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I
The air feels thick in Sif’s lungs as she breathes it in, water vapour settling sweetly on the tip of her tongue whilst they hurry toward the half-fallen structure that waits abandoned in the middle of the broad field. it is too far to get back to the city now. The children know they will be caught in the rain if they try to return, and there is nothing but open meadow between them and the storm that brews overhead.
Thor is convinced that it will be a gentle storm. He asserts that the lightning will not come often and that the static that the children can feel needling against their bodies, causing gooseflesh to rise and fall in waves across their skin, is nothing to worry over.
Loki scoffs at him, trudging just at Sif’s back, miserable still from the previous argument that they had all settled between them.
Well, Thor and Sif had settled it. The two of them are still giggling with the vestiges of their playful confrontation.
Mud falls from Sif’s tunic in clumps as she half jogs along beside the eldest prince, but the piece of clothing is still heavy with dirt. She’s covered from head to foot in the dark muck. Of course, she is nowhere near so slathered as Thor, Sif notes again with relish. The pride of victory swells still in her breast. Her chest puffs out, and Sif smiles her way into the gloomy interior of the barn.
The hay that sits there is slightly damp, sweet and pungent with the beginnings of decay. Loki immediately begins to seem mollified, as though the dark is something he has wished for all day, and Sif lets out a small, bemused, sigh. The corner of her mouth lifts in half of a smile at him. He likes decaying things, she thinks.
Though he is not one for playing out in the fields and getting dirty, he certainly likes to scavenge. Sif does not know how many times he has brought her bird bones to look at. It is half-endearing.
Sif and Thor sit heavily together in a pile of hay, perched at the entrance to the barn and watching as the thick, dark, clouds roll over them, thunder grumbling low in the distance over the mountains in tandem with the wind whipping up the long grasses outside and the first, fat, drops of rain beginning to hit the turf noisily beyond.
Sif cards a hand through her mud-encrusted hair, scratching at the back of her neck where it has caused her skin to itch. She looks to Thor, his slightly longer form resting into the flats of his palms where they have pressed within the hay, feet flexing in his boots while he considers the sky above them. He looks contented.
“I do not know how the two of you can be so…whatever it is you are,” Loki pipes up from just beside Sif, gesturing sharply enough to draw her attention.
She turns to look at him, taking in the pinched expression on his pale features, his dark hair a mass of mats and curls after the whipping they’d all given to one another. He is not nearly so dirty as Thor or Sif. There are smears of mud here and there, one across his left cheek from where Sif had ground a little of the damp earth into his skin when he had shown himself to be a spoil sport, even as the affront of Thor’s initial assault had turned into fun.
“What? There is nothing wrong with getting a little dirty once in a while,” Sif defends, grinning out of her own muck-smeared face, her teeth almost bright in the weak light filtering into the barn, and against the darkness of the dirt that has caked itself in patches on her skin.
“Yes,” Thor reinforces from her right side.
She watches as Loki’s gaze narrows passed her at his brother, anger obvious in the hunch of his narrow shoulders up to his ears. Sif swallows, recognising his temper when she sees it. Trying not to twitch away nervously -she has never been a mouse- the girl frowns deeply at the younger of the two princes.
“I do not know what it is that has got you so uppity about the whole thing, Loki,” Thor continues. Sif watches as Loki’s frustration grows, burgeoning under the surface as his hands curl into tight knots at his sides. Loki stands abruptly.
“Of course you do not understand. You always win and it is not fair,” he bites off at them both.
Sif raises her eyebrows at Loki, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Come now,” she tries to calm his defensiveness, “it was all in good fun. I protected you, didn’t I?” Sif smiles at him, trying for encouragement. Loki’s expression darkens just a little more, and Sif feels her chest squeeze.
“Well, since the two of you like one another so much, I suppose you don’t need me here to spoil the mood!” Loki is changing tactics. Thor straightens a little beside her, and Sif can feel the slight offence growing on the eldest brother.
“Loki! Do not be like that. I only — It was not to insult you. I merely…I was bored, and the two of you looked as though you were…having fun together, so I wanted to join you.”
“You chose an interesting way to do so.” Loki’s voice has venom behind it now, and Sif lets out a weary sigh, frowning up at her friend.
“I am going,” Loki announces.
Sif and Thor move as one to stop him, both pausing as they see the other coming forward. Sif glances sidelong at Thor, her heart stuttering, trying not to blush. She hasn’t had much exposure to the older prince, but he is good friends with Balder, and she has grown close with the other boy. Balder insists that Thor is a good friend, and very kind. Sif thinks that, given their personalities, Balder is likely the more correct between himself and Loki on the topic of Thor, but then again, he does let himself get bullied…
“Loki do not be silly. It is dangerous to go out. Besides, you will only be more miserable once you add cold and wet to the mud,” Thor points out.
Loki’s mouth twitches, and he glances at the outside again as the rain begins to pick itself up, no longer just a splatter of fat drops here and there, but instead a steady drumming against the patchy roof above them.
Sif flinches as a thick, cold, drop of water hits the skin of her forehead. She shifts positions, shaking the cold away from her face and blinking rapidly.
Finally the younger prince sits again, heavy enough to disturb the dust underneath the hay. Sif coughs a little, scrunching her nose as it itches with the particles, and Thor settles back, satisfied that his brother is staying.
A flash of lightning casts the barn in sharp relief, and Thor laughs a little as it disappears in the distance and the roll of its strike echoes off of the mountains and over the planes of Asgard. His hands do a little drumming against the turf, crunching lightly over the hay.
Beside her, Loki rolls his eyes at his brother.
“What’s this?” Sif turns her amber gaze curiously to Thor’s activities.
“The rhythm of the storm,” Thor informs her, forming another pattern against the ground as another flash of light makes the barn a little brighter around them.
She leans toward him, curious, and hears as the thunder in the distance almost mimics the movements of his hands.
“Father is teaching me,” Thor seems proud to say it, his chest puffing out a little when he glances slowly toward Sif, as though checking to see her reaction to the news.
She makes certain to smile a little, almost encouraging. Mostly she is confused by his words.
“Well, I mean…He taught me this when I was still little,” Thor corrects himself.
“But what did he teach you?” Sif purses her lips, still uncertain.
“W-well…”
She can swear she sees him flush in the gloom, though it is difficult to tell beneath the healthy coat of mud over his skin.
“The names of the lightning forms. What each of them means and can do…I mean…we are Storm Giants, after all…So we have to know these things if we are to use our powers.”
Behind her, Loki slaps a hand against the ground suddenly. Sif had nearly forgotten he was there, and she turns with wide eyes to look at him, unhappy with his sudden show of violence.
“Have you something to add,” her question comes out sharp, and Loki scowls in her direction.
“Only that I am part Storm Giant too, and you’ve never asked me any of these things.” Loki has bragged about many things in their time as friends, and this has never been one of them. It is not as though she had known to even ask.
“You’ve never offered such information,” Sif accuses.
“You have never showed an affinity for it, so it is not as though you have spent any time learning of it,” Thor interjects.
Sif can see the nerve being struck in Loki the moment that Thor says it. She swallows.
“I have shown an affinity for a great many things! Father could add it to the list of spells that he has already taught me if he truly wanted,” Loki snaps back at Thor.
Something swells up inside of the older prince, too, as Loki fires back.
Sif tries not to shrink between the two of them, worry starting to furrow her brow.
“Perhaps he does not want to,” Thor’s tone is suddenly as venomous as Loki’s. Sif finds it strange, unnerving even. The storm seems to snarl in response to Thor’s burgeoning emotions, the next flash of lightning closer and brighter than the others. The thunder that follows is on its very heels, chasing it over top of the barn. Sif cannot help but jump.
“Perhaps father only throws bones at you because he can see that you are untalented in the things which truly matter to him most,” Loki throws back at Thor.
There is a moment in which Sif can feel that the tension in the air might be broken in two with her hands, and she hears and senses Thor’s movement before she can even look around to see his fist raised, and his body coiled to launch itself at Loki.
She puts her hand out, bracing her palm against Thor’s chest, turning to glare back at Loki, pinning him with her look alone as the rain picks up outside their shelter, the roof above them beginning to gather a steady leak.
“Stop it, both of you!” Both princes start in surprise at the ferocity in her tone. “You are brothers, and should be kind to one another. Loki, perhaps if you were to ask the King, he would be willing to include you in the lessons, since you are clearly so fascinated by the subject.” The younger prince curls in on himself at her glare, still looking pinched and poisonous, retreating at her full frontal assault.
“Thor, perhaps you could show Loki what you know,” Sif points out, “and then maybe the both of you might discover some sort of common ground!”
Thor retreats in full, looking chastised, and Sif lowers her hand as she looks back to Loki. He seems as though he wants to say more, and she dares him to silently. Finally, the younger price stands and stalks off to the other side of the barn, disappearing partially into the shadows of a shrouded corner.
Sif hesitates, her hand braced against the ground as she watches after Loki. Her muscles coil as she readies herself to follow after him, but she pauses when Loki settles himself in the dry nook, facing away from them and the raging of the storm outside of the barn. He will want to be alone. These moods always prove to be solitary ones.
Pressing her mouth into a thin line, Sif settles where she is once again, turning back to Thor where he has taken to staring out at the clouds and rain once more.
“Do you have Storm Giant powers?”
Thor starts, looking back at her as though surprised that she is still sitting next to him, and he moves over a little the moment she starts to shuffle closer, huddling out of the steady stream of water that is falling from the roof beside her.
The hay crunches again under her body, and she can feel the warmth of Thor’s arm in the space between them. The air has grown cool as the storm relieves the humidity that had been accumulated during the day.
“Well…Father thinks that I do,” Thor admits, clearing his throat.
She does not think that she has ever seem him look at his lap when talking to someone else, but he does so now, as though he might find something there that will be of more interest than looking at Sif. She scrunches up her mouth, leaning a little closer.
Thor doesn’t move.
“I mean…I can certainly — feel the storm,” he tells her.
“Feel it?”
“Yes I can…I can feel what form it will taken,” Thor finally turns back to Sif, his golden hair dark and stringy in his face. It mirrors her own, no doubt. “I can tell when it will end and when it is coming,” Thor adjusts himself, limbs growing taut with excitement as his enthusiasm grows and he begins to smile again. Sif cannot help but smile back, his grin infectious.
“That is…interesting,” she decides. “I have never had any affinity for seithr,” Sif admits, “though my mother had it…and I think that probably my half brother has it as well.” She does not know how else it is that Heimdall might see beyond the veil and to wherever he wishes to look. She wonders what it must be like, seeing so many things all at once. It must be a great headache.
“I did not think that I would either,” Thor confesses, “but Father has it, and mother,” he glances over his shoulder just slightly, “and Loki…”
Sif can sense the loneliness in the words. Now she understands his reaction to Loki’s jibes. Loki always knows exactly what to say to hurt you the most, when the mood suits him.
She resists the urge to look back at Loki and scowl again.
“It must have been a relief then,” she lets the words come out as half of a sigh, lifting her nose out toward the field. “I am glad that there is something which you feel connects you to the three of them.”
Thor is silent a moment, and she can feel the force of his lightning blue eyes on her. She sees a smile forming on his face out of the corner of her eye, and swallows the smile that threatens to tug once more on her own lips.
“Me too.” He turns his gaze back out to the sky again too, clearing his throat. “That one is skellr.”
Sif blinks as Thor starts to instruct her on the name of the flash of light that cuts through the clouds.
“That is the first one that Father ever taught me,” he imparts, “he said that we were both sons of the storm, and that I must know what he knows.” Thor’s tone grows important as he relays the information, and Sif cannot help rolling her eyes, grinning again as she bites back a little laugh at Thor’s self importance. How like Loki, she thinks. Then again, she is never quite so endeared when Loki starts to brag.
“What about that one,” she asks, deciding that she will indulge Thor for the time being. Sif’s finger reaches out toward the forked tongue, its afterimage still burned behind her eyelids.
“Skina,” he leans his chin into his palm, elbow resting against his knee. Sif leans back against the hay, bracing her hands on the floor.
“Skina,” she repeats, and finds that she butchers the pronunciation a little. She does not blink, carrying on as though she had never made a mistake in the first place. “And when you are grown, will you teach these words to your children as well,” she wants to know, turning her gaze toward Thor again.
“Of course.” The eldest prince nods sagely. “But I will only have children if I find myself a suitable wife. She will have to be as strong as me…and lethal on a battlefield.” Sif snorts, shaking her head.
“Of course,” she repeats, giggling.
For a moment there is silence between them asThor’s companionable laughing recedes and he continues to look at her. Sif raises an eyebrow, turning to wonder at him.
“Marry me?”
The question takes her by surprise, and Sif pauses, flustered. Behind them, Loki vocalizes his disgust with a scoff, and she can hear him taking a breath to hurl something back at Thor for the question. Sif knows that she can remain silent no longer if she wishes to maintain the peace.
“No,” she tosses her dirt-tangled mane over her shoulder, staring primly back at the sky. Thor continues to grin.
II
Sif’s eyes blow wide as the air is forced from her lungs, and she coughs, struggling, pressing up against her foe only to find that she cannot get the upper hand. She lets out a squawk of displeasure, arm braced against the ground in a square even while she is pummelled from above. She feels her elbow pop as Thor presses yet more of his weight down upon her.
Pinned to the spot over the gravelly dirt below her, Sif winces, a stone digging into her elbow. She hisses out a wheezing breath in annoyance.
“Cheat,” she accuses through her teeth, and Thor laughs. The sound is triumphant, and infuriating to the young shield maiden.
“You are only mad that I have successfully thrashed you nearly every time we have fought since you turned thirteen.” He grins down at her a little wider than before, and Sif resists the urge to spit at him. That would show the burly oaf.
“Who’s been thrashed,” she demands, fight still taut in her limbs. One wrong move and she will have turned this around on him, Sif promises herself. She is unbeatable.
The shield maiden bucks her hips, and Thor wavers, expression going from triumph to surprise. Sif offers him a feral smile in turn as she starts to regain the upper hand, grunting while Balder’s voice rises from the sidelines, surprise and gladness intertwined in his tone, he encourages her advance.
Her triumph is short lived, and Thor forces her back to the ground once again, pinning her wrists with his hands this time and leaning into the connection, grunting back at her.
“You should admit defeat when you have lost,” he offers as advice, eyes narrowing down at her, his own smile turning as predatory as Sif’s. He wants to win just as badly as she does.
“You admit defeat,” she snaps back at him, trying to free herself with little avail.
“Sif — stop struggling,” Thor growls the words, a look of intense concentration upon his features.
He has extended himself too far above her, and Sif squirms again, brining up a knee from under him with some expertise, jabbing it upward into Thor’s stomach.
The prince’s grip immediately loosens, and she can feel the ache in the bones of her wrists as blood rushes back to them. Thor’s breath bursts against her face and he half collapses toward her at the force of the blow. Sif pushes him away, rolling to the side and up to her feet once again, crouched low, her hands out as she waits for her prince to recover.
Face red, Thor looks back up at her, intent sharp in his blue eyes, and Sif grins toothily back, shooting upward and away from him when he lunges at her. The two circle each other, strands of golden hair clinging to Sif’s skin as she sweats under the midday sun. Balder is watching silently now, eyes wide with disbelief no doubt.
How even he can have so little faith in her is a mystery to Sif. She’ll thrash him next.
“What’s the matter, Thor? Surprised that you cannot win so easily? I thought that you said you could thrash me? Looks like that bulk is not all that it is cracked up to be,” Sif taunts, dodging away as he rushes her again. Like this they can go all day, she thinks. She is far faster than Thor.
“Conserve your energy, Sif!” Balder’s prompt from the sidelines has her throwing a sour look his way. She is fine. Yes, she feels a little tired, her vision swimming just slightly and her heart a drum in her ears, but she knows what she is doing. She has not bested a hundred boys in the practice ring to lose to Thor now.
Sif falters, and she knows she has made a mistake. Thor seizes his opportunity. A leg sweeps hers out from under her, and Sif goes down with another expelling of her breath, saved this time unlike last.
She scrabbles to get back onto her feet, but Thor has taken hold of her ankle, and he drags her back toward him once more, clamouring on top of Sif’s tired form to pin her again.
She lets out a growl of exasperation, extracting one hand with a great effort and using it to push up against the underside of Thor’s chin, forcing his face away and his body to weaken.
They rock and gasp in each others’ grasps for a moment, Thor struggling to get away from her palm, using his own hands to push against her, locking the air from her throat a little while she uses her legs to wrap around him, rounding her back to attempt swinging them around the other way.
Sif chokes as Thor’s hands dig a little too far into her wind pipe, and she finds that she needs to rest, to take a moment to collect herself. He will not let her have it, and she would not want him to. In a real battle there would be no moment of respite. Not once. If she does not fight, then she will be defeated. On the field, defeat means death.
Sif rallies, making one last effort in her own favour, and rolls him over with a great heave, rasping out a triumphant noise as Thor is pinned beneath her knees. “Ha, ha!”
Panting heavily, Sif grips tightly at her prince, rising with the motion of Thor’s hips as he tries to unbalance her in turn and fails.
They breathe heavily together for some moments, both taking a breath, and then Thor smiles up at her, sweat dripping down his temples and forehead. With another heave of his own, he tips her over, unbalancing what she had thought was her victory once and for all.
A cry of outrage escapes her lungs, the ground hard at her back once again as Thor pants above her, coming in so close that she can feel the heat of their faces mere centimetres apart. His breath brushes against her skin, and her throat goes dry.
“You are indeed mighty, Lady Sif, but you are no match for the mighty Thor,” he announces. “Just as many before you have not been.” He settles himself in his victory, nose brushing against Sif’s almost playfully.
“You are my equal in but one thing…”
Sif rolls her eyes, contemptuous.
“And what, pray tell, is that?” Her tone holds venom.
“Sheer force of will,” Thor chuckles, eyelids lowering. Sif finds herself going cross-eyed with their proximity, and she flushes deeply.
Pausing as well, Thor seems to realise how close they have become. Another smile spreads slowly across his lips as he makes the decision not to retreat.
“Marry me?” The affection in his tone belies the joke that he is playing on her and Sif grunts, baring her teeth.
“No!”
Thor laughs.
III
The revelry lasts longer than usual. The Warriors Three have already bid them goodnight (at least, Fandral and Volstagg have done), Hogun draped between them as they head toward their homes for the evening. Sif shakes her head affectionately as they retreat into the dark, her own footsteps turning from the tavern that they had all but taken over for the evening and stopping her short when she notes that Thor still stands at her elbow, looking out at the silhouette of the palace against the horizon contemplatively.
Sif raises her eyebrows, amber gaze glassy with drink. “What troubles you, Thor?”
He blinks down at her, and she smiles up at her prince lazily, arms crossed while she awaits his answer.
“S’noth-nothing…” Thor reaches up to rub at the back of his neck, clearing his throat. She can see the turmoil swimming beneath his expression. Thor has never been good at suppressing his emotions, even when sober, and Sif bites back a sigh in amusement, thumping his bicep for good measure.
“Come,” she invites, “walk with me to the road home.” Sif doesn’t want to go all the way to Briedablik alone in any case. Sometimes it is nice to have company.
Thor nods, grunting once in acquiescence before they start on their way, headed toward the citadel.
His mood has changed. In the tavern he was all talk and laughter, boasting of the spoils which are to come his way. He has always made a show of things.
Their feet scuff the cobblestone road as they proceed slowly, and Sif breathes in deep as the breeze cuts across the rooftops and through the alleyways from the shoreline, bringing the scent of salt and seaweed amongst the buildings to catch in her hair and soothe her too warm skin. The stars are a nebulous cloud of light above them, one or two pinpricks burning out more brightly than the others. Sif wonders if any other realm has such a beautiful sky.
Tucking a dark strand of hair behind her ear, the shield maiden ventures another look at her prince where he walks in silent contemplation beside her. She thinks that she knows what the posturing had been about in the tavern, and Sif turns her gaze toward her feet as she gathers the courage to finally break their silence.
“So…tomorrow…is a big day for you.” An understatement. It is a big day for the entire realm — for the entirety of the Nine, she might venture. It is not every day that Asgard crowns a new King, and the old one steps down from his throne. It is not how their last two kings had ascended, that is for certain.
A product of the times in which they live, she reflects.
“I confess it has been much on my mind,” Thor ventures in response, tightly guarding his tongue for once. Sif raises her eyebrows at him in mild amusement but says nothing on the matter. He has only been talking of it for weeks — months non stop. Loki has grown so tired of it that he had not ventured to celebrate with them this night. Sif cannot say that she is sorry. Thor’s insistence that they include him in everything feels like a personal affront at times.
“I do not feel…as though I have truly had anyone I might speak with on the matter in full,” Thor admits. The confession takes Sif by surprise, and she blinks back up to Thor’s expression, searching his features for whatever it might be that has him so troubled now, when before it was all he could do to stop himself gushing over the matter. Certainly she is surprised that he has chosen to say it to her, of all those who surround him. Of all those who might offer him advice.
The shield maiden is just the tiniest bit pleased by it.
“There was a time that I might have had someone to speak with about it,” he ventures further, and Sif can feel that vague guilt and remorse which often claws its way up her throat from the cage of her ribs these days when she thinks of the past. Indeed, there was once a time when she, too, might have had someone to confide in fully. If only she’d allowed it. That time is past them, now.
She swallows and nods, rolling her lips inward and letting the bottom catch upon the edge of her teeth.
“I imagine that Balder would have been happy…to see this day.” It was perhaps not who Thor had been referring to. Sif thinks, though, that they have both missed his support in the seven years which lie now between his death and their lives in the present. His memory still weighs heavily on her shoulders. “But Thor…you may…you may be candid with me,” Sif invites.
Thor is silent for a time, a strange look on his face as he regards her, almost seeming to weigh the words. Their steps remain measured as they head toward the edge of town and away from the hustle of Asgard’s night life.
“It is just,” he bites back his words, seeming to think about them a little too hard, struggling to find the right way to express himself. Sif waits patiently, for once. “It is just that…I cannot say anything to Loki — he is always looking for something to hold over me.”
Thor sounds bitter, and Sif lets her lips pull into a thin line at the revelation. It is not as though she would expect more from Loki.
“And father is…He is counting on me,” Thor turns to look at her, and Sif reacts in kind, searching the vulnerability in his gaze for a time.
“But I cannot…I do not know if I am the right — I do not know if this is too soon.” Thor expressing uncertainty is jarring. Anxiety is not something she has ever associated with her friend.
Brow furrowing, Sif searches for the words that she thinks he might need to hear.
“I — to be truthful, Sif, I am…scared. I am scared that I am not ready.”
Sif cannot help the short laugh that escapes her throat at that.
“Scared?”
Thor scowls, ruffled, and Sif continues amenably.
“I have never known you to be scared of anything,” she reflects. The shield maiden bumps her shoulder into Thor’s arm. “I suppose if there is anything good to be frightened of it is this,” Sif allows.
Indeed, Kingship is a great burden, and a heavy one. She has a feeling it will weigh down her friend’s shoulders before long. Sif tries to lighten the mood with a smile.
Thor returns the expression, but it quickly slips away, and Sif sighs in understanding.
“All you need do is what you have always done,” she encourages finally, stopping Thor as they come to the road which branches off toward Briedablik from the main avenue to the citadel. “Meet the challenge head on. Show it that you are brave enough and strong enough to accept it and triumph over it.”
Thor chuckles. “You think so?”
“I know so. You have always bludgeoned your way through barriers. Besides,” she tosses her hair as though she too is facing the challenge ahead of her friend, “you’ve a plethora of advisors to help you, not least of which is your mother. she will not allow you to go astray.” Indeed, Sif thinks that though Thor will hold the title in name, Frigga will likely still hold most of the power, in the end. She doubts that the All-Father, in all of his wisdom, will simply leave Thor to it. No matter the hours that her friend has spent learning to be King.
Thor nods, looking at least a little more hopeful than before. Sif hugs her arms around herself as the breeze picks up, billowing her cloak out behind her and assaulting her front with cold.
“I’ve always been…anxious about Father’s sleep,” Thor tells her quietly then, barely audible over the rustling grass. Her dark brows raise once more against her forehead, tucking themselves toward her hairline and creating stitches in the skin of her brow.
“Mother is always encouraging, steady, but it has always been obvious that it causes her concern…and the length of the sleep is always proportional to the length between them.”
It has been so long since the last Odinsleep that Sif can scarcely remember it. Could he truly sleep for so long as he has held it at bay? Worry itches its way up her spine.
“What if he does not awaken? What if I am not ready and he never returns?” The possibility has the hairs on her arms standing on end, independent of the cold, but Sif crushes down her own fears in the face of Thor’s, trying to relax into a sense of ease once again.
“I do not…I do not know that even mother believes I can do this.”
Biting her lip, Sif shakes her head slowly.
“Thor…your father would not be naming you King if he did not believe that you were ready,” she finally points out, “and your mother would have voiced her concerns to him long ago, because I cannot believe that this would have been…That this was a rash decision. He must have been planning this for some time before now,” she adds. “You are merely nervous.”
Thor’s feathers ruffle once again at the idea. Sif smiles, placating.
“If he did not believe you were ready, the King would have appointed your mother regent,” she continues further, reaching a hand out to place upon Thor’s arm, “but he did not, He chose instead to instate you.” Sif’s hand squeezes in place.
The shield maiden can feel the tension leaving her friend, loosening his stance. She feels some relief as he does, and lets out a breath she had not realised she was holding.
A laugh bubbles out of his throat in relief, and Sif’s gaze narrows as he regards her rather curiously for a moment. She can see the gears turning behind his eyes, both of them more sober now that they have been walking for a time in the sea air. There is a hint of mischief in the upward turn of Thor’s mouth.
“Marry me?”
“Ha, ha.” He hasn’t asked her that in years, no least of all because of their falling out before…She is happy that he feels secure enough in their friendship now to bring up the old, teasing, words again. However, she cannot help the slight twist in her chest over them. She is almost tempted to say yes, her heart fluttering in her breast. She knows what the consequences will be if she does.
“I do not think so. Now go home and get some rest, or you shall never drag yourself out of bed in time for the ceremony! The people will think you’ve chickened out.”
Thor reaches forward, patting her shoulder with a grin and turning his footsteps toward his home obediently.
“Yes mother.”
Sif punches his arm for the affront, grinning back as he walks away rubbing the spot where her knuckles had dug into his flesh.
IV
“Marry me.”
The words cut through Sif’s fighting instincts like a knife, and she deflates a moment in surprise and wonder. Her anger rears forth again with renewed vigour but a breath later, outrage her new source for ire.
“How can you say that to me when we are in the midst of an argument,” she demands, sharp and vicious in her rage. She rounds away from Thor, stalking to the other side of his office, her hands knotted to fists at her sides.
“We are arguing, yes,” Thor agrees, standing finally from his desk and walking around it, assumably to place less distance between the General and himself. Sif feels him reach out for her even before his fingers brush her knuckles, and she wrenches her fist away
.
“How can you want to speak of marriage when we are having a fight? When you are so clearly — “ She cuts herself off, biting the inside of her cheek. When you are still so clearly in mourning for Jane Foster.
She wants all of him, but Sif is becoming more and more accustomed to the idea that she will never have all of him…And that it is perhaps not enough. Even if it means that Ullr will have someone who is around far more often than Balder. Even if it means security of a different kind all together. Sif still isn’t certain that she wants it when that security seems a mere veil over some bigger issue which will remain unresolved the rest of their lives.
“You keep me in line,” Thor answers, standing firmly where he has planted himself behind her, “and challenge me when others will not. You raise good points…You make certain that I do what is best for both myself and the entire realm when my judgement is clouded by my own desires. I have need of that in my life. I have…I have need of you.”
“And you have me,” Sif points out, finally turning to look at Thor once again, her expression drawn. “I am not likely to stand up and go anywhere any time soon. I have responsibilities here, and people who I care for…And I would not uproot Ullr from all that he has known on a whim.”
“So what is the issue, then?”
Sif presses her lips together, pacing away from Thor once more. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t see it, he doesn’t —
“I am not a fool, Thor. I know that you still go to the edge of the Bifrost and look down at Midgard and ask Heimdall what is unfolding there. You are King in Asgard, now, but your mind is still with the mortals.” Though all of them are gone, Sif thinks. None could have lived so long. Time passes so differently there.
“A part of my mind will always be with them,” Thor answers steadily. Sif almost prefers it when he is yelling; this new found moderation in her friend is infuriating in and of itself, at times. “It is the place which changed me. It is where I learned the most of my own…self. I cannot erase that. My father’s lesson will always stay with me in the form of my attachment there.”
After all of these years, Sif still believes that Odin could never have known that Thor would be affected by Midgard to quite the degree in which he had been. In becoming a reluctant heir to the throne, Sif knows that he has become a better King…Much as she is loath to admit such a thing. It has made him somewhat more distant, however. Less obtainable than before.
She cannot see him quite the way she used to, and though many of the changes that he has made are for the better, and Sif can understand that, likes it even, she is also…afraid of those changes. Of the Thor who is willing to ask her to marry him in all honesty, without first seeing if he can get her to proclaim love for him back the way he had done when they were eighteen.
Hasn’t she dreamed of this moment? So why, now, does it feel like the dulled edge of a rusted knife dragging across her skin?
“I do not wish to play second to the memory of a woman long gone,” she says finally. The words wrench themselves from her breast, but she cannot utter them any louder than at the level of a murmur.
“That is not fair, Sif.”
“I know.”
“Can you truly tell me that you do not, on occasion, remember Ullr’s father with fondness? Even sadness?”
“I can.” She rarely ever thinks of Ægíl. He had not been her greatest love, or truly even a love at all. He had used her up, and then tossed her aside, and made her feel the fool. It is sad, that he has passed, and it is sad that Ullr will never know him…But Sif is not so very torn over his absence in her life.
Thor is silent, as though shocked, and Sif looks at him with weary eyes.
“Are you so surprised by that?”
“…I had simply not thought you so hardened.” The words twist in Sif’s gut.
“You do not get to judge me on this, Thor.”
“I am…I am not trying to judge you,” he relents. But she can see the way that he looks at her now, as though something about her makes him recoil, even as he draws a little closer to attempt contact once again.
“I am not him,” he acknowledges, “and you are not…Jane.” There is a weight to the Midgardian’s name even now.
Thor’s hand closes around Sif’s once more, loosening her grip so that their fingers might entwine, his nose brushing Sif’s temple as he breathes gently out. Sif shivers.
“We are two different people,” Thor continues then, “in love in a different way than we were in love with our previous partners, no matter who they were. I do not see every man you have ever been with, and surely you do not see every woman or man whom I have been with.”
“Of course I do not — “
“
Then let it lie, Sif. I did not ask you out of some sense of obligation. Take what you will of what I have become, but I think that I am a better man than I ever was before…And I cannot think that you have not changed yourself. In fact I know that you are not the same woman you were when first we met one another in the bedchamber. On the battlefield. As friends or lovers…Or ‘friends with benefits’.” Thor giggles just a little, wheezing the sound out of his chest. Sif rolls her eyes at what is obviously Midgardian slang.
It is an apt descriptor for their relationship as it stands, perhaps.
“We are closer than friends,” she answers finally. “You and I have endured more together than many others will ever hope to, even when we were apart. I have always been at your side and I have always…believed in you.” Sif swallows. “For a long time I have accepted that this is all that I can ever hope for.”
“I have offered you something else to hope for, Sif.”
“Yes, and it is…very kind of you to ask…but I do not — I do not know what I want now, any more than I knew what I wanted at eighteen.” When she had stopped specifically wanting Thor, Sif does not know…but she is certain that it happened at some point between laying siege to her own home with the help of her enemies and giving birth to her son, all simply to be handed the keys to the Kingdom whilst Thor went back to Midgard to play house with Jane Foster and continue shirking his duties to his people.
He has taken up his proper mantel, of course. She has remained his advisor, of course. What if he meets some other Midgardian woman in a distant future and he leaves Asgard for her too?
How cynical.
Thor sighs, drawing her to him, his mouth at the junction of her neck and shoulder with a warm puff of breath. She shivers again, closing her eyes, leaning her head away to expose more skin beneath the fur trim of her cloak.
It would be nice to be different than this…It is nicer still to remain as they are for the time being, not thinking of a more serious future, or of being Queen of Asgard and all that would come with such a responsibility as the title of All-Mother.
One child is more than enough.
Thor’s mouth moves along her skin, settling at the base of her jaw, beneath her ear, back down again as he moves her hair out of the way and finds more skin to suckle and nip. He does it to make himself think of anything but her rejection, perhaps. Sif doesn’t mind this sort of distraction from her own inadequacies.
“I will bring a contingent of Einherjar to meet Ulf,” he tells her between kisses. Sif sighs out as her heart flutters, pulse quickening with every piece of gentle pressure and every burn of Thor’s beard as he pays her body his compliments.
“Good,” she manages between gasps, back arching.
“You will…” Thor’s hands come to grasp at her tunic’s stiff shoulders, pulling them aside as well as can be managed, “be amongst them.”
“Of course…” Sif turns her face to meet his kiss as he presses it hungrily to her mouth. These are negotiations that she can be a part of.
“Good…” he says.
Thor lifts her, and a moment later her back meets the surface of his desk, papers and ink pots scattering to the floor.
~
Waiting for the thundering of her heart to cease, Sif breathes into the crook of Thor’s neck. It is hot and humid in the small space between them, and the chair that frames them is uncomfortable now that she is not distracted with the feeling of hands and teeth, her body still humming with life as she holds him within her. Thor’s hands glide almost too warm against her spine, burning at her skin through her tunic. The General swallows convulsively, eyelids opening lazily as her breathing slows.
“If you do not wish to be Queen, then you do not need to be,” Thor says quietly, finally breaking the long silence between them, “it is enough just to have you at my side.”
V
She can’t breathe.
“SIF!”
Trying to suck in air, the shield maiden’s grip on her weapon loosens, and she stumbles back, confusion tugging at her brow. Before her, Ulf looks down at the uru weapon protruding from his chest, and then falls. His blood-caked blade clatters dully against the grassy turf.
Something of force grabs her arms, yanks her away. There’s warmth at her back, but she feels cold, and she cannot seem to get her breath. Her body is trembling.
“Sif..! Audumbla, Sif! Look at me!” She can’t. She tries, Thor’s voice is calling her name and the warrior attempts to look up, to focus on something, anything. In her fading vision she sees her own hands brought up, covered in crimson. Hers?
Is she — ?
~
A dull ache wakes her. Her mind wanders, unable to focus, and Sif squints through the fog, eyes aching in the bright gold of the healing caul that undulates over her in peaceful waves.
She’s warm, and she’s in pain, her mouth so dry that she grimaces, breath a wheeze in her throat. She remembers only vaguely how she got here — or rather, she does not know how she ended up in the healing wing of Asgard’s citadel, but she remembers bits and pieces of the battle she’s just fought as it only slowly knits itself back together in her pain-hazed mind.
The dull crackle in the air as Thor raced overhead to meet their enemy leader. The numbness in her arm as her sword met with the battle axe that the giant had brought with him to the fight.
Her right arm is heavy, still, and Sif finds that she cannot move it beneath the weight. Turning her head, she peers through the fog of waking to see the peaceful face of her son, his expression lax in slumber, half-covered by the dark curling mop of his hair. Her own expression relaxes, hand coming up to cradle his body carefully a little closer.
Sif looks down at herself, recollection gathering, and takes in the view of the bandages which thickly bind her torso. She groans, and her son sleeps on…But another weight stirs, and then there is the warmth of a large, calloused, hand against her cheek.
Sif turns her head once again, swallowing thickly as she sees Thor’s drawn expression from outside of the caul, the smallest hint of relief darting through his eyes as it washes over his features. She thinks that there are new lines around his eyes and mouth that she’s never noticed before, wrinkled from care.
“Sif…” he breathes her name and a shiver runs down her spine as she closes her eyes once again, simply allowing herself to feel the blunt expanse of his palm against her skin. She stays this way too long, feeling his hand starting to slip away as he draws back. She opens tired eyes again and he pauses.
“Did we win,” she croaks in question, her throat scratching, grating, at the words. her chest complains of the effort, and Sif breathes in, rasping, cheek twitching.
Thor pauses, as though struck, and then lets out a gasping chuckle, emotion thick in his voice. “Aye, we won.”
“Good.” Sif’s lips tug into a tired, grimacing, smile.
“No small thanks is owed to you for winning the battle by placing yourself between him and me,” Thor tells her then, almost reproachful. Sif’s eyebrows twitch upward, as though she cares little for the reproach, though in truth it is becoming apparent to her that if she had died, Ullr would have been left alone in the world. The idea causes a different sort of pang in her chest, and the shield maiden wheezes again, coughing painfully, face paling.
“Gently,” Thor reaches for her, pressing his palms to her shoulders, careful as he brushes the backs of his fingers against her brow in the next moment before reaching for a cup sitting beside her healing bed.
Sif allows him to tip the cool contents against her lips, swallowing a mouthful with a belated grimace as she discovers that it is bitter, whatever it is. She feels her hurts starting to melt slowly away.
“Were you both here…this entire time?”
“I have only just allowed Ullr in,” he confesses, “but he was outside for most of the surgery, I believe. I sent word to Balder to come home as well. We are still waiting on him.”
She is glad that Ullr has only just been allowed in. She would not have wished for him to see her bloodied and broken, and she hopes that Heimdall or someone else in their family had taken him aside before he could be exposed to such a trauma.
For a time, Sif stares at Thor in thought, amber eyes clearing as consciousness returns in earnest. She can feel the pain in her body from her brush with death, but whatever Thor has fed her dulls it, making it an afterthought in the back of her mind. A different pain than the thought of her son made an orphan by her death on a battlefield far from home. It isn’t something she’s ever truly thought on before now. It has always seemed such a far fetched thing.
She will be in bed for some days yet. Just more time to reflect on such realities. Sif is already restless at the mere notion. “Thank you…” Sif finally says, drawing Thor’s attention from whatever he has been frowning at that he can see on her face or body which, for the moment, the shield maiden cannot. “For making certain that he is well…and for staying here with me.”
“There is nothing to thank me for. You are both my — “ he stops himself from saying whatever he had been about to say. Sif closes her eyes again, breathing in as deeply as she is able.
“What you did was foolish,” he tells her then, voice tight. Sif cracks her eyelids open once again and frowns at Thor. She doesn’t want to hear this now.
“Thor — “
“No. You are…you are important. You are integral to Asgard, not just to your family, and you put yourself in harm’s way and you almost — “ Emotion has got the best of him, and the Thunderer takes in a sharp breath even as he allows his hands to fall down, squeezing Sif’s fingers and wrist.
“That is my duty,” Sif croaks wearily, “as it has always been. Before I had a son, and before I was a General. My life is yours; my life belongs to the people here and to those who are helpless amongst the Nine Realms. As it shall always be.”
It is Thor’s turn to close his eyes, his grip nearly painful at Sif’s wrist, bruising her bones. The shield maiden grits her teeth.
“I took an oath, Thor, and I take it seriously.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? You have never attempted to interfere in this before, and yet now here we are, you lecturing me in my sick bed.”
“It was very different before. I had never been concerned that you would — “
“Everyone is fallible. Something the two of us know well.” He falls silent again, paling at the memory. It’s distant now, the way that Balder had left them, but it still sits in the corners of their minds, as it always will. Even the infallible are fallible.
Just look at how Odin had died.
“You are one of the few people left for whom I care deeply, Sif,” Thor finally tells her, voice low. “I will not watch you be destroyed the way that the rest of the people I cared for were destroyed.
“Loki is gone.”
“That is not what I mean, and you know it.” Thor’s voice is tight.
Sif is regretting this vein of conversation.
“I need you to trust me as you have always trusted me.”
“I do — “
“That is not what it sounds like,” she says.
Abashed, Thor looks away.
Turning their hands, Sif grasps Thor’s wrist in turn now, feeling the steady beat of his pulse under her fingers.
“Thor…”
“What?” He turns electric blue eyes back to Sif, and she lets her weary expression fall for a moment, smiling just a little at her friend. Her lover. She has kept them apart long enough, perhaps. She doesn’t know what she had wanted to say, but now the words that she thinks she means to have said for some time bubble up out of her chest unbidden.
What a terrible idea.
“Will you marry me?”
His eyes widen, and for a breath Sif’s heart quickens, fluttering. When Thor’s expression softens, her grasp against his wrist firms, slipping a moment later when he moves his hand to catch her fingers in his own again. Thor brings her still torn knuckles to his lips, pressing them there gently. His expression crumples.
“Yes.”