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The throne room of Asgard with court in progress is a loud raucous thing. Noble lords rail and jockey for position, hurling claims back and forth, refuting with oaths and insults. The court's business is conducted by the various house representatives, and rarely does it need the steadying hand of the sovereign unless appealed for. It leaves the ruler upon his throne to often only listen to what passes with half an ear. It grants him time… time for his thoughts to wander, for his gaze to distance.
Loki sits upon the golden throne, leaning forward with his weight being held up by Gungnir clasped almost desperately in one hand. His dark green eyes are focused on something far beyond the court of nobles before him even as they speak. And as they speak he lets his thoughts wander, to drift through the aether as ephemeral things even as he slowly, absently worries at the small blade wound upon the side of his face. Just a small scratch of a fingertip over the several weeks old wound that for some reason or another has not healed.
"During the Fall it was we of the Blackmane that held against the Jotun. It is our right to take the trade profits as Olvarson's family can no longer fulfill their obligation!" One lord shots as he rails at another.
"Nonsense! We have lost much, as much as you and more Blackmane! We do not see you rushing to repair the Bifrost, to reforge its magic! The All-Father knows our efforts on his behalf are more profitable!"
Loki's head snaps to the side, his eyes narrowing as he snaps his gaze to Olvarson. "What did you say?"
"My King?"
Loki is down off the throne as quick as a shot, Gungnir ringing loud as its haft slams into the stone floor. "What did you say!"
"Your majesty… I said you know our efforts on your behalf…"
"You said All-Father. I am not the All-Father. My father…" He stops himself, something in his eyes angry, distressed, then angry again. "He yet lives. Watch your tongue, lest I see you swallow it."
The noble steps back and lowers his eyes, going to one knee. "Yes, your majesty. Forgive me. I misspoke."
Clearing his throat, the majordomo advances another issue of business, "Next for discussion. The distribution of lady Sif's estates. Should she continue her efforts to starve herself, upon her passing we believe it would be most suitable to divide up her property. A contest of sorts perhaps…"
"What is this?" Loki looks to the side sharply, frowning. "She starves herself?"
Another nervous look, but this time by the Majordomo. "Ye-yes, Your majesty. She has refused food and water these last…"
A hand snaps up, staying the man's words. "Carry on without me." Suddenly Loki turns, striding away from the dais and down the side, stepping off without a further word to the nobility.
*
The night after he left her the first time, food was delivered. It was grand, by prisoners standards. And it was pulled apart by Sif's standards with a rush of eating that physically made her sick. It was odd. She never really remembered the last time that she suffered a chill or a cold, and yet here she was, doubled over in pain and curled upon the floor in a little ball. Perhaps that's when the idea came; if Thor did not eat, did not feast as she did even as she lay captive, neither would she. If Thor were truly gone, she would make her exit hasty. By denying herself the satisfaction of food within her belly, the sweet wine upon her lips, the fluffiness of the pillow and bed beneath her back..
Nothing really mattered. He would not let her leave either way. Her innate will to teleport faltered by the blast of Gungnir, and that alone was realized by trying.
But being held captive is what allowed the days to blend. One moment she was on her feet, pacing the floor, looking through the cell to see if anyone would pass. The next she was upon the floor again, curled into a ball. It could have been a week or three, where she'd huddle up into the corner, delirium set in, or maybe it was the month where she scratched at the walls feverishly.
Each time a tray of food was pushed in, each day she would throw it against the wall. The food itself would be collected and surfaces cleaned while she slept a deep and weakened sleep, save for that one time she tried to battle and escape upon her own two feet.
There was a lingering thought after that one, perhaps she should have eaten to keep her strength up. But such a delirious mind could not be a formidable tactician, especially when she was nearly stark raving mad.
But all was loss, there was no more a great shine to the dark hair that crowns her head. Perhaps a bit of stress allows a few strands to turn grey. Her cheeks were hollow. Each slow pace she takes is with a limp because everything aches. Her lips were dry and near cracked. She was a ghost of what she once was. And in front of the cell wall that she could see through she collapses, curled upon her side, her body shivering..
..this was it! This was the end!
And how painful it was!
*
The doorway to her wing of the dungeons swings open slowly, the great and heavy stone door grinding and creaking as it opens, its twelve foot tall entryway barely large enough to allow the entrance of the being stepping through it at first. She may have seen it before in ages past, depictions, descriptions. It is the giant suit of armor known as the Destroyer, a suit of armor crafted for Ragnarok and one of the few things able to grant true death to the Aesir.
It waits a step to the side of the doorway, awaits its master as Loki storms through the portal into the hallway of Sif's cellblock. Behind him the giant suit of armor stomps along, its footsteps seeming to hiss and sizzle upon the stone ground. His arrival for her is heralded most likely by his words, "You surrender yourself to despair so easily as this?"
His tone is angry, accusatory, as if she had yet again betrayed him. Should she look up she'll see him there, regal in his wroth and with that long cloak swirling around him. Gungnir is held like a scepter of authority and beside him is that enforcer of the Gods. It all presents such a stern and daunting image… and yet he rails at her.
*
Her head lifts weakly as her hand reaches out to press against the wall, her eyes hazy, the image of the Destroyer nearly flattening and fading out as she collapses upon the floor yet again, staring into the ceiling outside of the cell. For once she could hear herself breathing, her chest visibly trembled with the rapid beating of her heart, her eyes close for but a moment until the startling, authoritive figure of Loki stood above her, blocked from a grasp or a swipe of a hand that would have possibly felt like a kitten who begged for attention.
In ways, this was possibly it.
His words cause a smile, for try as she might to sit upright, she just couldn't be assed at the moment, but she does drop the smile in favor of wetting her tongue so that her hoarse voice could be heard. "Oh, no. King Loki.." She rasps out, a little smile playing upon her lips. "..it was not easy. Do… do I need to recount the steps.." She laughs then, a horrid sound to hear. "..for your feeble mind?"
*
Rage. Just pure rage takes him, takes his expression. She has most likely never quite seen it. Ever did he hide those times from her, those times when he would seem less a man and more a creature. The wild almost fey look to his features, like some creature torn from the myths held by mankind of children of the forest, with hair aflame and features human yet inhuman. But transformed in the forge of this anger and hatred he has held in his heart as it is now, it might almost be amusing in the abstract that her collapse, her weakness, so causes him this displeasure.
"The loss of your dear loved one. So has transformed you into the weak woman all have proclaimed you from the first? The warrior maiden who chose death as her livelihood, doling it out as she wished, now having it strike home finds herself without legs to stand?" There's a scoff that comes from him, dismissive, angered as he steps forwards and /smashes/ at the window of her cell causing a fracture to crack its facade.
"You forsake yourself. Valhalla? I had thought you not so weak as this."
*
It was not something that she was used to seeing, but after the betrayal of Thor and the capturing of her person, she knew that some part of him within had existed. But it was a frightening change to see, such delicate features turned horrid by her own actions. In her mind, she would have sought pleasure from that, but her hands were soon upon the ground to weakly drag herself away from such a sight. She would see no more of it. In a way, her heart breaks because of it.
She pushes herself up upon thin arms that tremble, a hand that captures a leg to draw it up so that she could prop herself upright. Just in time for the smash of the window which draws her own hands up to shield her ears. It was loud, too loud to be normal.. soon. She hopes.. soon.
"I forsake myself -everything!" She nearly cries out. Her body slumping against the side of her bed, her head falling forward as she lets out a hiss of breath. "The very air that I breathe, the sun upon my skin. A lovers embrace.." She hisses quietly then, her hands moving through her ruined hair as if she resolved herself to this fate.
"I told you from the beginning.. these walls will not hold me. I intend to make it so."
*
"You utter coward." Loki's anger is an almost palpable thing between them as he steps back. "I will not have your weakness here. I will not have this mewling quim pretend to still hold the flesh of the warrior I knew." He turns, cloak snapping as he moves away, his footfalls echoing up and down the empty hall. Almost dismissively, roughly he turns his head towards the Destroyer and tells it simply, "Take her."
As he utters those words the entry point of the cell slides open slowly, the seal broken and the molten earth scent of the roiling suit of armor reaches her. It advances, undeniable, inexorable, perhaps even at her full strength she would have been able to withstand these commands, these wishes uttered to such a creature.
But now… in her state. Most likely it will be but a moment or two before she finds herself held by those cold uru-metal arms as it follows Loki's command to take her, to seize her, and carry her in his wake.
*
"Nay.." She says with a trembling voice. "..I'll be a martyr.." Her body was near slumping, sleep great and nearly overcoming. The sliding of the cell doors has her eyes lifting, though they were hazy, near gone even as the cold grasp of the Destroyer awakens her soul with a frightening tremble that has her twitching harshly. Perhaps it was a cruelty, for the one thing that scared her the most carried her to her perdition.
"I loved you.." She says quietly, unsure if he could hear her whispers, even as she curled within the arms of the unkind thing. "..I said to thine own self that if the shoe were on the other foot, if Thor had done this to his own brother.. I would have laid down my life for you. I thought to lay waste to Midgard for your death. So make them pay for allowing such a precious life to slip through their grasps after we left you in their protection.."
Her eyes close, growing near faint. "But nay.. could it be your betrayal. Your betrayal.. your betrayal.." She sighs softly. "..was it that, that broke my heart more than hearing that my love hath fallen to the darkness. Could it?" The ramblings of a near mad and dead woman felt true, true enough as words seemingly fallen upon deaf ears.
*
She could feel the words come from her, could hear them in her own ears, could see the brush of her breath upon the armored chest of the creature that carried her down the dark deep halls of Asgard's dungeons. Yet for all the response it gains her it's as if she were speaking but to the ancient ghosts of the Aesir that assuredly must populate these depths, that assuredly must bear silent witness to what has passed within these halls.
Perhaps it is a blessing that the passing of time is almost imperceptible to her in such a state. What paths are taken and what stone path is crushed under the tread of the ancient armor, who could recall? She'll feel the air grow more chill however, as if they were descending further and further away from the life-giving golden city, and towards something entirely other.
Then there's the sound of two large stone doors rumbling open and only then is she set down upon the ground, a great metal hand upon her shoulder both holding her upright as well as back. It's then that she may see him again, and now those eyes… those reddish eyes are accusing. They are wild with the moment as he tells her, "You did not. You knew me for naught. You knew me not at all."
His empty hand, the one unfilled with Gungnir's shaft, twitches twice… reflexively as he snaps at her. "You only knew what I allowed you to know. May you find Thor, in life or death, I care not which."
Then he snarls at the Destroyer. "Cast her in."
And it's only then that she might realize where they are. The runic halls, the ancient vaults. And there, upon the pedestal rests the Cask of Winters, cast open with its maw roaring in a low rumble, a rumble that seems to come from… an otherworldly aspect of the other side of the room that somehow seems larger than it has any right to be, as if the object were warping the world around it.
*
Words were still carried upon her lips, memories of old spoken like an incantation that quietly echoes as whispers through the stone halls in which the Destroyer carries her. Her eyes remain closed, there was no telling if she knew that she were speaking or if she were speaking at all save for the echoes upon the walls, though it could have been her imagination. But the first brush of air revitalizes her skin, the tickling of her own hair upon her features, her eyes slowly opening to view the stone with a shaken hand reaching out to try to touch it. But she was left wanting.
Presence was a warp in her mind, the cold steel that wraps around her were replaced with warmth. Perhaps in these last vestiges of breaths that she takes, all dreams were laid bare and came true in some form or another.
"Nay.." Sif quietly rebukes him. "..the intimate moments we've shared, the way you held me.. I know you. I -know- you."
The snarled order allows those eyes to finally rise, her teeth to grit and chatter against the other as she takes in a sharp gasp, a look of horror filling her features as she turns her blue eyes, near iced towards Loki. "No…" Her hand stretches out, weak and pitiful, her bottom lip trembling in a last and final plea. To the memory of her that she sullied, to the laughter, to the quiet moments spent.. "Loki.." His name was spoken with sorrow, even if this was what she wanted, her moment of defiance which was meant to slap him in the face of all that he knew of her. But alas, it was too late.
*
And with that. With only those final words between them she is pushed somehow gently into the whorl of energy that surrounds the Cask of Winters. It is a swirl of reality even as the cold reaches out to claim her, to draw her into that twisted corrupted version of reality that the relic projects. It takes in the form of the Asgardian Goddess, drawing her in, reaching out with icy tendrils that swirls and wraps around her…
Then she is gone. The cask closes with an ominous clap of leather bound crystalline surface, the latch redoing itself with a certain click. It's only then, when she is gone that Loki turns back to look at what he has wrought.
A scream comes from him, torn from deep in his lungs as he cries out, cries out such a sound of pain like a wounded animal screaming its hatred and loathing even as he hurls Gungnir away from himself, discarding it across the room as if it were but some piece of detritus that he can no longer look at.
He falls to his knees heavily, his arms clasped at his sides as he screams again. It is such a cry of pain, all the more forlorn for having none to hear it. None that would hear it and care a whit. Only the Destroyer, as it stands there, quiet… observing. It says nothing. It judges nothing. Even as the King of Asgard allows himself to weep there, before the coldness that is before him, and the oblivion behind.
*