On the coast of Norway, where a little cabin sat, the winter days were short and the nights were long. Even in the dark bedroom, the moon and stars gave enough light for Sif to see her husband's form rise from the bed and move towards the window that over looks the crashing ocean shores.
It wasn't unusual for Loki to get up in the middle of the night, even before they had abandoned their own realm. Loki had always been a restless, troubled sleeper. The planet the remaining Asgardians had re-settled on was green and lush and Sif had hoped that it would bring him some peace. But even now, months after the final battles, Loki was plagued with intermittent nightmares and bouts of insomnia.
Loki, ever proud, first attempted to suffer in silence, trying to stifle the cries that woke him from his sleep. Sif always did her best to offer her own comfort, running calming fingers through his hair or passing a soothing hand over his shaking back.
As time passed, Loki would usually tuck himself against her in the night, holding tight and steady, allowing her to be the anchor that kept safe him through turbulent storms.
Certain memories, however, seemed to drive him away, distance and pain clouding his eyes and cooling his touch, taking him far from her. She worried about him when those dreams haunted his nights. Love made her sick to see it. She could sense it now, in the hard line of his bare back and felt it in the empty space of her arms.
"Loki?" she called to him. He tilted his Loki's head tilted slightly away from the window, turning his ear towards her.
"I didn't mean to wake you," his voice was quiet, controlled. Something about it made her gut dip with concern. She tried to blink her own dreams from bleary eyes.
"Come back to bed," she murmured, sleep rasping her voice. Loki blew a long, slow breath from his nose, but he did not answer.
Sif rolled to her side and threw off the warm covers, letting her feet gently meet the cold floor. Naked, she padded softly towards the window and let her hand rest between Loki's shoulders, feeling the muscle coiled tight. Still, her silvertongue did not speak.
"Do you wish to tell me about it?" Sif stepped closer, letting her hands wander down his bare back and torso, until her arms were wrapped around him. She pressed her nose against his skin, breathed in the smell of his minty soap and something that was just him.
Loki shook his head, reaching one hand up to unconsciously touch his throat before allowing his hands to settle over hers, tracing a soothing pattern against her strong arms.
"I cannot," his voice was tight. Sif pressed her lips against his spine and spoke into his skin.
"Perhaps, instead I can help expel it from your mind?"
"Hmm," Loki hummed, still absent.
"You do know," Sif mused, pushing against Loki until he turned to face her, although his eyes remained downcast, "how deeply I care for you? How proud you've made me."
Loki's eyes flicked up briefly, pain and disbelief still storming in his gaze. Sif caught his cheek in her palm, guiding his head back up.
"Much has been lost, but I could not bear to lose you too. Not again." She pressed a kiss to his mouth then, whispered against his lips. "Come back to me."
"Sif," Loki breathed against her mouth, his hands wrapping tight against her waist. She kissed him again, pleased when his mouth moved against hers, warm and strong. She thread her fingers into his hair, making him sigh. He said her name again, then turned his head to drop desperate, urgent kisses along her jaw, her cheek, her ear, her neck.
"Come back," Sif repeated, stepping backwards, but not releasing her hold on her husband's cheek and back. Sif moved, and Loki moved with her, stepping until the back of her knees hit the bed. She pulled him down with her, on top of her.
She rolled them, straddling his thin sleep pants so that she could press her mouth to his chest, his jaw, his tender throat. His body was covered in scars, most were ones that she knew although there were several that were mysteries to her, gained when he was lost.
"Loki," she whispered his name, her voice raw and thick with the pain of love she felt so deeply. She put her mouth back to his, kissing him long and deep, and let her hands touch and press, trying her best to communicate what she could not voice.
Again, she rolled them, helping him discard and kick off the trousers. He nipped at her clavicle and then laved his tongue against the mark, soothing. Sliding both hands into his hair, she dragged his mouth back up to hers, and gasped his name when slid inside of her. He paused for a moment, his face hovering above hers.
"You do know, my lady Sif," he whispered against her mouth, "how dearly I love you?"
She ran one finger down his jaw, against his lips, and looked into his eyes, eyes that were clear and fierce and present. Her chest burned with affection and devotion.
"And I you," she said, breathing her love into his lungs as he moved again, pushing her deeper into the bed. Their bed.
Afterwards, when they lay together, limbs intertwined, sated and unspooled. Sif's head rested against Loki's chest, listening to his heartbeat and the easy tide of his breathing as he drifted off into sleep. She hoped, knew, that his dreams would be peaceful and unburdened for the rest of the long night, and felt glad that she could gift that to him.
How strange, she thought, that after all these millennia and sorrows, that it would be here, in a little house perched on a cliff with salty wind frosting their windows, where he would come back to her. Where they could both come home again.