Once again I would like to warn the world as a whole of the dangers of writing kid!fic while listening to the Game of Thrones soundtrack, for no good will come of it.
Jane falls asleep outside Loki's door every night, but when she wakes she is always in her own bed.
It doesn't matter. Every morning she comes back. She talks through the door. She shouts at it, insults it; once she cries. She threatens to go to Earth and never return. She threatens to stop drinking the Idunn tea. She threatens to marry someone else and never speak to him again.
There is never an answer.
One night she rouses as she's taken back to her rooms; she's much too old for it, but she's being carried like a child, arms hooked under her knees and shoulders, cheek resting against a man's chest. A beard tickles the crown of her head.
She asks why. She doesn't even know which why she means. There are too many.
"Because a King," says Odin, without looking down, "cannot speak from the heart."
When he lays her in bed, he pulls the covers up to her chin. "I was cruel not to return you to Midgard the moment you arrived," he says softly. "You do not belong here, child. You never will."
She hears those words forever.
The Vault was one of the few places Jane doesn't feel slighted by being banned from. The relics of Asgard were kept under lock and key with guards posted at all times; only a few people in the entire realm had ever been inside, and never without Odin's presence at their side.
Of course Loki thought it would be fun to sneak in.
And Jane would have objected, had Thor not been an integral of the plan. She hadn't seen Thor in ages. If violating fifty or sixty laws by wandering around a creepy old crypt of dangerous and highly-forbidden trinkets meant Loki would help her spend time with her foster brother, than she could live with that. So Thor became Odin (an easy trick for Loki to play, the son sounded so much like the father), and the guards stepped aside for their King while Loki and Jane slipped in invisible and unnoticed behind him.
The moment the doors closed, the illusion dropped, and Thor swung Jane around in his arms and announced that Loki was right: she was, in fact, getting shorter.
Then he insisted on carrying her piggy-back as he did when they were small — even easier now that Thor was well over a foot taller — and she held on tight while they explored, Thor teasing, Jane giggling, Loki showing off. The way it used to be. The way Jane thought it always would be, before they grew up and everyone told them it had to change.
It was the best time she had had in decades.
Finally, his chamber opens — to Frigga. Jane tries to follow on her foster-mother's footsteps, but the door swings shut before she can so much as sneak a toe over the threshold.
She paces, waiting, all through the afternoon. When the Queen finally emerges, she only pats Jane's hair for a moment and shakes her head. "No, dear one," she says gently. "No."
The next day Thor shows up and swears he will shatter the walls with a single blow if Loki doesn't speak to him.
Again, the chamber opens. Again, Jane tries to slip inside. Again, the door slams in Jane's face.
This visit is shorter than the Queen's, but still goes on for more than an hour. And when Thor comes out his hug lifts her off the ground, and he swears that the All-Father will not be able to part them again, that he will lift Mjolnir at last and shatter the Rainbow Bridge if there is talk of returning her to Midgard.
But he doesn't tell her anything about Loki.
She pulls out her daggers and uses the door for target practice. Even with a half-healed arm she can hit the dead center from thirty feet every time.
No one responds.
Most of the displays were full, but the few conspicuously empty spaces implied great and terrible tales. When asked, Loki and Thor spun stories that Jane was pretty sure were more than half made up, but some she would discreetly ask Heimdall about later. (If there was really an infinity stone hidden somewhere on Midgard, he'd know.)
They stopped for Mjolnir. For all she'd heard about it, Jane didn't think it looked that impressive; it was just a big stone hammer. But Thor looked at the weapon so longingly that Jane asked him to tell her how it was forged, even though she'd heard it before; the hundredth time he spoke of the dwarven blacksmiths and their dying star was just as exciting as the first. On this he could be as eloquent as Loki.
They were so caught up in the drama — his telling, her listening — that Jane didn't notice Loki had wandered away until she saw the flare of blue in the corner of her eye.
It doesn't make sense. Everything is supposed to make sense, everything, even when she hates it, and Loki not wanting to see her is a violation of everything she has ever known.
Finally she goes to Heimdall. He can see a single drop of dew fall from a blade of grass a thousand worlds away. Surely Loki's rooms are no challenge.
His refusal is gentle, but absolute.
She demands to know what the point of it all is. The Bifrost and the stars, Midgard and Asgard, she and Loki. Existential whys have never much eaten at her before, but all the natural laws of the universe have been subverted and she cannot find her footing. If there are answers, Heimdall will have them. Heimdall always has them.
And then he tells her the truth. "It was I who saw you, Lady Jane, the day your parents died. Our Queen was lonely and wished for a daughter. I showed you to her and told her you must be that child."
Why?
"Across the fields of eternity, most will live and die quietly, as is their right and pleasure. But there are a few who will alter the course of many. Some will change everything. I cannot know the future… but I can see who burns bright."
That's not an answer.
"You will shake the branches of Yggdrasil, Lady Jane. For good or ill, I know not. But you will play a part — and that is what I told the Queen the day you arrived."
So that's all I've ever been? A part?
"No. You are loved, Lady Jane. It does not take a Gatekeeper to see that."
Jane had heard the history, of course; everyone knew about the Casket of Ancient Winters and the great war that brought it to Asgard. Even a mortal like her.
Don't wander off or the Frost Giants will get you.
Thor tells the story again anyway. The Jotuns were about two feet taller than usual in this version, and the descriptions of how their bladed arms of ice severed the heads of Aesir and mortal warrior alike were even more lurid that usual, but the way the dancing light of the Casket cast long shadows through the hall made Jane shiver.
Finish your supper or the Frost Giants will come.
Children's stories. Monsters under the bed. History made into mythology. Nothing to worry about.
And Loki stood silent and stared.
The longer he stared, the brighter the casket seemed to glow.
Eventually Thor ran out of hyperbole and tried to move on. But Loki just stepped closer, right up to the pedestal, and asked if they could hear it. The casket. Didn't they hear it?
No. Neither Thor nor Jane heard it.
"They didn't even want me for me, Loki," Jane says to the door. It is deep into the night, but this time she can't sleep. "They took me for a purpose and no one even knows what it is."
There's no reply. She doesn't know how long she's been waiting in this hallway. Maybe it's been months. Time is so strange here.
"I hate them." She leans her forehead against the dagger-scarred wood and closes her eyes. "They lied to me. I hate them all. Don't leave me out here with them."
She almost doesn't hear the soft click of the lock releasing. But this time, when she tries the brass handle, the knob turns.
Jane slips in before he can change his mind and slams the door shut behind her. "I don't care," she announces. (But this doesn't change the fact that she's filled with relief at the fact that his skin is once again pale and his eyes are once again green; she doesn't know what she would have done otherwise.) "I don't care that you're a Frost Giant, Loki." (She'll make herself not care.)
"I have a name," he says, like Loki wasn't a good enough name all these years.
"I don't care about that, either."
"I do. I am Laufeyson."
It takes Jane a long moment to understand what that means, but when she does, only placing a hand against the wall stops her from sinking to the ground. "King Laufey?"
He nods.
It all clicks into place.
Loki is a prince. Loki will be King of Jotunheim. It is Loki who will be sent away from Asgard. They'll turn him back into a Frost Giant so that if he touches her he'll freeze her skin from her bones and then they'll send him away and she'll be all alone with Them.
No. No, no, no. "Do you even want to be a king?" she demands, crossing the room towards him, deliberately ignoring the way he studies his hands instead of her.
"It is my birthright."
"That's not the same thing."
"You were born to be a mortal," Loki says, and it's not nice the way he says it. He doesn't say mortal that way to her. "We are what we are, Jane Fosterdóttir."
"We're not like them. You said so yourself."
"But we're not like each other, either."
And it feels like the dark thing in her chest has swallowed her whole. "I hate them," she says again, with every ounce of envy, pain, and injustice in her being. Heimdall, Frigga, even Thor; they are Them. She should never have trusted them. Loki is the one thing that is hers, and they're trying to take him away. "They lied to us. We don't need them."
Loki's eyes flash in the torchlight. "What do we need?"
To not be part of someone else's plan.
To make their own plans.
To hear Them apologize for their lies.
To hear Them beg forgiveness.
To be equal.
To be more than equal.
And to have the power to make it all happen.
"Each other," she says aloud.
Loki steps forward and she flinches in spite of herself. She's mortal, and no matter how many times her hand is slathered ointment, it's going to take years to fully heal from what would be gone in weeks for an Asgardian.
But when he kisses her, the only burning she feels is pleasure.
The torches gutter out, they fall into his bed, and the shimmer of the doors magically sealing shut is the end of their light.
Jane screamed when Loki's skin changed. She couldn't help it. Thor's story about the war had been too gruesome.
And the second the echo died, Thor began to laugh and congratulated Loki on such a exact likeness. He looked just like a Frost Giant — a little small, but otherwise perfect. Even the eyes. His best trick yet.
Fury and embarrassment made Jane stride forward and yell at Loki for playing jokes on her. If she hadn't been so flustered she might have noticed the chill in the air, something even Loki couldn't fake. Or the way he was staring at his own fingers. Or the way he didn't speak. Loki not speaking should have been the biggest hint. Loki always had the last word.
She grabbed his forearm to break the illusion.
Jane woke up in the healing room, and everything had changed all over again.
"You were born to be a king," says Jane afterwards, staring up at the ceiling and thinking of Heimdall's words. You will shake the branches of Yggdrasil. "Who says it has to be of Jotunheim?"
Loki is silent for a long time… but then, in the darkness, a grin spreads across his face unlike any she's ever seen. "I will never shut you out again," he vows.
Good.
