Disclaimer: I don't own Thor, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Marvel and their respective creators. I only own any original characters that I choose to include, as well as any original plot ideas.
As A Passing Afternoon
A/N: Pre-Thor.
There were times where he would laugh freely, smile every day, look up at her with the sun in his eyes. But they had all been decades ago, centuries, and now, as the days would pass, Frigga found that he didn't smile quite as he had before.
At meals and events, he was stoic, particularly if the celebration in question was centered around him, as Loki despised being made spectacle. For his brother's parties, he'd sit quietly at her side, say nothing, ignore the incessant prodding as Thor and friends attempted to draw him into their foolish drinking games. Only once had she seen him comply, muttering to himself about the blatant stupidity of it all, and, though he'd ended up going well and over his tolerance for alcohol, Loki hadn't laughed a bit. Rather, he'd leaned against her arm and fallen fast asleep.
She lingers over him now, tucked warm beneath the covers of his bed, hair tousled as he lies flat, one arm hanging off the side of the mattress, the other pinned beneath his chest. His back rises slow and steady, and Frigga reaches out to touch him, though she knows he may wake.
The years that have spanned a lifetime appear to her as but a day, imagining that, only this morning, he was small and frail and wailing in her arms. At noon, he had been a frustrated little boy, sitting alone and buried among piles of books within the library, turning page after page as he sought after a spell with which to turn his brother into a toad. By late afternoon he had gone away for the hunt with Thor, returning in the early evening with his first kill. And, not an hour before she had retired to bed, he had been a man, pacing the halls as his brother laughed, making jokes of what the coronation ceremony for the next king would entail.
Now it is nearly midnight, and only now does he remain unchanged, fair in appearance and serious to a fault. But still, she loves him.
Frigga touches him, feeling the steady heartbeat through the back of his shirt. He's grown far too quickly for her tastes, even being so many years behind Thor. She thinks he should still be awkward, hunched over a musty old tome, not so fluent in his craft that he needs only a word or a gesture of his hand to conjure illusions of beasts.
She wonders now how long it will be before he finds her, the woman set aside for him by fate, and moves even further along, cradling in his arms a crying child of his own.
The queen sheds a soft tear at the thought, and she sings.
"Rest your weary eyes, little one. Dream sweet under cover of night. Spin gentle, sweeping thoughts in your mind, like spider's silk caught woven to the vine. Sleep, sleep, little child, for the morning soon comes, breaks through your window with the purest of love. Sleep, sleep, little child of mine, and wake at the crack of dawn."