His eyes flashed back to hers. He immediately stood up and backed away.

"It's really you," she rasped, feebly smiling up at him through single tears that rolled silently down her face. "You're real. How - how is it possible?"

He swallowed hard, raising his left brow arrogantly at her, but he did not turn himself back into the guard. "You are not well. You don't know what-"

"You and your tricks. And your lies. Always," she interrupted him crossly, shaking her head. Pushing herself up weakly from her resting state, she paused only when the pain became too much. He started towards her to help, but her eyes suddenly pinned him firmly with that don't touch me or you'll wish you were never born classic Sif look. "I know you are real now, just as I did before in the washroom. Why do you continue to make this seem like an illusion?"

Loki looked at her a long time before sighing and crouching back down beside her, putting his head in his hands. "If I told you, you'd only believe what you want to believe."

Sif cautiously reached over, as if she were about to touch a wild animal, unaware of how it would react. Her breath caught in her throat as she tentatively took a lock of his hair and twirled it gently between her fingertips. She relaxed immediately, as if touching him was suddenly the most wonderful thing in the nine realms. "I don't care. I'm only glad you are alive."

She reached over to touch his hand that was tangled back in his locks. The warmth of her skin against his startled him once more. How long had he wanted this- her hand, in his, and not by his own accord, but of hers. He closed his eyes, almost painfully, as if the touch of someone so good was burning a hole right through his miserable skin. Unable to endure something so foreign anymore, he set her hand back on the bed and darkly glanced up, his face full of hatred once more. He responded to her gentle countenance the only way he knew how; angrily and with skepticism. "Why do you lie to me? What you are saying now, what you said to me back in Odin's chambers I-"

"I knew that was you! Where is the Allfather?" Sif's eyes widened. "I thought I was going mad!"

"Clearly you are mad! Look at what you've done! Lady Sif, the great warrior princess," he yelled in disgusted disbelief, standing to pace around the bed, arms pinned behind his back. Without a doubt, he was mustering all the anger he had within him in an unsurprising attempt to mask his true emotions."Look at the state of you now."

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!" she screamed, sitting up on her elbows, matching his rage with ease. The blood drained from her cheeks. Suddenly, it was clear to Loki that she was recalling the memory of his feigned demise, and the look on her face made his stomach turn with self-loathing. It was at that very moment he knew, for the first time ever, that she did care for him.

"Sif, I -," he started toward her, but she raised a hand to silence him.

"Don't," she said angrily, pointing for him to sit down in the nearest armchair and listen to her. Her eyes were laden with heavy fatigue and sadness. "I'm tired. I do not give a damn how angry you are with me, or what you've done, or how it is you're even standing here before me, but do not believe my sentiments insincere. I realize I am rather unstable and clearly I do not know much of anything anymore," she said, using her unscathed arm to lift the covers away from her body, swinging her legs swiftly over the edge of the mattress. Before he could stop her, she was up and standing before him, steadying herself against the edge of the bed. She crouched down on her knees in front of where he now sat, forcing him to look down at her. "I only know that I have begged the Gods to bring you back to me. And here you are."

The sight of her in front of him now was comparable to the mid-summer sun of Asgard, for he could not look at her directly. She was blinding in her all of her beauty and close enough to burn him. The short, cream-colored lace robe she wore hugged her striking figure, leaving very little unexposed. Her heavy dark locks fell chaotically across her chest, covering her breasts where they otherwise would have been bared to him through her transparent negligee. His eyes flickered to her wounded arm which had almost healed entirely, cursing himself silently for causing her harm and all the while acting like a damned fool. It wasn't that he didn't believe her now, it was the fact that he didn't deserve her. She always was his achilles heel; his only true weakness. Now she was broken, and he was the cause. The irony was too much for him.

She suddenly stood and moved closer to him, her stomach inches from his face. Her head cocked to one side and she studied him closely, seriously, as her fingers brushed a strand of his hair away from his eyes. Running the fingers of both hands delicately through the slicked back locks of his mane, she drew him in closer until she could feel his heavy breath against her abdomen. His hands moved slowly, magnetically to her thighs as he buried his face in the soft fabric of her robe. The intoxicating smell of lavender and springtime invigorated his senses and he found himself in the middle of a dream he never wanted to wake from. Curse the fabric between my lips and her skin, he thought to himself. As much as he wanted to rip the garment from her body, to take her as she was now, he wanted to savor every small thing about her much, much more. She was not a bar maiden or concubine. She was a delicate flower, rarer than the convergence. She was, and always had been, the very center of his universe. What stood in front of him now was no longer the tempestuous maiden he fought with and against, but a woman whom he had ached for his entire life.

Sif reached down and pulled him up to her where they stood, facing him. She began helping him out of his layers, leather upon more leather, until he was bare chested, his raven hair a disheveled mess. He moved closer into her, his hands moving from her thighs up to her waist, his stomach brushing against hers. She stood on her tip toes to try and match his height and her forehead fell gently against his. They stared at one another, searching each other's eyes for what felt like forever before he slowly backed her up towards the bed, his hand tracing the small of her back.

"Loki?"

"Yes?" he whispered, barely audible, his lips inches from hers. He instinctively cupped her face with his hand and began stroking her cheek gently with his thumb.

"Kiss me," she breathed, looking up into his blue eyes in the soft glow of the evening light.

At the sound of her request, he tilted her chin up towards him and placed his aching mouth fervently upon hers. Her lips were wet, warm, like biting into a ripened peach heated by the sunshine. She leaned into him further, wrapping her arms around his neck, desperate to prolong the moment she had truly waited forever for.

Carefully laying her down on the bed, his mouth not leaving hers for a moment, he took her unscathed arm and placed her hand over his heart so she could feel, if she couldn't already see, exactly what she was doing to him. He knew, in this moment, he would never kiss another woman for the rest of his days. There was only her, there was only ever her…