Previously, on The Long Winter:
After moving into their new chambers in the bowels of the palace, Max confronted Loki about getting her home. Things didn't go smoothly, to the say least, and mid-argument she ended up getting physically ill. Concerned, Loki rushed her to the palace's medical staff.
"I really don't want him in here."
Max looked between Loki and Eir, the healer who seemed to be in charge of things in the cavernous medical wing. Somehow Loki had alerted the medical staff on-call for the night that they were coming, because by the time they arrived, there was a whole army of woman clad in blue dresses, their hair swept back in the traditional thick Asgardian braid crown around their heads. Eir, who Loki had greeted by name, seemed to be the oldest, the skin crinkled around her dark eyes and thin mouth, giving her the appearance of constant scrutiny. Grey streaks worked through her dark brown hair, and fat, bulbous rings adorned her fingers.
"Max, don't be ridiculous," Loki ordered, arms crossed. The female healers had situated themselves between him and her once they'd directed her to a long, narrow table to sit on, perhaps sensing the tension. Loki's scowl wasn't enough to deter her, and when Max gave a pointed look to Eir, Loki cleared his throat and gestured to her. "Commence with your testing."
"No," she repeated. It was a childish protest, she knew, but she wasn't about to let him walk all over her here—king or not. "Get out."
"Max—"
"We're in a fight," she ground out, "and I don't want you in here. Doesn't Asgard have the same rights to medical privacy that Earth does?" When his eyes narrowed at her, she crossed her arms and shrugged. "You can wait outside."
Loki's arms fell to his sides as he looked haplessly to the healers, but no one said a word until finally Eir stepped forward, her head dipped down somewhat. "Perhaps, my king," she began, not shrinking so much as an inch when Loki fixed her with a withering glare, "it would be beneficial for your lady's state of mind if we were to conduct the examination alone. Mental stress can skew—"
"Fine," he hissed, an icy venom wrapped snugly around the word. "Fine. I will be in the hall until you've completed your testing, and then one of you will fetch me immediately."
He fired one last look to Max, one that she ignored in favor of picking at the nonexistent bits of lint on her dress. Only when she heard the familiar sound of his boots stalking heavily across the floor did she lift her gaze, just in time to catch him storming out the door from which they'd entered. Seconds later, the door shut, and she gave him a bit of credit for not slamming it.
Once she was alone, she let herself feel the weight of her nausea, of her light-headedness, of the ache in her gut. Swallowing hard, Max pressed a hand to her stomach and winced as the healers scattered to work around her at Eir's request. Moments later, the greying brunette pressed a finger under Max's chin, prompting her to raise her head.
"You look pale, my lady," she noted, and before Max could say anything, she pressed her cool hand to Max's forehead, then her knuckles to each cheek. "Clammy as well."
"I was throwing up," Max admitted with a weak shrug. "My stomach's been off for a little while. I don't… Loki says Asgardians don't get stomach bugs, but I…" She pressed her lips together, suddenly very aware that she had no real knowledge about her new body. As she got older, Max could tell when she was catching a cold, when a headache was on the way, and when she'd pushed herself too hard on a run. Her human body was familiar, as were its aches and pains. She'd been applying what she knew about that to this body, not taking into account it's new inherent strength. "I should have said something."
"I would have liked to see you once you and the then prince returned from Nornheim," Eir said, her tone making it sound like she was scolding them both lightly. "It isn't every day a human is made one of the Realm Eternal."
Heat rose to her cheeks. Apparently her transformation was gossip through the palace grapevine.
"I'm sure you're right," she managed as Eir stepped back, the woman's clinical gaze sweeping up and down her body. "Just a forewarning that I might throw up again. I don't think there's anything left, but I can feel it churning."
At the end of the table, which had two metal rods at the either side like conductors, one of the younger healers shot her a wary look. If the stomach bug wasn't big in Asgardian healthcare, maybe they weren't as used to dealing with all the bodily fluids that human doctors and nurses put up with on an hourly basis. Somehow that made her feel even worse about her new body, but Eir gave her no time to contemplate it. At the head healer's instruction, Max eased back on the table, and once she was stretched out flat, the tabletop changed from mute brown to brilliant white.
The change was startling enough to make her gasp, but Eir pressed down on her shoulder when she sat up to take a look.
"Be still, my lady," she said softly. Max's gaze darted from side to side as more healers lined up along the table. When they started pressing at something beneath it, the table started to vibrate, the huge conductor rods by her feet humming. Eir gave her shoulder a hard squeeze, and Max tilted her head back to look up at her. A half-smile seemed to be about as good as it was going to get.
"Is this going to hurt?" she asked in a very small voice. Around her, the healers exchanged subtle looks, though she was pleased to see they weren't smirking snidely at her ignorance. Eir moved slowly to her right side, stopping by her shoulder as the healers along that side of the table shuffled down to accommodate.
"No," Eir told her, crouching somewhat so that she wasn't so far away. "You're in a Soul Forge, my lady. We will use it to determine the cause of your illness. It will only take a few moments. Please be still. Nothing about it should bring you pain."
"Right. Okay." She tried her best not to sound skeptical, but the table she was on with its crackling copper rods and alien-experiment-table-white-light looked straight out of an old sci-fi movie.
Regardless, Max drew in a deep breath and faced forward, eyes wandering the dark vaulted ceiling in silence as the healers worked around her. They were like a well oiled machine, all ten of them moving in perfect harmony without any uttering a word. It was almost as unnerving as it was fascinating, but the former kept her stare up and away, ignoring the rising heat of the table's surface beneath her body. Back of the head, shoulders, butt, and heels, all direct points of contact, warmed to a feeling just short of discomfort. But Eir was right. So far, there was no pain—besides the pain in her stomach, which was fucking relentless.
"Deep breath, my lady," Eir instructed. As Max drew in a slow breath through her nose, the table she lay stretched out on hummed once more, the rods crackling and vibrating. She drew in a sharper gasp of air when suddenly a field of orange particles drifted into focus, creating the shape of a person—her, she assumed.
"Is that me?"
"We use the Soul Forge to find your maladies, my lady," Eir told her, reaching into the hovering body and moving bits of it around. Max's eyes fixed to her hands as she worked. "It gives us a fast reading of any problems."
"Cool," was the best she could do, staring up at her body in awe. It was like a hologram—Asgard was absolutely an old sci-fi movie. Sci-fi meets fantasy, somehow. At Eir's instruction, she stayed as still as she could, watching the healers work. They started from her head and worked their way down, probing and talking softly. One of the younger women stood a few feet from the table, recording everything on what looked like a tablet. Where was all this technology before? Max was so used to feasting halls and merchant carts that she'd all but ignored how advanced a society Asgard was in comparison to Earth.
Something caught her eye a few minutes into the procedure, the points of contact along her body aching as they rested on the very solid tabletop. While it seemed Eir had already spotted what she'd seen, Max couldn't help but point and frown at the black-brown dot in her midsection. "What is that?"
"Be still, my lady," Eir said absently, pushing her arm back to her side. "It's nearly over."
The healers fussed over the dot, pulling that chunk of her hologram body toward them and enlarging it as one might zoom in on a touchscreen device. Max bit her lip, watching, though she had a sinking feeling she knew precisely what it was before Eir told her.
"Leave us," she ordered the other healers, and as the women in dark blue uniforms drifted off into the dark recesses of the ward, her glowing orange self disappeared. Seconds later, the light from the tabletop also vanished, and Eir helped Max stand upright, a hand on her crooked elbow for balance. "How are you feeling, my lady?"
"A lot of things," Max told her, threading her fingers together as her hands settled on her lap. "What's… What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing is wrong," Eir said as she stood before her. "You are feeling poorly because you are with child."
This was the second time in her life she'd been sitting in a hospital and someone told her she was pregnant. Thankfully the news didn't hit her as hard as it did the first time. In fact, as Max leaned back against the table, she almost wasn't surprised. Maybe she'd known, deep down, that this would happen. She'd kept taking whatever birth control she had, but it made sense that it wouldn't work on her body now. What human medicine would?
The first time she'd been pregnant, her world was disintegrating. Her brother had just died. Her city was in ruins. Her body was broken, her mind in scattered pieces. It wasn't something she could handle. It wasn't something she was prepared for in any sense of the word.
But what about now?
"My lady?" Eir ducked down a little to meet her eye. "Are you alright?"
"I don't know," Max admitted. Her mind should be going a thousand miles an hour, assessing all the pros, all the cons, all the potential problems. But it wasn't. Everything was somehow very still, grounding her in the moment. Max drew in a shaky breath, her hands fisting in the fabric of her dress. "I…"
"Sit on the table." She barely registered Eir helping her back, nor did she flinch away when the woman took her pulse or pressed a hand to her forehead. "Do you feel faint?"
Max shook her head. She felt…sturdy. Her knees hadn't threatened to buckle, nor was the room spinning. She should have been panicking. Crying. This wasn't the time for a baby—but when was it ever?
"I've been pregnant before," she said, only half aware of what she was saying. "Before… I was human, and Loki… I…" Her eyes darted to Eir, but she didn't know what else to say. The healer let out a soft breath, her hands clasped before her as she returned to her clinical two-foot distance.
"He spoke to me of it when he returned." The healer pursed her lips briefly. "I'm not confident we could have helped you back then, given… what you both were."
Tact. Eir had a lot of it. Max swallowed hard and tucked her hair behind her ears, a thought only just occurring to her. "I've been drinking a lot lately. I… I mean, I didn't know I was pregnant."
What if she'd already destroyed it? The thought brought the tears at last, but she wiped them away before any fell. Eir studied her with a frown, as if trying to work through some ridiculous riddle Max had just posed.
"Ale won't hurt the development," she said slowly after a tense pause. "The pregnancy is only early yet. You're still at risk for losing it."
"Oh." Max placed a hand on her abdomen. Normally there'd be a plump curve, the kind all women had when they crouched over, but she'd been losing weight steadily for quite some time now. Stress-induced, probably. But she couldn't do that anymore. She'd have to make sure her dinners consisted of actual food—not just a flagon of booze. "Human babies might get, uhm, what is it…" She closed her eyes briefly, the name at the tip of her tongue. "Fetal alcohol syndrome if the mothers drink during pregnancy. Is that not the same for Asgardians?"
"I don't encourage a mother to drink," Eir told her sternly, "but only because ale makes fools of us all. Your child is quite safe, though ale is hardly the sustenance it will need to grow."
"Right, no," Max mumbled as she looked down, "of course not."
The doctor in Manhattan—what was her name?—had a whole slew of pre-natal vitamins ready to go when she saw Max's bloodwork. Would her Asgardian body need those too? How long was an Asgardian pregnancy? What about Loki's frost giant heritage? Just as the questions started to overwhelm her, Eir placed a hand on Max's knee, the contact yanking her back to the present.
"Overall you are very healthy, my lady," she said. "Perhaps not entirely in the mind, but physically there are no problems."
Aside from the sudden appearance of something growing inside her, of course. But maybe Eir was right. It wasn't technically an illness, pregnancy. Not if Max didn't want it to be.
"I would like to see you again in two weeks' time," Eir instructed as she withdrew. "I will see you every two weeks to monitor your health. I am also going to put you in touch with someone you can speak to should you be experiencing any stress," her eyes swept up and down Max's figure again, "with all these new changes."
Max nodded, a thick lump settling in her throat as she continued to look down at her abdomen. Maybe it would do her some good to talk to someone, but she could hardly sit down with a therapist and tell them she suspected the new king of Asgard did something undesirable to attain his new position. She couldn't talk about how she just wanted to go home—because Earth was a non-entity to so many Asgardians, just another speck in the universe full of backward humans. Still, she knew logically she couldn't keep her feelings bottled up for much longer.
And given all the progress they'd made in their most recent conversation, maybe Loki wasn't the ideal person to vent to anymore.
"Would you like a moment to yourself?" Eir asked. "Or shall I let him in?"
"Yes," Max whispered without missing a beat. When she looked up, Eir was watching her with a slightly raised brow, and she cleared her throat, speaking louder this time. "You can send him in."
As she watched Eir drift across the dark space, her robes moving with more flourish than the other healers, Max thought back to Manhattan. Back then, her first instinct had been to hide the pregnancy. Keep it from Loki, from everyone. Take the time to figure out what she wanted, what she thought would be best for her life in that moment. All the while trying to grapple with the complexities of a world free of body-stealing aliens. Try to find her friends, her family. Attempt to rebuild her life without the ones she'd lost along the way. Figure out what was going to even happen with her and Loki now that the war was over.
There was none of that here. Sure, she was lost in space, trapped in a world she didn't feel she belonged—not by a long shot. But things were different. She was different. And this time, things had to be different. Max refused to repeat the past.
She hardly had a second to school her features between Eir's disappearance and Loki's return. He emerged from the shadows tall-backed and grim, features cool as he strode toward her. Slowly, the nearer he drew, the more his face lost its aloof edge. By the time he reached her, all she saw was concern. It surged forth from the depths of his gaze as he took her in, his hands reaching for hers. She thought he'd keep his distance—they were in a fight, after all—but Loki gathered her hands to him and kissed her palms. She welcomed his cool touch, pulling one hand up to press against her forehead. For a moment, she closed her eyes, breathing deep and even.
"What news?" he asked. Tentatively. Like he was bracing himself for the worst. When she didn't open her eyes, Loki retracted his hand and gripped her arms, squeezing gently. "Max?"
Here it was. A moment that would change them forever. She still had the chance to lie, to run, to hide. But Max swallowed hard and opened her eyes, searching out his with some hesitancy.
"I'm…" She pressed her lips together, the word catching in her throat. No. This was doable. It wasn't the same as before. She wasn't immediately wracked with anxiety, with guilt, with fear. Squaring her shoulders, Max lifted her chin and exhaled deeply. "Loki, I'm pregnant."
His arms fell to his side as his face went slack, but he collected himself fast, stepping back from her with a furrowed brow. It wasn't the reaction she'd expected, but then again, pregnancies hadn't gone down well in the past. So she slipped off the table, one hand still resting there on its fingertips in case the dizzying feeling threatened to kick in again.
"Loki?" He looked down, hands planted on his hips. The room's lighting cast long shadows across his pale face, but when Max reached out for him, he glanced up sharply. His eyes watered, and the second she saw it, so did hers. Unsure of what to say, Max grabbed one of his hands and placed it on her abdomen, and as he shifted closer, suddenly she was smiling and she didn't know why.
"Are you sure?" he murmured, looking to her quickly when she sniffled.
"Eir's pretty sure," she told him, then let out a bit of a strangled laugh when his lips spread into a smile. It was tentative again. Maybe he worried if he showed too much emotion, she'd turn and run. She wouldn't. Not this time. Drawing in shallow breaths, she pushed forward and threw her arms around his neck, holding tight. For a moment he stiffened, yet when she said it again, I'm pregnant, he practically melted into her. Loki trembled in her arms, but then again, so did she.
They stood like that for some time, holding one another, letting the emotions of the day ebb—just for now, just for that moment. When she finally pulled back, Max slid her hands down to his chest, wanting the closeness.
"She says it's early," Max told him. When a tear rolled down his cheek, she brushed it away with a smile. "I know back home you can't tell people you're pregnant until it's like twelve weeks because there's a higher risk of miscarriage, so we can't say anything—"
She squealed as he devoured her with a kiss, dragging her close, his large hand splayed across her lower back as he held her. Her lips parted and she let him drink her in, savoring a kiss that wasn't tinged with tension for the first time since he'd been crowned. As her fingers worked through his hair, gripping it, Loki lifted her and spun them both in a circle before setting her back down. Max dodged the next kiss, recognizing the familiar hunger in his eyes as he swooped in on her. If things were different, she'd let him hoist her up and set her back on the table. She'd drag him to her, legs wrapped around his hips as frenzied fingers worked at buttons and clasps and zippers.
"We still need to talk," she told him, using the hand on his chest this time to hold him back. He grinned wolfishly and it was nearly her undoing, but she held firm, knowing there was so much left unsaid that they couldn't just sweep under the rug anymore. "We need to talk about a lot. I don't want to say this doesn't change things, because it does…"
"I know," he told her with a slight nod. Max let him draw her to him again, eyes drifting shut with a sigh as he nuzzled her neck. When her physical response to his caresses lessened, he seemed to take the hint, kissing her cheek instead of her swollen lips. "How are you feeling?"
"Scared," she said without missing a beat. "Nervous. Like I'm totally out of my element." Max paused, biting her cheek for a moment before adding, "Kind of excited. I don't know. A lot of things. It's hard to process any of it." When she noticed the twitch of his eyebrows, threatening to knit into that over-thinking expression she knew so well, Max hugged him again, a hand on the back of his head, and asked how he was feeling.
"More of the same, I suppose." Loki sounded dazed as they eased apart, then ran a hand through his hair. "There's much to… think about."
"And talk about," she insisted, taking his hand. Her nausea crept back in the longer she stood, and suddenly she found herself wanting to be sitting somewhere. But she was determined to ride it out, knowing she had him at the perfect moment to rope him in. "Promise me. We're going to go talk about this."
His eyebrows shot up. "Now?"
"Yes, now," Max said, giving his hand a squeeze, "while it's still on our minds."
He took a moment to consider it, drawing their clasped hands to his lips to kiss the top of hers, then sighed heavily. "Fine. Let's talk now then."
"Okay." She swallowed heavily again, realizing this time she was swallowing down a mouthful of saliva with it. More surged to fill its place, and before either of them could say another word, she yanked her hand away and made it a whole three steps before bending over and throwing up whatever was left in her stomach. When she felt Loki's hand on her back, she glanced up and shot him a weak smile. "Morning sickness I did not miss. At all."
His jaw flickered as he clenched it briefly, and he then drew her hair out of her face as she turned and dry-heaved onto the floor.
"Eir!" Loki's voice bounced off the walls of the ward, and within seconds the healers came running.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
HELLO MY DARLING BABIES.
Firstly, let's discuss my huuuuge absence. So, literally the day after I posted the last update, I was in an accident at work that resulted in a super severe concussion. I had to go the ER, was banned from looking at screens, and experienced probably the worst headaches I've ever had in my life. This is my second concussion ever (the first was in the time of The Sky is Falling, and it sorted itself out within a week), and I'm still dealing with post-concussion syndrome nearly 8 months later. Every day is different. It's either mediocre and I just have the standard constant headache, or it's horrific and I feel like I can't talk.
Back when this first happened, I was dealing with some freelance work. My client wouldn't let me stop working, so I literally sat there, five minutes at a time on my laptop, and tapped 150 words out before needing to crawl back into a hole and recover for two hours. It was fucking awful.
When I started to improve slightly, I had to make a decision about where I wanted to focus my writing energies. I had fanfiction, freelance, and personal writing projects on my plate. Doing well as an author is my goal, so that had to come first. Freelance work pays for me to be an author, so that had to come second. And then I literally had no brain power left, on top of going back to work at the Day Job (because heyyyy my employer wasn't insured and no one covered my missed wages), for fanfiction.
Since then, my man and I have moved to a new city (at the start of this month, actually!). I was just put into a concussion clinic where my meds had been finagled with, and things have been really slowly improving. I'm optimistic in a sense, but trying to be realistic too. I'm currently not working at a Day Job because who will hire someone who needs excessive accommodations just to get through the day, so I have some time to spare for fanfiction.
I'd been trying to find a will/way to come back to Max and Loki for a while now. I really missed them, but I think the time apart from this series has done good things for my muse. It was actually a reader on tumblr who messaged me recently telling me what this series meant to them, and those words got me fired up to give this a try.
So, I've designated my Sundays to fanfiction—if I have the brain power and if I have the ability to work on updates. I'm estimating 3 weeks to a month (or more) between updates, but I'm trying. There are 40 updates in this story total, and we're on 25 right now. I think we can do this before the next Thor movie comes out. Maybe.
But I really missed you guys, and I'm super amped to be back!
PS: brain injuries are NO JOKE PLS FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY. It's been a nightmare. A total nightmare that I would never wish on anyone. I literally write with all my Word docs zoomed in 180% and the background has to be grey or I'm weak and sad and it's just a shit show.
I'm sorry if I forget things (one of my symptoms) or if the writing quality is a bit sub-par (another symptom) and all that stuff. I'm reaaaally trying here.
See you soooooooooooooooooon!