Of Golden Thread (Part II)

That evening, after dinner, Sif slipped into his rooms. He was sitting in a wingback chair by a fire that had dwindled to embers. Shadows bent toward him like a second skin, magnetically hovering over him as they would a corpse and speaking volumes about his current state. He looked up when the door creaked closed behind her, and she felt an all too familiar sensation of her breath hitching at the sight of his mouth, sewn up with the golden thread. She imagined that she would never grow used to the sight.

"Hello," she said softly in greeting, and he tried to smile, wincing a bit for his efforts. The thread at the corner of his mouth tugged, a pinprick of blood seeping out and sitting there ominously. His wounds, while no longer streaked with blood, were extremely sensitive to any sort of movement. The droplet by the thread slid onto his lip, squeezing into his mouth and making him grimace at the taste of it. "Does it hurt?" she asked, feeling immensely stupid the second the words escaped her.

He shrugged.

"You can tell me the truth, you know," she said quietly, dropping into the empty chair opposite him. "You needn't be brave for my sake."

He glanced at her, eyes lifeless and dull despite his cocked eyebrow. The sight pained her. He gave a very slight nod. Yes, it hurts very much.

She had expected this, but it still cut her to see him admit it. "I'm sorry," she told him, and he rolled his eyes. The gesture was entirely devoid of his usual jaunty humor. Not this again. "But I am sorry, Loki," she pressed. "This never should have happened."

He shook his head. No it shouldn't. Then, he looked very sternly at her, his eyes getting his point across sufficiently without words. But it is not your fault.

She didn't bother contesting his silent assertion; instead, she grabbed a poker and stoked the dying embers absently. "Everyone thinks you are merely ill," she told him. "They know not what ails you. I assumed that you would prefer to keep it that way for the time being."

He nodded once, watching the fire flare up through the cracks Sif opened in the ashes.

For a long moment, they sat in silence. Then, Sif took a breath. "Is there anything I can do to help you?" she asked.

She expected him to shake his head, refusing her outright. But he looked at the floor, considering. Then, he pulled a book from the stack nearest his chair, cracking it open to a random page and scanning it. He pointed to a word and showed her. Stay.

Sif smiled warmly. "Absolutely," she replied. She could see his thanks in his eyes, shining feebly through the glaze that had stolen his every expression.

She spoke very little the rest of the night, instead just existing beside him. Her presence alone seemed to chase some of the shadows back, and he eventually drifted into sleep sitting upright in his chair. She was not far behind him, only staying awake long enough to glance over through the ever-diminishing firelight and see for herself what he looked like when he slept.

His silence was long and harsh.

Besides Thor, Frigga, and Sif, not a soul was interested in making it easier on him. It was punishment, they reasoned, so it should hurt like it was meant to. If he was scorned during his time with a sewn mouth, then so be it. If he suffered because of it, it was justified.

Sif made a point of disagreeing.

Loki bore the hardly-veiled stares and whispers with the sort of rigid grace that he had adopted specifically for situations like this. He carried himself with all the pride befitting of a prince, though he spent a great deal of time very intentionally looking at the ground, avoiding the eyes of those around him. He did his utmost to let it all roll off his back – or at least make it appear that way.

Sif visited him every evening in his quarters, where the two of them could breathe without a courtier or nobleman staring them down. With the oppression of life at bay until morning, she could see that at least some of their barbs had taken hold, and, despite his thick skin, were hurting him. In those precious, sacred hours of the night, he could tell her everything with just his eyes. What she saw there during each visit worried her. It was all slow, arduous defeat. It was futile resistance. It was I don't know for how much longer I can do this.

And yet, the next morning, there he'd be. Head held high and proud, posture straight, regal, and immaculate, hands clasped carelessly behind his back as though not a thing could bother him.

Later that night, he would lay his head on her chest and cry. His tears were silent, like everything else in his life since the rude introduction of golden thread, and she would cry at the cool, wet feeling of them on the skin at her collarbone. She would say encouraging things that rang hollowly in her ears and run her fingers through his hair because it helped her calm down.

When he had been mute for long enough, as determined by Odin, the task of removing his stitches had originally fallen to Thor, who blanched at the idea. Sif, however, stepped up, and, with cold hands, she shut herself in his rooms. He was sitting by the fire, evidently expecting his brother, judging by the change of expression when he saw Sif there instead. His eyes flicked to her small, lithe fingers, and the fear in his eyes diminished by a fraction. Even so, his face was sheet-white. She saw him swallow and draw a deep breath, and she abruptly wished that she was anywhere else than with him right that moment. She could understand why Thor hadn't wanted to do this.

Slowly, she knelt down in front of him, reaching out to brush her thumb over the edge of the thread where the knot had been tied. "Your father sent Thor, but he couldn't," she explained. She tried to hide the tremor in her hands as she reached into her belt for the tiny dagger she would use to cut the thread away. "I suppose you shall never be ready for this," she mused, turning the blade over and over in her hands.

He didn't need to shake his head for her to understand that she had spoken the truth.

"I wish there was another way," she murmured, and she realized that she was stalling. She crawled a bit closer to him, holding his face gently in her hands, inspecting the thread. She looked at him, setting her jaw and letting a stoic shield fall over her. "Try not to move, and I shall be as swift as possible."

She tugged the knot from its pocket of skin and dried blood, cutting it free from the length of the thread with a delicate, careful slice. He didn't move. When she started pulling the thread back through it holes, though, he jerked away.

She had always known that it would hurt; undoubtedly, so had he. Still, seeing him flinch made her hands shake when she went to give the thread another pull.

The more thread she released, the more he reacted. She tried to loosen each segment before she disrupted it, but, if it helped, it was only a very little. About halfway across his lips, she paused, letting the golden thread – which, to her, more resembled barbed wire at that moment – hang freely. He was bleeding again, and she used the small dagger to cut a section out of her shirt hem, handing it to him. His hands were subtly trembling as he lifted the soft cloth to his lips, dabbing very gently at the blood that seeped immediately through it, staining it a dark red.

She couldn't steady the tremor in her hands or her voice when she worked on a particularly difficult spot, and, when he shivered in pain, said, "I'm so sorry, Loki." She was speaking idly as she worked, but she felt as though her heart was pushing its way up her throat and out her lips. "You will never have to endure torture like this on your own again," she said, every word pure and true and terrifyingly unsteady. "I will never abandon you again. I promise."

Somehow, her shaking hands were coordinated enough to get the rest of the thread out. He was trembling in agony, but he made a concerted effort not to shy away, letting her work more quickly. In perhaps another minute, a bloody strand of thread laid on the ground between them, his lips no longer bound but still very much closed.

She cut another square out of her shirt, this one bigger than the last, letting him do his best to staunch his own bleeding. Even though it hurt like a knife through her chest, she sat motionlessly and watched him cope. Everything in her longed to touch him – to hold him as she had when the stitches had first lashed his mouth closed. But, because he didn't move, neither did she.

His eyes strayed down to the thread on the floor; he pulled the cloth away and looked at the amount of blood that had soaked into the fibers, and his eyes hardened. His empty fist clenched on his thigh, so tight that she could see the knobby whites of his knuckles. Almost reflexively, she laid a hand on top of it, feeling it relax a bit instantly at her touch. She leaned a breath closer. "Loki?"

Nothing bound his lips now. He was completely free. And yet, he spoke not a word, instead only looking at her in bland acknowledgment when she said his name.

"You –" she tried, having swallow to get the words out. "You can speak now, you know."

For a long moment he stared at her as though she had introduced a novel concept to him and he had yet to decide whether or not he believed her. Then, he shook his head. Lost sorrow touched his eyes, and she understood. I think I might have forgotten how.