fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: interlude (ii).

[mekosuchinae]

Interlude.

The queen sat at her loom, but the shuttles were still and silent, the threads strung only a suggestion of what she might make of them. Her hands rested folded together in her lap, and she looked to them where they lay. What fading light showed through the tall windows caught like fire in her golden curls.

Thor stood at the door to his mother's great, empty hall. Like a child trespassing in a sacred place, he could not bring himself to enter. The quiet oppressed. His mother's grief filled the arching vaults, the shadowed corners, the open spaces which the windows welcomed, and in her grief he remembered, though he had not forgot, his own grief. Here in Frigg's court, the absence of Loki made everything dim.

"Mother," he said.

The queen lifted her head. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her face was pinched. She did not weep. In all his life Thor had never seen the queen's eyes clouded with tears.

"Oh, Thor," she said. "I didn't know you were there. Please, come in. Don't linger so. The doorway will close around you."

Her levity fell flat. Frigg turned to her loom. As he crossed to her, she touched the strings, dragging her fingers across them as across the belly of a harp. No other chair accompanied her. Loki, who had liked to surprise the queen at her work, would have conjured one to sit at her side.

Thor stood at her shoulder. He did not know what to say to her. The stupidity of his tongue choked his throat.

Frigg drew her fingers over the strings again. Then she lowered her hand.

"It's so strange," she said. "Now that I've peace, I can't seem to work. I look for tangles, but there are no tangles."

"I am-" Thor swallowed. Clumsy in his armor, he knelt beside her. He covered her hands with his own. "I am sorry, Mother."

She turned her hands over to catch his. Gently, she squeezed his fingers. "Oh, what do you have to be sorry for?"

Loki, hanging from the end of the scepter as the Bifröst fell beneath them, as the bridge which had united the realms collapsed. He had been so close. If Thor had pulled- If he had caught him-

"I let him fall," said Thor.

"There was nothing you could do," said the queen. "It isn't your fault Loki fell."

A shadow bloomed in her face. She looked from him. Thor could not read Frigg as Loki had; as children, this perceived closeness had given Thor cause to envy Loki. But: he was not so obtuse as to not see the guilt in his mother's sorrow. He clasped her hands and leaned toward her, his face turned up to the queen's bent head.

"The responsibility is mine," he said urgently. "If blame must fall, let it fall on me. I should have understood him better."

"It isn't yours to bear," said Frigg. She drew her hand free and rested it lightly on his wrist. "If Loki turned on you," and if he'd Loki's gift for understanding Frigg perhaps he would have known if the way her eyes closed at this meant she did not believe Loki had turned, "it was not on your account.

"I loved him," she said suddenly. She looked into Thor's eyes then and her expression was fierce, fiercer than any such look he had ever seen his graceful, serene mother bear. "He was my son, and I loved him. But now I think I did not love him well."

"Mother-"

Thor made to rise. Her hand on his wrist tightened, clutching his arm, holding him there.

"The truth is out," she said. "Loki knows it. You are his brother, and so you should know as well."

"What?" He looked up to his mother, his beautiful mother whose hands were worn with years of weaving, years of tending to her sons and to the throne. "What truth?"

His mother the queen lifted her hand and touched his cheek, as she had not since he was a child. Thor had not wanted for his mother's comfort as Loki, so often given to crying, had. Now she offered it and he did not know why.

Her lashes dropped. When they rose again, her eyes glimmered oddly.

"Oh, Thor," she said. "Your father and I-we did not mean to do a terrible thing. But I'm afraid we have."

"What is it?" It came out near to a shout. Thor swallowed. "Are you ill?"

"Listen," his mother commanded. Her fingers on his cheek were light; they did not tremble. "You were only a newborn babe when the last of the great wars ended. You wouldn't remember how your father returned from Jötunheimr with another babe."

Thor held tightly to her hand. Her face was pale but set.

"I don't understand," he said.

"We named him Loki," she said, "and we called him Odinson."

*
Thor threw open the doors to his father's private rooms and stormed in without invitation or preamble. Odin looked up from his papers. Firelight glinting off the gold walls shone in his hair, his eye, his face, off his patch. He looked ringed with fire, righteous with its power and its strength, which was his own.

"Why did you lie?" Thor shouted. "You should have told us the truth!"

"Is there a reason why you have broken into my chambers?" asked Odin mildly. Thor knew it to be a lie. "Why you accost me as I work?"

Thor would not be silent. He bore down upon his father. Like Loki with a blade, he threw it at his father: "Loki is of the jötnar!"

A change came over Odin. His eye closed. Thor thought, for one unspeakable moment, Odin meant to turn his face away. Then he opened his eye again and he said to Thor,

"So your mother has told you."

"As she should have years before!"

Thor paced before his father's desk. His hands worked, tightening into fists and then easing only to tighten again. He wanted to break his father's desk in two, tear the tapestries from the walls, throw all of them at his father and see his father bow his head.

"How could you not tell us? How could you have hidden this from us?"

"I thought only to protect you," said Odin. "You were but babes, both of you, and the war had only just ended. Should I have presented him to our people as a jötunn? Do you think they would have welcomed him?"

Thor slammed his hands down upon Odin's desk. A jar of writing implements fell from the corner. His father stared unblinking up at him.

"You should have told us!" Thor snarled. "You should have taught Loki not to fear or hate the jötunn when you knew he was one!"

Odin rose then, and though Thor stood taller than his father and had stood taller for years unnumbered, he remembered what it had been to be a child and small and guilty beneath his father's eye.

"Loki was jötunn," said Odin, "but he was of Asgard, too. What I did, I did for the future of both our worlds. He was Laufey's son and heir to the throne of Jötunheimr. If he knew Asgard, if he cared for it-"

"Enough of your plans!" Thor roared. "Enough of your lessons! Loki is no more a piece on your gameboard than I! And if you had remembered this, perhaps he would not have tried to destroy Jötunheimr."

"You would lecture me on responsibility?" Odin thundered. He rose higher still; he filled the room with his fury and his power.

"I would call you for what you are!"

"I had thought you had learned humility," said Odin, cold as winter, "but it would appear you did not."

"And what will you do?" demanded Thor. "Will you cast me out again, with the Bifröst broken? Will you strip me of my titles? Of the throne? I am the last son you have, Father."

"Get out of my presence," said Odin. He raised his chin. His eye shone, a cold star made distant. "You will not speak to me again."

"Only if you will not speak to me," said Thor.

He made to turn then stopped. His father was small behind his desk, but he was proud, proud as Thor was proud. He would not bow his head. He would not acknowledge fault or weakness. He had never done so.

"I told you once not long ago there would never be a better father than you," Thor said. "I was wrong to say it."

"Begone," said Odin, and his voice rang off the walls, the ceiling, Thor's bones.

Thor turned from Odin then. Mjolnirr was heavy at his side; it dragged at his hip and weighed him down. His brother had fallen and he had thought himself at fault. Thor would have torn the doors to his father's rooms from their hinges and thrown them at him. Then he thought of Jane, and instead, he looked over his shoulder.

Odin remained, standing, unbent and unyielding and blind to the little grief which showed in the lines of his face. Even in his own anger at Odin, Thor felt something like sorrow wash over him for his prideful father, all-seeing and yet blind to that which was nearest to him.

"Loki lives," Thor said to Odin. "Sif has gone in search of him. I don't think it likely he will return to us."

And Odin bowed his head.

Thor left his father there, alone in his chambers.

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