Working Title : Loki & Annie

Chapter 35 - Illusion and Mist

Frigga's bitter furor led her to the stables where she took her favorite mare out for a bruising ride across the open land. At near breakneck speeds, she rode because she needed to clear away the sourness of her anger, the choking ire that was clouding her thoughts. Giving the mare free rein, the horse flew, sending great chunks of dirt high into the air behind them. Frigga finally brought the mare to a walk down the Rainbow Bridge to the Observatory, where Heimdall stood, eyes gazing outward in his eternal watch. 

If the time at a gallop was used to clear her mind, then the time walking down the bridge was used to plan and plot. To scheme in a way she had not had to since she was a young woman fighting the  Great War. But this time instead of standing by Odin's side, she would be facing him. 

Leaving the mare to stand obediently waiting outside the Observatory, Frigga gracefully strode inside. She had come to the Watcher several times when Loki had escaped from the dungeons, he had been unable to pinpoint Loki but knew he had been on Asgard. Until suddenly he was gone. Vanished. For a week, until he had been sensed on Midgard. However as Midgard was the largest of the Realms, he could be anywhere.

"AllMother." The giant god's deep voice filled the Observatory, sounding off it's walls before dissipating out into the silence of space. He spoke without turning to face her, of course he saw that it was her.

"Guardian." She continued forward to come to a stop beside him, staring in the same direction as he did. Standing with her hands joined tightly in front of her, the breathtaking beauty of untold universes were before her but she saw nothing except the coldness of space. Each time she came here her mind always thought to Loki falling through that coldness, that nothingness. Not dying but living in nothing. What would that do to a mind as brilliant as his? To fall for an infinity of time. "You can still sense Loki?"

Heimdall felt no resentment when Frigga asked the same question that she always asked. Asked even though she knew the answer. "Yes. He still wears the charm he made for his brother. It hides him, though not perfectly." He answered her question the same as he always did. It was a ritual they had created. She took comfort from it, he would not deny a mother her comfort.

"He was a child when he cast it. Something to aid in his and Thor's adventures." There was a note of pride in her voice.

Heimdall spoke dryly, "I remember those adventures, the end usually came with a visit to the healers. Or the AllFather."

"Or both." Frigga's slightly upturned lips slowly came down as the smile faded. In silence they stood, the fingers on one hand pinching at a sliver of skin on the other. Keeping her tone remote, she asked,  "Did you see what Odin did to him? In the dungeon?"

"I did."

Frigga nodded as she let the cold seep into her, it was a different cold than snow or cold from the weather. The cold of space was deeper some how. It settled into one's bones differently. She wondered if Loki's bones had ever warmed or if they remained cold. She doubted they had warmed. When would that have happened? He had received not one single kind touch since being brought back to Asgard. He would be freezing cold inside. Unless his hatred warmed him.

"Why did you not reveal it to me?" There was disappointed curiosity in her question.

The Guardian spoke the truth. "Because you could not have stopped it nor changed it."

Frigga turned her upper body to face Heimdall who continued his watching, his eyes reflecting billions of points of light. Glancing down at her hands to see a piece of skin painfully caught between her nails she turned back to study the airless stretch before them. "But I would have tried."