"He was always up to no good."
"He is still the child of Odin and Frigga. He is good inside."
"He is the child of a frost giant. He is no prince of Asgard."
There would always be talk of Loki, son of Odin, for as long as he was away. Thor brushed the subject aside whenever somebody tried to speak of it. He had told Sif and the Warriors 3 in secret that whatever Loki did, he was still his brother and in time would come back to the good he fought side-by-side with before. Sif had known how much Thor loved Loki. No matter how often he put his little brother to the sidelines in order to show his own talents to Asgard, Thor would never want to see Loki gone.
At the dinner where Sif told Frigga she was sorry for her loss, the Queen put a hand on Sif's arm and the comfort was almost too much to bear. Sif had learned long ago not to let her emotions show and the threat of her lips trembling was the most difficult challenge that she had experienced in a long time. That and the water that clogged up in her eyes after she had excused herself from the dinner table. She needed to be alone with her thoughts. There had been so many recent changes; from Thor getting banished and falling in love with a mortal to never seeing Loki again. Asgard was home to Sif, but home was never whole without all her friends.
What she missed most dearly she could not reveal. The way his green eyes seemed to burn through to her soul with just one glance, his lips that she longed to feel, even if only once, and the intelligence and sense of reasoning he maintained, the one that his brother lacked in the most desperate of circumstances.
Sif shuddered at the thought of Thor, Fandral, Volstagg and Hogan ever knowing about any of this. She had woken up in the night because they had appeared in her dreams, mocking her for it. "My brother you say? Why do you think about him so? Did I recently hit you with my mjolnir? I'm so sorry it gave you those thoughts," Thor had said, meta-morphing into Hogan who only shook his head in disappointment. Fandrall had claimed, "I got stabbed thanks to him! He let those Frost Giants in and forced Thor to make that journey." Volstagg just laughed, "Sif, this is madness."
She'd woken up and laid her head against the pillow. A tear had run down her cheek, followed by another. Sif had silently wept until she'd fallen back asleep.
Sif knew she could trust Loki. He had made mistakes in the past but his intentions had come from his heart. And when it came to trusting anyone, Sif knew she could count on all five of the men that she grew up with, and in return she would follow them wherever they went, even to the most unusual or dangerous places. If there was ever a time they needed to support each other, it was now. Sif knew each one had every intention of bringing Loki home to where he belonged. Asgard.