In case you're wondering why the chapters are coming in one giant flurry, I've decided to put them all up at once because they're oneshots. Consider it a late Christmas gift to my readers. :-)

Of Golden Hair

Loki sat on the rock, staring hard at his hands. He thought the incantation over and over, hearing each word echo in his mind as vividly as if he had shouted it aloud. "Come on," he muttered through gritted teeth, flexing his fingers. He had done it earlier – entirely by accident, but he had achieved it nonetheless. Now, he was doing his utmost to avoid frustration because, try as he might, he couldn't get those little green flames to curl up from his palms again.

A rustle in the woods behind him broke his concentration, and he whipped around to see Sif pushing through the trees. He let out a breath that he hadn't realized he had been holding. "Sif," he said, relieved. Had it been anybody else, he probably would have magicked himself into the shadows.

She didn't respond, instead plunking herself down heavily beside him on the rock. Loki watched her; she was tense as a brick, a compressed coil of energy that made him instinctively wish to back away, lest she explode.

For a moment, she just sat there, huffing angry breaths. A slight tremor rested in her hands, and her jaw was a vice for how tightly it was clenched.

Loki shifted, not daring to speak.

She picked up a stone, gripping it until her knuckles turned white. "It's not fair," she said, hurling the rock out into the woods with all her power.

Loki was quiet for a second before he responded. "If I ask what's wrong, will you dislocate my shoulder again?"

"Possibly," she said, and he grimaced. At least she was honest.

"You know," he said after a hesitation, "you were being rather cruel in the ring today."

She didn't say anything, instead picking up two more stones and chipping them against each other, the clicking noise filling the silence. Loki wondered if he should divulge the full extent of his injuries to her, telling her about every bruise, cut, and fracture. When she slumped forward, hanging her head so that her blonde curls hid her face, however, he decided against it. "Sif?" he tried, contemplating laying a hand on her shoulder, though he eventually decided against that too.

Then, she muttered a phrase that sounded vaguely like an apology, and Loki knew something was wrong. Sif never apologized. Least of all to him.

She heaved out a long breath. "They stare at me, Loki," she said, voice small. "They talk about me, and I hear them. They think I'm a waste of time – that I'm not a worthy warrior. Everywhere I go, I can feel them all staring and whispering, and it's like their eyes burn into my back."

He didn't speak; instead, he listened with all the attention of a friend.

"Every day, I need more stamina to get through dinner than training," she continued. "I find myself even going so far as to walk down paths that go well out of my way just because they will be less populated. If it is this difficult, becoming a warrior, I wonder –" her voice broke. "I wonder if, perhaps – What if it was all just a stupid childhood fancy, like they say? What if I am truly meant to be the sort of lady my status demands?" She took in a breath that shivered a little. "I wish my father was still alive," she whispered. "He would know what to do."

"Were your father still alive, I doubt the nobles would be treating you so poorly, for fear of his wrath," Loki offered. "And, I think he would encourage you down your current road. He always was very proud of you." Cautiously, he reached over and laid a hand on her back, making sure to keep it well above her waist. He had no idea when thoughts like that had begun to appear in his mind; probably around the same time that Sif's girlish body had begun to take on some of the features of a woman's. Now, though, she was caught somewhere in limbo, and he had begun sometime during his own ungainly transition to look at her differently. He was suddenly very conscious of where her small, young breasts ended and her ever-narrowing waist began. Her legs (and also where they met her back) had taken on more shape to him too, and he couldn't help but notice it. He cleared his throat, forcing his mind back to the moment at hand. "If there is any way I can help you, Sif –"

She was already shaking her head. "No," she said. "It is not your burden."

He wanted so badly to tell her that she was wrong. That people stared at him too, whispering behind his back. That people judged him and condemned him and berated him at the very least within their own thoughts. He wanted to explain that, because he was gifted with magic instead of steel, he was as much of a target for gossip as she was. But he held his tongue. This was about her, and she didn't want to hear his woes, no matter how similar they were.

"I would prove them wrong, if they would only give me a chance," she lamented, sitting up and pushing her golden curls out of her face. "They don't take me seriously."

"How unfortunate for them," Loki said, and he meant it. "You will be something truly special someday. And they will all regret scoffing at the notion that a woman can fight alongside men as a Warrior of the Realm."

She looked at him for a moment. "You think so?"

"Absolutely."

"Then why do they disagree?" Her clear, blue eyes implored him, asking him all the questions she couldn't bring herself to say aloud. He saw them all, though, and the sight of her looking so vulnerable made him feel sick.

He shook his head. "I don't know," he told her; he hated the sound of it. He wanted to give her solutions. Answers. And yet, all the wanting in the world wouldn't grant him the words she needed to hear right now.

"They think I'm such a girl," Sif said. "They like me in pretty little dresses wearing my mother's jewels and with my hair all done up like a –" She stopped abruptly, turning to Loki and scrutinizing him.

He knew that look, and he didn't like it. "Sif –"

Before he could get past her name, she had lunged forward, grabbing the knife from where he kept it on the inside of his boot. It was a small thing, not very useful save for its sharp edge. It was made for vanity more so than utility, with its gilt handle encrusted with a spray of rubies. Had the thing been sharper, he would have been more concerned, but, being that it was just the little thing that he carried for the occasional cutting of twine or scoring of twigs, he only arched an eyebrow at her.

"Be honest with me, Loki," she said, entirely serious. "Does my hair make me look like a girl?"

Loki blinked. That hadn't been what he had expected. "Sif, you are a girl," he replied, his eyes quite inadvertently dropping to her breasts for half a second before he righted himself.

Thankfully, she hadn't noticed his moment of indiscretion, instead just leaning closer to him and saying, "But does it look . . . feminine?"

"Of course it does, but, Sif –" He lost his train of thought entirely as she pulled a chunk of hair over her shoulder and began to saw it away with the knife. "No! Sif, what are you doing?"

She opened her fist and strands of blonde fell to the ground like silk. "They think I'm a girl," she said simply.

"Yes, but this is madness," Loki told her, grabbing her wrist before she could cut away any more of her hair. The Aesir only rarely cut their hair, wearing it long through all stages of life. The women especially all cherished their flowing tresses of that varied in shade from white-blonde to auburn red. What would people think if Sif went hacking away at hers?

"It makes perfect sense to me," she retaliated, trying to jerk free of his grip; he wouldn't let her, and that fact only frustrated her more.

"If you really wish to get out of the circle of gossip, this is not the way." He ran his free hand through the portion of her hair that she had just cut. It hung to her shoulder while the rest of her hair fell down her back gracefully. "This is not the way, Sif," he reiterated.

Defiantly, she yanked her wrist away, and, before Loki could protest, she was slicing off more of her hair. "You cannot stop me, so you might as well help me," she told him, cutting off more hair so that it was all relatively the same length. "Tell me; do I look less girlish now?"

Loki was at a loss, gaping at her sheer audacity. His gaze kept flickering between her face and the strands of blonde now littering the rock around her. Absently, he touched them.

"Nothing?" Sif challenged. "I shall have to cut it shorter, then." And she did. All the way to her jaw.

"Sif," Loki stammered, "this is not in any way going to help things."

She looked around her at the hair that had not long ago been part of her. "It will help me," she decided after a moment. The rash light had left her eyes, and she was thinking clearly once more when she looked up at him. "I want it all gone," she said simply.

Everything in Loki's mind – all the arguments and convincing monologues and utter shock – came to a crashing, screeching halt. "I'm sorry?" he managed, though he didn't remember thinking of the words at all.

"You heard me correctly," Sif said, holding out the knife to him. He didn't move to take it. "Loki, please. It will do me no good to keep cutting and cutting. Please help me." After a long moment and with conflict written all over his face, he reached out very slowly and took his knife from her; he had carried it for years, yet it suddenly felt completely foreign to him.

Sif turned around, tilting her head back so that whatever remained of her hair spilled behind her. Loki stared at it, the blonde curls tighter now than they had been when her hair itself had weighed them down. He put out his tongue, wetting his lips anxiously. "You're sure?"

"Yes." Not a hint of doubt came through in her voice.

He took a deep breath and combed her hair back from her forehead with his fingers. He willed his hand not to shake as he set the knife's blade against her hairline. "All of it?" he asked softly.

"Yes."

He hesitated a moment more. "Just remember that you wished this. It was your idea."

"Of course," she said, strangely unperturbed by his reminder. "I am aware."

Loki swallowed, and then, very carefully, dragged the blade along her scalp.

He didn't watch when the hair fell; instead, he kept himself focused on her head, working in sections to get rid of anything blonde. Try as he might, he couldn't ignore the feeling that he was butchering something beautiful.

He had never called Sif beautiful; in fact, it had never truly crossed his mind. She had always been like a sister or a friend, and beautiful had always seemed the wrong word to describe her. Pretty, she was. But beautiful –

Now, there was nothing else in his mind except for that word.

Her hair fell to the flat of the rock, making a carpet there. Strands fell onto his clothes as well, standing out even more starkly against his chosen blacks and deep, rich greens.

Any other woman would have been called insane.

Neither of them said a word as the knife drew close to the nape of her neck. Only a few more sections still hadn't been shorn, and Loki felt his eyes misting at the sight of it. Still, he did as she had asked and removed all of her hair. When the last of it fell from her head, so did a tear from his eye. He was quick to hide it, though, before she turned around.

He wanted to ask her what that had accomplished. The thought fled his mind when her hands – white, feminine, and heavily calloused – ghosted over her bare scalp.

Sif let out a long breath before her hands dropped again. Slowly, she turned to face him. "How do I look?" she asked almost sheepishly.

When her eyes flicked up to him, he realized that he had never truly known just how deep a blue they really were. Her hair had always masked them. Still, he was being entirely honest when he replied, "Different."

"Good different?" she asked. "Bad different?"

He shrugged. "Indifferent."

Just for that, she punched him. On top of all the other injuries she had dealt him during training that day, it hurt quite a lot, but it was worth it; she was grinning. "Stop it, Odinson," she said. "I asked you a serious question."

He smiled because she was. "That was a serious answer."

"Indifferent?"

"No; just . . . different." He wiped some of her hair from the knife blade and commented, "You shan't be winning any beauty contests, though."

She pushed him hard in the shoulder, but she was still grinning wryly. He would have let her hit him all day long if it meant that she would smile more. "That was the point," she said.

"I know that, but the fact still remains."

She tossed her head, but it didn't carry the same weight without her curls swirling around her face. "I am making a statement," she told him, crossing her arms.

He raised his eyebrows. "I couldn't agree more." Then, a thought occurred to him and he laughed. "Just wait until Sigyn sees you."

Sif's eyes grew wide with a mischief that she had undoubtedly learned from Loki himself. "Can we go show her?"

"Right now?"

"Right now."

Loki stashed his knife back into his boot and stood up. He offered her his hand, but, as expected, she didn't take it, shooting him a look instead. "After you," he said, fighting the urge to put my lady at the end of that. He had been railing against that desire for some time now, and he wished he could have explained why that was. Sif was certainly not his lady.

As she set off through the forest along the path that they had carved out for themselves years and years ago, Loki looked back once more at the blanket of golden hair that covered the rock; any trace of humor vanished from his face. He glanced at Sif's back as she slowly moved away from him, and, when he was certain she wouldn't see, he gathered a bundle of strands, tying them in a knot and tucking them up his sleeve. Hair was valuable when it came to sorcery, and there was a certain spell that he knew for which it would prove useful.

The next morning, when Sif awoke to find a charmed poultice under her pillow and black stubble growing in on her scalp, she knew exactly who was to blame. When she burst into Loki's chambers to demand an explanation, she found them vacant. The curious little knife with the rubies in the handle laid on his bed alongside a note that read:

Sif, I thought you should have this. -L

At first, she considered leaving it. Then, just as she was about to walk away, she turned back and took the knife, tucking it securely into her belt. She didn't know what possessed her to do it; she had been feeling something shifting between them as of late, and, while she never would have thought of it before, there was something enticing about having something of his. So she took it.

Back in her room, she hid it in the bottom of a drawer that held all of the ribbons, bows, and hair combs that she had always so seldom worn before and had no need of now.

She told herself she would never think of it again. She also told herself that she would get rid of the magical poultice immediately. In reality, Sif did neither of those things.

As her hair grew back in, she was only a little surprised to see that it was the exact same raven-feather black as that of the one who had cut it; she didn't know whether to thank him or hate him for it. Still, if she was honest with herself, it was a significant improvement over her bouncy blonde curls.

As Sif's hair came in, Loki couldn't help but smile wryly. He much preferred it dark, he mused. Now he could honestly say that she was beautiful.

A/N: The cutting of Sif's hair is an event that occurs in the Norse mythos, though I have drastically reimagined it here. I hope you enjoyed it!