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She’d been trying to avoid him all day.
...
A strange little girl has deep brown skin, sky blue eyes, and snow white hair. She trembles between the corpses of her parents in the mangled remains of their home.
Odin Allfather, conqueror of worlds, slayer of the defiant and of the innocent alike, God of Midgard. He stands in the center of the destruction he has wrought and is yet unsatisfied.
He turns when he hears the high bleat of a frightened girl-child.
Frigga--before her untimely death--had always desired a daughter. He takes the child, and, finally, decides to leave the middle realm in peace.
...
“Is this what you wanted, Ororo?” the sound of his familiar, soft voice caressed her, carried her into a brief state of calm before her eyes flashed at the question. What she wanted?
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she began bitterly. “so why ask?”
“What you want matters to me,” he said softly, sadly. He took a hold of her hand and interlaced their fingers.
“No, it’s not, Loki. It’s not what I wanted at all.”
...
Loki regards the young girl with curiosity. He knows who she is, his father’s ward (a strange action it was, for his father to have taken a mortal ward, he had to say), but what she is doing in his room, his wardrobe, for the life of him, he cannot divine.
“Pray tell what you are doing in here, little one?”
“The swordsmith’s daughter--she locked me in here. Please don’t punish me,” she sobs the last sentence. “I didn’t mean to trespass.”
His brows climb up his forehead as he regards the crying girl-child with wide eyes. Sif had done this? “No--no, no. Don’t cry. Please. I’m not going to punish you.” Gently, he puts his hands on her forearms and draws her out of his wardrobe. He knew that he had to be centuries older than her, but they appeared to be of an age, and now that she was a partaker in the Apples of Idunn, she and he would develop at the same rate. She was, for all intents and purposes, his peer.
They could be friends.
“I’m not going to punish you,” he reiterates. “Ever.”
...
“You will bear Thor’s heir, one day. You’ll have the strongest babies in all the Nine Realms.” He had a strange little smile on his face. He moved even closer to her, placed his pale, long-fingered hand over her stomach while the other still laced their fingers together. It was inappropriate; far too intimate for a brother-in-law. It wasn’t enough. “You will make a lovely Queen.”
“I don’t want to be Queen,” she whispered.
...
When her powers manifest, Odin immediately makes a strategic decision, though he keeps it a secret for some time. She would, when of age, be wed to Thor. They would be a good match. The union would be seen as an act of goodwill to Midgard. Their children, surely, would have powers like none other, among the most powerful in all the Nine Realms.
…
“Then what do you want, ‘Ro?” He called her the name he’d called her in their childhood, when the full length of her name still tripped his tongue. The nickname had become something special between them, something to only be used when the two of them were together alone. Perhaps this would be the last time.
“I want to be free.” Once, Loki had absolutely towered above her, but the Apples had made her stronger, had compensated for her stunted growth so that now, she stood almost as tall as he.
She didn’t have to stand on the tips of her toes to press that one, final kiss on his lips.
After, she walked out of the room in a blaze of white. She couldn’t take any more. There was nothing left to say. There was too much more that she wanted to say, she wanted to stay.
(“I want you.”)