"It is unlike you to be up so early," Odin said, setting aside his surprise as easily as he set aside the papers on his desk. He glanced up at the slim figure silhouetted in the doorway, making a motion of his hand that beckoned Loki closer. "Does your brother know you've left him?"
If Loki was startled by the guess, he showed none of it. Closing the door lightly behind him, the boy shook his head. Odin was heartened. Wounds shared cut less deeply than those born alone. That his sons might learn to set aside their differences and support one another had long been amid Odin's dearest hopes for them.
That Loki was wearing still the tunic Odin had marked at dinner the evening prior, also did not come as a shock. No doubt the news had shaken Thor in much the same manner as it had Loki. They would have spent the evening as they were bound to spend many in future. What love lay between them would need to be reestablished. They would have to renegotiate what their alliance meant, and how it would function. Odin doubted either of them had spared even one thought to dress for bed. Thor, likely, would have slept. His nature was resistant to lasting hurts. Loki, however, was sure to have lain awake late into the night, listening to his brother's breathing. Loki took wounds more deeply than did his brother, but just so had he a resilience Thor lacked. While Thor could take a beating many men would fear, Odin had seen Loki return time and again after humiliations his brother never would have faced.
Odin himself had slept but little. He'd remained awake long into the first, small hours of the morning and dozed but shallowly before determining there were duties that could well use the attentions of the king when sleep was so elusive. Turning his chair away from the desk, Odin gestured to that which stood against the wall. This was not a private audience of state, where the supplicant would come to plead his case across the hard wooden panels of a desk to a largely-indifferent sovereign. It was his son who had come to him, and Odin would treat the audience with the familiarity it was wont to receive.
Loki hesitated a moment, quick calculation shadowed in his eyes before he set it aside and padded across the floor on bare feet to the chair his father indicated. His son's slender build was accentuated by the width of the wingback chair's arms, thought Odin's thoughts were elsewhere. Loki's movements were fluid, not the sudden sharp motions he'd exhibited the night before. Odin suffered no illusions that his son was well after only one night with the new concerns that rode him, but neither was he mislead enough to think himself one with whom Loki would share his deepest mind. By nature, the boy was reserved, and experience had only enforced in him what nature had planted. Odin was glad to see that Loki was capable of keeping up appearances once more. The court was cruel. A true mask was the greatest defense offered a prince. And Loki was certain to need what defenses he could gather before this was well and over.
Odin had more respect for his son than to make light of what was passing between them with cheap pleasantries. Setting pen aside, Odin turned his entire attention to the boy. "You would have something of me?" he half-asked.
Loki's posture was amended admirably from the form it had taken last night. His chin was balanced as befitted a prince speaking to his father, his back straightened, but not held rigidly as would indicate fear. The only motion that gave him away was the shifting of the fingers he'd laced together in his lap. It was a nervous tell he'd inherited from his mother, but minimal enough that Odin did not check him on it.
Loki looked up, matching his father's tone and manner in his choice of answer as he so often did, mimicking him with a half-question that was no answer at all, "You have told me the truth in all of this," he said.
Odin inclined his chin solemnly, allowing the play. "I have."
There was a quick flicker behind Loki's eyes that another might have missed, but the boy's gaze remained steady. "Will I be sent back?" he asked.
He asked it levelly, as though the answer were nothing to him, but not flippantly, and Odin's heart thrilled with pride at his composure. Odin adjusted his seat. "To Jotunheim?"
Loki's chin dipped in a stiff nod.
"I will not deny the possibility had been in my mind when first I took you to me." Loki did not react in any discernable way, and Odin lowered his arm, laying it over the papers on his desktop. "But I long set such notions aside as a matter of course."
A slight frown furrowed Loki's brows. He didn't glance aside at Odin's hand. "'Of course'?" he asked.
Odin fixed the boy with a steadier gaze, uncertain if Loki asked only for clarity's sake or if there was some deeper purpose – whether Loki sought evidence of resentment or disappointment in his reasoning. "It would avail Asgard nothing to send you to Jotunheim without proving the truth of your origins to both peoples, and to win their good regard in so doing. With the tensions current under Laufey's reign, I find such policy ill-suited to lasting peace – Thus, meaningless, as well as disruptive to all concerned. And,"
Loki's brow rose, his eyes hooded from betraying further emotion. The expression gave the boy an oddly lifeless look.
"such schemes should want your full assent, which was hardly capable of being given during your infancy."
Loki merely nodded understanding, glancing disinterestedly away.
Odin's ordinary methods of observation availed him little in this interaction with his son. Loki's talent for reticence was equal – nearly – to Odin's powers of discernment. Such would prove no benefit to either of them here. Odin leaned forward on his elbow, hoping to unsettle the boy with his uncharacteristic nearness. "Does Loki regret that time has altered the mind I had in this?" he wondered aloud.
The boy's mask faltered. He swallowed, shifting back a little and turning his head involuntarily away to shed some of the weight of his father's gaze. It took him more than a moment to answer, and when he did his voice had less strength than it formerly possessed. "His allegiance lies with you. I," Loki glanced aside, almost lifting his eyes to meet Odin's, "would go wherever you sent me."
Odin sat back, giving the boy the space he so clearly wanted. "I am pleased to hear that," he said.
Loki interrupted him before he could say anything further, "Everything you do has a purpose," he said with renewed strength. He lifted his chin in a defiant jerk. "If you're not sending me away, then why tell me now?"
Odin rested his elbow on the arm of his own chair. "Your mother was adamant that the truth not be kept from you longer than was necessary," he traced his fingers through his beard. "You and your brother are of an age where you both could be counted upon to understand the gravity of what was said and – perhaps – to profit by it."
That same flicker showed behind his eyes, but Loki glanced away in time that Odin made out little of it. It was unsurprising that Loki should disbelieve him in that.
"How do I hold this form?" Loki asked, softly. Then, after, almost like he'd forgotten, "You told me nothing of my – mother."
Odin noted the way he pronounced the word, as though it was one with whom he remained unfamiliar. "You wonder if your mother was of Asgard?" Odin asked. "That," he answered before the boy could voice a reply, "I do not know. The confinements of Laufey's queen have never been public knowledge."
"Did you make me this way," Loki pressed, sitting forward on his hands, "Or do I hold this form myself?"
Odin studied him for a long moment, his chin resting thoughtfully on one fist as the boy stared back. Loki showed no signs of the emotional instability that might have been expected. While Odin was proud of his son in this, the fact that someone else would bear the brunt of it at a later time was clear to him. Odin wondered if it would be Frigga, or Thor. Or if the boy would retreat further from the eyes of all and present no more of himself to the world. Such withdrawal could only harm the boy, though it would have to be another who prompted him away from such course. Odin had no misconceptions about Loki's regard for him.
Finally, Odin answered him, "I suggested the form. The transformation was yours, as is the strength you exhibit in keeping it. Should I die, no alteration will come to you."
If the boy felt relief or pleasure in hearing that veiled praise, he expressed none of it. How poor preparation for such a child as this Thor had been. His heart was ever in his mouth and on his sleeve as Loki's would never be. Odin wondered briefly what might have been, had Loki trusted him as easily as he trusted Frigga. Possibly, that case would have been worst of all. Betrayal where lies no true trust can hardly be named betrayal, and can hardly be treated as such. Anger might be expected, but little, perhaps, of true hurt.
Loki remained quiet, his face grim in its stillness as he studied the hearth. He looked very small, between the spreading arms of the wingback chair, and very young. His shoulders were narrow, his face too solemn for so young a youth.
Odin thought then to offer some kind of comfort to the boy. To promise love, or perhaps to reiterate the pledges of family Frigga had pressed on him the night before. In Odin's experience, such words were largely pointless, and soothed only the speaker. If the receiver believed them, they need not be voiced. The belief would already have been deeply seated. If the receiver did not, then there was little the speaker could say that would lend itself to belief. So when Loki said nothing more, Odin asked with only the barest concession to sentiment, "Is there more you would know of me, my son?"
There was that flicker of that something behind Loki's eyes as he sat up, like one waking from a trance. The barest hint of a smile, old in its bitterness, tugged at his mouth. "I can't think of anything now," he admitted.
It was the first true show of emotion the boy had displayed yet, that smile, and it did more to encourage Odin's belief in Loki's resilience than anything the boy had said.
Odin gave a solemn nod. "You should return to your brother, then," he said, turning back to his desk. "He will be distraught, should he wake and find you gone."
Loki said nothing as he rose and nothing as he left the room. He shut the door quietly behind him, and the only sound to herald his going was the soft click of the latch. Raising his head and leaning back in his chair, Odin scrutinized the door. His lone eye glowed with a grim amusement not unlike that which Loki had expressed before his going. It was bold, for a son to leave his father without so much as a word, even more so when his father was king. But the choice had an eloquence of its own, whether that meaning was of Loki's making or an accident thereof.
Their conversation was far from over. And while Frigga – by necessity – was to bear the greater part, Odin knew he would be no small player in the scenes to come.
Giving a deep sigh, Odin bent his head once more to his work.