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: