The Midgard Woman

“Laufey, may I ask you something?”

“You may, Georgiana.”

The library of the palace of Jotunheim was probably the most impressive one Georgiana had ever seen in her entire life. It wasn’t even the amount of books, but just the towering grandeur of the place, and the way the shelves and sculptures were all created from ice, sparkling like glass when the sunlight shone through them. She had been searching the shelves for a book to read when the King had come in to search for a book on a completely unrelated topic and Georgiana had been glad of the opportunity to talk with him alone for once, because she had a feeling that he might know the answer to the question she was about to ask a little better than Loki would. After all, he was older and wiser to the Nine Realms than his son.

She took a deep breath. “If Loki and I were to have children...and the chances are we probably will someday...would they be...human-sized?”

Blushing deeply, she bowed her head, hoping that she had not offended him with her curiosity. To her relief, however, Laufey seemed to understand that she meant no disrespect as he paused in what he was doing to consider her question.

“Um...” he pondered, thoughtfully, “I think they would, yes, because you’re both human seized, so the genes would pass through you.”

“That’s what I thought,” Georgiana replied.

“I mean, to my knowledge, there’s never actually been any record of a Frost Giant marrying a human before,” Laufey added, “but if Loki were full Frost Giant size, there would probably be a chance that your children would inherit that from him. But since you’re both human sized, it’s more likely that they will be too.”

Georgiana smiled. “In a way, I’m glad. I mean, I don’t actually know how large Frost Giants are at birth-”

“Oh, much larger than human babies,” Laufey cut across her with a smile. “By your human standards, they’d be about the size of a healthy four year old.”

Georgiana blanched. “Goodness! I don’t think my body would be able to cope with that.”

Laufey chuckled. “Then it’s just as well Loki is only a little taller than you.” He glanced at her. “They will be blue, of course, like the rest of us.”

Georgiana smiled. She could picture them now, several children, blue of skin, dark of hair, like smaller versions of Loki, running around the palace. She reached out and touched the old King’s hand. “I will still love them. I know my Mother will as well.”

Laufey returned her smile. “It would be best to teach them Loki’s magic so that they may disguise themselves in human form, just for when you visit her on Midgard.”

He marvelled at what she had said, however. “I will still love them.” Most human were frightened by the things they were not used to or did not understand. Georgiana was a wonder.

“Do you think Loki wants to be a Father, though?” Georgiana asked, slightly nervously. After all it wasn’t something they had discussed together yet and she hoped that even if Loki had no desire for them to have children together that were she to suddenly become pregnant he would change his mind and love their children just as much as she would. She quickly shook that thought away, of course he would, he loved her and wanted her to be happy.

“I think,” Laufey replied, with a mischievousness that reminded her of her husband and proved that they really were related, “that that’s a question best put to him, don’t you?”

Georgiana roused herself from her dream of that conversation. She blinked and then twisted around, disappointment twinging within her at once again finding herself alone in the fur-lined bed she usually shared with Loki. With a sigh, she seized his pillow and hugged it against her chest as she stared up at the ceiling. She seemed to have stopped crying for him; now she just felt empty and hollow, and almost without a purpose, almost, for after all it was her duty to run Jotunheim until the Bifrost Bridge was repaired. It felt so strange to wake up and find Loki not there. She had grown so used to it, and even on those rare occasions when she would wake up alone she always knew that he would never be far away.

And never before had he felt so far away, without the Bifrost to bring her to him.

Georgiana leaned forwards and buried her nose against the pillow in her arms, breathing Loki’s soft scent, the comforting smell of him that still lingered there. It gave her some degree of relief, a calming, soothing notion, but the fact still remained that the pillow was too soft and too furry and too lifeless to ever be a substitute for her husband. Plus it didn’t hold her warmly like Loki did every night.

She closed her eyes, remembering the first night they had shared in this bed, and all the nights since then, all the talking and the laughing and the cuddling and the pleasuring, and she smiled as she remembered the various times they would tease one another sexually. They knew exactly how to drive one another wild.

“Please be alright, Loki,” she whispered for about the hundredth time before finally, reluctantly, she rolled out of bed and stretched herself, preparing herself for the day ahead. Nothing felt the same anymore, waking up, bathing, getting dressed, eating, any of it, without Loki right alongside her. As she bathed, however, a thought suddenly occurred to her and she sat up, wondering whether it was something Loki would be alright with. She smiled, realising that she could see no reason why not, after all, Loki always told her that she loved wonderful whenever she wore his colours.

Finished with her toilet, she slipped back into the bedroom in her dressing robe and pulled open the vast wardrobe they shared, moving her dresses out of the way until she found one of Loki’s tunics. With a mischievous smile, she pulled it out and held it against her. Given that she and Loki were build differently due to their genders and that he was a little taller than she was, only a little, it would be somewhat baggy on her, but that didn’t matter. Perhaps that way she was more likely to pass it off as a dress.

She quickly pulled on her dark green, fur-lined undershirt over her hose before daring to pull the tunic on. It felt nice, she realised, comfortable, like being held by him, and somehow that made her feel closer to him. The thing hung on her the way her usual tunic did, only slightly looser, and almost brushing her knees, but giving a quick glance at herself in the mirror, she decided that she liked the way it looked and set about pulling on her boots and styling her hair.

Already a small fantasy about what Loki would do if he saw her wearing his clothes was forming in her head, and as she made her way downstairs, it gave her courage, reminding her to keep on holding on and that one day she would be reunited with her husband.

It was a prayer that was weighing very heavily on Loki’s mind at that very moment.

Margaret gave him a sympathetic smile as she watched him once more attempt to use magic. She could see the frustration in his face as he concentrated hard on trying to conjure a book into his hands, but all the happened was the thing trembled and then fell off the shelf, landing paged down and open on the carpeted floor.

“Damn,” Loki muttered under his breath.

She reached out and patted his arm. “Don’t give up trying,” she said, encouragingly.

Loki shot her a brief smile and then sighed as he reached to retrieve the book. “I do hate being without magic. I mean efficient magic. This is like being a child and having to learn everything all over again.” He quickly smoothed out any crumpled pages within the book before snapping it shut with vigour. “Now I’m beginning to wonder if I did the right thing by bringing us here, or by trying to help him.”

“And what would have happened if you hadn’t?” Margaret asked. “You might have been killed by the Dark Elves, or if not then you’d be stuck in Asgard, still parted from Georgiana. Besides, if your magic hadn’t brought you here to Earth, who knows where you might have landed, or what dangers you might have been in?”

Loki had to admit that she was right. “I just feel so useless not being able to-”

“Let Georgiana know you’re safe?” Margaret finished for him, gently. “Your magic will come back eventually. Hopefully the Bifrost will be fixed soon and then everything can go back to normal.”

“Well, as normal as it can be for a human and a Frost Giant,” Loki quipped, provoking a light laugh from her and bringing a smile to his own features.

Margaret left him the library, knowing that it was something of a sanctuary for him at a time like this, and made her way into the dining room. Whilst Loki had headed straight for the library after breakfast, Thor had decided to explore the house and she had allowed him to do that, just so that he might get his bearings.

Strange as it seemed, she found it a little hard to believe that Thor could think badly of Frost Giants. Of course she knew that Loki was telling the truth about this, it was just that she couldn’t imagine how anyone could view the people of Jotunheim as ruthless savage beasts, when they were clearly not. She resolved to confront him on the issue the next chance she got.

Surprisingly, the chance came sooner than anticipated as she rounded a corner and spotted him just a little way off, looking around the front hall. He turned and offered her a polite smile, which she returned as she made her way up to him and clasped her hands delicately together in front of her.

“How are you finding it here?” she asked, politely. “I know it must seem quite different from Asgard, not that I’d really know, since I’ve never been there...”

“It is different here,” Thor admitted, “but in some ways it seems our cultures are the same.”

“Oh, I’m sure all beings in the Nine Realms have some customs that are similar,” Margaret replied, approaching what she actually wanted to talk with him about with careful consideration. “Speaking of which, I was talking with Loki earlier and he told me something...rather interesting...”

Thor winced. “Did he?”

Margaret didn’t elaborate since she could see they were both on the same page. “Walk with me,” she suggested lightly, turning towards the door leading into the grounds. Thor fell into step beside her, blinking in the bright sunlight as it flooded in upon the opening of the door. They made their way down the stairs in silence and only when they reached the open plain of grass did Margaret break it. “I’m not really one for scolding, Thor, so you needn’t fear that,” she said, truthfully. Thor glanced at her but said nothing and she went on “What I want to do is...well...is merely to understand what happened?” She looked at him, seeing him duck his head and not meet her eyes. “Is it really so hard to believe that a Frost Giant can take a human for a wife?”

Thor raised his head and she saw that he was flushing slightly. “I had never heard of such a thing before.”

“Then what had you heard?” Margaret asked, gently. “All these stories of Frost Giants you’ve encountered as a child, what did they say, exactly?”

Thor had the decency to look a little ashamed as he recounted the details of stories he had heard in his youth. “That they are...creatures of quick temper who feed on raw meat and drink the blood of animals, that they rarely wear clothing because it isn’t needed to protect them from the cold and that they kidnap people from other realms or take prisoners of war as their own slaves or...playthings to use and abuse as they will and have their wicked way with, and that their souls are darker than the darkest pits of Hel.”

Margaret blinked at him. “And no one told you that those are merely stories made up by the Dark Elves to evoke hatred for a peaceful race?”

Thor looked surprised and slowly shook his head.

Margaret nodded. “You should check your facts, Thor, go on what you know for certain and not what you’ve heard. I mean, you’ve seen Jotunheim for yourself; how much of what you’ve just said is actually true from what you’ve seen?”

“I admit,” Thor said, “the stories were wrong about most things, but seeing the way Loki was with Georgiana, I just...” He shook his head. “If you’d been there, you’d understand.”

“No, Thor, I wouldn’t,” Margaret corrected him, “because I know for a fact that Loki would never hurt Georgiana, or if he did then it wouldn’t be with intent to do so.”

Thor sighed. “Alright, well, if you were someone who hadn’t know, you might have thought-” He broke off, seeing the way Margaret was looking at him. “It was an accident; why can no one see that?”

“I think they do, Thor,” Margaret replied, calmly, “but you really do need to try looking at it from Loki’s point of view.”

“He’s angry, I know that,” Thor began.

“It’s more than that.” Margaret sighed. “You know, before he met Georgiana, Loki had no friends, because his Father was so worried about him mixing with other Frost Giants his own age, worried that because of his size he might end up getting hurt by them. The pair of them have been thick as thieves since they were children; imagine that you had been like that with someone, with a girl that you’d later fallen deeply in love with and that someone had tried to take her away from you.”

For the first time since the incident had happened, Thor thought about it properly, placing himself in Loki’s shoes and thinking about what he might go through if it happened to him. “Well, yes, I’d be angry too,” he said.

“And hurt,” Margaret added, “but not just by your wife’s attempted kidnapping, rescuing, whatever it was. Imagine that someone came up to you and told you that the Asgardians were a race of savages who couldn’t be trusted and that was the reason they’d naturally assumed your wife needed rescuing. Wouldn’t that hurt? To know that someone who was meant to trust you didn’t underneath?”

Thor nodded, realising that what she was saying made sense. “Yes. It would.”

“And if that person then just insisted that the whole incident was just an accident, would that be enough for you?” Margaret finished. “Would you just accept that and move on, after almost losing the woman you would give up your life in a second to save? Would it really be that easy to?”

Thor stopped in his tracks and let her words sink in. “No,” he said, slowly. “It wouldn’t.” The more he thought about it, the more he began to realise why Loki had reacted the way he had to the whole incident. “I think I understand now.”

Margaret smiled. “Love is a complex emotion, Thor, it is never as simple as it seems. Take it from someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

She turned and began to walk back towards the house. Thor, however, continued walking, his brain now reeling with all that Margaret had made him think about. Now he had put himself in Loki’s place, imagined what it must feel like to have the love of your life snatched away from you, even if it was only for a few minutes, it was hard not to feel truly sorry for what he had done. And all this time, when he had seen for himself what Frost Giants were truly like, that they were not the monsters everyone else made them out to be, he had still doubted. Margaret was right. Even though she had never explicitly said it, he was a fool for having assumed that Loki, the man who had seemed so level-headed, intelligent and thoughtful within the conference room, could also be so callous and shallow as to deliberately hurt a young Midgard woman.

That didn’t explain why she had looked nervous when he spoke to her, though. Unless...unless it was not his tone but his words that had scared her. Perhaps he had spoken of a potential oncoming war, or something else that would send chills down anyone’s spine, some kind of fear about something, and he had misinterpreted it as something sinister.

He wanted to kick himself.

Taking a deep breath, he turned, briskly, and walked back towards the house. His Father had been right too; because of his thoughtlessness, his stupidity, war could have broken out between their two realms, and instead of accepting the facts, that he was a complete idiot who had lost his head for no reason, what had he done? Stubbornly insisted that he was the one in the right, or at least that he thought he had a good reason for it.

And it hadn’t been his place to get involved anyway.

So, why had it taken an older Midgard woman to make him see sense?

He was still surprised that she wasn’t angry with him for having “kidnapped” her daughter. Still, she seemed like a patient and understanding woman, so she was probably wiser than that, he reflected.

Loki, on the other hand...

He collared the nearest servant as he stepped into the house. “Pardon me, but you don’t happen to know where I might find Loki, do you?” he asked. They needed to talk, and talk properly this time, he knew, not just bicker with one another. This had to stop. It could seriously damage their alliance otherwise.

“I believe that he is in the library,” the man replied. “Two doors down the hall on your left, Sir.”

“Thank you,” Thor replied, making his way there.

Loki was sitting on the window seat, flicking through the book he had succeeded in knocking to the floor earlier, although his heart wasn’t really in reading as his mind was still on Georgiana, as it had been for the last two days. Glancing up at the sound of the door opening, he bit back a sigh at seeing it was Thor, but said nothing, keeping his eyes fixed on the page until he felt that the Asgard Prince was standing right in front of him. Only then did he look up.

“We need to talk,” Thor said.

Loki flicked his eyes back to the page he had been “reading,” even though he was slightly intrigued by this statement. “What about?” he asked, his tone flat and unamused.

“I never said sorry.”

Loki frowned and looked up at him again. “What?”

“I never said sorry,” Thor repeated.

Loki was still confused. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”

“To you or your wife,” Thor elaborated. “I never apologised for what happened. I just kept insisted that I was the one in the right. But I was the one in the wrong. And I know that you must have been extremely worried about her and hurt by my actions, and that she was probably very scared by what happened, so I’m sorry. I’m sorry for any pain I caused either of you.”

Loki stared at him. This was a complete change from the Thor he had been talking with the day before. When he eventually found his voice, he managed to say “Why the change of heart?”

“I tried putting myself in your position,” Thor replied. “Tried to imagine what I would be like if I found out someone had kidnapped my wife, if I had one, how upset I would be and how much I would hate the person responsible for it.” He gave a shrug. “Believe it or not I do have a heart under all this armour.”

Loki said nothing.

Thor sighed. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that.”

He turned and was at the door when Loki said “Could have fooled me.”

Thor frowned and turned to him. “About what?”

“About the heart thing.” But Loki was grinning as he said it. “I wouldn’t have thought that your armour would leave room for one.”

Thor realised he was joking and managed a smile. “Loki-”

“Look.” Loki closed the book and got to his feet. “You want to know why I hated you? Because I thought you didn’t care about what you put, not me, but Georgiana through. But if you do, then...” He shook his head and opened the book again. “It’s fine.”

Thor let his words sink in before asking “So, are you saying..?”

“That’s the closest to an “I forgive you,” you’re going to get,” Loki replied. “Just be thankful I didn’t throw something at you.”

Thor laughed and in spite of himself, Loki found himself smiling. “So...we’re good?”

“We’re allies,” Loki replied, sitting back down again.

Thor nodded. “That’s good enough for me.”

He left the room and Loki found himself thinking that if Georgiana had seen him then, she would have been extremely proud of him.

“Perhaps the Aesir aren’t as bigheaded as I originally thought,” he muttered.