Days, and then weeks past and Freya fell into a routine. Thor and his friends truly were not as horrible as Freya had imagined (foregoing the Lady Sif), as much as she hated to admit. It made it so much harder to hate them. She didn't, in fact. If it were under other circumstances she would have greatly liked to be their friend.

She spent her days alone, closeted away in her room. She hadn't gone back to the practice yard. She couldn't allow herself to become placid. They were not her friends, and she not theirs. She was a prisoner and they her captors.

Freya found herself missing Freyr more than ever. He had a way of finding the bright side of any situation, the uncanny ability to make her feel better, even in the worst of times. Even at the end of the war when they burned the fields as they marched on their palace, he told her of how the ash would nurture the crops when they replanted, bringing them back tenfold. Freya could never find the good in things as he was able to. She saw the darkness in people, the worst of everything. She saw the path to victory paved in blood. Her father had been like Freyr, ever the optimist.

To his last breath.

She would not make his mistakes.

Loki knocked on the door once more. Freya knew it was him. Three knocks, sharp and clear. At first she had answered the door, but now she left it shut, keeping him at bay with her silence. If it were Thor, she knew, the hinges would threaten to give out.

She shouldn't have gone out in the first place. Then she wouldn't feel this ache in her heart. Freya thought that besting them in battle would help to sate her anger and fear, but it did nothing of the sort. It left her with comrades she did not want.

The room disappeared before her eyes, transporting her into the realm of uncertainty, the realm of the future. Now familiar shapes swarmed before her eyes, drowning her in their incomprehensible nature. These visions kept coming to her, filling her with dread, though she knew not their nature.

This one was different though. The shapes seemed to settle, solidifying before her eyes. Freya was filled with fear—she was running towards something at the end of the rainbow bridge, but suddenly there was no bridge, only blackness and she was screaming and she didn't know why but she was filled with such a sharp sense of loss that everything spun, and suddenly she was falling too, into the too-black sky towards unfamiliar constellations—

"Freya! FREYA!"

She was being shaken. She was on the floor of her balcony, a figure kneeling over her. Loki. His blue eyes were wide above her.

"What the hell were you doing?" he shouted. His eyes were angry now, his mouth set.

Freya's breath rattled out of her chest, her body still seized with panic. Her heart slammed against her ribs at a frightening pace, filling her ears with its pounding. She turned her head and surveyed the dizzying drop below into the gardens. Her stomach clenched sickeningly. She closed her eyes and thought longingly of home.

Loki stared at Freya, lying sprawled on the ground, her eyes squeezed shut and her brows furrowed. His heart pounded in his chest as he looked at her, safe upon the stone balcony, her silver hair fanned across his lap. He wanted to reach out, to feel the softness of it, to cup her face in his hands just to reassure himself that she was, in fact, alright.

If he had stepped out onto his balcony a second later, or if he had been buried, as he so often was, in a book, she would have been gone. She had stepped up on the railing of the balcony, her eyes shut, her arms outstretched, reaching. It was her expression which perplexed him, however, tormented as it was. Almost as if she were not the one willing her foot to step forward into empty air.

Loki had leapt from his balcony to hers and tore her from the railing, knocking her to the floor in his haste. She had seemed just as frightened, just as surprised as he had been to find herself out on the balcony.

He stared at her as she lay curled on the stones, her eyes squeezed shut and her fists balled up. His anger began to ebb away to something else, something nameless that lay between pity and curiosity.

Loki brushed the hair away from her face and tucked it gently behind her ear. She looked up at him then, her brows still furrowed. Her eyes shone. In little more than a whisper she said, "Thank you."

"Are you alright?" He asked, his own brows furrowing. She nodded, but offered no further explanation. He waited a few moments before asking.

"Sedir, she said finally, after turning the question over in her mind. The concept was relatively foreign to him. Loki knew that through it one could see into the future, though he knew little else of what it entailed. It was not practiced in Asgard.

Freya sat up, her back against the balcony railing. She looked at him a moment before continuing, perhaps noting his confusion. "I was lost in a vision, and my feet believed they were lost as well."

She had an odd way of explaining things, just like she had an odd way of pronouncing the Common Language.

"A vision," he said finally, his curiosity peaked, "What did you see?"

She stared back, looking perplexed. "It is not that simple."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the future is not a book that you read from. It is living, breathing, changing. Nothing is set, everything is just pieces of what might pass."

"Then what were you seeing? Why did you nearly leap from that balcony?"

She stared at him for a moment, her face heavy with sorrow. Loki almost regretted asking, but he was too intrigued by the prospect of an insight into the future.

"I saw the Rainbow Bridge. And I felt oblivion."

Loki stared at her, mouth slightly open. He had no idea what it meant, what it was supposed to tell him.

"I could—" Freya began, reaching a hand towards his temple, but she stopped herself and looked away.

Loki stood and reached out a hand to help her up. She looked up at him, confused, before taking his hand. She seemed more resigned than anything else. He led her back, out through his chambers and into the halls. She had not ventured out into them since the first day, he knew, though as to why he wasn't sure. Regardless, he thought the walk would do her good.

Loki had never seen war. Of course, as an heir to the Asgardian throne he had fought in battles, but never ones that would pose any real risk to his safety. He was still too young to be tested in that way, or at least that was what his father believed.

Freya had seen war, he knew, though she was younger than he. And, depending on who you asked, Loki knew that she may have fought as well.

There were rumors swirling amongst those who had fought, tales of a great necromancer in white armor who had slain whole companies of soldiers with a wave of their hand. A necromancer who disappeared during the last battle, allowing the Aesir forces to take Vanahiem's capital city.

And I knew now from her excursion to the training field that she could fight, and fight well.

Loki suddenly realized that in his pondering he had not noticed that Freya was no longer walking at his side. He turned, momentarily losing the composure he so prided himself on.

He crept back through the hall, his head swiveling, hoping to catch sight of the gleam of the silver hair that would give her away.

He found her in the library, just standing in the doorway, staring up at the books that stood in neat little rows, three stories high. Her mouth was slightly open, her eyes round with wonder. He felt his lips curl into a slight smile.

"Do you like it?" he asked, pushing open the other oaken door open so they stood wide. She stared at him in the odd fashion of hers, like she was caught between two emotions. She nodded mutely, trailing like a shadow as he led her through the shelves.

"You must have had a library such as this in Vanaheim," he said, trying to start a conversation. She shook her head.

"Ours was only small. Most of our stories are not passed through pages, but through the tongue." It was the first time Loki had seen her pulled free of her melancholy, seen the girl underneath the battle-worn exterior.

"Find something you wish to read then. I shall be at that table, by the windows," he said, pointing towards the second floor, where an ornate mahogany table sat flanked by two plush golden armchairs. She nodded and he left, quietly, crossing to the well-worn ladder which led to the upper floor. From there he could watch her without her knowledge. Loki always found it was easier to see into the heart of a person when they thought they were alone.

She crisscrossed through the many shelves, her fingers lingering on the spines of the books as if they were long lost friends. After a few moments she selected one and sunk down onto the floor, cross-legged, and began to read.

"She is strong," came a voice to his left. Loki turned to find his mother standing next to him, leaning over the railing, she too staring at the girl. "She is still young, younger than you. Young hearts are more easily swayed. She will be alright my son."

"I fear for her," he said, honestly, looking up at her delicately lined face. "She is so rash, so full of hate and yet I fear that this was not her nature."

Loki stared down at Freya, the book still clutched in her hands. She'd pulled her knees up to her chest, rested her chin on them as she read.

"You have an effect on her. She is far less so when she is around you. She'll make you a very fine queen one day."

"Mother, I don't understand. I don't-"

"This is hard on all of us dear. Blood has been spilt and passions awoken. But you show her great kindness. I am proud of you."

Loki nodded, looking back down at the girl. She was completely immersed in her book now, her slivery hair falling in front of her face. She pushed it behind her ears impatiently, her eyes dancing back and forth across the pages. He turned back to Frigga, but she was gone, as so often was her nature.

Loki climbed back down the ladder and wound his way through the aisles to where Freya was seated on to floor. He sat next to her, peering to see what she was reading about. It was a volume of poetry by several prominent Light Elves. She traced her finger down the page as she read, mouthing the words to herself. For a long while he thought she hadn't noticed his arrival, immersed as she was in her tome, but then she spoke.

"Have you ever been to Alfheim?"

"Once, though I hardly remember. I was very young at the time," he replied, watching her face. She kept it buried in the book, though he knew that she was no longer reading.

"I hope that it is as beautiful a place as it is described in these poems. It always seemed Freyr enjoyed beauty most of all," she replied, sadness slipping into her voice.

"The whole of Alfheim seems to be green," Loki said, driven to speak by something he couldn't quite explain. Perhaps it was his mother's words or the weight that seemed to rest upon her shoulders. "And there are forests as old as the realm itself. They say it holds every shade of green."

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. He went on, struggling to remember every detail from his childhood visit. "The castle sits in the middle of one of the forests, on the banks of a waterfall. It is built around the trees, its stone's removed to make way for them, and in some places the floors give way to the river. Flowers grow from the walls and many of the ceilings open so they can see the stars on a clear night."

She stared at him, her brows furrowed. She opened her mouth and then closed it again before finally speaking. "Do you think Freyr could be happy there?"

"I do," he said, nodding. She glanced down at the book in her hands before gentle closing it and nestling it back into its place on the shelf.

"I just had to know to what sort of place Freyr had been taken," she said quietly. She gave me a small smile. A sincere one.