Chapter 19 - If You Can't Be a Valkyrie, Be a Bilgesnipe

A/N: Content warning for talk about Loki's suicide attempt in the last section of this chapter, after Sif gets Loki down to the training floor.

Thor stuck out his bottom lip. "Why can't I be a Valkyrie?"

"Because you're a boy," Sif informed him, pushing away a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes. Her golden hair glowed in the bright afternoon sunlight of the courtyard she and Loki had chosen for their game, which Thor had insisted on intruding upon. "Boys can't be Valkyries."

"That isn't fair."

Loki twirled around in the Valkyrie costume Frigga had made for her. "I think it's fair." After all, if girls weren't allowed to be warriors or kings, boys shouldn't be Valkyries.

"Loki, you're a boy too!"

"Not today. See?" Loki began to lift the edge of her skirt, but Sif stepped in front of her and pulled it back down before she could reveal herself.

"It isn't fair. I wish I could turn myself into a girl."

"I wouldn't let Father catch you saying that."

"Why? He doesn't mind that you can do it."

Loki wasn't so sure. Father had never reprimanded her for being a girl or for being a boy, but she had overheard him telling Mother that he wished she would choose one or the other to be. And she suspected he liked her better as a boy, because as little attention as he paid Loki to begin with, it felt like he wanted nothing to do with her on the days she was a girl. Maybe it was because he didn't know what to do with a girl, but it still hurt. She wouldn't waste her time trying to explain that to her thick-headed brother, though. "Never mind, Thor."

"Even if I can't grow up to be a Valkyrie, you could at least let me play Valkyries with you," Thor sulked. "Sif, Loki and I let you play warriors with us, even though girls can't grow up to be warriors."

"I'm going to be a warrior. Just wait and see." As much as she already idolized her friend, Loki's respect for her grew even more upon hearing Sif's bold declaration.

"Well, in that case I'm going to be a Valkyrie."

Loki found herself much less impressed with her brother's utterly idiotic declaration. "No, you're not. For one thing, you don't get to decide what you're going to be. Either you're going to be king and I'm going to be your advisor, or you're going to be the commander of my armies when I'm king. For another, the Valkyries all died in battle with Surtur before any of us were born. Don't you pay any attention to your tutors?"

Thor sat down on the ground and appeared to think deeply about what he had just been told; you could tell because whenever Thor thought deeply about anything, his lips moved the same way they did when he read. After about a minute, he looked up at them. "Fine. If I can't be a Valkyrie, I'm going to be a bilgesnipe."

Loki spoke slowly so that he might understand. "You can't grow up to be a bilgesnipe either, Brother. Only bilgesnipe cubs get to do that."

Thor narrowed his eyes at her. "I meant in the game. Watch out, raging bilgesnipe coming through!"

Loki screeched and jumped out of the way as Thor leapt up and charged at her headfirst.

Sif picked up her wooden sword and ran after him. "I shall protect you from this foul beast, princess; just stay behind me!"

Loki wasn't sure it was fair that she'd just been demoted from Valkyrie to princess, but she supposed it was her own fault for screeching. Besides, watching Sif push her brother to the ground and smack him over the head with a wooden sword had its own merits.

Thor attempted to shield his face with his arms. "Ow! Sif, why do you always have to play so rough?"

"If you don't like it, you could try fighting back." Sif kicked him in the stomach.

"Oof—I would, but my mother told me I shouldn't fight with girls."

"Suit yourself, then."

Loki summoned a bag of popcorn from her dimensional storage and sat down to watch, but just as it got to the good part, the scene began to change. This came as no surprise, as she had already guessed that she was in a dream. After all, she had never eaten popcorn before her most recent trips to Midgard, nor had she learned how to use dimensional storage until she was at least a couple of centuries older than she currently was.

She looked out on the training field as she remembered it from her youth. Sif, her hair now dark, pummeled a Thor who had finally outstripped her in height. This time, Thor fought back, or at least, he attempted to fight back.

Sif grew impatient with him. "You mustn't hold back simply because I am a female, my prince."

"I swear to you by Gungnir that I am not holding back, Sif. I'm only—running—out—of breath! Could we perhaps take a—" Thor was cut short as he watched his sword fly out of his hand.

"If you aren't going to take this seriously, perhaps you had best sit on the sidelines with your little brother."

Loki looked down at himself. He wasn't sure when he had changed, but not only was he male, he was a century or so older than he had been. Unperturbed, he continued to munch on his anachronistic popcorn.

Thor doubled over, grasping his knees. "Sif, we've been at this all afternoon. I need a break. Maybe you could spar with Loki for a while instead."

"I don't want to spar with Loki," Sif pouted. "He cheats."

"Using magic isn't cheating." Loki heard his own voice before he realized he was the one speaking. He tossed the bag of popcorn aside and stood. "You just don't want me to use magic because you know you'll lose."

"And you don't want to fight without magic because you know you'll lose."

Loki knew he shouldn't allow Sif to goad him into a fight he had no chance of winning without his magic. After all, he had no illusions that he could win. Sif was older than him and bigger, plus she had more experience with a sword. But he had been raised an Asgardian warrior, and an Asgardian warrior never backed down from a challenge, even if it did come from a girl. He liked to think himself better than those who used Sif's sex as an excuse not to fight her. She was easily the most skilled of those training to be warriors, even if she didn't quite possess his brother's brute strength. "Fine. I shall fight you on your terms."

"No one is meant to be fighting," Thor told them. "We're only meant to be sparring—"

"Shut up, Thor," said Loki and Sif at the same time. Jinx, thought Loki, though saying it aloud would have been as out of place in this dream-memory as popcorn. As a matter of expediency, Loki summoned his own practice sword, even though he was still too young to have been able to summon anything. Luckily, Dream-Sif didn't seem to notice. She hadn't waited for Loki to say he was ready, rushing him with her own sword drawn back.

But Loki's quick reflexes were one of his few strengths, and he assumed a defensive position before the impact. If he could have used his magic, he would have made doubles of himself, so that she would have to guess which Loki was the real one. That would have at least given him a chance to escape the complete humiliation of being beaten within the first minute of their fight; but since he couldn't, all he could do was stand still and wait to see how severe his injuries would be when she was done with him.

Sif met him with much less force than he expected. Instead of knocking him to the ground, she only pushed him back a few inches. "Fight back, you gutless recreant! Don't you dare hold back after all your big words."

"I'm not the one holding back," Loki pointed out, before considering it might have been the wrong thing to say. As he should have expected, Sif abruptly stopped holding back. She sent Loki sprawling backwards, his sword flying out of his hand. Sif cast her own sword aside and dropped onto him, pushing the air out of his lungs as she sat on his chest, pinning him to the ground.

He had a distinct feeling that if this had actually happened in his youth, he would have yelled at her to get offbefore she suffocated him. But at the moment, he felt oddly excited about the ordeal. Sif leaned in closer, and he realized that she was no longer a child, and neither was he.

The setting had changed from the training field to Frigga's garden. It must have been early spring, because the blossoms were beginning to fall from the apple trees, and a few stray petals had stuck in Sif's hair, the white a beautiful contrast to her raven locks. As much as Sif might have complained that Loki had "stolen" her beauty from her, he had always liked her better as a brunette.

"Loki," said Sif, in a sultry voice he had never heard her use before. "It was always you I wanted," she continued, running a finger over his jaw. "Not your idiotic brother."

Loki knew full well that while the rest of his dream had been based in memory, what was happening now had never happened, nor would it ever. But it was only a dream, so why shouldn't he allow himself to enjoy it a bit? He couldn't recall having this kind of dream in the past, and the novelty of it made it intriguing, all the better that he happened to be lucid.

"Kiss me," said Sif, and bent her neck towards him. Loki closed his eyes and allowed his lips to part. Sif began licking inside his mouth—with a shockingly large tongue that smelled and tasted like a combination of pizza, old socks, and the decomposing corpse of a small animal.

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Loki awoke to find himself Frenching Thori. Horrified, he attempted to push the dog off, but he wouldn't budge. It was all he could do to turn his head; as a result, the dog licked his eyeball instead. "Norns, Thori—what have you been eating?"

"Off the bed, mongrel!" At the sound of Sif's voice, Thori stopped licking him. His ears laid flat against his head and his tail tucked between his legs. "Off," Sif repeated, and he jumped off the bed and sat at attention. Loki might have felt grateful to her for putting an end to the dog's assault, but he didn't have the opportunity before she turned on him. "I went to the kitchen with the intention of making myself coffee when I discovered that your doggot into the kitchen rubbish bin last night. You need to get out of bed and clean it up."

So, that was what that rustling noise in the kitchen had been. Now that he thought of it, Tony had mentioned something about the dog getting into the garbage, which meant he had seen the mess and just left it. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. "Princes do not clean," he told Sif, rolling away from her. "But as you are here as my servant, feel free to—"

"Loki, get up now, or I shall count to three."

Unlike when Thor said things like that, Loki had full confidence that if Sif got to three, something unpleasant would happen. Without access to his full magic, he doubted he would be able to defend himself. He cast off his duvet. "Fine, I'm getting up."

"Good boy. Get dressed, then march straight into the kitchen and clean up your dog's mess. If you want to keep an animal, you have to be responsible for it."

"As far as the dog is concerned, you're its mistress," Loki grumbled.

"If you want an animal to respect you, you simply need to assert your dominance," Sif advised him. The edge of her mouth quirked upwards. "But it looked like the two of you were getting along well enough."

Loki rummaged through the laundry basket full of clean clothes he was yet to put away, looking for a t-shirt that wasn't too wrinkled. "I'm sure he was just trying to see what I tasted like before he ate my face."

"This room is an atrocity," Sif commented.

"Why, thank you. Your face is an atrocity." It wasn't a lie; she had put on too much makeup again. He tried to avoid looking at her, because if he looked at her, he would be compelled to try to fix it for her again.

"Let's get something straight, highness.I am not here to be your maid, and since Lord Stark does not have servants to do the cleaning on these floors, that means you are responsible for cleaning up after yourself. As a matter of fact, I think you had better clean this room after you have cleaned up after the dog, had your breakfast, and completed your training for the day."

"What training?" Loki demanded.

"Starting today, you and I are going to start training together. I've watched you sit around here growing soft long enough."

"For your information, I usually train with Clint and Natasha, but they have been away since before Christmas."

"In that case, you will train with me until they return."

Don't allow her to dominate you like some animal, Loki told himself. (Though if he were honest, the idea didn't entirely lack appeal—but no, it was only the love potion that was responsible for both his odd dreams and these highly inappropriate thoughts!) "I shouldn't have to point this out, but as heir to the throne of Asgard, I outrank you. You cannot order me about like an animal, or a child."

"But you are a child as far as the Midgardians are concerned, are you not? Otherwise, you would have some sort of responsibilities beyond lounging about, playing all day."

"I do more than that!"

"Every time I see you, you are staring at that rectangular light producing device—"

"It's a phone. You've been here long enough to know what it is."

"The point is, I have seen you waste enough of your time on it. Perhaps it isn't a bad thing that you're getting the opportunity to be a child for a bit longer, but even children should have some responsibilities and routine."

"I have both a routine and responsibilities," Loki insisted. "I have to see Doctor Samson twice a week, and for your information, I have been using my rectangular light producing device to conduct a thorough study of modern Midgardian culture."

"From now on, I think I'd better oversee your 'studies.' I'm not fully convinced that playing Angry Birds is a necessary part of an Asgardian royal's education."

"So, you do know what a phone is!"

"Of course I know. Lord Stark gifted me one the second day I was here and showed me how I could use it to track your location."

"Then why did you call it—oh, never mind." He had more important things to be annoyed about; that Tony had shown Sif how to use Find My Friends to stalk him, for instance.

Ɛ ==(`･⊝･´) ヾ(；ﾟ(OO)ﾟ)ﾉ

Loki looked at the time display on the oven. It was seven-thirty, which meant it must have been just after seven when Sif had woken him up. He had already picked the garbage off the kitchen floor and taken the bag to the garbage chute, and now he mopped the floor as Sif sat watching. No one else had come into the kitchen for breakfast yet, likely because they had all been up late to ring in the New Year and had chosen to sleep in like reasonable people. "Make sure to clean under the cold foods chest," she told him between sips of the coffee she had made herself; the coffee maker being the one kitchen appliance she had already mastered.

"The refrigerator," Loki corrected.

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

Loki finished with the mopping and returned the mop to its place in the cleaning supply closet. "I'm going back to bed now."

He hadn't even seen Sif get up, but now she had him by the collar of his shirt. "Training," she reminded him.

"I don't want to, and you can't make me!"

"Have you forgotten that your life may still be in danger from the intergalactic warlord you betrayed?"

"He hasn't come for me yet." And if he did come for him, he'd be dead anyway, so why worry about it?

"So, you are content to become soft."

Loki snarled at her. "How dare you call your prince—"

Sif pulled him along toward the stairwell. "I'm not calling you fat, you brat, I'm calling you lazy."

Loki flopped to the floor and did his best to make himself a dead weight, but Sif, who still possessed the Asgardian strength he no longer did, simply dragged him along. "Stop it, Sif. I'm mortal and you're not. You're going to hurt me—"

Sif let go of him. "I've no intention to hurt you. I'm sorry that I've hurt you in the past. Now get up."

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Loki had been so surprised to hear her apologize to him again that he had gotten off the floor and followed her into the Avengers' training floor.

As it turned out, Sif didn't mean to spar with him. Instead, she'd made Loki go through a tedious regimen of practicing forms with one of the practice swords that Clint sometimes trained with. "This is ridiculous, Sif. I'm not a sword fighter."

"Which is why you must practice your swordsmanship. It is my understanding that you still don't have access to your dimensional storage, which means you cannot simply summon knives to stab your opponent in the back with anymore—"

"I hardly ever stab anyone in the back, Sif. I much prefer to see the look on my enemy's face when I stab them."

"My point was, what if you're ever caught in a situation where all you have to defend yourself is a sword?"

"How likely is that? It's not like I walk around wearing a sword, like you do. Were I allowed to carry weaponry, obviously I would carry as many daggers as I could conceal on myself."

"You're not allowed weapons here? So as much as the people here consider you 'family,' they don't trust you not to attack them."

"That isn't their concern, for your information."

"Then what is?" Loki didn't want to answer Sif's question, so he tried to ignore it, continuing with the sequence of sword forms Sif had set him upon. She reached out and grabbed the hilt of the sword, holding it still. "I asked a question, Loki, and if you'll not answer, I'll just have to ask the others."

Loki became aware of the way their hands were touching as they both gripped the sword hilt. He let go and took a step back. "It really isn't any of your concern, but if you must know, they're afraid I might hurt myself."

"They are aware you're not a complete idiot, and that you've been trained to handle weaponry from the time you were old enough to stand?"

"They are not concerned that I might hurt myself accidentally," Loki clarified. "Have you also noticed that the kitchen knives are kept in a drawer with a lock, and that any actual weaponry is kept in locked cabinets as well?"

Sif furrowed her eyebrows in apparent consternation, but then her face smoothed as understanding seemed to dawn on her. "Oh," she said, sounding a bit uncomfortable. "I'd assumed they were just guarding them against thieves."

Loki rolled his eyes. "JARVIS would never allow a thief to get into the tower."

"You haven't given them a reason to think you might mutilate yourself, have you?"

"I've told them I'm not going to, but they know that I—" Loki bit his own lip, realizing that Sif must not have known his fall from the Bifrost hadn't been accidental. "None of this is your business, you know."

"If you're a danger to yourself, it is my business. I'm meant to protect you from anyone or anything that might hurt you, and that includes you."

Loki debated with himself as to whether he ought to let Sif know that his daughter was the Queen of Hel and had promised to send him back to the land of the living if he died meaninglessly, making suicide a pointless exercise anyway. He decided against it however, as saying such a thing likely wouldn't make her worry less for his sanity. "You don't have to worry, Sif. I don't think about hurting myself anymore, and I generally find life worth living now."

"What do you mean, 'now?'"

"Didn't Thor tell you? My fall from the Bifrost was not accidental."

"Norns, Loki; no, I didn't know that. All anyone was told was that you had fallen."

"I suppose you think even less of me now than you did before. But you know what? I don't care. Think as little of me as you wish."

"I don't think less of you." The way Sif averted her eyes told him otherwise.

"Perhaps not. Your opinion of me has always been so low that you couldn't possibly think less of me. But I don't need you to pity me either."

Sif growled and gnashed her teeth. "I don't pity you!"

"So you don't think less of me, nor do you pity me. You admire me for attempting to end my own life, then?"

"To be honest, I don't know what to feel about it. Guilt, perhaps."

"Why should you feel guilty?"

"Because as you pointed out before, I never asked if you were okay. You're wrong that I 'couldn't wait to betray you,' but you are right that we should have recognized that you were suffering and made an effort to intervene. Perhaps part of me did know, but I still thought the best thing to do would be to bring Thor back and let him handle you. I've never been good at comforting anyone."

Now Loki was the one feeling awkward about this conversation. "Can we just never speak about this again? I swear to you that you do not need to worry about me engaging in acts of self-harm. I haven't had those kinds of thoughts in months, but if I do, I promise I'll tell someone."He had already made that promise to Bruce when they were having their little heart-to-heart after his accidental death and resurrection. "Not you, obviously."

"You had better. I swear, if you slash your wrists or any such nonsense, I'll drag you back to Asgard before you can blink." Sif looked away again. "Not that you would be at fault, to be clear. But if it turns out that there's something here I can't protect you from—if I've failed you in that way—I'll have no choice but to return you to your brother and allow him to care for you."

Loki didn't bother to point out that Thor wouldn't be the best person to care for him in that scenario either. He wasn't planning on doing anything drastic anyway, and convincing Sif that his chosen mortal family were capable of caring for him was likely to end with her again tactlessly pointing out the ephemeral nature of their existence, which was something he had forbidden himself from dwelling on until it became more immediately relevant. Like with pets—you didn't dwell on how much shorter their lifespans were than your own, you just enjoyed them while they were there.

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Author's Note:

If anyone's inclined to leave comments/reviews, I love reading them ٩(oεo )۶