I accidentally wrote a sad ending to this when I meant to write a nice one, so I published both. This is the alternative, sadder ending.

Loki looked at Kari in her bed, his chest felt as though it was going to explode. She looked different, the beautiful glow from her skin gone, replaced by a paling pallor, the bright sparkle of her life, extinguished in her eyes. Gone, his beautiful Kari was gone. His breaths came in fast and shallow, slowly he turned to his mother, in her arms was a blanket, covering the little child, it was small because of its premature birth, but its seidr kept it safe. Frigga seemed to be holding onto it as though terrified it would disappear, he did not even hear what it was, he did not know if he had a daughter or a son.

"Mother." Thor's voice was small and weak. Frigga looked at her older son. "Mother, give her to me." He reached his arms out for the small child. Frigga was reluctant to let go of the baby for a moment before she gently rose to her feet and assisted him in taking her.

Loki stared, he watched as Thor walked toward the bed for a moment, looking between mother and daughter, before looking down to the little girl in his arms, she began to wriggle with little cries emitting from her small lungs. When Thor looked to Loki, he just swallowed and stared at the baby, who raised her arm up from the blanket she was wrapped in to try and grasp something. He did not even seem to realise he was walking until he reached Thor, and looked at the baby. A pained gasp erupted from his throat.

She was almost like a porcelain doll, her skin pale, her little tuffs of hair seemed to be dark brown, darker than her mothers had been, and her little hand glowed deep blue, the same blue her mother loved more than any other. He turned and looked over at Kari again.

"Loki?" His mother's concern was finally what broke the wall that had kept his emotions at bay. He broke down, his violent wails startling his brother, his mother, the healer and even the tiny baby. Falling to his knees on the floor, he gripped the bedding and sobbed. Gone, she was gone.

Thor and Frigga stared at him in shock, neither knowing how to process what they were seeing. "Mother, take the baby, get her a wet nurse." Thor ordered, looking at Loki who was still in tears next to him. When Frigga and Eir left with the baby, he waited until Loki's cries became sobs. "Still?" Loki looked to him, his face that of a broken man. "You still loved her?"

"I never stopped." Loki's almost choked as he spoke.

"And she…did she still?" Thor was frightened to ask.

"Yes."

"That is why she wanted me to be happy with Sif, because she wanted to be happy with you." Loki did not respond. "I…Why did neither of you tell me?"

"You were blind to your own feelings, how could you ever realise other peoples." Loki voice was cracking. "We never stopped loving one another. I will never stop loving her." He rose to his feet again, wiping the tears from his eyes as he looked down at the woman he adored. "Thor," He turned to face his brother. "Kari had no idea how to tell you, but you never did anything with her on Vanaheim."

"I don't understand, what has that to do with…." Thor's eyes widened. "The baby. You…she."

Loki nodded "She is my daughter, not yours."

Thor looked at Kari's lifeless body in the bed, then back to his brother, unable to process what he was hearing. "So what she meant when she said she was an abysmal wife, she meant that she was busy…" Thor's lip and nose twitched as he became more and more enraged.

"She meant what she said to you, she did wish to see you happy, and that that would never be with her. That is why she wanted you to realise how you felt for Sif. She wanted you to…" Loki did not get to finish his sentence before Thor swung for him, his fist colliding painfully with Loki's jaw. "You should never have held onto the idea she would love you back for so long, she told you long ago to take a mistress." He added, his speech slightly slurred as he spoke because of the ache.

"She had come round, then you came back, and everything went to shit." Thor roared as he paced in front of Loki.

"Because she couldn't lie to you or to herself any longer, my returning forced her to realise that." He retorted as loudly, rubbing his face where Thor's knuckles collided painfully with his cheek. "She pushed you away, then when she realised you were in denial about Sif, she did everything she could to get your focus off her and to Sif. Just because you loved her, doesn't mean she was obliged to love you."

"She was my wife."

"Only because Odin forced her to marry you, she loved me. The last conversation she had in this world was with you, trying to get you to be happy. I was not given that, and now you are going to piss all over it, she knew she could never atone for her own wrong doings, she was trying to free you of yours."

"Mine? What did I do?"

"You forced her to feel as though she had no choice but to act as a good wife to you, rather than accepting your feelings were not reciprocated. Have you any idea of the heartache that would have been saved if you had accepted that? She said time and again how she wanted you to feel loved, but it could never be from her. And now she is gone."

"Loki." Thor's anger dissipated.

"I have nothing left. Nothing." Loki began to cry again. "She left me, she promised she wouldn't, but she did. Now all I have is nothing."

Thor looked at Loki, he was conflicted, their betrayal hurt him, it ached like a jagged knife. The child he had been so excited for, was not even his and for the rest of his life, if he wished to avoid public humiliation, he would have to pretend she was his, and train her to take the crown after him. But Loki had lost everything, it was true. Kari was gone, and for the sake of stability and face, he would have to be acknowledged as the girl's father. "What is her name?" Loki looked at him in confusion. "The girl, what is her name? It is a father's right to name his child, is it not?"

"Why?"

"You said yourself, you have nothing. I can give you this. She would have wanted it." Thor looked at Kari, the woman who used her last day to draw him, telling him how best to live his rule, and telling him to be happy. She knew she was dying, and she told none of them, and rather than having Loki by her side, she chose to council him. Even at the cost of her own happiness, she had done such a thing, Loki was right; he had his part to play in everything. "She would have asked you what you would have wanted to name the child, and would have fought tooth and nail for that name, so what is it?"

"Mya, she wanted Mya."

Thor nodded. "Mya it is then." He turned to leave. "I will have to be seen as her father publically, for as wrong as what you both did was, the people adored her, and she was truly a good person, she does not deserve such a thing, especially since she is not able to justify her actions, and because of such, she has to be deemed my heir. But in private, do as you wish." He did not look back at Loki as he walked out of the room, and passed the grieving handmaid, who mourned her employer, a woman who in truth, trusted her with her secrets, even ones she never actually spoke them, but her actions revealed.

Loki walked to the head of the bed, and leant over Kari's still form to kiss her forehead. His jaw clenched as he felt how cold she had become in such a short time. "I will make sure she knows of you my darling. She will know of how much we loved one another, I swear it. I will make you proud of us." The tears fell from his face onto her. "I swear."

He stood tall and walked from the room. Outside he noticed Helena. "You have a new charge." He informed her. Rising to her feet, the handmaid looked at him in teary eyed confusion. "Baby Mya needs to be tended to; you were being trained to help Kari with such were you not?" He nearly choked again using her name and thinking of her. The hand maid nodded. "Well then, if that is what she wanted, that is what will happen."

"Yes your highness. It will be an honour to help raise her." The maid gave a small but genuine smile. Nodding silently, Loki walked on. He found Frigga with the baby in her rooms, humming a lullaby to her, turning around, his mother paused when she saw him. He walked over and took the baby from her.

"Loki?"

"Her name is Mya." He informed her.

"It's perfect, a beautiful name for a beautiful child." Frigga smiled sadly. "She has your nose." Loki stared back at her. "You think I never noticed? The looks of adoration, for the past fifty years or so, then when you realised the child was yours, the way you could not be parted from her, and its seidr, I figured it out immediately."

"You said nothing."

"I know. What you both did to Thor, making him believe she was his; that was wrong. But what was done to you both, how any could think you could be kept apart. It was unavoidable."

"We did not know what else to do, not without shaming us all."

"I know, but it is done, and we cannot undo it."

"He is accepting her as his publically."

"I knew he would."

"Mother…I don't know what to do."

"Welcome to parenthood my son. But fear not, I will help you."

"I'm scared."

"You'd be a fool not to be."

"I don't know if I can do this without her." Fresh tears welled in his eyes. Baby Mya began to stir, looking up at him, her little being sensing his distress. Again her little hand rose from the blanket, and glowed blue. Sitting in a chair, he allowed his own seidr flow to his hand, when he let her tiny fist wrap around his, she calmed again immediately. "You know me, don't you?" He smiled, she just looked back at him her baby blue eyes focusing on the dark shadow against the bright room. "I will protect you my beautiful little Mya."

X

"Mya, be careful." Loki warned. The chocolate brown haired girl grinned wickedly back at him as she took another step toward the pond.

"You worry too much Papa." She laughed.

"I worry because I have reason to, you are turning me grey, child."

Mya erupted in laughter. "Fine, here I will come back if you are so concerned." She sighed.

"Good. So what is new with you?"

"Nothing. Father and Sif are having another child."

"I heard."

Thor had taken Sif as his wife not half a century after Kari's passing, since then they had had two sons, however as first born, Mya still had to be deemed Thor's heir. Mya stood beside Thor's new family at formal events, and she did actually enjoy her time around Thor, but there was always a complexity to their relationship, guilt still played a factor in Thor's memory of Kari, and looking at the green that ever so slightly tinted the blue eyes of his supposed daughter, so did anger. Loki assisted him in his rule still, but he was somewhat less inclined to be involved too much in anything other than what required his input, he usually shied from public behind the scenes, training Mya in seidr along with his mother when she was not being prepared to rule after Thor.

"Why must I call him that?" She sat down beside him on the bench.

"It is just the way it has to be."

"It feels wrong."

"I know my little dove." Loki kissed her forehead.

"I miss her."

"I do to."

"But I never knew her." Mya looked to the ground sadly.

"It does not mean you cannot love her."

"Will you ever find someone else to make you happy, like he did?"

"I think not little dove, your mother was my love."

"And now? You don't have any happiness?"

"Now I have you."

"You deserve love Papa."

"I had more love in almost sixty years than most people will have in their five thousand year lives." He smiled sadly. "None would ever compare."

"You'll never know if you do not try." Kari argued.

"Sweetheart, when you lose your true love there is nothing that can ever come close to it." Frigga explained walking slowly to the bench where Loki sat with his daughter in her old age. "Your Papa will never love another woman again."

"That's just sad." Kari's eyes welled with tears.

"Do not weep my little dove, she awaits me in Valhalla, where we will have a lot longer than a few millennia in each others arms." He smiled looking to the skies.

Frigga watched as her son tried to will away his sadness. "Loki." He turned to face his mother. "The day Mya was born; I noticed something in Kari's hand. She refused to let it go."

"What was it?"

"A piece of paper, just a scrap but she held it fast."

"And? What was on it?"

Frigga beckoned Mya to turn towards her, and reached for the locket the girl wore, a gift from her Papa on her hundredth name's day. With a wave of her seidr, she clicked it open, and a small scrap of paper fell from it.

Loki was the one to catch it, his eyes immediately overflowing with hot, heavy tears. "She kept it."

"And held onto it for dear life." Frigga nodded, though she knew not the true value of it.

"What, what is it Papa?"

"The morning your mother was forced to wed Thor, I left a scrap of paper with her before I fled; she kept it all that time, until the day you were born." He held out the scrap for his daughter to read. "This is why I can love no other. Something as simple as that, meant so much to us." He explained.

Mya looked at the piece of battered paper in her hand once more, before folding it again and placing it back in the locket, using her own blue seidr to lock it again. "I know you want it Papa, but I need it, I need to be reminded of what I am."

Loki frowned at her. "What are you little dove?"

"Proof, that death cannot kill love." She held the locket tight in her grasp, the piece of paper inside still reading the words it had read for nearly a millennia. "I'm so sorry my dove; I will love you for eternity'.