fic: this side of the mountain
Thor. Sif/Loki. 1767 words. Ragnarök comes. There’s no proving they weren’t made for each other. There’s no conclusive evidence that someone else could understand them, could survive this.
notes: Thank you S, for handholding and listening to me whine.
This is history this is legend this is what we once were. Where the stories come from, what we are. When you fall in battle, they will take your body with the life you made in this world and set it off to sail behind you into the next, so that you will stay a king, remain forever the golden being you breathed as on this side of the mountain. When you pass, may your life follow you like a shadow into the light. When I go, bury me with nothing but my own skin.
- Anis Mojgani [Cradle]
i.
In the end he doesn’t have to set fire to it. The world was always going to burn.
ii.
Time is a lie and knife and crutch and the only thing you have. And the only thing you will never have enough of. Time bends and pulls at your seams and shatters across the face of your reality. Time is the only drug worth taking. The only domain worth having power over.
Loki knows this. Loki knows that this is what the Allfather rules. (The kings of old did not conquer the cosmos. They did not sweep the distances between stars away like so much dust. The kings of old built the Bifrost and in doing so they tamed time. This is the power of Asgard-too grand to be hidden away, too simple to be understood.)
Time is the only thing that matters. Loki will shatter the universe (will break apart his very being) to change it.
He won’t be able to. This story was written long ago.
iii.
There is a knife still clasped in her hand and he thinks if he only tried hard enough he could count every tear she shed for him. The number isn’t very high. She is one of a kind. She is unique in every sense of the word and at the last trumpet blast of destiny the world will look upon her face and say, “you were my favorite child, you were the child I could pick out among the masses, but even that won’t save you.” There was never a warrior like the Lady Sif. And there was never a man like Loki.
So what if it isn’t precisely love. So what if it is only habit and desperation. There’s no proving they weren’t made for each other. There’s no conclusive evidence that someone else could understand them, could survive this.
She changes her grip on the blade, draws a line slowly up the column of his throat and even when she twists it under his chin she still doesn’t draw blood.
“Since the day we met, there have been eight-hundred and forty-seven separate occasions on which I could have killed you before you had the time to react.”
He shifts. He’s hard against her and she allows him no relief but the blade against his skin.
“If I am to die, I would want you to murder me.”
Hear that? It almost sounds like I love you, never leave me. (“Never leave me, my Lady,” whispered in the night. She never speaks of it and he never repeats it. She remembers.
If he could count every tear she shed for him, he would truly be immortal.)
iv.
A dreamer looks out over the edge of creation and says, “let us touch the stars.”
A trickster looks at the stars, touches them, caresses their jagged edges and says, “one day they will burn us.”
v.
Sif is a knife. She carves an image of herself into the walls of his mind, into the skin of his back, into the silences between heartbeats. Sif is a weapon and when she looks up at him in the throne room, challenge written flat across her face, adrenaline thrills through him. He can read the bloodlust in her eyes, knows that there has always been a part of her aching to hurt him.
Loki never wanted to be king, never wanted to be first. Loki only ever wanted to be equal, to not be less. But in that moment, in the throne with her eyes blazing and the power of Asgard at his fingertips, Loki thinks of what it would be like.
Together they would rule the cosmos. Sif as his warrior queen, always at his right hand, the armies of the nine realms would fall before them. There in the curve of her lips he thinks he sees this dream reflected back to him for a moment. (“They were made to be ruled,” he says later, the words cracking harsh against his teeth. In a different world, a different place, a different time she answers, “and we were made to rule them.”)
She leaves though (the throne room, his side, him. She leaves him.)
vi.
The hours of our youth were corrupted by the sins of our fathers.
Parents lie to us until we are old enough to lie to them. But no, this is not true. Parents lie to us and then one day we are old enough to lie back to them. This is what the stars are made of, the lies you have told and made true.
One day we will be stardust, my love.
vii.
He would tire of the fight but it brings such rewards. For every wound he gets, for every battle he loses-the chaos grows. In every human heart there is a seed of fear and that is how Loki will rules this Earth, this place where Thor found something other than himself to fight for.
(“I did not think you so petty, my prince.”)
He dreams of her constantly. (“You dream of me only when you aren’t dreaming of what you persist in calling your fall.”) The curve of her breast, the sharpness of her teeth at his lips, the warmth of her is as familiar now as it was when he last held her against his skin, tried to strip that artifice that every word they exchanged held.
(“Did you ever think that perhaps I was honest? Or can a liar see nothing but his own image in the actions of others?”)
She is with him constantly. She is cruel as she never was, as cruel as he always wished she would be, if only to assure him she was there. (“But I’m not here now, am I? I’m not even one of your tricks.”) In the heat of battle she stands behind him and laughs and taunts. (“A group of humans and your bother. They alone have vanquished you and your armies. And you thought I would be your queen, really?”) At night she digs her nails into his hair when he wakes, dreaming of the Bifrost. (“Are you scared yet, my prince?”)
She is always there. And then one day the sun dawns, red and angry in the east, scorching the land, boiling the oceans, and she is gone.
viii.
It is said that at the last Yggdrasil itself will drown. It is a tale told to children, to teach them of fear and glory. And as most such tale it is more lie than truth.
At the last, fire will spread across the realms. The skies will burn, set alight by the stars that once gave life.
ix.
“I am not a son of Asgard.”
“You are Loki. That is all that matters.”
“I am the monster in the dark. The thing parents teach their children to fear. You should leave me. Leave this place and never come back.”
“Where would I go?”
x.
A lamp left on in an empty house and the neighbors look through their windows and shake their heads; dinner left to cool on the stove, a snapshot of a life discontinued. When the paint has changed colors and the hinges rusted shut, the children will look at that house and say-once love lived there and when it left there wasn’t even life.
It left. It didn’t die. Love doesn’t die. It closes like a chapter, still existing on the days where it was written but no longer something new, something stretching out beyond the field of vision.
Every story is a lie. Asgard grows cold and the stars in the sky get hotter and hotter. The sky burns and Sif’s rooms are long empty.
The universe will not shut off the lights when it leaves.
xi.
The humans’ voices have grown to screams by the time she comes. The sky casts her features in a deep orange. She laughs, low and sharp.
“How?”
“It is the end of time, my prince. The rules have ceased to matter. The paths of Yggdrasil are broken.”
“Then how did you come here?”
“The same way you did. I jumped.”
In the edges of her voice lurks an accusation. He meets her eyes and refuses to acknowledge it.
The greatest lies don’t require words.
xii.
A dreamer and a trickster stand looking out over the edge of creation.
“One day the stars will burn us.”
“Then we will be stardust, my love.”
xiii.
The history of desire is written into the flesh of those who are foolish enough to consider themselves immortal. For one fleeting moment, the world is under their control. For one fleeting moment they are gods. Equilibrium crashes through them as more than an urge or a need.
To be a god you must do more than create, you must be willing to destroy. Must be willing to destroy even yourself or time will do it for you. (I was indestructible and then I looked upon her face and she was as bright as the stars, impossible to truly look at without crying. I was indestructible but she was a knife, let loose into the air long before I thought to turn and look. And then she was a knife piercing my heart.)
High above the city, only glass walls for protection and in its final hours the universe screams-or perhaps it is the singing of an ancient being, the words long forgotten, the melody misunderstood. Sif’s body cuts a curve through his bed. Her hair curled loose around her shoulders; he sits at the edge of the mattress, back to her and it isn’t wise, isn’t a tactically sound position. (But what more could she do? Stab him in the back; rip the blood from his body? Sif has never thrown tantrums, never destroyed her own possessions.)
A thousand things sit in the space between. A thousand accusations and wrongdoings and unsaid things. (You jumped; you gave up. I love you. You left me. Are you really here? Are you real?) From out between the folds of her discarded clothes, Sif pulls a knife, one of Loki’s knives. With its tip she coaxes him to lie down, settles herself above him, steals the air from his lungs with her lips.
xiv.
This is how the world ends. The edge of a blade, the fire in the sky, two lovers intertwined and when they are dust, when they are particles, when they are nothing but matter in its simplest form, they will still be wound together.
The stars are reborn.
notes: Thank you S, for handholding and listening to me whine.
This is history this is legend this is what we once were. Where the stories come from, what we are. When you fall in battle, they will take your body with the life you made in this world and set it off to sail behind you into the next, so that you will stay a king, remain forever the golden being you breathed as on this side of the mountain. When you pass, may your life follow you like a shadow into the light. When I go, bury me with nothing but my own skin.
- Anis Mojgani [Cradle]
i.
In the end he doesn’t have to set fire to it. The world was always going to burn.
ii.
Time is a lie and knife and crutch and the only thing you have. And the only thing you will never have enough of. Time bends and pulls at your seams and shatters across the face of your reality. Time is the only drug worth taking. The only domain worth having power over.
Loki knows this. Loki knows that this is what the Allfather rules. (The kings of old did not conquer the cosmos. They did not sweep the distances between stars away like so much dust. The kings of old built the Bifrost and in doing so they tamed time. This is the power of Asgard-too grand to be hidden away, too simple to be understood.)
Time is the only thing that matters. Loki will shatter the universe (will break apart his very being) to change it.
He won’t be able to. This story was written long ago.
iii.
There is a knife still clasped in her hand and he thinks if he only tried hard enough he could count every tear she shed for him. The number isn’t very high. She is one of a kind. She is unique in every sense of the word and at the last trumpet blast of destiny the world will look upon her face and say, “you were my favorite child, you were the child I could pick out among the masses, but even that won’t save you.” There was never a warrior like the Lady Sif. And there was never a man like Loki.
So what if it isn’t precisely love. So what if it is only habit and desperation. There’s no proving they weren’t made for each other. There’s no conclusive evidence that someone else could understand them, could survive this.
She changes her grip on the blade, draws a line slowly up the column of his throat and even when she twists it under his chin she still doesn’t draw blood.
“Since the day we met, there have been eight-hundred and forty-seven separate occasions on which I could have killed you before you had the time to react.”
He shifts. He’s hard against her and she allows him no relief but the blade against his skin.
“If I am to die, I would want you to murder me.”
Hear that? It almost sounds like I love you, never leave me. (“Never leave me, my Lady,” whispered in the night. She never speaks of it and he never repeats it. She remembers.
If he could count every tear she shed for him, he would truly be immortal.)
iv.
A dreamer looks out over the edge of creation and says, “let us touch the stars.”
A trickster looks at the stars, touches them, caresses their jagged edges and says, “one day they will burn us.”
v.
Sif is a knife. She carves an image of herself into the walls of his mind, into the skin of his back, into the silences between heartbeats. Sif is a weapon and when she looks up at him in the throne room, challenge written flat across her face, adrenaline thrills through him. He can read the bloodlust in her eyes, knows that there has always been a part of her aching to hurt him.
Loki never wanted to be king, never wanted to be first. Loki only ever wanted to be equal, to not be less. But in that moment, in the throne with her eyes blazing and the power of Asgard at his fingertips, Loki thinks of what it would be like.
Together they would rule the cosmos. Sif as his warrior queen, always at his right hand, the armies of the nine realms would fall before them. There in the curve of her lips he thinks he sees this dream reflected back to him for a moment. (“They were made to be ruled,” he says later, the words cracking harsh against his teeth. In a different world, a different place, a different time she answers, “and we were made to rule them.”)
She leaves though (the throne room, his side, him. She leaves him.)
vi.
The hours of our youth were corrupted by the sins of our fathers.
Parents lie to us until we are old enough to lie to them. But no, this is not true. Parents lie to us and then one day we are old enough to lie back to them. This is what the stars are made of, the lies you have told and made true.
One day we will be stardust, my love.
vii.
He would tire of the fight but it brings such rewards. For every wound he gets, for every battle he loses-the chaos grows. In every human heart there is a seed of fear and that is how Loki will rules this Earth, this place where Thor found something other than himself to fight for.
(“I did not think you so petty, my prince.”)
He dreams of her constantly. (“You dream of me only when you aren’t dreaming of what you persist in calling your fall.”) The curve of her breast, the sharpness of her teeth at his lips, the warmth of her is as familiar now as it was when he last held her against his skin, tried to strip that artifice that every word they exchanged held.
(“Did you ever think that perhaps I was honest? Or can a liar see nothing but his own image in the actions of others?”)
She is with him constantly. She is cruel as she never was, as cruel as he always wished she would be, if only to assure him she was there. (“But I’m not here now, am I? I’m not even one of your tricks.”) In the heat of battle she stands behind him and laughs and taunts. (“A group of humans and your bother. They alone have vanquished you and your armies. And you thought I would be your queen, really?”) At night she digs her nails into his hair when he wakes, dreaming of the Bifrost. (“Are you scared yet, my prince?”)
She is always there. And then one day the sun dawns, red and angry in the east, scorching the land, boiling the oceans, and she is gone.
viii.
It is said that at the last Yggdrasil itself will drown. It is a tale told to children, to teach them of fear and glory. And as most such tale it is more lie than truth.
At the last, fire will spread across the realms. The skies will burn, set alight by the stars that once gave life.
ix.
“I am not a son of Asgard.”
“You are Loki. That is all that matters.”
“I am the monster in the dark. The thing parents teach their children to fear. You should leave me. Leave this place and never come back.”
“Where would I go?”
x.
A lamp left on in an empty house and the neighbors look through their windows and shake their heads; dinner left to cool on the stove, a snapshot of a life discontinued. When the paint has changed colors and the hinges rusted shut, the children will look at that house and say-once love lived there and when it left there wasn’t even life.
It left. It didn’t die. Love doesn’t die. It closes like a chapter, still existing on the days where it was written but no longer something new, something stretching out beyond the field of vision.
Every story is a lie. Asgard grows cold and the stars in the sky get hotter and hotter. The sky burns and Sif’s rooms are long empty.
The universe will not shut off the lights when it leaves.
xi.
The humans’ voices have grown to screams by the time she comes. The sky casts her features in a deep orange. She laughs, low and sharp.
“How?”
“It is the end of time, my prince. The rules have ceased to matter. The paths of Yggdrasil are broken.”
“Then how did you come here?”
“The same way you did. I jumped.”
In the edges of her voice lurks an accusation. He meets her eyes and refuses to acknowledge it.
The greatest lies don’t require words.
xii.
A dreamer and a trickster stand looking out over the edge of creation.
“One day the stars will burn us.”
“Then we will be stardust, my love.”
xiii.
The history of desire is written into the flesh of those who are foolish enough to consider themselves immortal. For one fleeting moment, the world is under their control. For one fleeting moment they are gods. Equilibrium crashes through them as more than an urge or a need.
To be a god you must do more than create, you must be willing to destroy. Must be willing to destroy even yourself or time will do it for you. (I was indestructible and then I looked upon her face and she was as bright as the stars, impossible to truly look at without crying. I was indestructible but she was a knife, let loose into the air long before I thought to turn and look. And then she was a knife piercing my heart.)
High above the city, only glass walls for protection and in its final hours the universe screams-or perhaps it is the singing of an ancient being, the words long forgotten, the melody misunderstood. Sif’s body cuts a curve through his bed. Her hair curled loose around her shoulders; he sits at the edge of the mattress, back to her and it isn’t wise, isn’t a tactically sound position. (But what more could she do? Stab him in the back; rip the blood from his body? Sif has never thrown tantrums, never destroyed her own possessions.)
A thousand things sit in the space between. A thousand accusations and wrongdoings and unsaid things. (You jumped; you gave up. I love you. You left me. Are you really here? Are you real?) From out between the folds of her discarded clothes, Sif pulls a knife, one of Loki’s knives. With its tip she coaxes him to lie down, settles herself above him, steals the air from his lungs with her lips.
xiv.
This is how the world ends. The edge of a blade, the fire in the sky, two lovers intertwined and when they are dust, when they are particles, when they are nothing but matter in its simplest form, they will still be wound together.
The stars are reborn.