Chapter 10
“Tell me what it means to be the Queen of Asgard,” Thor said, early one afteroon after he and Loki had fought themselves to exhaustion. Valkyrie still wouldn’t spar with him alone, though she had taken to lingering when he and Loki faced off, shouting commands to one and then the other, with a perfectly professional disregard for their long-term health or safety.
Today had been one such day. Thor could not deny they were improving under her keen eye, but gods, it was exhausting. At the moment Loki was flat on his back, his breath only starting to slow after ten minutes of inactivity. Thor, conscious of a certain kingly dignity, was sprawled out on his belly, the better to press his scarlet, sweating face against the blessedly cool floor.
Valkryie had been doing one-armed pushups, scornfully, while they recovered, but now she paused. “Are you speaking actual words?”
Which was fair, since he’d been mumbling directly into the floor. He rolled onto his side with a groan. Victory had seemed imminent when he had finally backed Loki into a corner, but Loki had skittered sideways in what looked like desperation, shifting his gaze wildly around and throwing knives haphazardly, so that Thor had not actually noticed the ten-foot thick block of ice forming behind him until, at Valkyrie’s sharp word, Loki had thrust out a blazing hand and blasted him straight through it. He felt every inch of it now on skin bruised from head to heels.
“I want to know what it means to be queen. We never finished our discussion from before, ” he said. “But I’ve been thinking about Mother.”
“All right,” Valkryie said, and rearranged herself to a sitting position on the floor. “To begin at the beginning - your mother, Frigga of Vanaheim, reigned as the Queen of Asgard for almost two thousand years.”
“Yes,” Thor said, moving his head the absolutely minimum distance necessary to look at her, “and I believe that means something more than I thought it did.”
“The Queen of Asgard is not a title given lightly, with good reason,” Loki said, not bothering to move at all but speaking up straight up at the ceiling. “It isn’t granted automatically through marriage, or even through the provision of an heir.”
He still sounded a little winded. Before that last maneuver with the ice, Thor had thrown him down some three or four times with a crackling whip of lightning he’d been practicing. He could see where the leather at Loki’s ankle had burned away on the last strike; the skin was already pink and healing underneath. He reached out reflexively to poke it and Loki kicked at his head. “Pay attention.”
“I am,” Thor said, gingerly raising himself up to sit facing Valkyrie. To her, he said, “You said the queen is Asgard’s last and best defense.”
“That’s right,” Valkyrie said. “They fight not with the honor of the knight or the duty of the soldier, but with the ferocity of the wolf at the mouth of the den. The Queen of Asgard fights for what they love, and fights to the death.”
Thor bowed his head, not ashamed of the tears prickling in his eyes at the thought of his mother’s glorious final moments. How well she had fought, with such grace and power, and without regard for whether anyone else would consider a mortal soul worthy of her sacrifice. Yet - “You say that the queen loves Asgard, and will fight to defend it, but surely that is within the power of any citizen.”
“Certainly,” Valkryie said patiently.
“So how does the queen’s power differ?”
Valkryie tilted her head. “What did your brother say?”
He turned to Loki, who had drawn himself up as well, and was looking at Thor now with a guarded expression. “You said, the dream that was Asgard died with Mother. That Asgard never knew true peace, or safety, since she fell.”
“Yes,” Loki replied, and said nothing further to help him understand.
Thor looked back to Valkryie, who only asked, “Why?”
“Why did he say that?” Thor frowned. “I’m not sure I - “
“I mean,” Valkryie said quietly, “why is he your brother?”
“Because - “ Thor said, and his breath caught on the memory. He remembered a pale face peering out from the embrace of Frigga’s arms as she introduced Thor to his brother. He could almost see her now, the love shining in her eyes, and his own heart leaping to answer her joy. Was it so simple?
Other memories crowded in, and he caught again on something darker. He remembered dragging Loki home in chains, remembered his own disgust and Odin’s fury - and equally he remembered his mother glowing with happiness, humming sweetly to herself as she bustled about gathering books for the bloody-minded sorcerer whose cell could constrict his own powers but not those of his mother. Not those of the Queen of Asgard.
Why - oh, he would have laughed if it wasn’t so bitter - why was Loki his true brother, and Hela his sister in name only? Odin would have consigned his second son to the same fate as his first daughter, save that Frigga simply had not allowed it. And why, if the queen was to die for Asgard, had his mother died for Jane? Clearly the final determination of who was worthy of Asgard’s love and protection belonged to the queen, and not to her complicated and compromised husband.
He was struck by a vision: a shining circle of gold, encompassing those within in light and warmth and community. “It’s not that the queen loves Asgard,” he said, wondering, “but that Asgard is what the queen loves.”
Valkyrie nodded at him with solemn, shining eyes. “Now, how and why it all works,” she said, smiling, “the proper flow of magic between the King of Asgard and the Queen of Asgard and the people and so forth - that always went above my head. Loki could explain it. But yes, that’s the heart of it.”
He looked back to Loki, his heart full, but Loki only offered a smile that did not begin to reach his eyes. “So you see,” he said calmly, “it really would have been better - “
But the rest of Loki’s thought was lost, as the doors slid open behind him and Cul appeared at the head of a score of young Asgardians who had volunteered to form a new defensive corps. “Ah,” the old warrior said, eyes lighting happily on Valkyrie, “you’re here. Care to put these cubs through their paces?”
“Absolutely,” Valkyrie said, hopping to her feet and rubbing her hands together in glee. “Where were we? As I recall, I was kicking ass, and your asses were getting kicked.” She cuffed at the heads of those closest to her, quarter-speed, and they ducked away laughing.
Thor rose as well, and smiled, welcoming the group and thanking them for their efforts, and when he turned to look for Loki, he only glimpsed his brother’s back as he slipped quietly away.
*
He knew that Loki would delay being found if Thor looked for him, so Thor occupied himself entirely with other tasks. He met with Heimdall, planning adjustments their course as they approached the next station. He checked in with the engineering team, and the healers. He stopped by the children’s lessons, and discovered they were preparing a play, and immediately promised his help - an offer received with muted thanks - and Loki’s - an offer received with great enthusiasm. Apparently the entire success of the production rested on certain props and lights being enchanted just so.
It was late into the evening when he finally emerged from the last of his meetings, and found Loki perched above the opposite doorway, radiating discontent. You were looking for me, Loki said.
“I dare you to prove it,” Thor said comfortably. He held out an arm, and Loki hopped onto it with a quick flutter of his wings. “I’ve got dozens of witnesses to how much I wasn’t looking for you at all.”
I know, Loki said, walking up Thor’s arm in little hopping steps. Thor waited until Loki was settled on his shoulder before he began walking. How incredibly annoying.
“Finish your thought from earlier,” Thor said, nodding at a passing citizen who nodded back at him, and separately at Loki, without blinking an eye.
Loki paused a moment before replying. I don’t want to fight.
“Will it be a fight?” Thor mused. “I suppose it will be, if you meant to say that it would have been better had Mother never loved you.”
Loki’s feathers ruffled against his ear. It’s not that I’m not grateful -
“Loki,” Thor said, wanting to grab Loki and shake him into some kind of sense, and knowing that’s precisely why Loki hadn’t given him the option. “You don’t need to be grateful to your own family for loving you. That’s not how it works.”
Not for you, I suppose, Loki said.
“Never mind,” Thor said through gritted teeth, as he triggered the door of his quarters and went inside. “I am going to fight you, just as you are.”
Loki made an amused sound, stepping off Thor’s shoulder and touching the ground with human feet. She kept the bold patches of white, though, in the dark hair waving over her shoulders. “Maybe next time we spar,” she said, moving to the bar and pouring herself a drink. “I’m sure Valkyrie would be delighted.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” Loki said, turning and leaning back against the bar as she looked at him. “I won’t say I’m not glad, to have had Frigga as a mother. Of course I am. But you must think seriously about these things as the King of Asgard, and not as Odin’s son, or Frigga’s son, or my brother, if you wish to protect your fledgling kingdom.”
“And you must know,” Thor said, coming up to her, close enough that she had to tilt her head up to keep meeting his eyes, “that the only Asgard worth protecting is the one Mother loved, and that I love. An Asgard that does, and will always, include you.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment,” Loki said, “and one you absolutely cannot afford.”
Thor smiled reassuringly down at her. “Let me worry about that.”
“What a preposterous thing to say,” Loki sputtered, and since she was already annoyed he felt free to steal her drink and step away, laughing at her rising temper. “Let you worry about - ! Until a few hours ago you didn’t even know what the queen did!”
Thor settled into a chair, sipping from his glass. “Luckily I have you and Val to guide me.” He scratched his head. “Oh, before I forget, in the morning you’re helping the children enchant the set for their new play.”
She stared at him in outrage for a long beat, and then spun around to make herself another drink, the better to stop and wave various bottles at him as she ranted, and Thor was perfectly happy to let her.
*
They kept working, they kept sparring, they kept stealing moments of uncomplicated pleasure. And it did feel like stealing, Valkyrie could admit to herself, though not in a truly guilty sense. More like a child sneaking sweets from a feast-laden table - an indulgence not quite forbidden, but not quite assured. And all the sweeter, perhaps, for that.
She tried not to think about it too much.
Instead, as the days passed and they drifted closer to their next port, her thoughts turned increasingly to the memory spell, and how useful it would be for the warriors of Asgard to know how to defend against such an attack. So it may have been that their mistake was inevitable, for it was rooted in good intentions, which are fertile ground for mistakes.
"I've been surviving that memory for millenia," she said. It was past midnight, some weeks after she’d first broached the topic, and she was sprawled comfortably in her own bed with a bottle for company. Loki had come to meet her after her shift on watch, had accompanied her back to her room, but in a strange mood - he kissed her sweetly but absently, and did not come to her bed but drifted to her window instead.
She had been slipping in and out of sleep, pleasantly buzzed, but he was still curled there, watching the stars slack-faced, with his fingers twisting strangely in his lap from time to time, as if he were tying knots.
At her words he finally blinked and turned his attention to her. Void-walker, Heimdall had called him once, before Thor had seen the bloody writing on the wall and put a stop to the names. She thought of it now as he came to her bed with the dead light of stars spilling from his skin.
“Believe it or not,” Loki said softly, as he laid down facing her, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I see it anyway, every night when I close my eyes," she said. He studied her intently and she could see herself, the seriousness of her expression, reflected in his still-dilated pupils. “I already know I can survive it. I want to learn how to fight it."
"Ask me again tomorrow,” he said, finally, before closing his own eyes to sleep.
She didn’t know what the next day would bring, but tonight she followed him into dreams, content.