Ciri's head was spinning when her eyes opened to the ceiling of the infirmary in the Asgardian royal palace. Loki hovered nearby, practically standing over the royal physician, who was still examining Ciri with the soul forge. "Oh lay off it, brother. She barely took a blow."
"Thor you oaf, some people use their brains more than you do." Loki moved closer. "Ciri...Are you alright?" His green eyes sparkled like a verdant garden. Eugh. I could fall into those forever.
"My head-"
"Is injured, yes." The physician was firm. "You are to be on bed rest for a week. Do not use your precognitions, either."
"It's not a case of precognition." Ciri said for the thousandth time since she had begun living here. "It only works if I'm involved in a situation."
"Don't use them. Now go on, back to your quarters." Loki helped her up, and Ciri glanced at him as she sat on the edge of the soul forge table. She could still remember the day centuries ago now when they had met, her and the brothers. It had been a very low point in her life and might have been the end of it had their paths not crossed.
"Come on, duchess." Loki gently teased, taking her by the waist and assisting her in jumping down. Ciri stood on her own feet, Loki right by her as they left the infimary and took the halls slowly together. Thor trailed further behind. "So, did any more flashes come to you when Thor beaned you on the head with that brutish hammer of his?" Loki tossed a salty look over his shoulder at the blonde who just huffed in response.
"I...did. It was the same as it usually is except I saw his face more clearly this time." Ciri was troubled. "He touched my face, cupping my cheek. I begged him not to do whatever he was about to do. He said he had to, that it was for my own good and he would not lose me too. I could see the details in his eyes this time." Ciri's stomach twisted the same inexplicable pain it always did on the pondering of her memories. "I still don't know who he is. Or what he has to do with the scale." She stuck one hand in her pocket, rubbing a thumb over the bronzed scale that made her think so strongly of the mystery man.
"It is a powerful magic that keeps your memory shrouded in foggy blurs." Loki was contemplative. "One I dare not work at unraveling until I can know the true depth of it."
He had said this many a time over the hundreds of years they had experienced together. Loki was afraid attempting and doing badly at said attempt would destroy Ciri's mind. "Yes but taking hits to the head seems to help." Thor piped up.
"Concussions can kill anyone, you absolute buffoon. She is not a god, nor god-kin. So perhaps it goes even more for her than it does for our ilk. We must take every injury seriously."
"Father finds quite the use for her." Thor agreed as tactlessly as he could. Ciri did not truly believe he meant any malice. Thor was just clueless and had no social prowess beyons winking at pretty women and making them swoon. She took no more offense this time than she usually did.
"He was crying." Ciri said, as they stood at last outside her door. "He was crying. Why would he do something to me that pained us both so?"
"The man said he had no choice." Thor made it sound cut and dried. "Perhaps he was your lover and he made a choice to send you away and die for it. So you may yet escape some horrible fate the others he cared for did not."
"Lover doesn't sound right." Ciri hesitated. "But again, I cannot be sure." She opened her door. "Loki will you-" He was already walking in.
"Of course, duchess."
Hearing the laughter in his voice, Ciri scowled, shutting the door and going over to her bed. "I am the duchess of nothing. I wish you would not jest of me being nobility."
"I do not jest, Ciri. It is a wish I hold." He met her gaze from the reading table, holding it with a piercing intensity. "That we may...-"
"Don't, Loki." Ciri felt uncomfortable. "Every time I care...It...It goes poorly."
"I am no mortal." He kept the same soft care. "Why do you insist on making your torturous curse this much worse, duchess?" He stood, coming closer as she reclined on her bed, propped halfway up on her side to converse with him. "I care for you an enormous deal. You are the one and only apart from Friga who does not sneer or express outright disgust at my...talents."
"There is more to life than being a muscle-bond warrior. There are different ways to fight, many unique battles, and several distinct kinds of strength to face these battles." She reiterated her support of his magic, maintaining her opinion he was as strong as Thor. He sat right next to her, his whole demeanor longing and hunger.
"Then why can we not enjoy each other, Ciri?" The pain in his eyes was almost enough to make her finally relent, to make her finally let someone in, after thousands of years. Oh how she longed for it, for him to finally be the one she could be with. "I love you."
And there it is. The vocalization of what we both feel. "Do you not feel the same?"
"Loki, I've come to love you as I haven't loved someone since I wandered Earth, wondering why I alone lived for...well all eternity. Even that love is fleeting and shallow compared to what you draw out of me."
"Then why not?" The desperation in his emerald eyes nearly killed her. They both craved affection, love...a lingering warm embrace. Someone to call their own. "You claimed you do not use your precognition on Thor and I."
"I lied, Loki. The moment my weak heart betrayed me, the second it dared love again...I looked upon your path should I come into it. I saw...many outcomes each branching into more. All changing by the second with my wavering resolve to not act upon my deeply-seated and ever-growing care for you." Ciri let it be confessed at last that she more than returned his advances.
"Then damn all convention and what is proper. I'd throw it all out...for you. I'd give away the rest of my existence, all for a brief time with you." He leaned in and kissed her deep. Ciri felt it snap, her resolve ebbing away as if it were a line of sand meant to hold back a coming tide. They tangled on the silk sheets, rolling over one another in a ball of limbs and sweat, kissing and moaning and holding one another in whispered sweet things.
They continued like this in secret, many stolen moments stacked together that formed their hidden romance until it all came to a stop one day. "A marriage has been arranged that will at last bring peace between us and Svartalheim."
Odin spoke aloud the one eventuality Ciri had struggled her damndest against. "But I am not even yours to give, All-Father."
"You count yourself Asgardian yes?" He kept an even-keel. Ciri agreed. "You care for it's citizens, from peasants to nobility?" Again Ciri agreed. "The elves ask for you by name, child. You may single-handedly end this conflict...Or worsen it beyond all belief."
Ciri looked at the paths before her. Of the choices that branched. Neither had the life she wanted. Both meant walking away from Loki or otherwise losing him. Ciri could not see far enough down either to know if they would be together again. She simply had to pick. There is no other way. He is of the personality that should I...If I do not do this...hurt him now and send him away...He will fall into that endless chasm. He will die. I'd rather he hate me and flee to less desirable company than die.
"Of course not, All-Father." The words were poison in her gut and a knife in her heart. "I will do this thing. For Asgard." For Loki. It's all for Loki. Please...if there is mercy...let it fall upon him. Let him live. I'd give it all to just let him live. Behind her and in the hallway, Loki began to walk away no longer caring to be hidden. She let him go, the tears in her eyes like a fine acid.
The next time she would hear of or from him was when she learned of Thor's banishment to Earth. Her heart thoroughly broken that she had picked what she felt the wrong path, Ciri fled Asgard. She had let him go early rather than stubbornly hold on and enjoy their time together. Now it would seem to be over. Perhaps neither path would've let me be with him again some day. Perhaps I was once again damned to only anguish. It would've been better never to love.