Sorry about the wait...Crazy weekend...other bad excuses...anyways, here we are.

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Loki picked himself up off the floor. He didn't know what he was supposed to do, so, after a bare moment's hesitation, he made for the woods. No one would find him there, and he would have the space to think. He went up to the cliffs which overlooked the city. He'd always loved the place. But this time, he hadn't come for the view. He sat down with his back to a tree and his head on his knees.

How could he have been such a fool?

Normally, the walk would have helped to clear his head, but not this fine morning. Today he was all in a whirl. He had to make it up to her…somehow…He hadn't meant to hurt her. He'd thought…Well, quite frankly he didn't know what he'd thought or why in heaven's name he'd thought it.

He had to fix this. He had to…

…Well, there's an idea…

~.~

He'd cut off her hair.

He'd snuck into her room while she'd been asleep and cut off her hair.

Sif couldn't quite make herself believe it.

It wasn't so much her hair itself that she was upset about, once she'd had time to think. She was, but hair would grow back. Eventually it would be just as long and beautiful as it ever had been. It would take time, but it would come, and it would be tolerable until it did.

What really bothered her was the fact that Loki had willingly harmed her in a semi-permanent way. He had to realize that there were parameters to what was considered playful and harmless. And this time he'd overstepped them by a long-shot. He wasn't stupid. He had to know how upset she'd be. Maybe that's what he'd wanted the whole time, to convince her that he was her friend, that he wasn't going to hurt her, that she could trust him, no matter what the others said about him.

And she had. In the library, all that time ago, she'd decided that she was willing to give him a chance. He'd taken it, and look what had happened. She wondered about it, wondered about the tunnels and that first adventure they'd had.

She wondered suddenly if it hadn't all been contrived to win her trust. That would explain Loki's mysterious seeing in the pitch-dark passage, and how he seemed to know everything about where he was going and what they might find in the dark. He'd run ahead out of hurt pride – he'd admitted as much to her face. How much harder, if one knew magic, might it be to build the rest just to rub it in that you had control and power where someone else didn't?

But he had seemed just as frightened as she, she reasoned. But then she countered almost just as quickly that fear was easily faked, especially in the company of one who was legitimately feeling it.

Why though? What would he possibly stand to gain?

Maybe he'd gotten carried away and had sprung too soon…

But no, Loki was too smart for that, too calculating.

Well, what else then?

She didn't know. Maybe just for the thrill. Mayhap he'd tired of the game.

But if that was so, it was already over. Fulla had seen to that, all he had to do was to stop and go back to his old ways. He didn't have to drive it in.

Why had it even started?

She had pursued him that first time, when they found the passage. She had given him no choice but to allow her presence. It had angered him, and he'd made up the riddle, or misinterpreted it. He'd known the ruins and thought them a fitting place, then made up the rest by his magic. But after that, why?

She felt sick. Again, it was her pursuit. She'd climbed into his room, to ask him for help in getting Vali off her back. She'd gone to him then because she knew he disliked him as much as she herself did. She thought there was no way he'd refuse. And he hadn't. And the whole damn thing had sprung cleanly out of that.

But that night. That night when they'd talked in the woods. He was the only one who knew any of it, and he'd told her the same. But of course he had. And really, what choice had she given him? He couldn't help having a nightmare, but she hadn't had to wake him. And once he was awake, she had just begun talking, she hadn't given him the choice to go back to sleep and leave all as it was. If his goal had been to force her trust, he'd done well. He'd listened, and then he'd shared his heart. See, he'd said, you can trust me. We're not so different after all, you and I. And she'd believed him. He'd probably made it all up, and she'd believed every damn word.

It was her own fault. She'd wanted to believe him. So desperate had she been for companionship that she'd been willing to find it anywhere. She'd been looking for someone to take the place of the brothers she'd lost, and had been so blinded by her own misery that she'd settled on the worst possible choice. She'd given him every opportunity. He had to have laughed at how easy she'd made it. Even now she didn't want to believe it. She wanted him to be the boy she'd come to believe he was.

She'd wanted to believe in the old stories, where things worked out well and everything worked out in the end for the better.

But it was enough. She would watch herself. She would not let anyone slip in on her the way she'd invited him to. She wouldn't be anyone's dupe. Never again.

I've been such a fool…

~.~

Loki stepped out of the passage, marked it, and let it fade to nothing behind him. If he were to return home by his own means, it would be there. And if not, well, it would fade with time.

He though it fitting that the passage Sif had helped him to find would help him to make good his debt to her. There was a nice kind of symmetry to it.

Nidavellir was a rocky and dull place. No wonder the inhabitants made their homes underground. Barely anything grew on the surface. The clouds were ashy gray. And the sun, when it broke through the dirty wool of the clouds, was red-hot and scorching.

Father said it had not always been so. According to legend, Nidavellir had once been lush and fertile as Vanaheim. It had flourished, and the people who dwelt on it had prospered. They had been tall and graceful. They had had farms, and mined near the surface of their realm. But after a time, they had dug too deep, and had discovered that they were not the only ones to call that realm their home. Dragons had dwelt several miles below the surface, and at the contact of the people, they had come out. They laid waste to the land, burning villages and driving the people into their own deep caves.

There were other legends that one of the Nidavellir had had strong magic, and – for whatever reason – hating his kin, had created the dragons and set them on the people. And there were still other legends that they had come as a gift – as tiny, lizard-like pets – from a king on Vanaheim. The Vanir knew how to handle dragons, and would have been able to train one raised from a hatchling. The Dwellers of Nidavellir had no such knowledge. Thus the gift was ultimately their destruction.

Regardless of how it happened, the fact was that the people were driven underground and the dragons were left the surface-land. Having no useful occupation or skill of any kind, they drained it and looted it, and burned it until nothing remained but the ashes and rocks that were still left behind them. Once the land had died, they set about trying to kill one another, and – for the most part – succeeded. There were few dragons left on Nidavellir, and all of them lay sleeping in the age-old abandoned halls of the people, or buried in the shallow caves they had dug for themselves, waiting for some hapless traveler to come by and provide them with the sustenance they needed in order to fly once more.

As for the people, they had made the best of it, and built a huge citadel deep below the surface of their world, running streets into and out of it like a Warren. It got bigger and bigger, wider and wider, until the tunnels branched out nearly as far as their original settlement ever had.

But an odd thing became of the people, underground in the dark. They grew smaller, more ugly and misshapen, less able to take the light of the sun, more suited to the dark and the tunnels there. Over time, they had grown so sensitive to the sun's light, that their own sun would now turn them to stone. And if they ever did come to the surface, it was only in the dead of night.

There were some, who had refused to go into the ground, and still lived the lives of wandering nomads, scratching what living they could off of the rocks. The sun did not harm them, and they were taller and more fair than their kin. Many of these hunted dragons. The others traded their work with various other realms and often made their home on them, where living was easier.

But it was not to one of these that Loki was making his way. He smiled as he surveyed the barren landscape. He remembered this place.

Portals like the one he'd found were less accurate then the Bifrost. The Bifrost would land you yards from where it was you meant to be put down, usually feet. Portals would often set you miles from your target, though a skilled manipulator might be able to make it closer. Sometimes, if very lucky, one could get nearly as close as the Bifrost would take you.

There were skills that Loki had that he did not tell anyone about.

He had been here before. Once. Not long ago. Just over a year, perhaps. He had been here with his father when his father had come to sort out some trouble or other. The dwarves made nearly all the armor and weaponry for Asgard, and many beautiful items that were less necessary as well. There had been some argument over whose right it was to be the main supplier to the Aesir. The AllFather had gone to hear the arguments and make a decision, but Loki had liked the Sons of Ivaldi right from the beginning. Living farther from the city than the others, they were a tribe much less given to the petty quarreling and blood-feuds pursued by the other tribes. He told his father this, commenting that their supply would be much more steady, and probably of better quality than that of the other tribes. They were already the preferred smiths of the queen, and various other high-ranking merchants and buyers in Asgard. By choosing them, what did they stand to lose?

The AllFather heard out the speeches. But ultimately, the Sons of Ivaldi won his approval.

It was time they made good on their debt.