The Lady Sif (strandsofnaught) wrote in avengers_logs, @ 2018-02-24 22:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | -complete, loki odinson, sif |
Who: Sif & Loki
What: Loki visits Sif in her room
When: After this so backdated to Thurs morning
Rating/Warnings: Green. OMG FEELS
Loki had shapeshifted many discarded objects into finery for their new home. Planks of wood were now marble tiles. Discarded scrap metal was now decorative columns. There was an upper and lower floor, five bedrooms, at least three baths, and a grand staircase that might make Tony Stark green with envy. While the inside of their warehouse vaguely resembled a posh Midgardian home, it was enmeshed with several touches that were decidedly Asgardian. There were intricate spirals and interlocked designs that could be found around the doorways, on the staircase railings, and around the tops and bottoms of each column.
For Sif's room, Loki wanted to show his well intentions. He had provided ample space for weapons on the walls, with cascading drapes over a large window that was now manipulated so it was a more pleasing curved shape than the old square window panes of before. The last thing she needed was a starry sky, and he had spent enough time gazing up at them, deep in contemplation, so he could recreate those with the greatest of ease.
He knocked lightly upon her bedchamber door, waiting for her to bid him entry.
Ever since Thor had broken the news of Asgard, its fate, and the untimely death of their friends Sif had retreated into herself. She was quiet, withdrawn, and mournful. So much so she hadn’t picked up her sword or left the four walls that made up her room, her new home it would seem. There was no going back, no reuniting with the others or knowing the beautiful sights of Asgard any longer. It was gone, destroyed, and everything and everyone she had ever held dear with the exception of those on Midgard gone with it as well.
She had contemplated drinking away the pain but there was no brew strong enough to piece together the shattered pieces of heart nor enough for her to honour their dead in the most fitting way possible. Sif whilst she held no ill wishes nor bad feeling towards Midgard had not thought of it as anything permanent not when she had ached and longed for Asgard in all the ways that she found hard to describe.
Her armour rested on the nearby wall as did her weaponry of choice and Sif, well, she was garbed in simple clothes. Blue skinny jeans, a form fitting black tank, and bare feet with her hair left loose. For all intents and purposes she looked very much as if she belonged in this world but she felt very much alien and alone though she did have the company of her fellow Asgardians she had yet to recover from her prolonged banishment and the news that there was no more home to return to.
“Enter,” she announced when she heard the knock at the door.
The door opened, and Loki leaned around to see if Sif was weilding any weapons. She had been unnaturally quiet and withdrawn, which was a state he could fully understand. He had felt much the same for innumerable years on end, although the loss of their home had left a more profound effect on him, than even he thought it would.
Compounded with the fact that he had looked with envy upon Thor and the way Sif pined after him, it made him even more withdrawn. Sif was beautiful and bold, and had never looked upon him with such favor. It was an old wound by now, but one that still festered. And it was no time to revisit such feelings at all. What's done was done, in more ways than one.
Sif didn't appear to have any weapons in hand, or any intent to kill him. Yet. So he entered and closed the door behind him, leaning back against it.
He was head to toe in almost all black, a black long sleeved shirt and fitted pants, the only sign of color was the fact that his socks were a deep pine green color. He rested his hands together in front of him, trying not to clasp them together as that might give away the sense that he was somehow nervous.
"Lady Sif," he said, not even bothering to ask if she was well or how she was fairing. He already could guess that she was not well. As much as he would normally poke at someone to find new and unusual ways to torment them for fun or profit, he did neither at this moment. Instead, he stood quietly, and waited for either her wrath or her sorrow to make itself known.
Sif had thankfully in recent years come to terms with the fact that while she had looked at Thor in ways that were distinctly more than friendly he would never return her affections. He had made that clear by favouring other maidens and then the ladies of Midgard over her. Besides she had in recent years had more important things to worry about than silly affections and unrequited feelings.
Loki was correct, she was unarmed, though weapons were never far from her grip. She breathed in and exhaled out as Loki made his presence known and was thankfully and rather blessedly quiet. She did not trust herself to act with the same amount of restraint as she possessed normally if he was to say something Sif did not think she would be able to stop herself.
It felt very much as though she was adrift in a sea of sorrow and drowning in her grief but she was nothing if not stubborn and she did not wish to show an outward display of weakness.
“Thank you for coming,” she said as she turned to look at him. “The room as you can see is more than adequate but it is bereft of stars.”
"Let us see if I can remedy that," was Loki's softly spoken reply. He usually didn't feel guilt over too many things, but for a moment, he actually felt it for what Sif had been robbed of. He had no strong affection for The Warriors Three, but those had been Sif's brothers in arms, and her close friends. Combined with losing her home, a home that he had cast her out from, it was no foregone conclusion that she was going to be in a state of mourning for a while.
Without further words, Loki eyed the ceiling and raised one hand. With a twist of his fingers and wrist, the entire ceiling shimmered into the familiar nighttime sky they knew so well, with innumerable stars scattered throughout.
"And now it is no longer so," he said, looking from the stars to Sif. He pulled out a very small golden flask, containing the drink that Stark had given them. It was all that was left from their revelries, as far as he knew, and he held it out in offering toward her.
Sif turned her head to regard Loki closely as he lifted his hands and cast his spell, the same spell that soon turned her ceiling into a glittering amazing display of the nighttime sky that she’d longed for. She let out a shaky breath and where her arms had been folded across her chest her hands strayed out to rub at her bare arms, not because she was cold but it was a comforting reassuring gesture.
“It’s beautiful,” she offered as her head tipped back to take it in more fully, a slow passing gaze that lingered longer on some stars than others. One she knew better than others and it was as she did this that she thought of the Warriors Three and there was an ache which persisted, deep in her chest, and it was all consuming. “I remember looking upon these stars when I was a child and wishing more than anything to be amongst them but now I find that I long for the exact opposite.”
The offering of the golden flask soon drew her attention and she scrutinised not only it but Loki as well, trust was something that had to be earned after all. Still she would be a fool to turn down the offer and she took the flask not too long after, opening it and tipping it to her lips.
Loki watched her for a moment, before lifting his gaze up to the stars overhead. It made him think of his mother weaving tales during the evening hours, when he was younger and more sure of his place in the scheme of things, than he was now.
"How many countless hours were squandered," he began to say, slowly and carefully, from his spot where he leaned against the door. "And us never knowing that it would one day be gone. I thought Asgard would stand strong forever, despite the foretelling of Ragnarok. Yet there had been no choice in the matter. Thor was wise to see as much, and bid me to be quick about it."
Hela would be unstoppable. A part of him wondered if she had survived, as invincible as she seemed to be. It would be very hard to kill the aspect of death, itself.
Sif was silent as Loki spoke, not questioning the decisions that needed to be made, especially as if there had been a way to save their home then it would have been done. It was that simple. Of course she did wish she had been there though had she would she now be alive? On Midgard they called it survivors guilt or at least that was what Google had told her when she looked at it due to not being able to sleep.
It pained her to think that her friends had been killed so easily like they didn’t matter and Asgard had to be sacrificed to stop Odin’s first born.
“I do not doubt the wisdom of the actions taken,” Sif was quick to say. “But I do regret that I was not there. I could not cast my eyes over Asgard one last time or fight a battle worthy of a warrior of Asgard.” She had been so far from home and banishment been damned had she known of its plight she would have been there in a heartbeat. She was not unaccustomed to heartbreak nor feelings of sorrow but this? This was something new entirely.
"It was a battle that could not be won," was Loki's reply. He didn't even hesitate. In fact, he stepped forward so he could look into her eyes, trying to convince her of the truth of this. "If the Warriors Three were not there to fight that last battle, then that speaks of Hela's might. She cast both myself and Thor out of the Bifrost, as though were dolls made for the smallest of children. So I say to you, Sif, that you would have fought bravely, but you would be dead now if not for....ah, the banishment."
Surely she knew by now that he had been disguised as Odin, and had been the one to do that. Although he hadn't doubted that Odin would have viewed them all as traitors for going against his express orders to shut the Bifrost down and wait for Malekith to return a second time.
He stepped back, silencing himself, and watching her with a wary gleam in his eyes.
As Loki sought eye contact with her Sif was resolute in meeting him head on and she lacked for emotion in her expression she more than made up for in the gaze that levelled on him. It was a swirling maelstrom of contrasting and conflicting that darkened her eyes though her overwhelming self control kept those very same emotions from spilling forth.
She did know of his disguise as Thor had shared with her the fate of Odin along with that of Asgard and she had drawn from that the conclusion that Loki in Odin’s guise had been the one to banish her. She would have been a threat to him, would have seen through his glamour and exposed the truth.
“If Asgard still stood and my friends still alive then I would happily take your head in penance for your slight,” Sif began, voice level and gaze steady. “But it would be counterproductive to start fighting amongst ourselves when we are so few.”
There was little doubt of her claim and her conviction. This Loki knew. And so he let out a soft exhale, a breath he didn't realize he was holding. It did not mean he relaxed. In fact, he stood perfectly straight, hands relaxed, but ready to grab his daggers if he needed to defend himself.
Even so, his commands could not undo what the Allfather's commands would have been for going against his wishes during the Convergence. He had little doubt that one or all of them would have been banished for a time. Sif was the most dangerous link in that chain of persons that might find him suspect, a fine scapegoat to make an example of. Only now, it was coming back around to bite at him. Oh, how he truly hated the bitter bite of sentiment and regret.
Speaking of bitter bites, the thought that he wasn't truly one of them began to tug at the furthest reaches of his thoughts.
"Few in number, yet it seems no lesser in our intents. Always you have made it clear you would find no greater prize than to remove my head from my shoulders," said Loki, his words soft but his meaning sly. "Is there nothing more that I can do to ease your troubled spirit, Lady Sif?"
“There was a time,” Sif began, “when I did not hunger for your head, Loki.” Her voice might have been soft but there was a steel to her words. It was of a past they had once shared, of being comrades, friends even. That was before Loki had seen it to fit to betray not only Thor and Odin but her as well. “Let us not forget that.”
Her troubled spirit was born of many things. The sudden arrival here, Loki not being dead, the news of Asgard’s demise and how she did not feel as if she had a purpose though her hands still ached for her blade and the glory of battle.
“I long to see home again,” she said as she turned her head, eyes watching him closely from beneath long lashes. “But it is gone, destroyed.”
They remembered different times, then. For Loki did not recall ever feeling like they were friends, as much as someone that she and the Warriors Three tolerated, because Thor wished his brother to accompany them on adventures.
"Alas, I can not forget what never existed at all," was Loki's reply, finding himself overshadowed by an onslaught of bitterness he thought was long extinguished. Even so, he knew what it was like to cling to the past, so he raised both hands and the entire room seemed to disappear behind them, so it appeared they were standing in a lane on Asgard, the golden pillars of the castle looming high over them.
"It is being said that Asgard is not a place, but a people," he was saying, while lowering his hands back to his sides. "In a sense, then, is it truly destroyed? Our numbers may be few, but Thor believes what was lost can be rebuilt."
“As you wish,” Sif remarked cooly as she had no patience nor time to soothe Loki’s bruised ego and perceived slights. He did however possess remarkable abilities and she had to remember how to breathe when he conjured up a vision of Asgard, one that caused her heart to lurch quite painfully. She was for that moment the same young girl she had been when she had first dreamed of reaching the staggering heights of the castle as a worthy warrior fit for the attention of Odin.
She then turned her attention back to Loki as he spoke. “Perhaps,” she agreed with a movement of her head. “But I do not currently have the capacity to fully appreciate that point of view. In time I’m sure it will change but for now I need to work through-”
Grief, pain, fear of the unknown? Sif didn’t really know.
Another pull of the flask was taken before it was offered to Loki like a small olive branch as he had taken it upon himself to help her feel more at ease in her new room.
His own thoughts on the matter were a conflicting tempest, half of his own making, and half out of sheer circumstance. It was difficult for him to find any peace between the two, and he had not known such peace for years now. He feared that it would always be that way.
"There is time yet to reflect. And, truth be told, I do not know if it is possible," he admitted, after a moment of silence to reflect on what was around him. "I fear that there will never be anything as grand as what Asgard once was. But if Thor remains hopeful, and if the people of Asgard yet live? I will too readily admit that my fears were without merit."
He had spent so many years memorizing the city, noticing every small detail, so he could manage his tricks and sneak to and fro. And now, he was using it to ease Sif's wounded heart. He never thought that would happen, but things always took unexpected turns, where he was concerned.
He took the flask and it almost seemed like his fingers closed themselves in on it, it disappeared so quickly.
"The illusion will disappear in an hour's time, and shall return to the stars you requested. Is there naught else you require?"
He doubted she desired further company from the likes of him.
Sif’s gaze upon Loki’s face was intense, discerning, as if she were trying to search his soul through the look alone. What else did she need? Company probably, Thor was- Well, wherever he was he was not here and Sif was very alone with her thoughts and broken heart.
“Nothing,” she said with a shake of her head as she returned her arms to across her chest in a self comforting gesture. “But thank you for this,” and that was sincere, apparent in how her previous hard gaze softened. “It helps.”
Loki stared back at her, uncertain of Sif's thoughts or intent toward him, other than inflicting bodily harm. He had a strong enough sense of self preservation to know he should back away, despite his equally strong tendency to see if there were subtle forms of trickery or ways to take advantage of an opportunity. Such doors of opportunity were closed here, for Sif was resolute, even in her grief. And there was no time for tricks, for he too felt the loss of Asgard with a keenness that could rival any sharp blade.
"I pray it does, Lady Sif," he said, with a slight bow to her, "and I offer my condolences for your loss."
He took one last longing look around at the illusion of Asgard, pausing only to cast a fleeting glance at Sif before he showing himself out the door.