eswareinmal | Action: 14th of the Rebirth

He had suspected there was a curse, but knowing it, feeling it is shocking. Someone has placed Sif under a spell. And that -- that is absolutely, unequivocally wrong.

Loki picks out that sparkle of a spell, holds it carefully on his palm. It seems like ice; this is his element. Far easier than blood magic, in a place like this.

So he summons his own ice, letting his palm frost over, seeing if he could overwhelm this spell with his own. If this fails, he will draw a rune of breaking and cast that, with all the force of his magic behind it.

Her blood drips into Loki’s hands, and while he might probe it, whisper to it, ask of its secrets, Sif knows exactly what it is her blood contains. Blóðughadda, the one with blood red hair, borne of Ægir, the oldest of them all. Name writ in crimson waves after a battle. A ninth of Heimdall*, the sentry, who sits at the edge of the universe.

“I will kill you for this.”

When Sif was a girl, she waited seven years for her name, as was the custom of those born in between ranks. Her mother’s lineage was unquestioned. But her father was a farmer. One day, her grandfather, whose name she never said aloud, dropped out of the sky and caught her hunting rats in the garden. He asked who had given a young girl such a knife. She asked who had seen fit not to give him one.

“I will cut you from stem to sternum.” She declares it clearly, can see herself performing the action. “Your blood will turn the road crimson and muddy. The last sound you ever hear will be my footsteps, as I leave you to the wild things. The last thing you ever see will be the coal-black eyes of crows, as they come to feast upon you.”

Ægir laughed, and asked what business she had with a knife. Should she not be inside, learning to cook and clean for a husband? Sif dug her toes into the soil and declared that she would sooner marry the rats she was ridding the garden of, because they knew well enough how to prepare their own meals. Or even better, she would marry the very knife that cut them.

Ægir assented, and thus she was given her name. Sif. Wife of rats and blades.

“You should not have caught me, Odinson. I am nothing to put in a trap.”

[ooc: There are two different versions of the mothers of Heimdall (Heimdallr). Most have him borne of nine jötunn maids -- no big deal in the myths, where the Aesir and frost giants hook up all the time. A much bigger deal in the comics and movies, where they all hate each other. So I went with the less popular interpretation of Heimdall being borne of the nine daugthers of Ægir. One of those daughters is named after the blood the stains the water after naval battles, so NATURALLY, that is Sif's mom. I apologize for my life.]

And Loki gasps, with the pain of casting break, the power required to crush the spell. And yet he had not eliminated it, just turned a large splinter into small. Sif would have to overcome the rest on her own.

The frost around her ankle cracked and released her; Loki had not the strength to keep it up. He took to his knee, his hand covering his heart.

Her blood is lit with fire, or ice – something sharp that is trying to escape through every skin cell. She rolls onto the ground as the trap breaks and stalks over towards Loki. No weapons. She will not need them. She can use her own hands well enough to see if red still flows in his—

”Do you think I planned to live, when I fell from the Bifrost?”

She stops, briefly, but it’s like trying to light a candle in the height of a fog.

—veins. His pose mocks her, and she stops short of him.

“Get up.”

He hisses in pain, inhaling sharp as he can. Out of breath.

And he decides to gamble.

When he lifts his eyes to hers, they're wet with tears. He draws his collar from his throat, and bares it to her.

"Kill me, then," he says. (Knowing that this might be the only way to bring her honor to the surface, and inside, he is cold and calculating as a snake.) "Kill me, though all I wanted was to help you. Kill me, and prove you are no better than I am."

"Get up," she screams, gutturally. She swings her leg out savagely, kicking the liar where he sits.

"You do not help me. You do not help me when you run. You do not help me when you throw my words around like things without meaning. You do not help me when you die so willingly." Another kick, and she wants to--

Stop. The day has gone on for years, from the moment that her father caught her training with Thor. She stands outside of the throne room, ears pressed to the door, and she can't breathe. She hears footsteps and flees before she can think better of it. She runs until she has no idea where she is, and barricades herself behind a large, wooden door. Behind it is the smaller prince, the quiet prince, with a stack of books.

"Don't say anything. Please."

stop. She wants to stop this (stop what?) and she screams at him again, eyes red.

"You do not help me, Loki!"

"Then kill me!" he shouts back. "I have spent all my strength on you. I am powerless. If I am such -- anathema, then strike me down!"

The air is thick, taut, full, as though the spaces between all the swirling molecules have been packed tight with emotion and memory. A thousand years, a thousand of friendship and rivalry and distaste, of bitterness that has swung to something near love and then back again. She is near as much a part of him as Thor is, as much as he struggles to be separate, as much as he wishes to be set apart.

He pleads with her, silently, wholeheartedly: come back to me. Break free of this fell presence in your blood, and come back to me.

It feels like walking through sand, every step of it a memory that comes up through her throat -- thick, cloying -- and out through her skin, holding her to the ground and making each step the weight of lifetimes.

The wine stain in the great hall that they covered with an elm tree.

Notes she'd written in the margins of his favorite books.

The air on her neck one morning, her once golden hair now short and black as night.

A space carved out for him, the lost one, as they walked in the hallway and pretended not to notice.

She marches through all of it, the thrumming under her skin becoming sharper, louder, with the weight and height of silence. She reaches him, finally, and crouches down with wide eyes. Her hands trace his face and it is so wondrously cold that she thinks she might drown in it.

“Loki?”

For a moment he is convinced -- convinced, beyond doubt's shadow, that she is under no curse. He believes this to be nothing but her own rage, her true rage, finally revealing itself. He has deluded himself into believing that something remains of them, that he has not destroyed everything in his agony.

And then her hand touches his face with heat like reddened iron, and he flinches away. "So it was a curse," he breathes, and he wills himself to stand and pull away, wipe the tears and mock her with the effectiveness of his mask. Look, how I have manipulated you.

Instead, the world reels around him, black spots in his vision, and he catches himself on his palm. He is all too tempted to let himself fall.

She stands up, quickly, and that in itself is no easy task. But the next moment seems very important, somehow. Still coming back to herself, she reaches out and grips her hands on his shoulders, buries her fingers in the fabric of his cloak. She doesn't care if he flinches, he if feigns disgust.

In the next few seconds, she'll lose him. She can feel it to her very bones. So now it is her turn to be laid bare. Her throat before a knife.

"Know that I love you. Even now."

In what way, she does not know. To what degree, to what meaning, she honestly can’t say. It always became so fluid around them -- like trying to catch rain with a cupped hand. But it is still there. A thousand years between them doesn’t disappear with one terrible act.

His heart leaps in his chest; what once was flesh and solid bone is now a whirlwind, a thunderstorm of water warm on the skin. He would, he thinks, he would -- he would break this world in two to hear that again, and this thought stuns him in its truth. How long has it been since he's thought without lying to himself?

He supports himself on her, folds into her arms, and his palm cups her jaw.

Carefully, gently, he shifts close to the other side of her neck and presses one kiss there, a dry brush of lips to the pulsing vein at her throat.

Oh, she thinks, and the clarity of it is like a shock, the heady weight of the air in her lungs dissolving into something lighter. She exhales, and slings one arm fully against his back, ignoring the throbbing in her wrist. Her other hand, she brings to the base of his neck, fingers resting in his hair. She shifts her head down, lips ghosting over his cheek.

Her entire body draws him in closer, every part of her screaming out one thing: stay. For a moment, stay.

He turns his head and inhales the smell of sweat and blood and chase from her skin. He thinks of her lips, and the desire is a blade so keen it would slice through the remainder of his heart. He should flee, with angry words or a sharp tongue or a bird's wings, but instead all he craves is this: less than forgiveness, but more than need.

He realizes now that he was afraid. He had taken the risk that she would kill him, had known that a part of him would not have objected to a clean death. But the rest of him, the whole of him, wants to survive.

"And my life is yours," he breathes. "Again."

She can feel his breath on her cheek, warm. A comfort. A reassurance that there may be parts of them not yet erased. And that is one root of her anger, is it not? Outside of the spell, outside of Eswareinmal, going back to the moment he let go of the edge of the world: that he’d been broken so completely. That he had willed himself never to mend, rather than move forward.

She closes her eyes – something she would not have done in front of him yesterday, but that now seems natural. She has never been this close to him, never held him in this manner. But a thousand years has led her to know the angles of his face well enough. She inches closer still, the sweat and dirt on her brow mingling with his.

“It seems to be a mutual inclination,” she whispers, and closes her lips over his.

Loki keeps his skin as a boundary. Even more so, now that it is revealed that this is not his true form. His skin keeps him separate from the world; it is shield and armor. What emotion he reveals is whatever he wants to -- his lies are carried by skin.

But then her fingers map his face and he shudders, because his skin has turned transparent. No longer does it keep the world out, no longer does it shield him. Instead, it is open, the shivers of her touch raw against someplace deep within him.

Loki is one who flits from moment to moment, never settling, never lingering. Today, it seems that the instant before their lips touch lasts a lifetime, perhaps two, and he would drag it on for more if only he could.

He thinks of Sigyn, the chaste and sweet kiss that sealed their marriage, the reluctant and dutiful ones that followed. Even when the air was harsh with desire between them, duty ever-remained.

Angrboda, and her chaos, her feral passion. How she had swept Loki along in a torrent, and he felt consumed with every kiss. Then, the joy was in abandonment, in the violation of precious duty, in the meadow's wildflowers and the wolf's wild-hunts.

Svadilfari was when Loki's body was torn with need, when he would shake and quiver with the slightest touch, and yet he had been seduced with courtly care. He was fond of Svadilfari because Svadilfari was fond of Loki's pleasure.

No, and no, and no; he is not thinking of Sif's pleasure, not truly. His lips move the right way on distant memories, in ingrained motions, but his heart flutters against its cage of tendon and bone and he cannot think. Every touch flares and burns, and he thinks -- this is the first time I have been touched. The first time that I, as a Jotunn, as myself, as traitor and monster and sorcerer, have been touched.

His hand tightens in her hair and he kisses her with a roughness not borne of carelessness but of too much need.

Sif cannot separate the parts of herself – warrior, lady, friend, rival. They all meld together in action and thought. In battle, in silence, in contact: she is on alert, ever pushing for more, ever craving completion. This has kept as many lovers away as it has drawn in, and she would have it be no different.

Warrior, lady, friend, rival. There is nothing gentle of her kiss – it explores, it challengers, it asks for more. It does not coddle. She breathes into him, the pressure of her lips hot upon his, searching him out with tongue and teeth and movement.

With her good hand, she runs her nails down the back of his neck, scratching under his shirt collar, seeking him out. All of him – skin and bone, flesh and heart. All that she can. All that she will. Warrior, lady, friend, rival. The selfish Lady Sif.

He would not trade any piece of her. The rival challenges, the friend soothes, the lady suits him, in demeanor and gentleness, and the warrior fights alongside. Loki, too, is a many-faceted creature, shining one way and staining blood-red another.

The strain of his spell and the strain of his emotions catch up with him at once. He breaks the kiss, breathes sharp and his fingers go tight on her. "Sif, I..." and the world retreats from him, goes grey and distant, and he starts to fall.

Her arms are around him in an instant, though she's clumsier handling him than she would be at full power. She half walks, half drags him over to a nearby tree. She sinks to the ground and brings him with her, resting her back upon the tree and positioning his head in her lap.

She looks down at him, letting out a low breath. Willing herself only to think of the present -- not unlike a battle. She knows well enough how he looks after a particularly exhaustive spell. But worry creeps in (that's the danger here, isn't it? A new kind of blade), and she shakes his shoulders.

"Loki," she says, tilting her head down and whispering into his ear. "If you have need of a fainting couch, I can procure one."

He swats at her, sourly, his mind throbbing in his skull. "Leave me be." His voice is more of a croak. "I have no strength for this." And his hand seeks out hers, tangles their fingers together and grips weak. Shreds of unconsciousness, exhaustion, low and simmering pain.

Sif has half a mind to remark that she thought she was in the presence of a prince and not a grumpy cat. But his fingers lace with her own, and the words die on her lips. When she looks down at him and says:

"Very well, then."

It is in a space between begrudging and affectionate. She sits with him for some time, and leaves only to hunt down dinner when the sun starts to wane. When he wakes up, he will find her roasting a rabbit.

Any by-the-hearth comments he has may very well leave him knocked unconscious again.

He has not slept so sound in ever-so-long. -- No, not so long, was it? Only since the coronation. Has it even been a month? Jotunnheim, Thor's outcasting, Loki's fall. And then his time here, where he never quite learned to trust anyone. Not even the ones who learned to trust him, though affection had just started to swell in his breast, before Thor arrived...

But he sleeps sound and exhausted and unafraid, because there is a part of him that knows Sif is near. There is a part of him that trusts her to allow him to come to no harm. It is an enchanting, strange feeling.

He awakens at the smell of cooking meat, with a wrinkled nose, not sure if he wants it, if he is hungry, or if his stomach would rebel at the reality of food. He hasn't eaten well, of late, and a spell tends to unsettle his system for a time. Especially a spell as draining as that one.

"Have you any thought on what managed to curse you?" he asks, hesitantly, not knowing if she's noticed him awakening.

In truth, she did not see him stir. Her attentions were turned towards setting up camp, wrapping her wrist, the root of the earlier spell -- almost everything aside from what transpired between them in the moments before he fell unconscious. But the moment he is awake, speaking, she finds she can think of little else.

"You're awake," she obverses, dumbly. And then, turning the rabbit in its makeshift roast: "Yes. There was an orb about it while you were asleep. The reigning theory is that it was the unnatural snow, two evenings before. I saw fit to go for a walk that evening."

What she does not mention: the root of the cure. Letting someone know that they are loved.

His throat is dry. He wishes for a canteen.

Curls his knees and shifts up, leaning back against a tree. "How unfortunate," he murmurs. "I favored the snow." He had felt so powerful, for that day. The cold had lent him strength like he'd never felt before.

No; more like he was aware of it, now. Now that he knew.

"And you are cured, now. There is nothing of it left."

"No." She looks down at her hands -- the ones she tried to kill the king with, the ones she had very nearly used to rip his throat out. "No," she repeats, softly. "It has passed."

Brushing her hands on her trousers, she slings a water pouch over her shoulder and goes to him. She crouches down, knees to her chest, a few inches in front of him. Closer than the reach of an outstretched hand. She offers him the water.

"You could have died at my hand."

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Akjdhsf edited, sorry!

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