Seven years later….

Loki struggled, gasping and choking, fighting for breath as he clutched at the Titan's fist that had closed around his neck, lifting him from the ground. In a desperate attempt to save his brother and what remained of Asgard he had made one last roll of the dice and lost. In his final seconds of life, he acquiesced to fate's decree knowing that his journey had come to its end. A strange sort of calm came over him as he uttered his last words with what breath remained within him.

"You will never be a god."

Loki's brain had ceased to function before it could register the sound or sensation of his neck snapping in Thanos' grip. The image of Thanos faded, replaced with that of a bright light. He felt warmth and a peace he had never before known. What darkness and angst had still remained within him had now flown.

The light faded but the sense of peace and calm remained. Loki slowly opened his eyes. He lay on the deck of the Statesman, the ship he and Korg and the other gladiators had stolen from Sakaar that had then become a lifeboat for the people of Asgard, it being the only thing that had stood between them and extinction. Though many had fallen to Thanos, many others he knew had escaped. Because of him, Asgard would survive. He had accomplished what his grandmother had told him to do many years ago.

Loki rose and looked around him in confusion. Thanos and his 'children' were gone. The deck was devoid of the bodies that had once littered it. There was no sign of his brother, no sign of anyone that he knew had been there only moments before. He was alone. All was silent and still.

"Thor? Brother?" he called, breaking that silence. He received no reply. "Is anyone here?" he called, his voice echoing through the expansive room.

Loki slowly made his way towards the large viewing window and looked out over the expanse of space and its myriad of stars and other astral bodies.

"Loki…" he heard a gentle female voice say from behind him. It was a voice he had not heard in many years, one he had buried deep within his memory to never in life recall again. He quickly turned to view its source, the woman with the reddish gold hair in the emerald green gown. "Do you remember me?" she asked.

"Revna?..." Loki said softly, breathlessly, as if he were once again at a loss for vital air to speak. The woman closed the space between them, a smile on her face yet tears in her eyes.

"Yes…"

"But you're…..so I'm…." Loki struggled to say the words. "Is this Valhalla then?" Loki was confused. This was nothing like what he had expected. How could Valhalla be an empty ship? Where were the others, his mother, his father, those he had lost other than Revna that he had expected to greet him?

"Yes and no. It is a place between. I have been waiting for you, as I told you I would." All his memories of that short period of time in his life that he had forced himself to lock away and bury flooded back.

"I told you, I swore to you I would return..."

"I did not take my own life. It was stolen from me." Revna said. The truth flooded over Loki. Without her having to explain, he now knew all that had happened and why. Thinking back, he realized he had already known. He had put it together somewhere in his subconscious not long after Thor's ill advised visit to confront the Jotuns after the aborted coronation, after they had first learned of the Jotuns' burning touch. Her arm, the similar marks on her throat, the thick, heavy cloak on the bed during the warmest part of the growing season, the beast she had been so frightened by that she had stated was similar to the one he had conjured an illusion of that was from Jotunheim, her knowledge of the location of the portal there. It was not only his disgust at what he had learned was his true heritage or his anger at Laufey for abandoning him to die that had led to him setting up Laufey's demise and his attempted destruction of Jotunheim with the Bifrost.

He now realized the source of his disgust at the behavior of those of Midgard, how they slaughtered each other in droves. He had wished not just to be a king there, to finally have a throne and to rule but to also use the power vested in it to put a stop to it. 'If you ever become king, put an end to it….the wars, the slaughter….' she had said to him, 'there are better things to celebrate than bloodshed...art, music, theater…' As King of Asgard in the guise of Odin, he had neglected to fight and defend the other realms not out of laziness, not merely so he could sit back and enjoy his theater and grapes.

"So...what now?" Loki asked. He couldn't imagine spending the rest of eternity on an empty ship.

The ship around them suddenly vanished, Loki finding himself standing in a familiar place, the sound of the sea behind him, Frida's cottage before him. The door of the cottage opened, a woman stepping out, he at first mistaking her for his mother before he recognized her from his childhood long ago, the years having been stripped from her face and body. She now stood straight having no need for a staff.

"Loki, my boy….it took you long enough." Frida said with a grin.

"Amma!" Loki said, his face breaking into a grin to match Frida's own.

"Your journey is not over." Renva told him. "Eventually you will be called. You will forget all of this. I will join my mother and father. But until then….I thought we could enjoy each other's company." Taking Loki's arm, Revna led him towards the cottage. "Will you read to me more stories? The ones with happy endings?"

The End