I want to put a disclaimer here but, sometimes, I am not even sure I need one for these characters because they do not technically belong to Marvel. Anyway, I am stalling. Enjoy this fresh piece of Asgardian Royal Family angst.

"You do not raise heroes, you raise sons.
And if you treat them like sons, they will
turn out to be heroes."

~ Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

"Tell me," cries Frigga and the look on her face is pure, unspeakable terror. "Tell me what happened!"

Her voice his raw and shrill. She knows. While Odin sees everything that transpires in the Realms, she senses it with her heart. She knows that Loki is gone and, yet, she does not want to know.

Thor glances at his father, who has not spoken a single word since they walked back from the Bifröst. On top of the sliver of pain stabbing into the Thundergod's heart, it is Odin's reaction that almost undoes him. His father—All-father, king of Asgard and fearless warrior—a mountain of strength that has towered over him all his life is now crumbling.

"Odin!" Frigga screams. "Where is my son?"

"He is gone," confirms Odin eventually but the words are spoken so softly that Thor feels rather than hears them. "He …fell." He pauses. "From the bridge."

"No!" Frigga stands in front of her husband now, mouth gaping open in terror, pounding her fisted hands against Odin's armor in a gesture of sheer and utter despair and, in this second, Thor knows that the loss will break her. All the time she spent with him, all the Seiᵭr she taught him, all the secrets they shared, the walks they took, the breakfasts they ate in the gardens, the books they read together—and now Loki is gone. Her delicate child, the son who loved her so deeply and whom she has tried to protect from the menace lurking deep within his own mind with her last and every breath, is dead.

The scene unfolds in front of Thor's eyes again, unbidden. He hears the deafening noise in his ears as the Bifröst implodes, sees the blinding flashes of rainbow light stabbing into his retinas, feels the ground give way underneath him, time and space becoming unhinged for the briefest of moments, hurling him and Loki off the Rainbow Bridge. His father is there, grabbing him by the ankles. His father saves him. He hears Loki scream, sees his brother's fingers curl around Gungnir—those long, slender fingers that he hated to besmear with the dirt from the training ground. He feels his own fingers reach for the staff because if he does not reach it, Loki will fall. His father saves him but he must save Loki. If he does not pull him up, his little brother will fall. And Loki knows this. Loki knows he is going to fall. His brow is furrowed with pain and tears glister in his eyes.

Thor groans.

"I could have done it, father," cries Loki and there is so much longing in those words that Thor feels his heart shatter. "I could have done it," cries Loki again, his voice shaking, vibrating even, with all the pain he has concealed in Thor's presence until then. "For you!" he cries and now there is rage too and sadness and hopelessness. "For all of us," Loki concludes softly, glancing up them, his gaze hungry, starving for approval, praise, recognition; anything.

"No, Loki," says Odin and Loki's world shatters. There is a brief flicker of disbelief in his eyes but then his swift mind begins to work against him again and he understands. His eyes narrow. His face hardens.

"Loki, no!" Thor begs when he understands but it is too late. Loki lets go of the king's staff, of his need to please their father, of his family, of everything, and there is nothing Thor can do to save him. Not that there has ever been anything he could have done to save him but that does not matter. Thor hears his own scream as he watches Loki fall into the abyss of space until the stars devour him whole.

"No," whispers Odin but it is too late.

"Why didn't you save him?" cries Frigga and brings Thor back into the present. His mother's lips are trembling and tears are flowing freely down her cheeks. "You should have saved him! How come he could not be saved with the both of you there?"

Her words bring Thor to his knees and, for a moment, everything turns dark.

A long moment.

When Thor awakens, Odin is gone, and he is sitting propped up against a stone column. Frigga is beside him, her trembling fingers cupping his chin and Thor feels the warmth of her magic stream into him. The healing spell does little to piece the shards of his broken heart back together.

"Forgive me," Frigga whispers, her lips still trembling.

"No, forgive me, mother." Thor swallows. "I should have said something, anything. If I had said something …"

Frigga shakes her head and there seems to be reluctance in the gesture. "It was not you," she says, her voice a broken whisper. It breaks Thor's heart all over again to see his mother in so much pain.

Thor tries to draw a breath and finds that he himself is still trembling. "I wish I knew …" His voice trails off. "He has been teetering on the edge of chaotic madness for so long that I began to think he would never slip." The pain slams into him again and with such force this time that it drives the air out of his lungs. And then he softly asks the question he has been meaning to ask for a long time but always put off because he has been too afraid of the answer. "What was wrong with Loki's mind, mother?"

Frigga winces. Her teeth pull at her lower lip as she ponders the question. She remains silent for so long that Thor thinks she might not speak. "He has always suspected that he was different from us," she begins quietly, "even from a very young age. His mind was always working, always scheming, always making him aware of how people treated him, of how they whispered about him when they thought he could not hear them."

Thor bites his lip until he draws blood. "I should not have ridiculed him and his magic the way I did," he brings himself to say and the admission knocks the bottom out of his stomach. "Call him argr and other things, and belittle his fighting skills and … I was these people."

"You were his brother," says Frigga and the past tense almost undoes Thor a second time. "Brothers do fight with each other and ridicule each other. If you knew how many times he has insulted your intellect, you might not even feel bad." She cries tonelessly, tears flowing down her face in a steady scream. "No, Thor, my love, this is our fault. Your father's and mine."

"How?" Thor whispers and his voice is hoarse with tears, sounding alien in his own ears. He wants to hear the answer, needs to hear it, but he knows it will change his life forever.

"We lied to him," Frigga admits and he can see how much it costs her to speak these words. "To the both of you. Loki is … was … He was Jötunn. And what pushed him over the edge is that he found out about it."

Thor hears the Queen's words but he is not certain whether they make sense. All their lives, the brothers have heard tales about this despicable race of monsters that inhabits the icy wasteland of Jötunheim. They have grown up to fear and despise the Jötnar with a burning passion that has driven him to march upon Jötunheim against his father's orders and that has driven Loki to unleash the full energy of the Bifröst upon… "He tried to destroy his birth planet," says Thor and he is not sure if it has been a question. "His lineage, his past. Why? Because he thought father was going to send him back to where he came from?"

A sob tears through Frigga's chest and comes out in a noise that Thor cannot even begin to describe. "I don't know," she whispers. "But I would not put it past his self-destructive mind to arrive at such a conclusion."

"Loki told me all he wanted was to prove his worth to father. To have father look at him and see that he is my equal." The pain that follows is unbearable and Thor is sure that the loss will break him too. "Father denied him that. He told him no. He rejected him on the brink of suicide." Now he cries in earnest, violent sobs ripping his chest open like the claws of the Fenris wolf, and he is scared that his body is going to actually, physically, break.

Frigga holds him even though she is shaking.

"Why did you lie?" Thor howls. "He let go of all this because you lied … Because father … because … because we never … I would have told him that it doesn't matter to me and I never got the chance because of him."

And for a long time, this is all Thor can think of.

That he has never told Loki how much his little brother meant to him. That he has never ensured him he would not think him less of a brother just because his skin was blue under the magical guise of his Aesir form. It matters little to him that Frigga tried to persuade Odin to tell the truth because all that matters is that they never did and that Loki died thinking he was no longer wanted in Asgard because of that.

And the God of Thunder can never love his father the same ever again.

Note:
Yes, yes. This is the mood I woke up in this morning and then I burned my toast and everything went straight to Hel from there. I hope you "liked" it. It was the first time I attempted to write in the present tense (Akira, you might have inspired me again *wink*), so let me know what you think. Until next time xoxo