Elvish funerals were different from the Asgardian version.

In Asgard, the culture claimed that battle and the furnace of war was the most honorable thing a person could go through in their lives, therefore, the best way to honor the loved ones who had passed was to cremate their remains in the most noble of warships available.

Even Frigga, the most graceful, peaceful queen of Asgard there had ever been, had been a warrior, and had been given a warrior's funeral.

However, on Alfheim, the mindset was more simplistic, that everyone had come from their planet, and everyone would eventually return to the stuff it was made of.

To Loki, it seemed anticlimactic, nearly disrespectful, for the queen of the elves, and his mother-in-law, to simply be placed underground, a simple tree planted above her final resting place.

For a woman so noble, so powerful, one would think there would be just a little more chaos to honor her.

Such was not the way of the elves, though. As each of Queen Galadriel's children sprinkled flower petals around the sapling that would one day become a tall tree, Vali, the only one of her grandsons who actually even remembered what she looked like, buried his face in his knees and sobbed. They were sitting on the grass, so no one really noticed, but Loki gently wrapped an arm around him in a silent gesture of comfort.

Not a word was spoken as the ceremony came to a close, and the crowd slowly began its dissipation. Soon there was no one left on the hillside, save the queen's own children. The sun gently sank behind the hills, painting the sky a glorious array of vibrant flaming colors. Slowly, the stars came out, and most of what was left of the royal family lay on their backs in the grass, staring up at the glittering constellations.

"Why did you never tell us?" Eowyn's small, soft voice piped up. All heads turned toward her as she stared directly at her oldest sister.

"Me?" Sigyn raised her eyebrows. "Why didn't I tell you what?"

"Anything." She explained. "You didn't say when you had the babies. You didn't say Loki was still alive. You didn't say you were still alive. Why not?"

"She told me she was alive." Legolas pointed out.

"But you never wrote us, after the blip." Eomer chipped in. "And before then, you only said stuff that didn't matter. I thought my brother-in-law was dead for years. You only talk to Legolas. It isn't fair!"

Sigyn looked to her smallest sister, Arwen, with a confused frown.

"I don't know anything about you." Was all she said, but it hurt far worse than anything anyone had said so far.

It was true. Arwen was nearly ten, and Sigyn had seen her maybe a dozen times since she'd moved to Midgard, seven of Alfheim's years ago. There were no memories left in her head of her eldest sister.

A thousand excuses popped up in her head, a thousand reasons she hadn't truly kept in contact. Loki's life would have been in danger if she had told them about him, but it was the least she could have done to go visit. It wouldn't have done any harm, in fact, it would have given her mother an opportunity to meet her two grandsons. And now she never would.

What had she done?

"I'm sorry." She whispered. The tears were spilling over, again, squeezing out of her eyes and dripping down her face into the grass. "I didn't mean to leave. Not forever."

Before she could make out another word, all four of them had scrambled up and wrapped her in the warmest group hug she'd ever experienced. "We didn't mean to guilt you." Eomer whispered. "We just really miss you."

"We're sorry." Arwen agreed. "Please don't cry?"

It was too late. Sigyn was bawling. It was all so much, piled on top each other. Hela, her mother, her siblings, her family, the new baby on the way, it seemed like she was balancing a thousand things at once in her heart, and since she couldn't pay close enough attention to any one of them, they were all falling apart on top of each other. Could she truly do anything the way it was supposed to be done? Perhaps not, if she had so much she had to handle correctly at once.

Meanwhile, her siblings were going nuts, trying to find some way to get her to stop crying. It was heartbreaking. She knew they were all grieving, too, but somehow they were able to keep themselves together enough to comfort her, and her alone, as she broke down. Arwen was pulling a seemingly infinite amount of sweets from wherever she'd hidden them on her person, stacking them up in front of her like an offering on an altar. Eowyn was crushing her ribcage in the fiercest hug she could manage, while Eomer desperately pulled faces to try to get her to laugh.

"Sigyn…" Legolas pleaded. "Come on, there's got be some sort of solution, right? We could do Zoom calls on weekends, or something. It's not as bad as all that. You haven't failed us."

"It's not just that." Sigyn sniffled, swiping at her tears in a last-ditch effort to calm down her siblings, and herself at once. "It's… the kids. And Jotunheim. And Hela. I can't do anything the way it's supposed to be done."

"Hey. Hey." Legolas soothed, taking her hands in his own. "It's okay. You're kinda torn into a million pieces, aren't you?"

"Mhm." Sigyn agreed with an embarrassed smile. "I'm sorry to drop all this on you."

"It's what we're here for." Eomer reminded her. "We're family. We'll be here for you."

"Maybe you could stay for a while?" Arwen suggested. "Just until the baby comes?"

"You sound like you could use a break." Legolas agreed. "We can help with the kids, and you can get a bit of a breather."

Sigyn nearly burst into tears again. Her family was so willing, so eager to help, they were willing to help her take on her hoard for the remaining five months of her pregnancy. It felt like a huge burden had lifted from her shoulders. "I… I'd have to ask Loki…"

"Naturally." Legolas agreed. "But we'd love to have you."

Two months seemed to slip by like a couple of weeks, thanks to the help of the Elvish royalty. Things began to look up. For once, a spell of complete calm was over their little family.

It never lasted long, though, did it? Something or other always blew up eventually.

It had supposed to have been four months. No one expected the baby to pop out so quickly, so no one was prepared or ready when Sigyn went into labor almost a full two months early.

The elvish healers rushed her behind the thick, heavy doors of their own ward, spouting frightening words like, "Critical," and "condition,' put together in such a way that made Loki's very bones tremble.

It was all afternoon, he was pacing up and down the halls, pretending not to be lingering outside the healer's wings. Vali was the only one allowed inside, and that was only because they needed all hands on deck.

He probably would've worked himself up into a panic attack if it wasn't for Fenris. The little guy noticed Loki impersonating a ghost as he wandered the halls, and decided the best course of action was to silently trail after his Papa as he paced, no matter how long it took.

It took a while. Eventually, Fenris did leave his side, but only to fetch a snack for the two of them. Not a word was traded between them as they sat on the floor and had a sort of picnic in the hallway to the sound of Sigyn's muffled screams.

The sun dipped low behind the horizon before an altogether different sort of wailing could be heard from behind those heavy doors. It was high, thin, weak, the sort of voice that had suddenly been thrust into a world of cold, unforgiving horrors far too early, and certainly did not approve of any of it.

"Is that them?" Fenris asked in a hushed, highly adorable voice. "The baby?"

"That would be them." Loki nodded breathlessly, scooping his youngest – well, not his youngest, anymore, was he? – up into his arms as he moved to hover and fret over the doors while he waited for Vali to come fetch him.

But then he didn't.

Five minutes passed, and he still didn't.

Of course, Loki figured since the baby had come so early, the healers would need some extra time to sort things out. But as the minutes ticked by, and slowly turned into an hour, and he'd devolved into pacing, again, this time with Fenris hanging koala-style off his shoulders, the worry and terror flared up, again.

What if Sigyn wasn't alright? What if there had been complications with the birth. He couldn't hear his child's wails, anymore… were they alright?

"Your face is all pinched up." Fenris whispered in his ear.

"I know." Loki replied. "My heart is all pinched up, too."

"Why?"

"Because I'm thinking about your new sibling." He sighed, and peeled his teeny son off his shoulders, and setting him down on the floor.

"Do you not like the new baby?" Fenris' eyes went wide. "You haven't even met them yet!"

"I… No, no, no, of course I like them. I love them, they're my child." Loki fumbled. How to explain this to a seven-year-old without scaring him? "It's just that… they weren't supposed to come so early. And that makes me think the baby… or perhaps your mother… well, either one of them might get sick, because of this. And that worries me."

"Oh." Fenris nodded, his serious little face growing even more solemn. "But Vali's helping, right? And he's the bestest healer ever. He turned you into a zombie-person, even!"

"…What?"

Fenris nodded, as if this was simply a fact of life. "When you died on Svartalfheim. He told me he zapped you until you came back to life. So now you're undead."

Loki couldn't help but snort. Sure, he hadn't been conscious for that bit, but he was pretty sure that hadn't been precisely how that happened. "Vali told you he turned me into a zombie?"

Fenris nodded, eyes wide and solemn. He wasn't exactly sure why this was funny, but at least Loki didn't seem so very tense, anymore.

"That would explain a lot." He hummed, an amused smile growing on his face. "The random cravings for brains, for instance."

"What?!" Fenris' eyebrows shot up in disbelieving horror. "You want to eat brains?"

Loki opened his mouth to reassure his small boy that he was simply messing with him, but before he could, the great doors to the healing hall slipped open, and Vali leaned out. "Father? You ready to meet her?"

No more words needed to be said. Loki scooped Fenris up like a sack of giggling potatoes, and basically shoved past his eldest into the healer's ward.

Sigyn lay on a hospital bed, pale, her eyes shadowed in exhaustion, hair damp and clinging about her face.

There was no baby in her arms.

Still, her eyes lit up with a dull, weary glow, the moment they recognized him. "Melleth." She breathed.

He didn't even notice his hands were shaking, as he sat down on the bed beside her. "What happened?" He wanted to know, fearing the answer. Vali had said he could meet her, though, implying that there was someone still around to meet.

Sigyn didn't answer, only pointed at a table about three feet from her bedside. "She's asleep."

Loki's first impression of her was that she was tiny. She was barely bigger than his hand, dressed in a little pale blue nightgown with the teeniest of hats on her head to keep her warm until her baby blubber began to grow in. Her little eyes were closed, her pinkish-purple skin all blotchy from the stress of being shoved out into the world. Her teeny fists were curled up beside her face, and all in all, she looked like the most hideous adorable limpet ever birthed into creation.

She lay face-up on the table, a protective shielded dome of pure energy encasing her inside, keeping her warm, filling her lungs with the oxygen they weren't yet developed enough to intake by themselves, feeding her intravenously.

"Is she going to…" Loki wasn't even sure how he was supposed to add on the remaining two words to that sentence. Is she going to be alright? He fumbled to take Sigyn's hand, and squeezed, less for her reassurance than his own.

"She's not out of the woods by a long shot." Vali spoke up, all professional at the foot of the bed in his healer's coat and clipboard. "But she's stable, for now. Things are looking good."

"Can I hold her?"

Vali shook his head. "She can't come out of the soul forge for a while, yet. It's too dangerous. But you could pet her, if you like. Gently, though, especially on the top of her head."

Loki got up from the end of the bed, his heart pounding. This really was the first time he'd actually been here (well, not in the room, obviously, but here) for one of his children's births. It was a solemn, tender moment as he slipped his hand into the protective dome, the energy instantly sanitizing his hand, and he gently stroked the palm of his daughter's hand with a single outstretched finger.

Her teeny little fingers wrapped around it, clung to it as hard and desperately as she was clinging to life.

Loki nearly wept. "You'd better name this one, Sigyn." He choked. "Every time I try it, I name them after monsters."

Sigyn snorted from her place in the bed, as Vali gave her a bewildered look. "I'm named after a monster?"

"Angry named you two." Loki replied. "But Sleipnir, Jormungandir, Fenris… You see my point?"

"I think they're beautiful names." Sigyn protested. "Otherwise I wouldn't have ever agreed to them."

"Sure." Loki nodded. He decided he ought not tell her that he'd really only given them those names as a reflection of his own self-worth. They were children of monsters, so he'd given them monster names. It had been stupid, rather petty, much like something an emotional teenager would do, but that bit of his life was behind him. He was fed up with hating himself, especially when other people were saddled with monster names as fallout.

"Hela."

Loki nearly jumped out of his skin, and rounded to stare at his wife with wide, bewildered eyes. "Excuse me?"

"I want to call her Hela." Sigyn repeated. "You said once that it was a name you'd always liked, right?"

"Well, yeah, before I knew I had a monster sister named that." He insisted. "I thought we just agreed; no more monster names."

"After you forgot her, you mean." Sigyn whispered. "She wasn't a monster."

Loki decided getting into an argument with his wife who'd just given birth would only end in one of them crying, and it wouldn't be him, so he very wisely shut up. "Any other ideas? Vali?"

"We could call her Dawn." He suggested.

"Don? Isn't that a boy's name?" Loki countered.

"That's what you said about Billie Eilish, too." Vali muttered, and kicked at the floor with the toe of his boot.

Loki couldn't help his devious grin. "Oh, are we getting into Billie Eyelash again –"

"It's Eilish!" Vali insisted. "And it's a girl name!"

"Boys." Sigyn's voice cut through their impending squabble. "Can you focus? I like Dawn, actually."

"Oh, Dawn with a w." Loki grinned infuriatingly. "Yes, that is quite pretty."

"We could name her Hela Dawn." Vali proposed. "Like, with Dawn as a middle name."

"And never call her Hela ever in her life?" Loki ensured with a hopeful smile sent Sigyn's way. "Yes, that could work. What do you think, Love?'

"I think it sounds like a warrior's name." She admitted. "Hela Dawn Lokidottir."

TheOnlyHuman.