eswareinmal | [closed]

Entry tags:

↓loki,
↓sif

[closed]

Characters: Loki, Sif
Open?: No
Where: Drunk Duck Inn and Tavern
When:Rebirth Height 8, late
Warnings: Loki is a warning. A warning of angst and petty bitchery. Also probable mentions of genocide and arguments and identity crises. Will update if necessary.

He has taken a single room at the inn, pending time to find his own space. It is simple -- he has no need of ostentation. He has few possessions, too, though being poor in wealth bothers him little, knowing how poor he is in everything else. Power, companions... There is naught in his room but bed, ever-so-limited wardrobe -- and, of course, the mirror.

A hand-mirror. Silver, embossed and engraved, with a handle. It is face-down, on the bed, half-covered by the pillow as though the owner didn't quite know whether to hide it from sight or leave it in plain view.

The door is locked, but not warded by any noticeable means.

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In barely a month -- a blink, really -- Loki has gone from friend to traitor to murderer to dead...only to arrive back at living, his position mercurial as ever. Sif has sung with banshees that test her patience less than Odin's second son.

She still spins with it all, her very veins alight with a constant thrum of annoyance which tells Sif that the lost prince is indeed returned. After he ends their correspondence in such a diplomatic way (out of character for Loki, but what isn't these days?) Sif sits at the throne a moment, drumming her fingers lightly on her knees.

…Then she rounds about on every available advisor until she finds out where the damn fool lives. She readies a horse without assistance and arrives within the hour.

Loki, being Loki, does not have the simple courtesy to be home when she chooses to ambush him. The door is locked but unwarded and she breaks in easily enough. She sits on the bed, arms crossed in defiance, and waits for him to come in.

And when that gets old after about twenty minutes, she starts drumming on her knees again. It’s an old habit. The room is barely furnished, which does not surprise her. The lack of books is unsettling. When she pictures Loki, she pictures books. Perhaps he has them tucked away somewhere, neatly. She draws her fingers along the threadbare sheets, and they come to rest on the ornate handle of a...hand mirror? She frowns.

When he is stripped of everything, Loki would find room in his quarters for a mirror and not books. The thought makes her want to hit him.

There are no apparent wards, of course, but Loki has not left his room defenseless -- he has cast an alert spell, painstakingly, in the cracks and breaks of the wood. And it is that spell that sparks along his skin when she enters. He feels it in his fingertips, like a sudden shock.

Of course. He goes, to secure new rooms for himself -- and as soon as he has done so, his old ones are broken in.

He is still angry from speaking with Sif. Stomach twisted in fear/hate/anguish, and so he does not bother to transform and spy on his old room. He returns in his own form, takes the steps up to it quick, draws his knife as he sweeps down the hall --

And when he sees Sif, sees her hand on the mirror, his expression goes aghast.

"Do not touch that!" And he lunges forward, to take it from her hands.

Sif draws back automatically, standing on the bed and taking the mirror with her. There's a time when Loki would have yelled at her for getting her shoes on the bed, but she suspects those to be the least of his current concerns.

"Has death made you that vain, Loki?"

"Don't be a child! Have you ever known me to be vain?" He shoots off a spell, a shadow of a bird flying at her face, an attempt to make her duck or loose her hold. "Give it back!"

"A child? You're the one that storms off in the middle of conversations. Heavens forbid you actually admit--"

The bird throws her off momentarily, which is foolish on her part. It's a spell he's used before. She steps backwards, fully against the wall, but the mirror still with her.

"--that you've made a mistake."

And he attacks. His style has always been swiftness, speed, not power -- he attacks like a spider, like a ghost. As she is off-guard, in the moment of movement, with a kick to her abdomen and a throw to toss her down.

His focus is singleminded.

He's a hairsbreadth from being willing to kill her.

Foolish. Foolish that she left her guard down, foolish to let herself forget who she was in the room with -- the man who had set the destroyer on his own friends. On his own brother.

She hits the ground and remembers. As she goes, she sweeps her leg out, attempting to knock him down.

He turns the knock, the loss of his balance into a weak tackle -- not on her, on her wrist. To the mirror. That is his focus.

If she is willing to let it go, she can pin him to the ground.

Loki is more vain than he likes to admit, but he's not vain enough to put himself in such a weak position over a mirror. Not unless there's more to it.

She lets the mirror fall, half expecting it to break. It doesn't. Rolling over, she wrenches herself on top of Loki, pinning his arms on either side of his head and looking him in the eye.

"What is wrong with you?"

He thrashes; he would do anything for distance between them. For the cold weight of a throne at his back, a horned helmet, swear to me, as your prince. But there is nothing -- he is a traitor, broken and defeated, cast away, chased and found.

He is trembling. He will not meet her eyes.

"Unhand me."

"No."

As intangible as he has always been, he has been present. A sixth in their company, back to back with Sif in battle, in the moments before she's willing to admit that she desires the assistance.

Now, she doesn't trust that if she lets him go, he won't find some way to slip away forever.

"I don't want to--" What? Hurt him? She does. She can't look at him without wanting to kick him. But in this moment, it's not what she desires.

"I want to understand. You just -- I want to understand why."

She doesn't let up on her hold. But the confusion is clear on her face.

How can she not know? How can she fail to see what is in front of her? He will not say, he cannot say. His throat is closed tight. He gives a little aborted twitch toward the mirror, lying face-up next to them. The mirror that will show her not her reflection but what she believes to be the truth of herself -- the mirror that will not show Loki pale and green-eyed but deformed and monstrous.

He is half-disgusted at the transparency of the motion, half-desperate in hope that she'll realize what it means.

"I will kill you," he whispers. "I will rip you apart and leave you to the thorns." His voice tangled and fighting with itself, bleeding over with emotion.

She has fought by his side for more years than they have seen fit to number and knows a signal when it is given. She glances at the mirror, but sees only herself. Rage twists her features, in ways her mother warned her about as a girl.

Snarling, she clutches his wrists tighter (his wrists, the root of him, which are--)

"If you kill me, it will be as you lay dying. Do not think yourself so untouchable that (blue at the slender wrists, in the mirror, where blood meets ice) you cannot be (breaking together, and they say that the world tree knows pain unlike any other, pain born of the screams her children aim at one another, crashing and breaking together, a sheet of ice falling under--)"

(At the root of it.)

Everything connects, and Sif's eyes go wide. She looks to him, wordlessly, for confirmation.

Jötunn. Frost Giant.

His eyes are wet, raw with pain. Tears that have not spilled, that he struggles to stop from spilling.

"Then so be it."

Leave them both dying, bleeding together, souls fading in a world markless distance from their own, alone as enemies.

That is poetry enough for the silvertongued-god.

That's confirmation enough. Sif looks down at his face -- really looks, in a way she hasn't before.

She's seen him mischievous. She's seen him full of malfeasance, of anger, of cruelty.

But she's never seen him this tired. Like he's being eaten from the inside out. She breaks the hold and backs away. When she speaks, her voice is much more quiet, more raw, than she expects.

"How long have you known?"

His eyes close, and the fight goes out of him. Like an exhale of a held breath. His eyes close, and the tears spill.

"Our expedition to Jotunnheim," he says, hoarsely. "It seems more than relics were taken, so long ago. And so you see before you the lost son of Laufey, king of the Jontar."

It is soft, but a proclamation nonetheless. The words ring, in the quiet room.

"How much it explains," he muses. "How much became clear -- you cannot know."

Sif lets out a breath, sliding to the floor as the events of Loki's downfall are cast in a very different light.

She crosses her legs, not so foolish as to take her eyes off of him.

"You were different, after. In a way I couldn't find a name for."

She trails off, shaking her head. His musings seem like bait to her, even if he doesn't know it. All the same: "What became clear?"

"You can not be so ignorant as that."

And he pulls away and up onto the bed, above her, curling defensive and vulnerable against the wall.

"I never had a chance to be king. I was never equal to Thor. I was always..." -- and he glances to her. Against the Aesir, the shining Aesir, there was Loki. Loki, who was pragmatic and ruthless and intelligent, Loki who was not noble, Loki who had right and wrong trained into him but never felt it in his heart.

"I was always wrong."

"Nobody is equal to Thor."

To say otherwise would be lying. But she doesn't mean it as an accusation towards Loki. Thor is her friend, and she loves him dearly. But her entire life -- everything she's ever accomplished, every battle she's ever fought, pales in comparison to what the Aesir view as her main attribute: the woman Thor once liked best. The maybe-bride.

She looks up Loki, and leans her head against the door.

"I did not always think you wrong. If it makes any difference."

"Nobody equal to him in hardheaded stupidity," spits Loki, "in impulsive, idiotic --" Courage.

He bites hard on the inside of his cheek, until he tastes his blood.

"I should be his equal." And Loki has never lived up to that should. He has always been less than others want him to be.

"Is that why you struck him down?"

Strangely, there isn't any anger in Sif's voice. She just honestly wants to know.

"So that there would be no one to compare yourself to?"

Loki wishes he knew. That moment of death -- Thor's voice, settle this, his infuriating nobility, the knowledge that anything Thor could say would never be enough. The breathtaking satisfaction of beating Thor, of turning away and leaving Thor to die alone at his back. The cold emptiness of the throne room, the ever-present knowledge that Loki had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed. He had become a monster with that movement, dealt a blow that no redemption could undo. And there was a horror in that, but a satisfaction too...

He ignores the question.

"The mirror was given to me by a woman," he says. "A woman encountered in a false town called West Haven, a figure of great power in this world. It shows how each person sees their own self. It should not be used so carelessly."

"Not everyone sees themselves as secretly as you do, Loki."

She wondered, idly, how he might have seen himself before he knew he was a Jotunn. If it would have still been an image he hated.

"I think the boy will try and follow the expedition, tomorrow."

Loki's mouth turns sour.

"He has the wolf in him," he tells her. "But he is young." He is unable to defend himself, Loki means. He is helpless when it comes to real teeth, real claws.

There was a brief time when Fenrir was just a cub. He would lick Loki's face and chase after his heels; Loki turned to a wolf himself, and he taught Fenrir how to kill.

He does not disagree with the Aesir. Fenrir was dangerous. It was worthwhile to have him bound. But Fenrir is still his child, and Faolan has ever-so-distant echoes of that child in him.

It explains enough -- the boy's stilted speech, and Loki's concern for him. Sif once spoke more freely to Loki than other Aesir might have. But she has never talked of his children. Now is not a good time to start.

"I cannot divide my attention between the forest and the boy, and he won't listen when I tell him he is unwelcome."

"Use him or outwit him," says Loki. "Those are your choices. Take one."

Another option, of course, is to have Loki distract him. But he does not plan to offer.

"How can you stay so still?" he asks. "How can you stay your hand, when you know what I am, and what I have become?" What he is: Jotunn. What he has become: a murderer.

"Who says I've stayed my hand," she says, dully. "Perhaps I poisoned you and you haven't noticed yet."

In truth: she has no idea how to proceed from here. She can't forgive him, even knowing the full circumstances. But he wouldn't ask for such a thing anyway.

He makes a derisive noise. "The Lady Sif, a poisoner? Never."

She shrugs. It was something to say.

"I'm thinking. You can withhold comments on how hard that may be for me."

"Consider them withheld," says Loki, primly. There are ever-so-many insults he is holding back, Sif; he deserves a bit of respect for that.

"All right, then."

She's quiet a moment, fingers tapping again against her knees.

"I'm thinking about prophecy," she says, slowly, working it out as she goes. "That's better left to other branches of my family tree, but nonetheless. I've always hated it. The idea that we don't have control over our actions and are punished for it anyway. It goes against everything I believe. And yet your mother weaves, my brother watches, and Odin knows."

As far as Sif knew, she'd never been part of a vision. It was easier to write them off when you had no part in one.

"I'm thinking of what Odin whispered, and how Thor had to die before he could reclaim what was his. How what you did insured what he became. So, I'm thinking about prophecy. And I'm thinking about you. And I'm wondering who I might be, if my entire life had been structured around the ideas of another."

His heart flares with pain, fury, fear; he detests her, in this moment. Her words portray him as worse than nothing -- as a puppet to Odin's will, and a pawn of prophecy.

He tightens his hand so hard on the bed's wooden post that splinters break loose. So hard that he drives them deep into his palm, focusing on the pain, on the blood that wells from his skin.

Edited 2012-02-13 02:32 (UTC)

The blood surprises her, even now. He’s almost always in more control than that. She rises, but stops before she goes to him. She doesn’t suspect that any assistance would be appreciated.

“I was born to be a lady, and found ways to change what that meant. You seem to be at such a place. If you are Jotunn, you are still Loki. You can abide by tales of the wicked frost giants, become the monster. Or you can make tales of your own. I suspect they’d be much more interesting.”

She looks around for some sort of cloth to staunch the bleeding, but the room is quite bare. She takes off her own sash and places it on the bed. She doesn’t suspect he would take it if she held it out to him.

“If it’s worth anything, I think I am glad you aren’t dead. And I don’t care that you’re Jotunn. I just care that you’ve been an ass.”

With that, she turns to go.

He takes the sash in his uninjured hand, and holds it, curling his fingers in its folds.

"Were I to do it over again," he tells her, "I would do the same. I would destroy the Jotunn, and prove myself worthy for Asgard's throne. I would not allow Thor to lay me low."

The lies spill from his tongue so easy -- they belie Loki's terrible confusion, his conflict, the emptiness within him. Sometimes he looks back on it and he thinks he always expected to lose. He expected Odin to let him go. He expected Thor to sour love to hate so quick, quick enough to overpower his brother.

Loki bows his head. Blood leaks from his palm, and he cries with silent, shivering tears.

She doesn't look behind her. For whose sake, she is not sure. Her own face, unguarded enough, is too expressive right now. Regret, sympathy, and anger all rolled into one. She clears her throat before she speaks.

"You can lie better than that, Loki. Though I hope you do not need to."

With that, she takes her leave. The ride home will feel much longer than the ride here did.

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