on the hilt of Laevateinn as it pierced her tiny body, it was his hands stained with the blood of his beloved and salvation, or so he perceived.

Wordlessly, Thor turned from Loki to look on Jane, her skin glowing as if lit from within, and he could almost believe that the fire of her spirit still remained within her, somewhere. But no air fogged the surface of the glass casket above her mouth, and her chest moved not at all. She was gone, as Thor had seen for himself, in that bloodsoaked room above the Sanctuary, and he could not bring her back.

How he wanted to! He loved Sif, with the love that had grown from centuries of companionship and knowing one another, soul to soul, but Jane…Jane he had loved with all the newness of raw passion and the discovery of a life so very different from the one he had been born to lead. It was a love that had been tempered by time and circumstance into a deep affection that bade him do anything for her happiness, even give her up to Loki when he realised the true depth of feeling that had existed between them, and that affection had now turned to a gnawing, biting thing in his breast, shadow-whispers that cursed him for not being fast enough or powerful enough to save her.

But he knew it was worse for Loki, her mate, her lover and the father of her child. His brother loved but rarely, and then he loved too well and too much. This loss had truly destroyed him.

"She is beautiful, is she not?" Loki breathed beside him, his voice a low rasp from days of disuse. "Death, that hath suckt the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death's pale flag is not advanced there…Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe that unsubstantial Death is amorous; and that the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour? But he will not have her. She is mine!"

It was the most Thor had heard Loki speak since the final breath had left Jane's lips. Abruptly, Loki lunged to his feet and leaned over the glass surface, looking down earnestly within, as if willing Jane to open her eyes and breathe again. "It is a lie," Loki snarled fiercely, making even Thor recoil with fear. "I will bring her back to me."

"Loki….my brother please," Thor began quietly, his voice weak and uncertain. This new insanity was not one he had any idea how to deal with. "Come away now. Aoife needs you. She needs her father."

"She needs her mother too, yet now she is deprived of both," he replied, bitterly. He raised reddened, glassy eyes, raw with tears, to Thor's and he flinched away. "She needs us both, but without her….I can never be whole again. So let it begin…"

"Loki…" Thor began, unnerved, as Loki suddenly stood upright, tall and proud, his eyes flashing, as he bent one final look on the still, lifeless, beautiful form within.

"Sleep well, my love, until I return," he breathed. "I will bring you back to us, and until I do so, I will not step foot in this chamber again. I vow it, my Jane."

Thor watched, pained and uneasy, as Loki met his eyes with a new purpose and madness blazing within, before he turned on his heel and stalked away, his whole being bent on some new purpose.

The days passed, and autumn came. The leaves withered and fell from the trees, the sunlight was dimmed and the cold winds blew.

Aoife and Loki remained in Asgard, and still Thor watched with increasing unease as Aoife grew paler and quieter, the youthful joy in her eyes extinguished, its flame smothered, and Loki retreated further and further into himself, never leaving the library, living his half-life within its winding passageways of tomes and dusty parchment.

Loki felt their scrutiny, their disbelief and their ever-growing certainty that he was truly mad, but he did not care. Now he had purpose again, he had reason to push himself on.

Without Jane, he was nothing. He could not go on, and he would not. He chose not to, but he knew the ramifications of that choice meant that his beloved daughter would lose both her parents for good. And he would not countenance that.

So now he probed the darkest corners of the library of Asgard, uncovered its secrets and searched its blackest lessons for a way to bring Jane back, or if not that, to go into the world of the dead and recover her himself.

At last, he found it, after weeks of pain and fruitless, frustrating searches, grief and agony borne alone in the depths of the library, as forgotten and uncared for as the books he frantically clawed through, he found it. The path to the world of the dead.

His skin shone as if fevered, his eyes heated with new life, but a terrible one, a flame of agony, desire, need and hellbent determination. His hair was lank and his limbs ached, but he cared nothing for any of it. He had found the way.

Now all he needed to do was follow it.

He only paused to stop by his daughter's bedchamber, once his and Jane's. She lay in the midst of the great, fur-covered bed, tiny and pale and sleeping, her dark curls spread across the coverlets.

He stood and watched her for the longest time, conscious of the gaze watching him from the door of his chambers, feeling nothing but pain in his soul. He could not do this without Jane, he could not be the father Aoife needed, yet alone deserved, without his Jane.

"Forgive me, my little one," Loki breathed, stepping up to kneel by Aoife's side, pressing a kiss to her warm forehead. "I will bring her back to us."

He left the room as silently as he came there, his visit remembered only as a dream in the child's mind when she awoke, alone and bereft of her parents.

He walked without stopping through the silent, darkened city, until he reached the outskirts and stood atop a hill, outside the walls, looking out at the dark lands beyond their borders.

"You shall not dissuade me, brother," he called back to his shadow, as Thor all but melted from the darkness, his bright hair and armour covered by the black mourning cloak around his shoulders. "I will do this, and I will bring her back to us."

Thor stood and simply looked at Loki, his warm blue eyes meeting his steadily, before a ghost of his former devil-may-care smile appeared on his lips, as he stepped forward and raised one hand to Loki's shoulder.

"I know, brother, and that's why I am coming with you," he told him, firm and resolute. Taken aback, Loki could only nod, but he returned the press of his shoulder in Thor's paw-like hand with his own on Thor's shoulder, and he smiled mirthlessly.

"Then so be it, brother," Loki murmured, already turning away to face the darkness of the night, away from the approaching dawn and the golden city of Asgard. His road, their road, lay upon a much darker path.

Wait for me, my love. I am coming for you…

And with a shiver of certainty down his spine, as the cold winds drew his hair out behind him, mingling with the golden mass of Thor's own, he heard her voice, sweet and strong, in his mind.

I know you are. I am waiting…

She had no idea of time, of space, of breath or light or dark or reality. She floated as if in a sea of forgetfulness, her mind and soul drifting along an endless current, the fire of her soul drowned by the waters of death.

She remembered the pain of the sword in her gut, the agony of breathing, of fighting Death's call to hold on, to see her beloved one last time. She remembered the fraught, uncertain days of their relationship, filled with darkness and fear and pain, with love and need and joy in equal measure. You could not have one without the other.

She remembered the joy of their daughter, Aoife's musical laughter, her wicked eyes, her bouncing hair as she ran along the paths of the city in the trees.

The dry dust of the desert, the squeal of tyres, the thud of a body hitting her truck. The kiss of a new passion, the farewell, the acceptance of another's soul and heart into her keeping.

Letters and numbers danced through her mind, and she saw them as if with vision again. Hard, warm lips against her own, hands on her body, tugging her back from the current.

The eyes of the two people she loved best in the Universe. Green eyes that turned into demonic red, and the midnight blue darkness of the other…and with that remembrance, she was dragged free of the current, and she awoke.

And a new voice resounded in her conscience, bringing with it tangible memory and new hope, as she remembered her family and her love, her friends and her life, and the fire of her soul ignited into full flame once more.

Wait for me, my love. I am coming for you…

She did not know where she was, she could not see or hear or touch but for the phantom memories that drifted across her soul, but with her phantom mouth, she smiled and clung to the flames.

I know you are. I'm waiting…