Work Text:
bright star
by fallfromstars
June 13, 2012
{For Kelcie }
Loki Laufeyson has brought back the latest in tributes from Jötunheimr; he had only needed to speak his true father’s name and show his sword and his wife’s knife before they had bent their knees to him, not wishing for another war or the Bifrost aimed at the heart of their world. When he crosses the valley of the dead that claw at him in Vanaheimr and rises up the cliff that holds their home, he can hear the voices of his sons, Nari and Váli, who are now seven and five winters old. For all the rush that hearing his fanfare gives him, for all the joy in conquest and submission from others, there is never quite a welcome like the one he finds when he rejoins his sons here.
Every day they look more and more like him, and they bob at his legs as he enters their home, not content to move from him until he has bestowed a kiss on their foreheads and he has placed rare jötunn treasures in their hands.
For Nari, he has conjured a small square toy in similar shape to his own larger Tesseract, a small charm encased in a box that will trick and twist and delight, and his son chirps happily to have a new toy to play with. For Váli, he has fashioned a spear in the fashion of the jötunn warriors that he may use to prepare for his bright and terrible future, and with a wild screech, Váli breaks from his father’s arms to chase after his brother in the woods.
He has only removed his helmet and tugged at his cape before Váli returns, holding his spear behind his back. The toy weapon is taller than he is, Loki realizes, and for a moment, he wants the tyrannical flow of time to stop until he remembers that Váli may yet inherit someday.
“...I almost forgot,” Váli says shyly, as if he is sharing a secret. He points towards the room he shares with his wife. “Mother’s brought the baby home, Father.”
“Has she now?” Loki asks, bending his knees until he is only as tall as his son. “And is this baby your new brother or your new sister?”
Váli purses his lips before bursting into a smile. “She’s my sister!” he says cheerfully. “She’s so pretty, Father. You should go see her.”
And just as quickly as he came, his son is gone, as of yet unburdened, as of yet free.
A daughter. He had prepared for wars and conquests, claimed Sigyn from the remote corners of a prison cell, had taken her and sired sons upon her, and he had meant to make her Yggdrasil Queen, to stay by his side forever.
But he had never expected her to bear him a daughter.
When he enters their chambers, the first thing he notices is the grey pallor in Sigyn's face. The babe is at her breast, having just finished suckling, and though there is exhaustion in his wife’s eyes, she still has a smile for her newest child. She looks up at him and gives him a smile too, and while she makes to stand, he holds up a hand as he lays his staff against the wall.
“Please,” he says. “Jötunheimr is not so far away that I cannot walk to my own bed to see my new daughter.” He presses a chaste kiss on Sigyn’s lips even as his new child squirms and fusses beneath him. Sigyn breaks away from her husband’s lips to coo at her baby, and places their daughter’s head between her breasts so she might face him.
“Greet your father, dearest,” Sigyn tells her softly, running a finger over her cheek, soft as velvet. The girl stares at him with eyes that are more hazel than green, slightly darker than his, and he realizes now why Váli said his new sister was so beautiful.
She is the exact image of her mother, with dark hair and sharp eyes and soft edges, and he decides then he will not need to expose her to the Tesseract to discover if jötunn-skin lies beneath her, as he had done with his sons.
The baby lets out a messy giggle as a greeting, blowing a few bubbles out of her mouth onto her bottom lip. Sigyn laughs in return, though Loki notes the undertone of exhaustion in her voice. His wife pops a bubble with a finger and then runs it down her husband’s cheek.
“There, her first kiss for you,” she says softly, and though she tries to hide it, a yawn stretches her mouth, and he wonders when she last slept.
Before he can even think, his arms are outstretched to take the child in his arms. Sigyn wraps a panel of her dress over her nursing breast, eyes still focused on her daughter even as Loki brings her silken sheet around her and smooths her hair.
“Sigyn,” he asks quietly, tangling his hand around a curl on his wife’s neck, “what is her name?”
“Asfrid,” his wife says quietly, half-asleep, and everything about her is run ragged. He plants a kiss on her head, and he turns from her then, letting Sigyn fall unburdened into sleep and focusing on his new daughter.
After tilting her head at him, Asfrid takes a hold of her father’s hair, and pulls hard enough to make Loki wince in pain, even if it is a small pain.
“Stop that,” he tells her sternly, smoothing back his hair, but then he notices her face scrunch up, as if she means to cry.
He imitates Sigyn’s cooing and shushing immediately, and though he thinks he sounds completely ridiculous, it seems to appease the babe, who then nestles her head against a soft spot of leather in his armor.
He is careful with her, so careful. With the boys he had been sure they would survive any accident or rough handling, and when Sigyn was awake and by his side, he knew he could always look at her, model what to do with children. But she is sleeping now, and the first words he’s said to his daughter have already been rejected. He sighs heavily, as if the entire weight of the universe is nothing compared to this child, and he speaks to her again.
“Asfrid is your name, is it?” he asks quietly, and she splays one of her small hands against the gold that rounds his neck. “Your mother named you well. You truly are beautiful.”
Asfrid turns her head to look at him, and he laughs quietly. “Do you know who I am, dear girl? I am Loki Laufeyson, your father, the rightful King of all the Nine Realms. Before you are grown, I mean to have them all by one throne. Your mother and I shall win the universe and make you a princess, and when you are of age, it will come your turn to be Yggdrasil Queen.”
Sigyn would have an eye into the future, a proper vision to go with this to whisper to her child, but Loki has not been given such gifts, and for all his magic and power, foresight is not one of them; he must rely on his wife for that. He has only knowledge of the burden of his calling, the weight of destiny pushing against him, and the feeling of falling through a black hole and coming out the other side smiling. And he intends to share that much.
“I cannot promise you that it will be easy. To be a king--” He catches himself, and smiles.
“To be a ruler is no easy task, Asfrid.” He thinks of his initial failures in Asgard and Midgard, of stern Odinson eyes, of all Asgard turned against him. “There will come days when no one wishes you to lead them, when the love you seek is nowhere to be found.”
He looks at Sigyn breathing softly in sleep, remembering the first day he saw her again, that cornered smile as he was condemned.
“But you must continue on, especially when all the universe wishes you to stop. You will be hated by some because of my name, and I cannot take that burden from you. But I will teach you how to make that hatred your strength, and the ways men will fall before you, and there shall be none so feared in the universe as your brothers--and you.”
Asfrid only gazes at him, her mouth wrapped around part of her wrist. He smiles at her.
“I suppose I can tell you again later,” he decides aloud, and he sits beside his slumbering wife, and thinks that he has never been more at peace, more surrounded by light, than he is now by the two of them.
Sigyn has rendered him eternal by bearing his children, rendered him a king by screaming as she cut his foes down on the field, and spun love around him like silver magic of the sweetest kind.
And his sons had given him a chance to prove himself a great man, to extend his legacy even if he should be struck down, and establish himself as ruler forever in style if not in name.
But then there is Asfrid, a bright star within his arms, the sight on the other side of the black hole as he fell from the Bifrost; he sees that star now contained in a babe, and he supposes he shall never see anything more beautiful than her small fist against the battered battle-gold on his armor.
You are the brightest star I will ever see, he thinks as he places a soft kiss on her brow, and the brightest star that all shall ever see.
For you are Asfrid Lokisdóttir, and there shall never be another star such as you.