The hall echoed hollowly with her footsteps.They were heavy against the floor, quick, unfaltering as she made her way as fast as she could from the royal wing. Away from her shame, and her embarrassment. Away from the silent, looming, judgement of the staunch pillars and darkened walls.
Her anger with Thor followed on her heels, stalking up behind her and taking hold of her chest, settling itself there like a dark, smouldering, lump of coal. Sif’s throat was aching, and she could barely swallow past the lump it had twisted itself into, tears flowing freely down her face once more.
She couldn’t head for the barracks.
The shield maiden stormed in a flurry of half-tied silks down the deserted path toward the practice grounds. It was quiet as a tomb, all of Asgard partied out and sleeping warm in their homes, mead-induced stupors keeping them to their beds or their chairs, or wherever else they might have found comfortable enough to lie down and close their eyes for a moment’s rest.
Feeling welled up in her, a spring which had barely been tapped in the months following the loss of her shield brother. A sob hiccoughed its way through her mouth, past her lips, and curled into the frigid air. Sif hugged her arms to herself, wishing beyond all that it was Balder’s arms holding her just then and not the spindly poor excuse for a replacement which her own made. Her dark hair collected snowflakes like the night sky, letting them settle in small galaxies within the strands before they melted from the heat of her body, slow but steady.
Of all the foolish things to do, she thought, sleeping with Thor Odinson had been the worst. What had possessed her to take him to her bed? What had possessed her to allow it to go so far as it had? She could have been with him once and been done, but no…grief sent her back into his arms time and again, and what did she have to show for it but more emptiness.
A burst of steam streamed from between her lips as she stumbled gracelessly into the ring. The ground was frozen, sprinkled over with an icing sugar coating of snow. Her feet crunched on frozen earth, and she headed straight for the weapon’s shed, finding the long wooden staff that she wanted within without even needing to look for it.
In the quiet of the resting weapons, Sif found a practice dummy, deafeningly silent like the rest of the equipment and the cocoon of snowy weather beyond the walls.
She aimed her first strike straight for its head.
The dummy didn’t move. The response mechanisms within remained dormant. That was fine for her purposes. The shield maiden swung again and again at the thing, kill shot after kill shot delivered with deadly accuracy. Her voice came raw from her throat, grunt after feral grunt released with each abuse that she landed upon the training equipment. Still it did not reply.
Sif couldn’t imagine his voice anymore. The realisation had dawned on her not two days previous when she’d heard Bragi and his children practicing in the great hall, preparing for the Yule feast. Her heart trembled, mirrored by her lips, and Sif landed another harsh blow upon the machine’s head, repeating the strike again and again, faster and faster until finally, jarringly, the wooden staff broke into splinters.
The maiden paused only to take a breath before picking up yet another staff and setting to work once more.
She couldn’t hear him talking anymore either. She couldn’t smell him on the shirts that they’d given her with that ridiculous box of his belongings which had been bequeathed at the time of his passing. The body of the thing took the brunt of her blows now, and she could feel the impact absorbed through her arms, jarring her shoulders.
Her eyes ached as much as her throat, and the water which fell down her cheeks burned first too hot and then too cold. They were trails of ice that seemed to serve only to make her face colder.
There was faint light in the weapons shed. She’d been at it with Thor longer than expected, and already pre-dawn was upon her. Sif kept swinging.
She hacked at the metal of the dummy, her hands chaffed and bleeding, painful. It was better to feel the ache in her hands than the ache in her chest. Sif clenched her teeth together, one grunt after another escaping her chest, leaving her more winded the more often they escaped. The blows to the dummy only seemed to be blows to her own body. Blows to her fragile ego. Blows to her friendships and loved ones.
Why couldn’t you say that you loved him?
Her next blow didn’t hit metal.
Sif started, her entire body aching, arms so tired she could barely move them. Before her, a familiar figure stood nearly as silent and still as the training dummy, tall as the pillars in the palace. She swallowed against her raw throat, sniffling heavily, and Heimdall’s bright eyes took her in from head to toe, raking her, reading her. She could see the sympathy in his gaze. He was reading her like an open book.
She didn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed anymore.
“So—sorry…” her voice was hoarse, and she could barely force it past the barbs in her throat. “I’ll…” the floor was littered with the splinters of the first staff, the one in her hands barely more than a twig itself any longer. She’d burst it open without realising, wearing it down bit by bit. “I’ll clean it up…”
Sif made to drop the staff. Her hands burned, stinging, and Heimadall’s hands caught her wrists, stopping her mid-motion. The shield maiden stared at him, half-dazed from fatigue, wondering what he was doing out so early himself. He must have seen, she knew. Heimdall saw everything. He was bundled up against the cold, far better dressed that Sif herself. He seemed to have noticed that too, and finally, slowly, Sif began to feel self conscious.
She barely recognised him without his helm covering his hair.
He’d taken to staring intently at her hands, his gilded eyes surveying the damage she’d done. Her stomach tightening right along with her chest, Sif made to remove her hands from his grasp.
“It’s nothing… “
“It is not nothing,” Heimdall’s tone was gentle, but not to be argued with. “Come. We need to clean these cuts.”
Sif let him pull her along behind him, too tired to resist. Did he know what she’d been up to? He must. She’d disappeared with Thor, and if he’d noticed her absence before then he must know now. How many people knew? The sudden realisation that she hadn’t exactly been careful that night hit her hard like the butt of a spear in her gut, and Sif nearly retched.
Heimdall drew her close, loosening his cloak to pull her beneath it. Too cold, she thought, to be walking about in nothing but your silks.
