Hello again! It's that time of week: story update day! I always get very excited to update this fic, so thank you for reading it and sticking with it thus far. Things are starting to get rolling in New York with the addition of the new character, but we're going to let her get herself situated and instead check in on Asgard for a chapter. This is the past, but we're slowly working our way up to the present. Soon, the italicized chapters will go away for good, I promise. :-)

This is a slightly longer chapter than some of the ones I've previously posted, so I hope you like it! Feel free to message me or write a review if you'd like; I always appreciate the feedback. Enjoy!

"No, Loki."

The memory was so ripe that he could have sworn that he was actually hearing it. Only he couldn't be. Loki looked out to the corridor beyond his cell door just to be certain that he was alone. The sound of Odin's words still rang in his ears, as fresh as the day they had been uttered. Inside his mind, they tumbled around with other words from other mouths, including many from his own:

"What, because I – I – I am the monster parents tell their children about at night?"

"Is it madness? Is it? Is it?"

"You could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!"

"I only ever wanted to be your equal!"

"Mewling quim."

"Child at prayer."

"What's the matter? Silver tongue turned to lead?"

That last made him steam with fury. He knew it was petty, to fume over such a simple, ill-executed insult, but it still burned him inside, to feel the condemnation behind it: You think you're special, but you're just not.

Loki wanted to scream to anyone who would listen that he knew it. He had learned as much throughout his entire life, living alongside his brother – or rather, half a step behind. Just enough to remain in the shadow cast by the bigger man.

He pulled his knees up to his chest and tucked his head, resting his forehead on his kneecaps like he had done when he was younger. He wanted to disappear. There were times still when he wished that his plummet from the Bifrost all that time ago had actually killed him; even if it had only pulled him away from the living world, depositing him into the Void to rot for eternity, he would have taken it.

The imminent punishment did not frighten him, nor did any manner of retribution. He had faced untold amounts of both as a child, as payment for his mischievous ways. Instead, for the second time in his life, he feared looking into a mirror.

The first time had been when he had realized his true parentage and race – entirely by mistake, a fact which made the realization sting even more. But then, he had only feared that which lay behind the careful façade of Asgardian prince. Something blue and cold and terrible that had been hidden from him all his life and lurked beyond the face he had come to know so well.

Now, all the proof of his heritage he needed was the trail of decay that he left behind him.

How like a Frost Giant. It made him want to spit.

He squeezed his eyes shut, praying that nobody stood on the other side of the bars, looking in on him and waiting to offer their condemnation. He was a failure to both Asgard and Jotunheim – a runt of a Giant and a disappointment of a prince.

He knew it.

Out in the shadowy corridor, someone stood, watching him with eyes that mourned – not cried, but mourned – as calloused fingers twisted themselves in a thin black cord tied securely around a slim, feminine wrist.

"Loki," she said quietly.

He tensed at the sound of the voice, briefly wondering if it was in his head or outside of it. The echo against the prison walls told him that he hadn't imagined the word, as merciful as that would have been.

He lifted his head, which had become as heavy as a bag full of rocks, and slowly looked to the cell door. When he saw her standing there, his face colored a shade redder, both out of embarrassment and frustration. "What?" he hissed, ashamed that she had discovered him in such a defeated position. How he ached for magic enough to conjure a glamor projection.

At his recognition, however bitter, Sif took a step closer to the cell. "I come with a request," she told him, voice light but falsely so.

Loki made to stiffly rise, but Sif sat down cross-legged on the floor outside the door, silently soothing his wounded pride, bidding him stay put. For a second, he eyed her with confusion, as though he didn't trust her intentions despite their solidarity throughout life thus far. Then, once it became apparent that she was not about to move, he sat up straighter and turned to her, mirroring her posture on the opposite side of the grating. He waited, listening.

She pulled a small but sharp dagger from her tunic, holding it up by the blade. His face showed the recognition before he had a chance to ensure composure; she smiled, though her eyes did not grow any happier. "Fandral tells me that my hair has grown too long for my face," she said simply. "Seeing as you were the last person to cut it, I was hoping that you might be kind enough to do it once more."

He stared at the dagger in her fingers, taking in the rubies and golden filigree laid into the handle. It was practically a relic, from so long ago. Sif had been a blonde before he had shorn her beautiful hair from her head. Now, her inky tresses – quite unusual for the Aesir – looked more like Loki's own than either of them had ever anticipated. He felt time dragging on the longer he looked, but he could do nothing else in the face of all the things that dagger dredged out of his memories, and, slowly, he felt his frustration begin to melt into something sadder. That had been so very, very long ago.

Reaching through the bars and taking the knife carefully, he murmured, "I cannot believe you still have this." He turned the blade over in his hands, running his thumb along the flat, observing the way it shone. Just as it had before.

She had cleaned it since then. Polished this silly thing with the same care and precision with which she polished her beloved glaive. The realization struck him with more force than he had prepared himself to take.

Sif shrugged apathetically. "Why wouldn't still have it? It's a perfectly usable blade."

He scoffed as he turned the thing over in his hands, sliding his thumb along the edge and generally ignoring the way it pressed painfully into his skin. She had sharpened it too, apparently. "It's far too delicate for most practical uses, and not balanced at all for throwing."

"Well," Sif bristled slightly, "perhaps I just like it."

Loki tried not to think too hard about that; she certainly didn't have any sort of attachment to the thing. Of course, that day had been a fairly monumental one in her life, but she was a warrior. Mementos were meaningless as dust over a battlefield. She probably simply admired the craftsmanship of such a beautiful weapon. It was a prince's dagger, and it knew it, sparkling and dazzling enough in the sun to blind. She probably enjoyed the weight of it in her hand, too. It was rather heavy for its size, giving the wielder more control over the considerably lighter blade.

He hadn't held it since the day he had cut her hair, and, feeling the cool, heady metal pleasantly sing in his hand again, he wondered why he had ever given it up. He had always been rather fond of it. He looked and looked at it, and he felt Sif watching him with the sort of clarity that could only be afforded to someone who had been there when the memories had been made. He closed his fingers around the hilt, seeing phantom glints from the rubies, as if they were out in the sun and not stuck belowground in a lightless dungeon. Curls the color and texture of corn silk littered his forearm, clinging to the black leather and hiding against his fair skin. He glanced up at Sif, and he saw her younger, caught somewhere between girl and woman, not a trace of hair left on her head.

Then, he blinked, and Sif went back to having long, dark hair, her days of baldness eons behind her. His arm was clean, not a single blonde hair anywhere to be found, and the rubies in the dagger sat there, dull and lifeless as they should be in this darkness.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I was just –"

"Me too," Sif told him with a sigh. "Things were simpler then, weren't they?"

At first, he didn't reply. He knew she was right. Turning the dagger over and over in his hands, he remembered. His enchanted chains rattled, a bitter reminder of his situation, but, for the first time in many days, he didn't hear it. He only heard her laughter, ringing out delightfully against the golden walls of the palace, as it had long ago, when life had been easy and Sif had laughed more often. When he had played tricks with her and on her, and she had laughed at him, and he with her, until their sides ached, and they had collapsed against each other in a heap of robes and armor and dark hair that fell, graceless, in their eyes.

That felt like another life, belonging to other people – a young warrior with her whole life ahead of her and a proper Aesir prince with a bright future.

Nothing of that showed in Sif's face now, and he was certain his own expression was no better.

In an effort to occupy his mind with something – anything – else, he motioned for her to turn around, and she obeyed wordlessly. She ran her hands behind her neck, spilling her hair down her back like a cape of raven's feathers. Her chin was held high, but Loki could sense the tension in her body; something also told him that it had nothing to do with having her hair cut, considering how calm she had been last time. He reached through the bars, pinching a lock tightly enough to feel its texture but loosely enough to let it move a bit. "How short would you like it?" he asked.

"I leave that up to your good judgment," she replied, but he could hear in her voice the tautness he saw in the rest of her.

He responded by running the blade down the flat of her cheek and watching the gooseflesh ripple on her collarbone. "Are you certain you trust me with a blade this close to your precious neck?" he said bluntly.

She took a breath, and then she said, "I trusted you before, didn't I?"

He fingered her hair thoughtfully, despite the question being rhetorical. Then, sliding his hand that pinched her hair down and stopping about an inch from the end, he poised the knife to slice. It didn't surprise him that his hands trembled just a bit; they had shivered like the wings of an insect when last he had cut her hair. He hesitated for only a moment longer, breathing in to steady himself, and then he made the first cut.

Now, strands of black fell on top of his hand.

He methodically made his way around her head, getting every piece of hair and cutting off the last inch or so. He would never tell her so, but he liked her hair long. If he had to take something, he would only take the bear minimum, leaving her with hair not so different from when she had first come to his cell.

Gradually, the tightness across her shoulders dissolved, and she seemed to breathe a bit easier; still, neither of them said a word as he worked.

By the time he was finished, the stone floor was littered with small strands of black that almost blended into the shadows around them. He surveyed his handiwork: not exactly straight and not truly even, but passable. Possibly impressive, considering that he was working through the iron latticework of the cell door. He found one chunk that had somehow avoided his knife and cut it too, determining his job done and wiping the blade on his shirtsleeve to remove any lingering pieces of hair.

"Thank you," Sif said, turning back around, and, in response, he passed the dagger back through the prison door – albeit a little hesitantly, now that he had touched the old, familiar thing once more. She eyed him curiously for a moment, slowly hooking her fingers through the bars. She didn't smile, and her face grew cloudier by the second.

"You did not only come so that I would cut your hair," he said, grim and unwelcome realization dawning.

When she shook her head, it was no surprise. "I bring word from your father regarding your trial." Loki tensed, but he did not otherwise react. "It is to be held at dawn on the day after tomorrow." She closed her eyes, as if willing herself the strength to finish this speech – as if to forget that her closest friend was going on trial in less than two days. "Thor and the Warriors Three will be there. As will I. If they call for witnesses, Loki, we must be honest."

He nodded. "Of course." But the words hurt. Not because his friends may have to condemn him, but because, somewhere inside him, he knew that he had earned every moment of it. He took a breath and looked up at her, trying his hardest to give her a convincing smirk. "Just try not to be too harsh with your adjectives," he said.

Sif scoffed, though there was no humor in it. "I am hardly as talented a commander of words as you." She spun the dagger absently on the prison floor, saying, "I prefer to argue or convince with steel."

"Ah, well, please refrain from your steel at the trial as well." He grimaced, and she almost smiled. After a tense moment shouldered its way clumsily between them, he leaned close to the bars and scrutinized her. "Do you truly not despise me?" he asked quietly – candidly.

"You know I cannot hate you." The teasing edge she tried to give her voice only came off as heavy and melancholy.

"Even though you have every reason in the world to do so."

"So it would seem," she mused, looking at the dagger simply so that she would not have to look at him. "And yet, here we are." He hummed in agreement, though he was still bewildered by it. With a small sigh, she turned to the side and leaned her shoulder against the bars, crossing her arms against a chill that had arisen not from the atmosphere, but from something Loki guessed was inside her. He mirrored the turn, facing her but not looking at her. She stayed silent for a moment, and Loki's fingers found their way through the lowest squares in the lattice, tracing the edges of the dagger absently. "What do you anticipate?" Sif asked softly.

He knew she meant the trial, though he had nothing to offer her in the way of predictions. Frigga was the prophetess, and he was the liar. So he lied. "I am certain it cannot be too terrible."

Sif didn't seem to notice as he fiddled with the knife. He knew he should probably leave it alone, but it offered him a small comfort at which he grasped with everything he had. So he fiddled. Eventually, she muttered, "I only hope your mouth remains unsewn this time."

Over the largest ruby in the hilt, his hand abruptly froze. Everything within him balked at the memory of the magicked thread pulling its way through the skin around his lips, puncturing them, closing them. He recalled the taste of so much blood in his mouth that it had almost choked him in his attempts to avoid swallowing. There was the stab of the needle, though that was not the worst of it; feeling the thread tug at his open skin as it jerked along – that had been the part that had almost been his undoing.

"As do I," he told her darkly. "It was far from pleasant."

She glanced up to look at him, leaning closer, inspecting him with a sharp eye. "I never knew you had scars," she whispered, putting a finger through the grate to touch the corner of his mouth, where garish speckles lined his lips in a sickening, jagged echo of the twine that had once rendered his lying tongue mute.

He couldn't look at her as he replied, "I normally enchant them so that they don't show."

Her brow creased as she considered them, trailing her chipped fingernail along the sharp lines, connecting the dots. Her touch was gentle, but the scars ached as though they were fresh instead of many decades old. After a moment, she pulled her hand back through to her own side. "I will never understand how you were able to endure that torture and yet remain silent. I would have cried out at least once – in anger, if nothing else."

His mouth hurt at the merest mention of the golden thread, and he felt so much weight in her gaze that he had to close his eyes to avoid it. He took a breath and said, "I am a fair bit stronger than people are wont to believe."

"I never thought you weak," she said softly, and he saw that she wore remembered pain in her eyes; she had been the one to remove the stitches from his lips once his silence had been served. At the time, he had almost cringed to see her jaw set like she was going to war as her trembling hands loosed the thread – the removal far more painful than the insertion. He would have crumbled before her, would the action not have shattered her resolve. But, as she sat opposite him in the dungeon, so many years later, he saw her before him, open and vulnerable once more. He wanted to thank her, but he stayed quiet.

They sat for a while in comfortable, heavy silence. That had always been one of the things that Loki had valued about Sif; the two of them could pass hours on end in each other's company but without speaking a word, and they would call that time well-spent. He didn't know how long they stayed there, but when she muttered that she should be going back before she was missed and started to rise, it was too soon.

He pulled the dagger through to his side, standing as well. He ran his hand over the entire thing once more and, without looking at her, said, "If I asked, would you do me a favor?"

"I owe you nothing, Odinson," she said, a bit of her usual brusqueness finding its way back into her voice. At the mention of his adoptive surname, he glanced up, confused, and saw that she was well aware of what she had said, and she was not about to amend her statement. A tiny light of kindness welled in her eyes, and she crossed her arms. "That depends very greatly on what you need," she told him, and he saw quiet friendship in her face.

"Would you please return to me once more before the trial?" He held the dagger out to her through the grated door, trying to hide how much he hoped she would agree to do this for him.

She took the knife right away, stowing it back up her sleeve; then, she was quiet for a long moment, looking perfectly impassive. Then, she gave a little nod. "You have my word," she told him.

A smile tugged at his scarred lips. "Thank you," he said.

For a second, she watched him. Then, she muttered, "It's been far too long since you've smiled." With that, she turned and made her way back down the hallway. He listened until he couldn't hear her footsteps any longer, and then he raised a hand to his own mouth, feeling the raised bumps that ringed his lips where the golden thread had once laced through the skin. He hadn't even been to trial before receiving such a punishment. He hated to imagine what they had in store for him now.