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The clashing sounds of metal grate deep in Sif's teeth like claws, ripping her apart from the inside─

(or is that the dagger in her shoulder)

blinding pain white hot lightning rip it out rip it out and the howls of war in her ears and sweat stinging her eyes, the scrape of her boots across the ground and blows kicking dirt onto her cheeks and the squelching gush of her blade tearing into flesh─

//ek em gyðjan ófriðs//

darkness; a drum;

she hits the ground.

\\

The World Tree glimmers around her as she wanders, moving silent through the Branches like silk, as she has done for centuries, feeding, feeling rage fester in the cracks of her skin and the pools of her eyes.

They thought they could keep me from you, from the Allthing and the One and who I am meant to be.

They are wrong.

She smiles, her spirit liquid and light, racing through the Branches, through the waters.

When she surfaces, the ice and frost of Jötunheimr greet her, and she walks.

\\

from móðir Yggdrasill I have come-

The water is glittering cold and starshine warm, prickling like teeth against his skin beneath the leather and cloth over his body. It slides beneath, slipping through his veins to circle his bones, feeding him from the inside out. Voices brush along the slope of his cheekbones and seep into the spaces between his armor, filling in the spaces of him, making him whole.

-to móðir Yggdrasill I return again, he thinks, his hands liquid in her waters and he melts into them, one with the Allthing and all things that have ever been and ever shall be, until Ragnarǫk come, world without end.

The God of Mischief opens his eyes, pinpoint and glimmering green beneath the surface, and he breathes in, taking the world with him, and there is no need for air in the deep waters as the lives of countless souls tumble into his lungs, the World Tree's Branches cutting like ice across his eyes and fluid into his heart. He is all things and all things are him, and in the water he is Loki and not, everything and nothing and all things in-between.

He surfaces, teeth dripping with her life-giving waters, and it is long before he breathes out.

+

When the two moons of Ásgarðr are full, he makes the journey.

Sif watches the snowflakes float past the windows in a shimmering, weaving blanket of patterns, far too thick to see through. Her sons are asleep in their rooms, their father's monthly retreat an old tradition to which they have long since grown accustomed.

Áfríðr sits patiently on the sofa before the fireplace, determined to stay awake for her father's return even as sleep claws at her eyes and makes her limbs heavy. Her stuffed hreindýr sits in her lap, worn with time and countless hugs of the wool to her chest.

“He won't be long now,” Sif says, leaning down to her daughter's level to brush a few strands of night-dark hair behind her ear. Her little girl yawns, covering her mouth with both hands and rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown.

The sound of the front door opening; Sif stands.

Speak of the wolf and he will claw at the door.”

When he comes inside Loki's eyes are snow-bright and glittering, and Sif can see the Branches in his eyes, swirling in the green depths. The fur around his neck is wet with frost, and his armor and leathers glimmer black and gold and liquid in the candlelight. The God of Mischief is slick and dark before her, and in the shadows of his face she can see desire and destruction and all the things that keep him awake at night. The scent of magick and ozone hits her like a shield-blow, and if she looks hard enough she swears she can see it melting off of him like water.

"Faði," Áfríðr leaps from the chair, darting towards him, and he kneels down, scooping her into his arms as she buries her face in the frosted fur of his cloak. He presses a kiss to her hair, wild even after the strokes of Sif's brush, and the little girl tilts her head in curiosity, reaching a hand up to Loki's eyes.

Faði, your eyes look silly," she states, as if it is the most routine observation she has ever made, and Sif laughs while Loki's brow knits.

"I have been to the Great Moðir," he replies, even as her tiny fingers trace his brow and down his nose.

"But Mútta is here," the little girl reasons, turning to point at Sif. Loki closes his watercolor eyes, the barest hint of a smile flashing across his lips before it is gone.

"Yggdrasill is moðir to us all," Sif begins, running her fingers through her daughter's hair. "From the seas unto the stars, deep in the forests to high in the mountains; all things are her children," and at her words she looks to Loki, "even your faðir."

"But faði is big," she reasons, tangling her fingers in the fur collar of his cloak.

"Once even we were small," Sif adds, and Áfríðr responds with a quiet oh, playing with strands of Loki's hair, the loose curls and braids bitten with frost.

"When you are older you will understand," Loki says, tilting his jaw into her hair as the little girl buries her face in the fur around his neck, yawning. One of her hands tugs at his hair, the other curling beneath her chin, and Sif smiles.

"I think it's time for bed," the warrior whispers, and she knows her daughter is tired when she does not protest, only tucking her head further under her father's jaw. Sif picks the stuffed hreindýr up from the chair, the wool warmed from Áfríðr's hands.

The God of Mischief turns towards the stairs, his daughter held in his arms and surrounded by the warmth of the Great Moðir that drips from his teeth.


+

Sif watches Loki sitting on the side of Áfríðr's bed, her little girl tucked in comforters and furs, her tiny hreindýr squished against her chest. The God of Mischief's hands slide through the air, painting a story with the vibrant green of his magick made anew in the hold of the World Tree. Ethereal stags leap in and out of nothingness, flitting in the space before him, and Áfríðr's eyes are wide with curiosity, the little girl enraptured by her father's silky words.

The warrior watches his eyes burn with the waters of the Great Tree, cracked icy with her Branches as his fingers weave worlds for their daughter, and Sif wants.

"Goða nótt, faði."

"Goða nótt, daughter mine."

The misty stags dissolve into nothingness and Loki presses a kiss to his daughter's hair. When he reaches Sif at the door his eyes meet hers, and in them she can see stars, the fierce love for his daughter and all of his children as his fingers slide over her closed door, his magick slipping through the spaces like wolves to keep her safe.

She nudges his jaw with her cheek, burying her nose in the high collar of his longcoat, and the smell of magick and stars is like fire in her lungs, dripping down her throat. Her fingers flicker through his hair, curled and long and decorated with braids, and when he breathes against her mouth there is ice in his kisses, prickling against her teeth.


+


When Loki comes from the World Tree he is like water slipping silent through her fingers, into her veins, dripping from her throat and down between her legs. She tastes the waters on his tongue and drinks eternity down her throat. His eyes glitter like the stars that burn above, flecked like paint across the unending cosmos. She can see his magick flickering within them, cutting across the black and green depths like cracks in glass.

He tastes of mint and snow and the lightning scent of magick she cannot name, and her hands grip his frost-laden hair, fingers flitting through the braids and curls. His tongue licks her teeth, cold and hot and wet and his hand holds her jaw, opening her mouth further to his kisses. His fingers grab at the material of her robe, rucking it up to her hips as he pulls them close, breath hot on her jaw as she rocks into his hold.

The warrior shoves him to the sheets and furs of their bed, shedding her warm robe as his fingers flicker the hearth to light. She undoes the clasp of his cloak, rubbing her cheek against the frosted fur of his collar and she yanks him up with it, tossing it to the floor. He bends her back, she bares her breasts to his mouth and she laughs at the prickle of his his pointed teeth on her nipple, the other covered by this thumb, and her nails drag up his back. She is lightning on his tongue and in his skin and he shivers when she twists her legs around him, nipping at the spaces of his collarbones.

His touch is electric down her spine, even more so than usual, the waters of the World Tree glimmering between her legs and sinking down to her toes. His eyes are star-bright and out of focus and he moves slowly over her as he always does when he is like this, slick and smooth and aware of nothing else but the lines of her skin and the shape of her body beneath his, around him.

His groans buried in her shoulder are like cries of war in her ears, biting her and bringing her undone as he moves, and she buries her fingers in the braids and waves of his hair, long and guardian around his face. She holds his gaze as she watches him break, swallowing the stars in his throat when they bleed upon her tongue, all the pieces of him held in her care until he can handle to be put back together again, her touch and her kisses filling in the spaces of him.

She flips him to the sheets, riding him rough like an unbroken stallion, running her nails over the runes of her name inked into the side of his hip that few have seen and only she has traced with her tongue. She feels the tension of his body in the lines of his arms against her thighs and the sliding of his feet against the furs, the starburst of his hair wild on the pillow as she drags it from his face. His cheeks are flushed red and his eyes glazed over with stars, and she can feel his magick like electricity beneath his skin, made anew in the waters of Yggdrasill and vibrant in the spaces of her ribs.

When he is lost, his cries sharp between his teeth and his fingers buried in the shape of her hips she presses her lips to his throat, bared to her in the broken sounds of his undoing, feeling breath in his body like waves, and she is the anchor of the shore to guide him home.

The world could end in his eyes for all the stars Sif can see in the green depths, his pupils cat-thin and razor sharp, and Loki buries himself in her body, where only she and the waters can reach.

\\

Her white hair whips in the winds of Jötunheimr, but she comes from the Great Moðir, magick slipping between her ribs and tingling down her spine, and it fuels her, feeds her, and she has no care for petty things like warmth when all of Creation runs through her veins.

The Frost Giants circle her, and she can see disgust in their red-chip eyes; they think her a runt, like him, like all of them on the Golden Realm.

“Who among you is leader now?” and her voice is like honey-gold and sunrise, dark before the dawn. She has watched the realms rise and fall for centuries in the World Tree's hold, and she would see them torn apart at the seams, made anew in her body and blood.

“Why should we tell you?” one of them growls, ice flickering at the tips of his fingers, the ridges of his face curved in a sneer. “You have nothing to offer us.”

“I can offer you revenge,” she purrs. “I can give you the one who brought your kingdom to its knees.”

“Óðinn is long since dead,” another Frost Giant spits. “Unless you can cut him from the Tree of Beginning, you are of no use to us.”

“Even I cannot give you a soul that has returned to Yggdrasill,” the white-haired woman speaks, her green eyes glittering. “But I can bring you one that still lives. Do you remember Loki?”

The jǫtnar howl, and her teeth are daggers, the waters in her veins like blood.

“Who are you?”

“I am World-Watcher and Yggdrasill-Walker; I have seen the worlds fall and I will see them rise again. I have drank from the waters of the Mother-Tree and in them I see the one you seek, who walks the Branches as I do,” she says, her fingers weaving magick and life before the eyes of the jǫtnar, and in her eyes they can see the Branches, cracked like the ice that covers their world.

I offer him freely to you,” she continues, the misty tendrils taking the form of the God of Mischief's face. “Gather those who would serve you, and I will lead you to him.”

“Nothing is offered freely,” the largest of the Frost Giants growls, swiping a scarred hand through the illusion. “What is it you want from us?”

“I have all that I need from Yggdrasill,” she breathes. “There is nothing I could ask for in return that she has not given me.”

Except for her heart.

\\

When Sif hears of the rebellions she is in the markets, and her ears perk at words of battle.

Her purchases are few, cloth and fabric for blankets to last the long winter, and as her lengths are being cut she overhears a group of merchants huddled close to a fire for warmth in the soft snow. They speak of unrest, factions of rebels on Vanaheimr who do not agree with the temporary peace of their leaders, and instead oppose Ásgarðr's return to glory and its control over the Nine Realms, something Sif has heard countless times across countless teeth; Ásgarðr's place has not been secure since Malekith and Thanos, and the kingdom has many enemies that would try to finish what the tyrants began, eager for their own chance to redden the skies with blood and melt the gold of the kingdom to the ground.

It unsettles the warrior that conflict lingers heavy over Ásgarðr's halls, but more so that she has to hear it from the mouths of villagers instead of the mouth of her king.

Thórr, she thinks, and gathers her purchases, her mind electric.

She gathers her stallion from the stables, her heels quick against Lóriði's sides, and the snows are blinding in her eyes.

+

“I am leaving for Iðavǫllr.”

Sif waits until their sons are in bed and their daughter asleep, but even the calm routine of laying Áfríðr to rest is not enough to keep the fire from Loki's eyes, the sharp points of his teeth peeking from his mouth.

“Why?” he breathes, and the warrior pays careful attention to the gravel of his throat, though she does not step down.

“I have heard tales of unrest and rebellion against Ásgarðr in the villages,” she begins, stripping her warm dress from her shoulders and tossing it over a chair. “There are more and more soldiers on more and more patrols, and it cannot be coincidence. The palace is preparing for battle and I intend to be there when it does.”

“You have heard tales,” Loki counters, his eyes dark and deep and the tails of his longcoat flowing behind him as he paces, and Sif thinks of a caged beast, planning its escape. “Nothing more.”

“What I have heard is irrelevant,” Sif continues. “The choice is mine and mine alone to make.”

“You belong here,” the God of Mischief snarls.

“I belong where I see fit, Trickster,” she snaps. “I am War, and my duty is to Ásgarðr above all else.”

“You would leave behind this family and your children to do my idiot bróðir's dirty work-” but the Trickster's words are cut short in his throat as Sif whips around, her hair wild around her face and braided with gold, a dagger in her palm pressed sharp to his skin. She is naked in the firelight, and even as anger prickles through his veins he cannot hate her, cannot move his eyes from her own.

“I will cut your liar's tongue from your miserable throat if you think I love War more than my children,” she seethes. “I go to the palace of my own free will, not because the king has called for me but because I am sworn to protect this realm and those in it, including my children, and I will not be left behind.”

“Why go if he has not named you?” Loki asks, wary of the blade pressing against the vein of his neck above his collar.

“I will not stand by and watch as Ásgarðr's armies meet our foes without me,” Sif continues. “I would rather die in battle than lie low in the mountains and let them reach this far. There are far more precious things to fight for than glory now, and much more than honor to protect.”

(Even as Sif holds her dagger to his throat he knows, knows she does not go to battle for herself.)

“I cannot watch as the men and women I have trained with for centuries defend this kingdom while I stand by and do nothing,” she says, the dagger falling from his throat as she tosses it back onto the dresser. “There are many that have given life and limb to save mine, and what kind of warrior would I be if I did nothing in return?”

The God of Mischief is silent, her words heavy on his shoulders and salt upon his tongue. He cannot keep her from her oath, and he cannot deny the Goddess of War her dominion.

“Very well,” he begins, his fingers folded before him. “It does not please me, but I have never been able to deny you what you desire.”

“I can no more deny War than you can deny Mischief,” Sif replies, her back to him as she sheds the ties of her hair and the gold woven into it. “I leave for the city in two days, and do not think I will not give the king the same lashing either; whether I go to battle with him is my oath and decision to make, not his.”

“It will not be easy without you,” Loki breathes, and when she turns to face him he takes her hands, rubbing his thumbs over her calloused palms, and she can feel his magick like ice beneath his skin, flickering through his veins like blood. “There are days when even Yggdrasill is not enough, when her waters do not fill the cracks enough for the darkness to keep from sinking in.” He presses his forehead to hers and his breath is sharp over his tongue.

“I know,” Sif says, digging her nails into his hands, leaving imprints in his skin that remind him he is still here, can still feel the pain of her touch, that the darkness is not so great that he is numb to the marks she can leave upon him.

Which is why I won't be going alone.”

Loki's eyes glimmer in shock, and the points of his teeth peek from his mouth once more, the warrior feeling the sudden tension in his body.

“You know my feelings on the matter,” he says slowly and quietly, dampening down the fire that stirs in his belly. “I left the palace centuries ago for good reason and I do not wish to return under any circumstances.”

“I do not speak of you if you so wish it,” Sif responds. “But our sons are almost grown, old enough to make their lives their own, and I would not keep them hidden from the world any longer.”

“Iðavǫllr is no place for them,” Loki growls, but he does not let go of her, and she holds his hands even tighter, there and real for him.

“You are their faðir, but they will be their own masters soon, and I want them to see the realms, see the places on which we cut our teeth and journey on the paths that forged us in steel,” the warrior argues. “There is only so much that you and I can teach them, and there are those in the palace that can give them what they need in more ways than we can.”

“I have taught Ullr all that I know, and Eyarr and Líkreifr learned their weapons upon your knee,” Loki counters, but both of them know his argument is gauze-thin against her own.

“Even you and I learned from others,” Sif adds. “You your magick from Frigga and me my stances from the best of the Einherjar. They can learn much from others, just as we have.”

“But what of Áfríðr?”

“What of her?” Sif parrots. “She deserves to see Iðavǫllr just as her brothers do, and though she is yet too young for magick or weapons, she is not too young for her own memories she can make of the palace. I would not keep her from it while her brothers are allowed their share.”

The God of Mischief sighs, knowing himself lost, but too stubborn to simply give up.

“How do you know they will be safe there?” he asks. “If it is truly rebellion you go to battle for then the palace is the most obvious target.”

“Would you rather I leave them here with only you to protect them?” Sif asks. “You are powerful Loki, and the spells that protect our home are just as dangerous, but you are one and our enemy is many. There are even talks of dissidents scattered throughout Ásgarðr, tempted by power stronger than their loyalty to the realm. I would not leave any of you here alone among them.”

…

Silence.

(Her heart is a drum in her ears, and she swallows.)

“I will go,” the God of Mischief finally whispers, the quiet between them stretched long and thin.

“We will go. I want you all there waiting for me when I return victorious.”

The warrior gives the Trickster no time to respond as she shoves him to the sheets, rage and love spilling from her teeth to his own.

\\

“How do you know he will come?”

“I have heard him in the waters of Yggdrasill when he seeks solace from the darkness, and when I look into his heart she is there, like fire on his tongue and the sun in his eyes. She is the world to him, and there are few threads that tie him stronger to sanity.”

“This Sif means that much, that her life is worth more than our own and the lives of those who destroy on Vanaheimr even now for you?”

“She is the thread that ties the fates of all the realms together, though she does not know it. If she is lost, he will not hesitate to bring the worlds to their knees. He walks the Mother-Tree, it is within his power.”

“I will not tempt the Twilight for revenge on one runt,” the leader snarls, turning his back on her.

“He is one, and you are many,” she reminds the group of jǫtnar. “Your realm is in ruins, but Ásgarðr fares no better; none of the worlds fear its power as they once did, and if you do not ride for the end of all things then another of them will. Would you live to see Ásgarðr rise again, casting its shadow on this land, or would you lead the armies of the Nine against it, and die knowing the Golden Realm will melt in the fire as easily as all the others?”

The Worlds were formed from the first men to step down from the Branches, and I would see you one of them when Yggdrasill grows again.”

“You could do this?”

“I can do much more,” she states, her voice like darkness at the edge of the horizon. “I can take you to her, and in the water you will see.”

“Show me.”

\\

“I have something very important to tell you, strákar,” Sif says, her feet kicking through the thick layers of snow on the fields, her thick cloak dragging behind her. Her hair flickers in the wind against the fur of her collar, and her sons surround her as she walks, the silence around them crisp and sharp.

“Is it about faðir?” her eldest asks first. “He's been acting strange all morning.”

“He's always acting strange,” Eyarr cuts in. “It's his natural state.”

“Now now you two,” Sif chides. “Your faðir has his reasons, and we live with them as they come.”

“Then what is it?” Líkreifr asks.

“You have all heard in the markets talk of unrest and rebellion,” she begins.

“Who hasn't?”

“Have you been called by the king to fight?”

“One at a time, my sons,” she interrupts. “I have not been called by your föðurbróðir, and that is why I am going. When I first became a warrior of Ásgarðr I swore an oath to protect this realm in times of trouble above all else; and though your föðurbróðir seems to have forgotten it and your faðir attempts to deny it, I will not sit by and watch as my fellow warriors go to battle without my aid. There are those who have given their lives for my safety, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing.”

“This is not the first time you have gone to the battlefield while we stayed home with faðir,” Ullr remarks. “What makes this time different?”

“This time, you are coming to Iðavǫllr with me,” Sif smiles, and the excitement in her sons' eyes is like the sun on the snow around them. “I know you have always been eager to study under the tutors and weaponsmasters in the city, and I have convinced your faðir that you are ready.”

“We've been trying to persuade him for the past decade, how did you do it?” Eyarr questions, shock and surprise scrawled like runes across his face.

“I told him he cannot keep you hidden from the world forever,” Sif continues. “But more importantly, I do not wish to leave you here. He is powerful but he is only one, and he cannot alone protect you from the many that are clawing at Ásgarðr's door. Your father has many enemies, and I will not see them upon our own.”

“Will we go to battle with you?” Líkreifr asks.

“I would that you did not need to,” she answers. “But if our enemies make it to the city then I would see you defend it.” She turns to them, taking their hands in hers.

“You are sons of War,” Sif reminds them. “And I will not deny you it.”

+

“Áfríðr, come here.”

“Is the palace big? Is it pretty?”

“Nú, Áfríðr.”

Her excitement doesn't diminish as she reaches her arms up, questions rolling off her tongue as Loki takes her into his arms. Sif presses a kiss to her sharp-cut hair and her brothers each wish her a good night before he takes her to her room, the boys helping their mother ready weapons for the morning downstairs.

“What is it like, faði?” his daughter asks, and though he would rather not think on his time in the palace, he does not wish to color his answers in a way that would discourage her, so he simplifies.

“Iðavǫllr and the surrounding city are large, the buildings made of gold and silver and decorated with banners and jewels,” he begins, motioning for her arms as he pulls off her dress and underthings. “There are islands that float above the ground and rivers that flow through the towns, and the Bifröst runs from the entrance to the edge of the waters of the realm in a single unbroken line of glimmering glass,” he continues, helping Áfríðr pull her nightgown over her head.

“What else, faði?”

“The buildings glitter in the sun like fire, and the snows there are not as deep, so you will not have to be carried many places like here in the mountains,” Loki finishes, helping her tug on her warm robe and tucking her beneath the sheets.

“Will I get to see föðurbróðir Thórr? Mútta says I met him when I was born, but I don't remember.”

Loki starts at his brother-not-brother's name and the shadows it stirs in his head and his heart. He is not fully at peace with the God of Thunder and does not believe that he ever will be, and his place in Loki's mind is unformed, always changing, slipping through the cracks like water too fast for him to chase. His daughter's eyes meet his own, and the darkness crumbles beneath her gaze and the glitter of the World Tree's magick in his veins. It does not belong in this space, not while one of his children shares it with him.

“Já, Áfríðr, you will.”

\\

She watches the Frost Giants as they march, ice beneath their feet and blood upon their tongues.

These are a people with nothing left to live for and everything to die for, she thinks. They will give their lives to bring Ásgarðr below them where they stand, if they cannot rise above it.

When the first howls of war ring in her ears, she smiles. The circle is almost come round.

\\

The ride to Iðavǫllr is calm, the silence broken only by the pounding of the horses' hooves in the snow. The tall towers of the palace grow larger as they near the city, and Sif is filled with memories of the training grounds at dawn and evenings spent in the taverns surrounding the palace borders. The townspeople and guards whisper and watch as Sif leads Lóriði into the inner sanctum of the grounds, and she knows Loki is restless on his mare, Áfríðr and her wide-eyed gaze held tight to him and her sons radiant on their mounts, heads darting back and forth as long-worn memories of the palace come rushing back like rivers.

It is rare for Loki to be seen by the folk in the mountain villages, and to see him set foot in Iðavǫllr is like lightning striking ground in the same place twice. It has been centuries and Sif wonders if there are citizens who have forgotten him, his many names lost to time and the turning of the stars in his absence. She looks to him beside her, and his body is poised tall upon Svaðilfari, his daughter settled between his arms, his armor shimmering and his longcoat flickering in the wind. After all this time he is still powerful before Iðavǫllr's inhabitants, and if he strikes fear into their hearts like she does then so be it.

She is the Lady Sif, and she has returned.


+

"I would have council with the king," Sif demands, Loki beside her and her sons behind her. The warrior holds Áfríðr close, her daughter taking in the gold of the inner chambers with soft silence. The guards watch Loki and the little girl and she holds her ever closer under their gaze. They think me changed because I am a parent, and to the children of the Silvertongue no less, she thinks to herself. But I have never been nothing, and I will not be so now.

"Do my words fall on deaf ears?" Sif barks, shifting her weight and letting the sharp silver of her armor lay in the liquid sunlight painted across the floor, the red line of her cloak like blood dripping from her shoulders. "It has been long since I set foot in Iðavǫllr, but I am still one of Thórr's inner circle and a commander of the Einherjar when he wills it. I have come to see him, and if you do not lead me to him then I will go there myself." she says, her voice commanding and clipped.

I can assure you, I have not forgotten the way.”

+

When they set foot in the throne room, the weapons of the Einherjar are pointed to Loki. Sif hears her warrior sons reach for their swords, feels the electric air of magick dripping from Ullr's tongue in defense of their father.

“Sif!” Jane calls from her seat beside Thórr's, rushing down the steps to hug the warrior, taking Áfríðr gently from her arms. She kisses the little girl's hair, and the soft sound of questions bubbles from their direction as Jane holds her.

“Stand down,” the God of Thunder's booming voice echoes throughout the hall, even as his eyes widen at the sight of his wayward sibling and his children. “My bróðir will do no harm, least of all while his family is present.” Thórr leaves Gungnir at the throne, making his way down the golden steps of the dais, the red of his cape melting over the shimmering floor.

What brings you to Iðavǫllr without warning-” the blond's question is cut off as Sif's hand cracks across his cheek, the sound echoing against the walls.

“That is why I am here,” the warrior replies, and behind her she can hear the whispers of her sons and Loki's low laugh at his sibling's discomfort. She half expects the guards to raise their weapons to her now, but they do not. They are smart after all.

“Jane told me you were going to do that,” Thórr says, almost to himself, rubbing his cheek and looking down at his hand.

“There is talk of rebellion and unrest,” Sif continues, pacing around the God of Thunder, her voice cutting through the hall like one of her daggers. “I heard of it from the mouths of merchants and the increase in patrols through the mountain borders. When I did not hear of it from the mouth of my king, I came here.”

“I did not mean any disrespect by not summoning you to the palace,” Thórr begins, but his words are cut off by Sif's own.

“I care not for what you meant,” she reprimands, circling her king. “I may have a family now like you, but I swore an oath like you,” Sif reminds him. “And I will not allow anyone to stand in my way of it, king or not.” She stands before him, bathed in the sunlight that drips through the columns, and her eyes are fire.

“You cannot hope to win a war if you go to battle without it.”

The occupants of the room turn to Loki, his teeth sharp and his voice dark. Sif's eyes are kept on Thórr's as she speaks.

“Show me the War Room. I would see what filth threatens my home.”

+

“Does Loki disappear often like this?”

Jane and the brothers make their way through the gardens, the bare branches of the trees and the lines of bushes covered with a soft layer of snow. In the distant fields the blanket of white rises higher, but around the palace it does not, and Áfríðr trods along before them, her cloak and dress dragging against the white ground as she wanders.

“Faðir has his moods,” Ullr explains as they follow the little girl as she explores, Loki's familiar braided mane curling around his shoulders. “When the moons are full he journeys high into the mountains where the peaks touch the Branches of Yggdrasill, and he returns with stars in his eyes. Sometimes he disappears into the forests for days and comes back painted with runes and crowned in the horns of a stag, and other times he holes himself up in his study with only candles and books for company.”

“Was it hard for you as children?” Jane asks, pulling the wool of her thick cloak tighter around her shoulders against the wind. “There are times when Thórr cannot be here to greet Thrúðr after she is done with her tutors or tuck her in when she goes to sleep, but I don't imagine it's the same.”

“Faðir has been like this even before any of us were born,” Eyarr continues, and Jane thinks on how the God of Thunder calls him the image of Loki when he was young, before the darkness. “And when you've grown up with it, it isn't really strange, just something to accept. Both he and móðir have told us of his childhood and his past and his quarrels with föðurbróðir Thórr.”

“It is who he is, and we cannot fault him for it. He was not the most affectionate with us, but he never turned us away, and in time he learned how to be better,” Líkreifr adds, and in him Jane can see only Sif. “Though if you manage to see him alone with Fríða, he is like an entirely different animal,” the youngest of the three laughs.

“And that doesn't bother you?” Jane questions, and at Áfríðr's upp the brunette takes her into her arms, wiping away the snow from the fur of her cloak.

“If anything it gives us something to tease him about,” Eyarr remarks. “But if he has come far enough that he can give Fríða the kind of love and attention that he does, then all the better,” Sif's middle son says, fluffing Áfríðr's hair and laughing as she rushes to fix it, albeit without much success. Jane runs her fingers through the little girl's sharp-cut mane, smoothing the ruffled strands.

“Faðir knows we love him, even if in his moments of fear he is afraid we are turning our own liar's tongues upon him, and he loves us in his own strange, nervous way,” Ullr adds. “Be it all he can be, it will be enough.”

Áfríðr curls up close to the fur of Jane's collar, one of her hands reaching out to touch the soft snow that has begun to fall, and in his children the brunette sees how far he has come.

+

Loki is absent from the evening meal.

“Do not worry, Sif,” Thórr says. “I did not expect him to join us and it does not offend me.”

“It bothers me,” the warrior replies, watching her grown sons listen with wide eyes to Fandral's tales of the Warriors Three and their accomplishments, stories more embellished than any work of art in all of Ásgarðr as Hogun and Volstagg correct him. Jane and the girls sit beside her, the brunette telling them her own stories of her first visits to the kingdom centuries ago, and of the brave Avengers who once kept Midgarðr safe from its foes.

“He has come a long way from his old self,” the God of Thunder says. “I am not opposed to my bróðir refusing to dine with us if it means he is no longer subjugating realms or committing treason.”

“Like the rest of us?” Sif laughs, remembering the malestrom that had been Malekith and their desperate attempt to lead him from the city, and then the uproar of Thanos and Loki on the throne until he had given it up to the Thunder God. “Come to think of it, we nearly brought Ásgarðr to the ground.”

“Ah, but we did not,” Thórr reminds her.

Sif watches her sons trade tales with her oldest friends, listens to Áfríðr and Thrúðr's eager questions about 'earth's mightiest heroes' as Jane calls them, and she smiles.

No, we did not.

+

When the children are in bed, Sif finds Loki in the rooms allotted to them both, his eyes trained on the Branches that glimmer above them.

“You were not at dinner,” she remarks.

“Did you expect that I would be?”

“I would have been pleased, as would your bróðir.”

He flinches at the word, and she has known him long enough that her eyes do not miss it. But the God of Mischief says nothing, and she lets it be.

“We ride tomorrow at midday,” she continues, stripping off her armor and cloak. “It will be nightfall on Vanaheimr and we will join the Einherjar who are already there. It is much more than restless rebellion, Loki,” she states, and he turns, his eyes glittering.

I fear that Ásgarðr is on the brink of war again.”

“No surprise there.”

“At first it would only seem to be factions of usurpers on Vanaheimr, but their forces are much too organized for mere rebels, and far too many in number for the leaders of the realm to not take notice,” Sif explains, untying the half-tail of her hair so that all of it hangs curled around her naked shoulders. “They are allied with someone, there can be no other explanation.”

“And what does our beloved king have in mind to do about it?” Loki drawls, and Sif does not miss the slight that drips from his pointed teeth.

“He would not mindlessly slaughter them like beasts as you would,” the warrior quips, climbing into the bed and slipping beneath the furs.

“Pity,” the God of Mischief muses. “Though he seems determined to be even less like Óðinn than I had thought.”

“Enough of your rambling,” Sif barks, yanking Loki down into the sheets. “I would have you again before I go to battle,” she whispers against his mouth, her tongue licking his teeth and tasting magick upon his tongue, and she drinks it in like water that will nourish her upon the battlefield. His fingers flicker over the runes of his name bitten in ink beneath her hipbone, and he breathes in.

“As my lady commands,” Loki agrees, and he is undone.

+

Sif adjusts the ties of her provisions, setting them steady on her stallion's back. The God of Thunder stands with Jane and their daughter, surrounded by the Einherjar that will make the journey with them. Her own sons are gathered before her, little Áfríðr in Ullr's arms, and all of them lower their foreheads to her kisses. Her daughter holds her tight, cheek buried in the high fur collar and brilliant red of her cloak, and she gently untangles the child's arms from the fabric.

“I will not be gone for long, Fríða,” she soothes, running her fingers through her daughter's soft back hair. “There are bad warriors that your föðurbróðir and I must make go away, and then I will be home. I am going on my own journey, just like your faðir, for a few days.”

Loki's eyes are razor sharp and brilliant-bright in the falling snow, and when Sif's own meet them she can see fear and love and all things in-between. He fears for my safety, for the day when I go to battle and do not return and he is left alone with the things that keep him awake at night and curled in Yggdrasill's hold.

“Do not worry for me,” she tells him, holding his jaw. “I am War, and every victory belongs to me.”

The God of Mischief says nothing, as he always does when she parts from him, only pressing his lips to her own, and she feels his magick slide down her throat and seep into her belly, burning like fire and making her limbs torn anew.

“From móðir Yggdrasill I have come,” she breathes, the words ancient on her teeth. “But I have no plans to return to her yet.”

+

The glitter of the Bifröst is starlight on her tongue as they arrive, the whipping winds of Vanaheimr's mountain ranges like daggers through her armor, creeping between the steel and gold plates to the leather and fabric underneath. Her hair flickers around her face, and her eagle-eyes watch for movement in the distance.

“You say the rebels have already targeted the villages at the base of the Ered Luin,” Sif remembers, guiding her stallion beside Hogun's, Fandral and Volstagg and Thórr following behind them.

“Yes. Though our own forces have managed to drive them off, they have already done significant damage to Rhudaur, Arthedain and Cardolan.”

“Something isn't right about this at all,” Volstagg muses as they weave their way through the encampments of Einherjar. “What could they possibly have to gain from raiding villages and towns this close to the mountains?”

“Unless it is simply to attract attention, or provide a diversion,” Thórr wonders aloud, and Sif does not like the nagging feeling at her back that he may be right.

“Would that it is not,” she growls.

(...)

a flicker, howling, red-run claws

//glundroði//

+

Madness descends upon her like a wave, and it pulls her in, dragging her heels into the dirt, the blood-sun dripping beneath the horizon and livid in her lungs.

She is War.

War is dangerous and brutal, and when the vanir warriors meet her she greets them with open arms and sharpened teeth, her sword slicing through plated armor and undoing the wiry sinews of their flesh. Battle is like breath to her now, hot and burning and always one more, never enough and she will die if she does not breath their screams, gulp down their growls like air, taste them in her throat like blood as they gleam her body new.

One of the vanir leaps upon her back and she rolls to the ground, coming up on her knees and stabbing her sword through its body to the rocks and dirt. Another chases her up a slope of the mountain and when she reaches a ledge she spins, shoving the heel of her boot into its face and she does not watch as the body hits the ground with a sickening crack, only hears the sound of victory as she leaps down to a rider, cutting it to the ground and slipping beneath the wild hooves of its mount. Yet another dares to challenge War and she snarls low in her throat, reaching for her glaive when it knocks her sword from her hand, twisting the sharp metal through its neck and yanking, the flesh and bone ripping from its shoulders and splattering in her eyes already red with rage, and its blood on her tongue is the end of all things, brilliant and burning.

She can hear the shouts of the Warriors Three around her and even in the chaos she can find them like footsteps, the God of Thunder lighting the sky like the World Tree grown from the dust and dirt, and Sif makes for the bow and arrows of a fallen Einherji, spinning around and shooting an assailant between the eyes.

(War is the last thing he saw, and what a beautiful sight she is.)

Blood like rivers running running and this is all that she is and all she can be, every death upon the mountainside is like prayer washing over her, stinging fire burning all victories belong to War and móðir i am come-

a dagger;

going, goin-

gone

+

In the fighting Fandral can see nothing, only the blurs of soldiers and blood ripped from Einherjar and vanir throat alike. Their enemies are receding, their numbers falling but something isn't right, they should not be winning so easily-

“Fandral! Look out!”

Hogun's yell is electric and the blond rips his sword from another lifeless body, leaping over a pile of the fallen to see red eyes and blue skin like liquid night in the twilight, and suddenly everything becomes clear.

“It was a trap!” he screams, and the world unravels.

Thórr's lightning is enough to blind them all, pouring rage upon them like rain, and Fandral weaves between the remaining Einherjar to the jǫtnar descending from between the crags and slopes of the mountains. They are few but they are fresh, their skin untainted by blood and dirt and sweat and the screams of the dying, and he thinks of when he and his companions were young, new upon Jötunheimr's ice, and his shoulder stings in remembrance. Hogun and Volstagg have their hands full and the remainder of their forces are doing well enough, but he does not see the Lady Sif, and something strikes his heart that is more than ice and fire.

“Sif? Sif!” he yells above the maelstrom, wiping dirt made mud by blood from his eyes and leaping over the bodies strewn across the mountainside. Vanaheimr moves under him and around him, and when he does not see the flash of her night-dark hair or the glint of her glaive-

“Sif!”

He sees her unconscious, strewn across the body of a Frost Giant's mount before its rider, her weapon slipping to the ground.

“Thórr!” he screams, screams until his throat is raw and his lungs are burning even as he follows the retreating forms, yanking the reins of a riderless horse and leaping upon its back. The God of Thunder is lightning in his teeth and behind his eyes, a crackling blur of red and gold past him as he gives chase with Mjölnir. But a fierce group of jǫtnar block his way, giving their lives for the rider's own as he slips away into the blackness of the mountains.

A howl of rage, lightning crackling and splintering the ground, and the bloodied, sopping battlefield is empty but for the dead and the dying and the Einherjar still standing.

Fandral slips from the stallion and slumps to the ground, mud splattering his armor and skin and hair, and he fears for Sif.

(He fears for all of Yggdrasill, that it may suffer the wrath of the Mischiefmaker, the Liartongue, and now, the Bringer-of-the-End.)

+

“Where is she.”

It is not a question.

“Loki-”

“Where?” and it tumbles from his mouth like fire and ash, cutting like glass in the Thunder God's ears, and he can see magick dripping from his brother's sharp shoulders, gold glimmering and leather liquid-dark in the fading light of Ásgarðr's sun. The throne behind him burns in the brightness, and in his eyes Thórr can see the beginning of the end.

“The Ered Luin, we were ambushed by vanir rebels-”

“And you let her be taken, instead of having them all slaughtered on sight?” the God of Mischief seethes, feeling the threads of his control slipping from his teeth. “You were gone mere hours and it took not even that long to lose her,” he hisses, pacing the room like a rabid animal backed into a corner with only its fangs and claws to defend itself.

And where is your search party? Why have you not sent your filthy Einherjar to find her, or are they so pathetic and worthless that they cannot protect even one of their own? Is your Gatekeeper blind to her as well?” he spits, slinking towards the blond, fingers curled like claws and teeth dripping rage.

“She is hidden from Heimdallr’s sight, by what we do not know. And even you know a strategy is better than blindly rushing to what could be our deaths,” Thórr retorts, blood dried on his face and dirt beneath his nails and Loki can see see the fight that his brother gave but it isn't enough, he feels himself slipping like water, dripping through the cracks, down down and unto forever-

“Then I will find her myself!” the God of Mischief yowls, but before he can turn away Thórr yanks his wrist, fingers digging into the worn gold and his brother's hardened heart.

“Nei, Loki! You cannot hope to find her alone,” he growls, tugging the wayward Trickster in. “If you go without a plan and without help you will be taken or killed; you know you cannot bring down an army on your own, no matter how your rage fuels you.”

Loki snarls, the sharp points of his teeth bared, but he says nothing, as he always does when he knows his words have been undone.

If I let you go she would kill me, and so would your children,” Thórr continues. “There is no guarantee she is dead, for if they had wanted her so they would not have wasted the time to capture her and carry her away.”

Thórr's words are garbled in his ears, flickering through the darkness, but thought of his children brings him down, and the fire in his lungs calms enough for now. He closes his eyes and breathes, reaches for the water, and magick sparks in his throat, waiting.

“Fine,” he hisses. “But they will know nothing until I have seen for myself. Do not think I will let you leave me behind.”

“I did not deny you your revenge when Malekith came, and I would not deny you it now,” Thórr states, letting go of Loki's wrist. “But you will not like what we will have to face, as it is not only the vanir.”

Loki tilts his head in curiosity, pupils cat-thin, losing.

“Jǫtnar.”

(lost)

+

Sif wakes to the sounds of hooves like drums in her ears, like the pounding behind her eyes and the sting in her shoulder and she cracks them open, not wanting her captors to know she is awake.

She can barely see in the darkness, but soon they come to a cave in the side of the mountains, and the unfamiliar dialects of the vanir and the jǫtnar reach her ears, their words many and fast and garbled in her half-conscious mind. She realizes she is draped over the body of a horse, the rough, cold hand of its rider holding her still, and the thought is enough to sicken her to sleep.

When she wakes again, she is in a dimly-lit cell, the ethereal glitter of its walls not unlike that of Ásgarðr's dungeons. Her armor and leathers are untouched, mud and blood caking her hair and sticking to her face, and when she sits up there is fire in her shoulder, slick with clotted blood and dirt. Her weapons are gone, but she feels for the daggers in her boots and the knife at the small of her back and there is a glimmer of triumph when they are hard beneath her hands, clean and hidden. She begins to undo the straps of her armor over her injured shoulder, removing its weight so she can see it better, but she leaves the rest of the steel upon her body for her escape.

“In the end, all victories belong to War, even those not her own.”

Sif whips around at the voice, coming from the darkness just past the walls of her cell.

“Who are you?” she yells, grating through the dust in her throat. “Only a coward meets death with her face in shadows."

“There is victory in the shadows, for cowards and cheaters, and even Tricksters,” the voice says, and it slides smooth over Sif's ears like honey and gold. Tricksters? the warrior thinks.

“War is no place for cheaters,” she spits, hoping to get a rise out of her captor so that she may learn something, anything from the darkness.

“In War, it is the cheaters who are left standing, even if it is in the shadows. I would think you'd understand, given your relationship to one of them.”

“Is that supposed to scare me? I am Týsdóttir and Swordhand, I am she who has dominion over War, all battles are my blood and all victories belong to me.”

“Then I offer this one to you who have given it to me, Lady Sif. And I will offer Loki's madness to you when he comes; for you he will give chase.”

“Your words are slick and I grow weary of them,” Sif snarls, stalking towards the glittering wall of her cage, her nails scraping down the watery surface. “Tell me who you are.” The shadowy figure laughs, long and low and dark and deep, and when the darkness melts away Sif howls, anger dripping like sweat from her skin and nails clawed into the honey-gold.

“I am Amora, and I have come to burn your kingdom down.”

“You were exiled from the Nine Realms centuries ago,” Sif breathes in disbelief, the green eyes meeting her own blackened and burnt, chips of emerald in the firelight of the cavern's walls. “You dared to tempt Yggdrasill for more power than you could handle, and when madness took you Óðinn stripped you of all that you had learned. How are you here alive, and amongst the vanir and the Frost Giants no less?”

“That is none of your concern, Shieldmaiden,” Amora hisses, and Sif recoils at the name, the vicious kenning the men of Ásgarðr had given her when she first began her training, when they had still believed her womanhood weighed more upon her shoulders than leather and armor.

What concerns me now is the traitor and his bróðir, and how I will use you to bring them to me,” the sorceress muses, her eyes picking over Sif's bloodied, bruised form. “Or maybe even your children; I hear he is very fond of them.”

“Leave them out of this!” the warrior yowls. “Do anything that you wish to me, but you will die before you lay a finger on my sons.”

“Ah, but what about your daughter? Do not think I have not heard of her,” the white-haired woman thinks, and Sif laughs, the sound like a razor-crack through the chambers.

“You tempt Ragnarǫk, exile,” Sif growls. “If you call to him he will come, and Loki will tear the Nine Realms to the ground to find you.” Amora's smile is oily and dark, and she reaches through the glittering wall of the prison cell, yanking Sif's chin and clawing her nails into the warrior's jaw, and when Amora's skin meets her own it is like ice and fire and magick come undone.

“I know, and that is what I await,” she seethes, spitting in the warrior's face before she wrenches Sif's jaw from her fingers.

“If you kill me it will be the end of all things,” Sif snarls through the dust and raw of her throat, wiping the saliva from her cheek.

“Which is why I am going to,” Amora breathes, and with a flick of her wrist, Sif watches herself form out of the shadows and dust, a spitting image of the warrior as she sits dirty and bleeding in the cell. Her own eyes gleam back at her, flecked with steel and dark as danger, and the copy's smile is daggers, its appearance identical down to the stitching on her leathers. Amora calls for her guards, and two jǫtnar make their way into the cavern, their eyes run red with blood and their teeth lined in gold. She nods, and each takes the warrior's copy by the arm, and before Sif can speak, its head falls to the ground, cleaved away with sharpened ice. Blood and bone spit from its neck, and the dead eyes stare up at Sif, empty and glazed.

“You are hidden from your Gatekeeper’s gaze,” the sorceress breathes. “But not for the reason they believe.”

One of the jǫtnar yanks the head from the ground by its blood-darkened hair, the other swings the body over its shoulders, and as they leave Amora follows, with Sif left in the dim light of her cell, her heart heavy and scattered.

+

Hogun makes his way through the encampments in the pre-dawn light, seeing to the well-being of the remaining Einherjar and the vanir soldiers who have joined the against the rebels and the jǫtnar. He thinks of Sif, her body borne over the back of an enemy's steed, and of Thórr who would rip the mountains from the soil to find her.

(He thinks of Loki, who would do so much worse.)

“Hogun!” he hears Volstagg's call and turns to the great warrior, covered in blood both his own and others', gathering the weapons of the fallen. Hogun catches his own ball and chain, his most prized armament, and thanks him for finding it amidst the blood and bodies that litter the rocks and dirt.

“Is there word from Thórr?” the vanr asks, and Volstagg shakes his head.

“I'm afraid not,” he answers, tossing the ripped remainder of his cloak over his shoulder as they walk. “Though I imagine he has his hands full keeping Loki from ripping the palace apart in his anger at the moment. Frankly, I do not envy our king the task.”

“His love for her is strong,” Hogun observes. “He would bring down the worlds if she is not found safe. It is hard to imagine the Silvertongue fighting for more than himself, even after all this time.”

“There is a darkness in him that not even Yggdrasill can wipe away, and I don't think it will be gone until he returns to her Branches at the end of his days,” Volstagg continues. “But in Sif and their children he finds peace, and I would not wish that taken from him. We have all made our mistakes, and he has learned from them all that he will, just as we have.”

Hogun's response is cut off by the pounding of hooves from within the cliffs of the mountains, and he and Volstagg turn to meet the sound, their weapons drawn and the Einherjar poised to strike. A group of jǫtnar appear over the rocks, their horses tight-knit and shadowed in plates of gold, and they stop before they reach the rocky edges.

“Back again for another round?” Fandral's voice cuts through the silence, the warrior swinging his sword through the cold morning air in a display of hostility.

“If we were you would not be standing there alive to see it,” the leader growls, his body adorned with armor and his eyes like flecks of ruby in the rising sun. “We have come to return your lady to you.” He motions to his cavalry, moving his horse to the side.

Another Frost Giant tosses something from his stallion, and when it rolls down the small slope to Fandral's feet, it is all he can do not to vomit.

“What is the meaning of this?” Volstagg yells, and the sight of Sif's empty-eyed head makes the earth tilt beneath his feet.

“We did not say she would be in one piece,” a smaller jötunn snarls, lifting the remainder of the warrior's body from his horse and throwing it down the slope as if it were a carcass, unblessed by the words of thanks to Yggdrasill and left to rot without prayer. The Warriors Three and the Einherjar do not give chase, stung still by the sight of their fierce companion's body broken and bruised in the dust, and in her dead eyes Fandral can see the beginning of the end.

+

The fur around Loki's collar is brilliant-white and soft, the green wool cascading down his shoulders like liquid, his daggers sheathed in his boots and in the small of his back. Magick drips from his teeth, flickering in his eyes and when he thinks of Sif she is fire in his belly and blood in his mouth. His eyes turn to Thórr, the Thunder God's face cleaned of blood and dirt, the red of his cape vibrant once again. Jane stands behind them, Loki's sons with her in their finery, and though he does not wish for them to go they insist on being the first to greet Sif when he returns with her, and he will not deny them. Their eyes are hardened, and he does not begrudged them their anger.

“Remember Loki, we have a plan; there will be no running off like mares without reins,” Thórr reminds him, tucking the last of his own daggers in his boots, lifting Mjölnir from its plinth.

“You've changed,” the God of Mischief quips, and it is all he can do to keep his feet rooted to the ground instead of charging for the Bifröst.

“So have you,” the king replies, and the weight of their exchange is not lost to either of them.

“It is the nature of Mischief to-” but his words are cut short at the pounding feet of guards and shouts of the Warriors Three.

“Thórr! Loki!”

Both of them turn at the sounds and make their way down the golden dais, and the pile of cloak and cloth in Volstagg's hands make the hair on the back of Thorr's neck stand up and the blood in Loki's vein freeze like ice.

nei-

The God of Mischief shoves past the blond, his pupils cat-thin and eyes wide as Volstagg lays the cloth upon the marble floor, the toe of a boot peeking from beneath the fabric and Loki kneels, flinging the folds away, and his throat runs dry, his bones wear thin, he cannot hear the voices of the warriors as they speak, their half-yowled words distant in his ear and all he can think of is Yggdrasill burning, Yggdrasill dying.

Sif is dead.

Her body lies before him, bloodied and bruised, her leathers torn and her head ripped from her spine, her eyes empty of Yggdrasill's light.

The threads break, someone's retching echoes throughout the chamber, and magick bleeds from his fingertips.

(until Ragnarǫk come)

Loki breathes out, the Great Móðir behind his eyes, and he runs, slipping into the shadows of the dying sun, and he is gone.

“Loki!”

+

He rides.

He rides his mare until she cannot run anymore, until the winds take her where the sun sets and the edges of the mountains bleed into waterfalls. Here he finds the pools he used to visit as a child, where Frigga would take him for his lessons, where magick runs deep and he learned upon her knee all that he knows now.

The God of Mischief leaps from Svaðilfari’s back, clamoring through the hanging leaves and red-rimmed waters, drinking them in like breath, coming undone.

When he opens his eyes, everything is white.

Móðir drips from his teeth, slides down his back like water and ice and fire and all the things that are breaking inside his mind, and the silvery flowers of the World Tree glitter like diamond-dust, stinging his eyes (or are they tears? He does not know, does not know anything but death and dying and the soul he seeks.) Loki chases the path that he has walked countless times across countless moons, down to the pool he drinks from to keep himself sewn together, the forever water-

(the holy water that cannot help him now, even as his eyes thin and his breath leaves his lungs like the crashing of waves against the shore)

He reaches its edge, walking in, the glittering liquid flicking his cheekbones and wetting the leather and cloth, and his hands splash beneath the surface. When he drinks it is like the dying of stars and the birth of the universe in his throat, he is one with the Allthing and the souls of those unborn and reborn slide against his consciousness, mixing, melting, and he is Loki and not-Loki, he is all things in all times and all places.

But he is not her.

He dives beneath the surface as he always does, but he cannot find her, does not hear her voice amidst the thousands of ancient tongues that whisper in his ears, does not breathe her in with the water though he has no need for breath here, she isn't here, she is gone, she is nothing and that is worse than death-

Móðir Yggdrasill, he cries, and she comes.

He can feel her, móðir, móðir, Frigga's arms around him and her voice undying in his throat, and she is here but Sif is not and if she has answers for him he cannot hear them, cannot hear anything as the world goes silent, the Allthing dripping from his tongue as he stands again in her waters.

burning, blinding, melting-

(I am War, and every victory belongs to me.)

He will bring the Nine to their knees for her, he is World-Eater and Serpent-Tongue, and he will be the end of all things when the universe unravels at the seams.

She deserves nothing less.

+

Amora sits up, flinging away the cloth and taking in her surroundings.

The copy of the captured warrior is silent upon the marble floors of the palace as it moves, and through it the sorceress can see the familiar halls and banners, adorned with the new crest of the Thunder God but otherwise looking for all as it did centuries ago, sleek and shimmering in the moonlight.

She moves cloud-soft and quiet, slipping into the shadows to avoid the guards, the Einherjar oblivious to the power that slides between them and nips unseen at their feet. She feels for Loki but she does not taste his magick upon the copy's severed skin, and its feet quicken as her thoughts do the same.

He has left his children unguarded she thinks. The first mistake.

The headless body stalks towards the inner chambers, drawing its sword.

\\

"Where is faði?"

"He is still out following mútta," Ullr soothes, letting the little girl continue to believe Loki's earlier fabrication, before the body, before he disappeared.

"Okay."

"He will return soon. Mútta is on a long journey, and it may take him some time to catch up to her," Eyarr answers. "It is time to sleep now, Fríða."

"Goða nótt."

"Sofðu vel, Áfríðr."

When Líkreifr shuts the door, Ullr's illusion holds no more, and the red-run eyes of Loki's sons glimmer blood and darkness in the moonlight painted across the floor.

"Are you sure this is the right thing? Keeping moðir's death from her?" Eyarr asks as they walk, restless and sleepless and adorned in their armor and leathers, unwilling to walk the halls unguarded.

"I cannot believe she is dead, not while the realms still rest upon the World Tree's Branches. This is not the death she would choose to meet," Ullr snips, anger clawing at his teeth and disbelief hovering over his eyes. "Our forces were deceived once, and if there are jǫtnar among them that means there is magick; there is no reason this could be any different."

"But what if it isn't?" Líkreifr argues. "We have known all our lives that moðir might be lost to us in battle. No one wishes it, but what if that day has come?"

"I will not believe it until every Frost Giant and every vanir rebel is strewn across the mountainside for Ásgarðr's eyes to see, and every corner of every cave is lit by föðurbróðir Thórr's lightning."

"And what of faðir?" Líkreifr questions. "He slipped into his shadows as soon as he saw her body upon the ground and has not returned since."

"Without moðir he is all but lost to us," Ullr responds. "Even the waters of Yggdrasill may not be enough to keep him from tearing the Nine apart to find those who did this."

"He still has us and Áfríðr," Eyarr retorts. "He would be no faðir to us if he turned his back on his own children."

"The king may have begun him on his path centuries ago, but it was moðir who brought him out of the darkness, as much as he has ever been," Ullr cuts in. "But whatever his faults and whatever the demons that plague him still, I will not believe that he would turn his back on us; moðir would never forgive him, even if her soul rests in Yggdrasill's hold now."

Their words are silenced by the sting that settles on Ullr's tongue.

"Magick," he breathes, eyes glimmering green and crackling with the Branches. "Powerful like faðir's, but not his."

The three slink into the shadows, and Ullr whispers darkness around them, the black eating them up until they are invisible, melted into the entrance to the inner chambers.

"Something walks the palace halls," Ullr whispers, feeling for magick not his own, not their father's, but prickling with the waters of Yggdrasill, the taste like ice and frost.

It tastes of Yggdrasill, but not the way faðir does."

They watch and wait, silent, and when the figure comes from the shadows, their shock is silent under Ullr's illusion.

"What is that?" Líkreifr whispers, hands reaching for the glaive at his back, the fur at his collar prickling his throat. "Is that-"

"Já," Eyarr answers, their fears confirmed as the copy steps near the light. "Moðir's body; whoever killed her must have done this."

"Or it isn't really her at all," Ullr growls, magick ready at his fingertips. "Shoot it, while it still hasn't noticed us."

"Hvat?" Eyarr exclaims. "You can't be serious, that's-"

"If that really is our moðir then her soul is long gone to Yggdrasill, and her body is dust," Ullr hisses, impatient. "If it is not her, then that means her real body is somewhere else, and we do no harm by killing this one. Now shoot it!"

"It's moving faster, towards the bedchambers!" Líkreifr snaps.

"Áfríðr!"

Eyarr yanks Sif's bow from his shoulders and fires without pause, the arrow striking their not-mother clean between its shoulder blades. Its arm reaches around to grab it, ripping it out and tossing it on the ground, turning its headless form to face them.

"Líkreifr, do whatever it takes to get to the king," Ullr commands, the green crackle of magick dripping from his fingertips, and the youngest readies his glaive, quick to run.

"I would say I'm glad to be fighting something that isn't moðir for once, but that just doesn't seem right," Eyarr quips, readying another arrow, and Ullr only stares daggers at the copy rushing towards them.

And I can only hope faðir returns in time.

+

Loki races back to Iðavǫllr, his mare liquid in the shadows that cover the plains of Ásgarðr. The waters of Yggdrasill glimmer through his veins, but they are unable to fill the hole in his heart, the place where the cracks have run too deep and he will break he will break and when he does the worlds will have Hel to pay-

He slips through the shadows of the palace walls, and the taste of spells is like a shield-blow in his mouth, and then the shouts reach him.

He thinks of his children and wills his feet to carry him as fast as his magick will take them. And when he comes upon the sight of Sif's desecrated body, marked with cuts and pricked with arrows and her sword turned upon her sons, he seethes.

Red is all his eyes will see as he shoves Ullr out of the copy's hold, the scent of his son's magick and another's flooding the room, and he tastes Yggdrasill in his teeth where he should not-

"Faðir!"

"Loki!"

He is deaf to their shouts, he can hear nothing but the rushing of blood and magick in his veins as the copy grips his throat and his fingers claw at its hand, the waters sing in his throat and he feels, feels for her but the body is empty, empty gone she is gone-

-and there is someone else inside-

The hall fills with the green light of Loki's rage, and even Thórr shields his eyes.

\\

Amora hisses as her consciousness is thrown from the copy, and she curses the sun and stars that let the God of Mischief ever see the Branches.

It does not matter, she thinks. There is nothing that will keep him from me now.

If I cannot take his children from him, then he will take their lives himself when he tears the Nine Realms to the ground.

\\

When the light fades, they see their father, limned in gold and eyes wild with stars.

His breath comes slow like the sun dipping down below the horizon, and when they see his eyes they are like novas, death and rebirth and the turning of the stars, cracked with Branches unending.

His hands roam over the body-not-body, and he feels the sting of magick not his own dissipate into his skin, tinged with the waters of the Great Moðir, and he breathes them in. His control is a fragile thing, woven weak between his teeth and in the spaces of his ribs, and he can feel it slipping, sliding through his fingers like blood, unraveling like thread-

"I will not rest," the God of Mischief hisses, rage and love dripping from his teeth, the scent of the body's magick burned behind his eyes and he will know it like his own until he finds it.

"Loki-"

"I will find who did this!" Loki screams, the sound raw and rough in his throat like fabric torn at the seams, and his pupils are cat-thin and sharp, magick bleeding into his eyes and lightning in his bones. "I will bring the Nine Realms to their knees if that is what it takes," he hisses, the tails of his longcoat and the fabric of his cloak whipping with his movements, and Thórr thinks of hreindýri at Yule, in the sight of the Hunters and bound for sacrifice.

"If you go like this you go to your death, Loki," the God of Thunder warns, but his words are lost to the fragments of the Trickster's mind, slipping through the cracks to crumble at his feet.

"I let her go to her own," Loki snarls. "She deserves nothing less than to meet me in the darkness I sent her to."

The green of his eyes glitters dark and deep, the shadows of the moonlit hall slipping down his back and pooling at his heels, and in the darkness he is consumed.

The space where he stood is empty, the lifeless body broken beneath the Branches. Thórr calls Mjölnir, and Loki's sons ready their weapons.

Our faðir may be lost to us, Ullr thinks.

The Realms must not follow.

+

Sif drags her fingers along the edge of the golden wall, slick like mist and light on her skin. She knows little of magick; it does not come to her like it does Loki, but she feels for weakness, cracks, anything she can wedge a dagger between in hopes of escape.

Loki-

She thinks of the copy, beheaded before her and carried away like a carcass to rot, and she knows it has been delivered to the Einherjar and the Warriors Three, taken to the palace and laid before the God of Mischief.

She thinks of her sons, who must keep Loki’s rage on thin thread, and of her daughter, whose last memory of the warrior was a lie.

“No dagger will cut you from that cell,” her guard growls, a laugh buried in his throat. “Amora’s magick is not so weak.”

“Did I ask you to speak, filth of Jötunheimr?” the warrior growls, spitting dirt from her tongue in a display of aggression. It is low, she thinks. But I cannot remain here while my family believes me gone to the stars. I must do something.

“Says she who was captured by this filth,” the Frost Giant retorts, pacing around her cell.

“My tongue has earned its barbs from the mouth of the God of Mischief, when I lick his teeth and drink the waters of the stars from his throat,” Sif says, pushing the tangled strands of her bloodied hair from her face. “It is more than you could ever hope to taste of perfection.”

“There is nothing to be gained from the life of a runt, except for his death,” the Giant snarls, and the warrior watches his anger in the claws of his fingers, the heaviness of his steps, and she is almost there.

“It is more than you could ever claim,” she continues, her taunts growing sharper as she studies her short, dirty nails in feigned boredom that only serves to make her guard breathe shallower in rage. “Jötunheimr has nothing, and its people even less. You cannot even keep an eye on your own Casket, let alone rebuild your crumbling little world.”

“I could kill you for your words, whore of the Liartongue.”

“Ooh, I quiver with fear,” Sif drawls, honey in her throat and all of her senses trained on her guard and the dagger in the small of her back that awaits his jugular. “Would that you could try.”

“You are injured and filthy with defeat,” the muscular Giant spits. “You are easy prey.”

“Funny,” Sif recalls. “Your kind said that the last time we set our feet upon your ice.” She drops her hand, smoothing it over the glittering gauze that keeps her caged. “And look where you are now: serving an exile in the hopes that she might give you what you want, like a wolf-hound begging for scraps beneath the feet of its master’s table. Thórr was right all those years ago.”

The guard's eyes thin like razors as recognition crashes over him like a wave.

“Oh já,” Sif smiles, and when she does her voice drips venom, her fingers scraping the wall and her other hand flickering at her back, her face near to the mist. “I was one of the company that came to Jötunheimr and set in motion the war that brought Laufey-King to his death.”

“You brought the Mischiefmaker?” the Frost Giant seethes, stalking towards the cell, only the thin glimmer of magick separating his fangs from her own.

“I did more than that,” she taunts, weaving her words like claws, sliding the dagger from its sheath.

I helped him.”

The guard’s fist shatters the patchwork wall with a roar, but Sif is ready and spins to avoid it, plunging her dagger through the hole before the magick can reform, and when she brings it down the wall dissipates into glimmering pieces made solid by her steel. The warrior ducks to avoid the blade of ice aimed at her neck and she rips through the Giant’s neck like water, and icy blood sprays thick and heavy on her face and over her armor. The body drops to the floor, and as she watches the life sink from its eyes, she breathes a prayer for the life she has taken to save her own.

I am War, I carry Death beneath my feet, but I am not empty.

Sif wipes the blood from her dagger into the dirt, biting back the sting of her shoulder, and she runs.

+

In the darkness of the weapons vault, Loki comes.

guards

A flick of his wrist, and they fall unconscious to the floor.

the scepter

He is slick on silent feet, waving away the spells that bind it to its plinth, and when he touches it he can hear it voice in his mind, like thousands of pinpoints, weaving him together in all the ways he never wanted to be again. It calls, it calls like the howls of wolf-hounds and the screams of the dying, and behind his eyes he can see the ending of the worlds and his own soul ripped apart at the seams.

(for Sif, Sif who is War and carries Death at her feet-

In the glimmer of its gem he comes undone, power dripping from his teeth, the scent of tainted magick the only thing he understands, and he slips like shadow into the darkness once more.

there is no one else he would offer his life to than her)

+


“Strip it.”

“Master Ullr, what are you doing in-”

“Do as I say,” the eldest of Sif’s sons commands as he rushes in, the tattered remains of the body covered from view in the Healers’ rooms, his siblings not far behind.

I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before,” he hisses beneath his breath.

“What will this possibly accomplish?” Eyarr interrupts, brows raised and voice sharp. “It’s not enough that moðir's body is bloodied and bruised and tainted with magick?” he growls as Ullr undoes the straps of the body’s armor, letting the steel clatter to the floor as his dagger tears at her cloth and leathers, the Healers not daring to intervene between the shouting men.

“We don’t know that it’s actually-”

“Stop calling her it, you vámr!” Eyarr hisses, but his anger evaporates like mist in the dawn when he sees the body unclothed.

“Her runes,” Líkreifr breathes, hesitant to touch their not-mother's skin though they have no shame in seeing her body.

“They’re not here, there’s nothing here,” Ullr snarls, his eyes flicking over the copy, its skin neither scarred nor touched, no trace of wear or age in its shape. “Where are her scars, her bodymarks, where are the runes of faðir's name inked beneath her hip?” He whips around, his cloak following his movements, magick sparking in his eyes and prickling through his veins as his siblings look to each other.

“This has never been moðir,” he hisses. “Faðir goes to his death for her, but somewhere she lives.”

\\

Amora stands on the cliffs of the mountain, watching the Einherjar retreat, called home by their king. She dips into the waters in her throat, feeling the ripples of the Branches behind her eyes, and she feels him.

The skies stir above her, restless and dark, the sun swallowed up by the clouds, by the wolf that claws at her door-

“He wields the scepter,” one of the Frost Giants growls, but she pays him no mind. She has eyes only for Loki, the one who will devour the worlds and rip Yggdrasill’s heart from her waters so that her own may take its place. “You did not say he would be this cunning.”

“Meet him,” she commands, her white hair flickering in the growing storm as she watches Loki near.

“You have brought us to our deaths,” another Giant snarls.

“You are no longer of any use to me,” she breathes. “It is a more merciful end that I send you to than he alone would ever give you.”

The sky darkens.

\\

The Bifröst glitters beneath Ullr’s feet, stretching from the edge of Ásgarðr to the palace, and the wind whips fast through his hair, long like his father's.

Faðir, he thinks, feeling magick on his tongue, and he knows Loki walks between the worlds to the mountain caves, on paths even Yggdrasill’s Branches cannot lead him. He adjusts the daggers in his boots as Eyarr readies his sword and glaive, and Líkreifr secures his arrows, pulling their mother’s bow around his shoulders.

“We should have seen it earlier,” the eldest son growls, watching as Heimdallr brings the Bifröst to life. “The enchantment, the taint, the waters-”

“Hindsight will do you no good now,” Hogun interrupts, stepping towards the edge of the portal. “You will not regain your adar burdened with regrets heavier than your armor.”

“He doesn’t say much, but when he does it’s worth listening to,” Fandral calls.

“What matters now is finding the both of them,” Thórr states, Mjölnir ready in his hand. “You are all that’s left to keep Loki grounded until we find her. It is no easy task, but borne between the three of you, you will be able to bear it.”

The shimmer of illusions settles over Loki's sons, the colors of the Bifröst glitter in time with the stars, the familiar tug grasping at their feet, and they are gone.

+

Kill.

kill

    kill kill them  All  slaughter    death

                      dying-

dead at his feet dead   where they stand leave them in the dust gone, gone the scepter through their hearts like a blade through water

Thoughts splinter through his mind and he is undone, unraveled at the seams and he will take the world with him-

HER

     HER yes yes she who stands on the edge of the mountain white hair green eyes water in her throat

“You,” Loki seethes, every word a spell out of his control, let loose like rain and blood from wounds and the veins of those at his feet. “You who walked the Branches and took War from Mischief,” he snarls, teeth bared and eyes broken as he stalks over the dead he leaves behind, boots digging into the gravel of the mountainside, the scepter alive and burning into his skin.

“Would you bring the Realms to their ends for her?” the figure calls, stepping down from the rocks, her eyes never dipping from his own, and in them he sees everything he has learned from the waters of Yggdrasill, inverted and torn apart.

“I have already begun,” he seethes, pacing like an animal, rabid and festering in its wounds, with only its will to live stronger than its hatred of death.

“She told me you would,” she continues, and soon they are circling each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. “I underestimated how much she knew of her own value.”

“Who are you?” Loki barks, fingers curled like claws, breath drawn dark over his tongue. “I would know the name of the one who brought the worlds to their twilight.”

“Who I am does not matter,” the sorceress says, and the God of Mischief tastes magick on her tongue older than the stars, older than anything he ever learned upon Frigga’s knee. “The only thing that matters is you.”

he

    c ome-s

                     A                         PART

The God of Mischief leaps first, and the sky swallows the sun.

||

It should not be this easy to escape, Sif thinks, looking around as she readies one of the horses. Her shoulder stings of dirt and blood and she can feel infection nipping at the wound’s edges, her skin marred with oil and dust and what she would not give for water upon her tongue.

They can starve me, but I am not broken so easily.

The mare is restless and uneasy, and Sif soothes her with clicks and sounds, gritting her teeth as she climbs upon its back without comfort of cloth or saddle. There is nothing but rock and brush to draw the warrior’s path, no soldiers or rebels or life of any kind as she nudges her mount, moving forward. Her regained weapons are a comforting weight on her hip and at her back, and she draws her sword with her prime hand, guiding the mare with the other.

There is light and lightning in the distance, at the edges of the mountain where they had met their enemy, and even from afar she can smell the ozone scent of magick, the hair on the back of her neck standing on edge, and she urges the horse faster.

Loki, she thinks. Do not meet your end before I show you the truth of mine.

The slopes are sharp and the rocks loose as the mare runs, and when she finally comes upon the last edge, Sif sees the end of all things woven in the God of Mischief’s eyes.

“Loki!”

+

The sorceress’s magick crackles on his tongue, the taste familiar but foreign, as if her will has tainted the waters that flood her throat. Her fingers close around his neck, her touch a burning brand against his skin and it drags the life out of him, and he is lost, drowning, pulled down down into the waters of forever-

he plunges the scepter into her chest, the glittering blue seeping through her veins and flashing like fire, and he feels it pull at her heart, eating its way beneath her skin.

Until it throws him back.

His body cracks against the rocks and dust and his vision runs, the scepter to his heart, the glimmering blue pulsing in his eyes, and he wonders if this is what it feels like to burn, to be bound in the death and dying of another.

“Loki!”

He hears his name.
His name

       SIF

Nei, he thinks, and the sorceress digs the scepter further into his armor and leathers, and he feels blood dripping down his skin like water into the cracks, the spaces of his mind that whisper prettr and lygi and dauði behind his eyes.

The crackle of lightning, stars between his teeth, and the glimmer of the scepter dims in his eyes as he claws his way above it, ripping the weapon from her hands and spinning spells beneath her bones.

Sif leaps from her mount, her sword drawn and her teeth bared. Amora’s attentions are turned towards Thórr and the Warriors Three, her magick flitting between them and a small group of Einherjar. She throws daggers at Fandral who dives to miss them, the swing of Volstagg’s axe barely breathing against her skin, and when Hogun leaps for her she catches him, magick red like sunset flinging him away. Thórr’s lightning is quick to follow her and it hits its mark, the pounding feet of the Einherjar singing in her ears as they descend.

The warrior leaps, unseen.

The sorceress turns beneath their weapons but Sif’s blade is quicker, wedged through her heart as the warrior bounds over the God of Mischief’s fallen form.

Sif, he thinks, and there is rage and love in her eyes, bared in her teeth and sharp on her tongue, slipping down her legs to pool at her feet and he drinks it in, consume it. The Trickster watches as his world weaves back together in the red of the sorceress’s blood, and sees how it splatters into her robes like patchwork and stars.

The scent of magick is like fire and ozone in his lungs, thrown from the tallest of the Einherjar, and it pricks behind his eyes, familiar.

There is life in his veins when he springs from the ground, the Great Moðir on his tongue and her waters filling him in, and the light that surrounds them all is blinding and burning, and it takes them whole.

“Does he always have to do that? Where did he even take them?” Volstagg yells, and Thórr’s laugh is his answer.

“I know exactly where they are,” he responds, wiping dirt and dust from his mouth.

Fandral whips to his feet with Hogun, eyeing the pitiful remnants of the jǫtnar forces and the scraggly vanir rebels, and he brandishes his sword, hearing the rest of the Æsir gather around him.

“Looks like another round after all!” he yells, and he runs on the wings of the battle cries behind him.

||

The World Tree is blinding, moðir falling from her throat before she opens her eyes, and she rips her sword from Amora’s heart, her blood melting into the silvery white Branches beneath.

“How?” the sorceress seethes, fingers slipping through the river of blood flowing from her robes. “How did you escape? How did you survive?”

“I am War and I carry Death beneath my heels,” Sif growls. “I will know my end when and where I decide it is worthy of me.”

“She’s also our moðir,” one of the Einherjar drawls, and the illusion of golden helmets and dripping fabrics flickers away into nothingness, leaving the liquid leathers and silver steel of her sons behind. Their eyes are stars and their weapons are drawn, cloaks melting into the waters of the Branches.

“If you will not burn the Realms to the ground then I will,” Amora hisses, and she leaps for him, her magick a hurricane in the leaves, pinpoint at the God of Mischief’s heart-

Until it stops.

“You are not the only one who can bend the waters of the World Tree to your will,” Loki hisses, whipping the red glow away with the scepter, and the glimmer of armor and gold settles over his shoulders, in the spaces of his ribs and the dagger edges of horns that curve above his eyes. His fingers claw at her robes as her hands choke around his neck, his jaw bared to her teeth. Sif moves to strike her again but her feet will not move, she and her sons rooted silent to the ground like the flowers that whisper at their heels.

“I would have brought the Twilight to its dawn,” Amora howls, her blood marring the gold and black upon Loki’s body. “I would have carved out Yggdrasill’s heart and gave her my own. I would have melted the gold of Ásgarðr to the ground for all that she did to me,” she snarls, her will to live the only thing stronger than her hatred of death, the waters around her bubbling in her throat like blood, keeping her tethered to life by threads.

I would have made the Great Moðir anew, with all of you beneath me,” Amora hisses, and her words are an echo between the God of Mischief’s ribs, spoken in the shadow of his own tongue centuries ago.

“Not in this life,” Loki seethes, and he digs the scepter into the hole of her heart. Her blood is hot on his skin like fire and ash and the dying of stars, and it melts the jewel and gold between them, and with her last breath she pulls him beneath the water, her nails like claws down his throat, her magick inverted in his lungs. He feels the stone’s blue glow wink out of his eyes, sliding from his bones.

She is gone, slipping between the ripples and unto forever, and the weight of her life is like the world lifted from his shoulders as he breathes the world in, the voices of the dead and dying and born and reborn slide against his skin, and he is made and unmade, all of Creation slick beneath his skin.

Moðir, he calls, and she comes to him, the Allthing liquid in his throat, and he cannot tell the difference between Frigga’s arms and Yggdrasill’s hold and maybe there isn’t any at all, he breathes, feeling the pinprick of stars in his eyes and light warm on his face, and he reaches towards it, moðir i am come-

Sif’s strong arms carry him to the surface, the waters shimmering and silver-white around them, and when she kisses him she tastes of blood and dirt and sweat and fear and rage and love and-

She tastes of life.

||

On Vanaheimr, the skies clear.

It is done, Thórr thinks, watching the last of Amora’s pawns retreat in surrender, and he calls for Heimdallr.

Bring us home.

||

“Did you really think we would let you go without us?” Líkreifr asks, the three siblings perched beside the large bed in the Healers’ chambers.

“We found our way to Svartálfaheimr the first time we tried to walk the Branches alone,” Eyarr adds. “We laugh in the face of danger.”

“So does your moðir,” the God of Mischief breathes, the sting of magick still warm in his throat, his voice raw between his teeth.

“You would not have me if I did not,” Sif teases from her place at his bedside, her hair loose and clean around her shoulders, the thick fabric of a healing gown snow-bright and soft against her skin.

“Where is the scepter?” Loki asks, feeling the burn of its magick beneath the bandages, wasting away in his palms.

“Returned to the Allthing where it began,” Thórr says as he enters the large room, Jane on his heels. “As all things must someday.”

The God of Mischief says nothing, feeling exhaustion and sleep and the weight of fear settling over him like fog, clouding his vision and slick over his eyes. With a wave of her hand Eir dims the light-spheres above them, a silent signal for his visitors to let him rest.

“Where is Ullr?” Loki questions, refusing to let sleep take him yet, the loose waves of his hair falling around the collar of his gown. “And my dóttir?”

“Faði!”

The sound is lightning in his ears as Ullr carries her into the room, his other hand holding Thrúðr’s as they come to the Trickster’s side. Áfríðr almost leaps from her brother’s arm, squeezing the God of Mischief tight, her cheek buried in the fabric bunched at his shoulder. He has strength enough to hold her just as close, and the memory of his madness almost unravels him.

I would have swallowed the sun for Sif, he thinks. I would have left the world dark with my children still in it.

(He holds her tighter.)

“Are you okay, faði?” she asks, pulling away to meet his eyes. Her tiny fingers trace the shape of his brow, and he smiles.

“I will be,” he assures her, pressing a kiss to her sharp-cut hair.

If not in this life, then perhaps another.

||

When he wakes, the stars are glittering above him, and he can feel Sif’s arms around him, her legs tangled in his own. It is all he can do to turn towards her, his face buried in the curve of her shoulder and the waves of her hair.

“How did you convince Eir to let you stay?” he asks, knowing the master healer to be as strict as she had been when they were children themselves.

“I can be very persuasive,” Sif replies, kissing his forehead, running her nails like lightning through his hair and he groans, melting into her touch. She nips his jaw, dragging her teeth down his throat until she reaches the collar of the healing gown, pushing it aside. His fingers flit through her hair, breath hissed and sharp between his teeth, and the reality of her sets in.

He almost lost her.

(He believed he had.)

There is strength enough in him for this and he brings her lips to his, licking rage and love from her teeth, drinking her down his throat as she moves above him, careful of his wounds and the magick that lays low in his bones, glimmering and soft. His hands are eager over her shoulders, sliding down her back and around to her hips, and his thumb scrapes at the ink bitten into her skin. His name is certain on her body, eternal like the waters they have come from, and she traces the runes of her own on his thigh, reminding him of the only place he knows he will ever belong.

(with her)

Sif slides over him, onto him, and her vision is burned bright with the stars in his eyes, the Branches unending, and when he comes undone his cries are like songs to the Great Moðir, and she is there to put him back together again.

Unto forever, world without end.