of shadows in darkness that i used to own

xi. the apparition that remains

When next Sif dares to see him, many days later, she comes alone and unarmed.

"I have been to see the Lady Frigg." Sif speaks slow, revealing little in word or cadence; her face in shadow tells the rest. Loki allows himself to imagine her abject form, sniveling before the All-Mother's feet in the middle of the night. Did she collapse before her Queen's feet, spilling her tears like a wretched child? Did Loki's venerated mother, in all her misplaced compassion, take Sif's hand into hers and permit her to grovel?

"And what wisdom has my mother granted?" Loki asks darkly. Resentment coats his tongue. Though he knows the answer by the compunction in her face, the righteous indignation does nothing for his wounded soul. "Has she revealed the truth at last? That it was only by her grace that the throne came into my possession?"

"She has discussed matters with the All-Father and wishes you to take initiative in the reconstruction of the Bifröst," Sif replies, her eyes firmly on the floor. "In due time, naturally. You will earn your right for reparation."

At this, Loki tenses; frozen where she stands, Sif bows her head.

"I would imagine myself to be choiceless in the matter," he says at last.

She looks to him then, and looks truly. Pain in those features, abraded and raw, like bark carefully scraped from a tree. "You concede so easily." The words are soft.

He looks back with the face of a man consumed, a man who has known triumph and defeat, who has conquered and lost both space and time, all for so little more than the want of regard.

Then, Loki asks her a question she does not expect. "When did you discover the truth?"

Sif follows the path of a crack in the stone, clicks a heel into it. "After you left, all of us mourned. Most of all, your brother and the Queen. I kept their counsel." She pauses, then appends, "and I have known of what became of my hair for some time."

"I see."

"I know other things, too," she continues, emboldened. "That craven for power as you are, you crave subjugation in equal measure. Further, you crave absolution. This, to me, was always apparent. You have always wished to be saved."

He offers her nothing for this fury; but the inaction is admission enough.

"Does it not repel you, Sif?" he utters, after some silence. "Does it not spew your blood, to know you have lain with a Frost Giant?"

And again, as time and time before, she can indulge him no response; because Loki is and Loki knows this winter (there is no creed and no credence for melting such a gelid heart as his). But Sif's beautiful and broken face is that which burns in those frosted veins, in the frigid depths of Loki's mind. It remains, across worlds, across universes. Her war. Her light. Revealing everything.

"All of the things you could never say," Loki murmurs, and lets his eyes settle shut. Turning from that light, as he always has. "All of them, written plain on your face. I read them all, as from a book."

They loiter in silence for an indefinable period, Loki waiting for her to disappear, Sif staring into his pregnable face.

"Look, then, and you will see 'I love you,'" she glowers, but the words fumble and fall, spilling from her lips as rotten wine. And as though claimed to her whim, Loki's eyes snap open. "You'll see 'I love you' and 'I see you' and 'you incense me', you insufferable man. You'll see 'let me understand your pain'. You'll see 'I'll chase you across stars'." She stands, bereft, clenching those strong and savage hands that had ever strained against the chains of expectation. The hands that once balled into pitiful fists. The hands that would render Loki useless in all too many ways. "You will see each of these, and more. These, the things that I could not say. Could never say, for the fear of losing you completely."

Darkness splits her face. It diffuses her hair. It gives her his answer. (Sif.)

"See how I came undone when you went away," she whispers (face in shadow, body in light). "How many times over I died, when you blighted this realm and the next with your folly. But I know. I know what it is that unrests you. It is for the want of forgiveness. Until you have it, earn it, you will never know peace. "

And with every word, Loki can feel the charter, the dripping ledger, crumble to dust in her beautiful mouth. That steals, that breathes what he cannot say (the vicious cycle began and ended when you first scowled up at me.)

"Let us see, then, whose supposition will win," Loki tells her instead.

Encircled, entrenched in Fate's grand design, Sif smelts her will with his magic; she returns to him as the sun to the night, because Sif lives half in shadow and Loki is every bit the foil of light.

(You belong to me), he does not whisper another night, though he knows she can hear. It is Fate who unearths the memory of these words, velvet in Sif's mind. The dark swallows them whole. (You are forever mine, Sif; I, who cut your hair, who created a kingdom of your body and soul.)

She surrenders to her hope, and he to his adjudication. In this surrendering, their chase endures in purpituity. As the shadows whisper, a twist-horned dagger clutched in Sif's hand slips from her fingers and falls. Neither hears it clatter to the ground.

And to him, she is nothing.

And to him, she is everything.