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Marvel Cinematic, "Jealous Games" (Loki+Thor/Sif)
Thor does nothing but talk about Sif anymore. And Loki is starting to get tired of hearing about it. Maybe he should do something about that. aka, "Five Times Loki Tried To Break Up Sif And Thor, And One Time He Succeeded."
Discusses Thor/Sif, the Shadow of Thor's Greatness, and hints of your pick of the following: Thor/Loki, Sif/Loki, or Thor+Loki. Loki is the POV character.
.jealous games.
Most of Loki's impression of Sif, to begin with, was, She should be a passing hand at magic for how she has bewitched my brother. Thor talked about her incessantly, his face alight and his tongue tripping over itself with all that he had to say. Sif the Fair, Sif the Gentle, Sif the Clever, Sif the Brave, Sif the Proud, Sif the Overwhelmingly Perfect. Though younger, Loki reminded himself that Thor was only an adolescent boy, barely fifteen and of a race that would live to be eons old. Adolescent boys were prone to insipid crushes.
Still, the unending admiration got on his nerves. Which was why he was seeking things to dislike about her by the time they met.
It wasn't hard. Their first meeting was polite and proper enough, but on their second he came across her playing in the woods, dressed in leather and dirty cloth, her legs kicking through the air as she swung up onto a branch of the tree she had targeted. She was beautiful -- her features refined, her eyes warm -- but most stunning was her hair, thick waves of pale gold that shimmered as they bounced about her shoulders. It seemed almost to have a life of its own, vibrant and full of movement.
"Will you just be staring all day?" Sif called down from her tree, sparing him only a glance for her part.
"Do you recognize me?" Loki asked her. It had been some weeks since their first introduction.
"Of course," was her response. "Thor's brother. The one who practices with magic instead of the sword. Loki."
He had been just on the verge of assuming that she had forgotten his name. "Prince Loki," he corrected her. If she heard him, or cared, she gave no sign, swinging up to a higher branch and settling astride it. "You have it, although I would appreciate it if you would not define me in terms of your boyfriend."
"He is not my boyfriend," she corrected immediately. "And aren't you doing the same thing to me?"
"I'm doing the opposite," Loki informed her. Defining Thor in terms of her, because she had him so utterly wrapped around her fingers.
She had nothing to say to that, shifting her grip on the bark and slipping around the branch to dangle from it upside-down. Then she twisted nimbly to set herself in motion, and leaped to the next branch. If she had fallen, she could have broken bones. But she didn't fall.
Loki asked, uncertainly, "Doesn't that scratch up your hands?"
"Well, yes," she said, and then laughed. "I know how the story goes. The pretty girl must spend hours fussing over herself in the mirror, and could never bear to do anything that might mar her flawless skin. Some girls do, I imagine. But I am not one of them." She stated it proudly. "I wash my face, brush my hair, and then go out to get dirty!"
Loki tucked his own hands in his arms, crossing them over his chest. He couldn't stand the idea of putting his hands to such torture. The only times he had ever climbed trees had been at Thor's incitement.
"How lovely for you," he said, still watching her. "You must be so proud of yourself for not conforming to what is expected of you." Thinking yourself so much better than those other girls.
Sif settled back against a tree branch, breathing quickly. "Aren't you?" she returned, her brows drawing together, puzzled.
He felt a beat of surprise take him. They hadn't spoken much in their first brief meetings, mostly a polite exchange of pleasantries; Loki had declined to go play with the two of them. "You think so?" he asked.
"When Thor said you were studying magic, I said, good for him! It seemed similar enough to a girl studying the sword. I thought -- maybe we had that in common. Breaking away from what everyone says we should do, because of how we were born." She brushed her hair back from her face, watching him.
Loki let a beat pass before admitting, "Well, I won't say I'm not proud," and tossed his hair back, as if to prove to her that he was. He wondered what it was like for her: if she endured the same barbs of mockery that he did from his peers, the same condescending tolerance from adults, like it was a phase he would inevitably grow out of.
She laughed readily enough, and then brightened. "You do fight, though, don't you?"
"Of course I do."
"Let's wrestle!" Abruptly Sif dove out of the tree and came for him.
Loki tensed. He had no doubt that he could overpower most girls of Asgard effortlessly. But Thor had spoken enough about Sif's skill -- great enough that even Thor fell not infrequently in matches with her, Thor who Loki had never defeated in terms of strength alone but only when trickery and wit could come into the equation -- that he had his doubts about this girl.
And in spite of his own feelings of superiority that he was better than other Asgardians for stepping outside what was normal to do what he was best at, he still didn't want to lose to a girl.
"I don't want to!" he protested quickly.
To her credit, she stopped; Thor wouldn't have. She laughed. "Afraid of losing to a girl?"
He hated being predictable. He snapped back at her, "Afraid of having to hit my brother's girlfriend. Which wouldn't be a question if she weren't more a man than he is!"
When she punched him in the jaw, it was not part of any wrestling match.
Loki disliked Sif.
=
Thor dropped down onto the low couch next to his brother and pronounced, "I need to do something to show Sif I want to be with her."
"This again," Loki murmured to himself, scratching at his slate.
Loki and Sif had long apologized for the poor outcome of their second meeting, but his faint agitation over her had not faded. As Thor and Sif became better friends Thor's admiration for her only grew, and then Loki found himself regaled with not only tales of her beauty and uniqueness, but also the way that her head turned when she laughed, the way her gleaming gold hair fell in waves over her shoulders when she concentrated, the way that she wrapped her arms around her knees when she looked up at the sky from a dewy hilltop at sunset.
It was tiresome. Loki was tired of being this kind of confidant.
"Can we not go back to talking about your swordsmaster?" he asked.
"You would like her better if you spent more time with her," Thor insisted.
It was almost certainly true. She had not been objectionable company, and a part of him was... curious about her. But the problem there was that Loki did not want to like her.
He lowered his slate. "What do you want?" he asked frankly.
"I want your advice, of course," Thor laughed. "You always give good advice."
The fact that he even said that, knowing the kind of trouble Loki liked to get into, and the fact that Loki didn't care much for Sif, was a sign of how badly Thor needed someone to give him good advice. Loki let his lips twitch up, and pointed out, "You want my advice about how to court -- girls? Because of my vast experience?" It had been a year and Loki was now fifteen, but his only interest in girls was the occasional thought that if Thor was interested in girls, Loki should look into them as well, because otherwise Thor might 'win' at... something.
Thor laughed, of course. Vast experience with girls! Funny. "I thought you might know something about girls. You know, from reading, or the like." He peered curiously about Loki's slate, but it was covered in magical runes and he could not read them, so he quickly gave up. "You're halfway to being a girl, if nothing else." He snatched one of Loki's hands, peering at his black nail polish.
Loki yanked his hand free, and flicked Thor's forehead with quick fingers. "You're all the way to being a classless thug, so someone needs to balance it out," he informed his brother, who laughed again, good-natured as ever. "I have no particular knowledge of the ways of women. I just know what I like, and contrary to your belief, Sif is not guaranteed nor even likely to feel the same way."
Thor sighed, finally, and relaxed again, draping over the couch. "Perhaps I'll ask Mother," he said. "I was thinking about... I saw a locket, in the marketplace. Gold. I was thinking about buying it for Sif as a present."
Both of those were sound ideas. Mother would know about what a girl would want, of course, and logic suggested that any girl who had any interest in the boy who gave it to her would be thrilled by the gift of a golden locket.
Which was why Loki suddenly thought, Why just turn him away? I'm sick of hearing about this, and encouraging him to do well will only result in more of it. Why not -- stop it now?
"A gold locket? A fine gift," he said. "For most girls."
Thor looked up at him, brows drawing together. "You think she would not like it?"
"You know Sif better than I," Loki said. "Would she prefer a feminine gift, like a gown or jewelry, or a gift that reflects her interests?"
Only he suspected that Sif, for all her pride in not being one of those 'pretty girls' who preened in front of the mirror, was in fact quite vain about how pretty she was. She would deny it until her deathbed, but Loki had seen the flash of hurt and fury when he accused her of being manly. She didn't want to be considered girly, but she didn't want to be treated like a man, either. The locket would please her, because it would tell her that Thor saw her as a woman, and not just as a comrade-in-arms who by some coincidence of birth happened to be of the opposite gender.
Still, his wording had tangled Thor up. He admitted, "She would be furious to receive a gift that tells her she should behave more like a lady."
"Exactly," Loki said, encouraging. "And Mother, you know, I don't think she would be a good one to ask."
"Why not?"
It was almost a shame to lie to those incredibly blue eyes, that trusting face. Almost. "Mother only knows what it's like to be Mother, and she was never like Sif. But someone I think would really know what Sif would like..." Loki paused for a long beat, thinking. "...would be Fandral," he pronounced.
Fandral was a skilled warrior and a friend: older than the princes, though not by much, but he had begun cutting a swath through the ladies of Asgard like a hurricane, and they swooned in his passage. It seemed natural to assume that he would know how to court all manner of women.
Sif would have broken every bone in his hand if Fandral made any attempt to get near her, Loki felt confident saying.
Thor straightened up, energized. "Yes! You have something there. Fandral is an expert at courting women." His hand crashed down on Loki's shoulder, and Loki flinched. "You see? You do give good advice."
"Yes," Loki agreed, rolling his shoulder. "There's that problem solved."
But Fandral, damn his eyes, couldn't look into that trusting face and give him the same terrible advice. He told Thor to talk to Mother, and Mother told Thor that the locket sounded lovely.
Sif adored it, and thereafter, she and Thor were inseparable.
=
It became difficult not to spend time with Sif when Thor brought her along everywhere. Loki found himself yearning for the days when he had only joked about Sif being Thor's girlfriend, because the real thing was frustrating. It didn't help that he was the only one who was not enamored of the lovely Sif.
"You don't like me," Sif said one day during their riding lessons. Thor had gone crashing ahead at full-speed like a fool, and the mentor had followed after him to try to stop him.
Loki sighed, more irritably than was convincing, and said, "What gives you that idea? Have I not been the very soul of patience, even though you and Thor both treat horses like a stubborn keg, to be kicked when it stops dispensing drink?" He lowered his hand to stroke his mount's neck.
"Do you even care about these horses?" she demanded, some of her temper flaring up. "Stop pretending!"
"For your information, I do happen to be very fond of horses, and I'll thank you not to mistreat them," he told her coolly.
Sif let out a breath, looked away, and then turned back to him and said, more patiently, "I will take more care to be gentle with my mount, then." To demonstrate, she lowered a hand to stroke the beast's neck.
He wished she would lose her temper more, instead of struggling to remain reasonable. He hated that she was reasonable. He ratcheted down his own response, and said, "I appreciate that."
"But you do dislike me, don't you? I don't understand." Sif looked up at him, her dark brown gaze studying him between curtains of her bright velvet hair. "Why should we not get along?"
"Some people simply don't," Loki said to her, honestly.
"But why should we not get along?" She put her hand to her chest. "I want us to be friends!"
She wanted that. And why shouldn't they, really? She would likely understand the hardship he went through. She was a faithful friend and sound ally; he had seen that much of her to know. She was not even an empty-headed thug like most of those who surrounded him.
But when he thought back to endless evenings of Thor talking about her perfection, it set his teeth on edge.
Finally, he asked, "Because Thor would want it?"
"Because Thor loves you. He would die for you in a heartbeat. And I would like to be friends with the boy who is worthy of such loyalty."
Who said I was worthy? crossed his mind.
He didn't like being defined by his relationship to Thor. He still held to the belief that someday perhaps he would be king, and then Thor would be his brother instead of the other way around; that would show everyone who laughed at him now.
But he knew that what she was saying was that she only knew of him from Thor, and that made her want to know him. Not because of what he was to Thor, but because of what that meant about his character.
A well-meaning idiot, just like Thor. For a moment he was tempted to give in.
"You have much in common with him," he said.
Sif rolled her eyes. "Yes. I recall you saying how manly I am." She flipped her hair over her shoulder, letting the golden waves bounce down her back, straightening her shoulders as if to show off to the world how very not manly she was.
Loki's lips quirked up. Apologized for, but not forgotten. In that way she had more in common with Loki than with Thor. "No, not like that," he said. "He is always talking about how beautiful you are, how gentle and how compassionate. I should have known that you would be so generous, even after I have offended you in the past. Sif the Gentle, is that not what they say?"
But she was not smiling, and her gaze darted ahead of them. The words had been carefully chosen, and they did not charm her. Sweet words, describing a sweet girl, not a warrior.
"Before I introduce my boot to their teeth, mostly," she said, and he laughed. Her gaze was sober on his. "It is a mocking name, meant to be cruel. No more praise than Loki the Trickster."
A name he enjoyed, for it betrayed how much they stung from his barbs and pranks that made them look like fools. But he supposed if they had dubbed her Sif the Savage, she would enjoy that name, as well.
"Not mockery from Thor. He thinks it truly, for he thinks as highly of you as you do of him," Loki told her, shaking his head, and then paused, taking in the tightened lines of her face as if he had no idea what effect these words would have on her. "You seem surprised," he observed. "I suppose he mustn't say so in front of you. He would hate to say something that would offend you."
"I am not offended," she said firmly, spurring her horse on a little quicker. Loki noticed with some annoyance that her heels kicked into the creature's side in a way that would surely hurt it, but only nudged his own mount into following with subtler signals of his legs.
"Good. I'm glad," Loki said. "You and Thor just -- make each other so happy, anyone can see that. I would hate to think I had driven a wedge between you."
"Thor is a romantic," she announced. "He would see beauty and compassion in any girl he cared for. That is part of his charm."
Damn, he thought.
=
Loki found the queen in her garden, carefully attending to her flowers, but she looked up when he entered and smiled, starting to get to her feet again. That was all the invitation he needed.
He rushed in and blurted out, "Mother, you must do something. It's unbearable!"
"What is, dear heart?" she asked, her brows lifting. She came closer, lifting a hand to gently guide his hair from his face.
"Thor and Sif," he said, bitterly.
Thor was not the kind of boy who bragged, but it hardly took a genius to know that he and Sif were fully intimate. It always annoyed Loki when Thor got 'ahead' of him in any tangible way, even if Thor would never even known it was a contest and Loki had no interest in winning and Thor was older anyway so it made sense that he would reach such milestones first.
But it annoyed him still more to have it so evident. It felt like he could hardly round a corner without almost colliding into Thor and Sif pressed up against a pillar; he could hardly sit through a dinner without the two of them staring significantly at each other, the air heating between them until Loki wanted to gag and excuse himself.
Frigga's lips quirked up, and then she chuckled, turning him to one of the elegant chairs set out for when she liked to take tea in the garden. "I think perhaps we should have a talk, Loki," she said.
"We should," he said, darkly.
She had servants go to bring them tea, and Loki sat, letting out his breath. He didn't often take tea with his mother anymore, although when he was younger he used to much prefer it to the loud sweaty tangle of boys that Thor caroused with in the training hall. Still, she made idle chitchat while they waited, and then the servants brought the tea, and the first sip of the hot warm herbs eased some of the tension from him, in spite of himself.
Finally, she said, soft, "It is all right to be jealous."
"I'm not!" he said, immediately defensive.
Frigga waved a hand, pacifying. "Loki, Thor loves you as much as ever. You know that no young woman could ever come between you two. You have a bond as brothers that can never be broken."
A flicker of unease traced down his spine, but Loki ignored it. "I am not afraid he will abandon me," he said firmly. "As if Thor is capable of abandoning anyone, ever. He gives his heart to everyone he meets."
Frigga chuckled quietly. "I cannot argue so much with that... But what, then, is your objection?"
He shoved aside his agitation and sat up more straight, his expression sober. "Is this really what you want for him?"
Her eyebrows lifted.
An acceptable response, technically. Loki forged ahead, saying, "Sif is -- entirely unmanageable. She's beautiful, certainly, but what manner of queen will she make if Thor becomes king? She's reckless and rude and has all the manners of a wild boar. She enjoys fighting and she thinks she's better than those women who do not. Is that appropriate in the wife of a prince of Asgard?"
"They aren't married yet, Loki," she said, with amusement. "And, though I think you may be exaggerating things slightly, Sif is just a girl. She has a thousand years of growing up to do."
"She has less than ten," he insisted. "I know how it works, Mother. We're full-grown by the time we're twenty-five. That's what everyone says."
"I know this may be difficult for most children, but -- you are so clever, Loki, and you lend your mind so well to everything. So I ask you to think about this." Frigga wrapped her fingers around her cup. Her hair was woven in a crown around her head, but a few tendrils swept over her shoulders to hang about her face. "There is no magic date on which an Asgardian grows up, and becomes who they will be for the rest of their lives. All the races of the Realms grow and change for as long as they live. You will be fully mature, and your physical aging will slow, when you are twenty-five, but that does not mean you are done growing. That is never the case. And it will be many years before we need to worry about who will succeed your father, and who his queen will be."
He knew that, intellectually. But he found it difficult to imagine Sif as anything other than the proud, impetuous, emotional creature she was now. It was hard to tell himself that a decade -- that a hundred years, a span of time he could scarcely even yet imagine -- would tame her.
"What if it becomes an issue now?" he asked her, steeling his shoulders. "What if she becomes with child? It would ruin Thor's future to--"
Frigga laughed. Which was not an acceptable response, and Loki flushed, setting down his cup of tea and straightening himself with ruffled dignity. Immediately his mother was on her feet, circling around the table and kneeling at his feet.
"Mother, stop--" he said, annoyed, but she reached up and trailed fingers against the side of his jaw, cupping his neck.
"I will not say that your concerns are foolish. They are not," she said, firmly. "It is true that there may be trouble down the line, if Thor wishes to marry Sif, and she remains headstrong and impulsive. It is even true that a youthful dalliance may have undesired, unplanned consequences."
Loki frowned, although the words comforted him slightly. He still felt the sting of her laughter, but the calm warmth of her eyes on his, the fondness in her voice, made it hard to bring to the front of his mind.
"I know that these concerns are because you are a good brother." Her fingers gripped him lightly, encouragingly. "But a good brother... must also accept Thor's decision. And if Thor loves Sif, then you owe it to him to put your worries about the future aside, and to be a friend to them both. Who knows? Perhaps with your advice, you can keep them both from making a mistake they would regret."
"I've been trying," he said, soft and plaintive.
"Not try to correct mistakes about what may be in the future," Frigga countered. "But try to encourage them to make good choices about what is happening now." She smiled, sympathetic. "Like it or not, Sif is a part of our lives now."
Just then, laughter cut between them, and Loki's head jerked up. Sure enough, Sif and Thor raced below the balcony where they sat, Thor chasing her; she was headed to the copse of trees at the edge of the garden, and then swung up around the branch, hair flowing out behind her like a banner as she twisted. Her feet collided hard with Thor's chest despite his attempt to evade, sending him sprawling onto the ground. Then Sif sat astride his chest, and even from his distance, Loki could see Thor reach up to tangle wondrous fingers through the waves of her glittering gold tresses.
"Honestly, those two," Frigga said, huffing as she got to her feet.
"Honestly," said Loki, an idea forming in his mind.
=
The scream was so loud and so piercing that it woke Loki from a sound sleep at the early hours of the morning. His lips curved up and he stretched over his covers as footsteps pounded down the hall, away from him.
This was going to be good.
He was careful not to imagine it in his mind, because he cautioned himself against the real thing potentially not living up to his expectations. But he dressed, leisurely, and then headed down the hallways to the wing of the palace where the bloodcurdling cry had come from, finding the pillars outside Sif's room crowded with whispering servants and anxious guards.
Loki sidled his way through until he came to his father's arm, Odin standing by almost helplessly as he watched the scene within. "What happened, Father?" he asked, soft.
Odin glanced at him, lifted a hand and settled it on his shoulder. "Someone... Someone assaulted the Lady Sif in the night," he rumbled.
"Assaulted?" he echoed. That seemed like a bit of an overreaction. She hadn't been assaulted. "Is she hurt?"
"No... But--"
"You did this!"
Her ragged cry came from deeper in the room. Sif started to shove past the ring of people nearest her, Thor and Frigga among them, but a conciliatory guard grabbed her arm when she would have gone for Loki. She was not crying, but her eyes were puffy and her face bright red -- though what was most noticeable, of course, was the fact that her hair had been shorn off just at the ear, clumsily hacked so that it formed an uneven line. What remained on her head was not its former vibrant gold, but a dull, lifeless black.
Sif was staring straight at Loki, trembling. His eyes were carefully wide, shocked by the accusation. "What are you talking about?"
"It was you! Nobody here hates me as much as you! Who else would have done this to me?!" she screamed, struggling again; the guard held to her tighter, now with both hands.
"She's mad," Loki said, turning his head to his family. "She's just lashing out at me because she doesn't know who it could be."
But Frigga moved around the furious girl, stepping quickly over to her youngest, and taking his arms in her hands. Her face was heavily lined, but her eyes clear, her touch gentle. "Did you not do this, Loki?"
Although there was no judgment, no accusation in her, he suddenly felt the weight of what this meant to all of them pressing down on him. Loki looked around again at his father, his brother, Sif; the shocked soldiers and servants outside. They were all horrified. And he didn't understand. "I don't know where she's coming up with this claim," he protested.
"Then just tell me," Frigga said, softly. "Just say you did not do it."
Five little words. He lied frequently enough, and he was good at it; they would be so easy to say, and she wanted to believe him. But at the same time, it felt like she must know, at least well enough to lend credence to Sif's hysterical accusation, and she would certainly know if they had to ask Heimdall for his word on the matter. And he was so aware that everyone was staring at him, and they were all so shocked, and suddenly he felt like he had done something truly horrible and he didn't even know what it was.
"I--" he started, soft. "I-- don't see why it's such a big deal."
"Not a big deal?" Sif shrieked. "You invaded my bedroom while I slept and hacked off a piece of me!"
"It's just hair!" Loki said desperately, looking up to his mother for understanding. This wasn't how he'd wanted it to be at all.
Frigga enfolded him in her arms, holding him tight, but she whispered, "Dear heart, this was very wrong," her voice broken with tears, and then he thought he might cry as well.
And he still didn't know why.
Sif roared like a wounded animal and lunged for him, but the guard held her back, and then Thor was there and she wavered and collapsed into his arms, sobbing quietly against him with a fistful of limp black hair that had once gleamed gold clutched in her hand.
Frigga ushered Loki from the room, Odin leading the way, barking for the crowd outside to disperse. Over Sif's shoulder, Thor's features were like marble, chiseled and hard and coldly furious. His eyes followed Loki out of the room while the younger boy's stomach dropped. This was not going at all like he'd wanted.
The king did not speak to his son once he was safely ensconced in their corner, but the way he slammed the door behind him as he went out to deal with the important affairs of the day made Loki flinch, and he knew that his father was just as mad as everyone else.
"It wasn't a big deal," he said, struggling to hold in his own frustration. All this, over hair.
"You stole something from her against her will, without her knowledge," Frigga said, quietly. "Something she will never be able to take back. Isn't that right?"
It had been a simple enough enchantment, but he knew there was no simple way to reverse it. He shook his head, muted.
"She could not fight back. You took from her while she was powerless to stop you -- a despicable and cowardly act, on top of a cruel one."
"You make it sound so much worse than it is," he said, pleadingly, and she said, sharply, "No! You are only thinking of yourself. You must stop thinking of what you want, or you will never be able to see beyond yourself. Think of what Sif feels. How you would feel if you woke up in her position."
He'd thought Sif would be upset, yes, but upset because her secret vanity had been punctured, because she could no longer hide behind Sif the Fair; he'd thought people would laugh and tease behind her back at her new look, ugly and plain; he'd thought perhaps that Thor would see that she was not so remarkable without her mesmerizing fall of hair, and then he would be done with her. That was what he'd wanted.
He had never thought about what Sif wanted, except to feel smug about how he would take it from her.
If Sif had come into his room at night, shaved his head and made it so that it would never grow back, not in the thousands of years of their lives...
He could not imagine ever forgiving her. Ever forgetting what she had done. He would have seen the reminder every day and hated her with the passion of one finally vindicated in the dislike he had been determined to find in her ever since the day she came into his life, tangled up in Thor's heart. That was what he would have felt, even over just hair, and it was what he had done to her.
Loki trembled, the tears spilling now. "I didn't mean to," he said, weakly. "I didn't... I never meant to hurt her like that."
Frigga turned away from him, bowing her head. "No," she murmured. "It was only a bit of fun, I suppose."
That hurt most of all. Later that day, he knocked on Sif's door gingerly, and found her in her room, sharpening blades, her face still swollen from tears she pretended now she had never wept. After all, she was not vain, right? Thor was gone; but that meant that his brother might have been avoiding him. He supposed he should be thankful for that. Thor always overreacted when the people he loved were hurt, and when one of them had hurt another -- he would be both angry and betrayed.
"What do you want?" she asked dully.
"I'm sorry," he said, hushed. "I know I can probably -- never make it up to you. I know that words aren't good enough. But I never even thought it would be like that..."
"Just go," she said. Her head turned away, and her fingers curled around a throwing knife. He thought she might send it his way. "I don't want to see you."
"You did nothing to deserve this," he murmured helplessly, retreating.
In no time at all, everyone became accustomed to seeing Sif with black hair; she grew it out, and soon it was pretty, if nothing like how it had used to be. But it was years before Loki ever saw Sif look at him again without the memory of that morning in her cold eyes.
=
Loki drew back the dagger, holding it by its tip, and said, "The mortals call you Thor's wife, you know."
"They do not!" Sif said indignantly, and kicked his ankle as he made the throw. It went wide of the target, plunging into the wall beside it. Loki scowled at her as he straightened up, and she smiled at him, sunny.
"You are supposed to be teaching me to throw these," he reminded her, straightening to his full height, considerably above hers.
Sif told him, "Then perhaps you should learn, instead of tell your teacher tall tales." She withdrew another from her belt pouch, handing it over.
Loki got into position again, readying the small weapon, and paused to let her correct his stance. Three hundred years old and he was only just beginning to feel that his weapons knowledge was a trifle underwhelming. He had spent years learning sorcery and brushed off weapons training as a burden for the meatheads, but with the trouble Thor was always getting them into, the basics were not nearly sufficient.
"I needn't joke about what the mortals believe," he said. "They know so little about us, and they fill in all the details in their fairy tales the most adorable ways. Why joke, when their stories are already so hilarious?"
"Like what?" Sif said, with amusement.
"Would you believe they think me a frost giant?" He lifted his eyebrows at her.
She laughed, slapping his shoulder. "I do believe that, actually! You are about as trustworthy, if half as tall."
Loki smirked. "They have heard enough gossip in which I am a troublemaker that they have naturally cast me in the race of the villains," he said, modestly. He threw the knife again, and this time it plunged into the target.
"You have the angle of the throw well, but you are not aiming correctly," Sif told him. "Concentrate more on the projection. What do you think the mortals would make of this?"
He made a thoughtful noise, imagining the trajectory of the knife, and repositioning his aim. "Naturally, I -- somehow used my foul frost giant cunning to trick you into telling me your secrets of combat, so that I could use them to terrorize the Midgardians, the way that I do."
"Why would you need a few little knives when you could just step on them?"
"I haven't yet heard any rationalizations why I may be a mere six feet tall, and flesh-toned instead of snow. But I am a very powerful shapeshifter, you know," he said. The dagger hit near the center of the target.
Sif clapped. "Nicely-done," she commended. "But I have not known you to have much gift for shapeshifting. Illusions, but shapeshifting?"
He shrugged. "How else would I be responsible for every avalanche, every wayward child, and every wheel that breaks on their wagons?"
"You take it well," she observed, and folded her arms.
"What do the mortals know?" Loki said, with another shrug. "They eavesdrop on our conversations, and they take what little they managed to overhear and attempt to explain it in their stories."
"I suppose I should be grateful they haven't made me out to be a man," she said, chuckling.
Loki smiled at her faintly. In the decades and centuries since they had become friends, he had come to admire Sif, and he'd like to think she him. Though they had never become close -- not the way she was genuinely fond of Hogun, or the way Loki was friends with Fandral -- they were, at the least, happy allies. In a way, it seemed harsh to tell her that they thought little of her at all, beyond the wife of Thor and a patron goddess of harvest. There were no tales of Sif the Brave among the mortals. Perhaps it was her own fault, for visiting rarely enough that they had no glimpse of the shieldmaiden who fought so fiercely, arm in arm with men half again her size. All they knew was that she was ever with Thor, and that Thor was their hero, their savior, their valiant champion.
Still, he told her, "A mysterious omission, considering how the rest of their tales have evolved."
As if on cue, Thor and the Warriors Three broke into the room with a ruckus, sending a gust of snow swirling into the warm tavern, to the amused complaints of the patrons already present. Sif stepped around Loki and was almost immediately swept up into Thor's massive arms, bristling with furs to keep him warm as he twirled her around.
"Good evening!" he crowed, a nod to Loki to include him in a slightly less exuberant version of his welcome. "I was hoping to meet with you here! Sif, Loki, this is Ewald, magistrate of this town. Ewald... Loki, and the Lady Sif."
"I have heard of you," greeted the slim man behind him, dark and bristling with beard. He looked pleased. "Thor's dearest companions! No one in this territory will dare cross your paths."
Volstagg's voice bellowed out, "Did I just hear the Valiant Volstagg dismissed?!" nearly drowning out Sif's pointed reminder, "And not unimpressive warriors in their own right."
Thor only laughed at this, and clapped Ewald on this shoulder. "I see you two have been busy while we fetched the magistrate. If these are the keys to our rooms, I will go up ahead. Come up and join us when you're ready!" He waved Ewald with them, and then the tavern room fell far quieter when they were all gone.
Sif sighed, dropping onto a bench. "Well, now I need a break," she said, wryly. "Thor will really take the wind out of you."
"No one knows that better than me," Loki said, chuckling. He watched her while she called over a barmaid and ordered a flagon of mead for them each.
She seemed more than merely deflated. She seemed troubled about something. Thor had breezed in and out again, but his delight to see her had been very real. She had been the one to volunteer to stay behind, so she was not upset to be left.
Luckily, she gave him a hint. "I think I know now what you meant, all those years ago when we first met. About not wanting to be defined in terms of Thor." She shook her head, smile still on her lips.
Ah. The inevitable. "He does sort of become the center of attention, doesn't he?" Loki agreed, laughing again, quietly. "Sooner or later, all the Nine Realms begin to say, oh, it's Thor's brother!" And then added, snorting, "Those who haven't made up a tale where I am some hideous monster's spawn."
Sif couldn't help a laugh at that, and lifted her glass to toast him as the barmaid brought them over. "Doesn't it bother you?"
"Oh, yes," Loki admitted. "But what choice do I have? I am his brother."
And the dream he'd had as a child, about competing with Thor for the throne -- that dream was long gone, gracefully abandoned. How could he hold to that delusion when Thor never even had to try to excel? He was the best at everything he bothered to turn his hand to, and everyone adored him. Even though Loki was the one who had lost to him, still he couldn't help being among their number.
That was when he realized, and he found himself saying, "It's different for you."
He didn't lift his gaze to look at her, although he could feel her eyes on him. He said, "The problem with loving Thor is that... his light shines so brightly that he casts a shadow long and dark. It's -- a little overwhelming, really. How do you make anyone see you when Thor stands by your side? How do you gain notoriety when Thor loves you so much that he tackles all problems for you?"
Then he looked up, just as Sif was looking away. Her gaze was distant, thoughtful. She felt the same way, he saw.
The same way that he had felt, all this time. That she loved Thor; great, wonderful, sweet Thor; that they made each other maddeningly happy, but that she also struggled against being only Thor's.
"I wanted to make my name," she admitted. "I wanted... people to see me as an example. That they had a choice, and if they wanted -- other girls could make their way as I had, that they weren't strange or changelings for wanting it. I wanted them to be able to say, The Lady Sif did it, so I could too. I wanted to be known, and respected.
"But no matter what I do, no matter how I try, even after all this time... The one they respect is Thor," she finished, fierce and broken.
Loki felt very quiet, and very still. He said, almost inaudibly, "Thor loves you, you know. He would die for you without a second thought. If it were up to him, he would spend the rest of his life--"
"But it isn't just up to him," Sif said, and he thought her eyes were unnaturally bright; rimmed with red in a way he hadn't seen in a long, long time. "I have to be alone for a time. Don't wait up."
Loki watched her throw on her coat and head for the door with long strides, and then slowly he wrapped his fingers around his goblet.
"Huh. Mother was right," he murmured to himself. "All I had to do was think beyond what I wanted."
He drank his mead and tried to determine if he was celebrating or drowning his victory.
Discusses Thor/Sif, the Shadow of Thor's Greatness, and hints of your pick of the following: Thor/Loki, Sif/Loki, or Thor+Loki. Loki is the POV character.
.jealous games.
Most of Loki's impression of Sif, to begin with, was, She should be a passing hand at magic for how she has bewitched my brother. Thor talked about her incessantly, his face alight and his tongue tripping over itself with all that he had to say. Sif the Fair, Sif the Gentle, Sif the Clever, Sif the Brave, Sif the Proud, Sif the Overwhelmingly Perfect. Though younger, Loki reminded himself that Thor was only an adolescent boy, barely fifteen and of a race that would live to be eons old. Adolescent boys were prone to insipid crushes.
Still, the unending admiration got on his nerves. Which was why he was seeking things to dislike about her by the time they met.
It wasn't hard. Their first meeting was polite and proper enough, but on their second he came across her playing in the woods, dressed in leather and dirty cloth, her legs kicking through the air as she swung up onto a branch of the tree she had targeted. She was beautiful -- her features refined, her eyes warm -- but most stunning was her hair, thick waves of pale gold that shimmered as they bounced about her shoulders. It seemed almost to have a life of its own, vibrant and full of movement.
"Will you just be staring all day?" Sif called down from her tree, sparing him only a glance for her part.
"Do you recognize me?" Loki asked her. It had been some weeks since their first introduction.
"Of course," was her response. "Thor's brother. The one who practices with magic instead of the sword. Loki."
He had been just on the verge of assuming that she had forgotten his name. "Prince Loki," he corrected her. If she heard him, or cared, she gave no sign, swinging up to a higher branch and settling astride it. "You have it, although I would appreciate it if you would not define me in terms of your boyfriend."
"He is not my boyfriend," she corrected immediately. "And aren't you doing the same thing to me?"
"I'm doing the opposite," Loki informed her. Defining Thor in terms of her, because she had him so utterly wrapped around her fingers.
She had nothing to say to that, shifting her grip on the bark and slipping around the branch to dangle from it upside-down. Then she twisted nimbly to set herself in motion, and leaped to the next branch. If she had fallen, she could have broken bones. But she didn't fall.
Loki asked, uncertainly, "Doesn't that scratch up your hands?"
"Well, yes," she said, and then laughed. "I know how the story goes. The pretty girl must spend hours fussing over herself in the mirror, and could never bear to do anything that might mar her flawless skin. Some girls do, I imagine. But I am not one of them." She stated it proudly. "I wash my face, brush my hair, and then go out to get dirty!"
Loki tucked his own hands in his arms, crossing them over his chest. He couldn't stand the idea of putting his hands to such torture. The only times he had ever climbed trees had been at Thor's incitement.
"How lovely for you," he said, still watching her. "You must be so proud of yourself for not conforming to what is expected of you." Thinking yourself so much better than those other girls.
Sif settled back against a tree branch, breathing quickly. "Aren't you?" she returned, her brows drawing together, puzzled.
He felt a beat of surprise take him. They hadn't spoken much in their first brief meetings, mostly a polite exchange of pleasantries; Loki had declined to go play with the two of them. "You think so?" he asked.
"When Thor said you were studying magic, I said, good for him! It seemed similar enough to a girl studying the sword. I thought -- maybe we had that in common. Breaking away from what everyone says we should do, because of how we were born." She brushed her hair back from her face, watching him.
Loki let a beat pass before admitting, "Well, I won't say I'm not proud," and tossed his hair back, as if to prove to her that he was. He wondered what it was like for her: if she endured the same barbs of mockery that he did from his peers, the same condescending tolerance from adults, like it was a phase he would inevitably grow out of.
She laughed readily enough, and then brightened. "You do fight, though, don't you?"
"Of course I do."
"Let's wrestle!" Abruptly Sif dove out of the tree and came for him.
Loki tensed. He had no doubt that he could overpower most girls of Asgard effortlessly. But Thor had spoken enough about Sif's skill -- great enough that even Thor fell not infrequently in matches with her, Thor who Loki had never defeated in terms of strength alone but only when trickery and wit could come into the equation -- that he had his doubts about this girl.
And in spite of his own feelings of superiority that he was better than other Asgardians for stepping outside what was normal to do what he was best at, he still didn't want to lose to a girl.
"I don't want to!" he protested quickly.
To her credit, she stopped; Thor wouldn't have. She laughed. "Afraid of losing to a girl?"
He hated being predictable. He snapped back at her, "Afraid of having to hit my brother's girlfriend. Which wouldn't be a question if she weren't more a man than he is!"
When she punched him in the jaw, it was not part of any wrestling match.
Loki disliked Sif.
=
Thor dropped down onto the low couch next to his brother and pronounced, "I need to do something to show Sif I want to be with her."
"This again," Loki murmured to himself, scratching at his slate.
Loki and Sif had long apologized for the poor outcome of their second meeting, but his faint agitation over her had not faded. As Thor and Sif became better friends Thor's admiration for her only grew, and then Loki found himself regaled with not only tales of her beauty and uniqueness, but also the way that her head turned when she laughed, the way her gleaming gold hair fell in waves over her shoulders when she concentrated, the way that she wrapped her arms around her knees when she looked up at the sky from a dewy hilltop at sunset.
It was tiresome. Loki was tired of being this kind of confidant.
"Can we not go back to talking about your swordsmaster?" he asked.
"You would like her better if you spent more time with her," Thor insisted.
It was almost certainly true. She had not been objectionable company, and a part of him was... curious about her. But the problem there was that Loki did not want to like her.
He lowered his slate. "What do you want?" he asked frankly.
"I want your advice, of course," Thor laughed. "You always give good advice."
The fact that he even said that, knowing the kind of trouble Loki liked to get into, and the fact that Loki didn't care much for Sif, was a sign of how badly Thor needed someone to give him good advice. Loki let his lips twitch up, and pointed out, "You want my advice about how to court -- girls? Because of my vast experience?" It had been a year and Loki was now fifteen, but his only interest in girls was the occasional thought that if Thor was interested in girls, Loki should look into them as well, because otherwise Thor might 'win' at... something.
Thor laughed, of course. Vast experience with girls! Funny. "I thought you might know something about girls. You know, from reading, or the like." He peered curiously about Loki's slate, but it was covered in magical runes and he could not read them, so he quickly gave up. "You're halfway to being a girl, if nothing else." He snatched one of Loki's hands, peering at his black nail polish.
Loki yanked his hand free, and flicked Thor's forehead with quick fingers. "You're all the way to being a classless thug, so someone needs to balance it out," he informed his brother, who laughed again, good-natured as ever. "I have no particular knowledge of the ways of women. I just know what I like, and contrary to your belief, Sif is not guaranteed nor even likely to feel the same way."
Thor sighed, finally, and relaxed again, draping over the couch. "Perhaps I'll ask Mother," he said. "I was thinking about... I saw a locket, in the marketplace. Gold. I was thinking about buying it for Sif as a present."
Both of those were sound ideas. Mother would know about what a girl would want, of course, and logic suggested that any girl who had any interest in the boy who gave it to her would be thrilled by the gift of a golden locket.
Which was why Loki suddenly thought, Why just turn him away? I'm sick of hearing about this, and encouraging him to do well will only result in more of it. Why not -- stop it now?
"A gold locket? A fine gift," he said. "For most girls."
Thor looked up at him, brows drawing together. "You think she would not like it?"
"You know Sif better than I," Loki said. "Would she prefer a feminine gift, like a gown or jewelry, or a gift that reflects her interests?"
Only he suspected that Sif, for all her pride in not being one of those 'pretty girls' who preened in front of the mirror, was in fact quite vain about how pretty she was. She would deny it until her deathbed, but Loki had seen the flash of hurt and fury when he accused her of being manly. She didn't want to be considered girly, but she didn't want to be treated like a man, either. The locket would please her, because it would tell her that Thor saw her as a woman, and not just as a comrade-in-arms who by some coincidence of birth happened to be of the opposite gender.
Still, his wording had tangled Thor up. He admitted, "She would be furious to receive a gift that tells her she should behave more like a lady."
"Exactly," Loki said, encouraging. "And Mother, you know, I don't think she would be a good one to ask."
"Why not?"
It was almost a shame to lie to those incredibly blue eyes, that trusting face. Almost. "Mother only knows what it's like to be Mother, and she was never like Sif. But someone I think would really know what Sif would like..." Loki paused for a long beat, thinking. "...would be Fandral," he pronounced.
Fandral was a skilled warrior and a friend: older than the princes, though not by much, but he had begun cutting a swath through the ladies of Asgard like a hurricane, and they swooned in his passage. It seemed natural to assume that he would know how to court all manner of women.
Sif would have broken every bone in his hand if Fandral made any attempt to get near her, Loki felt confident saying.
Thor straightened up, energized. "Yes! You have something there. Fandral is an expert at courting women." His hand crashed down on Loki's shoulder, and Loki flinched. "You see? You do give good advice."
"Yes," Loki agreed, rolling his shoulder. "There's that problem solved."
But Fandral, damn his eyes, couldn't look into that trusting face and give him the same terrible advice. He told Thor to talk to Mother, and Mother told Thor that the locket sounded lovely.
Sif adored it, and thereafter, she and Thor were inseparable.
=
It became difficult not to spend time with Sif when Thor brought her along everywhere. Loki found himself yearning for the days when he had only joked about Sif being Thor's girlfriend, because the real thing was frustrating. It didn't help that he was the only one who was not enamored of the lovely Sif.
"You don't like me," Sif said one day during their riding lessons. Thor had gone crashing ahead at full-speed like a fool, and the mentor had followed after him to try to stop him.
Loki sighed, more irritably than was convincing, and said, "What gives you that idea? Have I not been the very soul of patience, even though you and Thor both treat horses like a stubborn keg, to be kicked when it stops dispensing drink?" He lowered his hand to stroke his mount's neck.
"Do you even care about these horses?" she demanded, some of her temper flaring up. "Stop pretending!"
"For your information, I do happen to be very fond of horses, and I'll thank you not to mistreat them," he told her coolly.
Sif let out a breath, looked away, and then turned back to him and said, more patiently, "I will take more care to be gentle with my mount, then." To demonstrate, she lowered a hand to stroke the beast's neck.
He wished she would lose her temper more, instead of struggling to remain reasonable. He hated that she was reasonable. He ratcheted down his own response, and said, "I appreciate that."
"But you do dislike me, don't you? I don't understand." Sif looked up at him, her dark brown gaze studying him between curtains of her bright velvet hair. "Why should we not get along?"
"Some people simply don't," Loki said to her, honestly.
"But why should we not get along?" She put her hand to her chest. "I want us to be friends!"
She wanted that. And why shouldn't they, really? She would likely understand the hardship he went through. She was a faithful friend and sound ally; he had seen that much of her to know. She was not even an empty-headed thug like most of those who surrounded him.
But when he thought back to endless evenings of Thor talking about her perfection, it set his teeth on edge.
Finally, he asked, "Because Thor would want it?"
"Because Thor loves you. He would die for you in a heartbeat. And I would like to be friends with the boy who is worthy of such loyalty."
Who said I was worthy? crossed his mind.
He didn't like being defined by his relationship to Thor. He still held to the belief that someday perhaps he would be king, and then Thor would be his brother instead of the other way around; that would show everyone who laughed at him now.
But he knew that what she was saying was that she only knew of him from Thor, and that made her want to know him. Not because of what he was to Thor, but because of what that meant about his character.
A well-meaning idiot, just like Thor. For a moment he was tempted to give in.
"You have much in common with him," he said.
Sif rolled her eyes. "Yes. I recall you saying how manly I am." She flipped her hair over her shoulder, letting the golden waves bounce down her back, straightening her shoulders as if to show off to the world how very not manly she was.
Loki's lips quirked up. Apologized for, but not forgotten. In that way she had more in common with Loki than with Thor. "No, not like that," he said. "He is always talking about how beautiful you are, how gentle and how compassionate. I should have known that you would be so generous, even after I have offended you in the past. Sif the Gentle, is that not what they say?"
But she was not smiling, and her gaze darted ahead of them. The words had been carefully chosen, and they did not charm her. Sweet words, describing a sweet girl, not a warrior.
"Before I introduce my boot to their teeth, mostly," she said, and he laughed. Her gaze was sober on his. "It is a mocking name, meant to be cruel. No more praise than Loki the Trickster."
A name he enjoyed, for it betrayed how much they stung from his barbs and pranks that made them look like fools. But he supposed if they had dubbed her Sif the Savage, she would enjoy that name, as well.
"Not mockery from Thor. He thinks it truly, for he thinks as highly of you as you do of him," Loki told her, shaking his head, and then paused, taking in the tightened lines of her face as if he had no idea what effect these words would have on her. "You seem surprised," he observed. "I suppose he mustn't say so in front of you. He would hate to say something that would offend you."
"I am not offended," she said firmly, spurring her horse on a little quicker. Loki noticed with some annoyance that her heels kicked into the creature's side in a way that would surely hurt it, but only nudged his own mount into following with subtler signals of his legs.
"Good. I'm glad," Loki said. "You and Thor just -- make each other so happy, anyone can see that. I would hate to think I had driven a wedge between you."
"Thor is a romantic," she announced. "He would see beauty and compassion in any girl he cared for. That is part of his charm."
Damn, he thought.
=
Loki found the queen in her garden, carefully attending to her flowers, but she looked up when he entered and smiled, starting to get to her feet again. That was all the invitation he needed.
He rushed in and blurted out, "Mother, you must do something. It's unbearable!"
"What is, dear heart?" she asked, her brows lifting. She came closer, lifting a hand to gently guide his hair from his face.
"Thor and Sif," he said, bitterly.
Thor was not the kind of boy who bragged, but it hardly took a genius to know that he and Sif were fully intimate. It always annoyed Loki when Thor got 'ahead' of him in any tangible way, even if Thor would never even known it was a contest and Loki had no interest in winning and Thor was older anyway so it made sense that he would reach such milestones first.
But it annoyed him still more to have it so evident. It felt like he could hardly round a corner without almost colliding into Thor and Sif pressed up against a pillar; he could hardly sit through a dinner without the two of them staring significantly at each other, the air heating between them until Loki wanted to gag and excuse himself.
Frigga's lips quirked up, and then she chuckled, turning him to one of the elegant chairs set out for when she liked to take tea in the garden. "I think perhaps we should have a talk, Loki," she said.
"We should," he said, darkly.
She had servants go to bring them tea, and Loki sat, letting out his breath. He didn't often take tea with his mother anymore, although when he was younger he used to much prefer it to the loud sweaty tangle of boys that Thor caroused with in the training hall. Still, she made idle chitchat while they waited, and then the servants brought the tea, and the first sip of the hot warm herbs eased some of the tension from him, in spite of himself.
Finally, she said, soft, "It is all right to be jealous."
"I'm not!" he said, immediately defensive.
Frigga waved a hand, pacifying. "Loki, Thor loves you as much as ever. You know that no young woman could ever come between you two. You have a bond as brothers that can never be broken."
A flicker of unease traced down his spine, but Loki ignored it. "I am not afraid he will abandon me," he said firmly. "As if Thor is capable of abandoning anyone, ever. He gives his heart to everyone he meets."
Frigga chuckled quietly. "I cannot argue so much with that... But what, then, is your objection?"
He shoved aside his agitation and sat up more straight, his expression sober. "Is this really what you want for him?"
Her eyebrows lifted.
An acceptable response, technically. Loki forged ahead, saying, "Sif is -- entirely unmanageable. She's beautiful, certainly, but what manner of queen will she make if Thor becomes king? She's reckless and rude and has all the manners of a wild boar. She enjoys fighting and she thinks she's better than those women who do not. Is that appropriate in the wife of a prince of Asgard?"
"They aren't married yet, Loki," she said, with amusement. "And, though I think you may be exaggerating things slightly, Sif is just a girl. She has a thousand years of growing up to do."
"She has less than ten," he insisted. "I know how it works, Mother. We're full-grown by the time we're twenty-five. That's what everyone says."
"I know this may be difficult for most children, but -- you are so clever, Loki, and you lend your mind so well to everything. So I ask you to think about this." Frigga wrapped her fingers around her cup. Her hair was woven in a crown around her head, but a few tendrils swept over her shoulders to hang about her face. "There is no magic date on which an Asgardian grows up, and becomes who they will be for the rest of their lives. All the races of the Realms grow and change for as long as they live. You will be fully mature, and your physical aging will slow, when you are twenty-five, but that does not mean you are done growing. That is never the case. And it will be many years before we need to worry about who will succeed your father, and who his queen will be."
He knew that, intellectually. But he found it difficult to imagine Sif as anything other than the proud, impetuous, emotional creature she was now. It was hard to tell himself that a decade -- that a hundred years, a span of time he could scarcely even yet imagine -- would tame her.
"What if it becomes an issue now?" he asked her, steeling his shoulders. "What if she becomes with child? It would ruin Thor's future to--"
Frigga laughed. Which was not an acceptable response, and Loki flushed, setting down his cup of tea and straightening himself with ruffled dignity. Immediately his mother was on her feet, circling around the table and kneeling at his feet.
"Mother, stop--" he said, annoyed, but she reached up and trailed fingers against the side of his jaw, cupping his neck.
"I will not say that your concerns are foolish. They are not," she said, firmly. "It is true that there may be trouble down the line, if Thor wishes to marry Sif, and she remains headstrong and impulsive. It is even true that a youthful dalliance may have undesired, unplanned consequences."
Loki frowned, although the words comforted him slightly. He still felt the sting of her laughter, but the calm warmth of her eyes on his, the fondness in her voice, made it hard to bring to the front of his mind.
"I know that these concerns are because you are a good brother." Her fingers gripped him lightly, encouragingly. "But a good brother... must also accept Thor's decision. And if Thor loves Sif, then you owe it to him to put your worries about the future aside, and to be a friend to them both. Who knows? Perhaps with your advice, you can keep them both from making a mistake they would regret."
"I've been trying," he said, soft and plaintive.
"Not try to correct mistakes about what may be in the future," Frigga countered. "But try to encourage them to make good choices about what is happening now." She smiled, sympathetic. "Like it or not, Sif is a part of our lives now."
Just then, laughter cut between them, and Loki's head jerked up. Sure enough, Sif and Thor raced below the balcony where they sat, Thor chasing her; she was headed to the copse of trees at the edge of the garden, and then swung up around the branch, hair flowing out behind her like a banner as she twisted. Her feet collided hard with Thor's chest despite his attempt to evade, sending him sprawling onto the ground. Then Sif sat astride his chest, and even from his distance, Loki could see Thor reach up to tangle wondrous fingers through the waves of her glittering gold tresses.
"Honestly, those two," Frigga said, huffing as she got to her feet.
"Honestly," said Loki, an idea forming in his mind.
=
The scream was so loud and so piercing that it woke Loki from a sound sleep at the early hours of the morning. His lips curved up and he stretched over his covers as footsteps pounded down the hall, away from him.
This was going to be good.
He was careful not to imagine it in his mind, because he cautioned himself against the real thing potentially not living up to his expectations. But he dressed, leisurely, and then headed down the hallways to the wing of the palace where the bloodcurdling cry had come from, finding the pillars outside Sif's room crowded with whispering servants and anxious guards.
Loki sidled his way through until he came to his father's arm, Odin standing by almost helplessly as he watched the scene within. "What happened, Father?" he asked, soft.
Odin glanced at him, lifted a hand and settled it on his shoulder. "Someone... Someone assaulted the Lady Sif in the night," he rumbled.
"Assaulted?" he echoed. That seemed like a bit of an overreaction. She hadn't been assaulted. "Is she hurt?"
"No... But--"
"You did this!"
Her ragged cry came from deeper in the room. Sif started to shove past the ring of people nearest her, Thor and Frigga among them, but a conciliatory guard grabbed her arm when she would have gone for Loki. She was not crying, but her eyes were puffy and her face bright red -- though what was most noticeable, of course, was the fact that her hair had been shorn off just at the ear, clumsily hacked so that it formed an uneven line. What remained on her head was not its former vibrant gold, but a dull, lifeless black.
Sif was staring straight at Loki, trembling. His eyes were carefully wide, shocked by the accusation. "What are you talking about?"
"It was you! Nobody here hates me as much as you! Who else would have done this to me?!" she screamed, struggling again; the guard held to her tighter, now with both hands.
"She's mad," Loki said, turning his head to his family. "She's just lashing out at me because she doesn't know who it could be."
But Frigga moved around the furious girl, stepping quickly over to her youngest, and taking his arms in her hands. Her face was heavily lined, but her eyes clear, her touch gentle. "Did you not do this, Loki?"
Although there was no judgment, no accusation in her, he suddenly felt the weight of what this meant to all of them pressing down on him. Loki looked around again at his father, his brother, Sif; the shocked soldiers and servants outside. They were all horrified. And he didn't understand. "I don't know where she's coming up with this claim," he protested.
"Then just tell me," Frigga said, softly. "Just say you did not do it."
Five little words. He lied frequently enough, and he was good at it; they would be so easy to say, and she wanted to believe him. But at the same time, it felt like she must know, at least well enough to lend credence to Sif's hysterical accusation, and she would certainly know if they had to ask Heimdall for his word on the matter. And he was so aware that everyone was staring at him, and they were all so shocked, and suddenly he felt like he had done something truly horrible and he didn't even know what it was.
"I--" he started, soft. "I-- don't see why it's such a big deal."
"Not a big deal?" Sif shrieked. "You invaded my bedroom while I slept and hacked off a piece of me!"
"It's just hair!" Loki said desperately, looking up to his mother for understanding. This wasn't how he'd wanted it to be at all.
Frigga enfolded him in her arms, holding him tight, but she whispered, "Dear heart, this was very wrong," her voice broken with tears, and then he thought he might cry as well.
And he still didn't know why.
Sif roared like a wounded animal and lunged for him, but the guard held her back, and then Thor was there and she wavered and collapsed into his arms, sobbing quietly against him with a fistful of limp black hair that had once gleamed gold clutched in her hand.
Frigga ushered Loki from the room, Odin leading the way, barking for the crowd outside to disperse. Over Sif's shoulder, Thor's features were like marble, chiseled and hard and coldly furious. His eyes followed Loki out of the room while the younger boy's stomach dropped. This was not going at all like he'd wanted.
The king did not speak to his son once he was safely ensconced in their corner, but the way he slammed the door behind him as he went out to deal with the important affairs of the day made Loki flinch, and he knew that his father was just as mad as everyone else.
"It wasn't a big deal," he said, struggling to hold in his own frustration. All this, over hair.
"You stole something from her against her will, without her knowledge," Frigga said, quietly. "Something she will never be able to take back. Isn't that right?"
It had been a simple enough enchantment, but he knew there was no simple way to reverse it. He shook his head, muted.
"She could not fight back. You took from her while she was powerless to stop you -- a despicable and cowardly act, on top of a cruel one."
"You make it sound so much worse than it is," he said, pleadingly, and she said, sharply, "No! You are only thinking of yourself. You must stop thinking of what you want, or you will never be able to see beyond yourself. Think of what Sif feels. How you would feel if you woke up in her position."
He'd thought Sif would be upset, yes, but upset because her secret vanity had been punctured, because she could no longer hide behind Sif the Fair; he'd thought people would laugh and tease behind her back at her new look, ugly and plain; he'd thought perhaps that Thor would see that she was not so remarkable without her mesmerizing fall of hair, and then he would be done with her. That was what he'd wanted.
He had never thought about what Sif wanted, except to feel smug about how he would take it from her.
If Sif had come into his room at night, shaved his head and made it so that it would never grow back, not in the thousands of years of their lives...
He could not imagine ever forgiving her. Ever forgetting what she had done. He would have seen the reminder every day and hated her with the passion of one finally vindicated in the dislike he had been determined to find in her ever since the day she came into his life, tangled up in Thor's heart. That was what he would have felt, even over just hair, and it was what he had done to her.
Loki trembled, the tears spilling now. "I didn't mean to," he said, weakly. "I didn't... I never meant to hurt her like that."
Frigga turned away from him, bowing her head. "No," she murmured. "It was only a bit of fun, I suppose."
That hurt most of all. Later that day, he knocked on Sif's door gingerly, and found her in her room, sharpening blades, her face still swollen from tears she pretended now she had never wept. After all, she was not vain, right? Thor was gone; but that meant that his brother might have been avoiding him. He supposed he should be thankful for that. Thor always overreacted when the people he loved were hurt, and when one of them had hurt another -- he would be both angry and betrayed.
"What do you want?" she asked dully.
"I'm sorry," he said, hushed. "I know I can probably -- never make it up to you. I know that words aren't good enough. But I never even thought it would be like that..."
"Just go," she said. Her head turned away, and her fingers curled around a throwing knife. He thought she might send it his way. "I don't want to see you."
"You did nothing to deserve this," he murmured helplessly, retreating.
In no time at all, everyone became accustomed to seeing Sif with black hair; she grew it out, and soon it was pretty, if nothing like how it had used to be. But it was years before Loki ever saw Sif look at him again without the memory of that morning in her cold eyes.
=
Loki drew back the dagger, holding it by its tip, and said, "The mortals call you Thor's wife, you know."
"They do not!" Sif said indignantly, and kicked his ankle as he made the throw. It went wide of the target, plunging into the wall beside it. Loki scowled at her as he straightened up, and she smiled at him, sunny.
"You are supposed to be teaching me to throw these," he reminded her, straightening to his full height, considerably above hers.
Sif told him, "Then perhaps you should learn, instead of tell your teacher tall tales." She withdrew another from her belt pouch, handing it over.
Loki got into position again, readying the small weapon, and paused to let her correct his stance. Three hundred years old and he was only just beginning to feel that his weapons knowledge was a trifle underwhelming. He had spent years learning sorcery and brushed off weapons training as a burden for the meatheads, but with the trouble Thor was always getting them into, the basics were not nearly sufficient.
"I needn't joke about what the mortals believe," he said. "They know so little about us, and they fill in all the details in their fairy tales the most adorable ways. Why joke, when their stories are already so hilarious?"
"Like what?" Sif said, with amusement.
"Would you believe they think me a frost giant?" He lifted his eyebrows at her.
She laughed, slapping his shoulder. "I do believe that, actually! You are about as trustworthy, if half as tall."
Loki smirked. "They have heard enough gossip in which I am a troublemaker that they have naturally cast me in the race of the villains," he said, modestly. He threw the knife again, and this time it plunged into the target.
"You have the angle of the throw well, but you are not aiming correctly," Sif told him. "Concentrate more on the projection. What do you think the mortals would make of this?"
He made a thoughtful noise, imagining the trajectory of the knife, and repositioning his aim. "Naturally, I -- somehow used my foul frost giant cunning to trick you into telling me your secrets of combat, so that I could use them to terrorize the Midgardians, the way that I do."
"Why would you need a few little knives when you could just step on them?"
"I haven't yet heard any rationalizations why I may be a mere six feet tall, and flesh-toned instead of snow. But I am a very powerful shapeshifter, you know," he said. The dagger hit near the center of the target.
Sif clapped. "Nicely-done," she commended. "But I have not known you to have much gift for shapeshifting. Illusions, but shapeshifting?"
He shrugged. "How else would I be responsible for every avalanche, every wayward child, and every wheel that breaks on their wagons?"
"You take it well," she observed, and folded her arms.
"What do the mortals know?" Loki said, with another shrug. "They eavesdrop on our conversations, and they take what little they managed to overhear and attempt to explain it in their stories."
"I suppose I should be grateful they haven't made me out to be a man," she said, chuckling.
Loki smiled at her faintly. In the decades and centuries since they had become friends, he had come to admire Sif, and he'd like to think she him. Though they had never become close -- not the way she was genuinely fond of Hogun, or the way Loki was friends with Fandral -- they were, at the least, happy allies. In a way, it seemed harsh to tell her that they thought little of her at all, beyond the wife of Thor and a patron goddess of harvest. There were no tales of Sif the Brave among the mortals. Perhaps it was her own fault, for visiting rarely enough that they had no glimpse of the shieldmaiden who fought so fiercely, arm in arm with men half again her size. All they knew was that she was ever with Thor, and that Thor was their hero, their savior, their valiant champion.
Still, he told her, "A mysterious omission, considering how the rest of their tales have evolved."
As if on cue, Thor and the Warriors Three broke into the room with a ruckus, sending a gust of snow swirling into the warm tavern, to the amused complaints of the patrons already present. Sif stepped around Loki and was almost immediately swept up into Thor's massive arms, bristling with furs to keep him warm as he twirled her around.
"Good evening!" he crowed, a nod to Loki to include him in a slightly less exuberant version of his welcome. "I was hoping to meet with you here! Sif, Loki, this is Ewald, magistrate of this town. Ewald... Loki, and the Lady Sif."
"I have heard of you," greeted the slim man behind him, dark and bristling with beard. He looked pleased. "Thor's dearest companions! No one in this territory will dare cross your paths."
Volstagg's voice bellowed out, "Did I just hear the Valiant Volstagg dismissed?!" nearly drowning out Sif's pointed reminder, "And not unimpressive warriors in their own right."
Thor only laughed at this, and clapped Ewald on this shoulder. "I see you two have been busy while we fetched the magistrate. If these are the keys to our rooms, I will go up ahead. Come up and join us when you're ready!" He waved Ewald with them, and then the tavern room fell far quieter when they were all gone.
Sif sighed, dropping onto a bench. "Well, now I need a break," she said, wryly. "Thor will really take the wind out of you."
"No one knows that better than me," Loki said, chuckling. He watched her while she called over a barmaid and ordered a flagon of mead for them each.
She seemed more than merely deflated. She seemed troubled about something. Thor had breezed in and out again, but his delight to see her had been very real. She had been the one to volunteer to stay behind, so she was not upset to be left.
Luckily, she gave him a hint. "I think I know now what you meant, all those years ago when we first met. About not wanting to be defined in terms of Thor." She shook her head, smile still on her lips.
Ah. The inevitable. "He does sort of become the center of attention, doesn't he?" Loki agreed, laughing again, quietly. "Sooner or later, all the Nine Realms begin to say, oh, it's Thor's brother!" And then added, snorting, "Those who haven't made up a tale where I am some hideous monster's spawn."
Sif couldn't help a laugh at that, and lifted her glass to toast him as the barmaid brought them over. "Doesn't it bother you?"
"Oh, yes," Loki admitted. "But what choice do I have? I am his brother."
And the dream he'd had as a child, about competing with Thor for the throne -- that dream was long gone, gracefully abandoned. How could he hold to that delusion when Thor never even had to try to excel? He was the best at everything he bothered to turn his hand to, and everyone adored him. Even though Loki was the one who had lost to him, still he couldn't help being among their number.
That was when he realized, and he found himself saying, "It's different for you."
He didn't lift his gaze to look at her, although he could feel her eyes on him. He said, "The problem with loving Thor is that... his light shines so brightly that he casts a shadow long and dark. It's -- a little overwhelming, really. How do you make anyone see you when Thor stands by your side? How do you gain notoriety when Thor loves you so much that he tackles all problems for you?"
Then he looked up, just as Sif was looking away. Her gaze was distant, thoughtful. She felt the same way, he saw.
The same way that he had felt, all this time. That she loved Thor; great, wonderful, sweet Thor; that they made each other maddeningly happy, but that she also struggled against being only Thor's.
"I wanted to make my name," she admitted. "I wanted... people to see me as an example. That they had a choice, and if they wanted -- other girls could make their way as I had, that they weren't strange or changelings for wanting it. I wanted them to be able to say, The Lady Sif did it, so I could too. I wanted to be known, and respected.
"But no matter what I do, no matter how I try, even after all this time... The one they respect is Thor," she finished, fierce and broken.
Loki felt very quiet, and very still. He said, almost inaudibly, "Thor loves you, you know. He would die for you without a second thought. If it were up to him, he would spend the rest of his life--"
"But it isn't just up to him," Sif said, and he thought her eyes were unnaturally bright; rimmed with red in a way he hadn't seen in a long, long time. "I have to be alone for a time. Don't wait up."
Loki watched her throw on her coat and head for the door with long strides, and then slowly he wrapped his fingers around his goblet.
"Huh. Mother was right," he murmured to himself. "All I had to do was think beyond what I wanted."
He drank his mead and tried to determine if he was celebrating or drowning his victory.