Welcome back! We've got us some mom feels today.
This is part of the If & Only If series, and the last of what I've been calling the mortal fics in my head. You can still read these in just about any order.
You don't need to know any calc to enjoy this fic, but I'll give you a basic one sentence summary of both concepts touched on.
Integrals are informally the area under a curve bounded by the x-axis and two other points (a and b). All about depths.
Limits, meanwhile, describe how a function behaves at a certain input.
Enjoy. :)
Integrals and Limits
If asked, Frigga will say she loves both of her sons equally. It is important, as the wife of a very well-known businessman, to appear as people expect, to know when to smile, when to frown, when to politely demur. Grace is not something people are often born with; it is learned.
Frigga was born with grace.
(She dreams of being a queen in a golden city, with threads of newborn children placed into her hands.)
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Frigga knows there is something not quite real about her life.
It is too easy, too dream-like. She does not remember her childhood except in snippets, and it is not the childhood of the woman she is meant to be. She does not remember attending the textile college that she is meant to have. She does not remember anything before she met Odin. She feels and senses things beneath the surface, and while she has turned the ability towards noticing people's emotions and becoming the perfect hostess, she recognizes in Odin that same dream-like quality. She does not have to ask to know that his childhood is shrouded.
She does not ask. It would be impolite, to remind Odin of things he cannot recall.
(She dreams of weaving children's threads and knowing how their lives end.)
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Thor, at least, knows all of his childhood.
He is a happy child, bright, golden as the sun. He is very intelligent (Frigga would not say clever, but she does not correct those who do; it would be rude), given to easy laughter, and their strangely large family enfolds him in warmth and love. They treasure him. Frigga smiles, pleased (because how could she not be?), but she is not surprised. She knew, as she carried him, that Thor would be well-loved.
There was never any other option.
For a time, he stays with his mother, and is interested in what she does. It does not last long; Thor is made for the outdoors, for challenges of strength, for being in the center of life. Frigga is not hurt by this—this is a thing she has seen coming and has felt before; she greets it as she might an old acquaintance: disinterested but not threatened.
(She dreams of tapestries that line golden halls, dreams of endless stars that burn brighter than anything on Earth, of rainbow bridges and a single endless tree.)
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Odin builds himself an empire; it is something that Frigga recognizes that he cannot resist, though she also knows that Odin does not realize it. He simply thinks to create something lasting, a safe empire for his son to grow.
Frigga weaves.
She cannot help it, just as Odin cannot resist creating a kingdom, as Thor cannot refuse spotlight and love. She does try to examine why she must weave, but all that she can find is a sense of urgency, a sense of needing to pass thread through her hands and cut cloth from a loom. Her hands twitch and ache when she is stressed for the smooth wood of a shuttle, ears feel defeaned by the lack of clacking heddles and belts, sight swims with patterns and textiles that she only knows she needs create.
(She dreams of green eyes sparkling with tears and hurt, skin all bloodstained crimson.)
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There is a reason they are in this waking dream.
(She dreams of a smile, quick and sharp and fleeting.)
After Thor, she and Odin had decided not to have another child. They do not need one; Thor lights up an entire room with his mere presence, fills in all the spaces. How could they have another child when they do not need one?
(She dreams of two young men, one tall and strong and blond, one tall and fast and dark.)
She watches Thor, three years old, play with his cousins and thinks He is not whole.
(She dreams of a tapestry, woven in greens and golds and blacks, a familiar weight that smells of apples and anise in her lap, guiding a boy's slender hands in the weaving.)
There is a reason they are in this waking dream, and it is not Thor.
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Her second son screams when he is born: high, unwavering, old.
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Thor is open, honest, and ultimately a surface that life reflects itself in. He is, in every way, a normal child, brilliant and golden and sweet. He is sitting by Frigga at the hospital on the bed and holds his new baby brother, eyes filled with wonder, like any boy who is meeting his newest sibling for the first time.
It has only been a few hours, but already Loki's eyes are changing from crystal blue to viridian.
(She remembers another life, a boy often marked as different and excluded, and knows, suddenly, that this is why they dream. Knowsthat where Thor is well-loved, this child will not be, even if he is the reason they are here.)
Her hands ache for a loom, for cloth, for the steady mediative rhythm of weaving to ease the sudden sharp knowingin her head.
(She cannot express how or why, cannot comprehend centuries of memory that press suddenly and forcefully into a mind that is only capable of decades.)
"You must keep him safe," Frigga tells Thor, suddenly desperate, gripping his arm. Thor looks at her and there is a little fear in his eyes. She relaxes her grip slightly, but she cannot make her voice less stern, cannot push back against the welling up of emotion-laced not-memory. "He is your brother, and you must keep him safe and well and happy. Promise me you will love him, no matter what, no matter what he becomes or what he does."
Thor is staring at her, terrified.
"Promise me," she repeats again.
"I promise," he says, voice quiet and cowed, her golden child suddenly dimmed by the shadow in his arms and the weight of responsibility thrust onto his shoulders.
She smiles and brushes a hand through Thor's hair, a little of the pressure in her head and chest easing.
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Frigga is not surprised when they learn Loki perceives everything in terms of math; like Odin, she simply begins to learn, to find new ways to speak with her son. She is glad that Thor does not need to do this, that somehow Thor seems to grasp his brother without math, and that in turn Loki has an innate understanding of Thor. She wonders, sometimes, if it has to do with how Thor is all sun and gold light, intelligent and generous in equal measure.
Loki is a brilliant child, but he is far from generous and his light is silver and star fire, sine and cosine waves that approach infinity. He is white noise that suddenly clarifies into music, pale white-green lines that glow in nothingness before they branch into endlessly expanding trees and snowflakes—he is brilliance that cannot be comprehended until one looks exactly so, listens exactly right. Where events shape themselves around Thor without Thor's prodding, they find themselves broken and shattered when coming into contact with Loki—only intensifying as Loki grows older and perceives his own differences more strongly.
It is the same with people—Loki is a limit, pulling everything and everyone to utter extremes until he can see how they shatter, see what they equal, before casting them aside, needing something else to feed his intensity.
Frigga is not blind; she notices how Loki never pushes her, no matter that he is constantly pushing at Odin and Thor until Odin wishes to strangle him and Thor is left confused at his brother's cruelty.
When Loki approaches her (and it is never the other way, never the limit of her feelings as she approaches Loki), he almost seems to calm, to relax, to still and slow and very nearly lose that fevered genius in his eyes and limbs that makes him race through everything he encounters like a forest fire aware it will burn out. Allows himself to fall into her arms and sit in her lap even when he is a gangly-limbed creature of fourteen and university-bound in just a few short months, resting his head against her collarbone and watching as she weaves.
She strokes his hair, hums a soft song to him, and he sighs, last of his wire tension draining out.
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When Loki dies, they have to drag her from the room long hours after Loki's love has left.
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Thor does not meet her eyes afterward for months; does not smile, does not laugh, does not live.
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If asked, Frigga will say she does not have a favourite son. It is important, as the wife of a very well-known businessman, to appear as people expect, to know when to smile, when to frown, when to politely demur. But her mask will crack a little as she smiles, and her hands twitch a little as they ache for (soft black hair and familiar weight in her lap) yarn to weave.