A/N: Lady Loki speaks with Frigga and learns a few unexpected truths

Loki didn't know how long she clung to her mother, begging for her forgiveness over and over again. Though it had only been five years since the Convergence and the Dark Elf attack that had claimed the life of her mother, to Loki it felt as though it had been centuries. And the time spent apart had done nothing to lessen the sense of loss, the absolute finality of it all. She knew she wasn't destined for Valhalla, being the monster that she was, there would be no Valkyries coming to escort her spirit to the eternal mead halls where her mother's soul dwelled.

She did not know why the stones had deigned to bring her there, if it even had been the stones and not her own subconscious desire to see her mother one last time before she died… maybe it was all just a cruel joke, another accursed conjuration of her broken mind, but even if it was just that, Loki wanted to stay in that moment forever. Closing her eyes, Loki breathed in the scent of her mother, drawing strength from her warm, solid presence. Frigga carded her fingers through Loki's hair just how she used to when Loki had been a child.

"I'm the one who should ask for forgiveness, my love," Frigga said after an eternity had passed.

Eyes snapping open, Loki pulled away to look at her, really look at her. Her mother looked so young. Still as graceful as Loki remembered her to be but without any signs of aging.

How far in the past have the stones brought me?

Loki looked around for something to clue her in to the exact timeline. Frigga easily guessed what was on Loki's mind. "You and your brother have started going down to the training rings just this past week."

In other words, quite a bit.

Swallowing the lump that had lodged itself in her throat, Loki asked in a hoarse whisper. "What do you have to be sorry for?"

"A mother's love can be the most selfish thing in the world," Frigga said by the way of answer as she gently led Loki to the balcony and made her sit. "And I have to apologize for all that you have suffered through because of it. And all that you will suffer through still."

"Some would say I brought all that suffering down upon myself."

"They would be wrong." Frigga's response was so fierce, even Loki herself was taken aback. "There was nothing you could have done and everything that I could have. That I should have…" mother cupped Loki's face in her hands and Loki melted into her touch. "Your life could have been very different had I chosen differently. You could have been made aware of the truth of your heritage and the fact that your father and I loved you still, with all our hearts. We chose to have you as our child."

Something cracked within Loki's chest, her voice coming out just as broken. "Why didn't you then?"

"A volva is said to be blessed by Norns, but if you ask me, this gift is just as much of a curse. Knowledge of the future can bring about an unprecedented advantage, that is one of the reasons Odin had asked for my hand in marriage, you know. But… knowing what the future holds also places a heavy burden upon you. Do you choose the path where the ones you love live happy but tragically short lives? Or do you choose the one where they suffer but live to an old age? Every path I ever divined for your future where I chose to tell you the truth or convinced Odin to do so, you never even lived to see the day of your majority." Tears welled in Frigga's eyes and Loki's insides twisted at the sight of those tears. This was wrong. Mother never cried. She was… mother…

"A mother's love is selfish," Frigga said as she cast a spell and the doors leading back to her chambers shifted to show an entirely different room. It was an enormous hall, carved out of a polished stone as dark as the Void itself. Elaborately carved pillars of stone grew from the floor holding up the pale roof that was inlaid with golden frescos depicting scenes from a hundreds and thousands of worlds and hundreds and thousands of lifetimes. Loki tried catching sight of something familiar before realizing just what it was that Frigga had opened up to her.

"The Weaver's Hall," Loki gasped, turning to face her mother, wide-eyed. "Y-You… Why are you showing me this?"

"Because of what I am about to tell you…" Frigga stood up, holding out a hand for Loki to take, "I want to show you something in here before I can explain any further."

"But…" Loki hesitated at the threshold when Frigga tried leading her inside. "Mother, none but the weavers chosen by the Norns themselves may set foot inside."

"Exceptions can and have been made in the past," Frigga assured her, gently tugging her inside, "and I feel this qualifies as one such time."

Loki felt her breath catch at the ambient magic inside the Weaver's Hall. Every step that they took on the floor sent bolts of pure white lightning shooting through the stone in all directions, resonating and flowing through the pillars to reach the frescoes high above their heads. Loki turned her head to see the murals shift, now depicting images from Loki's and Frigga's lives. Directly above their heads were images from their immediate past and present but spreading outwards and moving along with them were images that could have been from their pasts or futures. Could have beens, would have beens and never beens all mixed above them, flowing from one to the next so seamlessly Loki couldn't tell which of them was part of their reality and which wasn't.

"It's best not to look at them," Frigga said, leading Loki through a maze of pillars until stopped in front of one that, although visually no different than the others, emanated a warmth that Loki hadn't realized had been missing until then. "Place your hand next to mine."

Loki did as Frigga instructed, placing her palm against the stone, marveling at how similar their hands appeared. Had she subconsciously modelled some of her features based on her mother? Before Loki could reach a decision the strangest thing happened. Loki was intimately familiar with nearly all means of magical travel from teleportation, to portalling, to slipping into the secret paths of the world tree and moving between the realms, but never had she ever experienced the world itself move around her while she remained rooted to the spot. Loki knew it in her bones that she was still standing in the same place but the pillar seemed to grow around them and swallow them inside, bringing them to a room completely identical to the one they had just been standing in at first glance.

But it was as Frigga pulled away and led her past more pillars that Loki noticed a key difference. There were wooden shelves growing out of the stone pillars, adorned with hundreds of tapestries, stretching away from Loki in endless rows. Colorful scenes of Asgard's history were woven into each and every one of them, some featuring minor instances of things Loki could vaguely recall happening and some Loki was entirely certain had never happened at all.

"These tapestries hold within them, not only visions of futures that have already come to pass, but also futures that could have been," Frigga said as they moved past impersonal tapestries and towards shelves that depicted more personal histories and futures. Loki spied a tapestry where Odin had slain Laufey on Jotunheim during the war and another where Odin had lost not just his eye but also an arm. Another where instead of picking Loki up in his arms, he had left the little Jotun baby to suffer from the elements, taking with him only the Casket of Ancient Winters. Loki stared at Odin's back before shaking her head and moving on with Frigga. "While I cannot completely avoid what my visions bring forth in my weavings, I can control the outcome to a certain extent by tweaking the events that precede it."

A feeling of unease began to knot its way inside Loki's chest though she did not want to consider why that would be, her steps slowing as the tapestries after Odin's belonged to Hela. A lot more of them were woven with crimson threads than Odin's. Sometimes the blood belonged to realms that she had conquered and sometimes it belonged to Hela as she died. There was a tapestry that struck Loki as the strangest of them all for in that Hela was not dressed as a would-be conqueror but as a queen smiling benevolently down at Loki. She froze before it, marveling at how different that smile made Hela appear from the woman that had forced them to destroy Asgard in a bid to stop her.

Noting her interest in the tapestry, Frigga returned to Loki's side.

"She looks so at peace," Loki murmured. "Why did this not come to pass?"

"Because of what happened next," Frigga said softly as she reached out and touched the tapestry. Before Loki's very eyes, the threads shifted and flowed together until a different image, a horrifying image took its place. The nine realms destroyed, Hela sitting atop a throne carved out of the skulls of all the species she had conquered and destroyed in her bid for… vengeance. Loki wasn't sure how she knew that, but it was almost instinctual for Loki to surmise that the scene depicted in the tapestry was a result of vengeance. "Assassins." The word was uttered solemnly as though it explained everything, and in a way, it did.

Nodding, Loki forced herself to move away and Frigga took that as her cue to lead on. Loki knew that the next set of tapestries would belong to Thor and it was an effort to not turn and stare at them. Nothing good would come out of knowing every possible way that her brother would or could have died. She did not need the additional fuel to torment herself with. It was hard enough fighting off the phantoms that dogged her steps every waking moment.

"This," Frigga whispered as she came to a stop in front of the shelves that held tapestries depicting Loki's futures. "This is what I wanted to show you."

Pushing back on the feeling of unease which had increased tenfold, Loki lifted her head. Looking at what they held, she couldn't help but gasp at the sheer number of tapestries hanging from the shelves stretching out into the inky darkness.

"W-What is this?" Loki stumbled back, her gaze darting from one image to the next, her heart thundering inside her chest at the scenes depicted within, the air suddenly not enough for her to breath. The inky darkness of the Void reach out for her with clawed hands shot through with lightning, rising from the very floor that supported the shelves. Unease that had begun as a trickle was now a river rushing towards Loki, threatening to drag her under a rising wave of panic. A truth that Loki had refused to acknowledge since the moment she had first lain eyes on the tapestry depicting Odin now stood before Loki, demanding to be recognized.

Try as she might, she couldn't tear her gaze away from the morbid depictions of her death, for every single tapestry before her showed her in only one state. Dead. There she was, frozen as a little Jotun babe when Odin had rejected her. And there she was, impaled on a Jotun ice-blade in Jotunheim, blue bleeding across her skin as Thor and his friends watched on in horror. And there… she was tied to a boulder, mouth sewn shut and limbs pulled apart in impossible angles as a snake dripped burning venom into skin that was flayed apart. And that one over there… Thanos grinned down at her lifeless body as she lay crumpled at his feet, her neck bruised and crushed as the Statesman burned around them.

Everywhere she looked, Loki was dead. In a thousand different ways in a thousand different lifetimes in a thousand different worlds. There was only even one end to her story in the tapestries that Frigga had woven. But the one tapestry that truly grabbed her attention wasn't the one where Loki was dead. No, it was the one where she had successfully destroyed Jotunheim after throwing Thor into the Void.

On shaky legs, Loki backed away unable to tear her gaze from the image of darkness reaching out to swallow her brother. Her bright, golden, shining brother smothered by the nothingness of the Void. She knew what would come next for him. Thor would land in Thanos's grasp but unlike Loki who was too weak to resist, her brother would keep on resisting, keep on fighting until the Mad Titan would decide he wasn't worth the trouble. In her mind's eye she could see it happen, the Titan grasping Thor by the throat, lifting him off the ground, Thor's legs uselessly kicking in the air, trying to find purchase as he grasped at the hand crushing his neck until with a final resounding crack, it would break and Thor would be tossed aside like a ragged doll.

"Loki."

"Well, would you look at that, little brother? You managed to kill Thor after all."

"Loki."

A tiny part of Loki realized that although every other tapestry that she had noticed had depicted her own death in one manner or the other, that was the only one where she had lived. And Thor had died…

"I suppose it comes down to one or the other in the end," Hela said as she sauntered out from behind a pillar and leant against it, uncaring of the eternal flame that leapt out towards the nearest tapestry. "Either you die a gruesome death at the hands of Thanos, or you will kill Thor and survive."

"Loki, come back to me, love."

"If you ask me, I'd bet on you surviving," Hela continued conversationally, picking at a patch of fabric that had fused with her charred flesh. "Want to know how I can be so certain?"

Callused fingers grasped Loki's face and she was transfixed by Hela's wicked grin as her sister came close enough to whisper in her ear, "Thanos is already in Knowhere and Thor does not have you to offer as appeasement."

"Loki!" a jolt of Frigga's magic stung Loki back into the present.

"I-I…"

"It's going to be okay, darling," Frigga murmured, cutting Loki's view of a thousand different could have beens as she grasped Loki's hands and pulled her to her feet.

"You're all dead because of me, and now, he too will die because of me," Loki whispered, eyes burning with unshed tears as she looked at the mother she had killed. Guilt fizzed in her chest like a burning toxin as the true impact of what she had doomed her only remaining family to hit her. Her gaze slid to the hands grasping her own and she wrenched away. "I am a curse, a poison that eats away everything it touches. I did not wish to die so I killed Laufey. And then I killed you... I killed Odin by exiling him and now… now I've killed Thor…" Turning away, Loki tried not to look at the proof of all her betrayals, breathing fast as a hysterical laugh bubbled up her throat. "Oh the irony is delicious. I was trying to keep him alive! I was trying to save his life and in my foolish attempts at keeping the last of House Odin safe, I shall be its undoing."

"Loki, look at me," mother said as she stepped closer, once again grasping Loki's hands, refusing to let Loki pull away. "You are a gift, a blessing from the Norns themselves."

"Don't you see it? I destroy everything around me." Loki struggled to free herself without trying to hurt her mother who just would not let go. "If you don't let me… I-I… Why won't you understand? I'm the reason you died, mother!"

"No, Loki," those accursed words made Loki freeze. "I died because it was my time. It wasn't your fault."

"But I was the one who—"

"I do not need to know the details, my love," Frigga cut in as Loki's gaze slid past her to the ashen plain of Svartalfheim, where Loki lay sprawled on the ground in a pool of her own blood, alone and forgotten like the broken relic she was. "You needn't fret over something that is a long time in the future for me."

"In the future…" Loki choked on a laugh as her gaze darted to another tapestry. There she was, dead at the Grandmaster's hand, her flesh burning under the meltstick. Alone and forgotten, once again left behind to suffer the consequences of her treachery. Something like panic but visceral clawed on Loki's mind, her breaths coming shorter and shorter as infinites futures began to meld together.

"Loki."

There she was, embedded into the floor of Stark's tower, her body broken and bruised, barely even recognizable as Aesir after being smashed repeatedly by the green brute. Suddenly it wasn't the Hulk but Laufey standing there. And then it was Hela, the Grandmaster, the Other, Thor, Ebony Maw, Odin until each and every death that Loki suffered was ultimately at the hands of Thanos.

"He's coming for you, little bother~" Hela sang as mother forcefully turned Loki away from the tapestries.

"Loki, look at me," she ordered in a tone that brook no arguments and Loki found herself obeying. "There we go, now breathe. Come on, love, take in a breath. Now hold it in. Good good. Now let it out. Slowly. Good girl. Now once again, inhale." Loki mimicked her actions as Frigga breathed, loud and slow.

The panic clawing at the edges of her mind, gouging through her sanity slowly began to abate though there was a familiar seidr spreading through her veins, a formless spell working to sooth her emotions and calm her mind.

"It doesn't matter what I do," Loki said once again, her heart breaking at the tears that welled in Frigga's eyes.

"No, no, that's not true," Frigga repeated, her expression so earnest that Loki couldn't help but believe her. Mother's hands slipped down to grasp Loki's and she gasped at the blistered scars, calluses and cuts she could feel. Looking down, she could only see pale, smooth flesh but… a directed burst of magic dispelled the illusion placed on mother's hands. Loki's breath caught at the deep cuts in mother's fingers. Fingers that she knew mothers used to work the loom. Loki traced the length of a cut on mother's forefinger.

"You wove..." she breathed, struggling to grasp at just how much she must have done so for her hands to be in that state.

"I did, Loki," Frigga admitted. "I wove and I wove, trying to find a way to save you. A path that would not end in your death."

Loki looked back towards the shelves that had to hold at least ten times more tapestries then Odin, Thor and Hela's combined.

"It wasn't easy, finding the futures where you lived until an old age but…" Frigga trailed off.

"Is this one of them?" Loki whispered shakily. "Mother, tell me, is this future, my future one of them?"

"It can be," Frigga whispered in turn, her voice just as soft as Loki's. "The future is not set in stone and every action, every decision that we make affects the path moving forward. I cannot dictate your every action to ensure the outcome we want, however, I may be able to provide you with some clues."

"Such as?"

"You will need Hela by your side when you confront Thanos."

"Hela is dead, Mother."

"Loki, can the goddess of death truly be killed?" Frigga asked gently. "Find the soulstone and you will have your answers."

"Fath— Odin said that Hela drew her power from Asgard. Thor and I used Surtur to destroy our realm just so she couldn't begin her conquest of the universe anew. With Asgard gone, is her power really worth the risk of bringing her back?"

"Hela never wanted to conquer the universe. She only wanted one particular aspect of it."

An aspect of the universe… what could it be that the goddess with control over life and death itself would want—

"You would trust her with that?"

"Your father may not have trusted her with that power at the time of her sentencing but I believe in all of my children. Just as Thor came into his powers and you will soon begin to come into yours, so will your sister. There isn't much that the three of you together cannot achieve."

"I'm not sure there is much power to come in to with lies and mischief," Loki said while fighting to keep the bitterness out of her voice. The symphony belonging to the stones whispered in the back of her mind and she only half heard Frigga's reply.

"Oh but Loki, my dear sweet child, you are much more than a mere god of lies and mischief."

The symphony grew louder, signaling the end of her respite, as though whatever it was that Loki needed had already been delivered to her. Shoving aside the bitterness and regret that threatened to rise at the thought of leaving behind her mother, Loki did the only thing she had regretted not doing more of when Frigga had been alive. She closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around her mother and breathed in the scent of her perfume.

"I love you, Mother." She closed her eyes, trying to resist the tug of the stones' power even though it burned against her seidr. "I miss you and… I'm sorry."

With a mighty jerk, Loki was wrenched away from the Weavers Hall and sent tumbling through time and space. Times and Places went whizzing by, never stopping long enough for Loki to truly get her bearing and all too soon, she was thrust back into the moment where she had touched the time stone. Blue and Green energy intermingled around her and Strange in a complex dance, the songs of the two infinity stones taking on a tone of joy, like long lost siblings reuniting after eons of being kept apart. Power burnt in Loki's veins and across from her, she could see the same happening to Strange as his injuries knit back together in a way that had more to do with Time itself. His eyes glowed with the stone's power and when he spoke his voice rang with it too.

"We can't let that ship crash."

Fractals of green radiated outwards, rapidly aging and de-aging everything they touched.

"Conjuring a shield would be prudent," Loki replied and felt the power of Space echo within her words. Portals to other places and realms blinked in and out of existence within fractals of blue spreading out. Loki's attention was snatched by the view of an idyllic cabin, nestled within enormous trees with purple and orange leaves but it was gone the next moment.

"We should put away the stones first," Strange suggested, "as soon as time resumes, those aliens will notice their presence and come for us."

Loki looked around, noting for the first time that the world was frozen around them with Strange and herself being the only two being to still be moving.

"Agreed," Loki nodded, gathering as much of the chaotic energy that she could from their surroundings, letting it mingle with the power of space rushing through her veins, and ultimately channeling it into her seidr. "At the count of three?"

"One," Strange said by way of agreement and Loki witnessed the golden power of dimensional energy flare around the sorcerer, beginning to form a series of rapidly spreading mandalas above their heads.

"Two." Loki grasped Chaosmaker and channeled her seidr through it, strengthening and supplementing the sorcerer's shields.

"Three!" As one, they both concealed their respective stones and time resumed. The next moment, the Q-ship slammed into their shields with a mighty crack and Loki felt the drain on her seidr when the ship opened and Outriders poured out in a wave of gnashing teeth and claws to attack the barrier.

"We can't hold this indefinitely," Loki grunted. "When is the rest of your order arriving?"

"I didn't have a chance to call them in," Strange answered through grit teeth.

"Well I suggest you do that post-haste, unless you wish for all of Midgard to soon be overrun by those mindless beasts."

"While I see the urgency of our situation, is now really the time to exaggerate the threat?" Strange asked as he lowered a shaky hand to his pocket and withdrew a cellphone.

"Outriders spawn as they battle," Loki said. "The nest from that ship alone is more than enough to take over Midgard by the end of the day.

Suitably alarmed, Strange hurried the process of calling his assistant in the New York Sanctum and informing him of the threat.

"Stark, we need someplace isolated to channel the Outriders currently hovering above our heads," Loki took that time to call into her communicator.

"Can't you poof them away?" Stark asked in a tone that suggested he was only half listening.

"I would have already done so had I the means to do so without attracting your opponents' attentions. Now, if you want to minimize casualties, I suggest you offer us a suitable place within the next minute or I will create an opening wherever I see fit."

"Four blocks to your west, there's a park which should be completely empty by now," Stark answered only a few moments later.

"Strange, create a portal to that location," Loki ordered the sorcerer, who only shook his head in turn as he put his phone away.

"I need to be able to visualize my location," said the second-rate.

"Seems as if I have to do everything myself," she snapped at Strange. Closing the distance between them, she grabbed his arm and teleported. "How exactly will your order arrive to help us if they cannot create portals?"

"The Order has other means available," Strange replied, struggling to get his bearing after the sudden displacement though Loki couldn't find it in her to feel bad. Not after what he had put her through during that unfortunate trip to locate Odin. She turned to survey their surroundings, finding them adequate for keeping the Outriders contained. Moving in a wide circle, she cast the strongest containment wards that she possessed the ability for without depleting her Seidr. She still needed some for the oncoming fight. "I'm going to create a weak spot in the shields above us. The Outriders will do the rest themselves, however, we still cannot let the ship fall into the city."

"I have set a contingent of Sorcerers on that task," said Wong as he strode out of the treeline, robes billowing behind him, as he was followed by a dozen others. He came to a halt next to Strange and eyed Loki with curiosity. "Friend of yours?" he asked the second-rate.

"More like a temporary ally," Loki spoke up, holding out her hand. "You may address me as Loptr."

Wong frowned at the name though he refrained from accusing her of anything. Oh for Norns sake, how does everyone on this piece of dirt know that name? I haven't even used it in centuries!

Thinking it best to distract them from her identity, Loki allowed part of her support shield above the park to crumble, noting with some internal glee how Strange's primary shield did not hold up under the Outriders' assault for more than three seconds, completely disregarding the second-rate's physical state when he had cast it.

The first of the Outriders broke through, gnashing teeth flashing in the air as it fell some fifty feet to the ground with a sickening crunch of exoskeleton. Uncaring of their broodling's fate, the rest followed, falling in a torrent of clawing limbs and snapping teeth, creating a tiny mound of broken bodies. Loki chanced a glance towards the Midgardians, making note of their disgust at the sight of the creatures that continue to fall until a point came that they merely tumbled down the mound of their dead broodlings.

Splitting Chaosmaker into two swords, Loki took a stance and launched herself at the oncoming creatures. Somewhere in the midst of golden sparks of Midgardian magic, blades and spikes of ethereal energy of the mirror dimension and her own seidr reaching out to embrace the chaos, Loki lost track of time, losing herself to the rhythm of battle. Of parrying, dodging and attacking and confusing the creatures with her blades and seidr alike. Though it did not seem to matter to the Outriders. Just as she had warned Strange, they spawned far quicker than their meager defenses could get rid of them.

Stuck in the heart of melee, Loki felt one of her containment wards weaken. It seemed as though the Outriders had made it past some of the Midgardian sorcerers. Unfortunately, Loki knew that if she were to abandon her position, even more would get away and spread in farther directions.

"Stark, I hope you and your minions are ready to contain the Outriders," she called into the communication device, "they are about to breach perimeter to the southwest."

"No can't do, Lokes. We've got our hands full," Stark grunted back. "Kid, what's the status on your end?"

"None of the people here seem to trust Cap and Widow enough to want to evacuate," the spider-child replied, sounding a little out of breathe. "I'm stuck trying to convince them to leave."

"You're going to have to figure out a way to keep them contained on your own— damn it! I have to go!" Loki thought she heard the little witch scream the android's name in the background just before Stark cut off.

Between bouts of fending off attacks, Loki assessed her surroundings and the state of Midgardian sorcerers coming to dreadful realization that although the mortals fought valiantly, they did not possess the numbers to fight off a literal hoard of creatures whose only purpose in existence was to spawn and kill. Even if they had succeeded in portaling away the Q-ship to Norns knew where, there was still a matter of all the Outriders that had made it to the ground and spawned a hundredfold since then. At this rate, Midgard would be lost before the next sunset. And with it, Thanos would get his hands on two more infinity stones…

I suppose if things get bad enough, I can always grab the stone keepers and portal off planet. Loki decided grimly as she started making her way to where she knew the containment was about to be breached. All around her, the air was filled with the inhuman growls of Outriders and the screams of dying sorcerers. She was halfway to her destination when a bolt of lightning shining with all the colors of the rainbow struck the ground in the heart of the hoard and Loki froze for a heartbeat. Eyes going wide, she whirled on her feet to where she knew the bolt had struck, having only enough air to breathe a single word.

"Thor…"

A/N: Sorry for being AWOL guys. This chapter gave me way too much trouble. I swear I rewrote that conversation between Frigga and Loki a gazillion times before I was happy with it. So I hope you guys enjoyed the fruits of my labor. :3
Lemme know your thoughts in the reviews because I love reading and replying to each and every one of them even if it may take me a while to get around to it.