Title: A mother's love (part 1).
Author: Yeziel Moore
Fandom: Thor the movie (2011)
Characters: Loki, Frigga.
Pairings: None.
Rating: K+
Warnings: AU for Avengers; Loki angst (because it totally deserves its own category); Fluff at some point; dunno what else.
Summary: A mother's love is a fearsome thing. Or, in which Frigga takes matters in her own hands.
Disclaimer: I don't own Thor or the Norse Myths. This idea, however, is mine.
Words: 1886.

AN: I totally think that Frigga deserves more time on scene. In my mind she has to be a strong woman in order to put up with Odin's level of douchiness and still be a loved Queen and as well as a good mother. Go Frigga!

This is a two, maaaaybe a three-shot. Part 2 will be up soon (I hope).

.

No, Loki.

The words kept repeating themselves in his mind. Over and over again they were replayed. Two simple words that would be forever seared in his brain, his heart and his soul. Well, supposing that frost giants possessed any of the last two. He wasn't betting on it.

No, Loki.

He had done his best. He always did his best, gave his all, but it was never enough, had never been enough. He was not the son he should've been. He was just a monster who had inspired something akin to pity in an impenetrable heart. No, not even pity. He had been an opportunity, a bargaining chip that had lost his value at some point. A useless relic from a bloody past.

Not even as a tool he was useful to his Father.

No, Loki.

He wanted to cry but the searing pressure of the void didn't allow him the relief. Even now, falling to his death head on, he was denied.

He closed his eyes in order not to see the nothingness that surrounded him, the nothingness that was reflected in the state of his heart.

No, Loki.

He didn't bother steering his course. He would die or he would survive, it mattered not to him.

He kept his eyes closed as he fell and allowed his consciousness to drift away in a futile attempt to stop thinking, stop remembering those accursed words. He didn't need the reminder that he was a failure, a disappointment, a waste of time, effort and resources.

He just wanted to forget. He wanted to sleep.

He was so tired.

No, Loki…

"How could you!"

They were gathered in the Throne Room, they being Odin, Thor, the Warriors Three and Lady Sif. And now Frigga, or someone who looked exactly like her down to the last hair. If Thor hadn't seen his brother fell from the Bifröst mere moments before he would've believed this to be another of Loki's tricks, because this wrathful and powerful creature couldn't positively be his sweet and well-mannered mother.

But it was. It was Frigga and it took every drop of self-restraint in him not to visibly shrink away from her.

Thor remembered one time in his adolescence that Frigga had transformed from a delicate woman into a fire-spitting dragoness. Earlier that day he had decided that ir was a splendid idea to drag his kid brother, who had received no weapon training yet and had barely started to experiment with his magic, into one of his stupidest quests ever. Both of them had almost died but it was Loki who had suffered the most if only because he had been too young for such a thing. Father had been horribly disappointed with him and had punished him severely, as expected, but it had been Mother's reaction that had driven the lesson home.

Thor had never wanted to see such a terrifying thing again. Ever.

Fortunately, and he was not ashamed to admit it if only to himself, Frigga's wrath was focused solely on Odin.

"How could you!" She repeated in a voice that was colder than the wastes of Jotunheim, or the winds of Niflheim. Her honey-coloured eyes showed nothing but a stony conviction wrapped in a steely determination. Her lips, which always seemed to be curled into a smile, were now pulled downwards in a severe way. Thor was surprised to recognize that expression; it was the same expression that Loki would direct at him each time he thought Thor was being more dense than usual. It was usually followed by cutting words.

It seemed that his friends had seen the same thing Thor had for they exchanged nervous glances and inched backwards minutely.

Odin locked eyes with her, unafraid and visibly unhappy. Unhappy for being interrupted or for another obscure reason it was impossible to tell.

"Frigga-"

"Don't you dare 'Frigga' me Odin Borson!(1)"

The silence that followed was deafening and incredulous and heavy but it didn't last long. The All-Mother was in a roll and nothing would stop her until she had said her part.

"You said 'no'! How could you say 'no' to Loki when he was literally hanging over his death?" No answer was forthcoming but she hadn't expected nor did she wait for one. "Your son sanity was in tatters, scattered all over thanks to your lies and my complacence! He was barely hanging by a thread and what do you do when he asks you for reassurance? You deny him! You may as well have shoved him over the edge with your own hands for all the good your eloquence did!"

Frigga finished with a huff and Thor half expected to see tongues of fire escape her nostrils and was half disappointed when it didn't happen. The silence returned, heavier than ever. The Queen and the King were locked in a different battle now, Thor realized with a start, a battle of wills that charged the very air around them with its intensity.

Thor was not very brilliant, nowhere near Loki's impressive intellect, and he certainly had never claimed to be, not even at his worst. That didn't mean that he was stupid, because he really wasn't, it was just unfortunate that his thoughts tended to be too straightforward and usually lacked the depth necessary to come up with whole and functional ideas. Despite this flaw of his, a flaw he wouldn't have been able to see before his banishment, Thor was keenly aware of the gaps in the one-sided conversation he was witnessing. Thor already had suspicions about his brother betrayal before, it had been too sudden and too desperate for a being as composed as Loki, but now he knew that there was some semblance of a reason behind Loki's madness.

His line of thought was cut off by his Father sigh. Thor blinked. In less than five minutes Odin seemed to have aged centuries, Frigga too, but she stood resolute and victorious in whatever battle they had fought.

Odin said nothing for a while nor did he look at his audience.

"What will you do?" The All-Father asked finally, an oddly resigned air hung around him.

"I will follow him."

Odin's death grip around Gungnir was the only show of his displeasure. "Be careful then, for it's been a long time."

Frigga bowed her head but never broke eye-contact. "I will."

With that the Queen turned around and vacated the room but not before giving his elder son a kiss and an affectionate pat on his cheeks. For his part Thor watched her go mutely, confusion and worry nagging at him from the inside.

The silence returned and hung around them like a thick fog.

Loki had no idea for how long he fell. It may have been days, months or centuries, forward or even backward in time, it didn't matter because time was immaterial in the spaces between the branches of Yggdrasil.

What he did know was the moment he arrived at his destination, wherever that was. On instinct he casted a slowing spell on himself in a faint attempt to break his fall. It worked in the sense that he didn't die on impact, which isn't exactly the same as being uninjured. Loki blinked stars away from his vision only to be greeted by a black velvet sea full of unfamiliar constellations looming over him. He could feel rough stones under his back and fine grains of dust under his naked hands. The air was crisp and cold and pure, and it hurt as much as it revitalized him to breathe.

It was the pain that told him what he needed to know.

He had survived.

Had he been in any less pain he would've laughed hysterically and wouldn't have stopped until he chocked or run out of air or both. He was alive.

He couldn't even die by his own terms it seemed. How utterly pathetic.

He closed his eyes, blocking the beauty of the stars from view. Loki knew that he had to get up and get help but his energy was spent. There was no strength in his muscles, his magic was nowhere to be found and his brain felt like someone had stomp on it, repeatedly and with extreme prejudice. And let's not mention his fighting spirit; no, seriously, let's not mention what had been crushed and blown away with two well-placed words.

No, Loki.

This time he did laugh, a broken sound unlike any kind of laugher and which held no joy whatsoever. The tears that accompanied the sound did so unimpeded by any sort of manly pride. Not that it would've mattered as the only witnesses to his breakdown were the stars and the small animals that lived in the desert.

And Heimdall, but for all intents and purposes the gatekeeper didn't count.

Unconsciousness claimed him and a moment later two bouncing lights appeared on the horizon followed closely by the rumble of an engine.

Frigga sighed and bit back a decidedly unladylike curse as she passed by the same branch for the ninth time in what seemed like no time at all. The entirely of this hunt, because a hunt it was even if she disliked the connotations of the word, had been like that. Following Loki's trail was not difficult as her son had not bothered to hide himself or erase his tracks. What was maddening was the lack of a definitive destiny to this nonsense. The trail twisted, curled, went upward, downward, backward, sideway and every other possible way in between.

It was as if her Loki had given up and decided to simply drift away to wherever the Norns decreed.

Frigga's heart clenched in her chest at the thought and she hurried her pace as much as she dared. She hated that she hadn't find her child yet but she had to be patient, it wouldn't do any good to anyone if she lost the trail and had to backtrack, after all.

After what seemed like a bazillion of turns later, many stops and a confusing moment when the trail split in every possible direction, Frigga finally reached the end of the road, so to speak. The vaporous ribbon of green light dashed like a shooting star downwards and towards what she recognized as Midgard after a minute of contemplation.

She sighed in relief at that. Midgard was a dangerous place on its own right, true, but most of its population remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of other worlds, aliens and in particular of Gods.

This wasn't the end though, not by a long shot, and Frigga knew it. In fact, she was sure that the following encounter with her youngest son and the subsequent conversation, which included convincing Loki that they were his family and yes, they loved him very much, was going to be a royal pain in the ass... no pun intended.

In the end none of that mattered, not really. Loki was her precious child, a child of the heart and the soul if not because of blood they did not share, and she would do everything to save him, even or specially from himself.

Without preamble Frigga dropped towards Midgard only with far more grace than both her sons put together.

To be continued...

(1) I read in some of the Myths that Odin is the son of Bor. Considering that Thor is Odinson and Loki is either Odinson or Laufeyson, I don't think is too much of a stretch that at some point Odin was Borson. Probably before he took the throne or became the All-Father or whatever.
The point here is that is disrespectful to call the All-Father anything else than his tittle, which is exactly why Frigga did it.

Uploaded: 09/05/2012