There was only one thing Thor was certain of, and that was that Asgard had changed with Loki's leaving. Not changed in the greater sense of the word, but in his own eyes, it was different. Everything seemed blander with the lack of his younger brother, the golden spires of Asgard dulled without the same sun in the sky.
In reality, he knew nothing had changed and that the thoughts were his own mainly, for others seemed to be even glad at the loss of the Jotunn prince amongst them, and they spoke stories of how he was mad and insane. Thor defended him every time, although these days, his words fell on deaf ears who wanted to hear a story of bloodlust, not a story about possession of an otherwise good, if not misled and mistreated, man.
The day Thor became king was a week after Loki's birthday. After the party and the celebrations, he had took his horse to the end of the Bifrost and had sat next to Heimdall, both of them silently staring out over the universe, one who could see all and one who had eyes for only a single person, lost on the planet of the unforgiving Frost Giants. He had fallen asleep there and had woken up before the dawn, eventually returning to his throne before the others felt the need to seek him out.
Thor was a good king, there was no denying that. He had learned much in his time away from Asgard and its bloodied history, and while Midgard's was perhaps even more so, their wars were over different things and for different reasons, and they gave him a chance to be a hero rather than a king. The Avengers weren't as much about killing as they were about the safety of Midgardians, and it was a welcome break for the honour-obsessed people of Asgard. As much as the others disliked admitting so, Midgard had made Thor a good ruler, and so none questioned his decision to visit Jotunheim on an otherwise uninteresting day.
He had nobody to bid goodbye except his mother, father and friends - no wife, no fiancee, and definitely no children. Things such as this had not crossed his mind when he had eons longer to live, and things to finish before he dedicated himself to others in such a way. He may have been a good king, but he could not foresee himself as a father. Not yet, anyway.
The chilled wind bit at his fingers and his face, the things that were unprotected by armour that only provided a meagre warmth in the knee-deep snow. It was painful, but endurable, so he fought through the blizzard that stopped him from seeing much more than a few feet in front of his face and carried on. The wind seemed to speak to him in the darkness, tricking his mind into believing things were there where they were not, and when he happened upon the body of a fallen Jotunn he simply picked it up and slung it over his shoulder, not entirely knowing why or how he had came across it, or who it was for he didn't want to stop and check in such deadly conditions.
Eventually, his feet brought him to a carved out space under a mountain, and he placed the body down beside him, squinting slightly at it. It was impossible, though, the thoughts of who it could be - it was a trick of the cold and the wind. It just looked like him, even though in his ice-riddled mind he knew that it was too small to be that of a normal Frost Giant.