Sunlit Frost

by WinterDusk

Summary:

“You want to go on a diplomatic mission?” Father says, voice clearly sceptical. “To Jotunheim?”

If his brother is half of Jotunheim, then it stands to reason that Thor must learn more of the realm.

Notes:

This story is A.U. and, while it is part of a series (‘If, just maybe’), it can be read as a stand-alone if you prefer. There are a few comments in the end note to help you pick up this story.

Warnings for casual racism (Aesir/Jotunn).

Chapter 1: Planning

“You want to go on a diplomatic mission?” Father pauses in feeding his ravens, voice clearly sceptical. “To Jotunheim?”

Thor holds himself still, determined. Reminds himself of what’s at stake here: a shimmering drop of liquid hope. Meets his father’s eyes, fully determined to make just such a declaration.

Then finds the wind rather taken out of his sails when Odin adds, “And you do realise, that you are not permitted to start a war?”

You are more than just a battering ram. Words from the lips of another Loki.

Thor makes himself smile. “I am aware, father.”

#

On the face of it, it’s a terrible time to plan an excursion. Asgard is busy; buzzing with preparations for Loki’s Name’s Day. Eight hundred years; there are days when Thor can’t believe they have passed so quickly.

For a moment he lingers on the balcony, looking out over the Summer Garden, towards the arena beyond. A large open space, currently hosting two teams of horseriders. Daubed in bright colours, the opposing groups enthusiastically grapple with one another, seeking to maintain control of the ‘bounty’, in this case a small basket filled with eggs. Clearly raw, they’re causing the struggling mass to show considerably more care than is their want.

It’s going to be home to a substantially more brutal clash in a mere matter of days.

The thought casts a pall over Thor’s already considerably dampened enthusiasm for his expedition. But it’s not some leisurely dalliance that he intends to undertake. No jaunt to hunt on Alfheim, nor the need to suppress insurgency on Vanaheim; rather this is a very specific and important mission. He’ll be doing ill by his brother indeed if he lets mere emotion sway his focus.

Turning away, Thor walks the low corridors of Asgard’s central complex. Truly, his rooms lie not far from his father’s chambers – a royal prince kept close to the seat of power; he often wonders how Loki managed to put in more distance – but today has the taste of a day to walk; mother insists that pacing will settle his mood, though to himself Thor thinks she just wants him to more evenly distribute the rainfall. He walks.

There’s no obvious distinction, within the palace, when one passes from the main wing of Odin’s control and into the queen’s halls. Indeed, unlike the buildings scattered throughout their realm, where different halls reside within different structures, Asgard’s Allfather and Allmother show a united face. United, and yet separate. The queen’s space is… subtly different.

Thor can never quite put his finger on that difference. Maybe it’s the lighting or the incense, or maybe it’s all in Thor’s mind.

He meets Loki walking out, leaving mother’s solarium.

“Brother.” He tries to be hearty when he addresses Loki, but fears some of his pensiveness may be laid clear. Though, in truth, Loki looks ill-enough at ease even without their encounter.

“Thor.” A single brief nod. “What can I do for you?”

It’s been like this for… Well, to be exact, it’s been like this since Thor first went to Loki with his Winter’s Shine suspicions. He’d hoped that their swearing to be blood to one another would have helped mellow Loki’s troubles but, if this is what ‘helped’ looks like, then Thor fears indeed to consider how Loki would have otherwise responded to finding out about his heritage.

Since when do brothers have to do anything for one another? Thor’s long since learned better than to speak this line. Rather, he tries to smile encouragingly. “Are you looking forward to the joust?”

He should have gone with his first choice of words. Loki’s face, rarely an open exhibit of his true feelings, seen to freeze. His shoulders look tense and, certainly to Thor, achingly fragile. After a long, empty moment, Loki bites out. “Ecstatically.” Then tries to pass by Thor.

Thor takes a risk and catches Loki’s arm. Very carefully, Loki’s right arm. Clearly Loki’s in a warmer frame of mind than he’s letting on, for Thor doesn’t find an elbow in his gut.

Of course, Loki’s snarled “What?” is less than promising.

“Are you…” Thor hesitates. Uncertain how to ask after Loki’s health. How to allude to his long, slow recovery and the damage Thor fears still lingers in his shoulder? “Will you be sufficient to meet the challenge?”

Hel! But he’s never better at putting his feet in his mouth than when he’s trying not to! Maybe he really should rethink his plans for Jotunheim.

Loki’s eyes blaze. His lips, recently so quick to sulk, are thin and pressed pale with rage. “Good day, Thor.” And, yanking his arm free from Thor’s quickly released grip, he carries on down the corridor, presumably back to his own rooms.

Had Thor really expected that to go better?

#

Many things in Thor’s life could go better than they do. For all that, there’s only one area in which he finds himself so often thwarted as he is in his dealings with Loki: libraries.

Yet the library must be his destination if he wishes to find a scholar of sufficient renowned to produce a missive suitable for dispatch to Laufey-King. True, the royal heralds could venture forth, their words relaying, with greater or lesser accuracy, Thor’s own. And yet, for such an important behest, to leave such correspondence to transient air…

No; this request warrants paper and planning.

“My prince.” The acolyte at the library’s reception table bobs a startled bow. Whilst, at least, it’s a different person to the one Thor encountered that dreadful night, waiting to hear if Loki had pulled though, Thor’s left wondering when the barbs about seeing him amongst books will begin. Instead of mockery, the acolyte merely says, “How can I help you?”

Well, that’s the question. For a moment Thor wants to be cagy – for this is a fragile issue, one too-closely entwined with Loki – but then reminds himself that he has their father’s blessing for his trip and, more to the point, there’s a limit to how subtle a prince of the realm can be when journeying, under the banner of diplomacy, to a hostile realm.

“Do you have a scholar familiar with Jotunn script?”

That gets him a frown, though the young woman merely looks thoughtful rather than dismissive. She’s silent for so long that dreadful ideas begin to cross Thor’s mind. They’re all quite ridiculous, of course. That she will summon the guards, for how dare he ask after their enemies. That he’ll be labelled a traitor, rumour circling around him, arriving back, poisoned and twisted, at the Allfather’s ears.

That Loki will hear and- well, that he’ll be Loki about it.

So it’s somewhat of a horrible instant when she says, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Thor frets.

Yet, when she returns, it’s with neither guards nor irate family members, but rather the Head of the Library, Councillor Dagrun. “Elder.” Thor hopes that his voice isn’t too thick with relief. “I was expecting… Well, someone else.”

The Councillor’s dark eyes crinkle into an amused smile. “Alas, we hardly have a vast gathering of scholars interested in Jotunn’s realm. Certainly not the written aspect. So-“ here a small, theatrical bow “-I place myself at your service.”

Dagrun, it turns out, is an excellent ally. Showing Thor into a small, achingly bare room, she settles him at a table, draws pen and paper towards herself, and then asks him what exactly it is that he wishes to say. Thor, speaking on his hopes to visit King Laufey’s fine land, and his desires to engage with him about the advancement of Nine Realms collectively, expects to see his words rendered in strange and unfamiliar script. Instead, the notes Dagrun jots down are all in runes. “Um?”

Dagrun smiles, eyes kind. “You have little familiarity with this process, I believe, my prince?” And, at his uncertain nod, continues. “When wishing to convey a message within such a… volatile… relationship, one needs to have a care.” An ironic twist to her lips. “And then a second care. We must think your letter out in great detail.”

“Just as well that I didn’t go with the heralds.”

The Councillor doesn’t quite grimace, and manages to turn what might have been a shudder into an approving nod. “Quite. Some messages are best not yelled at full volume across the void. And besides,” she offers a smile that’s so obviously intended to butter him up that Thor’s unable to stop a startled laugh when she says, “how are we to record your future brilliance if you never write any of it down? And don’t talk to me of Skalds, forgetful gossips that they are.”

“Don’t let Hrafn hear you say that.”

“Oh! Fee!” She makes a shooing motion to dismiss ever holding such a care. “But what of your letter? You know what you want, and yet, how will your correspondent take such a declaration to attend him; how best can you guide his positive response?”

For a moment Thor flounders. For his request to visit is quite clear. Simple guest rights are all that need be extended to ensure his safe passage. And as for secretly locating the drug – can it be quite so unbelievable that he wishes to talk with Laufey-king absent of any underlying motivation? “Surely, manners-”

Dagrun has his mother’s manner, Thor realises, of looking at one both as if one were very young, and yet also not irredeemably stupid. “And what would you do, my prince, if a long known enemy walked out of the shadows, all unexpectedly, and asked simply to speak?”

Thor can see the point in her allusion. For if he were to happen upon a wily opponent? One well-armed and in territory unfamiliar to Thor? “Sometimes cunning is needed.” And then he flushes, for that doesn’t sound very friendly.

To his surprise, Dagrun looks pleased with him. “Cunning is exactly the word for it. Indeed, the Jotunn greatly value that trait. That and bravery. In truth, I think that as many of our troubles with Jotunheim stem from assuming they value exactly the same things as us, as problems relating to us assuming them monsters.”

Well, Thor knows which side of that equation he had sat on, brief seasons ago. Guilt, uncomfortable and ever more present in his days, tries to overwhelm him.

He puts that aside. He has a letter to write. “So, now we have an idea of what I want to say?”

“We have the start of one. First, though, we need to consider what unspoken implications or insults may lie herein, then remove them.” Thor tries to tell himself that this is general advice, not a dig at his bluntness. “Then we translate it. And then we check it again for hidden meaning.”

Maybe Thor should have involved Loki after all.

#

For such a slow start to a mission – the letter alone took an entire day to write! – time then seems to slip away from Thor. For there are preparations for Loki’s Name’s Day (gifts to commission; feasts to order); business as usual at the training sands (usual only in that it is never the same two days in a row); and a sudden flurry of messages to and from the Frozen Realm.

Thor would have tried his hand at their script, truly he would, save that instead he finds his time claimed with more immediate concerns. For he will need warm clothes and guest gifts before he travels. And, while the room dedicated to Jotunheim within the library might be small, that non-the-less his time might be better spent in reading up on his hosts than learning to write to them.

Not that it’s all hard work. There are evenings enough to find his way to the taverns and thence their gossip.

Thor’s always had a soft spot for the older warriors; for the men who once waged war, yet will go no more. For their tales and their experience and, yes, their wildly spun lies.

It’s been a long while since the last war with the Jotunn. Yet not all that long in the grand scheme of things.

“You do realise that we could be drinking with the enchantress sisters?” Fandral’s arm is heavy across Thor’s shoulders. Lantern light catches at the angles of his face; golden and warming.

“I’m not stopping you.” Thor reminds him.

“I know you’re not stopping me. You’re stopping you though. And there are three of them.”

“I’m not interested.” General Hogun says.

Fandral turns, walking backwards, and gives their visitor a thoughtful once over. “Well, you are the grim sort, aren’t you? No fun for Hogun.”

Thor elbows him; less with the intent of silencing Fandral’s chatter, and more in the hope that he’ll remember that the Vanir General is a guest; one entitled to a certain degree of respect. He wonders what digs he’ll endure in Jotunheim.

“What’s that, Thor? That the sisters are probably better off chatting with your brother?” Fandral pulls his face into lines of tragedy. “That’s hardly fair to any of us.”

“Really? I’ll let you take that up with him.” But thinking of Loki and the enchantress sisters has soured Thor’s mood. It’s not that there’s anything he can put his finger on exactly. Only that Loki is very young and the sisters are… much more Fandral’s pace.

He resolves to speak to Loki about them in the morrow, and puts the matter behind him: tonight he is after first-hand information.

The tavern, when they reach it, is small and homey, more timber than stone, and haloed in the vapours of warming mead. Along a bench outside, elders watch the world go by; watch Thor’s little group go by. Thor gives them a cheerful wave then ducks through the ever-open doorway and into the darkness beyond.

He doesn’t have time to let his eyes acclimatise before Volstagg hails them from a table in the centre of the inn. “Thor!” And then: “Barkeep! Some ale for my friends!”

And there’s only one suitable reply to that: “Ale for all, good keep! And don’t forget the bench-sitters outside!”

#

Some nights improve with liquor. Others do not.

Oh! Thor’s manages to steer the conversation well enough. One uttered “How about the battles with the Frost Giants?” and that was all it seemed anyone wanted to talk about. But there Thor lost control of the conversation. And no matter how many times he asks after their favourite foods, their preferred poetry, whether they sang of glory to their injured comrades, all that he hears is the same.

“-tore him limb from limb and ate the-”

“Demons, I tell you! Demons!”

“-don’t think like us. Can’t. Their brains aren’t wired right and our old captain used to say-”

“-saw them take the children from the village before we could even-”

The same stories Thor’s heard from childhood. Stories of blood and gore. Of evil made flesh; terrors manifested. Nothing that one could hold a conversation with. Only good for taking the sharp of a blade.

He rocks his near-empty mug back and forth between his hands, trying to reconcile the tales he hears with the truth that he’s lived: Loki. Prickly, suspicious, quick to offence. Brilliant, charming, ever so determined. The usual mix of qualities found in any being? Or the two halves of his nature, Aesir and Jotunn, battling it out?

Are they really nothing more than violent creatures?

“Something on your mind?” Volstagg’s voice is a low rumble; his presence a sudden warm weight along Thor’s side as the old warrior leans closer. “Besides that woefully empty tankard, that is?” And he plucks it from Thor’s hand, the better to raise and smash it against the floor.

“I didn’t realise I’d regressed enough to need you to order my drinks for me once more.”

“Once my squire, always my squire.” Volstagg says, voice fond for all that his own boys are now old enough to fulfil the duties Thor once learned at his side. “And I’ve still eyes in my head to spot the squall building outside.”

Grimacing, Thor takes a moment to dissipate the gathering clouds. “It’s been a long day.”

“Deflection.” Volstagg grimaces. “That’s usually your brother’s trick. Speaking of, what think you of this?” And Volstagg passes a small bundle under the table. Thor looks at it quizzically, then unwinds the cloth to reveal a small wooden chest worked into deep relief. For a moment Thor can’t figure out why Volstagg is showing him this.

“I struggle with Loki, you know.” A rueful hand scrubs through Volstagg’s hair, “Choosing a good gift’s almost harder for him than for my Gudrun.”

The Name’s Day.

Dismay lurches through Thor’s belly even has he hastens to remind himself that Loki must be ready. That neither mother nor Healer Eir alike would have permitted him to ride out in the scrummage unless satisfied at his recovery.

But Thor’s seen his shoulder; the damage. He knows how carefully Loki guards that side, the better to minimise any touch against it…

He’s over worrying. Just being a typical, over-protective big-brother.

Loki will mock him if ever he learns of this folly. Well, that or else he’ll take greatest offence.

“Hey.” Volstagg’s hand on his shoulder summons Thor back from his cares. “I’m sure that, whatever you’ve got, it will be perfect. When it comes to this type of thing you are-”

Dark shadow falls over them. “An idiot?”

Craning his neck back, Thor looks up at Sif, freshly arrived through what has only been a mild rainstorm. He somehow doubts that the damp seeping into her armour fully accounts for the rage twisting her face.

“I? What?”

“Get up!” She doesn’t quite lay hands upon him to force her request, yet Thor thinks it best not to press her patience further. “Now!”

Most of the crowd must think their altercation an amusement, but Thor catches a hint of concern cross Fandral’s face; outright alarm on Hogun’s. “We’ll be back-” Thor aims to reassure them; catches a fresh glimpse of Sif’s face “-as and when. Enjoy your evening.”

“That’s how rumours start, Sif!”

“Shut up, Fandral!”

And then they’re back out in the evening.

Thor takes Sif’s elbow, steering her away from the row of curious eyes, regretting it when he gets that elbow in his ribs. The streets in this section of the city are close and narrow; little space is to be found between the halls and workshops, but at length they come to Sif’s preferred place, a small triangular plot of land, walled in; nominally an orchard but with space enough to spar if one’s a preference for evading prying eyes.

What was that about? That’s what Thor intends to say. But Sif’s never been one to yield the prerogative. “I have a message for you. One of your father’s diplomats asked me bear it hence.”

Her hand is shaking as she extends the crumpled note. “Imagine my surprise when I find out that it’s fresh from Jotunheim.” Is it more incriminating for Thor to say that he can explain? Or to stand in aloof silence? “And you won’t believe what else the messenger said.”

Ah. “Let me guess? That I’m going to Jotunheim?”

“What do you mean,” Sif’s voice drops, low and dangerous, “that you’re going to Jotunheim? Why the hels would you want to go to Jotunheim? Besides the one good thing brewing there.”

For a moment, despite all possible logic, Thor’s convinced that she knows about his plan. About the Winter’s Shine, distilled in the wilds of the Winter Realm. That’s she’s pieced together Loki’s heritage; Thor’s plan to mitigate their ignorance about his brother’s maternal blood; and-

“You are not going alone into a fight.”

“A fight?”

“Don’t play innocent with me, Thor.” And then, a moment’s desperation in her rage, “Please.” And then, once more, that rage. “I’ve just walked into a tavern that you have all worked up over tales of monsters and blood; war. And you expect me to believe that you’re not…” her hands spread wide and helpless. Thor truly thinks she won’t complete that accusation. He’s wrong: “Not after glory at the expense of duty.”

First father, now Sif. “I’m not heading for a fight. I just want to… learn… more.” It’s a weak justification for all that it’s the truth.

“Norns curse it, Thor! Don’t play me for a fool!”

“I’m not.” He never has! “I’m just going to-”

“I’m coming with you.” Sif’s arms fold, defiant. “We all are.”

It’s as tempting as it is foolish. The Lady Sif, Fandral and Volstagg? Company in a strange environment? People to talk with and to consult if (when) things go wrong? To spin tales with in later years? “I can’t just go and-”

“Of course, you can. No one travels alone.”

He won’t be travelling alone. There will be a scholar and a healer. The healer’s mandatory guard, and a brace of Einherjar for Thor himself. This is going to be no small hunting party such as Thor has previously led, but one much closer in scope and style to those attending to his mother’s visits of state. “It’s agreed. I can’t just go changing the plans.”

“Change them.” The finger she presses to his breastbone is mostly for show; Thor recognises well Sif’s occasional flair for melodrama, but there’s a tension in her shoulders as though, truly, she is afraid for him. Thor recognises such a feeling; has felt it far too recently when watching Loki struck down and gravely injured. She fears for the harm that may befall him and who knows what such concern will drive her to. “Or else.”

She pivots to leave.

He grabs her wrist, “Sif.” It’s his voice and yet to himself he sounds tense, almost angry. Thor barely recognises himself. “Loki must not know.”

Not now. Not with him so brittle and changeable at the moment. And the problem with secrets is that, well, Loki always seems to have ways of finding them out.

He’s so braced for Sif to slip his grip, draw her dagger, and challenge him there and then for his discourtesy, that he almost doesn’t recognise the moment when her gaze instead grows soft and thoughtful. Questions seem to flow behind her eyes, but, when she speaks it’s only to say, “So. Why exactly can’t Loki know about this? A trip to exotic lands? He of all people would enjoy the chance to attend.”

#

Back in his rooms, Thor unfurls the crunched up note. The first thing that he notes is the quality of the paper; old and crumbling, even before Sif’s rough handling. Then there’s the text; runes so rough and malformed that Thor takes a moment to consider that it’s some subtle insult sent his way: a missive drafted by a child.

Then he sees the signature. The seven-spiked crown of Laufey.

The text itself, either by design or by scholarship insufficient to the task, is short:

The storm rages across the seas;
The seas lie deep below the sun;
The sun is lost behind the storm.

When we meet: Tell me, Odinson, who wins?

#

The next morning brings Loki’s Name’s Day. Also a quiet knock at the door to Thor’s rooms.

It’s barely two days before Thor intends to head to the bifrost.

Thor would be hard pressed to define why, exactly, that slight rapping sends a wave of horror through him, save that, while secret preparations may sound adventurous, to Thor, having the kin that he does, they’re closer to a challenge than an adventure. Hiding his activity from just one of the three who share his blood has been an exercise in utmost caution and care. Even then, Thor’s fairly certain that he’s only succeeded in keeping Loki from noticing the mounds of warm furs, heavy blankets and lined boots delivered to his door, because Loki hasn’t looked interested in anything of late.

Thor, suspecting what may lie at the root of Loki’s listless mood, has tried to call on him. Had thought to offer a brother’s advice and care. Yet his intrusion received such a sharp reply that retreat had seemed the only suitable response. And so Thor had been planning to reconcile with Loki later, after the stresses of this day, when Loki might prove to be in a more receptive frame of mind.

(Leastways until he finally hears of Thor’s planned excursion.)

And now, as Thor’s receiving room is full of half arranged packs and scattered, incomplete maps, here comes Loki to call upon him.

Thor’s so convinced that his visitor’s Loki, summoned by the Norns at the most vexing of moments, that it’s an actual surprise when he finds instead his mother.

“My son.” Her hands are on his face, turning his brow down that she may kiss it.

Is it only coincidence that she names him so possessively? For surely she addresses Loki as such, too? It’s merely that, in this moment, Thor cannot seem to remember such an instance.

Thor ushers her in, hastening to close the door as though that will bar his dark thoughts from entering with her. “What brings you here?” For, truly, he’d have welcomed the walk to her gardens and solarium. And on today…. “Does all go well with the preparations?”

A smile, more forced than Thor likes. “Of course. I have it all well in hand. But what of you? For that question could as easily be applied to your own endeavour.” It almost appears to Thor that she frowns at the signs of his imminent departure.

“Umm.” Thor drags a hand through is hair, uncertain. Looks at the half-made plans. “All in hand, here, too. Yes.” There can’t be that much to a diplomatic mission, can there?

Thought of Laufey-king’s cryptic message crosses Thor’s mind, but he pushes it down. It will all grow apparent soon enough.

“I suppose I might be struggling for a gift.”

“For Loki?” Their mother frowns. “It’s rather late for that!”

“Loki? No.” Thor’s had that arranged for nearly half a year now. A witch-sword; suitable for the forming of both spells and battle. Laevateinn; a blade truly suitable for a prince. (But not too heavy a blade; not with the heft of the spear, Gungnir, nor with the shear mass of Mjolnir. It’s not chosen because Thor fears his brother damaged. No, not for that reason. Nor because he thinks Loki weak. And yet-) “For Laufey-king.”

“Laufey?” Mother’s eyes widen, startled, her thoughts clearly following a different path. “He’ll take no gift from you.”

“But-” Thor cuts himself off. Reviews carefully his mother’s words; the woeful lack of information gleaned from aging warriors and crumbling scholarship alike, and remembers his mother for the Queen of Vanaheim. “What do you mean he’ll not take it?”

“Why! He’s king and you’re but a prince and so to think that you could possibly have anything that-” but here her brow grows heavy with worry. “You know, I’m well aware that your father thinks this expedition a good idea, but you’re still very young and really rather untried. Thor, I’m not saying this to dampen your enthusiasm, but Jotunheim isn’t… well, it’s not like the other realms you’ve been to. No one will overlook your ignorance of their customs nor find it charming to lead you though an education in their ways. Maybe you should reconsider this expedition.”

Reconsider? “It’s already arranged.” First Sif, now mother!

Frigga, Queen of Asgard, Birthright to Vanaheim, the Allmother of the Nine Realms, and one of the most terrifying swordswomen Thor has ever met, dithers.

“Mother, what exactly do you think I’m going to mess up here?”

“Well, now. That’s rather the question, isn’t it?” And like that the worried mother is gone; in her place the sharp-eyed power besides the throne.

“I don’t understand.” Thor rather fears that he does.

“Then I will ask you directly, my child. What takes you to the Frozen Realm? From whence stems this sudden interest?” And Thor’s mind is lost to the present, seeing again his brother, mauled and bloody in the healers’ hall. To that drug-induced and mending transformation.

“I want our realms at peace.” Words that cross his lips, unbidden.

“Loki.” The barest whisper from their mother.

Thor locks eyes with her. “I do not wish him to see war.” Not with people who may be his kin.

“We all know that you’re worried about Loki. But he’s stronger than he looks. He can hold his own.”

Thor knows that he can. It’s just that he doesn’t want him to have to. “Surely one God of War is enough for the Realm?”

He’s aiming for a smile, but Frigga’s eyes carry all the weight of her queenship when she replies, “No. One never is.” Then she sighs and, with a brief headshake as though to physically loosen grim concerns from herself, makes to smile and say, “Well, now. In the time that remains to us, we’d better get to brushing up on your Jotunn customs.”

#

The afternoon is loud and hot; two things Loki will be sure to hate. For himself, Thor’s main discomfort, physically at least, stems from having indulged too much at the noontime feast.

He’s sitting in the stands, next to his parents, the king and queen front and centre stage, looking down on the arena. The air is choked with dust, but it’s not deterred the crowds from gathering. Oh, there are entertainments aplenty throughout Asgard, but this? Their prince’s joust? That’s not one to be missed.

“What is wrong with you of late?” His father’s hand presses down, firm and grounding, on Thor’s shoulder. “I swear, you didn’t look sick to the gills for your own presentation, boy. Maybe a little less of letting Volstagg serve in future, yes?”

Thor attempts a smile, but cannot take his eyes from the gates opposite; from Loki, slender upon his mount, and from Skurge, all muscle and mass.

Oh, on the face of it Skurge is a fine opponent. Tall and heavy, there’s no doubt that it will take true battle skills to unhorse and overwhelm him. And, for those who know a little more of the man, as Thor himself does, aye and the training master who selected him, there’s the benefit that Skurge is as mild as they come, and not so vicious. So he’s a challenge, yes, but not one out looking to make a name for himself at a young prince’s expense.

Thor hadn’t ‘drawn’ against Skurge. He’d got Heimdall. But then, if old Tig had set him against Skurge, Thor’s not too proud to admit that he’d have thrown an offended fit.

But Loki? Thor fears that Heimdall might have made a better bet. True, his skill is phenomenal, and his height impressive, but Skurge is the heavier opponent, and Thor’s a dreadful fear that that could be decisive today.

“Sif threw Fandral half across the ring on her day.” Odin reminds Thor. “And she’s slighter than Loki.”

She’s not.

“I’m sure Loki will give an excellent accounting of himself, father.”

“Forget a good accounting. He’d better win! No son of mine goes down in the field. When I-” But he’s drowned out by a sudden roar from the crowd for, as they have spoken, events below have proceeded apace and Loki and Skurge are cantering to opposite ends of the field.

There’s a lap that they take. Both of them moving widdershins, bucking the sun’s flow, and giving the crowds the moment to appreciate them both. And the crowds do; their voices loud with approval. Loud for Skurge, known well enough for his strength in arms. Loud for Loki, their prince, on this day to celebrate his gathering centuries.

They’ve chosen lances for the first clash, a keeping with tradition that Thor hadn’t thought his brother would bother with. True, they’re a lovely moment of drama, but Skurge won’t be unseated by a mere pole and, if Loki is…

Thor would have said that the risk of them was too great.

Yet this is Loki; chin tilted and proud, if paler than ever. And he’s lining up at the far end of the run, lance clasped firmly in-

“Hels!”

“Oh, do stop worrying. You’re worse than your mother!”

For Loki’s holding the lance in his right hand. Thor knew some ill effect must have lingered from the cursed blade he’d taken, be that so many seasons ago now.

Oh, Loki will doubtless claim the switch the better for symmetry. A friendly attempt to make things easier on Skurge. It’s the type of heroics that Thor knows he himself has sometimes fallen guilty of employing. But in such a situation and when Thor fears his brother already at a disadvantage?

Not to mention that it will put Skurge’s target on Loki’s left shoulder: the source of all his trouble.

The ground thunders.

Dust; hooves; speed. The gap between them, vanishing and-

Loki rocks back; Skurge likewise. And they canter on past one another. Lances, now little more than shattered firewood, are tossed aside; horses turned and-

Thank the Norns, but Loki’s not foolish enough to reach for a second lance! Rather he reaches for his sword and Skurge, in keeping with Name’s Day tradition, does likewise.

They move to reengage.

Loki, curled low over the pommel, gallops his horse forward. Distance seems to drop away between the pair and Thor finds himself leaning forward, fists clenched tight in excitement.

Seconds are drawn; long. Summer sun glints from the prince's armour, the horse's track, the dulled blades. There's the faintest hissing breeze, just discernible over the thudding hooves. A perfect endless moment.

Noise, explosively loud, shatters the moment. Sword to sword, and bitter grunts of exertion.

Loki's hold collapses.

There's no other word for it. One moment he's there, metal to metal with Skurge, thigh muscles staining with the effort of holding his place on his mount, back twisting into the movement. The next Loki's forearm is pinned to his chest, Skurge’s blade against his left vambrace, and Loki's sword skittering from his grip.

Everything is silent; the crowd frozen.

Thor can’t blame them. For himself he’s torn between closing his eyes, the better not to see his brother’s shameful failure, and the desire to somehow be there not here that he can better help his sibling.

Of course, teleportation is quite beyond him; looking away from this brother in trouble much the same.

For Loki is in trouble. In battle this would likely be a deathblow; for Skurge could lean in ever more heavily, driving the flat of his blade up, over Loki’s arm, until its edge meets his neck. Thor should know; he’s executed such a move many times himself.

But that’s a move of killing instinct; slick between one heartbeat and the next. Skurge isn’t here to kill his prince; his blade falters; his eyes skitter over to Thor. No, not Thor. To Odin.

Thor can feel his father draw breath. But what it is he’d say Thor will never learn, for Loki alone appears not frozen in this endless horror. Instead he falls from the saddle, apparently overtoppled by the impact, and Thor tries to pretend that sudden loss of control doesn’t strike at his heart as his brother sprawls flat.

The prince’s horse shies, though he is well trained enough to shy away from his fallen rider. And Skurge and mount are momentarily distracted; dancing back from the creature’s departure.

And Thor sees his brother’s goal; the fallen sword.

So, the tumble had been deliberate then. At least somewhat.

The grace with which Loki rises, sword leading with brilliant light, cannot be dismissed.

Yet nor too can the action: the folly of a foot solider striking against a mounted one; the lack of grace in a warrior striking unbidden at another’s unguarded side. A different opponent and it might be considered inexcusably ungallant. But Skurge has been foot solider in wars enough; he’s not taken aback. Rather his sword is round, skimming over his horse’s neck, and down to catch the parry faster than a thought.

“Finish him.”

Thor misses the next action; attention snared. “What, father?” For he must not have heard true.

“Skurge must finish it now.”

#

After, when all is said and done and the crowds have wondered off in search of more certain celebration, Thor goes in search of his brother. He needn’t look far: just the changing rooms. Loki’s already leaving them, hair still sandy from the ground, gear hastily bundled, as Thor jogs up.

“Don’t.” A single bitten out word. Loki doesn’t even stall in his march back to their father’s hall.

“Loki-”

“I said don’t!” Though at least now Loki’s turned to face Thor, if only for a moment, the better to snap at him. And his face, far from lined with tears as Thor has dreaded, is instead incandescent with rage.

Well, Thor can certainly sympathise with that.

He continues to follow Loki. For, if nothing else, the pace of his steps give Thor some reassurance that Loki does well enough. Apart from that shoulder. Three thousand nights, it transpires, are insufficient to heal some wounds.

“Bugger off!”

“At least let me carry-” That gets Thor a death glare. As though Loki’s determined to find some slight in Thor’s offer to help with his kit. Thus it is that they pass the Einherjar squabbling. So, more rumours of discord within their family. Wonderful.

“You got back up.” Maybe, if Thor says that often enough, it will become the important part of this tale?

And, for a moment, he thinks that he’s got Loki speaking. “Father… He…” But there the words stutter and die, leaving Thor scrambling to fill in the void.

“I just wanted to…” See if Loki was well? Commiserate on the day’s progress? Ask after the lingering damage to his arm? Just one look at his brother’s face and it’s clear not a word of those will wash over well. “I thought you’d want your Name’s Day gift.”

“My…?” Loki’s face is blank, shocked. And then, not. “You idiot. I don’t want to see another sword for centuries.” And, for a moment, Thor fears that that is that. Loki’s day ruined; the entire conversation strained and cold. Their words insufficient to bridge the gaps between them.

Just give me an in, Loki!

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Thor. I know you got me Laevateinn.”

“No, I didn’t.” Thor lies; she can wait for a more distant Name’s Day.

“Oh?” Loki stops dead in the corridor to challenge him: “Then tell me, brother. Just what is this all-amazing Name’s Day gift you’ve brought me?”

Well, Thor can take that dare and raise it. They’re near enough to his chambers. “Follow me.” Ignoring Loki’s deeply sceptical expression, he takes control of their route. Maybe if Thor’s really lucky, Loki will be so overwhelmed that he’ll consent to stay and eat something?

Thor opens the door to his room. It’s just as chaotic as it was when he left that morning.

“We’re going to Jotunheim.” And then, at Loki’s aghast expression. “Surprise!”

“Brother,” Loki murmurs, taking in the assorted gear Thor has assembled, “this is your worst idea for a Name’s Day gift to date.”

Chapter 2: Arrival

Summary:

Thor isn’t fool enough to have hoped for a warm reception on Jotunheim, but it would be nice if Loki’s temper would thaw a little.

Notes:

If it helps with your imagination, the Frost Giants in this story are closer in scale to the comic book ones than those in the movie. (Much more than twice the size of the Asgardians).

Jotunheim, it goes without saying, is cold.

It’s also dark and looks more than somewhat decaying. Drab, drear, depressing. Thor stands in the throne room of Laufey-king and tries to keep his smile. Hopes the grit of his teeth none too evident, for Laufey – king though he may be – is neither magnanimous in his greeting nor cordial.

Around the Aesir, stone and ice soar skyward, but the roof lies jaggedly open; a half-scoured-away frieze of sailors battling mountain-sized waves among the scenes enacted around its circumference. Where Thor would normally appreciate the clear path to the skies above and thence the broiling storm exposed, that is merely the rage in his soul speaking, not the Aesir. As a prince of Asgard and of the Nine Realms, he should instead focus on the daily living standards of these people; on ensuring that the devotion his party receives matches its due; and to the comfort of those companions currently travelling with him.

The first is doubtful, the last impinged by the dire, ever-biting exposure. And as for the second?

Laufey-king speaks the words of host to guest, but his courtesy is scraped thin and bare. Seeking calm, Thor watches a single raven battle its way to roost in hall’s dubious shelter, and tries to pay his meagre reception little mind.

“You do honour us.” Thor forces the words around the doubts in his mind. For truly, he knows little of these people. And so he must tread accordingly.

Laufey, large as a dragon and twice as inscrutable, neither sniggers that Thor has fallen for an insulting welcome, nor shows pleasure or even relief that his threadbare ceremony, attended by a mere handful of giants, passes muster.

“There’s a room, set aside for your stay.”

#

One room, in Asgard, would be a snub. Especially for a party as large as that Thor leads. When first he’d dreamt up this endeavour, he’d intended to travel alone; maybe with Fandral if pressed for a sworn-companion. But then Dagrun had shown him clearly the political posturing of the moment; the old-scholar clarifying the need for a certain… ceremony. And so Thor had chosen his score carefully. Only to have Sif insist that she follow and, hot on her heels, the Warriors Two and General Hogun.

And then Thor had added Loki.

So, there will be twenty six who are housed in this ‘room’.

Shown into the cavernous chamber, Thor can see that there’s space enough and more.

“We could set up tents!” Volstagg exclaims.

“Well, it would certainly be warmer.” Fandral blows hard onto his hands, then beats them fiercely together. “You’d think no one in this realm had ever heard of a fire.”

“Maybe they haven’t.” Sif murmurs. Alone of all the Aesir, she’s been turning in place; eyes ever seeking a threat amongst furniture tall enough to tower over even Thor’s head. And, while he can see her reason for wariness, he suspects no giant hidden here; they’re all much too vast to crouch behind a footstool the size of the hunt-mistress’s kennels or even on the far side of a bed as expansive as the central lake by Asgard’s palace.

He can’t help but turn to Loki, small as ever, and looking paler still in the dim light here. For what strange heritage has rendered Loki to his father’s scale rather than that of his Jotunn mother?

Still, first things first. He presses one hand against the back of Sif’s wrist, forcing her clenched fist down. “We’d rather look out for rats and spiders than giants.”

“I don’t think they have spiders.” Loki says; the first words to pass his lips since the light of the bifrost receded.

Thor hadn’t thought his brother had read up much on the Frozen Realm. Has suspected Loki had rather been avoiding it.

Clearly he’s been mistaken.

“What do they have, brother?”

But Loki just gives him a side-eyed frown before slinking further into the shadows and gloom. Maybe he’s curious or, more likely, he’s holding the entire trip against Thor. Well, Thor should expect no less for such a poorly thought out invitation.

Thor wishes, truly he does, that he’d time enough to trail his brother. In so much as he can, to see to Loki’s peace of mind, or maybe just receive a piece of said mind. But the lead Einherjar is keen to take Thor’s advice on positioning tents. And Fandral’s more fixed upon that fire than Thor had expected. Sif wants a watch set, and the scholar, Bergljot, is convinced this will be political suicide. All told, Thor’s kept busy. When he chances to look back up, Loki’s vanished.

#

It’s unbefitting of a prince to panic. Especially over the vanishing of another prince whilst they’re on a delicate diplomatic undertaking. Even moreso given that Thor’s ‘secret quest’ to collect something not-always-poisonous is likely to make maintaining diplomatic cordiality yet more tricky. There’s little room for causing additional slights here.

Besides, what will Laufey-king do, should he hear to that a warrior of Asgard has been sneaking about his home? What would Thor do, should the tables be reversed?

Thor’s quite keen to retain sufficient freedoms for their group so that he, too, can sneak off later if possible; giants guarding the chamber’s door and windows is not something he wishes to provoke.

So, yes, his panic is touched with a hint of exasperation.

“What exactly are we meant to do at a formal dinner with our historic enemies?” Fandral’s leaning against the sheer stone cliff that makes up the side of the bed. It’s a hard and unforgiving surface to rest on, though the top is spread with thick furs, and Thor’s companion seems hunched in on himself, the better to wind his cape close.

It had seemed better by far to place their shelters and bedrolls on the stone paved floor. Now, Thor wonders if he should have had them set up camp amongst all those luxurious hides.

“Eat, drink and make merry?” Thor suggests, maybe a little more sharply than he should. It’s not just the nipping chill of the room that’s leaving him ill at ease though.

For Loki is missing.

“Well, that last, at least, will take effort here.” Chaffing his hands together, Fandral continues half-heartedly to blow on them. His breath produces little puffs of cold. “Maybe a good jig or two will get the blood flowing.”

Thor grimaces. “We’re meant to keep the blood from flowing.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Fandral gives Thor a gentle shove. “What’s got you all bent out of shape?”

Don’t draw attention to Loki’s absence. Never draw attention to Loki’s absence. He’ll just be up to his normal antics and won’t thank Thor for his interference nor the attention that will bring and-

“Loki’s gone.” Damn. He shouldn’t have said that.

Fandral frowns, expression more worried than Thor had expected. “Missing?” Like he suspects some nefarious influence. His hand, intentionally or not, has drifted down to rest upon his blade’s hilt.

Visions of murder and mayhem and – worst of all, though maybe it shouldn’t be – his father’s disappointed frown, flash across Thor’s thoughts.

His hand covers Fandral’s on the hilt.

“You know how Loki is.” It’s leaving Thor in the peculiar situation of trying to put an optimistic front on a worry he, himself, has raised. “I’m certain…” But it’s hard to put it down into words without being offensive towards his new host. For what can he say? I’m certain that Laufey-king hasn’t had my half-brother kidnapped?

Fandral doesn’t know Loki’s not Queen Frigga’s child. Doesn’t know that Loki’s not full-Aesir.

“Then why speak of it, if it’s nothing more than the usual?”

It’s Fandral’s very easing of concern that has Thor’s own temper surging back. He tries to check himself, “It’s nothing. I’m just not fond of Loki’s lies and misdirection.” Words that come out hotter than Thor intends, worry making his tone hard.

Fandral steps closer. Places his hands, bracingly, against Thor’s biceps. His touch is startlingly cold against the bare skin there, and Thor’s half a mind to send Fandral over to their makeshift fire, but his companion shushes him. “Doubtless that’s why Loki’s not told you where he’s gone. The better to keep you from becoming involved. He does try to protect you from his schemes. In his own way.”

Schemes? “Do you know where he’s gone?” Truly, it would be more a relief than an insult to Thor to find that he’s only a second-best confident for his brother.

But Fandral’s shaking his head and Thor’s frustrated worries return.

“I’m sure he’ll be back by the dinner, Thor.”

#

Loki nearly isn’t.

Thor’s actually pacing just besides their guest room’s immense door, weighing up the pros and cons of lying to his host (which is utterly reprehensible and a terrible violation of guest rights) to tell Laufey-king that his brother is abed ill. (For inference of personal weakness would at least rile Loki and act as punishment of a type). It’s that, or tell the truth.

Thor’s not certain how the near-absolute ruler of a realm would feel about having the prince of their overlord slipping about, looking into chambers and secrets and up to who knows what and-

Actually, Thor suspects he knows exactly how someone would feel about that.

He is going to have words with Loki, when he reappears.

And he will reappear. Soon. He must. For nothing’s happened to him; nothing’s wrong here.

(And that’s the second problem with lying to Laufey-king. The one Thor doesn’t want to consider too much. For if Laufey is behind Loki’s continued disappearance – him, or one of his subjects, looking to cause trouble – and then Thor were to explain away his brother’s absence, then…)

“You are going to freeze wearing that.” A finger pings off Thor’s shining breast plate.

And Thor can suddenly breathe easier. “Maybe if you’d been here to tell me that a turn of the sands ago, then maybe I’d have listened to you. As it is, we’re in serious danger of being late.”

Loki rolls his eyes. Which is hardly appropriately respectful to their guest duties, but is better than the quiet sulking that he’d been indulging in earlier on that evening. So Thor reaches for Loki’s leather-clad arm ready to drag him out into the corridor and thence to the main hall and-

He lets go immediately. For a moment he just stands there, looking at his hand, and then looking at Loki, ever familiar.

Loki, who is cold as the ice around them.

“Thor?” There’s an edge to Loki’s voice, more worried than confused, but definitely a bit of both. “You said that we’re going to be late.”

“Yes.” Thor nods. Tries to shake the strangeness away. “Yes, I did.” It must just be that Loki’s been outside. It’s howling up a gale out there, and the chill must be lingering on his clothes and-

Loki has always run colder than Thor. That’s all this is.

Carefully – and trying not to appear like he’s being careful – Thor reaches out once more, placing his hand on his brother’s shoulder under the guise of leading him out the door. Definitely chill. He lets his thumb brush the nape of Loki’s neck. Cold. So cold. Thor’s held corpses with more warmth in them.

“Your hands are boiling.” Loki laughs. “Have you been sitting next to the fire?”

Maybe it’s an aspect of Loki’s heritage? A way to endure the cold better by becoming cold?

It’s just that Thor had thought the Aesir half dominant in his brother. Is there more to his form than they’d thought?

“Come here.” He pulls Loki in closer to his side. “Let’s get you warmed up.” And then, as they walk into Laufey’s feast: “But don’t think you’ve got out of telling me where you’ve been.”

#

Their formal dinner is no less off-putting than their so-named welcoming ceremony. Thor sits up as straight as he can, yet is aware that Laufey-king, positioned just across the carved stone table, still dwarfs him. He tells himself that it’s petty to be bothered by this – words no less than he’s whispered to his brother many times when they were younger; when Loki never seemed quite so large as Thor had been at a comparable age – and yet he doesn’t believe his own dissembling.

For it’s not an ego thing, but rather something more ethereal and harder to pin down. Something rooted in his irritation in always having to be looking upwards; or maybe in the fact that whole conversations pass, literally, over his head.

Or maybe it’s simpler still, and can be explained by the giant’s immense reach; something that leaves the instincts in Thor’s blood and bones clamouring to summon Mjolnir to get the first blow in.

“Have you settled?” Laufey-king condescends to bend his neck as he addresses Thor, light catching and flickering across the table from the jagged spires of his ice crown. Thor wonders absently whether, should the giant lean forwards far enough, that display will topple from his host’s brow. And, if it does crash down, what it would weigh; how many it would maim.

Then he remembers tales of ice daggers condensing around the limbs of monsters of old and wonders if this is stuck tight with much the same magic. Whether that makes the crown less fearsome or more.

“Well, thank you.” And Thor bows his own neck, trying not to make the move as stiff as he would like. He is a guest here, and his mother had been at pains to emphasise how different that role might appear in their rivals’ realm. “We need for nothing.” Though they may want for much.

“Nothing save firewood,” but from the grunt that follows the end of those words, Loki’s already kicked Volstagg’s shin before Thor can. The warrior’s words were uttered low; Thor hopes Laufey-king missed them.

It turns out it’s a hope in vain. “We don’t burn wood here, Asgardian.” Laufey-king’s heir and second-born, Helblindi, leans in, past his older brother, Byleistr, rage flashing in eyes larger than many a shield Thor’s carried into battle. “Only a wastrel or a cheat would dare-“

“Their ways are not our ways.” On the surface, Laufey-king sounds bored by his heir’s ire; but Thor sees the hand that the king sweeps – too vast and imperial – to lay upon his child’s forearm; catches a hint of the pressure applied; the quelling looks exchanged only by bloodkin and-

He trips his mind up over his own thoughts. For Loki casts him many such looks, and yet they are not bloodkin. Not in full.

Of course, they have been raised in closest confidence and-

But Fandral never cools Thor so pointedly nor-

He’s missed something of Laufey’s words, Thor realises. Something about guest rights and hospitality and – quite possibly – firewood. Is it a failing in a prince to hope that his brother will be able to fill in that which he has missed?

“Have you no preference, Odinson?” It would, naturally, have to be one of those types of questions that he’s failed to catch.

Resigned to confessing to his wandering mind and asking their rather brusk host to indulge him so much as to repeat himself, Thor pulls a wry smile.

“Well, there are many things I would like to know about.” Loki talks blithely over the awkward moment. “For starters, what magics have this realm?” And despite the clear intention of his brother to cover for him, Thor feels fragile delight unfurl in him that finally Loki admits to some interest in his mother’s realm.

Even if, Loki being Loki, he has to ask after the feminine arts.

Everyone’s looking at Loki now. Not all expressions are so fond as the look Thor suspects himself of having donned. Loki, never one to miss a chance to perform, blinks. Raises one hand to his throat as though startled to embarrassment. “Oh. Wait. Do you mean the other Odinson?”

“Of course, my father means him!” Helblindi thrusts a huge finger in Thor’s direction, face drawn in lines of irritation as he snarls at Odin’s other son. “Who’d care a jot for the opinions of a snot-nosed runt like you?”

Loki’s face flushes; eyes narrowing ‘til they are but twin pricks of light in the shadow.

Thor sincerely hopes that he’s the only one who recognises the brutal twist that curves across his brother’s lips. Wishes he had the diplomacy to head off this sudden spawning of disaster even as he wants nothing more than to lean across the table; grab the furs that adorn the Jotunn prince’s shoulders; and test his might against this giant.

Which is exactly what his father fears Thor will do on Jotunheim.

He tries to bite his temper down. “Well now…” But, what more words can he add to that? His mind is blank; his tongue lead. “Maybe if…”

“Shapeshifting.” Laufey-king leans back in his throne. The ice groans and snaps beneath his shifting bulk, but no fissures open. Rather cold blossoms in Thor’s veins, helping quell his irritation. More Winter Realm magic? Just how much control do the Jotunn hold over the ice?

Odin’s grasp of the Dark Magic of the sun and the stars seems boundless. Even Thor’s affinity for the storms that rage – here, in Asgard, anywhere he’s roamed – is unbreakable. Of course a realm’s king would have his powers.

And then he realises their host is answering Loki. “Ice crafting.” Those giant fingers are spread wide, a surprisingly delicate gesture, and while the shapes that bloom between them are of a Jotunn longboat, Thor can imagine more easily the cutting edge of a blade. “Spells for the hunting of fish or beasts.” A dark look to the ravens roosting in his hall. “Birds.”

Or gods, Thor surmises. But Laufey doesn’t capitalise on his unspoken threat. “I would have my Skald tell you more, save that said Skald has…” Another circling hand gesture. It looks… oddly theatrical. Or, rather, meaningful.

Do the Jotunn, too, use signs in their hunts, the better to silently track their quarry?

It would be stupid to assume that they don’t.

And then Thor realises that there’s another gap in the conversation. One that he should be filling with words. Failing, failing, failing. Thor struggles to put the thought aside though, thankfully, Loki again doesn’t leave him floundering: “Your Skald has what?”

“Gone.” Laufey-king nods. And then, before Thor can wonder whether the giant left willingly or in a funerary-boat, he is told: “They do that, damn chattering dreamers. Back and forth like birds. You’re best to save your witching questions ‘til the return.”

Which is a clear opening to move on to more earthly things and leaves Thor in something of a quandary, for what Thor wants to ask about are flowers and blades. One flower and one blade in particular. And although flowers and their resulting drugs will lead to the wrong type of questions (“Tell me, Odinson, why do you want a poison lethal to the Aesir?”), blades are no safer a topic. He imagines asking to seek out Laufey’s armoury and the all-but-certain repercussions of that request. Puts aside his heartfelt questions in favour of a more politic one, “It would be an honour to me to learn more of your realm.” Though please not the libraries, even if they’ve books on Jotunn hybrids. Thor’s spent enough time drowning in books of late.

From the gritting of Helblindi’s teeth, Thor’s request is no better received than Loki’s, but his father’s already nodding slowly. Those great eyes are half-closed, the expression so perfectly that of a cat watching a mouse that Thor’s palm resumes itches to summon Mjolnir: he’s no weakling to be evaluated for flaws.

He bites his tongue.

“Well, you could accept my invitation to tour around my city. Though I’ll thank you to refrain from carrying arms within its limits.” Keep smiling, Thor tells himself. And, though the fight should lie in not looking alarmed at the request that he travel unarmed, instead Thor’s battle is all to not look disappointed. For truly it doesn’t matter how many diplomatic walks he’s granted on his father’s behalf; they’ve never grown interesting. He doubts receiving such a tour is any better. “Or, if I recall my Aesir customs correctly, you might prefer to venture into our countryside, perhaps upon a hunt?”

Winter’s Shine grows in the wilds.

“A hunt seems charming.”

It’s the wrong things to say. Thor can’t put his finger on what he’s said or insinuated or done. And yet, it’s been done all the same. This time when Laufey-king and Helblindi exchange a glance, it’s one of perfect understanding. What’s worse, Loki’s face is suddenly pale and drawn in mostly-hidden alarm.

“I’m not certain that Thor means-”

“So be it, Odinson.” How is it that every word from Laufey-king seems rich in condemnation?

“Normally people ask what is it that their hunt will be seeking out before excitedly rushing forth.” Helblindi seems almost smug.

“I’m certain I’ve fought bigger.” It’s not even meant to be a brag. It’s just that this conversation seems to be sliding from bad to worse; Thor’s own mouth not least of the parties making things worse.

“Bigger than that?” Helblindi points to a high-up section of frieze; the scene showing ants battling fanged mice. Or so it seems until Thor’s eyes adjust to the scale; to the reality that there are no ants on Jotunheim.

“A most fearsome monster.” Thor hears himself say, apparently blithe. “And, come the morrow, we’ll go in hunt of one.” He wonders if Loki’s shoulder will have recovered from his Name’s Day joust. If maybe he can persuade Loki to stay close, or whether the potential blow to his brother’s pride isn’t worth the risk. It’s not like it’s in Loki’s nature to put himself in deliberate danger; no, that’s more Thor’s own forte.

“Delightful.” But Volstagg sounds troubled.

Thor tells himself not to note this. “I, myself, am a great fan of hunts. Why, my fondest childhood recollections include travelling to Alfheim, there to do battle with their boars and-”

“I think you’ll find the tann-mus of somewhat greater challenge.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment when, wind eroded carving aside, Thor’s none-the-wiser about his prey. Laufey-king frowns down at them. “And while convention suggests I should ask you for the answer to my riddle tonight, I suggest we put that aside. If you’re to hunt, you’ve a long way to ride in the morrow, and an early start to make.”

#

The one advantage of having his stupidity provoke his brother so, is that when they reach their room Thor doesn’t need to go in search of Loki. Rather, Thor’s not allowed to escape him. “Are you an idiot? A hunt? Do you want to give them the perfect cover for killing us?”

“No one’s killing anyone.” Thor tries to keep his voice down; to lean in close to Loki and hide their words. He hopes that Laufey’s set none of those shapeshifting witches to infiltrating their rooms and watching them fight.

He takes a chance in looking away from a more-than-usually irritated Loki, and makes a quick headcount, but can’t find himself much reassured upon confirming the correct number of Aesir.

Shapeshifters! Why had nobody mentioned that?

“Thor! You cannot possibly-”

“It’s an escorted hunt.” Admittedly in a land of giants. “I will only take experienced warriors with us.” The scholar and healer and their guard allocations will have to remain here. Helblindi wasn’t wrong when he said Thor could have asked after their prey before agreeing to ride out. For that matter, it might have been an idea to corner the giant and ask after the next morning’s plan; for maps; recommendations; even whether they are to walk or to ride.

Does Jotunheim have horses?

But Loki is more important.

“Us?” Loki steps back. Shakes his head. “Oh no. I’m staying right here.”

“For what?” To sulk in the dark? “It will be good to get out of the city.” Truly, Thor can’t think of a situation where having less people around to scrutinise the two of them would made things worse. “It will be fun.” For him, certainly; for everyone else, probably.

“I want to stay here.”

“The fresh air will do you good.” But, like a reminder to check his armour after every bout, or to clean a blade after every blood-letting, Thor feels his own habits reminding him: This is Loki. There’s always another possible reason behind his choices.

Loki is snorting; gesturing to the unadorned and rattling windows. “No fear of running short of that, outside or in.” But Thor’s mind is back to their words before the feast. To Loki’s vanishing act. Something Thor’s absence from his side can only make easier for Loki to repeat.

“Where were you earlier?” His brother’s lips thin; no answer is made forthcoming. So be it. “Loki.” Exasperation grants Thor’s voice a sharper note than he’d planned. Yet, now spoken, his word cannot be unspoken. And Loki’s eyes already hold the tone against him. So let that bitterness bear some positive fruit. “You will be there tomorrow. At the hunt. And we will have a merry time.”

#

Thor’s never been one to have a favourite time of day. How can someone choose between the warmth of an evening’s companionable drinking, or the heat of the midday sun beating down on the sparring fields? Or the wonder of a new day dawning, forging afresh all that came before it?

A morning in Jotunheim is no small thing to behold.

The world, as they climb slowly the low, rolling hills around the city, feels muffled; thick snow weighing down sounds as soon as they’re born; smothering them in a thick blanket of white from which nothing should emerge.

And yet, Thor and Loki, Sif and Hogun and the Warriors Two, plus a gaggle of four Einherjar acting as an honour guard, do emerge from that snow. They are circled by Helblindi and six of his giants. Laufey-king has lent them his ‘prized’ rask-kaninrev; creatures that seem like a strange cross between a fox larger than a man, and a rabbit. And, while it should feel confining, to be riding in the midst of a group of towering Jotunn warriors, the creatures’ loping, jumping gait covers ground fast enough to keep all beings well-spaced as they race – first Aesir first, then Jotun, then Aesir again – below a sky both open and arctic-blue.

Overhead, a raven flaps lazily across the stillness, for the night has taken with it the previous day’s storm, and, as they put leagues between themselves and the city – as the sun just barely starts to crest the mountains that run wild in this realm – only one cloud remains on the horizon.

Namely: Helblindi.

Laufey-king is, understandably and maybe even believably, too busy to ride out, even if it would have been as escort to the sons of his old enemy and current master. His heir is not. And thus the two bloodlines of princes have been bidden to go forth together.

It’s a situation Helblindi seems to find even less pleasure in than Thor would have predicted. Maybe Thor should make a matched pair of he and Loki? Twin sulking princes of Yggdrasil. Mayhaps if he travels further across the realms, Thor can even find himself a whole set of nine?

“It’s not that bad.” He calls out to Loki, hoping to convey some cheer, but Loki is sporting the disposition of a scorned cat and merely turns his mount to slink to the back of their pack.

“Let him be.” It’s with surprise that Thor realises the hand to staying him from turning his own beast is Hogun’s, the solider so bundled up in furs that for a moment he could be Volstagg.

“General.” Thor nods, stiff and awkward, but not yet affronted.

“It’s clear Prince Loki needs some space. I’ll keep an eye on him, my prince, but,” this with a nod towards Helblindi’s broad back, “you have other duties to attend to.” Unfortunately, Hogun is not wrong.

“My thanks.” Thus it is that Thor instead directs his rask to shadow Helblindi’s beast.

For a moment he remains alongside the giant, enjoying a break from a wind he hadn’t even realised icy until freed of it. Then he fears that his relief might be obvious and so noses his own rask slightly further abreast of the Jotunn prince. The beast, warm-blooded though its snorting breath indicates it to be, is so covered in thick fur that barely any heat escapes its pelt to warm Thor.

“Where lies our prey?”

“Not here.” Helblindi barely deigns to look sidelong at Thor. “So must be further, correct?”

“Further?” Fandral has drawn level, and Sif too. “Helpful that.” And Thor cannot bring himself to disagree.

Ahead, the snow stretches without break or let. Thor cannot see how such a vast creature as Helblindi described could possibly be found nearby. However, ahead, the hills grow higher and steeper until, at some ill-defined point, mountains soar. Is that the jagged terrain they’ll need to reach to find their quarry? Certainly the rough workings of that scene in Laufey-king’s feasting hall had hinted as much.

Trying to find cause to rally ahead of the long, cold, ride, Thor reminds himself that Winter’s Shine is said to bloom best in such wilderness. Maybe he will achieve two of his goals on this day?

#

It’s hope that keeps him warm until midday, when the sudden realisation that the sun is no longer gaining height and yet they are still heading away from the city gives Thor pause. “Are we to camp out here tonight?” For certainly they have brought no equipment for this purpose.

“If you wish.” Helblindi says, apparently agreeable. But Thor notices that it’s not a ‘yes’.

He pushes down on his sudden doubts. Tries to remember to be cordial to his host. “I thought we would be at the hunting ground by now.” Though if it’s the mountains proper, they have further yet to go. Much, much further.

“Or is this the hunting ground?” Sif looks every inch an Asgardian warrior – surely even the Valkyrie of old couldn’t rival her fire? – but it’s a fire banked beneath a thick woollen coat and her lips, when Thor looks at her, are purple, bordering on blue.

“Well,” Helblindi shrugs. “It’s a hunting ground.” That it’s not a good one, evidently doesn’t need clarifying.

For a moment, Thor’s stuck dumb with outrage. For if what Helblindi is implying is true… If they have been riding around a wasteland all day, looking for something never likely to appear and… “You knew there was nothing here.” Thunder rumbles in the distance, and Thor won’t say he has nothing to do with that.

“I suppose there could have been.”

A whole day, wasted on a long slow ride in the cold? And for what?

Normally, when people face Thor’s gathering rage, they falter. Helblindi grins; his first sign of mirth all day. “Don’t you enjoy our beautiful scenery, outlanders?”

“We were after tann-mus, not views!”

“I might have been after tann-mus, Odinson,” Helblindi sneers. “As for you and yours, I cannot speak.”

Thor thinks his teeth might break, so hard must he bite his tongue. “Why?” Is this some sort of… joke? A petty trick at their expense?

But for what purpose?

“Why, you say? You are the ones who all appeared more interested in frolicking in the lowland snow than a hard day’s hunt.” Helblindi tilts his vast head, eyes narrowing scornfully. “Which fits. Aesir: only driven by fun and ease.”

The giant’s fist clenches. Maybe he’s expecting Thor to forget himself; to lash out? For them to unleash violence against one another and thence-

The only thing staying Thor’s wrath at the dig is his confusion. Because surely Helblindi can’t have drawn them out here for simple mockery? Yet what ulterior motive he can have?

Horror flows like ice over the violence of Thor’s temper. For there can be no rational reason, unless it has been to have the Aesir warriors leave Bergljot and Hlifthrasa but lightly guarded and-

But to attack a healer? The consequences would be-

“So, what says you, Odinson?” Helblindi asks, face almost innocent. “Didn’t you have a lovely day?”

“It’s been lovely, Prince Helblindi. Most generous.” Sif’s voice is flat; her face shows no reflections of Thor’s wild fears. “But if there’s to be no hunting, then we should turn back.” There’s a slight question on the end of that; a glance in Thor’s direction. He manages to nod tersely. “And next time we head hunting, maybe we should have a better plan.”

It’s clear she means her words as a rebuke, slight though it is, against their leader for the day. But Helblindi seems overjoyed. “A plan, the Asgardians say? Before wondering off into the wilderness? Oh, aye, I suppose a plan might have helped you. Maybe next time you should make one.” And then, with a snort of mockery, he turns his mount, heading back along the trail they’ve forged.

Thor watches him go. Rage crackles under his skin.

“Thor?”

So, a prank then. Well, that or a test. Something that Helblindi – aye, and Laufey, too, most likely – had concocted. To pretend to be in charge, then claim that it was Thor’s group who led them astray and-

“Thor, are you alright?”

But they had taken the lead at times this morning. Fandral, Sif, Thor himself, even Volstagg. They’d raced at the front of the group and-

It’s just that it had been for sport. Not actually with the intention to inform the course of their day in an unknown territory and-

Thor’s not sure if he’s more disappointed by the lack of a hunt, or the unfamiliar humiliation of finding out he has apparently been mocked all day. Tricked, all day. His face feels like it’s burning, so that warmth is a small mercy.

He’s not sure what to say. Save that, apparently, he’s not as suited to diplomacy as he’d hoped.

“That could have gone better.” Volstagg reins his rask in besides them.

Thor nods, and, still not trusting himself to talk, turns his mount to follow their steps back.

#

One good thing about the smooth and easy snow field is that, at least if Helblindi means to make fools of them a second time by bodging their return navigation, Thor’s fairly certain he knows the route back to the city. Though they’ll be arriving after dark and in the bitter cold.

Cold, when everyone already looks miserable in the icy wind.

Thor’s so lost in looking at the chilled, cheated Aesir around him as they make their way slowly down, off the slopes, that it takes a moment for him to realise what he’s looking at. Indeed, he’s nearly besides Loki and Hogun – resolutely bringing up the rear all day – when he reigns his mount in, startled. For Loki is an almost indistinct shape, hunched in on himself and bundled up in what – Thor realises after a moment – are furs Hogun must have lent him. He looks absolutely freezing.

And yet, the night before, he had walked outside with apparently no ill effect.

Thor draws his massive rask closer to his brother’s. “Are you well?” For, truly, Loki looks miserable.

“Fine.” The single bitten-out word sounds miserable, too. Thor can’t remember ever seeing his brother ill at ease in the cold before.

“You don’t look-” Thor starts, doubtful.

“I said I’m fine!” So. It’s going to be one of those ‘conversations’.

But if he’s talking, then this malady, whatever it may, be is not the worst harm Loki’s ever received. Maybe he is simply struggling to acclimatise? They have been out far longer this day than Loki must have managed to escape for the previous night. Maybe his immunity to the chill, whatever it may be and however it exists, is not boundless?

None of which bodes well for their visit here. “Do you need…” to go home, is what Thor wants to say. That, and to apologise. Maybe the stress of the journey has gotten to Loki? Or maybe it’s a lingering effect of his joust? And here Thor is, dragging him about! Not listening earlier, when Loki had asked to stay in their rooms!

Maybe, unlikely though it seemed, Loki had just wanted to rest? Was maybe overwhelmed?

But they’re on Jotunheim now. And Thor can’t see how leaving his mother’s realm early can be beneficial for Loki. It’s not like Loki couldn’t have refused to come along in the first place. So Thor finds his words twist in his mouth, “Do you need anything?”

Loki’s “No” isn’t even a surprise.

And then, sullen and small, “We should have taken the tour”: Loki: who has been silent in his preferences thus far. The night before, and Thor might have thought that, by talking of viewing Laufey-king’s realm, Loki holds some interest in his roots, his heritage.

But now..? Thor’s known Loki too many turns of the seasons to read something so positive into the statement. Rather he fears Loki brooding; stewing on his ills and Thor’s failings.

At least the brooding has led to this; to a concrete statement that Thor can act upon, even if Loki doesn’t truly want it. “I’ll ask Laufey-king tonight.”

#

They return empty-handed.

In Asgard, that’s no small thing. Thor can’t remember leading a less bountiful hunt in all his days. However, Jotunheim is not Asgard, and Laufey-king seems unsurprised by their lack of tann-mus pelts and meat. Indeed, the feast table is already laden with fish from the deeps, many of which are unfamiliar to Thor.

Fish has ever been a favourite of Loki’s; maybe one person will be happy with today’s outcome? Thor chances a glance at his brother for confirmation. But, while Loki looks less wan than he had, little colour has returned to his cheeks, and his brows are drawn in lines which, while more thoughtful than furious, are none-the-less unhappy.

Thor aches to wrap an arm around his shoulders; to pull Loki in close and ask him what’s bothering him. (To ask if it’s all too much; if Loki wants to leave this place and return to Asgard.) It’s a foolish idea; Loki would no more accept the comfort than Sif, and Thor, yet to locate his Winter’s Shine, cannot depart. And, while Sif would vent the perceived slight with immediate violence, Loki, instead, will let it fester.

Thus it is that Thor keeps his peace. He doesn’t aggravate Loki with misplaced affection. Doesn’t rise to Helblindi’s bait over their day’s poor yield. Doesn’t grimace when taking a bite of some unnameable sea creature that crunches unpleasantly.

Instead, he does what he should have done the night before: he bows to convention. “Laufey-king. I believe that at our last meal you mentioned a tour?”

A day later, and he’s starting to get used to the strange sweeping motions the giant makes as he turns; the speed and unintended threat of it. “A tour and a riddle, Odinson.”

That damn riddle! How did it go? Something about a battle between the sea and the sun? Or a storm? “Well, tonight let us talk of the former.”

Notes:

I hope that you’re enjoying the story so far!

My animal names are, I’m afraid, entirely made up. The fearsome tann-mus is a bad Google translation from Norwegian of ‘tooth mouse’; while the rask-kaninrev is ‘fast-bunny fox’. Unfortunately, when it came to finding the names of fearsome monsters from Jotunheim, I came up rather blank. If anyone knows of more authentic MCU names, I’ve be very interested!

Chapter 3: Familiarization

Summary:

Thor and Loki settle into life in Jotunheim.

He should have asked Laufey-king for the tour that first night.

Gazing up at the edifice of rock and ice they are approaching, Thor finds that he owes his host an apology. And that maybe Laufey-king had the right of it in judging harshly a prince who’d choose a daytime’s ride over the opportunity to see this: the Winter Realm’s crowning building.

It’s distant yet; a fair walk from Laufey’s palace. Another of Laufey-king’s sons tends to them this day, Byleistr. Behind Thor and Loki and Byleistr, the near-full Aesir entourage fans out, accompanied by only a pair of Jotunn warriors.

The wide boulevard they traverse betwixt the two towers more resembles a canyon than an imperial city due to the roughhewn nature of the structures bracketing it. Shops or residences or establishments of some other purpose; Thor wouldn’t like to hazard to guess. For they all seem alien and lack the familiar markers he’s used to. They bear no painted sign to denote an inn, nor colourful bottles to mark out a witch’s apothecary, yet neither do they echo with the laughter of children playing nor the rote chanting of those in a schoolroom.

Briefly, he hesitates to call attention to his ignorance. But, where yesterday Helblindi had soured the day with his dark temper, Byleistr – their host for this day – seems mild and fair-tempered.

And besides, learning more of this land is surely a purpose of this tour?

“What are these structures?” Thor indicates to the closest building they are passing.

Byleistr smiles, “What do you think they are?”

“He wouldn’t has asked if he knew,” Loki snaps. And then, to Thor, “They’re charnel houses. Full of bones and- and doubtless, tasteful commemorative artefacts of great sentimental value.” Only the fact that Loki seems to remember to bite his tongue makes Thor suspect his brother’s telling the truth. But why would anyone fill a city with such structures?

“You seem to have read up on us.” Byleistr seems amused. He’s also not correcting Loki’s assessment.

Loki shrugs, then pulls his cloak more closely around himself. From another being, that nonchalance would be a confirmation, but Thor finds himself suspicious. Is this where his brother snuck off to that night? Yet for what purpose?

“The land to this side of the city is sacred.” Byleistr appears to straighten as he speaks; as though some of the area’s gravity makes its way into him. “This is where we remember our dead.”

Is it also where they nurse their grudges?

Thor forces the thought away. For though the Jotunn evidently don’t burn the bodies of their kin, is this really so different from Asgard? From the recounting of tales and anecdotes, back through the whole of one’s ancestors?

It feels different, but perhaps that is just the force of Thor’s lived habit? “So all of these buildings are in commemoration?”

“Indeed.” Spoken as though such massive construction is as unremarkable as a walk to the Silent Glade, near Asgard’s peak, where one may hew wood only for funerary ships. Maybe one day this realm will seem familiar? “We have a strong connection to our kinlines.”

“Must be nice,” Loki mutters.

Though Thor starts, looking rapidly to Loki, he misses whatever expression his brother may have worn. And a strange and curdling feeling seems to take up residence in his chest. That maybe he’ll even lose Loki to Jotunheim. Should they find his blood-mother. For Loki has never made bones over his discomfort in his adopted realm.

But surely Loki’s discontent is that of any growing youth? A simple testing of boarders and not something to be taken too seriously? For Loki is Thor’s brother and a future with distance between them is-

But that is Thor thinking of what’s best for himself, not what’s best for Loki.

Should he be looking for Loki’s blood-mother, too?

It’s… not something Thor had considered when extending the invitation to Loki. Dread tries to unfurl inside him; colder by far than the ice glinting in the walls around about. Maybe he should have thought this all out more. The Winter’s Shine; the diplomacy; Loki’s need to escape Asgard; the secrets around Loki’s birth; Thor wanting to learn about that cursed blade; Laufey’s riddle…. It’s all be coming rather jumbled and complex, not helped because none of his companions know a fraction of his goals.

And now he’s following giants whose motivation he fears to trust through a section of city whose purpose he cannot fathom.

The building they approach, however, cannot be mistaken. Thor knows little of Jotunn faith – if indeed they have one – but no one builds a glorious monumental structure like that ahead – all tall towers and vast arching spaces – unless they have something they intend to display.

And yet even the low, morning sunlight and the misty gusts Thor’s breath paints in the air, can’t hide that, for all its grandeur, it’s a damaged and decaying thing. It’s a dilapidation that grows more apparent with every step travelled closer; Thor has a feeling that he’s not going to like the reason behind the destruction and adjusts his cloak under the pretext of a chill, so that he can keep his hands busy.

Truly, it is another cold morning; for all that they’ve had a later start than the previous day. Thor’s accompanied by a different group today. Still his brother and companions, but also the healer and scholar: it seemed like the type of thing they should see.

All are well bundled up against the chill, save the few Einherjar along as an honour guard. Thor doesn’t envy them their armour in the cold, though he would like a spear in his hands. Not to start a fight, but just because-

“Stop faffing.” Fandral’s hand catches at his, smoothing over his fingers in their gloves. The other man leans in close, though his warmth seems to do little more than highlight the ever-present chill elsewhere. “You look like you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous!” It’s just that he’s not walked weaponless since… Well, as he’d had a toy blade in his fist since before he could crawl, Thor’s never walked weaponless. He’d feel less self-conscious with his head shaved bald!

Fandral – oldest friend, close companion, and far-more insightful about his prince than Thor’s sometimes comfortable with – gives Thor a deeply pointed look. “I know that. But they don’t. They’re not going to like it if they figure it out and realise you want Mj-” a discrete cough “-her.”

And Fandral’s not wrong that Thor can’t ask to walk around carrying a warhammer. Not when Laufey-king has prohibited weapons for aught but their honour guard within the city proper. In case their intentions were misunderstood, he’d said. And so to keep his Asgardian guests safe.

It doesn’t make Thor feel safe.

Still, there’s stone aplenty around if he needs a projectile to hurl.

They draw to a halt as the ‘street’ ends at the foot of the damaged building.

“The Temple of Winter.” As he draws himself up regally to announces it name, Byleistr’s pride is clear. The action leaves Byleistr at his full height, towering over Thor’s party, for he’s every bit as tall as his brother and father. More than that, he’s broader; a rare bulkiness of muscle and shoulder Thor’s not yet seen in this realm. It leaves Thor itching to invite Byleistr onto the training sands – or whatever else this realm may have in lieu of such a place – and test their respective mettle.

It’s probably not diplomatic for two princes to engage in a brawl. And it could definitely be open to misinterpretation by those who saw them.

“It’s lovely.” Thor tries to make his voice agreeable, carefully selecting the words that his parents would use on touring Alfheim or Vanaheim or even a new construction on Asgard.

Needless to say, he appears to offend his host; Byleistr puffs up, shoulders straight, head pulled back so far that all Thor can see of his face is an immense pair of nostrils. “It is exalted. An instantly recognisable sign of authority and power.”

“Um.” Put that way, ‘lovely’ does seem rather weak. Not that correcting an honoured guest is any more polite. Father would never let that stand. “As you say,” Thor’s not apologising for calling a thing lovely when it is, though he’s also not willing to start a fight over mere description. So, enough of pretending to be his parents on a tour. How does Loki respond when in trouble? Lie? No. Escape? No. Deflect: “Can we go inside?”

Byleistr hesitates, and Thor wonders if this is one of those ‘only those with the blood of…’ locations. But then the giant nods. “I will permit it.”

Byleistr will permit it? Interesting. “You are master of this temple, then?”

And this time when Byleistr rears back, it’s less in insult, and more in pride. “And so do I serve my realm.”

Thor can’t imagine being born so much stronger than the others of one’s realm and not wanting the glory of being a warrior. But each to their own. “I look forward to all that you can tell me of this place.”

And that, it appears, is the correct thing to say.

#

Inside, the temple doesn’t appear quite so careworn. The Asgardian tour scatters to explore though, out of obligation, Thor remains close by Byleistr. It’s hardly an imposition, as Byleistr has many tales to tell. Of the nave down which they walk; of the smooth ice and deep hewn images; and of the unshuttered windows high above, the better to let in not just the light, as Thor had first assumed, but also the wind. “For she carries with her secrets.” And Byleistr’s rugged visage appears lightened as he speaks of the wind, like a man with a lover.

Thor, thinking of Mjolnir and the storms she helps him call, cannot but agree with the sentiment.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard a female aspect invoked since arriving.” Not entirely true, for there’s been the Lady Sif, Healer Hlifthrasa and the Scholar Bergljot to introduce. But it’s a correct enough observation in the spirit of things. Thor’s beginning to wonder if rumours of his wenching ways have led Laufey-king to hide all his maidens away.

Byleistr laughs. “And now I know how deep the ignorance of Asgard runs.” But for all that the words are rude, Byleistr’s tone is more that of an amused comrade on the training grounds; one laughing as you find yourself – through your own folly – laid out in the sands.

“Well,” Thor picks his way carefully between tumbled blocks of ice, intent on heading towards a spiral staircase he’s spied, “a kind heart would use this moment to relieve me of my ignorance.”

“And if I’m not kind?” But it’s still spoken in that easy, metered tone.

“Well, a trickster might use the moment to set themselves up for future fun and me for future embarrassment.” And, yes, that’s a situation Thor knows well enough.

Though Loki’s tricks have been absent of late.

No. Not ‘of late’. But since the revelation about his birth. One doesn’t have to have cunning insight into the hearts of gods to read his half-brother’s sudden insecurity. Thor kicks at a loose ice shard, only realising that this might be rude after it’s shot off.

“You look troubled.”

Damn. Caught. “I am transparent, it would appear.” And he tries a smile, because it always works on friendlier realms.

But Jotunheim is not Asgard nor Vanaheim or Alfheim. And frost giants seem not overly fond of smiling.

Still, after a long, considering look, Byleistr lets Thor drop it, nodding instead to the stairs. “It’s not safe.” Which, given all of the fallen ice, comes as no surprise. Expecting to be turned back, Thor hesitates, but Byleistr just moves on past him. “Don’t fall and kill yourself. My father would be furious.”

Thor’s yet to find a fall that can kill him. “If I had Mjolnir, I could fly.”

But that just gets him a dark frown; clearly Byleistr’s not the path to get around Thor’s city-based weapons ban. “You’re small as a goose-feather. I’m certain you’d just float safely down.”

Is it perverse for Thor to suddenly really want to meet giant geese? “Alas, that is not the case.”

At first, the steps are easy enough, though so tall that he must jump for each stair. Any spiral sufficiently wide for a Jotunn presents Thor no problems with finding space to navigate, even when rubble strewn. Then they pass above the temple’s main roof.

The stairs continue, unenclosed.

“Hels!”

But it’s not the height or the drop of it that tears the word from Thor’s lips. Rather it’s the wind. Loud and tugging and vigorous as Ran’s daughters; dragging a man to his doom. And all around them, as she dances through the whipped and torn ice spearing the roof, she sings.

Yes, this wind is a woman.

A jealous one, from the way she wants to steal Thor from the steps. And so it’s with a good deal more care that he continues scrambling from one riser up to the next.

Such is the wind’s power that speech is impossible until, almost as unexpectedly as she greeted them, the wind is gone. They climb the last few steps in comparative peace until they reach…

“What is this place?” Thor looks around the chamber. Open arches present an unrivalled view over the realm but, at its centre, lies an empty pedestal. Despite that emptiness, the room is- “It’s lovely.” He snaps his jaw shut. “Spacious. That’s what I mean. It’s very, very spacious. For being so high up.” Babbling: which is hardly any better.

Byleistr doesn’t seem to notice. Rather his hand is lowered, mournful as a lady touching her errant lover’s token, to gently graze the pedestal. “Here once rested the Casket of Ancient Winters.”

Ah.

“Sacked,” Byleistr says, “By Odin the Brute.”

Thor aches to snap back; to fire off a retort built of Jotunheim’s crimes against Midgard; of Asgard’s need to hold the frost giants in check. Reminds himself that this should be a moment for peace and reconciliation. Forces back the rage, but cannot help the gathering churning of the clouds and the way the gale starts to sing through the open windows. Mayhap here no one will look to such a disturbance and attribute it to him?

“It’s a very lovely temple.” He manages. Kicks himself. Is grateful that Byleistr remains lost in thought, but worries that those thoughts are bitter. Better to distract his host. “The ice-carvings are-” Not lovely, don’t say lovely-

“Lovely?” But Byleistr, roused from his contemplation, appears amused rather than offended. And so Thor lets it stand. “Well then, Prince Thor, let me tell you something of them. Here, you can see the Primordial Sea from which we all came and the Trickster Sky who-”

#

“So.” Thor says. The day is turning, and they have left the Temple and its strange beauty and misery behind, heading yet further out of the city. It seems as good a time as any to resurrect their interrupted line of reasoning. “Where are all these women I’m too ignorant to see?” Maybe it’s like the dwarves, where everyone has beards?

One of their Jotunn escorts snorts disparagingly, but Byleistr cuts the giant off. His expression is on the serene side of amused when he looks at Thor; like a mother beholding a mischievous child. Thor tries not to let the expression get to him, for he’s here to learn of his brother’s heritage and-

“There are no women in Jotunheim,” Byleistr says, then seems curiously disappointed when Thor doesn’t react.

Thor mostly isn’t reacting, because he’s noticed Loki has sidled up, nearer to them, and is avidly listening. And, if this conversation is even possibly going where Thor thinks it is, there is not a thought in existence that is going to be safe to show before those sharp eyes.

And Thor will keep the conversation going. Has to do so, for Loki doesn’t look inclined to weigh in and pursue it himself, yet doubtless will run wild with speculation if not given fact.

Assuming that Loki’s not already aware of the truth of this, which, considering how Loki’s been about his ‘mother’, is less likely than usual for a topic of ‘forgotten knowledge’.

“So you’re all…” Is it rude to say ‘hermaphrodite’?

“Lovely?” Byleistr grins. “Why, thank you.”

Oh, Norns! If he laughs, Loki will kill him, and if he doesn’t, then Byleistr might take offence.

Thor smiles, rueful. “I clearly need to work on my diplomatic vocabulary.”

“Well, at least you don’t have to worry about memorizing gendered nouns for this realm.” Byleistr turns them down a side street. “There’s no she-rask or he-rask, only rask; no bull- or cow-whale, only whale.”

“But you’re all ‘he’.” Thor checks. Because, if Byleistr is speaking true, then he may as well get this information from the least irritable frost giant he’s met. That, and appraise his mother of a much needed addition to her “briefing on the Jotunn”.

And if Byleistr’s pulling his leg? Well, Thor will keep his mind open to that unlikely possibility.

“’He’ is better than ‘it’, if I understand correctly. And your Allspeak has many… quirks.”

Which is not wrong. “No one uses ‘she’?”

“The Skalds are women,” one of the guards cuts in unexpectedly.

“Magic is a woman.” Byleistr corrects. “And primal forces are. We use it for the… other… side of reality. As for the Skalds…” He shrugs and Thor gets the impression that, be they ‘women’ or ‘men’, Skalds aren’t really of interest for wenching. Well, not to a Jotunn warrior.

And…

Thor shuts down all possible thought processes as to how this might affect his half-brother or, for that matter, what it might mean for his father’s dalliance. He’s currently more than aware of Loki’s death glare between his shoulder blades. His brother will not welcome Thor’s unfounded speculation.

Thus it would appear that it is time for a diversion. Ahead, he sees an unexpectedly open-looking stone building. “What’s that structure?”

“It’s the library.” Byleistr says, offhand.

And Thor’s turning to Loki, intending to smile; perhaps to ask if he’d like for them to head in that direction. To maybe even engineer a moment alone with him, to check Loki’s not too… bothered… by Byleistr’s words. Yet, when he looks at Loki, his brother’s face is calm, almost disinterested. As if nothing in the building holds any interest for him.

“Don’t you want to go in?” Thor asks, more sharply than he intends. For surely Loki can’t mean to sulk over the wrongs of his heritage – perceived or otherwise –for the entirety of their trip!

But it’s Byleistr who laughs. “Whatever for? It’s just old tablets. Births and deaths. Even the Skalds barely bother looking in there for learning. Come on! Let me show you something worth seeing!”

But Byleistr already has. For, just like that, Thor knows what his brother had been seeking out when he should have been resting. Because of course, Loki has already found the library!

(But has he found reference to his own birth? And why hasn’t he spoken with Thor about this?)

If Loki feels the sudden sharpening of Thor’s regard, he doesn’t let it register in his gait or face. And yet Thor would bet much indeed that his surmise is correct.

When Byleistr once more draws ahead in his eagerness to be seen leading them, Thor lets his steps draw him closer to Loki’s side. “Did you find-” damn, what pronoun to use for a ‘mother’ from an all-male race? “-her?”

Loki’s face doesn’t so much as twitch. His eyes remain straight ahead, as though only one direction matters to him today. Just when Thor, disappointed, thinks his question will go unanswered, Loki makes the smallest of head-shakes; barely enough to sway his hair.

“Oh.” And Thor can’t help but pull Loki into a one armed hug, careful to keep them moving, but otherwise uncaring of their hosts’ opinions. “I’m sorry.”

#

Their hosts, whatever else they may think of the Aesir, are unconcerned about making them walk. If Thor had thought the Temple at the far end of Laufey-king’s city, then their continued stroll takes them into the start of the wilderness.

Oh, it’s a plain enough start to the snow fields they’d rode over yesterday, but there’s nothing tamed about the land. Fissures riddle the area, feeling like canyons to Thor, though the giants step over them with ease, and Byleistr leads them with a confidence that comes from knowing well the shattered and hidden landscape.

Small though the fissures might be to giants, they’re plenty big enough to hide many of the predators from other realms. Thor’s palm itches for Mjolnir afresh. “Where do we head?” For if it’s a far trek from the giants’ dwellings, then surely he can call her to his side with no offence?

“Not far now.” Though that’s not what Thor had asked.

“There seems little for a tour here.” And much for an ambush. Truly, Byleistr has been too friendly!

And, today, Thor’s brought the defenceless with him: the scholar and healer alike.

“I thought you liked traipsing, unknowing, about the hillside.” But maybe some of Thor’s distrust and ill-ease shows on his face – Norns know, he’s never been good for hiding such – for Byleistr relents in his teasing. “There is a cave ahead. One of legend.”

“Legend?” Thor’s pulse quickens. For surely nothing is of more myth and portent in this realm than a certain small flower? One that could save a Jotunn and damn any other. But it never hurts to be sure: “What type of legend?”

Yet, now that his temper is eased, his mind eager, Byleistr is once more disinterested in answering questions. “As I said, it’s not far now.”

Thor tries not to let his steps draw quick and eager, for in this icy realm naught thus far has been as he would expect. And yet still, when he arrives, he is disappointed.

For though he’s dared hope that, in heading beyond the city’s immediacy, he might get a glimpse of Jotunheim’s five-petalled flowers, he finds his hope in vain.

Instead what he spies is a rather disappointing gap in a crevasse wall. It’s shallow enough to clearly see to the far wall and is utterly without interest. A dragon could have scooped out such a hollow with a single misplaced tail swing. And access isn’t even possible; the bottom of the cave full – as such spaces often are – with muddy standing water.

“This is a very worthy cave.” For it seems that he’s expected to say something.

Byleistr gives him a dark look. Makes a grunt, that Thor tries to take as thanks, for it’s that or feel unease-banked rage surge within him again. (And if he’d thought that he’d leashed that temper since he met future Loki and her unspoken tale of trouble; the Frozen Realm continually shows him otherwise.)

The giant turns from Thor and the pool, heading for the cave’s entrance. “Let us go.”

A half league trek, for a cave it took less than a heartbeat to see the entirety of?

Thor glances at Loki, but Loki’s face is as bored and closed as ever it gets. If his brother’s found anything odd in their excursion, he’s hiding it unnaturally well. More likely the atmosphere of their trip is taking its toll on Thor; filling his mind with dark and unlikely suspicions.

“Well! I’ve had my jest.” Byleistr claps his hands together and, ignoring the small cascades of ice this disturbance causes to patter down around them, gestures still further ahead in the chill, blue-white landscape. “We’re actually heading for the armoury. My father thought you might enjoy seeing the young ones spar.”

Thor smiles and nods and agrees that watching sparring is – almost – as good as participating in it, but inside his mind is churning. Byleistr’s enthusiasm about his legendary cave hadn’t seemed like a trick. “Your father intends for me to see his weapon house?”

“Indeed. You should be honoured.”

Thor would be. Really. Save that, “It’s an awfully long way from his hall.” What use are weapons, held so far away?

Unless they are too dangerous to maintain closer at hand? But then why would Laufey-king reveal them to him?

Byleistr laughs. “Gods walk slow in comparison to giants. If you’ll forgive such a truth.”

“And gods can fly faster than giants run.” If only they have their hammers. But that still doesn’t explain why Laufey-king wants him to see such a space.

As a bare and austere structure – more barn than keep – looms into view, Thor wonders anew if he should be worried. If he should send Bergljot and Hlifthrasa back, the better to ensure that they are safe.

Yet this is a royally granted tour. Even a frost giant wouldn’t dare desecrate such a duty?

Even more than his worries, within him is growing a new hope. The flight of fancy taking hold of him that, maybe here, he’ll find knowledge of that vanished black blade – the one to so incurably wound his brother.

One look around their destination, and it’s gone. The armoury is threadbare and basic. A square chamber of immense dimensions to a god, but a mere box room to a Jotunn. Metal, of the conventional type, lies rusting; wood slowly crumbling into decay.

“This is…”

“Not lovely?” Byleistr offers. Thor has a feeling this trip will birth mockery he’ll never live down.

Thus surely it’s acceptable to speak plain? “I was expecting… more.”

Byleistr shrugs, immense shoulders disappearing up into the gloom and coming down coated in ice, thick as a polar cap, or so it seems to Thor, and studded with icicles larger than he. “Why debase ourselves before dwarves and godlings, begging for goods for which we have no need?”

Which is true, so far as it goes. Though Thor’s never met a people unwilling to lay claim to more. Yet here he bites his tongue and stops his questions; has to stop for fear of giving the appearance of suspecting Jotunheim of harbouring arms forbidden them by the Allfather (and despite the fact that, yes, Thor does fear as much) for surely that’s what Laufey-king wishes to achieve with this portion of this trip – for Thor to relay to his father the Jotunns’ lack of warmongering?

“Come. Let me show you where the youngsters spar.”

#

A feast follows when they return that night, chilled to the marrow but – for Thor at least – smiling and delighted. More fish, fresh from the seas, and the charred but succulent meat of some winged creature. The giant goose of which Byleistr spoke, perhaps?

Laufey-king’s hall bears none of the grandeur of the Allfather’s Valaskjalf. Its shattered roof holds no heat, only birds, and the dim, fireless illumination does little to supplement the distant stars’ shimmer. The supposedly feasting warriors are quiet and haunch protectively over their food. Yet for all that, the occasional thread of laughter cracks the grim illusion, aided by lavish piles of furs to hold back the winter’s chill.

Thor pulls one over his knees, letting his fingers run through the lush pile as he tucks into the food before him. Was this once part of the realm’s wealth? Furs to barter along with their silver and diamonds? Now untradeable with the Allfather’s post-war embargo.

Or have the Jotunn only ever raided and taken?

“Is this tann-mus fur?” He asks of Laufey-king. For surely such a pelt would be well worth a second attempt at hunting.

“That?” Laufey smirks. “Even given that the colour and the pile are both wrong, the size is too small. That’s a beist skin.” And then, when Thor thinks their conversation is ended now that he’s been put in his ignorant place, the giant points to a rich silver and blue carpet spanning the far wall. “That’s tann-mus hide, princeling.” Thor tries not to grind his teeth too loudly; suspects Laufey knows non-the-less. “Good meat on the creatures, but better fur. Warm. Enduring.” And then, unexpected as an Uru hammer hauling one through thin air: “Got off-cuts from one around somewhere. Might be worth finding some bits for yon sibling of yours. Doesn’t seem cut out for our chill.”

Sure enough Loki, perched at the end of the high bench, looks grey and still. With his dinning-dagger, he’s slowly stirring about the bird-wing on his plate; seemingly more interested in studying the bones than picking clean the flesh for eating. Next to him, Volstagg is toasting some mock-achievement of Sif; neither apparently aware of the withdrawn look on their companion’s face.

Unaware or overly familiar with it? Loki’s ever been quiet. But Laufey-king doesn’t know as much.

“Please pardon, Loki. I believe him to be somewhat unwell.” Having Laufey take against Loki just due to a quirk of his brother’s cagy nature seems poor planning on Thor’s behalf. Especially if they are determined to find Loki’s true blood… mother? parent?... and might need the king’s good will in the future for permission to visit again.

“Ill?” Laufey laughs. “An Asgardian under the weather? Has Muspelheim frozen over and Fenris Wolf shed your sister’s grip?”

Sister? “Loki’s my brother, not my sister,” Thor corrects the king, but does so as carefully as he can. For once Laufey-king doesn’t seem to have meant offence. And for a being from a realm with but one gender, perhaps it’s not surprising that he occasionally makes such errors?

Besides, Loki is gifted with witchcraft and Byleistr had claimed the feminine to denote Seidr in this realm.

“And on Asgard, we say that Fenris Wolf has caught someone when they grow wan. Not escaped their grip.” But something in the exchange is… disquieting. Maybe only because: “We only use that phrase when someone’s death is near certain.” Not for something as trivial as a secretive youth falling quiet, especially when Thor can discern just-cause for Loki’s dark mood.

For a moment silence stretches, Thor aware of Laufey’s regard heavy upon him. But just as Laufey had clearly meant no insult to Thor’s brother, so too Thor hopes it clear he means only to help the king’s understanding, not undermine his authority.

At length Laufey grunts and picks up his tankard. “Is that so?” Not an expression of thanks, to be sure, but not hostile either. Maybe this trip will mark progress between their realms?

For a moment Laufey looks into the depths of his cup, swirling and turning it; looking in the manner of old men stalling to save their head or seers hoping to read the yet-to-be. “So. Tell me, Son of Odin, you’ve been here two days now. Just what made you of my riddle?”

Thor’s optimism evaporates. Clearly the whole visit is going to crash and burn. “Well. It was-” not lovely, not lovely “-very well written. A clear and concise…” He runs out of words; how is one meant to smooth over an absent answer when even the riddle’s topic is unclear? “…message.”

“Aye.” If Thor didn’t know better, he’d think Laufey-king enjoyed watching him squirm. “And?”

And for a moment Thor’s tempted to wipe the smile off the monster’s face and-

Thunder cracks; blue-white light flaring across the room. Thunder rumbles, louder than the murmurs of the assembled forces.

And Loki looks over at Thor; concerned.

Loki, who is half-Jotunn and wholly inscrutable and never, ever, a monster.

Thor takes a deep shuddering breath; forces his temper down and the storm away; and reaches for his own tankard. “Any chance of more beer, dear host? To toast our realms’ ongoing…” His hand’s shaking; slight but certain. “…futures.”

Laufey duly pours, eyes on Thor, and with a steady grip that does not spill a drop. “What an interesting answer, Thor-aethling. Let us toast.”

#

That night, shaken and more confused than he likes to admit to being, Thor leaves their guest-room. It’s less a decision to walk, and more a compulsion to shake out his excess energy. He leaves straight out of the main doorways, uncaring of what the guards think.

The guards, it appears, think nothing of it. Are there more secretive eyes at watch over him here? Or is he truly free to come and go as he so pleases? Certainly no one appears to follow his pacing steps as they draw him ever further from Laufey-king’s hall, his mind looking to make sense of the day’s events – a friendly prince of giants; a father-raided temple; a haunted Loki; and a riddling, hostile king.

Whatever the truth, Thor reaches the Temple uninterrupted. For a moment he pauses, debating whether to turn to the left or the right, or simply to turn back. A pointless consideration. Towering into the dark night sky; all brutal, clean lines and exposed danger, Thor knows what’s brought him here.

So he climbs, up and into the sky and the stars and the wind, the better to clear his thoughts. When he reaches that emptied chamber, he looks out over a sleeping city. And though the riddle’s answer doesn’t come to him by dawn, then at least he has mapped out new constellations in the foreign stars above him. Has tried to carry out a one-sided sign-language conversation with Heimdall, to let him know all is well, assuming – of course – that the Gatekeeper is watching. Has run his fingers over friezes of giants braving vicious seas thronging with life; of witches half turned to wolves; and of warriors hurtling through space in raiding parties.

When the dawn comes – when all the blue ice and grey stone is briefly flushed rose red – Thor heads back to his duties as visiting diplomat and the challenges they bring.

And so it is that he falls into his habits. Into a certain type of complacency, and not a one he’d expected to find in the lands of their ancestral enemies. By day he sees diamond mines and silversmiths and fisheries (but never Winter’s Shine flowers). By night they feast and thence Thor retires to the Temple – to the sky and the view and the stars high above (to his fears for his ever quieter brother). And though Laufey-king asks often after his riddle, it seems more an amused chiding, maybe the start of an in-joke between them, as that which peers, if not friends, may have.

And soon Thor gives no more thought to that riddle.

Time passes.

Notes:

I've diverge slightly from the comics when representing the Jotunn. Apologies if I’ve upset your internal visions, but it’s an idea I’ve found interesting in other tales, and I wanted to play (a little) with it!

Chapter 4: Observation

Summary:

There are days when it seems like everything comes down to arguments and bitterness. Loki, Helblindi, the whole Frozen Realm! Thor’s beginning to suspect he’s not suited for activities more complex than hunting and battle.

A.K.A. That moment wherein Thor comes very close to breaking his word to his father.

Notes:

Chapter Warning: The murder of a child is discussed in this chapter. If you have lost a child, you may wish to skip this chapter.

They’re out on the sea-ice, hunting. They’ve been out for two days now; Thor and Loki, Sif and Hogun, Volstagg, Fandral, Helblindi and a young Jotunn warrior, Thiassi.

“Today’s the day. I can feel it in my whiskers.” Volstagg’s in great good humour – a long night snoring in his tent and a hearty breakfast, the last of which is clutched in his hand – seems to have inured him to the futile nature of their hunt. For himself, Thor suspects the night’s fresh snowfall will have hidden any but the most recent of animal tracks.

Fandral, by contrast, seems little more optimistic than Thor feels, “For it to be the day, oh valiant one, we’d have to first spot our prey. And in that regard, alas, I cannot see how today fairs any better than yesterday.”

“You doubt too much.” Volstagg claps a hand to his shoulder companionably. “Remember you not the boar of Niflheim? How you – a mere young lad – despaired over ever seeing him, yet I led us forth, into the wilderness, until his tracks came clear and-”

“I recall Thor spotting those tracks.”

And Thor recalls their hunt being for the hoard of the dragon, Fraenir, the better to retrieve her gold for Eitri’s workings. But that’s the way with Volstagg’s quests.

“You wound me, fair Fandral!” Volstagg’s face is all outrage. “It’s not within the remit of an Asgardian warrior to find mere beast tracks; not when he’s two squired boys to train. Of course I let you be the ones to find its fearsome prints!”

“Well, we won’t find any prints, hanging around a cold campsite.” Sif, gear slung over her shoulder, stalks past them to where Thiassi is releasing the rask from their hobbles.

She’s not wrong.

Thor stoops to gather the bundle of his tent and bedroll, then turns to check on his companions’ progress. Frowns. Loki’s missing. “Has anyone seen my brother?”

“Loki?” Volstagg swallows down the last of his breakfast. “Maybe he’s gone ahead to find us some trail or other? Why! He’s a better knack of it than the two of you. I remember when the Allfather first told me to take him, also, under my wing and we all went out to the Queen’s Forest together, looking for sugar-squirrels and-” Thor stops paying him mind. Rather he scans the skyline, searching out anything that might pique his brother’s curiosity.

There’s nothing. Just fractured ice, thick enough to pretend it’s not floating, as far as the eye can see. No creatures to hunt regardless of what Helblindi may say, and no Loki looking about, determined to make sense of it all.

Is it a good thing that Loki’s decided to explore the realm on his own? A sign of positive regard for his Jotunn heritage?

As if to underscore the empty landscape, a single magpie flaps lazily across the firmament; a splash of black and white against the endless, open blue.

“Are you coming?” Sif calls from where she’s saddled and mounted her beast. Then: “Where’s Loki gone?” She sounds vexed, where Thor feels worried.

“Probably just…” Fandral turns a slow and contemplative circle. “…playing a trick on us. Hiding under an illusion or… Loki? Come out, Loki!”

“Silence!” Helblindi, quiet but enraged, storms over. “You’ll scare all the prey away.”

“What prey?” Fandral puts his hands to his mouth. “Loki! Get back here!” And then, to Helblindi: “We’ve not seen hide nor hair of any creature save those we’re riding.”

“Be quiet! And if your princeling’s stupid enough to wonder off on his own, then he can get left behind for all I care!”

“No one’s leaving anyone behind.” Hogun counters. “I’m sure that-”

Carefully pacing around the campsite, Thor hopes for a sign of his brother’s narrow footprints. But the snow is soft and fluffy, freshly fallen, and the only direction from which people have obviously departed the camp is on a heading for their mounts: two massive Jotunn pairs of feet and a third that must be Sif’s. Worry and irritation growing in equal amount, Thor starts to swing Mjolnir, grateful to be beyond the city limits.

“Hey! What do you think-” Helblindi’s words are lost to the air roaring past Thor’s face as he launches himself skyward.

Higher and higher he rises, but Loki is nowhere to be seen. Just the camp and the ice and – because apparently Helblindi does know what he’s doing – a small heard of something green and lumbering in the distance. Thor looks further yet.

By the time Thor sets down, he’s tipped firmly in the direction of worry. “We need to set out a search grid right now and-”

”A search? For what?” And with just those few words, all of Thor’s worry transforms to temper.

“Where the Hels have you been!”

For a moment Loki’s eyes are large and startled, his pale face almost expressive.

“Shut your mouth, Odinson, or the hunt-”

“Damn the hunt, Helblindi! Loki! Where-” But Loki’s already snatched up his gear and is striding over to the rask. “Loki!” Thor catches up as his brother all but throws a saddle across the beast’s broad back. “Where were you? What do you think you were doing? Do you have any idea how-”

“Maybe I’m testing you. Did you think of that?” Loki doesn’t look at Thor. Rather, he yanks fiercely on the strap he’s tightening, rough enough that if the mount had been an Asgardian horse Thor would have had to reprove him. The shaggy rask appears unbothered. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you’d really ride on and leave me behind.”

“That’s a stupid test and a stupid, nasty thing to do.” If exactly the type of needling that Thor could imagine Loki engaging in. For a moment he’s so angry he nearly drags his brother around to face him, the better to start a fight. Lightning flashes through the clear morning sky; thunder a bang hard enough to be felt through their feet.

How can Loki always make him so angry?

Save that, just moments ago, starting a fight with Loki was the last thing on his mind.

He needs to calm down. To be glad that Loki is back and safe and-

The storm dies as quickly as it’s come, and Thor finds himself able to unclench his fists. To raise his hand, slow and careful as he would for a skittish falcon newly trained to the hunt, and lay it upon Loki’s thin shoulder. “Brother. I’d never leave you behind. But please don’t worry me like that.”

Loki is frozen and still, face still turned to his mount. For a moment Thor fears that Loki will shrug him off. He doesn’t. “I apologise. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

And that should be that. Except that in the calm that blossoms after his fear and his rage, something of the oddity of the whole situation occurs to Thor. For however ‘Loki’ a test that might have been – manipulative, short-sighted, pointless - Loki would never admit to needing to test Thor.

So, if Loki wasn’t testing them, then where exactly did he disappear off to this time?

#

After the stresses of the morning, their quarry, when they reach them, are almost a disappointment. Well, for Thor at least. Barely have they approached the group when one of the immense adults rears and charges them, huge tusks gleaming in the sun. No one is more surprised than Loki himself, when it ploughs into his rask, forcing the creature to lurch forwards with all the aggression of a trained warhorse. Thor’s spinning Mjolnir, Sif has her spear raised and Helblindi’s mid-way through manifesting an ice club, but they’re all too slow: Loki’s dagger has found its eye and the creature’s still-twitching corpse is already slumped across his rask’s flank.

“No!” Helblindi’s roar shatters the moment. “That was meant for me!”

“Then get the beast to charge at you in the future!” Loki sounds tart, as he ever does when shaken.

“Aye.” Helblindi snarls. “I will. Come!” And he makes as if to chase down another beast.

Thor manoeuvres his mount to head off the giant. “Hold. Hold, Helblindi.”

For the rest of the heard is already disappearing into the distance, and the creature Loki’s slain has meat enough for the lot of them, and then some. By the time the beast is skinned, its flesh parcelled up and the tusks strapped to saddles, there’ll be little enough space on their mounts for further bounty.

“Get out of my way. They’re fleeing.”

“And maybe they wouldn’t have shied so far if you hadn’t yelled so loudly. Come! The creature needs dressing. Will you show us how, or leave us to mangle the job?”

For a moment Thor thinks that Helblindi will, indeed, leave them to it, rude though such an action would be. And, save for the insult, it wouldn’t bother Thor much. He’s hunted a multitude of beasts across the realms; Thor doubts this creature will prove past his ability to successfully prepare. But Helblindi will know the best technique, and the hide will make a fine trophy for Loki; maybe something to win back some of their father’s regard after the troubles at his Name’s Day.

Helblindi sighs, irritated. “Aye, well. I suppose there’s no need to make waste.” His eyes sweep over the corpse. “There’ll be enough there as is.”

“Loki gets the hide.” Thor’s not having Laufey’s irritable son claiming that honour.

“Aye. Aye. And the tusks and the teeth. Any bones that he wants. I know the hunter’s code as well as you, Odinson.” With that Helblindi swings down from his saddle, and the hard work of the day begins.

#

A storm is coming. Thor can feel it.

He looks at Loki. Bundled up in furs and curled in on himself. Little more than a lump on the back of the immense beast, he looks nothing like the form Thor’s well-familiar with. It’s not just the closed-off look to his face, or the unregal slump to his shoulders; it’s that he’s even quailing before the day’s chill at all. Before Jotunheim, Thor can never remember a moment were Loki seemed more hurt by cold than they.

Is it some odd artefact of his mixed blood? That he seems better in the chill until, unbelievably, he becomes too chilled?

Or were the words Thor spoke to Laufey-king that feast day more true than he knew? Is it something else that ails his brother? For there is no doubt in Thor’s mind anymore: Loki is ill at ease. Or maybe just ill.

He draws his mount level with Helblindi’s. “We should turn back.”

Helblindi turns his head, pulls on his reins and circles his whole beast, the better to give Thor a disbelieving look. “Back? Now? When we’ve food enough for a week?” As though Thor has proposed the sun is made of cheese or the beasts beneath them require a break to take up dancing.

“Aye.” And Thor can’t help the irritation that colours his voice warm. He’s not accustomed to repeating himself aught but in cases where his words have been missed.

Helblindi is a prince, he reminds himself. One with almost as much right to question his judgement as Loki.

Almost, but not quite. Thor is an heir to the Allfather; Helblindi only to Laufey-king. Thor tilts up his jaw and refuses to back down. “The weather will grow worse.”

Helblindi sneers. “Cold, little princeling?”

Thor should just punch him. Instead he reminds himself of his brother. Of the existence of whatever this strange ill-health is that has stricken him down. And of his brother’s pride.

He swallows his own. “Aye, I’m cold. And it’s looking to get colder yet.” He can hear the ice singing in the storm. It makes him want to hurl himself from the saddle to be airborne; to meet the colours of the sky and the broiling air and to-

He needs to get his brother to somewhere with a fire and stout walls or, at the least, somewhere that is out of the wind.

Aye, him and their companions.

“Coming, host?” And with that he leads the beast in a slow loping loop, the better to return to Laufey-king’s city.

#

Alas, it appears he may have left his decision too late. The storm, bearing more ice than snow, has closed in around them, driving the late afternoon to unnatural evening. Even nudging at the winds and thunder does little more than have the storm nudge back, excited to have found a companion to play with.

Normally Thor would enjoy the primeval rage – certainly the rask he’s riding seems unconcerned by what is – evidentially – entirely normal weather to it. Thor’s not certain how its eyes cope with the hail – his own are sheltered under a deep hood of thick fur – but it’s ambling along apparently contented. And Helblindi, for a change, has taken clear charge of their group, but doesn’t seem unduly concerned that they’ll run astray in the blizzard.

So no, the storm’s not a big problem. Save for the cold.

“We should stop. Build a camp.” For the storm is here to stay. There’ll be no break before dawn at the earliest. Thor can hear her laughter and her delight. From mountains to the distant open sea, she’s spinning, her clouds spread wide. And as she spins she draws down air yet colder than any Thor has felt in this realm.

Maybe the storm steals his words, or maybe Helblindi’s ignoring him again, but the giant keeps up his pace. Thor tries to drive his rask to catch up to his host, but the animal ignores him; clearly there’s one speed only in a storm: enduring.

Turning to look back, the wind near tears the hood from his cloak, but a moment focussing on the storm and there’s enough lull for Thor to see clear along their ragged caravan. All still accounted for.

He’s actually settled back in to enjoy the ride, at least so much as he can when he can’t feel his fingers, when his rask lurches.

For a moment, improbably, Thor thinks it must have lost its footing. Then he realises that it’s nosing at something in the snow.

Flicking at the guides, Thor tries to get it moving once more, but the beast refuses.

The dark, snow-shrouded forms of his companions’ mounts are moving past him and, ahead, Thor is aware that Helblindi, near lost in the snow, has noted something amiss and is turning. For himself, Thor peers down into the drifts engulfing the rask to the knees and sees only snow, ice, rask fur and nothing el-

“Norns!”

He’s down in an instant, the hungry, fresh-fallen snow sucking at him ‘til he’s hip deep in powder. Cold and then damp seeps between his armour and clothes and skin, but the snow’s not enough to stop him wading up to the rask’s snout, the better to push it aside and get a clearer look at what it is the creature’s noted.

It’s a baby, or had been before it perished. A giant’s child, to be sure, so large in infancy that he’s bigger than Thor full grown.

The corpse is damaged. Thor hopes that such damaged occurred after death; preferably after the body was abandoned and left for the birds and the beasts. Though having seen as much as he has of battlefields, he’s less than convinced of this.

Helblindi wades up to Thor’s side; snow cresting and curling around his legs and even in so dark a moment, the corner of Thor’s mind ever thinking of battle recognises that the deep and gathering powder is giving the much larger giant almost as much trouble as Thor. That, far from being rendered helpless in such conditions, Thor’s sunk in less far, though who knows how that buoyancy might affect his ability to swing a punch.

With a few quick swipes at the snow, Helblindi lays clear the body. “A forbannet-fødte.” And he spits. “Bad business.”

“Forbannet-fødte?” The word is unfamiliar, even the Allspeak offering no insight. “A sickness?” Though the body shows no relevant marks.

“Godscursed.” And then, before Thor can object that the Aesir have nothing to do with this: “Not your lot. Proper gods. Wind and ice and sea. Sun and stone and stars. Proper forces in this reality.”

Cursed? To have ended up like this, Thor supposes he must have been. “But what happened here?” How did a baby end up in the wilderness on its own? “Was this a burial?”

“A burial?” Helblindi snorts, the sound full of scorn. “In shifting snow? Remind me to outlive you, Odinson, if that’s how you treat the dead you stumble across. No, this is no burial. It’s an offering.”

“Offering?” Thor’s beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

“Who’s offering what to whom? And why are we stopped?” Sif: approaching through the snow and gloom. It’s with a lurching of relief that Thor recognises Hogun, not Loki, at her side. Though how ill his brother must be to ignore a puzzle before them, sets unease deeper into Thor’s bones.

“A babe died.” Thor says. Though he can’t imagine how it ended up, lost and alone, out here on its own. Surely it’s too young to have crawled by itself? Maybe a group of nomads rode past and the young one fell from some cot or other? “His family should be found.”

“It has no family.” Helblindi snaps. “Or none that would claim it.”

“You can’t-”

“It’s forbannet-fødte, Odinson. Damaged; surplus to requirement; not convenient. It doesn’t matter which. It was born to a parent who wouldn’t claim it and so has been returned to the gods.”

“That’s murder!”

Helblindi’s judgement is clear. “This isn’t your Asgard of plenty, boy. This is Jotunheim. If the parent decides it’s a mouth that can’t be feed, then it’s a mouth that can’t be fed. Who are you to tell the clan to keep something that could break their supplies? The babe was offered as a new-born; it’s been cleanly returned to the gods before its soul could settle on this realm. There’s no harm done here.”

No harm? “And you support this?”

Helblindi’s laugh is cutting. “How do you think my older brother, Byleistr, was able to slip a firstborn’s duty of service as his father’s body-warrior? He wasn’t our father’s firstborn.”

Thor reels. That even royalty could decide to kill rather than pay the ‘price’ of raising a child? “This must be stopped.” Surely his father, if Thor explains it to him, will forbid Laufey-king from supporting this barbaric-

“Stopped! And who are you to dictate to us, boy?”

I am the Allfather’s firstborn! Not a good tack; not at this time. “I’m sure that something can be arranged and-” maybe this will be an unexpected benefit of his visit? He’s certainly done Loki little enough good thus far “-and we just need talk of it.”

“Talk? You are a fool!”

“A fool? You are condoning the execution of your own people!”

“While you do nothing but stir up trouble speaking of things you do not comprehend.”

“I comprehend murder of the innocent well enough.”

“Aye, you’ve blood enough on your hands for an education in that.”

Thor’s hand tightens on Mjolnir, aching to loose her from his belt and thence to-

Through clenched teeth, he manages to grit out: “I think we shall have to agree to disagree.”

“Aye.” But there’s a rage to match Thor’s in Helblindi’s face.

“We should burry the body properly.” It’s the least that can be done for this one; failed before it ever had chance to thrive.

For a moment he thinks Helblindi will object to that as well, but, after a moment, some of the tension eases from the giant’s shoulders. “Stay here, Odinson. Thiassi and I will take it to the nearest village. As like as not, that’s where it was born and that’s where it can be laid to rest.”

The nearest village? “Isn’t that-?”

“Wait. Here.” And he scoops up the body; suddenly tiny in his large, scarred hand. “Wait, then we will return and you can take this folly up with my father. If you are crazed enough.”

#

Waiting in a snowstorm is even less pleasant than riding in one. The wind is no less; the hurtling of ice at the face much the same; the near-negligible heat from the rask even lower than usual. Worse; there is no promise of an end to the discomfort drawing nearer.

At some point the storm stops causing things to be dark; instead the blackness is simply due to the encroaching night.

“How far off was that village?” Fandral calls. They’ve drawn the six rask as close together as possible, and yet still it’s hard for Thor to hear his companions.

He thinks of that hammer-ride in the morning. “Far. But not this far.” Why is he beginning to think that maybe they’ve been abandoned? “We should set up camp.”

And if Helblindi returns and is angry at such an interruption to their ongoing journey? Well, he’s been gone long enough that he can hardly reasonably begrudge them for seeking shelter. ‘Reasonably’ being the key word.

Thor’s tent – the tents of all the members of the Asgardian delegation – are well constructed single-occupant affairs. Unbreakable poles from the bamboo groves on Alfheim; silk, suitable for repelling water or wind or even fire, from the looms of Vanaheim; a witchstone for light from Thor’s mother herself. And yet, for all that, the part Thor most appreciates are the thick Jotunn-provided furs he can lay straight onto the snow and crawl amongst. Truly! This is not a night for rolling up in one’s cloak!

For a while Thor keeps his eyes open. Those, and his ears, too. Listening for Helblindi’s return, and the probable hel that he’ll doubtless try to raise. But the wind is almost as loud as the patter of snow on the stretched silk so, after a while, Thor tries to sleep.

Tries and fails.

His mind catches on the argument with his host’s son. The giant’s boorish instance that he has the right of things, when confronted with Thor’s reasonable horror. With the way that Helblindi didn’t listen; wouldn’t act; couldn’t seem to care. The fact that, even now, rage is curling through Thor’s veins, desperate for release, and that the storm outside, never quiet, is screaming with thunder.

If only he could sleep!

But it’s not rage keeping him awake. Or the injustice of having been wronged. Rather it’s guilt; worry. For he shouldn’t have stirred trouble. He’s meant to be better than this. Hels! He promised his father he would be better than this! That he wouldn’t start fights and risk war.

But for a child; a babe-in-arms? Was he really meant to ignore that death?

Maybe if he’d simply taken the entire sorry affair straight to father?

Asgard and Jotunheim are realms with only the very thinnest of veneer of peace between them. Laufey-king will never submit to any command of the Allfather. Not with their realms’ relationship so hostile.

There is no clear-cut answer. Not that Thor can see.

Worse, Helblindi has clearly taken offence. If Thor’s lucky, the bulk of that will have spent itself on abandoning them in the wastes and tomorrow the Asgardians can dig themselves out of the snowdrifts; saddle up the rask; ride into Laufey’s city, and – if the corpse won’t leave Thor’s conscience – then at least hopefully the argument over it won’t lead to realm-against-realm violence.

To more dead.

When did the idea of war become other than an exhilarating daydream?

He’s so lost in his musings that, when first Thor spies the hand, he thinks it some shadow of his own imagination. Blue as any Jotunn monster’s, but slight and small, tinier than Thor’s own and with delicate fingers he’d recognise anywhere – even clad in the wrong skin and striving to sneak open the fastenings to his tent.

Rolling onto his side, Thor reaches for the bindings, loosening them and pulling Loki in, all in one smooth motion.

Loki, who is blue as their hosts, and trying to scramble out of Thor’s grip as fast as Thor can haul him in from the weather. “Have a care, brother. You’re letting half the storm in with you.” Magically woven fabric or not, it took long enough for Thor to dry himself from the melting powder he’d picked up walking. “I have no interest in sleeping in damp furs. Cold, damp furs even less so.”

“You. You recognise me.” This, from the youth Thor’s known almost as long has he’s lived.

“Yeees. I’ve not found anything to hit my head with of late, brother.”

“I- But I’m-”

“I noticed.” The colour and the lines; they’re hardly subtle. Also the eyes; red as blood. “You’re cold as ice. Come here.” Thor holds up one of the furs.

Loki scrambles back far enough to provide a good test of the unbreakable nature of the tent’s canes. “I…”

It is not a good sign when Loki is short of words. Maybe if Thor starts him off? “How came you by this transformation?” And if Loki’s too… distressed… to have a care for the volume of his voice, then Thor at least will whisper. There’s noise enough outside to mask their conversation, but still, this doesn’t seem an ideal moment to tempt having their companions interrupt them. And for all its otherwise great powers, previous experience (featuring mead, two fine women, and a lovely celebration on the plains of Vanaheim), has taught Thor that the silk is far from soundproof.

Are you cursed? But considering Loki’s parentage, there are more likely explanations. So he leaves the concern unvoiced.

“I,” There’s a particular look Loki gets in his eyes, one where he’s considering how much of a lie to tell. It’s never there when he knows he’ll lie, or when he has a trick he’s determined to carry out, more’s the shame. But when he’s trying, on the wing, to decide if he can be bothered with the truth? “I think it’s caused by the cold.”

A lie or the truth? Thor’s no idea which way Loki’s settled on. But if it’s not the truth, then what could have happened? It’s hardly likely that Loki will have been holed up in his tent learning to shift his form or some such!

“I can’t turn back.” And though he’s calmer, now, perhaps settled by realising Thor won’t thrash a Jotunn ‘invading’ his tent without time for explanation, there’s a panicky edge to the words that goes straight to Thor’s heartstrings.

Thor holds open his arms. “Well, let’s get you warmed up then.”

It’s like embracing an icicle. But as Loki burrows into the furs, his nose somehow going straight to the junction of Thor’s neck and jaw – that point right where Thor swears he can feel it the most – Loki seems to calm a little. And, though it’s difficult to tell with all the leathers his brother has a preference for wearing, it seems that he warms as well.

“Let’s get some of this off you.” Thor tugs, more to show intent than with any expectation of achieving anything, at the neckline of Loki’s heavy robe.

And Loki flinches. “Off?” He tries to cover. “And get colder?”

“Colder? Not in these furs.” He doesn’t give Loki further opportunity to lie: “You’re in pain.” The only question is why? Could it be that the transformation harms his brother? Thor had barely touched him; his hand barely grazing Loki’s shoulder; and his fingers on Loki’s neck were much the same.

“It’s nothing.”

“It is not nothing. What-” And then Thor knows. “It’s your shoulder, isn’t it? Show me.”

Loki rolls away from Thor, clearly aiming for the tent’s opening. From the flash of his face that Thor sees, he looks less blue, more pink. But not yet as he is of a normal day. And Thor could grab at him; could physically stop him from leaving until this discussion is done, but-

But what if he hurts Loki further? He barely touched that side of his brother’s shoulder, and yet Loki reacted in pain.

And if they are to discuss this, then surely it is best to do so with actual words? “Is it really so dreadful?” Loki won’t turn his face to him; rather, he’s sitting completely still. “Brother, I can’t help you, if you don’t come to me with your troubles.”

Loki’s laugh is a small and broken thing. “And would you? Come to me? If you needed help.”

“Of course.” Why wouldn’t he?

“Liar.” But Loki’s not left the tent.

“Come back and be warm.” Thor won’t push him about the shoulder if Loki’s unwilling to share. But, Norns!, he wishes he could see just how bad the damage remains.

Loki’s gaze, when he turns to look at him, is cold and assessing. Thor’s been looked at like that in the past by stray dogs. The ones trying to decide if taking the scraps offered from his campfire is worth the possibility of a beating.

No creature should wear that look upon their face; least of all one’s brother.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Loki.”

“And you won’t talk to father?”

Thor hasn’t talked to their father yet and has no plans to do so. Not about any of the details of Loki’s injury, nor his fears about the wound, nor his suspicions. But it tears at him, just a little more, that Loki, too, thinks they should be careful of Odin. “Of course not, brother.”

Loki looks down. And Thor’s convinced that it’s the precursor to a farewell, abrupt or otherwise, until he realises that Loki’s looking at his hand. Not at the blue flesh or the clawed nails, but at the palm. One that will be scared by a promise, marked in blood, years ago.

Thor slides his hand into Loki’s, scar to scar. “Let me have your back, brother.” The slightest possible tug, not to move Loki, but only to indicate Loki can, if he wishes, come closer. “Let me see.”

Loki raises his free hand to his left shoulder; makes a gesture so that the magic within the garment causes it to peel away, just enough.

Thor’s breathe exits in a hiss.

“Quite.”

It’s been… a long, long while since the wounding. And Loki has seen countless healers. Yet the damage wrought by that one sword strike… The flesh is closed over, nominally, but still deeply split. The bones, ever so close to the surface at that point, look crooked and ill-set. As for the skin!

If Thor had been asked – if he’d been able to be honest, and not stand accused by Loki of wishful lies – he’d have told his brother that his blue skin, while strange, is not unpleasing. That the lines that swirl across it are balanced and elegant. That, in general, this other form is really rather pleasant and that it is something one could get used to seeing.

The black, necrotic, damage around the should-have-healed scar is anything but pleasant.

“That needs treating.” Thor can’t stop his fingers from rising to touch. And Loki, though he flinches slightly, does not stop him.

“It gets treated. Often. In the Healer Halls.” Then, with the first flash of non-downtrodden emotion that evening, he hisses in irritation. “It’s a damn inconvenience.”

But Thor is caught on the earlier words. “And have you treated it in the days since we left Asgard?” He doesn’t need Loki’s averted gaze to know the answer to that. “Do you have a balm with you? Yes? Then pass it here.”

It’s slow, careful work cleaning the wound, but nights are long in Jotunheim, and Thor sees no point in rushing things. “You should tell father about this.” There’s no way Loki can be fit to ride to war with his shoulder so disfigured.

“And disappoint him even further?”

Thor wishes he could claim their father not so minded. Settles for: “He would understand the Name’s Day bout.”

“Thor. Don’t be so obtuse. You know what father would command.”

Loki’s shoulder is thin under Thor’s hand. Pink from contact with Thor’s skin; the cursed sword decay retreated and near gone. Maybe it’s this ‘illness’ of his, or maybe it’s a change brought when he switched to a Jotunn form, but he looks fragile as spun-sugar. “Loki-”

“Don’t ‘Loki’ me. You know as well as I do that he’d have the healers cut it off. My entire arm gone, and just so I could get a ‘more durable’ replacement.”

Thor winces. “There are worse things.” At least the pain would stop then.

“You mean, beyond the fact that the curse might migrate? How about the impact it will have on my Seidr?” And he must see Thor’s confusion. “Sweet mercy, have you really studied magic so little? They say that flesh, not metal, is needed for a witch to best connect with… everything. And father would not care; for all that measures one’s worth is war.”

“Really?” That seems strange to Thor, for he has seen many metal weapons and talismans command power. And yet there is no doubting that Loki seems sincere in his fear.

“No. I’m making it up.” A bitter twist crosses Loki’s lips; one Thor didn’t realise he’d missed. “Fooled you!”

“Ah. So we’ve reached the part where you mock my stupidity.” It’s almost a relief after centuries watching his brother walk as if on eggshells around him. “Loki. Trust me. Father’s not going to cut your arm off and replace it with some Nidavellir concoction. Even if he tries, I won’t allow it.”

Loki laughs. “He’s the Allfather. What are you going to do?”

“What’s he going to do?” Thor counters. An image flashes across Thor’s mind, picture perfect in its ridiculousness. “If we say no, is he going to banish me to Midgard and throw you in the dungeons? We’re his sons.”

And though it’s a statement meant to show Loki his folly, those flippantly-chosen words fill Thor with dread, even as speaking it seems to bring some ease to his brother. “Hey now. The cleansing is done. Come here.” And this time Loki seems to come more easily to his arms. Thor tucks his brother’s hands under his armpits and – horrifically cold though that is – the blue starts to retreat down Loki’s arms.

“You seem to be taking this all very well. The blue bit, I mean.”

“Well, I’ve seen it before.” In Eir’s realm. “And it’s nice not to see you covered in blood this time.” That had been all kinds of horrible.

“I didn’t. Take it well, that is. It took me by surprise. It’s been happening… just a bit… ever since I arrived here whenever I’ve become too cold. But if I warmed up then it all… And then there was today, and I just got colder and colder and colder. And everything went. My face, my belly. I swear, even my innards feel like they’ve been jiggling about. And I sat in my tent and just… I just couldn’t change back. I wasn’t cold any more. I never am when I’m… you know... like that. But I just couldn’t go back to being me anymore.”

Thor pulls him in closer. “Then we’ll make sure you don’t get so cold again.” Puts a hand to his brother’s cheek, and watches the pink start to return.

“I’m sorry I woke you.” Loki says.

“You didn’t.” But talking about sleep… “Here.” Thor pulls some of the furs over Loki. “Lie down. It’s late.” Or possibly early. Thor’s lost track.

Loki looks horrified. “I can’t stay all night. What would everyone say? They’ll think I’ve succumbed to some childish folly.”

Which has got to be the stupidest reason Thor’s ever heard for not staying safe, or Aesir, or whatever. “Loki. For all I care you can tell them I had screaming nightmares and that you had to soothe my tormented brow. Now lie down, warm up and let’s go to sleep.”

Notes:

forbannet-fødte means 'cursed born' in Norwegian, at least, according to my terrible Google Translate skills. Indefensible though we consider the exposure of new-born babies to be, it is a practice which some cultures (I’m looking at you, ancient Greece) have historically carried out. Thor’s about to run headlong into a cultural issue that doesn’t have an easy fix.

Chapter 5: Negotiation

Summary:

Wherein Thor needs to summon some diplomacy, and Laufey-king needs to consider an external point of view. Needless to say, it goes about as well as can be expected.

Notes:

Warning for issues with inter-realm racism.

Morning dawns, crisp and clear as a new honed blade.

Thor has to dig himself out of the tent. He must look fairly ridiculous for Sif hides a grin when he emerges, presumably covered in snow, and Hogun actually smiles. Inhaling, Thor could swear the very air cuts open his throat. Though at least there’s an endless open sky, all trace of the previous day’s clouds spent.

“Anyone else up?” Six colourful little tent apexes pierce the surrounding whiteness, but only three look ‘opened’.

Sif shakes her head. “And someone,” a pointed nod to Volstagg’s tent, “is going to be sorely aggrieved when they realise there’ll be no fire for preparing breakfast.”

“You mean that lighting a blaze in however much snow is a challenge, my lady? And I thought you could surpass any hurdle.” He probably deserves the faceful of snow that he receives for that.

Shaking the snow away, Thor looks further around. “Still no sign of Helblindi?”

“Let’s just say that he’s clearly taken offence. I thought frost giants were meant to be wrathful and raging, not pissy and petty.”

Thor suppresses a slight twinge of guilt – so much for hoping that everything will be back to their strained, diplomatic attempt at ‘normal’ – and tries to make light of everything. “All these new things we’re learning. We seem to be performing brilliantly as cross-realm peace-weavers.”

Alas that it seems to have the opposite effect to that which he intends! For his words somehow have Sif straightening up; the look she pins him with so piercing that Thor is convinced he’s managed to offend her. “Learning? Really? Is that your claim?” An accusing finger in his direction. “Don’t you think for a single moment that I’m happy with your non-answer about our reason for journeying here.”

Ah, curse it! He hadn’t meant to remind her. “This is hardly the time.”

Not with Loki ‘asleep’ bare paces away and with the potential – though vanishingly unlikely – for Helblindi and Thiassi’s imminent return.

“Why not?” Her arms are spread wide. “There’s none but us for leagues around. When could be better?”

Two days after the turn of Ragnarok? Or, more immediately, any day by which Thor has had time to find a plausible explanation. For he can’t confess that he’s here to learn of Loki’s heritage; that’s Loki’s truth to tell. And similarly he can’t explain about needing to find the highly-toxic-to-all-but-a-Jotunn Winter’s Shine. As for confessing that he’s still keen to look everywhere for the mysterious black blade that came so close to felling Loki…?

He hesitates for too long. Long enough for others to draw their own conclusions.

“Is it a… sensitive… matter?” Hogun says, voice slow and heavy with meaning, though what meaning exactly that is remains unclear until he adds, “Would you prefer for me to take something of a scenic walk while those of Asgard talk?”

Indeed, it is Sif who follows the General’s thoughts before Thor. “You think this is to do with spying, Hogun? On Jotunheim? Whatever for?”

Hogun shrugs.

“Thor? Really?”

“There is no trans-realm espionage taking place. None.” Yet neither of his companions look like they trust his word. “Is it really so unlikely that I would want to come here, to this realm, just to learn more of the inhabitants?”

Hogun, at least, looks away. If not convinced, then unwilling to press the point.

Alas that when Thor looks to Sif, she is unswayed as ever. “Never,” she starts, “in all my days at your side have I heard aught but ill of frost giants from you.”

Thor winces. “When I was a boy, I spoke like a boy. I haven’t said such things in centuries.”

“Silence is not the same as approval, Odinson. Now stop this and explain yourself.”

“Sif.” But where to start? “Have I ever lied to you? Or broken my word?”

“You’ve made some slightly ridiculous drunken boasts over the eons.” But then her stance softens, some of her adversarial stiffness seeping away. “But no, you’ve never lied.”

“And I’m not lying now.” But finding the phrases to convince her? Thor has no idea how Loki can sway people with mere words. Norns! But he’ll be glad of Loki if their father ever dies.

And then he sees it: “One day I, or Loki, will be Allfather. And, whether I become Allfather or his closest advisor, I will hold power over the whole Nine Realms, Sif. All of them. Alfheim, Vanaheim, Nidavellir; these I know well. Svartalfheim is dead. Midgard; a walled hot-house garden. But Muspelheim, Niflheim and Jotunheim: these are realms I need to know more of.”

The truth, and yet also a lie.

Thor wonders if these are the moments that will render him unfit for Valhalla. Or whether even the Valkyrie of legend understand the need to protect a currently-vulnerable sibling.

“Hels! Do you truly expect us to head for Muspelheim next?”

“I’d rather that than the Land of the Dead, my lady.” But Hogun sounds less unwilling than Thor would have thought. Until he adds, “Good as it is to see one of the House of Bor attempt friendly chit-chat, might I suggest that yesterday isn’t how one goes about that?”

“Aye.” Thor can’t fault him on the observation. “I’m in sore need of practice.”

And Loki, freshly emerged from the tent says, “You’re not wrong there.” Is it only paranoia, or do his eyes appear to carry a pinkish tinge? As for Loki’s skin, it’s hard to tell, for he is well swathed in leather and fur, leaving only his face and hands open to the elements. Hands that are already disappearing, as he first dons gloves, then folds his arms under his furs. “Morning.”

“Morning.” And whatever Loki might have feared the night before, and however much Sif and Hogun might have been willing to question Thor mere moments earlier, neither companion seems inclined to question Loki’s night-time presence in Thor’s tent. So at least there’s that.

Thor wonders what the Norns will choose to destroy, to balance this one good thing out.

#

“Are you well?” They’re finishing binding the last of their tents and goods to the rask; the activity leaving Thor warm and in good humour, even as his concern for Loki has that cheer coasting, like pack ice, over a frigid sea of worry.

“Perfect.” At least Loki’s gentler with his rask’s buckles today.

“Truly?” For it’s a lot of fur for someone usually as lightly clad as Loki.

His stomach falls when Loki hesitates to reply.

“Loki?”

His brother sighs, more irritated than last-night’s fearfulness, and pulls off his gloves. It’s with relief that Thor sees his fingers still pink, and the relief leaves him feeling guilty, for isn’t he meant to love his brother regardless?

For once Loki seems less interested in reading the people around him, than in his own thoughts. “Watch.”

And he kneels.

As his hands touch the snow, blue, startling and sudden, blossoms across his brother’s skin. Loki curses. “I keep hoping that this time…”

“Maybe it’s direct contact with the realm’s ice?” Thor suggests. For it can’t be the chill; other days have started colder. “Maybe it knows you?”

“That seems a fair assessment.” Rising, Loki makes as if to force his still-changed fingers back into the gloves, but Thor can’t help remembering what Loki’d said of the night before. Of his struggle, when cold, in reversing the change.

Catching Loki’s hands, Thor chafes them between his own, chasing the change away. “Will you be well on the steed?”

Loki shrugs, but doesn’t pull away from Thor’s warmth. “And what do you recommend? That I ride with you like a frail maiden?”

Thor laughs. “Fair enough. The day that happens is the day you’re out cold.”

“Forget out cold.” Loki retorts. “I’d have to be on the edge of death. You, on the other hand, I can imagine carrying back stone cold drunk. Oh! Wait!” His eyes open comically wide. “What am I saying? I’ve no need to imagine what I’ve already experienced.”

Thor gives him a playful push. “So you want me to pretend to be drunk so you can keep hold of your hot water bottle? Alas, that we didn’t bring enough mead with us for it to be convincing. Next time, brother, don’t gainsay my proposals for luggage.”

“Next time? You plan for us to return here?” Loki snorts, dubiously. Then starts to climb up to the saddle. “I, for one, can see little of charm in this place. And as for you…? There are no maidens to bed, few beasts to hunt, and little conversation that doesn’t place you dangerously close to starting a war.”

“Maybe next time will be better?” Maybe next time they’ll be able to play attendance on Loki’s Jotunn parent?

“Then next time I will be bringing charmed Hot Stones. Not mead.”

#

For all Loki’s apparent cockiness when they head out, by the time they have covered half the distance back to the city, Loki looks… If Thor were still in ignorance of his brother’s blood, then he’d say that his brother looks peaky. For his skin is pall, almost blue. And dark circles start to ring eyes that seem bloodshot and troubled.

Knowing what he does, Thor’s more deeply worried. But what can be done save pressing on?

When they reach the walls themselves, Loki has drawn his hood up, over his face, and Thor fears that it’s not merely to keep the glare reflecting off the snow out of his eyes. Fandral, riding to Thor’s left, catches the look. “This realm seems to fit ill with him.”

“Aye.” For Thor’s not cruel enough to ignore that, far from revelling in exposure to parts of who he is, Loki instead seems to be suffering under connections he cannot control. “I should not have brought him.”

“Hey.” Fandral catches Thor’s hand; fingers warm around Thor’s grip on the guide. “You couldn’t have left him behind, either. Not after...”

“No. I suppose I couldn’t.” It’s a truth that does little to raise his spirits; spirits which fall lower still when they reach the rough gate, mounted at the entry to Laufey-king’s city. The gate-guards don’t stop them, but there’s a hostility in their expressions that Thor doesn’t remember being there when they rode out. Mayhap it’s all in his mind. Perhaps, on leaving, he had been distracted by Helblindi’s dour company and the dubious possibility of a hunt.

Perhaps.

At the stables, the Jotunn attendants are bare and curt with their words. And with the heft of the tann-mus hide and tusks, Thor’s ridiculously aware of how slow to response he would be should any wish to start trouble. So he is aware of that, aye, and of Loki, still keeping his face cowled.

If Thor hopes that his brother will lose his coverings as they enter the dubious shelter of Laufey-king’s hall, he hopes in vain.

Through the palace, and on to their room, the air of gloom continues. Though, when at length they reach that room and the score of Aesir Thor’s hunt had left behind, all looks well. At first glance.

“Prince Thor. Prince Loki.” It can’t be good to have the group’s scholar hurry over. “We received word from Laufey-king late last night.”

“Word of what?” Last night? Have Helblindi and Thiassi had time to ride all the way through the storm and to their king’s side despite their detour to the village? (Had they even gone to the village in the first place?)

“Of our expulsion.”

“Ah, hels.” Fandral drops his gear to the floor. “I knew it.”

“What do you mean, expulsion?” Volstagg’s all swaggering indignation. “They cannot mean such offence to esteemed personages such as-”

“By when is this expulsion meant to occur?” Because if he can’t have black blades and white flowers, then at the least Thor wants time to set his brother by a fire. Wants not to have his brother reach Asgard and her well familiar faces and-

Heimdall! Last night, Heimdall must have seen and-

But, then, Heimdall the All-Seeing, must already know of Loki.

In that instant, facts and conspiracies threaten to race away from Thor, growing and churning as they go. For a moment he seems to teeter besides the abyss of madness; for how can one look on those they trust and yet now must doubt whilst remaining sane and-

He forces it down.

There is a problem here and now. And, much as he would in any skirmish or battle, the bigger picture must be put aside to wait. “When?”

“After tonight’s feast.”

“Well,” Volstagg grunts, apparently mollified, “at least they aren’t complete barbarians.”

#

Indeed, when the feast arrives, it is Thor who feels the barbarian. For Laufey-king’s court is out in force, more giants than ever he has seen in one place all congregated and clad in carefully arranged fur and ice and swoop-lined skin, while Thor’s own group huddles for warmth in their thick coverings. The tables are laden with food although, as Thor approaches the high table, he notes that some of their tann-mus, too, has made it onto the display. So, angry as Laufey-king is, he’s not yet ready to scorn guest-traditions.

“Quite a hunt, Odinsons.” Yet even that phrase seems laden with threat.

And for all that Thor’s resolved to be meek and apologetic, the better not to start a war, he cannot check the words that flow forth: “And quite a storm that followed it.”

Laufey-king bows his head, apparently thoughtful, but when their eyes lock, Thor is startled to see the king smiling. “And thus does our realm renew itself.”

Thor snorts. “Yet it’s no good way to treat your guests.” At his side, he’s aware that Loki has gone still and places a reassuring hand on his forearm – he knows what he’s doing; Laufey-king needs to know that Helblindi overstepped the mark.

“And what of you, Loki the Silent?” Laufey’s words cause Thor to stumble and stop as he and all the hall seem to look at once at the subject of the king’s attention. “How found you the sea ice?”

Loki, never short for an answer, smiles. His face looks strained and wan, and Thor wants, more than anything, to not have torn him away from that pathetic little fire back in their room. “A rare and beautiful experience.”

“We could have stayed longer.” Helblindi smirks.

“Hardly,” Thor snaps. “It was a blasted cold and ill-conducted trip.”

Laufey-king’s eyes narrow. “Is this how a guest should talk to their host?”

Thor’s grip on Loki is suddenly a whole lot less to support his brother and a whole lot more to prevent himself from lashing out. “One that’s been left in the cold with naught but lies, yes.”

“You call my son a liar?”

“Thor.”

“Unless there’s another word you’d prefer to claim for a prince who says one thing, yet does another.”

“Thor!” Loki’s hiss is horrified.

“You are calling my son a liar.” But Laufey-king laughs. “And yet where is the harm done? Were you afraid of a long, circular walk back to the feasting halls without a guide to draw you a straight line? Did the cold nibble at your weak fingers, Asgardian? Or was it being left, all alone, in that dark and dreadful storm, that did for you?”

Dimly Thor is aware that, by his side, Loki has wilted. Something that might be ‘Oh, don’t’ passes his lips, but it’s hard to hear over the thunder drumming in Thor’s temples. Overhead, light strobes through the hall and, hot on its heels, rain lashes in, through the shattered roof. The birds sheltering there, squawk in offence.

At the first drop, Laufey-king actually flinches and a perverse type of delight thrills through Thor. “Stop that, boy!”

“Don’t speak to me of storms to be feared!”

“Thor. Thor, stop this.” Loki is shaking at his arm, but it’s as a leaf trembling on the end of an oaken bough, and Thor can pay him as little heed as the mighty tree would.

No, all his focus is for the no-longer smirking giant before him. Surely not so great a foe, for all that his father has claimed otherwise?

“Be silent and eat, child, before I decide to take your games as sophisticated insult and-”

“And what?” What exactly can Laufey-king do? Will he order his giants forward, the better to attack his visitors? Will he try to cut down the son of his Allfather?

Dimly, Thor is aware that no sooner does the rain land, than it freezes; that his cape lies heavy and damp across his shoulders; and that hail is overtaking the water in what falls. Outside the storm is mutating, Jotunheim’s wild nights hearing his rage and turning to join with it.

Laufey-king is drawing breath and, unexpectedly, time seems to slow. Reminiscent of those moments when Thor has watched a could-be-fatal blow coming, his entire mind seems to be screaming out the hazards to him. That Laufey-king could say anything and not be considered in the wrong; that the storm that he’s called holds the potential to grow exponentially and that, for all his temper now, if the morning brings him visions of civilians – children – killed in the tempest…; and of Loki, frantically trying to shut. him. up.

Thor drops is head; neck as pained as if he’s broken in. Drives back the storm, though it feels like tearing out his own hair. “I apologise.” The words are like shards of glass in his mouth. “I overstepped.”

And Laufey-king hesitates.

For a moment Thor thinks that this won’t be the end of it. Certainly, should he have ever spoken with such disregard towards his own father it would never be. Yet Laufey-king is not Odin, has not Odin’s power nor his unbroken line of victories. Instead, he nods. “Yes, you did.”

“I saw the babe. Its death angered me.” And that, actually, is the truth.

“So my son tells me.” Laufey-king sits back in his throne.

“It is not right.”

“It is our way. And who are you to insult those ways, Asgardian, when you have no flesh in the game?” And, strange as it seems, Laufey seems to look past Thor at that, to Loki.

Loki, who’s still at Thor’s side, trying to hold him back. “Surely such morals should be apparent? Across the whole Nine Realms, such an act would-”

“And does your father tell the imps of Muspelheim to cease eating their dead? Or the mortals of Midgard to not rape their wives?” Thor’s breath draws short. “Look long and hard, princeling. Your father allows self-rule. And that means understanding that not every aspect of every people will be pretty to your oh-so-fine sensibilities.”

“It’s still wrong.” When he rules in Asgard, then-

“Then learn to live with it being wrong. This is my realm. And there’ll be war most bloody before I consent to let you dictate my customs to me. Our ways are not your ways.”

If he grits his teeth any harder, they’ll surely shatter. “We should eat.”

“Aye.” Laufey-king turns his back and, where one could imagine an insult, one could also just see the weight of an argument narrowly avoided.

“Eat!” Loki’s voice is incredulous. “You know what? I’m not hungry.” And, as Laufey-king turns to scowl, “You must forgive me, my host. It would appear that my frail constitution is not up to the rigours of a Jotunn Court.”

Thor watches him bow then depart with a sinking feeling.

“I get the impression that you’ll be hearing more of this in the night,” Laufey says. “Tell me, is your child-brother always the one to scold you into line?”

The picture thus painted is hardly glamorous, but no more is it wrong. “Of that, you are doubtless right.”

Laufey-king nods, thoughtfully. “Brothers can be a wonderful thing. It always grieved me not to be so blessed. But at least my sons are not similarly alone.”

Thor thinks of Helblindi’s insinuation – that Laufey’s sons should number three not two – and wonders how the man can sound so guileless in discussing their kinship. Then wonders if that’s exactly the association that’s caused him to raise the topic.

“Again, I cannot disagree.” Even if brotherhood gives Thor someone to hold him painfully to account.

“Your father would.” Which is an odd supposition of the giant to make, for Thor has only heard his father speak well of Thor’s dead uncles; raised up to Valhalla in wars waged shortly after King Bor’s death.

Thoughts of Valhalla sit, sour and poisonous, in Thor’s belly. They eat away at him more surely than he eats the feast before him; filling him with bitter recrimination. For the path to Valhalla is arduous; one only a strong warrior can tread. And Loki, maimed as he is, may struggle.

Thor had thought to come to Jotunheim, the better to learn how to heal his brother; that, and to search for indication of the blade that cursed him ruin. Yet not only has he found nothing on the latter, but has seen to their expulsion before finding the drug for the former.

Unless he simply asks directly.

“Laufey-king,” the attempt at speaking beseechingly lies flat in his mouth; his tongue finding the words hard to shape; their very sound alien to his mind. “When I came to Jotunheim, I came searching answers. Ones which I fear I will depart leaving unanswered and-”

“And you would ask answers of me? When you have yet to address my barest of riddles?” There’s an edge to Laufey-king’s voice. Not yet rage, though Thor’s been long enough around kings to know it won’t remain that way for long.

“Your riddle.” Hels and dancing Norns, but it always comes down to that!

“Aye.” Laufey-king agrees. “My riddle.” But his voice softens as he speaks. “While I will not speak of further of mysteries with you, it appears that you still retain some of Asgard’s famed golden fortunes. For my Skald has returned just earlier today. And mayhap she will speak to you of riddles and mystery.” Then with a grimace more indicative of tedium than excitement, the king adds, “Seas and Storms know, it seems to be the only thing any of them will speak of.”

But Thor’s attention has been caught earlier. “She?”

“Aye.” Laufey sounds contemptuous. “She. My Skald.”

Magic is female. That’s what Byleistr had said. “Is she a witch?”

Laufey shrugs. “Well, she’s certainly not your mother, prince.” And only the fact that it’s couched, admittedly vaguely, as a compliment to the Allmother, leaves Thor able to quelch his temper that someone would name his mother a mere hedgewitch.

And then he sees her.

She is… definitely not at all like any other frost giant Thor has ever seen. For a start, she’s not giant. Nor, for that matter, built in a manner that would usually cause Thor to assume, unprompted, that she were female. Which, he’s forced to remember, is no less than he should expect in this realm. Except that he’s still stricken by the very sight of her. For she is, in fact, almost exactly the size of-

“That’s our Farbauti. I suppose you’d call her a scholar. Or a soothsayer.”

Thor rises to bow. “Delighted to meet you.”

She’s… her skin is blue, that’s true. But her hair is long and black, bound up with bone and silver, in contrast to the warriors’ shaven scalps. And, while her skin is creased with advancing age, between the signs of her long-life and wisdom, are the other lines; the sweeping, whirling kind that cross the giants’ bodies.

“As I will greet you.” Her voice is low; hoarse as that of an old warrior who’s spent too long a time leaning close over the bonfires as they spin their yarns. One hand, spindly and claw-nailed, points at his chest. “Stay, while I do so.” And she starts to walk around him.

Thor should, perhaps, stand perfectly still, but cannot prevent himself from pivoting on the spot. She doesn’t tell him to stop.

Rather, she walks with deliberate steps, half-hopping, half-dancing, precise enough to let Thor know that she’s invoking some kind of ritual. That everything about her – from her bangles, to her nose rings, to the ropes of worn hemp she’s dressed in –it’s all likely part of some greater meaning that he should endeavour to understand.

Yet all that Thor can see, in this endless, unexpected moment, is just how much she looks like Loki.

He’d thought Loki’s height an inherited trait from Odin. “Are other giants so-” Not short. Don’t say short. “-built?”

And then it occurs to him, even before Laufey-king’s eyes narrow, that he shouldn’t say anything at all in this greeting.

But the witch just smiles, a little wryly, and continues her steps until they define a full circle. And then, stopped where she began, says, “No, Thor of Asgard. Other giants are rarely so built as me.”

“Ah.” Thor runs a quick hand over his hair, “I-” didn’t meant to be rude, is what he’s aiming for, but Laufey-king says:

“One question, only. And what will that be?”

And, with this woman in front of him, it seems clear and obvious that there are so many questions to ask. That he should understand about this shortness of stature. Or possibly about the ritual she just performed. Or about the history of any previous interactions between the Aesir and Jotunn.

Loki has a wound, a decade old, that’s barely healed at all.

“Have you ever heard tell of a black blade?” And, unintended, his hands spread to show the remembered span of the sword. “One that doesn’t look to be made of metal, and which is near unstoppable.” A pause. A memory of Loki’s rotting shoulder. “Maybe even a cursed one?”

Speaking, Thor is aware of the weight of Laufey-king’s eyes. That, in speaking here, he is letting it be known that this is something that matters to him; something that the giant may wish to know more of. It feels like baring a secret he should better have hidden.

And yet ignorance – not just of Thor, but of all his people – leaves his brother injured and, unless Thor’s sorely misreading things, in pain.

The Skald tilts her head, the movement bird-like. “A black blade? Aye, there are many stories. Though only three are not of mortal metal.” Three? Thor’s heart lurches with hope. “Surtur’s blade of smoke and death.” (Not that one; Thor knows the tales of Ragnarok as well as any.) “The glass knives of the marauding star eaters.” (Not that one either; long hours of childhood daydreaming have shown Thor how little weight to lay in those tales.) “And the legendary sword of nightmares.”

“I’ve never heard of that one.” And hope lilts his voice.

“Then sit, Thor of Asgard, and listen to my tale.”

He does.

Under other circumstances the story would have gripped him. For there are hopes and dreams; heroes and villains; fair maidens and dashing warriors. And yet, within the first few lines of song, Thor already knows that it is the ‘wrong’ blade. For this enchanted weapon is both transparent, and only lethally sharp in the hands of Seelie Dream King.

The brute who cut Loki down was in no way a Dream King.

But then, if it’s not a blade known to Jotunheim or Asgard? Both realms have their knowledge of war all but unsurpassed. Unease uncurls within Thor, but he crushes the sensation. For when it comes to the forging of weapons?

He’ll have to visit Nidavellir soon. The dwarves must know.

And so, as the old Skald spins her tales of beauty and war, of encroaching ice and broiling heat, Thor’s mind wanders. Slips through time and space more surely than the Dream King crosses the slumbering gulfs, to a time when Loki had hit the ground, face ashen, his lifeblood surging into the soil below them. To the blade that Fandral and Hogun had retrieved; black as space and seemingly lit with green flame. Cold, hard, real. Unrecognisable. Vanished from Odin’s vault before any could inspect it.

Could it, maybe, have been some sorcerous creation after all?

Or is the answer more bound up in the physical world and disquiet thoughts? Was the sword merely taken? A sign of a conspiracy at the heart of Odin’s palace?

As Thor broods, the tale ends. There are calls and cheers; more enthusiasm for anything save hunting that Thor has seen since stepping from the bifrost. Laufey-king’s warriors shout out for their favourite sagas, and so, later, there are more tales. Of a young warrior born in storms who set sail across the sea to feed his starving clan. How he wrestled with monsters, large and small, and returned, victorious, with the realm-spanning length of an eel for all to gorge on. Of a wise old Jarl, who, when trapped in a vicious ice storm, stumbled across the hall of amazing generosity and his slow awareness of, and then cunning in, escaping the realm of the dead. And so the stories continue – though Thor notes mostly that the Skald studiously avoids clamour to recall battles of yesteryear. Rather she speaks of the guidance of the stars-

“They shone down upon him, as he lay bleeding,” the old Skald says, “and in their turning colours and plunging indifference he saw the way.”

-and the bounty found in barren ice-

“For, at his darkest moment, it cracked open beneath his feet and, far below, he saw the shimmer of the hardest stone of all; of diamonds.”

-of enchanted pools-

“It’s a spring, known far and wide for her true visions, for her roots reach down to the very Niflheim well into whence bold Yggdrasil plunges her tap roots and draws forth sustenance.”

-and of endless, sunless night.

“And so he tumbled over the cliff and into the depths of the deepest ocean, where even the stars dare not shine their light, but where instead, relief from the dark comes from fish that glow, luring the unwary to fangs the size of spears and thence into the pits of unimaginable bellies.”

And grief strikes at Thor. Not for the fallen giant or – as the story takes a turn for the macabre – the shredded-from-the-inside-out monster of a fish. But rather for his brother, who always loves knowledge and tales of the arcane. And who will not be returning to hear more of this.

He should have paid more attention to better relay the Skald’s words.

“And what of the little babes?” Volstagg’s words stay the whole boisterous, lively cheer to a sudden halt. “The ones left to die?”

His voice is rough with emotion and it crosses Thor’s mind that, caught up as he has been in the injustice of seeing any random child exposed for a lack of food in a clan, Volstagg might instead have seen his own children’s fate had the Norns but spun a different tale.

Fearing repercussions, his hand aches for Mjolnir, safely stowed away in the Asgardians’ guest room.

But the Skald just smiles, and if there’s an edge to that smile, it looks no more strained than when the giants across the room had howled for the tales of Ymira, who appeared to have spent a good portion of his life murdering Skalds. She takes two steps towards Volstagg with as much dancing ritual as ever and her hands move to frame her face and then his before making a lilting move that looks more as if she imagined her hands to be butterflies. “You speak of the Godsblessed.”

“Blessed?” It doesn’t take much to make Volstagg bellow, but this is not one of the better tones for such volume.

And yet she talks. Of souls that belong to the great powers that be. To the Ice and the Sea and the Sun and the Storm. Of creatures that would bring forth vision from one side of the living veil to another. Of babes whose death saved villages and of, strangely, foundlings taken in by lonely elders, and the mischief that follows them; of the vengeance that they might – under Jotunn law – wreak on the clan that cast them out.

It’s a very bloody type of reckoning. Thor can’t help but feel that there must be a better way to redress the situation.

“Alfheim produces food in excess,” he starts as the Skald draws to a close.

But Laufey-king actually snarls at that, and his warriors shout down any suggestion of ‘grovelling’ when they have enough. “I thought that you were learning our ways. I thought that you cared to learn!”

“Maybe it is time to call it a night.” Sif says.

“Aye.” And the Skald answers faster than even Laufey-king. “It is as your Skald says, Thor of Asgard.” Besides him, Thor’s aware that Sif’s gone rigid with indignation at her role’s misidentification. “The night draws thin.”

“And in the morrow you will leave.” Laufey’s voice is low and rumbling with irritation. “Doubtless no wiser than you arrived.”

#

“Oh, sweet apples! I thought you were half in love with her!” Fandral laughs, at least having left his mockery until they have reached the sanctity of their guest room. “You could not take your eyes off her!”

“And she was hardly worth the attention.” Sif snaps, still stinging. “Clearly no learning in that one.”

“It seemed an honest mistake,” Hogun suggests. “It can be hard being a stranger in your own party. I thought she balanced the hall’s tensions well.”

But Thor is in no mood for their discourse. “I should check on Loki. Goodnight.” Yet as he paces the length of the room to the corner where Loki has erected his tent, the fabric is dark: either Loki has fallen asleep or he has left their room.

Thor returns to his own tent.

The furs which had, the night before, felt so warm and comforting, tonight seem to bunch up uncomfortably. Turning on his side doesn’t help. Instead his mind flows to the troubles here; the lack of… anything. Of food and firewood and… outside influences. That, determined as Laufey-king’s court may be to reject external help, his people may feel differently.

And that Thor risks leaving the realm with tensions high enough to prevent his return. To close down further dialogue before it ever begins.

Is this how his father feels, when a problem festers and cannot be met?

He loses track of how long he lies there, mulling over the challenges that bleed between their realms. Fretting over how best to bridge them.

Feels his thoughts stumble to a halt on an idea and wonders if it could ever be that simple. A frantic search through his belongings, and he’s holding that scrawled message in his hands once more:

The storm rages across the seas;
The seas lie deep below the sun;
The sun is lost behind the storm.

When we meet: Tell me, Odinson, who wins?

The Skald had spoken, time and again, of the sea and the storm and the sun. Also of ice and dark and stars and death. But they’re motifs that appear on the friezes around the Laufey-king’s hall and in the Temple, too. So it’s clearly something important. Could it be an ancient prophecy perhaps?

Maybe if he can grant Laufey whatever answer it is he so desires, then, when they part on the morrow, their separation will be at least somewhat less strained?

And the Skald had even mentioned a pool where true visions could be had. Water. Where in this realm has Thor seen liquid, save in a flagon or the surging seas?

Memories of Byleistr’s ‘legendary’ cave with its small pool of murky water hit with all the force of an avalanche. “What I fool I’ve been.” For rain run-off, rising ground waters, or even simple oozing damp might well explain such a puddle on any other realm. But on Jotunheim, where ice rules supreme?

It’s no decision at all to decide to go.

#

Walking through the city, alone and at night, is a strange experience. The whole space simmers with silence, but there’s a watching aspect to it, as though someone were dogging his steps. Yet when he turns, all that he sees is a magpie, perched on a wall, and a brace of ravens, further back. His hands itch for Mjolnir, but the aim of this excursion is to start to heal metaphorical wounds, not inflict new ones, and so he merely quickens his steps. Behind him, wings flap.

Overhead the sky, which earlier had been thick with clouds, is scattered with stars and galaxies. In the distance, green and yellow ribbons streak the sky; the realm’s auroras almost as beautiful as the rainbows of Asgard.

Briefly the silhouette of the magpie cuts across the dancing lights; and in Asgard that would be a strange sight for a nighttime. But on Jotunheim, where all the creatures are different? Thor only wonders how the bird sees to navigate.

He passes the temple, and then the library. From there he heads out, as if to the armoury. He almost passes the pool in its cave; no less under-whelming the second time it’s seen than the first.

Stopping, he doesn’t give himself time for doubts. Though the water looks shallow and muddy, nothing at all like the crystal pools of Vanaheim’s scryers, it is freestanding water on a realm crushed under ice.

Shedding clothes is… notable. Though the gully he’s in provides some shelter from the wind. Thor tries to tell himself that the chill is bracing; that it shouldn't kill him, no matter how much it might seem otherwise at the moment. His boots, oddly enough, are the item he's most loath to lose; the slick icy stone against his bare feet numbs them near instantly before sending doses of chill up, into his calves and shins.

Still, what's done is done. He makes himself step with as much decision as possible when every step must be more watched than felt.

For a moment he hesitates by the pool’s edge. Less at the enormity of what he's about to attempt (for there’s a possibility it might count as sacrilege), although that's certainly a factor. But mostly he pauses for purely logistical reasons. Is fast or slow better? And, if fast, then would a dive be disrespectful?

In the end he makes a quick slither into the water, feet first and the rest of him following in short order.

The pool is – like nothing Thor has ever experienced before. Cold doesn't even begin to cover it. Within heartbeats he feels like every glimmer of heat has seeped from his flesh. And it’s deep; he seems to sink endlessly; far enough to surely have fallen through the bottom of the realm.

Then comes the burning; as if ice could be as brutal as lava. He'd have assumed that it would come for his extremities first, but instead it starts across the small of his back, reaching kidney to kidney. Is this how Loki felt, struck by that sword? And from there the agony spreads…

For all this bodily awareness, as yet there's been no epiphany.

No visions; only the curious feeling of sinking into nothingness even as the cold stalls his fire and steals the fight from him.

Dimly, Thor knows that he dies.

Notes:

Story tags still valid.

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Execution

Dimly, Thor knows that he dies.

He’s always been a creature of fire and heat; even when he’s cold, there’s lightening dancing at his beck and call, and a fire in his belly. Temper, flesh, passions; nowhere amongst them are cool and still. Yet as he slides deeper into the dark and as the numbing water steals even touch from his senses, he knows that this is exactly what is happening to him: everything that he is, cancelled out.

And, in the darkness, he sees.

There’s a mosaic. At first Thor thinks it is of Loki; for the figure’s back is slender and darkly clad. Hair, black as the voids between the stars, falls down his back; far longer and wilder than ever Thor has seen his brother’s look. But then ‘Loki’ is turning, and the hair is made of thorns. Thorns that frame the face of a woman, taller even than Thor and with a smile that sits, poised and disappointedly scornful, on her lips.

“Who?” But only bubbles leave Thor’s lips.

Her smile deepens, now pleased, and her hand arches up, out of the patterned stones. Painted nails reach and, desperate to know what her purpose here is, Thor stretches back, his entire body straining to reach her.

No hurry, little one. You’re well on your way to meeting your queen.

Queen? But Thor hadn’t thought to look for prophecies of his future wife!

Jarred, he’s suddenly aware of the water in his mouth, of the endlessness around him, and he thrashes, panicking.

Hold still!

But in his struggles he seems to stroke at things. Memories. Thoughts. Realities. He’s not sure of anything around him; save that – as visions flash across his mind – he knows should have left foreknowledge to the Norns.

He sees Loki, bloody and bound and silent. Sees a stranger with rich green hair that coils around a face of peerless beauty. Hears his own voice screaming grief into the void. Smells a strange combination of burnt bread and exotic jam. Feels a woman’s arms enfold him in a hug and lips that press a kiss to his brow. Tastes blood and iron in his mouth. Hears Loki screaming. Sees a star explode. Feels Mjolnir quake in his grip. Sees a purple, sneering face. Smells Idunn’s orchard but sees alien stars; hears children laughing in the depths of space; feels tears slick his cheeks; tastes the mead of Valhalla; feels-

Feels his arm near wrenched from its socket.

Pain, heavy and shattering, thumps through his chest, once. Again. Again.

Through eyes that feel dim and full of grit, Thor sees the sky above him, stars drowning in the pale wash of dawn. And, Loki, soaked and shaking, leaning over him. Seidr, green and pulsing, is cupped around Loki’s hands; spilling across Thor’s chest.

And then it’s not. Loki rocks back.

Then punches Thor’s shoulder. “You bastard!”

“Sorry.” Thor thinks he probably owes Loki more than that, but the solitary word leaves his throat aching and scratched. He tries to plant his hands on the ground, the better to sit up, but his arms are weak and uncoordinated; his fingers don’t seem to want to work properly.

Something heavy’s dumped over Thor’s head and shoulders, and Loki scrubs it viciously back and forth across him. His cloak; Thor realises slowly, making double duty as a towel. Alas, it’s not doing much to warm him up. “What the hels were you doing?”

Trying to find enlightenment, doesn’t seem like the type of answer Loki’s going to like.

“Damn right I don’t like it!” Which means that apparently Thor’s even more confused than he thought, what with saying the first things coming into his mind.

“Of course you’re confused. You’re hypothermic and probably in shock.” There’s a tugging sensation around Thor’s legs, which, when he manages to raise his head to look, he realises comes from Loki trying to stuff his feet into socks.

Socks seem like a strange place to start dressing someone, at least until Thor gets a good look at his extremities and sees the white flesh of early frostbite.

Well, sees that his flesh is white and beaded with rapidly freezing water. Loki, though equally ice-clad, is blue. “You should probably turn back.”

“Why yes, Thor, I probably should,” Loki snarls as he continues dressing Thor. “What a good idea you have there.”

“You’re angry with me.” Loki doesn’t dignify that with a reply. Well, he is busy. Thor tries to hold up one arm to help and then, when that fails, tries to wriggle his toes instead. He’s not certain he’s succeeded at that, either. “Why don’t you switch back now?”

That gets him another punch to the shoulder. Thor’s mostly aware of this fact because he sees Loki do so. “I can’t!”

Can’t? Then it hits Thor. “Oh.” The cold and the ice. His own body, chilled to the point of unresponsiveness. And Loki’s… issues with the temperature.

And the fact that, somehow, they have an entire city to cross in the very near future. “Oh.”

“Yes. ‘Oh’. So glad to notice that your little dip hasn’t killed off your last few brain cells.”

“Well, the remaining ones are a hardy lot.” Forcing his hands flat on the ice, Thor finally finds the strength, from somewhere, to lever himself upright. Moving’s starting to hurt. That’s probably a good sign.

As Thor sits up, Loki leans back, kneeling on his haunches. “What in Bor’s name were you doing, you fool?” But there’s fear as well as fury on Loki’s face, like he’s not certain that he wants to know the answer.

Thor manages a shaky gesture to the puddle besides them. “It’s a pool of ancient prophecy.”

“And?” Loki snaps. “Is it also the pool of unexpectedly-warm-and-suitable-for-swimming-in water?”

Which is a fair point. Thor grimaces. Thinks that he grimaces; he can’t feel his own face except, strangely, for his eyebrows. “Sorry. That was stupid.”

“And you never thought to turn back?” Loki lets out an irate hiss, hands raking up spikes of his hair. “No! Of course, you didn't!”

“Sorry.” As much as Thor wants to be angry at repeating himself, all that he finds is misery. “I’m sorry, Loki.”

Loki shoves him, none too gently, but somehow that ends up being a hug. It’s the coldest hug Thor’s ever felt. All icy skin and muscles stiff with anger and, just when he thinks he might let his cheek rest on his brother’s shoulder and sleep for a little while, Loki shoves him again; this time away.

“Get up! Get up right now, and I might forgive you.”

It’s going to be a long journey back.

#

In the end, the sun is well risen by the time they approach Laufey’s hall. Loki is dressed and covered in his cloak; Thor is also dressed and beginning to get some sensation in his extremities again. Maybe it’s a good thing that he’s heading back to Asgard today; it won’t hurt to have the healers look him over.

Loki hasn’t spoken to him since the pool, save to chide him along. As exercise warms Thor, leaving his movements easier, Loki’s chiding falls at longer and longer intervals until Thor feels like he’s crossing the plains of Niflheim, followed only by a tongueless, vengeful wraith.

It’s clearly time to speak plain. “I didn’t want to end our time with Laufey-king on such a bad note. I wanted to...” He scrubs his hands though his hair, frustrated, “I don’t know, leave the option of future visits open. I thought the pool would help me.”

“You thought,” Loki’s words are daggers, “that a swim in a death-by-ice pool would give you charming words so that Laufey-king would forgive you?”

Forgive is a strong word. Thor’s pretty certain it’s Laufey, not he himself, who needs forgiveness. “It’s that riddle of his.”

“What? His little ‘There’s the sea and the storm and the sun; which wins’ joke?” Thor’s neck hurts, jerking to look at Loki in shock. “Oh, don’t you dare give me grief about looking through your things. Not today. Not after the trouble you’ve just caused.”

Which is probably fair. “It’s not a joke.” Thor fumes. “He’s really keen to get an answer.”

Maybe it’s the lingering effects of the pool. (Maybe it’s an aftereffect of the visions; and no, Thor doesn’t want to reflect too closely on those; not now.) But it takes him a few steps before he realises that Loki’s no longer keeping time with him.

He stops and turns to look back.

Loki’s face is horrified. “You mean you haven’t figured it out?”

Thor feels his face finally warm enough to flush, embarrassed. He juts his chin forward, defiant. “You know I’m not as smart as you.” Everyone knows that. It’s just that Thor hadn’t expected Loki to find the riddle so ludicrously easy that he’d look at Thor like he’s this much of a fool.

And Loki seems to double-down on his wrath. “I also know you’re not as brainless as you like to act!”

That hits home. “I’ve tried answering it.” It just doesn’t make any sense. There’s no context; no reason or detail or scope. “I’ve nearly drowned trying to answer it.”

“Oh yes, and that’s Thor, the Golden of Asgard, to the bone isn’t it?” The bile in Loki’s voice actually forces Thor back a step. “Better to die in a piss-filthy puddle on some backwater realm than think, even for one heartbeat, to ask for help from your oh-so pathetic changeling brother.”

There are tears, glittering with misery and rage, in Loki’s eyes.

“Loki.” Thor tries to reach out to him. But moreso even than the woman in the pool, Loki is impossible to touch.

Indeed, he strides past Thor, the wind of his passage nearly snatching his hood from his face. “You know what, Thor? You might not be stupid or brainless or any of the other excuses you like to use. But you are a liar. You said there was nothing wrong in asking someone for help; you said you would ask me for help. But you won’t and you don’t. And that’s not stupidity; that’s just arrogance.”

It’s like he’s hitting Thor’s chest again; trying to get him breathing.

Save that this time Thor’s left breathless.

#

Thor trails Loki into the palace, through the decaying ice-and-stone corridors, and reaches their guestroom.

He arrives, depending on one’s viewpoint, either just in time, or rather too late.

“What, by the Norns, is going on here?” Brynjar, the head of their honour guard, has Loki by the arm. By his left arm. Thor feels a sudden and irrational need to punch the guard until he stops hurting his brother. Even though the Einherjar can’t possibly know about a wound that Loki refuses to publicly admit to having.

“That is a bloody good question.” It’s wonderful to be able to lose his uncertainty to wrath. (And doesn’t that just mean that Loki’s correct, to accuse him of hubris?) “Let him go!” Thunder echoes Thor’s demand.

“But.” Confused, Brynjar releases Loki’s arm. It almost breaks Thor’s heart to see Loki’s free hand rise to support his injured limb, then drop away as he remembers himself.

His brother turns heel and stalks through the gathered Asgardians.

“Um.” Fandral looks from Thor to Loki’s retreating form to Brynjar. “Is there a reason that Loki’s glamoured into Jotunn colours?”

“Long story.” Thor says, moving to chaise after Loki. “Not one that needs public discussion. Now I need to-”

“And what happened to you?” Fandral catches Thor much as Brynjar did Loki, though to far less effect considering that Thor’s shoulder isn’t a shattered ruin.

“As I said,” Thor carries on going. “It’s a long story.”

He catches up with Loki at the site of their merge fire. More to the point, at the former site of their merge fire. Hogun’s just finishing sweeping up the ashes. “We’re leaving today.” But there’s a hesitancy to his voice that goes beyond confusion at Loki’s appearance and into a deeper level of concern. He looks from Loki, staring at the empty stones with something approaching panic on his face, to Thor, who doubts he looks much better, and, while Thor’s yet to part his lips to beg the General to remake the fire, is already kneeling to do so. “Someone should let Laufey-king know that our departure will be delayed.”

“Good idea.” Thor nods. “Volstagg?”

But Volstagg is staring at Loki.

Everyone, save Hogun, is staring at Loki.

(Thor is definitely making Hogun a permanent addition to his retinue after this day, if he has to bribe the Vanir Lords with a dragon’s horde of gold.)

“Get packing!”

But though everyone starts at his snarl, no one seems inclined to go anywhere. “We’re already all packed.” Sif says, voice careful. “Including those goods belonging to the two of you.”

“You are rather late,” Fandral says. “And, as much as I’d like to assume you spent the night carousing. Well. You didn’t.”

“I hadn’t realised I’d surrounded myself with such a nagging bunch of nursemaids.”

“Now,” Volstagg grumbles, gaze still transfixed on Loki, “that’s not called for.”

Loki, for his part, is frantically ignoring the lot of them and currently preoccupied with crouching in front of the first curling flames Hogun’s conjuring from the kindling, scrubbing his hands for friction. He’s still blue; still too cold to turn.

Thor sighs, and ignores his audience. Drops down behind Loki and pulls him back into a hug. Tries to add his hands to Loki’s chaffing efforts.

Loki elbows him, non-too-gently, in the ribs. “Go swing.”

Not exactly a nice sentiment, but clearly heartfelt. Also not entirely undeserved.

“I’m sorry.” But, in the cruel light of day, surrounded by gossiping compatriots, those words feel more futile than ever. “Look,” this, to everyone else, “can you all just go away?”

Behind him, he can hear Sif pick up his request. If she doesn’t think to apply it to the princes’ immediate companions, then at least getting down to a gathering of six is an improvement. “Here.” And then she thrusts a steaming flask in front of Loki’s nose. Thor remembers that he adores her. “I made it for the journey back.”

Loki sniffs, more testing the air than coming down with a cold. “I don’t like cider.”

“Oh, for the love of…!” But at least in her irritation, she sounds normal.

“What happened?” Fandral drops down to sit, knee-to-knee with Thor, tailor-style. “Is this some…” his fingers, upon nearly reaching Loki’s elbow, pause just before reaching the skin, “curse?”

“No.” Loki snaps. “I’m just really, really cold.”

Fandral snorts. “You do know that’s just a turn of phrase?” He sounds friendly; Sif, annoyed. But Thor’s eyes pick out the cautious watchfulness of Hogun; his ears hear the strange silence of Volstagg behind them: all is not as it should be.

Still, under his hands, Loki’s shoulders are losing their current tinge, while Loki’s fingers, closest to the fire, are already pink skin ending in neat-cut nails. So, hopefully, this is nearly over.

Thor just has to think of something to say.

Normally concocting a cover story would land squarely in Loki’s territory. But his little brother is giving no sign of spinning a convincing anecdote.

“We went out for a walk.” Thor begins. For that is true enough, for himself at least. He has no idea why Loki followed him, nor how his brother did so undetected.

“And fell in a lake?” Sif’s scepticism is clear.

“Actually, yes.” Thor grimaces. Wonders if admitting to swimming in a pool of prophesy is better or worse than making up some tale about getting dunked in someone’s cooking pot.

“A pool which turns one of you blue, and the other one not?” It’s the same remorseless chipping away at idiocies she’d employed every time a sparring master had tried to banish her from learning the crafts of war. They’d never fared well either.

“Actually, yes.” Because it’s true. As far as it goes.

“You fell into a selectively wet vat of dye lying about in the Jotunn wilderness?”

“It does sound unlikely,” Fandral happily throws Thor to the wolves. “What really happened?”

“Nothing!” At the shriek, Thor’s head snaps around. Behind him Volstagg has both his hands over his mouth. Then, ever so slowly, he lowers them. “Nothing happened.” He says, voice high and strained. “It’s all just a…” he makes a vague gesture, “a thing.”

“A thing?” Fandral’s face says it all. “Do you need to sit down for a moment?”

“No. No, I’m fine. Loki’s fine. Everything is-”

“You!” And Thor’s arms are empty, for Loki is there, in front of Volstagg and trembling with rage. “You knew! You-”

“Knew what?” Sif’s face is sharp with questions. While she’s not exactly dragging Loki away from Volstagg, previous experience lays the odds on her supporting their old friend over her prince. “What exactly is going on here?”

“Nothing!” Volstagg looks more panicked by the minute.

“Nothing?” Loki laughs. He sounds punch drunk; the notes of his voice driving Thor to his feet, hands outstretched to offer comfort, even though he suspects he’s more likely to encounter a fist. “You call this-” he plucks at his own skin hard enough that it hurts Thor just to watch “-nothing?”

And maybe it’s all still redeemable. Everyone’s questions, Loki’s hysteria, the fact that Volstagg clearly knows about the entire Loki-is-part-Jotunn story and has therefore been lying to them, at least by omission.

But then Fandral goes and says something that should be a tactful distraction and just… isn’t: “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. I’m sure it will wash off soon.”

Loki goes very still. So still that it’s as though he’s shrunken in on himself too. As though all his vibrating rage, once stilled, has left him smaller than he was.

Thor’s just worried that the fury hasn’t truly gone. “Loki-”

“It.” Loki has turned. “Will.” Is kneeling near Fandral. “Not.” This, spat at their friend with less than a hand-span between their faces. “Wash.” Hands, fisted in the shoulders of Fandral’s jerkin. “Off.” Thor starts towards them. For Loki is shaking Fandral and-

Loki is trying to shake Fandral.

Fandral, dashing hero of a thousand maidens’ dreams, master of witty retort, and ever keen to uphold his honour, just pulls Loki into a hug. “Ok. I’m sorry. That was presumptuous of me.” His eyes, when they meet Thor’s over Loki’s shoulder are just confused. “I’m a little out of the loop here, and everyone else is clearly rather… overwrought.”

“What is going on here?” Sif’s looking more threatening by the moment.

Loki’s trying to say something. But it seems choked, either by rage or tears or both. Fandral shares one of those looks with Sif. The ones that used to make Thor jealous, back before he got a handle on that. “Nothing that needs settling right now, obviously.” He chances a look at Loki’s face. “Yes, still blue. Any clue on how to get this gone?”

“Warmth.” Thor’s feeling like a bit of a dullard, standing in the midst of drama, yet unable to contribute much.

“Warmth? Okay then.” And Fandral’s pushing Loki back over to the fire as though this isn’t the craziest answer he’s ever heard. At least, if one is looking for ways of removing a dye from one’s skin. “Here.” And he slips his cape from his shoulders, patting it into place over Loki’s.

His eyes meet Thor’s. “And you? Any side effects?”

Thor shakes his head, startled that Fandral would even think to worry about him when Loki is so obviously… upset. “No. Just a miserable brother.” It’s meant to come out joking, but the words fall flat in the strained moment and Thor fears that he sounds more scathing.

“Brother.” Volstagg mutters. “Right.”

“Right.” Thor meets his gaze and refuses to blink. Because, if there’s one thing that Volstagg needs to get, it’s that Thor isn’t letting any of this ‘half’ business get in the way of what Loki means to him. “My brother.”

“Good.” Sif draws the word out uncertainly. “So, everything’s good now?” She looks from Thor to Loki, and then back again. “Well then, I suppose I’d better let Laufey-king know we’ll be late departing.”

Notes:

So, you want to pick this tale up as a standalone? There are two main points to understand:
(1) Thor and Loki have ‘discovered’ that Loki is half-Jotunn.
(2) Loki was badly injured by an unknown cursed blade, and only saved by a ‘poison’ called Winter’s Shine.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 4 of If, Just Maybe