Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

All at once, the battle ceased.  

Chitauri after Chitauri collapsed to the ground, twitching a few times before becoming truly and obviously dead.  One of the dragons, for Thor could never think of them as anything else whatever the Midgardians called them, crashed into a cluster of abandoned cars leaving nothing but rubble and dust in its wake.  

“Thank God.”  

The Captain’s relieved voice brought Thor back to his immediate surroundings.  “They must have had some sort of chip controlling them, that even kept them alive.  Whoever trained them or whatever, they weren’t taking chances on them doing something unauthorized.”  

Thor wasn’t listening.  He’d already jumped ahead to the more immediate concern.  Banner’s scream-and-pray approach had revived Metal Man, leaving the hawk and the spider as the only ones still missing.  And of course...  

The thought hit Thor like Sleipnir’s hoof to his chest.  “What- did they do that to Loki?”  

An odd mix of emotions crashed into Thor like a bilgesnipe.  If they had, Loki was probably already dead.  But it would mean that he hadn’t been too far gone.  

It horrified him to realize he didn’t know which would be worse, losing his brother to death or to madness.  

X 

Loki lay still on the ground, taking a shallow, ragged breath every now and then.  Thor appeared out of nowhere, saying something that to his jarred and damaged brain was nothing but so much meaningless noise.  

Somewhere deep inside him, a problem made itself known in the form of hot numbness.  

X 

“Loki?”  

Thor’s demolished brother flicked his eyes in the general direction of the sound, but there was no focus to them.  

“It’s going to be fine.  We’ll get you back home, get you fixed up.  Just don’t cause any more problems.”  

“That’ll be the day.”  

The Hawk’s voice sent a thrill of alarm through Thor.  Loki was alive and fixable at the moment, but the drawn arrow pointed directly at his face threatened to change that with a single twitch of mortal fingers.  Thor stepped between the two, struggling to contain the upcoming storm.  

“Loki is my responsibility.  I and Asgard will handle him.  He is no longer a threat.”  

In fairness, that shouldn’t have been particularly reassuring to any of the mortals, and inded it wasn’t.  Hawkeye’s weapon remained aimed.  Resigning himself, Thor pulled out the gag his mother had made, enchanted to counter Loki’s magic.  

“I’m going to put this on.  It’ll stop him casting any more spells, then we’ll get him back to Asgard and figure out what to do next.”  

As soon as the metal fastened over Loki’s mouth, he shuddered and went limp.  Thor made to pick him up, then noticed the shine of a fading glamour spell.  Scars and injuries, some of them disturbingly half-healed, made themselves apparent.  Most disturbing was the swelling under his battered shirt.  Thor lifted it up to look, revealing a spectacular bruise, or was that Loki’s Jotun skin putting in an ill-timed appearance?  

One touch revealed pulsing heat under Loki’s skin, and sent him squirming around trying to get away from what looked to be horrific pain.  Thor felt sick to his stomach.  “I’m sorry, brother.  We’ll fix it.”  

“There’s an infirmary a few floors down.”  

Metal Man’s voice shocked Thor for the split second it took to realize the remaining Avengers had gathered around him and his brother.  Gingerly, he took Loki and followed them into the elevator, ignoring the various questions from the two of them during the brief -descent? ascent? he never could tell with those things- to the infirmary floor.  A flurry of activity rushed around them, and soon enough Loki lay on a rolling bed with a de-angered Banner running something over his stomach.  

“Something’s hemorrhaging inside, can’t see it behind all of the blood.  I’ll have to go in and fix it.  Is that okay?”  He looked between the barely-conscious Loki and the confused and concerned Thor, who just nodded.  

“Do whatever it takes.  I can’t lose him.”  

That , of all things, seemed to calm Loki.  Natasha helped Thor to restrain Loki’s limbs while Banner cut off his shirt and began working.  Loki struggled for a horrific moment, every sound muffled and punished by the gag Thor knew none but Odin could remove, before he passed out.  Small mercies.  

“Banner?  What ails my brother?”  

“There’s some organ I can’t recognize, full of blood.  Maybe I can get into that, figure out where it’s coming from.”  

At a touch of Banner’s scalpel, blood spurted out and Thor ducked away to vomit.  Nothing came up, and he bothered to wonder when last he’d eaten.  After a moment, the sound of a machine made him look at what was left of Loki.  Banner was using some sort of tube to suck the blood out, all the while raising questions about Loki’s anatomy.  Thor couldn’t answer.  In retrospect, he should have brushed up on Jotun biology before coming here.  Come to think of it, he wasn’t all that well-versed in his own.  

A weird gurgling noise and exclamations from the Avengers drew his attention back to the mess that was his brother.  Metal Man made some vulgar comment involving the Chitauri and some “demon chestburster”, quickly hushed with a “language” from someone else.  Banner laid the strange entity in a metal bowl Steve offered before returning to Loki, removing something else, and beginning to stitch.  The Widow had placed some sort of tube in Loki’s arm; maybe that was helping him.  Thor was certainly of no use.  He didn’t help in the healing rooms other than giving them new patients on which to practice.  

“Loki?”  

Loki gave no indication of having heard, but Thor noticed tears on his cheeks.  “Hey, it’s going to be fine.  We’ll get you back to Asgard, get you fixed up properly, figure out what’s going on.  Okay?  Brother?”  

Banner held up his hands as if to say, I’m finished , and Thor nodded at him.  

“Thank you.”  

Any explanation of what just happened was interrupted by the small creature freshly extracted from Loki announcing its displeasure with inarticulate shrieks.  Thor had to fight the urge to just smash it with Mjolnir, only because there was a lot of expensive equipment and he’d been on the receiving end of that sort of lecture before.  

“What’s up with this thing, anyway?”  Stark honestly sounded confused.  But what was there to question?  The Chitauri had put one of their spawn inside Loki and it had tried to claw its way out and kill him.  Another debt to the Avengers that they had managed to save him.  Already Loki’s breathing had eased and he seemed to sleep.  Thor ran his fingers through Loki’s messy curls.  What did they do to you, brother?   

Then he realized everyone was waiting on him to give some sort of an answer on the... being.  

“Whatever.  Maybe SHIELD can figure out what to do with it.”  

X 

Logistics reared their ugly head, and it fell to Thor to drag a barely-conscious Loki into an elevator and down to the outside.  The contraption Thor had been given to transport the two of them home required open sky, so he made for the nearest park.  Except...  

In fairness, the mortals weren’t all that interested in letting a massive source of power leave their planet in the hands of two beings who were also massively powerful and not exactly trustworthy.  Thor had to draw on a few different arguments, then the whole question fell to pieces in an instant.  

What exactly happened to the Tesseract, Thor couldn’t be sure, but out of nowhere, it was floating away across the floor while Stark had some sort of medical incident.  Thor zapped him with Mjolnir and all seemed well, except that Loki and the cube had vanished into thin air.  

Much later, the Avengers would explain that Loki had snatched the case off the floor, opened it, grabbed the cube, and simply disappeared in a cloud of green-black haze.  At the time, Thor could only know that his brother was once again gone.  

X 

A lunch of shawarma later, the alarm brought them back to Stark Tower.  Evidently, Loki had been found in one of the labs near the top of the tower.  That surprised Thor.  He’d have thought Loki would end up somewhere on the opposite side of Midgard if not on an entirely different planet.  Truth be told, he wouldn’t have even blamed him for that.  

Thor, the rest of the Avengers tagging after him, burst through the door to a scene of carnage.  Three Shield agents lay dead on the floor, the victim of stab wounds and in one case, a snapped neck.  One living person had managed to flee, evidently the source of the alarm.  

Loki sat curled up in the corner, arms wrapped around himself.  Whatever shock and anger Thor had one his face apparently sufficed for him to take one look and bolt out the door at top speed.  Thor let out a furious shout and gave chase, out the door, down a hallway, up an emergency staircase, which set off a piercing alarm and flashing lights, and out onto the roof.  

Now it was Thor’s turn to take one look and panic.  Loki had backed himself onto the edge of the roof, gasping for air beneath that stupid gag.  One step backward, or passing out, and he would plunge to his death with no magic to save him.  Even now, after everything Loki had done, Thor couldn’t see anything other than his brother, in mortal danger.  

“Stay back,” he hissed to the other Avengers, then slowly approached Loki.  “Brother, let me help you.  Come with me.  We’ll get Mother to take a look at you, figure out what’s going on.  I can’t-”  

Loki flicked his eyes over the dropoff, and Thor felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.  

“No.  Not again.  Loki, please.  I can’t watch you die again.”  

Thor would have paid dearly for Loki to be able to speak.  As it was, he had to take a wild guess at what was going through his brother’s head.  Then again, it hadn’t been much better back at the Bifrost when Loki had the freedom to say whatever he liked.  

“Brother.”  

Finally, Loki stepped forward from the edge, towards Thor.  Before he could change his mind, Thor grabbed his hand and pulled him even farther away.  

“Come on.  Let’s go home.”  

X 

Back in the park where they’d originally intended to depart, Thor spent a few minutes in silence, then turned to the others.  

“Change of plans.  My parents want to speak with all of you.  I guess they have questions.”  

The tone left no room for arguments or even questions.  Taking one last look at the planet they called home, the rest of the Avengers prepared to leave it behind for Asgard.  

On the balance, that wasn’t even the weirdest thing that had happened in the past hour.  

Chapter Text

Welcome back, haha, I’m writing this before I’ve even posted the first chapter.  Bold of me to assume I will have any readers.  

Chapter warnings: past non-con, minor character death 

X 

“Loki.”  

At Frigga’s voice, Thor saw a spark of hope jump into Loki’s eyes.  Good.  He’s not unreachable in there, whatever dark world took over him.  Maybe we can get him back.   

“Mother, Loki needs a healer.”  

Odin, looking every inch the king and not the father, declined to respond, only glancing over Loki and nodding.  “Get the prisoner tended to, while I question our guests.”  

Thor longed to accompany the two of them as they left, Frigga’s arm around Loki, but he knew there would be questions and anyway, Loki had seemed terrified of him.  Maybe his favorite person in the world could figure out what was going on with him.  

Odin’s questions were numerous, but in fairness, understandable.  In fact, many of them were along the same vein of questions Thor had raised himself.  

“Where did the scepter come from?”  

“Wherever Loki opened the portal from the first time.  May or may not have been the same place I saw when I flew through that portal, but that’s destroyed in any case.”  

“What exactly did it do to its victims?”  

“It took over intentions, for lack of a better description.  I still had control over my body, thoughts, whatever, still had all my knowledge, but I had to use it to protect and serve Loki.  Or, come to think of it, whoever he was serving.  I’ve been thinking, do we know they didn’t use the scepter on him?  What if-” Clint chuckled humorlessly.  “Maybe the scepter’s the real mastermind here, and nobody actually wants to conquer Earth.”  

“What was that creature you took from Loki?”  

Now it was Bruce’s turn to speak.  “I barely got a look at it.  Blue skin, weird limbs and face, but other than that, it looked a bit like a person.  Shield was supposed to figure out what it was, no idea what they learned.”  

Odin nodded.  “I have my suspicions.”  

X 

Frigga settled Loki onto a bed in the healing rooms.  Just the two of them, as it should be.  There were some things he would never tell anyone else.  

Of course, there were others he’d never told even her.  

Even well into adolescence, he’d never found himself all that inclined to the pursuits of the flesh.  That had been fine for him, completely fine.  Until Thor noticed, and insisted on changing that.  

It was immediately apparent that the twin sisters had encountered Thor on multiple previous occasions.  He’d selected one and set about the appointed task, occasionally interrupting to make a jab at Loki.  Ergi , or do you not know how this works , or afraid she won’t like it ...  Eventually he’d done what was expected, a meaningless and unenjoyable act.  

It had taken him a long time to even be able to look at his own body again.  

After that, he’d made a few explorations on his own, trying such things in the various combinations.  Pleasures were had, but there was never any real attachment.  

Until, of course, it worked .  

The fact that he couldn’t shift entirely back to his usual male self hadn’t initially struck him as all that odd.  He’d been young and still learning the ropes of that sort of thing.  Until he did some more research into the sort of body he’d assumed, and realized it was, for lack of a better word, occupied.  

He spoke to it sometimes, telling it all his secrets, or rather all of his other secrets, and before long he would often feel it kick in response.  He’d loved that.  He’d been the only person in the universe to know of the tiny being’s existence.  Its nature was a mystery to even him.  

And then it had stopped moving.  

To her eternal credit, Frigga had asked no questions about how he’d gotten that way, andhe later realized she’d already known.  A quick lesson from one of her spellbooks had assisted them in having a proper look at the child.  Soon she confirmed what he already suspected and assisted him in the removal of a tiny, perfectly formed infant.  There was no way to know what had gone wrong.  

They never spoke of it afterward, of the blood and tears and a tiny boat sailing off in flames, but there was that bond, of being the only two in the universe to know a secret.  

Which was, of course, the only way he could trust her now.  

X 

“Let me see.”  

Of course she already knew.  Some quirk of Frigga’s powers had always told her exactly how many people were in the room.  It made her an excellent hostess for the ubiquitous victory feasts.  No amount of bulky clothing and wordless spellwork could hide the stowaway from the Queen of Asgard.  

Loki opened his coat to reveal his daughter.  

Cleaned now of blood and all else, the tiny creature looked around with interest.  Red-brown eyes blinked curiously back at Frigga.  After a moment, she looked away and up at Loki.  Something fierce and protective made itself known inside him, and he covered her in his jacket again.  

“She’s holding on for dear life, hands and feet.  I haven’t had a good look at her, but I think she has some sort of claws.”  

Frigga sat on the bed next to him, opened her mouth to speak, and closed it again.  After a while, she coaxed him to lie down and began her healing spells.  

“The impact with the floor tore the placenta away.  Both of you would have bled to death if the Avengers hadn’t cut her out.  But you seem to have recovered.  May I have a look at her?”  

Loki hesitated, then set about unlatching the baby’s claws from his robe.  Frigga quickly inspected her, proclaimed her stable, and wrapped her in a blanket before handing her back to her father.  Mother.  Parent.  Whatever.  

“You know, Loki, a lot of species can’t rest after giving birth.  The baby has to just hold on while the mother goes about her business, working or fighting.  So they come out stronger.”  

“Unless they don’t.”  

She shook her head.  “That’s not what happened to you, Loki.  It’s far more complicated than that.  And the Jotuns are usually fairly good about that sort of thing.”  

“Let’s just skip to the part where I point out that the Chitauri aren’t.”  

“That’s what I thought.”  

“I don’t want to hide her.”  

“Nor should you.”  

“I don’t want to die.”  

“You won’t.  I promise.  More specifically, I made your father promise not to kill you.”  

“He wanted to kill me?”  

Frigga hesitated.  

“Honestly, I can’t even remember what led to that.”  

Loki snorted, and laid a hand on the baby’s forehead.  Her blue-grey skin shimmered and morphed to match Loki’s Asgardian glamour, green eyes blinking slowly under her armored eyelids.  

“Loki, do you understand now that you’re safer looking like one of us?”  

He nodded.  “You should have told me.”  

“I know, and I’m sorry.  I’d fix it with a time machine.  But right now, Odin has questions for you.”  

“Okay.”  

X 

There was a saying that no one ever arrived somewhere like an Asgardian, and despite it being slightly incomplete with respect to Loki, it was nonetheless true.  The doors burst open, and Frigga stormed through.  Close behind her followed Loki, head high, newborn child in his arms.  

Thor was gobsmacked.  “Loki?  Where did you get a baby?”  

“I gave birth to her, you idiot.  Thanks to your friends” -here a wave in Banner’s direction- “sort of, but why in Hel didn’t you protect her?”  

Thor blurted out, thoughtlessly, “I thought they put it in you without asking, couldn’t fathom you’d actually care for it-”  

“They did, I do, her , and I know you can’t fathom a lot of things, but I don’t care where I got her.  Stop talking.”  

“Loki, I didn’t mean-”  

“Shut up.”  

Thor closed his eyes.  Loki, I love, you, and it doesn’t matter that you’re a Jotun -  

But of course, it had mattered just now.  And Loki was slow to forget.  

X 

Loki lay on the ground, bathed in the golden light of a truth spell from Gungnir.  Frigga held the ill-begotten child sleeping happily in her arms, while Thor had to suppress the urge to run in, grab his brother, and drag him somewhere it wouldn’t hurt.  

After a few moments, Loki stopped fighting it and lay still.  Thor asked the first question.  

“What happened after you let go?”  

“They called in the Sanctuary.  Just a barren rock with no sun.”  

“Who gave you the scepter?”  

“Thanos.  He wanted to send one of his ‘children’ to Midgard with the army, but I convinced him I knew that planet well enough to manage the invasion better and eventually he let me go.”  

Odin silenced Thor with a wave and continued the line of questioning.  

“What was the goal of the attack?”  

“To wipe out half of the humans.  I figured there would be fewer deaths if I kept them aimed at the places that were defended, so...”  

The Avengers eyed each other resentfully.  Loki had been using them just like Fury.  And yet, they weren’t even allowed to be angry about it...  

Except Natasha.  Loki referring to her by a part of her anatomy that no longer functioned had been unnecessarily cruel.  But there was nothing to be done about that.  

Odin ended the spell, and Loki sat up.  

“Can I go to sleep now?”  

X 

I am off to boot camp, so it will likely be December before I publish again.  Stay safe.  

Chapter Text

Welcome (back)!  Been quite the journey since last I posted.  BCT is a chaotic mess of a metamorphosis.  But I’m finally done.  

This chapter will begin to get particularly dark.  I will try to italicize the more disturbing parts, so you can skip if needed or just brace yourselves.  Let me know when you figure out what I did with this fic.  Because it takes a while to get around to it.  

X 

The child was crying, again.  

Frigga lifted it from the crib, just wishing it would stop.  Why did it have to exist?  Another scrap to be fed, cleaned, and whatever it was it needed now.  

She’d told herself the day before to sleep on it, make sure she was absolutely certain.  Now, after this, she was.  

It took longer than she’d expected for the child’s struggles to stop.   

X 

After all else, the outcome was less than Thor had hoped for.  His new friends were returned home as soon as Asgard could find a way to do so.  The Tesseract was safely locked away, when it was not being used to rebuild the Bifrost.  The yet-nameless child lived in the nursery, cared for by Frigga.  As for Loki...  

Thor had protested, Loki had bargained, the baby had wailed incessantly, and Frigga had quietly taken Odin aside for a private word, but in the end, the verdict stood.  Loki would remain in the dungeons until... some time when Odin saw fit to release him.  No visitors, no contact with the baby.  Just an empty room.  Punishment for what was done, not after the fall but before it.  There had to be something.  That scepter, now guarded by the Avengers, would only accept some of the blame for the intervening acts.  

Thor busied himself caring for his niece.  She lacked a name, as Loki had not seen fit to give her one and no one seemed to question that, or to give her one in her parent’s absence.  “The child” would suffice.  

Frigga doted on her granddaughter with an attentiveness that surprised Thor, but she assured him was perfectly normal.  “You wouldn’t remember, of course, but you needed all of this for yourself, long ago.  Babies are tiny, helpless creatures.  That’s why they have parents.”  

“How did you hide Loki from everyone?”  

In the wake of Loki’s original death, as they’d thought it, Thor had asked few questions.  The brief explanation, of an abandoned Jotun child raised in hopes of peace, had sufficed at the time.  The remaining questions would never be answered.  But now, some pieces of the puzzle called out to be retrieved and placed in the overall picture.  

Frigga hesitated, as if trying to retrieve the memories of centuries past had become difficult.  “We told everyone we’d had twins.  I bore you alone, in my chambers, and hid you under my clothing for months because I didn’t want anyone knowing about you until the war was over.  Even then, it was some time before we told everyone.  By then, the two of you were so close, it might as well have been true.”  

“I just want him back.”  

“He won’t be locked away forever.  We will be back together, as a family.  Worse things than this have tried to tear me from my children and nothing’s worked yet.”  

“Why did you never have any other children?”  Thor blurted out without troubling to think if it were too personal a query.  That wasn’t supposed to be the sort of thing you asked someone.  

Frigga burst out laughing.  “As if the universe can handle more of you two?”  Thor had to chuckle at that.  Then something came over Frigga like a stormcloud, and he bitterly regretted asking anything at all.  Finally, she got out: 

“I was a child, Thor, and we only did what was needed to give Asgard its next king.”  

X 

In fairness, the cell was not overly harsh.  Sufficient features for hygiene and sleep served their purpose, and Frigga had somehow sent him a few books from his room, and hers, and the library...  

Of course, he’d read through all of them in short order.  

On the rare occasions he stopped reading mid-book, he used a scrap piece of paper from some spellbook on changing one’s appearance.  He’d filched that from his mother’s study a few times, back in the day.  Thor’s lovely pink hair had been glorious .  

Circiter the third circuit of his reading material, he finally bothered to read his mother’s handwriting, at least, he thought it was hers.  Hers from some centuries back, perhaps.  It took him a moment to puzzle out the flowing script.  

Loki is a Jotun 

Don’t let Odin touch you 

Protect Thor  

Loki felt his blood run cold, then mused as to the physiology required for such a thing to occur.  There was so much he did not know about his own biology, and it irked him.  But he shoved it aside for the moment.  

His mother had written the note, that much was obvious.  To mention the other members of her family, it was probably a note to herself.  But why risk writing down his true heritage for any bold thief to see?  

And what exactly had Odin done to her?  For a wife to convince herself that being touched by her husband was something undesirable ...  

Little wonder, then, that she understood so well his need to protect his daughter regardless of her beginnings.  

A muffled explosion shook Loki out of his musings and brought him to the glass.  Einerjar were running into the dungeon, weapons drawn.  Some sort of commotion further down, a breakout maybe.  

How many prisoners were there in the dungeons?  He’d not been paying attention to such things.  In retrospect, that was a mistake.  Come on, master strategist.  You are off your game in a big way.   But now they were all breaking out, or more likely being released by someone in an attempt to cover their own escape.  

A quick illusion of more helpful inmates in his cell yielded the desired result.  And yet, what good was he out in the hallway?  He lacked a weapon, the dungeon muffled his seidr, and no amount of negotiation would work when what were obviously Dark Elves were busy massacring everyone in sight.  But- 

Some inner alarm, a lurking spell or else some premonition, drew him upstairs to where his mother should be protecting his daughter.  He could only hope he would get there in time.  

Chapter Text

The first thing Frigga could remember was brushing her hair.  Golden strands caught in the empty hairbrush and pulled free.  Why that was of note had been lost in a dark haze.  The task must have been performed half a million times in her lifetime.  A few matts here and there proved troublesome.  One smelled of dried blood.  Her own, she thought.  There was a half-healed cut across her left palm.  

Fussing noises caught her attention as soon as she finished her task.  Oh, yes.  The twins.  They must be hungry.  That was her job, to tend to them.  She’d agreed to it.  Children needed a mother, and it felt so right .  

The larger one waved at her sleepily.  Frigga made to pick him up, and nearly dropped him back into the crib as electricity shot through her.  Her yelp of anguish crossed with irritation woke both children fully and set them to screaming.  Great.  

“Hey, I’ll bet you can’t eat and cry at the same time.”  

As if any child ever conceived did anything but defy parental expectations...   

“I’ll admit, I’m impressed.”  

One fussy baby in a cloth sling at each breast, Frigga set about tidying her chambers.  Spellbooks lay scattered here and there, one on memory charms open and facedown on her window seat.  Pages were crumpled underneath it, something about how to erase unwanted memories.  

She clamped the book shut and returned it to her library, trusting whatever her past self had wanted to forget.  Who needed memories, anyway?  The present was happy enough.  

Shame there wasn’t something in there that could make the babies stop kicking each other.  

X 

Tyr stopped in a stream to wash his hands.  The children did not need to know just how violent the invasion of Vanaheim had been.  What were they fighting for, if not to protect the children’s innocence?  That all of the blood and death had been in vain was too much of a possibility for him to bear.  

Hands wet but clean, Tyr turned for home.  

X 

The palace was chaos.  

Attacks by Dark Elves and a scattering of allies to the same left everyone scrambling to respond both inside and out.  Loki slipped, invisible, out of the dungeon and up the stairs.  This exact situation was the reason the layout was so convoluted and he’d only been down here once or twice a few centuries ago.  

Fortunately, he knew the art of tracking spells.  

Mother and his baby were the only real concerns.  Thor could handle himself.  In fact, according to the smashing sounds and periodic lightning strikes, he was handling himself well.  As for everyone else, well, they were out of his hands and wouldn’t want his help anyway.  

Nearly to his mother’s chambers, and something hit Loki like a knife to the gut.  And he would know.  He’d been on the giving and receiving end of such things plenty of times.  But never anything as painful.  

And then it came again.  

Tears already soaked his cheeks by the time he smashed bodily through the door.  He could feel the deaths, somehow.  Frigga lay on the ground, struggling for a few last breaths around the gaping wound in her chest.  Some creature he did not care to name came at Loki as if to behead him, but by then, he’d already impaled it half a dozen times.  Bizarrely, it disintegrated into what looked like ravens that flew out an open window.  

Loki dropped to his knees.  “Mother-”  

I’m sorry , she mouthed without breath.  Loki took her in his arms, pouring healing spells into her, but he could feel the shadow of approaching death.  Some things, no magic he knew could fix.  

Seidr pulsed from Frigga as her body went limp.  Loki clutched at her for a moment before the thought occurred to him.  

No.   

Please no.   

He laid his mother on the ground as gently as he could manage before walking to the nursery she’d obviously been guarding.  Each step felt like a deadweight.  But he had to confirm what he already knew.  

The child it had taken him months to acknowledge as his own still lay in the crib he could barely remember.  Loki lifted her gently, noting in a detached way how wrong she felt, no muscle tone and body heat fading fast.  There was no grief, not any more.  Only a burning anger, mixed with a childlike confusion.  What was the point of it all?  What had the Dark Elves been after?  

X 

Something seemed wrong, but Tyr could not put his finger on it.  The house in the forest looked as ever, smoke from the chimney, flowers and a few toy swords in the yard, the goat in her pen.  Everything as he would have expected, had he even thought that far ahead.  

Years later, he would put his finger on the utter silence.  There should have been five children making the usual amount of noise.  It was of course difficult to notice that which did not exist to be noticed.  

At the time, Tyr opened the wooden door gently, cautious to announce himself.  The smell of roast boar made his stomach growl hungrily, but the unknown fear left him too sick to his stomach to consider eating.  

Frigga turned the boar on the roasting stick, utterly focused on her task.  

“Hello, sweetie.”  

Well, maybe not utterly .  She had noticed him.  

“What’s going on, Frigga?”  He tried to keep the edge out of his voice, and failed in spectacular fashion.  There was something profoundly wrong here, and she just kept going like nothing-  

“I killed a boar.  Can’t you see?  We’ll have a wonderful feast, just with the two of us.”  

“Where are the children?”  

“What children?”  

X 

Thor found him lying on the floor, curled up around his daughter’s body.  Technically, escaping from the prison carried a sentence of death, which Loki would have gladly taken without struggle, but there was nothing of that.  A few quiet attempts at reassurances fell on understandably deaf ears.  

“Why did they come here.”  

Loki’s dead, monotone query sounded like it was all that mattered, and Thor had to compose himself before admitting the truth.  It was, of course, all his fault.  

“I don’t know if you remember that human, Jane, I met earlier on Earth, but she found something called the Aether.  I brought her here to see if we could figure out how to deal with it.  The Dark Elves wanted it to take over the Nine.  Mother said she’d protect Jane.  Looks like she did her best, but-”  

Thor jolted upright.  

“Where did Mother go?”  

X 

The Thing brought the truth to light.  The birth of Tyr and Frigga’s youngest child had left her with a bizarre illness that no one had noticed.  With her husband gone to war and five young children to care for, something had broken inside her.  

Upon questioning by Odin, Frigga seemed genuinely convinced that the bodies found lying in their beds were not her children, had never been her children, and that she definitely had not smothered them as they slept.  They were a trick of magic.  

Five bodies in one funeral pyre shone all too brightly in the eyes of a grieving father and betrayed husband.  Tyr returned to an empty house and the knowledge that justice would be served to his no-longer-wife.  The assumption would usually be a private beheading followed by casting the remains ingloriously into the Void.  No one bothered to verify this.  

Which was fortunate, because Odin had his own plans for Frigga.  

X 

Heimdall showed them what he’d seen.  Loki could hardly bring himself to watch.  The same blade that killed Frigga still had her blood on it when it ran through his daughter.  As for the bizarre creature that wielded said blade, Loki memorized every single detail.  Kurse’s death would be far slower and more painful.  

What no one could explain was that moments after Frigga’s death, her body shuddered and vanished in a burst of black and gold.  Odin opened his mouth to speak, but one look from Loki silenced him.  There was no way around the fact that Odin had prevented Loki from protecting the people he loved more than anything else from brutal deaths.  

“Where did they take that human of yours?”  

Thor was honestly shocked that Loki cared.  “They took her to Svartalfheim.  I would go retrieve her and the Aether, and put an end to the Dark Elves once and for all.”  

Without a word, Loki rolled to his feet and slipped into the nursery.  Moments later, he emerged with empty arms and conjured weapons in both hands.  

“Let’s go.”  

X 

The time it took to muster the Einherjar was spent, for the most part, in utter silence.  Loki breathed and blinked, and that was all.  Thor paid a quick visit to the armory for swords to complement Mjolnir.  Some things couldn’t be solved by smashing.  Case in point: 

“Loki...”  

Loki just turned away.  Thor sat next to him and put on his own armor, hoping Loki would do likewise.  No joy.  Thor’s suspicions that Loki had no intention of surviving the upcoming battle were only heightened.  That made total sense, he had to admit.  Dying gloriously in battle was his best chance of finding Frigga and the nameless child.  But that in no way meant that Thor would just let him.  

“Loki, put this on.”  

The direct command made Loki flinch away.  Thor took matters into his own hands.  He had to physically coax Loki through the motions of armor overhead, fastening it on the sides, attaching sleeves.  It was as if his brother were a child again, and Thor Frigga helping them dress.  

They’d been claimed as twins, which no one ever question.  For all their many differences, they were such brothers.  The shared memories and traditions and mannerisms bound them together in a way few things could.  But most of the milestones, walking and swinging a sword and speaking, in that order, Thor had always led.  He’d wondered sometimes if he were truly the first to find his way out of Frigga’s womb or if Odin had simply waited to declare the more successful one the firstborn and switched them somehow.  Of course, unless he were keeping some dark secret about Thor’s true parentage, that had been disproven.  Frigga’s half-revelation had certainly left him ill-trusting his father’s virtue.  

“I don’t know why you bother.  I’ll find a way somehow.”  

Well, the cat’s out of the bag now.   

“I can’t lose you, too.  I know you’ve been through something horrible, that I can’t fathom.  Well, half of it, I can.  But that’s not the point.  

“Thor, no amount of armor is going to stop what happened to them.  Especially if I do not wish it to function as it ought.”  

“Loki...”  

Something about Thor’s demeanor made Loki stop resisting and hold still as Thor fastened the buckles.  Moments passed in silence as the last pieces of armor fell into place.  Thor wrapped his arms around his brother as if hoping to physically hold him in the world of the living.  

“I know you’ve lost just about everyone you cared about.  I’m grieving Mother, too.  Not going to pretend I know what it’s like to lose the baby.  I’ve not experienced parenthood yet.”  

“It’s not even the first time.”  

Even when Loki stabbed him on the tower, it hadn’t been that much of a gut-punch.  There really wasn’t anything to say, just one more hug muffled by two sets of armor.  

The horns blew to start the battle.  

Chapter Text

Odin led the attack as ever, from the rear.  Thor couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually seen his father take a life in conflict.  Or at all.  There was an executioner, or had been, back in the day...  

Ah, but of course.  He is not getting any younger, and his judgement day is coming.  And if I’m right about half of the things he’s done, maybe he should keep out of things.   

Thor tried to ignore the looks many of the surrounding Einerjar were sending Loki’s way.  They didn’t trust him, they thought he was strange, they would probably leave him to be slaughtered given the chance.  Which is why Thor intended to not give them one.  

The arrival of the army on Svartalfheim bore all the usual fanfare of Asgard and its people.  Ambush warfare was never their forte.  Tactics were unneeded when one had a massive fighting force and one’s enemies were honor-bound to fight head on.  

All things considered, Thor now understood why Loki thought their way of fighting was stupid.  There were so many scenarios where it wouldn’t work.  Such as the Chitauri invading Midgard.  

But now, just for today, they didn’t need tactics.  There weren’t all that many Dark Elves, and their only defense was to be clustered together.  That everything seemed to be what it was indicated they had  They wouldn’t last long.  

Shoulder to shoulder, Asgard’s entire army charged in.  Beside Thor, Loki had blades in both hands and tears on his cheeks.  Thor added stay out of Loki’s way to his list of “How to not end up in Valhalla before I want to”.  Blood spurted everywhere as Dark Elves fell like grain in the harvest.  Soldiers, their whole species.  Malekith’s earlier sacrifice ensured that they were doomed to extinction in any case, and they were fighting back.  If one had to commit genocide, this wasn’t so bad.  

In an instant, Loki vanished.  

Thor let out a mouthful of uncreative expletives and scanned the field for his wayward sibling.  One of the Elves, and he had a suspicion which one, had split from the rest of their army.  Traces of Loki’s magic were already following after him, and Thor joined in the chase without a moment’s hesitation.  

The two, Loki visible again, converged on the creature Heimdall had told them was named Kurse.  Kurse had fled to a cave sealed with metal bars.  Through them, Thor could see Jane, eyes blood red with the Aether, pinning herself against the back wall.  

Kurse swung at Thor with some sort of blade.  Thor dodged it and hit him with a lightning blast.  To his shock, Kurse caught it and sent it straight back at him.  He hit the ground hard, scrabbling for purchase.  

“Loki?”  

Gungnir was ice cold in Thor’s hand, a contrast to the heat he felt from the blood rushing to his head.  All of which registered somewhere in the back of his head because 

“Hold on.  Just hold on.”  

Something in Loki seemed to be struggling with an obvious desire to let go, but the command tipped the scales and he reached up, trying to grab hold with his free hand.  Thor wrenched on Gungnir and somehow managed to snag Loki by the wrist 

The three of them were piled on the broken Bifrost, complete with splinters of broken glass embedded in Thor’s bare arms that had Loki in a near-stranglehold.  Odin kept making assurances, the words passing through leaving nothing but the soothing emotions they were intended to evoke 

It wasn’t real, of course, never could be real, but Thor was sorry to leave it.  

Back on Svartalfheim in the timeline they had instead of the one they wanted, Thor struggled slowly to his feet.  Loki lay on the ground, gasping for air around a mess where his heart and lungs were supposed to be.  Jane stood above him, red light swirling from her hands.  Kurse knelt before her, pinned to the ground by the light.  Within seconds, his body disintegrated into red and black powder scattering in the wind.  

Jane hit the ground, gasping as the red light flowed back into her hands.  Thor barely noticed around the red flowing out of his brother.  Loki looked as though he’d been completely run through, and part of Thor was glad he’d not been conscious to witness it.  

“Brother?  Just hold on.  We’ll get you fixed up.”  

“No.”  Loki’s voice was surprisingly steady.  “Just let me go.”  

That hurt, almost as if it were Thor who’d been stabbed in the heart.  Protests rose to his tongue, tasting like bile.  Then again, would it really be doing Loki any favors- 

“No, get away from me.”  

“What-?”  Thor tightened his grip on Loki out of instinct, but his brother wasn’t looking at him.  Some giant purple figure loomed over the pair, only feet away.  Where in Hel did he come from?   

Jane launched her red light at the word Titan came to mind and he began to disintegrate.  Thor spared a thought for what powers exactly his love interest may have acquired before the Titan vanished through some sort of portal.  

Loki, eyes wide, had stopped breathing.  

“No, no, no.  You don’t get to do that again.”  

There were footsteps behind him, some question as to Thor’s well-being because to Hel with the mortal and the Jotun , then they just as quickly departed.  One of the Einerjar, gone to get one of the healers?  

Thor gathered Loki into his arms and stumbled to his feet.  Father had to be around here somewhere.  

On the balance, the Aesir who should have been king shouldn’t still be relying on his father to fix everything.  But that instinct would not die so easily.  

Odin greeted them at the Bifrost site with a blank look.  It was as if the All-Father were frozen in his own memories- 

Which was probably exactly what was going on, considering what had just happened to Thor.  Was that some sort of spell, or weapon of the Dark Elves?  

“Father.”  

That brought no reaction at all.  Whatever was going on, it was beyond Thor’s ability to fix.  

“Heimdall, can you-”  

No, there were too many Dark Elves around, a whole company charging across the hill towards the Bifrost seal.  Thor dumped Loki unceremoniously on the ground and set about smashing.  A flash of red behind him went noticed, but unaddressed.  Jane still had the Aether and was making use of it.  

Another surge was on the horizon.  The Einerjar needed Thor to stay and help them with the battle, that much was obvious.  But- 

Jane lay on the ground, out of it completely.  Thor guessed she’d worn herself out to snap Odin out of whatever spell he was under.  The latter knelt over Loki, checking for a pulse.  

“Father-”  Please no.  Not after all this.  We’ve got him back now -  

“I will look after him.  Go look after your soldiers.”  

Thor hesitated, unwilling at the last moment to just trust his brother to Odin’s fickle care.  Why had he been trying to get him to help in the first place?  He’d never been that good with Loki- 

No, Loki was just the straw that broke the bilgesnipe’s back.  

Odin pulled a dagger from his belt and slashed it across his hand.  “I will do everything I can for him, Thor.”  He laid the bleeding hand on Loki’s destroyed chest, the blood mixing and binding him to his word.  

Thor stepped back and went to keep the area clear.  Moments later, moments of smashing and lightning and not thinking later, the Bifrost fired off and the three of them disappeared.  

X 

Next one will be up shortly! 

Chapter Text

Asgard was boisterous, joyous shouts of victory and songs of praises drowning out all else.  It was the perfect cover, but for the fact that the man would have stood out like a sore thumb had anyone bothered to notice him.  

No one did.  

The relief that a war was over numbed him.  Righteous anger merged with the necessary survival instinct had now faded to a dull tasking.  Seek and address the one person who had fared ill in the preceding conflict.  

The burden of leadership is watching everyone else enjoy the freedom that you fought for.  

X 

Thor made his way to the room where Odin usually Slept.  Jane sat on a nearby bench, warily staring at something that looked like the Casket of Ancient Winters, but full of red instead of blue.  Evidently, the Aether had left her for a less spirited home.  

Loki lay on the bed, golden light wrapped around his torso and concealing the horrific injury.  Odin sat beside him, oblivious to the world around the two.  

“Is the crisis resolved?”  

Well, maybe not entirely oblivious.   

“Malekith is dead, the Aether is contained, and the Convergence has passed.  There were probably more deaths involved than there should have been, but nothing we can do about that.  Unless you’ve got some way to raise the dead.  But I think you would have told me about that by now, so-”  

Thor awkwardly faded to silence at his father’s utter lack of response.  A simple yes probably would have sufficed, but words were always Loki’s strength, not his own.  

“I’ve done what I can for him.”  

“...and?”  

“Correction, I’ve done almost everything.  I doubt he’ll pull through as he is.  Too much of what he needs to heal himself is damaged.  There’s another spell I could cast, but-”  

“Do it.”  

“I intend to.  I made a promise, and I mean to keep it.  But there are some things I need to tell you first.”  

“Are they going to be things I want to know?”  

Odin just shook his head.  

“Not even close.  You will hate me before the end.”  

X 

For some reason Odin, at least Thor assumed it was him, had brought the baby’s crib into the same room.  Loki had encased both his daughter and the Casket in a brick of ice.  Perhaps he’d held some hope of reviving her, or of a joint funeral.  

“Jane, are you well?”  

Jane shrugged.  “This is either the weirdest few days of my life, or the worst trip ever.  I’m not convinced against the latter.”  

The look on Thor’s face must have shown his confusion, because she chuckled with little to no mirth.  “It’s when you put stuff in your body you’re not supposed to and you start seeing different worlds.  Which is pretty much what happened, so.”  

The door showed up in front of them, ending the conversation.  Thor opened it and showed Jane in with a sweep of his arm that seemed fakely careless.  

The guest chambers were luxurious in a way Jane had not appreciated before.  The sitting room had several couches and a central table.  Off of the main room were several doors.  Jane made to open one, then turned to Thor.  

“May I...?”  

Thor nodded.  “Make yourself at home while we figure out what’s going on.”  He made a gesture at Jane, who shrugged.  She wanted a chance to examine the differences in private, anyway.  “I need to talk a few things over with my father.”  

Something about that last statement made Jane think she would never see Odin alive again.  

X 

The silver basin held some sort of whitish liquid.  Shapes swirled across the surface, nothing Thor could put his finger on.  Stormclouds, maybe.  

“This holds memories.”  

Thor was nonplussed.  “So, if you don’t trust yourself to remember something, you put it in here?  Couldn’t you just write it down?”  

Odin shook his head.  “This takes the memory out of your mind.  If there’s anything you’d like to forget...”  

Mother’s death.  Loki’s fall.  Fandral walking in on him with two girls at once and everyone never letting him hear the end of it-  

“It has to do with Kurse’s power.  It calls up the most traumatic memory it can find and twists it like a knife in the wound.  The usual result is that it paralyzes the victim long enough for the spellcaster to get close and kill them.  Quite effective on soldiers, as I’m sure you can understand.  When you asked me to help Loki, I was fittingly enough lost in a memory of another time someone begged me to save him.  I kept that memory out of everything because it was the day I realized I loved him.”  

“Who was it?”  

“Your mother.  It’s a long story.  Most of which is stored in here.”  

Thor had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.  All he’d gotten from either of his parents lately was some variation of “It’s a long story”.  Maybe he should just go ask Frigga-  

It had taken one day to forget his mother had died.  

“What happened to him?”  

Odin hesitated, and Thor couldn’t squash the immediate assumption that he was crafting a lie.  “He was born far too early, among other things.  Your mother left him in the crib alone for a few hours, first time she’d done that, and he stopped breathing.  I realized how much it would destroy her to lose him, how much I would miss him.  That surprised me.  I hadn’t thought I could love him.  But that brother of yours has always had a way of defying expectations.”  

“I can’t imagine life without him.”  

Thor glanced over at his brother, who looked as if he were already gone.  Only the faint rasp of breathing, boosted by healing spells, indicated life.  

“We should get started.  He won’t hold out like this and you need to see what happened.”  

Bracing himself, Thor agreed.  

X 

Leftmost was a bedroom, no windows and an odd thrum of what Jane assumed was magic.  Some sort of privacy screen?  If half of what she’d heard of Heimdall’s powers were halfway accurate, that was understandable.  Especially considering it was a luxurious double bed.  

Chuckling, she checked the next room.  Toilet, sink, tub, shower, all in gold of course.  Did they even have another color in Asgard?  Shelves held towels of pure white, so she had to amend that thought.  A bath would be nice, check things over.  Maybe in a bit.  

A closet full of various clothing greeted her next, lit she now noticed by oil lamps that lit and extinguished by the opening and closing of the door.  Amazing.  She collected some clothing and left it near the washtub for later.  

A library, or perhaps it should be called a study, held books on a variety of subjects.  Jane could easily picture herself spending the rest of her life pouring through Asgard’s vast trove of hoarded knowledge, history, legends, and whatever else now lay at her fingertips.  

If her suspicions were correct, that would be a very long time.  

X 

Thor had been expecting some thing elaborate, but all it took, apparently, was for them to touch the liquid.  All at once, the entire room around them vanished and they were standing in a dungeon cell.  In fact, Thor was pretty sure it was the exact cell Loki had been in.  

Frigga sat in the corner, arms around herself.  Odin the younger stood in the middle of the cell.  The voices carried through with surprising clarity.  

“Did I really do what they’re saying?”  

Young Odin nodded.  “Unless Heimdall is being tricked, and severely, you did.”  

She shuddered.  “Then you’d best do it.”  

“Thing is, I won’t be.  You will.”  Odin produced a wine goblet from somewhere.  “You will just go to sleep.  It will be painless.”  

That earned him a grim laugh that sounded like one of Loki’s.  “For one thing, how does anyone know that?  No one survives to report, right?  For another, are you too much a coward to do it yourself, King of Asgard?”  

For answer, Odin grabbed her face and forced her mouth open.  Frigga struggled against it, perhaps even to say she would do it herself, but he’d poured whatever was in it into her before she could speak a word.  After a few seconds, she simply drank without struggling.  

The simple act of swallowing so quickly proved difficult as the potion took effect.  Frigga went limp completely and hit the floor hard.  No matter.  She would still serve his purposes.  

Even a woman whose mind had died completely could still bear his heir.  

X 

Back in the sleeping room, Thor had to fight the overwhelming urge to simply bash in Odin’s skull with Mjolnir or even his bare hands.  

“What on the Nine.  You killed Mother-”  

“She was to die for what she’d done to her children.  The other alternative was public beheading.  I found a use for her.  Nothing more.  The alternative was trusting some unknown woman for raising an heir to the throne.”  

“...Hold on.  You brought her back, somehow, why?”  Thor couldn’t get a grasp on Odin’s slippery half-explanation.  “Sudden change of heart?  Or did you just realize it would be awkward to explain me?”  

“Your mother, who loved you deeply, who was skilled in magic of many forms.  And I had to find ways to explain things, but I truly did want the best for you.”  

“You know what?  I’m sorry I asked.  There aren’t going to be straight answers.  Let’s get on with this trip through memory lane.”  

Odin’s eye blinked a few times.  

“It’s a Midgardian expression.  Never mind.”  

X 

A small dining room and a balcony finished Jane’s allotted space.  All things considered, her “chambers” were far more luxurious than anything on Midgard.  

All too quickly, she had stopped thinking of her former home as Earth.  

Watching the sunset off the balcony proved soothing, putting a close to one of the strangest days in her life.  

Back in the washroom, Jane thought only to relax and find some new clothing.  But something tugged at her like an unscratched itch.  Back into the sitting room, into the library.  One specific shelf almost seemed to glow.  

Jane ran her fingers over the books, assuming there was a specific one that wanted to be found.  It stuck out, just a bit, from its brethren.  Black leather, gold-edged pages, green printing inside in a runic alphabet.  

Out on the balcony, the book fluttered open in the wind and stopped on a specific page.  Jane browsed through it, noting what looked like a chapter heading, diagrams of cutting plants, and a few illustrated measurements.  Was it a cookbook?  Some long-dead sorcerer wanting a burnt offering of their favorite dinner...  

Or a spell they wanted her to use.  

Jane slammed the book shut and set about seeking a bath and food.  All else could wait.  

X 

Odin visited Frigga every day during her pregnancy, making one excuse or another.  The guards only watched the dungeon entrance, sparing no thought for the condemned.  Few, if any, ever exited the dungeons for anything but the axe.  Rumors of brutal interrogations dismayed anyone from looking or even thinking too closely.  

One healer, spell-sworn to secrecy, provided guidance on keeping the mother alive and the child healthy.  He would wipe her memories later, perhaps even send her to the battlefield and arrange some sort of misfortune just to make certain.  The part of himself that was a king noted with some pride that everything was progressing correctly.  As to the other part...  

The only lesson Bor had taught him that actually stuck had been to separate, king from Aesir or husband or father or whatever else.  He’d found that useful thus far.  

Husband he was not, utterly undeserving of such a title, yet he did what he could for the mother of his child.  He fed her with a tube to her stomach, tended to her body’s needs otherwise, bathed her periodically.  What was left of her might appreciate the effort.  Her womb swelled with the child, and crude spellwork told him it was healthy.  Soon he could feel it with his seidr, singing as it were.  Another magic user?  What kind of powers would his child have?  

Perhaps fathering a child was a bad idea after all.  Yet, it was the expectation.  

Life on Asgard moved on as ever, and Odin presided over various disputes, passed laws as needed, and led the counter to an uprising on Alfheim.  Securing the Nine for his child and an heir for his kingdom.  

He let it be known, at the annual harvest festival, that he and an unidentified wife were expecting a harvest of their own.  A secret left untold, of course, was that his “wife” would tragically and heroically die in childbirth.  Asgard would only know an assumed face and name at her funeral.  

Shortly after that, he noticed a change in the song.  Quieter, somehow, yet deeper.  Or was the whole thing only an imagination?  When he laid a hand on the child, it liked to move in response.  That, he knew was real.  

X 

Jane stepped out of the last of her clothing and examined herself in the full-length mirror.  The extra few inches of height were mostly in her legs.  Everything had far more muscle.  Even her eyes were somehow more brilliant.  The only thing that looked familiar was her hair.  Whatever the Aether had been intending, it had at least left her with something .  

Only time would tell if she had gained an Asgardian lifespan as well as appearance. 

Fresh clothes, a nap, and a small meal later, Jane took a stab at the spell.  Some scrap parchment served to copy over each rune, the closest she could think to casting it without being able to read it.  

Bad idea, very bad idea, it must have been, to cast a spell without an idea of what it was, but something felt like she was supposed to.  Perhaps it was fate.  

As soon as Jane lifted the pen from the parchment, a brilliant green werelight appeared a foot above it.  

Well, it worked.   

Jane stood up from the desk, and the werelight moved to the door.  Adventure time.   

The utter silence and darkness outside was unexpected.  There had just been a battle.  Celebrations had already faded to getting back to normal life, else the grieving process.  They’d burned the bodies already.  How many homes were darkened by the loss that they were expected to rejoice in?  This seemed to be Jane’s new home, and yet it felt so foreign.  

Somewhere in the back of her head, she thought to wonder about Eric and Darcy and Ian.  They ought to at least know she was alive but would not be coming back.  

A blank wall in the side of the dressing room.  Maybe she’d cast the spell wrong, or...  

Her newly transformed body was not perfect.  It still bore nicks and scrapes from every time she’d dinged it throughout the years.  She would have to be much more careful now.  

A hangnail caught her attention, left middle finger.  Something about it bothered her beyond belief.  Logically, she knew she should have just scrounged up a nail clippers, because surely they have such things on Asgard, but instead she pulled at it and wound up ripping it away completely.  Satisfaction shot through her along with the pain.  

When she laid her hand on the cold marble, it melted at once.  Not bothering to question the exact mechanism, Jane followed the light into a spiral staircase.  Crossing the threshold brought with it the predictable result of the wall re-materializing behind her.  There was nothing but cold stone and the green light she was beginning to suspect may have been Loki’s.  

This was, on the balance, a terrible idea.  

X 

The day of reckoning fell on the winter solstice.  Upon Odin’s arrival in the dungeons, Frigga greeted him with moans as her abdomen clenched over and over again.  That shouldn’t be happening.  Either the potion had been insufficient to the task or she had somehow recovered.  

He ran his hand over her hair and she quieted.  

“Hush, Frigga.  This will happen on its own.  You’ve done it before.”  

Checking her progress yielded the knowledge that she’d been in labor for quite some time; his hand fit inside to be met by the child’s head.  The skin felt loose, or was that the sac of waters?  No, that seemed to have broken all over the place.  

Norns, he had no idea what he was doing.  He’d acquired and pocket-dimensioned an array of instruments, but nothing came to mind as necessary.  Another contraction hit, and the child slid out in a rush of bloody water.  Long dead, he knew at once.  The skin had detached in places and overall, it was no larger than his hand.  That was the song changing, nothing but an echo of his son’s life.  He must have imagined the quickenings.  

Could Frigga handle a full, live-born pregnancy as she was?  Finding another suitable woman was unlikely.  

His eyes fell on her deflating belly, which twitched.  A second child?  

A quick check revealed a foot.  

Hello, there.   

Some barehanded maneuvering brought the other foot down and the rest of the child followed.  A girl.  A fifty percent change that he really hadn’t considered.  Asgard had always been ruled by a male.  Could she become violent enough to rule as needed?  Go to war when the situation called for it, execute those unfit to live, by virtue of one crime or another that sooner or later, any society would be called upon to punish...  Shame , he thought, the wrong one lived .  

The head slipped out, the fresh air yielding a few quiet cries.  A dusting of hair as dark as his own was slicked down with the various fluids.  No obvious deformities, which came as something of a disappointment.  An excuse would have been nice.  

Odin grabbed the newborn by the foot and dragged her away from the mother, considering.  One of the two was about to die.  

The child’s cries ceased.  

Chills ran through him.  Does she know what I’m thinking?   

No, that sort of power was too much of a risk.  He would try again.  

X 

“How many have there been?  And don’t say ‘It’s complicated’.”  

“Very well, it’s not that simple.  I changed my mind with respect to her.”  

“Why?  And what happened to your daughter?”  

“It is a very long story.  Shall we continue?”  

Thor felt liable to vomit at what further memories would likely contain.  But Loki needed help, and apparently, the journey was required.  

“Very well.”  

X 

There was, of course, no call for cruelty.  

The child was beginning to fuss again.  He lifted it from the floor and hushed it.  

“You will be with your siblings soon.”  

There was a tiny window in one corner of the cell.  Through it, stars could be seen, infinite in the blackness.  The longest night of the year, a time of beginnings and endings, saw one child born to death and another one soon to join him.  

One hand found its way to the child’s mouth.  “Go in peace, little one.”  

X 

The remains of the Bifrost streaked past, swirling into the Void.  Thor’s leg burned in his grip, but there was a solidarity to it so utterly reassuring.  One that Loki’s life force, dangling on the very edge, lacked utterly.  

Thor wanted Loki back, enough that he would have gladly traded his newly-regained powers just for a better grip.  Frigga’s spells rang with terror as she’d tried to wake him; despite centuries of caring it was obvious she feared for Loki more.  Loki, after everything the past few days had brought, held on purely by reflex.  For the how-manyeth time in his life it would take so little for him to slip over the edge.  

And of course, if he finally did die, Odin could stop caring...  

X 

“I did say you were going to hate me.”  

They were back in the Sleep room now, with Odin lying on the ground, Mjolnir on his chest, and Thor standing protectively between him and the unconscious Loki.  

“You knew how vulnerable he was, what losing him would do to me, to Mother, and you deliberately -  And not even have to live with the memory of it, you coward , while I still have nightmares of dangling over the Void, wishing I’d jumped after him because that’s how much he matters.  Which you knew.  To say nothing of how much it should have hurt you to lose him-”  

“You will get him back once we’re done here.  I promise.”  

“I don’t even believe you.  If it turns out you are lying I will kill you.”  

X 

The song faded to silence.  Odin waited a few more grim moments just to be certain.  It hurt, in a muffled way, as injuring a limb long gone numb from the cold.  

A quick message to the healers notified them of a death and the need for funeral arrangements.  They did not need to know for whom.  

Shaking off the deserved sense of guilt, Odin set about washing and swaddling the newborns.  It was an unfortunate reality that not all children would live.  The shield of the palace would, he hoped, discourage any questions.  

He was puzzling over names -for even the dead ought to have a name- when a violent blast of seidr shot through the cell.  Odin fell to the floor, needing a moment to process what his misbegotten offspring was up to now.  

X 

“...you’ve wondered that an awful lot of times across the centuries, haven’t you?”  

“And yet, still not nearly as many as I should have.”  

X 

Black light flowed from the female child, green-gold from the mother, and the two collided violently in midair.  

Odin blinked and it vanished, replaced by an infant’s cries.  Frigga, on the other hand, had ceased to breathe.  Had she switched her soul into the infant’s body in an attempt to escape?  No, that was a foolish thought; even were she so inclined, there had never been so much as a trace of seidr from her.  

Which left that the child had taken her own mother’s life force to survive.  

“Perhaps you can be brutal enough,” he murmured.  In any case, he decided he lacked the heart to perform such an act again.  He lifted his daughter from the floor with a sense of finality.  

“It’s going to be fine, little one.  Papa’s got you.”  

X 

“Oh that’s sweet.  Right after you murdered her.”  

“Believe it or not, Thor, I do love all three of you.  I am... unskilled at it, I’ll give you that.”  

“What was her name?”  

“Hela.  And her twin was Baldr.”  

X 

Hela’s warmth was oddly soothing on the longest, coldest night of the year.  She sat upright in his arms, the pyre of her mother and twin brother bright in her eyes.  Only when the sparks faded to blackness did she relax against him.  

The announcements, of births and deaths all at once, were met with far more sympathy than Odin deserved.  To lose a wife and son simultaneously, and be left with nothing but an unwanted daughter, was no enviable thing.  Knowing that their king was within reach of troubles such as plagued far too many, that had to be good for Asgard.  They were ruled by one of their own.  

He arranged for a wet nurse and caregivers and returned to his duties in short order.  Hela grew as any other child, pale blue eyes darkening to green to match her mother’s and black hair so much like his own cascading down her back.  

Odin taught her to fight, to kill.  Some power of hers, spawned by the number of death that surrounded her beginning, left her knowing how to kill exactly as quickly or slowly as she wished.  Soon, while she was barely an adolescent, Odin gave her the titles of both executioner and interrogator.  She excelled at both.  A shame, he counted it, that there was not a war for her to fight.  She would make an excellent soldier.  

So kind of Laufey to oblige...  

X 

Hela’s newfound ability to raise the bodies of the dead to fight again proved both invaluable and terrifying.  The war should have ended quickly. But he took his eyes off her for one moment and she was simply gone.  Killed by the Jotnar, he should be so lucky.  Taken as a treasure, as a trophy of war, an insult, that seemed more likely.  

Without his best warrior, it took several cycles of Midgard’s moon to ferret out the last holdout invaders.  Odin personally led the chase through the portals all the way back to Jotunheim.  

On reflection, Odin mused to himself that the Jotnar found it easier than the Aesir to navigate between the Nine Realms.  Perhaps their nature were water, rather than ice, the better to slip into the cracks in Yggdrasil.  He’d never troubled to think too much of their exact biology.  

As to their culture, one moment had burned itself into his mind that turned out to Laufey’s credit.  In a last effort to avoid losing even more of his people, called to a truce and challenged Odin to a duel.  There was something in his demeanor that spoke of regretting the beginning of the war.  Odin never did get to the bottom of what they’d been trying to achieve, but they’d obviously, utterly failed.  At the cost of many lives on all three of the pertinent Realms.  The mortals would replace their own dead in short order.  Perhaps they should have been left to their own devices after all, but it was far too late for that.  

Soon enough, Laufey knelt before Odin utterly defeated.  The duel and the end of the war had only cost the latter one eye.  

“Are you going to kill me?”  

“No.”  

The two of them, defeated and marked in turn, considered each other, bound each in turn by a throne unwanted by any who held it.  

“A king I’ve thoroughly defeated is safer than anarchy.  Neither of us needs another war.”  

Laufey hesitated.  “What you’re about to find out, I already regret.”  

X 

“You were not entirely truthful about where you got Loki, were you?”  

“No.  What you’re probably thinking, you’re not wrong.”  

“Where do I come in?  No offense to Loki, but-”  

“Everything in its time.  Your own origins are no fairy tale, either.”  

“Color me surprised.”  

X 

He found his daughter among the few dozen prisoners waiting to be Bifrosted home.  She’d bundled up heavily against the cold, wrapped in the furs and crude textiles that passed for clothing on Jotunheim.  They’d treated her better than the others, he could tell just by looking.  Most of them had lost weight and not bathed in, well, long enough.  Considerations for the aristocracy, or compensation for what Laufey regretted?  Or claimed to, now.  

Odin took a step towards Hela, and their eyes met for a split second before she vanished in a burst of rainbow light.  Silently cursing Heimdall, Odin asked as to the health of the remaining warriors and was met with polite responses.  Some hours passed of catching up.  

Yes, we won the war.  Yes, Midgard is safe.  No, you’re not in trouble for getting captured instead of killed.  Yes, your family thinks you’re dead.  Maybe, they’ve found a replacement already.  No, you may not kill them if they have.  

Rainbow light pulled them home.  

X 

News of the victory had spread.  Celebrations of the victory, of the deaths, of the living, of life returning to what passed for normal, spilled out into the streets.  The palace glowed with lanterns, flowers, and streamers pulled out of storage or specially made in anticipation of victory.  

The feast hall hadn’t even been set with tables and chairs; cards of food and casks of ale were simply rolled in and back out covered in smashed remains seconds later.  

Odin snatched a bite of food here or there, but no drink.  He needed his mind to be clear.  Peace had been bought too dearly to be lost to a careless drunken oath.  Hela, he noted, refrained likewise, but made certain the common people saw her healthy and happy.  As he’d taught her.  Put on that golden mask and never let them see the damage.  

Even from across the hall, hundreds of lives swirling around in between, he could feel the song of another child.  It was, of course, doing nothing but what its own nature dictated.  What followed would have been easier were there any malice involved on its part.  If such a thing were even possible.  

Hela stayed at the chaotic feast long enough to be known as having survived the war unscathed, then vanished to her own quarters.  Soon after, Odin gave a quick speech of which he later remembered not a word, then excused himself.  

The door to Hela’s chambers were sealed as ever with magic, but inside he could hear bathwater running.  That would make it easier to clean up.  The grim task made him nearly sick to his stomach, but it had to be done.  A short phrase bypassed the wards on the room and another, seconds later, began the required process.  

An anguished cry shot through him, not just auditory but magical.  Would she know what he had done?  Goddess of death that she was, most likely.  

Shaking that off, he returned to the feast and left her to miscarry in peace.  

X 

“Stop.”  Thor’s choked voice obliterated the silence with all the force of Ragnarok.  “Loki-  You tried to kill him.  He wasn’t even born yet, and you just-”  

“I know.  Go ahead and hate me.  It made sense, at the time.  Practicality and mercy collided.  Given everything he’s gone through these past few years, perhaps it would have been kinder.  But he’s always been a survivor, from the very beginning.  I haven’t actually heard of another Jotun-Aesir hybrid.”  

“He wants to live, even if he’s had trouble realizing it.  You don’t get to take that away from him.”  

“You sound so much like Hela.”  Odin made for the basin again, but Thor shook his head.  

“Not again.  I can’t take more of you at the moment.”  

Thor crawled into bed with Loki like they were children again.  

“We’re getting you some help, brother.  You’re going to be fine.”  

X 

The werelight slipped through a stone archway and split to light a few lamps around the room.  Now the light was gold, as all else.  She’d come out in the closet of whoever’s rooms these were.  The utter silence left her certain no one was around.  

Understandably, the floor plan was identical to her new rooms directly below.  No magical guidance remained, but Jane arbitrarily picked the library.  

Most of the shelves were bare, with dust where books used to be.  A few remained, odd histories long before Jane’s birth and a strain of spellbooks on fertility spells and healing.  Nothing obviously stood out, until it occurred to her that what wasn’t there was likely more interesting.  Transformations and how to leave a spell in a book...  

The desk contained one untitled book laid out neatly.  Jane grabbed it by instinct and opened.  Lined paper, handwriting inside.  The runes morphed before her eyes into something she could read.  Another spell in a missing book?  

To the woman who has fallen in love with my son...   

Chapter Text

No more than a few hours passed before they began again.  They couldn’t take forever.  Even Thor could tell Loki’s life force was fading.  

As the two plunged into the basin, a memory of a different color flew directly into his face, and he knew this one belonged to his sister.  

X 

Pain wracked Hela utterly.  

One was the contractions, constantly misfiring with all the awkward uncoordination of youth, both hers and the child.  Neither was an appropriate age for this.  

The second was the unmistakable rush of approaching death, again of both of them.  Not yet inevitable, though.  If she could figure out why, then maybe...  

Water gushed between her legs and expletives between gritted teeth.  Yanking off the last of her clothing, she stepped into the bathtub and turned on the water.  A correct step, as told by the black cloud of death backing off just a bit.  

What, then, was the cause?  The child was early, but not excessively so.  As for herself, the placenta tearing away?  Infection?  Blood loss?  

How many times had she slipped unnoticed into the midwives’ quarters, to learn the mysteries of that particular endeavor?  The unborn were so far from their own deaths, yet had to come close to achieve birth.  

Some of the women felt wrong, one way or another, and she soon noticed that those women or their unfortunate offspring or even both were doomed.  Only once did she attempt to intervene, dropping the invisibility spell to warn the midwives that something had to be done or the mother and both children would die. The problem was clear to her: the first was breech and their chins had caught on each other.  The midwives insisted that there was only one child, that everything was fine, and when she’d protested, had Odin drag her screaming from the room.  

Later, Hela had slipped out to watch the funeral of a mother and two newborns.  Never did she receive an apology or so much as an acknowledgement.  

Snapping out of, but still drawing on, those memories, Hela wet her hand and made to check on the child she might still save.  Her blood ran cold as the one finger that could fit in brushed against something she could not identify, slippery and an odd lump.  The sac, still intact in some places?  Or a prolapsed cord, which would explain why it’s about to die...  

It grabbed the end of her finger.  Hela gasped as its life force rushed through her.  

“You must be that offspring of mine,” she muttered, sounding suitably careless.  She wanted it to live because its death would be painful, nothing more.  As to after that...  

A contraction shot through her and put thoughts of What on the Nine am I supposed to do with this thing out of her mind.  

First, get it turned.   It couldn’t come out sideways, that was clear.  What with how early it was, she couldn’t blame it for not being ready to be born.  It wasn’t as if she were any more ready to birth it.  

The next several hours were a struggle of pushing on her stomach in various ways and even pushing up from below, with increasingly close and intense pains periodically putting a stop to her endeavors.  She knew of no spells to help her, and a trip to her own library, much less that of the palace, was completely out of the question.  Even leaving the tub proved beyond her.  Perhaps they would die together, right here.  

All at once, she felt her anti-Heimdall spell fading, and lacked any ability to recast it.  

Odin found her clinging to the edge of the tub, sobbing convulsively.  One touch of his hand on her disheveled hair brought her to her feet, knee-deep in bloody water and gasping hard.  

“You- this didn’t just start on its own, did it.”  

Odin took a deep breath before even beginning to respond, and that was all the confirmation she needed.  

“Don’t touch me.”  

“Hela, I didn’t- you’re further along than I thought.”  

“You’re not helping your case.”  The scathing nature of Hela’s words cut through the memory like one of Loki’s daggers.  Thor chuckled to himself.  That had to be where his little brother had gotten it.  

Past Odin only dug himself deeper in the hole.  “I assumed it would just bleed out and that’s it.”  

A foul string of breathless expletives was Hela’s only reply.  

X 

A cluster of Odin’s memories broke through, a sense of grim determination tinged with regret.  Thor pulled back long enough to point out, “Serves you right that it was worse than expected.”  He felt completely numb in the face of Odin’s would-be murder.  

The latter nodded with an air of acceptance a millennium in the making.  “It wasn’t even the only time I tried to kill him.  I did say you would want to kill me when we were done.”  

That he had.  

“Let’s get it over with.”  

X 

Hours of agony passed, with Hela’s wails fading away to faint whimpers and Odin forcing himself to kneel before her.  He’d brought this upon her, he and Laufey, and he deserved to hear every minute of his daughter’s heartbreaking cries.  

Eventually, even those stopped.  

Odin checked for a pulse and came away somewhat disappointed when his fingers found one.  That was so wrong.  This was his daughter, and Asgard needed her alive.  His own involvement could be left out, but if they were to learn of her death, they would blame Laufey and once more declare war on an entire planet.  More deaths, more captivity and torture and rape and how hard it was to think the word even in the abstract.  To learn of the child in any case, same problem.  This was a necessary evil.  

He reached inside her with one of the instruments he still kept from all those years ago, shushing her as she flinched at the cold metal in a place never meant to receive it.  Push on the shoulder, pull on the feet as identified with an improvised spell.  

Hela awoke as her misborn offspring came free in a rush of blood and whatever else it was.  Tiny, spindly, and what little hue there was to the translucent skin was unmistakably blue.  

Father and daughter stared at the tiny being for a moment.  Hela moved first, to grab it and hold it to her chest as it began to fuss.  Alive would not have been Odin’s first guess, but it made no difference.  It wasn’t as if anything had changed.  

“Hela, it can’t live.”  

Hela hugged it tighter and shook her head.  That would, he knew, have to be enough of an answer for him.  After everything, she lacked the brutality required to her purpose.  He would need to dispose of her somehow and find another heir.  

As if sensing the thought, and it finally occurred to him that she in fact was, Hela ducked away from him and tried to climb out of the tub.  One foot slipped and she fell back into the filthy water.  Odin caught her in his arms and set her on one of the steps.  

“Hela, Hela shush.  I have no wish to harm you.  You’ve been through a terrible shock.  You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep trying to run away.”  

He noticed, pointlessly, that the umbilical cord still bound her to the child clutched in her arms.  Its voice had quited, but Hela’s hand on its back rose and fell with surprising strength.  Ideally, he would have simply allowed Hela to care for it until it died of its own accord.  But with Hela as a mother, that would never work.  Her spells would keep it alive no matter that it couldn’t be more than halfway gestated.  

“Give me the baby, Hela.”  

“I would rather die.”  

Her voice was quiet, but without hesitation.  She hadn’t even looked at it yet, he realized, most likely not wanting to know if it looked like a Jotun.  It did, very much; tiny blue fingers had wrapped themselves around the end of her thumb.  Was a newborn supposed to do that?  He couldn’t even remember what Hela had done at that age.  It hadn’t been all that long, come to think of it.  She’d barely begun adolescence.  That she’d managed to bear a child at all, he would have thought impossible had he paid any thought to it in the first place.  Perhaps he should have waited longer to take her to war.  

Too late, of course, for all of that.  

“Asgard will tear it apart if they find out.  Which they will.  You try to protect it, they’ll do the same to you.  They’ll start another war.”  

“So just kill me.”  

The silence that followed was broken only by a few quiet cries.  

“I could tell everyone what happened here.  Say what you will about Asgard, but they’d love an excuse to rebel against you.  How many of them died to protect your precious Midgard?”  

There were, of course, spells to prevent a person from speaking on a particular subject.  Hela would find a way around them sooner or later.  Which left silencing her in a permanent way.  Vicious she was not, but certainly clever.  She’d leveraged him into what she wanted, or seemed to want.  Perhaps death was not in fact her goal, but simply to spite the purpose for which he had raised her.  She’d certainly defied Laufey’s intentions with her by wanting the child to live.  

“Kill me and be done with it.  You could do what you want with the little one then.”  

Her voice wavered at the last, and Odin couldn’t help a twinge of anguish.  How was he supposed to do this.  Think, think...   

Apparently deciding to live normally until she was actually dead, Hela removed the shredded remains of her blouse and put the baby to her breast.  What passed for it, rather.  They’d barely begun.  Her eyes never left the dagger belted around Odin’s waist.  

“Hela, your life has never been your own.  Neither has mine.  You’re needed here.  You don’t have to rule Asgard.  But if you just disappear, they will figure it out, sooner or later.”  

Hela shook her head and curled up around the child.  A few minutes of nursing it yielded the usual result: Her body clenched and shuddered violently as the afterbirth emerged in a rush of bloody water.  Odin retrieved it to examine: still intact.  Her womb was empty now, ready for another in time.  He tried, pointlessly, to prevent that line of thought from reaching the obvious conclusion.  It was, of course, inevitable.  

The child, satisfied or else exhausted, soon slept in its mother’s hand.  It was too small for arms or even both hands.  Left to any mother other than the goddess of death, it would have already died.  Her powers would likely keep it alive, and all of its body’s systems, as long as she wished.  

Odin took a deep breath and spoke the irretrievable words.  

X 

Chills ran through Thor’s body as the realization hit.  “You didn’t actually -”  

“I think you can fill in the blanks, so I shall spare you that exchange, if you wish.  Suffice to say-”  

“You raped your own daughter until she got pregnant.  With me.”  

“We reached an arrangement that gave Asgard the heir it needed and allowed her to keep her child alive-”  

“Threatened her newborn baby to get her to comply.  That’s not her agreeing to anything.  It’s utter barbarism-”  Thor cut himself off.  Something was tugging at him, like an unscratched itch.  What had he heard, not long ago-  

“I did tell you you would want to kill me, and you may.  Once we’re done here.”  

It slipped away like a wet bar of soap.  Thor shrugged it off.  He would figure it out later.  

“Why is Loki still alive if it was so important to hide him?”  

“Things happen, Thor.  I do still have a soul.”  

“Let me guess, you murdered Hela, picked up Loki to kill him too, and then conveniently decided not to.  Because I need him.  Can’t imagine life without him.  I just want him back.”  

“I wish I could promise that.  But I have no way to guarantee anything.  Now the memories will remain intact long after my death.  We could skip to the end.”  

“No.”  Thor surprised himself with the intense bitterness in his voice.  “You don’t get to just skip over the parts you’re not proud of.  You deserve every bit of hatred I’m going to feel after what you did to her.”  

“Very well.”  

X 

After Odin left, Hela rolled upright, wincing in pain.  Come on.  Nothing you haven’t felt before.  And you’ve got that demonic creature to care for.  

It gurgled faintly, too weak and young to properly cry.  Probably just some immature variant of mama feed me or maybe this sucks .  

Which, let’s be real, it did.  

“I would like to make something quite clear,” she muttered as she dressed herself, an awkward balancing act considering the child lying over her heart.  “That is, welcome to life in Asgard’s palace.  Seriously, you are welcome to it.  I obviously don’t want it.”  

She rubbed the baby’s back with one finger.  Its lungs inflated slowly under her touch.  

“We lie about everything and everything, to everyone.  It’s this golden shell over a rotten heart.  Nothing is what it seems, and I hate it.  So, I want to be completely honest with you.”  

It couldn’t possibly understand her words, but it quieted anyway as if to listen.  

“I do not love you.”  

That made it flinch away.  Maybe it could understand.  

“I like feeling you alive, that something I created is alive, when I’m surrounded by all this death.  And I’m not supposed to be a mother, ever, just a weapon and a soldier.  So you’re a way for me to make my life something of my own.  And I know that’s not a good reason to have a baby, but I do have one.  You’re a miracle.  You break a few rules just by existing.  So I’ll protect you.  But, just so we’re clear, it’s not love.  I just- you deserve the truth.”  

“Oh, and I suppose you need food.”  

Hela’s barely-growing breasts took some persuasion in the form of spellwork to achieve their appointed task, but soon enough the child was happily nursing, with a gusto that surprised her.  Her offspring was just as spirited and defiant as she, and perhaps that feeling was pride.  

“You may as well be happy while you’re here, because it won’t be long.”  

That obviously didn’t translate into baby, since it made no sign of comprehension.  

“I made a bargain with my father.  I bear him a child, and he will not harm you while I live.  Of course, once it is born, he intends to kill us both and whatever afterlife we end up in, I will look after you forever.  I promise.  It’s not what you deserve, but it’s the best I could do.”  

The slash across her hand had already begun to heal, leaving behind only the sworn oath beyond it.  It hurt in a dull way, far beyond what other body parts had been through in the past few hours.  

To take her mind off of everything, Hela slipped into the passageway she’d made years before.  As far as she knew, it was unknown.  It linked her current chambers to the ones she’d used as a child.  There wasn’t much to them, but it should still hold what she needed.  

The spiral staircase took her down to her old nursery, lantern in one hand and nameless-towel-wrapped child in the other.  Doors opened at her approach, a detail of which she was irrationally proud.  

One room held all of the clothes and all else she must have used as a baby, not that she could remember much of those days.  A few toys seemed familiar, a boat and a dragon...  

A sling bound the baby to her chest as she gathered what seemed useful.  A few diapers, enchanted to adjust to the size of the child who wore them.  Clothing that did likewise, mostly on the order of a bag with arm and head holes.  A tiny crib to hold everything.  

Back in her own room, Hela set about bathing her newborn.  Despite the unorthodox genetics and early birth, the little girl was perfectly formed.  Everything where it was supposed to be.  

Washed, dressed, and sleeping, the small blue child slept in her new crib.  Hela cleaned the room with a few quick spells and tucked herself into bed.  Before extinguishing the lamps, she whispered to the sleeping child.  

“I will call you... Sylvie.”  

X 

“...I’m confused.”  

Odin chuckled.  “Loki has taken so many forms and names throughout the ages.  For most of your childhood, she was your sister.  Have you honestly forgotten?”  

“I suppose I never thought that much about it.  It’s not like I... looked all that closely.  Except then he managed to have a baby, so-”  

“Your sibling is a unique creature in the universe.  I would stop trying to put him in a box.”  

Thor’s laughter was cut short.  “What did you do with Hela.”  The lack of inflection suited the fact that it was a demand, not a request.  

Odin hesitated.  “I sealed her away where she would not cause problems for anyone.  She has not been suffering excessively.”  

“So she’s alive?”  

“As far as I know.  With powers like hers, she could keep herself alive as long as she wanted.”  

“Once, just once, to get a straight answer.”  

“Welcome to Asgard.”  

Chapter Text

Hela had fallen asleep, again.  That made sense, in a way.  It was likely she barely remembered what happened.  Perhaps he should adopt the same strategy if this kept up.  

Odin covered her with a blanket and turned to leave.  A wail from the corner of the room stopped him in his tracks.  

The child who’d become the crux of monumental trouble simply by existing was absolutely none of his concern.  If nothing else, he could at least give Hela her own child, to care for, for the brief time the two would live.  She could do what she liked with the little one, and with much else.  Her life was not all that terrible, on the whole.  

Or so he kept telling himself.  

Simple curiosity drew him to the tiny crib Hela must have pilfered from her old nursery.  Perhaps he wished to know what sort of power the child had over his daughter, that she would endure so much for its sake.  

To his surprise, the child lying in the crib looked like any other Aesir infant, although still smaller than a healthy newborn ought to have been.  Hela had dressed it in a cloth bag with arm and head holes.  A simple blanket half-covered it, bunched up and clutched in one hand.  Had Hela changed its appearance, in case someone spotted it?  Or perhaps it was simply a wish for her offspring to resemble her.  

Odin’s hand reached out of its own accord and brushed the baby on its cheek.  It stirred without opening its eyes, one hand reaching out and wrapping three fingers around his smallest finger.  

You manipulative, deceitful, mix of a sorceress and an Ice Giant-   

“Get away from her!”  

Of course Hela had woken again.  She lunged at him, snatching the now-wailing baby to herself and conjuring a blade from somewhere.  Odin backed away from the crib, trying to pacify her, but to little purpose.  

“Don’t you touch her.  Ever.  She’s mine.  I’ve given you everything else.  Every single part of me.  You don’t get my baby while I’m alive.”  

Somewhere in Hela’s breathless, understandable tirade, Odin observed that the child was female.  He hadn’t even bothered to ask.  

“Hela, she was just crying.  I went to check on her.  I have no intention of harming her.”  

She scoffed at that, and he couldn’t really blame her.  He had tried to kill the child once, and still intended to complete the act after disposing of Hela.  But even if it worked this time, it would take so long to achieve the birth that he had a sneaking suspicion that- 

No, not around Hela.  She would know, and it was better she didn’t.  

Hela lifted her daughter from the crib and clutched her protectively.  “Get out of my room.”  

Odin nodded and left.  At the door, he turned back to ask, “Anything yet?”  

She shook her head.  “I told you.  I’ll know as soon as it happens.”  

“Remember, the sooner it does, the sooner this ends.”  

X 

The spell for fertility required an acorn that had never touched the ground.  As opposed to the one that required roasting one of Idun’s apples in the Eternal flame or the one that required the blood of a newborn.  The last being easy and harmless enough to filch from the healing rooms.  

Hela found herself at an odd intersection of wanting to conceive to end the daily act and knowing that doing so would start a countdown to death for both herself and Sylvie.  The latter being nestled in her usual place under Hela’s blouse, bound to her body in a sling.  Her typical elaborate clothing and a few spells served well to hide the odd bulge.  

Not that she spent all that much time in the public eye.  Odin had let it be known that she was abdicating her role as heir to the throne and would be married off to a prince from...  Somewhere.  Likely not even on the Nine Realms.  Any number of planets out there had compatible species and would benefit from an alliance.  

Of course, she wouldn’t actually be marrying anyone, or having much of a family.  Just throw a newborn baby at the last person on Asgard who should be raising one and head off on her one last adventure.  

Take the acorn to an utterly dark room, for which Hela’s closet sufficed.  Plant it in the dirt from under Idun’s apple trees, gathered entirely by hand.  Water from the edge of Asgard proved difficult to gather.  She’d lowered herself down via rope from the Bifrost with a flask.  

Sylvie had not enjoyed that experience.  For a child who refused to look at the world around her, she certainly had plenty to say about it.  By the time Hela clambered back up, the angry baby was lashing out against Hela’s concealment and silencing spells with every scrap of seidr she evidently possessed.  The obvious conclusion was that the terror of dangling over the Void had unlocked previously latent powers.  Those would develop, given time that mother and daughter did not have.  

A handmade clay pot and the light from a specific type of werelight completed the spell, and a new oak tree was beginning.  In secret, of course.  Hela rarely did anything known to the public these days.  

Until her courtship ball.  

X 

Formal announcements went out with three fortnights’ warning to those of the Nine Realms that were considered suitable.  It had often been theorized that the Aesir and the Vanir and a few others were variations on the same species, as evidenced by similar lifespans, powers, and overal aspect.  That they could intermarry and produce viable, fertile offspring served well to substantiate that hypothesis.  Recent events in the form of an undersized premature infant indicated that such may have been true of the Jotnar as well.  

All of which was to say, had Hela been in truth seeking a husband, she would have found herself with plenty of choice.  

Some time earlier, Hela had officially resigned her role as heir to the throne.  She would be married off to some foreign prince and conveniently disappear from Asgard for good.  Naturally, everyone would be told that she’d gone somewhere else, with someone else.  

Part of Hela wished it were real.  That she could have a proper family, one she could protect and raise and teach and show off to the world.  What kind of powers would her children develop?  Or would they?  Normal Aesir lacked elemental powers but could still fight and all else...  

And she’d given that all up for a helpless scrap that would live few minutes longer than she.  

Sylvie had been bathed, fed, and laid to sleep in her crib, guarded by every spell Hela could think of.  It’ll only be a few hours, little one , she’d said, and meant it.  Never in Sylvie’s entire life had she been so far from her mother.  

Feasting and dances came in turns, and a whole host of suitors.  Some had questions as to what she hoped to do in a future that would never come, children who would never even be conceived, days she would never see.  The mask slipped once or twice, and Hela found herself wishing more than anything that the festivities were over.  

One of the young men invited her to dance, and she acquiesced despite the knowledge that she was absolutely terrible at dancing.  Her missteps yielded laughter, which she joined in gladly.  This once, she could pass for a normal person enjoying life’s simple pleasures.  

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a cluster of young ladies standing near the drink table.  Had they come looking for those of the males that would be left over?  Or were they after her?  Such pairings were allowed, even codified if the partners so desired, but discouraged for the nobility for the obvious reason that children were expected-  

As if on cue, Sylvie reached out with her seidr, some sort of cry for help 

Which vanished as suddenly as it had begun 

Hela made some excuse and immediately hated herself for it.  Her daughter needed her, and that should have overruled any social concerns.  The two minutes it took her to extricate herself, she would regret for some time.  

X 

Halfway down the hallway, she felt it.  

Red-hot pain shot through her chest and sent her sprawling on the floor.  Tears were already streaming down her cheeks.  A nearby servant made to check on her, but Hela threw her off and scrabbled to her feet.  

Hold on, little one.  Amma’s coming.  I can help you.   

Her chambers felt horribly wrong as soon as she kicked the door down.  A quick spell slammed it shut behind her as she threw herself at the crib.  Too little, too late, of course.  Sylvie lay curled up around her favorite toy, returned to her original blue.  

Hela knew without checking that she was dead.  She’d been perfectly healthy hours previously.  Crib death, they called it.  There was no reason.  

Her arms reached out of their own accord, latched on to the baby, and began every healing spell she could think of.  

X 

Hela’s departure had not gone unnoticed.  Gossip spread like a coronavirus through the various nobles and commoners pretending to be nobles.  She’d made a selection.  A few selections, to be interviewed in private.  Auditions, even, conducted in her bedchamber.  One suitor had been too forward in his advances.  It was a test, to see who would go after her.  

Odin had his suspicions, and they hit harder than he would have thought.  

He slipped away soon enough, to confirm.  The door opened easily enough, and closed behind him of its own accord.  

Hela’s heartbreaking cries felt like a blow to the chest.  It shouldn’t have hurt.  He was supposed to kill both of them as soon as he achieved a healthy newborn from her.  He wasn’t supposed to care about them.  

Mechanically, he noted that those emotions were reasonable and quite likely the only reason enough children survived to keep each species going.  For all the good that was during something like this.  

Hela was curled up on the ground, her baby clutched to her chest.  Seidr poured from her into the child, but he could see it was useless.  This wasn’t an injury, or an illness.  

One trick came to mind, that he’d learned in preparation for Hela’s own birth.  Hela herself would have had no reason to learn it, not with her powers.  But should he?  

This was a turning point.  They could simply let what remained of the little one fade away, Hela would let go sooner or later, and go have a family of her own.  Something proper, that she could show to the world and healthy enough to leave for a few hours without them dying.  He would have to find a wife of his own, somehow make it work...  

“Papa?”  

At that moment, Hela was still the child she was, hoping her father would fix everything because that’s what fathers are supposed to do, and no nebulous future would outweigh the tiny creature that she’d created, that needed her and she wasn’t there-  

One tiny blue hand stuck out from the blanket, completely limp.  Why had she grabbed him with three fingers instead of all five?  A trace of personality, in a child that even now should still be inside her mother...  

Coward that he may well have been, he left the decision to her.  

“Hela, there’s something I can try.  If you want me to.”  She looked up at him, eyes already bloodshot.  Her hair, done up for the ball, had half-fallen out around her face.  Sometime in the scramble to get to the child, she’d ripped open the waist seam of her elegant green dress.  Nothing she couldn’t fix, given time.  Except the obvious problem that had spawned all else.  How much trouble could one tiny creature cause by simply existing?  

Hela relaxed, and held the baby out with all the pleading of a child with a broken toy.  Odin lifted it gently from her arms and laid it on the floor.  A few quick jabs with his knife removed the clothing, to which Hela flinched.  No matter.  This wasn’t going to be pleasant.  

One finger pressed down on the baby’s chest with all the force he dared.  A vague crunching could only have been ribs cracking.  Hela whimpered and clutched at her ribs.  Sympathetic pain?  That explained a lot.  

“She thought I abandoned her.”  

Odin opened the baby’s mouth.  His own covered most of its face as he breathed in as gently as he could manage.  The blue chest rose and fell accordingly.  

“I told her I didn’t love her, and she believed it.  She didn’t want to live anymore.  Please, Papa.  I just want her back.”  

Another round of compressions, breaths again.  At what point would he just give up, he’d done all that he could for the child, and her death was truly without guilt?  That would probably be for the best.  

All at once, Hela went limp, and the baby began to move again.  Relief crashed over Odin, drowning out the traces of frustration.  A little quiet fussing was the only sound that remained.  Proper wails were probably too painful.  

Some half-forgotten lullaby found its way to his lips, and the child quieted.  Then she reached out and grabbed one of his fingers with three of her own.  He actually smiled at that.  

“It’s alright, little one.  Your mother loves you.”  And so do I formed on his lips so strong he could taste it, but he would not let the words out.  

What was he to do now?  Drop the two off on Midgard, where no one seemed to care about the goings on on other Realms?  And then what?  The thought of finding another woman made him physically ill.  

No, he needed the child they’d been trying for.  There wasn’t much of a choice there.  It wasn’t like he could pass of the one they had as his heir.  People would look too closely.  

Some overriding instinct took over, and he kissed his granddaughter gently on the forehead.  She’d fallen asleep again.  Thank the Norns.  He turned to check on Hela.  

“How long have you been watching me?”  

“Long enough.”  

He opened his mouth as if to offer some sort of justification, but decided against it.  She held out her hands, and he gently deposited her baby in her arms.  

“Thank you,” she whispered.  Odin nodded, and took her into his arms.  For a moment, they simply sat together, him not daring to even think.  

Decisions already made and to be made later drove him to action.  Hela flinched away as one hand slipped inside her dress, over her womb.  He forced what spells he’d found into her, in the hope that this would be the last time.  

X 

“I suppose it took a while to get started, and even longer to admit it.”  Hela sat out on the balcony, Sylvie a warm weight in her arms.  Shouldn’t she retain her body heat better?  Perhaps once she were grown, or if her environment were sufficiently cold to warrant it.  

“I love you.  Possibly you are the only being I actually care for.  And I can’t just hand myself over like a Bilgesnipe for slaughter and leave you with no one to protect you.  But if I just ran away with you Odin would probably hunt us down and execute me for treason.  Except now, I’m wondering if he’d prefer that, so he doesn’t have to...”  

Or was that only Odin her father, who would never stand up for her against Odin the king?  

It took Hela far too long to realize that the stars she could no longer see were being shrouded by thunderclouds.  We should probably go inside.   

Clutching Sylvie to herself, she made to stand, until the baby reached out and poked her in the stomach.  “Hey, what was that f-”  

A brief glimpse of her reflection in the window, hair standing on end, shocked her to the core.  That couldn’t be right.  Was someone trying to invade her mind?  

One look at her fingers made her blood run cold.  Lightning bounced between them, stinging her skin.  She made to set Sylvie down, only to fall to the ground, unable to move coherently.  

All at once, a massive bolt of electricity shot from her belly and into the sky.  Dimly, she noted a few admiring exclamations from the city.  As if Asgardians did anything without making a spectacular show of it.  

Tears already forcing themselves down her face, Hela laid a hand over her womb.  

Hello, little one.   

X 

“So...”  

“And that’s where you come in.”  

Chapter Text

He pictures it, sometimes, how it should have gone.  Hela half-clothed, starved, and distraught.  Himself, well-accustomed to killing and utterly ruthless, unburdened by troublesome emotions.  The child, nothing but a scrap to be disposed of.  

Hela is confused, but does not struggle as he takes her into his arms.  This is a mercy, for both of them.  She’s half gone already, as if the life were ripped violently out of her.  

Well, to be fair, it had been.  

He slides her down into the filthy water and holds the two of them under without hesitation or doubt.  This will end the problems in short order.  

She makes a pretense of struggling, as the token battle to enter Valhalla.  What of the child?  Where do the ones too young to fight go?  His own son among them.  

By the time he thinks that far, the two have left on their own adventure.  At least, that’s what he tells himself.  

But of course, he would have to explain Hela’s disappearance and find a new child, and that obviously outweighs any sense of mercy because if he dies without an heir Asgard will descend into chaos and how many of the Midgardians have died for the same reason and Aesir simply do not reproduce quickly enough for such things-  

He supposes, on the balance, that only his pathological obedience to the ends justify the means has kept the two alive this long.  

X 

“What did you do with her?”  

“I want to see your face when you figure it out.”  

X 

No amount of spellwork made the slightest difference.  To touch anything metal, and plenty of things that were not, was to shock herself painfully.  Gloves worked sometimes, but to not touch things built herself up with such a charge that her hair would stand on end.  A few invented spells served to change its color, or make it curl beautifully, but nothing that would keep it under control.  

Odin left one day, telling her the night before that she would be serving as regent.  That he would trust her with such a thing caught her off-guard, but of course, he would soon be back to rectify any mistakes.  She therefore erred on the side of mercy.  Executions of the type Odin had so frequently handed out, with her as the instrument thereof, could not be overruled. 

Soon enough, she realized it felt good, to grant a chance at life instead of simply enacting death.  Wasn’t that all she had done, grant life to the children she carried?  One in her womb, one in a sling hidden under her cloak.  No one seemed to notice.  That she kept one hand on her throne to avoid the electrical buildup was dismissed as a show of strength.  But of course, the lightning child within her would be born and Sylvie would grow too large to hide- 

Hela tried not to remember that her daughter would never walk, talk, cast a spell in earnest, wield a blade.  The second child, a mystery yet already wielding its own powers with all the uncontrolled enthusiasm expected of a child, spelled death for the first as well as its own mother.  Ah, but that’s not the little one’s fault, it’s Odin’s...   

He returned in time, bringing with him an odd mix of relief and regret.  

“I have a gift for you,” he announced over a welcome-back feast.  “From Nidavellir.”  

“A... hammer?”  

“Forged in the heart of a dying star.  It will channel your new powers.”  

Skeptical, Hela nonetheless took it.  Lightning shot through her hand, out the hammer, and up into the open sky overhead.  The child within her flared.  So, a little god of thunder and lightning.   The old one had died in the war with Vanaheim.  Lacking a host to keep the two under control, they’d been running amok.  Lightning out of a clear blue sky had killed at least a dozen, and sparked countless fires.  That was just on Asgard.  No one could say of the other Realms.  Asgard had a way of creating what it needed.  

Power of that sort required a host to function correctly.  What would happen to death, when she met her own?  Some new child, born to a dying peasant woman after the death of its father, to scream in anguish 

Asgard celebrated her weapon, dubbed Mjolnir, and what she did with it far more than the ever had her.  A few paintings on the ceiling that she already knew would conveniently disappear marked the last times she appeared before Asgard’s people.  Her “wedding” would be a private affair, followed by her permanent departure.  All her would-be suitors had been told that she would wed someone else.  

Would Odin even bother with a funeral, she wondered, her body and Sylvie’s blazing into the void under an assumed identity?  She hadn’t even told him the name she’d chosen for her daughter.  That was just for the two of them.  

X 

The child was undeniably growing.  

However small it was, its life force shot through Hela at the slightest provocation.  Mjolnir helped somewhat, but several times a day she would have to slick her hair down with water to keep it under control.  

Sylvie paid no attention to her sibling-induced death date, but ate and cried and did everything else expected of such a child.  She grew, albeit slowly, but there was one thing that never changed, no matter what spells Hela tried.  

She never opened her eyes.  

Records of infants born too soon indicated that few survived if their eyes were unopened at birth.  That had surprised her.  What possible purpose did it serve, to open one’s eyes in the womb?  There was nothing to be seen, and nothing to do about any danger if one did see it.  

All Hela had wanted, once, was to see her daughter’s eyes before they both died.  But of course, that feeling by its very nature could never last.  Sylvie deserved to live.  She clearly wanted to, feeling and tasting and listening to whatever new toys Hela found her.  

Case in point: Hela had placed her in her crib between two tiny amulets.  The only difference was the color, and that the orange one was simply a wooden figure while the green bore a charm for luck.  Sylvie latched on to the green almost immediately, tucking it under her cheek as a pillow.  

The pocket dimension remained inaccessible to Hela, but her favorite backpack served with the addition of an extension spell.  Every book that could prove useful or even entertaining was tied shut and dropped in unceremoniously.  What clothing of hers was unobtrusive, and all the baby supplies she could lay hands on followed them in, along with various weapons and as much currency she could pilfer unnoticed.  It would have to be enough.  She picked up Mjolnir and bounced it into her hand.  

Out of concern that Odin may have been listening, she refused to consciously formulate a plan.  She could only prepare, and hope- 

A lurching from within her jolted her out of whatever she wasn’t thinking.  They’d reached quickening, then.  “You never got that far,” she muttered to Sylvie, picking up the same.  “Can you feel your sibling?”  

Another kick and Sylvie bounced on Hela’s rounding womb.  Then she kicked back .  

“Oh dear,” Hela mused.  “You’re already fighting and he’s not even born.”  

Shocker, pun intended.  

X 

“Why am I not surprised?”  

“Because you’re catching on.”  

“Actually, I think I figured out what happened somewhere with her changing her appearance.  Shall we finish?”  

X 

Either Odin had broken down her defenses, or he was simply playing the odds.  Either way, Hela found herself unable to leave her chambers.  They were spacious, and contained everything she needed, and she could sit out on the balcony as she wished.  No one bothered her.  She could read and cast a few spells and play with Sylvie.  

One spell that she could not find would be to loop a day so she would never have to do anything else.  These days would have been perfect if not for their inevitable progression towards an end she could no longer accept.  

The spell that bound her in her golden prison was easy enough to detect.  All that was required to break it was a drop of blood.  

Which had to be why Odin had prevented her from any sort of self-harm.  After days nonstop of trying to rationalize, she’d even tried drawing blood from her daughter, teeth to arm.  That, too, was prevented.  Perhaps it had occurred to Odin that she would follow her mother’s example.  

She’d raided the memory basin once, after he refused to explain her origins one too many times.  It hadn’t shocked her even at the time, but she’d never thought his machinations would be aimed at her ...  

Squeeze 

That was not a practice contraction.  

X 

Odin finds her in the garden, the portal she thought to escape through only feet away.  

“Did you honestly think you could just-”  

“I escaped you once, didn’t I?”  

Hela is in no shape for a fight, he can see that at a glance.  It is clear enough to him that she is moments away from birthing the new god or goddess of thunder.  But she has a pack full of whatever and her weapons belt strapped to her, and a child to protect.  

“How did you get out of there?”  

“Blood magic.  I’m in labor.  It happens.”  She held up a hand streaked with bloody water.  

On the balance, there were some things that only a man would fail to anticipate.  

“Hela, I can’t just let you run off to wreak-”  Odin cut himself off.  “Let’s get the baby out, then we’ll talk.  You know perfectly well you shouldn’t go world-walking while in labor.  That’s not safe for any of you.”  

“I wasn’t going to.”  Hela hit the ground hard as Odin helped her undress.  “I was just going to put it in the grass and disappear.”  Her necroswords he laid carefully on the grass next to her pack.  The baby wailed from inside the pack.  He undid it, lifted the child out, and held her for a few moments.  Again with the three fingers around his own.  

“Still hasn’t opened her eyes yet?”  

Hela scoffed.  “Pick one.  Do you care about her or not?”  

“I think you know I do.  Perhaps we even realized it at the same time.”  He set the blanket-wrapped infant down as gently as he could manage.  She was still so small.  How much of that was her early birth, and how much her unorthodox heritage?  

“Let’s get you delivered safely, and then we’ll talk.  You’ve got a decision to make.”  

Odin was many things, but if he’d ever had the stomach to actually follow through on the plan to kill the two of them, he’d lost it somewhere with a premature baby girl who only used three of her fingers.  Perhaps she didn’t think he deserved all five.  

That kid was pretty darn smart.  

Hela knelt in the grass, slapping his hands away as he sought to examine her.  “Lay off.  Neither of us will be dying from this.”  

“That doesn’t mean you have to do this yourself.  This is my responsibility, to both of you.”  

“Fine, fine.  Make yourself feel better if you want.”  

Odin felt her womb as gently as he could manage.  The bulge on top moved at a touch.  

“You know it’s breech, right?”  

“I noticed.  I’ve been learning spells to check on things.”  

Odin sighed and sat back.  “All three of you, and not one managed to be born correctly.  You-”  

Another contraction hit, and Hela and her daughter whimpered in unison.  That, Odin chose to ignore.  Something weird was going on with them.  

The body slid halfway out in a wet rush.  A boy.  Thank the Norns.  His youngest child would never have to go through what Hela had endured.  

One more push, except that ended up being several one-more-pushes, and the child was in his arms, screaming in protest at every single one of the Nine Realms.  Odin let out a filthy expletive as electricity shot through him.  Was that really what Hela had been putting up with for so long?  

Hela had already cut the cord and made for her older, but still smaller child.  “Hela, wait.  We need to talk.”  

“I won’t cause problems.  You’ve already found a way to make me vanish.”  

Odin held out his son as an offering.  “Do you want to hold him?”  

Hela flinched but only laid one hand on her baby.  With a shrug, Odin set his own down next to her.  A dusting of blonde hair, baby-blue eyes.  No obvious deformities, which was something of a miracle all things considered.  

“I don’t know if you considered trying to kill me, but I wouldn’t blame you for it.  You may try, if you like.  Trial by combat is something of a tradition.”  

This, too, he can picture easily.  Hela trading her daughter for her blades and coming at him with the fury of Helheim.  Would he even fight back, if she tried to kill him?  Death might be preferable, but he’d hoped for some time to redeem himself before facing judgement.  If she defeated him, she could take his face and rule as him with two children to follow and few would question it.  

X 

“So...”  

“Not what you’re thinking, but you’re getting close.”  

“...oh.”  

X 

“Ah, but I do not want the throne.  I never wanted the throne.”  

“Of course there’s always the original plan, but I think you and I both know that will not be happening.  Which leaves what you’ve no doubt been planning.  You take the girl and leave, to whatever life you can make for yourself.”  

“I didn’t even think about it.”  

“You didn’t have to.  It is the obvious solution to everything.  I would have from you a blood oath that neither of you would return to Asgard.  Preferably, you would not seek to leave whichever of the Realms you chose as your new home.  I’m not having you slip in and out like the palace is some sort of wayvarers’ house.”  

“Looks more like a brothel lately.”  

Zing, and not even the lightning power.   

“I have an offer you may as well consider.”  

He does not know what she wishes.  She’s bonded well with one child, but seems disinterested in the second.  She’s been planning to abandon it, perhaps, and wants to make a clean break.  

“What if I already know what you’re going to ask?”  

Silence stretched between them, broken only by the wind and the babies’ faint noises.  Hela spoke first, voice more full of scorn than his son was of thunder.  

“I know the situation in which you have placed yourself.  You finally have the son and heir you so desperately needed.  But what now?  What’s to say this one will be the perfect crown prince any more than I was?  And what will Asgard think?  They’ll doubt he’s yours.  I’ve heard what they said about me.  That I’m some sort of soulless demon you formed from the dust and brought to life with the Eternal Flame.”  

“You’re not, as you well know.  I can tell when someone’s been at the memory basin.”  

“I know you’re too much a coward to kill someone who can and will fight back.  You lead your armies from the back, make everyone kill everyone else when both sides of a war are only doing what their leaders say.  The only time you held a weapon that entire war was when you went after Laufey and you couldn’t even kill him.”  

“That was tactical.  Forcing him to surrender ended the war.  Killing him would have left the Jotuns out for revenge.”  

“You couldn’t look at me and kill me.  You wouldn’t even kill her without my permission .  Just a pathetic coward content to sit on a throne and watch the world burn.  For all you whine and complain of the burden of the throne, you actually deserve it.  To be bound in everything you do, say, think to maintain this golden face of perfection.  Which requires an explanation for the child, of course.”  

“There is one obvious and logical conclusion that fixes most of the problems.”  

“I know.  You find some woman to present to Asgard as your wife and the mother of your child.  And of course, you’ve cast me for the starring role in your little staged life.  Ties up all the loose ends and lets you maintain control over me.  And you’ve made me say it instead of you so it’s not you forcing me into it.”  

“I will not force you.  You are free to take your daughter and go, as previously stated.  But if you wish to remain on Asgard, to raise both of your children as your own, that would be allowed.  I have seen you change your appearance, and the child’s.  Doubtless you can maintain that.  And of course, I would promise to never touch you without your permission.  In fact, I’ll do that in any case if you like.”  

“Total coward.  You can’t even manage that without casting a spell to stop yourself.”  

How exactly did she have that ability, to tear him apart so thoroughly?  The spell is cast quickly enough, another cut across each of their hands but no reciprocity this time.  Hela adds the caveat that he be able to save her life if need be, and the covenant is struck.  Odin bandages his hand and turns to check on the now-quiet children.  

“Oh.”  Hela’s voice is full of wonder as she reaches for them.  “She’s finally opened her eyes.”  

The children have curled up together, with the girl’s brilliant green eyes fixed on her brother’s face.  Uncle’s?  Their family tree is more twisted than Yggdrasil.  

Hela has delivered the placenta and dressed herself by the time he stops watching them.  He can guess her answer, but to confirm it, lifts their son from the ground and holds him out to her.  

“What’s it to be, Hela?”  

“Give him to me.”  

He does, and feels oddly like a wife handing her husband a child that may or may not be his, but he has accepted anyway.  Justice takes a back seat to the needs of the next generation.  

“It’s not for you.  It’s for them.”  

“Do you agree, then?”  

“I do.”  

X 

“She tried to tell me.  I don’t know if she remembered much of it or not.  I asked her why she never had more children, and it was like it touched a memory that she didn’t want.”  

“That’s not surprising.”  

X 

He reaches for her, and is stopped inches away by an invisible barrier.  The smirk on Hela’s face, he already knows, will show up again from at least one of the children.  After a moment, she nods and the barrier crumbles.  He plants a kiss on her forehear, does the same with the boy in her arms.  After some hesitation, he repeats the process with the girl he is now to call his daughter.  There is nothing left in him but love for all three, stained though it is by what has been done.  He hopes, in time, they will heal.  

X 

“Has it?”  

“It felt better, for a while.  But after what happened with Loki, it’s like I’ve done nothing but harm all three of you.”  

“So fix it.  Bring Hela back.  Heal Loki.  Cast that spell you told me about.”  

“One more memory before we do.”  

X 

Thor knows what the last memories will tell him, but watches nonetheless.  

Odin goes to check on his new happy family, and is greeted by a smirking Frigga.  She must have taken her dead mother’s face from his memories.  Of course she did.  No one will recognize her but Odin, who will have to face every single day what he’s done to mother and daughter.  The name is identical too, and why wouldn’t it be?  The old Frigga’s husband died in the war with Jotunheim.  No one will notice.  

The wedding ceremony and Frigga’s coronation, he has seen already in the paintings and a memory she shared with him.  That it was a show put on to make certain he would grow up with a mother and a brother turned the whole memory a different color.  Some mix of red anger and warm love and blue sorrow.  

On their name day, Thor is announced as the heir with his small twin, Loki, of course a few hours younger.  Better her true paternity stays hidden under the shroud of obscurity.  There are of course whispers that the children were born too quickly after the wedding.  Asgard has caught their king and queen in a lie.  They will be satisfied with that, and not seek another.  

Asgard loves their new prince, barely notices the princess.  Only centuries later did Odin realize to what extent.  Even when whatever it was happened and the children were brothers instead of brother and sister, no one seemed to notice.  That Loki felt overlooked was perhaps an inevitable result.  And yet, few to none of the fears that had nearly drowned Odin in the early days ever came to fruition.  How close had he come to murdering two innocent children for nothing?  As if murder, by definition, were ever worth it.  

The exact moment of the switch, no one could pin down.  It wasn’t as if Loki changed all that much.  The onset of adolescence simply brought a masculine body instead of a feminine one, and no one seemed to question that.  The last Odin could remember of the little girl, she’d been playing with a dragon and a Valkyrie- 

As if that mattered.  Such things were Loki’s concern.  There were far more important matters to concern Odin.  Crowning a new king would at last relieve him of the burdens that had long since overwhelmed him.  Then, perhaps, he could rest.  

Then they come to Frigga’s death, but it cannot be Hela’s death, because what is dead may never die.  There is something left of her somewhere, waiting to be retrieved.   

X 

“More important matters, were they?”  

“I have failed all three of you, obviously.  Let me make amends.”  

“So how do we get her back?  And what do we have to do to fix Loki?”  

“Whatever is left of your mother is his best hope.  I will do nothing but die.  Asgard is enchanted to retrieve all claimants to the throne and bring them together on the death of each reigning monarch.  By tradition, any battles must be fought individually, to avoid unnecessary deaths.  Once it resolves, one way or another, then the formal announcement is made.”  

“Unless you’re actively dying and haven’t told me, I think I found a flaw in your plan.”  

Odin nodded.  “Remember how I said you would want to kill me?”  

“... oh .”  

“And unless you’ve got something else to ask me, you had better do it now.”  

Chapter Text

Mjolnir slipped from Thor's grasp and would not return. That made little sense. He'd only done what was requested of him. Perhaps that were itself the problem. He was meant to rule Asgard and make decisions that would affect entire planets. Was he as much a coward as Odin?

Nothing had happened yet. Wherever Hela was, it wasn't here. Give her a few minutes before starting to panic. Odin is still twitching a bit. The spell can't kick in until he's properly gone, must be.

He hadn't been out for revenge, even for Loki or his mother. Part of it had been mercy, perhaps. Or a desire to escape having to either condone or condemn what his father had done. Or was it just the greed of wanting his brother back?

Unworthy

He could hear Odin's muttered spell when being ejected to Midgard, and again on getting his powers back. It never made much sense, on the balance.

Something crashed into him like a wave of seidr

X

Loki is unharmed, but exasperated.

That his brother's condition is his first observation, Thor counts to his own credit.

The two are walking towards the edge of a cliff. Odin sits on a rock, gazing into the distance.

He tells them a very different story from what the memories have shown. That Hela grew violent and had to be locked away. But she will return, on his death. Which happens almost immediately, after a claim of love that Odin will never follow through on and calling them "my sons" one last time as if they were his possessions and nothing else.

How does he still care for this man?

Hela arrives, and almost instantly tries to kill him. Or he tries to kill her. That part's a little fuzzy. But on some level he is the same untested youth who started a near-war because his solution to everything was to smash it with a hammer, and he can readily believe that he would start a war with a sister he'd only just met.

In what the Midgardians called an Uno Reverse, Hela smashes Mjolnir and smirks at him. Loki panics and calls for the Bifrost, but the two are quickly thrown out and into a galactic garbage heap. After that, it's a bit of a blur, but at the end, Loki has vanished, Hela has ripped out his eye, her undead soldiers are overrunning the few survivors from Asgard's population crowded onto some sort of spaceship...

Then Asgard is in pieces, with nothing left recognizable.

The dream fades, and Thor is left wondering what exactly made the difference.

X

She arrives in a blur of black and green, and that seems appropriate.

"You must be Hela."

Hela has aged somewhat since Odin's last memories, but still so young and scared he feels the same protective fire that Loki often awakens in him. For her part, his mother or sister or whatever it is he's supposed to call her says nothing, only narrows her eyes at him suspiciously.

Then Odin makes some sound, and Thor curses internally. He'd been inefficient in the act after all. But that is fitting. Death should not come too quickly.

"I'm Thor, son of Odin."

"You don't look like him."

Well of course not. He's gone grey with age, lost an eye, and had his head smashed in. Not that I want to look like him anymore.

The two of them froze as Odin twitched slightly and gurgled as if to speak. Kill me properly this time? I'm sorry? I hid the Infinity Gauntlet in the-?

Hela glared down at Odin with an expression that could have meant anything. Maybe she wanted to kill him herself. Maybe she shared Thor's urge to castrate him just to make sure. Maybe there was a part of her that wanted to comfort him.

In the end, they did none of those. They simply watched as their father gasped a few final times before lying still. Then Hela turned to Thor.

Before he could do more than open his mouth, she had him pinned to the wall, dagger at his throat.

"Wait-"

What little air Thor could get into himself smelled oddly reminiscent of the kitchens growing up, when he and Loki used to sneak in and "tactically acquire" food-

Milk. It was milk. And it was coming from Hela, come to think of it. Something about that seemed badly wrong. Or wonderfully right.

"Where are they?"

"Who-" Thor could barely choke out the word.

Finally it clicked. Classic Thor, figuring things out too late. Loki would have anticipated the problem. On the balance, it would have been better if they'd switched places.

Oh. She means I don't look like the baby she expected to see, because she doesn't remember the years in between. So she thinks I'm an imposter, which explains why she wants to kill me and is therefore endeavoring to do exactly that. If she even cared about me back then. She'd been trying to abandon me and run away with Loki, so maybe not. Come to think of it, she won't recognize him, either. She's looking for a baby girl named Sylvie, not a grown man named Loki-

Hela flings him to the ground with more strength than makes any sense. She is smaller than either him or Loki. But that does not matter.

"Hela, I need- Loki's hurt. I'll give you the throne if you help him. If you want that. Or whatever else you want. Please just save him."

Part of him wonders if she even heard him. She turns to Odin, lying on the ground.

"I did that. He told me it would bring you back and you might be able to help Loki. That's what I'm willing to do for him."

Hela scoffs, but does look at Loki for a few moments. "He feels like death," she mutters, at least that's what he thinks she says.

Then she notices the crib in the corner, and Loki's daughter encased in ice. Thor had completely forgotten about her, and he immediately decides that Loki will never know. Hela lays one hand on the ice, looking for something? Does she think the nameless infant is the one she's looking for? Or has she decided that Odin killed her and accordingly wants to burn Asgard down for it?

"That's Loki's daughter. The Dark Elves killed her a few days ago. I think. It's been a weird few days. They've kind of run together."

"What- when is this?" The odd question raises so many more. She's forgotten most if not all of the time she was his mother. That she still smells of milk, perhaps even her body has reverted. Or, and this makes a certain amount of sense, the woman in the room has only the memories Frigga tried to erase, which were full of anger and trauma and pain.

Asgard keeps track of years from the start of each king's reign. Only the first century is celebrated, sometimes five or ten if things are going well.

"Odin's been ruling for some two thousand years. I've been around for about fifteen hundred of them. I think maybe you've lost some memories of what happened in between."

"You don't know me."

But I do he wants to say. He's touched her memories and seen most of her life and grown up with some version of her as a mother-

Except none of that matters to her. She most likely does not even remember falling in love with her own daughter. There is nothing left of the mother they loved.

Upon realizing that, Thor makes a plan. Scheming is Loki's strength, not Thor's. Strength is his strength, but he does the best he can. Hela is suffering, and has a motive to kill everyone on Asgard, and most likely the capacity to do so. All of which are reasons to kill her. Give this creature, whoever she is, whatever it takes to get her to fix Loki. Wait for her to fix Loki. Then kill her, somehow. Preferably before Loki even realizes she exists. That would lead to so many questions that should not be answered.

Of course, he will never tell Loki what exactly lead to the two of them existing, let alone being raised as princes of Asgard. The half-truth of Loki's Jotun parentage tore him apart. If he can get Hela to fix the baby somehow, Loki should manage. Even if not, they still have each other.

Then of course he would have to put the memories of the past few days in that vapid basin and find a way to destroy it so they will never ever know what became of their mother.

That he is turning into his father, Thor notes with a healthy sense of poetry.

X

Years later, when Thor works up the courage to tell his brother about his dream, he will learn that the dreams came far more often to Loki. That the only difference was that a tiny embryo belonging to three different species lived long enough to be known instead of bleeding out after one too many injuries, and Odin realizing that there had to be more to the story, that Loki would never have willingly placed his child at the center of an invasion.

The plan that never even sprouted, let alone bore fruit, he will keep to himself to his dying day.

X

"Hela, what is it you want?"

She hesitates, as if unsure herself. Thor runs through the possibilities: the throne, never thinking about the throne again, getting to rule for a day occasionally, offering her Loki or his daughter as a companion, as if either is an object to be traded.

He catches a glimpse of his own hand, and for a split second fancies he can see each of the cells in his body. They'd learned about genetics once, and he dully wonders how many of his are identical. No obvious problems came to mind, sickly in his childhood or any such thing, but it seemed like something should be wrong with him, somewhere in there.

Skipping ahead a bit, he wondered if he and Jane could have children.

He tries another tactic. "What's the last thing you remember?"

That yields results, though not what he'd hoped. Hela slams him to the ground, one hand on his forehead.

X

The room disappears again, replaced by the bathroom where Loki was so violently born. Hela is nearly naked, sitting in a bathtub half-full of bloody water. Loki is a blue scrap in her left elbow, her right hand cupping his head.

Thor assumes this picks up where Odin's memories completely skipped.

"Hela, there isn't a good way for this to end. It's best we just get it over with. Then you can clean up, get some sleep, and food, and you don't have to think about this ever again."

Hela scoffs at that. For a split second, she actually looks at her child, and does not seem to like what she sees.

"I know you've seen a lot of deaths. And I'm sure there are plenty of times where it has come as a relief."

One quick blow of an axe as a way of paying for a murder. Joining a treasonous group that demanded loyalty and sacrifice with no way to get out save dying. Being horrifically wounded and captured by enemies that could not care less how they treat prisoners. Tumors throughout the body that no amount of Asgard's best medicine could remove.

Something shifts in Hela's demeanor, that looks like giving up. Odin reaches for the baby, but she pulls away.

"Don't you touch her. I'll do it myself."

"Hela, you shouldn't have to-"

"You've made me take how many lives, and you're drawing the line here?"

Odin couldn't argue that, apparently. He handed over the dagger into her outstretched hand with an air of relief.

Hela took it with a shudder, not looking. It was an instrument of death. Just how far did her powers reach?

The mistake proved itself obvious in seconds, as Hela plunged the dagger into her own chest. Out and in and out and in again so quickly he could not stop her. He slammed healing spells into her, trying to keep her alive. The baby was screaming.

The balance of Hela's self-destruction and Odin's seidr struggled for a few moments, but ultimately he won out. Today was not her day to die. She gasped for air by reflex as he stitched her flesh together, her pain draining away in keeping with the fading wails of the child she seemed to love so much. Both were now in his arms, slippery on the wet tile.

The only sound from either father or daughter was the occasional expletive, formed from anger and frustration and flung at each other like daggers.

"Hela, I didn't mean you." The attempt at humor fell as flat as anyone would expect. Hela slipped to the floor as he held her, and closed her eyes.

"That's how much I mean it." Her voice was as dull as the death that surrounded her every waking moment.

Within the memory, Thor could practically see the gears turning in his father's head. How to broach the subject without casting himself a villain. As if he weren't already.

"Hela, if you wish to die with the child, that can be arranged. But Asgard requires an heir to the throne. I will not live forever, and someone must inherit the throne."

What Odin is suggesting has not sunk in just yet, Thor can tell. There is a lack of suitable outrage on Hela's part.

Odin lays one hand over his daughter's womb, still contracting painfully to recover from the preterm birth, and she at once realizes what he means to do. She slaps his hand away with surprising strength and scrabbles to her feet.

"No. That's beyond wrong."

"It's the price of it, Hela. Pick one. But we need to settle this now."

"It won't work. I've only just given birth." Here she scoffs, as what happened does not rate the term. "We're related. It wouldn't be healthy."

"Then give me the baby."

In the end, of course, it's not much of a choice.

Hela nods once, opening her legs slightly. Odin has the grace to wrap the baby in a towel and set it safely in the corner before they begin.

After that, it's nothing but pain.

X

Something in Hela has clicked.

"That's what- you- you're the-"

Thor nods. "My name is Thor. I don't know if you named me or what. And that's Loki, in the bed. He's hurt. Can you help him?"

Hela is gasping for air, drowning, he assumes, in the depths of her mislabeled memories. But she makes her way to her feet, to Loki. Thor follows her silently, hoping.

Loki has lost most of the Asgardian glamour, or is that all? He should only look halfway.

Hela presses her forehead to his, and Loki seems to breathe easier. Then she moves to the wound in his chest.

"What happened here?"

"Some Dark Elf weapon. He was protecting me."

"Do better."

That hurt, and it shouldn't have. She isn't his mother, not really. She's everything Frigga tried to lock away. She has no call to be proud or disappointed in him.

Hela lays her hand on the wound. Correction: in the wound. Then it keeps going. The physics involved make no sense to Thor, but she is death and Loki is nearly dead and maybe it works somewhere in there. She's buried both arms shoulder-deep in her son by the time Thor has to look away.

Something black bursts through the room, and Thor hits the ground hard. Whatever. That makes about as much sense as everything in these past few days.

When he regains his senses, Hela lies utterly still on the floor near the bed. He cannot see whether she breathes, and it means nothing to him anyway.

Loki stirs slightly, back to his normal appearance, as Thor crawls into bed with him. He will live, that is obvious. That's all he needs.

Sleep crashes over him like a long-overdue rainstorm.

Chapter Text

Loki felt good .  

The lack of pain could only mean that he’d died and found his way to wherever it was he was going.  Somewhere nice, apparently.  The split second he’d opened his eyes before slamming them shut again looked bright gold.  

Breathing had to be by habit.  He couldn’t actually be alive.  Not after something like that.  

The snoring beside him took a few minutes to be recognized for what it was.  Thor, sleeping.  Was he dead, too?  At least they would be together, but Thor wasn’t supposed to die, ever.  

That Loki’s hand poking him in the ribcage -he lacked a dagger for his immediate reaction- yielded a few half-conscious whines that led to some questions about his initial assumption.  

Someone else was in the room.  

That realization hit out of nowhere.  Had he picked that up from Frigga?  She’d always known who was in the room-  

Climbing out of bed brought with it jabs of lingering pain.  Alive, then.  So be it.  It was what it was.  He probably needed time to heal on his own.  

For a moment, he thought it was his own dead body lying on the floor.  

One touch on her shoulder to roll her over brought with it the spark of life.  Absurdly, she felt more like Frigga than anything else.  

“Who are you?”  

The woman rolls to her feet, breathing hard.  Her eyes take a moment to focus on him.  

“I’m Hela.  I’m your sister.”  

The lie was blatant, but he decided against calling her out on it in favor of checking on his daughter.  No change.  

“Do you- is there anything you can do for her?”  His voice was barely above a whisper, driven by some unfounded hope.  

“Bring her and come with me.”  

X 

Thor awoke utterly alone.  A quick glance revealed even Loki’s daughter was gone.  

Hela had once wanted to grab Loki -Sylvie- and just vanish completely.  Perhaps she had done that.  If she could fix the baby, Loki would love her forever.  

“Heimdall?  Can you see any of them?”  

Asgard’s gatekeeper responded with a few brief glimpses of three generations of ill-conceived Asgardians slipping through one of Loki’s portals with no signs of distress.  That would have to be enough.  They would find a way to contact him when they wished.  

X 

Outside the picture window, the suns set in a blaze of gold and red.  

Jane had a few questions.  

“Do you have seasons every time you orbit both planets, or just the one?  Actually, do you even have seasons?  If we have a kid, will they be Asgardian?  Can we even have a kid?  Hey, if I’m really an Aesir now, does that mean I’m a goddess of something?”  

“Goddess of curiosity, maybe.”  

“How does that work, anyway?  Do you just vote on a new god of whatever when the old one dies?”  

“There are aspects to the universe that require a host.  If the host for one dies, a new one is conceived in short order.  Then there are some where it is not required, but one shows up every now and then.  It’s rare, but not unheard-of, for an adult to gain powers.  As for children, well...”  

“There’s one way to find out?”  

“Yep.  That.”  

X 

The two had at last worked themselves to sleep when the commotion woke them.  Specifically, running feet could be heard throughout the palace and a servant pounding at the door.  

“Hello?  Is anyone in there?  Something is happening to everyone-”  

Thor donned a robe with a speed Jane realized probably meant this wasn’t the first time.  Never mind.  He’d had a lot longer and it wasn’t her first time, either.  

“What’s happening?”  

“I don’t know.  But people are falling to pieces all over the place and I can’t find my family and everything is chaos-”  

Something clicked on.  Thor turned to Jane, already knowing what had happened.  

“Jane, what did they do with the Aether?”  

Jane blinked, trying to think.  “They had it in a box and put it in the Vault, I think.  Could someone have gotten to it?”  

“It’s not just the Aether.”  Dawning comprehension darkened Thor’s features.  “The Tesseract and that scepter were in there, too.”  

“ Oh. ”  

“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess someone found the other three.  They must have broken in while Odin and I were lost in the memories.  That’s the only way this makes sense.  Loki mentioned it once, I think, wiping out half of all life.  Maybe I should ask him-”  

Thor broke off as he realized there was no way of knowing if his brother had even survived.  Jane made a half-hearted attempt to cheer him up.  

“Midgard, we have a problem.”  

X 

Jane and Sif, newly appointed as envoys, arrived at Stark Tower.  A scattering of Avengers and someone called the Ancient One dissected every scrap of information they had, and reached the inevitable conclusion.  Someone, somehow, had gathered all six Infinity Stones, and used them to disintegrate half of all life.  

Regrettably, they’d never pushed Loki for straightforward answers as to who exactly it had been, or where.  Thor claimed he’d meant to ask later, but later never came and with everything Loki had been through, those were not memories to call up lightly.  

A few suggestions that Loki may have used the chaos to hide his escape were met with dismissal.  His daughter had been spotted a few times, revived and grown a few years within minutes and roaming the empty lands of Helheim.  Thor intended to check on her as soon as things stabilized.  He couldn’t fathom Loki abandoning her for anything less than returning to Asgard.  Unless, of course, he’d had no choice.  

Hela was a complete mystery, as ever.  Nothing had been seen of her.  Thor assumed she’d lived long enough to revive the baby, but then what?  

The only resolution achieved was to stay in touch, and keep an eye out for any sign of Infinity Stones.  Everyone would come back, somehow, they all insisted, but they needed the Stones for that.  It had a certain logic.  Unfortunately, said Stones remained missing.  

X 

Royal weddings were typically a grand affair -Asgardians rarely did anything any way but spectacularly- but considering the number of families halved or obliterated by recent events, it seemed inappropriate.  What were the odds that both Thor and Jane had survived?  

Blessed by the Norns they may have been, and certainly that sense increased with the proof positive, as Jane called it, that they could indeed have children.  Thor tried to be grateful for everything they had, but somewhere in the back of his head he couldn’t help but wondering if, given the choice, he would have traded everything just to get Loki back.  

On the balance, he was relieved he did not have the choice.  

Legal documents were drawn up and certified, and that was all.  Thor had once had some hope of a spectacular wedding and everyone to celebrate, much like the coronation that never was, but he’d lost all taste for it.  Perhaps later, once everyone vanished had returned.  

He was beginning to doubt such a day would ever come.  

X 

With Jane acclimated to life on Asgard and serving as regent, Thor Bifrosted to Helheim.  He couldn’t stay for long, that was obvious.  His life force was tangibly draining away with every moment.  

The child appeared before him in an instant.  She looked more like Hela than anything else, black hair and pale skin, but something reminded him of Loki.  Grand entrances and demanding attention.  

“Oh, hello.”  

“It’s Hel .”  After a moment of confusion on his part, he realized that was her way of introducing herself.  Loki must have named her after his mother.  

“I’m Thor.  I’m your uncle.”  

Hel nodded.  “Mother mentioned you.  He wanted to go back home after a while, so we said goodbye.  But he didn’t make it back.  A lot of people vanished.”  

Mother had to be Loki.  No stranger, on the balance, than the fact that Hel was his niece and great-niece, or that Hela was both mother and sister to them both, in a way.  Most crushing was the confirmation that Loki was gone in all forms.  

“What about Hela?  Was she here?  I think you’re named after her.”  

“She brought me back, but not completely.  I have to stay here.  But look!”  

Hel reached into thin air and grabbed a hand.  A little boy appeared out of nowhere and she pulled him into a rough hug.  

“This is my brother.  We have a lot of little friends we have to look after.  All the lost children.”  

The first one Loki lost.  Baldr.  Hela’s older siblings.  Worlds upon worlds of children lost to misfortunes of biology or happenstance or parental rejection.  And now, thanks to Loki and unwitting assistance from Chitauri and Dark Elves, they had a mother.  Big sister?  Guardian?  Whatever she was supposed to be, a mix of three different races, had nowhere to belong anyway.  Perhaps this was for the best.  

There was no time left.  Thor departed with a hug and a reminder that she could call Heimdall if she needed help, ever, with anything.  

X 

Jane’s time came during the midsummer festival.  Things were going well, and Asgard needed something to celebrate.  

The healers insisted someone assist the birth, and neither Thor nor Jane objected.  All things considered, it would be good to have a witness.  Thor himself did not attend.  He doubted he could force himself to watch.  Centuries of battle, of glorious death and maiming and everything else supposedly sentient creatures could do to each other when they put their minds to it and he still couldn’t watch a child be born.  Too many images of it going wrong bounced around his head, ready to knock him out at a moment’s notice.  

Thor had told Jane little of the memories.  Hela he could not avoid, and something of her powers.  Hel, she thought a pleasant addition to the universe.  Her own concept of an afterlife was a bit nebulous, Midgard’s wide range of faiths meeting her respect for science and its failure to measure anything past death.  Loki, she’d liked during their brief acquaintance.  

If either of his wayward siblings ever returned, Thor managed some optimism for what their lives together could be like.  They could serve as regent in turns if he and Jane wanted to go somewhere nice or if Midgard were invaded again.  Loki could go back to spending years at a time in the library.  Hela he could see becoming a healer, or a priest, or whatever she wanted.  Both of them would doubtless corrupt his and Jane’s child whenever they weren’t around, which was perfectly normal.  

As if the thought summoned her, one of the Healers approached with a smile on her face.  

“Jane and your son will see you now.”  

X 

Arkyn, they called him.  There were no obvious powers.  Those would come later, if they did.  

The happy toddler greeted the entirety of Asgard at his formal presentation with happy shouts and waves and attempts at walking.  He learned everything by doing , always doing things.  It took a small army of attendants to keep him occupied and not actively flinging himself from the Bifrost.  On the balance, he couldn’t have been all that different from either parent as a child.  

Life moved on for everyone in the circle of skirmishes and victories and a small incident on Midgard.  Something to do with multiverses.  That was beyond Thor’s understanding.  

Occasionally he visited Midgard and even brought the family once or twice.  Metal Man had his own wife and daughter, growing so much faster than his own.  The sparks that light the fires that make their world go around burn up so quickly.  

Jane finding the Aether had given him a proper wife at the expense of his mother, his brother, and half of the universe.  At least she wouldn’t burn out her lifespan at both ends before he could blink twice.  

Mother.  Loki.  A sister who’d raised him yet he barely knew.  His father immediately after the loss of all respect for him.  And yet, he was expected to shun friendship with mortals because they died too soon.  It made no sense.  

X 

Arkyn turned five on a glorious summer day, as was entirely appropriate.  Enough time had passed that Asgard could properly celebrate.  

Midgard had made fewer laps around its sun, and at odd times.  That was one thing Thor couldn’t quite pin down.  Loki would have been better at calculating that sort of thing.  Mix the two together and Midgardians get maybe a fiftieth of the summers that Thor could hope for.  

But today was Asgard, and feasting, and celebrating his son’s unsteady steps and half-formed words.  Jane tried to keep him on her lap long enough to feed him, but it was a fruitless endeavor.  Nor was food much of a motivator when he could grab food off the serving plates or be handed one by just about anyone in the hall.  

Thor knew for a fact that he had been no different at that age.  

He was mulling over how best to broach the subject of another child to Jane when a commotion broke through the general clamour.  A new arrival?  

Hope didn’t sprout , as such, but it put out roots, and a tiny shoot began to push its way slowly towards the sun.  

For a wild moment, he dared to hope that the figure was Loki.  But no, of course not.  His sister, and he knows at once she will never claim to be his mother, has finally seen fit to return.  

X 

The crowd quiets almost instantly, as if holding its collective breath.  Hela looks up at him, ready for a fight if it comes to that.  

Does anyone recognize her, remember her?  The princess who left quietly for a life of her own has at last returned.  A few of the older ones can place her.  

Eternity or heartbeats pass while Thor and Hela lock eyes.  Then Hela drops to one knee, right hand clasped to her chest.  

“My king.”  

Thor softens, reaches his hands out, and pulls her to her feet.  The tension is broken.  

Only then does anyone notice the small child hiding underneath Hela’s cape.  

X 

“His name is Bjorn.”  

The sun had dipped below the horizon for a single hour.  Twilight blanketed Asgard in a soft embrace.  Thor, Jane, Hela, and the two children had retired to a private dining room to talk things over.  Oblivious to the adults’ conversation, 

“After Loki and I got his daughter settled, we found some wayfarer’s house on Vanaheim and had a nice long conversation about everything.  Or a lot of things.”  

Hela took a sip of whatever she’d decided to drink, as if to stall for time.  

“He said I felt like his mother.  The woman who raised him, that is.  That feels right, but why can’t I remember any of it?”  

Thor shrugged.  “I think you packed away all your memories when you went to raise us.  That part of you died at the hands of a Dark Elf.  I suppose you’ll probably never get those memories back.  But that’s fine.  We’ll make new ones.”  

“But I am your sister .  That’s what everyone knows.  That’s what you should call me.”  

Perhaps that is enough.  

Bjorn climbs up into Hela’s lap and falls asleep in her arms almost instantly.  Thor asks no questions, but something of his curiosity must be obvious or else purely the reasonable assumption, all things considered.  

“Loki and I noticed we’d each lost two children, in a way.  We even noticed that none of the children came about through our own intentions.  So, and I don’t remember who as we were fairly drunk at the time, we made some sort of a pact.  We each find a way to make a baby happen, then raise them together.  There was some idea of returning to Asgard, but only when we were ready.”  

“So, Bjorn’s father-”  

Hela shrugged.  “I suppose there is one, but the odds are, he’s vanished with everyone else.  I woke up alone, again, and realized I couldn’t feel Loki anymore, and then that I could feel Bjorn.  Well, he didn’t have a name yet.  Then people were running around screaming about people disintegrating, so I just ran.  I haven’t seen Loki since.”  

Silence reigned until the sun rose again, bathing the world with warm light.  

If only Loki would come back, Thor thought his life would be absolutely perfect.