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They had avoided each other since she had arrived.
When what was left of Asgard had landed on the planet that Loki, acting as Odin, had exiled her to, he had hidden himself away in the recesses of the ship and not come to greet her, confident that no good could come of it, especially when they had so much bad news to break to her. There was no doubt that Thor should be the one to do so, and so it had played out.
The first time Loki saw her was three days after she had arrived. Hours after everyone else had retired to bed, Loki, ever the night owl, had been leaving the dining hall just as Sif was entering. For a moment, he thought she would just pass him by as if she hadn’t noticed him, but instead, she stopped in her tracks, prompting him to do so as well. Fury, hatred, and something else he couldn’t quite admit to himself — it was all there for anyone to behold, shining nakedly and brightly in her eyes. Loki, never one known for his paucity of comments, opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, she unlocked her burning gaze from his own and brushed past him.
Over the next few days, the interaction replayed incessantly in his head. Sometimes, he would imagine a different version of events, one in which he found the right words to say, one in which she took her leave of him with her expression softened into relief, instead of one that felt like a slap in the face. In his more indulgent moments, he found himself imagining a smile breaking onto her face, happy just to see him again, and her arms wrapping around him in a joyous embrace. Folly, he would think to himself, triggering a descent into yet more indulgence in the form of self-loathing. Pure, utter folly. It’s nonsense, really. She has not loved you for years — oh, so now you think she once loved you? Conceited much? You don’t even deserve a sliver of goodwill from her. You didn’t deserve it then and you certainly don’t deserve it now, after everything you’ve done.
And yet, he could never quite seem to stymie his longing, as much as it made him feel pathetic. It almost brought him right back to his younger days, when he pined and pined and dreamed and dreamed of the shieldmaiden, all the while knowing that she didn’t return his affections. A perception that would later prove to be inaccurate, as it turned out, though even now he would never admit such a thing — at least not while in the depths of his pity parades. (Which, to his credit, seemed to be becoming less frequent, less intrusive, and easier to climb out of).
In the following days, they continued to have chance encounters due to their shared proximity to Thor, but she no longer showed any flicker of emotion, any hint of a reaction to his presence — a painful situation to find himself in when he craved nothing more than to be the sole subject of her attention and admiration. Gods, she never so much as glanced at him, as if he had concealed himself in an illusion designed for her eyes only. His angst was multiplied by the fact that this kind of behaviour was so unlike her, too. She was the type to deal with things as soon as they came up, to run directly towards her problems, and surely, she would never miss an opportunity to stare down the person she hates most and make sure he knows exactly how she feels about him — not excluding the possibility of doing so with her fists, if words failed. Perhaps he didn’t even warrant such an effortful response anymore. Perhaps even an unkind word was too much energy for her to waste on someone as worthless as him.
Or perhaps she had finally learned that the best way to outwit a trickster was to simply ignore him and never give him a chance to weave his web of words at all.
Two weeks after she had arrived, Thor had called a general meeting with his advisers, including both Sif and himself. The usual topics proceeded: the status of negotiations with the Midgardian state of Norway, the results of the census, the supply of rations, schooling for the children, sanitation problems — all the mundanities of kingship that he could not be happier to no longer be in charge of. He had had a lifetime’s fill during his “reign” as Odin. It was Sif’s first time at such a meeting, though, and as such, it was her first real acquaintance with just how much they had lost that day. It was one thing to be told that Asgard no longer existed, but quite another to find out that there were so few school teachers—once one of the most populous professions in Asgard—that tailors and engineers were suddenly having to fill that role. Or that all the instructors that had made her into the warrior she is today were gone, and with them the knowledge they had accumulated over thousands of hours of experience, the knowledge that was supposed to be passed onto the next generation.
After they had adjourned for the day, she had, for the length of a few heartbeats, met his gaze. It was no longer filled with rage, but with an unblinking sadness that made him question whether he would have rathered the fury, after all. As everyone began to filter out of the room, she wordlessly turned to leave, his eyes following her as she walked out. A firm hand on his shoulder shook him from his reflections, and he turned his head to see Thor standing beside him, tracing Loki’s line of sight.
“Give her some time,” Thor said.
“That obvious, huh,” Loki replied with a sigh.
“Or maybe I’ve just become fantastically perceptive,” Thor said with a wink.
Loki gave a light-hearted scoff and crossed his arms. “I will become known as Loki The Truthful before that happens.”
“Well, stranger things have happened,” Thor retorted with a shrug.
“Anyway,” Loki continued, “I think you might be a bit optimistic on that point. She hates me with every bone in her body.”
“Well, you did send the Destroyer after her and her friends, faked your death twice, and exiled her in order to cover up your kidnapping of the Allfather. Just to name a few.”
“I’m aware, thanks for the reminder,” Loki said sarcastically, before thinking to add, “And I didn’t ‘kidnap’ him. You might at least be accurate when listing my crimes.”
“My point is, it’s all very fresh for her right now.”
Loki shook his head, suddenly donning a pained expression. Uncrossing his arms, he asked, “Thor, do you truly believe I deserve the love of someone like that? If she was smart, she’d never so much as look at me again.”
“That is not for me to decide, Loki. Only she can make that call. And as far as I’m concerned, if she hasn’t said it to your face yet, she hasn’t made the call.”
Sighing, Loki countered, “What exactly are you suggesting I do here, beg her to forgive me?”
“I mean it would be hilarious to watch,” Thor laughed, “but no, I’m just saying, maybe try to have a conversation with her.”
“You know I’m not actually very keen on taking fists to the face.”
“Really? I could’ve sworn you loved it, given how many things you do that make people want to do that to you,” Thor said with a smirk, gesturing to his face.
“Ugh,” Loki groaned. “Well, this time I’m trying to not provoke such a reaction.”
“She’ll talk to you, Loki. I promise,” Thor said, laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“And what do I get if instead I come to you tomorrow with a broken nose and a black eye?”
“You get to say ‘I told you so.’”
Loki nodded in satisfaction. “Very well, I may yet take your suggestion. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more important business to attend to,” he said as he started to back away towards the exit. Thor made a brief wave goodbye, giving Loki permission to turn around and take his leave, but just as he landed on the door sill, a thought occurred to him. He rotated back to face Thor again, and asked, “If I may, just one last question…what makes you so sure?”
“We had a couple of discussions while you were ‘dead’ and…let’s just say I’ve never heard her speak of someone in the way she spoke of you.”
For a moment, Loki’s gaze flickered back and forth between Thor and the ground, trying to decide how far to take his interpretation of what was just said. Without having arrived at an answer to that question, he awkwardly nodded, looked down again, and hastily left.
He couldn’t sleep. In fact, sleep had become somewhat of a luxury to him since they had boarded the ship. He would lie there for hours and hours, and then eventually give up and wander the vacated halls of the ship until morning — well, “morning” that is. The lack of sleep was weighing on him, but he had started to dread his bed, plagued as he was by intrusive thoughts. No matter how tired he was, it was never enough to shut them up; the peace he longed for was increasingly found instead in those small hours of the morning spent wandering around alone.
On this day, as he approached his favourite spot, his peace was suddenly interrupted by an awareness prickling his skin that told him that someone else was already there. However, as he got closer, the wariness faded; he knew exactly who it was.
“And here I thought I had found a spot no one else knew about,” Loki said, seating himself opposite to Sif on the wide ledge of the large circular window. She did not turn to look at him, but instead continued to stare out the window, knees hugged to her chest, into the blackness of space.
Finally, she muttered, “I should have been there,” still gazing out the window forlornly, as if he wasn’t even there. “I should have died with them.”
“Sif, if we had had time-” he started, the rest of his sentence severed by the venomous look she suddenly shot him.
“I wouldn’t have been on that planet in the first place if not for you,” she spat, keeping her gaze on him just long enough to make her disdain known, before turning to look out into space again.
Pushing down the habitual defensive impulse to explain why he was, in fact, justified in his actions, he instead forced himself to say, “You’re right, Sif. I’m sorry,” making an effort to sound authentic. And genuinely, he was sorry, he just didn’t have the slightest idea how to communicate that to her.
“Sorry,” she scoffed, “what is an apology from a trickster worth? Even if I were charitable and assumed you were being truthful for once in your life, it does not undo anything.”
“No, it doesn’t…” Loki affirmed, searching for something, anything that he could possibly say. Not for the first time, he asked himself, what good was the title of silvertongue if he couldn’t find the right words to say when it mattered most?
Shaking him from his thoughts, Sif’s next question came sudden and sharp.
“Did you not realize how much it would hurt me? Or did you just not care?”
Perhaps it was a mistake coming here, he belatedly thought. For he could not, at that moment, look into her eyes. She had always teased him about the intensity of his own gaze, but surely, nothing throughout all their years together could have compared to this. But then again, they hadn’t known loss back then, hadn’t been so familiarly acquainted with the searing pain of grief, grief for both those who had once lived, and those still living. And surely, Sif must’ve never imagined that he was what she would lose first.
“The former…I was consumed by jealousy, and I thought you wanted nothing to do with me…quite frankly, I thought you had forgotten all that we had shared, that it meant nothing to you, especially now that you were free to marry Thor.”
“You truly were never a good listener,” she scoffed again, but this time with a hint of nostalgic tenderness.
Narrowing her eyebrows at him, she continued, “How could I have made how I felt about you more clear? Were my actions not enough? Do you think I would’ve stayed with you for all that time, for hundreds of years, if my care for you had been something fleeting, something to throw away at the first sign of trouble?”
“There was nothing you could have said or done to make me see that, Sif,” he said emphatically.
“Why?”
“I…” he started, looking away before continuing in a steady, but muted, voice, “I hated myself, Sif. And I couldn’t understand how it was possible for anyone to see something of worth in me, despite all my efforts to prove myself.”
“Is that why you let go?” she asked, her voice softened, its former sharpness now dissolved for want of any subconscious self-preservation instinct. “You must have known that your punishment would have been hardly more than a slap on the wrist, a luxurious and princely one at that. You were faced with that or the void of space…and you chose to let go.”
Discomfort settled into his body at the question. He had never discussed what had happened that day with a soul — not his mother, not Thor, no one. And this despite the fact that since they had boarded the ship, with some prodding, Thor had occasionally managed to broach subjects that Loki had long withheld from him, sometimes even surprising Loki with his tact and empathy (something Thor had learned on Midgard, to be sure, where the people had apparently taken to speaking openly about their feelings with enthusiasm). Even so, neither of them had ventured near the topic. It was rarely spoken of, and even then, only in euphemistic terms: the fall, the Bifrost debacle, or jokingly, the first fake-out — everything but what it actually had been: a suicide attempt.
Normally, he would have maintained the illusion, denying that he had chosen his fate and insisting that the fault lay rather with Thor, or perhaps Odin himself, but it no longer seemed evident to him what he had to lose by speaking the truth to Sif.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said cautiously, still hesitating to fully commit to the truth. “My entire life’s purpose up until that point had been to seek the approval of my father, and in that moment, I felt that there was nothing I could ever do to achieve it, to ever be enough.”
He paused.
“Take that to its logical conclusion and, well, my life was worthless,” he said, embellishing the confession with a brief laugh and a showy flash of a smile, as if it somehow made the memory less painful, somehow diminished the heaviness in the air between them.
“I wish I had known you felt that way,” she said, almost whispering. “I knew about the jealousy, of course, but…I thought you must’ve known, deep down, that your family loved you.”
Sighing, she continued, “And I wish that you could have seen yourself the way I saw you.”
Loki shifted, discomfort rising in him all over again.
“And what would I have seen?” he asked, not without trepidation.
A tender smile spread on her face as she recalled the man she used to know.
“Someone whose company I preferred above all others…someone who could always make me laugh, who was dedicated to the few who had the privilege of being cared for by him, who was-” she raised her eyebrows provocatively at him, “-giving, even at his own expense, who was attentive and observant, who was thoughtful and curious and intelligent, who had a well-earned mastery of seiðr that no one else could match…” she finished with a wistful sigh.
He stared at the window sill in silence, unable to decide between anger towards himself that he had spent so many years blind to the depths of her affection, and a much more familiar feeling that discounted everything she had just said, assuming she couldn’t possibly be telling the truth. That he didn’t deserve her love.
His ruminations were suddenly interrupted by words he never thought could be strung together in a sentence.
“I would have married you, Loki.”
The delicate balance of emotion that had been playing out in his heart tipped decisively towards one side, as the gravity of her words dawned on him and fanciful images of domestic bliss danced before his eyes. It was not long, however, before he realized that had those words been spoken all those years ago, it would have changed nothing.
“I wouldn’t have believed you,” he replied, regret giving way to acceptance.
“I know, that’s why I never said anything. Not to mention that we were already having a lifetime’s worth of arguments by the time it became a possibility, and the last thing I wanted was to start another one, or to be accused of falsehood and hidden motivations yet again, by the very person who was profoundly guilty himself of both those charges.”
For once, Loki had the self-awareness to look ashamed.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that that was no coincidence…I was merely projecting my own flaws and insecurities onto you. And that was unfair, Sif. You didn’t deserve a word of it.”
“Maybe Thor was right about you,” she said offhandedly, conveying her surprise—and maybe even a little respect—with a brief eyebrow raise. “I did know, of course, even at the time. But even so, it still hurt, and…it’s nice to hear you acknowledge it.”
“Loki,” she continued, voice raised in inquisition, “if you had believed me, would you have said yes?”
His reaction was a laugh so gentle as to be barely audible, accompanied by a smile that seemed to wink at her.
“Sif, if that had been the case—and if there had been no external obstacles, real or perceived—I would have married you the moment I knew you were willing.”
He couldn’t help but indulge in the reaction that illuminated her face in that moment, with her head slightly tilting to the left and her lips—the very ones he had once graced with kisses—pressed together in a bashful smile. It was at that moment that she unfurled her left leg from her chest, settling it mere inches away from Loki’s own outstretched leg.
“When did you know? That it was me you wanted, I mean,” she asked.
“You’re going to laugh at me if I tell you,” he assured her, shaking his head at the memory.
“Probably, but am I not owed a moment of levity after everything that has happened?”
“Alright, alright. It was not long after we had been first introduced to each other as children. I had played a prank on you and the other boys in our training class by making the grip on your weapons slippery. Not so much that you wouldn’t be able to hold it, but just enough so that it made you all seem clumsy and uncoordinated, whereas I was the very epitome of sophistication. Causing, of course, great feelings of embarrassment on the part of everyone who did not happen to be me. You were the first to clue in to what was happening, and the first to correctly identify yours truly as the mischief maker. I remember you glaring at me in indignation when the instructor complimented my forms and asked me to demonstrate to the rest of the class. You were having none of it, so you loudly accused me of having tampered with everyone’s weapons in front of the entire group. I, of course, denied everything, and the instructor was ready to let it go, not wanting to press the matter with a son of the Allfather, but you, you couldn’t do that.”
Knowing the story well herself, she took it upon herself to finish it for him, a reminiscing smile on her face.
“I knocked your sword out of your hand, grabbed it, and then started perfectly demonstrating the forms that I had been so clumsily doing just moments ago, thereby proving my case.”
And for the first time in months, she laughed. He was quick to add his own laughter to hers, and for a brief moment, they were not the lost son of Asgard and the shieldmaiden without a realm to protect, not weighed down by the heaviness and ensuing bitterness of everything that had happened. They were just Loki and Sif.
When silence fell again, he continued.
“I was upset that my prank had been thwarted, to be sure, but more than that, I felt a deep respect for you. Not only were you not willing to treat me any differently despite my rank, you were willing to stand up for what you believed to be right. A quality that I lacked in myself, but one which I could not help but admire in you. I am convinced that no one else in that class would have had the guts to accuse me as you did. And from that moment on, you, and you alone, had my heart.”
“My turn, I suppose. It was after my father had died. There was a state funeral for him, and everyone was giving me their condolences, telling me they were sorry for my loss. Everyone except you. You hung around me that entire evening like a shadow at my back, never saying a word. When it was over, and everyone started to return home, I headed in a different direction, seeking a place where I wouldn’t have to hear them laud him as if he was a saint, wouldn’t have to hear the insincerity dripping off their tongues.
“I felt you following me as I made my way to the forest near the palace. When I arrived at the small clearing, the one with the pond, you left me alone for a while, letting me be with my thoughts. But eventually, I got tired of you lurking in the darkness, and called out for you to show yourself. You cautiously approached me and then sat beside me, still not saying anything. I don’t know how, but you seemed to be able to tell that I didn’t actually want to be alone, I just wanted to be around someone who wouldn’t tell me how I should be feeling. And that night, you listened to me as I lost my composure and let free everything I had ever wanted to say about my father, both the love and the hate. You understood me in a way that no one else had, and when you wrapped your arms around me at the end of the night, I felt safe,” she said, her voice fading into a whisper.
Silence settled into the space between them.
“Loki, I can’t stay here,” she suddenly said. “On the ship, I mean.”
His eyes narrowed, the lines of his face morphing from retrospective contentment into confusion.
“Why not?” came the question that his expression had already asked.
“What need is there for a warrior in peacetime?” she asked rhetorically, continuing, “There’s nothing for me here except reminders of what I’ve lost, reminders of my failure to protect my people as I swore to do.”
“And now you have an opportunity to protect them in a different way.”
A guffaw met his words. “What, by trying to play the architect? The healer? The school teacher? Those are what these people need, now, and I cannot fill any of those roles, and you know that as well as I do…I need to be in motion, Loki. I can’t allow myself to stay still. I need to feel the adrenaline rushing through my veins, the taste of blood on my lips.”
He parted his lips to allow a counter argument to come out, but then thought better of it. She was right. But perhaps there were other reasons she would choose to stay?
“What about Thor?” A valid line of questioning to be sure, but his eyes were asking a different question.
“What about him? He has the love of his life waiting for him on Midgard and is surrounded by friends. And most importantly of all, he has you. But that’s not really what you wanted to know, was it?”
“You have read me correctly, it seems. No, it wasn’t.”
“Loki…” she sighed, “I love you, but I can never be with you. You are fortunate to have someone as forgiving as Thor as a brother, but I’m afraid that trait does not come so easily to me. I can come to understand why you did what you did—and even empathize—but I cannot forgive you.”
The hope that had begun to bubble in his heart, despite the fact that rationally, he knew this was coming, crumbled into nothingness. How fitting, he thought, that the first time she ever breathed those words would only be to hand him his rejection moments later.
But he could expect nothing less, if he was being honest with himself. And so, he nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Understandable…I would not have deigned to ask that of you anyway.”
He shifted his gaze to the window again, reflecting on the unbridgeable gap, seemingly as vast as space itself, that now existed between them.
When the disappointment had finally settled at the bottom of his stomach, he asked, “So, where will you go?”
She shrugged. “Somewhere where there is a just war.”
“I will do what I can to scout out potential locations,” he assured her, garnering a kind-hearted smile from her.
“Thank you, Loki. And one more favour…don’t tell Thor. Or anyone, for that matter. I want to tell them at a moment of my choosing and…you're the only one who knows.”
“I kept our secret safe for centuries, Sif. You have my word.”
“Speaking of which…I should probably tell you that after Thor revealed your parentage to me after your fall, I told him about us.”
“I know,” he laughed, “he brought it up while we were making preparations for your arrival. But please, do not let that stop you from describing the look on his face when you told him.”
“Well, due to the rather sombre circumstances at the time, it bore no resemblance to what you’re probably imagining. His reaction was very subdued, quite frankly…he was a little surprised, of course—he hadn’t suspected a thing—, but contrary to what you believed at the time, the idea of us being together was easy to absorb once it had been suggested.”
He raised his eyebrows in near-disbelief before softening and breaking into a light chuckle.
“I suppose I was wrong about a lot of things,” he said, swallowing the urge to defend his prior position. “Tell me this, Sif. You said you revealed us to him after finding out about my origins…did it bother you?”
“My reaction was much like Thor’s when he found out about us: surprise at first, and then I absorbed the information and it just became another fact I knew.”
“It didn’t bother you to know that you had lain with a Jötunn? That you could have carried a half-Jötunn child?”
She shrugged. “There was a time in history when Asgard and Jotunheim were not adversaries, when intermarriage was not such a rare sight. I fail to see why the happenstance of politics should determine the permissibility of two individuals entering into a union. And besides, I have only ever known you as Loki of Asgard. I have never known your Jötunn form, and you do not choose to wear it.”
“Loki,” she sighed, “no one is ever going to care about this as much as you do.”
They lapsed into silence as the weight of her words seeped into him, and with it—hardly for the first time since they had left Asgard—the weight of his past miscalculations. Everything that had happened, and everything that could have been but will never be, seemed to crush him in that moment. If he had been told a thousand years ago that Sif cared for him so dearly that not even him being a Jötunn could dissuade her, that his brother would one day seek his counsel and actually listen to what he had to say, that his father would tell him that he loved him…
He nearly shuddered to think of how different things could have been. The guilt and regret that had become his ever-present companions threatened to engulf him into a state of sterility and motionlessness. Then again, he thought, attempting to escape their total envelopment, as he had repeatedly found himself doing lately, sparing Asgard from the impulses of the young and reckless Thor surely must have counted for something.
“You know, if either of us were ever going to leave, at any other point in time I would have wagered all my possessions that it would be you,” she said with a chuckle, while Loki breathed a sigh of relief at the change of subject; he had more than enough of those thoughts when lying in bed at night as it was.
“I mean, you’ve never exactly worked well with others, nevermind serving them. Why do you stay?” she asked.
It was a question he had been asking himself, lately. Eventually, he had stumbled upon the right answer: “I feel valued, for perhaps the first time in my life. My opinion is sought out by others and given its due respect, and sometimes even acted upon. And I don’t have to wear an illusion to achieve it.”
“In short, you’re finally getting enough attention,” she laughed tenderly.
“I suppose you could put it that way,” he replied, mirroring her teasing tone.
“I hope you stay, then.”
“Not such a lost cause after all, hm?”
“Perhaps not, but that will be up to you to decide. I’ve seen the worst of you, but I’ve also seen the best, and so has your brother. We know who you could be, Loki, and no matter how angry I feel about your past misdeeds, I will never stop wanting you to be that person.”
This is too much, he thought, self-doubt crushing what should have been the hope in her words. He was the villain, always had been, and how could he possibly live up to this imaginary “best version of yourself” that both her and his brother alluded to? Surely, no such thing existed. There was only the singular entity of Loki, and playing the hero was not his role, no more than a schoolteacher was Sif’s.
“I admire your faith in me, but-”
“My faith?” she chuckled wistfully. “No, it is your mother’s faith.”
No, after all, he couldn’t say to Sif what he had been on the verge of saying, that he could not be the man she wanted him to be. He could afford to tell another lie.
“I…I will try.”
She nodded her head in gratitude. “For her sake, at least.”
“Well, I suppose we should get some rest,” she said, standing up. A moment of awkward silence followed, as they both hastened to think of a good way to end this encounter that they had been waiting, longing, for ever since everything fell apart. It soon became obvious that they were both coming up short.
Finally, Sif sighed, saying, “I’m glad you’re alive, Loki,” before promptly turning on her heel and walking away.
His ears popped as they descended onto the pale grasslands of Xieter VI, Sif’s ostensible new home, at least until she found somewhere better to be. The small planet Loki had scouted out was embroiled in a war caused by the unprovoked invasion of one nation by another that was at a significant demographic and technological advantage, leaving the invaded nation nearly no chance of victory. A tale that had been spun over and over on countless worlds, and one in which Sif was sure to find some measure of purpose, where she could feel that she was making herself useful. It was the least he could do for her, after depriving her of the opportunity to defend her own realm.
With a large puff of air, the ship settled on a deserted field of wheat. Far into the distance, metal clanged against metal. This is what’s best for her. She deserves as much, he repeated to himself as the hangar ramp yawned open. A pang of guilt throbbed in his chest at the thought, because he knew he didn’t actually believe it. There was a part of him, a selfish, egotistical part of him, that didn’t want her to go, a part of him that still, stubbornly, dreamt of reunion. Rationally, he knew he had lost her forever. She wasn’t coming back, not after everything that had happened. He knew that. She had stated as much. And yet, he still dreamed of her coming to some grand realization and changing her mind.
With an inaudible sigh, he shook his head at himself, unwilling to let his mind follow that train of thought again, amazed that she could still affect him like this after all this time apart. He should have moved on by now, by all rights he should have, but he just…couldn’t. She had never stopped being an omnipresent background thought, not during his invasion of Midgard, not in his prison cell, not as King. And now she was going away again, and for all he knew, their paths may never cross again. (And it’s all because of you), a voice whispered in the back of his head. Ignoring it, he reiterated to himself that it was truly for the best. For both of them. She will be happier here than she ever could be with you.
The ramp finished opening, and Loki found that the light that suddenly flooded in from the golden fields was blinding. For a few moments, he felt as though the world had been torn asunder into two halves, and while he was languishing in the soundless darkness, melting into it, she was walking into the light, the blinding light, disappearing from view, and leaving him here to fall so far into the darkness that he became a part of it and would never resurface again.
But then the moment passed and his eyes adjusted and there was just a field and a ship and Thor and Sif talking to each other. He let out a sigh of relief, and then walked over from where he had been leaning against a wall to the top of the ramp, where they stood. Thor acknowledged him with a brief smile while continuing his sentence.
“And you’re welcome back any time, Sif. We would love to have you. Oh, speaking of which, I trust you were given the communicator device?”
“Yes, I have it here,” Sif replied, patting a tight hidden pocket on her hip.
“Perfect…well, I guess we’ll see you off then.”
“Thor…thank you, for everything. To be honest I wasn’t expecting you to be as understanding as you were, but know that I’m very grateful to have been proven wrong on that count.”
“Well, who am I to tell the fearsome Lady Sif what she can and can’t do?” Thor laughed. “I just hope she will do me the honour of visiting every once in a while.”
“I will,” Sif promised with an affectionate smile before stepping closer to hug Thor, giving him a few slaps on the back, as fellow soldiers did.
Loki smiled, despite himself. At any other time, seeing Sif hug his brother would’ve caused intense jealousy, but now, he just felt glad that Sif still had a friend, and a genuine one as Thor. (Well, fine, maybe just a hint of jealousy).
When they broke apart, he was expecting her to pick up what little baggage she had and turn around to leave, but then she turned in his direction and walked towards him until they were face-to-face, mere inches apart.
Clearing his throat, he started, “Sif-”
“Don’t. Whatever it is you’re about to say, just don’t.” To his relief, he didn’t have to search for the right reaction, because she closed the gap between them and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her face against his chest and her body tightly against him. He steadfastly responded in kind, coiling his arms around her waist. The fear of being left to rot in the dark with nothing but his own devices melted away under her long-awaited touch, and light seemed to seep out of her pores and into his soul. It was then that he knew that though she hadn’t forgiven him, there was still grace left in her heart for this pitiful creature who bore the name Loki. And though things would never be the same again, he knew her love was, and had always been, true.
“I know who you could be, Loki, and so do you. And I think it’s about time for you to prove us right,” she whispered in a low tone.
He wanted to say something, but his throat hitched and he knew all he would be able to get out was a stammer, and so, uncharacteristically, he let her have the last word.
The rest happened too fast, as if he was still stuck in that moment, his mind a fly caught in a spider’s web. Before he knew it, they had broken apart, she had looked into his eyes, really looked, and smiled with goodwill at him, and a blink of an eye later she had taken her bags and walked off into the distance, never once glancing back at him.
They never saw each other again.