Chapter 17
Thor steps into Sif's Holding Cell, having asked his Mother to let him talk to her before she gets interrogated - he might be able to get something out of her, such as a reason why she did everything.
When she sees him, Sif practically throws herself at him, hands scrabbling to grip at Thor's armor as she desperately says "Thor, you have to talk to your- is Odin awake yet? You have to talk to him, I shouldn't be here!"
Thor pulls Sif's hands off of him gently, and says "Father is not yet awakened, Sif. Why shouldn't you be here, did someone frame you for Amora's poisoning and near-death?" Frigga has a list of crimes a mile long, to use a phrase he picked up on Earth, High Treason being the very top of them, and even Odin wouldn't be able to get her out of this one. Still, he'd really like to know what's going on in her head right now.
Sif shakes her head, saying "I was trying to protect Asgard from her - the both of them! It was all a coup, a plot to usurp the throne! I incapacitated the Witch to buy us some time to bring you back so you could take your rightful place, and to separate the two of them! You must see that, I was only acting in Asgard's best interest!"
Thor stares at Sif for a moment, trying to piece together her reasoning for that, and finally says "Sif, our journey to Jotunheim was entirely my idea. Loki and Amora had nothing to do with it. Odin and I argued in the Bifrost after you and the others went to the Healing Room, you didn't see him since you were unconscious - Sif, he was furious. I was banished because I dared to go against him, not because of something Amora or Loki might've said." When did Sif get this…delusional? When did that manic look in her eye appear?
What in the name of the Stars happened to his long-time friend?
Neither of them have any interest in the throne either - Amora would rather stay out of the spotlight altogether, according to Loki, and Loki has no apparent wish to rule a society that has only ever looked down on him because I'm not a carbon-copy of you, Thor.
Sif's expression changes after a moment, and she suddenly asks "Why are you looking at me like that, Thor? What's Loki told you? What's he done to you? Poisoned your mind with his magic? Had that Stars-damned Amora do so?"
Thor incredulously asks "Sif, do you even hear yourself?! Loki wouldn't 'poison my mind' as you put it, he's got no need to! Anything he could possibly want is available to him, he's a Prince of Asgard!"
"Not the Throne!" Sif latches onto his cape, not finding any good handholds on the front of Thor's armor, and gets maybe an inch from Thor's face as she says "He can't have the Throne, Thor. Not as long as you're here, not as long as Odin is awake-"
Thor not-so-gently pulls Sif's hands off him, quickly deciding to ask Loki if he knows of any spells - or, oh, what was it he was giving Amora, Potions he thinks? - that cure insanity, and pushes her back a few steps while saying "Sif, they don't want the Throne. Never have, alright? The two of them would rather be in the library together making some new spell, or-"
Thankfully, Frigga comes in right then, with two Einherjar following her, and they quickly grab Sif and pin her to a chair before ropes appear out of nowhere and tie her to it. Sif immediately starts thrashing and screeching, so Frigga snaps her fingers and suddenly the dark-haired woman goes silent. Once that's done, Frigga turns to Thor and checks him over, asking "Are you alright, Thor? Did she try anything?"
Thor shakes his head, saying "No, Mother, Sif…she didn't do anything." Whether he's alright, though, is another matter. One he's entirely unsure about, to be perfectly honest. Long-time friend or no, Sif was freaking him out with her behavior - he doesn't usually get fazed by much, but that wasn't anything he's ever encountered before.
Frigga purses her lips, disbelief clear in her expression, but doesn't say anything more on the matter. Instead she says "why don't you go visit your brother, Thor? See if Amora's woken yet. Or keep an eye on your father if you wish."
That'd be when something strikes Thor - Odin, Sif always called his father Odin. Not Allfather, not 'the King' or 'His Highness' or anything else that would be appropriate for someone who isn't Royalty. Even he and Loki have always called the man 'Father' or 'Allfather' - Stars, Amora's always referred to their Mother as 'Queen Frigga' for mercy's sake, and they get on perfectly well! His mother even knows Amora is Loki's Soulmate, so she could theoretically call her 'Frigga' in private if she so wished!
Exactly what goes on in Sif's head?!
Consciousness comes crashing back into Amora like a bag of bricks, wringing a groan out of her - her body isn't numb any longer, but she almost wishes it were given the detail that she feels like she's on fire. Just breathing is agony, and her side where the poisoned dart hit her feels like there's molten lava embedded in it. Maybe two seconds after she comes to, Loki's at her side in an instant, his magic wrapping around her before his arms can do the same.
Amora lets out an involuntary hiss at the pain that brings about, and it sets Loki off into a million questions - she doesn't have it in her to answer them, so instead she makes her body fall into him in the best approximation of a hug she can give when her arms feel as strong as overcooked noodles. After a moment, she hisses out "Missed you, Trickster…" And, ow, her throat feels like she's got sandpaper for a windpipe.
Loki lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, pulling back just enough to frame her face with his hands and pepper it with kisses before hugging her to him again. After a moment, he hisses "You didn't answer me before, Amora. How do you feel?"
"Like I'm on fire. Moving hurts, breathing hurts. But, I've had worse, I can deal with it…"
"I called Hermione, she's been testing out a new Potion for nerve damage. Hopes it'll solve the Cruciatus problem back in Britain. It's still in the first round of tests, though."
Amora nods her head slightly, hissing "I'll heal, I'll be alright. Always."
Loki nods after a moment, and Amora buries her face in his neck for a moment. After a solid minute spent in Loki's arms like that, Amora quietly asks "How long have I been out?"
"A few days, Sif's still in custody until the trial. You've been out of it with a fever as your body tries to fight off the poison Sif used on you."
"Loki, I'm..." Amora trails off as she notices who else is in the room with them - Thor. Last she knew, he'd been Banished to Earth...and, even before that, he wouldn't be here.
Loki pulls back in concern, asking "Amora?!" Amora, his Amora, doesn't just suddenly trail off - especially not in the middle of insisting she's alright now.
Amora shakes her head, immediately regrets that action, and says "I was going to say I'm fine now, but I'm pretty sure I'm either delirious or hallucinating on whatever medicine I'm on."
Loki blinks, puts a hand to her forehead to check her fever again, then asks "What makes you think that?" He's never once known Amora to just come out and say she's hallucinating or delirious.
"Because, for whatever reason, my eyes are telling me that Thor's over there while the past few centuries of dealing with him on a daily basis tells me he couldn't possibly care less if one of us was sick if he actively tried."
Thor winces at the sheer bluntness, then tells himself she's sick and thinks he isn't really there - still, if Loki's lack of response is anything to go by, he's got a lot more making up to do than he realized. He would've cared if Loki was sick…but, he probably wouldn't have known what to do if Loki was sick. He can't even remember the last time Loki was sick, much less what one's supposed to do for someone who's sick.
Ergo, he'd most likely have decided staying away would be the best thing for him to do...in hindsight, he can see how that could be taken as not caring.
As opposed to Loki, who's currently rubbing Amora's back with one hand and helping her swallow another vial of foul-smelling liquid.
Once she's washed the taste away with a goblet of water he made, Amora stares up at him and asks "When's the last time you slept, Loki?"
Loki makes the goblet disappear, saying "More recently than I intended."
Amora sighs, then says "Get over here, Trickster. You're exhausted and I'm not going anywhere." Loki just nods, not arguing with Amora - in Thor's opinion, he might know what she'll do if she learns she's been out for five days. If Thor hadn't made Loki go to sleep, he would be on day eight of no sleep.
Loki's out as soon as he settles into place, snoring softly practically face-down in the pillow curled up into Amora's side, and Thor quietly sits down in the chair Loki has magically attached to the floor - he's tried putting it away while his brother was sleeping, it won't budge. Amora turns her head when he sits down, then closes her eyes and hisses something to Seleana as the snake slides down next to her from her spot on the headrest next to Jormangundr.
After a moment, she hisses again…then turns to look at him, a resigned 'I can't deal with this right now' expression on her face as she asks "What do you want, Thor? Seleana was so kind as to inform me that I wasn't hallucinating earlier."
Thor nods, running a hand through his hair, and says "I…Amora, I wanted to thank you. It's many centuries late on my part, but you've always been there for Loki even when I wasn't. Thank you for that, Amora."
Amora stares at him for a moment, expression unreadable, then finally asks "What the hell happened to you, Thor? Because the Thor I've known for the past thousand years doesn't apologize…not when Queen Frigga doesn't make him, that is." Or when she makes him, via a set of donkey ears.
Thor sighs once more, running a hand through his hair again, and says "I had my eyes opened, that's what happened. Odin cast me out when I had done what I thought he would've wanted, and…well, Hela stayed with me. She talked, I listened at long last…"
Amora snorts, and says "Daddy dearest isn't so dear anymore, hm?"
Thor shakes his head, saying "No, not particularly. I don't think it's even that I went to Jotunheim, or the war I nearly restarted. I believe…he banished me because I defied him. Dared to take an action he didn't approve of. And, just like Hela, he tossed me aside."
Amora closes her eyes, taking a long breath, and finally says "Nobody had thought he'd do that to you. Hela and her friends were watching him like hawks about Loki and I, but you? His favorite, Asgard's literal Golden Boy, you were everything he values and everything he encouraged Asgard to value. We'd thought that, between all of that, your obvious blind worship of him, and the detail that he's too old by now to have another kid and train them to take his place…you'd be safe." There was no war he could say Thor died in, and she didn't leave many uprisings once they reached Odin's ears and consequently her own. No excuse for Thor disappearing, and using the Odinforce to simply erase him would've sent him into the Odinsleep for an indeterminate amount of time...and it wouldn't have gotten to Hela and co.
She and Loki would've also known something was different, for that matter. Not that Odin knows that.
Thor shakes his head, saying "I wasn't. Even if it was temporary, even if I'm back now…"
"What's to say he won't do it again? This time permanently?"
Thor's eyes shoot open, and he asks "How did you know?"
Amora gives him a pained grimace, and says "I used to ask myself that question a lot, believe it or not. What would I do if the world turned on me for good? If I was labeled a monster despite having done nothing to warrant it? My life before freeing Hela wasn't a good one, Thor. It was short, hard, and painful, actually. I was Hari Potter, the Girl Who Lived…Britain's 'Chosen One' as it were. Some of the time, anyway."
Thor slowly asks "Some of the time?"
Amora gives a short nod, saying "Some of the time. Sometimes, I was hated, demonized, crucified. When I was twelve, I was the social pariah of the entire school simply because I talked a snake down from biting an innocent bystander." At his confused look, she adds "Parseltongue, Thor. The Snake Language I shared with Loki centuries ago."
Thor gets even more confused now, saying "You talked the snake down."
"Mm-hm."
"Yet they…cast you out for it? Why?"
Amora gives a mirthless laugh, with quickly dies down to the pain it creates, and says "They couldn't understand it, and Parseltongue was taken as a sign of a Dark Witch or Wizard. So, that combined with that year's problems lead to me being Hexed and Cursed by anyone brave enough to take a shot at me. At fourteen, I was entered into a deadly tournament I never wanted to be in, and they all turned on me yet again for something I wanted no part of in the first place. To be clear, it was meant for seventeen-year-olds, with three more years of studying and experience under their belt. I had no choice but to participate, though, else I would've lost my magic. That year ended with me getting kidnapped and used in a dark ritual, the kid that had gone with me dying because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The very next year, the British Magical government was doing a smear campaign on me and had appointed a sadistic kid-torturing woman to the school in an attempt to make me recant things I hadn't even said and publicly go along with a lie. That ended with my Godfather getting killed, and my one chance at getting out of the hellhole I'd been placed in dying with him."
The more Amora talks, even as it seems to wear her out, the more Thor wants to be sick to his stomach - it seems she was well-equipped from the very first time she woke up to stand up for Loki. Well-versed in ignoring those who'd look down on her because that was all she'd known for so long. It makes Thor wonder who she used to be, before remaking herself as Amora Sigyn, who she could've been - who Loki could've been, had she not been brought to Asgard.
She walked to her death and didn't fight against it, sacrificed herself to save everyone else with some unforeseen consequences - not exactly what Asgard would call a hero's death, in glorious combat. But, given everything she told him...she could've left Britain to burn, should've left Britain to fight for itself. Could've gotten out of the country via nonmagical means, and made a new life for herself - she didn't though. She stayed, she fought, and when left with a nigh-on impossible choice...she chose the hard one.
Though, Thor muses darkly, perhaps it was an easier choice for her than me. My life hasn't been one of constant pain and betrayal.
Amora pulls him from his thoughts when she says "Don't think for a moment that this makes everything alright, Thor. You've spent a Millennium hurting Loki, even if you don't know all the ways how. Loki might forgive you, but I'm gonna give you hell when it comes to making up for it."
Thor nods, and says "I'm sure, Amora. I undoubtedly deserve it."
Amora just gives him a 'duh!' look, and then her eyes slip closed and she falls back asleep as well. Loki unconsciously buries his nose in her hair, and Seleana and Jormangundr slide to the pillows…and Jormangundr poofs out a dark green hood warningly, hissing and showing off fangs as long as his pinkie finger that end in wicked-sharp points, dark red eyes glaring at him malevolently.
Seleana slides up next to him, hissing to him, and the dark green snake slowly pulls the hood back in and gives him an absolutely withering look as if to say 'you're not worth the venom.'
Great, even Loki's snake doesn't like him…