i.
There was never any question about who would be king, of course. From the time they were small, the unspoken knowledge resided between them, despite all Odin’s admonitions that the heir had not yet been decided and either one could ascend the throne. The spot was Thor’s. He did not think Loki minded. It was hard to tell, sometimes, with his brother; he twisted his thoughts deeply up inside until he could no longer keep hold of them, and then they spilled out, usually in anger; years later he would scream something about a grudge or slight all but he had forgotten. His teachers thought him quiet and studious, for he knew what would please each of them, but it was Thor who found time to study the other realms, who would come to Loki with some new knowledge—did you know that the dwarves have three sexes, or the rulers of Alfheim have always been brother and sister, and they rule together?
“Perhaps, when I am king,” Thor would say; and to preface it such was of no consequence, because they knew it to be true, “we could rule together like that;” and Loki would stare at him with his cool gaze, aloof, and say, “don’t be an idiot, Thor, a monarch’s job is not to change things. The people need stability, continuity; we don’t want them getting any ideas.” Ideas, like the democracy that Midgard was so fond of. Thor studied that too; it seemed to work out sometimes well, many times badly, but in a way it made sense; they were so short-lived that a good ruler could be replaced by a bad one in succession in the blink of an eye, and their depositions rarely worked in the long run.
In truth it was perhaps through a study of their natures and not through any favoritism that Odin was to choose Thor for the throne, for from a young age he was aware of the burden of duty, though in his personal life he shunned it as much as possible. “It is the wildness of youth,” Odin would say, knowingly. “Let him spend it now, for when the time comes, he will have to set it aside.”
In the years before Odin was king he had traveled far, hardly alighting in one place before he was taken up again, driven by the winds of space.
ii.
“How could it be that you would make a Jotun your blood brother?” Loki asked, fresh with anger, from the stories told by their uncles of times neither Thor nor Loki could remember. He had been born at the end of the war, and war was in his blood, and pride, almost as much as it was in Thor’s.
Odin was solemn, and watched Loki as though seeing someone from the past. “Because we were kin, perhaps more than my own brothers. Laufey was quick-witted, sharp of tongue, but loyal. Asgard treated him ill.”
Loki laughed scornful. “You talk as though you cared. I’ve heard how Asgard used his cleverness for their own ends. But was his loyalty so dear you had to sully your own blood?”
“His love was dearer than you know,” Odin said, and watched his younger son, the casual arrogance of youth, sat lounged across his study chair as if to inhabit the ghost of one who had been there long ago, a memory in every sharp movement, the slant of his eyes, a reminder of his failures and his vows.
“So am I just a relic, locked up here until you might have use for me?” Loki demanded later, remembered, Laufey, who helped Asgard’s wall to be builded, Laufey, who rescued Idunn from the giants; Loki, by whose cleverness Thor’s lost hammer was retrieved, (Laufey, who paid the price for Asgard’s glory).
Because Loki detested the frost giants with the same disdain as the rest of Asgard, but with a separate fire, Thor followed. He knew with instinct that to disagree in that would make a breach between them, and his brother’s regard was worth more than he knew. So he made plans, for how to keep the monsters in their place, and protect his people, the way a king should.
iii.
And Thor knew too that Loki would not a just king make. He was too attached to his own selfishness, but it could be forgiven, the way Thor’s own recklessness could, Loki’s calculated planning filling the places that lay untended in himself.
“Our world is dying, as well you know,” Laufey said, in the ruins of his army and the broken ice. “And Midgard is a fair world, with many years left; surely even you would not put the lives of insects above our own.”
It was the first time they had faced each other in battle that was more than play; they who used to fight side by side. Wearily, they stood, poised to fight, Odin leaning on his spear and Laufey’s ice-mace at the ready.
“It is Asgard’s place to protect the Nine,” Odin said, grimly, “from those who would seek to conquer.”
In another time, Odin and his friends and his chosen brother walked through the green forests, hunting, and in ignorance Laufey killed a man in the form of an otter; and he paid the ransom to free them, every drop of gold to cover the pelt.
iv.
The king must marry, for he must have an heir. Thor knew his duty and would not shirk it. Loki’s affairs were discreet, and he would lord it over his brother whose entanglements were always known as soon as he cast a flickering glance. For it must not be wondered about. He was the heir, and there were women, and men, enough who seemed to find him pleasing to the eye.
But of course Loki knew the truth, the way he searched out secrets, always thinking of blackmail.
“How can you not be interested?” he asked, baffled.
“I don’t know,” Thor admitted. When he was a boy he had wondered if the knowledge, the strange key would come to him as a man; as a man, the act of sex was bearable, but baffling; it fostered not the closeness others seemed to feel, nor did he understand the way lust could be incited by a glance on another’s form.
Sif, of course, was Odin’s choice for a wife, and he lost no time in making that clear. She was a dear friend, but wanted his love, something he knew he could not give, though she deserved that and more.
“Sometimes I think you find me displeasing,” Sif said, frankly, and Thor replied, “I never could think that; only I am not ready yet to give you the commitment you desire.”
Then Sif with a strained smile went to his brother, and watched to see if Thor would be made jealous.
“Take my advice,” Fandral said, “this relationship is going to end badly.”
v.
Like the gods of summer and winter, Sif and Loki were always battling. Each sharp word pushed the other onward, small grievances became large, and never a time was it that you did not hear them arguing, unless they were tucked away in some corner, hands under each others’ clothes and still fighting in their passion.
“You will have to marry someday,” Loki said, “if only so that I may get a wife before I am an old man.”
They stood in each others’ presence, twin dark hair and canny expressions. They would be a fearsome couple to contend with if it were not so obvious it would not last. And like a sun, Thor strode through, pulling their gazes in his wake with the same expressions of hunger.
Jane, the mortal, loved him, or thought she did; with the obsession she felt toward everything in life. As though you could make it work with an alien who would live far beyond her lifespan; as though he were the key to the knowledge of space and time. As allies, they were formidable; though in the years they were together they spent but days in each others’ company.
“Bringing a mortal to Asgard is like bringing a goat to a banquet table,” Odin said, the first time Thor brought her to Asgard, and Thor married her.
vi.
“People think you’re depraved,” Loki informed him once, when they met in exile. Loki’s short stint as king under Odin’s guise had lasted only until Odin returned from his quest, he would not say where or why, but the gleam of Asgard’s foundations had fallen from him, and he walked into the city as an old man, weathered, and unrecognized by those who knew him, until sitting upon the heavy golden throne his normal aspect was restored, as though the roots of the ground had reached up once again to claim him.
“People can think what they like,” Thor said. “It is not as though I am making her Queen. She will die long before that becomes relevant.”
“You married her just to spite the old man, didn’t you,” Loki remarked, with the same gleam in his wild eyes, sitting in the small apartment in Vanaheim, filled with books and paraphernalia of magic. The corners of the small room were filled with strange and impossible shadows that were dizzying when looked at too closely; the old lamp burned with a smoky flame, and papers were scattered all about, half-written, a mix of languages Thor did not recognize in the increasingly shaky script of Loki’s hand.
I fear you are destroying yourself Thor did not say again, and gave Loki the ingredients he required.