A/N: written: summer 2012
edited: August 10, 2013
Don't own any of the characters!
()()()
"I'm fine, Mother," Loki complained, squirming in Frigga's arms. "Let me go; I want to play."
"You're bleeding, Loki," Frigga soothed, unrelenting but gentle. "Let me see." Her youngest son, seven years old and falsely supercilious, wriggled in her lap in spite of her words, tongue flitting out to curiously moisten a split lip before cringing at the sting and blood, face going pinched. Immediately after he realized that his mother might've seen and his countenance shifted to one of almost-convincing, albeit-rushed vigor.
"Really, Mother, I understand your concern for my wellbeing, but I am quite fine. See?" Ever the charmer, Loki attempted to grin, but with the bloody mess that was his upper lip, it appeared rather gruesome.
Frigga smiled back anyway, nodding. "I do see," she replied emphatically, with all the grace of humoring a small child, as she brushed back his hair from his cheek. There was a bruise there, startlingly purple, and she noted how Loki's jaw clenched at the slight contact. "But being your mother, I worry a bit too much, so let me do this for my sake if not for yours." She winked, and Loki giggled.
"Oh, all right." He parted his lips when she beckoned, and she dabbed the damp cloth to clean him off. The two of them sat upon the bed Frigga shared with Odin, mother cleansing son's face in the aftermath of a scuffle in the training grounds. Loki, two years Thor's junior and not nearly in the same weight class as his older brother, had caught up with Thor and his friends in the courtyard while they were taking a break from sparring. Frigga had seen the entire thing from the window: Loki being a pleasant surprise to his brother, but to his friends, a nuisance: They rolled their eyes and said to each other things like, "Ugh, there he is again."
It was doubtless that Loki was a mischievous child, and he'd shown this most recently by sitting in on the spars after the short break. Eager to tip the scales in his brother's favor (especially after bumbling Volstagg, who was taller and broader and clumsier than all the other children, elbowed Thor in the face and broke his nose), Loki had subtly flicked a finger, and Volstagg had tripped over nothing on the verge of winning the spar.
Sif, who had been sitting next to Loki with her arms folded and her shoulders firmly hunched away from him, indignantly lunged from her seat, dark hair flying. "You did that!" she snarled.
"Me?" Loki's innocent expression was flawless: Eyebrows rose fractionally, eyes widened, jaw slackened in a little "o" of surprise. "I'm only watching, and I did nothing but that. You must have seen somebody else."
Fandral stood as well from the other side of him, glaring. "Yes. This fake blameless person, and the real you-the liar-are two completely different people!" Next to him, Hogun silently smirked, folding his arms across his chest.
Thor wiped the blood from his upper lip and helped Volstagg up with his free hand. "Oh, leave him be. My brother meant no harm."
"Your brother is a cheater, and he's not even in the fight!" Volstagg protested, snatching his hand away as soon as he had stumbled to his feet.
Loki remained calmly sitting on the onlookers' bench, eyes narrowed at Fandral. He hadn't moved since the older boy had spoken to him. "What did you call me?" he asked, cocking his head to the side as if curious.
"A liar," Fandral spat. "I called you a liar, because that's exactly what you are!"
"Come closer," Loki said, "and say that again."
A split lip, a bruised cheek, and a twisted ankle later, Frigga had taken the pouting boy into her room to heal the minor injuries and pacify his annoyed mood.
"Thor didn't need hugs and kisses, Mother, and he actually broke his nose!" Loki piped up again as Frigga finished wiping his face.
"Shhhh." Frigga continued as if he hadn't spoken, shushing him quietly and gently placing her fingers upon the bloodied lip. Her magic wasn't strong, a cool, delicate thing tenderly smoothing out scratches and cuts, but it was enough to make the tension leave Loki's face, to make his curled fists unclench.
She sent him out five minutes later, with a peck on the forehead and a smile, and as soon as his running footsteps faded down the hallway, Odin slipped into the room and closed the door behind him.
Frigga sighed and bowed her head as she took her hair from its intricate updo, letting it fall upon her shoulders as her husband came to sit at the edge of the bed, where Loki had been moments before.
"You can't coddle him forever, you know," Odin said quietly.
And Frigga did know. But it didn't make her care any less.
()()()
The last time she saw both of her sons together, they were fighting. She can remember to this day how overjoyed she'd been at seeing Loki vanquish the horrid frost giant (his biological father was such a terrible beast and she still wishes, wishes, wishes that he hadn't been so, because maybe things would've turned out differently), her pride at her younger son's bravery overrun only by the relief she felt at seeing Thor home safe.
But then she'd seen the eyes, Thor's glowering, angry blue eyes, and then Loki's cleverly-hidden guilt and shock. And she'd known.
She still wishes they wouldn't fight. There aren't many things Frigga hates, but she hates when her sons fight.
()()()
That same night, she was making what she called her "rounds," checking on each of the boys in their respective rooms to make sure they were there, safe, and asleep. Her footsteps were silent on the carpet as she padded down the hallway towards Thor's room. The door was ajar, and a single shaft of dim light peeked out into the corridor. Her brow furrowed, and in typical motherly fashion she moved to tell her elder son that it was high time he go to bed, but then she heard the voices.
"I don't think they like me very much, Thor."
It was Loki, diminutive and timid. Frigga's expression softened as she peered through the crack in the door, invisible to her conversing sons.
Thor was taking down the covers on his bed, tossing the pillows every which way so he could reach the sheets. Loki stood off to the side, his back to the door and hands folded demurely in front of him.
"I think they like you well enough." Thor's comment was offhand but reassuring nonetheless, even as he grinned and pitched a pillow in Loki's direction. Loki's hands came up to catch it, and Frigga could imagine the corresponding grin he wore, something like joy unbridled in his eyes and a smile so big that it almost seemed too wide for his face splitting over his lips.
"Thor, Sif punched me in the face. And she's a girl. I think she hates me most of all." Loki clutched the pillow to his chest.
"She doesn't hate you, Loki. If anything, when a girl's mean to you, she likes you." Thor rolled his eyes as if the idea of hatred was so outlandishly absurd, and to him, it must've been. Everybody adored Thor, and most people simply tolerated Loki—even most of the adults, to Frigga's dismay.
"She doesn't like me. No one likes me." Loki's head ducked, and Frigga's heart was clenched by a cold, unforgiving fist. She yearned to rush into the room and tell this boy that he was cared for, he was loved, and that he needn't worry about the other children. There was nothing more heartbreaking than the truth, bluntly spoken from a child's pure tongue.
()()()
Every night, Frigga still makes her rounds. It's necessary only to her to check on Thor ("He's grown," Odin says tiredly.), but since Loki's fall into the void, she's been watching her elder son recede, stony-faced and battle-scarred and pointedly not crying, into his chambers earlier and earlier each night.
She opts not to knock, instead pushing the door open gently and peering inside. "Thor?" she says softly.
"I'm here, Mother."
Thor is cross-legged on the bed, his blanket thrown over his shoulder, and he clutches a goblet of what must be ale tightly. When he looks up, his eyes are intense, staring beyond even his mother, and his mouth is etched into a downward sloping expression of gut-wrenching sorrow.
Frigga nods and steps out, closing the door quietly. She knows he's not really there.
She continues on down the hallway to Loki's room. The door isn't locked, and it isn't dusty either, because she checks on him, too—just in case.
()()()
Frigga watched as Thor, who now sat cross-legged on the bed, shrugged. "I like you," he said.
Loki perked up. "Really?" The doubt in his voice was palpable.
"Of course! Come here. I want you to stay in my room. We can count the lightning bugs." Thor patted his bed, grinning broadly, and as Loki cautiously dropped the pillow, Thor stretched over to open his window. Frigga pursed her lips, unable to find the cruelty to tell him to close it for the night, and instead watched as Loki shuffled over to the bed, less sullen now, and climbed up.
Thor blew out the candle, flopped back on the mattress, and dropped his head next to Loki's on the pillow. The window brought in a nighttime chill, but neither of the boys cared, instead pulling up the covers to their chins as a combatant to the temperature.
"Someday, I'll make lightning so strong—" Thor began, but Loki cut him off, pointing.
"There's one!"
A flicker of light in the darkness, flashing so quickly in a glimmer almost unseen, a subtle gleam invisible if one wasn't looking at the right time, wavered in the air.
"And another," Thor added. "There, see?"
"Look! Over there, too!"
Frigga could see Thor's smile in the dark, and she knew for a fact that Loki wore a matching one. She waited until both boys had drifted off to sleep, curled up comfortably within Thor's bed, before she closed the door.
()()()
When Loki finally returns from his punishment one night, there is frost in his hair and exhaustion in his eyes, but Frigga can't detect any hatred anymore, so she guesses (hopes) that it's a good sign.
"Where is Thor?" he asks her when the Bifrost, repaired in his lengthy absence to Jotunheim (the terrain, Odin had said, would be harsh and unforgiving and Frigga had almost ventured, "Like you?" because she knew that Loki hadn't been sent to Jotunheim for the terrain), has deposited him onto the rainbow bridge and he has clambered back to Asgard's palace.
"In his room, dear," Frigga says, as if nothing has happened, because she knows he'd like to forget. In the gaunt, ice-riddled man that jerks his head at her and shakily stalks away, she can see so clearly the small, apprehensive boy holding a pillow to his chest in his brother's room, confessing his insecurities.
When she makes her rounds that night, Thor's door is ajar, and a single shaft of dim light peeks out into the corridor. Nostalgia hits her, hard, like a jab to the solar plexus, and she has to stop and catch her breath before continuing on.
She finds them huddled like they once did as children; Loki curled in on himself as Thor embraced him. The window is open, and there are still lightning bugs, floating and flickering in the air, and her sons are both laughing as they count, two heads on the same pillow, watching flecks of light shimmer in and out of existence. In the faint illumination provided by a forgotten candle, Frigga can see those same identical smiles, genuine and reaching their eyes and it gives her a pleasant, warm feeling in her chest.
When Frigga closes the door, she feels a smile on her face, the quiet kind, the kind that one cannot stop from happening. And she knows, she knows,that everything will be quite all right.