"I just can't," she says with finality, pale green eyes closed. Even now, he can't help admiring the sweep of lashes against her cheeks, can't look past her beauty.
Even now, while she's breaking his heart.
"I beg of you," he begins, and a single slim upraised hand cuts him off as no other ever does.
"You have begged. You've begged, and promised, and sworn, and pleaded, and you never change. Oh, yes, for a brief little time, you stop, and just as I've got used to the freedom, it starts all over again."
Loki sits, with a thump. She is right. He hates it, and it hurts, and she is right.
Synne walks over to him, clasping his upturned face in her two hands. He can see the glitter of unshed tears in her eyes, and wants to look away. But he's earned this; it wouldn't be right. He must take his punishment.
Why did no-one ever tell him how terrible it is to love?
"What," he begins, and has to stop and clear his throat, "what will you do?"
Her smile is so very tiny. "I'll not leave Asgard, if that's what you're asking. Nothing will change, save that I will no longer be yours and yours alone." She lets go of his face, with reluctance, and he can see her lower lip start to tremble. "Forgive me, Loki. I - there was no easy way. You were hurting me, more each day. I can't - "
He doesn't speak. What could he say? He has already said it, over and over, and so has she, and this is what it has come to.
There's something less about her, holding herself together before him by main force of will - that same will they'd shaped together in long hours of seithr and short hours of sex. Nothing had ever broken it before.
But nothing has ever broken him, either, and he fears this, as it's doing to her, will break him. All he wanted was to be worthy.
Of something.
Of someone.
Of her.
He's failed at that, as he's failed at so much else. There aren't words for how very much it hurts.
They don't look at each other, and the silence grows, each swift breath seeming longer. Unable to crush hope entirely, Loki asks, very small, "Is there anything at all, any way I can prove ... "
"I can't make you change, my prince. The only person who can change you is yourself." Her breath goes out of her in a jagged sigh. "I will not be owned. I am not a thing."
"I know."
"You don't." This is cutting, and she turns on him; he's woken her anger. One hand slashes out, then falls. "We've said these words before. I'm done. I've said it." Synne draws herself up, squares her shoulders. "Good-bye."
She pauses in the doorway, one hand on the frame. "I love you. I always will." Then she is gone, leaving Loki with his grief and guilt and pain.
He can't think what to do with it. There's so much, boiling inside him, raging for release. His eye falls on a dagger, lying innocuously on a marble table, and a thousand temptations roll through his head in a vast wave. To hurt, to maim, to break, to cut, to kill ...
He doesn't realise the tears are sliding down his cheeks, slow trails with each blink. He casts about, hopelessly, for some kind of distraction, something to make him not ithink/i, his gift now turned curse. His eye lights on the dagger again, and he rises to his feet and crosses to it.
Picks it up.
His other weapons and armour, formal and practise, are racked nearby. Methodically, stiffly holding his mind away from the events of the past hour, he begins to strap himself into the practise armour. Bristling with weaponry, he makes his way, through out-of-the-way hallways and down corridors little-used, to the training rings.
He begins with daggers. Vicious knife fighting, brutal and underhanded. Throwing. For a while he misses, his hands trembling and his eyes clouded, before shock begins to run out of his system. When he is hitting the bulls-eye on every strike, he switches to paired daggers and sweeping, whirling forms, moving through them all as fast as he can, challenging his mind and breath to keep up.
It is while he is driving himself with the spear, after sword and dagger, that Thor enters. Loki ignores his brother, forcing his exhausted muscles to carry through another sweep, another thrust.
"When the armsmen said you were down here battling Nidhoggr, I did not believe them," Thor says after a short time. "But I see it is true."
Loki falters, gasping for breath, and without seeming to move at all, Thor is there holding him up. "Put down the spear, brother. You do yourself harm this way."
He is so tired he drops the spear without a word, leaning against his brother.
"I will not ask. Just know that I am here for you," Thor says, one arm about Loki's shoulders. "Here, raise your arms, it will help you get your breath better." Loki complies, and indeed, soon his breathing eases. Thor beckons to an armsman, hovering on the outskirts of the rings, and puts a horn to Loki's mouth. "Drink. It is water." He tugs Loki to a bench and pushes his brother down gently.
"What do you need, brother?"
Loki folds both hands about the horn and closes his eyes. Weariness has dulled the edge of the hurt, but he can feel it still, waiting for attention to sharpen into full flower again. "Away from here," he rasps.
"Shall I help you back to your rooms?"
Loki shakes his head, a flaring edge of pain catching at his heart. He cannot face that space where he and Synne made so many happy memories. "Away from Asgard. As far away as possible."
Thor looks puzzled, but he is true and honest and does not ask, not even with his expression. "Then we shall go far away. Is it battle you seek, driving yourself here? The svartalfar ever need strong blades in their country, or we could make challenge in Muspellheimr."
Loki laughs under his breath. Of course Thor's thoughts would turn to battle. But after all, had not his own? "I do not care," he says. "Lead, and I shall follow."