FIC: Grandma Bestla’s Coming To Town [Marvel Movieverse x Norse Mythology, Loki&Thor&Odin&Bestla]
Title: Grandma Bestla’s Coming To Town
Author: Omnicat
Unofficially Adapted From: Kenneth Branagh & co’s Thor and Norse mythology (the latter of course being an ultimate form of public domain).
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Thor. All you need to know about the myths is that Loki once turned into a horse and had a foal, and Thor and Loki once dressed up as a bride and her handmaiden to get Mjolnir back from a giant.
Warnings: None.
Characters & Pairings: Loki, Thor, Odin (x Frigga), mention of Bestla (lots), and Heimdall, Jane and Balder (a little).
Summary: Sing to the tune of “Santa Clause Is Coming To Town”; add some old Norse sibling rivalry; stir well. Grandma Bestla’s come to visit, and now she’s Thor and Loki’s problem.
Author’s Note: For the record, Grandma isn’t a frost giantess in this. Keeping the mythological Aesir-Jotun crossbreeding tradition intact would add a level of fail to Odin’s parenting that boggles the mind too much for me to keep even remotely believable.
Grandma Bestla’s Coming To Town
“So this contraption will allow us to speak to Asgard like any old telephone?” Loki said, eyeing the humongous, telescope-like machine. There was a horn next to the control panel, he had to give them that.
“Yes. Jane designed it. It’s attuned to Heimdall’s helmet. Ingenious, is it not?” Thor said proudly.
Loki imagined the sound of a phone ringing obnoxiously inside Heimdall’s helmet, and asked indignantly, “Why did I not know of this until now?”
Thor gave him a significant look.
Right. Semi-mortal enemies.
Loki sighed. “Well, go on then, call them.”
Thor performed a series of complicated procedures (Loki wouldn’t have thought he’d had it in him) and the machine came to beeping and blinking life. He held the horn to his ear - and thrust it at Loki at the last moment.
“What, no, Thor -”
“Answer it, answer it.”
“No -”
The thing was roughly shoved to his ear, and held there.
“HELLO,” he heard. “THIS IS ODIN, BOR’S SON, THE ALLFATHER, KING OF ASGARD.”
Loki froze.
“WHO CALLS ON ODIN, BOR’S SON, THE ALLFATHER, KING OF ASGARD?
It took three tries to unclench his jaw enough to speak. “Hello, father. It’s me. Loki.”
There was silence for a long time.
“Hello?” Loki repeated.
Odin scraped his throat, and if Loki didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was trying to suppress some strong emotion. “Loki. Thor told us you had survived.”
“Yes. He mentioned,” Loki said stiffly.
“You didn’t try to contact us.”
A bit more sharply, “No.”
Another pause, and then: “Did you kill him?”
“What? No!”
“Then how did you gain access to this machine?”
“He tricked me,” Loki said, giving a beaming Thor a venomous look. “He’s listening in right now.”
“HELLO FATHER,” Thor bellowed into the receiver - and Loki’s ear. Loki cringed.
“Oh.” An awkward pause. “What is it you wish to say to me?”
“Tell father you’ve missed him,” Thor hissed.
Loki shoved him. “Uh, Grandmother Bestla is here.”
“Mother!” Odin exclaimed. “We’ve been looking all over for her! How did she get all the way over there?”
“Magic. She remote-activated the Monofrost* and recalibrated it to the signature of her lifeforce instead of Thor’s. We were wondering how the restoration of the Bifrost is coming along.”
“Much as it has been for the past four years: slowly. Why?”
“Damn.” Loki turned to Thor. “Still out of order.”
“Damn,” Thor muttered back, then turned to the receiver. “FATHER, YOU MUST HURRY. GRANDMOTHER BESTLA HAS BROKEN HER HIP.”
Loki punched him in the kidney.
“What? How?” Odin demanded.
“It’s not as urgent as all that, the healers here on Earth are quite gentle. We merely thought it would be kinder, for someone her age, to recuperate in Asgard, by means of a healing stone.”
“How?”
Loki grimaced. “She may have... crossed paths with a dragon.”
“A dragon.” Odin sounded exactly as unamused as Loki’d been expecting. “And how would a dragon find its way to Midgard.”
“I imported it?” Loki tried gingerly.
“And why would you import a dragon to Midgard?”
“I bet Thor he couldn’t slay it all by himself.”
“And why would you make such a bet?”
“Because I was bored and your precious heir still doesn’t know when to say no,” Loki snapped, suddenly out of patience.
Silence.
Eventually: “IS THIS TRUE, THOR?”
Now it was Thor’s turn to cringe. “YES, FATHER.”
“I HOPE YOU KNOW HOW DISAPPOINTED I AM IN YOUR LACK OF PROGRESS, THOR.”
“YES, FATHER.”
“DID YOU AT LEAST SLAY THE BEAST?”
Loki slapped his free hand to his forehead. This was why Odin’s lessons never stick.
“No, Grandmother did,” he said.
“BUT I ALMOST HAD IT BEFORE SHE INTERRUPTED, FATHER.”
“Loki, hit him,” Odin ordered.
Loki complied. “She fought most admirably, father. Only broke her hip because she’d used her cane to spear the dragon through the eye and had nothing to break her fall on the way home. She just wasn’t expecting the sidewalks.”
“Suck-up,” Thor muttered, bitterly rubbing his bruised arm.
Loki cursed internally. Damn those ingrained habits!
“Take example by your brother, Thor. He puts respect for his elders before personal glory,” Odin said sternly.
Loki beamed at Thor. Thor stuck out his tongue.
“Now you two bring your grandmother right home, you hear me,” Odin went on.
“Father, we can’t,” Loki said. “That’s why we called.”
“Don’t tell me ‘can’t’, I know all about your illicit world-walking.”
“It’s more like rollercoastering. Far too rough a ride for an injured twenty-five-thousand year old lady.”
“AND SHE DOESN’T WANT TO GO BEFORE SHE HAS SEEN US DEFEAT A FOE TOGETHER.”
“THOR, STOP SCREAMING IN MY EAR.”
“Well, then I suppose you two will have to take care of her until the Bifrost is repaired,” Odin said complacently.
“What? No!”
“Father, no!”
“Oh, don’t whine. She’ll bake you cookies and tell you about the good old times and make sure you go to bed on time, and if you could leave some of the slower beasts to her, she’d love that. It’ll be the best time she’s had in centuries.”
That was exactly what they were afraid of.
“Well, it’s been good talking to you boys. Have fun!”
And Odin hung up.
Thor and Loki looked at each other with identical expressions of dismay.
“You have to take her back,” Thor said.
“I’m not going back to Asgard. I’m not even stopping by.”
“You have to.”
“Only if you explain to her that we don’t want to spend time with her.”
“You’re the one with the knack for words here.”
“I’m also the villain here,” Loki remembered, perking up. “I could walk away and leave you to deal with the mess all by yourself.”
Thor grabbed him by the sleeve preemprively. “I won’t let you!”
“Just you try stopping me!” Loki said, trying to shake off Thor’s grip.
“I always do, I always win. Don’t kid yourself.”
They were both close to panic now.
“Surely it wouldn’t be that bad?” Thor tried.
“She made father name me after a man who fucked a horse,” Loki reminded him. “She dressed you up as a maiden when we were young and had you play out a wedding in front of all her wrinkly old friends.”
“Yes, but we are men now -”
“And today, she forced us to kiss and make up, and we let her,” Loki finished.
“But she slew a dragon and does incredibly complicated magic. Surely we’re just forgetting all the fun we used to have with her,” Thor said desperately.
It was hard to say whether or not they ended up being lucky in the end. On the one hand, Grandmother Bestla spent most of her time with a group of fellow oldtimers she’d met in the hospital, joining in their bingo and bridge and alternately bragging and complaining about being older than all of them and their ancestors combined. On the other hand, she spent the rest of the time making sure her unruly grandsons behaved themselves and got along, and demanding to be entertained.
Odin and Frigga’s marriage, meanwhile, flourished like it hadn’t in millennia now that they had the royal quarters all to themselves again.
And that’s how Balder was born.
Legend / Notes
* The ‘bi’ in Bifrost is not a Latin-derived ‘bi’ no matter how the movie may pronounce it, so a one-way Bifrost would not, in fact, be a Monofrost. But Jane liked the pun, okay. Leave her alone.
Author: Omnicat
Unofficially Adapted From: Kenneth Branagh & co’s Thor and Norse mythology (the latter of course being an ultimate form of public domain).
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Thor. All you need to know about the myths is that Loki once turned into a horse and had a foal, and Thor and Loki once dressed up as a bride and her handmaiden to get Mjolnir back from a giant.
Warnings: None.
Characters & Pairings: Loki, Thor, Odin (x Frigga), mention of Bestla (lots), and Heimdall, Jane and Balder (a little).
Summary: Sing to the tune of “Santa Clause Is Coming To Town”; add some old Norse sibling rivalry; stir well. Grandma Bestla’s come to visit, and now she’s Thor and Loki’s problem.
Author’s Note: For the record, Grandma isn’t a frost giantess in this. Keeping the mythological Aesir-Jotun crossbreeding tradition intact would add a level of fail to Odin’s parenting that boggles the mind too much for me to keep even remotely believable.
Grandma Bestla’s Coming To Town
“So this contraption will allow us to speak to Asgard like any old telephone?” Loki said, eyeing the humongous, telescope-like machine. There was a horn next to the control panel, he had to give them that.
“Yes. Jane designed it. It’s attuned to Heimdall’s helmet. Ingenious, is it not?” Thor said proudly.
Loki imagined the sound of a phone ringing obnoxiously inside Heimdall’s helmet, and asked indignantly, “Why did I not know of this until now?”
Thor gave him a significant look.
Right. Semi-mortal enemies.
Loki sighed. “Well, go on then, call them.”
Thor performed a series of complicated procedures (Loki wouldn’t have thought he’d had it in him) and the machine came to beeping and blinking life. He held the horn to his ear - and thrust it at Loki at the last moment.
“What, no, Thor -”
“Answer it, answer it.”
“No -”
The thing was roughly shoved to his ear, and held there.
“HELLO,” he heard. “THIS IS ODIN, BOR’S SON, THE ALLFATHER, KING OF ASGARD.”
Loki froze.
“WHO CALLS ON ODIN, BOR’S SON, THE ALLFATHER, KING OF ASGARD?
It took three tries to unclench his jaw enough to speak. “Hello, father. It’s me. Loki.”
There was silence for a long time.
“Hello?” Loki repeated.
Odin scraped his throat, and if Loki didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was trying to suppress some strong emotion. “Loki. Thor told us you had survived.”
“Yes. He mentioned,” Loki said stiffly.
“You didn’t try to contact us.”
A bit more sharply, “No.”
Another pause, and then: “Did you kill him?”
“What? No!”
“Then how did you gain access to this machine?”
“He tricked me,” Loki said, giving a beaming Thor a venomous look. “He’s listening in right now.”
“HELLO FATHER,” Thor bellowed into the receiver - and Loki’s ear. Loki cringed.
“Oh.” An awkward pause. “What is it you wish to say to me?”
“Tell father you’ve missed him,” Thor hissed.
Loki shoved him. “Uh, Grandmother Bestla is here.”
“Mother!” Odin exclaimed. “We’ve been looking all over for her! How did she get all the way over there?”
“Magic. She remote-activated the Monofrost* and recalibrated it to the signature of her lifeforce instead of Thor’s. We were wondering how the restoration of the Bifrost is coming along.”
“Much as it has been for the past four years: slowly. Why?”
“Damn.” Loki turned to Thor. “Still out of order.”
“Damn,” Thor muttered back, then turned to the receiver. “FATHER, YOU MUST HURRY. GRANDMOTHER BESTLA HAS BROKEN HER HIP.”
Loki punched him in the kidney.
“What? How?” Odin demanded.
“It’s not as urgent as all that, the healers here on Earth are quite gentle. We merely thought it would be kinder, for someone her age, to recuperate in Asgard, by means of a healing stone.”
“How?”
Loki grimaced. “She may have... crossed paths with a dragon.”
“A dragon.” Odin sounded exactly as unamused as Loki’d been expecting. “And how would a dragon find its way to Midgard.”
“I imported it?” Loki tried gingerly.
“And why would you import a dragon to Midgard?”
“I bet Thor he couldn’t slay it all by himself.”
“And why would you make such a bet?”
“Because I was bored and your precious heir still doesn’t know when to say no,” Loki snapped, suddenly out of patience.
Silence.
Eventually: “IS THIS TRUE, THOR?”
Now it was Thor’s turn to cringe. “YES, FATHER.”
“I HOPE YOU KNOW HOW DISAPPOINTED I AM IN YOUR LACK OF PROGRESS, THOR.”
“YES, FATHER.”
“DID YOU AT LEAST SLAY THE BEAST?”
Loki slapped his free hand to his forehead. This was why Odin’s lessons never stick.
“No, Grandmother did,” he said.
“BUT I ALMOST HAD IT BEFORE SHE INTERRUPTED, FATHER.”
“Loki, hit him,” Odin ordered.
Loki complied. “She fought most admirably, father. Only broke her hip because she’d used her cane to spear the dragon through the eye and had nothing to break her fall on the way home. She just wasn’t expecting the sidewalks.”
“Suck-up,” Thor muttered, bitterly rubbing his bruised arm.
Loki cursed internally. Damn those ingrained habits!
“Take example by your brother, Thor. He puts respect for his elders before personal glory,” Odin said sternly.
Loki beamed at Thor. Thor stuck out his tongue.
“Now you two bring your grandmother right home, you hear me,” Odin went on.
“Father, we can’t,” Loki said. “That’s why we called.”
“Don’t tell me ‘can’t’, I know all about your illicit world-walking.”
“It’s more like rollercoastering. Far too rough a ride for an injured twenty-five-thousand year old lady.”
“AND SHE DOESN’T WANT TO GO BEFORE SHE HAS SEEN US DEFEAT A FOE TOGETHER.”
“THOR, STOP SCREAMING IN MY EAR.”
“Well, then I suppose you two will have to take care of her until the Bifrost is repaired,” Odin said complacently.
“What? No!”
“Father, no!”
“Oh, don’t whine. She’ll bake you cookies and tell you about the good old times and make sure you go to bed on time, and if you could leave some of the slower beasts to her, she’d love that. It’ll be the best time she’s had in centuries.”
That was exactly what they were afraid of.
“Well, it’s been good talking to you boys. Have fun!”
And Odin hung up.
Thor and Loki looked at each other with identical expressions of dismay.
“You have to take her back,” Thor said.
“I’m not going back to Asgard. I’m not even stopping by.”
“You have to.”
“Only if you explain to her that we don’t want to spend time with her.”
“You’re the one with the knack for words here.”
“I’m also the villain here,” Loki remembered, perking up. “I could walk away and leave you to deal with the mess all by yourself.”
Thor grabbed him by the sleeve preemprively. “I won’t let you!”
“Just you try stopping me!” Loki said, trying to shake off Thor’s grip.
“I always do, I always win. Don’t kid yourself.”
They were both close to panic now.
“Surely it wouldn’t be that bad?” Thor tried.
“She made father name me after a man who fucked a horse,” Loki reminded him. “She dressed you up as a maiden when we were young and had you play out a wedding in front of all her wrinkly old friends.”
“Yes, but we are men now -”
“And today, she forced us to kiss and make up, and we let her,” Loki finished.
“But she slew a dragon and does incredibly complicated magic. Surely we’re just forgetting all the fun we used to have with her,” Thor said desperately.
It was hard to say whether or not they ended up being lucky in the end. On the one hand, Grandmother Bestla spent most of her time with a group of fellow oldtimers she’d met in the hospital, joining in their bingo and bridge and alternately bragging and complaining about being older than all of them and their ancestors combined. On the other hand, she spent the rest of the time making sure her unruly grandsons behaved themselves and got along, and demanding to be entertained.
Odin and Frigga’s marriage, meanwhile, flourished like it hadn’t in millennia now that they had the royal quarters all to themselves again.
And that’s how Balder was born.
Legend / Notes
* The ‘bi’ in Bifrost is not a Latin-derived ‘bi’ no matter how the movie may pronounce it, so a one-way Bifrost would not, in fact, be a Monofrost. But Jane liked the pun, okay. Leave her alone.