The Watchful Eye

One-shot, at the very end of The Avengers. Odin and Frigga discuss their sons and subsequent fates as they observe events from the heights of Asgard. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The view from the top of the observation tower extended to the farthest reaches, spreading from the deep blue arc of the sky to the threading stars on the horizon. No wind penetrated the open alcoves atop the Asgardian spire, and the stillness at its peak broke only for the soft sputtering of a torch, and a deep, world-weary breath.

A single eye pierced out into the darkness, ever watching. In the distance, the swirling nebulae of the outer rim of the realm eternal seemed to open, dissipating around an image of a far-off land, duller and darker, and short-lived in the grand scheme of things. Still Odin watched.

"Do you see them?" a soft voice came from behind.

The All-Father did not look to his wife.

Frigga took a few steps closer, her small feet echoing intrusively upon the stillness. "What news?" she pressed. "What do you see?"

Odin responded slowly, deliberately measured in his tone. "They will return soon."

She stopped at his statement, barely breathing. His silhouette remained motionless at the edge of the alcove, lined in white around the edges of his armour and his beard. Frigga stood in his long shadow that flickered on the floor in the torchlight, waiting for him to turn and face her. She parted her lips to speak, but hesitated at the words, raising a hand to her heart and clutching the fabric of her gown. The flutter in her breast spurred her.

"Both of them?"

His brow moved, slight and unnoticed as it faced the open sky, but it moved nonetheless. Distantly, his single seeing eye gazed out to the edge of the realm and beyond, where amid the wreckage of a sprawling city of steel and glass, a swath of green remained untouched. Down below the treetops, a concrete path held a small, assembled group as they surrounded the edges of a railed plaza, and from among them a pair stepped into the centre. Bold, with a grave, determined step, his elder son strode forward, a hand upon the back of his brother. The second son looked down as he walked, his hands bound, his face muzzled, and his eyes downcast, more distant than ever.

"Yes," Odin answered his wife as he watched them, lingering on the face of his youngest, "both of our sons."

Frigga, raised her face. "After all this time," her eyes shone, brimming with relief, "I'd thought Loki lost to us forever . . ."

"That he may well be."

"W-what?" she faltered.

He closed his eye with a slow and sighing breath. "In the well of time, I have seen many currents," he began to turn away from the view of the horizon, but Frigga could only see the metal plate beneath the brow that now faced her, "I have peered over the precipice of eternity, and seen the essences of destiny spreading from the base of the worlds' tree."

The torch sputtered, and she dared not add a sound that might cover his next words.

"Each one," his shoulders heaved, "conjoined, and yet spreading into its own distinct set of outcomes. In some, I have seen great gardens that bloom through the midwinter cold, where not even the entirety of the men and women of Asgard together could find the limit to its splendour," beneath his beard, the ghost of a smile traced his lips. "In others," it faded quickly, "I have seen my own demise—swallowed by the great wolf, and the world aflame beneath a black sun as the stars vanish into darkness."

Frigga swallowed at the terrible words he spoke, doubt in her step as she approached him with a comforting arm. "But," she offered, gently placing a hand upon his shoulder, "these are only some of many . . ." her fingers clutched the folds in his cape where it joined with his armour. "Surely, our sons have their own currents. They can choose their own branches of destiny—"

"They can," he did not respond to her touch. "I have seen them as well—or seen all that I may."

"Then perhaps we haven't lost him," her voice grew insistent with hope. "Perhaps there is still time to change the course—"

"That is exactly what led to this in the first place," Odin shrugged his shoulder from her, turning out toward the sky again. "I had set us on a path to peace—one of the precious few I could glimpse in that swirling pool of time. I had laid the plans for alliance, to unite our kingdoms—I could see the way to a lasting peace with the other realms within our grasp, and . . . and Jotunheim, lush and flourishing again, warmed by the light of Asgard, under the rule of our—" he could not finish. He shook his head, a disappointment lingering upon his shoulders. "It doesn't matter. Everything I had planned, everything I had worked for vanished in an instant," his eye fixed on the distant space between the stars, "and I am left grasping at the unraveling threads."

A bitter sound came from his throat. "No man—not god, nor All-Father, nor any being, has sufficient might to pierce the veil of things to come without facing retribution, it would seem."

"With one eye looking so far into the future," Frigga stood stiffly behind him, "you've lost sight of those around you."

A sigh escaped his breast, and he leaned upon the column of the portico. "Of all the weapons in the nine realms," his limbs suddenly felt very old, "none cut me so deeply as your displeasure."

"And yet you scorn it," Frigga couched her criticism in her soft voice, but beneath it was a tone of iron. "You banish Thor, you proclaim Loki dead to us while you let him suffer at the hand of some . . . some base creature at the outer limits of the universe," her grief grazed the edges of her voice, roughening it, "alone and in pain—"

"It had to be done."

"So Thor is given an exile on Midgard, and Loki thrown out to suffer at the will of the cosmos?" She stepped round him to face him. "Why couldn't you forgive him? Everything he did," she turned his head to hers, "he did to gain your favour."

"I could have done it, Father! I could have done it! For you! For all of us!"

That single eye looked away. "A misguided plan—short-sighted and selfish."

"A desperate plan," Frigga corrected, "for a son who thought he was passed over in favour of his brother."

Odin grunted in reluctant acquiescence. "Perhaps," he began slowly, "perhaps I did favour Thor. It was so easy," he turned his face from her hand, "to let my praises fall on him for his success in battle and his bravery. But Loki—" he stepped away from the edge, entering into the shadow of the room, "Loki was unfortunate enough to take after me, regardless of his blood."

Odin stood by the edge of the central pool within the room, watching as the torchlight struck the surface. "He learned too well, and in his mastery of deceit, and sorcery, and cunning—it was too much the same, too much to praise my own image reflected in the boy's eyes." The shining ripples of the pool distorted the mirror of the water. He frowned at himself. "My own father would laugh to see me now—afraid of my son, my own shadow, haunting me with my own talents."

"So because he is his father's son, he is beyond forgiveness?"

"And should the All-Father so easily forgive the genocide of an entire race? Of his entire race, the race he was to rule?" He could no longer bear to look at the one-eyed image in the pool. "All my hopes for him ruined because of his childish need. For as vainglorious and greedy as his brother was, Loki's fault within himself has proven the more pernicious—a cold, calculated purging of those he felt to be an inferior part of the universe—an inferior part of himself."

"You know as well as I do that he can be more than that," Frigga pleaded, "that he can be better than that." She glided swiftly across the distance between them. "He needs only to be given the chance to—"

"To what?" he whirled on her. "To prove himself a king by slaughtering his subjects? What precedent does that set? Should I pardon a murderer because I once held him as a babe in my arms?"

"You held him once," Frigga did not back down at his raised voice, "and it warmed the frost from his skin. The love in your embrace made him Asgardian. Why not embrace him again now, in his hour of need?"

"What he needs," the bones beneath the thin flesh of his hands began to tremble as he clenched his fists, "what he needs is something I cannot give him—not anymore."

"And . . . and what is to become of him now?"

Odin looked up, past the brimming tears of his wife before him, into the opening in the space between stars. His sons stood next to each other, ready to grasp an artifact he had long left behind to make their way back to Asgard, back home. An unsettled feeling flowed from his chest, unnerving in its unfamiliarity.

"I—" he hesitated. "I do not know."

Doubt. It loomed in the shadows of the observation tower, creeping around the pair of them, alien and intrusive to the perpetual security of the realm.

"You—you do not . . ." Frigga grasped for words, astounded. "But you—you must know . . ."

"I have spent my long life trying to know all things," he continued to stare out into the mortal realm, watching his sons, "to understand and prepare for them as king, as the All-Father—but there is no more bitter irony than fact that I did not know myself well enough, nor my sons."

As he watched the brothers grip the handles around the tesseract together, Odin set his jaw. "All-Father though I may be, there are some things even I cannot foresee."