Baldr's POV

At the end of the day – or rather, daily routine – Baldr and Nanna were bafflingly peaceful and consonant. Baffling for him, that is. After millennia of distance and icy silence between them, this took some getting used to.

He hadn't pinned Nanna to be so … genuinely funny. Not that he minded, of course.

"… and then Sigyn chased him all across Asgard with a pitchfork!", she finished her latest tale.

Baldr chuckled: "Yes, that's a very Sigyn thing to do."

He had always found his starry-haired older sister hard to deal with, most people had. Sigyn's abrasive and explosive demeanour was just repelling.

"I still have a few questions, though", he told Nanna.

She considered, before agreeing to answer what she could.

"How did you and Sigyn become friends in the first place?"

Nanna laughed: "Well, I was curious about what's behind her bitchy exterior and she was the only goddess noticing that you and I were unhappy. We talked and before I knew it, we were best friends."

Baldr had no idea why it made perfect sense to him, that Nanna would bond with a spitfire like Sigyn. They were opposites, while having just the right things in common with one another.

But before he could further ponder his ex-wife's friendship with his sister, he remembered something else. Something that had bugged him, ever since they had got here.

"Uhm, Nanna?"

She perked up at his tentative tone. "Hm?"

"If it's not too much to ask … why are you dead too? You caught up to me right when I got to the bridge to Helheimr, which means you died no later than a day after me. What happened?"

Suddenly her carefree expression vanished and she averted her gaze.

"You know, you don't have to answer, if you don't want to-"

"I killed myself."

Cue his jaw dropping. "What?!"

"I killed myself", Nanna repeated. "When I heard that you were dead, my first plan was to mourn you appropriately and then move on."

"Makes sense so far."

"But then I heard the other goddesses talk about me behind my back. Skadi had seen me look at Hermóðr for two seconds too long and then told the others about it. And with how envious the goddesses were of me, she found open ears. I heard her accuse me of being a gold-digger and a faithless bitch behind my back. Not the first time she said that either. She has been so infatuated with you this entire time, but you married me instead, so she hated me, like, you have no idea. Anyway, Sif brushed it off and pointed out how lovey-dovey you and I always looked and that I would likely die of heartbreak, once it sunk in, that you were dead. That was the moment, when I realised, that I would never be free to marry the man I love and just move on. You would always haunt me."

Baldr felt his heart shatter.

Nanna swallowed what was clearly a lump in her throat and continued: "So I dressed my best, wrote goodbye letters to my loved ones and chugged a vial of poison. It kicked in, when you were carried to the pyre. The last thing I remember is collapsing and hearing someone say that I died of grief, before everything turned black, so at least that plan worked. Then I was burned with you, I guess, because next thing I knew, there was fog everywhere and I could hear the far-off voice of the gatekeeper talking to you. And, well, that's about it."

"Nanna …"

"Don't get me wrong, I wasn't relieved or even happy, that you were dead. It wasn't like I hated you or anything like that. Actually, once I got over the shock and confusion, I felt … nothing. My own husband freaking died and I felt nothing!"

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

"It made me spiral into a panic attack. Luckily Sigyn was there to reassure me. She said it's not uncommon, that people don't immediately feel anything after losing someone. That was a relief. I thought I was a monster for not feeling anything, but apparently that's a normal thing, so …"

Baldr chose his next words carefully.

"Nanna, you're not a monster. You and I hardly were close and even if we had been, you wouldn't have had enough time for everything to sink in to the point of grief. It was only a few hours between my sudden death and your suicide. I have seen people who lost someone dear and needed years to, you know, actually feel something. I think that's a defence mechanism. It's not weird that you had no immediate emotional response other than shock."

She sighed: "Yeah … I know that now. And maybe I overreacted and didn't think things through, but everything just hurt so much."

"How do you feel now?"

"Lighter than ever in life." Her face grew sombre again. "I just regret having to leave our son and my friends behind."

Baldr nodded sadly. "Same here."

.

"By the way, remember when I questioned how you found out about me and Hermóðr and you didn't answer?"

"Huh. Now that you mention it …"

"So how did you find out?"

Baldr gave her an underwhelmed look. "Well, you should have chosen a more discreet spot than your husband's backyard to make out with your brother-in-law."

"Oh … right."

"Yeah."