I imagine Thor and Loki about the equivalent of two years apart in age. They just age differently – being near-on immortal beings. So, Thor's presenting as being about 3.
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For a week after his return she refused any contact. She had just begun to find her feet, find her strength, and he brought her one of their children? What of the child's mother? What of their child? Was their child not good enough that he had to kidnap those of another realm? Kidnap a giant's brat? Better that the child had been his with another woman! Then at least she would have known the offer wasn't made out of pity.
But Odin had his ways. He left the child with a wet nurse and he asked to take Thor – not to visit the babe he'd stolen – as she had expressly forbidden it – but merely for a walk about the palace. It was the single request he'd made of her in that week that she deigned answer at all. And only then, for the sake of her little, golden-haired boy. Thor needed his father. And he was still so young.
The two spoke of many things together on their walk. Thor was just beginning to be old enough to keep up a conversation and it had been some time since the rambunctious child had had time with his father. When he came to see her afterward he clambered up on her lap to hug her.
"What did you and your father do today?" she asked him. She smiled fondly at his squirming and she balanced him with her hands so he wouldn't fall onto the floor. A heady breeze blew through the open windows.
"We talked like grown-up men!" Thor beamed. He rocked back on her lap holding to the front of her dress for balance. Then he caught his lower lip in his teeth as was his childish way when he wondered things. He looked all around the room. Then he stilled and his brows came down very seriously over his little nose.
She laughed at him, tapping the end of it.
Grinning, he pawed her hand away.
"What are you thinking of?" she asked.
"Amma," he said, very seriously, "Can I have a b'other?"
Something icy clamped tight in her chest and she tried not to show it to the boy, "What a strange thing to ask, Thor," she said, lightly. "Wherever did you get such an idea?"
He rocked back and forth on her lap, back and forth until, a little sharply, she stilled him.
"Adda had b'overs." Thor told her. "He told me 'bout 'em. S'ord b'overs."
"Did he. Well. That was different."
Thor nodded. "I asked him if I could have one. "'E said," the little boy arched back, puffing out his chest as he tried to imitate his father's voice, "'It's Amma's choosin'.'" Then he laughed, snuggling up against her only to rock back with a hand clapped over his eye, "Adda's got this too, Amma."
"He does."
"Can I –"
"No Thor," she said. "You cannot have one. I think it's time you went out for a while. Have you played with Freki yet, today?"
The boy's eyes lit up at the name of his father's great hound and he squirmed down from her lap to the hand of his waiting nurse.
Gathering her skirt in one hand, Frigga strode purposefully to Odin's study, opened the door without knocking and waited there, eyes blazing, for his notice.
He was alone. Though she would not at all have minded if she had interrupted affairs of state.
Finally – and she could swear he was laughing at her – he looked up. "My Queen,"
But she gave him no time to finish, "How dare you?"
"How dare I –"
"Do not," she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, "pretend," opened them again, "that you do not know of what I speak. You would send our son to me –"
"I might have ordered you to raise him." Odin pointed out. He laid aside the pen in his hand with a definitive little gesture and looked up at her out of his one remaining eye. The sight twisted something in her strangely. "But I would rather have you willing."
She pushed the nagging ache away, "So you send our son? You excite him with ideas of what can never be and have him come to me, knowing how much I –" her voice failed her and she turned furiously from him.
Odin rose. He came around the great desk until he stood behind her. Very gently he touched her shoulder with the back of his hand. Such a tender caress. It had been so long since he had been home.
"You would not speak to me," he said lowly, sounding soft and hurt and she turned.
"But you took him," she said, "you took him from his home and from his people. What of his mother?"
"The Queen of Asgard worries after a giant?"
"After a mother!"
Tears spilled suddenly hot on her cheeks and she closed her eyes against them. She felt Odin's hand tighten on her shoulder, felt the rough pad of his thumb wipe at her eyes, and she did nothing to drive him off.
"Worry not after that, my Queen," Odin murmured. "He was left by his people to die."
She drew inadvertently back and Odin nodded.
"Too small for his kind, he was left to die on the temple stair, where I discovered him, a child, dying for need of a mother's love." He held out his hands, took hers. "And within my own home I had left a mother, dying for the need of a child."
Frigga shook him from her hands. "Our son was enough for me."
Odin's eye flashed and he gave her a smile tinged with bitterness, "Our son was never enough for you."
He stepped back toward his desk. "Or either for himself," he continued, lighter. "You've seen how he is already. How is it to be with him as he grows? The boy needs one to counter his force, to balance him."
"Why must there be the tie of blood?" she challenged, "Will not a friend do this?"
"No. Only 'the tie of blood' will be enough to make the other stay."
Quick flare of anger, revulsion. "Such hope, AllFather," she snapped. "Such belief in your own son!"
"Do you not see it as the truth?"
"I see a bare infant yet, with years left to learn, and already you turn your back on him!"
"Perchance I am wrong, Frigga," and Odin shook his great head, spreading his hands, "But I am never wrong. He is too headstrong."
Odin sat back at his desk as though the discussion were done. But Frigga did not leave.
"He takes much after his father," she said lowly.
"Yes." Odin barely looked up, "And you above all know then what must be done."
A flash of anger shot up in her breast and she whirled to the door, but stopped herself suddenly with one hand to the frame. The pressure of her magic tingled in the tips of her fingers, and she stilled herself until she felt it dissipate. She inhaled through her nose so that it hurt in her lungs. Then she let it out and she spoke over her shoulder.
"I will take the boy," she said. "But know that it is not for you, AllFather, and for none of your dire predictions. It is for our son and the joy I know they might share. A joy I know I cannot otherwise bring him. And for that alone."
This time Odin did not look up at all. She could tell it by his voice. She could hear in it how he laughed at her as he answered, and her hand tightened on the frame of the door.
"And I trust you will get no joy out of it," he mocked.
"Nor you either," she spat.
And she left.
She went to the nursery where the monster-child Odin had stolen was being kept.
She sent the old nurse out and, locking the door she down sat beside the cradle where the child lay, sleeping. Pale as any Aesir. Warm to her wandering finger's touch.
She drew her hand back to herself.
Watching him, she felt nothing. All the anger had left her.
And she waited.
She'd told the woman she might as well use the cradle, when she'd come timidly in to ask it of her the week before. Why not? The AllFather thought so little of his home as to bring in a monster-child and demand its keeping. Why not allow the creature into the very heart of her desires? All the sacred places where she had had such dreams. Such foolish, foolish dreams…
She didn't know how long she sat watching the child sleep with her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped tightly before her and her thoughts errant, before the little one woke. The brightest color of green she had ever seen in a person's eyes greeted her, and she sat straight on the chair, her heart beating a little too fast, as though she'd been caught doing wrong. Something about his eyes, and the way he looked at her for that one, long, drawn-out moment, changed him before her. He was alive, just as she was.
He blinked owlishly at her for several minutes as she watched, then his little lips pressed together and turned down as he began to cry.
Awkwardly, not knowing really what else to do, she put out her hands to pick him up. She knew the way of it, Thor had been hers and it was only in the most recent time that she had come so completely to rely on his nurse. In the past she had done well. Even through the darkness she'd managed to play with him. To talk to him. To engage him. To care for his needs. She was his mother and she would be that. But with Odin away and the whole of the regency on her shoulders…
This time it was different. This child was different. Neither of her blood nor of her kind. Distantly, uncertainly, she regarded him.
Throwing out little searching arms, the child caught a lock of her hair and he pulled. With a frustrated catch of breath she drew him close, lay him on her knees and bent double to untangle his fingers. When she'd managed it she looked at him again and saw that her long hair had fallen into his face. It was tickling him and he smiled toothlessly at it, green, green eyes screwed shut.
Surely a monster-child couldn't smile so simply. They suckled blood and death, rejoicing at the things of the grave.
But why should they? The thought hit her forcefully and it startled her. Why should they. Why should they not laugh and love and live and grow just as any of her own people? What was it that made his kind monster? Had they not minds and hearts just as she? Could this one not be taught another way?
She held him up the better to see him. Soft round cheeks, pale skin. He smiled at her, dimpling his little face and she wept. Wept that she could be so blind, so proud and cold. She held the little one against her as she wept and when he began to root against her for milk she fumbled her hand across the low table to the bottle the nurse had indicated before she'd left. She held the little one against her as she pressed the nipple into his little searching mouth.
He blinked up at her over the top of it and, wiping the tears off her face, she knew that nothing could ever be the same again.
She went away that night, with the babe. It was high summer and she took him away with her to Fensalir. She'd kept him a secret, telling Thor that she would return in a few days and leaving the unconcerned boy with his nurse. A part of her had protested that she should not go, she should not leave him. But she needed to better know his brother, if such the little one was to be.
And, truth be told, Thor was unlikely to miss her. He was such an independent little thing.
She had not told Odin of her leaving. And that did not trouble her.
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Part-Two, being the better half of what I think has to be my favorite chapter. The idea that Frigga might not have accepted a foundling jotun with open arms was really what spawned this whole thing, and I've only seen it approached once before. (I don't spend a LOT of time reading fanfiction, so perhaps I'm only ignorant of others.) In that fic, she was just mad because she thought Odin had had an affair and was asking her to raise the child that came from it, but then when she found out the truth, she was fine with it. I'm not sure I'd be fine with it.
But there it is.
It's not really part of anything, but I heard about the shooting in Vegas last night. Not a good record to break. My prayers go out to everyone involved.
