Among Them
By Rey
Laufey notices something odd – or rather, someone odd – with the band of Asgardian young warriors that have just trespassed into their realm and have the temerity to demand things of them, and reacts accordingly.
Story tags: POV Laufey (Marvel), Canon Divergence - Thor (2011), Alternate Universe - what if, Mama Laufey, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Jotunn Culture, Family History, Single-Gendered Species, Past Violence
Author's notes: Well, here it is, at long last: a story from Laufey's POV, though it's shorter and simpler – perhaps flatter – than you might wish for. And, just a forewarning: There are lots of little things that you might be baffled by, that are nonetheless unavoidable given whose POV it is and the wealth of unspoken, unexplained history behind it. But I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. Please feel free to comment and/or complain and/or ask/suggest things. - Rey
Glossary for Ýmska:
elða: seiðr, magic (as an inborn sense of a jötun instead of a skill)
milaða: jötun
milaðen: jötnar
Ýmirheim: Jötunheim
Started on: 24th December 2020 at 02:10 PM
Finished on: 31st December 2020 at 08:05 PM
O-O-O-O
The Bifrost's appearance, sound and touch are painfully familiar to all milaðen who have been old enough during the devastation of Ýmirheim to see and hear and feel the horrors it could wreak on anything and everything.
And now, nearly one millennium and three centuries after the war, the accursed beam of destruction once more lances down from the sky.
It disgorges six Asgardians, this time, not far enough from the courtyard of the temple where the Commemmoration Day for those lost in the war is held today: a woman trying too hard to be a man, a young man with Bor's eyes, a very fat older man who has the looks of a doting parent instead of a warrior, a dark-skinned man too silent for Asgard's usual warrior type, another young man with the looks of a woman-player….
And a milaða youth, with horribly familiar green eyes, just a few shades darker than their own when in their warm-weather form like the youth is in now.
But this must be the so-called "Loki Odinson" that rumours have been mentioning, often in relation to "Thor Odinson" the Crown Prince of Asgard, the young man with Bor's eyes – the kidnapper-and-murderer's eyes – who is even now stalking up to the dais and demanding how milaðen - `Who?!` – got into Asgard.
`Why would Asgard's second prince feel so familiar? We have never even met!`
Laufey, seated in a chair they had fashioned themself moments before the cocksure band of Asgardians arrived here at the courtyard of the ruined temple, purses their lips and finds their eyes flicker yet again to the milaða youth standing among the Asgardians, even as they offer that "the House of Odin" is full of traitors – and indeed, it is; there is no need to think about that, as Bor kidnapped and forcefully wedded Bestla their elder womb-sibling millennia ago and betrayed Bergelmir their queen mother to the latter's death two millennia after, and as even Voðen – their sibling-child – left the child's home and rightful station here to go rule a people who had kidnapped and forcefully wedded the child's own previously espoused mother to the then King of Asgard, a people who had also forcefully wedded the said child to their childhood friend whose realm had just been conquered.
And then, in the wake of the war that at last broke with Asgard almost a millennium and three centuries ago, ignited by Bor and ground to an uneasy halt by Voðen, the Anchor was thieved, and the twins – Laufey's twins prematurely born, the fruit of their own womb before it was wrecked by Týr's enchanted mace by purpose shortly before the war was lost, their newborn firstborn-and-lastborn, the only legitimate heirs to Ýmirheim – were lost, one to death and the other to kidnapping.
And Thor, Voðen's kin-child, is shaping up to become like Bor instead of their sire or dam, with that bloodlust in his eyes, already so alike Bor's.
The milaða youth, meanwhile….
Laufey's heart clenches in bemused trepidation, in recognition, when, upon their taunting return to Thor, however truthful their words are, the milaða youth seeks to urge the Crown Prince to turn back and go away. The action, even the gestures and expression of the youth, reminds them of themself when they were but a child, seeking to prevent their thrice-elder sibling from upsetting their queen-mother with some rash or reckless action or another.
And then one of the war orphans they have been with on this Commemmoration Day taunts Thor, however childishly and lightly, just as the quarter-ás turns back as the strangely familiar milaða youth has urged.
Predictably, Thor raises his weapon and lets it fly towards the child taunting him.
The milaða youth accompanying him looks highly alarmed and dismayed, on this turn of the unpleasant event.
Strangely, Laufey feels the same, and they would wager that their expression would match the youth's, at present.
They do not think, afterwards. They just react.
And what they do first is to secure the weapon before it can impact the foolish – now terrified – taunter, before they order half of the royal guards to escort the war orphans who were participating on the commemmoration ceremony away to a safer place.
And then, after ordering the other half of the royal guards to detain most of the Asgardians, they approach the milaða youth themself, highly trepidatiously, just like how the youth looks and seems to feel.
"Who are you?" they ask, ignoring how the youth is bristling with elða now, seeming ready to attack them like a wounded, cornered animal would do.
"Loki Odinson," the youth says curtly, tensely.
And the proclamation rings as a lie in Laufey's soul.
"You do not look nor feel like Voðen," they point out, instead of confronting the matter dead-on. `Why are you lying, child? Why do you feel like my own self?`
The youth – no, the child – looks stricken on that statement.
And then, lacking any coherent return it seems, the said child retaliates by tossing a spell at them.
And, for the first time in their brief, startling acquaintanceship, as they capture the spell in an elða sphere of their own making, Laufey gets a direct measure of the child's escence.
One that resonates all too synchronously with theirs.
The child's breath hitches. Most likely, they have just realised that they have attacked a monarch in the latter's own realm.
Laufey's own breath hitches, but for a different reason this time.
The child is all too familiar in all their senses, in their mind, in their soul.
They scoop the child up into their arms, by instinct. And there, as the small limbs flail about and the child yowls in surprise and fright, they are painfully reminded of the moment each of their twins was so prematurely and forcefully delivered out of their wrecked womb.
And this close, they can somehow detect a foreign layer wrapped round the child's presence, with the flavour of Voðen's elða.
An identity cloaker.
They swipe the layer aside, angrily, but as carefully as they can.
And there, the soul, fully uncloaked.
Loptr.
There is no doubt about it, after half a term bearing and interacting closely with the child. There is no more obfuscation, redirection of attention, sense muddying.
And the child cannot deny themself, their dam, their bond, when the dam – the mother – lays an elða-coated hand on their chest and proclaims like that day nearly a millennium and three centuries ago when they were born, "Loptr Laufey-childe."
Maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe, Thor could be thought of more kindly, now, after returning Loptr here, albeit by chance.
But for now, all thoughts of other people and other things are shunned, however briefly, as the pleasantly surprised – nay, pleasantly shocked – mother cradles their newly found child close in their arms and bathe the latter in their presence, their elða, like when the latter was but one of two babies growing in their womb.
Loptr Laufey-childe.
Yes, for once Asgar did something right and proper.