When Loki was young, only two hundred years old, Thor became too old and grown up to play with him and his parents found themselves beside themselves with worry and anger. They had been harangued by the Kitchen staff that had had enough of the boy getting underfoot, stealing food and enchanting it as well, switching sugar for salt and more. Then there were the complaints from the maids who found their soaps suddenly colouring things in vivid shades of pink and the soldiers whose helmets magically began strangling them and more and more, the list went on. Finally when they could not take any more of his mischief and were unable to persuade Thor to include his baby brother in his play they made a plan. He needed a friend and found one courtesy of a play date set up by his parents.

Alfdis was small and weak like him, she had unusually dark hair like him and she was strange and had her head up in the clouds, dreaming of worlds that never were, like him.

"I'm too small and weak. You're small now but you'll grow up to be a big and strapping man one day, I just know it." She explained in a conspiratorial whisper soothing his worries in one go and he leaned in closer to whisper just like she did.

"Maybe you'll grow up to be big and strapping too." He tried his luck at making her happy again, but the sad look deep in her eyes didn't vanish and she shot him a watery smile.

"I don't think I'll grow up at all." She'd said and he was too young to understand but old enough to know that she was so fragile that most of Asgard wasn't even to touch her for fear of breaking her.

He'd thought being small and weak was bad but knowing that he was the only one who could hold her hand and pull her along in the golden corridors of Asgard without leaving bruises on her skin made him feel powerful like never before.

She loved love stories but the ones that had tragic bittersweet endings the most and the one she repeated to him most often was one of her aunt and her betrothed.

Alfdis sighed breathily, her gaze growing vacant as her mind drifted into the world of imagination and her voice grew soft and sweet and tender."He died you see and he died in her arms, bleeding out and staining what was to be her wedding dress with his blood and she wore red forever after, for the life and love that she had lost."

He didn't know why her aunt would have to be reminded of her loss but simply went along with it for the starry look in his best friend's eyes.

"What happened to her after wards?" He asked, not really curious but a little enamoured by her sighs and not wanting her to stop talking.

"She died in battle but when the Valkyries came she asked them if they had her betrothed. When they said he had not been brave enough for Valhalla she fought them and won, exercising her right to stay with him in Helheim instead.

Loki didn't know why anyone would want to go to Helheim and asked his best friend why her aunt did that. The dreamy look reappeared and she sighed breathily again.

"Because she loved him and had lived a life without him. She did not want to spend an eternal afterlife without him as well." She blinked the daze gone and laughed. "Of course it might just be a fairytale my mother told me. Maybe I don't even have an aunt, she is 'supposed' to have died long before I was born."

"Do you think we'll love like that?" He asked her pondering his future.

"You will. I probably won't grow up enough to love like that." She smiled impishly but it didn't reach her eyes. "I'm too selfish."

And he didn't know what she meant then either but he hoped she would find a love like that.

The Queen of Helheim was visiting Asgard and his sickly friend had snuck, hid and persuaded him to help her talk to the Goddess of the Dead, Hela, and so he did. He stood next to her in front of the Queen resolute and proud even though the bruises left on Alfdis' arms from when the Queen's phalanx had caught her made him sick on the inside.

"And what have we here?" Queen Hela said and though the voice was sweet and soft he could hear the lament of the dead in it and shivered. She knelt to meet the two quivering children's eyes and his friend stood firm and unflinching.

"I wanted to ask you something." Alfdis said, brave beyond compare. "I heard a story and wanted to know if it was true."

And she tumbled out the tale he had heard a thousand times over the look in Hela's eyes growing softer with each word, heartbreak in them.

"So? Is it true?" Afldis asked, desperate for an answer. "And don't lie to spare my feelings either, I just want the truth."

Loki flinched at her lack of formality, his lessons in politics urging him to apologise on his friend's behalf but before he could do so Queen Hela answered.

"It is quite true. Your aunt and her lover are married in my world."

The smile that grew on Alfdis's face made him wonder how people could possibly compare Thor to the sun.

Thor was fire, bright and hot but burning to the touch, she was the real sun, soft, gentle, warm and achingly...something that he had no words to describe but simply was.

"Perhaps one day you'll get such a love." Queen Hela teased and she gave her the same answer she'd given him. Unlike him though, the Queen seemed to understand what she really meant and they shared a sad smile that left him feeling bereft.

They had never kept secrets from one another before.

One day she was there and the next she was gone. He heard tales, rumours of how the Hela had stolen her away in the dead of the night and for a moment allowed himself to believe that she really had been kidnapped, she just couldn't possibly be dead. After all Hela had seemed fond of her during her last visit. But then he found a letter left for him and finally realised what she meant when she said she wouldn't grow up at all.

He had thought it to be her stubborn wish to remain a child forever, it made sense to him, after all there were many days when he didn't wish to grow up either but he had not known the extent to which she was sick.

"Dearest Loki,"

It read in her small scratchy writing that made him want to use that translating spell he had learnt a week ago but could not because his mind was too broken, too lost in mourning to think of the right words.

"If you're reading this I'm dead and probably in Helheim. I wouldn't like to eliminate the possibility of Valhalla but it seems unlikely. I'm sorry to have been so unclear about my...condition but I didn't know how to say it. I still don't. It is easier to tell someone else's story than my own I suppose.

I did say though didn't I, that I am selfish. I did not want you to know and treat me differently and I forgot to think about how it would pain you in the end. I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused. You'll always be my best friend even in the afterlife. I hope I don't see you for a long time and I hope you end up in Valhalla like you want to.

Love,

Alfdis."

He was sure if he spent enough time on it he could find a way to bring her back but there was the one rule of magic that he remembered and it would have rendered all his research useless.

An equal trade, always.

A life for a life and for the life of him he could not think of a single one who was worthy of being taken in her place and to exchange her soul for an unworthy one would result in her being incompletely brought back to life and so he accepted her fate even as he did not accept it.

It wasn't long before he found himself standing over the boat with her corpse in it. He half expected her to shoot up and say 'Boo!' giggling while he choked on his breath. He could almost hear her laughter, see her leaning her arms on the lip of the boat while he struggled to use his words but she remained still, cold, lifeless. Still and pale she lay against its dark wood her brown hair fanned around her.

She was surrounded by trinkets, books and jewellery, everything she owned waiting to be taken with her into the afterlife and his hands as they rested by his side shook. His eyes fell to the necklace still around her neck, with the dark green stone on it.

"It's from Midgard," she said proudly showing it off to him. She had only gotten it a month ago. "Something called Yù, isn't it pretty? I love its green." She had said and stared at it with a smile, never taking it off.

With trembling hands he took it off her, desperate to have something of her. An almost sob made its way out of his throat when he felt how cold she was and he put it into his pocket quickly when his time alone with her ended and her parents came into the chamber. They stood next to him, her father's heavy hand on his shoulder preventing him from leaving, leaning on him and providing him support as well and the three stood around her mourning.

They noticed the missing necklace a momentary frown blooming on her mother's face as she drew the veil over Alfdis' face before she turned to Loki and he ducked his head shyly. They didn't say anything and he was glad. At least they had their blood that they shared with her, her very existence however brief, was to their credit. When her boat would fall over the edge he would have nothing of her but the memory of her laughter and the little pendant she was fond of and they let him have that.

An hour later he watched the burning boat set off the waters and Thor stood at his back suddenly there after what felt like years of absence. When he turned up for his lessons the next day dressed in green from head to toe (For the life he had lost, her voice echoed in his head) no one said a word.