Darcy was now six months along. September had come along out of the blue. Nathan had started going to preschool at the beginning of the month and it was hard for Darcy to adjust. Nathan adapted right away, happy to meet new friends. He was always a social little boy, and he enjoyed preschool quite a lot. But Darcy struggled with this new thing about not being with him all the time. His preschool ended at two, so she now had about seven hours without him that she didn't really know what to do with.

The house was so quiet when he wasn't there. She'd taken to putting music on quietly just so there wasn't complete silence. It was good for her concentration- she'd finished a significant part of her current book and had sent it off to her editor to look over. Aside from that, she found herself not really liking all the downtime, though the other benefit was that it had led to her reading a lot. She'd been pouring over Norse mythology, devouring anything she could get her hands on. The problem was, she didn't know how much to believe- if any, because the Loki of the books was completely different from the Loki that she knew- and so she would cross-question Thor. A lot of the time though, the questions she was most interested in, he didn't know the answer to. The poor guy- he was always so apologetic about it.

"If this baby is part Frost Giant," she asked, "what does that mean about it's life span? Will it look human? Loki does, but he has magic, right? Will the baby have magic? What if it's going to need to be in a really cold environment?"

Her pregnancy was definitely weird. The biggest thing was that the baby had somehow lowered her temperature- as if it needed to be at a lower temperature to form, but also knew that it needed to keep it's mother alive. Darcy herself didn't feel like she was cold, but she couldn't touch Nathan now except with gloves, because he complained that she was freezing. Thor was as flabbergasted as her as to how such a thing was possible.

Jane had said what they'd all been thinking: "Darcy, I don't know how you're still alive, honestly. With a temperature so low, by all rights you should be dead."

But she wasn't. She felt fine.

The other thing was that the baby had already started kicking. With Nathan that hadn't started until a month or two later, which meant that this baby was developing faster. It was anyone's guess when she would be due because of this. She was afraid to go to a doctor, or even to consult a midwife, because, like Jane said, she shouldn't even be alive. There would be far too many questions.

She hadn't told her parents yet, either. She kept putting it off. They'd been so upset that they'd missed Nathan's birth that they would certainly want to come up for this baby's. But Darcy didn't know what this birth was going to be like, or what the baby would even look like, and as few people as possible should be in the know about all this god stuff, anyways. Darcy hadn't even told them that Loki was gone yet. Well, kind of. She'd said that he'd been called away for a sciencey thing over in Oregon and that he'd be gone for a while.

It was funny- well, not really funny- more like odd and disconcerting- how she wouldn't think about Loki for a week maybe, and then something would remind her of him and bam! all the heartache and sadness of him being gone would come rushing back. It wasn't the sadness that was disconcerting though- it was the fact that she would go a week or two without thinking of him at all. How could she even do that? she would question herself when she remembered. He was Loki. He was without a doubt the love of her life...and she just, what? Didn't think about him for days on end? What was wrong with her?

Nathan wasn't talking about him much, either, but he was four. He had a short memory. It wasn't as if he had forgotten his father, but he wasn't seeing him every day. So he just wasn't something that Nathan thought about much.

Loki, on the other hand, thought about Nathan and Darcy all the time. It was what fueled him to keep going. It was exhausting and for the most part, unrewarding, work to rebuild the Bifrost. There was a reason only one had been built. It was fucking hard to do.

He was working on the frame for the Bifrost first, because the Bifrost was really basically pure energy, contained. And what was he supposed to do with the pure energy if it didn't have a frame to contain it?

The frame was an intricate thing though, and he was going off of memory because the old one had completely shattered. This meant it was all by trial and error, and it was frustrating. And Heimdall, who could have helped him, was sulking. Well, okay, not sulking. He was absolutely furious at Loki for destroying what he was meant to guard, and it was only because Odin had ordered him not to that Heimdall hadn't pummeled Loki into next week.

It had dawned on him, too, that for his whole madcap idea of rebuilding the Bifrost to actually work, he would have to be able to get to Jotunheim to actually acquire the pure Energy needed, and that could only be found in the heart of the mountains of Jotunheim.

And the more he thought about the Bifrost, the more problems he encountered with it. For instance, the Bifrost and the Tesseract, and probably a few other Artifacts, were made with the pure Energy found on Jotunheim. But the Frost Giants got their power from the Tesseract, rather than the pure energy of their realm? That meant that there was something even more unique about the Tesseract (and the Bifrost, by extension) than Loki had thought.

"Motherfucker," Loki swore as he accidentally hit his finger with the hammer.

He'd tried using magic to cut the wood, but the results had been too askew. The frame needed to be made of Dwarven wood (as Heimdall had finally told him after days of building with Asgardian wood), and Dwarven wood was enchanted in such a way that it really had to be handcrafted. One of their little jokes. Dwarven wood (and coal, and stone, and other such building materials) was famed for it's stellar durability and magical properties. But Dwarfs are greedy creatures, and they are loathe to part with things. So to make it more palatable, they enchanted their products so that the owner would have to build with their own hands.

"Bloody little bastards," he grumbled under his breath, getting the nail in and standing back to look at his work with a critical eye. It was so close. But not...quite. "Argh! I may as well be trying to eat the moon!" His heart gave a little throb at the expression he'd adopted from Darcy. A slow (but determined) reader, she was wont to use it when starting a new book.

Despite a few more injuries and snide looks from Heimdall, who watched but refused to help (the lazy swine), it was coming together. A pretty solid frame was mostly built.

In other news, the Warriors Three had tried to adopt him into their social circle. Which was...strange. As children, the Three had picked on him. There had been no love lost between them. But they were different now. A little more mature, a little more confident in who they were. Perhaps they could now afford to be kinder. And it didn't hurt that his manner of return had made him into something of a celebrity.

During the day it was pretty fend-for-yourself at the palace unless you wanted to order something in particular to be sent to your room, but dinners were a formal occasion. The Warriors Three had taken to sitting at the end Loki did when he managed to remember about dinner, and they would try and coax him into telling them stories about Midgard, and Thor, and the kids.

Loki was both eager and reluctant to share these details. He wanted to tell everyone how amazing his family was, and share all the wonderful things about them, but at the same time he also wanted to keep them for himself- as if to tell people about them would make them less his. Except with Baldr, who Loki had grown quite close to.

So with the Warriors Three, he'd settled for misdirecting the conversations to Midgardian customs and quirks- like Christmas, movies, comedians, cars... and then of course, their favorite subjects: themselves.

Loki and Odin hadn't really been talking since their fight. Not that they talked much normally, but their was a definite tension between them. When it came to his father, Loki was man enough to admit that he had a lot of issues- and while he understood Odin's side, it pissed him off royally that Odin couldn't understand his.

Odin had been very busy, as ever. He was always in a meeting or off to another one. Though he didn't speak of it again, Loki knew that every day knowing Frigga was trapped in Jotunheim was abhorrent to him. He'd had the treasury thoroughly searched, and there was no sign of the Galaxy Ring. Other Artifacts that could teleport their owners were nowhere to be seen- and Loki vaguely remembered hearing a while back that the Light Elves had hoarded a bunch of them up somewhere, so the chances that there was one just bobbing around somewhere in Asgard were slim.

Odin had made it quite clear that he was counting on Loki to find a way to get Frigga back, which put even more pressure on Loki. Loki thought that perhaps Odin blamed him for the whole thing in some way, though why Odin would think that he had no idea. In this one case, Loki was actually quite blameless.

Odin had tried to give Loki a whole bunch of people to help him with the Bifrost so it could be done faster, but Loki had refused the help. He was the only one who even vaguely knew what needed to happen. Directing others who had no clue would have been more of a hindrance. Annoyingly, it had taken Odin a long (and loud) while to accept this.

And all the while there was the threat of Laufey hanging silently over all of their heads. They knew Laufey could still get to Asgard with the Galaxy Ring, though he hadn't attacked again yet. Because of this, Loki was guessing that the Ring could only transport it's bearer- making it quite ill-suited for launching an attack. It was disconcerting nonetheless, to know that he could pop up at any moment.

His sleep was light and fitful, his dreams full of strange, half-memories where he was the cause of Darcy suffering.

He would wake up from those feeling nauseous and exhausted, which didn't help his efforts with the Bifrost.

"Mommy, look!" Nathan held up a floral-print baby dress. "We should get one for the baby."

Darcy smiled. "We don't know if it's a girl though, Nate." Thor and Jane had agreed that it was probably not such a great idea to get outside help if possible. She was eight months along now, and so far there hadn't been any new developments. All in all, she was feeling pretty serene about the whole Frost Giant baby thing.

Nathan rolled his eyes. "Who cares? Boys could wear dresses too, you know. I like the flowers on it."

"True," Darcy conceded. She loved the way kids thought sometimes. Still unblemished by society. "You are one smart little boy, you know that?" She ruffled his hair and he made a face and leaned away.

"I know."

They had gone shopping for baby clothes, because Darcy and Loki had given away all of what Nathan had worn when he was a baby. They hadn't really been planning on a second child.

"Those are some pretty kick-ass flowers, too. Those are flowers that really say: 'I may be a baby, but underestimate me and I will cry in your face until you do what I want."

Nathan frowned. "Mom, babies always cry. Liam never shuts up," he huffed.

"Well," Darcy said archly, "not me. I was a very dignified baby. I only cried at weddings."

Nathan just looked at her for a moment, said, "I don't understand you," and then turned back to the baby clothes with a serious expression on his face.

Darcy looked at the ceiling (a surprisingly nice pale blue) and sighed. "I am unappreciated. But that's the curse of the humorous, I suppose. Forever misunderstood. Ah well." Loki would have laughed, she thought fleetingly.

She put the dress back. She was all for abolishing gender roles and all that, but it was winter, after all. So dresses weren't going to be the most practical thing.

The fall had gone by so quickly! Honestly, she felt like it had been no time at all since she'd found out she was pregnant, and now here it was- the beginning of December. Life was moving so fast! Her latest book had been published and was doing fairly well, and she had gotten an idea for another one that she was currently exploring. She had finally gotten used to having the mornings to herself, and she'd become quite productive. The first few hours of the morning were for writing, and then she would clean, or catch up on phone calls/bills/errands/etc, or watch a little TV if she didn't have something else to do. Then she would go get Nathan and depending on the day they would go see Jane and the boys, or Nathan would have a swim class, art class, play-date...there weren't a lot of gaps in her time. Before she knew it, it had started getting chillier, and then just after Thanksgiving it had snowed for the first time and it had officially been winter.

One of the perks of this pregnancy was that she didn't feel the cold at all. The downside being that it had become harder to judge how to appropriately have Nathan dressed, meaning she erred on the side of caution and he sometimes ended up taking off a layer or two in protest.

Sadly, she had to wear two layers of thin gloves pretty much all the time now so she could still touch people, which was annoying as fuck. Her temperature had lowered even more, causing her to look paler than normal, and now when she held an un-gloved hand to the window it started frosting over ever so slightly. Bit freaky, but also a bit cool.

As far as a due date went, no one knew for sure. Normally it would be early to mid January, but this baby seemed to be developing faster, so it was pretty up in the air. The plan was that she would give birth at home, with Jane helping, who had actually taken a few nursing classes over the years and felt pretty okay about being useful. Thor would probably be with the kids, trying to distract them from the fact that a baby was being born at their house.

Ironically, Darcy felt much calmer this time around than she had the first time when she'd thought she'd been so prepared and things had kind of fallen apart, only to work out in the end. But this time, despite the unknown factors, she was serene. The baby would come when it came, in whatever way it would, and then she would figure out what to do about raising them.

The bigger problem of the moment was her parents- specifically her mother. She'd finally gone ahead and told them that she was pregnant. They reacted as she'd expected they would- excited and eager, and then confused (and on her mother's part, annoyed) that she'd waited so long before telling them. And neither understood how Loki could be away from her for it, even if he was on an important job for the next few months.

"So you'll be due in January, then," her mother had said over the phone. "A bit unfortunate, that. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Christmas baby? And then of course, it's harder for your father to get time off of work in January. But not to worry! We wouldn't miss this for the world."

"Oh. Right. Well, ma, here's the thing," Darcy had tried to lie, but she was horrible at it. "You guys can't come up for a while."

There had been dead silence for a moment. "What?" Her mother had asked sharply.

"Umm, yeah. Just, cuz, there's a...bug thing at the apartment right now, and I know how you are about bugs."

"We'll stay at a hotel, Darcy. And honey, you should not be in that house if there are bugs. I know a guy. Let me call him for you-"

"Wait. From way down in Virginia you know a guy who can help my apartment in Boston? Nevermind. It was a slip of the tongue, anyways, because really it's not just my apartment- it's the whole city, and most of New England for that matter. There's a bug thing."

She could hear her father laugh through the phone and say, "Next she'll be saying the water is turning to blood. Tell her I said that, honey." She must have been on speakerphone. Surprising, considering how technologically-impaired her parents were.

"You're father says-"

"Yeah," Darcy had broken in. "I heard. Ha ha. Very funny. No, it's like a virus tree bug thing. I don't really know, but anyways people aren't suppose to come to Boston for a few months."

"But that doesn't make any-"

"Ummm, oh no! Nathan's doing something bad, I've got to go- I love you both! Bye!" And she'd hung up.

Nathan and Darcy were curled up one night watching The Lion King, a thick sweater and a quilt separating them so Nathan could still lean against her, when the baby started kicking quite a bit. Even through the layers Nathan could feel it, and his eyes grew huge because it was the first time he'd felt it.

"Did I do that?" he asked in surprise.

Darcy laughed and paused the movie.

"Yup. When you were in my belly you kicked up quite a storm, especially in the last month. You just couldn't wait to get out and meet everyone here."

"Wow," he breathed, impressed. The baby kicked again and he jumped, startled, and then laughed. "Come on baby! I want to meet you too!"

It made Darcy's heart glow with love and pride at what a wonderful little boy he was.

They started the movie again soon after that and the baby quieted a little. But there would be the occasional kick from the baby, and each time Nathan would turn to Darcy's belly and pat it affectionately in an 'oh, you' kind of way.

Loki's sense of urgency had grown over the last week. It felt like something was coming, and it had made him more tense and irritable than usual. To add to that irritability, he'd finished the frame for the Bifrost, and was stuck waiting around Asgard for his teleporting to come back enough so he could go to Jotunheim.

To pass time he'd been spending his days again either with Baldr, whom Odin still refused to pass judgment on, or in his own room, practicing magic and trying to anticipate Laufey's next move. The older man's laid-back, down to earth attitude had a somewhat calming effect on Loki, whose nerves were so often raw these days from anxiety.

It was amazing, he had noted with a dull amusement, how weak he really must be. That he could be reduced to such a wreck just by being away from his family.

He and Baldr were playing chess today. Baldr wasn't a good player, but he was an interesting player. His strategy, if he had one, was to be as reckless and unexpected as possible. Loki always won, but it was still fun.

It was a good enough way to pass a day. He appreciated Baldr's jokes and attempts to cheer him up, but his smile was mostly for Baldr's benefit. His heart ached like a bitch.

Nathan eyed Darcy in astonishment.

"How can you eat all that?" He asked, his eyes wide.

"Mmpf," Darcy mumbled through a bite of pumpkin pie. Her plate was piled high with desert. "What can I say? The baby likes their vegetables." She sighed in contentment. "Jane, this pie is incredible."

Jane laughed. "I made it just for you, you know. You are a pie fiend."

It was true. Every holiday one of the things Darcy looked forward to most were Jane's pies. She didn't bake much, but when she did...good lord.

"In fact," she said, licking her spoon. "You might say it's piefect."

Nathan giggled. "Mommy, that's not a word."

"It certainly is."

He gasped- whether out of surprise or indignation was anyone's guess. "No!" He looked at Thor. "Is it?"

"Yes," Thor agreed, and Jane shook her head, smiling.

"You two are setting that boy up for a rude awakening when he learns to play Scrabble."

"Ah, but is any awakening ever truly not rude?" Darcy asked.

It was Christmas, and Darcy and Nathan were over at Jane and Thor's (Darcy's parents having developed a unique tradition of taking holiday cruises in the past couple years). It had been a colorful day, although some of the credit for that could be given to Liam and Isaac, who had taken to throwing their food around.

The boys played together for most of the day while the three adults played the aforementioned Scrabble, and finished getting the food ready. Their Scrabble games had become something of a tradition every year.

"Aha!" Thor exclaimed in victory. "Finally! My first Triple Word Score. Loki usually snatches those up somehow." Immediately after that he fell silent, looking apologetically at Darcy.

It took her a minute to realize why. "Oh," she said. "Mmm. Yeah, he'd be proud of you."

Thor frowned, expecting a bit more of a reaction. But he shrugged it off. Everyone dealt with things differently.

For a moment Darcy felt a shiver of unease, but then Liam started crying and the moment was gone.