Friday
“Hello, Thor.”
Frigga put a finger on her newborn son’s cheek, which made him open his eyes for the first time. Unless he’d opened them in the womb. Did they do that? Like opening your eyes while underwater...
Entranced as she was by her baby’s face, she didn’t even notice the door opening, or Odin slipping inside. She unwrapped the blanket, and began examining his hands, his feet, and all else. Such strong hands, destined to carry and wield swords, or spears, or-
One of the healers slammed a cloth into her face, and the room spun to blackness around her.
X
Frigga slumped back into her bed, and Odin lifted his baby from her arms.
“My son.”
Eir smiled at him. “A strong and healthy son, my King. All is well.”
He smirked at his unconscious Queen and nodded at the healers. “You know what to do.”
He left the healers to their task and carried the baby out to show off to the adoring crowds.
No one questioned Frigga’s absence. Why would they? She’d just given birth. The newest member of the royal family was cause for celebration and nothing else.
X
Frigga woke up in a sterile white room. Nothing particularly unlike where she’d gone to sleep, except for the lack of windows. Why had she been moved while she slept? Where were Odin and Tho-
Sitting up was a mistake. Pain shot through her entire lower body. A quick check revealed sutures running up her belly. A push of Seidr told her that underneath, she now lacked a womb. What- had she hemorrhaged so badly and not noticed? How much had she missed?
A young healer slipped in with a tray of food, all smiles. “All-Mother! Glad to see you awake. We’re all thrilled with the new prince.”
She set the tray on Frigga’s bedside table, but the sight of it made her stomach churn as if she were again newly pregnant.
Never again.
She and Gna had been best friends growing up, and their three brothers had volunteered to go to war only ever together. They were dead now, in one battle, and buried where they’d fallen. Two experiences Thor would now never know.
“What did you do to me?”
The healer seemed genuinely confused. “My Queen?”
Frigga gestured to her incision.
“I don’t know anything about that. You’d have to ask Eir.” She said all this very fast and left the room like Ragnarok was impending.
Too sore to move, Frigga could do nothing but sleep.
X
What woke her next was Thor’s newborn babble. She sat up gingerly and held out her arms for her child before even realizing Odin was holding him. He backed away as she reached out, dangling Thor out of her reach like a cat toy.
“Odin, let me hold him. Please.”
Odin was unmoved. “We need to talk. After that, you can hold him if you like.”
With no real choice, Frigga nodded. “Okay.”
“I had two younger brothers. They proved... troublesome when it was time for me to take the throne. I have prevented a second occurrence.”
Frigga shuddered without meaning to. That was cold. That was really cold. Thor would likely end up having no idea how to handle having an equal, because siblings are the only equals one ever gets, no one to tell him he did something not-quite-wrong-but-not-right-either-
“What is wrong with you?”
Odin’s voice was harsh, and she realized for the first time that she was actually afraid of her “husband”. “You have a problem with Thor, is that it? Is he not good enough for you?”
She shook her head violently, unable to get a word in edgewise as Odin continued his tirade. Finally, he threw the baby at her, and she clutched him for dear life. Her own life, more than his. Odin would have no need of her if anything were to happen to the baby.
Naturally, he’d made it far more certain that his precious heir would live to grow up. And of course, she couldn’t leave him now. Thor bound them together, and the thought made her want to strangle him. Of course, no other man would want her now.
A part of her couldn’t really argue with that logic.
X
Hela lay curled up on the ice. The cover of chaotic battle should have been the perfect chance to escape. No one was actually watching the prison cells. Were she so gifted, she could have spelled open the door, all of the doors, and escaped in the ensuing chaos.
She’d never had a knack for seidr.
The door burst open of its own accord, and she recognized Laufey’s step. Why is he here now? He’d come often enough in the early days, to-
“Get up.”
The rest of what he said was probably native Jotun for every derogatory female term under a cold sun. No matter. She’d heard it all before. At least he hadn’t done that since he noticed she was carrying “his” child. No, mine. Only mine.
Two guards followed, and she tried to get to her feet, arms around her child. There was no point in trying to hide it; her swollen belly was the only part of her that hadn’t been starved away to near-skeletal.
Laufey slammed his staff into her back, knocking her to the ground. “None of that now.”
At a command from their king, the guards flipped her onto her back and pinned her down. Laufey smirked at her and began ripping away at her clothing. Realzing what he was after, but absolutely helpless to fight back, Hela couldn’t help but blurt out, “Just let us go. It’s diplomatic. Odin will be grateful-” The guard slammed a hand over her mouth, silencing her as Laufey pulled out a stone knife and began carving-
Pain blazed through her, but all-consuming as it was, it paled next to the sheer horror of the damage Laufey was doing to her, to her baby. The wound would perhaps heal, if it were tended to, but it would definitely scar. Anyone who ever saw that much of her would know easily what had been done to her.
Hela had never thought much of having a family of her own, at least until recently, but Odin would be displeased if she were no longer useful. She’d been less of the executioner of late, and if she couldn’t be traded as someone’s wife, which was highly unlikely now, she was more apt to find herself on the receiving end of the axe.
And of course...
The baby squelched out of her and Laufey absurdly thanked her and kissed her on the lips before departing with the silent newborn dangling from one hand.
X
“Oh my goodness.”
The kindness of the voice shocked Hela, but no more than the fact that it came from a female Jotun. She hadn’t seen one of those before. Some Aesir even speculated that there were no females of that species, and that new ones just grew like icicles fully matured. To be fair, that would explain how there had always been more of them flooding Midgard for her to kill, reanimate, command to turn on each other... Of course, that couldn’t be the whole story, or there wouldn’t be a tiny hybrid creature out there somewhere-
“My baby.”
The Jotun woman put a surprisingly comforting hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know where your baby is. But let me fix you up first.”
Hela wanted to protest, but knew she couldn’t help her baby if she couldn’t even walk. Besides, she realized grimly, if Laufey had decided to kill the little one, it was already too late.
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“My name is Sagaoya.”
Hela grimaced. “Hela.”
Sagaoya worked quickly, sewing and adjusting. Hela couldn’t look. Eventually:
“Why are you helping me? I’m the enemy.”
The Jotun shook her head. “War is the enemy. I fight back with decency.”
“Odin and the Einerjar will be here soon. They’ll probably kill you just for showing up big and blue.” Hela pulled at her chains experimentally, but they were as strong as ever. Stymied, she turned to her unexpected ally. “Just run. I’ll be fine.”
Sagaoya hesitated, then whispered “Good luck” before sprinting out of the prison like it was on fire. Hela never did see her again.
Come to think of it, on a day like this, ice burning wouldn’t be all that weird. Everything was off-kilter.
Alone again and still in pain, Hela could do nothing but wait and hope she would be found.
X
Somewhere between a split second and eternity later, the door burst open to reveal Odin. They hadn’t seen each other in at least a year, and some part of her that she resented but couldn’t quite squash was actually glad to see him. She rolled upright, grimacing in pain but still plastering on her best (read: terrifying) friendly smile.
“Hello, Father.”
Odin wordlessly lifted her torn blouse to reveal her wound. He must have known what it was, but gave no outward reaction. A few quick blows from Gungnir shattered her chains, finally freeing her. She quietly thanked him and got to her feet with difficulty. Roughly, he shoved a bundle at her before storming out of the prison.
To her shock and joy, he’d brought her the baby, wrapped in a spare blanket. Questions swarmed through her mind, but she followed Odin blindly, without even looking at her ill-conceived offspring. It was warm through the rough blanket, and she felt it stir a few times as she struggled to keep up with her father, exhausted from her long captivity and pregnancy.
She shoved a hand into the blanket, feeling around. Good, strong life force, no hair yet, a couple raised lines like Laufey had that fade at a touch... Ah, you’re a little boy. Small fingers wrapped around her own. Hi there.
She stumbled up to the Bifrost site just in time to be whisked away in a burst of rainbow light.
X
Heimdall’s strong arms steadying her were the first sign that she’d arrived back home.
Home.
Such a simple word for it. Asgard was the only place in the universe she would ever call her own until the day she left for Valhalla or Hel.
Odin left the observatory with a gesture to follow. Hela caught Heimdall’s eye.
“How much does he know?”
“All of it, or near enough. Laufey left the little one in the temple, just for one last insult. I-” He flicked his eyes to the child, and Hela drew him close to herself. “I am bound to obey my king.”
Unable to respond, Hela left to follow Odin.
Despite her questions and protests that she needed a healer, his steps led without hesitation to the edge of the sea. Far out past the breaking waves, Jorgamundr shifted ominously.
“Why are we here? I’ve done nothing-”
“You let them take you alive. You remained alive long enough to give our mortal enemy a child-”
“I didn’t give him anything. He did it to me, took the child from me. Why don’t you go back and kill him if it bothers you so much?”
“He has his uses.”
But I don’t, not anymore. The baby certainly doesn’t except perhaps as a hostage, but Laufey already rejected him once and has other children. So does Odin. He’s probably disappointed that I survived.
“Why did you even bother saving us?” He could have left her and the baby, or killed them outright, but... too much a coward. He only ever killed under the justification of battle. Jorgamundr’s very existence testified to that.
Odin clasped her shoulders, looking deep into her eyes. Only now did she realize he’d lost one of them in the battle. If she held a weapon in her hands instead of a child, or hadn’t just been carved open to birth said child, she could have killed him then and there. As it was, she barely had the strength to stand.
“I wanted my daughter back. I still do. Is that so bad? But I need to be able to trust her. Just get rid of it, and you can forget it ever happened. We’ll get the healers to fix you up properly, and you can meet Thor. We’ll be a family again.”
Some family they were. A palace built on skeletons could never stand. Frigga had been visibly pregnant when the army left for Midgard and Jotunheim, and some small part of her had actually been glad of it. It would be nice to help raise a younger sibling. But never instead of her own.
For the first time, she actually took a good luck at the newborn. Pale blue eyes stared back at her out of the same warm, sallow shade of skin as her own. She showed him to Odin.
“Looks Aesir to me. Call him yours. People will believe you.”
At that, Odin slapped her across the face, knocking her to the ground. “If you can’t take a life when Asgard asks it of you, you don’t belong here.”
Not Asgard, you’re asking it of me. What is Asgard, if not its most innocent occupant? An all-too-familiar clenching hit her stomach, and she recognized the touch of approaching death. She doubled over and tried to vomit, but her empty stomach yielded nothing but pain. Couldn’t be Odin, unfortunately. But the baby...
Lacking any real alternative, Hela nodded reluctantly. “Just... Give me a minute?”
Odin shrugged carelessly and backed off a few paces. It made no difference. She’d never make it out of here with her baby, and there really wasn’t anywhere to go. It may have even been kinder to do what Odin wished. What sort of a life was it, not part of either species, rejected by both, growing up with Odin of all people as a father?
The baby let out a gurgle, and she put him to her breast. Incredibly, he smiled around the milk and held out a hand with the thumb up. Love flooded through her, or else the usual mothering hormones sending milk to her breasts and squeezing her womb back into place. Then again, what was the difference? What were anyone’s actions or desires but the sum of biology and history? Only a lifetime of putting on a diplomatic facade of equilibrium kept her from breaking down completely.
Quickly enough, he closed his eyes to sleep, and she was glad. She kissed him on his forehead with a soft apology. Rolling to her feet, she trudged down the beach toward the river delta. The current would carry him out to Jorgamundr, and that would be it.
The thought that maybe it was just a test of loyalty, that she didn’t have to actually do it, crossed her mind, and she glanced over her shoulder at Odin. He gave no indication of stopping her.
As she crouched near the water, it occurred to her to wonder if Jorgamundr would even trouble with her scrap of a newborn. Not even a snack for him.
Then it clicked.
He wouldn’t, if he had more fitting prey, an actual traitor, or someone held to be one. Life on Asgard was to her a fate worse than death, but the baby likely disagreed. He deserved to live. Inevitable death had come by now so, so close, but it didn’t have to be his.
Resolved, she took one last look at her son -now beginning to cry, as if he knew his mother would be leaving him- and laid him on the sand before diving headlong into the water.
Behind her, Odin let out a frustrated expletive, and she threw a crude gesture over her shoulder. More spirit than she felt. The water was freezing, even after months on Jotunheim, and felt like a brand against her unhealed wound. At least she didn’t need to do anything, just let the current take her. Already, the land was out of her reach. The baby’s wails pulled her back, but she ignored them and the tears on her own cheeks. He would have to manage on his own. Odin lacked the nerve to take a life outright. That had been her job.
No more. She was free now.
Jorgamundr greeted her as a friend, a kindred spirit, in another world perhaps her brother. The two were hosts for death.
As he claimed her, her only regret was never seeing her child again.
X
The traitor vanished into the jaws of the serpent, and Odin forced himself to squash a burst of regret. She’d had her uses, after a millennium of training. He’d been proud of her, in a way. Still, she’d learned to fight back. She’d become a liability. Better she had died on Jotunheim, but that was remedied now.
The warspawn child protested its mother’s death -it must know, somehow- and Odin made to cast it into the water, but changed his mind. It might prove useful with Thor one day.
His child would grow up in a peaceful world, there was no avoiding that. Down to one eye, Odin could no longer fight, or send his prized executioner to enact his will. Loyalty would have to be proved much closer to home now.
He would never forget his own test, when he’d come of age. Bor had tasked him with squashing a rebellion on Vanaheim, led by his older brother, Veli. Odin had attacked with fervor, eager to earn a throne. Veli’s face when Odin ran him through...
Only after Bor’s untimely death some years later did he realize Veli had never actually betrayed them. He’d just been the spare, judged less apt to ruling. The last part of him that regretted his brother’s death died with Hela.
Well. He’d make a use of the traitor’s child yet.
Tucking it under one arm with a hand over its mouth -finally, some peace and quiet after an entire war- he set off for the palace.
X
The shift in Asgard’s core magic could be felt throughout the Realm by anyone attuned to it. Few would make note of it, and fewer -in fact, only one- possessed both inclination and ability to trace it to its source. Therefore, as she quickly realized, Frigga was most likely the only person in Asgard to immediately notice Hela’s death.
Except she wasn’t the only one.
She followed the magic back to its source, and from that to the newborn child in her husbands arm a split second before the door to her chambers burst open. She flinched, glancing toward Thor’s playpen. The toddler had been happily napping, but at the sound of the door, he began to fuss again.
Odin shoved the child into her arms, and she caught him out of nothing but reflex. “There you go. You wanted another one, you’ve got one. Keep it alive; we’ll use it to test Thor once he’s ready for the throne.”
“Odin-”
He cut her off, snatching her hair and dragging her face to meet his. “You are my Queen. Mine. You will do what I wish, no one else.”
Shaken badly even after everything he’d ever done to her, she could only nod and murmur the appropriate agreements. The baby nonetheless fussed as Odin’s fury abated as quickly as it had begun. Or withdrew, rather, as a turtle to its shell, ready to emerge and lash out again at any moment.
Before he left the room, he muttered, as if an apology, “If it dies, I won’t hold it against you.”
Then at last he was gone, and Frigga could finally breathe again. She stood on shaking feet and locked the door. Both children were openly wailing now, and some part of her felt inclined to join them. Hela was dead, Thor destined for life with a terrible father, no sister to protect him, and a brother he would one day be made to execute, that self-same brother destined for honorless death at the hands of his closest friend...
After a long time of anguish, Frigga began to order her runaway emotions and put her thoughts to rights. It would be a millennium or more before that hrorible day, and any number of disruptions could interfere between then and now. For today, the children needed baths, food, and meaningful company.
She turned to the new one as his seidr reached out to hers. Hello, Amma. At his infant voice, she stiffened in alarm, but allowed him to grasp her finger.
My name is Loki.
X
Loki gulped down a drink with unsteady hands. If he was shaking this badly now, he doubted he would be in any shape to hold his newborn child once it actually deigned to make the grand entrance. Exit. Either one, once he thought about it.
Asgardian tradition dictated massive crowds congregating to feast and celebrate each new birth. Countless women surrounded Sigyn cheering her on, although he’d given strict orders that anyone who caused her distress would be removed, and he was to be called immediately should anything go wrong.
For now, he was happily drinking with the other men, watching the twins he considered his daughters play in Frigga’s garden with a crowd of other children. The next generation was alive and well. Something about that felt so right, one last dig at Thanos and his idea that there were too many people. How long would it be before the universe was back to its previous numbers?
Of course, that hadn’t fixed it. He wanted Thor here, constantly shoving extra drinks into his hands insisting that Loki could handle it, even though he couldn’t. He wanted to complain about the elder’s obnoxious bubble nature that couldn’t be squashed by anything. He wanted his child to constantly chase after his cousins, pranking them at ever turn. The next generation could repeat the good things from their parents.
But Thor was gone, and as he’d found out later, Sif was likewise a pile of ash scattered to the wind. They should have been married by now, ideally with Sigyn giving birth in the middle of the ceremony just for kicks. They should be trading stories about having to fire up the kitchens in the middle of the night for obscure cravings, of foot and back massages that they could never refuse because hello Loki, I’ve got a whole person inside me...
“My King.”
Loki bounced to his feet at the head healer’s summons. At least he’d finally become accustomed to his no-longer-new title. But the formal use alarmed him.
“Is something wrong?”
Eir shook her head. “Sigyn wants to see you.”
They slipped out of the hall to various drunken shouts of good wishes.
X
Eir’s reassurances had been an absolute lie, Loki knew instantly. She’d wanted to avoid alarming the gathered crowd. That made sense, but he resented it.
It felt too much like his constant reassurances of Astrid when her baby was already long dead.
Sigyn had stationed herself in a bathtub half-full of water. That made sense -relaxing, easier to clean up- except she was now clutching at the side, face scrunched up in pain, as a healer did something down near her-
This was his wife giving birth, and he was still so awkward with it.
Loki knelt next to her, putting a comforting hand on her hair. “It’s going to be fine, my love. They’ll fix-”
At his concerned, questioning glance, one of the healers chimed in. “The child is breech, with its legs catching on Sigyn’s pelvis. We’re having to... maneuver it into the correct position so it can be born.”
“Right. Good. Do what you have to.”
Sigyn grabbed him by the hair with strength he was surprised she still possessed. She dragged him down to eye level and glared at him with the force of Ragnarok.
“If you... even think of putting that thing anywhere near me again... You’re going to lose it.”
“Duly noted, my Queen. I love you.”
Sigyn started laughing, and relaxed just a bit. The healer tending to the baby let out a happy exclamation, as the spindly little body slipped out. The head followed with the next contraction, and after a few seconds of attention from the healer, cries filled the room.
“You’ve got a little boy.”
At that, Sigyn began to laugh hysterically, and collapsed back into the water with a splash. Loki lifted her out gently and laid her on the tile beside the tub, realizing she’d already fallen asleep. Well. She’d certainly earned a break.
The healer handed him the baby, and he burst into tears in an instant. “Hello there, little one.”
Cleaned of the bulk of the messy birth fluids, the newborn was absolutely perfect. Bald save a dusting of fine blonde hair, newborn-blue eyes. Only the faint traces of blue on his palms and the soles of his feet told of his mixed blood, and the barely noticeable line patterns that matched Loki’s own. He’d modified his glamour to stop hiding them some years previously. Why hide who he was? Everything that had ever happened in his life, from his illegitimate conception and birth to every pain and joy of a childhood in the light of the palace and the shadow of his brother, to his death at that brother’s hands and escaping Hel thanks to his mothers, to obliterating half of the universe, to finding Sigyn... That was who he was. Had anything gone differently anywhere in the story, he would be someone completely different. Part of him was fine with that idea, but the newborn child in his arms would not exist if just one thing had changed. And that was something he could not stand.
“Hello, my little Fenris.”
X
Hel really wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Frigga had been led to believe. It was quiet, it was peaceful. There was even a library.
There were no children here, and she assumed they had their own place to go to, with someone to look after them. That would have been her ideal afterlife, if she could pick one. But she couldn’t, so no use complaining.
Hela had ruled in a way the realm that shared her name. It gave them something of a culture, an identity. But she’d vanished along with half of her subjects, and the task fell to Frigga. If this were forever, it could have been so much worse.
Friday is Frigga’s own day, she who is called goddess of motherhood. There was something so perverse about her own experience in that arena. She’d had everything taken away from her, and every reason to be bitter and angry. But instead she is Friday’s child, loving and giving.