When Loki awoke, he found himself horribly uncomfortable in the sweltering heat of his chambers, and the morning sunlight was so blinding that he clapped his hands over his eyes. His skin was still blue, and he began to cry in miserable frustration. He tried, for about the dozenth time, to shapeshift back into his true form, but nothing happened.
Not far away on the bed, there came a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan. He cupped his hands around his eyes and opened them a fraction. The light didn't hurt so much, and he was able to see Thor lying there. His skin was flushed and his blond hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. There was also a greenish tinge around the black frostbite on his hand. "Thor?" said Loki, squinting and carefully touching Thor's shoulder through his tunic. "Thor, wake up." Thor moaned again, and his eyes moved beneath their lids, but no matter how loudly Loki sobbed his name or how hard he shook his shoulder, Thor didn't wake.
X
It wasn't an altogether uncommon occurrence for the boys not to arrive in the royal breakfast room on time. Odin was already poring over a stack of parchment—the reports from Council members, requests from Aesir nobles and rulers of other realms, and lists of supplicants and the concerns they would be bringing before the throne that day—so he barely noticed the food on his own plate, or that Hugin and Munin were taking advantage of this and stealing beakfuls of it. He hadn't noticed the absence of his sons either.
Frigga, however, frowned at the arched doorway they should be coming through. She sent a projection of herself to Thor's chambers first. They were empty, and the red blanket was missing from the bed. Suspicions growing, she vanished and reappeared in Loki's chambers. There was no sign of the room's occupant, but Thor was lying on the bed in restless sleep. One glance was enough to tell Frigga that he was very ill, and the source of that illness was a black burn on his right palm. Immediately, she sent her projection several levels down to the healing room.
"Eir!" she called.
"My queen?" said the woman who had overseen the treatment of injuries and illness in the palace for centuries.
"Prince Thor needs you. You will find him in Prince Loki's chambers."
"What happened?" To Eir's credit, no hint of exasperation colored her tone, even though she had tended to both princes for accidental injuries more than enough times to have lost all patience with them.
"It appears that sometime in the night, he suffered severe frostbite to his hand. It has become infected, and he has a fever and will not wake."
Eir looked horrified. "But that could only have happened if he touched a—" She broke off, her eyes widening. "Does that mean…?"
"I fear it does. But let me worry about that. I will leave Thor to your excellent care."
"Yes, your majesty."
Frigga's projection did not remain long enough for her to see Eir hurry from the room. Her consciousness returned to her physical body, and she glanced at her husband. He was still reading, fork poised vaguely a few inches from his mouth. Hugin had already stolen the piece of sausage off it.
"Anything particularly noteworthy on your schedule for today, my dear?" she asked.
"What?" said Odin. He looked at her, then back at the parchment. "Oh, not especially. A few construction proposals, requests for a team of healers to be sent to a Vanir city suffering from a plague, and the delegates from Nidavellir aren't happy with the accommodations we've prepared from them, even though they're the same ones they've stayed in for every visit for the last five hundred years, which usually means they're trying to put me off-balance before making an outrageous request." He gave her a weary smile. "I hope your day will be more pleasant than mine."
"I think I will be spending the morning with our sons, but after I send them to Bragi and Vor for their lessons, I can take those supplicants if you would like."
"Thank you," he said. It came out a sigh of relief, and he passed her several of the sheets of parchment. "Give the boys my love. If I can get everything sorted out with the dwarves, I might actually be able to see them at supper."
"If you cannot, they will understand. Taking them to the Vault yesterday was a wonderful idea. I'm sure they will be talking of nothing else for weeks."
"What if we were to leave Asgard to Tyr and the Council for a fortnight or so and take the boys to Vanaheim?"
Frigga's smile widened. "You don't think the Council will scheme behind your back in your absence?"
"Of course they will, but I flatter myself I can still best them. It's been far too long since I made time to see how Thor is coming with his training, and Loki with his seidr. And I had to find out by a stray comment from Bragi that Loki has already mastered written Allspeak." He flapped a hand to shoo Munin away from his plate and took a moody bite of egg.
"You know very well how difficult it is to be both a good king and a good father," said Frigga. "Your people and your sons love you, and so does your queen." She gave him a kiss before leaving the room. Then she headed straight for Loki's chambers.
Thor was gone; he would be in the Healing Room by now. There was still no sign of Loki. She waved a hand, causing the heavy curtains to fall closed over the windows, leaving the room in semidarkness. Then she approached the northeast corner and crouched down. She stretched out with her seidr and unraveled the somewhat sloppily constructed cloaking spell, revealing her second son. His arms were wrapped tightly around his knees, and he was sniffling. As she had suspected from Thor's frostbitten hand, Loki had reverted to his Jotun form.
"Loki, will you look at me?"
He turned tear-filled crimson eyes to face her. "I didn't mean to," he said. "He grabbed my arm, and it just happened. And then when I woke up, it was worse."
Frigga's heart broke for him, and she reached out to wrap her arms around him, but he recoiled. "No!" he cried. "I'll burn you too!"
She drew back, and she had to fight to keep her voice even. "It's alright, my love," she said. "It's just a defense mechanism. Your skin will only burn me if you believe I'm a threat. Do you believe that?"
"No," he whispered. "But I didn't think Thor was a threat either, and now he's hurt and ill."
"Hmm. Did he catch you by surprise when he touched you?"
Loki nodded.
"Well, you're not surprised now, and you don't believe I'm a threat. You will not hurt me. I promise." She smiled at him and held out a hand. He stared at it uncertainly, then slowly reached out. He touched the center of her palm with his fingertip for the briefest moment before whipping it back. She showed him her undamaged skin. "See? It's perfectly safe." She reached up to brush away some of the tears on his cold cheeks. More joined them, and after a few seconds, he flung himself into her arms. She held him tightly as he cried into her shoulder, and they sat this way for several minutes.
"Is Thor going to be alright?" he asked eventually, voice choked with fear. "I watched Eir take him away."
"Of course he will. Eir is well practiced at treating frostbite. He will be his hale and happy self in no time, but you should have come straight to us when it happened. Such wounds do not go away on their own."
"I didn't mean to hurt him. I swear I didn't."
"I know, Loki." On the occasions when he did deliberately injure Thor, he became evasive and stubborn, and it could be quite a task to coax a suitable amount of remorse out of him. When it was an accident, he was distraught. "Will you please tell me what happened?"
He pulled back and looked up at her with those wide, shockingly red eyes. She smoothed his hair, which was somewhat rumpled from sleep. "I'll tell you, but we didn't go just for fun. It was because I had the nightmare again," he said. Frigga's heart twisted. She had hoped the troubled nights of his early decades were behind him now, but apparently not.
"Where did you go?"
"I thought the nightmare might have returned because Father showed us the Casket of Ancient Winters and told us of the war, so I wondered if I could stop myself having it again if I went back."
"So you persuaded Thor to return to the Vault with you in the middle of the night?"
Loki dropped his gaze from hers, his cheeks darkening to an almost violet color. "Yes, Mother."
Frigga hadn't known that Jotnar could blush. How precious. She resisted the urge to give one of those cheeks a pinch and forced her expression to remain gently stern. "What happened in there?" she asked.
"I made some illusions for us to fight, like we were fending off an invasion of Frost Giants. But then I looked at the Casket. I could feel its magic. It was singing to me."
"Which is why you touched it?"
He nodded.
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Despite what I've taught you about treating magical artifacts with caution and respect?"
He looked chagrined. "Do you know how to break the curse it put on me?" he asked.
She pursed her lips. Odin and his secrets. She knew how many scars his daughter had left on his heart. In many ways, they had made him a wiser king than he once was, but sometimes what he called wisdom was merely an attempt to protect himself from more pain. Loki never would have been so frightened and confused if they had just been honest with him from the start. Well, Frigga wasn't about to let her husband smooth this over with more lies. However, Loki would probably react better to the truth if he wasn't in this unfamiliar skin when he heard it. "What have you already tried?"
"I tried changing back like I do when I shapeshift, but nothing happened."
"Have you tried shapeshifting into something else first?" she suggested.
"Oh," said Loki, brightening. "I didn't think of that."
"Go on," said Frigga, smiling encouragingly. When he had first taken his Aesir form, he had done it by instinctively drawing on the powerful seidr of the person holding him. He was unlikely to be able to duplicate the same results after so many years of formal magical training, especially without skin contact and with no idea that he was changing out of his true form, not the other way around. This roundabout approach would be much easier for him until he understood more.
Loki's brow furrowed and his lip jutted out as he concentrated. Then the green-gold of his seidr shone from his skin, and in seconds, he became a small green snake coiled around her forearm. She tickled him affectionately under his chin, and he flicked his forked tongue out at her in an exasperated sort of way. The light shone from him again, and her son reappeared, back in his Aesir form.
"It worked!" he cried in delight, looking at his pink hands. "Thank you, Mother!" He hugged her again and kissed her on the cheek.
"Of course," she said, kissing him back.
"May I go to Thor now?"
"Not just yet. There is something I need to discuss with you. I believe you are old enough to know."
Loki looked horrified. "Mother, I already know where babies come from!"
Frigga let out a burst of laughter. "No, no, darling, that is not the discussion I had in mind. Come." She got gracefully to her feet and held out a hand. He took it and allowed her to lead him out of the room.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Somewhere very special to me." She glanced at him and saw him shooting furtive looks in every direction, plainly attempting to guess their destination.
"The nursery?" he said, sounding disappointed when they turned down the final corridor. And indeed, the room she was leading him to was the one he had shared with Thor for most of his first century. She pushed the door open and they stepped inside. The large room had a feeling of disuse now, as it had been unoccupied for quite some time. "What's so special about the nursery?"
Frigga waved her free hand to bring up the lights to about a medium glow, led him to a window with a wide, cushioned bench underneath it, and sat next to him, before taking his other hand in hers. "This is the room where I first held you in my arms."
"What do you want to discuss with me?" he said, a hint of an embarrassed scowl on his face, color rising in his pale cheeks.
"Perhaps discussion is the wrong word. It's more of a story."
Loki sat up straighter, intrigued, and Frigga began her tale.
"Once, there were a king and queen who ruled over a golden land, and all their subjects were happy and prosperous. They lived in peace for many years, and the realms under their protection thrived. But then the shadow of war darkened the horizon, for there was another king, a cruel giant who ruled over a world of ice and darkness. He coveted what the first king had, and so he tried to take one of those protected realms. If he had succeeded, the people, plants, and animals there would all have perished under the ice that only his own people could survive."
"Mother, this is the same story Father told us in the Vault yesterday," said Loki, rolling his eyes.
"Hush," said Frigga, amused. "Just because you have heard a story once does not mean there is nothing more you can gain from it." He grimaced and nodded. She continued. "The first king and his armies went to war. It was a difficult time. Many warriors were sent to Valhalla, leaving their families behind. However, the golden land still had cause to rejoice, for the queen had given the king his first son. The queen was very happy, but as she watched her child learn to walk and talk, the only little one in a palace full of grown men and women, she knew that her family was not complete. She longed for another child to love."
Loki's cheeks were bright red again and he squirmed a little in his seat.
"Meanwhile, on the world of ice, another queen was with child. She already had two sons, and she loved them as much as the first queen loved her little boy."
Loki made a sound of disbelief, and Frigga looked at him sharply.
"Yes, Loki, she did. Queen Farbauti loved her children with all her heart, and she was good to her people. She never wanted war."
"She didn't?"
"No."
"Did you meet her?" said Loki, his eyes wide.
Frigga smiled, but it was pained. "I did. Only once. It was before the war, when your father and I went to attempt negotiations with Laufey. She was fierce and brave, and had an incredible inner strength. I would have liked to have known her better."
"But she was a Jotun," said Loki.
"And what do you think that means?"
He frowned. "The Einherjar and the shieldmaidens all talk of the savage monsters they faced in the war..."
"The Einherjar and the shieldmaidens saw little of the Jotnar apart from the soldiers they met in battle. They could not tell you of their families, their children, their markets, their craftsmen, their breathtaking music and poetry."
"But...but they don't even wear proper clothes!" Loki protested.
"They wear what is appropriate for their needs. They do not require protection from the cold, and the more of their skin they cover, the less they are able to feel Jotunheim and draw strength from it."
"What, like seidr?"
"Not precisely. Some Jotnar are blessed with seidr, just like all the long-lived races. But even the Frost Giants without a hint of seidr in them are connected to the power of Jotunheim itself. The power of winter."
A small furrow appeared between Loki's eyebrows. He had likely realized how similar this description was to his own experience in the Vault and was wondering what it meant. "Do you have other questions, or may I continue the story?"
He shook his head and adjusted his seat. "Please continue, Mother."
"The people of Jotunheim were eager to welcome another royal child. But Farbauti gave birth far too early. The child was healthy, but she was afraid for him, for he was very small—only the size of an Aesir babe."
"Why was she afraid?" asked Loki, his voice barely above a whisper. He had clearly become more invested in the story now, after what she had told him about the Jotnar, and Frigga was glad.
"She was afraid because her husband the king had made a cruel decree centuries before, about babies born so small. He believed they were a threat to the strength of Jotunheim."
Loki wrinkled his nose. "How could a baby be a threat to anything, no matter its size?"
"How, indeed," Frigga agreed. "Laufey has never been very wise. According to his decree, any parents who produced an undersized child were barred from having other children, and so were any existing children already in the family." She opted not to tell him that this was accomplished by forced sterilization. "The babies themselves were taken away to die. Laufey tried to make it sound better by calling it 'giving them back to the gods.' He rewrote Jotunheim's religious texts to legitimize the practice."
Loki looked appalled. "And Farbauti was afraid Laufey would do the same thing to their own baby?"
Frigga nodded. "She knew her husband better than anyone. He had effectively lost the war against Asgard already. They had been beaten back from Midgard, and the Einherjar were at the gates of Utgard, their capital city. After all his lies about how these children were cursed and a threat to the Jotnar's way of life, for Laufey's own child to be born so small on the eve of defeat in the war…"
"It would have looked like he had been judged unfit to rule by their gods," said Loki.
"Yes," said Frigga. "And perhaps he had, for his hypocrisy and greed. Farbauti knew that the child's life would be forfeit the instant Laufey learned of him. So she planned to do what many Jotnar mothers whose children are born small have done: smuggle him to another realm where he could be safe. On Alfheim, there are several communities with more Jotnar than Alfar, and there are even a few living on Vanaheim. Laufey knows nothing of them. They are kept very secret, in order to protect them from him."
"And the Alfar and the Vanir help keep the secret?" said Loki.
"Of course. These Jotnar are their friends, their neighbors. They have grown up alongside their own children. Some have even married them."
Loki looked amazed by the very idea. "So where did the baby go? Is he on Alfheim or Vanaheim? Do the people there know he is a prince of Jotunheim?"
"He is not on Alfheim or Vanaheim," said Frigga. "Laufey discovered Farbauti before she could carry out her plan."
Loki gasped, his eyes wide and fearful.
"Farbauti was right to fear how he would react. He took the baby from her and brought him in secret very close to where the battle was taking place. He thought an Aesir wouldn't hesitate to slay a Jotun, even an infant, and then no one would ever know. Farbauti was still weak from childbirth, so she couldn't fight him, and not long after her son was ripped from her arms, her grief claimed her life." This was not true, but though Frigga felt Loki was more than old enough to know of his origins, she would certainly not burden him with the knowledge that his mother had been murdered by his father hours after his birth until he was much, much older. If ever. As it was, Loki's eyes were already bright with tears. It brought up a lump in Frigga's throat. She hoped Farbauti could see him. "Laufey told his people the child died with her. They were devastated. So were the older princes."
"But Laufey was lying, wasn't he?" said Loki. "No one from Asgard would murder a baby. Father would never allow it."
"You're right; he would not," said Frigga. Of course, it had not always been so, but Asgard had been a very different place, and Odin a very different king, since the days of the Aesir-Vanir war. "But that nearly didn't matter. The newborn prince of Jotunheim spent two days lying alone inside an abandoned temple near the wall of Utgard, where his cries went unanswered. If the battle had gone on any longer, he might have starved to death." She couldn't help tightening her grip on Loki's hands as she said this. She wondered if he had recognized his old nightmare in what she had just described. "But the Norns had other plans for him. The war won at last, Odin went into the temple for a moment of respite. Instead, he found the baby lying on the altar inside, crying. Small wonder the sight of him didn't make poor thing cry harder, for he had just lost his eye and the wound hadn't even been cleaned. However, the little prince was not so easily frightened. He quieted when his father's mortal enemy picked him up, and he smiled. He reached out with his seidr towards this strange new person, then turned his own skin from blue to pink, perfectly imitating an Aesir form."
She thought Loki must be very close to realizing where she was going with this, because he didn't say anything, and his face had gone very pale. "I don't think anything had ever surprised Odin more. The little prince had quite impressed him with that display. He knew about Laufey's decree against allowing such small children to live, which meant it was unlikely any of his own kind would be coming back for him. The only thing to do was to bring him home to Asgard.
"And so it was that the deepest wish of the queen of the golden land was granted the same day the war was won. The king returned with his army, and all the people celebrated." Frigga took a deep breath, then squeezed Loki's hands and continued. "I was sitting on this very bench with Thor, awaiting Odin's return. Thor was impatient to see his Pabbi again, for it had been many months since we had last been able to meet. Odin arrived at last, but he wasn't alone. He was carrying a bundle from Jotunheim in his arms. He wasn't sure how I would react, but I took one look at the little prince and knew I would never be able to let him go. My heart had recognized him as the piece that had been missing from our family. Odin admitted that he was relieved to hear me say so, because the idea of passing the child off to be raised by someone else had pained him."
"So," said Loki, his voice small and tremulous, his eyes on their joined hands, "that is how the third prince of Jotunheim became Loki Odinson, the second prince of Asgard."
"Yes," said Frigga. She gathered him up in her arms.
He let her do it, though his limbs remained limp and unmoving. "How did you know all that about Laufey and Farbauti?" he asked. "Did Heimdall tell you?"
"He did. I made a promise to Farbauti that day, that I would give her son all the love she did not survive to give him." She pulled back so she could press a kiss to his forehead and look him in the eyes. There was a distant, almost vacant look in them, which was more worrying than tears would have been. It didn't stop her from speaking her heart. "Never has any promise been easier to keep."
I wonder how many different versions of Loki finding out his origins I'm going to end up writing. "Interventionism" has Odin making less of a mess of it than he did in canon, and here we've got Frigga doing it, and it'll definitely happen at some point in "If I Could Start Again."
I love Frigga so much. How well do you guys think she did with this conversation?
I kept the backstory for what went down with Laufey and Farbauti mostly the same as in "Interventionism," although Laufey's policies about runts is a bit worse in this fic.
There will probably be at least one more chapter, because obviously the rest of the family needs to get involved and Loki needs to react to what he just learned.
