The kingdom of Asgard, rich in gold and resplendence as it is, is a paradise to shadow.
To the prisoner Loki, the shadows are invaluable tools—tools to gauge the passage of time, each shifting in seconds to be hoarded like precious gold, smelted into insight. The shadows are something which he, fettered and bound and stripped down to rags, can claim as his own.
He sits, spine arched against the unyielding crystal that encloses the small holding cell, hands clamped in metal bracers and held stiff before his body. He rattles the short length of chain connecting them, just to hear the sound. He releases a long breath.
Loki's punishment was decided even before his brother led him home.
His eyes trace the enclosure. The walls are lit in limpid rings by torches in stone brackets pointed to the ceiling. He watches them flicker with a kind of hushed malice, birthing an army of shadows. They flock to Loki like prey, though he has not the freedom to bid them dance. Writhing their antipathy, the shadows circle endlessly. They whisper to Loki what he already knows.
(You have no power here.)
Friends to the shadows are the voices, low tones uttered by armored guards who stand just outside the metal doors of the room. Loki thinks they, too, might be of use to him, if only their owners had something of importance to say.
During the long stretches he designates 'night', the voices cease. Sound diffuses into darkness, leaving only the snicker of fire and the hot throb of Loki's pulse in his teeth.
He measures five cycles of thrumming noise succeeded by stark-stretching silence, five days dissolving to nights, before the first disturbance deviates the pattern: an abrupt tinny screech of chrome and crystal; the groan of an opening door. Footsteps, rapidly approaching.
His loyal shadows storm the intruder with such a vehemence that Loki cannot authenticate its features. The door creaks shut. His intruder treads lightly to the enclosure and frees the lock with a soft click; then steps into the torchlight.
He freezes when he sees her: the warrior Sif, towering before him, her face livid in the aura of breathing flame. For a fleeting instant he thinks to move, to somehow resist.
(Futile, hiss the shadows.)
With a practiced flourish, she rips him from the wall by the neck and throws him into the ground.
Sif towers over him, curled on his side, bound arms uselessly bowed as if to protest. The plates of armor that are her hallmark have been abandoned for more practical nightclothes; Loki finds the will to curl his lips, behind the fetter that masks them, behind the florescent familiarity of pain. They are leveled at least in one way, here within this cell.
Yet Loki's hands remain clasped, while Sif's freely roam. Her fingers scourge the skin of his sides, beneath the rags that hide his ribs. She presses vitriol into the base of his spine, trails her nails in deep and twists. Loki's breath pulses a curse in his throat. Their eyes meet.
Lying blue against the floor, Loki is subjugated by her rage. His face is slated cold and clean, even as the force of her wanting shakes to his core. In this cruel arena, Loki flashes the only weapon he has: a look of indisputable dispassion.
Shadows streak Sif's face, swarm into her open mouth. Loki's laugh, behind the mask, is a suffocated sob. Her dagger comes from nowhere, hollow point to a hollow column, scraping ice across the vein that feeds his heart. A warning.
Sif shoves him back against the wall and mounts him, sweeping his bound arms over his head in a fluid motion. Loki growls into the metal, face upturned like a roaring beast. She slams her hips into his own.
She is shadow.
Sif's hair is a wraith, a dark-raining sky; as it obscures his chest, Loki trembles with the need to tear it from her thread by thread. She hikes his tunic to his neck. Shadow strips his flesh in long cuts, swarms her fingers like moths as they beat across the surface. They burnish with fire, with her blood. She grasps his jaw.
Sif's discipline wavers. She swipes at what remains of his clothing, not bothering with the boots, just enough to uncover. Her cast-away leggings are tribute to the shadows. Something snaps when she tangles one hand into the band of Loki's trousers and pulls. Sif's eyes are licentious as she mounts his left thigh, leaving him exposed and untouched. Beneath them, the cold floor cracks like burnt skin.
The slide of her body against his thigh splinters Loki into fractions. Her movements cage and provoke him; Loki can do nothing except watch the sin of her fingers as they chafe. As Sif works herself at a furious pace, Loki is made prey to her darkest inclinations.
The fetter swallows the howl that he makes; he's nearly thankful for it. He aches at the joining of his still-bound hands, the cruel sear of stone and crystal. Sif's jaw beckons the ceiling, the veil of her hair bewitched by flame. She moves like stars aligning; Loki knows her by the way she moans, the way his shadows play about her. Turning her gold black; making her like him.
When she comes she does so breathlessly, her face strangled in shadow, her body in light. She collapses against him as though felled—an error, unamended for several seconds.
Then Sif bolts off like a spit of flame, scraping together what she can of her clothing. Her leggings litter the floor like a corpse. Briefly, her eyes waver to settle on his. He does not think for their ferocity.
As she silently leaves, Loki's cock pulses violence in the rhythm of her steps.
She lay there, sprawled upon her back, like a flare from the sky. Loki had seen her there before, bird-thin in boy's clothing, this shock of a girl with hands ever in fists. Even supine, she flashed them; punching upward and outward, her body trembled from the force.
Daily she crept upon the grounds like a stain, her knuckles held white at her heart; she watched the warriors train for hours, daring closer and closer, witted to nothing that surrounded in the fervor of her veneration. But on this day, she'd drawn too close, stupidly sneaking upon a training youngling brandishing a stick, who shrieked like a hellhound when she suddenly appeared. Panicked, he knocked her to the ground.
Loki, idling his time among the nearby trees as he did, peered from his book just in time to witness the spectacle.
"Brother!" Thor's voice struck him, like a bolt from the blue. "Come now! There is a young maiden in need of aid!"
The girl lay splayed, scowling at the young soldier who struck her, the men who surrounded her. From an arm's distance, Loki took in the outlandish sight: the girl-beast displacing earth as she thrashed, Thor trying to right her, she assaulting his extended hand with her fist. She finally calmed when each took a step back. Thor folded his arms behind him and smiled as she struggled upward; the girl's assailant trotted briskly back to safety.
"Are you well, fair girl?" Thor asked in good humor, evidently unperturbed by the assaults. Without answer she beat the soil from her tunic; her mouth looked cross. "It is rare to happen upon a maiden in these warrior's grounds," he coaxed. "What called you here, Lady...?"
"Sif," she proclaimed, puffing her chest in such a laughable show that Loki struggled to conceal his face. "I was observing the training, of course."
"Marvelous!" Thor thundered, his armor cackling with him. "I am Thor! And here, my brother Loki."
With diffidence she beheld the pair; all of Asgard knew the faces of its princes, the golden son of Odin and his dark foil—the shadow-prince who, even now, darkened his brother's side. Loki, in equal fractions of bemusement and irritation, looked upon her briefly before returning to his book.
"Ah, brother!" Thor's gold head shook with mirth; he jabbed his brother playfully. "Show some respect to this warrior-girl."
Sif frowned. "I have seen him often, there in the trees with a book in his hand while yourself and the rest practice form." Addressing Thor, he gave her a sheepish grin in acquiescence. When Loki provided no reaction, Sif narrowed her eyes. She turned to him with knuckled hands.
"Spar with me, book-shadow-prince!" she ordered. Thor's grin spanned his face.
"And why should I do that, Lady Sif?" Loki droned. His eyes never left the page.
Insulted, she crossed her arms to her chest. "My intention is to become a warrior," she informed the dark prince stiffly. "I will become stronger than everyone, and protect this land."
Thor stamped his delight into the ground. The glint of his teeth outshone that of his sword. He gripped Sif's hand; he praised her, hailed her 'most honorable', went so far as to promise her a sword of her own—if only she trained hard.
(Ah, Loki thought then. So he's got chivalry and charity confused.) If Thor wasn't so oafish, Loki would think him sweet on her.
"You think yourself a soldier?" Loki quipped suddenly. His book snapped on its spine. "Your future is foretold by your name*."
Anger struck the foolish girl's face like a scourge. Loki studied her for what felt like the first time—not just the wisp frame or the farce of her fists, but the whole of her shape and her fury. Even Thor looked alarmed at the sight.
"Pay him no heed, my lady," Thor chuckled, but shot Loki an exasperated glance. "He's only sore because we occupy his reading time! Won't you come now, see the barracks?"
She trotted after him like an obsequious hound. As Loki watched the pair depart, he noticed that Sif's hair was golden, too.