Out the Window
Part I: Worlds Apart
Two
A metallic zzzzziiiiiinnnnng rent the air and Buffy dodged a split second too late.
Mjölnir impacted with her chest with the approximate force of an eighteen-wheeler doing seventy-five on the freeway. An eighteen-wheeler full of bricks. She curled forwards instinctively around the hammer to absorb the blow, but that didn't stop her from flying twenty feet through the air.
"Lady Buffy?!"
"Nghygh," Buffy whimpered, flat on her back and completely winded. Okay, so that was probably a few broken ribs…
Thor's worried face swam into view above her. "Buffy, are you injured?"
"Ugh," she grunted, and kicked out sharply, sweeping Thor's legs out from under him.
He made a noise of surprise and collapsed across her feet. Buffy half-heartedly tried to dislodge him, but it was in that moment that her strength finally gave out, and she slumped back again, breathing heavily. Down by her boots, Thor muttered something unsavory and pushed himself up to his hands and knees. She was inordinately pleased to note that his breathing was also a little labored. It was hard to wear out a god!
He rocked backwards into a crouch and stood up. "You…are…distracted," he said between breaths. He reached down for her hand and pulled her swiftly into a standing position. "What troubles you?"
"Ow, my chest, you big jerk!" Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and breathed through the stabbing pain. Yeah, those were definitely broken…She opened her eyes and glared up at him. "What gives, Goliath?!"
Thor shrugged, his expression stuck somewhere between guilt and concern. "I thought you would duck." He tiled his head to the left and stared intently down into her face. "You have not been yourself, these past weeks. I would know what ails you and causes you to act so abnormally!" As he spoke, his volume rose and he gestured wildly with Mjölnir.
"How would you know what's normal for me?" Buffy snapped.
Thor's expression crumbled. "I – I had considered us friends."
Buffy immediately felt like the biggest douchebag in the history of the world, because Thor looked like someone had just punted his puppy off a bridge. "Of course we're friends, I'm just being a bitch," she said miserably. "I'm sorry, I haven't been sleeping well."
"You are missing your home," Thor said quietly, his expression still unhappy.
"A little," Buffy admitted. "The people. And coffee. But this is…something else."
Thor took a half-step forward and settled one massive hand on her shoulder. "Tell me," he implored. "I wish to help."
"I know," Buffy acknowledged. She hesitated, trying to decide how much to tell him. "Do you have seers here in Asgard? People who can see the future?"
"Yes," Thor responded immediately, and then blinked down at her in surprise as he put the pieces together. "You have such sight?"
Buffy nodded, and wrapped an arm around her aching ribs. "I don't see the future, exactly. But sometimes I have these dreams. They're not clear – usually they're chock full of vague and heavy on the cryptic – but they're almost always warnings. That something bad is about to happen, and I'm supposed to stop it." She frowned suddenly. "And sometimes there's cheese."
"Cheese?" Thor repeated, brows furrowing in confusion.
"Never mind," Buffy said quickly. "It was a whole thing. You had to be there."
"These night terrors are what lead you to roam the halls in the early hours of the morning?" Thor pressed on.
Buffy stared at him, surprised by his specificity. "You know about that?"
"I have been trying to discover the cause behind your abrupt change in demeanor for several days now," Thor admitted. "My quest has led me to take note of your comings and goings."
"I thought I heard someone following me last night," Buffy said, several puzzle pieces of her own falling into place. "Thor, you creeper!"
Thor ducked his head, abashed. "I grew concerned when I passed your chambers and heard you crying a sennight ago," he defended.
"Well, that's mildly embarrassing," Buffy said. "O-kay, any chance we can just forget about this entire conversation? I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"
"You should visit my mother," Thor advised.
Buffy frowned. "Because she's going to make us lunch?"
Thor laughed loudly. "Never have I known her to withhold food if her guests wish it, aye. Those who visit Fensalir are treated with the utmost hospitality. But I speak of the guidance she may give you, for Frigga is a great see-er of things to come; though such knowledge is hers to keep in secret."
"Seriously?"
"I do not jest."
"That's…convenient," Buffy said slowly.
"I shall take you to her now," Thor decided abruptly. He swung Mjölnir up in a glinting arc, now clearly meaning now, and as quickly as possible.
"Hey!" Buffy protested, throwing up her hands and backing away when he reached for her waist. "This flight is not cleared for take-off!"
Thor lowered the hammer and looked at her patiently.
"What?!" Buffy demanded, reaching up to smooth her sweaty hair self-consciously. "I can't visit your mother looking like this!"
Fensalir was gorgeous in a wild, swampy sort of way. It rose out of lush wetlands, a glittering edifice swathed in mist that stretched up towards the heavens.
Frigga welcomed Buffy warmly and dismissed her son in practically the same breath; back to his warrior companions and the halls of his father.
Buffy was led first to a room with a steaming bath, and blushed only a little when the two handmaidens within ignored her protests and helped her to disrobe. One of them bundled her dirty clothes away while the other began to work the knots free from her flight-tousled hair. They left the actual washing to Buffy, which was a relief. That particular Asgardian hospitality had taken some getting used to – and some convincing on Buffy's part that no, she didn't feel slighted by the notion of washing her own hair, she really did prefer it!
That hadn't stopped most of the palace attendants from hovering just outside the door and then swooping in with warm towels, or scented oils for her skin, or snacks, or whatever else they deemed helpful, almost before Buffy made up her mind to get out of the tub. She'd gotten used to it. Ever since that time she'd lived with a few dozen teenage girls crammed into a two-and-a-half bath house, she'd sort of stopped placing unnecessary importance on modesty.
Clean clothes and a basin of water with the tools to clean her teeth had Buffy feeling 100% better. The bruises dotting her ribcage from her earlier sparring match with Thor were already beginning to fade, and it no longer hurt to breathe which was always a plus. She combed her hair out over her shoulders to air-dry and followed one of the attendants through the brightly lit passageways to Frigga's private apartments.
When she first stepped inside the spacious chambers, hung as they were with intricate tapestries and elegant sculpture, she was overwhelmed with a sudden wave of homesickness for her mother. Buffy had no eye for art, but she knew Joyce would have swooned at the sight laid out before her.
Buffy blinked back unexpected tears; it had been years since her latent grief for her mother had caught her so unawares. Frigga saw something in her expression that betrayed her altered mood and took her hand to lead her further into the room. She settled them on a plush sofa that overlooked the wild landscape below through enormous bay windows. She signaled for an attendant to bring them refreshments.
"I am glad you have come," Frigga told her with warm sincerity. Her eyes searched Buffy's face. "I see now that I should have sent for you sooner. Thor tells me you have not been sleeping."
"Thor has a big mouth," Buffy grumbled.
Frigga laughed. "'Tis true. Ever since he was a child he has found it difficult to hold back his thoughts, and often expresses them with little consideration for subtlety. I hope it does not offend you that he has made your troubles known to me. He acts only out of concern."
Buffy smiled reassuringly. "I know he meant well. Believe me, I have plenty of experience with friends poking their noses into my business." She spared a fond thought for her friends back home, and accepted a drink from Frigga's handmaiden who had returned with a platter of fruits and bread. She had been expecting mead, which seemed to be the drink of choice on Asgard, but was pleasantly surprised to find her cup full of a kind of fruity sparkling wine. She sipped it slowly, turning her gaze once more unto the magnificent view outside.
"You will see them again," Frigga promised her, breaking the silence.
"Maybe," Buffy said, noncommittal. It wasn't that she didn't have faith in Willow (the woman had brought her back from the dead once, after all) but there were other things brewing. Slayer-y things, if her dreams were anything to go by. And she wasn't going to be able to just walk away from that.
"Your destiny has been much altered," Frigga commented oddly. She paused, and seemed to stare past Buffy. Finally, she blinked and refocused her gaze. "It is difficult to follow the threads," she said mysteriously. "It is not done changing, I think."
Buffy hardly knew how to respond to that statement. Her impulse, born out of decades spent rejecting the idea that she had some pre-determined destiny, was to declare that she didn't believe in fate or prophecy. Something in Frigga's voice gave her pause, though.
"Is anything ever fixed?" Buffy wondered out loud. She took a bite of a crunchy sort of biscuit and continued through the mouthful. "The thing about prophecies is, they have a nasty habit of self-fulfilling." She swallowed, and sipped her drink to wash it down. "So basically, I've stopped worrying about them."
Frigga inclined her head slightly. "That is wise," she said generously. "To prophesy is to claim a great authority over future events; few who possess such arrogance are able to accurately read the future."
At this point, Buffy fully expected the conversation to turn to the real reason she was there – the reason for her sleepless nights and for Thor's worry – but Frigga surprised her again by changing the subject entirely, and they did not return to such weighty discussion again for many days.
When the topic finally arose once more, it was not at all in the way Buffy imagined it would.
Fensalir was captivatingly beautiful and Frigga nothing short of the consummate hostess, but Buffy soon found herself growing restless. She had struck up an easy friendship with the other inhabitants and had at first relished in the solitude that could be achieved so much more easily in Frigga's halls than in Odin's bustling palace, but Buffy was not wired for prolonged inactivity. She found herself missing the companionship of Thor and his warrior friends strongly, and spent hours running drills with her scythe and other handy weaponry.
It was just when she thought she might explode from pent up energy that Frigga redirected her attention.
"Come," she said late one afternoon. "I have something to show you."
Frigga led her to the very top of Fensalir, up winding stairs that seemed to go on forever and ever, until they stepped out into an open, airy chamber full of tall windows and skylights. In the center of the room, there was a curious structure taller than either woman and hung with a multitude of colored threads. As Frigga beckoned her closer, Buffy recognized it as some kind of loom. She realized belatedly that the beautiful tapestries hung throughout the palace must have been woven by Frigga herself. It seemed a massive undertaking, but Buffy supposed you needed a hobby or two when your lifespan was many thousands of years.
"Know you anything of the weaving arts?" Frigga inquired as she watched Buffy studying the loom.
Buffy shook her head. "Mom took me with her a couple of times to buy some Navajo rugs for her gallery, but I was mainly interested in the sheep."
Frigga ran her fingers gently across the threads. "It is one of the oldest magics," she murmured. "It is my own gift, and one of the first I taught to my son."
Buffy suppressed a laugh at the mental image of Thor trying to untangle the tiny threads with his large hands. "I imagine that went over well," she commented jokingly.
Frigga looked at her oddly for a moment before understanding dawned.
"Ah, no, Thor never had the patience for such craft. I speak of my younger son, Loki."
Buffy winced at her faux pas, but Frigga continued, unconcerned.
"He possesses a natural talent for it, though he has little use for the physical medium of thread," she said.
"It looks complicated," Buffy said.
"The end result can be," Frigga agreed, "but there is a rhythm to it. Here, I will show you."
She took Buffy's hands and guided her through the steps, explaining the differences between the warp threads, which ran the length of the fabric, and the weft, which ran side-to-side, and how they interacted to form dazzling patterns. It was actually kind of cathartic.
"This is magic?" Buffy asked dubiously after she'd gotten the hang of the movements. She paused to examine her work. It looked a little…lumpy.
Frigga smiled. "In a way – although perhaps not in the way you are thinking." She took the shuttle from Buffy's hands.
"The universe is like this warp," she explained, running her fingers across the threads that hung from the top of the loom. "A base structure – determinate – but only half of the equation."
She pulled on one of the rods running the width of the loom, causing the stone weights below to knock against one another in a soft, musical jumble. The threads parted enough for her to pass the shuttle through, completing a row of weaving. "The weft is choice. What thread we put into the cloth, and the exact path it takes through the warp, is up to us."
"So it's a metaphor."
"Yes."
Buffy sighed. "What if I don't know which threads to use? Or what if they're all tangled and knotted in a giant ball?"
"Sometimes I find it necessary to step back from my work to gain perspective," Frigga told her. "It is easy to see one thing in the isolated moment, and something else when gazing on the whole with fresh eyes."
It sounded to Buffy as though Frigga was advising her to wait and see what happened next. And if her suspicions were correct, and her old pal The First really was lurking around in this universe, she didn't know what else she could do. The trouble with The First Evil had always been that it acted through others, manipulating their deepest fears and desires. It twisted good intentions and fed on desperation and above all else, it was infinitely patient. There was nothing to fight, nothing to seek out and slay, no preemptive measures she could think to take save for staying vigilant.
She needed a fresh perspective.
"Loki is alive," she told Frigga, making the decision she'd been wrestling with for weeks since the dreaming began. She hadn't told Thor, whose grief and guilt was so palpable. Hadn't dared to, when there were still so many unanswered questions.
"I know," Frigga said simply.
"You know?" Buffy repeated, flummoxed.
"Call it a mother's intuition," said Frigga.
Buffy thought it was probably a little more than that, but she didn't comment. She was too relieved that she didn't have to try to convince Frigga, half-afraid to bring up such a sensitive subject.
Frigga fingered the edge of the incomplete cloth on her loom. She was quiet for a moment, obviously choosing her words carefully. "Loki has always been capable of far more than even he can fathom," she said finally. "I see now that it was a mistake to keep his birthright a secret from him."
In bits and pieces (and one evening in particular when Thor had gotten very, very drunk) Buffy had unraveled the story as best she could. And yeah, finding out you were of an entirely different species, not to mention one that you grew up fearing and hating, had to be one of the worst 'Surprise! You're adopted!' stories she had ever heard. Personally, she thought Frigga might be understating things.
"I regret the way things turned out, but it has always been clear to me that Loki could never reach his full potential here in Asgard, forever in his brother's shadow," she continued. "His path is just beginning. As is yours, Buffy Summers. Perhaps yours is also a journey that must take you far from home."
Buffy shivered, a tingling chill running down her spine. There was something in the lilt of Frigga's voice that gave the words more weight than a casual observation.
Frigga had a faraway look in her eyes again as she turned back to the loom. She touched the rows of weaving Buffy had tentatively completed, and picked up a shuttle wound with a bright gold thread. She plucked at the warp and began to work again, following some complicated pattern that was beyond Buffy's comprehension.
Sensing that the queen's attention had been captured entirely, Buffy quietly left her to it. She had much to think about.
"Thor, you're bleeding!"
"Buffy – "
"And oh my god, you have a black eye!"
"There is nothing to –"
"You, Mr. I'm-so-strong-I-can-level-mountains, have a black eye."
"If you would let me –"
"Did somebody beat you up? Like, did you steal their ale?"
"Nay – "
"Hit on someone's wife?"
"What?! I am not in the habit of hitting women! I – "
"It's an expression, never mind, but I just can't believe you! You totally got in a fight – "
"Buffy, please."
"…and you didn't invite me?!"
A wide smile pulled at Thor's split lip and a dribble of fresh blood rolled down his chin. His beard was already matted with the stuff and his teeth were stained pink. His entire person was covered in mud and gunk and his cloak had left a smudgy trail behind where it dragged across his mother's ornately tiled floor.
"Lady Buffy," he said, bowing formally and adopting a stately tone, "my companions and I would forever be in your debt should you grace us with your presence and help us defeat a fearsome beast that is ravaging our lands."
Buffy squinted up at him. "How fearsome are we talking?"
"I would not fault the bravest of warriors for soiling his drawers upon gazing into its repugnant, gaping maw."
"That fearsome, huh?"
"There is also much slime."
Buffy glanced at Frigga, who had been silently watching the proceedings with an amused expression ever since Thor touched down a few moments ago, and received a fond headshake. Buffy shrugged. "Yeah, what the heck?"
End notes: The description of Frigga's loom is of a warp-weighted loom, which is what the Vikings would have used. A quick Google search should yield some good images if you're having trouble picturing it. The nature of the design is that they can really be any size - I imagine Frigga's is quite massive. Most depictions of the goddess Frigg show her at a spinning wheel ("spinning the clouds") but I felt this story needed something a little more realistic. She probably spins, too, though.
