Chapter Text
Frigga draws back the curtain and watches Thor walk across the courtyard below until he disappears under the archway that leads to the training grounds. The grueling drill of the last few months is starting to have a visible effect on him; he has already lost quite a bit of weight, and there's a new energy in his step that leaves her with a smile on her face as she returns to her loom.
Shuttle in hand, she studies the colorful patterns for a moment. They're more unpredictable than ever, but they no longer feel as strange to her as they did during those dark days when she got one son back only to lose another and a husband. It has not even been two years since Odin's passing, and by tradition, his queen should still wear the black weeds of widowhood, but the Norns have shown her more generosity than she could ever have hoped for by returning both her children to her, and it would be supremely ungrateful to cling to the signs of grief in the face of such a gift. Instead, Frigga wears sky-blue, the color Odin most liked to see on her, and considers it a better way to honor his memory.
The dead do not need her any more; it's her living, breathing children who do, and Frigga's thoughts return to Thor as her fingers toy idly with the weft yarn. He doesn't complain much about the strict exercise regimen Loki imposed on him in preparation for Thor's planned ambassadorship on Midgard; the only time he tried to resist was when Loki ordered him to have his hair and beard cut because, as he put it, Thor's mortal allies wouldn't recognize him if he looked like a bear at the end of a long winter. Thor's protests availed to nothing, though; Loki seems downright offended by his brother's appearance, and Frigga wonders whether his determination to restore Thor's former looks as quickly as possible is a sign that he's just as unsettled as she is by the deeper, far more alarming changes to Thor's personality and state of mind because she sometimes has trouble recognizing the son she bore and raised.
She still doesn't know what Loki did to bring him back. She doesn't doubt that the man he brought back truly is Thor, no matter how different he seems, and neither of them are tainted with the stench of necromancy, but she's still as much in the dark as she was the day Loki delivered him to her doorstep. Loki refuses to answer any of her questions, and Thor is clearly not free to discuss the matter even if he wanted to. She spotted the geas on him right away – it's a different spell than the one she's familiar with, and it's thrumming with a power she can't identify, but it also carries the sharp, cool tang of Loki's seiðr that always reminds her of the way the air tastes before the season's first snowfall.
She has heard the rumors, of course – that Loki could pry his brother from death's clutches because he holds the leash that tethers the Goddess of Death, but even though this is another subject Loki won't discuss with her, Frigga knows too much about Hela, and her true relationship with Loki, to give any credence to such fables. She needs to trust that Loki knows what he's doing – concerning Hela as well as concerning his brother, but she still can't help yearning for those long-gone days when he would always turn to her as his first and most reliable confidante.
With a sigh, Frigga resumes her weaving. She tries to slip into the familiar, age-old rhythm of repetitive movements that usually makes it easier to focus, or to let her mind wander freely instead, but today she seems unable to do either. She worries for both of her sons, albeit for very different reasons, and it hasn't been lost on her how they both sometimes look at her as if she might fade away before their eyes at any moment. Thor is more obvious about it, but she has caught Loki at it too, although she has no idea what kind of troubling secret concerning her they could be sharing. It's bitterly ironic because she often feels the same way about them – she has had one son torn from her by the Void, the other torn apart by poisoned Elvish blades, and whenever she recalls those days, she has to fight the urge to gather her children in her arms and never let go.
For all that Thor is improving, he still feels strangely brittle to her. The healers have provided him with a proper replacement for his missing eye, but the haunted look in those eyes is still there, and so is the tension that only ever seems to leave him when he's in his brother's company. Whatever happened between these two, it has changed their lifelong dynamic into the opposite of what it used to be – where Thor once accepted Loki's company as a given, or demanded it as his due, he now seeks him out with almost frantic determination as if it were of the utmost importance to him to never be far from his brother. To Frigga's amazement, Loki doesn't seem to chafe at the way Thor all but clings to him, and he doesn't even tend to lord his royal authority over him. The fact that Thor so readily defers to him may play a role in that (and Norns, what a relief it is that Thor accepts Loki's kingship without question because she doesn't even want to imagine the consequences if he didn't), but given how much Loki used to resent living in his brother's shadow, she truly didn't expect him to be this gracious about the fact that Thor now counts among his subjects.
She is still troubled by the memory of the day when Thor got his hammer back. Loki had been prepared to just hand him Mjölnir without much fanfare, but Thor insisted on a public ceremony, and then took everyone (none more so than his brother) entirely by surprise by bending his knee before the throne when Loki held the hammer out to him. It still makes Frigga's heart ache because she is certain that Thor's show of deference that day was not the sign of a newfound humility, but rather an indication of how broken he truly is by whatever he went through on his way back to the land of the living. Loki had refused to renew Odin's spell and instead bound Mjölnir to Thor, thus doing away with Odin's pretense of 'worth' (and oh, how careful her husband had been to hide that from her) and not-so-subtly making it clear that while the hammer was still Thor's, he now wielded it by Loki's leave and not because he had earned it. That's what Frigga assumed at the time, at least – yet given that Loki seemed almost embarrassed to have his brother kneeling before him, she now wonders whether she didn't misinterpret his intentions.
It wouldn't be the first time she has utterly failed to understand him, after all.
The steady, rhythmic clack-clack of the loom weights falls silent as Frigga's hands go still. What is she doing? Was she truly about to slide back into the same old patterns that have already torn her family apart once?
There is every reason to keep worrying about Thor – yet, as much as it pains her to see him hurting without being able to help, she cannot, must not focus all her attention and energy on him and expect Loki to be the rational one again just because he always used to be in the past until the day when he... wasn't.
To think that she and Odin used to jest about this, about the irony that the son whose domain was chaos and mischief should prove to be the more sensible of the two, but she never questioned it, never doubted that Thor would be able to rely on Loki's sharp wit and calm, calculating mind once he inherited the throne, that Loki's counsel would curb his brother's temper and make up for Thor's lack of political instinct. She never truly feared for Thor back then because she took it for granted that Loki would be able to protect him from himself if the need arose, yet it never occurred to her that Loki might need the same some day – just as it hasn't occurred to her until right now to wonder what kind of emotional price Loki has paid, and might still be paying for his brother's return at a time when he is already burdened with greater responsibility than Odin ever had to bear during the entirety of his reign.
She will, to her dying day, remember how Loki sat by Odin's bedside with her, quiet and stone-faced, and seemed to calmly accept her explanation – excuse, really – why they had kept such a terrible secret from him, why they hadn't considered it necessary to be honest with him about the most basic facts of his existence. She, who had believed she knew him better than anyone else, had placed Gungnir in his hands without even guessing at the storm that must have been raging behind the composed facade, and then had let him fend for himself, uncounseled and unsupported, while she couldn't bring herself to leave her husband's side, too distraught by her fear for Odin and Thor to even consider what Loki must be going through.
When did this happen? When did the child of her heart grow into a man she barely seems to know any more without her even noticing until it was too late? She does remember how the bright, excitable boy who used to talk her ear off about anything that caught his interest grew quieter and more withdrawn as he left his childhood behind, how his tongue grew sharper and his mischief developed a more ruthless edge, if not enough to stand out among the general atmosphere of casual violence that is part and parcel of every man's youth in Asgard (and that the part of her that will always be Vanir will never get used to). Yet she failed to understand the true depth of his bitterness even though she was well aware of his struggles with the fact that his talents and interests were considered strange at best, unmanly and cowardly at worst by his peers, that he knew from an early age that he would never live up to the Aesir ideal of a perfect warrior prince that Thor so effortlessly embodied. She did what she could to shield him from the worst of the backlash – as proud as she was of the promise he showed in his magical studies, she knew it wasn't what everyone, what Odin expected of him, so she always took pains to emphasize that it was her who had decided to share her magic with him when in truth he outmatched her before his voice broke. Now she thinks of the way he bullied the Völur into renouncing a millennia-old tradition for the sake of a boy he hadn't even met, and she has to ask herself whether it wouldn't have been her duty as a mother to stand up for him in the same way instead of covering for him as if his gift were a shameful flaw she needed to make excuses for.
She remembers King Freyr of Alfheim once calling her out on this very issue during Loki's youth. It resulted in the worst quarrel she has ever had with her half-brother, but also in an official royal invitation for Loki to study at the Great Library of Vanaheim, which even Odin couldn't refuse if he didn't want to cause a diplomatic incident. Should she have done the same – confronted her husband, confronted Asgard for Loki's sake instead of urging him to defer to his father's judgement and conform to Odin's demands? She can't take the easy way out and tell herself that it would have been too dangerous to provoke Odin's wrath – she was never truly afraid of him, not even as a girl when he sought her hand as her realm's conqueror, although things might have been different if she had known at the time that the man she was about to marry was capable of erasing his own daughter's existence. Yet, even if it had been so, what kind of mother would it make her if she put her own fear above the well-being of her child? Or was she just too unwilling to disrupt her peaceful family life with pointless strife, given that Loki always seemed to acquiesce willingly enough even though she knew he didn't like it? Should she have taught him to take pride in who he is instead of encouraging him to keep striving after a goal that she knew, deep down, Odin would never let him reach?
It feels like treason to let herself think of her late husband, her late king in such a way – she truly, deeply cared for Odin, but he is gone, and she can no longer hide behind her faith in his wisdom, and the loyalty she owed him as his queen.
Oh, Odin Allfather did test that loyalty during the last year of his life – he forbade her to keep scrying for Loki after she discovered her lost son on Midgard, half-obscured by a miasma of sickly yellow energy, but still miraculously alive. She only obeyed because she trusted Thor to bring his brother home safely, but Thor returned alone, and was ordered by an enraged Odin not to discuss the 'shameful' events on Midgard with anyone. She still got a few things out of him because Thor was never one for keeping secrets, but it was far too little to truly understand what had become of her younger son, and to this day, she doesn't know at all what happened to Loki before his reappearance on Midgard.
Yes, she should have asked him the minute he came back, not days later like she did, but Thor was dead, Asgard was under siege, and then Odin was dead and Loki was king before either of them had even had time to catch their breath, so there were things that had to take precedence –
Just like there had been when Thor was banished, Odin was sleeping, and Asgard was on the brink of war with Jötunheim. The council had petitioned her to act as regent, but she meant to prove to Loki that he had her trust, that his... bloodline had no bearing on his status as a prince of Asgard and his place in the line of succession. She still doesn't regret that choice, but she bitterly regrets not staying by his side every step of the way, because it was far too late when she realized her mistake. And then, after his fall – she was horrified to discover the rumors of usurpation, the whispers that the second prince had stolen the throne in the absence of his father and brother. She had taken it for granted that Chancellor Fjörgynn would inform the court after he'd presented Loki with Gungnir at her behest, but she was well aware that the old man held little love for his king's younger son, so it would have been her duty to make sure that no-one could doubt the legitimacy of Loki's regency. Odin tried to quell those rumors by propagating the tale of Loki's victory over the traitorous Jötun king (and Frigga tries very hard not to ponder the fact that Loki slew his birth father before her eyes), but she knows that all this tragedy could have been prevented if she had just been there when her son needed her.
Instead, that son now keeps his own counsel and only allows her rare glimpses behind the mask he has become so adept at wearing. They are slowly getting more comfortable with each other again, and Frigga is grateful for every precious moment when the child of her heart shines through the facade of kingly poise, but there's still so much he's keeping from her – about Hela, about Thor, about the terrible war for which he is preparing the realms in ways she doesn't fully understand. It's obvious to her that he knows far more about Thanos than he has ever let on, and Frigga remembers the gruesome stories of her childhood and shudders at the suspicion that her precious child might actually have crossed paths with –
The sharp sting of pain pulls her out of her thoughts; she has been worrying the weft yarn with such force that it has cut into her finger. She takes a deep breath, and then another, slower one as she tries to find that center of calm deep within herself. Fretting over her regrets isn't going to help anyone; she has to look ahead, to try and do better so she won't repeat past mistakes, but in order to do that, she needs to clear her head first.
With new determination, Frigga turns her attention back to the half-finished tapestry in front of her. It's a complicated pattern that requires concentration and diligence, which makes it the perfect tool to collect and focus a mind in turmoil, and as she slowly immerses herself in the comforting routine of weaving, she gradually starts to breathe easier. The rhythmic clacking of the loom weights soothes her agitated nerves, and Frigga slips deeper and deeper into the meditative repetition of familiar, practiced movements until the world around her starts to fade away.
The dawning vision announces itself by a prickling sensation on the fringes of her consciousness, and Frigga chases after the feeling because she wants to see, to know, to grasp at every shred of understanding she may be offered. Her family never thought much of her prophetic talent – not only can she never speak of what she sees, it often isn't clear as well, and neither is it set in stone that things will truly come to pass the way she saw them. Still, at a time when she often feels as if she were going through her life blindfolded, she is eager for every kind of guidance the Norns may grant her, so she lets her mind reach out until she can take that step forward that allows her to leave her body behind.
She is standing on a barren, icy plain in the murky twilight of a realm she recognizes with a pang – this is Niflheim, land of mists and shadow, but all those shadows are moving, and the clammy air is filled with the sounds of weapons and the cries of thousands, of hundreds of thousands of warriors. Her blood is singing with the might of the Nine, set apart from the hosts of their foes by the blue haze of a power she has no name for. Aesir and Vanir, Dwarves and Elves, the eternal fire and ice that are the Giants – they cover the battlefield from horizon to horizon, but Frigga passes through them like wind through the trees, her gaze drawn towards the massive figure in the center of the slaughter. His skin is the grayish purple of decaying flesh, and the menace that radiates from him cuts into her senses like a knife.
She knows who he is, knows the atrocities he has committed and will keep committing if he isn't stopped, and her heart leaps when she sees his opponents close in on him. In the thick of battle, he finds himself surrounded, and Frigga moves in for a glance at those who are brave enough to face the destroyer of worlds –
Two women, one green- and one blue-skinned, fighting shoulder to shoulder with hatred burning in their eyes. Two Jötnar, wielding the ice blades of their people – strangers to her, and yet she recognizes them, recognizes Laufey's sharp features in his offspring even though she only saw him once, long before the Great War. Oh, but she has seen his face since, time and again, with fear in her heart as her sweet boy grew up to resemble his sire more and more with every passing year...
Another woman, clad in black and green, whom Frigga has never seen and yet has – but she would not have needed those forgotten frescoes to recognize Odin's battle joy in her. The Warfather of old, covered in the blood of a thousand foes – she sees him in his daughter's laugh as she wields her deadly birthright, wields her realm's power that is both her fetter and her weapon as it coils around her like brambles bristling with vicious black thorns.
Frigga's heart almost stops at the sight of Thor, eyes flashing silver-blue with the power of the storm, hammer raised to summon the lightning she can already taste on the air. And next to him, right in the center, facing that deadliest of foes –
The green and gold of Loki's armor looks near black in the murky twilight, the bright shine of the metal dulled as if covered in ash – but all she can see are the wide green eyes in his deathly pale face, and the new and remembered terror in them makes her blood run cold. Yet he stands tall and straight, Gungnir in his left hand and his right raised high as if to command those around him. Her mind's eye perceives the ties that connect him to all of them – some she understands, some she doesn't, but she sees him surrounded by siblings who stand with him, and she is glad of it.
She feels him gathering the tendrils of a power she still can't name, that sparks red and blue between the familiar gold of the might of Asgard's kings – it pushes outwards against those who approach to aid their beleaguered master, renders their weapons useless and throws them back like a wave clearing the shore of debris, and within the clearing, Thor's lighting flashes and strikes the Titan. It doesn't fell him, but as he staggers, a move of Hela's hand entangles him in a thicket of brambles that tethers him to the ground. Thanos roars with fury, and for a heartbeat, Frigga fears he will break free, but then, with a sound like a whip cracking, a ray of brilliant green flares from Loki's outstretched hand towards the Titan and wraps around his neck like a hangman's noose.
Thanos... smiles. It's a smile that freezes the soul and makes Frigga's breath catch in her throat, and then he speaks, his eyes on Loki's as if it this battle of worlds were between the two of them alone. She can't make out the words, but she sees Loki pale and clench his jaw as he tries to hold steady while Thor's lightning strikes the Titan again and Hela's thorns creep higher up his body.
Frigga can only watch, invisible and helpless, how Thanos fights with all his fearsome might – yet none can stand against the power of thunder, death and chaos, and Loki slowly pulls the noose tight while the Titan still curses and threatens even as he struggles for breath until, like a giant oak falling under the woodman's axe, he crashes to his knees.
Loki takes a step forward, and then another; the others fall back as if they knew that this is his fight to finish. The Titan wheezes something that is too low for Frigga to catch, but although it is spoken softly, she can still hear Loki's reply.
"You will never be a god."
Then he snaps his fingers, and Thanos' neck breaks with a sickening crack as the noose pulls tight.
Thor's face is a mask of horror Frigga doesn't understand, but before she can try to look closer, she feels herself pulled out of the scene no matter how much she tries to hold on. The Sight is not a ship one can steer, it is the wave and the wind, and she must go where it takes her whether she wishes to or not.
She finds herself not far away, among a group of warriors surrounded by a ring of slain enemies. The fighting has come to a halt as everyone turned to watch Thanos' fall, and Frigga follows their gazes and sees a giant black wolf ripping the Titan's corpse apart. Blood-thirst is not in her nature, but she will not feel ashamed of the wild triumph that fills her at the gory sight. Loki is addressing Hela, and even though they are too far away to hear what he is saying, Frigga sees Odin's daughter smile as she reaches out towards the monstrous beast that pushes its bloody muzzle into her hand like a dog returning to its master.
One of the men next to Frigga speaks up in the harsh tones of the mortals that not even the Alltongue can soften, and her Sight follows the sound and hones in on the warriors of Midgard. They all blend together into a mass of bodies and weapons but for three she can see clearly – two men and a woman, two of them dressed in flimsy mortal battle garb while the third is encased in armor from head to toe. They are staring, transfixed, not at the wolf but at Loki – the man in red and blue who stands a little to the side is watching him with narrowed eyes, the red-haired woman with an enigmatic smile on her face; the armored one's expression is hidden behind his helmet, but Frigga can still hear his voice, bewildered and suspicious, "So are we sure this guy is who we think he... whoa, Widow, what's with that look? Don't tell me you knew!"
The woman remains unperturbed by her shield-brother's outrage as she replies, "I didn't, but I couldn't help noticing that Thor suddenly always said 'the king' instead of 'my father'."
"Are you kidding me? Who hears that and comes up with 'Hey, might be Loki!'? I thought Reindeer Games had disappeared off the face of the Earth!"
"This isn't Earth," the other man murmurs under his breath, and –
"My queen?"
Frigga is forcefully yanked out of the vision by the sound of the shy young voice. The sudden shift makes her head spin, and it takes her a few heartbeats to get her bearings; once the disorientation passes, she finds herself faced with one of her handmaidens, who curtsies with a blush and an apologetic smile. "Forgive me for disturbing you, Allmother, but the king is here and asks to speak to you."
With a deep breath, Frigga composes herself. "Thank you, Inga; please go and show him in."
Her mind is still reeling from the aftermath of the vision, but as much as she needs time to think on everything she just saw, she will gladly put it off for this – Loki doesn't seek her out as often as Thor, but he is slowly becoming a regular visitor in her rooms again, and Frigga treasures every moment she gets to spend with him away from the prying eyes of the court. She still half expects her husband to appear at the door when 'the king' is announced, but she can't really wish for things to be different – if Odin were still alive, she could not have both her children back, and that's not a bargain she would ever be willing to make.
She hears the flutter of wings before Loki even enters, and it brings a smile to her face. The ravens seem to accompany him even more faithfully these days than they ever followed their previous master, and she likes to consider them an echo of the love Odin felt for the child he raised – she knows he did love Loki once even though she can no longer shut her eyes to the fact that he stopped at some point, and that a part of her was aware of it long before it became evident even though she didn't want to see it.
Loki walks in with a nod to the curtsying handmaiden, who blushes again and then closes the door behind her as she slips out of the room. He bids Frigga good morning, but then frowns when he steps closer; she knows she often looks a fright right after a vision, and even though this latest one was neither painful nor upsetting, he has apparently noticed that she's still affected by it.
"Are you well, Mother?"
Mother. It warms her deep inside whenever she hears him call her that; he hasn't addressed her by the formal 'Allmother' in private for many months now, and it gives her hope that the little boy who used to sit on her lap and show her the latest spell he'd mastered is still alive underneath the armor he has learned to wear around his heart. There even was one unguarded moment, one precious slip-up not long after she had pulled him out of that terrible nightmare – she might have gotten a little overbearing during the days that followed, and although Loki tried to be patient with her mothering at first, he eventually waved her off with an absentminded, "Stop fretting, Amma, I'm fine", and Frigga had to excuse herself and retreat to her chambers so nobody would see her tears.
She is deeply grateful for these small signs of trust even though she knows he no longer trusts her like he once used to, and that she has no right to blame him for it. Yet it pains her that there seems to be no-one else who stepped in where she failed him, that he probably considers it normal by now that there is nobody he can trust, and that he remains convinced he can only ever rely on himself when it really matters. She hopes he will eventually come to rely on his people's trust in him because she has seen the tide of Asgard's regard for her new king begin to turn ever since his address to the Allthing, although Loki will likely be the last person to notice it given that he is far too used to the opposite.
She doubts he is aware that while he always fell short compared to Thor in Asgard's eyes in the past, things have changed drastically since Thor's return – the people of Asgard are certainly glad to have Thor back, but Frigga isn't blind to the fact that they seem uncertain what to make of the stranger their beloved prince has become, and that they are relying on Loki for stability in the face of that uncertainty. Things may be different at court, but with the exception of Odin's old guard, even many at the palace openly prefer a King Loki to this Thor. Thor has made it abundantly clear that he doesn't wish for the throne, but he still remains the crown prince until Loki has an heir, and the knowledge seems to unsettle quite a number of courtiers because Frigga has already received several discreet suggestions that it might be time for the king to start looking for a wife. She doesn't like to see Thor under that kind of scrutiny when he's clearly still struggling to readjust, but for all her worries about her firstborn son, she must not, will not forget the son who sits on the throne.
She has failed him in the past, but this time, she is resolved to be there for him whenever he needs her.
The thought brings her back to the present, and Frigga rises with a smile. "I'm very well, thank you for asking. Shall we go sit on the balcony? It's a lovely morning, and I doubt you'll get much fresh air for the rest of the day."
Loki just nods and gestures for her to go ahead, and Frigga does with one last glance back at the half-finished tapestry. Her mind is still filled with images of triumph and victory, and she has to remind herself that while a vision can be many things, it is certainly not a promise that things will come to pass the way she saw them.
Maybe it was just wishful thinking, hope masquerading as prophecy, but she takes heart from it nevertheless.