Frigga cried for her youngest son even as others felt relief at his passing. She had shared a unique closeness with Loki that nobody else had. She had spent many days with the child teaching him all that she knew and learning even more from him in return. Now that he was gone she grieved for both her child and her friend.

She had argued with Odin and many others over the years that Loki had more talents than the ones he chose to show. He was more than a trickster boy trying to win attention away from his brother and ruining the well-laid plans of others. He was intelligent, diplomatic, gifted in many forms of magic, and just as worthy as his older brother of his rank. Even now, as others pointed out all his faults to her, she remained firm in her argument that he was more than what he appeared to be on the surface.

The memories of the time she had spent with him as a child and a youth only served to torment her now when he was gone from her. The joy she had taken in her youngest child was now painfully marred by the lies she had told him all his life and the agony that she had inadvertently caused him.

"Mother! Look!" Thor pulled his younger brother into the room by the wrist. "Look what Loki has learned to do!"

"It's nothing," the dark haired boy sighed impatiently, wrenching his hand free. "It's barely even worth doing over again."

"It was wonderful!" Thor insisted.

Loki sighed, giving his brother a somewhat aggravated look, before holding out his hand. In it was a small ball of flame that was slowly changing in both color and intensity. She knew he had been working on this particular spell for a long time but she was not surprised at his lack of enthusiasm to show it off.

"It's not that great," Loki mumbled, letting the magic dissipate slowly. "Thor has not stopped with it since I showed him earlier."

Frigga took Loki's face in her hands and kissed his forehead. The boy was ever dismissive of his own talents no matter how advanced or how interested those around him were in them. She knew that he felt pride in each new skill that he mastered but he was not inclined towards gloating as his brother was.

"It is quite a feat, Loki," Frigga smoothed the boy's dark hair away from his face. "Your work has paid off beautifully."

He smiled at her in spite of himself and allowed Thor to take him away to show others what he could do.

Frigga always found joy in the relationship that her boys had. Loki expressed disdain for the things his brother did but he was always there to fix Thor's messes or to take part of the blame for the situation. Whether or not he was always a culprit in the mischief was not always clear but he was loyal to Thor as nobody else was. In return, Thor kept watch over the younger boy and made sure that he was always included in whatever the other children were doing even if Loki had no interest in it himself.

As they grew older, it slowly became clear that Thor would be heir to the throne. As a result, few spared much attention to his small, dark-haired sibling. Loki began to distance himself from everyone around him, instead immersing himself in his books and his studies. Even as others dismissed him, he remained ever at his brother's back carefully watching what was happening around them, always one step ahead of everyone else.

Sometimes he would try and reach out to his mother as he had when he was younger but the wall he had built around himself had also become a prison. He no longer remembered how to reach out to someone else for comfort or companionship. In some ways, his mother feared, he no longer wanted to.

"Show me again," Loki insisted, his green eyes looking over the herbs on the table. He looked anything but confused about the small magic she had done there. He had surpassed Frigga's abilities long ago so certainly this was not new to him.

"Loki," she said softly, chidingly, "you know what I have done here. Do not pretend to me that you have any doubts."

"Of course, mother, I only wanted to be sure," a soft smile danced at the corners of his mouth. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and left the room.

Frigga knew he had wanted her to show him again if only to spend a few more moments with her. After he left she always wondered if she had indulged him if he might have opened up to her like he used to. She couldn't remember when he had drifted so far out of her reach but she wished she would have known so she could have stopped it.

If Thor was loud thunder and bright flashes of light then Loki was the soft wind and gentle rain that came with it. Their differences brought them together as much as they tore them apart. She missed the time when they had been too young and innocent to realize that the people and events around them would only end up conspiring to tear them apart.

She missed the sound of her children laughing together at some joke or another, she missed the comforting weight of Loki in her arms as he cried himself to sleep over something one of the other children had said to him, she missed the conversations she shared with him as he grew older, and she missed most his reluctant smile that he would give her when she told him how much she loved him.

"I am sorry, mother. I tried," Thor's voice was hoarse as he spoke. "I couldn't save him."

Frigga shook her head and held out her arms to him, bidding him to come to her. This wasn't his fault and it should not be his burden to bear. In lying to one child she had failed both of them. She had been as much a cause of the wedge that had been driven between them as Odin himself.

"Will you forgive me?" his bright blue eyes sparkled with a fresh wave of tears as he knelt in front of his mother.

"There is nothing to forgive you," Frigga kissed his forehead.

Thor nodded letting his mother wipe the tears away from his eyes and stood up. He couldn't help but bear the guilt of letting Loki fall and she knew it would be something he would bear for a long time. He couldn't have known how troubled his brother had become. Loki had hidden it so well that she hadn't even noticed it until it was too late.

"It isn't your fault either, mother," Thor said quietly, pausing at her doorway before he left.

It was her fault though and the knowledge of it would pain her for the rest of her years.