I'm probably posting this way too late, but I thought I might as well see what anyone else thinks of it :) And now I can move on to writing a (hopefully) funny Ragnarok fic and a (hopefully) bittersweet post-Infinity War fic.
Disclaimer: "I am Loki only, and I am alone" is a line from the comic books (I think?) that I thought to use here.
Hope you like it :)
P.S. To people whom I haven't replied to after their recent replies my reviews on their story – I'm on my way :P
Clink, clink
(Clink, clink)
The sounds of his chains echo through the sleek curves and confines of the Observatory, like it is a whole troupe of convicts being escorted to the palace by the dozen guards, not his lone self. It nearly amuses him how many sentries had been assigned to him; they surround him like a spider web, each holding a fistful of steel chains and a wary deportment. He wonders if it rankled Thor and the Allfather that he had necessitated so many – taking up their resources, their time, their attention.
You'd almost think I was one of his children.He straightens his back after the jarring passage through the Bifrost. The steel links rattle louder.
"Move."
Move,
Move
His brother's deep voice resonates around them, the gruff impatience surrounding Loki like his chains. As they march, he smiles beneath the iron gag digging into his hollowed cheeks and jaw.
Before they reach the Observatory entrance, she is there.
She waits at the threshold between the Bifrost and the Bridge as if they are simply returning home from a casual tour of their neighbour galaxies.
The guards between she and Loki stand back for her, not even moving with her for protection as she flows forward to greet him. She is a queen of Asgard, after all. She is glorious and intimidating.
She is neither of those things to him.
"Kneel to the Queen," one of them on his left commands, and Loki feels the hard hilts of several axes, sickles, and broadswords on his shoulders and the backs of his knees driving him down. When Loki tilts his face up to her, he cocks his head slightly, asking her opinion of this.
She is not looking at him.
"The reason I assigned so many of you to him is to make sure he is escorted without incident, including none to himself. He will not kneel to me no more than my other son will."
She is too poised to snap at the man – she could be gently coaching a young student through drills of Asgardian magic. But Loki can hear the coolness in her tone – it warms him.
He smirks beneath the gag.
Either at her words or the glimmer in his eyes, his guards eye him with even more misgiving.
He recognises the one who had ordered he kneel – the same man Loki had instructed to warn Odin they were going to Jotunheim, before Thor ignited the war that had ushered Loki into this very position. When their eyes lock for a transient moment, Loki's narrow until the other looks away.
He hears a small sigh from Frigga – disappointment.
She leans forward, to his left, to brush a welcome-home kiss on Thor's cheek. His brother gives her a tiny nod like they share a secret, or some kind of understanding. The kind she and Loki used to share. His smile falls as he stands slowly, channeling his gaze ahead, down the straight line of the Rainbow Bridge and right through Asgard's gates. He knows his eyes chill again as if he is staring right at Odin.
But then her palms are cradling his face, like holding something precious and fragile, as she stares him in the eye. Despite sensing the tension rolling off the sentries around them, Loki is suddenly thinking how this is just like a softer version of Thor's signature grip on his shoulder and neck; his brother's reassurance, his warmth, after a conflict alongside or against him.
Looking more closely, their mother's face appears slightly gaunt. Loki tries to convey more to her past the damn muzzle.
"I thought you dead," her voice low.
Thor's words.
He feels Thor's grip on his shoulder tighten, as if his brother remembers too.
(Did you mourn?)
(He would not ask her even if he physically could – he does not need to)
Her blue-grey eyes looked like they were reflecting Hel. Maybe she had been searching for him there.
This is not the reunion he had imagined.
(But he had actively avoided imaging one)
Before he can do anything more, he is pulled away.
She reaches the main gates of the city when she sees her husband.
Odin is in his silver armour with Gungnir ready in his grip as if he had not just recently awoken from his deepest Odinsleep, though the worn shadows around his eye give him away. Behind him in the distance is a picture of utter destruction against the serene night sky, like someone has hastily cut out and pasted it over what should be there, what had always been there.
"He's gone."
Frigga does not need much more than that. She had seen the lightning and heard the Bifrost crack while the Bridge had crumbled. And maybe it had been her darker imagination as she had run towards them after Odin, but she thinks she might have also heard her two sons' screams.
(Odin had not specified which son, but how can she not know?)
She refocuses her gaze from the distant scene onto Odin before her. His expression is regretful but calm, as if he is telling the family of a fallen soldier he had not met of their loss. Frigga can tell that beneath that he is feeling something more than this, but she cannot find comfort in it yet.
She finds her voice, lost somewhere inside her. "How?"
Still that gently remorseful look, which makes Frigga feel strangely desperate somehow.
"He," the hesitation shivers in the air like a drop of rain at the tip of a leaf before falling, "fell."
(And she feels like she is falling, like Loki is taking her with him)
(Her little son, in the Void?)
"And Thor?"
The mention of his other son brings more life into Odin's blue eye – sorrow seeps in, more comforting because it is much more there in this moment.
"He chose to stay at the Bifrost a while. What's left of it."
Frigga is besieged with images of her eldest, kneeling at the jagged edges of the broken Bridge and staring into the Void below. She has no idea what her youngest would have looked like falling. What his expression would have been, what he would have said. If he had realised how badly she wishes she could reach in after him.
(Her Loki, in the Void)
(Loki, with no one)
(She fights back a memory of him, something he had said to her once after an apparently troubling day of his that she had never fully managed to investigate;
I am Loki only, and I am alone)
"He will return when he's ready."
For a second she thinks he is speaking of Loki, as if Loki had chosen to fall and would clamber his way back up out of the Void to them once he had come to his senses. She had not heard the full story of his temporary kingship, nor what had transpired in the Observatory between he and his brother, but she knows Loki.
Or she had thought she did.
(Even if she did not, she still wants both her sons back)
(I am Loki only, and I am alone)
Frigga realises she had hung her head at some point, though clenching the hilt of her sword at her hip as though ready to fight. She raises her head to look at Odin again – the tiny movement has never felt so heavy in her entire life.
"What have we done?" She whispers.
"My Queen."
Sif is there, her banquet dress not softening one bit the regal lines of her warrior's stance.
Frigga always felt some sense of pride whenever she regarded Sif – she had been a steadfast friend to Thor, driven in her training, and nearly a daughter to Frigga as they had grown from toddlers giggling with blankets as pretend capes.
"I'm" Sif delivers the line as earnestly as Frigga knows she can bring herself to "so sorry for your loss."
Pride is still there, but it is taking a backseat for now.
He is only my loss, isn't he?
This is not completely true. Frigga knows what Loki meant to Thor – and there are times when she had wondered if still she only sees the half of it – and that her husband grieves in his own way. But what remorse or grief Thor's friends feel is not exactly apparent in the feast before her eyes, of which she stands at the periphery as their laughter rings loudly into the night air.
She knows she cannot blame them. They fought for Asgard in the only way they know how.
(But – Loki had fought for Asgard in the only ways he had known how)
Frigga places a palm on Sif's arm and asks her how Thor fares. But, tactfully, she soon moves away. She will take her loss elsewhere.
She stands at the front of the silent crowd, because she has to. Because she is the Queen, and this was her son, despite how badly she wishes she could instead hide at the back, curl into ball, and sob as if she were alone.
(I am Loki only, and I am alone)
Despite that Asgard and its blackened oceans are as magnificent as always to look at, Frigga squeezes her eyes shut for a second. Yggdrasil can spare her one second, to force down all tears and the choking, aching feeling of loss in her throat. She would rather get through this particular funeral without expression, without anything, and let her heartbreak floor her afterwards in private.
Frigga realises just how much she detests this. Not because she does not believe Loki does not deserve a send-off, but because of how little comfort it provides, despite the perfectly cool night air, and the enormity of the crowd spilling into palace foyers and courtyards. How little it would comfort him, if he were here. As she turns briefly to scan the throngs of Asgardians behind her – dotted with those holding the little white lanterns to release at the end, into eternity – she sees how alone she is in her grief.
Loki had been nowhere near as beloved as Thor. She knows that.
(Odin knows that, Thor knows that)
She can feel the sense of righteous obligation as they behind her – decent, good people she cares for – pull the most earnest sorrowful expressions they can. Their eyes are dry, and their children are thrilled to play with the lanterns.
(Loki had been nowhere near as beloved as Thor
– Loki knew that)
There is no body, of course. The farewell vessel atop the glistening water – normally cradling the body – is filled instead with a few of his old things; books, daggers, gloves, whatever else Frigga could bear to allow to be taken. The point of including such possessions in the vessels is so the dead have a few of their things as they begin their afterlife in Valhalla. Frigga cannot imagine what comfort Loki would draw from them if he had indeed made it there.
The boat looks lonely as it glides over the waves towards the edge of the realm. It is splashed with shadows and then with firelight as the customary, blazing arrow sent after it sets it alight. The lanterns float upwards to shyly greet the cold dusk.
In wake that follows, Frigga holds onto her neutral mask tightly as everyone offers her, Odin and Thor polite condolences as shallow as young rain puddles. It pains her almost as it had to hear of his death the first night.
(I am Loki only,
And I am alone)
She had known for a long time what he had meant by those words that day. She is witnessing the proof from the whole city.
It is this lone thought that squeezes her throat and heart so hard that her tears finally begin to stream.
She knows Thor writes to him.*
She still passes Loki's old bedchamber more often than necessary. Many times, even nearing dawn, she glimpses a burly silhouette hunched over Loki's old desk. Tiny shadowy movements just visible through the gloom, like a candle flame flickering, indicate Thor's feverish scrawling.
The first time, she had thought it an intruding palace servant rifling through their second prince's belongings, and she had drawn her sword. In the confrontation, the intruder had stopped her arm with an ease that had almost embarrassed her, until his face had entered the lamplight. She had sheathed her blade before wrapping her arms around Thor's wide shoulders, the two of them stilled by a quiet, midnight heartache.
"Does it help, to write?" She had asked. "Do you know what to say?"
"I never quite know," Thor had answered, "But it's worse to not try."
Thor never shows her his letters, so she tries to write her own. As though Loki can read them from wherever he is and that it actually makes a difference whether or not Thor has missed anything so Frigga is there to add her own thoughts.
When she lifts her own pen, she is often stuck. She imagines Loki standing at her shoulder with amused eyes and asking her why she struggles so to write to him. After all, the two of them shared – had shared – a different bond from everyone else. With him gone, reality pummels her again and again with just how different he had been from the rest of their world. The little world – half-in half-out of anything that can be pinpointed by words – that he had carved for the two of them just by being present. By being Loki. If being with Thor had been like dancing on a sunlit lawn, time with her youngest son had been like nestling in a quiet bedchamber during a nighttime storm. Reality pummels her with the fact that he is gone.
But she imagines her youngest taking the pen from her hand and asking if he can help her.
She imagines saying Yes please, Loki, and the two of them sitting together at her desk, or in her garden, writing a letter with no longer a purpose because he is there safely beside her.
Whenever she manages to finish one, for some reason she signs it with Your mother, as if of all things that had transpired, that was what he had needed reminding of.
"Does it help you to write?" Thor asks her one morning. "Do you know what to say?"
She answers softly, and honestly, "He usually knew, anyway."
She lies awake, as always, listening to the tempest outside.
Thor does not even bother with rain half the time anymore, their eldest son sending mass after mass of dry lightning down from the skies like he cannot be bothered weeping any longer. Frigga wonders if he would ever run out.
A slow yawn creeps up to stretch her jaw and scrunch her eyes; she is exhausted, as always these days, but she continues to listen to Thor's grief painted in lightning because they all knew he was never a Silvertongue and this is how she can listen.
She cannot see the streaks of electricity while lying on her back on the cool velvet mattress, but she can hear the thunder – how it began earlier that night almost regally, before growing wilder until the sky should be rent into pieces. Before settling into mournful rumbles that eventually fade.
She tries not to think how Thor's grief comforts her, as if it is something like a blanket, or a coat, that they are sending to Loki wherever he is to keep him warm. As if Loki is not alone.
Frigga lies awake, as always, listening for someone else to grieve for him.
She cracked open the door without knocking.
The study chamber was golden but dim, illuminated by a few lamps stationed across Odin's long desk, which was piled with neat stacks of documents, like a miniature citadel. Odin was there too, poring over the papers. Frigga remembered she had once wondered absurdly if his lone eye meant he read at half his usual pace.
"What busies you now when there is a funeral to attend?" Her voice evidently broke into his reverie, because he raised his head stiffly from its bowed position that it had not left when the door had opened. He looked slightly drained, but calm, always calm.
"I was just finishing approving the plans for repairs of the Bifrost and Bridge."
She felt her jaw tighten unconsciously. "That can wait, Odin."
"Of course, Frigga, I was merely finishing off the last of them." He rose slowly, as though he had been frozen there all day and was thawing out. "I'll sign this last one and join you shortly."
Something had been budding inside her, separate from her grief but stoking it higher. Growing monstrously itself.
Odin added, "Our constructers need them approved soon so – "
"The constructers?" She cut him off politely. The thing inside her snapped.
To his credit, Odin detected the change in tone.
"Yes," he said slowly. "They asked earlier today if I could – "
"You will attend to them promptly, then? Our son's sendoff is nearly to begin."
"I was going to make my way there immed – "
"HE. IS. YOUR.SON!"
And suddenly she was losing it, losing everything, because Loki had disappeared into the Void. Loki was gone despite how he had thrown himself into making things. Loki was gone after centuries of loneliness.
Loki was gone and she had not said goodbye.
"HE. IS. GONE. AND YOU ARE ALREADY WORKING ON REPAIRS– "
She had no power over lightning or storms like Thor, so this was the closest thing she could manage. She did not even register if Odin was cowering, or crying, or fleeing from the room to search for their son's body like they ought to have.
"OUR SON. IS. DEAD – "
Because Loki was now in the Void, or in –
(Valhalla or Hel, despite her love for him she could not fool herself that the Norns loved him too to grant him eternal peace instead of damnation)
Her son –
(I am Loki only,
Loki –
And I am alone)
Loki, she thought, with her head turned away, and realising Odin's arms were around her trying to console.
I'm so sorry.
Frigga wonders how Heimdall copes with seeing everything. Everyone's joys, gossips, and grief. She hopes their Gatekeeper has his ways of shutting things out, for his own sake.
Thor has him.
Heimdall had sent a courier to alert her a few minutes ago.
Thor is bringing him home.
Frigga had not even belted her sword as she left the palace to get to the Bifrost.
The scene of the crisscrosses of heavy chains and the dozen guards does not give her pause as she strides into the Observatory. But her eye is caught by Thor's red cape – she slows at the cautious, angered look on his face.
She stops when she finally sees the prisoner they surround.
For a long moment, Frigga does not recognise the man in weathered black armour and manacles.
And then the sentries around him are suddenly digging the hilts of their weapons into him so his knees bend and he is staring up at her. Loki's eyes search hers like he is asking something.
Frigga has to look away from the sight of her son kneeling to her.
When he is shepherded away, Thor at his side now appears more like an attack dog keeping him in line rather than to protect. She only waits for a second before she follows the morbid procession. When they lead Loki to the underground floors towards the highest-grade prison cells, Frigga instead takes the stairs leading up to Odin's quarters.
She finds her husband in the northern courtyards, his crows darting in and out of the sky above him like sewing needles stitching fabric.
"Our sons return." She tells him even though, of course, he knows.
Odin does not bat an eyelid at her choice of words.
"Execution," he tosses the word out into the air between them like a gambler throwing down dice. It lands on the trimmed lawn, ugly and unwelcome.
"Really?" It is not really a question.
His eye tells her he knows, resignedly, what is coming next.
"Public." Odin nods. She is glad he realises he may as well fully inform her.
She purses her lips. "No."
He sighs, sending the crows away with a gesture of his gloved hand so the courtyard is deserted save for she and him.
Their argument shakes the palace for days.
"I will speak with the prisoner alone."
Odin's gaze is still straight as a spear pointed at her – their– youngest son draped in chains before him, but Frigga gets the message. She lets her own gaze linger on Loki for a last moment before turning away; there is a pang at the image of him regarding Odin with such stale hatred.
(Had she glanced over her shoulder as she left, she thinks she might have seen him break away to look at her again)
Before the door closes behind her, Odin's next words slip out and follow at her heels.
"Frigga is the only reason you are alive, and you will never see her again."
She inhales deeply to calm herself as she glides the length of the hall.
Frigga will never stop loving her husband, but, really, he ought to know her and Loki better by now. She heads toward one of her private study chambers – Frigga already knows the pattern of scrying enchantments to use, and Loki will be expecting her to visit him soon.
I am Loki only, and I am alone
It is centuries too late to rectify that day, whatever had happened, but she thinks back as if the memory of her son can hear her:
Never
And am I not your mother?
The clamour of the main city square dispels as the guards close the palace courtyard gates behind her, like steam after placing the lid on a boiling pot. The babbling of the kingdom is replaced by the recollected voice of her son, where the sounds of council members meandering the gardens to clear their heads after a complicated meeting did not stand a chance against it.
Despite the shouting and ire, his quietest words had tailed her through the city while she had walked, long after she had closed off their linked scrying enchantment.
Am I not your mother?
(And Loki had looked heartbroken, as though trying to believe it for the first time himself)
You're not
How apt he can be at lying at times, but that answer may as well have been a glass window. She resolves to find more time that evening to contact him for the second time that day – she could speak with Loki again, and let them both set things right. That afternoon, Frigga finds herself on a balcony with Thor and the mortal, Jane. Even as they speak, she can picture Loki drifting somewhere behind them, or in the chamber, or amidst the cluster of other royals and palace staff nearby. But she tries to shake the sense of foreboding like a silhouette looming over her shoulder. They would always find time to set things right.
She cannot even tell if the blade is still inside her or not. Her blood had felt hot streaming out of her sides moments ago, but now Frigga feels nothing but pain and cold.
She does not know if Malekith or the Dark Elf are still there. She does not care.
Her eyes can still move – weak flickers. They search for Odin, and for Thor.
(Her mind can still move – it searches for a third person)
I am Loki only, and I am alone
She never did find out about that day of his.
If she cannot be there for him forever then she needs to believe that Thor will. That they never did stop being brothers, that they will both be okay one day.
(The belief stays safe inside her even as she bleeds out)
She has the sense that Odin is holding her as she fades, and she sees Thor's lightning arching above them in her blurring vision. So her mind summons pictures of Loki – beside Thor, beside Odin, kneeling there with her wrecked body and holding her numbing fingers.
(Her last memory of Loki is not of him insisting she is not his mother, but reaching out to try take her hand)
With her family complete, as much as she can make it, she finally lets go.
Odin approaches her calmly. He looks refreshed and well, as if his lifetime had not been spent on wars and regret. It takes all her willpower to approach him just as patiently.
"Finally." She places a palm on his cheek.
"So this is Valhalla." But he does not cast his blue gaze around; it rests on her, content.
"Is it what you imagined?"
"I tried to avoid imagining it. Disappointment with the realm we will spend our afterlife in would not have been pleasant."
"Still wise, Allfather." Frigga smiles.
"It no longer matters. You are here with me, and…" He tails off, as if half of him still lingers in the living realms. Frigga can guess what preoccupies him – the same thing that had preoccupied half of her mind since her arrival.
"And the two?" She probes.
Even with his single eye, she can see he is not lying: "Together."
Frigga nods. "I suppose that is all we can hope for."
She takes Odin's hand in hers. It is still calloused like she remembers, but steady like she had hoped. "In the meantime, let me show you around."
End. Thank you for reading, if you did!
*Thought I ought to make an allusion to my other story 'Dear Loki' if I'm going to include a post-Thor-pre-Avengers section in here.