AN: Major spoilers for Infinity War.

Like many of you, I had some pretty strong feelings about Loki's death (sad ones, in case that wasn't clear), and I got to wondering if this was the death knell of the Sifki ship. Would people keep writing about them, now that one of them is dead and one of them is . . . pretty permanently off-screen? And that got me wondering if it was even possible to write a Sifki story with a (somewhat) happy ending, that takes into account the events of Infinity War, and the next thing I knew I'd written this. So as you might guess, there is some miraculous last-minute surviving going on here. Do I think this is likely to occur in the movies? No, I'm assuming he's going to stay dead. (And really, as bummed as I am about that, I am pleased that at least he got a good death, in terms of reconciling with his family.) But for the purposes of this story, for the joy of fanfiction, we're saying he's alive, all right?

I am also very much of the school of thought that since Sif was not shown dying in Thor: Ragnarok, I'm allowed to believe she's alive, and I will not be dissuaded from that opinion until an on-screen character states that she's dead. Because she's seriously the best and I want to believe she's still out there somewhere, floating around the MCU, kicking trash and taking names. So for the purposes of this story, she's been off on a mission assigned to her by fake Odin and has no idea what's happened in Asgard lately.

Many thanks to CallistoNicol, who was my beta reader and my resource for remembering details of the movie, and who was very encouraging when I didn't know if I could get this story right.

. . . . . .

"Asgardian refugee vessel—under assault—requesting aid—"

is all the message that makes it through, and Sif's blood runs cold. The drink she'd planned on buying herself, as a reward for finally completing a lengthy solo mission, is forgotten entirely as she throws herself into the pilot seat and slams her hand down on the starter. She's gunning the throttle before the ship has even fully booted, which is not good for the engine, she knows, but she can't care about that right now, she cannot care—

She's not much of a pilot, not even after the last few years of bouncing all over the galaxy on the Allfather's orders, but somehow she manages to leave the Dervani spaceport and clear atmo without colliding with any other ships. She is deeply grateful, even more than she usually is, for her extensive training and experience as a warrior, which is keeping her hands steady and her mind clear despite the adrenaline rushing through her veins and the sick feeling of dread pooling in her stomach.

Because, Asgardian refugee vessel? Under assault? Something—several somethings—many somethings seem to have gone horribly wrong in the ten months she's been away from Asgard. And what makes it all the worse is that she's suspected, for the last month, that something is wrong at home; she's been unable to contact Heimdall for weeks now, and she kept telling herself that it was because she was farther from Asgard than she'd ever been and even Heimdall's power must have its limits, but now . . . if something has gone wrong, and she could have prevented it by returning to Asgard when she lost contact with Heimdall, she will never forgive herself.

The maps finally boot all the way, and Sif locks onto the location of the distress signal, and grimaces: sixty-seven jumps, which is both far too long a trip for her peace of mind, and far more jumps than is recommended for a person to take at once. (At that distance, she's sure she only picked up the distress signal because she is always passively monitoring the subspace frequencies used by Asgardian vessels.) But she doesn't hesitate before checking her harness is secure and hitting the button.

Asgard is in danger. And she will do whatever it takes to protect it.

. . . . . .

The scene before her is absolute carnage, and it takes all her training, and all her will, not to turn her face away. Floating before her is the debris of a massive ship, and scattered through the wreckage are bodies: hundreds of bodies, some whole, some blown to pieces, all still as the grave and wearing armor and clothing that she recognizes all too well.

She gives herself the space of one breath—in, out—to wrestle her anguish and shock back under control. And then she sets the ship to scan for survivors. The readings she's getting tell her the destruction took place an hour ago, which means she's being perhaps too optimistic; an Asgardian can withstand exposure to the vacuum of space far longer than many other beings, but they're not invincible. And the bodies that are closest to her seem to have been killed by weapons before the ship was destroyed.

But she has to look. She has to try.

The scan picks up no signs of life at first, but she is nothing if not persistent. Besides, she's got time. If something has happened to Asgard, she has nothing but time. Literally.

So she navigates her little ship carefully through the debris field, forcing herself not to notice when she recognizes faces, or surely she will break before her task is done. At least she never sees Thor or the Warriors Three or Odin, and she dares to hope that they were not on the ship. But Heimdall—no, she can't think about that now, only continue her search.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And then finally, something.

When she's halfway done with her search, her ship's sensors finally pick up on something: the faintest heartbeat, but the pattern is wrong for an Asgardian. The faintest heat signature, but the temperature is wrong for an Asgardian. Still, injuries and exposure to space might account for the irregular signature, so although she knows she oughtn't, she lets herself hope, just a little, as she swings the ship around a chunk of debris to get a good look at the source of the signature.

And then she stares, too exhausted and heartsick to feel anything but a faint sort of bemusement.

And then mechanically she starts the process of using the tractor beam to pull the body of Loki Odinson onto her ship.

. . . . . .

It's another half-hour before she really has time to examine her find. After bringing him aboard, she still had half the debris field to search, so she put him carefully in the stasis chamber, sending a silent thank-you to Odin, wherever he is, for forking out the extra money for a spaceship with a top-of-the-line chamber. And wondering what she'd do if she found any more survivors. There's only one stasis chamber on the ship, after all.

It turns out that it doesn't matter. She spends another thirty minutes searching the rubble, but there are no other survivors.

Part of her wants to stay here and search the remains of the ship for answers, but she has no idea where to start; she doesn't have the skills required to coax data from a fried and shattered system, and anyway there's no guarantee that the ship would have any useful information. Not to mention, she's a little nervous; this was the result of an attack, according to the distress call and to the wounds she can see on the bodies, and lingering in the area seems unwise, in case the perpetrators return. And anyway, she's hoping her new guest will have answers. So she navigates away and makes a few quick jumps to a quadrant she knows is quiet and empty and safe. And then she takes a deep breath and goes back to examine the young man in the stasis chamber.

Loki. Loki Odinson, the fallen prince of Asgard, is somehow alive and on her ship, which is absolutely impossible and yet, in a way, doesn't surprise her at all; this isn't the first time he's cheated death. Thor saw him die on Svartalfheim—but clearly Thor was mistaken. But if he did not die there, where has he been since then? And how did he end up on a ship full of Asgardians?

At least there's one thing she doesn't have to wonder about: she has heard that Jotuns can survive exposure to space even longer than Asgardians. It seems Loki's biological parentage has saved him.

But what saved him from his wounds? Examining him now, through the clear case of the stasis chamber, she can see massive angry marks around his neck, and burst blood vessels in his eyes, and grayish skin that suggests a loss of oxygen: someone very strong and with massive hands attempted to crush his throat. It makes no sense that he yet lives, unless it is some trick of his magic—some protective spell that keeps him breathing even when his throat has been crushed. Or perhaps not even a conscious, deliberate spell; she has heard stories of powerful witches and sorcerers whose magicks flared up in the moment before death and pulled them back from the brink.

So what now? Part of her wants nothing more than to race back to Asgard for answers, but that's a long journey, and she doesn't know what the state of things will be when she arrives. Which could be bad for the half-dead prince currently in her stasis chamber; the chamber will keep Loki from succumbing to his injuries indefinitely, but brain function will start to deteriorate in three hours and vanish entirely in twelve. If she doesn't want him to end up a vegetable, she needs to get him help before she sees to Asgard.

Which, she feels, is the right choice: if he recovers, she can learn from him what happened.

Not to mention, no matter what horrible things he did in the past, he was important to her once. And he did die a hero on Svartalfheim, and the warrior in Sif cannot help but honor that—has honored it, since she first heard of it. So now, despite everything, she finds herself pleased that he is alive, and determined to do what she can to keep him that way.

Luckily, she knows just the place to go.

. . . . . .

Four jumps away, on little-known planet called Terma, in the forested town that acts as their capital city, lives the most talented healer that Sif has ever seen—more talented, even, than Eir. A quest for a lost relic, ordered by Odin, brought Sif there last year, and she saw Ifli do miracles during that visit.

Fortunately, the assistance Sif gave in driving off bandits when last on Terma has earned her enough good will that Ifli immediately agrees to see to Loki. There's something very reassuring about the woman's serene manner as she and her assistants move the stasis chamber into the healing hall, and the knot in Sif's chest loosens, just a little, at the thought that her only source of information is in good hands.

But there's no time to relax; as soon as Ifli and her group disappear from view, Sif makes her way to the communications post at the central building. They, too, remember her from last year, and are more than willing to help her.

The communications and scanning equipment in her own ship is good enough for what it's for, but it's not as powerful and advanced as what's found in any communications post worth its salt (not as powerful as Heimdall's sight, which she can't think about right now, can't think about). So she spends a while trying to reach Asgard, and when there is no answer to repeated calls, she reaches out to other places in the Nine Realms, places friendly to Asgard. They all tell her the same thing: that they too have been unable to communicate with Asgard for the past few weeks.

The communications techs give her sympathetic looks, and she knows they're thinking exactly what she's currently trying not to think.

She could go to Asgard alone now, she supposes; she trusts the Termans enough to leave Loki in their care. But some intuitive part of her is telling her to stay until he wakes up, and she has learned the hard way, over many centuries, to trust her instincts. And as for figuring out where Thor is, she thinks talking to his brother is the best place to start. So she goes to the healing hall and finds her way to Loki's room.

It's easy to find; it's the one that's a flurry of activity, as Termans flit about checking vital signs and filling syringes; one walks away carrying the leather clothing Loki was found in, while another is carefully adjusting the light-colored tunic and leggings they've changed him into. In the center of it all stands Ifli, calm as anything, with her hands hovering a few inches over Loki's chest.

"It's the strangest thing," she tells Sif as the warrior joins her at the bedside. "Your young man here ought to be dead. But there's a knot of magic sitting on his chest, the likes of which I've never seen—not a spell so much as a . . . a shout. Your young man is a sorcerer, is he not?"

Sif nods.

"Then a very powerful one, apparently, for this is raw magic here, unfiltered, and as powerful as I have ever encountered. I believe this knot of magic is a self-defense mechanism. A living organism's drive to survive is very strong, and can lead to unusual behaviors when death is imminent. Including, for a user of magic, a last-ditch effort at a protective enchantment—in this case, messy and formless and very powerful. I don't believe he was even conscious when he created it. But it's keeping oxygen going to his lungs and blood going to his brain, despite the immense damage to his neck. I've never seen anything like this before. It's fascinating. I'm glad you brought him to me."

"Can you fix him?" Sif asks, fighting to keep her voice even.

"I'm hoping I can use this magic that's keeping him alive to our advantage. He's given me incredibly powerful raw materials to work with; if I can manipulate the magic that's already there, I can redirect some of it to begin healing the damage to his throat. Fortunately that's the only physical damage to him. You say he was floating in space for an hour? Fortunate for him that he's a Jotun; many other species would be long dead, too irreparably damaged by such exposure for even this magic to keep them alive."

Sif never told Ifli about Loki's true parentage—it feels like a secret that should be kept in the royal family—and she stares. "How did you know?"

Ifli chuckles. "I would have figured it out very quickly once I started working on him," she points out. "But I knew the moment I saw him. Look at him."

Sif obediently takes a closer look at his face, then kicks herself for being so unobservant. She'd taken his grayish-blue pallor and reddened eyes to be a result of his air being cut off, but she sees now that he's actually half-shifted; the raised ridges and markings of a Frost Giant are faintly visible on his face.

"So why bring a Jotun to me to be healed?" Ifli asks. "I thought they were great enemies of your people."

And Sif, in her mind's eye, sees a thousand golden summer afternoons spent in joyful play with the princes: Loki before he knew the truth; Loki before his jealousy and fear and pain turned him traitor to his people. She remembers words of encouragement that flowed between them when they sparred. She remembers a hundred times when Thor had thoughtlessly hurt or belittled her, and Loki had cheered her up by helping her execute elaborate pranks against his brother. She remembers that kiss—the only one they ever shared—centuries ago, after a Yuletide feast. And when she speaks her voice is soft. "He was my friend."

Ifli seems willing to take that as an answer, and Sif collapses back into her chair and keeps her eyes fixed on Loki's still, blue-gray face.

. . . . . .

It only takes an hour for Ifli to start Loki on the path to healing. "Relying on my own powers and technology and skills, it would have taken far longer," she explains to Sif. "But the enchantment on him was very amenable to being repurposed for healing, and as I said, your Jotun was far more powerful than I'll ever dream of being. Jotuns always have been very powerful enchanters. I predict he'll be breathing on his own by sunset."

Loki is stable; Loki will live, and Sif breathes a heavy sigh of relief. She supposes she could leave now while his body stitches itself back together, go look for more information about Asgard, but again her intuition tells her that she belongs here. So she sits, and she waits, as the angry marks on his neck start to fade.

Some four hours after they arrived on Terma, Loki starts slowly shifting back to his Asgardian form. Seeing him look so much like his old self sends a pang through her heart. She thought she'd stopped mourning his loss ages ago, after he fell from the Bifrost; perhaps she was wrong.

Either way, she finds herself reaching out to carefully brush a strand of his long, dark hair away from his face.

Six hours after they arrived on Terma, Sif becomes aware of a new sound in the room, starting off quietly but slowly growing in volume, and a powerful lance of joy runs through her as she finally identifies it: Loki is breathing again. Ifli comes in only a few minutes later to check on him, and smiles in satisfaction as she tells Sif the worst is past.

"As for when he'll wake up, I couldn't tell you," she says. "The brain is the most difficult thing to heal, and while my scans tell me he has maintained what appears to be normal brain activity for a Jotun, it's hard to say what his injury may have done to him, especially given his absolutely astounding survival through magic. He could wake up in an hour with no negative side effects. Or he might . . ." She sighs, then gives Sif a motherly smile and puts a hand on her shoulder. "But lets hope for the best, shall we? If your young man is anything like you, he's a fighter."

And for the first time, Sif realizes that Ifli suspects that her connection to Loki is romantic in nature. But she doesn't bother to correct her. If it gets Loki the absolute best care that Terma has to offer, then Ifli can go ahead and assume that they're married, for all Sif cares.

Ifli leaves, and a young man in the white robes of an assistant brings Sif a plate of food, which she eats because she knows she should rather than because she has any appetite. She takes off her armor to get more comfortable in the chair. Dusk outside deepens into night. The healing hall slowly falls silent. And finally, the worst day Sif has had in years comes to an end, and she sleeps.

. . . . . .

"Sif?"

Years of experience on the battlefield come into play, and Sif bolts immediately into wakefulness. But she's not sleeping in a tent or a forest; she's curled up uncomfortably in a chair, and in the faint light coming in from the hallway on her left and the moons outside the window on her right, she can see Loki is awake and looking over at her with an unexpected sort of anguish in his eyes.

"What happened to you?" he asks, sounding and looking a bit disoriented (understandable, given that he's only just awoken and was so recently all but dead). His voice is scratchy—a result of the trauma to his throat, no doubt—but also filled with sadness and something like guilt. "Was it Ulik? I never intended—" He breaks off, coughing.

Ulik was Sif's most recent mission—a troll, escaped from the dungeons of Asgard during Malekith's attack, that Odin sent her to find. How in the world does Loki know about that?

But that question can wait. "Don't strain your voice too much," she recommends, pouring him a glass of water and then, when he can't quite manage to drink it himself, sitting on the edge of his bed to help him. A glance outside shows that it is still the middle of the night, and she turns a bedside lamp on so they can see each other better.

The coughing fit has not put him off his original question, as it turns out, because once his breathing is back under control, he looks once again at her with pain still in his eyes. "Was it Ulik who killed you?" he asks in that hoarse, scratchy voice.

Is he delirious? Did the lack of oxygen to his brain cause damage? "I think you'll find that it was I who killed him," she informs him. "And that, perhaps more important, I'm not dead."

His brow furrows. "Then why are you here?" he demands, and finally she understands.

"Loki," she says mildly, "you're not dead either."

He looks a bit baffled as he processes that, his confusion no doubt made worse by the fact that he still seems not quite awake, and is blinking heavily to drive the sleep from his eyes. She can't help giving him a tiny smile. "Did you suppose Valhalla looked like a darkened healing room?"

He rubs at his face for a moment, with a movement that looks as exhausted as Sif feels, and takes a deep breath, somewhere between a yawn and a sigh. And then he looks over at Sif with a touch of surprise in his expression, as though seeing her for the first time, or at least finally registering that she is actually here. For a moment he gives her a strange, somewhat guarded look that she can't read. And then he clears his throat and smooths down his hair, almost self-consciously. "How did I end up here with you?" he asks, his tone suddenly polite and a bit distant, as though they're exchanging cordial greetings in the halls of Odin's palace.

"What do you remember?" she asks, but scarcely has she spoken when his eyes widen and his whole body tenses.

"Thor!" he all but shouts, struggling to climb out of bed. "Where is Thor?"

"I was hoping you could tell me that," she says, and then, supposing his body ought to be given all possible time to recuperate, puts one hand on his shoulder and gently presses him back down onto the bed. "But why don't I start with what I know?"

He is clearly chafing at not being allowed to jump up and take action, but he finally and reluctantly relaxes back down into his bed, although he does insist on her helping him prop himself up on his pillows so he can sit up a little.

"This is unexpected," he says carefully as he watches her adjust a pillow behind him. "I have never seen the Lady Sif act as nurse or stand watch by a sickbed, and I certainly never thought that the first time, it would be the traitor prince of Asgard that she tended to."

"There is still much I find it hard to forgive you for," she informs him. "But I have heard of your heroic actions on Svartalfheim—the things you did to protect Thor, and the Midgardian woman. Apparently there was still good in you, even after everything you'd done."

"Ah," he says after a moment. "Yes. Svartalfheim."

That reminds her: where has he been since Svartalfheim? Why did he let everyone believe he was dead? But other questions are more pressing: what happened to Asgard, and where is Thor?

So she tells him everything: the distress call, searching the wreckage of the ship, bringing his body to Terma, the enchantment that saved his life, Ifli altering that enchantment to heal him. Loki makes a few hand gestures, clearly doing some kind of magic, and then looks impressed. "This Ifli is very talented," he says.

But Sif isn't thinking about Ifli. "Loki," she says quietly, "what has happened to Thor? Was he on that ship with you? What about Odin, and the Warriors Three, and my parents? And what's happened to Asgard? Why were so many Asgardians on that ship?"

Loki looks at her a long moment, with something like caution in his eyes. Or perhaps it's defensiveness; he did always hate being seen in moments of weakness, she supposes, and his current state certainly qualifies. And then he sighs. "Help me sit up, at least."

She still thinks he needs to rest, but if this is what it takes to get him to talk, she'll do it. So she helps him up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, and then she sits back in her chair, facing him. "Please tell me," she prompts when he simply stares at the ground. "You can't imagine what horrible things I've been imagining."

At that he sighs. "No matter what you've been imagining," he tells her gravely, "the reality is worse." Sif's brow furrows, but Loki presses on. "Did you know that Odin had a daughter?"

As Sif stares in wide-eyed astonishment, he tells her of the unknown sister, of Hela's invasion of Asgard, of the terrible choice Thor had to make. "It eventually became clear that we had two options: either we let Hela destroy Asgard and all its people, or we let the destruction of Asgard take Hela with it, and save what Asgardians still remained. Thor chose the latter. Hela and Asgard were destroyed, but two ships of Asgardian refugees got away."

"Two ships?" she whispers. "Out of the whole of Asgard?"

At that question his body language softens, just a bit; perhaps he pities her. "Most of the population was already dead by this point."

"Thor?" she prompts.

"He was on the ship with me."

"Odin?"

He shakes his head. "His death is what allowed Hela to get free."

"Volstagg? Hogun? Fandral?" she asks, horribly certain that she already knows the answer.

His reply is solemn. "Killed in Hela's invasion."

"My parents?"

And for a moment, the wall he's been putting up between them vanishes entirely, and she's reminded of the Loki who used to comfort her when they were young. "I don't know, Sif, I'm sorry."

Loki was right: reality is worse than anything she had imagined. This is a list of horrors she never dreamed of. And she knows it's not over yet. "And then?" she whispers.

Loki, never very physically large, seems to shrink in on himself at that question, whether in pain or shame she does not know. "A few days out of Asgard, our ship was attacked. The second ship escaped, fortunately, and is I hope still safe somewhere. But ours . . . it was the mad Titan Thanos, who desired the tesseract that I had taken out of Asgard's vaults before the palace was destroyed."

"Did you give it to him?"

"He would have killed Thor!" Loki snaps back defensively, and Sif puts her hands up in a placating manner. She would very likely have done the same, in that situation.

"And then?"

The fight gone out of him, Loki subsides again. "And then he killed me. Or so I thought. And then I woke up here. So you'll understand why I assumed we were both dead."

"And Thor?"

Loki shakes his head slowly. "He was injured and restrained by Thanos when I died. He may have escaped, or he may have fallen to whatever destroyed the ship." She could almost swear that Loki's face goes even paler, but it could be a trick of the light; it might not even be possible for Loki to look paler than he already does. "Or Thanos may have taken him along; he's known for collecting trophies who might be useful to him."

Sif nods slowly, her mind racing over and over everything that Loki just said. It doesn't even occur to her to question his words, despite who he is and what he has done; she saw for herself the destruction of that ship, Heimdall's body, Loki's own near-death. She has no reason not to believe the litany of horrors that he has just recited: Odin, dead. The Warriors Three, dead. Heimdall, dead. The vast majority of the Asgardians, most likely including all her family and friends, dead. Asgard, destroyed. Thor, missing and possibly in the hands of that madman Thanos.

"Sif?" Loki prompts softly when she doesn't react for a long few moments.

And when she slowly lifts her head to look at him, her vision is distorted and blurry, her eyes burning. He looks a little alarmed, and she can hardly blame him; the goddess of war is not known for allowing herself to cry.

"I should have been there," she says lowly. "The second I lost contact with Heimdall, I should have gone back to Asgard. Maybe I could have helped; maybe I could have made a difference. And stopped all this destruction."

"Or maybe you'd be just as dead as the others," he says, but scarcely have the words left his mouth before Sif stands up so suddenly that her chair topples over backward, the crash echoing loudly through the silence.

"Then at least I would have had a good death!" she shouts. "At least I could have fallen alongside my brothers-in-arms, protecting our homeland, and gone to Valhalla with them." She strides to the window and stares out at the night, one hand pressed to her chest as she tries to force her emotions under control, and the other balled into a fist at her side. "And perhaps I could have made a difference," she repeats, quieter.

"Sif, I saw Hela," Loki says, all his reserve from earlier entirely vanished. "I fought her. And none could stand against her. We survived only through a great deal of luck, and setting Surtur on her."

"I have to do something," Sif says, turning from the window. "I have to stop Thanos, and seek to learn if Thor yet lives."

But as she strides by the bed on her way to the door, Loki catches her wrist and halts her flight. "You cannot face Thanos alone. He can kill you with a snap of his fingers."

"Let me go," she insists, trying to pull away, but he is surprisingly strong for a man so recently killed.

"I will not let you go to run headlong into death."

"I don't care about my death," she insists.

"I do!"

Surprise saps the strength and the fight out of her, and she stops struggling against his grip and stares at him. He seems to be having trouble meeting her eye, but he doesn't let go of her wrist. The adrenaline leaves her all at once, and, suddenly exhausted, she collapses down onto the edge of the bed next to him like a marionette with its strings cut.

"Everyone dead," she repeats quietly.

"Nearly everyone," he confirms gently.

"Did you see my parents die?"

He shakes his head. "I did not. But I'm not aware of them having made it onto either ship. Sif, I'm so sorry."

Sif sits quietly for a moment, Loki's hand still cool against her wrist, his body a reassuring presence by her side despite everything that has transpired between them—a reminder of days long ago, when Loki was her friend (and when she briefly wished he was more than that to her), when sitting close by his side at feasts or in the library was an everyday occurrence.

Her mind goes over his story, the senseless death and destruction that has plagued her people and beloved home while she was flitting about the galaxy with no cares or worries other than tracking down an escaped convict. She thinks about the golden palace of Asgard, the fountains and trees, the festivals and celebrations, the mountains and rivers that she will never see again. She thinks about the fact that, with the exception of the fallen prince, everyone she has ever cared for is mostly likely dead, and she is alone in an uncaring universe.

It is indeed worse than she imagined. It is the end of the world.

And then, for the first time in longer than she can remember, Sif cries—great heaving sobs that wrack her whole body, a sensation that is all the worse for being unwanted and unfamiliar. For several long moments, Loki is perfectly still beside her, but eventually he releases her wrist and sets his hand carefully on her shoulder.

Usually Sif would hate a reminder that someone is seeing this moment of weakness in her. But a thousand years and several heartrending betrayals is not enough distance to make her forget that when they were children, Loki was the only person, outside her mother, that ever saw Sif cry. Because unlike Thor or Fandral, he never made fun—not of her tears, anyway.

So instead of pulling away, she leans a little closer, and turns a little toward him, and his hand slides a little farther across her back, and she leans even closer, and turns even more toward him, and his hand slides even farther, and the next thing she knows Loki has both his arms wrapped around her and she is sobbing into his shoulder, hating herself for being so weak but unable to make herself stop.

"I will kill Thanos," she promises, her voice low and deadly, when her sobs have quieted somewhat. "I will make him pay. And I will find Thor."

Loki speaks more gently than she knew he was capable of. "As you should. But for the moment, you should let yourself grieve and rest, just for a little while."

"I hate crying."

"I know. But I'd be more worried if you weren't crying right now. You've just learned of tremendous loss. Thor and I experienced all this over a few weeks, so we had time to accustom ourselves to each new tragedy, but you're experiencing it all at once. Your reaction is not weakness."

Loki, talking sense instead of vengeance and madness—it truly is as though they've gone back in time.

He makes a good point, and anyway she's only slept four hours in the last three Asgardian days, and even she has her limits. And she also can't help but notice that having physical contact with another person is easing her sorrow, somehow; she supposes that there's comfort in knowing that despite all of her loss, she's not entirely alone.

So she extricates herself from Loki's arms; once she starts moving away from him, he lets her go quickly, as though he's been burned, and his face goes carefully blank. But that quickly turns to an expression of confusion when she kicks off her boots and turns off the bedside lamp.

"What are you—"

"Sleeping," she says, and lies down on her side on the bed, and lifts one arm in invitation. In the faint light of the moons outside, she sees something like shock cross his face, and then he cautiously lies down as well, facing her. She wraps her arm around him, mindful of his recently injured neck, and buries her face against his chest. A moment later, she feels his arm come up around her.

And once again she cries. The sobs are past, but tears pour, hot and unaccustomed and silent, from her eyes; if Loki notices his tunic slowly getting wet, he says nothing. And if Sif notices his chest shake with a few silent sobs of his own, she says nothing. And eventually they sleep.

. . . . . .

Ifli says nothing when she comes in the next morning about finding Sif in the patient's bed, but her expression is quite eloquent. Sif doesn't care; she's far better rested than she would have been sleeping in that chair, and she does feel better for having let herself grieve, and she did find it a comfort to have Loki hold her while she cried. So let Ifli think what she will.

The healer declares Loki to be well on his way to recovery, but won't hear of him leaving until she's been able to observe him for a little while. "At least until this afternoon," is her suggested compromise. "It's not as long as I'd like, but it is at least a full day."

And Sif, remembering how Loki looked when she found him—limp and lifeless and gray—agrees on his behalf.

The healing hall has a sundeck on the roof for recuperating patients; Ifli believes firmly in the healing power of fresh air and sunlight. Sif and Loki take their breakfast there, and fortunately they have the place to themselves; they sit in silence, and eat slowly, and gaze out over the forest, and Sif decides to ignore the glances that Loki keeps shooting her way. Sleeping in Loki's arms made perfect sense last night, but in the light of day . . . she's not ashamed, but she doesn't know what she'll say about it if he brings it up, and would prefer to pretend it never happened.

Sif finally breaks the silence. "What will you do now?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Loki set his drinking glass down. "The same as you," he says. "So I thought that perhaps, if there's room for two in your spacecraft . . ."

She's glad of it, for it saves her the trouble of inviting him along. She can use all the help she can get in this fight, and Loki's miraculous healing has reminded her of precisely how powerful he is. "That can be arranged," she says. "If you promise to rest this morning, and heal, and gather your strength. You're no good to me if your injuries overtake you." He nods his agreement, and she asks, "Where will Thanos go?"

"Midgard," he says confidently. "Unless he has already been and gone. They have two of the Infinity Stones there. And anyway, it would be a good place for us to visit; those mortals Thor was always so fond of have their faults, but they could be useful allies in this fight." He hesitates, and she looks over at him. "For you, at least. I imagine they may not be interested in allying with me."

"You do have a knack for making enemies," Sif agrees. "Although attempting to take over Midgard was a bit much, even by your lofty standards."

To her surprise he looks pained at that, just for a moment, before smoothing out his expression again. "I'm not proud of what I did on Midgard," he says, a little quieter than before. "Indeed, I am not proud of a great deal that I have done."

She doesn't know how to respond to that. So she doesn't.

For a few long moments, they eat in silence. As Sif finishes her meal, she glances over to see Loki smothering the end of a smile—not one meant for her, clearly, given the quiet, introspective nature of the thing. But she could use something to cheer her up, so she asks, "What are you smiling at?"

He demurs at first—he always has loved having secrets—but when she presses, he says, "You won't like it."

"Try me," she challenges.

"Fine," he says with another smile, this one directed at her and full of mischief. "I was thinking how thrilled my adolescent self would have been to know that I would one day have the Lady Sif in my bed."

She blinks at him a few times, then balls up her napkin and throws it at his head. He swats it away, chuckling. "I told you that you wouldn't like it." And then his laughter fades. "Even if all we did was cry ourselves to sleep." And then his amused expression falls entirely. "I suppose that if my adolescent self knew all the tragedies that had to occur to reach that point, though, he'd be less excited at the prospect."

Though Loki's an expert at keeping his emotions from his face, she can see the ghosts swimming behind his eyes. And she can't follow him down that path right now; she can feel that same dark grief hovering around the edges of her mind, but if she lets herself fall into it she'll be useless against Thanos. So she elects to focus on a different part of his statement.

"Perhaps your adolescent self would be thrilled to be close to any lady," she jokes gently, "but I imagine he'd be more thrilled if the lady was Sigyn."

And Loki's face goes slack with surprise. She's accustomed to seeing him with his expression carefully controlled, so it's strange to see him, however briefly, with raw, unfiltered emotion on his face. "You think I had feelings for Sigyn?" he asks.

"I know it," she corrects him with a small smile. "I'm not blind, Loki."

When he responds, there's a strangely mocking note in his voice, but she's unsure whether it's directed at her or himself. "If you think that's where my interest lay back then," he replies, "then I'm afraid you're more blind than you realize." A self-deprecating smile twists his lips into something that is not happiness. "And perhaps I am, as well; I was certain I'd been so obvious."

Sif looks at him a long moment, a surprised sort of suspicion welling up in her—but no. She would have known, surely. Though she prefers to ignore it now, there was a stretch of time in her adolescence when she was constantly watching the younger prince out of her corner of her eye, hoping to one day find him looking back, and surely she would have picked up on any hint of such feelings. He must be speaking of someone else.

"But then perhaps you were too busy looking at Thor to notice," he adds, and she rolls her eyes.

"You always did love throwing that in my face."

"Falling for the handsome, muscle-bound crown prince?" he asks, but the mocking tone in his voice has softened to something more like friendly teasing. "So obvious. Such a cliche. Why not choose someone truly unexpected? A servant from the kitchens, perhaps. Or follow Thor's example and choose a Midgardian. That's at least a little more imaginative."

That response warrants an eye roll. "I was with Haldor, for a while," she points out.

"Still muscle-bound and handsome."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

He hesitates, almost imperceptibly, then asks, "Is that feeling behind your need to search for Thor?"

Months of soul-searching have given her the answer to this question. "Thor is still my dearest friend, and now my king, I suppose," she says. "But the romantic feelings I used to harbor for him . . . so much has happened between now and then. He's not the same person he used to be. And neither am I." The corner of her lip twitches into a self-deprecating smirk. "And it took me centuries, but I did finally see which way the wind was blowing, as concerns Thor's interest in me. Or lack thereof."

There's a pause, and then Loki says "Ah," in a tone she doesn't quite recognize. "So nothing ever . . . happened? Between you?"

She snorts. "What an old gossip you are. Our world has ended. Our people are dead. Is this really the most important topic to be discussing just now?"

He shrugs elegantly, and she supposes that someone who didn't know him would believe the carelessness he puts into the gesture. "Just wondering if I'm the only son of Odin you ever kissed."

A whisper of heat comes to her cheeks; five hundred years later and the memory of that night still embarrasses her. "Yes, you are the only son of Odin I ever kissed."

"I suppose there's comfort in that thought." His gaze is fixed out over the forest spreading out below them, but his eyes are unfocused, and she thinks he doesn't really see what he's looking at. "Thor always had your heart, but I at least had this one thing that he did not."

A vivid memory flashes into her mind: the darkened gardens, the falling snow swallowing the sounds from the banquet inside, Loki's skin feeling warm, for once, compared to the icy night. "Thor didn't always have my heart," she corrects him quietly.

"My mistake," Loki says, and that mocking tone is back. "I suppose Haldor had your heart for a time as well. Until Lorelei stole it."

But Sif ignores him. "I know what I told you that night," she says, looking down at her hands. "But the truth is that I panicked, so I lied. I . . . didn't just kiss you out of boredom. I kissed you because I wanted to."

Loki has gone quite still, and he slowly turns his head to stare at her. She steadfastly refuses to meet his eye. "This is ancient history, I suppose, and it hardly matters now, with everything that has happened since. But . . . I have long regretted how I handled things that night. It was dishonest and dishonorable of me to tell you afterward that I was simply bored and curious. But I was not accustomed to failure, and I dreaded being rejected. It was easier to pretend it meant nothing to me."

And finally she looks up to meet his gaze. She has never seen this look on Loki's face before: wide-eyed, incredulous, looking like it would take very little to send him careening into either laughter or tears. "Why did you think I would reject you?" he says, his voice very carefully controlled.

Her light tone sounds forced to her ears. "Because I knew you cared for—I thought I knew you cared for Sigyn. You'd never shown the slightest bit of interest in me."

"And you . . . wanted me to show interest in you?"

How did they come to be discussing this, here at the end of the world? But then she supposes, perhaps that's exactly why. When you've lost everything, it changes your perspective; no sense worrying about hiding old secrets when your whole life has gone up in flames. So why not discuss the things you never dared to discuss before? "You remember when Thor became so unbearable back then? When he refused to take me seriously as a warrior because 'a girl can't fight as well as a boy,' and I didn't want to spend time with him so you and I became such good friends for a while?"

He nods, his eyes as wide as saucers.

"You were the only person who understood me, who took me seriously and listened to what I had to say. And I . . . I suppose I developed feelings for you."

"You cared for me then," he says quietly, still staring. And then he drops his elbows to his knees, hangs his head, and laughs. There's a strange, bitter tone in it.

Immediately her defenses come up. "Is that so absurd?" she demands, and he lifts his head so she can see the resigned look on his face.

"It's absurd that you and I were such fools," he tells her, and then before she can get even more defensive, he explains. "I loved you quite passionately," he says, and her eyes widen, "though I tried to keep it hidden when we were in public, out of fear that Thor and the others would mock me for thinking I had a chance with you. But when we were alone . . . I thought I'd been so obvious, but apparently I was too accustomed to hiding my feelings; I did too good a job keeping my secret from you. And apparently you did too good a job keeping your secret from me." He gives a self-deprecating laugh. "Perhaps we should share the title God of Lies. Just think of what pain we could have avoided if either of us had been willing to speak of our feelings."

"Were you in pain?" she asks hesitantly. She hadn't thought he would be—after all, she'd backpedaled so energetically from that kiss on the assumption that he felt nothing for her—but apparently she was wrong about several things back then.

"I was quite heartbroken," he tells her, simply and, if she's reading him right, honestly.

Surprise and incredulity and sorrow war in her chest. "You hid it well," she says, then reconsiders. "Although I suppose we were never quite good friends after that night."

"You went back to being friends with Thor," he says. "I thought the message was clear: you'd had your fun and now you were tired of me."

"I went back to being friends with Thor because you changed," she retorts. "Not immediately after that night, but over time you began to act . . . resentful. Jealous. Your pranks and jests became increasingly mean-spirited, where once they were so good-natured." She sighs. "Though I never realized just how resentful you had become until you allowed Frost Giants into Asgard, just to ruin Thor's coronation."

He stares at her, and then he looks away, out over the forest, and she knows he's avoiding her gaze, rather than enjoying the view. "What fools we have both been," he says again, quietly.

"How differently the last few years might have played out," she agrees, her mind still whirling with this revelation that Loki loved her once. If they had been together, could she have helped him root out and destroy his growing resentment for Thor? Could she have steadied him through the discovery of his true parentage? Might he have stayed loyal to his family and his people?

As though he's read her thoughts, he says quietly, "My bad decisions are not your responsibility."

"Still," she says, and sighs. "There are so many things I wish had gone differently. For both of us."

"For all of us," he agrees, and she smiles a little, which causes his brow to furrow. "What?"

"It's simply good to hear you say 'us,' and mean 'Asgard.' After all that's . . . that's happened." And then she adds, "All that you've done."

He nods, a pained expression briefly crossing his face before it disappears back behind his careful mask. "I will always regret, for the rest of my life, that I spent so much of the last decade estranged from the places and the people I'd always loved." Again, something honest and pained glimmers in his eyes, just for a moment. "And now I can never go back to Asgard."

She nods, but her mind is elsewhere; his comment has reminded her of a question that she's had since finding him in that wreckage, that she keeps forgetting to ask. "Speaking of how you've spent your time," she asks, "where have you been since Svartalfheim? Did you know we all thought you were dead?"

For a brief moment there's a flash of alarm across his face, but almost immediately he's got himself back under control and is saying, "There was a period when no one wanted me alive. I thought that if Loki disappeared, everyone might be happier. Thor and Odin could rest easy in the knowledge that I died a hero—that I was redeemed in the end. And you could be pleased with me as well, for you've already told me my sacrifice is the reason you've been so civil to me for the last day."

"I suppose you're right," she agrees. "But where have you been?"

Perhaps the god of lies is out of practice, for he hesitates just a fraction of a second too long before answering, "In disguise on Aakon."

There's something particularly unsettling about the lie; maybe it's that for the first time in years, Sif feels as though Loki has actually been honest with her for an extended period of time, so to have him stop now is a bit upsetting. "No you weren't," she says, watching his face closely.

"I hate to contradict so noble a lady," he drawls, "but I was definitely on—"

"You seem to be losing your touch, Loki Silvertongue," she says. "You were close to Asgard, weren't you?"

"What makes you say that?" he asks smoothly.

"For one thing, that you knew that my last mission was to stop Ulik," she says. "The Allfather and I were the only two in the room when that was discussed, and I didn't tell anyone about it, and he always kept our missions fairly quiet. So you must have been in close contact with him. Unless—"

Realization hits her like a blow from Mjolnir, and she physically recoils. "No."

"No?" he repeats, a shade too innocent.

"No," she says, her mind suddenly connecting the dots between a handful of strange incidents, each one insignificant on its own but each contributing to the picture that's emerging. "Tell me you didn't, Loki."

"Didn't what?"

"Is that why you were constantly sending me and the Warriors Three on lengthy quests? You were afraid we'd detect the truth if you let us stay close to you?"

"I have no idea what you're—"

"You've already admitted it," she reminds him sharply. "Remember? When you woke up and you thought Ulik had killed me; you said 'I never intended.' You never intended for your little errand to get me killed, is what you meant."

"I was delirious," he says dismissively. "I'd been all but dead, remember?"

"No," she says sharply, standing from her chair with her hands clenched at her sides. "For once, stop lying. For once in your miserable life, tell me the truth. What did you do with the Allfather?"

"Nothing," he insists.

"Did you kill him?" she demands.

"Of course not," he says sharply, forgetting himself a moment. "He was unwell, so I put him somewhere safe to recover."

"So when you said you let us believe you were dead because you thought people would be at peace with you gone, what you meant was that you faked your death so you could disguise yourself and take the throne."

"It wasn't like that," he insists, but she turns and stalks away to the edge of the deck, gripping the railing tightly and staring sightlessly out over the trees.

"What an idiot I've been," she says tightly. "And how neatly and easily you manipulated me. Did you know how much I mourned you? I mourned you both times you died: the first time because I understood how the truth you learned might overset you, and I mourned the loss of my old friend; and the second time because I thought you died a hero, and that the old you, the Loki I once loved, had been somewhere in there all along. I mourned your potential for redemption. I raised toasts to your name. I defended you against detractors on Asgard. And both times it was lie—you allowed us to believe you were dead so you could sneak away to seize a throne. Once on Asgard and once on Midgard."

There's the sound of footsteps behind her, and when Loki speaks, his voice is close to her ear. "That's not what I intended. Either time."

"I find that hard to believe," she retorts sharply. "Given that it's exactly what happened. You didn't a die a hero. You lived, the way you've lived for years now: as a traitor and a liar and a pretender to thrones never meant to be yours."

There's the lightest touch on her shoulder: Loki's hesitant hand, beseeching her to just look at him. And at the touch, something in her snaps, and she whirls around and grabs the front of his tunic to hold him at arm's length. "You were there once, as Odin, when I proposed a toast to the fallen prince," she recalls. "Did you find it amusing how thoroughly you'd fooled me? How entirely blind I was?"

"I was honored," he corrects her, and she has to admit that his expression and tone are a good approximation of sincerity and desperation, but she's unmoved.

"How do I keep doing this?" she demands. "How do I keep falling for your lies? How could I have been so wrong as to believe there was good in you?"

"Because you know me," he says, his expression beseeching, and one hand comes up to hesitantly touch her hand where it's still gripping his tunic.

But she releases him and pulls her hand away as though his touch burns her. "Clearly I don't," she says. "Clearly I was wrong when I thought I did." And she strides away from him and toward the stairs with all the dignity she can muster.

"Where are you going?" he calls after her.

"My ship," she says. "I need to see that it's prepared for the trip to Midgard. You should consider looking into your own transportation."

"You're going to leave me here?"

She whirls around to face him. "I can't have someone I don't trust around in a fight as serious as the one I'm about to engage in."

"You trusted me last night," he retorts. "You trusted me ten minutes ago."

"That was before I knew that you faked your death and made everyone believe you'd died a hero, so that you could kidnap your father and take his throne. And that you sent me to the far corners of the galaxy so I wouldn't see through your ruse, which meant I couldn't fight to protect Asgard against Hela."

He hesitates, genuinely thrown for a moment, then says, "Fine, I did some of those things. But Sif, let me come with you, please. For your sake, not mine. Thanos is far more dangerous than you can imagine, especially if he's obtained any more Infinity Stones. He will kill you, Sif, and I will never forgive myself for not preventing it."

"Oh, because suddenly you're so heroic?"

"Because I love you!" he all but shouts, heedless of who might hear them. "Because I've always loved you, even when I resented you for breaking my heart, and then ignoring me to fawn all over Thor. Even when we were fighting each other; even when you were threatening to kill me if I betrayed Thor. That's why I sent you away from Asgard; I was afraid people would discover the ruse because I found myself behaving like a lovesick fool whenever we were in the same room."

She stares at him a long moment, her thoughts a cyclone in her head. And then she says, "I am leaving. If you follow me, we will find out how well you can walk with a dagger in your leg."

And apparently she was convincing, because when she storms down the stairs, Loki does not follow.

. . . . . .

For nearly an hour, Sif stomps around angrily in her ship, doing routine maintenance checks, checking the hull for damage (her limited piloting skills mean that there was a collision or two out in that debris field), inspecting her armor, sharpening and polishing her weapons.

But despite everything, despite her anger and her threats, she can't bring herself to leave Terma just yet.

Maybe it's that she worries that what Loki said is true, about how powerful Thanos is. If it is, then it would be foolish of her to rush headlong into battle. She needs intel, and Loki seems to have that. That intuitive sense she has, the one that's so often kept her safe in battle, is currently telling her that to go off on this quest alone, without at least talking to Loki first, would be suicide. That seems a reasonable explanation for her current reluctance to leave, and she focuses on that.

What this hesitation is not about is the fact that some tiny part of her objects to leaving him here, and not only because there are so few Asgardians left that she wants to protect all of them. That tiny part remembers when he was her dear friend, and how she used to love him, and how ready she was just this morning to put the past behind them and ally herself with him once again—but that was before she knew of this most recent betrayal, one that rankles in particular because she was so taken in by his supposed redemption. So she's ignoring that tiny part of herself.

And what it's definitely not about—what she refuses to let it be about—is the revelations of today, the ones that keep bouncing around her head despite her best efforts to quiet them: Loki loves her. Loki has always loved her, if she is to believe his claims, and she rather thinks she does; he's a talented liar, but she can't think of what he'd gain from this lie. And in retrospect it does explain a few things—a few lingering glances Odin gave her over the past few years, the fact that Loki always acted a little different around her than he did around any of their other friends when they were younger—

No, she's not thinking about that. It doesn't matter. He's a liar and a usurper and she can't let it matter now that apparently he was thrilled when she kissed him outside the Yule feast, and then heartbroken when she lied and said that she'd just been curious what it was like, and if only one of them had been brave enough to speak up—

Not thinking about that.

But she's not leaving, either, because she can't quiet that sense she has that to leave alone would be disastrous. And she's wasting time just sitting here in her spaceship. So finally she decides to do her duty as a warrior (and what she should have done immediately): to put personal feelings aside to be the most effective she can be in battle. She's not pleased with Loki. But she needs his input. So she supposes she can give him a ride to Midgard.

. . . . . .

She finds Loki in his room in the healing hall, dressed once again in that unfamiliar leather clothing she found him in, tugging his cuffs down and examining himself in the mirror with a grim expression on his face. But when he catches sight of her in the reflection, his face lights up with such relief that for a brief moment, she wants to forgive him for everything.

"Sif." He breathes her name like a benediction, and turns quickly to face her. "I'm so glad—you—you haven't left yet?"

"I decided it was foolish to rush off to face Thanos without any intel, which I knew you could give me."

His shoulders droop a little, whether in relief or disappointment she can't tell. "I'd hoped you might come to that conclusion, eventually."

"So," she says formally, "if you are still interested, I would still like to offer you passage to Midgard, in return for your telling me everything you know of Thanos. But I'd prefer you not speak of anything else on the journey; I grow tired of your lies, Silvertongue."

Loki simply stands and looks at her for a long quiet moment; the dignity in his posture is familiar to her, but the exhaustion is not. "Then let me speak now. Please, Sif," when she moves as though to object, "let me explain myself once, and then if you desire I will never speak on the subject again."

Ifli won't discharge him for another few hours, so Sif supposes they've got time for such an explanation. "Fine," she says, and sits in the chair she slept in last night. "But if you lie to me again, Loki, I will not hesitate to show you exactly how I feel about that."

"Understood," he says, and seats himself on the edge of the bed, facing her. For a moment he appears to gather his thoughts, and then explains, "I thought Algrim had killed me; truly I did. And I didn't entirely mind; it would've been a good death, the sort you and Thor could be proud of me for. And I'd see . . . my mother again." For a long moment, he bows his head and she hears nothing but the breeze rustling the leaves outside. "But as Thor said his goodbyes, I realized that the wounds weren't quite as dire as I'd thought, and that I could heal them with my magic. And yes, I chose to let Thor think I'd died. I had every intention of disappearing somewhere far away from the pain of my past. Everyone would have been happy. Including, for the first time in many years, me."

Sif is forced to admit to herself that she can see the wisdom in what he's saying. Had she herself not been just a bit relieved to know that Loki's suffering was past, and that Asgard was safe from his future mischief and betrayals?

"But I couldn't resist one last visit to Asgard, in disguise. I wanted to tell Odin personally that I'd died. I wanted to watch his face and see if he showed any sorrow whatsoever." Something dark crosses his face. "He certainly didn't when I died the first time. Or when he sentenced me to life in prison and informed me I'd never see my mother again."

Sif shakes her head. "How do you live with a man for more than a millennium and never understand him? Odin kept his emotions tightly controlled; it was his way. But of course he mourned you, and it broke his heart to lock you away. Everyone could see that. You just refused to see it because you'd already made up your mind that you knew what he thought."

Loki stares at her, then looks away. "I do understand, now, the ways I misjudged him. But he did an awfully good job of keeping his emotions hidden from me. And you have to see that he would have been a difficult man to grow up with."

"I suppose I can see that," Sif admits.

"So I went to see if he'd mourn my passing." His brow furrows. "And he did. In fact, he collapsed—not the Odinsleep," he adds quickly, correctly predicting the question she was about to ask. "Simply from the shock of it. He was a very a old man; sometimes I forgot that." His expression grows distant for a moment, and then he shakes his head. "Almost right at that second, before I'd had time to react, there was a knock at the door. I knew that if anyone walked into the room and saw Odin collapsed and me standing over the body—whether I was in disguise or not—they would assume the worst. So I cast an illusion: me as Odin, and Odin invisible. I was able to send the visitor away quickly. And then . . ."

"And then," Sif prompts icily, and Loki looks at her helplessly.

"It was so easy," he explains, and there's an apology in his voice, along with a plea. "I was already there, in the throne room, and no one was aware a switch had been made. And I . . ." He leans forward, his tone earnest, begging her to understand. "Odin had told me all my life that I was born to be a king. He let me grow up believing that if I just tried hard enough, studied and worked and pleased him enough, there was a chance he would name me his heir." And suddenly he leans back, his pleading expression replaced by a sneer. "Little did I know that my future had been decided long ago; no matter what I did, Odin would never allow the throne of Asgard to be filled by a Frost Giant whose own father hadn't even wanted him." He looks down at the ground a long moment, and when he looks back up at Sif, the anger is gone. "I knew I could do a good job. I knew I could prove that I could've been a good king if Odin had ever given me a chance."

"Oh, being a good king?" Sif retorts. "Is that what you were doing? Because it looked to me like you were lounging around Asgard, eating exotic fruits and making people put on plays about you."

He looks largely apologetic and just the tiniest bit amused. "All right, so it turns out that ruling is difficult, and enjoying the perks of being king was . . . a bit too tempting to resist. But you can't try to tell me Thor wouldn't have done the exact same thing for the first few years of his reign."

He's not wrong, but there's not a chance she's going to tell him that. But it does mean that her next question isn't delivered with quite as much bite as her last few. "Wasn't your whole point that you were a better choice for the throne than Thor?"

Loki looks duly chastised. "I'm not proud of my behavior," he says, then insists, "But I did have plans. I could have been a good king. You must believe me, Sif."

There was a time when she believed that he would be a good king. And she still believes he has the intelligence to do it. What she can't decide is whether he has the decency, or the self-restraint. "And now?" she asks quietly, curious as how he feels now. "Are you still eager to prove you could be a good king?"

He shakes his head slowly, and she decides that the pain and weariness in his eyes is real. "Seeking the throne has caused nothing but heartache, for me and everyone around me. Besides, seeing Thor take charge during Hela's attack, and the sacrifices he made to keep our people safe . . . I misjudged him. He needed to do some growing, but he will be an excellent king. Better, perhaps, than our father." His brow furrows. "If Thor yet lives."

"Speaking of your father," she prompts, and Loki grimaces a little.

"I . . . put him in a care center for the elderly on Midgard. Enchanted to believe he was a Midgardian named Anthony."

Sif sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose, carefully tamping down the laugh of surprised disbelief that very unexpectedly bubbles up at his statement. "You put the Allfather in a home for the elderly?"

"It was a very fine facility, and highly regarded," her companion retorts. "He received excellent service and care there. I checked on him often. From afar, obviously; I'm still not very well liked on Midgard."

"Imagine that," she says drily. "And is that where he died?"

Loki shakes his head. "He escaped, and went to Norway. Thor and I found him there, and there he died of old age. It was . . ." What appears to be genuine emotion crosses his face for a moment. "We parted on a better note than I'd expected. He . . . told me that he loved me."

Something in his face just then reminds her forcibly of when they were children, and Loki was so eager to prove himself to his father; looking back on those childhood memories with an adult's understanding, she wonders if Loki was always so eager to please because even in those early days, Odin was already showing favoritism to Thor. (She didn't notice it, but then she wasn't looking for it, and when she was young she always felt that Thor deserved the adoration he got.) Either way, Sif knows enough about Loki's state of mind the last few years to understand the impact Odin's declaration would have had on his adopted son, and something in her heart twists, just a little.

She examines him a long moment as he looks back at her with that impassive expression he uses when he's feeling anything but impassive. And then she sighs and rubs her eyes, suddenly exhausted. "So what now, Loki? Am I meant to forgive you because you're now so repentant, having learned the hard way the carnage that comes with seizing power? Am I meant to excuse all you did because your father gave the throne to your older brother and it hurt your feelings?"

"Yes, that would be greatly appreciated, thank you," Loki says promptly, and Sif can't help herself: she laughs a little. It's a tired and a sad and a quiet sound, but a laugh, nonetheless. Loki did always have a knack for making her smile. "Probably not," he amends after a moment, his voice so quiet that she's not entirely sure she's meant to hear it. "But I wish you would."

They sit in silence for a long few moments, and then Loki adds, sounding very reasonable. "After all, you forgave Odin."

"Odin?"

"You said that I learned the hard way that carnage comes with seizing power. And so did Odin. I didn't tell you everything last night, about his past. Do you know the reason that the Nine Realms are united under Asgardian rule?"

Truth is, she's never thought about it. "No?"

"Odin wrested them under his control, through war and violence and bloodshed and carnage, with the help of that same Hela who destroyed Asgard in the end. The 'wise and peaceful king' persona he adopted came much later in his life. So if he can turn his back on his violent past, why can't I?" He gives her a winning smile. "I am, after all, his son."

"Only when it suits you," she mutters, and his smile turns genuine.

"And Thor's hands are certainly not clean when it comes to violence," he points out. "How many battles and fights did he start, how many people died, because he sought glory? Or a trinket? Or simply had too much to drink at a tavern?"

Unfortunately, he's not wrong about his brother. She loves Thor, but she's honest enough that she can admit that to herself. "So your argument, then, is that I should forgive the terrible things you've done, because other people have also done terrible things?"

Here's that charming smile again. "I would have put it much more eloquently and convincingly, but . . ."

It doesn't excuse things. And yet, sitting here at the end of the world . . . it's hard to feel as strongly about fights long past, over a throne that no longer exists.

She examines him a long moment: Loki, back from the dead for the second time—the third, really, if one counts his near death yesterday. Loki, now the traitor and villain, but once her dear friend, and her first kiss. Loki, as handsome as he ever was, but now with a sort of hardness about him that hurts her a little to see. Loki, looking exhausted and just a bit vulnerable underneath his devil-may-care exterior, who fought so hard at Ragnarok to protect the people he once turned his back on. Loki, a tangled knot of contradicting motivations and desires that she can't untangle . . . but she finds there's a part of her that wants to understand him. A part of her that wants to know whether it's safe to trust him again. And that part is growing larger with each moment that passes.

"What is it that you want?" she asks finally. "Right now, and in the future?"

"I want to stop Thanos," he says without hesitation. "I want to find Thor, if he yet lives—I will scour the universe to find him. I want—I want to make sure that you survive the coming conflict. That you both do." And then he pauses, and a tiny, bittersweet smile crosses his face. "There are only two things left in the universe that matter to me: my brother, and you." A moment's thought, and then, "And that other ship of refugees, I suppose, if they have survived."

"And after that?"

"After that, I do not know. My expectations are a blank. I . . . did not ever expect to find myself in such a situation."

"But what do you want?" she presses.

The light mood from a few moments ago has entirely vanished. Loki looks at her a moment, his expression a carefully neutral mask that doesn't prevent her from knowing his true feelings, not anymore; she saw into his soul today, and knows at least a few of his secrets now. And perhaps he knows that, because he gives her a self-deprecating smile. "Nothing that I can have."

She looks at him.

He looks at her.

And then the door opens and Ifli enters. Her observant glance takes in the tension in the room, but doesn't comment on it, simply informs Loki that they're there to do an examination and draw blood for a test. Two assistants follow her in carrying various pieces of equipment, and Loki, with a final glance at Sif, obediently lays back on the bed and submits to their examination.

Sif stands and walks to the window, carefully working to quiet her mind and focus on the task ahead of them, trying and failing to keep her mind off the prince behind her.

Ifli finishes her visual examination, proclaiming her satisfaction with Loki's improvement, and then walks over to talk to her assistants who are preparing a syringe.

And then there's a loud crash as one of the assistants drops the box he's holding.

Sif turns quickly, as the man says quietly, "I feel . . . I don't . . ."

Ifli, too, looks suddenly disoriented and pained, and Sif steps forward quickly. Loki has stood up by then, and he grabs her wrist as she reaches his side.

And that's when Ifli and the assistant start to dissolve.

That's not the right word, precisely, but Sif doesn't know the correct word for when someone appears to turn to ash and then blow away, bit by bit. "Ifli!" she cries out, horrified.

"What's happening?" exclaims the assistant who is still whole, reaching out uselessly toward her colleagues.

"Thanos," hisses Loki. "He's gotten all the Infinity Stones. This is what he wanted: to destroy half the universe with the snap of his fingers." That's when the last bits of Ifli and the assistant vanish, the fallen box of supplies the only sign that they were ever there. And before Sif can react, Loki has suddenly turned to her, the hand that was on her wrist sliding up to grip her forearm, his other hand coming up to cup her face. "Sif?"

She knows what he's asking. "I feel fine," she says. "You?"

He nods, and she's surprised at the relief that courses through her. But the feeling quickly vanishes as the magnitude of what's just happened hits her. "Half the universe?" she repeats blankly.

Loki nods, and turns to the assistant. "You should go see who's survived. And spread the word, so people know what happened."

The woman nods and leaves the room, and Loki and Sif are left standing together with his hands still on her. She's glad of the contact, which grounds her as she tries to process what's just happened. Half the universe, dead in a single moment. Men, women, children, babies, crumbling inexorably away, leaving no trace behind. The horror of it overwhelms her at first, which is perhaps why she doesn't object when Loki leans in and presses a lingering kiss to her forehead.

"I am pleased you were not taken," he says softly when he pulls back, and she can see in his eyes that he's as distressed as she is.

Unthinkingly, she brings up her hand to cover the one he has cupping her face. She's not sure what she means by it: "I am pleased that you were not taken as well," perhaps, or "Don't let go; I need proof that someone I care for still exists in this universe." He grows very still, but she doesn't see if his expression changes because she lets her eyes slip closed, and just stands there breathing and calming herself and drawing strength from the feeling of his skin against hers.

And then she opens her eyes. "We have to leave." Her tone is calm and confident and strong: the moment of shock is past, and she is Lady Sif, Goddess of War. "Now."

He nods and steps back, his hands falling from her body. "I couldn't agree more."

Eight minutes later they are clearing atmo, on their way to Midgard; Loki pointed out that there are enough of Thor's hero friends there that with any luck, some of them will have survived the culling, and that they may, at the very least, have information about what happened when Thanos visited.

"And if they don't have a plan to kill Thanos, then we make one," Sif says lowly, her expression set and dangerous. "And we find Thor, or at least learn what happened to him."

Loki, buckled into the seat next to her and plotting the jumps required to get them to Midgard, looks over at her with a tiny smile. "You look quite formidable right now, my lady. I am glad that, for the first time in several years, that look is not aimed at me."

She rolls her eyes at him.

Only nine jumps to Midgard, and then a forty-minute flight into the Midgardians' solar system. They make the jumps in silence; more than once, Sif could swear she feels Loki's eyes on her, but when she looks over his gaze is fixed on the navigation system.

It amazes her to think what courage it brings her to have Loki at her side as she goes into battle. He's always been a powerful sorcerer and a brilliant strategist, and there's comfort in knowing that he will use his magic and his mind to avenge the people of Asgard, and the people of the universe, that Thanos has destroyed. With his help, and with her sword, and with the aid of the Midgardian heroes, she believes they have a chance.

And if they succeed, who knows? Perhaps there are Asgardians on that other ship who survived. Perhaps they will find a new place to settle, to rebuild their home. She glances at her companion out of the corner of her eye. Perhaps if they do, she will convince Loki to stay and help. Perhaps he can reconcile with his people and his brother; perhaps he can finally find peace and happiness. And perhaps she and Loki can . . . reconcile as well. She meant what she said this morning: she wishes that things had gone very differently for the pair of them, individually and collectively. So maybe someday . . .

It's an absurd idea to be thinking of, given all that has transpired in the past, and all that is yet uncertain about the future; there is a part of her that can't believe that she's even considering it.

And yet, with the Midgardian sun coming into sight in their view screen, with Loki a reassuring presence by her side, his breathing a reassuring sound in her ears—Loki who has made so many mistakes, but who seems to be finding his way again—Loki who she loved once, and who loves her still—

Sitting here at the end of the world, she makes a decision.

She holds out her hand. Surprise in his eyes, Loki looks at the hand, and then at her; she simply watches him. Slow, cautious, he reaches out his own hand. She threads her fingers through his. He tightens his grip gently, experimentally. She returns the pressure.

And hand in hand, they go to find Thanos.

. . . . . .

fin