Chapter Fourteen

Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers.

"Would it be terribly insensitive," Jane began, leafing through a large hard-cover book, "if I tried to figure out what's going on with your brother?"

Thor frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I was looking through my old psychology textbooks the other day and it occurred to me that Loki would probably be the most interesting person – from a psychological standpoint – that I've ever met," Jane told him. "Psychology was never my major but I took a few classes as electives and I always thought it was pretty interesting."

"You hardly need my permission to try to figure my brother out," Thor pointed out. "And it would stand to reason that, if you were going to ask, you would ask my brother himself."

"He would say no," Jane replied.

Thor laughed. "That he would. And you think that I can give you permission that would override his no?"

"Well…you know him better than I do and so I was kind of hoping that you'd help me with this," Jane admitted. "So…would it be okay?"

Thor thought about it. "As you said, he would not say so but that would be partly because you are a human and he still looks down on humans."

"And the rest?" Jane asked.

Thor shrugged. "As to the rest, Loki has never been very fond of being understood for all that he complains when no one does. I have never been very good at understanding him so I do not know of how much help I could possibly be."

Jane smiled at him and patted the seat beside her. "Well then I guess we can try to figure him out together. If that was a 'yes', that is."

"That was a yes," Thor confirmed, gladly taking the seat offered.

"It should go without saying, but let's not tell Loki that we're doing this or anything that comes out of it," Jane suggested.

Thor nodded. "Agreed."

"I just don't want him to kill me," Jane continued.

Thor knew better than to promise that Loki would never try to kill her. He didn't think that he would but, well, there was a lot of things that he had never thought that Loki would do. He placed his hands on hers. "Jane, I promise you that I will not let my brother kill you."

"That's sweet, Thor, and I appreciate it but I don't want him to try either," Jane replied.

"He shall never know," Thor promised.

Jane nodded, looking reassured. "Right. Well, I've got some ideas. I know that you thought he was dead and only found out otherwise after he showed up on Earth and started killing people. That means he found out about his adoption before this, right?"

"Right," Thor confirmed.

"He finds out that he's not who he thinks he is and then he goes out acting like he's so far above us that he just gets to conquer us all," Jane said slowly. "You told me that you were cast out for arrogance and yet you never acted like we were beneath you…much…and you certainly never tried to conquer us."

"Loki just loves being compared to me," Thor said wryly.

"So we've already got some sibling jealousy going on, right?" Jane asked him. "Otherwise why would that bother him?"

Thor thought back. He hadn't thought the pre-banishment days were perfect but he remembered them far more fondly than Loki seemed to.

"I suppose so," he said finally. "Asgard has a monarchy but it's not the eldest that automatically assumes the throne. Instead, it is whichever child is judged the one most suited for the task. Loki and I always knew this and I suppose it might have made him resent me a little."

"But not you?" Jane asked.

Thor shrugged. "Honestly? No. But then, I was always able to live up to the Asgardian ideal in a way that he chose not to. Or maybe he was unable to. But he always made it look like it was his choice, at least."

"It's hardly uncommon for people who cannot do something to pretend like they never wanted to do it in the first place," Jane told him. "I wanted to be a ballerina, once, but try as I might I could never be as flexible as I needed to be and so I went around telling anyone who would listen that ballet was stupid. I don't know if they believed me but pretending made it easier."

"In Asgard things are pretty simple," Thor told her. "We're a very…boisterous society. We value strength and fighting ability as well as honesty and a good drink. This may sound immodest but…in a lot of ways, I am the ideal Asgardian."

"And Loki isn't," Jane concluded.

"And Loki isn't," Thor agreed. "It isn't that he cannot fight, of course. In a straight-out strength competition I always win but give him the chance to put some distance between us…well, I haven't won all of our sparring matches. It never meant that we loved him less, just that…It was so hard to understand him."

"And that's why he has more issues with you than you do with him despite the fact that he's the one who tried to kill you and not the other way around," Jane said, nodding. "Finding out he's adopted could only make the sibling rivalry worse and suddenly he thinks he has an explanation for everything that's different about him. And since he thinks he's not good enough to be an Asgardian he tries to be better than us."

Thor frowned. "You're almost making me feel sorry for him."

Jane tilted her head curiously. "You don't?"

"He would never allow it," Thor assured her, smiling grimly.

"Tell me that there wasn't a girl that you both liked who preferred you," Jane practically pleaded. "Or more than one, for that matter."

Thor rubbed his chin, thinking back. "It may have happened. Loki had a bad habit of assuming that every girl who spoke to him was just interested in using him to get to me. And I'm sure it happened sometimes but every time? And some of those girls never did come over and talk to me so I highly doubt that was it."

That brought his thoughts back to Sif. He had been worrying on and off for a few weeks, ever since Clint had informed him that the Midgardians had decided that he married Sif. She was a very good friend and he was sure that she would be a very good wife (though he wasn't sure if she would ever agree to take time off of fighting to have children and just asking when they weren't involved would be weird) but…The only person he wanted right now was Jane and they were happy together. He wasn't sure what the future would bring on that front but for right now he had all that he needed.

But Loki…he and Sif had always been close, hadn't they? She certainly seemed to have stronger opinions about him than their other friends had. And even her anger at him for what she knew of what had happened made sense when considering that she could be heartbroken at his betrayal. It was one thing if you knew that someone had done what Loki had done and quite another if you deeply cared for them.

Did Loki and Sif have feelings for each other? Could they have feelings for each other? It would be so perfect if that could happen.

Sif, as one of his closest friends and one of the top warriors in Asgard, was a suitable wife for a prince. She had fought for her place in Asgard and was accepted now so marrying her would help Loki realize that he was accepted as well. And then there was the fact that the two of them had grown up together so it's not like either wouldn't know what they were getting. And if Loki fell for Sif he might actually start admitting that he wanted to be in Asgard.

Unfortunately, one couldn't just force two people to have feelings for each other or even acknowledge feelings that they might already have. They could, however, put them in a situation where they were more likely to develop those feelings. He would have to think more about this.

"So you think that Loki doesn't remember what happened accurately?" Jane asked him.

Thor laughed. "We made sure that he never knew this, but my friends and I referred to just that phenomena – remembering something in a way that it did not happen – as 'puling a Loki.'"

" 'Pulling a Loki,'" Jane repeated. "Catchy. Can you give me an example?"

"Well, Bruce told me that right before he and Loki…fought, Loki accused us of bullying him," Thor told her.

Jane frowned. "Bullying? You were trying to stop him from conquering the entire planet and he interprets that as bullying?"

Thor nodded. "He's always been like that. We'd ask him to spar with us, he'd say he's not interested, and then he'd sulk that we never play with him. Someone would try to kiss him but he wouldn't let them and then he'd complain that no one was ever interested in him. He'd insist he was running away from home, someone asked him why he was planning on doing that, and he claims he never said that and we can't force him to do that."

"That sounds…" Jane trailed off, trying to think of a way to describe it. Giving up, she just shook her head. "Yeah."

"It makes discussing the past very difficult because you never know what past he's referring to and how it compares with the actual reality," Thor continued. "It's why I accused him of having imagined his slights back when I first saw him again. I guarantee that at least some of the things he feels so slighted about did not actually happen the way that he says that they did."

"But then how are you to know what really happened if you can't trust what he says did?" Jane asked reasonably.

Thor nodded again. "Yes, that's exactly it! He must have a reason why he does this but for the life of me I cannot see why he won't just let himself be happy. I'm forced to rely on my own memories and that of others but no one can remember everything perfectly and with an unbiased eye. I keep looking back but I can't see any slights and I know there must have been some somewhere. I'm sure that that vast majority of the real ones were unintentional anyway."

"Which makes it no less painful but suddenly a great deal more complicated and harder to detect," Jane realized.

"And you can never just tell Loki that he does this because he will never believe you," Thor continued. "Trust me, I've tried. I do still try to correct him about…what happened right before we thought he died because that's a bit more serious than usual and I do not wish for him to remember me that way."

"What way?" Jane asked, curiously.

But Thor merely shook his head. What happened on the Bifrost and the reasons why was something he thought best kept in the family and Jane, for all her charms, was not a part of that. "Badly."

Jane nodded, accepting that.

"Things never used to be so bad," Thor told her. "But maybe the resentment was always building. Things might not have been so…explosive had he not found out about his adoption or at least not so explosive so soon. But you can't bottle everything up forever."

"At least now that this has happened, you'll know better than to just let it fester again," Jane said, trying to be optimistic.

"We'll try," Thor told her. "But, on top of everything else, Loki insists on hiding everything he's feeling and then blaming people for not knowing what it is that he's feeling."

Jane looked at him with new admiration. "Thor, I'm beginning to understand what a Herculean task trying to redeem your brother is."

"It's worth it," Thor said simply.

They sat in silence for a moment, just enjoying each other's company and reflecting on what had been said.

Then, clearly determined to inject levity back into the situation, Jane grinned and said, "So, the giant robot, the giant portal to bring in the giant army, the grandiose plans for world domination…what do you think he was compensating for?"

It had taken Thor a while to find Loki after he was finished with Jane. Or, at least, it had taken awhile before Tony either got annoyed enough or managed to take him at his searching the tower and instructed JARVIS to tell Thor where Loki was.

Thor found him in a room that was labeled as a memorial for the son of Coul and that was covered with pictures of him. Why had Loki come here? Was he feeling guilt?

"Oh Loki…" Thor said quietly.

Loki, who had predictably been reading a book, glanced up at him. "What?"

Thor shook his head and hid a smile. If Loki didn't want to admit to being remorseful or sentimental then that was fine. At least he had mostly stopped hissing 'sentiment' at him. "Nothing."

"So you and that mortal are done then? Can we leave?" Loki asked, looking almost hopeful. It might bother Thor how eager his brother always was to leave Midgard if it weren't for the fact that that had the consequence of meaning that he was eager to be back in Asgard which was the far more important bit.

Thor nodded. "Yes, Loki, we can leave."

Loki stood up but he made no move to leave, instead looking very carefully at Thor.

"What?" Thor asked, a bit unnerved by the scrutiny.

"Oh, nothing," Loki assured him. "I was just thinking about you and that girl."

"She does have a name, Loki," Thor said pointedly.

Loki blinked owlishly at him. "When did I say that she didn't?"

"It would be nice if you could use it," Thor hinted.

Loki rolled his eyes, no doubt amused at Thor's poor attempt at subtlety. That had always been Loki's realm, not his. Still, it seemed to cheer him whenever Thor revealed something that he wasn't so good at. In Asgard, sometimes he had to do it intentionally because there was so much that he was good at. So much that Loki was good at, too, but of course Loki never seemed to notice that.

"What were you thinking about?" Thor asked, a bit apprehensively. He hoped that Loki wasn't plotting again. Well…he was of the belief that Loki never stopped plotting but that didn't meant that he wanted him to be plotting against poor Jane.

"It's nothing lascivious, don't worry," Loki assured him.

As it happened, that thought had not crossed Thor's mind and now that it had he was a little uncomfortable. "What then?"

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting but what he got was about the furthest thing from it.

"Is this…wise?" Loki asked, uncharacteristically uncertain.

Thor frowned. "I do not follow."

"Where do you see your relationship with her going?" Loki tried again. "Is it getting serious? How can this possibly end except in heartbreak and death? You look like you're around the same age but you're not. She's…I don't, let's say thirty. You might look around the same age but you're dozens of times older. By the time she's been around as long as you have been right now, there will be nothing left of her, just dust in the wind."

Thor looked down. These thoughts had occurred to him as well but he had tried to ignore them so as to not ruin what he had with Jane now with his fears of the future. "Brother-"

But Loki hadn't finished. "This isn't like everything else, Thor. You can't just dive into it and hope that things will turn out alright. If you do nothing then she'll only die one day or things might fall apart when she ages and you don't and one or both of you can't handle that. The only way I can see that gives you a chance might end with you losing her anyway."

It was oddly touching that Loki had been thinking of how to solve his problem. Touching and oh-so-very familiar. This was a good sign.

"What do you mean?" Thor asked him.

"You could make her one of us, if Father allows it," Loki told him.

Thor wondered if he hadn't noticed his 'slip' or if he was done denying his family but had – naturally – declined to let them know about it.

"But he might not. He would test her and see if she deserves the privilege and would be worthy to be the queen of Asgard someday," Loki continued. "And even if he allowed it, would she really be willing to give up her entire world and everyone that she's ever known for you?"

"She wouldn't have to give anything up," Thor protested. "She could still stay here and be with them."

"For now, yes, but by giving up her mortality she would force them to leave her behind. She could stay on Midgard and see them every day for the rest of their lives but ultimately they would grow old and die and she could not be a part of that. It would create a distance she could never bridge," Loki told him. "And one day she may resent you for that. One day she might leave you. She might even decide to reclaim her mortality. There are just so many ways for this to go wrong…Are you sure this is wise?"

Thor's first instinct, of course, was to sharply retort that yes it was and to order him to stop questioning him. But that only proved how very unsure he was.

"Probably not," Thor conceded. "But when it comes to matters of the heart, what is? But…I see no reason not to enjoy what we have because of what might come. Jane and I are happy together but we are nowhere near being ready to spend the rest of our lives together, even if we were both mortals like she. Not every relationship ends with happily ever after and Jane and I…" It hurt to say it. "We might break up long before this becomes a serious concern. But if not…then we'll see."

"Yes," Loki agreed solemnly, "we will."

We.

Despite the distressing nature of their conversation, Thor felt his heart lift a little at that.

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