Yes. Finally. Finally! I honestly have nothing more to add here as it's ungodly early, I'll fix the grammatical mistakes later, and yeah, here's to hoping the next chapter doesn't take nearly as long.

Hawkz

What Might Have Been: Chapter XVI

He was not spying.

He was not.

Thor was merely following his siblings at a distance and cloaked in one of mother's many spells as Loki and Jane headed down to the lake, but he was not spying.

Thor just had some, concerns.

First was mere curiosity tinged by shadows of circumspection. Curious about the conspiratorial whispers he overheard his two siblings mutter late one night about an early morning foray into the wild. Unattended and unknown to the rest of the royal family being paramount. Thor saw and heard from afar, returning from a spar with General Ty—one certain to leave underutilized muscles sore and aching if riding his horse back to the castle was any indication.

He had not meant to eavesdrop; he found the act dishonorable. Sconce lit hallways gave his Aesir eyes enough light to see Loki's fingers rest on the crook of Jane's elbow, his other hand tucking a loose piece of hair behind an ear and trailing down her jaw, lingering. So out went curiosity and in flooded concerns. Concerns that sharpened into suspicions when Loki stiffened, withdrawing his hands and melted into that false facade of his. He offered such a smile to his brother.

Thor affected a tired grimace in return, one not requiring a false heart. he turned to their sister.

The thunderer mulled over Jane's state of dress. It was not new, her wearing Loki's things but that suspicion stuck to the roof of his mouth like peanut butter and he wondered. He wondered, he pondered; he drove himself deep into confusion as suspicion lingered and twisted in his mind. That he suspected his brother of anything skated through his gut like Dwarfish knives. After all his brother had been through and now Thor looked at him with suspicion? For shame.

Jane hugged him without care of the grime and sweat that stuck to her person, giggling when, for all his bemoaning of fatigue, Thor swept Jane off her feet in an unbalanced, lopsided imitation of a pirouette. He gazed down tenderly at the mortal and placed a chaste kiss on her crown. Jane's smile widened while Loki's grew thin and a quicksilver shine of jealousy darkened those viridescent eyes of his.

How quick Loki spun a barb oat Thor's unclean state, waspish in tone but centuries of hearing such, the Asgardian heir let it roll off his shoulders with ease. Then, in a chiding sort of way, he led Jane away in a gentle, firm hand under the presumption of escorting her to the bathing chambers. Thor watched them go, Jane waving farewell—Loki's green sleeves drooping and billowing around her much more slender forearms—and Loki's shoulders easing in tension every step he took further away.

Away from him and close to Jane. How the tides had turned in a mere score of years.

Loki was, is, a good brother, Thor told himself, even if he did not start out as one. He had not the right to judge; in the beginning, Thor had not been a worthy brother to Jane either. Thor had known Loki for nearly a millennia. For all his tricks and syrupy silver-tongued machinations, Thor knew his brother to be an honorable, just male. His Jotunn blood did not make him cruel nor his mischievous tendencies apathetic. That was just Loki being Loki, and Loki was many things.

Waspish; prickly; cautious; quick-witted and quicker with his tongue; chicanery at its best and mendacity at its worst; regal, never humble accept before their mother, never loving accept with their mother (with perhaps a mortal added to that short list); brooding; beautiful; incredible in his intellect; unbreakable in his loyalty. If Thor spoke and allowed that precious secret he kept locked away in his chest, he knew how his friends and acquaintances of the court would react. The dubiety, the laughter, none of it kind, and the looks.

Thor trusted his brother.

Sad it was how very few could say those same words. Loki cursed him a fool and Thor, to himself, raged against his slow wit, too, time and again. Still, he enforced the ruling of his heart:

Thor trusted his brother.

All the same, he trailed them at a distance this day, breathe thundering in his ears when Loki turned for the umpteenth time, searching and narrowed eyes for that presence he could have sworn he heard. Jane waved him on.

"Come on Loki. You're taking forever. We won't reach our destination till next season at this rate."Loki frowned at Thor's hiding spot but he doesn't come over to search—he's done that three times by now—and Thor praises their mother for the see-me-not draught she fixed for him (with skeptical, amused eyes, he might add).

Thor was not stupid nor was he slow; he, however, was not as quick nor clever as his brother. Loki could disguise the most incredible lies as innocuous, self-evident truths, and over time he had grown fond of Jane. Thor was fond of her, too, getting worm down by sentiment and a shared childhood. Perhaps, perhaps, he grudgingly and occasionally acknowledged, he was not as close-knit to her as Loki, but Thor accepted they shared more in common with each other. That same intellectual, unquenchable thirst bound them in ways he failed to comprehend. One Loki liked to tease and bait Jane over, using his centuries of knowledge to enchant her, infuriate her, enlighten her. Loki loved Jane in ways he wouldn't love his brother. Thor accepted that.

The thunderer revisited old memories of finding his brother buried in a book, skipping martial lessons for dusty old tomes. He remembered: His brother's crushed face to learn he couldn't be a scholar, he had to be a prince; how Loki did not always like being an Asgardian prince; how he strove so hard for Odin's approval as his father and then as his king; yet when his cerebral aptitude was not as celebrated as Thor's martial facility. That look on his brother's face as the latter proved true decade after decade, century after century.

Guilt and shame gnawed on his bones like a hound's favorite chew toy. Thor shrugged it off brusquely. He could change and make amends; he proved it, too, he would say, and unlike his father, Thor would give his brother anything to combat his darker tendencies that Frigga fretted over in more recent times. Anything.

That is not the same thing as anyone.

Which is why he currently snake-crawled under a bush and, over the course of this early, not-yet-daybreak morning, scrutinized his two younger siblings as they lounged at the edge of a lake. Jane withdrew charcoal drawing instruments and paper, sketching while Loki examined the thin branches of a given tree. He found one to his liking, snapping it easily, and began to whittle it with one of his daggers. They didn't speak; not tales of myth and legend from Loki's silver tongue, no endless questions from Jane's curious mind. It was rare for the usually verbose prince to have no words sashaying on his tongue. Loki fastened string to one end of the stick and proceeded to fish.

Time drifted.

The silence remained. Companionable silence one might say. His brother did not move from his relaxed sitting position save to better accommodate Jane when she leaned against his back and went from sketching to writing and back again in that 'science' journal of hers. Sketching the schematics of her latest innovative inspiration and jotting notes in the margins no doubt. Thor tried reading her journal once—boredom and curiosity both fueling the action. Sorcery and gibberish. That was his opinion of that diary.

Loki stayed true to his mischievous roots, sending a gust of wind to mess up her hair or a zing of magic to tickle her, but never when she drew or wrote with an enlightened zeal about her that spoke of insight. An unseen line of respect uncrossed. Thor saw tenderness in Loki's actions that most did not credit the second son of Odin. When the fishing line grew taut, Jane's eyes went alight and Loki made a show of his fishing prowess. Thor remembered those days as boys when he and his brother would spend their afternoons thus, albeit with far more bluster and ambition and petty games by boys to build and tarnish petty prides. Jane leaned in close to the fish, Loki speaking softly of the fish's characteristics, ancient lore and legend peppered on occasion, how best to cook it, how he burned his share and swapped it for Thor's unburnt share on a given quest, and so forth. (Thor blinked, backtracked to those memories of that one quest, and squinted at his brother's figure. He never could figure out why his catches tasted burnt in those early quests. Fiend.) Jane's questions punctured Loki's lecture, the latter taking no offense when she sometimes cut his off with a remark or disputation.

Years gone by witnessing it, Jane obviously perked up when Loki displayed his magical prowess. Not envy, not so much any more, but the same awe and wonder, yes indeed. Loki preened then gave a low deep chuckle that threatened to turn into honest laughter when Jane tried and failed, then tried and failed again, to catch one of his illusions.

Gently, he unhooked the lure from the fish's mouth and released it back to the lake. The fishing line went back tot the water and the dialogue faded back silence, Loki catching different kinds of fish with different lures and releasing them. It had been a long, long time since Thor saw his brother so gentle with another creature.

Morning faded as the shadows grew short and the sun bold and hot. Thor grew mellow in the bush as he watched them and nearly jumped when he realized why.

Peaceful. He felt peaceful. How long had it been since he'd done something outside of quests or sparring bouts or engaged in drunken revelry, not to mention debauchery? Thor knew how different his brother was compared to him. Loki enjoyed feasts and drinking as much as any Asgardian but he loved quiet nights in the library even more. Thor had his Warriors Three and Sif to join him in his martial quests but who did Loki have to join him in the library?

There was Mother, there was always Mother, but that was not the same as a companion. A friend. Thor's hands danced to a nervous, erratic beat as he wondered just what he hoped to find, verify, or debunk this day. What did it matter? What did any of it mean when Loki finally had what his elder brother took for granted all these mortal lifetimes? Thor turned his attention back on the two. They snacked on dried fruit, cider, and crusty loaves over the course of the morning. Jane hit Loki when he kept magically stealing her blackberries, and his brother laughed, wide smile and carefree.

All this thanks to little mortal Jane. She held a dear place in Thor's heart that swelled into something terribly emotional as he watched Jane tease something so demonstrative from his brother. Not a hug, not a kiss, not even an implied caress. Just a smile and light laughter. The Asgardian prince wanted so dearly to give his adopted sister a boisterous, Volstagg-worthy hug.

Thor withdrew. He had seen enough; his worries were unfounded. Loki had a friend, and Thor had a sister. All was right in the world.

Dinner that night, Thor clasped his brother's shoulder and offered a sheepish smile. "Forgive me brother. I suspected you of uncouthness regarding our sister's honor. And you would never do that." Would you? Loki returned Thor's thinly veiled admonition with a cool look and arched eyebrow.

"No," Loki finally drawled. "Never have and never will." Thor grinned wider and slapped his brother's back.

"Good. I'll drink to that. Another!"

Thor drunk many that night, cajoling his brother to join him for six too many rounds, but he was not drunk. Still, he should have knocked. The moans of Jane—his sister—he recognized, though he shouldn't have. Not in his brother's room. While Loki did, more than once Thor might add, indulge his carnal passions in Thor's bed as a slight, he did not think Jane cable of such spite or ill caution. The real sight that set his blood afire was his brother and where that damnable tongue of his laved. Wide, dilated brown eyes gained enough focus to recognize they had company. Loki stilled to attention shortly thereafter.

A pregnant pause sunk into all their bones. Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance, building rapidly into a frightful storm.

Loki was quick; Thor was quicker.

His fists found his brother's lapels and shook him vigorously. "Loki, you cad! Thou surreptitious silver-tongued fiend! You gave me your word that you have don't nothing to impinge our sister's honor!"

There had been Loki and Jane, his brother and much more importantly his sweet little mortal sister, in flagrante delicto. Jane was saying something but the brothers locked gazes and nothing made it through the blood pounding in Thor's ears. His fists tightened to furious white and he pulled Loki closer to his face. He bore his teeth at Loki in a feral imitation of a dog, growling his brother's name, anger and alcohol hot in his veins. Loki sneered from within Thor's hold. "I assure you dear brother, I have done nothing but honored our sister's flesh."

Silence.

The next day, Loki and Thor would blame the mead. For now, Thor used Mjölnir to send Loki through the balcony.

He was going to fucking bloody his brother.

Loose gravel rumbled then jumped from the pavement, falling with the rattle clack of hail. Prince Thor's hammer no doubt. The searing green lightning, one that sparked fires and the charred smell of brick, mortar, and leather melted together, was assuredly his kin's reply.

Ivar picked at his teeth with a thin piece of singed firewood that he whittled into a makeshift toothpick. He sucked noisily at his teeth, trying in vain to loosen that kernel shell from behind one of his molars. A sizable bowl of salted popcorn—-a curious snack Ivar, the bohemian realm traveler, picked up during his most recent venture to Midgard—and three pints sat between the troika of musicians. Lorcun pushed his worker's cap just past the bridge of his nose to see the second Prince of Asgard thrown, violently, from the top of the alchemists' guild to the street below. He landed with more of a crunch than a crack. Ziggy was more enamored with the corn derivative than the princes. He couldn't quite form words with so much popcorn in his mouth but the elder woodwind player grunted a reply.

"It's either here or at home watching the twins. Here smells less of baby puke and other biological discharge." The two children gurgled and gasped below the table, cooing as the heir to Asgard whizzed by.

"Phwadda gurk lla?" Ziggy was close to swallowing.

Lorcun took a peevish drag on his bidi. "When you dare try to reproduce, see how well your home stays clean."

The young bass player hummed and shoved in another handful. Two blocks over, all the street lights on one side of the street were melted in half. It perfumed the air like a dwarfish coal mine, thick in sulfur and after smells of well-stoked coals. Ivar rubbed his sapient beard.

"Y'know, I think our princes have really calmed down these past two decades. Learned restraint and to exercise caution. Not like they used to in the past. I mean," he extended his hand to the destruction all around, "it was rather nice of them not to damage our tavern."

Lorcun clicked his tongue. "Like they would survive the flaying tongue lashing our violinist would lay upon them had they done otherwise." The youngest beamed, bobbing a nod.

A roar preceded a different strike of lightning and Loki skid across the roof shingles of Dyffin's tavern, rolling off the edge and falling shakily to his feet. His armor glowed in golden splendor albeit lacking his usual horned helmet.

Ziggy swallowed. "Wonder what they're fighting over this time?"

Thor landed more steadily on his feet, hammer humming post-flight, but he too lacked his helmet for all his armored glory. Quite a few bruises, cuts and dagger marks marred both of them. "You never should have touched her, brother!"

The trio sighed and leaned back into their pints. Fighting over a woman. Again.

Loki's snarl mimicked his brother's. "You would have her die, withered and chaste to her last, brother?" His voice mocked the last word as one would spit out a curse.

"I would have you do right by her! Honor her!"

Loki's face darkened at the accusations. "How quick you are to judge, Son of Odin," he said, "as you have acted far less so towards other maidens."

Thor palmed his hammer. "They are of no consequence as they are not our sister."

Ivar upchucked his mead in spectacular fashion.

"Your words bear as little wit as per the norm, Thor. I have never acted dishonorably towards Jane in this regard." They circled one another, closer now, predators sizing up the competition and looking for fatal weak spots to exploit. Reach out a hand and they could touch the other's neck.

"So you tell me this is no dalliance on your part? No hidden alternatives or shadows of deceptions in your actions towards her?"

A flicker of something not fueled by anger shined in his grimace and it echoed of a hurt heart. "Would you believe me even if I spoke true? Or have you already decided on what truth is?"

Thor hesitated in his reply, but his hand bridged the divide quick enough, gripping his brother's lapel with little hope of letting go. "If your actions were so noble then why the need for secrecy, serpent-tongue?"

Now it was Loki's turn to falter. He grew defensive soon enough. "Oh brother, are you so obtuse towards another's suffering that you cannot see that which nourishes thy own heart is poison to mine?" His brother was in tears but the image did not last. Choler quickly replaced sorrow and the mist behind those green eyes dried to a hard contempt. "Sister, sister, sister, nothing but sororal affections," he snarked. "I. Want. More!"

"Greedy serpent," the elder spat. "All you have ever craved from life is more. More, more, more. Avarice sustains you while love and honest affection rot from neglect. You are a dragon with a treasure hoard and more will never be enough. You dare tell me to trust you with our sister when all other wants before go unfulfilled and haunt your soul? When you find her love insufficient, what will you do then? What will happen as has happened so many lifetimes before?" Loki reeled back, hurt covered by more anger. He was dangerously close to unsheathing one of his hidden daggers, and this time, he wouldn't miss.

"So the Noble Thor protects the young mortal? Ha! Did you shower Jane with only affection on her days in the Realm Eternal? Did you never hate or curse or rue the day Mother brought her to this plane? Did you always act justly, genteelly, Norn forbid gently, with the mortal we now call family? We you always so fucking perfect Thor?" The truth behind Loki's words were a bitter barb in the Heir Apparent's chest. Loki snorted. "I thought so. Yet how I am to blame for my past actions. I am to blame and to shame for what I did. But not you. Never you!"

Thor had the decency to look contrite, but one breath steadied his resolve. "You are truly silver-tongued, brother, for you have yet to answer my question." The impasse bore a weight Loki could not bear, and he drooped a bit in Thor's grasp.

"I cherish her," Loki spoke softly. "Why is that never enough?" Thor lost most of his piqued posture.

Ziggy was sluffing off the drool saturated mead from his glasses. "Guess this means we shouldn't tell them about that fellow and Jane, huh?" That line proved to be the hook that snared the deep sea beast for the brothers turned as one and spoke in unison, eyes narrowed.

"What fellow?"

Odin affected a frown in the presence of his sons and, truth be told to his wife, he was starting to tire of it. They hardly looked repentant as it was when Odin issued commands or reprimands regarding a certain mortal, and the King's patience wore thin. Precariously thin. They were not in the great hall nor did he have a throne behind him nor a scepter in hand. There was only the fire and Frigga for solace to provide solace to the aged Aseir, and how the king relied on his queen. But not in this, maybe never in this, and that made it a lonelier, harder affair for him to bear. Frigga stood regal straight yet the dismay in her eyes the fire reflected.

Loki's affair had come to light and her uncertainty on Odin's response churned an unhappy anxiety deep in her chest.

This had the potentiality to go very, very wrong.

Odin stared a while into the fire and let the silence prey upon his family's nerves. Jane, he made sure, was not present for this. "I should banish her," he stated, turning to face his sons. "Send her back to Midgard with all those other mortals and let her flourish with her own kind."

Heartbreak broke on Frigga's and Thor's faces, the Heir Apparent heartbeats from a protest if not a coup.

A wrath impossible to hide bunched Loki's shoulders, crackling the magic around him.

Odin stood firm. "But we do not banish family, and her place in the Nine Realms forecasted long ago." The anger and sadness each dissipated but a wariness replaced it.

"I can assume your reason for this latest bout of bickering but that we save for another day." Chips of wariness flaked off at Odin's admission, the burden lightening and growing heavier at the same time. The wait and the uncertainty ate at at least one son.

The hour was late, most of the castle asleep, even the servants, but Odin stalked about the fire brisk as a winter morning and just as inviting as one. Trepidation was a friction that sawed on their nerves like a bow to a violin, each pass crying out some foreboding note. Loki more a better politic mask than his elder son but the ill-thought rashness of their actions haunted both his sons' presences. Truth laid bare was not Loki's strong suit.

Their father gave them a small grace by reading the damages first, skirting the tender heart of the matter for later. "Town hall, three brothels, six duplexes, four chariots, a watch tower, Norns know how much of the fishing harbor and its boats, a smithy shop, a tailor's, the left wall of a mechanic's shop and the entirety of a baker's ovens, all the roofs on the lower North side and one long scar on my castle. But, no, my sons did not stop there," Odin's voice deepened and grew, true ire now coloring his tone. He slapped down the report and scowled at his heirs. "Will someone tell me why in all of the Nine Realms is a son of Alfheim is wheezing away in the medic wing?"

"He'll live," Loki supplied. 'Unfortunately' was an unspoken word that curdled his face. Thor did not defend his actions yet neither did he upbraid his brother's. How telling.

The King of Asgard frowned and checked his aggravation. The anger churning in his gut was not an uncontrollable thing full of froth and unreason, but how his boys constantly tried his patience. Honest as the sun's rays, Odin sought to sow no fracas between himself and his children, but the years and the centuries of experiences and knowledge did little to temper their emotional responses. Loki proved the more apt student there but tonight he flunked as badly as his elder brother, and Odin grew weary of cleaning what dregs of a consequence they dragged up.

He could not be their keeper forever. Not with the Odin-sleep beckoning and beckoning, nor the lowvelds to the entry of Valhalla beyond the Odin-sleep. All the vices his boys harbored and all the ways they could lead them to their downfalls mocked Odin's good eye, grinning ghoulishly as demons basking in Helheim fire.

Loki's pride.

Thor's arrogance.

Loki's penchant for grudges.

Thor's taste for bloodlust, gore, and glory.

Loki's want what the masses denied him.

Thor's blindness to what he routinely denied his brother.

The diminished and augmented examples each vice enjoyed in the last score of years.

Odin's frown grew severe. Coincidence. Nothing more.

Inwardly he sighed. Another day. Another day when he had the strength, he and his sons could bicker and argue and he would continue to try to set his sons on the right path.

"Loki." Odin spoke. Loki flinched as if someone had cracked a whip between his shoulder blades. "Clean yourself up and retire for the evening. We will speak on the morrow. Thor, the same for you." His sons bowed out after a hitch of consternation. Mutinous as sons, they were still princes loyal to their king.

The old Aseir sagged into his chair, looking less of king and more of an aged man hollowed by conflict. One sad eye stared at nothing on his desk. "I need to be alone, wife." Frigga took a step, the normal protest there on her lips. "Frigga," he repeated, "I need this time alone." His wife stood next to him, a soft, warm hand almost as aged as he on his shoulder. She did not move, forcing Odin to look up.

Odin loved his family, loved and cherished them as only a select few understood, but it was a harsh burden to bear for a man told to play king and father where the two roles did not compliment one another.

Frigga took his hand and kissed it long enough for Odin to feel each curve of her lips through his hand. "I love you, dear heart." She smiled at her husband. She understood. He blinked back wetness as he watched her go. He cleared his throat and summoned a messenger.

King.

And Father.

Odin desperately yearned for the luxury of choice.

He sat for a minute more, the silence pressing down on his mind and quieting the thoughts. The drawer lowest on the left held them. Locked by key and enchantment, they held nothing but parchment, each folded and sealed with a wax long gone dried and cracked. It crumbled under his thumbs but magic kept the paper alive. Some of the lines were short and riddled with grammatical errors, though they improved as did the length. A court calligrapher would burn those earlier pages out of sanctimonious duty to his art. Odin gave something between a fond grimace and a wincing smile; the runes were woefully bad.

The king settled on the recurring line in one of the more recent letters.

The messenger bowed his entrance. Odin did not look up from the letters. "Send for Jane and have her brought to my quarters. Make sure none of my family knows nor allow them to interfere."

King and Father. He had duties to both. Odin sighed, closing his eyes. He was tired, so bone-weary tired.

Father, I have something important to tell you. Next time we meet for tea, perhaps. I have something very important to tell you, but promise you won't be cross. I'm hoping we can work it out. As family.

His thumb rubbed the page's edge.

King. Or Father.