A/N: I don't own Skulduggery or Valkyrie. Sam and Cat are mine though.

Sam woke up from his latest nightmare with a gasp and sat up shaking. He was on one of the couches in one of Skulduggery's living rooms and at first the detective thought the figure across from him was Skulduggery, but it couldn't be. Skulduggery was meditating in the next room. Then the figure raised his head and as he took off his fedora Sam could make him out clearly. Sam gulped but the man's handsome features moved into a benevolent smile. "Bad dreams, Sam?"

Sam nodded. His patron was known for sometimes instigating nightmares through the sheer power of his presence, but he didn't think it was the case this time. Still he explained the dream and the god across from him listened carefully. "Is it an omen? Will she be left alone?" Sam asked worriedly.

"No. You're gifted Sam and you saw what could be if you two parted. It's a metaphor, not an omen, your disappearance was symbolic. I came to you because she won't listen to me anymore. Tell her the dream, just don't mention my name."

"Why?" Sam asked. Loki, far from the monster shown on the silver screen was a benevolent and giving god, even if he was also a trickster.

"She chose to embrace the lies about me, knowing better, she embraced them. I had no choice but to become the dark and twisted thing she saw me as. That was not what I wanted, but she used it as an excuse to leave me."

"That doesn't sound like the Cat I know." Sam said. "I trust you, Loki, you know that. But Cat only hates one person on this earth, herself. If she walked away from you it was in atonement and you know that."

Loki looked thoughtful. "That would explain the uptick in her web research on me lately. When she's ready, tell her the truth, Sam. Tell her I never left her, even for an instant."

Sam nodded then talked to his patron on other matters before Loki took his leave. Sam got up to see to coffee, mulling things over. A lot of the old believers are leaving the Gods. He thought with a sigh. And they were as one diety after another was sucked into the Hollywood film machine and actual practitioners ran away from their gods when the influx of new believers arrived. Loki was just another casualty and La Santa Muerte will be next if she isn't already.

"Si." Said a gentle voice behind him. "I was dressed up as a lolita film version of myself and now I have fanart." Sam turned to see La Santisima, for a moment taking the animated version of herself on with a laugh. "But it is mostly a good thing. We reach new people any way we can."

"Like your trying to reach me?" Same asked as he gestured for her to join him for coffee.

"No, I only call those who will love me. You already have a la flaca to love. Who is worried that you don't love her for now being a skeleton." La Santisima sipped her coffee. "Good coffee. Take her some. And ask her to remember me. Since finding out her true nature as a living skeleton she feels too ugly to approach me. Me, La Santisima Muerte, of all the gods." The skeletal goddess shook her head sadly. "Do this as a favor to me if you would. It won't hurt if you pass on Loki's name either. She needs to know he still loves her, Sam."

With a sweet thank for the coffee and company Santa Muerte vanished, leaving Sam to do as she asked, putting the remaining coffee in a thermos and driving to the mansion to find Cat up and waiting for him outside. Cat ran to him and clung on tightly.

"La Santa said you'd be here. Is it true, Sam? Is it true you honor Loki?"

Sam winced inwardly. As much as he loved Cat he loved Loki as his patron a tiny bit more as was only right and proper. "Yes, Cat. I serve him. And so should you. Whatever you did in your past, stop making both of you pay for it. He needs you, Cat. You know that. And I need you too, but only if my little hellcat is ready to let go of her past and welcome both of us. We're a package deal, Cat." Sam fell silent, cursing himself. Why'd I have to back Cat of all people into a corner?

But when Cat pulled away he could tell she was amused. "So to get Loki back I have to take you, huh?" She asked and they both smiled. "Hm, a lifetime of missing him, or a lifetime of having you as my partner, hm." She said teasingly and Sam grinned then turned serious.

"He's frightened, Cat. He's frightened the mask is going to drop and you're going to see the real god, the real Loki, and he's not going to be enough for you. He's terrified you're going to leave him. That you're going to leave me." Sam spoke rapidly, the dream finally making sense. They'd shared the same dream and now he knew why. "He's terrified that at the end of the day you'll be gone and all he'll have left is his memories of you."

Sam watched Cat's reaction, he watched the tears come and he realized he'd been right about her all along. She'd sent herself into exile because she didn't feel good enough to be anywhere near Loki. He was everything to her and always would be. So she'd made up lies so very clever even she'd believed them and forced herself into exile. Not from lack of love but from a lack of feeling worthy of having that love returned. "He loves you, Cat. He's even willing to face loosing you forever just to see you again. Just for one moment. Can you please at least give him that?"

Cat trembled and shook with emotion before him and Sam knew there was a war going on inside her, the war that always raged there and he hoped for once she'd be merciful in victory and free herself from her self-imposed exile. That she'd stop judging and condemning herself because it wasn't her job, it never had been. Only one being, well, two to be precise could have any judgment of her whatsoever and thanks to his second sight Sam saw them waiting, waiting for Cat to be brave enough to step up out of Hell and enter the land of the living once more.

Maybe an episode of Dr. Who was involved and maybe it wasn't.