Hela woke up at three in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so she stretched the kinks out of her back and retrieved her laptop. If she was going to be awake at this ungodly hour, she might as well find plane tickets. The sooner the boys got home, the happier they would be and the sooner her life could go back to normal. After sliding on sweatpants, she set her laptop up on the dining table, brewed some coffee, and worked through a dozen emails. Fenris padded to her and curled up at her feet, a warm footrest with his flanks rising and falling.

Some work out of the way, she pulled up a travel site and dug through LAX flights to Chicago via the Minneapolis airport. After talking with Adam, she had a business trip to the Windy City to meet with a client, so maybe she could fly the boys home then hop on another plane to Chicago. Maybe having an adult along would calm some of Loki's anxieties. Or not. She didn't remember him as a particularly anxious kid, but he'd been what? One? Two, maybe, when she'd stormed out for good.

Hela shook the memory of that fight from her head and scrolled down the obnoxiously orange webpage.

Nothing. Not on this short notice, unless the boys were willing to stay in LA another week or Odin wanted to cough up eight hundred dollars a ticket.

Hela frowned and expanded the search to Burbank, then Long Beach, then John Wayne, until she was looking for flights out of San Fransisco and Las Vegas.

Nothing.

Growling, she checked her phone. No emergency texts. Four forty. That meant it was what? Eight forty in Minnesota? Hela scrolled through her contacts until she found Frigga and hit call. The phone rang twice then:

"Good morning, Helen." The woman sounded weary, the kind that sleep doesn't fix and early morning calls can't make worse.

"Hi, Frigga. We have a problem."

A long sigh. Hela plunged ahead, better to plunge ahead. "I'm looking at plane tickets, and it's not looking good. Not unless you're willing to put the boys on separate flights or leave them here a couple more days after I fly to Chicago for a meeting."

"I can't leave the boys in LA by themselves. Who would you leave them with?"

"My roommate will be here. Adam, he works for me, he has kids so maybe..."

"Absolutely not. I can't leave the boys with strangers after all this."

Hela snorted. "You left them with me."

"I trust you."

Taken aback, Hela blinked. "Maybe you shouldn't. They haven't had a vegetable since they got here."

Frigga laughed, and this time it sounded genuine. "They'll survive that." Then her laughter faded, and the weariness crept back into her voice. "You must think I'm a terrible mother."

Hela shifted in her seat, then stood and walked towards the balcony. She just wanted to buy some plane tickets, not get in a heart-to-heart with her stepmom, but she heard herself say, "You know I don't really care that you're divorcing him or why. I bailed a long time ago, so I don't think I get to judge."

"I don't know what I'm doing anymore, Helen. We wanted different things, we stopped talking, I thought we could be reasonable about the boys... I..."

Hela slid open the glass door and stepped out into the cool morning air. The sun wouldn't be up for another hour, but the sky was greying over the skyline and only the brightest stars lingered overhead. Crossing her arms against the cool air, Hela decided she might not be judging, but she was certainly having some regrets. Wearing a tank top. Having this conversation.

Frigga sniffed. "I just want this to be over. I just want my kids back. I'm sorry."

Was she going to cry? Amanda only cried after an ugly, ugly break up, and that hadn't happened in two or three years. Hela couldn't even remember the last time she herself had cried; she didn't know what to do with a crying… anyone.

Frigga took a shaky breath, but Hela blurted, "What if I drove them out?"

"What?" She was definitely crying.

"I could—" What was she saying? She was already regretting this. "I could drive them out. It would only take what three days? I drop them off at your house and still get to Chicago on time."

"No. No, you don't have to do that, I can fly out and rent a car and..."

"Don't be ridiculous. Keep the money to pay for your miracle lawyer."

"Okay. Okay, I... thank you. Thank you so much, you're amazing."

"We'll leave as soon as I can get everything pulled together."

"Okay. Let me know if you need anything: hotel reservations, places to eat or walk around. I'll put money on the boys' debit card for gas and food..."

"Yeah, I'm gonna go before your wedding planner kicks in."

Frigga laughed again. "Okay. Have a good day. I love you."

Then she hung up before Hela could react, leaving the younger woman standing in awkward silence. It was probably just a reflex goodbye from calling Thor and Loki so much. After a couple seconds, she went back inside, did some numbers crunching, and started breakfast. Once she had pancakes, scrambled egg whites, English muffins, and juice on the table with another pot of coffee brewing, Hela went into the office-bedroom. In the dim light filtering through the shades, Loki and Thor were sprawled across the hide-away bed, limbs akimbo and Thor wrapped in all the blankets. She shook them awake. "Guys. Hey, wake up."

Thor lifted his head, bleary-eyed. "Wha..."

"Up. We got places to be."

Thor patted around the bed for his phone. "Wha time's it?"

Hela shook Loki, who rolled off the bed and jerked awake. Then she pulled the blinds up and jerked her thumb at the door. "Breakfast is ready, so get a move on."

Yawning, Thor sat up and ran a hand through his static hair all on end. "Don't wanna go to work."

"You wanted to go home though. We've gotta pack if we're going to drive there before my meeting."

Loki bolted to his feet. "Road trip? Hell yeah!"

"Watch your mouth, or I'll change my mind."

Loki grabbed an armful of clothes off the ground, hopefully with a full outfit somewhere in the tumble. "I gotta beat Thor to the bathroom." Then he was gone.

Thor rolled out of bed, extricated himself from his cotton cocoon, and found his phone. "Don't you have important work stuff to do?"

"This is work stuff. Adam filled the cyber security job, and it'll be good for them to manage a while without me. If they can. We'll see."

She left him digging through his ratty old duffel bag and tossing clothes onto the bed. In the kitchen, Amanda was already up knocking around in her penguin pajamas and serving herself a plate. "This is nice. What brought all this on?"

"Apparently, I'm driving the boys home, and it's going to take all day for them to pack."

Amanda's eyebrows met her hairline. "Wow."

"I haven't taken a vacation in a year—"

"Two years." Amanda sipped at her coffee.

Hela shot her a look and sat down. "We can't get plane tickets, so we're just going to drive."

Amanda spit a mouthful of coffee back in her mug. "To Minnesota? Middle of nowhere Minnesota."

This time, Hela rolled her eyes. "It's a three-day drive and cheaper than flying for a thousand bucks apiece."

"Hmm. That makes sense. Well, buy me a Vikings t-shirt. And if you're driving, you can take the dog with you."

"What? No. Amanda."

"He'll destroy the apartment if you leave."

She looked at Fenris lying on the carpet, and he raised his head and thumped his tail once. Yelling echoed from the bathroom. Hela buried her face in her hands. This was going to be a disaster.

Hela ran to the store for food—some snacks that were supposed to be the best road trip food. She came home with arms full of grocery bag only to find the boys huddled in front of her laptop, zooming in and out on some national park in Google Maps.

"Jane said she saw a bear there last year," said Thor. "Can we go?"

"You want to drive hours out of the way to wander through backwoods?"

Loki twisted around and looked at her like she'd left her brain to melt in the car. "They have bears."

Hela dropped the reusable bags on the table. "Make a list I guess. Your mom is never going to let you leave the state again, so I suggest you choose wisely."

That night Amanda helped them pack the car to overflowing, and at four the next morning, they piled in. They buckled in and promptly passed out with Loki nestled against Fenris, fingers curled around the mutt's thick dark fur. Maybe bringing the dog wasn't the best idea, but Frigga had a house with a yard where Hela could stash him until she got back from Chicago.

Hela got to enjoy the sunrise in the relative silence of early morning LA traffic. The thick city buildings grew shorter and sparser with more brown-green in between them, and the sky got clearer as it brightened. The skyscrapers gave way to shorter, less frequent buildings, interspersed with stubborn, gnarled trees and bush shrubs.

Thor drifted to consciousness around eight thirty, yawning and stretching so loudly she thought Loki would wake up, but he knotted his hands in Fenris' fur and slept for another hour. Thor stared blankly out the window, blinking at the light.

As the backseat rider, Loki was the designated snack distributor, so he fished around in the cooler bag and snack box and passed out granola bars, cheese cubes, and strawberries. Fenris whined, and the snack master slipped him a cheese cube. Thor was in charge of directions and finding good radio stations, and he found one running comedy sketches.

The suburbs gave way to countryside that grew steeper and less and less green as they sped up into the mountains and away from the sprawling metropolis.

"We've been driving forever." Loki flopped awkwardly across the cooler, one arm dramatically across his face. "I've been in this car for eighty-seven years."

Hela glanced in the rearview mirror. "Please, you've only been awake for three hours."

"I hate it."

"I doubt a ten-hour car ride is going to kill you."

He moaned and went limper.

"Fine. We'll stop at the next town and fill gas."

Loki perked up a little bit. "Where are we headed anyway? Will we pass the Grand Canyon?"

"I told you that's too far south. We'll head through Vegas, then up to Salt Lake—"

"Vegas?" Now Thor was definitely awake. "Sweet, can we drive the strip?"

"I don't want to be a throw rug in your mom's dining room, so no."

"Come on, I'm not a baby."

"We'll find something else, kay?"

Thor leaned back in his seat. "Okay."

Hela leaned back in her seat and rolled her shoulders. Maybe the next three days wouldn't be a total disaster after all.