Thor was born during an unplanned stay at her 'Sea Palace'. He came unexpectedly and rather early.

The labor was a hard one, and Eir, who was the most-skilled healer Odin had been able to find and who was the one he had chosen to abide at the palace, advised that Frigga not carry a child again. Odin was not bothered by this.

He did not see the child much, tensions were rising in Jotunheim – the one realm remaining that might pose credible threat to Asgard – and that threat – coupled with his own father's insistence that war be necessary – kept him often from his wife and his tiny son.

The most he saw of the boy was at night, when he howled and would not be consoled by any. Then Odin would get up and he would take the babe from Frigga or from the nurse and he would go out on the walls and he would walk and, grudgingly, the boy would calm, and, eventually, sleep.

But such sweet images of domesticity were not to be his for long. War with Jotunheim loomed. And it was not as the previous wars of his Kingship had been. Those had been skirmishes, revolutions and uprisings of people far away with a power diminished.

Jotunheim was strong.

Odin went out with his father. They brought battle to Jotunheim's icy ground that it might not come to Asgard.

Years passed as battles raged. Only twice did the Jotnar front come near to Asgard, both times stopped before war could touch the Golden City.

Odin saw little of his wife in those years, and less of his son. During the time, on one of his rare visits to her, Frigga conceived a child. Odin had heard nothing in his whisperings of another child. Nothing in his sleeping-visions had alerted him.

Several months later, Odin received a missive from his wife, telling him the child was stillborn. She said nothing else. The regency rode hard on her. But it was not a thing with which he could busy his mind. Without his whole attention, his men would die.

Cloaked from even Heimdal's sight, Laufey led a front of his host to Midgard. He bore the Casket of Eternal Winters, prophesied to be the harbinger of Ragnarok and the End of All. Odin pursued and drove him from Midgard, but at great cost.

Upon arrival back in Jotunheim the Jotnar forces were met by Bor's men. Amid the turmoil of battle, Bor was snared in a sorcerer's net and dissipated to no more than a wash of snow amid the blackened stone.

In the wake of this father's death, Odin went again – in the darkest watch of the night – to the dark places. He would know how to end this conflict. He would play at games with this cunning Jotun king no longer. And such demands carry high price.

He gave his eye for knowledge.

Odin took Laufey spare days after amid the rubble of Jotunheim's former stronghold – the city of Utgard. Odin had the casket sent to Asgard, to be housed amid the relics he had gathered. Laufey, he had released. He might govern his people, but he would remain vassal to the AllFather. Laufey resented, but he was wounded and he knew he had been beaten. Knew enough to draw away and take what leash he had been given.

Amid the ruins, Odin found a babe. Laufey's son, left to die. A bastard child, almost certainly a half-breed, for he was too small to be the offspring of a Jotun. Something had drawn Odin to the place. A power not unlike that he'd won for himself. Too strong for one of this tiny creature's size.

Perhaps left to die by its kind for scorn, perhaps for fear of what it might grow to become.

Seeking to be certain that the power emanated from the child, Odin reached out a hand and touched it and beneath his hand the child changed. Ridged blue Jotnar hide shifted to soft flesh like Odin's own. It shifted its form to suit that of its discoverer, and as it did the power of it shifted inward, like a flower secreting its lure after the insect it sought had been drawn in.

And drawn in, Odin was. He took up the child and hid it within his cloak. He fed it with bits of softened bread until he could bring it home with him in utmost privacy.

What was to be gained by spreading tales that the AllFather had taken in the bastard heir of Jotunheim?

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I have a few things I could add to about this chapter and Odin's motivation therein. But I won't yet. It depends if any of my theories about 'Ragnarok' are correct. I don't want to run this fic out that far on a limb. I may do a one-off kind of "replacement" (or possibly a whole multi-chapter fic…might be worth it) to this chapter if it turns out they are.

(I'm willing to go into detail for anybody who's interested, but as anybody who knows me knows, I can go on FOREVER. And as I don't want to bore anyone to death this time, feel free to PM me or pop it in as a review. I promise I'll get to it when I can.)

It'll be a few days before I update this. Probably Tuesday-ish. Frigga has a few things to say at this point, and heaven help the fool who tries to stop her ;)