fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 5a.

[mekosuchinae]

5.

i: loki dreaming.

Jötunheimr cracked. It split; it crumbled; it fell out of the sky, and the ash tree caught the pieces like so many bits of earth in its fingers. The temple stood out from the juncture of three branches at a precipitous sideways angle, and from its narrow windows dark figures fell. Loki watched them as they fell; he watched and did nothing. It was good that they should fall. It was right. He knew this to be so.

For the vermin shall be routed from their holes and the monsters set to flame, that all the worlds should be better for their dying. So will Asgard lead us. So will Asgard cleanse us. So will Asgard make us pure, make us strong, make us mighty as Asgard, holy Asgard, and as bright. This is the word of the Allfather, and the Allfather's word is Asgard's word and Asgard's word is true. Darkness must give way to light. Corruption must give way to healing. We will be clean.

"We will all be clean," he said. The words shivered in the night air; his breath was white. Odd that it should be so. It was, he thought, quite pleasant out. Warm, but not so warm as to stifle. He breathed out again. A pale cloud fogged the air.

They fell fewer now. A little pile showed between the tree's roots, the corpses dwarfed by the ash's girth. He watched, dispassionate, as the last handful of jötnar fell from their temple which was both sacrosanct and profane. Now it was dead. He did not smile, but he did not weep.

It was good. It was right.

"Asgard shall be a beacon," he said. "A light in the darkness."

At his side, Thor said, "I know that. Father goes on about it often enough."

Loki looked down to his brother. He was young and fair and round of face. A child. Thor tipped his head to one side. His cheek was still thick with baby fat. Loki had not been so strong, so square. He remembered that.

"Are those monsters?" Thor asked, interested. "Have you killed them all?"

"I did what was needed," said Loki.

"You did!" Thor grinned and struck Loki's arm, then his smile caught; it faded, and he frowned. "That means I don't get to slay any of the beasts."

The moon glimmered, nearly new. It hung like a ghost over the ash tree. In the highest branches, held aloft by the strongest boughs, the royal complex lay broken and silent. A pitiable thing, next to the glory and wonder of Asgard and her golden palace.

"I would that I could have," Thor went on. He scowled tigerishly. "I would have chopped off all their heads. Like wyrms."

Loki said, "Well, give me your hand. We'll see if there are any throats left for you to cut."

Thor took Loki's outstretched hand and yelped. "Your hand's freezing!" He snatched his own hand back.

Loki turned his hand over. It was only a hand: pale skin, long bones and thin joints, the tendons showing in the back. A certain redness flared at his knuckles, but it always did. He had not goosebumped. A vein stood out at his wrist, where it crossed the musculature. He turned his hand again. Loki bent his fingers, one by one. The bones slithered, shadows beneath his skin. He closed his hand and dropped it.

"A bit chilly out," he said.

"Come on," said Thor. "No one cares for your hand. I want to fight the monsters."

"Then, by all means," said Loki. He bowed to his brother. "Lead the way."

Thor would. Of course he would. He clambered down the hill as swiftly as he might, heedless as a child was of nearing rocks, of little pits in the soil that might trip him up. Loki followed. Of course he followed.

The ash tree towered over them, colossal and without measure. What light showed there at its roots was meager, for the tree's branches were heavy with leaves and the moon waned so thin as to venture into meaninglessness. The soil was dry. Nothing grew where the tree's shadow fell, and the tree's shadow fell far about it. The air was still and silent and dead.

"I'll race you up!" Thor shouted.

He'd found stairs cut into the side of the tree, wedges like cankers which marred the trunk. Loki looked up before he ascended in pursuit of Thor. A strange silver sheen coated the underside of the leaves, and the illusory glow they gave off dappled his eyes, his hands. Like bubbles in a bath, refracting the light in many colors. A blue shadow wandered over his wrist. He drew his hand into his sleeve.

"Hurry up!" Thor cried. He peered round a bend at Loki. His hair gleamed even in the dark. "Last one to the temple's a big, stinking jötunn."

"But you already are," said Loki.

Thor laughed and vanished again. Loki ascended in his wake.

The tree whispered about him. Leaves rustled. A samara, thrown loose, brushed Loki's cheek as a finger across the bone. He had thought perhaps there would be screaming or soft moans, all the graceless sounds of beasts dying. The damned, weeping. But for Thor's thundersome steps and that susurration of the wind, all was quiet. Even his own breath, like spun ice in the air, slipped silently from his lips.

The temple, then. The temple, first. Nearly flat on its side, its arches had cracked; the roof had collapsed half into the sanctuary. The bough that held the bulk of the temple threatened to swallow the single entrance that remained. Thor had gone.

Loki scaled the branch, held out for balance. The bark, lined with deep grooves, caught at his fingertips; it bit his skin. The leaves murmured, and their murmuring washed over him as a wave at sea, a tidal roar which threatened to drown him. So thrown, he slipped into the temple.

His shoulder struck the floor first, then his head. A star burst. He thought he would slip and threw his arm out to stop it. The floor was level beneath him. His fingers skated over ice. He drew breath, slow through his teeth. Frost laced his lungs, his throat, his tongue. The world had frozen.

Loki opened his eyes. Thor had gone farther into the temple, up to a dais once ringed with cloth. He had torn it down. Silver hooks jangled, hanging from the ceiling. Jötunheimr was a cold, dead world without color or song, but the cloth was a glowing silver, a silver which shone so brightly as to look like something borne of Asgard. Moonlight circled Thor; it lit his hair. Loki did not know where it came from. The ceiling was whole.

A deep basin stood at the top of the dais. Thor turned his face down to it.

"Come away from there," said Loki. What trap might the jötnar set to snare a prince?

Thor did not listen. Thor never listened. Loki scrambled to his knees, then his feet. Stars lit behind his eyes, a cavalcade of fireworks. The world rolled beneath his feet, as branches in a wind.

He said, "Thor-"

"Loki," said Thor. He turned. His face had screwed up with puzzlement. A hesitation slowed his tongue. "Loki. It's a baby."

Loki came to stand at last by his brother, his little brother. Thor pointed into the basin. In the well-

What had he expected? A beast. A monster. A demon. A creature like the creatures his father spoke of when he spoke of the great wars, of the evils of the jötnar, of the petty cruelties inherent to their natures. But it was only a baby.

"It's crying," said Thor. "Loki, why is it crying?"

For that was what the baby did: it squalled, fierce as any storm. Tears slicked its little face. Its hair was black and curled tight against its scalp. A silver cloth had been wrapped about it, but the child had freed one arm. Its hand grasped.

"It's very small," said Loki slowly, "and very alone."

"Why is it alone?" Thor asked. "You aren't supposed to leave a baby alone."

Those fingers uncurled then fisted again. The baby turned its face to them, to their voices, and cried all the louder. Loki's throat had tightened. He swallowed carefully to clear it. All alone, he thought, in a temple. But whoever had left the child here had taken care to wrap it.

"Are you loved?" he whispered to the baby.

It was too small still to focus its eyes, too young to see beyond its nose. A monster, he thought. A monster. A baby. He touched his finger to its palm. The babe closed its hand about his first knuckle.

"Where is its mother?" Thor demanded.

"Not it," said Loki.

His brother stared up at him, blue eyes creasing at the corners. The baby's crying filled the empty corners of the temple. Loki wanted to pick the child up and stick him in Thor's face and say, "How is this child different from you?"

For one, Loki thought, Thor wasn't a monster. The child's fingers tightened. Loki turned from Thor. He looked down into the basin. Thor shifted. He looked, too. How small the infant, how thin. If his skin weren't so blue, he might look as normal as Thor.

"Not it," Loki said again. "Him."

"Where is his mother?" Thor asked. "He's only a baby. He shouldn't be left all alone in the cold."

"The cold doesn't bother him like it bothers you," Loki said.

"But he shouldn't be alone," Thor insisted. "Where's his father?"

"His father is here."

Loki lifted his head from the basin.

The temple had brightened as with the coming of day, but then it wasn't the temple but the throne room of the Allfather. The emblem of the rising sun showed at Odin's back. He bore the symbols of his station. He carried the weight of his office across his shoulders. His cape dragged behind him, an endless length of red velvet which hid the steps as he descended.

"Remove your hands from him," Odin commanded.

Loki drew back his finger from the child's hand. The babe had begun to calm. Now he cried again, screaming into the vast and shining silences of Odin's great chamber.

"I was only-"

"I know what you were doing," said Odin. His eye flashed, like lightning in a storm. "You would turn my son against me."

He rose as a thundercloud over Loki. Thor had gone. Thor had never been there. Only Loki remained before Odin. Loki sank to his knees before the basin.

"He cried," Loki said. "I only wanted to comfort him."

"He is not yours to comfort," said Odin thunderously. "Jötunheimr has no claim on him."

Loki flexed his fingers. His hand was cold, his palm slick as if with ice. Staring up into his father's face, he thought he had never felt so very numb before in all his life.

"But he has a claim on Jötunheimr," he said.

The words dropped like pins.

"Yes," said Odin. "He has a claim."

Loki licked his lips. They hurt, pricked through with cold. He searched Odin and found nothing.

"Why," he said. His throat closed, frozen tight. Loki forced the rest through: "Why did you take him?"

"He will be king," said Odin.

"King of what?" It ripped from Loki's mouth. It tore his lips. "Of the monsters? Of the, the jötnar?"

"He will be a wise king for Jötunheimr," Odin said remotely, "wiser than Laufey. He will keep the peace when Laufey is gone. I will teach him. I will raise him. I will guide him, so that when he is king he will be a just king, a good king who will not raise war."

What look would cross Odin's face when he gazed at the child in the basin? Loki dared not blink. His eyes stung, drying.

"But will you love him?" he asked, then he shouted it; he snarled it so it broke in his chest: "Will you love him!"

"Does it matter?" Odin asked. In the sun at his back, the shadow of a tree. Odin's face shone, bright as day. "What I do, I do for the good of Asgard. That is the duty of a king."

Loki scraped his nails over the stones, scraped them so his fingers hurt with it. His chest worked too quickly. The baby, he thought. The baby. The baby. As a child Loki had looked at Odin standing with his hand upon Thor's shoulder, and he had seen how the sun shone in their hair, how it shone in Frigg's hair, and he had known he was unlike.

"But what of your duties as a father?" He clawed at his chest. "What of- What of your duties to me? To your son?"

"Asgard will always come first," said Odin.

"You mean Thor will always come first," Loki spat. "Your son, your true son. I knew it. I saw it even as a child, how you preferred him, how you looked on him and smiled to see yourself-"

Odin loomed before him. The sun rose at his back.

"You are my son," he boomed. "I am your father."

"No," said Loki.

The sun winked out.

ii: memory: loki.

"Here you are," said Thor.

Loki looked up then turned his face away, for the sun swallowed Thor and blinded him. Then Thor crouched beside Loki on the riverbank and he resolved out of the light.

"I knew you'd be here," Thor continued. He would have gone on in this self-congratulatory vein had Loki, warily watching the thick brush that ran alongside the channel, not abandoned his crafts and made to push up off his chest.

Thor put his hand on Loki's back and shoved him down flat again. Loki swore and lashed at Thor, but of course Thor was so huge and so ox-like now Loki only hurt his thumb. Loki stuck his thumb in his mouth and glared.

"Don't worry," Thor said, unbothered. "Sif thinks you're in the hideaway. If you aren't, she intends to surprise you there."

Loki pulled his thumb free of his teeth. He glared, still, and had no intention of stopping.

"Don't you mean Thorheimr?" he asked poisonously.

Thor puffed up outrageously at this.

"You agreed to it," he protested. "You said we could call it Thorheimr!"

"Only under repeated duress," said Loki. He turned from Thor and back to his contemplations of the river, how it flowed against the bank as it followed this little crook. He set his chin on the back of his hand and said, "I'll never call it Thorheimr."

Thor stuck his jaw out.

"If you didn't want to call it Thorheimr, then you shouldn't have agreed to call it that."

"I wouldn't have," said Loki slowly, as to an idiot or, as was the case, to Thor, "if a certain oaf, who will remain nameless as we both know full well who he is, hadn't threatened to punch me in the nose."`

The primeval jutting of Thor's jaw softened. It retracted, and in a moment he looked less a barbarian fresh out of the caves and more like Thor, brash and thoughtless and now contrite. Thor reddened ferociously. He looked away.

"Sorry," he said at last. "I shouldn't have done it."

With great airs, Loki said, "I do not accept your apology at this time."

He half-expected Thor to turn on him at that, but Thor only sighed and let his shoulders slumped and looked even more contrite. Now Loki found he was the one who felt guilty, which was absurd and even more absurd the more he thought of it. His shoulders itched, his back too. His neck itched worst of all.

If Thor really wanted Loki to forgive him, Loki thought, he wouldn't insist on calling it Thorheimr. He would, of his own volition, tell Father he held the threat of brutish violence over Loki to get Loki to do what he wanted. Loki plucked viciously at the grass. Father would probably congratulate Thor on his proactive problem solving attitude.

"I am sorry," Thor said. The words were awkward coming out of his mouth and they hung awkwardly in the air between them. "Truly."

But he didn't offer to call it Lokaheimr, now, did he? Loki tore out the broken bits of grass and tufts of loam and fuzzy whatever it was and threw them to the river. The water whispered along its course and didn't mind as it bore the refuse out to sea.

Thor sighed and dropped onto his back. His legs stuck out off the bank, then his knees bent and his boots dipped into the water and bobbed with the current. Loki threw a tuft of grass at Thor's knee, but the wind took it and threw it back in Loki's mouth.

Loki was still sputtering and clawing at his face when Thor got up on one elbow and asked, "What did you do to make Sif so mad?"

Loki curled his tongue and spat into the water. "I didn't do anything!" he snapped back. He ran a hand down his tongue and then shook his fingers out.

"Sif feels very strongly that you did do something," said Thor.

"And what did you say?" Loki demanded. He glowered at Thor, who had the grace to look hunted, if confused as to why he should look so.

"Say what?" Thor ventured.

"You're my brother," Loki said, "which means you're supposed to say I didn't do it, because you're supposed to believe me first and foremost, even when you don't know what it is I'm supposed to have done."

Thor relaxed. His gaze wandered skyward, to where the pale clouds chuffed along before a strong breeze. He said, as if it were the most obvious thing, which Loki supposed it was, "That's what I told her. That you didn't do it."

"Oh," said Loki. He looked to his fingers. He turned the strands of grass over. "How did she take it?"

"Not very well," said Thor sadly. "She called me a liar and an accomplice and threatened to throw me off the ledge."

Loki laughed. He could imagine it perfectly, how she would have shone, incandescent and suffused with fury, like a fire burning hotter still in a strong wind instead of going out. He wished he'd known to be there, to see how Sif would cross her arms and pace the hideaway, her hair hanging loose down her shoulders, loose and tangled and shining where it caught the sun.

He glanced sidelong at Thor, who was frowning up at the clouds. They threw small, thin shadows across Thor's face, fleeting shadows which passed not long after they came upon him. That guilty itching picked at Loki's neck. He didn't much like guilt.

Loki twisted the grass together and said, "I did do it, though."

"What!" Thor shoved up onto both elbows. "What about everything you just said about how I should believe in you?"

"You should!" Loki said. He held his chin high. "But yes, it just so happens that in this one particular instance I did do it."

Thor groaned and fell back again. He covered his face. "Loki!"

"It was only a little thing," Loki said soothingly. "It isn't as if I killed anyone. All I took was her knife."

"You took her knife?" Thor shouted into his hands. He threw his arms wide and stared at Loki as if he'd never seen him before. "Are you daft? Her mother gave her that knife."

"I know," Loki said. "It's a very nice knife."

"Do you have any idea how mad she's going to be about that?"

Loki thought of Sif, how her hair had tumbled around her shoulders as she pinned him, straddled him, held him down with her hands and thighs and square hips. How her teeth flashed. He breathed out. His neck itched again, too hot this time. It wasn't guilt that made him itch now, he thought. He didn't know what to name it.

"I have an idea," said Loki.

"And you made me lie for you," Thor pressed.

"I didn't make you!"

"Yes, you did!" said Thor. "You're my brother. Which means I have to stand up for you, which means I told her whatever it was she was so certain you'd done, you hadn't done it."

"You didn't have to do it," Loki protested.

Thor looked at him in outrage. "What- I don't like lying, Loki!"

Loki sighed and rolled over onto his back. He dropped his feet where Thor's head would go if he laid back down.

"I know you don't," he said. "I'm sorry. Thank you for doing it, though."

Thor made a face, but he gave as Loki knew he would. For all his tempers, Thor was so very soft. He scooted around and laid his head down by Loki's feet.

"You're going to have to give Sif her knife."

"Oh, I will," Loki said. "As soon as I find it."

"You lost it?"

"She pulled me out of a tree!"

"I would that she'd hit your head," said Thor.

Loki turned the grass whistle about and pressing it to his lips, whispered a charm into its veins.

"No," he said to Thor, "you don't."

Then he pursed his lips and began to play. The song was a simple one, for however he'd enchanted the grass it was still only grass, but he embellished it as he could so it twined in the air above them like the stroke of a bell which lingered as the tongue stilled. The notes lilted, turning sideways and then righting again. Loki ran his fingers down the whistle. The grass shivered under his fingertips.

"Cheater," said Thor.

Loki lowered his whistle.

"It isn't cheating."

"Tricks and lies," said Thor.

"Magic," Loki countered. "Call it truly by its name. You don't like it because you aren't any good at it."

"It's all smokes and mirrors and dreams," said Thor. "It isn't straightforward or honest."

Loki snorted. "That would be why you're no good at it. You can't do magic if you aren't true with yourself."

"I'm always true with myself," Thor said, indignant.

"With a sword," said Loki. He blew gently at the whistle. "Not with magic."

"And you are?" Thor asked.

"Always," said Loki.

He piped a rude note at Thor to teach him how to be respectful toward others. No doubt having learned his lesson quite thoroughly and secretly vowing to reform at his earliest opportunity, Thor turned onto his side, looked Loki gravely in the face, and punched Loki in the shin.

"Fuck!" said Loki. He brought his legs up to his chest.

"I'm telling Mother you swore," said Thor smugly.

"I'll tell her you hit me!"

"Not if I throw you in the river first," said Thor.

Loki glared at Thor over his knees. He sneered. "Please. We both know you're too lead-footed to catch me."

"I found you here, didn't I?"

"Yes," said Loki, "but you didn't catch me, did you?" and he thrust his legs out, rolled onto his feet, and staggered for the woods as Thor struggled to sit upright.

"Cheat!" Thor shouted after him.

"Slow!" Loki shouted back, then he vanished into the shadows.

iii: loki dreaming.

In dream, song. Dreaming and in his dream, he slept. Loki slept like a child in the silted embrace of twining roots, thick toes of a thick tree pillowing him, holding him, hiding him; and as he slept, the wind sang, and the leaves sang, and the soil sang, and the root beneath his cheek sang. He did not know the song, for it was an old song, old and forgotten for its age. Night, cool and sweet, laid down upon him. Dreaming, nevertheless he did not dream; he dreamt only of the tree and of the earth and of the night and the wind which blew gently through it all.

Into his dream, another.

The wind stilled. His fingers coiled in the dirt. He felt it get up under his nails, grit and scratching, drawing him out of sleep. He would not wake. He had no desire to do so. He was cold; he was tired; he was worn and thoroughly so, used up and scooped out and exhausted of all he had, empty with nothing left to give and nothing more to take. No one to give to, no one to take from. He had done it to himself. He had done it gladly. The vermin shall be routed, and what was Loki if not a rat biting at his father's hand?

Footsteps in the earth. Toes sinking into the soil, soft with rain. He knew that stride. He knew the low-slung arch of her foot, how her heel punctuated it as an exclamation. She'd a scar on the heel of her left foot where a snake had bitten her, and:

Loki had set his fingers in the arch and drawn the venom out, coaxed it from her puckered flesh with the tips of his fingers. It had flowed out like pus from a sore, little yellow beads conjured out of her blood.

"Ah," said Sif.

"Can you walk?"

"Of course I can walk," she said.

He gave her his hand and she held it, just a moment, her fingernails biting into the underside of his fingers. Then she let go. She took a step, another, hobbling on her toes. Her calf muscles fluttered. Her left ankle bent. Loki made to touch her back, to brace her. He hesitated. Her shoulders had hunched.

"Would you like for me to carry you to the healers?"

"I can carry myself," she said shortly.

He'd dropped his hand. She took three more steps, each harder than the last. Loki caught up to her. Quietly, he slipped his fingers around her elbow. She turned on him, her lips flaring. Her eyes sparked, her hair, too, where the sun caught the red in it.

"I told you I could carry myself!"

"I'm not carrying you," he said. He began to rub his thumb in a circle then stopped. "Just- If you should fall."

"I won't fall." She forged on, dropping more weight on her right foot. "Why does everyone always expect me to fall?"

Had he got all the venom? He felt for it in her blood, the small heat which meant sickness. A tiny flare-but that was where she bled.

He walked alongside her through the brush. The stream gurgled on behind them, uncaring for the little drama which had unfolded beside it or the snake which floated, dead, upon it. He wished he'd thought to find her shoes. It had happened very quickly. Loki had waded into the current and turned to tease Sif for taking so long. Her hair fell like a storm cloud about her face, and she'd scowled so ferociously his head had nearly floated off. There'd been a snake at her raised foot, a watersnake. He'd seen it last when he should have seen it first. He'd said, "Sif," and she set her foot down.

In the thicket, he ventured, "No one expects you to fall."

"Everyone does," she snapped. She glowered sidelong at Loki then her face closed up and she looked away. "My father does."

Ah, Loki thought.

"I'm not your father," he said. "So far as I know."

"Don't be clever," she said gruffly.

They walked on, silent. Her shoulder bumped his. Under his fingers, her arm tightened, the muscles pulling as she held herself apart.

"I don't expect you to fall," he said.

She looked at him. A shadow, cast by the movement of a bird through the trees, shivered across her tanned face. She'd a mole by her nose. His thumb itched to cover it.

"Isn't that why you're holding my arm?" she asked.

He feigned interest in a passing tree. "It's such a nice day for a stroll."

"Me, and the snake," said Sif, pausing for breath, "and you."

Loki leaned into her. He whispered, "You could always shake me off."

"I could beat your tongue," she said, but she hadn't shaken his hand from his arm.

Now. Now. When was now? What, he thought. It was not a question of when or of where. An echo murmured in his ears, as of chimes stilling. Muted footsteps in the earth. Someone approached him. Sif. He knew that step, the coarse whisper of her trousers. How she balanced her weight on her toes as she climbed. He turned his face away.

She stopped beside him. He heard her breathe out, breathe in, out again. Her toes curled in the soil. She was barefoot. Bare-legged, too, when she knelt at his shoulders, her knees brushing his back. Her hair fell against his nape. She pushed it away.

Leaning over him, Sif said, "I know that you're awake."

A knot in his chest, a small one, a nothing. Loki breathed out through his lips, as if sighing.

"How so?"

"Aside from the part where you just spoke," she said.

There it was again, a little answering flicker somewhere deep in his bones, rising to the challenge.

"Your shoulders are too tense."

She set her hand on the left shoulder and pushed. Loki came up again.

"You breathe too lightly. You're trying too hard not to draw attention."

Her fingers ran down his back, between his shoulder blades, tracing the motion of his spine. His chest rose, too swollen. It was a game, he thought. They were children, and he had fallen asleep in his mother's gardens.

Her hand stilled on his back, beneath the sweep of the left blade.

"I saw you turn your face away," she said. "As I came up the trail."

He opened his eyes. The hour, if an hour it was, was late, the night thick with all its regalia. He saw clearer than he ought.

"Show me," Sif said. "Show me your face. Truly."

"I was always true with you," he said. He did not turn.

"Only when it suited you," she said. "Stop running from me or whatever it is you're running from. Show me."

He imagined he could see her shadow cast upon the root, or perhaps her profile captured in a whorl of the bark. He never could catch her likeness.

"I already showed you," he said.

"Then show me again."

Her fingers, at his back. Her breath at his shoulder, her hair slithering to hide in his throat. Even here Sif subsumed him; always it was so. She closed her hand around his arm.

"Loki," she said.

He turned. What was it he wanted of her? To scream, then, and to fall away from him? To bring her glaive around to press the tip to his throat? She carried no weapon with her, nor a shield on her back. Her mouth tightened, but she did not scream; she did not fall away. So brave, he thought; and the tenderness of it made him ill. He did not want for tenderness.

"So have you come to kill me after all?" he wondered into the space between them. "Did you find your courage where you hid it?"

"Enough," she said. "No more of your tricks."

"Is that the maiden or the warrior?" he jeered.

Her face hardened. The change began at her jaw, always her jaw, her teeth setting first. He would goad her, and she would strike, and in her absence he would sleep again. She held his gaze. A little movement at the corner of his eye, and Loki thought: now, now was when she would do it, now was when Sif, swift and sure and so very sharp, would slay him and leave him.

She set her fingers on his cheek, beneath the ridge of bone. He could not breathe for the heat of her touch. A fire mirrored in her hair. The roots were burning. He smelled the smoke.

"You won't trap me with your tongue," Sif promised. Her thumb was an anchor pushing into the juncture of his jaw. "I know you, Loki Silvertongue."

He stared, unblinking, up at her. Did her fingers burn? Did her palm? Frozen, deadened, rotted by his skin.

"You've never known me," he said.

"I've always known you," she said. "Since we were children, and my father first brought me to the palace. Do you remember?"

He remembered. What had he thought of her? A tall, loud girl with a face like a knife. He'd said as much, and she had reddened and called him a pig. No one had called him pig before. Shadow, he'd heard as he eavesdropped around corners. The pest. Second son. Never pig.

"So you think you know me?" He smiled at her as he had smiled at that sharp-edged girl. "Because when we were children I called you my friend?"

"You never called me your friend," Sif said quietly.

"Is that what this is all about?" His breath came in spurts. Her hand burned him. "Your hurt feelings?"

"And yours," said Sif, "if you'd shut up and be honest for once."

"Oh, I'm always honest," he said.

"You always lie," she said.

He reached up then and set his hand on her cheek as she had set hers on his. She stilled, but he had seen how she flinched, how she recoiled from his touch, his cold touch. A shadow darkened her skin.

"I never lied," he said softly. "You just couldn't distinguish the different truths."

Her nails turned against him. Her hair coiled like clouds of smoke. She was bare, all of her, and only the shadows hid her from him. Was he bare to her eyes?

"So what truth is this?" she asked. She stroked her thumb down his jaw, to his throat. A brand. "Why do you make yourself look like this?"

"I don't make anything," he said cuttingly. "I was born like this, of my mother and my father."

She shook her head. The smoke in her hair trembled.

"Odin-"

"Not him," said Loki. "My other father."

Sif looked at him and he saw it in her eyes, oh, he saw it: the truth. So kill me, he thought, but Sif had never done what he expected of her. Mercies when he wanted cruelty, cruelties when he wanted mercy.

"What are you saying?" she asked at last. She refused it, still.

He touched his thumb to the corner of her mouth. He had always loved that corner, how it creased, how it deepened, the shadow that clung to it. Her lips paled, the blood driven from them.

"At the very end of the last war," Loki whispered, "the great king Odin took home many prizes. He took home the source of the jötnar's power. He took the holy texts. He took the scrolls of ice magic."

Her lips parted; they moved slowly now. See how his touch corrupted. Her eyes did not waver. Her hand on his cheek, how it burned; he had never felt such heat.

"What else did he take?" she asked, steady even as her lips turned against her.

"A souvenir," Loki said, "but a very special one. Something he could tame."

Sif loomed over him. She shone somehow, but that was a trick of his eyes. She always shone. He could not let her go. He would have to drive her away, he thought detachedly, or else he would never be rid of her. Smoke in her hair and fire in her touch. That he could burn in her arms and be freed.

"You can't be a jötunn," she said. "I grew alongside you. I know you. I would have known."

"You," he said. It was venom in his teeth, poison on his tongue. "You, who never knew the truth of anything."

"And what truths did you know?" she snarled. "Tell me, Loki. I want to know. I want to know why it is you would throw this on me when it's yours to bear, too."

He did not know where they were, how they'd got there. Everything spun away from him. Only Sif remained, her hand on his jaw, her hair at his throat, her cheek beneath his fingers. The years opened between them. She said:

"What was it you thought when you said I should marry Thor and be done with it?"

"I saw the same thing everyone else saw," he said. "I saw that you loved him."

"Then you're as blind as everyone else," said Sif.

The smoke got in his eyes. Sif got in his eyes.

"What of you?" His lips were dry, cracked, seared. "What did you see?"

"Loki," she said. "Insufferable, stupid, clever Loki. When I left my mother's house. When I came to the palace. I thought you hated me." Her fingers fanned over his cheek. "But that wasn't it."

He tightened his fingers on her cheek. The bone bit into his fingertips. She'd darkened, frostbit, and yet still she flickered with firelight.

Loki rose against her.

"Kill me," he said. "That's what you're here for. That's what you want. You're the warrior and I'm the monster, so do it and be done with it."

Her fingers spasmed. She stared in horror at him. At him. Not because of him.

"I'm not going to kill you," she cried. "Loki-"

He cut her off: "Why? Why won't you end it? Look at me," he shouted. "I am the frost giant. I am the monster. I am the changeling in the cradle, and if you don't throw me out then I will poison you."

She raised her voice at him again: "You aren't a monster!"

"I was always the monster," he hissed. "I was always this."

"You were never a monster!"

"Look at me!" he roared. He pressed into her hands, into her chest, her shoulders, her hot embrace like the heart of a conflagration. His skin ached with her heat. "Look at me and tell me what you see!"

"Loki," she shouted. "Loki! Who lives!"

Her nails bit into his face. She held on to him; she held him, savagely, near.

"I thought you were dead," she said harshly through her teeth, "I thought you had died."

"I should have," he said, "I should have."

"Don't," she commanded, "no. No. You're alive. That means something. That must mean something. Loki-"

"Why won't you do it?" He pressed closer to her, close so he could feel her heart beating and beating, her breath on his mouth. "I never thought you were one for mercy. Sif, brave Sif, the greatest Asgard has to offer, and she can't kill even one lowly jötunn."

"I won't kill you," she said.

He could have wept for it. Perhaps he did. She stroked her fingers over his cheek, down the side of his nose. It was not gentle.

"I'm going to save you," she said.

"And then what?" he whispered. "Then what will you do? Will you bring the criminal to the Allfather for his punishment? Will you let Thor do what you cannot?"

"You are his brother," Sif said. "You know Thor would never hurt you."

So close, it was as if they kissed, as if they entwined as lovers. He licked his lip and felt it on hers.

"Do you really believe," he said into her mouth, "that Asgard would welcome me?"

"No," she said.

He closed his eyes for it hurt; it did. He had not thought it would. You are no longer of Asgard, he thought; but how he longed to be.

Sif cradled his face. She lifted him up, up from where he had fallen, and her hands on his skin were brands, but they were strong, too, and they were steady.

"But I would," Sif challenged.

Loki opened his eyes.

( Continue.)