Author's Note: Hello, hello! Here we are again. I have nothing to say in this author's note. This happens a lot. And then I end up rambling. Like right now. This chapter is a little different, it doesn't feature Loki or Val, but it's very important, I promise. So, anyway, on with the chapter. Let me know what you think in the comments!
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“You are a complete idiot, you know that?” Gymir growls at Forseti who merely rolls his eyes in return.
“I am taking action, Gymir. I do not care if she is your daughter or not, she is a threat to everything we have been working towards,” Forseti says calmly, rising from his seat. Gymir narrows his eyes at him and lets out a lengthy sigh. In fairness, Forseti is right.
Gymir counters, “We can easily manipulate her. And, if we play our hand correctly, we can get Loki on our side.”
“I fail to see how we go about getting the bastard trickster to do anything for us.”
"You said once you thought we could use him..."
"Yes, and that was before he became weak. The vengeful part of him has been subdued and he is no longer filled with the type of passion we could use."
“I have seen the way he looks at my daughter,” Gymir smiles crookedly. “I know that look. You said yourself he confessed his love for her in front of the council.”
Forseti meets Gymir’s steady gaze, his interest suddenly piqued. “True…”
“Loki went against deliberate orders to save my daughter. That right there is the best weapon we could possibly have,” Gymir says simply. Forseti bites down on his bottom lip, chewing the skin while he thinks.
He shakes his head, “Unbridled passion doesn’t make for efficient control. If we could break them, then perhaps it would be a consideration. But for now…”
“Valkyrie has always been a bit of a loose cannon…”
“You needn’t remind me,” Forseti sniffs, recalling with a shudder the confrontation at the last council she attended. He had gone after her in blind rage, but she had disappeared. The little, hapless, unwieldy, rebellious little shit. His distaste for her is kept just enough in check to only slightly consider her potential use in their ploy. “I’d rather we get this done soon enough. Things are falling into place.”
“Patience is a virtue, Forseti. Soon enough we will have what we want. Asgard will fall to you, and Jotunheim to myself and all will be well, that much I can assure you,” Gymir nods with a smile on his thin lips, hands clutched behind his back. He carries an air of dignity and power with him that Forseti admires.
“I have waited far too long for this,” Forseti says, mostly to himself. “I have given everything for Odin and his foolish would-be-king sons and I get nothing in return. No merit, no award, no recognition. A position on the most ancient and defunct council in the Nine Realms? That is hardly worth what I have given up!”
Gymir observes Forseti as he crosses the room, his temper rising, colour flushing his face red. He notes that perhaps aligning himself with Forseti was not the wisest of choices, though he was the most eager and determined. Gymir of course has no real reason, nor a legitimate claim to Jotunheim, except that in he saw the opportunity for power and seized it. Marrying Valkyrie’s mother had been its own stratagem, though without the results he had wished for.
Forseti’s passion stems from a different place. Misplaced blame, anger, frustration…a toxic and spreading poison in his blood. It has been a festering wound for years in Forseti’s mind, slowly seeping into every thought and every action. If Forseti hadn’t been so devoted to Odin…if he hadn’t had the narrow focus he had as Odin’s ever-ready and eager errand boy, if he hadn’t listened to Odin’s word as gospel, then perhaps he would not have lost everything. And everything was love. A family of his own. A woman he had bargained and struggled for and loved so consumingly that he did everything for her. She was a woman of Midgard who bore his son and Odin allowed the family together on Asgard as long as Forseti did his bidding. Of course, that was until Odin agreed Forseti’s love be tested, tested to join the Aesir and live out her eternity with her devoted lover. Odin’s tests, notoriously unwinnable, took the life of the human woman, and Odin banished their demi-god son back to Midgard, left without a father or mother and in a few short years died alone.
It was Odin’s blind sense of justice that drove Forseti nearly insane. Justice. He could laugh at the thought of the word. No one on Asgard ever truly knew justice, not the way he would have them know it. His godly position was merely a joke, a figurehead manipulated further by Odin’s power. Forseti was finally done, and that was when Gymir came along with a proposal.
The rest is history. But the matter of Valkyrie is not so much history as a very pressing problem.
Forseti grits his teeth, thinking of Valkyrie again. In a way, she reminds him of his mortal wife and it pains him. On the other, she reminds him of everything he hates. Especially Frost Giants. And what makes her so special? A bastard hybrid who, for some reason, is entitled to come to Asgard and practically rule the roost?
“You know,” Gymir breaks Forseti’s steady stream of thought. “Once this is through, we could ally Jotunheim and Asgard.”
“Oh?”
“With a marriage, of course. Between my daughter and yourself.”
Forseti frowns. “I should think not.”
“Ah, well,” Gymir shrugs with a smirk. “Then Loki it is. As long as they both cooperate, they can have each other. And I suppose that two could prove an alliance. He is Frost Giant after all, and she is…well, at least partially Asgardian.”
“Yes,” Forseti says tightly, his tolerance waning. “That would be advisable.”
“Are you quite alright?” Gymir asks, laying his hand upon Forseti’s shoulder. He shakes him off. “What is the problem?”
“My problem remains the same.”
“Ah, still caught up on Valkyrie. I assure you, she will bend to our will in order to protect her loved ones. Thor, Loki, that lovelorn puppy Fandral…”
“Yes, but I still get the chance to kill Odin myself, do I not?” Forseti demands, scowling at Gymir.
Gymir smiles, an unsettling, untrustworthy thing, particularly on a man like him. “I have been thinking on that, and perhaps it would be wiser for me to kill Odin. It would leave your hands perfectly clean. Then we just get Thor out of the picture, Loki can’t technically inherit the throne anyway. We will make certain it will fall to you.” Gymir pauses a moment, turning away from Forseti. “Perhaps we will even have Loki kill Odin. It would make us both look go—”
Gymir feels the sharp pain in side, between his ribs, and it doesn’t take him very long to figure out what has happened. He looks down, his hand meeting Forseti’s, wrapped around the hilt of the black blade in Gymir’s chest.
“Obsidian. Clever,” Gymir looks up at Forseti and grins, blood coating his teeth, “you son of a bitch.”
“I…I am sorry,” Forseti whispers, hand falling away, leaving the obsidian blade buried within Gymir’s flesh. He shakes his head from side to side. “I have my own plan to follow now and you are not a part of it. Neither is your daughter.”
“No,” Gymir gasps, clinging to Forseti’s sleeve as his feet give way beneath him. Forseti shakes him off and watches him drop to the ground. He grits his teeth and reaches up wiping the back of his hand across his face, accidentally smearing Gymir’s blood like war paint across his cheek. He steps over Gymir’s prone body and strides right out the door, blood on his hands and murder on the brain.