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Sif's hands are still covered in soap when she hears it - the faint creak, the quiet huff of breath...
"Loki...?" Her tone is warning, irritation underlaid with concern. She rushes through rinsing but not quickly enough. There is a pained curse from beyond the door, the sound of the bed creaking and the bolted side table jostling. Sif likewise curses, sloshes her other hand beneath the tap and grabs a towel as she is rushing out the door.
"I was not gone thirty seconds and you are climbing out of bed exactly as you were told not to? This is why the healers are so loathe to deal with you, you know! Sit DOWN Loki!"
He glowers at her from his precariously balanced spot at the edge of the mattress, stubbornly gripping the table and levering himself further upright, although the action makes his face pale and his brow knit with discomfort. Sif feels like she is watching an overfull child take an enormous second helping of cake just for spite.
"There is not a thing wrong with my legs, I may stand if I like." Loki grouses through gritted teeth.
"Your back and ribs are another matter!" Sif snaps, storming over to his side and threading her arm in beneath his, supporting the less wounded side of him.
Loki's arm loops her shoulder, grips her in favour of the table, taking a stubborn hobbling step away from the bed's edge. His legs are not wounded, but they are still quite disused thanks his other injuries and full just now of a fierce pins and needles sensation.
"You stubborn ass. Could you not wait a few moments to be helped to a chair?"
"No! No chairs. No beds. No more SITTING. I am going to go mental if I am sat down in another bloody chair." Loki snarls, gripping her more tightly and planting his feet when she tries to move him toward the seat at the foot of the bed. "I can bear my own weight for pity's sake, just give me a moment to let the feeling come back. Gods! And you tell me I am impatient."
"You are! Case in point at this very moment! Eir said two weeks of bed rest."
"She said 'about' two weeks. Ten days is nearly that."
"Loki." she snaps.
"Si~if." he echoes, mocking her warning tone with a nasal sing-song that splits her name into two syllables.
"By the branches, you are such a child." Sif snorts, and he returns the gesture with an extra helping of derision, shuffling a foot forward and peeling himself away from her embrace as the sensation in his toes begins to return.
Sif huffs in frustration as he pulls from her arms, seeing how hard the bruised muscles in his back and side strain with the first few steps he takes unsupported, though once he tucks the damaged arm tighter to his side again he seems a bit more stable at least. A few more moments' motion seems to warm the muscles and largely eliminate his limp, but for a few wrong steps that tweak his back.
"See. I am quite mobile."
"Barely, more like." She grumbles, but does not reach for him, as she does not relish the tantrum he will pitch if she manhandles him back into bed. If she pushes he may start trying to use magic to dodge her which shall be a far more dangerous endeavour than standing after the blow-back he has experienced. Sif sighs. Being talented in strategy is only rarely satisfying it turns out...
"Fine then. You are standing. Now what?"
Loki turns toward the window and nods.
"Now a walk I think."
"You do not mean to go outside?"
"Yes, outside! You would deny me even a breath of fresh air?" He asks, tone dramatic, though there is something sincere in the sad look that he gives her. "How cruel can my wife be? After all I have done for her..."
"Oh yes, all the struggling and flinching and complaining and frightening me half to death you have done is truly worthy of reward." She drawls, closing the small gap between them at a sedate pace.
"You are being wholly over protective.” he tells her with a superior air. “What harm could come to me in a hospital courtyard? Shall I be attacked by a breeze? The sunshine? Look at what a beautiful day it is, Sif."
It is, in fact. She had not taken a proper look outside yet this morning, busy since waking with eating, dressing and helping Loki with the changing of his bandages, but there is a bright calm day awaiting beyond the glass. Fresh snow blankets the courtyard apart from shovelled paths, the bare trees laced with a clinging layer of white. A groundskeeper is moving about tree to tree, walking on the air above the snow as not to disturb the soft layer, applying light-illusions in place of the fallen leaves for the days leading up to yule. Stars and branches, yule already. The midwinter has crept up on her with all that has gone on in the last weeks...
"You have been in this room almost long as I have you know." Loki points out, with a gentleness that catches her a bit by surprise. "Perhaps a walk for yourself as much as for me, hmm?"
"Well I am certainly not about to let you go alone." She replies with a resigned sigh. "Nor without a coat."
“Goodness no. Not without a coat. You know how very susceptible I am to the cold.” he says with the sort of mock seriousness that is usually directed at their sons and Sif cannot help the smile that pulls at her lips.
“You shall have that arm in a stiff sleeve for support as well.” she nods to the sedir-burned limb tucked against his side. “Those are my conditions for your walk.”
“I do not think you are quite qualified to be a nurse, milady.” Loki says mildly.
“You are not quite qualified to be standing, and yet here we are.” she fires back and a smirk flashes across his face.
“Very well, a stiff sleeve.”
-----
The air outside is crisp and cold and the first lungful burns in a way that is briskly satisfying. Sif straightens up a little, tipping her head back to take in the open sky along with another deep breath. It is a still cold, no wind to nip or pull their hair, and Sif can feel the warmth of the sun on her face.
Loki seems eased for just this little exposure to the outdoors, breathing as deeply as his bruised ribs and sore body will allow. He lets his eyes close as he adjusts to the sun and Sif takes the moment to look him over without receiving his irritated glances in return.
It cannot help but strike her as cruel to let him hobble about in such a state for so long - bandages and stiff sleeves, chemical additives for pain, seem practically primitive, too little to offer for the breadth of his injuries - but he shall be too sensitive to magic to bear the manipulation of a proper healing for a few days yet. In the first few hours just the residual sedir always at the fingers of the more experienced nurses had made him howl and recoil...
Eir had cautioned them both of the difficulty of treating a sedir burn, offering instructions for optimal healing that Loki had accepted solemnly and then promptly ignored as it suited him. It had taken not even two days for most of the healers to wash their hands of him and leave Sif - with whom he was at least passably cooperative - to bear the brunt of his moment to moment care. Clearly the patient is just as difficult as his wound…
Loki starts a careful slow-paced walk and Sif moves along at his side, mirroring his steps with an ease borne of recent practice. His good arm around her, and hers around him, they make their way along the path, the yule-leaves glinting in the sunlight and casting bright dots of light along the snow.
“If I am up and moving now I imagine I will be well enough to be home for the solstice eve.” Loki muses, tucking his fingers neatly into the waistband of Sif’s dress.
“I believe you shall.” She agrees with a sigh that speaks of the ease that knowledge gives her. “The boys will be pleased. They have missed you. It would be insult to injury if you missed yule dinner as well.” They have spoken to him by the tablet, of course, but they are young still, rather unreliable at following rules and too steeped in their own yet-unchanneled magic to aid their father’s healing any.
“I would not do such a thing to them if I could help it.” Loki sighs, with a shake of his head. “I only hope they have not been too difficult to care for in our absence.”
“My parents have raised Heimdall and I.” Sif points out. “I am sure they can manage.”
“Ah but they are out of practice. You and he were only two, and we have left them one extra. Little sorcerers besides…” there is a proud lilt there that Sif does not miss, along with no small parcel of Loki’s infamous mischievousness.
“I am sure you are simply devastated by the thought that your sons might be tormenting my mother with their magic.” Sif says flatly and Loki fires her an amused smirk.
“When I am not there to witness? Of course.”
She does not mean to laugh - she has spent years attempting to diffuse the tension between her mother and husband, taking pains not to choose a side - but the sound bubbles up past her lips at the sentiment anyway and Loki grins all the more at her reaction.
“Even you wish you were there to see their pranks, don’t you?” he needles, laughing with her, and it is only when he is brought up short by a fit of coughing that Sif’s smile fades again.
They halt in the middle of the path as he catches his breath, his arm around her squeezing as each cough sets off a spasm of bruised muscle and cracked bone. Sif winces, bracing her free hand gently against his chest until the wracking coughs stop in full.
He makes a sour face at the taste that is left in the back of his throat, the strange ozone residue of lungs over-saturated by magic, and shoots Sif a brief miserable look before straightening up again, working his tongue awkwardly in his mouth.
“Ugh…”
“Should I fetch you a drink?”
“I do not need quite that much pity, thank you.” he says mildly, straightening up with stubborn indignance, and Sif fights a roll of her eyes. She comforts herself that at least his attitude has suffered no injuries...
He takes another stubborn step and she moves with him, falling into the same steady pace again and off they go along the path, though Loki seems a shade more subdued.
They come to the largest tree at the centre where the groundskeeper is still placing lights, watching the leaves go up. Loki’s gaze remains up toward the tree, drinking in the peace of the garden path, but Sif’s mind wanders again now that there is no action to focus her. Her gaze drifts down, from tree, to trunk, over again to her husband, awareness of how much he is leaning upon her sinking further in.
As their quiet stretches he holds out his injured palm for her hand, the same absent offer he has made dozens of times, and as she has before Sif lays her palm in his own.
The texture of the bandage there pulls her short. It is too soft, has come loose from his wrist with the friction of his sleeve, exposing tender swollen skin and the thin golden filaments of the sedir wicks.
Sif shifts her weight, sliding her her arm out from around him once she is sure he is standing solidly. It is easier when she can dedicate both her hands to re-wrapping the bandage. She unfurls the last few inches of it, straightening its layers and rewinding them anew. The skin beneath is not as red now as it had been a week ago but it is still in rough condition, unsightly with irritation, and the reminder of just how much harm remains culls out the last of her smile.
“What is it?”
Loki’s voice makes her jolt a little, focus returning to her gaze, and Sif realizes she has been lost in her examination of his hand, her self one place and mind another.
“Nothing.” She shakes her head, though she does not lift her gaze from his bandaged palm. “Just my thoughts wandering.”
He makes a non-committal noise, runs his thumb over her own idly for a quiet moment, before breaking her focus upon his hand with a few gentle words.
“I am alright you know.”
Loki’s voice is soft, something in his drawling tone pulling her gaze up to his own.
“It shall take much more than a bit of magic to end me, my dear.” he reminds her, with a breath of a laugh at the thought. “Do not look on me as if I am so fragile, hmm?”
Sif sighs, smiles just faintly as she smooths the ends of the bandage.
"Fragile does not describe you, no. Neither does ‘alright’, however. Nor patient…”
Loki scoffs a bit and Sif shushes him with a look. “You make me worry you know. I have never fretted so much in my life as I do over you. There are three children in our house but they are responsible for only a fraction of the silver in my hair.”
“That is simply age, my lady.”
“That is YOU, my prince.” she admonishes, harkening to his old title as she so rarely does these days, and the choice of words quiets him. Sif sighs, for his chastened expression does not satisfy her the way she had hoped it might.
“If I am growing old than so you are you.” she says finally, her gaze falling again to his hand. “And I wish you to be with me as we go.”
“She says as though I worry not.” Loki sighs, as if to an invisible third party. “As though she is the one who each night watches the horizon hoping for an uninjured return. You are the one who worries me. This is mere repayment."
"A thousand years worth at once?" Sif quips, with a raised brow, but her smile has returned and for that Loki simply scoffs at her words.
"Hardly. 300 perhaps..."
"I have been more injured by our babes than by battles in 300 years! You may keep your repayment. I do not consider there to be a debt between us. Moreover I care little for your method."
"See, you fuss like an old woman already," Loki snips, but he squeezes her hand regardless. "Just as I have not been able to convince you to keep yourself hale and whole and safe, so too do you know that this is not my last wound. If you wanted a life free of worry, my Sif, you have married quite the wrong man.”
She sighs, a faint smile on her lips, for that is a phrase that has been brought between them before. (Sometimes bitterly, mostly with fondness, a shade sometimes of disbelief…)
“I did not choose wrongly.” she reminds. “I did not have much choice at all in fact.”
“Emotions are notoriously unreasonable in that regard, aren't they?” Loki clucks, as if commiserating and bragging at once. “This is how I have come out on the top of our little arrangement you see. You are stuck with me, due your pesky heart. I however have simply chosen the best woman there was available for a wife, as is only reasonable. You shall stay for love, I for logic, and we are both of us happy.”
“Until one of us is in hospital for three weeks right before Yule, yes.” Sif quips, though it is paired with a fond smirk for his compliment.
“I see that War, as ever, does not yield.” Loki says with the grumbling sigh of a man whose fun has been spoilt and Sif threads her arm around him again, resting her head on his shoulder and looking up to the glittering leaves of the tree.
“Just promise me that you will behave more carefully in future before you go back to risking your neck like usual.” She tells him. “That is what I always do. It seems to make you feel better.”
“Oh, I could not lie to you my dear.” he says, and for the first time in two long weeks Sif laughs.