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Chapter Text

Sif had not always been in love with Thor. It was the younger brother who caught her eye first.

In fact, Sif met Loki first. Her parents were courtiers—her mother was part of Queen Frigga’s retinue, and her father was a rotating member of Asgard’s High Council (not a permanent member of the Small Council, but it was still a position of great honor)—so she lived in a wing of the sprawling palace compound. She had seen the princes, of course (who hadn’t?), but she was not old enough yet to be formally introduced at court. She was the second of three children. She and her elder sister and younger brother had a private tutor (not the same one who tutored the princes, but a student of his, which was almost as good). After their morning ride, Sif and her brother, Gunnar, were tutored together in mathematics, history, poetry, and ancient lore. But in the afternoon, Gunnar would go into the training yard with the other young boys of the court to learn swordsmanship, archery, bare-handed fighting—all the skills they would need to become warriors in the service of Asgard. Sif, meanwhile, stayed in her family’s rooms to learn weaving and embroidery from her elder sister, Astrid, and music and drawing from an older lady of the court. She found that she could seldom focus on these afternoon lessons. She excused herself suspiciously often, pleading a need for fresh air, to walk the walls above the training yards and gaze down enviously at the boys going through their exercises. Her muscles yearned to be stretched and tried in the same way. She often found herself unconsciously mimicking the movements of the boys in the courtyards below as she paced the walls. The motions of sword- and staff-fighting felt natural to her—more natural than the motions of weaving or dancing ever had. She was certain that she could fight as well as any of the boys she watched in the yard—except perhaps the elder prince, Thor. If fighting seemed as easy as walking to her, it appeared to come to him as easily as breathing.

The mad idea came to her one day when she returned to her drawing lesson after one of these walks. Her teacher scolded her for wandering off for so long—surely if all she needed was a breath of fresh air, she didn’t need to take half an hour for it. No, Sif thought, she didn’t need half an hour—she needed hours, alone, when no one was around to see her. She would borrow her brother’s clothes (they were close enough in age and size that they should fit her, with just a bit of extra room) and sneak out to the training yards at night, when she could practice on her own the moves she had seen the boys doing day after day. She could use a real staff, a real bow, the wooden practice swords, and get used to their weight and feel in her hands. And so, that night, she did just that. The practice swords were heavier than she imagined, but the hilt fit into her hand as if they were made for each other—as if the sword was a part of her arm that had been missing.

Sif was tired every morning from her late-night training sessions, and was less than attentive during her morning lessons. Her muscles ached; the hand that held her pen or her embroidering needle sometimes shook. But still she went to the training yards every night, then went to bed and got up just a few hours later still exhausted but exhilarated, thinking of how the sword hilt completed her hand, in a way the shuttle never would.

One night, though, when she went to the yard in her brother’s slightly-too-large tunic and trousers and her own riding boots (Gunnar’s feet were far too big for her ever to wear his shoes), someone else was there. Sif walked into the shed where the practice weapons were kept; it was unlit, but she had learned by feeling around in the dark where everything was. But this time, she stumbled against the rack where the wooden practice swords were hung—it had been moved slightly from its usual place. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have worried about the clatter she made when she bumped into things, since no one was ever here late at night. But this time, someone—a young man, by his voice—heard it and called, “Who’s there?”

Sif froze. She thought that perhaps if she didn’t move, the boy would attribute the noise to some nocturnal creature scurrying about in the shed… but what if he came looking? She crouched down behind a bench; unless he had a lantern—and she hadn’t seen the glow of lantern light from anywhere in the yard—he wouldn’t see her. She heard footsteps approaching, and tried to breathe as quietly as she could. The figure that approached was not preceded by the halo of a lantern—but as soon as the boy stepped into the dark shed, a small light appeared in the palm of his hand. Magic, she realized. And to her horror, the soft glow of the enchanted light illuminated the unmistakable high cheekbones and aquiline nose of the younger prince.

In the light of his spell, Sif’s hiding place was completely ineffectual. The young prince looked right at her and furrowed his brow. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” His tone was brusque and authoritative, but surprisingly unthreatening.

Sif stood up as gracefully as she could manage and attempted to make a curtsey look dignified in her brother’s baggy trousers. “Lady Sif, your highness. My mother is a lady of the court.”

Prince Loki tilted his head to one side. “All right, but what are you doing here at this hour?”

“I—I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk. But then—I felt tired, so I came in here to sit down for a moment.”

The prince raised his still-furrowed eyebrows; the effect was one of withering skepticism. “You went for a walk… in your brother’s clothes?”

“I…” Sif couldn’t think of any more convincing lies to tell. She looked down, and noticed that a wooden sword hung loosely from the prince’s left hand, the one without the magic flame resting in it.

“You came to practice when no one would know you were here,” Loki announced calmly. “So did I. It appears that we were both thwarted in our aim.”

“Why did you—?” Sif blurted the beginning of the question before she could stop herself, but then she realized her blunder. “Forgive me,” she said hurriedly, “it was not my place.”

Loki did not contradict her, or insist that he had taken no offense. He gave her a piercing stare; his eyes looked almost black in the dim light of the enchanted fire. But then, unexpectedly, he answered her question: “I am not very good with the sword. I was hoping to improve my form.”

Do you want to practice with me? Sif momentarily imagined herself saying; but she stifled the wild thought. “I’ll—I’ll go at once.”

“No,” the prince said thoughtfully, “let’s practice together. After all, that’s what we’re both here for.”

Sif was stunned for a moment, but then silently took one of the practice swords and followed Loki into the yard. They faced off, took their positions—then fought. Sif had never put the moves she had rehearsed into practice with a real opponent. She left herself open to too many blows, and let Loki disarm her twice early on; but she adapted quickly and soon was giving as good as she got. He was quick and graceful, she noticed, but he moved too much, preferring to dodge blows rather than parry them, and he soon tired himself out. He was the first to call a halt.

“Truce, Lady Sif,” Loki said with a wry, rueful smile, holding his hands in the air, after she had knocked the sword out of his hand for a second time. “I think it is time we both retired for the night.” Sif lowered her sword. Loki approached her with his right hand outstretched. Sif was puzzled for a moment, then switched the sword to her left hand and offered him her right hand. He took it—not to shake, as two contestants might; instead, he turned her hand palm-down, raised it to his lips, and gave it a courteous kiss. “Thank you, my lady, for the dance.”

Sif wondered for a moment if he was mocking her, but the mischievous gleam in his eyes told her she was in on the joke. “The pleasure was all mine,” she dared to joke in return, giving him a brief, nervous smile. But then she pressed her lips together anxiously and said, “Please, your highness—you won’t—tell anyone, will you?”

Loki gave her a quizzical look. “Don’t be foolish,” he said. Sif’s stomach clenched. But then he continued, “If I don’t tell anyone, how will the master-at-arms know he’s to begin training you?”

Sif’s heart leapt. This was beyond her wildest hopes. “Really? You would—you would speak to him for me?”

“I’ll speak to Thor,” he said, stooping to pick up his fallen sword. Sif gave him a questioning glance, which he answered by saying, “Trust me, you want him to advocate for you with the master-at-arms, not me.” There was the slightest note of bitterness in his tone.

“I can’t thank you enough, your highness,” she said earnestly, following him into the shed to put the practice swords away. “There aren’t many who would countenance the idea of a young maid being trained in the use of arms…”

“That’s nonsense,” Loki said sharply. “I’ve always thought everyone should be allowed to do what they’re best at, regardless of what class or gender they were born into.”

Sif stared at him, astonished. “That’s… that’s quite an unusual view, if you don’t mind my saying, your highness.”

“Yes, well. There are good arguments for it. Good night, Lady Sif.” Loki strode to the door; the enchanted light, which he had rekindled in his palm when he entered the shed, winked out as he walked out into the moonlit courtyard, leaving Sif alone in the dark.

Chapter Text

It took a certain amount of persuading and arranging for Sif to join the boys in their training at arms. Loki spoke to Thor, as he had promised, and Thor spoke to the master-at-arms; but then the master-at-arms protested to Frigga, who needed to speak to Sif’s parents and convince them of the wisdom of the idea. The Queen sent a message announcing her visit, and Sif’s parents made sure that she and her sister were busy at their afternoon lessons and would not disturb them; but after Frigga revealed the purpose of the visit, a very frightened-looking servant interrupted the sisters’ drawing lesson to tell Sif that she was wanted in the receiving room right away. With Frigga’s calm encouragement, Sif begged her parents to let her learn to fight; and under the pressure of the queen’s gentle but firm insistence, they had no choice but to give their consent.

Still wearing her brother’s spare clothes, Sif began training with the very youngest boys, the ones just starting their military education, though she was half again as old as the youngest of them and considerably taller. Though the master-at-arms had been skeptical, Sif quickly proved to the sergeant who taught the younger boys that she was both naturally adept and more knowledgeable than a mere beginner. After just two weeks, she moved up into her younger brother’s age group. (Gunnar pretended not to know her, which suited Sif just fine.) When she continued to excel, within a few months, she was promoted into the class with boys of her own age. Loki was in the same cohort, she knew. His brother, Thor, though only a few years older, trained with the very highest class, the last before the students came of age and were qualified to serve as warriors of Asgard; Thor’s strength and skill were well beyond what was expected for his age.

As the students went to get their practice swords and their training sergeant (a young but imposing bearded warrior named Volstagg) arranged them in pairs, Sif tried to catch Loki’s eye, but he seemed not to see her, or to notice that she was trying to get his attention. His gaze was firmly fixed on his sparring partner, so Sif turned her focus to her own opponent. He was a lanky but good-looking blond youth with an easy smile and the shadow of a moustache growing above his lip. Sif returned his friendly smile, pleasantly surprised that someone, finally, didn’t seem hostile to the very idea of her presence.

Then he said, with a wicked grin, “I knew I was popular with the ladies, but I didn’t think they would go to such lengths for a taste of my sword.”

Sif’s face grew hot with shame and anger. She wished she could come up with some witty retort, but her mind was clouded with rage. Loki would have thought of something clever to say: the nickname “Silvertongue,” which Sif had heard bandied about by Astrid’s friends, must have caught on for a reason. But Sif wasn’t Loki; so she gritted her teeth and channeled all her rage into a deadly focus and a grim determination to beat this little swine.

Volstagg announced the beginning of the match. Within ten moves—well before any of the other pairs of fighters had finished their bout—the presumptuous youth was on his back in the dirt, disarmed, with the point (which was, unfortunately, blunt) of Sif’s sword at his throat. In Sif’s exhilaration at her triumph, inspiration struck: “All right, I’ve had a taste of your sword and I’m not impressed. Should I tell the other ladies they needn’t bother?”

Sif expected the boy to scowl and mutter curses and threats at her. But instead, to her great surprise, he laughed jovially and said, “It rather appears that I’ve had a taste of your sword, my lady, and it tastes very much like eating my words. I apologize for my rudeness, and I promise, I shan’t underestimate you again.”

Sif wanted to make him promise not to underestimate any woman again, but she felt that would be pushing her luck. She just hmphed and offered him her hand to help him stand up.

They went through several more bouts with the wooden swords, changing partners each time. Occasionally Volstagg would choose a pair of combatants and ask them to demonstrate something for the whole class. He seemed unusually kind for a training sergeant; he never humiliated the boys he was using as models, but used their mistakes as an opportunity to teach everyone a new move or strategy.

After the class was finished, when the students were traipsing back into the shed to put away their swords, Sif’s first opponent, the lanky blond youth, sought her out. “My lady,” he said, “I wish to apologize again for my impertinence upon our first introduction. I would very much like to make it up to you. Would you allow me to buy you a drink?” Sif furrowed her brow and looked at him suspiciously. “A thoroughly collegial, comradely, not remotely suitorly drink,” he specified.

Sif hesitated, then said, “All right.”

“My name is Fandral,” he said, bowing slightly from the waist.

“I’m—”

“Lady Sif,” he finished for her, giving her a roguish smile. “I think all the young lads of the court know your name by now.”

Sif felt her face flush. She hadn’t been seeking notoriety, but she should have known it would find her anyway.

“Have you been to the King’s Arms?” Fandral asked, either unaware of Sif’s discomfiture or politely ignoring it.

Sif knew of it; it was the small pub in the section of the palace compound with the barracks and the training yards, frequented by the soldiers and palace guards. She couldn’t have said exactly where it was, but she knew they were walking roughly in that direction. “No, I—my parents don’t consider it a proper place for a young lady.” She gave a mischievous smile. “But then, they didn’t consider the training yards a proper place for a young lady, either.”

“The King’s Arms is most certainly the proper place for a warrior in training,” Fandral said graciously.

Before long they had arrived at a carved wooden door with a painted sign hanging above it. Fandral pushed it open and ushered Sif through. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Sif took in the long bar in front of shelves lined with (it looked like) hundreds of bottles made of variously colored glass, and filled with variously colored liquid (most of it different shades of brown and deep red, but Sif thought she spotted something oddly yellowish-green). Around the room there were smallish rectangular tables; Fandral was headed toward one at the back of the room next to a window, at which several people were already sitting. In the gloom, Sif couldn’t make out their faces until she was almost at the table—and then she felt as if her heart had leapt into her throat and stuck there.

Seated across from each other, at the end of the table closest to the window, were the two princes. Thor, facing her, gave Sif and Fandral a welcoming smile. Loki mostly had his back to her; he turned when he saw Thor acknowledge them. Sif smiled at him shyly; he gave a polite nod, but again, strangely, showed no sign of recognition. A serious dark-haired boy sat next to Loki, and also nodded politely without smiling. Fandral pulled out the chair beside this dark-haired boy for Sif, then went around the table and himself sat next to Thor.

“Fandral, you rogue, who is this new beauty and why have we not been introduced?” Thor said jovially.

“Your highnesses, may I present the Lady Sif, a fierce warrior maiden. Lady Sif, the princes of Asgard, Thor and Loki.”

Thor rose slightly from his chair to take Sif’s hand and kiss it. “An honor, my lady.” Loki did the same.

“I believe we’ve met, your highness,” Sif ventured.

“I have seen you on the practice yards,” said Loki coolly, “but I have not had the privilege of an official introduction.”

Sif was puzzled and somewhat hurt. She was only half paying attention to Fandral’s last introduction, of the dark-haired youth to Loki’s left: “This is Hogun, the son of the ambassador from Vanaheim.” Hogun, unsmiling, stood bolt upright to take Sif’s hand and kiss it, even though he was sitting right next to her. “I am honored to make your acquaintance, my lady,” he said very formally. He spoke the language of Asgard with perfect grammar but a heavy accent, rather than allowing the All-Tongue to translate for him.

“Lady Sif gave me a very well-deserved beating on the training yards today,” said Fandral cheerfully, “and now I owe her a drink. What is your pleasure, my lady? Mead? Ale? Wine? Something stronger?” He winked.

“Wine, please—well-watered,” said Sif. Her parents had never let her drink anything else, and she certainly didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of the princes of Asgard by reacting badly to an unfamiliar drink.

“We’ll soon cure her of that, eh, Fandral?” Thor said playfully, punching his friend lightly in the arm as he stood to go to the bar.

“Before long she’ll be drinking straight whiskey,” Fandral said over his shoulder.

While Fandral was at the bar, Thor asked Sif polite questions about her family, which she answered just as politely. Fandral returned with the wine, which was stronger and more bitter than Sif was used to, but she drank it gamely while the boys chatted with each other with all the ease of long acquaintance.

Or three of them did, anyway; Loki seemed to be on the fringe of the conversation, mostly quiet, frequently staring down at his wine cup and distractedly turning it around in his hands. At some point Hogun leaned forward to better hear what Thor and Fandral were saying, and Sif leaned slightly back to try to catch Loki’s eye. Though Loki had been looking down, he noticed her change of posture and finally met her gaze. Sif saw there the recognition she had been looking for, but also a warning. Then it dawned on her: she couldn’t tell anyone that she’d met Loki before because of how they had met; he didn’t want them to know that he had been going out to the training yards in the middle of the night for extra practice. “You came to practice when no one would know you were here,” he had guessed, and then said, “So did I.”

Sif resolved to find Loki alone later and speak to him in private; she wanted to ask him about something he had said at their first meeting, but clearly she could not bring it up in the company of his brother and their friends.

At that moment everyone’s attention was drawn by a new arrival at the table: Volstagg. Sif was puzzled to see her instructor; but, she found out later, he had only recently come of age and graduated from training into the ranks of Asgard’s warriors, and for a time he had been a classmate of Thor’s. “Norns, I need a drink,” he sighed thunderously (Sif hadn’t thought that such a thing was possible), sitting down heavily in the empty seat next to Fandral and across from Sif. “And some food. Teaching always makes me hungry.”

“Is there anything that doesn’t?” Fandral ribbed him.

Volstagg turned to face Fandral and pointed his finger warningly in the younger boy’s face. “You should show more respect for your teachers, lad, especially for teachers who saw you get knocked on your arse by a—” He was about to say “by a girl,” but he remembered that Sif was right across the table from him. “—by a recent beginner in the fighting arts,” he finished, sounding slightly awkward. He nodded to Sif, and stretched out his hand; when Sif offered her own, he did not kiss it, as the others had, but shook it with a firmness that verged on painful. Sif was strangely gratified by the gesture. “A recent beginner,” he continued (trying to make his hurried change of verbal course earlier sound fully planned), “who has made astonishing progress in just a few months. Which calls for a toast. Barkeep!” he shouted, turning around. “Ale, if you please. And a leg of mutton.”

The barkeeper hurried out carrying a huge tankard of ale in both hands. Volstagg took it, raised it in the air (itself quite a feat of strength), and waited for the rest of them to raise their glasses. Sif, deeply embarrassed, covered her face with her hands. Volstagg boomed: “To Lady Sif, the first maiden warrior of Asgard—”

“Not the first,” Loki corrected quietly.

Volstagg looked startled; Fandral snickered slightly; Thor rolled his eyes. Sif, far from insulted, gave Loki a grateful smile, which he acknowledged with his eyes but did not return. Volstagg cleared his throat and continued: “One of the first maiden warriors of Asgard, and bound to become one of the best. Not just of the maiden warriors, either.”

“To Lady Sif,” Thor repeated with a kind smile, and Fandral echoed him. They all drank. The boys, including Volstagg, resumed their easy chatting; Loki resumed turning his cup around in his hands. He was the first to excuse himself. Sif stayed long enough to finish her wine (she was impressed with herself for managing to drink it all), then also excused herself, pleading weariness from her first day training with the older boys.

Sif had a feeling she knew where Loki had gone. Among Astrid’s friends, who delighted in gossiping about the royal family, Loki had a reputation not only for being quick-witted (hence “Silvertongue”), but also for being studious and reclusive, and spending an extraordinary amount of time in the library. Sif had, of course, been to the royal library to read books and write the essays assigned by her tutor, but she (like most of the young lords and ladies of the court) tried not to spend any more time there than was absolutely necessary. Suddenly, though, she felt ashamed of that fact; would Loki find her foolish, shallow, ill-educated?

As Sif walked through the imposing double doors of the library, the librarian, sitting at a desk close to the entrance, glared at her suspiciously; this, she had found, was the librarian’s usual demeanor. She wandered around the towering shelves, among the reading tables with the floating lamps that automatically illuminated when someone sat down at them. She found Loki in one of the back corners of the library, ensconced in a window seat with his boots on the floor and his stockinged feet up on the cushion. He was reading something written on a scroll of papyrus in characters she didn’t recognize. Suddenly she felt foolish and anxious, and was afraid to interrupt him. She wondered if she could just turn around and leave—but he had already noticed her presence. He looked up. “Lady Sif,” he said. He didn’t smile, but his tone was warm.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your reading, your highness,” she said nervously. “I can go if you want me to.”

Loki raised his eyebrows. “If you look for someone in a library, it’s very likely that they’re going to be reading, so this can’t come as a surprise.”

Sif flushed. She opened her mouth without knowing what she was going to say, but then Loki rescued her. “I apologize for not acknowledging our previous acquaintance earlier; but I trust that you understood why I could not.”

Sif nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize it earlier. Then I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself…”

“No harm done,” Loki said with a hint of a smile (at last). “My secret is still safe.” He began rolling up the sides of the scroll so that his place was saved where the two rolls came together. “Please, sit.” Loki swung his long legs down off the seat to make room for Sif. “Did you wish to talk to me about something?”

“Yes, I—” Sif sat down, gathering her thoughts. “I can’t stop thinking about what you said—about everyone being allowed to do what they’re best at, no matter their class or gender. I’ve never heard anyone say anything like that before.”

“Of course not,” said Loki with a quiet snort of contempt. At first Sif thought the contempt was for her ignorance, but then he continued, “Why would they, when the current system works so well for them?”

“But you said there were good arguments for your view.”

“Yes.”

“Where? Who made them? Why haven’t I ever heard them?”

Loki held up the scroll he had been reading. “Plato. A Midgardian philosopher who wrote… oh, fifteen hundred years ago? Two thousand? Something like that. And the reason you haven’t heard the arguments is because most people here think that Midgard has nothing to teach us—my renowned tutor included.” Loki’s voice held the chill of scorn.

Sif had always thought that Asgard only taught Midgard, never the other way around; but she didn’t want to align herself with the targets of Loki’s scorn, so she did not say so. “What does Plato say about it?”

A slight gleam entered Loki’s eyes; it seemed that he enjoyed explaining things. “Well, the basic idea is that children don’t always resemble their parents—at least, not in every way. Just because your father was a cobbler doesn’t mean you’ll make a good cobbler; and just because your father was a warrior doesn’t mean you’ll make a good warrior. But surely everyone is better off if their shoes are being made by the people who are best suited to be cobblers, and their city is protected by the people who are best suited to be warriors.”

“Of course,” said Sif. “But how would they—the people running the city, I suppose—figure out who’s best suited for what? The children would have to try their hand at everything.”

“Precisely,” said Loki, his eyes now thoroughly lit up. “That’s why all the children of the city would receive the same education, which would be designed to figure out which of them should be farmers, artisans, and merchants, which ones should be soldiers, and which should be the future rulers of the city.”

“So they would be separated at some point, to learn their different occupations.”

“Right,” Loki replied. “The students who reach the limit of their ability for mathematics, science, history, and such early on would stop their theoretical education and be taught a trade. The ones who reach their limit somewhat later and also excel at physical activities would become the guardians of the city. The ones who do the best in the theoretical disciplines would also be taught dialectic—that is, reasoning, logic, philosophy—and they would be trained to govern the city.”

Sif pondered this for a moment. “Wouldn’t it be hard for the families, if a child is placed at a different level from his parents? Wouldn’t a guardian be disappointed and ashamed if his son became a farmer? And wouldn’t a child be ashamed of his parents if he became a ruler when they were only artisans?”

“Excellent question,” Loki said, beaming at how quickly his (temporary) student caught on. “That’s why the children would all be raised together and wouldn’t know who their parents were, and after infancy the parents would never know which child was theirs.”

Sif was stunned. “Wouldn’t the parents be devastated, having their child taken away from them as a baby?”

“No, no, no,” Loki said impatiently. “It would be considered completely normal. No one in the society would keep their children, or form any kind of relationship with them, so they wouldn’t think to be devastated.”

Sif was somewhat disturbed by the lack of familial sentiment Loki was showing. “But wouldn’t people want to raise their own children? Or just to have children around?”

Loki scoffed. “I don’t see why—I tend to think they’re mostly a nuisance. The people who really liked children and wanted to spend time with them could become teachers or nursery attendants, I suppose.”

Sif shook her head, still trying to wrap her mind around these foreign ideas. “You really don’t think the ties of blood are strong enough that parents would miss their own children, and want to know what became of them? Or that children would want to know who their parents were?”

Loki shrugged. “I think a lot of it is social convention, really. If people weren’t told they were supposed to feel special loyalty for their blood kin, I’m not certain they would.”

Sif stared at him in silence for a few moments. “I’ve shocked you,” Loki observed.

“No—well, yes, but… tell me what Plato says about women, and what he thinks they should be allowed to do.”

“Of course—that’s why we’re having this conversation, isn’t it? Well, the point about gender is much the same as the one about class: there’s as much variety in individual dispositions and talents among women as there is among men; not all women are well-suited to ‘women’s work,’ so-called—cooking, sewing, housekeeping, and so on. Plato acknowledges that some women are better at fighting, and at thinking and ruling, than some men—than most men, really; and some women are better at those things than they are at anything else, so more benefit would come to the society if they were trained to fight and to rule well than if they were forced to cook and sew badly for some unfortunate husband…”

“Some unfortunate husband?” Sif repeated indignantly.

“…but of course the greatest misfortune belongs to the women who are forced to waste their lives on tasks that make them miserable, and to the society itself, which is deprived of their talents as guardians and rulers.”

“At least this Plato fellow got some things right,” said Sif.

Loki smiled wickedly. “Although he did think that women in general are less capable than men—that while there were women who would make better rulers and guardians than most men, the very best of them would always be men.”

“Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Sif scoffed.

Loki laughed with a slight bitterness that was familiar from their previous conversation. “To disprove it conclusively, you’d have to defeat my illustrious brother in single combat.”

“Maybe I will,” Sif replied, affecting haughtiness.

“I sincerely look forward to that day,” Loki said with another laugh.

“Do you—resent him?” Sif asked seriously, before she could stop herself. She immediately regretted it. What a question to ask one prince of Asgard about the other!

Loki certainly looked taken aback, but not angry or offended. After a pause, he said softly: “As the yew tree might resent the great pine that towers above and drinks in the sunlight.”

Sif felt a strange urge to put a comforting hand on his arm, but she thought she had probably done enough terribly presumptuous things for one day. “I’m sorry,” she instead said gently.

“Don’t be,” said Loki, brightening. “Be glad that Asgard will have such a mighty warrior in her service.” If he was trying to hide the bitterness in his tone, he wasn’t doing it very well. He put the scroll he had been reading atop a small stack of books he appeared to have set aside for himself on the window ledge behind the seat, then bent down to pull his boots back on. “Now, if I have satisfied your hunger for philosophy, our families will probably be expecting us for supper.”

Chapter Text

After that first drink at the King’s Arms, Sif was more or less officially adopted into Thor and Loki’s group of friends.  Besides joining them for a drink after training most days, she also came with them on the outings they took on the two days a week when students were given a rest from their lessons.  Sometimes they went hunting in the kingswood (a distinct advantage to being friends with the king’s sons), or in the hills outside the city; a few times they went sailing in an old-fashioned ship (which was considerably harder than it looked, what with all the different ropes needed to release or secure the sails), or camping in the mountains (an expedition that took up both of their free days).

Although Sif’s parents had at first been resistant to her abandoning her womanly studies for military training, her friendship with the princes of Asgard soon reconciled them to the idea.  Indeed, Sif once overheard her mother expressing to her father the hope that Sif would marry one of the princes.  The idea had not crossed her mind (although she had begun her monthly bleeding some time ago, she still felt too young to be thinking seriously of marriage), and when she heard it, it was all she could do not to burst out laughing.  But once it had been called to her attention, she could not seem to banish it entirely, no matter how strange and foolish it sounded.  At odd moments, she would find herself looking at Thor or Loki and wondering what it would be like to be married to him, before shaking the disturbing thought away.

After spending time with the friends for only a short while, Sif became conscious of the peculiar dynamics of the group.  Thor was clearly the center around which everything revolved, as well as the leader who made most of the decisions about what they would do.  Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun complemented each other well: they shared a deep loyalty to Thor and a commitment to their calling as warriors, but their characters were different enough to even each other out—Hogun’s seriousness balanced the easy joviality of the other two; Volstagg’s basic warmth and kindness balanced Hogun’s occasional tendency to coldness and Fandral’s tendency to flippant thoughtlessness.

Only Loki didn’t really seem to fit in; as he had that first day in the King’s Arms, he hovered at the edge of the group, often saying little in their conversations.  As Sif knew from their discussion about Plato in the library, Loki could talk eagerly, and at great length, when invited to; but somehow the conversations of the other four always dwelt on topics about which he had little to say.  Sif wondered if he had always been this quiet, or if he had tried to talk to the other boys about the things that interested him—about philosophy, perhaps, or science, or magic—and had been rebuffed, and learned to keep his mouth shut.  She learned, however, that the advantage to sitting next to Loki at the pub, or riding close to him on their outings, was that she alone got to hear the quiet snide comments he sometimes made about the others.

When he did hold the attention of the group, it was because of the (mostly harmless) pranks he liked to play on the others.  Once, for example, he replaced one of the potions Fandral used on his hair with some kind of resin, so that when he ran his hands through his hair (as he did often, very conscious of the effect it had on girls), it stuck straight up as if a cow had licked it.  It took a little while to notice the snickers he was getting, but he looked in the mirror often enough as a matter of habit that he realized after only a couple of hours what had happened.  It took several vigorous washes to get the resin out.  Another time, on a hunt, Loki replaced Thor’s knife with a folding stage dagger, so that when he tried to cut the throat of a doe they had cornered, it just collapsed against the animal’s neck; during the moment Thor took to figure out what had happened, the doe, although wounded by an arrow in her haunch, recovered from her terror enough to flee, knocking Thor over as she burst out of his grip.  Their supper that night was rather more meager than usual—they had to make do with a couple of rabbits they had trapped and the smoked meat and bread they had brought from the palace—but Loki said it was worth it for the stupid confused look on Thor’s face.  Sif pointed out that the deer probably also thanked him.

One of Loki’s more involved pranks, which required the (rather cheaply bought) cooperation of one of the bartenders at the King’s Arms, was to bubble helium gas through Volstagg’s ale.  He didn’t notice at first, since the drink was slightly effervescent anyway, but the next time he spoke, his usually deep, booming voice instead came out high-pitched and squeaky.  Everyone except Loki collapsed in fits of laughter, though Loki was hard-pressed to suppress his own.  It took Volstagg a little while to figure out what the culprit was; Loki almost lost his composure when Volstagg’s first reaction was to take another draught of his ale to try to clear his throat.  Loki really only played pranks on Thor, Fandral, and Volstagg, though.  He wasn’t sure if Hogun would have a sense of humor about it (or anything else, for that matter); and Sif was new enough to the group, and her position still precarious enough, that Loki spared her the possibility of ridicule.

Sif continued to make rapid progress in her training, though she never managed to best Fandral again at swordplay after that first rage-fueled match; and before long he reached the age to join Hogun in the next class up (the two of them were between Thor and Loki in age).  Sif was still able to beat Loki consistently with the sword, though they were more evenly matched at quarterstaff fighting (his height and long arms were surely an advantage), and his skill at archery far outstripped hers (or most anyone else’s).

Loki seemed to find his true forte, though, the week that Volstagg introduced them to a skill that he said was one of the less important ones for military success: projectile weapons, including javelin- and knife-throwing.  “The trouble with this technique is that once you’ve thrown your weapon away, you have to figure out a way to get it back,” Volstagg explained to the class, who were ranged across from a row of targets.

“…which is simple enough if you can use magic,” Loki leaned over to mutter in Sif’s ear.

“And unlike arrows, it’s difficult to carry around a big supply of javelins or knives,” Volstagg continued.

“…unless you have magic,” Loki muttered.  Volstagg glared at him; he straightened up and smiled sweetly.

Volstagg instructed them to line up four to a target to practice.  Sif and Loki found a target together, then two other boys joined them.  They took turns throwing the weapons.  Sif was hopeless at it; her aim was poor (as she knew from her struggles with archery), and the weight of the knives and javelin in her hands and the position she took to throw them felt strange.  Often she threw short or wide.  She was relieved to see that the other boys were also struggling with the grip and throwing stance.  (Volstagg had wisely set the targets up against a wall, so that no one could wander into the space behind them and be hit by the many stray blades that flew between the targets.)  Except Loki, that was.  He, too, seemed uncomfortable with the heft of the javelin, and while he seldom missed the target altogether, it frequently struck well outside the center.  But the way he held the throwing knives, and his smile when he let fly, reminded Sif of the way she had felt when she first held a sword: as if it was a part of her arm that had been missing.

Volstagg noticed that Loki was doing considerably better than any of the other students with the throwing knives, and since Loki seldom enough provided a stellar example, Volstagg seized the opportunity to let the younger prince shine.  He asked Loki to demonstrate his throwing technique for the class, and as he did, Volstagg drew their attention (and made slight corrections) to his posture, the set of his feet, the position of his arms and shoulders as he prepared to throw, the way his whole body followed through after he let go of the knife.  Sif tried to take note of all the details so she could emulate them, but she suddenly found herself distracted by something completely irrelevant: the fluid beauty of his movements.  The intrusive thought about what it would like to be married to him wandered into her head again, and for once it she didn’t find it disturbing—though she quickly became disturbed by the very fact that she wasn’t disturbed.

Not long after, a slight complication arose in training.  Volstagg brought it up over drinks at the King’s Arms on the last day of the work week.  “So… Sif,” he began, sounding uncomfortable.  “Next week I wanted to review bare-handed fighting with the lads.  You know, bring them back to basics.  But, um… you’re a woman…”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Fandral interjected dryly.

Volstagg cleared his throat, glared at Fandral, and continued.  “And I’m afraid some of the lads might be tempted to, uh, take inappropriate liberties when you’re fighting with them at such close quarters.”

“I see,” said Sif, setting down her mead (she still had not acquired a taste for ale—or for whiskey, despite Thor and Fandral’s teasing).  “So, what do you propose?”

“Well, I… I thought if you weren’t comfortable with the idea of wrestling with the boys, you could just… sit the week out.  Practice archery or blade throwing on your own, something like that.”

“But it would be helpful for me to practice fighting without weapons,” Sif pointed out.

“Right.  So, if you don’t mind the, ah, attention, I could give them all a stern talking-to—‘don’t try anything,’ and all that.”

“Hmm.”  Sif didn’t exactly relish the idea of Volstagg taking a moment to point out to all the boys that she was, in fact, a woman (with breasts and everything!), and she wondered if it might not have the opposite effect from the one he was trying to achieve.

“Or you could just partner her with me,” Loki suggested quietly.  They all turned to him with some surprise, since he hadn’t spoken in a while (as usual); Sif suspected that when he wasn’t playing pranks on them, the three members of the group who weren’t Sif and Thor had a tendency to forget that he was there.  (This did, however, appear to be an asset when he decided to play a prank.)  “At least at first.  I can set an example of appropriate conduct during weaponless combat with a lady.”  He gave Sif a humorous smile.

Sif’s stomach gave an odd little leap.  She tried to ignore the feeling and returned the smile with as much composure as she could muster.

“Well,” said Thor, “that sounds like a reasonable solution.  Sif, does that sound agreeable to you?”

Agreeable wasn’t exactly the word Sif would have chosen to describe it, but… “Yes, of course.”

“Good, then,” said Volstagg, looking relieved.  “Thank you, Loki.”  He reached around behind Sif to clap Loki on the back, which made Loki jump slightly and look distinctly uncomfortable.

Sif spent the next two days in a state of nervous anticipation.  She didn’t see Loki all weekend, either—the princes’ attendance was required for some formal occasion, so the group dispensed with their usual weekend outing—which somehow made it worse.  Instead she spent the weekend with her sister Astrid (they went for a ride, and Astrid attempted to make up for some of the time Sif had spent away from her weaving and embroidery lessons), who seemed to notice Sif’s jumpiness and kept giving her knowing looks.

At last the time came for the dreaded training session.  Fortunately, the lesson started out very routinized: Volstagg taught them specific holds and ways to escape from them, specific blows and how to block them, and had his students practice them slowly to master the technique.  Sif was mostly successful at focusing her attention on the content of the lesson, but she found herself noticing strange things: how her heart beat faster when she felt Loki’s grip on her wrist; how striking his dark hair (unusual among Asgardians) looked against his pale skin; how close their faces were when they fought hand-to-hand, so that she could see distinctly the clear green of his eyes, the aristocratic arch of his nose, the slender curve of his lips.  Stop it, Sif, she told herself.

Volstagg had most of them switch to a different sparring partner to practice fighting at a more natural pace, but he kept Sif and Loki together.  Thankfully, the instinct to protect herself from actually getting hit enabled her to keep her head enough to respond with the right twists, blocks, and counter-blows.  Still, irrelevant thoughts kept drifting across her mind, things like How does he have such dark hair and such fair skin? and Thor’s nose doesn’t look like that.

Sif was distracted all through their post-training drinks (though Volstagg congratulated them, and himself, on the success of their stratagem) and through the morning lesson with her tutor.  Feeling slightly reckless, she asked him about Plato, and why they never read any Midgardian philosophers.  Her tutor, somewhat bemused, replied that if she was interested in philosophy he could recommend the writings of some well-respected Asgardian thinkers.  Sif wrote down the recommendations, then later crumpled up the paper and threw it in the fireplace in her room.

As Sif had anticipated, the fighting that day became less like boxing and more like wrestling, as Volstagg taught them how to knock their opponent to the ground and what to do once there—how to hold an opponent down, escape from holds, deliver and block blows.  Of course, he partnered Sif with Loki again.  Sif probably would have been too flustered to take in any of the lesson if she hadn’t found the situation so funny.  By focusing on how hilarious it was that she was expected to tussle on the ground in a completely serious educational context with a boy that she was finding herself suddenly, inconveniently attracted to, Sif was miraculously able to keep up with the instructions, and even managed to pin Loki more often than he pinned her.

The next day, finally, Volstagg thought that the other boys had internalized Loki’s perfectly gentlemanly example enough to trust one of them with being Sif’s sparring partner.  Both Volstagg and Loki gave the boy stern warning looks, which he seemed to understand completely, and the match proceeded without incident.  Sif even switched partners twice (both times, Volstagg and Loki gave the boys the same warning glare), and nothing untoward happened.  For her part, Sif was intensely relieved.  She was starting to think that she would have preferred to be groped by some impertinent lordling, whom she could then give a forceful lesson in respect (much like the one she had given Fandral), rather than have to try to concentrate on technique, and ignore her stupid irrelevant thoughts, while she was so close to Loki.

Sif found herself partnered with Loki only once more that week, on the last day of their bare-handed fighting review.  Volstagg was letting them fight free-form, to see whether, in the context of a relatively realistic fight, they could remember the moves they had learned and when to use them, and improvise when necessary.  Sif had not expected to be matched up with Loki again, since they had spent the first two days of that week practicing with each other, and when Volstagg put them together again, Sif felt her stomach drop; but she could not very well protest.

Through her head as they fought ran an accompanying monologue of Oh shit, oh shit, focus, Sif, focus.  But how is his face so beautiful?  That angled shape, those cheekbones… Stop it, Sif!  But he moves like a cat, like flowing water, and he’s holding my arm and oh shit, break out of it!  Oh Norns, what if we end up on the ground and he’s on top of me?  Naturally, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she let her guard down and he did manage to kick her leg out from under her.  Her knee hit the ground hard, but—feeling suddenly furious with herself for being silly and weak, and with him for being beautiful and seeming completely indifferent to her—she pulled him down with her, pushed him down onto his chest, and put her knee on his back.  His hands, still free, struggled to push her off, but she grabbed his wrists and pinned them behind his back.

“Ouch.  I surrender,” he said, his voice muffled because his face was pressed against the ground.

“Good,” she said, still feeling the fury coursing hot through her chest and stomach.  She let him up, and saw that the cheek that had hit the ground looked very red; he would probably develop a bruise.  Sif’s knee hurt like Hel.  Her fury started to subside.  “I’m sorry, it looks like I hurt you.”

Loki touched his face carefully.  “I’ll be fine.”

“Let’s go to the healers’ after class—they can give you something that will keep it from bruising.”

He smiled crookedly.  “No, I think I’d rather wear it as a token of your esteem.”

Sif’s stomach gave another strange jolt.  Did that mean what she thought it meant?

Chapter Text

The weekend after those uncomfortable lessons in weaponless fighting, Sif decided to skip the group’s hunting trip, pleading indisposition; weaving lessons with Astrid sounded reassuringly boring and familiar.  The next week’s training was spent on spear fighting (Volstagg just gave them quarterstaffs with one end painted red and told them to imagine it was tipped with a blade), and by the following weekend, things were (it seemed) more or less back to normal.

Thor decided they should take it easy, in case Sif was still feeling unwell, so they just took a ride into the hills for a picnic.  It was autumn, so the trees that surrounded them as they rode were vibrant with the colors of flame.  They stopped to eat in a meadow where the last of the summer wildflowers were fading.  Sif noticed that the bruise on Loki’s cheek was also fading, taking on a greenish tinge in place of its earlier bluish-purple.  (The bruise on Sif’s knee, however, was still in full bloom; she, too, had decided to keep it as a badge rather than letting the healers treat it.)

After lunch, Volstagg stretched out to take a nap (“Typical,” Fandral snorted), and the rest of them tried to decide how to amuse themselves.  Thor proposed short sprinting races across the meadow (“Right after lunch?” Fandral protested), or going for a swim in the nearby pond; but then, when he turned to Loki for ideas, he noticed that Loki had already taken a book out of his saddlebag and started reading.

Thor sighed.  “Really, Loki?  You brought a book?”

Loki looked up.  “What?”

“You can’t truly be surprised,” Hogun remarked dryly.

“Frankly, I’m surprised the two of you are even related,” Fandral said, laughing.  “Assuming you actually are…”

Thor laughed, too.  “Yes, I’ve often wondered that myself.”

In retrospect, Sif realized, she should have noticed the stony expression on Loki’s face as he put the book down, the way his lips were slightly pursed and his jaw clenched.  But at the time—probably still feeling the effects of the wine they had brought along for their picnic—she was just struck by the way their musings resonated with the strange uninvited thoughts she’d had the week before.  “Your faces really don’t look anything alike,” she chimed in.  She at least had enough presence of mind not to comment specifically on the shape of their noses.  “And I don’t think anyone else in your family has black hair—where did that come from?”

“Lady Sif, are you suggesting that my brother is a changeling?” Thor asked with mock dismay.  “Perhaps some dark elves stole my real brother from his cradle and left this strange creature in his place.”

Sif didn’t notice until too late that Loki’s lips were moving slightly as he murmured something under his breath, and his fingers were curling into odd shapes.  “Who knows where black hair comes from?” he said cryptically.  Fandral gasped, then guffawed; Thor looked stunned for a moment before he too started to laugh.

“What is it?” Sif asked, clearly not in on the joke.  Thor and Fandral continued chuckling.  “Your hair,” Hogun said simply.

Sif pulled a lock of her hair forward (while she usually pulled it back into a ponytail for training, she often left it down for days of recreation), and when she saw it, her mouth fell open.  Before, her hair had been the yellow-gold color of summer wheat, but now it was as dark as Loki’s own.

At first, Sif felt a little thrill of pride that she was now considered enough a part of their little crew that Loki was willing to play one of his tricks on her.  But it occurred to her that she had never seen him use magic in his pranks on the others; this seemed somehow more serious.  “Loki, change it back!” she protested with half-feigned indignation.

Loki gave a little shrug and made another complicated hand gesture.  Suddenly Sif’s head felt strangely light, and she shivered as she felt a breeze run across her scalp.  Dread gathered in the pit of her stomach, strengthened by the looks of shock on the boys’ faces—including Loki’s.  Fandral guffawed again, but it sounded nervous.  Thor put his hand over his mouth, seemingly unsure whether to laugh or not.

Sif put a hand on her head, and her fears were confirmed when she felt nothing but smooth skin.  “What did you do?” she demanded, feeling horrified and betrayed.

“I—that’s not what I meant to do,” Loki stammered hurriedly.  “I was just trying to undo the previous spell.  Listen, Sif, I can fix it…”

“Like you fixed the last one?” Sif retorted.  Her nose prickled as tears of hurt and anger started to gather in her eyes.  She couldn’t let them see her cry.  Turning on her heel, she ran to the stand of trees where they had tethered their horses.  As she re-saddled and bridled her horse, she heard Loki calling after her—“Sif, I’m sorry, I’ll find a way to fix it”—but she ignored him.  She threw on her cloak, thanking the Norns that it had a hood, mounted her horse, and rode back toward the palace.  When she was confident that she was out of the sight and hearing of the others, she started crying in earnest.  Her horse swiveled his ears around, disturbed by the strange sound, and he slowed down, sensing her distress.  She stroked his neck gratefully, then dug her heels in to speed him on.

Sif’s tears had subsided by the time she got back to the palace.  But after stabling and washing down her horse and giving him hay and water, she crept back into her room through her window, which she tended to leave open a crack (she liked the fresh air, and the palace was too well-guarded to need to worry about thieves).  She didn’t want anyone to see her, including her family.

She took off her cloak and boots and curled up on the bed, her mind racing.  What if her hair never grew back?  She had no idea how magic worked, or what spell Loki had accidentally cast—if it was really an accident.  She had always thought that his pranks were harmless fun; but he had used magic on her, which she had never seen him do before.  Maybe he really meant to hurt and humiliate her.  He had always seemed kind to her; she recalled all the things he had said about how women should be allowed to do what they were best at, including fighting and ruling.  But she also recalled the sarcastic remarks about Thor and his friends that he made quietly while sitting next to her, so that only she could hear.  Did he make similar remarks about her to the others when she could not hear them?  She remembered another thing he had said when talking about Plato: that parents and children wouldn’t think to care about each other if society didn’t instruct them to.  Sif had dismissed it as a philosophical eccentricity; but did it in fact reveal a profound coldness in his nature?  How could she have been so wrong about him?

Sif started crying again.  Her mother must have heard her, because she knocked on the door and asked, “Sif, are you there?  Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m all right,” Sif called back, trying to steady her voice.

“Do you want to talk about anything?” her mother asked gently.

“No, I’m fine,” Sif repeated.  “I just need to be alone for a while.”

“Are you sure?” came her mother’s warm voice through the door.  The offer of comfort was tempting; but Sif wasn’t ready to share her humiliation with anyone who hadn’t already witnessed it.

“Yes.  Please, I just want to be alone.”

Sif waited until she heard her mother’s footsteps retreating down the hall, then started crying again more quietly.  She cried until she was completely worn out, then fell asleep.

She was awakened, perhaps two hours later, by another knock on her door.  “What is it?” she asked hollowly.

“Prince Loki is here,” said her mother.  “He wishes to speak with you.”  Her voice was still gentle, but held a stern note that Sif read as warning her against the (extremely strong) temptation to tell him to go away.

Sif steeled herself.  “Tell him he can come in.”

“Wouldn’t you rather come out into the front room?” her mother asked significantly.  What she meant to say was, It’s hardly proper for a young lady to invite a boy into her bedroom without a chaperone.

Sif sighed, dragged herself off her bed, walked to the door and opened it a crack.  Her mother gasped when she saw Sif’s bald head.  “I don’t want Astrid and Gunnar to see,” Sif said quietly.  “It’ll be all right.  Just tell Lo—Prince Loki he can come talk to me in here.”

Her mother nodded and bustled back into the front hall.  Sif closed the door again, but stayed standing in front of it, waiting.  As soon as she heard a tentative knock, she yanked the door open, jerked her head toward the room to indicate to Loki that he should come in, then closed the door quickly behind her.

“How may I help you, your highness?” she asked coldly.

Loki looked down at something he was holding in his hands: a small jar of some greenish substance.  “You can let me fix my mistake,” he said quietly.

Sif gritted her teeth to keep herself from making some angry outburst.  With pointed calmness, she asked, “How do I know you won’t just replace it with another mistake?”

“I did my research this time,” Loki assured her.  “It’s just a spell to make hair grow faster—it’s very common cosmetic magic.  And I got this ointment from the barber’s; it does the same thing.”  He held up the small jar he was holding.

Sif looked at him suspiciously.  “Can I just use the ointment without the spell?”

Loki shrugged.  “They can be used separately, but they’re more effective in concert—they reinforce each other.”

“Hmm,” Sif replied.  She wasn’t sure she trusted him.

Loki cleared his throat.  “I’m truly sorry about what happened, Sif.  Please let me explain.”

“You meant to undo the hair color spell but you removed all my hair instead,” Sif said shortly.  “You said so before.”

“No, not that.  May I—can we sit down?”

There was a cushioned chair in front of the fireplace; Sif pulled it around to face the bed, gestured for Loki to sit down on it, and then sat on the side of the bed herself.  She waited in stony silence for him to speak.

Loki looked down, turning the jar around awkwardly in his hands.  He cleared his throat again, looked up, and said, “I’m sorry for casting the first spell on you.  I just—I was angry and I wasn’t thinking straight.  I really shouldn’t do anything when I’m angry; it always turns out badly.”

Odd, thought Sif; she always seemed to fight better when she was angry.  “Why were you angry?  Because I said that no one else in your family had black hair?” she asked, somewhat incredulous.

Loki licked his lips and kept spinning the jar around in his hands.  “The others joke sometimes about how it seems like I’m not related to the rest of my family—to Thor especially.  It’s become a bit of a sore spot.”

“They didn’t seem to mean it cruelly,” Sif pointed out.

“Maybe not, but…” Loki sighed through his long nose.  “I know that I’m different.  I’ve known it for a long time.  And it’s almost never worked in my favor.  Asgard honors warriors far more than scholars, and Thor is a warrior through and through.  But I… I’ve never been the best at fighting, and I’ve never even enjoyed it that much, either.  The only weapons I’m especially good with—ranged weapons; bow and arrow, throwing knives—tend to be considered a coward’s weapons.  And using magic in battle—people think that’s even more cowardly; that it’s cheating.  Magic itself is dismissed as a woman’s art—something to make the laundry dry faster.  Or hair grow.”  He gave a slight laugh, hefting the jar of ointment.  “But I really think magic can have important tactical uses,” he continued earnestly.  Sif heard some of the same eager warmth in his voice that he had had when he was talking about Plato.  “Defensive ones, mostly—concealment, misdirection, and the like.  But a skilled magician could also change the weather conditions to favor one side in a battle—hiding an advancing army in mist, or controlling the direction of the wind during a naval battle.”

“Yes, I see you have no interest in fighting at all,” Sif said dryly.

Loki laughed.  “Yes, well—maybe I am a coward after all, but I’d rather be the general in the command tent poring over the big map and working out overall strategy than out on the battlefield.”  He gave another short laugh, then said, “I have the wrong kind of metal in my soul.”

“Come again?” Sif asked, puzzled.

“You remember what I told you about Plato and his ideal city?”

“Of course.”  It was their first real conversation; how could she forget?

“Well, in order to make sure people will accept the way things are done—that parents must give up their children to be raised by the state; that everyone must take on the occupation assigned to them—the lawgivers must tell what Plato calls a ‘noble lie.’”

“That sounds like a contradiction in terms,” Sif remarked.

“It’s meant to, but it’s really not that strange.  The idea is just that sometimes it’s best for everyone if people believe something false.  Like that good and noble warriors will go to Valhalla when they die, while base and cowardly ones will go to Hel.”

Sif was momentarily stunned.  “What do you mean, that’s false?  You don’t believe in Valhalla?”

Loki’s eyes widened.  “Um… never mind that.  You understand the idea.  Plato’s noble lie is this: all of the citizens are brothers and sisters, regardless of who their birth parents may have been; they are all children of the earth.  And as children of the earth, they are all born with a bit of metal in their souls.  But different individuals have different kinds of metal: those who were meant to be farmers and artisans have baser metals, like bronze and iron; guardians have silver; and the rulers, the philosophers, have gold.  And the city will fall if anyone with a bronze or iron soul is guarding it, or if it is ruled by anyone with bronze or iron or even silver in their souls.”

Sif looked at him skeptically.  “So… you’re saying that Thor has silver in his soul, while you have gold.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.  But it seems to me that in this regard, Asgardians value silver more highly than gold.”

Sif continued fixing him with a skeptical look.  “This is making me sound like an arrogant prat, isn’t it?” he said, quirking one side of his mouth into an ironic smile.

A little shocked by her own presumption, Sif replied, “Yes it is, a bit.”  She cleared her throat.  “All right, so you don’t like it when people make jokes about you not really being related to Thor.  Why did you attack me?  Fandral started it, and Thor took up the theme; and they’ve known you long enough that they should know it bothers you.”

Loki sighed, looking regretful.  “I—they should know, but they don’t.  I’ve never said anything.  I don’t want them to know it bothers me—I don’t want them to know that anything bothers me.”

“Loki… you do know that not everyone who knows your weaknesses will exploit them to hurt you, right?”

“Don’t be so sure,” Loki said darkly.  “Anyway, I—I guess I took my anger out on you because I felt—betrayed, in a strange way.  I thought you, of all people, would understand how hard it is to be different from everyone around you.  Not to live up to their expectations.”

Sif was puzzled.  “Of course I understand.  But… how was I supposed to make the connection between all that and the observation that you look different from the rest of your family?”

“I told you, I don’t think properly when I’m angry.  I do stupid things.”

“Apparently so,” Sif muttered.

“Can you forgive me?” he asked, seeking out her eyes with his.  Once more Sif was startled by their clear green, and in spite of her lingering anger, some of her foolish thoughts about what it would be like to be married to him came drifting back.

“I’ll only forgive you if you can make my hair grow back,” Sif told him sharply.

“You’ll let me fix it, then?”

“Yes.  I’ll give you the chance to redeem yourself.”

Loki laughed.  He pushed up his sleeves to make sure his hands could move freely and started to unscrew the lid from the jar of ointment.  “Wait—can’t I just put that on myself?” Sif said nervously.

“As I said, the spell and the ointment sort of reinforce each other, so it’ll work best if I do the spell while putting on the first coat.  Obviously you’ll reapply it later.”

Oh, for the love of Yggdrasil, Sif thought.  This was becoming absurd—unless he was putting them in these situations on purpose?  To toy with her?  Or… for some other reason?  She looked at the fading greenish bruise on his cheek: “I think I’ll wear it as a token of your esteem.”

Sif sat up straight and closed her eyes as Loki started muttering things in some strange language.  She couldn’t understand what he was saying, despite her knowledge of the All-Tongue; apparently magic was done in languages so arcane as to be inaccessible in that way.  She shuddered when she felt the cold paste touch her scalp.  “Hold still,” Loki told her.  “You try holding still while someone’s putting that stuff on your bare head,” she retorted.

He sighed and continued the incomprehensible muttering.  Sif tried not to think about the long, graceful fingers running over her head, which was exactly as successful as any effort not to think about something has ever been.  Eventually he stopped muttering and announced, “All right, that’s it for the spell.  Let me just finish covering your head with this.  Then you should put another coat on tomorrow morning, and a third tomorrow evening.  You should already see a fair amount of hair tomorrow, but when you put the ointment on, try to get it directly on your scalp as much as possible.”

Sif tried to think of something to talk about, hoping to alleviate the unbearable awkwardness of the situation.  “So—how did you even know a spell to turn someone’s hair black?”

“Completely by accident.  I just came across it in a book one day.  Apparently some witch thought she’d look more imposing with black hair.”

“But why did you go to the trouble of learning it?  Your hair is already black.”

“I didn’t,” Loki answered.  “I have a very strange memory—I’ll remember a spell I saw in a book once, and only noticed because I thought it was amusing; but most days I don’t remember what I had for breakfast.  Or whether I had breakfast.”

“No wonder you’re so thin,” Sif teased him.

Loki snorted.  “There, all done.  You won’t have your long, luxurious tresses back by the time lessons start up again, but you should have a decent head covering.”

“Thank you,” said Sif, standing up and turning to face him.

“It’s truly the least I could do, considering that I’m the one who fucked it up in the first place.”

Startled by the profanity, Sif gave a small nervous giggle.  “Yes, I suppose you did.”

“Good night, Lady Sif,” he said, suddenly the soul of courtesy.  He held out his right hand, the way he had the night they first met.

“Good night, my prince,” she replied, and obediently placed her own right hand palm down on his.  As he bent to kiss her hand, she imagined what it would be like if instead he had leaned down to kiss her lips.  This time, instead of trying to banish the thought immediately, she decided to enjoy it.

The next morning, however, when she awoke to discover that the bristly new growth covering her head was still dark, she felt much less favorably disposed toward the second prince.  In fact, she threw a minor tantrum; she threw her hairbrush (currently quite useless) and some of her other sturdier possessions angrily onto the carpeted floor (she didn’t want to break anything and make a mess that she would have to clean up later), then threw herself onto her bed, curled up in a ball, and cried some more.   She didn’t leave her room all day; her mother, generally sympathetic to her plight, brought her trays of comforting food rather than forcing her to come out and face the ridicule of her siblings.  Sif thought she spied the hint of an I-told-you-so look on her mother’s face—a bit of This is what comes of friendship with magic users—which she thought was rich, since her mother had been so taken with the idea of Sif marrying one of the princes.  Just imagine having a magician for a son-in-law, Sif thought mutinously.  You’d have to be careful what you said at dinner…

She did, however, continue using the hair-growing ointment as Loki had instructed, since she reasoned that black hair was better than no hair.  By the time the week of lessons started again, her hair, while still very short, was no longer bristly; it formed a small cap on her head, which was the way some young boys deliberately wore their hair.  Someone might even have been fooled into thinking the look was intentional.

Sif’s mother must have explained to her siblings and her tutor what had happened, because none of them asked—though perhaps it was Sif’s murderous I dare you to say anything glare that stifled their curiosity.  Sif directed the same glare at the boys during afternoon training, though she reserved an especially poisonous expression for Loki, who averted his gaze from hers with an appropriate amount of guilt.  Volstagg tried to look sympathetic every time he turned toward her, but she thought she detected a hint of amusement in his face.

After practice she cornered Loki as he tried to sneak away from the training yards, not toward the pub, as usual, but toward the library.  “It’s still dark,” she said accusingly.  “I want you to turn it back.”

“I’m not sure I can,” he said regretfully, putting his hand on his forehead as if it hurt.

“Why not?” she demanded.  “Don’t you have a way to undo spells?  You screwed it up the first time, so just make sure you do it right.”

Loki shook his head.  “The reversal spell I know only works if it’s used immediately after the target spell.  It’s been two days, and I’ve worked other magic in the interim.”

“Fine.  If there’s a spell to turn hair black, there’s got to be a spell to turn it blond.”

Loki was rubbing his forehead again.  “I don’t know of any.  And I did look yesterday.  I looked very thoroughly.”

Sif was incredulous.  “There have got to be millions of women who want to turn their hair blond.”

“But apparently none of them invented a spell to do it.  You could always dye it…”

“I don’t want to dye it,” Sif snapped.  “I just want it to be the color it was.”

Now Loki started rubbing his eyes.  They did look tired and a little bloodshot.  “I think the best I can do is put a glamor on it so it looks blond again.  But the problem with that is that the glamor will dissipate as soon as anyone touches it.  Other than you, that is.”

So her hair would be its old color only as long as no one happened to touch it during training, and her mother never stroked it comfortingly—and no man ever touched it admiringly, or ran his hand through it as he kissed her.  Stupidly, she was imagining Loki doing that, his long graceful fingers lacing through the long golden hair she used to have—and still thought of herself as having—even as she glared at him with hate and fury.  She felt like she might burst into tears any moment, but she couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than crying in front of Loki, so she just turned and strode away as quickly as she could.  “I’m so sorry, Sif,” he called after her, but she didn’t turn around.  As soon as she was around a corner and knew he couldn’t see her, she broke into a run.

Chapter Text

As soon as Sif started spending time with the princes and their friends again, about a month after the awful incident, they tried gallantly to reassure her about her changed appearance.

“It looks quite striking,” Thor said kindly.  “Alluring, even,” Fandral contributed with a wink.  Both Thor and Sif glared at him.  “I didn’t say I was allured,” he pointed out with an air of wounded innocence.

“The dark hair makes you look stern and fearsome—like a Valkyrie,” Volstagg said.  “Perhaps the lads will be less tempted to underestimate you,” he added, looking significantly at Fandral.

Fandral’s expression progressed from wounded innocence to positively martyr-like.  “Will I never live that down?”

“No, you won’t,” said Hogun with complete seriousness.  Fandral sighed tragically.  Thor and Sif snickered.

“Actually, it looks rather like Loki’s,” Thor observed, returning to the subject of Sif’s hair.  Sif had noticed that herself; since the ends of her hair now reached the corners of her jaw, it was only slightly shorter than his.

“And he is quite pretty,” Fandral commented, his tone somewhere between teasing and mocking.

Sif’s first reaction was to wince.  As furious as she was with Loki, she was still sensitive to the way the others needled him, and saw the way his gaze hardened and his jaw tensed, belying his tolerant smile.  But then she felt a thrill of horror as it occurred to her that Fandral might be mocking her.  Was it completely obvious the way she felt about Loki?  Were they all reading all of her absurd thoughts?

“So, my lady, how can my brother atone for his grave crimes?” Thor asked with a playful smile.

Did he know that Loki had helped her grow her hair back faster, or tried to find a spell to change the color back?  Sif realized she wouldn’t be surprised if Loki hadn’t told any of them; he didn’t seem to want to reveal kindness any more than he wanted to reveal weakness.  Sif finally met Loki’s eyes.  He looked completely miserable.  Sif’s fury softened.  She gave him a smile that she hoped was reassuring.  “Well, he can buy me a drink, for a start.”

“Of course,” said Loki quietly.  He immediately stood up.

“That’s rather a meager start,” Thor remarked.

“I’m sure I can think of other ways for him to atone,” Sif said, a bit mischievously, as Loki headed toward the bar.  Then she thought she saw Fandral smirk, and her face grew hot.

Gradually Sif grew used to the idea of herself with dark hair.  Volstagg was right, she decided; it did look rather fearsome.  And it did look striking against her fair skin, in much the way that Loki’s did (though perhaps not as striking as his raven-black hair against his even fairer skin, with his luminous crystal-green eyes).  She wondered if he had noticed that.

The months passed.  Loki joined Fandral and Hogun in the class above Sif’s.  Although Sif was very close to Loki in age, she remained in the class that Volstagg taught so that she could catch up on all the lessons she had missed during the years she had wasted trying to learn how to weave, sew, draw, and sing like a lady.  But she still joined the boys for drinks most days after training, and for their outings most weekends.  And she still nursed her crush on Loki, while trying to conceal it as best she could.

Her older sister Astrid had noticed it, though.  In fact, she had first noticed Sif’s jumpy nervousness the weekend when she was anticipating having to practice bare-handed fighting with Loki, and ever since, Astrid had been keeping an eye on her sister’s growing air of distraction and anxiety, her tendency to wander into daydreams.  Eventually, one weekend afternoon when the princes were unavailable for an excursion and Sif returned to embroidery lessons with her sister, Astrid asked casually, “Who is he, then?”

Sif jumped slightly and poked herself with the needle through the fabric she was attempting to embroider.  “Shit,” she said, then, “Who is who?”

“Language, Sif,” said Astrid, pretending to be scandalized.  “Clearly you’ve been spending too much time with the boys.  But which one are you in love with?”

“Who says I’m in love with anyone?” Sif scoffed, stabbing the needle through the fabric a little more forcefully than necessary.

“Your entire demeanor says it,” Astrid replied.  “The way you stare off into the distance, and make little sketches that you hide with your hand when you’re supposed to be writing history essays, and fuss over your hair before you leave for training or your weekend outings.  Do tell me it’s one of the princes.  Mother and Father would be simply delighted.”

Sif didn’t reply.  She drew her lips together into a thin line and kept working on the somewhat mangled flower she was embroidering.

“It is!” Astrid exclaimed triumphantly.  “It’s got to be Thor, then.  He is quite the exemplar of manhood.”

Sif’s mouth closed even tighter as she continued to mangle the embroidered flower.

Astrid scrutinized Sif’s face, then put her own needlework down on her lap and stared at her sister with bemusement.  “Loki?” she said incredulously.

“What about him?” Sif said irritably, not looking up from her work.

“You’re in love with Loki,” Astrid said, shaking her head.  Then she picked up her embroidery again and said, “You’ll get over that soon.”

“Why would you say that?” Sif asked, carefully trying not to affirm or deny anything.

Astrid cleared her throat.  “He’s… not the most masculine youth you might encounter.”

“All right,” Sif acknowledged.  “And I’m not the most feminine young woman.  Does that mean I’ll never find a husband?”  She rolled her eyes.  “I’m devastated.”

 “That’s not exactly what I meant.”  Astrid put on her most authoritative sister-knows-best expression and continued, “Many girls your age are attracted to somewhat… androgynous youths because they find them less threatening.  More familiar.  But as you get older, that phase will pass.  You’ll be looking for… more of a man.”

“More of a man?” Sif repeated skeptically.  “Does having a thicker head make someone more of a man?”

Astrid sighed, then leaned forward and said quietly, “Listen, Sif.  I’m not sure that Loki would be interested in… someone like you.”

“What, you think he’d be looking for more of a lady?”  Sif bit off the words sharply.  She was no longer even attempting to deny Astrid’s suspicions.

“Actually… I think he’d also be looking for, um, more of a man.”

Sif was taken by surprise.  “Really?  What makes you think that?” she asked, forgetting her embroidery entirely.

“Well… no one has ever seen him wooing any of the young ladies of the court.  Unlike Thor and Fandral and the other lads you spend your time with.”

Sif snorted.  “So?  I haven’t seen him wooing any of the young lords, either.”

Astrid sighed again.  “Sure, that sort of thing isn’t illegal anymore, but it’s still not quite… proper.  Especially for someone who may be called upon to carry on the royal line.”

Sif shook her head.  She wasn’t ready to believe that the attention Loki paid her, and the kindness he had shown her, meant no more than they appeared to on the surface.  “I need better evidence than ‘I’ve never seen him with a girl.’  Maybe he just hasn’t found the right one.”

Astrid raised her eyebrows, her skeptical expression seeming to ask a silent question: And you think you’re the right one, do you?  Instead she remarked, “He’s also very meticulous about his clothing.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Sif said disdainfully.  “So is Fandral, and we all know that he’s interested in women.”

Astrid assumed a superior, knowing look.  “I suppose you’ll have to find out whether Loki is.”

“I suppose I will,” Sif replied haughtily, and went back to stabbing her embroidered flower.

By this time Sif was once more the oldest student in her training cohort.  She continued to improve steadily, until she was as skilled with the staff, the spear, and the battle-axe as any of the boys in the class, and excelled most of them with the sword.  But archery remained her weak point; her aim was dreadful, and she had very little sense of how the tension of the bowstring converted into distance.  Volstagg said he was ready to promote her into her own age group once she gained greater mastery of the bow and arrow.  So for the first time in almost two years, she went out to the training yards at night to practice.

Part of her expected to find Loki there; the other part told her not to be foolish.  But as she approached the weapons shed she heard the repeated thunk of blades burying themselves in a target, and she was almost certain she knew who was there.  Her heart beating faster, she fetched a bow and a quiver of arrows from the shed, and walked out to where the targets were still set up from training earlier that day.  Sure enough, there was Loki, throwing knives into one of the targets.  It was clear that his skill had grown: he was throwing from much farther away than she had seen him try when they were first learning the art, and the blades he had already thrown were clustered in the center of the target; all but one had landed either in the bull’s-eye or in the first ring.

Loki turned when he heard Sif’s footsteps.  “My lady,” he said, bowing slightly from the waist.  “We meet once more as we first met.”

“So it appears,” said Sif, trying to sound calm and friendly.  “Only this time it doesn’t look like I can help you improve in any way.”  She nodded toward the cluster of knives.

Loki walked across the yard to the target and began pulling out the knives; some of them were buried deep enough that he had to struggle to free them.  “There’s definitely still room for—improvement,” he said, gritting his teeth as he yanked on the hilt of one of the more stubborn knives.  “I’m trying to develop a comprehensive battle technique,” he explained as he walked back toward Sif, while sliding the knives into little sheaths he appeared to have sewn into the sleeves of his tunic and the inside of his leather overcoat.  He seemed to be having some difficulty remembering where he had put them all.  “Shit,” he muttered, staring at a spare dagger that he hadn’t found a home for, until he remembered that he still had the standard sheath at his hip.  He cleared his throat and flashed her a slightly embarrassed smile.  “I’ve had to invent a lot of it myself; there isn’t a great deal of literature on fighting with throwing knives.”

“Didn’t you say before that you could use magic to carry a lot of them?” Sif asked, staring at his bristling sleeves.

“Yes, of course I can summon more using magic,” Loki said, trying to adjust his coat so that it hung naturally despite all the knives secreted inside it.  “But it’s still a good idea to carry a fair number the usual way, in case my magic gets blocked or worn out.”  He tugged at his sleeves, looking dissatisfied.  “I need to design some smaller, lighter knives,” he declared.  “These are too heavy and awkward.”

“Hmm,” Sif agreed, noting Loki’s uncomfortable posture.  “How often do you come out here to work on developing your, er, comprehensive battle technique?” she asked.

“Twice a week,” he said, rapidly pulling a knife out of his coat and whirling away from her to throw it at the target.  It landed with a dull thud in the first ring away from the center.  “The second and fourth nights of the work week.”

Sif wondered why he was being so specific about his schedule without being directly asked.  She had hoped he would give her enough information that she could plan her late-night practices to coincide with his, but she hadn’t entirely expected it.  Did he also want to keep meeting like this?  Sif’s stomach gave a little flutter at the thought.

Sif positioned herself across from the target next to Loki’s, took an arrow from her quiver, nocked it, drew, took aim, and let fly.  The arrow struck low in the target’s outermost ring.  At least it actually hit the target, she thought dismally.  She looked over at Loki; he was still too engrossed in his own practice to notice what she was doing.  For a moment she allowed herself to watch his swift, graceful movements.  Like a cat coiling to spring, she thought as she had once before, when they had fought bare-handed in training.  Like flowing water.  She gave her head a slight shake to try to scatter the thoughts, and loosed another arrow.  It hit the edge of the target near the top.

“Fuck,” said Loki, and a knife clattered to the ground.  Sif turned toward him again.  “I’m still working out the kinks in the method,” he explained a little sheepishly as he stooped to retrieve the fallen blade.  “I haven’t quite mastered quickly pulling knives out of my sleeves.”

“Are you always this profane in the presence of ladies?” Sif asked primly, pretending to be scandalized.

“I’m never this profane in the presence of ladies,” he said with a small mischievous smile, “but I am always this profane in the presence of fellow warriors, so you’d best get used to it.”

Five nights later—the second night of the work week—Sif returned to the training yards to practice.  Loki welcomed her warmly and showed no surprise at her arrival.  Sif wondered if he had, after all, been inviting her to keep him company.  He certainly didn’t seem to mind her presence; as before, he was so caught up in his practice that he barely paid her any attention.  She, on the other hand, frequently found herself looking over at him to admire his swift and seemingly effortless motions.  Well, not always effortless; he did fumble a few times while trying to pull knives out of his sleeves, or to throw with his left hand.  But he somehow managed to make even his fumbles look graceful, and Sif was starting to find it adorable the way he bared his teeth in fierce concentration as he whirled around to throw, and cursed when he made a mistake.

And so they continued to meet two nights a week to practice side by side, without ever making a spoken agreement to do so.  Neither of them said anything about it to the others.  If they were both a little more tired during their lessons and quiet during post-training drinks on the third and fifth days of the week, none of their friends remarked on it.  Sif blushed to think what they might suppose was going on if they did notice, but she half wished that such suppositions had merit.  More than half.

Loki and his graceful movements were making alarmingly frequent appearances in Sif’s dreams, both waking and sleeping.  She dreamed that he led her in an unfamiliar dance, the palms of their right hands touching; though she never had any idea what step came next, his natural grace and the surety of his movements carried her along and made even her uncertain steps look beautiful.  Most of all she dreamed of kissing him.  She dreamed that they were fighting bare-handed again; that as she pulled him to the ground after her, they landed face-to-face, their bodies pressed together; and that, unthinking, overcome by their closeness, he kissed her.  She dreamed that he was teaching her to throw knives the way he did, his right hand grasping hers to guide her arm through the arc of the throw, his left hand on her waist; and as she turned to him to ask a question, he leaned down to kiss her.  She dreamed of his long, slender fingers running through her hair as they kissed; most of the time, in her dreams, her hair was still the yellow-golden it had been, but sometimes she saw it as the raven-black it now was, as black as his.  Either way, she always thought they looked perfect.

Chapter Text

The weeks passed, and Sif and Loki continued holding their late-night training sessions.  Sif’s aim improved somewhat, but was still a bit inconsistent; and Loki’s command of his new battle technique increased considerably.  It was probably because he no longer needed to focus so intently on his own training that he finally looked over to see what Sif was doing.  “Hmm,” he said, sounding disapproving.

“What?” Sif asked irritably.  She released the arrow she had been aiming and it flew wide, hitting the wall to the right of the target.  “Damn it!  Don’t look at me, I get self-conscious and I lose my aim.”

“It’s useless learning to shoot if you can’t aim while people are looking at you,” Loki pointed out.  “If you’re in a battle, the entire opposing army might be looking at you.  And at the very least, you’ll have to be able to aim while Volstagg is watching you, or he’ll never know whether you’ve improved enough to graduate from his class.”

I don’t care if Volstagg or even an entire army is looking at me, Sif thought; it’s just you that makes me self-conscious.

“Draw again and let me see your technique,” Loki said in a business-like manner, sheathing the knife he had been holding as he walked over to watch her more closely.

Trying to breathe slowly and deeply to quell her nervousness, Sif did as she was told.  “Hmm,” Loki said again.  “Make sure the arrow is anchored right below your pupil so it won’t go wide.  No, don’t let your elbow drop while you’re thinking about that.”  Sif’s arms were starting to tire from holding the bow at full draw for so long; she felt a tremor in her right wrist.

“Are you using your arm muscles or your back muscles to draw?” Loki asked with a tone of very teacher-like concern.

“Um…” said Sif, not sure of the answer.

“You should always let your back muscles do the work,” Loki said as he walked around behind her.  “Pull your shoulder blade in.  No, not the left, just the right.  But keep your shoulder down.”

Sif flinched a little as Loki grasped her shoulder and gently pushed it down and back.  He stood close behind her, examining the alignment of her body, and reached out with his left hand to rotate the elbow of her bow arm slightly, which forced her to shift her entire position; keeping his left hand lightly on her arm, Loki gently pushed her right shoulder down again.  Sif’s heart was beating wildly.  Though their bodies weren’t touching, Sif was keenly aware of his presence just inches behind her, as if an electrical field filled the space between them.  “All right, aim and release,” he said.  In her distraction, Sif forgot how much to correct for the distance and the arrow went a bit high, striking the third ring of the target.  “Better,” he said.

Sif lowered the bow slowly, her heart racing faster than ever.  The way they were standing seemed to have been drawn straight from one of her dreams.  She turned to look up at Loki, but he didn’t move.  So in a mad moment of recklessness or courage, she stood on her toes and pressed her lips to his.  He froze; out of surprise or instinct, he opened his mouth slightly, and their teeth bumped together briefly.  Then he recovered from his shock and pulled away.  “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head.

Sif turned to face him fully.  She, too, was shocked at what she had done, and dread was starting to build in her chest at his reaction.  “What is it?” she asked apprehensively.

“I’m sorry, Sif,” he said again, “I don’t—feel that way about you.”

Now Sif shook her head, bewildered and deeply embarrassed.  “But I thought—all those times we ended up so close to each other…”

“What do you mean?” Loki asked, his brow furrowed.

“When you asked to be partnered with me to practice bare-handed fighting, and when you put that ointment on my head… what was I supposed to think?” Sif asked, humiliation pushing her into defensiveness.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, shaking his head again.  “I didn’t mean… I didn’t think…”

“No, you didn’t think, did you?” she snapped, the heat of shame giving way to the heat of anger.  “You, the philosopher with the gold in your soul, you didn’t think.  Is that why, by the way?”

“Is… what?” Loki said somewhat pathetically, looking completely lost.

Sif pushed on, giving free rein to her anger.  “Is that why you don’t feel that way about me?  Because you’re a philosopher while I’m just a warrior?  Because you have gold in your soul while I only have silver?”

“What?  No, that isn’t it at all,” Loki said, sounding alarmed.

“What, then?  Am I not feminine enough?  For all your talk of how women should be allowed to do whatever men can do, do you want a proper lady?”

“Of course not,” Loki insisted.  “Listen, Sif, it’s nothing to do with you.  You’re beautiful, truly, and clever.”

Sif paused; this protestation disarmed her anger and left her puzzled.  Had Astrid been right after all?  “Do you… do you seek out men, rather than women?”

Loki licked his lips somewhat nervously.  “I don’t… seek out either men or women.  Not in the way you mean.”

Sif was stunned into silence for some moments.  At last she asked, “How can you be sure?  Maybe you just haven’t met the right person yet.”  Astrid’s unasked question echoed mockingly in her head: And you think you’re the right one, do you?

Loki shook his head slowly.  “I don’t think so.”

Sif too shook her head, in disbelief.  “How do you know?”

“Plato again,” he said with a slightly apologetic smile.  “Maybe we should sit down,” he suggested, and started walking toward the weapons shed.  Sif followed him numbly, the bow still gripped in her left hand.  As they walked through the doorway, Loki sent small globes of enchanted light into the empty lamp sconces on the walls.  Loki sat down on one of the benches.  Sif hung up her bow then sat down next to him, her head bowed and her back hunched in defeat, her hands pressed together between her knees.

Loki cleared his throat a little uncomfortably.  “In one of Plato’s dialogues, his teacher, Socrates, goes to a dinner party where everyone gives speeches in praise of love.  One of the guests, a playwright, tells a story—a myth, you might say—about the origin of love.”

Sif closed her eyes, drinking in the smooth cadences of his voice.  It already sounded like a man’s—it no longer cracked to betray his youth—but it was light and melodious, and not as deep as Thor’s.  She knew that he was explaining why he could not love her, and that after this conversation they would never have another like it; they would spend time together only in the company of the other boys, where Loki remained mostly quiet, and never gave these animated monologues about his intellectual passions.  So she savored the sound of his voice, locking it away in her memory.

“According to this myth,” Loki continued, “people—humans originally, but it could apply just as well to Asgardians or elves or even frost giants, I suppose—people used to be round, or I guess sort of cylindrical, with four arms, four legs, and two faces, one on each side.  Some of them had two male faces, some had two female faces, and some had one male face and one female.  These people displeased the gods somehow, and so the gods punished them by cutting them in half and scattering the halves around the world.  Love, then, is the desire to be reunited with one’s missing half; and sex is the closest thing that people have to rejoining the sundered halves of the body.  And what we call true love is when the two halves of what used to be one whole person find each other again.”

Sif’s eyes stung with tears that she tried to hold back.  “That’s a beautiful story,” she said, her voice cracking slightly.  “And it feels… true, in a way.”

 Loki’s eyebrows furrowed a bit.  “Yes, that’s what Mother said when I told her about it.  And even Thor seemed rather impressed.  But I… I don’t understand why it should be beautiful, or seem true.  I can’t imagine feeling that way about anyone, woman or man—as if they’re the other half of me that was missing, and being with them makes me whole.  It sounds completely alien to me—wanting to be that close to someone, and that dependent on them.  It sounds… suffocating.”

“I think that’s sad,” Sif said quietly.

Loki’s brow furrowed even deeper.  “Sad?  I don’t see why.  What seems sad to me is that so many people—most of the world, in fact—feel like they’re missing half of themselves unless they find the right person.  I think I’m lucky, honestly.  It means that I’m already whole.”

Sif shook her head.  “I’m not sure that it does.  It might mean that you’ll always be incomplete.  That’s what the story suggests, anyway.  You’d only be whole if you had two faces, which you don’t appear to—unless there’s something under your hair that I don’t know about…”  Sif gave a small smile to accompany the joke, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Loki exhaled a short laugh through his nose.  “As far as I know, I don’t have two faces.  But the problem with the story is that it doesn’t seem to be able to make sense of people like me—people who don’t feel that they have a missing half that they need to find.”  He looked troubled for a moment, then shrugged.  “Oh well.  It’s only a myth.  And anyway, the character who tells it isn’t Socrates—if Plato presents his own views, he always puts them in Socrates’ mouth.  So he must not quite believe the idea behind it.”

“And what about unrequited love?” Sif said tightly, trying to control the shaking in her voice.  “What if there are two people, and one of them thinks they’ve found their missing half, but the other doesn’t?”

“I’m not sure,” Loki said.  “He doesn’t say anything about that.  As I said, it doesn’t work very well as a theory…”

No longer able to stop herself, Sif burst into tears.  Loki looked horrified.  “Oh, Sif, I’m so sorry.  I don’t know what I can do…”  He raised his hands helplessly toward his face, unsure whether he should try to comfort her by patting her shoulder or her hair or something of the sort.

Sif covered her face with her hands so that he wouldn’t see how it was distorted by her wretched sobs.  Struggling to speak through her tears, Sif choked out, “I spend all my time trying to be seen as one of the boys, but the one time I finally want someone to see me as a girl…”

“I’m so sorry, Sif.  I do understand.”

“How can you?” Sif demanded, glaring up at him accusingly.

“I—of course I can’t know exactly what it feels like.  But I think I know what you mean.  It’s hard, truly it is.  And I do know what it’s like not to fit into any role comfortably—to feel like you’re neither one thing nor another.”

His kind words sent Sif into another storm of tears.  “It’s so hard,” she managed to say between sobs.  “I wish I didn’t have to struggle to be taken seriously.  I wish I didn’t have to feel like I’m—fighting for the honor of all womankind every time I pick up a weapon.  I wish I could just—be a girl and a warrior at the same time.  Is that so much to ask?”

“No, it’s not,” Loki said gently.

“It’s not fair,” Sif sobbed.

“No, it isn’t.”

Wiping her eyes and attempting to get her tears under control, Sif asked, “How are you so—not stupid about this?  I’ve never met another boy who seemed to understand at all.”

Loki shrugged.  “I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a woman.  Maybe because of the—the peculiarity of my nature that I just explained, I’ve never thought it would feel much different.”

“Oh, it does,” Sif said bitterly, tears starting to leak out of her eyes again.  “But mostly because of how other people look at you.”

“I think I’m starting to understand that,” Loki said quietly.

Apparently Loki had resolved his indecision about how to be properly comforting by determining that putting an arm around Sif’s shoulders was the right thing to do.  Sif flinched at first, startled by his touch, but then she leaned into it, even going so far as to rest her head on his shoulder (though she wiped her eyes first and made sure to keep her face turned forward so that she wouldn’t get his sleeve wet).  She knew this was the first and the last time he would ever hold her like this, and she wanted to savor the bittersweet comfort.

Loki tensed when Sif put her head on his shoulder, but didn’t move his arm.  “You won’t—read this the wrong way, will you?” he said anxiously.

“Of course I won’t,” she snapped, somewhat wetly.  But you can’t tell me how I should imagine it, she thought.  Or how I should feel it.

They stayed that way for a while.  Loki relaxed gradually as Sif didn’t start crying again, or try to kiss him again, or whatever he had been worried she might do.  Sif closed her eyes and focused on the warmth of his arm around her shoulder and the surprisingly pleasant smell of his sweat, and pretended that they were sitting like this because they were both in love, not because he was trying awkwardly to comfort her after breaking her heart.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be coming here nights to practice with me anymore,” Loki remarked, a touch of sadness in his voice.

“No,” Sif agreed.  She found herself feeling a little guilty for depriving Loki of a friend by being unable to see him as only that.

Loki sighed regretfully.  “All right.  I don’t understand the game, but I must abide by the rules.”  He fell silent for a moment, thinking.  “Remember to anchor the arrow right under your pupil.  Keep your right elbow high and your shoulder blade down and back.  Use the muscles of your back to draw, not your arm.”

Sif nodded against his shoulder.  She knew he was going to pull away soon, so she locked this moment in her memory along with the music of his voice.

Sure enough, Loki took his hand away from Sif’s shoulder, and she lifted her head from his shoulder in response.  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply to keep herself from starting to cry again.  “I’m sorry, Sif,” he said again as he stood to go.

She forced herself to open her eyes and look at him to ask earnestly, “Please don’t tell the others about anything I did—or said—tonight.”

Loki gave her a knowing smile and said, “You don’t want them to know your weaknesses, either?”  Sif shook her head silently.  “Wise girl.  And—don’t tell anyone what I said, either.  We wouldn’t want anything to stop my royal parents from arranging a politically advantageous marriage for me, now would we?”  Loki’s smile took on a bitterly sardonic cast.

“But—won’t that be awful for you?  What will you do?” Sif asked, horrified.

Loki shrugged.  “The same thing people have been doing in arranged marriages for uncounted millennia: I’ll endure it for the good of the family and the realm.”  His tone softened as he said, “But that need not be your fate—merely to endure.  You’ll find the right person, Sif, I know it.”

Sif closed her eyes, not wanting to look anymore at the mix of sadness and pity on his face, and she nodded, though she wasn’t sure she believed him.  The light dimmed; when Sif opened her eyes again, she saw that Loki had extinguished most of his magic globes of light, but had left one for her to find her way out.  She turned to watch his back retreating across the courtyard, and didn’t stand up to leave until she was sure he was gone.  As soon as she left the shed, Loki’s last enchanted light winked out.  Numbly, she began the walk home.  Never had such a short walk felt so long.

Sif never quite forgave Loki—not exactly for not loving her, which she knew he couldn’t help, but for letting her think for so long that he did return her feelings, and for being witness to the deepest humiliation of her life.  She acted politely, if somewhat coldly, toward him in the presence of the other boys, and did not look at him or speak to him any more than was necessary to avoid being rude; outside the company of their friends, she did not interact with him at all.  The others did not seem to notice the change in their relationship, or that Sif no longer sat next to Loki so that she could hear his quiet witty comments.  Perhaps they had never noticed that she was doing that in the first place.  She tried to convince herself that Astrid was right: that Loki was too androgynous, in a way that was unthreatening to a young girl just on the edge of entering womanhood, but not masculine enough to satisfy a mature woman.  She decided she should start looking more at Thor.  He was, indeed, quite the exemplar of manhood.

For his part, Loki never made reference to the early period of his acquaintance with Sif—except once, long after they had both come of age and graduated from training as full warriors of Asgard.  For her six hundredth birthday, he sent her a gift; he did not give it to her in the presence of their friends, not wanting to raise questions about its meaning, but instead had a messenger leave it for her at her lodgings.  The gift consisted of two rather large tomes, bound in golden-brown leather stamped with geometric floral designs.  She opened the first one, and saw printed on the title page in two different languages, above a printer’s mark showing some sort of large fish wrapped around an anchor, All the Works of Plato.  Beneath the printer’s device, Loki had written a note in his small, slightly cramped but still elegant script:

Dear Sif,

At last all of Plato’s dialogues are available in book form, which is much more convenient than the assorted papyri and clay tablets one had to make do with before.  I have been pleased to see that he is becoming quite popular in the region of Midgard known as Europe.  (For reference, the Jötunns attempted to invade the northern tip of Europe around the time we were born; this book was printed in the southern part, just west of where Plato himself lived.)

The dialogues I told you about years ago are called the “Republic” and the “Symposium.”  It is in the former that he presents the myth of the metals and argues that women should be given the same education as men, and in the latter that the playwright Aristophanes tells the story about the origin of love.  Now you can finally read them for yourself, if you are still interested.  I do hope that you have preserved some inclination toward philosophy, despite your training as a guardian.

Many happy returns!

Loki

Below his note, he had drawn a whimsical little sketch of a cylindrical person with four arms, four legs, and two faces, one male and one female.

Sif’s first reaction was to slam the book shut angrily.  She had long since recovered from her infatuation with Loki, but she would never forget the humiliation she had felt at the moment when she tried to kiss him and he froze, then pulled away.  Was it all a joke to him?

But her anger softened when she realized that he must have gone to some trouble to find this in Midgard.  He probably missed having someone (other than Frigga, perhaps) to talk to about his intellectual interests.  Sif opened the book again and ran her thumb thoughtfully over the little sketch.  “You’ll find the right person, Sif, I know it,” Loki had said to her.  Maybe it was Thor after all, Thor with the golden hair and the silver in his soul—“a warrior through and through,” in Loki’s words.  She pictured herself and Thor, two silver-souled guardians, ruling Asgard side by side.  If Plato (or Loki?) was right, the city would surely fall.  Sif chuckled quietly at the idea.  But no—she looked back over the note: “I do hope that you have preserved some inclination toward philosophy, despite your training as a guardian”—perhaps it would be all right; Loki, anyway, thought she still had a touch of gold.