A/N: So I was reading some great Sif/Loki fics by author Mira-Jade, and was inspired to write one of my own. I've always liked the idea of a Loki/Sif pairing. Hope you guys like it! It's set post-Thor, in Asgard. Mostly just Sif's introspection; not pro-Odin. I don't even agree completely with what she feels about Odin, but it wrote itself. The muse will not be denied!
Disclaimer: nothing but my own ideas belong to me. Not Thor, not Loki. *Sigh*
"Loki—my brother—has fallen."
There is a silence after Thor speaks. Odin's brow furrows with something like disapproval at the word "brother," but he says nothing because there is nothing to say.
To Thor, Loki will always be his brother.
Frigga weeps quietly. Odin rests a hand on her shoulder, and gazes mutely at his son. Frigga, Sif thinks bitterly, has lost a son—but Odin has not.
In Odin's mind, Loki was not a son to lose.
They are harsh, those thoughts, and Sif knows it—she knows that Odin would deny it, that Odin would proclaim that he had once loved Loki, like my own son. But she does not want to hear him say those words, for Loki is lost and yet Odin has lost nothing.
But she—she has lost—
In her mind, she sees a memory of his smile—and though she had known, then, that the smile's ability to mesmerize her was half-grounded in his powers of charm and mischief, she believes that he makes her heart flutter all on his own.
For they were Loki's powers—and therefore part of him. And so it was Loki who smiled.
Loki, who will never smile again.
She wishes, steeling herself to the reality, that he had fallen in battle—a warrior's death. Not this—not falling as he did, with hatred and bitterness in his heart, and blood and vengeance on his hands.
How did it come to this?
The question that swirls up within her awakens a coldness that is icier than that of the Ice-Giants. The coldness is guilt. For Sif knows how it came to this. And Sif's heart swells, for she knew—or might have known—better than the others, that in the years of peace and prosperity, Loki always lived in the shadow of his brother. Is it is a wonder, really, that he would have made that shadow his own? That he would have grown tired of being always behind, second, lesser?
For Loki always looked up to Thor, and Thor always looked down to him. Not cruelly, not contemptuously—but with love and friendship.
And yet—down.
And so, Loki broke everything good, which had yet somehow already been broken, because he could not bear it any longer.
Sif's tears rise in her eyes and then ebb again. She is a warrior; she will not weep for an enemy. She tells herself that that is why the tears do not fall. But she knows that the real reason is because it hurts too much for tears—because Loki was an enemy to all the world, but not to her.
He was not lesser, not truly.
In the end, the only one who had truly thought of Loki as lesser was himself.