Kamar-Taj, time immemorial

"Loki."

"Sorcerer Supreme."

"It has been centuries."

"It is only right that I come." Loki spread his arms. "Bearing warm wishes, good tidings – " a small, brown package appeared in one hand, "and tea."

She walked into his arms and embraced him tightly. She savoured the earthy, musky scent with citrusy undertones in girly delight – "Da Hong Pao?"

"Would I bring you anything inferior?"

"Only you would put the most expensive tea in the world in a doggy bag." Being of impressive height herself, she pecked him on the temple with relative ease.

"I suppose congratulations is in order?" He squeezed her arms warmly.

"How did you know?"

Loki only smiled one of his rarer, kind smiles.

She sighed, shaking her head in bemusement. "How could you not know."

"I may not be as powerful a seer as you, but I have my ways of knowing."

"Of course."

They walked into the courtyard, largely deserted except for a small group of students crowding under a tree in formation. The apprentices pointedly ignored them as they went about their martial arts practice.

"Darling, please tell me I did not just walk into one of your invisibility spells." He grumbled, "You know I hate not being the centre of attention."

"Oh, but you're my secret, Loki."

The Mirror Dimension was a containment spell of her own creation, one she had perfected over the years as she apprenticed under the tutelage of the late Sorcerer Supreme.

"Naughty." He glanced at her out the corner of her eyes. "You have missed me."

"Terribly."

She threw open the double doors to her private study and swept the gaudy beaded curtain to one side, gesturing him inside.

"If you had only been more forthcoming with your feelings – " He mused, studying the various Thankas mounted on the wall, made of decadent silk appliqué and the finest cotton. "We could have easily been lovers."

He fingered one made entirely of gold and silver threads, depicting Yama Dharmapala, the Wrathful God of Death.

"Goodness. Your tastes haven't changed a bit," he muttered under his breath. "The last I saw this was back in your 18th century."

"I'm sure we could." She concurred, alluding to his previous proposition, her eyes watching as he walked slowly around her study. "I have always had a thing for older men."

"Older beings, you mean."

She clasped her hands across the front of her body in anticipation. Something was coming.

Loki helped himself to an antique-looking carver chair and leaned back, his hair spilling over the backrest, looking every inch his regal self. "Older than the galaxy itself, it seems."

"Is this where you chastise me and tell me not to play with fire?"

"Oh, by all means, play, darling." Loki waved a hand. "Better us than somebody else who doesn't have a clue what she's doing."

"You have always had much confidence in me."

After a beat,

"Only because I have played before," he confessed.

"And you won." Despite her complimentary words, the slightly anxious expression on his face did not change. "You're still here."

"But you're playing a far more dangerous game," he said quietly. "You're playing for life."

"Whereas you only played for Asgard."

Loki tapped a rapid-fire staccato on the ceramic armrest. "I have no need for such long life."

"Spoken like a true immortal who stares his gift horse in the mouth."

Loki's forehead furrowed.

"Every time you brush too close to death a clump of my hair falls."

Loki knew it was impolite to laugh but he could not help it. "Your concern touches me, as always."

"As does yours, my love."

"I live and breathe danger. When I say the Dark Dimension is dangerous, I do not exaggerate." Loki lifted a finger. "Intoxicating, I give you that, but fraught with hazards nonetheless, and I do not mean simply the physical kind."

"Shall I bargain with you?" She leaned her tall, willowy frame against the wall farthest from him. "A secret for a secret?"

"I don't see how we can strike a fair one. You have all the advantages over me, being all-seeing and a witch."

"And you're an alien sorcerer who survived Dormammu and saved his home. I need to learn how to save mine."

Long seconds passed. Loki held out a hand for her to take. When she came closer and he broke the silence, his voice was low, almost a whisper – "With or without sacrificing yourself?"

"Does it have to be mutually exclusive?"

"Depends. What do you wish to keep in the end?" Loki took her hand and studied her palm lines. They had not changed since they last saw each other. Would they remain the same the next time he came to visit? "Your body? Your mind? Your soul?"

She held the hand once extended to her all those centuries ago.

The hand that had saved her life.

She lifted it to her lips and kissed the back of it, to Loki's suspicion, somewhat apologetically. He frowned.

"You cannot beat a river into submission, yet you cannot lose yourself to the currents."

"So teach me to swim." Her request sounded more an order than a plea.

He remembered her bargain. "Tell me my secret."

"Only if it is one of my choosing?"

"Oh dear. And here I thought I'd get you to tell me how I am to meet my death."

She stared into his green eyes and straight into his soul. "You know how you will meet your death."

"Prophecies schmophecies," he shrugged, smiling lazily.

She draped herself on the divan and languidly crossed one long leg over the other.

"I will tell you of love."

"Love?" If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel the distaste in his voice on the tip of her own tongue.

"One of the great loves of your life." She reopened her eyes, all mysterious. "Dare I say even the greatest."

"You would tell me of Sigyn?" His voice was quiet and light, yet the pain in his eyes was anything but.

She shook her head. "Future love."

"If you tell it, it won't happen."

She shook her head again. "This is a fixed point in your timeline. This version of you anyway."

"It will come to pass." Loki heard the words and the truth in them and yet he was hesitant. He never did like peeking into the future. It always brought the excitement of living down a notch, but still he had to know, just a little bit –

"Will she give me children?" He held a hand to touch fleetingly the lapel of a very handsome red cloak as it floated around the study. It seemed to have taken a liking to him; the thing had been flying around as if sniffing him out the moment he entered the door.

"He will give you many children."

His hand stilled. It dropped away from the sentient cloth.

Loki turned around slowly.

She lifted a guilty eyebrow that seemed to ask 'too much?'

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you will name one of them after me."

As serious as the discussion was, he simply could not resist rolling his eyes. "I am not going to name my child The Ancient One!"

She pulled her chin back to peer at him as if staring over the top of a pair of imaginary spectacles.

"No one will be able to tell if it's a girl or a boy!"

She snorted a laugh. "That's your issue with it?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Is he handsome though, at least?"

"Oh, very," she said nonchalantly, studying her fingernails. "Because that is so important."

His lashes fluttered as he rolled his eyes. "Obviously."

She laughed again, properly and out loud this time. She always enjoyed his visits, as sporadic and far between as they may be. "Staying for tea?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

Soon, he was lying on a chaise-longue with a cup and saucer resting on his stomach, his eyes closed as he listened to her play on the erhu. They were all familiar tunes, his favourites and her favourites alike played in turn.

"So when will I and this mystery man be bringing our brood over…is it anytime soon? This century? The next?" He opened his eyes. "I assume you would want to meet your namesake?"

The fiddle stilled. Her eyes glazed. She did not answer.

The next tune she played was sombre and sorrowful.

Loki slowly raised to an upright position. Despite the melancholic atmosphere, his heart began to pound.

"Why do you not answer?" It was a rhetorical question for Loki suddenly realised he had known the answer all along, hidden in the music.

She was playing for the dead, and perhaps the dead was she, for she had tears in her eyes.

No.

Loki rose to his feet.

For all her age, power, and stature, she was once again the fourteen-year-old maiden Loki had saved from the maws of death and as drops of tears fell onto the red sandalwood body of the violin, Loki dropped to his knees at her feet.

"Oh, my sweet." Loki's cool fingers reached to thumb away the tears from her pale, pale cheek.

"My sweet, sweet darling," she heard him say, so far away yet so close, and she played and played for there would come a time when she could no longer play for him and she feared, no, she knew, that she would not live long enough to teach Stephen Strange how to play Loki's favourite songs let alone see their beautiful, beautiful daughter –

"Remember my name."

New York, present time

"How about…Hatshepsut?"

"Are you seriously considering naming our daughter after an ancient Egyptian queen?"

"She single-handedly built the wealth of Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt. Rich as Hel, impeccable lineage too." Loki mulled the names in his head. "Or how about this –" he drew an imaginary line across the air with his two index fingers, as if writing a name in the sky, "Sekhmet."

"Sekhmet." Stephen repeated.

"Yes, Sekhmet. After the greatest Warrior Goddess, the fiercest hunter in all of Egypt." He grew visibly excited. "If I remember correctly, she was a Goddess of Healing too."

Stephen stared at him. "Is this because we watched The Mummy last night?"

"No." Loki sulked. "Well. Maybe." He pouted with his eyes. "So…it's a no, then?"

Stephen shook his head kindly. "It's a no, I'm afraid."

"But you went with Stian."

Stephen shrugged. "Because it starts with the first two letters of my name."

Loki pelted him with a fry.

"There is power in a name, Stephen." He hunched over in his chair and somehow Stephen knew Loki was fighting the urge to touch his belly for fear of attracting attention. Ever since visiting Bruce and Tony, Loki had been plagued by constant worrying, which in turn, induced a vicious cycle of anxiety.

"We have to give her the strongest name we can possibly give her."

Stephen was quiet for a moment. He knew the ambience could shift any which way, depending on his next words.

"How about Thora then?"

Another fry hit Stephen square on the forehead.

"Stop playing with your food, Loki." Stephen tried not to smile. He always cherished their times spent away from New Asgard; there was something carefree about the way Loki carried himself when it was just the two of them, and New York seemed to bring that side of him out most often.

He would even go as far as to say that Loki looked healthier than he had seen in months, despite the constant cloud of worry hanging over their heads.

"If we are going Egyptian this time, how about Arsinoë?" Stephen teased.

A frosty silence ensued, warring with the warm August sunlight.

"Is that meant to be a joke?" Loki asked flatly. "I am nothing like her."

"She was a Warrior Queen, wasn't she? Pushed back Julius Caesar and his mighty Roman army at one point during the Siege of Alexandria."

"And she also tried to kill Cleopatra. Her sister."

"She was the beauty of the two, I heard."

Loki lifted an eyebrow coolly. "Well, I am prettier than Thor."

"Breathtaking, actually, under the right lighting." Stephen reached over the table and thumbed a smudge of aioli off the vermilion border of Loki's lower lip.

He sucked his thumb. Loki stared.

Arousal stirred deep in Loki's gut and his thighs tingled with want.

"Suddenly I am not hungry anymore."

Stephen was still smiling that infuriating, arrogant smirk of his. "We had a bargain, Loki. Finish half your food, and I'll take you wherever you want to go. Finish it all, I'll take you there twice."

Loki growled and made a vicious show of biting into his burger, despite hardly making a dent in the sandwich. "You wait until this baby is out of me and I'll teleport wherever I want and you won't be able to find me."

"Not too soon, I hope."

And both their smiles faltered slightly.

"Why are you making me eat this disgusting fare, anyway?" Loki wiped his greasy fingers on a napkin, grimacing in distaste.

Stephen shrugged. "No harm treating yourself once in a while."

"But I'm not exactly enjoying this. It's such a chore." Loki sighed, picking at his cheeseburger. "If you so wish to fatten me up, I'd rather drink a vat of cooking oil and be done with it."

"Somehow I have a feeling you're not joking."

Just to humour his doting husband, Loki took another obligatory bite out of his burger. "You're lucky I like you, you know that."

Stephen only smiled indulgently.

Loki peered between the buns and sniffed, before picking the raw onions off. "To think that just the sight of this would have turned my stomach inside out within seconds when I was carrying Stian."

"Every pregnancy is different," Stephen murmured.

Loki's fingers stopped halfway from digging through the toppings in search for more hiding raw slices of onion. His face turned glum. "I suppose it is."

Stephen looped an ankle around Loki's own under the table. "Hey."

Loki looked at him.

"It's going to be okay," he said as reassuringly as he could.

Loki continued to look at him unhappily

"You're going to be okay," Stephen repeated. "She's going to be okay."

"Did you look into the future and find all that out?" Loki asked lightly.

Stephen was stunned into momentary silence.

Of course, if Stephen knew for certain, he would not have said it, would never risk jinxing it. And Loki knew him all too well.

"I didn't think so." Loki forced a smile onto his suddenly pasty face. "But thank you for saying it anyway."

They stared at each other, neither feeling much like saying anything. False reassurances had a way of killing all conversation.

Stephen was aware of the depth of Loki's worry. He had caught him studying his profile in the mirror several times when Loki thought Stephen was not looking and he did not have to be an empath to be able to read Loki's mind for he too shared the same wish – for Loki to be strong enough to carry their daughter to term.

"Stina."

Back to baby names it is, then. "No."

"Stella."

"No."

"Stefana."

"Loki, I'm flattered, really, but I was only kidding about using part of my name for every kid we have. I am honestly not that vain about it."

"Stevia."

"Now you're just avoiding finishing your food." As if of one mind, The Cloak reached across the table and slapped the back of Loki's scavenging hand, "Will you stop picking at it? Why did you get all the toppings if you were not going to eat them?"

"A naked burger and a heavily-dressed burger cost the same. I just got the latter simply for the tremendous sense of value." Loki sighed. "I can't eat this. I give up."

Stephen rolled his eyes. "Then what do you feel like eating then?"

"Ghost peppers?" Loki said hopefully, shyly.

An absolute, resounding, "No."