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Loki is in chains. Her baby boy, with his wrists and ankles bound, escorted by einherjar like a criminal. He is a criminal, Frigga reminds herself, but her heart twists all the same at the sight and it is not the only one.
The sound that comes from Sigyn when she sees her husband is not one that should come from any throat made for words.
She throws herself towards him, arms outstretched, the way Frigga has seen her do so many times after she and Loki have been parted. Loki will open his arms and pull her close to him. He will spin around, lifting her in the air like she is a bird. They will both laugh, high and bright, like sunbeams. And then their lips will meet, as inevitable as sunrise, sweeter than honey on the tongue, softer than thistledown. She, Thor and Odin will turn away, let her son and his wife have their reunion.
Not this time. This time, Loki is a criminal in chains standing accused of high treason and the attempt to enslave a planet. He is not the second prince returning from an adventure with his brother any more. Everything is different now. After all, there is a reason that Sigyn's children are not even allowed to be in the room while Loki is brought before the Allfather.
Thor catches Sigyn about the waist before her feet can even leave the ground. Her skirts eddy about her, echoing her interrupted arc towards her husband. Ever so faintly, Frigga can hear the clink of chains as Loki lowers the hands he had reflexively raised towards Sigyn.
Loki's eyes fall to Thor's arm about Sigyn's waist, her hands resting on it as she struggles in his grasp. Something flickers in those eyes, something that she does not recognise until it is too late.
And then, such vitriol pours from her son's lips that Frigga feels sick. It is pure venom and hate, untainted by any softer feeling. There is no intent in it save to wound and to wound cruelly.
Sigyn freezes when the first word spills from his mouth. Frigga can see the incomprehension in her daughter's face, the words being spat at her so unexpected that she does not quite register them for a long moment, and then the frozen hurt. Norns, she understands that hurt. Is this creature of poison and spite the boy she had raised?
He accuses Sigyn of being an unfaithful whore. He demands to know how long it took before she fell into his brother's bed. And then he digs deeper, throwing every twisted thing his brilliant mind can imagine at her. The silver tongue that had lavished praise and adoration upon Sigyn now turns to tearing down every wall she has ever raised, leaving her shivering and vulnerable and bleeding.
When at last he pauses, panting for breath, Sigyn does not weep. Frigga would not have blamed her if she had. Frigga wants to weep herself. What has happened to her baby boy? What has turned a man who worshipped the ground his wife walked on into this?
"Are you done?" Sigyn asks, cold and upright like a spring flower frozen in an unexpected frost. Her eyes are fever bright, limpid in a way that Frigga knows means held back tears - but the tears do not fall.
Loki is silent. His eyes flick over her, almost as feverbright as Sigyn's own.
"I would have followed you off the Bifrost." Sigyn says, voice as steady as the roots of the Eternal Realm. "I wish now that I had. I wish that you had stayed dead, and my memories of you had not been tainted."
Then she turns and leaves in a whirl of skirts that seem somehow heavier than they had that morning. Loki's mouth opens silently, and Frigga fancies she can see Sigyn's name forming on his lips. His eyes are very bright, glimmering much as Sigyn's had. She wonders if he will try to apologise, if he will find the words to patch up the great wounds he has made of Sigyn's soul.
He stays silent, and the doors bang shut behind Sigyn.
Instead, his attention turns to Frigga herself. She almost flinches as his eyes land on her.
Feverbright eyes, almost unfamiliar, and mad, mad, mad.
"Hello, Mother.'' Loki says with a smile, as if he has executed another of his pranks instead of breaking his wife's heart anew. "Have I made you proud."
If Frigga looks closely, she imagines she could see Sigyn's heartsblood splashed over the floor where she had stood. "Don't make this worse." She says softly.
"Define worse."
She is not sure she can.
*****************
Frigga finds Sigyn in her chambers. The younger woman has set her trunks open on the floor, and is directing an intricate dance as every item in the apartments set aside for the second prince and his wife marches into the trunks. Not quite everything, Frigga corrects herself, watching as only half of the books on a shelf dance their way into the trunk. Everything that belongs to Sigyn or her children.
"What was the sentence?" Sigyn asks, without turning, eyes still bent on the parade of items being swallowed by her trunk.
"Life in the dungeons.'' Frigga replies. "You and Thor may visit as you wish. I may only visit through projections." It is not execution, she reassures herself. Loki is alive, and will remain so. Everything else can come afterwards.
Sigyn scoffs. The things in the air freeze as she turns to face Frigga fully. Her eyes are red. "I do not think I will wish, Allmother. Certainly he will not wish to see me."
Her voice is bitter and hard, but it wavers nonetheless. She sounds very young. When Frigga opens her arms, Sigyn burrows into them as easily as she had when she was Frigga's homesick apprentice centuries before.
Frigga presses a kiss to her daughter by law's head. "Give it time, dear. You and Loki have had your quarrels before."
"He has never tried to overthrow the Allfather and subjugate three seperate realms before." Sigyn says bitterly. It is not, of course, that which has most offended Sigyn but Frigga does not bring Loki's words up. She is not so tactless.
Instead, she guides Sigyn to sit on one of the low couches scattered around the room. "Where are you going?" She asks gently.
Sigyn is quiet for a moment, just staring at her hands. Frigga wonders if it has truly become so bad that Sigyn wishes to disappear entirely. But then, after some minutes, she does answer.
"My father's house." Sigyn says, so quietly that Frigga can hardly hear it. Then she pauses, and resumes more firmly. "I have sent the children on ahead with Mother. She has promised that we can stay with them as long as we must."
It could be worse, Frigga thinks. Angrboda's family have several remote lodges on Vanaheim that Sigyn could easily disappear to and never be found by any Aesir again. If she stays with Tyr and Angrboda on their Asgardian estate then she will still be close by. No doubt she and her children will still be a part of court life.
All the same. "You do not have to leave." She says. "You are the mother to my grandchildren, you will always have a place in the palace."
"Loki has made it quite clear that he considers our marriage over, Allmother. I cannot stay here knowing what he thinks about me now." Sigyn's voice is steady. That does not disguise the raw pain in it. A year of thinking herself a widow, only to be cast aside by this terrible mockery that Loki has been twisted into in the mere year he was absent.
If Odin had fallen and returned unrecognisable, could Frigga have stayed in the rooms where they had been so happy? Could she have endured the centuries of memories now tainted by the knowledge of her beloved's face twisted with hate and spitting poison? She presses a kiss to Sigyn's temple. "Go with my blessing then, daughter." She says. "But know you are always welcome with your family."
The smile she gets is tremulous, but it is a smile nonetheless. Frigga will take every victory she can. She helps Sigyn pack three and a half centuries worth of life into a few expanded trunks, and slips a few tokens of her own in. Nothing much. Just gifts for her grandchildren and daughter through law, to ease their transition. She had meant them for birthdays and high days, but she does not know if she will have the chance now. If she does, well, she can always make more gifts for her grandchildren.
She carries the saddlebags as the two women walk through the silent halls of the palace towards the stables. Neither of them speak. They have said all that needs to be said, and their thoughts are heavy indeed.
Three and a half centuries of life, ended in less than an hour. It would hurt more, Frigga thinks, if she had not already endured the agony of believing her son dead. Even with that to compare the twisting in her heart with, she still feels almost breathless. She had been so happy only a year ago, with one son set to take the throne and the other son finally settling, with a wife and he most perfect children in the Nine. She and Odin were to have stepped back from court life, have time for themselves that was not snatched in stolen moments.
It would have been so beautiful. And then, in a single instant, it had all been snatched away. Now Odin is stuck with the throne even as he withers away, Thor pines for his mortal lover, and Loki languishes in the dungeon, having driven away his wife and children after attempting to subjugate an entire people. Where did it all go so wrong?
Odin and Thor are waiting for them in the courtyard by the stables, with Sigyn's horse already saddled. Frigga suspects Angrboda had left word for Thor before departing with her grandchildren. It is what Frigga would have done in her place, and half the reason Angrboda was chosen as her chief lady all those years ago was because the two girls were so very similar.
She embraces the daughter of her heart first, as tightly as she ever had held the son that Sigyn had wed. "This is not goodbye." She says. "You have been my daughter for more than three hundred years. I will not lose you now to Loki's foolishness."
That gets her a weak flicker of a smile, like the last embers of daylight before the sun sets. "You will not lose me, or your grandchildren, Allmother." Sigyn replies.
Then Odin moves forward, and Frigga busies herself attaching the saddlebags the pommel of the saddle, checking the tack, testing the buckles. There is nothing to warrant the testing of course, but it makes her feel a little better. She can hear her husband speaking behind her and turns her head ever so slightly to see over her shoulder.
"Your children will remain in the line of succession and both you and they will retain the allowance due to your status." Odin tells Sigyn, one hand on her shoulder. "Sleipnir is Thor's heir until he weds and has children of his own. This will not change, I promise you."
Sigyn smiles wearily. "Thank you Allfather, but quite frankly that is the least of my concerns."
"I know." Odin says, kissing her forehead. "But it is all that is within my power to give you."
"Not even you can be expected to heal a broken heart." Sigyn says, her eyes dryer than they were when she and Loki returned from one of their mad adventures to Muspelheim.
She turns to Thor, and almost vanishes when he embraces her. She has always been slight, and between her grief at Loki's death and her concern for her children, she has only become slighter in the last year.
Frigga, returning to her place at Odin's side, is close enough to hear what Thor says to her.
"You are still my sister, are you not?" His voice is smaller than she had thought possible. Oh, her sweet golden boy. This has been so hard for him. It was he who had to fight Loki.
Sigyn laughs for the first time since that awful moment in the throne room. "Always."
"Then go with good speed, sister." Thor says, beaming so brightly he looks like sunlight. "I will visit you as often as I can."
He folds his hands together and lets Sigyn use his joined hands as a mounting block. She looks down on him with a faint smile. "Amora is away still, if that is an incentive to visit us soon."
Then she clicks her tongue to the horse and with a clatter of hooves, she is gone.