Before you ask, no. I'm not sorry for what I did to you with the last chapter. Not sorry at all.
TLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTL
Frigga knew her sons. She knew that Thor had been angry with the outcome of his ruined coronation. How could he not be? So much anticipation and preparation, falling away to nothing as soon as he reached out his hand for it.
She knew her sons.
As she walked her gardens, in the presence of the fleeting memories of their childhoods, garbed in the grey of mourning, she strove to fit together the pieces she knew.
Thor had been angry and Loki – in all likelihood – had gone to him.
Such was their way. Had always been their way. When Thor was in pain of any kind, Loki would know it, and he would go to him. Whether with intent to sooth or rile depended on the occasion. Most situations, she thought, called from him a combination of both.
Thor would have been ranting. She'd seen the wreck he made of the dining hall. He would have been shouting at the seeming stupidity of their father's demands.
Loki, low-voiced and calm, like oil on the surface of turbulent water, would have agreed with his brother. Then he would have pointed out with equal calmness, that, daft or no, Odin was still their father. Their father, their king and their commanding officer, all in one.
She wondered if he had put the idea of disobedience into Thor's head, or if the boy had come to it naturally enough on his own. Obedience had never been a virtue well-liked by any in their family. She recalled her own history, and that she knew of Odin's. To point out the fact that one must obey would naturally lead to a consideration that perhaps one needn't.
But Thor had ever chaffed under his father's will.
Odin alerted. Thor banished. All over with the swiftness of a thunderclap. And she had been made aware of none of it until it was done and over with and she had no choice.
She had been furious with Odin.
Banishment? After – what? Nothing more than that of which Thor had been guilty his entire life? Never had it prompted Odin to action as it did now.
He blamed the coming war. But such declarations of imminent conflict had been made before. Odin well-knew they had the strength to defeat the Jotnar should they make good on their threat. They alone possessed the Casket.
He had pled with her that she trust him. And wearily, stricken with grief, she had agreed. What other choice had she had left to her?
She should have thought of Loki in that time. She should have sought him out. Should have gone to him.
Odin had fallen into his sleep and she had been afraid. If Odin was not there to bring to fruition his purposes, what was to become of their son? She determined, sitting beside him as he lay on the great bed, that she had to trust him. Had to trust that he had laid the pieces well enough that they would resolve themselves. In the quiet, her weary mind had finally accepted it. It was all she could do.
And Loki had come to her. Quiet. Jagged. Broken in ways she could no longer reach with eyes that were too bright. Too pale. With no depths to them.
She remembered the way he'd looked at her across the glow of Odin's healing sleep, how he'd hesitated. Then his low voice as he'd finally brought himself to ask, "Did you hate him for bringing me?"
At first, she had not known what it was he meant. "Loki?"
She remembered how he wouldn't look at her. "When he brought me home," he said, "from the War. After…" his eyes had come reluctantly up to her, "After he…found me."
Her heart had dropped out from inside her rib cage. "Darling!" she said. She reached out her hand across the bed towards him but he'd made no move to take it. "No," she'd said, "Of course not!"
She remembered how he'd turned his head away, and the utter blankness on his face as he did so.
He knew her too well.
It was too much for him. Too much in too short a time.
She blamed herself for not seeing how the pressures of his station and the oddity of his own gifts among them had worn at him. How they'd darkened his mind.
And she'd put the kingship on top of it all.
She'd meant it as a show of trust. A proof that nothing between them had changed.
But it was all too much for him.
And the people, the people he had styled his friends. Heimdall.
When they expressed their sympathies to her, however, she was gracious. The blame was a thing they shared. Though she did not feel kindly toward any of them.
It was too much.
And he'd been lost to her.
Odin had woken.
Thor was restored.
But her younger son was lost.
He'd let go.
And she didn't know if she would ever quite be able to forgive herself for the hand she'd had in it.
