A God of Truth
Vali often made use of the sunlight that streamed through their window to recline on the couch and study. His nephew, Skoll, was kind enough to chase Sól to where the angle of light was best, so it was not uncommon to find both Vali and Loki sharing that couch at the same hours of the day. Though Vali, as a boy, found the heavy texts and magic spells boring and would find more interest in annoying his father.
He was still small when he flopped back and placed his feet on Loki's arm, walking them upwards to his shoulder and then sticking his toe in Loki's ear.
"Stop that before I turn you into a fish. Then what would you do?" Loki said, not looking away from his own book.
Vali clambered to his knees and dropped onto his father's lap. "I would flop about until I found water, like this!" and he proceeded to do so.
"Well then," Loki tossed the book over his shoulder and grabbed his squirming child, "I would have to catch you like this! Then I would take you to the kitchens where they will cook you and I will present you as a meal to my brother!"
"Ah! Nooo!" Vali squealed as his father made to eat him.
Sigyn, quietly stitching in the chair nearby, made a point not to look at them as she said, "Loki, stop threatening to feed our son to Thor."
"He'd barely make a bite," Loki smirked, but set his son back on the couch.
"Then you should make me a whale," Vali whispered, and Loki laughed.
Skoll did not disappoint today, and the sun dipped just so. Vali sat on the couch, a book in hand and alone in the room. This had become the norm after a while, as Vali no longer needed someone to force him to study, he found pleasure in it on his own, and Nari would take walks through the garden with his nursemaid at this time. But it was different, now. His father was gone, not merely busy, and his mother was stuck smoothing things over in court for the sake of her princeling sons.
Vali wouldn't go. He could no longer bear the looks of his fellow Aesir, of Odin's odd one-eyed stare, of his uncle not looking at him at all. He had nothing to say to them anyway. He never did.
The door to the sitting room banged open and in stormed his mother. The look on her face made him hold off on any greetings and as she began to mutter and curse to herself he wondered if she knew he was there.
"If I hear one more remark on how truly relieved I must be," Sigyn snarled, tearing her cloak from her shoulders and tossing it aside, "As though I should be glad for the loss of my husband...!" Her walk to the couch was not a graceful one, and she dropped onto it as though exhausted, her head resting on her hand.
Vali looked carefully at his mother. Behind the anger he could see the deadening sorrow left behind when Loki fell. She'd wept for over a day straight, neither eating nor sleeping. It was a common misconception among those in the court that the marriage of Sigyn and Loki had been a loveless one, and Vali had never understood where that had come from.
It was true that the marriage had been an arranged one. When it became official that the succession of the throne would fall to Thor (a warrior who was oft away on dangerous missions), the question of an heir had arisen. With Loki, the second son, this would normally not be an issue, save that Thor often dragged his brother with him into danger. Who would take the throne after Odin should ill befall the sons of the All-Father? Yet Thor was not prepared for marriage, and having a grown son awaiting his own kingship for such a span of time was inviting ambition and treachery. So the second son, whose children (viable children, in the eyes of the Aesir, who often ignored his monstrous offspring) would likely never reach the throne, was betrothed as soon as possible.
Sigyn was a distant cousin on Frigga's side of strong lineage and good disposition. Her patience was great and Odin could think of no better match for his mischievous son. There was a great banquet before the wedding, and this was the first time Loki and Sigyn had met. From what Vali had heard, they mostly ignored each other. He had heard Sigyn once reference what she called their 'personal pre-wedding party' to his father and he concluded from the details that the two had later snuck off to get to know each other on their own terms.
During the wedding itself they remained mostly indifferent. Loki, in full armor, and Sigyn in her finest dress knelt before the All-Father and his Queen. Odin spoke to the gathered Asgardians of the duties and joys of marriage, of the unions and the lives to come from it, while Frigga dipped a fir branch into the mead produced by the goat Heidrun and sprinkled it upon her son and new daughter.
Vali had once asked Sigyn when she knew she loved his father.
"It was during the wedding, my love," she told him as he sat bundled in blankets in her lap upon her bed. Loki was away with Thor, and Vali had hated sleeping alone. "Some of the mead got in my eye, and it burned so. But the ceremony was so important, and Odin was speaking, I was afraid to draw attention to myself and reach up to wipe it clear! But Loki noticed, and in the middle of everything, he reached out and wiped the mead from my eye. Then he actually turned to his mother the Queen and said 'Please try not to blind my bride, Mother.' Then he smiled at me, and it was such a wicked thing that I fell in love with him right then and there."
They exchanged gifts then, Loki presenting Sigyn with a ring (essence of the Bifrost he'd forged himself with magic, mostly just to see if he could), and she to him the sword of her father, who had fallen on Jotunheim. They both clasped the hilt, their hands touching. Sigyn spoke her vows to her new husband, promising him her loyalty, her property to share, her partnership in all things, and the children she would bear him. Then it was Loki's turn.
He reached up and placed his free hand over hers, so that her ringed hand sat cradled between both of his, and stared at her with such intensity that she shuddered. He spoke to her, softly, but loud enough for all to hear.
"I promise you nothing."
Save a few gasps, the hall fell silent. There was nothing to do without halting the ceremony, and so, with a furious glare at his son, Odin called for the race to the dining hall. The party that arrived last, either the bride or the groom's, was to serve the drinks, but there were enough servants and it was more or less a tradition that survived for the sake of its cheer.
Loki smiled at Sigyn, slapped on her on the arm playfully and said, "Your side's serving tonight," and vanished in green smoke, sword and all. When the parties arrived in the hall, he was there, sitting on the dining table looking quite smug.
Once, Vali had asked his father on his lack of vows. "Surely you humiliated her that day, Father. That is cruel, even for you."
"I respect your mother, even then. I wasn't about to give her false promises I would later break. Amazing woman that she is, she understood."
"I would rather the harsh truth from him than a lie," Sigyn told Vali when he'd asked her on the matter.
"But he's the god of lies!"
"What nonsense," she scoffed and adjusted a suckling Nari at her breast, "your father is the god of truth."
Even at such a young age, Vali looked at his mother as though she were insane. Perhaps she loved Loki too much and had grown blind to him over the years. "A god of truth who lies all the time?"
"Is your uncle an actual lightning bolt?"
He blinked. "No."
"Yet he is the god of thunder. Thor is powerful, he is flashy, he is brilliant to behold, but he is not the thunder itself. Your father indeed lies, he misleads, he tricks and he deceives, and in doing so he can recognize a lie in another within the first spoken word. Through his mischief we see the reactions of his victims, we see their true selves. It is easy to tell others who we are, but it is only in the face of adversity and loss that we realize who we are. That is what your father does."
It sounded convincing, yet Vali wasn't sure he believed her. After all, truth was a matter of perspective, wasn't it?
As the feasting went on songs were sung and Thor raised a toast to his little brother. Loki triumphed in more than a few flytings. A servant brought Sigyn the marriage cup, filled with mead, which she carried to Loki, seated on the other side of the table. He drank from it, then handed it her as she sat beside him, and she drank before the servant took it away again. She sat beside him for the rest of the feast, though neither spoke to the other, until they retired to their marriage bed. Or at least to Loki's chambers, where he kicked the door shut in the faces of their witnesses.
So Loki and Sigyn had stood awkwardly in the large room, gazing at each other, until Loki began removing his armor.
"This was rather sudden, I'll not force you into anything. You may do whatever."
And Sigyn did. Her mind made up, she leapt onto his back, her arms around his neck. "I shall! I'm a princess now, and you shall carry my royal person to the marriage bed!"
Vali had no interest in hearing the rest of the story. He suffered through his parents' affections in person as it was. His father enjoyed magically appearing behind Sigyn and wrapping his arms around her, often frightening her greatly. One time he did so while she was stitching and she stabbed the needle fully into his hand.
Loki did not become angry, but hissed in his wife's ear, "You have injured your husband, you must be punished." He then licked her ear, and Vali, sitting across the room, wanted to bury his face in the pillows in disgust.
"Oh yes, punish me, my lord," she whispered, and he scooped her up and, to Vali's relief, carried her to their room, away from him.
Nari had been born not too long after.
Wherever the rumor of their loveless marriage had come from, his parents had done nothing to disprove it. If anything, he began to suspect they purposefully encouraged it for their own amusement. During festivities, as soon as they entered the hall they would part and ignore each other for the rest of the night. Once, Sigyn had even begun flirting with an Aesir of good standing in view of all.
They'd returned home later and Loki, laughing, had called her a whore. Vali had learned the precludes to their foreplay long ago and, grabbing his little brother's hand, fled the room.
There had been some good of it. His uncle, Thor, well believing that his dear nephew suffered in a loveless household, often took him out on local adventures, showering him in attention and showing him off to his friends. (It was about this time that Vali developed a crush on Sif and followed her everywhere.)
It was all gone, now.
Vali only saw his father once the day he fell from the Bifrost. There'd been something off about him, a manic gleam in his eye that had Vali step out of his way as he walked by. He knew now that he'd been heading to the Bifrost, to grant the Frost Giants entrance, to try to kill Heimdall.
To destroy all of Jotunheim.
And Vali knew that Loki had faced his own truth that day, and it had shattered him.
He was snapped out of his musings by his mother's hand on his knee.
"Odin wishes to speak to you tonight, after dinner," Sigyn said, the anger gone from her face and leaving only tiredness and sorrow. How Vali wished to fix that, to make her happy again.
"Me? Alone?" He tried to ignore how his voice broke on the word.
"He's not going to bite," she sighed.
No, something worse, Vali thought. His adolescent mind, expanded in many pathways of thought by magic, often cursed him with over exaggerated imagination, and he envisioned banishment, torment, or servitude by the All-Father for his magic, for being Lokison.
He pondered trying to jump off the Bifrost again instead.