.-.
Beneath
Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Seven – Puppet-Masters
"Helblindi and Byleister were always competitive. It's natural, of course. But you can't imagine what it's like to raise two boys in relative harmony and then see them overcome by such animosity that they raise up armies and try to kill each other."
Loki swallowed and thought of Frigga, remembered her confusion when Thor returned and spoke of Loki trying to kill him, and her horror as he turned Gungnir on Thor and blasted him out through a wall at the top of the palace. There'd been no armies, but Frigga had watched one son attack the other, with a weapon that certainly could kill. He hadn't been trying specifically to kill Thor…but he hadn't been trying specifically not to, either. Frigga had never given any indication of what pain that must have caused her, to see that happening right before her eyes.
And it wasn't the first time it had happened. Frigga at least hadn't personally witnessed Baldur's death at his hands, but he knew something of her suffering then. He knew it in the depth of her shock and grief in the immediate aftermath. He knew it in her rejection of him, and in her forgiveness and re-acceptance years later. He thought now that perhaps she had been hiding her anguish over seeing her sons fighting. It helped, of course, that Loki hadn't managed to kill Thor, and that Thor – once his blows became serious – hadn't managed to kill Loki either. He had already come to the decision not to try to kill Thor, on a rooftop in Puente Antiguo, while speaking for the last time to a Thor who truly believed them to be brothers, the bonds of neither brotherhood nor friendship in doubt. But now, for the first time, he was actively glad that he'd made that decision, and glad that Thor had survived his previous attacks as well. His mother did not deserve to endure such pain again. He thought perhaps he should even tell her so, in case she still feared that he may again seek Thor's death.
Farbauti was slowly wandering aimlessly about the chamber, and when she'd spoken it was more like she'd spoken to herself than to Loki, despite the "you." But she came to a sudden stop then, and turned to Loki. Her hands emerged from her cloak and then she was shrugging out of it, twisting briefly to hang it on a piece of bone that had apparently been wedged into a crack in the stone wall.
Loki's eyes swept over her body when her head was briefly averted; she really was wearing next to nothing, little more than the men. A strip of leather just wide enough to tightly cover her breasts – he caught a glimpse of some kind of tie at the back – and another strip much like the loincloth the men wore, though hers had more of those dangling panels that the men usually had in front, giving hers almost the look of an oddly short, slit skirt. Not particularly modest, the Frost Giants, he thought as Farbauti's attention fell on him once more, though it could be worse. The Fire Giant women, when pregnant or nursing an infant, usually didn't bother with covering their breasts at all. He still remembered the trauma of a First Birth ceremony he had to attend on Muspelheim, at a time when Thor was just old enough and confident enough to happily present his gifts to the new mother and smirk and jest about it afterward, and Loki was just old enough – and not nearly confident enough – to be extremely aware of the nudity and stammer his way through the ritualized words accompanying his gifts, uncertain where to direct his gaze. He and Thor had fought spectacularly after that, and once it was over and Loki had snuck them a couple of healing stones and some powder from their mother's changing room to try to cover the bruises, they had talked for hours about the mysteries of the opposite sex.
"Dirnolek was supposed to put an end to that nonsense."
Loki's thoughts – detached from any particular emotion save a certain nostalgia for simpler times – had pleasantly distracted him from the half-naked woman currently standing before him, with whom he was quite uncomfortable for reasons that had nothing to do with her state of undress…though that certainly didn't help matters. Fire Giant breasts and whispered words between adolescent brothers, as he and Thor had then believed themselves to be, vanished from his mind. "How was he supposed to do that?" Loki asked warily. Farbauti's voice was different, and while he couldn't quite define how, her entire physical presence was, too, and he didn't think it was merely because of the additional exposed skin. She seemed firmer, taller. A queen. Without quite knowing how or why, Loki knew this meeting had just fundamentally changed.
"How do you unite two brothers who are working against each other?"
Loki immediately thought not of Helblindi and Byleister, but of himself and Thor. How they had worked together to save the Polies evacuating from an unstable building, to repair that building, to steal the Ice Casket – not that Thor had been aware he was helping Loki do that at the time – to gain an audience with the Frost Giant princes. Outside forces. Earthquakes. War. Common causes, he thought. Only then did his thoughts shift to the Frost Giants. "You give them a common enemy. You…support Dirnolek?" Loki asked, eyebrows rising slightly.
Farbauti made a noise almost like throat-clearing. "I wouldn't put it that way. He works for me, in secret. I paid him to declare war."
Loki's eyebrows inched higher, before schooling his expression back to neutral. But he looked at Farbauti in a new light now. This wasn't a meek widow-queen hiding herself idly away in fear inside a stone-and-ice hovel while war raged around her. This was a puppet-master, manipulating an entire realm from the shadows. He swallowed heavily, trying to bring back some moisture to a mouth that had quickly gone dry.
"Unfortunately, he began to believe the words I put in his mouth. When one play-acts a role, one must keep the role separate from the self. Dirnolek is an old friend, loyal…but even old friends can become lost. He stopped showing up to our meetings, and his attacks gained new conviction. I didn't know he had sent any of his complement to attack Asgard. If he wishes to win Jotunheim, then that was a poor use of effort and men. Which tells me his eyes have become so large he's already looking beyond Jotunheim, and wishes instead to please the foreigners, to gain their backing against my sons, to take his place among their rulers. What a fool. At least Helblindi and Byleister haven't entirely lost their heads. They turned down that muckrat Brokk."
"Yes," Loki said, trying to keep up with everything Farbauti was saying, and briefly getting sidetracked wondering what a "muckrat" was, for if it was a rat that scurried about in the muck, then it was an apt description. "Wait…how did you know that Helblindi and Byleister refused Brokk, yet you didn't know that Dirnolek accepted his request?"
"I have contacts within Helblindi's and Byleister's complements. But among Dirnolek's complement, it was Dirnolek himself who met with me, and I haven't spoken with him in months."
"You have contacts…you mean spies?"
"Your tongue is your own. Mine chooses 'contacts.' You've met one of them: Taulist. He's also your cousin, by the way."
Taulist? Loki thought with disgust. That one had seemed like an imbecile, even more so than the rest of them. If he had to be biologically related to any of them, he'd rather it be Reihal, who seemed to have a brain at least a little larger than the underdeveloped pea that floated untethered in Taulist's skull. But he refused to react to that revelation. "You use Helblindi's own cousin against him as a…'contact?'"
Farbauti lifted her hands and roughly brushed the back of the fingers of one hand against the palm of the other. "Helblindi knows. He also knows that I don't repeat what I learn to Byleister or his complement, or the other way around. I don't take sides between them."
"No, only against them," Loki said with a smile, unable to resist the sarcastic response.
Farbauti laughed. "It was for their own good," she said once her breathing returned to normal; Frost Giant laughter, it seemed, was not conducive to speaking.
She is a viper, he thought, keeping his smile in place. What sort of parent pays someone to declare war on her sons? For their own good? The same kind who abandoned a son to the elements, of course, Loki answered himself. The Frost Giant kind. Vipers, however, Loki could work with. "You seem possessed of more wisdom than those who surround you. You could accept the Casket on your sons' behalf, and use that external force to make them work together."
"Does such flattery work on others you know? The Aesir do run in dim-witted circles. They're probably so busy flexing their little muscles that they are defenseless against you."
"It may be flattery, but it's also true," Loki said, thinking about how she was correct about him; he was not physically the strongest on Asgard – Thor held that title – but there were few he could not outwit, and most without real effort. His eyes narrowed then. She had turned his own tactic around on him. "Let us leave flattery behind. You seek a path to help your sons unite. I seek a path to help each of the realms step away from a war they no longer wish to fight. An agreement between us will help both of us, all of us really, get what we want."
"None of this is that simple. And there is the matter of the 'foreign' magic."
"I'm certain you could convince them to accept it, especially as it hardly foreign at all."
"I thought we were leaving flattery behind."
"Not flattery. Statement of fact. It's clear that you hold great sway over them."
"I hold some sway. If I held great sway, they would have stopped trying to kill each other each time they leave my shelter."
Loki started to speak, but Farbauti's gaze drifted to the side, and he decided to wait, to hear what else she might have to say.
"You're correct, in that I could convince them to accept the Casket as it now is. What do they know? The moment you showed it to them was the first time they'd ever set eyes upon it outside of artful reproductions. But my own hands have guided its power, as they and all Jotuns know, and if I declare it satisfactory, then they might grumble but they would accept my word. That is by far the lesser of the obstacles. No one rules Jotunheim. There's no longer even a throne for a king to lounge on. But the Casket of Ancient Winters is far more powerful than a throne. Whoever controls it, controls Jotunheim. My sons know that much, and they would only fight each other all the harder to be the one to claim it. It would not unite them; it would irrevocably divide them."
"Then designate one of them to control it," Loki said, though this wasn't the solution he'd been looking for. He had avoided going to just one of the warring parties because of the implication of Asgard choosing Jotunheim's king, and how that would look to Nadrith and the other rulers – a minority vassal Jotunheim declaring its withdrawal rather than a majority free Jotunheim. But this would be Jotunheim's queen choosing, not Asgard. Still, there was no reason Asgard couldn't voice its preference. "The choice is obviously yours, but if you're open to input, Asgard favors Helblindi." That was probably the surest way to ensure Byleister was chosen, but as long as the Jotuns were stuck on Jotunheim, Loki didn't actually care all that much.
"I'm sure you do. You should know that Byleister's threats against you are not idle. Given the opportunity, he would give you a thousand lives and kill you in a thousand creative ways. He adored and revered his father, and you took him away. Helblindi lacks real confidence and has been unable to sway enough of the population to his side despite being the natural heir; Byleister has an overabundance of it, but lacks maturity, especially when he lets himself be controlled by emotion. Helblindi wouldn't be able to hold Jotunheim together; Byleister wouldn't be able to hold himself together. Neither of them is ready to rule."
Loki waited a beat before deciding to ask the distasteful yet obvious question. "Dirnolek then? You could maintain control of the Casket, and through it regain control over Dirnolek, and he could control Jotunheim."
Farbauti smacked her palm again. "Has Asgard so fractured your heart? I don't actually want Dirnolek to destroy my sons. Neither is ready to rule now, but someday, one of them will be. Helblindi lacked his father's favor, and it planted something inside him that took firm root, but perhaps with time it will wither, and his confidence will grow in its place and he will prove more appealing to the people. Or Byleister, perhaps in time he will realize that it takes more than his father's favor to unite a people and rule a realm, and prove himself capable of the task."
"And how many millions will die throughout the Nine Realms while you wait to see who is more worthy?" Loki snapped, anger rising. It was impossible to deal with these Frost Giants, they were all the same. Completely incapable of making any rational decision. He had somehow managed to forget, for a moment, and thought that he was dealing with a normal person here, viper though she may be. Stupid, irrational, unreasonable viper.
"I don't particularly care how many die on the other realms. On this one, though, more than enough have died." Farbauti raised her right hand to her head, and ran it over her stubby black hair. "Jotunheim needs a ruler. Jotunheim needs change, and her people might finally be ready for it. And I grow weary of cutting my hair. It may be custom, but I don't actually need a man to braid it."
Loki stared at the hand, how it tugged at the little clumps of hair, so short they could barely be grasped. His eyes slowly fell back to Farbauti's. Jotunheim needed a ruler, she'd said. Not Helblindi, the natural heir, not Byleister, perhaps Laufey's preferred heir, and not Dirnolek, the once-loyal ally who had betrayed and cut ties with his former master.
"You will give the Casket of Ancient Winters to me. I will announce Jotunheim's departure from the alliance, to Brokk or Gullveig or anyone you wish, anyone other than an Aesir. In return, you will guarantee the removal of the restriction from the Casket in one hundred years from today."
"One hundred years!" Loki exclaimed. "That is the blink of an eye. Absolutely not. We will strongly consider it in a thousand," he told her. Farbauti as Jotunheim's ruler, and what that might mean for Jotunheim and the other realms, he had not even begun to consider. But he charged ahead at full speed anyway, because really, it didn't exactly matter. All that mattered was making this deal.
Farbauti laughed, and Loki decided he hated that laugh; he felt an urge to strike her, tempered by both the knowledge of the consequences of that, and by how deeply it had been ingrained in him not to hit women, even if this creature met only the biological definition. "You do think we're all stupid. That is to your detriment, Lie-Bringer. I never had the chance to teach you anything as you grew; I teach you this one more thing now. Underestimate your opponent, and your opponent will defeat you. I know math, and I know time. Asgard must be on the last toe of its last leg. I'm surprised you haven't fallen already. You reek of desperation. If this is your escape from war, then it's Asgard who's getting the better end of this bargain, not Jotunheim. The Casket will be unbound in one hundred years."
"I do not bring lies, not today. Yes, Asgard has suffered greatly. But so have the other realms. They are looking for an escape, and have explicitly said that the excuse they need to bow out with dignity is Jotunheim's withdrawal. Everyone wins in this agreement. But Asgard will not make it at Midgard's expense."
"Why do you suddenly care so much for Midgard's safety? We heard from Svartalfheim that not so long ago you yourself attacked Midgard."
Loki took a deep breath to steady himself. He wasn't going to get into that. "This isn't about me. The agreement is with Asgard, not with me personally. And Midgard has always been under Asgard's protection."
"You also attacked Jotunheim."
Haven't we been over that? "Yes. That was me, personally. Not Asgard. Again, the agreement is with Asgard. And once we make this agreement, you will have the Ice Casket to defend yourselves from any attack, as I've already pointed out."
"One thousand years is far too long. Have you no skill at bargaining? Shall I teach you something else? Make a counter-offer."
Loki opened his mouth, but it took a moment for his brain to catch up. "Nine hundred and ninety-nine."
"You would throw away your realm, your people's lives, out of this stubbornness? Sound familiar? I'll show you how it's done. Two hundred years."
It did sound familiar. He'd whispered those very words to Thor as the Frost Giants fell upon one another. Farbauti, apparently, had heard every word. And had a very good memory. He needed to stop thinking of her as stupid. She wasn't. "Nine hundred," he said over a tightened jaw.
"Three hundred."
"Eight hundred." Loki knew math, too. This would end somewhere around five or six hundred years, and that was far too little.
"Four hundred. I cannot go higher."
"You will have to. I cannot go lower."
"Five hundred. Right in the middle. Five hundred years is a very long time. It's a fair bargain. We both sacrifice a little of what we want."
"You're asking Asgard to sacrifice more than it can. Eight hundred years, and afterward, if you have not sought other means to attack unprovoked, you have my word and Asgard's behind it that the restriction will be removed."
"And here I thought you were learning something. This is not how one bargains. Five hundred."
Loki drew in another deep breath, and as he let it out slowly, he looked hard at Farbauti. She had already come up four hundred years; he had only come down two hundred. One corner of her mouth was a bit upturned. Her tone was serious yet with an edge of jest. She doesn't care, he realized. He thought. But he thought he was right. It's a game to her. She doesn't care about using the Casket to travel. She doesn't care about the restriction or the foreign-but-not-foreign magic. Game or not, though, she had her pride. "Seven hundred and fifty years. It is the absolute lowest I can go. Odin will be angry enough with me over it," he added with a secret little thrill behind his look of contrition tinged with fear. "I don't wish to walk away from this, but I will if I must. We have bargained, Your Majesty. You can tell your people that you gained two hundred and fifty years from Asgard."
"Well…if that is your final offer, then on behalf of Jotunheim, I accept."
/
/
"If there's something you wish to say, then say it."
Thor's head jerked up..and up…in the direction of the voice. Helblindi. He'd had enough time here, alone with Helblindi and Byleister, staring at them without making it look obvious, to work out the facial features that distinguished them, which weren't quite what he would look for in an Aesir. On the other hand, perhaps he'd been less subtle than he'd thought. "No, I…" But there was something he wanted to say, he realized, though he wasn't sure how to say it. "I'm…glad to have had the chance to meet you."
"Why do you encourage him?" Byleister said.
"I mean it. Learning that my brother was born here…" – and learning what real war was like, he thought though decided not to add – "it's given me much to think about. Whatever happens here today, it is my wish that things change between our two peoples. That we learn more about each other. That we strive for a real peace between us."
"Learning that your brother was born here means we now know him to be not just a murderer but a traitor," Byleister shot back.
Thor stood. "Loki is no-"
"Sit," Helblindi ordered, moving toward Thor, who squared his jaw and remained in place. "Your words have been heard. Do you think anything is going to change today, in this moment?"
The war had tested him, had even changed him in some ways, but Thor was by nature an optimist. He wrestled with how he should answer, and in the end could not deny his nature. "I think it can. If we want it to."
Helblindi didn't respond right away; Thor thought he, too, might be wrestling. "We do not…all want it to. Now sit."
Thor hadn't missed the pause, which had at first made it sound like Helblindi was going to say the Jotuns didn't want a change. When he continued, it seemed more as though he wished to say that some Jotuns did want a change. Perhaps among them was Helblindi, and perhaps Helblindi was unwilling to be more direct in front of his brother, given how quick Byleister had been to accuse him of favoring the Aesir. "I'm glad to have met you," Thor repeated as he sat back down on the frozen slab, holding back a wince; he'd just begun to get feeling back in his rear.
Byleister edged in beside Helblindi. "We will be glad to see you go without having brought another war. See if you can manage that change."
Thor thought for a moment that Helblindi would respond, but a moment later he turned and lumbered back to the other side of the ice chamber, Byleister soon turning away, too, putting as much space as possible between him and both Thor and Helblindi. It may not have gone anywhere, but Thor was still glad he'd said it. Perhaps a tiny seed, at least, had been planted. Perhaps not. But Thor was, by nature, an optimist.
He wondered how Loki was doing, meeting his birth mother for the first time. Thor had seen her before, on Asgard, long ago. His memories of her were vague; his attention then had been fixed on Laufey. He thought then that it was a strange coincidence that Loki hadn't been present on any of those handful of occasions, and almost immediately realized that it probably wasn't a coincidence. He remembered Loki had been sick one time, but another time their mother had taken Loki to Vanaheim for something or other, he recalled. He wished Loki didn't have to do this. He couldn't quite imagine being in Loki's boots, but he knew it wouldn't be easy for him. Loki was struggling, and had been for some time. He thought yet again about the shattered mirror, and how calm Loki had looked immediately after having clearly slammed his fist into it.
He glanced for probably the hundredth time toward the doorway Loki had been escorted through, itching to go after him but knowing he could not. Loki had been gone a long time. Thor chose to believe it was a good sign.
/
/
"Place it here. This will have to suffice for now."
Loki was pulled from his thoughts, and watched as Farbauti stepped away from the podium of ice she'd fashioned by hand, growing it simultaneously straight up from the stone ground and down from her hands. It hadn't been a smooth creation, though; she'd stopped several times, once stepping over to an ice chair and absorbing most of it into her body, commenting afterward "Good ice is scarcer now," as though Loki should know what that meant. He thought about asking – he knew he should ask, since despite this largely civil conversation the Frost Giants were still the enemy and the conditions of the enemy and his land were things worth learning – but he almost physically recoiled at the thought of more lectures about Jotunheim delivered by First Teacher Farbauti.
He brought out the Casket; scarce ice on a realm literally covered in it would have to remain a mystery for now. He lifted it high to place it on the podium, where it bathed the entire chamber in a soft blue light. His hands lingered on the grips as the surreal nature of the moment captured him. He and the Casket had been taken from Jotunheim on the same day, ending the Ice War, and now, over a thousand years later, he was personally returning the Casket to end another war. The moment was brief, though; the Casket pulled powerfully at his Jotun form here.
"It's more beautiful than I remembered," Farbauti said in a reverential tone, slowly approaching the Casket and circling large fingers around the handles. "Beautiful," she said again. "This will change everything."
Loki frowned. That last statement wasn't exactly something an Aesir wanted to hear from a Frost Giant. He briefly shook his head at himself, while Farbauti's back was to him. He'd fallen into old habits and cast himself in the role of Aesir. Asgardian, then, he amended. The two were often used interchangeably, but if one wished to be specific, the Aesir were the people original to Asgard, and the Asgardians were all those with citizenship on Asgard. He had been both, then he had decided he was neither, and recently he'd decided he still had claim to the latter. There were a good number of non-Aesir Asgardians, especially Vanir. He simply happened to be the very first Asgardian Frost Giant. His stomach, never quite settled from the moment he'd been led back to Farbauti, gave a vicious twist at the thought. It was an objective fact, but still sickening that these words applied to him, that this was now his life, not impersonal facts in a lesson on rights and responsibilities pertaining to Asgardian citizenship.
"How do you want your statement?" Farbauti asked suddenly, pivoting around from where she still stood next to the Ice Casket.
Loki was caught off guard, and it took a few seconds for his thoughts to switch gear. "Bound leather? With your official seal…if you have one."
"Of course I have one. Are women not considered people where you're from?"
"Aaah, they…of course they are. I didn't ask because you're…a woman. But on Asgard only those of high rank have-"
"Queen is not high enough rank?"
"It is, but you haven't been ruling and I-"
"Psssht. I'm in a good mood. I'm teasing you. Everyone here has a personal seal. I'll be back in a moment."
Alone for the first time since he'd left Thor to seek out Byleister, Loki's thoughts wandered. He remembered the child who'd come into the room, the overgrown two-year-old who played with a ball of ice with a feather stuck into it. The mother who knew that her child was upset even when separated. Farbauti and her shifting moods and what Loki suspected was a knack for manipulation. This would have been my life. He tried to picture himself as the dark-haired child, Farbauti running after him to-
Loki's eyes squeezed shut and he let himself inhabit that blackness, that nothingness for a moment, to clear his mind. He had grown up with grass and hills and flowers and trees, sunlight and gold and rich colors, a realm of great beauty and variety. He felt warm amid the cold, almost as though the rays of Asgard's sun shone on him now. He had grown up amid love. Nearly all of his early memories included Thor, and nearly all of them, from those early years, were happy memories. He had loved and been loved by Frigga, and in moments like now, when anger and resentment didn't obscure it, he remembered that he had felt loved by Odin, too. It had become more complicated, all of it; even the mere fact of leaving youth behind made life more complicated. At its simplest though, in his childhood, he had been happy. He forced himself to think back on those memories, trying to ignore both the lies surrounding them and the bits of life on Jotunheim that now surrounded him.
"Here it is," she said. "We have no spare lives to waste on your war anyway. Many will no doubt still desire to see your dead body placed on prominent display here…but you have survived this long. Perhaps you were meant to… I will do my best to quell those voices. Lie-Bringer…"
Loki had to bite back a sarcastic "Yes?" He watched Farbauti for some sort of signal, uncertain if there was an additional formalism to the agreement to be adhered to, made as it was on Jotunheim.
"I should really think of something else to call you, as that no longer sounds terribly appropriate…despite its historical accuracy."
"My name is Loki," he provided.
"That name has been placed under a ban here. Ever since we learned it was you who tried to destroy our world. But you once had another name, you know."
Loki's eyebrows drew together; the declaration had caught him entirely unaware, but of course it should not have. Even though he'd been abandoned, it wasn't at all surprising that he could have been given a name before then, perhaps even before he was born, before they'd known for certain he would be born abnormal.
"That one is forbidden, too, though."
Loki's mouth fell open for a second. "Did I do such wrong in your eyes merely by being born?" he couldn't help asking. It didn't come out quite as accusing as he'd intended it to. He didn't like the way it had come out. "Do you regularly discard imperfect children here, or was I special?" he added, satisfied with the lack of emotion in his voice this time.
Farbauti narrowed her eyes at him; Loki smiled. "You weren't just thrown out like refuse, you know. Is that what you think?"
"I haven't particularly given it much thought," he answered haughtily.
"You haven't? Silly child. Your lies to Laufey must have been much better. Or possibly he was simply more of a fool than I am. Don't worry, it wasn't in the delivery. You have to start with a lie that is at least marginally believable. You find out you were abandoned as an infant, and you don't wonder why?"
"It was a time of privation," Loki offered, parroting Helblindi. Empty words, really, but he didn't want to hear any more of this, and he definitely wasn't looking for some millennium-later bonding experience with his long-lost "mother."
"It was. But it wasn't just that. And privation in the royal family differs from that of common citizens. My rations were limited, but they were more than what most others received."
"What do they eat?" he suddenly remembered Jane asking, and was surprised to find for the first time that he, too, wondered. What did Jotun rations consist of? His curiosity wasn't strong enough to overcome his aversion to asking.
"You really shouldn't have been that stunted, especially with the amount of magic poured into my body…it was as though you bore a curse."
Loki closed his eyes and started to turn; he had the signed agreement in his hand – he didn't need to listen to this. He jerked away at the hand that landed on his shoulder, stopping and facing Farbauti again, unable – unwilling – to mask his anger.
"Hear me out. Do you always walk away in the middle of a conversation?"
I've been known to do it, he thought, though he hadn't exactly paid attention to how often. Looking back, he thought he'd done it to Jane many times, and he could even remember her planting herself in front of the door, as though that would stop him if he really wanted to leave. "I believe this is the end of the conversation."
"Not until I say it is. I don't mean that you yourself were cursed. You were innocent. Precious. You were the heir to the throne. But you were doomed. It felt like we were cursed." She paused; Loki could see her throat moving. "It felt like I was cursed. I was distraught when you were born as you were. I tried to care for you anyway, but it was a constant struggle, even just to feed you. We were losing the war; it wasn't going to get easier." Farbauti paused again and looked away, continuing after a moment. "You wouldn't have lived. If somehow you defied the odds and survived, you still wouldn't really have lived. The healers told me you would never grow to a normal size. You wouldn't have been accepted here. You wouldn't have married; you wouldn't have sired heirs. If a second child – Helblindi – had been designated heir instead of you, your existence would have been seen as a challenge to that child for the rest of your life. You had no future here." She paused again. "Do you see?"
The slight rustle of the leather parchment against his pants told Loki his hands were trembling. He sent it away to safekeeping, then clasped his hands in front of him. "Yes, I see. Raising me would have been difficult. I'm sure anyone would have made the same choice," he said with the thinnest veneer of sympathy.
Farbauti straightened; he hadn't realized how much she had slumped before then. "I thought I was doing the right thing for you. For all of us. I thought you would have a better life with your maker. Regrets are thick roots that will forever trap you beneath the glacier. I did what I thought best. I loved my child."
Loki stared at her, blinking in incredulity. Is that supposed to make me feel better? There, there, Farbauti, Mother, all is forgiven. Of course you did the only thing you could. But she hadn't said "I love you." She'd said "I loved my child." Loki took a deep breath and let his hands fall back to his side. He wasn't sure – he had little to go on in interpreting Frost Giant body language – but he thought it wasn't him she was trying to make feel better. For over a thousand years she had been comforted by the knowledge that her firstborn was well and truly consecrated, happily living out the Frost Giants' version of the afterlife. Then he had shown up, announced who he really was, proof that the child who could not live had done just that. She had left him to die; he had foiled her plans, and in so doing ripped away the metaphorical blanket she'd wrapped herself in to tell herself she hadn't just tossed her own baby out like refuse. He thought that if he pushed or provoked, she would give him twenty more excuses for why leaving him to die a slow lonely death was the good and right thing to do. He saw no reason to do so. "I'm sure we're all better off leaving the past where it lies," he finally said.
"You don't know our realm," she persisted.
Loki tried to interrupt, but she continued over his voice.
"I did what I did for my son. Not because he was imperfect as you say, or unwanted. He was very much wanted. It's a blessing for the child, to be consecrated and left in the temple, to meet his end and new beginning there, instead of in some unknown place after a long period of suffering. That is why his name, the name you were first called, is taboo. It is sacred. It can never be given to another."
He tried to speak again, but this time the words did not come. He could not take any more of this talk.
Farbauti made a noise akin to a growl, then inhaled a short laugh. "You are unique in all of history, you know. A Jotun raised Aesir. And the only person in the history of Jotunheim to have his name banned twice. Perhaps I shouldn't decide on another name for you, lest you find a way to get that one banned, too."
"Since I don't know all the rules for name-banning, it's entirely possible that I would," he said, lips pulling nearly into a smile – not because of any connection with the Frost Giant queen, or the sharing of a jest, but rather out of relief that she was clearly signaling the end of this revolting conversation.
"You'll simply have to be careful then. We all will. Go now. Take Thor. The Odinson and the Laufeysons must be losing their minds, forced into such tight quarters together. I'll send two of my own complement with you – these floes ooze spies, most of whom could imagine nothing greater in life than to slay the sons of Odin, especially you. End your war. And perhaps we'll meet again someday."
"Perhaps," Loki said diplomatically with a slow nod of agreement. May Muspelheim freeze over first, he thought. "Thank you for seeing me, Queen Farbauti," he continued, the first time he'd used her name. "I trust it was mutually beneficial."
Farbauti nodded back, and if it bothered her that Loki hadn't bowed – not that he knew how one bowed on Jotunheim anyway – she gave no sign of it.
Loki turned to go, toward the doorway in which chains now dangled. He'd seen more of this realm now over the course of less than a day than he had in over a thousand years of life. He was relieved to be leaving it now, and he hoped that in the next four thousand or however many he had left, he would never have to see it – much less Farbauti – again. He stopped then, just as his hand was reaching for the chains.
"The way is open to you," he heard Farbauti say behind him.
"Yes…"
"Is there something else, then?"
He turned. "I have always celebrated my birthday on…on the day of the truce between Asgard and Jotunheim."
"No need to be coy. I know you call it Victory Day. We, of course, have another name for it."
He ignored her, continuing before he lost his nerve. "When was I actually born?"
Farbauti regarded him for a moment that was growing acutely uncomfortable before she finally answered. "Fifteen days earlier."
Loki nodded again the second the words were out, put his back to Farbauti again, and made his way back to the ice chamber at the shelter's entrance.
/
/
"Loki?" Thor said, rising immediately to his feet at the first glimpse of his brother approaching. He emerged through the open doorway, two giants trailing on his heels. Helblindi and Byleister both edged closer.
"We're leaving," Loki said curtly, then turned to the brothers, his brothers by blood, to his unending shame. "You may resume your war as soon as we depart, if you like, but you might want to consult with your mother first."
Thor stood there, waiting for further explanation, but none was forthcoming, and Loki was continuing on right past him to the front wall.
One of the giants following him swiftly skirted around him and pressed a hand against the supposed wall of ice, and the wall faded away. Byleister started toward them, but the one with his hand now pressed over nothing bared his teeth and made a rumbling growling sound. Byleister stopped advancing.
One of the two giants with Loki took the lead with Loki right behind, and Thor jogging toward him to catch up, while the other giant fell in behind them.
"Loki?" Thor said again, still getting no response as they strode away from the place hidden amongst the ice boulders, with no one insisting now on blindfolds. "Do we have an agreement?"
Loki didn't feel like talking. And he thought the answer should be obvious, since he was leaving of his own free will. He turned to Thor as they walked, and flashed him a cool smile. "Of course we do."
/
Not much from me this time, due to lack-of-internet circumstances. I did want to say note the title - it's plural for a reason. I really hope you enjoyed the chapter, and if you did, please consider dropping even a quick line to say so. I have had a really crappy last week, with constant lack of internet (really the only way I can reliably stay in touch with my parents in poor health on another continent) and the worst sunburn in my entire life, mostly on the back of one leg, that turns sitting into an extremely painful exercise. Some happy-happy-joy-joy would be extra-special appreciated. :-) If only I could do my job while lying in bed on my stomach. Never fear, folks, if you haven't heard back from me on your review or PM, I'm not ignoring you, I just don't have time to respond because I only have a short bit of "borrowed" internet in the evenings (at the moment sitting on a hard - ouch - bench in a basketball court next to the closed community restaurant that has wi-fi. If you find yourself wondering where I am in the writing process, and thus maybe how long before the next chapter. You can usually find that regularly updated on my profile page. (Harder to keep it updated though when I don't have internet!) But I'll get back to you as always, once I have internet service again. Tomorrow, if I can bear sitting in my car long enough to drive to the store to set up a pay-as-you-go wireless modem thingee service.
To hard to come up with a preview for next chapter, sorry!
