“LOKI!” he heard Akira scream. Seems she’d figured out who he was. “LOKI! Gods be damned get your ass here! I fucking know you can hear me.”

Loki chuckled at his daughter. She was so much like her mother and she didn’t seem to realize it. He stood and put his mug in the sink and made his way to the inn where Akira and her party were staying.

“You called?” he asked stepping through the wall into the room.

Akira scoffed and shook her head in what seemed to be disbelief.

“All this time, you were my father and yet you still decided to curse me?” she spat with fury and venom.

Loki looked away in shame.

“I shouldn’t have done that to you; you did not deserve it,” he told her. “I had blocked memories of your mother and I from many years ago.”

“Why?”

“You and your mother would be in danger,” I began.

“Odin,” Akira muttered. “Fuck, that bastard is my grandfather now.”

“He was always your grandfather, he is merely unaware of your existence and it MUST stay that way,” he told her sternly.

Akira rolled her eyes and stood.

“Why didn’t my mother ever tell me?” she mused out loud.

“I asked Loxley not to tell you, well he more or less decided that you wouldn’t know until your mother and I decided it was the right time to tell you,” Loki told her. “Loxley was the father I could never be to you and it killed me. I wanted to hate him for being such a good father to you, though you were not his, but I just couldn’t. Though he probably hated me for a long time, his love for you was genuine. Did you know he told me to name you?”

Akira shook her head and Loki smiled sadly.

“It was the last time I would ever see your mother alive and the day I found out she was expecting you,” he began. “I knew then, that despite my love for her, if Odin ever found out about you or your mother he would kill both of you. I had to return to Asgard to protect the both of you and it killed me. I made your mother forget me so she could learn to love Loxley free from her love for me.”

“I don’t think my mother could ever forget you,” Akira interrupted him. “She was always drawing you. She never stopped. I think her heart always longed for you.”

“I’m sure my ability to completely wipe her memory was not as good as it should have been,” he smiled ruefully. “I was afraid I would hurt you and her if I went too far. Loxley was angry at the pain and grief I had caused Seona and rightfully so. Sadly, I was held in Asgard against my will so I could not prevent myself from causing her pain and grief. On top of that, I understood that despite the depth of my love for her her father would never accept me. I had nothing to offer your mother, as heir to the Danish throne. I’m not human and it wasn’t like I could tell your grandparents that I was a god, now could I? So I gave up my love and you. I had no other choice. I knew Loxley would make a better husband anyway.”

“My mother still had to give up her claim to the Danish throne to marry him,” Akira pointed out.

Loki sighed. His daughter was just as smart as her mother.

“True, but I think it was more due to the fact that she was already carrying you but she wasn’t married to Loxley,” he conceded. “Loxley was a good man to shoulder the consequences for my actions. I wished dearly that he didn’t have to but there’s a saying that says ‘wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.’ Despite all of that he still asked me to name you. It didn’t mean he forgave me, far from it. He told me that even if I never see the woman you would become, I was still your father. He said your name might be the only piece of me you’d ever have.”

“So you named me Akira?” she asked him.

He nodded.

“Did you know it means bright and intelligent in Japanese?” he asked her with a small chuckle.

“Strange, most close to me call me Kira which means dark in Japanese,” she mused.

Loki turned to her in surprise.

“My mother told me my father named me and what my name meant. I looked into what my nickname meant after I got out of the hospital from my time with the nuns.”

Loki looked away from her at the mention of the nuns.

“Forgive me for that,” he whispered, his voice choked with emotion. “I should have never interfered with any of that but…”

“You were bored and resentful,” Akira finished, turning his face to her. “You couldn’t have known I was your daughter anymore than I could have known the same thing.” Her lips quirked up on one side. “You know now and even before you knew, you removed most of your curse from me. For that alone, I am glad. I have always known I was not like my siblings and always wondered why. Now I know. I have a feeling this is why my grandparents didn’t visit us, because they knew I wasn’t Loxley’s daughter and they couldn’t bear to look at me.”

Loki reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek.

“Then they don’t know what they were missing,” he told her quietly.

“They didn’t even come to the funeral,” Akira cried quietly. “They must have thought my mother was a disgrace and I was a hellion that couldn’t be tamed.”

Loki brought his other hand to her cheek.

“My child, look at me,” he ordered gently.

Akira’s eyes slowly made their way to his.

“Your grandparents loved your mother very much. It hurt them, more than your mother ever told you, to make her give up her birthright. I’m sure they love you too. You are a piece of her; they know that but perhaps seeing you reminds them too much of her.”

“I look nothing like my mother,” Akira snapped tiredly.

“You have her eyes,” Loki whispered drawing her into his embrace. “And her thirst for knowledge.” Loki gently pushed her to arms’ length. “I am sorry for what I’ve done to you, my daughter.”

“Mija,” my mother would call me that from time to time. “It’s Spanish…”

“For my daughter,” Loki finished.

“But more often than not she’d call me mit stjernelys because of my hair,” she mumbled more to herself than to him.

She twirled the end of her braid around her finger distractedly. She stared at her hair as she spoke.

“The doctors said I developed something called ‘Marie Antoinette Syndrome’ during my time with the nuns,” she told him not looking up from her hair. “I don’t know when my hair began to change colors, whether it was after the first whipping or the second, but it’s the only explaination the doctors could come up with for the change and even then they didn’t fully believe it. Marie Antoinette Syndrome is said to not actually exist. But if it doesn’t exist, how then do they explain the change in my hair color? I’m sure my mother would have loved to find out but the fact I was her daughter and a reminder of the man she still loved stopped her from expiramenting on me.”

Akira fell silent and Loki watched her, wanting desperately to draw her back into his arms and protect her from what he knew awaited her. She would likely be very close to death once again in order for the remanents of his curse to be removed. He cursed himself silently for causing his daughter so much pain.

“So that’s the secret you’ve been hiding all these years?” a voice snapped in disbelief.

Loki whirled on the voice in surprise.

“Sigyne? What are you doing here?” he asked in confusion.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Akira countered without turning.

“And what do you know of it?” Sigyne snapped at her.

“You’re here on the orders of Odin,” Akira began in a monotonous voice. “He asked you to spy on your husband to find out why he has been so drawn to me and report back to him. You must know by now who I am to him, do you not?”

“How do you know that?” Sigyne growled, fear beginning to creep into her voice.

“I know many things, Sigyne,” Akira told her evenly turning slowly to face her at last. “One of which is your jealousy towards my mother for garnering the affection of the man you were and are so desperately in love with. Perhaps if you had looked inward to yourself you would have found why my father found you so utterly irritating, for lack of a better word. You have always capitualted to the whims of others and though you are a goddess in your own right, you do not act like it. Your followers are few and dwindling with each passing year because you do nothing to inspire devotion in your followers. You sit and whine and get others to do the work for you. Your voice is worse than that of my farmor, who sounded like an articulate three-year old combined with a two pack a day smoker. So yes, you can run along and tell Odin that I am in fact Loki’s daughter by the mortal woman he fell in love with all those years ago or you can do something about me right here right now. It is your choice. And you would be wise to choose quickly, I am not a patient person.”

“You are not afraid of death?” Sigyne asked her.

“I would greet death as an old friend,” Akira replied going to the balcony doors. “I have walked with him before and yet, here I stand to tell the tale. Death is an inevitability for all who are mortal, unless given the gift of prolonged life as Asena and Grandpa Mavi have been. Though these days I am far more certain that one, if not both, of them considers it more of a curse.”

Loki stared at his daughter in shock. He had never heard of mortals gaining prolonged life or that she herself had walked with death. Sigyne, in the meantime, was staring at her in sheer terror. For a mortal to be unafraid of death as Akira was, was unheard of to the gods. To hear Akira address death as a friend, an old friend, suggested that she had been near death at least once in her life. From what Loki himself knew, Akira had nearly died twice. While Loki was going over this in his head and Sigyne was still staring at her in sheer terror, Akira had turned from the balcony doors with a fierce look in her eyes. Not that either one of them noticed the look in her eyes until she began calling on Odin himself.

“ODIN! I call upon you! I am ready to face you without fear!”

Loki stared at her in utter horrified shock. What in Helheim was she thinking?

“ODIN! ALL FATHER! COME DOWN FROM YOUR CASTLE AND FACE ME!”