Oestre Chapter 6: Pensieve, a thor fanfic

This is definitely not mine. I unashamedly stole the idea from JK Rowling, flame away. Maybe Dumbledore got the spell from the Asgardians. Oh, and yeah, we're getting into seriously dark territory here. Italics for disturbing scenes and all. Warnings for this chapter: body dysphoria, character death, off-screen sexual violence. Bottom line: Hela wanting to slaughter everyone on Asgard is more reasonable than we were thinking.

I wasn't even going to include Jane at all in this fic, but some of it just sprang into my head and the rest has been running ever since.

Asgard was boisterous, joyous shouts of victory and songs of praises drowning out all else. It was the perfect cover, but for the fact that the man would have stood out like a sore thumb had anyone bothered to notice him.

No one did.

The relief that a war was over numbed him. Righteous anger merged with the necessary survival instinct had now faded to a dull tasking. Seek and address the one person who had fared ill in the preceding conflict.

The burden of leadership is watching everyone else enjoy the freedom that you fought for.

Thor made his way to the room where Odin usually Slept. Jane sat on a nearby bench, warily staring at something that looked like the Casket of Ancient Winters, but full of red instead of blue. Evidently, the Aether had left her for a less spirited home.

Loki lay on the bed, golden light wrapped around his torso and concealing the horrific injury. Odin sat beside him, oblivious to the world around the two.

"Is the crisis resolved?"

Well, maybe not entirely oblivious.

"Malekith is dead, the Aether is contained, and the Convergence has passed. There were probably more deaths involved than there should have been, but nothing we can do about that. Unless you've got some way to raise the dead. But I think you would have told me about that by now, so-"

Thor awkwardly faded to silence at his father's utter lack of response. A simple yes probably would have sufficed, but words were always Loki's strength, not his own.

"I've done what I can for him."

"...and?"

"Correction, I've done almost everything. I doubt he'll pull through as he is. Too much of what he needs to heal himself is damaged. There's another spell I could cast, but-"

"Do it."

"I intend to. I made a promise, and I mean to keep it. But there are some things I need to tell you first."

"Are they going to be things I want to know?"

Odin just shook his head.

"Not even close. You will hate me before the end."

For some reason Odin, at least Thor assumed it was him, had brought the baby's crib into the same room. Loki had encased both his daughter and the Casket in a brick of ice. Perhaps he'd held some hope of reviving her, or of a joint funeral.

"Jane, are you well?"

Jane shrugged. "This is either the weirdest few days of my life, or the worst trip ever. I'm not convinced against the latter."

The look on Thor's face must have shown his confusion, because she chuckled with little to no mirth. "It's when you put stuff in your body you're not supposed to and you start seeing different worlds. Which is pretty much what happened, so."

The door showed up in front of them, ending the conversation. Thor opened it and showed Jane in with a sweep of his arm that seemed fakely careless.

The guest chambers were luxurious in a way Jane had not appreciated before. The sitting room had several couches and a central table. Off of the main room were several doors. Jane made to open one, then turned to Thor.

"May I...?"

Thor nodded. "Make yourself at home while we figure out what's going on." He made a gesture at Jane, who shrugged. She wanted a chance to examine the differences in private, anyway. "I need to talk a few things over with my father."

Something about that last statement made Jane think she would never see Odin alive again.

The silver basin held some sort of whitish liquid. Shapes swirled across the surface, nothing Thor could put his finger on. Stormclouds, maybe.

"This holds memories."

Thor was nonplussed. "So, if you don't trust yourself to remember something, you put it in here? Couldn't you just write it down?"

Odin shook his head. "This takes the memory out of your mind. If there's anything you'd like to forget..."

Mother's death. Loki's fall. Fandral walking in on him with two girls at once and everyone never letting him hear the end of it-

"It has to do with Kurse's power. It calls up the most traumatic memory it can find and twists it like a knife in the wound. The usual result is that it paralyzes the victim long enough for the spellcaster to get close and kill them. Quite effective on soldiers, as I'm sure you can understand. When you asked me to help Loki, I was fittingly enough lost in a memory of another time someone begged me to save him. I kept that memory out of everything because it was the day I realized I loved him."

"Who was it?"

"Your mother. It's a long story. Most of which is stored in here."

Thor had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. All he'd gotten from either of his parents lately was some variation of "It's a long story". Maybe he should just go ask Frigga-

It had taken one day to forget his mother had died.

"What happened to him?"

Odin hesitated, and Thor couldn't squash the immediate assumption that he was crafting a lie. "He was born far too early, among other things. Your mother left him in the crib alone for a few hours, first time she'd done that, and he stopped breathing. I realized how much it would destroy her to lose him, how much I would miss him. That surprised me. I hadn't thought I could love him. But that brother of yours has always had a way of defying expectations."

"I can't imagine life without him."

Thor glanced over at his brother, who looked as if he were already gone. Only the faint rasp of breathing, boosted by healing spells, indicated life.

"We should get started. He won't hold out like this and you need to see what happened."

Bracing himself, Thor agreed.

Leftmost was a bedroom, no windows and an odd thrum of what Jane assumed was magic. Some sort of privacy screen? If half of what she'd heard of Heimdall's powers were halfway accurate, that was understandable. Especially considering it was a luxurious double bed.

Chuckling, she checked the next room. Toilet, sink, tub, shower, all in gold of course. Did they even have another color in Asgard? Shelves held towels of pure white, so she had to amend that thought. A bath would be nice, check things over. Maybe in a bit.

A closet full of various clothing greeted her next, lit she now noticed by oil lamps that lit and extinguished by the opening and closing of the door. Amazing. She collected some clothing and left it near the washtub for later.

A library, or perhaps it should be called a study, held books on a variety of subjects. Jane could easily picture herself spending the rest of her life pouring through Asgard's vast trove of hoarded knowledge, history, legends, and whatever else now lay at her fingertips.

If her suspicions were correct, that would be a very long time.

Thor had been expecting some thing elaborate, but all it took, apparently, was for them to touch the liquid. All at once, the entire room around them vanished and they were standing in a dungeon cell. In fact, Thor was pretty sure it was the exact cell Loki had been in.

Frigga sat in the corner, arms around herself. Odin the younger stood in the middle of the cell. The voices carried through with surprising clarity.

"Did I really do what they're saying?"

Young Odin nodded. "Unless Heimdall is being tricked, and severely, you did."

She shuddered. "Then you'd best do it."

"Thing is, I won't be. You will." Odin produced a wine goblet from somewhere. "You will just go to sleep. It will be painless."

That earned him a grim laugh that sounded like one of Loki's. "For one thing, how does anyone know that? No one survives to report, right? For another, are you too much a coward to do it yourself, King of Asgard?"

For answer, Odin grabbed her face and forced her mouth open. Frigga struggled against it, perhaps even to say she would do it herself, but he'd poured whatever was in it into her before she could speak a word. After a few seconds, she simply drank without struggling.

The simple act of swallowing so quickly proved difficult as the potion took effect. Frigga went limp completely and hit the floor hard. No matter. She would still serve his purposes.

Even a woman whose mind had died completely could still bear his heir.

Back in the sleeping room, Thor had to fight the overwhelming urge to simply bash in Odin's skull with Mjolnir or even his bare hands.

"What on the Nine. You killed Mother-"

"She was to die for what she'd done to her children. The other alternative was public beheading. I found a use for her. Nothing more. The alternative was trusting some unknown woman for raising an heir to the throne."

"...Hold on. You brought her back, somehow, why?" Thor couldn't get a grasp on Odin's slippery half-explanation. "Sudden change of heart? Or did you just realize it would be awkward to explain me?"

"Your mother, who loved you deeply, who was skilled in magic of many forms. And I had to find ways to explain things, but I truly did want the best for you."

"You know what? I'm sorry I asked. There aren't going to be straight answers. Let's get on with this trip through memory lane."

Odin's eye blinked a few times.

"It's a Midgardian expression. Never mind."

A small dining room and a balcony finished Jane's allotted space. All things considered, her "chambers" were far more luxurious than anything on Midgard.

All too quickly, she had stopped thinking of her former home as Earth.

Watching the sunset off the balcony proved soothing, putting a close to one of the strangest days in her life.

Back in the washroom, Jane thought only to relax and find some new clothing. But something tugged at her like an unscratched itch. Back into the sitting room, into the library. One specific shelf almost seemed to glow.

Jane ran her fingers over the books, assuming there was a specific one that wanted to be found. It stuck out, just a bit, from its brethren. Black leather, gold-edged pages, green printing inside in a runic alphabet.

Out on the balcony, the book fluttered open in the wind and stopped on a specific page. Jane browsed through it, noting what looked like a chapter heading, diagrams of cutting plants, and a few illustrated measurements. Was it a cookbook? Some long-dead sorcerer wanting a burnt offering of their favorite dinner...

Or a spell they wanted her to use.

Jane slammed the book shut and set about seeking a bath and food. All else could wait.

Odin visited Frigga every day during her pregnancy, making one excuse or another. The guards only watched the dungeon entrance, sparing no thought for the condemned. Few, if any, ever exited the dungeons for anything but the axe. Rumors of brutal interrogations dismayed anyone from looking or even thinking too closely.

One healer, spell-sworn to secrecy, provided guidance on keeping the mother alive and the child healthy. He would wipe her memories later, perhaps even send her to the battlefield and arrange some sort of misfortune just to make certain. The part of himself that was a king noted with some pride that everything was progressing correctly. As to the other part...

The only lesson Bor had taught him that actually stuck had been to separate, king from Aesir or husband or father or whatever else. He'd found that useful thus far.

Husband he was not, utterly undeserving of such a title, yet he did what he could for the mother of his child. He fed her with a tube to her stomach, tended to her body's needs otherwise, bathed her periodically. What was left of her might appreciate the effort. Her womb swelled with the child, and crude spellwork told him it was healthy. Soon he could feel it with his seidr, singing as it were. Another magic user? What kind of powers would his child have?

Perhaps fathering a child was a bad idea after all. Yet, it was the expectation.

Life on Asgard moved on as ever, and Odin presided over various disputes, passed laws as needed, and led the counter to an uprising on Alfheim. Securing the Nine for his child and an heir for his kingdom.

He let it be known, at the annual harvest festival, that he and an unidentified wife were expecting a harvest of their own. A secret left untold, of course, was that his "wife" would tragically and heroically die in childbirth. Asgard would only know an assumed face and name at her funeral.

Shortly after that, he noticed a change in the song. Quieter, somehow, yet deeper. Or was the whole thing only an imagination? When he laid a hand on the child, it liked to move in response. That, he knew was real.

Jane stepped out of the last of her clothing and examined herself in the full-length mirror. The extra few inches of height were mostly in her legs. Everything had far more muscle. Even her eyes were somehow more brilliant. The only thing that looked familiar was her hair. Whatever the Aether had been intending, it had at least left her with something.

Only time would tell if she had gained an Asgardian lifespan as well as appearance.

Fresh clothes, a nap, and a small meal later, Jane took a stab at the spell. Some scrap parchment served to copy over each rune, the closest she could think to casting it without being able to read it.

Bad idea, very bad idea, it must have been, to cast a spell without an idea of what it was, but something felt like she was supposed to. Perhaps it was fate.

As soon as Jane lifted the pen from the parchment, a brilliant green werelight appeared a foot above it.

Well, it worked.

Jane stood up from the desk, and the werelight moved to the door. Adventure time.

The utter silence and darkness outside was unexpected. There had just been a battle. Celebrations had already faded to getting back to normal life, else the grieving process. They'd burned the bodies already. How many homes were darkened by the loss that they were expected to rejoice in? This seemed to be Jane's new home, and yet it felt so foreign.

Somewhere in the back of her head, she thought to wonder about Eric and Darcy and Ian. They ought to at least know she was alive but would not be coming back.

A blank wall in the side of the dressing room. Maybe she'd cast the spell wrong, or...

Her newly transformed body was not perfect. It still bore nicks and scrapes from every time she'd dinged it throughout the years. She would have to be much more careful now.

A hangnail caught her attention, left middle finger. Something about it bothered her beyond belief. Logically, she knew she should have just scrounged up a nail clippers, because surely they have such things on Asgard, but instead she pulled at it and wound up ripping it away completely. Satisfaction shot through her along with the pain.

When she laid her hand on the cold marble, it melted at once. Not bothering to question the exact mechanism, Jane followed the light into a spiral staircase. Crossing the threshold brought with it the predictable result of the wall re-materializing behind her. There was nothing but cold stone and the green light she was beginning to suspect may have been Loki's.

This was, on the balance, a terrible idea.

The day of reckoning fell on the winter solstice. Upon Odin's arrival in the dungeons, Frigga greeted him with moans as her abdomen clenched over and over again. That shouldn't be happening. Either the potion had been insufficient to the task or she had somehow recovered.

He ran his hand over her hair and she quieted.

"Hush, Frigga. This will happen on its own. You've done it before."

Checking her progress yielded the knowledge that she'd been in labor for quite some time; his hand fit inside to be met by the child's head. The skin felt loose, or was that the sac of waters? No, that seemed to have broken all over the place.

Norns, he had no idea what he was doing. He'd acquired and pocket-dimensioned an array of instruments, but nothing came to mind as necessary. Another contraction hit, and the child slid out in a rush of bloody water. Long dead, he knew at once. The skin had detached in places and overall, it was no larger than his hand. That was the song changing, nothing but an echo of his son's life. He must have imagined the quickenings.

Could Frigga handle a full, live-born pregnancy as she was? Finding another suitable woman was unlikely.

His eyes fell on her deflating belly, which twitched. A second child?

A quick check revealed a foot.

Hello, there.

Some barehanded maneuvering brought the other foot down and the rest of the child followed. A girl. A fifty percent change that he really hadn't considered. Asgard had always been ruled by a male. Could she become violent enough to rule as needed? Go to war when the situation called for it, execute those unfit to live, by virtue of one crime or another that sooner or later, any society would be called upon to punish... Shame, he thought, the wrong one lived.

The head slipped out, the fresh air yielding a few quiet cries. A dusting of hair as dark as his own was slicked down with the various fluids. No obvious deformities, which came as something of a disappointment. An excuse would have been nice.

Odin grabbed the newborn by the foot and dragged her away from the mother, considering. One of the two was about to die.

The child's cries ceased.

Chills ran through him. Does she know what I'm thinking?

No, that sort of power was too much of a risk. He would try again.

"How many have there been? And don't say 'It's complicated'."

"Very well, it's not that simple. I changed my mind with respect to her."

"Why? And what happened to your daughter?"

"It is a very long story. Shall we continue?"

Thor felt liable to vomit at what further memories would likely contain. But Loki needed help, and apparently, the journey was required.

"Very well."

There was, of course, no call for cruelty.

The child was beginning to fuss again. He lifted it from the floor and hushed it.

"You will be with your siblings soon."

There was a tiny window in one corner of the cell. Through it, stars could be seen, infinite in the blackness. The longest night of the year, a time of beginnings and endings, saw one child born to death and another one soon to join him.

One hand found its way to the child's mouth. "Go in peace, little one."

The remains of the Bifrost streaked past, swirling into the Void. Thor's leg burned in his grip, but there was a solidarity to it so utterly reassuring. One that Loki's life force, dangling on the very edge, lacked utterly.

Thor wanted Loki back, enough that he would have gladly traded his newly-regained powers just for a better grip. Frigga's spells rang with terror as she'd tried to wake him; despite centuries of caring it was obvious she feared for Loki more. Loki, after everything the past few days had brought, held on purely by reflex. For the how-manyeth time in his life it would take so little for him to slip over the edge.

And of course, if he finally did die, Odin could stop caring...

"I did say you were going to hate me."

They were back in the Sleep room now, with Odin lying on the ground, Mjolnir on his chest, and Thor standing protectively between him and the unconscious Loki.

"You knew how vulnerable he was, what losing him would do to me, to Mother, and you deliberately- And not even have to live with the memory of it, you coward, while I still have nightmares of dangling over the Void, wishing I'd jumped after him because that's how much he matters. Which you knew. To say nothing of how much it should have hurt you to lose him-"

"You will get him back once we're done here. I promise."

"I don't even believe you. If it turns out you are lying I will kill you."

The song faded to silence. Odin waited a few more grim moments just to be certain. It hurt, in a muffled way, as injuring a limb long gone numb from the cold.

A quick message to the healers notified them of a death and the need for funeral arrangements. They did not need to know for whom.

Shaking off the deserved sense of guilt, Odin set about washing and swaddling the newborns. It was an unfortunate reality that not all children would live. The shield of the palace would, he hoped, discourage any questions.

He was puzzling over names -for even the dead ought to have a name- when a violent blast of seidr shot through the cell. Odin fell to the floor, needing a moment to process what his misbegotten offspring was up to now.

"...you've wondered that an awful lot of times across the centuries, haven't you?"

"And yet, still not nearly as many as I should have."

Black light flowed from the female child, green-gold from the mother, and the two collided violently in midair.

Odin blinked and it vanished, replaced by an infant's cries. Frigga, on the other hand, had ceased to breathe. Had she switched her soul into the infant's body in an attempt to escape? No, that was a foolish thought; even were she so inclined, there had never been so much as a trace of seidr from her.

Which left that the child had taken her own mother's life force to survive.

"Perhaps you can be brutal enough," he murmured. In any case, he decided he lacked the heart to perform such an act again. He lifted his daughter from the floor with a sense of finality.

"It's going to be fine, little one. Papa's got you."

"Oh that's sweet. Right after you murdered her."

"Believe it or not, Thor, I do love all three of you. I am... unskilled at it, I'll give you that."

"What was her name?"

"Hela. And her twin was Baldr."

Hela's warmth was oddly soothing on the longest, coldest night of the year. She sat upright in his arms, the pyre of her mother and twin brother bright in her eyes. Only when the sparks faded to blackness did she relax against him.

The announcements, of births and deaths all at once, were met with far more sympathy than Odin deserved. To lose a wife and son simultaneously, and be left with nothing but an unwanted daughter, was no enviable thing. Knowing that their king was within reach of troubles such as plagued far too many, that had to be good for Asgard. They were ruled by one of their own.

He arranged for a wet nurse and caregivers and returned to his duties in short order. Hela grew as any other child, pale blue eyes darkening to green to match her mother's and black hair so much like his own cascading down her back.

Odin taught her to fight, to kill. Some power of hers, spawned by the number of death that surrounded her beginning, left her knowing how to kill exactly as quickly or slowly as she wished. Soon, while she was barely an adolescent, Odin gave her the titles of both executioner and interrogator. She excelled at both. A shame, he counted it, that there was not a war for her to fight. She would make an excellent soldier.

So kind of Laufey to oblige...

Hela's newfound ability to raise the bodies of the dead to fight again proved both invaluable and terrifying. The war should have ended quickly. But he took his eyes off her for one moment and she was simply gone. Killed by the Jotnar, he should be so lucky. Taken as a treasure, as a trophy of war, an insult, that seemed more likely.

Without his best warrior, it took several cycles of Midgard's moon to ferret out the last holdout invaders. Odin personally led the chase through the portals all the way back to Jotunheim.

On reflection, Odin mused to himself that the Jotnar found it easier than the Aesir to navigate between the Nine Realms. Perhaps their nature were water, rather than ice, the better to slip into the cracks in Yggdrasil. He'd never troubled to think too much of their exact biology.

As to their culture, one moment had burned itself into his mind that turned out to Laufey's credit. In a last effort to avoid losing even more of his people, called to a truce and challenged Odin to a duel. There was something in his demeanor that spoke of regretting the beginning of the war. Odin never did get to the bottom of what they'd been trying to achieve, but they'd obviously, utterly failed. At the cost of many lives on all three of the pertinent Realms. The mortals would replace their own dead in short order. Perhaps they should have been left to their own devices after all, but it was far too late for that.

Soon enough, Laufey knelt before Odin utterly defeated. The duel and the end of the war had only cost the latter one eye.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"No."

The two of them, defeated and marked in turn, considered each other, bound each in turn by a throne unwanted by any who held it.

"A king I've thoroughly defeated is safer than anarchy. Neither of us needs another war."

Laufey hesitated. "What you're about to find out, I already regret."

"You were not entirely truthful about where you got Loki, were you?"

"No. What you're probably thinking, you're not wrong."

"Where do I come in? No offense to Loki, but-"

"Everything in its time. Your own origins are no fairy tale, either."

"Color me surprised."

He found his daughter among the few dozen prisoners waiting to be Bifrosted home. She'd bundled up heavily against the cold, wrapped in the furs and crude textiles that passed for clothing on Jotunheim. They'd treated her better than the others, he could tell just by looking. Most of them had lost weight and not bathed in, well, long enough. Considerations for the aristocracy, or compensation for what Laufey regretted? Or claimed to, now.

Odin took a step towards Hela, and their eyes met for a split second before she vanished in a burst of rainbow light. Silently cursing Heimdall, Odin asked as to the health of the remaining warriors and was met with polite responses. Some hours passed of catching up.

Yes, we won the war. Yes, Midgard is safe. No, you're not in trouble for getting captured instead of killed. Yes, your family thinks you're dead. Maybe, they've found a replacement already. No, you may not kill them if they have.

Rainbow light pulled them home.

News of the victory had spread. Celebrations of the victory, of the deaths, of the living, of life returning to what passed for normal, spilled out into the streets. The palace glowed with lanterns, flowers, and streamers pulled out of storage or specially made in anticipation of victory.

The feast hall hadn't even been set with tables and chairs; cards of food and casks of ale were simply rolled in and back out covered in smashed remains seconds later.

Odin snatched a bite of food here or there, but no drink. He needed his mind to be clear. Peace had been bought too dearly to be lost to a careless drunken oath. Hela, he noted, refrained likewise, but made certain the common people saw her healthy and happy. As he'd taught her. Put on that golden mask and never let them see the damage.

Even from across the hall, hundreds of lives swirling around in between, he could feel the song of another child. It was, of course, doing nothing but what its own nature dictated. What followed would have been easier were there any malice involved on its part. If such a thing were even possible.

Hela stayed at the chaotic feast long enough to be known as having survived the war unscathed, then vanished to her own quarters. Soon after, Odin gave a quick speech of which he later remembered not a word, then excused himself.

The door to Hela's chambers were sealed as ever with magic, but inside he could hear bathwater running. That would make it easier to clean up. The grim task made him nearly sick to his stomach, but it had to be done. A short phrase bypassed the wards on the room and another, seconds later, began the required process.

An anguished cry shot through him, not just auditory but magical. Would she know what he had done? Goddess of death that she was, most likely.

Shaking that off, he returned to the feast and left her to miscarry in peace.

"Stop." Thor's choked voice obliterated the silence with all the force of Ragnarok. "Loki- You tried to kill him. He wasn't even born yet, and you just-"

"I know. Go ahead and hate me. It made sense, at the time. Practicality and mercy collided. Given everything he's gone through these past few years, perhaps it would have been kinder. But he's always been a survivor, from the very beginning. I haven't actually heard of another Jotun-Aesir hybrid."

"He wants to live, even if he's had trouble realizing it. You don't get to take that away from him."

"You sound so much like Hela." Odin made for the basin again, but Thor shook his head.

"Not again. I can't take more of you at the moment."

Thor crawled into bed with Loki like they were children again.

"We're getting you some help, brother. You're going to be fine."

The werelight slipped through a stone archway and split to light a few lamps around the room. Now the light was gold, as all else. She'd come out in the closet of whoever's rooms these were. The utter silence left her certain no one was around.

Understandably, the floor plan was identical to her new rooms directly below. No magical guidance remained, but Jane arbitrarily picked the library.

Most of the shelves were bare, with dust where books used to be. A few remained, odd histories long before Jane's birth and a strain of spellbooks on fertility spells and healing. Nothing obviously stood out, until it occurred to her that what wasn't there was likely more interesting. Transformations and how to leave a spell in a book...

The desk contained one untitled book laid out neatly. Jane grabbed it by instinct and opened. Lined paper, handwriting inside. The runes morphed before her eyes into something she could read. Another spell in a missing book?

To the woman who has fallen in love with my son...

Have you figured it out yet?