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Sif was on him the moment he stepped outside.

"This is all your fault."

"All my fault? You could have waited. You could have let yourself be announced. You are responsible for the punishment on your own head, Sif!"

"And I wouldn't have felt the need if..."

"If what?"

"If you hadn't taken over!"

"That wasn't my choice!" he hissed at her. "Thor was gone. I was the heir. Until he gets back, I am the heir. I only left Father's side to go sit on the throne because Mother insisted, since it will hopefully be the only time in my life it's ever permissible! 'Go sit on the throne' she said. 'Get your friends to bow to you once' she said. 'Have fun.' The Allfather was still half-asleep when I offered back his staff and his power, Sif! And now I know exactly what all of you think of me, Thor's tag-along brother. Would you four have even tolerated me if we weren't princes?"

Sif looked like he'd just slapped her.

"I was doomed from the moment Thor decided to go warring off to Jotunheim," he told her, calming down and forcing his voice to follow. "But you could have been kept from this."

"You? Care about something like that? You never do!"

"How do you think I keep digging myself into these situations? Trying to fix things when everything falls apart and people besides me start getting hurt! That's what Father ordered me to stop doing, because it always gets out of control."

The guards in the corridor were making very transparent attempts at looking everywhere but at Sif and Loki.

Sif noticed it too, and they began walking toward less populated parts of the building.

"If you cared, you wouldn't have done what you did."

"I did that because I cared. If an infiltration like that had happened just a little later, Sif, an hour or two perhaps, how many of us would already be dead on the crags of Jotunheim?"

She stopped and stared at him.

"No one would listen to me say anything against the perfect prince. Even things that were true. I care about Asgard, Sif. And though I love my brother, the realm comes first. He nearly got us all killed for the sake of a ceremony being postponed."

"Maybe he'll be different when he gets back," Sif offered.

"He'll have to be. Our father won't let him back otherwise, but he's not saying what the required lesson is."

Sif thought for a moment. "Maybe he doesn't want to make it easy. Maybe... He did leave a way open for you to go to Midgard and help."

"Oh really. Total ban on travel, Sif."

"Not total. Only with permission. And he did say the only holes in the rules were ones he meant you to have available."

"So I personally shouldn't learn what Thor has to do to get home."

She shrugged. "Seems like it to me."

He shook his head and laughed.

"What?"

"Thor's trying to learn something to let him leave Midgard, and I'm going to have to get back Father's trust in order to go to Midgard."

Sif joined in the laughing. "I want to go with you, if you manage it," she asked.

"But how do we do it?"

She raised an eyebrow. "You're asking me for input into a tricky plot?"

"Sif," he said seriously, "you're my minder until further notice. If I don't include you, chances are you're going to make everything fall apart."

"Well then, that changes things a bit," she said, straightening and smiling somewhat. "I'd say we follow the Allfather's instruction for you to confess to the Warriors Three, and then see what things look like from there. He said no multiple stage plots, but it's not really a multiple step plot if you go one stage at a time and fix errors as he asked, is it?"

Loki looked at her with new appreciation. "You're good at bending rules."

"How do you think I managed to get where I am? Or do you think Thor's right that it was all on him."

Loki snorted. "Not likely. He should never have said that - if you weren't capable of holding your own on a battlefield you would have never been allowed near one even at Thor's insistence."

They started walking again.

"And besides," Loki told her, laughing again, "don't think I've forgotten who ended up teaching us so much advanced knifeplay."

"Invented it myself, more like it," she grumbled. "Weapons training for men like Thor is no good for either of us, but it's the proper war tactics of Asgard."

"Knife practice once we get done with the Three? Until dinner?"

"Or in the morning if there's not enough time left," she answered back. "It's going to take a while for your father to calm down." She shook her head. "My father is going to hate this."

"Sif, we spend practically all our social time together anyway."

"Because Thor's there. Father's been convinced there was something wrong with you since we were kids. He's never told me exactly what he meant. Oh, get that look off your face, Loki. You ought to be used to people his age having issues with your battlefield magic by now. And you'd better know by now that I don't have a problem with someone weaker than Fandral resorting to any advantage they can get."

"Oh, I am so touched," he cracked, trying to hide the pain inside.

Sif had been warned there was something off about him. She was still being warned.

And her father was one of Father's guardsmen long ago, Loki remembered. It was part of how he'd been convinced to let his daughter try her hand at arms at all.

He probably knowswhat I am, Loki realized.

And for the first time, he began to wonder just how many of the disapproving looks he'd earned over the years weren't even for anything he could ever control or change.


"You bastard."

"Volstagg, this is not the time for insulting the Allfather's son in such a way," Fandral told him.

Loki felt hope at his words. At least one of them seemed to be sticking up for him now. And Sif had been okay once she started calming down.

"After all, given everything that's happened," the swordsman kept going, "well, if Thor can end up thrown through the Bifrost, what hope do we all have?"

Well, that's depressing. Two of the Three, against him but careful of Odin. And that left one.

Hogun stared at him for a moment. "Seems the Allfather believes all three of you have lessons to learn."

"Don't you start, any of you," Sif ordered. "I hear enough about not knowing my place from the old fighters."

"Not like that," Volstagg assured her. "Your fighting technique within the realms of your strength is second to few, Lady Sif, and those few be many times your age."

"It's your other techniques that are the problem," Fandral cracked, with a joking impression of a leer.

Or at least Loki hoped it was joking. He wouldn't have joked about a thing like that. Just about anything else, but not that.

Sif seemed less sure, if the knife in her hand was any indication.

"Politics, my dear lady!" Fandral corrected himself. "You are one of the best in the land at standing up for yourself, but your sense of where and how best to do it may be in need of some refinement."

It took a few seconds for Loki to take in that they were all four now looking his way.

He sighed. "I suppose helping with that is the least I can do, given everything."

"Great. Everything settled? Good. I want to go kill some practice dummies. Loki?"

He made a sweeping gesture toward the door. "Lead on, my lady."


It was the worst either of them had thrown in ages, but as Sif reminded him, they were both emotionally off-balance.

Then again, she was the one who still had a sense of aim left. Loki gave up after a half-hour for the sake of both their safeties and settled for making Sif grin predatorily with illusions of blood running from the new holes in the dummies whenever she retrieved her knives.


Loki barely slept that night.

When he dreamed, he saw all the faces over the years, all the odd looks, all the times he'd sensed their disapproval without knowing why.

When he was awake, he wondered how many of them had known and how many had simply been told that the second prince was an odd child to be tolerated because of his position.

The dawn was the only thing that brought an end to the misery.