ideals, desires, and truths - for ofsilvertongue

[belovedone]

As far as most subjects of the Realm Eternal believed, their queen’s concerns began and ended with bearing healthy royal heirs, standing staunchly by while her husband went off to war, and making certain she always looked presentable and elegant.

But there was more to being an effective queen than being a pretty bauble or a smiling silent supporter.

Or so Frigga thought. And far more good she could do for her realm otherwise.

While the All-Father crafted peace and prosperity with tools of war and power, his wife worked behind the scenes, sometimes entirely without his knowledge. And there, her tools were not magic or blades but diplomacy, tact and charm. They were words.

Words like those she had been sending out in letters for the last three centuries, secret correspondence with people her husband had no idea she even knew.

With a realm that most were forbidden to even communicate with directly.

‘Tis better, as many a wise man said, to ask for forgiveness than permission. If her husband knew what she proposed he would have stopped her before she even had a chance to begin, dismissing it angrily as a fool’s errand. Impossible, and thus never giving her opportunity to prove otherwise.

But the truce they had with Jotunheim was more a stranglehold than a partnership. And Frigga would much rather replace it with a better one. One forged, perhaps, through an old standby when it came to the shoring of nations and the building of empires: the ties of kinship and unity offered by an advantageous political marriage.

She had started the venture carefully. Waited until the wounds of defeat were no longer so raw, a hundred years and more after the last battle – when her children were still little more than that.

But Frigga had foresight, and she was looking to the future. And this plan if it came to fruition, she knew, would take a long time.

A very, very long time.

First she’d done her best to forge relationships, find those she thought she could rely on to provide her with honest and accurate information. With so much bitterness and lack of trust awaiting her, it seemed this step took the longest of all. Once the lines of communication were open she learnt everything she could of the current noble families among the Jotun.

Who had the most power, land, titles. Who was most connected to the throne; who was most loyal to the throne, not always the same thing.

Who had children of an age with her sons. And of these, what were their attributes, their temperaments?

From this list collected at last, through the years she winnowed her options down cannily and with a firm judicious hand.

Thor would be king one day. He was expected to be allowed his own choice of bride when that time came. And it would be unthinkable to most that their ruler be partnered to anything other than fellow Asgardian.

But the House of Odin was blessed with another child.

And it was a cynical but very true fact that in these particular types of schemes and negotiations, extra princes and princesses could be very…useful.

Now here was hoping the child that’d been used as a bartering chip without his knowledge could, once presented with the tale, somehow come to view it in that light.

It was a warm spring day on Asgard. The view outside the large arched window offered sights of flowering trees and chirping birds, and when the gentle breeze blew it carried a faint scent of natural perfume. Normally on a day like this, Frigga would have liked to move any visits or discussions onto the balcony, or maybe even the courtyard.

But she didn’t dare. Right now privacy was favored; it was vitally important there be not even the slightest chance anyone would overhear them.

And she had the nagging thought that for the conversation she planned, at some point after they began talking, there might end up being a raised voice or two.

Unable to remain seated she walked the floor slowly, anticipating her son at any moment.

She was still trying to organize her thoughts and plan her words, deciding how would be best to begin.

On a table near her sat a small chest made out of beautifully-forged silver metal, inlaid with dark stones. It was large enough it would have to be lifted with two hands, big enough it could hold something the size of a very thick leather-bound book inside. At a glance it was clearly very valuable. But it would look strange to most Asgardian eyes, for the craftsmanship was clearly foreign, and unfamiliar.

Frigga glanced at it while she waited for Loki’s arrival.

Comments

[belovedone]

It took her a moment to reply -- well, half a moment, maybe. She didn't need time at all to think on her words. She had only to catch her breath after it was taken away by the betrayed hostility his words revealed. The horror he felt at what she offered him.

She knew the way things were in Asgard. She was no fool. She knew the stories the children of Loki's generation, raised after the wartime, would grow up hearing. But she had somehow entertained the desperate notion that maybe it wouldn't be this bad.

That somehow Loki, with his heart, with his cleverness, would have looked past the stories to the truth.

Of course it seemed that had not happened at all.

And now it was up to her to try and fix damage that might well be past mending.

"No," she replied in a soft murmur that grew stronger all the while as she spoke, and all of it shot through with deepest earnest. "Not at all. That is the furthest thing from what I intended. I am truly and deeply sorry if that's what my plans have made you think."

[ofsilvertongue]

The Jotun were hardly a race that Loki had grown to view with anything but a distant distaste. Their world was glaringly different to that of Asgard, a civilization more primitive than refined. His knowledge of it, while limited, was still enough to tell him he wanted no part of such an affiliation.

"Does Father know?" He doesn't want her apologies. He doesn't want her mending the situation to soothe his emotions at what could only be considered a most offensive offer. "Is he aware of the allies you are trying to win?"

Loki would bet that the All-Father had been kept as much in the dark as he himself was. The war won was not done so easily and Odin felt no love that Loki could see for the inhabitants of Jotunheim.

"Or were you intending to educate him on the nature of your plans only after my bride had already departed Jotunheim?"

[belovedone]

"He has no idea." Her words came calmly, her posture unbroken, unbowed. She laced her fingers in front of her, arms hanging straight. "I chose to keep my king in the dark for all this, until my attempt at negotiations could be finalized. He doesn't even know of any of the communications I've had with the people on that realm. Your father is a wise man...but he fought the Jotun as a soldier. He is used to them being unwilling to communicate through any language but war."

Odin had both his pride and his suspicions. The only truce he thought could be trusted was the one that'd been forged with his boot at Laufey's throat.

She couldn't entirely fault his wisdom. It was a dangerous game she dabbled in here. But neither realm could grow if all that passed between them was hostility. She thought it well worth the risk for the chance at better peace.

She finished, "I thought it best to wait until the proof was already in hand before I told him. It would make it...easier to accept." She couldn't help it that the look she gave him turned faintly hopeful. "I was going to go to him, after first I spoke to you."

There was a knot in her throat she had to swallow around, both at Loki's assumption his intended would be coming to Asgard, and that what he was being offered was a bride. But she would let it sit a moment before she corrected him.

[ofsilvertongue]

"Easier to accept or harder to dismiss?" The meaning behind her words was not hard to decipher, after all. Frigga had ensured that with all of her planning that this would not be a decision to be turned down lightly. To do so would be paramount to spitting in the face of all the trust she had fought for and would damage further the already weak understanding of peace between the two realms. She would like him to believe that this was not a contract she could force him into, but he knew as well as she did that he was virtually powerless to deny it.

The beginnings of a sneer on his mouth was unavoidable. "Was it your hope, by chance, that you would be able to ply him with my agreement should you be so lucky to gain it? Was I to help you persuade him of the soundness of your proposal?"

His words did not bring him enjoyment to say and they left behind a lingering bitterness on his tongue that would not be done away with easily, but they weren't, he felt, unnecessary either. Loki was sure that Frigga had grossly overestimated the benefits to this idea of hers and he refused to be silent about it.

"Or are you only hoping he would be relieved enough that you have planned this for me and not Thor that he wouldn't be hard-pressed to agree?"

[belovedone]

Frigga's mouth twisted sourly at his challenge to her thinking, but she decided to yield some ground rather than fight him on every level.

"Both," she admitted. "I couldn't go against him if he directly forbid me, after all." It shows in much subtler colors but the truth is there's something of the 'trickster' in her nature as well. Working behind the scenes and pretending to know and think less than she does have always borne out in her favor. She is proud of being able to find her clever ways around things that she has. She couldn't help but wish Loki was in better vantage to appreciate it.

But at his continuing tirade she started to shake her head in unhappy protest.

"My intention, as most always, was that you could leave your father to me. I know I am asking a lot of you in this. I certainly wasn't going to ask for any more."

And then, when he brought Thor into it her breath caught once again. Now this, this could be truly dangerous. The rivalry between the two of them, the unfavorable comparisons Loki drew, they had risen to a peak during the past centuries as they pushed further and further into their youth and left their times of easy boyhood far behind.

"What do you want me to say to that, Loki?" she demanded, not hiding that she was both frustrated and left at a loss. "You know what as firstborn is likely to be in your brother's destiny, and that it makes him unsuited for this marriage in a way that you are not. You each have your own burdens to bear."

[ofsilvertongue]

"And how terrible the weight of his burden must be upon his shoulders knowing he'll be handed the life he's always yearned for," He spit like venom from a viper, his building anger all but radiating off of him. Thor would be given a golden kingdom and the admiration from the people in it while Loki was to be used as a token to bargain with.

He would like for her to recant the offer entirely. He would like to hear her say that it had clearly been a mistake. He would like to hear that his brother wasn't disgustingly favored above him and believe it.

But today is not the day of good fortune, clearly, and he cannot ask of her anything that would require a lie to deliver. She would not give it to him and he would not want to hear it even if she could.

He had half a mind to leave altogether. What more could she have to say to him? Singing the praises of his intended now wouldn't do her any favors, nor would pressing upon him the importance of the union she had spent so long manipulating into place. Suddenly even holding her gaze felt like too much effort and he looked away from her, his jaw tight and his silence stretching.

When he found it in him to speak again, his voice was icy and devoid of even the barest sliver of warmth. "Send it back," He gestured dismissively to the chest on the table before turning his back to her, his arms crossing defensive over his chest. "Send it back to the wasteland it was borne from. I'm required many things, but I will not accept their gifts."

[belovedone]

Frigga kept her face still, her voice silent. Inwardly she sighed. She might even have felt inclined to roll her eyes. Though Loki's envy towards Thor still concerned her to see when he chose to reveal it, she still considered it more spiteful than truly dangerous.

He was still young, after all. Many behaviors were easy to brush off as growing pains. A lot of young men tended to be angry -- fewer of them stayed that way forever.

It was the nature of brothers, she had long decided. Each would covet and resent what the other had, and fail at times to see the different problems that plagued them.

She cast her own gaze down, staring distractedly at her hands as Loki turned his back to her. She decided that unwilling as he was to listen she had to keep going. After all the unpleasant revelations of this discussion were far from over.

"I will not," she stated, flatly. "It would be an insult." If she had to pretend to accept the gift on his behalf than so be it. "And, I think there are some other things that I need to make clear to you. Regarding the heir of Járnvid, first of all."

[ofsilvertongue]

"Then let them be insulted. It matters little to me." It was an answer born of spite and anger and Loki cared not that it was, at it's root, nothing more than childishly sullen. He didn't expect a response to his behavior or for her to do as he asked--she never would willingly bring around such offense, not even at her child's wish--but he would be damned if he would smile through this all while his hand was being forced.

He would not, he knew, be so lucky as to be dismissed from the conversation to sort things in his own way(which is to say, angrily and sullenly and with quite a bit of drink in the solitude of his own rooms). He would get there eventually, to be sure, and with his back still to her he sensed more than witnessed with his own eyes that she was preparing to continue.

"As you will," he said thinly, dread already settling even heavier in his stomach for what could be coming for him.

[belovedone]

Her sigh was outward this time, although it was disguised as slow and soft exhale.

Of course Loki would react in such a manner. She couldn't find it in her to be really surprised by this, either - nor was she left in the least mystified. Another situation she might have considered gently upbraiding him for expressing his unhappiness in such an undignified way; but this time he would be granted a reprieve.

And not only because if she pressed too hard he might snap and fully unleash his temper. She was aware that the longer this conversation went on, piece by piece, Loki would have things that were taken from him.

His ability to react the way he wanted, to not have to hide even his emotions behind his station and his duty, was something she could spare to allow him. So let him at least be granted the space and right to do that.

As she breathed back in again she looked towards the ceiling as if there'd be advice hiding there for her somehow, or at least inspiration. Weighing her options as she sorted through the heavy truths she had yet to unveil.

Deciding at last, her words started out slightly hurried; she strove to maintain an even and calm tone despite the way she was already bracing herself once more, "Obviously you know little of Jotunheim and its people. Even less than I might have hoped. Because...well, there are no women among the Jotun. There are no men, either. The Jotun are simply...themselves. Nothing more and nothing less. But to us, to other races that are so divided: they do appear as men. Mostly."

[ofsilvertongue]

The only thing keeping his fury at bay was his respect for her and, while he hadn't thus far been as presentable as he might have been otherwise, it was the most he could manage given the circumstances. It was still there, snapping under the surface and held at bay with the strength of his will not to break in front of her.

That will, however, could only absorb so many blows and remain intact. To not be rebuffed for his flippancy still left him fairing only slightly better for her next delivery, though the first thing that registered was confusion rather than anger.

His knowledge of Jotunheim and it's inhabitants was woefully sparse, reduced down to only the practical information needed to survive them. He knew their customs only well enough to successfully enter political negotiations, their land enough to lead a party to battle. Of their biology, Loki could apply the ways he knew to kill them most efficiently or in which ways they needed to be avoided lest one be interested in a fatal wound. Practical knowledge. Useful knowledge.

Of their populace and the ways in which they conducted themselves in their privacy, Loki knew nothing and Frigga's words only serve to muddle the waters of understanding further. "Mostly?"

He twists enough to view her, his narrowed and his brow creased as he tried to make sense of what she had said. "Mostly?

[belovedone]

She had to bite her lower lip in consternation. It was very difficult to find a way to explain this without being...crude. Without having to use language that had no place between a parent and grown child of completely different genders.

"There is only one gender among their race," she tried again, more factually. "There are no differences among them, no separate types, as we have men and women. Each can be either a father or a mother. Oftentimes both."

She made a few purposeless, fluttering gestures with her hands.

"But, outwardly, they present themselves as men. They address each other as men. And so, what I have arranged for you...isn't a bride, Loki. It is a bridegroom. A husband."

[ofsilvertongue]

Loki, who had never made a point to follow the rules or suggestions of others when they failed to suit his wants, couldn't say that he was entirely unfamiliar with the touch of another man. It was not knowledge he ever intended someone like his mother to learn, but he can't help the irrational thought that, despite his discretion, she had found out anyway and that it had solidified her decision in matching him with someone from Jotunheim.

"A husband." There was no way that she could know of his indiscretions, but she could have her assumptions(and, knowing her, she just might).

Still, past experience with his variety of lovers or not, a man was not a suitable partner. Certainly not one with biology clearly beyond the scope of what Loki was prepared to deal with. "A husband who can...no."

He shook his head, his lip curling back. "No. I refuse. I refuse this." An arranged marriage was one thing. An arranged marriage such as this? It was laughable. It was cruel. "You cannot expect me to take part in this. This is absurd. This is unnatural. I will not subject myself to the whims of those heathens!"

[belovedone]

"Be more careful with your words," she returned sharply. Her response in the face of his emerging anger was perhaps not what he would've expected - to be met with some anger back, albeit firm and cool compared to his own. "You were raised to show respect to the denizens of other realms. Such ignorance is beneath you."

Perhaps not the wisest of responses. Even as the uncensored words escaped her, she was cognizant of that.

But she was so tired of this -- worn down and exasperated by centuries upon centuries of feeling like the only soul left on Asgard who remembered there was a time when the Jotun came and went from their realm as easy as the dwarfs or the Vanir. When they were perhaps not loved but at least no more disliked or mistrusted than any of the other older races among the nine main branches of Yggdrasil.

Maybe she was. She'd overheard enough Asgardians who should have the same memory sneering at the the Frost Giants, using language to describe them as beasts and monsters.

And yes -- it was true she might have felt differently, had she not as a queen and a woman been spared the experience of the direct horrors of war. She too might have come to have a very different picture of their once almost-allies, if she'd known dark nights spent hunched down in alertness and fear, aware every moment of the possibility of a painful and brutal death at the hands of a towering warrior with sharp teeth and eyes of murderous scarlet flame...

Even so, however, Frigga could not pretend to be ungrateful for her objectivity.

And as to Loki's secret worries that she indeed knew more about his private affairs - and predilections - than they'd already discussed?

He was right to think his mother wasn't a fool. If it was the kind of thing she wanted to contemplate, certainly by now she would've uncovered a thing or two. But the fact was she was his mother. Every once in awhile her thoughts might turn that direction, a picture starting to form - and she would briskly clamp down on it and cast it out, convinced it was simply none of her business.

She didn't care what Loki did and she didn't need to know. And that was all that she had to believe on the subject.

Her mostly unthinking assumption her son would be somehow amenable to a union with another male had less to do with knowledge he was paranoid over her having...and more to do with knowledge she already had that he did not. Namely regarding his origins.

[ofsilvertongue]

Had Loki lived in a time before the war, in a time where opinions were not so harshly colored, his outrage might be significantly less.

But he wasn't. He was born of a time where Frost Giants were known to forsake what may have been a fragile alliance and taken with them the lives of too many honorable Asgardians in the process. He was born of a time where his father was forced to bear the mark of their bitter hatred and savage viciousness. He was born of a time where the Jotun were not friends but enemies, a race who had proven themselves untrustworthy and suspicious, a race no better than the Svartálfar or the Fire Demons of Muspelheim and his own utter disregard for them was not easily put aside.

Her words and the tone with them were well deserved, even if they take him slightly aback. She was right, of course. Loki was raised to behave better than this, to accept even the most unwanted news with grace and dignity and a pragmatism befitting a son of Odin. Another time, her sharp disapproval would have been enough to remind him of his place.

But not this time.

His anger boiled over at the corrections, contorting his expression as he snarled, "Beneath me? This entire proposal is beneath me." It was in no way the correct thing to say, but his fury was too great to think about altering his words as they spilled forward.

"I was raised to be a king, not the excitement of some lowly lord's son!" It's language much too inappropriate to be given in front of any lady of the court, much less his own mother. Any other time, he would have the decency to be ashamed. "The All-Father will not agree to this. He will not allow this deviancy to be seen in his court."

[belovedone]

At his outburst her face flushed hot at first, indeed, in a kneejerk reaction to hearing such words out of his mouth with her standing right there.

And then, in an instant, too soon for it even to be commented on, the color vanished in favor of her skin turning white-pale instead. The tension and foreboding threatening to just about literally drain the life out of her. The worse he reacted the harder it was for her to bear, the greater and greater her apprehension grew. She felt sick to her stomach.

For if this was how Loki reacted at hearing he was to wed a Jotun, how would he feel at hearing he actually was one?

"Oh how I wish at times like these, we could have simply raised you knowing the truth."

This unhappy wish falls from her mouth before she can help it, a rushed and ardently breathless murmur.

[ofsilvertongue]

There was no explanation for her quiet words that Loki could see but as a continuation of the current conversation at hand. She had said as much, hadn't she, of the long years of effort and thought that had been put into the details of the marriage being discussed.

But her words did not match the expression on her face, didn't explain why her skin paled so quickly. His anger did not ruin his ability to read the changes in her. It anything, it made him that much more keen.

"What truth?" He asked, his voice dropping in volume but not in intensity. "What truth could make what you've presented to me any more favorable?"

[belovedone]

She couldn't answer him immediately, her fingers once more knitting themselves together, finding her with them pressed flat against her chest over her heart. As she simply gazed at him; taking him in for all he was, at once.

All that he was now. All that he thought he was ever born, and destined, to be.

How much of it was about to be destroyed?

Nothing will be the same, after this, came the evil thought, tempting her into freezing her tongue.

How many ages had she waited for this chance? Come what may, no matter what, she would always feel better knowing it came at a time and circumstance at least partially under her control, rather than Loki or Thor somehow accidentally finding out on their own. And no matter her husband's assurances, that was always what she feared.

She had come this far. It was too late to turn back now. She had to be steadfast in her convictions, the way she always tried to be.

"The truth...that you were not born on Asgard, Loki," she told him, voice matching his own. She felt a weight leaving her body as she at last exorcised this secret, and yet it left her even more exhausted all the same. "That though you are our son, and always will be, we did not come by you in the conventional way."

She moved towards him, wanting to be close enough to reach out to him when the dam broke. "Your father...in the aftermath of that last battle, on Jotunheim, he found a baby left behind in the ruins of the temple. Laufey's son. Left there, presumably, to die; left there, as fate would have it, for him to find. That was you, Loki."

[ofsilvertongue]

He did not expect this. He could not have expected this.

If the announcement of Frigga's intention to marry him to some being he'd never met had felt like an ending to his life as he knew it, as he had planned for it, then this was as if the world as he knew it had dropped out from beneath his feet. As if the air in his very lungs had turned to lead. The outrage had all but disappeared from his expression, his rage bleeding out of him as if from a fatal wound and leaving behind a numbness that could only be attributed to his shock.

He couldn't have anticipated this, but perhaps he should have.

How often had he felt that he didn't belong among his peers? That he was strange, that he was different in ways that he had no name for. Different, because he was the very monster that the people of Asgard regarded with an unshakable sense of fear and distrust. Different, and now the secret of why the darkness of Thor's shadow always seemed to be without an end was finally revealed to him.

Laufey's son.

A stolen piece of the realm they nearly destroyed. A whim made of...what? Guilt and pity. Regret and recompense for the blood pooling at his feet.

Laufey's son.

He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his mind, trying to dislodge the words stuck in his throat. "Why?" The look in his eyes when he looked at her was desperate, as if he wanted to plead with her to recant her admission. "Why would you keep this from me?"

[belovedone]

She wanted to take him in her arms, to cradle him and let him cry, comfort him as she had when he had been naught but a small and confused and lonely boy.

She wanted to whisper to him over and over again, I am sorry. I am sorry.

Sorry that it had to be like this. Sorry that they couldn't have had honesty from the beginning. Sorry that she had to be the one to tell him; that she wasn't brave enough to do it sooner, without an excuse. Sorry for -- for everything. For things that were beyond her control.

And for things that were not.

She reached for his arms, fingers gripping him reassuringly. Trying to give him something to hold onto, if nothing else. Trying to keep him here, with her.

"The All-Father didn't want you to know. He did not want us to tell you. He thought it would be harder for you, growing up; that it would make things worse. I didn't agree, but...he only wanted to protect you, Loki. Please. You must understand."

[ofsilvertongue]

To protect him.

The laugh that bubbles out of his throat was harsh and broken, hardly a laugh at all for the raw sound it contains. They wanted to protect him.

Suddenly her touch was too much to bear and he jerked himself away from her with a shake of his head, re-establishing a distance between them because he could feel himself cracking, this being the final blow to the foundation of his strength and there was only so much pressure one single point could take before it splintered. "Protect me? Protect me?" His voice his barely more than a hiss, his eyes already burning despite his refusal to accept this weakness in him building, this mad hysteria that wanted to claw its way out of him.

Her words were missing something. Something important. Something key. "His hands were covered in Jotun blood. What difference would one more infant make? No, he took me for a reason." Of this, Loki was absolutely certain. Fate had nothing to do with it. His had been a rescue of opportunity. Why?"

[belovedone]

She faltered as he pulled from her, hands still outstretched, unhappy and uncertain what to do. She had a mother's instincts but how could she comfort him when even that very act would have to be forced on him?

Her mouth dropped open and at first all she could make was a stammering sound, taken aback that this of all things would be something Loki felt the need to question.

"Your father is many things, among them fearsome to his enemies and any criminal...but a king should have mercy. Killing a soldier, in the heat of battle, is a far cry from slaughtering an infant. It would be no less than murder."

She tried to emphasize the firmness with which she believed her words herself, the better to make Loki understand and accept them. As she would've always assumed he would, up until now.

"He wanted to give you a home. To see that you were loved, and grew up happy. Surrounded by the privileges and opportunities you deserved, as your birthright."

[ofsilvertongue]

"What did I ever do to deserve this?" Once upon a time, Loki had scoffed at the idea of heartbreak, but here, now, the ache in his chest was so strong Loki almost couldn't register anything else. It was an ugly, cruel thing that rubbed him raw from the inside and released ever unhappy, unkind thought that ever crossed through Loki's mind.

This was why none of his efforts had been good enough. This was why Thor had always been favored so far about him.

"Is this my birthright? To be deceived? To have my future given to the most desirable prospect?"

You're just a pawn. You're just another relic to be used when the opportunity calls for it. It's a wonder they didn't just lock you away with the casket you were brought with.

"You didn't want to see that I was loved. You wanted to see that I was complacent until you had a use for me!" The words come before he can stop them, the harshness of his tone clashing dangerously with the pain in his eyes.

[belovedone]

"No. Never," she swore as vehemently as any oath, doing her best to strike down those ugly words and the ugly thoughts that lurked behind them as fiercely as she would any enemy with a blade in her hand. "Since the day you were given to me, I have never seen you as anything less than my own child. We are your family, Loki. The bonds we have will always run deep."

Since he would not let her reach out to him, since he pulled back, she offered her hands out to him instead, palms up, beseeching. Her very openness the offering of a supplicant.

"I am giving you many burdens all at once. I know this. I should have tried to find another way. But alas, I could not. I don't expect you to feel as if you should forgive me. But...look at me," she entreated, firm yet emotive. Voice strong even though it trembled. "Do you truly have any doubt that I have ever loved you?"

[ofsilvertongue]

How could he accept her words when she had revealed herself full of such deception? Such manipulation. As well versed as Loki was in both, he could see it for nothing less and it was the greatest form of betrayal he could fathom and it turned the splintered pieces of his heart as cold as the frost she claimed he had been born from.

He was so tired suddenly, as if her question had done nothing less than carve out of him the bright, painfully vicious passion in which his words had been spoken, hollowed him out and left behind naught but an echo of what had been there. Numbness his brain supplied for him, and perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, a defense mechanism to shield him from the torture of her truths that would surely be his undoing.

"I know not what I think of you in this moment." He barely registered the first tear spill from his eyes, as if to make up for the distance already put between them by his tone, but his refusal to go to her. He made no attempt to brush the wetness from his cheek and if more decided to follow that track down his skin, he does not notice them. "For if it is in your love for me that you bring to me these burdens, I confess I cannot feel it."

[belovedone]

She stood there and watched her son cry. And what she felt most was horror.

Horror that he was aching and angry and devastated, and she had not the least idea how to comfort him.

She had made it her life's business to never ever be at such a loss. To always have some idea how to help when things went awry, to know just what her husband her sons needed and do whatever she could to provide it.

But here, she didn't know. She did not know for once, and to feel so helpless left her adrift in a way not dissimilar, ironically, to what Loki was feeling.

And though she wracked her brain still she could some up with no idea what to say or do now. How was she to soothe these injuries when they ran so deep, when they were regardless of intention wounds she herself had wrought?

"Please," she had to whisper; "do not think me cruel, or unkind, in telling you these things. I know it may not seem as much to you, but I swear that my end aim was only to help you."