"Having not been used for more than a thousand years, the bulk of Thor's seiðr we could utilise for healing is largely dormant. Akin to an atrophied limb after a stroke, you don't use it, you lose it." Stephen massaged two fingers along his eyebrow. He was developing a bad headache. "To awaken it we will need at least a year, and that is if you are willing to undergo intensive, round-the-clock retraining of your seiðr."

"Loki does not have a year!"

"I know that, Thor," Stephen said, a tad more snappishly than he intended. "But that is the best we have come up with so far – your lightning is good and all, but despite its abundant supply, we still have not figured out a way to channel it into Loki without it wanting to expunge the baby from his body!"

"What?" Valkyrie's eyes bulged.

The Sorcerer Supreme sighed heavily. "Thor's elemental energy is compatible with Loki and would have replenished his diminishing seiðr readily, had it not recognized our baby as a foreign body and tried to expel it the last time we tried to harness it."

He still could not erase the image and the sound of Loki screaming in excruciating pain, blood spreading everywhere. It took both Wong and Stephen almost half a day to purge Thor's seidr from Loki's body; thankfully they had managed to salvage the pregnancy.

"And what about your magic, Stephen?" Thor looked at him imploringly.

Stephen's jaw tightened. "My magic takes to seiðr like oil to water. You have seen the evidence of it yourself, remember?"

"Surely there must be a way…" Thor prodded his temples with his fingers in frustration. He banged a fist on the table. "The Tesseract. We could use it to bring Loki to any of the territories, of what has remained of the Nine Realms, if it is close enough to Yggdrasil the magic of the Tree of Life could surely heal him. Alfheim, Vanaheim, any of these would do!"

Stephen was silent for a long time.

"Even if we could obtain the Space Stone from its hiding place, the strain of intergalactic travel would tear Loki to pieces in his current condition. He can barely withstand the brunt of teleportation, let alone leap from one universe to another."

"All I'm hearing from your mouth is nay and naught, Brother." Thor's temper was rising by the second.

Stephen straightened in his seat, his face blanched in a mix of apprehension, guilt and fury. "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but I am working my ass off to find a way to save your brother who also happens to be my husband! Or did you forget?!"

"Yes, and as the High Prince Consort of Asgard, it is your duty to use whatever means necessary to save his life!" Thor thundered. "I can see the answer clearly as day, and I see it in your eyes as well!"

"It is not that simple, Thor!" Stephen was shouting now.

Valkyrie could feel the hair rising on the back of her neck. All this bickering, this useless squabbling when all good it did was wasting precious time, time they knew they did not have

"How is it that we have the most powerful Deity on this side of the galaxy, and the most powerful Sorcerer on earth and still we can't do jack?!"

None was more surprised than the Valkyrie to hear the words coming out from her own mouth.

Her heart pounded in her chest in time with the rush of blood in her ears.

"My Lady Valkyrie."

A page stood by the door. "His Highness Prince Loki is requesting the presence of your company as he wishes to partake in a light stroll on the palace grounds with Prince Stian."

"Go with him, Brunnhilde." Thor assented. "I wish I could accompany my dear Brother and sweet nephew but it seems I and my good brother-in-law here have further to discuss."

She knew when she was being dismissed but as slighted as she was, she also knew she had gotten off easy. Thor seemed to have chosen to both ignore and forgive her outburst. "Yes, Majesty."

She threw the Sorcerer Supreme a warning look for good measure before striding out of the Council Chamber.

"He's got my face all wrong." Loki studied the ceiling.

The magnificent fresco painting had been restored to its former glory.

"I think he's done a not so mediocre job, your Sorcerer Supreme." Valkyrie swept her eyes over the beams, now fortified ten-fold with magic and vibranium. "Completed the restoration in less than a day."

"Thor looks alright." Loki's nose crinkled. "Hair's too big, though. He doesn't have that much of it anymore."

"He's the King. He has to look grander than the rest of you."

Loki walked slowly down the length of the Royal Aisle, studying the burnished gold of the Grand Altar from afar.

"It looks great, yes?" Valkyrie sounded strangely earnest for some reason. "Fit for a Royal Wedding, don't you think?"

"Oh yes. For funerals too." Loki said cheerily.

That was absolutely the wrongest thing to say, and she bristled.

"With all due respect, Your Highness, I suggest we refrain from further talks of death and funerals." Valkyrie rebuked brusquely. She stole a glance at the little prince who was lagging a few steps behind with his au pair, marveling at colourful horses depicted on a stained-glass window. "Young ears are listening."

"My apologies, my lady," Loki murmured. In a gesture of truce, he gestured for her to take a seat with him on one of the pews. He nodded at the au pair as a sign of consent, watching his son's disappearing back as his carer took Stian by the hand and led the little prince down the grand staircase, most likely to take to the gardens outside.

"Everyone thinks I should let her go." A whisper.

Valkyrie slowly took her seat on the other end of the pew, letting her arm hang down the back of it. If she stretched it out, she could almost touch the tips of the Prince's black hair, let loose past his shoulders. From this angle, Loki looked much thinner than she remembered.

"To save my life, I must kill my own child." His eyes were hollow, the shadows under his eyes darker. "What do you think, Val?"

She let the pause hang in the air for a good few seconds before answering.

"I think you're one tough son of a bitch - pardon the expression for I meant absolutely no offense to the memory of your beloved Mother, Queen Frigga – even if you look like a marshmallow on a burning stick nowadays."

"That has got to be the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Valkyrie."

"That is really pathetic. I feel so sorry for you." Valkyrie smirked. "I'll try harder, next time."

Loki laughed, but his laughter was cut short as he abruptly recoiled in his seat, hand suddenly on his stomach. "Damn."

Valkyrie was by his side instantly. "Breathe, Lackey."

She looked down; he must have not realised it but in his distress, he had grabbed onto her hand and was clutching it like a lifeline. She covered it with her other hand and without thinking, began looking for the pressure points at his bony wrist and suddenly ice-cold palm; once she had found them, she kneaded them gently.

After a tense few minutes, the episode passed and the lines in between his eyes relaxed.

He exhaled a long, icy breath. "At ease, Captain."

Valkyrie found that she finally could breathe again too.

"Would you like to see her?"

Without hesitation she nodded.

He took her hand still curled loosely around his wrist and placed it palm down against his lower stomach. Despite having already entered his tenth week, it was still as flat as a washboard and Valkyrie would not have thought him pregnant but for the instant warm sensation of magic and seiðr she could feel pulsating under her skin.

She concentrated, and her eyes brightened as she marveled, "She is a fighter."

"Now do you see why I cannot let her go?" Loki asked gently.

She nodded tersely. Valkyrie called upon her own spiritual energy and hummed the words of her binding oath, offering it up to the Norns as she once had done years ago with Prince Stian.

"I will protect her with my life."

Loki watched her eyes gleam silver and gold, and he breathed in deeply as something stirred deep within him in response. "She accepts."

Valkyrie smiled a genuine smile. They had come a long way from their brawling days back on Sakaar, that was for damn sure. "I can't wait till we can stab each other again, Lackey."

"I have missed sparring with you too." After a beat, "But alas," A wince crossed his delicate features once more. "Let us come away, Captain. I am afraid I must return to my chambers to rest."

She must have looked stricken for as she offered her hand for him to take, he patted her vambraced arm gently.

"Don't look so glum, Val. I'm not dying today," he said placatingly, before muttering under his breath. "Not before I get Stephen to fix my face."

She sniffed, furious. "It's just allergies, stupid."

Valkyrie closed the door to the Prince's apartments behind her quietly.

"Lady Val, why is Pappa sleeping all the time now?"

"Little Prince, your Pappa needs as much rest as he can get." She went down on one knee, bracing her arm across it as she studied her royal charge, weighing her words carefully.

"He is trying to give you a little sister and he wants to make sure she grows up healthy, and strong –" she smiled as his hazel eyes twinkled, "and clever like yourself."

"Will my sister like horses, like me?"

"She might."

"Can she do magic too like Daddy, Pappa and I?"

"I don't see why not." She reached up to tuck a stray lock of glossy black hair behind his ear. It was getting longer. "You can teach her, can't you?"

He nodded his head excitedly and his hair fell across the front of his face again.

She made a face. "You need a haircut, my Prince."

"I don't want a haircut."

"Then what do you want then?" She rose to her full height. "Wanna go see to your horses? Or we could do some colouring, how about that?"

Stian went quiet. "Colouring please, Lady Val." He took her hand, and gestured for her to open the door again, "The stables are too far away. I want to stay with Pappa. I want to keep him and my sister company."

She stared at him. Finally,

"Okay, my sweet Little Prince." She blinked away the dust for what seemed to be the tenth time today. Stupid fucking allergies. "Come, let us colour to your heart's content. What shall we draw?"

"Horses!"

She rolled her eyes. "Why do I even bother asking."

"Pass me the Book of Caravaggio, the third one from the top. I think I've read something about magical catalysts in there some time ago."

Wong handed him the requested item through the portal. The fellow Master was sitting in his library at Kamar-Taj, deep in research. The portal-conferencing had been his idea, since he knew Stephen could not bring himself to leave Asgard.

"I have gone through it in passing and the catalyst we need to cut Thor's seiðr retraining time by any significant measure can only be found on some planet called Nidavellir, wherever that is."

It sounded vaguely familiar. "Think that's the birthplace of his hammer and his axe…"

"Meaning it's not somewhere we can utilize my air miles to get us free tickets." Wong shrugged. "But I could be wrong, you can check again. I'll try to look up conduits, if we could find a way to convert foreign magic into something both Loki and the baby could tolerate, that would be so freaking awesome."

Long minutes passed before Stephen could even bring himself to put his confession into words.

Wakanda may be able to help, it may not.

But he had in his possession the one thing he knew that could.

"Wong…"

His friend grunted in response, not looking up from the scroll he was perusing on mystical conduits.

"Wong."

Wong looked up.

"The Eye is calling to me."

A stillness settled over the air like fog.

"Stephen, you are not seriously considering using the Eye of Agamotto to reverse what happened, are you?" Wong turned around in his chair, and faced him through the open portal. His jowls worked as he tried to form words he knew would hurt both of them greatly but alas, they needed to be said –

"The price is too great, and I live with it every day."

"I brought you back and I paid for it with Mordo's life?" Stephen snapped. "Is that what you're implying?"

Wong stared at him with a mixed expression of sadness, guilt and most infuriating of all, sympathy.

"What, I should trade my daughter's life, in exchange for all the other lives Loki saved so as to not upset the balance of the universe? My daughter who is sucking the life out of my husband as we speak is not worth the hundreds of lives saved on that day that would not have been in danger had I been here as I should have?"

Wong looked aghast. "Strange, you need to center yourself. Right now."

Stephen buried his face in his shaking hands. "You are right, Wong. I'm sorry."

He swiveled in his chair to face his friend. "And you misunderstood me. I do not intend to use the Time Stone to reverse the accident. All I am asking is one day, back to the time when old Asgard still stands so I could bring Loki there to recharge his batteries, and then come back."

"And you misunderstood me. We have been here before, Strange. You held back, and we saved both your husband and your son, without relying on any relics or infinity stones, remember? All I'm saying is we have to find another way, just like we did the last time. In fact, the answer might be staring right in front of our eyes, we just cannot see it yet."

"I see it, Wong." Stephen whispered. "Just one day back in time. No harm done."

"No harm done," he lied to himself again.

Wong was silent for enough length of time that it was filling Stephen with the first glimmers of hope -

"You are not asking me for permission, my friend." Wong shook his head, almost apologetically. "You are asking yourself."

And the hope died like a flame extinguished in the dead cold of winter.

"You are the Sorcerer Supreme. There is a reason why you were chosen," Wong said. The uncharacteristic gentleness of his voice was not something Stephen expected. "I have always seen what it is in you that made you the right choice for the job. The question is, do you?"

Right choice for the job. Wong made it sound so inconsequential as if he was talking about the trials and tribulations of being a typist.

Stephen's fingers curled into a fist.

"You can only be as righteous as the incline of your slope, and you and I both know this is one hell of a slippery one."

He could not speak anymore.

Stephen waved a hand and he let the portal close without even exchanging goodbyes.

His head turned toward the pale, emaciated figure lying on their bed.

Righteous.

Would being righteous mean a damn thing in a world without you?

Stephen sat on the bed, careful not to jostle it unnecessarily. Despite having imbibed a sleeping draught fortified by the Order of the Mystic Arts' most potent sedating spell, Loki's forehead still crinkled every once in a while.

Even in sleep he could no longer escape the pain.

Stephen's eyes fell onto the steady rise and fall of Loki's abdomen as he took in breath after breath.

The gauntness was eating away at him and the very slight bulge in between the sharp jut of his hipbones only emphasized the concavity of Loki's stomach, and it filled Stephen's heart with such despair he could feel tears filling his eyes.

Loki should be thriving.

Stephen stroked his eyebrow, the tension headache sharp and throbbing.

His hand unthinkingly reached out to touch.

He caressed the swell of Loki's belly. At twelve weeks, their little girl was now fully-formed. Small, but perfect.

It would be so easy.

The spell was just on the tip of his tongue.

His princess. Their poor little princess.

His fingers curled around the soft flesh of Loki's stomach.

Was he really going to rob Loki of the chance to say goodbye to their daughter?

"Daddy."

Stephen's hand jerked away from Loki's belly as if scorched; it might as well be for how his face burned with the sudden rush of blood to his face –

"Stian." He fought to rein in the racing of his heart. "What are you doing out of bed?"

The door stood ajar and Stephen squinted at the outline of his son, clad in his pyjamas, black hair tousled yet eyes as alert as a deer's.

"Can't sleep?"

Stian nodded. He wrung his little hands and Stephen's heart twisted at how similar the gesture was to Loki's own nervous tic.

"Can I lie down with Pappa for a while?"

His first thought was an immediate, apologetic 'No', but the past week Loki had been so ill what little time he had spent with their son was imbued with either heady blurs of heavily-medicated numbness or in a paralysing haze of pain.

"I promise I'll be quiet."

"Of course, buddy." Stephen held out an arm to give his son a hug and kissed him on the temple, ruffling his glossy hair. "Go on, then. I'll watch over you."

Stian climbed onto the bed but instead of lying down next to Loki, he sat cross-legged at his sleeping father's waist.

A small hand reached out to slide Loki's tunic up, revealing his bare abdomen.

"Stian, what are you doi-"

"Shh, Daddy."

Stian put his palm flat on the strip of skin between Loki's navel and groin, and Stephen watched transfixed as blue flames seeped from between his little fingers.

Stephen propelled himself out of the chair so fast it toppled onto its side with a crash, but Loki did not even so much as flinch. He could feel the rise in energy, in disproportion to the plummeting temperature in the room – it was magic. Stian's magic. He would know the signature of his son's seiðr anywhere.

But Stian was still too small, barely five years old, how could he sustain the amount of energy required to -

"Take my hand, Daddy."

There. Stephen had his answer.

"You're the conduit."

And as father and son, their hands touched, and it was as if he had been struck by lightning, it was electric. Stephen's magic swirled furiously in his gut, his chest, oh his chest, burning and bright and golden, as it coalesced into one large dam of chaotic, mystical energy that in a matter of heartbeats, coursed down his arm and simply flowed freely unhindered into the pulling force Stian was exerting through their fingers –

And after what felt like eternity, the sucking force receded, before it finally disappeared entirely.

Stephen stared at the back of his son's head. He wanted so badly to leap forward, to see the expression on his sweet baby face, but he could not for the life of him, move.

"How did you know to do that?" Stephen's heart pounded.

Stian turned his head around. His snow-white skin was unusually flushed, his hazel eyes wide and innocent. "I just fixed the colours, Daddy."

"Colours?" Stephen echoed numbly.

A little crinkle creased Stian's forehead. "Pappa's green. He has to be green."

"So what colour has he been?"

"He was too yellow. He cannot be yellow." His little nose wrinkled. "Yellow is you, Daddy."

A chill ran down his spine.

"And you're…" His throat was suddenly much too dry, his tongue too thick for words.

Stian showed his fingers where cerulean wisps of seiðr sparked to life, dancing like the flickering ends of a candle, "Blue is my favouritest colour in the world!"

"Blue and yellow makes green, Daddy," he said enthusiastically. "Lady Val taught me the other day."

Right in front of your eyes.

"Look!" Stian nuzzled his face in the crook of Loki's neck, wrapping his small arms around his sleeping form in delight, "Pappa's green again!"

"My boy." Stephen's eyes welled. He lunged and grabbed his son and hugged him fiercely, showering his face, his head, his little hands with kisses. "My beautiful, magical boy!"

Stian squealed, flailing his arms, he was so ticklish too – and Stephen buried his face in his son's hair, breathing in the scent. "Oh bless, Stian. My darling boy."

Through teary eyes, Stephen pulled his son into his lap and studied his husband's sleeping profile, and true enough, the pallor had left his cheeks, and the telltale beginning of a flush of colour was beginning to return; he fingered where the perpetual creases of pain next to Loki's eyes had been and he marveled at the absence of them. And he could sense it, Loki's seiðr, stirring in his chest, thrumming with vitality and vigor.

Stephen laid his hand gently on Loki's belly and let his magic flow, looking for his daughter…and there she was, stirring underneath his palm, her seiðr the unique mix of his own magic and Loki's. To think that he very nearly took her life…a lump rose in his throat.

Will you ever forgive me, my darling?

He bent to kiss Loki's stomach. "I'm so sorry, honey. I shouldn't have given up on you."

"Are you kissing my sister goodnight, Daddy?" Stian asked in wonder. His eyes were beginning to droop.

"Yes, yes, I am," Stephen answered through an unshed veil of tears. "Come, you've done so well. I am so proud of you." He nuzzled Stian's temple. "You ready to go back to bed now?"

Stian rubbed his eyes and stubbornly shook his head. He was out like a light by the time Stephen carried him to his room and laid him on his bed.

Stephen must have not slept more than an hour, for when he awoke his arm was still wrapped around Loki's waist.

But something was poking his face.

Stephen opened his eyes only to nearly have them jabbed by someone's finger. He reared back in confusion, remnant of sleep stubbornly clinging to his muddled brain – "Loki!"

He reached up and caught the offending hand.

Loki' green eyes were the only thing bright enough to penetrate the blackness of the room.

"Stephen."

Stephen's throat was too dry to speak. His lips worked but the words were simply not coming.

Loki leaned in closer, and through the balmy darkness, Stephen could make out the familiar outline of his face; he reached up a shaky hand to trace the angular lines of his chin, his cheek, the dimple of his temple –

"Loki…" he breathed out. He still could not believe it. "Is this a dream?"

Loki's eyes softened. "I'm afraid it's not, gentle husband." He wiggled closer and now his body was pressing against Stephen, chest to chest, thigh to thigh –

"I know it's the middle of the night," Loki sounded apologetic, "But I am terribly, terribly hungry."

"Could you please make me one those Egg Benedict things I like?" Loki begged with eyes as green as gems, "Except for the spinach, you always make it too soggy it's disgusting –"

Stephen seized his lips and kissed him deep and hard. "Oh, Loki…" he laughed, and laughed till tears streamed down his face. Despite Loki's protest, "But my Egg Ben –"

Stephen shut him up with another soft but desperate kiss. "Hush. I'll make you whatever you want. Just –"

"Hush."