Sigyn walks in on quite a scene. In the few seconds it took her to rise to Vali's yell, both in this room are drenched with tears. Vali is crawling off Loki's desk and running to his mother. Loki just sits with his elbows on the table, sobbing loudly into his hands. There is a red and silver book, open, but face down on the floor in front of the desk; it seems to have been thrown there, which is surely what frightened Vali into crying.
Sigyn walks to Loki at the desk, but cannot get him to stop sobbing. She hasn't seen him so upset in years. He finally chokes out something.
"I'm not ready for this."
Sigyn can't help but already be teary, since it started before walking into the room. But she is trying to understand what happened here. She walks to the book on the floor.
"Stop! Don't touch it!" Loki is openly, angrily, yelling at her. Sigyn has, only once before, been yelled at by her husband. It stops her dead.
"What is that you have? Did Narvi bring another?" Loki gets up from the desk, his sadness morphing quickly into rage. He puffs the words out between the sobs. It frightens Sigyn. The boys are standing together at the back of the room, watching, holding each other and crying.
"Loki, don't..." Sigyn tries to put the golden book behind her back to keep it from him, and her eyes are trying to warn him that it has something he doesn't want to see. He is adamant, however, and snatches it out of her hands. Flipping the pages one by one, Loki doesn't understand this story, and doesn't take the time to read the runes. But he turns the last page, and his brow furls. The tears begin to stream again. Before his eyes, animated in color and grotesque detail, is the grand illustration of the thief's, his own, punishment. Cleverly missing his savior and wife, it paints him as a wicked soul to be forever remembered as such. Sigyn is now openly sobbing as well, as she didn't have the stomach to bear the inevitable end to the story.
Loki yells out in aggravation, throwing the book down on the floor with the other, flipping it over enough for Sigyn to see that the silver one has almost frozen itself to the stone. It obviously portrays some kind of war on Jotunheim, which accounts for Vali's declaration, but why would he yell something like that? Who taught him that the Jotun were frost giants at all?
"Loki, Loki please calm down," Sigyn is trying to reason with him, having closed the books and placed them on the desk. "It wasn't their fault, they didn't know."
"But Thor did, Sigyn! Thor knew the whole time! He could have taught his son the truth, or even stopped this from being put down - in the history books of the palace, no less!" Loki's anger is seething, his tears racing down his cheeks, his teeth barred. There is no forgiveness in his expression. He looks betrayed, hurt. Loki feels as though he is back in the fortress vault, holding the Jotunheim casket, watching his skin turn blue. Asking Odin, his supposed father, if his worst fears are confirmed. And they are. He is exposed, now to his children, now to his wife, all of the raw pain of shame to be seen as a fiend and nothing more.
"Loki, we cannot wait any longer. We have to tell them the truth so that we can move forward. We waited too long after coming here already."
Narvi and Vali perk up to hear their mother say this; clearly something is missing here. They are frightened back by a slam of their father's hand on the desk.
"No! I will not admit myself a criminal, a thief, or a monster to my own children for the sake of my brother's idiocy!" He ends this phrase with a long yell, and more tears. Loki falls to the floor. He raises his elbows and knees up, sitting in a fetal position, burying his face.
After a few tense minutes of standing around, watching one another cry, Vali finally steps forward to the mess that is his father. But Loki, thankfully, has calmed enough not to strike out at the child, and instead just exposes enough of one eye to look at him.
"I'm sorry father. I didn't mean to upset you. I don't want Thor to kill all the frost giants." Loki's lip trembles in another hard sob at these sweet words from the boy, who clearly has no idea the implications of the thought.
"I'm sorry too, father. I don't want the snake to kill anyone." Narvi stands beside Vali, in the only gesture of kindness that either of them can think to offer up.
"Oh, my sons. It is I who is sorry, to not have been a better man to be an honorable father, worthy of the grand stories that you deserve to hear. It is my fault to not have taught you about Asgard, or your uncle, or myself." This confuses the boys, and obviously so, as they look at him with such admiration. And what could he mean by claiming Thor to be their uncle? In the eyes of Narvi and Vali, their father Loki is invincible, the King of Vanaheim, the bearer of magic and life. Why would they want him to be any different? Sigyn does not interject during this exchange, choosing to hold back, letting Loki be vulnerable with them so that they might all be healed.
Loki sits on his knees before the boys, and for the first time in their lives, reveals his Jotun form. Narvi and Vali are a little afraid, and look at each other once before looking back. But unlike the image of the book, Loki does not look scary or intimidating; he is still their father, just marked with lines across his face, and deep red eyes that do not glow like fire. The tears that streamed down his face moments before turn into a fizzling snow that quickly dissipates.
"Your father was born on Jotunheim, which makes him one of the frost giants. My magic allows me to look as I please. But here I am, children."
Vali reaches out to touch Loki's hand, but he backs away slightly. Loki can't help but remember the terrible cold burns that the frost giants inflicted on the band of warriors when he first discovered his heritage. He is worried that a touch of his hand might harm the child, and starts to change back into his usual form. Loki is much less vulnerable in the camouflage he adopted.
"But father..." Vali looks at Narvi, and they nod at each other. They hold their tiny hands in front of him and focus, repeating the little spell they thought they'd taught themselves, not realizing that more than their hands could turn blue. They can change form like their father. Sigyn stands in the back and cries openly loud at this, thankful that there is not hopelessness in Loki's confession to them.
Loki quickly embraces them, tightly. They are his sons. And they love him for who he is, frost giant and all.
...
Loki and Sigyn stay up all night explaining themselves to their children. From Loki's birth on Jotunheim to his being raised in Asgard as the Prince, he explains to them that they are just as rightful as Modi to be in the palace, and to receive the honors of education that he so openly flaunts to them. And of course, as such, Modi is their cousin and Thor their uncle.
Sigyn tells them about their mother's role in the Chitauri war, and how she saved their father's life from the great serpent. The boys eat up the story that she tells much more than the book's illustrations, begging her to tell it again, asking their father if it really happened. Her ring now has a hidden meaning that the boys are proud to know each time they see it. Their sons learn that they lived on Vanaheim because their parents were not welcome here in Asgard, and their father became King because he was a great man. There is no throne for them on Vanaheim unless they earn it rightfully, for Vanir men are not to be ruled, but are to be respected. Narvi and Vali are proud to call themselves Vanir, and ask them for their own world's history, since Asgard's seems so boring if the books are all wrong anyway. The children run throughout the chamber, excitedly retelling the stories to one another.
Vali, still remembering the games they played with Modi earlier, somehow gets ahold of his father Loki's ornate dagger, hidden within the leather boots kept by the bed. He runs out of the back chamber as the conversation winds down, and the family prepares to go to their respective bedrooms.
"Father, I will defend you!" He throws the dagger towards the wall, thankfully just missing his brother's small body whizzing by unexpectedly. Seeing it fly through the air makes Loki choke with surprise, and he runs to grab it from the small wooden plank that Vali embedded it into. A good shot, admittedly, for the child to so expertly throw his father's weapon and to have it lodge with the correct end downward. But as is now routine with the boys' secrets that spill out one by one, they are terrifying. Vali's naivety alone forces Loki's blood to rise.
"I don't want either of you using weapons until I have taught you myself. Is that clear?" Loki is trying not to be angry, but he never worried about his son seeking out a fight, even for defense, before this moment. It's something he clearly picked up in these weeks spent on Asgard, as Loki never even told him that he had the dagger at all. The boys nod, Vali in particular flushing a shade of pink from disappointing his father. They retire to their small bedroom, and Narvi kicks him for almost hitting him with the dagger.
Loki watches the boys run to bed, and gazes at the dagger in his hand. He looks at Sigyn. They are tacit: clearly, they need to have a talk with Thor about his boy.