Thor and Jane sat just down the table from Loki, who was at the far end with his nose buried in a book with strange runes on the cover. Thor couldn't help but watch his brother, sitting alone and reading. Just like when they had been children.

Thor watched Loki's content face, perfectly fine with sitting there alone.

Jane touched his shoulder. "So…. I've been studying that rainbow bridge of yours, and I think I almost have it figured out."

"What do you mean?" Thor asked, confusion edging his voice.

"It's not magic, of course. It's just a matter of time before I'll be able to explain the science behind it."

They both turned as they heard Loki scoff, setting the book he had been reading on the table without bothering to mark the page he had been on. "Mortals…" He muttered, looking almost offended.

"There is no such thing as magic! It's just science that hasn't been explained yet."

Loki smirked and held out his hand, palm up. A green flame flickered to life, dancing and leaping, casting an eery glow around his arm. "Explain this, then. With your science, of course."

"It has to be some sort of illusion or technology you've developed." Jane replied curtly.

Loki rolled his eyes. "Oh, yes. Very intelligent of you. This is a technology. You see so much technology here, don't you? Wires, light bulbs, computers. Oh, wait! Perhaps I stole it from Midgard a thousand years ago!"

Jane flushed red indignantly. "You can't be older than thirty!"

Loki burst out laughing, not being able to suppress the urge. He almost choked on his laughter. Jane glared at him. "The sad truth, my dear sister, is that both Thor and I are over a thousands years old!"

Jane looked at Thor who shrugged, rather sheepishly. "What?!" She hissed.

Just then, as if she was meant to spare them all from never talking to each other again, Sorrow slipped gracefully into the room. Loki instinctively sat a little straighter. The small woman sat right next to him, smiling. "What are you arguing about now?" She asked calmly.

Loki cleared his throat, gesturing to Jane. "That mortal-"

Sorrow's look sharpened.

"-Jane… believes there is no such thing as magic. That it is just a trick. An illusion or technology."

Sorrow laughed softly. "Play nicely." She commented.

"How nice?" Loki grinned.

Sorrow thumped his arm playfully.

Thor and Jane were both watching them. Jane spoke up. "Wait! I thought you were like, 21 or something!" She said incredulously to Sorrow.

Sorrow's brows furrowed in confusion. "What?"

"Both Thor and Loki are over a thousand years old! And you're only twenty-something!"

Sorrow looked over at Loki, then at Thor. "I thought she knew?"

"Knew what?" Jane asked nervously.

"The Aesir can live up to thousands of years old. We generally reference the maturity of our body when talking about age. After the first few centuries, we lose track of the exact number of years we've lived. As an answer to your question, I'm not 'twenty-something' in mortal years. I'm over a thousand years old as well."

Jane's jaw dropped as Loki barked out a laugh. Thor put a reassuring hand on Jane's shoulder, but the ex-mortal was already panicking. "You were a slave for a thousand years?!"

Sorrow flushed red and Loki stiffened, glaring daggers at Jane. He was about to snap at the puny ex-mortal, but Sorrow smiled. "No. I wasn't a slave my whole life. Just a few centuries."

Jane gaped. "B-but… that's inhumane! Slavery is just…. a completely disgusting thing! Everyone should be free!"

Sorrow sighed. "That may be how it is from where you come from, but we are not like you. Many are fine with slavery. Honsetly, if you think about it, it provides many poor people with shelter, food, clothes, a job. All it requires is…. absolute obedience."

"How can you be fine with slavery?! Didn't you hate being a slave?"

Sorrow's eyes flitted down to her lap, the room silent, listening intently. "More than anything." She whispered.

"Then why are you fine with it?"

"I'm not." Sorrow responded, a snap hidden in her tone. "I was starved, beaten, treated like I was nothing more than a plaything. I am not at all fine with it. I am merely stating that it does provide many people with essentials that they would not get otherwise. A meal once a week is better than nothing at all."

"Once a week..." Jane whispered, her eyes widening. She suddenly turned to Thor, glaring. "Once a week?! You're the Crown Prince. Couldn't you have done something about that?"

"No. The slaves, if given any more freedom than they have, would start to rebel. It has happened before."

Sorrow averted her eyes from Thor's, suddenly feeling very small, very slave-like once more. Servants came into the room, and Sorrow recognized all of them. They brought trays to the table, trays of food. She wondered if she was the only one who knew the hunger they felt, the weakness. "Autumn?" Sorrow asked the woman who set the food tray in front of her.

Autumn was quiet, but nodded. As was respectful. "Yes, Sorrow? I mean, Lady Sorrow." Sorrow would have expected her tone to be biting and hostile, but it was honest and kind as it had always been.

"How is everyone? Has anyone… left us recently?" They were talking in hushed voices.

"Yes. Old Maid Mayda had a heart attack. She was buried out in the slave fields yesterday."

Sorrow felt a lump grow in her throat, her heart beating with pain. Mayda had been a very strict, but motherly figure to all of them. Always there to give advice, whether it be how to ease the hunger pains or wrap the lacerations on your back. That's where Sorrow had learned to wrap up her own back, clean fast and efficiently, not have such a loudly growling stomach. Even the guards had respect for Old Mayda.

Autumn continued, seemingly not caring that she was at a table full of royal people who were listening intently to the conversation. "It's hard to think of Old Mayda gone."

Sorrow nodded silently. "She was like a… a mother."

"Grumpy old woman that she was." Autumn sighed, shaking her head. "We think it was the stress."

Sorrow agreed. "How many chores did she have assigned that day?"

"About ten, if I remember right."

Sorrow winced. The most she had ever had in a day was six. And that had kept her up until the next morning. "I guess the cruelty rises with age. Was the Head Maid angry at her?"

Autumn laughed sourly. "She's mad at everyone, all the time." Her features softened. She put a hand on Sorrow's shoulder. "Midnight. At the old tree."

"Thank you." Sorrow whispered, tapping her finger three times on the table. Autumn nodded, tapping Sorrow's shoulder twice. "Take care."

"You too, my lady." Autumn smiled quietly, a hint of playfulness. Then, she was gone.

Sorrow studied her hands, not caring that the table had gone quiet, listening to her conversation. The old tree was where the slaves buried the elder slaves. The ones who had somehow made it that far in life. And for each slave that died, their friends would sing them into the heavens. Sorrow had only been to two. She was sure quite a few would be there to sing Mayda to the heavens.

"Who was that?" Jane asked.

Sorrow slowly looked up at her. "Autumn. A friend."

"No… Mayda."

Sorrow sighed, taking an apple from the tray and studying it. "She was like a mother to us. She was stubborn and grumpy, but old. She taught us how to deal with our hunger and fatigue. She'd put an arm around us while we cried, made sure that we all behaved. She taught us how to wrap our wounds, smuggled us bandages. When she heard one of us got a whipping, she'd leave us bandages and ointment, since she was friends with the Head Healer, Eir. When a new batch of children would arrive, she'd show them how things ran so that they didn't get beaten for messing up their schedule. Because children younger than eight can't get whipped, their immune systems not strong enough to deal with it. Mayda was like a Goddess to us."

Loki twined his hand through hers, their fingers locked.

Jane was quiet, for once. And, not surprisingly, it was Thor who asked the next stupid question. "How many times did you meet the whip?"

Sorrow's eyes bored into Thor's, Loki stayed silent. "Meet? You say that as if it were a casual acquaintance… like it should be expected for a slave to get whipped."

Thor cleared his throat, sitting up straighter. "Well… the slaves need to be kept in line somehow."

Sorrow pursed her lips, staring down at her hands. She placed them on the table for all three to see, even though Loki already knew them well. They were scarred and calloused from years of labour. Yet the skin had a strange softness to it. "You have never had to scrub a floor until your hands were bloody and split, working on three hours of sleep only until it feels as though your back will snap in half. And just when you realize you are almost done, there's a guard or noble there to mock you, to dirty your work. Or the Head Maid, thrusting another rag into your bloody hands and telling you to polish the walls.

"And after that, when you know that you will only get a few precious hours of sleep, you drag yourself back to your small room that you share with forty other slaves. And you sleep on a slab of stone.

And then you are expected to wake three hours later on your own. If you don't wake on time, you get five lashes, now go scrub the floor again, go clean the Prince's rooms, go clean the extra scraps of food in the kitchen and feed them to the pigs, because even the pigs have a higher status than you, and you'll never get anything more to eat than moldy oatmeal or rock hard bread once every night.

And because you just offended the Head Maid with your presence, you get the back of your clothing torn open, something you'll have to repair later, and a guard is fetched. And they hold a bull whip over your back like you're nothing more than an animal, and you can feel it coming, hear the creak of the leather right before it slices through your already mutilated flesh, promising infection and weakness and misery. And the guard laughs at you and kicks you to the ground and grinds his dirty boot into your bloody mess of a back. And you know nobody will help you up after the guard and Head Maid leaves, because WE'RE ALL TOO AFRAID TO LIFT A FINGER THAT ISN'T DOING A CHORE!

And after that, wrap yourself up in some smuggled in bandages, try to sleep through the pain, and get up the next day to find out that you've been assigned the task of hauling logs and boulders to build stuff.

And sometimes, one of your partners will catch the eye of a guard and they'll disappear and come back soaked in blood and sobbing, some not caring because they're used to it. And only then do we slaves help one another! We ring the blood out of the girl's dress and stitch it up and help her get through the pain and humiliation. That happened to a little six year old once. It killed her. The NOBLE was so brutal that he beat her to death after he humiliated her IN FRONT OF US!

You know that you belong to someone else. That you are not even Aesir. You are not Vanir or Dwarven or Elven or Mortal. You are dirt. And you wouldn't last a week as a slave, Thor Odinson. You have been trained in the arts of battle and killing. But what about those who prepare you for it? Those who make your meals and draw your baths and saddle your horse and polish your sword?! You know NOTHING ABOUT BEING A SLAVE!

I have MET the whip MANY times. I have the memories and scars to prove it. And you will never know what it is like because you haven't ever been whipped into servitude. You say us slaves have too much freedom?! WE. HAVE. NONE."

And with that, Sorrow stormed away from the table, her nails biting her palms and her breath short, her face red with anger. Nobody had ever heard her speak like that, shout like that. Except once. And that was at Brandt.

Thor's mouth was open, his eyes blinking, trying to comprehend what she had just said. Jane was sobbing. And Loki. Loki was standing up, going after his wife, knowing that Thor meant no harm, but was only an oaf at heart.

He finally found her in their chambers. She was quiet, sitting on their bed, staring at their blankets.

He sat next to her.

And put his arm around her.

And pulled her into an embrace.

And was quiet as she sobbed her guilt for leaving the other slaves behind to such a life. For blowing up at Thor as she had. For crying.

And when she was done, Loki lifted her chin and he kissed her. "My Queen." He whispered. "If I must, I will do everything in my power to see that your nightmares and the nightmares of all slaves cease. I will find a way."

So I was going to edit out the whole part with Autumn and Old Maid Mayda, but I figure I'll give a little bit to the slave characters I mentioned once or twice in the original story. I mentioned Autumn maybe once, as Thor's slave. You guys should remember Mayda, but it's okay if you don't. Anyways, I know this is kinda unlike Sorrow to blow up like that, but if you think about it, her slave years were pretty dark times for her, and to keep it all sunny skies in her life is unrealistic. She's been through too much to keep it bottled up. Everyone needs an outlet.

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