At no point in their relationship, not as acquaintances, not as friends, not even after they had married, was the pairing ever particularly fond of reminiscing. Not because there were no pleasant memories to turn to— as a matter of fact, if they had any pleasant memories in their lives to think about, it was the ones they shared together and little else. Nevertheless, perhaps it was for the best that they never tried to recall 'the first time when' or 'the anniversary of' or else they would have realized that —like with most subjects— they would disagree, eventually arguing over which moment in particular that had been. For instance, had they ever discussed their first kiss, each would have described a radically different experience, for it would not have been the same memory at all.
One of them was thoroughly convinced that their first kiss had not even involved the contact of their lips.
For no apparent reason, Loki had awakened one morning having decided that it would be funny to cut off Lady Sif's hair. Sigyn had forced herself to act surprised upon hearing of his mischief, but deep down she knew she was in fact not surprised in the least. What did genuinely surprise her, however, was Sif's retaliation: after having extended a well-deserved physical punishment, a witness claimed they had heard her tell the Prince that he deserved to be alone and forever would be.
It was not until later that afternoon that Sigyn had dared to approach his chambers, for there hadn't been a sight of him all day, something most unusual, particularly on a day where she had been in basically every room of the palace. Like he had done when visiting her own chambers before, she knocked on his door and waited until the Prince himself had opened.
"Oh, for goodness sake," he complained, evidently annoyed with having been visited.
After having opened the door, he had turned away with a rolling of his eyes, returning to his balcony where he had left a goblet of wine. Shaking her head, Sigyn let herself in, closing the door behind her before she joined him outside, taking a seat on the balcony's wide stone railing, upon which she had gotten with a swift hop.
"What were you thinking?"
"I felt like having a laugh," answered Loki apathetically, sipping from his beverage while staring out at nothingness.
"And yet, you're not laughing," she remarked.
"Why are you here?" asked the young man, evidently lacking the patience to tolerate conversations of any nature.
"I heard you were punched in the face and kneed in the groin. Since I've missed the chance to laugh at that, I figured I might as well laugh at the repercussions."
The God of Mischief did not answer. Sigyn's smile —whose sole purpose had been to amuse a young man who could not appear to be further from amused— disappeared the moment she laid eyes on Loki's expression.
"Loki…"
That must have been the first time she had ever addressed him by his first name, at least with such gentility, which was why the youngest Prince of Asgard immediately turned his face towards her in surprise.
"Why would you do something like that?"
Loki scoffed, as if convinced that no one with a mind so mundane such as herself would ever be able to comprehend his intentions. Sigyn, however, did not believe he meant a single emotion he was currently displaying.
"Am I to take that puff of air for an answer?"
"Was it not I who was deemed the God of Mischief?"
"It was," she agreed.
"Well, that's all it was."
"Mischief."
"Precisely."
She remained silent, as did he. Sigyn watched him, Loki simply stared into the horizon. When they were younger, those silences were filled with peripheral topics that tiptoed around the subject they both indeed wanted to bring up; nowadays, they had matured enough to let those silences remain so.
"Are there any further steps to your scheme?" she asked.
"There is no scheme— it was but a jest."
"I see."
"Rather than keeping a vigile eye on me, you would be better off trying to foresee when I might come after you."
"In that case, your Highness…" She took the liberty of snatching Loki's glass of wine, taking a sip for herself. "the jest would be upon you."
"Enlighten me," he commended.
More than pleased to respond, Sigyn leaned closer towards him so she could whisper her response.
"My hair is already short."
The Prince only swallowed, shooting an unconscious glance her way before he came to his senses, staring ahead with a blank mind.
"Am I to assume, therefore, that you don't feel the slightest remorse?" she ventured.
"I do not," answered Loki.
"And you were, thus, immune to Lady Sif's accusation."
Once again, the Prince glanced at her, realizing now that Sigyn held far more knowledge than she let show.
"If only I remembered what that was," commented he in an almost mocking tone.
Anyone else might have believed it, rendered horrified by the fact that he could be so cold-blooded, so utterly dismissive to other people's reaction. Unfortunately for him, Sigyn was not anyone else. Instead, she stared at him, still waiting for him to admit how he actually felt.
Nonetheless, the young man turned out to be far more stubborn than she had anticipated, allowing minutes of quiet to drag by until the maiden had run out of patience, breaking the silence herself at last.
"You cannot possibly be this obstinate."
Loki did not respond.
"Would you like to be alone?" Sigyn asked.
It took the prince several seconds to answer.
"As a matter of fact, I would."
Sigyn hopped off her seat, ironing her dress with both hands as she prepared herself to walk away.
"How about I come back and ask again within a few hours?" she suggested. "That should give you enough time to work on that answer, make it sound believable."
"What is that supposed to mean?" questioned Loki.
It was Sigyn's turn to let the silence after his question linger. Instead of answering immediately, she only sighed, crouching until she met his eye-line. He said nothing else, he did not even glance sideways at her. Sigyn allowed herself to assume his silence was but confirmation of what she suspected must have been the one thought roaming around his consciousness. Having realized he could indeed do with some time alone with his thoughts, she readied herself to exit his chambers, though not before she had leaned in, pressing a swift kiss to his cheek just as she used her thumb to brush away a single tear he had not even realized had been shed.
And with that rapid gesture, she disappeared.
That, however, did not qualify as their actual first kiss, at least not to one of them. From their perspective, their first kiss had taken place far later.
The length of the trail of broken hearts Loki left behind him had become legendary by then. Meanwhile, Sigyn was nowhere nearly as accompanied, not that it bothered her. She had befriended an Asgardian new to the palace, a brand new addition to Odin's guard: Einar, a dashing, friendly, humorous gentleman. He had become her most entertaining companion during the day and, admittedly, a fair source for divertissement during evening events. Needless to say that there was nothing romantic to their bond; as a matter of fact, the very first topic they had ever discussed upon becoming acquainted had been the God of Mischief himself. Einar had remarked how little he looked forward to working either for or alongside Loki, and even though she had attempted to agree with him, Sigyn winded up trailing off after having set her eyes upon the subject in question, which Einar picked up on with a delighted, cheeky grin.
In spite of his own busy schedule, both as Prince of Asgard and as a person known realm-wide —and outside of their realm as well— for their multiple yet brisk affairs, Loki still managed to find the time to take note of that budding friendship, the nature of which he knew nothing about; alas, to no one's surprise, he was too proud to ask Sigyn about it. Every couple of evenings, during a celebration or a banquet or just a spontaneous social gathering, he would see her from a distance and in every occasion, that lovely, perfectly kind and handsome young man was seated beside her.
That evening, however, Sigyn was sitting by herself, occasionally exchanging smirks and knowing glances with her friend as he went around the Hall, collecting gossip to discuss in detail in privacy the following morning. By then not only used to solitude but rather keen on it as well, Sigyn enjoyed observing interactions, perhaps even more than she enjoyed engaging in them. There was something —she ignored what exactly— rather fascinating about it, like a missed opportunity to learn more on people's nature than a thousand hours of academic studying could ever teach you. Perception, she believed, could only be sharpened by practice— all theory could do was bring some sense of solace to those who had simply not been blessed with sight piercing enough to see past words spoken and gestures extended until they could catch a glimpse at their subtext; they would never experience it first hand, but at least by reading the logic behind it, they could, however fleetingly, take part in it as well.
Fortunately for someone as intrigued with observation as she was, Sigyn had indeed been born with a knack for insightfulness, with which she was entertaining herself from her seat, watching from over the rim of her goblet at people around her as they interacted.
"May I?" came a much too familiar voice, which anchored her back to reality.
"If you must," she answered with playful formality, which earned her a smile from Loki as he took a seat beside her. "Won't you be missed?" she further teased, subtly gesturing with her head towards the Prince's latest liaison.
"Even if I would, I could not bring myself to even feign concern at this point."
"Aww," she pretended to lament. "Come to her senses already, has she?"
Loki glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
"Humorous," he sarcastically commented.
"I usually am," Sigyn agreed nonetheless, beaming as she delicately shrugged.
Whatever reason the Prince had had to approach her, he was indeed taking his sweet time exposing it. Lacking the patience —and, to be perfectly candid, the interest— to pull it out of him, Sigyn turned her attention back to the crowd in front of them.
"By the looks of it, you are not being particularly missed yourself," he remarked out of the blue, jerking his head towards Einar, who was interacting rather vividly, not to mention closely, with a fellow guard.
"And yet, here you are," replied Sigyn with a triumphant smile, needing not to see Loki's reaction to guess what it had been.
As swiftly as he had arrived, the God of Mischief got on his feet and exited the Hall. His companion audibly huffed, rolling her eyes though more to herself than to him, disappointed to be falling for that little dramatic number of his whose ultimate goal was, no doubt, to have her chase after him. And of course, she chided herself internally, that was precisely what she did.
"Honestly, you can be such a child sometimes!" she called after him, trotting across the short distance separating them in order to catch up with Loki's brisk, resolute pace.
"Whatever do you mean," said he, feigning oblivion.
"Oh, would you stop it?" She cut him off by standing in front of him. "Not only does this little pantomime insult my intelligence, it insults yours as well, if you really are thick enough to believe I can't see right through it."
Loki did not answer. Hands linked behind his back, he merely walked around her and went on. Bordering on exasperation, Sigyn huffed again, turning on her heel to call after him once more.
"What did you want to tell me?"
The Prince stopped but did not approach her. Instead, they both stood face-to-face upon that empty hallway, several meters away from each other.
"What gave you the impression there was anything I wished to discuss with you?"
"You sit beside me, you mock the only friend I've got besides yourself, yet you expect me to believe there was nothing more to it."
Loki shrugged. "I needed a seat and I was only jesting, why would there be an ulterior motive?"
"There's always an ulterior motive with you."
A silence settled, the same that tended to make itself present practically every time the two interacted. It was the kind of silence that rather than cover up words left unsaid, it seemed to only enhance them, the kind of silence they could never get used to despite having experienced it a dozen times before and that they were both too stubborn to break first. More often than not, it was Sigyn who overcame her pride first, like she did at that moment.
"What did you want to tell me?"
When Loki's lips first parted, it looked as though he was on the verge of genuine sincerity, but upon an instant of reflection, through them came only a sigh and his countenance suddenly hardened.
"I forget," he replied with fake nonchalance.
Thoroughly disappointed, and refusing to waste any more time and energy in that hopeless endeavor, Sigyn shook her head, turning around to leave as she muttered, "You're a coward."
The first thing she did upon returning to the Hall was emptying an entire goblet of wine within seconds, a desperate attempt to create a foggy layer between reality and her perception of it, some sort of buffer that would help muffle any other thoughts she might develop on the matter later on. A hopeless attempt, she realized soon enough, for the moment she took a seat and tried to resume her old train of thought that Loki had interrupted, all she could think about instead was their recent altercation.
It took the Prince, in fact, several minutes to pluck up the courage to show his face in there again. Since Sigyn had expected him to retrieve to his rooms —like he was known to do practically every time he was confronted— the fact that he had instead returned only made her attempt to forget about him all the more futile. From a distance and with a subtle gesture with his head, Loki invited her to step out into one of the balconies. Partly secluded yet still within sight of the festivities occurring just a few meters away, it was as though they were hiding at plain sight; with so many comings and goings, so many people in that Hall, each of them so absorbed into activities and conversations of their own, no one could have sincerely declared having seen either of them standing there at any point throughout the night.
While she agreed that decision on his part could be considered personal growth, Sigyn had decided she would not be the first to speak up. Knowing him the way she did —she noticed every day that she, in fact, knew him far more than she would have ventured to guess—, she knew for a fact someone as guarded as Loki would prefer to have her imply what it was he wanted to express until she got it right just so he did not have to find the words to articulate it himself.
"I had nothing to tell you." The moment he said that, his eyes lowered like a child's after they had been caught in a lie. "Or perhaps I did," he corrected. "I hadn't come up with any words specifically, I don't think... I could have if I'd tried, in fact—"
"However you've managed to have the name of Silver Tongue assigned to you is beyond me," the young woman dared to joke.
Loki exhaled a chuckle, the genuine kind that would occasionally catch him by surprise and that Sigyn was never not proud of having inspired.
"What I mean to say is... it wasn't one statement in particular I wanted to express, but rather... a sentiment."
"A sentiment," she echoed.
"Exactly."
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"As a matter of fact, I would."
It was Sigyn's turn to laugh in spite of herself; they exchanged a smile.
"Don't tell me you are jealous."
"Oh, I am," Loki admitted without missing a beat. "Only perhaps not in the way you think."
Her demeanor suddenly changed: standing straighter with a lifted chin and her arms crossed over her chest, Sigyn raised her eyebrows with challenging intrigue, inviting him to proceed and enlighten her in what it was he believed she was thinking. While very much aware that was something she detested, the God of Mischief was far more preoccupied with defending himself preventively to find an alternate route towards his point.
"And what am I thinking?" she defied him.
"Well, the words 'possessive brat' come to mind..."
Sigyn would have argued, but truth of the matter was she had indeed used those exact terms to describe him in multiple occasions. She therefore proceeded to rid herself of her defensive stance, her way of granting him the benefit of the doubt.
"So you say you are not being a possessive brat. Far fetched, but do go on."
Once again, the Prince had appeared to be on the verge of saying something before hesitation rendered him mute, only this time, rather than dismissing his own feelings and pretending they did not exist in the first place, he opted for an alternate way of expressing himself. If she weren't feeling her heartbeat thumping away in her ears, Sigyn might have believed her heart had somehow stopped, as had her breathing, the moment she inferred what was about to happen.
It was but a mere brush of the lips, a gesture that, while feather light and only a second long, felt very much wholehearted. When he had leaned away enough so he could catch sight of her reaction, it took Sigyn only a moment to a bring a hand up to the nape of his neck and pull him in for a second, much more active kiss.
They never would have come to an agreement in terms of which of those kisses they deemed officially their first; they would have, however, agreed that the most decisive turning point in the nature of their relationship had been the latter.