Wow, I am so sorry. I really have no other excuse other than real life got pretty hectic and I lost interest in this. However, upon seeing The Avengers, I would really like to finish it! I'm sure it's irrelevant now and no one will probably read it…but I'm going to finish it, at least for me. For those of you still reading, if any of you even exist, thank you and, again, I apologize profoundly!

Ana didn't hear from Loki for a long time after that.

She pretended not to care. Most of her time was spent with Thor and the others. They sparred together, ate together, drank together, had silly adventures…enough to keep Ana busy and her mind off of Loki. She never asked about him, and he never came up. It was as if somehow the others knew it was a sensitive topic, and therefore avoided it.

It was as if Loki didn't exist.

In some ways this was a good thing. Sometimes, she almost forgot about him. But there were always those little reminders—small things that wouldn't matter to anyone else. And whenever they came upon her, so did a wave of thoughts concerning Loki that threatened to drown her. So she built a dam to keep them out. She vowed not to think of him, and that was that. Of course, Ana had never learned the complexities of controlling her thoughts. They tended to wander, and whenever they did, they wandered exactly where she told them not to: Loki.

But she kept herself busy for the most part, and that was that. She had nothing more to say to him. She had reached out to him and he had refused her, just as he had refused her his whole life. She only ever wanted to be friends with the prince, but he swatted away her every attempt at affection.

Her relationship with Thor continued. Ana loved Thor, and Thor treated her like a princess. Ana's mother, of course, was thrilled about this. Everyone in the kingdom knew that Thor was the more likely of the brothers to ascend to the throne, and although Ana's mother would have settled for Loki, there was no contest when it came to Thor. This put Ana in her mother's good book, for once, which made life at home much easier to tolerate.

On the outside, everything was going well for Ana. She had friends, she had a future, she was on good terms with her mother, and she had a romantic relationship with the future king of Asgard. Nothing in her life had been more perfect.

But if that were so, why did she long for the days she spent in the meadow with the other prince?

One day, Ana was walking through the castle gardens with Thor, as they usually did when it was particularly sunny. Thor handed her a flower.

"For you, Lady—" Thor stopped as Ana gave him a look. She hated when he called her that. "Ana," he finished, clumsily placing the flower behind her ear. She smiled softly.

"Thank you, Thor, god of Thunder, prince of Asgard," she said in a mockingly formal tone as she curtsied. They continued to walk through the garden. Thor almost always gave her flowers. The most Loki ever did was throw the grass he had picked on her. Remembering this, a smile briefly came to her lips before it turned into a frown. She pushed the thoughts away. She wouldn't think of him.

"Does something trouble you, Ana?" Thor asked.

Ana considered telling him the truth. She could easily deny it and Thor would let it go—whether he believed her or not, she was never sure; Thor could be very dense at times. Instead, she took a more subtle route.

"Why do we never speak of Loki?" Ana asked. She looked up at Thor, surprised to see guilt in his expression.

"Loki does not approve of our relationship," Thor answered. "He will not speak to me. He avoids me, even in the castle."

Ana nodded. "I wondered. I haven't seen him in weeks." She thought back to their last fateful conversation. White-hot anger burned through her for a moment before it turned to utter sorrow. Her throat went dry. She bit her lip, fighting the tears that were threatening to spill over at any moment. She wouldn't cry. Not for him.

She didn't know how much longer she could fight it. Looking up at Thor, she attempted a smile. "I'm going to go use the wash," she said quickly before skipping off to the castle.

Ana didn't know how, but somehow she ended up in the old library, where Loki used to take her. Her feet wandered there of their own accord. She looked in the corner where he often sat; it was empty.

Tears stained her cheeks as she frantically wiped them off, sniffing. She kneeled beside one of the long columns of books and ran her finger along them before finding one. Theoretical Magic and Multi-Dimensional Mathematics. She smiled as she picked it up, remembering how fascinated she had once been with it when Loki first showed her. All of that seemed a lifetime ago now.

She didn't know why she took it. Perhaps she wanted to steal it away to get back at Loki for what he'd done to her. She felt wronged by him. But deep down, she knew that was not her prime motivation. Ana needed it. She needed a sentiment of him, a reminder that he was real, anything. Anything that made all the years she spent with him mean something.

Either way, she tucked it under her dress and quickly ran back to the garden, back to Thor as if nothing happened.

If she had only looked behind her once more, she would have seen Loki staring after her.