NOTE: Here's the final chapter! It's a bit longer than the others, but there was no good place to split it.

I hope you've enjoyed the story!

Chapter Seven - The Truth

.

Asgard.

Sif looked around, eyes rising to the towers and the sky above in amazement. They'd arrived in one of the palace gardens, in a sheltered place near the wall. "This is astonishing. How is this even possible?"

He shrugged. "Most believe it isn't. I decided it was and I found a way. So. Where is he? This child you claim exists."

She ignored his skepticism and answered, "In my suite."

He gestured with the scepter. "You go ahead. I'll follow under an unseen glamour."

She frowned. "Loki, you don't have to sneak in-"

"Not that I don't trust you, Sif, but... I don't trust you. I don't want anyone to know I'm here," he insisted. "Go."

Uneasy but figuring there was no harm in it, she nodded. "Fine. You'll see." She headed for the side door, turning to look over her shoulder. He wasn't there. Her footsteps paused, as she wondered, what if he'd come here to do something else? He was sneaking away under cover-

"Sif," an irritated voice muttered at her shoulder, making her start. How could he be so close and she couldn't feel him? "If I wanted to do whatever horrible thing you're imagining, I could have done it already. You have the proof right before you."

"Your- your spell was not so good before," she explained haltingly, to thin air. "I used to be able to sense you were close."

"I am not as I was," he murmured. A chill slipped down her back with a foreboding. Not of danger, but of awareness that the quiet words were the barest hint of something that loomed large.

She faced forward and kept her steps confident, walking past Einherjar as if she had every right, which she did, and as if she was not bringing someone secretly disguised past them, which she was.

They passed through the main doors to the family wing and she climbed the grand staircase, broad and curving, with its enormous statue of Bor in the middle of the hall.

"They kept your rooms untouched," she murmured to him as they went past the level where both Thor and Loki had their suites. "Your mother never gave up hope that you were alive."

She expected him to deny Frigga was his mother, but he said nothing, and she wasn't even sure he was still there. But she didn't stop, as she reached her landing and turned down the wide deserted hall and headed toward her door. He appeared at her side, and he laughed at her flinch, and she rolled her eyes at him.

But the humor died away from them both as they approached her door. It slid aside for her, to welcome her home. She called out, "I'm back!"

The reception room was empty as expected, and she went through to the main room and its wide window that looked out to the water. This was deserted as well, except for the cradle now sitting in splendid isolation in the middle. There was a book - not one of Sif's - on the chaise, abandoned there in a rush. Frigga must have left it and absented herself to let Sif and Loki have this moment themselves.

But Loki saw nothing but the cradle. His eyes went to it the moment he stepped through the arch from the reception room, and he didn't look away as he walked slowly toward it. Sif paced him and glanced down to check that Ullr was in there, having a sudden fear that it might be empty. But he was sleeping on his back, little hands in fists, and he was wearing a long tunic and a diapercloth.

Loki stared at the baby, lips parted, an expression of such stunned bewilderment on his face that she smiled. "I didn't- I thought you were lying to me," he whispered. "I was going to call your bluff, and see this was a trick. But it's not."

She confirmed, voice gentling in the face of his shock, "He's real. And he's your son."

"He's real." The haft of the scepter slipped through his fingers and clattered to the tile floor unheeded. As it left his hand, a shudder passed over his body and he blinked his eyes, inhaling a sharp breath as if he'd been underwater.

He reached out but his hand started to tremble before his fingers touched Ullr, and Loki pulled his hand back abruptly. He turned, shaking his head in denial, repeatedly, saying, "I can't. I can't." He stepped away from the cradle, her brief glimpse of his eyes as he turned looking wide and… afraid.

"Loki, what is it?" Sif asked. "I thought you'd be… happy?"

"Happy?" he repeated with shattered incredulity. "How - how can I be happy? I can't be his - I can't be-" He spread his hands out in helplessness, expression fallen in anguish, unable to finish. "It's too late," he whispered. "I've been places, terrible places, done terrible things..." He swallowed hard and looked everywhere but at Sif or the cradle as he stepped backward, away from them both. "I'll leave and never come back. Tell them - I disappeared. I attacked you both and we fought, or-" his chest heaved for breath, eyes increasingly wild with some violence within. "Tell them I died. Again. It's for the best."

She pursued him, confused and alarmed by the frantic words, as he hurried toward the door. "Loki, wait! What's wrong?"

She didn't realize Frigga was there, until her gentle voice said, "My son, please. You're safe here."

He halted as if run through with a blade and his eyes went liquid at the sound of her voice. She moved up behind him, the hem of her gown brushing the bare floor, and she smoothed a hand across the wild disarray of his hair at the back of his head with the exact same touch Sif recognized in how she stroked Ullr's head. Frigga said, "I've missed you so much, Loki."

"I-" he started but his voice cracked away to nothing. He turned and collapsed to his knees, clutching at her skirt, heaving sobbing breaths against her. It sounded so broken, Sif could barely look at him, her heart feeling tight in her chest. This was wrong, so awful, and told her that when he said he'd been terrible places, it was the truth.

Frigga didn't hesitate but kept caressing his hair and his back, as she knelt down with him to hold him, and made soothing sounds. "Hush, my darling. It is not too late, and we will make it all right again. Have hope and cast off this despair. Ullr is a sign that everything has changed. You are not as you were, but neither are we. All will be well, if we make it so."

He inhaled a deeper, shaky breath, calming down, and sniffling before he straightened. He lifted his head and wiped his eyes on the scarf he was still wearing around his neck.

Sif knew what to do and she was ready, Ullr held sleepily in her arms. She knelt beside Loki. "Here, hold him."

He shied back, holding his hands apart and to his sides in refusal. "No, no, I'll- I'll hurt him."

"No, you won't," she reassured him and held out Ullr, pushing him gently against Loki's chest until he reflexively lifted his hands so the baby wouldn't fall. He looked down, expression still teary-eyed and stunned as he looked at the fragile life in his hands. Ullr opened sleepy eyes to examine this new handler, and she heard Loki's breath stutter at the sight of Ullr's red eyes.

"You really are mine," he said, trying to sound like a jest, but his voice turned ragged. He shifted his grip to a more natural one, holding Ullr against his chest in one arm. He brushed Ullr's cheek, feeling how soft it was, and then the baby's tiny fist, and Ullr grabbed Loki's finger.

The smile on Loki's lips was slight, but genuine, the sight of it loosened something in Sif's chest with a soft warmth.

"You know that feeling you have right now?" Frigga asked softly. "That awe and love and delight at his little face? That is what I felt when you were first put in my arms. Because you're my son, Loki. You always have been, you always will be." She brushed his cheek, wiping the silent tears that Sif hadn't noticed until Frigga thumbed them away.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, head bent over Ullr. "I didn't know what to do, and I ruined everything. I thought there was nothing left… Nowhere to go…"

Frigga consoled him, "You were blinded by your despair and your anger, but it was never true, Loki. You keep looking for what isn't yours, and you don't see what you have. You have so much, my son." She pressed a kiss to the side of his head. "Hold him for now. Let that love knit all the broken edges back together and give you strength."

He knelt on the floor, motionless but for breath, holding Ullr, and nobody spoke until his tremulous voice confessed, "I never thought this was possible, not once I knew the truth. Who would let such a child be born? Or if it was born, wouldn't every mother drown it at birth or abandon it to the wolves as a foul creature unfit for Asgard?"

A soft sound came from Sif's throat at the horrible words. "No, Loki, never," Sif protested. "I never thought that. I feared I might have to leave with Ullr, if people were cruel to him. But aside from those who just don't see him, no one reviles him." Sif closed a hand around his arm and echoed Thor's words to her. "Asgard can be thoughtless, Loki, but not so cruel."

"Is that so?" He swallowed hard. "They all know about me."

"They do," she confirmed, and reminded him when his jaw tightened. "You were dead. I didn't want to hide Ullr, or force him into the same difficult moment of revelation that you had. So I had to reveal your secret. I am sorry, if you would have wanted it kept."

He did, she could see the revulsion - not of Ullr, only himself - and fear of the response he might receive, but he managed a shrug. "It's done, and I suppose I'm glad you chose the truth."

The edge in his words hit its target as Frigga protested, "Loki, we thought your form shift was permanent. We wanted to spare you the fear that it might not be."

His gaze snapped up, striking like a spark to tinder. "Yet so obviously the blood would've shown itself," he lifted Ullr in pointed display.

After a moment, Frigga allowed, "Yes. Truly I kept trying to think of a way to tell you once you were grown, I knew it was something you should know, but I was afraid of what your reaction would be. It was easier to put it off another day, another month… The longer I said nothing, the harder it became. But it's true, you should have known long ago, and you should never have found out as you did. That was our mistake, your father's and mine."

His tone biting and hostile again, Loki snapped, "He's not my father."

"Loki!" Sif exclaimed, shocked.

But Frigga frowned at him, more curious than offended. "Loki, why are you looking at the scepter?"

He flicked his gaze away from it. "I'm not."

Frigga stood up. "I think I should take a closer look at it."

"It's mine!" he snarled and thrust out his free hand, as if throwing something. Sif threw herself in between, blocking it from striking the queen. Nothing struck her, not blade nor magic, as he held back at the last moment. But Frigga looked alarmed, and Sif was breathing hard and her heart was beating a furious rhythm of battle.

But Loki wasn't fighting. He was looking at his hand as if it had struck on its own, brow knitted with confusion. His face was pale and eyes showing white all around, as he held Ullr to her. "Take him," he ordered her urgently. "I told you I can't do this."

Sif took Ullr back from him, all but snatching her son from his arms, and Loki knelt on the floor, stricken and trembling by what he'd almost done.

"It's not you," Frigga murmured, drawing their attention. She was now standing above the scepter, looking down at it. "It's this."

Loki restrained himself from any possessive reaction this time, slumping forward and not looking at the queen. Sif didn't understand how it could be doing anything - it was just a thing. "What do you mean?" Sif asked.

Frigga narrowed her eyes at the scepter, and Sif felt a soft breeze against her skin as the queen probed it with magic. "Its power reaches through the air, and it calls to you, does it not, Loki? You feel it. It is no ordinary power stone. Where did it come from?"

His head lifted sharply as if he heard something and his eyes darted as if there was something in the room, though there was nothing. "It… " he stopped and changed what he would say. "My allies gave it to me. To lead them."

Frigga went to one knee before it. "It has great power," she murmured and held out a hand above it, not touching it. She let out a soft gasp as her probe gave her the answer. "Loki, do you know what this is?"

He gave an uncaring shrug. "A weapon. A tool."

"No, this is so much more than that. Who were your allies?" she demanded.

"The Chitauri. A race of the rim with a weak hive mind. The scepter helped control them," Loki said, and frowned at the queen. "Why?"

"Because I know what this is, Loki, and I know who had it last. That you do not, makes me very uneasy. Because you should know."

"Why should I know? It is a mere scepter and a power stone?" he said, but raising his voice like a question, and there was nothing in his face that wasn't confusion. But his hands were tight fists against the floor, and his shoulders were hunched inward. Sif knew something was wrong. "I don't know his name. If he had one. He was the leader of the Chitauri."

"And?" Frigga persisted. "Who else?"

"There was… there was no one." But he rose and paced away between the pillars that framed the opening to the balcony. Looking outside to the sky, he stood still, except for his hands behind his back where his fingers rubbed together in restless agitation.

Sif watched him, rocking Ullr. Something in Loki knew what Frigga was trying to get him to remember; there was something lurking in his mind. But what could make Loki forget?

"What is it, All-Mother?" Sif asked. "What has you so concerned?"

"This stone," Frigga pointed to the glowing crystal at the end of the scepter, which she did not touch, even as she rose back to her feet and smoothed her skirt, "is one of the Infinity Gems. It is the Mind Gem and it belongs to Thanos the Eternal."

Loki whirled around, eyes flaring wide. "That is impossible!"

Sif was no less startled by that news, and she leaned away from the scepter as if that small distance would be of help. Infinity Gems and Thanos the Eternal were tales from an age past, and Sif had liked the tales when she'd been young, but the reality of them was dire.

"Look at it, examine it," Frigga invited with a nod of her chin to the scepter on the floor. "But don't touch it. You cast it aside, and I think you should not touch it again."

"But I would know," Loki objected. This time it was more hollow, as if he knew the truth and wanted to deny it. He asked in softer whisper, in a tone of creeping horror and dismay, "How could I not know?"

"Because Thanos wiped all knowledge of himself from your mind," Frigga said. The silence that fell after that was broken only by Ullr smacking his lips in his sleep. Sif felt cold - how was it possible that anyone could have done that to Loki? She was so used to thinking of him as sliding free from everything, using his clever tongue and magic tricks to never get caught; but now she knew he not only had been caught, but someone had made him forget. She stood beside him, hoping that her and Ullr's presence might be some comfort.

He didn't seem to know she was there, as he stared out the window, so still she wasn't sure he was breathing. Only the quiver in his lower lip showed a hint of how he was feeling.

Frigga joined them on his other side. "Loki, Thanos would not have sent the gem away from him lightly. What did he want? What were you supposed to do?"

He shook his head and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "The plan was to use the tesseract to open a portal to let in the Chitauri attack force to conquer Midgard for me."

"The tesseract," Frigga murmured. "This was so he could get the tesseract and have Midgard as a foothold. Probably to attack us as his greatest threat."

"So I was his tool," he said flatly, sounding angry, though his arms were now wrapped around his middle in deeper distress. "Conquer it for him, hold it for him, and I didn't even know I was on his leash."

Frigga glanced at the scepter. "Unfortunately, I think you still are, darling. We need to remove it to the treasury behind wards. Its influence is still staining seidr."

He nodded once jerkily, agreeing, but Sif saw how his eyes returned to the scepter as if he couldn't help himself. She slid in between, blocking his view, so he could see only her and Ullr. His lips flickered in a smile though the self-protective hugging didn't relax, as if he felt terribly ill, and his eyes turned back to the window.

Frigga left them to call the Einherjar to bring her tools and a shielded case to put the scepter in.

While Frigga was in the outer room, Sif moved closer to Loki, so their arms were touching. "It's going to be all right," she told him, not surprised when he shook his head in denial then gave a sharp laugh.

"It's going to be worse, not better," he told her. "I didn't know, Sif. I still don't, not really. I know the name, but I have no memory of Thanos." Then he glanced at Ullr and dampened his lips with his tongue before asking. "How old is he?"

Understanding why he was asking, though she hoped she was wrong, she answered, "Four months." She swallowed and answered his true question, "It's been almost a year since you fell."

He shut his eyes, brows drawing together in distress, "There are months I don't recall. I thought… I genuinely believed there was not enough time that you could have borne a child. What happened that I don't remember?" he asked in a whisper. "What did I do?"

"Or what was done to you?" Sif murmured, thinking that more likely. He tensed, and she knew he feared that, too. Her free hand took his, and his fingers were cold. She brought them to her lips to kiss and warm against her cheek. "We'll figure it out, Loki. You're home now, and you have us."

He pulled his hand free and turned to her, lips flattened. "Why?" he asked abruptly. "While I can't ever deny that Ullr is our child, and I'm grateful that you came to me to tell me about him before it was too late, he doesn't mean we have to… to pretend to more. I know you've never had any particular feelings toward me, and he was conceived in a night of carelessness, not devotion."

But that, she knew, was only half true. "You have feelings for me," she said. She'd sensed them that night, when he'd thought she was asleep in his arms.

His jaw tightened and he swallowed, but he didn't deny it. Steadily, he answered, "If you don't share them, it doesn't matter."

"And if I do share them?" she asked.

"You don't," he said, sharp challenge coming to his tone. "You're just suggesting you do because you're afraid rejection will push me to madness."

"No, I don't think that. Or, maybe a little," she admitted, "I think there's a lot going on with your emotions right now, and it's true I don't want to make it worse. However," she emphasized when he was starting to look satisfied and yet disappointed that he'd read her correctly, "that's not why I'm saying this. It's not only for Ullr's sake either. But that night, Loki… that night it was as if I saw you for the first time. Yes, you'd been there all along, but somehow in that stupid barn, I opened my eyes and I saw you. That's why I kissed you. Then, when I was still trying to figure out what I was feeling, you were dead. I hadn't realized how strongly I felt until it was too late." Her voice went ragged and she had to inhale a deep breath to gather herself. "So, even though I'd never expected to have a child so early, I wanted Ullr, because he was a piece of you, and I didn't want to let go."

He listened to this with dawning hope lighting his eyes, and he turned to her, seizing her shoulders. "Sif? Are you saying-?"

She smiled at him. "I'll be clear, so you understand. I don't know exactly what I feel. I don't know if we can be more to each other than Ullr's parents. But I want to try. I want to see who we can be to each other, without Thor between us. Just you and me. And our son."

She waited, apprehensive about what he would say, how he would respond. She was half-expecting some cruel jest to push her away, but he said nothing. He only looked in her eyes as if he was afraid she would disappear on him, which was ridiculous, when he was the one who had vanished.

But then he moved, pulling her closer and lowering his mouth to hers. His arms went around her, careful of Ullr between them, and she pressed into him eagerly. The touch of his lips made her shiver inside, something coming to life again that had been dormant. And he kissed as if he thought he might never have the chance again. It was all the answer she needed.

When he withdrew, he laid his head against hers. "I should run far away from you and Ullr," he murmured, and when she started to object, he lifted his head to look into her eyes to tell her very seriously. "I'm bringing Thanos with me, Sif. His servant warned that failure would bring retribution. Staying near me isn't safe."

She felt cold at the warning, but more because she worried for Loki, than because she was afraid of this monster. "Then we face them together. It's not our way to run from our enemies, Loki."

He smiled a little wryly. "Not your way, maybe, but it's mine."

"Oh, don't give me that." She snorted. "You wouldn't run away from him; you'd run straight at him to keep him away from here."

He gave a little chuckle. "That's an excellent idea, I should try that."

She poked him hard in the chest. "Don't you dare. I mourned you once, don't make me do it again."

He embraced her again, and dropped a gentle kiss on Ullr's head and then her cheek. "Even if I think you're foolish joining your fate to mine, when mine is so tangled and dark, I can't push you away. I should, I know. I fear where this will end, but I still want to try."

"Good." She tilted her head against his shoulder, as his arm went around her back. It was very comfortable, and she wished she'd tried this before. "If Asgard can't defeat some upstart Eternal with delusions of universal conquest, what good are we?" she asked, grinning.

"I've been wondering that for a long time," he added dryly, and she nudged an elbow in his ribs, smirking when he couldn't retaliate because of the baby.

Ullr awoke anyway, but luckily instead of crying, he made his happy burbling sounds to discover he was in his mother's arms, rather than in his cradle. Loki angled his head to watch Ullr, and when Ullr grabbed at the dangling end of his scarf, he twitched the scarf for Ullr to bat at. The sound of Ullr's giggle made Loki smile, eyes crinkling in genuine amusement.

She said softly, "Welcome home."

He lifted his head to meet her gaze, but he only smiled, before returning his attention to Ullr and their little game. Playing with him was the happiest she had seen him look in a long time. It was a refuge from the old resentments that were still there, and the new fears, but he put it all aside to live in the moment with their son.

Whatever danger lurked on the horizon and whatever else needed to be done to help Loki return to his place, for this moment, she was content.

the end.

.

(Note: there's obviously plenty of room for a sequel here, which isn't written, so I can't promise. But it's certainly possible. Love to know if that's something you'd like! Encouragement always helps. *g* )