Long Live The Queen

Abby Ebon

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Disclaimer: I do not own Thor.

Note: in answer to the LJ norsekink prompt "Jane marries Thor and is granted immortality. Unfortunately our frail mortal minds can't cope with eternity..." (I was toying with another title "The Sanity of the Insane".)

O.o.O.o.O.o

Frigga sits in her stately garden, and Jane sits at her feet, humming and plucking at plants; weeds and flowers alike. Jane has seen these grow from seeds and die each and every winter, and now she takes them from the soil without fretting, it's the natural cycle of life and death, from which Jane is far removed. Soil will never bury her, she will burn out, like the stars - she feels as if she should, right now, this moment - and it's a urge that startles her heart to beating too swiftly. She does nothing but sit, and is still, but is frightened, wanting and waiting for a blow - a mortal blow (a joke?), but there is nothing, only the passing of time, on and on, moments, minutes, where her body is healthy and whole and yet she does not trust it.

"Mother..." Jane murmurs, eyes flicking over the garden searching for the hem of Frigga's dress. There is something like panic in her urgent glance. Frigga offers her hand, and Jane takes it, her smile beautiful and childlike.

"Yes, child?" Frigga asks of her, prompting a frown. Jane can not recall why she sought this contact, why she is here at all, or whom this woman is who is not her mother, but who calls her child and daughter and is kind and generous. She is never impatient, even as Jane is with herself.

"Where is he?" There are many men, many that are male, but there is only one he for she, for Jane there is Thor, for Frigga there is Odin. It is less like love and more a partnering of equals, of halves joined and whole. Jane will never be whole, but she will always have Thor, they were married and immortal.

"Come, he would see you." Frigga knows these things, and Jane does not know how - has never known how. Only that she does see, and see so well she need never prophesy.

They walk together, hand in hand, their steps echoing and echoed by the halls and the shadows of bold and bloodied warriors. Jane used to think them fearsome and intimidating, now she thinks nothing of them but as so much and many shadows. Sometimes she sees the gleam of metal, and thinks of sharpness and steel and bleeding red. It has been a long time since Jane saw her own blood, her mortal fertility was one more thing long lost. Jane had wept for it, once, long ago.

This does not mean that Jane is not a mother, for her Sif had born the seed of Thor and the throne.

She blinks back the dampness of her eyes, and sees her husband. He sits enthroned, as once Odin was, with his warriors three and the Lady Sif. He is not the first to see her.

"Sister." Sif greets her with a soft smile, and open hands, Jane hugs her, armor and all.

Loki has seen her, and looks away, his eyes angry. Sigyn puts her hands upon him, and he is still and silent, and his silence is perhaps the most awful thing of all. He used to speak his mind, he used to string words together like singing, although once she told him that, and he had called it lying.

Frigga stands beside Jane, and Sif at her other side, she feels free and grounded all at once as she sits where Sif leads. Jane is the only one in all Asgard that Sif calls sister, so Thor looks upon her, seated upon the throne beside his own. He is distant and dreadful like a storm, but pleasing to look upon, all power and golden light; she lays her head upon his shoulder and he is warm.

"Love, is all well?" Thor's voice rumbles the bones, but Jane keeps her eyes closed as she smiles.

"Nevermore." She murmurs, though they all hear. It is a truthful and terrible thing. She would have it no other way, and is helpless to change it. There was no giving back a gift.

She remembers Hel, the Lady, like a shadow during the dawn. Loki's daughter, whom Loki himself had brought up from the depths of Helheim, she had been shrouded in shadows, her garment merely skin and spider-silk. She had flaunted her flesh, both the whole half and the marred ruin of the rest, both were like beauty upon her, to mark of her as mistress of what all Asgard feared: death in by any way but battle.

Hel's white hand upon Loki's arm, her fingers glistening with a red like blood: only Loki had willingly touched her, smiled upon her, and stood proudly by her. She was her father's daughter, a queen whom even Odin had had to take heed of when she had spoken in protest of the mockery of making a mortal merely immortal.

She had already eaten the golden apples of Idunn, and never would she age a day so long as she ate of them, but it was not the same as the immortality which Thor wished to gift her with.

"Uncle." Hel had greeted him, lashes over her eyes a grey so light as to be silver. Jane had wondered if the golden light of Agard hurt her.

"My father has fetched me, but he would not say why." Jane had marveled once, at the sheer trust that showed in Loki, whom Jane had once thought unworthy of it.

"Lady Hel, I ask a boon of you, upon my wedding day." Hel's head had tilted, she had been very still and silent as she listened. Loki had nodded his head, urging Thor to ask now or keep her at peace.

"Immortality for my mortal wife." Hel had hissed, as if struck. Loki held her steady and would have had the life-blood of any who had dared do so upon the hall floor before they would have hit her. Even so, uneasily, Loki had turned his eyes aside.

"Is this your will and wish, Lady Jane?" Hel asked instead, at a whisper. Jane had swallowed to meet her eyes, she was shadow and light, one day Baldr would dine beside her with his wife, one day Hoder would call her his companion; the one day among so many that Jane can not tell if they have passed or not.

"It is." Jane felt now a fool, and Hel had closed her eyes. She, like Loki, was uneasy were ill at ease.

"It is done, as asked of me. I grant this gesture." Jane evermore, nevermore, wondered why.

"Tha-.." Jane had begun to say, but Hel had opened her eyes and the silver in them had gleamed like a flash of the knife.

"Do not thank me for this, this is a cruel deed, a cursed thing that you think to welcome willingly." Jane had closed her mouth, and bowed her head, and wondered why Hel had done as she'd been asked at all.

Hel had swiftly taken leave of them, and Loki had for a time gone away too, for Fenrir was free of the noose Gleipnir, and Jormungand had come out of the sea. They had no place in Asgard, but Hel had taken them in willingly and with welcome.

Jane knew that never would Hel take her. She was no monster, she was not even a mortal, although Jane wondered if a mortal who was immortal could be worse then a monster in the eyes of Loki and his daughter. Loki would have left with them, journeying into Helheim perhaps never to return, had not Sigyn married him to Asgard, with the birth of the boys Vali and Narfi. Jane knew it to be done by Thor's asking, perhaps the greatest trick upon the trickster ever known, and Loki knew it well.

Frigga came again, and Sif smiled to see them, children born for the throne, the blood of Thor. His daughter Thrud, and his son the boy Loridi. There too were Magni and Modi flanking their siblings, sons of Thor by Jarnsaxa, they were born to wield Mjöllnir. All four were fine, Jane well knew but they were not her own.

"Which shall rule?" She asks of Thor; who looks to Loki, who laughs.

"We will see, won't we?" Loki smiles at Jane and she wonders how much madness is in mortality, and how much in mischief. If it is not equal out after all. With a nod she agrees. After all; the end of all things will bring about the end of she - and perhaps there is no end, or beginning, and only this unto eternity.

"Long live me." She mocks, for she is queen, and Thor is king. Thor holds her hand until she sleeps, sending all others away. .