I realized like a day after I posted the previous chapter that I'd missed the perfect opportunity to use "Get Help" as a chapter title. *facepalm* Oh well. Maybe there'll be another chance for that.
The past fortnight had brought many surprises and given Gerd much to consider. In the decades that followed the Aesir-Jotnar war, the people of Alfheim had waited nervously, wondering if the thousands of refugee skamrbarn they had helped escape persecution on Jotunheim and welcomed into their homes and families would make them a target of Asgard's desire for vengeance. The towering, faceless Jotun soldiers who dragged Gerd from her adoptive parents' home in her childhood nightmares were replaced in her early adolescence by gold-armored Einherjar.
When nothing ever happened and Asgard had remained Alfheim's ally, the terrifying visions gradually faded, but their specter had continued to hover over her. They had made her and Freyr's courtship somewhat difficult in the beginning, for even though he was one of the Vanir, he was in the extended family of Asgard's queen. Gerd had humored him for the first year or so, but his sweet charm and sunny demeanor were increasingly difficult to resist. She knew she was in very great danger of falling in love with him, so she tried to frighten him away with the truth of her species.
She'd told him what she was, and he had defied all her expectations by claiming not to care and trying to kiss her. Unable to accept it, she flung her shapeshifting pendant in his face, giving him a good look at what she really was, then jumped on her horse and fled.
She hadn't gotten as far as the edge of her parents' land before he caught up to her. With a gentleness she would never forget, he wiped away her tears and made her a promise.
"My lady, whether you be Gerd of Alfheim or of Jotunheim, my heart is yours now and forever. If Yggdrasil is truly not safe for us, I will forsake my lands and title and take you somewhere you can wear your own skin freely." Then he tilted his head and smiled that big, earnest smile that made his nose scrunch up like a schoolboy's. "I hear good things about the Nova Empire."
She still couldn't fathom what she had done to deserve such a good man, but she had known right then that she would never let him go. They were wed before the end of the month, and he hadn't given her the smallest reason to doubt him in centuries of marriage.
They had not needed to flee Yggdrasil. Vanaheim proved surprisingly tolerant. She wore her pendant whenever she wasn't at home as a precaution, but the people living under Freyr's charge had welcomed her and the improved trade access with Alfheim that she brought them. Freyr made sure she was able to visit her parents regularly, and they had gone on multiple trips to faraway realms where nobody knew or cared about the reputation of Jotunheim.
As happy as she was with Freyr, Gerd had worried about what life would be like for any children they had. Marriages between Ljosalfar and Jotnar were common enough that their offspring cheekily styled themselves the Frjosalfar or ice elves, but as far as she knew, mixing Vanr and Jotun blood had never been done before. Miraculously, Fjolnir's childhood had been blissfully free of worries about prejudice and the whims of more powerful realms. Some of that was, no doubt, a consequence of his having inherited Freyr's irresistibly cheerful disposition. He had his Vanir friends on Vanaheim and Ljosalfar, Jotnar, and Frjosalfar friends on Alfheim. He saw the whole thing as a great game, wearing his pendant outside their manor, having a secret that only his family knew. She dreaded the day it stopped being fun for him.
When Odin's invitation came and included Gerd and Fjolnir, Freyr had been reluctant. Asgard was one place he had never taken her, and certainly not their son. However, Gerd had thought it best to obey quickly so that they could leave quickly. Between Asgard's Gatekeeper and the throne Hlidskjalf, Odin was able to see much more than the other realms liked, but there had been no indication so far that he was aware of her origins.
That first morning in the royal breakfast room, when Loki asked her about Jotunheim, she'd thought all her old nightmares were about to come true, and that she and Fjolnir would soon be locked in the dungeons, perhaps to be used as symbols for a campaign against Alfheim. Instead, she was let into a bewildering secret: of all people, Odin Borson had adopted a skamrbarn child, just like her parents had. Not only were she and Fjolnir safe on Asgard, they had the privilege of giving the second prince instruction on his Jotun nature and abilities. It was extraordinary, and it hadn't occurred to her for a second to refuse (even if there may have been a certain amount of bitterness in the way she had designed her instruction).
The time she'd spent with Loki and his family had left her with a far pleasanter view of the four most powerful people in the realms, yet even after weeks of this, she still would never have imagined that she would witness the Allfather bringing out his terrible weregild from the war to treat a frjosleikr fever. Loki was too far gone to recognize any of them or move on his own, so to keep his hands wrapped around the handles of the Casket, Odin and Frigga had to crouch on either side of the copper basin hold his fingers in place.
The power of the Casket was palpable even before it made contact with his skin. Its icy blue light radiated a sense of rightness, of home so strong that Gerd wanted to weep. Images of her birth parents swirled in her mind's eye, their large, kind faces coming into far sharper focus than she'd been able to picture for a long time. The room grew refreshingly cold, and she felt the magic holding her Ljosalfr form together weakening. She fought the impulse to throw her pendant aside and soak it in. There were too many unfamiliar Aesir eyes here.
X
The day the most powerful military force in the galaxy discovered one of its princes had secretly been adopted from an enemy world was an exciting day for Earth to send two of its best spies to the interplanetary stage. Between Sakaar and the politics of Asgard, Natasha's report for this mission was going to be her longest by far.
Their flying boat took a few minutes to reach the palace. The young man steering it brought it up next to the final set of steps leading to the high golden doors. Fandral gallantly offered a hand to Natasha to help her disembark. She accepted with a smile. She knew exactly who her target would be if she ever needed more information than Asgard was willing to share openly. Based on his come-on to the Valkyrie and the way he interacted with Dr. Foster's intern, he would be an almost insultingly easy mark. Thor's attitude and his heartfelt trust in herself and Clint might mean she'd never have to go there, but it was a good redundancy.
Sif led the way inside, the Valkyrie following with obvious reluctance.
"Shall we go to the laboratory?" said Fandral, addressing Dr. Banner and tapping the transporter with a finger.
"That can wait, can't it?" said Dr. Banner a little uncertainly. "Shouldn't we go see how Loki's doing first?"
"Yes, of course," said Sif. "Don't you want to come and wish Loki well?"
"You know what Eir is like," said Fandral. His tone was casual but his posture was stiff. "If we bring too much extra traffic into her healing hall, she'll toss us out on our ears hard enough that we'll have to go right back in for treatment."
"Then we will simply do our best not to be underfoot," said Sif. "Eir should hear the comm—er, Brunnhilde's account of what happened to him as soon as possible, in any case." She was clearly uncomfortable addressing the other woman by anything less than her military title.
They didn't go up the sweeping staircases that curved high into a double helix above them, but instead stepped onto a circular platform that sat between the bottom stairs. It was about fifteen meters across and had a thin, raised pedestal in the center. Sif poked at something on this pedestal, and a golden net made of the same patterns in the burn marks left by the Bifrost and the protective barrier that enclosed them when they used the transporters shot up around the edges of the platform, fading out at a point about three times their height. The platform began to move upward. So Asgard did have elevators. That was a relief, considering the size of the palace.
Clint stretched out a hand and carefully touched one finger to the golden barrier. It flared a little brighter and remained inflexible, but did nothing to him.
"Okay so what's the deal with Loki?" said Dr. Banner, who must already be used to this kind of technology after the time he'd spent here. "Why were all those people out there freaking out about him? What's a Frost Giant? Aren't you guys used to seeing all kinds of aliens?"
Fandral looked at him in surprise. "Do your people not remember?" he said. "It was barely over a thousand years ago that the Jotnar invaded your realm."
"Whoa, what?" said Clint, tearing his gaze away from the landings they were passing and the glimpses they were getting of the different levels. "Earth was invaded by an alien species?"
"Yes, the Frost Giants opened portals to your subarctic region." said Sif. "Their bid to conquer the realm was brief and ill-fated. This all happened before Fandral or I were born, but you should hear the veterans of the war talk about what the Jotnar did to the mortals in their path before Asgard could intervene."
She shot a glance at Brunnhilde, as though hopeful she would launch into one of her own war stories. Brunnhilde, however, showed no interest in the conversation at all. She was watching floor after floor of fabulous architecture pass them by as though the sight of it all made her ill. Natasha got the feeling that Thor and Loki maybe should have asked her if she wanted to come back to Asgard before bringing her along.
"Odin led the charge of the Einherjar and Valkyrior," Sif continued. The platform slowed after about the seventh level and came to a halt at another landing. The golden field parted in front of it, and they stepped off into a long, vaulted corridor with more pillars and intricate gold knotwork in the smooth black floor. "They forced the Jotnar back to Jotunheim within the first two years, but once the battle was on the Jotnar's frozen turf it became much more treacherous, and the war continued another thirty-nine years before we had King Laufey's surrender."
"Yet barely a year after the truce was signed, a 'rogue' faction of Jotnar launched an attack upon Asgard itself," said Fandral. His tone suggested he had strong doubts that there had been anything rogue about them. "That one attack cost us more dearly than the entire war. Einherjar who were just settling in to enjoy the peace they fought for were slaughtered at their homes. Noble houses were destroyed. Even members of the Allfather's Council were slain, my uncle included. The only reason the invasion couldn't do even worse damage was the sacrifice of the Valkyrior. They gave their lives to end the invasion before it could get even worse. Well, all but one, it seems."
"Damn, that's got to be rough," said Clint, looking at Brunnhilde with grim sympathy.
X
Brunnhilde realized that everyone else was looking at her and tried to piece together what they'd been saying. It was no good. Her mind had been too focused on the fact that she could encounter the Allfather at any moment, and she didn't know what she would do when that happened. Scream at him, lunge at him with her Dragonfang, or simply wait for him to order her executed...they all had their merits. She frowned irritably. "What did you just say?"
"We were telling the mortals of the war with Jotunheim," said the blond dandy. He looked very somber and respectful. "And...how the Valkyrior fell defending Asgard from an attempted Jotun invasion after the truce was signed."
"What?" said Brunnhilde, freezing in her tracks. She barely felt it when the dark-haired mortal walked right into her. "We didn't fall to any bloody Frost Giants. What the Hel are you talking about?"
The two young warriors looked stunned. "But...everyone older than us saw it happen," said the black-haired woman. "There's even a memorial statue at the aeries of a Valkyrie and a Jotun trading mortal wounds."
Brunnhilde stared at her. For a few bewildering seconds, she thought the whole realm must've gone mad, but then reality sank in. Her hands balled into fists so tight that her nails cut into her palms. Odin. He couldn't just take the shame of his people knowing that their beloved Valkyrior had fallen in battle against his own daughter, or that he had failed to prevent it. No, it was much more convenient to blame the nearest enemy instead. Had Hela's loyalists even been punished, or had they, like everyone else, simply had their minds altered to suit this narrative? She didn't know how a child adopted from Jotunheim factored into all this. Maybe Odin didn't really consider him an heir, and he was simply a hostage to keep Laufey quiet about the slander.
She said nothing else to the others for the rest of the walk to the healing hall, unconcerned that her glower had cast an awkward pall over the group. Everything was just the same as the last time she'd been here. She'd expected it to be different. How could it not be, after what had happened? But of course it hadn't changed. Odin hadn't allowed it to.
If she were one of the Einherjar's berserkers, she might've gone on a rampage right then and there, but the Valkyrior had prided themselves on their control. It wasn't self-preservation that stopped her. She hadn't cared about that since that day on Niflheim. Whether leaving Sakaar caught up to her or she met her fate here on Asgard, she was going to give that old bastard a taste of what justice was like when not defined by him first.
X
Thor watched Loki anxiously. He didn't know anything about how Jotun illnesses or the Casket of Ancient Winters worked, but surely this couldn't hurt, at least. A few seconds after his parents clasped Loki's hands to its handles, they both winced. If the healing room was getting this cold so quickly, then maybe direct contact with Loki's skin was dangerous right now. They didn't let go. Gold light began to shine from their fingers, and their expressions smoothed back to steely determination. The steam drifting from Loki's markings thinned, then stopped entirely. The water in the basin began to rise higher, which seemed strange at first, until Thor realized that it was merely expanding in a kind of reverse avalanche as it froze into slush.
At the point when it began to spill over the rim, Loki groaned and opened his eyes. "Mother? Father?" he said. His words were slurred and sluggish. "Where'm I? Whass going on?"
"You're home, darling," said Frigga, squeezing his hand. "You're home and you're safe."
"Try to rest," said Odin. "It seems you've squeezed quite an exhausting few days out of the hour since I last saw you."
Loki gave a faint nod. His eyes fell closed again, but this time it was in a peaceful sort of way. Thor let out a slow breath. His brother was going to be alright.
"Prince Thor!"
Thor jumped and looked around at Eir, whose attention was no longer exclusively for Loki. "What?" he said. He felt vaguely like he was a little boy again, being scolded for doing something dangerous.
"What have you done to your arm?" she demanded.
He looked down at it. It was covered in dried, crusted blood and still bleeding from the deep gash in it. "Oh," he said. "Got cut. I won, though."
Eir waved one her assistants closer and together they marched him over to a cot and forced him to sit so they could get better access to his wound. Within moments, they had vanished the scale mail all the way from shoulder plates to bracer, cleaned his arm, smeared a stinging purple cream over the cut, sealed it shut with strands of seidr, and bandaged it. All the while, Eir muttered a familiar tirade about what Asgard would come to with princes who had such little regard for their own safety. He could see his mother fighting back laughter, and even Odin raised an eyebrow at him as if to say that the healer had a point.
The door opened, and Sif, Fandral, Brunnhilde, Romanoff, Barton, and Banner all filed inside. The humans recoiled a bit from the unexpected cold, while Sif and Fandral immediately put fist to heart (Fandral a little awkwardly, as he was still carrying the transporter), bowed their heads, and murmured, "Your majesties."
Frigga gave them a nod to dispel the formalities, and they straightened. Brunnhilde, though, didn't move a muscle to acknowledge the presence of her king and queen. Thor hoped no one else had noticed.
"How fares the prince?" said Sif. She made a funny face when she saw Loki, who now looked like he'd fallen asleep in the middle of a snowdrift, only his hands and head poking out of it. Thor had to admit it was an amusing sight.
"Thanks to our king's quick thinking, he may already be out of danger," said Eir. She shot a questioning glance at Gerd, who nodded.
Sif looked relieved. She smiled at Thor, who smiled back. He hadn't expected such a show of solidarity from her after their last conversation about Loki, but he was very glad of it.
"Lady Eir, I was captured by Thanos's man alongside Prince Loki, and we were held in the same cell." said Brunnhilde. "I can tell you what I know of his condition."
Odin went very still at the sound of her voice and turned slowly to meet her gaze. The atmosphere in the room shifted. Even the humans seemed to feel it, for they all made uncomfortable movements and looked at each other. It was impossible for Thor to tell what his father was thinking, but Brunnhilde looked both sober and quietly furious. From his experience, that was not a good combination.
"Y-yes," said Eir with a nervous glance at Odin. "The more information we have about what happened to him, the easier our job will be."
Odin stood, leaving the Casket to rest atop the newly formed mound of slush, with Frigga still supporting Loki's hand on the other handle. "Thor, come," he said. "I would hear your part of what happened on Sakaar. Loki can tell me the rest when he is well. Lady Sif, Fandral, escort the mortals to the laboratory."
"Yes, Allfather," they said in unison, putting fist to heart and bowing again. Romanoff, Barton, and Banner went with them, casting questioning glances back at Thor. He tried to look reassuring.
"Commander," said Odin when they were gone.
"Allfather."
There was a pause in which nobody in the room breathed.
"Come to the throne room in an hour," said Odin. "I believe there is much for us to discuss."
Brunnhilde gave a jerky nod.
As Thor accompanied his father from the healing hall, he wondered if maybe bringing the last Valkyrie home to an Asgard still under Odin's rule had been a bad idea.
I did not expect that writing a PoV scene for my sort-of OC Gerd was going to have me tearing up, but it totally did. Getting into her head at the beginning of the chapter seemed like an effective way to set the stage for delving into more political stuff.
If you think about it (and I have, a lot), for Odin to erase Hela from his people's memories, he'd have needed to make satisfactory cover stories for big things she was involved in, like the mass slaughter of the realm's most elite warriors. Maybe he could have invented an entirely unknown villain to pin that on, but the option that creates the fewest tricky variables is to take the people Asgard already doesn't like because of the war they just fought against them and blame them for it. Just, in a way that doesn't immediately restart the war.
Now, if it seems weird that Thor and Loki have never made any comments about the implications of this cover story in the entire fic, it's because this idea only occurred to me when I was writing this chapter. I'm not too annoyed with myself, though, because it kind of works. Thor already processed the Hela reveal before he came back in time, and he did it on a ship of the Asgardians who managed to escape a far worse slaughter than when she killed the Valkyrior. Also, Odin was already dead. I don't think it would have occurred to Thor to think about this stuff. Even Brunnhilde probably didn't see much point in bringing it up. And this timeline's Loki has been dealing with much more personal problems. Odin and Frigga didn't volunteer this information when Thor was wringing truth out of them because he didn't ask. But get a Valkyrie in the same room with Odin and it's going to come out.
These characters are taking me to some really interesting places. I can't believe I started out thinking I wouldn't be able to come up with anything worth writing in this timeline beyond that first chapter.
A note on a writing detail I feel disproportionately proud of: Natasha is Russian. As such, she thinks in metric, which is why she mentally measured the elevator platform in meters. (I'm also very proud of that elevator. It looks so cool in my head, and I hope you guys can picture it. That's definitely something I can't do justice by attempting to draw it.)