Chapter 7 - The Marriage of Frigga and Victor Von Doom

"Sister, what are you doing?" Leave it to Thor to ask a stupid question.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I thought we could use it to make a splint for Natasha's arm." The work would have been easier if Loki had had her knives, but the fabric of her dress tore easily enough if you found the right spots to start tearing it from. As shreds of delicate fabric fell around her, she felt a bit like the stamen of a flower that had dropped its petals.

"Thank you, Loki. That's helpful of you." On one hand, Bruce's praise felt a little condescending—did he think she needed to be praised every time she did something remotely unselfish? But on the other, she had to admit that she preferred consistent "positive reinforcement" to Odin's complete failure to notice her unless she had done something wrong.

With one arm, Natasha unzipped her carry-on bag and pulled out a large roll of gauze. "Helpful, but not necessary."

Loki stared at the roll of gauze for a moment, wondering just what else Natasha had hidden in her bag, then continued. "It will be easier to walk without all this material weighing me down anyway. If you don't need it, perhaps I can try using it to make something for Bruce to wear."

Bruce looked uncertainly at the heap of fabric. "That's okay, Loki—"

"It's no trouble. I can use my magic to reform the fabric into a pair of pants or something. It's more for the rest of us than for you, if I'm honest."

"Gee, thanks—"

Thor quirked an eyebrow at her. "If you can do that, why can you not do something about your shoes?"

Loki thought the question every bit as inane as his earlier question. "I haven't the time to explain the intricacies of magic to you, and quite frankly, I don't understand your sudden interest in my magic after hundreds of years of you maligning it as 'tricks.'"

"I will take that to mean that you could have done something about your shoes the entire time but preferred to be carried."

Loki balked at the accusation. "For your information, I haven't tried this type of magic since I first started to regain my powers. I'm not sure I could manage something as complex as shoes."

"And yet it seems to me such a thing should be simpler than turning yourself into a rabbit or turning me into a cockatoo."

"I never turned you into a cockatoo, Thor. I turned you into a kookaburra. They are completely different birds."

"My question remains the same. Why can you not change your clothes at will as you used to?"

"Because it isn't simpler at all. Fabric contains little inherent energy, whereas in a living organism there's more to work with. Even when I had access to all of my magic, I usually just cast glamors over my clothing to make it look like I'd changed my clothes."

"And the difference between glamors and changing your clothes?"

Loki wondered again why Thor had suddenly taken an interest in how magic worked when he had never been interested before, but decided she didn't mind. "It has to do with whether I'm manipulating electromagnetic radiation—light waves—or rearranging the molecules that make up an actual garment. It's similar to the difference between creating a hologram of something or creating an actual object."

"But where do your clothes go when you turn into an animal?"

Loki tried to think of a way to explain it but realized that she didn't know. "You wouldn't understand anyway—"

"You don't know, do you?"

She had been about to object to his accusation, but Natasha interrupted. "Loki, if you want to make it back in time for your mom's wedding, just do whatever it is you're going to do." She supposed she couldn't blame her for being impatient, when she stood there cradling her broken arm.

"So you could just make it look like Bruce is wearing clothes," said Thor, as if he'd just put that together.

"I could, but it would likely be more comfortable for him if—"

"I thought it was for our benefit, not his."

Thor could really be infuriating when he wanted to be. "Must you listen to everything I say and look for contradictions in it?"

Loki, now wearing a dress that ended in a frayed edge two inches above her knees, laid the shreds of the bottom of her dress in a pile. She held her hands over them, closing her eyes, her brow furrowing in deep concentration. Her hands, and the shreds of fabric, began pulsing with green light. The light pulsed brightly enough that Bruce had to close his eyes against it, and when he opened them a moment later, Loki held out a pair of what appeared to be size XXXL parachute pants in emerald green. Bruce took the pants from her, knowing that he didn't have any other options; in a way, they felt like the pants he deserved. Amazingly, they stayed up when he put them on.

After rummaging around in her bag with one hand again, Natasha held something out to him. Bruce took what appeared to be a small but stretchy women's t-shirt from her. "You had a t-shirt in your bag?" Loki complained. "You told me not to bring anything but my dress, but you brought other clothing."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "I just brought an extra t-shirt to sleep in. That's it."

Bruce held the little black t-shirt up. Large white block letters across the chest declared the wearer to be "100% Bitch." Again, it felt like the t-shirt he deserved.

(*-_-)ﾉ*:･ﾟ _ ✧:･ﾟ

As they walked through the streets of the same village they had traveled through before, once again, people were staring at them. Was it not rude to stare in Latveria? Then again, even in New York, a woman in a ripped-up evening dress walking by a man wearing taffeta pants in the same color and a woman with her arm in a splint might have attracted attention. Not to mention the large blonde man carrying a rather large, intricately carved hammer; Thor had found Mjolnir, but she had decided against transforming herself into something less conspicuous, even when he asked her nicely.

"Oi, you there," Thor called out to one of the villagers. "Do you know where we might find a healer?"

The woman looked about herself uncertainly. When she had determined that Thor had spoken to her and not someone else, she took a bold step forward. "The village doesn't have a doctor. Only the herb-woman, who is also our midwife and sees to the animals. I believe she is in the middle of delivering a calf—but Lord Doom is most knowledgeable about medicine, and often attends to our more serious illnesses and injuries himself."

Their conversation, of course, had been conducted in All-Speak on Thor's part, and Latverian on the woman's part. Thor turned to his companions and attempted to translate. "Their healer is currently giving birth to a cow."

Loki rolled her eyes. "That's not what she said, you twit. She said that the woman is in the middle of delivering a calf; she isn't so much a doctor as a midwife, herbalist, and veterinarian. Our best bet is to continue to Doom's castle, because it seems that Doctor Doom is a medical doctor after all. If anyone for miles around here has an x-ray machine and the means to create a cast, it will probably be him."

This time, they made it to Doom's castle without attracting the attention of any Doombots. Or maybe the Doombots had been instructed not to assault them this time; after all, once Frigga and Doom were wed, Loki would be a princess of Latveria. (Interestingly enough, Doom hadn't said anything about making Thor his heir. At least he had better taste than Odin.)

When they entered the foyer, Frigga ran to greet them. She threw her arms around Loki. "You came back. Of course, I knew you would come back. I saw it in a vision—"

"Natasha broke her arm," Loki told her. "And Bruce lost his clothes. I made him a pair of pants out of the bottom of my dress."

Frigga took a step back and looked Loki up and down. "So you did. I'm so happy that your magic is coming back to you. Well done—" Frigga turned her head to take in Bruce's outfit. "Though it might need a little work still. Did you notice, Loki, how there is more magic in the air here to draw from?"

Loki nodded. She had felt it, which was why she had felt confident enough to try using her magic to reform cloth. Latveria had a larger source of magic to draw from than anywhere else he'd been on Midgard, and he could understand why Frigga liked it there, even if she had more difficulty seeing what her Mother saw in Victor Von Doom.

Frigga turned her attention to Natasha and her injury. "Oh my. Those mountains are treacherous, aren't they? I wish you hadn't all left so quickly; I could have at least opened a portal back to Sokovia for you. Just wait here and I'll go get Victor. Loki and I can try to accelerate the healing after it's set, but it will have to be set properly first."

Natasha's eyes darted to Bruce, who cleared his throat. "You don't need to bother him. If there's an x-ray machine we can use, I can take care of that."

"If it would make you more comfortable." Frigga looked disappointed, as if she couldn't understand why they couldn't trust her villainous husband to be. "I shall still have to inform Victor of your needs. I do not have a key to his laboratory, which is where his medical equipment is. And I must warn you that he likely won't allow you access to his laboratory alone. Even if he allows you to use his equipment, you will have to put up with him looking over your shoulder."

"Great," said Bruce, smiling in a false way that did nothing but make it clear he didn't think having Doom hanging over his shoulder while he set Natasha's arm would be at all "great."

(❛ω❛) ┗(›´ω`‹ )┛

Victor Von Doom frowned at the little group that had been gone for one day and had come back looking as if they had been through a series of natural disasters. "Are you certain you wish to leave your daughter in the care of these people?" he asked Frigga. "They do not seem to be able to take care of themselves, let alone care for a child."

Frigga took his hand and squeezed it. "They have taken good care of her so far, and at least for now, I think we should respect Loki's wishes to stay with them. They aren't usually this much of a mess."

｢(ﾟﾍﾟ)(_ _|||):(⁄ ⁄ᵒ̶̶̷́⁄-⁄ᵒ̶̶̷̀⁄ ⁄):(,´ o`)

"Excuse me." Bruce had become a little impatient as Frigga and Victor spoke to each other in hushed tones, in the same language that Thor had spoken to the village woman in. "Could you show us to the x-ray machine so we can take care of Natasha's arm?"

Doom turned to him and nodded regally. "Of course. I will see to the young lady's arm, and you may assist me."

Bruce didn't want to debate Doctor Doom on who would be assisting who, so he just nodded back. At least he'd be able to watch and make sure Doom didn't do anything to hurt Natasha. Although considering that he'd been the one to hurt Natasha in the first place, that thought felt more than a little hypocritical.

"The children should stay here," Doom announced as he descended the stairs. "There is no need for everyone to come."

"Children?"Thor asked, looking around himself for the "children."

"I believe he means the two of us," Loki told him.

Normally, Bruce would agree that people who didn't need to be in an examination room shouldn't be there to get in the way, but he disliked the idea of the group getting separated again. Still, he couldn't bring himself to object to a reasonable request, and Loki would be with Thor and Frigga. If Doom tried to do anything to him or Natasha, he'd probably transform.

He didn't want to, so soon after the night before. He wasn't sure he ever wanted to transform into the other guy again. On their walk back, he had been going over theories about how he could remove the effects of the gamma radiation from his body, theories he had all but given up on when he had joined the Avengers, thinking that maybe, Hulk could do some good after all.

Bruce and Natasha followed Doom down a long staircase, where he pushed open a heavy wooden door. The other guy could plow right through that, Bruce assured himself, even though he still hoped it wouldn't come to that. Natasha leaned towards Bruce and whispered, "Gotta love the interior decorating." That made him smile for a moment. Doom's "laboratory" looked a lot more like a dungeon than a laboratory, or like the laboratory of a mad scientist in an old B-list monster movie, with its stone walls lined with torches that burned green. He wondered if the fuel contained chemicals that made it that color, or if they were magical torches, but he didn't ask. The last thing he wanted to do was start a conversation with Doom.

They came to another door that had a heavy padlock on it, and a little window in the middle of it with bars. For a moment, Bruce worried they were about to be locked in a cell again, but when Doom opened it and flipped a switch on the inside of the door, the room flooded with bright fluorescent light, revealing a modern if not quite state-of-the-art exam room, complete with a padded examination table and eye exam charts on the wall. A partition stood in the middle of the room, and Bruce found himself only slightly anxious about what might be behind it. He didn't have to wonder about it for long, though. Doom pushed the partition back, revealing a mobile x-ray machine with "Fujifilm" printed on the side.

"Are you familiar with the FDR Go Digital Mobile X-Ray from Fujifilm Medical Systems?" asked Doctor Doom. "The sales representative assured me that it is the most advanced mobile digital x-ray system available. It is loaded with features that speed the workflow. Two second image previews and nine second image cycle times, fully wireless transitions, and it runs four to five hours on a single charge—"

"Is that a giant potato it's hooked up to?"

Doom narrowed his eyes at him. "Do you have a problem with Latveria's clean energy initiative?"

Bruce gave Doom the kind of small smile you gave to someone you thought was out of their skull but didn't want to offend. "Not at all. You're going to have to show me how the interface on this thing works though. I haven't used this particular system before." All of the tower's equipment had been manufactured by the medical devision of Stark Industries, which was light-years ahead of any of the other medical equipment manufacturers. He would keep that to himself; he couldn't imagine that telling Doom that would be good for either him or the sales representative who had sold the man his x-ray machine.

( ̲̅:̲̅:̲̅:̲̅[̲̅ ̲̅]̲̅:̲̅:̲̅:̲̅ )

Frigga had taken Loki up to her sitting room while Bruce and Natasha had gone with her intended. Thor had excused himself, saying that he wanted to look around the castle; perhaps he had sensed that she and Loki needed a little time to make up to one another.

Tea had been brought up to them by one of Victor's maids. As always, she had been efficient and polite but much too deferential for her taste. It made her miss her Asgardian handmaidens, who over the course of two thousand years had become more like sisters to her than servants.

Frigga pretended not to notice Loki's lack of manners as she scarfed down tea sandwiches and petit fours. She wondered if she had eaten anything in the past two days. Loki paused between bites of a cheese and potato sandwich. "Mother, is it just me, or do we fight more whenever I'm in this form?"

Frigga took a long sip of tea before answering. "Perhaps it is natural for mothers and daughters to fight more than mothers and sons."

Loki frowned as she looked down at herself. "You know, I think I'm tired of being in this form for the moment."

"Change, then. There's no reason for you to stay in that form if it doesn't feel right to you."

"Very well then. I'm still wearing the dress Tony bought me to the wedding, though."

Again, Frigga took a long sip of tea before speaking. "Will it fit?"

"With a few modifications."

"Then whatever makes you happy is fine with me."

"But will it be fine with—"

"Don't worry about Victor. He will be fine with it if I tell him to be fine with it." As far as Frigga was concerned, Loki could attend as a cow or wearing blue jeans, and Victor "would just have to deal," as the Midgardian saying went. From the beginning, she had wanted both her children at her wedding. She had only agreed not to invite Thor because she had been confident in her eldest's ability to show up to any function whether he had been invited or not. Had they not come back to support her, she wasn't certain she could have gone through with it.

"You seem confident in that. Mother, you haven't put an enchantment over Victor Von Doom, did you?"

The corner of Frigga's mouth quirked up at the impertinent question. "A lady never enchants and tells, Loki."

(*-‿⸰) *:・ﾟ

To Natasha's surprise, the whole thing went without incident. Doom hadn't strapped her into a chair and attempted to remove her brain and replace it with a cat's brain, or anything weird like that. After he had taken x-rays of her arm, all the while blabbing on about the features of the x-ray machine and Latveria's potato-energy initiative, Doom had stepped back and let Bruce set it while he prepared the materials for her cast.

He had even let her choose the color. It had been years since anyone had asked her what color cast she wanted; SHIELD issue casts had always been dark blue, black, or gray. On whim, Natasha had chosen bubblegum pink. She regretted that decision now, because when Frigga had seen the cast, she had changed the color of her dress for the wedding to match it.

"You know, I could change your hair to blonde," Loki told her. "Then you would look exactly like a life-sized Barbie doll. It is Halloween, after all."

"Do it, and I'll break your arm," Natasha warned him. "It will be entirely on purpose, and I still won't feel bad about it."

"You wouldn't really."

"If I were you, I wouldn't test me. Now come here and let me zip up the back of your dress." Frigga had assured her that it would be fine for Loki to wear the dress he had brought to the wedding, even though he no longer filled it out the way he had before. As long as Victor Von Doom wasn't going to throw a fit about it, like he had about the blue jeans, Natasha didn't particularly care what Loki wore. "Are you still planning to wear makeup, or—?"

"Just a little mascara and some lipstick, I think."

"Pink or red?"

"Neither. Black, to match my nails." Loki ran a finger across his lips, and his lips turned to the color of black satin. How long had he been able to do that? Maybe it had something to do with "how much more magic was in the air" in Latveria.

( ( ◣m◢) \ ❤ ζ(´‿` )\\

The inside of the cathedral that stood in the shadow of Doom's castle was unlike any other Bruce had ever seen. There weren't any crucifixes or any other symbols that he recognized as belonging to any religion, and the art surrounding them didn't depict scenes from any religion he knew of. Stained glass windows depicted Doom as if he were either a god or some sort of avenging angel descending from on high, and frescoes depicted not only a god-like Doom but villagers working in the fields or constructing monuments to their glorious leader. The style reminded him of the social realism that had been the officially sanctioned artwork of the USSR and other communist bloc countries prior to their collapse in the 1980's. Part of him wanted to look away, but another part of him was fascinated.

Their group had been seated in the front row of pews, and the rest were filled with people from the village. He wondered if they were there voluntarily or if they had been coerced into coming. Many of them had been ushered in by the Doombots, and Bruce wondered if the Doombots had rounded them up and herded them to the cathedral like a flock of sheep.

There didn't seem to be any sort of elite ruling class in Latveria. Doom ruled alone, and the Doombots acted in place of administrative officials, police, and so on. As Bruce waited for the ceremony to begin, he wondered who would be officiating it—did they even have a clergy in Latveria?

The door behind the altar of the chapel opened, and out walked Victor Von Doom, wearing a long green robe and carrying a giant leather-bound book. Following him was another Victor Von Doom, wearing his usual armor and a slightly more formal, intricately stitched version of his green cape. Bruce scanned them up and down a few times before deciding that the Doom with the book was the Doombot.

The Doombot stood on the dais at the front of the room, and Doom stood a step beneath him. Then the doors behind them opened, allowing the early evening sunlight to flood into the room. Pipe organ music started playing. Bruce hadn't seen a pipe organ and couldn't tell where it came from. It all felt like a surreal dream, but he didn't think he'd ever had any dreams this surreal before, and that said something given the kind of dreams he had whenever he collapsed after his Hulk episodes.

Frigga began her procession down the aisle. The train of her dress was so long that it had to be held up by six Doombots, and the dress itself was also massive. Frigga, as tall as she was, appeared to be drowning in white lace and satin. There were white flowers in her hair, and she wore a beatific smile.

"She's got some nerve, wearing white," Loki snarked.

"Hush, Loki," said Thor. "You were the one that wanted to come back so that we could attend this wedding. I thought you wished to be supportive."

"I am being supportive. All I'm saying is, she's not fooling anyone—"

"Hush," both Thor and Natasha said at the same time, before Frigga came close enough to their pew to hear them.

When Frigga reached the front, she took one of Victor's armored hands. For a moment Bruce wondered what it might be like to stand in front of an entire room full of people and vow to love one person for the rest of his life. There had been a time when he had contemplated proposing to Betty, but it had never seemed like the right time; they were always busy with some project or other, the last being their gamma radiation research.

And after that had gone to hell, he had assumed he would be alone for the rest of his life unless he figured out how to reverse the effects of the radiation. He couldn't have guessed that he would end up as an Avenger, living with Tony, who had been like a brother to him (other than the times he acted like a moody teenager, or worse, an impulsive five-year-old), and Clint, Steve, and Natasha, who were like significantly younger siblings, or maybe like older nieces and nephews. The roles were ill-defined, but nonetheless, the Avengers had become his family.

Then Loki and Thor had come to live with them, and faster than he would have ever expected it to happen, he had come to care for Loki as if he were his own child. Thor was like—the family dog or something? Something about Thor did remind him of a golden retriever.

His relationship with Leonard had been completely unexpected, especially given that the one time he had met the man before, he had found him kind of obnoxious, and couldn't fathom what Betty saw in him.

But now he wondered if he'd just been deluding himself the entire time, thinking it might be possible to stay with them. After years of work, he had thought he had his Hulk problem under control, but what had happened in the mountains proved otherwise.

"Welcome all who have gathered on this most auspicious day to witness the joining of Frigga of Vanaheim and our beloved leader, Victor Von Doom. And now, a reading from the book of Doom." The Doombot held it's hand over the book, and the pages glowed with a green light as they flipped through the air on their own and then stopped. "Doom is love," it read. "Whoever lives in love lives in Doom, and Doom in them. This is how love is made complete among us so we will have confidence on the day of judgment: in this world we are like Doom. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves torment. The one who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love because Doom first loved us."

Bruce couldn't help thinking that the passage sounded vaguely familiar.

"We are here to celebrate the love between Doom and Frigga," the Doombot continued, "and to bind their houses together. A marriage is a magical bond between souls which, once entered into, may not be severed until the bond between body and soul itself is severed. Therefore, it is a contract not to be entered into lightly. If there is anyone here who knows of a reason these two may not enter into such a contract, let them speak now or forever remain silent."

Loki had shrunk into the back of the pew, his face scrunched up on itself. To Bruce's surprise, Thor was the one who stood up, raising his hand like a student with a question. (Did students in Asgard raise their hands when they wanted to ask a question? Had Thor and Loki even gone to school? He would have to ask later.)

Everyone in the room stared at him. Frigga frowned at him, and both the Doom on the dais and the Doom standing hand in hand with Frigga glared. "Do you have an objection?" asked the one officiating.

"If a marriage is a magical bond between two souls which may not be severed unto death, is Frigga not still married to my father?" asked Thor.

Frigga and Doom looked at one another. Then the Doom on top of the dais spoke. "We are aware of Frigga's supposed former marriage to the All-Father of Asgard. But because the marriage never produced biological children who lived past infancy—"

Thor chuckled. "But I am Odin and Frigga's biological child. Odin is my father, and Frigga is my—" Thor's face went slack when he saw how distressed, and how guilty Frigga looked. "Mother?" Thor asked, as if asking if that word were the truth. "Mama?" With each reiteration of the word, Thor's voice became smaller, younger and more broken. "Mommy?"

Frigga stepped towards him. "Thor, I have loved both you and Loki from the time that Odin put you in my arms and informed me that I had just given birth, and I had better stay in confinement for a while to complete the illusion. You are my children in every way that matters."

"But if you are not my mother—"

"This isn't the time to have this conversation."

"And when was the 'right time' for this conversation to be, Mother? Did you even plan on telling me?"

"I wanted to. I've been trying to tell you, but your father—"

"He forbade you to?"

Frigga opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She shook her head. "I promise you we shall speak of this later tonight, when I can speak of it freely."

...φ(ｰ￣*)

Author's Note:

With a little white out, a pen, and the religious text of your choice, you too can own your own Book of Doom.

Reviews/comments are always appreciated.