A/N: I'd apologize for the lateness of this chapter, but I'm not sorry, not really. This one was actually pretty grisly to write and I'm sort of glad its done and sort of proud of how it came together even if it did hurt to write some parts.

After the darkness and weakness took her, dreams that spun around nightmares pervaded her mind, sank into her with claws and drew from memories of times when things had been simpler and so much more painful. Moments when she had been the woman whose hand had been sought by the best warriors, the most prideful of Asgard, twined around the loneliness that the Void inspired. Times that had been suppressed for the sake of sanity in that place came crashing back.

Gifts had been thrust on her, forced into her hands. Beauty had driven suitors to try. Scorn had held them in thrall, tainted their vision of her in times when she had shown them her magic, her strength. Magic users had never been regarded as highly prized in a culture driven by physical strength and the victories that could be won and tasted in blood. Theoric, once friend and lover and betrothed, had won her love with patience and kind words in the midst of icy silence. There had been no scorn, no hate, no lies for the magic she had shown him, the strength she had possessed in her own right.

She had fallen for him, loved him. Then, the battles. Theoric had left to fight a war and returned bitter. His were not the touches of one that knew love. His eyes had held an edge of shadow and fear. Nightmares had been the croon that lulled him to sleep and woke him screaming in the night. Scars that had not before existed on his body pulled at the skin around them and they were ones she could not heal.

Time was what she had thought he would need. Time, she supposed, might have done him good if Odin had not kept sending him on patrols, on missions, anything and everything. A sword, justice, enforcer, assassin, hired hand, strong arm others whispered to her. Anything and everything Odin wanted him to be, he delivered, but for her he gave nothing save the duty of his word given before he had changed. It had been the first time she could not put to rights what she loved.

The cry that left her lips echoed across the walls of the room. She almost rose from the depths of memories, but they caught her and held her. What had been stripped from her in the Void was returning with a vengeance. Every pain, every sorrow, every guilt was being pressed back into her mind where it belonged and she had to live each and every shattered moment again.

"Why do you try?" Theoric asked her, voice sharp and harsh. They'd been arguing over the wedding, over the family they wanted each to invite, the home they wanted to build, the lives they wanted to live.

"Because I love you. Isn't that enough?" she'd shot back, temper frayed and patience at an end.

"No."

She'd let him go, watched him walk away and harden his heart towards her. Not for her magic and not for her beauty had he done it, but for the love she had tried to give him. War had made him bitter and Odin had stripped away everything else in creating an enforcer.

Loki. Trouble and mischief and magic and a dark edge wrapped in the body of the second prince. A shadow to the light of the first prince. Pain had drawn premature lines around his eyes, made him look older than his years. Never once had she thought he would look twice at her. Caught in her own grief at the end of what should have been the beginning of her life, she had never spared a second thought for him until he sought her.

Why, she would never care to understand. What mattered was that he had tried. "You'll never be want for anything," he had promised with gifts and gold and words crafted to show his strength. He offered her the universe, if only she would be his, and she denied him, but not without hesitation.

Unseen, unheard, unnoticed the shadows the flitted through the room she inhabited spoke in soft words. The weight that made the bed dip beside her was a familiar one and she relaxed into the cool touch of fingers that stroked down her cheek. When she settled into a dreamless sleep, Loki withdrew once more from her. Without him there, the peace evaporated and she was thrown back into the past and trapped there.

Theoric had turned cruel in his words after that, withdrawn the little affection he might once have harbored for her. Whore and traitor had been the kindest things he said of her to those he called friends and never once did more than glance at her while she stood at his side and listened. Voices long silenced had begun to whisper of a childhood spent in books and learning and magic and suddenly all she had were the memories of a time when life had seemed innocent.

Second prince and ever shadow to Thor had continued in his pursuit of her, however quite he was about his attempts. Flowers on the windowsill, a book of spells with annotations scribbled in the margins, the subtle turn of phrase that stopped the wagging of a tongue in the midst of condemning her, small things that made her day a little easier and what she had missed since Theoric had closed his heart to her.

"Sir," Jarvis intoned. "I do not think it wise to prod her when it seems obvious that she is suffering from a nightmare. All of her vitals indicate that she is in a state of distress. If she were to wake suddenly, I cannot say what might happen."

A moment of silence stretched between the AI and Tony. He eyed the section of wall where he had installed the speakers for the room and said, "I could reprogram you…with a hammer."

"You could, sir, but then you would also be required to make phone calls regarding your own takeout orders," Jarvis pointed out. "Therefore, I am ninety eight percent certain that you will not attempt to reprogram me."

"You have no faith in me, J, no faith at all," Tony said, affecting a mockingly wounded tone.

"One must always account for the insanity that usually accompanies the self-proclamation of being a genius," Jarvis said dryly.

Tony might have muttered something about AIs fighting dirty, but he retreated to the doorway of the room. He paused there and looked over his shoulder to take in the sight of the small frame twisted in the sheets of his guest bed. There was a pang that might have been guilt, but he had satisfied his curiosity that the woman was alive-as Jarvis had continually updated him-and thus he had no more reason to intrude on her privacy.

Words had not been enough. Driving her to pain in such a way had been little more than the prelude to what had happened after another argument. The blossoming shadow of a bruise on her cheek had stirred the whispers of condemnation again and made her lift her chin all the higher for the dark gazes they cast her.

It had been the first time that Loki dared to touch her, the ghosting of his fingertips across the discoloration. The look in his eyes had made her heart beat a little faster, made her wonder if he would care what might have happened should she just vanish. Words had failed him and she had left him standing in the middle of a feast when Theoric called her to his side. That was also the first time she had risked a glance over her shoulder in parting with him to witness the second prince staring after her.

Some of Odin's court had made outraged sounds over the action of one claimed sharing any kind of look with a prince. Let the mongrels talk, she had decided. What could they destroy that had not already been taken from her?

Had not there been the feel of silken cloth against her skin, she might never have recalled it in the first place. So many times she had worn a similar material against her skin, so many times she had repeated the conversation that had pained her.

Woman after woman, man after man came forward to whisper in her ear of the dalliances they had taken her betrothed in. It became a game, a taunt to those that despised her abilities. The twist of her lips and the words she returned made them falter and stare wide eyed as she left them standing rooted to the spot. She might have left him then, but it would have ruined him and she couldn't quite bring herself to do that to him.

Still, she never turned down the quiet overtures of affection that the second prince made towards her. She accepted the ring he gave her, listened to the gentle words he spoke, drank in the words of power he used around her. Never once did he again try to buy her affection as he had done on his first attempt.

Loki, always Loki, she came back to. In pain, in sorrow, in death and mischief she had returned to him and stood solidly beside him. He was the darkness within the light, the light within darkness that kept her sane even when he had not been entirely hers and she not entirely his. Even now, even now, even now…

Ending the engagement had been a surprise, the final twist that shattered her heart. Tears had not been shed in front of him, but the tightness of his mouth and the tone of his words had told her that was what he had been determined to wring from her. He had wanted only to hurt her in ways he had been hurt, to bend her spirit to match his. When that had failed, he had let go of duty, had thrown himself to the whims of a king that cared nothing for what had been lost. Enforcer. Odin's Hand. Whispers of his deeds had seeped into gossip and touched even her ears. She had lost him long before the war had started.

In the privacy of her own rooms she had shed tears for what had been and what might have been. Not even Loki had disturbed her that night.

She twisted the sheets between her hands, sweat collecting on her skin and dampening the cloth around her as she fought against the tide and fell once more to the memories. Around her, the temperature of the room adjusted slightly, as though she were being encouraged to sweat the past from her skin.

Whatever the whisperers said later, Loki had not been the one to suggest Theoric's death. It had been her idea just as it had been his to take Theoric's place and proceed with the wedding as though the engagement had never been broken.

That Odin had sent his right hand on a mission to nip something in the bud with the dwarves, it made their plan almost too easy. She remembered the apprehension, the guilt at letting Loki carry out her revenge, and the twisting of her hands as she waited for the news. Others put it to the fact that her betrothed had been sent on to deal with a dangerous task again.

When Theoric returned injured and limping, but very much alive, she had felt her heart go cold and her stomach twist in fear. Then, he had swept her into a desperate kiss and held her like he never had and she knew him for the illusion he wore. The punch of guilt and grief were muted by the happiness of being free of the such oppressive ties, of knowing that there was nothing but love in her future.

She would miss those idyllic moments when she and Loki were secure in their knowledge that they had succeeded and done so in such a way that they were bold in their affections of each other.

The engagement was announced once again and those of the court accepted that Theoric had changed his mind after a brush with death. The wedding was spectacular, huge, and over the top just like they did everything in Asgard. Even Thor's companion, Volstagg, proclaimed the food was excellent beyond what normally slid down his throat. When the façade dropped and Odin bellowed his wrath, she couldn't have contained the tears that dampened her cheeks. What she had hoped for, wanted, was not for Loki to have been cast away the day of their wedding from his family and his home, but the impish look he had given her had told her enough.

Telling Odin that she would continue being Loki's wife had been the icing on the cake of an otherwise strangely happy day. The look on his face had been a mix of horrified and pitying and had made her wonder at the relationship the man bore to his son.

Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheek to mingle with long, dark hair. One last memory, one last pain. The dagger that had ended love, ended all save for loyalty. No more dreams to be left after this, no worse betrayal than the death and violence and terror and heartache.

Holding them, nursing them, loving them had been the beginning of her end. Narvi and Vali, such lovely boys and hers. Oh. How they had been hers, following her about, clinging to her skirts, shying from the contact of other adults. Loki had loved them as he had her, in his own way.

But she had never been able to hold something of her own without Odin tainting it in some way. Thirteen years they had been hers before death had come for them, shadowed and shrouded in the golden light the All-father called justice. Their forms twisted, minds altered, and set against each other to the bitter end, her boys had fought. She had screamed and begged and been restrained, fought and clawed and been struck down for the trouble she had caused.

An audience had been there, present like it was a sport to watch. The sounds and snarls and rending of flesh had filled the room and none had flinched from the sight of it. And that hadn't been the worst of it. No, seeing one boy kill the brother he had been born with, raised with had not been the worst of it. Covered in the blood of his twin, the scent of death still clinging to him, Narvi had been released from the spells and allowed a look at the carnage he had wrought with his own hands before he screamed and kept on screaming until Odin had neatly sliced his grandson's head off and called it mercy.

After that, she had been released and she had scrambled forward to fall at their sides, to hold them to her breast, to scream her grief and disbelief and call for Loki, beg for Loki to come and set things right, and…

…and she woke with the tears on her cheeks and the short gasping of breath that came before the scream. Loki had not come that day because he had been beaten senseless and left to the tender mercies of the dwarves to sew his mouth shut. He had broken a deal in which the dwarves had planned to use him to take Asgard and Odin had taken his sons as payment, as recompense to avoid a war that had happened anyways.

Curled as she was around herself, she yanked the pillow from beneath her head and buried her face in it, muffling the sobs that overtook her slender frame. It didn't matter where she was, what enemies of Loki's that had her. Nothing would ever compare to that moment, to that day when her sons had paid for the imagined slights of the father.