Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters. All rights belong to Marvel.

Frigga was sitting in the royal garden of Asgard, smiling down at her three-year-old son, who had arranged a number of carved wood animals on the blanket spread out at her feet, when she suddenly felt a surge of energy in the air. Even though he should have been far too young to be aware of such things, Thor's head snapped up, his blue eyes searching for hers. A smile appeared on his small lips. "He is coming back." It wasn't a question. Thor could feel the energy of the Bifröst the same way she could.

"Yes," Frigga replied softly and sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Norns that her husband had returned home from war safely once more.

Thor had risen to his feet, eager to welcome his father. She bent down and gently scooped him up, balancing him on her hip as she walked back to the palace. His entire body seemed to be vibrating with joy. Frigga went into the royal chambers, where Odin had always greeted her upon his return, and sat her jittery toddler down on one of the golden cushioned chaise lounges.

"Are we not going to fetch him from the ob-suh-tory?" Thor queried, meaning the observatory at the end of the rainbow bridge, from where Heimdall was guarding the Bifröst.

Frigga smiled and patted her son's head. "He will be here soon, my love. Do not worry."

However, she could sense that Thor, small as he was, did worry in the peculiar way of three-year-olds who haven't yet learned what worry was but were still troubled when things did not transpire as expected. She sat down beside him, waiting, but the door remained closed and Frigga too began to worry.

After almost forty agonizing minutes, a forceful knock startled them both. Frigga sprang to her feet, shouting, "Yes, please?" The doors opened and Thor's nursemaid walked in, flanked by two guards. A sense of alarm crept up on Frigga and she felt her lips part.

The guard shook his head and said, "The all-father is well. I beg your forgiveness, my Queen, I did not mean to cause you any sorrow but he requested to see you in the healing room." He glanced down at Thor, who was peeking out from behind the overskirt of her gown. "Without the prince."

Frigga was surprised but caught herself quickly. She gave a nod and kneeled down beside Thor. "You are going to stay with Esja for a while," she told him softly. He began to pout and she brought her index finger to his lips. "Your father and I will be back soon, I promise."

Thor gave a sullen nod. Frigga kissed the top of his head, hoping she would be able to keep that promise, and rose to her feet.

"My Queen," Esja said, bowing her head slightly.

Frigga nodded back at her, left the chambers and hurried to the healing room, her mind throbbing with the gruesome images of all the possible ways her husband might have been injured in yet another battle against the Frost Giants. "I promise you, this is going to be the last time," Odin had assured her on his abrupt departure but after centuries of waging wars across the Nine Realms, those words were meaningless to her. Odin had promised her many times that he would never ride into battle again and even though he had seemed to honor his promise after the birth of Thor, she had always known that Asgard's peace with the other realms was fragile. Especially the peace with Jotunheim. She had always known that Odin's hatred for the Frost Giants would not cease until he could be certain that he, the all-father himself, had robbed Laufey of all his power, pride and dignity. Until he could be certain that Laufey had retreated far into the icy barrens of Jotunheim, licking his wounds like a scared animal. She had often wondered how the hatred between them had ensued but he had never given her an answer.

Frigga entered the healing room with a heavy heart that skipped a beat when she caught the first glimpse of her husband. He was sitting upright on one of the beds, his shoulders slightly hunched. One healer was tending to his face with a cloth, dabbing off clots of dried blood around the socket where his right eye had been. Another was standing in front of the bed behind her husband's, hunched over the linen. Frigga cleared her throat to announce her arrival.

The healer who was tending to Odin turned and bowed her head. "My Queen."

Frigga smiled back at the woman.

"Leave us alone," Odin commanded in a booming voice and the healers obeyed promptly.

Frigga took a step towards her husband and looked him deep into his remaining eye with a curious mixture of pity, glee, sorrow and relief. "I am glad you are home. Your son missed you."

Odin did not smile. "We are at peace," he said.

She let out a breath. "I wish that was true."

"We took the casket from them," Odin continued as if she had not spoken, referring to the Casket of Ancient Winters, the source of Jotunheim's power. "They will bother us no longer."

"What makes you so sure of that, my love?"

At that, Odin did smile but before he could give her an answer, she heard a gurgling cry that came from the bed behind him. She glanced at him curiously, anxiously really, before she craned her neck to peer over his shoulder. On the other bed, previously obscured by the slender healer's back and Odin's statue, lay a bundle of rags. Frigga gasped, her legs seemingly moving her around the bed and towards the sound all by themselves. Her eyes widened in terror when she caught sight of the baby wrapped up inside the torn and dirty linen cloth. Its skin was blue, with silver markings on its forehead and cheeks. Odin had committed many atrocities during his quest to establish Asgard's hegemony across the Nine Realms but this was a different matter altogether. "You took Laufey's child?"

"He'd left him to die," Odin replied curtly but something in his voice gave away that there was more to it than that. "We are going to raise him. As our own."

Frigga could not find her voice. She looked down at the baby, who was watching her with large red needy eyes and who did not know anything about the agelong feud between Asgard and Jotunheim but had been wrenched from his home because of it all the same. She felt pity and love for the small gurgling creature. Even if Odin's motives had not been entirely righteous—and she was in no position to question his decision—she swore to herself that hers would be. She would give this baby a home, welcome him into the family, treat him as a son and she would love him. She would not let him feel for one second that he was a relic of a senseless war. She reached down and picked the boy up, cradling him against her chest. He closed his eyes, giving a small happy sigh, but Frigga's skin began to burn against the touch, at first only lightly but soon becoming unbearable. She groaned with pain.

"Put him down," Odin said. "He is going to give you a frostbite."

She obeyed, reluctantly. The baby started crying when she placed it back onto the bed as gently as her throbbing arms allowed her. "Tell me, my love," Frigga queried in a low voice that barely contained her frustration, "how are we going to raise a child that neither of us can touch? Are we supposed to walk him around on a leash?"

Odin snorted a condescending laugh. "Be careful how you speak to me, my love. And do not assume that I came to this decision lightly."

Frigga's eyes remained fixed on the crying blue bundle as she replied. "I do not assume any such thing." Suddenly, she understood what he was asking her to do. "You expect me to change his body with my magic?" She felt a laugh of desperation catch in her throat when he confirmed this. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because he is too small," Frigga murmured softly, trying to soothe the baby with the affection in her eyes but he kept crying tearlessly. She held out her index finger and carefully touched the baby's cheek with it. "A magic spell that affects the totality of his bodily functions might be too much for a baby to bear. I am afraid it might kill him."

"Then we wait until he is older," Odin decided.

"And do what until then?" Frigga asked and turned around, looking incredulously at her husband. "He needs care and he needs it now."

"Then cast one of your invulnerability spells."

Frigga had thought about this, too, but only briefly. If this baby were to be their son, she would not accept a lifetime of knowing that she was only being able to touch him because of a spell. If this baby were to be her son, she would not settle for anything less than a real connection with him. And if Odin had indeed not come to this decision lightly, he knew that. And since Frigga knew that he would never appoint a Frost Giant as his son and potential heir to the throne of Asgard, he would have thought of a way to alter the baby's Jotun heritage beyond her magic. "If I am to raise him," she demanded, "I am going to raise him as my son. And I do not want my son to think he is worth less than we are because we adopted him. I do not want him to look at my hand in his, seeing blue against white, wondering why he looks so different. I do not want to see him standing in front of the mirror one day, despairing over his appearance." She paused. "I want him to be a God just like Thor, with equal chances of becoming a great man one day."

Odin heaved a sigh. The reluctance in his voice was almost palpable when he said, "I think I know what to do."

Frigga followed her husband to the weapon's vault, marveling at how quickly a life could change in such fundamental ways. Not two hours ago, she had sat with her only son in the royal garden, enjoying the sun. Now, she'd cast a temporary invulnerability spell upon herself to hold a second son that her husband had taken—stolen? abducted?—from his nemesis in Jotunheim and that would be burning her skin if she hadn't protected herself. She'd also cast the spell of forgetfulness over the healers who had seen Odin return with the baby to ensure that nobody would ever find out about the boy's true origin. She admonished herself for it, but she could not stop wondering if it was true that Laufey had abandoned the child to die. She wanted to trust her husband, she truly did, but she could not help feeling like a thief.

Odin did not display any such qualms. He strode purposefully down the stairs leading down into the vault, carrying the Casket of Ancient Winters with the same care with which she was carrying the baby. He stopped briefly, surveying the foreign weaponry and artifacts he had collected over the years with a flicker of pride in his remaining eye, and then placed the Casket on the display case next to the Tesseract, which was glowing in a similar blue. Frigga looked down at the baby's blue skin, thinking, I want you to have everything this color symbolizes. Freedom. Imagination. Sensitivity. Intuition. Confidence. Wisdom. Intelligence.

When she looked up again, Odin had brought forth a golden scepter with a glowing red tip from the gilded weapon cabinet by the end of the wall.

"Your father kept it," Frigga noted dryly. "I should have known it was here all this time."

Odin shook his head. "He did not keep it. He buried it safely. But not before he extracted some of its powers."

"And you are sure this is not going to harm him?" Frigga asked. "The Reality Stone is said to be unpredictable and the most dangerous of all the stones."

"But it will act according to whatever its wielder wishes and if I do not wish death upon the boy, it will not kill him," Odin affirmed. "Such is the nature of the stones."

Eventually, Frigga nodded her agreement and her husband brought the tip of the scepter to the boy's face, gently tapping his forehead. Ruby red sparkles sizzled into life around it and after a few seconds, the blue color on the baby's face began to fade into a pale white. The red in his sclera dissolved, leaving behind a milky white with clear emerald irises in their center. Frigga lifted her invulnerability spell and pressed the boy to her chest, feeling the warmth spread through him as his Jotun body transformed into that of an Aesir. She brushed a kiss against the baby's forehead but he started screaming. "It is hurting him," Frigga cried out. "I knew it was going to hurt him!"

"So as long as he does not hurt you again," Odin replied, lowering the scepter.

"He is a baby," Frigga mumbled in exasperation, her fingers running gently over the boy's soft, bald head. "He did not mean to hurt me." She tried to shush him, rocked him in her arms. "He is probably hungry."

Odin gave her a glance that expressed, quite unequivocally, how much he thought himself responsible for what the baby needed.

Frigga uttered a small sigh, conceding defeat. "Does he have a name?"

"Loki," Odin answered somberly. There was a hint of distrust, maybe even agitation, in his voice that she chose to disregard.

"I am going to feed you, Loki Odinson," Frigga murmured softly. "And you, my love, need to greet your other son." She locked eyes with Odin. "He really did miss you."

Loki did not imbibe the milk she prepared for him that day. He took a reflexive sip when she brought the bottle to his lips but then jerked away his little head, his face warped with pain. He did not eat for many days to come. No matter what Frigga prepared for him, his small body rejected everything and he would cry himself hoarse because he was so hungry. After two days, she began to freeze water into pacifiers because she suspected he might still need the nutrients that his people extricated from the ice but even though it seemed to calm him down, it would not sate him. He would cry at night because he was lying alone in his crib, longing for her touch, and he would stop crying when she scooped him up and cuddled him against her chest, yet he would cry again as soon as the warmth from her body had completely enveloped his small frame. After three nights, she cast a spell over herself, lowering her own body temperature, and it was only then that Loki would fall asleep in her arms. She debated with Odin whether it would be wise to undo the reality stone's modification, as it was obviously not having the desired effect, but he told her it might impair his fragile body even more. She sought the Norns' advice but they shrank back from her request in alarm, telling her that she must be careful because that baby—his name is Loki, the tangler, and he will bring you great sorrow, all-mother, yes, he will—was going to bring forth the Twilight of the Gods.

Frigga spent days in constant overwhelming exhaustion as Loki's cries echoed through the chambers, bouncing off the walls, and Thor scurried around her legs, tugging at her dress and demanding her attention. She increasingly resorted to spells in ways she had never done before. One day, she sent a mirage of herself to watch Thor play with Esja to honor a promise while she was bathing Loki in ice-cold water, feeling excruciating shame during every second of it. Once or twice, she even caught herself contemplating the one magical spell that she knew might either complete Loki's transition where the reality stone had inexplicably failed or kill him. She approached the idea with great care, carefully tiptoeing towards it, as if it were a giant serpent locked inside a cage.

No, I cannot risk it. He might die. His body might be too weak.

Whenever she lost faith, she recalled the first encounter between her two sons, which had played out later on the fateful day Odin had brought Loki home from war and never failed to conjure a smile upon her face.

"My darling boy," Frigga had said softly, "this is your new baby brother. Loki."

Thor had been sitting on Odin's lap in the royal chambers, his eyes widening in surprise. He looked up at his father first, who gave a confirming nod, and then slipped down from his legs and drew closer, his expression alternating rapidly between mistrust and curiosity. Frigga had kneeled beside him, presenting to him the fragile little boy who had cried himself into a sleep of exhaustion only moments before, his face red and puffy from crying. Thor gaped at first but before long, a smile lit up his entire face. He carefully stretched out his little hand and touched the baby's cheek as gently as a three-year-old's touch can be, whispering, "He's warm."

"Yes, he is."

"You are the big brother now, Thor," Odin told him proudly before he left the chambers. He patted his son's head. "And don't you ever forget that, my boy."

"I won't," Thor promised softly, his hand still on Loki's cheek. He bent over and repeated in a voice that was barely above a whisper, "I'm the big brother now. I will keep you safe."

Frigga smiled at them both, thinking, And so will I. No harm shall ever come to you for as long as I live.

And she abided by that promise, holding on to the love she had felt in the core of her existence the moment she had picked Loki up. Her love was sustaining her as days bled into weeks and suddenly, one bright fall morning about a month later, the crying stopped.

A thin line of gold was seeping into the shadows of the night when Frigga woke for the first time that day. Her eyes half-closed, she heard a door and then saw Thor skulk into their chambers from his adjoining nursery. Even though he could not see her face in the gray of dawn, she smiled at him drowsily, stretching out her right arm and waving him closer. He came to her side of the bed, standing on his toes, and she looped her arm around his body, lifting him up. Thor snuggled into her embrace and she pressed him to her chest. Loki was lying curled up between her and Odin on the other side. When the sun on her face woke Frigga for the second time, Loki was smiling at her and when she made him breakfast that day, he ate it all.

~ The End ~