Author's Note: 100% inspired by the new Thor 2 teaser trailer, which you should definitely go watch.
Disclaimer: I don't own Thor. Nothing changes.
He is in an empty room. The white and light blur together: silence and loss, a thunderous glare from his brother and cold iron at his lips, the glow of a lost prize. The Tesseract which led them from Earth brands blue into his vision, even after he is home.
When the light dulls he sees metal - a crude tray, laden with a captive's meal of hardened bread, a goblet of clear water and one of wine. Drink to ease the pain, no doubt. He wonders briefly who might have suggested such a shallow mercy.
Loki reaches for the water, but cannot find a will to drink. A tremor of pain splinters into his arm, runs a cord along his back. He tries moving his jaw, and the muscles ache with the discomfort of being shifted. The freedom is a cruel jest.
He smells something vaguely like death, and realizes in an instant that it's his clothing. Himself.
The absence of chains surprises Loki, until he thinks to raise a palm. No shivers interrupt his senses, no chill settles into his skin. The wall does not croak. Shadows do not multiply. He is powerless, here in this enclosure.
He waits. The walls remain white; the tray is filled and refilled by nameless guards. His blood dries in streaks, painting red the white of the ground and the white of his skin. When he sleeps, his dreams are cast in black and gold - images of a kingdom that Loki used to rule, and something else.
Thor does not come to see him. Loki doesn't expect it. In the time that Loki has worn and lost the crown, Thor has learned sense - or at least learned of the existence of others apart from himself. Sensibility, justice; a quick-fleeing ideal of love. Children's tales.
Thor's lover remains on Earth. The Red Woman's lover remains crippled by Loki's magic, blots of black ever-threatening behind blue eyes. Wasted. He thinks the Widow might weep for her bird. He knows she won't.
Love is for children, she said.
Loki's stomach turns; his mouth twists; light washes his face. He closes his eyes and breathes. Again, again, again, until he no longer thinks.
It's past evening when she comes. Loki's third daily meal remains untouched at his side, a portion of meat and bread and tasteless wine delivered by a stoic guard. He soothes his hunger with a thought, wills the pain of thirst away. The body is always last to rot.
She wears her armor and a slated look, the warrior Sif, a usual array of daggers hosted in sheaths held close to her body; her arms are bare, cheeks sunken in shallow light. Loki's mouth curves on its own.
"You've come," he says softly. "I'm impressed you kept away for so long."
Sif says nothing, as he anticipates, but instead takes inventory of Loki's appearance: battered and drowned, clothed in prisoner's garb and wreathed by a perverse crown of ratted hair. Loki's eyes are narrow and dark, jagged against the sallow of his skin. She has known the burn of those eyes, the quiet power, shadows which haunt her memories; but the eyes reflected in the glass of her mind are impish, even now.
Loki smiles, a shrewd curl of lips that distorts his face all the more. "We are the same now, you and I," he says, indicating the dirt-streaked mop that falls to his jaw, his shoulders, into his eyes. "In time, I might become as lovely as you: the Lady Sif with her glorious black hair."
She's upon him in an instant, a dagger pulled from nowhere to rest at his throat, nails and boots and furious eyes and he laughs, laughs, because Sif is war and war is Sif and she is beautiful in her wrath.
"Oh, I have missed you," Loki coughs bitterly, and his breath tastes of blood.
Her knife edges away from his neck, and Loki thinks to breathe. "I did not come to harm you," says Sif, but her voice strains. It doesn't need to be said.
She ghosts her fingers along his scalp. They come away oily, and she frowns, as if expecting something better. Loki doesn't laugh, if only for spite. There is no magic in this place.
"This is the hair of a martyr," she says quietly, fingering the strands. Her voice is low, hoarse. "And you are nothing less and everything worse."
She seizes his hair in a swift fist, and the long-dead cells give no resistance to her blade. The tufts fall, thin and tangled and brittle, bruising the floor and Sif's heart along with it.
"Penance for what you did," Sif whispers, sweeping her dark plait over her shoulder; and Loki knows she's not referring to his betrayal, this time.
The silence settles into their veins, molds to memories of a younger sun, of a fair-haired Sif and Loki with his quiet smile. Darkened rooms and sharpened words. Hands and tongues and teeth drawn quick and when Loki opens his eyes Sif's mouth is forced against his, a woman famished, frenzied; a taste of blood and bitter, steel and Sif.
Somewhere in the midst of her fangs and his lips, the goblets tumble and fall. Water streams into wine, a purpled rush of liquid that spills into their feet. Ruin.
"Your king would see you soon," she says when they break, because it's all she can think to say. She turns away and walks, if only to avoid his gaze. The glass door burns cold under her fingertips when Loki next speaks.
"What of my dear brother?"
Sif stops.
"Your brother would speak to you," she replies slowly, "when he finds a purpose to do so."
Loki snorts, and a few stubborn-clinging hairs drift lazily into his palms. "Tell me, does he still stink of love? Would he still rush to protect his precious Earth, for the sake of a lowly Midgardian mortal?"
She turns back then, and Loki's eyes are cold and hungry.
"You know nothing of love, traitor prince."
He looks again at the spilt wine, red and bleeding and layered with scattered hairs. When he dips a finger into the mess, he thinks of Sif's lips.
"And you, Lady Sif? What is it you love?"
A sneer stains Sif's mouth, a mouth Loki has kissed, a mouth Loki has bitten.
"War," she says, "and sharpened steel."
It is admission enough.