Round 12

Sep 18, 2012 12:43

ROUND 12 IS NOW CLOSED

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round 12, prompt post

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[Fill] [Loki/Sif] Incarnation [character death] [1/2] anonymous September 20 2012, 07:12:00 UTC
This cycle is different. It starts differently, ends differently. Asgard is in ashes, and though it's nothing new, it's not what he intended. It never is, though.

He turns a wry eye to his companion. His only companion. The others are dead; he killed them.

"You were supposed to die too, you know," he tells her almost philosophically. When they're lying side by side on the rubble stained with her husband's blood, he laughs through the fingerprints that are seared into his throat. "It is no matter. I was, too."

::

Some nights he stares into the branches of the great World Tree, wondering and thinking. Do the Midgardians miss his brother? Do they wonder where he's gone, or have they already forgotten about him? The mortals are so fragile, their lives so impossibly short. Have they been away from Midgard so long? It's possible Thor's friends are dead, rotting in the ground like animals because the Midgardians have forgotten the art of a proper send-off--though there'd been no time for burning ships for Thor; the whole world had burned for him, and he'd have shield-brothers aplenty in Odin's hall, if no wife. Loki ponders Midgard idly. There are no rainbows here, now, and no rain but the Lady Sif's tears.

::

She comes at him with a blade this time. He can see the glint of metal in her hand through his lashes as he feigns sleep, rolls to the side to give her a better angle at his neck. For one long, silent moment he wonders if tonight will be the night she does it, the night she finally, finally ends the cycle.

The blade comes down and he tries not to flinch. Instead of the bite of steel, though, it's the point of her toe in his ribs to rouse him. "Get up. It's your watch," she tells him, and it's only chivalrous to pretend she isn't crying if she's going to pretend he hadn't rolled to show his belly.

::

"What makes you happy, Lady Sif?" he asks, staring into the flames' ghostly green light. Only witch fire will burn what's already burned, but the world still turns. It will not be long, now, before winter falls.

"The thought of you dying on my blade," she replies, just as she did yesterday and the day before. She must be growing tired, he thinks, and almost misses the graphic descriptions of his blood mixed in the ash.

::

"What makes you sad, Lady Sif?" he asks, and she turns to him, disgust writ across her face.

"Talking to you, Loki Lie-smith." Her tone is abrupt, and she turns from him. She cries into her bedroll that night.

::

He takes her for the first time in a grassy clearing unmarked by most of the carnage. He realizes when he rolls off of her that they are in Idunn's garden and smiles as water drips into his eyes, the first rain since the end of the world. Sif pushes his seed deep with her fingers and bares her teeth at him.

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[Fill] [Loki/Sif] Incarnation [character death] [2/2] anonymous September 20 2012, 07:13:03 UTC
::

The first snow falls light as a lover's kiss, pooling in her hair to frost the dark strands stiff with ice. At the first touch of it, his skin goes a deep, craggy blue, but he's too busy maintaining the witch fire to give a damn what she thinks about the Frost Giant she's been fucking. The fire scalds his blue skin and he pulls his bedroll deeper into the shadows, but she follows, voracious. Her wetness leaves slick smears across his belly that pull and crackle when he wakes alone; it's frozen to his skin. She glares at him over the fire defiantly.

::

He's found a rabbit; she's killed and skinned it, and the pink flesh is dripping fragrant juices into the fire. Her skin is flushed from good food, a full belly improving her mood and manners tremendously.

"What makes you happy, Lady Sif?" he asks. She gnaws a leg bone contemplatively.

"You're not an incompetent hunter, though my knives are quicker," she says finally. He has her slow that night, nearer the fire than they've been for months.

::

He finds the shoot amid the melting snow on the same day he can no longer lie to himself. There will be apples in the autumn, a beautiful golden tree where today there are only pale leaves clinging desperately to a slender twig. He considers for a long moment ripping the tree out by the roots while he still can, ending the cycle in the only way he can, but he knows the Norns weave their threads tighter than that.

Sif's belly is swelling fast. Twins, by his reckoning, both of them named Thor, likely. He smiles at her and pretends he doesn't know what's coming.

::

She stands in the rain, all the power of the storm behind her and blood dripping down her thighs. Any other woman he'd be ushering to the birthing bed, but Sif reaches one shaking hand to him and Loki bares his throat.

The Aesir are reborn in his blood, and it seems this cycle won't be as different as he'd thought.

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Re: [Fill] [Loki/Sif] Incarnation [character death] [2/2] anonymous September 20 2012, 08:30:53 UTC
This is strange and beautiful and tragic. Very evocative.

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Re: [Fill] [Loki/Sif] Incarnation [character death] [2/2] anonymous September 20 2012, 19:25:15 UTC
Thank you!

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Re: [Fill] [Loki/Sif] Incarnation [character death] [2/2] jade_1459 September 21 2012, 08:10:28 UTC
Oh wow. For such a story your imagery is stark but so very vivid!

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OP anonymous September 24 2012, 16:19:47 UTC
Oh, this is lovely! So much better than I expected. Thank you so much. :D

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