Fic: A Mother's Love (Frigga-centric)

[bookishwench]

“I will not do this thing,” Frigga said, her voice angry yet quiet since she had no desire to wake the Jotun baby sleeping in her arms.

“Why? Does his ancestry repulse you too much to love him?” Odin asked.

“Of course not,” Frigga said. “I will love him and care for him as if he were my own child, but I will not lie to him about his adoption.”

“You will do as your king commands,” Odin said, a growl starting to underlie his tone.

“I will not,” she said, carefully putting the child into Thor’s old cradle. “In years to come, this lie is destined to harm him. If we are honest from the beginning, he will know there is no shame in his adoption.”

“But that is precisely what I do want, Frigga,” Odin said, stepping closer to her. “I want him to understand that the Jotuns are savage brutes, incapable of love, kindness, or honor. He will grow up thinking of himself as Aesir, disdainful of any other realm and loving Asgard as his rightful home.”

“And when the time comes that he must be told? What then?” Frigga said, her eyes flashing.

“Then he will belong only to us. He might be a Jotun, but he will loathe them and what they stand for. The spell I have cast over him makes him look like the Aesir, though the Jotun still lies beneath. When at last his true flesh is revealed, beneath it will be nothing but Aesir. He will sit on the throne of Jotunheim as Laufey’s heir when their king dies, but he will be loyal to Asgard, not Jotunheim. He will hand that realm and its inhabitants over to me.”

“You would warp him to hate his own people, then one day himself, so that you can at last take over a frozen kingdom you despise?” Frigga said, fury turning her cheeks crimson and magic crackling from her palms. “He is nothing but a pawn to you.”

“Chess is an admirable game, Frigga,” Odin said. “The aim is to capture the king, and as you can see, I have already done so, for he lies in that cradle. He is mine to do with as I please, for it is my mercy that has kept him alive. For that, he will owe me his life.”

“And again, I say I will not do this thing,” Frigga said, her hands balling into fists. “What you want is wrong, Odin. He is not a playing piece to be moved about on the board of your lust for conquest!”

“Yes, he is, but I do have another option for him if you insist upon your refusal,” Odin said, and though his voice was calm, his remaining eye was deadly grim. “Do you remember hearing I was married before?”

“I do,” Frigga said, suspicion coming into her eyes, “but none speak of your first wife.”

“She died,” Odin said. “It was long ago, eons before you were born, but childbirth claimed her life.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Frigga said, but she was frowning at not one but two revelations Odin had just uttered. “What of her child?”

“My eldest,” Odin said. “She and I were inseparable.”

“A daughter?” Frigga asked. “But you have no other child. Thor is your firstborn. You have said so yourself often.”

“I lied,” Odin said, giving her a smile with no humor behind it. “You see, Hela—that is her name— predates Thor by several thousand years.”

“Then why has no one ever told me of her?” Frigga asked, starting to feel very cold. Her eyes flicked to the child, still sleeping innocently in his cradle, oblivious to the world.

“She grew too powerful,” Odin said, sitting in a chair by the fire and keeping his eyes on her while placing himself between her and the baby. “She was the goddess of death, you see, so she made a wonderful ally in my conquests until at last I realized she too wanted to rule. I knew that soon she would be too strong for me to prevent her from killing me and taking all of the Nine Realms. So I put a stop to her.”

“You killed your own child?” Frigga said, horrified.

“Of course not,” Odin said. “I have read enough of the ancient stories to know filicide never goes unpunished by the gods in one way or another, even if the child is an adult. No, I imprisoned her. She is still very much alive. Perhaps you would like to meet her?”

Frigga knew he was trying to frighten her, and truthfully, it was working, but she refused to back down.

“If it pleases you, then yes, I would,” Frigga said.

“Very well,” Odin said, and in a moment his own magic had grabbed her and pulled her away.

Frigga was hurtled through darkness upon darkness, an emptiness like a universe devoid of stars, cold enough to burn and vacant enough to cause madness. This was true nothing, and no living thing was ever meant to be surrounded by it. She tried to scream, but sound was gone, replaced with endless wind, stealing her voice and threatening to crush her mind with the certainty of absolute oblivion.

As her eyes searched about her wildly for something, anything, she saw at a great distance the outline of a figure, like the difference between onyx and utter darkness. It took on form: a woman, tall, with long black hair whipping around her face. Frigga could not see her properly, but Odin conjured a single spark in the palm of his hand and threw it at his daughter, and by its light, Frigga saw a face contorted with agony. Hela was not merely in pain. She had become pain itself. It was torture beyond a body, beyond a mind or even a soul. It was utter and complete destruction over and over again, eternally, with no hope of freedom.

“Frigga,” Odin’s voice said with a mockery of politeness, “this is Hela. Hela, my wife Frigga. I assure you, my daughter would greet you if she could find a voice to do so, but over thousands of years in this place, her concept of reality has been torn to shreds.”

Frigga abruptly found herself standing back in the nursery again. She toppled to the ground, clutching a hand to her heart and gasping for breath.

“Whatever she has done, that is not justice,” she said, looking up at Odin. “How is it no one remembers her?”

“The generation that would have known her is gone,” Odin said. “I removed their ability to tell their children a word of what had passed, and they died as soon as there were enough replacements to continue our civilization.”

“You killed them to hide your shame?”

“I suppose so, but I feel my choice was the best one even now,” Odin said, smiling at her before his expression grew dark again, “and if you tell that Jotun child one word of his parentage, say anything to contradict my plan, I will know of it. As that will mean he would be of no further use to me, and I do not keep useless things in my house, I would simply put him with his adopted sister. The choice is entirely yours, Frigga.”

She glared at him, angry beyond anything she had ever felt before, but she also knew he was in earnest.

“I will say nothing to him,” Frigga said. “You have my word.”

“Good,” Odin said, rising from his chair.

“But if Thor is to be your firstborn, know that Loki will be your last child,” Frigga said. “I will bear no more heirs for you.”

“Thor is enough,” Odin said, “and there are always other women, if I wish. Do as you please, at least for now.”

Odin turned and left, closing the door behind him and leaving Frigga alone with her new child. She went to the cradle and studied him, wondering if anyone else could suspect what lay beneath the baby’s peaceful, content face. She gently picked him up, waking him, and he wailed in infant outrage until she held him close, unwilling to let him remain anywhere but her own arms.

“Whatever Odin says, wherever you come from, you are my son, Loki, and I am your mother,” she vowed to him. “Perhaps in time he will come to love you in his own way, but whatever the future may hold, know that I will protect you with my life even as I would Thor. I swear to you, though your father has destined you to learn hate, I will teach you what it means to be loved.”

The child gradually quieted in her arms, his fingers closing around this mother’s thumb as she softly sang him a lullaby, rocking him by the fireside until he fell asleep once more.

Frigga kept her promises. All of them.