Scribble for @sifkiweek
Day 2 - Time
~1600 words
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His return goes unnoticed by Earth's defence mechanisms – it’s about the third time, after all. Sif alone is allowed the knowledge. And her curiosity – so she names it – quite swiftly wins over her desire to keep an angered distance. She manages no longer than a day in New Asgard, then she’s on the way to London with a morning flight.
He waits for her outside the airport leaning on a sleek dark vehicle, sporting a rich man’s attire and sunglasses, his hair only carelessly swept backwards, winding dark and shiny behind his ears. She keeps a straight face, like she had long been used to his capricious jumps between life and death. Her breaths are bent on betraying her as she walks up to the spot in a strictly regulated pace and taps the car’s engine hood as a greeting.
“A fine illusion,” she notes. “Did you obtain it in a local junk yard?”
“I can’t believe you hold me that cheap,” he complains.
She shrugs.
“It’s how most of us started out here, no need to be ashamed of it.”
Loki opens the front door for her and then hops in behind the wheel, meanwhile admitting somewhat bashfully:
“To tell the truth, I’ve been here for a while.”
The note makes her blood heat up a notch. She gazes out at the streets rushing by to hide any traitorous signs of insult. She shall remain as detached as she was left in the past two decades while he was busy destroying himself and some realms in numerous attempts. She was clearly indicated to be of no priority any more, her rather self-humbling attempts to contact him met firm rejection when he reappeared in Asgard as a convict. She can read a message well, and what reason would she have to forget it just now?
“Would you be interested in a late breakfast, or perhaps an early lunch?” he inquires breaking the stretching silence.
“I’ll get my own meal, thank you.”
“Understood. Street hot dog it is.”
“I hate that,” she breathes to the window with her thickest disinterest.
“Thank you,” Loki mutters with genuine relief in his tone, which steals an undesired smile onto her lips.
Giving up the sulk that she knows he’d easily counter and is only letting her keep up to appease her, she steals a glance at him from the corner of her eyes. He’s guiding the soft-humming earthen vehicle with the knack he has for any machines of the Universe, rolling the wheel with a loose palm like it’s unworthy of his touch. It’s his way of touching anything while in public, really. Sif remembers, even though she’d have plenty of reasons to forget. She is desperate to forget, in fact, especially now, while locked in a small space with the subject of her increasingly detailed memories, at least one for each knuckle on those long fingers.
She all but flees from the metal box when the car stops in a parking lot.
“Is this where you’ve been lurking around?” she asks to prevent the conversation from slipping out of her control.
“Indeed. Not the most appealing location, but a tad better than those huts in… New Asgard.” He utters the name with a short chuckle.
He guides her up to a loft with a view over the river: quite pleasant indeed.
"And yet," she notes with a glass of wine in her hand and a purposefully nurtured grudge in her eyes, "it's not the kind of grandeur that’s rightfully expectable from you. Where are the servants? The garages? The library wing?"
"Well, this complex does belong to me," he admits humbly, "as does 6 Chesterfield and Maughan Library. But you noted well that I'm trying to lay low; it's not my intention to stir the defence squads of Midgard just yet."
"What makes you assume they don't know you're here?" she inquires.
"I don't." He walks up to her and places his own glass on the windowsill. He speaks huskily, his eyes searching her face. "Would I have informed you if I did?"
She makes effort not to turn her gaze away: not to give in to the welling up shame that she has helped SHIELD out a few times, and that he knows. It was her rightful choice, as she doesn’t owe anyone anything.
He speaks through the silence while they face each other up close like this.
“I wish to stay.”
“Alas,” she fakes soft surprise. “the God of Mischief wasn’t welcome anywhere?”
“It’s not that. I’d want to be where you are.”
“Big words,” she breathes through her turmoil of doubt, sarcasm, joy, and some unnamed things.
“No, they aren’t. You’ve always been the world for me, Sif. You’re the wisdom that I lack. You’re a haven for my rampant mind. However, I've never been able to tell what truly resides in your heart. It’s terrifying… But I don’t want to… " His lips tighten as he falters for a moment. "I don’t want to run from it any longer. It’s high time to face you.”
She watches Silvertongue rummage through words. She interrupts before she’d think to stop herself.
“You had clear priorities. Remember? You’re the one who refused to see me. You went out of your way, Loki, to avoid having to talk with me.”
“Because, my dearest Sif, how would it fit your greatness to be the widowed mourner of a criminal, a fugitive, a usurper?” His hands move to hold her by the shoulders but cower halfway.
“What has changed now?” She demands mercilessly, with the torn-up ache of her heart.
“The Universe.”
She sees the Universe light up in his eyes while he utters the answer. And she knows what he means, as she has always known; unlike others, she's had a knack for deciphering the tangled half-truths forged by his clever tongue. It may have been, she guessed, due to her pinpointed attention on his slightest moves. He made her addicted very early on, to the feeling of having him in a way no one else did.
“I would have been there,” the words escape her on their own, her tone bends into accusation. “You should have trusted in me while you had the chance. Haven’t you seen me stand my ground through centuries of your self-abasement? Was I not worthy of being by your side at those times?”
His eyes close for the moment at the cruel word. There is no place for regret, however: she knows her case is lost since the dam broke. He has gained insight, into her very core, and he's going to play it as he likes. He'll use her before leaving her behind once again, and she'll feel rewarded.
"I did not honestly think you still had me in your heart after all this," he admits softly. "You serve Midgard now."
"To build relations, to earn a place here for our disheartened people."
"Have you never been asked to help them entrap me?"
Her suppressed breath is an attempt to contain her anger and pain.
"They wouldn't dare," she tells him in a tone low, and for once, he’s clueless about whether her contempt is for him or for the humans. It daunts him, as she does whenever something else obscures her from him. Because he is exposed to her, free for grazing or clawing or cutting in, whether she’s aware of it or not.
“How many times have I let you go?" she whispers into his silence. "How many times have I mourned you? Can you tell, or have you lost count by now?”
He doesn't answer, unless the vast world in his eyes counts as one, while he takes a last look before he retreats to the couch. He's got nothing else to offer. It's up to her now, and she lingers by the window in futile hope that her stirred emotions settle into something tangible.
After a lengthy silence, she leaves her glass as well and sits next to his comfortably settled form, seeking his reaction from the corner of his eyes, to see if this is all right. She knows she’s struggling with her own broken trust, but so does he. How long he will stay on this planet, she burns to know, but she also knows it will never be asked, let alone answered. So she scoots over and cuddles up to him wordlessly, unsmiling, legs hung over one of his thighs without requesting affordance. She feels an arm slide across her back in response, a hand ends up on her waist. Looks rest against each other, both questioning. He leans in then, his lips reach her hair around the temple, he remains like that for a while, breathing in her scent, listening inwards to the stir settling down from the contact. Their hands meet, her fingers softly hook into his palm atop her knees, their warmth is equal.
He lifts her hand, places a languid kiss on each of her fingernails.
“Would you marry me if I asked?” he asks them in a very personal whisper.
They say love is different for everyone. For her, it’s him, with a big, empty void all around him in the rest of the entire Universe. She has experienced sufficient time of both having and lacking, to learn by now which one is her path. So yes, she would. If he could ever prove he knew what he was asking. But only then. So she refuses to answer, braving the greatest menace she’s ever encountered: letting this coward slip away for good. (One more time couldn't hurt any bigger, could it?)
And it eases him visibly.
"I will earn your answer," he says into her eyes.
Though she feigns nonchalant routine while leaning in for a kiss, her smile eventually spreads against his captured lips.
