Cooper watched Fjolnir run away in tears. He still didn't really know what was going on or what it meant that Fjolnir had turned blue when he took off his necklace, but he did know that Fjolnir was fun and nice and had made him feel much less nervous about being on a whole other planet. Leif and his brothers and sisters had also helped with that, making room for Cooper at their table and excitedly asking him questions about where he lived and what it was like.
"That wasn't very nice," he said to Leif. "I don't think Fjolnir was trying to hurt you. Why did you have to make him cry?"
Leif looked confused and his skin was very pale under his freckles. He stared down at the necklace in his hand. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Cooper decided Fjolnir needed his support more than Leif did, so he left him there, running around the pillar and back towards the high table after the other boy. A lot of the grown-ups he passed looked as confused and upset as Leif.
Up ahead, he saw Fjolnir in the arms of a big man with dark red hair who must be his dad. A pretty blonde lady with longer pointy ears than Fjolnir's before he turned blue was standing close to them and looking around, and several of the other people at the high table were moving towards them too, including the queen, Thor, and Loki. They all seemed worried.
Cooper didn't get much closer before a hand caught his arm. "There you are, sweetie." It was his mom. "I think you should come sit with us now."
"But I wanna make sure Fjolnir's okay!"
"I'm sure he will be. He's with his parents." She frowned over at Fjolnir's family. "What happened?"
"Leif started saying something about Frost Giants and how they're really scary, and Fjolnir took off his necklace and turned all blue with white hair and red eyes 'cause he's half-Frost Giant, and then Leif got scared and jumped away from him, and Fjolnir started crying and ran up here."
Laura's frown got deeper, but she took Cooper's hand. "Come on. I think Fjolnir's parents can take things from here."
Reluctantly, Cooper let her lead him back to where his dad was sitting with Lila.
X
Gerd's heart pounded. Her eyes flitted around the people in the nearer end of the second tier of tables, many of whom were standing and drifting closer, trying to get a better look at Fjolnir, who was still crying into Freyr's shoulder. He hadn't said a word yet, but they could guess fairly well what had happened. She looked at her husband.
"What happened? Is Fjolnir alright?" It was Frigga. Thor and Loki were right behind her, looking worried, and she motioned to them so that they would stand on Freyr's other side and impede the view of the curious onlookers.
"I don't know," said Gerd. "His pendant—"
"I could cast a glamour on him until you recover it," Loki offered.
Gerd nodded but didn't feel any calmer. This was everything she had feared. Loki waved a hand and Fjolnir shimmered back into his half-Ljosalfr appearance.
"We must return to our chambers," said Freyr, rubbing Fjolnir's back.
"Yes, we'll get our things and go home to Vanaheim tonight," said Gerd, wringing her hands. "Or perhaps to Alfheim to visit my parents." She turned to Loki. "I'm sorry we won't be able to continue your lessons. Truly."
"Gerd, surely there is no need for you to leave Asgard," said Frigga, laying a gentle hand on her arm.
"No need?" said Gerd, her voice breaking with a slightly hysterical laugh. "Of course we must go."
"Very few saw anything," said Thor, "and I doubt those who did know what they saw, besides a child running back to his parents."
"At least wait until you have the pendant back," said Loki. His expression was largely impassive, but there was a hint of a plea in his eyes. It struck Gerd hard that if they left now, he would be the only Jotun on an Asgard that now knew him for what he was. She felt so torn, but she had told Fjolnir that this was the most important thing they could do on Asgard.
"Please, think about it," said Frigga. "Decide in the morning."
Gerd squeezed her eyes shut and mustered her resolve. "Very well," she said.
"Are you certain?" said Freyr.
"Yes," she said.
"Wonderful," said Frigga. "Now, go on up, and I'll see what I can do to occupy the rest of our guests."
X
Fandral had spent the majority of the Allfather's speech ignoring pointed looks from Sif and resisting the temptation to make an early start on repeatedly emptying his tankard. He didn't know what he'd been hoping to hear. Had there been a part of him that actually wanted to learn that either the king or the queen had been unfaithful and Loki the result? Or that the Jotnar had somehow abducted the real prince and sent them an imposter? He would be a fool to wish for either, but it was difficult to be content with the idea that the king and queen of Asgard had knowingly and happily adopted a Frost Giant child after decades of war. Perhaps if Laufey had truly wanted that baby dead, it was right to help the poor creature, but to make him a prince?
A stubborn voice in Fandral's head muttered that Odin and Frigga might have been ensnared by the same sorcery as Thor, but that seemed rather weak. If the Frost Giants were powerful enough to hoodwink not only Thor, but two masters of seidrcraft like the Allfather and Allmother, then they never would have lost the war. No, he was going to have to accept that the prince he'd grown up with was and always had been a Jotun, and all of Asgard was to take it in stride. After all, Loki was a hero who had just saved Thor's life, and if a Valkyrie would give him her loyalty, then how could anyone else object?
Volstagg's oldest boy came slinking back to the table and took his seat not long after scampering off. He looked upset about something, and the mortal child and the son of Freyr weren't with him anymore. He shot furtive glances at his parents, but they were occupied with helping the twins and the baby not make a mess of their dinner and didn't notice him. Fandral caught Leif's eye and raised an eyebrow. Leif flashed a very false smile that emphasized the gaps where adult teeth hadn't grown in yet and quickly looked down at his plate, closing his fist tightly around something silver as he did.
Fandral raised his tankard to his mouth and took a long swig. He'd already emptied it twice. He noticed that about half of the high table were out of their seats and the people farther along his own table and those neighboring it were on their feet too. Before he could try to investigate the disruption, it seemed to resolve itself, for the sound of drumbeats began echoing from the grand ballroom, and then everyone else was getting up, looking excited.
"Bit early for the dancing, isn't it?" Volstagg complained. Fandral's portly friend was rarely satisfied with the time allotted for eating at these sorts of events, but tonight, he had to agree. Pipes, a horn, and a lyre joined the drums, and people were now flocking in earnest towards the ballroom.
"We should go find the Bartons," said Sif to Hogun. Earlier, they had offered to teach Agent Barton and his lady how to dance the triquetra. Hogun nodded and stood.
"Yes, and I the lady Darcy," said Fandral.
X
Hljodfall-Tivar was among the finest troupe of skalds in the realm and in very high demand—not only on Asgard, but on Vanaheim and occasionally Alfheim as well. They consisted of nine members. A pair of deceptively petite blondes pounded away on the drums. On the pipes were an olive-skinned man and a ginger half-Ljosalfr with more freckles than all Volstagg's brood combined. On the horn was a stout, heavily scarred former Einheri with a bald head but an enormous black beard. A willowy, dark-skinned woman played the lyre, which she wore on a harness so that she could play it standing, and a trio of sisters with fiery red hair provided the vocals, all done in Asgardian, not Allspeak.
In appearance, they were a touch more dramatic than the majority of the banquet-goers. While runic and knotwork tattoos were not uncommon on Asgard, Hljodfall-Tivar had more than most. Their hair and the men's beards were braided in the usual complex ways, but were also shorn almost completely to the skin in places (revealing the tattoos underneath) in a style that recalled the original Vanir men and women who established Asgard alongside Buri, back when "Aesir" was merely an Old Vanir word for "warrior." As to their instruments, Loki had heard rumors that some of them were made on Nidavellir and all of them had been enchanted on Alfheim. He didn't know accurate that was, but it was at least plausible; a significant branch of seidrcraft focused on music and other forms of art.
There were none better than Hljodfall-Tivar to play the King's Dance. In honor of Brunnhilde, they were also going to play the Dance of the Valkyrior in its original triumphant form, rather than the funerial variant that had been the norm as long as Loki could remember.
Loki and Brunnhilde lined up atop the giant triquetra at the center of the hall. Thor stood to her right, grinning like a fool. To Loki's left was Romanoff, who looked game for a challenge. Beside them were Agent Barton and his wife, paired with Sif and Hogun, then Volstagg and Hildegund. On Loki and Brunnhilde's other side were his parents, followed by Commander Tyr and Lady Eir, Selvig and one of the apprentice healers, then the lady Jane and Vidar, then Fandral and the lady Darcy, and the pattern was completed by a few dozen other pairs, all facing their partners across the golden symbol in the floor. Banner had nervously declined to dance, though Loki had seen him asked at least twice. He stood with the Barton children.
Loki smirked at Brunnhilde. "Still remember how to do this?"
She snorted. "If we look bad, it won't be my fault."
In the King's Dance, your direction was determined by your position in relation to the lead dancers, who were nearly always Odin and Frigga. The couples in which the man stood on the same side of the pattern as Odin would progress in the same direction as them, while the alternating pairs would progress in the opposite direction.
Once everyone was in place (and the surrounding area filled with eager observers and simpler dance formations), the song began with a measure of nothing but drums. The dancers bowed and curtsied on the fifth beat, and when the other instruments joined in on the down beat, they all raised their hands high for a triple clap, then stepped in and put right arms around partners' waists, revolved around each other, and returned to stomp out the last two counts. (The floor was strongly reinforced, but it was still rare that at least a tile or two didn't need replacing by the end of a banquet of this size.)
The vocals began, and everyone turned to the left or right depending on which half they were in and faced their neighbors. Frigga smiled broadly at Loki. They linked arms and wove past each other, then continued to weave right, left, and right around the next three people until the eighth count, then faced their partners again, now with different couples to either side of them.
For the third part, the two men in neighboring pairs stood back-to-back and lifted their partners in a half-circle so they ended up in reverse position, backtracking slightly from all the weaving they just did. (Loki heard laughter from a couple of places somewhere down the line, which must have been where Barton and Selvig had attempted to lift Sif and the apprentice healer but couldn't quite manage it due to the difference in density of their two species. This dance would go much better for the mortal women than for the men.) For the next four beats, they returned to their previous sides of the design by twirling the ladies out, backtracking past a second couple in the process.
On the final count of eight before the whole thing repeated, each man turned to the lady at his left and they revolved around each other with arms around waists like in the first stage, then turned to the lady on his right and did the same. All together, the King's Dance was not an overly complex one, but every time the dancers reached the triple clap that marked the first two counts of a new cycle, Hljodfall-Tivar increased the tempo, and the movements were soon quite lively.
Loki watched Brunnhilde's face as often as he could. If she still needed proof that this was where she belonged, she had it now—and perhaps those who had their doubts about him would think the same as they watched him dancing with her. He refused to be distracted by the glances he felt coming his direction, focusing only on Brunnhilde. She actually looked like she was letting herself enjoy this, and he was determined to keep it that way. He'd moved through these steps at countless banquets, opposite countless partners, but never had the movements felt so fluid or the brief moments of contact so charged.
"We ought to spar sometime," he said when they were in one of the close parts.
"What, is that a euphemism?"
"Can be."
"Ooh, you're better at flirting when you're dancing."
"I couldn't exactly get worse at it, could I?"
She laughed, and he spun her back out, making her gown billow and swirl around her.
The end of the dance came far too soon for his liking. In what felt like no time at all, they had looped the entire triquetra thrice and came to a halt back in their original positions. All the dancers gave merry shouts and applauded. Everyone around Loki was flushed-faced and beaming. He could see sweat glinting on the foreheads of the mortals and several of them seemed a bit winded, but they looked to have enjoyed themselves as much as their hosts.
"Now we have a little time to get more food and drink," Thor explained to Romanoff, "although the Dance of the Valkyrior isn't really one for any who haven't practiced it." His brow furrowed and he turned to Brunnhilde. "Are you certain you want—"
"Whether I want it or not, I'm not doing this halfway," she said, cutting him off. She looked at Loki. "We dance the valknut."
"As my lady wishes," said Loki with a bow.
Thor's smile returned in force, and he called for Sif. Hardly necessary. Of course she was going to want to be his partner for the valknut, as doing so combined her two favorite things in Yggdrasil: Thor himself and anything Valkyrie-related.
The Dance of the Valkyrior involved three large triangles, each formed by a single line of couples, all interlocking in the shape of the valknut. It was a far greater test of skill than the triquetra, because while both patterns had places that overlapped, the valknut did so much more precariously. Instead of leaving room to simply step past people moving on a perpendicular curve, partners dancing the valknut had to be able to precisely time their movements so as not to collide with the other triangles.
When Loki and Thor had learned this one as adolescents, they had been amazed at how well the pieces fit together. The dancing masters began by teaching them the steps in a single triangle so that they could smooth out any errors without risk of collision. Dancers entered their triangle at a corner, and the first leg was a lot of stomping and twirling partners about. Then the dancers rounded the second corner. Halfway down this leg, the men spun the ladies low, but it was the third leg that was the trickiest. Not long after the corner was a high lift, after which the men spun about, reached down, and quickly pulled the ladies between their legs. The momentum of that move was critical for the one that immediately followed, which was that the lady used the man as leverage for a leap. Then the dancers went back around into the first leg to briefly recover.
They had practiced this over and over, then again blindfolded, until Loki thought he would die of boredom. Finally it had come time to knot the triangles together. He had dreaded it the first time they tried the full dance with a complete valknut, but to his shock, it had worked. Every time he and his partner went low, the dancers from the intersecting triangle were already going high, and vice versa. Sometimes they missed each other by mere inches but were still able to continue on exactly as they had when dancing with only one triangle.
Even more than the triquetra dance, the whole thing functioned like a living piece of knotwork—truly a thing to behold, and there were galleries above the dance floor for just such a purpose. Birgir and a couple of the other servants were gathering the royal guests together so they could go up and watch it.
X
Fandral procured a pair of wine goblets for himself and Darcy and led her to one of the more secluded galleries. He was quite good at the Dance of the Valkyrior, but it was unwise to attempt it without a clear head, and a clear head was not remotely his goal tonight.
The dance began with the three lines of couples moving in and then veering sharply into their triangles, dancing the second leg with the low spin, turning the next corner, and finally intersecting on the third leg when the valknut symbol was nearly complete. Darcy bobbed her head to the beat and watched them move. Fandral frowned at Loki dancing with Brunnhilde for a bit before glancing over at Odin and Frigga, who weren't among the dancers this time. Odin had his arm around Frigga's shoulders, she was clapping in time with the music, and they both watched their sons.
"Damn, do you do albums on Asgard?" said Darcy. "I wonder how hard it would be to get these guys into a recording studio." She finished her wine and glanced at Fandral. "Whatcha thinking about?"
"I thought it might be a spell, but not anymore," he said. It took a little effort to keep the words from slurring, but he managed it. "It's love."
"Love?" said Darcy. For some reason, she sounded alarmed.
"They adopted him as a baby, and I'm sure even infant Frost Giants seem helpless and innocent."
"Oh," said Darcy, relaxing. "Wait, what?"
"Odin and Frigga are just and compassionate, so of course they would love any child they raised. It was love that blinded them to what he could grow to be."
"What, a snarky magical prankster who complains a lot and is kind of a menace when he gets bored but still has your back when you need him? 'Cause that's what I've gotten from all the stories you and Volstagg and Thor always tell."
"That's what he seems like," said Fandral patiently, eyes on the second prince again. "But he's also a threat with unclear loyalties."
"Oh wow, you're serious," said Darcy. "Huh. You're not as different from some of the guys at Culver as I thought."
"In what way?" said Fandral.
"In the way of being kind of a racist douchebag." She frowned. "Wait. Species-ist? Ew, no, those sounds should never go in that order. I'm gonna stick with racist douchebag."
He scowled at her. Her strange turns of phrase often pushed Allspeak to its limits and her perpetually apathetic tone didn't help, but he got the gist. "I wouldn't expect a mortal to understand."
"Oof," she said. "Little tip: if you want to convince someone you're not a racist douchebag, maybe try a less condescending comeback. You think being human with an itty bitty lifespan means I don't get that growing up hearing war stories from people who fought the Jotnar would predispose you to not like them?"
"It isn't only old stories!" said Fandral indignantly.
"Yeah, I've been reading your history books and some of the stuff that was published during the war, and it's kinda messed up how familiar the messaging was. I mean, I actually saw the phrase 'Frozen Peril' in there a few times, and I could write a whole term paper just about that."
"Frost Giants invaded Asgard after their king signed the truce. They used our sense of honor against us and then struck when we thought the war was over. My uncle was one of thousands of casualties. The impact on our realm was massive. Loki might be the only Jotun I've heard of who walks around disguised as Aesir, but the rest of them wear faces just as false."
"Read about that invasion too." She sounded unimpressed. "The faction responsible is pretty well documented as not being affiliated with Jotunheim's royal family. Laufey and his subjects aren't responsible for the actions of a rival faction."
"What would you know about that?" said Fandral.
She rolled her eyes. "The whole thing was a power play by this guy Ovaldi, some lord who thought he could gain widespread support if he did what the line of Ymir couldn't by striking a major blow against Jotunheim's enemies. At the same time he launched the invasion, he also sent assassins after Laufey and his sons. I guess he figured they'd be vulnerable because the queen had just died and they were busy trying to rebuild the capital and get stabilized again, but he didn't factor in Laufey's paranoia. Laufey wiped out most of the Ovaldi supporters who didn't die on Asgard and imprisoned the rest, publicly and brutally executed Ovaldi, and stripped his descendants of their rank. The rest of the Jotnar have kept to the truce ever since, even though it sounds like it's been a pretty sucky deal for them."
"Until a few weeks ago, perhaps," said Fandral, somewhat discomposed by how well she'd managed to educate herself in her short time here.
"Right, the thing with the coronation," said Darcy. "Didn't the queen make a statement about how that was just a handful of rogue operators and none of them survived?"
"She did."
"I'm not saying accept everything heads of state tell you at face value, but she was so not worried about what Jotunheim was up to that she let the entire line of succession go hang out on Earth by themselves for a few days, which is kinda the opposite of what royal families do when there's a serious security risk."
Fandral didn't have a reply. He wanted to blame all the mead and wine for it, but he and his companions had stayed very close at hand to the queen during the princes' absence, just as Thor had asked, and he had observed nothing to challenge Darcy's reasoning. Frigga had sent a messenger to Jotunheim along with the bodies of the three slain Jotnar, and when he returned, she had informed the Council that they had acted without Laufey's leave or knowledge. She and the Council had unanimously agreed with Odin's initial judgment that Asgard should be on alert but any further action was unnecessary, and the matter was closed.
"Just tell me this," said Darcy. "Have you even met any Jotnar besides Loki?"
"Of course not."
"Uh-huh. And...how much has Asgard interacted with Jotunheim in your lifetime?"
"It hasn't."
"Okay then. Are you really going to let this stuff dictate what a guy you grew up with should be like? Does any of it weigh more than the centuries of first-hand knowledge you have about him being kind of an asshole but reliable when it counts? Like are you really that shitty of a friend?"
Fandral stood there, stunned.
"Looks like the fancy dance is wrapping up," she said, glancing over the balcony at the dance floor. "It's been fun, but I think it's time we both found new makeout buddies, so I'm gonna head back down."
This one ended up really long too, mostly because I spent a good chunk of time choreographing plausible fancy ballroom dances in the shapes of the two most prominent symbols we've seen Asgardians use in the MCU (the valknut is on the Valkyrie cape and the triquetra is on Thor's hammer and other places) and thinking about what Asgard's music scene would be like and then I couldn't resist dumping ALL of it into the chapter, so you guys deserved at least a normal chapter's worth of actual character and story stuff as well.
My headcanons about Asgardian music are perhaps overly influenced by how much I love fantasy/Celtic/Viking symphonic metal (listening to that stuff makes me feel like I'm very capable with medieval weaponry and on an adventure through beautiful landscapes), but I'm just going to roll with it. I would've liked to use Viking music as my starting point for this stuff, but we don't actually know much about how it sounded except for some of their main instruments. I think their super long lifespans might make the evolution of musical styles a lot slower and a lot less stigmatized by older generations, and their enthusiasm for battle and boisterous social gatherings probably means that even their fancy parties don't have boring music and that their musicians have a very warrior-esque aesthetic. Also they have magic, which might affect how their instruments evolve. Our only canon example of Asgardian music (I think) is the mourning song in Loki's play, but all we can really extrapolate from that is that it's probably similar to their actual mourning songs (which is kind of supported by the singing sharing the tune of Frigga's funeral scene).
Because we also know very little about Viking dances, the dances I came up with are about 50% Regency country dance, 25% big band swing, and 25% step dancing (because stomping felt like it should be an essential component of dancing in a culture that inspired the Vikings so much), all thrown in a blender and laid out in cool knotwork shapes. I wanted it to have a feel similar to the dancing in Tangled, actually. Once I found the moves I liked and worked out the geometry of how the lines could move around each other, that was pretty much everything. Also, Hljodfall-Tivar translates to Gods of Rhythm.
Moving on: the story! Loki and Brun continue to be uninterested in my suggestions for relationship pacing, but I will have my revenge. Writing Darcy actually getting to talk about her field of study and use it to completely thrash Fandral on his biases was an absolute delight. I've sorted out how I want things to play out with these little parallel arcs we've got for Fandral and Leif and I'm looking forward to that, and then we might actually get back to addressing more of the canon antagonists.
Oh, also I'm considering changing the title of the fic to "Lightning Strikes Twice" or "Where Lightning Strikes Twice," since this is a do-over fic for a character with lightning powers. I wouldn't want to lose anyone in the shuffle and I don't hate the current title, so I'm not sure it's worth it, but what do you guys think?
(Also I've done more drawings, one of Brun in her dress, one of Fjolnir in half-Ljosalfr mode, one of him in half-Jotun mode. They're on my tumblr. Same username.)