It was raining again.

That's every night since Sunday, Jane thought, and pushed up on her side to switch on the bedside lamp. South London only, I'd guess, and in the middle of a week's forecast drought...Lord only knows what the Weather Channel is making of this.

She edged back carefully to look over her shoulder, studying her companion. Soundly asleep beside her, at a glance Thor looked quiet enough. Turned a little towards her on the pillows, his hair drifted loose across it in a soft gold mane, he looked unexpectedly young and unreasonably human. Too much not to smile. Talk about Sleeping Beauty for girls… In a v-necked navy t-shirt and plaid sleep pants, only the size of him—and that physique—suggested how much more. But she'd been fooling herself, the past three nights. Quiet wasn't the same as untroubled. That was a tear tracing down his cheek, from the corner of his eye, and when she stretched a little nearer she could see a matching trail fading into the soft beard tracing the line of his jaw.

Yes. That's how tears fall, in sleep.

She glanced across again toward the window. And yes, Jane, you now have a boyfriend whose emotions can show up as weather.

Who just lost his mother, and his brother, last week, and has been being altogether too quiet about both.

And so much, at least in part, because of me.

Or—not. No. She put a mental foot down hard on that thought, as she eased back onto her side facing him. Not going there.

Carefully, she pulled herself up to sitting and dragged her pillow higher, to jam it against the headboard.

She hadn't asked to stumble on the Aether, in that pocket between dimensions where it had been hidden. She hadn't asked to be possessed—infected, infested—whatever word one wanted, for the sensation of its energies crawling under her skin. She hadn't asked for Thor to sweep her off her feet and home to Asgard, either, at the first sign of its manifesting through her. No more than he'd asked for a vengeance-possessed Svartalf king or any of his army of blank-eyed elf stormtroopers to come rampaging through the Realm Eternal hunting her, to get it. And even Malekith hadn't actually spoken for Frigga's killing, when she'd defied him over Jane's concealment. Oh, she doubted he'd minded—or cared enough, that it wouldn't have been his next move to order it, but the choice that had slain Asgard's queen had been that of the creature who'd done it.

Creature. Monster.

And Loki had died for his vengeance on that very monster. For her that might still seem a fate that had spared them all worse—a fitting match of monsters—but she wouldn't deny, either that he had loved his mother enough to need that vengeance, or that neither he nor Thor had expected him to perish in achieving it. No more than she'd ever expected him to protect her as he had, when her usefulness as bait was done. She wouldn't deny him the credit for that, either.

It still leaves Thor with a mother and brother gone. And even if he's chosen now, to be here with me…it still leaves him a long way from a home he loves, too.

And as far as that went, she'd own the responsibility.

She dug a hand in between the pillows and bent to press a kiss on his forehead.

"I wish I was larger," she said.

"Hnh?" Thor didn't quite start, but his eyes came open, and he blinked. "Wh?"

"Larger," she said. "Me. Just wishing."

"Why?" He tilted his head back to look up into her face, and reached a hand up for hers. She took it, wrapping her wrist around his, and pulled.

"Well, it might make it easier to cuddle you, when you can stand it."

"When you—I—" He rolled with her tug onto his side, facing her, then sighed and pulled his free hand up to brush at his eyes. "Oh." He glanced up, clearly hearing the rain on the roof, then rolled forward to lean on his forearms. Nodded, not looking up. "I—oh. Um, yes."

"Mmhm." She leaned forward, brushing his hair aside to kiss him again, lightly on the cheek, before dragging his pillow loose with both hands. She shook it fluffy again, and pulled it against her side. "Come here. I think you can stand it."

He hesitated, and she reached to rub his back. "I know, Thor, Asgardians are different. You're bigger and stronger and faster than humans. You're the next thing to immortal, you're the warriors who taught Vikings about being tough, and as a royal, you are the last word in being stoic...and I think you may need to ease up on it a little."

"Jane..." He gave her an uneasy look. "I only know how to be how I am."

"That's fine." She patted the pillow. "The way you are is perfectly capable of scooching over here with the covers and getting comfortable."

That got her the flicker of a smile. "You are testing my English, again."

"Possibly," she said. "I always thought that one was British, but it turns out no one here knows it. Guess it's North American after all." She slid her arm around him, as he pulled himself carefully up beside her. "There, that's better. Nice and close, with neither of us getting squished or having parts go to sleep, or being in danger of melting."

"Hm." He relaxed, warm and solid, into her hug, and yawned. "I cannot look you in the face from here, though."

"That's fine, too." She slipped down against the end of the pillow, settling her arm closer around him. "You know I'm here."

"Mmhm." He pulled his near arm closer to him so he could reach with the other to shake the sheet and comforter straight around them both, then hugged her softly back, through them. Not quite around her waist. He was careful that way, she'd noticed. Not risking anything that might drop his full weight freely against her while he slept, anywhere that might crush her uncomfortably.

"I have a silly question for you," she said, leaning her cheek against his hair.

"What?"

"How old are you?" She sighed. "I don't mean the years. More, just—in mortal terms. 20s? 30s? Everything tells me you're not any older than I am, in terms of life experience."

"Hm." He thought about it a few seconds. "In years, it's close to 1,400, but against an Asgardian lifespan of about 5,000...late 20s, early 30s at most. Adult for most purposes. Since about 750, as you would count years."

"Beginning of the Viking era?"

"Or end of it, for us." His eyes had come open again, and he frowned slightly. "I wouldn't have called myself much more than a rowdy teenager for most of that, but it was in around that time—" He stopped.

"What?"

"In around that time, we stepped back. It didn't seem there was any way to get it through mortals, that we weren't the gods they wanted to believe in."

"Mm." A story for another day in that, she thought. "So if I were to call you 20 back in 750—"

"Try 15 or 16. Past the first century, once we reach adulthood we age at about a year for every 50 mortal years." Thor leaned back again, far enough to look up at her. "Jane, why are you asking this?"

She stared up into the shadows. "About 1,300 years divided by 50 would be 26, added to 15 or so…say 40, the year I met you." She looked down at him, and grinned. "Never!"

He chuckled. "Not that mature by mortal standards, I will grant." Smiled, and rested his forehead again lightly against her side. "I might have grown up a little, since."

"Yes." She relaxed, and gave his back a companionable rub. "My thought being, Thor, that especially among people so long-lived, you're not old enough to be anywhere near expecting to lose family. Not parents, not—especially not younger siblings. It's not right."

"Not right, or wrong." He turned his head slightly, almost pillowed against her. "Wyrd is wyrd, Jane."

"You're not going to tell me it doesn't still hurt." He made no answer beyond something that might have been either the beginning of a shrug, or the tightening of his arm around her, and she slipped her hand down to rub his chest. "The wonder to me is that you've been as calm as you have, through everything that's happened.

"Having seen Asgard," she went on, "I will believe Asgardians are different. I mean, such a strange blend of the ancient and modern, and your mother's magic, and how when the city came under attack, there was a readiness to everyone, to fight. An expectation of needing to be warriors. Even that pretty blue dress I ended up wearing had armor built into it." She smiled, when a faint smile caught at his lips. "You people are tough, Thor. I shouldn't think anyone with any sense would ever tackle the least of you.

"But it doesn't mean you don't feel, or don't grieve, or can't be shocked." She watched his smile fade to stillness. "You've lost so much these past few days. How have you borne it so quietly?"

"How?" He sighed and took her hand, let her turn it to hold his. "I don't know. I think we weigh our losses differently to mortals. Not less, but—" He stopped dead again, and was silent, his expression going blank. Shook his head ever so slightly, and reached closer around her again. "Differently."

"How differently?" He didn't answer at once—that faint beginning of a shrug, again?—and she sighed. "I mean, I'd hardly met your mother, and my heart breaks to think of her being lost to you. And to your father, after over a thousand years together, and they still the way I saw them, together." Memory bit, at the light she had seen in Frigga's and Odin's faces when they looked at each other, and she bowed her head, and felt a tear slip down her cheek. Bit her lip for a long, hard moment, for control. "You know, I doubt your father and I will ever be friends! but what I saw in his face, letting her go—" That, abruptly now, was too much. "With every reason to think she should be there to grace your lives for thousands of years more—!"

"Jane—" He had heard her voice break, now, and would have pushed up, but for her holding up her hand to stop him, before turning her face aside. She bit her lip again, and brushed at her eyes before pushing on.

"At the funeral, I could feel that loss, in how quiet you all were. So quiet." She closed her eyes against the spilling tears. "and I am so sorry, to have been part of anything, ever, to bring that upon you!"

"Jane, stop!" Thor pushed up over her, all but fell as the mattress sank under his hand, then shoved back, rolled, and pulled himself up beside her. Turned, caught her in his arms, lifting her, and swept her in close against his chest with a speed to make her gasp. "Jane, it was not your fault. Not Malekith, not Frigga's murder. It wasn't your doing, it wasn't meant—" His voice broke now as well, and he bent his cheek against her hair. "Nothing in any of what happened, I swear it!"

"I know that!" Jane leaned into his shoulder and managed a violent sniff to get the better of her tears. "Thor, that's not what I'm saying!"

She worked an arm free to push herself less off balance in his arms, then away a little, so she could lean in again and hug him, before dragging her free hand harder across her eyes. "What I'm saying, is that I was there and I felt all that, and I was just a bystander. You were right in the middle of it. What you can possibly weigh differently, to bear that?"

"Less than you might think." His voice caught, and broke to a whisper. "Less than one might wish for."

He gathered her closer, all but engulfing her in his embrace, and leaned his cheek against hers. "But—this much." His turn to free a hand, and brush his eyes, sniffing hard in his turn. Held her in silence a moment, and then she heard the rain above them stop, and felt him breathe.

"Jane, we will always fight. We will always stand firm for what we care about, for our lives and our homes and our loved ones. We will give to our last and we will never surrender—it is not in our natures to surrender!—but sometimes we will lose. Even with the powers of gods we lose, and we fall, and then all that's left is to call it our wyrd. To face that this was all we were to have.

"We don't count years that might have been." He drew a calmer breath. "We believe too strongly that we cannot die before our time. That we cannot fall unless we have reached the end of our days. Unless, whatever we might have hoped or wished, there were no more years to be given us."

"Taking the fact as the evidence," she murmured. She leaned into the curve of his shoulder, and held him tight. "Well, I suppose it's one way to keep from going mad, when there's nothing left you can do."

"Yes." Thor nodded. "Then, it's a matter of how we die." He made room for her to settle against him, arms circling his waist as his did hers. "I am a warrior, Jane. I have seen a thousand years of death, throughout the nine realms, and I can tell you, we all die. It's only our deeds that live forever. If it is given us to fall, fighting for what we love, for our lives and our homes, being who we are, we shall be remembered."

His arms snugged around her, and she felt him sigh. "The only truly terrible death is that which denies you the power to make dying an act of living, of giving your life bravely for what's right, for what you believe and love.

"Bound to a bed by disease or age, powerless to strike back at what is killing you—in pain that cannot be stopped—in a thousand years, I've seen that, too. There's no one I'd wish to that destruction."

"Straw death," she said.

"That's what the Vikings called it. As we used to, before them."

"Right." She brought her right hand up to grip his shoulder and leaned into him; pushed her left down to brace herself against the mattress, and swung herself to sit astride his legs. Better. That got her high to enough to look him square in the face. Close enough to take him aback for a second, before she pushed back her hair and leaned in to kiss him.

"No allowance then, for dying peacefully in extreme old age?" she asked, when they both came up for air.

Thor blinked, catching his breath, and shook his head all but imperceptibly. "No. It's—not in us."

"And so is there less mourning for the deaths of the young? For those who die—" She stopped as he met her gaze again, threatened as ever with drowning in his eyes. "But then, I guess you wouldn't ever say 'untimely'."

"No." That slightest of headshakes again. "Yes, it's still hard, Jane, but we accept it."

"Oh, Thor." She slid her arms back around his neck, turned to kiss his cheek, then shook her head and hugged him tighter. "That's not good enough, for us mortals. It's too individual."

"I don't understand."

"I don't know that I do, either." She drew back again, and sighed. "You're talking about a world, Thor, where people only die when things go wrong for them personally. When personal fate intervenes, or maybe you just always define it as personal fate.

"But here, what we see a lot of, is people dying because systems fail. Sometimes because mechanisms fail, that we've expected will keep people safe. Or because institutional things are wrong. Or justice fails, and we don't get on it. Or people fail. Through our weaknesses and inattention, or through making law or belief more important than caring, or choosing to prey on those weaker than ourselves, or deciding anyone's just different enough we aren't going value them.

"It's part of looking to make that less, that we do count the years that might have been. When innocents die, especially children, we do count those years. We always ask what might have been done, or different, to keep our tragedies from happening."

"And so you see what's happened differently." He freed an arm and jammed her pillow in behind him, before leaning back against the head of the bed. "You look for answers, Jane, where there may be none."

"Uh-huh." She rocked back, letting her hands fall to her thighs, and nodded. "We do—and you'll need to expect that difference in us, and have patience when you run into it."

"You live differently, and your years are fewer." He reached to stroke back her hair. Traced a finger down her cheek, before bringing both hands to hers, and drawing them together. "Is it so hard to find patience with it?"

She nodded. "It can be, yes. When all it results in is pointless hand-wringing. When it turns into a competition over who can be the most sanctimonius around the real suffering at the heart of whatever's happened. Lots of platitudes, lots of talk about 'working together' to prevent it ever happening again—when everyone knows it inevitably will."

She sighed and looked down as he stroked his thumbs across her knuckles and into the backs of her hands, and squeezed his fingers back. "But in the end, one has to let the process run." She shook her head. "Because in the end, at the heart of it lies our only hope. We keep stirring the issues and asking questions until we get ideas we can use to change things. Because if we have to face losing people any way except peacefully and in extreme old age, we need it not to be for nothing. Fate, or wyrd, doesn't work for us."

"I think I see," he said. "You have so little time. You want to know it's all it could have been."

"Something like that."

He smiled. "You mortals would hold the gods to account for their deeds, and the very Norns for the fates they spin. Then each of you dreams every day of reshaping your world, to better it in your eyes. And so you do. And I am so fortunate to have met this in you."

"Are you?" She sighed. "For so few years, are you?"

"I am." He studied her. "Jane, is this bothering you? That we may only have—what we have?"

"Shouldn't it?" Jane reached out again, to touch his cheek. "Thor, you've committed treason, taken on exile, renounced your birthright, left your home and your friends behind—for me? For a woman who can't hope to live more than fifty or sixty years more, against your centuries? Even loving you as I do, it's hard to feel that anything I have to offer can possibly be worth setting all that aside."

"Should I live instead, having done wrong?" He pulled her close. "Should I live down those centuries knowing I chose to obey my father, when he was wrong? Having betrayed you and failed us both—and left all of Asgard at risk, into the bargain?"

"Having—" She pushed back and stared at him. "How?"

"When I protested his taking you prisoner," he said, "and asked to do then what we did later as treason, he would not have it. He was more willing to have Malekith return, and suffer the harm both to our people and the realm, than seek any way of avoiding it."

"Oh, God." She would have turned aside, but he caught her.

"How long do you imagine I could live, if I'd shamed myself by doing such a thing?" He paused, and slipped his hand again from her shoulder, to hand. "Especially if it cost me you."

"But still," she said, "to have given up everything, your friends and home—"

"Jane, for the past two years I have had my friends and home, and it was not enough." He settled back against the pillow and smiled. "You know I missed you. I could see nothing without wishing you were there to see it with me, and as time went on, I only felt your absence more keenly. My friends grew altogether weary of me, and my father plain in his exasperation."

And you're going to argue with that? Jane stared at him, and watched his smile widen at her expression. You're actually going to argue with an admission like that, from a man who nearly enough qualifies as a god?

Yes, before her God, she was. She worked her hands free and gripped his shoulders.

"That's fifty to sixty years, Thor, if we're lucky."

"That's fifty to sixty years, Jane, that no Asgardian lives any faster than a man does." He caught her chin with a finger. "One day at a time. Twenty-four hours to the day. Three hundred sixty-five days to the year, give or take a few.

"And," he said, "if you imagine I will ever forget a day of it, you will do so in vain." A breath as he leaned closer, lips brushing her cheek. "The only time we can ever live, is now. Do you not think it may be just a little too soon even for a mortal, to fear the future for either of us?"

"It could be." She turned to accept the kiss, and returned it. Bent closer, as his hand slipped warm into the small of her back, to reach for where the folds of his shirt pooled looser round his waist, and smiled then at his smile, as he brushed a kiss lower. "It could be."

oOo

"Further," he said later, "I am no more renouncing my birthright, than claiming it."

"What?" Jane tilted her head back to look at him, as he reached over her to shake her pillow fluffy again. She pulled up a little at his hand going under her shoulders, lifting, to slide it beneath her. "I don't think I see the connection..."

I mean, even if I do feel completely 'claimed' at the moment, I hope that isn't what you mean!

"I was born here." He sat up enough to fix his own pillows, tweaked the bedclothes straighter, then settled back beside her.

"You were?" She blinked. "But you're still an Asgardian. I mean, Odin and Frigga—"

"No." She twisted to look round at him, and he shook his head. "No. Not exactly. Odin and Jörd, elder goddess of Midgard."

"But—" She pushed up, frowning.

"Frigga was my mother in every way that mattered," he said, "but it was Jörd who bore me. Here, on Midgard."

"Making you—" She stopped. "This wasn't before they were married, was it?"

"No." Seeing the disquiet in her expression, he slipped down to face her squarely, and raised a warning finger. "Make no mistake, Jane, Odin and Frigga were as you saw them. He adored her, and he valued her beyond price. She was his and Asgard's Queen, as she was Queen of Vanaheim in her own name before that, and with him she shared the knowledge of men's destinies. Only she, of all the Aesir, was ever granted the right to sit in the high seat Hlidskjalf, and look out over all the worlds. Even after he named me his successor, only she held that right.

"But one of Odin's tasks as All-Father was that of ensuring his succession, and they concluded early in their union that they together could not meet that need."

"What? Could they not have children?"

"No, they had two sons. My brothers Baldur and Hermod, both older than I." He let his hand fall, and his gaze followed it. "A problem of power. To both hold the throne of Asgard and ensure the peace of the Nine Realms, the All-Father must be extraordinary both in terms of strength and magical force, and wise above all. Baldur and Hermod, while fine, strong, fair and noble men, quickly proved my parents' suspicion that in times past the lineages of Asgard and Vanaheim had developed too similarly in terms of their magic, for either to embody the power needed.

"They concluded the heir must be further out-bred, as Odin and his brothers had been. Their mother, Bestla, had been a Jotun princess—"

Jane turned again to stare up at him. "You mean Jotun as in Frost Giant? Like Loki?"

He nodded. "More or less. Like Loki, she was one of those born small enough to pass as Aesir, and capable of bearing children to one—what?" he asked, when Jane groaned and put a hand to her eyes.

"It just keeps coming, doesn't it?" She tucked the sheet around herself and rolled onto her side, pulling up her free hand to throw her hair back. "Thor, even knowing it's all real, or something's all real that goes with this, every time you start talking, it all sounds like something out of fantasy fiction, and my brain just goes tilt trying to fit it into any rational context.

"Like nine realms as nine planets, except Asgard isn't so much a planet as a floating continent, and seems to have been created magically. Then each realm has its own more or less distinct 'magical' race in charge—"

"Except for the wastelands of Svartalfheim, and Niflheim, which is Hela's domain."

"Basically your Underworld. The races are almost all terrifically different, from big blue Frost Giants with red eyes—except for the smaller ones like Loki and now Bestla—to dwarves who smith magical weapons, light elves with iridescent skin, Aesir and Vanir who pass for human, fire demons, and then regular mortal men, have I got that all right?"

"Yes, exactly—"

"And they're all capable of mating, and inter-fertile?"

"Well, not fire demons!"

"Leaving fire demons out of it," she said, "that would suggest they all have to have originated from the same base genetic stock."

"As Odin always said we did." Leaning closer to face her, Thor set his palm against hers and laced her fingers through his. "'The roots of the World's Tree lie in Midgard.'

"So that was where he came and sought the goddess Jörd, the First Mother of Earth, and made a bargain with her, to bear him a son in whom might be united his powers as All-Father, and her strength as Earth Mother. Through them both, something unique. Me."

"Elder goddess," she said. "And all this was just 1,400 years ago."

"In a cave in Norway."

She sighed. "Thor, you are going to drive me crazy. Is there a point to all this?"

"Yes. I was born here." His gaze held steady on hers. "I have understood what it means, Jane, to be a son of Asgard…and now that to be fully what I am, I need the understanding of a son of Earth as well."

"Meaning what?" She studied him, suddenly hesitant. Because even loving you as I do, I'm not sure that doesn't scare me.

"Asgard has stood since the time of the first All-Father as a source of order and justice, its kings sworn to protection of the Nine Realms and the preserving of the peace among them.

"In all that time it has changed very little. In my own lifetime, hardly at all. It has endured as ever, secure and content in its power, and as we have all just seen, perilously fragile."

"I wouldn't argue that."

"I would say now that I have spent this last year coming to understand, even as I ached to bring you there by my side, that it could never be enough either of us. Me, or you. Because once I had shown you its wonders—the fact is that the Realm Eternal is mostly eternal, and its people cherish it so. So must I also, as its king."

"And you couldn't?"

"No longer." He sighed. "I can better protect the Nine Realms from here, than ever from that throne. From here in this mortal realm where everything changes, where every day can be different in ways that matter, because you question and learn, and the wise find ways to guide themselves without yielding to fate."

He let her hand go then, and reached to brush her hair, feather-light, back from her face.

"And I would do so with you, if you will have me, for as long as you will have me. Because whether or not I am ever able to learn all I need to know, I already know you have it in you, in your heart and understanding, to make me wise in ways I need to be." And he smiled again, as she stared at him. "As far as you and I are concerned, you will still have to forgive my believing in fate."

Author's Note:

Readers' comments are always welcome, but if anyone finds themselves boggled completely speechless by the end of this…I will in fact understand.

The only reason I haven't marked this complete, is because I feel the second half badly needs a rewrite that at this point, I've given up on having the clarity to give it with any degree of class, anytime soon.