Chapter 16 - An Asgardian Wedding

Loki had no idea how long she had been staring at the corner, but it felt like a few days must have passed. When Tony or Bruce gave her a time out, it never lasted for more than a few minutes, and they weren't even punishments, just opportunities for Loki to calm herself before they spoke to her about her behavior. "Nanny, can't I come out of the corner now? I've learned my lesson, I swear."

"There is no talking in the naughty corner, Princess."

|（-◝ ） (*´-｀ )

Thor nodded to the guards outside the door of what had once been Frigga's dressing room. He poked his head inside, and saw Sif stood in front of the full-length mirror, wearing a simple but elegant gown of white, a golden crown of laurels sitting atop her intricately braided dark hair. She made a beautiful bride, but her expression was all too serious, which made the scene feel wrong.

"Thor?" Sif's eyes widened when she saw his reflection in the mirror. "Is that you?"

"Who else would I be?"

Sif turned around, still looking at him as if he had returned from the dead. "The All-Father told us you had decided to join Loki in his banishment and forbid us from traveling to Midgard to try to talk sense into you, though I could not understand why. I was half convinced that Loki had secretly overthrown your father and was masquerading in his form, until Heimdall confirmed the story."

"Don't be ridiculous, Sif. Loki's not capable of something like that."

"Well, I'm glad to see you've come to sense on your own."

"I haven't. Sif, I have only come to take you away with me—"

Sif's expression darkened. "Take me away?"

"You cannot wish to marry my father."

"And why is that, Thor?"

So far, this was not going as expected. "Because he's old. And you're—you."

"I'm me? Whatever does that mean?"

"You told me once that you would never marry, because you would never feel that way about anyone."

Sif rolled her eyes. "I was a child when I said that, with silly ideas about how romance could be the only basis for a marriage. But I'm not a little girl anymore, Thor."

"You have not changed your mind then, about your ability to feel that kind of love for another?"

"Norns, no. I would be hard pressed to believe that sort of love existed, if I didn't know it was what you felt for your Jane."

"Right? We were made for one another, and Jane is a fool not to see it."

Sif looked at him pityingly. "I never said that. If Jane does not reciprocate your feelings, it may be for the best, and you should try to move on."

One time, the Avengers had confronted a villain who called himself the Ringmaster. He had attempted to escape from them in a hot air balloon, which Clint had shot with one of his arrows. They had all stood watching as it lost air and drifted to the ground. Thor felt like that balloon. "So, you are going to marry my Father, knowing that you do not and will never love him. Then why—"

"So that I can become Queen of Asgard, you dolt."

Thor blinked at her. "Since when have you lusted over the throne?"

"I have never lusted over it. I don't even want it, but your father convinced me that I was the best candidate. You do realize that when you ran off to Midgard to goof around with a bunch of mortals, you left your father with no heir, did you not?"

"And my father has convinced you to produce another." Feeling lightheaded, Thor collapsed onto what had once been his mother's settee.

"Don't be disgusting, Thor. I'm not doing that with your five-thousand-year-old father."

Hearing that made Thor feel better, if only marginally so. "If you do not plan to bear him a child, then—"

"Don't you understand? Your Father is old—very, very old." She made a face, as if thinking again about reproducing with Odin. "After he is gone, I will rule alone as Asgard's warrior queen."

"Oh," said Thor. "That's—better, I suppose? Though wouldn't you need to produce an heir?"

"I thought that eventually you would return—"

"You want to produce an heir with me?"

"—to take your rightful place on the throne. Then you can take your own queen—not me—and the two of you can have as many little heirs as you like."

"Oh."

"So let me get this straight. You've come to rescue me as if I were some damsel in distress, have you?"

"I suppose I should have known better." After all, he had not been able to best Sif on the practice grounds in over two centuries; the woman had spent her life doing all she could do to prove herself as a warrior. Perhaps there truly was no one more fit to be Asgard's queen than she. "Still, perhaps I am here to rescue you from yourself. It sounds like you do not truly wish to be queen, and are simply taking it on out of a sense of duty."

"I think it best that whoever becomes ruler of Asgard does it out of a sense of duty, don't you?Only someone as mad as Loki would lust after that kind of power."

"Loki is not mad, Sif. That is a derogatory term to begin with. But he isn't a sociopath, or a psychopath, and I doubt he has ever lusted after anything."

"Thor, I know you still think of Loki as your younger sibling—"

"Because he still is, Sif. You should know that blood is not the only thing that makes a family."

"I do know that, Thor. I only meant that your brother is not a child anymore, and he must be held responsible for his crimes. Remember when he tried to kill us all?"

"I am aware Loki has a lot of issues, some of which we contributed to."

"We are the cause of Loki's problems? He's convinced you of that, has he?"

"That isn't what I said. But Sif, you are the one who knocked out most of Loki's baby teeth."

"It can't have beenmost of them. Not at one time, anyway. Besides, they were only baby teeth, and he deserved it for cutting my hair."

"He was only a child. Perhaps what Loki needed was for someone to explain to him that we do not cut someone's hair when we're upset with them, instead of showing him that if we are upset with someone, it is okay to knock their teeth out."

Sif's eyebrows knit together. "I suppose I have never thought of it that way."

"Living among the Midgardians, I have learned to think of many things differently."

ζ (,Ծ_Ծ,) (￣-￣*)ゞ

"Alright, Princess. I think perhaps you've learned your lesson now. You may come out of the naughty corner. It is time for your bath."

Loki turned around slowly, her fists clenched defiantly. "I don't want a bath."

Nanny pursed her lips in that way of hers that said she would stand for none of Loki's nonsense. "Well, that is too bad young lady, because your father instructed me to give you one before I put you down for a nap."

"I don't want a nap, either—wait, you're doing this on the All-Father's orders?"

"Who else's orders would I be following?"

"Then I havehim to blame for this insanity. Obviously, he means to humiliate me."

"Or he just wants you to be clean and well rested before the wedding," Sjofn suggested.

"He expects me to attend?"

"Why of course, sweetling." Sjofn reached out and tweaked her nose. "You can't have a wedding without—"

"Sorry, what did you just say?" Loki must have spazzed out there, because she had completely missed what Sjofn had said just then.

Sjofn ignored the question and clapped her hands together. "Into the bath with you, then."

Feeling a little disoriented, Loki wandered into the bathing room that adjoined the nursery. Without any sense of shame, she began to strip (it was nothing Sjofn had not seen before, after all). Sjofn shook her head as she took her things from her. "I think we'll burn these," she said, as Loki handed her her jeans. "It isn't proper for a young lady to wear such things."

That snapped Loki out of her stupor. "Don't youdare burn my clothes, you cow!"

"Such language, and to your elder! Young ladies should not speak so; it must be the influence of those Midgardians you've been living with. I had heard Midgardians were crude."

Loki decided it was time to take a stand. "I shall be as crude as I wish."

"Princess Loki, do you wish to go back to the naughty corner?"

Loki's mouth worked, but nothing came out of it. She really didn't want to go back to the naughty corner. She hung her head and pretended to study her hands as she contemplated the bracelet, and how she might get it off. "I'm sorry, Nanny. You're right, it's those awful Midgardians' influence. I promise to be a good girl from now on."

"You had better be," Sjofn told her. "Now get in the bath, sweetling. The water isn't too hot, just like you like. I've filled it with your favorite scented oils, and look, bubbles."

"I do like bubbles," Loki mumbled.

˳˚ₒ ๐ (ᴗ ᴗ)॰° ๐

Sif sat next to Thor on the settee, cradling her head in her hands. "Your father convinced me that I would make a good queen, but now I'm questioning my judgment. What kind of monster brutalizes a child in response to a prank, then continues to hold a grudge against them for five hundred years?"

"To be fair, you were a child as well," said Thor, taking pity on her. "I was also guilty of bullying Loki; he made an easy target, being so little and, well—"

"Odd?"

"Aye. But where were our parents in all this? No one taught us any better."

Sif shook her head. "It isn't any excuse. Now that I think of it, you're right. If Loki is a monster, it's because we're monsters too, and we initiated him into it."

"Now you're taking too much responsibility, Sif. You aren't his mother, after all. And none of us are monsters—we're just little bunnies."

"Bunnies?"

"Yes, Sif. We are all little bunnies, working through our issues."

Sif shook her head. "I can't go through with this wedding. I'm not fit to be Queen of Asgard."

"You shouldn't have to be. Ruling Asgard is a responsibility that has only fallen to you because I thought I could run away from it." Now that Thor thought about it, perhaps he had little reason to return to Midgard. Loki would return, of course, and Tony and Bruce would take care of her. She needed parental figures more than she needed a big brother. And he could admit to himself now that Jane would not be awaiting his return.

The door opened, and Odin came in. Thor scowled at him. "It is my understanding, Father, that it is bad luck to see your bride on their wedding day."

"I admit I have been listening at the door. And I have a proposal for you, Thor."

₍ᐢ ̥ ̞ ̥ᐢ₎ ₍ᐢ ̥ ̞ ̥ᐢ₎ ₍ᐢ ̥ ̞ ̥ᐢ₎

The bath was the perfect temperature, and the oils her nanny had added to it smelled of summer flowers and caramelized sugar. Loki blew a mound of tiny pink bubbles across the surface of the water.

Nanny sat on a stool next to the side of the bath, holding a bottle of shampoo. "Lean forward, sweetling, and let Nanny wash your hair for you."

"I don't need you to wash my hair," whined Loki. "I can do it myself."

"Of course you can, sweetling, but it will be done quicker, and likely more thoroughly, if you let Nanny help."

"Do as you must," Loki said with a sigh. She leaned forward as Nanny had asked. Sjofen lathered the soap in her hands and began scratching and massaging her fingers over Loki's scalp. It felt far from horrible, and Loki had to admit she enjoyed being pampered. Sjofen sang as she washed Loki's hair, a tune that she remembered her singing her to sleep with in her youth. There must have been some magic in that tune, because it still worked on her now.

"Princess, try not to fall asleep in the bath. We wouldn't want you to drown."

"It's your fault for singing that song, Nanny. It makes me sleepy." She wondered if somehow, she could get a recording of her singing it, and use it to fall asleep to once she'd returned to New York. It worked better than Doctor Samson's pills.

"Nanny is almost finished with your hair, sweetling, and then we can get you out of the bath and ready for your nap."

"Don't want a nap," Loki grumped, rubbing away the suds that had gotten into her eyes with her fist.

"Nonsense. You need your beauty sleep before the wedding."

Nanny tipped a pitcher of warm water over her head, and Loki felt her insides melt.

She let Nanny help her out of the bath and dry her off with a cloth fluffier than any of the towels Tony had provided her with, like drying herself with a cloud. "Arms up," Nanny told her, and Loki obeyed. When she opened her eyes, she wore a soft linen nightgown that went down to the floor.

Nanny steered her to the bed, and Loki wanted to tell her that she was too old to be ordered into bed for a nap, but she was much too tired. "Fine. I'll take a nap, but only because I want to," she grumbled, and fell into the bed.

"That's a good girl," said Nanny.

[ (´・｀*)]ᐝ.∗̥✩(´▽ `ʃƪ)

The warm light of late afternoon streamed through the curtains, and Loki awoke with the strangest thought; Nanny had said that they couldn't have the wedding without the—what was it she'd said, "the sacrificial lamb?" Yes, that had to be it; she was to end as a sacrifice. Sif would cut her into lamb chops, char them atop a ceremonial altar, and serve her at her wedding feast.

No, wait; that hadn't been it at all. But it had been something similar—

Loki fell asleep again for a brief time, and when she opened her eyes, a familiar face hovered over her. It wasn't Nanny's. "Sigyn? What are you doing here? I haven't hallucinated you for months."

"I'm not a hallucination." A mischievous smile played at Sigyn's lips. "I'm here to help you dress for the wedding."

Loki sat up without any trouble. If she could move and speak, she wasn't having a sleep paralysis episode. Either this was a dream, or the Sigyn before her was the real one. She reached out and pinched her arm.

"Ow! Why did you do that?"

"This isn't a dream, then."

Sigyn smacked her on the shoulder in retaliation. "You're supposed to pinch yourself. Besides, I just told you I wasn't a hallucination."

"Dreams and hallucinations aren't the same. What are you doing here, anyway? I was under the impression that neither of us ever wanted to see each other again. I thought you'd gone back to Vanaheim."

"I couldn't miss my closest friend's wedding."

"Sif is your closest friend?"

"No, silly," she said, tweaking Loki's nose just as Nanny had done earlier. "That honor would belong to you."

"If I'm your closest friend, I feel sorry for you."

"The All-Father appointed me to be your handmaiden. Neither of us has much choice in the matter, so I decided it would be best to at least pretend we were friends again. Do you think you could do that for me? Otherwise, I'm afraid we're going to be in for a rather awkward and uncomfortable rest of our lives."

"The All-Father has appointed you as my handmaiden?"

"Yes. Had you not been informed, Loki?"

"No, I had not been. Going back, did you insinuate that this was my wedding day?"

"Oh dear. Were you not informed of that either?"

"I thought Sif and Odin were getting married." Sigyn didn't answer her, and Loki watched in horror as she threw open the wardrobe, revealing a fluffy white dress. Had that been in there all along? This was all starting to feel like a horrible, surreal dream. "I'm not putting that on."

"You will put it on, Loki, or I will inform your nanny that you are being a very bad, willful girl. Do you want to go back in the naughty corner?"

Loki scowled at her. How did she know about the naughty corner? "Do you really think there's anything you could do to make me put that dress on? I do not threaten, Sigyn."

"Sjofen," shouted Sigyn. "Loki is refusing to get dressed!"

"Tattletale," Loki hissed. "Fine. I'll put it on, but I'm definitely not marrying anyone. Wait, who am I supposed to be marrying anyway? Surely not you—"

"Of course not. You can't marry your own handmaiden. In a sense the relationship between a lady and her handmaiden is like a marriage, but you still have to actually get married."

"To whom, though?"

"Why, to a prince of course. You are a princess, after all. And someday, you will be a queen, and I shall be handmaiden to a queen. That's better than being the wife of a useless second prince, so I suppose everything turned out alright after all."

"Bully for you." Of course, Odin would try to marry Loki off to someone she'd never even met and ship her off to some far corner of the nine realms to rein as queen over some backwater just to rid himself of her for good. Frigga had likely been the only one standing between her and that fate before now.

"Look at it this way, Loki. We are becoming women today, taking our places in society. Or would you prefer to stay a little girl and let Nanny bathe you and put you down for naps your entire life?"

Loki stared at the bracelet on her wrist. "Wait; am I meant to stay a woman for the rest of my life? I'm not allowed to go back and forth anymore?"

Sigyn shrugged. "Perhaps if your husband allows it, you'll be allowed to switch back and forth. I imagine that might make for an interesting wedding night."

"Wedding night?"

Sigyn grinned at him. It wasn't at all a nice grin. "Yes, Loki. You're going to have to have one of those. You should try to enjoy it, but if you can't, I suggest you lie back and think of Asgard."

Loki sank to the floor and hugged her knees to her chest. If she screwed her eyes shut tight enough, this all might go away.

_ :(˃̣̣̥᷄-˂̣̣̥᷅ 」 ∠):_

Dressed in his best armor, Thor stood upon the dais below his father's throne, trying to convince himself that the course of action he had agreed to was truly the only way. If Sif could find herself willing to marry out of duty to the Asgardian people and not for love, he should be willing to do the same. His life had never belonged to himself alone, and it was time for him to grow up and accept it. Besides, Jane had made it very clear that they were not going to get back together this time.

"You will become King of Asgard, as we had always planned. As you should have been by now had Loki not seen fit to stop it. But perhaps Loki was right to think you were not ready to rule then, and now—I believe you could rule, but it would be better if you did not rule alone. A king is always more effective with a queen by their side." At first, he thought his father meant for him to marry Sif. Would it not have made sense, since she had already been set to become Asgard's warrior queen?

But Sif did not wish to bear children, and such a union would not produce an heir. Instead, she had shed the wedding gown she had warn before, dressed in her own best armor, and stood behind him on the dais as his second, or what Midgardians might refer to as his "best woman."

"Do not worry, my son. I have already selected the ideal bride for you. It is someone known to you—a familiar face from your childhood. Someone whom you already love." Thor had exhausted himself trying to guess who his father meant. Perhaps it would be Lady Kelda? He wouldn't mind too much being married to Kelda "the Sexy" Stormbreaker. Yes, she could break Thor's storm anytime. The only reason Thor had never wooed Kelda before was that even as a prince of Asgard, he found her a little intimidating.

Yes, perhaps it would be Kelda. That wouldn't be so bad.

The doors to the hall opened, and the same squadron of Einherjar who had met Thor and Loki at the gates escorted in a young woman, dressed in white. A maiden with hair covered by a serpent-like headdress and a face that seemed somewhat familiar walked behind her, carrying her train.

The procession proceeded silently to the dais, and the guards herded the young woman in front of him. Something about her seemed familiar as well, though he was yet to see her face.

Thor lifted his bride's veil, which oddly seemed to have been made from tightly woven muslin instead of the usual see-through material.

Unamused, he turned towards the throne to confront Odin.

ζ ( ˃̥̥̥ ˑ̫ ˂̥̥̥ )ζ Y-(≖‿≖ԅ) 10 minutes earlier…

Loki stood before the door of the throne room, drowning in a wedding dress that took up more of the corridor than the squadron of Einherjar surrounding her. She wished that she had remembered to bring her "emergency phone" with her to Asgard. What had happened Thor? He was the only one who could help her now, but at this point, she could only assume he had forgotten about her entirely. Then again, perhaps he had been in on this scheme from the beginning. For all Loki knew, he had lured her back to Asgard on false pretenses so that his father could marry her off. "This is insane. Odin can't force me to marry someone I've never even met!"

"I think you'll find he can," said Sigyn gleefully, "but who said anything about you marrying someone you've never met?"

"Wait; what?" Loki racked her brain trying to think of who it might be; of course, Sigyn must have known, but there was no point in asking her when she so clearly enjoyed having the upper hand. Earlier, Sigyn had said she would marry a prince, but she didn't know many princes other than Thor. She certainly didn't know any she would want to marry, not that she wanted to marry anyone. There was Prince Freyr of the Vanir, who was of an age with Odin and happened to be Thor's great uncle. Odin couldn't possibly expect her to marry someone five times her age, let alone someone she had grown up believing to be family. There were a few dwarvin princes, but Loki just couldn't see herself marrying anyone shorter than Tony. All the elven princes she knew were tedious, insufferable pricks, as elves tended to be.

Sigyn disappeared behind her. Loki attempted to turn to watch what she was doing but found that she could barely move in the oversized dress. A moment later, Sigyn returned with a large goblet. "Here, have some wine. A drink might make you feel better about things."

"I'm not allowed to drink." Loki's response had been automatic, and she regretted it as soon as it came out of her mouth and Sigyn looked at her as if she had just grown an extra head. "I mean, obviously, no one has forbidden me from drinking because I'm not a child. It's a personal choice; alcohol can wreak hell on mortal livers, after all."

"One little drink on your wedding day can't hurt. Go ahead, drink up."

Loki took the goblet from her and sniffed its contents; Frigga had taught her better than to accept a drink from a fellow sorceress without checking it. It would have been imperceptible to the untrained nose, but buried beneath the earthy smell of the wine, she could smell Vanir rose petals and honey. "I should have known. You're trying to make me fall in love with you again."

Sigyn scowled at her. "Don't flatter yourself. I know it might be impossible for you to comprehend, but I've been over you for decades."

"I know what a love potion smells like, Sigyn."

"Then you should also know that a love potion will make you fall madly in love with the first person of the opposite sex that you see. At the moment, we are both women."

"And there, dear Sigyn, is where you are incorrect."

Sigyn's eyes traveled over Loki, lingering on her chest.

"I meant that you are incorrect about how love potions work. A potion cannot differentiate between male and female. Instead, the person taking the love potion will be hopelessly attracted to whatever person they see first, so long as they have any chance of feeling a romantic attraction for that person naturally. Personally, I have found that I have the capacity to feel attraction to members of either sex, no matter the form I happen to be in."

"I thought you didn't feel that kind of attraction at all."

"Oh, of course, since I'm not attracted to you, I must not be attracted to anyone."

"I also thought that the very idea of physical intimacy repulsed you, which was why you sent your mommy and all twelve of her handmaidens to escort me out of your room that time. Do you understand how humiliating that was, by the way?"

"I never asked you to turn up in my bed wearing nothing but that wicked smirk of yours. If you'd given me some sort of warning, I might not have panicked." Loki also hadn't been aware of what Frigga had done to get Sigyn to vacate her room; her mother had only said she would "take care of it." If she had done something to humiliate Sigyn, Loki could hardly be held accountable. "Anyway, I don't find it repulsive. It just isn't something I think about that much, and I certainly wouldn't want to be intimate with anyone I didn't feel some sort of affection for."

"Then perhaps you ought to consider taking that potion. It might make things easier for you."

Loki hated to admit it, but Sigyn might be right. "But how could I even be sure that the next person I saw was the person I'm being forced to marry?"

Sigyn sighed as if the answer should have been obvious. "Drink it, then put your veil on. I've made sure it's opaque enough that you won't be able to see anyone until your intended lifts it."

Loki still doubted that Sigyn's intentions had been benevolent when she had tried to slip the potion to her, but she supposed it didn't matter. She would be married off one way or the other, but maybe it didn't have to be terrible, if she could just feel the tiniest bit of affection for whoever she was to be married to. She closed her eyes, downed the potion, and pulled the veil over her eyes.

"Oh, Norns! I can't believe you really just drank that, knowing what it was." Sigyn giggled maniacally, making Loki regret that she was currently too encumbered by her dress to punch her in the mouth.

"Do shut up and remember that you are my handmaid now," Loki said through her veil. "You do realize that pretty much makes you my bitch, right? If I wanted to send you on an errand to collect snow from the surface of Jotunheim, I could. If I were you, I might try to stay on my good side from now on."

Sigyn made an "harrumph" sound, and Loki wished she could have seen her face. She didn't think it within the realm of possibility that the potion would make her fall in love with Sigyn; after all, it should only be able to make her fall in love with someone she had at least the capacity to feel an attraction to, and that ship had sailed long ago. But if there was even a .001% chance she was wrong, she wasn't willing to risk it.

Sigyn took the goblet from her and pushed a bouquet of oversized lilies into her hands. They had been picked from her mother's garden, and the familiar fragrance calmed her somewhat. The doors of the throne room were thrown open and Sigyn pushed her forward, causing her to stumble through them. Through some miracle, she didn't trip over her dress and fall on her face. She moved down the aisle carefully, hoping that when she got to the dais at the front of the room, someone would think to stop her before she ran into Odin's throne. Instead, when she reached the front, Sigyn, who had been carrying her train, caught her dress by the strings on the back of her bodice as if it were a leash and pulled hard enough for her ribs to be bruised.

Loki had barely enough time to decide that Sigyn would pay for it later when the person standing across from her lifted her veil, and she found herself face to face with Thor.

Her first thought was that she would kill Sigyn, who had clearly known who would be waiting for her. Then she would find a way to kill Odin, and then Thor, for allowing whatever this was to happen, however it had happened. Perhaps she would make it relatively painless, given that he looked every bit as surprised as she was—wait, the potion! She couldn't fall in love with Thor, could she? Frantically, Loki searched herself for any budding feelings of romantic attraction towards her adoptive brother and was relieved when she found nothing. Of course, that meant that she would still fall for the next person she saw that she was capable of feeling attraction to. Thor turned towards his father's throne, while Loki looked down at the floor in an attempt to avoid the eyes of everyone surrounding them. "Have you gone mad, Father? You cannot seriously expect me to marry my sister. It would be incest!"

"It would not be incest," said Odin, "because you are not blood siblings."

"We were raised as siblings, and that is what matters."

"But think, Thor. This solves all of our problems, does it not? I once told both of you that you were born to rule—"

"You said we were both born to be kings," Loki pointed out, daring to look up at Odin. After all, there was zero chance she could fall in love with him. "Not a king and a queen. And if you expect me to stay in this form all the time, you have another thing coming to you."

"But this is what I should have done from the beginning, I see that now. I should have raised you as my daughter—"

"Still incestuous," Loki pointed out.

"Very well, I should have raised you as a female and my ward, with the clear understanding that you were not my daughter."

"Better. Still delusional, but better."

"I could even have told you your true origins. Yes, I see it now. I would have announced your betrothal when you were still young, to give you time to properly fall in love with one another. Then when you were old enough, you would have married, and it would have been a true joining of Jotunheim and Asgard. There would have been frost giants at Thor's coronation, but they'd have been sitting in the front row, not skulking about in the treasure room."

"Well, this has all been a nice little fantasy, but as Thor already put it, have you gone mad? It's too late for any of that! You raised us as siblings, and we love one another as siblings. That can't be undone. Plus, if you force us to go through with this, a pair of my time traveling other selves will come here and reset our timeline, which I'm certain is a nice way of saying they'll blow us all to smithereens." *

"But you wished for a throne, Loki, and now you will have one."

"I never wanted a throne. All I wanted was for you to love me as much as you love Thor."

"I always did, Loki. That is why I'm trying to fix things. I—" Odin took a step towards her, staggered, and sank towards the floor.

"Oh, Hel no, not this again. Don't you dare go into the Odinsleep now, you old coward!"

Thor rushed forward to catch his father. The wedding guests behind them had begun murmuring to one another excitedly. Loki allowed the muscles in her face to relax, since there was no point in scowling at someone who was unconscious. "What do we do now?" Loki whispered to Thor, but her brother seemed to have been struck mute by the "shock" of his father's collapse.

The next thing Loki knew, Sif had come up to the dais to kneel by Thor. "Thor, you should take your father to his room. Then we should call a meeting of your father's advisors to discuss our options."

Thor nodded reluctantly. "Yes, that does sound like the right thing to do. Loki, stay with Sif."

"With Sif? Sif, who volunteered to put me to death?"

"I did no such thing." Sif spoke through lips as red as the sweetest cherries. Had she painted them? She couldn't recall having ever seen Sif wearing makeup before, but it suited her. She had worn her best armor to the wedding, and her hair had been styled in intricate braids, which Loki found herself wanting to touch. "Wherever did you hear such a thing? I suppose I might have told a few people that if you dared to return, there would be no need to execute you because I would kill you myself, but I wasn't altogether serious."

Loki exchanged a look with Thor, then both glanced down at the unconscious All-Father before looking back to one another. "And people call me the god of stretching the truth."

"You will be safe enough with Sif," Thor assured him. "She even told me that she was sorry for knocking your baby teeth out."

"She did?"

Sif sighed, a sound like the gentle wind blowing through the grass in high summer. "Yes Loki, I apologize. I was a child myself and did not know better, but that is no excuse."

"In that case, I accept your apology, and I am sorry that I cut your hair, if I have never said so."

Sif's perfectly shaped eyebrows rose towards her hairline. "You're actually sorry for something? I have never heard you apologize to anyone."

"To be fair, I've never heard you apologize for anything either. Not to me, anyway." And yet, for a reason she couldn't explain, Loki felt inclined to accept Sif's apology.

Sif frowned. "Just to make things clear, I still do not like you. You allowed frost giants into the palace, tricked us into going to Jotunheim, and sent the Destroyer to Midgard to try to murder us."

"I was having a bit of a mental health crisis at the time, but you know what? Fine. I accept that some people just aren't going to like me because you can't please everyone. I don't like you either." Though Loki wasn't sure who she was trying to convince, Sif or herself. "You used to challenge me to fights because you wanted to prove yourself, and you were bigger than me and knew you'd win. When I was king, you couldn't wait to commit treason at the first opportunity. You didn't even think to ask if I was okay, even though you knew my brother had been banished and my father had fallen into the Odinsleep—"

"Thor had been banished because you wanted him banished."

Loki had never cared before what Sif thought of her, but at that moment it felt important she not think ill of her. "I couldn't have known Odin would banish him. All I wanted was for his coronation to be postponed indefinitely."

"Because you wanted the throne for yourself," said Sif.

"Why does everyone think that? Sif, you have to know what a disaster Thor would have been if he'd become king then."

"I'm to believe that you had the good of Asgard at heart, then?"

"What reason do you have to believe that I didn't?"

"I suppose I find it difficult to believe that you care about anyone else, when you have always thought yourself better than them."

"I only acted that way to hide my deep insecurities."

"I see; and what has caused this sudden self-awareness?"

"It wasn't sudden. It took several months of therapy. Perhaps you should try it sometime."

ヽ(҂▼_x)￣ _￣)_中

"Thor? Where is your mother?"

Thor felt like he could breathe again, he was so relieved for his father to have awoken. If he were honest with himself, he wasn't ready to be king of Asgard yet. "Mother is in Midgard, Father. Do you not remember?"

Odin's face screwed up in consternation. "What is she doing in Midgard?"

"Enjoying married life with a Latverian dictator I believe, though we have not heard from her in over a month."

"Gaea married a mortal? I suppose it makes sense. She is of Midgard herself."

Thor felt his chest constrict, the sensation of being unable to pull air into his lungs returning. Now that he thought of it, he'd never thought to ask Frigga who his mother was. Perhaps deep down, he had worried that if he knew, it would put even more distance between himself and the woman he had been raised to believe was his mother. "Gaea is my birth mother?"

Odin blinked up at him, and it was as if his mind turned over. He reached up and patted Thor's cheek in a way he hadn't since Thor had been younger than Loki was now. "Thor, there you are, my boy. Why do you look so troubled? Has your brother played another prank on you? He hasn't dressed Toothgnasher in one of your mother's dresses again, has he?"

"No Father, Loki has been good lately." It wasn't too terrible a lie; she had been relatively well behaved since their return from Latveria. She had flooded Bruce's lab once, but she had sworn that she hadn't meant any harm; she had just "spazzed," as mortals would have put it.

Smiling fondly, Odin shook his head. "Don't let him fool you, Thor. Whenever Loki behaves himself too long, it means he's plotting something. Oh well, tell him if he's naughty the Yule Goat won't bring him—what was it he wanted this year?"

Dear Norns, when did their father think it was? "I don't know, Father; I shall have to ask. Likely some foolish book of spells or magical artifact—"

"Never call your brother's magic foolish, Thor. Someday, he is going to be more powerful than your mother. And do you want to know a secret? Frigga is a better magician than I am."

"Mother says that you are the better mage."

"She is much too modest. Where is your mother, by the way? Did she go to Vanaheim to see her sisters?"

"Yes, I think that was it." Thor felt bad lying to him, but he had a feeling the man might not even remember their conversation later. "I am certain she will be back soon, but she wanted me to make sure you got some rest. You've been overworking yourself again. But don't worry, Father. Until you feel up to it again, I am more than capable of attending to your duties."

｡*ﾟ✲* (๑ò_ó๑)｡*ﾟ✲*

Author's Note:

The original title of this chapter was "I Thork Not," but I thought that might give too much away.

*In the summer special, TVA Beach Blanket Bingo, it was revealed that in an alternate timeline of an alternate timeline, a couple of variants had taken over the TVA, and had been using their newfound power to go around doing "welfare checks" on Lokis while resetting any "Thorki" timelines.